E171: DOJ sues Apple, AI arms race, Reddit IPO, Realtor settlement & more

Status of the DOJ v. Apple case

• The DOJ and 16 states filed United States et al. v. Apple Inc. in the District of New Jersey on March 21, 2024, alleging Apple unlawfully maintains a smartphone monopoly.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Apple moved to dismiss on August 1, 2024; Judge Julien Neals denied that motion on June 30, 2025, allowing the case to proceed.(en.wikipedia.org)
• As of October 2025, the case remains active in pretrial/discovery with no settlement, dismissal, or major scaling‑back of the government’s claims, and no trial date yet set.(grokipedia.com)

(1) Administration change leading to the case changing or going away

• Chamath predicted “at least a 50% chance” the administration would turn over and that this would mean the lawsuit “changes or goes away entirely.”
• There was an administration change: Joe Biden remained president through PAFACA’s passage, but public reporting around TikTok’s PAFACA litigation refers to Donald Trump being inaugurated on January 20 (after the 2024 election), indicating a change in administration in January 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Despite that change, the DOJ Apple suit has not been dropped or meaningfully gutted; instead, the new administration’s DOJ is continuing to litigate, with the motion to dismiss denied and the case moving into discovery.(en.wikipedia.org)
• So the mechanism he described (new administration → case goes away or is substantially altered) has not come true so far. However, the case could still be narrowed or settled later, so we cannot yet say the long‑run claim (“nothing’s going to happen here”) is definitively wrong.

(2) ~10‑year path to meaningful remedies/judgment

• The suit was filed in March 2024. Ten years from filing would put final outcomes in the early–mid 2030s.
• As of late 2025 (about 1.5 years in), there has been no trial or remedy phase; the case is still in early litigation.(grokipedia.com)
• Comparable big‑tech antitrust cases (e.g., United States v. Google LLC filed in 2020, liability decision in 2024, remedies proceedings in 2025) illustrate that multi‑year timelines are plausible, but they do not yet confirm a full 10‑year horizon.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Since we are far short of his 10‑year window, this part of the prediction cannot yet be tested.

(3) Smartphone no longer dominant by the time the case is resolved

• Chamath further predicted that by the time any remedies/judgment arrive (around a decade out), we will have “moved to a different compute platform,” making the case mostly irrelevant.
• That is explicitly about conditions in the early–mid 2030s. As of November 2025, smartphones clearly remain the dominant consumer compute platform, and we are years away from his forecast horizon; there is no way yet to assess whether they will be displaced by then.

Overall assessment

• We can say that one short‑term implied claim (that a change in administration would cause the DOJ Apple case to go away or be substantially changed) has not materialized so far.
• However, the core of the prediction—"nothing’s going to happen," taking ~10 years, and the case being practically irrelevant by then due to a platform shift—is framed on a decade‑long timeline, and we are only ~1.5 years into that period.

Because the main forecast concerns outcomes in the early–mid 2030s and those have not yet occurred, the prediction as a whole is too early to finally score, even though early evidence cuts against his specific scenario about the administration change.

As of November 30, 2025, the DOJ’s Sherman Act case against Apple (United States et al. v. Apple Inc., No. 2:24‑cv‑04055) is still in early-to-mid litigation with no final judgment, settlement, or remedies order. The court denied Apple’s motion to dismiss on June 30, 2025, allowing all major claims to proceed, but that is only a procedural win for the government, not a final merits victory or remedial order. (macrumors.com) Analyses at the time of filing expected a resolution timeline of roughly 3–5 years including appeals, which fits with the current posture where discovery and later trial/appeal phases still lie ahead. (techcrunch.com) Because the ultimate outcome (whether DOJ secures a clear court win forcing major structural/behavioral changes on Apple) has not yet been decided, Sacks’s prediction cannot currently be judged and remains too early to call.

As of 30 November 2025, the DOJ’s 2024 antitrust case against Apple (United States et al. v. Apple Inc.) is still ongoing with no settlement or final judgment yet:

• In June 2025, Judge Julien Neals denied Apple’s motion to dismiss, and reporting notes that the case is moving into discovery and is expected to take years, with trial timing projected around 2027–2028.(macrumors.com)
• Public records and coverage describe the case status as continuing litigation; there is no indication that it has been resolved or settled as of late 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)

Regarding the specific product outcomes Jason tied to that resolution:

1. Official iMessage client for Android

   • iMessage remains officially available only on Apple platforms (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS).(en.wikipedia.org)
   • A 2025 overview of iMessage-on-Android workarounds explicitly notes that Apple has never released iMessage for Android and continues to keep it as an ecosystem lock‑in, with only unofficial hacks providing limited access.(ofzenandcomputing.com)
   • Apple has added RCS support to the Messages app on iPhone to improve texting with Android users, but that is not an Android iMessage client; it’s standards‑based RCS handled on the Apple side.(en.wikipedia.org)

2. Apple Watch compatibility with non‑Apple phones (e.g., Android)

   • Current guides (2025) still state there is no way to directly pair or fully use an Apple Watch with an Android phone; the watch requires an iPhone and Apple’s Watch app for setup and normal operation, and any Android "workarounds" are limited and unofficial.(androidauthority.com)

Because:

• The core event of the prediction — the DOJ case being resolved via settlement rather than judgment — has not happened yet; the case is actively proceeding and likely years from trial.(macrumors.com)
• The supposed downstream changes (official iMessage for Android and official Apple Watch–Android support) also have not occurred as of late 2025.

…it is too early to say definitively whether Jason’s prediction will ultimately prove right or wrong. As of now, none of the predicted outcomes have materialized, but since the underlying case has not yet been resolved, the fairest verdict is inconclusive (too early) rather than fully "right" or definitively "wrong."

As of November 30, 2025, the DOJ’s 2024 antitrust case United States, et al. v. Apple Inc. over the iPhone and related ecosystem is still in pre‑trial stages, with no settlement or merits ruling yet that compels Apple to change its practices in any of the five cited categories (super apps, cloud gaming apps, messaging apps, smartwatches, digital wallets).

Key points:

• The DOJ complaint filed March 21, 2024 explicitly identifies those five categories as areas where Apple allegedly suppresses competition.(techcrunch.com)
• Analysts and coverage at the time of filing projected a 3–5 year timeline for any final resolution, noting that remedies would likely be years away, similar to other big‑tech antitrust cases.(techcrunch.com)
• The court denied Apple’s motion to dismiss on June 30, 2025, allowing the case to proceed, but this is only a procedural ruling and does not order any substantive changes to Apple’s conduct.(macrumors.com)
• The most recent overviews of the case state that pretrial proceedings are ongoing and that trial is scheduled for 2026, with final remedies (if any) to come afterward.(en.wikipedia.org)
• There is no public indication of a settlement, consent decree, or injunction in this DOJ case that already forces Apple to materially alter its behavior in three or more of the five specified categories.

Apple has made or announced various changes in some areas (e.g., NFC access and messaging standards), but these stem primarily from EU proceedings and other regulatory or strategic pressures, not from a settlement or judgment in the U.S. DOJ 2024 smartphone‑monopoly case itself.(techcrunch.com)

Because the case is still pending and the central remedies phase has not occurred, we cannot yet know whether at least three of the five categories will be materially changed “in the government’s favor via settlement or ruling,” as the prediction specifies. Thus, it is too early to judge the prediction’s accuracy, and the result is inconclusive (too early).

As of November 30, 2025, the DOJ’s 2024 antitrust case against Apple over iPhone-related practices is still in active litigation with no settlement or final remedy yet.

• The DOJ and multiple states filed the lawsuit in March 2024, alleging Apple maintained a smartphone monopoly via five categories of conduct (super apps, cloud gaming, messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets/NFC). (techcrunch.com)
• In June 2025, Judge Julien Neals denied Apple’s motion to dismiss, allowing the case to move forward into discovery and a likely multi‑year process; reports note the case is unlikely to reach trial before roughly 2028. (macrumors.com)
• Contemporary analyses of the suit have consistently described expected resolution timelines of 3–5 years, reinforcing that we are still early in the process. (techcrunch.com)
• Recent coverage in mid‑ to late‑2025 discusses Apple’s answer to the complaint and additional states joining the case, framing it as ongoing litigation, not a settled matter. (macrumors.com)

Apple has independently loosened some restrictions (e.g., on cloud streaming, RCS messaging support, and NFC access for third‑party wallets), which arguably benefits consumers, but these changes are not yet part of any DOJ settlement or consent decree in this case. (macrumors.com)

Because:

1. There is no settlement yet, so we cannot know whether “three of five” categories will be formally conceded;
2. The net consumer impact of any eventual remedy is unknown; and
3. The long‑term effect of that eventual outcome on Apple’s business and stock cannot be tied to a resolved case,

there isn’t enough information to judge whether Jason’s multi‑part prediction has come true. It remains too early to call, so the prediction is best classified as inconclusive at this time.

As of late 2025, percentage-of-sale-price commissions remain the dominant way U.S. residential real estate agents are paid. Post–NAR settlement coverage shows that average total commissions are still around 5–6% of the sale price, with only modest declines in some data (e.g., from about 5.64% to 4.96% in one survey), and in some cases average percentage commissions have even ticked up slightly rather than down. (kiplinger.com) Buyer–agent agreements introduced after the 2024 settlement typically still specify compensation as a percentage of the purchase price rather than as flat fees. (washingtonpost.com)

Flat-fee and fixed-fee brokerages do appear to be growing and are frequently discussed as alternatives that can save consumers money, but coverage consistently presents them as niche or emerging options rather than the prevailing model. Articles from Bankrate, NPR, and others describe flat-fee brokers as new opportunities created by rule changes, contrasted against the longstanding norm of 5–6% percentage-based commissions; data and reporting do not show flat-fee models as a majority of transactions or the primary compensation structure. (bankrate.com)

Because Friedberg’s prediction was explicitly framed as a gradual structural shift occurring “over time” without a clear deadline, and such an industry-wide change would reasonably be expected (if it happens at all) over many years rather than within roughly 18–20 months, it is too early to say definitively that the prediction is right or wrong. What we can say is that the predicted shift has not yet occurred by 2025 (percentage-based commissions are still dominant), but the open-ended time horizon means the ultimate outcome remains unresolved. Therefore, the appropriate status is inconclusive (too early) rather than definitively right or wrong.

Available data show only a modest decline in National Association of Realtors (NAR) membership so far, far short of the 500,000–1,000,000 exits Friedberg predicted, but his timeframe (“over time,” “over the coming years”) is too vague and clearly multi‑year, so it’s premature to call the prediction right or wrong.

What’s happened so far

• NAR ended 2023 with about 1,554,604 members, down roughly 26,000 (‑1.7%) from a year earlier. (wrenews.com)
• As of Oct. 31, 2024, NAR reported 1,526,631 members, still “near its all‑time high,” only ~2% below 2023 year‑end. (nar.realtor)
• A January 2025 tally based on state counts put membership at about 1.498 million, the lowest since March 2024 but still close to 1.5M. (realestatenews.com)
• At NAR’s June 5, 2025 board meeting, the treasurer reported 1,453,690 members as of May 31, 2025—a drop of roughly 100k–120k from late 2023, and still above NAR’s own 1.4M forecast for 2025. (nar.realtor)

So, roughly 100k–150k net members have left since the pre‑settlement peak—well below the 500k–1,000k contraction Friedberg anticipated.

Why it’s still too early to judge

• Friedberg talks about changes playing out “over time” and “over the coming years,” not by 2025 specifically. The core structural shifts from the commission settlement are only partly in effect: some practice changes started in 2024, and a key rule change—NAR no longer recommending that MLSs require NAR membership—doesn’t take effect until the 2026 MLS handbook, which could accelerate exits later in the decade. (barrons.com)
• Given that the horizon is implicitly multi‑year and the main post‑settlement membership shocks (like optional MLS‑NAR linkage) are still ahead, current data neither confirm nor definitively refute a long‑run 500k–1M decline.

Because the observed drop so far is much smaller than predicted but the stated timeframe has clearly not run its course, the fairest status as of November 30, 2025 is “inconclusive (too early).”

The prediction is a conditional one: if U.S. home buyers are actually made to pay their own buyer’s-agent commissions out of pocket (rather than those fees being embedded on the seller’s side), then the total commission pool would fall by ~50%.

As of late 2025, that conditional world doesn’t really exist yet:

• After the March 2024 NAR settlement and the August 2024 rule changes, buyers must sign written agreements specifying how their agent will be paid, but the commission can still be funded by either the buyer or the seller (or via seller concessions). In practice, the traditional pattern of sellers covering much or all of the buyer’s agent commission remains common.(washingtonpost.com)
• Reports note that many agents and sellers effectively preserve the old structure by arranging off‑MLS commission splits or seller concessions, despite formal language that buyers are “responsible” for their agent’s pay.(investopedia.com) Direct, out‑of‑pocket payment by buyers is still relatively rare and uneven across markets.(washingtonpost.com)

Because the premise (“buyers are forced to pay their own broker’s commission” in a clear, universal, out‑of‑pocket way) has not been fully met, we can’t say whether the consequent (a ~50% drop in the total commission pool) is right or wrong.

What we can observe is that, under the current mixed/transition regime, total commissions have certainly not fallen by anything close to 50%:

• A 2025 survey by Clever Real Estate finds the average combined commission rose from about 5.32% to 5.44%, roughly back to 2023 levels, not half of them.(etxview.com)
• Redfin’s national data show buyer‑agent commissions around 2.4–2.55% before and after the settlement, with only small moves in either direction, and aggregate commission levels roughly unchanged through Q1–Q2 2025.(redfin.com)

However, since the prediction explicitly hinges on a stronger, cleaner version of buyer‑paid commissions than what we actually have now, the fair assessment is that it hasn’t really been tested yet, rather than proven correct or incorrect. Hence: inconclusive rather than wrong.

Parts of the prediction materialized, but the core claim about meaningful near‑term adoption that reduces or replaces traditional agents has not.

1. Startups did appear quickly and fit the described model.
After the March 2024 NAR commission settlement and related rule changes (implemented August 17, 2024), multiple startups launched or repositioned specifically around AI‑enabled, direct‑to‑consumer home‑buying tools:

• reAlpha launched an AI-powered, commission‑free “Super App” with Claire, a generative‑AI buyer’s agent, explicitly timed to the NAR rule changes and pitched as an end‑to‑end alternative to traditional buyer’s agents, including AI document review, negotiation guidance, and human backup when needed. (stocktitan.net)
• Modern Realty (YC S24) offers an AI real estate agent that guides buyers through the process, including disclosure summaries, offer generation, and scheduling showings; it frames itself as helping people buy homes “without relying on a traditional realtor,” though humans still review key steps. (ycombinator.com)
• Homa targets unrepresented buyers, using AI to generate CMAs, fill out state‑specific forms, and coach negotiations; it’s explicitly designed for buyers who want to navigate without an agent. (housingwire.com)
• Joy AI, RealStar AI, reAlpha, Ridley, and others market AI “real estate agents” or AI‑heavy, low‑ or no‑commission models that handle search, disclosure/document review, and negotiation support, often citing the NAR/DOJ changes as part of their rationale. (reddit.com)
• A 2025 Business Insider roundup highlights eight post‑settlement startups (including Homa and Ridley) using AI or other tech to cut commissions and reduce reliance on traditional agents. (businessinsider.com)

So the “a lot of startups will show up fast with AI, a‑la‑carte, DTC services” component is directionally correct.

2. But traditional agents remain overwhelmingly dominant, with little evidence of “meaningful adoption” of AI DTC alternatives.

• NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (covering July 2024–June 2025, i.e., post‑settlement) reports that 88% of buyers purchased through an agent or broker and 91% of sellers used an agent—matching or exceeding prior highs. FSBO sales are at or near record lows (~5–6%). (nar.realtor)
  This indicates that, at the market level, buyers and sellers have not shifted away from traditional agents in any large way.
• Legal/industry analyses note that commissions have barely moved and that agents often arrange commission splits informally, blunting the rule changes. A RISMedia/ABA discussion finds early “workaround” startups that advertised commissions outside the MLS “did not catch on.” (rismedia.com)
• NAR‑cited data for 2023–2025 shows buyers’ reliance on agents actually increasing slightly vs. pre‑settlement years (roughly mid‑80s% up to high‑80s%), which is the opposite of a rapid shift toward AI‑only services. (houstonagentmagazine.com)

3. Current AI real‑estate platforms are niche in scale and usually augment agents rather than replace them.

• The HousingWire feature profiling reAlpha, Modern Realty, and Homa explicitly frames these as early, limited‑geography platforms (e.g., reAlpha only in Florida, Modern Realty only in California; Homa just launched and is bootstrapped), with humans still involved for offers and negotiations. (housingwire.com)
• Linkhome/HomeGPT, an AI‑driven brokerage active since before the settlement, processed about $48.6M in 2024 transaction volume vs. roughly $1.5T in total U.S. home sales—on the order of 0.003% of market volume, underscoring that even one of the “fastest‑growing AI real estate platforms” is still tiny at national scale. (streetinsider.com)
• Market research on “AI in real estate” finds growth primarily in tools used by agents (lead gen, pricing, marketing), with the real estate agent segment holding the largest share of AI‑related usage—again indicating augmentation of agents rather than mass consumer migration to agent‑free AI platforms. (market.us)

4. Timing: the “near term” window has passed without clear displacement of agents.
The prediction was made in March 2024 about effects “coming out of this ruling” and “show[ing] up real fast.” By late 2025:

• NAR data shows no material drop in buyers’ use of agents; if anything, usage ticks slightly up, and FSBO is at record lows. (nar.realtor)
• Multiple consumer‑facing articles on the settlement emphasize that average commission rates and agent usage have barely changed, citing inertia and limited consumer awareness. (kiplinger.com)
• AI‑driven platforms are still described as emerging, “looking to find their stride in 2025,” and mostly confined to a handful of states. (loyaltyhomegroup.com)

Conclusion
The narrow part of the forecast—a wave of AI‑enabled, DTC, a‑la‑carte real estate startups appearing quickly after the NAR settlement—is supported by the evidence. But the crucial part—that these offerings would be compelling enough, in the near term, to meaningfully reduce or replace the need for traditional residential agents—has not happened. The overwhelming majority of buyers and sellers still use agents at historically high rates, commissions have barely shifted, and AI platforms remain niche and often agent‑augmented.

On balance, the prediction as stated is wrong.

Chamath’s prediction has two time components (end‑2024 and end‑2025), and only the first is fully observable as of 30 November 2025.

What he predicted

• 2024: Three rate cuts in 2024, taking the federal funds target range to 4.50–4.75% by year‑end.
• 2025: An additional 50–75 bps of cuts in 2025, leaving the range around 3.75–4.00% by end‑2025.

What actually happened in 2024

• The Fed kept the target range at 5.25–5.50% from late July 2023 until mid‑September 2024. (federalreserve.gov)
• It then cut rates at three consecutive meetings in September, November, and December 2024, for a total of 100 bps of easing:
  • September 2024: 50 bps cut to 4.75–5.00%. (cnbc.com)
  • November 2024: 25 bps cut to 4.50–4.75%. (federalreserve.gov)
  • December 2024: 25 bps cut to 4.25–4.50%, the third consecutive cut. (jpmorgan.com)
• So he was right about the number of cuts (three in 2024), but the year‑end level was lower than he forecast: 4.25–4.50% vs his 4.50–4.75%.

What has happened so far in 2025

• The Fed held the target range at 4.25–4.50% from the start of 2025 through at least mid‑June 2025. (federalreserve.gov)
• It then began cutting again:
  • 17 September 2025 meeting: 25 bps cut to 4.00–4.25%. (personalinvesting.jpmorgan.com)
  • 29–30 October 2025 meeting: 25 bps cut to 3.75–4.00%. (federalreserve.gov)
• As of mid‑November 2025, commentary notes the target range is still 3.75–4.00%, unchanged since the October cut. (medium.com)
• This means that by late November 2025 the Fed has delivered 50 bps of cuts in 2025, and the target range is exactly 3.75–4.00%, matching Chamath’s numerical end‑2025 level so far.
• However, forward‑looking reports indicate a possible additional cut in December 2025, which would push the range below 3.75–4.00% if it occurs, but that meeting has not yet happened as of 30 November 2025. (barrons.com)

Why the overall verdict is inconclusive

• The 2024 portion can be judged: partly correct (three cuts) but off on the final level (Fed went further than he expected).
• The 2025 portion explicitly concerns the rate “by the end of 2025.” As of 30 November 2025, the range is 3.75–4.00% and total 2025 cuts are 50 bps, which aligns with his forecast so far, but there is still one FOMC meeting left in December 2025. A further move could render his end‑2025 level inaccurate.

Because the key horizon of the prediction (“by the end of 2025”) has not fully elapsed yet, we cannot definitively say whether the full prediction came true. Hence the result is classified as inconclusive (too early to tell).

Chamath’s claim was that, as of March 22, 2024, we were at “the beginning of the beginning” of a new speculative phase (meme coins, high‑risk assets, IPOs), and that speculation would build from there rather than already being near its peak.

Evidence since then largely supports this:

1. Memecoin and crypto speculation sharply accelerated after April 2024.
   • From April 1, 2024 onward, more than one million new crypto tokens were launched in a matter of weeks, with over 370,000 on Ethereum (88% on Coinbase’s Base L2) and over 640,000 on Solana, the majority identified as memecoins. This was roughly double the number of tokens created on Ethereum from 2015–2023, and Base’s TVL rose ~630% from the start of 2024, explicitly attributed to a memecoin frenzy. (cointelegraph.com)
   • A March 18, 2024 report already described “memecoin mania” on Solana pushing trading volumes to their highest level in more than two years, but the truly massive token‑launch wave only arrived after April 1, 2024, showing that the speculative phase was still ramping up from Chamath’s timestamp. (bloomberg.com)
   • By early 2025, platforms like Pump.fun had minted about 5.5 million tokens on Solana in 2024 and were still launching tens of thousands of tokens in a single day and generating tens of millions of dollars in monthly fees, indicating that the memecoin hype persisted well beyond mid‑2024. (medium.com)

2. Broader crypto prices and “risk‑on” behavior continued higher after March 2024.
   • Bitcoin set a new all‑time high above $69,000 on March 5, 2024, just before the podcast. (theguardian.com)
   • As of late 2025, BTC trades around $90,000, materially above its March 2024 peak, showing that the broader crypto cycle and associated speculative appetite continued to expand rather than topping out around the time of Chamath’s comment.

3. IPO and equity speculation did pick up from 2023 levels.
   • In 2024, U.S. IPOs increased to 146 deals raising about $29.6 billion, more than 50% higher in proceeds than 2023, with a notable skew toward larger, more speculative offerings and a sizeable pipeline of additional listings queued for 2025. (fnlondon.com)
   • In 2025, Hong Kong’s IPO market saw a strong rebound, raising about $13.7 billion from 41 deals in just the first half of the year—already beating its full‑year 2024 total—driven by improved sentiment and a rush of Chinese listings. (wsj.com)
   While global IPO volumes later softened amid tariffs and volatility, the post‑2023 direction was clearly from depressed toward more speculative conditions rather than the other way around. (reuters.com)

4. Meme‑stock and high‑risk equity speculation resurged in 2024–2025.
   • 2025 saw renewed meme‑stock style episodes: names like Krispy Kreme, GoPro, and Beyond Meat posted large, social‑media‑driven rallies (e.g., Beyond Meat up over 1,300% in four days), explicitly compared in financial press to the original GameStop mania. (nypost.com)
   These point to retail speculative behavior continuing and periodically spiking well after March 2024.

Collectively, these data show that speculative activity in meme coins, high‑risk assets, and IPOs grew meaningfully after March 2024 and remained elevated into 2025, rather than March 2024 representing the top of the cycle. That aligns with Chamath’s characterization that this period was “the beginning of the beginning” of a new speculative phase.

Given the direction and timing of these trends, the prediction is best scored as right (directionally correct and supported by subsequent developments).

The condition in Sacks’s prediction (“rates stay higher for longer instead of the big 2024–25 cuts people expected”) broadly came true, and so did the consequence (significant CRE distress spilling into regional banks).

• Fed kept rates elevated vs. early‑2024 expectations. In early 2024, markets were pricing multiple cuts; consensus shifted from ~six cuts to “maybe three,” a shift widely described as a higher‑for‑longer path that would squeeze smaller banks and CRE borrowers. (cnbc.com) In reality, the Fed held the policy rate at 5.25–5.50% through mid‑2024 and its June 2024 projections reduced planned cuts to just one that year, with the funds rate still projected at ~4.1% in 2025. (gold-eagle.com) By early 2025 the target rate was still 4.25–4.50%, well above the Fed’s estimated long‑run level (~3%), and only in late 2025 had it been nudged down to around 4–4.25%. (reuters.com) That is a prolonged period of elevated policy rates relative to what markets and the Fed’s own March 2024 dots had anticipated.

• Commercial real estate experienced clear, quantifiable distress. U.S. commercial mortgage delinquencies jumped from 2.94% in January 2023 to 4.66% in January 2024, largely driven by office properties; office delinquencies more than tripled year‑over‑year to 6.3% and coincided with record office vacancy rates. (investopedia.com) Through 2024 and into 2025, CMBS data show a sustained and worsening stress regime: by December 2024 overall CMBS delinquency had risen to 6.57%, with office delinquency above 11%, the highest since Trepp began tracking in 2000. (commercialsearch.com) In 2025, distress intensified further: CRED iQ reported an overall CMBS distress rate of 11.5% in January 2025, with office distress at ~17.7%, (commercialobserver.com) and Trepp’s office CMBS delinquency rate later hit ~11.7%, surpassing even the worst of the Global Financial Crisis. (wolfstreet.com) These are historically high stress levels by any reasonable standard.

• That CRE stress did, in fact, extend into the regional banking system. Regulators closed Republic First Bank, a Philadelphia‑based regional lender with about $6 billion in assets, on April 26, 2024. The FDIC and AP described it as the first U.S. bank failure of 2024 and explicitly tied it to the ongoing strain on regional banks from rising interest rates and declining commercial real‑estate values, especially offices with high vacancies. (apnews.com) New York Community Bancorp, another regional bank with large CRE exposure, reported a $327 million Q1 2024 loss driven by sharply increased provisions for credit losses on its commercial real‑estate book, leading Fitch to downgrade it and cite elevated CRE‑related loan‑loss expectations. (reuters.com) NYCB subsequently required over $1 billion in new capital and embarked on major layoffs and asset sales to stabilize after CRE‑linked losses and integration pressures, a restructuring widely reported as a response to CRE stress. (apnews.com) Sector‑wide, PIMCO and others warned that high rates plus depressed CRE values were likely to cause more regional bank failures, specifically because regionals had concentrated CRE loan books. (moneycontrol.com) FDIC data through Q3 2025 show elevated past‑due rates in non‑owner‑occupied CRE loans relative to pre‑COVID norms and dozens of “problem banks,” even as headline industry profits recovered. (reuters.com) Alongside a few additional small bank failures in 2025 and a wave of regional‑bank M&A (for example, Fifth Third’s agreed acquisition of Comerica to bolster scale and stability after the 2023 crisis), this indicates ongoing, non‑trivial regional‑bank stress linked to asset‑quality and funding pressures. (reuters.com)

Taken together: (1) the Fed did keep policy rates elevated longer than early‑2024 expectations, and (2) commercial real estate has suffered historically high delinquency and distress rates that (3) have already produced at least one notable regional‑bank failure tied in part to CRE, plus heavy losses, capital raises, and consolidation pressure at other regionals. That matches Sacks’s qualitative claim that “if rates stay higher, longer” there would be “real distress” in CRE, “including in the regional banking system.” Hence the prediction is best scored as right rather than inconclusive or wrong, even though the damage has so far been significant but not fully systemic.

Since the March 22, 2024 podcast, there has been clear early progress toward using genetically modified pig organs in humans, but these procedures remain highly experimental and far from routine clinical practice.

Key developments:

• Massachusetts General Hospital performed the first transplant of a genetically edited pig kidney into a living human in March 2024 and a second such transplant in January 2025; by early 2025, this was only the fourth pig-kidney recipient worldwide, underscoring how rare the procedure still is. (hms.harvard.edu)
• In February 2025, the U.S. FDA approved the first formal clinical trials of gene‑edited pig kidneys for patients with end‑stage kidney disease, with plans for up to ~50 participants across studies by United Therapeutics and eGenesis. (scientificamerican.com)
• By November 2025, NYU Langone had only just begun enrolling and operating on patients in one of these kidney xenotransplant trials. (news-medical.net)
• Additional experimental uses—such as FDA‑approved trials of gene‑edited pig livers used externally as a dialysis‑like bridge for liver failure, and pig lung transplants into brain‑dead donors for research—also remain investigational rather than standard care. (apnews.com)

These steps support the possibility that genetically modified animal organs could become a mainstream solution in the longer term, but they do not yet demonstrate that such organs are on a clearly established path to routine clinical use. Given that (1) only a handful of patients worldwide have received such organs in living clinical settings, (2) trials are just beginning, and (3) large‑scale safety, efficacy, regulatory approval, reimbursement, and ethical questions remain unresolved, it is too early in November 2025 to say whether the prediction that this will "definitely" become a widely adopted, mainstream medical solution is ultimately right or wrong.

Therefore, the appropriate judgment at this time is inconclusive (too early to tell).

Within roughly a year after March 2024, Neuralink did in fact make multiple, clearly more substantial public announcements about its brain–computer interface progress than the initial quadriplegic chess demo.

Key developments and announcements in that period:

1. Second human patient and improved performance (August 2024)
   In August 2024, Elon Musk announced that Neuralink had successfully implanted its device in a second trial patient, with the implant “working very well” and providing “a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes.” Reports noted that this second patient, identified as Alex, did not suffer the thread‑retraction complication seen in the first patient and was using the device not only to play video games but also to learn 3D object design, demonstrating more varied and functional real‑world use than the initial chess demo alone. (business-standard.com)

2. Third human patient and upgraded hardware (early 2025)
   By early 2025, the Associated Press reported that Musk had confirmed a third human recipient of the Neuralink implant. Musk highlighted hardware improvements—more electrodes, higher bandwidth, and longer battery life—and said that earlier recipients were using the implant for activities like gaming and design software, indicating continuing technical progress and broader capabilities beyond the first public demo. (apnews.com)

3. Regulatory progress for advanced applications (vision restoration, September 2024)
   In September 2024, Neuralink’s experimental vision‑restoration implant Blindsight received the FDA’s Breakthrough Device designation, a notable regulatory milestone that signaled serious advancement toward more ambitious BCI applications (restoring vision by directly stimulating visual cortex). (en.wikipedia.org)

All of these announcements—multiple additional human implants with improved performance and broader tasks, plus a major FDA breakthrough designation for an advanced BCI application—occurred between August 2024 and early 2025, i.e., well within one year of the March 22, 2024 podcast. They are materially more significant than the initial single‑patient chess demonstration alone, matching Jason’s expectation of “significant progress” and “even bigger announcements in the coming year.”

Chamath is reacting to two closely timed events:

1. Starship IFT-3 (March 14, 2024): SpaceX’s third integrated flight test reached orbital velocity for the first time, completed multiple in-space objectives (full-duration second-stage burn, propellant transfer demo, payload door test), but the ship broke up during re-entry instead of achieving a controlled splashdown. It was widely reported as a major milestone but still a partial failure and an intermediate step in the Starship program. (en.wikipedia.org)
2. Neuralink’s first human-implant livestream (March 20, 2024): Neuralink showed Noland Arbaugh, a quadriplegic, using a brain-computer implant to move a cursor and play online chess and other games purely by thought, which received extensive global coverage as an important demonstration of their BCI technology. (reuters.com)

The normalized prediction is that this specific seven-day run will, in historical retrospect, be regarded as one of the most significant achievement streaks of Musk’s entire career and as surpassing what most people accomplish in their lifetimes.

As of late 2025:

• Starship has already had more successful and arguably more significant tests after IFT-3. The June 6, 2024 IFT-4 mission achieved a successful controlled ocean landing of the Super Heavy booster and a mostly successful reentry and splashdown of the Starship upper stage, widely described as a major step toward full reusability. (wired.com) This tends to dilute the unique historical significance of IFT-3 as the decisive breakthrough.
• Neuralink’s first-human demonstration remains an early, promising but still experimental step. Experts at the time framed it as incremental progress in brain–computer interfaces rather than a singular scientific breakthrough, and the technology is still in clinical trials with limited deployment. (reuters.com) Arbaugh’s continued public demonstrations (e.g., playing chess on stage in 2025) show real impact but reinforce that this is an evolving program, not a completed epoch-defining achievement. (chess.com)

Crucially, Chamath’s claim is about long-term historical judgment over the course of Musk’s whole career, which is ongoing and still producing new milestones (further Starship tests, Starlink expansion, Tesla developments, additional Neuralink work, etc.). We do not yet have anything like a stable historical consensus ranking Musk’s “most significant” achievement streaks, nor is there strong evidence that commentators single out this March 2024 week as uniquely defining compared with later Starship or other Musk milestones.

Because the prediction concerns how future observers will ultimately rank this period in Musk’s life, and Musk’s career and these technologies are still unfolding, it is too early to say whether this week will indeed be remembered as one of his most significant achievement streaks.

Therefore, the status of the prediction is inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than clearly right or wrong.

The prediction’s time window is 5–10 years starting in 2024, i.e. through roughly 2029–2034, so it has not fully played out yet. We can only judge whether it is on track, not definitively right or wrong.

Early evidence strongly supports the direction of the claim:

• AI hardware profits and value capture: Nvidia’s fiscal 2025 revenue reached $130.5 billion, up 114% year‑on‑year, driven largely by its data center AI business, with record quarterly data center revenue of $35.6 billion and very high profitability. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) Nvidia’s market cap then surpassed $4.5 trillion on the back of massive AI infrastructure deals, putting it among the most valuable companies in the world and clearly showing that “fundamental hardware” providers are capturing enormous financial value. (cnbc.com) AMD likewise is anchoring its strategy on AI data centers, projecting data center revenue growth of about 60% over the next 3–5 years and seeing AI as a $1 trillion data‑center market opportunity, with analysts forecasting steep increases in its data center revenues. (finance.yahoo.com)
• Fundamental AI application‑level experiences: OpenAI’s annualized revenue run‑rate is expected to reach about $20 billion by the end of 2025, with roughly $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025 alone, even as it continues to run large R&D‑driven losses. (reuters.com) Anthropic, another core application‑layer AI company, reached a $61.5 billion valuation in a 2025 funding round and was said to have an annualized revenue rate of about $1 billion, with investors and analysts projecting the broader generative‑AI market could exceed $1 trillion in revenue within a decade. (cnbc.com) These metrics show that foundational AI application providers are already generating substantial revenue and attracting very large valuations.

However, Chamath’s statement is that “over the next 5 to 10 years” these types of companies will make a lot of money. That is a claim about sustained value capture across a future multi‑year period, not just the first 1–2 years. Significant uncertainties remain (regulation, competitive dynamics, potential bubbles/deflations, shifts in hardware paradigms, etc.), and we are only about 1.5 years into the 5–10‑year window. Because the full period has not elapsed and nothing has clearly falsified the claim, the most accurate evaluation as of November 30, 2025 is that it is too early to say definitively whether the prediction has “come true,” even though the evidence so far is broadly consistent with it.

As of November 30, 2025, there isn’t enough evidence yet to clearly say whether this AI‑driven robotics wave has definitively become the first sustained, broadly successful "general‑purpose" robotics cycle, versus another boom that could still stall.

Key points:

• Industrial and logistics robotics are clearly booming, but that trend predates 2024. The International Federation of Robotics reports that 542,000 industrial robots were installed in 2024, more than double the number a decade earlier, with over 4.6 million robots operating in factories worldwide. This reflects a long‑running automation curve, not uniquely the 2024 AI wave. ​(therobotreport.com)
• Service and warehouse robots are growing fast and seeing real commercial use. IFR’s 2025 Service Robots report shows almost 200,000 professional service robots sold in 2024 (up 9%), with more than half used for transportation and logistics, and a rapidly expanding robot‑as‑a‑service model. ​(ifr.org) Amazon alone operates over 750,000 robots in its fulfillment centers, using AI‑equipped mobile platforms and robotic arms for transport, sorting, and packaging at large scale. ​(businessinsider.com) These are substantial commercial successes, but they are largely task‑specific systems, not general‑purpose robots.
• Early AI‑enhanced general‑purpose / humanoid robots are only in pilot stages. 2025 coverage describes 2025 as a turning point where humanoid robots like Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas and systems from Agility and Figure begin entering factory and warehouse trials, but with lingering questions about reliability, safety, and economics. ​(wired.com) That is progress, but still far from “widespread practical deployment.”
• Some applications show promising but still narrow success. For example, Diligent Robotics’ Moxi has completed over 1.25 million deliveries across more than 25 U.S. hospitals and is now expanding pilots into senior living facilities. ​(reuters.com) This is real, scaled use, yet still focused on specific workflows rather than broad, general‑purpose capability.
• Regulators and analysts are already warning about a potential humanoid-robotics bubble. China’s National Development and Reform Commission has explicitly cautioned that the country’s rapidly expanding humanoid robotics sector may be experiencing a bubble, noting many entrants and limited mature use cases. ​(theverge.com) This underscores that it’s not yet clear whether the current excitement will translate into sustained, broad commercial deployment.

Taken together, the data show strong and accelerating adoption of AI‑enabled robots in specific domains (factories, warehouses, hospitals) and a surge of investment and pilots in more general‑purpose/humanoid systems. However, fewer than two years have passed since the March 2024 prediction, and the hallmark outcomes it implies—widespread, general‑purpose deployment and clearly proven long‑term commercial success of this new generation—have not yet fully materialized or definitively failed. The trajectory looks promising but remains unresolved, so the fairest assessment for now is "inconclusive (too early)".

As of November 30, 2025, there is strong early evidence in the direction of Friedberg’s thesis, but the claim is explicitly about where future AI-driven productivity and value will ultimately accrue, and the time horizon (likely late‑2020s/2030s) has not yet arrived.

1. Are traditional industrial sectors seeing meaningful AI-driven gains yet?
Yes, especially in manufacturing and pharma, but these gains are still in the early scaling phase rather than a settled end state:

• Manufacturing: Recent industry surveys report very high AI adoption and large reported impacts—e.g., up to ~63% productivity boosts and ~20% cost reductions in plants that have implemented AI at scale, with widespread use in predictive maintenance, visual inspection, and smart supply chains. (zipdo.co) Other data show AI integrated into many factories’ robotics and control systems, with projections of ~20% productivity growth in manufacturing by 2035 and large cost savings from predictive maintenance. (gitnux.org) Most manufacturers say AI is already improving quality and decision‑making and expect it to materially boost revenue over the next few years. (manufacturingtomorrow.com)
• Medicine/pharma: Think‑tank and consulting reports find AI can plausibly cut drug‑development timelines roughly in half and add 2.6–4.5% of annual revenues in pharma and medical products, with pharma companies currently capturing about half of the generative‑AI‑in‑drug‑discovery market’s revenue. (itif.org) Large incumbents like Eli Lilly are now building AI supercomputing partnerships specifically to accelerate discovery and manufacturing, reflecting a serious bet that AI will materially improve productivity and time‑to‑market. (reuters.com)
  Overall, this supports the direction of his view that traditional industrial sectors can get large productivity gains from AI, software, robotics, and automation, but much of the quantified impact is still framed as 2030+ potential rather than already realized.

2. Is “much of AI’s economic value” clearly accruing to these sectors instead of pure‑tech companies yet?
Here the picture is mixed and clearly not settled:

• On the one hand, broad surveys show that only a small minority of firms globally (about 5%) are getting measurable value from AI so far, and the industries with the highest AI maturity and realized value today include software, telecom, and fintech, while many traditional sectors (e.g., chemicals, construction, real estate) lag. (businessinsider.com) This suggests that, at least in the 2023–2025 window, realized AI value is still concentrated in tech and a handful of more advanced adopters rather than being clearly dominated by traditional industrial incumbents.
• Equity‑market evidence shows that the largest and most obvious financial beneficiaries of the AI boom to date are mega‑cap technology and semiconductor companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and others, whose market caps have surged to multi‑trillion‑dollar levels largely on AI infrastructure and platform economics. (euronews.com) At the same time, many AI‑native startups are struggling to convert hype into revenue, so value within tech is skewed to large incumbents rather than new entrants, but it is still overwhelmingly tech‑sector value, not clearly dominated by food, manufacturing, or pharma stocks. (investor.wedbush.com) Because Friedberg’s prediction concerns where the bulk of AI’s economic value will ultimately accrue—a structural, long‑run outcome—not just who is winning in the first 1–2 years of the boom, current data on market caps and early adoption do not yet suffice to judge him right or wrong.

3. Why this is “inconclusive (too early)” rather than right/wrong/ambiguous

• Too early relative to the horizon: The core of the claim is explicitly forward‑looking (“will derive substantial future gains” and “that’s where I’d concentrate capital”). Most rigorous analyses of AI in manufacturing and medicine frame the main productivity and economic impact in the late‑2020s and 2030s, not by 2025. (gitnux.org)
• Evidence is directionally supportive but not decisive: We already see meaningful pilot‑ and early‑scale productivity gains in industrial sectors, consistent with his thesis, but they do not yet amount to clear evidence that these sectors are capturing most of AI’s economic value compared with tech platforms.
• Outcome metrics are inherently long‑run: Determining whether "much" of AI’s eventual economic value accrues to traditional industrial incumbents versus pure‑tech firms will require observing several more years of diffusion, commoditization of core models, and integration into physical production and healthcare systems.

Because both the productivity gains and the cross‑sector value distribution he describes are still unfolding on a longer time frame than the ~20 months since the podcast, the prediction cannot yet be fairly scored as right or wrong; it is best classified as inconclusive (too early).

Available analytics show that the All-In Podcast YouTube channel did not reach 1 million subscribers by December 31, 2024, and in fact is still below that milestone in late 2025 (mid– to high-900k range according to Social Blade, SPEAKRJ, and other trackers).(socialblade.com) Since the antecedent of Jason’s conditional (“if we hit 1 million subscribers by the end of the year”) never occurred, we have no way to observe whether they would actually have organized the promised public party in that scenario.

There was a large public event — the All-In Holiday Spectacular at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts on December 7, 2024 — with open bar, food trucks, DJ sets and a big live show, which fans could attend by buying tickets.(garysguide.com) However, this event was promoted and covered as a general year-end/“blockbuster year” celebration, not as a "1 million subscribers" party, and it took place when the channel was only around the 500k–700k subscriber range (they had a 500K Subscriber Livestream on June 28, 2024 and were targeting 750k next).(getrecall.ai)

So:

• The condition in the prediction (1M subs by 12/31/2024) did not come true.
• The consequence (a public listener party tied to that 1M milestone) therefore never had a chance to be tested.

Because we cannot say whether they would have kept or broken the promise in the world where the condition did occur, the status of this conditional prediction is best scored as ambiguous rather than right or wrong.