First, All-In Red-Pilled the Billionaires. Now They’re Coming for Everyone Else

We have got to raise three million in the next three hours,” said Mathilde. She was talking to her friend, another start-up founder, and to me, who was trailing along on the implicit promise that I would not quote Mathilde—which is not her real name—by her real name. It was the final hours of the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, and just about every start-up founder was trying to raise as much money as possible before the event ended. The summit is the real-life extension of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcast, All-In, hosted by four men, all hailing from the world of Silicon Valley business: venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, entrepreneur David Friedberg, and investor turned blogger turned investor Jason Calacanis. The quest for millions was made all the more ridiculous by the fact that we were at Universal Studios, a theme park rented out for the occasion, and many in our midst were already feeling the effects of the unlimited booze.

Still, I believed my new friends could do it: raise $3 million in the next few hours. And why not? Over the past two and half days, we’d been marinating in money. You could see it, in the Versace sunglasses, the Rolexes, the parking garage overflowing with Porsches. You could actually smell it, floating in each morning in the lobby on expensive perfume. You’d hear it, in phrases like “a million dollars” and “a billion dollars,” which rolled casually off people’s tongues. Out here, $3 million was chump change.

“This is not an audience committing suicide,” said Palantir CEO Alex Karp. “This is an audience fighting to win.”

Three money managers—one of whom was actually wearing one of their telltale vests—were standing over by the ice cream stand. We approached. It took little journalistic prompting to learn exactly how many billions these guys stewarded. One of them ran a family office and managed so much money that he actually found it boring. The guy whose money he managed didn’t have kids, and it was kind of a headache for this rich guy to find places for his even richer boss to park his money. There was simply too much money! Where to spend? What to do? Total nightmare!

None of this was unusual, given that many people had paid $7,500 just to be here. It was the kind of place where stories started with, “So we were taking the PJ” —as in, the private jet—“from Telluride to St. Tropez and dropping the kids off in San Francisco on the way…”; and where someone recalled a speaker from the main stage saying that “a trillion dollars isn’t what it used to be anymore.” Everyone here knew that “founder mode” was really a euphemism for consuming copious amounts of cocaine.

Despite all the money—or perhaps because of it—the summit-goers spoke in the language of revolution. The West was dying; it was actually killing itself. Still, it could be saved. The people here, in fact, would save it. “This is not an audience committing suicide,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said from the main stage. “This is an audience fighting to win.” What would save us exactly, was not completely clear, but it had something to do with ambition, the new political drift, cryptocurrencies, AI, and getting to Mars.

“This country is getting into founder mode,” said an attendee who owns a bundt cake business.

In coming here, I was hoping to answer a fundamental question: What kind of people were these who would be responsible for saving the West? And also: What kind of person pays $7,500 for a two-day conference?

The All-In Summit is overseen by the podcast’s hosts, who are known more simply as “the Besties.” The Besties do many things very well, including making vaguely uncool people—money managers and corporate shills—feel not only cool but like cultural necessities. Now in its fourth year, the summit is a clubby, real-world extension of the pod itself. Onstage talks feature candid, combative conversation on global politics, investing, and business with some of the most powerful people on the planet. These talks are punctuated by lavish dinners around Los Angeles, a casino night, poker tables with fake chips, caviar, and champagne, and a one-night takeover of Universal Studios. Through all of it runs a chest-thumping celebration of capitalism and the idea that America, while the home of the free, is more importantly, the land of the entrepreneur.

“This country,” a woman who owns a bundt cake business told me, “is getting into founder mode.”

No other show or podcast has paved the country’s path to founder mode so directly as All-In. On the heels of helping bankroll Trump’s campaign and hosting him on the pod, the Besties are becoming fixtures at the White House. Days prior to the summit, Sacks and Palihapitiya dined there along with a coterie of Silicon Valley’s most powerful CEOs. Before Trump even took office, he appointed Sacks as the country’s “crypto and AI czar” to help shape federal policy on everything from digital money to machine intelligence. The pod has lately become a kind of kingmaker’s pulpit, with the Besties dropping casual hints that the concerns of All-In’s guests—entrepreneurs, VCs, billionaires—might find their way into public policy. Or, as one attendee put it: “This podcast is like a direct line to the administration.”

The Besties’ journey to the White House has been a strange one, unfolding publicly before millions of their fans. It began with outright hostility. Following January 6, they excoriated Trump as a “a piece-of-shit fucking scumbag” (Palihapitiya) and “a maniac” (Calacanis). Even for Sacks, a longtime Republican, Trump had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level.” In the months that followed, their transformation into right-wing powerbrokers played out over several hundred episodes, where listeners could witness the Besties shift right in real time.

More than once, formerly liberal-leaning attendees told me that it was All-In that had eventually led them to decamp from the Democratic party and embrace MAGA, for the very fact that the pod had made MAGA socially acceptable. “You’ve got this big red wave in New York and California in the professional class that you would not have otherwise gotten—and certainly wouldn’t have gotten in 2016,” an AI start-up founder and All-In superfan told me. “And they’re one of the strongest influences of that.”

Not only this, but All-In’s ongoing proselytization about entrepreneurship has sparked a frenzy of new founders; I spoke to half a dozen people who had quit their jobs in order to go into founder mode. “They’ve built a cult following that very much inspires people to go out and start their own thing,” said the AI start-up founder, who himself said that All-In inspired him to go, well, all in on his own thing.

“Uber-capitalism is what I call it,” said a man from Texas who worked in oil and gas. “It’s like, Get out of my way and just let me do it.”

It’s easy to see how All-In managed to reshape both the professional ambitions and political leanings of so many would-be moguls. (“By the end of this, you may be wearing a hat that says ‘Trump was right,’” said that same bundt cake business owner.) Both the podcast and the summit are undeniably slick media products centered on a coterie of extravagantly rich, deeply connected friends. Onstage at the summit, the Besties lounge on sofas around a coffee table, trading barbs and banter with some of the buzziest names in business, including DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev. The programming leans into provocation: Mid-way through a conversation with liberal-leaning Mark Cuban, Tucker Carlson walked onstage to needle Cuban as to why he wasn’t personally footing the bill for Ukraine. And then, of course, there was Elon Musk—an All-In regular—who this year beamed in by video, muttering about America’s “unfixable” government and estimating that humanity could be on Mars within 30 years.

Aside from the vast array of money managers, attendees at the All-In Summit hailed from all different backgrounds. I met a dentist, multiple founders working in manufacturing, an oil and gas employee, two Canadian business owners, several college students, and a self-professed “conspiracy theorist” Rinpoche Buddhist dressed in orange robes, who told me he was there to spread something called “spiritual accelerationism.”

What these attendees all had in common was a shared ideology: Business—and especially the founding of new businesses—was good. Regulation was bad. More than this, there was a collective understanding that what our hobbled and decaying nation needed was a kind of capitalism so feral, so totally unfettered, that it had a new name: “Uber-capitalism is what I call it,” said a man from Texas who worked in oil and gas. “It’s like, Get out of my way and just let me do it.”

Throughout the conference, I had been bumping into a twinkly-eyed Floridian who ran a public relations firm. I eventually asked him, mostly as a joke, if he was a cold-blooded capitalist.

“Oh, fuck yeah I am,” he said. “This is the land of opportunity…This isn’t about making sure nobody fails—it’s about making sure there’s no limitations to your success.”

There was a current of 1980s sleaze, evidenced by the steady supply of beautiful women seen traipsing in and out of the VIP lounge. (One young, pretty start-up founder confided that when she shook hands with an older man, he leaned in and softly murmured, “It is a pleasure to be touched by you.”) A rangy energy vibrated off the men, who complained that, while the conference had ample champagne, delicious food, and stimulating conversation, it lacked one critical aspect.

“Where are all the hot women?” A well-groomed man in a silk button-down wondered to me near the lunch stands. At least everyone could admit that there were more hot women than last year. “Significantly more prettier women in year four,” he continued.

“There is a filtration process that happened somewhere,” said the man standing next to him.

The filtration process to which they referred was the fact that just about every woman I spoke to at the conference had been admitted on a $1500 “scholarship application.” I myself had been admitted on the scholarship application, given that the All-In Summit does not provide media passes. (When a communications representative for David Sack’s venture firm learned that I’d somehow managed to get a scholarship pass, she called me up to express her surprise. “Everybody [in the media] asks for a pass and it’s always denied,” she said suspiciously. “But somehow, you got in.”)

“I just bought my neighbor’s house,” one All-In attendee said. “And then I bought my neighbor’s neighbor’s house. So I’m feeling very poor lately.”

It was necessary though, to let in as many women as possible including myself, at least according to the silk shirt guy.

“We don’t want to just be a bunch of guys talking about AI,” he said.

Conversely, I met two women who told me they had attended, in part, for husband hunting. It was a good place for it, too, if men with an affinity for boat shoes, strong-smelling cologne, and conversation dominated by cryptocurrency are your thing.

“I came for the sausage, the very small sausage,” a dark-eyed creative director who lives in Los Angeles told me, surveying the many men in near-identical button downs. She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “You know how it is…our capitalist society…”

Write this down,” my dinner companion instructed me. “You were at a dinner with a bunch of private equity and venture assholes—I run a $3 billion fund, and these guys run about four…two….” He furrowed his brow as he tried to remember exactly how many billions his friends tended, and ran the mental math “—so there’s probably about $10 billion at this table. And say that they were so offended by the table wine at Bavel that they ordered a $700 bottle of white Burgundy.” He paused to take a sip of the $700 white Burgundy. “Please, I’m begging you. Write that down.”

It was the first evening of All-In Summit’s themed dinners around Los Angeles. A member of our table had caught wind of another, more exclusive dinner, taking place at the same time, attended not only by one of the Besties, but several private-jet-loads worth of Qataris. It seemed unfair, and somewhat wrong, that the money managers at our table had not been invited. They were important guys, after all, who managed billions—billions! with a B! And now, here they were at fucking Bavel, saddled with, what, some former sales rep turned girlboss founder, and a journalist who was writing down the things they said.

They were nervous about that last part, by the way. They could see how obviously eager I was to observe them, the rich, in their natural habitat of James Beard Award–nominated restaurants. So it was only after the $700 white Burgundy was finished and many repeated assurances that I would not include any overtly identifying details that they began to say things that were actually interesting.

The men at our table had known each other for years; they had worked together at a well-known consulting firm. It had been some time since they’d last been reunited, and there was gossip to catch up on. One such morsel was that the private sushi chef who worked for the billionaire that one of these guys knew had lately made insane demands—for instance, requesting his own compartment on the billionaire’s private jet, given the amount of international travel they’d been doing. Outrageous!

The guys wanted to get their families together soon and do something low-key (say, fly private to an international destination). Problem was, one of them, a venture capitalist who lived in an upscale Californian enclave, was tight on cash.

“I just bought my neighbor’s house,” he said. “And then I bought my neighbor’s neighbor’s house. So I’m feeling very poor lately.”

“Ah, so you’re Zuckerberging?” his friend, a Northern California–based private equity manager, asked wryly.

As our table graduated from wine to tequila, the men were warming up. They began talking about the Besties. At the end of the day, they all agreed: The Besties were truly amazing guys, but they were not perfect; far from it. In fact, the investment history of one of the Besties was, generally speaking, borderline predatory: “At the end of the day, it’s bad taste to dump on retail,” the venture capitalist told me. “We’re long-term greedy, and even we would never do that.”

It was becoming increasingly clear that these guys did not want to be besties with the Besties. They wanted to be the Besties. And why shouldn’t they? These men, like the Besties, were rich. Unlike the Besties, they were only vaguely powerful. But this was what the Besties had done best, the men all agreed: accumulated power. They had practically bought the presidency. And it was cheap! “What do you think that cost, about half a billion?” one wondered.

What made the Besties all the more remarkable, they pointed out, was that they were self-made. “I am a self-made man,” the third guy who worked in private equity told me. This guy had single-handedly scaled the ranks of our finest institutions; he had attended an Ivy League university and toiled for years among distinguished corporate mercenaries like himself until finally arriving at the pinnacle of American success, as a middle-aged money manager.

“But your friends tell me you grew up very sophisticated,” I said.

“It was my grandfather who made all the money,” he corrected me. “I grew up with zero. Literally zero.”

Aside from being self-made, these guys—again, like the Besties— knew a thing or two about the world. For instance, they were fans of Mohammed bin Salman who, in their opinion, had revitalized Saudi Arabia. Sure, the guy’s track record wasn’t perfect, but, c’mon, “you have to hack up a journalist from time to time,” said the venture capitalist. “That’s just politics.”

“The problem we’ve had is that we’ve been guilt-tripped by this woke mind virus, where…everybody has to have some syrupy bullshit mission-vision about tree hugging,” said Chamath Palihapitiya.

There was nothing unusual about the tenor of this conversation, nor the fact that casual accusations of racism kept coming up at our table. (“This girl hates the Blacks,” the self-made guy said more than once, hurling a thumb at the Asian girlboss founder. “Oh my god!” she tittered. “I do not.”) These days, anyone could say just about anything and nobody really cared.

This was more or less the point of the New West, and the reason that it would survive—unlike the Old, Suicidal West, which had been far too preoccupied by hampering constraints like other people’s feelings and human decency to get anything done.

For many decades in Silicon Valley, chasing money was not only unfashionable but openly disdained.This was why entrepreneurs prattled on about things like effective altruism, attended birthday mediation retreats, and cast themselves as saviors ridding the world of any number of social and environmental ills. While the rest of the business class had thrown human decency out the window long ago, in the Valley, everyone was in business for all the vaguely right reasons, like making the world a better place.

But moralism, as everyone knows, is boring, and capitalism masquerading as moralism is downright evil. And while the current iteration of Silicon Valley’s bald-faced materialism is sleazy at best—and corrupt at worst—it’s refreshing for the fact that it is, at the very least, authentic.

“The problem we’ve had is that we’ve been guilt-tripped by this woke mind virus, where…everybody has to have some syrupy bullshit mission-vision about tree hugging,” said Palihapitya from the stage in his closing remarks at the summit. “When, really, what you’re trying to do is sell ads and plant cookies. We need to be a little bit more honest and the reason is, everybody else doesn’t like being lied to…. One of the things we need to do is just have a little bit more bravery to say, ‘I just make these seeds that make these potatoes to make a ton of money.’”

No one seemed to mind that the Besties were intent on profiting from their audience—through ticket sales, branded merchandise, or the unloading of their latest investments. Two people told me, almost cheerfully, that they had lost thousands of dollars in SPACs led by Chamath Palihapitiya, whose zeal for the vehicle earned him the nickname of Pied Piper of SPACs. But having lost this money, they were perfectly happy to risk losing more. “I’d still invest in Chamath’s next thing,” said the founder of a software company who said he’d lost some $7,000 in a Palihpatiya-led SPAC.

But people were making money too. They had bought into market rocketships like Nvidia and Palantir long before the rest of the public caught on, and only because they’d first heard these CEOs speak on All-In.

There was, it seemed, so much money—and the promise of still more—that the occasionally mercenary nature of proceedings barely registered. Nearly every speaker had something to sell: from Mark Cuban’s new drug company to Tucker Carlson’s nicotine pouches to bottles of the Besties’ All-In branded tequila ($1,200), which they sipped onstage. In some ways, we were here to be sold to, on the next cryptocurrency, the next investment opportunity, the next big thing. It wasn’t called All-In for nothing.