Marc Benioff on AI Eating SaaS, San Francisco’s New Mayor & CEO Trump Pandering
How does the AI gold rush look from the helm of a $40-billion software giant? Salesforce co-founder, chair, and CEO Marc Benioff joins Eric Newcomer and Tom Dotan for a tour of the next tech boom cycle. The conversation opens with Benioff’s sweeping vision of “Agent Force 2.0,” where large language models paired with reasoning engines mint whole new classes of digital labor, and brands from Gucci to Disney are already swapping call-center scripts for autonomous agents.The episode closes on politics and philanthropy: Prop C, homelessness, the 2024 electoral tightrope, and how Benioff plans to work with any administration and still sleep at night.
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56:48
Josh Wolfe on America’s Next War and Why It Isn’t Taiwan
This week, we kick off by discussing Ben Smith’s bombshell post ”The group chats that changed America,” that exposed the private chats that nudged Silicon Valley’s money crowd into Trump’s orbit. Then we hop to DC’s Hill-and-Valley Forum, where the mantra was industrial renaissance or bust. The race with China, AI’s essential energy demands, and the need to reshore American manufacturing were the talk of the forum. Fear of China loomed over the entire forum and only whispers of tariffs crossed the lips of attendees and speakers alike. In the back half, Eric and Madeline are joined by Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe, fresh off his on-stage appearance at the Hill and Valley Forum. Wolfe predicts two flashpoints the commentariat is ignoring: a terror-fertile Sahel and a China-courting Latin America. He spars with Eric Newcomer and Madeline Renbargner over Trump’s tariffs, friend-shoring versus reshoring, and whether founder-led startups like Anduril can out-maneuver bloated primes. If you think that the only great power game is Taiwan, Wolfe widens the aperture to central Africa and the Americas. Timecodes00:00 - Intro01:10 - Silicon Valley’s Most Important Group Chats 08:18 - Hill and Valley’s “America First” Victory Lap 16:20 - Josh Wolfe on America’s Next War
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49:55
The TRUTH about VC Media
We’re back to opining on the state of tech media! A16z has aqui-hired Erik Torenberg and his newsletter Turpentine, while the Technology Brothers with ties to Founders Fund have created a podcasting empire. Eric and Tom reminisce about the original wave of “going direct,” why it failed, and what’s different this time around. Later on, Madeline shares that crypto VCs are growing frustrated with President Trump’s meme coin grifts, and how hosting a private dinner for top coin holders doesn’t help legitimize the industry.
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24:28
AGI, Seriously + Foundation Model Polyamory (With Kyle Harrison)
This week, Tom breaks down his scoops on how the big foundation model providers are doing.and much to the chagrin of our resident skeptic, they’re earning lots of real revenue! OpenAI is on track to crack over $12 billion in revenue this year, and Anthropic projects it will double its ARR to $4 billion by the end of the year. But have we hit the AGI moment? Eric relays his o3 experiments as evidence. Madeline gets into the perpetual VC optimism in spite of market turmoil and why AI has early stage investors mostly unphased. In the second half of our show, Eric interviews Contrary’s Kyle Harrison about his viral foundation model market map and why AI has led many VCs to embrace startup polyamory.
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55:05
Walter Bloomberg at the Wheel for the Whole Stock Market
We're welcoming special guest Tom Dotan of Dead Cat fame to the show this week — just in time for the tariff market meltdown. To Silicon Valley's Trump supporters, we hate to say we told you so, but it's hard to imagine how these tariffs on our biggest trading partners will benefit tech and artificial intelligence development in the US.In the second half of the show, Eric interviews Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen on how to make sense of what President Trump's tariff policies mean for his customers around the world.
A podcast about Silicon Valley, hosted by newsletter writer and independent journalist Eric Newcomer. Listen in for interviews with the dealmakers and builders who matter. Subscribe to newcomer.co for summaries of the episodes plus tech industry news, scoops, and analysis. www.newcomer.co
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