David Friedberg and Fellow Tech Titans Outline 2026 Strategy: Why They're Betting Big on Copper While Shunning Oil

Four prominent venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs—David Friedberg, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and Jason Calacanis—recently shared sweeping investment theses and predictions for 2026 on the All-In Podcast, providing a rare glimpse into how elite tech investors are positioning capital across markets, politics, and geopolitical risks. Their candid discussion reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of certain trends, yet sharp disagreements on others—particularly around artificial intelligence’s impact on employment and the future of cryptocurrency.

California’s Wealth Tax: The Elephant Driving Tech Capital Out of State

The conversation opened with an unlikely confession: despite claiming he would “stay and fight” California’s proposed wealth tax, Chamath Palihapitiya quietly instructed his real estate agent to search for homes elsewhere. This mirrors a broader exodus of billionaire wealth from the state. The combined net worth of prominent figures who have already departed exceeds $500 billion, according to Palihapitiya’s estimates. If you include those wavering on the decision, roughly half of California’s projected taxable wealth could vanish.

David Sacks, who relocated to Austin, Texas in December, explained his reasoning plainly: the wealth tax proposal would effectively transform a 5% levy into a 25-50% burden for founders with super voting rights, making the tax economically catastrophic for entrepreneurs with illiquid stock holdings. The broader implications are staggering—if the proposal advances to a 2026 ballot vote, panic could accelerate departures even before a potential passage.

The group agreed that uncertainty itself is corrosive. Chamath observed that entrepreneurs face impossible math: accumulate illiquid wealth, then face 5% annual wealth taxes on unrealized gains that could bankrupt their companies. Meanwhile, Sacks noted that founders who sell just 1% of their shares annually to cover taxes face compounding losses.

Polymarket, the prediction platform championed by David Friedberg, assigns the proposal only a 45% chance of ballot passage—a figure that spiked to 80% after progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna mobilized support. Yet even if the tax fails at the ballot, the political uncertainty has already begun reshaping capital flows.

Investment Winners: Friedberg’s Bullish Bets on Huawei and Polymarket

When discussing the year’s most promising investments, David Friedberg articulated a two-pronged strategy. His first pick, Huawei, reflects confidence that China’s semiconductor leader—working closely with SMIC and competitors like TSMC—will exceed Western expectations in chip production this year. His bet hinges on the premise that geopolitical decoupling and supply-chain nationalism will elevate Chinese semiconductor capabilities beyond current consensus forecasts.

Friedberg’s second selection, Polymarket, showcases his conviction that prediction markets have transcended niche speculation to become mainstream information utilities. Following Polymarket’s partnership with the NYSE, Friedberg expects a cascade of integrations across major brokerages—Robinhood, Coinbase, and Nasdaq—throughout 2026. He boldly framed the trend: prediction markets will evolve into news platforms, replacing traditional media’s role as arbiter of informed discourse.

Chamath doubled down on industrial commodities, specifically copper. He sketched a compelling macro narrative: electrification, data center expansion, and military modernization are colliding with a forecasted 70% global supply deficit by 2040. Copper, he argued, represents the most economically advantaged play in critical materials—a metal simultaneously indispensable, inexpensive, ductile, and conductive.

Jason Calacanis championed Amazon as the first corporation approaching “singularity,” where robotic systems generate more profit than human workers. He pointed to Amazon’s autonomous delivery subsidiary Zoox and same-day logistics networks powered by automated warehouses as evidence of this transition gaining momentum.

David Sacks projected a major IPO resurgence, reversing years of venture capital companies staying private. He attributed this reversal to what he termed the “Trump Boom”—a confluence of pro-business policy expectations, accelerating dealmaking momentum, and renewed appetite for public markets.

The Losers: Enterprise SaaS, State Pensions, and the Dollar

The group proved equally clear-eyed about sectors facing structural headwinds. David Friedberg warned that state governments would soon confront buried pension liabilities, transforming previously stable credit profiles into potential defaults. Chamath targeted the enterprise SaaS industrial complex—a multi-trillion-dollar annual revenue stream, 90% of which derives from maintenance and migration costs. He posited that AI advancements would eviscerate the economic rationale for these services, compressing SaaS company multiples.

Sacks remained fixated on California itself, while Calacanis expressed concern that entry-level job destruction via AI automation would disproportionately impact young American workers, forcing a generation to develop resilience, independence, and rapid AI tool proficiency.

For asset classes, Sacks predicted high-end California luxury real estate would crater under wealth-tax uncertainties. Chamath articulated a controversial thesis: oil faces structural, irreversible decline toward $45 per barrel, driven not merely by climate ideology but by hard economic realities of electrification and energy storage displacement. Friedberg targeted Netflix and traditional media broadly, while Calacanis—notably—chose the US dollar, citing unsustainable debt trajectories and likely Trump-era defense spending expansions.

Contrarian Predictions: SpaceX Merges With Tesla, Central Banks Explore Sovereign Crypto

The discussion’s most provocative moment arrived when Chamath unveiled two contrarian theses. First, SpaceX will not go public; instead, Elon Musk will merge it into Tesla to consolidate control over his two most strategically important enterprises into a unified shareholding structure. Second, central banks globally will abandon gold and Bitcoin as reserve anchors in favor of a “controlled crypto paradigm”—quantum-resistant, government-issued, sovereign digital assets designed to maintain national financial independence without external surveillance vulnerabilities.

David Friedberg countered with his own provocative view: Iran’s regime collapse will destabilize rather than pacify the Middle East, as Sunni Arab states scramble for regional hegemony in a post-Iranian vacuum.

David Sacks invoked the Jevons Paradox to argue that AI will actually increase demand for knowledge workers—cheaper code generation will spawn software abundance, cheaper radiological scans will proliferate imaging, and radiologists will become more essential, not obsolete.

Political Winners and Losers: Democratic Socialists Rise, Tech Falls, Dollar Corrodes

For 2026’s political landscape, David Friedberg identified Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as the year’s biggest beneficiary, paralleling MAGA’s capture of the Republican Party. Chamath broadly nominated anyone combating government waste, fraud, and abuse. Sacks championed the “Trump Boom” narrative, citing falling inflation (2.7%), declining core CPI (2.6%), Q3 GDP expansion of 4.3%, the lowest trade deficit since 2009, reduced layoffs, and rising real wages exceeding $1,000 per capita.

The group projected US GDP growth between 4.6% and 6%—a range only China achieves, and then only through authoritarian economic coordination. Such growth, if realized, would represent a remarkable outcome under democratic capitalism.

Conversely, Democratic centrists emerged as the predicted loser, squeezed between socialist base voters and gerrymandered congressional districts favoring primary challengers from the left. Chamath provocatively argued that the Monroe Doctrine is obsolete and will be rewritten during Trump’s term, replaced by a hemispheric hegemony doctrine emphasizing transactional interventions—drug cartels, immigration control, vital asset security—rather than Monroe’s blanket continental protection.

David Friedberg positioned the tech industry itself as 2026’s political casualty. AI wealth and entrepreneurial prominence have become dual targets for populism across the political spectrum. Friedberg predicted the 2026 midterm elections would function as a referendum on the tech sector itself.

Asset Performance: Metals Surge, Speculation Prospers, Oil and Media Crater

By consensus, critical metals—particularly copper—will appreciate substantially. Polymarket’s network effects will compound its value. The tech sector’s “supercycle” will accelerate under pro-business policy expectations. Speculative platforms like Robinhood, Coinbase, and PrizePicks will capture excess liquidity as consumer confidence rises.

Conversely, California luxury real estate faces deflationary pressure. Oil—whether crude at $45 per barrel or oil service stocks—confronts inexorable electrification displacement. Netflix and traditional media chains struggle as independent creators and citizen journalism cannibalize audiences. The dollar weakens as federal debt spirals and defense spending expands.

The Verdict: 2026 as Inflection Year

The All-In cohort’s collective assessment suggests 2026 marks a genuine inflection point—not merely cyclical, but structural. Capital will reallocate from California’s regulatory regime toward pro-business jurisdictions. Commodities, particularly copper, will surge as geopolitical fragmentation and decoupling reshape supply chains. Technology will simultaneously prosper at the enterprise level while facing political hostility. And predictions markets, having emerged from regulatory purgatory, will mature into primary information infrastructure.

David Friedberg’s emphasis on Polymarket’s ascendance and Huawei’s technical capabilities alongside these macro shifts underscores a coherent thesis: geopolitical decoupling, energy transition economics, and market structure transformation will supersede traditional valuation metrics in determining capital winners and losers throughout 2026.