Semafor World Economy Forum 2026

Chris Rugaber (00:11):

We're here at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington, D.C. I'm Chris Rugaber at the Associated Press. And at the summit today, we have hundreds of CEOs and world political leaders and they're gathering while there's upheaval in the Middle East, there's blockaging of shipping. And all those things are being discussed as well as how companies and business leaders are responding to all of that. And here with us is Ben Smith, founder of Semafor and also co-founder of BuzzFeed and a former columnist at the New York Times and Politico. So thanks for being here.

Ben Smith (00:51):

Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here.

Chris Rugaber (00:53):

Oh, sure. No problem. So tell us a little about this summit and what your goals are and what caused you to do this here in Washington.

Ben Smith (01:02):

Yeah. I mean, I think maybe just start with where you started with these kind of business leaders. More than really ever in my career at least, I think feel like they need to be here in Washington to figure out what's going on and to navigate all these forces, basically driven by the US government that are affecting their business, which can be subtle regulatory things. But obviously, right now, is the war in Iran and whatever is happening in the strait at the moment anyone happens to watch this clip.

(01:31)
But I think there's a level of just uncertainty, but also opportunity kind of coming out of Washington. That means that just hunt business leaders who might never have been to Washington or might have avoided Washington in any other era are here all the time. And just trying to understand, I think basically like everybody else's, what to make of this very strange economic moment where you have enormous amounts of investment, these huge technological and energy innovations on one hand, and then on the other, just lots of uncertainty, lots of conflict and a populous that is very unhappy about the economy, whatever you tell them about the numbers.

Chris Rugaber (02:09):

And so what are your top things that you hope people take away this week? Because we will be here, I guess all through Thursday.

Ben Smith (02:17):

Yeah. I mean, I guess our sort of mission at Semafor is to have really open conversations with people who have deeply different points of view. We'll be hearing from Trump administration officials, like Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick. We'll be hearing from top European and Asian officials, as well as CEOs from a range of industries, all of whom interpret a lot of this data very differently, are thinking very differently about it. We've got an executive from Anthropic on stage right now. They're obviously having a pretty heated conflict with the administration. So I mean, I think our ethos is really just to try to have very open conversations among people who really disagree with each other. And there's a lot of that going around right now.

Chris Rugaber (02:54):

Yes. Yeah. And what do you hope viewers and this so called person on the street might take from this? Are you hoping that they'll get sort of unique insight into how some of these leaders are thinking about these issues?

Ben Smith (03:05):

Yeah. I mean, I think there are a lot of these kind of global economic gatherings. There's Davos, there's Milken and things like that. And I think something that a way in which we are different is that this is journalism and the 500 CEOs are coming here, I'm sure, to meet each other and there are lots of fancy dinners and things, but also, they're coming here to be grilled by journalists, by our reporters, by many of our great competitors. And I think that is the best way to kind of get to the bottom of what these people think, is to ask them.

Chris Rugaber (03:32):

Exactly. And are there other folks, you mentioned the Anthropic CEO, any others that you're looking forward to hearing from?

Ben Smith (03:39):

I mean, I do think it's a moment when anybody who is dealing with energy is really top of mind. We have the TotalEnergies CEO today. I think we have the Southwest Airlines and JetBlue CEOs. And I think people who are... It's one thing to talk about energy in the abstract. It's even another thing just to be like you or me and buying gas and a little annoyed that it popped at over $4 again, but I think you have these huge businesses that are really facing these kind of like enormously consequential choices of owing vast sums of money, where they really have to be... They're essentially betting on what's going to happen next and trying desperately to figure it out.

Chris Rugaber (04:12):

So oil and the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is certainly a big issue, I'm sure. What are you expecting? Are you expecting to hear about other topics, say AI and other things?

Ben Smith (04:23):

Yeah. I mean, I think the other and related top of mind question is how these, critically, these big businesses are going to navigate AI and how that kind of bleeds downstream into the workforce, into politics, into society. I think you're starting to see indications that a lot of companies have stopped hiring or slowed their hiring. And anecdotally, CEO told me, "Well, if somebody leaves, we're telling their manager, we'll see if you can fill that job with AI." And then it's early still for the numbers to be clear, but I think that between that and between this recent release from Anthropic of a new model that they say can basically hack anything, I think you're starting to go from this abstract conversation about AI and either the wonders or the terrors of it into the pretty concrete effects on the economy and decisions that business and political leaders have to make.

Chris Rugaber (05:21):

So you wrote, I think, last week about the disconnect between people unhappy with the economy no matter sort of what you tell them. And you mentioned that earlier. Do you get any sense yet from maybe some of the leaders here, CEO or government that they are worried about that, maybe picking up on that, worried about that divide?

Ben Smith (05:38):

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the real kind of crises of Washington, gosh, for the last 15, 20 years, Austan Goolsbee, who we both know, fed governor used to work for Obamas here. And I remember talking to him in, must have been like 2009 after the Great Recession, he was sort of wrestling with, are we allowed to go out and say things are getting better and that there are economic indications that things are getting better even if everybody is still super mad? And I think his conclusion then was no, they're just going to be mad. And I think you saw Biden wrestle with that where they were saying, "Look, there are all these indicators, wages are growing faster than inflation." Nope, everybody hates you. And if you tell them that actually things are going well, they hate you more. And I think Trump is now finding himself in that same position where, again, try going out and telling people that, "Don't worry, rents adjusted for inflation are actually down." No one wants to hear that.

(06:28)
And when you try to tell them, they are madder about the state of the economy. And I think what people in the White House will tell you but they won't say it in public, it's like, "We think... The Strait of Hormuz is a concern, the gas price is a concern." But we think we have a pretty defensible economic record. Unemployment is low, wages are growing faster than inflation. There's lots to brag about. There's a lot in the American economy certainly is the envy of the world. But again, go out and tell people like, "Hey, it's a lot worse in Germany and China." Again, nobody cares, nobody wants to hear it, and it's a huge political problem.

Chris Rugaber (07:00):

Well, and how do you think news coverage should or needs to react to that? Are there any things that you think... I mean, my day job as a news economics reporter, are we missing anything or should there be another angle or lens that we take to it that...

Ben Smith (07:15):

I mean, I think it's a really tricky thing. I'm curious how you think about it. I mean, I think we... I sometimes get frustrated at kind of coverage that is, people are very unhappy about the economy and about certain measures. And sometimes they are saying things that are just definitely wrong and untrue. The economy isn't shrinking. Also, prices aren't going to go down. I mean, there's just stuff that either where people's expectations or even their kind of perceptions are out of sync with reality.

(07:43)
I mean, the biggest piece of it is, Ronald Reagan had this famous line that he ran for election on in 1984, which was, "Ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?" And that used to be a pretty good test of whether an American politician would get reelected. And now, all those numbers tell you is, "Did my guy win?" And people's perceptions of the economy, Democrats suddenly think it's better when their guy wins. Republicans, when a Democrat wins, suddenly think the economy got bad. And it renders those kind of perceptions sort of useless. It's hard to know what to make. I don't know how you think about that.

Chris Rugaber (08:17):

Well-

Ben Smith (08:18):

Am I allowed to ask you questions?

Chris Rugaber (08:19):

Sure. Well, quickly, I think it is the challenge between giving people the facts and trying to make sure that they, even if they don't like them. And then at the same time, to acknowledge both frankly, politically, like yes, inflation was also high under Biden or was much higher, but also acknowledge things like the long-term increase in prices that are still, I think, causing problems for people. But yeah, it is important to balance that.

Ben Smith (08:46):

Because nobody wants to read a news article either that's like, "Shut up, it's fine."

Chris Rugaber (08:49):

Right, right, right. But then-

Ben Smith (08:51):

But actually, there are a lot of elements of the US economy that are unbelievably dynamic and impressive and could be way worse and are way worse virtually everywhere else.

Chris Rugaber (08:58):

Right. Well, inflation is tricky because it is important to say if and when it is down that it's better than when it was going up 6%, but then people are still upset about the long-term increase in prices.

Ben Smith (09:11):

Yeah. And if you tell people, "Actually, inflation adjusted gas prices, actually, they're below where they were." People don't want to hear that. Nobody's interested in that.

Chris Rugaber (09:18):

Yeah, no, it is a challenge. Yeah. And then on inequality, I don't know if that's one that is also... You hear about talk of the K-shaped economy with upper end people doing better. Is that something that... Are you hearing from CEOs about that and whether that's disrupting their businesses or are they adapting to it? Or I don't know what kind of chatter you're hearing.

Ben Smith (09:38):

Yeah, I think there are two big worries. I mean, actually, last year, we had Steve Bannon here, the kind of populist leader who basically turned to the audience and said, "You know what? You may not like right-wing populism, you may not like me, but the alternative is Luigi." And I think there is a lot of fear among-

Chris Rugaber (09:55):

Luigi Mangione?

Ben Smith (09:57):

Yeah. This assassin. So I think there is a certain amount of real anxiety among business leaders that like there's this populous turn just with a violent edge against them. And that is something that I think they do wrestle with. I would say the other big factor in that is that this question, is AI going to even further kind of centralize value and mean that even fewer people get even richer?

Chris Rugaber (10:24):

Mm-hmm. Right. Well, so this is the first year you're having this in D.C., as I understand it, but I think you've had it before. Tell us a little more about the history and so is this, you mentioned the focus on D.C. now, so you're going to keep doing it here?

Ben Smith (10:37):

Yeah, we launched it in Washington, but it's gotten a lot bigger. Semafor's only been around for three and a half years. This is our fourth event. And I think it's grown kind of beyond our expectations in part because there is this very intense demand to, among other things, gather in person post pandemic and try to kind of hash these hard questions out. And then also really, in a way, I sort of think about, like I came up working for newspapers as I suppose we all did it. So you remember those things, print sections and that like there's this, you have a business section and you have a political section or national section. And right now, all of the important stories are in some middle section in between them that doesn't exist and a lot of journalism I think misses these sort of big geoeconomic, political business stories at the intersection of politics and of finance fundamentally. And that's a lot of what people are coming here to figure out.

Chris Rugaber (11:32):

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's great. Well, we are here at the Semafor World Economic Forum talking to Ben Smith, CEO of Semafor. And this will go on through Thursday. I think now, we're going to check out a panel on building intelligent enterprises with Jack Clark from Anthropic and some other CEOs. Ben, thank you for being here.

Ben Smith (11:52):

Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Rugaber (11:53):

No problem.

Ben Smith (11:54):

And thank you for being here also.

Chris Rugaber (11:55):

Yes, exactly.

Liz (11:58):

... felt threatened somehow and it was going to do whatever it took to ensure its viability and its survivability.

Jack Clark (12:07):

So I don't want to sound like I'm belittling this, but I'll give you an analogy which I think is helpful.

Liz (12:13):

Please.

Jack Clark (12:14):

If you were doing plumbing for a house and you ran water through it at extremely high pressure and then a pipe burst and water floods out of it, the water didn't necessarily want to go out of that pipe. It didn't make necessarily what you might think of as a conscious decision. You just built the pipe wrong and went for wrong tolerances. And so when I see this, I think something about how we've built the system is clearly incorrect or some aspect of how we've set this up means that when we expose it to pressure, something really, really strange happens. Personally, I look at this stuff and I think how many hours in the day are there for me and my teams to work on this and am I putting enough in while maintaining my marriage and my relationship with my children? It's going okay so far, but for early innings.

Liz (12:59):

Your children are young, trust me. It'll take a bit here. You are currently suing the federal government after the Department of Defense blacklisted Anthropic simply because you requested certain limits on how your technology was going to be used. I know you will not comment on an ongoing litigation. I'm not here to push you on that. I will say though that simultaneously, you are briefing the federal government on Mythos, on cybersecurity, et cetera, and the capabilities, and you're calling it a relationship. How do you square both of those sides here, calling it a partnership and suing the government at the same time?

Jack Clark (13:38):

I mean, there are all kinds of different relationships in the world, right? But look, more seriously, we have a narrow contracting dispute, but I don't want that to get into the way of the fact that we care deeply about national security. We always have, as a company. One of our first hires before we started doing a business was the team under me that studied things like biological weapon risk and then cyber risk. We knew the stakes of what was coming. Our position is the government has to know about this stuff and we have to find new ways for the government to partner with a private sector that is making things that are truly revolutionizing the economy, but are going to have aspects to them which hit national security equities and other ones. So absolutely, we talked to them about Mythos and we'll talk to them about the next models as well.

Liz (14:25):

It's pretty nice of you, considering they deemed you a supply chain risk, which is really reserved for bad actors and foreign companies. So good on you, bravo. I think that's certainly a sign that can't we all just get along in some way, shape or form. We've got some top CEOs here and policymakers, I would imagine. How many of you switched or use Anthropic? Let's start with that. How many of you use Claude Anthropic?

Jack Clark (14:53):

Oh, thank you very much.

Liz (14:54):

He's very happy. But how many of you went to it after the Department of Defense took aim at it? Okay. I talked to some CEOs yesterday who had done the same thing. So I think that the privacy of what you guys push and the guardrails is an attractive proposition for at least this type of audience. Let's talk about Dario Amodei, your CEO. He has predicted that the AI spike could just crush entry level unemployment, bring it up to maybe 20%. The number's constantly changing, but that's depression era numbers here for unemployment. You're in a little bit of a disagreement. You say that that is a choice, but Anthropic, what you're building, the very technology that you're building, it's what makes that choice harder to avoid.

Jack Clark (15:50):

The way I'd put it is what Dario holds in his head is not where the technology is today, but where it's going to be three to five years from now. And he is similar to some others in the field like Ilya Sutskever. He has kind of called this correctly for many years by betting that the technology is going to get much more powerful than people expect much quicker.

(16:10)
And so when he talks about what he thinks will happen to the economy, he's holding that in his head. Now, I run a team of economists and what I see right now is I see potential weakness in early graduate employment in some industries. I don't see anything beyond that, but I have a team of economists and I share data so that we're ready in case we do see major employment shifts. But I think that the aspect of this, which is a choice, is if we're correct, this technology really is going to change the world in a vast way. It will change how business is done, aspects of national security, how we even relate to one another as people. And it's impossible to reconcile that with a world where the economy doesn't change in substantial ways as well.

Liz (16:56):

My son is graduating from college. Any USC Trojans in the audience? Oh, yay. All right, fight on. I'm a Berkeley graduate. When he went to USC, I thought the world was going to stop turning on its axis. Look, I can't wear the sweatshirt, honey. I'm sorry. Okay. That said, I'm very concerned about that. What majors, which majors would you say people just shouldn't waste their time going into at this point with AI out there?

Jack Clark (17:29):

Look, it's very hard for me to say this.

Liz (17:33):

Don't say journalism. You were a journalist and I am.

Jack Clark (17:36):

I'm a literature graduate and I don't think you'd put that as a co-founder of a frontier AI company, but what turned out to be useful is that I got to learn a lot about history and a lot about the kind of stories that we tell ourselves about the future. That's turned out to be extremely relevant for AI in a way that I think people wouldn't have predicted. Similarly, we employ philosophers. When was the last time you heard that a philosophy degree was a great job prospect? But it turns out that now, it is.

Liz (18:02):

And Alex Karp, Palantir, philosopher.

Jack Clark (18:04):

Another philosopher. Different type, but a philosopher.

Liz (18:07):

Very different type.

Jack Clark (18:10):

The way I put it, it's very hard for me to think of, to give you majors which I think are going to be made irrelevant by this technology because most people who've made these predictions have also been wildly wrong. But I think that majors which are going to become more important are ones which involve synthesis across a whole variety of subjects and analytical thinking about that. And that's because what AI allows us to do is it allows you to have access to sort of an arbitrary amount of subject matter experts in different domains. But the really important thing is knowing the right questions to ask and having intuitions about what would be interesting if you collided different insights from many different disciplines.

Liz (18:49):

Okay. But which one would parents steer their kids away from?

Jack Clark (18:53):

Steer their kids away from. Okay.

Liz (18:54):

It used to be the liberal arts.

Jack Clark (18:57):

If you're pushing me, I actually think probably rote programming, like if you were learning just how to do basic programming, some people will need to know those fundamentals, but we do see that technology move up the stack. It's like how people used to learn a language called Assembly and then everyone ended up learning languages like C and then Python because things became more and more abstract and there are very few Assembly programmers now, but some.

Liz (19:23):

Give me a minute or less because there's so much we want to talk about on The Anthropic Institute, this is a 30-person think tank to study AI's effects on the workplace, but you're also the company causing those effects. And by the way, I submitted that question to Claude and I said, "I'm talking to Jack Clark. What do I come back at him with?" And he said, "Don't let him pivot to The Anthropic Institute as a safe harbor on labor questions. Push back on whether studying a problem is the same as solving it."

Jack Clark (19:56):

Okay. Liz and Claude, if he's listening.

Liz (20:01):

Oh, it's a he. Okay.

Jack Clark (20:02):

If it's listening and maybe there'll be a transcript that it can read, it can't listen yet, our view is that the technology companies have a huge responsibility here and we need to share data about making the problem visible, but we are increasingly need to actually be on the hook for solving it. We've talked about interventions that range from just sharing data to eventually needing to consider tax differently for the technology companies. Now, I'm not advocating for taxing us differently today because the results haven't shown up in the economy, but if we're right about how large this could get and how central a role AI companies could play, you will need to consider the big policy levers.

Liz (20:40):

Do you foresee tokens being taxed? I mean, the STEM lords out there are going to really push back on that.

Jack Clark (20:45):

So we did develop some of this idea and then it led to a vigorous and outrageous debate with economists and tax experts. So I don't know if tokens are going to be taxed, but clearly, whether it's value added tax, whether it's changing how you tax compute, whether it's some kind of tax that you might do on AI companies themselves, we may need something like that, but that's only if the rest of it comes true. If the economy truly changes at the scale I'm talking about, you need unusual measures. And until then, the Institute, the job of it is to produce data from Anthropic that you could only get from a company like us. We make data available from what's happening on our platform and the econometrics associated with it so that we can make that decision.

Liz (21:24):

Okay. We've got a minute left, so I want to go to this lightning round that I came up with really fast.

Jack Clark (21:30):

Oh, this is exciting.

Liz (21:30):

Bing, bang, boom.

Jack Clark (21:30):

Did Claude help you with this as well?

Liz (21:31):

No.

Jack Clark (21:31):

Okay. All right. Well, let's see.

Liz (21:33):

No. Most overrated fear about AI? Overrated.

Jack Clark (21:40):

Yeah. I sort of think that maybe the collapse of meaning. I think that's going to be easier than we think.

Liz (21:49):

Okay. All right. OpenAI, Sam Altman. You worked at OpenAI. Friend, foe, or cautionary tale?

Jack Clark (22:00):

Acquaintance and a father.

Liz (22:03):

And a...

Jack Clark (22:04):

He's a father. He's a family man.

Liz (22:06):

Okay. So he dodges that one. Okay. Elon Musk's Grok. Serious competitor or distraction?

Jack Clark (22:16):

Serious competitor. Never count Elon out.

Liz (22:18):

Mm-hmm. What's one human skill that just became 10 times more valuable?

Jack Clark (22:25):

Idling so that you can come up with original ideas. I go for very long walks and then I figure out new questions to ask for AI system.

Liz (22:33):

In 10 years, will you, Dario Amodei, your CEO, and the Anthropic team be seen as heroes or villains?

Jack Clark (22:41):

That is our choice, but I say internally that we're a dice roll away from either one of those and we need to work really hard.

Liz (22:50):

It is a pleasure to speak with you. I wish we had all day because we didn't get to the China question. In fact, while I have this audience, I do just want to ask if there's... Sorry, Semafor. But listen, being first is a huge race right now with all of you guys. What is the one thing the US government and maybe policy makers in this room should not allow if America is going to maintain its way?

Jack Clark (23:14):

Export controls on computer are absolutely essential. Anyone that tells you that you can sell compute to China and it somehow doesn't disadvantage you in the race is horribly wrong in a way that will damage this country. You must maintain export controls because it is the fundamental resource we use to build this technology.

Liz (23:30):

How does Jensen Huang feel about that?

Jack Clark (23:32):

Well, he might take the other side of that argument and I would say, "I think that you're completely categorically wrong about this."

Liz (23:38):

Can't wait to see that discussion. We thank you all for coming and thank you to Jack Clark.

Automated (23:42):

Please...

Ted Leonsis (24:02):

... this venue, it's the most important city in the world. We have to really have the best infrastructure. We have to have the most iconic real estate. We have to have the best sports teams. And these icons for the community, like our arenas, like our stadiums, are incredibly important. We convene three million people a year come into the city. And it's not just from Washington, D.C. Our market goes from Richmond, Virginia, all the way to Delaware. And so that media market, that 10 million person media market is one of the foremost important and powerful in the country and one of the top 10 around the world. And so it starts with your downtown. It connects all of the universities that are here. And so we've got a lot of work to do and I never take a day for granted that we have to keep investing, keep innovating to make Washington, D.C. a great city.

Interviewer (25:02):

Mark, pick up on that. Obviously, with the Commanders Stadium coming to town, you obviously have the DC Open, which has become kind of a focal point of kind of the DC cultural summer zeitgeist at this point in time. What's the investment case that you make as you think through this process?

Mark Ein (25:17):

Yeah. Well, I mean, Ted gave you all the high level reasons Washington's one of the most important cities in the world. And economically, it's an incredible population here. I mean, it's a highly affluent, highly educated community. So the people here are great, but you were talking about, Ted and I backstage, Ted and I have been friends for like 35 years. I met Ted when he was running a piece of AOL and I tried to see if we could spin it out and send it to separate company and then have followed Ted. And Ted's been a great role model for a lot of us in sports in Washington, not just what he's done, but how he's done it. But Ted and I also met in the late '90s where we were talking about diversifying the Washington economy away from government into tech. And we would have all these meetings of leaders in both regionally and nationally to talk about how do you bring tech companies into Washington.

(26:08)
I planted a flag and ran an incubator here for over a decade right down the street from Ted's arena. And that didn't work as much. There was a couple, there was living social, a couple companies. Unfortunately, a lot of companies would get started here and then as soon as they became successful, they'd move out to Virginia. But today, it's more important than ever because obviously, we all know what's going on in the federal government. And I think this mayor has done a really smart job in saying, "I need to diversify our economy into something for the coming decades." And she's identified entertainment and tourism, entertainment, sports and entertainment, which plays off one of Washington's greatest strengths, which is a tourism hub for the world. And so every venue in town, including Capital One, Nationals, Audi Field, my tennis venue, and now, the building of RFK is having a reinvestment or a new build.

(27:06)
And so there's a massive investment in this because I think the mayor has said, rightfully, "I need to reposition Washington and we need to double down on what we're good at, which is tourism and entertainment." And so I'm super... This will be the nation's capital forever. It'll be the nation's capital of the world's most important country. There's so many great things about this city. We are definitely going through a bit of a challenging time, but I actually think all these investments are going to continue to pay off. I think there's a ton of upside still in tourism and entertainment, and it will be a huge driver of the city for a long time.

Ted Leonsis (27:44):

And we need to innovate. So we announced a couple of weeks ago with the White House, with Penske, with the Department of Transportation in August, which not a lot of people are here in August, but we have to support the local economy. And it's the 250th birthday for the country that we will do a IndyCar race. And it was really amazing to see the city, the government, Department of Transportation, Doug Burgum, Department of Interior all come together and we're going to bring in anywhere from 250,000 people to a million people. And just like they have a Formula One race in Vegas or in Monaco, we'll have that in Washington, D.C.

Interviewer (28:31):

Can I ask you, how quickly did that come together? Does it suddenly come out of nowhere? And then all of a sudden, you signed on and it was done.

Ted Leonsis (28:37):

Yeah. It was a great idea and we had to, because Washington, D.C. doesn't really exist, right? We're not a state and streets here are either owned by the city or owned by the federal government. And so we literally had to map out what percentage of the race would be on federal land versus on city land. The mayor really wanted this, the White House really wanted this. We went to Congress and it was, "You don't even have to tell us what this is. The answer's no." And so we had to remeasure to make sure that it was more on city streets. But it'll be a great thing in August, all downtown. It'll be two days on Fox. The first day will be really a celebration of the technology we're going to have, just like we do at the NBA, a tech summit. We'll have a tech summit around automotive. It really should be a kickoff. And I say, "Well, why do we have to do it just for one year? Let's do it every year."

(29:39)
Secondly, I'd say that Washington, D.C. needs to reward itself for its gifts. When I came to Washington, D.C. as a student at Georgetown, it was first class of graduating women from Georgetown University founded in 1789 and Title IX was created all in the same year in the early '70s here. And we should make Washington, D.C. the women's capital of sports. We're the second-longest tenured WNBA team owner. WNBA, it's taken a long time. I have to leave right after this to go to New York because the WNBA draft is this evening. We approved three new expansion teams last week. WNBA teams now are going 300, $400 million. We've arrived. Women's soccer, we have Michele Kang. Has a great, great franchise here.

(30:34)
We conducted a game for the Professional Women's Hockey League. I want to bring women's hockey to here, all of the colleges and universities because of Title IX, very, very strong. Mark's been an unbelievable advocate. I'll let him talk about in tennis. We ought to rally around and make this the professional women's sports capital of the universe. And that's only

Ted Leonsis (31:00):

... only good for the city, only good for the universities, only good for the community.

Interviewer (31:04):

Just for the record, I'm not skirting, asking the important question here, who will be the picks? You have three in the first round today.

Ted Leonsis (31:09):

Yeah.

Interviewer (31:09):

I was told there would be no comment on those. I'm still working my sources to see what I can get. Mark, as you think through this, you mentioned the phases, particularly on the entrepreneurial side, on the innovation side, why is this moment different than maybe what didn't work a decade or two ago through those phases? And how do you integrate technological advances into the experience for fans as they're attending events?

Mark Ein (31:34):

Yeah. Well, first of all, we were talking about D.C. itself. Regionally, the region has continued to thrive in terms of new business creation, but even more, new business attraction. People forget that Amazon did the biggest corporate relocation search in history, and basically picked New York and here, and it ended up really being here. So there was the most sophisticated, comprehensive search ever done, and they located here. So regionally, we've done okay. It's like, "What do we do in D.C.?" I could give you all the reasons I think D.C. never emerged as a tech hub, I think there's a bunch of structural reasons, even though despite a lot of good efforts. But I do think, as Ted said, this sports thing is definitely really talked about, the race, which I think is going to be great. Next year, we're hosting the NFL draft, which should get a million people on the mall, which will be incredible, and the draft, the backdrop will be the Capitol.

(32:28)
With our new stadium, and again, I'm giving mayor a ton of credit, she, as part of the deal, insisted that we would put a roof. We probably would've, but it wasn't 100%. But because she wanted it to be a magnet for Super Bowls, NBA championships, all kinds of stuff that'll come. And I think the reason it's going to work is because of the investment that everyone's making, the investment... Ted's making his building, the investment we're making, the investment the NATS are making Audi Field. The other thing about D.C. is, there's this argument out there, do sports stadiums... Are they worth the investments municipalities make? In Washington, D.C., we're 100%. So if you went down where Capital One was, I used to live there. When I first moved back here to work at Carlisle, I lived there, and it was a red light district. That was what it was, with abandoned buildings and everything.

(33:16)
Cap One gets built, and the East End of Washington thrives. Then NATS go down to an industrial part of town, and obviously you can see, it thrives. Then I actually owned the land under Audi Field, and I thought I would be there for 30 years before something happened. They built the soccer stadium, and Buzzard's Point is thriving. And now RFK is going to anchor 180 acre development there, so we're four for four, and we're going to be five for five on this. And then we're going to do something at our tennis stadium. And so I just think this investment, we have a track record of doing these things successfully. And then again, you have the engine that even though it's less, it is always going to be the nation's capital of the most important country in the world, and you put all that together, and I think there's a really bold case for what-

Ted Leonsis (34:02):

Yeah. It's the most wired city. We have the most PhDs. It's the smartest city. And E-sports is going to be important. Mark's dabbled in it. We are very, very serious about E-sports and multi-user gaming. Again, there should be a capital for that. What defines these next-generation great cities is the universities, the IP. We have 12 research-based universities right here. We need to celebrate, and bring in these universities more as a part of the ecosystem for the business, for the political area.

(34:40)
Right now, the average lifespan of a CEO of a university is four years. They're like one term governors in Virginia. And we have to do some longer term planning now to make sure that we're connecting all of the dots. Academia is such an important role. The local government, the federal government, the business community. I created the Greater Washington Partnership, which helped to drive and bring in the Amazon here. And our position to Jeff Bezos was, when one wins, we all win. It doesn't matter if you pick D.C., Virginia, or Maryland, because people are going to send their kids to school, they're going to get real estate, they're going to dine. We have to really think of regionalism as being really, really important.

(35:31)
But Mark's exactly right. If we don't have a thriving metro area, thriving downtown, none of this happens. And I just look at it, and I hear Semafor took this hotel for the day. We're making this Davos, we're like, "How did Davos even get into the conversation?" Of course, it should be here. It's the smartest people, the most powerful people. We're still certainly the country with the most influence, and the most money to make smart investments. It's almost a social responsibility that we all have to make sure that D.C. is thriving.

Interviewer (36:09):

And it's nice-

Mark Ein (36:09):

Can I ask one thing?

Interviewer (36:09):

Yeah.

Mark Ein (36:09):

I just want to add, because Ted touched on, [inaudible 00:36:11] says, "Why am I optimistic?" I also think in the culture of the business community in this town, in this region is collaboration and cooperation. And I chose to come back here after living in a lot of places, and when I talk to my friends in business communities and other cities, the level of pulling for each other and helping each other, I think is unparalleled. And I think that actually leads to real results. When I look at the RFK process, which came to Washington, we had to get the Maryland senators and governors, we had to get the Virginia senators and governors, and the mayor, and the federal government all together, and it happened.

(36:49)
It's one of the not yet, but we'll be eventually best told stories about how the region comes together. And then Ted just backstage said, "Everyone thinks we should be competitive." But we're not. And we really help each other. I mean, I love Ted as a friend, but also just business-wise, all the local sports owners help each other. We really do. We don't view each other as competitors, we view it that if one wins, we all win.

Interviewer (37:15):

Yeah. It makes for a less appealing panel that you don't hate each other.

Ted Leonsis (37:18):

And we all dress-

Interviewer (37:21):

We also all wear matching ties.

Ted Leonsis (37:23):

We're all wearing the same tie. Yeah. That's right. Exactly.

Interviewer (37:23):

This was not planned. It's just brilliance personified. Can I ask, local media? You obviously own Washington City Paper. The Washington Post hollowing out at sports section. Is that an opportunity for you, Mark? And then, Ted, just your kind of view of what that means given your ownership teams?

Ted Leonsis (37:43):

Well, I chairman, and continue to be chairman of the NBA and NHL media committee. My son's on the WNBA media committee. We saw early on what was happening. We also saw the power of sports media. We're the only AI-proof industry right now. And so we've obviously gone way up in value, our ratings for all of the leagues, and I think we have 98 of the top 100 rated shows, and we can convene in our building, 20,000 people in a... Hundreds of thousands and millions of people convening through streaming on terrestrial and the like. So I saw early on that the cable companies, which had had their day... I invented dial-up at AOL, that's kind of what cable was, you could see the iceberg melting. And I said, "They don't care about this." And so we bought our network 3 or 4 years ago. And thank goodness we did, because we don't look at it as a regional sports network, we look at it as a way that we can take our IP, and stream it.

(38:57)
And we've now built, I think, the largest database of customers, and we can take all sorts of programming to get it to them. And we're very, very unique. We're on our way to a billion dollars in revenue. We own the venues, we own the teams, we own the distribution channels, and we want to make sure that these five million patrons, that's what I'm going to call them after watching The Masters. You don't want to call them fans, the root of the word fan is fanatic, they're patrons. We want to love the fans, and so we need to know more about them, we need to use data, we need to use all of the power of AI to anticipate what do they want? What makes them happy? How will they come back to games? And so I think sports is becoming a launchpad for lots of innovations in tech. And it's such a consumer-based future-proof kind of industry, that again, we have this responsibility to do the right thing and the right way for our fans, but it's also propelling our business to grow and be very, very valuable.

Interviewer (40:06):

Last 30 seconds.

Mark Ein (40:07):

Yeah. I mean-

Interviewer (40:08):

How are my people going to report the really hard stories on his distribution?

Mark Ein (40:12):

Yeah, I know. Look, I think it's really unfortunate. I mean, I saved the city paper. They came to me, was going to go out of business. I believe journalists were doing really important work in the world. It's important, whether it's sports, or metro, or any foreign affairs, it's important to have strong independent journalism. It's what I did. I sometimes joke that if I write my autobiography, it will be, My Adventures and Journalism: No Good Deed Goes...

Tim (40:37):

How long you expect the repair work there might take? What's in the cards for Ras Laffan moving forward?

Lorenzo Simonelli (40:45):

So Tim, great to be here. And yes, Ras Laffan and Baker Hughes Festival provides liquefaction trains globally. And obviously within Ras Laffan, they've got a number of our trains and equipment. You've heard from the minister himself some of the impact that was to train 4 and train 6. At this stage, it's really threefold. The first is assessing what the damage is, and seeing how quickly we can at least bring up production of the other trains, because at the moment everything is really firm and stood still. Then actually the repairs, what's been said and stated publicly is, at the moment, you've got damage on the coal boxes, and that could potentially take anywhere from 3 to 5 years. And then how do you sustain the production going forward?

(41:34)
So we're actively monitoring the situation. We're working hand in hand with them. And I'd say that, again, everything that's out there is public to date. And as we go through it, we'll be able to assess more. I think what it does bring to light though is, again, the discussion around energy security and diversification. And so while we're going through this, they also have expansion plans. And maybe just to compliment also QatarEnergy, they've not stopped with NFE, NFS, and NFW. And so yes, the current trains, obviously, they need to fix and put back into production, but they still have very active plans to go up to 142 MPTA, and they're ongoing with the projects. And I was actually down in Qatar, Doha, meeting with the minister, and also with Qatar LNG, and just committing our confidence and our team to be there as we go through also the new projects that are going to develop going forward.

Tim (42:35):

And that work hasn't slowed down at all, because-

Lorenzo Simonelli (42:36):

No, it hasn't. And obviously the EPC contractors are there as well. And safety is a prime concern, and we put that always at the forefront, but also they're continuing to move forward. And as they look at it, these are long-term projects. We're looking at 20 years out, and we're also looking at the diversification across all of the LNG plays globally. And I think that's what we'll see now. This fear of an oversupply, which we viewed as overstated anyhow, is really not there. And you're going to see other FIDs happen here in the U.S., as well as Argentina, other locations much faster.

Tim (43:12):

So a lot of work for Baker Hughes ahead, definitely fulfilling all of that?

Lorenzo Simonelli (43:16):

Yes.

Tim (43:16):

Yeah.

Lorenzo Simonelli (43:16):

And we're obviously happy to partake in that, and provide the liquefaction train.

Tim (43:21):

Yeah. Yeah. Bob, can you say a little bit... We've seen, not just Ras Laffan, but just if you look at Iran, Ukraine, there's so many examples recently where energy infrastructure has been targeted, kind of getting wrapped up in these conflicts. As a company that builds infrastructure, how do you sort of think about what it takes to build these facilities in a more hardy way, to think about defense, kind of protecting energy infrastructure as it becomes more wrapped up into wars around the world?

Bob Pragada (43:56):

Yep. Tim, also, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I probably kind of separate the answer into two parts. Before speaking to those two parts, just to continue on with what Lorenzo said, first and foremost, the safety and well-being of our people that are there, we have several thousand people there as well, has been first and foremost on our minds. And interestingly enough, on that, unfortunately, we learned a lot during the pandemic from an engineering standpoint of how to work from home, and the services industry working from home. We probably underestimated the mental health effect that this time around has really affected. Because not only is it working from home, and all of those types of encumbrances, but also what's happening in and around people's homes in places like Dubai, in Abu Dhabi, and areas that may not be familiar with those types of circumstances.

(44:54)
On the resilience, I'd say there's two main parts. One is that thinking about the infrastructure needs from society outward. And a little bit of experience of this was when I was in the service as well is, when we would go in and rebuild either war-ravaged, or even conflict-ravaged areas of the world, or natural disasters, we would think about it from the perspective of, what does the human need in order to go back to some form of life? So things like electricity, clean water, transportation network, starting from that and working outward.

Tim (45:33):

Right.

Bob Pragada (45:33):

So that's kind of the approach that-

Tim (45:35):

This is your work with the Seabees?

Bob Pragada (45:37):

With the Seabees-

Tim (45:37):

Right.

Bob Pragada (45:38):

... in the Navy. Today, moving forward, it's those threats that we probably didn't think about as much as we did back 20, 30 years ago, around redundancy, and resiliency, as well as cyber protection as well. And that just doesn't apply to the Middle East, that applies to facilities all over the world today. Still starting with the human first, but now thinking about all of those unanticipated ramifications and conflicts.

Tim (46:07):

And maybe having a sort of premium on redundancy, or maybe that changes in some way the way you think about capital allocation. You need to kind of have a little bit more than maybe you would have thought you needed to the past?

Bob Pragada (46:18):

Absolutely. Especially in water infrastructure-

Tim (46:21):

Really?

Bob Pragada (46:22):

... that concept of redundancy.

Tim (46:24):

What's different about water infrastructure there?

Bob Pragada (46:26):

Clean drinking water facilities, water treatment facilities, if they're unfortunately hit, you could wipe out large... You could wipe out societies-

Tim (46:36):

Right.

Bob Pragada (46:36):

... as we know itself.

Tim (46:37):

That seems like maybe a little bit of a blind spot that we need to be more cognizant of.

Bob Pragada (46:40):

Very much so. Also a piece of contamination reasons too.

Tim (46:43):

Okay.

Bob Pragada (46:44):

So those things are being... Just not in the Middle East, that's across the world.

Tim (46:48):

Lorenzo, can you expand a little bit on the... You were speaking about QatarEnergy's plans for LNG expansion. When you look at the global LNG picture, I mean, one thing we've seen from this current conflict is the risk that stems from having this choke point in the Strait of Hormuz. Do you think that the conflict kind of strengthens the case for more LNG investment, or does it actually sort of weaken it in the sense of we have these few choke points, and maybe there's an increased vulnerability there? How do you view that kind of risk calculation?

Lorenzo Simonelli (47:26):

I think it actually strengthens very much the adage of energy diversification, and also energy expansion. And if you look at globally, the resource that we are plentiful of in multiple locations, including here in the U.S., is natural gas. And if you think about the future, natural gas isn't just a transition fuel, it's a destination fuel. It can be affordable, sustainable, and secure. And what you're going to see happen is continued development of LNG as being the way in which to transport that natural gas. In addition, as you think about what's happened with the Strait of Hormuz, it's going to bring back to the reality that you need infrastructure and redundancy, as Bob just mentioned.

(48:15)
And it's situations like this that remind you, we had draft plans for a pipeline network across the Middle East. We've had pipelines built in the past, and left redundant. And if you think about also globally, there's the opportunity of pipeline networks. You think of Argentina, Argentina has huge natural gas resources, associated gas. And from the [inaudible 00:48:46] down, now they're looking at LNG expansion. You look at the pipeline opportunities here in the U.S., which are now starting to come to the forefront, and the opportunity for the Permian gas, both associated, and also all of the gas in the Marcellus, and taking it to the East Coast. So we need to build that redundant infrastructure, because you need to make sure that we don't have these choke points be the burden of energy supply.

(49:15)
And we're in an energy demand decade, and one of the things that I think is going to come to the forefront is, people are going to be willing to look at that as being, not a financial return, but as a necessity, so that they can make sure that supply of energy is there on a continuous basis. And not just natural gas, but also energy expansion across the aspects of increased renewables, lessen dependency on any single choke points of single locations, and diversity of the energy supply, including geothermal, including nuclear. So we actually think it's a good lesson to remind us that we need to think beyond the current, and look to the expansion, and also the redundancies in place.

Tim (49:59):

Do you think the capital is there for those projects? I mean, if there's a sense of redundancy to some of them, does that lessen the bankability of them, or is Wall Street behind this mission, do you think?

Lorenzo Simonelli (50:11):

I think, actually, at the end of the day, the financial markets will work themselves out. And if you look at the oscillation that happens in pricing when these impacts occur, there are some people that are making a lot of money right now, because they can sell on spot, and you're going to see that come through also by having more affordable and sustainable. And I think that's what will actually come into the forefront, because one thing that at least we believe is, the demands for energy is unsustainable. It continues to grow. It just is a human nature that we like to consume energy. And if you look at generative AI, you look at the data centers that Bob is building, not just in the developed world, but in the developing world, we have a decade of energy demand. We've got to make it affordable, sustainable, and secure, and that's going to need also a robust infrastructure across multiple locations that we've potentially ignored in the past. And I look at Algeria, plentiful of gas, look at Argentina, you look at the U.S., there's a lot that can be done to sustain that affordability and security.

Tim (51:24):

Bob, even looking beyond energy, think you were saying backstage that the Middle East is actually the fastest growing region for your business. Does that change now? Do you see a change in the ability of those countries to continue investing in the type of infrastructure that you build? How is that going to change your plans?

Bob Pragada (51:41):

I think it's early. I think it's probably too early to speculate on what happens. Will say this, there is ambitious plans around Saudi's Vision 2030, all that's going on in the Emirates right now, does that get elongated a bit? Possibly. But it's also a society that has great ambition, to be integrated part of the world, and so I wouldn't count them out.

Tim (52:15):

Wouldn't count them out. Yeah.

Bob Pragada (52:16):

Tim, could I go back to something Lorenzo was saying with regards-

Tim (52:19):

Please do. Yes.

Bob Pragada (52:20):

It was a great analogy, he was talking about in the context of LNG, and even the hydrocarbon space even broadly, it's interesting, just the same applies in non-human-driven catastrophes that are having an effect on elements of the world that we need as humans. And the one that came to mind was water. If you look at the effects right now of climate, and what's happening where it's kind of two extremes, that there's either water scarcity issues, or too much water, and we have flooding issues all over, things like major metropolitan... Caused by climate, major and aged-infrastructure. Major metropolitan areas in the U.S. that in certain cases, were two to three days away from clean drinking water as a result of fires-

Tim (53:16):

Right.

Bob Pragada (53:16):

... and other natural disasters that have occurred. So that same kind of concept of what do we do around potable reuse and reclaim? How do we now take investment... And I love what you said, Lorenzo, about the financial markets, we'll figure it out, and invest that in elements that we, our children, our grandchildren are going to need for generations.

Tim (53:39):

Right. Let's expand a little bit, Bob, on your data center work, and you guys are doing a lot there, Baker Hughes also. What was this number? You doubled your data center order forecast to $3 billion earlier this year, if I'm getting that right.

Lorenzo Simonelli (53:54):

Yeah. I'm going to get an order from Bob hopefully too.

Bob Pragada (53:56):

Yeah.

Lorenzo Simonelli (53:56):

Yeah.

Tim (53:58):

So both companies doing a lot in this space. What do you think the energy industry is getting wrong at the moment, Bob, about what hyperscalers actually need? What do we need to do differently there?

Bob Pragada (54:08):

Yeah. First of all, I don't know if the energy industry is doing anything wrong. So maybe another way of characterizing it is, I think there is... And we'll go to the hyperscalers, but also it's getting broader, there's now the neocloud providers, and there are now providers of compute space that are compute loads that are increasing at a very, very rapid pace. Everyone's focused in on the energy requirements, there's an ecosystem of a supply network that brings these to bear. Of those, the electrical OEM space, I think the full consideration of if you put that much of a load on the entirety of the supply chain, there are going to be some choke points in those areas. And so looking at it holistically as a full multifaceted solution that takes... It takes a village to build, I think a little bit more attention on that, because now we're building, and then you kind of add on maybe some geopolitical-

Tim (55:17):

Uncertainty. Yeah.

Bob Pragada (55:18):

... uncertainty around that, and then you've got the ultimate state of entropy happening all at once. And so all of those things... And now I'm now going to applaud the supply chain, is that I think looking at it holistically now, and saying, "Okay, how do we do this in a more programmatic way?" Instead of just going to West Texas, and saying, "Okay, there's ubiquitous power here, that's where we're going to go." Well, now what's going on inside the data center is increasing... It's increasing the water needs, it's increasing the cooling needs, it's also increasing the complexity in the high bandwidth memory chips that are feeding it as well. So we're kind of looking at it holistically from all perspectives.

Tim (55:59):

Lorenzo, I mean, from your point of view, you're looking at this rapidly growing order book related to data centers and AI. How do you scale up your manufacturing? What kind of conversations are you having with your suppliers upstream of you about how to prepare and respond to that kind of demand growth?

Lorenzo Simonelli (56:20):

So I think you have to take a step back and say, "Where do we need to be in 10 years' time?" And from a capacity perspective, really look at the end marketplace, and the end marketplace for us is power generation. And when you think about power generation off the grid, it's a theme that is going to be growing, because the grid at this stage is unable to sustain the demand. And so distributed power generation is going to be key from a data center perspective, but then also from an industrial perspective, from an off grid of large urban areas. And you're seeing this whole aspect of interconnectivity with different stakeholders, but reliant on oneself. And so a cluster of capabilities, and where we're looking to is what are the equipment and services we need to provide over the course of those 10 years to each of those end markets. Not be dependent on anyone, but classify it from a power generation perspective, and then work with the stakeholders and the ecosystem entirely.

(57:25)
And we've doubled our production capacity, relative to industrial gas turbines. Not just because of data centers, but because we see pipelines and compression stations being necessary. We see industrial backup power being necessary, and that's the way we look at it. And I think you do have to take a step back and look at it more holistically. If you just go to any one end thing, you're bound to be wrong, because that end thing is going to move around, and it's a flavor of the month one day, and then it goes out of flavor, and-

Tim (57:57):

So moving target? Yeah.

Lorenzo Simonelli (57:58):

Moving target. So you've got to pick the thematic aspects, and that's what we're trying to do within Baker Hughes from a technology equipment and service perspective.

Tim (58:06):

Which, for this type of equipment that we're talking about just seems like more and more, more, more, more is the... I mean, that's the mandate?

Lorenzo Simonelli (58:13):

It really goes back to a fundamental theme that we're in an energy demand, and an infrastructure build, and it's also natural, if you think about it. It's been nearly 60 years since we really did anything to the infrastructure of the grid in the United States, and we've been looking at no real increase being required. Now you look at developing nations, and still have to produce it. So I think it's a generational aspect that comes, and this is the opportunity during the next decade.

Tim (58:46):

And there's not a risk of overcapacity, or having... You don't see any kind of stranded asset risk or anything like that?

Lorenzo Simonelli (58:52):

Look, there'll be some. At the end of the day, the markets will solve that. We pick the areas that we think are the winning areas over time. And again, it's the importance of having the right attributes. Today, there's some non-financially suitable solutions being given to data centers. I mean, if you have 201 megawatts, or... I mean, there are solutions that are available. Are they potentially the best reliable and sustainable for the future? I don't know.

Tim (59:19):

Don't know. Right.

Lorenzo Simonelli (59:19):

That's a question that has to be proven.

Tim (59:19):

Right. [inaudible 00:59:23].

Bob Pragada (59:19):

Can I kindly just have one item on that?

Tim (59:19):

Yeah.

Bob Pragada (59:26):

Because I do think this concept of overcapacity gets talked about a lot, especially when you look at some of the capital programs that the hyperscalers and others are putting out there. I think the difference today, and we're seeing this in the biotechnology industry as well, is, it's almost like this virtuous cycle. Because AI is driving innovation at such a rapid pace, it's then driving the need for the infrastructure to support it. Same thing is going on in the biotech world as well. Okay, if the world were to be static, back in the old days, chips had a certain need, and then that need was very much tied to consumer demand. Same thing with drugs. That's all changed now.

Tim (01:00:09):

Yeah. Right.

Bob Pragada (01:00:10):

And so now that you've got this acceleration, and velocity, and innovation, it's hard to see an overcapacity.

Tim (01:00:17):

Bob, in the five seconds we have left, you're meeting with some U.S. officials and members of Congress this week. What's your biggest, most important message for how to get U.S. infrastructure back on track?

Bob Pragada (01:00:27):

Consistency in funding, and clarity in approach.

Tim (01:00:30):

Wonderful. Bob, Lorenzo, thank you very much.

Lorenzo Simonelli (01:00:32):

Thank you.

Tim (01:00:32):

[inaudible 01:00:33].

Bob Pragada (01:00:32):

Thank you.

Dan (01:01:10):

And if you're making a build versus buy decision, if it's complementary... Our decision was to buy, and I think that transformed not only the extension of our product, but it also transformed everything in our core product as well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):

Dan, thank you so much.

Dan (01:01:28):

Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):

Thanks guys.

Rohan Goswami (01:01:35):

Those us who don't know, Yellow Card, you guys process, I think billions of dollars in stablecoin payments, primarily across Africa. Jamie, you run a company that, I think, hopes to be public, and will one day be public, that will allow investors to hold crypto in their regular brokerage accounts. Chris, I want to start with you. There was a moment last year where it felt like the crypto

Rohan Goswami (01:02:00):

... industry was on the verge of really mainstreaming, of really becoming part of the fabric of the American financial institutions. And that seems to, from your industry's perspective, subsided a little bit. And yet everywhere around the world, in Asia and Africa, even in Europe to a degree, the financial industry is adopting crypto and institutionalizing crypto in a way that we are not. And I wonder what learnings we can take from Africa, from Asia, and apply them to the US here, from where you sit.

Chris Maurice (01:02:24):

Yes. My brother, it's great to be here with you. Thank you. I think, look, you're 100% right. There was a moment, especially around the election in the US, where crypto and stablecoins and all of this technology was becoming a lot more mainstream in the US, right? And had a lot of early momentum. You had the passing of Genius, which sort of gave formal regulatory guidance on stablecoins, issuance, usage for payments, all of that. And I think things have slowed down now with Clarity and some of the other bills that are supposed to be coming to help regulate the space in the US. Turns out there are other priorities. I don't know what's going on, but it turns out there's other stuff going on. And I think that that's where the rest of the world has really picked up the slack. When I say the rest of the world, I mean, everywhere but Europe, has picked up the slack.

(01:03:24)
And I think that we've seen, in the last year and a half now, especially since the passing of Genius, we've seen a much more rapid pace of innovation from a regulatory perspective across Africa, across South America, across Southeast Asia, across a number of emerging markets that we just didn't see before there was Clarity in the US. And once that started coming, now you have really comprehensive legislation that's coming through in a number of emerging markets. Most recently, you have Kenya, Ghana, and a number of other African countries at the end of last year that passed really comprehensive legislation. And I mean, look, I think the big thing that the US should learn from what some of these other countries are doing is that, look, with the internet, the US was first and the US dominated the internet and still dominates the internet.

(01:04:25)
When you look at the stock market, it's all internet companies, right? And that should not be taken for granted. The fact that innovation happens in the US should not be taken for granted. Other countries saw that and now want to catch up. And you have a lot of regulation that's coming to ensure that these economies have the regulation and the tools to actually be able to build that stuff locally as opposed to having to buy everything from the US.

Rohan Goswami (01:04:53):

Jaime, ReserveOne sits in a slightly different space. And I want to pressure test your model a little bit because for those of you who know, there's this concept, a Bitcoin treasury or crypto treasury, which allows investors to hold crypto, whether that be Bitcoin or Ethereum or any sort of strange oddly name coins, directly in their 401ks or brokerage accounts. And I'm curious because we're going to get crypto ETFs, we're already seeing Bitcoin ETFs, and that model has come under a tremendous amount of pressure. Why continue ahead? What's the value proposition for the end user as opposed to just owning Bitcoin through an ETF or opening a Coinbase account and holding Bitcoin there?

Jaime Leverton (01:05:31):

Yeah, I mean, there's lots of different structural elements involved, and really it's about choice. It's about giving consumers choice to invest in a variety of different ways. That's essentially how this category kind of sprung up, obviously spearheaded in a more passive way by MicroStrategy. But if you think back to when I was the CEO of HUD8 and the Bitcoin mining companies, in the 2021 bull market, outside of MicroStrategy, the only way an investor could get exposure to crypto through their traditional investment vehicle was through a Bitcoin mining company or MicroStrategy. And really, there was so much demand from retail investors to get exposure to the underlying crypto ecosystem, but in an equity, in a financial platform that they were comfortable using. They didn't want to go online. They didn't want to use crypto exchanges. They didn't want to try to figure out wallets. They just wanted the exposure and that was the only type of product available to them. So you fast forward now to 2026, there's just a myriad of options available to the investor, and that's why we continue to see the category develop and evolve. It's to give incremental choice.

Rohan Goswami (01:06:50):

I mean, let's talk about the MicroStrategy of it all, because to me, they have a frankly, I mean, I cover finance, incomprehensible leverage model that seems designed to stem outflows to a ETF that holds Bitcoin. And I'm curious if that's their argument and they have their devotees. What is your argument for why I as an end user should invest in ReserveOne, whenever you guys do go public, versus holding it through my Morgan Stanley account and holding's Morgan ETF?

Jaime Leverton (01:07:18):

It depends what you're looking for. In the case of ReserveOne, we're diversified, we're active. So the intention is that we would put the assets to work to generate returns. It's not a passive strategy. MicroStrategy has a passive strategy. They don't put the assets to work. In our case, it's a diversified portfolio. We will have the optionality built in to invest in other companies or projects within the ecosystem. That doesn't exist in an ETF. Of course, a company accesses leveraged in a way that's different from what an ETF can do. Again, it's all about what is the investor looking for and the options ... We provide an option that's different from what is available in other packaging today.

Rohan Goswami (01:08:04):

I want to come back to Africa in a second, but while we're here, Chris sort of laid out the problems that the US faces. Do you agree? Do you feel like our regulatory framework is sort of stuck in time, stuck in the mud here?

Jaime Leverton (01:08:16):

Look, we definitely came out of the gates hot last year with Genius. Genius passed with broad bipartisan support, which was incredibly bullish, something the industry desperately wanted to see, and we got it with Genius. Unfortunately, we were hoping for a fast follow with Clarity, and Clarity's stalled. We haven't had the same pace supporting that. We really do, as an industry, need to get Clarity through. Lots of optimism that we'll see it happen before summer recess, and I think that's incredibly important, that we hit that timeline. We want it codified as soon as possible. And the longer it takes us to get Clarity through, the more advantages it gives other jurisdictions.

Rohan Goswami (01:09:01):

That optimism has been blunted a little bit by the bank lobbyists in part. Do you feel like the industry on the whole is doing an aggressive enough job in DC?

Jaime Leverton (01:09:16):

Back in 2021, in that market or that cycle, we were barely organized. The industry didn't start to organize really until we formed the Bitcoin Mining Council, which was in '21, early 2021. And that was formed so that we had some sort of collective voice to speak up and defend ourselves against some of the attacks that were coming related to our power use. But by our nature, our ethoses were decentralized, so we didn't get organized until the last few years. But we've organized quickly, we've organized well. Obviously, a lot of money has been donated by our industry, so I don't think we're lacking in that area.

(01:10:03)
I think, look, there's some conflicts involved, obviously, between what the banks want to see happen and what our industry wants to see happen. But recently, we've seen kind of a consensus. The people that were fighting the loudest, the most vocally, seem to have gotten to a place where they're comfortable moving forward. So I think increasingly we're optimistic. I mean, I did check Polymarket today and we're down 7 points to 60% odds that Clarity goes through. Not sure what caused the 7 point decline today, but it's still broadly optimistic.

Rohan Goswami (01:10:36):

I want to turn to a different set of regulators.,And I'll pick on Nigeria just because they seem, from where I sit, and tell me if I'm wrong, to be the largest and most vibrant stablecoin using market, $22 billion in transactions between '24 and '25. At a time where my sense is that African governments have tried to dedollarize, to shift away from independence on the dollar. First of all, what's your working relationship like with both the central banks, but then also regulators across the continent? It must be a little bit harder than just dealing with two here.

Chris Maurice (01:11:08):

Yes. Yeah, look, I mean, every country has obviously its own regulators, its own way of doing things and its own opinions. They have a lot of opinions, regulators, turns out. So we work generally with all of them. Look, when we started out, there were no regulations around stablecoins. There were no regulations around crypto. It was a new concept back in 2019, right? The dark days before COVID. And for us, what we did is we went in and tried to work with the regulators on establishing those guidelines. What does it actually look like to regulate this industry in a smart way? So we've had the pleasure of being able to write the vast legislation in a number of countries, at least the first draft, that largely then ends up getting adopted.

Rohan Goswami (01:12:05):

There was an incident a couple years ago involving a prominent crypto executive at a major exchange, this is Binance, who was detained for I think weeks, if not months, by the authorities on what were widely regarded as sort of trumped up charges. Is that just a risk factor that you have to deal with when you are talking about massive sums of money moving across the continent? I mean, what did you think when you saw that?

Chris Maurice (01:12:27):

Yeah, so look, I mean, number one, what I would say is Nigeria is the ... I mean, look, it's the number one economy for stablecoin payments. It is number one globally for stablecoin payments. Number one. I don't know, I think most people don't know that, they don't realize that because there's a lot of dog and catcoin trading that goes on in the US, but in terms of actual payments infrastructure, Nigeria, and you have six African countries in the top 20 globally for stablecoin payments. Nigeria has a quite robust regulatory system now for stablecoins and for crypto. There was a presidential directive last year to the CBN, SEC, all of these different organizations to essentially figure it out, come together, and put out legislation.

(01:13:17)
They have put out a framework just within the last couple of months that is supposed to guide that. The SEC in Nigeria, look, since 2022, has had guidelines that have been out and available to follow. Look, the regulation and the guidelines in Nigeria predate the incident that you're talking about, and all that I would say is that the companies that follow those regulations don't have the same problems, and obviously companies that didn't follow the regulations before does not preclude you from becoming compliant with the regulations. And those companies have largely become compliant with the regulations and ceased having those problems.

Rohan Goswami (01:14:03):

That company, Binance, among other failings, was accused and pled guilty to helping facilitate terrorist financing. And I think that is ... If I were to ask my mother what she thinks of crypto, that is what she would associate with crypto, crime or terrorist funding. And I know that's a label you guys have worked really hard to shed, and then came the war. And there have been some reports, I don't know how substantiated they are, that the regime, the Iranian regime is using crypto as one of many ways to pay for and facilitate ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz. I guess, Jaime, starting with you, is that just going to be a permanent part of the industry, that the blockchain is always going to be vulnerable to bad actors, whatever those actors might look like?

Jaime Leverton (01:14:44):

I mean, if you want to commit crime, the best thing to use is cash.

Rohan Goswami (01:14:51):

But that's an argument that-

Jaime Leverton (01:14:51):

It's not crypto that is on an immutable ledger where you can see every transaction and the wallet that it lands in. Think about the Colonial Pipeline attack and what happened. They ...

Rohan Goswami (01:15:04):

Paid millions in ransom over ...

Jaime Leverton (01:15:05):

Right. But they sent it to a ... That was transferred to a data center in California, so the authorities knew exactly where the Bitcoin was, showed up, and recovered it within 48 hours.

Rohan Goswami (01:15:15):

That is a specific incident that a lot of crypto folks have pointed to me, but the reality is banks would argue, and fairly argue, they have advanced KYC/AML, that they are highly regulated, not just by the states, but on the federal level.

Jaime Leverton (01:15:27):

Think about how much they've paid out in fines.

Rohan Goswami (01:15:30):

Well, sure. I mean, my job is not to carry water for the banks here.

Jaime Leverton (01:15:34):

It sounds like you are.

Rohan Goswami (01:15:36):

That's brutal. Don't let the tie fool you. I'm not that stick in the the mud. But I think it's a fair point because that is something that a lot of folks think about, and whether you like it or not, I feel like that is something that folks consider and think about.

Jaime Leverton (01:15:48):

I think it's just because they haven't done the work.

Chris Maurice (01:15:52):

Yeah, I mean, look, I would say, I mean, just from our business in terms of actually processing payments, payments on chain are significantly easier to screen and ensure that they are compliant than payments through the banking system. The reality is is that if you send me money through a bank, I have no idea where you got that money. And I am largely trusting ... And look, I mean, this is what KYC and AML and all these laws and regulations are designed around, but at the end of the day, all I can do is figure out who you are. It's very hard to really understand where that money came from because there's no transparency. That money, for all I know ... For all I know, you're on the bank's payroll, man. You're getting all that money from the banks.

Rohan Goswami (01:16:38):

Found me out.

Chris Maurice (01:16:40):

But it's really hard to see where that money came from. Whereas with crypto, I mean, look, the moment that hits our account, I can see this money is two hops away from the Strait of Hormuz. It's two hops away from North Korea. So it's much easier to actually trace the origin of those funds than with any other payment system.

Rohan Goswami (01:17:00):

I can tell you guys are both tired of answering that question, so let's change-

Jaime Leverton (01:17:04):

I've spent a lot of time with law enforcement over the years and they love to make that joke that their preference is that criminals use Bitcoin.

Rohan Goswami (01:17:12):

So it's good then that the Iranians are doing this, because at least you can trace it. The last point I'll make, and I feel like institutional investors are good for you, but you have and are hoping to serve, and I was always served, a very retail audience. I mean, less so the big banks, obviously, and more so the everyman. And it seems as though every day I read, not just on prediction markets, but big institutions, whether it's hedge funds or banks are spinning up these prop trading desks or moving into this asset class, it's a validation certainly, but does that change the dynamic structurally where things become less favorable for the retail investor as quote unquote "smarter money" starts to pile in or continues to pile in?

Jaime Leverton (01:17:52):

I think for a lot of reasons and not specific to our industry, not specific to digital assets, things are difficult for the retail investor. If the retail investor thinks that they're going to outsmart all of the trading bots that are looking for dumb money, I mean, they are on a fool's errand. It's not

‍