David Sacks and Silicon Valley's Elite Share Their Boldest 2026 Investment Thesis: Copper Soars, Oil Tanks, and Crypto Reimagines Money

Four of technology’s most influential venture capitalists and billionaire investors convened recently on the All-In Podcast to unveil their most provocative predictions for 2026. Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg, and David Sacks—a roster of PayPal veterans, early Uber backers, and current shapers of tech policy—articulated an investment playbook that diverges sharply from conventional wisdom. Their consensus view: a commodity-driven economic supercycle, accelerating consolidation in technology, geopolitical realignment, and most controversially, a reimagined role for digital assets that could fundamentally reshape how nations store value.

The Visionaries: Inside David Sacks’ Circle and the All-In Pod’s Investment Network

The four panelists represent different corners of Silicon Valley’s power structure. Jason Calacanis, an early Uber and Robinhood investor turned podcast impresario, moderates discussions with the precision of someone who has backed winners across multiple cycles. Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital and a billionaire in his own right, earned his “King of SPACs” moniker by orchestrating some of the decade’s boldest capital formations. David Friedberg, founder of The Production Board and nicknamed the “Sultan of Science,” brings scientific rigor to venture thesis development. And David Sacks, a former PayPal executive and co-founder of Craft Ventures, has ascended to become an architect of American policy itself, recently stepping into a quasi-governmental role focused on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency regulation. Together, they collectively oversee billions in capital and influence policy discussions at the highest levels of government.

The conversation, hosted by the world’s most-listened-to technology and business podcast, surveyed an expansive terrain: California’s proposed wealth tax, the incoming Trump administration’s economic doctrine, the employment implications of artificial intelligence, Middle Eastern geopolitical shifts, cryptocurrency’s future under central bank control, and which asset classes will soar or crater in the coming twelve months.

California’s Wealth Tax: The Exodus Trigger That Could Reshape Regional Economics

A dominant theme throughout the discussion centered on California’s emerging wealth tax proposal—a potential 5% annual levy on residents’ net worth exceeding $50 million. The four investors treated this proposal with the gravity of a civilizational rupture. Sacks, who relocated to Texas in December, noted that political uncertainty alone was driving capital flight. “Even if it doesn’t pass in 2026, people expect some version to come back in 2028,” he explained, citing this perpetual threat as sufficient reason to decamp.

Chamath, while still nominally undecided about leaving California, revealed the economic calculus privately: with a combined net worth of roughly $500 billion among friends who have already departed, California faces a structural tax base crisis. “Roughly half of California’s projected taxable wealth will be lost,” he estimated. The wealth tax’s technical architecture amplifies the burden for founders with super-voting shares. The proposal would value such shares using a multiple calculation—if Google’s market cap is $4 trillion but founders own 52% of voting rights, the IRS could value their holdings at $1 trillion each rather than $200 billion, effectively converting a 5% tax into a 25% or 50% levy.

Prediction markets had initially assigned the wealth tax a 45% probability of passage, but that figure surged to 80% when prominent progressives including Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna endorsed the measure. Sacks predicted this uncertainty would dominate regional discourse throughout 2026, accelerating demographic and capital migration to lower-tax jurisdictions. Even Friedberg, the most skeptical of passage, acknowledged that the vote itself—regardless of outcome—would create sufficient turbulence to reshape California’s competitive position as a hub for entrepreneurship.

Why Copper Beats Bitcoin: The Commodity Supercycle Thesis

Among the most contrarian positions articulated during the conversation emerged from Chamath’s selection of copper as 2026’s premiere investment opportunity—a thesis directly opposing the typical Silicon Valley fixation on digital assets and equities. His rationale bridged geopolitical resilience, supply-chain analysis, and physics.

“Copper is currently the most useful, cheapest, most ductile, and most conductive material,” Chamath explained, citing its ubiquity across data centers, semiconductor fabrication, weapons systems, and renewable energy infrastructure. At current extraction and consumption rates, he projected a global copper supply deficit approaching 70% by 2040—a gap driven by electrification, artificial intelligence infrastructure expansion, and military modernization. This supply shock, combined with political moves toward economic nationalism and regional self-sufficiency, will render copper “the asset most likely to take off in 2026.”

Friedberg added complementary skepticism toward oil, predicting crude prices would fall toward $45 per barrel—a function of irreversible electrification trends and energy storage breakthroughs rendering oil’s marginal use cases obsolete. “Regardless of your views on climate change,” he noted, “the trends are unstoppable.”

Yet the conversation also surfaced a more radical thesis about cryptocurrency’s future. Chamath floated a proposition that central banks, recognizing Bitcoin and gold’s limitations, would develop a “new, controlled crypto paradigm”—sovereign-controlled digital assets engineered to withstand quantum computing’s cryptographic threats while maintaining national economic sovereignty. These hypothetical central bank digital currencies would differ fundamentally from existing stablecoins or decentralized cryptocurrencies, creating an entirely new asset class that coexists alongside, rather than displaces, Bitcoin.

Tech Giants as Economic Engines: Amazon’s Robotics Pivot and the IPO Renaissance

The panel identified Amazon as the definitive technology winner for 2026, though their reasoning split into two camps. Calacanis argued Amazon would achieve “corporate singularity”—a state wherein robotic capital contributions exceed human labor’s profitability. “In Austin, we can now order anything from Amazon and get it delivered the same day, thanks to a huge automated warehouse and logistics network,” he noted, citing the company’s Zoox autonomous vehicle division and systematic replacement of warehouse workers with robotic systems.

Sacks diverged, suggesting Amazon’s 2026 performance would vindicate Calacanis’ thesis but for entirely different reasons. His prediction centered on an IPO renaissance—a massive reversal of the 15-year trend toward private equity ownership and private company status. Under the incoming Trump administration’s economic policies, Sacks projected that “a huge number of companies will successfully go public, creating trillions of dollars in new market capitalization.” He singled out potential IPO candidates including SpaceX, Anduril, Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI—suggesting that at minimum, two of these five companies would file in 2026.

This prediction derived from Sacks’ broader thesis about the “Trump Prosperity” or “Trump Boom.” He cited emerging economic data: inflation moderated to 2.7%, core CPI stood at 2.6%, Q3 GDP grew 3.4%, the trade deficit hit its lowest level since 2009, and stock indices reached repeated all-time highs. The Atlanta Federal Reserve had raised its Q4 GDP forecast to 5.4%. Layoffs had declined dramatically. “All of this will have a huge impact on the political landscape,” Sacks argued, predicting that by June 2026, the Federal Reserve would reduce rates by 75 to 100 basis points, flooding the economy with liquidity precisely when tax refunds arrive through April.

Friedberg selected Polymarket, the on-chain prediction marketplace, as his dual play on both speculative asset bubbles and replacement of traditional financial media. Calacanis chose a broader basket of “speculative and gambling platforms” including Robinhood, PrizePicks, and Coinbase, on the theory that elevated consumer wealth and reduced friction for market participation would concentrate speculative capital in accessible venues.

The Enterprise Collapse: Why SaaS Loses to AI While California Drowns

The four investors demonstrated surprising consensus regarding 2026’s major losers. Enterprise software-as-a-service companies, which the panel had correctly identified as underperformers in 2025, would face accelerated pressure as AI-driven automation eliminated the “maintenance” and “migration” revenue streams constituting 90% of SaaS company income. Chamath characterized this as the structural collapse of “the software industrial complex”—a three-to-four trillion dollar annual economy destined to shrink dramatically.

Sacks emphasized California luxury real estate, particularly properties held by billionaire and ultra-high-net-worth individuals facing potential wealth tax exposure. He admitted hoping the wealth tax ballot initiative would ultimately fail, enabling him to liquidate properties at peak valuations before panic selling commenced.

Calacanis identified young white-collar workers entering the labor market, whose entry-level tasks—research, data entry, basic analysis, routine coding—companies found easier to automate with AI than to hire and train recent graduates. While Friedberg attributed some hiring difficulties to generational cultural shifts and reduced work motivation among Gen Z graduates, both agreed that the combination of automation and economic disruption would create significant employment friction for young professionals.

Friedberg selected traditional media stocks—particularly Netflix, assuming no Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition materializes. Netflix faced simultaneous challenges: independent creators and citizen journalists displaced traditional media’s cultural dominance, while the company’s harsh creator economics (cost plus 10% margins) drove talented filmmakers toward competing platforms. “They will face huge difficulties if they don’t expand their content library through acquisitions,” Friedberg warned.

Bold Contrarian Predictions: SpaceX-Tesla Merger, Quantum-Resistant Central Bank Crypto, and US-China Resolution

The panel’s most provocative forecasts departed from consensus orthodoxy. Chamath predicted SpaceX would not pursue a standalone IPO but would instead merge into Tesla—Elon Musk’s consolidation of his two most valuable assets under a unified shareholding structure designed to amplify voting control. “Elon Musk will use this opportunity to consolidate his two most important assets into a single shareholding structure to solidify his control,” Chamath hypothesized.

Sacks forecasted that artificial intelligence would increase rather than decrease demand for knowledge workers, invoking the Jevons Paradox—the economic principle that efficiency improvements typically expand aggregate consumption. As code-generation tools reduced development costs, society would produce vastly more software, requiring proportionally more developers. As AI-assisted radiological analysis reduced scan interpretation burdens, hospitals would deploy more scanners, demanding more radiologists for verification and interpretation oversight.

David Sacks also predicted the United States-China standoff would substantially resolve under Trump’s second term, generating a “win-win working relationship” rather than perpetuating zero-sum competition. This contrasted with Friedberg’s prediction that Iran’s regime would collapse—not bringing Middle Eastern stability but rather triggering competing power struggles among the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar for regional dominance.

Friedberg additionally contended that the Democratic Socialists of America would consolidate control over the Democratic Party throughout 2026, paralleling the MAGA movement’s capture of Republican structures. This realignment, Friedberg suggested, would reshape American political economy around questions of public sector waste, fraud, and abuse—a populist movement transcending traditional left-right boundaries.

The Political Economy of 2026: David Sacks’ Pro-Growth Vision and the Tech Industry’s Perilous Position

David Sacks emerged as an architect of the “Trump Boom” framework dominating the panel’s economic predictions. He articulated a political economy thesis centered on three pillars: first, inflation’s descent to 2.7% removed monetary policy constraints; second, tax policy changes—including expanded standard deductions and new exemptions for tips and overtime—would generate substantial refunds in April 2026; and third, capital repatriation and infrastructure investment, enabled by reduced regulatory friction, would accelerate GDP growth toward 5%, potentially reaching 6% under optimal conditions.

Chamath extended this analysis, predicting GDP growth would land between 5% and 6.2%—a rate matching China’s performance only during periods of complete economic coordination. “It would be amazing if we could do that under democracy and capitalism,” he noted. Even Friedberg, the most conservative forecaster, predicted 4.6% growth—substantially above historical trend rates.

Yet the panel also articulated a darker forecast for the technology industry itself. Friedberg warned that artificial intelligence and technology wealth had become targets for populist movements across the political spectrum. The Republican right, once allied with tech entrepreneurs against regulatory burden, had fractured over antitrust concerns and free speech controversies. The Democratic left, suspicious of tech’s association with centralized capital and market concentration, was hardening its stance against technology companies and their leadership.

“I think the 2026 midterm elections will be a referendum on the tech industry,” Friedberg stated. This political vulnerability appeared most acute for companies perceived as excessively politically engaged—those that had implemented content moderation policies during the Biden administration or concentrated their philanthropic giving toward left-aligned causes. Sacks suggested the technology sector would require “truth and reconciliation” meetings with conservative constituencies to rebuild trust and clarify commitment to property rights and innovation-friendly regulation.

The biggest political winners, according to the panel, would be advocates of fiscal conservatism and government efficiency at all levels—a populist movement transcending traditional party boundaries. The losers would include Democratic centrists, whose influence within their party was being eclipsed by socialist movements gaining momentum among younger voters and primary electorates.

Asset Allocation and Market Direction: Predictions for Gold, Oil, the Dollar, and Emerging Cryptocurrency Paradigms

The panel’s asset allocation predictions reflected their broader macroeconomic thesis. Polymarket emerged as Friedberg’s selection for both speculative bubbles and financial media replacement—a platform where prediction markets would displace traditional news cycles and derivatives markets. Chamath selected a diversified basket of critical metals beyond copper, including rare earth elements—recognizing that geopolitical shifts toward economic nationalism and supply-chain reshoring would inflate commodity prices across industrial inputs.

Sacks positioned the entire “tech supercycle” as his preferred asset class, encompassing semiconductor manufacturers, artificial intelligence infrastructure companies, and cloud computing platforms benefiting from accelerated technological adoption. The theory: sustained GDP growth, declining interest rates, and corporate capital allocation toward automation would generate sustained secular tailwinds for technology equities.

The worst-performing assets would include oil and hydrocarbons—with Chamath’s prediction of $45-per-barrel crude reflecting structural demand destruction from electrification and renewable energy adoption. California luxury real estate faced perpetual uncertainty from wealth tax threats. The US dollar, Calacanis argued, faced persistent depreciation pressure from sustained federal deficit expansion (projected to increase by two trillion dollars annually) and potential military spending increases under Trump administration policies.

Most radically, the panel articulated a vision of cryptocurrency’s future fundamentally divergent from Bitcoin maximalist expectations. Rather than Bitcoin replacing gold or central bank money, Chamath suggested that sovereign central banks would develop their own quantum-resistant, nationally-controlled digital assets—creating a hybrid monetary system wherein Bitcoin functioned as a pure speculative/store-of-value commodity alongside sovereign central bank digital currencies optimized for transaction efficiency and monetary policy transmission.

This framework positions David Sacks—who has transitioned from venture capital into policy architecture roles—as a central figure in negotiating the boundaries between decentralized cryptocurrency systems, corporate platform tokens, and government-controlled digital currencies. His influence over these emerging frameworks reflects both his technical understanding of cryptographic systems and his direct access to policy decision-makers.

The Investment Narrative for 2026: Why This Moment Differs From Previous Market Cycles

The panelists’ collective thesis suggests 2026 represents a genuine inflection point—not merely another cycle within capitalism’s familiar rhythms, but a structural realignment of geopolitical competition, technological capability, asset valuation frameworks, and monetary architecture. The copper supercycle reflects genuine supply constraints meeting irreversible demand transformation. The enterprise software collapse reflects machine learning’s genuine capability to automate maintenance operations that previously required human expertise. The cryptocurrency reimagining reflects serious technical obstacles to Bitcoin’s monetary policy inflexibility and growing acknowledgment that central banks will create competing systems rather than adopting decentralized protocols.

For investors tracking David Sacks’ positioning and the broader All-In Pod consensus, the implications are clear: the next twelve months will reward those who anticipated commodity scarcity, embraced technological disruption without expecting permanent technological unemployment, and recognized that cryptocurrency’s future would likely involve government participation rather than government displacement. Conversely, it will punish those who clung to oil demand persistence, enterprise software revenue durability, or the notion that political uncertainty would permanently depress capital allocation and entrepreneurship.

The four billionaire investors were unambiguous in their conviction: 2026 belongs to those who position for growth, technological acceleration, geopolitical competition over resources, and fundamental reconsideration of monetary architecture. California’s coastal economy may suffer. But the broader American economic machine, properly positioned, was entering its most dynamic period in a generation.