Speaker 1
Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you selected our presenters and your vision for this.
Jason Calacanis
For any of you who’ve been involved in Ira Sohn, this is a gentleman who passed away from cancer far too young. His family created the Ira Sohn Foundation, and they would host this event. It started at Lincoln Center, and at the time, I was a young venture investor. I got an invitation and showed up in New York at Lincoln Center in 2015.
I said, “Amazon’s going to be a trillion-dollar company,” and I was laughed out of the room. David Einhorn, who is a friend of mine but was totally wrong, said, “I know trillion-dollar companies. This is not a trillion-dollar company.” Wrong.
It turned out to be a great bet. I went back and did Tesla in 2016. We picked the converts. Then, in 2017, I was like, “All right, this is it. This is my magnum opus.” I said, “AI is the future,” and then I picked Box.
If I had just picked Nvidia, I would have been an Irish legend and could have retired. Anyway, we wanted to recreate Ira’s event and start to get these great managers, who are making great picks and a ton of money for their LPs, in front of people. They don’t get the distribution, so this is just a chance to get to know some of these names.
You don’t have to see them on CNBC. You’ll see them here more and more often, and we can just get them to opine. Roll the video.
Kyle Samani
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Best Ideas Pitch. Let’s meet our contestants.
Anyone should be able to trade any asset anywhere in the world, anytime, 24/7, with just an internet connection and a phone in their pocket. We’re building a new financial system from the ground up here.
Speaker 2
People are going to want to own equities, and it’s going to be fun. In the next couple of years, companies are going to innovate and create products and applications, and that’s where hopefully long-short managers like us can make a boatload of money.
Oleg Nodelman
My fund, EcoR1 Capital, which is based in San Francisco, thinks of investing in biotech in a slightly different way. We’re looking for unfollowed, unloved, misunderstood biotech companies.
Speaker 3
It’s an amazing moment in time for those types of companies. There’s been a structural and permanent perception shift where both sides of the aisle are going to be leaning into nuclear in a big way.
Speaker 4
I’m massively optimistic. All of this leads me to just the maximum risk-on.
Aaron Cowen
Thanks to the Besties for having me. This is obviously a fabulous event you guys have put on, and I’m happy to be here. For those of you who don’t know me, I run a $4 billion firm in New York called Serratus Capital. Before founding my firm, I ran the equities business for George Soros. I was then CIO for Steve Cohen, and I’ve been doing hedge funds now for 29 years.
I’m definitely on the older edge of my peer group. I was thinking about this: I run a generalist fund, and we own a bunch of tech stocks. But given this audience, for me to pitch a tech stock would be absolutely stupid.
I was thinking about what else to pitch. Obviously, the theme of this conference besides tech is poker, so I’m going to pitch MGM. Most of you know MGM as the Vegas company. They own 13 properties in Vegas, and they and Caesars are the 2 largest owners of casino assets in Vegas.
If you noticed, the other day Caesars got taken out. We think Vegas is actually starting to improve. But I’m not here to pitch MGM because of Vegas. There are a couple of things we noticed. One is that the company’s stock has been very aggressively acquired by Barry Diller lately. Barry now owns 26% of the company.
I put this presentation together 2 weeks ago. Yesterday, he actually bid for the company. When I put the presentation together, the stock was about $37. It’s now in the high $40s. He bid $48. I would not sell my shares to him.
Jason Calacanis
When did we get this presentation? Did we get it early enough to transact?
Aaron Cowen
I would not sell my stock to him for a second. Besides him buying the stock, the company has also been buying the stock. Rarely have I ever seen a company, in 6 years, buy half its float back.
You have Barry Diller, the legend, aggressively buying the stock, and it’s also now 80% of his NAV. Most people think of Barry Diller as the ABC producer. He did IAC, which owned assets like Expedia, and now he’s a casino guy. What is going on here?
We spent a lot of time asking ourselves why. MGM has 2 hidden assets. The first one is the punchline of what we think the stock is worth. If you add the Vegas assets plus China, you get about the low $60s. From $48—or $37 when I started this—that’s a great return.
What they have now is a license to open a casino in Osaka, Japan. A couple of years ago, Japan went through a whole referendum around the country. They have prefectures, and the prefectures voted. The only one that decided to open a casino is Osaka.
This is what the asset is going to look like. It’s going to open in 2030. If you go to the company’s slide presentations, they mention this, but they’re not really talking about it.
Japan, just for you people—sorry, I don’t know, this is very slow—actually has a reasonably large gambling market. They have pachinko parlors and horse racing. That’s about a $40 billion market. If you look at the market in Macau, that’s $30 billion. If you look at Vegas, it’s only $10 billion.
This could be a massive opportunity. We estimate they’ll do about $2 billion of EBITDA. They own 40% of the property, and they also get a management fee for this.
If you look at where Osaka is located, it’s a great location. The Japanese like to gamble, but the Chinese really gamble. From Shanghai, Osaka is closer than Macau and Singapore, which are the 2 big gaming options in Asia. From Beijing, it’s about the same distance as Macau and obviously much shorter than going to Singapore.
If you want to go gambling for a weekend and you live in Shanghai or Beijing, Osaka is great. It’s also a first-world nation. As an investor, where would you want to have your money? Macau has issues. It’s a low-multiple business. This is Japan, a first-world country.
We think Barry Diller understands gambling and casinos. What he’s really doing is trying to pick off the company to get the Japanese opportunity, which we think is worth more than doubling the stock.
The final option—and I’m keeping this simple—is Dubai. What I love about this pitch is that it’s really simple. It’s not that hard to do the math. MGM is building a property in Dubai. It’s a grand complex with an Aria, an MGM, and a Bellagio.
Gambling is illegal in Dubai right now, but they’ve snuck 300,000 square feet of casino space into this building. One day, if Dubai decides to legalize gambling, guess where it’s going? Right there.
Two years from now, Wynn is going to open a casino in a place called Al Marjan, which is 45 minutes away from Dubai. Any of us who want to go gambling in Dubai—we’re going to find Al Marjan a bit of a pain in the ass to get to. We’re going to want to go here.
We think there’s a chance, especially when Wynn opens. There’s also a possibility that, with the war, Dubai wants to reestablish itself and will open a casino. You know what that would be worth.
When you take the Vegas assets, which we think are worth about $60, and Japan, which we think is worth about $50, if Dubai happens, that’s worth another $40 or $50. We think the stock is a triple.
But remember, Barry is bidding for the company. He is not a strategic buyer; he is a financial buyer, and he’s doing it to get rich. Therefore, I think this company is now in play. I don’t know how it’s all going to play out, but if you own shares, don’t tender them.
The risk-reward is incredible right now because I think the stock could easily be worth over $100. It could be worth $150. Now you have Barry Diller, who owns 26% of the company, with a firm bid at basically the same price. I think this is a cool idea.
Jason Calacanis
Well done. Okay, let’s do 2 questions. We’ll give you both questions at the same time for efficiency.
Speaker 1
How much have you looked at the monetization of the assets outside of gambling? I had heard from someone that Barry Diller was spending a lot of time trying to reinvent the entertainment piece of the properties. He was active on the board, and they were trying to identify that the entertainment value is way under-monetized.
Jason Calacanis
Okay, don’t answer yet. That’s question 1.
Speaker 1
Question 2 is: When you expand internationally, how do you scale customer credit? That tends to be the thing that drives people to come back.
Aaron Cowen
Obviously, MGM has a massive database of customers. I assume the Vegas properties have people who come from China and Japan. They’ll use that database to do it. They also have a loyalty program.
I unfortunately made a bad investment in a company called the Rio, which was in Vegas. We bought it when Caesars merged with Eldorado and had to shed an asset. That was the Rio.
Aaron Cowen
We did an investment with a couple of friends, and we were buying the thing at $200 per square foot. The thing we forgot was that when you separated from Caesars, you lost the loyalty program.
Speaker 1
Two quick questions from the audience.
Speaker 2
Wait, I have to ask Kyle's question.
Speaker 1
Hold on. Question, and then from the audience.
Speaker 2
Let me get his first.
Speaker 1
The entertainment question.
Aaron Cowen
I don't know the answer. If he can make them better, it will help. But as I'm saying, this is not really a Vegas play. This is an Asian casino play.
And if you look at their presentations, which is really cool, they barely mention it. Look, I worked at SAC, and one of the things we focused on was catalyst paths.
Speaker 3
Aaron, 2 questions. Caesars left Dubai waiting for a license. Why would this be different for MGM? That's question 1.
And then question 2 is, the Osaka casino was approved in 2023. Why was the market ignoring this hidden asset until the bid?
Aaron Cowen
Sure. Let me answer this. What's also cool about this idea is I've been doing this for 29 years. Wynn opened Macau. Wynn started as a Vegas property, then opened Macau. The market started caring about it about 3 years before it opened. The answer is, they should care about it. The reality is, it tends to be about 3 years before it opens. We're almost in that time frame, which is why we think it's opportunistically the right period of time.
Regarding the question with Caesars, look, this is an option. As I told you, somebody built this project for them. They are running it for them, and they were intelligent enough to leave 300,000 square feet of empty space in case they get a casino. If that happens, great. If it doesn't, you're still going to more than double your money. If it happens, you triple your money.
Speaker 2
Free option, you're saying?
Aaron Cowen
It's a free option.
Speaker 1
Well done. Big round of applause.
Aaron Cowen
Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1
Nicely done, Aaron. Next up, Daniel.
Dan Dreyfus
Long time no see. Today we're doing Talen Energy. But first, the anatomy of a power cycle.
A power cycle typically goes like this. In normal times, power demand grows about GDP. If GDP grows 2%, power demand grows 2%. If GDP grows 3%, power demand goes 3%. There are moments in time when we get technological breakthroughs, and a lot of those technological breakthroughs are very power-intensive. So power demand spikes, and once everybody adopts that technology, it trends back down to its normal organic GDP growth. Then you go through the efficiency phase, where we say, "Let's try to conserve and figure out ways to consume less power," and then the cycle starts all over again.
In history, the big technological boom that sent power demand skyrocketing was appliances and air conditioning. Everybody had to get their kettles and the air con. Then, in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, demand normalized again. But the 2000s were all about efficiencies. We had LED lighting, smart HVAC, tinted windows, and smart electronics. At the same time, as I said earlier, we were ripping down all our power-hungry infrastructure, like aluminum smelters, and moving over to China. So we had 2 decades of effectively no power demand.
Now we're just coming out of it and starting a technological cycle again, where power demand is going to really start to explode from these high-2% numbers you're seeing on the screen. I want to say something right now that is incredibly important: We do not need AI demand to keep the power markets incredibly tight for the next 20 years. AI demand just turbocharges it. That's all it does, and it creates shortages. So just remember that.
Early in my career, I was on a panel with Sam Zell. Interestingly, it was a panel on opportunities in Mongolia. I was looking at a copper mine, and he was looking at real estate. There was 1 thing he said that stuck with me for the rest of my career. He said, "If you can buy a hard asset below replacement cost, for an asset that's going to be needed in the future, where we're going to need to build new capacity of that asset, then you buy that asset at a discount to replacement cost. You hold it, and you sell it at a big premium to replacement cost when the market wakes up."
That's exactly what we did with Equity Office Properties. We sold it at the peak of the market, but bought it at a discount to replacement value. Talen Energy is a power producer. They have 2 gigawatts of nuclear power, and they've got 6 gigawatts of natural gas baseload power.
Today in the stock market, as a good speculation, you could purchase this company at a $25 billion enterprise value. The replacement cost is $45 billion. Because they've got debt, it means that the equity value just to get to replacement cost is more than double from where it's trading today. If you follow Sam's playbook, then we ultimately end this cycle at a big premium to replacement value.
When I see this, I say the plan for America on the power side has to be this: Make America great again. Copy China. If you look at what China did over the last 20 years, we started out this cycle with 2× the power generation that China had. Fast-forward to today, China has 3× the power-generation capacity that we have.
If you believe that artificial intelligence is going to be responsible for scientific breakthroughs, you either have it or you don't have the scientific breakthroughs. If you believe that artificial intelligence is going to drive robotics, you either have it or you don't have that productivity from the robots. If you believe that artificial intelligence is going to be helpful for national security and military affairs, then you either have it or you're dead. This is an absolutely mandatory build-out that we have to do; otherwise, we're going to fall behind.
At the end of the day, what is a data center? In my world, in the commodities world, I look at a data center as the exact same thing as a refinery. In a traditional hydrocarbon refinery, you put crude oil in, and you refine it into jet fuel or gasoline for your car. With a data center, you put electricity in, and on the other end, instead of gasoline or jet fuel, out comes photons or tokens or intelligence, whatever you want to call it. But it's the same thing: a big, capital-intensive asset, $50 billion per gigawatt, with power—just like electricity, just like oil—as the input to that refinery.
Here's Jensen Huang, who was recently quoted as saying that we need 1,000 times more power than we currently have. If that's remotely true, we need every single source of power that you can imagine. We need hundreds of gigawatts of nuclear, we need solar, we need orbital, we need it all, if this is even remotely true.
The challenge, as we spoke about before, is the supply chain. A data center competes for the same supply chain of critical minerals that space launches and orbital data centers do. Power plants need all the same nickel superalloys that it takes to launch rockets, and the silver that goes into these photovoltaic cells. There are going to be shortages of everything and delays everywhere. My point here is, we're just going to need every solution that we can throw at this for the foreseeable future.
Here's a little region in the U.S. called PJM—Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. This is a forecast from the grid operator where they say that over the next 10 years, we're going to need 106 gigawatts of new power in the PJM, in just 1 little area of the U.S.
In 10 years, in geological time, that's like tomorrow morning. We're all so used to internet time: You press a button and you get your food delivered to you, or your car picks you up in 2 seconds. Building infrastructure happens in geological time. Ten years to build out 106 gigawatts is literally a nanosecond from now.
You see those thermal coal retirements? We aren't retiring those coal plants, because there's no world where we're going to be building 100 gigawatts in 10 years. That's the size of what Japan consumes today, for 1 little part of the U.S. Those who understand the supply chain and what goes into building all this are in panic mode, because we know that we don't have the raw materials to meet this level of demand that's coming our way. That's going to keep existing capacity and power prices very tight.
The data centers and the hyperscalers are in a panic. They're trying everything they can to source as much power as they can under long-term PPAs—power purchase agreements—at fixed prices for 20 years.
There's a famous example. I thought Microsoft was a green company, but they went and convinced Constellation Energy, which is a company that owns the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor—the one that melted down and created the nuclear meltdown that gave nuclear a bad name for 30 years—to start it up. In order to stimulate their hand-to-wallet reflex to start this thing up, they said, "Power prices stay at $50 a megawatt-hour. We'll pay you $100 per megawatt-hour for 20 years at a minimum price for you guys to start this up."
So here we have it: Three Mile Island, brought to you by Microsoft Azure. It's getting harder to do these deals because the regulators are saying, "Wait a minute. If you're taking all this power off the grid for your data center, how are we going to heat the homes of our customers?" We're getting ourselves into what I call crunch time.
So, just to finish up, here are the numbers on Talen. The stock today is sort of in the high $300s. If they just do absolutely nothing—just sit there and run the business, let their Amazon data center contract roll up—these guys will be generating $50 a share of free cash flow per year. Again, the stock is in the high $300s, so it's about 7 times free cash flow. Good infrastructure assets in the U.S. trade at about 15 times. So that's pretty good. You get a double for basically management just sitting around and doing nothing.
But if they continue to figure out ways to sign contracts with data centers at premium prices, or if power prices go up—I mean, the amazing thing right now is, in PJM, where these guys operate, the power price is still too low to stimulate new capacity. The math still doesn't work, which is really mind-boggling. So if power prices go up a bit, they do more deals, you get to $70 a share of recurring annual free cash flow, put a 15 multiple on that, that's $1,050.
But then if they get into building power plants, right? And right now the regulator is telling these companies to go sit in a room—power producer, data center—come in a room, make a deal so that you build power and get a good return on it, and the data center gets their power and gets a good return on it. And Talen is in a pole position to be able to do this. If they just build, like, 4 gigawatts of the 100 gigawatts that we need, you could get up to, you know, over $100 a share of free cash flow. The stock's in the high $300s today. So go and buy the shares. It's a good speculation, and we can chat.
Speaker 1
All right. Not financial advice. Gavin, go.
Speaker 2
Gav, go.
Speaker 3
I'm just very curious: how do you think about regulatory risks here? Nobody likes their electricity prices going up. AI is an increasingly political issue. How do you think about that risk?
Dan Dreyfus
We need AI, and we need to figure this out. There are different ways to skin a cat here, right? My personal view is, during peak hours, if you drive down a highway at 4 in the morning, you would sit there and say, “Why do we have all this highway capacity? This is crazy.” But then you go on that same highway at rush hour, you're like, “Oh, we don't have enough highway capacity. There aren't enough lanes.”
Power is the same thing. There are only a few hours a day where you really stress the system. And so I think the working solution to get around this regulatory issue is you do the PPAs with the data centers. You force the data centers to throw a ton of battery behind it and some peakers just to get through that really intense period. And that's a good band-aid solution until we build more power.
So there are ways to do this. Human ingenuity is going to win here. We're going to get our data centers, and consumer power bills are going to be, I think, relatively under control. They're going to go up, but they're going to be under control.
Speaker 1
Okay, Dan, I have 3 questions from the audience. Really good ones. Number 1: does your thesis actually need behind-the-meter collocation to clear, or is it just a bet that clean, firm baseload is scarce enough that it doesn't matter whether power flows in front of or behind the meter?
Dan Dreyfus
It's the latter. And that's why I gave 3 scenarios, right? At $50 a share of earnings on a high-$300 stock, right? Nothing has to happen. You just sit, right? And you double your money. Now, if you get more behind the meter or even front of the meter, that's how you get up to that $70 a share of earnings from $50. And then if you get up to the $70 but start building new capacity, then you get to the $100-plus.
Speaker 1
Okay, question 2 from Brad. How do you think about competition for power from things like fuel cells, gas turbines, aeroderivative turbines, orbital compute, and other sorts of IPPs—independent power producers?
Dan Dreyfus
We need all of it. We need all of it. Fuel cells and Caterpillar's Solar Turbines—these are fantastic bridge solutions, but the cost to run these things, the LCOE, is through the roof. But, you know, to build a $50 billion data center, you don't want it to sit idle for 3 years waiting for your baseload CCGT. So you do whatever it takes. You don't give a crap what you pay for that bridge solution.
We're finding ways through fuel cells, through Caterpillar's Solar Turbines, hopefully through orbital data centers, where we can alleviate this because I want AI to happen in a really big way, and we're going to need all of the above.
Speaker 1
Okay, question 3. By the way, great questions, guys. Thank you for these. What is the right terminal multiple for Talen if the business mix shifts from merchant IPP to contracted infrastructure? And the addendum here: what percentage of EBITDA needs to be contracted before the market should rerate it?
Dan Dreyfus
Fabulous question.
Speaker 1
That was a great question.
Dan Dreyfus
I only had 6 minutes to do this, and I think I blew through my time, so I couldn't get into this kind of detail. But it's something I would have really wanted to get into. So whoever asked that, thank you.
I just use the 15 multiple because it's sort of a blended multiple between the contracted stuff, which will get a big premium multiple because, you know, it's a bond-like cash flow stream, and bond-like cash flow streams trade at a small spread to Treasuries. So Treasuries, if they're at 5%, should trade at 20 times plus some growth or whatever, plus or minus.
The uncontracted stuff, the merchant stuff that has spot-market exposure, is more volatile, less visible; that should trade at a lower multiple. We can get into the minutiae, but just suffice it to say: the more contracts, the higher the multiple; the less, the lower the multiple. Use 15 times as a good rule of thumb, and you'll probably get to the right answer, which is what I used.
Speaker 1
That last question from Daniel Scherer. Thank you for that, Dan.
Speaker 2
Dan, thank you. That was great.
Oleg Nodelman
My name is Oleg Nodelman. I'm the founder and managing director of EcoR1 Capital, a San Francisco-based, value-oriented biotech fund that I started about 13 years ago. Thanks a lot to the besties for having me here. I'm a huge fan of the pod, like I'm sure all of us are, and I know how challenging Science Corner can get. So I wrote this in a way that even David Sacks would appreciate and pay attention to if he were here.
Speaker 1
Well, paradoxically, he's taking a nap, which is what he normally does during Science Corners.
Speaker 2
Exactly.
Oleg Nodelman
Generally speaking, investing in biotech companies is a horrible idea, sandwiched somewhere between movies, wineries, and SPACs. In fact, our sector often feels a lot more like a casino than an actual financial market. And most of the tourists who are investing are playing the slots.
Of course, at EcoR1, we consider ourselves poker players in a sector where virtually everyone else is a momentum investor betting on science. We focus on margin of safety. We're one of the few funds not managed by Ph.D.s or M.D.s, and that's by design because we don't want to fall in love with the science. We fall in love with the risk-reward. And like the slide says, we want to monetize other kids' science projects.
This is my 25th year investing in biotech. I started my career with an 11-year stint at another fund and launched EcoR1 in 2013, humble beginnings with $13 million. Since inception, we've 10x'd for our investors and annualized at 20%. And today we have about $2.5 billion under management. We're lucky to have long-term partners, many of whom are biotech entrepreneurs themselves, and have been with us since day 1. And we recently reopened for the first time in 4 years.
Today I'm going to tell you about a company that's on the front lines of the war on cancer. Military terminology has been used when describing treatments for the disease since the early '70s, when President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act. The warfare analogy is actually perfect for cancer because both domains are trying to accomplish the exact same thing: find the enemy, figure out the best weapon to kill them, and have minimal unwanted casualties along the way.
First, a quick history of how this war has evolved. Early surgical cancer treatment and radiation were akin to a medieval siege: level the entire castle, burn the surrounding village, and hope the enemy was left somewhere in the rubble. Chemo actually evolved from an accidental observation during World War I that mustard gas killed rapidly dividing tissue. Tumor cells divide fast, so doctors would flood a patient's body with chemo and hope it killed the enemy faster than it killed allies. Unfortunately, hair, skin, gut, and marrow cells also divide quickly, and the poison doesn't discriminate.
First-generation targeted therapies were next, like a GPS-guided munition. Instead of carpet-bombing every dividing cell, you identify the enemy's command-and-control center and destroy it. The problem, as with any weapon, is that the enemy adapts and hides. In cancer, these are called resistant mutations.
Immunotherapy was first introduced to patients a decade ago. With I/O, you don't send in your own troops. You recruit local allies, also known as T cells, and let them do the fighting for you. Spectacular when it works, but highly dependent on the terrain, or the tumor microenvironment.
This brings me to the reason we're here today: modern-day radiopharmaceuticals. They're like a swarm of microdrones small enough to navigate the bloodstream and find their target by molecular recognition, then detonate a precisely sized warhead with a blast radius of 100 microns, or the diameter of a single cell. It's an autonomous assassination with the force of a bunker buster and minimum collateral damage.
The company I'm going to tell you about today is Aktis Oncology. The ticker is AKTS. The company has a $1 billion market cap, a $500 million enterprise value, and a stockpile of cash, which should last them over 3 years.
That is long past the critical milestones coming next year. Aktis was started 5 years ago but recently went public with a $300 million IPO that was 18 times oversubscribed and backstopped with a $100 million order by Eli Lilly, the folks who bring you all the weight-loss drugs.
The company has designed a platform that can carry any radioactive payload, is complex enough to go after a variety of targets, and small enough to clear your body with minimal side effects. The beautiful thing about this approach is that physicians can verify target engagement in early clinical trials with imaging. This significantly de-risks clinical development because you know the drug is getting to the tumor.
As another de-risking strategy for their first few programs, Aktis chose known, valid targets like Nectin-4 and B7-H3. Nectin-4 is critical in bladder cancer, and the company's second program targeting B7-H3 is even more ambitious, expressed on every major solid tumor, including the big 3: prostate, colorectal, and lung.
Aktis started clinical trials last year and is publicly guided to initial clinical data in both of these lead programs in 2027, with Nectin-4 coming as early as Q1. So you won't have to wait long. If either program shows a signal, the company is likely to get value not only for those programs but for the entire mini-protein platform. This is the holy grail in biotech: getting value simply for the promise of what might come.
What's even more compelling is that there's an amazing amount of interest in radiopharmaceuticals from pharma. The big ones, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Novartis, Bayer, and Lilly, who backstopped the Aktis IPO, have been building radiopharmaceutical capabilities, and they're hungry for assets to add to their pipelines. There's been $15 billion in M&A and dealmaking in radiopharmaceuticals in the last few years, and we're very much in the early innings.
The neatest thing about this modality is that it's very hard to replicate. Generics generally don't traffic in radiopharma, and because the class involves radioisotopes, it's off-limits to China.
Now, the obligatory safety warning. Aktis is not for everyone. You should consult your biotech analyst before purchasing Aktis. Initiating a position may cause increased anxiety and reduced sleep through the night. Serious drops in stock prices sometimes occur in biotech.
Immediately after investing, you may experience sudden volatility due to large competitors. If stock declines are experienced for no reason, call your broker immediately to increase your position. Remember, serious safety concerns have arisen in other companies' clinical development programs. While no safety concerns have occurred with any Aktis program to date, they may in the future.
The use of mini-proteins delivered for solid tumors has not been proven. Aktis has no marketed products and thus no recurring revenue. Dilution through equity offerings may occur. In the event of a secondary offering, immediately schedule a call with the Aktis management team to discuss placing an order.
It's notoriously challenging to value biotech companies because when you risk-adjust and discount back, you pretty quickly get to 0. For earlier-stage opportunities like this, we like to triangulate. We think Aktis could be worth $10 billion, or $200 per share, if even 1 of their programs makes it to market. In this case, you have a lot of outs.
Speaker 1
I'm not familiar with why radioisotopes are off-limits to China. So, in this particular case, Aktis' radioisotope payload is actinium, and actinium is manufactured from radium 233, which was used in our own nuclear programs in the U.S. in the 1950s and '60s. So it's a waste product from there. Actinium is not even available in other countries like China because their program was completely different, with enriched uranium and plutonium.
But the risk for a lot of biotech and Chinese replication came about from that Amgen v. Sandoz Supreme Court case, didn't it? It basically said all patents are composition-of-matter patents, so you could make a small change, like changing 1 amino acid, to get around the patent. China has basically done that with a lot of biologics that are patented in the U.S. and Europe. They just rip them off, and then you attach the radio-emitting radioisotope to the molecule and you can kind of trace it. That's kind of why a lot of biotech has been depressed. Is that not true?
Oleg Nodelman
Yeah. With radioisotopes, because you have to have a manufacturing supply that you have to source locally in the U.S., we haven't seen any competition coming from China at all.
Speaker 1
If they have a successful readout, though, would it not be the case that someone in China would say, “Hey, let's go get some of the necessary radioisotopes”?
Oleg Nodelman
They're sure they can do it for the Chinese market, but in terms of then transferring that over here, we haven't seen it or heard any wind of it at all.
Speaker 1
And so then my last question—I'm sorry for monopolizing. Why do you think the market has discounted the value so much since the IPO?
Oleg Nodelman
Oh gosh. Given the downturn in biotech valuation, it's pretty classic biotech. It's traded flat since the IPO. Biotech investors are so insanely short-term-oriented that even though we're now, call it, 8 or 9 months from data, that's still way too long. Our expectation is that folks will start accumulating this in the second half in anticipation of the data coming in the 1st quarter.
Speaker 2
Gavin, you had a question.
Speaker 3
Yeah, sure. In the distant past, I ran a biopharmaceutical fund. It's a very hard job, so congratulations on those numbers. I ran that fund right after the human genome had been sequenced, and there was an expectation that the sequencing of the genome was going to lead to this explosion in therapies, personalized medicines, and so on.
I don't think, broadly speaking, we've made as much progress over the last 25 years as maybe people thought in the early 2000s. My hypothesis is that the genome is too big of a problem space for the human mind, or software written by humans, and AI is going to unlock a lot of revolutionary therapies.
My question to you—I will just admit it's a selfish question; it is not about your stock pitch, which is great—is what you think the odds are that, in the lifetimes of everyone in this room, the average human lifespan in a developed country extends well past 100—to 125 or 150. I would take the over on that, in no small part because we already have one of the best longevity drugs out there, and folks don't even realize it: the GLP-1s and the obesity drugs.
Oleg Nodelman
I would take the over on that, too. One of the only things that's ever been shown, in fact, with actual data to extend life is caloric restriction, and that's literally what all the obesity drugs do. I'm sure half the people in this room are on one of them. That's just the beginning because it's trained people that you can inject yourself with something and have healthy living through pharmaceuticals. I think that's only going to continue.
Speaker 2
I got 2 questions from the audience. First one: as launch costs per kilogram continue to fall, is there a credible pathway to use space and microgravity as a therapeutic variable, given that cancer cells appear to behave differently in low-gravity environments?
Oleg Nodelman
That is a great question, but it's probably not applicable to this.
Speaker 2
Okay. And then the second question: what would be a technological breakthrough that could disrupt precision radiotherapy as a result of AI at scale for drug development and precancerous screening?
Oleg Nodelman
Yeah, another awesome question. There's a small skunkworks AI project within Aktis. With all these biotech companies, they have their little proprietary datasets that they hope to leverage for various insights. A company like this, with their mini-proteins and everything else they're trying to accomplish, has its own little, tiny group of Ph.D. data-scientist nerds who are seeing if they can leverage that in a pretty decent way.
Speaker 1
It's been really hard to get CAR-T into solid tumors. Is it the case that these kinds of personalized, peptide-based immunotherapies are showing some efficacy in some solid tumors, and is that a space that's going to expand and intersect here?
Oleg Nodelman
What's most promising, which I think a lot of folks have probably heard of, is a new drug for pancreatic cancer from a company called Revolution Medicines. It's just another targeted therapy. So for now, there's not a huge amount of progress from peptides.
Speaker 1
And have you looked at DARPins before? These kinds of right-sized proteins seem to be able to penetrate solid tumors.
Oleg Nodelman
One of the neat things about these mini-proteins is that they're hopefully of the right size to be able to deliver their payload inside the tumors.
Speaker 2
Incredible. Oleg, thank you.
Oleg Nodelman
Thank you.
Speaker 2
By the way, somebody just YOLOed into the stock while Oleg was on stage. It's up 6%. Like, LOL. Don't do that while we're all trying to buy as well. Please, come on.
Kyle Samani
Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle Samani. Thank you for being with us at the All-In Summit today. Thanks to the besties for organizing. Today we're going to be talking about a little-known asset, a little crypto asset called GEODNET, which is building the rails for AI. So let's jump in.
A quick bit about me: I founded a firm called Multicoin Capital about 8.5 years ago, and I stepped down a few months ago. In my time there, I was probably most well-known for leading all 3 rounds of investment in Solana prior to Solana's network launch in 2020. I've been deep in the crypto space for a very long time, and I thought this would be a very natural forum to talk about a very interesting investment at the intersection of crypto and AI.
Also, a big shout-out to David Sacks. Unfortunately, he’s not here, but David seeded Multicoin back in the day. Thank you, David, for believing in me very early.
All right, let’s get into GEODNET. The way to understand GEODNET first is to look at GPS. Probably everyone in this room has been in the situation on the left, where you’re using your phone and your phone is in the wrong spot, facing the wrong way. Right here, you can see this guy looks like he’s facing a wall according to his phone.
GEODNET fundamentally uses a technology called RTK, or real-time kinematic, where you can localize your location down to about 2 centimeters. For context, GPS precision is roughly 2 meters, so you’re getting about 100-times better accuracy for very precise geolocation. As you can imagine, any form of robotics can make use of RTK, with drones being the very obvious example. I’ll touch on a few more in just a couple of minutes here.
Today, GEODNET is the world’s largest RTK network, and it’s also the fastest-growing. The 3 companies you see on the left here—Trimble, Hexagon, and Topcon—have all been building RTK networks in some form or fashion for 20 to 30 years. All of them combined have roughly 12,000 base stations deployed around the world.
GEODNET was founded in 2021 and began building out the network in 2022. Today, it’s roughly twice the size of the next 3 companies combined. GEODNET is live in 150 countries around the world, in more than 11,000 cities, and covers roughly 80% of the global population, excluding some sanctioned countries. This thing is really growing quickly.
You might say, “How did these guys build this network so fast?” The key is really this decentralized crypto model. Here, we’re looking at literally a photo of a GEODNET base station on the roof of someone’s house. The global GEODNET network—those 22,000 nodes—is not being built and deployed by some company that looks like AT&T or Verizon.
Those base stations are being deployed by any random guy, hobbyist, professional, or small-business owner who wants to make some extra money. You can go on the GEODNET website today and buy one of these base stations. They’re a few hundred bucks. You put it on the roof of your house or your small business, it broadcasts radio waves, and you make money.
You actually get paid in GEOD tokens, which is the really cool part about this incentive system to bootstrap the network and get it off the ground. The GEODNET network started about 4 years ago doing this. Today, it’s the largest and fastest-growing network in the world by a pretty wide margin.
If you want a sense of scale, here we’re looking at its coverage in the United States. Obviously, every single major metro is covered, but even if you look at most of the rural parts of the country, you’re covering the vast majority of those areas as well.
Let’s talk about some of the customers and use cases for this. We’ll start with agriculture first. The USDA actually launched a program a couple of years ago to encourage farmers and ranchers to use precision-agriculture technologies, including RTK networks. Today, the USDA is subsidizing many farmers and ranchers all over the country to adopt high-precision agriculture, much of which is powered by GEODNET.
Getting into some specific examples, here we’re looking at what’s called a robotic mule. This is made by a company called Burro. Obviously, this is transporting some grapes, but you could put anything on it. It has pretty obvious applications for basically any farm or ranch you can imagine.
With the advent of computer vision, CPUs, batteries, and all the other AI technology, these things are growing like hotcakes. All of them are going to be powered by GEODNET or something like it.
Here we’re looking at John Deere. They have a new service that they rolled out recently called Global Unmanned Spray System, or GUSS. These things drive around and literally spray plants with pesticides and other things like that. I did confirm this morning that there are wineries here in Napa that are actually using John Deere GUSS vehicles. That was pretty cool. So, if you have some wine tonight, maybe it was powered by GUSS, which was powered by GEODNET.
Obviously, autonomous vehicles have a pretty obvious application for this. TomTom is one of GEODNET’s customers. TomTom is a supplier to basically every AV program in the world, excluding maybe a couple. Today, TomTom is using GEODNET’s data to update its maps and make them more accurate and precise, because they need to cover basically every square inch around the planet.
One of my favorite use cases is the next wave of consumer robotics, which are getting a lot of hype these days. I think the most obvious example is robotic lawnmowers. I don’t think anyone loves to mow their lawn. Robotic lawnmowers are now rolling out at pretty good scale. It’s estimated that they’re going to sell 1 million robotic lawnmowers this year, made by companies like Yarbo, Sunseeker, and others. All of these companies are powered by GEODNET.
Next up, let’s get to drones. The world’s largest drone manufacturer, DJI, is a GEODNET customer. It’s not in all of their models, but it is in a lot of them, so DJI is sending a ton of traffic over GEODNET now.
In the coming months and years, as DJI winds down in the U.S. and you have a new wave of American drone manufacturers pop up, I’m going to venture to guess that most, if not all, of them are going to end up on the GEODNET network as well. The GEODNET team is based in the U.S. and has deep roots here.
What I love about GEODNET is that it’s a very obvious network-effects business. This thing looks like a natural telecom, right? You have base stations all over the world, and you have to cover the whole planet. Telecoms have naturally formed monopolies historically, and I think the same is likely to be true here.
Today, GEODNET is the world’s largest and fastest-growing network, with the lowest cost structure by a very wide margin because of this decentralized nature, where people just put these things on top of their houses.
In terms of where the business is, it just crossed about $1 million in annualized run rate a few days ago, and it’s growing more than 3-times year over year. I think it’s probably going to more than triple over the next 12 months.
What’s really cool about GEODNET is how capital-efficient it is and how it’s actually returning capital to token holders. Today, of that $11 million in revenue, roughly 80% is being used to make open-market purchases of GEOD tokens. This is all visible on the Solana blockchain. All the addresses are published, so it’s all verifiable in real time.
That means $8.8 million per year is going into buying GEOD tokens on the open market. What’s amazing is that the remaining 20% covers all of the R&D costs and is being used to scale out the business-development team.
With a business like this, it’s a pretty small network of customers. The people who work at John Deere know the people who work at DJI, who know the people who work at TomTom. This thing is now growing virally among this core community of customers.
As you can imagine, when customers sign up for a service like this, they tend to ramp up their usage over time. Once someone starts rolling out GEODNET in the first year, they’re usually spending about $60,000 per year. After 2 years, though, they’re usually spending about $170,000 per year. So, the average GEODNET customer is growing its revenue with GEODNET by about 3-times in that second year.
When we look at the customers they’ve signed up in the last 2 years, you can see that they 5-timesed their customer base last year. Those are net-new customers. Applying some pretty simple math here, you can see they have a very clear path to more than 3-timesing this year as the network ramps up.
Just to wrap things up, GEODNET is the world’s largest RTK network and the fastest-growing. It has really obvious network effects and is likely to be a very natural monopoly, growing 3-times year over year with a bunch of flagship customers and brands that you all know.
Obviously, we have this huge physical-AI tailwind behind us now, with robotics and all the other amazing things happening. They’re returning capital to token holders. The token trades on the Solana blockchain, 24/7, and the ticker is GEOD.
Speaker 1
Awesome. What’s the market cap?
Kyle Samani
Oh, sorry. It’s trading at about $150 million on a fully diluted basis. If you were to look at any of the crypto price websites, like CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap, they’re going to show you something like $60 million or $70 million. That’s because not all of the tokens are floating yet, but the fully diluted number is about $1 million.
Speaker 1
Is there a corporation behind it, or is this just a project in the Cayman Islands or Panama with a board that nobody knows who’s on it? Tell us about governance.
Kyle Samani
The GEODNET team is a U.S.-based corporation. They have 4 teams in San Francisco. The CEO’s name is Mike Horton, a really, really good guy. He’s been building in this kind of IoT, smart-device space for a while.
Speaker 1
What’s the relationship between the corporate entity and the token, and which one should we own?
Kyle Samani
You should own the token, because I own a lot of the token, as you might imagine. I don’t own any of the equity. The relationship is that GEODNET, the company, is facing John Deere, DJI, and all these companies, and it has a contractual relationship with the GEODNET Foundation to use 80% of its revenues to buy tokens off the open market.
David Friedberg
And that corporation raised venture capital or anything?
Kyle Samani
Yes. My prior company, Multicoin, actually led a round in GEODNET previously.
David Friedberg
Okay, Kyle, I have many questions from the audience, so bear with me. Question 1: Do you like Helium as much, which is GEODNET for 5G signal?
Kyle Samani
Yes, I actually led Multicoin’s investment in Helium 6 or 7 years ago and continue to be a very big, long-term believer. They actually had big news go out this morning. But yeah, I’m a big Helium fan.
David Friedberg
Question 2: There’s a long list of DePIN projects that have failed because people just don’t value the token rewards. Why is this any different?
Kyle Samani
They’re returning capital to shareholders. This thing is returning $8.8 million to shareholders, it’s trading at a $150 million valuation, and it’s going to grow 3x this year. It’s an unbelievably cheap asset. It’s just that people aren’t paying attention because it’s a crypto bear market right now.
David Friedberg
Okay. From Sam—sorry, let me clarify: it’s a securitized interest in the cash flows from the customers, effectively.
Kyle Samani
Yes.
David Friedberg
It’s a revenue-share token.
Kyle Samani
Correct. 80%.
David Friedberg
Okay. So, the more John Deere pays GEODNET, the company, the more you basically appreciate the tokens, which should cause the token to appreciate, right?
Kyle Samani
They’re buying tokens on the open market.
David Friedberg
Correct.
Kyle Samani
Yes.
David Friedberg
From Sam: what accrues value—the equity or the token? Similar to the question, how do the value-accrual mechanisms square, or not, with current securities laws, or with what’s contemplated in the CLARITY Act?
Kyle Samani
The tokens are the ones accruing value because they’re taking 80% and buying tokens. The other 20% is obviously funding operations. They have engineers, salespeople, and all that stuff, so that’s all there and being funded.
In terms of securities laws, the CLARITY Act passing is certainly very good for GEODNET. I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to tell you that it passes the bar set in the CLARITY Act, but I can tell you I’m an optimist. I’ve been very involved in the CLARITY Act, and I’m not too worried about it.
David Friedberg
Okay. Can I ask about the business just real quick? I know this space somewhat well. I used to manage a company called Precision Planting in agriculture, and John Deere makes its own RTK systems.
So, when you run a piece of equipment that relies on RTK, you’re buying, in the construction industry, Topcon, Leica, or Trimble, or you’re buying John Deere’s system, and you install the RTK base stations and run your equipment. Why would John Deere and others want to rely on this system instead? Why is it better than the systems that they’re already using? It wasn’t quite clear to me.
Kyle Samani
Capex versus opex, right? These networks are all over the world now. They’re running at very low cost. GEODNET is probably a third to a quarter the price of buying your own capex and doing it. It’s just available everywhere.
So now it reduces the sales-cycle time for John Deere when they just say, “Buy the tractor. It’s good.”
David Friedberg
There’s another big push right now for microsats to be an alternative to GPS, in a way that they can actually provide subcentimeter resolution, effectively replacing both GPS and RTK, using a mesh network from satellites launched by SpaceX. Actually, I don’t know if SpaceX has looked at doing this, but I know that there is a very well-funded company that is trying to put up microsats to basically replace GPS and RTK.
Doesn’t that ultimately wash out the need to have all these Earth-based base stations?
Kyle Samani
There’s no chance they can compete on cost, because just sending things to space with satellites is so expensive. These GEODNET base stations are a few hundred bucks. You’re just not going to compete on cost with GEODNET.
David Friedberg
Do you think that this is a viable replacement, at scale and saturation, for GPS itself?
Kyle Samani
No. GPS is definitely very different, and the SLA is different.
David Friedberg
You’ve got to have ubiquity for a GPS alternative.
Kyle Samani
Yeah. For a GPS alternative, which is why you have to have the satellites everywhere. You’ve got to have enough, but if you get enough satellites, you can actually get to RTK precision and you don’t need to have the big, expensive GPS.
David Friedberg
You’d have a hybrid situation where you have a bunch of GEO and LEO, plus a bunch of base stations all over the place. That hybrid situation probably—
Kyle Samani
The LEO alone can replace all of the GEO stuff. That’s the goal. If you get enough of them, which SpaceX unlocks, then yeah.
David Friedberg
And Kyle, what about other tokens when you think about other compute tasks, like work to be done, for example? There are a bunch of tokens that have emerged in distributed training. How did you hone in on this and exclude the others?
Kyle Samani
I don’t mean that I prefer this over that. I met the GEODNET founder years ago. He pitched us, and I’ve gotten to know him and followed it.
The distributed-training stuff—there’s a whole bunch of people trying it. I’m pretty skeptical. I don’t think any of it’s going to work. The distributed-inference stuff is possible, although it has not worked as well as we would have hoped. I did put some money behind that a few years ago. It’s working, but not A-plus.
One last thing, actually, David, on your prior question: I want to highlight energy use. Going to space consumes way more energy than going to a base station that’s on the ground. For a tractor, maybe that doesn’t matter, but for a drone or any other battery-sensitive application, ground is always going to be the preferred solution.
David Friedberg
Super interesting. Well done. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Jason Calacanis
All right, guys. Before we vote, Chamath, give your feedback.
Chamath Palihapitiya
Here’s what I like. I apply the Stanley Druckenmiller school of investing. I really believe in it.
Speaker 2
Yes.
Chamath Palihapitiya
If you don’t have any skin in the game, you don’t care. This is the kind of stuff that I love. I love hearing ideas like this.
I love all 4. My difference is in sizing. There’s certain asymmetric alpha that each one of these exhibits, and then there’s very different downside risk for each of them. There are also liquidity issues.
So, for example, I love Kyle’s idea. The problem is I could not get enough working for me. I don’t even think I could get $1 million in today. To scale in, it would move the market. I’d have to be at $10,000, $20,000, or $30,000 and then maybe start to buy into it.
Talen, I think they could absorb tens of millions and people wouldn’t bat an eyelash. The biotech company—the issue there is that I think there is, as you said, Friedberg, this discontinuous illiquidity, zero risk, but then there’s the 10x upside.
Speaker 3
Lilly will bid for it.
Chamath Palihapitiya
And then MGM, I think, is just so—I think MGM and Talen are the ones you could have huge sizing in. The other ones, I think you have a piece because they’re like lottery tickets. I think your point on MGM—
Jason Calacanis
Okay, wait, hold on. Let me just review. Company number 1 was MGM—
Speaker 2
And that was—
Jason Calacanis
Resorts. Okay. Company number 2—
Speaker 2
Talen.
Jason Calacanis
Talen Energy. Company number 3—
Speaker 2
Aktis.
Jason Calacanis
Aktis Oncology. And then GEODNET. Not a company, but I guess a token.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Jason Calacanis
Company number 4, GEODNET. And you’re buying the token, not the company. Do you think—maybe for you too, Gavin, like the—
Speaker 4
I thought the pitches were great. I thought the format was amazing. I would for sure expand it next year. There are platforms that you guys could have an All-In basket or ETF that people could trade in, so maybe that’s something.
Jason Calacanis
Will you do it next year?
Speaker 4
Will I pitch next year?
Jason Calacanis
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Jason, I’ll do anything.
Jason Calacanis
He’s locked. He’s locked. Actually, here’s what I would ask Gavin, to put you on the spot. Next year, I think we would all learn and benefit if you would do—
Speaker 4
Silicon and memory supercycle.
Jason Calacanis
Sure. Would you be willing to do that for us?
Speaker 4
I’ll do it.
Jason Calacanis
Sign me up. Perfect. Great. Sign me up. Oh, thank you. So, keep going.
Speaker 4
As far as the pitches, I do think it’s important to disaggregate what was a really great, entertaining pitch versus what I think is a really good risk-reward. I thought Oleg and Kyle did a great job with the pitches, but I’m not a healthcare investor, nor am I a crypto investor. I thoroughly enjoyed the presentations.
I actually thought GEODNET was very interesting. I’m happy to learn from Oleg that I might live well into my 100s. That was good news for me and everybody in the room. I enjoyed all the military terminology and analogies.
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, that was really great. Huh.
Speaker 2
That was great. Really great.
Speaker 4
I do think, from a pure risk-reward perspective, MGM was the best. Your downside is really capped because of the Barry Diller bid, and then you have Japan and Dubai as, I think, very valuable future sources of value.
I do think Talen is also a very compelling risk. I just think everything in AI is going to need to grapple with increasing regulatory risk, which we talked about the last time I was on the pod with you guys. I don’t know how to dimensionalize that.
Speaker 2
The big negative externality for Talen is nothing to do with Talen.
Speaker 1
Nothing to do with Talen. It’s like something over the top from the U.S. government—caps prices, something something.
Speaker 2
Yeah. You have nationalized the load.
Speaker 3
You have a change in administration. You have a change in Congress. There are laws that are passed that I think alter terrestrial compute’s utility supply and demand. But I actually think, outside of that, Talen was super compelling.
Jason Calacanis
So you got MGM, you got Talen. Now, the other 2.
David Friedberg
I thought they were both great pitches.
Jason Calacanis
Well, no, don’t even give the score. Just give us any feedback on those 2 ideas. Are they just a little bit of a lottery ticket for you?
David Friedberg
No, I thought Aktis was very compelling. They’re trying to do something different, as Oleg said. If you ever get a biotech company that can become a platform and they have a mechanism—whether it’s drugging, whether it’s targeting—or if you have something that is broadly applicable, that is when you can get these really big, $100 billion-plus outcomes in biotech, which are rare. So I thought that part of Aktis was super compelling.
Jason Calacanis
You don’t play crypto.
David Friedberg
I don’t play crypto, but I thought the entire GEODNET discussion was fascinating, and I’m happy.
Jason Calacanis
Is there anything that would get you off the bench and make you jump into the crypto game, or why are you not playing the crypto game?
David Friedberg
I feel about crypto exactly the way I do about snowboarding. I’m not a very good athlete. I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to ski, and I’m okay.
The idea of getting on a snowboard, having thousands of hours of ski instruction—
Jason Calacanis
You don’t want the pain for the gain.
David Friedberg
Yes. I have 25 years of lessons, learnings, pain, and scars from investing in equities and public securities. Crypto is a little bit like snowboarding for me. Everybody who wants to snowboard, that’s great.
Jason Calacanis
Everybody who wants to do crypto, that’s great. Just please don’t go sideways down the mountain and ruin the powder. David—
David Friedberg
I think your assessment of MGM and Talen—I look at the return upside, the downside, and the timeline. MGM is probably a 3x. I think it’s also missing this point that I’ve heard a lot about: you can actually upgrade the monetization on these Vegas properties.
We were talking to a friend of ours in Vegas. They’re making $1 million a day in incremental EBITDA every day that they have a show at the Sphere, at the Venetian hotel, which is an unbelievable statistic. It tells you that when you have the entertainment draw, the gambling revenue just flies.
Barry Diller, I have heard separately, has been spending a lot of time trying to reinvent the entertainment at these properties and thinks he has an idea on how to do it, which will cause the gambling revenue to fly. So I think even if you discount the upside on these new locations, there’s probably a lot of work to be done.
I do like the floor on the bid, and then you’ve got, call it, a 3x in 2 years, even if this bid goes nowhere and they keep the thing running and say, “We’re going to reject the bid and keep running independently.”
Talen is maybe a 3x or 5x upside, but it’s 8 years out. One of the other challenges with Talen that I would use as a valuation metric is that I think it’s more interest-rate-sensitive than MGM, because the power-purchase agreements are really where a lot of the revenue comes from.
You’re going to get a discount rate that’s a function of where interest rates are sitting. So I think if interest rates shoot up—which some might argue there’s risk there—you actually get margin compression from that 15x outlook that he has for Talen. That would be my downside scenario on Talen in the time ahead.
With Aktis, I do worry because I’m an investor in a company that’s got a D-protein conjugate that shows really strong efficacy against solid tumors. I think there are new modalities for therapeutics for solid tumors being discussed that may put this at risk.
I think the China risk is legitimate because I’ve seen it across the board in biotech. Everything gets ripped off and people go to China. But they could have a hit, and Eli Lilly could bid on it in 6 months if they actually get a good readout.
So there’s certainly upside, but the downside is probably 50% to 75% if they get a bad readout, China, or some new modality comes out. I think the ranking is probably MGM, Talen, Aktis, and then, for me, the GEODNET piece.
I just think the space thing is likely the path. It’s going to replace all RTK and all GPS in the next decade. It’s an inevitable piggyback on systems that are already going up.
Jason Calacanis
All right, great. So I think I’ve got everybody. For me, I put them into 2 buckets. I think Aktis and GEODNET are like lottery tickets. They could be crazy returns, but there’s a big probability of 0 there if they don’t actually work.
Then MGM and Talen obviously have downside protection, and those feel like people will always gamble and leave the lights on. So I kind of like both of those. I put $200,000 into each in real time.
Speaker 1
Gamble and leave the lights on.
Jason Calacanis
I don’t have a public vehicle.
Speaker 2
Did you actually buy?
Jason Calacanis
I’m just day trading.
Speaker 3
I bought half of his action, and I don’t have a Robinhood account. I have to call my office. So I was like, “Just, I’ll take—”
Jason Calacanis
You lose, buddy.
Speaker 3
I’ll take half yours.
Jason Calacanis
I’m up 7% across the portfolio, so I don’t think I can include you here.
Speaker 1
Steps to buy.
Jason Calacanis
I did. So anyway, I’ll just give mine really quick. I will go MGM, Talen, GEODNET, Aktis.
Speaker 2
Gavin’s only going to make a trillion.
Jason Calacanis
Let’s bring our 4 pitchers out.
We have $1,000. Please get the 2-men-hugging statue. Wait, wait—before you announce it, I need the extremely alpha-male, heterosexual trophy. The All-In heterosexual alpha-male trophy, please. And I need our 4 pitchers to come on stage.
It makes it more exciting. It’s uncomfortable when they show the 5 people for Best Actor.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yes.
Jason Calacanis
You put those on the table. But wait, where’s my award? You guys have the award. Please bring me the extremely heterosexual alpha-male award.
Speaker 1
You’ll see why when I show you the award. Pass me this.
Jason Calacanis
Over a little more. All right. Bring me that award. Let me show you how we 3D-modeled this.
Speaker 2
No one wants to see this.
Jason Calacanis
Look at this. This is 2 men uncomfortably hugging. And the way we did this, it’s the best. Come here, Friedberg. I’ll show you. I’m not doing it with you.
Speaker 1
Come on, Friedberg.
David Friedberg
You do it tomorrow.
Jason Calacanis
Friedberg—okay, fine. He’s extremely comfortable.
Speaker 2
That’s David and me.
Jason Calacanis
It’s David and you. But let’s show them how we modeled this. We just did a long—
Speaker 1
This is uncomfortable. And we hold it for 5 extra seconds.
Jason Calacanis
At 2 minutes, you get the release of oxytocin. There it is.
Okay, gentlemen, this is it. Do you guys have the results? Go ahead.
Speaker 1
Audience award.
Jason Calacanis
Audience award. So, based on 150 votes from the audience, do I just go 4 to 1?
Speaker 2
4 to 1.
Jason Calacanis
4 to 1 is more exciting.
Fourth place, with 5% of the vote, was Kyle Samani.
Speaker 1
Okay. Well done on the board.
Jason Calacanis
A very close third place, with 21% of the vote, was Oleg Nodelman.
Speaker 2
Oh boy, we’re closing in here, guys. Very dramatic.
Jason Calacanis
And with 50%—who’s number 2?
Speaker 1
I’m going to go to you. No, you say number 1 now.
Jason Calacanis
Okay, okay.
Speaker 2
No, okay. Well, sorry. Yeah, you’re right.
Jason Calacanis
With 24% of the vote, in second place, Aaron Cowen for MGM.
Number 1, with 50% of the vote: Dan Dreyfus.
Speaker 1
Wow. Unbelievable. Give it up. Nicely done.
Jason Calacanis
Now, the bestie, though—
Speaker 2
Wait, hold on. Before we do the bestie, how do you feel right now having won this? Pass him the award. You guys look so uncomfortable. You guys are really— it’s very—
Jason Calacanis
But pass him his award for a second and let him hold it.
Speaker 1
Give it the Academy Award.
Jason Calacanis
Thank everybody. Tell them how you got to this place. Say a few words.
Speaker 2
I got my award. I got my tequila.
Speaker 1
Thank you.
Jason Calacanis
There you go. All right. Well done.
Okay, now—
Speaker 2
That’s the award. 4, 3, 2, 1.
Jason Calacanis
It’s relatively similar here. Fourth place was Kyle Samani.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Jason Calacanis
Third place was Oleg Nodelman. Second place was Dan Dreyfus. First place was Aaron Cowen. Big upset. Flip the audience vote.
Speaker 2
There you go.
Jason Calacanis
All right. So MGM wins.
Speaker 1
All right.
Jason Calacanis
Thanks, guys. This was amazing. All right, thank you all for participating.
Speaker 2
Thank you very much.
Jason Calacanis
Thank you so much for coming and we’ll see you next. I’m going all in.