Bill Bold

I cancelled my World Cup tickets. The ICE may decide that I am a gang member, and I'll be locked in prison for a year with no charges, no hearing, no trial, no right to consult a lawyer, no phone call. The US is not safe to visit.

SF and NYC will remain tech and finance capitals. Despite a few billionaires moving. Here’s why. For Austin to replace SF as the tech capital, it would need to capture the majority of US venture funding. In 2025, the Bay Area raised over $140 billion in VC. All of Texas raised roughly $12 billion. That’s a 12:1 ratio, and it got worse this year, not better. The gap accelerated in the wrong direction for Sacks’ thesis. The Bay Area’s share of US venture capital hit 45% in 2025, up from 31% historically. AI drove everything, and AI lives in San Francisco. The Bay Area alone captured $122 billion in AI funding in 2025, more than three-quarters of all US AI investment. OpenAI raised $40 billion in a single round in Q1. Anthropic expanded to 330,000 square feet downtown. xAI is headquartered there. At the close of 2025, OpenAI is valued at $500 billion and Anthropic at $183 billion. Those two companies alone captured 14% of all global venture investment this year. Both are in San Francisco. 49% of Big Tech engineers live in the Bay Area. That density compounds. Miami’s finance story is similar. Yes, Citadel moved. Yes, hedge funds like the tax arbitrage. But a few billionaires relocating their personal residences doesn’t move the infrastructure that makes a financial capital. Ken Griffin can run Citadel from Miami. He still needs prime brokers, counterparties, legal teams, and regulators who operate on New York time. JPMorgan alone manages $4.1 trillion from Park Avenue. Florida’s entire money management industry runs about $300 billion. That’s the gap. The billionaire moves make headlines because they’re individuals making individual choices. But financial systems aren’t networks of individuals. They’re networks of institutions. The reason Wall Street has been Wall Street for 200 years isn’t because bankers love the weather. It’s because when you need to close a $50 billion deal, everyone you need is within a 10-block radius. Same dynamic in tech. Elon moved Tesla’s HQ to Austin. Tesla’s AI and Autopilot teams are still in Palo Alto. The manufacturing went to Texas. The brains stayed in California. Will Miami and Austin grow? They’ve been growing for a decade. But Sacks is predicting replacement, not growth. And for that to happen, you’d need the entire ecosystem to relocate, not just the people who already made their money and want lower taxes. The founders building the next $100 billion companies aren’t optimizing for state income tax. They’re optimizing for talent, capital, and customers. All three are still concentrated exactly where they’ve been.

Folks in tech do not appreciate that the entire country is polarized against tech. Bernie wants a data center ban, and Bannon seems close to calling a Butlerian jihad. The only thing AI seems to offer most Americans is job loss and more billions for billionaires. We need a better story! A better story about how AI is good for America that we both believe and will see through. People do not care about competition with China when they can’t afford a house and healthcare is bankrupting them. If you are in tech it is part of your job to help address some of these concerns in society. If you want our industry to flourish, and you earnestly believe we will be better off in 5 years by embracing AI, you need to start showing ordinary people a reason to believe you and quickly.

We've entered the post-news era. Your reality — how you see the world — is no longer defined by "the news." Instead, it's shaped by the videos you watch, the podcasts you listen to, the people you follow on social media and know in person, and the reporting you consume. axios.com/2025/12/16/axi…

Apartheid was a violent legal system that stripped Black South Africans of citizenship, land, movement, education, and skilled work. Today’s redress policies are not “anti-white laws.” Equating the two is historically illiterate, morally bankrupt, and deliberately dishonest.

Donald Trump is in poor physical health.

@JakeBold2 get in line

As fired up as humanly possible

This is a clear sign that Cal is all in on football, with unprecedented donor support and alumni enthusiasm, and Ron Rivera directing the program as GM—with full alignment under Chancellor Rich Lyons

Sheeeeeeeee-it! Now I understand why we don't have full self-driving yet.

When I was 22 years old, I commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy and swore an oath to the Constitution. I upheld that oath through flight school, multiple deployments on the USS Midway, 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, test pilot school, four space shuttle flights at NASA, and every day since I retired – which I did after my wife Gabby was shot in the head while serving her constituents. In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much. Secretary Hegseth’s tweet is the first I heard of this. I also saw the President’s posts saying I should be arrested, hanged, and put to death. If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. — The New Yorker

FINAL: Princeton 3, Harvard 0 The Tigers earn a 3-0 (25-20, 25-21, 25-15) sweep of Harvard and clinch at least a share of the Ivy title! 🔗: tinyurl.com/2am2ox5o #NCAAWVB

This is mass murder on a scale we haven't seen in generations. Trump did this. Musk did this. The SCOTUS that allowed these cuts to congressionally mandated programs and an acquiescent @GOP did this. It's sickening. newyorker.com/culture/the-ne…

Reagan valued immigration, supported trade and despised tariffs, and promoted democracy abroad. On these three issues,Trump has the exact opposite policies.

The new right groans under the weight of its nostalgia for a nation that did not exist. It pines for a story that vindicates its reactionary rage. And in writing about a false enemy that destroyed a fake past, Andrews and the many other architects of the right-wing gender wars are committing the very sins they attribute to the enemies they detest. nytimes.com/2025/10/23/opi…

Let’s open our eyes. This isn’t a functioning democracy any longer when - in the middle of a high stakes funding fight - the President illegally suspends federal projects in states run by Democrats as a way to punish the political opposition.

"Donald Trump is a vulgar bigot and a reprehensible human being. He is unworthy to serve in any high office in this country, let alone its highest. Just because he’s acted this way before doesn’t mean we should let it go unremarked upon." thebulwark.com/p/trumps-ai-br…

TikTok just removed this video about Kash Patel being paid by Russian propagandist, Igor Lopatonok. They claim it "violated their Community Guidelines."

Where has all the leadership gone?  If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?  The “suspending indefinitely” of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC's aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation.  Maybe the Constitution should have said, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except in one’s political or financial self-interest.” By-the-way, for the record, this ex-CEO finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny.