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All-In Podcast

Bill Ackman: Here's What the Market is MISSING

29m · Transcribed via assemblyai · Watch on YouTube

Bill Ackman (Pershing Square, ~**$25B AUM**) on All-In. The throughline — and the answer to the title — is a **mispricing call on the quality megacaps**: while short-term capital crowds into *'the new new thing… chips and semiconductors and energy,'* the durable compounders get left for dead. **Ackman owns Microsoft, Meta and Amazon and says they are 'undervalued' / 'really cheap,'** drawing the 2000 analogy where *'Berkshire Hathaway traded at the lowest valuation I think it ever traded at in its history'* as the dot-com crowd dumped *'old stuff.'* This is the **direct inverse of [Dan Loeb's 'SOX is up 40%' regime call](/issues/2026-05-31) and [Gerstner's semis/memory cohort](/issues/2026-05-31)** — same tape, opposite trade. He times it to a recent table-pound: *'stocks just got crazy cheap… of really high quality companies.'* On the **private-AI complex** (the cohort theme this week — [OpenAI's Sarah Friar](/issues/2026-06-07), [Laffont's $4T IPO wave](/issues/2026-06-07)), Ackman underwrites **SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir 'as venture'** — *'people, opportunity, context, deal'* — noting they're *'not seed or series A… they're D or E.'* He's **personally in an xAI/SpaceX SPV** (via Ron Baron) and flags **SpaceX at a 'trillion / 750 billion'** valuation as plausibly *'the lowest cost of capital equity transaction in the history of the world.'* The bear note on OpenAI is precise and rhymes with the [ROI-reckoning thread](/issues/2026-05-31): the model is *'spending, making capital commitments… massively in excess of revenues,'* a *'degree of difficulty I would say is hard.'* On the **SaaS apocalypse** he bifurcates — *'I worry more about a salesforce'* and niche **$30k-a-seat** software than Microsoft at *'50 bucks a seat.'* On AI ROI he is blunt — every CEO's **number-one** worry, the McKinsey *'95% of enterprise initiatives fail'* stat goes unchallenged, and Pershing's own use is just *'legal… compliance, back office'*: *'we're still super, super early.'* The structural project is **Howard Hughes as 'Berkshire 2.0'** — a **$4B market cap** real-estate holding being recapitalised *'within the next week or so'* into an insurance compounder (float in treasuries, surplus in equities) with a stated **trillion-dollar** ambition.

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What's interesting about markets is people always bring their eye to the new new thing. And the new new thing is sort of chips and semiconductors and energy. And that's where, you know, the shorter term capital is going. What tends to happen is really high quality things get left behind.

Bill Ackman · 6:01

I was there in 2000 in that sort of bubble. This is different. I'm not saying this is, but there's some analogies and the analogies are people got excited about Internet stocks and Berkshire Hathaway traded at the lowest valuation I think it ever traded at in its history. As people said, okay, that's all old stuff. I think a similar thing is happening today in a sense to Amazon and Meta, Microsoft.

Bill Ackman · 6:01

Stocks just got crazy cheap, just incredibly cheap of really high quality companies, right?

Bill Ackman · 10:23

I think you underwrite a SpaceX the way you underwrite a venture capital investment.

Bill Ackman · 11:19

What's helpful is they're not seed or series A. Right. They're D or E, but they're still like venture investments. These companies have proven they can generate a lot of revenues.

Bill Ackman · 13:13

You get a company that's spending, making capital commitments, they're massively in excess of, you know, revenues. And how do you do that and get, you know, it's degree of difficulty, I would say is hard.

Bill Ackman · 13:13

I think there have been sort of monopolistic type profit taking off of customers. When someone had a kind of a niche software product, they're charging, you know, 30,000 a year or something like this. I think those companies are really at risk. You know, Microsoft, when the average customer is paying, I don't know, 50 bucks a seat or some small number, that platform is worth a lot more.

Bill Ackman · 6:57

The company's got like a $4 billion market cap and the goal is to build it into a trillion dollar thing over time.

Bill Ackman · 22:11

If SpaceX goes public at a trillion $750 billion, it'd probably be the lowest cost of capital, equity capital transaction in the history of the world.

Bill Ackman · 23:10

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