All-In

Elon's Anthropic Deal, The Next AI Monopoly?, "FDA for AI" Panic, Trading the AI Boom

with Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and Brad Gerstner
9 May 2026 18 min read 2h 15m
TL;DR

Elon's deal to lease Colossus 1 to Anthropic transforms the AI landscape: it solves Anthropic's compute constraints while creating Elon Web Services (EWS) as a third hyperscaler competing with AWS and Azure. Anthropic is now on an exponential 10x revenue growth trajectory that could make it the most valuable company in history—but this raises hard monopoly questions about whether regulatory guardrails are needed before one AI lab dominates.

Key Moments
Chamath Palihapitiya
“Anthropic and OpenAI's revenue performance has nothing to do with demand. Zero. It is entirely to do with the supply constraints that exist in data centers and specifically in power.”
Explaining why Anthropic's explosive revenue growth is constrained by compute, not market demand
▶ 6:14
Brad Gerstner
“I estimate that this is going to generate in this year an incremental 45 billion dollars of revenue on top of what I have seen analyst estimates in the mid-20s.”
Brad quantifies the revenue upside from Elon Web Services leasing capacity to Anthropic and others
▶ 9:43
David Sacks
“I'm saying something else, which is that unless something about their current trajectory changes, Anthropic will be the most powerful monopoly ever created in human history.”
Sacks makes the bold claim that Anthropic's 10x growth rate, if sustained, creates unprecedented monopoly dynamics
▶ 16:22
David Sacks
“John D. Rockefeller, he wasn't very good at PR. He was terrible at PR. Everyone sort of recognized how ruthless he is... imagine if John D. Rockefeller was way better at public relations.”
Sacks uses the Rockefeller monopoly as a thought experiment to warn about how PR and safety regulations can obscure consolidation
▶ 28:20
Brad Gerstner
“you of all people should know we've got the best competition in AI on the planet, which is why we're at the frontier and kicking the tail of everybody else on the planet.”
Brad pushes back on Sacks' monopoly framing, arguing healthy AI competition is driving U.S. dominance
▶ 30:49
About the show
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All-In is a weekly podcast featuring four prominent tech investors and entrepreneurs discussing the biggest stories in technology, business, and culture. The hosts bring deep expertise in venture capital, startups, and market trends, offering contrarian takes on everything from AI monopolies to regulatory capture.
Takeaways
1
Elon Web Services flips the AI infrastructure game By leasing Colossus 1 to Anthropic, Elon converts excess data center capacity into a $45B+ revenue stream while positioning SpaceX as a third hyperscaler. This sidesteps xAI's revenue problem (expensive training, no immediate products) and lets Elon subsidize Grok development with profits from Anthropic, Google, and others—a playbook that mirrors AWS's role in bankrolling Amazon's other bets.
2
Anthropic's 10x growth compounds into monopoly dynamics Growing from $10B to $30B to $44B ARR in four months, Anthropic is on track to hit ~$100B ARR by year-end and potentially $1T by 2027. At that scale and growth rate, network effects and first-mover advantage in coding AI create winner-take-most dynamics—but unlike traditional tech monopolies, this one controls the frontier model powering all downstream AI applications.
3
Regulatory framing risks hiding competitive consolidation Sacks warns that safety-focused regulation (an 'FDA for AI') can become political cover for monopoly formation, using the Rockefeller precedent: strict safety standards sound pro-consumer but entrench the leader who can afford compliance. The real risk isn't bad AI—it's one lab controlling 80%+ of the most important technology before antitrust has time to act.