Can the AI Industry Regulate Itself? Stripe Wants PayPal, China Catches Up, NY Bans Datacenters
Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, David Friedberg
18 Jul 20266 min read1h 45m
TL;DR
Demis Hassabis proposed a FINRA-style self-regulatory body for AI, winning endorsements from Elon, Sam Altman, and Sundar Pichai — but David Sacks warns it only works under five strict conditions, and risks becoming a 'stepping stone' to Dario Amodei's far more restrictive 'FAA for AI.' Meanwhile, Stripe, Block, and Advent are jointly bidding ~$53B for PayPal, which Chamath sees as the seed of a Visa/Mastercard competitor built on stablecoin rails.
Key Moments
David Sacks
“Dario calls it an FAA for AI. The government does not have the expertise to evaluate AI models. The criteria are changing too rapidly. you're going to very rapidly end up with a queue where all the models would be waiting to get tested and it would start with a month-long delay. It would end up being many months and we would just lose the AI race.”
Sacks explaining why a government-run AI approval body would be disastrous compared to an industry SRO
“for an entirely new aircraft design, it takes 5 to 9 years to get the certification. And if you merely want to amend a certificate, I guess for you know major changes or I'm not even sure how major the changes need to be, it takes three to five years.”
Sacks detailing what an 'FAA for AI' would actually mean in practice, using real FAA certification timelines
“if my choices are between FAA for AI or what I would call the DMV for AI, I would much rather go for Demis' SRO for AI, the self-regulatory approach. But we really have to keep it honest and pure because again otherwise it'll just be the opening bid in a coming new wave of regulation.”
Sacks summarizing his conditional support for Hassabis's proposal while warning about what comes next
“AI giant Anthropic is pursuing a strategy of oneupmanship that encourages states to impose increasingly tougher AI guard rails rather than a line around a single set of regulations.”
Sacks reading from a Politico article alleging Anthropic is deliberately ratcheting up state-level AI regulation
“you are creating a competitor to Visa and Mastercard because you now have upwards of 6 or 700 million accounts. You have massive stable coin infrastructure. You have all of the riskmanagement infrastructure that Stripe has built over the last 15 or 20 years.”
Chamath explaining what the Stripe-Block-Advent-PayPal combination could become if the deal closes
All-In is a weekly podcast hosted by Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg — four friends and investors who discuss tech, business, and politics. Known for unfiltered debate and insider perspectives, the show has become one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley. The hosts collectively represent backgrounds spanning venture capital, startups, government, and science.
Takeaways
1
AI-native operators are hunting stalled legacy internet businesses Stripe/PayPal and Ryan Cohen's eBay bid represent an emerging playbook: AI-native operators identify first-generation digital businesses that are no longer founder-led, have stalled growth, and haven't leveraged AI, then acquire and revitalize them. Bending Spoons (AOL, Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer) is the already-public proof of concept for this roll-up strategy.
2
SRO beats government agency — five conditions required David Sacks conditionally endorses Hassabis's FINRA-style AI self-regulatory body over a government agency, but only if it includes broad industry representation (not just top labs), covers only frontier models, focuses solely on catastrophic risks like cyber and CBRN, starts voluntary, and explicitly substitutes for — not adds to — new regulatory structures. Without those guardrails, it becomes a vehicle for regulatory capture.
3
Anthropic is deliberately ratcheting state AI rules A Politico investigation found Anthropic is running a state-by-state strategy that makes regulations progressively stricter with each new state, rather than converging on a single national framework. Sacks argues this is classic regulatory capture: use fear-mongering to invite regulation, then use each state win as a stepping stone toward the FAA-style federal control Dario Amodei has repeatedly called for.
4
Stripe-Block-PayPal deal targets Visa and Mastercard Chamath argues the real strategic logic of the ~$53B joint bid is to assemble 600–700M consumer accounts, Bridge and PYUSD stablecoin infrastructure, and Stripe's 15-year risk-management stack into a new payment network that can compete with Visa and Mastercard on near-zero-cost rails. Advent provides the capital; Stripe would likely operate PayPal post-close.
5
FAA certification timelines would kill US AI lead A new airplane type certification takes 5–9 years under the FAA; even amending an existing certificate takes 3–5 years. Applied to AI, where frontier models ship every few months, a permission-based regime would hand China an insurmountable lead — China will not abide by those rules. This is why Sacks treats 'FAA for AI' as an existential threat, not a reasonable safety proposal.
6
Regulatory concessions invite more regulation, not stability Sacks warns that companies offering voluntary compliance to governments rarely achieve a stable equilibrium — the government takes the concession and returns for more, ratcheting up control until the industry is fully regulated. For AI, the SRO only works as a true substitute with preemption written into law; otherwise it is simply 'the opening bid.'