🕶️ Sam’s IPO dreams, Bezos’ layoffs

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Vinod Khosla, billionaire venture capitalist and founder of Khosla Ventures, proposed that the U.S. government take a 10% stake in all public corporations and redistribute that wealth to citizens, inspired by President Trump’s similar move with Intel. Khosla, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, argued that as AI drives massive productivity and deflation, such bold measures are needed to maintain social stability and share the benefits of artificial intelligence equitably.

Comparing the idea to universal basic income but rooted in public ownership, he acknowledged the controversy but said “extreme ideas” are necessary in the face of AI-driven job disruption. He noted that while AI will eliminate many current roles, it also creates opportunities for startups to build tools across industries, adding that manual labor like assembly-line work or farming represents “servitude to survival” that humans should move beyond.

Pensions were built like a pyramid—and we’re running out of people to stack on the bottom. In this video, we break down the math behind Social Security, rising retirement ages, and the collapsing pension systems in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Why isn’t the system working anymore? What happens when retirees outnumber workers? And is there any hope for our generation to retire?

OpenAI just pulled off its long-awaited transformation—a for-profit company nested inside a nonprofit foundation, like Russian dolls with term sheets. The structure keeps the foundation in charge of mission and safety while freeing the company to raise major capital and eye a public listing. It marks the end of the capped-profit era and the start of a hybrid model—mission lock on top, growth engine below. For founders, it’s a new blueprint for frontier labs, reshaping power dynamics with partners, talent, and the pace of innovation. Read more.