Trump Vs Harris On Tech & The Economy?

TECH IN THE NEWS

Oracle Unloads — Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway sold another $36.1B in stocks (including Apple) and bought a mere $1.5B worth of shares in Q3.

AI Fights Back — Microsoft and VC firm Andreesen Horowitz join forces to fight on behalf of startups for AI regulations that don’t ‘stifle innovation’.

Fraud Denied — The Supreme Court is set to consider separate bids by Facebook and Nvidia - to fend off federal securities fraud lawsuits.

Nuclear Block — Energy regulators rejected both AWS and Meta’s proposed nuclear power expansion for AI data centers over cost and reliability concerns, however Microsoft’s plan will proceed as planned.

Perplexing — Perplexity launched an AI-powered election info hub to answer questions & track votes live. Its CEO also just offered its services to replace striking NYT journalists.

COMPANIES TO WATCH

$40B Valuation — Elon Musk’s xAI is in talks to raise more money at $40B, nearly double its last $6B round that included Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Valor Equity Partners, a Saudi Prince, and the Mubadala-backed UAE AI investment firm, MGX.

Physical Intelligence — The San Fran startup seeks to create a foundational brain for robots. It just raised $400M led by Jeff Bezos, Thrive and Lux, joined by OpenAI at a valuation of around $2B pre-money.

UBS Asset Management — The Swiss bank’s asset management unit is launching its first investment fund, a money market fund trading on the Ethereum blockchain.

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THE HOTTEST THING IN TECH
What a Trump or Harris Administration Could Mean for Technology and the Economy?

Preparing for Today

As of now, according to prediction markets, Donald Trump appears slightly favored to clinch the electoral college. With that said, Nate Silver’s aggregation of national polls shows Kamala Harris slightly ahead of Donald Trump. Ultimately, the election is predicated on electoral college votes—so keep an eye on those swing state numbers, particularly Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The election will almost certainly be decided by these states alone.

The first official polls will close at 6pm EST.

The Economy

There are a few key economic issues voters have at the top of their minds going into tonight’s election.

• Inflation and cost of living: Despite a promising inflation pullback under Biden, high prices for essentials like food and housing are straining household budgets. Voters are attuned to Trump’s “America first” philosophy, along with Kamala’s promise to implement a new economic plan.

• Housing affordability: Escalating housing costs have become a critical issue, with many Americans struggling to afford rent or purchase homes. Both candidates have proposed policies to address this.

• Federal debt: With high interest rates and ~$36T in national debt, voters are concerned about our country’s ability to service debt while enacting effective fiscal policy. At a conservative 3% weighted-average interest rate, we’ll be paying over $1T a year to maintain our debt without defaulting, a cost exceeding our military spend, which is already 10x higher than Russia’s.

• Labor market dynamics: Wage stagnation, job quality, and workforce participation are heavy influences on voter sentiment. While Trump’s border policy hits well with voters concerned about safety, Harris has argued it will affect businesses reliant on undocumented labor. Voters will have to decide if the gut punch of higher labor costs is worth the legal compliance and associated safety benefits.

Antitrust

Pro-Harris VCs like Vinod Khosla and Reid Hoffman, (a Microsoft board member), have called on her to replace the FTC’s aggressively-antitrust Lina Khan. These VCs argue that Khan's policies are hindering M&A deals, which they argue helps larger companies become more efficient. So VCs, who traditionally supported disruptive innovation, are now siding with large tech monopolies and fighting the FTCs efforts to advance competition. Nate Loewentheil, founder and managing partner of Commonweal Ventures, wrote in the NYT that the VCs true interest is to protect their investments, as firms now rely heavily on selling startups to big tech companies. 

Trump will also likely be faced by the same issue with VCs and big tech, which will limit his ability to act on big tech. However, the 2023 merger guidelines put in place by the Biden administration may be rescinded under a Trump administration as they are viewed negatively by many businesses.

In a nearly four-hour discussion on the largest direct platform in human history, JD Vance explained his antitrust positions to Joe Rogan, including his support for breaking up Google.

The topic is complicated to say the least. Questions of whether the sum of Google’s parts is equivalent to Google itself preclude shareholders from supporting a break-up. Many argue that Google’s breakthrough research developments, ex. AlphaFold, are only possible due to the free cash flow generated by one of the greatest business models in history. With that said, the study on the consumer stickiness of search-competing AI solutions like Perplexity and ChatGPT Search is ongoing, indicating it’s the wrong time to adjudicate Google’s dominance. The same goes for Nvidia, as the computational demands for AI services blow open a market for alternative chipsets, enticing disruptors like Groq and Cerebras.

Foreign Policy

Voters are concerned about the United States’ involvement in foreign affairs, and want to minimize the loss of life and economic value across conflicts. Neither candidate has unveiled a concrete plan to resolving the Russia-Ukraine or Israel-Palestine debacles, though Trump did promise to “end the Russia-Ukraine war before being inaugurated.”

Both candidates are openly pro-Israel despite the fact this has lost Harris a lot of support from the left and youth votes, as well as Muslim Americans. The expected behaviors of both candidates on Israel is unclear going into tonight’s election. The candidates’ starkest difference in defense policy lies in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Kamala Harris unequivocally supporting continuing the war and Donald Trump arguing for a withdrawal of Ukrainian support—negotiating the end of the war, with concessions. Neither position is invalid; the voters will decide tonight.

Overall

This election campaign has been a dramatic, tumultuous saga. Yet it all comes down to one day. Both candidates have stated their cases, and voters are armed with the information needed to make the decisions right for them.

Regardless of who wins, our country has a bright future empowered by a generational wave of innovation.

Every major news outlet, and many independent journalists, will be tallying the election results live. 📺️ 🇺🇸 

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TRENDING TOOLS AND BUZZY TECH
Tools

Microsoft —  1. Copilot Vision browser view coming ‘very soon’. | 2. Recall delayed again over Privacy concerns.

Decart x Etched — Oasis AI model generates playable video games IRT.

Google — ‘Grounding with Google Search’ integrates real-time search into models.

Salesforce — Event-driven API tool enables enterprise AI agents with real-time data.

AI Agent Store — Discover and list AI Agents for every use case.

Tech

Robotics — 1. Nvidia system generates robot training demos. | 2. MIT LLM -inspired method teaches robots new skills. | 3. Meta gives robots human-like touch.

China — 5,000 metric ton-heavy tunnel boring machine is largest ever.

Quantum Machines — ML gets closer to an error-corrected quantum computer.

Nanobodies - Study finds them superior to antibodies for cancer vaccine targeting.

Nasa — Voyager 1 phones home from 15 billion miles away after 50 years off radar.

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