Jason: All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the allin podcast. Episode 273. It's a huge week. Saxs is our show. We got to get Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.

Mark Benioff: I'm the only one left here. That's why that's how I made it on.

Jason: No software CEOs, right, to China.

Mark Benioff: There's no software uh CEOs in China.

Jason: Interesting. But did you get the invite? What's your what's your status with this administration because you were obviously very famous for, you know, being a Democrat on the left? Um, and What are you talking about? You donated to all these folks and now you're kind of in Trump's camp. What is it?

Mark Benioff: Listen, um, uh, the number one thing is, hey, I'm here to support the country. That's what I do. I'm not a Democrat or Republican. You're an independent. I'm an American.

Jason: Okay. I like it. Benioff got the invite to the two hottest tickets... All right. Well, we have a big docket here. The Trumpi summit has begun. That is the number one story right now after a two-month delay because of the war in Iran. This is the first visit to China since 2017. Seventh face-to-face meeting for Trump and President Xi... China agreed that the straight of Hormuz should remain open... On Taiwan, this is a little spicy. She warned that quote if handled poorly the two countries will collide or even clash... Poly market says Taiwan is safe for 2026 only 6% chance China invades this year... On trade, She committed to buy more soybeans, US oil, LNG, and 200 Boeing jets... Freedberg, you uh have been a bit obsessed with this relationship and the bipolar nature of it. What are your thoughts here?

Friedberg: I mean, she made comments in his uh opening remarks that it would be ideal if the United States and China could avoid the Thusidities trap... can the US and China avoid conflict and find a path to cooperation... perhaps there's a way that uh both societies, both countries can increase the quality of life for their people without taking it away from the other side. And in a world where you're more resource constrained or resource static, that becomes less possible... It seems like the perfect moment to say hey maybe the world can be more multipolar... Is there a way to kind of look at the next 30 years and ask the question, how do we all share proportionally in growing the pie and not find ourselves in a moment of conflict where we assume the pie is static?

Jason: Chimoth, why is Trump bringing all of these CEOs with him and what does success look like uh coming out of this meeting?

Chamath: I think that you find a resolution and a path forward with China through economic cooperation. It's the largest consumer economy in the world. It's still largely closed off. And so I think what this is was about bringing some amount of financial firepower with them so that they could start to penetrate that market... The fact that we're so different actually gives us a lot of room to find cooperation and not find conflict... the simplest and shest path to a no conflict dant with China is economic entanglement and it has to be birectional... behind closed doors they're probably just figuring out how to divide the pie.

Jason: Uh unpack that for a second. divide which pie the the globe the economy the the western hemisphere versus

Chamath: look China China still needs a lot of energy they also need a lot of critical technologies that America provides and so I think that there's a trade there... There are certain regions of the world where we want them to deescalate their participation in central South America... and then the second is probably in the Middle East...

Jason: They also uh Mark need customers... Tariffs obviously last year sticking it to China in a pretty hard way. the decoupling after COVID... Now, we're kind of saying, hey, let's come to the table and build connective tissue. So, sort that out for us on a business level.

Mark Benioff: Well, you heard it today from President Xi when he said he wants a wider door... We have our absolute best salespeople there. Not just our president... but also we've got Elon, we've got Jensen selling chips, Kelly Ortberg selling planes... Brian is selling soybeans... Each one is our best salesperson in this category and they're going to come back with orders... Don't forget, this isn't Trump's and she's first meeting. These guys really like each other... They have a sales orientation.

Jason: I have a question for you. Are you allowed to sell software in China?

Mark Benioff: Well with the right the Chinese have a lot of data residency laws. So uh you know we we do it is we don't have any offices or employees in China... We have an exclusive partnership with Alibaba... It's still your code, but then it resides in their servers for data residency stuff... It's the only place in the world that we do such a thing.

Jason: Yeah. And it has to be all the data has to be kept in China. All the data has to be accessible by the CCP. That's why it's so extraordinary. By the way, what Elon has, you know, Elon has Tesla in China, no partnership... notice how differential and respectful they are of each other. And here is these AI cars with all these cameras, Americanmade, you know, um Chinese factories driving around China.

Mark Benioff: I think Elon's the greatest salesman in the world.

Jason: I mean the cynical take on a chim would be they wanted him there and they wanted to study the company and the innovation and they have now become the biggest competitor uh with their EVs

Mark Benioff: I want one of those new BYD golf... with the doors that flip flip up... Gwing BYDs they have some cool cars have you seen those.

Jason: They're cool, but they're not safe... Uh would hollow out the entire automotive industry here if we had $20,000, $30,000 cars from China. It would be the end of the US automotive industry overnight.

Jason: Three, three hard questions, Mark. Uh, should we be selling them the latest chips? Yes or no? In your mind,

Mark Benioff: I think it's irrelevant at this point. I think that the Chinese models are as competitive as these US models and they've learned to make these models without having the highest end chips... We probably should just sell whatever we can at this point... the more economic cooperation and collaboration is better.

Jason: Freeberg, uh, your take on chips. Should we sell them latest chips?

Friedberg: I think it's inevitable that they get there... maybe Taiwan becomes less relevant to the US and to China as both China and the US um, mainland FAB... as they build out their own semiconductor capital equipment systems and their own fabs, does Taiwan really matter?... technology should be held to one uh side of the world and not given to the other side of the world is inevitably going to lead to conflict... Whereas if you let technology diffuse and proliferate, everyone benefits and conflict indices go down.

Chamath: we're 18 months from Taiwan not being an important moment of conversation the way it is today... number two, sell the chips. And the reason we should sell the chips is we want Nvidia to win. We do not want to give enough oxygen for Huawei to then all of a sudden emerge and have a version of a chip that works.

Jason: Mark, I'm going to give you the last word, but I'm going to force you to answer a hard question. China sets up a blockade around Taiwan and they decide they're taking it. Should the US defend it?

Mark Benioff: I've said this for years. I I don't agree with Neil Ferguson on that point. I think that this is a nonsense issue. I think China and Taiwan will reconcile.

Jason: All right. AI's impact on software rippling through the market. Mark, you're on the front lines here... Salesforce down a whopping 37% 90 billion in losses for you... the assumption mark is that AI is going to make it unnecessary for you to use Slack or Salesforce or HubSpot... what's your response to the fear the criticism and how are you managing this massive change internally?

Mark Benioff: You're right. It's the SAS apocalypse... the market software market's rerated. It happens every now and then... HubSpot. They're trading at two times sales. I've never seen that before... There's like, you know, a hypnosis around AI... What I tell my employees... is look, you can't get drunk on the stock price... Everything's going to be cheaper to make. It's more efficient... I am going to probably use $300 million of Enthropic this year at Salesforce coding.

Chamath: I think the low end of the market is basically finished. I think there there is no safe space. I think the high end of the market where Mark operates... is quite safe... Eventually, Jason, the next trade that has to happen is when the public markets become a little bit less breathless about AI and they ask one simple question. Okay, guys, you've spent $3 trillion in the last four years. What is the ROI of these tokens?

Jason: Breaking news. I want to get everybody's take on this. Open AAI in a breaking news story is considering suing Apple over their Chat GPT partnership... Apple chat GPT integration within Siri requires users to specifically say chat GPT to get results... they're annoyed that OpenAI... recruited their design guru, Johnny IV.

Mark Benioff: Listen, what has happened?... Enthropic was right... everybody's like, "Whoa, where did Enthropic go?" Oh, whoa, they're way up there... Coding agents. Everybody focus, focus... Pedal plus whisper flow and talking. There is no cans on keyboard anymore.

Jason: mirror Mrage [Mira Murati] released thinking machines new real time world... Apple at the same time has patented putting cameras into your AirPods... these persistent hardware devices the watch the earpieces are going to know your entire reality... that will 1,000x the need for tokens if people are doing this for 8 hours a day.

Mark Benioff: it's one small step for man one giant leap towards AGI... multiensory models are the next big wave for AI... I think we're wasting a lot of these tokens... there needs to be some intermediary layer layer that's saying oh oh that one has to go to enthropic but these ones can handle by smaller models... the edge and the cloud are going to come together.

Friedberg: This science corner is about the dreaded El Nino season that is coming up... temperatures that might be 4° above normal... The reason is the oceans are the battery of weather... 11 million extra terowatt hours of energy is currently stored up. That's 500 years worth of human energy... over the next few months, that energy is going to be released... agriculture failure... major kind of economic crisis that starts to emerge.

Jason: This is [ __ ] scary... Mark, thanks for coming on the program.

Mark Benioff: the best decision I ever made... when I started Salesforce we put 1% of our equity 1% of our profit and 1% of all of our employees time into a foundation... My best friend. Bestie... Susan Wjeki [Wojcicki] tragically died... She was a star. The best... I have an altar in my office... I think of her every single day.

Jason: Well said. Rest in peace, Susan Waki. All right. We'll see you all next time on the podcast.