Chamath Palihapitiya blames the Fed for ‘perverted’ market conditions that benefited him
Chamath Palihapitiya
Olivia Michael | CNBC
Billionaire investor and so-called SPAC King Chamath Palihapitiya said the zero interest rates the Federal Reserve allowed to persist for years created the “perverted” market conditions he benefited from at the height of the Covid pandemic.
Speaking with Axios at an event Wednesday, Palihapitiya explained what he felt contributed to the rapid rise and collapse of the SPAC market, the shorthand for special purpose acquisition companies, which created a way for young firms to go public without some of the usual IPO hurdles. SPACs, which grew in popularity in the first two years of the pandemic, have seen a reset amid economic and regulatory headwinds. Still, there are more than 450 deals on the market for a merger target ahead of 2023 deadlines, according to SPAC Research.
The former Facebook executive and CEO of Social Capital has helped several companies go public via SPACs, including Virgin Galactic, from which he later sold his personal stake before stepping down from the board. Earlier this month he closed two SPACs after failing to find merger targets in time.
“We are learning what went wrong, which is that we had a decade-plus of zero interest rates,” Palihapitiya said of the market. “That is what fundamentally was wrong. It perverted the market. It distorted reality. It allowed manias and asset bubbles to build in every single part of the economy.”
Low interest rates mean lower returns on savings accounts, which can encourage more spending in the economy, which can be a boon for high-growth assets.
Palihapitiya said the “free money” given by the central bank resulted in a “misallocation of risk,” which led many people to misprice the risk of their investments.
Still, Palihapitiya pushed back on the idea that SPACs were hit harder than other assets, including tech stocks.
“When you provide free money into a system, manias will build and these manias are broad-based,” he said. “And now that we’ve taken money out of the system, these manias will end, and you will find the market-clearing price for a lot of securities. And I think that that’s a healthy process. But I think it’s unfair to just look at one asset class.”
Now that interest rates are rising again, Palihapitiya said, “The biggest thing that I learned was how much of my early success was probably not attributable to myself. So on the same way that I sort of blame Jay Powell for zero interest rates, I think I massively benefited from Powell, and Bernanke and Janet Yellen before,” he said, referencing past Fed chairs.
“We have actually had a massive tail wind because we had a zero interest rate environment that allowed us to raise unbelievable amounts of money from investors who frankly had very few other alternatives because interest rates were zero,” he said. “And what it allowed us to do was crowd into companies. Many of those companies had unbelievable valuations. Eventually these unprofitable businesses went public and only now are we starting to sort out what are good and what are not so good businesses.”
— CNBC’s Yun Li contributed to this report.
WATCH: Chamath Palihapitiya unwinds two SPACs, cites high valuations and market volatility
Vice Chair and President at Microsoft, Brad Smith, participates in the first day of Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, on November 12, 2024. The largest technology conference in the world this year has 71,528 attendees from 153 countries and 3,050 companies, with AI emerging as the most represented industry. (Photo by Rita Franca/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Microsoft plans to spend $80 billion in fiscal 2025 on the construction of data centers that can handle artificial intelligence workloads, the company said in a Friday blog post.
Over half of the expected AI infrastructure spending will take place in the U.S., Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith wrote. Microsoft’s 2025 fiscal year ends in June.
“Today, the United States leads the global AI race thanks to the investment of private capital and innovations by American companies of all sizes, from dynamic start-ups to well-established enterprises,” Smith said. “At Microsoft, we’ve seen this firsthand through our partnership with OpenAI, from rising firms such as Anthropic and xAI, and our own AI-enabled software platforms and applications.”
Several top-tier technology companies are rushing to spend billions on Nvidia graphics processing units for training and running AI models. The fast spread of OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant, which launched in late 2022, kicked off the AI race for companies to deliver their own generative AI capabilities. Having invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, Microsoft provides cloud infrastructure to the startup and has incorporated its models into Windows, Teams and other products.
Microsoft reported $20 billion in capital expenditures and assets acquired under finance leases worldwide, with $14.9 billion spent on property and equipment, in the first quarter of fiscal 2025. Capital expenditures will increase sequentially in the fiscal second quarter, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said in October.
The company’s revenue from Azure and other cloud services grew 33% year over year, with 12 percentage points of that growth stemming from AI services.
Smith called on President-elect Donald Trump‘s incoming administration to protect the country’s leadership in AI through education and the promotion of U.S. AI technologies abroad.
“China is starting to offer developing countries subsidized access to scarce chips, and it’s promising to build local AI data centers,” Smith wrote. “The Chinese wisely recognize that if a country standardizes on China’s AI platform, it likely will continue to rely on that platform in the future.”
He added, “The best response for the United States is not to complain about the competition but to ensure we win the race ahead. This will require that we move quickly and effectively to promote American AI as a superior alternative.”
Technology
Meta replaces Global Affairs President Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan ahead of Trump inauguration
Facebook vice president of global public policy Joel Kaplan and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leave the Elysee Presidential Palace after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on May 23, 2018 in Paris, France.
Chesnot | Getty Images
Facebook parent Meta is replacing President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, the company’s current policy vice president and a former Republican party staffer.
The shake up comes three weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, and it’s the latest sign of how tech companies are positioning themselves for a new administration in Washington.
Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister, said he is stepping down, citing the new year as the right time to move on. He’ll be replaced by Kaplan, who will take on the title of Chief Global Affairs Officer.
Kaplan was a staffer under former President George W. Bush, and he appeared at the NYSE with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Trump in December. He also attended Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in 2018 as a personal friend, causing a controversy for the social media company.
“I will look forward to spending a few months handing over the reins — and to representing the company at a number of international gatherings in Q1 of this year,” Clegg wrote in a memo to his staff that he shared on Facebook on Thursday.
Clegg joined the company in 2018 after a career in British politics with the Liberal Democrats party, and he helped Meta navigate incredible scrutiny, especially over the company’s influence on elections and its efforts to control harmful content. Clegg also helped steer the company through the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Facebook shared user data with third-party political consultants. He also represented the company in Washington and London, frequently at panels for artificial intelligence and at congressional hearings.
“My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector,” Clegg wrote.
In his note, Clegg said that former Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin would replace Kaplan as Meta’s vice president of global policy. He mentioned that Kaplan would work closely with David Ginsburg, the company’s vice president of global communications and public affairs.
“Nick: I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for Meta and the world these past seven years,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. You “built a strong team to carry this work forward. I’m excited for Joel to step into this role next given his deep experience and insight leading our policy work for many years.”
Semafor first reported the news.
WATCH: Meta: Here’s why Rosenblatt Securities has set a price target of $811 for the stock
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