David Sacks Drops Data to Back it Up [WATCH]

Venture capital investors David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and Jason Calacanis pointed to recent economic data as evidence that the United States may be entering a new period of rapid growth, citing strong GDP numbers, job creation, and major investment tied to artificial intelligence.

“I got to say, on all this economic data, I think we’re kind of missing the lead here, which is we are at the beginning of an economic boom,” Sacks said.

He referenced GDP growth from the latter half of last year, noting that growth exceeded 4% in the third quarter and 5% in the fourth quarter.

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He also cited the January jobs report.

“Again, we saw it in the GDP growth rates in q3 and q4 last year, over 4% q3 over 5% q4 we just had a January job report where the economy added 172,000 new private sector jobs. This blew away the expectation, which was around 70,000 at the same time, the government shed 42,000 jobs. The net of this was to bring the unemployment rate down to 4.3%,” Sacks said.

He added that job growth was particularly strong in construction, including non-residential construction tied to data centers and AI infrastructure.

“You’re seeing a lot of jobs being created in construction, especially non residential construction, has to do with the data centers, the AI boom, that’s going on, 33,000 new construction jobs in January,” he said.

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Sacks also pointed to job trends during President Trump’s second term.

“You’ve seen in President Trump’s second term, you’ve had 615,000 new private sector jobs has been created while, again, like we talked about, over 300,000 government jobs have been cut, which increases the productivity of the economy, and it does what Secretary Bessent says, which is reprivatized the economy,” he said.

He argued that investment in artificial intelligence would further drive growth.

“There’s a new chart showing that the capex for this year that’s expected just from the four leading hyperscalers is $600 billion just from four companies. That’s a roughly 2% tailwind to GDP growth right there,” Sacks said.

“That is just the capex that doesn’t include all the ROI that you might get from that infrastructure on the software side, on the application side, the productivity side.”

Sacks suggested that negative commentary was overshadowing broader economic gains.

“So we have a boom going on. And I feel like everyone’s kind of black pilling about this,” he said, referencing critics focused on “…CBO report that has unrealistically low growth rates.”

Chamath Palihapitiya agreed with the assessment.

“I agree,” Palihapitiya said.

He added, “We’re going to print 6%.”

Sacks compared the current environment to the late 1990s.

“And I just think, when we look back on this period, it could end up being a little bit like the late 90s. Remember when we had, you know, we look back on the late 90s, we’re like, Wow, we had, like, phenomenal economic growth,” he said.

Jason Calacanis responded, “Golden Age.”

“Golden Age,” Sacks repeated, adding that public discourse at the time focused on political controversy rather than economic performance.

Jason Calacanis said the recent improvement in unemployment figures reinforced the broader trend.

“I think you’re correct. And just in terms of the hand wringing comment, anytime a statistic is 10-15% I highlight it. I wouldn’t use hand wringing. I would just say we generally look at that. When we went from 4.1% which is where Trump inherited it, went up to 4.5 it’s about a 10% increase in one year. If that trend were to continue, that would be notable. But to your point, it’s gone down, and that is because the border. I believe the southern border is closed. And as you’re pointing out, we’ve got a lot of good news in the economy. So people are hiring so and so we are in really good economic shape. I would say it’s hard to deny that,” Calacanis said.

Sacks added that job gains were concentrated among native-born Americans.

“All the job creation has been enjoyed by native born Americans as well. All the job loss has been on non native born Americans, which is pretty remarkable, so that, I think, is also going to accrue to the benefit of more Americans,” he said.

He also addressed a prior increase in unemployment tied to voluntary buyouts.

“By the way, just on the unemployment thing, there was a slight tick up in October because of the October one buyouts. Remember DOGE created the buyout program?” Sacks said.

“Yes. They hit in September, October. When did they hit?” Calacanis asked.

“It was October 1st. Was the deadline for that. And so we had a tick up in unemployment related to that. But remember, all of those were voluntary buyouts. They all chose the DOGE option. That’s what created the tick up in unemployment. But again, it was all, I think, a good and voluntary tick up, and now the unemployment rate has ticked down. So again, the job creation right now is strong,” Sacks said.

Palihapitiya reiterated his agreement with the broader outlook, saying, “I agree.”

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