Keith Rabois: Israel, OpenAI, Opendoor, and DOGE

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a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From politics to technology to real estate, Keith Rabois has bold predictions for America’s next decade. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg, Keith breaks down why he believes the U.S. is entering a new economic expansion driven by AI, productivity, and sovereign technology. They discuss how AI could lift GDP growth to 5%, why sovereign AI projects are inevitable, and why America can “grow its way out” of debt. Keith also shares his takes on Trump’s second term, the decline of legacy institutions, OpenAI’s dominance, the future of Google and Microsoft, and how startups like Ramp and Opendoor are rewriting the rules of fintech and housing.

Transcript

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0:00.0	ChatGBTBT becomes a monopoly. It is transforming how everybody, every normal person basically does their work, funds their life.
0:09.2	The thesis of AI is too important to the future of nations to allow an American company to dominate in certain regions, I think is going to prove to be true.
0:17.9	I actually believe you can probably cut 50% of the federal government.
0:21.5	What does the Commerce Department actually do? People are like, where do you get your
0:24.7	contrarian ideas? I was like, I read books. Like all the greatest thinking of all time
0:29.4	is available to anybody. You just have to read. The U.S. government is shut down,
0:35.7	peace is breaking out in the Middle East, and AI continues
0:38.4	to reshape global power.
0:40.6	On this episode, I'm joined by Keith Rboy, managing partner at Coastal Ventures and A16Z general
0:45.2	partner Alex Rampel to unpack how all these thesis is connected.
0:49.4	We discussed whether a new Middle East is emerging, what it means for U.S. politics and Trump's
0:53.7	second term,
0:54.8	and why sovereign AI could redefine national competitiveness.
0:58.4	From there, we zoom out to the economic implications of AI and if it can really drive
1:02.9	GDP growth without inflation.
1:05.0	We also cover the fate of big tech incumbents, Google, Apple, Microsoft, meta, Amazon,
1:10.1	and how AI threatens their moats.
1:12.8	Lastly, we end on Keith's broader philosophy.
1:15.5	Why he doesn't believe in experts, how to answer the right questions, and why sometimes
1:19.9	it just takes one person reading the right books to change history.
1:23.8	Let's get into it.
1:27.2	Keith, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to be with you. It's been a long time, excited to have you back. It's an exciting day to do it, big day for the Middle East. I feel like this is something you've been predicting for a while. Actually, if you read Jared Kushner's autobiography, all you have to do is he quotes the Saudi King, says you're going to bring peace to the Middle East, and it turns out to be correct. It's pretty obvious, like, this would happen. If you went to visited Israel recently in the last six, nine months, you could feel the teutonic plates shifting. It was just a question, what would be the trigger? And everybody's looking forward to the new Middle East. You're going to see lots of countries make peace explicitly with Israel, which is great.
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