00:00:00 · Ron Biscardi
[00:00:00] S0: Digital currencies have been a wild ride in my world for, like, five years now. I would say institutions have been curious about this for a long, long time. I think, generally speaking, where, you know, five or six years ago, there was a huge percentage of them who just thought Bitcoin is snake oil. Like, this is not real. This is never really gonna be an investable asset class. That has completely changed. I would... I don't really know anyone who says anything like that anymore. I think people now see that it is a completely legitimate asset class.
00:00:35 · Anthony Pompliano
[00:00:35] S1: What's going on, guys? Today, we have an excellent conversation with Ron Biscardi. Ron is the CEO and cofounder of iConnections. It's one of the largest platforms in the world where institutional investors come and talk to fund managers. The reason why that's interesting is Ron has got his ear to the ground when it comes to what is going on with this dark money, the institutional capital. How are they thinking about Bitcoin, artificial intelligence? What's going on with things like SpaceX, Anthropic? Are they excited or are they not? How about private equity? Private venture capital? What about private credit? All of these things Ron has unique insights into, and he shares it with us today. And then we talk about this massive event that Ron is putting on in Austin, Texas. He's got Jensen Huang, David Solomon, Marc Rowan, and a ton of other great investors that are all gonna show up. I think you guys are gonna learn a lot from this conversation. It's gonna get you excited because this is one of those rare moments where we pull back the curtain, we get you in the room with people who have a lot of capital and you usually don't get to hear about, and Ron's gonna tell it all to you in this conversation. Here's my conversation with Ron Biscardi. Alright, Ron. I think the first place that we should start is you've got a very unique seat in the industry. You get to see what is going on with the institutional capital. This is kind of the dark money behind the investors that people see on TV every single day. Not dark in the sense of nefarious. It's just that they are putting their capital into the hands of these investors. The investors are then going and they're allocating to venture capital funds, private equity, or excuse me, venture capital companies or, private equity companies. And so what are those people talking about right now with the impact of the midterms? We're hearing what the investors are saying, but, like, what is the people who actually control the money? How are they thinking
00:02:02 · Ron Biscardi
[00:02:02] S0: about this? So it's interesting you said dark money, and I agree with you. It is, it's incredibly opaque. Right? The average American doesn't really have any idea what goes on in the world of institutional investors who, by the way, are mostly focused on some level of either philanthropy or retirement savings. Right? You have sovereign wealth funds that are built to benefit countries. You have pension plans that are obviously benefiting people in their retirement. You have endowments, foundations. And honestly, even in the family office category, which are individuals who've had a lot of success and and are now managing their wealth, the vast majority of those also are primarily focused on whatever their legacy is gonna be, and that always involves a lot of philanthropy. And, you know, it gets to things like the the giving pledge and things like that. So that whole universe deploys capital into the funds that we hear about occasionally. Right? You'll see them on CNBC, venture funds, private equity funds, private credit, real estate, all of those things. Those those groups manage the capital for that that first group I mentioned and generate investment returns so that they can do, frankly, a lot of good in the world. What's the impact and what am I hearing? You know, it's obviously early, but the general chatter I've heard is a lot of anxiety. First, no one's surprised because, you know, I think pretty much everyone saw this coming. The polls were were, I think the polls this time were actually right. There is a lot of anxiety about what it will mean for AI. AI is the engine that has been powering the stock market. It's the many people believe, the future of America is now really connected directly to the success of our AI industry. And what powers AI are data centers. And to the degree this result results in a lack of data center construction, most of the people in my world believe that would be very, very bad for the country. Data centers are the heart of what makes AI possible, and any slowing down of that... Of the construction of these facilities, it just gives China and, frankly, you know, any any other country who wants to be competitive in this space a huge advantage over us, which, you know, in my opinion, would be a a really bad thing for the future of the country.
00:04:44 · Anthony Pompliano
[00:04:44] S1: Now when we go and we look, I think Texas maybe is the area that people have spent the most time on. You've got a democrat governor who is now the elect. She has been pretty open about wanting to create this moratorium. What's interesting to me is there's nuance here. Right? We obviously have, the outgoing governor. There is, like, maybe a pause. It's not like a true moratorium where they're not gonna go and and create more, but there's this, like, slowdown intentionally being done by the government. And Texas is important because there's a lot of data centers that are supposed be built there. Think something like 13% of all data centers planned in The United States, just in the state of Texas. And so when I look at that, it almost feels like less of, a zero to one. Hey. We were building tons, and now we're going to a complete moratorium. And more of this, like, okay. There was already a slowdown happening, and now we're gonna get an extension from a timeline perspective. And that continued slowdown or, like, the the belief that there is going to be a longer pause or slowdown is really what's giving people some heartburn. Now do you think that those data center providers or builders that maybe don't yet have broken ground or haven't actually gone and started, they're just like, well, let me pick up from Texas and let me go to, you know, some other state where maybe they're a little bit more open to these data centers? Or does it feel like they're just gonna wait it out and they say, hey. Maybe it's gonna take three, six, nine, twelve months, but I'll still build the data center. I'll do it in Texas. It's just gonna take a little bit longer?
00:06:02 · Ron Biscardi
[00:06:02] S0: Yeah. It... It's a great question. I feel like the... For... If, you know, if you're in the data center construction business, it's like your options just keep shrinking. Right? There were there were... I mean, the biggest cluster of data centers is actually Northern Virginia where, you know, for years, data centers have been built there. And really successfully, it's actually been a huge benefit to the counties in Virginia. You know, they've... They're... It's one of the few spots in the country where they were able to lower real estate taxes because the data centers have provided such huge tax revenue. So my guess is... I mean, look, this AI thing is moving at an incredible pace. Right? I mean, every... You know, we've been watching for the last two or three years, every time a new model comes out, it leapfrogs the the the capabilities of the model that came out a month or six weeks earlier. Know? So it... It's an industry that has to move really, really fast to remain competitive. So my hope is that at least the data centers that have already been permitted are not gonna be slowed down. Right? If they've already gotten governmental approval, let those move forward. And by the way, Texas is an enormous state with a tremendous amount of real estate, and it's the center of our energy industry. So what do you need to run a data center successfully? Lots of energy. So here you have the center of the oil and gas industry for our country. Putting the data centers there makes complete sense. There's a tremendous amount of open land. So, you know, it's one thing if you said, hey. I wanna start dropping data centers into metropolitan areas. That I totally understand can create a whole bunch of issues that people don't wanna deal with. But if we're gonna start slowing down data centers in, you know, vast open areas of the country, I just don't understand the logic behind that. So I hope that the that the way the incoming administration in Texas will approach it is to make good logical decisions for the industry and for the good of the state and the country versus just capitalizing on what has become a a political issue. I I suspect that the folks who have not been permitted yet are absolutely gonna start looking at alternatives. I'm not really sure what the best alternatives are.
00:08:24 · Ron Biscardi, Anthony Pompliano
I guess we'll start to see what shakes out and which states kinda raise their hand and say, hey. We'd love for you to put your data center here. But, yeah, my guess is if they drag their feet, I think that this industry is just moving entirely too fast. They're not gonna they're not gonna sit around for twelve months to wait and see what happens. I think I think in AI years, that's like an eternity. [00:08:49] S1: Well, know what's funny is, obviously, Elon Musk, SpaceX has talked about doing these orbital data centers. I think at first, was kind of a joke. Then all of a sudden, was like, well, maybe we can do this. Now they are betting a portion of their company on being able to actually build, launch, and, and operate these. But when you see this, it kinda almost feels like that's the natural conclusion. Well, like if the people on earth are gonna give us a hard time, we'll do it off the earth. Right? [00:09:14] S0: And exactly. [00:09:15] S1: Look, I don't know. Maybe it's better. Maybe it's worse. You know, there... There's all kinds of trade offs in terms of the latency or, you know, all of sudden there becomes a lot of space traffic, you know, which is something that people don't yet talk about, but I think it'll become a big, big issue. But from that perspective, like, is that kinda what happens? It's just entrepreneurs figure out a solution regardless of what the politicians do?