2025 Predictions with bestie Gavin Baker

Host Jason Calacanis opens the episode as the All-In 2025 prediction show, which follows the "bestie awards" episode. Gavin Baker returns as a guest for the second time. His firm's name is corrected on air from "Atreides Capital" to "Atreides Management." The firm is described as a crossover investor that invests "publicly and privately in consumer and tech," from "Series A to mega cap." Asked about its size, the answer given is "Roughly $4,000,000,000."

The show adds a new format this year. Each participant makes one or two "super predictions," and these are to be listed on Polymarket, which the hosts describe as a prediction market where people can bet on either side of an outcome. The arrangement is described as a deal that lets the show post its own markets on the site, in an All-In section, tradable "obviously, ex-US." The hosts say this will let them track how their calls perform over time.

Before the predictions, the hosts banter about a group ski trip and footage of everyone skiing. One participant says they switched from snowboarding to skiing to ski with their kids and remarks how hard it is to learn something new in your forties. Another mentions tearing an MCL the previous season. Asked to rank himself, the guest says he is "in the bottom percentile in terms of natural athleticism" but has "many, many thousands of hours skiing."

The segment starts with a review of last year's calls for biggest political winner: an independent third party in the U.S., an independent centrist, and dark horse presidential candidates. The host concedes these were "kinda wrong," citing Robert Kennedy's breakout as at most partial support. One participant objects that independent centrists did matter, arguing they "swung the election for Biden in 2020" and then "swung the election for Trump in 2024." Asked for his view, the guest largely agrees. He says many lifelong Democratic voters, not only centrists, voted for Trump, and adds: "Trump won everything, essentially."

The first 2025 pick is fiscal conservatives. The argument is that 2025 will test austerity, and that austerity has to work because "the only thing left after austerity is cutting entitlements." The predictor expects this effort to show how much "waste, fraud, and abuse" exists in the federal government, and expects the effect to spill over into state elections. On this view, fiscal conservatives who have pushed for restrained spending "will have their day in 2025."

A second pick is young candidates, backed by a specific age comparison. Trump's cabinet picks are said to average 40 to 45 years old, compared with "a little over 59, almost 60 years old" for the Biden cabinet. The predictor reads this as the start of a trend toward younger political candidates. They expect younger new names with "resonant messages" to appear as midterm candidates emerge by the end of 2025.

The guest's answer is short: "Trump and centrism." A related pick names Gen X and "the elder millennials," pointing to appointees including Elon, Sacks and Marco Rubio, and to J.D. Vance, Vivek and Tulsi. The argument contrasts this group with boomers, who are described as focused on Social Security, taxes and real estate for themselves. The younger cohort is expected to think also about "their own kids," and the change is described as a "sea change."

The guest names Putin as the biggest political loser. His argument starts from China's position. He describes Russia as "a client state of China at this point" and says Europe is starting to rearm, which he expects to accelerate this year. That would let America move resources from Europe to Japan, South Korea and the wider Pacific. This, he argues, makes it harder for Xi Jinping to "reunify China and Taiwan or invade Taiwan." He expects Xi to begin decoupling from Putin.

He also expects Trump, wanting to show he is not beholden to Putin, to be "a lot tougher on Putin than people think." He predicts a deal that is "very, very bad for Russia and Ukraine," and notes that Russia has "lost half a million people." A co-host agrees. They add that the war has gone on for over a thousand days with no NATO or American soldiers killed, since the West has only supplied weapons, and call the result "a humiliating defeat so far for Putin."

Another pick is "the pro-war neocons." The predictor expects them to clash with J.D. Vance, Elon and others, and to lose, opening a "big crack" in a movement described as "very pro-conflict around the world."

The guest then argues the opposite side in part. He accepts that the prediction may be right "in reality," but cites Trump's remark about John Bolton. In the guest's retelling, Trump said Bolton was "absolutely crazy" but that having him in the room improved deals. The guest expects "a lot more bellicosity from the Trump administration than anyone expects," used to secure a good Russia–Ukraine deal and to pull China away from Russia. So he expects a lot of rhetoric at odds with the prediction before it proves right. A co-host adds that aggressive posturing is already visible toward Canada, NATO and Taiwan and on tariffs, ahead of negotiations that will "hopefully" produce good deals.

Another participant names progressivism as the biggest political loser. They mention a speech at the Oxford Union after the election, described as "a full-throated defense of MAGA" but mostly an explanation of it. They then run through a series of predictions. Justin Trudeau will lose "massively" to Pierre Poilievre in Canada. AfD "looks like" it will win in Germany. In France, if there is a deadlock and an election, Marine Le Pen will "more than likely" win.

For the UK, the speaker points to what they call an unfolding child rape scandal. In their account, "allegedly upwards of hundreds of thousands of young girls over the course of 20-plus years" were raped by organized groups of Pakistani Muslim men who were not prosecuted for fear of stoking Islamophobia, which they attribute to the current prime minister, Keir Starmer. These claims are presented as allegations, and the predictions that follow are conditional: "if all of that comes to pass," they expect the Labour government to fall and Nigel Farage to win. They frame the overall trend as "a repudiation of this class-based identity politics."

A similar pick names "the racist vocal minority" of each party: DEI on one side and "outright racism" on the other. The speaker estimates this at "probably 5% of MAGA and 5% of the left."

Looking back, last year's picks for political loser were Netanyahu, Ukraine and the Koch family/GOP. The Koch pick is claimed as correct ("I nailed that one"). The explanation is that 2024 was "the end of the Republican Party as we knew it." In its place, the speaker sees a MAGA coalition that uses "the Republican vessel" to run candidates. They argue that the Koch family's political machinery, built after Citizens United, has seen "those billions of dollars of investment" go "essentially" to zero. New donors such as Miriam Adelson and Elon Musk now shape policy instead.

Asked whether there is too much money in politics, the guest says the answer is hard. He admits he "might feel very, very differently" if he did not agree so strongly with the cycle's largest donor. His position is that as long as each side raises roughly equivalent amounts, "I don't think it really matters."

The first business prediction is that 2025 will be "the year of autonomous hardware or robotics." The speaker compares it to 2024, which they describe as the year of compute build-out and AI software rollout. Their example is Unitree, a Chinese company they say they placed an order with that day. They describe the GO2 robot as costing $1,600, with an API, the ability to carry a payload, lidar and guidance systems. They also mention videos from earlier in the year of the same robot with machine guns mounted on it, used as "an autonomous field soldier."

The speaker stresses non-military uses, such as having the robot walk test farms to take images and report data. In the same passage they give its cost as "less than $3,000," a looser figure than the $1,600 quoted earlier. They say Unitree raised "a couple hundred million dollars last month" mostly from Chinese investors. Their wider argument is about timing: "it kind of takes a long time for things to work, and then all of a sudden they happen faster than you could have ever imagined."

The panel shows a video of the wheeled GO2 crossing terrain and notes that some viewers thought it was CGI or AI-generated. It is called "a real video." The guest says he wants the G1 humanoid. Its quoted price of $16,000 is compared to "the cost of a used Prius." It is described as something you can command to do tasks at home, in a factory or at work.

One aside raises how people treat robots. A participant recalls a robot on stage at the All-In Holiday Spectacular and their brother's observation that "everyone just wanted to abuse it." They call this "a very strange revelation of human behavior." Someone adds that humans want to stay "at the top of the species" and that this may not last much longer.

The guest agrees with the robotics pick and includes Tesla's FSD in it. He says FSD "works today" and will move into mainstream adoption. His personal evidence is anecdotal. When taking an Uber late at night, he prefers a Tesla because a tired driver makes him feel safer with FSD running.