More than 6,000 techies streamed on Tuesday evening into San Francisco’s Chase Center, a cavernous event space that is home to the Golden State Warriors and hosts pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo. Engineers, venture capitalists and other Silicon Valley digerati chatted as they found their seats, with Modelos and slices of pizza in hand. The anticipation was high.
They were not there to join a rager of a concert. Instead, they had paid $50 or more a ticket to see Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, tape a podcast about artificial intelligence, the metaverse and how he outmaneuvered the rest of Silicon Valley to keep his company winning.
“You underestimate how painful things are going to be, so you can go and do good things,” Mr. Zuckerberg told the crowd about the 20-year history of building his empire, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. He mentioned Aeschylus, the ancient Greek dramatist who is often described as the father of tragedy, in a nod to the lengthy time horizons he thinks in for his company.
The audience, a sea of Patagonia sweater vests and techno-optimism, roared in approval.
Other scions of capitalism piped up, too. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, appeared on the jumbotron. Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, flew in from Sweden for the chat. Even Jensen Huang, the very busy chief executive of Nvidia, made a cameo appearance. A full band played musical interludes between segments.
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