Stretch Four Podcast

About Stretch Four Podcast

Four Insights is a show from Matthew Parker — founder & CEO of ModernTax — on AI, markets, and how money actually moves. Operator-level breakdowns of the week's biggest deals, contrarian calls (and the receipts when they land), plus occasional interviews with founders and operators. stretchfour.substack.com (https://stretchfour.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Matthew Parker

Category

business · health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

24 Jan 2023

Latest episode

10 Mar 2026

Latest episodes

56 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   10 Mar 2026

   Anthropic Is Suing the Pentagon. OpenAI and Google Are Backing Them.

   Happy Tuesday. Little bit of a hiatus — a lot happening with the companies I'm running. Sometimes content takes a back seat. But today, that's not the case. This might be the biggest single news day in a while. The news cycle is insane right now in tech, especially as it pertains to first, second, and third order effects for founders. Let's get into it. Anthropic Sued the Pentagon — And Their Competitors Are Standing Behind Them The Anthropic-Pentagon (https://www.reuters.com/world/anthropic-sues-block-pentagon-blacklisting-over-ai-use-restrictions-2026-03-09/) story just escalated to a new level. Anthropic filed two federal lawsuits yesterday — one in Northern California, one in DC — alleging the supply-chain risk designation violates their First Amendment rights and exceeds the scope of law. They’re seeking a temporary restraining order to keep working with military partners while this plays out. The massive development: 30+ OpenAI and Google DeepMind (https://digg.com/technology/O3IJ7ih/google-deepmind-chief-scientist-jeff-dean) employees filed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic. Among the signatories — Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist and the leader of the Gemini AI program. The brief is blunt: the government’s designation was “an improper and arbitrary use of power that has serious ramifications for our industry.” The Pentagon could have simply cancelled the contract and hired another AI company. Instead, they weaponized a national security label to punish a private company. Even Sam Altman, who literally took the $200 million Pentagon deal that Anthropic lost, called this “very bad for our industry.” Here’s the thing I want to say to founders. This actually affects early-stage startups. Your political ties, your political positions are really, really important in how your product is commercially used. I work in an industry where things are regulated. We have a large government agency — the SBA — that oversees how our commercial partners provide services. It’s better to be on the side of the political institution because that gives you the benefit of the doubt when you bring services to market. Church and state are very integrated in business right now. Your political affiliation, your religious affiliation — all of it is part of how you’re judged as a builder. That’s just reality. I grew up on the principle that church and state are things you stay away from in business. That’s over. Anthropic has been the lone soldier among the big companies that hasn’t bowed down to Trump. Everyone else went MAGA in the past 18 months. Dario has been outspoken — he’s not from that ilk. He’s not giving money, not showing up at events. And now there are real ramifications. The supply-chain risk designation is going to cause a trickle-down effect. It’s going to slow the business in the short term. And here’s the part nobody wants to say: competitors will support Anthropic in court while taking the opportunity in the market. OpenAI already took the $200 million contract. Google will probably lean into whatever the military needs. The industry is standing behind Anthropic because this shouldn’t be happening, but the reality is that business moves on. Anthropic isn’t going anywhere. But this will probably go into litigation for a while. Oracle Reports Tonight — And the Pressure Is Real Oracle’s reporting after the bell today, and their AI cloud numbers will tell us a lot about whether this infrastructure buildout is real or hype. I’ve been reading a book on Dario Amodei (https://www.amazon.com/Dario-Amodei-Architect-Safe-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B0FKWH52G9), and the biggest thing to understand about the AI story is that these companies are built around access to compute. The more data centers, the more compute, the more power — the better. That’s how it works. That’s the reality of why these companies are building out massive infrastructure. But Larry Ellison is under pressure. Oracle has more than $100 billion (https://fortune.com/2026/03/09/oracle-earnings-layoffs-debt-cloud/)in debt and massive layoffs as they push ahead with this transformation. Expected numbers: $16.9 billion in revenue, cloud up 43% to $8.9 billion. That cloud number represents a historic shift. Oracle used to be an on-prem database company. Now cloud is more than half the business. There’s a learning lesson here for every startup: you have to always be reinventing yourself, especially in the AI-first market. What you were a year ago may not be what you are today. The capex numbers are staggering: $50 billion expected this year. Q3 alone, $14 billion, up 139%. And their Stargate initiative with OpenAI appears to be scaling back. The Information has reporting on why OpenAI walked away from the Stargate expansion in Albany. Oracle’s stock tells the story of the market’s uncertainty. Down 54% over six months. Flat over the past year. Up 125% over five years. The AI bet is massive, but the market is nervous about whether $300 billion in commitments upfront is justified for something we don’t know the full scale of yet. Mira Murati Hit Back — A Gigawatt of Nvidia and a Comeback Story Mira Murati (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mira-murati-4b39a066/) is back in the news. And this time, it’s a good story. The background: she’s 37, ex-CTO at OpenAI, previously at Tesla. She founded Thinking Machines Lab, raised $2 billion out the gate at a $12 billion valuation — notoriously, without a product. Then January happened. A wave of defections. CTO Barret Zoph left. People went back to OpenAI. She was in a tough spot. But here’s what I keep saying about startups — they’re long-term but also super short-term. You can go from a bad position two months ago to a pretty good position today. It looks like she’s weathered the storm. Today, Jensen Huang himself announced (https://www.ft.com/content/a8853057-c0a3-46f6-817f-7a23e79ea4e2) that Nvidia is making a significant investment in Thinking Machines Lab and supplying Vera Rubin AI accelerators. The commitment: at least one gigawatt of compute. Only the biggest labs operate at that scale. I want to say something real about this. She’s 37, I’m 38. I’m building a company, she’s building a company. It’s the game. Is it harder for me to raise money than Mira Murati? I’m sure it is. But at the end of the day, this is the game everybody has to play if you’re in the venture-backed world. The part that a lot of people aren’t ready for: down rounds, not paying yourself, seeing a new company raise more money than you every single day. The business of being in venture is as much about fundraising as it is about building a business. And if you can’t do it, if you don’t like to do it — you’ve got to get good at it. It’s a skill. If you ain’t got the money in the bank to build what you want, you ain’t got a chance. Go out there and get the bag. She doesn’t have to do Thinking Machines Lab (https://thinkingmachines.ai/). She could go make $10-30 million a year at another lab. She’s out there running a company. You respect it. Jensen put his neck out for her. To whom much is given, much is expected. She got her first hit and now she’s hitting back. Roy Lee: Building the Real Resume Quick reaction to Roy Lee (https://x.com/im_roy_lee). TechCrunch (https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/05/cluely-ceo-roy-lee-admits-to-publicly-lying-about-revenue-numbers-last-year/) did a whole piece on him and it sparked a lot of debate. Here’s what I think. See Roy’s (https://x.com/im_roy_lee/status/2031020809376932049?s=20) Response to Techcrunch below. I believe what Roy Lee is doing is the modern-day way to be a founder. You’ve got to get news, you’ve got to get attention, and he’s doing it in a very direct, punctual, public way. A lot of people can say a lot of things about him, but as a 38-year-old — I wasn’t doing what he’s doing at 25. I don’t think a lot of founders were thinking like that at 25. The real insight is this: he’s building a brand. And one thing that’s true today more than ever — if you’re a founder, you’re building a brand around yourself. One of my friends told me: if your companies fail, you still have to exist. You’re not defined by your company. I’m Matt Parker. I am who I am. I haven’t had a nine-to-five in over 12 years. This is a brand. For someone like Roy Lee, his public profile is the real resume. There’s always going to be young talent coming through the pipeline. And he’s building an attraction magnet. When stuff goes viral, it’s huge for him. As for the revenue numbers controversy — I don’t count people’s pockets. If you’re a private company, you don’t have to report revenue. And a lot of these AI revenue numbers right now? A lot of it’s bullshit. “We made X amount yesterday so now we’re doing this annually.” A lot of people are hyping it. Shout out to Roy. Different approach. We’ll see what happens. NBA & Morality — New Essay I published a separate piece today (https://open.substack.com/pub/stretchfournba/p/magic-city-luke-kornet-and-the-nbas?r=np8l8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true) about the NBA, morality, and the Magic City / Atlanta Hawks story. It’s on my NBA Substack (https://stretchfournba.substack.com/) — linked in the show notes. Go check it out. The Through Line Five stories, one thread: everything is political now. Your position on government, on safety, on brand, on how publicly you build — it all affects your business. Anthropic is being punished for having principles. Oracle is betting $50 billion on a reinvention. Mira Murati weathered a storm and hit back. Roy Lee is building a public brand because that’s the real resume. And even the NBA is navigating morality in public life. Church and state are integrated in business. That’s the world we’re in. Build accordingly. Reply PREMIUM for the weekly deep dive. This show is presented by ModernTax (http://moderntax.io) — AI and voice intelligence for IRS and tax services. We serve SBA lenders, CDCs, banks, and fintechs. 98% accuracy. 75% cost reduction. moderntax.io Get full access to Four Insights at stretchfour.substack.com/subscribe (https://stretchfour.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   4 Mar 2026

   Databricks Overtook Snowflake. Here's Why They Should IPO Before SpaceX.

   Databricks has overtaken Snowflake in quarterly revenue — and Matt argues they should IPO before SpaceX does. Anduril raises $4 billion at $60 billion amid the US-Israel war with Iran. And Claude crashed under "unprecedented demand" as 700K users pledge to quit ChatGPT. In today's episode: Databricks vs. Snowflake deep dive: Tunguz revenue crossover data, the public-vs-private dynamic, and the case for being the first IPO of 2026 Anduril's $4B raise: war context, Trae Stephens shoutout, and the irony of Anthropic being banned while their tools are used at war Claude demand surge: the outage, ChatGPT exodus numbers (295% uninstalls, 775% one-stars, 700K cancellation pledges), and why the product speaks for itself A personal note on Americans stuck in Dubai and the human cost of what's happening Sound bites: "It's kind of weird to see private companies get so big they're trolling public companies." "The people are speaking." "I've voted with my pocketbook." Sources: Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures), Bloomberg, Reuters, TechCrunch, CNBC, Sensor Tower Tomorrow: SpaceX confidential IPO (timing TBD — Elon's the master marketer) Host: Matt Parker | Newsletter: stretchfour.substack.com (http://stretchfour.substack.com) | Presented by ModernTax (moderntax.io (http://moderntax.io)) Get full access to Four Insights at stretchfour.substack.com/subscribe (https://stretchfour.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   3 Mar 2026

   AI Is Replacing AND Augmenting Workers. Here's the Data.

   Happy Monday. Three stories that tie together more than you’d think. 1Naval Ravikant: Software Engineering Isn’t Dead — It’s More Leveraged Than Ever X Post (https://x.com/naval/status/2028314493206585471?s=20) On Artificial Intelligence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXCKgEl9hBo) (Youtube) Naval dropped a post over the weekend that became the clearest articulation I’ve seen of what AI actually means for knowledge workers. Not the hype version. Not the doom version. The real version. His argument: software engineers are now among the most leveraged people on earth. Not because they write code — AI writes code. Because they think in code. They understand what’s happening underneath. And all abstractions are leaky. I’ve lived this. As a non-technical founder who’s been building with Claude Code and these tools, the bottleneck is exactly what Naval describes: understanding what’s happening underneath the platforms, writing the correct specs, knowing when the AI got something wrong. A strong software engineer isn’t just writing code anymore — they’re writing product specs that AI tools can actually execute on. And they’re catching the bugs, the suboptimal architecture, the leaky abstractions that every AI-built product ships with. Naval draws a distinction that matters enormously: codified knowledge versus tacit knowledge. Codified is what you learn from textbooks. Tacit is what you learn from experience. AI replicates the first. It cannot replicate the second. Companies are still hiring software engineers because even if 90% of your code is written by an AI agent, the people prompting those agents and creating those specs have a massive advantage if they’re strong engineers. At the worst, software engineers become the people who fix the problems AI agents create. That’s not replacement. That’s leverage. The uncomfortable punchline: “There is no demand for average.” But the set of things you can be best at is infinite. “Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.” I see this every day at ModernTax. We build voice agents handling codified, repeatable workflows with government services. But we also have a human component — enrolled agents doing the work. The AI tools help those experienced agents do their jobs better. The more trained and experienced an agent is, the better they perform with the technology. AI amplifies expertise. It doesn’t replace it. Claude Hit #1 on the App Store — And Nobody Expected What Happened Next I woke up Monday morning and everybody was talking about Claude. It’s down, it’s back up, but look at these numbers. The free app rankings (https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/charts)tell the whole story: Claude is #1. ChatGPT is #2. Google Gemini is #3. AI has completely taken over the top of the App Store. When you see these three at the top of a global ranking, you understand the sheer scale of what’s happening. This isn’t Silicon Valley in an echo chamber. This is global adoption. Anthropic went from #42 in the App Store in January to #1 over the weekend. Not purely product — the Super Bowl commercials helped, but the real catalyst was the Pentagon standoff. Here’s what happened. Anthropic has a $200 million contract (https://www.semafor.com/article/02/24/2026/pentagons-anthropic-feud-deepened-after-tense-exchange-over-missile-attacks) with the Department of War. The Pentagon demanded unrestricted use of Claude’s AI models, including for surveillance and autonomous weapons. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, said no. The political fallout was immediate: Trump called Anthropic “radical left,” Defense Secretary Hegseth designated them a “supply chain risk to national security,” and OpenAI jumped in to replace Anthropic on the deal. And then the opposite of what the administration expected happened. #CancelChatGPT went viral. Claude’s downloads surged. The attempt to punish Anthropic turned into the best marketing campaign they never paid for. There’s a political parallel here that I can’t stop thinking about. Remember 2016? The more liberal and progressive media attacked Trump, called him names, said he was a bad candidate — and it helped his popularity. There’s a correlation with this. The more this administration targets Claude, the more publicity and public support Anthropic gets. The Streisand effect in real time. My position: I use Claude constantly. It’s one of the best model companies. When you think about Coworking, Claude Code, all these tools — they’re phenomenal and everyone’s using them. Nobody is going to stop. And this weekend proved it. The Dallas Fed: AI Is Replacing AND Augmenting Workers — But I Think Companies Are Getting It Wrong The Dallas Fed put out a paper (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0224) that does something most AI hot takes don’t: it looks at real data. Real wages. Real employment numbers. Not doom and gloom — economics. The findings confirm what Naval said, but with numbers. US employment is up 2.5% since ChatGPT launched. But in the top 10% of AI-exposed sectors, employment is down 1%. Computer systems design is down 5%. The decline is hitting young workers hardest — under 25 specifically. Not because of layoffs. Because of a collapsed job-finding rate. Companies just aren’t hiring entry-level in these fields. But wages in those same sectors are rising. Computer systems design wages are up 16.7% versus 7.5% nationally. Employment down, wages up. How? AI is doing both — automating entry-level tasks and augmenting experienced workers. The experience premium — the wage gap between entry and experienced workers — correlates positively with AI exposure. High-experience-premium jobs like law, credit analysis, marketing: AI helps, wages rise. Low-experience-premium jobs: AI replaces, wages flat or down. Here’s where I disagree with the trend. I want to take a short detour here, because ModernTax is hiring new graduates. We’re hiring interns. We’re hiring everybody under 25. I believe companies have over-indexed on not hiring new grads. Think about it: if you’re building your career right now on the frontier of these AI models, if you’re Gen Z and you understand how young people think, if you’re native to these platforms — you’re incredibly valuable. The right companies understand this. Andreessen Horowitz is hiring people in their teens and twenties because if you’re building a content-focused business, you need people who are on these platforms, creating content, knowing the trends. The new grad community is an untapped resource right now. Yes, the data says AI is automating codified entry-level tasks. But the people who grow up alongside these tools — who learn to pair AI capabilities with their generational understanding — those people are going to be hugely successful. Companies should be competing for them, not avoiding them. The Through Line Three stories. One thread. The value of experience is going up — Naval sees it in code, Anthropic is living it, the Dallas Fed is measuring it. But I’d add a fourth beat: the value of adaptability matters just as much. The new grads who learn these tools aren’t competing against AI. They’re the first generation to grow up as native AI users. That’s an advantage nobody’s pricing in yet. Tomorrow: SpaceX confidential IPO filing. $1.75 trillion target valuation. The largest IPO in the history of the world, if it happens. This show is presented by ModernTax (https://moderntax.io/) — AI and voice intelligence for IRS and tax services. Our agents automate codified workflows, decrease hold times and form processing errors for commercial partners offering small business loans, HR services, and tax and accounting services. 98% accuracy. 75% cost reduction. moderntax.io Want to go deeper? Reply PREMIUM for the weekly premium newsletter or subscribe below. Get full access to Four Insights at stretchfour.substack.com/subscribe (https://stretchfour.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Contact Stretch Four Podcast

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.