Episode summary
California Forever: The Startup Building America's Next Great City
All-In Podcast
· · Hosts: David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg · Guests: Jan Sramek
Summary
Jan Sramek argues that California Forever is trying to solve two problems at once: California’s housing and infrastructure shortages, and America’s need to rebuild industrial capacity. He frames the project as a new city in Solano County, backed by more than a billion dollars raised and nearly 70,000 acres acquired, with plans for a walkable community for up to 400,000 people.
He says the first phase is the Solano Foundry, which he describes as the largest advanced manufacturing park in America, designed to let Silicon Valley talent work closer to production and use robotics and AI to raise productivity. He also argues the West Coast needs major new shipyards because China’s shipbuilding capacity and the vulnerability of the Panama Canal leave the U.S. exposed in a Pacific conflict.
Sramek presents California Forever as both a business project and a civic response: a self-funded, sustainable city inspired by older American neighborhoods, with traditional architecture and public squares. He closes by casting the project as a symbol of a broader national “abundance” agenda, alongside railroads, dams, wartime shipyards, and the moon landing.
Key takeaways
- Sramek says California Forever has raised over a billion dollars and acquired nearly 70,000 acres, or more than 100 square miles, in Solano County.
- He argues the Solano Foundry should be the largest advanced manufacturing park in America and use robotics and AI to boost productivity per worker.
- Sramek says the U.S. needs West Coast shipyards because China’s shipbuilding scale and the Panama Canal create a strategic vulnerability.
- He frames the proposed city for up to 400,000 people as a walkable, affordable alternative to the housing shortage that has constrained California.
- He presents California Forever as a physical symbol of a broader American shift back toward building, manufacturing, and abundance.
Notable quotes
“we have to fight for fixing all of the things that are wrong with the state”
“Over the decade, we've raised over a billion dollars and we've acquired nearly 70,000 acres to build”
“The only way that we can compete is by building factories of the future where we use robotics and AI”
“we building a new walkable city for up to 400,000 people”
“because of its scale and its location and ambition, California Forever is a physical manifestation of all of the most important things in America right now”
How the episode opens
The dream. Build a livable, affordable, eco-friendly community. California Forever owns more than 100 square miles of land here in Solano County, backed by Silicon Valley investors to build a new city.
We're going back to what the Bay Area and Northern California used to do back in the 60s and 70s and 80s when it was the center for high-tech manufacturing in America. This new city will be entirely self-funded and sustainable. The innovation engine that we have in Northern California is really special and the fact that we are throttling it by not building up housing is just crazy.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome California Forever's Yan Stramic. Morning. As you've just heard, I run California Forever, which is building the next great American city.
And we are building it right here in California. And I know what all of you are already thinking, which is uh California. Really?
Well, uh where are we today? We are in California. The Allen Summit is in California.
And I think that's kind of the point because despite all of its flaws and challenges, California is irreplaceable. Whether you like it or not, there is nowhere else in America that can play the role that California plays uh in the United States right now. And so we have to fight for fixing all of the things that are wrong with the state.
I was born in Eastern Europe in 1987 in the Czech Republic. Uh which was two years before the wall came down. And uh growing up as a kid in posts Soviet Eastern Europe, um California was the California dream.
California was this. And then after 26 years, I finally got here in 2013. And what I found was this.
It was homelessness. It was people throwing rocks at Google buses.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- california forever city building
- ai cloud infrastructure
- crypto payments
- stablecoins
- prediction markets
Companies and tickers mentioned
- GOOGL
- GOOG
- ORCL
- California Forever
- Solana
- OKX
- Google Cloud
- IREN
- Oracle
- Circle
- BVNK
- Polymarket
Watch the episode
Watch “California Forever: The Startup Building America's Next Great City” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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