Summary

Ackman’s investment evolution is a shift toward business quality, not away from activism. As Pershing Square became larger and more concentrated, “long-term, durable, protected, non-disruptable growth” became paramount. He says he is as activist as ever, but more of that activism now happens on Twitter; the ideal holding requires no intervention, though a large shareholder can support investments that depress near-term earnings while creating value over three, five, or more years.
AI has dramatically increased disruption risk, yet Ackman thinks the market is overlooking proven platforms while chasing chips, semiconductors, and energy. Pershing Square owns Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon, which he considers undervalued; his qualified analogy is 2000, when investors dismissed Berkshire Hathaway as “old stuff,” though he explicitly said today’s market is different.
The SaaS selloff cannot be underwritten as a basket because pricing power and platform value differ by company. Ackman worries more about Salesforce and niche vendors charging roughly $30,000 annually for narrow products than Microsoft, where an average customer might pay about $50 per seat. “You’ve got to do the work”—and every software company must become as AI-enabled as possible.
Ackman sees valuation as a tether that pulls both overvalued and undervalued assets back toward fundamentals. His recent bullish call followed “crazy cheap” prices for high-quality cash-generating companies. For the host’s examples of businesses valued at 50–150 times revenue, Ackman said companies such as SpaceX require venture-style underwriting around “people, opportunity, context, deal,” rather than a simple public-market multiple analysis.
Howard Hughes is Ackman’s attempt to build a 50-year Berkshire-like compounding machine from an ignored real-estate base. At roughly $63 per share, he said investors were buying below liquidation value—about “60 cents on the dollar”—while the plan is to redirect cash into insurance, keep policyholder float in short-term Treasuries, invest insurer surplus in equities, and potentially grow a roughly $4 billion company into “a trillion-dollar thing over time.”
Investors seeking Ackman exposure have three materially different choices. Pershing Square’s management company is a no-CapEx royalty on three permanent-capital vehicles; PSUS offers the investment portfolio at a stated 18% discount to cash, and Ackman described the public vehicle as charging only a 2% fee; Howard Hughes is the long-duration bet that he can build “the next Berkshire Hathaway.”
Founder control and follower-backed valuation can become strategic advantages in an AI-speed economy. Ackman contrasted founders’ lifelong economic and reputational stakes with an S&P 500 CEO tenure he estimated at roughly three to four years. Ryan Cohen illustrates how a personality can gather “armies of followers,” while Elon Musk illustrates how belief can support a higher valuation, lower capital costs, and greater strategic flexibility.

Deep dive

1. Business quality now outranks the activist setup

Ackman described his central evolution as appreciating “long-term, durable, protected, non-disruptable growth.” A smaller, liquid investor can think shorter-term; size and concentration make durability—and the possibility of permanent ownership—the decisive underwriting variable. He says he remains as activist as ever, but more of that activism now occurs on Twitter than in corporate settings.
Early Pershing Square had to “bang down the door.” After Wendy’s ignored his calls, Ackman bought 10% and publicly filed a Blackstone fairness opinion concerning what Wendy’s would be worth if it spun off Tim Hortons; Tim Hortons itself was worth more than Wendy’s entire value. The company spun it off six weeks later. Today, companies sometimes publicly welcome Pershing Square before any intervention is needed.
The best investment requires nothing beyond being a shareholder and “just clap,” but Ackman defended board involvement when it helps management resist quarterly pressure. A committed owner can support an initiative that hurts several quarters of earnings while serving a three-, five-, or multi-decade plan.

2. AI makes disruption the first underwriting question

For a long-term concentrated investor, Ackman said the hardest question is whether “2 guys or 2 women from Stanford in a garage” can destroy the moat. Abundant compute, capital, and talent make this “the greatest era in history to build a business”—and dramatically raise incumbent disruption risk.
While shorter-term money crowds into chips, semiconductors, and energy, Ackman sees Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon being treated as yesterday’s companies. His qualified analogy was 2000, when Berkshire reached an exceptionally low valuation because investors called it “old stuff”; “this is different,” he cautioned, but the neglect mechanism rhymes.
SaaS requires “one company at a time” analysis. Narrow software businesses charging roughly $30,000 a year for niche products look vulnerable; Microsoft’s broad platform, at perhaps $50 per seat, carries more value and less risk. Ackman worries more about Salesforce but offered no blanket verdict on an oversold sector.
Enterprise adoption remains “super, super early.” Ackman said AI is probably every CEO’s number-one opportunity and threat, yet he has seen little demonstrated success; Pershing Square’s clearest use case is legal work, approaching a compliance or back-office function.

3. Extreme valuation demands two different playbooks

Ackman’s market model is a rubber band: valuation is a “tether” that eventually pulls stretched prices down and abnormally cheap prices up. During COVID, concern about overwhelmed hospitals led him to use CNBC to reach President Trump with a two-week shutdown proposal; he also said cheap stocks should be bought. More recently, “crazy cheap” high-quality companies prompted another public bullish call.
For the host’s examples of businesses valued at 50–150 times revenue, Ackman said to underwrite SpaceX like a venture investment: “people, opportunity, context, deal.” SpaceX scores exceptionally on people, opportunity, and context; the unresolved variable is the deal. He mentioned possible valuations of $1 billion, $1 trillion, or $750 billion and said the question is what the company, including Starlink, looks like five years out.
Ackman argued that SpaceX’s near-monopoly in low-cost space launch should become increasingly important; even Amazon may need to become a larger customer because Blue Origin trails it. In an AI era, losing a month or two can matter significantly. He disclosed investments in X and xAI and participation in an SPV, while admitting, “I haven’t done the math.”
He classed Anthropic, OpenAI, and Palantir as later-stage venture investments—Series D or E rather than seed or Series A. OpenAI’s difficulty, in his view, is spending and making capital commitments massively beyond revenue; the CFO’s explanation of how the company commits capital made him “a lot more bullish,” although he said he had not heard a comparable explanation from OpenAI itself.

4. Howard Hughes is being rebuilt as a 50-year compounder

Howard Hughes came from Pershing Square’s General Growth bankruptcy trade: it bought roughly 27% at about a $200 million market value against $27 billion of debt, structured a Chapter 11 emergence in which the equity kept its investment, and saw the stock move from $0.34 to $34. The unwanted assets became Howard Hughes—and Ackman conceded that 15 years later, “we haven’t really created much value with it.”
The underlying asset is long-duration land development, including 26,000 acres in Summerlin, where Howard Hughes owns commercial and residential land, sells lots, and builds downtown infrastructure. Wall Street assigns that model a high cost of capital and dislikes its decades-long horizon. At roughly $63 per share, Ackman argued, investors were buying below liquidation value—about 60 cents on the dollar.
His reinvention borrows Berkshire’s allocation architecture: put 100% of insurance float into short-term Treasuries, invest insurer equity in common stocks, manage underwriting and assets well, and avoid issuing stock. Starting near a $4 billion market cap, the stated ambition is “a compounding machine over the next 50 years” that might ultimately reach $1 trillion.

5. Capital structure and belief can become competitive advantages

The hosts asked whether Howard Hughes had to remain public; Ackman corrected the premise: “It doesn’t have to be public.” Pershing Square got there by accident through the General Growth restructuring. More broadly, he argued that a lower cost of equity can increase a company’s value by enabling fundraising, stock issuance, acquisitions, and strategic flexibility.
Ackman disputed that his own Twitter following changed markets, but pointed to Ryan Cohen as an example of a personality gathering “armies of followers” and supporting a valuation above underlying value. He considered Elon Musk the stronger example: belief in Musk helped Tesla get built, while a higher valuation can itself lower capital costs and expand corporate options.
His three investment routes express separate theses. Pershing Square’s management company receives fees from three permanent-capital vehicles, has no CapEx, and can grow with the underlying assets; PSUS owns the portfolio and was said to trade at an 18% discount to cash; Howard Hughes is the Berkshire-style vehicle. If historical compounding persisted, he projected assets rising 35-fold, from $25 billion toward $1 trillion in 22 years, without hiring another person or adding overhead.

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