Brad Gerstner: The Great Wealth Transfer to 70 Million American Kids

Allright, we have a live one. Brad is a very special celebrity because people come up to him with how much they've impacted his— or, how much he's impacted their lives. So you have a Trump account?

My son does, yeah. Yeah, my son, Derek. He's a— he's a high schooler, and we just opened him a Trump account earlier this summer.

I love it. What's your name and where are you from?

David Harris. I'm from Poway, California, down in San Diego.

Oh, I love it. So we're here at the All In Summit. Molly's amazing. And I've had a lot of people come up and say they have a Trump account. My first question is: do you have the app on your phone?

And if they do, get out the app and I'm going to put $100 in your son's account. So what's his name?

Derek Harris.

Okay. So we're going to— we're going to walk through—

Talk through how easy this is.

Yes. So here he is. You could see on his phone, if you just turn it a little bit toward me—

There's a QR code?

It's a QR code on his phone. So you pull it up. I scan the QR code. So scan his QR code. It works very fast, but it is very sunny. And now we deal a little bit with a slightly slow Wi-Fi, as you know, Molly, because—

Okay. Brad, how many of these did you put some money into yesterday?

I think I probably spent $5,000 to 50 accounts, maybe, for people over the last 2 days.

Wow. That's a lot.

I mean, listen, it's addictive. I like it so—

I know. I know. Why talk to you about this?

I mean, it's the gamification. It's so exciting to add money into your kid's account. So you can see on my phone it says, "Contribute to Derek's Future." Your son's name is—

That's Derek.

—is Derek. Okay.

Exactly. Shout-out to Derek.

So get started. So it just brings us up. We're going to— we're going to give him $150 because he went on air with us, okay?

Oh, wow. Thank you.

So $150. And then it just says, "Who's it from?" Right? So Brad Gerstner. Give a little message, you know, to Derek.

Just pop a photo in there. Take a selfie.

Right. Exactly. So here we go. Hey, Derek. You have an awesome dad. Here's a little gift to get you started. Make sure you save a lot and keep compounding. Okay?

That's Derekright there.

Awesome. So you can see the message drops in. I say, "Go." Then it says, you know, "Confirm that you want to give this $150 to Derek."

Wow.

Okay? Then it just goes here. I use Apple Pay. Okay? I have to choose my debit card because we haven't lit up AmEx yet. Okay? So I double-click on it, just like I always do.

Wow.

Okay? Give it a second. Done. So now, "Thanks for your contribution." And boom, there's my JP Morgan account that's been debited $150.

Wow.

We just hooked up Derek.

Really easy.

Thank you. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Should I get a picture with you?

Yeah, let's do it.

Should I get a photo?

Who's helping him out?

Yes.

Joe, I'm the founder—

It's so sweet.

—of Invest America. I love it. I love it.

Thank you.

I love it.

Oh, this is great.

Here, let me get the All In in the background. Awesome.

Allright.

You're the number one bestie.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Awesome.

Yeah. So there you go.

So as you can see, Invest America, Trump Accounts, they're super easy to put money into. And it's quite addicting. I know you have a problem with it now because you're giving everybody money. But I did this for my nephews like a month ago or so, and I was like, well, I maxed out the accounts because I was really excited.

And I just wanted to put more money into. I guess, talk about the overall structure of that.

Yes. So I mean— I mean, listen. From the beginning, we were never building a program. We were building a platform. We want to have a universal infrastructure of capital accounts for every citizen in the country. We started with kids, newborns, and then we said, "Let's do everybody under 18."

So we're going to automatically create accounts. We have 9 million accounts today, which makes it one of the largest programs in the history of the federal government.

Yeah, that's incredible.

We're going to expand it to 70M accounts within the next month. All kids under the age of 18 are automatically going to have one of these accounts. And now we have all these incredible philanthropists who you know, and tons unannounced.

My dollars start hitting the accounts in Indiana on Thursday. Michael Dell's account, you know. And you can see how easy it is to donate to that phone. So moms and dads, friends, philanthropists, but the big one is companies.

So now companies across the country are turning it into part of their standard 401(k) infrastructure. 401(k)s have $75 billion a year put into them. So 401(k)s now have $15 trillion in them. We forecast that within the next 10 years, we will have $4 trillion in Trump accounts.

Now this is $4 trillion of wealth transfer to kids who would have otherwise had zero, who feel like they're totally out of the game, like they're not in— they're not part of the American dream. And now we're connecting them all with private ownership, with capitalism, you know.

And Michael and I have gotten so many emails and texts and letters and pictures from moms who say, you know, "Our family was struggling. It's only $200, but it gives us hope. We never thought we would own stocks.

We never thought we were going to be part of this system." And I really think that is the spirit that, you know, makes America what it is. That is the American dream. And so I couldn't be more excited.

And so many thanks to everybody on the team, to Michael, to Joe Gabbia, to Vlad Tenev, to Frank Bisignano, who runs all of this. He runs IRS. He runs Social Security. He runs the Trump accounts. To the president himself, who took the entrepreneurial risk of getting it done, and so many others.

But I would tell you, Molly, like, you know, like in Silicon Valley speak,right? I had the idea. Then, you know, getting Michael on board and building the Invest America Council, CEO Council. That was like the Series A. Getting the law passed is like the Series C, okay?

Yeah.

Now we're just starting to scale.

When do you IPO?

Yeah. So I'm going to say the IPO is in 30 days when we automatically launch 70M accounts.

Yeah.

Okay? That makes it one of the largest, you know, programs, accounts. It makes it— puts it on the scale with Social Security. But again, it's still day one. What this really changes is over the next 25 years, when we have 10, 20M— $20 trillion in these accounts.

And most importantly, we have a generation, 150M Americans, who feel like they're part of the system. My biggest concern for the country on the 250th birthday of the country was that we're going to lose it. The magic formula that makes America America is this belief that we have economic mobility, thisright to rise.

And if you destroy that, then you destroy capitalism.

I remember the day that Michael and Susan Dell's contribution hit, and you just saw so many amazing messages all over the internet. Not just on X. They were on Instagram. They were in the news. Like, it was incredible.

So could you talk about the impact and the impact of compounding and how you're teaching the American public about that?

Yeah. We just did an event in Texas with Michael. You know, Ted Cruz, many, many CEOs. Gwen Shotwell was there. Vlad Tenev was there. In the state of Texas, they already are putting a financial literacy wrapper around this for 750,000 kids.

Wow.

Okay? So imagine now, if you're trying to teach somebody something, and they don't own anything, and they have no prospect of owning anything, it's hard to teach them. But now the teacher says, "Get out your phone. Open up your Trump account.

And let's talk about how you got that $200. Let's talk about what it's invested in. Let's talk about what it means." Now you can, in the app itself, you can move the slider. What if I save $10 a month?

What if I save $20? And it shows you how it compounds over time. So we now have a platform and the mechanism to begin teaching people about compounding. But I will tell you this: I think there's this belief that, like, poor folks don't want to save or poor folks don't want to learn about this stuff.

It's just not true. I grew up poor, okay? The hardest movement in life is from zero to one. It's getting into the game. It's overcoming the cold start problem. It's having this belief that, "I deserve this. I'm part of this."

Once you're on first base, getting to second base is easier.

Yeah.

Right? But what this really does for tens of millions of Americans is it takes them from zero to one, and I think that's a game-changer for the country.

What is the biggest pushback that you get with the Trump accounts? Is it because they're labeled Trump accounts?

Well, that definitely is the one I hear the most often. Obviously, the country's pretty evenly politically divided. But I will tell you this: there is a grand bipartisan support for this. There has been from the beginning. And I tried to get it done during the Biden administration.

I had a lot of support on Capitol Hill, but I could never get to the White House to really get action going. And so whether it's, you know, senators like Booker and Warner on the left, or whether it's, you know, obviously senators like Cruz and Haggerty and so many others, John Thune on theright, same in the House.

But we have, you know, Gavin Newsom came out and said, "I enthusiastically endorse everybody to go get their Trump accounts."

Wow.

You know, Bill Clinton has said that this is the type of thing that can save America. So there is broad bipartisan support here. But the fact of the matter is, this would not exist. Michael Dell and I went and saw the president, and we said, "This is something that we think is really important for the country."

We weren't even there five minutes when he said, "This is the whole meaning of my presidency. It's the Main Street agenda. We're going to make this happen." He picks up the phone. He calls the Speaker of the House.

He said, "Get it in the bill." And that is, again, a very Silicon Valley founder moment that we, you know, we needed— we needed that to happen. And now we're running with it. And the execution by Scott Bessent, by Frank Bisignano in the government, and then by the partners outside the government.

And Michael Dell is the best partner I could ever dream of. I mean, he and I are going out and talking to every company. We're talking to every philanthropist. I think this truly will be The Giving Pledge 2.0, and it's going directly to America's kids, $0.10 on the dollar, no intermediaries.

And I think that the evidence on the field is: more likely to graduate from high school and college, more likely to buy a home, more likely to start a business, more likely to pay taxes, less likely to be incarcerated.

We've done the bipartisan research on this. The ROI is going to be off the charts for society. And I honestly pinch myself. I can't believe we got it done. I can't believe we're here and we're going to IPO in about 30 days, and then, you know, our goal is, you know, a multi-trillion-dollar company, even though it's not for profit.

I love it. I love it.

Yeah.

Well, Brad, thank you so much. This is incredible. Between the calcium scans, learning more about the Trump accounts. And before we close out, I have to ask.

Yeah.

We had some incredible programming here. Jensen.

Yes.

We had Elon chime in with Gwen.

Yes.

What is your hottest take from the All In summit this year?

Well, I mean, obviously, we had a lot of controversy at the end of last week, you know, that I was quite critical of on Friday. People coming out saying, "There's a 10% chance of an extinction event from AI."

Then we had the Dario essay that I thought was, you know, a good path forward around independent monitors on Saturday. A lot of controversy about how much that meant slowing down. We had Elon come here and say, "Listen, I tend to agree with Dario.

The risk is augmenting, and we need to have peer review, independent peer review." I thought that was a great idea. Jensen said, "Listen, the labs themselves need to control it. They need to do a better job. They need to get this under control."

The president calling in while Jensen's on the, you know, on the couch and chiming in. So everybody thinks there's chaos. I don't think it's chaos. I think what we're doing is we're open-sourcing in real time how consensus forms.

The sausage-making's kind of ugly. But if you really just think about everything we heard, it's boiling down to a pragmatic consensus that, yes, there's more power and more risk than we may have thought of. So we need to act responsibly.

It needs to start with the companies themselves. But we probably do need some sort of peer review. We do need to talk to China about whether or not they're willing. You know, Elon said yesterday, "Maybe they'll participate in open-source peer review on this."

So those are important conversations, important things to explore. I think sometime in the business of podcasting or X, everybody wants you to join a tribe.

Yeah.

You have to be all on this side or all on that side. But the constructive solution around Trump accounts and the constructive solution here is going to be a pragmatic, commonsensical middle way. And I think you saw that unfold here.

I mean, it's incredible. And I just want to say hats off to four of my besties who put this together. I mean, it's far more than a podcast. It's a community that I think is advancing important conversations. You're part of that.

But to watch that unfold in real time on stage and to move the conversation forward, it's something I'm proud to be a part of.

I don't think anybody who came here will forget that moment.

Yeah. Yeah. It's extraordinary.

Seeing history unfold in front of our eyes.

Yeah. Well, congratulations to you on all the success.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Brad. Really appreciate the time and a very happy All In summit.

Indeed.

Cool.