(TheStreet) - Billionaire investor and former senior executive at Facebook Chamath Palihapitiya rarely holds back his opinions. The CEO of Social Capital and cohost of the "All In" podcast is known for his fiery Twitter presence and diverse political opinions.
Having donated to both Democratic and Republican efforts in his past, Palihapitiya -- who was raised in Canada -- is hard to nail down.
But his most recent opinion about woke companies, or businesses that morally signal their allegiance to various causes in an effort to please a given constituency, is crystal clear.
"Go woke, go broke…" Palihapitiya tweeted out on Thursday morning to his 1.6 million followers.
"'For the first time ever, six states in the South - Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee are contributing more to US GDP than the northeast corridor of Washington-New York-Boston…'" he quoted from a Bloomberg finding.
"Just in the past few years, there has been a $160B swing in income between these two groups (South + $100B, NE - $60B). Is the major differences between these two groups only ideology? Or is it something else like genetics, health, etc etc that I’m not understanding?" he questioned in the lengthy tweet.
The tweet, which has since been viewed over 742,000 times, received a reply from fellow venture capitalist and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
"Can you name one woke company that has gone broke?" Cuban asked.
Cuban has recently been outspoken about companies who speak out in favor of social justice causes, going as far as saying "it's good business."
“There is a reason almost all the top ten market cap companies in the U.S. can be considered ‘woke.’ It’s good business,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a June interview.
Palihapitiya quickly provided a link from CB Insights that included a list of businesses he perceived as "woke" which had gone under. He also quipped that state and local taxes, also known as SALT for short, may be partly to blame for the jump in southern states' recent outsized contributions to GDP.
"My guess is that SALT lit the fuse and Covid added the gas," he wrote. "I think generally, most people want: 1) decent weather 2) good job 3) low taxes 4) gvt that stays out of their way 5) nice neighbors."
Jena Greene
June 29, 2023
