Last week, Saikat Chakrabarti joined Hasan Piker’s Twitch livestream to discuss everything from his upbringing in a Bengali immigrant family in Texas to his dreams of nationalizing industries for the benefit of the public.
Just earning a guest spot with Piker, America’s most outspoken socialist influencer, who has three million followers on Twitch and millions more on Instagram and X, was a coup for Chakrabarti’s campaign to be the Democratic nominee for Nancy Pelosi’s seat.
Chakrabarti’s visit with Piker went even better than the nascent politico could’ve imagined. Not only did he make the Twitch chatroom of extremely online young leftists buzz with excitement, he apparently won over Piker, who gushed that Chakrabarti was “knocking it out of the park for every question.”
The interview raised Chakrabarti’s profile in one major way: Chakrabarti hit a 2026 high in internet searches of his name last week, the biggest bump since a slew of national press placements (and one short-lived scandal) in October and November last year, per Google Trends data.
Although much of Piker’s fanbase won’t be eligible to vote for the Congressional race in San Francisco (and, in fact, may be too young to vote even if they live here), the media play has created a wave of online interest among young progressives who view Piker as a digital kingmaker of left populists. It may also serve as a kind of roadmap for Chakrabarti’s opponents, Supervisor Connie Chan and State Sen. Scott Wiener, to raise their own visibility by leveraging viral online personalities, even if it’s not for a local audience.
Chakrabarti projected a relaxed demeanor during the March 4 stream, bantering with Piker about Das Kapital and World War III while navigating questions about healthcare, foreign policy, and the need to start planning for a “publicly owned economy.”
In particular, Chakrabarti dug into five issues that define his campaign: making essential goods affordable via government intervention, ending political corruption, ending interventionist wars, using AI to build the “Star Trek future” rather than a profit-driven “Mad Max dystopia,” and building prosperity for the working class.
Chakrabarti again refused to label himself a socialist, but he happily called himself a “class traitor,” stating that the best use of wealth and privilege is to lift up working people who are struggling. (Chakrabarti, who described himself as a centimillionaire to Piker, has a net worth of at least $167 million thanks to his stint as second engineer of a startup that would grow into financial tech juggernaut Stripe.)
“It’s crazy that you can just end up working at a place early on and [can] just be in the right place at the right time, and you hit the startup lottery like I did, and you can have everything,” Chakrabarti said. “I worked hard for a couple years, but there are teachers, nurses, the people who actually run society, they work hard every day and can’t afford a home in San Francisco, right?”
He also discussed his time co-founding the Justice Democrats, a political caucus that raised money to support candidates who reject corporate donors and push progressive views. Chakrabarti noted the group’s wins but also reflected on what comes next, taking a militant tone about the Democratic Party as a whole.
“I did the Justice Democrats thing to try to push the party leadership. And my whole lesson from that was you can't push them. You have to replace them,” Chakrabarti told Piker. “We have to primary them, we have to actually do the political revolution and go in there and replace a lot of leadership.”
In a text to Gazetteer SF, Chakrabarti said that he appreciated the chance to speak with Piker and “discuss ideas in depth” for over an hour. “Since our conversation, we’ve seen a surge in interest in our campaign,” he said.
“People are hungry for new ideas and a new vision for our country. And I’m not just talking about young people or leftists,” Chakrabarti continued. “At our last town hall, people of all ages showed up who had heard about the campaign on Hasan’s stream, and who wanted to hear more about how, exactly, we can completely change the leadership and direction of the Democratic Party to create a party that will not just stop Trump, but build a society where people can actually afford to live.”
There remain vulnerabilities in Chakrabarti’s campaign, namely the lack of support from establishment Democrats in California and his previous support of moderate candidates in San Francisco in the 2024 race, such as current District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who received major donations from centrist PACs and unseated Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed incumbent Dean Preston.
Despite Chakrabarti largely glossing over Piker’s question about that — he said he worked with Mahmood on “climate stuff” in the past — the broadcast bolstered the narrative of Chakrabarti as the race’s left populist. He also earned Piker’s trust; the commentator took to X this week to slam Wiener and back Chakrabarti. (He said nothing about Chan.)
“This was incredible. We will continue doing this,” Piker said at the end of the March 4 stream, adding that he will be in San Francisco for a college speaking tour soon. “We’ll link up and do something there.”
