Big Technology Podcast - 2025 In Review, 2026 Predictions — With Reed Albergotti

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Reed Albergotti is the technology editor at Semafor. Albergotti joins Big Technology Podcast to break down which companies are best positioned in the coming year. We cover Meta’s superintelligence gamble, Google’s Gemini push, OpenAI’s model race, and the rise of AI companions. We also discuss Tesla’s self-driving moment of truth, Nvidia’s upside and risks, Microsoft’s Copilot dilemma, big media and streaming shake-ups, Anthropic’s IPO prospects, SPACs and private equity, quantum, and the strange new love stories people are forming with their bots. Hit play for a fast, prediction-packed tour through the year in tech—and a sharp, entertaining look at where the AI economy and Big Tech are headed next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's look back at 2025 and anticipate what's coming in 2026. We'll do it with Semaphore Technology Editor, Reid Al-Brogati, right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called chat concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive,

Get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. At Fandual Casino, you get even more ways to play. Dive into new and exciting games. And all of your favorite casino classics, like slots, table games, and arcade games. Get more on Fandual Casino.

Download the app today. Please play responsibly 19 Plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerned about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. Welcome to Big Technology podcast, a show for cool-headed and nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. It's the holiday season, which means one thing. We take a look back at what happened over the past year and say, what's next? And if we can be right, you know, maybe three or four times out of like the 90,000 predictions we'll make.

I'm sure we'll celebrate it next year. So joining us, as always, is, or actually joining us in key moments in history, shall we say, is 7 and 4 Technology editor, Reid Albergotti. Reid, great to see you. It's always good to be here. I kind of emailed you and said, let's do predictions. But I'd love to hear just your recap of 2025. I mean, it's been a crazier, so much funding, commitment, back and forth.

What would you say is like sort of the defining characteristic of the past? year. Yeah, I think, excuse me, I think that is one of them. I think the infrastructure, you know, sort of questions and just the sheer scale of it has been probably like the big topic of conversation. But I also think, you know, we've been talking a lot about China recently, right? I think geopolitics has played a big role, a much big role than it did last year. I was looking back at my predictions from last year and trying to see like, where did I get it? Where did I get right and what did I get wrong? And I mean, you know, it just seems like it was such a different world a year ago, right? Before the changeover in the

administration, we've seen all kinds of crazy stuff happening in the Gulf. And so, you know, I think that's another, another big one. I mean, for me, like, I view this as sort of a year of scale where like, let me, I'm just going to try to go through like the various years since chat GPT has been released because obviously gender of AI has been the animating conversation in the tech world. I mean, 2022 was like, oh, wow, the computer can talk to you and doesn't sound like an idiot. 2023 was basically, it felt like treading water. There was a lot of like, where's this going to go? Because the capabilities weren't advanced. Enough. Sam Altman gets fired, reinstated. And then I think 2024 and 25 have really been the years where, like,

like the applications are starting to material. Like maybe 24 was when the application was starting to materialize. Like you really had a sense that this stuff might work. And now 2025 has been like everybody's taking all of their money and putting all of it into this project in the hopes that, you know, it really will continue growing the way that it has. Is that a good sort of representation of where we are? I like that.

I like that. Yeah, I do think that's right. And I did write in the predictions last. year about, you know, infrastructure and the fact that it was probably an obvious prediction, but that like we were just going to see huge, like multiples more compute this year than we did last year. And also talked about how these data centers were going to get so big that they're going to be, these large frontier models are going to be trained across multiple locations, which we started to see in like the last quarter. So yeah, I mean, I totally agree with that.

And I think we'll see, I think we'll see that continue next year. So if those are the labels for 20, 25, what do you think the label is going to be for 26? Like if we are going to look back this time next year, where do you think we are? Yeah, I mean, I think actually we're reaching this point in AI where it is still going to be the major topic of conversation. But I think some of the sort of novelty of it is wearing off now. and I think we'll see it kind of plateau. And then I think the products will become much more important. Like I don't think, you mentioned the products back in 2024,

but I think next year it's really going to be about the products. I don't think people are going to be getting excited about, you know, the new, whatever new models coming out and, you know, what are the capabilities? Because I think for most people, they're basically good enough. And it's really about just adding new products rather than like the underlying model capability. So I think that's what next year, at least for consumers will be about. And the enterprise, it's maybe a little different. Yeah. I mean, I think there's going to be some

companies that will continue to push the envelope and that will be some pretty impressive news. But I also think the shakeout is coming in a way. Like to me, I think 2026 is really going to be a year of chaos. I mean, we're already starting to see some of this happen with Oracle and some of the other infrastructure builders. And the bets have become so, big and you know what that's one of the things about gambling is not everybody wins their bets so yeah yeah so so what i'm going to do i think that like we have a prediction episode coming up with ronjohn roy so instead of just going like for our wild predictions i just kind of wanted to set the table for 2026 and sort of throw some ideas about what the companies you know might be going through

what this chaos might look like and then sort of hear your perspective about it read does that sound good sure yeah and i'd love to hear if you disagree because i think this is it's fun to argue about this stuff definitely all right let's do it part of the interruption style meta uh the question for meta is like what is going to happen to that super intelligence lap i mean that is it's a multi billion dollar effort uh it hasn't has it produced anything uh and it is really going to be sort of deliver or or chaos or crisis mode for that division next year Yeah, I think it's going to continue to be chaos and crisis mode. I mean, you're already seeing stories coming out.

I think it was in the Times about some sort of friction between the product teams and the superintelligence team. So I think that will continue. I think it's just so remarkable that meta, you know, they were so early on AI. They tried to acquire deep mind, you know, before Google did. And then sort of just lost focus on it. And now it just seems to be all over the place. And it's going to be all about, I think, for them, like, again, it's products, right? It's like these glasses, you know, the glasses incorporating AI into those and, you know,

across its products, which has been sort of a, you know, a clunky experience, right? I don't think the Facebook and Instagram AI products that they put out have been necessarily that popular. So I think it'll just be more chaos as they try to figure it out. I mean, let's flesh that out a little bit. So obviously there's one question about whether Alexander, is going to stay. The other is, are they going to ship a leading model or at least a model that people respect?

Because after, let's say, Lama 3, which was neck and neck with some of the state-of-the-art closed models, they've really fallen off a cliff. And they have all the expertise in all the GPUs they could want. And obviously this stuff takes a long time. But yet, where's the cream filling? I think they've actually failed at that strategy of sort of putting out open source models and then trying to make that the standard. they're really good at open source software.

I mean, they've done that many times, right, with PiTorch. But I think AI's different because it's just so expensive. And I wrote about this a bunch. Like, eventually, do these models get so expensive that it just makes no sense to put out a leading frontier model and make it free? And you have so much competition now from China, from France, you know, with Mistral, that it's just, I think at this point, the new models are either going to just be part of their products, like almost backend technology. or they'll be, you know, they'll be closed models just like Open AI. That's my guess. I mean, I think, like an educated guess, I would say.

I don't know if you'd agree with that. I think so. I think they're not going to, their open source strategy is definitely done. The question really is, can they build a even closed model that rivals today's leaders? Well, I don't think they have to, to be honest. I think that thinking about it that way is like the way a lot of people still think about AI. It's like there's this race to super intelligence. I don't think that's the case.

I think at this point, it's about products. And if people like the meta products that they put out there that are run on these foundation models, to be honest, they could probably be run on a lot of different models that are out there. I think it's partly ego. It's partly bragging rights. And maybe a nod to maybe it's really for Wall Street to kind of look like you're on the cutting edge. But I mean, I don't, I really don't think they have. do i think the models are pretty they're they're good enough and they're close enough that you don't have to have some breakthrough um in fact i think the same is true for probably open ai um i mean we

you know i don't again that's maybe a controversial opinion but you know do you agree well i was going to say so let me let me let me throw this this other thing out there which which is um which is basically is one answer to your question um as you're talking about about meta, it does seem clear that meta can effectively fail to build superintelligence. They could fail to build, you know, the worst model and still make their products better. But then what do their products look like? There's a lot more interaction with AI in them than there were previously. They, you go from, you know, human, you friend a human to you friend your AI bot.

And we've already seen that there's compelling uses for that. So maybe next year really is the moment where Facebook and, I mean, we've already seen some of it with the recruiting. But Facebook and Open AI's battle just explodes out into the open and maybe Zuck and Sam are at odds with each other and meta might even start to eventually see some usage declines as people are like, well, I don't want to look at other people's great lives on Instagram. I want to speak with my AI therapy bot who tells me how great I am. Well, you know, that's interesting to think about like, so all these tech companies are always competing with each other on like every front, right? They all make a product in every single

category and opening eye has now made a social media app, right? And I think that's sort of looking like it's failed. I mean, they threw the spaghetti against the wall. I think actually it looks like Facebook is, or meta and Facebook and Instagram are sort of competing more with YouTube and TikTok and, you know, and it's not so much social media anymore. It looks it looks a lot like just media, right? And like television. I think that's in the YouTube strategy is like if you talk to Neil Mohan, it's like, you know, the CEO of YouTube, it's like they don't care whether it's AI generated content or human generating content. They just want to put content in front of you that you want to see and you want to watch. And I think that's ultimately

what Matt is about. I mean, it's it's eyeball farming, right? And so like I don't know what the AI, what the future of social media and content is in AI world, like we can make guesses about that. But meta will, we'll see what it is, and they're very good at copying that, right? So they will just mimic whatever, you know, wherever the eyeballs are going, they'll, they'll do those products. And they'll probably do, you know, they generally do a good job with that, I think. Talk a little bit more about why you don't think opening eye needs the best models. Well, I mean, there was an interesting story in the information today that said, you know, AI, so Open AIs realized that there's less progress on the model front. And consumers don't, it doesn't necessarily translate into, you know, better consumer products, right, as they increase the capabilities of the models. And that's creating some tension within the company. Of course, the company responded and said that's, you know, more or less not true. But like, I've been calling this now for like over a year, which is that. that the real, the open AI, as soon as chat GPT came out, completely changed from a research lab to a consumer product company.

Yes, they have an enterprise business that's growing, and I think that could be a good revenue source. But really, what they have that nobody else has is chat GPT and a lot of eyeballs, a lot of, it's, I think it was or is the fastest growing, you know, consumer product and history. if you just look at the numbers and the speed of growth. So they're just, what they need to do is keep those people engaged. That's their product. And they have to reduce costs. So I think when you talk about like opening eye building its own chips and data centers and all this stuff, that's all about like them foreseeing the future where there's so

many people using these things. It's expensive to run in the data center. They're going to have to have a strategy to control the costs and sort of vertically integrate there. It's not about, like, can we build superintelligence? I think they have to, they have to keep, stay on the cutting edge, but that's more because they've, like, they still have a lot of investors who believe that, you know, they've invested in this company because they're going to invent AGI and it's going to tell them how to make money, right? And there's a story that they have to keep telling. And I think it's important for recruiting and all that. But, like,

ultimately I think that will just become there will be a research lab within open AI just like Google has you know had for many years like an AI research lab and now that's becoming much more a part of product. So that's that's kind of how I see it if that if that makes sense. Yeah that makes sense. I mean I think my I will go against you on this one. I do think they need the best models. I think their story and their story is important is predicated on them being out ahead of everybody else. And it was interesting how, when Google released Gemini 3, before the code read happened, the underappreciated comment within that company was Sam saying there are going to be some,

I guess, like, what do you say, bad vibes or some economic, bad, like, tough economic vibes, which I think just indicates that best model story continues and, you know, then you can sort of build the infrastructure you need to be able to deliver the products. So I think if you fall too, go ahead. Oh, good. Sorry, I cut you off then. Yeah, no. I was just going to say if you fall too behind on model development,

then some of that magic evaporates. I agree with that. But I think the thing that I'd love to get your thought on is when the bad vibes, the bad economic vibes, are they, is that their customers with the products? Or is that more about investors and raising money and, you know, or borrowing money, that kind of thing? I think it's more about about investors. That would be my guess.

That's what I do. Right. Yeah. But that money right now is so important to the company. Totally. Totally. And that's what I mean. I think they have to keep doing it because, but it's more about appearances.

It's not, it's not like, you know, if they don't stay on the cutting edge of models, the users will go to Google or something, right? I mean, I think there is a competition for, for users there. But it's much more about. like what does the actual product feel? What are consumers able to do with this? Which has, I think, less and less to do with the underlying model capabilities and more to do with all the stuff they build around those models. So that's sort of my view. Okay. That'll take. That'll take. I get that. That's an important nuance. And we love doing that here. All right. Oh, we have so many

companies left to do. I think we've only really done one and a half. All right. Google. The Google thing is like we're going to see next year whether or not they can maintain this momentum. And if they do, they effectively become the undisputed leader in AI, given where they started and how they've been tracking. And that is an impressive turnaround for them. But my, all right, I will go with my perspective on this first. I don't think they're going to do it. I think there's been all this buzz about Gemini being so great. you use the product. It's good. It does cool things. It has really interesting features. You can talk to videos, which I like. But it doesn't feel as developed as the others do, as Claude and as Chatchipati. Like if you said run, go use an AI and you need to get something done right away. I don't go to Gemini. It just, it, sorry. Well, I was going to say something neat. I just think, not about you. It's about it.

I'll say it. I'll say it. I'll say it. Gemini to me feels like an Axios article. Right? It's like giving you the bullet points. Oh, wow. I thought you were going to say something mean about Google, but you're, okay, you're going for Axios. All right. I like Axios. But, you know, it just feels like, you know, oh, here, let's just give you, you know, the bull points. Then you go away. Yeah. No, I, I, I see what you mean. I actually, I like Gemini, too. Like, I use that. I think it's good for, like, you kind of said anything visual. Like, I use. Like, I use it. I use. I, you know, like, you kind of said anything visual. Like, like, I use. I use. I use. I. I. I used it to try to like redecorate my house which you know was like just just in mayhem and so it was really helpful for that i think it was i tried you know chat chabit so i think on the multimodal front they're they're better the way i look at it though is not that like google you know caught up or something like that i i think google was was already ahead on ai but they just hadn't been thinking about productizing it yet they were sort of like this technology's not here yet. It's not ready yet, so we're going to wait. You could say that was a mistake or not, but whatever happened is they get dragged into this new world. And they had to catch up not on

AI, but just on like how to turn these AI, you know, this AI research into products. And they pretty much have caught up. But I think that they still have a big problem, which is that like they're underlying you know they get 80% of their revenue I think from from search from the advertiserch advertising ecosystem um and that's totally changing right that whole industry is changing like it's I think traditional search is like is going to be just gone um even Google search is to me totally different now and what does that do to revenue and I think it's just a question of like that's a very tricky balance that they have to it's a tight rip they have to walk where they can't disrupt themselves too fast, but they kind of have to disrupt themselves. And there's a lot of ways that that can go wrong. So I kind of agree, like, it's not like Google's now in the lead and they can just like continue getting better at AI. And, you know, this isn't, this isn't really about being better at AI. But then again, I think it's, that's also looking at, looking at Gemini is like very narrow. Because like, in a lot of ways, like their AI showing up in places like self-driving cars.

right the waymo thing is is you know all over the place we can talk about self-driving car predictions if you want to um but you know quantum computing right where you've got a potential there for you know breakthroughs in quantum which then would feed into you know like isomorphic labs their biotech spin off right um which could be whole new sources of revenue so i think in a lot of ways like they're this giant empire that has a lot of like i think really good things going so I'd sort of like broaden it out beyond Gemini, if that makes sense. Yeah, that does make sense. I mean, this is like a place where, I mean,

Waymo is brought up every, you know, a couple episodes. And there's the only thing you can do with Waymo is just be like, they're really doing it. It's Google, like between Waymo, AI, Quantum. I mean, the fact that they acquired DeepMind, they're a smart company. It's a, yeah, I think it's a very smart company. And I think Sundar, you know, he gets a lot of, he gets a lot of crap, I think. But like, I mean, to be able to kind of like quickly mobilize and change.

And if you talk to people at Google, they're just like, it's a totally different vibe now than it used to be. It's like people, it's much more of like a, hey, let's get going, like fast-paced vibe versus kind of. I thought it was kind of a sleepy. It's kind of sleepy before. That was, that was my vibe. So. Yeah, I was retirement home in a way. I mean, I know that's wrong. But there's truth. in the joke yeah not for everyone right it's a huge company but like you know there were some people who for sure were taking it easy and i think they're being like sort of ushered out in one way or another so you know but it's hard it's it's it's tough to like turn around that chip so i i totally agree that they have they have huge challenges but it's like such a bigger

it's i mean we haven't even talked about their tpUs right i think so much of of this AI stuff is about cost and like vertical integration and they're they're leading there so you know it's it's really I think all this data center build out the way I think about it is it's like the training part is like interesting but like it's really about inference it's really about serving the products to you know consumers and enterprise in the most efficient way possible and like I don't it's between I mean Amazon's doing a good job of that too so it's Microsoft but like Google seems to be just ahead there. I don't know how you feel about that.

No, I agree with that as well. My perspective on this is that Gemini hype is going to fade a little bit, but Google the company is in really good shape. All right, I need to take a quick break. Let's come back. We'll do Amazon, we'll do Apple, and we'll see what else we can get to. Netflix, I don't know. Let's do that right after this.

These days, it feels like every dollar should be working a little harder. But figuring out where to put your cash can be confusing. That's where wealth from. comes in. Wealthfront is a tech-driven financial platform built to help you grow your savings into long-term wealth. Their high-yield cash account through program banks offers a 3.25% APY on your uninvested cash as of December 19, 2025. And there are no account fees, no minimum or maximum balance to earn that rate, and you can even make free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts in just minutes, 24-7, so your money can always be within reach. Right now, Wealthfront is offering

new clients an extra 0.65% APY over the base rate for three months on up to a $150,000 balance. That's a total of 3.90% variable APY when you open your first cash account. Go to wellfront.com slash big tech to sign up today. This is a paid testimonial for Wealthfront. It may not reflect the experience of others and there's no guarantee of future performance or success. Wellfront brokerage is not a bank. Rate subject to change, promo terms and conditions apply. For more information, see episode description. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one.

It's called chat concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's Technology at Capital One.

Michael Lewis here. My bestselling book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. A decade ago, the Big Short was made into an Academy Award-winning movie, and now I'm bringing it to you for the first time as an audiobook narrated by yours truly. The Big Short's story, what it means to bet against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant to, day as it's ever been. Get the big short now at pushkin.fm slash audio books or wherever audiobooks are sold. And we're back here on big technology podcast with Rita Albregadi. He's the technology editor at Simafore. A headline from the future about Amazon. I have it here. Amazon partners with OpenAI and Anthropic to bring shopping into chatbots.

Are we going to see it? Yeah, I mean, that would make total sense to me. I think that would make total sense. Because right now, I mean, that's what people want, right? That's what everyone is trying to basically do that with Amazon now. And they would love to like disintermediate Amazon. Like all these, all these chatbot companies, perplexity too. Like they'd love to just have you be able to shop on Amazon and never have to go to Amazon.

Of course, like that's a bad deal for Amazon. So the natural, I think the natural solution is they've got to work together and they've got to figure out how to, you know, with whatever it is, MCP servers or something else to just kind of make this shopping experience work. Yeah, no, I think it's happening. And of course, Amazon's eyeing this $10 billion investment into Open AI, which is fascinating because they already have many billions in Anthropic. That's really interesting. And I think the rumor, I don't think it's been confirmed that Open AI, is going to actually use the Traneum, the Amazon Traneum chips, is another really interesting one. That, to me, if that happens, you've got Anthropic and Open AI using Traneum.

That's a huge win for them on the custom chip front. It will help them develop their next generation of chips, and I think we'll be like a real competitor on the, not directly maybe to the TPUs at Google, but like just in terms of like vertical integration and cost. Right. Here's Apple. Headline from the future, Apple. M.G. C. Lear and I talked about this a little while ago, and it's been disputed, but I'm still going with it. Tim Cook announces on first quarter conference call that he's leaving the company at the end of the year. He's going out on top. He's going to give the world his last little gift, which is the folding iPhone, which will be the flagship. phone for the company, maybe not the flagship, but the most profitable iPhone Apple has ever made and Tim will shrug his shoulders like Michael Jordan and say, what more can I do and be done?

I think, you know, I don't know if that will happen, but I've read, as you said, conflicting reports on that, but probably a good move for him. I mean, he's like, just if you look at the market cap of that company, what he's done is incredible. And I think at his age, it's just, there's just very little upside in terms of, like, just his legacy. I don't know how much he, and you've got just so many issues with China, you know, all this stuff. It's just like the future of Apple is such a massive headache. Like, I think if it were, if it were me, I would, I would totally make that move. But then again, that's why I'm not, you know, a billionaire CEO of Apple. So, you know, they think they think different. But, but, yeah, I like, I like that. I like that.

Tesla. So Tesla is the big thing about Tesla's self-driving. And I wonder if 2026 could be a big year for Tesla's self-driving effort. I was just in Dallas and I got picked up in a Uber Tesla and with a human driver, but I said, hey, can you flick that thing on? And he did. And I felt good enough on the highways in Dallas that, you know, it wasn't going to crash and it operated around curves and around traffic very well. It switched lanes. A lot of people have been saying good things about it. I don't know. Reed, is this going to be the year? And why is Tesla and not really viewed in the same league as Waymo? I guess it's not as good. Well, I mean, I think politics plays a big part in that, right? I think it's one of my gripes is like I think tech reporters allow their personal feelings and, you know,

feelings, emotions to kind of like skew their analysis of these companies. And the Tesla FSD has come such a long way. Like I tried that out when it was brand new in Sacramento with some Washington Post colleagues at the time. And it was absolutely terrifying. I mean, it's amazing now. I mean, it drives you from San Francisco to like other anywhere, basically, in Northern California with barely ever having to touch the wheel. I mean, it's like 99.9% of the way there. So if they don't make some kind of breakthrough that allows them to, at least in some kind of like geographical, you know,

geo-fence area, get rid of the driver and start offering robotaxies, I think that will be a surprising loss, I think, like a hit on Tesla. Because, I mean, again, they've bet the future of the company on this, right? It's not a car company anymore. It's a robotics company. and they have to make this work. But the reason people don't, to answer your question, look at Tesla in the same way as Waymo,

is because they took a totally different approach that I think made them look like a cheap knockoff of Waymo, right? Waymo's got these really expensive, you know, LIDARs and all this stuff, and it's just like packed with technology, and Tesla's like, well, we're just going to do it with cameras. it's going to be, you know, it's just going to be a very simple, simple thing and took a lot of flack for that. And I think, you know, what that forced them to do was really focus on the long-term problem of, you know, building these models that can, you know, essentially look at the world

and reason like people, right? And that's where, that's where like these foundation models, like what Google is doing is sort of converging now in, in the autonomous driving space, where you're taking a lot of the human, the painstaking human, you know, sort of edge case, edge case engineering out of it and just sort of like handing it over to the model. But again, like that 99.9% is still like a long way from the finish line. So, you know, it could go either way, I think. Here's where I think Tesla comes, you know, into league with Waymo is if it can really get those Roboto. taxis on the road with no safety driver and operate them safely.

That's it. I mean, it's one thing to have like nice autopilot on your car for like some stretches. But once you can send, you feel comfortable enough to send these things out onto the wild and let them go. That's really where interesting things happen. And I don't know, maybe they'll do it. Maybe they won't. That's the great mystery of Tesla.

Yeah, I agree with that. There's something is going to happen in AV this year, next year, in 2026, that's going to be like a huge deal. And I think it could be a good thing. It could also be a bad thing, though. Like if somebody, if a Waymo, there's an incident, like a tragic incident where someone's killed, I mean, that, who knows how people are going to react to that, right? I mean, this thing could be set back in, in 26, even though the technology is really moving forward. So, you know, this is not a rational world. It says so much about the technology that it hasn't happened yet. that it's driven all these models, all sorry, all these miles and still is relatively safe, pretty wild.

It's way safer than a human driver, for sure, statistically. I mean, orders of magnitude safer. It's just like that's not how we look at it, right? We don't look at life through an economics lens, right? It's a different calculation. So I think it's going to be eventually something will happen. and I think that's going to be like a huge test for like the technology but also just like for society like how we how we allow this stuff to proceed so yeah all right looking ahead to

next year to me the biggest variable is invidia invidia could easily I mean it's kind of wild to say I feel like invidia could be a 10 trillion dollar company by the end of the year that might be an exaggeration or like two trillion dollar company it could have for double I'll say because either it like, you know, the AI buildout continues a pace and videos in great shape or what's happening now, which seems like some of it's being commoditized, really takes off. And then there are Jensen's there holding his power chip and being like, huh? Yeah, I think it's for sure going to lose market share, but I think the pie is growing so fast that there's just no way, there's no way they stop growing. What Wall Street decided.

to do with that, who knows? I mean, it could hit, you know, I don't know, if people get spooked, like I could see their stock dropping. But in the end, I mean, people are just going to be buying these chips. There's just, there's just no way around it. Microsoft, like the headline that I'm thinking about for 2026 has something to do with co-pilot. And I don't think it's good. We've seen some of those already this year. Microsoft has disputed them. I just think the company needs to do something with co-pilot. People don't like it. I mean, some people do, but by and large, it's not a beloved product. They have all of Open AIs IP and they have this very expensive add-on to office that everybody went for because it was important to do AI for a couple of years. And now

people are like, what is this? I know. I agree. I think they have to do something. If they don't, it's a disruptable product, right? Their whole, I mean, we just had a really smart story, I think, by one of my colleagues about Excel and how they just recently raised their prices on Excel. They're still, and the stickiness of these products is still like something to behold, right? Even without AI, they're still amazing.

But I think eventually as AI gets better, as the products get better, I mean, it is disruptible. So they have to figure out a way to essentially turn, turn office and really just office into like a natural language interface where you just talk to it and it does stuff and right now the technology isn't there right it's just like they could try to do that but it would make too many mistakes and you would you know I think they'd get a lot of blowback for that so they've been cautious there the danger is that they just become like a data center company right which is not not not as good of a business so yeah I think they've

got a lot of work to do, for sure. Headline from the future, Netflix says Warner Brothers deal falls apart. Yeah, I mean, I think one of my predictions for next year is like we're going to see a lot of M&A and I think the Trump administration is really kind of sending a signal. Like, we're not going to mess with your acquisitions anymore. But this is a special case, right? because there's family involved, family and friends involved in this deal. And I think for sure, like you could see, you could see it falling apart.

Or I think maybe the more likely thing is that it doesn't fall apart. But like there has to be some concession made to, you know, the Trump family, to, you know, to the Ellison group or something like that. Just to kind of, just to kind of grease the wheels here. Yeah. Last one I have is Anthropic. My prediction is, while opening a dozen IPO, Anthropic at least, sets a timeline, if not files an S-1 next year. Yeah, I think it's a good chance of the IPO next year. I think it could happen.

I mean, it's a good, it could be a really good time. And I think we'll see more. I think we'll see more IPOs next year. That's probably, you know, these things are notoriously wrong. It's always like the year, the IPO, and then something happens. But I would bank on that happening, I think. All right. Do you want to throw some haymakers before we leave?

Well, I think one that's going to be fun is like that we're going to see more SPACs next year. Really? I think, yeah, I think we had Rachel Jones, my colleague, had a good story on how, you know, some of these like critical minerals companies are doing SPACs. And it's a way to kind of get government funding. at it's sort of complicated but like I think I've heard quantum companies are going to be doing this next year so I think it's going to be another SPAC year which which could be kind of fun so that's that is that your idea of fun you like you like those times well fun for me I mean

I see I see what it is fun fun for journalists is not always fun for for everyone but the back hold of I guess no it's right exactly but it's um I think that will be I think that would be an interesting one. I think we'll see some private equity as just the gaming list. I think we'll see a lot of these companies that are being kind of disrupted by AI, SaaS companies that are public, get taken private by private equity companies. I think we'll see the state backed, like, I'm sure you saw, like, you know, this morning the Trump administration or the Trump media company merging with a fusion company.

So, I mean, just the whole, like, state, like tech and, and state-backed, you know, I guess enterprise continuing is going to be, is going to be really interesting to me. But we talked about a few. I think, I think quantum, it will be another big year for quantum, right? I mean, I think that's going to become a big, I think a big part of this, you know, the, I guess these big government initiatives to, you know, push forward AI. I think quantum will just have to be a part of that. So there'd be some fun stuff there. But, you know, I think we touched on a lot of, a lot of good ones. I don't know. What about you? Any other crazy ones? My haymakers, let me take a look at my, I mean, I'm talking about some of these with Ranjan. I guess, like, for me, like, one of the things is, like, who's going to

leave? I always like to think, like, who's going to leave. And last year, my prediction was Mustafa Suleiman is going to leave Microsoft. I was wrong about that. I'd also never spoken with Mustafa before. I've spoken with him a couple of times this year. I know you have some Mustafa. Sorry for the prediction. You made it. He stayed just to prove you wrong, probably.

He did. I know. And I respect that. There's nothing I can say about that. You know, maybe Alexander Wang leaves. I mean, do you think we could see any big, I guess Tim Cook is a departure? Yeah. Yeah.

No, I mean, I think there is. Yeah. I'm just going to share this that I was going to I was I'm going to do this with Ron John but I'm going to share this here because I just think it's fun I just think everyone's going to fall in love with their AIs not everyone but I think there's going to be a love boom that is my that is my guess and and you know if it's going to be one of those things where you know if people don't tell you about it then they're definitely doing it right right totally I mean yeah I have not I have not got it into that yet. I feel like it's already there. No, I don't have a relationship with the bot either. But like, I just think, and it's fun to talk about because it's crazy, but yeah, people are really, really doing this. You know, I think it's actually on that, just this is like a tangent to that, which is that the stuff people are willing to say to a chatbot where it is going to, whatever they type in there is going to the cloud, right? Like this is,

Remember when email was new and then all of a sudden, like, every lawsuit was like just a treasure trove of emails because people didn't realize that email was like forever. I think the same thing's going to happen with this AI stuff. Like it's just the stuff people are willing to divulge in an AI chatbot and literally send to, you know, a tech company. I mean, all that stuff is being kept, right? And at some point, we're just going to see like the craziest, the craziest stuff come out of what people type into these things. God, for score. I mean, I desperately want to tell it more because the memory features are getting good. I want it to know me more.

But then my spidey sense is like, probably shouldn't put this into chat, GPT. But I'm sure there's, yeah. Well, maybe local AI, maybe local AI is going to be a thing for that. Because I think eventually people will, you know, at some point, like people are going to be like, oh shit. Like, I probably shouldn't, I shouldn't just like all of my most personal information, like on the cloud. And then, I don't know, maybe they start, maybe that, that actually is a big impact on on the chatbot industry, right? If you're running on your computer. Man, 2026, year of chaos.

It's coming up. All I know is that I'm going to, like, I think we'll be wrong. Like, I just, it's too, it's too much, like the predictions for 2026 are like, they're too similar to the ones for for 2025. five and it's like everything like everything will change like there's always going to be some dark horse that comes that pops up that we haven't that we haven't thought of i think that's that would be my biggest prediction that my predictions will be wrong okay i'm with you that's what i said starting off if three of these are right we're going to trumpet them and go and ever talk about the ones that we were wrong on all right read uh can you tell folks uh where they can find

your work yeah go to seven four dot com uh subscribe to the tech newsletter, which comes out twice a week or three times a week this week, because we've got some extra advertising dollars. And follow me on Twitter at my name, my full name. And yeah, send me an email and tell me what you think. Well, it really is. It's always so much fun having you on the show. And we should just do this more off the next year. That's one of my predictions that I'm hoping will come true. We'll have you on more. I love that. I love that. Anytime. Hi, everybody. Thank you for listening. And we We will see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.