Big Technology Podcast - Alex And Ranjan's 2026 Outlook: ChatGPT 1 Billion, AI Shopping, Apple's Big Year, AI Love Boom

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. This week, we do our 2026 predictions in an abbreviated holiday-time episode. Here's what we cover: 1) AI agents start to work 2) ChatGPT hitting 1 billion users 3) AI shopping takes off 4) Ranjan gets a folding phone 5) Apple's best year ever 5) AI love boom arrives 6) AI infrastructure washout 7) 2026 Market and Performance 8) OpenAI's position 9) Does Alexandr Wang stay at Meta? --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Wealthfront.com/bigtech. If eligible for the overall boosted 3.90% rate offered with this promo, your boosted rate is subject to change if the 3.25% base rate decreases during the 3-month promo period. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC, not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of 12/19/25, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. The APY reflects the weighted average of deposit balances at participating Program Banks, which are not allocated equally. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable base APY. Instant withdrawals are subject to certain conditions and processing times may vary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy holidays, everyone. Ron John Roy and I are here to predict what's going to happen in 2026 and we'll do it on a special edition of Big Technology Podcast Friday edition 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. Michael Lewis here.

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Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where this week we will predict what's going to happen in 2026. we have a short episode for you on the feed today, but we didn't want to leave you alone during the holiday season. We're here to do what chat GPT will do over time, provide some companionship and hopefully some giggles. And so for that, we are going to spend the next 20 plus minutes sharing our predictions of what's going to happen in 2026.

Let's begin by just trading some predictions. We both have about five that we want to go through. Let's see if we can go through. them as fast as we can. All right. My first one is, and this is the area where I work in, I think agentic AI, what it actually means is going to become real in 2026. I think in 2025, everyone said it.

Everyone had kind of this vision of these, like, you know, you're stringing together blocks on a workflow, this RPA plus vision. And I think towards the end of the year, I started talking about this in July a bit and seeing it with my own, the company. I work for a writer, but like, and now we're seeing it in the way the chat GPTs of the world work, even what agentic means for Gemini, the idea that you define a bunch of tools, you define a bunch of data, and let the AI create that workflow itself. And I think it's going to expand into all parts of our life beyond enterprise. Like we, I remember a year ago you had been talking about like, what is an agentic workflow I want? Like, you know, and everyone, it always came back to travel booking. And like, go book my flight for me after doing a flight search. I think, like, people are going to start to, I've already, towards the, like, the last half of this year, started to actually agentify parts of my life. And I think, like, and people are going to be able to do this in a much bigger way next year.

Because you really believe in this technology being able to take that next leap? Yeah, to actually string together a bunch of different actions and do stuff for you. And we're going to, everyone's going to start to see that next year. This will be fun because as we go through the year, I will remind you of this prediction and we'll see if it actually comes true. All right, here's mine. I'm going with my safest prediction first. Chat ChitpT hits a billion users. And we know it's at 800 million now.

I expect that it will hit a billion by April next year at the latest. And I think that's a real moment, I think, for AI and Open AI in general. There's not many products that have a billion users out there. and the fact that Chat Chip-T will become one of them is going to be a big moment. I think it'll be a marker of people saying, okay, this is real. All right. I mean, they might do that by the end of this year in the next week or so at this point at this stage. But yeah, I think that's your safest prediction.

I'm hoping that's the safest one. I want a little bit of a little fire in some of these predictions here. Okay. all right the next one from you is a really fun one and I like that so why don't you hit that yeah uh I am going to buy a foldable phone I'm going to say it here I've been hedging on it god damn it I'm going to buy a foldable phone but I actually think they're going to have a real moment and the reason I think that's exciting is the phone form factor has not evolved since the basically the original iPhone I think like it's been exciting and cameras got better but

I've been, what you hold in your hand all day and interact with, some kind of a meaningful innovation in that, I think, is a good thing. And the foldable phones are the first place. I've seen that in a long time. I'm saying it here. I don't know which one. I've been looking at the pixel fold, the Samsung, but I'm going to get one. Yeah, I've been saying it on the show.

My mantra around this is foldable phones. People of foldable phones look happy. It really is the case. They, like, unfold their phone on the airplane, and they're like, and they're just so happy. But you don't think you're pondering whether it will be Apple, but Apple is on schedule to release one this upcoming year. So why not wait? Is it 2026?

Okay. Maybe I'll wait then. I will be unfolding my phone with a smile on my face in 2026. All right. Good lead in to my next prediction, which is Apple's going to have an absolutely incredible year in 2026. All right. Apple, you know, we've bashed them a lot for good reason. They just haven't done a good job with AI.

But they have something. The iPhone 17, which I just went out and picked up, it's a great phone. It really is good. I mean, some of the things you notice on it, the video is great, the audio processing is great. It's fast. The battery lasts a long time. Self-emode is cool. This is why people went out and got it.

And that's why they're having, I wouldn't call it a super cycle, but a mini-bump, you know. And I think they're going to. ride that strength into the next year. They do not have a real competitor from an AI device, which seems like it's a couple of years off. And then they're going to release their foldable phone. I think, I mean, every year should be your best year ever, your public company. But without a doubt, I think 2026 will be Apple's best year ever. They're going to sell a ton of phones. They're going to add to that user base. They're going to price their foldable phone at $2,000. Everyone will love it. At least. At least, maybe three.

maybe three every people will pay it and they will be happy they will smile and they will they will love apple for it will will no no but it's not going to matter yeah but i mean we can't have it all we can't have it all all all all all all all right my next one i actually and change this one of a bit um i think there's going to be major scandals and discomfort around recording or transcribing in public and what i mean here is i've already started to see i think i saw There's reporting that, like, one of the cruise lines is banning meta ray bans. Everyone who uses tools like granola or other call transcription, like in 2025, everyone just kind of let it go as every word you're saying and everything you're doing around.

Like when you hold out a phone and record someone in public, they mostly know that you're doing that. Those kind of more subtle ways of kind of recording activity of people have been increasing in 2025 because AI is so good at actually making sense of it, I think there's going to be some major controversy backlash around people. And I think it's going to inform the whole world of AI devices that Sam and Open AI and everyone else is talking about. Glassholes 2.0. What? Glassholes 2.0. Oh, glass holes 2. Wow, Glassholes. That's 2011 reference right there, Google Glass.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, and as a user, and I love my meta-ray bands, like, and I try to be responsible with them, and I'm not recording random people on the street, it's, at some point there is going to be, and you're already starting to see it major backlash, and I think it's going to happen next year. Okay. It's interesting how that jives with my next prediction, which is that there's going to be no AI device breakout in 2026. I don't think there's going to be, I think these, we're still in like the humane pin era and we're not moving to something that is going to be ubiquitous. And, you know, the meta raybans, you know, they are, they've been selling millions of, of these devices. I know, you know, when this episode drops, I'm going to be out in South America on a trip. I'm going to have those raybans on my face. But anyway, I think that, I think that, I think that. these things are just not there yet and there's a lot of hype about them and we'd like to think about them I still think the phone is powerful it actually sings with my belief that Apple's gonna have a great year right it's just like the phone's good team phone team phone no AI AI device breakout all right I like that and but if it does break out by next prediction is that you will be shopping on an AI chatbot

because I think AI shopping is gonna become a real thing I've actually open AI their shopping, like specifically trained model, is actually pretty good. I've been using it more. I think people are going to get a lot more comfortable. When you are buying your supplies for that hiking trip next year, you're just going to talk to ChatGBT, GBT or Gemini, and it will go out, find the best price, order, the package, tell you when, where it is. I think Amazon also is going to make some more interesting moves in this space versus

Rufus, which is more passive. Amazon came out. Do you remember the Amazon Dash? It was a button. Oh, yes. Yeah, it was a button that was tied to a specific brand or product that you just had to push and you would put it on your fridge. Like that whole mode of just like, I'm out of paper towels,

just get this done for me. Like, I don't want to go on Amazon, find paper towels. Like, all of that kind of shopping, I think moves to more of an AI-first way next year. That's interesting. So if shopping does go inside these bots, It's actually a pretty sizable bump for, like, the functionality that they have in business case. Yep, definitely. And Google puts them in a good position as well.

All right. We're going to take a quick break and continue with our predictions after this. Again, just doing a brief episode, but glad to be here with you today. My next prediction is that we're going to have an AI love boom in 2026, and I'm going to tell you more about it right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about. 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.

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26. I feel confident in our predictions so far. And my next prediction is that we're going to see an AI love boom in 26. I know in 2025 we had lots of interesting reporting about the companionship that people feel with these bots. We've tended to hear about it when it goes really bad. I don't think people are going to have come out of the woodwork yet, you know, talking about how, you know, deeply in love they are with their bot. But as this, as the functionality gets better, as memory increases and as personalization increases and as capacities increase and as helpfulness increases, I just, I think people en masse are going to fall in love or build or name AI as one of their, you know, top five friends. I think that's definitely coming next year and it does scare

me, you know, to many degrees, but I just, I think it's happening. Two questions. One, are you saying next year becomes the kind of inflection point like when online dating went from like awkward and you didn't advertise it to there's just the standard? Do you think next year is the inflection point where people just casually talk about their AI companions. It's like, oh, my Chad GPT was telling me this, or you name them. Yeah, I think so. Look, I think that this is happening. This is also going back, going back to my conversation with Sam last week,

I do think that there is this, you know, if not a stated preference, a revealed preference in the data that they're seeing, that people really want to bond with their bots. And maybe we will have this, yeah, you're right, an online dating moment where it goes from being. taboo to say, I'm trying to find love by meeting strangers on the internet. Maybe a similar breakthrough happens with online dating where people say, you know what, I don't need to use the internet to find other people.

I've actually decided that the internet is my, is that person. All right. My second question, we had talked about this, I think, like a year and a half ago. Do you need to go AI shopping for your AI love companion? What is that? Basically, do you need to try out different relationships with different companies? No, no, no. Do you have to buy gifts for your AI companion?

Oh, well, I think so. Shopping. Remember, we had talked about, I think it was what would an AI love companion want for? Oh, it was on Valentine's Day of this year. That's why I think one of my favorite episodes we've done. Yeah, you're going to have to buy gifts. You're going to have to, you know, offer it more compute. Maybe it will ask you to upgrade to the pro version.

So you can have longer chats. You know, there are, with voice mode, for instance, there are limits to how much voice conversation you can have. That's what, what does your AI companion want for Valentine's Day? More compute. You know, move up the tier to GPT Pro. It's funny because it's love language. She only, or they, it only dates GPT Pro users, not, not GPT Plus. Well, it's one of those things where it's love language is quality time, but to spend quality time, you need gift giving. You need to buy that time. Exactly. All right, that's a good one. I think my last one, I think 2026 is going to be both the best and worst year for AI.

What I mean by that is I think we're going to see much more widespread adoption, major breakthroughs, but also I think the kind of like financial arrangements that have been built in kind of that infrastructure, especially the financial infrastructure, separate from the actual. kind of like physical data infrastructure of a lot of the big players, I think takes a big hit next year. We're starting to see it with all these questions around Oracle just in the last month and a half. Like those, all of those trades that just kind of ran as pure momentum this year, I think we're going to see a big washout. And is that, so what happens in that case? Like if that's the case, and this is again, not investment advice, you know, if that washout

happens, can the S&P 500 go up in 2026? Or is that just like, does that? that mean that we just have a bad market year next year? I think we have a bad market year. I don't think we have a calamitous market year, but I do think, like, when it has been the single driver of, like, equity growth over the last two years or so, I think there's going to be some price to pay on that. I think, like, and it also kind of, you know, not as a separate prediction but i think like this also is going to significantly influence politics the midterm elections like as if you have kind of like flat equity growth people uncertain about the economy the trump administration and others and like a lot of people just still very strongly pushing

a i as a just kind of general term i think then you see more of a backlash to it like overall as everyone is still falling in love with their AI companion so i think you're going to you're going to have all these like weird forces kind of really pushing at each other. So that's why I say both it's best and worst year. Who gets hit the hardest? I think like the oracles of the world are kind of the peripheral players who made AI such a big centerpiece when it wasn't kind of native or core to their business. Yeah.

No, I mean, we're just seeing that happen in real time. It's not good forward. That's as much of a prediction here versus looking at the market today. Where do you think Open AI is at the end of 2026? I think a billion users. I don't think, I think they're not the leader. I think I think Gemini's Google definitely starts to catch up. I think like everyone is biting off at different parts of the Open AI empire, I guess, if we call it that.

But I don't think there's a leader. They're still at a billion users. I think meta starts to maybe do something interesting on the consumer side. So you have like Microsoft, Google on Enterprise, Google at consumer as well, meta consumer as well. Like at every level, I think they're going to be challenged in a bigger way next year. Is Open AI a public company next year? No, I don't think so. I don't think so either.

No, that's another one of mine. No opening I IPO in 2026. Actually, on that, I saw like a bunch of posts around how like the wealth creation in San Francisco because of the upcoming string of IPOs from the Anthropics and then open AIs of the world will be like unlike anything ever seen, housing prices, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think any of these companies are going to go IPO all the like, you know, 100 billion plus valuation companies? One of the things that I worry about is what happens when these chatbots and the public

markets collide and what do market pressures do? And again, like, imagine, just think about what the pressure to report quarterly earnings does in the middle of an AI love boom. I mean, that's good for quarterly earnings, right? As everyone is having to upgrade to GPT Pro because your companion is only dating? Pro users. But that's, I'm not saying the companies will do it. Imagine saying that on a public earnings call to.

Oh my God. Yes. Our dating business is going quite well. 100 million users have, you know, decided to become exclusive with. No, but the truth is that that is the thing. It is, I'm not saying the companies will do it, but I worry that if you are, there will be pressure and there absolutely will be pressure to sort of turn that dial up and make things spicier. Which there already is. There already is.

but there'll be public market pressure is a different beast you know you miss your quarter by a little bit or you make your quarter by a little bit it's just what you do versus expectations and you know you could be up or down a sizable percentage so yeah okay all right here's my here's my last one and i'm curious what you think about this because this is the one i'm probably least sure about um but it is increasing AI model efficiency causes a crisis and we've seen some of this over the past couple weeks like google's for for instance google's new flash model that they say has pro level performance at flash prices and speed. But the thing that I really wonder about with this AI moment is, let's say the bots get

about as good as they can be without requiring all this compute. And what happens then? I mean, I guess the pro-AI argument would be like, well, intelligence is now too cheap to meters. So there's going to be a boom in productivity and all these things. I don't know, is there? Actually, I think that feeds in perfectly with my AI has its best and worst year because that's exactly it that I think AI is going to be used by more people in more creative ways

and interesting and productive ways, but that doesn't necessarily feed back to the current infrastructure and trade that's been built up around compute and data centers. And I think that fits in exactly. So I'm on board. who is the company that has the best year in your opinion big tech wise next year um i want to like come out and say something unexpected like meta with ai but i don't know i'm still thinking it's probably google oh you just made me think of another one um do you think alexander wing Pinterest.

Pinterest, yeah, huge. People love to pin. I think Alexander Wing survives. Oh, that's a good one. You know, but at Meta in 2026. Do you think he makes it through? No, I don't. That would be such a disaster for meta.

I think, but I think Mark Zuckerberg, after the Metaverse, is going to be even more confident about cutting things that aren't working. I think, like, they saw, even again, I mean, I know he said, what was it like, we can lose like a hundred billion dollars but we still have to compete or whatever it was like but i think i don't think he's going to let things sit as long as they did just because you made a bet that's not work yeah i mean there's enough stuff coming out of that place you know one report okay but there's been multiple reports this year that like it's not really going well i foreshadowed it on the show so you know maybe that that is uh that will be the case and he'll be

out. All right, Ron John. I will predict one last thing. We're going to have a lot of fun talking about this stuff in 2026. So thank you again for being such a great podcast partner all through this year. And I really look forward to our conversations every Friday. Thank you for the analysis and the insight and the fun that you bring to the show. And looking forward to continuing. That's the best way to end the week. I agree. All right, everybody, happy New Year. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, and we will see you in 2026 on Big Technology Podcast.