Big Technology Podcast - Tim Cook’s Final Year?, Big Tech Horse Race, Anthropic’s Profitability Push

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

M.G. Siegler of Spyglass is back for our monthly tech news discussion. Today we dig into whether Tim Cook will retire in 2026, what his legacy will be, and who will likely succeed him as Apple CEO. We also touch on the various Big Tech companies jostling for the title of largest company in the world and what it says about the AI race. Finally, we cover Anthropic's push to become profitable by 2028 and what it says about the state of the AI race. --- 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 Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Tim Cook about to step down from Apple? Big tech stocks swing wildly as the market tries to pick an AI winner. And Anthropic is pushing toward profitability. That's coming up 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. The truth is AI security is identity security. An AI agent isn't just a piece of code. It's a first-class citizen in your digital ecosystem, and it needs to be treated like one.

That's why ACTA is taking the lead to secure these AI agents. the key to unlocking this new layer of protection, an identity security fabric. Organizations need a unified, comprehensive approach that protects every identity, human or machine, with consistent policies and oversight. Don't wait for a security incident to realize your AI agents are a massive blind spot.

Learn how Octa's identity security fabric can help you secure the next generation of identities, including your AI agents. Visit octa.com. That's okayta.ta.com. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast. It's the first Monday of the month, and that means M.G. Siegler is here with us to break down everything in big tech.

Today we're going to talk about whether Tim Cook is on the verge of retiring from Apple. We're going to look at why big tech's market caps have swung so wildly, seemingly from winner to winter in the AI race. And then we're going to look at a very interesting development in the AI research lab race. And that is the fact that Open AI, of course, is trying to reach AGI. and it's going to lose a lot of money on the way. But Anthropic is actually taking a very different tact and it's pushing towards profitability. What does that mean?

We'll cover it all and MG is here with us today. MG, great to see you. Welcome back. Great to see you, Alex. I wore my chat chagipt, if you can see it here. I love chat GPT shirt, which was great for me way back when and part because it's,

I guess it was a three year birthday of the service yesterday. So I thought we'd be having a party, but instead we'll just talk through it, I guess. Yeah. Well, we can consider this a festive moment here. It's amazing that it's been three years. I thought the shirt that you were going to be wearing was the one that Ron Jen and I discussed on Friday, which was my We're Not Enron shirt is bringing up worrying questions about whether we're Enron.

Of course, we're talking about Nvidia, but we'll get to that in a moment. It is interesting that the company that has sort of been on the outs in this generative AI race, and we'll start here today, has been Apple. and admit it all, Apple is looking extremely good right now. Of course, technology shifts take time to do what they do, but Apple has not spent a lot of money. It is about to turn in one of the best quarters, if not the best quarter of any business in history. Tim Cook has said it's going to be Apple's best quarter ever for the company. They're on track to bring in something like $137 billion in the fourth quarter, the iPhone,

17 is flying off the shelves. They haven't spent all their money on large language models. And yet the weirdest thing is happening. People are talking about whether Tim Cook is going to retire. Why is this happening? So, I mean, I think it's, you know, often when, at least over the past couple of years, given the AI fiasco, as you're talking about, obviously people have been sort of mentioning Tim Cook and retirement in the same breath with the notion that it's a negative thing, right? Like that maybe it's time for him to go because, yeah, they've missed the boat on AI. Like, is he really positioning the company to be successful going forward? You know, if you believe that this is the most sort of fundamental technology shift, certainly since probably the iPhone.

You know, you could argue that that Apple's not positioned well right now. But the flip side, as you're alluding to here, is starting to take hold, right? Where it's looking now like, you know, you hear more and more talk about unknown timetables for when certainly AGI is coming or super intelligence or whatever we want to call it these days this week. But also just, you know, the usefulness of AI. You and I have talked about this a lot, right? Like what are people actually on day to day and especially in personal settings, but also in work, right? Like there are use cases for sure. But how much is this fundamentally altering businesses right now and altering the bottom lines of these businesses. And I think, you know, these narratives seem to ebb and flow.

And right now we're in a period where Apple, in a weird way, is benefiting from, again, not having spent the insane numbers on CAPEX that all of their main competitors are. And so I think that the market has, you know, sort of started to smile upon that. And so, yeah, that's sort of the argument for, like, why on the positive side, this could be a good time actually for Tim Cook to go, because you could argue that they might not be in a better position as a company as good as they're about to be after the, you know, future earnings, as you know, they already guided that it would be record earnings. And so if those are, in fact, those numbers are hits in the next quarter, you know, they're all-time high, holiday quarter. Those are always the best time of year for Apple.

Like, you could make the case that this would be sort of the most opportune time for him to go personally, if he's thinking about going anytime soon anyway, which you have to believe he is. He's 65 years old. Like, these are natural discussions that you have. Certainly as a board, they have fiduciary responsibility to have this. They've talked about, they have a succession plan. They haven't talked about exactly who it is. But everyone knows that they have a plan in place right now, as they must, as a big company,

as one of the most important companies in the world. And so, again, just looking at all of those factors, I think that he has to be at least thinking about it in his head and thinking about the timing of it. You know, you could say like, oh, well, he's not, he's not vain in that way or whatnot. But everyone is legacy. This is his, this is his literal legacy. And he's been with the company forever. He wants to leave it on, you know, the best terms, I think, possible.

And it should be noted. Like many people have noted this. I've talked about this in the past. Mark Gurman has noted this. John Gruber has noted this. I don't think Tim Cook is actually going to leave leave. I think he would become, yeah, like chairman, especially because I think it's Art Levinson is right now, the chairman. And he's hit that.

unofficial but official sort of 75 year age bracket where basically that's when Apple for whatever reason historically has asked senior people to step down. And so Cook and slot right in there. And that would give him a nice 10 year run as potential executive chair. Yeah, I think this is very real. And there's a reason why I decided to lead with this today is because, you know, we may just be what seems like a rumor in the newspaper, but then you look. a level deeper and you see that there's there's actual movement here so first of all the ft put like

what four reporters on this story it's not like yeah and and published it that way so clearly they had some very good intel on cook's decision to move and it wasn't just like a story about how cook is going to leave it was about how apple has ramped up succession planning then the other indication here is that jeff williams the chief operating officer of apple uh just retired i think it was last week or two weeks ago And it reminds me very much of what happened at Amazon, where Jeff Wilkie, who is basically seen, who's basically seen as the number two to Bezos, he was the CEO of worldwide consumer. He leaves fairly abruptly, right? And now, retrospectively, it's very clear what happened. There was a decision, Bezos was going to leave.

And these two executives who had been waiting in the wings about, you know, ready to become the CEO, the next CEO of Amazon, Both probably made their case to Bezos. One was Wilkie, one was Jassy. And Andy Jassy won out, and Wilkie's departure was about a clear signal as you'll ever get that something was up and Bezos was going to leave. That's how I'm reading the Williams departure here. I think he was probably up against some people internally realized he wasn't going to get the nod and decided to retire. He has plenty of money, so he's going to have a nice retirement. But between that departure and this mega byline story in the FT,

I could see Tim Cook realistically leaving in Q1 in 2026. I think that's a real thing. So the only push I would give on the William Singh in particular is that, you know, as you know, as everyone has noted in these pieces. The weird thing there, the dynamic there is that he's only a very little bit younger than Tim Cook is. And so it would be sort of set up a weird situation where if Tim Cook were to step down a CEO and hand the reins off to someone who's a year younger than him, like what's the real long term viability of that? right. Like you could say, sure, maybe he does run it for 10 years or whatnot. But I always think that that was sort of an interesting dynamic at play. And certainly before, I think before Mark German, I think it was last year, sort of first throughout the name John Turnus, most people did

assume that the COO Williams would end up being the next in line because that's historically how Apple's done it, right? Tim Cook was COO before under Steve Jobs. And then he stepped in there. And so when he was appointed, when Jeff Williams was appointed COO, the idea was that he was sort of the de facto era parents. That's not to say that that was necessarily the case. I mean, I haven't seen a lot of reporting on this. But again, I sort of view that that age difference as one thing. But I also think it was interesting that they had him sort of over time, oversee different things. Like famously, the Apple Watch was the thing that he seemed to be sort of, you know, spearheading and the thing that he would present often in the, in the, you know,

yearly presentations and whatnot. So while he clearly ran operations per his title, like, I do think that it was sort of interesting the way that he was set up internally. And so I'm not sure, all I'm saying is I'm not sure that it was like a, a signal of him leaving is necessarily the white smoke billowing out of, out of Cupertino that they've picked a new CEO. I just think that that was sort of a natural recognition that it wasn't going to happen. And I think probably people realize that for the past few years.

years that that wasn't likely to be the case. We can talk through some of the other candidates because there's many people, part of the problem, I think that Apple's had over these years dating to talking about the AI stuff in particular is how long tenured the people have been. And that's not just about age. It's about like how in, you know, in the mind of Apple they are. Like, it's hard to sort of see outside when you've been inside for that long. And Ternis is, is the youngest of that group, but he's in that mold too. But anyway, so I think, you know, the Williams thing is a little bit different here. But I hear you. Like certainly that did, that was the case with Amazon. And when you were talking about it, that also reminds me sort of of Disney over the years, right? Like,

they've historically had also COOs who have, who have departed. I think Kevin Mayer comes to mine as one. And there have been a number of others. I think Tom Staggs, who also ended up working with Kevin Mayer, I think, together on a project, were two of the people who were viewed to be sort of the top internal candidates. And then they obviously didn't get it. And that's an interesting analogy, too, because that harkens to the time when Bob Iger tried to step back and handed over the reins and it didn't work out and he ended up having to come back. And so I think someone like Tim Cook, who's obviously close with Bob Iger, close with Disney, has to look at that situation, the way that that was handed off and really wants to avoid that. It was a little bit of

a extenuating circumstance because of COVID times, right? I think no one, no one could have known that the entire, all of Disney would get thrown into disarray in the way that it had. But there was a lot of question marks of whether Bob Chapec, the guy who he chose at that time was the right person. But I think to your exact point, like once he got picked, a bunch of other people sort of, yeah, step back. And so I think Apple is looking at all of this stuff when it comes to the succession planning. Right. And for Cook, I totally hear you. There's a desire, there will be a desire to go on top. I think that's why you're seeing this rumbling. And he would especially want to do it before one of two things happens. One is sort of the AI trade.

Because one of these two is going to happen, right? The AI trade is going to fall apart and it's going to put the market into a fairly deep correction. Or two, it's going to work and Apple's going to look, you know, far behind. Right. Either way. Which is worse. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And that's totally, your first point is a good one because, you know, we're talking about, we just mentioned, like, Apple's in a good spot from a stock perspective right now and sort of getting rewarded for not having all the cap-ex spend that all of their rivals are. But if the market, it does correct, Apple's not going to, you know, know, be immune to it. They might do, I think, I think that they would do better if the correction was caused by, you know, AI, concern about AI spent. Certainly, I think that they would, they would

hold up better. But they're not going to hold up, you know, just fine. And that would not be a good time for, for Tim Cook to step away, you know, with the stock down 20, 30 percent or whatever from from all-time highs. Yeah. So if you're looking for the perfect place to leave and your Tim Cook, again, I think Q1 might be it. I've not, again, like, we'll see what happens, but it would be a good time. And now I wonder, how do we judge Tim Cook? In particular, does it end when he steps down? Or does it end when Apple does run into that rough road that is inevitably going to come for it? You know, again, either the AI downturn or lacking, it's AI works and it's lacking in capabilities. I mean, Cook has obviously done a good job with the company. He's grown it from a few hundred billion dollars to four trillion today.

The other side of it is, I think as a CEO, you're also judged. by how you leave the place, by the, you know, Steve Jobs, for instance, to continue on the Apple front, left Tim Cook with a roadmap, really, and Cook crushed it. But what roadmap does Tim Cook leave Apple with if he leaves in Q1? And if Apple does continue to lag behind and suffer on the AI front, is that a ding on Kim Cook's legacy, even if he's not there? Yeah, and that was one that I didn't even mention this in. in the piece. But I do think there was some talk maybe a year ago or so that the one thing Cook was really focused on internally. There was a couple reports to this notion that the one thing

he was focused on right now or at the time was really meeting the market for what meta has done with the with the Raybans. And so he was sort of going all in on trying to make that potentially his last big product unveil because as we know, the Vision Pro just hasn't sort of, you know, lit the world on fire. Obviously, there's really nothing to show right now on the AI fronts. And, you know, the new iPhones, those continue just the current model that's been, you know, playing out over the past 15, 20 years. And so is there a new product that he can sort of go out with a bang on?

And, you know, there was some inkling again that that he might think that the glasses are the thing. I sort of discount that a little bit now because I just view like, yeah, they can make like a nice product with that. But I don't think it's going to be, you know, an overall. overnight game changer for Apple where it would like necessitate, you know, postponing a good time for retirement necessarily, right? And to your point, like of leaving sort of the cupboard stocked, as it were, like if he has sort of this, yeah, this pipeline of new products coming out, there's also some, you know, apparently some AI related products, you know, home, home, uh, interactive products, mounted iPad type devices and robotic arms and things like that. If he has some of that

pipeline lined up for whoever steps in. That also much of that pipeline does point again to why John Ternis might make sense, as a lot of it is hardware focused. But I also think that that's a point that goes back to another post that I had written recently where it just feels like, it feels like Apple now, and I think the stock market is also sort of learning this a bit. Like they are not pivoting, but they have sort of reoriented the messaging at least around like, look, for as bad as they sort of whiffed on AI, there is no company that's in a better position from a consumer hardware perspective than Apple still, right? And so Google tries, Microsoft tries, all these companies try, and no one can sort of hold a candle to Apple when it comes to certainly consumer hardware, but you could argue

hardware in general, like at businesses, you know, lots, so many Macs and everything. And so again, if he has set the company up for that to be the thing that they're going to double down on hardware and everything, that sets it up well for someone like John Turnus if he steps in and, you know, becomes the new CEO. Well, let me give the devil's advocate position on Ternus here. I don't think it's the right choice. He's the SVP of hardware engineering. You are a company that, yes, you've doubled down on the hardware side of things and it's

working out really well. But if you look into the future, the future of Apple is going to depend on, I think, two really important things. Well, I mean, I guess the given. So let's say three. The given is that it has to keep, you know, producing great phones. I don't want to say that's the easiest of the three, but it might be because people are used to the iPhone. The second of those three things is to continue to grow the services business, which has become sort of the thing that underpins Apple's valuation because it gives them this software multiple as a hardware company, right?

Basically, investors see it as something that you can continue to make money from people after you sell them at the phone, therefore you're worth more money on the stock market. And number three. And to that point, I would just add that at some point in, I think I've tried to model it out and I've had ChatGPT model that up for me. I think at some point in the next decade, services will pass the iPhone as the largest business for Apple, just to the exact point. Yeah. And then number three, just piggybacking on services, it's going to be navigating this AI thing. AI is not going away. Like, just because Apple is in a good position now and you have to give it credit, right?

It's obviously gone and worked a great strategy for this present moment. And that AI shift is going to change. We have, you know, Sam Altman and Johnny Ive working on a new device. And, you know, is it going to be the God device and replace the phone? Maybe not. But you'll find Apple trailing in categories that it didn't expect to trail in. Smart glasses for meta is a perfect example, right? They're catching up to meta, meta on their second product here.

You know, obviously the Metaverse didn't work out. But the smart glasses seem like a real deal. So do you want to pick someone from hardware engineering for that? Or do you want to put somebody? from the services side or from a more software background to run the company after Cook. So this one's a little trickier to talk to. First of all, I don't know. I've met a lot of Apple executives. I've not met John Turner. So I can't really, I can't speak from personal knowledge, not that I would know him that well anyway. But like, so all I'm going off of is the reporting here.

All the reporting and everything you hear from people who've worked at Apple, they do. You don't, you rarely, I don't think I've ever heard a negative word about him, which is good. There can be a, you know, flip side to that, which is, you know, that maybe he's, he's not like a great wartime CEO or something like that if he were to be put in that place. But again, that's all, that's all just trying to extrapolate out what, what there could be in downside scenarios. Remember, when Cook took over, there were many, many concerns about him taking over for Steve Jobs because he famously isn't a product guy, right? He ran operations. And there was a lot of talk of like, well, does this mean innovation is dead at Apple? And, I mean, now, you know, all these years later, 15 plus

years later, you could say, like, as you just did, like, basically like, look, Steve Jobs left a great, a great roadmap for Cook to execute on. And he executed on just about probably better than any single person on earth could have. And I think that, you know, that's, that's where the company is valued as it is right now. And he took the iPhone to a completely new heights and brought in services and all of that. But you could also argue, like, as the operations guy, he was just good at knowing what to execute. And it went from doing the, you know, the supply chains and all that that he had been focused on to doing the entire company. And so the question then for Ternus would be a similar thing. Like, look, he's, he's been at the company, I think for something

like 25 years, like almost half of his life, which is wild. And the question is then, like, is all of that internal knowledge and institutional knowledge that he's built up? Is that allow him to be in, you know, the right place, right time to basically, yeah, continue, not only executing on the stuff that Cook has been able to sort of orchestrating the entire company and stepping up one level to go from just orchestrating all of hardware. And obviously he's leveled up throughout the years to be able to take on new responsibilities. And you have to believe that that's a big part of the reason why they think that he's potentially the guy to be able to do this now. But to your point, it's the new stuff that's that's going to be the key to

it. It's the AI. It's any new devices that come in. And Cook, you know, did a great job stewarding Apple, but would we say that he's done a great job with the new device stuff? I mean, the Apple Watch certainly, I think, is, you know, a bona fide hit at this point, but it's not something that's at the iPhone level, certainly. And you could argue that that's totally unfair that nothing was ever going to be at that level. But, you know, he's had a few swings. And I think he, they've taken a while, but he hit with the Apple Watch and missed as of right now with Vision Pro. And then services obviously came up under him. He was right to focus on that. But it's like, largely like Eddie Q from all accounts who's in charge of that, right? And so, you know,

he tasked the right lieutenant with doing it. And that's exactly, it sounds like what Ternus is going to do. And that just speaks to, okay, so say Ternus is elevated to his B CEO, who's in charge of AI? Like, they need someone in charge. Right now, it's been John Gendria. I think everyone, everything you read is basically like similar to the, um, the Jan Le Cun's situation at Meta. Like, it sort of feels like the writing's on the wall there. Like, he will probably not be there for very much longer unless he were to fully step into just a full-on research thing, which is what Lacoon did, right, for a long time before he stepped back. And so who actually steps in to lead this? And that's why you and I have long talked about the M&A side of things.

And it's like, I still think the biggest argument to be made for Apple doing some M&A there is just to get the right team and leadership in place to sort of shift that mentality. Because that will be key to turn us if you believe that AI is one of those three pillars, as you note, like, who is actually leading that? Is it Federigi? Can he step up and do it in full? You know, is it Mike Rockwell who came over, it sounds like from Vision Pro to be able to step in to try to correct the series stuff? Like, is it one of those people or is it some from the outside? I tend to believe it has to be someone, again, from the outside just because of how new and how different this is. And it's not, it seems unlikely that it would be an Apple lifer who sort of is the one

to best corral AI, but, you know, maybe that, we'll see how that, how they are thinking about that. Okay, then lastly on Apple, or maybe a second to last, because I want to talk about the phones before we end this segment. But let's just talk about this argument that Apple was wise for not, you know, plowing a lot of money into experimental, large language model research that may not pay off for them. I have been skeptical of that argument. It's like you don't want to, you know, sort of pat somebody on the back for, like, not. giving their best shot at, you know, trying to develop the next level cutting edge technology. However, the other side of it is maybe, as we've seen, you know, we saw Google overtake open AI in some areas and Apple's going to partner with Google.

Maybe you do need to hand it to them and say, you know what? Not everybody needs to develop their own LLM and they won't have as much control, but their costs look a lot better, and it's ultimately about productizing this technology, not building the fundamental layer itself. I mean, that seems like the best argument for Apple in this case. What do you feel about that? I think it's a great point.

And I mean, in my head, I sort of think that that one part, the partnership with Google in particular, is what is leading to the sort of resurgence. Obviously, we know Google stock itself is resurgent on the back. It sounds like, you know, mainly of Gemini. three, but I think that Apple's resurgent in part because I think the market not only is recognizing, you know, the hardware side of the story again and not dinging them for the KAPEx Bend like they are with Meta and a few other of the players right now. But it's also, again, that they recognize the problem that they had and they were able to buy these reports, you know, nothing official yet, but recognize that they could make the best partnership possible with Google, who was obviously their longtime partner.

when it comes to search. And once that basically partnership got the okay, you know, the de facto okay from the Justice Department to keep going, I think, you know, they basically, you know, from again, the reporting, they were able to figure out a way to work out a new deal where if Gemini is powering, you know, the new Siri that they launch early next year, that seems like sort of the best of both worlds, right? You've got the best hardware and now all of a sudden you have the best AI. powering what has been the historic weak points of Apple's operating system and certainly going

forward, if you believe again, in any part of the AI narrative, like if they have what is considered now, if not the best, you know, in the top two sort of models for running all of AI, certain consumer-facing AI, then Apple's well positioned to do that. And as you're, as you're noting, you can make an argument that by sitting back and waiting, sort of they ultimately made the right decision. Now, the question still, I think, is going forward. Is that the right decision? And this is why I've long thought, like, in a similar vein to the Apple Maps scenario, which hopefully not executed to the same way, but I think that they learn their lesson the hard way that time. But I do think that they'll continue to work on their own models internally. And then, you know, they can, but this Gemini potential

partnership allows them, buys them a lot of time to basically be able to swap in their models. And they don't have to do it in even a big one fell swoop. They could just, you know, more and more sort of do these these piecemeal, you know, swaps and, and take on more responsibility with their own internal stuff. And, you know, as long as they can continue to massage that relationship with Google to be okay with that sort of interesting dynamic, then you're right. They're in a good spot if these reports, you know, end up being accurate. Okay. So last, on Apple, Cyber Monday. Of course, we're in the middle of what we said at the beginning is going to be the best quarter in Apple history. And if it isn't, maybe it really is time for Tim Cook to retire. But a lot of people

are probably out there thinking, hey, do I want to upgrade to this new iPhone 17? We also know that the iPhone Air is basically a massive flop. They cut back production dramatically. It doesn't seem like they're working on a next edition. So I am just curious to hear your perspective. Do you have the 17? What's what model do you have? You've been in enjoying it and what do you think people should be keeping in mind as they think about making their holiday purchase? And I'm saying this somewhat, you know, from a position of self-interest because I have the 15 pro. I really like it. I thought I was going to skip the 17, but man, I'm leaning towards going out and upgrading. Yeah, so I got the 17 Pro Max. I can hold it up here. I got the

special orange one with my little. Nice. Can't lose that. See, very easy. No, it's a great looking fun. I thought the color would be a little weird, given how orange it is, but I love it. I think it's great. And I was always going to be, though, a pro, and in particular, a pro max guy, because I care most about battery life. And that's obviously a big ding against the air itself, right? Like that you need the extra battery, the battery pack add-on to be able to sort of get full battery life capacity out of the device. I think, you know, Apple now has a sort of a track record of trying to trying to launch these new sort of adjacent arms of the iPhone dating back to even the iPhone 5C if you remember that like right that was the first colorful iPhone and it looked very pretty

but it just didn't seem to sell very well and so they only had sort of one one go of it and then you know fast forward a bit they obviously tried to reintroduce the iPhone mini after a lot of people seem to be clamoring for that but again by by most accounts that you hear and and and obviously played out in the fact that Apple discontinued it, like these just weren't selling very well. And you might say like the iPhone plus lineup was also in that camp. But it's basically like Apple keeps trying to do these adjacent new arms of the iPhone. And for whatever reason, they just don't take hold. I think the iPhone Air in particular was always going to be weird. I mean, I wrote about this well before when it was still just rumored that I felt like it would be

sort of a weird in a way in between phone because it's not the highest of the high end of the iPhone. And it's not the cheapest, most affordable, as Apple would prefer, we say, version of the iPhone. And so it sort of sits in the middle. Yes, it sort of looks nice and it feels nice in hand. You know, I don't have one, but I used it in store. And it's a great feeling phone. But it's, again, sits in this weird spot. It's like too expensive to be sort of a mass consumer, you know, device, I think.

And it's not fast enough and doesn't have the battery life and the camera system that sort of, you know, would be, I think, required now. table stakes for the top of the line. And so they just put it in this weird position. I do think it was interesting that they sort of tied it more directly to like the pro lineup. It has a faster chip and sort of they're trying to angle it that way. But again, I view it as this like awkward in between device right now.

And, you know, whether or not it was actually delayed, I think that there's no question that if it was a major hit that Apple would be moving heaven and earth, trying to get a second iteration out there, right? Like if it was as popular as,

as the MacBook Air became, right, like Apple has famously held on to that branding because that device is so popular and they were able to do that. But I'll say that and then I say in the same breath that the iPhone, the MacBook Air did not start out as super popular, right? It started out as a way too expensive sort of, yeah, cool demo with Steve Jobs pulling it out of the envelope and all of that. And so it had to work its way into that. And so maybe Apple thinks that they can do that again with the with the iPhone air but as of right now it just hasn't taken off obviously is the way they would okay so you like what i hear you saying here is is you like the 17 no looking back on that one oh yeah yeah so the 17 pro and the pro max version that i have but even the pro pro

regular the smaller version is just it's you know what it's the fastest one it's got the best camera it's got the best battery life like and if you're two to it or two generations back i would definitely upgrade if I'm if I'm you okay well here I go after this make my my crudge my way over to the app the Apple store and say once again can I ask you one one potential question that you hit upon but we didn't really talk through because I'm interested in your perspective so you noted that the FT report that talked about Tim Cook retiring had four reporters on it when I read that and I saw that it's like a 300 word piece and I'm just like okay so either these four reporters all talk to the same

source and they all have like and they just all decided to work together on this thing or they have four different sources or they have three different you know some mixture of different sources on this but like you've worked in a newsroom i've worked in newsroom way back in the day and tech crunch was a little bit sort of different much more independent i would say than uh independent operator than sort of working newsroom style and so i'm curious like when you see that what is what is what is that signal to you typically the way those big byline stories work is one reporter who may or may not be the main beat reporter gets the tip and then three people who are you know and and it becomes seen as such a big story by the masthead that three people who uh have decent sourcing within the company

basically open up their rolydexes and call every single person they know within the company and they'll get a byline even if they didn't really contribute very much because they put the time in uh that's my best guess what do you think it was all about no i I think you're probably exactly right. I mean, you know, again, I was thinking through like, do all these people have the same source? But I think you're exactly right. I think it's one person has, you know, got a tip about this specific incident. And then the other three were sort of used because they need to get at least a second source on this.

And so, you know, the fact that they, though, have four reporters on it suggests that they got more than a second source and that they maybe have a few sources, at least about people who are talking about this notion. But it's interesting in the context that Mark German, who obviously, as we talked about, was the person who originally reported on the Ternus succession and, you know, Cook potentially eventually stepping down, has pushed back pretty hard against the FT report, right? Like, he sort of called them out in his newsletter and saying, like, I don't know where they're getting the timing of this. Like, certainly as we, as you and I just talked about, like, you know, this is in the air that this is going to happen at some point, just given Cook's age and everything else. but there's no indication that he's heard. And obviously he's, by all accounts, the best sourced Apple reporter at this point that he's heard that there's anything. But I also think, like, his sources within, like, if this is a, if this is really a discussion

that's being had, like the amount of people who would be talking about this internally has got to be pretty small because this is like a, this is a board decision. This is a Tim Cook. This is the first of foremost, a Tim Cook decision, right? He's making this call. No one's going to force him out. at this point, certainly not at this point of the stock. And no one's going to push him out regardless.

He's been so successful. And so this is really his decision. And so I don't know what to make of the whole back and forth, though, between these conflicting stories. It's interesting that the F.C. hasn't sort of followed up at all. They certainly didn't issue a correction, but also hasn't, you know, hasn't doubled down as far as I know on it. And so, yeah, it's sort of just hanging out there as it is. Yeah, it's puzzling to me. I mean, Tim Bradshaw is the first byline.

on that and he's a really good reporter who does cover Apple. Maybe not as the beat reporter, but covers it enough that maybe somebody whispered something to him. So it is always fascinating how these things develop. But again, like even German had a story talking about how Turness was the heir apparent. So maybe the FT kind of caught the scent there and decided to go full in and try to see what the story was. Because even if they have like a successor internally, that could be like, you know, if they went from a company that didn't have a successor to one that does, now you could, you know, write the headline that they've ramped up succession planning and, you know, maybe make it seem more than it is. But I still think there's enough there that

that this is very real. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's head to break. Before we go to break, I just want to quickly take a moment to think TechMeme. If you go to TechMeme, you probably have seen that Big Technology podcast is one of the featured podcasts on TechMeme.com. We definitely thank them for doing that. TechMeme, of course, is a great website to keep up with the latest tech news. Always the best and most important stories are up at the top there. And it's a great way to keep up with things when you're not listening to Big Tech Podcast, of course. All right.

We'll be back 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. 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 Wealthfront 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 3.5% APY on your uninvested cash as of November 7, 2025. And there are no monthly 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 4.15% 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 Wellfront. It may not reflect the experience of others and there's no guarantee of future performance or success. Wellfront brokerage is not a big.

Rate is subject to change. Promo terms and conditions apply. For more information, see the episode description. Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for $2.50 a month. Learn more at pceexpress.ca.

And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with M.G. Siegler of Spyglass. You can find Spyglass at Spyglass.org. One of my favorite publications definitely recommend you check it out and sign up for the great newsletter and become a member of the site. It's great stuff. In Spyglass over the past month, MG, you wrote about how We are in the middle of this, like, very volatile moment for big tech market caps.

Every week, it seems like there's a new big tech company that has the crown for the most valuable company on Earth. NVIDIA has played that role for a long time. Microsoft has played that role for a long time. Apple has played that role for a long time in Google, you know, has surpassed Microsoft and seems like it might be making its way there, especially as the company starts to potentially sell its TPUs, the TPU chips to other companies like META, probably cutting into some of NVIDIA's lead. Let me ask you a question about this volatility. I mean, obviously, if you think about all these companies, it's, you know, three out of the four that I just mentioned are big on the AI trade and Apple is, you know, Apple is Apple.

Do you think the volatility that we've seen has just been the stock market? Trying to figure out who the winner is going to be in this AI race and sort of plowing money from, you know, one to the other. Is that the nature of the horse race here? I think at the highest level, yes. I think that that's roughly correct. It is fascinating how it felt like even just a few months ago that NVIDIA was basically running away with the game, right? They hit the $5 trillion valuation. Only I think Microsoft at that point was at four. Google not too. long ago, I wrote about this, like, how I felt like they were significantly undervalued, which, of course, proved to be correct by the stock market. But it's sort of odd. It's nothing, you know, that anyone couldn't have sort of thought about just looking at what they have on their plate beyond even AI with Waymo and everything else coming up. But Google was like, you know, valued at half of, certainly Nvidia, maybe even of Microsoft at one point just a few months ago.

And now they've come roaring back. And Apple, as you know, Apple's been in the front of the pack for most of the past decade. And now all of a sudden, as you're noting, and, you know, as I wrote a little bit about, they basically are collapsing up at that top echelon between those four companies. And it's just a matter of like what the current reports and narrative is around in particular AI, it seems like we'll push one of them to the lead. It does feel like that Google has that momentum right now based off of exactly what you're talking about with sort of the reports about, you know, potentially selling TPUs. And that obviously

has a direct impact on NVIDIA if it feels like that they're going to maybe not lose the crown of that business, but certainly if they get, if they get some pressure on the business for the first time from Google, that's going to take some sheen off of that. There's other external things that play like, you know, the reports that Warren Buff, that Berkshire Hathaway took a giant stake in Google, I think helped propel them even further, right? And, and, and, and, you know, And the fact that Apple's still, I think Berkshire's largest holding, but they've been trimming back. And so all of these things are at play when it comes to, yeah, that jockeying of the stock price. But Nvidia, I know you and Ron John talked about it on Friday, but it's like, you know,

their sort of PR curfuffles now are sort of not helping their stock, I think, just not helping in general the feeling of confidence around the way that people are feeling about it. But before that happened and the reason why that they feel the need to sort of come out with this PR strategy is because famously, of course, Michael Burry, one of the most famous, if not the most famous short seller of all time, has come out against them. And so, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of this sort of internal jockeying about how they'll, how they'll all play out. And then there's Microsoft who's sort of also getting dinged, but also getting buoyed a bit, but sort of some level of the open AI relationship now being more settled, I think, has settled their stock a bit more now. But this is all just going to continue

to be like in this, it feels like in this washing machine, all these companies getting tumbled around for who's in first, who's in fourth, and whatnot. All right, let me give you my hot take about what's happening here. And this is sort of a hybrid with something that Josh Brown has wrote about downtown Josh Brown, about how we're in a horse race right now. But here's kind of how I see it. So Apple, of course, was, you know, pre-AI, the most valuable company in the world for a very long time. Maybe they swap places with like Saudi or AMCO, so we would have to say like most valuable publicly traded company, but let's just say most valuable company or, you know, excluding Saudi or MCO at like one moment. Okay. So then

chat chip PT happens and all of a sudden you see people wanting to bet on open AI. And the way that they do that is through invidia and through Microsoft and invidia was the one that's the most direct direct correlation to open AI because if Open AI is predicated on scale both for training and inference

Nvidia which is the only one supplying them the chips was going to be super important and then Microsoft secondarily you would put Microsoft there because Microsoft has again like an unbelievable investment in open AI and intrinsic link to open AI through like the

IP rights and power over open AI for a variety of reasons. So there was this moment where Nvidia and Microsoft surge ahead because people believed that this AI thing was going to be real. And they believed that Open AI had a lead that was really going to be tough to challenge because the company came out with better models, better products. And it was just like the runaway favorite to effectively in the minds of investors, the best, it had the best chance of doing this straight shot to AGI or at least some economically valuable, economically valuable AI that was going to be tough to match.

But what we've seen recently, now that we've seen like Nvidia and Microsoft Fall and and Google surge is that I don't think it's that Google has surpassed Open AI. Maybe in some areas it has, but we are now in the first moment where the state of the art models are really commoditized, where you could argue that Google and Anthropic and Open AI have models that are, they stand together. Some might be better for some activities and some might be worse for other activities, but you're not going to say that Open AI rules the world the way that it did a couple years or even a year ago. And that's where you see, what you're seeing now really is not necessarily the fall of Open AI and the fall of Invidio or the rise of Google. It's this moment

where we see commoditization happen amongst the models and in some cases amongst the hardware because of the TPU thing. And when you see commoditization happens, the economics of AI shift. So I'm curious what you think about it. And I'm curious what you think, you know, if you agree with my premise that we are starting to see this commoditization, what do you think the economic impacts of the commoditization really are? Yeah, I would frame it's like the taking what you're saying, and framing it slightly differently is that if you believe all of that to be true that you're laying out there, maybe investors are just looking at it like, look, at the end of the day, then, if that's the case, who has the set or the best position and best business model for all

of this, you know, future going forward? And I think it would be hard to argue against Google, just given that they own not only Google Cloud, you know, on which a lot of models and everything are running, but the TPUs, as you're noting, obviously they have the search business and Waymo and all these other things. Whereas the other companies, if AI is starting to commoditize in some way, you know, NVIDIA, their business potentially is impacted in a good way, in some cases, but for the most part, it's probably going to be looked at as like, well, the arms race is sort of slowing down a bit, and that's going to be bad news for NVIDIA at the highest level because you won't need to necessarily buy, you know, the absolute top of the line and or on

the flip side, as we're talking about, if Google's able to sort of ramp TPUs to get close. That was part of obviously the messaging from NVIDIA was, we're a generation ahead, right, in their statement, which was obviously explicitly meant to say that, like, yeah, Google's doing great work, but they're not where we are right now. But to your question, yeah, like so Nvidia is obviously in a position where they need the AI revolution to sort of keep going as it has been in order to keep up just the incredible growth that they've seen including last quarter, which was incredible. And then, you know, the other players, Microsoft, to your point about Open AI, they also obviously have a great underlying business. But they don't have quite, I don't think is viewed as all of the pieces that Google necessarily has. has right now. And when people are looking at all of the different areas that they can

potentially monetize for future, you know, would be profits. And then Apple is, you know, the wild card, which is why I think Apple, you know, we talked about not getting hit by the CapEx stuff and everything. But Apple is, you know, about to, they're in second place right now. They're probably going to overtake Nvidia at some point. And then it's just a question of exactly what we were talking about in the succession stuff. Like, what is the future story there? So like, it could be, you know, the situation where Apple basically moves into first place again for a period of time, depending on what's going on within the AI, you know, overall framework and narrative stuff. And then eventually, you know, Google passes it. And then depending on where we

are, again, in that cycle. But again, to go back to the exact question, I do think that if this, if we are sort of working towards, you have more of this commoditization, that's the state that we're in right now. And I think that's why those, those four companies are getting bunched up more than just a video running away or, you know, earlier when Microsoft was running away. a bit. The wild card there, the next step might be, you know, next generation models. We're hearing a lot of people talk about world models now, right? Leon Lacanne, of course, famously has stepped away from meta to go work on that, but also Ilya Sutskiber. That's all he basically talked about, you know, in his, in his recent interviews. And yeah, it's basically like, this is

the new thing. And even Demis Haspas has been talking about world models, right? And so, like, this is the entire now thing. If this becomes the new narrative. that will obviously be the next thing that potentially sort of switches up or shakes up those companies again is how integrated or not they are with that with that lineup yeah i just wonder i mean if if if world models really is the next thing that's such it were such at at such a early point on that front i don't know that we might have a long stall before anything if that approach even works no one really knows yeah and we might see i mean obviously we're going to have Elon Musk try to come back into this, this equation, right? And he's already been talking about how

excuse me, the, you know, his robots are optimists are going to be the biggest business ever, not just like the big, you know, biggest business of Tesla, the biggest business of all time for anything ever. And so, you know, he's hyping that up to no end because I think that he probably views this as like, yeah, that's the next sort of world models are a part of that. And, you know, we go into robotics. And if that's the next multi, multi, multi, trillion dollar sort of business opportunity, then Tesla has a shot to get into that race, you know, and be making a five horse race. Obviously, Meta would hope to be the one to get also into that race. And Amazon, we haven't even talked about, you know, being sort of sitting

there, I think, what, a mere trillion dollars back or whatever they are at the moment from sort of the rest of the pack. And so all of that comes in. Yeah, it does also seem like meta is sort of fighting the last war on this where they're like they've assembled a super team to build LLMs. But let me ask you this. So let's say that's where we are. We're sort of, you know, I don't want to say petering out on progress with large language models, but maybe reaching some form of plateau and the models are commoditizing.

Who do you bet on? Who would you bet on? Would you bet on? And this is, again, using Josh Brown's like dichotomy here, the sort of the open AI cinematic universe where you have like open AI and my. Microsoft and Oracle or the Google universe where you have, you know, I don't know, and some others. Yeah, I mean, if I, if I was like actually betting and, you know, money on these companies, I would do what these companies are doing and I'll bet on each other.

That's right. Hedge your bets not stop. The circular financing actually makes sense in this front. That's how I would do it. But if you're asking me to actually bet to pick one winner of it, I do, you know, and I, you know, I, I worked at Google for a long time for Google's venture arm, you know, haven't been there for a while, so just to disclose that, but, but I do think that Google's, um, just given all of the things that they have, it does feel like the quote unquote beast has awoken and I feel like that they're in the best position right now to be able to capitalize on all of this stuff quite literally. Um, I think that again, though, this, I do buy into the notion, and I'm far from an expert on, you know, on AI models, but I do buy into the notion, the high level notion, that it's going to take more than where we are with LLMs to be able to take us to AGI or whatever you want to call it, the next phase of where we're going. And so if you believe that, it's really a question of who do you think is best positioned as one of these companies to take advantage of that. To your point, meta feels like they're literally,

letting that ship sail in Jan Lacoon and they'll invest or whatever in his startup. But they obviously made their bet in the opposite way. Apple is sort of off to the side. But Amazon, you know, they're apparently working on their own internal models. I mean, they've been working on their own internal models, but obviously they have the giant Anthropic bet. But it doesn't feel like at least from, there's been no leaks of anything that Anthropic is sort of really primarily focused on. you know, sort of the next world models and whatnot. And so, again, I think, like, the fact that Demas Hasibus has been out there talking a lot about this, like, you know that he's thinking, even if it's not world models, there's some

other what's next coming up that I think that they're heavily thinking about. Microsoft, to me, it also feels a bit like they're on the last battle. They're stuck there right now, just from, you know, public things that you're here and reports. And so it feels like it's either, we talked about this before. like with, with, you know, the, the history of open AI, it does feel like that they've made their AGI or bus bet. And then it's just a question of, like, can they find more and more people to give them enough capital? Because they're sort of now at this weird point where they

don't have, you know, Microsoft, yeah, owns 27% of the company, but they're not their main capital partner anymore. Um, nor are they even their real main technology partner sort of going forward. And so they need to like continue to bring in just an insane amount of capital. Whereas Google is insanely profitable. And so, you know, and they have the pieces in place to do it. So, you know, as much as I hate to bet on a, you know, three plus trillion dollar company against a quote-unquote startup, it just feels like there's there's a window of opportunity here. I think open AI, when I go back to it, what they've always done the best of is on the product side, right? They've always done a great job being able to productize AI.

And I think that that's what's directly led to. their consumer success. And yeah, Google is eating into that a bit now. It feels like you had a piece about this talking about how Google's like actually been able to build some. Yeah, the new stuff. Whether that's notebook L.M. Right, right. Which by the way, I have to say notebook LM, the team there did tweet like here's a holiday recipe and like somebody like saw that they had like just taken a recipe. They were doing holiday infographics and someone saw that they just literally jacked a recipe from some website indexed by Google and put it in a nice format and said, this is AI. And it's just like, oh, come on. Like, you can't do that. But there's also this dynamic

view that you actually wrote about, which I couldn't find. Is it just for like the Google, the pro users of Gemini? But you basically are able to, I don't even know how to explain it. It's this interactive web page or something that you can create via a prompt with Gemini. It's a very cool product. Yes. So one thing, it's not on mobile yet. So I don't know if that's where you were looking. I was on desktop, yeah. But yeah, I am a pro, pro subscriber, so maybe that was it. And it's in, it's in labs, so it's not officially rolled out. But it was just available.

Maybe I'm in some bucket A-B test for it. But, yeah, it was in the drop-down. And it's near nanobanana, you know, when you do the drop-down and pick, if you want to make an image, you could also pick to make this type of presentation, dynamic view. Again, awful name. But it's such a cool output that it does. I give the examples in my post. One of them was explaining that. end of the movie Heat, the famous 90s Michael Man movie to me. And it made this incredible,

just interactive output, which again, it's sort of when I'm explaining it, it sounds like rudimentary, but you got to see this thing when you do it. And you could do it for anything. And it basically takes what, you know, the output would be in a text format from a regular query on Gemini. And it puts it into this sort of interactive model, including like, like making just these like incredibly intuitive and like fun things like I did one for the for you know explaining in the movie interstellar to me and it like makes a uh a button where you can turn on sort of background mood music that's in the style of interstellar and then while you do that you can calculate uh like time dilation uh when you're going around a black hole and it's like

it's all this like just really fun interesting uh way to sort of present what would normally just be yeah, like a text output back to you. And again, it sounds like rudimentary, and it is in some ways right now, but you think about like, they made this in one minute based off of a random query that I do. Just think about like what they'll be able to do a year from now. And if you do like a thinking version of this where you give them a few minutes to come up with like sort of an interactive model, like the outputs I think will be absolutely incredible. And when you think about like kids learning this way, like I did one for like explaining stock buybacks.

And it's just like this great interactive way to learn. And so as long as you can trust that it's not going to hallucinate and actually give you good information, I think that this is just like an incredible bit of product work that Google has done here. And that's why I wrote about it. It felt like it was being underplayed for whatever reason, in part because it has such a bad name and in part because it's in labs or whatnot. But again, to your exact point, like it feels like Google has finally woken up also on the product side to be able to do interesting things to combat. what Open AI has historically done. Yeah, I was just on their labs page right now, and it's just filled with interesting things.

So, all right, before we get, we have just a couple minutes left. Before we go, I think you charted out one more interesting thing that's worth noting before we leave. And that is that Anthropic and Open AIs have like really divergent paths right now. If you like look at their projections,

Anthropic is planning to be profitable by 2028, which I know sounds like a long way away. but in AI years is pretty damn good, where Open AI is planning to lose more than $100 billion between now and 2030 and the losses will just basically keep ramping as we get closer. So what do you think this says about the competition between the two? And is Anthropic just being smart and saying we're probably going to have some AI downturn and we're going to try our best to sort of bat down the hatches and get through it? I do think that that's a part of it.

I think that it was, it's sort of interesting timing in everything else that we're talking about, right? Like if it does feel like, you know, that the models are sort of coalescing, but also that there's this, this sort of negative, you know, backdrop going on around just investing in AI in general from the public market sentiment on down, it feels like, yeah, if anthropic can sort of take advantage of like, look, we're at the cutting edge right now, but we're not going to be the sort of drunken sailor spend that open AI is trying to do. So come on board and bet with us. And, you know, the most recent report has their new valuation at $350 billion. So they're getting pretty close to where Open AI is at at $500 billion. It feels like, you know, they're sort of coming in, you know, in line with those numbers, which is super interesting. And again, maybe speaks to the dichotomy between the two, the two paths that they're taking there. It's funny.

I wrote that post and then literally the day later, I wrote like, you know, a number of things in that post. But one aside was like, and look, they're not spending all this money on building their own data centers. And literally like 12 hours later, they announced that their first data center that they're going to build, of course. But as long as it's one, as long as it's not, you know, the Stargate project and they're not spending, again, hundreds of billions of dollars on building out their own data centers. You could certainly argue that they should probably have some level of their own infrastructure in place. So they're not beholden to, you know, their partners on that stuff. And especially given all the weird, as we talked about, all the weird inner investing going on where it's like, yeah, and Amazon is, is their main partner maybe, but they're also now buying TPUs from Google. And then, you know, but Google's also, you know, potentially partnering with, you know, X, Y and Z.

And then Open AI is potentially partnering with Amazon now, too. And so there's, like, I think Anthropic probably is to look at this as like, I'm not sure that we can rely on, you know, just Amazon. and I'm not sure we can rely on just Google. And so in some ways, they have to sort of hedge that long-term bet. I just think, like, they might be and might be smartly be looking at the market as it is right now and saying, like, the music is starting to slow a little bit. Let's not commit to spending hundreds of billions of dollars. Let's commit to spending mere tens of billions of dollars for our future.

And let's see how this shakes out over the next couple of years. On one hand, it's interesting because I think people within Anthropic believe that, like, if you just scale up your training runs, then you can get to AGI. On the other hand, maybe this is some rationality finally coming into the AI research lab business where they're maybe smartly saying, okay, hey, let's try to make some money. And maybe that will be a good way to ensure that we'll reach our goal in the long term. Yeah. And the only other thing I would add is just like it's sort of as naturally played out the way

that Anthropic has done a great job on the enterprise front, right? whereas Open AI has done a great job on the consumer front. And so we have that sort of, again, there's nuance there. And obviously, Open AI is also trying on the coding front and enterprise and whatnot. But at a high level, like, they've sort of splintered off into those two worlds. And so, you know, the one is going to be an easier path potentially to making money. But we seem to be on the cusp of open AI potentially rolling out their first ads. if some of the leaked internal builds are to be believed.

And that will be a whole interesting element to the next year, right, of how that plays out. Right. So some of that did show up in, I think, the Android code, some places for advertising. So that's clearly coming probably at some point next year. Speaking of next year, that's going to be the next time you and I talk. So I think we'll kick off January maybe with some predictions or some recap of some crazy stuff that happens in December. But, M.G, just want to say it's been great having you on the show here. I think we started in the second half of 2025, and it's been a great addition to the show.

So looking forward to doing more together. Thanks so much, Alex. And happy New Year and happy New Year at all your listeners. And yeah, we'll catch up in early January. All right, we'll pick it up in January. All right, everybody. Thank you to MG. Thank you to all of you for listening and watching.

We'll be back on Wednesday with a couple of anthropic researchers who found a very interesting pattern in AI models and how they've sort of turned evil and how you might be able to stop them from going to the dark side. So that's coming up on Wednesday. And then Ron John and I will be back on Friday to break down the week's news. Thank you again and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Thank you.