Motley Fool Money - IPO Fever Heats Up For OpenAI and Anthropic

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Demand for AI is exploding and two companies – OpenAI and Anthropic – are driving the industry forward. Everything from hyperscalers to neoclouds to memory stocks are hanging on the demand for tokens they need. We discuss that demand, how debt got involved, and what could go wrong. Plus, what sports franchise would you buy?Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Jason Moser discuss:- AI IPO Setup- Insatiable Demand- Debt Gets Involved- Restaurant Recovery?- Buying a Franchise- Radar StocksCompanies discussed: Quantum Computing (QUBT), Firefly (FLY), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), SpaceX (SPCX).Host: Travis HoiumGuests: Lou Whiteman, Jason MoserEngineer: Bart ShannonAdvertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're racing to the biggest IPOs in history. Molly Fool Hinton Jim's investing starts now. Welcome to Molly Fulhinjave's investing. I'm Travis Hoham. I'm joined today by Lou Whiteman and Jason Moser. And guys, we've had a lot of earnings over the past couple of weeks. But the backdrop of all of these earnings reports seems to be anthropic and open AI racing towards their IPOs. They're trying to get as much compute as possible.

They're trying to grow revenue as much as possible. We've already seen SpaceX IPO this year. got to, I think it was nearly a $2 trillion valuation. I don't know if it ever popped above that, fell back pretty quickly after that. But Lou, we did learn this week that Open AI is starting to catch up to Anthropic with their revenue because of a little bit more aggressive pricing. They're also, I think both these companies are willing to pay top dollar for a compute. So as we think about that, and I want to get to some of the neoclods in particular in just a moment,

but how should we be thinking about the growth of these? companies and whether or not it's profitable because it does seem a little bit like they're growing almost at all cost at this point. As they should. Yeah, and that is. And I profits are not a requirement. They are not, as we saw with the SpaceX IPO, profits are not required now. Growth is required. So they are doing what they should do. Look, it could turn tomorrow, but as of now, there's a lot of source of capital. And as Anthropic and opening I go public, there's even more sources of capital. You need profits when the market tells you you need profits. The hard thing as the management team is, is that you don't necessarily get a exit sign three miles in advance.

You don't get a warning. So you better be ready for profits when they come. But as of now, there is nothing that tells us that the market is worried about this quarter's results. They're curious about what you're building. So go out and build something and may have long continue for these companies because I don't know when they're going to hit profitability. Jason, is that how you see this because it does look a little bit like I think the neoclouds were a good example over the past week. The numbers are phenomenal. Lou is right. The revenue numbers are great. But every time I look at these companies, I'm wondering what is sustainable and what isn't because it does seem like we have this exponential

growth to infinity. I mean, I even saw projections that SpaceX could add 10 gigawatts worth of capacity, which would be several hundred billion dollars worth of end of customer revenue. I'm not sure exactly where that comes from. But it does seem like these companies are growing at an astronomical pace. And I'm not sure where the end of that is. Yeah, it makes me think of like, you know, that investing style GARP, right, growth at a reasonable price. These businesses are just growth at all cost.

And right now, I mean, the market is pricing these companies entirely on growth. no regard as far as margins are concerned. And I mean, I get that. That makes sense today. The question mark is, how long will that be tolerated? My suspicion is it will be tolerated for a while. What's that old saying? The market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent or something like that. Yes. Yes. This is going to, it may seem irrational. And we're not exactly. seeing the clear pathway to profitability because, I mean, you're right. All of all of these investments in compute, I mean, they're paying up for it, of course. But what is the ultimate return? And I think that's what we're all kind of asking. It's probably easier to see at the

enterprise level right now. But my bet is if you just go take a walk down in a main street and just ask a random sample of people like, hey, how is AI impacting your life? life today. Most people would probably be like, I don't know. I mean, maybe they use an LLM, right? It makes customer support worse to interact with. Right. I mean, so I think that's, that's, we need to sort of see that aha moment where we really understand how these dots all connect. And I don't doubt that we'll get there eventually. But until we do, you know, these companies are just going to continue to raise money, spend on growth at all costs, and hope, I guess, that profits come at some point. I think the question mark for me is where do those profits really ultimately come from?

Because again, going back to just general society, most people are not paying for subscriptions to Claude or Gemini or whatever. I mean, it is just a very minuscule percentage to people that actually pay for those subscriptions. So that's not going to be a source of income. That's not going to need a solution. that begs the question, will it be advertising? Well, I don't know. It's worked out well for Google, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. It's hard to imagine a world where all of these companies are winners, which is really, really hard.

Because even if I agree with it, JMO, I mean, look, can you imagine Google trying to charge for search, even if it's AI search now? That's a non-starter. So it's going to have to be, you know, I don't know. And advertising, I guess, will change, but maybe stay. it's hard to imagine short of, I mean, I've even seen these like personal assistant things. And they, I don't think life, or at least life for me isn't rigid enough to fit into the confines of a personal assistant the way they do them. So I think it's a real tough sell. It is for the enterprise who can gain traction.

But even then, I haven't seen anything to suggest like, oh, we are just signing a 10-year deal with Anthropic or something like that. Even that feels very fleeting company to company. There's definitely a there there. Like Jason says, there is definitely something is involving here. There's something there. But how it turns into sustainable profits for any of these companies, I don't know. It's a weird moment as an investor because I both guarantee you, Travis, that this is not sustainable and it won't work for everyone.

And I wouldn't put your money out there betting against it right now because, you know, So you're just kind of stuck in this. Thank you, Lou. I appreciate that. Yeah, you're kind of stuck in this la la land where I know it can't last forever, but gosh, it works right now. And that's a very, very unsettling, at least for me, as kind of a conservative. I'm not a yolo guy. And it's a very unsettling place to be where you kind of don't want to, you know, FOMO if you're not involved. And you also know that there is another chapter to be written here. And it's not nearly as exciting. Well, and it makes you feel good as an investor, like owning companies like Amazon and Alphabet, for example, where, yes, they're making these huge investments. And sure, there are question marks as to the return on that investment, but at least they've got these businesses to fall back on, right? I mean, if this turns out to just not return what we all hope it will, at least they have these core businesses to fall back on these cash cows that they've already. already got, whereas with an open AI, with an anthropic, that's more of a one-trick pony right now. And it's not to say that'll always be the case. I mean, they may be able to, you know, introduce a number of different revenue streams as well. I'm not saying they can't. But for now,

I mean, essentially, they are just kind of one-trick ponies in a market that seems to become just more and more commoditized by the day. Let's also bring in the risk that I think is new in the last six months, It's not entirely new, but we've kind of gone to a new phase where so much of this buildup is now being fueled by debt. So you have the hyperscalers, which are now taking on immense amounts of debt, tens of billions of dollars worth of debt, even Alphabet is now burning through all of its operating cash is now free cash flow negative. But Lou, we talked about the neoclouds.

They're sort of on the front lines here. And the piece that I think is so interesting is everybody is saying we have more. more demand than we can supply for this compute. So we have to pay whatever it takes for memory. We have to pay whatever it takes for debt. Some of those debt costs are going up. But you tie all of these pieces together. And Corweave says we have a bunch of demand,

but that demand comes from alphabet or from meta or from Microsoft. And that demand for Microsoft and alphabet and meta ultimately comes from a couple of these companies that we talked about at the beginning that are looking to IPO, Open AI and Anthropics. So it does all seem to come back to, is this a house of cards that's built on top of specifically those two companies that are still in kind of this high growth mode, but we don't know what their profitability is going to be like.

How do we think about debt layering into this? Because it does seem to take the risk to a new level. Right. Debt is a fantastic tool, assuming you pay the debt back. And many of fortunes have been lost on that second part. Right? I mean, that is the thing. We all are living in houses today thanks to debt. So, you know, there are really good uses of debt. This is a house of cards or it's a solid foundation that all depends on whether or not they can come through. They don't even really need profits here. All of these companies, you don't need profits. You just need sustained cash flow. You just need just be able to sustain that revenue. For investors, you need the profits. But for the for the lenders, all you need is just cash coming in the door. And I mean, we can get into, there's another company's doing this, but like for the neoclouds,

the good news is, is that there's a lot of demand for compute power outside of AI. So there is a fallback. If you build it, they will probably come. But will they come to the extent that we are planning for right now when we are kind of at maximum stage with AI? And also, will there be any pricing power? As far again, about an investment. It sounds like what I'm talking about is if you just build it, it's out there. That's how commodities start getting formed. So, you know, I think price and power. So I do think there will be winners and losers. I do think you have to tread carefully. But I don't know if we are set up for the worst case scenario where just everybody defaults in their loans because I do think, I do think I see cash flow. I just don't know if I see profits, which as an investor at some point, unless I'm just investing in the lenders, I need to see profits as well. Yeah, Jason, the other piece that came out this week was

NVIDIA backstopping a bunch of debt from a number of institutional providers of debt. And the way that just in very simple terms, they're kind of cutting up the risk profile, the way that you do with a credit default swap or with securitizations of mortgages where there's somebody who's first in line, second in line, third in line. And NVIDIA is saying, hey, we'll be last in line. We'll make sure you get your money back. Just keep buying our GPUs, it seems like we're entering a new phase with all this debt and now with even the supplier saying, hey, we'll backstop this. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's been the big question mark for a while, right? It's just sort of the interrelatedness of all of these different entities,

these different companies investing in each other to try to ensure each other's success. And ultimately it's like, well, where is all of the money going to come from? from. In like within a video, for example, at least we know they have this deliverable, right? Their technology is something they can deliver on and that should continue for the foreseeable future. But, you know, I look at these neoclows, for example, and think, well, I mean, consolidation, I think is ultimately going to have to happen, right? I mean, it just doesn't seem to make any real sense unless there's some sort of differentiation that you possess. I mean, the cost of compute is going to continue to come down. And these neoclouds that are riddled with debt and have these sort of questionable capital structures, that's going to kind of come to the surface, right? The tide's going to go out and you're going to see who's swimming naked. And so my suspicion is we'll see some consolidation in that sector over the course of the next several years.

Can I maybe I'm too positive here, but can I give you the positive big macro spin on this? We need a little positivity. Yeah, because I mean, again, because the obvious what we're dancing around is what happened the last time that debt just got overwhelmed the system. That was 2008. I think I can squint and read Nvidia coming out and doing this publicly as a sign that the lenders are doing their due diligence, that there is a need for Nvidia to do this because there are people asking the right questions or there are people aware of all of these things. They're not oblivious to all of the issues. I look again it could still turn out terribly for some of the specific companies involved but as a as a someone who just doesn't want to see a repeat of 2008 I do think there are at least some signs that we have learned from those mistakes and that's a very good thing if so lots for investors to think about but you know it will be exciting when we finally do get the numbers from open AI and Anthropic hopefully later this year when we come back we're

going to turn to some good news in the restaurant industry. You're listening to Motley Fool, Hidden Gems, investing. You just found out that your sales team is at risk of missing quota. Don't panic. Just ask Rippling AI. Since it's built on your real-time people and business data, Rippling AI can pull metrics from Rippling and Salesforce into a meeting-ready dashboard showing quota attainment, headcount plan, and monthly revenue to quota by region. In seconds, you'll see exactly what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed. Question answered, action

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using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Chems, Investing. We did get an interesting earnings report this week from Kava. I'm sad to say we still don't have Kava where I'm at. I hear such good things from you guys about Kavana.

That's the opportunity, JMO. That's it. There you go. Come to the Midwest. But Jason, they had some pretty good numbers. Traffic was up. Spending per ticket was up. There's been a lot of struggles in the restaurant industry.

So is this at least sort of a green shoot that maybe things at least in certain pockets are getting a little better? Yeah, I think so to a degree. I mean, there are, the restaurant business right now is obviously very difficult. We're starting to see lines blur between. between traditional fast food, right, and fast casual. I mean, the menu prices for traditional fast food are really starting to creep up there. I mean, going to get like a value meal from one of these McDonald's or burger, you or whatever, mid-eat.

That's just, it's not cheap anymore. And so I think the fast casual restaurants have a little bit of an opportunity right there to sort of keep close, at least, in regard to pricing, while offering a higher quality meal, right? And so Kava really rhymes with Chipoli. I think, I mean, it was a good quarter, right? I mean, the revenue up 31 plus percent. That growth was fueled by a 9 percent increase in comps. They opened 17 new stores.

They are seeing, as you mentioned, traffic up that was better than 5 percent. Another interesting data point that I found regarding the quarter, they saw their average unit volume, right? The average unit volume for their restaurants now hit. They cracked $3 million per year, right? And that's up modestly from around $2.8, $2.9 million recently. But that is on par with Chipotle now. Now, I think the caveat there is that we need to recognize the fact. that Kava only has a handful of stores compared to the Chipotle, right?

I mean, there's something like 350 Kava's versus 4,200 Chipolets. Now, that is, I think, at the end of the day, an opportunity. You mentioned you don't have them out there in Minnesota yet, at least where you live. And so maybe there is a nice runway of growth because, I mean, as a consumer, and I think we would agree, we do like what Kava has to offer. It's not terribly hard on the wallet. And it is something that I think could continue to grow for some time. Lou, is this one of those things where people are just eating a little bit healthier?

Maybe McDonald's not doing quite as well. I know I own shares of portillo's. That's not doing particularly well because those beef sandwiches apparently are falling out of favor to a salad bowl at this point. Salad sounds good. Look, I'm biased here. But I mean, I don't know. I think Kava is winning. because they're well managed and they have a good product.

And look, it's early. These gross stories don't last forever. But I do think, you know, it's a reminder that leadership matters and concept matters, that not all restaurants are the same, to your point, Travis. The other thing, and I know I don't want to like, you know, stomp on any, you know, just big narratives, but can we get over this GLP1 is killing restaurants narratives? I believe in GLP ones. I believe in that.

But you're going to have to do runs of clinical trials to figure out why it doesn't stop us from craving Mediterranean, I guess. I do think that it's overstated. I think what's gone on with restaurants is a little bit of macro. It's a little bit of oversaturation. Maybe it's a little bit of GLP-1s. But earlier in the year when we had all of these restaurant stocks that were struggling, it was just, GLP1 is stopping everyone from eating.

I think that that is one of those just kind of the narrative overwhelms the evidence things. And I think good restaurants can still win is what we learned from Kappa. Lou, do you think that pricing pressure is going to be a challenge, whether it's on people spending money elsewhere, you know, going to spend grocery costs are still going up faster than wages are. Same thing with energy prices at this point. Is that something to at least worry about a little bit if you're a restaurant investor? Sure. And I think it always is on both sides, that their cost and whether or not consumers can afford it. Again, a well-run company can get through a downturn, but it might, I'm not going to predict earnings next quarter.

and what's going on in the macro. It will be interesting to see what happens with the restaurant. It's always an area that I would like to invest more, but it's such a tough space. So don't find a new Chipotle every day. When we come back, we were going to go shopping for sports franchises. You're listening to the Motley Fool, Hidden Gems, investing. This episode is brought to you by Accenture.

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Welcome back to Molley Foolin, Jim's, Investing. We like to have a little bit of fun in this segment with investing. And this week with the news that Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney and Josh Kushner, who runs Thrive Capital, one of the most successful venture capital firms over the past decade or so, are buying the Los Angeles Lakers for somewhere around $12.5 billion. What's a few billion dollars between friends? But that got me thinking, if you were going to invest in a sports franchise and you were doing this

just for investment purposes, not because you necessarily love that specific team, what would you be buying? There's a lot of options out there, but the prices are getting pretty crazy at this point, not that they always haven't been very high. Jason, I want to start with the NFL. If we're going shopping for NFL teams, are you going bargain basement, or are you willing to pay up for one of the big franchises? Man, you know, there are so many different ways to look at this.

You know, I did a quick search, and just by the numbers, you look at the Dallas Cowboys. They're the highest overall return on investment historically. I think Jerry Jones bought them in 1989 for something like $140 million. And the team is now, I think, valued. close to $16 billion. So I kind of wonder if maybe, I'm not sure how much juice there is left to squeeze there,

to be honest with it, particularly given the team's lack of success through the years, at least over the past, you know, a couple of decades. Probably, you know, I could, I could be a local here in Virginia and say I'd want to go with someone like the Ravens or the commanders or they'll always get the redskins to me. But I grew up in South Carolina, Travis. So I'm going to go with the Carolina Panthers because I think football in the Carolinas is beloved, right? You're getting down there in SEC country. But you're also benefiting from two states.

North Carolina and South Carolina, they both love the Panthers. So I think you just have a tremendous opportunity there. The team, I think, is still somewhat reasonably valued. It's like $8 billion today. I think there's plenty of opportunities. I'm going Carolina Panthers, and you're asking about who you want as CEO. Yeah, I also want a CEO.

Who's running this operation? Well, I love watching football college NFL. It's great. We're getting to that time of year. I'm excited. I'm the CEO of this bad boy. Wow. I mean, I would love to do something like that.

That would be awesome. You know what's fascinating about this is that this is like the two sides of a market because J-Mo and I have similar kind of life experiences and seeing the north, seeing the south, and we have jumped to opposite conclusions. One thing that really struck me, I used to live in the north, and I would hear NFL fans make fun of franchises in the south.

Well, they just don't like football because the Falcons games are empty or whatever. And down in the south, it's college fans make fun of college teams up north. Like, you see, they don't like, football up there because Rutgers doesn't draw and look at Georgia. So like I don't know. It my life experience is you are never going to be the big dog in the southeast if you're an NFL team. So if we're talking to NFL, I'm heading for the north. Green Bay is the stereotype

answer. Buffalo seems to have a rabid fan base. But Travis, I am just going to do a shout out to your hometown. All I saw when I was up there recently was, I don't even understand school. goal. You'll have to explain that to me offline. But I love that the new stadium looks like a Viking ship, too. So I am enamored with that. I am going north here. And I'll take the Vikings, baby.

You know, Jason talked about regional dominance. Look at a map of the United States. By the way, I also thought it was funny that you were saying that Rutgers was north, which is about where Omaha is at from a north-south perspective. I don't consider that very far north. Boston College doesn't draw either. God, now we're going to get letters. But you want to talk about regional dominance.

You've got not only Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska. You can go into Wyoming, Montana. You've got a long ways to draw from here in Minnesota. Well, sure, territory, but you're still getting like one Chicago suburbs where the people, Travis. Fair enough. We got a lot of land. No, the other piece here is they built a phenomenal facility, their practice facility, And we were at training camp.

They do a great job with that. Kids love going. It's five bucks. Five bucks to get the kids in. Get them excited about football. So love the shout out there, Lou. Who's running the team now? So I want creative disruption because you don't want to start over,

but you want to manage an existing business in new ways. And my go-to there is Alan Malawi, the former head of Ford, who is just a great CEO of like, look, he did not. Is he going to travel from San Diego to like he did when he was running for? He probably wouldn't want to. I mean, I think Alan's still with us, isn't he? But he is, he did such a great job of Ford basically just kind of running the existing business, but also thinking about, you know, not like just resting on the existing business. I think that's what the NFL needs in general.

I'll tell you the other thing about Alamalalli, and I had a very good fortune to interview him on the floor at the North American international auto. show in Detroit, I don't know, back in 2012, he has just this uncanny, you cannot have a conversation with him and not walk away just fully inspired. Like, I got to believe he would just have a football team just chanting at the bit ready to go from day one. He is just a, he's just one of those guys get you, get you seeing everything glass half full. All right, well, I, uh, I appreciate shout out. I think the Vikings would be a good buy, although they probably want a lot more than they paid for the team a decade or so ago. All right, if we are looking at NBA teams, the Lakers are now off the table. But Jason, who are you looking at? So I'm not the biggest NBA guy. I mean,

thankfully I got to grow up in the era of Jordan, watch the Bulls dominate, which was a lot of fun. But one of my best friends growing up, and this is down in South Carolina, he had moved there from Rhode Island. And so he brought with him his love of New England sports. And so we grew up watching a lot of Celtics basketball.

And I think for me, I would look at the Celtics as a, really fun opportunity to buy. I think it's the fourth or fifth highest valued NBA team, fifth maybe highest valued team in the league today. I think there's still some opportunity there, particularly given the rich history, just this hardcore, diehard fan base. Yeah, there just seems to me a lot to like about the Celtics. So I think I'd go with them. And who's running the team? This is what I really want to hear. Oh, I've got to go with Shaq. I always loved Shaq. is being a part of Papa John's right back in the day. He was on the board or whatever. And he's like, his brand is all about fun. I mean, Shaq is just such a character. And obviously, in the intimate knowledge of the game, I think, I think he would be, he would be a very astute and dedicated CEO. So that's, that's my pick.

It seems like he could be the kind of innovator that Jerry Buss was with the Lakers, what, 40 years ago or so. So I love that. Lou, who do you got? So I'm going Homer here. But I, I live. Living in Atlanta for 20 years and seeing the way this city loves basketball, unfortunately, Atlanta hasn't, the Hawks haven't given them much to root for until maybe recently, Jeffrey, maybe. But I do think that this is, I know this is the hometown fallacy, but there is a just pot of gold waiting to explode here. If you look at Joy, like, Travis, there's a really good player up in your neck and it was that came from just around the corner from me, Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brown, uh, uh, Casey

A lot of great players from this area. I am going with the Hawks. I'm going to run them right and I'm going to turn this thing into a gold mine because this city really, really loves this basketball. You remember how electric the days were when Spud Webb was playing there? Yeah. So I wasn't there then. But yeah, with Dominique is still, I mean, Dominique is still around a lot when you go to games. Look, this city is built for basketball, I think.

We actually run a league out of a downtown thing, just a small little. little like a summer league and it's amazing the people that you get to see going through there. It's it. This is a basketball city to just all the football talk we forget about it. It does. It seems interesting with the NFL, you could almost buy any one of these teams and you'd be just fine with the salary cap and, you know, people. The fandom is kind of dispersed.

Financially, you probably do just find it with any other teams. But with the NBA, you do have this local people either care or they don't care in these companies are either or these these franchises be either relevant or they're completely irrelevant. You know, think about like New Orleans. I'm sure that's a very valuable franchise, but there's no way that I would want to be, want to be buying that at this point. All right, let's end on this. Major League Baseball, Lou, I think you have a few more thoughts with MLB. If you're buying a franchise, what do you got? I mean, so this one is the most personal and I have to buy the Baltimore Orioles and figure out how to do it. Although I do like, we have the Carlisle guy, David

to Rivenstein owning them now. But look, I'm not going to say this is the best buy, but I just, there's tradition there. There's a rabid fan base. The whole Washington thing is behind us. I'm going with my heart here. I'm buying the Orioles just because my fantasy as a little kid was to turn, was to pitch the Orioles to back to back to back world series. That's not happening. So maybe I can buy and manage them to back to back to back to back world series.

Appointing himself as CEO. Maybe. Although, no, okay, can I just because it's such a complicated game with all the contracts and stuff, and you have to do so many spinning wheels and you've got to be good with money. I'm just really going into the archive here. Michael Dunlop, the guy who built Melmet. He's like one of my heroes as a CEO. I want Michael Dunlop to manage all of these things.

So there you go. This is going to be the future Billy Bean. I can't believe you can go with Cal. Well, no, no. Honestly, I don't think I want Cal running things. No. Or actually, Cal write me a letter. That's fine.

All right, Jason, who are you buying? Yeah, man, I tell you, Camden Yards, that's just a wonderful baseball experience. I got to go see a game there. Bullets Barbecue, by the way. Oh, yeah. Luke, that's a, Luke's Barbecue. I got to, many years back, got to go to Candid Yards to watch the Orioles play the Red Sox. Pedro Martinez was pitching for the socks.

We had the seats right behind home plate. It was really cool to see. And that leads me to my point, much like with the Celtics. I grew up with my buddy watching the Celtics. Grew up watching a lot of Red Sox baseball. I'm a Red Sox fan. I love, again, just the history, the tradition, the rabid fan base. And so what I think is interesting, when you look at the Red Sox versus the Yankees,

the disparity in the valuation there is pretty considerable. I mean, you get the Red Sox today valued at something like $5 billion. yeah he's understandably valued it something like nine billion dollars now I do think it would be interesting to see if we hit in baseball some sort of salary cap right now it's kind of the wild west and the teams that make the most money you're able to spend the most money and get the most talent and they tend to do you know obviously the best I think those days are numbered but I think that actually is something that would play out in in the favor of your teams like

the Red Sox and eating the Yankees because of the lore, the history, the tradition. People want to wear those logos, right? And they just have so much opportunity. So I'm going with my Red Sox and leading the way, you know, I thought about this. If you could go with something easy like a Tom Brady just because people love them up there. You know what, man, I'm going Brian Nicol because it seems like everything that guy touches turns to cold. And so maybe he could bring another championship. ship there to Boston year in the next few years. And imagine what would happen to the restaurants in Fenway.

Oh, my word. You double dip in there. You're getting the best of both worlds. All right, we got about two minutes left. Lou, quickly, if you're buying an MLS franchises. By the way, these have gotten incredibly expensive for the actual popularity of the league. But if you're trying to get in early, what are you looking at?

You know, I'm going to go to Jamos backyard. The Charlotte area for soccer, just the Carolinas is so good and I like the fact you're sort of getting in earlier and not getting, you're not going to pay the top dollar for MLS, but you are getting a great fan base and a great grassroots soccer.

I'm going to go there. I don't know who I'm going to pick as CEO, though maybe, can I say Clint Dempsey, just because I was my favorite U.S. men's player growing up, just a fantastic guy. I don't know if he'd do a good job or not,

but I do respect guys. So Clint went to school in South Carolina. Let's just put him in charge and see what happens. Jason? Well, I admittedly, this is the area. I have just the least file on. But doing a little bit of quick research, I think you've got to go Los Angeles Football Club,

LAFC. I think when you look at the two clubs that are really the highest value today, it's you got Miami and you got L.A. The thing about Miami is I think that all really hinges on Messi and he's not going to be around forever. I mean, I think, you know, the question as to whether he's going to be in the next World Cup, understandable. He's just time waits for no one.

So I think, I think L.A. football club is probably more durable of the two. And, you know, as far as CEO, I just, I don't have really a strong feeling there. Again, it's not a sport I really follow. So I don't know who would necessarily be most. suitable, but bring Jim McNerney in out of retirement. Yeah. Or how about this?

Jason, your CEO's already there. David Beckham. There we go. I mean, there you go. We're used in Miami, but yeah. I think Beckham, obviously, yeah, you want to go with someone who has inside knowledge. And so, yeah, Beckham could make sense.

Or, hey, I mean, you know, when Messi retires, maybe he's got another big weight form there. Yeah, that will be an interesting one to watch the valuations of some of soccer leagues because the other ones are going crazy. So I'm sure the rich guy club is coming after soccer next as well. When we come back, we're going to get to the stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool, Hidden Gems, Investing. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to

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As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Montley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for information. informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. We'd like to end the show with the stocks on our radar. Jason, I'm going to have you go first. What are you looking at this week? So a company I was digging into this past week,

had not really dug much into it before, but was looking at it for our quantum leap service. The company is called Quantum Computing, tickers Q-U-B-T. And quantum computing works in the Photonics space by providing quantum machines to commercial and government markets in the U.S. And photonics, right, that uses light instead of electricity, ultimately to generate transmit and process data. And so it just offers big benefits in speed, efficiency, higher bandwidth, yada, yada, yada, right? So I, you know, this is a company to me, it's interesting in that it's pursuing this quantum opportunity, right?

The quantum opportunity was still very early days. Now, it's worth saying, too, that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pachai just recently said that quantum today is where AI was five years ago. So, I mean, these are companies that really believe in what quantum computing is going to offer us in the future as far as the benefits to your traditional classical computing. But the company just reported results for the quarter. It really is important to note this is a company that is just starting to generate revenue drafts. It's not some company that's just bringing the money in. I mean, they generated $5.6 million here in the second quarter. And that was a massive jump from just $61,000 the previous year.

And this is a company that today is valued at around $2 billion. So the market is looking at a lot of these pure play quantum companies with a lot of optimism because of the language that we're hearing from a lot of these leaders and just the idea that maybe quantum is sort of the next AI or the next leg. of AI. That remains to be seen, but quantum computing is one that will continue to follow in the service and monitor its progress. All right, let's bring in Bart Shannon, who's filling in behind the glass. Bart, what do you think about quantum computing? Well, first of all, Jason's explanation made my brain hurt because I need to understand what a company actually does before I can fully embrace it. But if they don't name their first product Ziggy, it's going to be a huge

disappointment. But to quote Chevy Chase, I was told there would be no math. Bart, the best way to think about it is remember when you used to like hit up your neighbor across the street with a flashlight? Just imagine that at scale. Okay. Got it. There we go. That should be in the earnings presentation. It should be their tagline. All right, Lou, what are you looking at this week? Bart, I'm taking a look at Firefly Aerospace, ticker FLY. So they build and launch small rockets, among other things. They have a nice satellite business, too, which we'll get to. This week, the company reported better than expected earnings, which is good, but more importantly, because this is a very young company, they had a strong $225 million in future

bookings in the quarter and a new launch agreement with Lockheed Martin that runs through 2031. There's a lot of risk here. It is literally rocket scientist, rocket science here, break-even is years away, but one constant investable theme is if you, can get things into space. There is a market here, especially when SpaceX and at Blue Origin are devoting so much of their launch capacity in-house. Firefly can get things into space. They're using the revenue from their satellite business to build out launch. I really find this one intriguing. And we got a great ticker, Bart, Fly. Can't be beat, and you can't go wrong with any company that names their company after a Joss Whedon television show.

There you go. Which one's going on your watch list, Bart? I'm going to go with five. Firefly. Quantum, I'm still wrapping my brain around. Congratulations to Lou. That's all the time we have. Today, I'm Travis Toyum, for Bart Shannon, Lou Whiteman, and Jason Moser. We'll see you here next time.