Pivot - Nvidia Hits $5 Trillion, Elon Musk Launches Grokipedia, and OpenAI's IPO Future

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss OpenAI finally completing its for-profit restructure, and Nvidia becoming the first company in history to hit a $5 trillion market cap. Then, Elon Musk launches Grokipedia, while Truth Social gets into the prediction market business. Plus, the latest in tech earnings from Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet. We're going on tour! Get tickets at pivottour.com Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠. Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠ Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from Sacks Fifth Avenue. Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way. Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit, Sacks is where you can find everything from a stunning David Uriman bracelet for her or a sleek pair of pheragama loafers to wear to a fancy holiday dinner. And if you don't know where to start, Sacks.com is customized your personal style so you can save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays. Make shopping fun and easy this season and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Sacks Fifth Avenue.

Support for the show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes you work easier. CRM accounting inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-Doo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

So why not you? Try O-Doo for free at O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-com. Support for this show comes from Aramis Fragrances. Aramis is back, reintroduced for a new generation. The next chapter of a legendary brand reimagined and refreshed with modern energy. Now you can discover intuition by Aramis, a bold new fragrance for men. Be bold, be magnetic, be unstoppable.

Be like Global Ambassador Dwayne Wade, who captures the enduring spirit of Aramis. Intuition by Aramis. Available at Alta, Macy's, and Department Stores nationwide. Ask yourself and listen. It's intuition. And you did something you almost never do. You didn't let me finish. That's really unlike you. Oh, yeah, right. Do you like to see the statistics on the talking of this show? Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. I have returned to our country, Scott. Yeah, you look much better. Thank you. How is your travel back or your trip back? You know, you leave yesterday and arrived today. No, you leave tomorrow and then you arrive today.

I don't know. It's just like I left at 10 a.m. And then I got back. It was the same day at 10 a.m. That's all I know. It's funny because I can confirm you have not eight. since yesterday. Do you like my, I had a treatment.

I think I looked good. I think I looked good. Yeah, I wore a robot outfit. I wore a robot. It was good, it was good. But I, um, I, um, robot outfit. I, uh, I really am happy to be back.

I, I don't like traveling that much, you know, I'm not, I don't, even though I travel a lot. So I didn't want to tell you this while you're in Asia because I didn't want to trigger anything, but occasionally I have, I can tell you think it's going to be a dirty joke. It isn't. You're literally waiting like, oh, no. Here it comes.

I'm slowly catching up in my sleep. Is this the one? Is there going to be something about, I don't know, some sort of bad Asian flu joke or something? You know those funny Democratic ladies? They said the word twat, so we can do anything we want now. Well, that's the great thing about living in London is technically you can use the C word.

Oh, yeah. It means something different. I still don't use it. Anyways. No, you can't say it, can you? I can't say it. You can say it. I can say it.

I just think there's certain things that are just off limits for a straight white guy. Yeah, I would agree. There's certain words that we just have lost. Yeah. That are just a give. Anyways. Yeah. You can say it to me on our tour every night.

You could say it to me, just quietly. I'd never say that to you. Anyway, so I occasionally went a couple times, a couple times, yeah, twice when I've been in Asia. I used to get Asia a lot for business. And there's something about that amount of jet lag or crossing the dayline that triggers something in my, you know, hypothalamus or Amengala or whatever. and I get, I have a pretty serious depressive episode. And it's happened to me twice. And the last time I was in Hong Kong

and I was staying at one of the most remarkable hotels. I was like on the 88th floor. Like the Grand Hyatt or whatever? No, it was called the Upper House. And it was just remarkable. They bring you this incredible T-set and you're on top of the clouds and looking at Hong Kong.

And I woke up. And I get this weird sort of fear anxiety that I'm too far from anyone that cares about me or that I care about. And I feel very isolated and very frightened. And like, what series of bad decisions led me to somewhere where I don't know anybody and no one cares about me and if I get sick or something have?

I just start freaking the fuck out. And the last time, I was meeting with Mandarin Oriental the hotel group the next morning. I was supposed to meet with the CEO. And instead, I just checked out, went to the airport and got on the first flight home. Really? But there's something about...

I was waiting for the dick jump. you. I was like, where is he going to tell you? No, no, no. Wow, that's amazing. That's interesting. I get that feeling, I have to say, I was saying this to Amanda last night, I just wanted to get home. I felt unsafe. I don't know what it was. By myself. What you just described, times that by 10. Yeah. Where you're like, you start to kind of shake a little bit and you feel really upset and insecure and like foreboding. And I just went straight down to the lobby, went straight to the,

airport, looked at the board and said, get me the first flight back to the U.S., because I find, I don't know if you found this, and this sounds more virtuous than it is, because it only lasts about five minutes before I start hating them again. As soon as I'm around my kids, it was like the solve. It was the new year's board. Oh, no, I love my kids. I was just thinking how much I love my. I'm so excited for the holidays. I mean, it immediately snaps me back to just something okay. Yeah, it was great to see them. And of course, it was just like, when I got back, Saul often gets into bed with us in the early morning, and he goes, he looked at me. He goes, I really missed you. And I was like, oh, my God. I was like, where the cameras, right? Yeah, right. I think he knows

the impact, too, which is really cute. Well, so another quick parenting piece of advice. One of the biggest, one of my biggest regrets about raising my kids is with my youngest one. Until, not until he was like two or three, we didn't let him co-sleep with us because we read somewhere it was bad for you or bad for him. And he used to show up at our bedroom with a basket of cars, like it's an offering, saying, if you let me sleep with you, you too can play with these cars. And I look back, and fortunately, we did co-sleep with our younger one. Co-sleeping is a gift from God.

It is. It is. It's unavoidable. They come in and do you sleep better? They sleep better. And you'll wake up occasionally, like it doesn't have a lot of you. And they'll be looking at you and they'll smile and then they'll put their arm on you and then they fall to sleep and, like, everything is right with the world.

I think co-sleeping is the Japanese cultures do it, Indian cultures do it. Some psychiatrists fucked up in the head, in my view, in the 50s or 60s, convinced American parents we're not supposed to co-sleep. I mean, I just, I really miss that. Well, it's unavoidable with us. On point, Amanda's covered with the cat and both kids. I'm like, hi, good to see you over there. Yeah, it is a nice thing. Before we get to this award you got, last night I was at Mount Vernon, which they're redoing.

It's a, you know, Pumperner is privately run, so they can put up whatever they want. They have a whole new things about the slaves of George Washington. It was really well done. But Ken Burns was showing off his new American Revolution series there last night, an outdoor, in the middle of sort of a rainstorm. It was wonderful. And it was quite lovely, I have to say. I had the loveliest time last night.

I love that, Ken Burns. There is some wonderful things about social media. Social media, I always loved his document. But now that I have the attention span of a cat that's got into its owner's meth supply, I don't watch a lot of, you know, that PBS documentary style stuff. He's been on, he's been all over social media talking about the current administration and history. He is an outstanding thinker. He is, I have to say. But it looks actually really good and really pertinent right now. So anyway, tell me about this spirit of hope, speaking of hope in America. Well, care, I don't like to bring attention to myself. As you know, I've successfully navigated all awards since I won most comical in high school. Yeah. But last night, I was in Toronto at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and I got an award with Van Jones. Wow.

For, I think it's... He's a handsome man. Oh, my gosh. He's so dreamy. He's really nice, too. He's lovely. I like Van. I'm trying to get him to run for a son.

Was he wearing, like, a spiritual outfit? Like, a... Yeah, he looks like a sexy monk. He just looks... Hello. Monk is in spiritual figure. Yeah. He's very, um,

Yeah, and he's, I traveled back to New York with him. He's very, really very impressive. What's the spirit of hope? What was the award for? So every year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center gets together, and they have, they present an award to people for defense. I think it's defense of the Jewish community, and they do a talk and a speech. There was like 1,600 people. Canada has a very strong Jewish community.

It does. Toronto's particularly. Yeah, Toronto. And they reached out to me, and I was really excited to do it. I don't, quite frankly, I was sort of shocked. You don't ever do those things. I'm surprised. No, you know, it was, it was just, it was a really nice moment for me. You know, I don't, I've never been that in touch with my Judaism.

I'm an atheist. I don't feel much connection with Israel. I've obviously been pretty outspoken on it. And, you know, regardless of what you think of the situation, there's a lot of people in the Jewish community who are very appreciative. And it was just, it was just very nice for me. My mom would love it. Oh, well, we'll be back in Toronto, too. Yeah, we're going back.

Actually, a bunch of people came up to me and said, I'll see you next week. We're going to have such a good time. I'm excited. So we sold out there first, which was really interesting. Toronto, yeah. Toronto. We love them.

It's so strange. I doubt you've been watching the World Series. You know less about sports than I do. Blue Jays, right? But it's so weird to be rooting for the Blue Jays. L.A. is my home team. Oh, why aren't you voting for L.A.? You know, I just find Canada to be, quite frankly, the nation the U.S. should be right now.

I think they've got a good leader. I think there are reasonable people. I think they're a generous people. I think they take care of people. I don't think you can go bankrupt if your wife gets lung cancer. I think Canada is the underappreciated neighbor. We should move there.

We should just stay there. Who recycles, seize your kid on the street and walks him or her home, pays the rent on time. I'll tell you, I think we noted Doug Ford, who was very conservative.

And the Gavin Newsom-Dug-Ford thing about the World Series. It was very funny. And they took, like, they dumped on Trump at the same time as talked about, you know, the bet on the Blue Jays versus the Dodgers, which is interesting. It's a great series. I mean, I'm not into baseball, but it's a great series. I don't watch any of it, none of it, not a bit of it, slightly. I got cut from the baseball team in high school.

That's my connection. Yeah, I made the team, and then I got cut midseason, which was really good for my confidence. Oh, wow. Okay. Mom, I made the baseball team. I got news. How did you get cut? How did I get cut?

It's pretty easy. You don't play that well. Right. And then the coach sets you down and says, we're cutting you. Why even bother? Why even just let you stay there, sadly, on the bench? I guess there's only a certain number of, I don't know, it's not everybody gets a trophy. I kind of respect that about sports.

All right, okay. All right, all right. Well, congratulations on your spirit. You're my spirit of hope. Anyway, we've got a lot. I'm your spirit animal. We've got a lot to get to today, including Invidia making history, kind of crazy. And Elon making grocopedia.

Oh, my God. But first, Open AI is finally a for-profit company, and I knew this would happen. Elon tried to stop it, but it announced this week that has formed a public benefit corporation similar to the structures of XAI and Anthropic. Under the new setup, Open AI's nonprofit foundation gets a 26% stake worth about $130 billion and will run the for-profit arm, but it's the same board, by the way, I think. Microsoft gets 27% and keeps exclusive rights to Open AIS tech through 2032. Sam Altman reportedly does not have a significant stake.

I feel like he's going to do just fine. There's a buzz about an IPO as early as next year, possibly at a trillion dollar valuation out of the gate, but also been saying there's no specific time frame yet. Talk a little bit about this because we've talked about the idea of them going public, and a lot of companies not going public. And I just want to note, OpenA is also sharing estimates for the first time. This is a drag on them, I think,

how many chat GPT users are struggling with mental health issues. The company says in a typical week about 0.07% of users show possible signs of mental health emergencies. And well, that percentage sounds small. Remember, chat GPD has 800 million weekly active users. Open AI says they've consulted with more than 170 mental health experts to help improve responses during, quote, challenging conversations. Character AI, which is probably the worst, them is barring people under 18 from using its chat box starting next one. You're kidding. character, AI. Long time coming should have happened right at the start. So these are a drag on these companies, too, because these companies do know much more so than a Google mental, what

people are asking specifically about. So talk a little bit about the IPO and possible drags on, I would say this would be a drag on it, but maybe not. I think it's actually good that they're releasing this data. And supposedly, some people have said, although the chatters calm down, that the number one app of AI was therapy. And so if you can imagine a significant portion of those 800 million people are using it as a therapist, you know, 0.07% of users showing possible signs of mental health emergencies,

that just may be representative of the population who wants to talk to a therapist digitally or in person. So I don't think... They should be governed by therapy rules if they're going to be a therapist, but go ahead. I think that's a really good point. Can you say more about what that means? means. I don't know what that means. When I was doing the parents of one of the kids who

committed suicide, the chat GPT parents, she happens to be a therapist. And she's like, if I had given this advice, I would have been arrested. Therapists are governed by, you know, there's lots of bad therapists, by the way, let's be clear. But they have repercussions if they are. And so they have versatile privacy issues. And it's just these people have no, what you put into open AI is not, doesn't have any privilege. just like legal stuff, financial stuff, that's one, and then this, or privacy, and then, two, they don't, they're not governed if they do something wrong, if the, if the AI bots is something wrong like they have, there's no repercussions for it. And so therapists are governed. People are governed. If you, if you shame someone into suicide, you could be tried for it and have people have been. And so that's the issue. They have none of the, they have all the, all the usage and none of the responsibility. I would say. So if they're going to do mental health work with people, they should be licensed therapists and should pay the price if they fuck up. That's my feeling. Yeah, look, I agree with that.

I think that more broadly, they should have adopt a similar approach that most content or the military or bars put in place. And that is there should be the different versions of AI. And you have to show your age and your identity. And if you can't prove you're over the age of 18, you get an entirely different set of algorithms and, you know, processing and warnings. And also, I think kids, like, if I went in and tried to buy beer under the age of 21 and I got caught, they call the cops and my parents get to know. Right. Yeah. And my parents weigh in and say, okay, you shouldn't be buying beer. Why are you buying beer? Or why did you try to buy a gun? or your kid was here with a fake ID trying to get a driver's license.

Right. So I think that it's pretty simple. There needs to be a different version of AI. And there needs to be, in my view, I've never bought into the notion. So, for example, I want to give the right, you know, throw the right abone. I don't think kids under the 18 should be allowed to engage in gender affirmation drugs without the consent of their parents. And in some, when someone is under the age of 18, they're a kid. And kids are stupid.

They make irrational decisions. Their brains aren't fully formed. May I point something out? This is almost every case they are. So it's a very rare case. And I agree with you. It's been weaponized and politicized. But there are instances where parents found out after a lot of other adults knew.

And that is wrong. I think when you're under the- It's like the number of trans fans. But go ahead. I know. But I'm saying just theoretically, it just shouldn't happen. What I'm saying is there should also be no kid who types in how to kill different ways to kill yourself and not have their parents notified.

Right, exactly. They shouldn't be using them. They shouldn't be using them. I mean, there's only one way to stop. Well, look, using it for homework, using for research. They're just, for example, if you're under the, if you go to a movie and you're 12, there's certain movies you can see in certain ones you can't. It shouldn't be any different here.

it would be a certain type of AI that minors can have, not, and I mean, do you know what's going to happen? Do you know how a 17-year-old boy is going to start using AI now? I mean, it's going to be insane. Yeah, erotica and stuff. You know, they had a great piece in the near times with the guy who was in charge of that, how it had. They're very, they have a lot of insight to what people do compared to, you know, Google, you go, you search it, you know, like, I don't know, bondage or whatever you serve, but you don't really know what they're doing. In this case, it's very, very explicit what's happening in the surge. And so it's a very different ball of wax. Talk a little bit about the public offering, though, because this is going to be the

blockbuster, right? We predicted this. When he announced, I mean, I personally think all this stuff around, we need 50 nuclear power plants, just open AI. I think what he's saying is, my business is going to be so big, bad, awesome, and valuable, I'm going to need 50 nuclear power plants. I don't think it's any fucking idea at this point and how much power they're going to need. I mean, generally speaking, there's a bunch of catastrophizing

about how we don't have enough power. And my thesis is China is just going to develop AI or LLMs that use a lot less power. But in also signing a $300 billion deal with Oracle, what does that say to the market? It says, oh, my God, he thinks it's going to be, he knows more than us, he thinks it's going to be a trillion-dollar revenue company. And all of this, he is a very bright guy, and to be clear, he is focused on nothing

but his quote-unquote insignificant stake in AI. And his insignificant stake might be only five or six percent, but of a trillion-dollar valuation, which it might get, he's going to make 50 or 60 billion dollars. And he has energy companies, and he has blank, blank, blank. And I just love how we continue to fall for the hush tones. And oh, I don't get paid. He's going to make a lot of money. I don't get paid. That isn't why I'm doing this.

Yeah, he's getting paid. But meanwhile, I've decided that porn for kids, synthetic porn, life-like porn for kids is good for the world and is helping the original mission of using AI to improve and protect humanity. I mean, when do we clue in and realize everything these guys do is to get the incremental dollar. And in my view, that's fine. As long as we recognize it, regulate them and then tax them such that we can reinvest. Yeah, whenever they say we're not here for the money, I'm like you're here for the money. This is the only reason I appreciate Trump. It's like, how much money can I make? He's naked. Yeah, he's transferring. I've always said any, I've always said the VCs who get on stage of business school and say, well, it was never about the money would fuck their sister for a nickel. But anyways, oh my God. These, okay, that's not fair, 10 cents. So, look, Like, this is where the IPO markets are right now. The IPO markets are essentially branding events. He is an amazing brand builder.

He's done a great job being in the news. Open AI is the leader and what it's considered the tectonic shift in the technology. Also, the capital needs of this company are so extraordinary because it's a capital war right now. Because I think they've all figured out there's probably going to be one in the seven dwarves. And it's a capital race. And by the way, the last stop on the valuation change, people, the only people investors willing to pay a trillion dollar valuation for a company with 10, you know, that's, that's got to keep it height, in other words. That's going to be 50 to 100

times revenues. It's going to be, it's probably going to make Palantir look like a value stock. And the only people willing to pay that are going to be retail investors. Retail investors who are like, why not buy Open AI and just hold on? And so we said, I think I said two months ago when he announced this deal with Oracle, I'm like, this means he's going public. Because the only way he could ever even begin to deliver against those, that $300 billion agreement for compute is if he went public and raised, you know, $150 or $100 billion over the next few years in the public markets. Yeah, this is his move.

He has to be Google. He can't be Netscape. He's got to be Google, right? This is his move. Even though there's other competitors and everything else, they have got to maintain the lead perceptually and actually, right, in terms of. In terms of quality enough, they don't have to be the very best AI, I guess. It's sort of like Microsoft.

They have to be a very good one. But they have to keep the brand. They have the branding lead still. I don't think you think of anybody else. People cannot name other ones, sort of, unless they can say anthropic, I guess, but it's people who are actively using it or regular people think chat GPT. And I have absolutely, I think we should do away with the classification. as a public benefit corporation.

I think it is such bullshit jazz hands. Explain what that is for people who don't know. It's defined as a corporation, which is something along the lines of, intends to produce public benefits or public good and operate in a responsible and sustainable manner, balancing financial returns to shareholders with a broader public interest.

This is like British Petroleum in the odds, and B.P. is beyond petroleum. And they'd show so some Asian dude in a lab coat working on algae. And we were supposed to forget that 99.7% of their R&D was just drilling more for fossil fuels. And finally, BP just said, let's stop fucking pretending. We're an oil company.

Everybody needs oil. They interact with it every day. They're willing to pay for it. We're not doing anything wrong. We're complying with lies. We're complying with laws. Lies, too. We're going to blame with lies.

That was a bit of a Freudian slid. That's my favorite Freudian slip was Senator Warren's Freudian slip. What did she call Trump the C word? Yeah. You really just want to say that word, don't? And a bunch of VCs here in New York started calling their company's public benefit. By the way, who enforces that?

Who decides whether it is such marketing and BS? And so what I would like to see is, all right, you want to call yourself a public benefit corporation? There's certain guardrails here. One, you pay at least an AMT, an alternative. of minot. You're at least a good, a good taxpayer, right? You have, I don't know, you are never, you never get more than X number of complaints about X or Y. Otherwise, just call yourself what you are. Employees get this much money returned to shareholders. You could do all minor things.

The CEO doesn't make more than 50 times the average worker's salary instead of 800, right? You could come up with a series of things. If you're really serious about, quote, unquote, the benefit of the public here, here's a few ideas. Yeah. One of the, of the things is that they started that way, right? And so they kind of had to keep, they couldn't like, pretty, email Musk was like, this is bullshit. And he was right, like, in that regard. But they did manage to jam it through. And there was a lot of, like, he was ginning up all kinds of trouble. And state attorney generals were looking at it. And so they managed to jam this thing through, which shows how talented they are, meaning they are farthest away from public benefit

in terms of personality. But we'll see. We'll see where it goes. We'll see. Would you buy into it? Would you buy or not? No, yes. Oh, if I could get into the IPO, I would do it, but I would do it as a trade. So you buy and sell. Yeah, because what they'll do is they'll get, I mean, this will be a monster IPO. CNBC will just sit there touching themselves talking about this for three weeks. And then, and then, that's good.

And then the thing goes out. What IPOs do right now is they check in with the bankers every other minute and they go, We want to price it such that we can manage a 20 to 40% pop right out of the gates and maybe more. Now, Chesky priced it too low and it was up 120%. Figma went up 140% circle. Those guys didn't realize that was going to happen. But what you want to be is this is what he wants the headline. He does not want the headline to be open AI flat in IPO.

What he wants is open AI surges in IPO. That is a branding event. that is singular and can only happen once or not. So the thing will be priced. They'll come up with some bullshit thing where they'll say that we're offering our users a chance and they'll let them buy $11 worth of stock and claim that they're letting their users participate.

So they made $14, yeah. And then they'll run around the world of the biggest hedge funds and biggest instances. They'll go to Black Rock State Street and the bankers will make a shit ton of money. It'll be a huge branding event. But right out of the gates, I bet it's up 30 or 60 percent.

But the problem is, if I got access, which I don't think I'll have, given that I have this podcast where we're constantly critical of them. But the people, the institutions that get in, will, some of them a hold, most, a lot of them will sell. And then the retail investor, the guy or gal on the street will buy at that first trade, that will probably not be a great price to buy in at. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see if they'll give Scott some. All right, let's say, speaking of high stock market, let's go on a quick break when we come back. Invidia hits yet another major milestone.

Support for Pivot comes from Zoc Doc. Dens' appointments, annual checkups, and dermatologist meetings all have one thing in common, paperwork. And if like millions of other people walking the earth you don't like filling that stuff out, it might be time you checked out Zock. Zock is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. Appointments made through the app can happen fast, typically within just 72 hours of booking. booking. You can even book same-day appointments to take some of that stress out. Once you find

the right doctor, you can see their actual appointment openings and choose a time slot that works for you. Plus, you can filter for doctors who take your insurance or located nearby might be a good fit for any medical need you have and are highly rated by verified patients. You can stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com slash pivot to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash pivot. Zoc-D-O-C dot com slash pivot. Support for the show comes from Upwork. Hiring shouldn't be a hassle or a drain on your budget. Upwork says they're your one-stop shop to find hire and pay top freelance talent,

saving you time and keeping costs and check all in one place. Upwork grants you access to a global marketplace filled with top talent and IT, web dev, with AI design, admin, support, marketing, and more. Companies at every stage turn to Upwork to get things done and find more flexibility in the way they staff key projects and initiatives. Posting a job on Upwork is easy, and with no cost to join, you can register, browse freelancer profiles, get help drafting a job post, or even book a consultation. From there, you connect with freelancers to get you and your business.

Upwork makes the entire process easier, simply, and more affordable with industry low fees. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. UpWRK.com. Upwork.com. Support for this show comes from the audible original, the downloaded two, ghosts in the machine. Quantum computers, the next great frontier of technology, offering endless possibilities that stretch the human mind. But for Roscoe Cudulian and the Phoenix Colony, quantum computing uploads the human mind

with life-altering consequences. Audibles hit sci-fi thriller The Downloaded returns with Oscar winner Brendan Frazier, reprising his role as Roscoe Cadulian in The Downloaded Two, Ghosts in the Machine. This thought-provoking sequel from Robert J. Sawyer takes listeners on a captivating sci-fi journey, a mind-bending must-listen that asks, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Scott, we're back.

Invidia just became the first company in history to hit the $5 trillion in market value a little over three months after it hit the $4 trillion mark. To give you some perspective, NVIDIA is now worth about 20. Disney's, 50 Nikes are bigger than the GDP of Germany. It's been a busy week for NVIDIA. The company is also taking a $1 billion stake in Nokia. Oh, that seems, I'm not loving that move. Plus, partnering with Oracle to build the energy department's largest ever,

AI supercomputer, and NVIDIA's annual conference, CEO Jensen Wong took an opportunity to lavish praise on Donald Trump. Why wouldn't he? Trump has made him really rich. Let's listen. President Trump deserves enormous credit. his pro-energy initiative, his recognition that this industry needs energy to grow, it needs energy to advance and we need energy to win. His recognition of that and putting the weight of the nation

behind pro-energy growth completely changed the game. If this didn't happen, we could have been in a bad situation. And I want to thank President Trump for that. Oh, my God. Let me interpret for all of you out there what he was saying. Mr. President, let me sell my shit to China. Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. Let me sell my, okay, weapons, greater likelihood, they can hack our systems, more cyber attacks on us. That's exactly what I thought. An increased probability, they're able to invade Taiwan in a hot or a cold war using our GPUs, which American universities and IP protection have made me worth more than Boeing. Let me sell my chips into China

And ignore all of the concerns from the defense department. And look how rich I've gotten off of you. Like, it's just, you know, let me tell you something. I knew, I've known Jensen for a long time. And I interviewed him many times when he had the company. It was just selling chips to video game companies, essentially. He will not do an interview with me. I've known him 30 years.

Like, he refuses because I'll be like, so let's talk about China. Let's talk about President Trump. Let's talk about, you know. Yeah, he's smart. Yeah, it's just like, actually, you know what? I lost a lot of respect because I like Johnson, but boy, is he like... Actually, he should go on your show because he'd be fine. I would agree, but he won't because I know him, right?

Like, talk about someone I've known for, like, just, it's fine if he wants to do it this way, but, you know, it's some... He probably looked at a Cisco or something like that and is so much smarter, like that he... Speaking of wanting to keep, you know, he doesn't want AMD to show up. He doesn't want Apple to make, he wants to control, he wants to avoid the mistakes of Intel over the years. You know, he kind of wants to own it for the next, for the future, essentially. And so sucking up to Trump, he'll do it. He has no problem doing it whatsoever.

Though he dresses like a very attractive lesbian, I think. I'm sure that's what he's going for. That's what he says to a stylist. Hot lesbian. That's what I want my closet to look like. It's what he's going doing. Like the leather, I have that exact leather job. So, look, you got to give it to the guy.

He's created more shareholder value in a shorter time than any person in history. And he's created tremendous. He's made thousands of people millionaires, if not tens of thousands. He's created an ecosystem. He's paying a shit ton of taxes, indirectly and directly for the great state of California. A lot of that, it's great that that ecosystem, and he's sort of the ground zero for the ecosystem is happening in America. I think the guy deserves a lot of credit. He seems like a very nice man.

My Jensen Huang story is the following. I spoke on stage at some thing at can. And a bunch of people lined up to take photos. And this nice guy comes up and says, I just love your videos. And I was like, the line was really long. And I'm like, boss, where's your camera? He's like, oh.

And he pulls out of camera and we take a snap. And I'm like, I'm sorry, boss. The line is long. And I kind of shuffled him along. And the next guy comes up to me and goes, you know that was Jensen Huang, right? Oh. And I'm like, Jensen, come back.

Was this recently? Because no one really paid attention to. No, it was like, it was, that's exactly, it was like three years ago. Yeah, because I got to say, I always thought he was, he was, he was, it was unusual for us to have him at code because he wasn't that well known, right? But he was doing all sorts of innovative things in chips when others weren't. And it was largely around video games, as I recall, right? He was doing, and phones maybe. But this, his whole situation has changed rather, including that entire company, which was sort of not as well known.

But he has a feel for brand. One, the leather jacket is not an accident that he keeps wearing it. And two, his annual meeting is now the new Berkshire Hathaway Summit. I forget what they called it. But they are very, the investor relations there is very good. So he announced a bunch of promising new things, AI and quantum computing infrastructure. He announced partnerships with the U.S. Department of Energy on leading U.S. companies to build AI infrastructure, aiming to support scientific discovery and national competitiveness. he hit all the right notes.

AI supercomputers. He revealed a project to build an AI supercomputer for the U.S. Department of Energy with a reported $500 billion in Bookings for AI chips. Yeah, he needs to keep selling his chips. He needs to keep selling his. He's really good at it. But he's still a chicken shit. You're a chicken shit, Jensen, for not talking to me.

I'm not that hard. That's probably a little rough. By the way, you know who the only politician is? The only candidate who has refused to come on raging moderates? What? Who? The leading candidate for mayor of New York. He's the only person that said no to us.

Yeah. Anyways. Why would he come on your thing? I wouldn't. That's a really good smart. That's a smart mo. What do you talk? He won't come on mine either.

He's like literally talks to a door. He won't come. He's won. Why take any risks? I would advise him to just go with families right now. He won't come on mine either. It's weird. I was in Dutch with him months and months and months ago when he wasn't ahead.

No. Oh, was he a babysitter? Anyways. No. He was like pulling 2% at the time. at the time. So they revealed a project to build construction in America. They noted that their latest chips, including Blackwell, are now in full-scale production

in Arizona reflecting new investment in U.S.-based fabrication and supply chain. That will be a lot of jobs. He emphasized, at least in the short term to construct it, he emphasized the importance of accelerated computing, national AI strategy, and reindustrialization. They're hitting all the right words, re-industrialization, that's a great word. So any kind of bubble, are you worried? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not, the fear isn't that these things go down. The fear is, imagine Leo, when he was hanging onto that piece of furniture at the end, when he was going down, took Kate Winslet and 400 kids down with him. When he, when he vanished into the, you know, the darkness of the depths, what if he had 11,000 arms and took everyone down with him? That's the problem. It's not that these companies correct and their stocks go down. That happens to every big tech stock. That happens to every stock at some point.

The problem is they're going to, they may take the global economy with them down because 40% of the S&P is 10 companies, which represents 20% of the market cap of the entire publicly traded companies globally. So this is. Actually, not everyone goes down. Berkshire Hathaway didn't. That's because he's so good. Like, this guy's not.

Actually, that's not true. At the depths of the great financial recession. Oh, did it go down? When Berkshire had been hit hard like anyone else, if you did the calculation, on Warren Buffett, at that moment, he was flat. Now, within 14 months, he was now up again 23% since his inception of his fund. But no one gets out alive if this thing, if these things, if Invidia, we should hope. We should hope that Open AI goes public at a really good market cap and that

NVIDIA keeps announcing record quarters or that it's sort of a soft pullback. back. Because if NVIDIA throws up, I mean, everyone else has the stomach flow. Jensen, keep looking like that lesbian you do. You're an attractive, very attractive lesbian. Anyway, let's also talk about Grockopedia, the encyclopedia powered by XAI and his rival to Wikipedia. It sucks so bad. I tried it. I just couldn't. Has complained about so-called propaganda on Wikipedia. He's been doing that for a while. Grogapedia went online with around 900,000 articles and briefly crashed after launching. It was full. full of, like, it loves Elon. It loves Elon. That's where I'm sure. It's full of errors. It leaves

things out, like a lot of stuff out, factual stuff. And it's, does he, why is he doing this? Like, just an extra five minutes to do something? I don't know. At the same time, truth social, which majority owned by President Trump and his family, is launching a crypto-based prediction market platform to compete with polymarket, and I guess Kalshi. Truth predict will allow truth social users to place crypto bets on outcome events. The guy in charge of the outcome events is going to have a betting platform. That's interesting. Also, I think Don Jr. is on the board of both the polymarket and he's involved with them. And I just, I don't know what to say. And the last thing about Elon, of course, Tesla is looking for internal CEO candidates in case

his trillion dollar pay package is not passed and he leaves. So any predictions here? Any of these any of these topics, Grogapedia? I think it's a nothing per. Well, Grogapedia is an attempt to sort of establish a new truth, right? And one of the things I like about Wikipedia is it's almost impossible to have a functioning democracy if we don't all agree that there is an objective truth. And the Congress used to fall in line when peer-reviewed research would come in or data would come in, they wouldn't, I mean, they'd try and spin it, but they would acknowledge,

okay, this is the data, and we all need to rally around it. That's no longer the case. Everyone's decided there are, quote-unquote, alternative facts. There is an alternative truth. And I just see this is an attempt to try and mimic what a lot of people, one of the things I love about Wikipedia, I was also, I was freaked out when my Wikipedia page went up because I thought, there's no taking it down. That's the thing about a Wikipedia page. It goes up.

And then what really struck me was some misinformation went up. It said, you know, it's, it said one of my companies was now defunct. I'm like, and I'm like, no, it's not. It's still, that company's still going. other people weighed in. It's a community-based thing. And if you show your notes and your work, you get to edit a page. So it's like this kind of user-generated, but they do try to pursue the truth.

I find it actually quite apolitical, which I like. And what you see here, what you see here is they're saying shit like instead of showing suggestions for gay pornography, it falsely suggests that porn exacerbated the HIV. via AIDS epidemic in the 80s. I mean, something like that, that's just not helpful. Why is he doing it? Why is he doing it? I think he care if he's helpful, Scott, like really seriously. Yeah, but I think you've said this. I think something happened to the guy and he's traumatized and angry at the left and wants, I mean, he's talking about, he keeps going on and on about a white genocide? He's just, I mean, I use a lot of examples for how the term genocide has been perverted and overused in a lot of different regions of the world. But there's very few perversions that are less egregious or laughable

than that right now there is a white genocide taking place. He's like a plot of White Lotus at this point. Like, you know, between him and David Ellison, they look like the next cast of White Lotus. So why would he do this? Getting it on the action? Truth, predict. Well, so they've got to do something. The social media, okay, this is their second. can pivot. The social media company doesn't work. No one's going there. So they pivoted to become a Bitcoin treasury company and they took their cash and bought Bitcoin. That's sort of working not really. So their next pivot is to become a betting market. Because there is, actually, I do think there's opportunity for new players there. And you're going to see polymarket or cows to go out

in a monster IPO. These things are the new casino, but they feel less dirty. Like, oh, it's about politics, so it's not just gambling. Yeah. They do everything. They don't just do politics. But on his, I mean, okay, so, but I got to give it to the guy. The stock is up 10% this week and 22% up this year, Tesla. The fact they're able to keep this thing in the air, just is... This is Tesla. Yeah, this is just amazing. And his stock package, he's looking for a grant of up to 12% of outstanding Tesla stock,

which could feasibly be worth a $1 trillion package if the company hits a market value of $8.6 trillion, which I think is up six or sevenfold. I actually, I think one of the things about capitalism, that I think works is you can't get in the way, I don't think you should get in the way of limiting compensation at a gross level. I think you should continue to publish statistics showing what multiple of the average worker's salary

the CEO makes. But I think one of the intoxicating things and the incentives that works in the United States is that there's no limit on the upside. Well, here's the only thing. This is, look, first of all, it's offensive to people. That's part of it. I mean, the whole, like, hand-waving part of it

is offensive to people. So he knows he's doing that. He knows he's trolling people. The other thing is, if it gets an internal CEO, we will all value it at what it's worth, right? It will not get the Elon bump. And it'll look like an auto company.

And it's not selling as many cars, and it's not as good, and it will become what it's worth, correct? A very good car company that has seen better days. And, you know, one of the things that it's cost, there was another Yale study out showing that his involvement

and is costing them, I guess, one million cars or something, some number. It was a massive number. So he's also a downside candidate. I think him out of there would be great for Tesla as a car company. But you're right, not for the stock, but where I was going with is $1 trillion pay package. And you did something you almost never do. You didn't let me finish. That's really unlike you.

Oh, yeah, right. Do you like to see the statistics on the talking of this show? I love what you say. You say, no, you always say, is there a period coming? I know. 73%, Scott, but go ahead. I occupy 73% of the words. That's right.

Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Yes, that's correct. Oh, now I feel shamed. Don't worry about it. Anyways, where I was going with it is I like the idea of some of CEOs and people making extraordinary amounts of money at a gross level. I also believe in this book kind of changed my life, you know, Daniel Conneman's, you know, thinking fast and slow and his research around money, above a certain amount, you don't get any happier. And the

whole point of a good tax is a tax that is the least taxing possible. I believe the two least taxing taxes are the following. Over $10 million in revenue or from stock income, from current income, or from stock trades, or selling your stock in Tesla, I believe we should have an AMT of 60 or 70 percent. And everyone grabs their pearls when they hear that. That's the tax rate for that type of... I just grab my pearls, but go ahead. That's the tax rate for people making over a certain amount of money for the majority of the last century, folks, when income inequality was not as out of control, when people felt better about America, when we weren't cutting off food payments to kids. So I just don't, because here's the

thing, the person who's being taxed at 60 percent who made $2 billion in equity grant, they're no less happy. But that $2 billion divided among, call it, you know, 100,000 households, that's $20,000, $20,000 in universal child care credits, food stamps, vocational training, Pell Grants. Everybody's happy. That makes them significantly happier. And then the other one I can't stand is we should eliminate the deduction,

pull the deduction on inheritance tax down from $30 million to $1 million. If your kid inherits $7 million instead of $11, he or she is no less happy. And there's going to be such an immense transfer of wealth. And that needs, a lot of that needs to be reinvested back in the middle class. Anyways, my point is... Gosh, you know who you sound like? Zoran Mandami. But go ahead.

He hasn't talked about any of this shit. You mean, what, government-sponsored food lines? When you said 60%, I was like, ow, no. I am. I think taxes should be lowered on what I'll call the worst. I'm working wealthy. I think taxes should be lowered on Kara Swisher. You make an exceptional living, but living in D.C., you're probably paying 51% of your income to taxes. That is correct. Whereas, I'm self-conscious saying this, Scott Galloway, who now makes all of his money from selling

stocks and is a Florida resident, I'm paying about 20%. I know. That makes no fucking sense. You're not paying you. That makes no fucking sense. I would agree. In fact, I think you should write me a check. That's what I think should happen. Anyway, make a trillion dollars. Just put $600 billion of it back in the treasury. Is he going to get that? What's going to happen? They're all against it. I think the board, I think it's going to get most of it, so the board can say we took

a stand and didn't give him what he wanted, and I think he'll get most of it. But a lot of these groups, the shareholders are rejecting it. Will he quit? He'll quit, right? Yeah, but you'd have to get over. These shareholder votes, sometimes they're non-binding. I haven't looked at the bylaws. But for example, every year, Sir Martin Sorrell's pay package was rejected by the

shareholders of WPP, and he was like, Honey Badger, don't give a shit. And then they'd go back, and then the next 11 months of the year would click by and no one cared. So. But he cares. If he loses, he's going to, like, stock off. I know, but he'll stock off. But these shareholder votes are typically non-binding. It's the board that is supposed to take them into consideration and the compensation committee, which by the, by the way, I still maintain the hardest thing as a manager or the hardest thing for me, harder than clients, harder than hiring and firing? Compensation. It is so difficult to figure out the right number, keep people motivated, be fair, have the money to manage the company. How much do you pay employees versus

sharehold? It's really... So is he going to get this? I think he's going to get most of it. I don't think he wants to give up the mantle at Tesla. Also, if he leaves, and I think he probably knows this, if this company starts trading like an automobile company, it loses 90% of his value and the majority of his net worth is in this company. Yeah, he's got to stay there. Stop whining. So they both, quite frankly, it's a bit of a suicide pact, and that is the board knows if he leaves.

The board's, here's the good news for him. He's invaluable to the company. Here's the bad news. He's invaluable to the company. That's correct. And the majority of his net worth is tied up in Tesla. This board will do a symbolic haircut. They'll give him, you know, 50, 70, 80 percent of the trillion-dollar potential upside he's

asking for. but this board, and I've seen this happen, they have made so much fucking money with this guy, they all want to name their first child after him. You know, these are, these executives on the company, I mean, they're talented executives who... But they're not that talented. Yeah, I mean, they're probably people

who are really good at what they do, had three or five million dollars, and now they're buying fucking yachts because they met this crazy guy. Yeah, we're talking to you, Robin Denholm, possibly the most egregious board chairman of history. But you made a lot of money. It's good for you, Robin.

Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back. We'll talk about the latest tech earnings. We're going to run through them really quick. Support for the show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one fully innovative platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try O-D-for-free at O-D-O-O-O-O-D-O-com. Support for the show comes from MintMobile. If you're still overpaying for your wireless, it's time to start becoming more comfortable with saying no.

Because in MintMobile, their favorite word is no. They mean no owner's confidence. contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. So when they say no, they really mean it. MinMobil is letting you ditch overpriced wireless with plans starting at just $15 a month. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Without the jaw-dropping, monthly bills are unexpected overages. Plus, you can use your own phone with any MinMobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Ready to say yes to saying no? Make the switch at minmobile.com slash pivot. That's

mintmobile.com slash pivot, upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent of $15 per month, limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan, taxes and fees extra, and MintMobile for details. Support for this show comes from Indeed. If you're looking to hire top-tier talent with expertise in your field, Indeed says they can help. Indeed's sponsored jobs gives your job the best chance at standing, out and grants you access to quality candidates who can drive the results you need.

Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Now with Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash Fox Business. Just go to Indeed.com slash Fox Business right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed, on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Vox business.

Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, do it the right way with Indeed. Scott, we're back. It's time to do some rapid-fire highlights of the latest tech earnings. First up Microsoft, the company's Azure Cloud Service, saw revenue jump 40% in the quarter.

Amazing, and the total revenue rose 18%. Shares are up around 2% as the last five days they're taping. As for META, the company saw a 26% rise in sales year over year, and net income of $2.7 billion, impressive, but it still didn't meet expectations. META blamed the net income shortfall in one-time tax bill, but also warned of growing capital expenditures and spending enormous amounts of money on AI. Shares are down 12% at the time of the taping.

They got a real haircut there. Last, the Alphabet, the Google parent company saw 16% jump in third quarter revenue, topping $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first. first time. Really amazing, really impressive. Cloud revenue for the year rose 35% from last year, a little less than Microsoft. Shares are up around 3% at the time of the taping. Anything sticking out for you? And we'll note that earnings for Apple and Amazon are coming out after record today. By the way, Amazon's laying off 14,000 corporate workers as it invests more in AI. But any thoughts on not, we'll talk about Apple and Amazon next week.

What do you think about these three, the three biggies? Nothing short of extraordinary. Advertising revenue at Meta up 26%, and you want to know while your employer is dying, CNN, or your partner, CNN, Instagram video time was up 30%, up 30%. And much of that is me watching it, but go ahead. I hate to say this, I'm embarrassed to say this. People constantly ask me, what are your sources of news, and I always say the BBC, the F.T. and the Economist, which is all a fucking lie. But you do watch those. I subscribe to them so I can signal, for me, they're self-expressive benefit. I read those. But go ahead. When I go to the, when I go to

breakfast at the Crosby, I take my F-T because I think it makes me look smarter than I am. And I barely read it because my eyes are going. And then I go back and I watch reels on my phone. And I watch the Gio Hussar or Justin Wolfers or a reel from some economist or or YouTube. Or David From or and these little two and three minute hits of really thought people on YouTube and Instagram, that is now where I'm getting my news. Me too. You and I both. You and me both. And they will take the best articles and they'll summarize them for them and they'll put someone better looking to explain the article or more articulate. Remember when the New York Times started doing video about 10 years ago? It was like,

oh my God, that guy writes so much more handsome than he is. You know, you think. That's why they glowed up, Ezra. They're trying to, glow up Ross, duet, but that's impossible. When you find someone like Ezra, who's handsome and kind of dreamy in sort of a metrosexual way. He wasn't even close to this dreamy. They've glowed him up high. Or but like an Andrew Ross Sorkin, because I worked with a lot of these journalists of the New York Times, and I'm like, Jesus Christ, swipe left a billion times. Yeah, yeah.

And then they put him on camera thinking everyone would want to talk to the journalist, and you're like, oh, God. No. Anyways. Anyway. So get back to the results. These are kids who were traumatized and found refuge at the day at the school newspaper. This cloud revenues up, everything. The stocks are not that up.

The stocks are sort of. Yeah, the people are anticipating this. The CAPEX at Meta, you got to give it to him. He is not afraid to make unbelievable investment. As a result, though, the operating margins fell to 40% from 48. Capax reached 38% of revenue. That is crazy. I mean, Apple, I think, is in the high single digits most of its life.

Mark, I'm going to pay you a comment. You are a baller. I have to say, he's like, I'm going this way. He's not scared. That's what control is about. He has full control of that company, so he can do whatever he wants. He's arguably, he's one of the great business minds of the last hundred years. Unfortunately, he's done more damage to young people.

Correct. He'll make more money than almost any person in history. Thank you for noting that, yeah. So, okay, their CAPX drew the harshest market reaction. He doesn't care. If you look at their valuation is up 25% year-to-date, it has some show-me risk now, but for the most part, it's just unbelievable and can make these staggering investments. They have the cash flow alphabet.

The thing that really struck me here, okay, cloud revenue, 34% up 34%, net income up 33%, their income up 16%. And all of this fear, this existential risk of AI, is going to ruin the search business. The search business was up 15% this quarter. Because they have a lot of AI embedded in it. It's not only growing. It's growing faster. Paid clicks increased 7% year on year.

I mean, Google Cloud backlog. I gotta say their AI is getting better, isn't it, when you search now on Google? They're like, no need to go to chat GPT. Let me say, it was terrible and now it's good. I don't say it's as good. It's not as good as chat GPT. It's not.

It's not. They're Google Cloud Backlog, which is basically business that they've signed up, 46%, quarter on quarter, up 82% year on year. Over 70% of existing cloud customers now use Google AI products, and the company signed more than a billion dollars in deals this year than the prior two years combined. It's also their cloud, unlike the Amazon cloud,

which AWS has had a real issue with, which is still the number one by gross dollar volume. But what Gemini has done, which is really smart, is they have made it, quote, unquote, the AI cloud. And it's become the preferred platform for AI workloads. Google offers AI startups $350,000 in cloud credits, access to its technical teams and go-to-market support, and nine out of the top 10 AI labs use Google's infrastructure.

Can I make a note many years ago when Amazon pulled forward in the cloud market, I had lunch with Sundar Pichai, he was the CEO, and I was like, you really missed the boat on this cloud thing. And he was like, we did because we were using our cloud. for our own search service, right? And he's like, we had so much business over here. We didn't pay attention. I'm like, you should go in a cloud.

Like, you missed the cloud turn. And since then, I have to say, they have recovered rather nicely, I would say. Like, in Microsoft, a revenue on a big number up 18%. Azure, again, as goes the cloud goes, the stock in the company. Azure revenue, their cloud offering was up 39% year-on-year, topping Wall Street's 37% estimate. it. Azure remains the core growth driver for the company. He expects to double. That just

to double its data center footprint over the next two years. And these companies, there's just no getting around it. They're extraordinarily well run. Stocker seems flat. Like, you think it's going to keep running up? Well, I've said this over and over. It was my big tech stock pick for 2025. It's up 62 percent in the last 12 months. So I think it's, let me put it this way. The buying opportunity is over. It was trading at a P of 17, which made no sense. cents. And now I bet it's up in the hike 20s. So I don't, you know, I don't, I don't like to make, let me say, I was a buyer last year. I'm not a buyer right now. I'm not a seller either, but I'm not a buyer right now. It's come up. It was undervalued a year ago because of the quote

unquote exit. Everyone thought within a year, Open AI, that Google search, and it had gone from like 99, 91 to 89, everyone thought it was going to go to 50. It hasn't. Google search gets 96 times the traffic of chat GPT. It's big. It's big. And they've managed to be, you know, credit to, apparently Sergey Brin's spending a lot more time there, credit to them for coming back from that, or making certain that they didn't get their lunch eaten. In any case, last thing, CNN has launched its new subscription streaming service. The service will be like, quote, close sibling of CNN's cable product, offering access to select live programming for $6.99 a month. It's not really CNN plu. I

I think it's all of these. How is it any different? Exactly. How is it any different? It's not. It's not. Except now it's Azlava and Mark Thompson's idea. It's CNN with C. Remember when it was Plu and I said, how can you have CNN plus without CNN? This has CNN. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's it. They have to do this. Seven bucks a month and subscribers will be able to access. My idea, and this was an idea that I said you should have a bug on CNN Plus on their streaming thing. where you're just live streaming live CNN. And Mark Thompson implement, this is typically what happens with managers. You have one, you have a business that works, and you think that's the playbook for the rest of your life.

And to Mark Thompson's credit, he moved the company, he moved New York Times from an ad-based model to not an entirely subscription-based model, but the stock run-up in the New York Times, which has been strong, not exceptional, but stock was largely because the rest, revenue mix move much more to subscription under the leadership of Mark Thompson. The problem is it just may be too late.

CNN is struggling, even in comparison with other dying cable news networks. In the September primetime slot, get this, Fox News averaged 2.5 million viewers, that's flat. MSNBC, 810,000 down 43 percent, and CNN average 543,000 down 36 percent. And in the coveted 25 to 54-year-old demo, which is all advertised, the people buying their product, advertisers, they only care about people 25 to 54. Fox News averaged 280,000 in the core demo, down 14%. CNN averaged, get this, Kara, 87,000. Yeah, we're bigger. I know.

And MSNBC average 68,000. If you look at our downloads, plus our video views, we're averaging, I think, around 350 or 400,000. 60 to 70% of our listeners are in the core demo. So we're getting about 150 or 200,000 in the core demo versus MSNBC and CNN at 68 and 87. We have like six. We can fit everyone around this. These things literally, no one. The table.

We did fit everyone around a table at lunch. And I flew back, I flew back with Van Jones last night. And he said something really interesting. He said, all we're doing is bringing on people, encouraging them to yell at each other such that it gets clipped and goes on social and goes viral. And he said, which we know. But what he said that I thought was really insightful, he said, just two years ago, occasionally we would make news live. Something would happen live on the program that would make news and change things. Instead, it's like, how do we get this shit on Reels and on TikTok? And then it starts having an impact. They're all just essentially a content creation machine hoping to get to clear the hurdle such that it goes viral on one of these platforms. It's not a moneymaker, that's for sure. I don't think they'll sell many of these, I've got to say. I don't know.

I think it's all like, look, they're all going to get bought up all together, whether it's Tomcast or David Ellison. It's a trophy property, though. You know, nepo money, which is fine. There's got to be a nepo billionaire who's a Democrat who's going to want CNN and be willing to pay for it. Unless Ellison gets it. And then it just doesn't know.

But what about a guy like Michael Bloomberg? Why wouldn't he buy CNN? I don't know. He's been a great steward of Bloomberg News. He's moderate. He has the money. I don't know. I just, I don't think they're really big businesses. That's all. I think they're little businesses. Anyway, one more quick break, and we'll be back for predictions.

Support for this show comes from the audible original, the downloaded two, ghosts in the machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Roscoe Cadulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer. But a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?

The Downloaded 2 Ghosts in the Machine Available now, only from Audible Race the Runners, Raise the Sails, Raise the Sails! Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching, over. Roger, wait, is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry job title and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250

credit for the next one. Get started today at LinkedIn.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Support for the show comes from public.com. You're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic option plays on the side. The point is, you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. Plus, an industry leading 3.8% APY high-yield cash account.

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash podcast. Paid for by public investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of loss of principal, brokerage services for U.S. listed, register securities, options and bonds, and self-directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. What's your prediction? I predict we're going to have a great tour coming up. It's one more week. By the way, I predict your book is going to be at the top in the New York Times Best Siles. They're very generous. Thank you for signing out. By the way, can I just make an insight before you start? The back cover, is that your back cover that you sent? That is wonderful.

It's a picture of Scott as a teenager. I don't know how old you are 12, 13, 14, 13, and you. And I thought it was both a man and I were like, wow, that was really good. Oh, thank you. It's a wonderful. I didn't see the back cover. I love it. I love it.

It's all Catherine Dillon. My partner for the last 15 years in business has been a professor of the arts at the Tisch School named Catherine Dillon, and she's a creative. Well done, Catherine. She teaches visual design, and she's essentially run my companies. In addition to being a great manager, everything we do just has a certain level of aesthetic strength. It's very touching, actually.

It's very hard to pull that off, but it was very touching. Thank you. So, look, my prediction is the following. AI is now absolutely the equivalent of corporate OZMPIC. And that is what OZMPIC or GLP1 drugs do is they turn off the switch. kind of the instinctual switch that if there's food in front of you, you need to keep eating. And I hadn't realized how obvious or how linear when you're on a board and the CEO's planning the next year and trying to get approval on CAPEX and hiring, he or she will come in and say,

our plan is to grow revenues 8%. And that means we're going to grow our head count 6% because that'll increase profits by, you know, eight or 12%. And there was always a correlation. And if they came in and said, business is tough, I think revenues are going to be down 8% next year, then, okay, we need to lay off between 6% and 12%. So the corporate growth number, the hunger, if you will, was always matched by how much calories you were going to intake or get rid of. And then META said, using AI for better targeting, they announced what I still believe is one of the most seminal earnings quarters in history. They said, okay, we grew 20%, I'm sorry, We grew 23% last year with 20% fewer people.

So there's this entirely different gestalt in corporate America, especially among information age companies, that says, wait, just because I'm growing, doesn't need, I mean, doesn't necessarily mean I need to eat more. I don't need more calories. I don't need more people. As a matter of fact, I may be able to pull off the ultimate gangster move for shareholders here. I'm not saying it's good for society, is that I can. grow while reducing my head count. So Amazon announced that they were doing a restructuring

30,000 corporate job cuts, roughly 10% of its white-collar workforce to, they say they're aiming to reduce bureaucracy. Do you realize Amazon has said on the retail unit that they think they can maintain the same level of top-level revenue or they can double their top-line revenue by 2032 or 33 while maintaining the same head count. That's insane. That's insane. So I think the corporate ozempicking of AI is already underway. The number of managers dropped 6.1% between May 22 and May 25, while executive level rolls fell 4.6%. The average supervisor now manages six direct reports, double the number five. years ago, and Amazon is the only one. Metacut's 600 workers inside its AI division,

Salesforce eliminated 4,000 support roles, Chegg reduced staff by 45%, Clarnet downsized, 40%, duolingo plans to replace contractors with AI. Target, 1,800 people, Paramount, 1,000, Intel, 24,000, Nestle, 16,000, all announced reductions. And so some of this is a bit misleading because these companies went on a hiring spree after the pandemic, but these These moves are still pretty, pretty big. And as the market normalizes, more workers are now moving down the ladder. 17% of workers who changed employers saw pay cut in 2024. That's up from 15% in 2023.

The share of job changers taking a pay cut was even higher for tech, 18%. Managers, 22% and managers transitioning to individual contributor roles is 32%. So look, the hard part is who's next. So I have some companies that I think are going to announce multi-thousand-person layoffs. And I did a screen here. I spent some time on this. Etsy, Pinterest, Apple, Airbnb, PayPal, and HubSpot, I believe, and this is my prediction, along with a raft of other information-age darlings are going to announce 1,000 to 10,000 to 15,000

person layoffs in the next 90 days. Oh, wow, that's a big one. In that vein, I'm going to have to be laying you off, Scott. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. Scott AI. I know it was coming. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that.

I love that. That's a great one. That's a great prediction. And just to add on this, this has real societal implications, because unfortunately, what you have is one of the greatest threats to democracies right now is that the ratio of young people who are productive and pay more than their fair share taxes is getting flipped upside down in terms of its ratio to old people who are unproductive and don't pay their fair share. And without, it used to be 12 to 1, workers to Social Security recipients, now it's three to one. And if it goes much lower than that, we're not going to have the money. 40% of our entire budget now goes to payments for seniors. And unfortunately, our tax code encourages in our stock market, which drives everything, is now encouraging people to hire robots, not people. And the thing about robots, Kara, they don't pay Social Security or payroll taxes.

Yeah, we're going to tax them. We've got to tax them. We've got to tax robots. We've got to start taxing robots. That was a Bill Gates idea. Can I just say in this nature of what you're saying is I sent Alex is doing great in school and he's a he's a mechanical engineer. I think he'll be just fine. But I sent him the note about GM laying off a whole bunch of people too in the EV area. That largely because of the tax credits, etc. He goes, I love how all young people are being out competed by experienced workers and AI. So there is a zero opportunity for even the most qualified. Do you think we are totally cooked as a generation? Which was an interesting. And he'll do fine, is the thing. But it was an interesting thing for him to write me, I thought.

Yeah, but this is, what you have is labor and opportunity and equality. And that is, your son is frighteningly bright. He's big, he's strong. And he's going to graduate from Michigan with a degree in computer science. No, it's mechanical engineering. Okay, even better. Which basically means, when you show up from Michigan with a degree of mechanical engineering, I don't care if you're interviewing at Warner Brothers or Google.

They just want you. Yeah. Because the assumption is, this kid is really curious and really, smart and really hardworking. There's no way of faking mechanical engineering of Michigan. There's no way of, they're going to go, oh, he's a NEPO baby. His classes are so hard. He's a NEPA baby. I recognize that name. But he's clearly one of these kids who despite being born a NEPO baby is really hardworking and really smart. Let me tell you, I don't help him at all. He's so brilliant. But I'm just saying, but that's his mentality. Like, you know what I mean? Like a lot of younger people,

even someone is qualified as Alex is worried. They're worried about this. But this is the reality. a kid like that garners a disproportionate amount of wealth at a young age. There's more opportunity for Alex is in the 1%. There's never been a better time to be a 20 or 22-year-old in the top 1%. There's never been a worse time to be in the bottom 90. And that is, the kids who come out of a decent school but not a great school but had a lot of student debt and are good but not great, a lot of us, I would have been fucked. I was not especially impressive at 22. And I got a job at Morgan Stanley

because I lied about my grades and talked my way and I'm a good interview and I rode crew and the guy who ran the fixed income department rode crew. But in this age, if you don't have your shit together, if you're not one of the top 1%, and the problem is we all dilute ourselves into thinking our kids are in the top 1% and I can prove to every parent,

99% of our children are not in the top 1%. So the inequality, I say this in my class, It's never been easier to be a billionaire. I say, look around. My classes are 160 kids. Two or three of you are going to be billionaires. Through tech, alternative investments, I said, but unfortunately, there's probably about 10 or 15 of you who are going to be living with your parents at 30.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's hope Alex is one of those billionaires, because then I will live high on the hog. I go to Korea a lot for treatments. He promised me. He'd buy me a house with a roller coaster if he got really rich, which I'm very excited for. I was not expecting that. Anyway, we have to move on because guess what? I'm going to be interviewing Scott Galloway really soon.

that's right on talk about his book uh anyway we want to hear from you send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind go to nymag dot com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 pivot elsewhere in the karen scott universe gosh you interviewed someone you made fun of on 60 minutes uh recently this week on prof to market scott spoke with andrew ross sorkin about his new book 1929 inside the greatest crash in the was making fun of leslie stall not and all right wall street history and how it shattered a nation let's us in a clip our favorite Canadian. The truth is that, you know, over time, the market goes up.

You know, a lot of people, by the way, since this book came out, they said, oh, Andrew, you know, you're calling for a crash. It's all going to end terribly. What are you saying? And the truth is that you can have all the Cassandra's in the room, you know, saying the sky's is going to fall. But over time, things have gone up. And I do think that's worth noting because being a professional optimist has been a

a better business than being a professional skeptic, again, over time. Covering his ass on that one. He's actually pretty bold, though. He's not afraid to make statements about CNBC. Yeah, no, I love it. First, I want Andrew to run for mayor in New York. And two, I want Andrew to be the trustee for my estate. I think he's just such an honorable, smart, nice man.

It's a great book. I have it. It's really terrific, actually. I love those historical books. And he's a, we love it. It took him seven years. We love you. We love you. We want you to father all our children.

Imagine he does all this while maintaining a status as an undercover operative for the Canadian intelligence. That's correct. I mean, it's really impressive. He's able to balance all this. Yep. And he does all the pickup and drop off at preschool. Anyway, speaking of Canada, we're going on tour.

We are sold out in Toronto, Boston and San Francisco. But we still have just a, I think, a few tickets in D.C., not very many. some in New York, it's a big place, and L.A. and Chicago, please visit pivetor.com for tickets, especially you, Chicago. It's a very big venue. We've got a big venue because you're such big shoulder people, but come see us there. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Thomas Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher. Ernie and a Todd engineered this episode. Manala Moreno edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Miss Averer on Dan Shalon, Nishak Karas, Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. You can subscribe to the magazine to nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care.

I'll see in a few hours. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void. But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them, in fact. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started at LinkedIn.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Sachs Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way, whether it's finding

the right gift or the right outfit. Sacks is where you can find everything. From the perfect Chloe bag for your hard-to-shop for a sister to a prodig jacket for a fancy holiday dinner. And if you don't know where to start, sacks.com is customized to your personal style so you can save time shopping. Make shopping fun and easy this season

and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Sacks Fifth Avenue. Support for this show comes from Delta. When you unlock your full potential, you get to meet a version of yourself you might have never met otherwise. And as the official airline of the National Women's Soccer League, Delta Airlines is there to help connect you to your full potential. To help you grow and recognize the power you have to change yourself, your team, and the world around you. Delta is dedicated to helping you get to where you need to be, from season kickoff to the championships. Thank you.