Pivot - Paramount Wins Warner Bros. Bid, Anthropic vs. Pentagon, and AI Doomsday Memo

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Kara and Scott discuss Anthropic pushing back on the Pentagon's demands, and Trump's longest State of the Union ever. Then, Paramount wins the battle for Warner Bros. after Netflix drops out — Puck���s Bill Cohan joins with insights. Plus, Nvidia posts blockbuster earnings, and a viral memo warning of AI-triggered mass layoffs rattles Wall Street. Visit resistandunsubscribe.com for tickets to our Minneapolis show on March 8th! Proceeds to benefit the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Pivot is returning to the Vox Media Podcast Stage at SXSW for a live taping on March 15th, presented by Odoo. Visit voxmedia.com/sxsw to learn more and get a 15% discount on your Innovation badge. Or use code VOXMEDIA15 at checkout on SXSW.com. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠.Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠.Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠Follow 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

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slash ready for anything. I use it when I get like an ear infection every time I get an ear infection or something like that or clean out. My ears are a cold or a flu. That's a little too much information. Tell us about the ear cleaning. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Resistant on subscribe. Why don't you give us an update? Because February is coming to an end. You've had over 20 million views across social media, over 1.5 million sites. This obviously has a lot of momentum. People mention it to me all the time. Your website touts $242 million loss in market cap. Talk a little bit about how it's gone, because we have something to announce. But first, give me a little update,

and then you can do the big announcement. The honest truth is I'm struggling, because it's taken a lot of time and a lot of effort. And it feels as if it's, the momentum is actually cumulative in building. And I've had a lot of different kind of smaller, I don't know, resistance programs reach out and say, what are we going to do in March? Should March be, should we be meta-march where we focus on one company or focus on open AI? Should it? Right. So, and how do we keep it going? Because it does feel like it's building momentum and to just shut it down at the end of the month feels like a loss of effort and momentum. So I'm quite frankly, Kara, and I want your advice. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it going into March. I think you should hire someone specifically

not part of your team, but really hire someone to really keep it going. Someone who wears Birkenstocks, lives in Brooklyn. Someone with rich parents putting them through nonprofit. Whatever it takes, Scott, whatever it takes. But I think it's important to have someone Do you drive a Subaru? No. That's what my son does. Your son would be great at this. What's Louis doing?

He's in San Francisco working for her. Oh, perfect. No. You're not. No. He is a lesbian. Perfect. I don't know if you've heard, but I pay really well. You have to put up a lot of dick jokes, but I compensate 50 to 100 percent above market.

True story. The dick jokes and the compensation. I know. Well, I'll ask him. He does have a job. I will ask him. I will ask him if he wants to help. You know who you want is Alex, but he wouldn't do it.

Alex is so like he would engineer this the fuck out of this thing. He's at Michigan. He's taking like organic chemistry and computer science and working out and like lifting buildings. The title that he has for this summer where he's working his advanced manufacturing product integration engineering intern. That rolls right off the tongue. I know.

I was like, wow. Can he just say pole dancer? The poll dancer. Advanced manufacturing product integration engineering intern. That is what my second son is doing. Did I tell you when I was on the college tour of my son, Alec, the first thing, literally the first thing, the first impression we got of Michigan was Alex's fraternity. And we were both like just scared. Scared.

I mean, the floors were sticky. Sticky. Yeah. I lived in a fraternity. Yeah. I don't, I don't, it like brought back. I'm like, was it this bad? Yes.

And it smells like beer, old beer. Oh, yeah. Beer. Vowment. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah, it just...

Yeah, yeah. He's gonna live in an apartment for his senior year. But, so he's leaving the frat finally. My little boy is on his way. Yeah, and the house was clearly built like 200 years ago. He looked like Gulliver roaming around. Yeah, yeah, it's true. You want to go back.

I feel like you want to go back for a party. Oh, I'm in. Okay, all right. I'm definitely that pathetic guy that shows up at the fraternity party when he's invited. Yes. No, that's so sad. There was a Seth Rogen movie like that. Anyway, listen, we are going back to the Midwest.

Let me just say. This is not ending. I think you should hire someone. I think you should keep going. But we are going back to the Midwest. We're not going to Ann Arbor, but Scott and I are coming to Minneapolis. We talked about it on the show, and then we made it so along with our great team here. And you can see us live.

We're going to celebrate Resistant on Subscribe and keep the momentum going. We're going to do a live show at the Pontagious Theater on Sunday, March 8th. We will be there. A week from Sunday. Minneapolis, here we come. I want to meet Rhoda from Mary Tyler Moore. That's why I'm going. That's what.

I hope she's wearing a raspberry beret. That's right. Get it? Get it? Kara? Little local humor there. Talk about the tickets. They're not available yet, right?

They go on sale. I think by the time that's there is they're on sale. We're going to be donating all proceeds to the Minneapolis Immigration Center, I believe it's called. but we want to do something. Well, AI said this. You've been very supportive, and we've decided, I've decided I want my efforts off the fucking keyboard and off my to be a fraction of the virtue signaling and action

I claim to want to have. And so I pitched you on this idea, and we thought, let's go to Minneapolis. We want to bring some economic activity. We want to salute them. We want to basically say over and over that they fucked with the wrong cowboy when they, came to Minneapolis.

Right. It's going to be a nice event. You, of course, are totally well connected. We're going to have a bunch of fun and famous surprise guests. Yes. And we're going to do a live show and basically nod to the incredible Americans known as Minneapolisans. We love the Minneapolisans. And if you jump straight to the website, you can find a link to buy them when the tickets are available.

We think they're going to be available on Friday at Resist and Unsubscribe.com. We've got a thousand tickets. again, the money goes straight to charity. We're going to run this show on Pivot, too, so we'll talk about some current events, but we're going to focus on what's happening here with Resistant Unsubscribe, because we know we have a lot of fans there

and we love Minneapolis. We love what the city has done, and we want to get back in some way. And this is one of the many ways because what happened to you was heinous, and at the same time, tech companies have a lot to do with this. Like, let's be clear. And so we really, what Scott is doing here,

is giving you guys have resisted, and we are going to do our little part. And it's a little part compared to what Minneapolis has done. But tech is not the only reason, obviously, but it's played a part in where we are today. And so we're going to resist and unsubscribe. And everyone's going to unsubscribe. Speaking of unsubscribe, Scott, unsubscribe from One Medical, which is an Amazon product. Did you have the 99 a year or 199 a year? $1.99 a year.

And were you using it? A little bit, yeah, absolutely. And I liked it. service. I just hadn't used it in several years. Yeah, I use it when I get like an ear infection or something like that or clean out my ears or a cold or a flu. That's a little too much information. Tell us about the ear cleaning. Tell us about the ear cleaning. I get a lot of wax in my ears. And so I've unsubscribed our entire family from it. And it's a lot of money. Just when you thought it could be less attractive to a heterosexual. Yeah. Anyway, I'm doing just

fine, by the way. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to you today. But March 8th, Minneapolis, tickets will be on sale soon. Please come. We want a full house. And we're super excited to see you. We've got a lot to get to do this, so we're going to dig in. First President Trump delivered the longest state of the union ever on Tuesday, one hour and 48 minutes, where he, of course, said Americans were telling him we're winning too much.

Did you watch, Scott? Thoughts? I was not too late. I watched, I did what I did with almost all media broadcast on traditional cable. And that is I watched it in bits and pieces on, you know, TikTok and real. the next day. I felt like, for Republicans, I felt as if they were attending their ex-wife's wedding when you're still on her health insurance, but she controls the military. It felt like dear leader in the Duma where they thought, I better stand in a plot or I risk execution.

Yeah, totally. So I found it, I don't know, quite frankly, I thought it was a bit of a nothing burger. I agree. He didn't say a hell of a lot. I thought he came across as quite robust to be It came across is robust, but he moved very quickly by the end into very deflated. Like, it was really, if you watch the whole thing, he started off real, like, energetic, and then he got mean. He was normal-ish for him, and that's a very low bar. But he, as the night progressed, he got super mean calling the Democrats crazy. And then that fucking idiot in the back, J.D. Banz, was like, like, he looked like such dope.

He has no right being to be president. Sorry, I'm going to, he's just such a dope. The Supreme Court went and stony-faced. And every time Trump did something like the Democrats are crazy, the Republicans, as you said, jumped up like a bunch of like dancing monkeys, essentially. The Supreme Court sat down. The military looked straight ahead, which was really interesting. And, of course, the Democrats sat down and they wanted the Democrats to have photos

that Democrats not agreeing with immigrants shouldn't kill American citizens. They wanted photos like that. I thought it was mendacious. And if you look at any of the lie stuff, there's a lot of it. I thought it was, it veered into cruel, as usual. And then the worst part it was, it was dull. It was actually dull. And that's, to me, the worst part.

And, of course, the numbers show much less people watch at 28 million versus 36. It's like doesn't have any staying power. And he denied Americans were suffering. That's one of the things which I thought was a mistake. I thought from a political standpoint, is it Abby Spanberger? Is that her name? Yeah, Abigail Spanberger. Abigail Spence.

Governor, Virginia. I thought her rebuttal was outstanding, and I came up with an idea I want to pitch you, and I'm serious now, and I actually called one of our favorite senators, and I said, I have an idea. I think they should hire, if you think about essentially the Democratic response should turn into what the halftime show is to the Super Bowl, and that is the halftime show had almost no relevance 40 years ago. Now it's bigger than the Super Bowl.

I said hire Jay-Z's Rock Nation, fill a stadium with 10,000 rabid Democrats. Yeah, and then you get all excited. Music, cool, cool intro, amazing artists, graphics, visuals, great lighting. Because the problem is the follow-up, whether it's Marco Rubio responding, the response always comes across as flat

because it lacks the sex and the majesty of the rotunda. Yeah, it to be jazzed up. I agree. The lighting wasn't good. Let's sex it the fuck up. Because if you listen to what she said, if you read her response, it was good. It was outstanding. The lighting was bad. The setting was bad.

It's just they can't compare. It's like going from the Greek theater to your, you know, you're watching something on laser disc. I hated myself for thinking that, but I'm like, the lighting's bad and the setting is bad. It's not good. It was too far away, and it was too close. When I was renovating a house in the Hamptons, let's bring this back to me, I used to go to the 7-Eleven and a bunch of guys. would roll up and I'd say, okay, I need some guys to do stunsteading or something like this in my general contract. I would just sit in the passenger seat with a bunch of cash. And I had no less

than 12 or 15 workers at any time at my house doing shit. And at night, I'd roll in and they'd all be in the kitchen with a VCR in a big, like four pizzas and like 24, it was either Modellas or something else and they'd have this bad black and white TV and all these guys would just be sitting around watching porn. Oh. Yeah. And I remember thinking, this is odd. This is odd. This is odd. This is odd. This is odd. No, that's it. That's the whole story. Okay. That's the whole story. Don't do that, Democrats. Do not have medella pizzas and porn. I had a, this is what a douchebag I was. I had a sand beach volleyball court. Okay. Okay. You're losing the resistant on subscribe people. Oh, I was so optimized for the ladies. All right. Okay.

Let's move. You have progressed to a better person, and now you're a lesbian going to Minneapolis. I'd like you to wear Birkenstocks, by the way. I think that would be great. Anyway, it was a nothing burger, and he looked mean. And I thought he really got to, and started doing the bludge at the end. He didn't say anything. He didn't say anything.

He teased tax cuts, which I was interesting to say, okay, how are you going to pay for those? Didn't talk about AI much. He didn't do anything forward thinking. He didn't really talk about Iran much. The show is winding down. That's what I thought. I reminded me at the end of The Apprentice. It wound down.

It suddenly wasn't interesting. And that's what I thought. It was mendacious and cruel, but that sort of table stakes with him. Dull is what I thought. Hi, everyone. Scott and I just recorded earlier today, but I'm jumping on because a major story just broke.

After a long battle, Paramount has won the Warner Brothers Discovery, bidding war, at least for now. Netflix has released a state. saying the deal is, quote, no longer financially attractive. It never was. And it was, quote, always nice to have at the right price, not a must have at any price. Paramount had upped its offer to buy all of the company for $31 a share and added all kinds of bells and whistles. And Warner determined that offer was superior to Netflix, because it was, actually. So I'm joined now by Puck's Bill Cohen to break this all down. Bill, you and I have been texting about this for a long time.

You thought it would be quick than Paramount would get away. I said this was going to go on. on and on. And it has. It's really been, like, since December, I think we've been, whenever it's sort of broke. But talk a little bit about your overarching things, and we'll talk about a few other things. Oh, look, I think this, Carol is the outcome that had to happen.

You know, whereas Netflix was saying it was nice to have, at the right price, it was getting to be nosebleed territory. Paramount, this is existential. I mean, without this, they're just like an $11 billion dollar company, which once upon a time would be nothing

to sneeze at, but now it was a pipsqueak in this landscape. And so they needed Warner Brothers discovery, all of it, to, you know, make what the Ellicent's hope, you know, if they hadn't done this, then their original premise for the Paramount deal wouldn't have made much sense, and their equity wouldn't do anything. So this was kind of existential for them. They had to pay up, they had to win. And kudos to David Zazlov for running. One of the best M&A processes I've seen a long time. You know, for people who forget, yesterday I had read that Netflix had to walk away from this because it was just ridiculous. It was an insane price. And Warner was at, was that $10 a share recently. And it popped to $31. Was there $21 of excellence that had been created, not at all,

from nothing, right? It's like whipped cream or something. Well, it actually got as low at $7 a share. Yeah. Yeah, remember? Right. I do remember. And it was expensive at that. you know, buy at that price, but because I thought they would pay down the debt and make something of it. But, you know, he's, you know, ever since September 11th, when Paramount first began to hint that it was interested in buying this and it offered $19 a share, we've gone from 7 to 31, and it's, and what? Not because the companies have performed particularly that much better. I mean, they've performed fine, and Warner Brothers had some hit movies. But it's just because of the scarcity value,

the fact that he ran and Zaz ran an incredible auction process, kept them on both sides on their toes the whole way. And especially this last bit of jujitsu was just beautiful to watch. Yeah, yeah. I said he won the Jeff Bukas Award for turning chicken shit into chicken salad and feeding it to a nepo billionaire. Like that's, you know, Jeff Bucas was the, last guy at Warner Brothers to, you know, make a fortune selling the company to AT&T, and now Zaz has done it again. When sold again. So let's break it apart a little bit because one of the things that had begun to dawn on me,

and you and I, I always thought Netflix was the better owner in terms of taking these assets and doing something significant with them. I felt like the purchase, the Paramount is not as going to be as good at owner. It's still too small. Instead of a leaking, lumbering media ship, it's a bigger, you know, lumbering. ship, I don't see how they're going to, just because they're slightly larger, be that much better, unless they are run by someone who's more experienced. Like, I think David Ellison should get out of the way. And, you know, I know they have Jeff Schell, very talented, George Cheeks,

many others, but they really, they don't have the executive fortitude, I think, to do much with this. And Netflix later can come swooping in and take off parts. So how do you look at it? Look, I know they're very excited over at Paramount about winning. I know they're very excited about their business plan and what they think they're going to do with this. You know, they're going to have to combine CBS and CNN. I can only imagine what the feelings are over there. Bad. Probably not great.

You know, there's a lot of bloat probably on the CNN side that's going to once again come under the acts. You know, as we've discussed many times, Kera, I think, you know, David Ellison has blundered a few times already out of the gate. Taylor Sheridan, losing that. That was a big, big loss. Bigger, bigger than the CBS disasters. Which are not nothing either, you know, overpaying for, you know, UFC or whatever it is. I mean, you know, so I think there's, you know, they've got a lot to prove.

But nevertheless, they've got a lot to prove, but they also have, this. was existential for them. They had to, they had to win. And for Larry Ellison, I mean, if it weren't for Larry Ellison, we wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be talking about this, and we didn't have this discussion. They would never have been taken seriously. They never could have done the deal. So it's Larry's unbelievable amount of equity that he's willing to step up. It's something like $45 billion of equity, $25 billion from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, and the rest from Larry and, you know, Jerry Cardinal at Redbird Capital, with most of it coming from Larry, I mean, this is an unbelievable amount of equity, an unbelievable amount of debt.

It's probably going to be like the largest LBO kind of in history, except they're not taking the company private. They're, you know, it's remaining a publicly traded company. Let me ask you in that regard. You know, would you compare it to what Elon did at Twitter? Like that, I don't know. Someone was like, well, can't they do what Elon did, meaning the bankers sort of gave up and he managed to get his money back because he did.

squeezed it into a different company. I don't think they have that choice here. They're just to have the media company, correct? Hey, well, you know, if they want to create P-A-I and create a AI company and everybody go crazy for it and then have the AI company buy the media company and then, you know, merge it with SpaceX. Okay. I mean, you can do, you want to go do all those crazy things? Maybe they can pass it off onto somebody else. Maybe Elon will buy it. You know, Elon could buy it out of petty cash. He could. Why did Larry Ellison do this? Because he seems to me he's a smart customer about a lot of things.

This seems like buying a yacht or something. Well, he has a yacht. What am I talking about? But you know what I mean? It seems so unlike him. Perhaps he's old. Perhaps he wants to leave a legacy for his son who likes to make movies. What is, because from a financial money, this is not a Larry Ellison move to me in my mind.

No, this is, you know, they're going to have 70 plus billion of debt here, Kara. It's a lot of debt. You know, maybe they have 11 or 12 billion of cash flow. Maybe it's a lot of debt. They're going to have to make a lot of cuts. They believe they're going to deliver quickly. You know, every buyer, every buyer who puts together a leverage company thinks they're going to deliver quickly. Sometimes they do.

Sometimes they don't. Maybe Netflix will get another chance at this when the thing flounders. But why did Larry do this? I think it's Oedipal. I mean, I think he wanted to do this for his son, and he started down the path to do it. You know, it went from 19, was their first bid to 31. I think he felt like, you know, this ego was involved. If he didn't do it, that, you know, he'd have egg on his face kind of thing. And he's got now Trump expecting him to, you know, change the dynamic of the two companies in terms of the politics. And so I think he felt like he had to do it. And once he'd started it,

and, you know, he basically caved and gave Zazz everything he wanted, every little detail. Correct, which is so unlike Laryll. I was sort of like, what a chump. I never called Lary Lerilson a chump before, but I feel chumped that Zazov read circles around them. Yeah, he got into deal heat and gave Zazlov everything you wanted. I mean, they're happy over there.

Yeah, I know, because they're like, you know, they're pumping fists. But honestly, I was like, oh, dear, oh, oh, dear. That's what I kept thinking. There's going to be a hangover for this. Yeah. There's definitely going to be hangover. So two more questions.

You mentioned Trump. One of the things that everyone's worried about, of course, is Larry Ellison owning TikTok. He does an Oracle owns 15% of TikTok, which isn't a huge amount. It's a significant amount, but it's not the most amount. And owning CBS, which I think was a falling knife. So I'm not really clear where everyone's, they're obsessed with it because it's a good story. But it's not a, I would say, you know, we just did an analysis of pivot. And we have more people in the demo advertising.

You know, all of these companies do, all these companies. cable companies. So it's not that it's the news organization and CNN has been declining. Like, let's be clear, like the numbers have been declining. All of cable has, not just CNN. What, do you think it's a political thing or what? Or also, lastly, Trump's running out of time, right? Trump is absolutely running out of time. So look at, address the political issue. And then secondly, the regulatory issue could still get very ugly with Democrats attacking this if they get back in control of the legislature, correct, presumably? Well, let's take the regulatory, you know, first.

They made a big deal of them getting through Hart Scott Rodino, which meant that there wasn't going to be a deep dive into this by the DOJ, although they could still come back and take another look at this now that it's a kind of a different deal, a new deal. They could. They probably won't, but they could. They got the EU. They were definitely working the EU.

know, David and Jerry Cardinal were over there working the EU. They think they're in good shape with the EU. So they think between the DOJ, the EU, and Trump being on their side because he's going to, you know, give them the political, you know, format that he wants and be supportive of him, which, you know, whatever. It's ridiculous if you ask me. But, you know, that they think they've got the regulatory situation in hand. You know, politicians make a lot of noise about these mergers, but they have no say in the approval of them. So even if the Democrats take the House in, you know, November, I'm not sure what, this, you know, this is going to be, this could very well be over by then. You know, they put in this so-called ticking fee.

If it's not over by the end of September, which is obviously before the elections, they're going to owe Warner Brothers. shareholders, another 50 cents a share are $650 million. So they think they're going to... So the impetus is to do something quick, to get it quickly done. Some things they can't control, but I mean, they obviously are very... They're highly confident, Kara, they're going to get this through the regulators, and, you know, they'll give Trump what he wants, and I'm not sure the Democrats, even if they take the House, can do anything about what CBS and CNN broadcast.

Mm-hmm. At all. It's up to the FCC, and that's still in... Trump's pocket and, you know, Trump blithering away, you know, asking for them to give him favors and bend the knee. Or get rid of Jake Tapper, whoever they want to, whoever he's mad at the moment. It might be part of it, yes. Yeah. So when you think about where Netflix goes from here, I think it was the smartest move, the stock is going to soar.

They have plenty of money to do things. They're so innovative. They're such great operators, right? They're sort of, it's not a bad thing. They could do a distribution deal for some of this content, and then later just wait until the nightfall. right, presumably? What would you do if you were, Ted? I thought this is exactly what he was going to do.

Right, and this is what I wrote that exactly he should do yesterday, and then I don't know whether he reads it or listens to me or whatever, but he did exactly the right thing. He looks smart. Stock is going to move up after moving down like 30%. He takes his $2.8 billion

breakup fee and builds out his new movie studio in New Jersey and gets content deals and looks smart, and disciplined, and that's what investors like. Looks like the good guy. He does. He looks like the good guy, and he can move on from this. It was going to be a headache for him if he got this.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do in a deal, Kara, is to walk away, and he did the smartest thing. So he's going to get plotted all around. He could read the tea leaves. He wasn't, it was going to be a regulatory nightmare for him to get this through. Trump was not going to make it easy for him. You already bloviated about firing Susan Rice and Ted didn't do it.

And so, you know, who knows what was going to be in store for Ted? But he did the smart thing here. So very last question, when you think about what happens next for consolidation, this is obviously Comcast has got to be like going, what do we do? Disney's got to go, what do we do? Netflix now looks like it's willing to play, at least, because it wasn't an acquire, very much like Apple. But it is.

They're very opportunistic now. And now they've had this, they've never done this before. Now they know, right? they've worked on a big deal. What do you see next if you could make a prediction? Well, I mean, it's quite, you know, a lot of people have been thinking that Comcast would, you know, spin off NBCU and maybe, you know, Netflix and NBCU get together. But, you know, I don't really think Netflix needs to do any of that.

I don't either. Now they got a little taste of it. Maybe they thought, well, they walked around the, you know, the Warner Brothers lot. that was kind of fun. And now I guess maybe they could walk around the universal lot. They're building their own lot. I'm not sure they need to do it. But if they want to do it, I think there would be opportunities.

There's Amazon Prime. There's not going to do anything with Disney, I don't think. But NBCU, there are some smaller studios they could get their hands on, you know, AMC and things like that. I don't really see that they have to. I think Ted sort of had fun here. He showed his medal. He showed he can be a dealmaker. he got a merger agreement, and he showed himself to be disciplined.

And he comes out, he's the big winner in all this, him and Zaz, of course. Right. Zaz is the $600 million winner. I swear this guy, this guy, Mr. Discovery. Yeah. Mr. Diner's Drivens. He ran the M&A deal of the century. I got to give it to him.

I got to give it to him. I always run him down when I see him. I joke with him. I say he looks like a lesbian. But I have to say he, he, he, he's, He did a great job here for his shareholders, right? I mean, literally $7 to $31. Amazing, amazing deal.

And good luck, Ellison's, good luck on catching the car. Good luck. We'll wait for the sequel. All right, the other winner here is you. You've done an amazing job in covering this, and I like debating with you, and it's really helpful because it's smart and it's clear and you're non-romantic about any of this. Anyway, I appreciate it. Go to Puck to check out Bill Cohen's reporting, and we'll take a quick break, and Scott and I will be back with NVIDIA's earnings. Support for the show comes from Indeed.

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govern, and rewind their actions. Right now, our listeners get exclusive early access to rubric agent cloud, head to rubric.com. That's rubr-b-r-k-com, rubric.com. Scott, we're back with more news, and Biddy reported better than expected fourth quarter earnings with the profit hitting 120 billion. Only a handful of other companies, including Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple have made over $100 billion in profit in a year. Net income for the company doubled to $43 billion. dollars. Revenue in the data center business rose 75%. Talk about that because Wall Street was also rattled this week by a viral memo from market analysis firm Citrini Research, very good research group. The memo laid out a scenario where the AI systems trigger mass white-collar layoffs, push unemployment

above 10 percent, and ultimately lead to a stock market crash. Citrini said the Post was designed to prepare investors for potential left-tail risks as AI makes the economy increasingly weird. stressing that it's a scenario, not a prediction. Even so, the S&P dropped 1% on Monday, though some of it was concerns about tariffs. But companies specifically named in the memo included Uber, DoorDash, American Express, IBM, all saw steep declines.

It was an interesting memo, and it was a thought experience, and the markets were already rattled by Blue Owl Capital, a major private credit lender announced its halting of quarterly redemption for one of its funds and selling $1.4 billion in loan ads as the company stock fell. We'll get to that in a second. I'll talk a little bit more, but stick with the Citrini and the NVIDIA earns.

Well, I'll talk about Navidia before I talk about Citrini. Revenue, 68 billion versus 66 expected, up 73% year on year, up 20% quarter on quarter. Non-gap earnings, buck 62 versus $1.53, up 82% year-on-year. Data Center revenue, $62 billion of 75% year-on-year. The gross margins, 75%.

Yeah. Their fiscal 2026 revenues. Margins were crazy. $216 billion up 65%. I think that may be more revenue than like every streaming media company and movie studio combined since the launch of ChatGBT, NVIDIA, has grown its data center business roughly 13-fold. And this quartermarked the best revenue growth rate of the entire fiscal year. So it's revenue growth.

On the law, big numbers, it seems to be more like network effects. It keeps getting better. It's scaling. Q4, 73% year-on-year growth beat Q3 at 62, Q2 at 56 and Q1. As they get bigger, they're growing faster. They're literally defying gravity. Notably, they're leaving out China from its future guidance, according to the CFO, while small amounts of H-200 products for China-based customers

who are approved by the U.S. government, we have yet to generate any revenue. and we do not know whether any imports will be allowed into China. China was previously 20, almost a quarter of NVIDIA's data center revenue, but that's now gone. It doesn't seem to have hurt them. And the thing is, it's still not expensive. It trades at roughly 24 times forward earnings, which is only slightly higher than the S&P. So you have a company that's the most dominant company in history

at that moment is trading what the S&P is trading at. And because of the fears around AI, and maybe because of the stock acceleration, it's only up. It's basically flat. It's up 4% this year. Yeah, it was. I noticed that. But then you have all these companies announcing they're spending two-thirds or three-quarters

of a trillion dollars on CapEx this year. And most of it's, or a lot of it, is going to Navidia. Alphabet is flat. Amazon's down 7% year-to-date. Meta's flat. Microsoft is down 15% year-to-day. But Big Tech is getting punished for spending money. and Navidia is getting punished for collecting it.

Navidia's on the right side of that CAP-X. So one of those must be wrong. Either these companies are making good investments, or I guess maybe the thesis is they're overspending and it'll slow down. Should we talk about Satrini? Yeah, Satrini was interesting. You know, there was the other one a couple weeks ago

that was another thing like everything's going to change that one, Schumer or Matt Schumer, whatever's name is. There's been a couple of these that have actually, actually had real impact as they've been written. So because they're thought experiments in many ways, but they are interesting. But go ahead, Citrini. Well, essentially, I would describe it as an A-plus

creative writing project from a super bright high school student. And it is really, it's written in the past tense. It says, OK, this is how we hit this massive recession and the market lasts a third of its value. And I think it's a really interesting thought experiment. What they're essentially saying is that AI is going to create this negative feedback loop where it makes white collar workers so much more productive so quickly that companies can do layoffs and hire fuel workers, which results in an unemployment

spike, less consumer spending. And because companies fall into revenue pressure, they're forced to cut costs. And how do they cut costs more AI? And it creates this downward doom loop. Now, you can make the same argument for any technology, right? At 1.90% of us working in agriculture, now it's less and 2%, but that happened over 200 years. These guys are saying this is going to happen over 24 months. And what's happened is it's really cut, obviously we talked about last week. It's gone after the SaaS companies, the software companies, who they believe you'll be able to replace Adobe, Figma, or Salesforce, just with thoughtful internal prompts.

And it's really well written, and it's got great branding. They coined the term ghost GDP, and that is economic output can grow while the best. benefits of that growth never actually reach most people. The other surprising victims here, and this will come back to my prediction, is a lot of publicly traded PE or private credit companies, whether it's Apollo or TPG or Blackstone, have been, their stocks are down 20, 30 percent because they own a lot of software companies, and there's a fear that as private credit lenders, basically they act like banks to companies who are non-traditional. borrowers that a lot of those companies might not be able to make good on the money they've borrowed.

Let me just throw in some stats before. You're talking about Blue Owl, which is a major private credit lender. The company stock fell 10% on the news last week because of these sell-offs. Shares are a 52-week low. The sell-off did then ripple across the whole private credit sector, which probably wasn't fair, Apollo, Ares, Blackstone, and others sliding. Blue Owl said it is not halting investor liquidity. It's accelerating the return of capital. I love that. to that. Mohamed El Arian, former CEO of Pimco, suggested this could be a canary in a coal mine moment, comparing it to the early warning signs for the 2008 financial crisis. So this is all linked together, this idea of worries, worry for all of these things, especially private credit lenders.

Some are not as concerned, some are more concerned. We've got a lot of letters from people saying what should they be concerned and what's going on here. But they are definitely. As you're noting, they're linked, correct? All this is linked to this spending, this massive spending by the tech companies. The way I would try and describe the dynamic here and to understand if you're at risk in where you want to think about investing your own human capital and your own financial capital is the following, my mom used to run the secretarial poll at Southwestern University School of Law in downtown Los Angeles, where I actually worked in the mailroom in high school. And she oversaw 20 secretaries who would write up the exams and the legal research of all. all the professors. That's gone. Word processing has taken that away. At the same time, my mom then became an executive assistant because she has good EQ and she's smart and reliable and can write well.

If you look at truckers, AI will be a substitute for truckers. Truck drivers via autonomous are in real trouble. At the same time, accountants, you're going to see a lot of their rote accounting work go away, but there are now more accountants than ever because they move upstream into things like tax, wealth planning, and estate planning. So the question is... Which presumably AI eventually be able to help you with

that I don't have to... I call my accountant Mamie, who's amazing, all the time for little and big things, right? So presumably, at someday, I won't be talking to anybody, but... Yeah, see, I don't... It seems like a very artisanal on my part.

It seems like a lot of work by carous. It's like pumping gas. I kind of like... That's the right example. I use a lot of lawyers. I used to send every agreement I did, you know, advertising contract, whatever it was, a employment contract I sent to our lawyers. They charge me $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 to have an associate review it.

Now I say to our chief growth officer, no, use AI, review it, and you do it. I trust you more than with AI, you're as smart as a low-level lawyer. At the same time, I'm spending dramatically more on a very talented lawyer. at a firm that's actually called Citron on this incredibly smart woman named Lucy Lee who figures out everything from immigration to tax strategies to my estate plan, because that shit is complicated. Because you want her to be using AI for on your behalf, right?

Because presumably she's also using it. Yeah, but she can call me and say, Scott, have you thought about turning this company into an S-course so you can, in five years, qualify for 1202? She's incredibly strategic and smart and charges $1,500 an hour. So the bottom line is wherever you are in the world, do you have an opportunity to use AI to go upstream,

or is AI basically going to take everything you're doing and you have nowhere to go upstream? But the story of technology disruption is the same, and I don't think it's any different here. And that is, it will take out the boring row work and you either take that additional margin and go upstream and invent new jobs, new hire-paying jobs, or you get outsourced. The V here or the correction might be more severe, and America is bad at taking care of those people.

Again, we spend 0.2% on retraining. Denmark spends 2% of GDP on retraining. We also don't do it well when we try to do it. It doesn't quite work. Right. But look at what we're in the business. I would have thought, so for example, I've been writing books and I thought in my latest book, I'm starting my newest book.

I thought, oh, AI is going to play a huge role. It plays a role in research, in improving, and in fact-checking, but the writing is still... Yeah, I agree. I've been trying to make it. Fetch is not happening for me in AI and writing. It's not. But even look at our business, I would have thought, okay, AI can produce the scripts. AI could edit, edit, and it doesn't.

We're hiring, I know you are, at ProctuMedia, we're hiring more people. So I don't, and we use AI what we might. might do, we might launch two podcasts instead of one because AI will help us produce more data sets that we can talk about. Yeah, we've got to figure out, one of the things I was talking about this morning, we've got to figure out how to make fetch happen with it, right? And that's sort of a slower process, as you know. One of the things someone was like, oh, is it all going to be over?

I'm like, imagine at 2000, I went to see a Hollywood executive, big name. And when the thing crashed happened, he goes, I'm glad that's over. And I'm like, what? You have no idea what's coming, right? So I think we're in the, it doesn't mean that all of them are going to survive, but several will. And it is a significant change. And the question is, was it fair for Apollo to get dragged down in this blue owl thing? Probably not.

But that's how Wall Street reacts. So you may see, you may see an enormous decline in Nvidia or any of these tech companies. But are they really going away? Are they, is this really going to decimate them? what it's going to do is have every company refigure where this cost structure is. That's what it's doing. You're going, do I need all these lower level lawyers? And that is a significant problem. And one of the things that it creates is, if we throw all these people out of work, they're going to be mad. And there's all kinds of social issues there and political issues. And the question is, what do we do about it? And that's hard because we've tried retraining. And it hasn't, listen, it hasn't always worked. And we spent a lot of money on retraining, it can get sucked up into political bullshit, which is, let's give everybody jobs. Then other times it works, like during the Depression. We have wonderful things that they did during...

High-speed rail up in the West and Eastern Seaboard. There's a lot of infrastructure. But, look, both Andrew Ross-Orick and Josh Brown, who I've had on Profitio Markets a lot, said something that really impacted the way I process and how I approach. approach markets, and it's the following, and they're right. The optimists have beaten the shit out of the pessimists. So the key question you've got to ask yourself in something like this with respect to the markets is ask yourself, what could go right? Because there's a temptation by academics and thought leaders to catastrophize because you sound... Well, you sound smarter when you catastrophes. It sounds scarier and more interesting, and you put some bar charts around you,

talking about the zombie apocalypse and a downward spiral doom loop. Well, okay, the doom loop around moving from agricultural to manufacturing to service, it wasn't a doom loop. It was a job creator. So let's talk about what could go right here. And this is from a guy named, I think his name is Zviy Moschowitz, in open quote. Actually, this scenario does involve massive job creation. Starting a new business, creating a new product, or providing a service is now a turnkey thing you can launch with an agent. All sorts of barriers and costs involved are gone. Marketing cost drop almost zero because their agent finds you. Logistic costs are almost zero. Transaction costs are almost zero. Wages for anyone you hire are down and their productivity is way up.

The cost of living is weighed down, which creates more margin, more opportunities for new businesses. I've been struck. When I got a business school in 1992, there were two people that started a business, and the other was my business partner. There was only two of us. Now, I would bet a third of the grads from Stern are going to try and start some sort of AI company. Same thing with the media people. Same thing with the media people.

I started off having to work for a big firm. I don't need to. Anyway, we have to move on, but it's really, we should keep this discussion going. It's very important because I think you're right. It's easy to catastrophize, and you should be thinking about those things. It's just a question of what's the other side of that?

What's the, where are the opportunity? just like we were talking about Netflix. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Pete Hegseth, threatening Anthropic. Scott, we're back. Anthropic has rejected the Pentagon's demands for unfettered access to Claude, as we thought they might. Defense Secretary Pete Hegzeth had given the company a deadline to roll back certain safeguards

or risk losing a $200 million Pentagon contract. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi said in a blog post that the, quote, threats do not change our position and that the company quote, cannot in good conscious accede to the request. Good for you, Dario, not to accede to a moron. On the other hand, the AI company that's been all about safety is dropping its core safety pledge, too. It announced this week that it won't stop training potentially dangerous AI models if a competitor releases something parable or more advanced.

They're doing other things, but they say the move reflects the speed of AI progress and the lack of federal regulation, not a political pressure. Thoughts? The best reforming organization in his business, history is the U.S. military at close second is the U.S. corporation. It's created more wealth in the last Christ. In the last 17 years, U.S. corporations have created more shareholder value than all of Europe. It's since probably the 60s. One company, Navidia, is worth more than every publicly traded company in Germany and Spain. Now, why is that? One, we have incredible research

universities. We have a very risk-aggressive culture, and we have the deepest pools of capital in the world. We have $5 million per startup versus $1 million per startup in Europe. And why do we have such deep pools of capital? Because when people invest here, they know the rules that that company will have to play by.

And when governments start interfering and picking winners and losers and saying, oh, the rules have changed, you're going to have an absence or a flight of capital, which, by the way, has happened. And this bullshit sclerotic blood sugar level socialism where the government is deciding who should

get to acquire Warner Brothers, or that we should own a share, a golden share in a steel company, or which microchip companies that governments can invest in, because a failed casino owner and talk show or reality show host seems to believe he understands business better than the private sector. And we are already, this isn't a theoretical lesson in why I hate Trump, reflecting my biases. This has already happened. They point to over the last year, is up 14%, but it's not on a dollar-adjusted basis. The dollar has weakened so much, it's more up mid-single digits. And by the way, Europe is up more, as you know.

Every single major market from South Korea to Germany to the footsie to the Cossby in South Korea has massively outperformed the S&P. And one of the reasons is when you now invest in a U.S. company, there's unnecessary risk from the government if you, for whatever reason, the Pentagon decides that we don't like you. And guess what? Anderil and Palantir are working very closely with the government to help them track down spies, to maybe even track down immigrants using social media. A lot of people would say that's a violation of privacy rights.

A lot of people don't want to work for a weapons company. Well, guess what? I love your saying, you don't like Chick-Chic-fil-A. You don't have to eat a Chick-fil-A. Maybe you don't work there. Maybe you don't invest there. But guess what? They get to do what they want.

Regulated competition. And you get to decide what business you're in or not in, just as Anthropic might decide that we are not comfortable working and providing data and computing power to help surveil U.S. citizens. They get to make that decision. That's right. And they get to make – by the way, I think they'll do better. Like everyone's like, oh, they're going to get like blacklisted. I'm like, I think this is good for them. It might be good branding.

It might be good branding. It might be good. By the way, that they can do what they want and decide what they want to do on everything. And then you, the consumer, as we know, decide what you want to do. And one of the things that Higgs says is always, like, he's either doing like pull-ups or this nonsense. Another person never run a successful business, just so you know. A lot of these people in the Trump administration never run a successful business, including the president himself. really, really has driven so many businesses into the ground.

Let Dario Modi do what he wants. And if, but to like threaten him. It's called the private regulated competition. And everyone has to play by the, everyone gets to and has to play by the same rules. Elon will take it for you. Just go to Elon. And by the way, the reason why it's the problem is because most of the people in the Defense Department think Claude is better, right?

That's the issue. They don't want to give their better product to do what they want. This to me is ridiculous. And by the way, on the safety thing, you know. all these people are going to do whatever it takes, and they may be more safe, anthropic, but they will do whatever it takes to compete, right? Correct?

Look, I think the reality is, and this is the danger, and this has been one of my core thesis all along, is that we have fallen under the assumption that every breakthrough in technology results in a small number of companies that are able to ring-fence distribution, capital, or IP, and create trillions of dollars for their shareholders.

I wonder if AI is more like jet manufacturers, or vaccines, and that is, it will be an enormous innovation that will change society for the better, I'd like to think, but there aren't going to be a small number of companies that capture a ton of value, that the real winners will be stakeholders, but those stakeholders will be citizens. I think we have massively benefited from vaccines. Moderna is now down 90%,

there's no one company that's made hundreds of billions dollars from vaccines. If you added up all of the profits and lawsuits of all airlines and Boeing and Amber and Airbus, it's barely even a break-even. And yet, skirting along the atmosphere at seven-tenth-th of speed of sound is, in my view, for my life, the greatest breakthrough in history.

Now, my general impression is, people ask me all the time, which LLM do you like? I have favorites, but it only lasts for two weeks. I think AI is putting AI out of business, and that is if you look at the data, they're all getting to technical parity.

It is so hard to maintain. You know, Jan LeCoon said this exactly. He says they're all the same. The commodities. They're commodity. I use both chat GPT and cloud. And then for like 72 hours, I'll be like, oh, chat GPT is better. It's less politically correct.

And then I go, wait, Claude is better at editing. And then I go back and forth. And here's the thing. AI is reverse engineering every other LLM. So it's going to be about things like UI. It's going to be margin compression. And I wonder if we're going to be the big winners. And services.

And these companies are going to spend a massive amount of capital. Yeah, I know. I agree. We're getting a lot of free. We're getting a lot of free. 100%. All right, we do have to move on. We'll see what happens here, but Pete Hague says, you're a moron.

Okay, this is a story. I just want to say again, I knew this had legs. Dozens of FBI witness interview summaries appear to be missing from the DOJ's latest Epstein files released. Some of those are missing interviews that are tied to a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her decades ago. The DOJ said in a statement that the only materials we have been withheld were either privileged or duplicates.

This is nonsense. Democrats in the House Oversight Committee are now investigating. with the DA purposely withheld materials. The New York Times followed this. So did NPR broke it, and an independent journalist broke it. New York Times has followed. This is really a bad cover-up.

What they've done here is kept, they should just put it out there or investigate Donald Trump, one of the others. He's certainly not exonerated. By the way, other people are taking a lot of fallout from Epstein this week.

This is not stopping folks until, it's not over till it's over. Bill Gates apologized, the Gates Foundation for his ties, Epstein and also two affairs he had. He talked about them publicly, finally. He kept stressing they were older, just old enough, at least. Larry Summers is resigning from Harvard over his Epstein connection. The World Economic Foreign President is also resigning. Peter Mandelson, former UK ambassador to the U.S., was arrested over allegations that he shared confidential government information. The former Norwegian,

I think prime minister, was hospitalized with suspicion of suicide over it. There's a Columbia professor who's a very prominent neurologist, I think. All these people are paying the price, let's just say, either related or nearby. Trump obviously didn't say anything in the Epstein-Faelselsons-Lexe state of the union. I don't think he can ignore this. I think this is not going away. It is chasing him, and it will not happen until they do, as you say, they have to deal with the perpetrators. And if he is one of them, he has the right to be investigated and he should be investigated.

so should all of these people, there's still going to be repercussions for everybody in this world. It's just, there just is, whether your judgment was bad or whatever. You know how I feel about this, and it's an unpopular take. I don't think the files should have been released. I think the agency that aggregated the information should have reviewed it with the help of outside litigation counsel, and they should have communicated in one way to the general public, and that is with grand jury indictments and announcements. This administration wasn't going to do that because their own president, was possible. And so what have they done? They've created weapons of mass distraction. I don't know. I think there's repercussions here. I'm going to go. Because you're focused on it.

The reality is the following. There appears to be enough evidence that the warrant an investigation by, and again, to your point, unfortunately, we don't have the institutions to do this correctly. But the way this should play out is the following. The Attorney General should be announcing or the Department of Justice that they are forming a special counsel because there are credible accusations of rape against several people, including the president of the United States and all this other bullshit. Larry Sumner sending stupid fucking emails because he's pathetic to Jeffrey Epstein. I think that's a distraction, Kara. Again, I know. I know you do. I don't. I think it shows about judgment and we can decide who we want to affiliate with. I think it's fine. Okay. And if I had AI go through every one of your texts and emails, I couldn't reflect you as having poor judgment. Not to the extent of what, look,

Jeffrey Epstein's a unique figure here. You know that. And he represents something bigger, which is... Did they commit crimes? I get it, but our whole world... By going after everyone that hasn't committed a crime because America loves to shame people, we are losing focus on the people who raped children.

Yeah, but, you know, all kinds of people got in trouble because of shaming things. And some people got in trouble because of whatever. We have a history of this. Like, actors, like back in the 50s, 50s lost their jobs. But that's fine. But that wasn't the FBI investigating going on a fishing expedition for real crimes and

then shame. Neither is this. This is what's going to happen. This is TMZ's wed dream. And unfortunately, we're not creating the incentives such that if you're a single mother and your daughter ends up on an island that there's let there's, there's less chance she'll be raped. We're not protecting children and women.

We're not protecting women and children. You're absolutely right. I think it's hard of a whole. Instead, every celebrity is just going to start using Signal now. No, I don't. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I think it is linked to the feeling that the rich are, have no impunity. 100%. And that's part of a trend. And it's okay to have these other things, but they should do, I agree. I've said special counsel over and over again. But they were forced into it by Thomas Massey and Rokaneh because they wouldn't do their job. And they, they didn't do their job because they're under the thumb of Donald Trump. And so if they're not going to do their job, this is the only way. This is my... I get it. But this is what's happened, unfortunately, because our instance, institutions no longer have any independence or credibility. They have released nude photos of underage girls.

They have docs them listed their names and their addresses without their permission and redacted and confused information around the actual people who have evidence that they're pedophiles. I mean, this just could be... But they're not getting away with it. As you can see, they got caught here doing it. See, I disagree. I think they're mostly getting away with it. I think the wrong people are being prosecuted and shamed and voted off the island and the criminals are loving it because there's a ton of confusion and distraction. I think they're going to get the criminals. The one thing, and you'll agree with this, I was thinking about it the other day, is if we ask the general public to name five billionaires, I think three

of them would be, the first one would probably be Elon Musk. The second would probably be Jeff Beza. See, I think it would be Bill Gates. He was sort of the original billionaire. And then the third would be the president who calls himself the billionaire president. So, Three, I bet those three would be the three of the first five that people said who are billionaires. They're all in the fucking Epstein files. So anyways, my point is you can understand that the public has decided that once you get to a certain point of wealth, you engage in a level of depravity and feel that again, I love this saying, you're protected by the law but not bound by it, versus the rest of us are bound by the law, but not protected by it. So you can see that there is

a real populist uprising here. But again, I think the Department of Justice is there to serve justice. It's not this Department of Justice. If there was any other Department of Justice, you might expect a little bit of decency. This is not, this is the only way. You know what we should have, and I was going to do this, but maybe we do it on Pivot. I wanted to get pre-Barrar on to talk about the process of document collection. investigation collection, and then how that information is properly disseminated to the public and in what format. Because that's what we're talking about here. You're right. You're right. You're right. It gets prurient, but at the same time, it's the only way given Pam Bondi's the most,

another moron is in company. Yeah, but Kara, the Dow is at $50,000. She'll never live that one down. Anyway, let's take a quick break and we'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. So I just like to, I wrap my predictions in what I'm doing personally in terms of my own finances, and this is not financial advice, I'm just telling what I'm doing. I think that just as SaaS companies have been oversold, some of these PE or what they call business development or private credit companies have been oversold. So just some of the ones, again, I'm going to create a basket because I'm about diversification at this point.

But for example, Apollo, which has taken a huge hit, is trading at 14 to 17 times earnings. So a company with double-digit earnings growth and double-digit assets under management growth, which is the capital they deploy and how they make money, the S&P is trading at a P of 20, and Apollo's trading it 14 to 17 times. TPG is trading at about a one-third discount to fair value estimates. It's got unbelievable fundraising, and it's expanding their fee earnings. And again, the price reflects pessimism more than growth trajectory. And by the way, there's absolutely no evidence other than creative writing that any of these companies are experiencing.

I work or co-invest with some of these companies. They're fucking juggernauts. They're raising more money than ever. But it's public feeling about it. Investor nervous. Sentimus. Yes. But there's narrative in their numbers, and I believe over the medium and long term the numbers went out.

It's an opportunity. It's an opportunity is what it is. These companies have shed between 20 and 40 percent of their value in the last 12 months while continuing to grow their AUM and their fees. is Blue Owl, it's got a 7 to 8% dividend yield, and because of market discounting private credit fears. So there's a growth versus valuation, in my view, mismatch, and that all of these companies are growing their assets under management and their fees,

which is what essentially is their revenues. And the sector has had multiple contraction or compression due to private credit liquidity fears because of some of these creative riding projects. And in my view, the market pricing are more, the market is pricing risk more aggressively than current earnings trends justify. That's my, that's my thesis. So let me, I'll just wrap it up. My one-line thesis is the following. Compress multiples and durable fee growth plus strong fundraising, and I know these companies,

they're really well run. In my view, all adds up to potential relative undervaluation versus the broader market. All right, I like it. That's the same thing you were talking about last week. Look for opportunities, including you, Netflix. That's right. Just so you know, next week we'll be talking about Hillary Clinton's testifying about Epstein. Anyway, we'll be talking about that. But I want to actually get our listeners to write us in, give their own prediction. Jeff Beaz and Lauren Sanchez have been named honorary chairs of the years MetGal.

They essentially are paying for it, and that's how that happened. The dress code is fashion is art. I want to know what you think Lauren and Jeff will dress up as. What art thing will they dress up as? There's only two things I'm certain about their wardrobe. Bobs? 100%. Whatever she's wearing.

Both of them. She's not wearing an outfit, her breasts are. And I'm here for it. I think she's a beautiful woman. And have out of it, but let me be clear. Let's be fair. He's been improving his boobs, too. But go ahead.

Let's be clear. There is, like, Vogue and Condonast, they're smart people. They invest in cable companies. Those assets, the magazines, have literally been just like a slow burn to irrelevance. First is invested in all these incredible data companies like Fitch and this airline data company. They've actually grown their revenues. Condonast does not. But the reporting I want to see, the only thing I know is that Lauren's going to have her girls in the window, and I'm here for it.

And two, somehow indirectly, there is an exchange of money here. There is. Oh, is it already out? Oh, yeah, no. They're like back in it. They're paying for it? Yeah, Anna Winter chucked them down. They turned them upside down, got their wallet, put them on the cover.

They're paying for the whole thing. Put them upside down and certain things moved and certain things didn't. That's correct. The money moved out of their pockets. And now they get to be the king and queen. Good for them. We would like, I feel good about this. I'm here for his midlife crisis.

I like, I can't help it. I like that Pais-I-S. I want listeners straight in and we'll read them. What art will they dress up at? We need specifics. Sexy Mona Lisa. I hope we get invited. I'd like to go to that.

Do you think they'll invite us? No, I don't think they will. All right, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind and whatever you think, Lauren and Jeff are going to wear. Go to NYMag.com. Pivot to submit a question for this show.

Call 85551 Pivot before we go. As we said, Scott and I, also, besides Minneapolis, we're both returning to South by Southwest in Austin for three shows on the Vox Media Podcast. stage. It's a total South by Southwest takeover, because we are the king and queen, speaking of which we've got. With the mares. We'll have his boobs out, just so you know, on a platter.

First, I'll be doing a live taping at Prop G. Markets with Ed Elson on March 13th, where every person over the age of 40 will come up and go, I love your pocket. Is Ed single? I have a daughter. Literally, I'm so sick of people trying to set Ed up. Well, he's more handsome than you are. He's very handsome. He's very handsome. He's a nice kid, too. I mean, it's a low bar, but, and then on March 15th at 10 a.m., I'll be doing a live taping of On with two special guests I'm really excited about. Finally, we'll take the stage together on March 15th and 1130 for a live

taping of Pivot. You can touch Scott's, you can touch Scott's body parts the whole time. Scott Bear. Yeah, anyway, last year's pivot taping at South by South where it's featured whiskey shots, partial nudity, IPO predictions, and some smart questions from our audience. Love it.

So we will, we're going to double the fuck down on it, on that. And you don't want to miss it. I love by South Are you excited? Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to hang out with you. I'm excited. We're doing a lot of traveling together this year.

Oh, it's part of the Vox Media Podcast stage presented by Odu. The stage also features sessions from Brne Brown and Adam Grant, Marquez Brownlee, Ested Hearnden. As long as Esther Perel is there to tell me that I'm okay. I don't know if she's going to be there, but nonetheless, learn more and get a special discount on your innovation badge at Voxmedia.com slash SXSW. That's Voxmedia.com slash SXSW. We will see you 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. Today's show was produced by Lara and Aemann, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intert engineered this episode. Manola Moreno edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Minnesota, Missouira, and Dan Chalon. Nishakura is Fox 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 Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at NYMag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things, tech and business. One of my role models, Sam Harris, said that if you have economic security and people who love you, and I'm blessed with both those things, you have an obligation to speak your mind.