Prof G Markets - Did Anthropic Just Kill Software?

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Scott Galloway and Ed Elson unpack last week’s software sell-off, including which names could be potential buys. They then turn to the world of entertainment, from Disney’s next chapter to the Warner Bros. Discovery–Netflix hearing on Capitol Hill. Finally, they break down Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad and why it could mark a turning point for the company. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter  Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Send us your questions or comments by emailing [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is a paid advertisement. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that. And enjoy.

Via Rail, love the way. Coming up on Today Explain, I talked to one of the top stars of the Democratic Party and one of the most divisive about her run for Senate in Texas. I wonder, like, is there times in which the rhetoric goes too far? There are times in which you should say, you know, maybe I messed that one out. No. Not in this environment. I don't. I think that, you know, we are really in uncharted territory. Representative Jasmine Crockett, this week on Today Explain, listen wherever you get your podcast. Today is number one million. That's a total number of dot AI domain names registered as of last month. Ed, true story, as I'm trying to unsubscribe because of resist and unsubscribe.

I unsubscribe from Amazon 1, their health care offering. And I don't know if they're listening to me and using it across their other domains. Whenever I go to Amazon Prime now, it suggests erectile dysfunction socks. Okay, you don't like that one? Fine. Instead of getting a doctor for a same-day appointment, it gives me a, A picker from a warehouse named Kyle. I told that I had crowns, and it suggested, just turn your body off and on real fast, see what happens.

How are you, Ed? I'm doing very well. How are you doing, Scott? I feel very exposed, this resist and unsubscribe thing. A lot of people are saying it's inspiring, and a lot of people are saying that I should have been more organized and reached out to them. What do they mean they should have reached out to them?

These people, these politicians, who already had a plan? Yeah, or there's, activist groups, there's, you know, media personalities for like, well, this isn't, if you'd reach out to me or there's groups that help organize these things. And I'm like, the last thing I want to do is get on the phone with a bunch of media personalities and Brooklynites and get their view on whether Netflix should be on the list or not. That sounds like the seventh circle of hell for me. I think that's exactly right. And there you have your answer. It was the right choice. You don't want to do that. That's a pain in the arse. So you did it your way. And that's the right way to do it.

I did it my way. That's right, Ed. That's right. And today I'm speaking, no joke, to the senior class president and the senior class at a Michigan high school such that they're all considering collectively unsubscribing from Spotify, but they want to speak to me first. I have never been so intimidated. I got to speak to like 400 seniors at a high school about why they should unsubscribe from Spotify. I think somehow that's going to, I'm going to end up in the Epstein Files because of that. By the way, I just want to highlight, I don't think anyone on our podcast is in the Epstein files. Actually, you know what? Oh. Have you searched your name? Yeah. Well, no, I haven't. Kara did.

I didn't search. I'm not in the Epstein files. Kara did, and she called me to, thank God you're not in the Epstein files. You actually are in the Epstein, but it was an email to Epstein saying, you should read this article. And the article quotes Scott Galloway. It's a guy, one of his buddies saying, hey, you should read this, this, this, this article about, I don't know, valuations in big tech or something, it's really good. You should check this out.

And then in the article, it says, Professor Scott Galloway says, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you are in the Epstein files. But you're in there because Epstein's buddy thinks that you have good financial analysis. That's right. Well, there you go. It is getting to the point, though, where if you're not in the Epstein files, then who the fuck are you, you know? You know what I love?

So what is it? The Overton window has been shifted here. I've been seeing all these sex workers on TikTok saying that who's not in the Epstein files, Hunter Biden. We're going to need to audit your algorithm soon, but please continue. Hunter Biden loved two things. He loved crack cocaine and having sex with grown women. And he looks wholesome now. He looks, he only did meth and he banged sex workers who were actual adult women. And he looks like, something out of the Walton's right now. I love how the window has been shifted. And remember Larry Summers, I mean, he was just associated with the Epstein files. He had to step down from all of his positions. He steps down from the board of Open AI. Now it turns out there are hundreds of Larry Summers out there.

But there are so many at this point, it's sort of like the flooding the zone with shit. You just flood the zone with so many creeps that now being creepy doesn't matter anymore. What we need is an institution to go through these millions of pages and say, this is what warrants public scrutiny. This is what warrants a grand jury in an indictment. Exactly. And this is what doesn't warrant public scrutiny. And so everything's being mixed together. I mean, everyone's talking about Dr. Peter Othia. I think he's a fucking distraction. Totally agree. The cabinet members and the president and someone, people have committed child rape, those are the people we should be talking about.

100%. Anyways, I find the whole thing, another example of how. people don't appreciate how much benefit we got from institutions we could actually trust. There's no institution we trust to review this and parse out what is credible information that warrants discovery and other information that's just stupid gossip that's going to do nothing but create headaches for people for no fucking reason. And it almost seems intentional to mix them all together. Even the reductions, which don't really make any sense. I mean, they said that they had a rule for them.

the redactions, which was supposed to be victims and children, but then you go through and you see, actually, a lot of these redactions don't make any sense at all. You have redactions of people who are clearly the perpetrators, and they're just blacking out their name. So then you just, you just don't know who sent that very, very alarming email about potentially some sort of pedophilic or creepy, just awful behavior, whatever it is. I mean, the reductions don't make any sense. I'm totally with you. This whole thing is just a total shit show, and it seems like that is the point. Well, I forget his name, but the guy who sort of invented modern propaganda for the GRU said that,

you said the key is put out lies, put out truth whenever Putin or someone else is accused of something, put out some truth, put out some lies, accuse everybody all the time, and just make it such that people are totally confused and just give up, and there is no objective truth anymore. And that's what this is. And it's working. It's working really well. 100%. And because we don't have institutions we can trust, they can say, okay, we're not going to release names of the victims unless they want their names released. But if there is an individual who is, there's credible evidence in these files that this person has impregnated an 11-year-old, we're going to let the markets know through a grand jury indictment of this person.

And the American public has a right to know if the president of the United States has been. mentioned 5,700 times, or if his cabinet, Secretary of Commerce, claims very stridently that he wanted nothing to do with this guy and still continued to have, you know, I mean, even that you could argue, maybe that's not for public discovery or scrutiny, but instead they've just flooded the zone like nothing else, and everyone's just confused and had it. Well, we could talk about Epstein files for days, but we have some very interesting market news to get into today. Today, we are discussing why software stocks sold off last week. We're also discussing the future of the entertainment industry. We've got some updates there and also Anthropics, unbelievable marketing win with their

Super Bowl ad. But to start, let's discuss what happened to software. Now is the time to buy. I hope you have plenty of the world was all. Software stocks got crushed last week. Cloudflare fell 7%. At last year and fell nearly 9%. Shopify fell 14%. As a whole, software companies lost roughly 12% of their value in just one week. That dragged the NASDAQ 100 into its worst three-day slide since Liberation Day. Sell-off was triggered by a wave of new tools that spooked investors.

Anthropic rolled out industry-specific products for legal finance and customer service. OpenEI also launched a more powerful multi-agent version of its coding tool and a new platform to help companies deploy AI agents. Meanwhile, a new AI assistant called OpenClaw can now execute tasks directly through messaging apps like WhatsApp. The fear is that if companies can build their own software with AI, well, then why will you keep paying companies to make it for them? So, Scott, just absolute chaos in the software market right now. All of the big software names are trading down. You look at the software ETF, IGV. It's down 20% in the past month.

Tons of selling happening right now. I have a view on this, and I've actually gone into the market and taken some action. But I will start with your reactions to what happened last week, and then we can get into the details. What you just said is thinly a failed way of saying you buy. these stocks you think are being unfairly punished would be my guess. Yes. I think what you're going to see is that it's going to put margin pressure on these companies and it's going to create a new wave of startups.

I think that we talk about Figma and Adobe. Adobe is sort of Mercedes. Figma is sort of Toyota. Somebody's going to come up with B-Y-D and that is they're going to use AI to come up with 80% of Adobe for 10% of the price. But at the same time, I still think Adobe is going to be. be a cash machine because you'll continue to use Salesforce for a long time, because if you invest all that time in understanding the interface and getting good at it and your employees and your

sales teams know how to input data into Salesforce, unless something is monumentally better and it's been mandated from the top levels of the company, they're not switching over. So I think you're right. These companies have probably been overpunished. What I think the net net, though, will be is margin compression because there's going to be so many startups offering an old Navy version of the software platforms at a fraction of the cost from overfunded startups where a two, 10, 20, 30 person team can spin up a SaaS platform at a fraction of the cost. It will put, I think, margin pressure on these folks.

I think margin pressure is exactly right. I think that is the danger here. What is interesting, though, is that the market's reaction has not been one, of we're going to see reduced margins or we're going to see some more pressure on margins. The market's reaction is telling us software is dead. AI has killed software. So software stocks down 20% in the past month. It's just one month alone.

The forward PE has gone down from 35 times in 2025 to 20, lowest level since 2014. We're seeing huge amounts of selling pressure to the point where it's kind of obvious now. Like, this isn't just, oh, we might trim our holdings. This is like sell everything. This is what we would call panic selling. To me, this is very similar to what happened when ChatGPT came onto the scene.

And I don't know if you remember what happened, but ChatGBTGT shows up, and everyone decides that Search is dead now, specifically Google is dead now. And you saw Google stock cratered 40% in the year that ChatGBTGT was released. Actually then started to continue to slide. as more products were announced from chat chbt. Since it bottomed out, Google has obviously been on a massive run. They have risen 280%. And essentially what they did was they learned from chat chepti.

They invested more in AI. They integrated AI into their products. They came up with their own AI product. Their search revenue actually increased. It's up 50% since chat GPT was released. They got more usage. And now Google is, everyone agrees, the winner of AI, at least for the moment. It's now worth $4 trillion in market cap.

It is sort of with Apple competing for second most valuable company in the world. And that was an example where the market was confronted with this new technology that really freaked them out. And they decided that they just were going to do away with their models, do away with rationality, and they just decided, fuck it, let's sell. That's exactly what happened. And it made Google one of the best buys, and we recommended it, about a year ago. Similar thing happened, by the way, with TikTok. TikTok comes under the scene. It's really exciting.

It's really popular. Everyone decides Instagram is dead. Metastock falls 70%. Then it bottoms out. Then it rips up more than 600% in the next few years. They come out with a product that is very similar to TikTok in Instagram Reels. Now, Instagram Reels has almost the same number of users as TikTok does. very similar dynamic. So I think that this is the same thing is happening here. And that is we do have a new

technology and it could be quite disruptive, but the amount of selling pressure that we're seeing in the markets is just indicative of, again, panic, chaos, confusion. And there are many reasons why I think software isn't dead. You know, the first reason would be there's nothing stopping these companies from integrating AI into their existing products? I mean, this is the same thing we saw with Google. Just because Chad GPT comes along doesn't mean that Google can't get into AI. In fact, that's exactly what they did do, and it worked really well. The other thing that you point out, which I think is a massive point that people are not really

recognizing, if you're going to cancel an enterprise contract with a software company, say Salesforce, that's not like a small deal. That's like a gigantic pain in the ass. The switching costs are massive. It takes, on average, more than half a year to find a new service provider. It also has to go to committee. You need to have a bunch of people, executives, who have to sign off on the decision. It also costs money.

If you're going to terminate the contract, then you have to pay 100% of the remaining fees. This is something that companies do not want to do. You do not want to change your enterprise SaaS provider because it sucks to do it. And this, by the way, is why these companies have been such great buys in the past, because the moats are gigantic. It's always been a thing. The switching costs are tremendous. So in order to switch from one of those providers, you need to have a huge body of evidence

to show you and to show the committee that, yes, going with Claude or going with the other AI tool is a better idea. The other thing they're counting out is the trust they have with these companies, the relationships they have with these companies. They've been working with these companies for years. So again, the idea that, oh, there's a new tool, oh, there's a new startup that they're going to help us with our enterprise SaaS. Meanwhile, we've been working with these companies for years and we trust them and we trust their enterprise security. I just don't think that it's realistic. I think that the selling pressure is way too strong right now. I think markets are overreacting.

To me, this is perfect buying opportunity. I think you're right, and the reality is you want it. Your emotions are your enemy. And when you hear this news and the narrative and it's a solid one that AI is going to undermine all SaaS platforms, I get it. You have to be thoughtful about valuations. But the analogy I would use is that when I went to UCLA, everyone talked about the freshman 10. And that is the majority of people end up in the dorms. I forgot to send in my deposit from my dorms.

And I was so freaked out. My mom was going to freak out because she wanted me to move out so badly that I rushed a fraternity and ended up getting into a fraternity just because I needed a place to live. It's neither here nor there, but anyways. People want to know about my history. People want to know what music I was listening to in the 80s. R.M., Lloyd Cole, English Beat, Tom Petty, you know, damned up torpedoes. It was really unfortunate that you weren't born in an earlier age. I agree.

They called it the freshman 10, and that is you got a meal plant. You paid, I don't know, I figure it was, $1,100, and you got three meals a day in your dorm, Sproul, Hedrick, whatever. and you just go down, you roll down in your pajamas, and they had cereal and good food. It was all crazy, crazy fattening. And the notion would be okay, and I remember even someone writing an article saying there's all sorts of different options on campus for food. To eat somewhere else was a hassle and expensive and required a huge change in consumer behavior. That's the way I see this, and that is there might be a new AI company that comes out that is a better

CRM for half the price of Salesforce. Good luck trying to get your entire Salesforce to figure out a way to input and figure out the interface and the mobile application. You know, they're going to say, fuck that. Let's just stick with Salesforce. Now, the next time they're negotiating next year with a huge site license for, I don't know, McKinsey or whoever, who uses Salesforce to manage all their potential clients of people who think that someone with a PhD in a Northern European accent knows any more about their fucking business than they do, the procurement department at McKinsey will use all of these AI CRM startups to negotiate a lower price. But I don't think they're going to swap out a cloud flare of all these companies do such

a good job of creating friction to exit. Exactly. I remember when I was not running, but I started in my red envelope. I think we were using Oracle and Broad Vision. And Oracle was empowering our database, but trying to switch out of Oracle, they purposely make it almost impossible. Yeah. These companies do a really good job of making it easy for you to sign up. Like I find when I check out of a hotel, they make it so easy for me to pay.

They're like, okay, we've already taken the payment. What's really hard is if they charge you for breakfast you did an order, it takes, you know, several calls and years to get your money back, and it's not worth it. It's the same thing here. These companies will experience margin pressure because the procurements departments will have a lot of options, and they'll threaten it. But they're not going to tell their 4,000 media department at L'Oreal to start using some other software program to figure out how to track clients or payables or whatever. Right now, these companies, their revenues, are growing, and they're actually growing at double-digit rates. So it's not that people are

upset with the product right now. They actually like the product, and every company that has an enterprise relationship with one of these software companies, they're going to be trying to find reasons to continue the relationship, because it's too much of a pain to get out of it. They don't want to do that. In addition, they're going to be integrating AI into the products themselves. So it's not like, I mean, it's not as if Salesforce suddenly doesn't have AI. Salesforce is investing a lot in AI right now, and they're going to roll out those products to their customers. So I think it's a lot of hysteria over something that is not that meaningful.

And, you know, it's rare that you have these moments where there is such, such momentum in the selling pressure among the markets. And so I think these are the moments where you want to go in and buy. Mark Mahaney calls these kinds of companies DHQs, dislocated high-quality companies that is you want to find good companies that are experiencing some level of dislocation. I have a few names that I have bought

and who knows what will happen to the prices because the market is going crazy right now. What did you buy? inquiring minds want to know. So I bought three stocks. The first stock was Adobe and just a disclosure, Adobe has sponsored this podcast in the past.

I made this pick last week, and I stand by it, it's down 9% since Monday night. It's down nearly 40% in the past year. Trading at 17 times earnings, the S&P average is 29 times earnings. It's five-year average, its five-year PE average, is 37. So the assumption is AI is just going to kill Adobe overnight. But again, this is a large enterprise company. Wow, it's at a five-year low. It's getting absolutely decimated right now. But it's used by 98% of Fortune 500. We've also talked about this with the research team. They have this major tailwind, which is short form video. Everyone's trying to hire video editors right now, and every video editor is using Adobe Premiere. They've got a lot of things

going for them, and they're going to start integrating AI. So I think Adobe is a buyer right now. We've discussed that. I also think Salesforce is a buy. It fell around 11% at first. It kind of recovered, Again, we'll see how it trades in the next few days. You've got to move quickly here. It could be that by the time this episode air, it's back up, but it's down 45% in the past year, trading at 27 times earnings. It's five-year average is 73.

It's growing at double digits. Its RPOs are up 12%. Again, this is like a massive enterprise SaaS company, which, again, has really large modes. My third pick that I bought is Service Now, trading at nine times sales, year average of 16. People just assume AI's killed it. But again, they're integrating AI. They've got $1 billion in AI revenue in the pipeline for 2026. They're integrating with Anthropic and OpenAI.

They've signed contracts with these companies. So those are some buys that I've gone with. Again, do whatever you'd like. I think that these are good opportunities. And then the other thing that you could consider right now is just like buying the ETF, which is called IGV, just the whole software ETF. But my view is, you know, it's possible that there are going to be some losers here. So I think it's better to go in and start picking some winners. But that's what I've gone for. I also would have gone for Microsoft as well, but most people have just huge amounts of Microsoft exposure already. But that's gotten pummeled as well. And again, it doesn't really make sense because Microsoft owns a huge portion of Open AI already. So if Open AI is going to kill

Microsoft, well, Microsoft already owns it. So it's going to be totally fine. I really like your thesis. I was asked, I didn't think of software companies. I was asked a couple months ago, what are the companies that if you had to bet, if you had to go short companies because of AI boom, which companies would you pick? And I picked two. I picked OnlyFans.

And I think I told you, like, six months ago, someone called me and said, do you want to be a part of an investor group to buy Onlyfans? I'm like, one, no, and two, why would you think I'd be interested in this? Why wouldn't they think you're interested? I've never signed up for anyways I've never signed up for a porn site or anything like that although those gay hockey players from Harvest Moon or whatever it's called oh yeah rivalry I would definitely like $4.99 a minute I'd do that

like hey I love your program anyways I'm unsubscribing from HBO Max and so I'm binging the gay hockey thing and I'm rethinking everything Ed I'm rethinking everything Anyways, back to what were we talking about? Oh, AI. Only fans, I think it's fucked. I think you're going to be able to get a really hot person, you know,

doing whatever is they do on OnlyFans for 3% of the price with AI. And the other company, it's not really a software company, it's a research company. It's the company that acquired my company. I think Gardner is fucked. And that is every research report they put out, their events are still really powerful, but every research report they put out,

I feel like almost any IT manager or any CTO could get a similar level of feedback with a two-minute prompt. And their stock at this, in the last year, it's off 72%. My guess is that an activist is going to come in there and say, you need to lay off 70% of the people and use AI and offer, have a kind of a, what Figma is to Adobe, IT is, Gardner's going to need to come up with a lower cost product. but I hadn't thought about the software guys getting this badly hurt. But if you use Adobe, you're fluent in Adobe. It's its own language. It's its own job requirement. And we like Figma.

All the kids are using Figma in design schools. It's also gotten crushed. Gotten crushed. Yeah, I own Figma. Anyways, we should timestamp this and come back in three, six, and 12 months and see how these stocks are doing. ServiceNow is an interesting one. I've spoken at their conferences, but I don't know that much about the company. Yeah, it just, again, massively oversold. But your Gartner point is an interesting one because Gartner would be one of those

companies that is in that bucket of companies that have been absolutely crushed due to the AI thesis. But this is where I think stock picking actually does come in handy and it actually is useful. I mean, that we're usually pro-ETFs, just, you know, it does diversified indices. But when something like this happens, where a technology comes in and it just decimates the whole narrative of an industry, and it's not unreasonable. I mean, the idea that AI is going to massively disrupt software is a very reasonable pick. The point being, there are going to be winners and losers. It's possible that there will be losers in this, which is why you want to go in and, and figure out, okay, what are the winners here?

Because right now, everyone is being undervalued right now. Everyone is getting sold, regardless of what you're doing with your business. And that's why I think I've chosen a few names as opposed to going for the whole bucket of companies themselves because I do think it is reasonable to look at what's happening and say, okay, well, this company isn't taking AI very seriously. This company's product actually isn't very differentiated. and their relationships with their enterprises isn't as strong as some others.

Therefore, this one actually will get burned. And maybe Gautner is one of those companies. But it is a moment where it's like, okay, if everyone's selling at some point, you do need to go in there and start, as Buffett says, being greedy while everyone else is fearful. Agreed. We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend.

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That's V-A-N-T-A-com slash markets. We're back with Proftie Markets. It was a busy week in the entertainment industry. Disney finally named its next CEO, Josh DeMorrow. He is the head of its experiences division. He'll take the helm from Bob Eager next month. Meanwhile, Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery executives were on Capitol Hill defending their planned mega merger. What started as an antitrust hearing quickly veered into a broader fight over political bias, Senator Eric Schmidt, when as far as accusing Netflix of producing, quote, the woken content in the history of the world. So, Scott, we've got leadership shakeup at Disney, new CEO, going to replace Belwiger,

and then we had this antitrust hearing in Washington investigating the acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery. Let's start with the antitrust hearing, and let's start with just some of the highlights from that hearing. Let's play a clip. Senator Ali, Netflix has no political agenda of any kind. I would tell you that... Well, then, why is your children's program so full of this highly sexualized, highly controversial, highly controversial agenda. I don't understand it. It seems strange to me. Respectfully, sir, it's because it's inaccurate.

We have millions of hours of children's programming. You're saying it's not there. You don't have trans, you don't feature trans characters, trans storylines, trans themes. It's not in your programming. I'm saying we feature a wide variety of stories and programs to meet a wide variety of people's tastes. Why is almost half of it? Why does it on behalf of your children's program feature this highly controversial, highly sexualized material.

That just seems strange to me. Netflix content is synonymous for the modern phenomenon of race swapping, both historical and real and fictional characters. Netflix continues to push sexual and gender theory on kids, and maybe this is what was being referred to earlier. 41% of G-rated kid-approved series contain LGBTQIA plus content. You have a wide range of programming on HBO. Name one program.

that is designed to appeal to conservatives. We don't design our programming to appeal to any. I can think of a lot that are designed to go to liberals. Name one. Let me ask you, do you think CNN is fair and balanced? Sir, I'm not involved with CNN, and in fact, they're not part of this transaction. Remindy, this was an antitrust hearing.

Scott, your reactions. J.D. Vance goes to Europe and lectures EU leaders on their lack of free speech. And now the Republican Party is claiming that private companies have an agenda and they're not allowed to. So to be fair, CNN is biased. Fox is biased. And private media companies are allowed to have a bias because consumers have a bias. Netflix is probably the most politically neutral of all of them. They were getting shit two years ago for airing Dave Chappelle because progressives were freaked out about what they felt were anti-trans comments. So which is it?

I know Ted Sarandos. For the life of me, I could not figure out what Ted Sarandos is. politics are, and I think he wants to keep it that way. So this notion somehow, and also, I don't even need to know the data, and I know that it's bullshit that 50% of kids' content features in LGBTQ. That is not their agenda. They're just trying to get kids to spend more and more time watching Netflix. They're not, they don't have a, they don't have any sort of agenda along those lines. And even if they did, guess what? They're allowed to. The antitrust is a real issue here. And that is, if Netflix also owns HBO, do they consolidate the market at the high-end artisanal subscription content? That's a real issue. If Paramount slash CBS is allowed to own CNN and TikTok,

is that also an antitrust concern? That's a real issue. But this is what's going on. the Ellisons give money to Republican lawmakers. The Ellisons are trying to come up with a reason for Netflix to not be able to acquire Time Warner. And so they are ginning up a bunch of Republican senators to create some sort of controversy or reason why Netflix should not be able to acquire Time Warner. There are reasons why neither Paramount CBS slash the Ellison should be allowed to acquire it. There are reasons Netflix should not be allowed to acquire it. They are antitrust. It has nothing to do with the bias or lack thereof of their content.

And this is Senators Holly, and I forget the other guy, who are just fucking coin operated, who've been told by the Ellison's, we don't want to have to pay more. So go create controversy and some sort of bias among people who have absolutely no ability to think critically about when regulators should weigh in and they shouldn't. Quentin Tarantino films have a fucking bias. They're allowed to sell to whoever they want. This isn't about an editorial bias. This is about a concentration of power that would lead to higher prices, of which there are real concerns.

And Senator Booker actually thoughtfully tried to address these concerns, but instead you have coin-operated senators with the Ellison's head so far up their ass. You can barely see their legs dangling out of their asses trying to pretend. they give a flying fuck about free speech and that somehow Netflix is too progressive? And the right answer to, oh, CNN doesn't have a bias, it's more fair and balanced. He should have said, I believe it's more fair imbalance than Fox. And I believe Fox has the right to do whatever the fuck they want.

And people can decide if they want to watch or have advertising. This was supposed to be about concentration of power that transfers capital and power from consumers and workers to shareholders. That is a real concern from both bidders. But this is how it's supposed to work. Whoever shows up with the biggest check gets pre-approved for the acquisition, and then there is review across the DOJ, the FTC, and CFDIS around security concerns and antitrust. Instead, we're thinking somehow that they're not allowed to have a bias even when there isn't one.

Anyways, thank you for my TED Talk. It's completely ridiculous. And again, it was a hearing on antitrust. and it just completely devolved into a trial on wokeness. I feel like this is yet another reminder. I know we say this all the time of how stupid these Senate hearings are. Like every time these hearings happening,

it's just a giant display of political theater. None of it even matters. And I think it's so funny that these people, these Republican senators default to the wokeness argument, probably because they don't really know where to land on the antitrust argument, because the trouble is that you've got all these different players in here, and they don't really know who to side with.

Because on the one hand, like, oh, maybe Netflix is woke, so maybe they should be against them. But on the other hand, Paramount's controlled by the Ellisons, and the Ellison's a big tech. And, but historically they've been against Big Tech, but also, oh, wait, the Ellisons have been donated to Donald Trump, so who are we supposed to side with? So it's almost like, wokeness is just the default backup calling card

that you immediately knee-jerk reaction go to when you don't really know what the fuck you're talking about. And that seems to be what has happened in this Senate hearing, which was supposed to be, again, what do you do when an extremely large entertainment company is purchasing another extremely large entertainment company, and most of these entertainment channels are now going to be housed under one company that has, like, very legitimate and serious monopoly concerns. There are also decent arguments on the other side about the role of YouTube and Instagram and on TikTok and all these digital platforms.

But it's almost like that stuff is boring to them. They don't really understand that. That's business stuff. We don't really care. I'd rather talk about LGBTQ and transgender actors in children's shows because that's something that I know my supporters are really going to get riled up about. Is it going to have any impact on the transaction? Is it going to change the trajectory of monopolization in America?

Fuck no. But it doesn't matter. Because, again, it's all for the clips. It's all for the drama. It's all for the show. And this was just another reminder of that. You know how people say the politicians are speaking to a crowd of one? Like whenever Secretary Nome speaks, she's just thinking, does he want me to say this?

Does he want me to say they're all playing? They're all playing. I haven't know that. That's good. They're all playing to President Trump. Senators Holly, and I forget the other one, they all had an audience of one, but it wasn't President Trump. It was Larry Ellison. And unfortunately, the only people who demonstrate any actual domain expertise or any fidelity

to what the actual hearing was about was first and foremost Senator Klobuchar. I mean, here's the thing. If we're going to talk about affordability, throwing $40 billion at soybean farmers while pissing up China and then taking that money and giving it to Argentina, who's now

none of this shit works. Teriffs are inflationary. Nobody wants to have an adult conversation. If you want to bring inflation down, the two things we need to do, and there's a variety of things, but the two biggest things, free trade, get rid of all these ridiculous, ridiculous tariffs, reduce tariffs. There'll be some losers, some businesses in manufacturing

and services will go out of business in the U.S. But eventually, when you protect your domestic markets at some point, your competitors abroad own fucking everything, and then eventually they come for your lunch. And two, massive antitrust. I'm finally like have enough money and enough influence right now. I know I'll have, if there's a Democratic president, I'll know I'll have and amongst a variety of things, whether it's, whether it's mandatory national service, $25 amount of minimum wage, single payer health care, whatever it is, I'm going to push so hard and say the way you oxygenate the economy, the way you bring down prices over two, five, 10 years is massive antitrust. As voters were lazy, we're looking for a quick fix.

Oh, gas prices are down. That has nothing to fucking do with us. That's about shale and Canada. That's about geopolitics. That's about Saudi Aramco, to say, to open or close or tighten the spicket, that has nothing to do with anything. If you want prices to come down, you need massive free and open trade, and you need specifically to break up all of these monopolies who are charging monopoly rents. But nobody wants to have an adult conversation around the hard structural work of actually bringing down prices. But the fact, and I hate the fact that we're talking about these village idiots who are coin operated at the hands of the Ellisons, as opposed to Senators Klobuchar and Booker, who actually,

want to talk about the issue at hand. No, I 100% agree. It does feel that every time an antitrust lawsuit comes up, or there is an implication that there could be potentially a monopoly on the table, we always come up with an excuse as to why it isn't actually a monopoly. In this case, it's the YouTube and Instagram and TikTok argument. The argument is if YouTube exists and if TikTok exists,

and if Instagram exists, then, you know, they're competing against these platforms, which, you know, I get. I understand that argument, and it makes a lot of sense. However, are we ever going to have a moment where we decide actually no, this isn't okay? I mean, the same thing happened with Google and the Google antitrust case, and then they decided, oh, yeah, you were operating a monopoly, but AI came along and AI really destroyed the business,

and so now we found another excuse to not have any antitrust enforcement. It just seems that every time we come up with some reason, whether it's brokeness-related or otherwise as to why we shouldn't be implementing any form of regulation. And so, yeah, it's not a surprise that the market looks the way it does because we've just decided that we don't really want to do anything about it. Let's also talk about Disney's new CEO, Josh DeMorrow.

He's the head of Polk's going to be taking over on March 18th when Bob Iger will be stepping down. He's been working at Disney for 28 years. he has been, you know, crucial to expanding the Disney experiences business, which is basically their parks and cruises, which is now the core piece of the business. And this is a whole other conversation, but it is fascinating how that has changed, where the highly capital intensive piece of the business, which is operating a theme park, used to be way undervalued by investors, but now the narrative has flipped.

They're less interested in certainly the linear, also kind of the streaming. They're very excited about the experiences. He's been running that business. So now he's going to be taking over his CEO. Do you have any reactions to this new pick and the end, potentially, of the reign of Bob Iger? Bob Iger is the guy that after coming back from Vietnam, a war hero decided to go back and had his legs blown off.

That was one of the worst personal decisions in corporate history for him to start heckling from the cheap seats around his successor and then convince his board that he should go back and shed shareholder value. I mean, it's just been, and a lot of it isn't his fault. He's basically, you know, the market has poured honey on him and sent him hunting for bears. I like that.

That's like something that Brian Williams would say. That's like having a moose and a convertible. Anyways, the, why does that make me happy? Look, this company will have an overhang. This is also a buy. This company is going to have an overhang until they're able to get rid of their linear stuff. And that is, you know, Disney, Nat Geo, ABC.

Because in a conglomerate structure, and I experienced this at the New York Times where I was on the board, Ed, for two years. I don't know if you knew that. Wow. Yeah, I know. That's very impressive. So, but here's the bottom line. We had some great assets. We owned 17% of the breadsocks.

We owned the seventh tallest building in the world. We owned a really outstanding media company called The New York Times. And then we had all these shitty regional papers that were a melting ice cube. And what happens in a conglomerate business model, we also own to bout.com. Anyway, what happens in a conglomerate model with stuff that makes no sense, the market hates it, and the market finds the shudiest business and assigns that multiple the entire business. And essentially every analyst report and Q&A and earnings call or the investor relations or Bob Eager on a call, it goes something like this. Park's unbelievable business with an incredible mode around it.

film studio doing well creating IP that is drafted into our parks singular experience no one can compete with our parks if you don't take your kids to a $1,400 a night shitty hotel with shitty food and take them to Disneyland four or five times by the time they're 10 someone's going to call child services on you Disney streaming is getting some leverage it has singular positioning around family you know people say they've missed stuff and they've missed trends I don't buy that I think Disney still does a great job with their IP very talented people outstanding culture all of it's great, and then they have to go, but our linear platforms showed 8% decline in revenues and 14% decline in EPS. As soon as they shed that shit and go good, bank, bad bank, or sell it to a

consolidator, and it's all about the parks, and it's all about the experiences, cruises, and the streaming and the studio, this company goes up substantially in value. Disney is at a 10-year low, and Bob has clearly had the for sale sign out on those networks, but I don't think he's gotten, no one has offered him probably the price he wants. He probably has an unrealistic view of the value of ABC and ESPN. By the way, ESPN used to be the cash cow for Disney just to tell you how much things have changed. The other thing is, I wonder if the last six months are going to be awful because the fact that he's leaving, he's actually leaving ahead of schedule, says to me that he looked at the back half of the year and went,

oh, fuck, I don't want to be around for this. So, and by the way, I loved your interview with Rich Greenfield. I was Lauren when I listened from Rich. And you had them on markets, right? When did you have Rich on? We had Rich on last week. That's right. You do this some days when I'm not on?

Anyway, that's what you call scale. By the way, see all the stuff behind me? I do. I love it. How awesome is that? It's great. Oh, and who noticed it first, by the way, and why? Who noticed it first?

I don't know. I mean, what is this way? Who's not up here? Who's not up there? Kara Swisher. She gave me so much shit. I'm like, let's be honest, Kara. Let's go.

You're my ex-wife. These are all my Belarusian hookers. I am so down. These people are making me money, giving me more joy, and you're just the first wife. Oh, man. Belarusian hooker. I can't afford the Russian hoes.

I go for the Belarusians. Anyways, that's probably a hate crime. This is... Don't worry about it. This is Disney. is, I think, an undervalued asset. The Parks guy is the right pick. These things are, they're going to, I believe the back half of the year might be rough of them because of our head-up-your-ass tariff economic warfare against our strongest ally Canada. Anyways, the park's amazing, the film studio amazing. The streaming media company is starting to get real momentum. They have to get rid. And by the way, the new co, whether it's the independent, whether it's just bad bank and they spend them out on their own or someone consolidates them, that will also be a good stock to own because it's a different complexion of capital.

As long as you reduce costs faster than revenue declines, you can churn out and consolidate all the other cable guys. I think that's going to be a good stock. But until they do this good bank, bad bank, it's always going to be assigned a multiple of a shitty cable, outsported company that is not growing. And the reality is Disney is growing. I believe if the new CEO sold all of the linear, all of the linear, right? NatGeo, ESPN, ABC. I think if they sold it for a dollar, the stock would go up. I think I agree. Because everything they're doing is an apology. Everything is, yeah, but, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but the overhang of these linear networks, the confusion of the business strategy, the constant apologizing for the last

20 minutes of the earnings call, is this an enormous overhang on the stock? 100% agree. I think the question now being, when is it going to happen? And potentially it's going to happen now that they have a CEO. Because, you know, remember, you've been calling this for a long time. You've been saying this is an issue, not just in the last few months or the last year, but I think you've been saying this for years now. They have to get rid of of the linear assets. I would imagine that everyone's going to be hammering on Josh DeMorrow's door demanding the same thing.

So I wonder if now that we've got a new CEO in the building, is it actually going to be possible? Perhaps you have a prediction on if this is actually going to happen or not, but I will ask you the question. Do you think it's going to happen in the next, say, 12 months? The good bank, bad bank, to sell the linear assets? Yeah. Oh, they've been for sale for two years.

It's just a question of who can show up with an offer. And I imagine there's probably some content or, I don't know, who knows, creative contracts that are sort of trying to, you know, unmess or unfry or unscramble an egg. But these, it's not a matter of if, it's just when. So, and I think they were probably hoping they'd get a better price for ESPN and they just never got the number they wanted. But absolutely, this guy has, typically what happens with the new CEO, you can do almost anything, and your board just rubber stamps it.

You have a honeymoon period. So whenever you have a new CEO, you want to say to a boss, okay, go hard, go early because you have license to do whatever the fuck you want right now. He should do it. If he can, do it right away.

Do it immediately. By the way, it's starting to sound like forced seller territory, and I mean, there's two options. Either you sell it to a private entity or you spin it and you take it to the public markets, But, you know, we saw what happened with Versant. They did the spin.

It went terribly. The stock's been absolutely crushed. So I wonder if they're going to be looking for a private buyer. Either way, it seems like they have to sell. It's making me think that you need to put a consortium together and make them a somewhat measly offer that they must accept. I feel like that could be an awesome investment. For Sons of 4.3 billion. It's one year returns.

It's off 35%. You're right. Someone needs to roll up these things and make a go of it. It's, I don't, these actually can be really good stocks. Cable News is still a good. I think what they also might be waiting for, and I'd be curious to get riches of you on this. Typically, these companies lose money.

It's like the dirty secret especially retail is they lose money for $40,000, weeks, and then for four weeks from Thanksgiving to Christmas, they just print money. I think in some of these cable news, I don't know if Disney owns local stations or not, but they make a shit ton of money around the election. And that guy, that guy who hosts ABC News, and also the fact that CBS News went from 5 million viewers a night to 4 million, probably hasn't held the value of ABC. So my guess is they keep thinking, all right, someone's offered us. The problem is the only buyers right now are smart.

That's good. You should be one of those smart buyers. Yeah, but the problem with smart buyers is they want to pay market value. What he's looking for is some drunk kid with a rich father to come in and overpay for the thing. He's hoping for a Skydance, Paramount Warner Brothers like valuation, and no one's going to give them that. Because all the people who will buy these linear assets actually have calculators, and they want, and to be fair, these things, it's very dangerous right now. CNN just I think CNN's viewership is off 30 or 40% year on year. So they keep waiting for a better price and every day the price probably gets worse. So yeah, at some point, I think you're right. I think there's probably as an opportunity for a PE player to come in and say, here's a shitty, shitty offer. You must take it. Well, I'm sure they've already had those or for or for Versaunt to come in. And, and take this out. But any, any price at this point is accretive to the core business in terms of shareholder value. I'm excited to see what happens for the next, the next 12 to 24 months. I think it's a

buy here. I like this. I can never find value anywhere. I like your idea around these software stocks that may have been overpunished. And I do think Disney is an opportunity. Disney's going to have, usually, usually don't get an activist with a new CEO because I like to give the guy the benefit of the doubt as a honeymoon phase. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone, a peltz-like figure or somebody is taking, is starting to acquire or aggregate shares here. If this thing keeps going down, somebody's going to show up. Josh DeMara just needs to prey on either a drunk child of a billionaire showing up or a Saudi crown prince of some kind. Saudi can't own it. Gulf can own ABC News.

Fair enough. We'll see. But fair enough. I think they should have that anchor. I forget that guy. He looks ethnically ambiguous. I think they should have him do the evening news with his shirt off. If they want to juice ratings, that guy's dreamy.

I'd like to see him take up hockey and fuck a bunch of dudes in a locker room. Is that wrong, Ed? Not wrong. I think that's your, I think that might be your fifth heated rivalry mention in the last couple weeks. I'm starting to think that you are binge watching this and watching it again. You watch four episodes of that thing in the row. You rethink everything, Ed. You rethink.

I can't wait. Everything. Okay, let's move on to our final story here. That was a good segue. Let's get them off the gay hockey. Let's get them off. Back to price earnings. Antitrust hearings.

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It'll keep you feeling fresh for up to 72 hours. And when you smell good, you feel good. Visit dove.com to learn more. We're back with Profi Markets. Anthropic used the Super Bowl to take a shot at OpenAI, and it worked. The company dropped its ad early, building buzz before the game,

and reminding everyone that the Super Bowl is still one of the biggest marketing stages there is. How do I communicate better with my mom? Great question. Improve communication with your mom can bring you closer. Here are some techniques you can try. Start by listening. Really hear what she's trying to say underneath her words. Build conversation from points of agreement. Find a connection through shared activity. Perhaps a nature walk. Or if the relationship can't be fixed, find emotional connection

with other older women on golden encounters, the mature dating site that connects sensitive cubs with roaring cougars. What? Would you like me to create your profile? What's the difference between me and you? Awesome music. For our audio listeners, the tagline at the end reads, ads are coming to AI but not to Claude.

As a reminder, Open Eye recently announced that it would begin testing ads on ChadshyBT. That news caused a stir online as Sam Altman once described ads as, quote, a last resort for us as a business model. So Scott, big win for Anthropic. This ad went mega, mega viral. Everyone is dunking on Open AI.

Everyone's making fun of Open AI with these ads. Sam Altman had a pretty hilarious and pathetic tweet that he put out, which we can get into. Let's start with your initial reactions. It used to be that the right commercial could change a business's trajectory. When Hyundai came out with this commercial saying seven-year warranty, you know, Coca-Cola. Occasionally there's an ad that is so big. breakthrough and grabs people emotions, it just juices sales and rejuvenates the company. That almost never happens anymore because people aren't watching. The audiences become so fragmented and people immediately

go on their social graph or online and do diligence on whether this product actually is worth it or not. This is the biggest moment in broadcast advertising as it relates to impact on the markets we've seen in a long time. This is the moment that Anthropic begins in a sense in valuation. past Open AI. And in my course on brand strategy, we have a bunch of different models and constructs for evaluating brand and strategy. And one of them I call laddering. And that is you say, we're this, there are this, and you find points of differentiation that pass three hurdles. Differentiation, are we truly different? Relevance, does anyone care? And three, is it sustainable? So we're Democrats. We're for bodily autonomy, therefore denying a woman's rights. Is it differentiated? Yeah,

we are truly different on this. Is it relevant? No, we'd like to think it is, but family planning and abortion rights never show up at the ballot box, as much as we'd like to think it's going to happen this time. And is it sustainable? Can we own it? Anthropic has done laddering here. They've said, okay, we're not going to have ads. That is a point of differentiation because the number one use case for AI at corporations is what, Ed? Very good, Ed. Okay, we'll all go by service now. But anyway, I do know. What's the answer? It's therapy.

Oh, therapy. People are revealing their most intimate questions and concerns to AI. And the thought that this person is going to take all your personal information and start saying, oh, you seem to be suffering from depression. Have you thought about Lexa Pro from Hoffman LaRoshe? I mean, you know what you're getting with Google. You know that they're going to take you to a place they can further monetize and mix in some utile information. we have been opening up so much about our most personal information to AI that the thought that

they're going to put in ads, it really is different. Anthropic has said, no, we're not going to do that. It's hugely relevant to people because people are already scared and worried about AI and the thought that they're going to start taking all of our history and all of our most intimate secrets to prostitute us to advertisers. And it's also most likely sustainable. I think it'll be difficult for Sam Altman to go back on it because he has all these growth. objections he has to live up to, including going back on his word and saying, he wasn't going to do porn. Now I'm saying he's going to do porn. And the execution here around these ads, oh my God. This is, this is Whedon Kennedy like, you know, Nike ad material. These, whoever did these ads, this ad is going to get, if the, if the Super Bowl is like

the Super Bowl usually is, it's a shitty game, this ad is going to get more attention than the game itself. This is a pivotal moment that still shows that advertising can be relevant. Whoever is the agency here, their phone is ringing off the hook. They're getting, they're getting, there's always kind of a hot agency for a while that they do at a great out campaign. And people under the illusion that these guys, if we bring in these people, and they wear black, and they party with us, and they're really attractive. So we'll waste a lot of money on them that they can rejuvenate our business. This is a big moment for, for, for, Anthropic. In this execution, they've already gotten 10 times the ROI on the Super Bowl commercial

before it's even run. This is, I'm going away, Ed. I'm totally blown away. 100%. Sam's response was hilarious. He put out an essay on Twitter. This is Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI. He said, quote, first, the good part of the Anthropic ads, they are funny and I laughed. But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clear dishonest. He goes on to say, I guess it's on brand for Anthropic Double Speak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren't real, but a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it. We are committed to broad democratic decision-making, in addition to

access, one authoritarian company won't get us there on their own to say nothing of the other obvious risk. It is a dog, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No one fucking cares. He got roasted. And he's trying to make this argument that, you know, it's not true how they're portraying the ads in chat GBT. We're not going to be surreptitiously putting the ads in there and trying to recommend them while you're doing your therapy, which may be true. Maybe the ads will be a lot better than that. Maybe it'll be a lot less dystopian than Anthropic has suggested with this ad. Point is, no one fucking cares. It was a good ad. It was funny. The way that they even nailed down

the voice of chat GPT, which is this like, awkward, monotonous, sycophantic, very annoying voice that everyone has gotten sick of. Like, it's just a good ad. And they clearly are demonstrating they have their finger on the pulse here. And that's all that matters. And so if it's happened to come out and give this essay on critiquing the details of this ad. It's like, this is some of the worst PR comms that we've ever seen. And, I mean, it just rubs salt into the wounds. Andthropic, everyone's turning on Open AI. Anthropic is emerging as the winner.

You said that this was like the coming of age moment for Anthropic. I totally agree. For me, it has parallels to the Apple ad, the 1984 Apple ad, which was regarded by many as like the greatest commercial of all time, also aired during the Super Bowl and also took a direct shot at a competitor, which at that time was IBM. And the whole idea was saying through, you know, undertones, the sort of subtext of the ad, was that IBM is Big Brother, they're going to have this mind control, they're trying to take over the world.

Apple's going to be the company that liberates you with personal computers. On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh, and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984. It's just a good ad. It's like a good message. It's something that resonates. That's exactly what Anthropic is done. And, you know, I said a few months ago,

I think you agreed. Anthropics are going to be the heavyweight champion of AI in 2026. The narrative on AI is beginning to waver. And a trillion-dollar AI spending plan, it just isn't quite what it used to be. It doesn't sound as sexy as it did, say, 12 months ago. And that may well mean pain for Open AI,

which has, of course, been leading this charge. But more importantly, it might mean new opportunities, opportunities for other companies that are taking a different approach. It might mean the beginning of the rise of a new heavyweight champion, a new AI winner. It does look like that winner could well be, anthropic. And I feel like this is kind of the moment where everyone realized, yeah, this is actually happening. I don't think Alman was well advised here. I think he should have said,

when you're the market leader and there's still a market leader, you don't reference the competition. Yes. Don't say anything. You never talk about them. And if he'd been asked about it, he should have said, I've seen it, it's a great ad. That's it. That's it. Because anything beyond that looks defensive. Totally agree. And he might put out a separate release talking about, okay, I want clarify some things around our ads, what they will be used for, what they won't be used for, where they can add value, anything around medical information, anything around relationships, we will not be inserting it. You know, but when you respond to the number two player, which they still are right now, you're basically saying, I'm scared. You know, Hertz never

referenced Avis. Coke never referenced Pepsi. You don't ever reference your competition when you're the number one player. And he just comes across. across, he comes across his defensive and, you know, he's been caught flat-footed. I get it, but he should, his only, his only thing should have been, yeah, of course, I saw the ad. I think they, I think they did a great job. Good for them. Nothing more. And then maybe give it some distance and then put out something about, all right, let's talk about our advertising, what it will be used for, what it won't, why we think it's such an incredible opportunity to add value to our customer base, why it'll be a huge revenue opportunity. Let's be honest.

and what it will not be used for, such that you can, you know, if you're talking about, we will not take pharmaceutical ads. I'm obsessed whenever I get any of my health information, I upload it to chat GPT, I want to know there's no pharmaceutical influence here telling me, oh, okay, you, you know, whatever it is, you have shoulder pain. I just don't want, I want to know that they're doing their best to give me, I mean, AI should be the clean, well-lit place of the internet to a certain extent around information, it gets it wrong, but their hearts should be in the right place. So, yeah, this is a seminal, I believe this is a

seminal moment. I believe that when we look back on this, this will be seen as a big moment in the AI wars. Would you agree this could be like the 1984 Apple ad moment? I feel like that was Apple's moment in the computer revolution. I mean, this is it, right? It's a great analogy. This is that kind of landmark broadcast advertising moment. It's very exciting. It's also kind of interesting to see the return of advertising, which I feel like people have been sort of counting out that advertising's kind of dead or it's boring,

and, you know, the Mad Men era is over. But it's kind of fun and exciting to see what a great ad can do for your business. I mean, we'll see what the ROI will actually be, but it's already gotten millions of views, and this is before it was actually aired on the Super Bowl. This was just the pre-release. They just posted it on social media, got millions of views across the internet

in literally under 24 hours. And I find it exciting and cool, and I'm sure if you're working at an ad agency, it's also fun and exciting and cool to see just such a good, clearly created by humans as well. Like, this was clearly someone who's used chat GPT a lot,

who understands the nuances and annoyances of the product. Like, this is a very human commercial. And they've come out there and they put it out there, it's resonated so much with so many people. It does feel like this is kind of like the resurgence of the golden age of advertising. And I just love that it's going to be on the Super Bowl, which, of course, is the grand stage for advertisers around the world. By the way, the creative partner, it was produced by Anthropic, but the creative agency is a group called Mother, which is independently owned. It's not owned by one of the conglomerates.

My guess is in the next year they'll sell because everyone will want to talk to them, realize it's the right time to cash out. By the way, let's bring this back to me at. And please. And when I was right out of business school, I met this guy named Warren Hellman, and I'd started profit, my brand strategy firm, and he said, I've got a great assignment for you. And I'm going to pay you to go to Levi Strauss and company board meetings. I don't want you to speak to anybody. I don't want you to be politicized. And at the end of the board meeting, I want you to stand up and give us your honest, thoughtful advice. And I was like 29. I mean, that's a dream job, right? And they invited two other.

people for their unfiltered advice for the next two years of board meetings. They invited a guy named Leo Lee Klau, who was that of TBWHI Day, and a guy named Nigel Bogle from the hot agency of that time, BBAH. And we listened to the whole board meeting, and then we each get 20 minutes to just stand up and give our peace. And so it was a strategy guy, yours truly, and two creative guys, agencies. I haven't seen an ad man in a board meeting in 20 years. No one gives a fuck what I didn't see people think anymore. And if you go to, I've been going to Cannes for a long time, every year, the amount of beach space, the fabulousness of the parties gets smaller and smaller for WPP, IPG, Omnacom, Havas, and it gets bigger for the tech guys. I mean, the lack of

intellectual currency and influence of the ad market is just, it's just shriveled up and gone away. it's striking how little people care about their viewpoints. Ad agencies used to be in every strategy meeting. They used to be seen as a key thought partner. Now literally, no one gives a shit what they think. But maybe this is going to change things. Probably not, but maybe. This is a blip.

Mother's going to get a ton of business, unearned business, because everyone will be like, we hired the same agency that did the Anthropic ads, and then they're going to sell to one of the big conglomerates and go open a bar in the Bahamas or something. That's what I would do. That's what I would do. Start a hockey team.

I love that. Okay, let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see the employment report and consumer price index for January. We'll also see earnings from Apollo, Lowe's, Coca-Cola, BP, Spotify, CVS, Robin Hood, Ford, McDonald's, Shopify, and Airbnb. The earnings continue to roll in. Scott, do you have any predictions? We've already made it.

In 12 months, Anthropics are going to be worth more than OpenAI. This is a big moment. Anthropic has gone after the enterprise market, smart move. Open AI has kind of dominated consumer. Sort of the analogy I would use is 25 years ago, Dell versus Gateway. And Gateway went consumer and Dell on small, medium-sized business. We know how that turned out. Anthropic has gone enterprise.

Open AI has built a consumer business. And I think there's been a series of missteps at OpenAI. I think Anthropic is going this way up, and Open AI is going down, and within 12 months, I think Anthropics raising at 350. Open AI claims are raising at 850 within a year, and I don't know what the relative numbers will be, but in a year, Anthropic is going to be worth more than Open AI. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss. Mia Silverio is our research lead.

Our research associates are Isabella Kinsel, Dan Shillan, and Chris No Donehue. Benjamin Spencer is our engineer. Drew Burroughs is our technical director and Captain Dylan is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to ProfDG Markets from ProfTG Media. Tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on markets.