Kara Swisher · 48:57
He likes himself and his things, and that's it. I... It's very... I agree with you. It's the right corporate thing to do. I've never met someone who is so anti people in my life. Like, just has such disdain for humanity in a way that's really remarkable, actually. Just doesn't like anybody, like, essentially. And he would do it to the left or right depending on what suited him. What what... Someone was asking me, well, there are left wing people who are gonna give me... I'm like, I don't want... Who knows what they're gonna be next week? And I don't want any, like, individual rich person, left or right, to be able to take advantage this way. It seems unfair. Other people don't get an audience with the president, and they have an an... Unnecessary advantage based on money. And that's kind of gross in some ways. It should be
Scott Galloway · 49:42
Gross. Elon Musk, after the SpaceX IPO, might be worth between 700,000,000,000 and $1,000,000,000,000.
Kara Swisher · 49:49
Trillion dollars. Yeah.
Scott Galloway · 49:50
If he takes 1% of his wealth or $10,000,000,000 with his command of technology, he can decide who the next president is.
Kara Swisher · 49:57
He can. That's what I mean.
Scott Galloway · 49:59
Is that what you want? Mhmm. Taxes are our Kevlar and our vaccine from power. We need to stop thinking about taxes as something that is inherently evil and slows down the economy. That's bad taxation. Taxation protects us from... I don't wanna call them billionaires because I don't wanna demonize them. Taxes protect us from an unhealthy aggregation of power.
Kara Swisher · 50:25
Mhmm. Due to money.
Scott Galloway · 50:27
A 100%. Yeah. We shouldn't have any individual... I don't care if it's Soros. I don't care if it's unions. I don't care if it's Lorraine Powell Jobs. Although, I think she's a wonderful woman, and I'm not... This isn't a character assessment. You can't have an individual with this much power. And taxes are the only way... Our only protection are Kevlar against the aggregation of this type of power and Citizens United. Get rid of it.
Kara Swisher · 50:57
Speaking of which, all my friends have decided you'd become a lesbian because of.
Scott Galloway · 51:02
No. Really?
Kara Swisher · 51:03
They were like, what? Like, they were like,
Scott Galloway · 51:05
You weren't expecting that?
Kara Swisher · 51:06
No. I was not either.
Scott Galloway · 51:07
By the way, a lot of my friends are, like, get... Sending me messages like, what the fuck? Shut up, buddy.
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Kara Swisher · 51:14
Scott is a lesbian from San Francisco now speaking of virtue signaling.
Scott Galloway · 51:18
I go issue by issue.
Kara Swisher · 51:19
Alright. I get it. I get it. Speaking of... I get them getting more money besides Elon becoming a trillionaire. Anthropic is in talks to raise new funding that would value it at up to $950,000,000,000. Oh, really? The company's valuation would be 2.5 times what it was just three months ago and higher than OpenAI's valuation of 852,000,000,000. Of course, there's the overhang of that trial with OpenAI right now. It's a huge thing. Overinflated? I don't know. I don't know.
Scott Galloway · 51:46
Look. We've never seen a company scale like that. So... And we've also never seen Pepsi overtake Coke or or Avis overtake Hertz as quickly. We've never seen this type of of transition or pivot or reversal in fortunes. And and also, still think OpenAI's valuation... IPO is probably gonna be a hit. So get this. In March 2025, Anthropix valuation was 61,000,000,000. So it's up fifteenfold. It's up fifteenfold in the last year. Lot of
Kara Swisher · 52:19
parties in Silicon Valley.
Scott Galloway · 52:21
Well, okay. It was 9,000,000,000 in annual recurring revenue in December. Last month, it was 30,000,000,000. They think this month, it's on track to reach 50,000,000,000. For the first time, more businesses are using Anthropic than OpenAI, 35% versus 32. Anthropic's business adoption quadrupled over the past year while OpenAI's grew basically flat. And so a board decision on this financing is expected later this month with the... And they think the IPO might happen as early as October.
Kara Swisher · 52:52
Yeah. It's the fall.
Scott Galloway · 52:53
And Kaushi is saying it's a 70% chance it goes public this year. And then there's also a 60% chance that they have the best AI model at the end of the year. I don't know what that means. Look. I don't... This company is... It's just absolutely firing on all cylinders. Having said that, my thesis is that go long GLP one and short AI because I don't think... I think it's impossible to maintain a lead in AI with AI. And that is if you look at the technical specifications, it's moving more towards parity than differentiation. And I think it's gonna be difficult for any one company to maintain a technical lead here, And that that will drive down margins. And then when these open weight AIs, when Xi starts engaging in AI dumping, which is what I would do if I were him, I think it's gonna drive down their margins. And the good news is, I think similar to vaccines or PCs or jet transportation, the winners will be us, not these companies.
Kara Swisher · 53:50
There'll be one or two companies that will dominate. Probably Anthropic is one of them at this point, interestingly. Probably Google is the other.
Scott Galloway · 53:57
Yeah. It'll be it'll be really interesting, but when you look, we have become used to any innovation resulting in a small number of companies capturing trillions of dollars in shareholder value. Again, my thesis is that AI might be more like jet transportation, vaccines and PCs and that no one company is able to sequester shareholder value.
Kara Swisher · 54:16
Yeah. Yeah. I get your point. So it'd be funny if Apple spent nothing and ends up benefiting the most,
Guest · 54:21
which is Oh, that's The...
Scott Galloway · 54:22
Yeah. That It'll be sweet. Percent.
Kara Swisher · 54:25
That's sweet. Just last thing. Google... Speaking of Google is in talks with SpaceX for a rocket launch deal to put orbital data centers in space. The deal is based on currently unproven technology that Elon said is the next frontier for his rocket company. I I kinda like this idea. It's totally unproven, and Google has a history of investing in wacky schemes. At one point, they had... They were investing... This sounds like a Sergey Brin thing happening here. They used to beef over some girl, but now they're getting along, I suppose. Anyway, this is something. Google has done this. They had wind they had wind up in wind kites at one point. They were gonna do a chairlift in San Francisco. They had a ship, an energy ship parked off the city in San Francisco. This is nothing. This is... It feels... Smells like Sergey Brin to me. And so he would try anything, and this would seem cool to him. So sure. Why not? Why not invest in it? What's the difference? If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
Scott Galloway · 55:20
I think these guys, they wanna put chips down and options on anything they don't have insight into so they can get investor updates, have a chance to work with them. It's smart. Everything is so interconnected. Those graphs that look like, you know, the god's eye. Remember those in the seventies where everyone is invested in everybody else and everybody suing everybody else?
Kara Swisher · 55:39
Yeah. Just like Anthropic is doing a deal with Musk. Not as... Everyone was like, how dare you? Dario. I'm like, are you kidding? Of course, he did. Of course, they do. They don't. They like beef, and then they hug. It's like the mob. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
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— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 58:06
Okay, Scott. Let's hear a prediction. I will note that people should... Something we have talked about and have been in our predictions, a New York Times investigation, which you should all read, found that over 80 Polymarket users have placed bets with suspicious characteristics and won money across nearly 30 topics. The insider trading stuff, this stuff is just getting started on all these predictions markets, so we we thought this might happen, but that... Just just please go read that because it's a really interesting piece. Go ahead, Scott. Predictions?
Scott Galloway · 58:33
So my prediction, chipmaker Sarah Brass went public today at a $40,000,000,000 valuation, and that's up from its $23,000,000,000 valuation in February and 8,000,000,000 in 2025. And I believe it's over. I believe it's playing into this massive historic run up in chips. And after an initial pop, I think it'll fall. Since last year, its revenue has increased less than two x, while its valuation has increased six fold. And the $40,000,000,000 valuation implies a 76 times revenue multiple. In other words, it's... This shouldn't be a public company. It's it's it's drafting off of what has been an unprecedented increase in value in the sector. So as an example, NVIDIA trades at 26 times revenues and still controls 85% of the AI chip market and is growing faster. Cerberus tried to go public in 2024, but withdrew their filing at the last minute over intense scrutiny of its heavy reliance on a single customer, the Emirati AI firm g forty two. I don't remember if you remember these guys. It's basically like actual giant big chips, physical giant big chips. It strikes me as quite frankly a shitty company. And this is this is simply massively benefiting from an unprecedented updraft in chip stocks. And, anyways, my prediction is that the initial pop, this company, which I think is actually a fairly mediocre chip company trading at 78 times revenue, is not gonna sustain. And
Kara Swisher · 1:00:00
I like the highly specific stock thing.
Scott Galloway · 1:00:02
And then that that same customer, which makes up the lion's share of the revenue, group forty two, accounted for 24% of revenue last year, and state owned UAE University accounted for 62% of revenue. Given what's going on in The UAE, given their dependence on one customer, given the 76 times revenue, this feels like one of those bad Chinese firms that could just go down 95%.
— Predictions segment ends —
Kara Swisher · 1:00:27
Well, that's a good warning for people. Anyway, there's a lot of froth happening for sure, and and so there... It's hard to separate the good from the bad. Anyway, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe, this week on profg markets, Scott spoke with Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at NYU Stern School of Business, one of Scott's favorites, to break... And he's terrific, I think so too, to break down what's standing out to him in the market so far this year. He shared his thoughts on how the conflict with Iran could ripple through the economy. Let's listen to a clip.
Guest · 1:01:05
The catastrophic risk here is not that oil... Gas prices stay higher than they were before the conflict, it's whether they'll go even further up because there is a chance of that happening. I think if, in in many ways, what the market seem seems to be building in is the economy can survive with gas prices being $4.50 or 5, depending on what part of the country you're in, and that it might not be as robust as you thought it was three months ago, but it's okay. But I think the worry still remains that this crisis, while it's in a slow boil, at any point in time, could become a fast boil, at which point you could say, what happens to earnings now?
Kara Swisher · 1:01:47
Yeah. That's interesting. Four four fifty five. I've seen $6.07 now. It's really across lots of cities. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:00
Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Todd Wiseman. Ernie, you're trying to engineer this episode. Thanks to officer Drew Broz, miss Severo, Dan Shalonda, Shakuras, Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, have a great weekend.
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Guest · 1:03:56
by different
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