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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. I have returned to our country, Scott. Yeah, you look much better. Thank you. How was your... travel back or your trip back. It's like takes, you know, you leave yesterday and arrive to, or no, you leave tomorrow and then you arrive today. I don't know. It's just like, I left at 10 a.m. and then I got back. It was the same day at 10 a.m.
That's all I know. It's funny because I can confirm you have not aged since yesterday. Do you like my—I had a treatment. I think I looked good. You look very nice. You're a great skin. Yeah, I wore a robot outfit. I wore a robot. It was good. It was good. You wore a robot outfit.
I really am happy to be back. I don't like traveling that much. You know, I'm not, I don't, even though I travel a lot. So I didn't want to tell you this while you were in Asia because I didn't want to trigger anything, but occasionally I have. I can tell you think it's going to be a dirty joke. It isn't. You're literally waiting like, oh no, here it comes. I'm slowly catching up on my sleep. Is this the one? Is there going to be something about, I don't know.
some sort of bad Asian flu joke or something. You know those funny Democratic ladies? They said the word twat, so we can do anything we want now. Well, that's the great thing about living in London is technically you can use the C word. Oh, yeah. Something different. I still don't use it. Anyways. You can't say it, can you? I can't say it. You can say it. I can't say it. I can. I just think there's certain things.
That are just off limits for a straight white guy. Yeah, I would agree. There's certain words that we just have lost. Yeah. That are just a give. Anyways. Yeah. You can say it to me on our tour every night. could say to me just quietly i'd never say that to you anyway so um i occasionally went out a couple times
A couple of times. Yeah, twice when I've been in Asia. I used to go to Asia a lot for business. And there's something about that amount of jet lag or crossing the date line that triggers something in my hypothalamus or almond gala or whatever. And I get... I have a pretty serious depressive episode, and it's happened to me twice. And the last time I was in Hong Kong, and I was staying at one of the most remarkable hotels,
I was like on the 88th floor. Like the Grand Hyatt or whatever? No, it was called the Upper House. And it was just remarkable. They bring you this incredible tea set and you're on top of the clouds and looking at Hong Kong. And I woke up. And I get this weird sort of fear anxiety that I'm too far from anyone that cares about me or that I care about. And I feel very isolated and very frightened.
Like what series of bad decisions led me to somewhere where I don't know anybody and no one cares about me and if I get sick or something, I just start freaking the fuck out. And the last time I was meeting with Mandarin Oriental, the hotel group, the next morning I was supposed to meet with the CEO. And instead, I just checked out, went to the airport and got on the first flight home. Really? But there's something about...
I was waiting for the dick joke, too. I was like, where is he going to tell you? No, no, no. Wow, that's amazing. That's interesting. I get that feeling. I have to say, I was saying this to Amanda last night. I just wanted to get home. I felt unsafe. I don't know what it was. By myself. What you just described, times that by 10. Yeah. Where you start to kind of shake a little bit and you feel really upset and insecure.
like foreboding and i i just went straight down to the lobby went straight to the airport looked at the looked at the board and said get me the first flight back to the u.s because i find i don't know if you found this and this sounds more virtuous than it is because it only lasts about five minutes before i start hating them again. As soon as I'm around my kids, it was like the solve. Oh, no, I love my kids. I was just thinking how much I love my kids.
I'm so excited. That's what I mean. I mean, it immediately snaps me back to just something OK. Yeah, it was great to see them. And of course, it was just like when I got back, Saul. often gets into bed with us in the early morning. And he goes, he looked at me, he goes, I really missed you. And I was like, oh my God. Where are the cameras, right? Yeah, right. I think he knows the impact too, which is really cute. Well, so.
Another quick parenting piece of advice. One of my biggest regrets about raising my kids is with my youngest one. Until, not until he was like two or three, we didn't let him co-sleep with us because we read somewhere it was bad for you or bad for him. And he used to show up at our bedroom with a basket of cars like as an offering saying, if you let me sleep with you, you too can play with.
these cars. And I look back, and fortunately we did co-sleep with our younger one. Co-sleeping is a gift from God. It is. It's unavoidable. They come in and...
and you sleep better, they sleep better, and you'll wake up occasionally, like it doesn't happen about you, and they'll be looking at you and they'll smile and then they'll put their arm on you and then they fall to sleep and like everything is right with the world. I think co-sleeping is, the Japanese cultures do it, Indian cultures do it. Some psychiatrists fucked up in the head, in my view, in the 50s or 60s convinced American parents.
We're not supposed to co-sleep. I mean, I really miss that. Well, it's unavoidable with us. At one point, Amanda's covered with a cat and both kids. I'm like, hi, good to see you over there. Yeah, it is a nice thing. Before we get to this... award you got. Last night, I was at Mount Vernon, which they're redoing. Mount Vernon is privately run, so they can put up whatever they want. They have a whole new things about the slaves of George Washington, which is really well done. But Ken Burns...
was showing off his new American Revolution series there last night, an outdoor, in the middle of sort of a rainstorm. It was wonderful. And it was quite lovely, I have to say. I had the loveliest time last night. I love that Ken Burns. There is some wonderful things about social media. Social media, I always loved his documentaries, but now that I have the attention span of a cat that's got into its owner's meth supply, I don't watch a lot of, you know, that PBS documentary style stuff.
He's been on he's been all over social media talking about the current administration and history. He is an outstanding thinker. He is, I have to say. But it looks actually. really good and really pertinent right now. So anyway, tell me about this spirit of hope, speaking of hope in America. Well, Kara, I don't like to bring attention to myself. As you know, I've successfully navigated all awards since I won Most Comical in high school.
The last night I was in Toronto at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and I got an award with Van Jones. Wow. He's a handsome man. Oh, my gosh. He's so dreamy. He's really nice, too. Very spiritual. I like Van. I'm trying to get him to run for a second. Was he wearing like a spiritual outfit? Yeah, he looks like a sexy monk. He just looks... Like, hello. Monk is a spiritual figure. Yeah. He's very... Yeah, and he's...
I traveled back to New York with him. He's a really very impressive man. What's the spirit of hope? What was the award for? So every year the Simon Wiesenthal Center gets together and they have, they present an award to people for defense. I think it's defense of the Jewish community and they do. a talk and a speech there was like 1600 people um canada has a very strong jewish community and yeah toronto and and they they reached out to me and i was really excited to do it i don't
Quite frankly, I was sort of shocked. You don't ever do those things. I'm surprised. No, you know, it was a really nice moment for me. I've never been that in touch with my Judaism. I'm an atheist. I don't feel much connection with Israel. I've obviously been pretty outspoken on it. And, you know, regardless of what you think of the situation, there's a lot of people in the Jewish community who are very appreciative. And it was just very nice for me. My mom would have loved it.
Oh, we'll be back in Toronto, too. Yeah, we're going back. Actually, a bunch of people came up to me and said, I'll see you next week. We're going to have such a good time. I'm excited. So we sold out there first, which was really interesting. Toronto, yeah. Toronto. We love them.
It's so strange. I doubt you've been watching the World Series. You know less about sports than I do. Blue Jays, right? But it's so weird to be rooting for the Blue Jays. L.A. is my home team. Oh, why aren't you voting for L.A.? You know, I just find Canada to be quite frankly the nation the U.S. should be right now.
I think they've got a good leader. I think there are reasonable people. I think there are generous people. I think they take care of people. I don't think you can go bankrupt if your wife gets lung cancer. I think Canada is the underappreciated neighbor. We should move there. We should just stay there. Who recycles, sees your kid on the street and walks him or her home.
pays the rent on time. I'll tell you, I think we noted Doug Ford, who is very conservative, and the Gavin Newsom-Doug Ford thing about the World Series was very funny. And they took, like, they dumped on Trump at the same time as...
Talked about, you know, the bet on the Blue Jays versus the Dodgers, which is interesting. It's a great series. I mean, I'm not into baseball, but it's a great series. I don't watch any of it. None of it. Not a bit of it. Slightly. I got cut from the baseball team in high school. That's my connection. Yeah, I made the team and then I got cut mid-season. which was really good for my confidence. Oh, wow. Okay. Mom, I made the baseball team. I got news. How did you get caught?
How did I get cut? It's pretty easy. You don't play that well. Right. And then the coach sits you down and says, we're cutting you. Why even bother? Why even just let you stay there, sadly, on the bench? I guess there's only a certain number of... I don't know. It's not everybody gets a trophy. I kind of respect that about sports. Okay. All right.
Anyway, all right. Well, congratulations on your spirit. You're my spirit of hope. Anyway, we've got a lot. I'm your spirit animal. We've got a lot to get to today, including NVIDIA making history, kind of crazy, and Elon making grok a piece. Oh my God.
But first, OpenAI is finally a for-profit company, and I knew this would happen. Elon tried to stop it. It announced this week that it's formed a public benefit corporation similar to the structures of XAI and Anthropic under the new setup OpenAI's nonprofit foundation. gets a 26% stake worth about $130 billion and will run the for-profit arm. It's the same board, by the way, I think. Microsoft gets 27% and keeps exclusive rights to open-ass tech through 2032.
poorly does not have a significant stake. I feel like he's going to do just fine. There's a buzz about an IPO as early as next year, possibly at a trillion dollar valuation out of the gate, but also saying there's no specific time frame yet. Talk a little bit about this because we've talked about the idea of them going public. And this looks like.
And a lot of companies not going public. And I just want to note, OpenAI is also sharing estimates for the first time. This is a drag on them, I think. How many chat GPT users are struggling with mental health issues? The company says in a typical week about 0.07. percent of users show possible signs of mental health emergencies and well
That percentage sounds small. Remember, ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users. OpenAI says they've consulted with more than 170 mental health experts to help improve responses during, quote, challenging conversations. Character AI, which is probably...
Probably the worst of them is barring people under 18 from using its chat box starting next month. You're kidding, character AI. Long time coming, should have happened right at the start. So these are a drag on these companies, too, because these companies do know much more so than... going to Google what people are asking specifically about. So talk a little bit about the IPO and possible drags on, I would say, this.
would be a drag on it, but maybe not. I think it's actually good that they're releasing this data. And supposedly, some people have said, although the chatter has calmed down, that the number one app of AI was therapy. And so if you can imagine a significant portion of those 800 million people are using it as a therapist, you know, point
0.7% of users showing possible signs of mental health emergencies, that just may be representative of the population who wants to talk to a therapist digitally or in person. They should be governed by therapy rules if they're going to be a therapist, but go ahead. I think that's a really good point.
Can you say more about what that means? I don't know what that means. Well, when I was doing the parents of one of the kids who committed suicide, the chat GPT parents, she happens to be a therapist. And she's like, if I had... Given this advice, I would have been arrested. Therapists are governed by, you know, there's lots of bad therapists, by the way, let's be clear, but they have repercussions if they are. And so they have, first of all, privacy issues.
it's just these people have no, what you put into open AI is not, doesn't have any privilege, just like legal stuff, financial stuff, that's one, and then this, or privacy, and then. too. They're not governed. If they do something wrong, if the AI bot says something wrong like they have, there's no repercussions for it. And so therapists are governed.
People are governed. If you shame someone into suicide, you could be tried for it, and people have been. And so that's the issue. They have all the... usage and none of the responsibility, I would say. So if they're going to do mental health work with people, they should be licensed therapists and should pay the price if they fuck up. That's my feeling.
Yeah, look, I agree with that. I think that more broadly, they should adopt a similar approach that most content of the military or bars put in place, and that is there should be different versions of AI. And you have to show your age and your identity. And if you can't prove you're over the age of 18, you get an entirely different set of algorithms and processing and warnings. And also... I think kids
Look, if I went in and tried to buy beer under the age of 21 and I got caught, they call the cops and my parents get to know. Right. Yeah. And my parents weigh in and say, OK, you shouldn't be buying beer. Why are you buying beer? Or why did you try to buy a gun? Or your kid was here with a fake ID trying to get a driver's license. Right. So I think that it's pretty simple. There needs to be a different version of AI.
There needs to be, in my view, I've never bought into the notion of, so for example, I want to give the right, you know, throw the right a bone. I don't think kids under the 18 should be allowed. to engage in gender affirmation drugs without the consent of their parents. In some, when someone is under the age of 18, they're a kid and kids are stupid. They make irrational decisions. Their brains aren't fully formed. May I point something out? This is almost every case they are.
It's a very rare case. Rare. I agree with you. It's been weaponized and politicized, but there are instances where parents found out after a lot of other adults knew, and that is wrong. Okay, but it's small. It's like the number of trans fencers, but go ahead. I know, but I'm saying just theoretically, it just shouldn't happen. What I'm saying is there should also be no kid who types in how to...
different ways to kill yourself and not have their parents notified. Right, exactly. They shouldn't be using them. They shouldn't be using them. I mean, there's only one way to stop it. Well, look, use them for homework, use them for research. They're just... For example, if you go to a movie and you're 12, there's certain movies you can see and certain ones you can't. It shouldn't be any different here. There should be a certain type of AI that miners can have.
Do you know what's going to happen? Do you know how a 17-year-old boy is going to start using AI now? I mean, it's going to be insane. Yeah, erotica and stuff. You know, they had a great piece in the New York Times with the guy who was in charge of that, how it happened. They have a lot of insight into what people do compared to, you know, Google, you go, you search it. know, like, I don't know, bondage or whatever, but you don't really know what they're doing. In this case, it's very...
Very explicit what's happening in the surge. And so it's a very different ball of wax. Talk a little bit about the public offering, though, because this is going to be the blockbuster, right? We predicted this when he announced. I mean, I personally think all this stuff around, we need 50 nuclear power plants, just open AI. I think what he's saying is, my business is going to be so big, bad, awesome, and valuable.
I'm going to need 50 nuclear power plants. I don't think he has any fucking idea at this point how much power they're going to need. I mean, generally speaking, there's a bunch of catastrophizing about how we don't have enough power. And my thesis is... China is just going to develop AIs or LLMs that use a lot less power. But in also signing a $300 billion deal with Oracle, what does that say to the market? It says, oh, my God.
He thinks it's going to be, he knows more than us. He thinks it's going to be a trillion dollar revenue company. And all of this, he is a very bright guy. And to be clear, he is focused on nothing. but his quote-unquote insignificant stake in AI. And his insignificant stake might be only 5% or 6%, but of a trillion-dollar valuation, which it might get, he's going to make $50 or $60 billion. And he has energy companies, and he has...
Blank, blank, blank. I just love how we continue to fall for the hushed tones. Oh, I don't get paid. He's going to make a lot of money. I don't get paid. This isn't why I'm doing this. Yeah, he's getting paid. But meanwhile, I've decided that porn for kids. Synthetic porn, lifelike porn for kids is good for the world and is helping the original mission of using AI to improve and protect humanity. I mean, when do we clue in and realize everything these guys do?
is to get the incremental dollar. And in my view, that's fine. as long as we recognize it, regulate them, and then tax them such that we can reinvest. Yeah, whenever they say we're not here for the money, I'm like, you're here for the money. This is the only reason I appreciate Trump. It's like, how much money can I make? He's naked. Yeah, he's transparent.
I've always said the VCs who get on stage at business school and say, well, it was never about the money would fuck their sister for a nickel. But anyways. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay, that's not fair. Ten cents. Look, this is where the IPO markets are right now.
The IPO markets are essentially branding events. He is an amazing brand builder. He's done a great job being in the news. OpenAI is the leader in what is considered the tectonic shift in the technology. Also, the capital needs of this company. So extraordinary because it's a capital war right now. Because I think they've all figured out there's probably going to be one in the Seven Dwarves.
And it's a capital race. And by the way, the last stop on the valuation train, the only people, investors willing to pay a trillion dollar valuation for a company with 10, you know, that's. He's got to keep it hyped, in other words. That's going to be 50 to 100 times revenue. It's probably going to make Palantir look like a value stock.
And the only people willing to pay that are going to be retail investors. Retail investors who are like, why not buy OpenAI and just hold on? And so we said, I think I said two months ago when he announced this deal with Oracle, I'm like, this means he's going public. Because the only way he could ever even begin to deliver against that $300 billion agreement for compute is if he went public and raised $100 billion.
50 or 100 billion over the next few years in the public market. Yeah, this is his move. He has to be Google. He can't be Netscape. He's got to be Google, right? This is his move. Even though there's other competitors and everything else, they have got to maintain. the lead perceptually and actually, right, in terms of quality enough. They don't have to be the very best.
AI, I guess. It's sort of like Microsoft. They have to be a very good one, but they have the branding lead still. I don't think you think of anybody else. People cannot name other ones, sort of, unless they can say anthropic, I guess, but it's people who are actively using it or regular people think chat GPT. And I think we should do away with the classification.
as a public benefit corporation. I think it is such bullshit jazz hands. Explain what that is for people who don't know. It's defined as a corporation which... is something along the lines of intends to produce public benefits or public good and operate in a responsible and sustainable manner, balancing financial returns to shareholders with a broader public interest. This is like British Petroleum.
in the art saying, BP is beyond petroleum. And they'd show some Asian dude in a lab coat working on algae. And we were supposed to forget that 99.7% of their R&D was just drilling more for fossil fuels. And finally, BP just said, let's stop fucking pretending. Yeah, we make oil. We're an oil company. Everybody needs oil.
They interact with it every day. They're willing to pay for it. We're not doing anything wrong. We're complying with lies. We're complying with laws. Lies, too. We're complying with lies. That was a bit of a Freudian slip. That's one of my favorite Freudians.
Slip was Senator Warren Stroudian Slip. What did she call Trump the C word? Yeah, you really just want to say that word, don't you? And a bunch of VCs here in New York started calling their companies public benefit. By the way, who enforces that? Who decides whether it is such marketing and BS. And so what I would like to see is, all right, you want to call yourself a public benefit corporation. There are certain guardrails here. One.
You pay at least an AMT, an alternative minimum tax. You're at least a good taxpayer, right? You have, I don't know, you never get more than X number of complaints about... X or Y or otherwise just call yourself what you are. Employees get this much money.
Return to shareholders. You could do all my. The CEO doesn't make more than 50 times the average worker's salary instead of 800. Right. You could come up with a series of things if you're really serious about, quote unquote, the benefit of the public here.
Here's a few ideas. Yeah. One of the things is that they started that way. Right. And so they kind of had to keep they couldn't like predict. Elon Musk was like, this is bullshit. And he was right, like in that regard. But they did manage to jam it through. And there was a lot of like he was ginning up all kinds. of trouble and state attorney generals were looking at it. And so they managed to jam this thing through, which shows how talented they are, meaning they are.
farthest away from public benefit in terms of personality. But we'll see. We'll see where it goes. We'll see. Would you buy into it? Would you buy or not? No? Yes? Oh, if I could get into the IPO, I would do it, but I would do it as a trade. Buy and sell. Yeah, because what they'll do is they'll get, I mean, this will be a monster IPO. CNBC will just sit there touching themselves talking about this for three weeks. And then, and then. That's good.
And then the thing goes out, what IPS do right now is they check in with the bankers every other minute and they go, we want to price it such that we can manage a 20 to 40% pop right out of the gates and maybe more. Now, Chesky... priced it too low and it was up 120%. Figma went up 140% circle. Those guys didn't realize that was going to happen. But what you want to be is...
This is what he wants the headline. He does not want the headline to be open AI flat in IPOW. What he wants is open AI surges in... in IPO. That is a branding event that is singular and can only happen once or not. So the thing will be priced. They'll come up with some bullshit thing where they'll say that
We're offering our users a chance and they'll let them buy $11 worth of stock and claim that they're letting their users participate. So you made $14, yeah. And then they'll run around the world with the biggest hedge funds and biggest institutions. They'll go to BlackRock, State Street, and the bankers will make a shit.
ton of money. It'll be a huge branding event, but right out of the gates, I bet it's up 30 or 60%. But the problem is if I got access, which I don't think I'll have given that I have this podcast where we're constantly critical of them, but the people, the institutions that get in. Well, some of them will hold. A lot of them will sell. And then the retail investor, the guy or gal on the street, will buy at that first trade. That will probably not be a great price to buy in at.
You know, we'll see. We'll see if they'll give Scott some. All right. Let's say speaking of high stock market, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, NVIDIA hits yet another major milestone. Support for Pivot comes from ZocDoc. Dens appointments, annual checkups, and dermatologist meetings all have one thing in common, paperwork. And if like millions of other people walking the earth, you don't like filling that stuff out, it might be time you checked out ZocDoc.
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Before it was Pivot, it was just an idea. And the place where my ideas could take flight was always on my Mac. I've been using a Mac for everything since I started using computers. And of course, an iPhone. I got one of the first ones. You know, I use my Mac all the time when I'm doing pod. especially when I was traveling, but I used it in the very beginning of doing podcasts when I did remote stuff.
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Scott, we're back. NVIDIA just became the first company in history to hit the $5 trillion in market value a little over three months after it hit the $4 trillion mark. To give you some perspective, NVIDIA is now worth about 25 Disneys, 50 Nikes or bigger than the GD. of Germany. It's been a busy week for NVIDIA. The company is also taking a $1 billion stake in Nokia. I'm not loving that move.
Plus, partnering with Oracle to build the energy department's largest ever AI supercomputer and NVIDIA's annual conference, CEO Jensen Huang took an opportunity to lavish praise on Donald Trump. Why wouldn't he? Trump has made him really rich. Let's listen. President Trump deserves enormous credit. His pro-energy initiative, his recognition that this industry needs energy to grow, it needs energy to advance, and we need energy to win. His recognition of that...
and putting the weight of the nation behind pro-energy growth completely changed the game. If this didn't happen, we could have been in a bad situation. And I want to thank President Trump for that. Let me interpret for all of you out there what he was saying. Mr. President, let me sell my shit to China. Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. Let me sell my, okay, weapons.
Greater likelihood they can hack our systems, more cyber attacks on us. That's exactly what I thought. An increased probability they're able to invade Taiwan. In a hot or a cold war, using our GPUs, which American universities and IP protection have made me worth more than Boeing. Let me sell my chips into China and ignore all of the concerns from the defense.
Defense Department. And look how rich I've gotten off of you. Like, it's just, you know, let me tell you something. I've known Jensen for a long time, and I interviewed him many times when he had the company that was just selling chips to... Video game companies, essentially. He will not do an interview with me. I've known him 30 years. Like, he refuses. Because I'll be like, so let's talk about China. Let's talk about President Trump. Let's talk about, you know. Yeah, he's smart.
Yeah, it's just like, actually, you know what? I lost a lot of respect because I like Jensen, but boy, is he like... Actually, he should go on your show because he'd be fine. I would agree, but he won't because I know him, right? Talk about someone I've known. It's fine if he wants to do it this way, but...
You know, he probably looked at a Cisco or something like that and is so much smarter. Like that he, speaking of wanting to keep, you know, he doesn't want AMD to show up. He doesn't want Apple to make, he wants to. He wants to avoid the mistakes of intel over the years. You know, he kind of wants to own it for the next, for the future, essentially. And so sucking up to Trump, he'll do it. He has no problem doing it whatsoever.
Though he dresses like a very attractive lesbian, I think. I'm sure that's what he's going for. That's what he says to a stylist. Look at that outfit. Hot lesbian. That's what I want my closet to look like. That's what he's going to be doing. I have that exact leather jacket. Go ahead.
Got to give it to the guy. He's created more shareholder value in a shorter time than any person in history. And he's created tremendous. He's made thousands of people millionaires, if not tens of thousands. He's created an ecosystem. He's paying a shit ton of taxes.
indirectly and directly for the great state of california a lot of that it's great that that ecosystem and he's sort of the grounds you know ground zero for the ecosystem is happening in america i think the guy deserves a lot of credit he seems like a very nice man my jensen huang story is the following
I spoke on stage at some thing at Cannes, and a bunch of people lined up to take photos. And this nice guy comes up and says, I just love your videos. And I was like, the line was really long. And I'm like, boss, where's your camera? He's like, oh. And he pulls out a camera. We take a snap. And I'm like, I'm sorry, boss. The line is long. And I kind of shuffled him along. And the next guy comes up to me and goes, you know that was Jensen Huang, right?
Oh. And I'm like, Jensen, Jensen, come back. Was this recently? Because no one really paid attention to it. No, it was like, it was, that's exactly, it was like three years ago. Yeah, because I got to say, I always thought he was, he was. It was unusual for us to have him at code because he wasn't that well known, right? But he was doing all sorts of innovative things in chips.
when others weren't, and it was largely around video games, as I recall, right? He was doing, and phones maybe, but his whole situation has changed, including that entire company, which was sort of not. as well known but yeah but he has a feel he has a feel for brand one the leather jacket is not an accident that he keeps wearing it and two His annual meeting is now the new Berkshire Hathaway Summit. I forget what they called it. But they are very – the investor relations there is –
Very good. So he announced a bunch of promising new things, AI and quantum computing infrastructure. He announced partnerships with the U.S. Department of Energy and leading U.S. companies to build AI infrastructure. aiming to support scientific discovery and national competitiveness. He hit all the right notes. AI supercomputers. He revealed a project to build an AI supercomputer for the U.S. Department of Energy with a reported $500 billion in bookings for AI chips. Yeah, he needs to keep...
selling his chips. He needs to keep selling. He's really good at it, but he's still a chicken shit. You're a chicken shit, Jensen, for not talking to me. I'm not that hard. That's probably a little rough. By the way, you know who the only politician is, the only candidate who's refused to come on Raging Moderates? What, who?
the leading candidate for mayor of New York. He's the only person that said no to us. Yeah. Anyways. Why would he come on your thing? Well, everyone else is. That's a smart move. He won't come on mine either. He literally talks a door. He won't come. He's won. Why take any risks? I would advise him to just...
I know. He won't come on mine either. It's weird. I was in Dutch with him months and months and months ago when he wasn't ahead. No. Was he a babysitter? Anyways. No. He was like polling 2% at the time. They revealed a project to build construction in America. They noted that their latest chips, including Blackwell,
are now in full-scale production in Arizona, reflecting new investment in U.S.-based fabrication and supply chain. That will be a lot of jobs. He emphasized, at least in the short term to construct it, he emphasized the importance of accelerated computing, national AI strategy. Yeah, he's a rock star.
re-industrialization, they're hitting all the right words. Re-industrialization, that's a great word. So any kind of bubble, are you worried? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not, the fear isn't that these things go down. The fear is, imagine Leo, when he was hanging on to that piece of furniture at the end, when he was going down, took Kate Winslet and 400 kids down with him. When he vanished into the darkness of the depths, what if he had 11,000 arms and took everyone down with him?
That's the problem. It's not that these companies correct and their stocks go down. That happens to every big tech stock. That happens to every stock at some point. The problem is They may take the global economy with them down because 40% of the S&P is 10 companies, which represents 20% of the market cap of the entire publicly traded companies globally.
Actually, not everyone goes down. Berkshire Hathaway didn't. That's because he's so good. This guy's not. Actually, that's not true. At the depths of the Great Financial Recession. Oh, did it go down? Berkshire had been hit hard like anyone else. If you did the calculation on Warren Buffett, at that moment, he was flat. Now, within 14 months, he was now up again 23% since the inception of his fund. But no one gets out alive.
If this thing, if these things, if NVIDIA, we should hope. No, NVIDIA is keeping everybody up. We should hope. that OpenAI goes public at a really good market cap and that NVIDIA keeps announcing record quarters, or that it's sort of a soft pullback. Because if NVIDIA throws up, I mean, everyone else has the stomach flu. Jensen, keep looking like that lesbian you do. You're an attractive...
Very attractive lesbian. Anyway, let's also talk about Grokopedia, the encyclopedia powered by XAI and his rival to Wikipedia. It sucks so bad. I tried it. I just couldn't. Has complained about so-called propaganda. Wikipedia. He's been doing that for a while. Croquipedia went online with around 900,000 articles and briefly crashed after launching. It was full of, like, it loves Elon.
It loves Elon, that's for sure. It's full of errors. It leaves things out, like a lot of stuff out, factual stuff. Why is he doing this? Does he have just an extra five minutes to do something? I don't know. At the same time, True Social, which is a majority owned by President Trump and his family, is launching a crypto-based prediction market platform to compete with Polymarket and, I guess, Calci.
TruthPredict will allow truth social users to place crypto bets on outcome events. The guy in charge of the outcome events is going to have a betting platform. That's interesting. Also, I think Don Jr. is on the board of both. Polymarket and he's involved with them. And he, I just...
I don't know what to say. And the last thing about Elon, of course, Tezo's looking for internal CEO candidates in case his trillion-dollar pay package is not passed and he leaves. So any predictions here? Any of these topics? Grokopedia? Well, Wikipedia is an attempt to sort of establish a new truth, right? And one of the things I like about Wikipedia is it's almost impossible to have a functioning democracy if we don't all agree that there is an objective truth.
And the Congress used to fall in line when peer-reviewed research would come in or data would come in. They wouldn't, I mean, they try and spin it, but they would acknowledge, okay, this is the data and we all need to rally around it. That's no longer the case. Everyone's decided there are, quote unquote, alternative.
There is an alternative truth. And I just see this as an attempt to try and mimic what a lot of people, one of the things I love about Wikipedia, I was also, I was freaked out when my Wikipedia page went up because I thought there's no taking it down. That's the thing about a Wikipedia page. It goes up and then.
What really struck me was some misinformation went up. It said one of my companies was now defunct. I'm like, no, it's not. That company's still going. Other people weighed in. It's a community-based thing. And if you show your notes and your work, you get to edit a page. So it's like this kind of user-generated, but they do try to pursue the truth. I find it actually quite apolitical, which I like.
And what you see here is they're saying shit like, instead of showing suggestions for gay pornography, it falsely suggests that porn exacerbated the HIV AIDS epidemic in the 80s. I mean, something like that, that's just not helpful. Why is he doing it? Does he care if he's helpful, Scott? Like, really, seriously. Yeah, but I think you said this. I think something happened to the guy, and he's traumatized and angry at the left, and wants...
I mean, he's talking about, he keeps going on and on about a white genocide. He's just, I mean, I use a lot of examples for how the term genocide has been perverted and overused in a lot of different regions of the world. But there's very few perversions that are less egregious or laughable than that right now there is a white genocide taking place. He's like a plot of White Lotus at this point. Like, you know, between him and David Allison, they look like the...
The next cast of White Lotus. So why would he why would he do this? Getting in on the action to predict? Well, so they've got to do something. The social media. OK, this is their second pivot. The social media company doesn't work. No one's going there.
So they pivoted to become a Bitcoin treasury company and they took their cash and bought Bitcoin. That's sort of working, not really. So their next pivot is to become a betting market. Because there is, actually, I do think there's opportunity for new players there.
And you're going to see Polymarket or Calshi go out in a monster IPO. These things are the new casino, but they feel less dirty. Like, oh, it's about politics, so it's not just gambling. Yeah, they do everything. They don't just do politics. But on his... I mean, OK, so I got to give it to the guy. The stock is up 10 percent this week and 22 percent up this year. Tesla, the fact they're able to keep this thing in the air. This is Tesla. Yeah, this is just amazing. And his stock package.
He's looking for a grant of up to 12% of outstanding Tesla stock, which could feasibly be worth a $1 trillion package if the company hits a market value of $8.6 trillion, which I think is up to six or sevenfold. I think one of the things about capitalism that I think works is you can't get in the way, I don't think you should get in the way of limiting compensation at a gross level. I think you should continue to publish statistics showing
what multiple of the average worker's salary the CEO makes. But I think one of the intoxicating things and the incentives that works in the United States is that there's no limit on the upside. Well, here's the only thing. This is, look, first of all, it's offensive to people.
part of it. I mean, the whole hand-waving part of it is offensive to people. So he knows he's doing that. He knows he's trolling people. The other thing is, if it gets an internal CEO, we will all value it at what it's worth, right? It will not get the Elon bump. And it's not selling as many cars and it's not as good and it will become what it's worth. Correct. A very good car company that has seen better days. And, you know, one of the things that it's cost.
There was another Yale study out showing that his involvement is costing them, I guess, one million cars or something, some number. It was a massive number. So he's also a downside candidate. I think him out of there would be great for Tesla.
as a car company but you're right not for the stock but what where i was going with this one trillion dollar pay package and and you did something you almost never do you didn't let me finish that's really unlike you oh yeah right do you like to see the statistics on the talking of this show i love what you say you say
You always say, is there a period coming? I know. 73%, Scott, but go ahead. I occupy 73% of the words. That's right. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. Oh, now I feel shamed. Don't worry about it. But where I was going with it is I like the idea of CEOs and people making extraordinary amounts of money at a gross level. I also believe...
And this book kind of changed my life. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow and his research around money. Above a certain amount, you don't get any happier. And the whole point of a good tax is a tax that is the least taxing possible. I believe the two least taxing taxes are the following. Over $10 million in revenue or from stock income, from current income, or from...
stock trades or selling your stock in Tesla, I believe we should have an AMT of 60 or 70%. And everyone grabs their pearls when they hear that. That's the tax rate for that type of- I just grabbed my pearls, but go ahead. That's the tax rate.
for people making over a certain amount of money for the majority of the last century, folks, when income inequality was not as out of control, when people felt better about America, when we weren't cutting off food payments to kids. So I just don't, because here's the thing. The person who's being taxed at 60% who made $2 billion in equity grants, they're no less happy. But that $2 billion divided among, call it...
you know, 100,000 households, that's $20,000. $20,000 in universal child care credits, food stamps, vocational training, Pell Grants. Everybody's happy. That makes them significantly happier. And then the other one I can't stand is we should eliminate the deduction, pull the deduction on inheritance tax down from $30 million to $1 million. If your kid inherits $7 million instead of $11, he or she is no less happy.
And there's going to be such an immense transfer of wealth. And that needs, a lot of that needs to be reinvested back in the middle class. Anyways, my point is. Gosh, you know who you sound like? Zoran Mandami. But go ahead. He hasn't talked about any of this shit. You mean what? government-sponsored food lines? I'm just saying, when you said 60%, I was like, ow, no. I think taxes should be lowered.
on what I'll call the working wealthy. I think taxes should be lowered on Kara Swisher. You make an exceptional living. But living in D.C., you're probably paying 51% of your income to taxes. That is correct. Whereas, I'm self-conscious saying this, Scott Galloway, who now makes all of his money from selling stocks and is a Florida resident, I'm paying about 20%. I know.
That makes no fucking sense. You're a fair share. That makes no fucking sense. I would agree. In fact, I think you should write me a check. That's what I think should happen. Anyway. Make a trillion dollars, just put $600 billion of it back in the Treasury. Is he going to get that? What's going to happen? They're all against it. I think the board...
I think he's going to get most of it, so the board can say we took a stand and didn't give him what he wanted, and I think he'll get most of it. But a lot of these groups, the shareholders, are rejecting it.
Will he quit? He'll quit, right? Presumably. Yeah, but you'd have to get over 50. These shareholder votes, sometimes they're non-binding. I haven't looked at the bylaws. But, for example, every year, Sir Martin Sorrell's pay package was rejected by the shareholders of WPP, and he was like, Honey Badger, don't give a shit. And then they'd go back and then the next 11 months of the year would click by and no one cared. But he cares.
If he loses, he's going to like stock off. I know, but he'll stock off. But these shareholder votes are typically non-binding. It's the board that is supposed to take them into consideration and the compensation committee, which by the way. I still maintain the hardest thing as a manager or the hardest thing for me, harder than clients, harder than hiring and firing, compensation. Compensation. It is so difficult to...
to figure out the right number, keep people motivated, be fair, have the money to manage the company. How much do you pay employees versus shareholders? It's really... So is he going to get this? I think he's going to get most of it.
I don't think he wants to give up the mantle at Tesla. Also, if he leaves, and I think he probably knows this, if this company starts trading like an automobile company, it loses 90% of his value and the majority of his net worth is in this company. Yeah, he's got to stay there. Stop whining.
So they both, quite frankly, it's a bit of a suicide pact. And that is the board knows if he leaves. Here's the good news for him. He's invaluable to the company. Here's the bad news. He's invaluable to the company. That's correct. And the majority of his net worth is tied up in Tesla. This board will do a symbolic haircut. They'll give him, you know, 50, 70, 80 percent of the trillion dollar potential upside he's asking for.
But this board, and I've seen this happen, they have made so much fucking money with this guy. They all want to name their first child after him. You know, these executives on the company... I mean, they're talented executives who— But they're not that talented. Yeah, I mean, they're probably people who are really good at what they do, had $3 or $5 million, and now they're buying fucking yachts because they met this crazy guy. Yeah, we're talking to you, Robin Denholm.
possibly the most egregious board chairman of history. But you made a lot of money. Good for you, Robin. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the latest tech earnings. We're going to run through them really quick. Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.
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Scott, we're back. It's time to do some rapid-fire highlights of the latest tech earnings. First up, Microsoft, the company's Azure cloud service. Our revenue jumped 40% in the quarter. Amazing. And the total revenue rose 18%. Shares are up around 2% as of the last five days of the taping.
Meta, the company, saw a 26% rise in sales year over year and net income of $2.7 billion. Impressive, but it still didn't meet expectations. Meta blamed the net income shortfall and one-time tax bill, but also warned... of growing capital expenditures and spending enormous amounts of money on AI. Shares are down 12% at the time of the taping. They got a real haircut there. Lastly, Alphabet, the Google parent company, saw a 16% jump in third quarter revenue, topping $100 billion in quarters.
Quarterly revenue for the first time, really impressive. Cloud revenue for the year rose 35% from last year, a little less than Microsoft's. Shares are up around 3% at the time of the taping. Anything sticking out? for you. And we'll note that earnings for Apple and Amazon are coming out after record today. By the way, Amazon's laying off 14,000 corporate workers as it invests more in AI.
But any thoughts on not, we'll talk about Apple and Amazon next week. But what do you think about these three, the three biggies? Nothing short of extraordinary. Advertising revenue at Meta up 26%. And you want to know why your employer is dying? CNN or your partner, CNN? Instagram video time was up 30%. Up 30%.
Much of that is me watching it, but go ahead. I hate to say this. I'm embarrassed to say this. People constantly ask me, what are your sources of news? And I always say, the BBC, the FT, and The Economist, which is all a fucking lie. But you do watch those.
I subscribe to them so I can signal. For me, they're self-expressive benefit. I read those, but go ahead. When I go to breakfast at the Crosby, I take my FT because I think it makes me look smarter than I am. And I barely read it because my eyes are going. And then I go back and I watch reels on. my phone and I watch the Geo Hussar or Justin Wolfers or a reel from some economist or our YouTube or David from or and these little two and three minute hits.
of really thoughtful people on YouTube and Instagram, that is now where I'm getting my news. Me too. I hate to admit it. You and I both. You and me both, sister. And they will take the best articles and they'll summarize them for them and they'll put someone better looking. to explain the article or more articulate. Remember when the New York Times started doing video about 10 years ago? It was like, oh my God, that guy writes so much more handsome than he is.
That's why they glowed up Ezra. They're trying to glow up Ross. duet, but that's impossible. When you find someone like Ezra, who's handsome and kind of dreamy in sort of a metrosexual way. He wasn't even close to this dreamy. They've glowed him up. Or like an Andrew Ross Sorkin, because. I worked with a lot of these journalists of The New York Times, and I'm like, Jesus Christ, swipe left a billion times. Yeah, yeah.
And then they put them on camera thinking everyone would want to talk to the journalist. And you're like, oh, God. No. Anyways. Anyway. Get back to the results. These are kids who are traumatized and found refuge at the school newspaper. All right, get back to the revenues. There's cloud revenues up, everything. The stocks are not that up. The stocks are sort of— Yeah, the people are anticipating this.
The CapEx at Meta, you got to give it to him. He is not afraid to make unbelievable investment. As a result, though, the operating margins fell to 40% from 48. CapEx reached... 38% of revenue. That is crazy. I mean, Apple, I think, is in the high single digits most of its life. Mark, I'm going to pay you a comment. You are a baller. I have to say, he's like, I'm going this way. He's not scared. That's what control is about. He has full control. that company so he can do whatever he wants.
He's arguably, he's one of the great business minds of the last 100 years. Unfortunately, he's done more damage to young people while making more money than almost any person in history. Thank you for noting that. Yeah. So, okay, their CapEx drew the harshest market reaction. He doesn't care. If you look at their valuation, it's up 25% year to date. It has some show me risks now, but for the most part, it's just.
unbelievable and can make these staggering investments. They have the cash flow alphabet. The thing that really struck me here, okay, cloud revenue, 34%, up 34%, net income up 33%. Their income up 16%. And all of this fear, this existential risk of AI is going to ruin the search business. The search business was up 15%. this quarter. Because they have a lot of AI embedded in it. It's not only growing, it's growing faster. The paid clicks increase 7% year on year.
I mean, Google Cloud backlog. I got to say, their AI is getting better, isn't it? When you search now on Google. They're like, no need to go to ChatGPT. Let me say, it was terrible and now it's good. I don't say it's as good. It's not as good as ChatGPT. It's not. It's not. Their Google Cloud backlog, which is basically business that they've signed up, was up 46% quarter on quarter, up 82% year on year.
Over 70% of existing cloud customers now use Google AI products, and the company signed more than a billion dollars in deals. this year than the prior two years combined it's also their cloud unlike the amazon cloud which aws has had a real issue with which was the which is still the number one by gross dollar volume but what gemini are
has done, which is really smart, is they have made it, quote unquote, the AI cloud. And it's become the preferred platform for AI workloads. Google offers AI startups $350,000 in cloud credits, access to its technical teams, and go-to-market support. nine out of the top
10 AI labs use Google's infrastructure. Can I make a note? Many years ago, when Amazon pulled forward in the cloud market, I had lunch with Sundar Pichai, who's the CEO, and I was like, you really missed the boat on this cloud thing.
And he was like, we did because we were using our cloud for our own search service, right? And he's like, we had so much business over here. We didn't pay attention. I'm like, you should go in a cloud. Like, you missed the cloud turn. And since then, I have to say, they have. Recovered rather nicely, I would say. And Microsoft.
A revenue on a big number up 18%. Azure, again, as goes the cloud, goes the stock in the company. Azure revenue, their cloud offering was up 39% year-on-year, topping Wall Street's 37% estimate. Azure remains the core growth driver for the company. He expects to double, Thatcher said he expects to double its data center footprint over the next two years.
These companies, there's just no getting around it. They're extraordinarily well run. Stocker seems flat. Do you think it's going to keep running up? Well, I've said this over and over. It was my big tech stock pick for 2025. It's up 62%. in the last 12 months. So I think it's, let me put it this way. The buying opportunity is over. It was trading at a PE of 17, which made no sense. And now I bet it's up in the high 20s. So I don't, you know, I don't, I don't like to make, let me say.
I was a buyer last year. I'm not a buyer right now. I'm not a seller either, but I'm not a buyer right now. It's come up. It was undervalued a year ago because of the quote-unquote exercise. Everyone thought... within a year open ai that google search and it had gone from like 99 91 to 89 everyone thought it was going to go to 50. it hasn't
Google search gets 96 times the traffic of ChatGPT. It's big. It's big. And they've managed to be, you know, credit to apparently Sergey Brin spending a lot more time there. Credit to them for. coming back from that or making certain that they didn't get their lunch eaten. In any case, last thing, CNN has launched its new subscription streaming service. The service will be like, quote, close sibling of CNN's cable product offering access.
select live programming for $6.99 a month. It's not really CNN Blue. How is it any different? Exactly. How is it any different? It's not. It's not. Except now it's Zaslav and Mark Thompson's idea? It's CNN. Remember when it was Plu and I said, how can you have CNN Plus without CNN? This has CNN. Oh, okay. Yeah.
That's it. They have to do this. Seven bucks a month and subscribers will be able to access. My idea, and this was an idea that I said, you should have a bug on CNN Plot on their streaming thing where you're just live streaming. live cnn and mark thompson implement this is typically what happens with managers you have one you have a business that works and you think that's the playbook for the rest of your life
And he, to Mark Thompson's credit, he moved the company, he moved New York Times from an ad-based model to not an entirely subscription-based model. But the stock run-up in the New York Times, which has been strong, not exceptional, but stock, was largely because the revenue mix. move much more to subscription under the leadership of Mark Thompson. The problem is it just may be
Too late. CNN is struggling, even in comparison with other dying cable news networks. In the September primetime slot, get this, Fox News averaged 2.5 million viewers. That's flat. MSNBC... 810,000, down 43%. And CNN averaged 543,000, down 36%. And in the coveted 25 to 54-year-old demo, which is all advertised. The people buying their product, advertisers, they only care about people 25 to 54. Fox News averaged 280,000 in the core demo, down 14%. CNN averaged, get this, Cara.
87,000. Yeah, we're bigger. I know. And MSNBC averaged 68,000. If you look at our downloads plus our video views, we're averaging, I think, around 350,000 or 400,000. 60 to 70 percent. of our listeners are in the core demo. So we're getting about 150 or 200,000 in the core demo versus MSNBC and CNN at 68 and 87. Our tiny little selves. We have like six. We can fit everyone around a table. We did fit everyone around a table.
And I flew back with Van Jones last night, and he said something really interesting. He said, is bringing on people, encouraging them to yell at each other such that it gets clipped and goes on social and goes viral. Yeah, which makes more money. Which we know. But what he said that I thought was really insightful, he said, just two years ago, occasionally we would make... news live. Something would happen live on the program
that would make news and change things. Instead, it's like, how do we get this shit on Reels and on TikTok? And then it starts having an impact. They're all just essentially a content creation machine hoping to get... to clear the hurdle such that it goes viral on one of these platforms. He is not a moneymaker, that's for sure. I don't think they'll sell many of these, I gotta say. I don't know.
I think it's all like, look, they're all going to get bought up altogether, whether it's Comcast or David Ellison. It's a trophy property, though. You know, Nepo money, which is fine. There's got to be a Nepo billionaire who's a Democrat who's going to want CNN and be willing to pay for it. unless Ellison gets it, and then it just disappears. But what about a guy like Michael Bloomberg? Why wouldn't he buy CNN?
He's been a great steward of Bloomberg News. He's moderate. He has the money. I don't know. I just I don't think they're really big businesses. That's all. I think they're little businesses. Anyway, one more quick break and we'll be back for predictions. If it seems like AI is touching just about every part of your life these days, you aren't imagining things.
It's all up in your streaming services, it's all up in your job search, and now it's even in your doctor's office. It can perform exceptionally well, kind of almost in a superhuman way, on these specific, very challenging, complex clinical cases. This week on Explain It To Me, When AI Meets Medicine. And I think it can be potentially revolutionary and transformative for people if they use it in the right way. And when it doesn't compute.
One in five, around 20% of Americans said that they had turned to a chatbot for advice that later turned out to be incorrect. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Net Worth and Chill, we're joined by Marina LaRude, the powerhouse founder and CCO of LaRude, the luxury footwear brand that's redefining accessible luxury. From conceiving the idea during an RV road trip with her husband to winning the FN.
AA 2024 Brand of the Year Award, Marina's journey from Teen Vogue fashion director to building her own empire is nothing short of inspiring. Marina gets candid about the money mindset shift from executive to entrepreneur, how she's scaling internationally while maintaining and turning your corporate expertise into entrepreneurial gold. Listen wherever you... get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff.
Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. What's your prediction? I predict we're going to have a great tour coming up. It's one more week. That's right. And by the way, I predict your book is going to be at the top of the New York Times bestseller. Very generous. Thank you for signing out. By the way, can I just make an insight? before you start. The back cover, is that your back cover that you sent?
That is wonderful. It's a picture of Scott as a teenager. I don't know how old you are, 12, 13, 14, 13. And you, and I love, I thought it was both Amanda and I were like, wow, that was really good. Oh, thank you. I didn't see the back cover. I love it. I love it.
It's all Catherine Dillon. My partner for the last 15 years in business has been a professor of the arts at the Tisch School named Catherine Dillon, and she's a creative. Well done, Catherine. She teaches visual design, and she's essentially run...
my companies. In addition to being a great manager, everything we do just has a certain level of aesthetic strength. It's very touching, actually. It's very hard to pull that off, but it was very touching. Thank you. So, look, my prediction is the following. AI is now absolutely the equivalent of corporate Ozempic. And that is what Ozempic or GLP-1 drugs do is they turn off the switch, kind of the instinctual switch that if there's food in front of you, you need to keep eating.
And I hadn't realized how obvious or how linear, when you're on a board and the CEO is planning the next year and trying to get approval on CapEx and hiring, he or she will come in and say, Our plan is to grow revenues 8%. And that means we're going to grow our headcount 6% because that'll increase profits by 8% or 12%. And there was always a correlation. And if they came in and said, business is tough, I think revenues are going to be down.
8% next year, then okay, we need to lay off between 6% and 12%. So the corporate growth number, the hunger, if you will, was always matched by how much calories you were going to intake or get rid of. And then... Meta said using AI for better targeting, they announced what I still believe is one of the most seminal earnings quarters in history. They said, okay, we grew 20%. I'm sorry, we grew 23% last year.
with 20% fewer people. So there's this entirely different gestalt in corporate America, especially among information age companies that says, wait, just because I'm growing? doesn't necessarily mean I need to eat more, I don't need more calories, I don't need more people, as a matter of fact. I may be able to pull off the ultimate gangster move for shareholders here. I'm not saying it's good for society, is that I can grow while reducing my headcount. So Amazon announced.
that they were doing a restructuring, 30,000 corporate job cuts, roughly 10% of its white collar workforce to, they say they're aiming to reduce bureaucracy. Do you realize that Amazon has said on the retail unit that they think They can maintain the same level of top-level revenue, or they can double their top-line revenue by 2032 or 2033 while maintaining the same headcount. That's insane. That's insane. So I think the corporate ozempicking of AI is already...
The number of managers dropped 6.1% between May 2022 and May 25, while executive-level roles fell 4.6%. The average supervisor now manages six direct reports, double the number five years ago, and Amazon isn't the only one. Meta cut 600 workers inside its AI division. Salesforce eliminated 4,000 support roles. Chegg reduced staff by 45%. Klarna downsized 40%. Duolingo plans to replace contractors with AI. Target.
1,800 people, Paramount, 1,000, Intel, 24,000, Nestle, 16,000, all announced reductions. And so some of this is a bit misleading because these companies went on a hiring spree after the pandemic, but these... These moves are still pretty big. And as the market normalizes, more workers are now moving down the ladder. 17% of workers who changed employers saw a pay cut in 2024. That's up from 15% in 2023.
The share of job changers taking a pay cut was even higher for tech, 18%, managers 22%, and managers transitioning to individual contributor roles was 32%. The hard part is who's next. So I have some companies that I think are going to announce multi-thousand person layoffs. And I did a screen here. I spent some time on this. Etsy, Pinterest, Apple, Airbnb, PayPal, and HubSpot.
I believe, and this is my prediction, along with a raft of other information age darlings, are going to announce 1,000 to 10,000 to 15,000 person layoffs in the next 90 days. Oh, wow. That's a big one. In that vein, I'm going to have to be laying you off, Scott.
I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. Scott AI. I knew it was coming. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that. I love that. That's a great one. That's a great prediction. And just to add on this, this has real societal implications because unfortunately. What you have is one of the greatest threats to democracies right now is that the ratio of young people who are productive and pay more than their fair share of taxes is getting...
flipped upside down in terms of its ratio to old people who are unproductive and don't pay their fair share. And without, it used to be 12 to one workers to social security recipients. Now it's three to one. And if it goes much lower than that, we're not going to have the money. 40% of our entire budget now goes to payments for seniors.
Unfortunately, our tax code encourages in our stock market, which drives everything, is now encouraging people to hire robots, not people. And the thing about robots, Kara, they don't pay Social Security or payroll taxes. Yeah, we're going to tax them. We've got to tax them. We've got to tax the robots.
Start taxing robots. That was a Bill Gates idea. Can I just say, in this nature of what you're saying, is I sent... Alex is doing great in school, and he's a mechanical engineer. I think he'll be just fine, but... I sent him the note about GM laying off a whole bunch of people, too, in the EV area, largely because of the tax credits.
Etc. He goes, I love how all young people are being outcompeted by experienced workers and AI. So there is a zero opportunity for even the most qualified. Do you think we are totally cooked as a generation? Which was an interesting, and he'll do fine is the thing. But it was an interesting thing for him to write, I thought. Yeah, but this is, what you have is labor and opportunity and equality. And that is, your son is frighteningly bright. He's big, he's strong.
And he's going to graduate from Michigan with a degree in computer science. No, it's mechanical engineering. Okay, even better. Which basically means when you show up from Michigan with a degree in mechanical engineering. I don't care if you're interviewing at Warner Brothers or Google, they just want you. Because the assumption is, this kid is really curious and really smart and really hardworking. There's no way of faking mechanical engineering in Michigan.
There's no way of, they're going to go, oh, he's a Nepo baby. His glasses are so hard. He's a Nepo baby. I recognize that name. But he's clearly one of these kids who, despite being born a Nepo baby, is really hardworking and really smart. Let me tell you, I don't help him at all. He's so brilliant.
But I'm just saying, but that's his mentality. Like, you know what I mean? Like a lot of younger people, even someone as qualified as Alex is worried. They're worried. But this is, this is the reality. A kid like that. garners a disproportionate amount of wealth at a young age. There's more opportunity for Alex is in the 1%. There's never been a better time to be a 20 or 22-year-old in the top 1%. There's never been a worse time to be in the bottom 90.
And that is the kids who come out of a decent school, but not a great school, but had a lot of student debt and are good, but not great. A lot of us, I would have been fucked. I was not especially impressive at 22. And I got a job at Morgan Stanley because I lied about my grades and talked my way and I'm a good interviewer and I rode crew and the guy who ran the fixed income department rode crew. But in this age,
If you don't have your shit together, if you're not one of the top 1%, and the problem is we all dilute ourselves into thinking our kids are in the top 1%, and I can prove to every parent 99% of our children are not in the top 1%. So the inequality. I say this in my class. It's never been easier to be a billionaire. I say, look around. My classes are 160 kids. Two or three of you are going to be billionaires through tech, alternative investments. I said, but unfortunately...
There's probably about 10 or 15 of you who are going to be living with your parents at 30. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's hope Alex is one of those billionaires because then I will live high on the hog. I go to Korea a lot for treatment. He promised me he'd buy me a house with a roller coaster if he got really rich, which I'm very excited for. i was not expecting that anyway we have to move on
Because guess what? I'm going to be interviewing Scott Galloway really soon. That's right. Talk about his book. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.
We're in the Karen Scott universe. Gosh, you interviewed someone you made fun of on 60 Minutes recently. This week on Prof G. Markets, Scott spoke with Andrew Ross Sorkin about his new book, 1929, Inside the Greatest Crash. I'm just making fun of Leslie Stahl, not Andrew. Well, all right. Street history and how it shattered a nation. Let's listen to a clip from our favorite Canadian. The truth is that, you know, over time, the market goes up.
You know, a lot of people, by the way, since this book came out, they said, oh, Andrew, you know, you're calling for a crash. It's all going to end terribly. What are you saying? And the truth is that you can have all the Cassandras in the room, you know, saying the sky is going to fall. But over time.
things have gone up. And I do think that's worth noting because being a professional optimist has been a better business than being a professional skeptic, again, over time. Covering his ass on that one. He's actually pretty... Bold, though. He's not afraid to make statements about CNBC. Yeah, no, I love it. First, I want Andrew to run for mayor of New York. And two, I want Andrew to be the trustee for my estate. I think he's just such an honorable, smart, nice man.
It's a great book. I have it. It's really terrific, actually. I love those historical books. We love Andrew. We love you, Andrew. It took him seven years. We love you. We want you to father all our children. Well, imagine he does all this while maintaining a status as an undercover operative for the Canadian intelligence. That's correct. I mean, it's really impressive he's able to balance all this.
Yep, and he does all the pick up and drop off at preschool. Anyway, speaking of Canada, we're going on tour. We are sold out in Toronto, Boston, and San Francisco, but we still have just a... I think a few tickets in D.C., not very many. Some in New York. It's a big...
place and LA and Chicago. Please visit pivot tour.com for tickets, especially in Chicago. It's a very big venue. We've got a big venue because you're such big shoulder people, but come see us there. Okay. That's the show. Thanks for listening to pivot and be sure. to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus-Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher.
Ernie Unitot engineered this episode. Manala Moreno edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Severo, and Dan Shalon. Nishat Kauras, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. 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 later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. I'll see you in a few hours.