B (3:36)

So, I mean, I think it's, you know, often when, at least over the past couple of years, given the AI fiasco as you're talking about, obviously people have been sort of mentioning Tim Cook and retirement in the same breath with the notion that it's a negative thing, right? Like that maybe it's time for him to go because, yeah, they've missed the boat on AI. Like, is he really positioning the company to be successful going forward? You know, if you believe that this is the most sort of fundamental technology shift, certainly since probably the iPhone, you know, you could argue that, that Apple's not positioned well right now. But the flip side, as you're alluding to here, is starting to take hold right where it's. It's looking now. Like, you know, you hear more and more talk about Apple, unknown timetables for when certainly AGI is coming, or super intelligence or whatever we want to call it these days, this week. But also just, you know, the usefulness of AI. You and I have talked about this a lot, right? Like, what are people actually on day to day and especially in. In personal settings, but also in work. Right. Like there are use cases for sure. But how much is this fundamentally altering businesses right now and altering the bottom lines of these businesses? And I think you Know these, these narratives seem to ebb and FL now we're in a period where Apple in a weird way is benefiting from again not having spent the insane numbers on Capex that all of their main competitors are. And so I think that the market has, you know, sort of started to smile upon that. And so yeah, that's, that's sort of the argument for like why on the positive side this could be a good time actually for Tim Cook to go because you could argue that they might not be in a better position as a company as good as they're about to be after the, you know, future earnings. As you note, he, they already guided that it would be record earnings. And so if those are in fact those numbers are hits in the next quarter, you know, they're all, all time high. Holiday quarter, those are always the best time of year for Apple. Like you could make the case that this would be sort of the most opportune time for him to go personally if he's thinking about going anytime soon anyway, which you have to believe he is. He's 65 years old. Like these are natural discussions that you have. Certainly as a board they have fiduciary responsibility to have this. They've talked about, they have a succession plan, talked about exactly who it is. But everyone knows that they have a plan in place right now as they must as a big company, as one of the most important companies in the world. And so again, just looking at all of those factors, I think that he has to be at least thinking about it in his head and thinking about the timing of it. You know, you could say like, oh well, he's not, he's not vain in that way or whatnot. But everyone is legacy. This is his, this is his literal legacy and he's been with the company forever. He wants to leave it on, you know, the best terms I think possible. And, and it should be noted like many people have noted this, I've talked about this in past German. Mark Gurman has noted this, John Gruber has noted this. I don't think Tim Cook is actually going to leave leave. I think he would become, yeah like chairman especially because I think it's Art Levinson is right now the chairman and he's hit that unofficial but official sort of 75 year age bracket where basically that's when Apple for whatever reason historically has asked, you know, senior people to step down. And so Cook can slot right in there and that would give him a nice 10 year run as, as potential executive chair.

A (6:59)

Yeah, I think this is Very real. And there's a reason why I decided to lead with this today is because, you know, we may just be what seems like a rumor in the newspaper, but then you look a level deeper and you see that there's, there's actual movement here. So first of all, the FT put like what, four reporters on this story. It's not like, yeah. And published it that way. So clearly they had some very good intel on Cook's decision to move. And it wasn't just like a story about how Cook is going to leave. It was about how Apple has ramped up succession planning. Then the other indication here is that Jeff Williams, the Chief Operating Officer of Apple, just retired. I think it was last week or two weeks ago. And it reminds me very much of what happened at Amazon where Jeff Wilkie, who is basically seen, who's basically seen as the number two to Bezos, he was the CEO of Worldwide Consumer, he leaves fairly abruptly, right? And now retrospectively, it's very clear what happened. There was a decision, Bezos was going to leave and these two executives who had been waiting in the wings about, you know, ready to become the CEO, the next CEO of Amazon, both probably made their case to Bezos. One was Wilkie, one was Jassy, and Andy Jassy won out. And Wilkie's departure was about a clear, a signal as, as you'll ever get that something was up and Bezos was going to leave. That's how I'm reading the Williams departure here. I think he was probably up against some people internally, realized he wasn't going to get the nod and decided to retire. He's, he has plenty of money, so he's going to have a nice retirement. But between that departure and this mega byline story in the FT, I could see Tim Cook realistically leaving in Q1 in 2026. I think that's a real thing.

B (8:44)

So the only push I would give on the, on the Williams thing in particular is that, you know, as you know, as everyone has noted in these pieces, the weird thing there, the dynamic there is that he's only a very little bit younger than Tim Cook. And so it would be sort of set up a weird situation where if Tim Cook were to step down as CEO and hand the reins off to someone who's a year younger than him, like what's the real long term viability of that? Right? Like you could say, sure, maybe he does run it for 10 years or whatnot. But I always think that that was sort of an interesting dynamic at play and certainly Before I think before Mark Gurman, I think it was last year, sort of first throughout the name John Ternus, most people did assume that, that you know, the COO Williams would end up being the next in line. That's historically how Apple's done it, right. Tim Cook was COO before under Steve Jobs and then he stepped in there. And so when he was appointed, when William, when Jeff Williams was appointed coo, the idea was that he was sort of the de facto era parents. That's not to say that that was necessarily the case. I mean I haven't seen a lot of reporting on this, but again, I sort of view that that age difference as, as one thing. But I also think it was interesting that they had him sort of over time oversee different things. Like famously the Apple Watch was the thing that he seemed to, to be sort of, you know, spearheading and the thing that he would present often in, in the, in the, you know, yearly presentations and whatnot. So while he clearly ran operations per his title, like I do think that it was sort of interesting the way that he was set up internally. And so I'm not sure. All I'm saying is I'm not sure that it was like a signal of him leaving is necessarily the, the white smoke billowing out of, out of Cupertino that they've picked a new CEO. I just think that that was sort of a natural recog. It wasn't going to happen. And I think probably people realize that for the past few years that that wasn't likely to be the case. We can talk through some of the other candidates because there's many people what part of the problem I think that Apple's had over these years dating to talking about the AI stuff in particular is how long tenured the people have been. And that's not just about age. It's about like how in, you know, in the mind of Apple they are like it's hard to sort of see outside when you've been inside for that long. And Turnus is, is the youngest of that group, but he's in that, that mold too. But anyway, so I think, you know, the thing is a little bit different here, but I hear you like certainly that did, that was the case with Amazon and when you were talking about it, that also reminds me sort of of Disney over the years, right. Like they've historically had also COOs who have, who have departed. I think Kevin Mayer comes to mind as one and there have been a number of others, I think Tom Stags who also ended up Working with Kevin Mayer, I think together on a project were two of the people who were viewed to be sort of the, the top internal candidates. And then they obviously didn't get it. And that's an interesting analogy too because that, to the time when, when Bob Iger tried to step back and handed over the reins and it didn't work out and he ended up having to come back. And so I think someone like Tim Cook, who's obviously close with, with Bob Iger, close with Disney, has to look at that situation the way that that was handed off and really wants to avoid that. It was a little bit of a extenuating circumstance because of COVID times. Right. I think no one, no one could have known that the entire, all of Disney would get thrown into disarray in the way that it had. But there was a lot of question marks of whether Bob Chapek, the guy who he chose at that time was the right person. But I think to your, to your exact point, like once he got picked, a bunch of other people sort of, yeah, stepped back. And so I think Apple is looking at all of this stuff when it comes to the succession planning.

A (12:15)

Right. And for Cook, I totally hear you. There's a desire, there will be a desire to go out on top. I think that's why you're seeing this rumbling. And he would especially want to do it before one of two things happens. One is sort of the AI trade because one of these two is going to happen, right. The AI trade is going to fall apart and it's going to put the market into a fairly deep correction or two, it's going to work and Apple's going to look, you know, far behind. Right.

B (12:40)

Which is worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And that's totally your first point is, is a good one because, you know, we're talking about, we just mentioned like Apple's in a good spot from a stock perspective right now and sort of getting rewarded for not having all the, the capex spend that all of their rivals are. But if the market does correct, Apple's not going to, you know, be immune to it. They might do. I think, I think that they would do better if the correction was caused by, you know, AI concern about AI spend. Certainly I think that they would, they would hold up better, but they're not going to hold up, you know, just fine. And that would not be a good time for, for Tim Cook to step away, you know, with the stock down 20, 30% or whatever from, from all time highs.

A (13:18)

Yeah. So if you're Looking for the perfect place to leave. And you're Tim Cook again. I think Q1 might be it. I'm not again, like, we'll see what happens, but it would be a good time. And now I wonder, how do we judge Tim Cook in particular? Does it end when he, when he steps down or does it end when Apple does run into that rough road that is inevitably going to come for it? You know, again, either the AI downturn or lacking its AI works and it's lacking in capabilities. I mean, Cook has obviously done a good job with the company. He's grown it from a few hundred billion dollars to 4 trillion today. The other side of it is, I think as a CEO, you're also judged by how you leave the place by, by the, you know, Steve Jobs, for instance, to continue on the Apple front left Tim Cook with a roadmap really. And Cook crushed it. But what road map does Tim Cook leave Apple with if he leaves in Q1 and if Apple does continue to lag behind and suffer on the AI front, is that a ding on kick on Tim Cook's legacy even if he's not there?

B (14:23)

Yeah, that, and that was one that I didn't even mention this in, in the piece, but I do think there was some talk maybe a year ago or so that the one thing Cook was really focused on internally. There was, there was a couple reports to this, to this. Not that the one thing he was focused on right now or at the time was, was really meeting the market for what Metta has done with the, with the Ray Bans. And so he was sort of going all in on trying to make that potentially his last big product unveiled because as we know, the Vision Pro just hasn't sort of, you know, lit the world on fire. Obviously there's, there's really nothing to show right now for on the AI front. And you know, that the new iPhones, those continue just the current model that's, that's been, you know, playing out over the past 15, 20 years. And so is there new product that he can sort of go out with a bang on and you know, there was some inkling again that, that he might think that the glasses are a thing. I sort of discount that a little bit now because I just view like, yeah, they can make like a nice product with that, but I don't think it's going to be, you know, an overnight game changer for Apple where it would like necessitate, you know, postponing a good time for retirement necessarily. Right. And to your point, like of leaving sort of the cupboard stocked as it were. Like if, if he has sort of this, yeah, this pipeline of new products coming out. There's also some, you know, apparently some AI related products, you know, home, home interactive products, mounted iPad type devices and robotic arms and things like that. If he has some of that pipeline lined up for whoever steps in that. Also much of that pipeline does point again to why John Ternus might make sense as a lot of it is hardware focused. But I also think that that's a point that goes back to another post that I'd written recently. Feels like, it feels like Apple now and I think the stock market is also sort of learning this a bit. Like they are not pivoting, but they have sort of reoriented the messaging at least around like look for as bad as they sort of whiffed on AI, there is no company that's in a better position from a consumer hardware perspective than Apple still. Right. And so Google tries, Microsoft tries, all these companies try. And no one can sort of hold a candle to Apple when it comes to certainly consumer hardware. But you could argue hardware in general, like at businesses, you know, lots, so many Macs and everything. And so again, if he has set the company up for that to be the thing that they're going to double down on hardware and everything, that sets it up well for someone like John Ternus if he steps in and you know, becomes the new CEO.

A (16:56)

Well, let me give the devil advocate, the devil's advocate position on Turnus here. I don't, I don't think it's the right choice. He's the SVP of hardware engineering. You are a company that, yes, you've doubled down on the hardware side of things and it's working out really well. But if you look into the future, the future of Apple is going to depend on I think two really important things. Well, I mean, I guess the given. So let's say three. The given is that it has to keep, you know, producing great phones. The, the second, I don't, I don't want to say that's the easiest of the three, but it might be because people are used to the iPhone. The second of those three things is to continue to grow the services business, which has become sort of the thing that underpins Apple's valuation because it gives them this software multiple as a hardware company. Right. Basically investors see it as something that you can continue to make money from people after you sell them at the phone. Therefore you're worth more money on the stock market.

B (17:51)

And number three, to that point I would just add that at some point in, I think I've tried to model it out and I've had ChatGPT model it out for me. I think at some point in the next decade services will pass the iPhone as the largest business for Apple. Just to the exact point.

A (18:05)

Yeah. And then number three, just piggybacking on services. It's going to be navigating this AI thing. AI is not going away like just because Apple is in a good position now and you have to give it credit. Right. It's, it's obviously gone and, and worked a great strategy for this present moment. That AI shift is going to change. We have, you know, Sam Altman and Johnny I've working on a new device and you know, is it going to be the, the God device and replace the phone? Maybe not. But you'll find Apple trailing in categories that it didn't expect to trail in. Smart glasses for. Meta is a perfect example. Right. They're catching up to Meta Meta on their second product here. You know, obviously the Metaverse didn't work out, but the smart glasses seem like a real deal. So do you want to pick someone from hardware engineering for that or do you want to put somebody from the services side or from a more software background to run the company after Cook?

B (18:54)

So this one's a little trickier to talk to. First of all, I don't know, you know, I've met a lot of Apple executives. I've not met John Ternus, so I can't really, I can't speak from personal knowledge. Not that I would know him that well anyway. But like. So all I'm going off of is the reporting here. All the reporting and everything you hear from people who've worked at Apple, they do you don't you rarely. I don't think I've ever heard a negative word about him, which is good. There can be a, you know, flip side to that, which is, you know, that, that maybe he's, he's not like a great wartime CEO or something like that if he were to be put in that place. But again, that's all, that's all. Just trying to extrapolate out what, what there could be a downside, scenarios.

A (19:32)

Rem.

B (19:32)

When, when Cook took over there were many, many concerns about him taking over for Steve Jobs because he famously isn't a product guy. Right. He ran operations and there was a lot of talk of like, well, does this mean innovation is dead at Apple? And I mean now, you know, all these years later, 15 plus years later you could say, like, as you just did, like, basically, like, look, Steve Jobs left a great, a great roadmap for Cook to execute on. And he executed on just about probably better than any single person on earth could have. And, and I think that, you know, that's, that's why the company is valued as it is right now. And he took the iPhone to a completely new heights and brought in services and all of that. But you could also argue, like, as the operations guy, he was just good at knowing what to execute. And it went from doing the, you know, the supply chains and all that that he had been focused on to doing the entire company. And so the question then for Tertis would be a similar thing. Like, like, look, he's, he's been at the company, I think, for something like 25 years, like almost half of his life, which is wild. And the question is then, like, is all of that internal knowledge and institutional knowledge that he's built up, does that allow him to be in, you know, the, the right place, right time to basically, yeah, continue not only executing on the stuff that, that Cook has been able to sort of orchestrating the entire company and stepping up one level to go from just, you know, orchestrating all of hardware. And obviously he's leveled up throughout the years to, to, to be able to take on new responsibilities. And that's, you have to believe that that's a big part of the reason why they think that he's potentially the guy to be able to do this now. But to your point, it's the new stuff that's, that's going to be the key to it. It's the AI, it's any new devices that come in. And Cook, you know, did a great job stewarding Apple, but would we say that he's done a great job with the new device stuff? I mean, the Apple Watch, certainly, I think is, is, you know, a bonafide hit at this point point. But it's not something that's at the iPhone level, certainly. And you could argue that that's totally unfair, that nothing was ever going to be at that level. But, you know, he's had a few swings and I think he, he, they've taken a while, but he hit with the Apple Watch and missed as of right now with Vision Pro. And then services obviously came up under him. He was right to focus on that. But it's largely like Eddie Q, from all accounts, who's in charge of that. Right. And so, you know, he tasked the right lieutenant with doing it, and that's Exactly. It sounds like what Turnus is going to do and that just speaks to okay so say Turnus is elevated to be CEO who's in charge of AI. Like they need someone in charge right now. It's been John Gandria. I think everyone if everything you read is basically like similar to the the Yan Lecun's situation at Meta. Like it sort of feels like the writings on the wall there. Like he will probably not be there for for very much longer unless he were to fully step into just a full on research thing which is what Lacun did right for a long time him before he stepped back. And so who actually steps in to lead this? And that's why you and I have long talked about the the M A side of things. And it's like I, I still think the biggest argument to be made for Apple doing some M and A there is just to get the right team and leadership in place to sort of shift that mentality because that will be key to turn us. If you believe that AI is is one of those three pillars as you note like who is actually leading that. Is it Federighi? Can he step up and do it it in in full? You know, is it Mike Rockwell who came over it sounds like from from Vision Pro to be able to step in to try to correct the series stuff like is it one of those people or is it some from the outside? I tend to believe it has to be someone again from the outside just because of how new and how different this is. And it's not. It seems unlikely that it would be an Apple lifer who sort of is the one to best corral AI. But you know, maybe that we'll see how that how they are thinking about that.

A (23:13)

Okay then lastly on Apple or maybe second to last because I want to talk about the phones before we end the segment but let's just talk about this argument that Apple was wise for not you know, plowing a lot of money into experimental large language model research that may not pay off for them. I have been skeptical of that argument. It's like you don't want to you know, sort of pat somebody on the back for like not giving their best shot at at you know, trying to develop the next level cutting edge technology. However, the other side of it is maybe as we've seen, you know, we saw Google overtake OpenAI in some areas and Apple's going to partner with Google. Maybe you do need to hand it to them and say you know what, not everybody needs to develop their own LLM and they won't have as much control, but their, their costs look a lot better and it's ultimately about productizing this technology, not building the fundamental layer itself. I mean that seems like the best argument for Apple in this case. What do you feel about that?

B (24:17)

I think it's a great point and I, I mean in my head I sort of think that that one part, that partnership with Google in particular is what is leading to the sort of resurgence. Obviously we know Google stock itself is, is, is resurgent on the back, it sounds like, you know, mainly of Gemini 3, but I think that Apple's resurgent in part because I think the market not only is recognizing, you know, the hardware side of the story again and not dinging them for, for the capex spend like they are with Meta and a few other players right now, but it's also again that they're, they recognize the problem that they had and they were able to buy these reports, you know, nothing official yet, but recognize that they could make the best partnership possible with Google who is obviously their longtime partner when it comes to search. And, and once that basically partnership got the okay, you know, the de facto okay from the Justice Department to keep going, I think, you know, they basically, you know, from again the reporting, they, they were able to figure out a way to, to work out a new deal where if Gemini is powering, you know, the new Siri that they launch early next year, that seems like sort of the best of both worlds, right? You got the best hardware and now all of a sudden you have the best AI powering what has been the historic weak point of, of Apple's operating system. And certainly going forward, if you believe again in, in any part of the AI narrative, like if they have what is considered now, if not the best, you know, in the top two sort of models for running all of AI, certain consumer facing AI, then Apple's well positioned to do that. And you, as you're, as you're noting, you can make an argument that by sitting back and waiting sort of, they ultimately made the right decision. Now the question still I think is going forward, is that the right decision? And this is why I've long thought like in a similar vein to the Apple Maps scenario, which hopefully not executed to the same way. But I think that they, they learned their lesson the hard way that time. But I do think that they'll continue to work on their own models internally and then, then you know, they can. But this Gemini potential partnership allows them, buys them a lot of time to basically be able to swap in their models and they don't have to do it in even a big one fell swoop. They could just, you know, more and more sort of do these, these piecemeal, you know, swaps and, and take on more responsibility with their own internal stuff. And you know, as long as they can continue to massage that relationship with Google to be okay with, with that sort of interesting dynamic, then, and you're right, they're in a good spot if these reports end up being accurate.

A (26:55)

Okay, so lastly, on Apple Cyber Monday, of course we're in the middle of what we said at the beginning is going to be the best quarter in Apple history. And if it isn't, that's going to. Maybe it really is time for Tim Cook to retire. But a lot of people are probably out there thinking, hey, do I want to upgrade to this new iPhone 17? We also know that the iPhone Air is basically a massive flop there. They cut back production dramatically. It doesn't seem like they're working on a next edition. So I am just curious to hear your perspective. Do you have the 17? What's, what model do you have? You've been enjoying it. And what do you think people should be keeping in mind as they think about making their holiday purchase? And I'm saying this somewhat, you know, from a position of self interest because I have the 15 Pro. I really like it. I thought I was gonna skip the 17 but man, I'm leaning towards going out and upgrading.

B (27:47)

Yeah. So I got the 17 Pro Max. I can hold it up here. I got the special orange one.

A (27:54)

Nice. Yeah.

B (27:57)

It'S a great looking phone. I, I thought the, the color would be a little weird given how orange it is, but I love it. I think it's great. And I, I was always going to be though a pro and in particular a pro Max guy because I care most about battery life and, and that's obviously a big ding against the air itself, right? Like that you need the extra battery, the battery pack add on to be able to sort of get full battery life capacity out of the device. I think, you know, Apple now has a sort of a track record of trying to launch these new sort of adjacent arms of the iPhone, dating back to even the iPhone 5C if you remember that. Like right, that was the first colorful iPhone and it looked very pretty, but it just didn't seem to sell very well. And so they only had sort of one, one go of it. And then, you know, fast forward a bit. They obviously tried to reintroduce the iPhone Mini after A lot of people seem to be clamoring for that. But again by, by most accounts that you hear and, and obviously played out in the fact that Apple discontinued it. Like these just weren't selling very well. And you might say like the iPhone plus lineup was also in that camp. But it's basically like Apple keeps trying to do these adjacent new arms of the iPhone and for whatever reason they just don't take hold. I think the iPhone air in particular was always going to be weird. I mean I wrote about this well before when it was still just rumored that I felt like it would be sort of a weird in a way in between phone because it's not the highest of the high end of the iPhone, right. And it's not the cheapest, most affordable as Apple would prefer. We say version of the iPhone and so it sort of sits in the middle. Yes. It sort of looks nice and it feels nice in hand and you know, I don't have one but I used it in store and it's a great feeling. Phone but it's again sits in this weird spot. It's like too, too expensive to be sort of a mass consumer, you know, device I think. And it's not fast enough and doesn't have the battery life and the camera system that sort of, you know, would be I think required now table stakes for the top of the line. And so they just put it in this weird position. I do think it was interesting that they, they sort of tied it more directly to like the pro lineup. Right. It has a faster chip and, and sort of, they're trying to angle it that way. But again I, I view it as this like awkward in between device right now. And you know, whether or not it was actually delayed, I think that there's no question that if it was a major hit that Apple would be moving heaven and earth try to get a second iteration out there. Right. Like if it was as popular as, as the MacBook Air became. Right. Like Apple has famously held on to that branding because they, that device is so popular and they were able to do that. But I, I, I'll say that and then I say it the same in the same breath that the iPhone, the MacBook Air did not start out as super popular. Right. It started out as a way too expensive sort of, yeah, cool demo with, with Steve Jobs pulling it out of the envelope and, and all of that. And so it had to work its way into that. And so maybe Apple thinks that they can do that again with the, with the iPhone air but as of Right now, Now it just hasn't taken off, obviously, is the way.

A (31:01)

Okay, so you, like, what I hear you saying here is, is you like the 17, no looking back on that one.

B (31:07)

Oh, yeah, yeah. So the 17 Pro and the Pro Max version that I have, but even the Pro regular, the smaller version is just, it's, you know what, it's the fastest one. It's got the best camera, it's got the best battery life. Like, and if you're two, two or two generations back, I would definitely upgrade it if I'm, if I'm you.

A (31:26)

Okay, well, here I go. After this, make my trudge my way over to the app, the Apple Store and say, once again, can I ask.

B (31:32)

You one, one tangential question that you hit upon, but we didn't really talk through because I'm interested in your perspective. So you noted that the FT report that talked about Tim Cook retiring had four reporters on it. When I read that and I saw that it's like a 300 word piece and I'm just like, okay, so either these four reporters all talk to the same source and they all have like, like and they just all decided to work together on this thing, or they have four different sources, or they have three different, you know, some mixture of different sources on this. But like, you've worked in a newsroom. I've worked in a newsroom way back in the day and TechCrunch was a little bit sort of different, much more independent, I would say, than independent operator than, than sort of working newsroom style. And so I'm curious, like, when you see that, what, what is, what does that signal to you?

A (32:15)

Typically, the way those big byline stories work is one reporter who may or may not be the main beat reporter gets the tip and then three people who are, you know, and, and it becomes seen as such a big story by the masthead that three people who have decent sourcing within the company basically open up their Rolodexes and call every single person they know within the company and they'll get a byline, even if they didn't really contribute very much because they put the time in. That's my best guess. What do you think it was all about?

B (32:50)

No, I think you're, I think you're probably exactly right. I mean, you know, again, I was thinking through, like, do all these people have the same source? But I think you're exactly right. I think it's one person has, you know, got a tip about this specific incident and then the other three were sort of used because they need to get a, at least a second source on this. And so, you know, the fact that they though have four reporters on it suggests that they got more than a second source and that they maybe have a few sources at least about people who are talking about this notion. But it's interesting in the context that Mark Gurman, who obviously as we talked about was the person who originally reported on the turn of succession and, and you know, Cook potentially eventually stepping down has pushed back pretty hard against the FT report. Right. Like he sort of called them out in his newsletter and saying like I, I don't know where they're getting the timing of this. Like, like certainly as we, as you and I just talked about, like, you know, this is in the air that this is going to happen at some point, just given Cook's age and, and everything else. But there's no indication that he's heard and obviously he's by, you know, by all accounts the best sourced Apple reporter at this point that he's heard that there's anything. But I also think like his sources within, like if this is a, if this is really a discussion that's being had, like the amount of people who would be talking about this internally has got to be pretty small call because this is like a, this is a board decision. This is a Tim Cook, this is first and foremost a Tim Cook decision. Right. He's making this call. No one's going to force him out at this point, certainly not at this, this point of the stock and no one's going to push him out regardless. He's been so successful and so this is really his decision. And so I don't know what to make of the whole back and forth though between these conflicting stories. It's interesting that the FC hasn't sort of followed up at all. They didn't, certainly didn't issue a correct direction, but also hasn't, you know, hasn't doubled down as far as I know on it. And so yeah, it's sort of just hanging out there as it is.

A (34:42)

Yeah, it's puzzling to me. I mean Tim Bradshaw is the first byline on that and he's, he's a really good reporter who does cover Apple, maybe not as the beat reporter, but covers it enough that maybe somebody whispered something to him. So it is always fascinating how these things develop. But again, like even German had a story talking about how Turnus was the heir apparent. So, so maybe the FT kind of caught the scent there and decided to go full on in and try to digging into it what the story was. Because even if like they, they have like a successor internally that could be like, you know, if they went from company that didn't have a successor to one that does now, you could, you know, write the headline that they've ramped up succession planning and, you know, maybe make it seem more than it is. But I still think there's enough there that, that this is very real.

B (35:30)

Yep. Okay.

A (35:32)

All right, let's, let's head to break. Before we go to break, I just wanted to quickly take a moment to think Tech Meme. If you go to Tech Meme, you probably have seen that Big Technology Podcast is one of the Featured podcasts on Techmeme.com we definitely thank them for doing that. Tech Meme, of course, is a great website to keep up with the latest tech news. Always the best and most important stories are up at the top there and it's a great way to keep up with things. When you're not listening to Big Technology Podcast, of course. All right, we'll be back right after this. These days it feels like every dollar should be working a little harder. But figuring out where to put your cash can be confusing. That's where Wealthfront comes in. Wealthfront is a tech driven financial platform built to help you grow your savings into long term wealth. Their High Yield Cash account through Program banks offers a 3.5% APY on your uninvested cash cash as of November 7, 2025. And there are no monthly fees, no minimum or maximum balance to earn that rate. And you can even make free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts in just minutes 24,7 so your money can always be within reach. Right now Wealthfront is offering new clients an extra 0.65% APY over the base rate for three months on up to a $150,000 balance. That's a total of 4.15% variable APY when you open your first cash account. Go to wealthfront.com bigtech to sign up today. This is a paid testimonial for Wealthfront. It may not reflect the experience of others and there's no guarantee of future performance or success. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a big rate is subject to change. Promo terms and conditions apply. For more information, see the episode description. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car sharing, shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help Buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

B (37:37)

And Doug, here we have the Limu emoji in its natural habitat, helping people.

A (37:42)

Customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating.

B (37:49)

It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

A (37:52)

Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

B (37:55)

Cut the camera.

A (37:56)

They see us.

B (37:56)

Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.

A (37:59)

Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by.

B (38:02)

Liberty Mutual insurance company and affiliates, excludes Massachusetts.

A (38:05)

And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with MG Siegler of Spyglass. You can find spyglass@spyglass.org one of my favorite publications. Definitely recommend, recommend you check it out and sign up for the great newsletter and become a member of the site. It's great stuff. In Spyglass over the past month, MG you wrote about how we are in this middle of this like very volatile moment for big tech market caps. Every week it seems like there's a new big tech company that has the crown for the most valuable company on earth. Nvidia has played that role for a long time. Microsoft has played that role for a long time. Apple has played that role for a long time. And Google, you know, has surpassed Microsoft and seems like it might be making its way there, especially as the company starts to potentially sell its TPUs, the TPU chips to other companies like Meta, probably cutting into some of Nvidia's lead. Let me ask you a question about this volatility. I mean, obviously if you think about all these companies, it's, you know, three out of the four that I just mentioned are big on the AI trade. And Apple is, you know, Apple is Apple. Do you think the volatility that we've seen has just been the stock market trying to figure out who the winner is going to be in this AI race and sort of plowing money from, you know, one and to the other. Is that the, the nature of the horse race here?

B (39:33)

I think at a, at the highest level, yes, I, I think that that's roughly correct. It is fascinating how it felt like even just a few months ago that Nvidia was basically running away with the game. Right. They hit the 5 trillion valuation only I think Microsoft at that point was at 4. Google, not too long ago I wrote about this like how I felt like they were significantly undervalued, which of course proved to be correct by the stock market. But it was it's sort of obvious nothing, you know, that anyone couldn't have sort of thought about just looking at what they have on their plate beyond even AI with Waymo and everything else coming up. But Google, Google was like, you know, valued at half of, of certainly Nvidia and maybe even at Microsoft at one point just a few months ago. And now they've come roaring back and Apple, as you note, Apple's been in the front of the pack for most of the past decade and now all of a sudden, as you're noting and you know, as I wrote a little bit about, they've, they basically are collapsing up at that top echelon between those four companies and it's just a matter of like what the current reports and, and narrative is around in particular AI, it seems like we'll push one of them to the lead. It does feel like that Google has that momentum right now based off of exactly what you're talking about with sort of the reports about, about, you know, potentially selling TPUs. And that obviously has a direct impact on Nvidia. If it feels like that they're going to maybe not lose the crown of that business, but certainly if they get, if they get some pressure on the business for the first time from Google, that's going to take some sheen off of that. There's other external things that play like, you know, the reports that, that Warren Buffet, that Berkshire Hathaway took a giant stake in, in Google, I think helped propel them even further. Right. And the fact that Apple's still, I think Berkshire's, Berkshire's largest holding, but they've been trimming back. And so all of these things are at play when it comes to, yeah, that jockeying of the stock price. But Nvidia, I know you and Ron John talked about it on Friday, but it was like, you know, they're, they're sort of PR curf fluffles now are, are sort of not helping their stock, I think just not helping in general the, the feeling of confidence around the way that, that people are feeling about it, but before that happened and the reason why that they feel the need to, to sort of come out with this, this PR strategy is because famously, of course, Michael Burry, one of the most famous, if not the most famous short seller of all time, has come out against them. And so yeah, there's, there's a lot of, a lot of this sort of internal jockeying about how they'll, how they'll all play out and then, and then there's Microsoft who, who's sort of also getting dinged, but also getting buoyed a bit. But you know, sort of some, some level of the open AI relationship now being more settled, I think has, you know, settled their stock a bit more now. But this is all just going to continue to be like in this, it feels like in this, in this washing machine, all these companies getting tumbled around for who's in first, who's in fourth and whatnot.

A (42:35)

All right, let me give you my hot take about what's happening here. And this is sort of a hybrid with something that Josh Brown has, has wrote about downtown. Josh Brown about how we're in a horse race right now. But here's kind of how I see it. So Apple of course was, you know, pre AI most valuable company in the world for a very long time. Maybe they swap places with like Saudi Aramco. So we would have to say like, right, most valuable publicly traded company, but let's just say most valuable company or you know, out excluding Saudi Arabco at like one moment. Okay, so then chatgpt happens and all of a sudden you see people wanting to bet on OpenAI. And the way that they do that is through Nvidia and through Microsoft. And Nvidia was the one that's the mostly direct, most direct correlation to OpenAI. Because if OpenAI is predicated on scale, both for training and inference, Nvidia, which is the only one supplying them the chips, was going to be super important. And then Microsoft, secondarily you would put, Mike, you would put Microsoft there because Microsoft has again, like an unbelievable investment in OpenAI and intrinsic link to OpenAI through like the IP rights and, and power over OpenAI for a very variety of reasons. So there was this moment where Nvidia and Microsoft surge ahead because people believed that this AI thing was going to be real and they believed that OpenAI had a lead that was really going to be tough to challenge because the company came out with better models, better products and, and was just like their runaway favorite to effectively in the minds of investors, the best. It had the best chance of doing this straight shot to AGI or at least some economically valuable, economically valuable AI that, that was going to be tough to match. But what we've seen recently, so now that we've, we've seen like Nvidia and Microsoft fall and, and Google search is that I don't think it's that Google has surpassed OpenAI. Maybe in some areas it has, but it's. We, we are now in the first moment where the state of the Art models are really commoditized where you could argue that Google and Anthropic and OpenAI have models that are, they stand together. You know, some might be better for some activities and some might be worse for other activities. But you're not going to say that OpenAI rules the world the way that it did a couple years or even a year ago. And that's where you see, what you're seeing now really is not necessarily the fall of OpenAI and the fall of Nvidia or the rise of Google. It's this moment where we see commoditization happen amongst the models and in some cases amongst the hardware because of the TPU thing. And when you see commoditization happens, the economics of AI shift. So I'm curious what you think about it and I'm curious what you think, you know, if you agree with my premise that we are starting to see this commoditization, what do you think the economic impacts of the commoditization really are?

B (45:36)

Yeah, I would frame. It's like the taking what you're saying and framing it slightly differently is that if you believe all of that to be true, that you're, that you're laying out there, maybe investors are just looking at it like, look at the end of the day then if that's the case, who has the sort of best position and best business model for all of this, you know, future going forward? And I think it would be hard to argue against Google just given that they own not only Google Cloud, you know, on which a lot of models and everything are running, but they, the TPUs, as you're noting, obviously they have this search business and Waymo and all these other things, whereas the other companies, if, if AI is starting to commoditize in some way, you know, Nvidia, their business potentially is impacted in a good way in some cases, but for the most part it's probably going to be looked at as like, well, the arms race is sort of slowing down a bit and that's going to be bad news for Nvidia at the highest level because you won't need to necessarily buy, you know, the absolute top of the line and, or on the flip side, as we're talking about, if Google's able to, to sort of ramp TPUs to get close. That was part of obviously the messaging from Nvidia was we're a generation ahead, right? In their, in their statement, which was obviously explicitly meant to say that like, yeah, Google's doing great work, but they're not where we are right now. But to your, you know, to your question. Yeah, like so Nvidia is obviously in a position where they need the AI revolution to sort of keep going as it has been in order to keep up. There's just the incredible growth that they've seen, including last quarter which was incredible. Incredible. And then you know, the other players, Microsoft, to your point about OpenAI, they also obviously have a great underlying business, but they don't have quite, I don't think as, as viewed as all of the pieces that Google necessarily has right now. And when people are looking at all the different areas that they can, they could potentially monetize for future, you know, would be profits and then Apple is, you know, the wild card. Which is why I think Apple whole, you know, we talked about not, not getting hit by the capex stuff and everything but Apple is, you know, about to, they're in second place right now. They're probably going to overtake Nvidia at some point. And then it's just a question of exactly what we were talking about in the succession stuff like what is the future story there? So like it could be, you know, the situation where Apple basically moves into first place again for a set period of time depending on what's going on within the AI, you know, overall framework and narrative stuff. And then eventually, you know, Google passes its and then depending on where we are again in that cycle. But again, to go back to the exact question, I do think that if this, if we are sort of working towards more of this commoditization, that's the state that we're in right now. And I think that's why those, those four companies are getting bunched up more than just Nvidia running away or you know, earlier when Microsoft was running away a bit, the wild card there, the next step might be, you know, next generation models. We're hearing a lot of people talk about world models now. Right. Leon, the kind of call course famously has, has stepped away from Meta to go work on that. But also Ilya Sut, that's all he basically talked about, you know, in his, in his recent interviews. And, and yeah, it's basically like this is the new thing. And even Demis Hespis has been talking about world models. Right. And so like this is the entire now thing. If this becomes the new narrative, that will obviously be the next thing that potentially sort of switches up or shakes up those companies again. It's how, how integrated or not they are with that, with that lineup.

A (49:15)

Yeah, I just wonder, I mean if, if if world models really is the next thing that such we're such at or at such a early point on that front, I don't know that we might have a long stall before anything, if that approach even works. No one really knows.

B (49:31)

Yeah, and we might see, I mean obviously we're going to have Elon Musk try to come back into this, this equation. Right. And he's already been talking about how, excuse me, the, you know, his, his robots are optimists, are going to be the biggest business ever, not just like the big, you know, biggest business of Tesla, the biggest business of all time for anything ever. And so, you know, he's hyping that up to no end because I think that he probably views this as like, yeah, that's the next sort of the world models are a part of that and you know, we go into robotics and if that's the next multi, multi trillion dollar sort of business opportunity, then Tesla has a shot to get into that race, you know, and make it a five, a five horse race. Obviously Meta would hope to be the one to get also into that race. And, and Amazon we haven't even talked about, you know, being sort of sitting there, I think, what a mere trillion dollars back or whatever they are at the moment from sort of the rest of the pack. And so all of that comes them.

A (50:28)

Yeah. It does also seem like Meta is, is sort of fighting the last war on this where they're like, they've assembled a super team to build LLMs. But let me ask you this. So, so let's say that's where we are. We're sort of, you know, I don't, I don't want to say petering out on progress with large language models, but maybe reaching some form of plateau and, and the models are commoditizing. Who's, who do you bet on? Who would you bet on? Would you bet on? And this is again using Josh Brown's like, like dichotomy here. The sort of, or the open AI cinematic universe where you have like OpenAI and Microsoft and Oracle or the Google universe where you have, you know, I don't know and some others.

B (51:08)

Yeah, I mean if I, if I was like actually betting and you know, money on these companies, I would do what these companies are doing and I'll bet on each other basically. Right. Hedge your bet.

A (51:19)

The circular financing actually makes sense in this front.

B (51:22)

That's how I would do it. But if you're asking me to actually bet to pick one winner of it, I do, you know, and I, you Know, I, I worked at Google for a long time for Google's venture arm. You know, haven't been there for a while. So just to disclose that but, but I do think that Google's just given all of the things that they have, it does feel like the quote unquote beast has awoken and I feel like that they're in the best position right now to be able to, to capitalize on all of this stuff, quite literally. I think that again though this, I, I do buy into the notion and I'm far from an expert on, you know, all on AI models, but I do buy into the notion, the high level notion that it's going to take more than where we are with LLMs to be able to take us to AGI or whatever you want to call it, the next, the next phase of where we're going. And so if you believe that, that it's really a question of who do you think is best positioned as one of these companies to take advantage of that? To your point, Meta feels like they're, they're literally letting that ship sail in, in Yann Lecun and they'll invest or whatever in his startup. But they obviously made their bet in the opposite way. Apple, that is sort of a off to the side. But Amazon, you know, they're apparently working on their own internal, I mean they've been working on their own own internal models but obviously they have the giant anthropic bet that. But it doesn't feel like at least from there's been no leaks of anything that anthropic is sort of really primarily focused on, you know, sort of the next world models and, and whatnot. And so again I think like the fact that Demis Hasidus has been out there talking a lot about this like, you know, that he's thinking even if it's not world models, there's some other what's next coming up that, that I think that they're heavily thinking about Microsoft. To me it also feels a bit like they're on the last battle. They're stuck there right now now just from, you know, public things that you hear and reports. And so it feels like it's either we talked about this before like with, with, you know, the, the history of OpenAI. It does feel like that they've made their AGI or bus bet and then it's just a question of like can they find more and more people to give them enough capital because they're sort of now at this weird point where they don't have you know Microsoft, yeah. Owns 27% of the company but they're not their main capital partner anymore nor are they even their real main technology partner sort of going forward. And so they need to like continue to bring in just an insane amount of capital whereas Google is insanely profitable. And so you know, and they have the pieces in place to do it. So you know, as much as I hate to, to to bet on a you know, three plus trillion dollar company against a quote unquote startup, it just feels like there's, there's a window of opportunity here. I think OpenAI when I go back to it, what they've best of is on the product side. Right. They've always done a great job being able to productize AI and I think that that's what's directly led to their consumer success. And yeah, Google is, is eating into that a bit now.

A (54:28)

It feels like you had a piece about this talking about how Google's like actually been able to build some the new stuff. Whether that's not book lm Right, right. Which by the way I have to say Notebook LM the team there did tweet like here's a, a holiday recipe. And like somebody like saw that they had like just taken a recipe. They, they were doing holiday infographics and someone saw that they just literally jacked a recipe from some website indexed by Google and put it in a nice format and said this is AI boy. And it's just like oh come on. Like you can't do that. But, but there's also this dynamic view that you actually wrote about which I, I couldn't find. Is it just for like the Google, the, the pro users of Gemini but, but you basically are able to. I don't even know how to explain it. It's this interactive webpage or something that you can create via a prompt with Gemini. It's a very cool product.

B (55:18)

Yes. So one thing, it's not on mobile yet so I don't know if that's where you were looking.

A (55:21)

I was on desktop.

B (55:22)

Desktop, yeah. But yeah, I am a pro subscriber so maybe that was it and it's in labs so it's not officially rolled out but it was just available. Maybe I'm in some bucket a B test for it. But yeah, it was in the dropdown and it would, it's near Nano Banana. You know when you do the drop down and pick if you want to make an image you could also pick to make this, this type of presentation. Dynamic view again, awful name but it's such a cool output that it does. I give the examples in my post. One of them was, was explaining the end of the movie Heat, the, the famous 90s Michael Mann movie to me. And it made this incredible just interactive output which again, it's sort of when I'm explaining it, it sounds like rudimentary, but you got to see this thing thing when you do it and, and you could do it for anything. And it basically takes what, you know, the output would be in a, in a text format from a regular query on, on Gemini. And, and it puts it into this sort of interactive model, including like making just these like, incredibly intuitive and like fun things. Like I did one for the end for, you know, explaining in the movie Interstellar to me. And it like makes a, a button where you can turn on sort of background mood music that's in the style of Interstellar. And then while you do that, you can calculate like time delation when you're going around a black hole. And it's like, it's all this like just really fun, interesting way to sort of present what would normally just be. Yeah like a text output back to you. And again, it sounds like rudimentary and it is in some ways right now. But you think about like, like they made this in one minute based off of a random query that I do. Just think about like what they'll be able to do a year from now and if, and if you do like a thinking version of this where you give them a few minutes to come up with like sort of an interactive model, like the outputs I think will be absolutely incredible. And when you think about like kids learning this way like this, I did one for like explaining stock buybacks and it's just like this great interactive way to, to learn. And so as long as you can trust that it's not going to hallucinate and actually give you good, you know, good information. I think that this is just like an incredible bit of product work that, that Google has done here. And that's why I wrote about it. It felt like it was being underplayed for, for whatever reason, in part because it has such a bad name and in part because it's in labs or whatnot. But. But again, that's to your exact point. Like, it feels like Google has finally woken up also on the product side to be able to do interesting things to combat what OpenAI has historically done.

A (57:51)

Yeah, I was just on their Labs page right now and it's just filled with interesting things. So. All right, before we, we have just A couple minutes left before we go. I, I think you charted out one more interesting thing that's worth noting before we leave, and that is that Anthropic and Open A ICE have like really divergent paths right now, if you like, look at their projections. Anthropic is planning to be profitable by 2028, which I know sounds like a long way away, but in AI years is pretty damn good where OpenAI is planning to lose more than $100 billion between now and 2030 and the losses will just basically keep ramping as we get closer. So what do you think this says about the competition between the two? And is Anthropic just being smart and saying we're probably going to have some AI downturn and we're going to try our best to sort of batten down the houses hatches and get through it?

B (58:45)

I do think that that's a part of it. I think that it was, it's sort of interesting timing in everything else that we're talking about, right? Like, if it does feel like, you know, that the models are sort of coalescing, but also that there's this, this sort of negative, you know, backdrop going on around just investing in AI in general from the public market sentiment on down. It feels like, yeah, if, if Anthropic can sort of take advantage of like, look, we're at the cutting edge right now, but we're not going to be the, the sort of drunken sailor spend that OpenAI is trying to do do. So come on board and bet with us. And, and you know, the most recent report has their new valuation at 350 billion. So they're getting pretty close to where OpenAI is at at 500 billion. It feels like, you know, they're, they're sort of coming in, you know, in line with those, with those numbers, which is super interesting. And again, maybe speaks to the, the dichotomy between the two, the two paths that they're taking there. It's funny, I wrote that post and then that literally the day later I wrote like, you know, a number of things in that post. But one aside was like, like, and look, they're not spending all this money on building their own data centers and literally like 12 hours later they announced that their first data center that they're going to build, of course, but as long as it's one, as long as it's not, you know, the Stargate project and they're not spending again hundreds of billions of dollars on building out their own data centers, you could certainly argue that they should probably have some level of their own infrastructure in place so they're not beholden to, to, you know, their partners on that stuff. And especially given, and all the weird, as we talked about, all the weird inner investing going on where it's like, yeah, and Amazon is, is their main partner maybe, but they're also now buying TPUs from Google. And then, you know, but Google's also, you know, potentially partnering with, you know, X, Y and z and then OpenAI is potentially partnering with Amazon now too. And so there's like, I think Anthropic probably is to look at this as like, I'm not sure that we can rely on, you know, just, just, just Amazon and I'm not sure we can rely on just Google. And so in some ways they have to sort of hedge that long term bet. I just think like they might be and might least might smartly be looking at the market as it is right now and saying like, the music is starting to slow a little bit. Let's not commit to spending hundreds of billions of dollars, let's commit to spending mere tens of billions of dollars for our future and let's see how the, how this shakes out over the next couple of years.

A (61:08)

On one hand it's interesting because I think people within Anthropic believe that like, if you just scale up your training runs then you can get to AGI. On the other hand, maybe this is some rationality finally coming into the AI research lab business where they're, they may be smartly saying, okay, hey, let's, let's try to make some money and maybe that will be a good way to ensure that we'll reach our goal in the long term.

B (61:32)

Yeah. And the only other thing I would add is just like it sort of has naturally played out the way that Anthropic has done a great job on the enterprise front. Right. Whereas OpenAI has done a great job on the consumer front. And so we have the sort of, again, there's, there's nuance there and obviously OpenAI is also trying on the coding front in enterprise and whatnot. But, but at a high level, like they've sort of splintered off into those two worlds. And so, you know, the one is, is going to be an easier path potentially to making money. But, but we seem to be on the cusp of OpenAI potentially rolling out their first ads if some of the leaked internal builds are to be believed. And that will be a whole interesting element to the next year. Right. Of how that plays out.

A (62:18)

Right. So some of that did show up in, I think, the Android code some places for advertising. So that's clearly coming probably at some point next year. Speaking of next year, that's going to be the next time you and I talk. So I think we'll kick off January maybe with some predictions or some recap of some crazy stuff that happens in December. But MG Just want to say it's been great having you on the show here. I think we started in the second half of 2025 and it's been a great addition to the show. So looking forward to doing more together.

B (62:48)

Thanks so much, Alex, and happy New Year. And happy New Year to all your listeners. And yeah, we'll catch up in early, Jan. All right.

A (62:54)

We'll pick it up in January. All right, everybody, thank you to MG thank you to all of you for listening and watching. We'll be back on Wednesday with a couple of anthropic researchers who found a very interesting pattern in AI models and how they've sort of turned evil and how you might be able to stop them from going to the dark side. So that's coming up on Wednesday. And then Ranjan and I will be back on Friday to break down the week's news. Thank you again. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology podcast SA.