B (2:35)

Many advertisers can leverage enhanced ad units including interactive and shoppable CTV formats, to foster customer engagement directly within iconic brand safe streaming environments like Hulu, ESPN and Disney Plus. Learn more at Disney CampaignManager.com that's Disney CampaignManager.com well, you're going to be seeing a lot more green open to work circles on LinkedIn these days because big companies are slashing their workforces left and right. Amazon kicked things off yesterday, announcing it will lay off about 14,000 corporate employees, with reports saying the cost cutting campaign will ultimately result in the largest corporate job cuts in Amazon's history, totaling around 30,000. Not to be outdone, UPS said on its earnings call that it had reduced its operational workforce by 34,000 positions to go along with management cuts of 14,000 for a grand total of 48,000 job cuts. And those two are just the tip of the iceberg. The headlines poured in one after another yesterday. Chegg is laying off 45% of its workforce due to AI eating into its web traffic. Target is reportedly cutting a thousand of its corporate roles this week. The Paramount Skydance merger is leading to similar reductions, and consulting giant PwC reduced its global headcount by 5,600 over the last year after previously promising to increase hiring by 100,000 people by mid-2026. Why all the layoffs? Some of the reasons companies cited are cutting costs, making workflows more nimble, or in Amazon's case, reducing bureaucracy. But some of the biggest cuts are likely tied to execs hoping to free up funds for future AI spending. Neil, is the sky falling? It seems like every business is taking corporate ozempic and slimming down their workforces.

A (4:19)

Yeah, layoffs are always pretty spooky, but the recent announcements have been especially so because of the long term context, which is that many CEOs are now saying the that they don't intend to hire more people in the next few years. They think they can grow sales and their share price without increasing headcount, which is a 180 from how things have typically worked in corporate America. Goldman Sachs sent a memo to staffers this month saying that the company is going to constrain headcount growth through the end of the year. Walmart, which is the nation's largest private employer, said it's going to keep its headcount roughly flat over the next three years, even while trying to boost its sales. So CEOs are coming out one by one saying I don't think we need as big of a workforce as we used to have. So with these layoffs typically you think, okay, but they'll be hiring more in the future. This is a temporary setback to pave the way for future growth. But now you have CEOs coming out and saying, yeah, we're going to lay off a lot of people now, and I don't think we're going to hire many more back.

B (5:16)

Yeah, it's a positive signal. Usually layoffs were kind of tiptoed around because your company is not coming from a position of strength if you are laying people off. But yesterday, I mean, we were reading the headlines about ups, and Bloomberg's headline was UPS stuns Wall street with layoff announcement. And the stock ended up increasing a lot on this because you want to see more efficiency now getting more out of workers in the age of AI that we are entering. Raytheon recently told investors that it grew sales without adding people. It's almost as gleeful tone that these companies are adopting when they're saying, well, we need less people now to drive the same revenue as we did before. So definitely a tonal shift to go along with all these announcements as well.

A (5:58)

Yeah. There's a chart going around the Internet that some are calling the scariest chart in the world. And it says that since October 2022, which is the month right before Chat CBT was released, ushering in, you know, this AI revolution, total job postings in the economy have declined by about one third, which while The S&P 500 has spiked by 75%. And you can read between the lines about why that is called the scariest chart in the world because this has not happened in corporate American history. And if companies are seeing share price gains by cutting workforces, then, you know, where does that leave the labor market in the next few months, in the next few years? It's a scary prospect.

B (6:39)

I think we've scared people enough right now. So I'm going to give maybe some good news or maybe a caveat to some of these headlines that, that we've been seeing. And that is adp, which shows private sector job growth, said that it actually may be rebounding modestly. They had a report that showed an average of 14,250 private sector jobs per week were added over the past four weeks. So again, here we are saying that all these companies left and right, we're seeing headlines of people getting laid off, but that's roughly 55,000 jobs added for the month coming from, you know, an actual data provider right now. Again, ADP doesn't have full insight into the entire job market that the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report does. But at least for private employers, it does look like maybe we should slow our roll here because jobs are still being added, at least according to their data. Open Air has finally emerged from its nonprofit chrysalis as a beautiful for profit butterfly. The long awaited corporate restructuring marks an end to the capped profit hybrid era that confused investors, regulators and podcasters alike. Now it's unambiguously a for profit entity under the name OpenAI Group PBA, still overseen by the OpenAI Foundation. Now if that sounds a little confusing, I'm with you, but regulators are at least happy with Delaware AG Kathy Jennings saying this was a long and intensive negotiation, but I am pleased that OpenAI committed to a governance structure. One party who is more than happy with the path OpenAI chose is is one of its earliest backers, Microsoft Microsoft relationship has been in limbo over the past year or so, but yesterday's announcement revealed it owns a massive 27% of the $500 billion business. That's actually more than the 26% stake held by the Open Air Foundation. In fact, investors celebrated yesterday, sending shares of Microsoft up around 4% on the news. That was enough to push the company across the $4 trillion market cap threshold for the first time ever. One final win for Microsoft. It gets to keep 20% revenue sharing agreement until artificial general intelligence is achieved by OpenAI and confirmed by an independent panel. So it's going to keep getting sugar until Sam Altman can invent God, essentially. Neil no wonder Microsoft is a $4 trillion company.

A (8:56)

Analysts saw this as a win win for both parties here. Let's start with Microsoft. It has a huge stake in the world's fastest growing company. It retains intellectual property rights for OpenAI's tech and yes, it gets of OpenAI's revenues until AGI has achieved that nebulous concept of artificial general intelligence. And no one has a good sense of when that will happen, if ever. And then for OpenAI, this deal allows it to complete this transformation into a for profit company, allowing it to raise even more money than it has already, which seems impossible, but I bet it's going to get done and sets the stage for an eventual ipo. Speaking of raising money, plus it's able to tap into Microsoft's vast computing infrastructure, but it isn't completely locked into using only Microsoft. So it has options functionality. This relationship had become increasingly fraught over the past few years as OpenAI and Microsoft, which had been, you know, a buddy buddy relationship, had they developed into competitors with OpenAI releasing particular AI systems and chat bots while Microsoft doing the same. So they were butting heads increasingly. OpenAI even was thinking about going to antitrust regulators and getting them out of this investment deal. Now that that's all, you know, water under the bridge. Everyone seems to be happy from this deal and OpenAI is, you know, headed towards the public markets. It sure seems.

B (10:12)

Yeah, it does seem like a win win. But I would say the scales are probably tilted in Microsoft's favorite here just because the sheer equity stake that they have, $135 billion worth of equity in open air right now. They get guaranteed access to its frontier models too, which is a big thing as well. And then just that revenue sharing agreement I don't think can be overstated because AGI, artificial general intelligence is a nebulous concept. First of all, this is actually a big deal that they are trying to say that we are going to definitively pursue it and it will be verifiably basically fact checked by an independent panel. AGI has kind of been a nebulous concept up until this point. So the fact that that's on the timeline and it is a drop dead date for a revenue sharing agreement that really will either shows that Sam Altman is pretty dang confident they can get to AGI or they're basically screwed. Are going to be giving 20% of their revenue to Microsoft going forward. But yeah, kind of a clarifying agreement here because things were just so. I mean the corporate governance structure of OpenAI was one of the most confusing things ever. People are saying we need a Sorkin movie to break it all down because there's just so many layers of drama here. This hopefully starts to clarify things a little bit.

A (11:25)

Toby's word of the day nebulous. And that was not the only milestone that was reached on the stock market yesterday. Got to hand out a game ball to Apple which hit the $4 trillion market cap milest for the first time. There's a lot of hype around people buying the new iPhone 17 models. And then you have to talk about Nvidia. Nvidia is nearing a $5 trillion market cap. It's up 3% this morning. So it looks like it could reach that milestone today. It held this conference in Washington D.C. where it announced a partnership with literally every company on earth. I mean it was a dizzying amount of partnerships. So its stock got a huge boost yesterday. If you look at at your portfolio and you have Nvidia then you know you are pretty happy this morning.

B (12:09)

I thought you were going to say a game ball to Apple. And then how many game balls are we giving to Nvidia at this point? Because, I mean, it was just months ago that it crossed 4 trillion. These numbers mean nothing anymore. I mean, $4 trillion is an unfathomable market cap. Nvidia is already encroaching on $5 trillion. So yes, pretty insane that these companies now we're, we're encroaching on the entire GDP of America levels. If you start to add together all these magnificent seven firms, which Just a wild sentence to utter.

A (12:38)

All right, there's a new way to look up where the Jonas Brothers went to high school. On Monday, Elon Musk launched a rival to Wikipedia he calls Grokopedia. The site named after X's AI chatbot. Grok is intended to dislodge Wikipedia as your go to information source at a time conservatives increasingly accuse Wikipedia of veering too far to the left. Your history teacher wouldn't let you use Wikipedia as a source for your essay, and they probably wouldn't let you use Crackopedia either. Grokopedia, while resembling Wikipedia in terms of article format, is different in a very important way. It's completely generated by AI. That's of course, by design for Musk, who announced the project last week to combat what he considers a left wing bias by Wikipedia's human editors. And he's far from the only right wing voice needling Wikipedia. David Sachs, the White House's Eyes Are, has blasted the site for allegedly censoring conservative content, while Wikipedia's own co founder Larry Sanger wrote that it's been quote, captured by anonymous editors who manipulate articles to fit their ideological biases. So a lot of pressure is building on Wikipedia, the ninth most visited site on the Internet. It's not only facing political challenges from Musk and Co, but also a technological one from AI chat bots, which appear to be depriving it of website traffic. And worst of all, I didn't give it $3 the last time they asked.

B (13:56)

They do ask a lot, diving into what's inside Grokopedia and how it differs from Wikipedia. Just go no further than the entry on Elon Musk. It describes him on Gookopedia as an innovative visionary and a reverent provocateur. A lot of people said that it sounded like a PR team was writing this rather than actually AI chat bots. Go to the entry on Parag Argarwell, which was Twitter's former CEO that Elon had a testy relationship with. And he said on Crackopedia makes the acquisition that Argyle misled the public about bots. So it seems to influence a little bit of introduce a little bit of editorializing into it, which is exactly the thing that is saying that it's trying to fight against when it comes to Wikipedia. And then the final ironic thing about this too is that sometimes the entries on Pedia that seem to be entire carbon copies of the Wikipedia entries, you go to the PlayStation 5 entry, it is word for word the exact same thing as what you see on Wikipedia. So it's trying to say that were going away from Wikipedia, yet it's often using that as its source material of what it's citing.

A (15:01)

Yeah, and Musk continues to dive into the political sphere, which could be bad for his other businesses. Just look at Tesla. There was a study out yesterday by Yale University economist writing in the National Bureau of Economic Research and they found since Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X in 2022, Tesla's sales would have been between 67 and 83% higher, equivalent to about 1 million vehicles. And had he not done that, they call this the Musk pardon partizan effect. So Tesla shareholders are looking at Elon Musk's continued foray into partisan politics and saying we are missing out on literally 1 million vehicles over three years. Because you're doing this. They can't be happy. And yet they still are dangling a $1 million $1 trillion pay package ahead of him that is expected to be voted upon next week.

B (15:50)

Ryan McGrady, a researcher at UMass Amherst, said controlling what gets risen is a way to gain or keep power. The impulse to control knowledge is as old as knowledge itself. So Elon is obviously trying to expand the scope of his information and media empire here, maybe at the expense of some of his other businesses.

A (16:09)

Go, minute Man.

B (16:10)

All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with a Bill Gates story right after this. Neal, are you hitting your protein goals?

A (16:20)

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B (16:23)

They do not. So maybe try David protein bars. Nothing hits better after a gym says than their red velvet flavor. Seriously, how can a bar taste that good and have such good macros at the same time?

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To celebrate them restocking on their website, they're offering our listeners a special deal. Buy four cartons. Get the free fifth three when you use David protein.com mbd that's davidprotein.com mbd if you prefer to shop in person, David is Now in over 5000 stores nationwide. Check out their store locator to find a location near you. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky and let's be real, lots of firms throw a couple of flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard.

A (17:25)

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So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/audio that's vanguard.com/audio all investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor Bill Gates celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday by telling everyone to stop going all Chicken Little over climate change in a 14 page memo Gates acknowledged will generate a lot of debate. The Microsoft co founder warned against a quote doomsday outlook around climate change, saying it will not lead to the end of human civilization. Instead, he argued we should be investing more resources into alleviating human suffering right here and now, especially in poor countries where disease and inequality are still rampant. Gates wrote this is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change improving lives. The chance he's talking about is next month's UN climate summit in Brazil, COP30, which sets the standard for the world's climate policy each year. Gates wants to influence the delegates heading there to change their priorities in the climate fight. Don't worry as much about every small increase in temperature and divert more resources to lowering poverty and preventing disease. Toby let's be clear. This isn't Gates saying climate change is a hoax. He still thinks it's a major problem, but it's also clear from this memo that he's fed up with the end is near folks because they're sucking up money and attention he thinks will be spent better elsewhere. For example, Gates said I'll let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People don't understand the suffering that exists today.

B (19:14)

Yeah, he's kind of shifting his view from plowing billions of dollars into planetary scale transformation into something more Human scale. I do think there's a direct through line here to the cuts to US Aid that happened this year. He says that he wants to focus more on the immediate human suffering that is happening in the world right now, while yet toning down some of the rhetoric around climate change. The general idea behind the psychology here is that it, it supports Gates adoption of a more milder tone because apocalyptic messaging tends to push people back. Like, they don't respond to fear very well. They respond much better to optimism. And so maybe it is a calculated thing that he's doing here, is like, obviously this rhetoric hasn't necessarily worked over the last few years, this alarmist rhetoric. Let's adopt a different tome and see if it affects people's psychologies a little, a little differently.

A (20:07)

Yeah, there's a lot of reactions to this. So David Callahan, who's the editor of Inside Philanthropy, said exactly what you were saying. He said, Gates, his shift is in line with studies that alarmist messaging isn't working, that there's a ton of research out there that shows that in terms of messaging, things like climate change, it's much better to lean into optimism than pessimism. But then there were also some criticism of Gates. Jeffrey Sachs, who is at Columbia University, he called the memo pointless, vague, unhelpful, and confusing. There is no reason to pit poverty reduction versus climate transformation. Both are utterly feasible and readily so. And he's joined by a course of us others who said, why not? Why not both, you know, temperatures are increasing and that's leading to vast destruction right here and now. We had 62,000 people die of heat because of major heat waves that across Europe in the past summer, their whole islands being washed away. They said, we can, we can focus on the temperature increasing and the complications that arise from that, as well as immediate poverty reduction. Gates is shooting back, well, we only have a finite amount of resources, and a lot of resources are going to climate projects that really aren't very effective right now. And at the same time, there are a lot of resources being diverted away from, you know, human development in developing countries. So that's why he thinks it was necessary to write this really long memo that stirred a ton of conversation.

B (21:26)

Not only is it a psychological shift in messaging as well, but maybe it is reacting to the political headwinds right now, saying that, hey, in an era where ESG and people are maybe a little hostile to emissions frameworks, let's tone down this rhetoric so we see if we can sidestep some of this crossfire that is happening. In the political arena and get things done more effectively on, you know, the human scale arena. So I do think you can't overlook the political aspect of this as well in an era where maybe people would be more hostile to his ideals.

A (21:56)

All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Hurricane Melissa barreled into Jamaica yesterday as a ferocious storm. For the record books, the category five striking Jamaica with sustained winds of 185mph was the strongest ever to hit the island and one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history. This thing was a brute. As morning breaks, Jamaica is assessing the damage. So far, no fatalities from the hurricane have been reported, but hundreds of thousands remain without power. And Prime Minister Andrew Holness said his country has been, quote, ravaged by Melissa. The storm, Now a Category 3, made landfall on Cuba overnight and is expected to reach the Bahamas by evening.

B (22:36)

Yeah, meteorologists are looking at Melissa with the its special interest because it is the fourth of the five Atlantic hurricanes this season to undergo, quote, rapid intensification, which is when you see wind increases of 35 miles per hour or more in 24 hours. And researchers are kind of shocked by this. It's extremely rare to have a storm rapidly intensify when it's already intense. A researcher at University of Miami told Wired. You usually see rapid intensification happen when it's a tropical storm or a category one or two, but not when it's already at the upper end of intensity. So these are, you know, bad storms getting worse very quickly. Scientists note that the warmer waters in the Caribbean probably fueled this phenomenon. 1440 said that the waters were two and a half degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than average for this time of year. And again, I can't help but see the symbolism between the story we just talked about with Bill Gates with Melissa happening. Maybe he the timing is almost like poetic the fact that he dropped this manifesto while we have this massive storm intensifying. Up next, hold on to your cowboy hats because Taylor Sheridan, the architect of Yellowstone sprawling TV empire, is heading on over to new frontiers. The prolific showrunner responsible for hits like Tulsa, King Landman and Kevin Costner in those Jeans is set to leave Paramount and join NBC Universal when his current deal expires at the end of 2028. For NBC and Peacock, it's a blockbuster creative get because this dude just cranks out hits for Paramount, It's a gut punch that will be tough to stomach for new owner David Ellison, who Sheridan clashed with partially leading to his exit. Neal Sheridan, sprawling TV universe has carried Paramount plus for years now. Now NBCUniversal is betting he can bring that same Western magic over to their side of the fence. And I have never seen Yellowstone either, so apologies if I messed up any of those references.

A (24:23)

I haven't either, so I can't fact check you, but we absolutely have to watch. There's a lesson here, and it's don't tell Taylor Sheridan what to do. Because it seems like the new owner of Paramount, David Ellison, came in and said, hey, Taylor Sheridan, we need to talk. I have this idea for a 250th USA anniversary show that I'd like you to pursue. And Taylor Sheridan goes, nah, man, I don't want to do that. He also said, you know, it looks like your budgets are quite big here. I maybe want to rein that in. And Taylor Sheridan said, don't mess with my budgets, because he has been given a very long leash at Paramount. You know, the. The show 1923, which is a Yellowstone spinoff, was costing $22 million an episode or about $500,000aminute. This was, you know, they were spending half a billion dollars on this show. And so Taylor Sheridan kind of got used to that, you know, this empty, you know, this endless stream of money that was going his way. And so when David Ellison came in and said we might have to tighten the purse strings here, he was like, I'm out because I'm, you know, the biggest hit maker in TV and streaming right now. Don't tell me what to do. Finally, if you're not a big chores person, do I have the solution for you. Neo, the humanoid robot. The Internet was a flutter yesterday after the robotics company 1X announced pre orders for its 5 foot 6 inch robot. Neo, that will be your housekeeper on command. For $20,000, Neo will strut around your house, loading the dishwasher, watering your plants, wiping the counter, folding your clothes and turning off the lights, allowing you to stay on your couch. Scrolling social media One CEO Brent Bornitz told the Wall Street Journal that come 2026, when deliveries are expected, NIO will do most of the things in your home autonomously. Toby, we've got robots on the streets with Waymo, robots in the factories. Are we ready for robots in the homes?

B (26:09)

I don't think so. And I don't think robots are actually ready to go into homes either yet. Because even though that this company pledges that it will eventually be an autonomous little fellow going around folding your laundry, right now, most of them are controlled by human operators that, you know, plug into a VR headset use the VR controllers and literally control the hand movements and walking of this tiny robot. So there are a little bit of some privacy concerns because that means someone has eyes into your house and they do say that they will blur out people and there will be some certain no go zones in house, but still a little creepy to have an extra set of eyes walking around your house. They say they need it for training data to get started, but so far I don't know if this is something that will totally replace you when it comes to folding laundry. Unloading the Dishwasher I was watching a video of Neo trying to close a dishwasher door before the show and it truly is hilarious because it can't quite get low enough. It's doing this awkward squat. It almost tips over when it does it. So maybe not fully ready for the prime time, but the idea is put them in a home, start collecting data and eventually they will get to a point where they can take some of that chore load off your plate. $20,000 to never do laundry again. Would you take that?

A (27:19)

Absolutely. And dishwasher everything. You know, I actually do enjoy doing Choice because it allows you to take your mind off of things. I mean this job requires a lot of thinking, but the dishwasher video is very funny. It very much reminded me of coming home from the bar at 3am in college and trying to figure out how to work my kitchen. All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a great Wednesday. For any feedback on the show or you want to get in contact, send a note to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom or slide into our DMs on Instagram at me Daily Show. And remember, today is the final date to submit an answer for our game the Ladder. Head to the Google form in the show notes to see the puzzle and enter your response. Let's roll credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Lu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and Makeup is waiting for someone to make their Wikipedia page. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

B (28:13)

Great show today Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Neil, do you know David?

A (28:26)

Yeah, lots. The one who does nature doc, voiceovers, the magician king, etc.

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