← Prof G Markets
Prof G Markets
The UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting, Amazon Takes On Nvidia, & 12 Days of OpenAI
00:45:30
Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:01]
Scott Galloway
Support for this show comes from Grammarly 231. That's the average number of apps used by many, many companies.
- [00:08]
Ed Mylett
This can lead to a lot of context and tab switching that drains employee.
- [00:12]
Scott Galloway
Focus and costs your company money. Grammarly can help Grammarly's AI works in over 500,000 apps and websites, making it easy for your team to write clearly.
- [00:22]
Ed Mylett
And on brand without disrupting workflow. You can join the 70,000 teams who save an average of $5,000 per employee per year by using grammar. Go to Grammarly.com enterprise to learn more.
- [00:38]
Scott Galloway
Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant from AWS because business can be slow like wading through the mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work so tasks like summarizing monthly results can be done in no time. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you@aws.com learnmore that's aws.com learnmore More.
- [01:06]
Ed Mylett
Support for this podcast comes from Shopify.
- [01:09]
Kara Swisher
Companies need sustainable sales to thrive if you want to move your own business.
- [01:13]
Ed Mylett
In that direction, you might want to check out Shopify. Shopify is an all in one digital commerce platform that wants to help your business sell better than ever before. Shopify says they can help you convert.
- [01:24]
Scott Galloway
Browsers into buyers and sell more over time.
- [01:27]
Kara Swisher
You can upgrade your business and get.
- [01:29]
Ed Mylett
The same checkout Allbirds uses. With Shopify, you can sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comvoxbusiness all lowercase. Just go to shopify.comvoxbusiness to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comvoxbusiness today's number 170,000. That's how many unique drinks you can order at Starbucks. True story Ed I walked into a Starbucks with my ex wife and the barista said we don't recommend caffeine for pregnant women. And she said well I'm not pregnant. And he said well we do have diet free latte.
- [02:15]
Kara Swisher
Diet free lattes does not make sense.
- [02:19]
Ed Mylett
Diet free, sugar free. I'm in the Cotswolds. Let's skip to the banter part. I'm in the Cotswolds with my dogs.
- [02:26]
Kara Swisher
Oh lovely.
- [02:27]
Ed Mylett
And we're moving. So my job is to leave, take the dogs out to the countryside and stay in some bougie place and just be out of the way. So here I am.
- [02:38]
Kara Swisher
Are you staying in a hotel or you got a house? What's the deal? It looks pretty nice what you got behind you.
- [02:44]
Ed Mylett
It's called Heckfield Place and I was going to go to Manor Estelle but they didn't have any room. And then Soho Farmhouse can put up with the dogs. So Heckfield's kind of a. It's the Lexus.
- [02:53]
Kara Swisher
Soho Farmhouse has a no dogs policy.
- [02:56]
Ed Mylett
No only certain rooms, only certain sheds allow dogs. They all claim to be dog friendly and they have like two rooms for dogs. And I can kind of understand because don't tell anyone my dogs have ripped up this place.
- [03:06]
Kara Swisher
Jesus Christ.
- [03:09]
Ed Mylett
But it's, it's. We go on long walks, we're in the British countryside. I keep thinking I'm going to run into Ellen. Supposedly Ellen lives out here with her wife, Portia de Rossi.
- [03:19]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, she escaped once. She got kicked out of the US Basically. Isn't the British countryside the best? It really is incredible.
- [03:26]
Ed Mylett
Right, let me think, let me pour some tea first.
- [03:34]
Kara Swisher
Gonna go with a no from you there. You just don't really like the outdoors. I think that's the problem.
- [03:39]
Ed Mylett
I don't like the UK from November to May it's 40 degrees and just wet. I don't even see it rain. I just walk outside and it's wet. I'll give you this. When I first moved to New York people said oh there's beautiful beaches in Long island, in the Hamptons. And I thought I'm from California, these won't be beautiful beaches. And I went out there and found out that the beaches are beautiful. People constantly talk about the British countryside. And I thought yeah right. And I came out here. It is beautiful. It's just. It's dark at 3:30 today.
- [04:06]
Kara Swisher
That's all part of the vibe. You just gotta get involved with that and get on board.
- [04:09]
Ed Mylett
No, I just wanna. You listen to Simon and Garfunkel and self harm. It's just hello and Garfun smile.
- [04:15]
Kara Swisher
That's not the vibe. Simon and Garfunkel, get inside, have some tea, head to bed. Pretty early.
- [04:22]
Ed Mylett
Yeah. What have you been up to out here? We're always talking about me. Let's talk about you. But keep it short cause I'm not that interested.
- [04:29]
Kara Swisher
Well, speaking of weather, it snowed for the first time today, which is pretty exciting. So New York is getting cold and that's the long and short of it in New York. Wow.
- [04:39]
Ed Mylett
Are you engaging? He's a charmer. He's a charmer. Get to the headlines, Ed. Jesus Christ.
- [04:47]
Kara Swisher
That's right. Let's start with our weekly review of market vitals. The S&P 500 rose. The dollar rose on Trump's tariff threats but declined. At the end of the week, bitcoin hit. Wait for it. $100,000 for the first time, and the yield on 10 year treasuries was volatile. Shifting to the headlines, Salesforce shares rose more than 10% after the company issued higher than expected guidance for the current quarter. Revenue also beat expectations, up 8% from a year earlier as the company secured more than 200 deals for its AI chatbot suite called Agent Force. Meta is seeking proposals from developers to construct nuclear power plants. The initiative aims to get the plants online by the early 2030s to help power the company's data centers. United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in what the authorities are calling a brazen targeted attack. The incident occurred just before the company's highly anticipated investor day in New York. I don't really know what to make of this, Scott. We've never covered anything like this. I guess the first question I'd ask you is what do you think this means for United Health? Like, how is UnitedHealth supposed to respond to a crisis like this?
- [06:06]
Ed Mylett
Well, it's a tragedy for the family, no doubt about it. I think United's going to be fine. But what's come out, which was really interesting I found, is that the etchings on the casing said deny, defend, depose. And this is the name of a book that's about how insurance companies get out of claims. And so this appears to be politically motivated or thematically motivated. What's been shocking to me has been the response online. And to say there's been a lack of empathy is an overstatement. People are circulating memes and acting as if kind of, quite frankly, the company and this person had it coming is the way I read some of the memes I've been saying. And in the US what you have is a healthcare system that has is essentially bankrupting a lot of people. 40% of Americans have some form of debt as a function of dental or medical bills that they can't pay off. And the largest source of or largest cause of bankruptcy is medical debt. And there's just no getting around it. The American healthcare system, in my view, is optimized for the top 10%. If you're in the top 10%, you have the best healthcare in the world. If you're in the bottom 90%, you have expensive but bad healthcare. When income inequality gets to the point it's at, it usually self corrects, but it self corrects in a small number of ways either through war, famine or revolution. And I think this is an example when you have the CEOs of companies being murdered and it looks like it was politically motivated. It looks like it has some connection or link to the company and a viewpoint around the behavior of these types of companies. The healthcare system in the United States, and this in no way justifies violence, but it does create a lot of despair and disability in our economy.
- [07:56]
Kara Swisher
What do you think the conversations in the boardroom are right now? Like, do you think if this is indeed politically motivated, and it looks like it was, do you think the boardroom is like, okay, people are angry, we're going to change the way we do things, or is the boardroom thinking we need to up our security? I mean, just some statistics here. Meta spends $23 million on protecting the personal safety of Mark Zuckerberg. And Google spends 7 million. So a lot of other companies know that people are kind of out to get their CEOs. And UnitedHealth, I don't believe spends any money on executive personal safety or security. So, like, what do you think is the response at the board level from UnitedHealth when something like this happens? Does it actually force them to sort of take a look at their business and how they make money? Or is it more like we need to do a better job of protecting our executives?
- [08:58]
Ed Mylett
Yeah, I would imagine the first reaction is we need to keep our executives safe. Those numbers that you quoted around CEO security are about to explode. That's a good business to be in right now, offering executive security. This isn't going to be a moment of reflection for them. Like most for profit companies, they do whatever they can to try and maximize their profits and rationalize. Like, I know, let's get some insulin, let's put a brand on it and let's quadruple the price or whatever it is. But they're not going to say we need to really think through health care in the United States.
- [09:29]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, exactly. But that's what everyone online seems to think is happening here. It's like all those trolls that you mention, they're like, oh yeah, well someone finally showed them.
- [09:39]
Ed Mylett
This doesn't help the problem. It makes it worse. It makes it seem like the people who, I mean, this is just in any way, if the murder of a 50 year old man with a family is rationalized, you get a pretty serious chaos. And just the fact that these folks need security now is really, you know, it's disappointing. So the short term, it's just going to be those numbers are going to go way up. You're going to see security across every. I can imagine every CEO of a health company is saying, do I need security now? Should it inspire a moment of reflection of why does everybody hate me? Or why are there so many people that hate me? Yeah. Will that happen? No. And the guilty party here is not the CEO of these companies. The guilty party is the electorate who continue to let their elected representatives be weaponized by lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and the healthcare industrial complex such that they can charge more for pharmaceuticals, they can charge more for diabetes medication, they can let insurance companies deny all sorts of claims. So the US Healthcare system is the most disruptible business in the history of business. It's raised prices faster than inflation. At 17% of GDP, it used to be 5%, I think, as recently as 1962. So in 60 years, it's now almost four times the amount of our government. It's the biggest business in the US and we need to turn folks into consumers again, where they actually look at the price and they demand more. But this is, this is going to. It's going to inspire a lot of very interesting conversations. I'll just leave it at that.
- [11:11]
Kara Swisher
Let's move on to Salesforce earnings now.
- [11:14]
Ed Mylett
There we go. Salesforce, the agentic layer. They're killing it. They're wreaking or getting efficiencies internally. They're. Their quarterly earnings increased 8%, which isn't amazing, but it beat expectations. And their operating margins hit their highest number ever. And current quarter guidance came in strong. Overall, full year guidance for revenue growth stayed the same. Is this a little bit of rah rah? Yeah. Because if demand for the Agent Force was really as revolutionary as Marc Benioff described it, they probably would have guided up. I mean, Nvidia says this is revolutionary. And we're taking our guidance up. They're like, this is amazing. It's revolutionary. But we're going to. We're maintaining guidance.
- [11:57]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. I think the story of this earnings call was AI. They mentioned the word AI 21 times, and they mentioned the word agent force 67 times. So they are very optimistic about AI. The question is whether that will actually pan out in the numbers themselves. Because, you know, they talked a lot about Agent Force and they said that they've signed a lot of deals with Agent Force. And Salesforce only launched Agent Force a month ago. So we don't know yet. So I think the thing that we'll want to keep an eye on over the next few quarters is whether or not Agent Force, this new AI bot army, is hype or if it actually is going to have a meaningful impact on revenue. Because, you know, just saying over and over again, it's great. It's great. It's great. We're so excited to deploy it. That's just not really. That's not really enough for Wall Street, I don't think. And let's just wrap up here with Meta's new proposal for nuclear power plants, or at least they're seeking proposals from other development companies to construct nuclear power plants. Do you have any initial thoughts on that?
- [13:01]
Ed Mylett
Well, it's interesting. These companies are now kind of taking on the role of government in the sense that the only people who had the capital to build nuclear power plants used to be the government or a giant utility that was government regulated and given a monopoly. I mean, nuclear has just had such a terrible brand. I remember I was in fixed income at Morgan Stanley and going up to Washington for a dinner and there was something called the Washington Public Power supply, which was supposed to build a nuclear power plant. It overran and it ended up being just this giant hole in the ground. I'm not sure if it ever finished or not. And they used to call the bonds, whoops, bonds. And there's just been. It's been so out of favor and all of a sudden it is white hot because the friction in AI isn't people, it isn't customers. It's something unusual. It's energy to power it all. And we said in our predictions deck that nuclear would be the technology of 2025. Why nuclear? It's reliable, efficient, carbon free and powerful. One nuclear plant produces as much energy as 3 million solar panels or 430 wind turbines. And there's just few ways to kind of spin up in three to five years something that could potentially power 750,000 to 3 million homes, which is what AI is going to require. Meta's energy can consumption increased 1,500% in the last 10 years. And in August, Zuckerberg said Llama4met its next generation of their AI model will need 10 times more compute to train than the previous generation.
- [14:28]
Kara Swisher
I think the thing that jumped out to me is the point that you made about the idea that you have Meta basically taking on the role of the government at this point. Because the thing that Jigar Shah told us, and this was the head of the loan officer at the Department of Energy, is he said, you know, we need the government to be funding this because we're the only ones with the capital to make these, these risky investments. I mean, you look at Vogel, the new big nuclear plant in Georgia that was just built, that thing cost $35 billion to build, and it went $17 billion over budget. So these things are extremely capital intensive. But to your point, it's like actually there is another entity that can make these forward leading investments and it is big tech. You know, it's, it's Meta, it's Amazon, it's Google, it's, you know, potentially Apple at some point. And I guess where my mind goes, it feels a little bit dystopian that we're at a place in society where the two gatekeepers of the future of our energy industry are one, the government and then two, like a handful of tech executives. Like the idea that Mark Zuckerberg, who originally was the guy who built a social media network and now he's kind of shepherding the direction of clean energy in America, which will just give him even greater and an even tighter grip on all of the infrastructure in the US from advertising to computing power and now to just pure raw energy. Maybe I'm being a little bit, you know, tin hat, but it just feels like we're going into a slightly scary place.
- [16:17]
Ed Mylett
Well, you gotta ask yourself, what's next? They control the news or can elect a president? You're just figuring this out, Ed, wait, let me get this. Your thesis is that tech executives are growing too powerful, that there might be a problem here. Huh? Really? It's almost. This is the least mendacious thing that Meta's done. I mean if they, I don't know if there's a way for the government to get in the middle and say, okay. It's like when they build a building or a developer wants to build a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco, they say, fine, but it's not going to be as big as you want and you have to build a Park or 10% of the residences have to be for artists or whatever, for people raising allergy fee labradoodles or whatever. I think this is a good thing. I think that AI similar. One of the things that always bothered me about crypto is it seems like we have this self invented incremental usage of electricity that's equivalent to Argentina and that it's. I'm not sure that we really needed that, but this is going to make that energy consumption look like a walk in the park. This in my view is the most exciting technology outside of GLP1 drugs. I think it's, I think it's really exciting and I'm glad they're making these sorts of investments. The key is, do we need some sort of oversight to make sure they don't begin to sequester all power to a small number of companies and then use that as a weapon where other companies are basically dealing with brownouts every day.
- [17:46]
Kara Swisher
We'll be right back after the break with a look at how Amazon might start competing with Nvidia. If you're enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on Profg Markets.
- [18:04]
Ed Mylett
Support for propf G markets comes from Mint Mobile. We've all been there. You take someone up on a great intro deal, only find out later that that great price is going to skyrocket after the first month. Well, no more. Not if you go with Mint Mobile. Because when they say you can get a three month mobile plan for just $15 a month, they mean it. Say bye bye to your overpriced monthly bills and unexpected overages. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5D network. Plus you can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mint mobile.com markets. That's mint mobile.com markets cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month new customers on the first three month plan only speed slower above 40 gigabytes on a limited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. Submit mobile for details. Support for Profg Markets comes from Vanta Proving trust is more important than ever, especially when it comes to your security program. Vanta helps centralize program requirements and automates evidence collection for frameworks like SoC2 and ISO 27001, HIPAA and more. So you save time and money and build customer trust. And with Vanta you can join more than 80,000 global companies including Atlassian, FlowHealth and Quora, who trust Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. Now that's a way to GRC. Learn more at vanta.com markets that's vanta.com markets support for profit markets comes from Found. When you run a small business, you know that time equals money. So it's not great if you're stuck in a rut constant constantly toggling between a dozen different apps and services. One just to keep track on your business bank account, one for expense tracking, one for invoicing, contractor payments, tax planning, and the list goes on. Instead of all that, it might be time to try. Found Found is business making designed for small business owners just like you. Found lets you manage your financial tasks effortlessly, all in one easy to use app. The platform can help you manage your money, track your spending, invoice your clients, and even handle your taxes so you can focus on running your business. Plus, Found says that you'll save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on bank fees and app subscriptions because their platform has no hidden fees. Stop getting lost in countless finance apps and try Found for free at found.com profg Sign up for Found for Free today at F o u n d.com profg found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont bank member fdic. Found's core features are free. They also offer an optional paid product Found plus.
- [21:01]
Kara Swisher
We'Re back with Profg Markets. Amazon is building an AI supercomputer known as an Ultracluster, that will be powered by hundreds of thousands of its own Trainium 2 semiconductors. The chip cluster will quintuple the processing power for AI startup Anthropic, which recently received an additional $4 billion investment from Amazon. And when the cluster goes live next year, it will be one of the largest AI training clusters in the world. So, Scott, I think the most important thing here is the fact that Amazon is deciding to build a giant supercomputer not with Nvidia chips, but with its own chips, these Trainium 2 chips. Your thoughts on this news?
- [21:42]
Ed Mylett
I was really well one, I haven't participated in the kind of the Bitcoin explosion, and I haven't really participated in the AI explosion. And I was happy to see this because I own Amazon stock and I just thought this was brilliant and really exciting. And I love the idea of Nvidia having a competitor. I wish it was a smaller company, but it reminds me that some kid or some PhD student, you're too young to remember this 10 or 20 years ago, strung together a bunch of Nintendo game sets or game consoles and created like a supercomputer. Just stringing these things all together and this architecture just seems really fascinating. And as you said, if they can in any way, in any way somehow create a credible competitor around their chips, even in the same universe as Nvidia, just their operational excellence, their B2B, their cloud offering, you got to think they're going to take a trillion dollars in market cap away from Nvidia. So I thought, wow, this is really exciting for Amazon shareholders and they're kind of offering cost reduction and control. By reducing reliance on Nvidia, Amazon can now lower AI infrastructure costs for its business customers while gaining greater control over its Supply chain. I mean, this is. I just thought this was. Whenever you get a company that comes out of nowhere and becomes the most valuable company in the world, it's just imagine Lake Erie of blood being poured into the water and the Megalodons it attracts. And this has attracted one of the scariest Megalodons in the history of business, and that is Amazon. And they have the money to do this. The Firm's most recent $4 billion investment in anthropic included an agreement that Anthropic would use Amazon's AI chips. So the number two and LLMs is about to use Amazon chips, which will train the chips. They'll get better on it. Nvidia stock fell 3%, but that's not that big a deal. And just one add on here. Amazon is already trading at a pretty rich valuation, but it's potentially going to get some of that Nvidia or that GPU magic. We did a predictions podcast on Pivot and we asked Anthony Scaramucci, our friend, to come up with a prediction. And his big prediction is that he thinks that IBM is going to explode because IBM actually has some really strong IP and scientists around AI, that effectively Watson was the first kind of AI offering. And then he thinks with their CEO and their current offering that this stock is going to explode. And I thought, wow, that's a really interesting take. But it'd be interesting to see what companies are able to draft off of or kind of become more efficient on Nvidia and OpenAI success. But I just thought this was genius. I mean, you got to give it to the folks in Amazon. This is, I feel like this is a masterstroke.
- [24:27]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. It's also just like the perfect marketing message too, because, I mean, you think about standard marketing, the standard play is that you go out in public and you'll just like, say out loud, or you'll advertise like, we have the best chips in the world. Or maybe you'll like have some research report that says, you know, our chips are, you know, 5% faster than Nvidia's or whatever. And that's what we've been seeing most of these chip maker competitors doing right now. You just sort of make a statement about your chips, OZ is more efficient, it's cheaper, it's faster, whatever. Then you just hope that the market believes you. But this is so much more compelling because to go out and build a supercomputer that is this big and this expensive with only your own chips, not with Nvidia's implicit in that investment is a belief that your chips are better than Nvidia's. Like, it's the perfect show, don't tell strategy, which I find so much more compelling. And I would also assume that the market is going to find this a lot more compelling, especially the AI companies who want to use these chips. And that's sort of the most important thing here. So we've been talking a lot about all of these different chip makers. We talked about Cerebras who came out and said, we have the biggest chips in the world and therefore ours are the best. And I didn't really buy it. And this thing, I'm suddenly like, okay, this, this, this is really going to shake things up. For the first time in a market where Nvidia has 95% market dominance, it feels like Amazon could be the first one to actually disrupt this.
- [26:07]
Ed Mylett
Well, see above, the biggest Megalodons great white sharks in the world are coming for that 95% market share. Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are all developing custom AI chips to reduce their dependence on the market leader. And then there's just a suite of AI startups looking to get a piece of the pie. You mentioned Cerebros. There's Grok, Accelera and Tensterrent, which recently raised nearly 700 million in new funding from investors, including Bezos. So there's a three and a half trillion dollars carcass that everybody wants a piece of, and that's Nvidia.
- [26:42]
Kara Swisher
There's also just this one quote from the chief executive of aws, which I find so compelling because it's so understated and so simple compared to all of the other marketing messages of these other chip startups. He said, quote, today there's really only one choice on the GPU side, and we think customers would appreciate having multiple choices. That was the statement. It's just so simple and so compelling.
- [27:08]
Ed Mylett
Yeah, there you go. And kudos to them. Kudos to them. They're out first, right?
- [27:13]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, exactly. But you mentioned some of those other companies that are building. So you talked about Google. They're working on their, what's known as their Tensor processing units. Microsoft is working with OpenAI on chips. Meta is working on a chip called Artemis. These companies are all not dipping their toes, but maybe dipping their ankles into chip making. But the wrinkle is that they all still have big partnerships with Nvidia. They all still heavily rely on Nvidia. And so we're getting to this point now where they're all working with Nvidia because they have to. But on the side, they're starting to build out their own businesses because they all recognize, well, we rely on Nvidia too much. So I would be interested to get your perspective on how is that all going to play out. Have you ever seen a dynamic before where sort of you're friends with the big company, but then you start trying to nip at their heels and ultimately you're trying to compete with them?
- [28:19]
Ed Mylett
Yeah, it was a similar dynamic back in, I think in the 90s. I think Apple got sick of being so reliant on intel and they started developing their own chips. So, yeah, you have seen this before. Nvidia clearly doesn't have the power. They'd be worried about antitrust concern. If anybody wanted to play hardball, they'd say, well, if you're in the business of building your own chips, we're out. I think that would probably create antitrust scrutiny given their dominance in the market. So all of these guys, every year they spend more and more money on Nvidia. They're waiting in line. They're price takers. These folks are not used to being price takers. These folks are the biggest. They're the biggest gorilla in the room. And when they meet with their vendors, they're used to saying, no, I want you to cut Your prices by 10% this year and I need it faster and I'm going to delay my payment term. They're used to dictating terms. And so when a company shows up and starts dictating terms to them, they are just, they're just not used to it. They just, they can't imagine what world they're in. All of a sudden it's like, oh, wait, all of a sudden I'm not the hot, the hot girl at the party and I have to kiss your ass and you're ignoring my texts. I mean, it's just, this is an alien place for these guys.
- [29:30]
Kara Swisher
We'll be right back after the break with a look at an interesting new take on product launches from OpenAI.
- [29:46]
Scott Galloway
Amazon Q business is the new generative AI assistant from AWS. Because many tasks can make business slow, like wading through the mud.
- [29:57]
Ed Mylett
Help.
- [29:59]
Scott Galloway
Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline tasks. Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analyses in no time. Q Got this. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you@aws.com learnmore. That's aws.com learnmore. Support for the show comes from Alex partners in business disruption brings not only challenges but opportunities, as artificial intelligence powers pivotal moments of change. Alex Partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on. Alex Partners is dedicated to making sure your company knows what really matters when it comes to AI. As part of their 2024 Tech Sector Report, Alex Partners spoke with nearly 350 tech executives from across North America and Europe to dig deeper into how tech companies are responding to these changing headwinds. And in their 2024 Digital Disruption Report, Alex Partners found that 88% of executives report seeing potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or even extremely high positive impact on revenue growth. You can read both reports and learn how to convert digital disruption into revenue growth@w www.alexpartners.com box that's www.alixpartners.com Vox in the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. Why do we like sports? Is it for the jerseys the players wear? The food you grab at the ballpark? No. It's that feeling you get in your gut, that drive to compete. But competition isn't just on the sports field. It can breed innovation, and XPRIZE wants to use that competitive drive and motivation to tackle some of the world's biggest problems. What sort of problems? Climate change, accessible clean water, and healthy aging. These existential challenges affect our planet, and we urgently need to find solutions for them. XPRIZE is a nonprofit organization that designs and hosts global, incentivized competitions that drive scientific discovery, cutting edge innovation, and groundbreaking solutions for the benefit of humanity. Xprize has launched 30 prizes in 30 years. In doing so, they've driven the improvement of oil capture technology, catalyzed tools to detect Alzheimer's influence, and RSV helped educate 10 million children in 74 countries, accelerated carbon removal technology, and kickstarted the commercial space industry. And XPRIZE is just getting started. The future is still ours to create. Head to xprize.org to learn how you could help architect a brighter future for everyone.
- [33:03]
Kara Swisher
We're back with ProfG Markets. OpenAI has unveiled a new initiative for December called 12 Days of OpenAI, where it'll showcase upcoming products through live streams held on its website across those 12 days. The event has already gained traction with the company's tweet about the initiative racking up 2.6 million views and attracting coverage from more than 10 different media outlets. Scott we've been talking a lot about public relations and investor relations and how that's all changing this year. What's your take on OpenAI's strategy here, specifically the fact that they are deciding to go into live streaming.
- [33:41]
Ed Mylett
Yeah. So first off, I hear the term 12 days of OpenAI, and I want to go into the garage, close the door, turn on the car. I mean, 12 days of open AI. Okay, couldn't they have gone with like three days of open? I mean, so two weeks of this shit. Anyways, you've been talking a lot about this and how the earnings call needed to be disrupted or investor relations and whether I think it was Alexander Karp walking around livestream, Instagram, going direct to kind of retail investors. There's a ton of innovation around investor communications right now, and this isn't investor communications as much as it is a product launch. And Apple sort of redefined the tech product launch, and they literally ripped off fashion brands. They said, all right, highly curated, highly orchestrated lighting, celebrities, big reveal. And instead of having Gisele Bundchen come down the aisle, we have Steve Jobs. He has a uniform. I mean, the lighting, the production value is capturing a perfect moment in time. And it's now moved to. They've kind of zagged to their zig and that. They want it to be more authentic. I'm sure they rehearsed, but they want it to feel raw and they want it to feel genuine. And bottom line is this is a prediction. I bet more people watch this product launch than watch CNN during those days. This will get more viewership from a more valuable audience than any cable network. Maybe not Fox, because Fox still gets a lot of people. There's a lot of people in Oxygen. Takes thinking. She's a looker. I love that bread bear I'd like to grab a stick with. He reminds me of a guy I served a nom with. Anyways, I was going with that. I think this is going to be hugely popular and redefine product releases.
- [35:33]
Kara Swisher
And I think the main takeaway for me is that I think that companies should be thinking about their earnings and their product launches less as just press releases and announcements, but more as content. Like, ultimately, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to produce content in the same way that we're trying to produce content on this podcast that is engaging and that gets people excited and that gets people interested. And you're not going to do that with just a simple press release. The way you're going to do that is with videos and with podcasts. And I think it's just very impressive that OpenAI has really led this transformation here. And they Said, well, why don't we do a live stream? I mean, that they're sort of at the forefront of the transformation of content right now. So I'm very impressed by the fact that they're taking this route for a product launch. I would like to just get your thoughts on live streaming as a medium, which I'm just finding very fascinating right now. Like, I feel like live streaming was not very long ago this very niche concept, this very niche, kind of weird corner of the Internet. The idea of a live streamer was not something that held much cultural currency at all. But in the past year we've seen like an explosion of live stream live streamers and live streaming. I mean, we've seen like Aiden Ross, who is a big live streamer who ended up interviewing Donald Trump before he was elected. And now Adin Ross is all over the news. And we've seen Kai Senat, who has built this gigantic following on, on Twitch. His last livestream reached 50 million viewers, which is around 15% of the United States population. And then here's this one stat that blew me away. More than a quarter of Internet users today watch a live stream every week. So I would like to just get your take on live streaming as a medium. Why do you think we're seeing this explosion right now in media?
- [37:37]
Ed Mylett
The only sad stress. I don't know. I kind of feel like live streaming is to original scripted television or video or just streaming what podcasting is to radio. And that is initially out of the gates. An old guy like me says, what's the difference? It's just radio. No, podcasting is different. Live streaming. I feel as if, you know, I hear this and think, okay, we should do a live stream, right, like everybody else. But I'm sure it's hard.
- [37:57]
Kara Swisher
I mean, you did a live stream like last week, right? You did it on.
- [38:01]
Ed Mylett
On section Actually, I did it earlier today. I'm just not thinking correctly. I did a live stream in AMA for. For section. Yeah, it's. Look, the. It's been around a while, I guess. Celebs. I don't know what the. I guess live streaming is going B2C where it's. It's mostly been B2B, you know. § We did a live stream on AI Roi. What a name. And 10,000 people registered and I think 3,500 showed up. But that's a good audience, I guess when you have Robert Downey Jr. Or Terry Crew show up, I'd be kind of curious to understand what is the zeitgeist. What's Working what isn't. But it just feels like, again, it's all kind of the same thing. And that is, if you're Wals and AOC and you go on a live stream, you're basically going direct to consumer and you're cutting out the means of production. And the means of production is CNBC or Fox or cnn. And so you can do it much more inexpensively. You get to dictate the terms of it. Any economic rewards, you get to reap the majority of it. So it just feels like it's another collapse of the media industrial complex where the creators get to garner more of the rewards because it's taking advantage of the infrastructure called DARPA and the Internet, as opposed to trying to kiss the ass of some means of production that gets in the middle, whether it's Netflix, whether it's cnbc, whether it's Comcast, whether it's Disney, and you can just go straight to these folks. And so it strikes me as if it's going to follow the arc of podcasting. It's going to grow substantially. It felt like it had a moment a few years ago with gimbal gaming, and then it kind of went quiet again, and now it feels like it's coming back.
- [39:35]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. Something I would add on to that, that I've been thinking a lot about recently in content. As I've said to you before, I've just become fascinated with YouTube. And I look at what's happening with our YouTube channel, which is growing enormously. I mean, we're getting like hundreds of thousands of views on our videos now. And I've been sort of wondering, why is that? Like, why would you opt to watch this podcast on YouTube versus just listen to it in your headphones? And I don't think it's because people want to see our faces. I don't think that adds that much to it. I was thinking about this. I think the big differentiator with YouTube and with live streaming is the comment section. I feel like having a comment section is just an entirely different experience because you get to share your own opinions, you get to hear what other people think. And suddenly the experience transforms from not just consumption, but it actually becomes like a social experience. And so what I'm finding with live streams right now, my take is it feels like live streaming is the comment section on steroids. You're getting to participate in the content with a group of people who are watching it at the same time. And I'm starting to think that any form of content that doesn't figure out a way to interact with the audience in a meaningful way where the audience can comment and have an opinion and engage interactively. I'm starting to think that any of that content is really just behind the ball.
- [41:17]
Ed Mylett
It's such an interesting point. You just inspired an analogy, and I don't know if it's the correct one, but. But the reason you go to Premier League games, you know, during COVID they didn't have fans or they had a limited number of fans, and they're just. You watch on TV and it's the same players and it's the same rules and the same game, and it just fell flat without the fans in the stadium. And I wonder if this is effectively a game. You know, traditional video now is a game where there's no fans. And that is. When I was on this AI Roi livestream, I occasionally would stop and read a comment and we tried to interact with the audience, and it just had such a nice vibe. And the thing I love about Premier League is you go, and the fans are just amazing. It creates such. They are so engaged in everything, you know, screaming and booing at every little thing and, you know, making fun of people and they're hilarious. But to your point, maybe that's what this is. Maybe the next level of kind of interaction and dope and entertainment is. All right, you have two streams. One stream is the content, and the second stream is the fan reaction to the content. Because what I noticed myself doing today on this live stream was occasionally when someone put something really interesting or funny or asked a question in the chat, I would sort of selectively pull stuff out and highlight it and think how.
- [42:33]
Kara Swisher
Fun that is for the viewer. I mean, it brings on a whole different dimension. The idea that you're watching the content and the guy who you're watching is actually interacting with you in real time. You compare that to just watching, like, Jimmy Fallon, where they have these very kind of awkward interviews, and it sort of feels like you're watching like robots put on a production. It's a completely. It's so much more human, I guess.
- [42:58]
Ed Mylett
Yeah, I think that's. I think that's a really interesting point. It's sort of. You know, this company I'm on the board of right now, Open Web, manages the comments section of media companies. But comments are asynchronous. Someone posts a comment and people comment on the comment. But it creates a lot more engagement and which creates incremental opportunity for advertising. This is all right. If we engage the audience, it's like the players yelling back or kicking the ball at an audience member. Right. It's sort of.
- [43:26]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [43:27]
Ed Mylett
Or you know, when the dad in left field catches the ball while holding his kid. Right. It just sort of engages the whole audience. I think it's really neat. I think here we should announce now that we're going to do a live stream so people, people can see you live. See how the edit really does impact our ability to make you sound intelligent.
- [43:50]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. I don't know if we're cut out for live stream.
- [43:52]
Ed Mylett
No. We've got faces for podcasting and content for asynchronous.
- [43:58]
Kara Swisher
But it is very interesting that we're seeing companies start to embrace this and and I think this is all headed in one direction, which is that the press release is dead and newer forms of media like videos, TikToks live streams. That is the future. That is the future of public relations. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our Associate producer is Alison Weiss, Mia Silverio is our Research lead, Jessica Lang as our Research associate, Drew Burrows as our Technical director and Catherine Dillon is our Executive Producer. Thank you for listening to Profit markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Thursday for our conversation with Tom Lee only on Profgy Markets.
- [44:54]
Ed Mylett
Kind and kind reunion as the world.
- [45:24]
Scott Galloway
Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. Did you know that almost 90% of executives see potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or extremely high positive impact on revenue growth? In Alex Partner's 2024 Digital Disruption Report, you can learn the best path to turning that disruption into growth for your business. With a focus on clarity, direction and effective implementation. Alex Partners provides essential support when decisive leadership is crucial. You can discover insights like these by reading Alex Partners latest Technology industry insights available at www.alexpartners.com Vox. That's www.alixpartners.com V. In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. Creating highly advanced AI is complicated, especially if you don't have the right storage A critical but often overlooked catalyst for AI infrastructures, solidigm is storage optimized for the AI era, offering bigger, faster and more energy efficient solid state storage. Solidigm delivers the capability to meet capacity, performance and energy demands across your AI data workloads. AI requires a different approach to storage. Solidigm is ready for everything the AI era demands. Learn more@storageforai.com.