← Rich Habits Podcast
Rich Habits Podcast
Joby's Flight to Manhattan from JFK, Anthropic at $1 Trillion, & MrBeast
00:30:17
Loading summary
Transcript39 lines
- [00:00]
A
Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC and for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play? You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummer ahead to learn more. See you this summer. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Rich Habits Radar, our Friday episode of the Rich Habits podcast, where every Friday morning we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money. This episode is brought to you by vcx, the public ticker for private tech. My name is Austin Hankowitz. I'm joined by my co host Robert Croak, and the three things sitting at the top of our Rich Habits Radar this week include Joby Aviation's flight from JFK to Manhattan, OpenAI missing their internal revenue targets, and Jerome Powell's last FOMC meeting. The end of an era. And be sure to stick around to the end where we talk about Starbucks's turnaround story. Shout out Mr. Beast. All right, Robert, let's dig into our first story.
- [01:40]
B
That's right, Joby Aviation completed the first ever point to point electric air taxi demonstration flights in New York City's history. Taking off from JFK International Airport and flying over to Brooklyn and landing at heliports in Midtown and in Lower Manhattan. The whole trip under 10 minutes. Which is just crazy considering what you and I went through recently. Austin in our Ubers, sitting for that same trip for like 90 minutes. Under 10 minutes. The same route by car averages 60 to 120 minutes depending on traffic. So this is a big step forward for Joby.
- [02:17]
A
This isn't some concept video or a press release with some renders and some ideas. This is real. This was a real aircraft. An egg shaped cabin with six tilt rotor propellers, full electric, zero operating emissions that took off vertically like a helicopter does. From jfk, it transitioned to forward flight in the touchdown at the West 30th Street Heliport in Midtown only 14 minutes later.
- [02:43]
B
Yes, these flights are part of the FAA's EVTOL integration pilot program known as EIP, which was established by an executive order from Donald Trump last June and formally launched in March of 2026. The Department of Transportation eight pilot programs across 12 states. And Joby was named as a partner in five of those 12 programs.
- [03:07]
A
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey worked directly with Joby and the FAA to make these flights happen. Port Authority Chairman Kevin o' Toole said, and I quote, this is exactly the kind of innovation we have a responsibility to test, understand and help shape for the good of the region.
- [03:25]
B
Yeah. Joby is in the final stages of FAA type certification, the five stage process that grants approval for a new of aircraft to carry passengers commercially. Importantly, Joby's first actual passenger service won't be in the US It'll be in Dubai, where the company plans to launch later this year in partnership with the city's road and transit authority. The UAE's regulators moved faster. Several other countries, India, China and the UAE could have paying passengers in EVTOLs before the end of 2026.
- [03:59]
A
That'd be really cool. Now, the commercial vision for New York is built on partnerships, not just what Joby's doing by themselves. Delta Airlines invested $60 million in Joby back in 2022 and they have a small equity stake in the company. The plan is to eventually offer seamless air taxi transportation to and from JFK and LaGuardia as part of your Delta booking. Uber also partnered with Joby to integrate air taxi rides into the Uber app. And with Joby's ownership of Blade Helicopter company, they already control the passenger infrastructure, lounges, heliports, booking systems, all of that. They control all of it across Manhattan and other key airports.
- [04:42]
B
And the stock tells you this is still a show me story. Joby went public in 2021 and has never traded above $20 a share. The company reported a net loss of nearly 1 billion in 2025. And this is an R and D heavy pre revenue business burning cash with while it waits for regulatory approval. So think long term.
- [05:02]
A
Well, let's talk about that. Robert, what does this new story of Joby actually proving? Hey, I'm able to go from JFK to Manhattan. I've got the infrastructure trending in the right direction. What does that mean for you and your portfolio people listening right now that I say, hey, air taxes are real. How can I profit from that in the future?
- [05:20]
B
Yeah, this is one of those hurry up and Wait, you want to be early, but you have to be prepared for that volatility that comes with these new technologies and secular growth trends. And so this technology is real. But the investment thesis depends on timing. Joby's aircraft works. It's flown over 50,000 miles across dozens of flights over nine years. The infrastructure is being built. The regulatory pathway exists. So for your portfolio, the way to play urban air mobility right now isn't just through evtol manufacturers themselves as their pre revenue and burning cash. And it's also through the companies that benefit regardless of which air taxi company wins. Delta's $60 million Joby investment is optionality on top of an already recovering airline business. And Uber at $74 is interesting because they're the distribution layer. If air taxis become real, you'll book them through Uber. So there's lots of opportunities. We're always talking about picks and shovels and this is just something to be aware of in this sector. And we're really excited about air taxis,
- [06:28]
A
but Joby as well, yeah, super excited about the sector. We're watching the early innings of a transportation revolution that could reshape how cities actually move people. This is not going to happen overnight. The FAA certification is a grind and Joby won't speculate on timing. But when a real aircraft flies a real route in the most complex airspace on the planet and lands safely at a commercial heliport, that's not just fantas see anymore, that's infrastructure. And it's a pretty cool achievement. So shout out Joby and again, shout out to them for coming on the show. Maybe they're going to come back soon and tell us more about their progress. Robert, let's jump to our next story, which is OpenAI missing their revenue and internal user growth targets. On Monday evening, the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell report which claimed that OpenAI's missed multiple internal monthly revenue targets in early 2026, falling short of its user growth goals. And here's the kicker. Their cfo, Sarah Fryer, told other company leaders that she's worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue does not grow fast enough.
- [07:36]
B
Yeah, it's a little bit of a crazy thing, but let's put some numbers around this. OpenAI closed a historic $122 billion funding round on March 31st. So remember March 31st just a little bit ago, the largest in Silicon Valley history at an $852 billion valuation. Crazy numbers, but hear me out. Amazon committed 50 billion Nvidia and SoftBank each put in 30 billion and the company is committed to spending approximately $600 billion on compute infrastructure through the end of the decade. That's roughly 100 billion a year in data center spending. Oracle alone has a $300 billion five year computing deal with OpenAI alone. And CoreWeave also signed a an $11.9 billion contract just last month.
- [08:26]
A
So to recap, there raised a ton of money. All of this 600 billion in compute infrastructure is what they've committed to spending, but revenue is roughly $25 billion a year right now as of February, March of 2026. It's a lot of money. $25 billion is a lot of money, but it's not 600 billion, right? It's a fraction of what they've committed to spend. The math only works if this revenue continues to grow at a blistering pace. And according to the WA, it's not. So here's where it gets worse. OpenAI set an internal target to hit 1 billion weekly active users on ChatGPT by the end of 2025, and according to the Wall Street Journal, they missed it. ChatGPT's growth slowed in late 2025, and the company's been dealing with subscription churn, people canceling their $20 a month ChatGPT plus subscriptions and switching to competitors like Anthropic and Google.
- [09:18]
B
And the Journal also reported that OpenAI lost ground to Anthropic, specifically in coding and enterprise markets segments, and to Google's Gemini in consumer markets. The market reaction was immediate. On Tuesday, Oracle dropped 6.5%, Core Weave fell 7.1%, SoftBank cratered 11.9%, Broadcom lost 4%, Nvidia dropped 3% and Microsoft fell 1%. Every single company that's built part of its thesis on OpenAI's growth trajectory took a hit. And collectively, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap erased in one single session.
- [09:59]
A
So if you think about Sam Altman and Sarah Fryer here, they of course issued their own joint statements calling the report ridiculous. Hey, Wall Street Journal, that's ridiculous. Come on, get out of here. They quoted saying, we're totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every single day. But as an outsider looking in, because the Wall Street Journal also reported that Fryer has some reservations about a 2026 IPO and the board is now more closely scrutinizing their comput. So an outsider looking in, you're like, wait a second, it doesn't look aligned to me. DFO is publicly telling the board that she's worried about paying the bills and then the CEO is signing a hundred billion dollar deals. Totally aligned. I don't know about that. It's a tough sell.
- [10:44]
B
Yeah, that whole statement sounds like a trust me, bro process. But Austin, what does this mean for you and your money?
- [10:51]
A
Yeah, we've been talking about the AI bull market for years now. And the difference between the AI bull market and the dot com bubble at its core were the profits. Whenever you reflect upon the hope and idea of the Internet boom back in 1999, 2000, whatever it was, a lot of companies getting hyped up on the potential of making a lot more money. Yes, we had a little bit of that hype in 2023 and maybe 2024, but a lot of these companies, as the years went on, were able to materially generate billions, if not tens of billions of net new revenue. Fits cash flow, things like that. But now, as we kind of look around, we're seeing the AI infrastructure spending narrative start to have some cracks. And it matters whether you own a single share of an AI stock or not. The entire AI trade has been built on the premise that these companies are going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on compute and the revenue from that spending is going to follow. And we've seen that from Amazon and Google and you know, Microsoft, a ton of their cool companies. But OpenAI's miss forces investors to ask themselves, what if all of the revenue that's being baked into these valuation expectations doesn't come soon enough? What if the $600 billion of committed spend that's supposed to go to Oracle or supposed to go to coreweave? Like, what if that money actually doesn't end up on their income statements? Is that being properly priced into their stock prices at the moment? So for your portfolio, not all AI infrastructure plays are created equal. Companies with diversified customer bases like Nvidia, they sell to everyone. Not just OpenAI are more insulated than the companies that are concentrated just to OpenAI Core Weave, which derives a massive portion of their total revenue from that single $11.9 billion OpenAI contract is the most vulnerable. Oracle. And their $300 billion deal with OpenAI is a liability to the company. If OpenAI's growth can' that committed spend. On the other hand, you got companies building AI tools that enterprises actually pay for and benefit regardless from which foundation model wins. So think about it. You guys have the perplexities of the world which take all the different models and Just build cool tools for enterprises. They're going to win long term. It doesn't matter whose model wins. They're selling to the enterprises. But then you have people like OpenAI who have got one model and one product and they're trying to sell it to as many people as possible. So you have to have sort of this perspective with your portfolio is no matter what model wins, how can I ensure that I'm participating in this AI infrastructure? Which again goes back to Robert we've talked about. You know, DDTCR is an ETF that is sort of the electrification, these data center infrastructure plays. We talk about Bloom Energy a lot. That stock is soaring right now. I mean, you have to be diversified beyond just a one single name into the secular growth trend. Which is why ETFs are a great way to pick up some of that exposure.
- [13:56]
B
Yeah, that was a mind blowing take. And it just really speaks to everything we talk about of having that diversification, having the picks and shovels and understanding it's more than just chips, it's data centers, it's energy, it's photonics, it's copper, it's all of this. And you have to stay ahead of it and really understand. And we even saw that just in the last 48 hours of Marvell pulling out their POS. Those with poet technologies and poet stock went down 50% overnight because of one company pulling a contract. So that's why we try to stay ahead of all of this in the Rich Habits podcast and definitely in the Rich Habits network. So for me, the biggest takeaway is we may be entering the phase of AI where the winners and losers get sorted. The era where everything in AI goes up might be over. And from here it's all about who has real revenue, real margins and real customer retention, not just the biggest infrastructure commitments. Because those can go away in the blink of an eye.
- [14:58]
A
They certainly can. So, Robert, let's head on over to our third headline here of the Rich Habits Radar.
- [15:04]
B
That's right, our final story today. Jerome Powell's final Fed meeting Wednesday was one of the most significant Fed meetings in recent memory. And not just because of the rate decision, but because the FOMC held rate steady at 3.5% to 3.75% for the third consecutive meeting, exactly as markets expected. The CME Fed Watch tool showed a hundred percent probability of a hold going in. But there are three layers to this story that matters much more than the rate decision itself.
- [15:38]
A
Yeah, so the first layer, inflation. The inflation picture has deteriorated significantly. Arch CPI came in at 3.3% year over year, up from 2.4% in February, the biggest monthly jump since 2022, driven almost entirely by the Iran war's impact on energy prices. Oil. Oil is at one eleven something dollars a barrel. Right. It's above 110. That trickles into everything. CPI rose 0.9% month over month. The hottest monthly reading in years. Goldman Sachs estimates that headline PCE rose by 0.64% for March, lifting the jump to 3.45%. Which means that in just 12 months, the purchaser Consumer Index, which means, like the manufacturers, the businesses that have to go purchase all these raw materials and stuff, their costs rose by about three and a half percent. This is moving in the wrong direction and the Fed knows it.
- [16:36]
B
Yeah. And the second point here is this was almost certainly Jerome Powell's final meeting as Fed chair. So an end of an era. His term expires May 15. And Kevin Warsh's path. The confirmation cleared dramatically this week after the U.S. attorney's office dropped its investigation into Powell over the Fed's Washington D.C. headquarters renovation. We've all followed that debacle, EY Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco said he expects Kevin Warsh to be confirmed in time for the June Federal Open Market Committee meeting.
- [17:10]
A
Looks like he's going to stay on as the governor, as a Fed governor, which he should. And that was expected.
- [17:16]
B
So we expected that, though. Yep.
- [17:17]
A
And the third layer on top of all of this is the labor market. It's softening in ways that the Fed just can't keep up with. The ADP national employment report showed that private employers added an average of just 39,250 jobs per week in the first half of April, which is a downward revision from earlier estimates. Federal government employees have fallen off a cliff. Down 352,000 rolls about 11 and half percent since Trump took office. A lot of this was doge related workforce reductions. But the national unemployment rate is now hovering around four and a half percent, which is up pretty substantially in the last 24 months.
- [18:01]
B
So, Austin, that was a whole lot of numbers and things that did not sound good for us. What does this mean for you and your money moving forward?
- [18:10]
A
Yeah, means the Fed's stuck. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Can't cut because inflation is re accelerating. 3.3% CPI is well above their 2% target. Can't hike because the labor market is weakening and a rate hike would crush an already shaky housing market. So they're forced to sit, they have to sit and wait and they'll probably keep sitting for a while. Reuters has a poll that went out to 103 economists and they showed that half of those economists expect rates to stay the same through September. AP Morgan even shared that they expect no rate cuts in 2026 and the potential of a rate hike in early 2027, which would just absolutely cr markets.
- [18:52]
B
It definitely would. So for your portfolio, this rate environment favors quality over speculation. Companies with strong free cash flow, pricing power, low leverage don't need rate cuts to justify their valuations. The companies most at risk are the ones priced for monetary easing that isn't coming high. Multiple growth names with no earnings, speculative real estate plays and over leveraged consumer facing businesses. So stick with businesses that can grow earnings regardless of what the Fed does next.
- [19:24]
A
Couple good headlines there. Got a cool little shout out for Joby. Got a nice breakdown for what's going on with OpenAI and trying to make sense of all this stuff the Fed is navigating in real time now. Robert, before we jump to our radar points, gotta give a shout out to vcx, the public ticker for private tech.
- [19:43]
B
For generations, American companies have moved the world forward through their ingenuity and determination. And for generations, every day, Americans could be part of that journey through perhaps the greatest innovation of all, the US Stock market.
- [19:56]
A
It did not matter whether you were a factory worker in Detroit or a farmer in Omaha, because anyone can own a piece of the great American companies. But now that's changed. Today, our most innovative companies are staying private rather than going public. The result is that everyday Americans are excluded from investing and getting left further behind, while a select few reap all of the benefits. Until now.
- [20:21]
B
That's right. Introducing vcx, the public ticker for private tech. VCX by fundrise gives everyone the opportunity to invest in the next generation of innovation, including the companies leading the AI revolution, space exploration, defense tech and more.
- [20:36]
A
So visit getvcx.com for more information. That is get VCX.com carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risk, charges and expenses. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus@getvcx.com this is a paid sponsorship. All right, Robert, let's jump to our radar points. You went first last week, so I'm gonna go first this week. I'm jumping.
- [21:01]
B
All right, rock and roll.
- [21:03]
A
I've got three good ones here. My first one is all about Apple embedding AI directly into their camera. That'll be interesting. Anthropic crossing a 1 trillion dollar valuation in the private markets. And my final radar point is a little shout out to Mr. Beast because in my opinion he is responsible for much of that Starbucks is experiencing right now. So let's jump into the Apple headline. Apple is embedding AI directly into your iPhone camera. Bloomberg reports that iOS 27 will feature a Siri powered visual intelligence mode inside the camera app, letting users scan their environment and get real time information back. A foundation for Apple's rumored smart glasses and maybe AI pendant. New AI photo editing tools are also coming with the iPhone 18 in September. Apple's WWDC in June should reveal the full picture. If I remember correctly though, Robert Google Gemini is like partnered with Apple. So if Google is partnered with Apple I would imagine because I'm sure you guys have used the Google Gemini app and you turn on the like the conversation feature and you can turn on the camera and like, like your Google Gemini app will look through your camera and like look at things and talk with you about your environments. You can use it to do a lot of really cool stuff. I remember I couldn't find the, the reset power button on a Keurig and so I asked my Gemini and I was like hey do you see this Keurig? I need to help turn it on. I can't figure out what's going on and it helped me do it right. So like, I wonder if that is what Apple is going to have now natively built into their camera app. That'd be pretty cool. My next story is anthropic crossing, a $1 trillion valuation in the private markets on chain pre IPO instruments that are trading on Jupiter right now. Price Claude's maker Anthropic above OpenAI's 852 billion dollar valuation, which is a 733 surge in valuation for Anthropic since October of 2025. The company's official valuation could land at 800 billion or higher in their next funding round, which is more than double of February's 350 billion dollar valuation. Kalshi is giving them a 68% chance of an anthropic IPO by January of 2027. The AI valuation arms race is not slowing down and it's really cool to see how vcx, the public ticker for private tech, was an early investor in Anthropic and when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange, I think it had posted anthropic at like 150 or 200 something billion dollar valuation. But now their equity in Anthropic is worth a trillion on the private markets. So you have to think when it comes to the M nav of vcx. Now my final story is Starbucks posting their best quarter in two years, marking this turnaround story as real as it gets. So U.S. comparable sales for Starbucks were up 7%, doubling Wall Street's expectations, driven by a 4% jump in transactions, which means more people walking through the door, not just higher prices for your coffee. The CEO called it the turn in our turnaround, which I kind of like that. It's a cool quote. The turn in our turnaround. Robert, I can, I can say that a couple times their non GAAP earnings per share came in higher than expected as well. Stock price popped after hours guidance is calling for more of this growth in the future. But the reason I want to talk about this is because I have noticed, Robert, and we talked about this off camera a couple, couple months ago, maybe even a year ago now. Publicly traded companies, Shopify, Royal Caribbean, Starbucks. Publicly traded companies that advertise with Mr. Beast on YouTube tend to see a nice little move in the right direction in their stock price over the subsequent 6, 9, 12, 18 months. I remember when Mr. Beast did a video about Royal Caribbean's icon of the seas and they did like a real cool breakdown of all the cool stuff. It was Royal Caribbean stock spike spiked dramatically after that video got everyone buying tickets for their Royal Caribbean icon of the seas. Shopify has been a long term partner of theirs. And I remember Mr. Beast did a video where they had some sort of Starbucks thing like floating in the sky somewhere. They also did Starbucks I think at their Mr. Beast games. Like Starbucks was doing some interesting stuff there. And I would argue that the increased foot traffic that they saw causing their stock price to go up about 30% in the last 12 months could be because of small smart marketing strategies, aka Mr. Beast.
- [25:42]
B
Yeah, I think that's a great take because it's all about eyeballs and it's all about just getting out there and trying to find new customer base and how can you acquire these new customers without traditional marketing. So I think you're spot on there. But the other crazy takeaway from your radar points for me is how we're throwing around these trillion dollar market caps now like it's nothing. I've been doing this for over 30 years and it used to be cool when you see a hundred million or maybe a billion. Now we're talking in trillions for some of these new companies. So my three radar points are kind of saucy today I think. And my first one is if anyone hasn't seen it, Gary Brockman who is the co founder of OpenAI back in the day with Sam Altman and Elon Musk, he got caught in a little bit of a pickle because they made one of his diary excerpts, exhibit A in the trial. And the quote from that is this is the only chance we have to get out from Elon. Greg Brockman wrote that and he was the co president and co founder at that time and he also said is he the glorious leader that we would pick. So I thought this was very, very interesting and a great headline because that one diary quote that he got caught with could really put them in harm's way in this suit to prove Elon right light on what happened here in this big monumental tech case. Number two for me and I think this is a really good headline for all of you out there that have really, really struggled with cost of living and everything else the Republicans are eyeing away to Cut Capital Gains Tax Bloomberg reports Republican lawmakers are working to lower taxes on capital gains as the party searches for new ways to woo voters worried about the cost of living. As we head into midterm elections and this proposal index capital gains for inflation could be in play as soon as later this year, though the likelihood of the bill coming together before the midterms still remains a long shot. Some Republicans have also pushed President Donald Trump's administration to make this change unilaterally. And number three for me today that I just found this as we started recording and I was looking for something really good. Uber Adds Hotel Bookings as of about two hours ago to push to become the Everything app Uber on Wednesday unveiled a new feature allowing users to book a hotel room directly from its app, the latest step in its push to become a one stop shop for everyday needs. So Uber basically added through the app a partnership with Expedia, which lists more than 700,000 properties. So the tie up envisions eventually adding short term rentals through VRBO and other services that can all be done through your credit card that's already synced, saved inside the Uber app. So in my opinion this is a great addition to Uber's, you know, goals of being the Everything app. And if you remember a few short years ago when they added UberEats, they bought Postmates, all of that. Really good step in the right direction for Uber. So we'll have to keep an eye on what this does for the stock.
- [28:55]
A
That's so interesting because like at the end of the day Uber is trying to figure out how do we make actual money because the beginning they were just subsidizing these routes. They were bleeding cash, right? They were not making anything for so long. And I think it was in 2023 they started generating free cash flow for their business. And a lot of that free cash flow came from that Uber eats, you know, postmates acquisition, bolt on sort of thing going on in the app there. And Now I think UberEats is just printing money for the company. And I'd imagine too, Robert, you know, we have the advertising business with Uber. They're doing a billion dollars a year right now just in advertising revenue, which literally just shows you Coca Cola in Netflix ad, wait for your ride and you're looking at it there on your phone. And that's making them a ton of money. Just think about how easy it'll be for them to refer people to hotels with Expedia. That's 100% margin. I mean that's not like they're, they're doing anything for that money. I think this would be really accretive toward Uber's bottom line if they can figure out how to do it at scale.
- [29:54]
B
Well, think about this too. Let's add another layer onto that, their partnership with Joby. All of a sudden you're booking a hotel. You get in the EV talk mall with Joby through Uber, you fly to wherever they can land. You get in the Uber to get to the hotel that you booked with Uber. So they're really playing the long game here and I love to see it, but we'll have to follow the stock and see what happens.
- [30:17]
A
Everybody, thanks so much for tuning into this week's episode of the Rich Habits Radar. Do not forget, subscribe to the Rich Habits podcast on Spotify, on Apple, on iHeart, on YouTube. Please consider leaving us a five star review. Vote in the poll below. Share with us your comments about these videos. Anything we can to be better podcasters and provide more value to all of our incredible listeners over time. That is the number one goal we have for the show. We're so grateful that a hundred thousand of you come back every single week to listen and we'll see you on Monday. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com.