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- [00:00]
Narrator/Announcer
Wall Street Week is brought to you by OTC Markets Group. OTC Markets overnight platform for exchange listed securities Moon ATS provides access to Global securities in US dollars from 8pm to 4am Eastern Sunday through Thursday. Learn more at OTCMarkets.com Moon Moon ATS is operated by OTC Link, LLC, a FINRA registered broker dealer and is available only through participating broker dealers.
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David Westin
Never Bet against American Grit or American Energy through Innovation Venture Global is not
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Nick Fox
only building some of the largest energy
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David Westin
facilities in the world right here in
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Nick Fox
the United States, but delivering American energy
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David Westin
at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.
- [00:57]
Caitlin Petrie
Small businesses are the pulse of every community. They bring people together, create opportunities and drive growth. Chase for Business helps business owners like you with personalized guidance and convenient digital tools all in one place. With that guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn more@chase.com business chase for business make more of what's Yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JPMorgan Chase Bank N A Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase Co. Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.
- [01:53]
David Westin
This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Westin bringing you stories of capitalism. The US Government has become a venture capitalist, buying equity in quantum computing companies as a bet on the future. Plus, Google turns to AI in making the biggest changes in its search engine in over 20 years. And the World cup returns to North America for the first time since 1994 with a lot more teams, a lot more matches, and a lot higher price tag for fans. But we start with the arrival of the mega IPO led by Space X with Anthropic and Open Air right behind. What does starting out with a $1 trillion market cap mean for the markets and those of us investing in them? Steven Ratner is Chairman and CEO of Willett Advisors, which invests the personal and philanthropic assets of our founder and majority owner, Michael Bloomberg. Steve this week we have had the IPO of SpaceX long awaited. And it's not the only one that appears to be going out at $1 trillion or more. We also have Anthropic and we have Open Air. There's a lot of talk about this in the financial press. Is it that big a deal?
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Steven Ratner
Oh yeah. This is extraordinary. I've been in this business for a pretty long time back in the day when a few hundred million dollars of market cap and an IPO of $50 million was know reasonable and now look where we are. We've never had companies of this kind of valuation on the day they go public, go public. We've never had this amount of capital being raised at an ipo. It's extraordinary and perhaps it's a natural part of the evolution of capital markets, but it is still extraordinary.
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David Westin
It's also, I would say relatively concentrated as much of the stock market has been actually in big tech. I mean it's all the tech related air elected related. Is that a problem? Potentially.
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Steven Ratner
People certainly worry about it. The fact that you have such a high percentage of the stock of the stock market in a relatively Small Number of 7 to 10 companies depending on how you count. I've seen charts showing that if you look back at the dot com bubble, if you look back at 1929, at some of the other corrections, there was a similar phenomenon. I'm not sure why those two things necessarily should go together, but certainly the world is in love with tech at the moment and whether that will prove justified or not, time will tell.
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David Westin
Are the normal rules of finance suspended when it comes to these? Because I mean if you look at things like valuations, I mean they're really extraordinary. I mean for example what they're they're talking about with SpaceX is really using like 95 times their trailing revenue, not earnings revenue.
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Steven Ratner
Yeah, I think I absolutely would agree with that. But I would also say that back in the dot com bubble we had companies going public I think with no revenue or some de minimis amount of revenue. Again, much smaller valuations, much smaller offering sizes. But yes, the valuations very much depend on what you believe is going to happen in the future as opposed to what already happened or what's happening at the moment.
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David Westin
When I talk about Space X, Anthropic and OpenAI, they're very different in one respect, which is profitability. Space X actually has been losing money, making money in some parts, losing money in others and OpenAI has yet to make money. Anthropic actually is making money. Should that make a difference to investors as they look at these three stocks?
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Steven Ratner
Not necessarily. I mean it's certainly making money now is better than making money somewhere down the road. But an investment decision is essentially looking at the present value of future cash flows. And so if you believe the future cash flows will be there, then the fact that it doesn't make money now is not the end of the world. Obviously people who invest in private venture capital kinds of things or growth kinds of things are often investing in companies that make no money at that point. Some of them don't even have a business at that point. But you're believing what's going to happen in the future. The problem is that the further down the road the cash flows are going to occur, the positive cash flows, the more uncertainty obviously there is around them, the more you get into questions of what's the right discount rate and how do you really value cash flows that are five, six, seven years out.
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David Westin
As an investor looking at these stocks, we have Space X, which is a fairly complex creation. I mean, it's, you've got Space Launch, you've got AI, you've got all sorts of things in there, as opposed to, for example, an anthropic, which is a cleaner play. Does that make Space X more attractive or less attractive?
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Steven Ratner
I think you could go either way. I think there are plenty of companies with one line of business that have done fine and there are other companies with multiple lines of business that have done fine. If you look at Space X, the launch business is a excellent business. Musk has done a fantastic job of essentially winning that race, so to speak, if you look at that. But it's a small business and it's never going to be a trillion dollar valuation kind of business. If you look at the Starling business, he's clearly done a great job with that as well. But again, it's not going to fully justify probably the valuation. And so you have to believe that out there there's something else. There's an AI business, whether it's data centers in space or Grok actually becoming more viable than it seems to be so far, or something like that, we
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David Westin
can't know right now. But as you look at this as an investor, do you wonder where the upside is? I mean, as you know so well, companies are taking a lot longer to go public in general, which means that a lot more the upside may be before it goes public and a lot of the growth may be behind you as you go public. Is there a risk in something like a Space X that actually the good part's already been realized?
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Steven Ratner
Absolutely, absolutely. There's lots of research that's been done on IPOs. Smaller IPOs of smaller companies tend to not perform as well over in the fullness of time. Post ipo, bigger companies, we obviously again have no experience with something of this size, so who knows? But you remember when Facebook now met, it went public, it was a really messy ipo. The stock traded down, people were bailing out and now look at it. Google had this weird IPO with their Dutch reverse, Dutch auction, whatever you want to call it thing. Also a little complicated. Eventually look where Google is now. But then there's. There's plenty of tombstones out there for the ones. I mean graveyard kind of tombstones, not celebratory tombstones for the ones that didn't work out so well.
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David Westin
So there's concentration in the big tech area. There's also concentration in the person of Elon Musk. He has 85%, something like that, the voting control. He also is the CEO, the CTO and the chairman. What are the risks involved in that as an investor?
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Steven Ratner
Well, there's definitely what we call key man risk. This company is a unique creation of Elon Musk. I think he's got a good team. Gwynne Shotwell has a great reputation. He doesn't suffer fools obviously. So only people who really can produce stay with him. But nonetheless, it's hard to imagine many other people who could have achieved something of this extraordinary magnitude. So I would separate the voting control issue, which we can talk more about from Elon, the person actually calling the shots, making the important decisions. That I think is critically important. The voting thing I think is a different kettle of fish.
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David Westin
What do three IPOs as we're looking at right now mean for the rest of the marketplace and other investors? I mean, first of all, could there be a slipstream effect where there are other ancillary businesses that serve these business that could be brought along in the slipstream?
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Steven Ratner
Depends how they go. If they go well, then you will see more of them. It's not completely a coincidence. I don't think that you haven't seen that many IPOs of these kinds of companies and they've been staying private for longer. Part of is the IPO market has not been really robust for a good number of years now. I think it's finally coming out of that. And partly I think people have not really wanted the hassle of being a public company and like being private now when you need the amounts of capital that these companies need, you really at some point have no choice. And so I think if this goes well, these three or most of them, I think you will see more of them come out of the venture growth world and into the public markets.
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David Westin
One of the things was commented is circular nature of some of the transactions going on among these companies. I mean specifically the Space X they have a deal with Anthropic, right where Anthropic is Paying them a lot of money, I think like a billion to 50amonth, but with a 90 day out. But there are a lot of other circularities among the ownership and the relationships among these companies. Is that a risk?
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Steven Ratner
And people go back and they use analogies again. The dot com era, when people were doing these contracts for dark fiber, but they were never going to need it, they were never going to use it, it was never going to get built, whatever. I don't think it's that much of a risk here because fundamentally what we do know this this far is that AI is going to be a game changer. When you look at the pace of revenue growth for the providers of the large language models, it is. I don't think I've ever in my career see businesses exceed a set of projections by as much as these companies have. More often than not, businesses fall, but shorter. Your projections, whatever. This has been extraordinary. And the usage, the adoption rate is unlike any technology I believe in history in terms of how fast it's being used and how much it's being used by people. So there's a real business at the bottom of this. If Musk wants to use some of his excess data capacity to generate some revenue in the meantime while he tries to build GROK into a viable LLM, I don't have a problem with that. You just have to, as an investor looks at that, you have to understand what it is you're doing, how long the contracts are, what the repeatability is and so forth.
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David Westin
The dramatic growth that you describe also comes with what I would say is dramatic capital investment. I mean the capex is extraordinary. When does it need to pay off? I mean, at some point you put all that capital in, you need to get a return on that capital and give the amount of capital going in, it's got to be a lot of return.
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Steven Ratner
Sure. Anthropic is already profitable and so we can kind of see what this can look like. Yeah, I'm not going to argue about that. It's an extraordinary amount of capital and you expect extraordinary returns. But I do believe that AI is a game changer unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime in terms of what it, the impact it could have on business and how business is conducted and how we use technology and things like that.
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David Westin
But it must be siphoning capital off from other possible uses of the capital. I mean, is it, is it starving other other businesses that could be using capital to good effect?
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Steven Ratner
As a matter of corporate finance theory, sure. If you use more of something, the price of it should go up, but you can't find that in the marketplace. I don't think in terms of where corporate bonds are trading, the ability of these companies to raise capital, and they've mostly been raising equity. It should be noted as well, one of the things we're learning from this period is that the capital markets are deeper and more robust and more fulsome than we probably ever would have imagined.
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David Westin
Is this one and done. Will there ever be any series of IPOs like this again at this level of magnitude? We've never seen it before.
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Steven Ratner
No, we've never seen it before. But again, I think if you looked at other periods where we had very robust IPO activity, I don't know when Alibaba went public with a $20 billion IPO, we might have said, well, we're not going to see that again, or Saudi Aramco or General Motors, the other two big $20 billion ones, we might have said, oh, that's like kind of once in a lifetime. And now we're at 75 billion. So I would never say never. I think the numbers just get larger over time. I would not have predicted this. I'm not going to predict the next one will be a $150 billion IPO, but I wouldn't say never.
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David Westin
Up next, the United states is investing $2 billion in quantum computing. What does it mean when Uncle Sam becomes a venture capitalist? And what does it say about where the world of computing is headed?
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Narrator/Announcer
Wall Street Week is brought to you by OTC Markets Group. Thinking about joining the exploding overnight market space but unsure where to start. Designed to meet the needs of a growing international investor base, OTC Markets overnight platform for exchange listed securities Moon ATS provides access to global securities in US dollars from 8pm to 4am Eastern Sunday through Thursday. Extend your trading day and trade global securities in US Dollars through a FINRA licensed broker dealer. In April, over US$4.5 billion traded on Moon ATS.
- [14:00]
Public Representative
Support for the show comes from public. Public is an investing platform that offers access to stocks, options, bonds and crypto. And they've also integrated AI with tools that can assist investors in building customized portfolios. One of these tools is called Generated Assets. It allows you to turn your ideas into investable indexes. So let's say you're interested in something specific like biotech companies with high R and D spend, small cap stocks with improving operating margins, or the S&P 500 minus high debt companies. Chances are there isn't an ETF that fits your exact criteria. But on public. You just type in a prompt and their AI screens thousands of stocks and builds a one of a kind index. You can even backtest it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks, go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market and paid for by Public Holdings Brokerage Services by Public Investing Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors SEC Registered Advisor Crypto Service Services by ZeroHash sample prompts are for illustrative purposes only, not investment advice. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures@public.com disclosures running a small
- [15:13]
Caitlin Petrie
business takes everything you've got, but with Chase for Business, you're not alone. They bring together local support and a broad range of resources to more than 7 million customers with a deep understanding of your day to day needs. They provide products and guidance built to help you thrive right now. Earn $500 when you open a new Chase Business Complete Checking Account for New Business Checking customers with qual Qualifying Activities Offer Expires June 18, 2026 Chase Business Complete Checking has the flexible tools you need to accept payments, make deposits and manage your finances with confidence. Learn more@chase.com PodcastBizOffer Chase make more of what's yours. Fees may apply to Chase Business Complete checking accounts. The $500 offer is available for new business checking accounts with qualifying activities through June 18, 2026. Eligibility and qualification requirements must be met. Additional restrictions may apply. Please speak with a business banker for more information. JPMorgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC
- [16:16]
David Westin
this is a story about the government as venture capitalist the Trump administration has announced IT will invest $2 billion in nine quantum computing firms. The Trump administration taking stake in select quantum computing firms. That entire ecosystem of quantum computing stocks like Rigetti and D Wave all moving higher on the back of that news,
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Nick Fox
really strong optimism on this quantum computing sector.
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Narrator/Reporter
These investments will not be grants or contracts to buy from these firms. They will be equity stakes in the frontier technology of harnessing quantum physics to build an entire new form of computing, something talked about and researched for years, but that has remained stubbornly on the horizon. IBM by itself will receive half of the government investment. Sam Palmisano spent 40 years at IBM, rising to be its chairman and CEO. He was there when the company began its quantum quest.
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Nicolo DiMasi
I think the societal implications are greater than the financial investment. I mean, to put it in perspective, three decades ago I invested in quantum and IBM research. So when I left the board, which was 20 years ago. I said, It'll be there in 10 to 15 years. I'm wrong again. Wrong again. It's very difficult. Scientific problems. Disease, energy, financial markets, logistics, national security, cyber. It has the technology to do things that would have taken days on. A supercomputer that IBM built could maybe take an hour or two, literally. I mean, there's things that are intractable that we deal with as a society, climate change, those kinds of things, things that are heavily scientific and I'll say physics in this field can all be addressed, assuming you know where they are, actually does happen in the next two
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Narrator/Reporter
or three years, the potential may be enormous. But what exactly is quantum and why has it taken so long to realize the potential we've been promised? Last year we talked with Jamie Garcia, director of strategic growth and Quantum partnerships at IBM. A PhD chemist, she's working at the Cleveland Clinic where IBM has installed one of its quantum computers with the goal of transforming healthcare.
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Caitlin Petrie
Quantum computers are just a totally different paradigm to calculate solutions to problems. And so what most experts have done today that are studying quantum computing for different application spaces is to really sit down with the math and figure out
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Kathy Carter
are the algorithms here that I can
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Caitlin Petrie
use and that I can explore using a quantum computer going to bring me
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Kathy Carter
any sort of advantage over what can
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Caitlin Petrie
be done today in classical sort of
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Kathy Carter
state of the art techniques.
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Narrator/Reporter
At the core of classical computing are bits, single pieces of information that can have the value of 0 or 1. But quantum technology relies on qubits, a unit that can have multiple values simultaneously. It's like holding a coin in your hand, that is Heads, tails, and everything in between until you open your hand to check. Physicist Jerry Chow is IBM's CTO of Quantum centric supercomputing, working at the Thomas J. Watson Research center just north of New York City.
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Jerry Chow
Really fundamentally, there's a different math, right? It's the mathematics of quantum mechanics that is governing how you actually manipulate these quantum bits, which then gives rise to a whole host of different opportunities for algorithms and types of problems that you can actually solve using quantum computers.
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Narrator/Reporter
A turning point in IBM's efforts to make quantum computing a reality came when it made it available to the world
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Nick Fox
on the Cloud 2016.
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Jerry Chow
The IBM Quantum experience was really a pivotal moment for us in terms of getting quantum computers for the first time out onto the cloud and into the hands of anybody, really. People, right? What's interesting is that before that period, I'd say it was really much more in the realm of physics that we were doing experiments on small devices, qubit devices that we were looking at, understanding how they worked, trying to make them better. But we didn't have any kind of real thought about how is this going to be used for computation.
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David Westin
In the nine years since you put quantum experience out there, what have you learned at IBM?
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Jerry Chow
There was a whole lot of people out there who wanted to touch and learn about quantum. I think we were sitting there that first night after we launched it, watching these circuits coming in and people were actually running things and we were like, oh, wow, this is picking up some steam here. And then to this point, we've had tremendous uptake in terms of using the platform to actually generate new papers and research. Thousands of papers have been generated which would have been impossible for us to do, just as individual scientists or researchers. Studying these devices in our own lab and working with other scientists in collaborations
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Narrator/Reporter
and in success, that community could go places that classical computing, even using the large language models of AI could, could never take us.
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David Westin
So it's not just speed, it's actual accuracy. When we're using classical, no matter how infinite we get, it's an approximation, right?
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Jerry Chow
Absolutely. It's absolutely not, just not a question about speed. The whole point of the quantum computer and what it can do is that it can give us the ability to actually get potentially more accurate results. Also get results that otherwise are unattainable using a classical computer alone.
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Narrator/Reporter
Companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel are all exploring the potential of quantum computing. But there's also a new group of contenders, startups that are betting it all on the hope that quantum tech will one day become profitable. One of those firms is Maryland based IonQ. Its CEO is Nicolo DiMasi, who believes he has the best horse in the race.
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Nicolo DiMasi
We supply quantum tech computers to our both federal, state and commercial customer partners. We also provide quantum key distribution, and we do that both on the ground and up in the heavens. Quantum key distribution is effectively quantum cyber security, and we're very focused on this not being just proof points in the lab, but doing useful quantum advantage examples for our customers and embedding ourselves into their workflows on an ongoing basis.
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Narrator/Reporter
The potential may be great, as are the investments being made. But when can we expect to see these potentially dramatic results? It turns out that that depends on whom you ask. IBM has made getting to quantum advantage in the real world a strategic priority and has a timeline of getting there in a big way by 2029.
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Jerry Chow
Our roadmap really shows the detail in terms of how we want to get from today to 2029 in between we have this real important milestone also that we believe that with the community we'll be hitting quantum advantage, right where there'll be some problems and claims of advantage, where we'll see quantum really surpassing any classical methods of solving certain types of problems.
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Narrator/Reporter
IBM says it's on track to have quantum computing pay off in a big way by 2029. But IonQ's Damasi says they're already there.
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Nicolo DiMasi
So our machines we announced on September 12th at our analyst day are 36, quadrillion times more powerful than anyone else's machine. And that gap is increasing.
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Jerry Chow
Not only do we believe we are
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Nicolo DiMasi
five years ahead of anybody else in the quantum computing business, whether it's government programs, adversaries or commercial companies, but we also have the lowest unit economics.
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Jerry Chow
So we're able to build a fully
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Nicolo DiMasi
fault tolerant 2 million qubit system and keep our cost of goods sold under $30 million.
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Narrator/Reporter
The Quantum race is on and the promises are big. But the winner is in the eyes of the beholder. IBM says it's ahead because it has more total qubits in its machines. Ionq says it's not the number of qubits, but the number of algorithmic qubits putting it in front. Previously these were questions for investors to weigh. But now the government has entered the race and placed bets on nine quantum computing companies. Those left out include big players like Google and Microsoft and smaller contenders like IonQ. Google says that funding from the government would have come with conditions that would have slowed down its progress.
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David Westin
Why do we need the government to participate? Why can't the private markets take care of it on their own?
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Nicolo DiMasi
If you go back to the original investments in the Internet was arpa, then it became arpanet. It was basically a link to community to connect the scientific laboratories and the academic research universities to exchange information on what they were doing in research that became the telecommunication backbone for the Internet. The government didn't create the digital economy. The government created the infrastructure, but built on the infrastructure with the companies, the ecosystem for innovation as well as investment. An example of where things haven't worked so well had to deal with the energy company. Back in the 70s under Nixon, there was an energy crisis that failed miserably. Needless to say, because they tried to pick a company. So when the governments, not just here, when the governments around the world look at state owned enterprises, if you want to go to China and places like that, when they try to pick companies, they, their history says they aren't as successful as when they create the environment for the private sector to be successful.
- [26:05]
David Westin
This is an equity investment.
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Nicolo DiMasi
That's correct.
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David Westin
But there's a range of companies that they're investing in. But it's equity participation.
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Nicolo DiMasi
Yes.
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David Westin
Which is different. One happen with arpa. That was a grant.
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Nicolo DiMasi
Yes, correct. Yeah, it's absolutely right. And this is where I think the model is challenged because when you make an equity investment, maybe they're spreading their risk, I mean like a pro growth equity PE firm. But at the end of the day you're picking. The risk associated with picking as in the past, is that government doesn't do a very good job of operating and government doesn't have a long term attention span. This technology is going to take 10, 15, I'm already in for 30 years. Right. I mean so you know, you need stability in that regard. And that's where government struggles and operational detail.
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Steven Ratner
They do policy.
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Nicolo DiMasi
Right. They can make grants, do research and they need to fund long term stuff. But they're not strong at actually running companies and that's where they fail to
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David Westin
Most of us, $2 billion sounds like a lot of money, but when you compare that with some of the investments being made right now in AI, I mean $850 billion.
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Jerry Chow
Yeah.
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David Westin
So is this it priming the pump for investors? Is this a way of the government saying we're willing to invest and that will encourage other investors to come in?
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Nicolo DiMasi
I think the reason that why 2 billion is nothing, it's what's going to take just go through the development cycles. When they talk about a hybrid model for quantum.
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Narrator/Reporter
Right.
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Nicolo DiMasi
What they're talking about is marrying this quantum advantage, the technology to the traditional approaches, which is cloud and AI. But it's not commercial computing.
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Nick Fox
Right.
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Nicolo DiMasi
It doesn't have that. What you need to make this thing a robust commercial system, the data management, memory management, backup and recovery, all the things you expect. Right. Accuracy of your answers and things like that that you expect if you're running a hospital or a bank or whatever it happens to be, I don't think is going to be there in two to three years. I mean there are working on it like crazy. But I think this thing's got a way to go from a financial perspective. The 2 billion, I mean it's a, it's a start, but it's certainly not going to be the finish.
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David Westin
Coming up. Quantum computing may still be on the horizon, but AI is here now and Google is redoing its entire approach to search because of it. We talk with the man spearheading the changes, Nick Fox.
- [28:28]
Narrator/Announcer
Wall Street Week is brought to you by OTC Markets Group Thinking about joining the exploding overnight market space but unsure where to start? Designed to meet the needs of a growing international investor base. OTC Markets Overnight platform for exchange listed securities Moon ATS provides access to Global securities in US dollars from 8:00pm to 4:00am Eastern Sunday through Thursday. Extend your trading day and trade Global securities in US dollars through a FINRA licensed broker dealer. In April, over US$4.5 billion traded on Moonats.
- [29:01]
Public Representative
Support for the show comes from Public Lately it feels like there are two types of investing platforms. Some are traditional brokerages that haven't changed much in decades and others feel less like investing and more like a game. Public is positioned differently. It's an investing platform for people who are serious about building their wealth on public. You can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti. Retirement accounts?
- [29:26]
Nicolo DiMasi
Yep.
- [29:27]
Public Representative
High Yield cash? Yes again. They even have direct indexing. Public has modern design, powerful tools and customer support that actually helps go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market and paid for by Public Holdings Brokered services by Public Investing Member Finra SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors SEC Registered Advisor Crypto Services by Xerox all investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures@public.com disclosures running a small
- [30:00]
Caitlin Petrie
business takes everything you've got, but with Chase for Business, you're not alone. They bring together local support and a broad range of resources to more than 7 million customers with a deep understanding of your day to day needs. They provide products and guidance built to help you thrive right now. Earn $500 when you open a new Chase Business Complete Checking Account for New Business Checking customers with qualifying Activities offer. Expires June 18, 2026 Chase Business Complete Checking has the flexible tools you need to accept payments, make deposits and manage your finances with confidence. Learn more@chase.com PodcastBizOffer Chase make more of what's yours Fees may apply to Chase Business Complete checking accounts. The $500 offer is available for new business checking accounts with qualifying activities through June 18, 2026. Eligibility and qualification requirements must be met. Additional restrictions may apply. Please speak with a business banker for more information. JPMorgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC.
- [31:07]
David Westin
This is a story about anticipating your every want. Last week we told you how AI is cutting into traffic for Internet publishers and what that could mean for their business. But Google isn't standing still for all the challenges from chat bots. Last Month it announced the biggest changes to its search approach in over 20 years. Nick Fox is Google's senior vice president for knowledge and information and the man responsible for the changes. With your experience, rank order, which is probably unfair, this change with the AI compared to other innovations you've done.
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Nick Fox
Oh, I think, number one for sure,
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Narrator/Reporter
for Google, that transformation includes AI generated answers, conversational search, and new tools that can reason through complex questions, monitor information across the web, and even complete tasks on a user's behalf.
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David Westin
How would you describe the change?
- [31:59]
Nick Fox
You know, just to take a step back, AI is the best thing that's ever happened to search. And you know, a lot of people are questioning that. A lot of people are saying, hey, what does AI mean for search? And what we see, the vision of search is you should be able to ask whatever question is on your mind. And the way I think about that is we have probably thousands of questions that go through our head any given day. We ask maybe a few of them, maybe we ask five of them, maybe we ask ten of them. Why do we not ask them all? Well, we don't know if there will be a helpful response to it. It might be hard to ask that question. So our big idea is you should be able to ask anything. And AI really supercharges that. AI enables people to ask whatever question's on their mind and get a helpful response. And so that's what we're pushing on.
- [32:36]
Narrator/Reporter
The quality of the user experience is a priority for Google even as it's changed its search engine to put AI at its core. And Rand Fishkin, who specialized in the business of online search, says that improved experience is very much central to Google's business.
- [32:53]
Jerry Chow
Instead, they push those down and they put the instant answer from AI right up at the top. They call them AI overviews. In the long run, it's better for their user experience and it creates an
- [33:04]
Public Representative
addiction to search and quick answers.
- [33:07]
Jerry Chow
If they can get people searching more and instantly answering their queries, they would come back more often, they would trust
- [33:14]
Steven Ratner
Google more, and they would click on
- [33:16]
Jerry Chow
more ads in the future. So Google is hurting themselves a little tiny bit right now, costing themselves maybe a dollar that they could charge so that in the Future they make 5, 10, 50, $500 from you.
- [33:29]
Narrator/Reporter
Fox does not deny the advantages to Google. If its new approach to AI driven search gives users more reason to use its product, but sees that as a feature rather than a bug.
- [33:40]
Nick Fox
What we're seeing with users is they're asking far more questions than they've ever asked before. They're getting the approach that we've taken. The approach that really defines what Google in search is doing with AI is that we're able to bring the best of the web together with the best of AI, where we're able to bring frontier AI capabilities built on our Gemini technology in close collaboration with DeepMind, and then we're able to bring that together with the web. So people can get links, they can discover content across the web, but they can also get helpful responses that contextualize the web and also give contextualized responses that answer their question.
- [34:13]
Narrator/Reporter
But Fox insists that time spent on a search is not the right metric for success. He'd rather people spend less time on a particular question or search and be able to press further to get their answers, including from the web.
- [34:27]
Nick Fox
For us, it doesn't have to be about time and to some extent, attention. But we don't measure search by how many minutes are people spending on search. We measure search by how many queries are people doing. How many tasks are people doing? Actually, if it takes two queries to do a task instead of five queries to do a task, we prefer that. We actually don't want people to do more queries in a way where if they're doing more queries because they're thrashing and they're not getting a good experience, or they're spending more time because they're thrashing and not getting a good experience, that's not what we optimize for. We actually try to get people off Google as quickly as we can is kind of one of the things that I think has been a hallmark of Google. We do want people to be doing more things with Google. If we can help people with twice as many of their questions as we could, you know, before, that's great, but it should be they're doing more with Google because they're getting more done rather than they're spending more time to get to get the same set of things done.
- [35:19]
Narrator/Reporter
As AI takes on a greater role in helping us gain access to content on the web, there are those concerned about its use discouraging the creators of the content. Caitlin Petrie is author of the book all the News that's Fit to Click.
- [35:33]
Caitlin Petrie
I think that it's really important to think about what's happening with people who
- [35:38]
David Westin
make content and AI as this kind
- [35:41]
Caitlin Petrie
of longer story of a tussle or a conflict between tech companies and people who create media and information. And then the question becomes if the business model for making original content, and particularly I'm concerned with journalism and art. But if the business model for making original stuff kind of goes way or becomes even more challenging and even more punishing than it already is, what do we do about that?
- [36:09]
Nick Fox
You know, people, people today expect that when you come to Google, it's accurate, it's reliable.
- [36:14]
Narrator/Reporter
Fox says he has similar concerns that whatever Google does with AI in search, not take away from the value of the content on the web for the sake of all involved.
- [36:24]
David Westin
What does this mean beyond the users but for the rest of the web, the rest of content generators? I mean, because Google was originally way to organize the web, right? And a lot of content generators got linked back to their material. What does this new approach mean for them?
- [36:41]
Nick Fox
So we remain committed to Google organizing the web, right? That's, that's a core part of what we do. And I would say relative to really any other company, really any other organization out there, we care about the web incredibly, incredibly deep, deeply. We're a company that started in the web. We're a company that still is deeply in the web. And so that is a bedrock commitment for us. And so that leads to how we actually build our products as well. So for example, in search, it's not just AI, it's AI with links within the AI as well. We don't think the users need to make a choice do I want AI or the web, but rather we can bring both of those together in a really effective. So we have lots of links within the AI responses. It's not just because of a commitment to the web. We also think it's really useful for users. If you're interested in a topic, you want to go deep on a topic, you might get an AI summary, you might get an AI sort of overview to give you the context. But then you want to read it more deeply. You want to see original reporting on a topic. You might want to see firsthand perspective. You might want to hear from someone who's actually there. You want to get that you don't just want to hear from the AI. And so we're cognizant of that. And we design around that. People are searching more than ever. People are searching for topics they were never searching for before. That all creates opportunities for websites to get discovered that never would have before. Right? If a user was never asked them the question, the website never would have gotten traffic, never would have gotten a click. This is an expansionary moment, not just for search, but for the web Overall.
- [38:10]
Narrator/Reporter
Accuracy and trust have long been the foundation of Google search. But in an era of AI generated answers where Users may never click through to that underlying source, ensuring the quality of that information has become more important than ever.
- [38:25]
David Westin
Accuracy and trust are important. When you're searching, how do you monitor that? Because there are a lot of people out there who actually have almost a goal of putting out information that's not reliable, that's not accurate. How do you monitor how you're doing?
- [38:39]
Nick Fox
I mean, this is what Google has been doing for, for years and years, is what we've been doing for decades. We understand the Web. We understand the Web very well. We understand the very early days of PageRank was that you could use the citations across the Web to understand what's more valuable than others. We've obviously built on that tremendously over time. But we understand the Web well. We understand what's accurate on the Web. We understand what's reliable, we understand what's trusted across the Web. We're also able to understand when we get it right, when we don't get it right, because we're able to understand sort of metrics across our user populations. So, for example, when we roll out a new AI experience within search, we know based on. We run experiments, we run tests, and we can analyze those to see has this improved the experience or not. We only release changes that actually do improve the experience.
- [39:32]
David Westin
Are there some categories of information that you have to be particularly careful about? I mean, I'm mindful of the fact we're going to have elections, United States, coming up in November, and you can have a lot of people trying to use AI and the Web to misinform either political rivals or foreign governments. What do you do to protect against that?
- [39:48]
Nick Fox
We are particularly careful on, on. On those types of questions. Sort of an election type of question. We're particularly careful, a finance type of question, a health kind of question. The way we approach that is in a few ways. Number one, if we don't think the accuracy of the information is high enough, we won't show an AI response in that kind of a case. So that's the first level of it. The second is we invest incredibly heavily here, and we focus particularly heavily in categories where the stakes are particularly high. And then the third piece is we're clear with users about what is AI generated, and we indicate AI can make mistakes so that users can be cognizant of that. As well.
- [40:28]
Narrator/Reporter
As AI reshapes how people find information online, it is also reshaping the competitive landscape. And while Google may dominate search today, the rise of AI has opened the door to a new wave of competitors.
- [40:42]
David Westin
You come from a very strong position in search. I mean, you've become a verb in addition to a noun around the world. Do you have a comparative advantage against other AI companies in that you have search coming to AI rather than starting in AI?
- [40:59]
Nick Fox
I think our advantage comes from deep expertise and a and a and a deep focus on innovation and continual reinvention. I think one of the maybe understated advantages that Google has is we've been through many disruptions before. We went through a mobile disruption. We arose in the web disruption. There was Ajax technologies, there was voice, there's been sort of time after time disruptions. Each time it would be, is this the Google killer? And we have worked through those and we have really a playbook of how to work through those, which is lean into the innovation, innovate through the disruption with an excitement about what the technology can enable and a promise to build a better product for users through it. And so I think that's a core advantage through any of these transformations is to rely on that playbook.
- [41:53]
David Westin
You raise. I think a really interesting point. I mean, was there any hesitation anywhere at Google to say, we're doing pretty well in search? Why do we need to disrupt ourselves on this? It's sort of a form of innovators dilemma. Is there any sense of, you know what, we're doing pretty well. Why rock the boat never?
- [42:11]
Nick Fox
Because we've seen it before and we understand that if you stand still, if you don't innovate for users, you'll become irrelevant. And that's so clear. We know that. We know that time and time again. And so we see a new technology come along, we jump on it. We invent the new technologies in most cases, but we see it, we jump on it. And we know that if we innovate for users, it will be expansionary. We know that our business will thrive through it.
- [42:39]
Narrator/Reporter
For Google, the choice was between disrupting its strong business in search or having someone else disrupt it. As AI yet again reshapes how information is discovered and consumed, the question will be, as it always is, whether this new innovation gives people what they want and need.
- [43:00]
Nick Fox
We're seeing that users are loving it. And the best sign that we see is that queries are growing up.
- [43:06]
David Westin
Next, the Men's World cup has returned to the shores of North America for the first time since 1994. It's bigger and longer and higher profile than ever. But can the fans afford it?
- [43:25]
Narrator/Announcer
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Caitlin Petrie
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- [46:01]
David Westin
This is a story about having too much of a good thing. The Men's World cup has returned to the United States this summer for the first time in over 30 years, and this time Mexico and Canada have joined in. It's a dramatically different championship than we saw in 1994, with more teams, more matches and A lot more money. But is there such a thing as going too far and extracting cash out of mega sports events?
- [46:31]
Narrator/Reporter
Manchester local Andy Milne arrived in Miami ready to cheer on England.
- [46:36]
Jerry Chow
I can't wait for that first match when the national anthem strikes up and I know that kickoff is two minutes away and it's England against Croatia and our World cup is going to start. There's nothing like that feeling in the world.
- [46:50]
Narrator/Reporter
After attending his first football or soccer in America, World cup in 1982, this will be his 10th and easily the most expensive.
- [46:59]
Jerry Chow
And this is me with the lads at university with my England shirt on, eager and ready to go over there and watch the. The finals.
- [47:08]
Narrator/Reporter
So expensive. He wrote a book to help fund the trip.
- [47:11]
Jerry Chow
So in 1982, obviously a completely different era, prices were cheap and you didn't have to get your tickets in advance. You could queue for tickets outside the stadium. So for the final itself, I queued for three days, which maybe sounds like a terribly boring thing to do, but it's actually great fun. And then eventually I got my ticket and the ticket came to a princely sum of 800 pesetas, which was equivalent to £4.15, I guess around about US$5. It's changed a bit now.
- [47:43]
Narrator/Reporter
It sure has. A recent Economist report found that tickets for this year's World cup dwarf previous versions of the event. The list price for the final match is much higher than that of other margins, marquee sports fixtures, including the Super Bowl. And that's the list price on FIFA's official resale platform. Tickets for the final are going for far beyond face value, with the organizer taking a 30% cut.
- [48:10]
Peter Moore
Six billion people all over the world will watch the World Cup.
- [48:15]
Narrator/Reporter
It's little wonder that FIFA head Johnny Infantino expects overall revenue to break the record, reaching over $11 billion, leading some to question when enough is enough.
- [48:28]
Peter Moore
I guess my advice to Gianni Infantino, well, just make it 7 or 8 billion and put a few billion back to make this what it should be, which is a very accessible and inclusive World Cup.
- [48:40]
Narrator/Reporter
Peter Moore is the former CEO of Liverpool Football Club and is now part of the ownership group of football teams in California and Poland.
- [48:48]
Peter Moore
This World cup, it feels a little different, to say the least, because I don't think it's accessible. This is the world's game. This should be a platform for everybody that loves the game all around the world to be able to come, to afford to come as they've done in all of the previous World Cups. And I've been fortunate to attend six World Cups. But we've got the issues of dynamic pricing, the secondary market, and basically I think FIFA has decided that this World cup is where they're going to make a stated $11 billion and make this a very exclusive World cup rather than what it should be, which is an incredibly inclusive World Cup.
- [49:25]
Narrator/Reporter
The idea of leaving a few billion dollars in potential revenue on the table might not be a sound strategy for most businesses. But Moore says sports are different.
- [49:35]
Peter Moore
Football has changed since I first went to Anfield with my dad in 1950. It's a very different economy. In those days it was his five shillings through the turnstile and in you go and you stand on the terraces. Now it's a multi hundred billion dollar business worldwide and I get that. But you've got to balance out the fact that the people that made this game the world's game is the average Jack and Jill on the street. And it's not the corporate hospitality. And what we love about the game, what we love about World Cups is the passion that comes from the stands. So it's not just filling stadiums with people, it's the right people. And by that the average football fan who will have a trip of a lifetime to the United States, Canada and Mexico. And you need to respect the fact that they've got this dream to do it. But, but right now I worry very much that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of tickets in the wrong hands. Somebody say the wrong hands? It's people who are speculators type scalpers that are looking. They see these tickets as a fungible asset that they can make money on rather than the precious seat at the world's game. It's a bigger issue for football in general is that it's becoming more expensive. You've got an older fan who maybe has had that season ticket for 30, 40 years. It's the issue of how do you maintain the ability for multi generational support. My granddad was Liverpool fan, my dad was a Liverpool fan, I'm obviously a Liverpool fan. But more and more people are somewhat being priced out and the energy in the stadium for bluntly an older demographic if you will, rather than the younger demographic that I grew up with is starting to dwindle. And so you've got to find ways of allowing people that bring the energy, the passion, the excitement, the singing back in there and can afford to do so.
- [51:23]
Narrator/Reporter
It's not just the so called beautiful game either. Sports team valuations are soaring and investors are seeing opportunities in a wide range of sports from basketball to cricket, from baseball to pickleball. Kathy Carter has spent her career in commercial roles in sports from the 1994 FIFA World cup until recently as the former CEO of the LA 2028 Olympics.
- [51:47]
Kathy Carter
We obviously all know that, that we've seen a massive disruption in media in our country and quite frankly across the globe. And so, you know, you have different ways and micro communities that actually follow different either sports teams or communities that are developed around whatever the content might be. And I'd say that has both complicated and also given opportunity to the World cup to what is actually happening this summer. But it does mean that there are so many ways that companies or fans can engage with the game and creates what you, what you might say is this groundswell of commercial support for the event and, and in some cases so much more money that's at stake both in terms of media rights. Obviously we can talk about the ticketing, sponsorship, merchandise. I mean it just, we're at a scale that is very different. In 1994 we were introduced the game and now I would say that from a World cup standpoint, FIFA is really saying, how do we now maximize the opportunity so we can take dollars and redistribute those dollars around the world?
- [52:51]
David Westin
You mentioned several revenue sources. Ticket sales, media rights, merchandising, corporate sponsorships. Have they grown together or have some become larger than others?
- [53:02]
Kathy Carter
Well, listen, I'd say media rights has, is, is historic historically the major or the number one revenue source in this particular World Cup. Given the number of tickets and certainly the pricing on the games, that is going to break all records. I would say that the FIFA World cup final, there's no question in my mind that will become the largest gate in the history of any sort of event that's ever been produced just by virtue of the premium opportunities and the overall ticket pricing, etc.
- [53:31]
Narrator/Reporter
Many fans will gripe about the cost of tickets to attend matches. Carter says the money made can go towards making the sport bigger and yes, better in the long run.
- [53:41]
Kathy Carter
You know, we're a capitalist economy and you know, we subscribe to the adage of supply and demand. I do believe that we will see many kids and many families that will still be able to go. I think it'll be through different routes. But by the same token, you know, there is a, there is a market in this country for events. There's a market in this country to buy premium. And I'd say we're seeing what the, the actual ceiling on that might, might be as a result of this World Cup.
- [54:08]
David Westin
Where does the money go, I mean, in other American professional sports, it goes frankly a lot of to the players, they get paid an awful lot of money and then into the owners and the values of the team. Where does it go in the World Cup?
- [54:19]
Kathy Carter
Yeah, so that's a great question. You know, a lot of it is in support of the teams that do make it and participate. And in some cases that funds an awful lot of their youth development programs. Some of the smaller countries, it allows federations across the world to invest in the game and in the grassroots game in their countries. But it also then a disproportionate amount will stay with FIFA, which then goes into what they do to help grow the game across the world. And whether that is investing in women's soccer is a great example. And what they've done to build the FIFA Women's World cup into a much more significant and revenue generating and really the level of exposure for the women's game starts to create opportunity for women that perhaps didn't exist before. And you could say that across many different areas, whether that's in the youth space or that's in the Paralympic space, where you've got cerebral palsy teams, you've got beach soccer. So there's a lot of ways that they will contribute money to help the federations around the world continue to provide opportunity for kids and for those that are coming up through the system, if you will.
- [55:23]
Narrator/Reporter
Both Carter and Moore agree. To keep up in the world of sports, like in business, you need to be strong commercially, but you also need to keep the next generation engaged. And although there may be a market for the high priced tickets in the United States, Moore worries that the pricing might tarnish the World Cup's legacy and damage future tournaments.
- [55:44]
Peter Moore
When the stadiums become soulless, where there's no real atmosphere, where it becomes, I'm going to an event that I want to go to because it seems like fun rather than, this is my team. This was my dad's team, this was my granddad's team. I live and die for this team. They mean everything to me. My mood, my personality is based on whether we win or lose. Those fans are being priced out. And that is a long term price to pay that sports will have to deal with in the future. If these pricing structures stay the same
- [56:14]
Narrator/Reporter
as the football gets underway, Moore hopes the tournament is remembered for the action on the field and not for the cost of admission. As for whether he's attending, you know what I did?
- [56:25]
Peter Moore
I bought 100 inch TV for half of the price of an England ticket against Croatia. And I ought to this works. And seriously, I did. I went to Best Buy. I rationalized that this is half of the price of a Category 3 Ticket to Watch England against Croatia. And I bought a hundred inch tv.
- [56:41]
Narrator/Reporter
With all the commercial deals and billions in revenue, modern football can feel like a complex game. But the secret may lie in the simplicity.
- [56:50]
Kathy Carter
At the end of the day, it's still 11 guys in shorts and a soccer ball. I mean, that's the beauty of the game. I mean, they often say in its simplicity, it's what makes it complex. And so, you know, I believe once the national anthems get played and the ball is put in the middle of the field, it's just 11 guys playing against the other 11 guys.
- [57:12]
David Westin
That does it for us here at Wall Street Week, I'm David Westin. See you next week for more stories of capital. Unlock the savings at Boost Mobile and save up to 600 a year. I've been scouting these big carriers for a minute now and I've seen them pull the same play a thousand times. They promise you the world, then hit you with a price hike right when the game gets tight. But boost mobile they're $25 a month unlimited wire wireless plan is the most consistent player on the floor. No contracts, no price hikes. Unlock the Savings today@boostmobile.com Unlock based on average annual single line payment of AT&T Verizon and T Mobile customers compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile unlimited wireless plan as of January 2026. For full offer details, visit Boost Mobile.com Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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Caitlin Petrie
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David Westin
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Steven Ratner
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