Paramount Wins Warner Bros. Bid, Anthropic vs. Pentagon, and AI Doomsday Memo

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, do it the right way, with Indeed. I use it when I get like an air infection every time I get an air infection or something like that or clean out my ears or a cold or a flu. That's a little too much information. Tell us about the ear cleaning. Hi everyone. This is Pivot from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Karr Swisher and I'm Scott Galloway. Resistant on subscribe. Why don't you give us an update because February is coming to an end. You've had over 20 million views across social media over 1.5 million site. This obviously has a lot of momentum. People mentioned it to me all the time. Your website touts $242 million loss in market cap. Talk a little bit about how it's gone because we have something to announce. But first give me a little update and then you can do the big announcement. The honest truth is I'm struggling because it's taken a lot of time and a lot of effort. It feels as if the momentum is actually cumulative in building and I've had a lot of different kind of smaller resistance programs reach out and say what are we going to do in March? Should March be, should we met a March where we focus on one company or focus on open AI? Should it? Right. So, and how do we keep it going? Because it does feel like it's it's building momentum and to just shut it down at the end of the month feels like a loss of effort and momentum. So I'm quite frankly, Kara and I want your advice. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it going into March. I think you should hire someone specifically, not part of YouTube, but really. Yeah. Hires someone to really keep it going. And someone who wears Birkenstocks, look Brooklyn, a lesbian, some rich parents, putting them, putting them through nonprofit. Yeah, whatever it takes. Yeah. Whatever it takes. But I think it's important to have someone. Do you drive a Subaru? No, that's my son does. So you're so going to be created. That's what we're doing. He's in San Francisco working for all perfect. No. He is a lesbian. I know. Perfect. I don't know if you've heard, but I pay really well. You have to have a lot of dick jokes, but I compensate 50 to 100% above market. True story. The dick jokes and the conversation. I know. Well, I'll ask him. He does have a job. I will ask him. I will ask him if he wants to help you know who you want as Alex, but he wouldn't do it. Alex is so like he would engineer this the fuck out of this thing. He's a Michigan. He's taking like organic chemistry and computer science and working out and like lifting lifting buildings and the title that he has for this summer where he's working his advanced manufacturing product, integration, engineering and turn. That rolls right off the tongue. I know. I was like, wow. Can he just say pole dancer? He pole dancer, advanced manufacturing product, integration, engineering, and turn. That is what my second son is doing. Did I tell you when I was on the college tour of my son, Alec, the first thing, literally the first thing the first impression we got of Michigan was Alex's fraternity. And we were both like just scared scared. He's scared. He's leaving. The floors were sticky. Sticky. I lived in a fraternity and I don't I don't I like brought back. I'm like, was it this bad? Yes. And it smells like beer, old beer. Oh, yeah. A beer, beer and semen. Yeah. I know. I know. Yeah, it just yeah. Yeah. He's going to live in an apartment for a senior year. But so he's leaving the frat finally. My little boy is on his way. Yeah. And the house was clearly built like 200 years ago. He looked like Gulliver roaming around. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. You want to go back. I feel like you want to go back for a party. Oh, I'm in. Okay. All right. I'm definitely that pathetic guy that shows up at the fraternity party when he's invited. Yes. No, that's so sad. There was a Seth Rogen movie like that. Anyway, listen, we are going back to the Midwest. Let me just say this is not ending. I think you should hire someone. I think you should keep going. But we are going back to the Midwest. We're not going to Ann Arbor, but Scott and I are coming to Minneapolis. We talked about it on the show and then we made it so along with our great team here. And you can see us live. We're going to celebrate, resist and unsubscribe and keep the momentum going. We're going to do a live show at the Pentagious theater on Sunday, March 8th. We will be there a week from Sunday. Many apolis. Here we come. I want to meet Roda from Mary Tyler Moore. That's why I'm going. That's and you know what? I hope she's wearing a raspberry beret. That's get it. Get it. Cara. A little local. A little local humor is there. Talk about the tickets. They're not available yet. Right. They go on sale. I think by the time that's there is they're on sale. We're going to be donating all proceeds to the Minneapolis Immigration Center. I believe it's called. But we want to do something. Well, I said this. You've been very supportive and we've decided. I've decided I want a frat. I want my efforts off the fucking keyboard and off my to be a fraction of the virtue signaling and action. I claim I claim to you know, want to have. And so I pitched you on this idea and we thought let's go to Minneapolis. We want to bring some economic activity. We want to salute them. We want to basically say over and over that they fucked with the wrong cowboy when they came to Minneapolis. Right. It's going to be a nice event. You of course are totally well connected. We're going to have a bunch of fun and famous surprise guests. Yes. And we're going to do a live show and basically nod to the to the incredible Americans known as Minneapolis. And we love the Minneapolis. And if you jump straight to the website, you can find a link to buy them when the tickets are available. We think they're going to be available on Friday at resist and unsubscribe.com. We've got a thousand tickets. Again, the money goes straight to charity. We're going to run this show on pivot too. So we'll talk about some current events, but we're going to focus on what's happening here with resist and unsubscribe. Because we know we have a lot of fans there and we love Minneapolis. We love what the city has done. And we want to get back in some way. And this is one of the many ways because what happened to you was painless. And at the same time tech companies have a lot to do with this. Like let's be clear. And so we really what Scott is doing here is giving you guys have resisted. And we are going to do our little part. And it's a little part compared to what Minneapolis has done. But tech is not it's not the only reason obviously, but it's played a part in where we are today. And so we're going to resist and unsubscribe. And everyone's going to unsubscribe speaking unsubscribe. Scott unsubscribe from one medical, which is an Amazon product. Did you have the 99 year or 199 year? And did you were using it? A little bit. Yeah, absolutely. And I love it. I love the service. I just hadn't used it in several years. Yeah, I use it when I get like an ear and every time I get an ear infection or something like that or clean out my ears or a cold or a flu. I get a lot of wax of my ears. And so I've unsubscribeed our entire family from it. And it's a lot of money. It could be less attractive to a heterosexual. Yeah. Anyway, I'm doing just fine by the way. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. But March 8th, Minneapolis, Tickas will be on sale soon. Please come. We want a full house. And we're super excited to see you. We've got a lot to get to today. So we're going to dig in. First President Trump delivered the longest state of the Union ever on Tuesday, one hour and 48 minutes, where of course, set Americans were telling him we're winning too much. Did you watch, Scott? Thoughts. I was on to the late. I watched. I did what I did with almost all media broadcast on traditional cable. And that is I watched it in bits and pieces on, you know, TikTok and Reels the next day. I felt like for Republicans, I felt as if they were attending their ex-wife's wedding when you're still on her health insurance. And but he can, but she controls the military. It felt like dear leader in the Duma, where they thought I better stand in a plot or I risk execution. Yeah, totally. So I found it. I don't know. I quite frankly, I thought it was a bit of a nothing burger. He didn't say a hell of a lot. I thought he came across as quite robust to be heard. He came across as robust, but he moved very quickly by the end and to very deflated. Like it was really if you watch the whole thing, he started off a real like energetic. And then he got mean. He was normal-ish for him. And that's a very low bar. But he as you as the night progressed, he got super mean calling the Democratic's crazy. And then that fucking idiot in the back, J.D. Vance was like, oh, like he looked like such a dope. He is he is no right being to be president. Sorry, I'm going to he just such a dope. The Supreme Court went and stony faced. And every time Trump did something like the Democrats are crazy, the Republicans, as you said, jumped up like a bunch of like like dancing monkeys essentially. The Supreme Court sat down. The military looks straight ahead, which was really interesting. And of course, the Democrats sat down and they wanted the Democrats to have photos. The Democrats not agreeing with immigrants shouldn't kill American citizens. They wanted photos like that. I thought it was mandatious. And if you look at any of the lie stuff, there's a lot of it. I thought it was it veered into cruel as usual. And then the worst part was it was dull. It was actually dull. And that's to me the worst part. And of course, the numbers show much less people watch at 28 million versus 36. It's like, doesn't have any staying power. And he denied Americans were suffering. That's one of the things which I thought was a mistake. I thought from a political standpoint, is it Abby Spanberger? Is that her name? Yeah. Abigail Spanberger. Abigail Spanberger. Governor Virginia. I thought her rebuttal was outstanding. And I came up with an idea. I want to pitch you and I'm serious now. And I actually called one of our favorite senators. And I said, I have an idea. I think they should hire. If you think about essentially the democratic response should turn into what the halftime show is to the Super Bowl. And that is a halftime show had almost no relevance 40 years ago. Now it's bigger than the Super Bowl. I said, hire Jay-Z's rock nation. Fill a stadium with 10,000 rabid Democrats. Yeah. Then you get all the kind of music, cool, cool intro, amazing artists, graphics, visuals, great lighting. Because the problem is the follow-up whether it's Marco Rubio responding, the response always comes across as flat because it lacks the sex and the magic. Yeah. I needed to be jazzed up. I agreed. The lighting wasn't. Let's sex it the fuck up. Because if you listen to what she said, if you read her response, it was outstanding. The lighting was bad. The setting was bad. It just can't compare. It's like going from the Greek theater to your, you know, you're watching something on laser discs. I hated it myself for thinking that, but I'm like the lighting's bad and the setting's bad. It's not good. It was too far away and it was too close. When I was renovating a house in the Hamptons, let's bring respect to me. I used to go to the 7/11 and a bunch of guys would roll up and I'd say, okay, I need some guys to do stun-studding or something like this in my general contract. I would just sit in the passenger seat with a bunch of cash. I had no less than 12 or 15 workers at any time at my house doing shit. At night, I'd roll in and they'd all be in the kitchen with a VCR and a big four pizzas and 24, those are Modelas or something else and they'd have this bad black and white TV and all these guys would just be sitting around watching porn. Oh, yeah. And I remember thinking, this is odd. This is odd. But go ahead. This is odd. No, that's it. That's the whole story. Okay. Don't do that, Democrats. Do you not have Modela pizzas in place? I had a, this is what a douchebag I was. I had a sand beach volleyball court. Okay. Okay. You're losing the resistant unsubscribed people. I was so optimized for the ladies. Okay. Let's move. You have to ask a better person and now you're a lesbian going to Minneapolis. I'd like you to wear Birkenstocks, by the way. And that would be great. Anyway, it was nothing, Birger. And he looked mean and I thought he got, he really got to and started doing the blood. He didn't say anything and he didn't know my, he teased tax cuts, which I was interested in. Okay. How are you going to pay for those? Didn't talk about AI much. She didn't do anything forward. He didn't really, he didn't really talk about Iran much. He didn't show his, the show is winding down. That's what I thought. I'm reminded me of the end of the apprentice. It wound down. It suddenly wasn't interesting. And that's what I think. He was mandatious. It was mandatious and cruel. But that, that sort of table stakes with him. Doll is what I thought. Hi, everyone. Scott and I just recorded earlier today, but I'm jumping on because a major story just broke after a long battle. Paramount has won the Warner Brothers Discovery bidding war. At least for now, Netflix has released a statement saying the deal is, quote, no longer financially attractive. It never was. And it was, quote, always nice to have at the right price, not a must have at any price. Paramount had up this offer to buy all of the company for $31 a share and added all kinds of bells and whistles. And Warner determined that offer was superior to Netflix because it was actually. So I'm joined now by Pucks, Bill Cohen to break this all down. Bill, you and I have been texting about this for a long time. You thought it would be quick. And Paramount would get away. I said, this was going to go on, on and on. And it has. It's really been like since December. I think we've been, we're never, it's sort of broke. But talk a little bit about your overarching things. And we'll talk about a few other things. Oh, look, I think this caro is the outcome that had to happen. You know, where as Netflix was saying it was nice to have at the right price. It was getting to be nosebleed territory. Paramount, this is existential. I mean, without this, they're just like an $11 billion company, which once upon a time would be nothing to sneeze at. But now it was a Pipsqueak in this landscape. And so they needed Warner Bros. discovery. All of it to make what the elephants hope, you know, if they hadn't done this, then their original premise for the Paramount deal wouldn't have made much sense. And their equity wouldn't do anything. So this was kind of existential for them. They had to pay up. They had to win. And Kudos to David Zazel for running one of the best M&A processes I've seen in a long time. You know, for people who forget. Yesterday, I had tweeted that Netflix had to walk away from this because it was just ridiculous. It was in same price. And Warner was at was that $10 a share recently. And it popped the 31 was their $21 of of excellence that had been created not at all from nothing, right? It's like whipped cream or something. Well, it actually got us low at $7 a share. Yeah. Right. I do remember. I was recommending people buy that price, but because I thought they would pay down the dead and make something of it. But you know, he's you know, ever since September 11th, when Paramount first began to hint that it was interested in buying this and it offered $19 a share. We've gone from seven to 31. And it's and what? Not because the companies have performed particularly that much better. I mean, they performed fine and Warner Brothers had some hit movies. But it's just because of the scarcity value, the fact that he ran an incredible auction process kept them on both sides on their toes the whole way. And especially this last bit of of of of jujitsu was just beautiful to watch. Yeah. Yeah. I said he won the Jeff Buickus Award for turning chicken chicken salad and feeding it to a NEPO billionaire. That's you know, Jeff Buickus was the last guy at Warner Brothers to, you know, make a fortune selling the company day TNT. And now Zaz has done it again when sold again. So let's break it apart a little bit because one of the things that had begun to dawn on me and you and I I always thought Netflix was the better owner in terms of taking these assets and doing something significant with them. I felt like the purchase the Paramount is not as good as going to be a good owner. It's still too small. Instead of a leaking lumbering media ship, it's a bigger thing, you know lumbering ship. I don't see how they're going to just because they're slightly larger be that much better unless they are run by someone who's more experienced like I think David Elleson should get out of the way. And you know, I know they have Jeff Schell very talented George Cheeks many others, but they really, they don't have the executive or to I think to do much with this and Netflix later can come swooping in and take off parts. So how do you look at it? Look, I know they're very excited over at Paramount about winning. I know they're very excited about their business plan and what they think they're going to do with this. You know, they're going to have to combine CBS and CNN. I can only imagine what the feelings are over there. Bad. Yeah. I'm not great. You know, there's a lot of bloat probably on the CNN side that's going to once again come under the come under the acts. You know, as we've discussed many times here, I think that you know, David Elleson has blundered a few times already out of the gate. Taylor Sheridan losing that. That was a big, big loss. Bigger, bigger than the CBS disasters, which are not nothing either, you know, overpaying for, you know, UFC or whatever it is. I mean, you know, so I think there's, you know, they've got a lot to prove is, but nevertheless, they've got a lot to prove, but they also had this was existential for them. They had to, they had to win. And for Larry Elleson, I mean, if it weren't for Larry Elleson, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be talking about this and we didn't have this discussion. They would never have been taken seriously. They never could have done the deal. So it's Larry's unbelievable amount of equity that he's willing to step up. There's something like 45 billion dollars of equity, 25 billion from Middle Eastern, probably, sovereign wealth funds and the rest from Larry and, and, you know, Jerry Cardinal at Redbird Capital, with most of it coming from Larry. I mean, this is an unbelievable amount of equity, an unbelievable amount of debt. It's probably going to be like the largest LBO kind of in history, except they're not taking the company private. They're, you know, it's remaining publicly traded company. Well, let me ask you in that regard, you know, would you compare it to what Elon did at Twitter? Like that, I don't know, some of them was like, well, can't they do what Elon did at the meeting? The bankers sort of gave up and he managed to get his money back because he squeezed it into a different company. I don't think they have that choice here. This is, they're just have the media company, correct? Hey, well, you know, if they want to create P AI and create a AI company and everybody go crazy for it and then have the AI company buy the media company and then, you know, merge it with SpaceX. Okay. I mean, you can do, you want to go do all those crazy things. Maybe they can pass it off onto somebody else. Maybe Elon will buy it. You know, Elon could buy it out of petty cash. He could. Why did it Larry Allison do this? Because he seems to me, he's a smart customer about a lot of things. This seems like buying a yacht or something, well, he has a yacht. What am I talking about? But you know what I mean? It seems so unlike him, perhaps he's old. Perhaps he wants to leave a legacy for his son who likes to make movies. What is, because from a financial menu, this is not a Larry Allison move to me in my mind. No, this is, you know, they're going to have 70 plus billion of debt here. Cara, it's a lot of debt. You know, maybe they have 11 or 12 billion of cash flow. Maybe it's a lot of debt. They're going to have to make a lot of cuts. They believe they're going to deliver quickly. Every buyer, every buyer who puts together a leverage company thinks they're going to deliver quickly. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Maybe Netflix will get another chance at this when the thing flounders. But why did Larry do this? I think it's edible. I mean, I think he wanted to do this for his son and he started down the path to do it. It went from 19, was their first bid to 31. I think he felt like, you know, this ego was involved if he didn't do it. That he'd have a gone his face kind of thing. And he's got now Trump expecting him to change the dynamic of the two companies in terms of the politics. And so I think he felt like he had to do it. And once he started it, and you know, he basically caved and gave Zaz everything he wanted, every little detail. Correct. Which is so unlike Larry, I was like sort of like, what a chump. I never called Larry else in a chump before, but I feel chumped that Zaz loved rent circles around them. Yeah, he got into deal heat and gave Zaz love everything he wanted. I mean, they're happy over there. Yeah, I know because they're like, they're like, you know, they're pumping fists. But right. Honestly, I was like, Oh, dear, oh, dear. That's what I think. There's going to be hangover for this. Yeah, definitely. So two more questions. You mentioned Trump. One of the things that everyone's worried about, of course, is Larry else and owning Tik Tok. He does an Oracle on 15% of Tik Tok, which isn't a huge amount. It's a significant amount, but it's not the most amount. And owning CBS, which I think was a falling knife. So I'm not really clear where everyone's they're obsessed with it because it's a good story. But it's not a, I would say, you know, we just did an analysis of pivot and we have more people in the demo advertising than see. You know, all of these companies do all these cable companies. So it's not that it's the news organization. And CNN has been declining. Like, let's be clear. Like the numbers have been declining. All of cable has not just CNN. What? Do you think it's a political thing or what? Or also, lastly, Trump's running out of time. Right? Trump is absolutely running out of time. So look, address the political issue. And then secondly, the regulatory issue could still get very ugly with Democrats attacking this if they get back in the control of the legislature, correct? Presumably. Well, well, let's take the regulatory, you know, first, they made a big deal of them getting through Hart Scott, Rodino, the, which meant that there wasn't going to be a deep dive into this by the DOJ, although they could still come back and take another look at this now that it's a kind of a different deal. A new deal they could, they probably won't, but they could. They got the EU. They were definitely working the EU, you know, David and Jerry Cardinal were over there working the EU. They think they're in good shape with the EU. So they think between the DOJ, the EU and Trump being on their side because he's going to, you know, give them the political, you know, his format that he wants and be supportive of him, which, you know, whatever, ridiculous of yes me, but, you know, that they think they've got the regulatory situation in hand. You know, politicians make a lot of noise about these mergers, but they have no say in the approval of them. So even if the Democrats take the House in, you know, November, I'm not sure what, this, you know, this is going to be, this could very well be over by then, you know, they put in this so-called ticking fee. If it's not over by the end of September, which is obviously before the elections, they're going to owe a Warner Brothers shareholders another 50 cents a share of $650 million. So they think that they're going to- So the advantages is to do something quick, to get it quickly done. They, some things they can't control, but I mean, they obviously are very caught, they're highly confident, Cara, they're going to get this through the regulators. And, you know, they'll give Trump what he wants. And I'm not sure the Democrats, even if they take the House can do anything about what CBS and CNN broadcast. So to the FCC and that's still in Trump's pocket and, you know, Trump blithering away, you know, asking for them to give him favors and bend the knee. Or get rid of Jake Tapper, whoever they want to, whoever he's mad at at the moment. Part of it, yes. Yeah. So when you think about where Netflix goes from here, I think it was the smartest move. The stock is going to soar. They have plenty of money to do things. They're so innovative. They're such great operators, right? They're sort of- it's not a bad thing. They could do a distribution deal for some of this content. And then later just wait until the knife falls, right? Presumably. What would you do if you were tense? I thought this is exactly what he was going to do. Right. And this is what I wrote that exactly he should do yesterday. And then I don't know whether he reads it or listens to me or whatever, but he did exactly the right thing. He looked smart. Stock is going to move up after moving down like 30%. He takes his $2.8 billion breakup fee and builds out his new movie studio in New Jersey and gets content deals and looks smart and disciplined. And that's what investors like. Looks like the good guy. He does. He looks like the he looks like the good guy and he can move on from this. It was going to be a headache for him if he got this. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do in a deal, Kara is to walk away. And he did the smartest thing. So he's going to get plotted all around. He could read the tea leaves. He wasn't. It was going to be a regulatory nightmare for him to get this through. Trump was not going to make it easy for him. You already bloviated about firing Susan Rice and Ted didn't do it. And so, who knows what was going to be in store for Ted, but he did the smart thing here. So very last question. When you think about what happens next for consolidation? This is obviously Comcast has got to be like, what do we do? Disney's got to go. What do we do? Netflix now looks like it's willing to play at least because it wasn't an acquire very much like Apple. But it is. They're very opportunistic now. And in good now they've had this. They've never done this before. Now they know, right? They've done. They've worked on a big deal. What do you see next if you could make a prediction? Well, I mean, it's quite a lot of people have been thinking that Comcast would spin off NBCU and maybe Netflix and NBCU get together. But I don't really think Netflix needs to do any of that. Now they got a little taste of it. Maybe they thought, well, they walked around the Warner Brothers lot. That was kind of fun. Now I guess maybe they could walk around the universal lot. They're building their own lot. I'm not sure they need to do it. But if they want to do it, I think there would be opportunities. There's Amazon Prime. I'm not going to do anything with Disney. I don't think. But NBCU, there are some smaller studios they could get their hands on AMC and things like that. I don't really see that they have to. I think Ted sort of had fun here. He showed his metal. He showed he can be a deal maker. He got a merger agreement. And he showed himself to be disciplined. And he comes out when he's the big winner in all this. Him and Zaz, of course. Right. Zaz has a $600 million winner. I swear this guy. This guy. Mr. Discovery. Mr. Mr. Diners, Drive-ins. He ran the M&A deal of the sense of his. I got to give it to him. Yeah. I always run him down when I see him. I joke with him. I say, looks like a lesbian. But I have to say he did a great job here for his shareholders. Right. I mean, literally $7 to $31. Amazing. Amazing deal. And good luck, Alison. Good luck on catching the car. Good luck. Good luck. We'll wait for the sequel. All right. The other winner here is you. You've done an amazing job in covering this. And I like debating with you. And it's really helpful because it's smart and it's clear and and you're non-romantic about any of this. Anyway, I appreciate it. Go to Pock to check out Bill Cohen's reporting and we'll take a quick break and Scott Knight will be back with Nvidia's earnings. Support for the show comes from Indeed. Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job. It's about connecting with someone who can move your business forward. For that, check out Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Indeed Sponsored Jobs boosts your job post for quality candidates so you can reach people that can help your business thrive. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now as we speak. 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They're so excited to go out every day. They wait-rated the door. In fact, we milk them and we just open up the laneway and let them just go right out to pasture. I'm Rhonda Miller Goodrich and I'm a dairy farmer in Cabot Vermont. Our farm is Mollie Brook Farm. We're an organic dairy farm and we are a supplier to Stonyfield. Mollie Brook Farm has been in my husband's family since 1835. We started our organic transition in 2015. We had 53 acres of corn ground and of course we had to use herbicides and pesticides and the soil was dead really for all intense purposes. We stopped growing corn and stopped using herbicides and pesticides and we seeded that down to perennial grasses. After that we began to see biodiversity in that soil again. To be organic certified, our cows need to be in pasture at least 120 days. I think the organic practices really benefit our animals. You know, having good feed, good water, a nice light area, that's what's important to us and that's what's important to Stonyfield. Visit Stonyfield.com to find Stonyfield organic yogurt near you. [Music] Scott, we're back with more news and video reported better than expected fourth quarter earnings with the profit hitting 120 billion only a handful of other companies including Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple have made over 100 billion dollars in profit in a year. Net income for the company doubled to 43 billion dollars. Revenue in the data center business rose 75 percent. Talk about that because Wall Street was also rattled this week by a viral memo from Market Analysis from Citrini Research, very good research group. The memo laid out a scenario where the AI systems trigger mass white collar layouts, push unemployment above 10 percent and ultimately to a stock market crash. Citrini said the post was designed to prepare investors for potential left-tailed risks as AI makes the economy increasingly weird, stressing that it's a scenario, not a prediction even so the S&P dropped 1 percent on Monday, though some of it was over concerns about tariffs. The company specifically named the memo included Uber, DoorDash, American Express, IBM, all saw steep declines. It was an interesting memo and I thought it was a thought experience and the markets were already rattled by Blue Owl, capital and major private credit lender announced its halting of quarterly redemption for one of its funds and selling 1.4 billion dollars in loan ads as the company stuck fell. We'll get to that in a second. I'll talk a little bit more, but stick with the first with the Citrini and the Nvidia earns. Well, I'll talk about the video before I talk about Citrini. Revenue, 68 billion versus 66 expected up 73 percent year on year, up 20 percent quarter on quarter, non-gap earnings, buck 62 versus a dollar 53, up 82 percent year on year data center revenue, 62 billion up 75 percent year on year, the gross margins 75 percent. Their fiscal 2026 revenues. margins were crazy. 216 billion, up 65 percent. I think that's that may be more revenue than like every streaming media company and movie studio combined since the launch of chat Gbt. Nvidia has grown its data center business roughly 13 fold. And this quarter marked the best revenue growth rate of the entire fiscal year. So it's revenue growth on the law big numbers. It seems to be more like network of facts. It keeps getting better. It's scaling. Q4, 73 percent year on year growth, BQ3 at 62, Q2 at 56 and Q1. As they get bigger, they're growing faster. They're literally defying gravity. Notably, they're leaving out China from its future guidance, according to the CFO, while small amounts of H200 products for China-based customers who are approved by the US government. We have yet to generate any revenue. And we do not know whether any imports will be allowed into China. China was previously 20 almost a quarter of Nvidia's data center revenue. But that's now gone. It doesn't seem to have hurt them. And the thing is, it's still not expensive. It trades at roughly 24 times toward earnings, which is only slightly higher than the S&P. So you have a company that's the most, arguably the most dominant company in history at that moment, is trading with the S&P is trading at. And because of the fears around AI and maybe because of the stock acceleration, it's only up. It's basically flat. It's up 4 percent this year. That's that flat. And then you have all these companies announcing they're spending two-thirds or three-quarters of a trillion dollars on CapEx this year. And most of it's, or a lot of it, is going to Nvidia. Alphabet is flat. Amazon's down 7 percent year to date. Metast flat. Microsoft is down 15 percent year to date. But Big Tech is getting punished for spending money. And Nvidia is getting punished for collecting it. Nvidia is on the right side of that CapEx. So one of those, one of those must be wrong. Either these companies are making good investments, or I guess maybe the thesis is they're overspending and it'll slow down. Should we talk about Satrini? Yeah, Satrini was interesting. You know, there was the other one a couple weeks ago that was another thing like everything's going to change that one, Schumer, Matt Schumer, whatever his name is. There's been a couple of these that have actually had real impact as they've been written. So because there's thought experiments in many ways. But they are interesting. But go ahead, Satrini. Well, essentially, I would describe it as an A+ creative writing project from a super bright high school student. And it is really, it's written in the past tense. It says, okay, this is how we hit this massive recession in the market last the third of its value. And I think it's a really interesting thought experiment. What they're essentially saying is that AI is going to create this negative feedback loop where it makes white collar workers so much more productive. So quickly, the companies can do layoffs and hire fewer workers, which results in an employment spike less consumer spending. And because companies fall into revenue pressure, they're forced to cut costs. And how do they cut costs more AI? And it creates this downward doom loop. Now, you could make the same argument for any technology, right? A 1.90 percent of us working in agriculture now, it's less than 2 percent. But that happened over 200 years. These guys are saying this is going to happen over over 24 months. And what's happened is it's really cut. Obviously, we talked about last week. It's gone after the SaaS companies, the software companies who they believe you'll be able to replace Adobe, Figma or Salesforce just with thoughtful internal prompts. And they, it's really well written. And it's got great branding. They coined the term Ghost GDP. And that is economic output can grow while the benefits of that growth never actually reach most people. The other surprising victims here in this will come back to my prediction is a lot of publicly traded PE or private credit companies, whether it's Apollo or TPG or Blackstone have been their stocks are down 20, 30 percent because they own a lot of software companies. And there's a fear that as private credit lenders, basically they act like banks to companies who are non-traditional borrowers. Did a lot of those companies might not be able to make good on the money they borrowed. Let me just throw in some stats for the this you're talking about blue owl, which is a major private credit lender. The company stock fell 10 percent on the news last week because of the these these selloffs shares are to 52 week low. The selloff did then ripple across the whole private credit sector, which probably wasn't fair Apollo, Aries, Blackstone and others sliding. Blue owl said it is not halting investor liquidity. It's accelerating the return of capital. I love how you do that. Mohamed El Arian, former CEO of PIMCO, suggested this could be a canary in a coal mine moment, comparing it to the early warning signs for the 20 2008 financial crisis. So there this is all linked together. This this idea of worries worry for all of these these things, especially private credit lenders. Some are not as concerned. Some are more concerned. We've got a lot of letters from people saying what should they be concerned and what's going on here, but they are definitely as you're noting and they're linked correct. All this is linked to this spending this massive spending by the tech companies. The way I would try and describe the dynamic here and to understand if you're a risk and where you want to think about investing your own human capital and your own financial capital is the following. My mom used to run the secretarial poll at Southwestern University a school of law in downtown Los Angeles where I actually worked in the middle of my high school and she oversaw 20 secretaries who would write up the exams and the the legal research of all the professors. That's gone. Word processing has taken that away. At the same time, my mom then became an executive assistant because she has good EQ and she's smart and reliable and can write well. If you look at truckers, that AI will be a substitute for truckers. Truck drivers via autonomous are in real trouble. At the same time, accountants, you're going to see a lot of their wrote accounting work go away, but they there are now more accountants than ever because they move upstream into things like tax, wealth planning and estate planning. The question is, which presumably AI eventually would be able to help you with that I don't have to I call my account and maybe who's amazing all the time for little big things. Presumably, at someday, I won't be talking to anybody, but yeah, I don't see very artisanal on my part. It seems like a lot of work by carers. It's like pump and gas. I kind of like that. That's the right example. I use a lot of lawyers. I used to send every agreement I did, advertising contract, whatever it was, an employment contract I sent to our lawyers. They charged me a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars to have an associate review it. Now I said to our chief growth officer, no, use AI review it and you do it. I trust you more than with AI, you're smart is a low level lawyer. At the same time, I'm spending dramatically more on a very talented lawyer at a firm that's actually called Citron on this incredibly smart woman named Lucy Lee who figures out everything from immigration to tax strategies to my estate, because that shit is complicated. Because you want her to be using AI for on your behalf, right? Because presumably she's also using it. Yeah, but she can call me and say, "Scott had you thought about turning this company into an S course so you can in five years qualify for 1202. She's incredibly strategic and smart and charges 1500 bucks an hour." So the bottom line is wherever you are in the world. Do you have an opportunity to use AI to go upstream or as AI basically going to take everything you're doing and you have nowhere to go upstream? But the story of technology disruption is the same and I don't think it's any different here. In that is it will take out the boring road work and you either take that additional margin and go upstream and invent new jobs, new higher paying jobs or you get outsourced. The V here or the correction might be more severe and America is bad at taking care of those people. Again, we spend.2% on retraining. Denmark spends 2% of GDP on retraining. We also don't do it well when we try to do it. It doesn't quite work. But look at what we're in the business. I would have thought, so for example, I've been writing books and I thought of my latest book. I'm starting my newest book. I thought, "Oh, AI is going to play a huge role." It plays a role in research and improving and in fact checking. But the writing is still. Yeah, I agree. I've been trying to make it. Fetch is not happening for me in AI and writing. It's not. But even look at our business, I would have thought, okay, AI can produce the scripts. AI can edit. And it doesn't. We're hiring. I know you are at Prof. Media. We're hiring more people. And we use AI what we might do. We might launch two podcasts instead of one because AI will help us produce more data sets that we can talk about. Yeah, we've got to figure out one of the things I was talking about this morning. We've got to figure out how to make Fetch happen with it. That's a slower process. One of the things someone was like, "Oh, it's all going to be over." I'm like, "Imagine at 2000. I went to see a Hollywood executive, big name." When the thing crash happened, he goes, "I'm glad that's over." I'm like, "What? You have no idea what's coming." I think it doesn't mean that all of them are going to survive, but several will. It is a significant change. The question is, was it fair for Apollo to get dragged down in this blue owl thing? Probably not, but that's how Wall Street reacts. You may see an enormous decline in Nvidia or any of these tech companies. But are they really going away? Is this really going to decimate them? What it's going to do is have every company refigure where this cost structure is. That's what it's doing. You're going, "Do I need all these lower-level lawyers?" That is a significant problem. One of the things that it creates is if we throw all these people out of work, they're going to be mad. There's all kinds of social issues there and political issues. The question is, what do we do about it? That's hard because we've tried retraining. It hasn't always worked. Then we spend a lot of money on retraining. It can get sucked up into political bullshit, which is, let's give everybody jobs. Then at other times, it works like during the depression. We have wonderful things that they did during high-speed railup. There's the West and Eastern Seaboard. There's a lot of infrastructure. Both Andrew Ross-Sork and Josh Brown, who had on property markets a lot, said something that really impacted the way I process and how I approach markets. It's the following. They're right. The optimists have beaten this shit out of the pessimists. The key question you got to ask yourself in something like this, with respect to the markets, is ask yourself, "What could go right?" Because there's a temptation by academics and thought leaders to catastrophize because you sound smarter when you catastrophize. It sounds scarier and more interesting. You put some bar charts around you talking about the zombie apocalypse and a downward spiral doom loop. The doom loop around moving from agricultural to manufacturing to service. It wasn't a doom loop. It was a job creator. Let's talk about what could go right here. I think his name is Zvi Moshewitz. Actually, the scenario does involve massive job creation. Starting a new business, creating a new product, or providing a service is now a turnkey thing you can launch with an agent. All sorts of barriers and costs involved are gone. Marketing cost drop almost to zero because their agent finds you. Logistic costs are almost zero. Transaction costs are almost zero. Wages for anyone you hire, a down in their productivity is way up. The cost of living is way down, which creates more margin, more opportunities for new businesses. I've been struck. When I got a business school in 1992, there were two people that started a business. The other was my business partner. There was only two of us. Now, I would bet a third of the grads from Stern. Are going to try and start some sort of AI company. Same thing with the media people. I started off having to work for a big firm. I don't need to. We have to move on, but it's really, we should keep this discussion going. It's very important because I think you're right. It's easy to get satisfied and you should be thinking about those things. It's just a question of what's the other side of that? What's the where are the opportunities? Just like we were talking about Netflix. All right, Scott. Let's go on a quick break. We come back. We'll talk about Pete Hegsetth, Threatening and Thropic. Hey, Cara Swisher here. I want to let you know that Vox Media is returning to South by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcasts. Join us from March 13th through the 15th for live tapings of today. Explain. Tuffy Talks, Prof. G Markets, and of course, your two favorite podcasts, Pivot and On with Cara Swisher. The stage will also feature sessions from Brane Brown and Adam Grant, Marquez Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Two, and Robin Arzhan. It's all part of the Vox Media podcast stage at South by Southwest, presented by Odo. Visit VoxMedia.com/SXSW to pre-register and get your special discount on your innovation badge. That's VoxMedia.com/SXSW to register. Really, you should register. We sell out and we hope to see you there. After decapitation strikes against Iran's leadership, what can we expect next in the escalating war? The big question is, if there is going to be a next strongman in Iran, what kind of strongman will that person likely be? I don't think that there's going to be another powerful, cleric, supreme leader. I'm John Feiner, and I'm Jake Sullivan, and we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, we sit down with Karim Sajapur to discuss what to expect in this next phase of the war against Iran. The episodes out now, search for and follow the long game wherever you get your podcasts. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel served as President Obama's Chief of Staff, an administration that had to deal with its fair share of global conflicts. He dealt directly with Israel's prime minister and thought plenty about the threat from Iran. But Emanuel told me that the pace of action from this President in the Middle East is giving him whiplash. In 15 months, this President has taken military action against eight countries. Now, we got three more years to go. In 15 months, Iran is twice, but you have Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Venezuela. I'm losing Nigeria. Today, explained in your feed every weekday and on Saturdays, too. Scott, we're back. Anthropic has rejected the Pentagon's demands for unfettered access to clawed as we thought they might. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the company a deadline to rollback certain safeguards or risk losing a $200 million Pentagon contract. Anthropic CEO Dario Amote said in a blog post that the quote, "Threats do not change our position and that the company quote cannot in good conscious a seed to the request. Good for you, Dario, not to a seed to a moron." On the other hand, the AI company that's spent all about safety is dropping. It's of course safety pledge, too. It announced this week that it won't stop training potentially dangerous AI models if a competitor releases something parable or more advanced. They're doing other things, but they say the move reflects the speed of AI progress in the lack of federal regulation, not a political pressure. Thoughts? The best reforming organization in history is the US military. A close second is the US corporation. It's created more wealth in the last, Christ, in the last 17 years, US corporations have created more shareholder value than all of Europe. It sends probably the 60s. What one company in the video is worth more than every publicly traded company in Germany and Spain. Now, why is that? One, we have incredible research universities. We have a very risk-aggressive culture, and we have the deepest pools of capital in the world. We have $5 million per startup versus $1 million per startup in Europe. Why do we have such deep pools to capital? Because when people invest here, they know the rules that that company will have to play by. And when governments start interfering and picking winners and losers and saying, "Oh, the rules have changed." You're going to have an absence or a flight of capital, which, by the way, has happened. In this bullshit, sclerotic blood sugar level socialism where the government is deciding who should get to acquire Warner Brothers or that we should own a share, a golden share in a steel company or which microchip companies the government's going to invest in because a failed casino owner and talk show or reality show host seems to believe he understands business better than the private sector. And we are already, this isn't a theoretical lesson in why I hate Trump, reflecting my biases. This has already happened. They point to over the last year, the S&P is up 14%. But it's not. On a dollar-adjusted basis, the dollar has weakened so much. It's more of mid-single digits. And by the way, Europe is up more, as you know. Every single major market from South Korea to Germany, to the footsie, to the Cosby in South Korea has massively outperformed the S&P. And one of the reasons is, when you now invest in a US company, there's unnecessary risk from the government if you, for whatever reason, the Pentagon decides that we don't like you. And guess what? And and Palantir are working very closely with the government to help them track down spies, to maybe even track down immigrants using social media. A lot of people would say that's a violation of privacy rights. A lot of people don't want to work for a weapons company. Well, guess what? I love your saying. You don't like Chick-fil-A. You don't have to eat a Chick-fil-A. Maybe you don't work there. Maybe you don't invest there. But guess what? They get to do what they want. Regulated competition. And you get to decide what business you're in or not in just as anthropic might decide that we are not comfortable working and providing data and computing power to help surveil US citizens. They get to make that decision. That's right. And they get to make, by the way, I think they'll do better. Like everyone's like, oh, they're going to get like blacklisted. I'm like, I think this is good for them. It might be good branding. By the way, that they can do what they want and decide what they want to do on everything. And then you, the consumer, as we know, decide what you want to do. And one of the things that exists is always like, he's either doing like pull-ups or there's this nonsense. Another person never run a successful business just so you know, a lot of these people in the Trump administration never run a successful business, including the president himself really, really has driven so many businesses into the ground. Let Dario Moody do what he wants. And if you, but to like threaten him called the private regulated competition and everyone has to play by the, everyone gets to and has to play by the same rules. Elon will take it for you. Just go to Elon and by the way, the reason why it's the problem is because most of the people in the defense department thing, Claude is better, right? That's the issue. They don't want to give their better product to do what they want. This to me is ridiculous. And by the way, on the safety thing, you know all these people are going to do whatever it takes. And they may be more safe and anthropic, but they will do whatever it takes to compete, right? Correct? Look, I think the reality is, and this is the danger. And this has been my, one of my court thesis all along is that we have fallen under the assumption that every breakthrough in technology results in a small number of companies that are able to ring fence distribution capital or IP and create trillions of dollars for their shareholders. I wonder if AI is more like jet manufacturers or vaccines and that is it will be, an enormous innovation that will change society for the better I'd like to think. But there aren't going to be a small number of companies that capture a ton of value that the real winners will be stakeholders, but those stakeholders will be citizens. I think we have massively benefited from vaccines. Moderna is now 90, down 90%. There's no one company that's made hundreds of billions dollars from vaccines. If you add it up all of the, all of the profits and lawsuits of all airlines and Boeing and Amber and Airbus, it's barely even a break even. And yet, skirting along the atmosphere at 710th speed of sound is in my view from my life, the greatest greatest breakthrough in history. Now, I, my general impression is people ask me all the time, which LLM do you like? I have favorites, but it only lasts for two weeks. I think AI is putting AI out of business and that is if you look at the data, they're all getting to technical parity. It is so hard to maintain. You know, Jan LeCoon said this exercise. He says they're all the same. The commodities. They're coming. I use both chat, GPT and cloud. And then for like 72 hours, they'll be like, oh, chat, GPT is better. It's less politically correct. And then I go, wait, cloud is better at editing. And then I go back and forth. And here's the thing. AI is reverse engineering every other LLM. So it's going to be about things like UI. It's going to be margin compression. And I wonder if we're going to be the big winners. And these companies are, are these companies are going to spend a massive amount of capital. Yeah, I know. I agree. We're getting a lot of free. 100% all right. We do have to move on. We'll see what happens here, but p-hex that you're more on. Okay. This is a story. I just want to say again, I knew this had legs dozens of FBI witness interview summaries appear to be missing from the DOJ's latest Epstein files release. Some of those are missing interviews that tried to a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her decades ago. The DOJ has said in a statement that the only materials we have been withheld were either privilege or duplicates. This is nonsense. Democrats in the House Oversight Committee are now investigating whether the DOJ purposely withheld materials. The New York Times followed this. So did the NPR broke it and an independent journalist broke it. New York Times has followed this is really a bad cover up at what they've done here is kept. They should just put it out there or go at investigate Donald Trump. One of the other. He's certainly not exonerated. By the way, other people are taking a lot of fallout from Epstein this week. This is not stopping folks until it's not over till it's over. Bill Gates apologized the Gates Foundation for his ties to Epstein and also to affairs he had. He talked about them publicly finally. He kept stressing they were older just old enough at least. Larry Summers is resigning from Harvard over his Epstein connection. The World Economic Forum President is also resigning. Peter Madelson, former UK ambassador to the US, was arrested over allegations that he shared confidential government information. The former Norwegian I think Prime Minister was hospitalized with suspicion of suicide over it. There's a Columbia professor who's who's who very prominent neurologist. I think all these people are paying the price. Let's just say either related or nearby. Trump obviously didn't say anything in the Epstein files. It was an lengthy state of the union. I don't think he can ignore this. I think this is not going away. It is chasing him and it will not happen until they do. As you say, they have to deal with the perpetrators. If he is one of them, he has the right to be investigated and he should be investigated. So should all of these people, there's still going to be repercussions for everybody in this world. There just is whether your judgment was bad or whatever. You know how I feel about this and it's an unpopular take. I don't think the files should have been released. I think the agency that aggregated the information should have reviewed it with the help of outside litigation council and they should have communicated in one way to the general public and that is within grand jury indictments and announcements. This administration wasn't going to do that because their own president was possibly done. They've created weapons of mass distraction. I don't know. I think there's repercussions here. I'm going to go to the department. Because you're focused on it. The reality is the following. There appears to be enough evidence that the warrant and investigation by and again to your point. Unfortunately, we don't have the institutions to do this correctly. But the way they should play out as the following, the attorney general should be announcing or the Department of Justice that they are forming a special counsel because there are credible accusations of rape against several people including the president of the United States and all this other bullshit. Larry Sumner sending stupid fucking emails because he's pathetic to Jeffrey Epstein. I think that's a distraction, Kara. Again, I know. I know you do. I don't. I think it shows about judgment and we can decide who we want to fill you with. I think it's fine. Okay. So and if I had AI go through every one of your texts and emails, I couldn't reflect your evidence. Not to the extent of what. Look, Jeffrey Epstein's a unique figure here. You know that. And he represents something bigger, which is they commit crimes. I get it. But I'm going after everyone that hasn't committed a crime because America loves to shame people. We are losing focus on the people who raped children. Yeah. But you know, all kinds of people got in trouble because of shaming things and some people got in trouble because of whatever. We've had a history of this like actors like back in the 50s lost their jobs. Like, but that's fine. But that wasn't the FBI investigate going on a fishing expedition for real crimes and then shaming. This is going to happen. This is TMZ's wed dream. And unfortunately, we're not creating the incentive such that if you're single mother and your daughter ends up on an island that there's let there's there's less. We're not protecting women. That is not protecting children and women here. We're not projecting women and children. You're absolutely right. I think it's hard. In stead, every celebrity is just going to start using signal now. No, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I think it is linked to the feeling that the rich are have no impunity to talk about. And that's part of a trend. And it's okay to have these other things, but they should do I've said special counsel over and over again, but they were forced into it by Thomas Massey and Rokana because they wouldn't do their job and they didn't do their job because they're under the thumb of Donald Trump. And so if they're not going to do their job, this is the only way. This is my I get it. But this is what's happened unfortunately because our institutions no longer have any independence or credibility. They have released nude photos of underage girls. They have docs them listed their names and their addresses without their permission and redacted and confused information around the actual people who have evidence that they're pedophiles. I mean, this just couldn't be. But they're not getting away with it. As you can see, they got caught. I think they're I think they're mostly getting away with it. I think the wrong people are being prosecuted and shamed and voted off the island and the criminals are loving it because there's a ton of confusion in this reaction. I think they're going to get the one thing and you'll agree with this. I was thinking about it the other day is if we ask the general public to name five billionaires, I think three of them would be the first one would probably be Elon Musk. The second would probably be Jeff Beza. See, I think it would be I think it would be Bill Gates. He was sort of the original billionaire. And then the third would be the president who calls himself the billionaire president. So three I bet I bet those three would be the three of the first five that people said who are billionaires. They're all in the fucking abstinence files. So anyways, the my point is you can understand that the public has decided that once you get to a certain point of wealth, you engage in a level of depravity and feel that again, I love this saying, you're protected by the law, but not bound by it. Whereas the rest of us are bound by the law, but not protected by it. So you can see that there is a real populist uprising here. But again, I think the Department of Justice is there to serve justice. Yes, because it's not this Department of Justice. If there was any other Department of Justice, you might expect a little bit of decency. This is not this is the only way. You know, we should have and I was going to do this, but maybe we do it on pivot. I wanted to get pre-bararan to talk about the process of document collection investigation collection. And then how that information is properly disseminated to the public and in what format. Because that's what we're talking about here. You're right. You're right. It gets purrant, but at the same time, it's the only way given pant bodies. The most another moron is in Congress. Yeah, but care on the Dow is it $50,000. Yeah, but $50,000. No, she'll never live that one down. Anyway, let's take a quick break and we'll be back for predictions. This week on version history, our chat show about the most interesting and important products in the history of technology. We're talking about the hottest toy from 1998. That's right. Of course, I mean the Furby. The little thing that sat on your desk and didn't have an off button and didn't speak English and annoyed everyone you knew, but you loved it to pieces anyway. It turns out there is a fascinating technology and even AI story behind what happened with Furby and why it took off. That's the story this week on version history wherever you get podcasts. Our Democrats, their own biggest problem. You know, a party becomes defined by who they're central figure who their quarterback becomes Democrats haven't really anointed a effective quarterback since Barack Obama pretty much. And this week the Atlantic staff writer Mark Liebovich joins me to discuss the state of the Democratic Party and which race is to keep an eye out for this midterm election. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay tuned with pre wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. So I just like to I wrap my predictions in what I'm doing personally in terms of my own finances. And this is not financial advice. I'm just telling what I'm doing. I think that just as sass companies have been oversold some of these PE or what they call business development or private credit companies have been oversold. So just some of the ones again I'm going to create a basket because I'm about diversification at this point. But for example, Apollo, which has taken a huge hit is trading at 14 to 17 times earnings. So a company with double digit earnings growth and double digit assets under management growth, which is the capital they deploy and how they make money. The S&P is trading at a P of 20 and Apollo is trading at 14 to 17 times. TPG is trading at about a one third discount. But to fair value estimates, it's got unbelievable fundraising and it's expanding their fee earnings. And again, the price reflects pessimism more than growth trajectory. And by the way, there's absolutely no evidence other than creative writing that any of these companies are experienced. I work or co-invest with some of these companies. They're fucking juggernauts. They're raising more money than ever. But it's public feeling about investor nerves. Sentiments. Yes. But there's narrative in their numbers. And I believe over the meeting in long term, the numbers went out. It's an offer tooty. It's what it is. These companies have shed between 20 and 40% of their value in the last 12 months. While continuing to grow their AUM and their fees. Blue Owl, it's got a 7 to 8% dividend yield. And because of market discounting, private credit fears. So there's a growth versus valuation. And my view mismatch and that all of these companies are growing their assets under management and their fees, which is what essentially as their revenue is. And the sector has had multiple contraction or compression due to private credit liquidity fears because of some of these creative writing projects. And in my view, the market pricing risks are more, the market is pricing risks more aggressively than current earnings trends justify. That's my thesis. So let me, I'll just wrap it up. My one line thesis is the following. Compress multiples and durable fee growth plus strong fundraising. And I know these companies, they're really well run. In my view, all adds up to potential relative under valuation versus the broader market. All right. I like it. That's the same thing you were talking about last week. Okay, look for opportunities, including you Netflix. Just so you know, next week we'll be talking about Hillary Clinton's testifying about Epstein. Anyway, we'll be talking about that. But I want to actually get our listeners to write us in, give their own prediction. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez have been named honorary chairs of the years MetGal, they essentially are paying for it. And that's how that happened. The dress code is fashion is art. I want to know what you think Lauren and Jeff will dress up as. What art thing will they dress up as? There's only two things I'm certain about their war drop. Bob 100 person. Whatever she's wearing. Both of them. She's not wearing an outfit. Her breasts are. And I'm here for it. I think she's a beautiful woman and have out it. But let me be clear. That's fair. He's been improving his boobs too. But go ahead. Let's be clear. There is like Vogue and Condon asked their smart people and invested in cable companies. Those assets, the magazines have literally been just like a slow burn to irrelevance. First is invested in all these incredible data companies like Fitch and this airline data company. They've actually grown the revenues. Condon asked does not. But the reporting I want to see the only thing I know is that Lauren's going to have her girls in the window. And I'm here for it. And to somehow indirectly, there is an exchange of money here. There is. Oh, yeah. No, they're they're like back in. They're paying for it. Yeah. Anna Winter shook them down. They turned them upside down, got their wallet, put them on the cover. They're paying for the whole thing. Put them upside down and certain things moved and certain things didn't. That's correct. The money moved out of their pockets. And now they get the king and queen. Get for them. We would like. I feel good about. I'm here for his midlife crisis. I like. I can't help it. I want to listen to straight in and we'll read them. What art will they dress up as? We need specifics. Sexy moment. I hope we get invited. I'd like to go to that. Do you think they'll invite us? No, I don't think they will. All right. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind and whatever you think Lauren and Jeff are going to wear. Go to nymag.com/pivot. Assume a question for the show I call 85551 Pivot before we go. As we said, Scott and I also besides Minneapolis, we're both returning to South by Southwest and Austin for three shows on the Vox media podcast stage. It's a total South by Southwest takeover because we are the king and queen speaking of which we stop. We'll have his boobs out just so you know on a platter. First, I'll be doing a live taping of property markets with Ed Elson on March 13th where every person over the age of 40 will come and go, I love your pocket. Is Ed Sengel? I have a daughter. Literally, I'm so sick of people trying to set out up. Well, he's more handsome than you are. He's very handsome. He's nice to. I mean, it's a low bar. But and then on March 15th at 10 a.m. I'll be doing a live taping of on with two special guests. I'm really excited about. Finally, we'll take the stage together on March 15th and 1130 for a live taping of pivot. You can touch, you can touch it. Scott's body parts. You stopped there. Scott, yeah. Anyway, last year's pivot taping at South by Southwest featured whiskey shots, partial nudity, IPO predictions and some smart questions from our audience. Love it. So we will, we're going to double the fuck down on it on that and and you don't want to miss it. I love my Southwest. Aren't you excited? Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to hang out with you. I'm excited. We're doing a lot of traveling together this year. Oh, it's part of the Vox Media podcast stage presented by Odo. The stage also features sessions from Brunei Brown and Adam Grant. Marquez Brownley as stead Herndon. As long as the stair Perella's there to tell me that I'm okay. I don't know. She's going to be there. But nonetheless, learn more and get a special discount on your innovation badge at voxmedia.com/sxsw. That's voxmedia.com/sxsw. We will see you there. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Today's show was produced by Larry Names and Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Earned an intertide engineer this episode. Manolum Arano edited the video. Thanks to Austin to Drew Burroughs, me and Savira and Dan Chalon. Neshat Kura as voxmedia is executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to pivot from New York Magazine of Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. One of my role models Sam Harris said that if you have economic security and people who love you and I'm blessed with both those things, you have an obligation to speak your mind.