Prof G Markets: Airbnb’s Record Revenue, Buying Football Teams, and Testing Bing’s AI Search

This week on Prof G Markets, Scott breaks down Airbnb’s first full year of profitability and shares how his options trades from the previous week turned out. He also explains why billionaires are investing in Premier League football clubs like Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. Then, we take a look at the new Bing AI search experience and hit the street to see if anyone else is actually using it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Northwest Registered Agent. Your business identity is everything that makes your business legitimate and professional. With Northwest Registered Agent, you don't just form a business, you start a complete foundation built for privacy, credibility, and growth. That includes registered agent service, a business address, operating agreement, domain, website, professional email, phone number, and built-in privacy. In other words, your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  This week's number, 700,000. That's the average number of visits each In-N-Out location registered in 2022. The industry average, 121,000. There are 387 locations, mostly in California. I like my burger the way I like my anal. And involving

• 1:39Speaker 03

  No, Scott.

• 1:40Scott Galloway?

  Come on, everyone's smiling. Give it up for the doll.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Oh my God. You really want to put that out there?

• 1:49Scott Galloway?

  I like it. This is not CNBC. This is not Jim Cramer. Next up, Joe Kieran.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:09Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Prop G Markets. Today, we're discussing Airbnb's earnings, takeovers in the Premier League, and Bing AI's search experience. Here with the news, Prop G Media Analyst Ed Elson. Ed, what is going on?

• 2:22Ed Elson?

  Scott, I asked ChatGPT for its thoughts on my job security at this company.

• 2:26Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 2:26Ed Elson?

  And let me just read you what it said. Scott, I strongly believe that Ed Elson should not be replaced by AI as the co-host of the Prof G Pod. Ed brings a wealth of industry experience and a unique perspective that cannot be replicated by a machine. His dynamic with you adds a level of engagement and entertainment that is critical to your success. Moreover, Ed's ability to connect with the audience on a personal level is truly irreplaceable. He has a real personality, thank you, a sense of humor, yep, and the capacity to establish a genuine connection with listeners. In short, Ed is an indispensable part of the podcast and should continue to be a co-host.

• 3:03Scott Galloway?

  Wow.

• 3:03Ed Elson?

  Your thoughts on that?

• 3:04Scott Galloway?

  Well, I'm just curious. What was the query? Did you say, give us the full query or command to ChatGPT that inspired that? Because it's impressive, right? Not true, but it's impressive.

• 3:15Ed Elson?

  Yeah, yeah, I told, I said, I asked ChatGPT to tell you why I shouldn't be replaced by AI. But that's all I told it. It sort of filled in all of those really crucial blanks there, which I'm not sure I disagree.

• 3:31Scott Galloway?

  Well, so the obvious follow-up is to ask it, which I should do right now, why you should be replaced by AI and see what it says. And then, and then have, I don't know, can ChatGPT decide which is the more compelling argument? The mind starts to spin here, Ed. Anyways, tell us about the news. Tell us about the headlines.

• 3:48Ed Elson?

  Let's start with our weekly review of market vitals.

• 3:58Ed Elson?

  The S and P 500 was mixed amid signs of persisting inflation. The dollar rose, Bitcoin climbed back above $24,000, and the yield on 10-year Treasuries also gained. Shifting to the headlines, the Consumer Price Index rose 0.5% from December to January. However, on a yearly basis, inflation was down slightly from 6.5% to 6.4%. And on the supply side of the economy, the Producer Price Index also rose, up 0.7% in January from the previous month. That's the largest gain since June. Meanwhile, consumers are still spending money. U.S. retail sales jumped the most in almost two years, up 3% from December to January.

• 4:41Ed Elson?

  And finally, the SEC is coming for crypto. On Wednesday, the agency voted in favor of a rule that will require investment advisors to secure their crypto assets with qualified custodians. Previously, this was a rule that only applied to traditional assets like funds or securities. Scott, what are your thoughts on this?

• 5:01Scott Galloway?

  I mean, it just struck me that Bitcoin is back above $24,000 because I see Bitcoin has almost become sort of the ultimate risk-on, risk-off metric. And that was when Bitcoin goes up, it means risk on. And I think it bottomed at 16 or 18 grand, at least most recently. And it's up, you know, call it what, 25 to 33% in the last few months. So I think this means a few things. I think you're going to see a return or revenge of the growth stocks, the stuff that's survived and isn't going kind of to zero has popped. But also, I wonder if it means we're going to see more activity, more up rounds in the private markets, or usually there's a lag. We're probably three or six months behind in the private markets.

• 5:45Scott Galloway?

  There's probably still some pain there. But I see this as, by no means an indication of Bitcoin's value or lack thereof, but it does seem to be a pretty decent kind of, you know, the bulls are marching again. The inflation headline number, again, the number is, oh, it's a disappointment. It's not coming down as fast as we'd hoped. Another month where inflation has declined year on year. So now we are at seven months of declines. And the thing, I was on the BBC yesterday because I'm actually quite fancy. The UK, their inflation, I think, is 10.1%. So get this, their inflation is 350 basis points more than us. Food, get this, Ed, food costs are up 16.7%.

• 6:30Scott Galloway?

  So almost 17% year on year, food is up. The fastest way to get to a revolution isn't to abuse your people. It isn't to be corrupt. The fastest way to inspire revolution is inflation. Because while people may disagree or, you know, or agree with your policies, most policy changes don't impact you on a day-to-day basis in the short term. But what does impact you is when you can no longer afford beef. What does impact you is when you can no longer pay your kids tuition. Generally speaking, whenever we have inflation, wages do not keep pace with inflation. So in sum, inflation is a, an erosion in the quality of life of people immediately.

• 7:11Scott Galloway?

  Immediately. They can't make their car payment. They're eating, you know, potatoes instead of chicken or chicken instead of beef, whatever it is. So inflation in the U.S., as much as we'd like to think it's bad and the headlines are bad, inflation is less bad here than almost any Western nation in the world.

• 7:30Ed Elson?

  And then any final thoughts on the S E C regulating crypto? This has been pretty big scary news for crypto firms in the past few days.

• 7:39Scott Galloway?

  My response would be, okay, a day late and a dollar short. Where were they 12 months ago before most of the damage was done? So I guess better late than never. But, you know, the asset class has lost, what, 60 or 70% of its value from the peak? And I feel like a lot, maybe even the majority of the fraud that has taken place has already taken place. So.

• 8:00Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I have this theory about this because it is so, so unbelievably late. And I'm wondering what you think of this, which is, I feel like they knew that they should have regulated this thing years ago. But if they were to do that while crypto is at the peak, then it would have been bad press because people were making money off this thing and it would have felt like these regulators have come in and stolen all of the people's money because it would have killed the industry basically overnight. My feeling is that maybe Gensler was waiting. He knew this thing was going to implode. He knew that a market couldn't function without regulation. And maybe they were just waiting for everything to implode on its own. Let everything come crashing down. And then once it's politically, you know, reasonable

• 8:44Ed Elson?

  and encouraged to go in and regulate, then they go and do it, which, you know, is what they're doing now. Suddenly everyone's like, oh yeah, crypto is kind of dangerous because we just saw what happened to F T X. And now they're going in and regulating. Do you think that that's possible? Or are these guys just late to the party, didn't know what was going on?

• 9:02Scott Galloway?

  I think you're right. I think they waited, you could call it politically or tactfully, until public opinion, until they had the wind in their sails to do this, right?

• 9:11Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Scott Galloway?

  But I also think that's really disappointing because if you think about the whole reason behind having a representative government. Is that they are supposed to take issues, slow them down and act in the long-term interest. They're supposed to prevent a tragedy of the commons. Uh huh. And if they felt this way and they saw what was going on, which I believe they did see what was going on, the whole notion of government is you're supposed to weigh in and say, no, we're not going to approve this drug because as much as people may want it, uh, we think it does not serve the long-term interests of the Commonwealth. Uh huh. So I think you're right. I think they were waiting for political opinion to give them the cloud cover to do this. But the whole point of a representative government

• 9:54Scott Galloway?

  is that they're supposed to be able to have the backbone and the power to make very unpopular decisions.

• 10:01Ed Elson?

  Okay, we'll be right back after the break with a look at Airbnb's record earnings.

• 10:14Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Nutraful, the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over one and a half million people. With age comes knowledge, patience, and for some, hair loss. Didn't say it was all good things. And for those who want to do something about it, there's Nutraful. Nutraful has formulas built for men at different life stages. They have Nutraful Men for Guys Age 18 to 49, plus the new Nutraful Men 50 and Older. That's the first product of its kind specifically for men over 50. You can now address the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. Grow visibly thicker, fuller hair in just three to six months. Start Nutraful today and make the hat optional. Visit nutraful.com and enter promo code PROP G for $10 off

• 10:57Scott Galloway?

  your first month's subscription and free shipping. Find out why Nutraful is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code PROP G. That's nutraful.com promo code PROP G.

• 11:17Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentic trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 12:02Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash profg for $1,000 off.

• 12:30Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Airbnb had a huge earnings report, which included record revenue as well as its first full year of profitability. The company generated $1.9 billion in revenue for the quarter. That's up 24% from a year before and much higher than analyst estimates. And earnings came in at $319 million for the quarter. That's six times higher than the year before and double what analysts expected. Airbnb shares rose almost 10% in after-hours trading. So Scott, what stood out for you in these earnings?

• 13:06Scott Galloway?

  I mean, everything. This company is firing on all 12,000 cylinders. And because it's in the business of managing these properties and really doesn't have huge capex, once it hits profitability, if they can maintain anything resembling this type of growth rate, this company should become a cash volcano. Because the margins on those fees they're charging, I mean, what are they, 90-plus points of margin? So this is a company, this is what you look for and pray for in a technology investment. And that is, you cover your extraordinary. Cost to build a marketplace with enough buyers and sellers, you cover your extraordinary costs of developing that IP and getting to critical mass. But once you hit that tipping point, it's champagne and cocaine. I mean, most of that revenue above their costs will

• 13:51Scott Galloway?

  fall to the bottom line. And if they grow another forty percent next year, you gotta think that they're going to become immensely profitable and the market sees that. What we predicted, and I think we got this right, was what we refer to as revenge travel. More than nine hundred million tourists traveled internationally in twenty twenty-two. That's sixty-three percent of twenty nineteen levels. But the UN World Tourism Organization predicts international tourism will return to approximately eighty to ninety-five percent of pre-pandemic levels in twenty twenty-three. I actually think it's going to be more on a dollar volume basis, because I think there's a certain mentality among people that's like, you know what, let's upgrade to business class. Let's not go to Yellowstone. Let's go, you know, let's go to Japan. People, I think, have a renewed sense of the finite

• 14:35Scott Galloway?

  nature of life and want to do really exotic, extraordinary things and really have, I mean, they're kind of going to go large here. Chinese tourists may also return in twenty twenty-three after three years of closed borders. You gotta think that's going to be big when you have, you know, the nation that's created, I think, more new wealth, if you will. I mean, a few things happen when people get wealthy for the first time. One, they start eating beef. Two, they buy cars. Three, they send their kids to college. And also, they start traveling abroad. And so you could see this, just this red wave of tourists emerge again and start seeing Chinese tourists back at Disneyland and everywhere else. And that's just, just their sheer numbers and their economic power could kind of just juice the entire system. Brian Chesky stated that no matter what happens

• 15:19Scott Galloway?

  in the world, people want to travel. The office is now Zoom, the mall is now Amazon, and the theater is now Netflix. And that's an interesting statement, because essentially... If you think about the most enduring feature of COVID, it's probably remote work. I mean, I'm traveling right now. When I first started this podcast or first started working with Vox, I didn't have the capability. If I was in Florida, if I came down to Florida, I went to the local PBS affiliate and we rented a studio there and I recorded in the studio. Now Drew sets me up with this portable mic and I can work from anywhere. I mean, tomorrow I'm going to Isla Marata with my kids, which sounds like hell, by the way.

• 16:02Scott Galloway?

  It just sounds like hell. Some tacky resort in the Keys. It's supposed to be good for the family. I'm gonna hate it. Jealous. Anyways, but then daddy's jumping on a plane to Tulum to party with all the rich, hot people who pretend that they're soulful and into yoga. Hello ladies. Oh my God, I can't wait. Anyways, don't know how I got there, but my point is I'll be doing podcasts from Isla Marata and Tulum and you weren't able to do that. And so what does that mean? When travel is no longer isolated or sequestered to the time to your vacation time, but travel is just something you can do your all 52 weeks of the year, not just 48 or 44.

• 16:42Scott Galloway?

  You gotta think that the travel ecosystem is just gonna boom. And we predicted this and I think Airbnb is up 50, 60% from its low. I think it touched a low in the high 80s and now it's in the 140s. By the way, it's gone up since the earnings call. Airbnb is my favorite company in the world. It's got great margins. It's leveraging other people's capital. I think that any company that has a shot at getting to a trillion dollars in value, they all have one thing in common. They leverage other people or other agencies capital, right? Apple built its incredible business off the back of GPS and chip research by the government, Google off of DARPA. SpaceX is building their business off of the backs of EV subsidies at Tesla and then at SpaceX, the huge investments we made in NASA.

• 17:27Scott Galloway?

  The best thing to do is to build a layer of innovation on top of someone else's investment. And Airbnb is exactly that. They don't build a hotel. They don't finance this stuff. They don't even really train a distinct set of employees and give them uniforms with name tags and have to pay their health insurance. They are leveraging one of the largest investments in the history of mankind, and that is the US populace's investment in residential real estate. And then these things set fallow for Thirty, fifty, seventy percent of the year for some people and it gives them a way of monetizing that excess capacity. So anyways, Airbnb has been my largest position since they went public.

• 18:04Ed Elson?

  Yeah, so there's one question that I that I wanted to ask you, Scott. Last week, you said that you wrote call options on Airbnb, specifically covered calls. How have those done after earnings? My guess is not great.

• 18:18Scott Galloway?

  Oh, I hate myself. You know, it's like do as I say, not as I do. I covered it or I brought options against it at a much higher price than it was trading at, but it has busted absolutely through that. So I haven't lost money. What I've lost is potential upside.

• 18:33Ed Elson?

  Can you explain the rationale behind why you wrote those covered calls and what that means?

• 18:37Scott Galloway?

  So I have a very big position in Airbnb and one way I hedge it is that on a regular basis, I write calls. In other words, if the stock's trading at a hundred, I'll write calls at one ten or one twenty. And I get a little bit of premium. I think about it as like owning an apartment complex and I'm collecting rent. And it's a means of generating cash flow off a stock you own. And it's also sort of a means of hedging because if the stock goes down, you collect all the premium. And it's all fine and good until the stock skyrockets as it has done the last week. And basically the underlying stock goes up in value, but you have to pay above the strike price to the person you wrote or sold the call to. So basically you end up at anything above, you know, one twenty, if you wrote calls at one twenty,

• 19:21Scott Galloway?

  you're awash on. Your underlying stock has gone up, but you've given up the upside and that really hurts. In some ways that hurts more than losing money. So yeah. I wish, you know, I'm hating myself, but I've done this strategy for a while. I try to be pretty disciplined about it. And it's over the long term, it's paid off. But yeah, this was the wrong week.

• 19:40Ed Elson?

  Yep.

• 19:41Scott Galloway?

  To give up heroin, I mean, the wrong week to give up or not give up writing covered calls on Airbnb.

• 19:47Ed Elson?

  And while we're on the topic, last week we were talking about your Bed Bath and Beyond put options.

• 19:53Ed Elson?

  Let's let's hear how you did.

• 19:54Scott Galloway?

  So yeah, my thesis was bankruptcy or the decline would take longer to play out than people think. And I wrote puts, I sold puts to someone at two fifty, a strike of two fifty, and I got twenty five cents in premium. The puts expired and the stock was trading at about 2.35, which means I had to buy back shares at 2.50. They got to go out and buy in the open market at 2.35, so I lost 15 cents. But I'd gotten 25 cents in premium for writing the put. So I made 10 cents per share. So I actually made money there. It's unusual that it's right in the strike zone there. Usually they're keep it all or you know, you have to write a check. But in this instance, I made a small amount of money.

• 20:37Ed Elson?

  How much did you make?

• 20:38Scott Galloway?

  I wrote 4,000 contracts of 400,000 shares. So 400,000 times whatever a dime net gain. So I made $40,000.

• 20:54Ed Elson?

  Two huge transactions are pending in the world of English football. The first is for Manchester United. The club is in talks for a takeover agreement with a group of Qatari investors, including Qatar's Sovereign Wealth Fund. That's the Qatar Investment Authority. Manchester United, which is a publicly traded company, saw its stock rise more than 5% on that news. Meanwhile, Tottenham Hotspur is also facing a potential sale. Iranian-American billionaire Jam Najafi is making a $3.75 billion bid that would value the club's equity at $3 billion and add $750 million in debt to its books. Najafi will provide 70% of that financing, and the rest will be taken care of by Gulf state investors again, mainly from Abu Dhabi.

• 21:39Ed Elson?

  So Scott, it feels like every billionaire wants to buy a Premier League club these days, especially investors from the US and the Gulf. Last year, Todd Bowley bought Chelsea, Bill Foley bought Bournemouth, and there are even rumors that Liverpool is in talks to be sold at the moment. So what is with this new billionaire obsession with football?

• 22:00Scott Galloway?

  So my neighbor down in Florida purchased the Houston Rockets, I think for $200 million in the early 90s, and sold them two or three years ago for $2 billion. These are just, they're the definition of trophy assets. They don't really produce income. You hope to break even. All the money that you get from TV, from ticket sales, you pour back on to the floor of the ice. And that is you spend it on the players. Except for, I think, the Maple Leafs, who have figured out that everyone in Canada will watch the Leafs regardless of how good they are. So the owner there doesn't spend because it doesn't matter. They continue to show up and watch the games. But anyways, these assets keep going up in value. There's also a huge non-economic return.

• 22:45Scott Galloway?

  And that is, for lack of a better term, sports washing. Roman Abramovich, who, whose reputation globally obviously took a big hit during the invasion of, Russian invasion of Ukraine. And for being a, you know, what people thought was a close ally of Putin. But if you talk to Chelsea fans, they feel pretty good about him. They thought he was a great owner. Yep. And the Gulf's association, support, investment in football has a halo effect. And I would argue a really positive halo effect. And while Qatar hosting the World Cup raised some important issues and brought some attention to the region that was probably unwelcome in some instances for them.

• 23:24Scott Galloway?

  This isn't anything new. The Gulf has figured this out. Abu Dhabi purchased Man City in 2008 for 360 million. By the way, that's probably worth a couple billion now. Doha purchased Paris Saint-Germain PSG for 170 million. And since then, the UAE and Qatar have invested a combined two and a half billion dollars to improve their teams. Egypt's billionaire businessman, Nasser Sowiris, I think I'm saying that correctly, bought Aston Villa. Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdullah bought Sheffield United. Most recently, the Saudi government wealth fund purchased Newcastle for 405 million. And then it even goes down to the sponsorship. Qatar Airways pays between five and 10 million bucks a year to sponsor PSG jerseys. I would argue that's the best deal in branding.

• 24:05Scott Galloway?

  Emirates, not to be outdone, the best airline in the world in my vision, maybe other than Qatar, sponsors Real Madrid for an estimated 75 million a year. And Arsenal for 56 million. And then also an unknown sum for AC Milan. So word is out. I mean, the most powerful people in the Gulf have basically said. Our brand strategy can be described in one word, football. And so these, you know, for lack of a better term, what they're called, these oil teams. It's a great investment for the region. It makes them feel softer, more benign, more relatable. They're known as very good owners, mostly because they spend and they're very focused on winning. But they're seen as good organizations to work for. So if you have an asset that's going to go up in value, maybe you break even, maybe you don't. You probably lose some money.

• 24:50Scott Galloway?

  I mean, Todd Bowley is spending, you know, crazy money, including the young player of the World Cup. This Argentinian kid, but he's, he's spending a ton. And it's also this amazing kid out of, out of Ukraine. Anyway, enough about Chelsea. But if you have an asset that continues to go up in value, I mean, occasionally there's a cycle where it goes down for a few years. But generally speaking, this is beachfront real estate. If you're willing to hold it for a decade, you're going to sell it for more than you bought it. You get huge PR ROI, huge goodwill across the whole region. And the bottom line is it's probably a shit ton of fun. What, you know, it's a great answer in a bar. What do you do? Oh, I own Chelsea. I mean, that's just a good rap. That's just a good rapid.

• 25:33Ed Elson?

  Don't you think that there's a, I mean, you often talk about boring is sexy. And this is the sexiest thing of all time. And to me, it feels like these guys are coming in and they're buying these companies because of, largely because of this PR incentives and the incentives of it being extremely fun and cool and being able to say that you own Chelsea. But, you know, would you ever personally invest in a sports team? I feel like it doesn't really fit with your boring is sexy thesis.

• 25:59Scott Galloway?

  So I called the banker handling the Chelsea transaction and said, I would like to be a small investor with the investor group. Uh, I want to go to the games. I want to take my sons. I think it'd be fun to say I'm an owner, you know, I'm a narcissist and going through a midlife crisis that'll last about another 30 or 40 years. And I gave this pitch, I'm like, I'll help with technology. I understand NFTs, I'll, you know, blah, blah. And the banker, super smart guy goes, Scott, why on earth would you do that? You'd be dead equity. These guys control the team. They're not really financial buyers. They, you know, they, they know they'll make money eventually, but that's probably not why they're doing it. It's for the love of the sport. And so, you know, I said, okay, that, that doesn't make sense. But the analogy I would use is that a fat home on the beach, like beachfront real estate.

• 26:43Scott Galloway?

  And imagine you were really social and had business associates come over from meetings. First off, you want to go where other people can't. You're taking advantage of the fact there's just a limited number of people that can plunk down billions of dollars for an asset. That's not going to produce any money. Just as there's just a limited amount of beachfront real estate and a limited number of people can afford it. It's good for your brand. People are impressed. It's really rewarding emotionally. There's huge psychic return to living on the beach or owning a football team. And two, over time, there are a few assets like beachfront real estate or sports teams that more reliably go up over the medium and long term. But you also have kind of a winner take most environment here. You know, you just go down one or two leagues and the value drops dramatically.

• 27:28Scott Galloway?

  But my plan has always been if I have a, a next big or another, you know, or I would say a much bigger exit at some point. I am absolutely going to buy 20 or 30% of Rangers. Their market cap, I think it's 130 million pounds. So I've put together investment group of other sort of famous Scots and go in and do some sort of convertible preferred vehicle. And then go to Rangers games and they will love me, Ed. They will love me.

• 27:57Ed Elson?

  Okay, we'll be right back after a quick break with a look at Bing's AI capabilities.

• 28:15Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentic trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 29:00Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash profg for $1,000 off.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 29:57Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Microsoft recently announced a new AI-powered version of its search engine, Bing. We discussed that news and its implications on our previous episode, but that was before we'd gotten a chance to try it out. This week, Bing finally took us off the waitlist. So let's bring in our editor-in-chief, Jason Stavers, to discuss whether Bing 2.0 is really worth the hype. Jason, how has your Bing experience been so far?

• 30:25Speaker 05

  Well, I think my first impression was it's kind of complicated and a little overwhelming. And you get through that pretty quickly, but I'm not sure that's the best first use experience for a new technology. But what you have with Bing 2.0 is you have ChatGPT, which I think everybody's pretty familiar with, except that it's now been bolted on to a search engine. So it's got more options in how it can communicate with you. And, and this is a really big difference, it can access the internet. With access to the outside internet, Bing can answer a lot more questions than ChatGPT ever could. The thing is, that also means there's a lot more going on.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  And so, you know, my experience with search has been that there was originally sort of Google and it gave you the 10 blue links. And that's pretty useful. And for a lot of things, that's exactly what you want. But as the internet gets fuller and fuller of stuff and we use it for more and more things, we come to Google or any search engine with a lot more different kinds of questions that want a lot of different kinds of answers. And so I think the idea behind AI is that it can sort of route you to the right kind of response, as much as to the right response itself. So the chat interface is just one more thing, like in addition to the box of similar questions and the little column of Wikipedia entries and all the other stuff they've cluttered up the homepage with, now we also have the chat interface.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  The way Bing has installed it is that it doesn't immediately come on to your page. Sometimes there's a box that has the results of the AI. Sometimes there's a little tag that says basically, would you like to ask the AI? And you can always either swipe or click this button that brings you into a much more of a ChatGPT, chatbot type environment. Another big thing about it is that people are doing the same things with Bing that they did with ChatGPT. They're trying to break it or get it to do weird stuff. And what's really interesting is that it does do weird stuff, but it's doing different weird stuff than ChatGPT did, right? It almost has a different personality. So Kevin Roos in the New York Times, Ben Thompson have written some interesting pieces

• 32:31Speaker 05

  in the last week where they've gotten the chatbot piece of Bing to fight with them, to claim it's fallen in love with them. And it seems to have a sort of snippier, maybe more argumentative personality than ChatGPT did. And what I think is really interesting about that is that You're seeing the benefits of beta testing at scale because these technologies, these large language models, even their designers don't really know how they work in the sense that they don't really, they don't know what kind of result they're going to get, right? It's not that formulaic. And how the model is processing the information is, it's not quite a black box, but it's sort of a difficult to see into box. And I gotta believe that getting millions and millions of people, many of whom are very

• 33:16Speaker 05

  creative, trying their best to sort of manipulate the system, is giving the developers of the system a tremendous amount of data and also qualitative insights. And that's an advantage that Microsoft has, Google will have, but that startups in this space will not have, right? OpenAI was able to break through and, and reach a lot of people, but the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth large language model that comes online as a chatbot is not going to get anywhere this kind of pickup. This is something that you need scale to do to evolve these models and something that only a few players, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, have the kind of built-in scale that they can leverage.

• 33:56Ed Elson?

  So to your earlier point, one of the issues is that it's crawling the entire internet and we can't necessarily trust everything that's on the internet. Did you trust the answers it was giving you?

• 34:06Speaker 05

  Well, a lot of what it does is it kind of regurgitates back to you websites that it found. And it kind of, you're kind of relying on those websites. It has returned some stuff to me that was clearly just clickbait stuff and not very useful stuff. But one thing is fascinating is that just yesterday, I did some searches that I could show you and say, look, this is where it got something wrong. This is where it did something that confused it. And when I went to do those searches again this morning, but using a screen recorder, so we could use it for the YouTube and everything else, the answers that it gave me back were actually much better. And so some of the things that I'd found that it was doing wrong, it had already fixed. So Microsoft is clearly iterating this thing really, really quickly. Right now, I don't really trust Bing.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  Because, for example, I asked it about, uh, give me the numbers that I need to use to adjust historical dollars to current dollars. I've asked it that question three times now, and I've gotten three different sets of numbers each time.

• 35:03Ed Elson?

  So what kind of queries would you prefer to use the chatbot for versus the normal search bar that we're used to? Like, why would you use Bing AI versus regular Bing?

• 35:14Speaker 05

  Part of the problem is that you have to ask me that question. And Bing doesn't just figure it out on its own, right? So they're they're offloading a lot of this very important navigational stuff to the user. Because now I have to decide, do I want to use the chat interface? Or just the traditional search results, which are pretty cluttered and busy? So one of the challenges I think that Bing AI has is it has to do better than the search page, right? Or why are you using this chat function? But I think there are situations where that might just be a better interface. So for example, like if it's through like Siri or Google Assistant, and you want to speak your question, then the AI needs to be able to take what's in those links and say it back to you. And so I had a bit of an experience this morning that I I thought was pretty relevant,

• 35:59Speaker 05

  which is as I came into my studio to sit down and do this recording, I looked out the window and there was a turkey on my neighbor's roof. So I asked Bing AI, how do I get a turkey off the roof? And it did a pretty good job. The chat function first asked me if I was sure I had a turkey, or was it maybe a turkey vulture? To which I I think I know the difference, a turkey, a turkey vulture, Bing. And then I thought about it, and I was like, I'm not actually sure that I do. So I asked it to show me a picture of a turkey vulture, and it gave me a link. It won't actually put the picture in the chat. I imagine that'll come soon. But it did give me a link, and I confirmed I definitely had an actual turkey on my neighbor's roof. And then it gave me, I guess, you know, I don't know, the advice is particularly groundbreaking,

• 36:43Speaker 05

  spray it with a hose, yell at it, keep some food away from it, so it doesn't have a reason to go on your roof. All makes sense. But then somewhat more usefully, it said, and if you still need to get this turkey off your roof, call wildlife control or pasture. It gave me three actual phone numbers and I checked these are real places for the city's wildlife control and two private groups and even, you know, placed them on a map. All of which you could get on the regular Bing page or the Google page. And in fact, it might even be quicker if you were on your screen. But I was thinking if I was just on my phone and I was standing outside and I had some issue I wanted to resolve, like get this turkey off my neighbor's roof, that there's a lot of advantages to being able to do it through this chat system, which would work a lot better if it was speaking.

• 37:29Ed Elson?

  So Scott, what do you think? Do you think there's a demand for Bing? Do you think people want more ways to search?

• 37:34Scott Galloway?

  So a couple of observations here. Microsoft claims it can add $2 billion in incremental revenue for every 1% in market share it gains from Google in the search market. And right now, Microsoft trades it at 10x revenue multiple, meaning that every percent or every percentage point of share it can take from Google, it's probably going to translate to $20 billion in market capitalization. I mean, that's just striking. The other thing that really, that I think we're missing here, or the power, if you will, from a consumer standpoint, is that, and Shana Iyengar said something that's always stuck with me. She's a professor at Columbia Business School. The consumers don't want more choice. They want to be more confident in choices presented. The ultimate merchandising and selection is you are presented with the one best choice.

• 38:20Scott Galloway?

  And that's what ChatGPT is trying to do. It's trying to zig, whereas the incentives have sent Google zagging, specifically giving you dozens of answers that you then have to perform your own diligence on as you slowly but surely no longer trust Google to take you to the right place, because oftentimes they take you to the place they can further monetize. And what ChatGPT and AI is trying to do is saying, you know what? We're going to attempt to give you the best choice. And consumers love that, especially retail. Huge business is based on less choice. You don't want a thousand toasters. You want someone with better taste than you to pick the right two or three toasters. You don't want to assemble an outfit at JCPenney's or Sears, or even at Macy's.

• 39:02Scott Galloway?

  You want to go into free people and know that that merchant has much better taste than you, is much cooler than you, and you can have relative certainty that if you select something, it's going to kind of be in that vein and you're going to look good. So, choice is a bad thing. Choice is a tax on consumers.

• 39:19Ed Elson?

  So, full disclosure, I use Bing, but I'm only one of 3%. So, we wanted to find out if other people in New York are using Bing, and if so, what are they using it for? Let's go to Mia on the street.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  The question is, what search engine do you use and why?

• 39:37Speaker 06

  I use Google, mostly, I would say, just because it's like built into the search bar. So, I don't really think about it. If Bing had been built in there, that's probably what I would use as well.

• 39:49Speaker 07

  Usually Google.

• 39:51Speaker 06

  Google.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Have you ever used Bing?

• 39:53Speaker 06

  I... no.

• 39:55Speaker 07

  No, no, like I don't know anybody that's like Bing is like my thing. Like, that's what I like to do.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  New slogan, Bing is my thing.

• 40:04Speaker 08

  With that said, I was actually talking to a friend about this recently, and I feel like the quality of Google's search results has kind of gone down, where I feel like now I have to like use quotation marks and like dashes to actually find what I'm looking for.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  Have you ever used Bing?

• 40:19Speaker 09

  I have, on my grandma's laptop. I do use Bing on one of my devices. I just don't want to be tracked.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  You feel that Bing has better, it has better privacy than Google?

• 40:31Speaker 09

  Oh, that's a good question. It's more so that Google knows so much about me already that I kind of want to disrupt that.

• 40:37Speaker 10

  I feel like the times I tried to use it, it didn't make sense to me. Maybe that's just like I'm projecting, but...

• 40:44Speaker 03

  No, I kind of feel the same way, actually. Yeah, it feels like I'm betraying like a partner.

• 40:49Speaker 10

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  I'm cheating on Google.

• 40:52Speaker 11

  I'm gonna be really boring. I mainly just use Google. It is simple, easy. I'm probably relatively mainstream in what I'm searching for, so it does the job.

• 41:05Speaker 11

  I have a Google Pixel phone. So, now I've like moved to a point in my life where I used to use Google to organize my life, and now I feel like Google organizes mine.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Don't know how I feel about it fully, so I basically don't really think about it too much. If you were using the AI assisted Bing search, what would you ideally want it to be able to do for you?

• 41:26Speaker 12

  Make reservations, I'd want it to call for appointments,

• 41:31Speaker 12

  braid my hair, I don't know.

• 41:32Speaker 08

  Like something like Amazon, for example, if I go on to try to find something and there's a thousand products that are all kind of essentially identical, like it'd be nice if the AI search could help say, oh, you know, because I I know you and I know your preferences, I know that maybe you'd like something like this, which like that also raises a lot of like data privacy issues, which is kind of another interesting thought, but.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, honestly, I don't have an answer and honestly, that kind of freaks me out.

• 41:58Speaker 09

  I think I would want that search to give me recommendations for things that I'm troubleshooting at work. So not necessarily like I know how to find something with Google and Bing, I know exactly what terms to use, but if I'm brainstorming something like a solution to a problem and I don't know what to search for, that's what I would want to use Bing search for.

• 42:17Speaker 10

  I'm pretty happy with my search needs like right now, they're being met, so I'm like kind of not. My girlfriend kind of uses ChatGPT sometimes. I think I like came up with an email response for her, which was kind of cool.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  That's useful.

• 42:33Speaker 10

  Yeah, some people get really anxious about writing emails, so.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  All right, that's it. Thank you very much.

• 42:41Ed Elson?

  Okay, let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see the minutes from the latest Federal Open Markets Committee meeting, which investors use to try and interpret the trajectory of interest rate hikes. Minutes typically hold granular economic data as well as insights on the Fed members' decision-making process. We'll also see revised fourth quarter GDP data, new and existing home sales for January, and the personal consumption expenditures index. Again, that's the Fed's preferred measure of inflation. Meanwhile, Walmart, Home Depot, Nvidia, Baidu, Alibaba, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Berkshire Hathaway will all be reporting their earnings. Scott, do you have any predictions?

• 43:19Scott Galloway?

  So my prediction, Ed, is that I see the results of the companies I'm working with. They're actually doing quite well. It looks like they bottomed out in Q3 and Q4, and they're starting to bounce back, and they bounced back after having. Gotten in fighting shape, which means that if there's a return to growth, that growth comes over or washes over a lower cost structure, which should make that renewed growth more profitable. Now, what does that all bubble up to when I look at Bitcoin at $24,000? To me, that says risk on is coming back. I think the companies have been agile, burnt some of the brush away, shed some of the fat. And I think Q2, Q3, we're going to see the beginnings of the return of the IPO market.

• 44:05Scott Galloway?

  And we're going to see some, not only some IPOs, of which there's been almost none, but we're going to see some big first day gains in the IPO market. So my prediction is Q3, Q4 of this year, the IPO market returns, and we see some really significant first day pops. That's all for this episode. Our producers are Claire Miller and Jason Stavers. Benjamin Spencer is our engineer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Special thanks to Catherine Dillon and Mia Silverio. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to Property Markets for the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Wednesday for office hours to kick off our special series on the future of work. And we'll be back with a fresh take on markets every Monday.

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