Emergency Episode! Sam Altman Out at OpenAI and X's Advertiser Exodus

It's an emergency crossover episode of Pivot and the Prof G Pod and there's a lot to discuss. Sam Altman is out as CEO of OpenAI — but what exactly happened? Kara shares her latest reporting. Plus, major advertisers are fleeing X after Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Will Elon and X survive the firestorm? Kara and Scott break it all down. 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?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:10Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone. I'm Kara Swisher.

• 1:11Scott Galloway?

  And I'm Scott Galloway.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  And this is an emergency crossover episode of Pivot and the Prof G Pod because a lot of news just broke in the last few hours, especially because it's a Friday and we need to discuss it. Let's start with a story I don't think anyone saw coming. Sam Altman is out as CEO of OpenAI. Quote, this is from the board, quote, "Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI." Chief Technology Officer, Mira, I think it's Marathi, is now the interim CEO. Altman himself posted on X, "I loved my time at OpenAI.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  It was transformative for me personally and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all, I love working with such talented people. Love more to say about what's next later." So just so you know, the president and co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, posted a statement a little while ago that he He is quitting following the news. As I noted in a post myself, I'd done a little reporting. There are a lot more departures of top folks. I've been hearing from them all night at OpenAI. I understand it was a misalignment of the profit versus nonprofit adherence of the company. Developer Day was an inflection point. Some people on Sam's side are calling it a coup. Other people are calling it a misalignment, as I said, or that it was getting too far away from its

• 2:37Speaker 02

  profit, its open nonprofit status and was moving too quickly, not thinking of safety and diversity and other issues.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  And that he was doing stuff without, you know, consulting them. And there was a side of the company, including its chief scientist and another board member who were on one side and Brockman and Altman were another. The way the, the, the, the board phrased it was so funny, the candid, meaning he lied. That's, that's a word for lie. It did leave open enormous amounts of rumors, including some very sordid, personal ones on the internet. I've been trying to chase all those down too, because very people were like, oh, it was really this and it was this. And I'm not even going to repeat them because I haven't been able to confirm any of them. You know, I just don't want to go anywhere with stuff I don't know. It sounds like this developer day was an issue and that, that maybe, you know, he was the

• 3:32Speaker 02

  face of AI and OpenAI. He's gotten very famous. He was just at a meeting in San Francisco with the president. He's been all over the place. As you know, I've interviewed him a bunch of times. I happen to like Sam Altman. But I think there was a real misalignment here. Let me say one last thing is Microsoft absolutely didn't know this was coming. And my sources say Satya didn't know and the company was told just minutes before they put out the press release. So they're, they were caught unawares. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know. It's really a big deal, I think. This is a big, big deal.

• 4:05Scott Galloway?

  It is a big deal and there's a lot here and we'll know more. So I think you can make an educated, there's an educated guess around what happened, but an uneducated guess around what inspired and what likely happened.

• 4:19Scott Galloway?

  Is that the board found something that upset them, asked him to clarify, and then later they found that he had lied and misled them. Because for them to dismiss a CEO who has created, or at least spearheaded, an increase in value of $90 billion, and quite frankly, was seen as sort of a good guy, a lot of hope. This is the most exciting new technology in probably a decade. This must have been real. I mean, this, they don't do, boards don't do this lightly. And I would put it, you know, if you wanted to, now start handicapping the why and the uneducated guess.

• 5:00Scott Galloway?

  The personal scandal stuff, I think is less likely because other executives are resigning. And if it had been a personal scandal thing, I think they would have thought, well, maybe I'll be the CEO, or I don't want to get anywhere near the appearance of support of this type of behavior. It would, it would just be, and not only that, I hate to say this incorrectly, probably, or incorrectly, when you create $90 billion in shareholder value, boards have a habit of trying to wallpaper over scandal. And, or personal scandal. And then, and then when they're

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Because, look, I would just say, people, you know, there was, I've gotten everything from who was doing some of the company, like, maybe it was this, maybe it was that, right? You know what I mean? You can go through all of the possibilities.

• 5:44Scott Galloway?

  That seems less likely. What seems the most likely here is that Sam was investing in, doing a side hustle, starting something that had some sort of competitive conflict, perhaps with other people at the company. I'll just give you a scenario. Maybe at some point, OpenAI has decided, we want to pull an Apple and not be dependent upon Nvidia or Intel. The way Apple was dependent upon Intel, they said, we're going to develop our own chips. Maybe OpenAI said, we have enough money now. We should develop our own chips instead of building Nvidia's business. And they were developing their own chips. And at the same time, Sam was working with other people and funding a chip company focused on AI,

• 6:29Scott Galloway?

  and maybe wasn't as forthcoming about his activities. As the board would have liked, and they feel like, boss, you can't have your cake and eat it too, and dismissed him. The notion around the semantics around the split between profit and nonprofit, I find that unlikely because there's so much money here.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, Open, just so you know, OpenAI was exploring making its own chips.

• 6:52Scott Galloway?

  But I'm using that as an example.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:55Scott Galloway?

  Starting another generative AI company. Who knows, right?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's got a lot of other interests, including fusion, energy, all kinds of things.

• 7:03Scott Galloway?

  But the board doing this, I mean, I was sat in the sense that I was hoping this guy was going to be the anti Elon and present a more optimistic, aspirational, and quite frankly, just responsible, masculine, mature version of what it means to be a business leader. So I was disappointed that he was ousted. It's a victory for corporate governance, though, because boards, the whole point-

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Well, if that's what he did, if they just had a misalignment about profit versus nonprofit, then it's a little funnier, right? Don't you find it?

• 7:36Scott Galloway?

  I personally think that the whole point of corporate governance and governance in general, whether it's the Congress or whether it's Board of Directors, is that we have figured out that when individuals aggregate a lot of power, it begins to corrupt their thinking, and that they can become dangerous and make bad decisions that are bad for stakeholders. So we create governance. And governance is meant to prevent a tragedy that comments, protect shareholders, enact as fiduciaries, and do something wonderful, and then is tap into our advantages as species, and cooperate with each other and learn from one another. And when you have no board, no governance, no fiduciary responsibility-

• 8:10Speaker 02

  I get it.

• 8:10Scott Galloway?

  It goes bad places. So I think this is actually, in my view-

• 8:14Speaker 02

  What if he's not wrong about the direction? If the developer day was very exciting and everything else, maybe they're just a bad board. Maybe they're an inexperienced board. Maybe they made the wrong decision. This press release feels stupid to me unless he's- the way they phrased it left them open to all kinds of problems.

• 8:31Scott Galloway?

  And we have bad referees in the Premier League, and on the whole, it's the way to govern the game.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Of course, but what if it's just a bad board, and they just had a fight, and one side beat the other? You know, that doesn't make them a good government at all. I'd have to push back on this for my reporting.

• 8:47Scott Galloway?

  I would bet when the news comes out, I just find it highly unlikely that a group of people governing a company that had increased 90 billion in value, I can't imagine they wanted to do this, Kara. I think we're gonna find there was real reason here.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  If they didn't like the direction of the company, if they thought he was too organized around profit, if they didn't like how the developer day, which again, several people on both sides said it was an inflection point of tension. So, you know, it's just a direction thing. So, no, I think they could do that. That's happened on boards. We're not gonna go this way and not this way.

• 9:26Scott Galloway?

  Well, sure.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  And one side tends to win.

• 9:28Scott Galloway?

  Boards, boards make bad decisions all the time. When you're ousting the CEO of a company that, as I said, has created this amount of economic value, and there's enough to go around for everyone, for the nonprofit side, the profit side, they're all making a shit ton of money, and they decide to fire him?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Well, not Sam Altman. He doesn't own very much of it.

• 9:45Scott Galloway?

  Well, okay, better yet, but I gotta think there's a there there here. This is pretty dramatic.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is, but maybe it's just that. It's just, it's a difference of the way, the direction of the company. And he was going a different direction and just not heating them, right? And that's a problem, of course, because they're, a board is a board is a board, right? Maybe he was taking a direction and just wasn't dialing them in, you know, to it.

• 10:11Scott Galloway?

  I would not blame a young man in this environment who creates tens of billions of dollars of thinking, I can do whatever the fuck I want.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct.

• 10:19Scott Galloway?

  Because the, the role model here does whatever the fuck he wants and totally ignores his board. He has no board. And so, I wouldn't blame, I wouldn't, I wouldn't find it unusual to find out that the CEO was ignoring everything the board told him he could or could not do.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:38Scott Galloway?

  You know, we'll just, we'll find out, but this is...

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:41Scott Galloway?

  I mean, I was flummoxed by this. I was totally shocked.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  The board needed to be much more transparent, and he's got to make a statement too now.

• 10:47Scott Galloway?

  Of course.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  It's kind of like, only because there's so much, you know, in several articles previously, he's got a sister who's making all those kinds of allegations against him, which has been out for a while, and not even gonna go through them right now. People, I did run that down too. People told me it had nothing to do with it.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  It's they've got to be more clear. This is the zeitgeist company of the moment. And if they're not clear and transparent and their statement, I'm sorry, I thought was clodish, like, what? What does that mean? What did he lie about? What? You can't just be unspecific. If you were, if there was a real problem, they should have been, we've hired an outside law firm to do an investigation. Like, they were so unspecific that it left everything open. And you cannot do that. They don't understa-- it gives me the impression this company doesn't, the board of the company, or the one that won, doesn't understand the impact this company is having, right? Like, or something. It seems like a very inexperienced board, and I think it is.

• 11:45Scott Galloway?

  Well, within, within a couple hours, it's probably already happening. Both sides are going to go on background and try and spin it to their advantage.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 11:52Scott Galloway?

  And so we're going to find out, we're going to find out what happened here. But this is, I mean, I was totally shocked. I do, I got to be honest, though. I do like the fact that this will send a signal to CEOs that everyone has a boss, and boards matter.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  I think it's going to send a signal to, if, if it's just a matter of these disagreements over the direction of the company, that Sam Altman's going to be funded tomorrow, and all these people have left, all these people are leaving OpenAI, will go with him, and they will just reformat, you know, let me just, we've done this before. We leave and go to things, right? And it's never as juicy as it is inside. It's usually just a misalignment. It is indeed a misalignment.

• 12:37Scott Galloway?

  But you just said, you just offered a very realistic scenario here. And that is, he's not getting funded tomorrow. He was funded several months ago to do something competitive and didn't disclose it. And I have no evidence of that. I just can't imagine this board would say, okay, this, this thing is a rocket ship. It's going to create enough value to solve a lot of problems, nonprofit, for-profit.

• 13:05Scott Galloway?

  But this guy is, you just don't fire a CEO on a company that's creating this type of value.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  No, no, and if it's a personal thing, they should have said, we're doing an investigation right away, like it should have said in the statement. I know, I don't think that's the case, but.

• 13:21Scott Galloway?

  Because would the president leave with him the same day?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. No, no, I don't think that, but I think that they should have been more clear. This statement is clodish to the extreme. I just was like, you're leaving, what happened here? You can't be this unspecific and yet say a word like not candid. What does that mean? Right? They were specific and deeply unspecific, leaving them open to all kinds of crazy rumors, all kinds of speculation and pretending it's not the most important company AI, right? So, and then, and then, and then surprising Microsoft, their big partner and their big funder. Are you kidding me? Microsoft should have known days in advance, like what was happening. They had no.

• 14:04Scott Galloway?

  Satya looked stupid. He was on stage with them last week.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  No, Satya didn't know. Let me just say.

• 14:09Scott Galloway?

  And that's my point.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Satya didn't know. So that means something's wrong with his board. That's my feeling.

• 14:14Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I think that's fair.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Governance, like you don't tell Satya Nadella, you not surprise Satya Nadella. That's my feeling. If somebody is giving you billions and billions of dollars in investment, they're going to pull it. You know, they get, they've got their product, but I don't know.

• 14:27Scott Galloway?

  When you got, when you're building this kind of value and all the things you just talked about, we got Microsoft as a partner, he was on stage with the CEO. I think there's a lot of reasons to not fire him and they decided to fire him, you know, in a pretty unceremonial fashion.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe there was an article being worked on and they, I don't know. I would like them to be specific. If it's a really serious, personal thing, you need to say, we're doing an investigation. If it's not, you need to be more clear. It's really left it far too open. It's really badly done, badly done, let's just say, poorly done. I'm getting, I'm also getting a bunch of theories from very smart people in Silicon Valley via text live as we talk. One theory from one person who actually does know quite a bit about this board is that he called them effective altruists, like they're very like. Much more oriented towards nonprofit ideas of what chat GPT should be versus a commercial operation. So interesting. A lot of the board, in fact, when you look at it,

• 15:26Speaker 02

  is of that, in that direction. I don't know if it's effective altruism, but it's definitely much more, it's a crunchier group of people, I would say.

• 15:35Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that would, so that sounds like one viable kind of door number three here, but I just would have been shocked they couldn't figure it out, given the amount of money that's being created, that they couldn't have figured out a way to say, okay, well, 10 billion to build, you know, parks and homes for veterans. I would have just thought they would have tried to figure this out.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I had a very smart person also just text me, my boring version board, don't launch GPT store until it's safe. Sam, okay. Also, Sam, we launched GPT store. So.

• 16:10Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, and it goes back to the notion that I just, you wouldn't be surprised, nor could you, I don't want to say blame Sam Altman, but when he looks around and says, oh, people of my genius and my shareholder value creation can do whatever the fuck I want. The board is just there to rubber stamp it, full stop.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Well, we'll enjoy his new company, Closed AI.

• 16:31Scott Galloway?

  There you go.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Anyway, it's not just OpenAI making news. Elon Musk and X are dealing with a firestorm yet again. This follows Elon's comments on X endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory by saying it's the actual truth. Usually he goes, interesting, or something like this. But now he said, this is the actual truth, which was a trope around Jewish people having a dialectical something or other hatred, dialectical hatred of white people and trying to replace them by bringing immigrants into this company. It's one of the most more heinous antisemitic tropes, replacement theory.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  So he did that and major advertise and then Linda Yakarino, the pain sponge is was trying to dial it back by saying, we don't agree with this at all, but never mentioned her, the CTO, because the call is coming from inside the house. Major advertisers on X are now cutting off their spending. Companies are pulling back, including Disney, Warner Brothers Discovery, Lionsgate, Apple and IBM. I've heard from a half dozen more who are pulling, just calling me, saying, we're going to pull too. Even Comcast, NBC Universal paused advertising. That's Linda Yakarino's former employer, where she was head of advertising. It's been a deluge in the last few hours. The White House has also chimed in and condemned Musk for boosting anti-Jewish conspiracy

• 17:52Speaker 02

  theory. The White House spokesman said it was, quote, "unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust." He's trying to dial it back by saying he's going to kick off everyone who says things like from the river to the sea.

• 18:13Scott Galloway?

  Decolonization, yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Decolonization. And he's saying genocide is not acceptable. Thank you, Elon. Who is who's on the genocide side, except for the genociders? It was so ridiculous. What a ridiculous joke he's being.

• 18:28Scott Galloway?

  It's easier to speculate what happened here, and that is.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Okay, go right ahead.

• 18:32Scott Galloway?

  Well, the guy, the guy gets home late, is ridiculously high, and the real Elon comes out, the angry whatever, you know. I got a lot of pushback for calling him an antisemite. I think he's absolutely an antisemite. And, and then he says this, and advertisers start falling, you know, withdrawing like crazy, including pretty iconic ones, Apple, IBM. And Linda calls him and says, you're going to have to put more money into the company. And all of a sudden, he's like, oh, oh. And then he starts saying, he starts backpedaling. And it's so ridiculous for him to say, we will not tolerate this kind of hate speech unless you're high on ketamine and own the company. And at four in the morning, start tweeting out antisemitic tweets. I mean, it

• 19:15Scott Galloway?

  was just so ridiculous for him then to pretend that he's a warrior against these, against these hateful, these hateful terms. And also, I've got to be honest, I'm heartened by this because I have been really disappointed that more people have not been more.

• 19:34Scott Galloway?

  Robust, strong, pushing back on anti-Semitic comments.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Well, no, no well-known people have, no other billionaires. Can I just make this point?

• 19:45Scott Galloway?

  Sure.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  I gave him a hard time. Bill Ackman, who's like beating up on college students who, let's just say, probably don't have good judgment, has not, not word one about this.

• 19:54Scott Galloway?

  About Twitter and Elon?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  About Elon. Not word one. Here he is, like doxing kids. I'm sorry, these kids are stupid and there's not that many of them that are that stupid. Some of them just are calling for a ceasefire and they can do that in America? Like, we may agree or not agree with them, but this guy was trying to dox them and then he has not a word for this, which is such an obvious thing. Nobody does.

• 20:17Scott Galloway?

  The finance community has a lot of leadership that's Jewish, whose parents are Holocaust survivors.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  They are.

• 20:24Scott Galloway?

  And they don't come out against Twitter because they, or they want to be involved in SpaceX's IPO.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 20:31Scott Galloway?

  And unless-

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Hey, Bill Ackman, come on, Bill.

• 20:33Scott Galloway?

  And, and here's the reality. 90 years ago, we didn't speak up enough.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:40Scott Galloway?

  And it's happening again. So organizations, people, customers, financiers, and just general US citizens need to speak up and say, "I'm selling my fucking Tesla. I am not going on Twitter."

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Some of Tesla's backers are doing that right now. But let me see, what, tell me why they can go after students like this? And you, you could have disagreed with these students and say they're acting badly and whatever, and then say nothing? Please explain that to me, how you can punch down but not up.

• 21:12Scott Galloway?

  You're 100% correct. And not only that, quite frankly-

• 21:15Speaker 02

  I want you to explain it to me, since you worked with these terrible people.

• 21:19Scott Galloway?

  Since I worked? No, it's indefensible. Not only that, these people should be held to a higher standard than students because they should know better. They are responsible for the livelihoods of other companies. They have enormous influence. When you're a 19-year-old- Where your prefrontal cortex is still evolving and you're pushing the limits of, as a function of growth and evolution, you're pushing the limits and the boundaries, which is natural, that's part of, that's part of growth, that's part of, and you say something stupid, "We provide young people with a bit of a hall pass." And I have said, there's a difference between free speech and hate speech. And if a student is saying hateful things, I think he or she should be-

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Violent, 100%.

• 22:03Scott Galloway?

  Incenting violence should be brought in front of a student board and even maybe just suspended and have to call their parents and say, "This is why you're paying for me to be at school and I was suspended." I think that's a learning moment. But when you're the wealthiest man in the world and you're responsible for employees and you have dramatic influence over the behavior, you set a role model for young men, and you start talking about, retweeting things about replacement theory? That's totally fucking unacceptable. And what I find just so upsetting is not as many people as I would have thought nor hoped have said, "I'm embarrassed, I wrote a biography on this guy. We are canceling the movie we were going to do on him.

• 22:47Scott Galloway?

  I am selling my Tesla, I am selling my shares. We will not be involved in any financing, wealth management, or debt offerings for any company that this individual is involved in." If we don't cauterize this shit right now, it gets out of control. And I'm just incredibly shocked and disappointed that more people aren't pushing back.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  They're not going to, what are you talking about? They're gonna make the movie. I have written lots of these people, just so you know. I've written a lot of them. And they're just like, "Well..." I'm like, "Well, what? Well, he doesn't mean it." And I'm like, "Oh, my God, it's the 7th, 10th time he's either, either retweeted an anti-Semitic thing, and in this case, he's now gone even further. He agrees with it, and he says he agrees with it." I was like, "How many times is he gonna get a pass here on this stuff from you people? Because you're here..." I literally, I'm like, I'm washing my hands at you people, because I just don't even under, I do understand it now, the money, the green is what you're looking at here. And, and, you know, and listen, Linda Iaccarino, I don't know what you're gonna do here, but don't, stop going down with this ship.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  You are, you better find yourself a door you can float on at some point here, because this is really appalling. This is appalling, and it's appalling you didn't call out your- Your own employee, by the way, the CTO of your company. I don't know, what's she gonna happen to her? She gotta go? I've been told by people close to her, she's gonna go down with the ship. That's her attitude.

• 24:13Scott Galloway?

  She's in, she's in literally an impossible position and

• 24:17Speaker 02

  She can leave.

• 24:17Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I think she would do herself well. I'm biased here to say, not even, she doesn't even have to be this specific. I'm just not, if she said, look, this is a great opportunity. I don't mean to throw the company into more chaos, but I'm just personally not comfortable with some of the actions and words of the person who controls this company. I think she'd get a job offer the next day.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Next day.

• 24:39Scott Galloway?

  And

• 24:39Speaker 02

  We'd give her a job.

• 24:40Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, and not only that, you know what? She already has enough money. Her kids would be proud of her when they're talking about mom, you know? You gotta think about, you know how history's gonna judge you. It's never the wrong time to do the right thing, especially when you're in a position of economic security.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  I like when you say that. I'd say that again.

• 24:58Scott Galloway?

  What's that?

• 24:59Speaker 02

  It's never, not the economic security. It's never the

• 25:02Scott Galloway?

  It's never the wrong time to do the right thing.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Nice. It's true. Yeah. So where does it go? Do you think he gets another pass, like a Trumpian thing? Oh, did he say that?

• 25:10Scott Galloway?

  It'll be, advertisers will fall. Now his advertising revenue will be down 80%. And he will fund the thing, because he's still the wealthiest man in the world. And all of these companies that would, that will send out tweets about, or Instagram posts about Indigenous Peoples' Day will line up, even though they have, you know, I won't even say a lot of Jews in their company, but claim to be concerned about bigotry and suck his cock so they can get the next IPO. And this, this type of behavior, principles don't mean anything unless you're willing to sacrifice for them.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 25:52Scott Galloway?

  So what I would say to the investment banks involved in constantly doing debt offerings, financings for this company, are your notions that anti-Semitic content is, and statements are unacceptable? Is that a principle of yours? Or is it just an opinion? If it's a principle, then you can't work with this guy.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't, honestly, I just, I was only using Ackman as one of the examples, but boy, like, we're waiting, Bill, we're waiting for some statement, because this was pretty appalling, and it was, it wasn't pretty appalling, it was appalling period. Anyway, we'll see what happens, I don't know, what's it worth now, is it half as much?

• 26:30Scott Galloway?

  Again, it goes back to governance. He has no boards.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:35Scott Galloway?

  Any board, and this is, this goes back to income inequality. When someone can aggregate a quarter of a trillion dollars in wealth and start buying huge influential companies and have absolutely no safeguards, the board of this company, even if it was a real board, if Tesla was a real board, they would say, you can't be on Twitter. I'm gonna, let me, let me pretend I'm the hero here. I've been on boards where there's been a control shareholder, and we on the board have said, we recommend the following, firing the CEO or not firing, whatever it might be, or doing this or not doing this, and the control shareholder calls us and says, no, and I'm in control here, I'm the control shareholder. And then the board says, and this has happened to me twice, fine, then we will resign, and you can replace us, and the world will know that in a public company, the control shareholder

• 27:19Scott Galloway?

  got in a fight with the board and the independent board directors resigned. That's what this, in my opinion, if this board, these boards had any principles, they would say, Elon, either you stop tweeting, or I'm resigning from this board. But they all want the money, they all want to be near the innovator, they all want to be, you know, next to this cool company. These companies have no boards, they, they, they clearly don't even want to save this guy from himself. But there's, there are things the investment banks, his board of directors should, can and should be doing, and instead, everyone's like, well, everyone starts making all these excuses, and you're right, and then with these students, they want it to be one strike and you're out.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what I hear from, oh, Kerry's not really anti-Semitic. I'm like, really? Because it feels very anti-Semitic, the things he's retweeting and posting and promoting, and, and the actual, this is the actual truth, pretty clear, pretty clear, when you're talking about replacement theory, or, or, or the, the dialectical hatred of white people. I'm like, well, it feels, and, oh, well, he, oh, well, there are always, this is what happens, and I, I literally, I'm now hanging up the phone.

• 28:32Scott Galloway?

  But what, and this goes to this, the notion of this, this... Reservoir that I just didn't, the, the surface area of the iceberg below the surface of antisemitism that I had no idea existed. Let me ask you this. What if he was saying this about non-whites? How would Hollywood respond? What if, what if he was making this? If there was the same level-

• 28:55Speaker 02

  He said it about gays. He's already been insulting to gays. So keep going.

• 28:58Scott Galloway?

  He has, I agree. He has made homophobic, he-

• 29:02Speaker 02

  And transphobic.

• 29:03Scott Galloway?

  And transphobic. But in general, what I have found is the level of tolerance for these, this antisemitic hate speech recently. If I said any of this shit about non-whites or gay people on campus, if it, this is the, the double standard here. Enough is enough. If people need to speak out-

• 29:27Speaker 02

  So why don't you say that to Bill Ackman? Enough is enough, Bill.

• 29:30Scott Galloway?

  Well, I, I think we're saying that, but let's be honest. Bill, Bill, you gotta give Bill some credit. At least he's-

• 29:36Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna give him credit because he's not, I don't want him punching down at students when he refuses to punch up, but Elon must.

• 29:41Scott Galloway?

  Okay, but he's mostly going after the leadership of these universities.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  I don't care. He should say something about Elon. This is the most famous person on the planet Earth right now. So, come on. Don't get on your high horse and then refuse to look straight at the person who has more influence than all those college campus heads put together. So, anyway. All right, we're gonna end it there. I'm gonna read some very funny, one thing that Twitter and also threads are good at is, is making jokes about this. So there's a couple I wanna read about Sam Altman leaving. Maybe GPT-5 is already sentient and live and wants Sam Altman gone. This is from New York Times Pitchbot. Probably was a mistake for Sam Altman to do that TikTok about how much he loves Osama bin Laden. Another

• 30:27Speaker 02

  one, Sam Altman was actually typing out all the ChatGPT responses himself and the board just found out. I thought that was funny.

• 30:34Scott Galloway?

  The one I saw that I liked was, if Mike Pence had only done the right thing.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 30:42Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, this is an unfolding story, as you would say, or a developing story.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Developing story. So we'll see what happens. We'll see. Maybe something even more heinous will come out about Sam. Something, we are certain that Elon Musk will say something even more heinous, and he still won't get into trouble. That we can assure you of. Okay, Scott, we're going to wrap it up there. We'll have much more on Pivot and the Prof G Pod next week. I'm going to read us out because this is an emergency pod. Can you just go, "Emergency"? Just want to hear you say that. I want to hear you say it loud.

• 31:09Scott Galloway?

  Emergency.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  No, that's not an emergency.

• 31:12Scott Galloway?

  I feel like we're in some weird sex game. You're making me uncomfortable. What's my safe word here? You're making me feel uncomfortable. You know what my safe word is?

• 31:20Speaker 02

  The board is firing you now, Scott. I just want to tell you what.

• 31:23Scott Galloway?

  Maybe.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Okay. Scott, you've been, you've been less than candid with us about, and we're going to have to fire you now, just so you know. You can, yeah, yeah. This show was produced by Nishat Kirwa and Zoe Marcus. Brandon McFarlane engineered this episode. Thanks also to Claire Miller and Drew Burrows. Thanks for listening to Pivot and the Prof G Pod from New York Magazine and Vox Media. Obviously, we'll be back soon.

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