Pod Insights Prof G Markets Scott Galloway’s Predictions for 2026 About this episode Scott shares his predictions for the year ahead, including his picks for the tech of the year and stock of 2026. He also forecasts what’s in store for AI. And for the first time ever, Scott ventures into uncharted territory with his prediction for the "vice of the year."
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Transcript 9,782 words · 14 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:29 Scott Galloway? Today's number, 187 million. That's how many minutes our fans spent listening to Profitec Markets in 2025 on Spotify alone. That's equivalent to 356 years. In celebration, Ed, tonight I'm going to watch Jaws with my son. We're going to do it a bit different, though. We're going to watch it backwards. And it's actually, when you watch it backwards, a heartwarming story of a shark who helps people work through their disabilities.
2:06 Scott Galloway? All the podcast jokes are kind of lame. It's like, it's like going to therapy and your therapist are people who haven't matured since 2011.
2:15 Scott Galloway? Oh, you like that one better?
2:16 Ed Elson? Yeah, I like that. I like that.
2:18 Scott Galloway? Congratulations, Ed. You're not only 30 under 30, but we're wasting people's time. We're...
2:25 Ed Elson? Pretty good, pretty good, pretty good numbers.
2:28 Scott Galloway? Should we do a crime podcast where we, where we describe, where we describe hideous murders as like skincare routines?
2:34 Ed Elson? We'd be more successful. True crime podcasts absolutely crush, which I do not understand. I've never found a true crime podcast interesting in the least.
2:44 Scott Galloway? How, well, let's bring in Claire. How does any woman ever be around any man or live in an apartment building or stay in her car when she parks after listening to crime podcasts? It's basically all the same thing. There's a stranger in town who's introduced early in the podcast who commits a terrible murder against a woman. They're all the same. Claire?
3:06 Speaker 07 You want my take on true crime?
3:07 Scott Galloway? Do you listen to crime podcasts?
3:08 Speaker 07 I don't listen to them either.
3:09 Scott Galloway? You don't listen to them?
3:10 Speaker 07 No, no.
3:11 Scott Galloway? Hmm, okay.
3:13 Speaker 07 I don't, I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, Scott. I don't have a lot of time to listen to anything other than...
3:18 Ed Elson? You're supposed to give us a nuanced take on how women...
3:20 Scott Galloway? On how women feel about crime.
3:22 Speaker 07 On how women feel, yeah.
3:23 Scott Galloway? What actually, Claire, what, what, I'm the same way. The first podcast I ever listened to was the one I was on with Kara Swisher. I still don't listen to this one, but what, um...
3:35 Scott Galloway? What podcasts do you listen to, Claire?
3:36 Speaker 07 I actually, I listened to one podcast recently called Articles of Interest. That's all about how our fashion industry is inherently linked to the, the American military.
3:47 Scott Galloway? Whoa.
3:48 Speaker 07 And it's been an exploration of kind of how each war has shaped what we wear as Americans. I think that one's pretty fascinating. I think you would like it, actually.
3:57 Scott Galloway? That sounds cool.
3:57 Speaker 07 Articles of Interest, yeah.
3:59 Scott Galloway? Ed, what do you listen to?
4:00 Ed Elson? I listen to me, I listen to who else?
4:06 Ed Elson? I listen to Lex Friedman sometimes, actually. I've been listening to that.
4:10 Scott Galloway? Yeah.
4:11 Ed Elson? It's been good.
4:11 Scott Galloway? Lex?
4:12 Ed Elson? Um, yeah.
4:15 Scott Galloway? Well, that was fascinating. Let's move on from these personal interest stories.
4:21 Ed Elson? You know, you're the one who started this. Did you know?
4:24 Scott Galloway? Yeah, I was just hoping I had more interesting friends.
4:28 Ed Elson? Why do you ask a more interesting question?
4:32 Scott Galloway? What are you guys doing with all?
4:35 Scott Galloway? I listen to The Daily.
4:38 Scott Galloway? I used to listen to Radical History and then I realized no one was watching me listen, so I don't need to listen to them because I'm not impressing anybody.
4:46 Ed Elson? Funny.
4:47 Scott Galloway? So I mostly, I listen to our stuff. I listen to, occasionally I listen to an interview that Kara does on On with Kara Swisher. I really like The Daily. I think they do a great job and it makes me feel very old and very white. I'm kind of settling in to get off my lawn when I'm listening to The Daily. I liked that guy asked a couple of questions that his producer teased up and then every few seconds goes, huh? Huh? So what you're saying is it was difficult? I'm like, a lot of skill there.
5:18 Ed Elson? What do you mean by that?
5:21 Scott Galloway? By the way, I made fun of him and supposedly he's really upset and all butthurt that we made fun of him.
5:24 Ed Elson? We're talking about Babaro?
5:25 Scott Galloway? Michael Babaro, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michael, welcome to come on anytime, you sexy beast. He's got all that Movember hair on his head now, on his face now. He's very, very handsome, very good voice, too.
5:36 Ed Elson? Actually, I have no idea what he looks like. What are your reflections on, on 2025 for the show? We are entering a new year, but those minutes sounded like a lot of, a lot of listening time. Reflections on the show and how we've done?
5:53 Scott Galloway? Well, so kind of zooming out, I thought that podcasting, so I sold my company in 2017, started another company. And I realized I went off this hamster wheel of more money. I like more money, but I wanted, I want other things to drive me. I thought, what would make me really happy? And I want. Creativity, to hit intellectual property, to hit influence and try and do meaningful work. And we started Prop G Media. And we want to make enough money to pay our people well and make good livings. But it was never, it was different. It was a different approach. It was never about, okay, I've always been, how do I raise a shit ton of money, build
6:35 Scott Galloway? something and then sell it to a company. That's been my strategy for the last 30 years. This was different. This was more about, you know, quote unquote, emotional and intellectual reward. And about two years ago, we started doing really well. And we started launching new voices, new programs, and now my greed glands are going again. And so Prop G Markets within the portfolio of the five podcasts is growing faster, I think, than any other of our properties. And the most exciting thing about it is earlier in the year, you and Claire basically went to five days a week. And I'm basically like one, one and a half. And so, and by the way, that doesn't, has not in any way slowed the growth. So,
7:17 Scott Galloway? and I also believe the opportunity. So I think CNBC sucks. I don't know if you've ever picked up on that from me. But I think there's a huge opportunity to be the premier business media property, especially going after young people. I think the average age of a CNBC viewer is like dead. And we get, the average age of our listeners is 34. So, and that's where all the money is. So I like the idea of surrounding a set of consumers with shows on economics, China, the markets, we do our political podcasts, but there's just no getting around it. You and Claire have, in the Prop G Markets team, have killed
7:58 Scott Galloway? it. You guys are, what, I mean, you've won a bunch of, in addition to your 30 under 30, Jesus, what, what is the podcast one? We won best business podcast? What did we win? We won the Signal Award, Best Business Podcast. We also won the Webby Award. There you go. So it's been, it's been great. It's been, I think this was Claire's first job. I know it was your first job. Claire, was it your first job?
8:20 Speaker 07 Yeah, it was, after internships.
8:22 Scott Galloway? Okay. So think about this. The two people running this show, the person running it behind the mic and the person in front of the mic, this was their first job. So I think that, but that's really exciting. That's really nice. And
8:36 Scott Galloway? And you guys work well together and I like the, yeah, I'm just, this is probably profiting markets. I think it's growing. It's probably the most successful product I've ever been involved in right out of the gates. I don't have anything I can. Wow. I don't think I've ever launched. Typically, when I launch a product or a website or a business, it's kind of like, oh, I have a great idea and I raised some money. I'm like, well, this isn't working. And I pivot and I pivot and it does okay. And then pivot again and we catch on to something. And that's why I tell entrepreneurs that the key is just starting because whatever you think makes sense, until you face the enemy being the marketplace, you don't know. And the vision for this, granted, we have profit, we had
9:19 Scott Galloway? profiting markets for a while, yeah, twice a week, but then when we went to five times a week. And also, I love that you guys have done a great job incorporating other boy. I'm talking my own book here, but I'm really happy. How do you guys feel about it? Claire, you go first. You're the, you're the brains behind this chili bag of donut taco stand.
9:36 Speaker 07 It's been a really rewarding year. I mean, it kind of went off without a hitch and we've got such a good team behind us. So I don't know, it's been, it's been a lot of fun. It's been a year of hard work, but it hasn't been a hard year. It's been a really fun year. So I've loved it. And I think we're going into year four.
10:01 Scott Galloway? Wow, it's been that long? I didn't know that.
10:03 Speaker 07 It's been that long. We started, we started with one episode in 2022 in July of 22.
10:08 Scott Galloway? Add reflections?
10:09 Ed Elson? I'm just surprised that there's so much to talk about. I remember when we, when you said, I want to do a daily show. I was like, well, there's not enough stuff that happens in the world to talk about. Oh my God, was I wrong? You can talk about anything. There is so much crazy shit happening, especially in business and markets. So it's been really fun.
10:29 Ed Elson? Learning how to do that. I need to come up with something with a plan for 2026. Our 2025 thing was, okay, now we're going to do it daily. Every year we have a thing that we're working towards. I need to think about what that's going to be for 2026.
10:43 Scott Galloway? You don't think it's going to be events?
10:44 Ed Elson? Events? That's good. That's a good one. We can make it events.
10:47 Scott Galloway? So I'm going to have people come up to me and ask me about if you're single, which I'm really looking forward to. 2026 is going to be about, I think, about events and alternative platforms for distribution. But I think Claire's point is a really important one, that she's gotten a lot of psychic compensation, because this year, the monetary compensation will be dramatically lower for both of you. So I just want to prepare you. And I want to acknowledge Claire's recognition of the psychic compensation.
11:15 Ed Elson? I need nothing else, Scott.
11:16 Scott Galloway? Yeah.
11:17 Ed Elson? I've had a terrible time. I've had a terrible time. Yeah.
11:20 Scott Galloway? It's been wonderful. Thanks. Thanks for your good work.
11:23 Ed Elson? Just consider that for my review.
11:26 Scott Galloway? Uh huh.
11:29 Ed Elson? Okay, let's get into our episode here. This is our first episode of the year. It is pre-taped. So we'll be back next week for our proper episode, and we'll get into everything that's been happening. But for this episode, to kick it off, we are going to walk through your predictions for 2026. We're going to have your thoughts on what is in store for AI, for media, for emerging tech, trying to address some audience questions and comments we got on the live stream. That sound good?
12:01 Scott Galloway? Yeah, sounds great.
12:02 Ed Elson? Okay, we're going to zoom through this. So your first prediction here, Scott, AI stocks correct. Please unpack that.
12:09 Scott Galloway? Yeah, so I think the groundwork for this is I think China is so sick of dealing with the sclerotic, raccoon on meth policies of the Trump administration, where he has Changed the tariff policy with China seventeen times since entering office. And if I were him, and they've seen this for a while, they've been diversifying away from the US. They've gone from seventeen percent of their exports went to the US. It's down to ten and they have reduced just in the last, gosh, the last eight months. Their exports to the US by seventy billion. And if I were advising Sheen, I've said this before, I'd go for the jugular and I'd start dumping AI into the US market with open weight, less expensive AI models.
12:53 Scott Galloway? And I believe they're already starting to do that. And as you see, as technical specifications or performance of these things start to reach parity. And they seem to be able to train their models for less money and have built models that require less energy. I think they're just going to dump a massive amount of AI into the market and crash our market or force a correction in the valuation of these companies. So I think that's, I think that's coming and these coming, it's really interesting. Now, they appear to be doing this, making these advances with substantially less capex. Some people would say that the capex is hidden because similar to how Boeing benefited from massive government military spending, a lot of people say that local governments are propping up these AI or open weight AI models.
13:37 Scott Galloway? But one thing is clear, they're reaching sort of technical parity. So if you can get ninety percent of OpenAI or Anthropic for thirty percent of the price, that's a really good value proposition. And the CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, kind of rattled markets when he said that they were relying on Alibaba's. I don't know if it's QN or Qwen model. He said it's very good and it's also fast and cheap. So I think anyways, I think these stocks are going to come under, these valuations are going to come under huge pressure as more and more companies announce that they're using, you know, much less expensive Chinese models.
14:13 Ed Elson? I'm just going to zoom us to the, the second prediction, which is that the data center bubble bursts.
14:18 Scott Galloway? Yeah, I, I find that a lot of the data center modeling is essentially such that Sam Altman can pretend his business is going to be much bigger than it is. The number of data centers announced. Is up at 240%, but if you look at the actual number that have begun construction, it's a fraction of that. I feel like a lot of this is signaling as opposed to actual construction. And also, there's huge points of constraint and specifically, like one of the biggest data centers in Nvidia's hometown is still empty because it's awaiting power. They're estimating for a lot of these things, it would take five to eight years to
15:00 Scott Galloway? connect them to the grid. And if you believe the statements around the revenue projections and the power required to fund the data centers implicit in these revenues projections, we would need 250 nuclear plants, new nuclear power plants at a cost of $10 trillion. So, you know, I just think it's, you know, Altman said, our vision is simple. We want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week. I just don't see how that's feasible. I also don't think it's true. I think he's just trying to say, I know my business so well. And as a head fake, look at, we're going to need all this power. And I just don't, I just don't think it's, it's going to happen. And all
15:44 Scott Galloway? the data, I think the data storage projections are way off and that that, that bubble is going to, is going to pop. And whether or not the infrastructure, power infrastructure keeps up or increases or not, the capex will absolutely increase it. But meanwhile, China kind of is continuing to power ahead. They, they brought on 256 gigawatts of new solar capacity in 2025, the first half, and that's more than the rest of the world. So it doesn't even appear that we have the infrastructure or we have the capital, but it doesn't appear like we're actually going on with it. So it strikes me that one, they'll either be huge constraints logistically.
16:27 Scott Galloway? Or that we're going to find that in fact, AI does slow down and there are cheaper, less energy consumptive ways of powering these L L Ms, or that they'll be powered out of China with open weight models. So I think we're going to see a bit of a bubble burst in not only AI stocks, but in this data storage hysteria. In addition, unfortunately, what we're going to see is another wealth transfer from middle-class households in the form of higher electricity prices because it will put a strain on the existing grid, which will transfer to an increase in electricity prices for middle-class consumers. But also incumbent in the first prediction about those stocks we're correcting, I think there's
17:07 Scott Galloway? going to be a bailout in 2026 and the bailout is going to be of AI specifically. They'll position as some sort of strategic government investment in the form of loan guarantees to continue the music playing, but it's effectively going to be a bailout. And that is, all of these companies are built on such ridiculous expectations around revenue growth and the way they will want to get to that revenue growth and provide the infrastructure and buy more chips will be to take on massive debt loads backed by the government, which in my mind is essentially a bailout.
17:38 Ed Elson? Yeah, I mean, well, AI bailed out Trump's administration, so it only makes sense that the next year Trump's administration bails out AI. It would bring everything full circle. Your third prediction, the Nvidia and OpenAI duopoly comes under siege. Please unpack that prediction.
17:56 Scott Galloway? Well, it's just the great thing about competition. Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world because they're able to command incredible operating margins. It reminds me, when I got out of business school in 92, the premier job was Intel and Apple and Motorola got sick of Intel's essential duopoly in conjunction with their partnership with Microsoft and they started producing their own chips. And, you know, OpenAI is saying they're going to increase their revenues by $180 billion by 2030 and Nvidia $800 billion by 2030. And then if you look at, I mean, it's just, it's just staggering. And we're also seeing that while these companies still dominate, we are seeing some share dispersion,
18:39 Scott Galloway? specifically Gemini is now 15%, DeepSeek, which was at zero, is now at 4%. And also, you know, as we've said, we think Gemini is probably the most underrated. L L M because of the fire hose of, you know, a couple billion users each day that they can fire via Google search. And I find that the AI summaries at the top of Google queries are getting better and better. I think anthropic for our comments around, I think it's going to be a successful IPO. I think it'll grow its share. So, and even Amazon and Google are trying to get into the game, producing their own chips to compete with Nvidia. This is a good thing. But right now Nvidia's share of GPU market is 94%. That
19:19 Scott Galloway? will come way down. And their market cap right now is greater than the entire stock market of Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Italy. And then if you just look at the market cap of this company relative, Nvidia's market cap is greater than the market cap of Costco, Bank of America, IBM, Palantir, ExxonMobil, Walmart, Netflix, Oracle, Home Depot, and Salesforce combined. I don't think that's sustainable. And go back to the Intel example. Intel had a similar type of duopoly with Microsoft versus Nvidia and OpenAI. And in 1999, it was a $200 billion market cap. By 2000, it was half a trillion. Now it's 165
20:01 Scott Galloway? billion. And granted, Intel may be the worst managed big tech company of the last 25 years, given their leadership. But I do think it's somewhat of a metaphor for what might happen to Nvidia. And also Nvidia is a premium priced product. It costs about 10 bucks an hour to use their Nvidia H100 versus about half the price for an AWS Tranium or a Google TPU. So I don't think this is kind of a, this is a bit of a layup because these two companies are too profitable to maintain, to not attract huge sharks. There's so much blood in the water here. So it's just logical. Their share would come down. So that's not that bold of prediction. I guess the question is how much their share will come down.
20:43 Ed Elson? And who will come for them? Who are they going to be the main attackers?
20:46 Scott Galloway? Well, it's like Gary Oldman said in the movie, Was It the Assassin with Natalie, Natalie Portman's first, first movie.
20:54 Scott Galloway? He says, bring everyone. And he's like, what do you mean? He's like, everyone. So everyone, I think everyone's coming for these guys. I think Amazon, every big tech player, I mean, Meta, everyone's going to be trying to develop their own chips and their own L L Ms. And again, per the previous prediction, China is just going to just start massive AI dumping. I don't know if they have the IP around the chip. But you know, this Jeff Bezos looks at all these rockets going into space and the value of SpaceX and starts saying, okay, Kuiper. And I would bet that they're thinking a lot, long and hard about how to develop a pretty robust chip offering.
21:31 Ed Elson? We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show, send it to a friend and please follow us if you haven't already.
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23:22 Ed Elson? We're back with Profty Markets. Okay, big tech stock pick is Amazon. Why is that?
23:29 Scott Galloway? So it's all about, obviously, their earnings growth, strategic positioning, and also all of this relative to their current valuation. And Amazon, so our big tech stock pick of last year was Alphabet. It's up 68%. The worst performing stock of the last of the year to date is Amazon, only up 7%. And if you look at their revenue per employee, it's actually down 28% in the last 10 years versus up 49, 56, and 62 at Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft, respectively. And I think a lot of that is not because of underperformance of Amazon, but because of huge investments in more people to staff their factories
24:12 Scott Galloway? and also huge investments in robotics and AI. And I think that where AI begins to pay real dividends in terms of market cap increases is that I think it will lose market cap across the infrastructure and LLM layer, but I think it's going to increase market cap in quote unquote, the application layer specifically around autonomous and robotics. And I think Amazon's acquisition in Kiva was genius. And the fact that Amazon has a million robots or a million operational industrial robots versus the rest of the nation of 400,000. And their prediction that they can double their retail revenue by 2033 or 32 without any increase in employees
24:56 Scott Galloway? just says to me that one of the biggest businesses in the world, and that is Amazon's retail business, is going to register margin expansion. Typically, what's happened over the last 10 years is all the margin expansion has come from Amazon Media Group or from AWS. But if you're able to expand the margins substantially across one of the world's largest revenue streams, and that is Amazon's platform retail, that's going to be dramatic. And Amazon is the Ford of the 21st century. Ford, in about 10 or 15 years, took the production time of a car down 90%. And in the last decade, Amazon's been able to do the same thing from click to order. And I think it's going to take it down 99%. And you're going to have huge Amazon warehouses and delivery, basically almost the entire supply chain.
25:42 Scott Galloway? Operated by these industrial robots and that obviously has societal implications, but it's going to be great for Amazon shareholders. And then you layer in Kuiper, which is its Bezos attempt to develop launch capability. I think that'll become, it's kind of been a pimple on the elephant to SpaceX. I think that's going to become not a big competitor, but a player, if you will. And I just don't see AWS is being kind of hammered as being seen as the least AI compatible, or at least AI enabled cloud, but it is still the number one cloud company. And it's also trading at what are typically historically low multiples for Amazon. It typically trades
26:24 Scott Galloway? at 58, P of 58, which is rich. It's now trading at 33. Its enterprise value to EBITDA over the last five years has averaged 23. It's now at 17. In sum, just as Alphabet looked cheap to me last year, or reasonable, I should say, not cheap. Amazon doesn't look cheap, but it looks reasonable. And I think people are going to realize that AI, the best interface of AI is in autonomous or in robotics. And Amazon is a leader in collapsing AI and robotics.
26:51 Ed Elson? Listen to comment. Kind of surprised the pick isn't Alphabet again, given how you've praised Google's progress in AI. Why not Google again, Scott?
27:00 Scott Galloway? Could be. I think, so I own some Alphabet and I'm not selling. And the thing I'm most excited about, quite frankly, with Alphabet is Waymo. Because again, I think the place that AI starts to register stakeholder growth is in autonomous. I like Alphabet. I'm not selling. It's up 69% this year. So it's had, or 68%. So it's had a pretty, a pretty big run, but I still think it's, it's one of the more reasonably priced stocks.
27:27 Ed Elson? Fifth prediction, space becomes the next thing.
27:31 Scott Galloway? Well, tech of the year. So, you know, AI, then I predicted voice, then AI, then GLP-1. And last year I predicted nuclear. This year I'm predicting space. And that is what technology or platform or sector attracts, attracts the most cheap capital and sees the most, the greatest increase in valuations. And I think it's going to be space. And if I were running IR for SpaceX, the way I would position it is, okay, Google gets 90% of search. Meta, 60% of all social, Amazon, 50% of all commerce, but we at SpaceX have 90% of literally everything else. And that is, if you look at this tiny little pale
28:13 Scott Galloway? blue dot in one of 10,000 universes or galaxies, we own 90% of everything outside of that blue dot. We are putting, I think, 90% of launch, launch capacity right now, two thirds of satellites, they can get, they can get items or products into space for less than anyone else. The price per kilogram's come down 90%, which sort of gives them a bit of a mini monopoly on space. And space has evolved from kind of weird narcissism and nihilism. Yeah, let's people like space tourism is the stupidest fucking business I'd ever heard. But space hauling is huge and connectivity. And then
28:53 Scott Galloway? where I think you're going to get real, some real serious like, new unicorns is going to be in space defense. Like, what is the undero, undero, is that what it's called of space? And it might be undero. But there's going to be some companies who are going to say, we're the best at building weapons deployed in space. And those companies are going to go crazy. So I think that the next kind of big technology that results in a massive increase in attention capital and companies you've never heard of becoming unicorns is this space.
29:27 Ed Elson? Best investment you don't have access to, TikTok US.
29:32 Scott Galloway? So, Trump, in what is socialism meets cronyism, has basically forced China to sell TikTok to a group of Republican donors. That is total bullshit socialism, denial of rule of law. And he's carving it up like a birthday cake and giving it to his Republican buddies. And they're getting it for a song. Supposedly their price is 14 billion, 50% of the revenues are going to go back to the CCP, which technically makes it a $28 billion price tag. TikTok's US business is about 12 billion in revenue. If you assign the same multiple alphabet house, despite the fact TikTok's probably going faster than
30:11 Scott Galloway? alphabet, which is 10, you get an implied valuation of 120 billion. So effectively, these guys are getting.
30:21 Scott Galloway? Getting a four and a half X on their investment from day zero when they are awarded the company. And unfortunately, as Democrats, we don't have access to this investment. But this is probably the biggest hundred billion dollar giveaway, I think, in recent memory, based on cronyism and a lack of feckless, neutered, co-equal branch or not equal other branches of Congress that should be blocking this deal. But this is the, this will be the easiest way that any group of people have made a hundred billion dollars in 12 months.
30:52 Ed Elson? Listen, a question, what happens to TikTok when Democrats win back government control?
30:57 Scott Galloway? It's a really interesting question. The problem is they're so fucking old that they just don't understand it. And I don't know how they unwind that deal. Do they unwind it? I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure anything happens because, you know what's, it's like trying, we know Instagram, I mean, Congress really fucked up approving Meta's acquisition of Instagram. They fucked up letting Alphabet acquire YouTube. These would be two great companies, competitors battling it out, lowering rents on advertisers and consumers because there'd be more options for advertisers. But once these acquisitions are done, they're very hard. It's, it's very hard to break up companies. So I don't know. I don't know if anything's gonna happen.
31:42 Ed Elson? That's exactly what Jonathan Cantor's point has been as well. Just this retroactive approach to policy is so useless. It never gets us anywhere.
31:49 Scott Galloway? So hard.
31:50 Ed Elson? Prediction number seven, short form video and AI meteors strike Hollywood.
31:55 Scott Galloway? Since 2019, US restaurants have come back and then some. Airlines have come back and then some. Concerts, Broadway is back to almost where it was. Hotel occupancy is slightly down. Theme park attendance is still slightly down. But the film industry is off 30 to 40% since COVID. It just never came back. And when industries are in structural decline, it's like something happens and takes, they have a step change down and they never recover. And if you're a listener in the creative community here, you absolutely want to run as fast as you can to a small screen. If you're If you're making shit for the big screen, I went and saw that movie Battle After Battle,
32:40 Scott Galloway? the Leo DiCaprio movie. Was it called Battle After Battle? Yeah, one battle after another. It's literally peak artistic masturbation. Supposedly the thing costs 200 to 300 million. It's, you know, it's a decent film on Netflix that should have cost 12 million. We're all talking, or I've been talking for a while, for a couple of years now, about how AI is coming for Hollywood and that all of the, you know, these, these unions who just think they're so fucking precious and not, and somewhat immune from market realities are just gonna have such a rude awakening. And I think that the elephants get a hold of these assets and have to justify or find efficiencies from overpaying for these things. AI is coming for them. What people aren't talking about is these short form video platforms.
33:25 Scott Galloway? Like something called The Kids Diana Show has 137 million subscribers versus Disney at 128 million subscribers. So these really short form, it's basically Quibi, but with better storytelling. I mean, Meg Whitman and Jeff Katzenberg, to their credit, they were actually right. In 2019, one of my predictions was Quibi would fold and I was right. They were just ahead of their time. And that is, we're basically punching out into the market, a group of adults who have attention spans of two to three minutes. And the idea of a series that is two, three, or 10 minutes seems weird to people my age, but it's actually kind of in line with the brain being trained by TikTok.
34:03 Scott Galloway? And so I think a lot of these platforms are going to start to erode share, not only from traditional streaming networks, but especially from movies. I even find myself, I have a tough time sitting through a movie. And I think it's because I've gotten so used to short form video. And I will not go to a movie unless I know it's at least good, if not great. I just won't do it. I won't take a risk on a movie. Whereas when I was your age, Ed, I used to go. Well, at least when I was a teenager, I would go to two movies a week. I would just see everything. I would see everything when it came out. And the good movies, I saw Empire
34:41 Scott Galloway? Strikes Back like six times. I saw Grease five times. Wonderful movie, Ed. I don't know if you saw Grease. Have you ever seen Grease with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John?
34:53 Ed Elson? Of course.
34:54 Scott Galloway? And Jeff Conaway, who later died of opiate addiction. Fantastic film. Anyways, these short form video, first it was TikTok coming for them. And I think that you're going to see a bunch of upstarts with new platforms. Yeah, it's just going to be streaming. Streaming video will hold on. Movies are just gonna, it's sometimes it's darkest before it's pitch black. I think you're going to see more theaters closed. And I think you're going to see, unless it's, it's just so discouraging, but we're just going to see sequel after sequel after sequel because the cost. I just saw a movie called Roof Man, which is a wonderful film. Barely broke, it'll be lucky if it breaks even. Just no one's seeing movies anymore.
35:37 Ed Elson? Let's move on to your eighth prediction. Waymo speeds ahead.
35:41 Scott Galloway? So a million trips, September 2025, they've pulled ahead of absolutely everybody. It's a, it's a time machine. I think, I think Waymo could drive about half a trillion dollars in value at Alphabet because if you want a trillion dollar company, you got to build a time machine. This gives back a ton of, a ton of time to people. And the cost, you know, the downside of Waymo is the car costs about a quarter of a million dollars versus, versus Tesla's at 40 and Baidu's at 30. But I think that cost will come way down because of the LiDAR sensors. But the two domestic competitors, Tesla and ZUKs,
36:21 Scott Galloway? are absolutely nowhere compared to Waymo. They're, I think Waymo in 2025 had nine million or it looks like it's going to have nine million rides. I think Tesla's going to have less than 100,000 and so is ZUK. So, you know, Tesla has one and a quarter million miles with a human safety monitor in the front, which kind of defeats all purpose. And Waymo's already at 100 million miles. So the other player that's really going to benefit from The autonomous explosion in 2026 is going to be Uber, who I think Dara Khosrowshahi is one of the brightest managers in tech right now. And he's taking an agnostic approach, letting all of these players massively spend on the technology and he'll just be the front end and use his custody of the consumer to offer
37:06 Scott Galloway? people autonomous across a variety of players. So I think as the distribution kind of mechanism for autonomous, I actually think he'll be a winner. Everyone's saying it's going to eat into their business. I think he's smart and is going to actually benefit from it.
37:21 Ed Elson? Ninth prediction, humanoid robots are the self-driving cars of 2015.
37:26 Scott Galloway? Better or not, I should have said they're the segue. This is just so fucking ridiculous. Again, more weapons of mass distraction from Elon Musk, trying to get people not to look at the fact that as a car company worth 100 billion, not 1.4 trillion. And he even said that robots would comprise 90% of the enterprise value of Tesla. Basically, what he's saying is I need to find something to be 90% of the value because it's not here with cars. And I just don't think, it's just so interesting. People don't do any consumer research. The last fucking thing I want in my home is a robot traipsing around. I mean, it's just so ridiculous.
38:04 Ed Elson? What if it was really exclusive and expensive?
38:06 Scott Galloway? Yeah, I don't think I'm quite that level of douchebag, but no, I don't want a robot. I don't, I just think these things are ridiculous. I don't, I don't see these things. I don't think they've done any consumer research around, do people really want a humanoid robot traipsing around their house? In addition, the utility is just not there. They don't, the technology is just not there. And this is one place, you're going to have a million non-college or, you know, non-high school grad, mostly men, put out of business because the experience, unfortunately, the human contribution to that job, the delta is just not that much greater than, or it's
38:50 Scott Galloway? less because they're more dangerous than an autonomous. Whereas, quote unquote, whatever you call it, domestic help is still 10x what a fucking robot's going to do in your house. These things just don't work. And they're creepy and they're weird. So I, again, this is the segue. The autonomous 10 years ago, vastly overhyped, a weapon of mass distraction, going nowhere.
39:19 Ed Elson? Listener question, is now the time to short Tesla?
39:22 Scott Galloway? I would never tell anyone to short Tesla because I wanted to short it at 30 bucks a share. What's it at now? I, I've been so wrong on Tesla and this company is a meme stock, meaning it's not connected to its underlying fundamentals. So they could announce terrible earnings. They could announce these robots make no sense and the stock could be up 20%. It's been, become totally disconnected from its underlying fundamentals. So rather than advice, I'll say what I'm doing. I'm looking at buying these two and three X leveraged short positions on the magnitudes in 10, including Tesla, because I think it's all overvalued right now, just as a hedge, not a big bet, but just as a hedge.
40:07 Scott Galloway? So I said, if the market, you know, throws up and these things are off 50%, I'll still lose money because everything is correlated. You know, my total portfolio will probably go down 20 or 30%, but I'll maybe get 10, 10 or 15 back if I, if I take this short position. So I, I wouldn't tell anyone to short Tesla because this company has become disconnected from its fundamentals a long time ago.
40:29 Ed Elson? We'll be right back and for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profitemarkets.com/subscribe.
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42:20 Ed Elson? We're back with Prof G Markets. 10th prediction, vice of the year is prediction markets.
42:27 Scott Galloway? Yeah, these things are fascinating. They have built into them the most incredible marketing. And that is the wisdom of crowds is fascinating. And it's not only insight into what might happen, but it becomes self fulfilling prophecies. When you see these digital billboards in Manhattan saying 95% likelihood from, I think it was Kelsey, that Mom Donnie would win the election. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And a lot of times these prediction markets really have insight into what's going to happen because you're getting thousands of points of light from different processors called human brains. So it's incredible marketing. More and more people will get excited. More and more people will be arguing over Thanksgiving dinner
43:12 Scott Galloway? about who will be president, decide to make bets.
43:16 Scott Galloway? People love the DOPA of gambling and especially young men who wanna believe that they can find easy riches without actually showing the grit and discipline of getting up and going to work. And the Calci CEO said something interesting, he said, "If we're gambling, then I think you're basically calling the entire financial market gambling," and there's some truth to that. The problem is it's gonna be the mother of all insider trading because if there's a 1 in 3 chance Eric Adams will drop out of the race in the next 7 days, what's to say he can or is even illegal for him to raise 10 million bucks from his friends and say, "Let's put 10 million on me, you know, it's 3 to 1 that I'll drop out in the next week
43:56 Scott Galloway? and then we'll make the bet and I'll drop out tomorrow and I get a $20 million severance package for dropping out of the race in the next 7 days." I mean, the betting is getting down to, "Will this pitch be faster than 95 miles an hour?" So the temptation just to coordinate with people betting real time and manipulate the market is just extraordinary here. They're getting into the market, they're starting to bet on sports. We have a very lax administration. Day will just give millions of dollars to the next, I don't know. He wants to build, I don't know, a dance hall or a disco or, I don't know, he wants to put in pole dancing and, you know, the Oval Office or something. The losers here hands down are the gaming communities.
44:39 Scott Galloway? I mean, gaming stocks are down between 7 and 38%. Caesars off 30, is that Caesars? I think Caesars off 38%. All, there's no, you don't, why be in Vegas when Vegas is in you? And that is, it's in your pocket and you're just seeing a crash in Vegas. Visitor volume is down 8% to Vegas. The problem with it is that, hey, see, I had another thing. I mean, so much about the most valuable companies in the world basically exploit a flaw in our instincts and, and free, safe play has been in short supply.
45:17 Scott Galloway? And the envy of getting all of these notifications on your phone has made a less sophisticated or mature brain of young men think that they can get rich quick with speculating. And 50% of US men 18 to 49 have a sports betting account and about a third of sports bettors say they're addicted. So this is, and you know, the consequences are pretty dramatic here. When a state legalizes gambling, there's a 28% increase in bankruptcies. There's a huge increase in domestic violence. And also, my mom was a docent at the Bellagio Hotel and she's come home with all these fun facts. Gambling has the highest suicide rate of any addiction because if you become addicted to meth, people figure it out and try and intervene.
46:01 Scott Galloway? You can mortgage your house, spend your kid's college fund on gambling and nobody knows. And so you feel like there's only one way out. As a matter of fact, one in five people with gambling addiction at some point attempt suicide.
46:15 Ed Elson? 11th prediction. Synthetic relationships take center stage.
46:19 Scott Galloway? Yeah, I hope that we have gotten a little bit smarter about the damage that big tech and these platforms have done to young people in that we have a more prompt response to synthetic relationships. I really do think these things are a real threat to our youth. By the way, I want to acknowledge there's some really positive things or potential about synthetic relationships. A quarter of people 65 and older are socially isolated because they've outlived their friends and family or they're alienated from their family. And so social isolation among seniors increases the risk of a stroke by 30% and increases the risk of dementia by 50%.
47:02 Scott Galloway? And chronic loneliness is, has the same impact on your health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. And also nursing homes are vastly understaffed. And a lot of what, you know, a lot of what healthcare workers say in these nursing homes is that what, what their residents really want is company. What they want is companionship. And so the share of the population that is sixty five or older is going from twelve percent in two thousand and four to by twenty thirty will be twenty one percent. So I do think these these synthetic relationships have big opportunities with seniors and there'll be some interesting companies there. The problem is it should be age gated. Three quarters of teens have used have had a relationship with an AI companion and half
47:47 Scott Galloway? of them say they're using it a few times a month or more. And four fifths of users are under the age of thirty five, which means Congress will do nothing because they'll all be watching fucking Murder She Wrote and have no idea that what a synthetic relationship is. And they're just not in touch with this this technology and how dangerous it is. And when you look at just searches for how to make a friend exploding on Google and how lonely people are and the fact that their amount of time they spend with their family each day has been cut by two thirds in the last twenty years. And the number of high school teens who sees their friends every day has been cut in half in the last fifteen years. And the number of people stating that they're lonely is up sixty percent.
48:31 Scott Galloway? You just see where this is headed and that is people sequestering from society, especially young men. And I've said this before, that big tech wants to evolve a new species of a social, asexual males. And it's, you know, one in eight, one in eight people say they have no close friends. One in seven men says they have no friends. And unfortunately, there's so much profit in this because the amount of the average duration or time spent on ChatGPT is fourteen minutes. And get this, they have the average amount of time spent on a character AI or with a character AI, the average amount of time is ninety three minutes. These things are really seductive. So I would, I hope that our elected representatives and some scholars really take a hard line
49:16 Scott Galloway? against synthetic relationships for people under the age of eighteen. I really do think that. It's pretty basic. The most rewarding and stabilizing thing in life are relationships, but organic relationships. And these things are sequestering young people from their family and their friends.
49:34 Ed Elson? Your final prediction here is that the college is dead narrative will collapse.
49:40 Scott Galloway? God, this is just hilarious. All these people saying college is over and you don't need to have a college degree. Anyone who's saying that usually has a double E degree and masters from Stanford. And the parents, as I'm in the full process around my kid applying to college right now, whenever I hear people saying that, I'm like, oh, your kid fucked up on the ACT and you're trying to make yourself feel better that they're not getting, gonna get into a good school. There's just no evidence that that in fact is the case. And the narrative is very striking. You know, the number of people who say college is very important, Republicans, it's gone from, get this, it's gone from 70% in 2014
50:25 Scott Galloway? to 20%. Basically, Republicans think that college is no longer important. And yet, anyone with any money is gonna work their ass off to get their kid into college. And Google and Apple have all made these big announcements that they no longer require a college degree because it should be skills based as opposed to certification based, which I agree, and that's a great idea. But meanwhile, their hiring hasn't changed at all. The number of workers without degrees has increased a whopping 3.5%. And half of firms have made no changes at all. So distinct to the fact that college supposedly has no value, you're still seeing big firms who are, you know, we, kids who come to school think they're the customer. They're not. Corporations are the customers of colleges. Kids are the product.
51:09 Scott Galloway? And the key is to get corporations to show up and pay incremental salary in exchange for an admissions department to make sure the kid isn't mentally ill, has group skills, critical thinking, and a little bit of training. But that value is still there. Now, that's not to say that white collar workers aren't going to go through a down cycle or new college grads because of AI. But the down cycle won't be as bad. I mean, there might be an uptick in vocational programming, but it's still a pretty good plan B. And people have been talking about Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropping out of college to start these amazing companies. And I just say the same thing. Assume you are not Mark Zuckerberg. And what we see is that over time, the average
51:51 Scott Galloway? Median household income for two college grads is 133K and the median, the median household income for people with high school educations is 58,000. And by the way, last year, it didn't change. And people who graduate from college have much lower divorce rates, 26% versus 39. Lower obesity, 27% versus 34. Two thirds of people who go to college get married versus half of people without a college degree. And men with a high school education were twice as likely to die by suicide versus those with a college degree. And this is, you know, one of my big social pushes is that if you had a pill that increased
52:33 Scott Galloway? the likelihood you would get married, run for Congress, have a strong household income, and decrease the likelihood you would be obese, take your life, be abusive, be subject to conspiracy theory, have diabetes, wouldn't you give that drug to as many people as possible? But instead, we in higher education, who think we're really noble, have decided to hoard this drug and artificially sequester supply. There is no reason that Dartmouth, Harvard, and these schools with over a billion dollars in endowments couldn't double, triple, quintuple their enrollments and actually pretend that they're fucking social servants or civil servants as opposed to Chanel bags. So what's happened this year, despite college having no value, enrollments, fall undergrad
53:18 Scott Galloway? enrollments is up 4.7%. So, and by the way, it's the southern schools and the public schools that are booming. The problem is, see above how fucking corrupt me and my colleagues are, is that public schools have increased their tuition since 2000, adjusted for inflation, by 53%. That's adjusted for inflation. And private schools are up 32% in the last 25 years, adjusted for inflation. The good news is, we are seeing, we've seen an 18% increase over the last five years in trade schools. That's a hopeful sign. But the notion that somehow college doesn't matter. Be careful with that. And I'm not saying that your kid should go to a second tier school and take out a bunch of debt if he or she really isn't cut out for school.
54:01 Scott Galloway? But this whole narrative of college is going away and you don't need college anymore. Yeah, that, that, that's bullshit.
54:08 Ed Elson? Those are the predictions. Before we go here, there was a final reflection from one of the viewers who watched this predictions livestream. They say, "This is the most depressing hour I have spent in years because I am afraid that Scott isn't wrong." What would you say to that?
54:25 Scott Galloway? Well, my last slide was, I think a lot about risk in the markets and my life, how risk aggressive I've been, and it's paid such huge dividends in terms of starting companies, even if they failed, I started again. Expressing friendship, making overtures to, to women who were out of my weight class. You know, my father's risk DNA, I inherited some of that risk aggressiveness from my parents who decided to take huge risks and leave their families in the UK. I think a lot about risk and how I diversify against risk now that I'm older and I don't want to lose all my money for a third time. But
55:04 Scott Galloway? I think that unfortunately, what we have is we've tied our economy to trying to increase or decrease young people's risk aggression around relationships. And that is, we've said, "You can get all of your risk aggressiveness out on betting on sports, or on who's going to win the mayoral race, or taking risks online by saying really incendiary things and seeing how people respond." And that's the miss, one of the greatest misallocations of a resource in history. And what I would suggest to any young person, especially young men, is take less risks with your money. Try and be a little more risk.
55:48 Scott Galloway? Risk averse with your money and try to be much more risk aggressive with your time and your relationships in that is don't take as many risks with Calci, polymarket, Robinhood and crypto and take more risks by getting out of the house and approaching strangers and expressing friendship and expressing romantic interest that that's where risk needs to really increase. Take more risks outside of the house and take less risks on your screen. Nothing wonderful is going to happen to you without taking risks, but there's bad risks and there's good risks. And expressing friendship, telling people you care about them, telling people you're interested in them, those are the good risks that that young people need to take more of.
56:32 Ed Elson? This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Mias Verio is our research leader. Our research associates are Isabel Kinsel, Dan Shalun and Chris Noddy. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. Tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on markets.
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