Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway The Week: SpaceX, Iran, and the World's First Trillionaire About this episode We're back with another episode of The Week, a new weekly show from Prof G Media, hosted by George Hahn.
Every Friday, we break down the biggest stories shaping business, technology, politics, and culture — and connect the dots across the conversations happening throughout the Prof G universe.
This week: SpaceX becomes the largest IPO in history and makes Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. Then, after 107 days of war, the U. S. and Iran announce a framework agreement that leaves the biggest questions unresolved. And finally, historian Heather Cox Richardson joins Scott to discuss expertise, institutions, and America's future at 250.
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Transcript 2,881 words · 15 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:30 George Hahn? Welcome to the Week from Prof G Media, where we break down what mattered and what it all means. I'm George Hahn, and it's Friday, June 19. Today, the biggest IPO in history finally landed, minting the world's first trillionaire. Then, is the Iran War over? And finally, historian Heather Cox Richardson on expertise, power, and America's future at 2:50. Let's get into it.
2:05 George Hahn? SpaceX went public this week. After years of waiting, the largest IPO in American history finally landed, opening at $150 a share, an 11% jump from its offering price, and climbing from there. By day three, SpaceX was briefly worth more than Amazon. Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire. But Scott wasn't celebrating. His argument? What happened this week wasn't a market event. It was financial engineering.
2:41 Scott Galloway? And what I don't think people are focused enough on here, and there's been news on it, but it's really, I think, the whole shooting match, is that Musk threatened not to go public on the Nasdaq unless they waive the 12-month requirements for him to be included in the Nasdaq 100. So they backed down, they blinked. The S&P said no, the Dow Jones said no, but the Nasdaq blinked. And the result is they're immediately included in these indices. If it's at $2 trillion and there's $50 trillion of market cap in the Nasdaq 100, that means all the indices that track the Nasdaq 100 now have to put 4% of their assets under management into SpaceX stock, creating anywhere between 20 and call it $50 billion in additional demand
3:25 Scott Galloway? that no IPO is, you know, benefits from. In addition, traditional IPO rules are that you have to issue at least 10% of your shares. They didn't, they issued 5%. So massive artificial demand, or demand that no one else has benefited from, from constrained supply that no one else has been able to manufacture. And what you have is a pop, a 20% or 25% pop on what I think is manufactured scarcity. Now, the question is, where do you go from here? And I would argue, someone called me and said, "I have access to share, should I do it?" I said, "I think you should, but I would look at this as a trade, not as an investment."
4:10 Scott Galloway? Because eventually that manufactured scarcity begins to leak.
4:14 George Hahn? When the dust settled, SpaceX was trading at 112 times last year's sales. For context, Meta went public at 28 times trailing revenue. Google at 10. And just as investors were digesting the biggest IPO in history, another piece of the AI story emerged. OpenAI's financials leaked and the numbers were staggering. Here's self-proclaimed AI skeptic Ed Zetron, who first reported on the leak.
4:48 Speaker 06 So last year, OpenAI spent about $34 billion to make about 13.01, uh, sorry, $07 billion and uh, had about $22 billion in cash at the end of the year, lost about $21 billion. That 38, 39 billion dollar number is what I would describe as gap voodoo. There is some very strange stuff and I'll be going into this in future episodes, going on in the balance sheet and everything with this company. They turned from a nonprofit to a for-profit, though they've remained profitless, uh, last year, which means that they have their net loss is quite strange. It's like 38.5 billion dollars. But the number I like to come back to is they lost $21 billion from operations
5:30 Speaker 06 and they spend astronomical amounts on sales and marketing. They spent $7.5 billion on cost of revenue, 19.18 billion dollars in R and D. But that sales and marketing cost, that 5.73 billion dollars is one I really like to hammer on because what? It's like, it's just like, it's just like, excuse me, well, how much did you spend?
5:52 George Hahn? How much of today's AI boom is being driven by fundamentals? And how much is being driven by the belief that someone else will pay even more tomorrow? Morningstar recently estimated SpaceX's fair value at roughly $780 billion, less than a third of where it's currently trading. And on markets this week, Howard Marks, co-founder and co-chairman of Oak Tree Capital Management, put the moment in historical perspective.
6:25 Speaker 07 So I wrote in a memo recently this year, and I think it's true,
6:32 Speaker 07 that if this technological innovation,
6:37 Speaker 07 with its exuberance, doesn't produce a money-losing bubble, it'll be the first.
6:46 Speaker 07 And now, it could happen. You know, you can't rule these things out. And you know, maybe this is a good time for me to introduce the rejoinder of the of the optimist. What do they say? This time it's different. Okay, that was true about the railroads, it was true about radio, it was true about computers and the internet, but this time it's different. And this time, we have a development of incalculable, unlimitable value. So there, this time, it's really true that there's no price too high. That's what they say. Right. But the problem with that is, is they always say that.
7:29 Speaker 07 This time it's different is never different. And they've said it in each of those bubbles that I mentioned, I think. So, or, nobody, including me, should say definitively that this is a bubble, that the people who invest in these early stages of AI will lose their money, that the people who invest in the companies you named will pay prices that they'll never see again. But you must be alert to the possibility.
8:02 George Hahn? The Schiller-PE ratio, a measure of how expensive stocks are relative to long-term earnings, now sits above 40. The last time it got this high was 1999. Back then, investors believed the internet had changed the rules. Now, maybe AI has. We are officially in dot-com territory. We'll be right back after the break.
8:37 Scott Galloway? Support for the show comes from Bilt. Most of us work hard to earn our keep, but usually there's no one around to hand you a cookie when you successfully pay your monthly housing bill. No one except Bilt, that is. Bilt has expanded from their original renter rewards program, and they have a lot more going on for members now. For example, members can earn points on mortgage payments, too. Every housing payment gets you points that get you a lot more than baked goods, such as flights with top travel partners, including United and Hyatt, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much, much more. Here's another benefit of Built membership. You also get access to what they call a neighborhood concierge. You can make restaurant reservations, book fitness classes, and find new local spots, all while rewarding you at more than 45,000 merchant partners. It's simple. Being a renter and now owning a home feels a lot better with Built.
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9:37 Scott 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. Their Agentic 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?
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10:43 Scott 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 regentech 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?
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11:55 George Hahn? Welcome back. After 107 days of war, the United States and Iran announced what the White House called a breakthrough. The problem? It's not exactly a deal. It's a framework, or, as Scott says, a memorandum of understanding. A 60-day negotiating period meant to produce an actual agreement later. The hardest questions, nuclear enrichment, sanctions relief, frozen assets, remain unresolved. On Raging Moderates this week, Scott and Jessica Tarlov discuss.
12:36 Scott Galloway? And then the uncomfortable truth that no one wants to own up to is that Iran has way more leverage after the escalation than before it. We come out of this weaker, they come out of it stronger. Let me just repeat that. Any honest analysis of this? Iran comes out of this stronger. We come out of it weaker. Your thoughts?
13:00 Jessica Tarlov? I wholeheartedly agree with you and would just add that even if they got exactly the same deal, the fact that they know that they can shut down the Strait of Hormuz whenever they want and hold the world hostage is an enormous bargaining chip. And, you know, we're quibbling over the Iranians basically saying, no, we're not, it's not going to be toll-free, right? Like, we can work towards that, perhaps, but it's not going to go from, you know, 60 to zero, right? When this reopens tomorrow or when the blockade gets lifted.
13:33 George Hahn? Ian Bremmer joined the show earlier this week and made a similar point. His argument? Even if the final terms resemble the old nuclear agreement, the geopolitical context has changed dramatically.
13:47 Speaker 10 Well, first, one obvious thing is that the JCPOA was not a unilateral US deal. It involved the Europeans, it also involved the Chinese and the Russians. So you had a lot of countries that had various degrees of influence and equities in their relationships with Iran that had a stake in ensuring that the deal actually held up, that the inspections actually went ahead, that the sanctions that remained on Iran remained on Iran, all of these things. So that's one point, is that this new deal, it's only going to be the Americans. And if the Iranians feel like they have more leverage going forward, then breaking an agreement that's only with the United States is less consequential than breaking a deal
14:29 Speaker 10 that involves countries like Russia and China that Iran really does not want to antagonize for other reasons.
14:35 George Hahn? The broader concern isn't just what's in the deal, but what the war accomplished. After months of escalation, billions spent, and global energy markets repeatedly thrown into turmoil, we're left with an uncomfortable question. Did the United States end up with a better outcome than the one it started with?
14:59 George Hahn? On this week's Conversations episode, Scott spoke with historian Heather Cox Richardson. As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, they reflected on power, expertise, and why so many voters have become skeptical of institutions. Here's Heather.
15:17 Heather Cox Richardson? And one of the things that jumps out to me about the people in power right now is the degree to which they have simply said, "Well, I'm going to put the best people in charge." Or, "I read a book. I then can go in and I can negotiate Middle East peace in a way that nobody who's studied this and been trained and so on has been able to do for 40 years." And the thing about that is we have never put those people at the highest levels of our government before. The idea that you just have a hotline to the universe or God or to intelligence. And in this moment, it seems to me that that idea overlaps strongly with Trump's sort of fascist, traditional ideas about some people being better than others.
16:02 Heather Cox Richardson? And that, I think, is interesting because I think that's one of the reasons that evangelicals adhere to him as closely as they do. And I don't really know how to grapple with that. What do you think about that?
16:15 Scott Galloway? I think in America, it has become a national pastime of being critical of our government. And I would argue our government is the best performing organization in history. And I think we have just taken for granted at every level how thoughtful and credentialed people in the CDC are and the diplomats who try and hammer out and cross the Ts and dot the Is of an incredibly complex deal like this. And that we have essentially gutted and neutered the competence of the best organization in the world. And Americans have taken for granted, believing that these things just operate on some sort of autopilot. And I think we're about to figure out in a very painful way that, no,
16:59 Scott Galloway? there were very smart people working at the TSA. There were very smart people working in the IRS, the CDC. Those people were there for a reason. And when we decide to take out our entire Iranian diplomatic corps...
17:15 Scott Galloway? Staff our intelligence agencies and our security apparatus with loyalists as opposed to people who have any background, that eventually you end up with poor execution. And I think, I think a lot of this is our fault. I think a lot of Americans have taken for granted the commitment and expertise that is resident in our government. And I think that those chickens are coming home to roost.
17:38 George Hahn? We spent the week talking about big promises, that AI will change everything, that a fragile peace will hold, that the right leader can succeed where institutions have failed. Maybe all of that turns out to be true. But history has a way of separating confidence from competence. And eventually, the results speak for themselves. We'll be back next Friday with a fresh addition of The Week from Prof G Media, breaking down what mattered and what it all means. I'm George Hahn. Have a banging weekend.
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