Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway's 2025 Predictions on AI, IPOs, Podcasts, and Trump | Pivot

Kara Swisher 0:00 Okay, Scott. Now, it's time for our predictions. I'm gonna do mine first. I think, um, Donald Trump's age is, might become an issue in the next two years. I think the presidency is an incredibly difficult thing. I do think it might be calmer, bec- and it's largely not because he's become wiser 'cause he's not. He's not wise in any way. He's not a good person. He's a serial sexual harasser, at the very least, and a r- and other things. I think he's a terrible person. I think his age is going to calm him down. I don't know how else to put it. It... either through, uh, natural what happens when you get older and the, and the difficulties of this. So, you may see a calmer Donald Trump. I just... I... you may see it, and it's not because he's a good person, or he's turning the tide, or anything else. He also is probably looking at his legacy now, and he's a lame duck president. No matter how you slice it, he's a lame duck president. And again, people around him are aware of it. I've heard it from so many people in his party. "We only need him for a couple more years." They've said it. Uh, "And then we'll make him into an icon. We'll do some statues, all good." And

Kara Swisher 1:00 so I think it's gonna maybe a little surprising, and it's not, again, not 'cause he's a good person. Um, as to, uh, my other prediction, I do think there's gonna be a lot more advantage to companies in AI that you aren't thinking of, like IBM, Salesforce, a lot of the others that are gonna ride on the rails of the enormous spending that, uh... whether it's $30 billion from, from Meta, whether it's, um, uh, 50 to, uh, 80... 50 to 80 billion from Microsoft, or all of them are spending. I think those who ride the rails on these things are gonna be the beneficiaries that put them into place, whether you're Salesforce helping Disney with its lines, the... that's one of their clients, or, um, IBM, or things like that. So, I would look to those companies in a lot of ways who are gonna be the real beneficiaries. It reminds me of the early internet. It was not the companies that put up the websites like Netflix... Netscape, excuse me. It was the companies that rode the rails, and these rails are being put in place not by our government, but by companies, and they're getting paid for, uh, n- whether it's energy costs, everything else. So, I would look to those companies in 2025. I think the AI revolution is just getting started, and it will start to really... it reminds me of early, early internet, and who s- who began and who succeeded were two very different parties. Y- on to you, Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway 2:22 I like those. Uh, so okay. So briefly, 2025 will be the year of a new duopoly. It'll be OpenVideo. OpenAI and NVIDIA right now control arguably 90% of all traffic in AI, 90% of the queries, 90% of the queries of the processors that are powering those answers to those queries are those two firms. And so it'll be kind of the new Wintel, and people will start referring it, to it as the most powerful duopoly in the world. We're... we haven't seen... I think we're gonna see a bunch of raft of new unicorns

Scott Galloway 2:52 in the application layer of AI. We have the infrastructure layer, we have the LLMs themselves. But every, every innovation or new technology creates a bunch of interesting consumer applications. I think you're gonna see a raft of new unicorns in healthcare where you upload your medical records, your diet, and it starts playing offense and come back, comes back to you with exact... I told you, I... for the first time, I ha- was diagnosed with high blood pressure two and a half months ago. I went into AI. I uploaded my urine, my blood work, my fecal work. Uh, I talked very openly about my diet, and it came back with a series of recommendations, and I took them to heart, and I no longer have high blood pressure. And I think that's gonna be systemized, routinized, and create a bunch of interesting applications around fitness, healthcare, especially I think around travel, there's huge opportunity. Look at all... I upload all of my credit card bills, all my past travel, my calendar, and it starts proactively saying, "Scott, we see that you're gonna be in LA for this meeting. We're gonna book you here. You should do this. You should go see your dad. You should do this." I've already organized a flight-

Kara Swisher 3:53 What, what, what do you upload to OpenAI?

Scott Galloway 3:57 Well, so for example, I, I took my MRIs on my shoulders, and I-

Kara Swisher 4:02 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 4:02 ... uploaded it to OpenAI. And I said, "Please diagnose this and tell me what I should be doing, what stretching I should be doing." And it comes back with a whole-

Kara Swisher 4:09 Wow.

Scott Galloway 4:09 ... list of things. I mean-

Kara Swisher 4:10 Really?

Scott Galloway 4:10 ... you can, you can upload a board de-... I'll, I'll give you an example, Kara.

Kara Swisher 4:14 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 4:14 We... you know, we're out in the marketplace-

Kara Swisher 4:16 Hm.

Scott Galloway 4:16 ... potentially thinking about our next four years.

Kara Swisher 4:18 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 4:18 I uploaded our deck-

Kara Swisher 4:20 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 4:20 ... that we put together on o- summarizing our business.

Kara Swisher 4:23 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 4:23 And I said... I basically said, "What is the likely deal we will get, and what should we be thinking about?"

Kara Swisher 4:29 Oh.

Scott Galloway 4:29 I mean, this shit is so powerful, and instead of having smart people prompt, people are gonna build a thin layer of innovation.

Kara Swisher 4:36 Oh, yeah. It would call someone in that case, and it's like calling, calling your smart friend. Yeah. Interesting. Wow.

Scott Galloway 4:41 Or, but it'll be proactive. It'll say, "Okay. Here's the new trav- you know, AI-enabled travel," and Expedia's-

Kara Swisher 4:46 I would

Narrator 4:47 agree with that.

Scott Galloway 4:47 ... going very hard at this.

Kara Swisher 4:48 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 4:48 And I just say... it just starts sending me text alerts saying, "Oh, we see you have this coming up. This is, this is your travel itinerary and what we're thinking. Here are the decisions I need from you."

Kara Swisher 4:58 Uh-huh. You know, you just said Expedia. I think they're a ride-the-rails company too. They're gonna benefit. Uh, anyway, they don't have to pay for-

Scott Galloway 5:03 Yeah. I think so.

Kara Swisher 5:04 ... ride the rails. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway 5:06 Yeah. I think so. Uh, so anyways, software basically... SAS goes from s- um, software as a service to service as a software. That's where I-

Kara Swisher 5:14 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 5:14 ... kind of see my prediction for AI. Podcast, this is gonna be the b- the breakout year of podcasts because this election just illuminated, uh, what is going to be an enormous transfer of capital from the political spending machine, and that is they used to spend a ton of money on local broadcast TV stations 'cause those were voters, i.e. old p- people were. And what they realize is where you go for voters is podcasts. And if you can go on one podcast and get the equivalent listenership of going on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox every night during primetime for three hours for a week by going on one podcast, you're just gonna see in the amount of capital it's drawing, the means of production are less expensive. So, creators make more money, which is drawing in more human capital. 47% of people have listened to a podcast in the last 30 days versus less than 10%, uh, 15 years ago. I mean, the medium is just... the medium is gonna boom.

Kara Swisher 6:06 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 6:07 And Kara, I, I don't know. I'm sure you're getting the same calls. I have all of these political candidates reaching out to me, asking me for their...... for my-

Kara Swisher 6:13 Yes.

Scott Galloway 6:13 ... views on things-

Kara Swisher 6:14 No, I-

Scott Galloway 6:14 ... which means I am running for something and I wanna come on your podcast. Every-

Kara Swisher 6:18 I have had four US senators write me, both Repub-- recently, text me this week. It was crazy.

Scott Galloway 6:23 Yeah. A- a- and I s-

Kara Swisher 6:23 "Can I come on your podcast?" And-

Scott Galloway 6:25 And I say to them the following thing-

Kara Swisher 6:27 And several governors, several governors.

Scott Galloway 6:28 I say to them, "You're, you're ambitious and you're running for something, that's fine for me, uh, yeah, 100%, but don't, don't (laughs) pretend that you wanna talk to me about policy."

Kara Swisher 6:37 Right, yeah.

Scott Galloway 6:37 Um, anyways, uh, uh, th- this and podcast revenue in 2025 is gonna grow faster, granted off a small base, than Meta or Alphabet or Amazon.

Kara Swisher 6:48 Mm-hmm. Okay.

Scott Galloway 6:48 It's gonna be up 20-plus percent. The CPMs, it, it's a better consumer, it's a 34-year-old, uh, versus a seven-year-old. It's much more impactful because we do host readovers. People go to cable news-

Kara Swisher 7:00 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 7:00 ... to sanctify their beliefs. People go to, people go to podcasts to learn, and also there's a vibe about podcasts where we try and present people in their best light, and it's quite frankly, it's just a little bit more pleasant, it's not as antagonistic. So IPO of the Year, I think it's gonna be, and it's gonna be an interesting one because it's probably gonna have a London exchange. Uh, Shein, these asset-light models, and disclosure I'm an investor, but if you look at Airbnb versus Marriott, it needs a third of the employees with the same revenue. If you look at Zara, they're doing about 400,000 per employees whereas Shein's at two million per employee. If you look at Uber versus the car manufacturers, these asset-light, um, all IP-intensive versus CapEx-intensive companies, Shein doesn't own a single truck, factory, warehouse, store. It's all software-driven. And this year it's bigger than, um, Amazon Retail in apparel and next year it's gonna pass Walmart to be the biggest apparel retailer in the world, and it's going public on the London exchange. I think for a lot of reasons that's gonna quote-unquote be the IPO

Scott Galloway 8:00 of the Year. Uh, I think the Technology of the Year is nuclear. You just saw Facebook basically put out an RFP saying, "Build us a nuclear power plant." The friction in AI is energy, uh, it requires 10 times the energy, and people have realized that it's one of the safest, most productive, most reliable sources of energy, it's just been terribly branded the last 20 or 30 years. But some of the biggest brains have turned their massive capital fire hoses on nuclear. 2025's gonna be the year of nuclear, that'll be the Technology of the Year. And the Substance of

Scott Galloway 8:30 the Year is testosterone, and that is, this election was supposed to be a referendum on women's rights. It wasn't. It was a referendum on how poorly young people are doing, specifically young males. And I think we're having a more honest and open conversation around the attributes around masculinity and the struggles of young men. I think that's come to the fore and, uh, Trump going, flying into the manosphere was a direct, um, one of the dr- you know, one of the fundamental reasons he was able to win the election. I think if you look at the, if you look at the election, who swung most violently away from blue to red, it was people under the age of 30 and women 45 to 64 who I speculate are their mothers. Uh, I think, I think mothers and young people, uh, are really hit hard by young people not doing as well, and they just don't have the luxury-

Kara Swisher 9:19 No.

Scott Galloway 9:19 ... of thinking about some of the other social issues when their kids aren't doing well.

Kara Swisher 9:22 Yeah. So once again, the penis. Once again, the penis.

Scott Galloway 9:25 Well, I, what, what I would argue is I think people are coming to the conclusion that women will not continue to flourish, nor will the country flourish, and on a much more boring level, I think the biggest LBOs of, in history are gonna happen in 2025. There's so much capital on the sidelines, and my favorite two targets are Target and Intel.

Kara Swisher 9:42 Anything else?

Scott Galloway 9:43 That's all I got here. I think it's gonna be a great year for us.

Kara Swisher 9:45 You?

Scott Galloway 9:46 I think it's gonna be-

Kara Swisher 9:46 Us.

Scott Galloway 9:46 ... a nice year. Um...

Kara Swisher 9:48 Uh, is there gonna be vacation for us together or some-

Scott Galloway 9:51 No, you don't want a vacation with me.

Kara Swisher 9:52 ... you know, conscious coupling?

Scott Galloway 9:53 I don't wanna take you s- you've got five kids. You've got like 100 kids. I don't want babies.

Kara Swisher 9:56 I do. I have 100 kids. I have 100 of them. Yeah, you know, some of Elon's kids are now my kids 'cause they don't like him. (laughs) No, I'm kidding.