# Anthropic IPO, Musk's Political Spending, and Election Risks

**Podcast:** Pivot
**Published:** 2026-10-27

## Transcript

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Her husband in this is quite the villain, and you get to see his penis.
Will that attract you to it?
His penis is in the movie?
Hi, everyone.
This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway.
What did you do this weekend?
I'm going to tell you what I did.
I went to Michigan.
Did you go to a football game?
I went to the parents' weekend.
Me and Louie and Megan and Alex went to a football game.
Oh, that's nice.
We had such a good time.
The big house, it's called.
And it was wonderful.
We had a great weekend.
I took Louie and Alex to a steakhouse.
Alex ate a steak as big as, like, your head, essentially.
And we had a great time.
We had a lovely family weekend.
It was very nice with our son at Michigan.
It was very sweet.
Do you want to know what I did?
Sure.
Yeah.
I did the exact same thing except at another great public university.
I went to Parents' Day at- Oh, it was Parents' Weekend.
Or Parents' Weekend at UVA, first Parents' Weekend.
Yeah.
And just to be serious for a moment, it's just such, and I'm sure you feel this way, but there's this quiet, unspoken of cohort.
of families where the kid goes off to college and right away it comes off the rails.
Like we've had friends who for whatever reason got upset, they didn't get into a sorority, they miss their parents, they're overwhelmed by being away from home.
And it's really too bad because I think especially among wealthy parents, the general view is the only track to being happiness and purpose and reward involves college.
not recognizing that two-thirds of kids don't end up with a traditional Bachelor of Arts.
And it kind of brings the whole household down.
And so when you go to Parents Weekend, as I did, and your kid is doing good academically, not great, because he's doing great socially and is just having such a good time, you have what I describe as Parents Weekend as like this 48-hour exhale if it goes well.
It's like our son is thriving.
Our son is making friends.
Our son is learning about himself.
And it's just so rewarding because you do hear stories of kids who, you know, haven't been away from home and kind of their first couple months are rough.
And sometimes they leave.
It can be.
Yeah.
I didn't have that experience with either one of my boys, but I still have two more to go.
But I just loved, I loved being.
Oh, it's so much fun.
It's so much fun.
I'm not a big football fan, but it was a really good game.
It was much closer than they thought.
You know what I was thinking?
It sounds crazy, but I was sitting in that stadium.
It was 111,000 people in the big house.
It was against Indiana.
First of all, Indiana fans and Michigan fans got along fine.
Then everyone literally was all together.
I know it sounds like I'm singing.
And for some reason, I was like, oh, I love America.
Because it was like all of us, it was such diverse crowd.
It was so everyone was getting along.
Everyone was having fun.
It was just like there was no internet.
There was no Elon Musk.
There was no Donald Trump.
There was no noise, noise, noise, noise, noise.
And it was really nice.
Like it was a beautiful day.
And I know I'm being like, oh, you know, whatever.
But I thought it was great.
We went to a UVA football game.
Let me be clear, a UVA football game versus a Michigan football game is like a German PBS documentary compared to a superhero film.
I mean, no one does college football like Michigan unless you're going to the SEC.
Unless you're Indiana, which beat them.
Yeah, but go to a Bama game.
There's a Big Ten, my son's explaining to me.
But all of a sudden, it was me.
my son and his mom, and all of a sudden he put his arm around us.
And I'm like, oh my God, he's finally coming back.
And that wasn't it at all.
They put their arms around each other and sing the college song when they score a touchdown.
And I'm like, I should have known better.
A guy hasn't put his arm around me since he was four.
But it was incredibly rewarding.
And you get to speak to all these parents.
I can't even imagine.
So me and my son.
We get recognized a lot.
I can't even imagine what celebrities LeBron and Irve Villachez have walking around the Michigan campus.
You guys must look so ridiculous together.
A lot of fans.
A lot of fans came up to me.
Oh, my God.
If people don't know, my favorite memory of Alex was when Kara and her wife and Alex came down.
And Alex was young but fully formed, as in, a monster.
We were watching some shitty documentary that Amanda made us watch about librarians in uproar or something.
But you're a guest, so we agreed to it.
And Alex came over and he sat down.
And I'm not exaggerating, everyone else on the couch went up two feet in the air.
We're like, whoa.
He's a big man.
He's a big man.
I know.
It was great.
Anyway, we have to move on.
But I have to say the best part was also that Louis and Alex were together and they were bro-ing it up.
Yeah, I'm going to take my youngest to go see the UVA.
My heart was so big seeing the two of them.
UNC game.
Just being good brothers together.
Anyway.
That's nice.
It was really fun.
Anyway.
What was the weather like?
Gorgeous.
Gorgeous.
It was like 70.
It was fantastic.
I love, I'm moving to Michigan now because it's not cold.
You may just slow your roll.
Go to a basketball game in February and take a stroll outside.
I am going to go back.
Anyway, we have to move on, but it was great.
I do want to, at the end, talk about, have you seen this, Nathan?
Fielder movie yet?
I have known as Artists yet.
You need to see.
I'm going to talk about it at the end.
Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today.
So let's dig in.
There's so much.
I mean, we've got the Anthropic IPO.
We'll get to that in a second.
But it's a busy time for elections.
Let's hit those quick.
Brazil's leftist president, Lula, just won re-election, though his right-wing opponent, Bolsonaro, who's the son of the previous Bolsonaro, is refusing to accept the results.
Of course he isn't.
And Serbia's longtime leader, this is a big deal, just conceded defeat to a student-led opposition movement.
This was exciting.
Israel is also going to the polls this week, voting over their Netanyahu gets to stay in power.
It looks like he's not going to, but who knows?
The other guy might not be able to form a government.
And here in the U.S., the midterms are now just more.
one week away.
Before you get to midterms, talk about what these elections, something's coming.
I don't know what it is, but it's going to be great.
Well, I mean, you can read it either way.
I don't know how much of a litmus test Brazil is because Brazil has a compulsory voting.
And also, while it looks like the populist or the more progressive is going to take the election, the son of someone incarcerated looks like they're inheriting was the equivalent of the MAGA movement.
So you could, I think, interpret that other ways.
The most encouraging thing is what's come out of, is it Serbia?
Serbia, Serbia, yes.
And that is, I think young people are the immune system here.
I think young people are saying, look, there's a variety of things plaguing the world right now.
But if you look at what's going on in France, if you look at the election results in Serbia, I think what has happened is that young people are saying, We're sick of old people voting themselves more power, more ability to engage in corruption, and voting themselves more money.
And this was a student-led electoral victory.
Now, unfortunately, in America, young people don't show up to the voting polls.
They get a Robinhood account and start trading crypto.
I'm not sure.
I hope we see an uptick in young people voting.
That'll remain to be seen.
But loosely speaking, if you had to be reductive about it, you would say that there is a pushback on corruption.
that is being led by young people who are fed up with not only corruption, but a lack of affordability.
And also what, for example, in France, the statistic that is just sort of, I think, rolling over the world right now in a variety of measures is the following.
In France, a third of the education budget goes to paying the pensions of retired teachers that are no longer teaching.
That is just not sustainable.
And I think young people have kind of, now granted, there'll be opportunists and just thugs and just people who are angry, who will join in and take advantage of it and are anarchists.
And, you know, that's unacceptable.
But the kerosene waiting for matches of different flavors here is the notion that there is a corruption scandal across the world right now.
And the young people feel like, OK, enough of using my credit cards that you can keep going to Mazelan.
I don't know.
It was really interesting at the game, the mission game.
It was all Abdul stuff.
Vote Abdul.
It was not a single Mike Rogers sign anywhere.
which was really interesting.
And I know it's, but it's not, I can't say Michigan is as liberal as in that particular school is necessarily, but it was interesting.
But you're right.
I think, but I do think young people are engaged politically much more so than you think.
I think you're seeing it.
I hope so.
And I hope they do vote, but I think they are tired of older people.
running the table for them.
Now, it'll be interesting to see what happens in Israel.
And if Netanyahu loses, if the new person can form a coalition.
Yeah, very difficult.
Election Day almost doesn't matter in Israel.
It's their ability to kind of play chess, which Netanyahu has been a grandmaster of to form coalitions.
And unfortunately, the way he stayed in office is by forming coalitions with very far-right ultra-religious groups.
I've been watching that election closely.
I mean, obviously, I'm more focused on this one.
A lot of protests.
But that is a really important one.
Yeah.
Led by students.
Students.
Yeah.
That's really interesting.
And we'll see where we're going.
We are seeing the numbers here move in, again, the Democratic's direction.
Let's talk about that.
Former President Barack Obama is back.
He hit the campaign trail this weekend, accusing Trump of bringing chaos and cruelty and corruption to the country.
Nice.
bunch of C's.
He even channeled his inner Logan Roy saying administration officials like Pete Hegseth are, quote, not serious people.
Obama then took a shot at Trump's White House makeover.
Let's listen.
I don't know if you've noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations.
He should be on HGTV.
Guys building a ballroom that's bigger than the White House.
It's paved over the Rose Garden.
helicopter pad on the south lawn and there's gold everywhere.
What's up with the gold?
Everything, more gold.
He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory.
You got to miss him.
I got to say he is funny.
But, you know, he did this for Kamala.
It didn't really work, but was was sort of on a roll.
Meanwhile, election officials around the country are preparing for potential federal interference in the midterms.
There's already cause for concern in Alaska.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit at Trump's request seeking to block certification of the Senate race.
If the Republican incumbent loses, it's because of the name.
It's ridiculous.
Attorney General Todd Blanche says Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape or form, which is precisely what he's trying to do.
And of course, Elon Musk is pouring even more money into the midterms.
He just gave another $76 million to his PAC, bringing his total contributions to Republican groups this cycle to more than $445 million.
The PAC has spent more than $12 million attacking Texas Democratic James Tallarico.
And Tallarico is pushing back against Elon.
Let's listen.
Elon Musk wants our land.
He wants our water.
He wants our taxpayer dollars.
And he wants his very own personal United States senator.
He is trying to buy Texas.
But on November 3rd, we're going to deliver a crystal clear message to the world's first trillionaire.
Texas is not for sale.
He's been using this line all over the place.
So let's start with Obama.
Thoughts on this?
He's going all over the place.
Again, he did this for Kamla.
It was not effective.
I think Saddam Hussein, it's as if Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory.
It's sort of the line of the midterms.
And what Obama gets that the rest of the Democratic Party doesn't get is that ridicule is more powerful than indignance.
Or being righteous, right?
Yeah, outrage.
And that is, you know, comedy.
is a strategy.
Outrage is a hobby.
And he's just very powerful.
He doesn't come across as mean or Trump derangement syndrome.
He just ridicules the guy.
We don't have anyone like him.
And what he does is he creates an atmosphere where he comes in late.
He is very few people understand brand management like the Obamas.
They are very, very crude and manicured in terms of their appearances, who they associate with, when they say and when they don't say, and they're smart to hold back until the very end.
And what he does is he probably adds 10 or 15 bips to every Democrat running.
And that's powerful.
He's not going to save a bad candidate, but he might, he quite frankly just creates, he's another, you know, couple million gallons of water forming a wave.
Now, how big, you know, again, it's the candidate more than anything, but he provides cloud cover.
And what this also means, I mean, going forward, the thing I'm most worried about is November the 4th.
Yes, you and Hillary Clinton.
Yeah.
I really hope the Democrats don't mistake this.
This isn't a blue wave.
It's a red riptide.
And what it comes right down to is if we take the Senate and the House, be clear, it wasn't the Democrats are back.
It's just for this moment.
the American public decided they hate Democrats less because Democrats are not polling.
And if the Democrats and Speaker Jeffries don't immediately move to a series of bold proposals about affordability, restoring a progressive tax structure, taking away the anxiety that Americans feel around health care and security, more sanity around our foreign policy, specifically our tariff policy.
We're going to find out that, yeah, they had a one-night stand with us, but they're not interested in having a relationship with us.
Right.
They've got to follow up.
They will.
And they also have to worry.
This is something Hillary Clinton brought up last week is...
Let's worry about what he's going to do between now and January when they have to seat this new Congress.
He's going to try all manner of hijinks.
He's already trying in Alaska.
He is.
But he'll continue to do so, and he'll get more and more possibly demented because he really is.
With someone who covers him closely, I was like, well, maybe this will finally shut him up.
And this person was like, absolutely not.
It's going to get worse, worse and worse.
Yeah, but I will say this.
So far, the way I see it is.
When I was building, when I was renovating a home, our neighbor basically found out he didn't want construction while he was there.
So he came up, he hired a lawyer and just got in the way of development and showed up to the local review board and said we were threatening the manatee population.
Anyway, just literally tried to obstruct it.
But eventually, at least in Florida, eventually you get to renovate your house.
And that's because the law kind of weighs in and you can delay and obfuscate, but you can't change that.
I think so far, so for example, Cal Street has Democrats, it puts them at 76% chance of winning the seat in Alaska.
And that's, Trump carried Alaska by 13 points in 24.
In other words, I think all this bullshit attempt to interfere in the elections, I'm not saying it's not important.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be worried about it.
I'm not saying we shouldn't push back on it and have lawyers at the ready.
But I do think ultimately the person with the most votes, and this happened in 2020, our democracy did hold.
What is unfortunate about it and what Sacha Baron Cohen was talking about, because I love the term shared lies.
And what he said that really struck me and what's kind of the longer lasting thing about this is that if you were in the bubble that those January 6th rioters were in, were they really guilty?
Yeah.
Because they thought they were being patriots.
They did.
And so if we don't have a series of, if our leaders don't have a series of shared truths, it's becoming the Republican strategy, the Republican acceptance speech or the Republican post-election speech.
is one of two things.
Either I won or it was rigged.
And that just can't continue.
They're going to have to.
They're going to have to move on.
They really are.
I do think if it's a convincing enough defeat that they will turn on Trump immediately, if not sooner.
They've got to get him in the rearview mirror and move on in many ways.
They can't keep holding on.
By the way, he's already...
pretty demented these days.
And with those little outbursts he has, those noises he makes, I think they've got to move him way off screen as much as they can.
That said, Elon Musk continues to pour money, and I suspect he'll do the same for the presidential to try to get J.D.
Vance made president.
This money is staggering, Scott.
This is staggering amounts of money.
I know Michael Bloomberg gave $80 million, but this is nothing like that.
This is crazy.
It's staggering, and at the same time, it isn't.
Because While numbers create a metric above a certain amount, the metrics begin to become very opaque and our brain can't even wrap our head around it.
So, okay, first off, $440 million, a staggering amount of money.
It has an impact.
It has a lower impact.
The ROI is going down and I'll come back to that.
But to give you a sense for that and how until we overturn Citizens United, our democracy is going to be whittled away one cut at a time.
It just is.
To give you a sense for what that means, he's a trillionaire.
So $443 million.
Oh my God, what a staggering amount of money.
Okay, let's put it in relative terms.
You're a millionaire.
You're worth a million dollars.
Okay.
And if this group of politicians gets elected, it might get in the way of your car wash.
And so you'll do anything to keep this representative.
out of Congress because they don't like your car wash because your car wash, they have deemed, is bad for America.
And you have government contracts and you're getting tax credits.
So, all right.
And your state, that's why he's so demented against Tallarico, obviously.
You're a millionaire.
This candidate you see is an existential threat to your ability to stay a millionaire.
Let's just not even go to politics.
Would you be willing to spend?
$443 on the campaign.
That's what it is to him.
$443 million to a trillionaire is $443 to a millionaire.
So for the cost of a really good dinner, if you saw huge advantage in leverage to you getting one candidate elected over the other, would you spend $443?
Absolutely.
So the question is, And I now believe this.
I think we should let our trillionaires cook.
I want them to make a lot of money.
But on one side, you have to have campaign finance reform.
And two, I do think much more progressive taxation protects us from this type of corruption.
There's really nothing good from someone becoming a trillionaire.
And people will say, well, he's smarter than us on business.
Granted, or most people on business, and he deploys capital in incredible ways that benefit the economy.
I'm not suggesting he shouldn't be allowed to make trillions.
I'm not suggesting he shouldn't be able to invest it and take the CapEx right off.
I don't want to decrease his genius or his investment.
What I'm suggesting is when he decides to take the money and recognize that gain and do things such as spend it on a boat or spend it on a political campaign, which is not tax deductible, before he does that, it should be taxed at a minimum AMT of 40% and possibly more than that.
Okay.
I agree.
Okay.
Okay, shut the fuck up.
No, this is something you've been saying.
I can't believe that the Democrats, this is something Democrats could win on.
They've had enough money.
They have enough money and they're now fucking with us.
And I think it really is, it is coalescing people, the amount of money he's giving.
You know, he's sort of become the bond villain of our country.
And I think, especially with Tallarico, the obsession, the obsessive.
You know, he doesn't even have Natalie Harp to write those for him.
And just like on and on and on.
There were like 20 of them in a row in one evening, late into the evening.
And the reason he, of course, is going for Tallarico is because all his stuff is he moved to Texas to get away from people.
By the way, California helped him a lot.
Oh, you think?
But they didn't like one thing he did.
And so he had to leave in a big old flounce.
Now with Tallarico in Texas, he's going to have a problem.
He left for taxes.
I get that.
He left for taxes and to get a bunch of subsidies from a governor.
I get it, but now he's very upset about a Tallarico-led Texas.
Anyway, we'll see what happens, but it's an enormous amount of money for an unaccountable trillionaire to be able to spend.
Okay, so the Democrats have vastly outraised Republicans in terms of number of people.
and under-raised in terms of the amount of money.
Why?
Because there was regulatory capture among billionaires and saying, oh, these guys will wash my back.
They'll scratch my back.
So I'm all over them.
The silver lining here, and I think this is a reason, you know, in my, I have a lot of reasons why we should vote blue.
This will send a strong message that the market, I think the market is starting to gag on money.
What do I mean by that?
Just as if you pour too much money into any one asset class, the returns go down.
$440 million just 10 years ago could have got one president elected over the other in a closed race.
Now it might not even get a senator in Texas elected.
So you're going to see, and this is a good thing.
But the bottom line is, this is the full local TV station employment act.
Right.
Yeah.
Like, you know, these.
Yeah, which is owned by conservatives, which is kind of funny.
But local TV stations lose money for basically 44 weeks a year.
And then the eight weeks before the election, they make it all back.
And election people who make.
In swing districts.
Everybody.
Anyway, good luck, Elon.
I hope it turns out like it did in Wisconsin.
OK, Scott, let's go on a quick break.
We come back.
Anthropic takes the next step toward going public.
How exciting.
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Scott, we're back.
Anthropics officially filed its IPO, which everyone knew was coming.
Let's go through some of the details.
The company's revenue has skyrocketed, bringing in $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from just $1.2 billion a year earlier.
But the company reported an $80 billion net loss in the first half of the year.
This had been reported previously.
Anthropics committed more than $600 billion to future cloud computing deals.
Five of the company's customers accounted for about a quarter of its revenue for the first nine months.
of the year.
94 pages of filing are spent on risk factors with the company warning investors about rogue AI models in the opposition to data centers.
Anthropix co-founders, including CEO Dario Amadei, would retain a combined 50.1% of voting power.
The company hasn't yet revealed how much it plans to raise or its offering price.
It's a really interesting situation.
And by the way, at the very same time they're doing this, Elon is trashing data centers because, of course, he's in the data center business and he's trying to kill all the other Neo Club businesses.
But talk a little bit on Anthropic.
Look, it's staggering.
It may be the fastest scaling software company.
It is the fastest scaling software company in history.
So effectively, let's just talk a little bit about the numbers.
So what it shows is, okay, revenue in 2024 was $386 million.
In 25, it was $4.5 billion, so up 12x.
And so far this year, in the first half, it's clocked 16, so call it an annual rate of 40.
So it's 10x-ing in 26.
So it basically 14x-ed its revenue from the first half of last year.
I've been trying to sort through the numbers.
They called it a net loss of $81 billion.
Ignore that because $72 billion of that loss was the accounting loss you have to take when you take a convertible bond and convert it to equity.
Yes, explain that.
They borrowed money and then they turned it to equity.
So an incredible innovation in the debt markets is something called a convertible bond where you pay them kind of a below market interest rate, but you have the opportunity to convert your debt into equity if the equity goes up.
And so it's a chance to kind of have the downside protection of a bond.
The company gets cheap capital, which it can pay back in cheap equity if the stock goes up.
It's a great innovation.
But when a debt converts to equity, which is kind of a good thing for everybody, shareholders get a little bit of dilution, but you take the debt off the balance sheet, you no longer owe that money.
And then debtors get to participate in that sweet, sweet returns of a growth company.
But when it converts, you have to take that as an accounting loss.
The actual conversion from debt to equity, if it's a billion dollars in convertible debt that converts to equity, you have to recognize that billion dollars as a quote-unquote accounting loss.
So the numbers I've sussed out is basically it did 25 billion and lost nine, but if it's growing four or five X at high margins, it should be able to get to profitability.
Now they've done a bunch of like you know, hocus pocus to try and show that they're sort of profitable.
I hate this fucking adjusted EBITDA shit.
So for example, what Anthropic does and OpenAI doesn't to their credit, Anthropic books the full revenue of a token sale, whereas OpenAI only takes the 20% that they recognize because the rest goes to the neoclouds and stuff like that.
This is, there's just no getting around it.
This company is scaling unbelievably fast.
This is anecdotal evidence, but quite frankly, the permissions from I get from Claude Cowork have probably, in my opinion, been the greatest innovation for me in terms of a change in my life since Uber.
So let me ask you, what's the problem?
What are you worried about?
Like, be the discussion.
Oh, there's tons of risk here.
Besides AI Rogue, obviously.
Okay, first off.
Government.
Government regulation.
If the government can't come up.
with some sort of regulatory policy that lets these guys understand the rules by which they're playing by and gives the public some type of certainty for what is going on here and not going on here.
The IRGC figures out a way to just hack a light signal at a busy intersection and then blames it and then spins up their bots and blames it on AI.
States are going to start banning AI models.
People are scared of this shit right now.
And people don't trust it.
75% of Chinese trust AI, only 25% of Americans.
There's an existential risk.
Americans hate it.
It's not just not like it.
They hate it.
The terms are very, you know, it's really interesting to see the attitudes.
Everyone was saying that the scarcity was around chips.
It's not.
It's electrons.
It looks like it's power.
There is huge risk around the levels of CapEx they have to make.
And if these things don't keep 10xing, all of a sudden those, I added up Anthropics commitments to 400 billion.
People are saying it's 600 to 800.
I don't know how they got to that math.
But regardless, unless they keep 10xing, which they are doing right now, someone's going to go, uh-oh, the math doesn't work.
And then competitive risk.
NVIDIA is talking about taking their GPUs and putting them directly on a client, a phone.
which quite frankly might leapfrog LLMs.
And then you have Meta with its own LLM that is free, that is number one in the app store, that has a direct relationship with half a billion businesses and three billion consumers.
There are threats everywhere.
But the reason there are threats everywhere is this is a blue whale.
And there are orcas everywhere thinking, how do we take this thing down?
But the blue whale is 10xing right now.
Yeah, it's interesting.
This is like, it's the Google, essentially, is how I think of it.
Like, is it the Google versus anything else?
And where will it go?
And I think the issues are, what will happen to the OpenAI IPO post this depends on what it does.
At the same time, if it doesn't have as impressive a bottom line here, they're going to have a real problem.
And then what do the big companies do?
What does a Microsoft do?
What is a...
What do the rest of them do?
Because there is a precariousness that I think Elon was pointing out, which is all these neocloud businesses are going to go belly.
I call them guppy level extension or something.
I forget.
Something with guppies.
And he's talking his own book because he sells compute himself.
That's how he's making money.
He's not making money in people using it as much as it is renting out his space.
And so it's important to him for these things to happen.
It's all sort of, it feels a little Jenga-like, some of this.
There were, it's like.
A lot of circular deals, but let me just, I'll go back down.
But consumers are using it.
Consumers are using plot.
Well, let's talk about those numbers.
Yeah.
I hate this, but it's a justed measure.
It made $1.6 billion in operating income and a half.
It's a 10% margin.
And a year earlier, the margin was negative 159.
Let's see what happens when they actually start accounting for it.
in a rational, mature way, but I still think the growth, growth kind of cures all problems.
Computing infrastructure costs were $9 billion in the first half.
That's already more than the $7.3 billion it spent in all of 2025.
But still, you can't get around the fact that Anthropics revenue growth and efficiency has been incredibly impressive.
Get this, get this stat.
Revenue per employee is about $6.6 million.
That's up from $1.4 million a year earlier.
So the efficiency here is remarkable.
By the way, that's greater revenue per employee than every MAG7 member except NVIDIA, and it'll probably surpass NVIDIA's revenue per employee.
So well-run.
This is a well-run company, much better run.
They don't have that.
I mean, this is the nightmare.
This is the nightmare for politicians and for citizens and for college grads and the dream for shareholders.
They don't employ that many people.
And their revenue is up 1,400%.
Their employee count wasn't up 1,400%.
They didn't 15x their employee base.
And this is what is so, I just can't get over.
This is how every board meeting in a growth company works.
The CEO comes in and says, we're going to grow revenues.
12% next year, 14% next year.
That's like a modest growth company.
Adding headcount of, yeah.
Which means I need permission to hire another 8% employees or increase my employee base 8% or 10%, which will increase earnings 15% to 20% next year.
And we go right at it.
Have at it, brother.
Meta, two years ago or six earnings calls ago said, oh, we increased revenue by 23% and we did it with 20% fewer employees.
That should have said shut.
That literally all of a sudden, and no one likes to talk about this.
If you use the term AI in a board meeting, they expect the next sentence to be, I'm going to do more with less.
And when I say more, I mean more revenues and less employees.
And this is what Anthropic is showing.
Yeah, 100%.
It'll be, okay, last question.
So we've got to move on to the next topic.
What is the valuation in November when it goes public?
Well, it'll be looking at, I'm trying to think what their 27 projected numbers will be.
If they're at a run rate of 40, I think it goes out at $2 trillion because I'm just – My Greek lands are going here.
If it's doing 40 this year and they think they can not 10x it but 5x, that's $200 billion on $2 trillion.
That's 10x for 12 months rate.
I mean, that looks cheap compared to SpaceX and some of these other guys.
Yeah.
And let me say for everyone, it's coming after the election.
The Democrats just got a lot of new donors because this is not a MAGA group of people.
Let's just say it'll be interesting to see where they deploy their political capital when going forward.
And speaking of how you deploy your capital, Elon Musk is finally admitting that SpaceX restricted Ukraine's access to Starlink.
You think?
This is what Scott and I said he did.
He's claiming Ukraine violated Starlink's terms of service by using it for offensive drone strikes to kill people, which Ukraine disputes.
But Elon also said Starship is a different system controlled by the U.S.
government and what they decide to do is up to them.
That's, again, a bunch of lying.
Ukraine says Starlink and Starship are now operating at normal speeds after more than a week of disruptions that impacted military operations and led to the deaths of people in Ukraine.
That incident, again, reminded people how much power.
this guy has and whether they'll do anything at all about keeping him in check.
I will also note Musk also reportedly invested about $1 billion in David Ellison's Skydance.
They need the money.
But guess what, Scott?
I'm leaving!
Sorry, I just had to say that because I know you like it.
Though they're trying to get me to stay again.
They're trying to get me to stay.
I'm telling you, they're trying to get me to stay.
It's all economic.
The costs of you leaving are minimal because you make a lot of money on a podcast with a jarhead.
I get it.
I'm just telling you.
I was surprised because I keep yelling.
I'm surprised too.
I'm surprised they want you to stay.
I know.
I don't know why.
Maybe David doesn't know.
But this, we can make very quick.
Look, we said he was lying about it.
He was lying about it.
He is in a position to influence battlefield decisions and he shouldn't be.
Trump seems to be out of it or lying.
Either one, not good.
Neither choice is good.
And Hegseth doesn't seem to be anywhere here.
Should be the one having decision-making power here.
Who knows?
And an unaccountable trillionaire should not be making these decisions.
I don't know how else to say anything.
Anything to add?
You know, I'm very excised about this, so I want to talk about it.
But I just briefly want to return to Anthropic for a moment.
Just in the risks section of the S1, I just want to highlight some of my favorite things.
Open quote, advanced AI could pose catastrophic or existential risk to humanity.
That's my favorite.
Our AI models may behave in unintended, misaligned, or autonomous ways.
They could blow us up.
Capabilities may advance more rapidly than our ability to develop, validate, and implement safety measures.
Okay.
That means your product shouldn't be out in the public, folks.
Anyways, so Musk.
Speaking of an unguided missile.
I'm shocked he's not spending more because I can't imagine the first person that's going to be hauled in front of Congress on November the 4th is Elon Musk.
And for all of his lawyers, he's not going to be able to avoid that for very long because.
Imagine Charles Lindbergh, a hero, an innovator, an idol.
He was on the side, to be fair, as a lot of Americans were.
And they said in World War I, it wasn't worth it.
The juice wasn't worth the squeeze for us.
That's their problem.
Now they want us to send our young men back.
Let's partner with Hitler.
He's not that bad.
Imagine if Lindbergh had purchased McDonnell Douglas and he could have raised the money, which at the time was the premier aircraft manufacturer.
And then it was converted for military use.
There was a...
There was a military business version of McDonnell Douglas, and FDR started converting DC-3s into bombers and giving them to Churchill to try and stave off fascism.
But there was a guidance system on these DC-3s.
And what if Charles Lindbergh had the ability to remotely turn off the guidance systems and all of a sudden...
London was burning because they didn't have the ability to deploy their defensive bombers.
That has happened here.
What would they have done in the middle of the last century if they found out that a private citizen was purposefully throttling back the defense capabilities of who the American public supports and considers an ally in the defense of a murderous autocrat?
So, this is nothing short of, in my opinion, and I've used this term, if what went down here or what was alleged to go down here went down here and unilaterally Elon Musk decided to throttle back Starshield slash Starlink such that they could not launch defensive drones and our ally has been weakened strategically and there has been civilian deaths, then In sum, he is a traitor to the West and our government is at fault for not putting in place guardrails such that one person who is not elected can have that type of power over history.
Why do you think he admitted it this week after lying about it, essentially?
I think he's going to have to go before Congress.
And I think his lawyers, I think his lawyers said, no, no, no, no.
Stop tweeting that you didn't have anything to do with it.
You're going to have to go in front of Congress and either say, I lied or lie again.
And you don't want to lie in front of Congress.
So come out of the closet now.
There's a ton of noise.
This is a huge story.
This would be the biggest scandal of any decade if it happened in any other decade.
Right.
Yeah, I agree.
But they're like, there's a ton of noise, midterms, just put it out now.
Just put it out.
You throttled it back.
Say you were confused or you didn't know or you don't like silence.
Whatever it is, take your medicine now because you are going to be hauled in front of Congress.
They are.
That is something.
And it's by the way, it's bipartisan.
There's Republicans speaking about this.
There's not.
It is not just the Democrats gunning for him.
It is every is lots of people.
And I think and by the way, it's global to FYI.
And he's starting to see problems in Canada and Europe and it's fighting with India.
This man can't.
He's literally.
This is not going to end well, any of this for him.
But, you know, he's got a lot of money.
He's going to keep spending it.
All right, enough of Elon.
Let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, audiences are flocking to that new Elizabeth Holmes documentary.
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Scott, we're back.
A nearly three-hour documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
gave a comic book movie a run for its money this weekend.
You Can See Everything, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, was the second highest grossing movie at the box office just behind Clayface.
The film has now made $45 million in two weeks, the biggest debut for a non-musical documentary since Michael Moore's...
Fahrenheit 9-11 in 2004, and it cost just $7 million to make.
It's also generating Oscar buzz, possibly becoming the first documentary ever nominated for Best Picture, and maybe picking up an acting nomination.
I'm going to spoil the movie, so just deal with it.
And by the way, this has been written about a lot, so I'm really not spoiling it.
But listeners, skip ahead now if you don't want to hear it.
I have some thoughts.
This is a...
I liked parts of it.
I didn't like other parts.
He's full of trickery.
This is what he's known for.
I put something out that I said, one, Amanda Seyfried is the best thing ever in this movie.
She deserves an Oscar.
Secondly, Elizabeth Holmes reminds me of every tech person I've ever met, constantly denying accountability, what we just talked about, denying accountability, lying through her teeth, committing all manner of criming, and...
acting as if she's the victim.
She is sort of the distillation of every single bad tech person I've met.
And by the way, she maybe shouldn't be in jail compared to them.
She absolutely should be in jail, but maybe they should be too.
But you can have that as a separate debate.
It's a really interesting movie.
I suspect there's a lot there.
I think he's playing with them.
He's well known for that.
He's pretending.
on their side a little bit.
Who knows where he is because he's such an interesting filmmaker.
I don't usually like his stuff, but I tell you it is riveting and it's really interesting about identity and lying and truth in this society.
So that's what I have to say about that.
But the fact that it's making so much money, Scott, I mean, people are sitting through, this is a three-hour movie.
This is not a short movie.
My showing last night was packed at an Alamo draft house in Crystal City.
Virginia.
That's how I wasn't able to get tickets except for there.
And I barely got those.
Alamo White House at Crystal City, Virginia.
Alamo Draft House.
In case anyone forgot, you're wider than a snowflake.
Well, it was the only place I could get tickets.
It was crazy.
I love Alamo Draft House.
But it's really popular.
I know.
We had a good time.
I'm bored.
Bring me a beer.
Bring me some sliders.
It's the dark so I can't see what I'm eating.
Bring me some of those.
I love ordering cuisine in a movie theater.
Then you know you're in for some fine dining.
It was actually not bad.
Nonetheless, this is interesting that people are sitting through in a theater.
The theater stuff is going really well for it.
And I think that in and of itself is an interesting phenomena.
Any thoughts on why?
I don't want to see the movie.
It's, as you said, second biggest opening ever for a documentary behind Fahrenheit 9-1-1 in 2004.
And per theater, it's outperforming Clayface, which probably spent 10 times that.
Which is supposed to be good.
Yeah, cost $40 million to make.
This cost...
Seven.
This costs $7 million to make.
It's great to see docu...
I'm super excited, the documentary I'm super excited to see.
I want to see the documentary on the guy who skied down Everest.
I think it's called Everest.
That looks really cool.
But it's nice to see documentaries having their time in the sun.
The only thing I'm sure of about this...
So I've told you, I don't...
It's not easy to feel sorry for Elizabeth Holmes, but it struck me that the only reason she's in jail is because her board got very, very angry.
And felt like they were taken.
She took a lot of money from a lot of rich white guys.
Rich, powerful white guys.
Yeah.
Anyways, the only thing I'm certain of is what her punishment should be.
Her punishment should be a staring contest with Kash Patel, and I think both their heads would blow up.
Oh, that's funny.
She's been sucking up to Trump and trying to get out a pardon earlier.
By the way, that's the humor.
I think his name is Josh Johnson.
I need to start crediting these communities.
Okay, you need to credit people.
I'll tell you this.
It's not a documentary exactly.
It's something else.
It's a drama.
The music is used.
It feels like a thriller.
It feels like a movie.
And by the way, by the end, it's not clear what you saw.
So it's not the documentary in the traditional sense of that, you know, it's laying out a case.
It's something.
It's a mindfuck of a, I say it's a movie.
And it's.
You have to see it that way versus anything else.
And for everyone online who says to me, don't you understand Nathan Fielder?
He's fucking with you.
I do understand it, people.
I understand his genre.
I think he's a very talented filmmaker.
I would recommend seeing it, Scott, if I were you.
I think you would enjoy it because it's a movie, not a documentary.
I find her and the sociopathy she represents just uncomfortable.
And my sense is...
All of these men have just become such fucking idiots in her gaze.
All these older men she seduced to invest or be her boyfriend.
Her husband in this is quite the villain, and you get to see his penis.
Will that attract you to it?
Well, that depends.
Yes, exactly.
It's a weird color, I have to say.
It's rather large, but it's a weird color.
His penis is in the movie?
Yes.
They somehow...
I don't understand why it's there, but there it is.
There it is.
I think you would like it.
I have to say, it's not a documentary in the traditional sense.
It is something else.
I just don't, I just, I also get who she is because she's just like a lot of the people I've covered, which is without accountability, completely acting like a victim and a stone cold liar.
And that is what I, I did walk away from it.
Do you think she deserved a 10-year prison sentence?
Probably not.
Agreed.
Like, I don't know.
But nonetheless, I think she's guilty, guilty, guilty.
Yeah, I think she's guilty too.
And listen to like Tyler Schultz and others who went out on a limb and John Kerry Rue.
She's a grifter and so is her husband is a massive grifter.
And I have to, I want to see it again because I want to see if I think that Nathan Fielder has been tricked by them or he...
tricks them by pretending to be tricked by them.
It's very much an origami of a movie.
And you should see it.
But Amanda S.
is fantastic.
That's why you should go, Scott.
I love Amanda Seyfried.
I think she's a great actress and hot.
Not just that.
She is a great person.
She's a great...
She's part of this movie and reenactments and stuff like that.
And let me say, she starred in the Hulu series about...
Theranos, the dropout, if you remember.
It's like really scanned my emotions.
I think the reason I don't want to see it is I'm traumatized looking at her and the way she talks.
She looks at people the same way my ex looked at me when I ordered fries after she said she wasn't hungry.
Oh, that's funny.
Well, it's not that funny.
You're not laughing.
It's a little funny.
It's a little funny.
You know what she does a lot and is a trick is whenever she's talking to you, she shakes her head.
She's like a car salesman.
She looks like my youngest when his mother asks if he remembered to take the chicken out of the refrigerator.
He looks at her like, why would I deceive you?
Of course I did.
I know it's still in the refrigerator.
She just freaks me out.
I do not want to become a tractor beam into her gaze.
I just want to see the Amanda Seyfried parts.
It's worth it for Amanda Seyfried.
That's it.
And it's not about Elizabeth Holmes.
It's about Amanda Seyfried and the crazy ex-husband.
I mean, husband, not ex-husband.
He's her husband.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, he's reached out to me a couple times.
What did he reach out to you about?
Nothing.
Nothing untoward.
He heard my comment.
I've made comments several times.
I get that Elizabeth Holmes is not a sympathetic character, but it just struck me that there's been the line between fake it till you make it and fraud is getting increasingly blurred in Silicon Valley.
It just didn't sit with me that they seem to have absolute, the public, the media and court seem to have no problem putting away someone for 10 years and she just happened to have ovaries.
I just, to me, it just struck like, okay, one of these things is not like the other.
And that when, that a lot of the male founders who I think have done very similar acts of fraud.
They seem to get lower prison sentences.
Now, having said that, someone would come back.
What did her partner get?
The guy?
He got the same?
He got more.
He got more.
Well, okay.
So that directly contradicts what I'm saying.
But anyways, I have said, I have shown some, I don't call it empathy, but I have talked consistently about there's something that doesn't sit right with me about her sentencing.
Now, so he reached out to me and said, Basically, I appreciate your kind words.
Would you be interested in getting involved in a movement to try and get her out early?
And I'm not.
You know, I think that the courts have made her just— Maybe looking for money.
They're trying to revive Theranos 2.0.
No, I don't think he was coming at me for money.
I think he generally wants to get the mother of his children out of prison as soon as possible.
That's the sense I got.
But it was a very, very minor email exchange.
Yeah.
Well, stay away.
Go see this movie.
Well, I don't know.
I wouldn't mind hanging out with him and providing some comfort to his friend Amanda.
She must be quite upset about all of this.
She's not his friend.
Anyway, one more quick break.
We'll be back for Wins and Fails.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Sky Galloway.
Twice a week, we get together on Pivot to sort through the biggest stories in tech, business, and politics.
And we're taking the show back on the road for a live tour in November.
So we'll bring hot takes, I'll bring the insight, and the dick jokes, and Kara will try, keyword is try, to keep me in check.
You'll get to see her hit me in person, live.
I'll do it.
If someone has to do it.
We'll cover AI, whatever chaos Washington has cooked up that week, and every billionaire misbehaving.
That's all of them.
And you'll also get to participate in audience Q&A, so bring your best questions.
Scott will probably answer ones you didn't ask.
We also have secret special guests, which you'll enjoy for every city.
Get tickets at PivotTour.com.
That's PivotTour.com.
We are selling out, so don't wait, and we look forward to seeing you.
How will Israel's upcoming elections shape its relationship with the United States?
The most probable scenario.
There's not going to be a clear winner, and therefore there will be another election, and Trump's Middle East agenda is going to be pretty much hijacked by the political crisis in Israel.
I'm Jon Feiner, and I'm Jake Sullivan.
We're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast.
This week we speak with Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios.
He explains the stakes of the elections for Israel and the world.
The episode is out now.
Search for and follow The Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, everyone.
This is Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway.
And we want to tell you about Pivot, our twice-weekly podcast.
That's right, Kara.
What a thrill.
It's a chance for us to break down all the big things happening in tech, business, and politics.
Yes, and I keep you in check so people can make it through each episode, whether it's digging into constant changes in the world of AI and social media or trying to keep up with whatever the fuck Elon is doing.
We're here to give you our take on all of that.
Every Tuesday and Friday morning, we drop a new episode about some of the major stories of the moment.
And Scott is a prediction machine gazing into his crystal ball to tell you about where it's all heading.
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Boom.
Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails.
Would you like to go first?
So my win is, just in terms of media, I watched something called, and I haven't seen a war movie that I didn't like.
There's a new war movie out, screenplay and directed by Peter Berg, who's, I think, a great...
a great artist or a great filmmaker.
It's from Imagine Entertainment called The Mosquito Bowl.
And it's an American war sports drama.
And it's basically, it's based on the 2022 Buzz Bissinger book, The Mosquito Bowl, A Game of Life and Death in World War II.
It's about a game played during World War II.
And it's essentially these four top American football players were enlisted in the United States Marine Corps after the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
while preparing for the Battle of Okinawa.
And most World War II movies are about the European theater.
And this just shows just the brutality and cost of war.
It's well done.
These things are very hard.
It's very hard to recreate battle scenes and do it well.
I don't think anyone's done it as well as Steven Spielberg did in terms of his depiction of the landing on Omaha.
But this comes pretty close.
And it's also...
Berg and Grazer also collaborated on Friday Night Lights, which was another great sports film.
Anyways, I think war movies are really a really good reminder for people like me who have a tendency to be a bit more war hawkish of just the real costs that we outsource.
Mostly, not all, but mostly in terms of combat to young men, because the reality is young men are disposable.
Anthropologically, if you have a village of 100 people and 40 of the men die, the village survives.
If 40 of the women die, the village goes out of business.
So especially in a society where young people don't have as much opportunity, we find wars for them.
I don't think that's true with America in most instances.
You just see the brutality of war up close, and they do a good job.
It is a very difficult thing to recreate.
Anyways, my win is the movie The Mosquito Bolt.
I really enjoyed it.
My loss is very straightforward.
If a general of NATO was found out that he was somehow involved in the scaling up or scaling down of Starlink or Starshield.
and we found out that that individual had throttled back, a private citizen or someone in the military had throttled back the capabilities of Starlink, what would we do?
And why is it any different from Elon Musk?
If the CEO of Boeing figured out a way to inhibit the defense mechanisms and defense...
If the head of Northrop Grumman, if we found out the CEO had throttled back the guidance systems on our nuclear submarines, what would we do to that CEO?
How is this any different?
We have normalized the standard of behavior and given the mother of all dangerous hall passes to people because they are billionaires.
And this cannot continue.
And if he got permission from the president, then the president needs to be held accountable.
But the CEO of Boeing is not allowed to throttle back military aircraft mid-flight defending our allies.
And that is exactly what happened here or appears to have happened.
So I'm super excited.
I'm hoping there's going to be a blue wave.
I've been bringing on candidates.
The vibes are pretty good.
But on November the 4th.
These candidates have to do a couple of things.
It's about affordability and it's about accountability.
And I don't, first off, when I say accountability, for God's sakes, please don't try and impeach the president.
Please don't.
But absolutely, in terms of corruption, haul people in front of Congress.
And we're going to see a lot of names we've been talking about over the last few years who are under the impression that they're immune from all this shit.
But absolutely, my fail here is America has normalized a private citizen.
Becoming the most powerful person in terms of military technology and potentially the fate of the West.
Haul this person in front of Congress.
Haul him.
Bring him in on a dolly.
All right.
My win.
You know, I was traveling a lot in the last couple of days and I ended up watching Nobody Wants This.
And I didn't love last season.
It's in its third season now.
I thought it was kind of silly.
I liked it at the beginning.
It's on Netflix.
I think this season is wonderful.
Nobody wants this?
Yeah.
And it's not because of the main couple, which is Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, who are perfectly fine.
He's a rabbi, she's a goyess.
They're never going to get together.
Nobody wants this.
It's a very solid comedy, stuff like that.
But there are two characters in this.
Justine, I think it's Lupe, or Lupe, who plays Morgan.
And Timothy Simons, or Simmons, I think it's Simons, plays Sasha.
They're the brother of the man and the sister of the main character, woman.
Have the most beautiful relationship.
He's from Veep.
He played the really tall guy.
the obnoxious guy on V.
He's supposed to be a wonderful man also.
Oh, he's amazing.
He's hilarious in V.
This guy.
He was on, what did he play?
What was the name of the character he played on V?
Jonah.
He played Jonah.
Jonah on V.
He was amazing.
She played the wife of the dumb brother, who was, I think, a prostitute on Succession, and she was great there.
The two of them together are one of the most lovely friendships.
I suspect it's moving.
I haven't watched the whole thing.
to romance, but the way they interact as a man and a woman, it's really refreshing.
And I think they're just the most lovely pairing.
I'm sorry if I mispronounced their names.
My fail has got to be the executives now trying to suck up to Democrats.
I am getting a lot of incoming from companies now.
I think they're suddenly very worried about what's about to happen.
And they're worried about looking like assholes.
sucking up to Trump really pretty much.
And so they're making all these moves.
I find that I've just been invited to four different company parties, tech company parties, which did not happen in the last six months.
And interestingly, someone who has gotten in a bit of trouble, Bill Maher, went to the White House again for dinner.
It's fine if he wants to go to the White House, whatever.
But Trump then posted his longest true social post ever, a 1,300-word diatribe against Bill Maher.
Dinner might not have been great.
He just got criticized for going.
He's getting criticized by Trump.
You're going to see a lot of this kind of stuff going forward is people, you know, being angry because you were canoodling with the president.
So just it's a fail.
I don't want them.
I didn't want them then and I want them now.
So it's going to be interesting to see them trying to reenter society if he loses as badly as people think he will.
Anyway, we'll see where it happens.
So just going to the Jonad files and that is.
Jonah was probably the subject or the receptacle for some of the best insults.
He was called the cloud botherer, guy scraper, the pointless giant, the wrong shape, human scaffolding, the world's biggest single cell organism.
I'd still think next to Modern Family, I think Veep was the best written show on television.
It was.
As you have been in my house more times than I have, I don't like stuff.
I have no kids.
I have no people.
I don't like, you know, I have yogurt, champagne, and, you know.
Very expensive champagne.
A few pre-rolled, and that's it.
One, and I get all this tchotchke shit that I throw out immediately.
I decorate my house like a Swiss architect who's, you know, got ADD.
Anyways, the one thing I have in my room, and it's almost the first thing I wake up every morning, is Tammy Haddad sent me.
a Veep pillow and it's Mount Rushmore with Julie Louis-Dreyfus's face on it.
And I wake up and it just makes me smile.
Yeah, she's the best.
I love.
That show is the best.
Whenever I'm a little bit down, I turn to drugs.
No, I turn to Veep or sometimes I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm or Modern Family if I'm feeling like I want to cry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, she's in a play in New York by the way with Allison Janney, who's also spectacular in The Diplomat.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus?
Yeah, they're in the thing together.
Why doesn't she come to one of our live pivots?
I think she's busy being on Broadway, Scott, I believe.
I'll text her.
Broadway schmodway.
All right, I will text her.
Nobody sees Broadway.
I will text her.
She's a shy and retiring person.
She's great.
I've spent a little time with her.
I really like her.
Anyway, we want to hear from you.
Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.
Go to nymag.com.
Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Dodd Wiseman.
Thanks also to Jubros, Miss Averia, and Dan Chalon.
This is Shark Crow as Fox Media's executive producer of podcasts.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from Fox Media.
We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.
Kara, go blue.