CEOInterviews.AI
Start App
Try: AI strategy tariffs earnings guidance layoffs interest rates growth

Brad Jacobs

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, QXO, Inc.

Search every verified Brad Jacobs interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Brad Jacobs, chairman and CEO of QXO, appeared on Morgan Stanley's "Hard Lessons" podcast in August 2026, where he discussed his approach to mergers and acquisitions and reflected on past business decisions. During the conversation with Eli Gross, Jacobs recounted a significant financial loss of approximately $500 million, stating, "I wouldn't have bet the ranch on it... We probably lost 500 million bucks. It's a lot of money. And you remember that forever. So we could afford it, but barely!" He also described his practice of meeting with the top 15 or so people at target companies for extended conversations, asking them directly whether they would pay billions for the business with their own money. Jacobs shared lessons from his career, emphasizing the importance of transparency over persuasion. He said, "The most important lesson I've learned is, you have to keep it real... Early in my career, I was kind of selling a lot... At a point in time, I realized: stop selling. Just make it happen, and tell people exactly what you're working on. Don't tell them just the good, that's selling. Tell them the good, tell them the bad, and tell them what your plan is." The episode highlighted his track record of founding multiple billion-dollar companies, including United Rentals and XPO, and his authorship of two books on business success.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“I wouldn't have bet the ranch on it. Well, we didn't bet the whole ranch. We probably lost 500 million bucks. It's a lot of money. And you remember that forever. So we could afford it, but barely!”

“I think the industry is a big industry and it's a growing industry, but it could be more efficient on all the things you were just talking about. And I think technology will empower that. We're making a big investment in technology and the whole supply chain and the whole customer experience so that people will get the experience you just mentioned, which is get the products, the building materials they need when the”

“We're up to more than $10 billion in revenue, but our goal is to get to 50 billion in revenue. And I feel we're solidly on that path.”

“We've never had the type of economic policy and the trade policy that we've got going on right now, so we're on new territory and I think it's evolving. The policy is changing and then you have reactions from the counterparties from the other countries, so I don't know how it's going to play out. I don't know anyone knows how it's going to play out.”

“We're going to build a $50 billion company over the next five or six years. M&A is going to be a big driver for our growth here, that's in our DNA. So 10 billion with Beacon gets us one fifth of where we're going to be, so it's a good start but it's really just a start.”

“I think there's I think there's some truth in what Stanley is saying I think that but as with most things there's a balance there you don't want to be totally undiversified and put all your chips like in the James Bond movie on like like one one red and then you lose all your money at the same time if you're going to be totally Diversified you're going to get totally boring results you're going to get average results”

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →