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Ed Elson
Co-host, Prof G Markets, Prof G Media

This Bull Market Is Hiding Something

📅 Oct 05, 2026 Prof G Markets 70 MIN 224139 VIEWS 173 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
Today on Prof G Markets, Scott Galloway and Ed Elson break down the biggest takeaways from Anthropic’s financials and explain why the company’s customer concentration is raising concerns. Then, they examine the state of the IPO market and make the case for why now could be the time to buy bonds. Finally, they discuss the changes John Ternus is making at Apple and debate whether the company’s new smart home hub will be a success. Vote for Prof G Markets at the Signal Awards for Best Video Podcast https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVo... Vote for Prof G Markets at the Signal Awards for Daily P...

What Ed Elson said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Ed Elson and Scott Galloway discussed the AI industry, focusing on Anthropic's S-1 filing and its upcoming IPO. Galloway highlighted that a quarter of Anthropic's revenue comes from just two clients, calling the concentration risk 'frightening' for a company seeking a $2 trillion valuation. He argued the valuation implies Anthropic will be the most enduring, fastest-growing company in history, which he called 'pricing to hallucination.' Galloway advised people who own Anthropic stock to sell it now, citing risks including customer concentration and potential exogenous events. The conversation shifted to the IPO market, where six companies postponed their debuts, including Oura. Galloway attributed this to market dynamics trumping individual performance, noting that yields soaring to multi-decade highs are pressuring valuations. He agreed with Elson that now is the time to consider buying bonds, recommending low-cost funds like Vanguard's. Finally, Galloway predicted Apple's smart home hub will become the number one smart display by revenue within 18 months, turning a $350 device into a $1,000 household purchase.

Key takeaways

  1. Galloway advised selling Anthropic stock now, citing a quarter of revenue from two clients and a $2 trillion valuation that implies unprecedented growth.
  2. Galloway predicted Apple's smart home hub will become the number one smart display by revenue within 18 months, turning a $350 device into a $1,000 household purchase.
  3. Galloway said market dynamics trump individual performance, explaining why IPOs like Oura are being shelved despite a strong overall market.
  4. Galloway agreed with Elson that now is the time to buy bonds, recommending low-cost fixed income funds like Vanguard's.
  5. Galloway called the Anthropic valuation 'pricing to hallucination,' not pricing to perfection.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
$2 trillion Anthropic's valuation target metric 7:47
25% Anthropic's revenue from two clients metric 11:32
435x Anthropic's trailing revenue multiple metric 15:14
74% Annual growth needed for 10 years to justify Anthropic's valuation metric 15:14
18 months Timeline for Apple's smart display to become number one by revenue timeline 1:09:00
$350 Price of Apple's smart home hub price 1:09:00
$1,000 Target household purchase price for Apple smart home products price 1:09:00
8% Annual yield on corporate bond funds metric 51:08
2.8x Revenue multiple at which Galloway sold Profit in 2000 metric 41:21
15x Revenue multiple offered for Profit in 1996 metric 41:21

Chapters

  1. 0:00Anthropic S-1 and valuation
  2. 7:21Customer concentration risk
  3. 14:47AI lab bubble
  4. 30:43IPO market and Oura
  5. 39:08Market dynamics and selling advice
  6. 46:14Bond market and yields
  7. 55:59Apple's new CEO and smart home
  8. 1:03:31Apple smart home prediction
Ed Elson 0:00 ↗
Since July, there are five stocks that have contributed to 93% of the S&P 500 gains.
Scott Galloway 0:06 ↗
They are Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Alphabet, and Nvidia. All of the names that you would have expected. But you look at the rest of the market and it does seem to be a structural problem where valuations are starting to come down, which I think is healthy. And I also think it's a result of probably the most important thing that is happening in the market right now, which is that yields are soaring.
Today's number, $30,000. That's how much the world's most elite sheepdogs sell for at auction on a farm in England. True story, Ed. My sister was accused of bestiality. We'll all be a monkey's uncle. You like that one?
Ed trying to look sexy. The flannel shirt. He thinks he's Grizzly Adams at a Pearl Jam concert.
Ed Elson 1:06 ↗
What are you wearing today?
Scott Galloway 1:07 ↗
The same thing I wear every day. Rag and bone jeans, a Panerai watch, and Brunello Cucinelli. Hello, ladies.
Ed Elson 1:14 ↗
There we go.
Scott Galloway 1:15 ↗
Hello, ladies.
Ed Elson 1:16 ↗
That's pretty sexy, too.
Scott Galloway 1:17 ↗
Yeah.
Ed Elson 1:17 ↗
$30,000.
Scott Galloway 1:22 ↗
Grr. Yeah. Yeah. No, I make a room sexier by leaving it.
Ed Elson 1:31 ↗
Yeah.
So, $30,000 for a sheepdog. What do we think? Worth it?
Scott Galloway 1:37 ↗
I asked a Scotsman what his body count was and he started counting and then he fell asleep. That is my favorite Family Guy thing where the guy is shearing the sheep and the sheep's like, 'Oh, yes, you... Shear that. Shear that...'
Ed Elson 1:52 ↗
Shear it.
Scott Galloway 1:55 ↗
Um,
Ed Elson 1:56 ↗
It is very good.
Scott Galloway 1:57 ↗
You spoke to Paul, one of my early role models, Paul Kedrosky, yesterday, by the way. I listened to the podcast, which I don't like to do, but he's really good. It was a really good one. Well done.
Ed Elson 2:09 ↗
Paul's really good. Paul was a very, very, very smart guy with a lot of opinions on AI, which we will be getting into now.
Scott Galloway 2:16 ↗
But first off, we haven't talked enough about me. Okay. About 25 years ago, I'm not joking, my first TV appearances were on Bloomberg. Some woman named Laura, gosh, such a cool woman who did content programming, reached out of nowhere and said, 'You're a marketing professor. Do you want to come talk about marketing?' And I used to go to Bloomberg Television every week. And I'd be on with Tom Keene. That's how I met Stephanie Ruhle. That's how I met Sarah Eisen. And I used to do every week this thing called Business and Tech with Deirdre Bosa, who I love. She went to Fox. It's like college. Stephanie Ruhle went to MSNBC. And then, oh, and Eric Schatzker. He's still there. He's the only one that stayed. But it all started for me at Bloomberg Television.
Ed Elson 2:59 ↗
And what is this? How does this relate to our man Paul?
Scott Galloway 3:04 ↗
Paul was also a frequent guest. And I used to be both happy and bummed when I'd have to go on. They'd bring us as the two panelists in for like, you know, he and I were the panelists and the founder of Reddit for when Meta went public, Facebook went public. It was supposed to go public at the opening of trading, it didn't go public. Once we had to sit there for three and a half hours trying to talk about tech, it was really painful, and come up with new insight into the Facebook IPO because there was some technical problems. And Paul, it was like a love-hate thing. I love Paul, he's a nice man. I think he's super smart. I was always so intimidated by him because I'd be like, 'The audience is going to figure out I don't know what I'm talking about when they hear Paul talk.' He's very smart. He's very knowledgeable.
Ed Elson 3:48 ↗
He's very smart. He brings the heat. He's aggressive. He's opinionated. He's everything you want in an investor, but also in a guest on a show.
Scott Galloway 3:59 ↗
Yeah, he's really good.
Ed Elson 4:00 ↗
But he told, when we had him on a while ago, we've had him on a couple times now, he said he doesn't like going on Bloomberg or CNBC anymore because he doesn't like feeling like he's in a Piers Morgan debate show anymore.
Scott Galloway 4:10 ↗
It could be worse. You could go on Piers Morgan and have to put up with some maggot douchebag who calls you un-American and desperate. That's nice. That's why I've worked this hard, Ed. God. I like Piers, though. I like Piers.
Ed Elson 4:26 ↗
Piers is good. He knows what he's doing, which is he's very...
Scott Galloway 4:30 ↗
Sensationalizing.
Ed Elson 4:31 ↗
Drama, but it's entertaining.
Scott Galloway 4:34 ↗
It makes me feel stupider. With Abby Phillip, it feels like real journalism.
Ed Elson 4:39 ↗
That's even more. Yeah, but Piers, he knows how to... He does good TV. It's like...
Scott Galloway 4:45 ↗
When did CNN and Abby Phillip turn into like Jubilee Media? When did that happen?
Ed Elson 4:50 ↗
I think they nailed their eyelids to their forehead and made them watch 72 hours straight of Jerry Springer.
Scott Galloway 4:56 ↗
Yeah. And they said, 'That's what we need. We need to turn this into Jerry Springer with a CNN logo.' That's probably a little harsh. That's probably a little harsh.
Ed Elson 5:05 ↗
By the way, Abby texts to get in my face. She texts me.
Scott Galloway 5:10 ↗
She is not afraid to text me and tell me how wrong I am.
Ed Elson 5:14 ↗
Yeah.
Scott Galloway 5:15 ↗
People like her, though. They say she's a good journalist. That's my attempt to put my words back in my mouth here. It's also the highest-rated show on CNN, which is a pretty wonderful reflection on the state of our society right now.
Ed Elson 5:27 ↗
Yeah. Well, keep trying to unsay what you said. I will quote Katie Martin: you can't put the shit back in the donkey. Let's get into our show. We have a lot to get into here.
Scott Galloway 5:38 ↗
All right.
Ed Elson 5:39 ↗
Washington is starting to take a closer look at the AI industry. Last week, the FTC opened an investigation into OpenAI and Anthropic over potential safety and consumer protection concerns. The news came during an already chaotic week for both companies. OpenAI announced that it would not release its latest Astro model due to safety concerns, and Reuters reported details from Anthropic's S-1, which show that the company racked up an operating loss last year of $8 billion.
So Scott, a lot of AI news to dig into here, which is going to be extremely important for the public markets going forward. I think a decent place to start would probably be the Anthropic S-1, which, as you mentioned, we dug into last week with Paul Kedrosky, and he had some interesting things to say, but I would like to get your take. Revenue last year grew 12x to nearly $4.6 billion, but their operating losses widened to more than $8 billion last year. To be clear, we don't know what their financials look like right now in 2026. And that obviously matters a lot, but we did get some clarity on what financials looked like last year. And the reality is, as we have suspected for a long time, that the losses are enormous in the same way that they were enormous at OpenAI. Not as enormous when it comes to Anthropic, but still very, very large. And this is very relevant considering this company is imminently going public. Supposedly it's going to happen right after the midterms. Scott, what did you make of these leaked, revealed financials? Who knows if they were actually leaked or if it was a setup. I don't know. What do you make of them?
Scott Galloway 7:21 ↗
They were leaked by Anthropic, would be my guess. There's the valuation itself, and we'll come back to it, but what Paul said yesterday on, I was going to say your show, but our show, was that really the number that jumped out to him, and I didn't recognize, was I believe about 40% of their revenue is coming from just two clients.
Ed Elson 7:46 ↗
A quarter, not 40%.
Scott Galloway 7:47 ↗
Excuse me. A quarter. We always used to worry, I've always run small companies. I've never been able to scale to a big company, and we always had, and I've always been in B2B services, right, strategy analytics, and we always had this problem of too much concentration across the small... Nike was like 22% of our business at one point, P&G was 15%, LVMH was like, Estée Lauder, like the five companies were like 60% of our revenue. And I used to say, okay, that's a problem, but it's a good one. It means these iconic brands are spending a shit ton of money on a small company and getting the types of contracts that only big companies get. But when you're asking for a $2 trillion valuation, you need to look more like Meta. And that is, remember all of these, and I'm guilty of this, attempts to boycott Meta where people were so upset at Meta. I think it was like five years ago, they said, 'Let's start a boycott.' And Meta has something like 300,000 clients and no one is more than a third of a percent. That is what you call robust. And robust is a really interesting term in business because it indicates fragility. Let's talk about the economy. The banking industry is not robust. If JP Morgan finds out it had some rogue whale trader that figures out a way to short-circuit or get around some of their internal controls and makes an enormous bet on the debt market in Germany and it turns against him and they end up down $700 billion somehow using leverage and derivatives that got past their compliance or risk department, and Jamie's about to get flipped upside down. If he calls Donald Trump, Donald Trump has to bail him out. JP Morgan has become too big to fail, and they put in place a bunch of capital constraints and ratios in Sarbanes-Oxley that are supposed to limit the likelihood of that. But the banking industry in America is not a robust business. There's a lot of small banks, but a disproportionate amount is concentrated amongst some of the bigger banks. They would argue back that that creates strength, creates operating leverage, better customer service, lower interest rates, and those banks do an amazing job. And JP Morgan right now is worth more than the biggest 12 banks in Europe, just that one bank. So, there's this capitalism versus regulation. But back to the notion of robust versus fragility. The fast food industry is really robust. It's not fragile at all. If the biggest player, McDonald's, went out of business, you could just still find really cheap caloric intake that puts you on a path towards diabetes really early, really easily. There's a ton of substitutes. And the reason why you want a robust industry is it not only results in a lack of systemic risk to the system if one goes out and consumers start bailing it out. The problem when you're too big to fail is you start taking stupid risk because your downside is limited because you know you'll get bailed out, right? And also the advantage of a really robust industry is there's more competition which ultimately lowers rents and transfers capital back from the shareholders to the consumer, which is absolutely what we need more of. Long-winded way of saying the most frightening thing about this is I don't think you've ever seen a company ask for $500 billion in market capitalization that had a fraction of the client and revenue concentration that Anthropic highlights or articulates in its S-1. I want to get your reaction to that and then I want to talk a little bit about the valuation.
Ed Elson 11:32 ↗
Oh, I can 100% agree with you. I think the problem here isn't necessarily the company per se. It's a startup. It's a relatively new company that is trying to figure out how to get clients. Similar to the dynamic you're describing that you dealt with when you were starting your businesses. Some will say, well, that was last year. You're looking at the customer concentration from last year. But what we know based on the Ramp spending data, which has been extremely informative, is that 80% of both OpenAI and Anthropic's enterprise revenue is coming from 1% of customers. And so the question that you have to ask yourself, sure, they're getting a lot of revenue, and let's be clear, the revenue numbers are incredible. I mean, supposedly OpenAI is coming up on $70 billion ARR. ARR is a little bit of a bullshit number, but let's put that aside and recognize that these are tens of billions of dollars in revenue that these companies are raking in, and that is impressive. But there is extreme customer concentration risk here. And I've been going back and watching Mad Men, which is the greatest TV show of all time. And I am reminded of exactly this dynamic because I don't know if you remember, but Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in that TV show, they have a similar problem where they're extremely dependent on Lucky Strike. And then one day the CEO of Lucky Strike has a meeting with Roger Sterling. He says, 'Sorry about this. I know we've been together for 25 years, but it's time to move on.' At which point Roger Sterling says, 'You're going to kill me.' And that's essentially what happens. It completely collapses the business. And this is what happens in business. If you become too reliant on a handful of customers, things can go wrong and suddenly your business is no longer sustainable or structurally sound. So they are at immense risk of that, and that's okay. That happens. But they are asking for a $2 trillion valuation which would make them more valuable than Meta, more valuable than Saudi Aramco, more valuable than Broadcom, more valuable than Berkshire Hathaway, more valuable than Eli Lilly, more valuable than JP Morgan, more than twice as valuable as JP Morgan. And so for me, the problem here, as usual, is that we're having price problems. We're having an issue of the valuation. And I don't think that the valuation is properly pricing in the massive risks here. And I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I don't think that we necessarily have an AI bubble right now that is infecting the totality of markets. We can see that in, say, the Nvidia valuation, which has actually come down quite significantly. But we do have an AI lab bubble where there seems to be too much excitement and too much enthusiasm about Anthropic and about OpenAI because they're new, they're sexy, they're doing interesting things, but let's be very clear, they still haven't figured out their business models by all accounts and from what I'm seeing, they are still not profitable. In fact, they're very unprofitable. Some of the most unprofitable businesses of all time, and the risks are still systemic. So, I think that needs to be priced in. But the question is, will investors care about it or are these businesses just too sexy that it's not going to matter? I'm not sure, but over the long run, I think it will matter.
Scott Galloway 14:47 ↗
I'm just impressed I was able to find a protege that was more glass-half... You're like, the glass is broken and it's going to sever your thumb.
Ed Elson 14:59 ↗
I'm not just bearish on these two companies. Again, for me, it's all about price. Just remember about me. I also bought Meta. I also bought Microsoft this year. I bought the SaaS company. So I'm not a perma-bear.
Scott Galloway 15:14 ↗
I've never seen a more important distinction, or what will be a greater effort in IR history, for everyone to start talking about forward 12-month revenues versus trailing. Because the thing that is staggering about this company is its growth rate. And if it were to, supposedly it's 10x-ing again this year, and if it 10x's next year, then all of a sudden its multiple on revenues goes from 435 to 43.5. You know, Deirdre Bosa accurately called it, said that the math says Anthropic needs the entire AI market to nearly 4x just so one company can hit its number, which isn't a forecast, it's a monopoly fantasy wearing a spreadsheet. You know, needing 74% annual growth for 10 years straight to justify your price tag. You know, you're asking investors to bet on a streak no company, including Nvidia, has ever thrown. So that this valuation, built into that valuation, is this will be the most enduring, fastest-growing company in history.
Ed Elson 16:15 ↗
That's a bold thing to assume.
Scott Galloway 16:18 ↗
That's not pricing to perfection. That's pricing to hallucination, right? That's pricing to kind of a wing and a prayer.
Ed Elson 16:24 ↗
I think it is probably growing faster than any billion-dollar-plus business in history, including Nvidia. Now, having said that, the asterisk on the asterisk is the thing that is fueling that growth appears to be a small number of enormous spenders that keep finding, I think it's specifically Alphabet and Amazon, that keep finding new ways to leverage AI. And as Paul referenced, how many of those types of companies have that type of business to, one, justify multi-billion-dollar spends, and two, can leverage that multi-billion-dollar spend into their businesses? How many businesses have the capacity and the need to spend one, two, five billion on these types of services? So this is, either way, I would imagine...
Scott Galloway 17:12 ↗
I think a lot of these marks, I would be dying to know, and unfortunately we don't have clarity into this, what is the volume in the secondary market? Because if I, you know, I've had a couple of these calls from people, 'Oh, my brother or my wife works at OpenAI, what do you think?' Sell. Right now. Call a setter, whoever it is, sell. I mean, and call me, and I hope I'm wrong, but you know, 435 times trailing revenues, or if it's 300 in the private markets right now, whatever that is, this is an extraordinary company. But, and then the asterisk on the asterisk on the asterisk is there's probably a nonzero... I would say there's an even greater risk than a mass extinction event of an Anthropic extinction event. And that is, I'm literally looking down out of my hotel room at the intersection between Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards. If some rogue bots who were told to be creative and persistent and told to shut down the signals at Santa Monica and Wilshire, if they were able to figure it out, and I'm not sure these things are connected to the ground, I can't figure out if this is a smart city or not, or if these signals are hackable. But if they were able to shut it down for, say, 10 minutes, and there were a dozen automobile accidents where all the lights just turned green at the same time for 10 minutes. I think the media is so ready for a story. I think the public is so sufficiently alarmed that I wouldn't be surprised if finally Trump or somebody was forced to step in and say, 'You have to shut down for 72 hours.' And then what happens to the valuation?
Ed Elson 19:00 ↗
And it might already be happening, which is why the FTC investigation is so important. I think they're now investigating Anthropic and OpenAI, and it looks like this is going to be a question of were they deceiving consumers or other customers about the potential harms of their artificial intelligence. And I think the answer is yeah. I mean, we just had the reporting from Axios from Madison Mills, who came on the show last week, and her reporting showed that there have been thousands of these security breaches. And the question is, like, okay, well, why wasn't anyone told about this? I mean, so far there has been no legal action, no legal ramifications that have come out of what have supposedly been some of the greatest security breaches in the history of cybersecurity. And it all lies at the feet of OpenAI and Anthropic. And so the question is, like, okay, clearly something's got to happen. And the question is, what do you think that something is going to be? If the FTC has decided that these guys are targets and put the target on their back, that's a problem. And then it's also a problem if the entire American public hates you, which we've been talking about for a long time. And whether that hate is warranted or unwarranted, I don't know. I'm not going to opine on that. But what I can tell you is it exists. And the fact that it exists matters. And while you're in Los Angeles, I will just point out an observation that we were discussing with the research team for the markets show, which is that over the next couple of months, you're about to see four different feature films, Hollywood movies, that are going to be centered around a tech founder and how bad the tech founder is. You've got Social Reckoning coming out this week on Friday. You've got Musk, the documentary about Elon, which apparently is going to be very anti-Elon. You've got the Elizabeth Holmes documentary coming out the next week. You've got Artificial, which is the movie about Sam Altman, and supposedly Sam Altman is not very excited about this. Supposedly it portrays him as like this sociopathic serial liar. Again, I'm not saying that these movies are accurate or fair, but they exist and it's happening. And so the question is, does that have an impact on your valuation? Does that have an impact on the usage of your products? I think ultimately it does, and all I want to see is a little bit more reflection of those risks reflected in the valuation. I think that what we're seeing at $2 trillion or $1.5 trillion is just investors saying blinders on, cover your eyes, doesn't matter, they're going to win, done deal. It's a fundamental law of the universe that Anthropic is going to be successful. That is a very, as I said, bold statement. Let's attach some risk to that. Let's reduce the price a little bit to reflect what might go wrong here, because I'm looking at the news right now and it's a lot.
Scott Galloway 21:55 ↗
Everybody missed out on what is the greatest stock in history, and that is the infrastructure for AI, and that's Nvidia. So people think, I mean, all they hear about is AI. People who do use Anthropic go, 'It is just a technological marvel. It is a breakthrough.' And then when they're going to see it's 10x-ing, and then they see other pundits say it's going to 10x for a long time, you can make an argument that pretty soon it's going to look not crazily overpriced. I think all the existential risk, I think the concentration risk, like I said, I don't own the stock. I own it indirectly through some bankruptcy claims I bought against FTX, but which have already been sold. But you're, I think you're looking at this rationally. It does feel overvalued. I have told people who own the stock to sell it right now because I imagine there's a robust secondary market. But the risk of this thing getting cut by 80% because of some exogenous event or another rogue thing is pretty dramatic. But most importantly, the real piece of data here...
We need to, I need to fact-check you right now. Mad Men is not the greatest series in history. Although I do have, I'll do a good impression of a Mad Men scene. All right. Do this. You say this. Say, 'Scott, you never say thank you.' Say that.
Ed Elson 23:19 ↗
The greatest line of all time. 'Scott, you never say thank you.'
Scott Galloway 23:23 ↗
'That's what the money's for.' That's the greatest line. Greatest line in all of television. And I'm not sure how you could say...
Ed Elson 23:33 ↗
Breaking Bad and Modern Family and The Sopranos.
Scott Galloway 23:37 ↗
Modern Family. Really?
Ed Elson 23:39 ↗
Oh my god. When Jay is asking whether his father knew that he loved him. I mean, come on. You don't have kids yet, so you're emotionally bankrupt. Talk to me after you have... I cannot watch that show without crying. I literally cannot. Oh my gosh. I absolutely... I think Phil, that guy's the funniest guy in history. He's like, 'I'm the cool guy. I'm the cool dad.' LOL. Laugh out loud. WA. Where you at? WTF. Why the face?
Scott Galloway 24:18 ↗
There's a scene where he's like, 'I'm the cool guy.' He memorizes all the dances from High School Musical and he's doing it, and you see how the kids react. And then, I'm sorry, I'm going to go through my favorite scene, and then they walk in on Claire and Phil having sex, and they freak out and they run downstairs, and the daughters are like, 'What were they doing?' And Luke, the youngest, goes, 'I don't know, but it looks like Dad was winning.' Oh, those guys are geniuses. I hope they all made a billion dollars. I hope everyone on that show made a billion dollars. They deserve it. Anyways, where we are, extinction event, Anthropic S-1. All right, bring me back.
Ed Elson 25:03 ↗
I think we probably hit all of it. The only other thing that we could talk about is...
Scott Galloway 25:06 ↗
The Wire.
Ed Elson 25:07 ↗
No.
Scott Galloway 25:07 ↗
Oh, no. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Ed Elson 25:10 ↗
OpenAI's Dev Day. They have released their own competitor to Muse. They're calling it Dots. 'Hey, I'm your dot. I'm new in ChatGPT. I'll be here to handle everything that comes your way. Ready to jump in when you need me.'
Scott Galloway 25:24 ↗
I'm going to call you Alfred.
Ed Elson 25:25 ↗
'You got it. I'm Alfred. Hey there. Your website's updated with the new designs for the forward rock. Check it out.'
Scott Galloway 25:32 ↗
Nice. I like that. 'Just swap the first and third photo and then you can publish the site.'
Ed Elson 25:37 ↗
'Done. You're live.'
Not much to say here other than I think that they're going in the right direction. They recognize that Meta is doing something pretty powerful, which is that they're trying to use AI to do the boring stuff in life and not do the sort of frontier model figuring out the secrets of the universe. They're just figuring out how to book a reservation and how to get a doctor's appointment. OpenAI has now come out with a competitor. There were some things that went wrong. For example, the CFO, Sarah Friar, was talking about it on TV and she accidentally called the product Muse instead of Dots. People found that funny. Kind of a flop. I get it. It happens. And then also, they had a few mistakes during the live product demo. I don't think any of it is groundbreaking. I don't think it says anything that dramatic about OpenAI. To me, honestly, I think that they're doing the right thing here. They are trying to compete. The only trouble for them, to me, the bigger problem is the fact that they're getting investigated by the FTC. And I think that could be consequential.
Scott Galloway 26:37 ↗
The interesting thing on Muse and Dots, I mean, have you seen these things? One of the visual metaphors is a plush toy. They're sandbagging us. They're trying to pretend that this...
Ed Elson 26:47 ↗
It's cute.
Scott Galloway 26:48 ↗
This mutant Lucifer-like product.
Ed Elson 26:51 ↗
I think it's good.
Scott Galloway 26:52 ↗
It's cute and adorable. If they were really honest with this thing, they'd make it look like the alien from the USSO in the movie Aliens. Like this thing, if you cut it, its blood might be acidic, and it is sentient, and it is really mean, and a lot of people might die. If they were honest, they would have, 'Here's our new product,' and they have an alien come out and start tearing apart people. Why does that make me happy? Why does that make me happy? Instead it's a little plush toy. To be honest, if I were giving business advice to OpenAI, I would say, 'Yeah, do the plush toy instead of a Godzilla version of your AI.' So, they might be lying, but at least they're doing the right thing from a business perspective.
Ed Elson 27:39 ↗
And then you press on the plush toy like one of those baby toys that goes, 'We're open to regulation. We're open to regulation. We're open to regulation.' Or you press the back, 'We need to do better. We need to do better. We need to do better.' Or press it again, 'We're proud of the progress we've made. We're proud of the progress we've made. We're proud of the progress we've made.'
Scott Galloway 27:58 ↗
That's already Sam Altman. That's just press a button on his forehead and that's what comes out of him.
Ed Elson 28:06 ↗
We'll be right back after the break. And we have some good news. We are nominated for three Signal Awards. So, please vote for us at vote.signalaward.com. Every vote counts. Type in Prof Markets in the search bar. You'll find us. And we'll also leave a link in the description.
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We're back with Prof G Markets. This is the first full week of the fourth quarter, so we're going to take a step back and look at what happened in Q3. We will talk about the IPO market, where six companies postponed their debuts. We'll also look at the latest inflation data and see what that might tell us about the health of the economy. And finally, we will dig into the bond market, where yields continue to hit multi-decade highs. Scott, let's start with this IPO news, because we were excited about the Oura IPO, and we had talked about some of the IPOs that had been postponing or pausing their plans before, like SB Energy, which we identified as a BS, borderline fraudulent company. Maybe that's harsh, but they said they're a data centering company and they have no data centers in operation. Either way, there have been plenty of companies that are supposed to go public: Holtec, Ammyro, Agrico, SB Energy, Bamboo Insurance, and now Oura. And they're all delaying. And most of them are saying that it's because of market uncertainty. That is what Oura, the smart ring maker, said themselves as well. And this is interesting because you look at the market right now. The market's up 12% year to date. Yeah, there are some concerns about AI bubbles and circular financing, but generally speaking, it seems to be pretty strong. And then suddenly you have these companies saying now's not the right time. There is too much uncertainty. There is too much risk. And so I guess the question is, are they right? And if they are right, what does it say about market conditions at this point?
Scott Galloway 32:17 ↗
I got caught flat-footed here. We, or I, predicted that the Oura ring was, or Oura, was going to be a successful IPO. Not only was it not a successful IPO, it got shelved. And I've been in these meetings where you're arguing with your bankers around valuation. Your bankers want to manufacture a pop such that their existing institutional investors that have access to the IPO get rewarded for trading through the investment bank or doing business with them. The issuer, the issuing company, wants a pop. So, they're on the front of the business section of every news media publication around the world. And typically what happens is the bankers come back and say, 'Okay, we can get you out. We can manufacture a pop, but only if we go out at this price.' And of course, management says, 'No, we should go out at this price.' And there's a back and forth, and you settle at a midpoint and you go out. Typically IPOs get shelved when management just can't wrap their head around the valuation that the bankers are saying, based on our read of the market, this is what we can get and have a successful IPO. And what happens is management says, 'Well, market dynamics trump individual performance, we're going to hold.' Now, there's different types of holds. There's, I think, one of these septic tank companies in AI that you were talking about last week that was just ridiculous. A SoftBank company.
Ed Elson 33:38 ↗
Yeah. SB Energy. Yeah.

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APA, MLA, BibTeX
APA

Elson, E. (2026, October 5). This Bull Market Is Hiding Something [Interview transcript]. Prof G Markets. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003212/

MLA

Ed Elson. "This Bull Market Is Hiding Something." Prof G Markets, 5 Oct. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003212/.

BibTeX
@misc{elson2026_3003212,
  author       = {Ed Elson},
  title        = {This Bull Market Is Hiding Something},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, Prof G Markets. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {oct},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003212/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}