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SG Scott Galloway Scott Galloway Professor of marketing at NYU Stern and author of bestselling books including The Four and The Algebra of Wealth.

“The NeoCloud guys, the compute guys, they're basically levered trades to AI. As goes AI, that goes them times three or times negative three. … Alphabet and Microsoft are both AI plays, but quite frankly, AI could end up being vastly overhyped and be like the railroads, and they would still be fine. People are still going to be buying Google search ads and YouTube ads and PowerPoint.”

Prof G Markets · Money & Markets · November 2026

“The NeoCloud guys, the compute guys, they're basically levered trades to AI. As goes AI, that goes them times three or times negative three. … Alphabet and Microsoft are both AI plays, but quite frankly, AI could end up being vastly overhyped and be like the railroads, and they would still be fine. People are still going to be buying Google search ads and YouTube ads and PowerPoint.” — Scott Galloway, Prof G Markets

Context

Elson asked why leveraged data-center names like the neoclouds plunged after the election while the hyperscalers held up. Galloway's answer: big tech is an AI bet with a fallback business, the neoclouds are not.

Transcript

Prof G Markets Around 32:14 into the episode
Scott Galloway

…It is very hard to draw consistent themes. And CNBC, I'm sure, has already interpreted this 45 different ways. But I'm not, I think it is difficult to draw any conclusions either way, as I tried to do yesterday, based on what we've seen in the last 48 hours in the markets. What are your thoughts?

Ed Elson

…them to stop spending as much. But at the same time, they've committed to spend so much already. And so maybe this puts them at a structural disadvantage. I'm not sure. And there's a lot going on here. So I guess your reactions to all of those dynamics and what you think may or may not be right.

Scott Galloway

The kind of simple or lazy observation, and it might not be the right one, is that there's just been a rotation out of, if you think about the NeoCloud or the NeoCloud guys or the compute guys, they're basically levered trades to AI, right? I mean, as goes AI, that goes them times three or times negative three. Whereas if you still want to play the AI trade, but you want some diversification, you go into big tech. I mean, Alphabet, Alphabet, Microsoft are both AI plays, but quite frankly, AI could end up being vastly overhyped and be like the railroads, and they would still be fine. People are still going to be buying, you know, Google search ads and YouTube ads and PowerPoint. You know, I mean, or it just, so I, you know, the lazy explanation is people said the levered AI trade based on one piece of data from yesterday looks a little scary. So I'm going to take my leverage down. I still want exposure to it. I still want to be, you know, big tech or these names look like great ways to play it with some downside protection because the piece of data that I think the market is looking at or the brightest. So the market every day absorbs hundreds of millions of points…

Ed Elson

Because, by the way, it is so hard. And this is going to be the thorniest question for Democrats because there are decent arguments on both sides, which we'll get into. But it doesn't surprise me that she dodged it because that is a fucking hard question. But sorry, continue.

Scott Galloway

Well, 71% of Americans said they oppose building one in their area, which for context is slightly lower than the share of Americans who oppose strip clubs. So people would rather have a strip club or a nuclear power plant.

Ed Elson

Well, that's all of us, but yeah.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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