Alex And Ranjan's 2026 Outlook: ChatGPT 1 Billion, AI Shopping, Apple's Big Year, AI Love Boom

0:00Happy holidays, everyone. Ron, John, Roy, and I are here to predict what's going to happen in 2026. and we'll do it on a special edition of Big Technology Podcast Friday edition right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they step.

0:40That's technology at Capital One. Michael Lewis here. My bestselling book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. A decade ago, The Big Short was made into an Academy Award winning movie. And now I'm bringing it to you for the first time as an audiobook narrated by yours truly. The Big Short story, what it means to bet against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been. Get The Big Short now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where this week we will predict what's going to happen in 2026.

1:27We have a short episode for you on the feed today, but we didn't want to leave you alone during the holiday season. We're here to do what ChatGPT will do over time, provide some companionship and hopefully some giggles. And so for that, we are going to spend the next 20 plus minutes sharing our predictions of what's going to happen in 2026. Let's begin by just trading some predictions. We both have about five that we want to go through. Let's see if we can go through them as fast as we can. All right. My first one is, and this is the area where I work in, I think agentic AI, what it actually means is going to become real in 2026.

2:08I think in 2025, everyone said it. Everyone had kind of this like vision of these, like, you know, you're stringing together blocks on a workflow, this RPA plus vision. And I think towards the end of the year, I started talking about this in July a bit and seeing it with my own, the company I work for, Ryder. But like, and now we're seeing it in the way the chat GPTs of the world work, even what agentic means for Gemini. The idea that you define a bunch of tools, you define a bunch of data and let the AI create that workflow itself. And I think it's going to expand into all parts of our life beyond enterprise.

2:46Like we, I remember a year ago you had been talking about like, what is an agentic workflow I want? Like, you know, and everyone, it always came back to travel booking and like, go book my flight for me after doing a flight search. I think like people are going to start to, I've already towards the, like the last half of this year started to actually agentify parts of my life. And I think like, and people are going to be able to do this in a much bigger way next year. Because you really believe in this technology, being able to take that next leap. Yeah. To actually string together a bunch of different actions and do stuff for you.

3:22And everyone's going to start to see that next year. This will be fun because as we go through the year, I will remind you of this prediction and we'll see if it actually comes true. All right, here's mine. I'm going with my safest prediction first. ChatGPT hits a billion users. And we know it's at 800 million now. I expect that it will hit a billion by April next year at the latest. And I think that's a real moment, I think, for AI and open AI in general. There's not many products that have a billion users out there. And the fact that ChatGPT will become one of them is going to be a big moment.

3:59I think it'll be a marker of people saying, OK, this is real. All right. I mean, they might do that by the end of this year and the next week or so at this point at this stage. But, yeah, I think that's your safest prediction. I'm hoping that's the safest one. I want a little bit of a little fire in some of these predictions here. Okay. All right. The next one from you is a really fun one, and I like that. So why don't you hit that one? Yeah. I am going to buy a foldable phone. I'm going to say it here. I've been hedging on it. God damn it. I'm going to buy a foldable phone. But I actually think they're going to have a real moment.

4:38And the reason I think that's exciting is the phone form factor has not evolved since basically the original iPhone. I think it's been exciting and cameras got better. But what you hold in your hand all day and interact with, some kind of meaningful innovation in that, I think, is a good thing. And the foldable phones are the first place I've seen that in a long time. I'm saying it here. I don't know which one. I've been looking at the Pixel Fold, the Samsung, but I'm going to get one. Yeah, I've been saying it on the show. My mantra around this is foldable phones. People with foldable phones look happy.

5:16It really is the case. They like unfold their phone on the airplane and they're like, life hack. But you don't think you're pondering whether it will be Apple, but Apple is on schedule to release one this upcoming year. So why not wait? Is it 2026? Okay, maybe I'll wait then. I will be unfolding my phone with a smile on my face in 2026. All right. Good lead into my next prediction, which is Apple's going to have an absolutely incredible year in 2026. All right. Spicy. Spicy. You know, we've bashed them a lot for good reason. They just haven't done a good job with AI, but they have something. The iPhone 17, which I just went out and picked up.

6:01It's a great phone. It really is good. I mean, some of the things you notice on it, the video is great. The audio processing is great. It's fast. The battery lasts a long time. Selfie mode is cool. Like this is why people went out and get it, got it. And that's why they're having, I wouldn't call it a super cycle, but a mini bump, you know? And I think they're going to ride that strength into the next year. They do not have a real competitor from an AI device, which seems like it's a couple of years off. And then they're going to release their foldable phone. I think, I mean, every year should be your best year ever, your public company.

6:36But without a doubt, I think 2026 will be Apple's best year ever. They're going to sell a ton of phones. They're going to add to that user base. They're going to price their foldable phone at$2 ,000. Everyone will love it. At least. At least. Maybe three. Maybe three. People will pay it, and they will be happy. They will smile, and they will love Apple for it. Will Siri work better? No. No, but it's not going to matter. Yeah, but I mean, we can't have it all. We can't have it all. All right. My next one, I actually changed this one up a bit. I think there's going to be major scandals and discomfort around recording or transcribing in public.

7:16And what I mean here is I've already started to see, I think I saw there's reporting that like on one of the cruise lines is banning meta Ray-Bans. everyone who uses tools like granola or other call transcription like in 2025 everyone just kind of let it go as every word you're saying and everything you're doing around like when you hold out a phone and record someone in public they mostly know that you're doing that those kind of more subtle ways of kind of recording activity of people have been increasing in 2025 because ai is so good at actually making sense of it. I think there's going to be some major controversy, backlash around people.

8:01And I think it's going to inform the whole world of AI devices that Sam and OpenAI and everyone else is talking about. Glassholes 2.0? What? Glassholes 2.0. Oh, Glassholes 2.0. Wow, Glassholes. That's 2011 reference right there. Google Glass. Yeah. Yeah, I think. And as a user, and I love my meta Ray-Bans, like, and I try to be responsible with them and I'm not recording random people on the street. It's at some point there is going to be and you're already starting to see a major backlash. And I think it's going to happen next year. OK, it's interesting how that jives with my next prediction, which is that there's going to be no AI device breakout in 2026.

8:46I don't think there's going to be, I think these, we're still in like the humane pin era and we're not moving to something that is going to be ubiquitous. And, you know, the meta Ray-Bans, you know, they are, they've been selling millions of, of these devices. I know, you know, when this episode drops, I'm going to be out in South America on a trip. I'm going to have those Ray-Bans on my face. But anyway, I think that these things are just not there yet. And there's a lot of hype about them. And we like to think about them. I still think the phone is powerful. It actually syncs with my belief that Apple is going to have a great year.

9:26Right. It's just like the phone's good. Team phone. Team phone. Team phone. No AI device breakout. All right. I like that. But if it does break out, my next prediction is that you will be shopping on an AI chatbot. because I think AI shopping is going to become a real thing. I've actually, OpenAI, their shopping specifically trade model is actually pretty good. I've been using it more. I think people are going to get a lot more comfortable when you are buying your supplies for that hiking trip next year. You're just going to talk to ChatGPT or Gemini, and it will go out, find the best price, order the package, tell you where it is.

10:07I think Amazon also is going to make some more interesting moves in this space versus Rufus, which is more passive. Amazon came out. Do you remember the Amazon Dash? It was a button. Oh, yes. Yeah, it was a button that was tied to a specific brand or product that you just had to push and you would put it on your fridge. Like that whole mode of just like, I'm out of paper towels, just get this done for me. Like, I don't want to go on Amazon, find paper towels. Like all of that kind of shopping, I think moves to more of an AI first way next year. That's interesting. So if shopping does go inside these bots, it's actually a pretty sizable bump for like the functionality that they have in the business case.

10:50Yep, definitely. And Google puts them in a good position as well. All right, we're going to take a quick break and continue with our predictions after this. Again, just doing a brief episode, but glad to be here with you today. My next prediction is that we're going to have an AI love boom in 2026, and I'm going to tell you more about it right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.

11:29It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition predicting what's going to happen in 2026. I feel confident in our predictions so far. And my next prediction is that we're going to see an AI love boom in 2026. I know in 2025, we had lots of interesting reporting about the companionship that people feel with these bots. We've tended to hear about it when it goes really bad. I don't think people have come out of the woodwork yet talking about how deeply in love they are with their bot.

12:16But as the functionality gets better, as memory increases and as personalization increases and as capacities increase and as helpfulness increases, I think people en masse are going to fall in love or name AI as one of their top five friends. I think that's definitely coming next year. And it does scare me, you know, to many degrees, but I just I think it's happening. two questions one are you saying next year becomes the kind of inflection point like when online dating would be went from like awkward and you didn't advertise it to there's just the standard do you think next year is the inflection point where people just casually talk about their ai companions it's like oh my chad gbt was telling me this or you name them yeah i think so look i think this is happening this is also going back going back to my conversation uh with sam uh last week i do think that there is this you know if not a stated preference a revealed preference in the data that they're seeing that people really want to bond with their bots and maybe we will have this yeah you're right an online dating moment where it goes from being taboo to say i'm trying to find love uh by meeting strangers on the internet um maybe a similar breakthrough happens with online dating where people say, you know what, I don't need to use the internet to find other people.

13:53I've actually decided that the internet is my, is that person. All right. My second question, we had talked about this, I think like a year and a half ago. Do you need to go AI shopping for your AI love companion? What is that? What basically do you need to try out different relationships with different? No, no, no. Do you have to buy gifts for your AI companion? Oh, well, I think so. Remember, we had talked about, I think it was, what would an AI love companion want for, oh, it was on Valentine's Day of this year. That's why I think one of my favorite episodes we've done. Yeah, you're going to have to buy gifts.

14:29You're going to have to, you know, offer it more compute. Maybe it will ask you to upgrade to the pro version so you can have longer chats. With voice mode, for instance, there are limits to how much voice conversation you can have. What does your AI companion want for Valentine's Day? More compute. Move up the tier to GPT Pro. It's funny because it's love language. It only dates GPT Pro users, not GPT Plus. Well, it's one of those things where it's love language is quality time. But to spend quality time, you need gift giving. You need to buy that time. Exactly. All right. That's a good one. I think my last one, I think 2026 is going to be both the best and worst year for AI.

15:18What I mean by that is I think we're going to see much more widespread adoption, major breakthroughs, but also I think the kind of like financial arrangements that have been built and kind of that infrastructure, especially the financial infrastructure, separate from the actual kind of like physical data infrastructure of a lot of the big players, I think takes a big hit next year. We're starting to see it with all these questions around Oracle just in the last month and a half. Like those, all of those trades that just kind of ran as pure momentum this year, I think we're going to see a big washout.

15:55And is that, so what happens in that case? Like if that's the case, and this is again, not investment advice, you know, if that washout happens can the S &P 500 go up in 2026 or is that just like does that mean that we just have a bad market year next year I think I think we have a bad market year I don't think we have a calamitous market year but I do think like when it has been the single driver of like equity growth over the last two years or so I think there's going to be some price to pay on that I think like it also kind of, you know, not as a separate prediction, but I think like this also is going to significantly influence politics, the midterm elections, like as if you have kind of like flat equity growth, people uncertain about the economy, the Trump administration and others, and like a lot of people just still very strongly pushing AI as a just kind of general term, I think then you see more of a backlash to it like overall as everyone is still falling in love with their ai companion so i think you're going to have all these like weird forces kind of really pushing at each other so that's why i say both it's best and worst here who gets hit the hardest i think like the oracles of the world are kind of the peripheral players who made AI such a big centerpiece when it wasn't kind of native or core to their business.

17:27Yeah. No, I mean, we're just seeing that happen in real time. Yeah, that's not as much of a prediction here versus looking at the market today. Where do you think OpenAI is at the end of 2026? I think a billion users. I think they're not the leader. I think Gemini's Google definitely starts to catch up. I think everyone is biting off at different parts of the open AI empire, I guess, if we call it that. But I don't think there's a leader. I think they're still at a billion users. I think meta starts to maybe do something interesting on the consumer side. So you have like Microsoft, Google on enterprise, Google at consumer as well, meta consumer as well.

18:15Like at every level, I think they're going to be challenged in a bigger way next year. Is OpenAI a public company next year? No, I don't think so. I don't think so either. No, that's another one of mine. No OpenAI IPO in 2026. Actually, on that, I saw a bunch of posts around how the wealth creation in San Francisco, because of the upcoming string of IPOs from the Anthropics and then OpenAIs of the world will be unlike anything ever seen, housing prices, etc. Do you think any of these companies are going to go IPO? All the 100 billion plus valuation companies? One of the things that I worry about is what happens when these chatbots and public markets collide and what do market pressures do?

19:11And again, like imagine, just think about what the pressure to report quarterly earnings does in the middle of an AI love boom. I mean, that's good for quarterly earnings, right? As everyone is having to upgrade to GPT Pro because your companion is only dating Pro users. but that's i'm not saying imagine saying that on a public earnings call too oh my god yes our dating business is going quite well 100 million users have you know decided to become exclusive with uh no but the truth is that um that is the thing it is i'm not saying the companies will do it but i worry that um if you are there will be pressure and there absolutely will be pressure to sort of turn that dial up and make things spicier which there already is there already There is, but there'll be public market pressure is a different beast.

20:01You know, you miss your quarter by a little bit or you make your quarter by a little bit. It's just what you do versus expectations. And, you know, you could be up or down a sizable percentage. So, yeah. Okay. All right. Here's my, here's my last one. And I'm curious what you think about this. This is the one I'm probably least sure about, but it is increasing AI model efficiency causes a crisis. And we've seen some of this over the past couple of weeks, like Google's for, for instance, Google's new Flash model that they say has pro-level performance at Flash prices and speed. The thing that I really wonder about with this AI moment is, let's say the bots get about as good as they can be without requiring all this compute.

20:48And what happens then? I mean, I guess the pro-AI argument would be like, well, intelligence is now too cheap to meter. So there's going to be a boom in productivity and all these things. I don't know. Actually, I think that feeds in perfectly with my AI has its best and worst year because that's exactly it. I think AI is going to be used by more people in more creative ways and interesting and productive ways. But that doesn't necessarily feed back to the current infrastructure and trade that's been built up around compute and data centers. And I think that fits in exactly. So I'm on board. Who is the company that has the best year, in your opinion, big tech-wise, next year?

21:38I want to come out and say something unexpected like meta with AI. but I don't know. I'm still thinking it's probably Google. Oh, you just made me think of another one. Do you think Alexander Wang? Pinterest. Pinterest, yeah. People love to pin. I think Alexander Wang survives. Oh, that's a good one. But at Meta in 2026, do you think he makes it through? No, I don't. That would be such a disaster for Meta. I think, but I think Mark Zuckerberg after the Metaverse is going to be even more confident about cutting things that aren't working. I think like they saw even again, I mean, I know he said, what was it like?

22:21We can lose like$100 billion, but we still have to compete or whatever it was like. But I think I don't think he's going to let things sit as long as they did just because you made a bet that's not working. Yeah, I mean, there's enough stuff coming out of that place. you know one report okay but there's been multiple reports this year that like it's not really going well i foreshadowed it on the show so you know maybe that that is uh that will be the case and he'll be out all right ron john uh all right i i will predict one last thing we're gonna have a lot of fun talking about this stuff in in 2026 so thank you again for being such a great podcast partner all through this year and uh i i really look forward to our conversations uh every friday thank you for the analysis and the insight and the fun that you bring to the show and looking forward to continuing.

23:14It's the best way to end the week. I agree. All right, everybody. Happy New Year. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. And we will see you in 2026 on Big Technology Podcast.