WEF-Hater Elon Musk Makes Davos Debut & ‘Sinners’ Breaks All-Time Oscars Noms

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0:19Neal Freyman:Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from The Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at The Home Depot. Exclusions apply. See homedepot.com slash price match for details. Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Sinners makes Academy Awards history. And heated rivalry has done the impossible, getting people to care about hockey. It's Friday, January 23rd. Let's ride.

0:52Good morning and happy Friday. Though we are actually recording this Thursday afternoon, since we have a flight out of Switzerland in the morning. The Delta Wi-Fi isn't quite there yet to record a podcast from extreme basic economy. There's been a lot of huge news this week, but for probably the most exciting headline, we're gonna hand it over to social producer Annie Bennett. Annie, what's the good word? We got some breaking news that Morning Brew has a variety show at Caveat in New York City Thursday, February 5th at 7 p.m. If you and your friends wanna watch us bully Toby live on stage, this is the show for you.

1:26What about me? Well, Neil was frankly not invited, but that's okay because he's going to show up anyway and we'll bully him then. So all good. It's going to be the best video, sketch, stand-up. It's the best morning brew content that you can see online, but this time you can't scroll ahead when it's boring. Am I selling this well? Don't answer that.

1:42Neal Freyman:Annie, you could sell water to a fish, but please get out of our studio now. The link to buy tickets to the show will be in our show description. I will be there. Neil will probably be there and we hope to see you there as well. And now a word from our sponsor, Indeed. Toby, what are you doing to make better workforce decisions? I ask our producer Emily what she thinks, then agree with her. Smart man. But for even more insights grounded in real-time data, there's the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. Indeed is there diving into things like how AI is transforming jobs, skills, and employer adoption.

2:16Indeed will be sharing real-time insights into the global labor market and how leaders can navigate the workforce challenges and opportunities ahead.

2:22Neal Freyman:Indeed's helping business leaders and hiring professionals dive into these perspective through Indeed's global labor market and workforce trends report. These insights also include where job opportunities are growing, where skill shortages and mismatches could impact business performance, and how immigration patterns are shaping workforce capacity. Learn more at Indeed.com slash Davos. That's Indeed.com slash Davos. Elon Musk hates Davos. He's said so himself. And yet the world's richest man made a surprise appearance at the World Economic Forum this year, perhaps jealous of MBD's presence here as well.

2:57Neal Freyman:In an interview on the main stage moderated by Larry Fink, Musk waxed on the future as only he can. He hyped up a world where there will eventually be more robots than people. That prediction might have something to do with the fact that he also teased the sale of Tesla's Optimus robots to the public by next year. He didn't hold back on his AI predictions either, saying that he thinks there'll be an AI smarter than any human by the end of this year. And in five years from now, AI quote will be smarter than all of humanity collectively. It wouldn't be a Musk interview without a Mars mention either.

3:29Neal Freyman:And Elon delivered saying, people ask me, do I want to die on Mars? And I'm like, yes, but not on impact. That got a laugh, believe it or not. You could describe the half hour he spent on stage as a collection of his greatest hits. Mars, AI, robots, robo-taxis, all familiar Musk talking points. But given that it bookended the conference, Neil, How did it fit into the broader themes that dominated this year's WEF? Yeah, there was a joke that there were two main themes here in Davos this week, which was Trump and AI. Talked a lot about Trump and the Greenland of it all and the tariffs and the schism between the United States and Europe.

4:05We haven't talked as much about AI, but everyone was talking about it this week. There was a breakout player in AI, and I want to talk about them. It's the company Anthropic. No one knew about this company a few years ago. was just a small AI lab. And now CEO Dario Amadei is seen as one of the true sayers or one of the prognosticators about what a future could look like with mass adoption of AI. And he is someone who is developing AI, but at the same time, quite pessimistic about the possibilities that could lead to huge economic inequality from artificial intelligence. He said that 10 million people, about 7 million of them in Silicon Valley could, quote, decouple from the rest of society.

4:45so they would enjoy as much as 50 % GDP growth while the others were left behind. He painted a picture of the overall global economy growing at five to 10%, which is crazy because of AI, but there would also at the same time be 10 % unemployment. He said that's not a combination we've almost ever seen before. So we haven't heard that much from Anthropic over the past few years, but Dario has become one of the people that people listen to the most when it comes to prognostications about the future.

5:12Neal Freyman:And that fit very well into how the conference kicked off this year, which was Larry Fink, who was kind of running WEF this year, saying, if we're not careful, AI can absolutely exacerbate the global inequality that we have seen emerge over the past few decades. Like that was a main talking point from the very beginning of the conference to the very end. There was also a couple of doomsday prognosticators in terms of will AI be a bubble or not. Brett Taylor, who is the former chair of OpenAI's board, said that AI probably is a bubble that is causing both smart money and dumb money to fund companies like crazy.

5:49Neal Freyman:So that was definitely a buzzy soundbite. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said AI could lose its social permission if it burns too much energy without real-world benefits. So those were some of the more negative soundbites that we heard. Yeah, but Brett Taylor was like, at the end of the day, he's the chairman of OpenAI. He's very bullish on AI. He's the chairman of OpenAI. And he said that however things shake out, this will be a revolutionary technology. And let's talk about our personal experience. We sat here after we recorded these podcasts and interviewed a bunch of founders. And many of them were in the AI space.

6:22And talking to them was really, I thought, very interesting because we talked to them about their businesses. Some were doing AI. Some were not doing AI. But they basically said when ChatGVT was released November 2022, like everything changed about the economy, about their companies. And, you know, obviously they are on the more optimistic side because they are building companies. But it was just striking to hear how much of a hinge point it feels like AI is here at Davos.

6:46Neal Freyman:One of the biggest founders that exemplified that was we talked to a cybersecurity founder. He's like, yeah, companies are getting attacked way more now that AI is a thing, way more sophisticated than ever before. But at the same time, we also have the tools to combat that. So it really is both changing both sides of the equation, oftentimes in security, oftentimes in coding as well. On a non-AI front too, there was some funny stuff that happened in Davos as well. One that I want to mention, French President Emmanuel Macron's aviator sunglasses were a major storyline. He wore them inside during one of his speeches.

7:19Neal Freyman:And internet sleuths kind of figured out what is this brand of sunglasses he's wearing? They're 659 euros. They're French-made frames from Masson Henry Julien, and it basically crashed the brand's website when he went on stage to wearing these things. It made me want to start wearing aviator sunglasses indoors because it's quite the look. And the company's stock was up 28%. We should be clear, he's wearing them not for the fashion statement. Maybe he is, but he also has a burst blood vessel. All right, moving on. Winner, winner, chicken sinners. Ryan Coogler's historical vampire epic, Sinners, scored 16 nominations for the Academy Awards, setting a new record for the most Oscar nominations in history.

7:59The previous record was a tie between Titanic, La La Land, and All About Eve with 14 apiece. After Sinners, Paul Thomas Anderson's action rollercoaster One Battle After Another received 13 nods, making those two films the big winners from the Oscar nomination announcement Thursday morning. They also share a common thread. Both Sinners and One Battle After Another are highly original, Americana-focused films with huge budgets that seem to resonate with our cultural and political moment. Who else is in the running? Well, let's head to Best Picture, the most prestigious category. Joining Sinners in One Battle are Bougonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, and Train Dreams.

8:37For Best Actor, Michael B. Jordan from Sinners and Leo from One Battle will go up against Ethan Hawke from Blue Moon, Wagner Mora from The Secret Agent, and Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme. For Best Actress, Jesse Buckley is the overwhelming favorite for her performance in Hamnet. Also in the running are Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, Kate Hudson in Sing Song Blue, Renata Reinsver from Sentimental Value, and Emma Stone in Bugonia. Toby, I know one of your New Year's resolutions is to become a movie snob. Thoughts on these nominations?

9:06Neal Freyman:Well, I saw Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme, and I saw One Battle After Another. It gets a little dicey for me after that, but my big takeaway from this is that all these roads seem to lead back to Warner Brothers' discovery. Sinners and One Battle After Another were both produced by Warner. And in total, the studio led the entire Oscars nomination process with 30 nods. And then you also have to look over at Netflix because what have we been talking about for months now? Netflix's deal to potentially buy Warner Brothers Discovery. They did pretty well. They had Frankenstein and Train Dreams.

9:39Neal Freyman:They earned 18 nominations as a whole. So you think about combining those two forces into one. That's a lot of Oscar nominations under one roof. one fun under the radar storyline that I think people should look out for. Neon, a very indie producer of foreign language films like Sentimental Value, like The Secret Agent, also racked up 18 nominations. The exact same thing as Netflix with, I would imagine a little bit of a smaller budget. Speaking of Netflix, I wanna talk about K-pop Demon Hunters. Now, K-pop Demon Hunters is Netflix's most viewed movie ever. It got a few weekends in theaters, so it doesn't show up so much in the Oscars, but it is nominated for best song, best original song.

10:20Of course, that song is Golden. So I think that's got to win. That's one of my favorite songs of the year.

10:25Neal Freyman:The amount of times I've prepped for this show while listening to Golden, it is permanently seared into my brain. One other thing to look at as well is Ryan Coogler's deal that made a bunch of waves a few months ago. Remember, Ryan Coogler, director of Sinners, had this very unorthodox agreement with Warner Brothers for Sinners, which means he will actually own the movie outrate in 2050. This is not a thing movie studios do. Movie studios are valued based off how good their catalogs are. They don't want to give up those catalogs lightly. This kind of completely changed the game. Is this going to change the way that Hollywood makes deals with directors?

11:01Neal Freyman:The fact that Sinners is now the most nominated movie ever is only going to make this movie even more valuable and make that deal look even more present. So the question now is, is anyone going to watch the Oscars? That's what we've all been asking for the past few years. Last year, Conan O 'Brien hosted and the ratings hit a five-year high for ABC. About 19.7 million people tuned in. That was up from 19.5 million the year before. As recently as 2019, there were 30 million people watching the Oscars. So Conan O 'Brien is going again. This is happening in the middle of March. And then, of course, in 2029, the Oscars is leaving ABC and going to YouTube.

11:36And we're going to see how that changes the telecast. I hope it makes it shorter, but it's not going to be because YouTube doesn't have to end for anything coming after. And the problem is this thing, runtime last year, was three hours and 50 minutes.

11:48Neal Freyman:Listen, we saw the Golden Globes at a podcast category this year. Oscars, just think about it. Academy Awards, just think about it. We're sitting right here. Moving on, it's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, the segment where we pick one stock that cooks their pasta perfectly al dente and one stock that lets those noodles get soggy. I won the pre-show game of a biathlon out here in Davos, so I'm up first. And my Stock of the Week has been seeing hockey stick growth. It's literally the game of hockey. In the wake of the breakout HBO hit Heated Rivalry, interest in the actual game is heating up too.

12:23Neal Freyman:SeatGeek said its weekly hockey ticket sales jumped over 20 % after the show first aired last year, while StubHub saw searches jump 75%, according to Bloomberg. Hollander and Rosanoff are introducing a lot of new fans to the game. Bloomberg talked to Nyala Williams, a part-time book content creator on TikTok who spent$175 on a solo ticket to watch the Florida Panthers play after watching the show. StubHub is seeing this reflected in their data as well with hockey ticket purchases from first-time buyers jumping 5%. For anyone, Kof Neal, who has missed the rise of this show, the story which documents a steamy romance between two rival hockey players is based on the book series from Rachel Reed called Game Changers.

13:07Neal Freyman:Before HBO picked it up, The show was produced for Crave, a Canadian streaming service, and was filmed around Ontario, Canada on a shoestring budget. It's since turned into a full-on phenomenon. Neil, you haven't seen it yet, but the game itself is seeing a major boost. When we come back to the United States, there's going to be a massive snowstorm, and I promise I will binge it then. You have a long flight home, too. We have a long flight home. I will watch it at some point over the next couple of days. Pretty cool to see how hockey teams and the NHL are capitalizing it. they are fully embracing this.

13:39And why shouldn't they? The Ottawa Senators have this official team shop. They're selling jerseys featuring the names and numbers of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rosanoff, who I know by name, even though I haven't watched the show, because you've talked about it so much. They sold out of jerseys at an actual game last Saturday night. So they are fully leaning into it. Similar to what happened with Taylor Swift and the Chiefs. They, they saw the Chiefs saw home game ticket sales triple after Taylor Swift started going out with Travis Kelsey. And, you know, that brought a whole new audience to NFL. and looks like we're seeing the same thing with hockey.

14:09Neal Freyman:It is touching so many different parts of culture too. SoulCycle has hosted nearly 100 heated rivalry-themed rides. On Sunday in New York City, there's going to be a major snowstorm, but also scheduled is a Connor Story and Hudson Williams, the two actors, look-alike contest. Do you think I would make the cut? I don't think you will, but I think I have a little bit of Rosenoff in me. That might be a little bold of me to say. And then tattoo parlors are also being inundated with requests of inside jokes from the show saying, I am coming to the cottage has been a vocal stim for me over the past few weeks.

14:43Neal Freyman:It is really a great show and you absolutely should watch it. And it's amazing how it came to HBO. So just weeks before it streamed on this streaming service, Crave, it landed on the desk of HBO head Casey Boyes and he binged it over one weekend like I'm about to do. And he said like, I can't believe this just fell into my lap. This is available, are you serious? And then he put it on HBO. They're licensing it for$600 ,000 per episode, extremely cheap, and has become one of the most breakout hits in television in the last few years. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's Dog of the Week.

15:17Neal Freyman:Time for our Morning Brew Daily Davos update with Lightspeed. We are joined by Lightspeed co-founder and partner Ravi Matra. Ravi, you've been doing this a long time. What's your personal rule for staying ahead of trends in tech before they're obvious? Understand the technology deeply and think about the trend line for where technology is going, not where it is. Investing in technology is all about almost thinking a little bit outside of yourself to understand that we're on an exponential curve and not just plotting ahead linearly. And that forces you to have to understand deeply what technology might be capable of and imagining what's possible.

15:52and then getting a sense of being right on the timing for when that knee in the curve and inflection is gonna happen and arriving either just before or at the time when that inflection is starting to emerge.

16:03Neal Freyman:Thank you, Ravi. We have learned so much about the tech space this week at Davos and are very thankful to be working with Lightspeed to make all of this happen. And be sure to head to our YouTube channel for special interviews with Lightspeed founders all week. We just posted one with Yotam Segev, who is the CEO and co-founder of Syriera, a company using AI to monitor cybersecurity. Thank you again to our friends at Lightspeed and the generous founders who have gave us their time to talk about robot brains, fusion energy, space satellites, and more. Give our YouTube page a follow at Morning Brew Daily Show to watch all weekend long.

16:35Now, Toby, I hope you don't mind, but I couldn't really find a good candidate for dog of the week. So I'm going to piggyback with another stock of the week. I promise it's interesting.

16:43Neal Freyman:Piggyback away, Neil. Okay, my stock of the week is Toto, the Japanese high-end toilet maker. Its stock just had its best day in five years, shooting up 11%. But here's the thing. The surge has nothing to do with increasing demand for futuristic toilets and everything to do with the AI infrastructure build-out. It starts to make sense when you learn that Toto has a separate business making what's known as electrostatic chucks that are used in the chip-making process. Toto uses its expertise in ceramics that go in its toilets to produce these chucks, and demand for chucks is expected to boom alongside AI.

17:16and AI just got a shot in the arm from none other than Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. At Davos this week, Huang said that the AI boom has started the largest infrastructure build out in human history, claiming that trillions of dollars will be spent on powering the next industrial revolution. Those comments lifted the stocks of AI companies across the board, including the AI stock you never thought about, Toto Toilets.

17:37Neal Freyman:This is so funny. What do you mean the same ceramic that you sit on on a toilet but is perfect for the AI revolution as well. It's not the exact same, but their advances in ceramic technology do translate very well to this industry. They have great strength when you compare them to different metals. It's lighter than metal. It does not interfere electrically with chip making tools. That is why ceramic is such in high demand right now. And I do just want to zoom out a little bit to the wider memory industry right now because it is ripping. It is unbelievable the stocks that are doing well, Not only in Korea with SK Hynix and Samsung who have seen stock run-ups, but also American companies like Micron and SanDisk are doing well.

18:19Neal Freyman:Micron is up 250 % over the last six months. It's now the 25th biggest company in the entire US. And SanDisk, the little things you used to plug into your computer in school, is up over 1 ,000 % in the past six months. That sentence alone is very difficult to get used to saying. So toss in Toto and its electrostatic chucks. You never know what's going to pop these days. And it's not so unique for a Japanese company that makes something entirely different to also have a product, a similar product in the semiconductor supply chain. There's an MSG seasoning inventor that makes chip insulating films, which is because it's so good about amino acids.

19:00And there's a cosmetic firms that sells facial cleaners, but it also has a chip wafer cleaning business. So they've been making chips for decades in Japan. So if you have a factory and you make something that could potentially be, you know, massaged a little bit to fit into the semiconductor supply chain, you're going to do it. And these companies are seeing huge successes because of the AI boom.

19:19Neal Freyman:We're treating this as like a fun side business for Toto. But at this point, it's basic. It's almost their main business. 42 % of its total operating income came from this neck of the woods. So at a certain point, maybe it's not a toilet company anymore. It becomes, you know, an electrostatic Chuck company. Okay, but just know that the demand for toilets, for their Japanese high-tech toilets, is actually booming here. Toto's profits in the Americas have grown more than eightfold over the past five years. More than two in five renovating homeowners in the US are choosing to install toilets with specialty features like bidets, like heating.