📺 “TBOY on CNN” — Our 5 Big Biz Trends of 2025 & 2026

0:00Yetis, Nick and Jack here with you from the T-Boy studio. A couple of weeks ago, Nick and I recorded a segment on CNN. Yeah, cable news network. We went old school for this one. Lights, camera, action. We did a hit for their Christmas Eve special, and we loved it so much, we asked if we could publish it right here on the pod. And then Jack and I were in front of our Christmas trees watching this thing live on CNN, and hopefully you did too. We were on TV, and if you want to see it, you can check out our YouTube, or you can just listen right here. Because in this mini episode we're publishing for you, we got to chat with CNN about the business highlights of 2025 and what to expect in 2026.

0:36We had a lot of fun on camera, so we wanted to share it with the besties and yetis right here. All right, Jack, hair and makeup ready to go. Push and play. T-Boy hits CNN. 2025 was a big year for business, from soaring stocks to a surge in investment into AI by tech companies to the struggles of Americans with persistent inflation. What happens on Wall Street matters more than ever to Main Street. So what does 2026 have in store? Jack Kravicci Kramer and Nick Martel are the hosts of the Best One Yet Business podcast, and they join us now. So, fellas, thanks so much for being with us. Let's talk trends for next year.

1:10You all have said that you see some trends that could develop into the new year, including self-driving cars. Waymo is planning an expansion to more cities next year. How do you see that playing out, Jack? Merry Christmas Eve, Boris and Brianna. Great to be here. 2025 was the year that self-driving finally arrived at its destination, right, Nick? Okay, yeah. Here in San Francisco, you got Waymo, five cities it's expanded to, 20 more planned for next year. You got Tesla robo-taxis catching up. I took one to work today to get to this studio. You got Amazon Zoox already in Las Vegas and San Francisco.

1:46Robo-taxis are expanding next year at a pace that was not expected. But here's what, Jack, I think is even less expected, and it's going to be a public attention win for the robo-taxi industry. What do we got, Jack? Our 2026 kind of eccentric prediction is the first self-driving hotel. We're talking red-eye robo-taxi rides. So you go to sleep in your self-driving car in one city and you wake up in another. Because to convince a skeptical public that self-driving cars are actually safe, you need a public spectacle. And a red-eye robo-taxi ride is just that. I kind of like that. That's a good idea.

2:23I've had to do something similar in, you know, moving between stories at times. Brianna, this is actually inspired by a book we read about the Brooklyn Bridge. So when they built that bridge across the East River, New Yorkers didn't believe it's possible that such a gigantic spanning bridge could hold people. So they called up the Ringling Brothers Circus and got a dozen elephants in broad daylight to walk across the bridge. That's the kind of public spectacle that we think Americans are going to need to believe that self-driving cars are safe. So a CEO is going to live stream his eight-hour snooze on YouTube going from San Francisco to Las Vegas in a red-eye robo-taxi ride.

3:01Or maybe they can just move an elephant from city to city in a robo-taxi. I would like that. I like what you're paying homage to. I think that would be excellent. Okay, so Nick, big deals were also the norm this year, especially for tech companies. And you think, you know, we could see some giant IPOs in 2026. Who, how much are we talking about? What do you think? Oh, we are talking, Brian, about something Jack and I call IPO loser. IPO, of course, standing for initial public offering. In 2026, Jack and I think it stands for initial public outburst, because there are going to be more IPOs in 2026 of bigger size than since there was an actual wall on Wall Street.

3:41First up, everyone is focusing on the trillion dollar valuation of a SpaceX IPO. Then you've got people focusing on Anthropic and OpenAI. The first pure play AI hyperscalers going public. So we think there's going to be a battle, and this is going to be the key word next year, over ticker symbols. Who is going to get the stock tickers for Mars? You know, SpaceX is going to jump on that. And who's going to get the ticker symbol so coveted GPT? It's going to be Anthropic or it's going to be OpenAI. One of them is going to go public first and snag that. And we're looking at potentially$5 trillion worth of size, $3 to$5 trillion for the first time in public markets IPO.

4:23Although, Nick, everyone's talking about Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Kim Kardashian may be the most culturally exciting IPO if it happens with Skims. Ticker symbol for that's got to be Kim. They're selling a billion dollars of merchandise right now, which has grown so fast. Their private market valuation is five times that,$5 billion. They're adding 18 new stores in 2026. That's faster than Kris Jenner can get a facelift. If skins hit the public stock market, that might be even more exciting than SpaceX. Those ticker symbols are obviously going to carry a lot of meaning and weight and influence.

4:58At the same time, other companies, though, are hitting rough patches. Some are looking to rebound with new CEOs. Who do you all see having a bounce back year in 2026, starting with you, Jack? So two iconic brands, one of which Nick owns stock in, sorry, Nick, have hit their darkest moments in decades. We're talking about Nike and Starbucks. Both have new CEOs. Both have had deep stock market declines this year. And both have a ton of new competition. But the question is, to quote Batman, is the night darkest before the dawn? Are Nike and Starbucks going to have big comebacks in 2026? We think the stage is set for that.

5:36Yes, they seem to have hit lows. And so Jack and I have been working on what can they do to lean into mega trends right now, macro trends to boost the stocks. And to start with Nike, we see a huge opportunity in hospitality. You look at the hospitality industry in 2025, it thrived despite what may be happening in the economy for many Americans. You've got Louis Vuitton and other fashion brands launching hotels. That was unexpected. You've got Restoration hardware doubling down as a company that makes home goods on hotels. So we think there's an opportunity for Nike to expand into resorts, to build back the brand by going in full-on hospitality, which is the ultimate expression of a brand and the best way to experience a brand.

6:18So we think Nike can stage a comeback. Remember, they got a new CEO, Elliot. He's been there for about a year now. He can finally, now that he's done his cost cutting, he can finally start investing where the company has done things that it hasn't done before. And we think the first opportunity is in Nike hospitality. Just do it. Yeah. Again, we have a skeptical public that isn't sure that Nike is cutting edge when it comes to performance. Brooks, On Running, Hoka, they've all kind of taken the lead in this running shoe race. But Nike could convince a skeptical public with a big public spectacle, the Nike Hotel Resort.

6:51It's all about fitness, cutting edge materials, functional health, a wardrobe when you walk into the hotel room full of all your Nike gear and the size that you told them ahead. the ultimate gym to try out all that gear. So look, it might be a little bit of a crazy PR stunt, but that would get our attention. And we'd be like, whoa, Nike is back, baby. I like your big ideas. And I don't mean to quibble with Batman, but it's not darkest before the dawn. That's pre-dawn. It gets lighter right before the dawn. But nonetheless, I think we would welcome that maybe for both of those companies. I'm going to check with Commissioner Gordon on that.

7:24Yeah, check. I would. I think he's going to back me up. So Nick, affordability. I mean, that's what everyone throws around here in politics in Washington. That is like the word of the moment. How could that be impacting businesses next year? Yeah, Brianna, the word of the year on Wall Street was trillion. Jack and I said the word trillion more times this year than we have in any other year. As in, NVIDIA hit a$5 trillion valuation. Elon Musk got a trillion dollar pay package. Sam Altman announced a trillion dollars of AI data centers. But you do have a case-shaped economy here. So what we also saw this past year was that Carvana, Walmart, TJ Maxx, their stocks hit all-time highs.

8:04It's something Jack and I call the thrift economy, the real real, where you can buy and sell secondhand clothes. Their stock jumped. Get this, ThredUp stock was up nearly 500 % this year. One of the most popular stories Jack and I did in our podcast this year was on Americans buying and selling Gucci and Louis Vuitton, trading clothes to make money off of them from their closets. So this thrift economy was a big theme of the previous year. So Jack, what are we going to be looking forward to next year to build off the thrift economy? Yeah, looking backwards, we've had three and a half painful years of inflation and people demanding lower prices.

8:39Will 2026 be the year that businesses actually offer us lower prices? We've been tracking Slate Automotive, which is bringing to market a$25 ,000 electric pickup truck. Rivian and General Motors and Ford, too. They seem to realize that affordability is top of mind when it comes to cars. No more$50 ,000 new cars anymore. Give us something a little cheaper. We're also expecting to see the rise of Chinese brands hitting American markets in 2026. Maybe BYD vehicles finally hit the road. Mi Shui has a bubble tea craze that's going nuts in China. Luckin Coffee, which undercuts Starbucks in China. It's already in New York City and has big expansion plans here too.

9:19And that leads to a big thing we're expecting in 2026. one of our business predictions is the rise of the dupe apartment store. That's right, a dupe department store. The idea here is that everything in the store would be a lower priced version of an expensive name brand product. And you'd be seeing this in retail. We're already seeing this play out online, but we haven't yet seen this play out in brick and mortar. We're talking a store filled with products, 80 % of the value for 20 % of the price. Think of the Trader Joe's model, but applied to fashion, retail, electronics, bubble tea, coffee.

9:55We could see this across the spectrum, the idea of the dupe apartment store. I was going to say, if they do that and there's bubble tea, I am in. Jack Carvici-Kramer, Nick Martel, really appreciate the conversation. Thank you guys so much. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having us on. And of course, you can hear The Best One Yet wherever you listen to podcasts. And we'll be right back. Yetis, Nick and Jack back in the studio with you here. We are off for one more week, but then we return to your usual daily T-Boy pod on Monday, January 5th. Hang on a sec. I want to ask, what'd you think of that Kris Jenner joke I dropped?

10:31Funny thing about that joke, Yetis, Nick wrote it, but I delivered it. Stuck the landing on it, Jack. A plus on the execution. Now, our first pod of 2026 is going to be our best one yet. It's our three big business wishes for 2026. That's right. Our first pod back. We're predicting some wild pop biz ideas. Can't wait to see you next Monday. But again, we're off the rest of this week. So as a final toast to 2025, make it a T-boy, everybody. Celebrate the wins.

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