BlackRock’s Tony Kim on AI Deals, Goldman Sachs Economist’s AI Report, AI Accounting | Nov 4, 2025

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the Informations TI TV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Tuesday, November 4th. We have got a jam-packed show for you today. First up, we've got our earnings blitz. Uber and Shopify reported this morning. Palantir reported last night. We've got our reporters coming on to help us break them all down. We've also just published some big news that Anthropic is dramatically raising its growth forecasts. We'll tell you more about that shortly. And after that, we're bringing on our editor-in-chief, Jessica Lesson, for some broader reflections on AI in this moment with our friends over at BlackRock.

0:49We've also got Goldman Sachs coming on the show to talk about some new data they have on how companies are using AI. And we're going to close things out with a special segment, the launch of the information's 50 most promising startups known as TI50. Subscribers can get the full list on our website, but all week, we're going to be giving you a preview with conversations with some of those founders. It's going to be a busy show, so let's get right on into things. Shopify reported earnings this morning. The company reported 32 % revenue growth, though the more interesting story is, of course, the growth rates of the different business lines.

1:24Here to break it all down is our e-commerce reporter, Anne Guillen. Anne, welcome to the show. It's great to have you this morning. Hi, Akash. Great to see you. So let's talk Shopify. What stood out for you from the earnings this morning? Yeah, so I think one of the most notable things is their revenue growth kind of keeps chugging right along that roughly 30 % growth rate has been what they've been posting for the past several quarters. So investors really like to see that, and they haven't really seen any slowdown or any dent from increased tariffs. They also say they haven't really seen a meaningful slowdown in consumer spending, which is something that a lot of investors are tracking really closely right now.

2:06So I think that top line number was pretty well received and I think kind of in line with what people were expecting. and Shopify has been really pushing to kind of expand in, you know, what hasn't historically been their kind of core categories. So they've been growing a lot with merchants that are based in Europe. They've been growing a lot with merchants that do more of their sales in brick and mortar stores versus online. So they're really kind of continuing to sell this story that they're for more than just online sales and they can really work with any kind of retailer, which, you know, is what investors want to see.

2:42I think the one kind of interesting thing to call out from the earnings this morning were that their costs rose a little bit this quarter, and they said that was mostly due to increased marketing expenses as well as some R &D costs, but also increased spending on AI, which is another story that Shopify has been looking to really lean into lately. How are they leaning into AI broadly from what you've seen? So it's kind of twofold. It's both internally, you know, within the company to speed up their operations. They talk a lot about being very AI native, using AI for product development, product feedback, understanding what merchants want from Shopify, but then also, you know, incorporating it into their products as well.

3:30So a couple of weeks ago, they announced a partnership with OpenAI to make it easier for all of the merchants that are already using Shopify's software to sell products through OpenAI's new e-commerce features. So that's something that a lot of people are really excited about. But I think that that approach is pretty in line with how Shopify has historically approached some of these newer sales channels or places to sell. If you think back to the launch of something like TikTok Shop, Shopify was very early to partner with them. So I think it's just kind of a continued, you know, another example of Shopify really making a big effort to help their merchants kind of sell anywhere they possibly can.

4:15And obviously being early to AI is something that investors are really excited about. Great. Well, Anne, I want to thank you for coming on. We should say that shares were down this morning, and I think part of that might have to do with the guidance as well that the company gave that, as you said, growth is north of 30 % right now. They're thinking it's going to come down into the mid to high 20s, and so that will be something to watch in the quarter. But I want to thank you for coming on. That is Anne Guillen, our e-commerce reporter here at The Information. Uber shares were falling this morning, as were Palantir shares.

4:47Uber reported this morning. Palantir reported last night. Both companies reported pretty strong results. Palantir, of course, is on a bit of a rocket ship right now. I want to bring on our financial analysis columnist, Anita Ramaswamy, to help us break it all down. Anita, good morning to you. It's great to see you. Good morning, Akash. Good to be here. So let's talk Uber and let's talk Palantir. I want to start with Uber because they reported this morning. What stood out to you from the results? So the biggest thing was the top line news, which is that Uber actually grew its trips by 22 % year over year, which is the fastest growth rate that we've seen from this company in the last couple of years.

5:24And I think that's really significant because a big part of their success recently has been the growth, rapid growth in their delivery business, which is the Uber Eats and grocery delivery that they're growing out. And they're also at a pivotal time in their ride-hailing business as they invest more in autonomous vehicles. So there was a lot of chatter about that on the call from Dara as well. Right, and I should say, I was listening to the call this morning. The interesting thing was revenue overall accelerated, but both of those business lines, mobility and delivery accelerated, and delivery was on a bit of a rocket ship.

5:54Can you talk a little bit about what you make of that? And is delivery the future here? I mean, I was listening to the call. There was a lot of talk about autonomous vehicles. There was a lot of talk about Europe. Just talk to me broadly about where you see the business going. Yeah, so I mean, taking a step back in both businesses, Uber has grown a lot faster in the US than it's been able to grow internationally. The growth rate in its international business actually stayed pretty much stagnant this quarter. So that was one potential reason why we saw the stock fall a little bit. But when it comes to the delivery business and the mobility business, delivery is a lot smaller, but it's growing a lot faster.

6:30It's a newer line of business for them. And I thought the most impressive number or metric in this earnings report was actually that adjusted EBITDA grew around 30 % over that actually in the delivery business specifically. And that's notable, Akash, because right now Uber Eats is making a big push into grocery delivery. And grocery delivery is tough. It's an area where companies like Amazon have historically struggled. It's not as profitable as restaurant delivery typically. And so it's possible that we've seen this acceleration in Uber Eats now, but that may not be as sustainable in the long term as the mix of business shifts more and more towards the grocery side.

7:09I mean, Uber CEO, Darukh Otsrashahi, said on the earnings call that grocery delivery is actually growing a lot faster than traditional delivery on the Uber side of the house. And we obviously know that Uber has just come into profitability as of the last couple quarters, last year. I can't remember when it was, but I remember it was a big deal when they finally turned a profit and everyone was sort of saying, oh, my gosh, what a story it's been. And the talk on the call this morning was we were making these investments into autonomous vehicles, into grocery, as you say. We are staying committed to profitability.

7:38And so, as you said, that adjusted EBITDA number is certainly something to pay attention to. Let's pivot quickly to talk about Palantir. This is a very different story. What stood out to you there? Gosh, it's hard to pick one number because the numbers are all so big when it comes to Palantir. Yeah, it is tough. But I think the biggest, most eye-popping number, Akash, that I was really thinking about when it comes to Palantir is the growth in their U.S. commercial business. They grew revenue in that business by 121%. and last quarter - More than doubled, more than doubled. Yeah. It's been growing really rapidly in the last couple of quarters and Palantir is traditionally known, I think, to a lot of folks as a business that focuses on government revenue.

8:22That is a big chunk of their business, but their commercial platform, the artificial intelligence platform, AIP, which they've been selling to a lot of different enterprises to help these companies get their data houses in order to run AI apps has been wildly successful and has started to actually overshadow growth in the U.S. government business. So this is kind of interesting, though. The commercial business is booming. It's more than doubled. Revenue growth was still just as strong, I think, as last quarter. And yet, shares are down this morning. People are saying maybe it's just kind of a cool off of a stock that is trading at around 100 times next 12 months revenue.

8:58What do you think the stock being down today says? I think it just goes to show exactly what you said, that expectations are sky high for this company. When investors are making projections, if you take the discounted cash flow method and you look at the next one or two years, you can say, okay, Palantir is going to continue to grow really fast. We've seen a lot of momentum. But beyond that, it's completely uncertain. And most of the value of that share price is coming from the years past year one and year two, which we don't have any visibility into. I mean, we know that their commercial platform is selling well now, but at the end of the day, that's not been their bread and butter.

9:30It's a very new and sort of not tried, not tested portion of their revenue. And so even if you assume Palantir is going to grow upwards of 30 % for the next, let's say, five years, 10 years into perpetuity, that still doesn't come anywhere close to justifying a$200 per share price. I think the price at that point would be somewhere maybe closer to$50 per share. Have you written a true value column yet on Palantir? You did write one, right? I did write one when the price, I believe, was trading a bit closer to that$50 per share. We'll link it in the show notes. I have to refresh myself, but I remember you having written about it.

10:06Thank you, Anita, for coming on. It is a busy time for earnings, so we'll get you back to it. We've got a number of other companies reporting, and so I'm sure we will see you later on this week. That is Anita Ramaswamy, our financial analysis columnist here at The Information. Much has been made above OpenAI's financials, but a new exclusive story in The Information this morning reveals the latest picture of Anthropics' financials. The company is projecting it will grow its top line at a staggering pace, unsurprisingly, and in some categories of its business, it's actually doing even better than OpenAI.

10:37I want to bring on Sri Mupiti, who wrote that story this morning to help us break it all down. Sri, it's great to see you. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Great to be here. So let's talk about this big scoop that you had this morning. Lay out the numbers for us. Anthropic is also on a bit of a rocket ship. Exactly. Anthropic is growing really quickly. What we reported earlier today is that Anthropic expects to generate$70 billion in revenue and$17 billion in profits in 2028. And that's in its most optimistic projections. Basically, Anthropic had raised its revenue projections to be higher than before.

11:13When they had last made projections, they're shared with investors back before its March raise, which was done in late 2024. And what we see is that, as I said, that Anthropik is growing much faster than expected. It actually expects to be cash flow positive as soon as 2027, when it will generate$3 billion in profits that year. And comparing it to OpenAI that year, OpenAI expects to have$35 billion cash for it and won't actually be profitable till 2030. So let's talk about where the revenue is coming from, because the breakdown is slightly different than compared with OpenAI. Exactly. Anthropic has two main revenue drivers.

11:53The first is its main B2B business, which is selling Anthropics models to business customers via an application programming interface, also known as an API. And that makes up roughly 80 % of Anthropics business through 2028. So for this year, for example, Anthropic expects to generate$3.8 billion from API and related sales. That's roughly about double what OpenAI expects to generate from API sales. Although, of course, OpenAI generates a vast majority of its revenue from ChatGPT. That's just a comparison point. The second line of Anthropics business is its prosumer business, which is basically selling consumers or employees who pay with their own credit card access to Anthropics Cloud subscription premium features.

12:36This includes, for example, the popular coding tool, Cloud Code, and the subscriptions for access to these premium features range from$17 to$150 per month. And the other piece that we had reported, and that's a big revenue driver for Anthropic as well, is cloud code is just growing really quickly amongst both developers and even data scientists and other folks that want to generate something really quickly. And they're expected to generate close to$1 billion in annualized revenue as well. So the thing that stood out to me from your story is what you were mentioning earlier. The revenue is one thing, but profitability is the thing that is very much in vogue right now for AI companies.

13:14And like you said, Anthropic is planning to get to generating free cash flow much sooner than OpenAI. Broadly speaking, the margins feel like they're a lot better than OpenAI. Do we have any sense for how Anthropic is being more efficient than OpenAI? What's at the root of all this? So actually, Anthropic had negative margins last year. They had roughly negative 94 % gross margins last year, comparing that to OpenAI's 43 or so percent for last year. But Anthropic expects to have slightly higher margins for this year as well as into the future as compared to OpenAI. For example, Anthropic expects 50 % this year and then roughly 77 % in 2028.

13:55OpenAI, meanwhile, has 46 % this year and 67 % in 2028. I think what the slight differences might be is that Anthropic, for example, only includes the cost of running its AI models and products for its paying users, but not paying users, while OpenAI includes the cost for both. The other piece is that Anthropic just has more focus in terms of serving just, for example, business customers, which makes up 80 % of its revenue, versus OpenAI is very diversified across different types of products. And so there might be variance in terms of the margins as well there. Right. And I was going to say, all of this is leading up to, of course, the anticipation of whether or not Anthropic is going to fundraise.

14:38They obviously have better numbers now to do it. When do we think we can expect that? And what are you hearing? I'm hearing chatter that investors are excited to pour more money. There were a lot of investors that weren't able to get into the last round and it was really oversubscribed. And so I believe that if it were to raise, which we reported this morning, Anthropic could probably expect a valuation between$300 billion to$400 billion. And so comparing that to OpenAI's recent$500 billion and its employee tender, they're really going head to head. And so I'm excited to see the next couple of months play out as well.

15:10Great. Well, Sri, it was a great story. And I anticipate that we're going to have more reporting from you in the days and weeks to come. Thank you for coming on. That is Sri Mupiti, who covers all things OpenAI and Anthropic here at The Information. Okay, it is only Tuesday, and already the two big news stories from the week, OpenAI's$38 billion deal with AWS and our scoop this morning about Anthropics booming financials, show the sheer scale of this moment in AI. I want to bring on our editor-in-chief, Jessica Lesson, and Tony Kim, BlackRock's head of global tech within the firm's equities practice, for a bit of a broader view on what this news all means.

15:46Jessica and Tony, it's great to have you. Good to see you. Thanks, Akash. Hey, Tony. Hi, guys. Great to be here. So I'm excited for this discussion. Jessica, look, it's been a really busy week. What do you make of the flurry of the OpenAI deals that have been going on, the deal yesterday, the news this morning? What's your view on it all? You know, obviously, the OpenAI AWS deal is really notable. It's a teeny amount of money, OpenAI spending, you know,$38 billion relative to its compute. but it's an alliance that honestly was not clear we were gonna see in AI two years ago, maybe two months ago, right?

16:22OpenAI was partnered with Microsoft. Obviously its compute needs have changed that, but seeing them as now a partner with AWS, I think is very interesting and raises a lot of questions for me about the broader relationship between these two companies. We know shopping is a big priority for OpenAI. So I think, you know, what I've learned in, a long time of tech reporting is there's always a lot of negotiation behind the deal. So I think it's an intriguing deal for what it might portend in the future for the companies. And when you say portend for the future, what questions does it raise for you about the future of open AI and the deals that it might seek to strike in the future?

17:01Well, I think if you zoom out, Akash, we're seeing, I'll call it a multilateralism, That's a very fancy word that's happening in AI and sort of these big tech giants that we haven't seen in a while. Open AI also has a deal with Google. Clearly, its chief rival in Google Cloud, we know that Google is pushing TPUs. And I think and continue to hear that people are very excited about the progress in TPUs and expecting big things for them. This is Google's chip that competes with NVIDIA. And so all of a sudden, these companies that were kind of in their lanes as rivals are still competing head to head.

17:43But the unprecedented compute needs and just the realities of building this next layer of AI, whether it involves agents that span multiple sites, is leading to shifting alliances. And so I think it's exciting as someone who loves business reporting and just kind of believes you can learn a lot by understanding the relationships between these companies in terms of what products are coming. It is kind of an unprecedented moment where people are no longer in their lanes and they're kind of frenemies to a whole new level. Tony, I want to come to you because one of the interesting points here Jessica is making about multilateralism is the number of Mag7 companies, for example, that OpenAI is doing deals with.

18:28And we obviously saw that I think six of the seven Mag7 companies have reported now, NVIDIA is coming up. But what I want to get your sense on is how this is affecting valuations. We already know the story that once OpenAI issues a press release, they've done a deal with a company, we can expect the stocks to come up. and it ends up influencing the market more broadly. But what do you make for this moment for big tech valuations more broadly as you see it? As I list the valuations, I think there is a... there's constantly changing. I think Jessica said a lot of this is multilateralism. This...

19:07the amount of compute that is necessary, no one entity can fulfill it all. So this is causing frenemies and cooperation, co-opetition, and it's diffusing across all the Mach 7 plus, in general, the top 10 tech companies. In the beginning, I think when these deals were announced, these multi-year, hundreds of billions of dollar commitments, you're seeing large stock reactions. as people start to digest and decipher what the implications of these commitments are. And then, as we continue going through this earnings season, certain reactions, certain announcements don't have the same kind of reaction.

19:58In some cases, they do. In some cases, they don't. And what is now being digested is, okay, well, these are some mega commitments. commitments, what is then the implications of those commitments in terms of balance sheet, cash flow, debt, et cetera. And so you do see different reactions. And I think it's now we're going to this next level and looking at, we have to look at the balance sheets. We have to look at the free cash flow to fund these commitments. In some cases, those companies that have higher firepower, if you will, capacity to fund this, might get a better reaction than those that are a little more strained in terms of ability to fund this.

20:43So, you know, that is kind of how I see the evolution of the reaction for earnings season. But in the beginning, you know, a few months ago, you would say this is unbelievable, unprecedented number of multi-year commitments. But now, you know, there is the re-examination of that. Jessica, Tony's making a good point here about how these companies fund all this investment. We saw the CapEx numbers last week ticking up. And I wondered if you could help us put the latest CapEx boom into context. We've seen upticks in CapEx over the past couple of years. What do you think of this moment for CapEx? I don't think there is a context, although Tony would be much, you know, great authority on this.

21:25But we're certainly in really uncharted territory. I mean, obviously the market's reaction to Meta's news last week was notable because it wasn't just the continuation of, great, spending more, you know, we're more optimistic, right? So there's some shifts there, but the big picture is that investors are kind of buying the story. I think Tony, you know, bringing up free cashflow is the next level. I'm also curious, and we love Tomi's opinion on this. You know, I'm curious about the public market's appetite for these fast growing, but money losing AI companies. I'm not talking about, you know, yes, it would be awesome or so interesting, awesome in a journalist business news sense, you know, to see an open AI anthropic IPO.

22:18I don't think they're around the corner per se because they still have a lot of options. But as we look into next year, I do think, and our team continues to hear, more people may be testing the public markets to that point, Akash, of where's this money coming from? But that's still a very open question for me, where investors are going to net out on that. Tony, pick up on what Jessica's saying here. Sure, absolutely. Let me give some numbers, maybe frame this. And Jessica's right. We might not have seen the quantum of dollars. We've never seen the sheer aggregate number of spend. We're talking trillions now.

22:58But it's a percentage of global GDP. We've had higher spending in the beginning of electricity or the Industrial Revolution. But in terms of the dollar spend right now, if you take the 10 biggest tech companies, including the big foundation model companies, they have roughly a trillion dollars of EBITDA. They also have roughly net debt of zero. So they're not levered. The balance sheet and the cash are roughly equivalent. And there's a trillion dollars of EBITDA. And there's a couple hundred billion dollars of free cash flow after roughly about a 600 billion or more of CapEx next year. So as we said, there's a trillion dollars of what I call EBITDA and no debt, no effective net debt.

23:57When you start looking at other industries and other kind of the amount of debt that can be sustained, could you lever these things up one, two, three times net debt to EBITDA? So I don't think generally tech companies have historically not added leverage, but I think there is no doubt that with the amount of the trillions of dollars of CapEx that are potentially coming, there will be leverage that will be necessary. So if you went to one times EBITDA, you'd be at a trillion dollars of additional capacity, which most of that will come through leverage in my opinion. and then there'll be, if you did the two times EBITDA, it'll be two trillion.

24:43So, you know, and that's the kind of the, what is coming in terms of the help fund. So there is capacity to fund this from the 10 biggest tech companies. And then there is a, what I call it, a cascade downstream, right? You're going to have the biggest spenders with the best credit ratings to drive the spending. And then from what I see, I still think there's a room to run. And then there will be then, you know, then you're seeing what you're seeing, as I think Jessica mentioned, you're seeing a lot of these other diffusion of other data center providers and power, real estate, and all these things that will then serve these big companies because you're doing some of it.

25:34you're building yourself and sometimes you're leasing to others. And so there's going to be a whole myriad of financing options to finance this. Right. Well, I think it's certainly an interesting thing to see how it plays out and certainly to see how the market reacts to that debt, as you say, Tony, if it's coming. I want to thank you both for coming on. That is Jessica Lesson, our editor-in-chief, and Tony Kim from BlackRock here on TITV. Okay. We've tried on this show to get a sense for the extent to which enterprises are using AI. And typically, the data points we get are anecdotal from executives.

26:07But a new report out from Goldman Sachs puts some numbers to that problem and shows that while many corporations might be using AI, they might not be using it for the tasks that we think they are. Joining me now to discuss the firm's findings are Joseph Briggs, a senior global economist and co-lead of the global economics research team at Goldman Sachs. Joseph, it's great to see you. Welcome to CITV. Great to be joining you today. So let's talk about this report that you put out. What is the headline number for you? I see 37 % of clients using AI in regular production. Help us break down what's behind that.