Tech’s debt pile, Micron earnings day, Rubrik CEO on AI cyberattacks | Sozzi Unleashed

[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] It's crazy to see like just before I came on here the uh the CEO Mattel and Nan cries just out resigning. Kandandy Ness CEO taking over just totally random news. I've known it on for a while, so it's uh it's been there for a while. Helped save Barbie. But a little bit of breaking news there uh for me. And you know, it's interesting. I was going to start the show right out of the block on uh maybe a little bit more Mattel than I told my team. You know, this news just broke. But really on technology out of everything that came out of yesterday from that really uh was it lunch? It was just ridiculous looking at these photos of all these CEOs just surrounding a table. I hope they enjoyed their lunch. The tech signatures, you know, these executives were there to do something important. Talk about AI safety. And look at this is the only thing that X is focusing on today. It's the signatures of the uh the CEOs, the tech giants that were allowed to get on this document. Then of course see the president's uh signature on the left, but everybody focused on Greg Brock, OpenAI. What is it? GDB. Everybody focusing on Greg's penmanship. And then last but not least, look at the bottom. Our man Jensen Wong with a a Wong mandering mongering. Is that how X is saying it? Whatever it is, he's got the biggest signature on the page and not that surprise cuz he's got the biggest market cap. Shout out Jensen for showing up everybody else in tech with your big big signature. Uh just amazing to see what X focuses on at this point. I really probably shouldn't even be surprised to see something like this. I really like Jensen signature. Greg Brockman, I mean he ahead of the uh company going public maybe next year. You got to step up your uh signature a little bit. That ain't going to cut it on financial documents, my man. Sorry. Not sorry. All right. I'm going to stay on tech here because uh I've been really engulfed the past few weeks talking to tech CEOs and highlighting end of the world because of AI comments. I forgot that today is an important day. It's the end of the third quarter. Shout out to my team for reminding me of this one in our morning meeting cuz I I forgot. I went in there with my hoodie and I was feeling good. I had a bunch of stories I wanted to talk about and they're like, "Oh, hey, Brian. Uh the third quarter ends today." So, shout out for my team uh for reminding me about that. Now, I was so excited about this after they told me, I went back to my desk and wrote a story on SanDisk in under seven minutes about it surprising a third quarter. You can go read that on Yahoo Finance right now. >> Check it out, baby. But the third quarter of 2026 will go down as one with a lot of surprises. I I can go through them. And in fact, that's what I'm going to do. The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates for the first time since 2023. This has pounded housing stocks even more. Toll Brothers, Home Depot, Lowe's. These stocks have been obliterated. Now, speaking of housing, the 10-year yield is now at 19-year highs. That's a surprise in the wake of Treasury Secretary bested buying bonds in the quarter. Good luck affording a new home. Now, diesel prices blew past $6 a gallon because of the Iran war. That level of diesel wasn't on my bingo card a few months ago, even though I don't drive a truck or a car that takes diesel. Walmart probably didn't expect it either. Only 25% of the stocks in the S&P 500 are now trading above their 50-day moving average, lowest percentage since April. 2nd. I find this surprising. And you guessed it, I find it a little alarming. Bitcoin is up 43.1% so far in the quarter. Ching ching ching. On track for its best quarterly performance since the fourth quarter of 2024. Who cares that the Clarity Act fell miserably? What surprises are you worried about in the fourth quarter? Get at me on X at Brian Sazi. Here's what Apollo's chief economist Torstson is concerned about. >> Well, one thing, and you also talk a lot about this, but one thing that I still think we should pay attention to is that the risk of oil prices potentially jumping higher. The inventory of oil is being run down in the US and also in the rest of the world when it comes to crude oil, diesel, jet fuel, marine fuel. And the consequence of this is that at some point we get could get to a lower level of inventory which could create a jump in energy prices and that could of course also just add not only to the affordability challenges but that could also add to some of the headwinds to the economy. >> Torson's the man, one of my favorite economists and that's why he's getting the dollar sign today. Uh and I want to start off I want to go back to Jensen. You know I wasn't going to forget about Jensen. You know, I could stand here all day and talk about what Jensen does and doesn't do and talk about how he uh just took his giant signature of the document yesterday in front of all our tech executives. Got to sit next to the president. It was so hilarious just to see Microsoft CEO Sati Nadella behind Jensen like I don't know 15 years ago Microsoft CEO would have had a seat at that table. It was just I love the optics. Nonetheless, it has been a big third quarter for Jensen. Huge. Huge. He has had lunch with the president, various lunches which you saw yesterday. He got invited to the state dinner with the president. You got Nvidia's stock up about 19% this quarter. Like, oh yeah, I bought Hugging Face. I didn't buy it. Jensen bought Hugging Face for billions and billions of dollars after that big breach. Somebody had to get Hugging Face. He wasn't going to let it go to OpenAI. Hell no, said Jensen. Company came out August, big quarter. Jensen hops on an earnings call, says growth might be over 100% next year. one of the companies growing over 100%. Nobody. Just Nvidia. Well, not just Nvidia, but you know what I mean. And then it really was like the the icing on the cake this week. There's Jensen. You can see he was at that lunch. Uh what you don't see is Dario Amade behind Jensen right now. He's also going viral on X for all his like mannerisms. He was like just this. He was really He's really fidgety. He was like a little bit. Dar was like kind of like dancing in place. He had a lot going on. Ultimately, Dario looked uncomfortable be there. I don't know what the read through to that is to an earnings call when the company goes public. I can't imagine it's good for Dario. Nonetheless, there's Jensen in his suit and tie. He always likes wearing that blue. Came out this week with the largest ever stock buyback in history. $150 billion. Total stock buyback for Jensen and Nvidia. Now 200 believe it's $235 billion. Big win after big win for Nvidia this quarter. Now you want to push back on me and say, "Look, Nvidia is not doing everything perfect. I get it. And there are some of the wins uh you see from uh Nvidia right there tick by tick. Now the bar has been high. They had a great quarter. Nvidia has to crush it when they report earnings in a few weeks. And I think they will. Now also in addition to all this, Jensen spent a lot of time going to tech conference. I just missed him at the Goldman Sachs tech conference. Uh but then he went over to Dreamforce gave a keynote with Mark Beni off and here's what Benoff told me after that keynote. you know, he only has a limited set of customers who are just building these enormous data centers that are material to his business. That that's what's exquisite about Nvidia is that they have the product for the moment and there's just nothing like this. We've never seen anything quite like this in our industry. >> Vinnie also has the stock for the [laughter] third quarter, which is technically not an over. It's not over until the market closes today. There it is. Good old Alpha Space, Nvidia stock chart really uh up and to the right throughout the quarter because a lot of those big wins. I can't say that I'm surprised because that's what Nvidia does. All they do is win. Let's stay on tech here because I don't want to sit up here and be a uh pop is fool and you know talk about all these amazing things going on in tech without talking about the other side of the trade. And there is another side of the trade and I got to give a shout out to uh Vinu Krishna over at Barclays. This is how my morning started. read his report coming in uh on the train on the amount of tech debt and equity capital raises that are starting to stem out of the tech industry and it's really starting to pick up. So he notes that uh the total capital raised by hyperscalers data center specialurpose vehicles or SPVS as he wrote in this report I just spelled it out because nobody knows what SPV is if you're not in this industry and neoclouds in the form of investment grade debt high yield debt and equity capital rose from 172 billion in 2025 to 346 billion so far this year. This is a massive increase. But he adds this too which I think is a is a red flag. uh over the past two quarters with unprecedented credit supply hitting the market, credit spreads have widened materially. Usually, this is like a red flag when this happens. This is what you don't want to see uh if you're a company that if you're someone that owns a debt, but you don't want to see it as a company issuing the debt because it might increase your cost of capital, pound your profits, and probably pound your stock price. Uh also seeing warning signs in convertible bonds across hyperscalers, data centers, and neoclouds. Also, de uh credit default swap spreads have risen sharply for all hyperscalers in 2026. Now, uh these debt raises this year by a lot of these companies have been significant. You had Alphabet with its 100red-year bond, Meta out there raising billions of dollars. Uh and it's not just debt. Look, yesterday we heard that Open may raise $30 billion because it's not going public this year and it needs money to for compute. It needs money to build out everything it's trying to do on the data center front. It needs money to keep its business going. Why? because it's not making any money. So, it needs to raise debt to make it happen. I wouldn't be surprised if Open Eye ends up raising more than $30 billion in this last raise theoretically before they go public. They need the money. And if I've learned anything from all these years of talking to OpenAI CFO Sarah Frier, who used to be the CEO of Next Door, she loves to raise money and she is damn good at it. So I think her philosophy has long been if the money is out there to be had, grab that money, get it on the balance sheet and then spend it and possibly raise some more or possibly in the case of opening I go public. And then of course though keep in mind you know we talking about anthropic all this week they raised $65 billion in May valuing at the company at close to uh a trillion dollars or $965 billion uh more specifically. I don't want to get fact checked by my friends over there at Anthropic. It's already middle of the week. I'm kind of tired. I'm in a bad mood. I really don't want to hear from Enthropic. Now, uh let's keep it moving here because outside of the debt and outside of everything Nvidia is doing, it's Micron earnings day and I'm super excited and I know you're super excited because I wake up every day and two of the top tickers on the Yahoo Finance platform are Micron and SanDisk. Doesn't matter what's going on in the world, the Yankees can win the World Series for the first time what 20 plus years. And best believe there are going to be people on Yahoo Finance, our app, on Alphaspace looking up Micron and SanDisk, maybe in some cases more so than Nvidia and AMD. When Micron comes out today, I want you to look for this. The numbers are going to be huge. Sales are going to be huge. Earnings are going to be huge. The earnings call is going to be huge. If there is a surprise factor to be had in Micron, it is this. I would be listening uh out to any clues or signals for when the company might boost its capital return program. Company is generating a lot of cash. Uh they've plotted a lot into their business. Some folks on the street are now looking for the company to increase their dividend and perhaps go massive in terms of a stock buyback. Now, I'm not talking Jensen Wong at Nvidia level buyback from Micron. But if there is a surprise to be had, it's a potential capital giveaway. I don't think uh Micron will announce this today. It could be one of those things where they come back in a few days and announce it. So there could be a big surprise there. And uh I love the data and the analysis section uh on Alphaspace. I spend a lot of time there too when I'm not checking the stock prices of Micron and the SanDisk. You can see I the growth rate for Micron uh really has accelerated over the past few years significant. It's going to accelerate even more. It's going to accelerate even more next year. uh you look at the valuation multiples and somewhere on here there is a PE ratio PE forward ratio and I always giggle I have been giggling at the PE ratio on Micron so many investors are just thinking this is a peak for Micron peak for Micron fundamentals that's not the case all right the company has been crushing it there's no reason for Micron to be trading at about seven times forward earnings I think that is the same PE ratio as like a Ford or a General Motors it makes no damn sense Micron is crushing it also crushing it is SanDisk now Micron shares have been under pressure this third quarter. Sandisk shares have also been under pressure this third quarter. They're in the same boat as Micron doing very very very well. And if you look at the uh we even got SanDisk up here on Alpha Space. Amazing. Look at this revenue growth. Are you talking about tripledigit growth for SanDisk? Go to the earnings estimates on Yahoo Finance. Uh this company is expected to grow significantly this year and next year just like Micron and there it is again just like Micron. Eight times forward earnings PE and that is not normal. The stock market, as seen through the prism of the S&P 500, trades at about 21 times earnings, something along those lines, maybe like 19. You get the point. There's no reason for Micron Sandis to be trading at these valuation levels. Title up in a bow. Wait, look out for that micron micron surprise on the earnings call. I think they're ready to give cash away to investors. That's pretty big. Second thing, top takeaway, there's no reason for these both of these stocks to be trading at single-digit earnings multiples. Ford earnings multiples. It makes no sense. Their growth rate is to the roof. They have top executives and they're doing a lot of great things and they are key players in the AI boom. So, lots going on there. All right, we're gonna keep it going here. We're like uh fired up. My next guest has been watching me. Uh but it's good to see him. Bipple, good to see you. Uh the CEO of Rubric. Um I wish you were here, Bipple. I mean, I want to show you my new set. You got to come here next time. >> Ryan, I'm loving your show, man. You are totally unleashed. >> I I thank you, Bipple. I appreciate that. You know what? We're going to give you the we're going to give the dollar sign smash down. Uh I appreciate that love. It's good to talk to you. Um look, I thought you I think you have been uh in Rubric a forgotten play in in cyber security. Uh and that's not the case. Your stock has been on a tear the past month. But when you hear some of the warnings we have been hearing from an anthropic in an open AI and AI safety, where does your head go? >> As I've always said, let AI cook. We can't stop the technology development. If we are not doing it, then our competition in other parts of the world are doing it. We need to ensure that the cook stays in the kitchen and we need to create guard rails and boundary conditions so that we can we can avoid the unintended consequences of agentic action. But we have to kind of develop this technology because it's important for our long-term prosperity and growth. I I've been talking all week, Bit about the warning that uh Anthropic reportedly put in in its perspectives. I have never seen a a leak perspectus. You went public. I remember talking to you in your IPO day. Can you imagine your perspectus leaking? Like I've never seen anything like that. But uh when a company like Anthropic again reportly says there is an existential risk to humanity, break it down for the average human being out there. Uh what does that exactly mean? I don't believe that there is an existential risk to humanity. I mean AI is still a technology that is trying to complete our sentences and and do some IT work for us. uh my belief is that uh we need to ensure that the cyber security aspects of of agentic action is is controlled and contained and there's a lot of technology being developed uh to ensure that not only runtime security is there but also rubric is focused on creating resilience and guardrails for uh for agents. I believe that we have amazing talent in America, amazing technology in America. you saw at white house the level of of executives that are involved in this AI development. I believe that we are going to solve this problem and really define as an as America the frontier of what AI could be and it is going to help our students is going to help our farmers our our hospital workers everybody to be more productive remove mundane tasks and really be their uh produce their best. I'm glad uh Pipple that you're not up here telling me that AI is going to wipe out humanity. I It's Wednesday. Like I just don't I didn't really want to go there. So I'm glad you uh you I'm glad you got that out there. But what keeps you up at night when it pertains to AI and and the powers that you're starting to see? We had dots yesterday from OpenAI. We have Muse. You give it your password can control your life. I This is some serious stuff. >> We are living through an age of technology acceleration and you see that in AI and the AI's development. I'm so excited to see Muse come out and it gives uh all Americans and people around the world the power of AI in their hands. Now they can be more productive. Things that they were calling up restaurants and trying to make reservation and if they can't get the person on the phone, they have to repeatedly try it. Now AI is doing that task. How great that is. And I believe that this technology will seep into enterprise and enterprise productivity will be greatly impacted positively. And all these developments are so exciting. I mean we are really in entering in a in a world of abundance. We need to just make sure that there are right cyber security guard rails and and boundary conditions around this AI technology outside of it. I'm very very excited. >> I mentioned uh Pipple that your your stock has been on fire. My read through that has been your phones have to be off the h off the hook at Rubric and you're probably not alone in cyber security. Um just given what we are seeing on agents like what are you hearing from you know the CTO's the CFOs that are that are talking to your company right now? If you look at AI, it is thousand times more opportunities and thousand times more risk because it is a powerful technology and with hugging face and open AI and all the cyber attacks that our customers are hearing about they are concerned about AI powered attack coming to them and their own agents that they are deploying misbehaving and creating liability for them. So they want to ensure that they are able to recover quickly from a AI attacks so that their business remain in business and at the same time they want to ensure that they can deploy agent with confidence. So we are seeing lot more conversation lot more uh customer interest in cyber resilience AI resilience and that's where we are delivering the marketplace. >> Does the cyber security industry need to work closer together? You know, I see a lot of, you know, OpenAI, Anthropic, all these folks talk and I, you know, they're not exactly working together per se, but to protect what's coming at us from a human perspective and also from a company perspective, should like companies like yours all band together and and come up with some form of something that could end worst case scenarios >> 100%. I mean if you just look at uh the alliances that uh Enthropy created around cyber security, you saw Nvidia come out with uh alliances around cyber security. There is a a lot of industry focus in ensuring that this technology has the right guard rails and there is a lot of focus and effort in that front. I mean it's not the first time we have done something like this. You have known you know that cyber security white house has in the past like created guidance and and and structures so that the private sector public sector can collaborate. >> How prepared are companies for some of the risks we've all been talking about on AI? >> This is where the challenge is. Lot of Fortune 500 is still on legacy technology. >> Oh that's terrifying. That's absolutely terrifying. [laughter] That's awful. I mean look the last generation of cyber security was built for human attackers and people running businesses. Now you have AI attackers and increasingly we are rolling out agents to do our work and that increases the surface area of cyber attack and this is where adopting newer technology refreshing and modernizing infrastructure and getting ready for this new world of AI and AI attacks as well as agentric operations is critical. What's your what's the next big product for for a company like Rubric? >> I mean look, we have staked our future on AI resilience. It is about how do we give our customers confidence that they can continue to operate no matter what happens to their business and what comes after them. And then the second piece is that they can actually deploy agents and run AI operations with confidence. And so we are innovating on both fronts. Rubric is at the intersection of data, identity and AI and this is a great place to be and we continue to kind of race forward. >> Bipple, good to see you. Thanks for hopping on. Hope to see you in person next time, >> Brian. Always a pleasure. >> Thank you. All right, that is a bankable co right there in Bipple. I mean, it's been crushing since the company IPOed. Uh, now I'm staying on tech now. This is really turning into like a little bit of a tech show, but it is what it is. And I want to give a shout out or slam down, however you want to put it. Maybe I can give give it a I'm going to give it a I'm going to give it an alarm. I'm going to give it an alarm. And that's Apple Siri. [laughter] You remember Siri? Uh not a lot of folks do. You know, it's been recently revamped. You know, you could use Siri and pull up a photo from uh 10 years ago when you were getting an ISIS or some ice cream or a piece of pizza with a friend. It'll pop up on your phone. But how outdated does Siri look in this environment of dots and muse? And I I really was reminded of this. Oh, there we go. We got Apple Siri is this. Our producer said it best. I'm sorry, Kayla. I I I apologize. I forgot what you called this uh Apple Siri, but Siri has no It's just like a It's just like a blob. It's just a blob. It's so 2011 when it launched. It's like it is. But look at all these cute, cuddly AI agents. I mean, they have phenomenal mascots. You got Agent Force. I believe that's called Astro. I have a stuffed Astro actually up there on my bookshelf right there. I brought that from home. That's my stuffed Astro. You got the Open AI dots released yesterday. Not sure what that is. Kind of like a blue blob. I would have liked to see a happy face on it. Like my man or is it a man? Whatever it is, the furry muse. Look at look how lame Apple Siri is compared to these folks. It's also lame on the pure specs. This will allow you get more business done inside of Slack amongst 40 other use cases that I didn't feel like writing down this morning because it's been a busy morning. I told you Mattel co just resigned out of the blue. So I've been working on that. You got OpenAI dots that will help you get some stuff done on uh in your company as well. It connects to uh chat GPT. It does I don't know all the sorts of stuff. It does a lot of things what I'm trying to say that Siri doesn't do. Same thing with Muse. Look at all those partnerships that Muse has signed up with Shopify, PayPal. It'll shop for you and it'll stay smiling in the process. Bottom line is Apple Siri needs to get off his phone. Look at all these things. Look at this amazing comparison chart. Look at Siri. Look what powered by Apple foundational models. That's cool. You know, Apple struck a deal with Alphabet. So, you're maybe getting some improved uh Siri features. How lame does Siri look compared to Muse? Muse, you give it your password. For right or for wrong, it will run your whole damn life. I think Apple needs to pick it up. They need to pick it up. Now, I wrote a story yesterday on Apple is laying off workers in large part to save money because of memory chips. They got to fix Siri. Get that on your list, John Turnis. Stop screwing around. Now, to deliver on the stock market's super optimistic expectations for AI profits, speaking of tech, you actually need a human beings to build the data centers and handle a ton of other manual jobs in the supply chain, aka people that could use a hammer. Elon hasn't made enough robots to power job sites yet, but that skilled trade labor is getting increasingly scarce because nobody wants to get dirty. They just don't. They're not wrong with it. US will need to fill 1.7 million skilled trade job openings annually through 2035. According to a new report out today from the Alliance for America's skilled trades, current training programs produce just 55 workers for every 100 needed. That's terrible. The skilled trade jobs gap matters as the US builds infrastructure uh behind AI. Employment of electricians, eighth track technicians and industrial machinery mechanics is projected to grow at twice, three times and five times the rate for all occupations uh occupations uh respectively. This report shows my hot tip to the next generation watching this is this and you're not going to like me for it, but I'm giving it to you anyway because it's some tough love. Figure out how to wire up an AI data center and prevent it from catching fire instead of toiling around on the Muse app to program what time your $30 Starbucks order arrives using your parents' credit card. Stay unleashed. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] >> Down. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Down. [music] Down. [music] >> [music] >> or heat. Down. [music] [music] Down. Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music]