Google Steals the Show in AI

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Rachel Warren, and Jon Quast discuss:

• Gemini 3.
• Anthropic's capital raise.
• Bitcoin is down, but is it out?
• Why Target is falling behind in retail.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Nov.19, 2025.

Travis Hoium: Somehow artificial intelligence has stolen the day again. Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoium joined by Rachel Warren and Jon Quast. Guys, as much as we have talked about artificial intelligence in 2025, things actually seem to be gaining momentum, and the big news this week is that Gemini 3.0 came out. This looks incredible. The narrative around Google has changed or Alphabet, I guess. Their shares are up 5% today. They're up over 100% since earlier this year. Rachel is this a big game changer for Alphabet and for Google? Because this seems like a model that was so far ahead of competitors, at least on some of the benchmarks that maybe this is not a disruptive force for Alphabet, but it's actually something they're going to grow with long term.

Rachel Warren: This is actually a really big deal, and I think this is really exciting for anyone that follows the world of AI and AI stocks. Gemini 3 is very different from its predecessor in a few ways. There's been a lot of advancements in its reasoning, coding, agentic capabilities. There's been early benchmarks that have suggested that Gemini 3 outperforms other models, whether it's in critical analysis or strategic reasoning. The models also demonstrated impressive coding abilities. Gemini Agent is also a major new part of this rollout. It's an experimental feature that can complete multi-step tasks like organizing an inbox or managing a schedule, very practical things, and that connects to services like Google Calendar and Gmail. Gemini 3 seems to be better at understanding nuance and context, which is really notable. For the first time, the latest Gemini model is being integrated into core Google products like Search on its launch day. Alphabet has said that Gemini 3 has undergone the most comprehensive safety evaluations of any Google AI model. I think this is very exciting, and I'm very curious to see how the use cases for this expand from here.

Travis Hoium: Jon, there has been a steady drumbeat of AI announcements. Is this one meaningful or more meaningful than other ones, or is this just another step in the right direction toward AI doing more stuff for us?

Jon Quast: I don't know how meaningful this update is, but I will say that there are actionable things for investors today. Rachel already touched on some things about Gemini 3 understanding nuance and context better. To me, that feels like the old iPhone update events where you knew you were getting a better camera. You know that these new AI models are going to have better understanding. It's going to be smarter. You come to expect that, but what is something that really stands out as different? I would say, for me, the one thing was Google talking about the agentic AI push. That's not necessarily new, but I think you are going to hear this more and more from the other AI companies as they release their updated stuff, really talking about agentic, where this is going to start to do more tasks on your behalf as it learns more about you, the user, and I think that that's really important for one big reason is that agentic AI to do that, it's going to need more memory, and so I think it's why you're seeing three out of the Top 5 best performing stocks in the S&P 500 in 2025 are memory stocks. This is a trend that I think has legs to it. They've already sold out basically all of their 2026 inventory for memory, already talking 2027. This has a long tail to it, in my opinion.

Travis Hoium: Jon, do you think that Alphabet is going to be able to lean into, you talked about memory. It did seem like one of the things that changed with this model and some of the product announcements that came along with it, is it going to follow you around your Google experience. If you use Gmail, if you use Search, if you use Google Drive, it's going to get to know you a little bit better, be able to maybe even control those things in certain ways. Is that ultimately from a business model and Google not being disrupted by OpenAI, is that a step in the right direction if you're an alphabet investor?

Jon Quast: Yes, I think it is, because when you look at how many fires Google has a little iron in. It's a very busy company. It's a company that has very long reach, and so as it gets to know you better as you interact with its AI model, yes, it can monetize that in many ways.

Travis Hoium: We're talking about a vertically integrated company with Google and Alphabet. I think that's interesting is we're starting to see these business models play out, how is everybody going to work with each other? Google's really doing everything. They're making chips. They're building the data centers. They're building the artificial intelligence models. They have the products. The other thing to look at from a business model is companies that are more modular or horizontal business models. This is NVIDIA. It's Microsoft. It's OpenAI, and it's Anthropic. That was the other big announcement for the week. They got $30 billion worth of investments. That's coming from NVIDIA and Microsoft. It's another circular deal where NVIDIA, in particular, is investing money in Anthropic, and that money will eventually come back to NVIDIA through the purchase chips via Microsoft. But this is a logical step for for Anthropic especially to move off of something like Google Cloud, and Google is one of their biggest investors to go to some of these other partnerships and start using NVIDIA chips more in Microsoft Cloud. Rachel, what did you think when you saw another huge deal between this handful of players that do seem to be circularly financing each other?

Rachel Warren: I think that this is the new normal in this space, at least for the near future. I think a lot of these really significant investments, these circular deals in AI, I think it does suggest a future, at least for the near term that could be dominated by a few major players. Now, I do think, 10-15 years from now, that paradigm is different, but for now, I think it's clear companies that have the enormous capital required to develop and deploy cutting edge AI, they are really few and far between, and so this does create a very powerful ecosystem that at least for now could make it difficult for smaller competitors to compete. I think it's leading to consolidation of influence among the largest tech companies. But I do think that's a natural part of the journey. For now, the bigger, the most capital efficient players dominate, but I do think as time goes by, you're going to see more competitors emerge. That could create new opportunities for investors and the industry as a whole. One thing I'll note, it's really fascinating to see how this industry has developed through the years. You go all the way back to the early 1980s, there was this massive surge of interest in AI. Then there was the AI winter, but AI research continued in the background. Now you have a genuine resurgence in the 2020s. We're in the beginning of the life cycle for the potential of this industry. It's very exciting to think about.

Jon Quast: The MAG7 is definitely the kingmakers in the AI market right now. They're the ones with the money. They're the ones that are making the deals, but money isn't the only thing you need to succeed in AI. I really think that yes, money helps. [laughs] All these companies are happy to have it, but I think there's still room for a scrappy start-up to come in here with a different model or just doing something differently. Necessity is the mother of invasion. I think that there could be room for a AI start-up to bootstrap itself and really shock the world, and so it's hard to predict when that would happen, how that would happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen.

Travis Hoium: History does say that the big companies lead the next phase of innovation, IBM and PCs would be a good example of that. But they aren't necessarily the long term winners. We'll see if Jon's right about that. Next, we are going to talk about the fall of Bitcoin and what's going on there. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Bitcoin has fallen periodically below $90,000. We have seen Strategy, the former MicroStrategy drop. They were once the biggest buyer of Bitcoin. Probably they're still the biggest individual buyer of Bitcoin. Jon, is this a sign that the crypto trade has hit a wall? Again, we've been through this before, but it seems like the momentum that was happening even just a few months ago has ended in the crypto space.

Jon Quast: It does seem like momentum is ending, and it's ending right on schedule when you'd expect it to, at least from the perspective of Bitcoin, and so Bitcoin does have some pretty regular patterns, and it seems to be related to the halving cycle, which impacts the flow of new Bitcoins into the circulating supply, and so it messes up with supply and demand. While those things are still coming back into balance, there can be big swings in the price of bitcoin upward. But around a year and a half, two years after a having event, which we had one in early 2024, things start to stabilize and it seems to peak off, and in the past, we've had bear markets with Bitcoin with a drop of 80% or more. You would hope that Bitcoin has grown out of that extreme volatility at this point, perhaps with higher adoption, but in reality, the Bitcoin stalling out, the price stalling out, it's pretty much right on schedule. I find that interesting. What does surprise me as well, though, you'd expect this crypto space to have matured to the point where not all of the alternative coins are trading in pair with Bitcoin, but there still seems to be a lot of directionally tied movement with all of the coins to the price of Bitcoin.

Travis Hoium: Jon, do you think that the maturity of the space in general, and I'm thinking about the business models, maturity of companies like Coinbase, Circle, we have plenty of others. Even companies like Robinhood and SoFi getting into the crypto space, does that actually change things, or is that not necessarily going to be related to Bitcoin and the tokens themselves?

Jon Quast: It is very different this time than, say, four years ago or eight years ago when these other cycles have happened with Bitcoin. It's so interesting. We did talk about Strategy, and yes, it owns 650,000 Bitcoin. Certainly a big player there, but as you brought up, so many crypto exchanges are now publicly traded, blockchain businesses such as Figure. There are many companies with Bitcoin treasuries. There's a lot of more interconnectedness between let's say, real world economies and these crypto economies, and so it will be interesting to see if there is a so-called crypto winter as we had in past cycles. How much impact will that have on the real world economy? But vice versa, how much is the real world with Robinhood and all these things, all this new retail investment coming in, does that break the past cycles? It definitely could.

Travis Hoium: Rachel, that does seem to be the elephant in the room is that, yes, there are these typical cycles with Bitcoin, but they also are really correlated with market cycles. When there's periods of high volatility, when speculation goes up, guess what? Bitcoin goes up. It's not necessarily a great hedge to something like the dollar or interest rates. It's actually more correlated with risky stocks. What should we take away from that?

Rachel Warren: I think it's an interesting point you make because there has been, I think, this idea that's still really widely debated among a lot of people in the crypto world of whether Bitcoin and other assets like that can be a hedge against inflation and some of these other macro concerns. I think we've seen, at least in recent times that hasn't necessarily been the case. Bitcoin's price dropped as low as about 89,500 on Tuesday. That's a significant decline from its all time high over 126,000 in early October. I do think this decline is part of a wider retreat from speculative assets, both across traditional markets and the digital asset world. I think we're seeing that at play right now, and as you noted, during periods of economic stress or even market crashes, crypto's often demonstrated a correlation with more traditional high risk assets. Obviously, crypto can be accessed and transferred globally with an Internet connection, so there's a high degree of liquidity and accessibility, but still that correlation remains. I think we're seeing that connection between real world events and how crypto and stocks are performing. I think we're seeing that now. Could a crypto winter be coming? I'm not really ready to call that, but I think we do need to be realistic about how these assets perform in volatile market environments as compared to stocks.

Travis Hoium: The other big news of the day is retail. We got earnings from Target. We're going to talk about that when we come back. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Retail numbers are coming out again. We got numbers from Target and T.J. Maxx this morning. The surprising one to me is Target. The results weren't particularly good. The stock's not actually down all that much, down 1% as we're recording early in the day on Wednesday. But this is something I thought was crazy. The current drawdown in Target stock is at 66.8%. That is worse than the fall in their stock during 2009, during a very deep recession. The market does not like what they're seeing with Target right now. Rachel, what is the broad takeaway both short term and long term for Target?

Rachel Warren: Target's been dealing with a myriad of its own challenges for several years now, and I think in an environment where certainly consumers are under pressure, but they're also being very selective about where they put their money to work, I think we're seeing that play out. Their Q3 earnings, there was a year over year drop in net sales and profits, comparable sales dropped. Both GAAP and adjusted earnings were down. GAAP earnings per share actually fell about 19%. Target's Chief Commercial Officer noted that consumers are prioritizing gift giving over other holiday spending, but broadly signaled that they expect a weak holiday spending season, even as they're introducing 20,000 or more new items across various categories, and they're forecasting an ongoing sales slump. Now, contrast that to a business like TJX companies. Obviously, the business models of these companies are different, but still there could not be more variance.

Travis Hoium: They were very excited in their release about the results. Everything seemed to be better than expected.

Rachel Warren: Absolutely. Where you've got Target forecasting a weak holiday season, sales are down. The CEO of TJX company said the holiday shopping season is off to a strong start for us. They said, our availability of merchandise is outstanding. We're really excited about the deals that we're seeing. They're expecting comparable sales to rise between 2% and 3%. They even elevated their upcoming expectations after their better than expected Q3 results. A really strong quarter for TJX companies, a very weak quarter for Target. I think what we're seeing is maybe consumer weaknesses persist, but how that plays out to different companies is going to be on a very much case by case basis.

Travis Hoium: Jon, the story for Target over the past few years, and the reason that they hit the high in 2021 that they did was their digital sales, and that encompasses delivery, pickup. They're trying to become an Amazon competitor in that space with quick delivery. Is there any green shoots there or is this just a fundamentally problematic time where Target's just trying to find its way?

Jon Quast: Well, it is a problematic time where Target's trying to find its way, but there are green shoots in the digital businesses, for sure, and I think that's really important. If you are looking at Target stock today, if you're an investor, shareholder of Target, you definitely want to see this, and so, in fact, that's where basically the only green shoots of the business are, are in the digital offerings. Like Round Dell, it's retail media business all double digit growth, Target plus. This is like the marketplace where there's some curated offerings. Over 50% merchandise value growth. That's really important. Even, I know that we hate to bring it up every single segment, but OpenAI, Target has a new thing with OpenAI.

Travis Hoium: I was surprised to see that they were one of their launch partners with the retail shopping thing.

Jon Quast: It's not exactly who you'd expect to top the list, it's Target. But definitely jumping on the bandwagon here with allowing the OpenAI chatbot to help shoppers find holiday gifts. Maybe these are some things that can eventually start to change some of the direction with the business can start to change the economics of Target's businesses for the better. I believe that that is something that can happen, but it does need to keep pushing ahead.

Travis Hoium: Quick question for the end of this. Target stock is trading for 10 times earnings, 11 times forward earnings. Jon, are you interested at that price?

Jon Quast: I definitely am, and one that you didn't mention was it's paying out over a 5% dividend yield now, and it's paid a dividend for over 50 consecutive years.

Travis Hoium: I don't know if this is a falling knife or not, but it is interesting. You would think there's got to be a turnaround somewhere. This is such a big name, so much retail space, but we'll see where they go. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. For Rachel Warren, Jon Quast, and Dan Boyd behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money. We'll see you here tomorrow.

Jon Quast has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Rachel Warren has positions in Alphabet and Amazon. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet, Circle Internet Group, Coinbase Global, Robinhood Markets, and SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Bitcoin, Microsoft, Nvidia, TJX Companies, and Target. The Motley Fool recommends Coinbase Global and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.