The Trade Desk’s Woes & A New AI Doughnut?

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Jon Quast discuss:

• The latest jobs report.
• Recap of the earnings season.
• The Trade Desk: value or trap?
• Google's brain drain.
• Stocks on our radar.

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 Aug. 7, 2026.

Travis Hoium: Would you buy a doughnut-shaped AI device? Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoium. I'm joined today by Lou Whiteman and Jon Quast. Guys, we're going to get to that doughnut-shaped AI device in just a moment, but I do want to cover the latest news that came out just a few minutes before we started recording. That is the jobs report for the month of July. Lou, the U.S. economy, at least according to this first reading, and these get revised over time, lost 23,000 jobs. The estimate was for 83,000 jobs to be gained, but the unemployment rate fell 4.1%. The strange thing here, if you are not into these market dynamics, is that the market is actually up, at least in pre-market trading.

Lou Whiteman: Right, which I think makes sense because it at least maybe puts the idea of not raising rates on the table, which I think we were thinking was going to happen because the Fed's dual mandate is to fight inflation and protect employment. All the focus of late has been on inflation. If employment is weak, then maybe that does stall things. But really, I don't think the market is shocked by this report because I don't think we should be. The participation rate is the lowest it's been since COVID. That is the denominator on the unemployment rate so that I don't focus on. I think this report and the last month, too, where it missed expectations, it's telling us what we already knew. It's not a red-hot employment market. It's also not a falling-off-the-cliff employment market. I think the employment side of a mandate speaks for a lack of action among the Fed, but watching closely. I think the question is still the same: is inflation bad enough that the Fed has to move, or will they just buy their time and not do anything, and maybe we got a slight leaning towards do nothing for longer?

Travis Hoium: Jon, this does seem to be at least the short-term reaction is, what is the Fed going to do based on this report? Obviously, inflation is still something to think about but as we look at earnings reports, and we're going to talk about big picture takeaways from earning season in just a moment, it does strike me that some of the weakness in the economy that some companies talk about is showing up in these job numbers, and that has me at least a little worried about what are earnings going to look like going forward if fewer people have jobs?

Jon Quast: That would definitely be a thing if fewer people have jobs. I just don't think that this report showed us enough to make us overly concerned about that in the moment. Of course, we're always looking forward and monitoring that and making sure that jobs aren't falling off a cliff in the future, but they certainly aren't right now. I do know that from the government's perspective, it's a weird place to be. Yes, it wants a hot economy, but it also does want those interest rates to come down, and that's harder to do the hotter the economy is. So maybe this is the middling report that the government hopes for so that we can at least start not raising rates and getting them down because so much of the national budget at this point is going to interest, and so it would lower interest rates.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, that's not happening, sorry. But I think it's important to really look at these numbers and not just take the big macro. A lot of the weakness was retail and leisure, and that is likely the World Cup reaction. Hospitality shed 40,000 jobs after the World Cup, and this is, again, heading away from the summer season. You're definitely hiring their sports equipment jobs. Sports and leisure equipment jobs, though, were great. Again, I am very cautious, especially Travis, as you say, this will be revised a lot of times. Could get a lot worse, could get a lot better, but there was nothing in here saying the sky is falling. There's nothing here that's saying that things are robust. This, again, speaks to Fed inaction. I think, yeah, sure, the government would like to pay less on interest rates, but interest rates are fine. Interest rates are still below where they have been for most of the last three decades. Businesses can survive here. I don't want to say Goldilocks, because if anything, everything is glass half empty, but there is a lot of water in the glass, at least.

Travis Hoium: Let's turn our attention to earnings because we've gotten through most of earning season. We still have a bunch of reports from smaller companies next week but a lot of the big companies have reported. We've heard from a lot of the companies that are in The Motley Fool universe that are very popular. The Trade Desk reported last night. We'll talk about them in a moment. Shopify. Lou, as you look at the earnings season, what are your big-picture takeaways? Obviously, AI is something that we're all thinking about, talking about. How much is that spending happening? But was there a way that the market was reacting that told the story of the quarter to you?

Lou Whiteman: I think the story of the quarter is resilience. We're focused on AI, but the rest of the economy, the rest of the companies reporting are looking OK. I think outside of software, a lot of the big movers were in software, but if you look banks, really strong, airlines, surprisingly strong. There's just a lot of success stories outside of the tech trade. I just did a quick count this morning, 45 companies from the S&P 500, probably more that raised full-year guidance in this quarter. Analysts’ estimates for S&P 500 earnings per share, so a wider index, not company specific. They're up 3% since late June, just the consensus estimate. Things are doing OK. There's been a lot of volatilities, there's been a lot of gloom and doom on the AI trade. That is where our attention is, but I think if you go to flyover country, baby, or if you go off of the center of attention. Similar to the jobs report, I'm not saying things are great, but they're not bad.

Travis Hoium: Jon, what has been your takeaway looking at earnings this year?

Jon Quast: I don't know why they call it a consensus estimate because it seems like we're always expecting a different number. What is interesting is that what Lou is saying is absolutely correct, and I think that the word choice that he just had of resilience was an excellent choice. Yet there are some interesting reactions where a company is perhaps beating that consensus estimate, and yet it almost is like the market expected it, and the reaction is either very little to the positive. I think of many of the top AI trade stocks in that bucket, many of them showing numbers that were even ahead of what the consensus estimate was or even internal projections, and yet the reaction from the market is a 5% gain or something like that. That's interesting to me.

Then some companies that are outside the AI trade, seeing their stocks get hammered 10% or so, even though the numbers coming in better than expected and raising that guidance. There is an interesting reaction. It's just anecdotal, I don't know how pervasive that trend actually is. I haven't done the numbers on that, but there are a large number of companies that are coming in better than expected, and yet, not all those stocks seeing the benefit from the market and so do with that what you will.

Travis Hoium: Jon, do you think that part of that is still the disruption story? I just think about company like Uber. Uber reported this week pretty good numbers. They're growing their bookings over 20% year over year. They said they're going to be in 15 cities with autonomous vehicles, and yet the stock was down, and the biggest thing that always sticks out to me is investors just have questions about, are they just going to get crushed by Waymo?

Jon Quast: I think that's definitely part of it. We're investors and we're thinking about the future. We're not thinking about the last three months and for some companies that the disruption question is on the table, it hasn't satisfactorily been answered yet for investors. Uber is in that bucket. How much is AI innovation going to drive driverless technology forward and then disrupt the business model? That's the question that investors are asking. I think of other companies such as financial technology, enterprise software, these sorts of things. There are companies that are delivering good numbers, and yet the existential question is still on the table, and it hasn't been satisfactorily answered even with the last three months being good.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, company like Meta fits that bucket to me, as well. Didn't satisfactorily answer, how are they going to make money on all of this AI spending? Lots of questions yet to be answered for the rest of the year. When we come back, we're going to talk about this AI donut that OpenAI is reportedly developing. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. The big topic as we prepared for the show over the past 24 hours or so was this new device that Bloomberg is reporting that OpenAI is developing. If you've been following this, OpenAI has been stealing people from Apple for years at this point. Jon Ive joined the company with the acquisition of his startup. This has become now a lawsuit between the two companies. But what in the world are those people actually making? That is what a lot of us have been wondering because oftentimes, a new piece of hardware comes with a new technology paradigm. Lou, the piece of hardware that they are reportedly making is a hockey puck-sized doughnut with a speaker and some moving components. I don't know exactly what that means, but is this the thing you're excited to jump all over?

Lou Whiteman: Well, first of all, we should say that Jony Ive is not involved in a lawsuit. OpenAI bought that company fair and square, but since there's lawyers running around everywhere, we should say that. But yeah, look, Travis, if you're like me, you can't walk down Main Street in your hometown without hearing someone say, gosh, I love AI, but I just wish there was a $300 device I carry around my house to interact with it. That's what we all want?

Travis Hoium: So you're a little skeptical?

Lou Whiteman: Well, look, we do have a device that we carry around our house to access AI, and it works really daggone well. We can use it to search. We can use it to play wordle, or we can do whatever we want. It's got a great battery life. It fits in your pocket. It's the phone. That is what we have to be better than to compel people to buy a new $300 speaker. I guess it's going to dance around when it's talking to you. I don't get it. I really don't. The good news, bad news for Apple shareholders here. If you were putting into your models a huge windfall from just the profit sharing that Apple is going to get after there's a settlement on this intellectual property thing for all of the OpenAI revenue they're going to generate from hardware, you may be disappointed here because I don't think there's going to be a lot of profits to share here. This is a device because OpenAI needs a device. I don't think this is solving a problem anyone actually has.

Travis Hoium: Do you see this any more positive, Jon?

Jon Quast: Well, no, not for the doughnut-shaped item in particular. Bloomberg reporting that it's going to be doughnut-shaped so it can sit on a nightstand or a counter, but I checked my nightstands and counters this morning, and there are many non-doughnut-shaped things sitting on them but I'm actually in the market for an AI hardware device right now. I'm looking at some very strongly that our recording devices, they will record conversations. They will transcribe those conversations and then provide AI summaries and action points automatically in an app. That to me, has utility.

For myself personally having multiple jobs, having many conversations with many people throughout the day, I do forget things, and I have to take physical notes. That would be simpler. There's no screen. You can have it out on the table as far as moving parts. There's a physical toggle switch. I would imagine that's what OpenAI is looking at with their own device. But here's the thing. The ones that I'm looking at, the utility is debatable, so I'm debating that in my mind, but it's also coming in at a third the price of what this item is. You look at Apple strategy over the years, that premium pricing that they demand, that has a reputation behind it, a hardware reputation that OpenAI does not have. How is it going to charge a premium pricing on its own AI hardware device right out of the gate when there are other devices out on the market at a much lower price and aesthetically pleasing as they are? This, I don't think is going to gain traction. To me, it's the Amazon Fire Phone.

Travis Hoium: Lou, the thing I always think about with a lot of these AI technologies and the potential devices is the paradigms that we've gone through in the past. It seemed so clear to me when the PC first came out, the mid '80s or '90s, whenever you got your first PC, that was such a big difference from a typewriter. Then when mobile phones came out, especially smartphones, you went from, now I got to go to my computer to access the Internet to, oh, my gosh, there's a screen that has all of this stuff available to me in the world is my oyster. I have such a harder time making the same leap with some of these AI devices. Is that 10X? It's got to be 10X better to actually replace a phone? Is that what you're indicating here?

Lou Whiteman: This is both Apple's greatest success and greatest failure as a growth company now, is that the phone is really good. That's exactly it, Travis, is that to change consumer behavior, you have to give the consumer something they don't have today. I don't know why the doughnut versus your phone makes things any better than it was today. I just look, because we need to is not a good reason. It has to be because it's worth it for you, the consumer, or the consumer won't buy it.

Travis Hoium: Let's move on to a big earnings report that happened overnight. That was The Trade Desk. Jon, this is one of those companies that has always been loved by the market until 12 or 18 months ago, and then things really went off the rails. After this recent earnings report, at least, in premarket trading and post-market after the report came out, shares were down somewhere around 20% off about 90% from their high. What went wrong at The Trade Desk?

Jon Quast: Its execution. You look at the last three quarters. We had 12% growth in the first quarter, only 3% growth in this quarter and forecasting potentially a 12% drop in revenue in the upcoming quarter. This is supposed to be a huge growth business, it's the market is expanding that they're in, so this is an execution thing. Jeff Green, CEO, coming out of the gate here and blaming the macro conditions, something outside of its control.

Travis Hoium: I want to highlight that because I listened to at least the first half of the call, and he spent 10 minutes talking in detail about, here's the macro conditions, and this is why Nike isn't spending more and all these things. I was going, this is excuses. This is always a red flag for me as an investor.

Jon Quast: I'm sorry. This doesn't pass the sniff test here. He normally comes out with long monologues talking against these walled garden businesses of Meta Platforms, Alphabet, and Amazon did not mention walled gardens on the call, and I believe that that was very wise on his part because you look at those numbers, all of those growing by double digits at much higher revenue basis, whereas The Trade Desk is projecting this shortfall, this deceleration, this decline in revenue in the upcoming quarter. To me, that is an internal problem of execution. You also look at other companies that do have a lot of overlap with The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk is very heavily weighted towards consumer package goods and cars in their advertising mix. Not one to one, but there are other companies in the space, adTech, Magnite, and PubMatic reporting double-digit growth. Even companies like Zeta is posting very strong growth rates, and so to me, this doesn't pass the sniff test from Jeff Green and The Trade Desk.

Lou Whiteman: I think the wall garden is winning. I'm not going to just say execution is nothing management could do, but the Internet is getting more closed off. The Trade Desk has always said, we have a solution for that. We're not seeing it. Look, guys, I don't think this gets any better. I keep hearing that AI bots are going to do while they're shopping for us if not actually buying. I'm a bit skeptical there, but I do think more of this is going to bots. Do bots respond to advertising? What world does that play?

But let's talk about Green for one second. You mentioned, the [inaudible] his statement, the quarter didn't meet the standards, but it just reinforced the belief that we are focused on the right opportunities. I think that has to ring hollow for investors at this point. That was maybe something you did three or four quarters ago when first bombed. Green needs to move upstairs. I know he has, like, nearly 50% vote power, so we're not going to activist here, but his voice is no longer resonating on Wall Street. He needs to go become executive chairman. Hopefully, he can do a better job finding a CEO than he did with finding a CFO, given how long that's taken and how many things. If Trade Desk is going to have a chance here, even if the strategy is right, even if it is just all of the macro headwinds against them, even if you concede that, there just needs to be a new face of this company for Wall Street, or things aren't going to change.

Travis Hoium: Lou, do you think that the fundamental dynamics of advertising in this digital age have changed in a way that is going to make it really hard for The Trade Desk, 'cause there are companies, like Jon said, who are doing well.

Lou Whiteman: I think The Trade Desk is having trouble adjusting to the Internet as quickly as offers, and that isn't to say they can't, but right now it's not happening.

Travis Hoium: When we come back, we're going to play Value or Value Trap. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Hidden Gems Investing. In this segment, we like to have a little bit of fun with investing, so we're going to play a game called Value or Value Trap. We're going to ask Jon and Lou whether these companies are a great value for investors or whether this is a trap that, looks really cheap, but doesn't end up being that long term. The first stock we're going to talk about, we just covered a little bit. That is The Trade Desk. But, Lou, I want to know, is this now a value? We were just going over the numbers during the break, $5 billion enterprise value. The price startings multiple on a forward basis is 6.6. By the way, all of these companies have a forward P/E under 15. Theoretically, they could be values, but is this a trap?

Lou Whiteman: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. At this point, I'm not going to see value here until I see some articulation from them that they know how to solve the mess they're in. Right now, I think it's a trap, or it's too risky to try and catch this falling knife.

Travis Hoium: Jon?

Jon Quast: I agree with that. Value Trap for now. You point out the forward earnings multiple, but I would assume that is actually going to go up, here in the coming weeks, because the guidance showed that we're going to have a revenue decline. We don't know how long that's going to last, and the margins are getting pressured, so I don't think it's as good of a deal as it looks. It's a show me story at this point.

Travis Hoium: If you're going to have traps, I do want to hear what companies are more attractive in this space. I'm going to just throw one out because I think, one that I have been interested in recently and been adding to my position, too is Zeta Global. Here's a company that's growing almost 50% year over year. But Jon, Lou, what's on your radar in this area that is more attractive?

Lou Whiteman: I just said the Wall Garden. Give me an Amazon just because I get a lot of things going on there, but that works for me.

Jon Quast: I agree with Lou. Go with the ones that are working for sure. Meta Platforms will be at the top of my list, but Zeta is at the top of my watch list, the one that I need to do more research on.

Travis Hoium: Let's talk a little bit about Shift4. This is in the payment space, and some of these companies, PayPal, you can throw into this as well, have gone from being market darlings to incredible value stocks. Forward priced earnings multiple is 7.4 for Shift4, but after they reported earnings earlier this week, shares fell almost 20%. Jon, I know this is when you follow a little bit, is Shift4 today value or value trap?

Jon Quast: Value all day long. If you are a Shift4 shareholder, as I am, you are used to the market just dogging on the earnings results that are consistently good. This is a company growing at a very high growth rate and doing so profitably, not really any delusion to shareholders to speak of. I think that this is a company that is going through a little bit of a transition as it expands into more international markets. The financial technology sector, it's not just unloved. It's hated by investors right now, so that's going against it. But you look at the business itself. This is one of the few companies in the space putting up growth and profits.

Lou Whiteman: I guess, Toast? I don't know. This feels so commoditized to me, and it doesn't feel like everyone could be a winner. I'm not sure I really like any of these in the long run. I don't know if this is a value trap as in there's anything really wrong with the business, but I don't find it a compelling investment. I'd buy Toast before I'd buy Shift4.

Travis Hoium: Both companies that I have on my watch list, I have not bought either of them, but I actually like the case for both of those. Let's talk about one that has been the talk of the market over the past year or so that is Micron. Shares are actually down 26% from their peak. But if you look at the forward priced earnings multiple, it's still just six. Lou, with everything going on in the memory market, is Micron a value today or a value trap?

Lou Whiteman: This, to me, is a good textbook example. If I ever have to go back and teach a college class about why there is no one financial metric that you should focus on and make all your decisions basically. That's a great P/E, but this is a commoditized business, and the commodity is red hot, so is that sustainable? I don't think it is. I still think that this is a value trap. I know Micron. I actually like Micron better than any of their competitors because I think Micron has made more of an effort to differentiate itself and actually try to break out of a commodity trap. I'd rather be late on this one buying in, though, because it's still, just I know the history and memory, and I know how this story ends.

Jon Quast: It's not the first time that Micron has been valued this cheaply. In fact, I think in a lot of the past cycles, it has been valued at, I know for a fact, it's been valued at under 10 times forward earnings, many times in the past. I would say, though, even though I agree directionally with Lou, I would say this is a value stock. The reason being that I would say it is a value stock is that I think that the red-hot commoditization or the red-hotness of the commodity right now is going to continue for several years more. I don't think that this is a short boom-and-bust like it's been in the past. I really think that there is so much to be done in the AI space. Memory is still there's such a shortness of supply that I do believe that Micron is able to maintain its pricing power for I would say the next three years, at least.

Travis Hoium: I've got a little quiz for you because the last time that memory was this hot was early in 2000, the year 2000, 26 years ago. Jon, do you know how far Micron's stock fell from its peak in mid 2000 to its low and I've got that at late 2008?

Jon Quast: I would imagine it's over 90% because it took it, I think, 20 years to recover and hit recapture highs.

Travis Hoium: Ninety-eight drawdown, 98.2% to be exact. This is one of those markets that if you get it right, you can have a 10X stock like we've had over the past 18 months or so. But, man, if you get the timing wrong, this can fall apart really quickly, so this does make me a little bit nervous as an investor. Let's talk about Salesforce. This is another one of these companies that you would think has a lot of staying power but has had trouble in the market, Jon, is Salesforce a value today or a value trap?

Jon Quast: It's a value trap, in my opinion, for a variety of reasons. But as you look at what this company is doing, I think that it is taking on a huge risk as it tries to change its business model from a per seat business model to a per task business model. When you integrate AI tooling into your product, but then you start charging per task, you're really not looking too much different from just the direct AI tools that are available themselves because you're paying for tokens when it comes to a coding AI agent. I don't think that's a smart move. I think that there's a lot of aggressiveness here with high goodwill on the balance sheet and it does look cheap, but I do wonder about this business long term, so for that reason, I'd say value trap.

Lou Whiteman: Probably more bullish on the business' survivability than Jon, but I'm not really compelled to buy in here. I'm pretty lukewarm on value trap. We have decelerating growth. We have a lot of headwinds, and as Jon says, there's a lot of debt, just a lot of garbage on the balance sheet. Also, my fantasy in this world is to see Slack disappear, and since that's so obvious, I'm rooting against them for that reason, but I feel like this is likely just going to be not get worse but not get a lot better for a while.

Travis Hoium: Lou, anything in this space that does intrigue you?

Lou Whiteman: Not particularly. I do think there is a path for, and it might be a company that Jon is going to talk about on the radar, but I do think that companies are going to emerge that can actually package and use AI to actually sell AI value to enterprise customers. I do think there's a path here. I don't think Salesforce is the best vehicle for that, but I do think that that's coming.

Travis Hoium: This is going to be such an interesting case study in the disruptors and the legacy companies because it does seem like Salesforce, The Trade Desk, they are serving some of those bigger older companies that don't necessarily have the disruption mentality of a lot of their competitors. Let's talk about another one that we have talked about a few times on this show always seems to be a bit of a value that is Adobe. Jon, Adobe's shares are currently trading for just 10 times earnings, and the stock's in a 62% drawdown. Is this a value or a value trap?

Jon Quast: Lou, I hate to be negative Nancy here, but I'm going to go with value trap again. The reason I'm going to go value trap is I am seeing concerns over growth. I am seeing concerns when it comes to margin. We have ongoing questions in leadership, and then there's also the prioritization of the premium model. This is what management is saying it wants to focus on, get these free users into the ecosystem. But to me, that's moving the wrong direction. It signals to me that the creative space is becoming more competitive due to just superior AI tooling that is out there. I do wonder about this business, I'm not ready to buy into Adobe at this valuation, even though it does look attractive.

Lou Whiteman: I took a flyer on this one, so I have to say value. I mean, I get the risks, and I think they're real. I am still skeptical that the people really using Adobe are going to switch over anytime quickly, especially with Adobe working on their own AI tools and trying to make their own tools. Again, if AI tools ge really good, there's going to be a lot of corporations saying we can save money here, but with tokens, will they? Stuff like that, I do think that there's a runway for Adobe to figure it out. The management turnover is unfortunate time and given everything that's going on. I mean, look, a person has done a great job, and it's been there decades, so I get it. But that's unfortunate. But I have hope for this one so I'll say value.

Travis Hoium: I want to quickly touch on one of the companies that has actually outperformed the market over a period of time and also outperformed its high-profile competitor, Tesla. That is General Motors trading for just six times forward earnings. Lou, I'm going to let you go first because I know you're always my negative voice in my head when it comes to automakers. But is this a value? Have they actually got this figured out with a reasonably good strategy in autonomy, too?

Lou Whiteman: They do, and it's still not good value to me, because this is just such a cutthroat business. I mean, they are very good at what they do, but I am long-term focused, and at best, with an automaker you trade cycles, and I'm just not interested in doing it. Their margins stink even when things are going well. There is no more complex supply chain in the world. Not even any of my defense contracts or anything like that, than the automakers. You're asking for trouble if you try and go long term in an automaker, so every time it looks appealing, this is just Lucy in the football all over again.

Jon Quast: I would agree with Lou here is that maybe the stock looks attractive, but for me, the automakers, the businesses never look all that attractive to me. That is why I am disinclined to ever get into GM or others. I have looked at Ford in the past, and just at the end of the day, I don't love the business, and so for that reason, even when the stock does look attractively priced, I stay away. Now, of course, you point out this has been a stock that has been gaining, so I have been missing out here, but it's just not one that I am attracted to because of the business.

Travis Hoium: Always one of the toughest debates for an investor when you see a stock that looks cheap, but the question is, really, is it long term? Hopefully, that is helpful in understanding. Some of these cheap-looking stocks today, when we come back, we are going to get to the stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems investing.

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Travis Hoium: 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.

I did want to touch on one of the bigger topics of the week, and that is Alphabet losing a bunch of its best researchers, people who have been there. Jeff Dean has been there for I think it was 27 years. This is not the first time, Jon, they have lost some of their major talent, but this is now a trend over the past six months or so. They're showing really good numbers at GCP, but the existential question seems to be getting stronger for Alphabet. Is AI going to be disruptive if they lose their smartest people? What do you think?

Jon Quast: I don't know what to make of some of these announcements of the departures from Google talent. With Jeff Dean in particular, he's been at Alphabet so long. You have to imagine that he's accrued somewhat of a nest egg, and who can blame him for going out and starting his own company to pursue something at this point that he wants to pursue. I mean, that's what I would be tempted to do if I was in his position. It's hard to fault him too much for that. You look at some of these companies too. Anthropic losing some talent, yes, but also gaining some talent from Google as well. You have somebody such as Jon Jumper, who is a big part of Google's AlphaFold, and I really think AlphaFold is a really important thing that Google is doing that we don't talk about enough, trying to figure out how proteins fold, and I think it's going to be revolutionary for medicine and more. But Jumper leaving Alphabet for Anthropic.

Anthropic is also gaining some talent. I mean, they're losing talent, but they're also gaining talent because all the chairs or people keep jumping from one boat to the next. It makes sense because changes happen in this space so quickly that businesses and models take new directions. It makes sense that as talent is looking at where its own ship is sailing, that as they change directions really quickly, that I'm going to jump on a different boat that's more in the direction I want to go.

Lou Whiteman: This is all just, I think, parlor gossip. I don't think it's investable. AI I don't think it really tells us anything we don't know about the frontier models. We don't know that Google doesn't have a 50% stake in whatever Dean's doing next.

Travis Hoium: They did say that they have a stake in the company, and he's going to be running on GCP.

Lou Whiteman: They're moving some of the more speculative stuff off balance sheet. That's OK. As an investor, it's just go play your games.

Travis Hoium: The other thing that's so interesting is Google was the company that the show Silicon Valley was making fun of being the place that you just go to work and collect a giant paycheck. But now, we're really worried about losing specific people, so it does seem to be the market talking out of both sides with its mouth. I think the thing that is undeniable with Alphabet and Google in particular is the company has more and better infrastructure than any of these other companies, whether you're talking about hyperscalers or the start-ups. Anthropic is building its business on top of GCP. A lot for investors to digest, but I don't think Alphabet is going to go anywhere. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Jon, I'm going to have you go first. What are you looking at this week?

Jon Quast: I'm looking at ServiceNow. This is ticker symbol, NOW. I am not a big fan of enterprise software stocks, generally speaking, but this is one that stands out in my opinion. This company is embedded across many important businesses around the world, doing just some customer service management, some information technology service management, just some really boring stuff behind the scenes. But it is really embedded and this whole space, I believe, is poised to be disrupted due to AI agents. Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, saying that ServiceNow is actually at the forefront of deploying AI agents. If you've tried to build an AI agent on your own, you realize how difficult it is. If ServiceNow can make it easier for businesses, I think that gets adopted. The company is still growing at over a 20% growth rate. You look at the remaining performance obligations still growing at an over 20% growth rate, as well. Trading at around 30 times forward earnings is not particularly cheap, but not unreasonable given that growth. ServiceNow is one that I'm looking at.

Travis Hoium: We need our thoughts from Dan Boyd behind the glass. Dan, what do you think about ServiceNow?

Dan Boyd: ServiceNow is one of these companies that just does stuff in the background, and you know I love that stuff. The companies that nobody knows quite what they do, but they must do something really important. It's got to be important.

Lou Whiteman: Especially now.

Dan Boyd: ServiceNow.

Travis Hoium: Lou, what are you looking at this week?

Lou Whiteman: Dan, I'm going to give you something where I do know what they do, but you can't see it every day. I'm looking at warehouse automation company Symbotic, ticker SYM. Company beat on earnings and revenue this week, but Wall Street was disappointed by the guidance, or a lack of enthusiasm around the guidance. Stock traded down about 10%. Dan, I think the market has this one wrong. Symbotic is methodically building its business. They added a really important new customer, Southern Glazer, a bigger beer and wine distributor in the quarter. Symbotic is conservative in the way it books future business. It's basically just bolting in one warehouse at a time on these big things, even if they're going to get 30 eventually. That understates the guidance. I think there's huge growth potential here, and Dan, I'm convinced there's a whole new generation of warehouse automation that's actually going to create a lot of value coming out of this AI wave. Symbotic has a big role to play here. Stock’s not cheap relative to current business, but I'm bullish that that current business is going to grow from here, and this one is really intriguing to me.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what do you think about warehouse robotics?

Dan Boyd: I've never worked in a warehouse, but get this. I'm looking up Symbotic, and apparently their robots can travel up to 25 miles an hour, which again, I've never worked in a warehouse, so I don't know how all that stuff works, but it seems very scary to me to have a robot blasting around at 25 miles an hour while I'm trying to walk to the bathroom.

Lou Whiteman: That's why the bathrooms got to be separate. The robot bathrooms are separate, so you're fine.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what's going on your watch list?

Dan Boyd: I'm going fast robots. Let's go Symbotic.

Travis Hoium: Congratulations to Lou. Thanks, everybody. See you here next time.

Jon Quast has positions in PubMatic, ServiceNow, Shift4 Payments, and Toast. Lou Whiteman has positions in Adobe, Shopify, and The Trade Desk. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet, PayPal, PubMatic, Shopify, Uber Technologies, and Zeta Global. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Micron Technology, Nike, Nvidia, PayPal, PubMatic, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Shift4 Payments, Shopify, Symbotic, Tesla, The Trade Desk, and Toast. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors, Magnite, and Uber Technologies and recommends the following options: long January 2028 $330 calls on Adobe, short January 2028 $340 calls on Adobe, and short September 2026 $47.50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.