IPO Fever Heats Up for OpenAI and Anthropic

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

• AI IPO setup.
• Insatiable demand.
• Debt gets involved.
• Restaurant recovery?
• Buying a franchise.
• Stocks on the 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. 14, 2026.

Travis Hoium: We're racing to the biggest IPOs in history. 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 Jason Moser. Guys, we've had a lot of earnings over the past couple of weeks, but the backdrop of all of these earnings reports seems to be Anthropic and OpenAI racing towards their IPOs. They're trying to get as much compute as possible. They're trying to grow revenue as much as possible. We've already seen SpaceX IPO this year, got to I think it was nearly $2 trillion valuation. I don't know if it ever popped above that, fell back pretty quickly after that. But Lou, we did learn this week that OpenAI is starting to catch up to Anthropic with their revenue because of a little bit more aggressive pricing. Also, I think both of these companies are willing to pay top dollar for a compute. As we think about that, and I want to get to some of the neoclouds in particular in just a moment, but how should we be thinking about the growth of these companies and whether or not it's profitable? Because it does seem a little bit like they're growing almost at all cost at this point.

Lou Whiteman: As they should, and that is. Profits are not a requirement. As we saw with the SpaceX IPO, profits are not required now. Growth is required. They are doing what they should do. Look, it could turn tomorrow, but as of now, there's a lot of source of capital. As Anthropic and OpenAI go public, there's even more sources of capital. You need profits when the market tells you you need profits. The hard thing of the management team is is that you don't necessarily get a exit sign 3 miles in advance. You don't get a warning. You better be ready for profits when they come. But as of now, there is nothing that tells us that the market is worried about this quarter's results. They're curious about what you're building. Go out and build something, and may it long continue for these companies because I don't know when they're going to hit profitability.

Travis Hoium: Jason, is that how you see this? Because it does look a little bit like I think the neoclouds were a good example over the past week. The numbers are phenomenal. Lou is right. The revenue numbers are great. But every time I look at these companies, I’m wondering what is sustainable and what isn’t, because it does seem like we have this exponential growth to infinity. I even saw projections that SpaceX could add 10 gigawatts worth of capacity, which would be several hundred billion dollars worth of customer revenue. I'm not sure exactly where that comes from, but it does seem like these companies are growing at an astronomical pace. I'm not sure where the end of that is.

Jason Moser: It makes me think of that investing style GARP, growth at a reasonable price. These businesses are just growth at all cost. Right now, the market is pricing these companies entirely on growth, no regard as far as margins are concerned. I get that. That makes sense today. The question mark is, how long will that be tolerated? My suspicion is, it will be tolerated for a while. What's that old saying? The market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent or something like that.

Travis Hoium: Yes.

Jason Moser: It may seem irrational. We're not exactly seeing the clear pathway to profitability, because you're right. All of these investments in compute they're paying up for it, of course. But what is the ultimate return? I think that's what we're all asking. It's probably easier to see at the enterprise level right now, but my bet is if you just go take a walk down Main Street and just ask a random sample of people, how is AI impacting your life today? Most people would probably be like, I don't know, maybe they use an LLM.

Travis Hoium: It makes customer support worse to interact with.

Jason Moser: We need to see that aha moment where we really understand how these dots all connect. I don't doubt that we'll get there eventually. But until we do, these companies are just going to continue to raise money, spend on growth at all costs, and hope, I guess, that profits come at some point. I think the question mark for me is, where do those profits really ultimately come from? Because again, going back to just general society, most people are not paying for subscriptions to Claude or Gemini or whatever. It is just a very minuscule percentage of people that actually pay for those subscriptions. That's not going to be a source of income. That's not going to be the solution. That begs the question. Will it be advertising? Well, I don't know. It's worked out well for Google, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Lou Whiteman: It's hard to imagine a world where all of these companies are winners, which is really hard because even if I agree with you, JMo. Look, can you imagine Google trying to charge for search, even if it's AI search now.

Jason Moser: Exactly.

Lou Whiteman: It's a nonstarter.

Jason Moser: It's nonstarter exactly.

Lou Whiteman: I don't know. Advertising, I guess, will change, but maybe stay. It's hard to imagine, I've even seen these personal assistant things, and they I don't think life or at least, life for me, isn't rigid enough to fit into the confines of a personal assistant the way they do them. I think it's a real tough sell. It is for the enterprise who can gain traction, but even then, I haven't seen anything to suggest, we are just signing a 10-year deal with Anthropic or something like that. Even that feels very fleeting company to company. There's definitely a there there. Like Jason says, there is definitely something is involving here, and there's something there. But how it turns into sustainable profits for any of these companies, I don't know. It's a weird moment as an investor, because I both guarantee you, Travis, that this is not sustainable and it won't work for everyone. I wouldn't put your money out there betting against it right now. Because, so you're just.

Travis Hoium: Thank you, Lou. I appreciate that.

Lou Whiteman: You're stuck in this Lala Land where I know it can't last forever, but it works right now. That's a very unsettling, at least for me as a conservative. I'm not a YOLO guy. It's a very unsettling place to be where you don't want to FOMO if you're not involved, and you also know that there's another chapter to be written here, and it's not nearly as exciting.

Jason Moser: It makes you feel good as an investor, owning companies like Amazon and Alphabet, for example, where yes, they're making these huge investments, and sure there are question marks as to return on that investment, but at least they've got these businesses to fall back on, if this turns out to just not return what we all hope it will, at least they have these core businesses to fall back on these cash cows that they've already got, whereas with an OpenAI, with an Anthropic that's more of a one trick pony right now. It's not to say that'll always be the case, they may be able to introduce a number of different revenue streams, as well. I'm not saying they can't, but for now, essentially, they are just kind of one trick ponies in a market that seems to become just more and more commoditized by the day.

Travis Hoium: Let's also bring in the risk that I think is new in the last six months, not entirely new, but we've gone to a new phase where so much of this build-out is now being fueled by debt. You have the hyperscalers, which are now taking on immense amounts of debt, tens of billions of dollars worth of debt. Even Alphabet is now burning through all of its operating cash. It is now free cash flow negative. But Lou, we talked about the neoclouds. They're on the front lines here. The piece that I think is so interesting is everybody is saying we have more demand than we can supply for this compute. We have to pay whatever it takes for memory, we have to pay whatever it takes for debt. Some of those debt costs are going up. But you tie all of these pieces together, and CoreWeave says we have a bunch of demand, but that demand comes from Alphabet or from Meta or from Microsoft, and that demand for Microsoft and Alphabet and Meta ultimately comes from a couple of these companies that we talked about at the beginning that are looking at IPO, OpenAI and Anthropic. It does all seem to come back to is this a house of cards that's built on top of specifically those two companies that are still in this high growth mode, but we don't know what their profitability is going to be like. How do we think about debt layering into this? Because it does seem to take the risk to a new level.

Lou Whiteman: Debt is a fantastic tool, assuming you pay the debt back. Many of fortunes have been lost on that second part, that is the thing. We all are living in houses today thanks to debt. There are really good uses of debt. This is a house of cards, or it's a solid foundation that all depends on whether or not they can come through. They don't even really need profits here. All of these companies you don't need profits. You just need sustained cash flow. You just need to be able to sing that revenue. For investors, you need the profits. But for the lenders, all you need is just cash coming in the door. We can get into, there's other companies doing this, but for the neoclouds the good news is that there's a lot of demand for compute power. Outside of AI. There is a fallback. If you build it, they will probably come. But will they come to the extent that we are planning for right now when we are at maximum stage with AI? Also, will there be any pricing power as far, again, about an investment? It sounds like what I'm talking about is if you just build it, it's out there. That's how commodities start getting formed. I think pricing power. I do think there will be winners and losers. I do think you have to tread carefully. But I don't know if we are set up for the worst-case scenario where just everybody defaults on their loans because I do think I see cash flow. I just don't know if I see profits, which as an investor, at some point, unless I'm just investing in the lenders, I need to see profits, as well.

Travis Hoium: Jason, the other piece that came out this week was Nvidia backstopping a bunch of debt from a number of institutional providers of debt, and just in very simple terms, they're cutting up the risk profile, the way that you do with a credit default swap or with securitizations of mortgages where there's somebody who's first in line, second in line, third in line. Nvidia is saying, we'll be last in line. We'll make sure you get your money back. Just keep buying our GPUs. It seems like we're entering a new phase with all this debt and now with even the supplier saying, we'll backstop this.

Jason Moser: That's been the big question mark for a while. It's just the interrelatedness of all of these different entities, these different companies investing in each other to try to ensure each other's success. Ultimately, it's like, well, where is all of the money going to come from? With Nvidia, for example, at least we know they have this deliverable their technology is something they can deliver on, and that should continue for the foreseeable future. But, I look at these neoclouds, for example, well, consolidation, I think, is ultimately going to have to happen, it just doesn't seem to make any real sense unless there's some differentiation that you possess. The cost of compute is going to continue to come down. These neoclouds that are riddled with debt and have these questionable capital structures, that's going to come to the surface. The tide's going to go out, and you're going to see who's swimming naked. My suspicion is we'll see some consolidation in that sector over the course of the next several years.

Lou Whiteman: Maybe I'm too positive here, but can I give you the positive big macro spin on these.

Travis Hoium: We need a little positivity.

Lou Whiteman: Again, because the obvious what we're dancing around is what happened the last time that debt just got overwhelmed the system? That was 2008. I think I can squint and read Nvidia coming out and doing this publicly as a sign that the lenders are doing their due diligence, that there is a need for Nvidia to do this because there are people asking the right questions or there are people aware of all of these things. They're not oblivious to all of the issues. Look, again, it could still turn out terribly for some of the specific companies involved. But as someone who just doesn't want to see a repeat of 2008, I do think there are at least some signs that we have learned from those mistakes, and that's a very good thing, if so.

ADVERTISEMENT: Lots for investors to think about, but it will be exciting when we finally do get the numbers from OpenAI and Anthropic. Hopefully, later this year, when we come back, we're going to turn to some good news in the restaurant industry. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. You just found out that your sales team is at risk of missing quota. Don't panic. Just ask Rippling AI. Since it’s built on your real-time people and business data, Rippling AI can pull metrics from Rippling and Salesforce into a meeting-ready dashboard showing quota attainment, headcount plan, and monthly revenue to quota by region. In seconds, you'll see exactly what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed. Question answered, action taken, crisis averted. When you have critical business questions that need answers, don't just file a ticket and wait weeks for an outdated report. Describe what you need and have Rippling AI build it instantly from your live people and business data. Whether it's a dashboard with detailed charts or automated workflows with the right triggers, conditions, and approvals. Ready to rule your business, head to rippling.ai/fool to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's rippling.ai/fool. Sign up for exclusive access today rippling.ai/fool.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. We did get an interesting earnings report this week from Cava. I'm sad to say we still don't have Cava where I'm at. I hear such good things from you guys about That's the opportunity, JMo.

Jason Moser: That's it. That's exactly.

Travis Hoium: Come to the Midwest. But, Jason, they had some pretty good numbers. Traffic was up. Spending per ticket was up. There's been a lot of struggles in the restaurant industry, so is this at least a green shoot that maybe things at least in certain pockets are getting a little better?

Jason Moser: I think so, to a degree, there are the restaurant business right now, it's obviously very difficult, and we're starting to see the lines blur between traditional fast food and fast casual. The menu prices for traditional fast food are really starting to creep up there going to get a value meal from one of these McDonald's or burger, or whatever. It's not cheap anymore, and so I think the fast casual restaurants have a little bit of an opportunity right there to keep close, at least in regard to pricing, while offering a higher-quality meal. Cava rhymes with Chipotle. It was a good quarter revenue up 31-plus percent; that growth was fueled by 9% increase in comps. They opened 17 new stores. They are seeing, as you mentioned, traffic up that was better than 5%.

Another interesting data point that I found regarding the quarter. The average unit volume for their restaurants now hit they cracked 3 million dollars per year, and that's up modestly from around 2.82, 0.9 million recently. But that is on par with Chipotle now. I think the caveat there is that we need to recognize the fact that Cava only has a handful of stores compared to the Chipotle; there’s something like 350 Cavas versus 4,200 Chipotles. Now, that is, I think, at the end of the day, an opportunity. You mentioned you don't have them out there in Minnesota yet, at least where you live, and so maybe there is a nice runway of growth because, as a consumer, and I think Lou would agree, we do like what Cava has to offer. It's not terribly hard on the wallet, and it is something that I think could continue to grow for some time.

Travis Hoium: Lou, is this one of those things where people are just eating a little bit healthier? Maybe McDonald's not doing quite as well. I know I own shares of Portillo's, that's not doing particularly well because those beef sandwiches apparently are falling out of favor to a salad bowl at this point.

Lou Whiteman: Salad sounds good. Look, I'm biased here, but I don't know. I think Cava is winning because they're well managed and they have a good product, and it's early; these growth stories don't last forever. But I do think it's a reminder that leadership matters and concept matters that not all restaurants are the same to your point, Travis. The other thing, and I know I don't want to sample on any the big narratives. Can we get over this GLP-1 is killing restaurants narratives? I believe in GLP-1s. I believe in that, but you're going to have to do runs of clinical trials to figure out why it doesn't stop us from craving Mediterranean. I do think that it's overstated. I think what's going on with restaurants is a little bit of macro. It's a little bit of oversaturation; maybe it's a little bit of GLP-1s. But earlier in the year, when we had all of these restaurant stocks that were struggling, it was just GLP-1s stopping everyone from eating. I think that is one of those the narrative overwhelms the evidence things, and I think good restaurants can still win, is what we learned from Cava.

Travis Hoium: Lou, do you think that pricing pressure is going to be a challenge, whether it's on people spending money elsewhere, grocery costs are still going up faster than wages are? Same thing with energy prices at this point. Is that something to at least worry about a little bit if you're a restaurant investor?

Lou Whiteman: Sure. I think it always is on both sides: their cost and whether or not consumers can afford it? Again, a well-run company can get through a downturn. I’m not going to predict earnings next quarter, given what’s going on in the macro.

Travis Hoium: It will be interesting to see what happens with the restaurant. It's always an area that I would like to invest more, but it's such a tough space, so don't find a new Chipotle every day. When we come back, we're gonna go shopping for sports franchises. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. We like to have a little bit of fun in this segment with investing. In this week, with the news that Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, and Josh Kushner, who runs Thrive Capital, one of the most successful venture capital firms over the past decade or so, are buying the Los Angeles Lakers for somewhere around $12.5 billion. What's a few billion dollars between friends? But that got me thinking: if you were going to invest in a sports franchise, and you were doing this just for investment purposes, not because you necessarily love that specific team, what would you be buying? There's a lot of options out there, but the prices are getting pretty crazy at this point, not that they always haven't been very high. Jason, I want to start with the NFL. If we're going shopping for NFL teams, are you going bargain basement, or are you willing to pay up for one of the big franchises?

Jason Moser: There are so many different ways to look at this. I did a quick search, and it just by the numbers, you look at the Dallas Cowboys. They're the highest overall return on investment historically. I think Jerry Jones bought them in 1989 for something like $140 million, and the team is now I think value close to $16 billion. I wonder if maybe I'm not sure how much juice there is left to squeeze there, to be honest with you, particularly given the team's lack of success through the years, at least over the past couple of decades, probably I could be a local here in Virginia and say, I'd want to go with someone like the Ravens or the Commanders, or they'll always be the Redskins to me. But I grew up in South Carolina, Travis. I'm going to go with the Carolina Panthers because I know football in the Carolinas is beloved. You're getting down there in SCC country, but you're also benefiting from two states, North Carolina and South Carolina. They both love the Panthers, so I think you just have a tremendous opportunity there. The team, I think, is still somewhat reasonably valued. It's like $8 billion today. I think there's plenty of opportunities. I'm going Carolina Panthers, and you're asking about who you want as CEO.

Travis Hoium: I also want a CEO. Who's running this operation?

Jason Moser: I love watching football. College NFL. It's great. We're getting to that time of year. I'm excited. I'm the CEO of this bad boy. I would love to do something like that. That would be awesome.

Lou Whiteman: What's fascinating about this is that this is like the two sides of a market. JMo and I have similar life experiences, and seeing the North, seeing the South, and we have jumped to opposite conclusions. One thing that really struck me: I used to live in the North, and I would hear NFL fans make fun of franchises in the South. They just don't like football because the Falcons games are empty or whatever, and down in the South, it's college fans make fun of college teams up North. You see, they don't like football up there because Rutgers doesn't draw. I look at Georgia. I don't know, in my life experience, is you are never going to be the big dog in the Southeast if you're an NFL team. If we're talking NFL, I'm heading for the North; Green Bay is the stereotype answer. Buffalo seems to have a rabid fan base, but, Travis, I am just going to do a shout-out to your hometown. All I saw when I was up there recently was I don't even understand, Skull. I don't have to explain that to me offline, but I love that the new stadium looks like a Viking ship, too. I am enamored with that. I am going north here, and I'll take the Vikings, baby.

Travis Hoium: Jason talked about regional dominance. Look at a map of the United States. By the way, I also thought it was funny that you were saying that Rutgers was North, which is about where Omaha is at for now.

Lou Whiteman: I know, but you know what I mean.

Travis Hoium: [OVERLAPPING] very far North.

Lou Whiteman: Boston College doesn't draw either. God, now we're going to get letters.

Travis Hoium: But you want to talk about regional dominance. You got not only Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska. You can go into Wyoming, Montana. You got a long ways to draw from here in Minnesota.

Lou Whiteman: Sure territory, but you're still getting like, one Chicago suburbs where the people trim.

Travis Hoium: Fair enough. We got a lot of land. No, the other piece here is they built a phenomenal facility, their practice facility, and we were at training camp. They do a great job with that. Kids love going. It's five bucks, five bucks to kick the kids in. Get them excited about football, so love the shout-out there, Lou. Who's running the team now?

Lou Whiteman: I want creative disruption because you don't want to start over, but you want to manage an existing business in new ways. My go-to there is Alan Mulally, the former head of Ford, who is just a great CEO of like look, he did not.

Travis Hoium: Is he going to travel from San Diego to like he did when he was running Ford?

Lou Whiteman: He probably wouldn't want to, wouldn't he? Is he Alan? I think Alan's still with us, isn't he? But he did such a great job of Ford, basically just running the existing business, but also thinking about not just resting on the existing business. I think that's what the NFL needs in general.

Travis Hoium: The other thing about Alan Mulally, and I had the very good fortune to interview him on the floor at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, I don't know, back in 2012. You cannot have a conversation with him and not walk away just fully inspired. Like, I got to believe he would just have a football team just champion, get the bit ready to go from day one. He is just one of those guys get you seeing everything glass half full.

Alan Mullaly: Well, I appreciate the shoutout. I think the Vikings would be a good buy, although they probably want a lot more than they paid for the team a decade or so ago. If we are looking at NBA teams, the Lakers are now off the table, but Jason, who are you looking at?

Jason Moser: I'm the biggest NBA guy. Thankfully, I got to grow up in the era of Jordan, watch the Bulls dominate, which was a lot of fun. But one of my best friends growing up, and this is down in South Carolina, he had moved there from Rhode Island. He brought with him his love of New England sports, and so we grew up watching a lot of Celtics basketball. I think for me, I would look at the Celtics as a really fun opportunity to buy. I think it's the fourth or fifth highest valued NBA team, fifth maybe highest valued team in the league today. I think there's still some opportunity there, particularly given the rich history. Just this hardcore die-hard fan base. There just seems to me a lot to like about the Celtics. I think I'd go with them.

Travis Hoium: Who's running the team? This is what I really want to hear.

Jason Moser: I got to go with Shaq. I always loved Shaq as being a part of Papa John's, right back in the day on the board or whatever. He's like, His brand is all about fun. Shaq is just such a character and obviously, an intimate knowledge of the game. I think he would be he would be a very astute and dedicated CEO. That's my pick.

Travis Hoium: Seems like he could be the kind of innovator that Jerry Buss was with the Lakers, 40 years ago or so. I love that. Lou, who do you go with.

Lou Whiteman: I'm going homer here, but living in Atlanta for 20 years and seeing the way this city loves basketball. Unfortunately, Atlanta has the Hawks haven't given them much to root for until maybe recently, Jeffrey, maybe. But I do think that this is, I know this is the hometown fallacy, but there is just a pot of gold waiting to explode here. Look, Travis, there's a really good player up in your neck of the woods that came from just around the corner from Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brown, KCP, a lot of great players from this area. I am going with the Hawks. I'm going to run them, and I'm going to turn this thing into a gold mine because this city really, really loves this basketball. Remember how electric the days were when Spud Webb was playing there?

Jason Moser: I wasn't there then. But yeah, Dominique is still I mean, Dominique is still around a lot when games. It's, look, this city is built for basketball, I think. We actually run a league out of a downtown thing, just a small little, like, a summer league, and it's amazing the people that you get to see going through there. This is a basketball city to just all the football talk, we forget about it.

Travis Hoium: It seems interesting with the NFL, you could almost buy any one of these teams, and you'd be just fine with the salary cap, and the fandom is kind of dispersed. Financially, you probably do just fine with any other teams. But with the NBA, you do have this local people either care, or they don't care, and these companies are these franchises either relevant or they're completely irrelevant. Think about New Orleans. I'm sure that's a very valuable franchise, but there's no way that I would want to be buying that at this point. Let's end on this. Major League Baseball, Lou, I think you have a few more thoughts with MLB. If you're buying a franchise, what do you got?

Lou Whiteman: This one is the most personal, and I have to buy the Baltimore Orioles and figure out how to do it. Although we have the Carlyle guy, David Rubinstein, owning them now. But look, I'm not going to say this is the best buy, but there's tradition there. There's a rabid fan base. The whole Washington thing is behind us. I'm going with my heart here. I'm buying the Orioles just because my fantasy as a little kid was to pitch the Orioles to back-to-back World Series. That's not happening. Maybe I can buy and manage them to back to back to back to back world series.

Travis Hoium: He's appointing himself as CEO.

Lou Whiteman: Maybe, although no. Can I just, because it's such a complicated game with all the contracts and stuff, and you have to do so many spinning wheels, and you've got to go with money. I'm just really going into the archive here. Michael Dunlop, the guy who built Melnet. He's like one of my heroes as a CEO. I want Michael Dunlop to manage all of these things. So there you go. This is going to be the future. Honestly, I don't think I want Carolyn things.

Travis Hoium: Actually, Caro, write me a letter. That's fine. Jason, who are you buying?

Jason Moser: Yeah, man, I tell you, Camden Yards, that's just a wonderful baseball experience. I got to go see a game there. Books Barbecue, by the way. Many years back, I got to go to Camden Yards to watch the Orioles play the Red Sox. Pedro Martinez was pitching for the Sox. We had seats right behind home plate. It was really cool to see. And that leads me to my point, much like with the Celtics. I grew up with my buddy watching the Celtics, grew up watching a lot of Red Sox baseball. I'm a Red Sox fan. I love, again, just the history, the tradition, the rated fan base. And so what I think is interesting, when you look at the Red Sox versus the Yankees, the disparity in the valuation there is pretty considerable. I mean, he get the Red Sox, and he valued at something like $5 billion. Yankees, understandably, valued at something like $9 billion.

Now, I do think it would be interesting to see if we hit in baseball some sort of salary cap. Right now, it's kind of the Wild West, and the teams that make the most money are able to spend the most money and get the most talent. They tend to do, obviously, the best. I think those days are numbered. But I think that actually is something that would play out in the favor of your teams like the Red Sox and even the Yankees. Because of the lore, the history, the tradition, people want to wear those logos. They just have so much opportunity going with my Red Sox and leading the way. You know, I thought about this. You go with something easy like a Tom Brady just because people love him up there. You know what, man? I'm going Brian Nick because it seems like everything that guy touches turns to gold, and so maybe he could bring another championship there to Boston in the next few years. Imagine what would happen to the restaurants in Fenway. Oh, my word. Double dipping there. You're getting the best of both worlds.

Travis Hoium: We got about 2 minutes left. Lou, quickly, if you're buying an MLS franchise, by the way, these have gotten incredibly expensive for the actual popularity of the league. But if you're trying to get in early, what are you looking at?

Lou Whiteman: I'm going to go to JMo's backyard. The Charlotte area for soccer, just the Carolina is so good, and I like the fact you're sort of getting in earlier. You're not going to pay the top dollar for MLS, but you are getting a great fan base and a great grassroots soccer. I'm going to go there. I don't know who I'm going to pick as CEO, though, maybe can I say Clint Dempsey, just 'cause I was my favorite U.S. men's player growing up, a fantastic guy. I don't know if he'd do a good job or not, but I do respect guys, so Clinton went to school in South Carolina. Let's just put him in charge and see what happens.

Travis Hoium: Jason?

Jason Moser: Well, admittedly, this is the area I have just the least file on. But doing a little bit of quick research, I think you've got to go Los Angeles Football Club, LAFC. I think when you look at the two clubs that are really the highest value today, you got Miami and you got LA. Thing about Miami is, I think that all really hinges on Messi, and he's not going to be around forever. A question as to whether he's going to be in the next World Cup is understandable. Time waits for no one. I think I think LA football club is probably more durable of the two. As far as CEO, I don't have really a strong feeling there. Again, it's not a sport I really follow, so I don't know who would necessarily be most suitable, but bring Jim McNerney in out of retirement.

Lou Whiteman: Jason, your CEO's already there. David Beckham.

Jason Moser: There we go.

Lou Whiteman: [inaudible] But yeah. I think that comes obviously.

Jason Moser: You want to go with someone who has inside knowledge, and Beckham could make sense. Or, when Messi retires, maybe he's got another weight for him there.

Lou Whiteman: That will be an interesting one to watch the valuations of some of these soccer leagues, because the other ones are going crazy. I'm sure the Rich Guy club is coming after soccer next, as well. When we come back, we're 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 is closure, please check out our show notes.

We'd like to end the show with the stocks on our radar. Jason, I'm going to have you go first. What are you looking at this week?

Jason Moser: A company I was digging into this past week had not really dug much into it before, but was looking at it for our quantum leap service. The company is called Quantum Computing. Tickers QUBT, and quantum computing works in the Photonics space by providing quantum machines to commercial and government markets in the U.S., and Photonics that uses light instead of electricity ultimately to generate, transmit and process data. It just offers big benefits in speed, efficiency, higher bandwidth, yada yada. This is a company to me. It's interesting in that it's pursuing this quantum opportunity. The quantum opportunity we're still very early days. Now, it's worth seeing too that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai just recently said that quantum today is where AI was five years ago. These are companies that really believe in what quantum computing is going to offer us in the future, as far as the benefits to your traditional classical computing.

But the company just reported results for the quarter, it really is important to note. This is a company that is just starting to generate revenue traps. It is not some company that's just bringing the money in. They generated $5.6 million here in the second quarter. Now, that was a massive jump from just $61,000 the previous year. This is a company that today is valued at around $2 billion. The market is looking at a lot of these pure-play quantum companies with a lot of optimism because of the language that we're hearing from these leaders and just the idea that maybe quantum is sort of the next AI or the next leg of AI. That remains to be seen, but quantum computing is one that will continue to follow on in the service and monitor its progress.

Travis Hoium: Let's bring in Bart Shannon, who's filling in behind the glass, Bart? What do you think about Quantum Computing?

Bart Shannon: Well, first of all, Jason's explanation made my brain hurt because I need to understand what a company actually does before I can fully embrace it. But if they don't name their first product Ziggy, it's going to be a huge disappointment. But to quote Chevy Chase, I was told there would be no math.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, Bart, the best way to think about it, remember when you used to hit up your neighbor across the street with a flashlight? Just imagine that at scale.

Lou Whiteman: Got it. There we go.

Jason Moser: That should be in the earnings presentation.

Lou Whiteman: Should be their tagline.

Bart Shannon: Lou, what are you looking at this week?

Lou Whiteman: Bart, I'm taking a look at Firefly Aerospace, Ticker FLY. So they build and launch small rockets, among other things. They have a nice satellite business, too, which we'll get to. This week, the company reported better-than-expected earnings, which is good, but more importantly, because this is a very young company. They had a strong $225 million in feature bookings in the quarter, and a new launch agreement with Lockheed Martin that runs through 2031. There's a lot of risk here. It is literally rocket scientists, rocket science here, break even a years away. But one constant investable theme is, if you can get things into space, there is a market here, especially when SpaceX and Blue Origin are devoting so much of their launch capacity in-house. Firefly can get things into space. They're using the revenue from their satellite business to build out launch, I really find this one intriguing. We got a great ticker, Bart: FLY. Can't be beat, and you can't go wrong with any company that names their company after a Joss Whedon television show.

Travis Hoium: There you go. Which one's going on your watch list, Bart?

Bart Shannon: I get to go with Firefly. Quantum, I'm still wrapping my brain around. Congratulations to Lou.

Travis Hoium: That's all the time we have. Today, I'm Travis Hoium for Bart Shannon, Lou Whiteman, and Jason Moser. We'll see you here next time.

Jason Moser has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Chipotle Mexican Grill. Lou Whiteman has positions in Firefly Aerospace. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet, Portillo's, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Cava Group, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Firefly Aerospace, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short September 2026 $35 calls on Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.