Corporate Ozempic. If you want to understand how AI is… | by Scott Galloway | Feb, 2024 | Medium
If you want to understand how AI is reshaping business, picture it as the other massive innovation of our time: GLP-1 drugs. Both shed weight by suppressing cravings; both exacerbate existing inequities (aka the rich get richer) before generating wider prosperity; and both are having a greater impact than projected as early adopters are hesitant to admit they’re using.
Nobody I know is on Ozempic. Yet, nearly everyone I know is on Ozempic. Either that, or gluten-free diets are suddenly delivering exponential results previously unheard of. People are hesitant to acknowledge they need a drug to lose those last 15 pounds — which doesn’t fit with our narrative that success is correlated to self-control. One of the most interesting, and discouraging, features of GLP-1 use is that the region with the greatest per-capita prescriptions is also (wait for it) the thinnest. This makes no sense … but it does. The Upper East Side of Manhattan is replete with people who can spend $1,000 a month to go from slim to skinny. In sum, GLP-1 drugs are not (yet) getting to the communities who really need them. I believe this will eventually happen, however, because the public health and economic benefits are just that staggering.
Similarly, my thesis is that firms (notably tech companies) have also discovered a weight loss drug and are also being coy about it. Recent financial news features two stories: layoffs and record profits. These are related. There’s no mystery to the surface narrative. A company lays off 5%, 10%, or even 25% of its workforce and, 6 to 12 months later, after severance pay and expenses are flushed through the P/L, its operating margin hits new heights. The ultimate peanut-butter-and-chocolate shareholder confection is Meta, which produced a singular Hall of Fame quarter in Q4.
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