Is Energy the Next Big Trade? + How to Actually Tax Billionaires

Scott Galloway opens this episode of The Prof G Pod with a contrarian take on the energy sector. While acknowledging that energy is receiving massive attention—he notes that the best-performing stock of the last few years might be Bloom Energy—he warns that the consensus narrative around a power shortage for AI might be exactly wrong. The episode then pivots to a second, more heated topic: how to actually tax billionaires without alienating the voters needed to make it happen. Galloway’s throughline is that in both cases, the conventional wisdom—whether about energy scarcity or about demonizing the wealthy—is politically and economically counterproductive.

The AI Energy Boom: Supply, Demand, and the Real Bottleneck

Galloway frames the current AI buildout as the second-largest capital expenditure boom as a share of GDP in U.S. history, behind only the railroads. The five biggest tech companies spent more on capex in 2025 than the entire global oil and gas industry invested in production. This is not a demand-side story like the social media boom; it is a supply-side story about making chips, building data centers, and powering them. The International Energy Agency reports that data center electricity demand grew 17% in 2025 against just 3% growth in overall global electricity demand, and projects it could double by 2030, with AI-focused centers tripling.