Baillie Gifford’s Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking bring valuable insights into the benefits of taking the long view. You’ll hear frank, thought-provoking opinions from our team in Edinburgh and experts around the world. These podcasts do not constitute an offer of or solicitation for purchase or sale of securities or provision of any investment services. They are provided for information only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment. Our podcasts have been compiled with considerable care to ensure their accuracy at the date of publication. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made to their accuracy or completeness. For further details please see our legal information at www.bailliegifford.com
Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking - Baillie Gifford
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Baillie Gifford’s Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking bring valuable insights into the benefits of taking the long view. You’ll hear frank, thought-provoking opinions from our team in Edinburgh and experts around the world. These podcasts do not constitute an offer of or solicitation for purchase or sale of securities or provision of any investment services. They are provided for information only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment. Our podcasts have been compiled with considerable care to ensure their accuracy at the date of publication. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made to their accuracy or completeness. For further details please see our legal information at www.bailliegifford.com
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Recent Episodes
August 4, 2026
SpaceX: past, present, future – and finding the next world-changers
<p>Baillie Gifford first invested in SpaceX in 2018, nearly eight years before its record-setting stock market listing. Investment manager Luke Ward, who championed the holding, discusses what first drew him to the business, why Starship is critical to its future, and reveals where he’s now looking for another company with industry-upturning potential.</p><p></p><p>Background:</p><p></p><p>Luke Ward is an investment manager on Baillie Gifford’s Private Companies Team and co-manager of Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust.</p><p>In this conversation, he tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion how SpaceX’s first successful landing and recovery of one of its rocket boosters led him to explore an investment in the company, and how he gained access to its senior management.</p><p>Ward also explores three growth drivers that could determine its future success: </p><ul><li>regularly flying a new, larger spacecraft, Starship, into orbit</li><li>upgrading its Starlink broadband network with satellites that connect to smartphones directly</li><li>putting and operating datacentres in orbit</li></ul><p>In addition, he discusses some of the risks in being a long-term shareholder in the Elon Musk-run endeavour.</p><p>Ward also reveals why he thinks the construction industry is ripe for disruption from 3D-printing robots.</p><p> </p><p>Resources:</p><p> </p><p><a href="http://bailliegifford.com/privatecompanies">Baillie Gifford Private Companies Team</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/en/uk/individual-investors/funds/edinburgh-worldwide-investment-trust/">Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust</a></p><p><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/419660/elon-musk-by-ashlee-vance/9780753555644">Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/insights/ic-video/2026-q1-private-companies-10061626/">Private companies: our philosophy</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/insights/ic-article/2025-q1-three-firms-engineering-the-future-10052988/">Quantum, space, fusion: three firms engineering the future</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/insights/ic-article/2026-q3-ltgg-reflections-spacex-10064379/">SpaceX: the economics of the impossible</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/insights/ic-article/2024-q1-trust-48-starlink-10045464/">Starlink: broadband from above</a></p><p><a href="https://www.iconbuild.com/technology/program">Titan robotic construction system</a></p><p> </p><p>Companies mentioned include:</p><p> </p><p>· <a href="https://abc.xyz/">Alphabet (Google)</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/">Anthropic</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.astranis.com/">Astranis</a></p><p>· <a href="https://rocketlabcorp.com/">Rocket Lab</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.spacex.com/">SpaceX</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.tesla.com/">Tesla</a></p><p></p><p>Timecodes:</p><p>00:05 Introduction</p><p>02:00 A successor to the Space Shuttle</p><p>03:55 Reimagining a market</p><p>05:55 Reusable rockets</p><p>06:30 Mars as a ‘forcing function’</p><p>07:55 First encounter with Gwynne Shotwell</p><p>10:10 The ‘scale of the Dutch East India Company’</p><p>12:40 What we got wrong</p><p>14:25 The advantages of early access</p><p>17:50 Starship’s cost advantage</p><p>19:40 Next-generation Starlink satellites</p><p>22:30 AI and space-based datacentres</p><p>27:20 SpaceX’s scale of ambition</p><p>29:00 Governance risk</p><p>31:05 Flywheels and stepping stones</p><p>32:55 3D-printed homes</p><p>34:25 A “nerdy” book pick</p><p></p><p>Glossary of terms (in order of mention):</p><p></p><p>Path dependency: The idea that earlier choices shape and constrain what becomes possible later.</p><p>Rocket booster: The part of a rocket that provides extra thrust during launch, usually early in flight.</p><p>Orbital-class craft: A spacecraft or rocket powerful enough to reach orbit around Earth.</p><p>Market capitalisation: A public company’s total value on the stock market, calculated from its share price and number of shares.</p><p>Vertical integration: When a company owns and controls more of its supply chain itself, rather than relying on outside suppliers.</p><p>Point solution: A product or service built to solve one specific problem, rather than a broader system of related problems.</p><p>Balance sheet: A financial statement showing what a company owns, owes and is worth at a point in time.</p><p>Roadshow: A series of presentations in which a company and its advisers meet potential investors before a share sale or listing.</p><p>Cost curve: The trend in how the cost of producing or delivering something changes as technology improves or scale increases.</p><p>Geostationary orbit: An orbit where a satellite moves at the same rate as Earth rotates, so it appears to stay above the same point on the planet.</p><p>Transistors: Tiny electronic switches used in computer chips to control electrical signals.</p><p>S-curve: A pattern where progress starts slowly, accelerates rapidly and then slows again as a technology matures.</p><p>Ancillary services: Supporting services or costs around the main product or technology, rather than the core hardware itself.</p><p>Orders of magnitude: Very large multiples, usually powers of 10.</p><p>Radiation hardening: Designing or adapting electronics so they can keep working despite radiation in space.</p><p>Cap table: Short for capitalisation table, a record of who owns a company’s shares and on what terms.</p><p>Thermal mass: A material’s ability to absorb, store and release heat, helping to smooth temperature changes.</p>
June 23, 2026
Tokenisation: a better way to own what you own
<p>Tokenisation represents an “operating system upgrade” for the investment industry, says Theo Golden, Baillie Gifford’s new head of digital assets. In this episode, they explain what it involves and how it should deliver a better experience, both by reducing the number of middlemen between you and your investments and making your holdings more “useful”.</p><p> </p><p>Background:</p><p></p><p>In this conversation, Theo Golden tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion about how tokenisation can reduce costs and complexity – and pave the way for providing clients with new services that better fit their needs.</p><p> </p><p>Tokenisation means taking an asset – such as a fund – and turning it into a line of code. This lives on a blockchain: a shared digital record that no single party owns or controls. The investment itself doesn't change, but what does are the ways that ownership is recorded and transferred. Instead of a chain of intermediaries, each keeping their own set of books, everyone can work from one shared record. As Golden puts it, it's “the same but better” – the same investments, on faster, lower-cost, more flexible rails built for the internet age.</p><p> </p><p>It also paves the way to new capabilities. Among those Golden discusses are making it much easier for clients to use the funds they invest in as collateral for loans, and the development of “agentic wealth management” – AI bots that autonomously plan and, potentially, update an individual client’s portfolio based on their risk appetite and changing circumstances.</p><p> </p><p>Baillie Gifford’s first steps with tokenisation involve fixed income, but in time the ambition is to “build across our investment universe,” Golden says. “So be ready for Baillie Gifford on chain.”</p><p> </p><p></p><p> </p><p>Resources</p><p><a href="http://bailliegifford.com/digital-assets">Baillie Gifford digital assets hub</a></p><p><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6758022">Dr Ian Hunt: Replicating Legacy is Squandering the Promise of Tokenisation: We Are Building a Faster Horse</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/en/uk/individual-investors/short-briefings-on-long-term-thinking/">Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking podcast archive</a></p><p> </p><p>Timecodes:</p><p>00:00 Introduction</p><p>01:40 “A world with less friction”</p><p>02:15 The lesson from losing it all</p><p>04:50 From Bloomberg to bonds</p><p>06:35 Defining tokenisation and the blockchain</p><p>08:20 Same assets, better system</p><p>09:35 One golden source of truth</p><p>12:35 Making assets more useful</p><p>16:10 Turning assets into “Lego bricks”</p><p>19:20 Stablecoins, regulation and new decision-makers</p><p>24:00 Managing crypto risks</p><p>26:25 The ‘same but better’ rule</p><p>28:00 Starting with fixed income</p><p>29:20 Meeting clients where they are</p><p>30:27 Book pick</p><p> </p><p></p><p>Glossary of terms (in order of mention):</p><p> </p><p>Trading volumes: The amount of buying and selling taking place in a market over a period of time.</p><p> </p><p>Blockchain-based tokenisation: The use of blockchain technology to create digital tokens that represent ownership of assets.</p><p> </p><p>Self-sovereign: Controlled directly by the owner, rather than depending entirely on a bank, platform or intermediary.</p><p> </p><p>Custody: The safekeeping of assets. Self-custody means holding and controlling the asset directly yourself.</p><p> </p><p>Counterparties: The other parties involved in a financial transaction or agreement.</p><p> </p><p>Multi Asset: An investment approach that can invest across several asset classes, such as shares, bonds, currencies and infrastructure.</p><p> </p><p>Catastrophe bonds: Bonds that transfer insurance-related risks, such as natural-disaster losses, from insurers to investors.</p><p> </p><p>FX rates: Foreign exchange rates.</p><p> </p><p>Smart contract: Computer code that automatically carries out agreed rules when certain conditions are met.</p><p> </p><p>Token: A digital representation of an asset or ownership right on a blockchain.</p><p> </p><p>Walled garden: A closed system where users can only operate within the rules and limits of one provider or platform.</p><p> </p><p>Fixed income fund: A fund that invests mainly in bonds or other debt instruments that typically pay interest.</p><p> </p><p>Growth equity fund: A fund that invests in companies expected to grow faster than the wider market.</p><p> </p><p>Vehicle for transfer: The system or method used to move ownership or value from one party to another.</p><p> </p><p>Rails: The underlying infrastructure that allows transactions or transfers to take place.</p><p> </p><p>Reconciliation: The process of checking that different records match each other.</p><p> </p><p>Shareholder registry: The official list of people or organisations that own shares or fund units.</p><p> </p><p>Transfer agency register: A fund-administration record that tracks investor ownership and transactions.</p><p> </p><p>Wallet: A digital tool used to hold and manage blockchain-based assets.</p><p> </p><p>Finality: The point at which a transaction is considered complete and cannot easily be reversed.</p><p> </p><p>Unitisation: The process of dividing a fund into units so investors can buy and sell a share of the fund.</p><p> </p><p>Inert: Hard to move, transfer or use in other financial activities.</p><p> </p><p>UK gilt: A UK government bond.</p><p> </p><p>Margin call: A demand for more cash or collateral when the value of an investment or position has fallen.</p><p> </p><p>Interoperability: The ability of different systems, assets or pieces of software to work together.</p><p> </p><p>Composability: The ability to combine digital assets or software components, like building blocks, to create new services.</p><p> </p><p>COBOL: Common Business-Oriented Language – an older computer programming language still used in some legacy financial systems.</p><p> </p><p>AI agents: Software that can act semi-independently to carry out tasks on behalf of a user.</p><p> </p><p>On-chain books and records: Official ownership and transaction records kept on a blockchain.</p><p> </p><p>Stablecoin: A digital asset designed to track the value of a traditional currency, such as the US dollar or pound.</p><p> </p><p>Fiat currency: Government-issued money, such as pounds, dollars or yen, that is not backed by a physical commodity such as gold.</p><p> </p><p>USDC: A stablecoin issued by Circle that is designed to track the value of the US dollar.</p><p> </p><p>FCA: The Financial Conduct Authority, the UK regulator for financial services firms and markets.</p><p> </p><p>Burn a token: Permanently cancel or destroy a digital token so it can no longer be used.</p><p> </p><p>Remit a token: Re-issue a token to a new wallet.</p><p> </p><p>Neobank: A digital-first bank, usually operating mainly through apps or online services.</p>
June 1, 2026
Why American culture feels so chaotic – and how investors can benefit
<p>The US public’s tastes and habits are fragmenting, leading to new consumer behaviours. The shift from a handful of TV networks to an endless supply of streamed shows and social media clips is just one of many causes. Investment manager Dave Bujnowski discusses the characteristics that determine which growth companies should thrive in the resulting ‘high entropy’ environment.</p><p></p><p>Dave Bujnowski is an investment manager in our US Equity Growth Team and co-manager of the Baillie Gifford U.S. Equity Growth Fund and our American Fund.</p><p> </p><p>In this conversation, he tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion about his work with anthropologist Dr Grant McCracken, studying the causes and effects of the fragmentation of American culture. They believe that US culture is a system that has entered a ‘high entropy state’ – meaning that tastes and habits no longer change in an orderly manner. The result is “tremendous instability” and a sense of “continual pandemonium”.</p><p> </p><p>This shift, they argue, has implications for growth companies and helps explain why some are struggling to maintain mass-market appeal. But the disorder also plays to others' advantage, and they have sought to identify which will thrive and why.</p><p> </p><p>Portfolio companies discussed include:</p><p>· Cloudflare – the service that protects websites from attack and optimises their performance</p><p>· DraftKings – the sports gambling platform that lets Americans bet on sporting events</p><p>· Samsara – the Internet of Things specialist helping companies track and make sense of data</p><p>· SharkNinja – the home appliance company behind the CREAMi ice-cream maker</p><p>· Shopify – the ecommerce platform serving merchants</p><p></p><p> · </p><p>Resources:</p><p><a href="https://linktr.ee/grant27">Dr Grant McCracken</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/en/uk/individual-investors/short-briefings-on-long-term-thinking/">Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking podcast archive</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/en/uk/individual-investors/the-long-view/">The Long View collection</a></p><p><a href="https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/thinking-in-systems/">Thinking in Systems</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bailliegifford.com/insights/ic-article/2025-q4-the-long-view-fragmenting-systems-cultural-change-10057520/">When systems fragment: entropy, cultural change and the next great US companies</a></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Companies mentioned include:</p><p>· <a href="https://abc.xyz/">Alphabet (Google)</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/">Amazon</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.draftkings.com/">DraftKings</a></p><p>· <a href="https://investor.atmeta.com/home/default.aspx">Meta</a></p><p>· <a href="https://about.netflix.com/en">Netflix</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.samsara.com/">Samsara</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.sharkninja.com/">SharkNinja</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.shopify.com/uk">Shopify</a></p><p>· <a href="https://www.spacex.com/">SpaceX</a></p><p> </p><p></p><p>Timecodes:</p><p>00:00 Introduction</p><p>02:05 System-level thinking</p><p>03:20 How change happens</p><p>06:10 Entropy and fragmentation</p><p>08:15 A conversation with Cloudflare’s CEO</p><p>10:20 Ants and anthropology</p><p>13:25 Grant McCracken on North Sea culture</p><p>15:15 The causes of splintering culture</p><p>17:05 New consumer behaviours</p><p>19:15 Challenging times for lululemon</p><p>21:00 Shopify and agility</p><p>23:10 Agentic commerce</p><p>25:40 SharkNinja and new niches</p><p>28:30 DraftKings and cultural anchors</p><p>30:40 Samsara’s entropy antidote</p><p>32:10 Finance and space: systems to watch</p><p>33:50 Book choice</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Glossary of terms (in order of mention):</p><p> </p><p>Entropy: In this podcast, a metaphor for systems becoming more fragmented, varied and harder to predict.</p><p></p><p>Cash flows: The money moving into and out of a business.</p><p></p><p>Market cap: The total stock-market value of a company: share price multiplied by number of shares.</p><p></p><p>S&P 500: A major US stock-market index of large companies.</p><p></p><p>Second law of thermodynamics: A physics principle often simplified as the tendency of energy in a closed system to spread out over time.</p><p> </p><p>Mainframe: A large, central computer used by organisations to process major computing tasks.</p><p> </p><p>Big iron: Informal technology term for large, powerful central computers.</p><p> </p><p>MMA: Mixed martial arts, a full-contact combat sport.</p><p> </p><p>Delulu: Internet slang for optimistic or unrealistic self-belief. Short for ‘delusional’.</p><p> </p><p>Traffic aggregation: Bringing together large numbers of users or customers in one place, often online.</p><p> </p><p>Total addressable market (TAM): The total potential market size for a product or service if it reached all possible customers.</p><p> </p><p>Prediction markets: Markets where people trade contracts based on the likelihood of future events.</p><p> </p><p>Internet of Things: Everyday equipment connected to the internet so it can collect and share data.</p><p> </p><p></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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