Coatue’s Philippe Laffont: The Year of the Privates 6/25/25
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Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. Prolific technology investor Philippe Lafont, an early backer of Facebook and Netflix, is our special guest. In general, now you have to be a lifecycle investor. More shots on goal at the end is what you hope for.

He says 2025 is the year of the privates, inside the promise he sees in private companies building artificial intelligence. When the market goes up, then I'm definitely a public investor. But then when the market doesn't do well, I switch to, you know, venture and growth.

And the electoral earthquake in America's largest city. Digging into the results of the Democratic mayoral primary with CNBC contributor Michelle Caruso Cabrera. Basically, last night, a socialist won the Democratic primary in New York City. What the stunning results mean for a new era of politics. Did you ever run for...

student council or anything did you part of my campaign was giving out free things plus all the rest of today's news that got us squawking it's wednesday june 25th squawk pod begins right now stand becky by in three two one cue please

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Very big day for the markets. Dow was up by over 500 points. S&P is now less than 1% from an all-time high, and the Nasdaq 100 closed at a new all-time high yesterday. So we are looking at some

Very positive moves for the market moving back towards these new highs or at new highs if you're the Nasdaq 100. Check out Treasury yields. Of course, all of this happening with the backdrop of Jay Powell talking yesterday, and he'll be speaking to Congress once again today. You are seeing the 10-year at $4.29, the two years at $3.79, and then you've got oil prices. WTI was down another 6% yesterday. It saw its lowest settling point in about three weeks.

The day before, Krug was off by about 7%. So you're talking about some massive pullbacks on the idea that there is this ceasefire in the Middle East. Right now, WTI is at $65.09 a barrel. Brent is at $67.90 a barrel. And then if you check out Bitcoin this morning, you'll see right now it is $106. Actually, it's $7.29. Yeah, close to it. Been moving. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning to you all and welcome to this leaders session of the North Atlantic Council. Go ahead, yes. Mr. President, how is the Iran-Israel ceasefire going?

Meantime, President Trump taking aim at the media following the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear program in a post on Truth Social last night. Trump blaming CNN and the New York Times for what he called, quote, an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history. Both outlets, along with many others, citing an early U.S. government report that the American strikes only set Iran's nuclear program back by a few months. But in his social media post, the president claimed, quote, the nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed.

Speaking in the Netherlands earlier this morning, this is how the president responded to a question about the damage report intelligence. The intelligence was was very inconclusive. The intelligence says we don't know. It could have been very severe. That's what the intelligence says. So I guess that's correct. But I think we can take that. We don't know. It was very severe. It was obliteration.

Director General of the UN's nuclear watchdog has said no one, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, was in a position to fully assess underground damage at Iran's key Fordow site. And the thing that I couldn't understand when you read at least the reports about it is whether they just were able to close off effectively the entrances to these things by knocking all of that down versus actually closing

knocking, which seems to be at minimum the case, versus whether they were able to knock down the entire facility. Before the go-ahead and before it happened. You and I were talking about the bunker buster, whether it even worked. Whether it would work. And President Trump had to be convinced it was going to work. Whether it worked or not, I don't know, but it's a big ask. It's 300 feet down or whatever it is. So I think they went

They didn't do two. I don't know how many they did in each entrance. So there were three or four in each entrance. Like I said off camera, I haven't finished my direct assessment of that. I know nothing. As usual, I know nothing. The IAEA is really trying to get back in and be able to assess some of these situations. You are going to have to have somebody who comes in and takes a look at it. Is it possible that it was down so far that those actual billboards,

Build structures, survive? I'm certain that that is a possibility. Is it just a couple of months? I doubt that. I think Israel, before the United States did anything, I think Israel had degraded a lot of the facilities more than just a couple of months. And then you add in how many scientists are dead. Of course, did you see...

One guy yesterday that Israel said was dead, he was out partying with everyone in the streets. And obviously, I don't know, some IRGC guy who was obviously not dead. So once again, we got the fog of war and we got the fog of the marrow race. So we need an expert. Did you ever run for student council or anything? Did you? I did. I tried. And you know what? You would have appreciated this. Part of my campaign was giving out free things. No.

No joke. Free pizza. Free pizza was part of my campaign plan. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it.

I was, if I had run, that wouldn't have been my thing. I would have been cutting back on everyone's benefits if I had run. Well, we now see what's on the winning end of this. Which I didn't, but that makes sense to me. You're giving away free things, buying votes. I'm telling people you're going to eat cake. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, someone's here. That's why I said this. Someone who has run for office, who knows how sharp the elbow is. Michelle Cruz Cabrera is here to talk about

Mamdani, being the guy after Cuomo, basically conceded to this gentleman and state assemblyman. Tonight was not our night. Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani's night. My friends, we have done it. I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.

No candidate is set to secure a majority in the first round of the city's ranked choice election. But last night, he did lead the vote count, and he had, as we're finding out, 44% in a million votes, the biggest we've seen. Yeah, it was very heavy turnout. Very heavy turnout. We have betting sites now, so nothing's a surprise anymore. Right. Because he moved ahead in those and in some of the polls, so...

I still thought it might not happen. I don't live here, so it's not... So the results aren't official yet, but basically last night a socialist won the Democratic primary in New York City. And generally in states or cities where you have one party that dominates the politics of a city or a state, whoever wins the primary generally goes on to win the general election. So right now the betting markets have that a socialist will be the next mayor of New York City.

when the November election. That's Zoran Mandami. He is an avowed socialist. When he first won his assembly seat back in the summer of 2020, the New York Times tweeted -- they were tweets back then -- said, "There's a new progressive representing Astoria, Queens," which is the part of New York City that he is from or is living in. And he tweeted back at them and said, "Stop calling me a progressive. I'm a socialist." And back then, he was running on defund the police

Global intifada. Well, that's this time around. Does he know what that is exactly? Oh, I think he knows exactly what it is, sure. So we want October 7th type things to happen here? Michelle, I heard somebody this morning, I think it was the managing editor of Bloomberg, saying that he...

has reached out to Jewish leaders in New York City. He has. He says that he wants to work with them. He's just pro-Palestine. What do you make of that? What do you think that means?

So, yes, he's absolutely reached out more than we have seen other members of the Democratic Socialists. Very recently? Oh, yeah, very recently. But make no mistake, when you look at the Democratic Socialists, and you can go to their website and look it up, and their stronghold is New York City, they support the BDS movement, you know, the Boycott and Defund. They support the BDS movement.

They prohibit people from traveling to Israel. If they're going to be a member of the party, they won't get the endorsement. So, you know, this and this was a big issue in New York City. It was where did you stand on on the state of Israel and its existence? So when you look at a map, though, and you start to then project out into where we'll be a couple months from now, the business community, as we as we learned yesterday, Kathy Wilds here, I think her phrase was, you know,

terrified terrified uh the feeling is terrifying how do you think that the business i imagine the business community of whatever you believe that means will try to rally either around cuomo or do they try to rally around adams i don't know and then the second question is is that a can something like that actually work in so far as clearly there is a group of people a lot of people in this city but the question is how many of them really

who both like him and maybe not like them, if that makes sense. So let's clarify for the viewers, because you mentioned Andrew Cuomo. He lost the Democratic primary, so why are we talking about him in the general? Because New York State has this particular election law where you can have another line on the ballot. So he has another line on the ballot. Andrew Cuomo will be on the ballot in November.

under a different party called the Fight and Deliver Party. This is a very common practice to have several lines so you can walk in and vote for your choice of a candidate sometimes on three or four different parties. What a stupid system. You know, I don't judge it. I just live in this world. And so the current mayor of New York City, who clearly didn't think he could win the Democratic primary, also has a line. So we're going to have four people on the ballot in November.

The question is, you can have a line in the ballot, but are you going to run? So Andrew Cuomo said last night he was going to look at the numbers and decide what he's going to do. He's already raised a ton of money. And the question is, can you raise that many millions more after having lost the Democratic primary? We'll wait and see what the business community does, what former Mayor Bloomberg does.

We have a Republican, a perennial candidate, Curtis Sliwa, who's going to be on the Republican line. You know, this is a city that is quite, you know, anti-Republican. So I don't think he's going to have much of a shot, but we'll see. What I will say is that the betting markets do think that the person who picks up the most gain from this is the current mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

But let's see a few polls. But what did the betting market say? Right now, it's 75% that Zoran is the mayor of New York City. It's early. Remember, it was less than a week ago that they thought Cuomo was in the lead, right? Until the last poll came out, and that's when the betting market switched. Is there a wild card, dark horse, somebody who could emerge and get themselves still on a ballot that we don't know about? No, that ballot is set. That ballot is set. The train left the station there. The train has left the station. Are you...

Well, you know, do you have a hat to throw there? I mean, you've got a you've got a platform that's similar to his that you ran on, that you said free things. Right. When you ran this and when he was in the state when you when you you're well known, you think you think I got a shot? I'm ready to. I don't live here, but I'm ready to consider. You know what? You know, be my controller. Becky's controller. No. But you know what? I don't want to go here, but.

Have you seen what Batman is up against in Gotham and what the guy running for mayor is up against? That's what it reminds me of. They're taking Wall Streeters and make them walk out onto the ice in the East River and then they fall through. I mean, there is a class warfare that's going on. So what's happened here, I think, is...

There's a division within the Democratic Party in New York City and New York State, and it's emblematic of the division that we see nationally. How far left does the Democratic Party want to go? In Chicago, they tried to save it. Of all people, the Chicago Tribune tried to save New York from itself. The New York Times told voters not to vote for the Socialist. The New York Times said yesterday that his joyful campaign brought new voters into the

Yes, but then they said, but please don't rank him on the ballot. They said they weren't going to endorse anybody, and then they said, you know... Kathy Hochul did not endorse anybody, and I wonder if she's regretting that now. I don't know. So you were all in on Cuomo? I was all in on Cuomo. You were all in, and you still are. I'm a registered Democrat. I'm a centrist Democrat in New York City that has been trying to push back the left. Not very successfully, I've noticed. I just wonder how...

So why did Catherine Wilde say that Adams, she thinks he's going to end up being mayor? It's possible. It's possible that if there's enough voters out there who say, okay, they don't want somebody that, because now in the general, you get a lot more centrist Democrats, right? Who comes out in the primary? Hardcore voters, mostly the hardcore left when you see the turnout. The problem is if you have both Adams and Cuomo running, do they split that vote? Do they split the ticket? Yes. It is a different group of people. I mean, to the extent

To the question you asked me before the show began, you said, did you vote yesterday? And I said, I didn't vote because I'm actually not a Democrat. I know you laughed at that. I did. I'm not a registered Democrat. I was not voting. More than a chortle. I got you. You're a registered independent. Correct. But here's what you have to understand. In New York City, that doesn't mean you're an independent. It means you're a member of the independent party, which is an actual party. I understand that.

The point though is that there's a lot of people in this city who didn't vote yesterday. Because they couldn't. Because they couldn't. Okay. And therefore, where this all lands later is a different story. What's the normal turn of the mayoral election? It's piddly. It's piddly, isn't it? Are you talking about the general? Yeah.

I think it's going to be very high. It is piddly. I was focused on last night's numbers. We got a million voters last night, which is very, very high. So I think it's going to be high. But normally it's like less than a million people elect a mayor. It's very small. It's out of 8.8 million people. You've got to remember, there's a large percentage that can't vote because they're not citizens. Like if you go to 2021, about a million people voted. What do you mean they can't vote? A million people voted last night. Oh, that's right. There's a different president. So they can't vote now.

They said there's a million New Yorkers voted in 2021. That represented 23% of registered voters. 23% is what? 23? There's only about 4 million registered voters. I often haven't paid attention to the numbers in the general because the general just doesn't matter. Often. Maybe it will this year. Oh, I'm sorry. 4.7 million people were registered to vote in New York City in 2021. Florida, I mean, the weather, the overcast.

Ocean. It's nice down there. Just say nationally what we've seen in certain parts of New York City is that parts of the city that used to vote Democratic, they get so disgusted with the Democratic Party for moving so far left, they end up voting Republican. We saw that in certain parts of Queens in the last mayoral election.

I'm out of here at nine, but for people that live here, I don't think it's great, is it? It wasn't my choice, Jim. It wasn't your choice, that's as much as you'll say. Okay, thank you. Good to have you here. A lot of fanfare when you showed up. Oh, thank you. Tease will be next.

Coming up next on SquawkPod, our guest is Philippe Lafont, the billionaire who started multi-strategy hedge fund Kotu in 1999. He was an early investor in Facebook and Netflix, and today in his public and private investments, he's betting on AI, even if innovation means a shift in employment.

Lafont is usually heads-down investing, so he rarely does interviews. And this one is exclusive to CNBC, so stick around after this break.

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Learn more at Schwab.com slash trading. This is SquawkPod. I've been Andrew. Cue.

You're watching Squawk Box on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin on this Wednesday morning along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. We've got a huge lot, a lot of things to cover, a lot of ground to cover with our next guest. We're very excited about it. The markets, the Fed, why he's excited about private markets, AI, some very provocative views about Alphabet, which, by the way, didn't make his fantastic 40 list, and so much more in exclusive with famed tech investor Philippe Lafont. He's the founder and portfolio manager of Kotu. It's a tech hedge fund.

a private markets investor, $55 billion under management. Some people think of you as a venture capitalist to some degree these days. What do you think of yourself as actually? What are you anymore? - The winner of the AT&T Pro-Am is what he thinks of himself. - That's true, but I don't think that's what my investors would care about. - Yeah, they might not like that. - You're too good. Your name is on the wall?

It is, it is. It's supposed to be on the wall right there next to Rory McIlroy. For me to have me on there, I'd have to change my name to Philippe Lafont. There you go. Yeah. Congratulations. But what are you these days? Because you're doing a lot of things. When the market goes up, then I'm definitely a public investor. But then when the market doesn't do well, I switch to, you know, venture and growth. But I think that in general, now you have to be a lifecycle investor.

Sometimes you have a new idea, it's a small little company, then you miss it as a small company, you try to invest it again. You miss it as a big company, you invest within on the public side. I think more shots on goal at the end is what you hope for. I said at the beginning of this, and I've teased it a couple of times, because you put together a fascinating deck from your East Meets West event, which is an unbelievable thing that you put together.

about what happens to the Mag7. This is sort of a public markets issue, but really a private markets issue because you think that this whole thing may ultimately turn over.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you look at the MAC 7, it's been so popular for a while and I felt like this year maybe is the change. And if you remember a few years ago, the MAC 7 was called the FANG index and then the FANG++. These indices change. And we were thinking like this year, there's some MAC 7s that have worked out well, some that haven't. Is it the change of the guard?

And you think this is it? I think this is it. I think that with AI, it's sort of this big new wave. We're sort of ushering out of the era of cloud and SaaS into the era of AI, and there's going to be some changes. So who are the half a dozen winners that replace them then? So we looked at the, let's say, top 25 companies and what happens to them every five years. And some of them just drop out. They run fast, but they don't run as fast as the others. Then you've got some new IPOs that come in as

OpenAI going to be part of the Mac 7 of the future? Is SpaceX going to be part of the Mac 7? And so we try to recombine the index and imagine what's, we're here today, NASDAQ 100. What's a NASDAQ 100 five years out? And who's on it then?

- Okay, I thought you were gonna ask me who's not on it. - Well, we can do who's not on it. By the way, Alphabet's not on it, tell us why. - You know what I did? I just thought some of the big companies are gonna be amazingly positioned. Microsoft is gonna stay on it, and maybe today it's a $3 billion company, but let's say it doubles in five years, it could be five or six billion. - Oh, trillion. - Trillion, yeah, sorry, of course, trillion.

Then we added Bitcoin. We thought of Bitcoin as a company. Today, I think Bitcoin is 2 trillion. We're like, well, could it get to also 4 or 5 trillion? Obviously, Bitcoin is not a company. It'd be like saying if gold's a company. But I thought it was interesting as a new asset. Market cap. Market cap. 2 trillion is so big. When did you get involved in Bitcoin?

You know, I've not gotten involved with Bitcoin and I wake up every day at three in the morning and I'm like, why am I such an idiot? What have I been waiting for? Not being involved in it. And it just goes up and up in the past. I think this is interesting. The retail investors, they were much faster at getting involved with Bitcoin than the institutional ones. And I always thought Bitcoin is amazing, but it's double or triple the volatility of the Nasdaq. Nasdaq is already pretty volatile. Why do I need to deal with this?

added volatility. Recently, Bitcoin, when it went down during the tariff, only went down as much as Nasdaq. So it seems the volatility as an asset class is coming down, which I thought was pretty interesting. Okay, so but given your sort of thesis, do you say to yourself, even at this point in the ballgame, if you think it's going to double or triple and going to be part of the Nasdaq 100, if you would think of it as a company?

Yes, I have to think about it. That you should own it now? Yes, I have to think about it now. Do I own it now? Do I own it tomorrow or in a few days? But every day, I do think, why do I not own it? And I think to be a good investor, it's not just like owning the obvious stock, but sometimes you have to change your mind and you have to just say, well, I made a mistake and I'm

I'm changing my mind and maybe Bitcoin will be that. How do you come up to that evaluation? Is it as a percentage of gold's market cap or something? So I thought like the market cap of the world, the net worth of the world is, I think, 450 to 500. Equities are, let's say, 120. Gold above and under the ground is 20. And then Bitcoin is 2 trillion.

And I was like, okay, well, 2 trillion, let's say it represents half a percent of the net worth of the world. Could it go to one or two? Some people say, oh, Bitcoin is going to be 100 trillion. I'm like, okay, that's not...

you know, maybe a bit of an aggressive estimate, but could it double over a period of time? And then we talked about the de-dollarization of the world, the end of US exceptionalism. So those would be some of the reasons. Hey, Philippe, you mentioned that because of SaaS and cloud kind of not being as powerful, that's why some of these companies are going to move out. We've had other people who have come in and said,

the Mag 7 is not going to be as strong in terms of an investment vehicle because they now have to spend a lot of money on things like AI development that they never had to spend before. Do you think about that or you think Microsoft is still going to be there because as long as you're a leader in AI, it doesn't matter if you have to spend a ton of capex to get that? Yes, that's a great question. And the idea would be like, look, the free cash flow is going to disappear. They're going to have to reinvest so much.

And in fact, what's funny is at the beginning of the cloud, about 10, 15 years ago, everybody said the same Microsoft and Amazon, why are you guys spending so much in this new business? And at one point, I remember the new business was losing 10% of the overall profits. And today it's 50% of the profits. And so I think you have to invest

But public investors in general, we just want things to be like they were. Please don't invest, just keep growing, give me my little returns. But I think the entrepreneurs, they're like, no, this is a huge business and we got to go for it. Where do you stand on the hardware side of all of this? Because there is a sort of great debate. Either we are in a massive shortage of chips and we're going to be needing this stuff for as long as the eye can see, or this is like a big overbuild.

a la some of the fiber stuff that was going on back in the late 90s. Yes. So you think about it in terms of the return on investment and say, wait, we're spending half a trillion a year multiplied by two because if the chip is half a trillion, the total system is a trillion. The data centers, the cooling, this and that. Where do we get the return on the trillion?

I think maybe two years ago and one year ago, some people were saying, look, the return is not there. This is crazy. We're in a bubble. But when you speak to companies now, the amount of AI that they're implementing, the savings that they're getting. And if you think of the world economy, I think just in the US, labor is maybe 20 trillion, the savings that we could get off that.

You look at Microsoft, their number of employees is going down. Amazon, Andy Jassy. You just had Andy Jassy at your event. He was unequivocal that basically the number of employees over the long run is going to go down. Those are the benefits of...

Right. Of AI. And so I tend to see like the glass is maybe half full and half empty, but I'm very much on the half full cap. Are you a believer though that, I mean, we've always talked about, I mean, by the way, given what's going on in the city, UBI and all of these things. I mean, look, if nobody has a job, we all have a problem. The question is whether you think this is going to generate an enormous amount of productivity and that we're going to find roles for everybody in some other way. Yes.

So there's a big debate with AI, like are we all going to be out of a job? Displaced, yes. Obviously displaced. I think in 1900, the US economy was 52% agriculture and today it's 1%. So over 100 years, we can replace but then find new jobs for half of the economy, right? So the question is, is AI going to happen so fast that we can't just replace?

There's this advertising that came out that's really funny. You should look at it on X. And it's a flying monkey. And he breaks his teeth. And he's looking for a dentist in LA. And that new ad cost $500 to make. And an ad usually costs, let's say, $1 million to make. Wildly popular ad.

So the question, too, is when the price of things come down, there are going to be lots of people that can become ad creators, lots of people that are going to become directors, and stuff like that. So I'm optimistic that at the end, as the price of things goes down, more people create companies, more people become entrepreneurs, and we sort of square things up. But there's a lot of change that takes place there, and breaking down of old guards along the way. For sure. And that's why I always thought, like thinking about the index of the future,

When things don't change very much, okay, then maybe you can't beat BlackRock. But now that things are changing, the index of the future should outperform the existing index by a lot. Before we take a quick pause and we're going to continue this conversation, I am curious, though, talking about private markets, public markets, these now semi-liquid vehicles that you've created with Jeff Bezos' backing and a whole bunch of others. And Michael Dell. And Michael Dell.

How do you think about the private market versus the public market and the distinction between the valuations? Listen, the public market should have higher valuation because it's more liquid. If you give people more chance to be liquid, you should be able to pay more. But the private market also has a great role, which is when you're building a company, Becky, to your point, sometimes you have to lose money before you make money. You go do that.

in the private side. I think that the private and the public markets are going to be a little bit more intermeshed now where the decision is not black and white. I'm private and I'm going public. Now you have employee tenders, you have structured capital, you have private equity, you have infrastructure capital. There are so many ways to stay private for longer.

This is another reason, if you would like, that you need to be both public and private. How much do you care about what the Fed is doing at any given moment these days? I think I actually care a lot because when you're a tech investor, there's this view like, who cares about the Fed? I just invest in tech. Right. But then you have events like 2022, where if you're not careful, you can get caught in such a downdraft. And on a mark to market basis, it can hurt a lot.

And so we care a lot about what happens. I would say that right now I hear, of course, a lot of pressure like let's cut rates, let's cut rate. My simple interpretation is what if the economy is doing so well that we don't need to cut rates? And what if we did cut rates and that's actually an implication of almost like we're seeing some weakness that's not there. So I'm not too worried. It seems like

The economy is doing well. We have a data science team. We process about 100 million or so credit card receipts a day. So we have a T plus three view of what people are doing, which is a little bit faster. Usually MasterCard and Visa speak on a monthly basis. We think the consumer is still resilient. The economy is doing well.

I don't see exactly the reason to cut rates given the strength. So maybe that's a different view of things. I want to ask you a different name, Meta. Where is Meta land? I mean, you like Meta. It's one of your biggest holdings. Yes.

Where do they land in the AI debate, fight, whatever you think is out there? It's a bit of a tale of two cities. On one hand, you've seen they've been very aggressive at restructuring their AI team. They've made some big hires. They've offered some big packages to try to get some of the talent. But on the other hand, they just have this core business that if you think about an advertising business,

how long is it before every single person sees an advertising that the ai chooses and it's like oh becky a red dress you a blue shirt me a white shirt joe a tie everything is going to be custom designed for each ad and the price of an ad is going to come down so much so i think their revenue per ad

is going to go up a lot and since they've implemented ai their revenue per click has been growing significantly but you like them for the advertising site you don't like google or alphabet listen uh google has a combination of some businesses that are great waymo youtube but then they have the search

And with respect to the search, I do think that OpenAI is a threat to the search. And you own OpenAI too? We do own OpenAI. And so, but is your view that Waymo ultimately gets spun off?

For example, some people talk about that possibility. I don't know if they spin off because you don't want to spin off a good business and be left with maybe one that's under attack. I think all these tech companies, you've seen they try a bunch of different businesses. Some work, some don't. But Amazon invented AWS. Google invents Waymo.

Apple invented the whole ecosystem of the iPad, the watch. So I don't think so. What about Elon?

Where's Elon playing all of this in your mind? I think Elon has gone back to being an entrepreneur. He's hyper-focused. I was speaking to some of the all-in guys who know him well last week and mentioned that he's basically... They were at your conference too, I heard. 24-7, 24-7 at... Yeah, when are you going to come to the conference, Andrew? I'm going to...

invitation lost in the mail I gotta look so I think Elon is back and when he's back he can do great things and the robot axis started two days ago and I hear it's a sort of a near magical experience to be in a car with no driver and the car makes no mistakes Philippe are you an investor in any of Elon's businesses

We're investors in SpaceX. We have very small investments in X.AI and I think Neuralink. And we also have a small investment in Tesla. Interestingly, by the way, I don't know if you saw, Sam Altman made a comment recently about whether OpenAI could ultimately actually do self-driving. Yes.

I think that the ambition of the OpenAI CEO is very great and I love that. You want to be around the most ambitious people in the world. He wants to compete with Apple. He did the deal with Johnny Ive. He wants to maybe do social media. He's talked about that.

I think you try a lot of different things and you see what works out. I don't know if you'll do the platform immediately. - What about the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft? I know you invest in OpenAI, you think Microsoft's going to be a big player down the road, but there has been a lot of media

talk about frictions between those two companies and the partnership they've built to this point. Are you an investor in Microsoft? We also happen to be an investor in Microsoft. And listen, some of these companies, you start doing a partnership and then you realize that you both want the same prize. And then that becomes a problem. So maybe it's a version of that that's going on. But I know that both Amy, the CFO of Microsoft, and Sarah, the CFO, they're working hard on it. And

I would think that a deal is going to be made. If a deal isn't made, who suffers more from it? Maybe short-term OpenAI and long-term Microsoft. So I think at the end, they'll make a deal. Interesting. We're going to run out of time. I got to ask you a question. I don't know if you can answer it or not. You're on the board of ByteDance. We all want to know what's going to happen to TikTok. What do you think? I used to be a director. Now I'm a board observer. So it's a little different. Okay.

I think Trump, President Trump has given three 90-day extensions. That probably shows that he wants

this to be solved and I hope that post tariffs things will be solved. I think in the US if there's two strong competitors Facebook and TikTok is better than one and two competitors force each other to innovate versus having one on their own so I'm hopeful there'll be two. I'm obviously extremely biased in what I'm saying. Okay. Philippe, thank you. You don't have to ask about New York.

Oh, yeah. What do you make of the mayor situation? You've got a big operation here in the city. Yes. Had. What did you say? Had. Had. Had a big note. I think we had Mayor de Blasio for eight years. New York is really strong. I'm hopeful the same will happen. Okay, so he's not thrown in the towel. Survived de Blasio. Right. Yes. Emphasis on survive. Survive. Right. So hopefully...

And listen, you make it like a fait accompli, it's not quite done yet. There's still an election. Maybe Cuomo will reenter as an independent. There's Adams. If you do so well, can you self-fund some of the police in case it gets cut back or something? I mean, that's what I'm worried about. Well, there's that question, but the other question is, do you think that there are people in your business who are going to say, "You know what? Two percent on top of what we're already paying.

you know some of this some people are going to be paying 60 60 percent and they're going to say you know what we didn't love florida before but maybe florida and we'll figure out a way to be here 179 days a year seminal for sure for sure did you just say something like the golf course i did hey i'm still working you know i'm still working some people are gonna for sure go i think that if you want to attract young talent you gotta be in new york there's just no way around it

And those people who left in Florida, outside of Citadel, I feel a lot of them miss New York. So we'll see. Okay. I want to thank you for joining us this morning. Appreciate it very much. Thank you. Next on Squawk Pod, the NBA approving a sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Is that an apples to apples with what the Lakers are worth? And former baseball great Alex Rodriguez is in the owners group. We've got the details right after this.

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If the witch wants to sell...

Fee subject to terms and minimums. Equal housing opportunity. CADRE number 01521930. You're listening to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Becky Quick.

The NBA approving a $1.5 billion sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to an investment group that's led by e-commerce entrepreneur Mark Lurie and former baseball star Alex Rodriguez. That deal also includes the sale of the NWA's Minnesota Lynx. The ownership transfer receiving a unanimous vote from the NBA's 30 team owners. It's the culmination of years of work following an initial deal back in 2021.

Lori and Rodriguez will serve as co-chairmen of the Timberwolves. The team is planning an introductory news conference next month in Las Vegas during the NBA Summer League. So that's, is that an apples to apples with what the Lakers are worth? I don't know. I don't know the...

I mean, was it a full sale? Yeah. $10 billion versus $1.5 billion. Totally different kind of... I understand, but it's still... It's a premium on... Yeah, but still $10 billion versus $1.5 billion? I mean, that sounds like maybe go long...

The Timberwolves and short the Lakers then, if you could. Well, part of it, though, is think about it like the Yankees or the Knicks or something. Just the amount of paraphernalia that people buy. Lakers stuff. People have Lakers hats. It's just a different number. But still, it's amazing, isn't it? It is. Both of them are, they play basketball, both teams. I mean, one's $10 billion, one's $1.5. Market size. Market size.

Sure. TV rights, all that kind of stuff. Really good when you win. The latest valuation had them valued at $3.1 billion. Yeah, I'm wondering whether that's... Do you think the 1.5 is... I don't know what that is. I don't know what it is. I don't know. I was wondering. The most recent ones that had the Lakers valued at $10 billion had the Timberwolves worth $3.1 billion. So I don't know where that comes down.

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