Gary Cohn & CNBC’s Disruptor 50: Gecko Robotics 6/12/25
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Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod...

Gary Cohn, a veteran of the first Trump White House, says the U.S. economy is sitting pretty. The Fed right now is in a pretty, I would say, opportune, lucky, good scenario. And the Fed, a target of his old boss, may be doing OK, even as tariff policy leads to volatile markets. They do admit we're in a restrictive environment right now, but the restrictive environment doesn't seem to be having a negative consequence on the economy.

And climbing robots going where human intelligence won't? Gecko Robotics is a defense and infrastructure startup now worth billions. The founder, Jake Luserarian, joins us. The people that are out there gathering information to detect, is this going to fail or not, whether it's a power plant or a bridge,

Someone had fallen and died, and so that inspired me when I was in college to build a company that could gather information and data, make it safe, but also figure out how to build new materials. Plus, the developing story of a crashed Air India jet, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, our Phil LeBeau reporting. A catastrophic loss of power and the ability to get any lift, and you have a crash within basically a minute.

It's Thursday, June 12th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand back, you buy in 3, 2, 1, cue please.

Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. And oil prices, which are the big story of the week, higher across the board. In fact, yesterday WTI was up by close to 5%. You can see it's at $67.08 right now. Brent is equally pulling back a little bit down by about 1.6%. There have been a lot of concerns about

about tensions in the Middle East and what's exactly happening there. President Trump saying that some U.S. personnel are being moved out of the Middle East. Those tensions with Iran in focus, but we've been moving some of our personnel out of Baghdad in Iraq. NBC News reports that Israel is now considering taking military action against Iran in the coming days, even as the Trump administration is in talks with Iran about a deal to try and curb the country's nuclear program.

Just a short time ago, the board of the U.N. nuclear watchdog declaring for the first time in almost 20 years that Iran is not complying with its nuclear obligations. Immediately responding to that, Iran said that it would establish a new uranium enrichment facility in a secure location. President Trump making comments yesterday saying that it did not look like they were going to be willing to reach a deal, that things were different than he had thought just a few months ago.

Just happening, an Air India, or recently, a plane has crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad. Air India's chairman saying on X that flight 171 on the way to London's Gatwick Airport was involved in that tragic accident.

as police say the plane crashed in a civilian area outside the airport about 242 passengers on board according to flight radar 24 the aircraft was a boeing 787 8 dreamliner delivered to air india about 11 years ago in a statement boeing says it's aware of the initial reports working to gather more information trying to determine whether there's

I guess at this point there may be survivors. There were some reports that there were some ambulances leaving the scene. This happened initially on takeoff. It was only up by less than 700 feet in the air. 700 feet. And with all the problems from the 787 that we've seen, I don't think there's been...

fatality or a whole failure or anything close to this than the shares of Boeing, as you can see down 17. Phil LeBeau joins us now on the Squawk news line. Good morning, Phil. What can you tell us? Good morning, Joe. I'm actually over here in Paris ahead of the Paris Air Show, where we will be listening and hearing from Boeing CEO Kelly Warburg next week, as well as the CEO of GE Aerospace, Larry Culp. We believe that the Air India plane

We haven't confirmed this yet, but we believe it had two GE engines powering it. Look, we're so early in this investigation that it's hard to know exactly what would have caused a catastrophic loss of power and the ability to get any lift and you have a crash within seconds.

basically a minute of takeoff. So what you're looking at right now is a situation where once the immediate task at hand, which is trying to see if there are any survivors, once that is done, investigators will have a chance to say, okay, let's find the black box, the cockpit data recorder. There have been reports that the crew issued a mayday warning just seconds before the plane crashed. Whether or not that's true or not, we haven't confirmed. Um,

But that will tell us what we need to know in terms of what went horribly wrong within a minute or two of takeoff. And again, you mentioned the 787 Dreamliner.

I do not believe there has been a Dreamliner crash. To my knowledge, this is the first Dreamliner crash. It's not a terribly old aircraft. Eleven years is well within the life cycle. So it's not a case of a really old airplane here. We just have to wait and see until we get more information about what exactly contributed and caused this accident.

Can you, Phil, I was going back and trying to look at all the myriad problems of the Dreamliner. How many production stops were there and delays? There were fastener issues. Over the years, it was, along with some of the other problems that were so widely reported on with Boeing, the Dreamliner was

you know, had its own issues, but never an issue like this. And, you know, we did see Boeing trading at a 52 week high recently. And not that this has anything to do with the sub, but Boeing has had a lot of problems. It's still 50 percent below its all time high. Now this. Right. Right. I think what you're getting at, Joe, is this question of could

could some of the quality issues that we've seen over the years when it comes to the Dreamliner, could they have been a contributing factor here? We don't know at this point. But you are correct in saying

Look, I remember going back to when they were first developing the Dreamliner that there were issues. You are 100 percent correct. There were issues when it came to the batteries, a couple of batteries catching on fire. They had to rework that within the aircraft. There have been issues with fasteners. And the production has generally been about four per month over the last year.

A couple of years, three years maybe. Some of that is largely brought on by issues with the pandemic and staffing and in the supply chain. But there is no doubt that there will be scrutiny here in terms of the quality of the Dreamliner and specifically what we're, you know, have any of these past issues, could they have been a contributing factor to this accident?

I will point out that Air India's CEO said earlier this year, back in February, I believe, that they would not be taking or exercising their option to buy more Boeing planes until Boeing was able to get through the backlog. They've been in the middle of...

an upgrade for their fleet where they've been adding a lot of planes. They're a buyer of both Boeing planes and Airbus planes. But I think they were concerned about some of the backlog issues and said that until Boeing could figure out when it could deliver some of those, they would not be taking that option on additional planes. And Boeing is, Becky, Boeing is in the process of planning to increase production for the 787 Dreamliner going up to five per month. And whether or not that's impacted by that, that remains to be seen.

All right. So we, you know, stay near the phone. And whatever you find out, interesting that you're at the Paris Air Show and Boeing will be, obviously,

confronted with this front front and center when that when that happens. But hopefully we'll be able to keep tapping your your knowledge about the whole industry throughout throughout the show today. So just keep your phone handy. Thanks. Will do. We're going to be sending letters out.

in about a week and a half, two weeks, to countries, telling them what the deal is, like I did with EU. And are you happy with the EU right now? You were unhappy with them about 10 days ago. Well, I'll let you know in about a week. They do want to negotiate, I will say that. Thank you. President Trump says he'd be willing to extend an early July deadline for finishing trade talks.

with countries but doesn't think that'll be necessary. At the Kennedy Center last night, the president told reporters that the U.S. is going to send out letters in the coming weeks with terms of trade deals to dozens of countries which they could choose to accept or reject. Earlier in the day, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besant told lawmakers that the White House could extend the July deadline for countries that are negotiating in good faith.

"It is highly likely that those countries that are negotiating or trading blocks, as in the case of the EU, who are negotiating in good faith, we will roll the date forward to continue the good faith negotiations. If someone is not negotiating, then we will not."

In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal reports that China putting a six month limit on licenses for the exports of those rare earth metals to U.S. auto manufacturers and automakers. Those have proven to be a major point of leverage for China in the trade negotiations.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. naming eight new members to a key government panel of vaccine advisors after firing the previous panel of 17 members a few days ago. The group reviews vaccine data and makes recommendations that determine who is eligible for shots and whether insurers should actually cover those shots. On X, Kennedy said that the eight new advisors will attend a meeting of the panel later this month.

Among the new picks are some well-known vaccine critics, including one doctor who suggested earlier this year without evidence that recent measles deaths among children were because of medical errors rather than the virus itself. There is at least one member who identifies as an anti-vaxxer, and this is...

Not exactly what people had been hoping to see. If you talk to some of the senators who had signed off on this, I think we talked about the Louisiana senator earlier this week who had some concerns as a medical doctor. He approved RFK Jr.'s nomination, but he has said that he's spoken with him about this and it will continue to monitor the situation. If you had seven that were, you know, not anti-vaxxers and one who's an actual...

accredited, well-known, published scientist that has concerns with it, I could see that. But I don't know. Having concerns with vaccines, I think, is a little different than being an anti-vaxxer. And calling yourself an anti-vaxxer. It's kind of scary. I'm raising questions about whether the measles deaths were actually called by measles. I have no idea what the guy actually said or about that individual case with the measles. But we're at a point in time where we certainly do give out a lot of vaccines and they're still scientifically proven.

You'd like to at least know more about the long term effects on the immune system of bombarding someone with vaccines early on. Sure. But I do think that they're the people who were concerned about what RFK Jr. would do in this role. They're seeing it are seeing it play out the way they had feared it might. Just in terms of I don't know if they can if the jury's totally in on.

uh... on that it's just going to be rabid anti-science uh... conspiracy we used to talk to scott gottlieb who was the head of the f_d_a_ during the first trump administration about

his concerns with the vaccine requirements during COVID because he worried that it would lead to vaccine backlash. And we have seen the number of people who are willing to take vaccines drop. We worry that you get to the point where you no longer have herd immunity on some of these because you raise so many questions about the vaccines. Definitely the way that it was handled by Fauci and others, some of that backlash is more because it didn't prevent

infection, number one. And a lot of the stuff that they told us about lockdowns, about masks, about none of it was based on science. The vaccines did not prevent infection. It didn't prevent it. And you think that it probably prevented the worst case scenarios of some of these things happening. I would agree with that. But whether young, healthy people, I mean, I look at

I look at Djokovic now and I think, wow. Yeah, there are questions about whether young boys in particular should take it. I'll bet you Djokovic is... And by the way, I've spoken with my doctors who are generally in favor of vaccines who raise some of the same questions about for young men in particular because of... Or healthy people. I mean, if you're not eating, you probably weren't going to die. Again, it depends on the variant that came through. Some of the variants were much worse than others. None of the variants was the mortality rate for a 40-year-old healthy person

worth, perhaps, if there were, you know, at that point. I don't know. The Army shouldn't have been going door to door to give people vaccines. Teas will be next. Still to come on Squawk Pod, de-dollarization? The world's reserve currency, the U.S. dollar, may be heading for a reckoning as countries around the world contend with a dramatic trade policy from President Trump. Gary Cohn, a one-time Goldman Sachs banker who was the initial National Economic Council director in the president's first term, joins us on the Squawk set.

We're now to a point where the world is now reevaluating the dominance of the dollar. And B, they may not have the extra currency to ship out to the United States to buy dollars. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC, today with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. Here's Joe.

joining us now for a look at the economy trade the budget bill and much more ibm vice chairman gary cone he was in the uh at the white house the first trump administration as nec director long um career at one of the preeminent firms obviously on wall street goldman sachs so you know what you're talking about in terms of things and you're not part of the administration anymore so i think you'll you know you won't be you won't feel like you have to say great things but i mean

Why does this keep happening every single time it happens? Why are things defying the worst case scenario? Why is the market now and the SP is in a bull market again? So is the NASDAQ. Why are these things happening when so many negative things have been pointed out by so many people? Look, Joe, the actual economy continues to perform very well. That's what you're pointing out here.

The perceived economy and the polling data keeps coming in horribly. So we've got this huge divergence between what people think may happen, what has actually happened. And I think people's anticipation is like things are going to get worse, but they haven't gotten worse. We continue to see inflation data sort of at or around the Fed's target of 2%. We continue to see the job market increasing.

be strong, not overly strong and not overheated, but strong enough to continue employment growth. So when you look at the underlying economic data, we're relatively sound right now. Everyone keeps worrying about the tariffs and tariffs feeding through the system and the inflation that's going to cause and the disruption it's going to cause. And look, I'm not saying we won't see that. We still may see that.

We've only been in this tariff dislocation, tariff conversation for a few months now. It takes a long time for these things to feed through the economy. We had inventory. A lot of people brought in a lot of inventory before Liberation Day. Those goods are priced at old prices. As we work off the old inventory, we bring in new inventory, I think we're going to start seeing some price increases, but it's going to take its time working its way through the economy.

So we're early in this game and we may never get to a place where we have this inflation. We've definitely gotten past a couple of data points where people said, OK, you're going to see it here. And it wasn't there. I would I'm really afraid to stick my neck out and say we're not going to see it. I believe whatever what all the dooms say. I believe it's coming. Why he'd like you to say this is why I like no, no, no. But then at the same time, I look at the discounting mechanism of the stock market and

And I'm not absolutely convinced that the most dire forecasts are ever actually going to come to pass. But I think the market's not convinced that the highest levels of tariffs are ever going to pass. A lot of times, most dire things don't happen.

Usually. Markets tend to... The world can only end once. Yeah, markets tend to overreact. We tend to overreact on everything. Whether it's perceived data, whether it's reality, we tend to overreact. Markets tend to normalize relatively quickly. But look, there's some things we do know.

So if you look at freight shipments coming into the port of L.A., L.A. Long Beach, which is the major import destination for things coming out of Asia, we know that freight shipping is down about 50 percent year over year. So we are getting 50 percent less goods than we were a year ago. It doesn't feel to me that the U.S. consumer is consuming 50 percent less today than they were a year ago.

So as we work through the inventory buildup that I perceive was there, that new pricing has to feed into the system. I think a lot of people felt like that was going to feed into the system now. It was going to have fed into the system by June.

Maybe it's July, maybe it's August. I'm not smart enough to know, but it feels to me like it's a July August. And on the other side, we should have seen some of the uncertainty and the paralysis of consumers and CEOs. We should have seen some of that manifested too. I think you are seeing some of the, I think you're seeing some of the, I won't call paralysis of CEOs. Hesitancy. Hesitancy, that's a much better word. I think you're seeing some conservativeness. CEOs in the CapEx space,

are taking their time. Right now, I don't think the CEO community feels like they're getting rewarded for leaning into big CapEx opportunities. They don't feel like they're being rewarded for making big, bold investments.

I say that then you see what's going on in the power space, in the energy space, in the small nuclear reactor space. We're seeing deals all the time because this whole AI boom and what's going on in AI. So in selective areas where people feel like there's an immediate need, we are seeing capex. In traditional business investment where the business community says, look, I need to make this investment, but if I make it today or I make it six months from now or I make it a year from now,

It's not going to matter as much. And if I make it too early and the economy turns down, it's really bad for my shareholders. If I don't make it in the economy, say, instead, it's OK. I'll have time to make it towards the end of the year, the beginning of next year. And I do think you're seeing that feed through the economy. Is it time for you to sign up full bore with the bond vigilantes at this point? Are you concerned? I mean, we had a.

I mean, I really think it was like 20 basis points. And people said, oh, my God, Trump's folding because the bond market is paid. Well, he himself said the bond market was getting jittery. I know, but 460 is not. And then we also have seen a dollar has been declining. Is our preeminence around the globe, has our brand been damaged by any of this? Are we exceptional anymore? I think we're seeing a natural decline.

Move in markets remember markets never go one direction forever And if you think they are gonna go one direction forever, then you know you're in trouble So this view that the world was going to own dollars and was going to invest in u.s Fixed income and there was this great carry trade we lived up that trade for a long time in America You know the dominance of the dollar was really helpful to us. We're now to a point where the world is now reevaluating the dominance of the dollar and

And B, they may not have the extra currency to ship out to the United States to buy dollars. So if you're looking at Europe, for instance, right now, a country that has historically underinvested in its own infrastructure, underinvested in its own national defense, with what's going on right now, they're being told, you know what, you're going to actually have to spend money to defend your country. Great food, though.

Well, it is. But you're talking about the dollar here. They don't have the extra capacity to buy dollars and invest in the United States. The extra currency flows that they have are now being recirculated into their own economy to provide the defense mechanism they need for themselves.

These things are on the margin. You point out, even though there's vigilantes out there, we're talking about relatively small moves in the big picture. But these relatively small moves happen because of the marginal investor, the marginal dollar. The price of the Treasury auction is based on the marginal bid, not the core bid. The price of the dollar is based on the marginal buyer today, not the core buyer of the dollar.

So when the marginal buyer changes slightly, we get price moves. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing a new readjustment. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, is trying to find new marginal buyers. That's why they're talking about the SLR relaxations on what banks can do with their capital. Will that work? Will the banks actually buy treasuries? Look, I think to the extent that we get new relaxations on capital, banks will look at the opportunities to put their capital to work.

you know there's there's a move on um with the department of labor right now to free up 401k retirement plans to go into the alternatives market you know if we get more capital coming into the alternatives market which i think makes an enormous amount of sense that long-term investors investing for the retirement should have access to better product and more product these all have inputs because all of these markets do price on the marginal buyer the marginal dollar the marginal dollar in the marginal dollar out really drive the

the price. You know, that's that's the most unique thing about our market system here in the United States is an open, transparent market and an open, transparent markets. The marginal dollar, the marginal player really dictates price. At the beginning, you talked about how businesses and consumers are worried about inflation expectations. The Fed watches that very closely to

Do you think that's because of what they're hearing when they look at the news? Do you think that's because of what they've lived through the last five years since COVID? I think it's a combination of both. You know, if you look at the current Fed chair,

You know, he lived through, quote unquote, transitory inflation that proved not to be transitory, where the Fed did have to play catch up and they did have to raise rates quite dramatically to get things back under control coming out of covid. So they've got that real time experience in hand and they still haven't totally recovered reputationally from that.

They're hearing in the news and they're hearing from the corporate community that the cost of inputs is going up or the scarcity is starting to show. And we know supply-demand drives price. We know that less materials come in the United States.

So I think the Fed is worried about the potential that prices go up and things get more expensive and therefore we end up in an inflationary cycle. The Fed right now is in a pretty, I would say, opportune, lucky, good scenario. Like I said, inflation is right at their target, just slightly above their target. So they can say, look,

We're living at our 2% target. Employment's sort of right at their target. They do admit we're in a restrictive environment right now, but the restrictive environment doesn't seem to be having a negative consequence on the economy. So the market is giving the Fed the opportunity to wait. Yes, look, I understand that we all would probably like lower interest rates. I mean, given our choices, we all would like to pay less for money. Interest rates is a cost of money.

But right now the Fed is saying, you know, it's our job to moderate the price of money. And right now we see no reason to lower the price of money based on the data inputs we're looking at. Gary, we have been told that some of the angst in the bond market, and we've been told repeatedly it has to do with the perception of the markets to the big, beautiful bill.

So somehow the $3 trillion that the CBO estimates that we add to the deficit is a lot worse than that $3 trillion we just added during the Biden administration. It's qualitatively different than that $3 trillion. So I don't believe that. But I also don't think that the deficits you were running in the Trump administration or the Trump administration, we were at $700 billion. We're at $2 trillion now.

Post pandemic for no reason to be at two trillion. And we're going to be there again with the big beautiful bill, probably. So there is something wrong with with with what it's not all Trump's fault, obviously. And if if the Green New Deal passed, I mean, we'd I don't we'd be at eight percent probably. Joe, I think we need to separate two things. I think there's two things we really have to separate.

When we're talking about the deficit here, people argue about the $2.4 trillion over 10 years to extend the existing tax cut plan that was put in place in 2017. Yes, they do. Okay. That $2.4 trillion is a static scoring number. It doesn't relate to the economic impact of rolling or not rolling. What we don't talk about

is we don't talk about the economic impact of not rolling over the Trump tax cuts. If we said these Trump tax cuts are going to expire December 31st of this year, what would be the scoring impact of that? It would be a lot more dramatic than the $2.4 trillion.

People have estimated being the four to five trillion dollars of negative impact of raising taxes on hard-working American citizens So that that's one part of the equation that we can talk about we can talk about that 2.4 and what it does and does it drive economic growth and does it pay for itself over time the other side of the equation which I Agree with you on is this spending side of the equation which is not the the tax revenue side of the equation and

We have a spending problem. You know, in COVID, the U.S. government did exactly what they're supposed to do. They helped the U.S. economy stay stable. They made sure we as citizens could continue to live our life. When the economy shut down during COVID, you know, people needed to put food on the table. They needed to pay their rent. They needed to heat their homes. They needed to make payments. The U.S. government stepped in and did exactly what they are there to do. The problem is when we came out of COVID,

They looked at the baseline spending that we were at and they said, oh, this is an interesting number. Let's keep working from here. Let's not go back and look at where we were pre-COVID and say, okay, that should really be our baseline. This was an extraordinary one-off period of time. We did our job. We did our job successfully. We came out the other side. The economy is strong. The economy is growing. Now we have to slash spending back down to where we were pre-COVID. I think we have to separate these things to actually get to the right answer. Certainly the narrative is if you...

take anything away from current spending that it's going to hurt people that we don't want to hurt. And we hear it every single day. I mean, how were they really hurting that much? There is a reality when you're an elected official and you run for office every two years. It is very difficult to go back to your constituents and say, hey, I went to Washington, did a great job. I took something away from you. Right. There's a fundamental problem there. That said, the bigger picture is

Your job is to create a long-term stable economy for your citizens. And I think we sometimes conflate this issue of what Washington's supposed to do, creating a long-term stable economy with the short-term election phenomena of what is my opponent going to run against me. Why the Senate's supposed to be the more stable body. It is. But the Senate is being asked not to put any input into this because they won't be able to then get it through the House again. I think. Such a narrow majority. Look, my view is I think the Senate will put some input into it.

They will get to a compromise. I feel very strongly that the tax issue, and most of what's in the one big beautiful bill, will get passed. And I think it should be passed. I mean, raising taxes back up does not make sense. Border security is something that people rely on. All the additional tax cuts make sense to you? I think there are pieces in there that will have a lot of discussion. You know, when you take and look at the state and local tax deduction,

Obviously very important to many members of the House, especially those that sit in high tax jurisdictions. Most of the Republican senators,

don't really care as much about the state and local tax deduction. I think that's going to be an item. Should you have additional tax cuts for no taxes on tips, no taxes on... She had a bad experience of a waiter somewhere. This tip thing is just... But I think this is just a giveaway. This is just a giveaway to say that this form of income should be taxed and this shouldn't. Honestly, it's the... The Richmond's equivalent of this is the capital...

thing and carried into a very very very very interesting idea interest where if you are money this way it shouldn't be taxed it's

to be honest with you if you look at the no tax on tips legislation it's gonna have very very very very little impact because all the sudden you're gonna need to declare your tips you're gonna need to declare enough income and tips to get out and that was a hundred zero and so any money we get declared in tips that people aren't declaring today is actually a windfall for the government and it will collect Social Security will collect Medicare will collect the Obama tax so

There's some give and take in there. It's a short-term program. The amount of money that it raises in scoring is a tiny amount of money. The federal government is not assuming they're collecting a lot of money. I want to talk to you about tariffs. We don't have time, but I want to talk to you when we go to break about tariffs. All right. I'll come back and we'll talk about tariffs.

Next on Squawk Pod, the private companies shaking up industries. CNBC's annual list of disruptors. We'll hear from the CEO of number 30 on that list, Gecko Robotics. The U.S. power grid has only four years left of useful remaining life of all the assets that power our grid. That's pretty scary. And so our job is to extend the useful life for those assets way beyond what they ever were supposed to.

how he's using AI and robotics to disrupt defense and infrastructure manufacturing, plus what Gecko does with all the data those robots collect.

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This is Squawk Pop. Straight up on Becky. 3, 2, 1. Up on Becky. Cue.

You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. This week we unveiled CNBC's 2025 Disruptor 50 list and at number 30 is Gecko Robotics. Julia Boorstin's here with more on that. Good morning, Julia. Good morning to you, Becky. Well, Gecko Robotics uses its AI-powered robots that can climb up wind turbines and into nuclear power plants to test critical infrastructure, including battleships.

aircraft, gas refineries, and power plants. It analyzes the condition and readiness of those assets to get ahead on repairs and keep those assets operational. Gecko is at the intersection of AI, robotics, defense, and infrastructure, some of the hottest industries

for funding this year, which helps explain Gecko's news of the morning. The company has closed another round of funding, doubling its valuation to $1.25 billion. Joining us now, Jake Lusserian, co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics. Jake, thanks so much for being here this morning. Yeah, thanks for having me. So tell us about this new funding round. How will you put it to work?

Well, thanks for having me on. For those that don't know, Gecko is a company that collects and diagnoses the health of built structures all around, whether it's a bridge, a dam, an aircraft carrier, like you said.

And it powers an AI-powered operating platform for our customers called Cantilever. So the funding round is to surge resources and energy around the most critical industries that is creating a flywheel right now with the sale of Cantilever, and that's in the energy manufacturing and defense sectors. You recently expanded your partnership with the Navy. You have a new partnership with L3 Harris.

All of these partnerships, do you have the capacity to scale up and meet their needs right now? We do. And it's because of this concept that we came up with out of the college dorm about 12 years ago when I created Gecko. And it's about not building robots and selling them to our customers, but it's about using robots to collect unfair data advantages that power a software and operating platform that no one else has and is able to compete with.

These things are so cool. They're like Spider-Man. They crawl all over the tank or the bridge or whatever it is, and they find structural weaknesses, which to me seems like one of the best use cases for AI, especially with an instant use case and people who are probably willing to pay for it.

Yeah, that's right. And one of our incredible customers is a mining company called Rio Tinto, and they spend about $4 billion a year on sustaining CapEx, for example. And so sustaining CapEx is just you have to deploy capital to make sure things continue to operate, and you can create the kind of

products that you're supposed to be delivering. The problem is, infrastructure is just so old. In the US, for example, the US power grid has only four years left of useful remaining life of all the assets that power our grid. That's pretty scary. And so our job is to extend the useful life of those assets way beyond what they ever were supposed to. But while you're collecting that data, it

It actually helps power something way more exciting, which is an operating platform. So one thing that I'm working on with the power sector is how do you get 10 gigawatts of more power at the existing thermal in the US without building another power plant? And that's something that we've been able to prove out with a partnership with a group called NACE, which runs about 5% of the power in the US. - Okay, I love this idea. One thing that just popped into my head is are you liable? If you sign off on something and say, hey, this bridge is safe, this ship is safe, this tanker is safe,

and there's a problem and a leak springs, an accident happens, are you liable for that? - We're not liable. We have to follow all the standards and guidelines set out by API or ASME, these like societies that set out, here's the standards you have to abide by. And because we have a million times more information data, it's all localized using robots that are AI powered. So what we're trying to do is create a representation of what the real world looks like. We talk about digital twins,

What we do is we create what the real reality of the power plant or the refinery or the ship looks like. And then we represent that instead of cantilever to make all these decisions around how to operate and also to build new infrastructure.

Now, all that's really important to document and interrogate something that's never actually existed before. So, you know, one thing that we've been getting a lot of attention around and we haven't like gone into the sector yet, but another act of the company is how do we use this to underwrite better? Because right now you're using very little information and data to underwrite, you know,

billions and billions of dollars of not just physical stuff, but also production. So if the power plant doesn't bring you in and pay you to do it, the insurance company might pay you to do it so they can figure out what to charge them on their liability? We have 500,000 of the world's most critical assets managed inside a cantilever. And you can imagine the information and data that we have about...

things that power large industries on the insurance and compliance side are very interested in the data sets that we have. So we don't do anything with that, but you can obviously imagine how important that information is. Julia, this is pretty unique from your disruptors last round. Yeah, and I think what's so interesting is it's really sitting at the intersection of robotics and AI and infrastructure and really addressing real world needs and using AI to power solutions. Up to this point, it just was expensive to check everything.

whether there's flaws, right? I mean, we're not... It is. There's flaws everywhere and all these things. It'd be nice to know about these. Yeah, I think I mentioned when we were together at Sun Valley, there's only six bridges in New York that are not in need of immediate repairs. Just to have you feel nice at home. Like, you don't know which bridges those are? Yeah. And I started the company because... Does that drive over one every day? Yeah. I started the company because the people that are out there gathering information to detect is this going to fail or not, whether it's a power plant or a bridge,

someone had fallen and died. And so that inspired me when I was in college to build a company that could gather information and data, make it safe, but also figure out how to build new materials to power, in particular, the most important sectors that are existential risks today. There'd be a lot more inspections and cheaper inspections. That's right. Because there's probably not enough inspections. Because these things can, like, crawl up.

all over the undercarriage. And one thing I might say-- Proactive repairs, right? That's right. And I think one thing that's interesting about our company is outside of the ,, we're the place where the most Palantirans go. Oh, really? And the early Palantirans go. And the reason I'd say that is Alex talks about ontology. Alex Carr. Right? Yeah.

Alex Kirk talks about ontology. What's important to realize about GetGo and how we think about building operating platforms with software is that you have to start with a, we call it a data is guilty until proven innocent, meaning that we believe that you have to actually go out and gather information that's never existed before

to power a software and artificial intelligence driven software in particular to help operate and build things better into the future. So we are building software by first gathering and owning this information data layer that just never existed before. And this is why digitization and transformation in the sector just haven't happened. So the AI predicts something is ready to fail? That's what I was wondering too. You know what that's like? 2001. Remember how...

Said that there was something gonna fail and it wasn't the poor guy went out to check it out And he's still like this you probably didn't see that either you guys are so young missing so much watch the Kubrick 2001 okay watch it all right You never lost a robot right like you were talking to how your fear of heights on these things you never ever fallen off No, never falling off. Yeah, I'm not going up with it. Yeah, that's not good You probably carry you up if you held no no no no

Thank you. I'm even going to lower my chair. And Jake, thank you, too. Yeah, thanks so much. This is like the gems of the CNBC Disruptors list. Yeah, 13th list. You find out about these companies early on.

And that's the pod for today. This Thursday, thanks for listening. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern or get the best of our TV show right into your ears when you follow Squawk Pod wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Have a great day, and we'll meet you right back here tomorrow. We are clear. Thanks, guys.

Yeah.

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