Squawk Pod: SpaceX aims for telecom, Starbucks eyes Chipotle – 10/09/26 | Audio Only

Bring in show music, please. >> Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. One big deal for telecom and for SpaceX. Elon Musk wants to keep us all connected and he's moving the markets. >> For so long, we thought of the telecom companies almost as like the railroads, right? They had the tracks and there was no way to get away from the tracks. These guys, meaning Elon, is going over the tracks. Who better to ask about it than Elon Musk's biographer Walter Isacson? >> I mean, the total addressable market he says is like the size of the economy of the entire planet. >> Then reskilling workers laid off in the AI age. Former e-commerce founder Chay Huang of Boxed joins us. He wants those making the cuts to pick up the tab. I don't know in particular if there's going to be more or less jobs, but what I do know definitively is almost all jobs will be vastly different. >> Plus, bracing for hurricane Isaiah. >> Did you pronounce this hurricane yet? It >> I have not even tried, but you know me and pronunciation. >> I spelled it. You know, it's potato >> and a possible merger between Starbucks and Chipotle. >> It's so healthy and it's got so much cilantro. Give me Fritosbased or Doritobased tacos. >> It's Friday, October 9th, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now. >> Stand Andrew by 3 2 1 up and Andrew. >> Good morning. Welcome to Squawkbox right here on CNBC. We're live at the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross Sorcin along with Joe Kern and Becky is out on this Friday morning. Much of the market story centering around the tech sector. The NASDAQ tumbling more than 1% having its biggest one-day loss since mid August. The index hit an all-time high earlier in the week. AI stocks dropping this after CNBC confirmed OpenAI told investors it saw $50 billion in annualized revenue at the end of September. Now, that would be about $20 billion less than previously had been expected. Uh though there is some back and forth about what is included in that number or not in that number and how that relates uh to the way Anthropic accounts for things. Of course, Anthropics IPO uh scheduled or at least expected uh for some time in November. Take a look at Treasuries right now. 10-year sitting at 5.2 and the 2-year at 4.7. >> That's a little a little better uh maybe somewhat responsible. We're going to talk a lot about uh this and some strange uh technical factors that have caused the the tail to kind of wag the dog supposedly on the 10-year. Check out the price of crude that's moving lower. The President Trump said the US would not attack Iran before the midterm elections. The president making those comments on two social also said the administration is having productive discussions uh with tan. Oil prices spiked yesterday after attacks on Saudi Arabia by the Iranbacked Houthis. Uh missiles hit the main airport uh in Riad. And we're tracking uh hurricane uh it's like this was what was our clo clothing, wasn't it? For a while, Andrew is a I remember what what? >> Yes. Probably 15 or 16 years. >> I have one. >> It's that that's how you say it. Yeah, I think this this might be one of and u so this did you pronounce this hurricane yet? It >> I have not even tried but you know me and pronunciation. >> I spelled it out. You know it's potato potato. Uh the storm's it's a category 2. It has sustained winds of 105 miles per hour. It's expected to make landfall later today near the Alabama Florida line just west of Panama City. Heavy rains and flooding uh could extend into Tennessee and North Carolina throughout the weekend. It's been a really quiet uh hurricane season in the Atlantic because of a super El Nino. I guess >> this is a major major sea change. I mean, just watch out folks. Uh this is the big story of the morning. SpaceX purchasing nationwide spectrum portfolio pushing its Starlink service deeper into the US telecommunication market. shares of Elon Musk's rocket company moving higher this morning, another 4% higher. The deal involves the acquisition of a spectrum portfolio from Grain Management, which specializes in digital inf infrastructure. Now, financial terms were not disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal says SpaceX agreed to pay Grain about $8 billion in cash. The FCC will need to approve the transaction. SpaceX says the acquisition will and this is the important part pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US and that is driving down the shares of AT&T also Verizon also T-Mobile perhaps most importantly uh the the band of spectrum uh depending on uh your understanding of the way the technology works can go through walls um and this has always been the central question about whether if you're going to be running a network by satellite as opposed to terrestrially whether you can really compete because in a big city it's hard to do these things even in suburbs. This could be a major major game changer and you're seeing the stocks of all these companies fall on the back of it. science fiction wise they talked about when you can talk you can contact anyone anywhere in the most remote places on the planet and that that's that's a potential of this at this point and you're not near Newark but when you do fly United you immediately thought wow this is the other airlines >> oh you're talking about being on the on the airplane sure but >> how good Starlink is >> is amazing is amazing and that's my my airline and that's my my airport. But you know, you know what I think, Andrew? Wasn't Comcast one of the few bright spots in recent um reports has been they've been expanding into wireless, right? Mobile, >> right? No, no, >> mobile. And and and that's that that hit $20 and change yesterday, down from 65 broad for whatever. But they're all getting affected by this, right? >> Well, because for for so long, we thought of the telecom companies almost as like the railroads, right? They had the tracks and there was no way to get away from the tracks. These guys, meaning Elon, is going over the tracks. >> So, the tracks don't have the same kind of value that they used to have potentially, >> but it's not like, you know, like cord cutting where the ice cube is really big and you can sort of see it shrinking. This is like like >> it could be it could be >> this is like could be disin intermediated in in the blink of an eye theory. So, I don't know if you if you saw >> Is that really possible though? Is this is that really possible that that >> I think Look, all of these things always take longer than you think that they do, but when they happen, they happen fast. Elon, I don't know if you said last night, >> this will sound super crazy, but I see a path to SpaceX being worth orders of magnitude more than the current Earth economy. >> Yeah, we've we've talked about that before. I'm trying to figure out what it's in the it's what 30 or 40 trillion or something. >> Yeah. I mean, look, I >> it must be more than that. 100 trillion. >> I don't know how he gets there. But if you can start to think about SpaceX as a sort of massive telecom company globally that that's a big business obviously if you start to then start to think about all the other things. I I I was thinking about who loses not not really who wins as much but yeah you can imagine the market cap would be >> well you just significant >> just take up all the market caps of all the other telecom companies assuming that you think the other telecom companies aren't going to compete I mean the other thing is they could try to compete on price I mean it' be a race to the bottom is what'll happen >> that that's always great >> let's uh talk about some other uh potential deal news I don't know what we really think of this shares of Chipotle heating up after the financial times reported that Starbucks has explored an acquisition of that burrito chain stock gaining more than 6% in yesterday's trading this morning. The shares are still moving higher and Starbucks is flat. Of course, Starbucks's CEO Brian Nickel led Chipotle before moving uh to the coffee giant. A Starbucks spokesperson though telling CNBC it doesn't comment on rumors or speculation. >> I don't know. >> It's not like It's not like Smuckers in a in a in a peanut butter company. I don't I don't really >> You mean you mean peanut butter and jelly together? >> I understand burritos and coffee. I don't I guess people breakfast burritos. I guess >> I don't No, the question is whether you think you could rationalize both businesses, >> right? It's not about >> by putting them together. >> The food synergy obviously. >> I think it's I think it's if you believe that Brian is a great operator and he was a great operator at Chipotle >> and I think he's fixed Starbucks. >> You know where he cut his teeth. >> But by the way, he left Taco Bell. >> Yeah. But he left Chipotle and then by the way the management of it wasn't so great. this sort of one man. >> They turned Chipotle into Taco Bell, which is why I asked him to let's have some more, you know, it's so healthy and it's got so much cilantro. Give me Fritosbased or Doritobased tacos with, you know, lots of sour. >> You think that? Do you think Chipotle is healthy these days? >> I think that it's much healthier than Taco Bell. And I don't want because of that. I don't like it. >> Okay. >> I've always said that that there's two kinds of people in the world. Chipotle people, Taco Bell people, >> and you're a Taco Bell person. >> Yeah, most people wouldn't admit that. I probably should. >> Meta banning Tik Tok ads on its social media platforms in the US and a handful of other countries. This is now the latest escalation in what has become a longunning rivalry between those companies as Tik Tok has emerged as one of Meta's most formidable competitors for users, creators, and of course, ad dollars. In a statement, Meta says, quote, "We don't have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps." The interesting thought, and I don't know if you put this in the category of you own the stadium, you get to do what you want in the stadium. What gets into other people say there's a free speech thing. You should be able to buy an ad anywhere you want, >> right? >> Got a thought? >> No, I don't. I I you know, there's certain things, Andrew, I'd refer to you uh on People sit around watching TikTok. They just sit >> that they do. They just doom scroll down the Tik Tok the way they doom scroll down the Instagramily >> the way you doom scroll down the X. >> Boom Boomer the guilty, you know. Yeah. I I watch Rifleman. >> Um so I got I I have issues. I have issues on uh M TV, whatever the hell it is. Um >> cheese will be next. >> Coming up on Squawk Pod. We've got a lot of questions about artificial intelligence. From when is it going to destroy us to do we have to give it a new name? Big questions. Walter Isacson is next. >> And who do you trust? Who do you listen to and say, you know what, they're they're going to try to do the right thing. I believe that they're going to try to do the right thing. >> You know, this is a problem because there's no obvious answer. This is Squawkpod. >> Three, two, up an Andrew Q. >> You're watching Squawkbox on CNBC. I'm Andrew Sorcin along with Joe Kernan on this Friday morning. The US budget deficit climbing nearly $2 trillion in the fiscal year that ended September 30th. The Congressional Budget Office now reported that 1.993 trillion deficit was 12% above the 2025 level in nominal dollars, reaching the highest level since 2021. The US spent 7.4 trillion last year. That's up 6%. It collected 5.4 trillion in revenue. That's up 3%. Deficit also stayed high as a share of gross domestic product. The metric that economists watch closely. Although the final fiscal 26 numbers uh for GDP have not been released just yet. Budget experts expect the deficit to surpass 6% of GDP compared to 5.8% in fiscal 2025. And of course, um, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson has been adamant, uh, that he believed he was be able to get it down to 3%. >> Yeah. >> And, um, >> we talking about it's a hit. I thought that the >> the rise in interest rates was adding to how much it costs us to service all the 40 trillion, but >> that takes a while for that to happen. What's really happening is Medicare, Social Security keeps going higher. And >> it is hideous when you add to the deficit 2 trillion. Then you do have the debt service on the addition 2 trillion. So it's like this >> this vicious cycle. But again, revenue for the government was up 3%. Except spending was up six. So whether you hate the Trump administration or not and whether they're spending too much, they are trying to cut um except for the war obviously which >> but the war is a huge portion of this. >> I know I know but but now you know who's going to probably win in the midterms. No one in that party is talking about cutting anything. So I I don't know how it gets any better. I I think the I would just make one obser >> I think they're going to raise t the argument that somehow thus far Democrats have been more irresponsible than Republicans I think is a much more complicated >> depends on what you think irresponsible is. If you think it's responsible to raise taxes to pay for more spending, okay, then they're respon I don't think it is. I we need to stay exactly where we are and and cut spending. We don't need raising anything. >> I think we probably need to do a combination of both. >> I don't think so. and and we had laws debt. >> I think it's the only way and and I think historically >> for opticsto historically taxes have represented typically 19 in some cases 20%. >> No se 18 and we're at 17 and a half >> we're at 17 it's not 18. If you you go back in especially the end of the Clinton era when things were were working you would go you were you were in the high 90s >> in the tech bubble but where was spending >> typically it's 21 now it's 24 >> 24 and so we got to >> 24 by the way I'm saying you got >> I'll give you a half a point up to 18 and a half's you give me >> really you give me you give me three and a half on spending >> let's go but then yes >> no it can't happen you can't cut anything >> you can't do it if you're not if you're not dealing with defense spending if you're not dealing with healthare spending. >> We tried with Doge and we got a this best-selling author saying with the minuscule amount that they did cut, he's whining about >> because it wasn't done >> as appropriately as it could be if it it >> it's impossible to do it because the swamp creatures will will win. >> I don't believe it. >> Swamp creatures win. >> Mars. >> Yeah. >> Exactly. regular freedom, economic freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom ring. Let freedom ring. Andrew, it's not in the teleprompter. Walter Isacson's here. That's what you are such a patriot and such a an unbelievable historian and and uh you move me. You move me when I read anything you write. >> Wow. Thanks. >> Yeah. Um we've got uh Walter here as we just mentioned. He's got a new podcast uh the Elon Musk author Walter Isacson called The Builders coming out. Set to launch this month. The podcast examines how tech creators are designing AI and whether it's an independent intelligence or humans are being kept in the loop. Elon Musk, Dario Amade, Peter Teal, Lucky Palmer, and Alex Karp among the first interviews of that series. And Walter joins us this morning. He's also a CBC contributor, Twolane University professor, Pela Weineberg Advisory Partner. He's got the list goes on. And yes, the author of The Innovators, which is being uh re-released in a new edition today. So, congratulations. >> Palmer Lucky. I love that book. >> Palmer Lucky. >> Palmer Lucky. You said Lucky Lucky Palmer. Lucky Palmer. He's lucky. He's He's pretty lucky. Got you little switcheroo. Little switcheroo. >> I'm doing tonight at the 92nd Street Y, which is a shrine to you because you're always there. I'm doing Mustafa Solomon for part of the terrific >> podcast series, but anybody can come because it's going to be open. We'll ask questions. >> By the way, related to Mustafa, >> there was an interview where he talks about I don't know if you'll get into this with him, >> the uh constitution effectively of the way anthropic is is written. >> Oh, absolutely. The risks that he thinks that that constitution poses relative to the way OpenAI or others have approached it. >> That's what we're going to do at the 90 seconds. because he has written this thing called you know a vision that's his Microsoft AI vision and it really is a push back on anthropic for trying to create anthropic and claude a sense that these AIs have moral standing their conscience >> talking about I don't know we we don't have to get into moral standings one way or the other but I'm very curious about what you thought yesterday of what I think is the biggest news at Starlink >> oh yeah >> um and Elon Musk uh capturing or buying uh this new license. >> But we did talk about talked about we talked about that possibly happening to the phone. >> This could be the biggest thing. >> Absolutely. It's amazing how he I mean I almost feel like he stumbles on these things because he hadn't thought about uh Starlink being direct to cell phones up until about a year, two years ago. Likewise, he's starting, you know, making it a financial service with X and X uh SpaceX AI or SpaceX SI, whatever he's talking. >> How much capital do you think he's prepared to spend though to really build out the the network? >> I mean, the total addressable market, he says, is like the size of the economy of the entire planet. So, yeah, if you decide you're going to control the cell phone market, you're going to have internet access, uh this is huge. And it's not he's already got the big new Starlink satellites and he already has Starship that's deployed them. So this is not the biggest capital outlay ever, >> right? Um I have a another space question for you because I know you were fascinated by space, but it relates to to Elon. >> You know, Elon for a long time, I think, wanted to go direct to Mars. That was his is the whole idea. and and Jeff Bezos wanted to go to the moon, sort of turn that into a way station where then you'd go to Mars or other places. There now seems to be a a bigger shift move >> to get to the the moon first% >> and then to deal with Mars after, >> you know, and it's interesting because people think Elon Musk is so stubborn. He never changes things. He was totally occupy Mars wearing the t-shirt all the time. But Jared Isaacman came into NASA more and more it became uh apparent that the moon is a place if you have a base there it becomes a you know launching pad so to speak to Mars and Elon has shifted his priority. So, does that change the race to space in so far as to the extent that Jeff Bezos was talking about that earlier and and has been making efforts to get to the moon? >> Will will he get to the moon first or do you think >> No, no, no. It's going to be a NASA program. NASA has contracted with both Blue Origin, which is Bezos's company, and with SpaceX to create crew landers to the moon. SpaceX is way ahead because as you know Jeff Bezos with his Blue Origin rocket the launchpad blew up. So he has until probably the end of this year to rebuild it. The real race is with China because if you get to that part of the moon there's only a small area of the Einstein crater and the Shackleman crater that has ice and sunshine at the south pole of the moon. So that's where the race, but it gets us back to AI because everything seems to be driven by a race to China, >> right? Um related to AI, uh one of the things we saw yesterday was that OpenAI's um potential uh revenue or at least their their revenue numbers were lower than some people thought they were going to be and what that was going to do to the market. We were just talking to Bradley Tusk who was sitting in your seat who said that he thought it was terribly hypocritical for a company like an Anthropic or frankly any of these guys to go public at a time when they're screaming from the rooftops that there is a safety risk to all of this. Do you think that's true? >> Yeah. In the builders this podcast series I not only interview uh Dario Amade you know of Anthropic but his sister who's actually the real force behind that Daniela. And the question is how can you figure out how to keep it safe, how to have guard rails when you also have the pressure of the market and therefore they haven't yet done their IPO. On the other hand, you need the huge amounts of capital. So you need to do the IPO. If you're driven by the market, can you also have your own we will do no harm guard rails. That's why the Dario and Daniela Amodi interview in the builder podcast as well as some of the others doing it. Peter Teal is one of the people we interviewed. I asked them all these questions which is if you're going to be market driven, how are you going to restrain yourself when you know you're creating something that can do harm? >> You also interviewed Alex Karp >> very >> who has some deep distrust of all of this even though he's partners with all these people. I think his deep distrust comes from the fact that he's uh these AI uh models and the companies making them will take all the data from the companies and have control over them. >> Data is you know we're having trouble with the bottlenecks of the oil now and the straight >> the new oil >> but it is the new oil. Alex Karp has a very interesting perspective which I I kind of push back and discuss with him in this series on the builders which is you have to have each company in control of its data and the surveillance state which I think some people worry about. He's not worried about he's saying this is something Palunteer his company is going to use AI to make us safer. >> Okay, hard question. you're now spending an extraordinary amount of time with so many of these individuals. And I think part of the sort of public question about all of this is we sort of have I don't want to say overlords, but we have people with extraordinary power. >> Well, they are they're they're the overlords of this new technology. >> And and who do you trust? Who do you listen to and say, you know what, they're they're going to try to do the right thing. I believe that they're going to try to do the right thing. >> You know, this is a problem because there's no obvious answer. You look at an Elon Musk, you look at a Sam Alman, they don't trust each other. And certainly Dario Amade doesn't trust Sam Alman. So the notion that you have a group of people trying to self-regulate when they don't trust each other is a problem. And it's actually a systemic problem here, which is you're building one of the most powerful but also most dangerous technologies. and you have maybe eight or 10 people that nobody exactly trusts in charge, that's probably not the best way to do things. >> Um, artificial intelligence or super intelligence, which do you like better? I like artificial intelligence better because that's what it is and that's what Dario uh that's what Mustafa Solomon we're talking about uh the essay you mentioned that I'm going to be talking about with him tonight and in the builders is these aren't real humans between the Pope and Mustafa Selom that both remind >> you think they need to be called artificial intelligence you think the super rebrand is not not for you >> I think it's both >> well it's super but let's make artific understand that these are not human. They don't have consciousness. >> Well, that's the question. That's a discussion we had. That's what we're going to have. Sentience whether is it possible at all. >> Are you talked to me about hormones? And I looked it up. You're right. There there's a lot of neuro hormones, but I still think they modulate the neuronal connection. >> Real deep question. I tell my students at two lengths, please don't go down the rabbit hole of consciousness and defeated everybody since day, >> right? But the real question is do you have to be biological? Do you have to be embodied in order to have consciousness? Do you have to have life? >> Well, then we can go to to we can design enough nucleic acids to create a virus. Is it alive? Is it alive? Is it alive? Do we create is it alive? >> Yes. Yes. You can do that living organic organism. >> Well, that's scary. And that's why when you get back to the question of all these builders, I'm trying to say, how am I supposed to trust you, right? And drill down on that question. >> U, the podcast is called The Builders. Uh, it is on your favorite podcast app right now. >> Yep. >> Thank you, Walter. Appreciate it. >> Congratulations. >> Thanks. >> Still to come on SquawkPod, a wire fraud fine at American Express. >> Honey, would you do this? I I have a favor for you to ask. Yeah. You want me to pay $100,000 in Mexico? >> A lot. I I did a little shopping. >> And maybe getting laid off isn't the end of the world. Entrepreneur Sheay Huang built e-commerce company Boxed. Now he has a new venture, Pelgo, which retrains workers who have been let go on their former boss's dime. Maybe they're not afraid that they're going to lose their job, but the uncertainty of what my job looks like in the next decade is causing a lot of that angst. You're listening to SquawkPod from CNBC today with Joe Kernin and Andrew Ross Sorcin. >> Federal regulators are finding American Express $350 million after failing to detect and report money laundering. The penalty is among the steepest under President Trump's second term. American Express says it's >> fully committed to addressing the concerns. They can't help it. Unrelated to to the Kimberly Gilfoil uh as far as Is there a second fine coming after that? >> As far as I know, it's unrelated to uh to that whole mess. >> I mean, if that's true, >> honey, would you do this? I I have a favor for to ask. >> Yeah. Honey, >> you want me You want me to pay $100,000? >> A lot. I I did a little shopping. >> You did a little shopping. It needs to be paid like this afternoon. >> I'm trying to get an ambassadorship. So, it would it would help me greatly. >> Is so outrageous. I mean, the real question is >> how I mean, the grift is just everywhere. But if this is an example we know about and so like how much worse is it? >> This didn't happen as it finally happened. The guy said if if I did this for you, I'd get it would cause a divorce. If you pay $100,000 of someone's credit card bill for if you don't know it's it's in all the papers if you haven't seen the situation and uh uh secretary of say Rubio snapped when someone asked him about it. I wonder whether you saw that. >> Yes. He wouldn't he wouldn't talk about >> because he was in Greece. >> Yes. >> Yeah. He was in Greece where uh where it all happened. >> There's some grift. I I told you the >> you told me >> I told you the alternative. Tim Waltz a heartbeat away from the presidency and and Kamla Kamla as president. Okay, so let's think about that. Japan's a >> You think the grift is better? I mean, this is why >> I do I there's a counterfactual. You'd have the grift and the incompetence. >> Wow. Wow. >> The consulting firm it it said Mckinsky and I figure they might be a direct competitor to McKenzie, right? Um and and people wouldn't know, you know, they but we meant Mackenzie. put out a report two weeks ago saying that they see 11 million American jobs going away due to AI in the next few years, but they also believe AI could create more jobs in the next decade. I'll concede you that Pelgo founder and CEO Chay Wong is trying to capitalize on that by starting a new company that contracts with businesses laying off workers to retrain and hopefully help them find new jobs. And we were talking off camera, Chay, and and I've been thinking about because my I contend that once these companies are trying to to get lean or use AI to to save money or whatever it is, when they jettison these people, unfortunately, it's it's not their problem anymore. And and I think only the government probably is is in a position to try to retrain and and try to help the disruption, help people through what's going to be gut-wrenching with that. you are actually trying to saddle these poor are or the companies that are doing this nasty uh these nasty job cuts. You think it's their responsibility and they will take some responsibility to help retrain the people they're getting rid of? >> I absolutely do and actually they're doing so today. So when some are >> I think many are when you think about the 20 million folks that are discharged annually that's a real number by the way. So 20 million folks annually adjusting for COVID it's running average about 20 million from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A lot of those folks are getting not only retraining budgets from their from their previous employer but also severance budgets. And so when you think about how much severance is actually paid throughout the United States, it's a very very large pool of capital. I totally agree. If we were to go to those folks who were affected and charge them for our services, this is not a viable business. But those companies do care about their reputation. They care about getting the release signed and they care about those employees on the way out because some of them will boomerang. So you you pointed out to me because I said if if the going gets a little bit tough and their motivation was to try to to save money by downsizing their workforce, the last thing they want to do is is dilute the benefit of those people leaving by saddling the expenses of trying to to retrain them. But I said I wish they would because the government really is the only uh instit in in a position to help these people and they always do a terrible job of it. >> Yeah. Well, you know, when you look at um especially public companies, large ones that do uh reductions in force, when you pour through their filings, when you look at the one-time charges that they take uh for all those restriction costs, they're us not usually, but often times there's hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, >> and a lot of it is is is they can't get people to sign the the the severance agreement and then there's litigation and what then there's employee morale, then there's all these sort of ephemeral um soft dollar things, right? >> That's right. Like when you think about, you know, for lack of a better explanation, when you think about that sucky process of being offboarded, if you make it less sucky, there's actually business benefits. Like not everyone that's being laid off will forever um uh kind of not boomerang back. And when you think about their current the current employees, they were friends with those folks. They were colleagues with those folks. And so current morale is also affected. So that's why those budgets are actually larger than you would imagine. >> How big are those budgets ultimately? Yeah, when you look at uh Starbucks last Rift um it's about a hundred plus million dollars for a onetime charge. When you look at Meta's last rift, over a billion dollars in a single >> What is it? What is it per employee though? >> Um they don't disclose that. So when you roughly do the math, I mean you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars. >> What are you talking about per per employee for these programs? >> Oh, retraining budget. >> You know, it really depends. So on the low end, folks out there who are doing this, some of these offboarding services on the low end, their services are$1 to $2,000 and they're part of multi-billion dollar companies already. >> So what do you who's helping people find new jobs? Who's retraining them? Um >> we are you any good at it? >> Yeah, I think we I think we are. So um >> like what would the training what would the retraining involve and and what what business would would you pick for the person that it depends on what kind of job they're losing? Yeah, it's a marriage of human counselors uh as well as the latest with LLMs and AI. And so the marriage of those two provide a compelling skills map and provide a a good career path for some of these folks that that are affected that we're helping. I I you know, I started this company because I myself have been affected. You know, you've been around long enough. You you've been fired. You will have to fire folks. And so really creating a service that would have helped me um uh is kind of higher on a mind. Okay. Do you believe that when it's all said and done, there's more jobs >> that are going to be created than than lost? >> I I love that question. I I don't what I I don't know in particular if there's going to be more or less jobs, but what I do know definitively is almost all jobs will be vastly different. What's with this angst in the economy? You know, like wages have risen 4% 4 point I think 75% for the lower middle class. Why do people still only 13% feel like we're in a good economy? I think it's beyond those numbers and it's the fact that maybe they're not afraid that they're going to lose their job, but the uncertainty of what my job looks like in the next decade is causing a lot of that angst. >> Will you end up your services? I don't know what they cost, how expensive it is, but you mentioned the the charges that these companies had to take. >> Yeah. >> If they use you, will the will the charges be less? Will they be the same? I mean, even if even if the charges were the same, at least you're you're doing something to to help the people that that you're you're offboarding. Better than than just blowing it. >> Exact. So, we don't determine those budgets. We don't determine who is affected by those riffs, but what we do help them do is provide those effective with choice. So, one like how do you want your severance paid? How what benefits would you like outside of say career counseling? Are there other things that affect you and your family, which right now is just a cold package. It's like, "Thank you for your service. Here you go. Don't let the door hit you on the way out." That has to change if jobs continue to to evolve and speed at which they're evolving. >> Did you go back historically and look at at previous um disruptive events? Because a lot of times the government tries to retrain and you see Congress allocate money to to retraining. Is it has it ever worked and and did you learn anything about the mistakes the the government has made in the past? >> I I've learned a lot from my personal mistakes. So I I've been on the show multiple times for previous company. And so unfortunately for my previous company, we had to go private. We went public, had to go private, and we had to do riff after riff. Uh and I learned the pain from both sides of that experience. And and we try to create a company out of it. >> I just wonder whether people are going to follow you into this business and whether it's a what do you think? You think this is a See, I I think that that companies are so ruthless that it when they say, "All right, we're paying this guy and you know, maybe some employees are doing okay, but we're going to There's a business. There's a business here. I'm not saying there's not a business here. I just think it's on I don't want to say it's a marginal business, but it's like cash. Yeah. But I think there's going to be enough money in it that there's some money. >> You don't think that companies will say, "Look, that that's the reason I'm I'm downsizing in the first place. I don't want to, you know, now I got to now I got to worry about where they're going." >> A slightly different one, which is we keep talking about people leaving. One of the things that we're finding right now is that it looks like employment may actually be up in a certain way around AI in part because there's this transition period where a lot of companies are hiring outside consultants. They're hiring new people. We're trying to help them figure out how to use AI. My question is is it a head fake meaning that we sort of have a growth right now in terms of those kind of new jobs yes that are emerging and that longer term once the companies sort of figure it out >> then the hammer comes down. >> Um I don't know definitively Joe says you guys are agreeing that's a good thing I'm helping you guys agree. So let me rethink that. >> Um is it an actual head fake? I'm not certain. But what I am certain about is that if you're looking for a job right now, if you're thinking about what industry um should I be going into, what job should I be thinking about? If you're watching this right now, as cliche as it sounds, go where the puck is headed. So instead of looking at industries where they're playing defense, go to jobs and industries that are created that couldn't exist but for AI. And so when you think about those industries and those new jobs that are being created, I think that's where the future is. >> Okay. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you and good luck. Thank you guys. >> All right, that is Squawk Pod for today and for the week. Thanks for listening. Squawkbox is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorcin. We bring everyone together. >> Boomer, but guilty. >> You can tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern. To get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show right into your ears, please follow SquawkPod wherever you get your podcasts. Tell a friend to follow, too. We'll meet you right back here on Monday. Have a great weekend. >> We are clear. Thanks, guys.