Latest news with #MoneyMovers
The Hill
15-07-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Trump AI czar David Sacks urges Musk to reconsider third party push
David Sacks, President Trump's artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto czar, urged tech billionaire and friend Elon Musk to reconsider his recent third-party push, arguing his political goals could be achieved through the Republican Party. Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, also said that he hopes Musk repairs his relationship with Trump, as the two had a public falling out over the president's 'big, beautiful bill' that ended up being signed into law on July 4. 'Look, I work for the president, and Elon is a good friend, and I hope that one day there will be a reconciliation. I do believe that Elon's objectives politically can be achieved and can best be achieved through the Republican Party and I hope to convince him of that one day, and I hope that there'll be a reconciliation, because I think Elon, and the President, there were once very good friends and I hope they will be soon again,' Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said during his Tuesday appearance on CNBC' 'Money Movers.' Musk, who spent nearly $300 million to help get Trump elected during the 2024 presidential election, announced the 'America Party' earlier this month, a third-party group that Musk hopes could rival the Republican and Democratic Parties. Musk has railed against Trump's massive spending and tax bill, warning that the legislation would balloon the national debt. The president has said that Musk's opposition to the bill is because of the incentives for electric vehicles (EVs) being yanked. The relationship between Musk and Trump turned contentious, months after Musk forcefully campaigned for the president on the trail and was eventually tapped to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The two appeared to have eased tensions, only to again start throwing jabs at each other earlier this month. Trump slammed Musk's idea for a third party as 'ridiculous.' 'He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States – The System seems not designed for them,' Trump wrote on July 6. 'The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats, who have lost their confidence and their minds!'
CNBC
15-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC Exclusive: Excerpts: BlackRock Chairman & CEO Larry Fink Speaks with CNBC's Brian Sullivan on 'Money Movers' Today
WHEN: Today, Tuesday, July 15, 2025 WHERE: CNBC's "Money Movers" Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with BlackRock Chairman & CEO Larry Fink on CNBC's "Money Movers" (M-F, 11AM-12PM ET) today, Tuesday, July 15. Following is a link to video on All references must be sourced to CNBC. FINK ON INFRASTRUCTURE AT THE BEGINNING OF A GOLDEN AGE LARRY FINK: We believe infrastructure is just at the beginning of a golden age. And I'll get into that. We believe private credit will continue to grow and evolve. We did HBS BRIAN SULLIVAN: That's HBS. FINK: But also we believe that if you're going to be, if you believe there's going to be a melding between public and private markets, which we believe that's going to happen. FINK ON INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT FINK: We believe that there's a need for trillions of dollars investing in infrastructure related to our power grids, AI, the whole digitization of an economy. We are still going to be investing in decarbonization. So all these different investments. SULLIVAN: They go together, don't they? FINK: They all go together. Plus making sure that we have adequate, you know, dispatchable energy. So all of this is all part of a plan. And we only had one target when we determined we needed to get even larger in infrastructure. And that was GIP. FINK ON PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INVESTING FINK: We're going to have to do more and more public and private investing. I do believe deficits have consequences. And I've been discussing with this administration and many other governments that we need growth to reduce the dependency of our deficits. If we don't have economic growth around 3%, our deficits, our federal deficits are going to overwhelm the economy in the future. So the only way to get out of it is growth. FINK ON PRIVATE CAPITAL FINK: I think there's enough private capital to put the put the money to work working with state and local governments, working with the hyperscalers. And we need to make sure we do this because the US has to win and lead in AI and infrastructure. It is imperative. And so, you know, we need to find these solutions and we need to rapidly find the solutions. The money is there. The opportunity is there. BlackRock is going to be integral in this process.
CNBC
03-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC Excerpts: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Speaks with CNBC's 'Money Movers' Today
WHEN: Today, Friday, July 3, 2025 WHERE: CNBC's "Money Movers" Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNBC's "Money Movers" (M-F, 11AM-12PM ET) today, Friday, July 3. Following are links to video on and All references must be sourced to CNBC. BESSENT ON POTENTIAL OF BILL PASSING SCOTT BESSENT: It's going to, going to pass. And my expectation is that we'll get a vote around 1:30 today. BESSENT ON TARIFFS BESSENT: What we've seen so far is that tariff, tariffs haven't hurt. The dog that didn't bark was that tariffs were going to hurt the economy, were going to hurt the markets. Market had the fastest recovery ever, ever from the low in April, from a 15% decline. And we're at new highs in the market. BESSENT ON VIETNAM TRADE BESSENT: I haven't spoken to Jamison Greer who's heading the team. My understanding is that it's finalized in principle. BESSENT: We've seen that a huge amount of the trade that comes from Vietnam is what's called transshipment from China. So we'll see what happens with the, with the transshipment and the businesses have already adjusted to a 10% tariff. So we'll see what happens with the additional ten. BESSENT ON NO INFLATION FROM TARIFFS BESSENT: Thus far, we haven't seen any inflation from tariffs. And again, I would say that tariffs are not inflationary. You could get a one-time price bump. But in terms of a generalized economic inflation, I don't think that tariffs cause that. BESSENT ON TRADE TALKS BESSENT: We are. Of course, everyone waits till the last minute. They think that they can get the best deal. And as I've warned, when I've done other media, these countries should be careful because their rate could boomerang back to their April 2nd rate. BESSENT ON ELON MUSK BESSENT: I have great respect for Elon on rockets. I will leave that to him. He can leave the finances to me.
CNBC
21-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
After Zuckerberg spent billions on an AI 'dream team,' he has to deliver for Meta shareholders
When Mark Zuckerberg feels the heat, he opens his wallet. The 41-year-old Facebook founder and Meta CEO is on a spending spree like never before in an effort to position his company at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom and make up for recent costly mistakes in a market that's rapidly revolutionizing the business world. Following last week's stunning $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, which brought with it Meta's hiring of the startup's founder, Alexandr Wang, and a small group of his top staffers, Meta now plans to hire former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, who had been CEO of $32 billion AI startup Safe Superintelligence, CNBC reported this week. Meta previously tried to buy Safe Superintelligence, which was launched a year ago by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, sources told CNBC. According to other sources, Meta had previously been in talks to buy Perplexity AI, which was valued at $14 billion in a funding round in May. The people who spoke to CNBC about the various dealmaking pursuits asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Zuckerberg told investors at the top of the most recent earnings call in April, "The major theme right now, of course, is how AI is transforming everything we do." At the same time, Meta upped its capital expenditures range for the year to between $64 billion and $72 billion from between $60 billion and $65 billion to reflect more data center investments in AI and potentially higher hardware costs. What Zuckerberg didn't say then is that he was about to start shelling out mounds of cash to revamp his AI organization. "Mark Zuckerberg is in founder mode and he's not going to be stopped," said Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, in an interview on Friday with CNBC's "Money Movers." Luria has a buy rating on the stock, but said that to win in AI, Meta needs to be successful with the next round, with the dream team that they're building." At Meta, AI is being embedded across the company, from its core online advertising unit and Instagram algorithms to its effort to build the metaverse. Better AI models and technology enhance the company's existing business, both by improving ad targeting and by bringing down costs. However, the building of fundamental models used by the vast community of developers — where the company competes with Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and others — is where Meta is viewed by many as a laggard. Meta's unique open-source approach is built around the Llama family of models. Its most recent update in April, the Llama 4 AI models, was not well received by developers. At the time, Meta only released two smaller versions of Llama 4 and said it would eventually release a bigger and more powerful "Behemoth" model. "On the heels of a successful rollout of Llama 3 a year ago, Llama 4 that came out this year was an absolute failure, almost by his admission," Luria said, referring to Zuckerberg. "Meta can't afford to fail in having the leading AI model. So they're out in the marketplace desperately trying to replace their AI team right now." Meta didn't respond to a request for comment for this story. Bringing on Scale AI's Wang was Zuckerberg's most headline-grabbing move yet. While Meta is gaining a 49% stake in the startup, Zuckerberg's real prize in the deal was hiring Wang, a dropout from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who started his company at age 19. Zuckerberg then turned his attention to Github's Friedman and Gross, who have been investing together at their venture firm NFDG. They will work on products under Wang, one source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday. Meta, meanwhile, will get a stake in NFDG, according to multiple sources. A Meta spokesperson didn't comment on the planned hires and said the company "will share more about our superintelligence effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks." Not all of Zuckerberg's recruits are costing billions of dollars. Some are in the tens or hundreds of millions. That's according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Altman said on the latest episode of the "Uncapped" podcast, which his brother hosts, that Meta has tried to lure OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million, with even larger annual compensation packages. "I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," Altman said on the podcast. "Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things." Meta technology chief Andrew Bosworth told CNBC's "Closing Bell Overtime" on Friday that Altman is countering the offers. "The market is setting a rate here for a level of talent which is really incredible and kind of unprecedented in my 20-year career as a technology executive," said Bosworth, who joined Meta in 2006. Wall Street is mostly giving Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt, for now. Meta shares were flat this week after slipping about 2% last week. Shares are still up 17% for the year, outpacing the Nasdaq and all the company's megacap peers. Analysts at Argus maintained their buy recommendation on the stock this week and lifted their price target to $790 a share from $725 a share. The stock closed on Friday at $682.35. "The company's ability to capitalize on GenAI advances in advertising targeting is a particularly relevant opportunity to drive advertising spending, which is the company's lifeblood," the Argus analysts wrote. D.A. Davidson's Luria said that Zuckerberg has put more pressure on himself to turn Meta into a long-term AI leader, but said he won't bet against him. Luria said: "The last time Mr. Zuckerberg felt like he was under the gun," he snapped up Instagram for $1 billion, a deal that set the stage for Facebook to become a dominant player in mobile. That was in 2012, just as Facebook was about to hit the public market. Luria also highlighted Zuckerberg's controversial $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp two years later. He sees the Meta CEO making an equally bold wager in AI. "He's going to rebuild the team and they're going to come back," Luria said.
NBC News
12-06-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Yellen expects Trump's tariffs will hike inflation to 3% year over year
Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicts President Donald Trump 's tariffs will cause prices to rise and average household income to fall, despite a slowing trend in the U.S. inflation rate. 'I would expect inflation, on a year-over-year basis of this year, to shoot up to at least 3%, or slightly over, because of the tariffs,' Yellen said Thursday on CNBC's ' Money Movers.' The Biden-era Cabinet secretary made that prediction even as she noted that when it comes to Trump's tariffs, 'There remains a huge degree of uncertainty about exactly what is going to go into effect.' But 'I definitely expect that we're going to see them impact pricing,' she said. That will lower average household income, Yellen added. 'The most recent and optimistic estimate I've seen suggested that the average household will see on the order of $1,000 reduction in income,' due to tariffs and their knock-on effects, she said. 'It could be greater than that, depending on how things play out with the tariff program,' she said. The comments came as data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown the inflation rate rising less than expected in recent months. Trump has pointed to that trend to fuel his latest attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. At the White House later Thursday, Trump slammed Powell as a ' numbskull.' Trump's allies, meanwhile, have argued that tariffs do not contribute to inflation. Yellen, who also served as Fed chair from 2014 to 2018, said the central bank should right now 'worry about the possibility of second-round effects or wage increases or inflation expectations feeding into continued inflation.' The Fed does not have a 'good handle on how the tariffs are going to affect either spending in the labor market or inflation,' she said. 'So I would expect them to remain firmly in latency territory,' she added, suggesting that the Fed is likely to continue its wait-and-see approach.
