Power Lunch - Crypto slides, M&A is heating up 9/22/25

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

A look at what the options market is signaling to investors. Dealmaking is on the rise in 2025. And Nvidia and OpenAI announced Nvidia will be investing up to $100B in OpenAI. Where will the energy to power the AI come from? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

More record highs for stocks. Invita doubling down on AI and MNA mania, at least for some companies. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian. Kelly is out again this week. Lots on deck for you today after a relatively slow start this morning. Stocks turning higher, the S&P and NASDAQ, yep, hitting new highs. Crypto, not kind of taking it on the chin.

Bitcoin down about 2% today. We'll tell you what you need to be watching as the trading week begins. Plus, Nvidia. making a massive deal announcement. It is moving Nvidia stock, but there may just be one big problem with that. We'll hit it. Speaking of deals,

one of Wall Street's biggest deal makers is here on set with what will power the next leg of M&A. It is a big day, folks. Thanks for joining us here on CNBC and Power Lunch, and we're going to begin with InVIDIA. And that huge announcement where NVIDIA and OpenAI are investing in each other, trying to bring our AI dream. to life, there was a lot of energy in the room.

Literally, John Fort made it all happen. He is out West, and he's got the details on what just happened. John. Brian, well, I made the part happen that appeared on CNBC. Quite a unique experience. I'm still here at Nvidia headquarters in Silicon Valley. And I had Jensen Wong and Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, the CEO and president of OpenAI. here at NVIDIA and this $100 billion announcement,

the scale of it's kind of hard for us to wrap our heads around as NVIDIA agrees to invest kind of one gigawatt at a time in this AI data center capacity that's been such a hot commodity literally these days. And of course we saw the idea of an investment from apparently open AI move Oracle stock not long ago. I asked Sam Altman, OpenA., OpenA., NAAI's CEO where this invidia investment fits into the infrastructure picture.

Here's what he said. This is helping us get to a world along with our partners at Stargate, Microsoft Oracle, where we can build out increasing amounts of infrastructure to deliver on what the world is demanding out of these services. There's like no partner but NVIDIA that could do this at this kind of scale, at this kind of speed. It's really like quite incredible. So to my eye, Brian, it looks like Nvidia touched all-time high.

on this news today. And it's not just lifting InVIDIA. Take a look at Oracle, if you have a moment. It was already up for the day, but then right there at about noon eastern, 9 Pacific, when this announcement comes up, you see Oracle moving higher as well. I guess this adds to this entire idea that there's some real demand behind these AI moves. It's not just hype. It's not just kind of circular AI investment.

There's some big bets being made here, Brian. Well, I do wonder. John, if there's a little hype. And you're the tech expert. So I don't doubt the technology side and what they want to do. But I'm kind of the energy guy. And I know you guys touched on it a little bit, but I want to be clear with these numbers, John. Gigawatt is about 750,000 homes. They're talking about 10 gigawatts. That's about 7.5 million homes, basically like two Houston, Texas's worth of power. It's not possible in the short term. Is there any timeline on this or where this may actually take place?

Well, I asked specifically about that. I tried to get a timeline. They wouldn't put a specific number of years, but it was as fast as we can. And power is one of those gating factors. So certainly we're all aware of it, and there are technologies, investments going into trying to make this more efficient

through liquid cooling, things like that. But that's one of the challenges on the table. They have the demand for the community. compute for the capacity for AI. How exactly are they going to roll out? How quickly can they do it? And yes, it is global. This isn't just about the U.S. It's about as many different places as they can put it where there is demand. That's what they're working on. We're going to talk about it later in the show, John, and we'll let you go. But maybe all this doesn't even take place on Earth. I'm not joking. You've got to listen. Stay tuned. How's that for a tease? Amazing day. Amazing place to be, John Ford. Thank you.

So folks, perhaps the biggest question here, the money can be made. What about the power, though? Are the power requirements to make this happen even possible? Bernstein, Stacey Razgon in the last hour addressed that very concern. Listen. The power question is very interesting. I think customers are lining up a power in front of these kinds of investments on years in advance because the power infrastructure isn't there.

That has to be put in front. and people have really thought about whether or not power might actually be like the primary constraint as we ramp all this up over time. It may not even be compute. Yeah, to put it more bluntly, where does all the actual electricity come from? Is the AI industry writing checks at the power industry simply cannot cash? Let's talk about that. And more welcome in Daniel Newman. He's the CEO of Terrell-Wolf actually making power for high-compute data centers

Paul, you and your team are working to solve this very problem. So I'm going to ask you, these numbers, I know electricity is confusing, but these numbers are astronomical. And when they announced this deal, I started sort of yelling to nobody, by the way. How is this ever going to happen? How big are these power generation figures and can this actually occur? So it all depends on what period of time you want to measure it. Near term, it's going to be tough. And open AI, you know, they're not the only game in town.

It's a very competitive industry, and AI and superintelligence is viewed as a win-it-take-all pursuit. The problem is going to get worse before it gets better. What Terowulf does is we not only have the power, but we build the data center and we meet the needs of the customer. We just, as you know, we've partnered with FluidSat Google. We also have a customer, G-42, Core-42. What Terowulf is doing is looking at repurposing retired industrial assets with existing grid

connections and installed infrastructure. We've done that at Lake Mariner. We're doing it at Cayuga in New York, but not everybody can do this, and there's not an infinite number of sites. That's it. So can you Paul, sorry to jump in. What do you mean it's going to get worse before it's going to get better? Well, the demand for power is just, it's through the roof. And near-term demand is what everybody wants to talk about today. When you talk to any one of these hyperscaler customers, cloud customers, they're all talking about power in 26 and 27. The reality is having power in 28th is not going to be, you know, walk in the park either.

You have to take a look at where will this new power come from. Terrell's view is that we will repurpose retired industrial sites. We will also look at sites where there's trapped gas and develop CCGT natural gas facilities. But new generation is going to take four to five years. Yeah. Yeah, you know, Daniel, again, I'm not. I'm not trying to bring it back to the world that I do, which is energy, but here's the reality. You can say all you want.

Sam Altman and Jensen Wong are far smarter and certainly far richer than I'll ever dream to be. So they must know something. But when we hear these numbers, and I look at the biggest nuclear power plant in America, votal in the state of Georgia, was $36 billion and took over a decade to build. And we're talking about two and a half votals worth of power. it's hard not to be a little bit skeptical. We know they're playing the long game here, Brian, and yes, you are absolutely right.

This is going to take some time to build out. But this is the future. Multiple decades of economic global leadership and, of course, these company's positions. You know, over the last month, OpenAI has had to be very strategic. It had to work with Microsoft to undo a complicated deal

that was limiting its ability to get funding. NVIDIA is trying to make sure that it is solidified with the winner, meaning that its infrastructure is getting into OpenAI because we've heard Open AI talking about building its own chips. And I think it's aggregated. It's going to be additive to the overall infrastructure market, which we have pinned at like $583 billion just for data center chips by 2029. So as I read this, yes, the power or the complication of what Wolf there is trying to solve is a very real and very important problem to solve. It could be the biggest rate

limiter to us getting there. But we're not playing the game for just one or two years. We have to play the game for the next multiple decades, and we have to build this out, because this is where China really is ahead of us is in the energy game. They've been beating us. They continue to outpace us. Yeah, and I hear what you're saying, and it's always, Daniel, that last mile, literally. We can build, for example, autonomous driving, it's hard, but it's there. I've ridden in Waymos. Tustle's pretty much got it figured out, but the roads have to exist. The roads have to be paved well. They have to be painted. It's that last mile. that I worry about where the AI dream may not actually occur, do you worry there's a chance none of this actually happens? I don't think it's zero-sum. Daniel first, then Paul. All right.

I don't think it's zero-sum. I think it's going to happen. I think the timeline is going to be the biggest debate. This year, we saw, from the standpoint of inference or the consumption of AI, we're seeing about 50 trillion tokens is the number that we're hearing here. Next year, the expectation is $500 trillion. So we're seeing a 10x growth in consumption just between 25 and 26. This is just the beginning.

That exponential rate of growth is expected to continue multiple years into the future. So the ability for companies like Wolf and the others that are making these massive investments is going to be paramount to us getting there. But I don't see a situation which it goes to zero. I see the situation of where we hit some roadblocks, which we already have. Paul? Yeah, I think the answer is we could. deliver. I mean, we had, Wolf, we have one point two, you know, gig of power, scalable, ready for this industry. We are repurposing sites as we speak real time. There are states that have trapped

gas where the governments and the regulatory environment is very exciting. We could develop combined cycle plans of those states within four years. We will meet the need and the goal will be to sort of meet that need as it scales. But on a long-term basis, there's nobody better at developing power facilities than the United States, particularly former IPP guys like Terowulf. And we will continue to do that to meet the needs of customers like OpenAI and our customers, Fluid, Google, G42. That's what we do from the limit. Because at least Paul, and if this is wrong, just say, Brian, you're wrong about this. With these numbers, and maybe these, by the, by the data centers are going to be built all over the world.

It could be in Europe or Australia or the moon, who knows, or China. We don't know. But on the U.S. side, we're going to have to make power or take power. There's 200 combined natural gas cycle power plants being developed in some stage in the United States. I'm not as sure about nuclear because that's a lot harder. I know some of the older ones are trying, like Dwayne Arnold and Iowa, are trying to be sort of resuscitated.

Is there a way to make this power or take? this power economically, Paul? Absolutely. We have a ton of gas here in the United States. We have a lot of trapped gas in the United States that needs to find a market. And that market could be, if you will, a mind-mouth data center, if you will. So I think nuke's are great. SMR is great, but, you know, even the notion of government backstopping some of these, it's going to take time. But gas generation is certainly within reach. And we're really capable of moving the needle here. and you've got to, there'll be winners and losers. I mean, we as a company, Terowulf, we've developed power plants for the last 25 years.

We're not going away. We're reinvesting our capital in sites that either have existing energy infrastructure or sites where we can bring new power generation and then build a data center on top of that. I absolutely think this is a challenge, but it's a great opportunity. The company's got to be, you know, ready for it. But we're certainly well positioned, and I think there are a couple of others in the space right now that are getting well positioned. We'll meet the need. We got to quickly go, Paul, I just have fun with it.

All right, Diablo Canyon in California, it's like 9% of the state's electricity. They've been talking about shutting that thing down for years. How valuable is Diablo Canyon right now? Honestly, is that the most valuable power plant in the United States? I don't know what the most valuable power plant in the United States is. I kind of think that the power that we source for our. customers is the most valuable to our shareholders. That's our focus, meeting the needs of the data center customer and providing value to our shareholders. Well, it's up 5%. TerraWolp's up 5% right

now. So the whole complex, XLU, ETF, also on the rise today. Great discussion. Paul Prager, Daniel Newman, guys, really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Nice to you, brother. All right, take care. All right, coming up, the crypto crunch. Stocks are mostly up, But Bitcoin, Solana, Ether, they're all down. We'll talk about that. Plus, one of the biggest deal makers in America will join us with the state of the M&A market right now. All right, welcome back. Maybe the big money story to start the week is not necessarily stocks.

It's crypto, as we just showed you, Bitcoin, Ether, Solana. They're all lower right now. And that is actually hitting some of the crypto-related stocks as well. exchanges like Gemini, Coinbase, Micro Strategy, Merrill Holdings and more, they are all down. And BitMine immersion technologies, one of the hottest trader stocks out there, BMNR, it's also lower, down almost 10%. They're selling about 5.2 million shares at 70 bucks a share along with warrants to buy up to 10.4 or so million shares.

Again, it's higher than the current price, but the market doesn't like being diluted, so that stock is down about 9%. Let's talk more about just crypto generally. Turn to our resident crypto expert, Mackenzie Sagalos out west. Mack, hi, what's going on? So, Brian, whereas easier U.S. monetary policy has really lifted gold and equities. The steam is coming out of crypto after last week's Fed cut rallies. You've got Slana, Ether, and Bitcoin.

You're just pointing to the chart. They are all sliding as traders unwind their bullish bets. That has pushed the overall market value back below trillion dollars. I was looking at coin glass data. They say about $1.7 billion in positions liquidated over the past 24 hours. 1.6 billion of that was long. That is the biggest for selling that we've seen since late March. Now, to your question, there isn't a single clear trigger for the slump, but there are three distinct factors here that are weighing on sentiment. One, you've got those massive liquidations. Two, renewed anxiety over potential government

shut down ahead of next week's deadline. And then three, fading momentum from that so-called digital asset treasury trade. They call that the DAT trade. You were just talking about BitMine immersion. That's a key name in the DAT trade. What is it again? The DAT. What's that trade?

Digital asset treasury. So DAT? And that was a big part of momentum over the summer. We saw all these reverse mergers, all these companies going public, either becoming a proxy trade for Ether or for Bitcoin or even for Solana. But we've seen those names both come down in the public markets, but also less announcements about these multi-billion-dollar buys. And that's been weighing on sentiment. I thought you're talking about the Saints.

Who dat Nation. Mackenzie Sagalos, great stuff. Stocks are all in the move. Thank you very much. Well, let's continue the crypto convo with your next guest who is a CIO, one of the biggest crypto index fund managers in the world. And he remains super bullish on Bitcoin. Joining us, Matt Hogan. He is CIO of Bitwise asset management.

Matt, welcome. I'm going to quote Matt Hogan to Matt Hogan. There are now more than 180 public companies that have added Bitcoin to their balance sheet, according to Bitcoin Treasuries.net. That sounds like a lot. It's a down payment. I think that number is going up. You know, some of these companies are those so-called Dats, digital asset treasuries,

that just buy Bitcoin for their balance sheet. McKenzie is right that that momentum is somewhat fading. But on the other side of the balance, you have a broader set of companies that just like individuals want to have five or 10% Bitcoin, companies like Figma, companies like Block. I still think that corporate number is going to double over the next year or so. The amount of Bitcoin on the balance sheets are going to go up. And I think there's an even bigger story in ETS where the flows from my perspective are set to accelerate strongly into Q4. So I am still feeling bullish about this market. I take this

pullback as an opportunity and not a setback as we move into Q4. Yeah, again, pardon the pun, but what's up with that? I mean, like, what's, I had, listen, I had to do it. Okay. So good. I'm a dad, Matt. It happens. But, but why are we suddenly talking now about this? All the side, I feel like with crypto every week, there's some hot new meme term that we're talking about. Yeah, well, they really exploded into consciousness over the last year. Of course, the original dat was micro strategy or now strategy with Michael Saylor hoovering up a huge amount of Bitcoin. A bunch of people noticed that that did very well from a stock perspective. And you saw an explosion of that. To be honest, we probably saw too many emerge and we're seeing a little bit of a winnowing down.

We saw an acquisition of a debt today that was trading under the value of its Bitcoin shares. But I think people have the wrong perception here. They think these dads are going to trip over into selling Bitcoin. And I think it's more like their pace of buying is going to slow down. And as I mentioned, they're going to hand the baton to ETIP. So this was a big boom. It's now into a sort of consolidating growth phase. I don't think it's going away, though. Every statistic I look at says they're still buying Bitcoin. They're still buying ETH. They're still buying Solana. Until the data says otherwise, I'm not going to count this trade out. Yeah, fair enough. But to your, I think to your point, Matt, and I think you might agree with this, it doesn't matter what the asset is,

whether it's oil, gas, Bitcoin, stocks, SPACs, CDS's, whatever they are, right? You're going to get a group of companies that see that others are making money, and they're going to rush into that space because it's viewed as easy money. And there's going to be a lot of, I don't want to say bad actors, but there's going to be a lot of sketchier companies. How do we know what's what these days? because it's a time to be careful in crypto. Yeah, well, in the DAT specific space, I would say that size and notoriety wins. The companies that are the biggest are the most liquid, have the most access to capital. They'll be able to take advantage of situations where these smaller players start to trade below the value of the Bitcoin that they hold.

So, again, we saw an acquisition today with Strive and similar scientific. I wouldn't be surprised to see more of those acquisitions. So if I was an investor in the DAT specific space, I would be looking at those larger names at a premium to the smaller names in the space. But more broadly, again, the big story in crypto is institutional adoption. That's still a trade that is gathering steam. So I would look at this sort of Bitcoin sell-off, this crypto sell-off we've seen this weekend, as an opportunity as we move into October, which is historically the best month of the year for

crypto. So that's the big picture perspective on that specific, focus on the premier names in the space. Matt Hogan, really appreciate the view. And, you know, it's a lot of money to be made. You're bullish. Maybe also time to be a little bit cautious. All right. Still ahead.

Let's make a deal. 2025 on track to be the biggest deal year for M&A in about four years, but only for a specific group. Coming up, we'll speak to a real power player in dealmaking for what he is seeing right now. All right. deals and dealmaking. Your next guest is one of Wall Street's leading bankers, 2025, a year of resurgence in the MNA market. Total USMNA dollar volume up 27% compared to this time last year. There's been a particular increase in deals over $5 billion. Dollar volume of more than 50% compared to last year. Vito Spurredudo is here. Vito, good to have you on. Really appreciate

you joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I think I'm going to bring you out to hype me up like that every time. That was good. Right? Let's get ready to rumble. But you would note that, unfortunately, I've got to temper those numbers a little bit because those numbers are for the big, big deals. Are deals under a billion dollars getting any traction? I mean, as you noted, deals over $5 billion are up 50 to 70 percent, depending on whether you look in the U.S. or global in total. And deals that are a billion or less are actually flat year-to-date. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that the largest corporates had cleaned up their balance sheets.

were prepared to do deals, and they're executing on transactions they've considered for some time. I think the billion dollars in below are having a more difficult time with the volatility and adjusting to the swings that are happening quarter to quarter. Hopefully that change is on a go forward based on what we're seeing. Last week I was hosting fast money, and one of the traders, Tim Seymour, said, well, I don't even know what we're talking about small caps, and we kind of gave them the business about it. But he made a good point, I think, which is these companies,

listen, a billion dollars is still a lot of money. For the founders of those companies, for the CEOs, and for the employees that may own stock, it matters. How do we get a little more deal-making attention to them? Well, I think what's going to happen in the remainder this year in the beginning of 26, we're going to see those companies probably be more active. They actually fit a great profile of being companies that are excellent acquisitions or bolt-ons for much larger companies. A lot easier to execute that deal than something large and transformational. And depending on what you think is going to happen going forward from a regulatory percentage,

perspective, doing something that's bite size is easier to get done than necessarily something that's going to put a large target on you. The IPO market feels like it's come back. Yeah. I mean, we've had a few failures, but most have been pretty wildly successful. Yes, yes. And I'd say so far, September to date, and we still got a week to go, has been the most active time period for IPOs this year of any month.

And a lot of that is just driven by, I think a lot of folks are waiting to monetize, and they feel the conditions are strong. I mean, I was joking to you before, our two co-heads of equity capital markets are nonstop on planes, just given the level of activity that's going on. And I think, you know, part of it, Brian, is that there's so much money on the sidelines waiting to invest in these offerings. What are they waiting for? They're waiting for an opportunity to put money to work that they've been tasked with giving a return to their investors on. And they haven't been able to put it to work at the same frequency that they had historically.

I think when you look at the rate cut that happened last week as an example, everybody's kind of asked, well, does that mean that we're off to the races? Well, conditions are really strong already. Maybe it's an indicator that we're going to see a little bit more activity. And maybe it's an indicator that, hey, we're actually going to see a time period that's a bit more smooth sailing going forward. Does the Fed rate cut matter at all? It does in terms of helping companies position. I think the smaller companies now can borrow at some better rates for a time period. I do think if you look at Thursday of last week, the day afterwards, there were nine investment

grade issuers that did $15 billion in capital raise that day. And they specifically, a few of them talked about earmarking that to term out debt that was coming due, but also to prepare for upcoming acquisitions. And so I think the conditions are just fostered a bit in that regard, and it helps. The other thing I'll tell you is where we're tracking this year, we'll probably end the year up about 25% over last year an overall deal volume. If we are up 30% next year over 25, we're going to hit the levels we had in 21, which is the best year in history by a mile. Quickly, you saw the top of the show. I would imagine you guys are the biggest, you're the U.S. head of capital markets,

but you're the biggest company. Biggest bank in Canada. I think you're the biggest company. Largest company in Canada. Are you beefing up the energy team? Because it feels like there's a lot going on there. Well, I would say our energy, power, and utilities have just been some excellent, strong businesses for us historically and going forward. As your guests noted in the segment, a couple segments ago, the bottleneck is power on the AI buildout and really finding how you're going to power the build out, how you're going to take care of the infrastructure. And those are our strategies that we're focused on, strategies that our clients are focused on. And so I think we're well prepared and well positioned for it. Well, not only you a nice,

guy, but I also like that you're a backer of rugby. Yes. So there's, you know, there you go. Vito's Perduto, head of RRBC's capital markets in the United States. Vito, really appreciate you schlepping out here to New Jersey and coming on. Not that far away trip. I really appreciate you. I haven't been.

Thank you very much. All right. Up next, the under the radar trade that is starting to form in the market. You want to know what it is? You got to stick around to find it. All right, Tim, for your daily bond market report with yields holding steady. kind of eyeing some of that key inflation data coming out later on this week. Inflation will determine what the Fed ultimately does at meetings to come.

Tenure yield hovering just above 4%. It's at 4. What is that? 1 4% or so. The personal consumption expenditures index, thankfully, better known as the PCE, is due out on Friday. And as we noted, that should give us all a better idea of pricing pressures that are being felt right now and maybe help determine what the Federal Reserve ultimately does. So let's go back now to the stock market and your money with the S&B 500 and NASDAQ hitting new all-time highs again today. Your next guest has his eye on the options market to evaluate where you should be looking for opportunity right now.

Joining us, Chris Murphy, co-head of Derivative Strategy at Susquehanna. Chris, I really appreciate you coming on. Your notes, always a must read. It's really kind of weird because the VIX is sort of near multi-year lows, individual option activity, a little more dramatic that seems to me like a disconnect. What are you seeing? Yeah, that's, you know, hey, Brian, it's a great point. It's just incredibly low correlation in the stock market, rotating in and out of whether it's small cap into Mag 7, even rotation. You know, we saw a little bit today within the Mag 7 when a couple names are down and a couple names are up.

So the reality is there is a ton of exciting option opportunities. on the single stock level, even though the macro level with S&P is relatively boring. Yeah, but the individual stocks, I think, listen, options are critically important to the market. They've never been larger than they are right now. Is there anything you're seeing even with individual stock options activity, Chris, that could impact the macro market? Well, I mean, the MAG7 are obviously the drivers for the most part. And, you know, we sometimes ignore the weekly.

option trading because there's so much of it. We try to find more interesting, a little bit longer term. So if you're talking about Apple and Google, we're seeing a bunch of medium-term larger call spreads trading into year-end, kind of of the idea of you can never really be long enough, these names, and I want to have a year-end call spread in case they continue to melt up into year-end. So that's interesting on the larger cap level. In terms of a trade in the near term on the smaller cap level, people are looking for the continued catch-up of the small caps. There's a big demand for upside options there. So that sets up well for more near-term call spreads, more as a trade in the small cap. Are you surprised by how to you, I think the technical term is, how blah, the S&P 500

is from an options activity perspective? I mean, valuations keep going up. up, markets keep going up. We're having AI deals that are, you know, tens of billions of dollars, and we hope we have the power. It's kind of running the whole stock market. I'm a little shocked at how sanguine things seem, but my job, I guess, is to be nervous. Yeah, well, no, I think that part of it's the correlation story, which I mentioned. Another part of it is people love selling options, too. And if the S&P 500 is not, you know, making big swings even on, you know, Fed events, and things that it typically used to, that's going to embolden volatility sellers even more. And if the volatility selling trade is working, the assets behind that trade continue to grow.

So there's a little bit of a virtuous cycle there with the volatility selling and the smaller moves. Yeah. What's the next biggest thing, Chris, you and your team are watching right now? You know, we're still looking at all of the high flyers in the near term. You know, that's where the trading is. So you're talking about the quantum computing and the robotics. And, you know, if you're looking at Tesla recently, how much that's moved, you know, as people start to follow the momentum. So, you know, it's nothing really under the radar.

I do find it interesting that people kind of talk about retail favorites. And really, it's just the names that are getting the most options, volume and the options volume is chasing the positive momentum. So at the end of the day, they're just the stocks that, you know, have really been performing recently. But that's where the trading is. So that's a lot of what we're focusing on. Chris Murphy, Susquehanna, his notes, always a must read. Chris, we appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Let's get now with a Christina Partinevulus for a CNBC news update. Brian, the U.S. is reportedly considering imposing sanctions against the entire international criminal

court potentially as soon as this week. The global court prosecutes for crimes that violate international laws such as genocide as well as war crimes. And the U.S. has already imposed targeted sanctions specifically on several ICC prosecutors and judges following the court's decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. Switching gears completely. Let's talk about Spirit Airlines. Planning to furlough a third of its flight attendants, the budget carrier told its employees today that the furloughs would hit 1,800 of its roughly 5,200 flight attendance. That's according to a memo seen by CNBC. This is Spirit's latest move to cut costs and get back to profitability after filing for bankruptcy last month for the second time in less

than a year. And hundreds of Hollywood stars signed a letter defending free speech following ABC's suspension of talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. He was pulled off air for comments he made about the killing of Charlie Kirk. The more than 430 backers include Robert De Niro, Pedro Pascal, Lynn Manuel Miranda, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston. Brian, the list continues. Backer view. Long list. Christina Parts of Nevelas. Thank you very much. All right, your next segment may offer a solution to the energy debate that we had at the top of the show. What if we could get our power from outer space? It is not just science fiction. Dian Oleg has that story coming up. When you think of solar power, you probably think of energy from the sun on the beach. ground. But what if we could also get solar power from outer space? Technology is making that dream

a reality. Heck, outer space is closer to the sun than we are. Diana, look us here where the continuing series on climate startups. It's a fascinating story, Diana. Yeah, Brian, I mean, it sounds sci-fi. And in fact, the first idea was floated in an Isaac Asimum short story back in the 1940s, satellites using lasers to basically shoot solar power from space back down to Earth. but that is exactly what one startup is testing. This is the launch vehicle for new space-based satellite technology designed to send solar power back to Earth. California-based startup Atherflux plans to send it into space

on a SpaceX rocket next year. Robin Hood co-founder Bejou Bot is the company's CEO. We're going to do a constellation of satellites where each one transmits power with infrared lasers. And the benefits of this are, Number one, you get to distribute the power generation across a lot of satellites as opposed to one monolithic one, but also the spot that you're able to project on in the ground, the actual thing that collects the power, you can make small.

The idea is to collect solar power in space and then use lasers to beam it wirelessly to a network of small ground power stations. Having several stations to collect energy makes the satellite system more efficient. You may have one satellite that's projecting power to one. location on the ground, and as it keeps moving around the earth, it'll find another ground station and start projecting power there. Atherflux is first working with the U.S. Department of Defense, an important market, BOT says, because it solves a real problem of getting power into the battlefield,

where caravans of diesel generators can become enemy targets. This initial phase is attractive to investors who say it'll help scale the company quickly to the broader market. We think that the military customer is large enough, and for like of the, better word, difficult enough of a customer that if we can serve, we can build a constellation and we can be at scale. And at that point, we will have dropped the cost of the technology such that we can expand into other customers. In addition to breakthrough energy, Ather Flux is backed by Index Ventures, Andresen Horowitz, and NEA. Total funding so far, $60 million.

That admits it's expensive and the challenge will be making it cost competitive with other energy sources. He said he thinks that advancements in launch technology and the maturation of the components will be important factors. The more satellites with newer versions of the technology should bring the costs down. It's not crazy. So out in California, and I think the short story was called Reason by Isaac Osimo, in California, have solar farms that use basically like magnets and lasers. They kind of go to this one magnifying glass, and they intensify the stream of solar power. It sounds like that's kind of what they're trying to do. But with power grounds stations, these small stations, so that when they're beaming it back, you can have them everywhere

depending on how the earth is rotating. So literally one satellite could hit ground stations all over the world. Do we know where they are in the process of demoing this, testing? They are testing. They're in the testing phase, in the launch phase. They're getting it ready. They're doing a big test next year. That'll be coming soon. But, you know, they've got a lot of competition, too, in this space. Do? Yes, Caltech is working on this. And more importantly, China and Japan are really going down this road quickly. you know, well,

heating up literally and figuratively because my guess is you would not want to get your hand. No. No, you will not have a hand.

I'm sure it'll be a little more precise. That's the technical sound. All right. Diana, oh, look, really fascinating stuff. Maybe you solved

the open AI problem. There you go. I'm here to serve. Thank you, Diana. All right, up next. A power check on a stock and is set up to SOAR according to Jeffries.

That is next. Crypto Watch is sponsored by Crypto.com. Crypto.com is America's premier crypto platform. All right, down to 70 points, but it's up nonetheless. Time now for a power check. We have a special one for you today. There was a big now over the weekend, no doubt from the weekend by Jeffries, with some names they say could outperform the rest of this year and into next year.

So we asked our trader, Jay Woods, of Freedom Capital Markets, to take a look at the piece and pick out some names that are interesting to him either way. So, Jay, we appreciate you doing that. First up is Best Buy. Jeffries likes the risk reward on this electronics retailer, thinks it can offset tariff pressures. What say you? Yeah, well, they have a new campaign, an in-store ad campaign.

Usually you walk in and you see videos of Michael McDonald and I'm going to be there. And now, no, we're going to have targeted ads when you walk through the store. Meta, one of the biggest ad components, there with their nice little ray bands. I'm walking through the store. I see that. I'm attractive. It's easy revenue for them,

and that's what they need, because the tariff pressure is real. A lot of their appliance and electronic tariffs come from China, and then the consumers change their spending habits. We're not getting those people out buying those home movie studios and, you know, doing the big upgrades on appliances.

They're kind of scaling back. Best Buy has beat in the last four quarters. It's kind of in a no-touch zone for me. It can break above 80, then fine. I think the worst may be behind it, but for me, I'm going to just say it's an okay buy, not a best buy of my choices, that's for sure. And okay, worst name, okay buy. All right, let's move on from Best Buy to bleach, Clorox.

Jeffries likes it. They just basically like the valuation. Yeah, I think the valuation is fine. Historically from a P.E. multiple, it is at a low level around just over 15. The dividend, 4.1%. The downtrend is awful. Their brand loyalty isn't really there. It's, you know, people, the consumer, have continued to just look for a cheaper way of doing things.

They haven't been crushing it on the earnings front. So they need to turn things around. Technically, though, you look back at this. This 117.1.120 level has been a nice floor. From a risk-reward point of view, yes, this stock may have bottomed. It's trying to put one in right now. So the upside potential is outweighing the risk. So I would take a flyer on this, play the dividend.

But it's not going to excite you because, you know, Clorox and the Staples have really You know, when they move, they'll go and they'll trend. But right now, the trend is not your friend, and I would stay to the sidelines, maybe play for the dividend. All right. The last pick from the Jeffries note, they had a bunch of stocks, but you picked out a third. It's Cortiva. You note the technical's looking pretty good on Cortiva. Yeah, I mean, there are two stories to this stock.

You know, it's agricultural. I have to look at my nose. Chemical Company. It's an agricultural chemical company that deals with seeds and then pesticides and herbicides. Now, on the pesticide side, that is tariff-ridden. They have China concerns there, but the seed business domestically has been crushing it. There have been rumblings that this company may actually divest. If they do that, shareholder risk reward is skewed toward the reward side very nicely.

It's still up 22% for the year. It's outpacing all the material stocks. And I think any pullback to 65 from a technical point of view, this stock can run to 80, 85 pretty easily. So I would buy it knowing that if it got back to 60, maybe it's not worth the shot. But I think it's turned the corner and it continues to look good over the long-term basis. Quickly, it's not for the Jeffrey's note, but Kenview, all-time low for the stock in the news. Yeah, I think this is an opportunity. Yeah, I mean, you think about Johnson & Johnson, baby powder cancer.

Stock was down over 12 days, 20%. Kenview now down roughly 18% over the last 11 days. I think the worst in this is over. This is a long-term turnaround story. It's not going to just brush this off. But that's 8 to 9% the Tylenol brand. of their total revenues, not something to sneeze at. It's their biggest brand.

But when you look at Band-Aids, you look at Listerine, this, to me, from a staple point of view, almost a 5% dividend now is something that you can buy, put away, and in 12 months from now, you're going to be very happy a debt. All right, Jay Wood's freedom capital markets for stock. Power check, Jay, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, after the break, what France's national debt could be saying about the health, their economy. Stick around. All right, call this one, the allie at three but interesting, me interesting, we hope. Because this next data point is definitely a little obscure, but something important to watch. It is the credit default swaps on French debt. Remember CDS's for the bad old days and subprime crisis? They basically measure the insurance on debt, the risk that it goes bad,

the higher the price that goes up, the bigger seen as the risk. And we are starting to closely watch French debt insurance because, it is getting a little bit more expensive. That's a five-year CDS, so you can see it's kind of all over the place, but that right sort of spike up, it's just something to watch. And there is a concern that if this goes up more, it means investors are placing a greater risk on French debt. To be clear, not a problem level yet.

You can see it's kind of all over the place, but it is something Wall Street's talking about. See you tomorrow. Closing bell starts right now.