Power Lunch - The Trade on Nvidia Post Earnings 8/28/25

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

CNBC’s Kelly Evans and Brian Sullivan take you through the heart of the business day bringing you the latest developments and instant analysis on the stocks and stories driving the day’s agenda. ���Power Lunch” delves into the economy, markets, politics, real estate, media, technology and more. The show sits at the intersection of power and money. “Power Lunch” gives viewers a full plate of CNBC’s award-winning business news coverage, plus a healthy dose of personality from the show’s anchors and the network’s top-notch roster of reporters and digital journalists.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Big tech getting bigger as the NASDAQ pops to yet another record high. Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody. I am Brian Selvin. Kelly is off today. InVIDIA may not be rocking after earnings, but call them the AAAs. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, they're all higher. And Tom Lee says, you can hate this rally all you want, but you're going to miss out on making some money. He is here on set in a moment plus why one company might make you money in the big power buildout.

and it's probably not a name that you're thinking of. The big brand your kid may be telling you not to buy. And would you buy a tiny little electric pickup truck? If it only cost $25,000, well, it's coming, and we're going to show it to you coming up in just a couple minutes. But let us start with maybe the most bullish man in America. Tom Lee of Fundstrat. He's not only been bullish, but maybe he's also been the most correct man in America.

His optimistic take is played out, not just with stocks, but with Bitcoin and crypto as well. So I'm going to shut up because Tom Lee is here on set. Tom, thank you for coming on. Really appreciate it. Yeah, great to see you, Brian. I know a lot of people on your take on a video and we'll get all that stuff. How has it been in like in April you remain bullish, even when everybody was running around their hair on fire?

Is it hard? Like, do people come at you and be like, how could you be so bullish all the time, Tom Lee? Yeah, I think that we get more criticism than. positive feedback to any of our views. I mean, if someone follows us on social media like Twitter, or if you look at the comments on our YouTube clips, or even sometimes unrequested inbound emails to our firm, usually it's criticism.

Yeah, it's amazing what people can do when it's anonymous, right? And they write in, whatever. But those people, you've been right. I mean, you've been bullish. You've stayed long. You've stayed strong. What are you seeing maybe that some others are missing? I don't know.

Well, I think too many people. are tied to their own biases. So like when markets were falling in February to April, then in their own portfolios, they were suffering damage. And as you know, that gets into people's sort of psychology because no one likes to lose money. It's more painful to lose a dollar than the joy of gaining a dollar. But what we did was we took a step back and said,

you know, with all the forces at work, are we really gonna drive the economy off a cliff? And if that answer was no, then we know that at those points of fear, That's when as hard as it is to do is you either have to hold on or buy. And that was our advice to clients. Yeah. And is there anything that you see in your research, Tom, that would imply that this momentum trade, if it is indeed a momentum trade, is going to end anytime soon?

We don't. We, you know, for instance, if we take AI as a thought and we, let's say overlay something like the exponential growth of the wireless industry, that was a 20-year period when The number of users went from 37 million subscribers to 7 billion. You know, we don't have 7 billion chatGB users, and we don't have 7 billion robots. So I think if someone... Not yet. Not yet. That's right. And so if someone's trying to bring the bell at the top for AI, they're underestimating how quickly penetration grows.

We're probably in the first quarter or first third of that cycle for AI. Okay. If I had to make, if I had to take the other side of that trade and who am I, but we'll talk about this, the way with Christina Partsenevelas coming up soon, is that people are spending a lot of money on AI, the metas of the world, the XAIs, the Googles, they're buying a bunch of Nvidia chips, they're building out power data centers, and all that's inflating the market. Are companies making any money from AI? They're spending a lot, but are they making any? That's a great question. Because if they're not, maybe they stop spending so much.

Well, I think that when you look at the early builds of any new wave, and I think wireless is a good example, first is the infrastructure that gets laid. So that's the LLMs and the data centers. And then what happens is you have critical mass, and so then the application layer starts to emerge. That's exactly what happened with wireless. And then that's when not until 2007 that the iPhone came along, 15 years into that cycle. I was thinking more like global crossing-ish. Yes. Somebody paid, and if you're really young, Global Crossing was a company that spent billions and billions and billions of dollars laying actual physical cable around the oceans, the world, to which eventually Global Crossing went bankrupt.

But those cables are still being used today. Thank God. Yeah, all that fiber. They spent that money to do that, even though it sort of cost them the corporate entity. You're not seeing any of that now. That's right. And in the global crisis, the second owner of the hotel made a lot of money. Yeah, second owner. So I think that we're now at the phase where we're going to be thinking about things of like security around AI, you know, proof of human or whatever.

And we're going to see companies leverage AI like the JP Mortgans and the Goldman. So there's another wave of opportunity coming where it's exactly what you're saying. We got to the point where AI is good enough that companies can really now actually improve their business strategy. So I think there's still a lot of positive to come. Yeah, and I hate to say it because you never want to talk about job losses, but I think that companies, we have a story later on in the show, companies may be able to use AI to, shall we say, they'll say right size. I don't like that term, but streamline expenses.

Let's move on very quickly. Bitmine immersion technologies, BMNR, been one of the hottest stocks in the world. I know they're in a quiet period. We're not going to ask you about the details. as your executive chairman, not operational CEO. But why did you get involved with this company? What did you see that made Tom Lee decide, huh, you know what?

I'm going to join his executive chairman of a Las Vegas-based company. Well, it all starts with a view that Ethereum is probably one of the biggest macro opportunities for the next 10 to 15 years because it's the blockchain that is different than Bitcoin because it has smart contracts.

And we see the convergence of two things there. One is Wall Street really re-architecting itself on the blockchain just like a 1971 moment when the dollar went off the gold standard, and that created Wall Street's opportunities around synthetic dollars. Now Wall Street can create synthetic tokenized assets on Ethereum. Why would they want to? Well, there's one much better proof of identity and a proof of transaction. In other words, you can, when you tokenize a document, let's say you put a million-page document on Ethereum. Yep. A million pages.

But if someone wants it and changes one period, the hash breaks. You can't alter a record once it's on the blockchain. Someone can go into any of these records at any of these companies change. I didn't make that trade. Yeah. Yeah, I never did it. You didn't buy that. The blockchain will say that was changed.

So it's really a good way to secure information. But that's also why AI is going to converge. on Ethereum or a smart contract because in the future, we might have a billion robots getting instructions. We want to make sure it's... So quickly, is BitMine kind of then an AI play? It's a digital infrastructure play, because what the company's doing is acquiring Ethereum. It's proof of stake. So it's securing the network. And in exchange for that, it's going to get a staking yield. But now that you're... What they have the power law, once you get enough Ethereum, you can have an influence on sort of the development of the ecosystem.

So it's really trying to get at the 1971 moment of Wall Street. It's a really interesting way to look at it. But you're an interesting guy, and that's why we have you on because you are. Tom Lee, not the drummer. Tom, thank you. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate that. All right.

Now, to the bond markets, Rick, not available. U.S. Treasury yields in focus today. Longer data maturity is leading the move lower, flattening the yield curve, spread between two years and 10-year notes, widening to its steepest level in about four months, 2.30, by the way, that yield curve, three-year high. All this is the government's latest seven-year note auction drew softer than expected demand. That highlights investor caution at a time of heavy supply, shifting interest rate expectations. In fact, the aforementioned Rick Santelli gave that auction a C-minus. C-minus. I don't know which way you see it on TV, but you get the point.

All right, meantime, it is the fight at the Fed that has captured the country's attention. President Trump saying he's firing or trying to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over alleged mortgage fraud allegations. I want to be clear, no actual legal charges have been filed with the law and may never be. Cook says she's not going anywhere and is now sued Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, a hearing for this case set for tomorrow morning. Let's talk about what we know, what we don't, at the Sauer with, again, a fluid and developing story with a man who I feel like has been working 24-7 the last couple weeks. So, Steve, we really appreciate it.

Why is Lisa Cook also suing the Fed and Jerome Powell? So it's a good question, Brian. It's so that the Fed and the Federal Reserve Board and Jerome Powell don't take any action to enforce the firing from President. Trump. Unclear if he could or would or what he could do. But for example, it doesn't want him to bar cook from the office or get rid of her computer or take away her security pass. It's looking for a stop on all possible actions that could be taken in regard to the firing

for the president. Yeah, and this hearing tomorrow morning, again, there's a lot of legalese here. I have a law degree, but I'm not an attorney. I read over it. A lot of this looks like it's going to come down to how a court. court might interpret some 1935 rule, correct? I mean, we're dusting stuff off on this one? That's right.

I would add we go back further, Brian, the 1913 Federal Reserve Act and the 1935 rule on Humphrey, which is one of the very few cases where they defined what for cause is. And obviously, Lisa Cook saying that an allegation of mortgage fraud is not cause. She's saying she was denied her rights to a hearing. she's saying that if a president could dismiss a Federal Reserve Board governor based on an allegation, well, then he has control of the Federal Reserve Board, and that is not the intention of Congress. And it goes through, Brian, a lot of history in their recent history of the president and his efforts to get interest rates lower and says,

this is what it's all about. It's all part of a political campaign to get the president to lower interest rates. The two sides, yeah, the two sides do seem to be sort of talking. past each other because Cook's lawsuit, which is right here and I've read it, is basically you can't fire me over policy reasons. Trump is alleging, again, alleging there's been no charges filed, they may never be, over alleged mortgage fraud. Has Cook come out and openly denied the mortgage fraud part of it?

If she has, I haven't seen it. You know, Brian, I'm glad you asked that, and I anticipated that. and I anticipated that just a little bit. There is a one liner here. I want to just call it up for you. I actually prepared it ahead of time. There is one line in here which she says, even if Governor Cook had committed the infractions

that the president alleges, dash, which she did not, the president would lack cause to remove her dot, dot, dot, based on a certain code there. So that is really the one place where she says, I didn't do it. There are other places in the, the document, Brian, where she talks about it being potentially a cleric error, even if it was

potentially a clerical error. I like your phrase about them talking past each other because Cook is specifically not addressing the facts of the allegation. Basically, she's saying it is an allegation and because it's only that, you can't fire me. And even if it were proven, she's saying these are actions that took place when I was not a Federal Reserve governor, not part of the for-cause explanation. But, Brian, every time we talk about this, we're breaking new ground, trying to understand what's happening.

There's also another issue in there, which is that let's say she did check the box. Was there intent? That's also one of the things in the lawsuit. Did she intend to fraud? Apparently, that's a very important part of convictions and why there are apparently very few convictions for this particular aspect of alleged mortgage fraud.

The term mens rea, state of mind from law school comes up. Basically, did you just do something accidentally? Whoops, you know, I checked this box, whatever it might be. I didn't mean to. I was kind of flying through it. Or somebody did it for me. It wasn't even me. There's a lot of stuff that's come out.

Steve Leavesman, Me, thinks, the only thing I'm sure of is that we'll see you again soon. So, Steve, I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. So we talked about it a little bit with Tom Lee. What happens to the AI trade? what happens to the entire market? If firms don't actually make money from AI,

is there a potential risk that is getting overlooked? Talk about it with Christina P. coming up. All right, welcome back. What happens to AI if nobody ends up making any money on it? We heard last night from Nvidia that capital spending is like $500 plus billion, but only like who's making money on it? Christina Ports on us, joining us now with this story. And Christina, I know, listen, it's not, nobody can answer this question,

because you'd have to go by company by company and say, are you making money? We'd take researchers millions of years and cost thousands of lives, and we just don't have that time. Or AI can do it in 30 seconds. But that said, do we have proof that, because my fear is that if companies say, eh, we're not a lot of promise, not a lot of return, could they cut back on capital spending, which then ultimately cuts back on the stock market? If that were the case, then why would Johnson Wong on the call yesterday say,

and I should say the CFO, Colette Cress, actually, promised that they're going to see about three to four trillion dollars and spend just over the next five years to the end of the decade. That's a lot of money people are still spending on infrastructure. The second part of the equation is inference, which NVIDIA and many other players like AMD Broadcom will say that you need even more compute, which would keep that demand cycle going. However, to your point, look at growth for NVIDIA's revenue. It's definitely climbing, and maybe we can bring a chart. There's a chart in there just about just data center revenue just over the last little while. It's climbing, but it's climbing at a decelerating rate.

So that's the concern. What is the patience of investors going forward? What is the patience of companies who keep spending? How long can they keep spending to build out inferencing, build out these large language models with the hopes of, you know, saving so much money and getting rid of so many employees. Unfortunately, to all those listening and myself even included, Brian. Never.

And by the way, right now AI, like, you know, every company you deal with, I deal with, our listeners and viewers probably deal with, is trying to put AI, you know, these smart chatbots and very minor level things on AI on their websites. They're annoying. You end up calling the company. Anyway, do we need to be worried that like two companies, we don't know who they are. Somebody said XAI may or may not be one of them, that about two companies are like half of Nvidia's spending. That sounds nerve-wracking. So that's the accounts receivable. It's about 56% divided by three companies. NVIDIA unfortunately won't share the names of customer concentration, but they did say four cloud service providers.

You can guess the big ones, Microsoft, Google, META, Amazon are contributing 50% of data center revenue. The Bulls will say these guys, they have the money, they're spending it, and of course, Nvidia is going to sell to them first before having to deal with all the smaller firms. The bears will say customer concentration risk, if META were to stop spending, Microsoft were to stop spending, that would be a huge hit to NVIDIA's revenue line. But it seems right now, look at the stock. It's not even down a percent. People have patience with this company, that's for sure.

They do. And we love your reporting on it. It's a heck of a story. One not going away. Christina Parts on Avelas. Thank you very much. Nor am I, right? What?

I said, nor am I. Nor are you what? Well, I'm not going away. Never mind. It was to my old, never mind. You weren't listening. I was. Of course I was.

The producers are yelling at us, so we got to go. But I said because AI is going to take all our jobs. So that's me saying that's not going to happen. This isn't Brian Sullivan. This is an AI simulation of Brian Sullivan. Christina P. Thank you very much. It's much handsomer. Let's get a shareholder's take on what to do now with NVIDIA.

Jason Ware is chief investment officer at Albion Financial Group. He also is not going anywhere. I guess the question, Jason, is, is NVIDIA? Are you as a stockholder worried that 56% of their accounts receivable are three companies? Yeah, and we're not worried at all because, you know, as Christina pointed out, these are the companies with the most financial firepower and they continue to spend. And that's what they tell us every quarter of their hyperskillers are saying we're spending a ton of money. And they just put that into context. You know, Christina mentioned that, you know, Crest, the CFO of Nvidia on the call mentioned that three to four trillion. If you look at that through the end of decade, that's six to seven hundred billion a year. That's almost a doubling of CAPX. So, you know, we think the money is still flowing and it's flowing to the best chip within the AI complex. And that's in video. Yeah, I mean, I guess if those companies, whether it's three or one, 10, if they keep spending, do you care? Because, I mean, obviously the risk is if one of those three were to slow down, you have a sizable percentage hit to the accounts receivable, thus the valuation of the stock, thus it has to come down in price. Yeah, sure.

I mean, there are always risks, right? That's just part and parcel of owning equities. And there's always risk to growth in any business. But it's about visibility for us. and it's about being able to place a high probability on earnings. And look, we think InVidio's going to do $6 on earnings over the next four quarters. That puts the stock at 30 times. And I think the market is discounting that deceleration of growth that you guys have been talking about. And it's still good growth rate, though. I mean, these guys have grown revenues north

of 50% for nine straight quarters. And we think that the stock going forward continues to compound at a 20 plus percent rate of growth. I think that's a strong position to be in for the best company and AI. Did you hear at the top of the show with Tom Lee where we talked about the old school companies? Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, one of those, I would throw Cisco systems. At one point, Cisco was the biggest company in the world. 600 billion seems quaint now. I understand that. But Cisco has been like a phoenix, like rising from the ashes. How and why? Well, you know, I'm glad you brought up Cisco. We just bought it for our core flagship growth strategies a couple of weeks ago. And look, Cisco reminds me a lot of Oracle, a couple of

years ago. I was on this program. I was on your network talking about how Oracle is a sleeper play in cloud and AI. It was trading at 20 times earnings, but nobody cared because Larry Ellison supposedly missed that boat. I think Cisco's in a similar position. We're talking about $3 to $4 trillion in AI infrastructure spending. Guess who's at the center of that? Cisco, half of their business is selling into those data centers as they retool and we build new ones. A lot of networking gear is needed. Meanwhile, Chuck Robbins is focusing on high margin, growthier areas like software services, cybersecurity. So it's becoming a subscription business.

We think the stock re-rates 16 times earnings. It probably should be in the low 20s, get a 2.5% dividend. And the growth is accelerating in the context of all this AI spend. It's a critical company. Okay. As is the next name that you brought. And I, of course, I'm the energy geek. I love this company because we talk about all this fancy stuff.

Ultimately, none of it's going to work if there's no power lines. Little you have to be physical. You know, some people say they're unsightly, whatever. maybe they're necessary. And Qantas services, PWR is the ticker, that's one of their main businesses. That's right. We bought this company earlier this year amid the sell-off in the market. And look, we look at this as there's a couple of durable mega themes that are happening,

mega trends for Kwanas business. One is the energy transition. Second is AI. And then there's kind of a short-term kicker with regards to the traditional energy build-out during the Trump administration with regards to pipelines and all of the oil and gas that we're drilling. Quantum benefits from all of those. Energy transition to renewables is important.

But also, Brian, as we've talked about, we've seen for 20 years there was no demand growth on the grid. There's now demand growth because of reshoring electrification and, of course, AI and data center. And the first call from all of these public utilities goes right to quantum services to do that construction work. So we like the company, good growth rates over the next several years ahead. Not expensive, 30 times forward earnings.

Yeah. And listen, shout out to all the women and men doing these jobs, because putting up power lines is hot, it's dusty, it's hard work, doing the rain, but it's much much. So important. Yeah, Jason Ware, thank you very much. By the way, I heard they're being paid a pretty fair wage too. All right, coming up, some portfolio protection. Your next guest has a plan for what he's calling disaster insurance if the markets do ever turn down. And check out shares of Oakville. It's up around 8% today. Now, you'll remember such shows as yesterday's. When Bank of America analyst Dimple Gossai joined us, she initiated

Oprah with a buy rating and a $92 target, bullish on a stock that's up 1,000%. Oklo up another 8, 7.6%. Right now, Oklo continues to be a winner. It's a nuclear company. We're back right after this. All right, welcome back. Stocks overall at record highs today. But if you're worried that a downturn may be coming, and maybe you should be, how do you protect those gains. I don't know. Dom Chounos in today's market navigation. I might have some idea, but let's turn to our guest for this, because even though Nvidia shares are kind of sitting there and at least moving a little bit lower, seeing that modest drop, our next guest does say that there's portfolio protection to be had. So let's turn over now to what's happening with our guest in,

and that's Todd Gordon, and he's saying that there's a way to have your cake and eat it to. I know it's a weird way to say it, but you're saying that we can stay invested in the market at record highs with possible momentum higher, but still guard against the downside. How exactly do you do that? And even more so, Don, there's still people who are not yet invested who are, you know, are reluctant to jump in. This could be a way to do it. So we like buying and I currently hold some VIX call spreads of which I'm down. I'm losing money, which is good. I'm looking to extend that out in October. You know, I'm looking at doing you could buy the 25 strike call in the VIX, the volatility index, which of course, trade's inverse to the S&P. You can buy the 25, sell the 30. It's, you know, that's,

excuse me, I'm going to do 2025. Excuse me, that's a $1 spread. You're going to make $4 if the market rips to new high. You know, if VIX goes up, I should say, and, you know, the market sells off. So, you know, it's a good time. It's, there's tax advantages for doing so. And again, it gives you that sort of courage to jump in and buy it highs. Seasonsally, Dom, we're coming into the weakest period. September is the worst since 45, down about 0.7% on average. And, you know, as they said, despite Nvidia, the semi and the AI trade continues to go. So if you want to get in, it's a good way to protect yourself. All right. So that's the downside protection aspect. If stock market volatility goes higher,

what part of the market do you think is the most at risk if there is a downturn? Well, of course, it's going to be the high beta names. Of course, it's going to be AI. It's going to be tech driven. You know, we're watching too. it's kind of interesting as long-term rates are going up, which is somewhat steepening the yield curve. We're seeing financials act pretty strong here. I know we're all talking about AI, but I'm watching those financials. And if there were to be a flight to safety, perhaps, you know, that yield curve, which has been steepening, would come off. And those financials, I would say, get hit. But, you know, again, you know, with the market leading, higher, you know, the AI, the last segment you had was really good.

You know, you've got to protect on the high beta AI led names. But I'm still very bullish. And I I think it's the reason to have the protection. VIX is the lowest it's been since December of last year. So buy insurance when it's cheap, and that gives you the courage to hold it on the upside. All right. The call from Todd Gordon, stay along the market, but buy the insurance. Well, I think what Todd is suggesting is if you look at Todd's photograph behind him is a picture of a beautiful lake with a canoe on it. He's basically just saying have a life jacket in there, right? There you go. Look at the beautiful canoe.

And hope you never have to use it. And hope you never have to use it. But the life jacket is there. Well said. Is that well. That's what I do. It's my thing. I'm all hopped up.

That's it. That's upstate New York life here. Literally my only skill. We communicate. There you go. Tom, thank you. Thank you. All right, coming up, a power check on this under the radar energy stock.

It is more than doubled in the past year. That name. A head. All right, let's get a power check on a power name that should be on your radar. It is Vistra Energy. It's been a rocket ship more than doubling in a year. Let's talk about that and more with Jay Peters, portfolio manager at New York.

edge wealth. Also, I believe I am told, is this true, making your inaugural appearance? That is true. Happy to be here. Thanks, thank you. All the best, Jay. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming on. Vistra, a name I know, Vistra, a name that we love to talk about. And they're taking advantage of a power market where they can sell to others, correct? Correct. Yes, this is the largest independent power producer in the country, operator the second largest competitive nuclear fleet in the country. And as we've seen, there's upward pressure on power prices largely fuel from data center consumption. And Vistra is, in our view, a company that's still well positioned to benefit from those price increases. And, you know, it's a stock that's done very well over the years.

We think there's a lot of room to go ahead of it, potentially some upside to 2020 current estimates if they announced another or a potential partnership with a large hyperscalor to sell some of this nuclear capacity. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's one of these names that was pretty much ignored for a long time. And suddenly people realize, wait a minute, some of these companies, not all, if you're selling all your power to a regulated utility, the profit you make is generally capped, it's regulated. Correct. Vistra doesn't have all those regulations. No, that's the beauty of being an independent producer. We've seen that you saw it with that PJM auction last month. Prices continue to increase.

I'm guessing you've seen, even though with our utility bills this summer, there's a lot of pressure on the electricity grid. And I think companies that can alleviate that power constraint are well positioned. Okay. So we got two other names on Power Check here. One, obviously, we all know. That is Salesforce. The other one, Argan. I don't know that company.

Let's talk about Salesforce here. Some people suggest that the behemoth that Mark Benioff has built, the great company that he's built, is going to be hurt by AI, not helped. They would disagree with that view. What's your take? Yeah, so we would say that you can afford to be patient with a, with a name like Salesforce here. We, you know, the AI disruption narrative for software has certainly been popularly this summer.

We've seen that impact a lot of names in the software space. But, I mean, Salesforce is a bellwether software company. This is a firm that serves over 100,000 corporations around the world. Offers incredible not only pricing power, but we think high switching costs, which ultimately buys a little bit of insulation against some of this narrative. Once you have Salesforce to go to anything else, it's just years and expensive. and annoying and you got to retrain everybody. Correct. And I'd say at 20 times earnings right now, it's trading at a 50% discount to its 10-year average. You know, this is a company that consistently

grows in 9 to 11% year over year. And in our view, just a high-quality business that you can afford to be patient with. The previous sector, we just talked, or segment, we just talked about power, quantum services. Argan's not that much different than them. A physical cable company. Well, this is a company. This is a $3 billion market cap company, so it is in the small cap segment. But these guys design and build power facilities, mainly natural gas and renewable energy facilities that are fueling data centers across the country. So, you know, they're known for bringing these facilities online quickly, producing reliable and efficient power for data centers. We think they're incredibly well positioned going forward. Even at this price, because, man, I'm looking at this chart.

If you bring up like a five-year chart, guys, Argan's like this. Yeah, I mean, it has performed exceptionally well. But at 30 times earnings, it's not that much more expensive than it was when it started the year. And we think, again, there's probably upside to estimates if they can announce some, you know, additional power agreements to support some of these data centers. And the last thing I'd say in the data centers is, you know, we have about 25 gigawatts of capacity today. That's expected to go to over 100 in the coming years. And so that growth alone, you know, to us is, you know, a powerful secular story.

I know some guys that's been talking about that for a while. You got Svistra, you've got Salesforce, and you have Argan. And you can tell your friends and family that you nailed it as well. And you're welcome back any time. Thank you, Brian. All right. Good son. That's what I make it easy, don't I?

You do. Make it just so, so nice. Jay Peters, thank you very much. New Edge wealth, fun manager, some new names there. All right, let's get to Kate Rogers for a CNBC news update. Brian, the UK, France, and Germany launched a 30-day process today at the UN to reimpose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. The three countries said in a statement that they decided to employ the so-called snapback mechanism before they lose the ability to restore sanctions on Iran that were lifted at.

as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran called the move null, void, and devoid of any legal effect. Microsoft says it's fired two employees who broke into vice chair Brad Smith's office during a protest on Tuesday. Seven current and former employees were protesting in opposition to the Israeli military's alleged use of Microsoft's software by Israel in Gaza. Microsoft said the two employees were fired due to Syria's breaches of company policies and its code of conduct. And another former pro athlete is throwing his hat in the political ring. Former Major League Baseball star and World Series champ with the Yankees, Mark Toshera, is running for Congress in Texas as a Republican. He's campaigning for the seat currently held by Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy,

who launched his own bid for State Attorney General. Brian, back over to you. All right, Kate Rogers, thank you very much. All right, coming up, folks, here's a question for you. Would you buy that little electric pickup if it comes? cost you only around $25,000. We'll talk more about that and that car next. Crypto Watch is sponsored by crypto.com.

Crypto.com is America's premier crypto platform. All right, let's talk cars, trucks, and EVs, because they're all being bundled into one by a startup called Slate in Indiana. You heard from the CEO and saw the new pickup earlier today on CNBC with Phil LeBoe. Here's the car again. It's small, and that's kind of the point. It's also very customizable. You can add a covered bed.

You can kind of turn into a fastback mod, whatever you want. Now, Slate calls it, quote, radically simple. And none other than Jeff Bezos is backing Slate to help build it. But if you build it, will they come? Mark Fields is the former CEO, Ford Motor, CBC, a contributor member of Qualcomm's board of directors. Mark, I want every company to succeed. whatever their power plan is, I wanted Lourdes Town to make it, they did not, I wanted Fisker to make it,

they did not. I think Slate's going to make it? Well, you know, Brian, I think Slate has really struck a nerve in the industry and also with consumers. If you think about those other EV automakers that you just mentioned, they focused on the really high end and there's only so many customers that can pay $80,000 for a vehicle, nonetheless an EV vehicle. So I think Slate's approach towards affordability, and they're doing some innovative things. They're making it very, very simplistic. Even the manufacturing, they're using a lot of injection molded body panels, which doesn't mean you need a paint shop, so it keeps their capital expenditures down. But, you know, in this environment where the cost of a vehicle is, the average cost of a vehicle is about $48,000

and is going higher because of tariffs, this might hit a nerve. And what's interesting, Brian, is we haven't seen this kind of size of a pickup since the mid-90s. And that's when Ford had a lot of success with the Ranger and Chevy had the S-10. And they weren't so much bought because they were pickups and for payload. They were bought more for commuter cars and they were affordable. So I think, you know, Slate has really, you know, kind of carved out an interesting piece here. Now it's all going to come down to execution because, as you know, the industry's littered with the EV startups that couldn't scale manufacturing or supply chains.

You know better than I do. Building cars is hard. It's really, really hard. It's hard to build them. It's hard to sell them. The Maverick, the Ford Maverick, Mark, you might have heard about that vehicle, having success being a little smaller. My first car was a 1981 Toyota Tacoma pickup, not the cool jacked up one, but a little tiny thing with bench seats. and no air conditioning, stick shift, zero to 60, maybe if I was going downhill. I feel like this is trying to take that market. And I think I feel optimistic about that price point, but are you convinced they can keep it? Well, that's going to be the challenge.

I mean, first off, from what I understand, they're focusing on a lot of their sourcing on here in the U.S. So, you know, the good news on that, that's going to shield them from tariffs. The bad news is, you know, particularly just focusing on U.S. sourcing is more expensive. So, you know, as they get into, you know, the further engineering of these vehicles and then, you know, getting into the pre-builds at the plants, you might see that, you know, price point creep up. The other question, Brian, is what's the margins at the pricing that they're announcing? You know, they originally announced, I think, around $27,000. And then when you factored in the federal incentive for EVs, it was going to be about 20 grand, and that's now gone. But I think the point is there's not many vehicles, Brian, that are below $30,000.

And when you think about whether it's first-time buyers or people just focusing on affordability in an environment where vehicles are just going through the roof in terms of their pricing, this might carve out a nice little niche. And, you know, they have a plant that has 150,000 units of capacity. So we'll see what happens. The demand, at least the, you know, I think they have over 100,000 pre-orders, but, you know, we'll see how many of those translate into sales. That's an excellent point, Mark. And again, how, in your experience, like people, yeah, it's 50 bucks refundable, right? So the pre-order numbers could be messy.

Yeah, it's, listen, it's a lot of false positives, right? Remember, you know, I think Fisker said they had 50,000 orders. and I think it turned into four. So, you know, you have to take that with a grain of salt. But I think the most important thing is, are they going to get this vehicle out on time, as they mentioned by the end of 26? Because not only do you have vehicles like the Ford Maverick, but Ford also, as you know, made announcements around a small EV architecture

that they're going to bring out with a small pickup probably around the same time frame. So there's going to be more competition. But I think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens here. And it's going to come down again to execution. But you, you know, holding that price point may be challenging. But in relation to the rest of the industry, it'll still be one of the entry price points that people will have access to. Yeah, we'll see if they can, we can pull that off. Cover story to Car and Driver, by the way, this month.

And yes, I subscribe to actual physical magazines. There's the cover. Let's see if it works. Mark Fields, love having you on. Love talking about this topic. Thank you very much. You bet. All right.

On deck. The new news on Nike that you will only hear here here. I welcome back. Let's hit another CNBC exclusive retail reporter Gabby Fong Rouge. Has a new story right now on CBC.com about Nike and how it is laying off some management, a story that you will only hear here. Gabby, welcome. What have you found out?

So what we found out today is that Nike is laying off less than 1% of its corporate staff. Nike has about 77,000 employees worldwide, but a lot of those people are part-time store employees, so we don't know the exact number of people that are going to be impacted. But this isn't so much of a cost-cutting, restructuring thing. This is more about CEO Elliott Hill's efforts to realign the business. You know, you have to kind of take a step back to understand how we got here. Under the former CEO, Nike changed the way that it aligned its business. Instead of going from tennis and running and basketball, it aligned it to women's men's and kids.

And now Elliott Hill is trying to redo, undo a lot of that work. And so they're realigning from women's, Mids, and kids into more of a sport focus. That means the teams are going to be realigned and some cuts are going to happen along the way. So basically shifting divisions, but that's still going to be cold comfort for the folks, because I know 1% doesn't sound like a lot of people, but if you're a company Nike size, it's for those people, it's a big deal. Absolutely. It's always going to be a big deal. And you have to also think about where we have come, right?

In February of 2024, Nike laid up about 1,500 employees. And a lot of these staffers are feeling a little bit of whiplash, right? You had one CEO in, one CEO out, a new one in, a new strategy. And one of the things, you know, beyond all of the other things that Elliott is working on, he also has to fix the culture. Which is tough to do because Nike is in Oregon, okay? And Oregon's a wonderful place. But it's not New York City.

We don't have a thousand companies where people can move over from, right? Their pool of labor is probably a little bit smaller than most, unless people are willing to move to Oregon, which they probably would be all the Oregonians are not going to come at me. I think I hate their state. Be careful with that one. I got to be careful with that one. Dangerous folk. No. But this is, one wonders, we don't know why, but one does wonder.

We just talked about AI, like what's really happening? You know what I mean? If it is just the reshuffling of the divisions, AI is also going to play a role, I think. Not just a Nike, but any company. You're already seeing a lot of companies who are actually admitting that they're using AI for product design. It makes things faster. It makes things more efficient. In this economy and with the troubles that Nike is facing, it has to take cuts where it can.

It has to be efficient. It has to be able to compete, especially with how competitive sneakers have become over the last couple of years. Is Nike coming back? Like, how's the company suffered for years? It's not, it's lost market share. The stock's gotten crushed. China's a problem. China is a problem.

But that's a Nike self-inflicted problem. Nike is on its way back. It's been in the midst of this turnaround. And in the last quarter, what we heard is that the worst financial impact is now behind the company. It's on and upswing from here. So we're just going to have to keep watching. Well, it's an exclusive story. Great reporting. Love to have. Thanks for coming on to talk about it. Gabrielle Fon Rouge. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Staying with jobs and layoffs. How many jobs might AI really take a new survey? You've got it here to believe. And you will. Next. All good things must come to an end. But before we. We go, one of the most read stories on CNBC.com right now, a new Stanford study saying AI adoption is linked to a 13% decline in jobs for younger U.S. workers. Some of those roles most at risk include customer service reps, accountants, and software developers, but it could even be far more reaching than you'd expect. Listen.

I think it's around 50%. And it's one of the things we talk to our customers about that they're most encouraged. We have a labor gap between what's available and what our customers need. There's going to be two sides of it. Those that are afraid of it that stay away from AI and those that embrace it and take advantage of the opportunities it gets. But I think it is meaningful, especially for the back office redundant type jobs. That's Brett Beardell, Welfed Bank out in Seattle. So, folks, we want to hear more stories about you and your experience.

Let us know. You can let me know on Twitter, X, whatever, on LinkedIn, about what you're hearing in the job market out there. Because AI is really amazing, but it can also be really scary. To read that and more, go to CNBC.com. I'll see you tonight on Fast Money 5 p.m. Eastern. Thanks for watching, everybody. Closing bell begins right now.