>> yep. >> up double digits, five years. amy? >> vertex. we think the stock will go up. >> so we need 5254 on the s&p 500, and we're in this holding pattern after the ppi. of course, cpi in the morning. i'll see you at 3:00. we'll see you then, scott. hi, everybody. and welcome to "the exchange." i'm kelly evans. here's what's ahead. the ai arms race is heating up. one day after openai's front man google and front run google and threw down the gauntlet with its ai update. now it's google's turn to wow investors. this is a live shot of the io 2024 event. the ceo is just about to begin his keynote address. we'll bring you all the biggest headlines as they come in throughout the hour. but first, mean stocks are

soaring for a second day, with gme, amc up big following the return to social media, but they're not the only stocks caught up in this trade. we'll hit all of the angles from the charts to the chatter, and the trades and what it says about this market. in fact, that's where we start today. let's get over to dom chu monitoring the latest moves. >> it's been crazy now for just in context, to kind of look at the board as we're seeing it. we are well off the session highs so far today. gamestop, 42% to the upside, up $ $13.48. amc entertainment, the other stock out there, up 23% to $6.42. blackberry even get caught up in that. remember, it was part of the derivative ancillary ripple effect mean trade back in 2020 and 2021. it's up 9%. and koss up 29%, as well. to put it in context for you, let's look at these charts

really quickly. gamestop over the course to have last year, yes, it's a down trend and here has been the big pop. earlier in the premarket trade, this got up close to $80 per share in the premarket session. $64 and change is where we got and we opened there today. we're at $43 right now. so you can just see back in the lows that we saw just about a month ago, it was roughly a $10 stock. it got up to $65 near there at one point today. and remember, volume just around this time period was roughly two to seven million shares on any given day. yesterday, we traded roughly 187 million shares, and up north of 130 million today. so that gives you an idea how much that frenzy has caught about. it will show you koss, as well. those moved happened on or about may 2 and, may 3rd.

that was for koss and gamestop. a different story for the other two mean stocks i showed you early with regard to amc and blackberry. blac blackberry, the move has been higher, but not as much as gamestop. the last two days since they started tweeting again. and check out amc, which has been a real, real laggard over the course of the past year, and we didn't see the real moves higher until yesterday's session into today. so it's kind of like a tale of two different mean stocks if you will here. you have the one side in koss and gamestop and then the other side with amc and blackberry. but the volumes have been through the roof and volatility has caused halts during the course of this span. we'll see if that continue. >> koss the speaker company? >> yes, the ear phone, headphones speaker company. >> dom chu, thank you very much. let's get to the chatter on

re reddit. boris, to be clear, reddit isn't one of the mean stocks. tell us what you're seeing, what started all of us, where is the biggest buzz? is this another retail driven phenomenon we're seeing? >> hi, kelly, thank you for having me. in terms of the reddit, it started creeping up sunday night and exploded on monday morning. especially for gamestop and also for amc and some of the other stocks. and we have seen this before about three years ago. so there's some similar trends, but there's also some differences this time around, particularly around some of the other web data we scraped for these companies where we see stronger fundamentals. >> explain that for a second, what's different? >> so reddit is only one of the data sets. we also scrape employee

sentiment, job listings, and, you know, something like ten other data sets. we're seeing that for these mean stocks, there's actually some web data supporting their encreased stock price and increased valuation. amc they have been hiring aggressively the last three months and the employee sentiment data is showing that gamestop is a better place to work than it was three years ago. so that's an interesting trend that's very different this time around. >> what would you say is the same, what do these periods all have in common? >> umm, so i'll say that as more sort of economic data and social data moves online, there's more data trails left on the internet and more signals that investors can trade on from those data trails. so i'll say the common thread has been web data becoming more main stream, and being increasingly adopted by

non-professional investors. >> so in other words, you think that other people are accessing the same kind of data sets and using that to say the business at amc or gamestop is on an upswing? >> that's right. so when we first launched our reddit mentioned data set three years ago, it was aimed at hedge funds and professional investors. we had overwhelming demand from nonprofessional investors and we launched a platform aimed at retail traders. we launched that six months ago and it's been our fastest growing party. >> so number one, shouldn't that become priced in at some point, if it's more widely available, shouldn't the stock price reflect that knowledge already? and number two, it doesn't explain why we get these little spurts of trading all of a sudden. are these spurts coordinated? in other words, do you get the sense that people are saying let's drive this up to $80 or $100 or is it more organic than that? >> so on the first point, i'll

say there's still alpha generation potential for alternative data. this has been around for ten years, and the most sophisticated users are still using it to generate alpha. so i don't think it's fully priced in. the chatter on reddit is unpredictable, but increasingly investors see it as almost table safe. they need to have this data to understand what's happening on the internet. >> boris, before you go, do you want to give us any hot tips? if you see the places that might have an increase in job postings or positive sentiment around the company, any other stocks or areas people might want to look? >> so, i'll pitch again sort of our product, which is looking at web data wholistically, and not only at reddit mentions, but understanding what is the foot print of any company on the internet, what is the employee sentiment. the potential to generate alpha

is understanding how all of those data points connect. >> boris, thank you for joining us today. thank you very much. let's get over to the trade on these names with chris murphy, co-head of derivative strategy at susquehanna. maybe you can give us a window, is this largely a retail driven movement as it was in the past, and as we perceive it, or hedge funds more involved this time around? >> hey, kelly, thanks. no, it's clearly a mix. just based on the size of some of the blocks that we're seeing trading in some of these names, you know, when we're seeing five options at a time, one option at a time, that's more likely retail. when we see 2500, 5,000 block calls trading at the same time, we're confident that it's a combination. >> what would you say is similar and different from the episodes

in the past couple of years? >> i don't think it's nearly what we saw in 2021, and i think part of the reason why is a lot of the short side of these trades, they still remember 2021. you know, they learn their lesson. they have some things in place. they're not quite as aggressively short as you remember some of those hedge funds that were the first time around. so, i think this is -- it's certainly interesting on a day when the s&p is not moving at all, and you think if you weren't looking at this sector, one of the most boring days of the year as we wait for cpi. i hope it can be as big as 2021. >> boris hinted maybe the fundamentals are the reason why these stocks are taking off, people get wind of job postings, and there's a stock case to be made for that. but your data and some of the others point towards this short squeeze. gme, 24% short interest.

amc, 21%. some of them are lower, but some are also still pretty high. so how would you wrap the fundamental story, what is the most important lever being pulled here? >> it's a short term, short squeeze type of a trade for the most part. it's great if a company has great fundamentals and they can point towards that, but these trades are happening intraday. so they're not long-term investments. as this trade is starting to move from gamestop and amc into other names, the momentum chasers who are doing this trade are looking at what's the next highly shorted name that we can look towards. >> right. >> so that's all really short term. the names that this is happening to that have strong fundamentals, there are good trades to be made in the options, but it's not short-term calls. >> finally, you do think you can

identify some of the next candidates where this wave could be headed. what example would you give? >> we're going to follow spikes in call volume and volatility. spce, others, i saw an interesting call buyer in roku. that is a decent short interest there, as well. so we're looking for upticks in volume and the volatility like everybody else. but just as importanty, looking for down ticks in volatility as a sign that the momentum chasing trade is leaving these stocks, because we're seeing volatility levels start to move lower, where is it going to go next? so there's two parts to that. >> fascinating. chris, just before we pivot and talk markets, where are you on the markets more broadly, just waiting on the cpi at this point? >> yeah, i think so. we're waiting for a little more

of an all-clear that this uptick in inflation that we have seen recently was temporary. you know, in terms of the broader market, i know people are asking how can you buy it, we're back to all-time highs, things like that. i would point out, we're always focusing on the options, if you're looking at macrooptions, like s&p 500 options, they're very inexpensive. you know, if i have to pick a direction for the next six months, i would think the market is going higher. what's great about a low volatility environment is, you can have some protection on it. if you're not 100% confident about buying the s&p, you don't want to be the last one to buy it at all-time highs, you can have protection as cheap as we've seen it. >> chris, thanks so much for joining us. appreciate it. chris murphy from susquehanna. despite that rally, the market was unchanged. let's talk about that. the producer price index jumped

0.5 in april. the biggest gape win we have sen about a year. food and energy prices rose more than double the forecast. my next guest says there are four stocks he's monitoring, and he would know a thing or two about that. jake is here. i'm sure your fed background i'm going to mention in passing so people know that you're not anyone just talking about macro signals, but i'm curious where you are looking these days. >> in terms of the ppi this morning, how that translates ultimately to pcu, which is what the fed cares about, is lower than what we have seen. so there's some slight positive news, which explains why you saw the headline beat. and yet the markets came down, and powell spoke. once you look under the hood,

the ppi was a little less concerning. so what we're looking for tomorrow with cpi, it's shelter on one side, we know shelter places will come down because of what private markets have done. that lag has been much longer than we anticipated. powell talked about that today. and the services tide excluding shelter, so really the only place we can gauge with an inflation data about whether or not wages are at a level consistent with 2% in the medium term. >> you have four names, and i wonder if people caught what you said there, the way they calculate pce, those components of ppi not so concerning. starbucks, down 20% this year, not giving us a lot of confidence. talk a little about what signals you are looking for and what you think they're telling us. >> starbucks is this ongoing debate. are we seeing some pressure from

low-end consumers? star bucks is one of the most emblematic names for this. so you can tell this story, star bucks is facing competition, especially in china, and they've been doing a lot of cap ex over the last few years, so are they telling us about the low-end consumer, consumers willingness to take on the prices. the price level has increased more than 20% over the past four years, so are consumers starting to buckle? freeport, that's a more of a secular story. they're one of the best pure play copper names out there. so you really have seen a tightening of that physical copper market of late. is that a story of near-term optimism in china, the largest consumer of copper, or is it data centers that we know a lot more copper they need, or

decarbonization, are we getting to that secular story yet or is it short term? >> i was just going to say, are you kind of thinking of yourself as a buyer of all these names? new york community bank, western alliance, those are bearing a lot of the brunt of the banking crisis a year ago. i guess all of these -- are these names that you want to pick up here with confidence about the macro outlook, or are you not so sure? >> i think we're not certain, but starbucks, if you're optimistic about the consumer, and i think we will muddle through here, maybe it will slow in the fourth quarter. but the economic outlook remains positive. so star bucks is at the negative end. so you're buying a cheap name, at a name of low valuation. so we think that's a positive story and can do a lot of self-help there. freeport, we are buyers of the longer term secular theme that

we are going to need more commodities than we have. copper is a very long cycle asset. it takes 10 to 15 years to ramp up, so we think this will be a tailwind for industrial metal demand for a long time, and regional to the bank story, there's a list of what are the risks out there that are known? it's really cre in the u.s., one of the easier things to think about. so those two banks kind of typify the cre exposure, and then the growth banks coming out, so a lot of new assets and deposit growth. so, are we getting past the deepest concerns about cre, and kind of what do we make of this going forward? >> you have to wait till september. we'll have maybe a clearer sense of where it's trending and whether rents are coming down. jake, thank you for your time

today. >> thanks so much, kelly. coming up, we'll bring you all the headlines from google's annual developer conference underway right now in mountain view, california, a lot at stake. new members for mastercard showing the consumer spending and traveling. a look at where the strong spots are and where we could see weakness down the road. "the exchange" is back after this.

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welcome back to "the exchange." google's annual developer conference is under way in mountain view, the ceo giving the keynote right now. deidre bosa is outside with the big headlines so far. deidre? >> reporter: that's right. we're going to hear the cheers from inside the amphitheater. the ceo took the stage and is still on there right now. and probably the biggest announcement, we're still early, but he said the company is launching ai overviews and search across the u.s. this week. we have talked about this, this is previously known as search generative experience. so this is search with ai -- generative ai added to it. so it's no longer the ten blue links that you typically see from a traditional search, but they're incorporating ai to all users in america. so search is going to look very

different for everyone in the u.s. by the end of this week, and he says they're going to roll that out to more countries throughout the year. another headline that came out, he said over a million people have signed up to try gemini over the last three months. gemini is its more pure form chat bot, more of an answer machine. i just want to note that 1 million people in three months compare that to what we saw from chatgbt. within two months of launch, back in 2022, they made it to 100 million monthly active users. so, again, you see that google is moving slowly, but they do have that huge distribution, that huge scale advantage and kicking off a new kind of race here, as they are making generative ai available in search this week. we're getting more demos, including work space. he just introduced the idea of ai agent. that's what we saw from chatgbt. the idea that we're moving out of this era of chat bots into an

era of ai agent that can e motor, that can reason, that can have a back and forth conversation. so kelly, i'm going to tune back in. we see the head of ai taking the stage right now, to find out more what google's ai agent is going to look like. >> deidre, first of all, thank you for pointing out the ai overview. but you also asked a very good question the other day when -- because i said i liked it as a use experience. you said how many ads am i seeing. the answer is, not many? how big of a problem is that? >> reporter: i think that is still an open question, and that's why google is not rolling out gemini to everyone, because gemini doesn't really have ads. it's that -- where they can place above and below those generative ai answers.

it's unclear if that will go below the fold, how does the business model change with that? a million users have signed up versus 100 million monthly active users for chatgbt been two months. there's a difference there, and can google win using its strategy by keeping the ad model within a generative ai world? >> would people just pay to be the sponsored answer or point you -- but then it compromises the quality . can't wait -- >> reporter: kelly, this may be backwards looking, because what we see right now are voice agents. we're not typing anything in. we're not going to see links anywhere, we're going to hear a chat bot answer us. that raises more questions about that model. >> excellent point. the ceo will be on cnbc this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. eastern. deidre, thank you for you.

we'll check back in soon. deidre bosa. let's turn to mark mahini, the second highest price target on google at $220 a share. mark, thanks for joining us today. >> hi, kelly. >> what do you think so far? what jumps out? >> well, i think the word that's going to be used more than any other today is gemini. so they're going to infuse gemini in ai into all of their apps, a huge advantage that google has is they have a billion plus users for a range of different consumer facing apps. whether that's youtube, search, photos, g mail. there's just so many different ways they can win here. what they're showing today is when you use -- you can now use ai to say the wonderful example i saw earlier is if you take pictures of your child swimming over there as they grow up over time in the first 15 years, you can say show me pictures of my child learning how to swim. it's wonderful to go through

that library of photos and use ai to pull out the most relevant photos to you. so i think the products are going to get more and more interesting for consumers. >> ben thompson said basically, this era calls for great products, the best. and google has been an advertising company forthe past couple of decades. so how do they change that corporate culture to focus on, we are product people who are putting the end user first opposed to we are basically a salesforce who is kind of putting the advertiser first? >> well, with all due respect to ben thompson, i'll give you a very different perspective. 80% of search activity doesn't show any ads. it's people looking for things that are not monetizable. the vast majority of usage of google, they don't sell ads on google search. it's been a product led company for some time. some of the problems they had in the last year or two, they

allowed a little bit of politics to get in there. but from what i have seen using a search generative experience and using gemini has been very impressive. so we'll get to a point where we're just not going to talk about gemini, it's going to be google as an assistant. if there's one company out there, it's google. >> one thing they emphasized recently, the hallucination problem ai has, google's argument is because they can test -- back test your answer against the internet, so to speak, they can try to make sure they get the ad hallucination problem and give you answers that are more real. i don't know if that's going to become a huge deal over time or if the hallucination problem goes away. >> i don't know. that's a great point. i don't know how they solve that. i assume everybody is going to have to deal with that. everybody running these large language models is going to have to deal with that.

getting back to io, i expect them to show hardware products, roll out a new mobile operating system. but the opportunity is there for google, how many consumer touch points they have, and i've watched sindar for eight years and he's talked and ai the entire time. so the problem is execution on the part of google and getting products to market, but they have the products. i've been over time impressed by the level of ai integration and the financial market is skeptical about google as an ai winner. i think that creates a great buying opportunity. >> i want to ask you about amazon. the news is that the head of -- is stepping down today. how do you take it? >> well, andrew had been -- he was the lead person at aws almost since the beginning, except for jassy. the person who is replacing him

at the head of the sales has been there since 2006. so i don't see this as a major change in aws strategy. what matters in amazon's stock is does awc continue to accelerate? if they do, i think aws is coming from a really soft year and is going to be able to recover, maybe not to the 30% hyper growth they had before, but they can get much closer to the 20% growth. >> even without ai? >> no, ai is part of it, and they're also telling you that ai workloads are at a millionty billion revenue run rate. so they're not -- they may have been slow on the ai transition, but they're not going to miss it and they have plenty of opportunity to catch up. i like amazon as an ai play, too. >> mark, thank you very much for your time today. >> thanks, kelly. still to come, after a quick

break, cnbc is unveiling its 12th annual disrupter 50 list, including one team that is teaming up with mark cuban to transform the pharmaceutical sector. we'll get you the story and speak with the ceo a little later in the show. "the exchange" is back after this. but it's not the critic who counts. with every swing and block, your game plan never changed. ♪♪ some still call it luck. let them. because you know what it's always been. inevitable. ♪♪ ♪♪

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welcome back to "the exchange." i'm tyler mathisen with your cnbc news update. the trump hush money trial on lunch break, but when the trial resumes, it will be the defense's turn to cross examine michael cohen. he acknowledged that he lied in the past about his involvement in campaign finance violations in an effort to remain loyal to mr. trump. and that loyalty led him to "violate his moral compass." protestors over the israel-hamas war are taking down their tents on harvard yard today after university officials agreed to address questions about harvard's endowment. protestors are demanding the

tool divest themselves from companies that do business with israel. and the nobel laureate and master of the short story alice munro has died. awarding her with the nobel prize in literature in 2013, the swedish academy cited her ability to write a novel in just a few short pages. >> i must read her short stories 10, 15 years ago, and i just remember the scenes from them all the time. she was incredible. those that haven't read it, i highly recommend it. >> put it on the list. coming up, record travel demand is showing up in some stocks like delta, which is trading at the highest level since the start of the pandemic. up next, an inside look at mastercard spending data with chief u.s. economist michelle meyer. back after this. )

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welcome back to "the exchange." 2024 is promising to be another record setting season for travel. u.s. airlines are expecting to carry 271 million passengers to and from their holiday destinations. that's up more than 6% from last

year's already record season, according to airline traders. and this as prices continue to climb. the cost of airfare is up 20% from prepandemic levels. hotels are up 15%. this data coming to us courtesy of mastercard's latest survey. joining us now is michelle meyer, chief economist at matter card institute. welcome, michelle. great to see you again. >> good to see you, kelly. >> this is one of the biggest questions on investor's minds that area of the economy, is it showing any signs of slowing down? >> it isn't. we are seeing increasing spending and activity, whether you're looking at the number of passengers out traveling, or the amount of spend that's out there. and you're also seeing some interesting developments play out. for example, we've seen leisure for longer, which is that in some locations when people travel, they stay longer. that could be this combination

of business travel with leisure travel, more flexibility in the workforce. but it's a fascinating dynamic, particularly in some of the lower cost destinations. >> i was just going to say, related to that, you guys say for each extra 6 degrees else -- celsius term, the length of stay is approximately one day. >> you want to travel where it's warm and affordable. so people are figuring out what works best for them. but the reality is, they're certainly dedicating a good amount of purchasing power towards travel and experiences. >> we have a list of some of the top, you know, summer destinations for 2024. albania, yes, we've got japan by the way seeing a huge travel boom. some of the more typical places like cancun. but some of these places are forflung. >> for japan, a lot has to do

with the currency. you've seen a lot of dollar strength and yen weakness. so it makes sense. so go someplace where you have that advantage. you see a lot of u.s. and canadian travelers going to tokyo. albania, it's the story of affordability. it's away to getting the your p -- european experience. >> cruises, the actual vacation is, you know, still extremely in demand. global cruise passenger transactions were up 16%. the fwabahamas threeing 3 milli more passengers. >> people are out there cruising, and that took longer to come back after the pandemic versus air travel and certainly car travel. so there's still more pent up

demand i would argue that we are seeing with the acceleration. but then you also are hearing a lot about river cruises or smaller cruises or new ways to be out there traveling and having these experiences. so i think there's a certain amount of availability, of variety of different ways to go out and to travel that is creating this real nice lift to the sector. >> i know you can't help yourself and you must put this through your macro brain when compiling all the data and thinking about it. what does it tell you? what does it reveal to you, if anything? >> so i think it tells us a ton about the consumer, because you have the same consumer that might be out there spending on travel, going to events, whether it's concerts or sporting events, which we are seeing very, very clearly, driving some of these travel trends. and they're doing it in a way that's really strategic. at the same time, that same consumer might be walking into the store and thinking about how they're spending, looking for

the best promotion, the best discount. so it's not one story for the consumer. i think that's really important, because it creates a lot of complications in the narrative, because you have consumers looking for discounts and promotions. and you have consumers that want to make their dollars work the best they can in a way that works for them. >> i noticed that a note was put out, and steve is worried about a consumer led slowdown in the fall, similar to larry linsey. do you worry about that, or is that still a ways off? >> look, i think you have to focus on what the consumer is telling us right now, which is they still have the ability and the desire to spend. differently for different categories. but aggregate spending is still accelerating. that was a big part of why gdp growth has been beating expectations the last several

quarters. but the other thing that's really important is the labor market. the labor market is the main force behind the consumer in terms of job creation, the breadth of job creation, the amount of income support that comes from that. and the trend in the labor market is still very encouraging. we are seeing job growth of about 250,000 a month. depending on what wage measure you're looking at, we're about 5% year over year wage growth. so i think the consumer is being mindful of the different, you know, economic factors that are out there. but still very engaged in this economy. >> really interesting, with more data points than ever to illustrate that. michelle, thanks for bringing that to us. good to see you again. >> any time, kelly. by the way, catch our continuing series "the anatomy of a consumer" at 2:00 p.m. eastern. today, we'll talk about the arms, that's traditional retail that holds up the entire

consumer space and take a closer look at that. shares of uber are lower today after announcing they'll acquire a food panda business in taiwan for nearly $1 billion in cash. we'll look aso ot mef the other names on the move today, next.

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♪ ♪ welcome back. as we mentioned earlier, there's a leadership shakeup at aws with the ceo stepping down to be replaced by matt garvin. kate rooney brings us more. >> reporter: so a source close to amazon says garvin is a war-time ceo he's being described as. that leadership, they say, is needed as amazon is perceived as lagging behind google and

microsoft in ai. this person told me they need a more aggressive leader, more technical. this perp pointed to amazon's lack, as they described it, of a competitive large language model and the general feeling that amazon is behind despite rolling out bedrock. amazon is seen as the most vulnerable big tech in ai, comparing it to microsoft, which has been savvy on deals and exclusivity. amazon is tethered to the success of an tropic, which has teamed up with google, which is hosting its premiere ai event as we speak. all of this has caught the attention of former ceo jeff bezos. this person telling me the former ceo is still very involved in the company's ai se efforts, saying he is hyper aware of the competitive landscape out there in ai, and he has full knowledge of what google and nvidia are up to,

very much paying attention. for example, he's been sending emails to executiving wondering whether companies are not using amazon and other ai platforms. amazon declined to comment on this reporting beyond a statement from jassy this morning, which thanked the ceo, who is well respected in amazon, but it is a big leadership change. >> kate, that's a great headline, that this is perceived to be, this new leadership, to be putting him on a war fronting and not a peacetime one. >> that's right, kelly. that is important. they are seen as needing to get more aggressive, and that they may have missed the moment in ai. this is all moving so incredibly quicking, and aws is a profit engine. it's valued for the cloud computing side of the business, but they need to get ahead on ai, and he's seen as the leader who may take them into this new era. >> that is fascinating and backs

up what the market was worrying about, or perhaps should be excited about. kate, thank you very much. our kate rooney reporting. still to come, if you're tired of trekking to the pharmacy for prescriptions, one of this year's disrupter companies aims to save you the trip. way. we'll talk to the ceo of alto pharmacy about that next. amelia, unlock the door. i'm afraid i can't do that, jen. ♪ (suspenseful music) ♪ why not? did you forget something? ♪ (suspenseful music) ♪ my protein shake. the future isn't scary. not investing in it is. you're so dramatic amelia. bye jen. nasdaq-100 innovators. one etf. before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses and more in prospectus at invesco.com.

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welcome back to "can exchange." it's been a tough environment for digital pharmacy companies. good rx is down nearly 87% since its 2020 ipo. there's one private name making waves in the industry, alto pharmacy. they work to streamline the prescription business for both doctors and patients and recently landed a partnership with mark cuban's cost plus company. it's 29 on annual disrupter 50 list. let's dive in further with ceo alicia bowler davis. welcome to the program. congratulations. >> hi, kelly. thanks for having us. we're really excited about being recognized for the the second year in a row. >> you have 25 years of gm, on the board at general mills, you were at amazon. how did you wind up at this startup online pharmacy as its ceo just for the past year or

so? >> yeah. i joined in september of 2022. i was looking to have a larger impact and also had a lot of momentum. they're really known for challenging the status quo. that's what i've done throughout my career. i thought it was a great opportunity. i thought with my background and skills it was a great pairing so i jumped in and joined the company. >> so my kids are always getting strep throat or pinkeye or ear infection. i'm curious how my experienceover laps with what your customer base is looking for. we have to go through a doctor and point us to a prescription and go to the cvs up the road. what role does alto play in the process? >> so we're really working to improve cost, convenience and care for the customers. so, just like you mentioned, if you haven't, you will one day -- if you have a typical retail experience where you're waiting in a long line, or you're some unexpectedly high cost. we're really working to change that experience where we can on

board you, do the investigation into your insurance, we can have your prescription ready to schedule. 60% of our prescriptions are ready to schedule within ten minutes or less. and so we're really trying to leverage technology, leverage automation, leverage our expert pharmacists to provide a different experience. and we know our customers expect the same type of seamless experience with pharmacy as they do in any other experience. and so that's what we have been focussed on creating. >> so in other words, when they ask meat the doctor's office, what's your pharmacy, would i tell them alto and are they placing the order to alto or do i get on the app and say, i need amoxicillin and hopefully it comes rather quickly? >> yeah. so you would tell your physician send my prescription to alto. and the physician can look through the drop down box for all of the other pharmacies that are out there. they'll see alto and they will send us the prescription. and then, as a customer, what

you would do is download our app. and when you download the app, and you put your information in, we should already have your prescription, we'll connect it and then you should be ready to put your insurance information or if you have -- how you're going to pay. and then we'll do all the work on your behalf. we have -- go ahead. >> i don't mean to interrupt. just in the final minute, what you're describing sounds great but also the biggest advantage seems cutting the line. and there's so many other competitors throughout. so how would you kind of explain your position amidst all of that? >> yeah. i would say it's definitely cutting the line. but we make it easy and seamless for you. so we do all the work for you. we will go out and find coupons and rebates and we will apply it automatically. we will give you different options on speed as far as do you want it the same day? we're able to deliver directly to you. the same day or the next day if you want to pay cash. we present different options for you. so it's seamless. then our pharmacists really are

at the core of our offering. and they're available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer questions and assist you and can do that through phone, through messaging, through the app. and so, our experience truly is seamless. and we're really focussed on making it easy for you. >> yeah. >> as a patient. >> founded by a couple former facebook employees who, like many of us, were frustrated with the status quo. alicia, thank you for joining us to explain. it congrats on making the list this year. we're excited to see what comes next. >> thank you. >> alicia boler davis. for the full list, scan that qr code on your screen or go to cnbc.com/disrupters. a lot of healthcare names this year. that does it for us. next hour on "power lunch" president biden raising tariffs on $18 billion worth of chinese goods. we'll discuss the full implications. tyleis gtir etng ready. i'll join him on the other side of this break. (♪♪) iconic brands speak for themselves.

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♪ good afternoon, everybody. welcome to "power lunch." alongside kelly evans, i'm tyler mat mathisen. glad you could join us. america's chess match with china continues. biden administration raising tariffs, $18 billion worth of chinese imports. we'll discuss the impact. plus, the mean season. viral trading roaring back to life on the mean veteran. thisou