of the people they serve. . good morning, it's 11:00 a.m. at aol headquarters in new york city and 11:00 on wall street and quack ail li is live. [ modem noises ] [ static ] you've got mail. >> all right. joining us this morning on "squawk alley" is ed lee, managing editor at recode. good to see you. >> and here for the entire hour,

simon hobbs, what a treat. >> i feel very dial-up. i have to say. >> we're going to be talking about that big deal you just heard of course the throw-back aol sound. aol is being bought by verizon in an all-cash deal worth $4.4 billion. shares of aol have been soaring on news. sitting bost $50 per-share deal price. aol's ceo tim armstrong talked about the deal this morning on "squawk box" and here's what he said. >> verizon has been one of our biggest and best partners since i've been at the company. think there was a natural set of conversations that have happened. you know over time. and you know over the last couple of months. it got more serious and i think we share a combined vision. and this will be one of the largest-scale most exciting biggest platforms for the future of mobile and o.t.t. content and video. so it's and advertising, it's

very, very powerful platform. >> ed li, aol will get a corporate partner with a powerful balance sheet. and verizon gets aol's ad tech and content what more to it is there than that? >> the question i have is basically as you point out, verizon is buying aol's ad tech business, which is a nice business, it's growing. tim armstrong pivoted aol from a content focused company to an ad tech focused company. it's doing really well. why didn't they do a biz dev deal? $ $4.4 billion is a lot of money. it's interesting they went that far for it my feeling was tim said hey, you want this? buy the whole thing. >> when the story came out in january, bloomberg reported there were talks going on and at the time it did sound like it was maybe more of a partnership. john, and that sounded really is getting investors' attention is where tim armstrong said he

didn't shop the company around. it was partnership talks with verizon that turned into a deal. what's ahead for that situation? does someone come in and make a competing offer? is that unlikely at this point? >> i don't know. what, it was interesting to me is looking at some of the competitive companies in the various spaces where aol plays, take a look at tube mogul for instance, which has a software, a service platform in programmatic advertising, it's down 3% this blorng. look at you, me and tremor which are prom at ik ads, their market caps are below $200 million. look at yahoo, on the other hand, doing a little bit better and armstrong hasn't been clear about the total rationale behind the deal. he was talking to some of the content staff. saying that verizon wants the content. is it about the programmatic advertising platforms? is it about the content? is it about both? i think we have to see the follow-on moves that happen as a result of this to understand it better. >> during the interview several times he mentioned the human

resources they have at aol and wanting to find a home for them. i wonder if verizon simply wants to get its hands on more technology brains to be at the forefront of whatever is happening, whether it's the fios distribution. >> i think what aol has done well is building up human capital around their ad tech. now the other point that john brought up, the content side, our sources are telling us, my boss kara swisher reported this. aol looking to spin off its businesses, "huffington post," verizon is nice to have, but not something they were looking to get. nice to have, not a need to have. >> you want them in your marketplace, right? if you are doing a programmatic ad platform, whatever deal they do, if it's a complete spin-off or maybe a partial spin-off, you want that huge "huffington post" audience, some of the tech

crunch audience, in the mix as you're verizon scaling up your over-the-top and digital video efforts. >> that's a great point. to dig into what the ad tech is that oolt is giving verizon. what aol does well is cobbled together video networkance, there are other sites with video, they cobbled them together in one big network. they make it available to advertisers. you can bid on the space. the thing is the key is that what makes it strong is how many more content players you add on to that system, that network. the more you have, the more valuable it is. so they need to have an ongoing partnership or you hold onto it. >> to reiterate, aol has been in advanced discussions as part of the negotiations to sell aol to verizon. to spin off the "huffington post" unit. which would seem to be a diversion of its strategy at least that it communicated so vocally a few years ago, you say it's been cobbling together all of these businesses, but it's a

cobbled-together business at this point what is verizon really buying here? >> there's a lot of things up in the air. tim has been so vocal, two or three years ago, a premium content company and he spent money building that, whether it was patch or buying "huffington post." tech crunch, all of these things, patch didn't work out. the thing is he more quietly pivoted to an ad tech business about a year ago when i saw how fast it was growing. he didn't make it as vocal a claim when he did that. >> who would buy "huffington post"? >> well so one of the sources, some sources telling us, axis spring anywhere germany could be a buyer of "huffington post." they're a shareholder, no the owning it. >> if you are marissa mayer, final question, are you excited that now shareholders willstop potentially agitating for a yahoo/aol deal? >> i think there are reasons to be excited on both sides, think you're excited that you got

bright roll months ago when you did. because that is also a programmatic video play, it enhances the video. yahoo can say we've got content plus video. there's reason to be patient with us as we show you the value of that. on the other hand, with aol being taken out, there's going to be increasing pressure if somebody does show up for yahoo, for yahoo to take a deal. >> yahoo shares are up by about 8.8% this morning. they've been in the green despite a negative take in the broader markets, next up, apple's ceo talking apple pay while in china. in an interview cook said he was focusing on apple pay's entry in china saying quote we very much want to get apple pay in china, i'm bullish on apple pay here. apple has apparently been negotiating with both chinese banks and alibaba, about the service. cook also saying china is a market where everyone will own a smartphone and he is hoping to convince a quote reasonable percentage to do so.

ed, it seems like his comments on apple pay are conservative. why not be bullish about the service in china? >> the one thing that you know his point being that you know, everyone, a lot of people in china will be having mobile phones. they already have it is the thing. think there's a limited market in terms of people getting into smartphones. the next thing is to make it more efficient. monetize it better, giving them services like apple pay or other apps that the phone will make more apparent and more necessary for people who have phones. over there, phones are everything. it's how they access the internet. that's becoming the fen nopheno. more than desk tops, that's an important path for them to take. clearly he's being conservative, it will do really well for them. >> i think tim cook is one of the smartest ceos in tech about china. he knows you don't charge in there like a bull in a china shop. expecting china to bend to your will. he's lining up partners here. he's saying we like to do some good things, he knows he's gaining market share on jao

ming, but he's not gloating about it. so i think he's very determined to do this but his measured tone is probably a recognition of what tough do in china. >> a smart way to play it for sure. >> he did talk about eventually we'll have 40 stores in china. gradually building the retail presence. what do you see that strategy resulting in for the company there? >> well i mean, china, china has been really the growth center for apple right now. i think he recognizes that he can't let go of that in any kind of significant way. the more physical presence you have, the more chance you have of just converting people who already have smartphones or are getting new ones, that's the importance of doing that. >> figures, 90% of the adult population in china have smartphones. always good to see you ed lee from re/code. what was a triple-digit decline on the dow is now a decline of about 30 points that trade something in tandem with a

stall in the bond route. of course, selloff in bonds across the globe has been the story all morning. there's a lot of issuance in the government debt market. s&p is down by about .33%. as is the nasdaq. take a look at the 10-year yield, sitting at about 2.26, 2.27. earlier in the morning, it as well as the german bund had reached a high yield it hadn't seen since december. shares of tesla rallying after maryland passed a bill allowing the company up to four licenses in the state. the bill stipulates that a manufacturer can be licensed as a dealer if it sells only electric or nonfossil-fuel burning cars, tesla up by about 2.33%. coming up, trying to reinvent space travel for the modern age. the president and coo of spacex is with us. it's barely four years old, but already has passed the biggest private round of funding

for any biotech company in history. the number one company on the cnbc disrupter 50 list, moderna will join us and re/code's walt mossberg has had a month to try out the apple watch. his review is coming up. my feet felt so heavy at the end of the day. they used to get really tired. until i started gellin'. i got dr. scholl's massaging gel insoles. when they're in my shoes, my feet and legs feel less tired.

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cnbc is unveiling its third

annual disrupter list, private companies whose innovations are revolutionizing the business landscape. coming in at number two this year, the top pick for the past three years, is the company that wants to send you to space and colonize mars, spacex. joining our own julia boorstin at spacex headquarters in hawthorne, california is the president and coo, gwen shotwell. >> gwen thank you for having us here today, a spectacular backdrop, congratulations for being named to cnbc's top 50 disrupter list. it seems that the big disruption you're focused on now is the idea of a recoverable rocket. as you work on perfecting that, your biggest rivals, lockheed martin and boeing and their alliance are working on chasing you to do the exact same thing. how do you as the disrupter avoid being disrupted? >> well, we have years of

experience on the recoverability and reusability piece so though it's really great to see others follow in our footsteps, i think it's going to be hard to catch us. >> how big of a game-changer is the idea of a recoverable rocket? how close are we to achieving that? >> i think we're going to recover the boost stage this year and hopefully refly it this year as well. it's absolutely critical in order to move life to other planets. you can't, you can imagine what would air travel be like, if you tossed the aircraft after flying from los angeles to new york. it would be very expensive. it would be incredibly prohibitive. so it's critical for us to facilitate human access to space, to have recoverability. >> it seems that the other big thing on the horizon is getting access to military contracts. would you expect that to happen in june? >> it's really the next hurd until front of us. i think we're right on the edge of acquiring national security space business. >> and so what kind of new things will that mean for the

company? in terms of new revenue streams, new business lines? >> no question it's a new revenue stream. but fundamentally, we believe our vehicles are the most reliable and we certainly want to support our sons and daughters overseas by putting satellites in place that will help them. >> now one thing that's been obvious walking around your headquarters this morning, you guys are thinking very big there are a lot of people walking around with t-shirts that say "occupy mars." what's your plan? >> well the plan is obviously get reusability and recoverability in place. develop bigger rocket ships and bigger spaceships that will take people to land on mars, within the next decade or so. >> once we get to mars, what then? >> well then there will be lots to do on mars. there's a lot to do to make it habitable. and i think it's incredibly exciting to think about a new settlement on another planet. >> kayla? >> hey, gwynne. we're so thrilled to have you on "squawk alley." i want to ask you about the

funding of your business. obviously software companies don't have the challenge that you have in growing which is the nature of your business, is so capital-intensive. your competitors have billions of dollars in free cash flow. at what point do you think spacex will need more capital? and do you ever think about the fact that the cycle may turn and that capital in a few years may not be available? >> so we have weathered a lot of economic storms. and we've been profitable and cash flow positive for years. soy actually don't see the need for a huge injection of capital. we're running our r&d as well as the company off our revenues. >> our current revenues. >> and how long will that last, gwynne? is that a sustainable pattern for the company from here on out? >> absolutely sustainable. i anticipate our revenues to grow, they have grown year over year since 2011. i don't want to say there might not be a downturn. but we have on purpose looked at

our business and diversified so we have international governments as customers, we have nasa as a customer. soon will have national security space as customers, we're starting to dominate in the commercial arena as well. >> you face competition on sort of a cross the spectrum when it comes to satellite launches and you have you know, competition with united launch alliance and also with smaller companies like virgin and orbital, which is a smaller satellite launch company. what's your plan to compete as more people try to sort of recreate some of the things that you've had success with? >> well, i think it's a great testament to the work that we're doing when people are kind of following in our footsteps and looking at some of the same technologies or similar technologies as we are we've never been able to compete against the united launch alliance, the joint venture between boeing and lockheed. they'll had a sole source contract basically handed to them since 2006. almost a decade and we're just right now on the verge of being able to compete. i anticipate competing one or two missions this year.

>> how much do you see the overall market growing as you compete against them? i mean is it a fixed pie from where we are now? do you see it getting big centre. >> i think national security space will stay representatively consistent. the commercial market will grow slowly, 5% to 10% a year, but i do see growth. especially with the recent discussion on enterprise in space-day anticipate it growing? >> what's the next frontier. you've talked about the recoverable rockets, what's the next big disruption to this category? >> you know i don't think we think about what we're doing in terms of being disruptive. i think our total focus right now is developing better, ever-better rockets. more reliable rockets. ultimately to get to mars of course with people. you know people have asked me before, what's after mars? i'm thinking well there's a lot going on just to get to mars. so beyond mars? i'm not sure. but we've got a bigger rocket that we will unveil this year, the falcon heavy. so between the falcon 9 and the

falcon heavy we'll be able to accommodate the entire market sweep of any satellite that looks to be needing a ride to space in the next few years. we are working on our dragon capsule. upgrading it from a cargo vehicle, servicing the international space station with cargo. to servicing it with crew. hopefully you saw a really exciting test we had last week in florida. there's a lot going on. >> certainly a lot to watch. thanks so much for taking time to join us today, obviously you have a lot going on here. we appreciate it and congratulations on being named to the cnbc disruptor list. >> thanks, julia. >> guys, back to you. >> actually spacex was number two on our disruptor 50 list this year. the company that was good enough according to the experts to beat them out at number one will join us later on this hour. random? no it's all about understanding patterns like the mail guy at 3:12 every day or jerry, getting dumped every third tuesday.

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>> you know when i first started trading in the bond market, the bond prices for 30-year were in the 50s, now they're in the 150s. a lot has changed. but certain things never change. and i think the best way to get a handle on the fixed-income market. the global sovereign market. the global interest rate market is to make it a story issue. in other words, let's make some over simplifications, let's make some mission statements, think you'll see the pieces flow nicely together. there was a period not that long ago where we went through a long consolidation, okay? so let's lay the framework for those 29 sessions that closed in a range of 186 to 199 and why they're so important. because for the last three and a half years or so, maybe a bit longer, the conventional wisdom has been that rates are going up. but something changed early last year. everybody seemed to -- investors everybody -- seemed to gravitate to the notion there could be a market where people are buying just like the central banks. so we saw the above 3% open to

2014. and we saw nothing but rallies. everybody was packed in tight on positions. the conventional wisdom that rates had to go up was a distant memory. enter 2015, everything is packed up. we see at the end of last year, we had one capitulation day when we traded down do a 186 yield. settled 28 bases points. made a big deal about that day. because capitulation is one of the best market indicators, short to medium-term. all that consolidation, what did it really mean? it means that everybody pretty much on the emotional side, the newcomers, were on the long side. because we know that there's another side to the trading card. but that emotion as rates kept staying in that range, there was not a lot of interest to be buying any more. it was only when you broke out of that range that things started to happen. almost immediately things started to happen. now let's look at the kind of market we're in it doesn't seem to subscribe to the

fundamentals, the equity markets see a little pull-back in the rates. seem to come back. all of this is going to get more exaggerated. because the 231 from thursday, that kind of wild spike, the 237 last night, wild spike, these are liquidity outside our time zones. when you get one of those capitulation spikes where you know that the last bad position is out and the last margin call, phone call is made, you'll recognize it. i don't think we've seen it yet. i think we need to be on a watch for the generalized notion of trying to get the symptoms for how much leverage is left and maybe one good thing will be today, tomorrow and thursday, when i cover the auctions at 1:00 eastern. simon, back to you. >> thank you very much, rick. let's look at where we're closing in europe at the moment. it's been a a rough session for west european equities. we are off the lows. germany was down 2% earlier in the session. we're now down about 1.5%. it's all to do with the vicious sell-off you have in the bond markets, today it spilled over into the equity market, partly

because of the risk models that a lot of professional investors use if you have high volatility or losses in bobds, they might have to be foresellers effectively, that's what you saw in the urban equity markets. this is a months-long chart of the eye of the storm, german bunds going from almost 0 to almost 70 basis points. still higher on the session overall. this is high quality debt of course. that is very much the eye of the storm. we're keeping an eye on greece. last night the euro group finance ministers wrapped up their session with a news conference from the head of the dutch finance minister, the head of the euro group. he seemed to suggest there could be partial fund disbursements to greece for partial reform. what ubs is describing as potentially a never-ending cycle of greek/german arguments over cash. the finance minister of greece says they hope to do a deal within two weeks. you've heard that before. but arguably they'll have to because they don't have the cash. on that subject we learned that

greece has paid its imf bill, 750 million euros from emergency cash at the imf. it got the imf's permission to move the money from one bank account to the other. in the meantime, top loser today in europe is easy jet uv been on an easy jet flight across the europe, they're one of the giant low-cost carriers, warning on profitability because of the french air traffic controllers' strike and because of the germanwings crash, which led to a period of softness. the most surprising statements about easy jet. if you've been on an easy jet a-320, they're going to squeeze another six seats on each flight. who knew they had room? guys, back to you. >> i have been on an easy jet flight before and i'm in disbelief. >> that doesn't sound easy. >> high-density format. >> they don't call it comfy jet. >> simon hobbs, our thanks to you. up next, does the apple watch pass the test of time? re/code's walt mossberg just hit the one-month with his apple watch. that's when he was going to

write his review and he did. his update, next. but what if you could see more of what you wanted to know? with fidelity's new active trader pro investing platform, the information that's important to you is all in one place, so finding more insight is easier. it's your idea powered by active trader pro. another way fidelity gives you a more powerful investing experience. call our specialists today to get up and running.

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herera, here's your cnbc news update. am tower video capturing today's 7.3-magnitude earthquake in nepal. it's killed more than 40 people while injuring 1100 more. it is the second major quake to hit the country in three weeks. this video was shot in a small hilltop village a few miles east of kathmandu. war planes from the saudi-led coalition pounded a rebel military camp in yemen's capital city of sanaa, just hours before a five-day cease-fire was due to start. the cease-fire is set to help ease the suffering of civilians caught in the crossfire by allowing in humanitarian aid. british prime minister david cameron holding his first cabinet meeting since winning re-election. he faces to major dilemmas in the second term. british membership in the european union and the growing movement for scottish independence. and tom brady may be suspended, but that's not hurting his popularity. since the wells report was released last week he has the top-selling jersey in the nfl

among current players. sales of his gear have spiked 100% since the suspension was announced, which was just yesterday afternoon. and that's your cnbc news update. let's get back to "squawk alley." >> apple choices two weeks to get used to their new devices, but re/code's walt mossberg has been wearing and reviewing his apple watch for a month. joining us with his updated review is re/code's co-executive director walt mossberg. walt, good morning to you. what changes as time passes with the watch? >> well, you know, think the initial novelty wears off after a couple of days and then you really have to try to figure out how is this going to be for people who put down the money to buy it on a day-to-day basis over a long period of time. and that was my goal on this review. and the answer was -- i think it's really good. and i think people will find a a

handful of things to build their use of it around every day. >> i guess it comes down to the apps more than anything else? >> it absolutely comes down to the apps. and apple has done a beautiful job of building in the core apps, like fitness, and texting and apple pay and things like that. and then there are already 4,000 third-party apps, many of which i wasn't so crazy about. because they had very limited functionality. but some of which also worked, worked well. >> walt there are multiple people who have said despite the fact that it does have a lot of useful functionality, the watch feels very 1.0. do you think that changes the more apps get on board? >> yeah. it didn't feel 1.0 to me at all. obviously it is 1.0 and i'm sure they'll make it thinner or different, you know, as they did

with the iphone and their other devices over the years. but this 1.0 version is going to be able to run a whole new type of app that they're going to have later in the year. apps that are written directly for the watch, the apps today are written for the iphone and a small part of that functionality appears on the watch. but they're going to be able to write directly for the watch. and i think apple will bring out the developers' kit for that fairly soon. i would bet probably at their developers' conference next month. >> walt one of the things that struck me about the watch is how slow the third-party apps are most of the time. it keeps me from using them a lot. do you think they can fix that with just this updated api for the watch? or is it going to take a whole new version of the watch for the apps to get as speedy as they need to be? >> well first of all i didn't

find it with every third party app. but i do know what you're talking about and i mentioned it in the review, john. i don't know, i think, i have some indication that they think this latency problem will be fixed. it has a lot to do with getting fetching data first of all from the web and then from the web, from the watch, from the phone to the watch. and so it's kind of a two-hop and it takes some time. you're not noticing that so much on apple's own apps, like the texting app doesn't have that problem. and neither does the email app, which is their own app. and those are examples of what's coming in the new type of direct to the watch app that we're going to see next, later in the year. >> well i'm just looking at the, the disappointments as you list them. one was the fact that you can't reply to email. although it will notify you've got an email. another was the need for connectivity with your iphone and you know, walking around a

suburban house, whether that breaks down. what really surprised me was the issue of sleeves. just run us through that. >> well, it's a watch. and i think this would apply to any watch that is ambitious. that's trying to do more than let's say fitness. this watch, you know, really can do a zillion things, and we're just beginning to find out. it's like the first month of the iphone. but it's on your wrist. and if you live somewhere, where you're wearing long-sleeved things with kind of tight ends to the sleeves, edges to the sleeves, like leases or sweaters in the winter here in the east coast, it becomes kind of a pain in the neck to pull this thing back and then have it not flop back over it before you're finished reading the text or dictating or whatever you can do. >> people of our generation, my generation, we've worn watches forever. this points to the fact that tim cook is trying to get a new

generation that tells the time on their iphone, to put a watch on. that's the deal. >> well that is the deal. but it doesn't solve the sleeve problem. >> well good thing it's launching as the u.s. is heading into summer. that at least will be one positive. >> walt, you talk in your review about the fascination especially of airport employees, encouraging you to pull up your boarding pass during a couple tries. i'm wondering what the general reception was of people who saw you wearing it, saw you trying to use it. were people equally fascinated sm. >> yeah. >> or were they scratching their heads? >> no. people weren't scratching their head. they all wanted to know about it they wanted to look at it. have me show something on it. ask me how much it cost. what style, why did i choose this style? well the answer is this is what apple lent me. and you know, stuff like that. i would say fascination. i want to talk about one other thing we're tight on time.

dictation, i've heard it from other people as well. my experience with the dictation of this thing has been fantastic. it is far more accurate than on the iphone. same with siri. it's basically the same technology. >> so in summary, in one word, walt, would you buy one? >> yes. and i said that this morning in the column. >> thank you very much. walt mossberg joining us from re/code. one month into wearing the am watch on loan he said. thanks, walt. >> always value his insights, coming up, our next guest has raised $1 billion in what was the largest private round of funding for any biotech company. the number one on cnbc's disrupter 50 list. the ceo of moderna therapeutics the ceo of moderna therapeutics will join us next. to decide

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come up, interest rate drama. plus we talk to the investor who said more than a year ago that aol would be bought. iron fire's eric jackson tells us what he thinks of the verizon deal and what else could be in play. plus a member of cnbc's disrupter 50 list is here, ceo of twillio, if you use uber or air bnb, you've used his service and probably didn't even know. >> at barely four years old,

cambridge, massachusetts company has nabbed first place on this year's cnbc disrupter 50 list, the company is moderna therapeutics, it's discovered something of a holy grail in medical development. using messenger dna to help the body's own cells to fight rare or incurable diseases. to top it off they've raised more money in a sungle fundraising round than any biotech company, joining us now is the moderna's ceo, stephane bancel. congratulations on being number one on the cnbc's disrupter top 50. what is the simplest way to describe what biotech companies do. you're helping to create immunities for the body that it didn't have? >> rekt correct, instead of doing what the biotech industries do, is making medicines in factories very far away. we're going to inject you so that your own body will make the

protein. like if you were not sick. >> this isn't just for one type of illness, you have programs for cancer, for rare diseases, for infectious diseases, how do you choose what you're going to target and build for? >> that's the biggest challenge we've had since day one. all of your cells use trillions of times per day. messaging. every disease you can think of, has protein, has a lot of it. so what we try to do because we are trying to play a very long game, is to pick the areas where the technology works for them. not trying to dream about why am i might work 20 years from now, but figuring out what works now. rare diseases, cancer, the ability to combine different antibodies, to go after cancer and activate the immune system, that's very exciting to us. >> there isn't yet one of your programs that's in human clinical trial yet and that's been one of the criticisms of where moderna is in had stage. is one of those programs closer to the end of the pipeline than

others? >> we are playing a very different game than most of the biotech companies, because we are inventing the technology at the same time we're developing new drugs, if you think about all the other biotech companies, they're using existing technologies. if it's a small cure like lip tore or aspirin, it's been done for 150 years, it's a large molecule like a protein like amgen or genentech, it's been done in the last 20 years. we need to develop the technology at the same time as we push the drug forward. but we still expect to be in the clinic in the next 12-18 months. not with one, but with many drugs. because the beauty of the technology is that we are able to develop a lot of drugs in tandem. >> it sounds too good to be true. but you say there are some areas where you know it works better than others. can you characterize the difference? what are the areas where you see that you've got the greatest chance of success versus some others where you say, okay

that's still quite a ways off? >> let's start with the ways off. in the brain, today we do note how to deliver a message to the brain. we have good ideas about how to develop the enzyme. but we don't know how to do that today. some teams are trying to figure it out there are things we know how to do today. we know how to make cocktails of drugs, which is very important for infectious disease. and for cancer. we know how to get the molecule to put in your liver there are dozens and dozens coming from the liver. using that technology which works today. >> can you describe to us briefly what the landscape is like? i feel like i've had this type of conversation before, whether it's people in academia or other people on the west coast that are working in similar ways. i mean are there many of you and you're the most prominent? what is the landscape? >> there are a couple of small

biotech companies in europe that are playing with the idea of using messenger enzymes. and small, 10, 20 people teams. people have been using other technologies, you might have heard about gene therapy or sione, these are very different technologies, totally different from what we do at moderna. >> your list of partners, merck, a who's who of the pharma industry. how worried do you get that one of them could start building the capability to do what you do. they have a lot of resources. >> i think it's quite interesting in the first two years of the company, coming from big pharma myself, i was very worried about a big pharma company putting 50 people, 100 people, and $100 million on the table to try to make m&a work. now where we are, i think we can do something quite unique. that only start-up in this country can do. which you know work together,

fix problems, fix find solutions, and just make things happen quickly you know when we have a program at moderna, we don't set up a committee that three weeks from now is going to figure out how to do it we get people in the room, engineers, scientists, clinicians and we stay in the room until we fix it. >> you raised $1 billion recently. what's the theoretical valuation? >> the valuation has been reported when we did the fundraising in the just before christmas, was around $3 billion. >> what one i think there must be a huge number of pharma or biotech companies that are looking to buy you. are you approached? have you been approached? what view are you taking? >> we have discussions with a lot of companies. what is quite nice is in early days i had to beg to get a meeting now i get emails from others saying can we meet with you. we are trying to make this a reality to patients.

if people approach us, of course we're having discussions, we're having a lot of discussions as we go. but what we care about is making this a reality for patients. >> you're not going public. i read that your cfo said you turned down some investors over the winter when were you doing your fundraising, because you didn't have any plans to go public. but we had a record number of biotech companies go public last year. why is the market dynamic for you? when do you go? >> we want to go when the company is going to be ready. this is a new technology that has never been done before. we want to focus on the science, on the products and we will go out when the company going to be sitting on the very ground. >> we're going to keep a close eye on moderna as we await the first human clinical trial. we appreciate you being here and congratulations, stephane bancel, the ceo of moderna therapeutics. when we come back, $250 million investment from alibaba, and now a major partnership with walmart. the ceo of the mobile messaging service tango will be live on "squawk alley."

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$250 million investment for alibaba. over 300 million users and a partnership with juggernaut retailer, walmart. alibaba also in this. tango messaging service is announcing today it's going to launch social shopping on its app in partnership with walmart. eric setten is the co-founder and cto of messaging app tango and joins us from our one market bureau in san francisco. eric, good to see you.

>> thank you for having me. >> tell me about this social shopping initiative. in context there are all sorts of different ways people are trying to monetize apps these days, in this era of programmatic advertising, you are hearing that advertising is not the sure thing it once was. is that part of the reason you've focused so much on commerce and not just the advertising models some others have tried? >> absolutely. messaging services already turning out to be the new gateway into the mobile internet. this is where people are spending their time and we thought that you know it really made sense for people to learn about new products, that they could discover and buy for their friends and family members, that's what we did with tango shop that we're launching today in partnership with walmart and alibaba's express service. >> you're in a unique position to give insight into what alibaba is really up to in u.s. they've invested $250 million in

you guys. what are they most interested in learning in their interactions with you? what dpo you think they're up t with this zuilily stake they've taken? >> i think one of the things that is striking about start-ups of the valley is really their pace and how quickly we can innovate and how quickly we can bring forward to market things that were never done before. and the tango shop that we worked with together with them, and is the first of its kind. the first time that a messaging app couple as messaging service inside of just one app and offers it to its members. think that's one of the things that alibaba is exciting and trying out with us. >> facebook and messenger is trying to do some things with payments, that's a space that your first mover in, what do you think is going to determine who succeeds and what the user experience is, that works within messaging with payments? >>. >> you know, there is so much attention given to the mobile

messaging space. these are apps that people spend checking with the messaging their calls and with their family members, we think that the apps will be the center of how you operate on the internet. and that's why it makes a lost sense to bring forward commerce or games offering or content offering like we have in the past. we think it's the center. our innovation pace is something that's difficult to follow for larger plays out there. but we think that we're going to be the trail blazers and a lot of people are going to be following the same types of things that we've been doing. >> so what will the e-commerce partnership do for tango, eric? how do you see this playing out? what type of benchmarks will you be measuring it by? >> a lot of our members for them it's going to be the first mobile shopping experience that they've ever encountered, believe it or not. and we think that you know, the

space that we can carve out is all of these times where you need validation before you make a purchase, you need to check with your friends or your spouse, you know whether this is the right product for you. and by bringing together communication and shopping, i think we can do that. the convenience of being able to pay with just one tap. i think is phenomenal. and i thinkis something that we're extremely excited about. >> and obviously it's a big space, i think that all eyes are going to be on us. on the other people that are going to be following. >> yes, indeed, eric seton, co-founder of tango, thanks so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. stocks are off the lows of the morning. but still in the red. the dow by about 21 points. we'll take a closer look, coming up next. yet up to 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more... ...add one a day men's 50+. complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it helps support healthy blood pressure with vitamin d and magnesium.

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we have a great responsibility to get that right. and we take it very seriously. because we love them. and we know you love them too. let's look at the markets as we head towards noon. the dow off its lows, down about 28, 29 points. the s&p also just off .25%. we'll see how the day goes from here. as we approach halftime. not as bad as it was. i know a lot of people are going to be watching the bond auction at 1:00. the question is one of liquidity. whether the sell-off is exacerbated by a problem of liquidity in the bond market.

>> generally if rates are going higher, which they would appear to be, arguably led now from the united states. more than what was happening in germany. >> a note from our markets desk saying the 10-year yield in the u.s. hitting a high it hasn't seen since november. not december. so certainly some action. but for now it's nearing noon on the east coast. so we'll send you over to scott wopner and the halftime show. ♪ ♪ guys, welcome to the halftime show. we meet our starting line jup for today, steve weiss is here ayalon with jim lebenthal. and pete najarian and paul richards is with us and our game plan looks like this you've got $4.5 billion, what verizon's deal with aol means. and the disrupter 50rks the ceo of cloud-based twilio is here with us. if you