tv Squawk Alley CNBC February 3, 2021 11:00am-12:00pm EST
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good morning it is 8:00 a.m. on northeast 28th street in bellevue, washington 11:00 a.m. on wall street. "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ all my life i wish i had a girl like you ♪ good wednesday morning welcome to "squawk alley." i'm carl quintanilla with jon fortt. we're watching gme out of the corner of our eye this morning obviously shares are in focus, back in the green slightly, 10%, after the extreme volatility in the trade. we are going to begin with
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amazon we mentioned the address of the original location in the cold open as bezos says he will step away from the ceo role to become executive chair handing the reins over to andy jassy, a name you will hear a lot more and, jon, you know well, as we talked this morning about his installation and what it means for the future of that giant >> carl, the first thing this means is it shows the importance of aws to amazon as a whole and just about every year for the past five i have asked andy jassy whether amazon is going to spin out the cloud business. he always says no. and now he's in an even stronger position of influence with that no jassy is a type of founder himself after being bezos' right-hand man and chief of staff, he's the one who pitched the creation of aws. and jassy has been running aws since the very beginning of it he's also steeped in the culture, philosophy and process and that's what's made amazon
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the force that it is today five years ago i asked him about its culture and how the company creates new business opportunities. >> amazon, when we look at a big new business opportunity we say if we are successful can it be really big, is it being well served today do we have a differentiated approach and do we believe we have some competence there if we had like to answer those questions and we can put a single threaded team of leaders just focused on that business not having to manage the rest of the business we'll pursue it you've seen that in aws, in the device base. >> carl, there's a big difference often between talk to go a founder and talking to a manager or executive put in charge, the level of authority they speak with, the level of knowledge. jassy speaks with an unusual
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level of authority given the fact that it's jeff bezos who founded the company. i think it translates into the role he's taking on this week. well, midyear. >> yes speaking of founders, bezos' legacy as he transitions to space, more charity, media what do you think that will look like >> i was thinking about this transition and how i talked to jeff bezos almost ten years ago for his outlook for the next ten years and how amazon does strategy and the way bezos talked about it then is right in line with what we're hearing from jassy today. listen to jeff bezos talking about what isn't going to change over that period of years. >> that is a very good question because i rarely get asked the second question. i often get asked what's going to change and rarely what's not going to change.
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it's usually better to build strategies around stability. in our retail business we know that ten years from now people will still want low prices, fast delivery we never have to worry we'll wake up ten years from now and customers will say, mr. bezos, i love amazon. i just wish you delivered more slowly >> back then, carl, they were delivering at the super slow prime rate of two days now it's faster than that, maybe in hours next day in a lot of cases it stretches not just in the retail business but aws, the way they lowered prices even before the competition at the sacrifice of their own margin but believing they would drive long-term value. >> as he's long said, jon, thinking about the customer more than the competitor. our next guest was on amazon's
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s-1, an original investor, confidant for 20-plus years. deirdre bosa joins with us a special guest. >> that's right. he was on the original s1 many years ago. good morning to you. thanks for being with us >> good morning. nice to be here. >> so over the last 12 hours or so since we found out the big news amazon has emphasized the idea of continuity but over time, tom, of course we will begin to see andy jassy's own leadership style i wonder what does he bring to the table that builds on or is different than bezos ran amazon? >> well, he's been totally immersed in the amazon culture for 20 years i think we'll see a lot of continuity everyone is different a little bit.
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he's similar to jeff in a lot of ways he's very inventive. with aws he's had to build something from nothing it really is like a startup. and they have been incredibly innovative at aws, stressed changes every year i think they have like 300 new apps every year to serve their customers. i think we're going to continue to see a lot of the same there's no -- there's no question that he's going to go from aws to the whole company and it's a big, complicated company. but he has been sitting on what they call the s team, the top 12 or 14 people, and they meet once a week for three or four hours and discuss all the big issues of the company andy, even though he's been, as he sort of said, a single threaded leader on aws, he's
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very much participated in the decisions for the whole company. and has been a part of that. it's not like he doesn't know about all aspects of the company. >> right, and that s team you referred to really seen as bezos' inside group that has had such a big hand in running the company for such a long time let's talk about the differences between aws and the rest of the company. bezos is known for customers, not focusing on the competition. andy jassy has built amazon's cloud unit and fending off rising competition from the likes of microsoft and google. do you think we could see an amazon that pays more attention to what the competition is doing? >> i think the culture of paying attention to the customer as opposed to the competition is so
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strong the competition is always there but the essence of the point is they make decisions based on the customer if they do well by the customer they'll take care of the competition. andy, when they started aws, the big companies weren't interested at all in outsourcing their computer services. and everybody thought amazon was crazy and they focused on startups it was a very small companies and they were delighted not to have to buy big servers and deal with peaks of demand and then gradually they started dealing with big companies and for at least four or five years the big companies sat there. ibm, google, microsoft they all had incredible server
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resources and could have jumped in amazon had the luxury and jeff marvels they got a four or five year lead. they're in a very competitive battle with the others microsoft is a very strong competitor in cloud services >> andy has talked about that six-year lead and how they were very conscious about staying quiet about what they were working on to try to not attract too much attention from the likes of microsoft you know jeff bezos. just how executive you're going to be, how far a step back do you think jeff bezos will take here >> i think he will turn the business leadership over to andy the executive chairman is the signal is more involved than a regular chairman of a board or
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lead director. he's bound to be more involved he, himself, said he wants to be involved in product development and new initiatives. that's what he spent a lot of his time over the last even five years of developing. he's always put a leader in charge of a new initiative but jeff has been intimately involved in suggesting ideas, suggesting inventions to solve problems, so i think that will work i think he's really going to -- the company is big and complicated. you have to spend a lot of time managing the whole company i think that's what andy will do he has leaders in all the different parts of the company i think jeff will really focus not on the overall company but on these new products.
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they have a lot of things going on for example, health care they haven't announced this is a big, new platform. but, in effect, they're doing an incredible amount partly because of covid but also they've launched a number of initiatives in health care i think probably will see jeff involved in that more. they're into electric vehicles who would have thought amazon was going to be somewhat in the car business we don't know where that's going to head, but i wouldn't be surprised if jeff gets involved in that, too >> yeah, there are some headlines out this morning, in fact tom, we talk about managing an innovating within the company. what about jassy's skill on external coms. he's come on cnbc a lot. there will be a lot more managing to do with tech regu regulation, hill visibility.
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what do we think about his skill level on that? >> well, i think he's basically well informed. he's smart he's obviously less experienced than jeff on that. they've been dealing with the federal government on a lot of aws has and somewhat controversial issues there it's not that he's inexperienced, i think he has less experience but will continue to lead that effort publicly >> finally, tom, bezos has done a really good job building a bench and keeping veterans around his number two left last year and a number of other vps have left for other pursuits. will andy jassy be able to retain talent and atact new tal snent. >> yeah, i think jeff did a great job of building a very
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strong bench particularly -- well, all the way through and focused a lot of time on leadership and who would be promoted each year and the s team was built out very strongly and, you're right, in the last couple of years very strong people like wilke, jeff blackburn, steve kessel have left but they had been there a long time there is sort of a natural turnover now they have equally strong people coming along. they're less experienced but dave clarke, for example, in the retail area. some very strong people. i do think andy has lived through that that and will be aware of the necessity of building from the inside they're not afraid to hire outside.
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even andy's choice is a strong affirmation of wanting to build from inside and i think we'll see him building and promoting people >> we're certainly looking forward to covering under jassy. thank you for being with us this morning. back over to you >> thank you >> great stuff, d. keep your eye on alphabet leading both the nasdaq 100 and the s&p this morning that's an all-time high at 2066. the biggest revenue growth since q2 of 2018 you can read more on cnbc.com. some see a grilled cheese sandwich and ask, “why?” i see a new kitchen with a grill and ask, “why not?” i really need to start adding “less to cart” and “more to savings.” sitting on this couch so long made me want to make some changes... starting with this couch. yeah, i need a house with a different view.
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the narrative that is we create to sell stock, price earnings, right, discounted cash flow, those are all subjective we just have been told by wall street that the lower the price earnings ratio against your growth rate then that's an indicator the stock is going to do great things. or in terms of asset valuation that doesn't necessarily hold in a digital environment in the same way it did in the past. >> a great chat with mark cuban on the show yesterday talking about the disconnect between valuations and fundamentals as seen through a gamestop lens joining us to talk more about that is the dean of valuations, nyu professor.
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welcome back always good to have you. >> thanks for having me on >> i want to get your numbers on some of these names in a moment but cuban's point, i think his general point was that equities at this point are a tool to trade or for yield and that there's really no interest in equity owners in looking at true fundamentals he thinks it might be an outdated way of looking at that asset class. what do you think? >> markets have always been a good mix of traders, people who care about price and what happened to price, and people who care about value each group needs the other they need a sense of balance markets get into trouble when one group gets much too large. mark's point is right.
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this is a market driven by traders. any given day we try to explain of any given stock it's more mood and momentum, in the stock of gamestop, than fundamentals there's an underlying reality none of us can run away from, these are shares of companies, of businesses, and ultimately if the numbers are not there, the earnings and cash flow, perception can't keep it at the price you want it to be. that is, i think, the reality we cannot lose sight of >> so you don't think it's a matter of if you can't beat them, join them? >> well, you can join them with a caveat which you need to know when to get off the elevator momentum works until it doesn't. the people who make money on momentum can detect when momentum shifts. if you want to be a trader, be a trader, but be aware of the fact you have to sense when the momentum is shifting that's a very different game f.
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you're good at it you can make a lot of money if you're not, you're going to get slaughtered. >> i don't know if we're doing mark cuban justice, my sense is he was not just describing this moment but he was saying things have fundamentally changed and those measures just don't matter anymore in a digitally driven economy. i disagreed with that and still do despite his arguments we could be entering into a period like exotic mortgages for this decade, let people borrow because the assets are going up. flipping stocks is like flipping houses i'm not for infringing on people's freedoms but when you have these platforms allowing free trades, encouraging on margin regardless of experience,
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is that a responsible system >> i have serious concerns about restricting people from trading. >> and, to be clear, i am not talking about restricting people from trading at all. >> right >> i'm talking about when you have platforms that are not -- not restricting but encouraging, gamefying certain times of behavior it reminds me of when we had when people were pushing exotic mortgages perhaps on a public not suited for those particular structures >> no, i think when people trade they have to remember the reality in investing for as long as investing has been around more activity almost always hurts you. so when you have platforms like this that encourage you to be more active, to trade more, the
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end game is in a sense prewritten you will end up losing this game i don't think it's a good idea to be encouraging people to trade constantly there's no way you can win that game especially when you're trading against people who have better resources than you do you have to pick your game and this is not a game you can win that cat is out of the bag you can't put it back. what is it that will teach people that lesson and, unfortunately, the only way people learn is through pain now the pain comes from having a correction, from losing your money. and it's, in this case, going to be money you can't afford to lose -- tuition money, mortgage money, money you shouldn't be playing with i think, unfortunately, that's the only way people learn. we can tell them, we can lecture them, but it sounds like you're telling them not to do things other people are doing and it's not going to work. so that's the unfortunate truth,
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pain is the only real long-term teacher of that lesson and that's going to play out >> speaking of which, you said you're not changing the way you value companies. so i'll let you tell our viewers where you see fair value for gme right now. >> based on my view of the company i think it's coming off brick and mortar retail stores as an online retailer, as a gaming platform, so my base estimate is about 30 but i can see why you could get to 50, maybe $60 worth of plausible story. when i see $250, there's no way i can get to that value with any plausible story so i think that i went back and looked at the
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wall street valuation, he came up with $40 or $50 once you break through $400 a couple of days ago you're no longer investing, you're trading. you have to be clear what you're trading on which is a company with a broken business model >> we'll see if that company can fix it >> i don't think -- >> professor, always good to have you >> i don't think it's that easy. >> good to see you jon? >> sorry, carl still ahead, the startup being valued at $28 billion ahead of its ipo counting salesforce, amazon and alphabet as investors. is this your chance to get in on the next snowflake well, the founder and ceo will join us in just a few.
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welcome back, everybody. i'm sue herera here's your cnbc news update at this hour. netflix movie "mank" leads with nods in six categories including best drama film and best actor netflix blowing away the other studios with 42 nominations thanks to strong showings by both tv and film offerings the supreme court has canceled today's arguments in a case defending the trump administration's asylum policy and border wall funding. the biden administration says it is changing policy in both areas. president biden among the lawmakers paying their respects to capitol hill police officer brian sicknick who died as a result of injuries suffered during the capitol hill riots. sicknick is only the fifth private citizen whose body has laid in honor at the rotunda morgan whalin apologized
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after video of him shouting a racial slur and cumulus media removed all of his songs from their playlist your up to date. "squawk alley" is back in a minute why don't you call td ameritrade for a strategy gut check? what's that? you run it by an expert, you talk about the risk and potential profit and loss. could've used that before i hired my interior decorator. voila! maybe a couple throw pillows would help. get a strategy gut check from our trade desk. ♪♪
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generation use their power, the same sort of power that we saw this summer with the protests for george floyd to push washington to pass policies that are beneficial to their economic health they've done a great job on social justice but i would like to see them push washington on the economic justice piece of this >> and you will see a lot more on black history month over the next weeks here on "squawk alley. but for more on mcneill's story head to cnbc.com w geico could save you hundreds on car insurance and a whole lot more? hmm. so what are you waiting for? hip hop group tag team to help you plan dessert? ♪ french vanilla! rocky road! ♪ ♪ chocolate, peanut butter, cookie dough! ♪ ♪ scoop! there it is! ♪ ♪ scoop! there it is! ♪ ♪ scoop! there it is! ♪ ♪ scoop! there it is! scoop! ♪ ♪ shaka-laka! shaka-laka! ♪ ♪ shaka-laka! shaka! scoop!. ♪ ♪ choco-laka! choco-laka!...♪
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our next guest says the wall street bets phenomenon is just parler 2.0 founder david sax. >> david, thanks so much for joining us i have to say in addition to running your venture fund you are also coo of pay pal back in the day and have had many various companies since then i want to ask you about your blog post you put up this week entitled gamestop was a warning, elites are weaponizing censorship to keep the outsiders out. i want to know about investing in reddit. tell us about the gamestop short squeeze. >> yeah, thanks, julia
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so what we saw was very interesting. in addition to the wall street bets, their ability to trade was frozen at a crucial moment, their lines of communication were disrupted we saw an organized effort to try and get their message boards taken down it succeeded in theca case of discord but not reddit taking down the discussion board of wall street bets. it's a good example of the slippery slope we're on where three weeks ago censorship was fine on the grounds of preventing an insurrection i get that now we're using it as a weapon to stop outsiders from communicating on a trade that i'm very concerned about continuing to be on the slippery slope and where it goes from here
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>> these are companies that are enforcing their terms of service not countries that are censoring. so i'm curious when you talk about this idea of it's shaped by the fact you're an investor in reddit. how does that play into things >> i'm a very small investor in reddit along with 100 other companies. it doesn't affect my decision on this i'm glad they stood up to the censorship in this case. if they doesn't i would be criticizing them first amendment does not apply to private companies we used to have a thing called the town square on public land that you could go and speak up now the town square has been priv privatized it's owned by corporations
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it's been centralized in their hands and they can get together and deny us our free speech rights i wonder how much of a right do we have when big corporations with just take it away without any protections or due process that's what concerns me. >> what i don't get there's a lot of talk about the public square being privatized. the internet is still the internet and people can post whatever they want on their own page and use tools that are not owned and monitored under those terms of service to organize discussion groups. they're choosing platforms like facebook, reddit, like discord, i suppose, because they work better if you want to have that kind of open conversation, the internet still works for that maybe not as well as you'd like it to but don't investors like you fund companies, or ideas -- it doesn't have to be a
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company -- that get around that? >> sure. i was an investor in facebook and i think the creation of these companies was a good thing. what concerns me is the way they're regulating speech now. the first amendment contains a right to assemble. where do people assemble today they assemble online, on the internet, inside these giant social networking apps if you get shout of the apps, what is your free right speech in this country? if you are silenced and ghosted and deplatt formed, you don't have a free speech right >> it doesn't cover the right to assemble on private property, though i think that would be the point. you can't come to my house and assemble or into my business in violation of the terms i set up for my business and say that it's the first amendment, right? >> no, but there are cases in california of protesters protesting on the private land
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of shopping malls and the courts upheld the right to do that. there's a supreme court case which basically said the state cannot deny access to social media on the part of certain criminals. i think there is some legal justification for saying that big tech companies shouldn't be able to shut people out without any due process of law at all. >> i guess, david, the question is if you're going to have regulators tell tech companies how to manage the platforms they're building on this free speech notion, what happens when they tell tech companies how to manage other elements of their business it sort of flies in the face of classic libertarianism >> i find it suspicious so many liberals are now acting because they like the results of these censorship decisions we know that monopolies have to be regulated i'm not talking about small sites.
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i'm talking about gigantic internet companies that are monopolies, the googles and apples and amazons and facebooks and especially when they come together and make the exact same decision at the same time. that's like acting like a c cartel i call it a speech cartel. if all these companies tomorrow together and deplatform you at the same time, how can you not say that's not an infringement on your rights i don't want big tech to have all the power. >> i'm curious what your perspective on this push that's bipartisan to revise section 230 which would certainly impact facebook and reddit. what would you advise to regulators as they evaluate that >> yeah, i think it's a great question and i think the reason there is bipartisan support for this is precisely because of the dynamics i'm describing. nobody is happy with big tech
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having all the power and i would take a look at section 230. i've written a blog post about it if you have monopolistic power in the market, you can't just summarily deny people their free speech rights. there's precedence and common carrier regulation that basically says you cannot deny people access to essential infrastructure based on their viewpoints i would like to see these big tech companies be prevented from viewpoint discrimination, right? we have a saying in this country you shouldn't be able to discriminate against people based on their race or their creed. and i think creed should apply to your viewpoint. we can't disjust allow discrimination on this basis. >> interesting point there i want to ask you another regulatory question, but this about the kind of market volatility we've seen in stocks such as gamestop we had amc, also, that chart up
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recently and that trading driven by the conversation on reddit. today janet yellen has called this interagency meeting to address that market volatility what kind of regulation would you like to see there? >> i've never heard this on message boards when it was the powerful hedge fund. now that we have a new player in the game, it's these outsiders, these reddit kids. they can't be predicted or controlled by the powerful interests and now we're hearing calls for regulation i would say maybe we should be taking a look at this. let's look at what the big hedge funds are doing. they've been manipulating markets for years in order to drive down the price of companies of their stocks after they've taken a short position that should not be allowed >> i might argue they've been playing both ends of that not
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just driving things down the hedge funds are out to make a buck back to section 230 reform because it is a bipartisan issue. how do you suggest threading the needle where some would say if you take away some of those protections companies are more likely to be more strict about the contents and viewpoints allowed? that you can't have it both ways >> i agree i think if you did a straight repeal it would be a disaster for that reason. corporate risk aversion would cause the companies to take down everything that posed any liability risk whatsoever and so it would backfire and you would get more censorship. we have to be careful about how to modify section 230. amend it not end it. >> a final question about your investing outlook. kraft ventures has an impressive portfolio. you announced another investment
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today. tell us where you see opportunity right now. >> the truth of the matter is i invest in private companies i plan on holding for at least a decade i look at high frequentry trading and think it's nuts. the outsiders should have the same opportunity as the insiders i try to invest in companies that will be great ten years from now we announced scratch pad it's a great example of what i call bottom up sass. in a bottom up way and spreads virally throughout the company that's what i did a dozen years ago with yammer and i'm still investing in that thesis >> interesting stuff we're so glad you joined us today, david, and i hope you'll come back and talk to us again soon really appreciate it >> anytime >> great discussion, julia i thank you for that, our julia boorstin keep your eye on spotify today
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hit a two-month low. did surpass the 150 mark crushed on that wider than expected loss. citi did downgrade to sell t-mobile is now america's largest and fastest 5g network. and to celebrate, we want everyone to unleash 5g speeds in more places. right now, every current and new customers can get a free samsung galaxy s21 5g. just bring in a qualifying device to trade. switch to t-mobile and save up to 20% every month vs. the other guys. the leader in 5g coverage. the fastest 5g speeds. the best value in wireless. and a free galaxy s21 for everyone. only at t-mobile.
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this year. joining us now first on cnbc is databricks founder ali ghodsi. ali, great to have you help the viewer understand -- i mean, we've seen how hot this cloud data space is. we all remember the snowflake ipo late last year, but where do you fit within this ecosystem? you've partnered with snowflake at times, sifting and analyzing data at a massive scale is so important. give us the elevator pitch on your story >> yeah, we really enable enterprises to take this massive amount of data that they have on what's called data links in the cloud and do ai, machine learning, predictions on it. it's much more focused on the ai side of things >> and you have investors like amazon, which is also a frenemy to many in the data space. as you navigate this how do you think about operating on these platforms but staying arms length enough that you get to survive? >> great question.
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basically what we do we have a different strategy we've cracked the code on how to take this massive data set that's already sitting on amazon, things like s3 or azure, and we figure out how to do machine learning on it directly where it sits so you don't have to copy it over to, say, a data warehouse. therefore, we're sort of really in cooperation with them. cooperation with them whereas many other vendors they ask you to move that data somewhere else in which case you end up in a more competitive situation with the vendors. >> tell us about the environment for raising capital. a billion dollars is still a lot of money despite everything that we're hearing about valuations and what not over this -- these past few months during the pandemic and the resulting focus on transformation, data center transformation and cloud, how has that influenced the conversation and the amount of money that you are trying to raise and able to raise? >> the interest levels have just been crazy
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frankly, we were sort of pushed and first we said we'll raise 200 and we upped it to 500 and at the billion we just drew the line and said we're not going to raise anymore and i think there was $2 to $3 billion investment in this round. for us it was a strategic partnership with the vendors and they'll invest with databricks for many years to come and we have to raise money because some clearing house demanded it [ laughter ] >> right on topic, ali the question then is it is certainly a great problem to have what does it is a absay about yr climate. >> it lets you in private markets get the benefits of ipo without ipoing, right? you get to raise massive amount of capital that will support you. frankly, you can provide some liquidity to your employees and
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as this shows, you also get the pr so, you know, so i'm not in a hurry to go public it will definitely happen at some point for databricks. in fact, there are some things that you can't so easily do if you're public. >> yeah. it does sound, though, if i made you choose between the traditional ipo path and you sound like the direct listing, you think, makes the most sense theoretically over the long term >> i think all options are on the table for us we're evaluating it and we're looking at other companies that are trying the different options and seeing how it plays out for them i think there are pros and cons. i think there are advantages to the ipo where frankly, you're given a discount to the investors that are coming in and that means something relationshipwise with investors and on the other hand, you're giving up more dilution that you don't need to do in direct listing so we're evaluating all options. >> ali, andy jassy over at amazon is taking over as ceo
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mid-year he is the first mover, kind of the founder of aws within that organization what do you think is the significance of that for this cloud-driven time that we see ourselves in now >> yeah. i mean, first of all, i think andy's awesome he was personally involved in this investment in databricks. i think he's going to be a fantastic ceo. it also shows how transform tiff cloud computing will be, that they're picking the ceo from the cloud computing sort of company to lead all of amazon.com. i don't think people realize how big machine learning a.i. will be for all enterprises and basically for all economic activity on the planet and say in the next decade or two. i think very few people really realize that and this ceo change is partially a testament to that. >> finally, ali, i want your take on what we're seeing right now in the public markets. we at cnbc have talked to the retail investor and really tried to talk directly to the retail
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investor at core for years and technology has affected the levels at which the retail investor is able to participate in the success of companies to sort of invest and believe in that where do you think the healthiest place is that we could head in that from here >> well, i think it's great. i think it's great that we're democratizing access to these markets. everyone can participate in them, and i think, you know, it also keep, you know, executives like me honest so you have to make sure that you actually are bringing everybody along, so i think it's great. i don't know to what extent it will influence companies with bigger market caps >> all right ali ghodsi, the founder and ceo of databricks, thank you for being with us. >> thank you great interview. watch ea today they did raise their annual sales forecast this morning. it wasn't enough for the market, though
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the stock's getting dinged on some -- as investors did anticipate some stronger results. you can see the shares down 6.5%, about a two-week low "squawk alley" continues in a moment it used to be that brainstorming required a whiteboard and squeaky markers, but when you have devices that let you collaborate in real time from anywhere, the future works better. microsoft surface devices with teams, orchestrated by cdw enable employees to stay productive when working together, with high-quality audio-visual features designed for natural collaboration. so your team always captures every detail. microsoft and it orchestration by cdw. people who get it.
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half years and have been involved in all of our businesses and i've learned to never say never about anything if you had told me -- first, if you had told me 18 years ago that we would be -- you know, i was coming to amazon as a books-only retailer at that point that we would build a technology infrastructure platform and we'd have a $7 billion revenue run rate after nine years and be the clear segment leader, i would have said well, are we just going to get into something other than books? >> yeah, and now five-plus years after that they've dwarfed that revenue run rate that's amazon's incoming ceo andy jassy with me back in 2015. carl, if there's anything i draw from those conversations with andy jassy, he's highly pragmatic. he is very consistent and, you know, a lot of executives talk
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about focused on the long term at amazon they do it to a degree that's kind of fanatical and that doesn't always lead anywhere, but it's based on the principles of what they believe is important a lot of these tech giants, john, have mads out of having management practices that some would say border on the eccentric. netflix is another example, but it will be fascinating to see how jassy takes control of other part of the business and other silos advertising revenue up 64 is accelerating from 49 in the prior quarter. so it's going to get very interesting. >> they do have a deep bench, and i expect they will continue to draw on that for running those businesses. >> i want to mention snowflake because we just had databricks on take a look at that stock. it is up 3.5% showing how important data and cloud continue to be in this market. remember that ipo from months ago in the mid-200s and it's
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still doing quite well, carl >> yeah. you also want to watch kohl's and cowan does upgrade talking about the company benefiting from the re-opening and the sephora partnership. it's gotten an upgrade and that's a 7% move and not quite to the highs of 49 and change of a couple of weeks ago. by the way, guy, reuters with the flash headline, gm saying that the chip shortage will impact production in 2021. we'll watch that let's get to the half. >> carl, thanks so much. welcome to "the halftime report ". i'm scott wapner the next catalyst for stocks now that big techs are in the books what will drive your money in the months ahead we'll discuss and debate that with the investment committee, joe teranova, pete najarian, and richard sapperstein, high tower treasury partner cio and barron's top 100 investment advisers and michael farr, good to see everybody let's go to the wall
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