good morning

it's 11:00 a.m. at ibm headquarters in new york and 11:00 a.m. on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ ♪ in the white room with black curtains there's a station ♪ ♪ >> welcome to "squawk alley. i'm jon fort with carl kwinltial and deer are a bosa. still ahead the ibm's of cleveland clinic and ibm join us on the heels of their new partnership of health innovation and two big funding round for two up-and-coming caps we'll talk with the ceos of dapper labs and cameo. we'll start with amazon and that union vote getting a lot of attention, and,

you know, deirdre, i've been thinking about this, walmart itself has resisted union efforts for a long time so maybe it shouldn't surprise us that amazon coming up on that number two retailer position is resisting, and i'm skeptical in a way of both sides of this. i'm skeptical of tech's outsized powered over labor during this phase in the economy, and i'm skeptical of traditional unions fitness to effectively advocate for workers in this economy. i mean, yes, wage pressure is important, but education, retraining we just had boston dynamics on showing that robot that's going to be replacing a lot of what these workers do in warehouses if the unions play this wrong, workers will end up losing >> john, i'm sensing an on the other hand segment coming up from you good way to paint both sides of that i couldn't help it you know, it's a really good question one that i've asked myself a lot

over the last few months how does amazon's quite aggressive anti-unionization tactics measure compare to that of other big, you know, players like walmart? i read something this morning, guys, that was really interesting. it was a new report from nbc news, and it found out that the number of charges filed with the nlrb, the national labor board, against amazon has more than tripled during the pandemic. at least 37 charges filed. for walmart that number is eight. for jbs, the meat pros sessioning plant the number is nine, so there is something different going on here, and i think that's one of the biggest questions coming out of this, carl, is there going to be a domenie eschneck are we already seeing this because no doubt warehouse workers around the country are looking at what's happening in bess america alabama. the vote is started to be counting today and thinking what can we do? should we take action? >> yeah. i'll be waiting for results. we're not going to get it any time soon but obviously it will be an enormous story when we do get the result

that's where we'll start this morning. jill carlson joins us today, principal and slow ventures. talk about, jill, what they are calling sort of a watershed moment in u.s. labor relations i hate to ask you, if you have a guess as to how this vote goes, but i wonder if you do. >> you know, i don't have a guess on how the vote goes we'll have to see how that plays out over the coming days but i think you're spot on in terms calling out that this is a larger commentary on where we are as a country right now it's inequality exacerbated in particular over the last year throughout the pandemic, and also a commentary on where we are in tech. you know, it's no coincidence that amazon is coming up excess youth any i would actually say relative to walmart and some of the other large players and, you know, you look at this playing out across deliveroo, an amazon-backed company and investors are skipping out on that cue to how the service has

been treating drivers. you look at uber and lyft drivers looking to overturn prop 22 in can. all of these dynamics are, again, a commentary on where we are as a nation and where we are in tech and the scrutiny that that's coming up >> so if you are an entrepreneur who is as good operating its scale as bedsos and its team, how do you think about unionization over the long term? is it truly a drag on innovation and efficient circumstances or if given the dynamics the macro dynamics that you just laid out, is it sort of an accepted cost of doing business now? is that, do you think -- is that how amazon is viewing the next 15 or 20 years of labor relations? >> you know, my guess is that it's the latter. we've seen the narrative around the gig economy shift very meaningfully from this narrative of it empowering workers and being real on the side of labor

to these companies now are big and powerful now that now have that narrative is turned around and there is going to be a dynamic here to stay and that they will have to confront and deal with. you know, what's interesting to me though is while we're seeing investors have a backlash against these companies, we're yet to see that really playing out on the level of consumers and users, and so, you know, i think that there will be a question there as to whether these companies can ride this out in such a way that they deal with the investor backlash over the short term, but their margin profiles and the underlying dynamics of the business eds themselves can persist and the investors will just have to come around eventually. >> jill, that is such a good point. i'm glad you bring it up is what has sort of been the reaction from the investor community? i think i read three amazon notes yesterday from brokerages. the first thing i did was search for the mention of union

i think there was one mention. it just feels like investors don't really think that this union vote in alabama has the ability to really threaten amazon's efficiency, the efficiency that made it the number one e-commerce player in the country. are they sort of complacent? are they ignoring the effects, or do you think that this is just a real long, slow process that ultimately isn't going to go anywhere? >> i think that those investors are probably looking at the longer term and they are looking at, you know, the ability of these the big now bell weather tech companies to ride out the storms you look at the controversy around facebook, not just around cambridge analytica but also accusations of workplace mistreatment and by contractors, et cetera, and facebook came back from this guns blazing, no issue, and so you have this kind of split among the investor community of some investors looking at the more short term

and intermediate term again with the deliveroo ipo there is a real investor sentiment issue there, but then you also have investors taking the other side of that trade and saying, you know, what these companies have the ability to ride this out and we're in this for the long term. >> jill, when it comes down it though, these are the two biggest employers in the u.s., and they are battling not so much for in-store brick and mortar dominance but for logistics dominance and connection to the end user, and it seems like no matter how you look at it, the clock is ticking on the value of warehouse work by human beings, so even if the unions win, part of what they have got to figure out is how to improve the long-term prospects for that worker in that blue commerce demographic that's a cog in the logistics machine i hear about wages, but wages will not be the saving grace

here, right? >> their it comes down to so much more than, that and i think that it's a great point. you know we for so long have talked about this technology, these technology companies as being these miracles of software and the internet, you know, that's what enabled the margin profiles to look like what they do, and there's this reckoning happening right now, that underneath all of that it's come down to cheap labor, you know. you could call it exploitation in some cases, and i do think that there is at least in the short term a reckoning happening here again to me it all comes back to whether or not consumers actually start to care about that, not just investors over the short-term . >> the consumer voice to your point has become really powerful in the last few years. >> exactly. >> jill, stay with us, because robert frank is with us to set up our next topic which is catching up with the crypto investor who bought the nft that we talked so much about a few

weeks ago. hey, robert. >> the man known has been medic coven, and he said in his first tv interview that he was prepared to pay each more for the $69 million bft that cold at kristi's earlier this money and nfts are creating a higher investing world. >> really i was really motivated and ready to go beyond what we paid for it at this auction at this point and i knew that it is that important of a piece. this is a significant piece in artistry, and sometimes these things take some time for everyone to recognize and realized, but i'm okay with that i had the opportunity to be part

of this very important change of shift in how art has been perceived for centuries. >> news also today that the underbidder for that $69 billion beeple is justin sun who is launching a price at over $1 million and a group of major block chain players, egethereum co-founder joe lubin launching a new nft network that they say is 99% more energy efficient than ethereum, energy, of course, being a huge criticism of nft and block chain. the platform they are launching is called palm and it will start with artist damion hirst selling oil paintings he did five years ago and will launch all of them on this new platform, so this speaks to the growth as well as the backlash that we started to see against the environmental impact of nfts and block chain

guys >> robert, great get and wait to spin the story forward appreciate that very much. robert frank jill, i know you thought a lot about this i know you've thought a lot about the supply side versus the demand side and to your large part the supply side is growing fast we're waiting for the consumer now. >> yeah, no, that's absolutely right. you look at the household names that we have creating these nfts, the likes of damian hirst, the nba, the knox "new york times," you name it. it seems like anyone who has ever created any form of contempt or entertainment or media is in the game and then if you look at who is buying these thing, a lot of it still comes back down to sort of what i call the crypto rich. you know, it's people who have made their money in cryptocurrency and there are kind of two ways to look at that on the one hand, you know, it might be the case that the crypto rich are just on the cutting edge and they have seen into this market and they have seen the future in a way that the mainstream has not yet, but then the other way to -- to cut

it might be, oh, is this a little bit self-serving of people who have skin in the game in the crypto industry already, you know, potentially hyping this or pumping this in a way that's maybe not totally authentic. >> yeah. we're definitely trying to sort between the two, jill. we're talking to dapper labs later on in the prarnlg the company, of course, behind nba's top shots, and they just raised the financing round valuing the company at more than $2.5 billion. i wonder what do you think is this the top or just the beginning. will we see a proliferation of startups serving the nft market? >> i'm optimistic. i think, you know, in any marketplace it's all about sort of winning or bootstrapping with one side of that market and getting that flywheel going, and i think that it gives me a lot of hope going actually that we

esolved what i would have guessed actually would be the harder part of getting the attention of these artists and these creators who are well established, who, you know, people accept the things that they create have value, and i think that the other side of that will come i think that the challenges that we're seeing there though is just solving the frictions around buying and selling and holding these things, you know i don't know if you all have gone in and bought nfts yourself but it's not a totally simple set up yet there's some friction there and then just a lot of the -- of the nfts that are getting bought and sold and really hyped are at price points that candidly are not acceptable to the average user, and so i think that those are two things that we're going to have to see solved over time. >> yeah. friction and price. >> yeah. >> jill, so smart. love checking in with you. thanks for helping us start the hour we'll sigh next time. >> great to be here. thanks so much >> as we've been talking, take a

look at shares of wells. got a moment ago a statement from the company on its relationship with archegos saying they had a relationship with archegos and well klattrized over the last week and no longer have any exposure. we did not experiment any losses related to closing out our exposure prices spiking on that news. we'll keep an eye out, jon, along with a notice that the nlrb has begun counting vots on the amazon count. >> we don't expect to get the final tally soap, but we will be watching for it. now after the break my exclusive with the ceos of ibm and cleveland clinic on their new rtrspanehip. we'll be right back. stay with us

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welcome back ibm announcing a ten-year partnership with nonprofit medical center cleveland clinic installing the first retail onsite quantum computer to support advancements in health care joining us now ibm chairman and ceo arvind krishna and the ceo of cleveland clinic. welcome to both of you arvind good to see you again. there are a lot of pieces to this partnership including ai, cloud research tool and quantum and let's start closer in. quantum still needs time to bake bigger picture for investors lacking forward to overall revenue growth at ibm, what does this deal represent

and what do you see customers and life sciences demanding? >> look, this deal is all about our partnership with the cleveland clinic to show how these technologies, hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing in the near term can all bring great benefits to health care. as we all know, i think covid-19, jon, has shown us that science can really help bend the curve and the advancements, for example, and the vaccine this seen what can be applied to science to get down. use these technologies of artificial intelligence, cloud and high-performance computing we definitely hope that what used to take ten years can be done in one year and what used to take hundreds of millions of dollars can be done with perhaps is million to so million and these advances then if you work on together with the cleveland clinic, we do the computation and the computer science and they do the medicine we hope to take those learnings and go into other climbs and be

able to apply those. that's the whole goal here, jon, and that's what we believe we'll get done. >> doctor, the partnership overall with ibm has been long, long term. you two have been working together for a long time talk to me about watson, what you learned from that, the degree to which you're still using it and how that plays into this new phase of partnership. >> we have a long-standing partnership with ibm that's true on a number of different levels. they are tri-state partner when it comes to our information infrastructure across the entire cleveland clinic, both here in the united states and abroad we partnered in initial phases with watson and there were many learning experiences from using watson with you this is a completely different and separate deal. we're naming it discovery accelerator as arvind

appropriately described. what we're going to be use sag high-performance cloud infrastructure, ai knowledge that ibm will bring in partnership over cleveland clinic so that we can aggregate, analyze and put the data that we see as important here in clinical research so we can advance the medical field faster >> doctor, how do you measure the value that you're receiving from a technology partnership like this? i mean, how clear is it and how measurable >> it is -- it is clear and it is measurable. first of all, i think it has -- the partnership has two parts. one is that it's pertinent for what we need today in our conventional research, and i would like to sayconventional research in the 21st century is highly dependant on our computational ability, and it's highly dependant on infrastructure to analyze a massive amount of data

as we all know data and health care has exploded and our ability to analyze it is crucial for the rapid advancement of this discovery, so then we're also, the other part of the value for us is to be at a cutting edge of a technologies that have a huge promise for the future and that particularly relates to quantum computing, and lastly our partnership here with ibm will add yet an additional dimension, and that's the creation of jobs creation of jobs in a new field that's very relevant for health care future, and that is the field of intersection between information technology and health care. >> arvind, let's talk about quantityup i know it's a favorite subject of yours it's deep in research and it's starting to get to the point where a number of different partners are working on the software that would allow this technology to really get a fast start when the hardware is

there. tell us about where quantum is now, the state of hardware advances and when you expect it to be material to ibm. >> yeah. so, jon, let me help unpack that a little bit part of what we're announcing here is that we're going to install a physical quantum computer at the cleveland clinic it's the first time that we're doing something like this. so it is of major minimum wage or importance to us and to the clinic we believe that over time this is going to allow us to understand the impact of molecules, materials and, of course, we hope that those molecules will form the basis of new drugs and new understanding of interactions in biology next, where are we today what we initially announced is we're going to install a 64 cubic computer and that will allow us to make advances in the software and algorithms that are needed by the reference of the cleveland clinic we also intend in three years,

2023, we announced we have a 1,000 cubic computer and we'll install that i do believe that will help us, jon, gain many commercial advantages but 64 today will allow us to learn on problems that are real but not necessarily yet offering commercial advantages. >> yeah, and that's -- for those listening qbits, not talking about measurements of noah's ark or anything, we're talking about the power of computation inside a quantum computer arvind, over the past couple of weeks, you've shown up in a couple of partnerships, one was at intel talking about the materials as part of their foundry push as ibm continues its research legacy but seeks to transfer that into technology that is growing revenue. what's your take on the better way to do that

what's your approach. >> it's very straightforward, john i've been clear. we're a hybrid cloud and ai quantity and i'll add quantum for come down the road overall they have to allow everyone else to take advantage of these technologies for their businesses so you'll see us announce more and more partnerships you talked about intel and cleveland clinic and i can in shru schlumberger and as we have others invest for their purposes, we get a share the cleveland clinic is about advancing research in health care and the other three are a mixture of using our capabilities to advance a business for them and sometimes for ourselves. as with intel i was actually clear. we also hope that with that partnership we can win the national semiconductor technology center as a pair, and

a consortia and we hope that will be $5 billion to $6 billion over a few years that's an example of how the partnership from intel turns into real revenue. >> and that's a number that i can understand. >> doctor, over the past year, the challenges that covid has posed i think have accelerated some areas where health care providers, life sciences this focused on the technology that they are going to need for the future in what specific areas would you say cleveland clinic has accelerated. what perhaps do you want to see available in the market technology-wise that isn't there? >> what we would like to really accelerate is our new center which we'll name a global center for emerging pathogens and human health the new center will -- has one primary purpose, and that is to use this technology and our ability to understand, analyze and put the data in a function

of finding a better and a faster cures for what is going to become an inevitably a part of our future, and that is an offset of the new pandemic, so that is really why we're so excited about this partnership we believe once we form the center that we're going to be much more prepared, much better prepared to face the challenges in the future and we hope to face the pandemic in ways that is different and better formed and quite frankly will serve our communities here in ohio and in the states and sever our global world better. >> you're leading that interminally and then from a policy perspectivein the unite states, what's top of mind to make that happen in the best way possible >> i think safe reopening. that's number one, and actually with the vaccine rollouts, so thank you to -- to tom, his

colleagues at the cleveland clinic but also all of the health care proadvisers, pfizer, j&j, moderna and astrazeneca i think what they are all are doing is remarkable and it's science over nature and i think that will help us open up and get the going growing again. >> thank you both. i appreciate it. >> thank you still to come on the show, nba top shop-maker dapper labs now valued at more than $2 billion following its latest funding round. the ceo will join us next and ta tlkhings all things nfts. don't go away. ant at walmart, they can buy more plants from metrolina greenhouses so abe and art can grow more plants. so they can hire vilma... and wendy... and me. so, more people can go to work. so, more days can start with kisses. when you buy this plant at walmart.

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digit alt collectibles or nfts, they are the latest investing craze. $69 million for people's art nearly $3 million for jack dorsey's first tweet and then there's top shot which allows for buying and sell and trading nba highlights bringing in $400 million in transactions just since october. the company behind it is dapper labs announcing a massive funding round today led by the likes of michael jordan, kevin durant and more than 30 other athletes, entertainers and venture investors. joining us now first on cnbc

dapper labs' ceo thanks for being with us this morning. >> good morning. thank you for having me. >> now the popularity of top shots has really been incredible over the last few months, but how do you balance supply and demand and there's some degree of scarcity and avoid the junk wax era that trading cards went through when the industry was essentially deemed valueless i read that there's 15,000 identical moments of a series 2 daniel thighs dunk against the grizzlies only differentiated by serial number. why does someone want to pay up when there's so many of those and it's not sort of one of the top moments? >> well, first of all, i mean, thank you for having me on the show i've been a longtime watcher, so it's good -- good to be here you know, in terms of collectibles and digital collectibles the important thing to remember, sometimes it's not just about the one thing but

about the collection as a hole so first of all they might be part of the same hometown or fan of the team and they might think that the player has future potential or they might just be collecting it to -- to fill out their full set, sometimes get extra content that's only available if you have a full collect so, you know, to me the bigger story is top shot in six months has completely changed the fan experience, it's completely changed how active players and athletes get, how directly they interact with the fans and, you know, the -- the fact that these are sort of the first digital collectibles on the block chain, the first time that anyone, a consumer can come pay for something digital and have confidence that they are going to be able to have it. 100 careers from now they can pass it down the generations or they can sell it at an instant on the marketplace, and in terms of sort of how prices are set, it's a completely global, completely transparent

peer-to-peer marketplace and most of that $400 million has been traded between the players for these collectibles so you can tap in there and see the full transparency from the data of manufacture and the whole chain of custody because it's all transparent on the block chain and to collectors that's a completely new concept, and so a lot of these moments because they are historic they are from the first year -- first two years of nba top shot, they have their collectability value as well >> you're certainly seeing a lot of demand and the popularity of top shop means more ref now for the nba and as you said players are trading them and they are taking notice. kevin durant, michael jordan, nfl, mlb athletes participating in the latest round. at some point if momentum continues, do you think that players are going to take no account these nfts sales when they are bargaining salary caps or clarkning agreements? could this really change the finances for pro sport leagues

>> yeah. i really thinking so and it's maybe not just sort of about the finances but it's also a great way for newer players, the rookies, to get to know their nance and for fans to get to know them even off the court, and so we're seeing rookies come to top shot and just get so involved, jump on live streams with players and join private discord rooms and kind of be a lot more accessible than i think anyone ever anticipated, and that's amazing to see. >> i wonder at what point do you expect the demand, the base, the consumer base to widen out beyond people who have a lot of money to spend i mean, trading cards have been, you know, around forever and when does all that equalize, do you think? >> i mean, the reality is it's not that unequal today you can go to nbatopshot.com and

create a package for $99 and we're mayor training scarcity and more than 1.2 million trades have happened between $10 and 50 you could sell something for $1, pay five cents in fees, very few things are just a dollar, but you can find cards for like i said between $10 and 50 bucs so it's much more accessible than high-end cards which need to be authenticated and graded, so on and so forth and the cool thing is because these things are digital over item's authenticity is guaranteed whether it's worth $1 or $200,000 it costs the same amount to sort of verify that it's real and to move it around, and so top shot is already a lot more accessible that's because of the flow block chain. there's no transaction fears

everything is low cost and high speed. it is true that other nft projects are simply lower volume because it costs more to sort of move them around on the block chain, but that's a temporary problem with the infrastructure. it's going to get better. >> top shot has definitely put dapper labs on the map in an important way and i know you're launching ufc, you know, that partnership soon help us understand how the business mold works. is this like the gaming world where when you partner with a big brand you get a lot of attention but you give a lot of profit to them, and then it's important that you build your own intellectual property pace in order to increase your company's value over time? >> well, a couple of things. i mean, you know, we've been at this nft game for a while now. we wrote the original on ethereum and we built crypto kiddies and we have our own

block chain. we've been working on this for several years. you're right that it's like gaming where we're helping the big ips create new products and services, but, you know, the reality is that a lot of the benefit also goes to the consumer, you know when we sell an nba top shot, the primary sale, 100% of it goes to dapper labs and then it's split between our partners and every player gets a piece as well, but then after that the secondary sales, 95% of it is accrued to the players now in terms of how we make money, sort of the long term of dapper labs, we want to bring all kinds of interesting contempt we're going to bring all the best sports leagues but we're working with over a thousand other companies and developers from fortune 5 hundreds to venture-backed companies, startsups like open sea, et cetera, and they will build on this open source platform that we've developed. they can do that without paying us any fees. >> okay. >> we look forward to seeing --

to seeing how that shapes up sorry to interrupt you one more quick question before we have to let you g.users, they have compared top shot to robinhood, not had a very good way, instances where trading was halted and users couldn't trade cards and watched the value of their cards plummet. what are you doing to improve the halts? have you improved it and what portion of money raised recently is going to go to address that >> yeah, i mean, top shot is not -- it's not like ronnedhood in the sense that we're selling collectibles and we're first and foremost dedicated to making sure that that experience is fair for all collectors, so number one, i mean, yeah, we've scaled up the systems very significantly and there hasn't been much down time over the past couple of weeks or so, and, number two, we're very much focused on making sure that every pack drop is fair and people are getting a fair shot at getting these -- getting these collectibles unlike say

sneaker drops and on the marketplace all of the trading is fair, it's complaint. we do heavy compliance checks and make sure that everything is above board. >> right, which has led to a lot of your success. thank you so much for being with us today we look forward to tracking where all of this goes >> later on today, tune into cnbc's at work summit. jon and i will be interviewing some pretty big names including matthew mcconhi, reed hoffman and others, talking about the future of work and a lot more obviously. can you register now at cnbcevents.com/work, and we're back in a moment rance. really? yeah. very proud of that. with smartride® from nationwide, they can get discounts for safe driving. does she get one? mrs. carmichael? safest driver in peytonville. takes a lot of work and effort to be the safest driver in peytonville. what about this guy? with nationwide smartmiles®, the less he drives, the less he pays.

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welcome back celebrity platform cameo is raising $100 million in its latest round, giving the company a cameo's co-founder and ceo, steven galanos. great to have you. so many of us by now have seen on social media somebody posting. it is kind of like the digital version of an autographed picture. it is a individuals yo with somebody saying somebody's name and it is a celebrity people know what is the underlying value cameo has got? something tells me it is more than the video clips. >> thank you for the question. thanks for having me for the talant the value prop is we are helping them become more famous and beloved when you get a cameo from somebody, you like them more than before.

in many ways every video becomes a living, breathing billboard for that artist, comedian or actor and reminds people how great a person they are. on the fan side it is really about spreading love virtually in a year like 2020 where we couldn't see, you know, our parents for mother's day or father's day, you couldn't share graduations or birthdays with those that you loved, cameo is a way to share digital love. that's one of the reasons i think it resonated so much this past year. >> it also seems to me that you're part kind of speaker agency, part event promoter. as you scale this, my understanding is you are planning to have backstage-type of events people get access to so you can get payment from multiple fans at once, and you are also planning to expand the b-to-b aspent. we know companies love to book certain celebrities to speak at events is the potential for you to get maybe that kind of scale of

revenue with those efforts >> look, i always like to say at cameo we are opening the red velvet rope, not just for fans but also for businesses across the country. if you are nike or adidas, you know how to get in touch with your top-tier athletes or actors, but for mom-and-pop businesses across the country they have no way to get to hollywood. in many ways we open the red velvet rope, and that's what we do. >> i have to say, steven, i have gotten a cameo i got loretta switt who loved "m*a*s*h" for my stepfather given the ease of technology, where was the idea pitched and to whom? >> well, we had the idea leaving my grandmother's funeral, of all places, i think where every billion dollar idea ought to happen my co-founder martin was at the time an nfl agent and he had one

client, a guy with the seattle seahawks he told me cash had this big personality but he couldn't find off-the-field endorsement deals. right before that espn had a documentary saying nfl players go broke five years after playing their last game. we were trying to find a great way to help talent and fans connect, but in a way where people like cassius marx of the seattle seahawks could make off-the-field income while becoming a bigger hero to the people that love them. it started with the idea that the selfie was the new autograph. >> steven, good morning. it is deidre i actually bought my first cameo a few weeks ago for my brother, retired leafs player, wendel clark. his reaction, it was priceless, but i have a hard time imagining i would do it again. there was a lot of surprise and excitement, but it is going to be hard to replicate so what can you tell us about the stickiness of cameo

customers? how many are repeat buyers >> look, we have over 2 million customers at this point. the product has an nps in the high 70s, which puts it up there with the iphone as one of the most beloved consumer products on earth most people say that high nps is the number one long-term indicator to long-term customer retention. we're dedicated to building a new suite of products that is not just buying another video, but doing other interactions through our cameo calls product, which is a live meet-and-greet we just launched, our fan product coming out, it is to allow every talent on earth to have a personal relationship with each of their fans. a lot has to do with the new product roadmap that's coming up. >> right steven, last question from me. how are you moving upstream, so to speak you guys are well-known for your roster of, i guess, d list celebrities.

are you attracting more as you guys grow? >> look, i think, number one, i have never believed in a-list, b-list, c-list somebody like wendel clark, he is not on the a-list but for your brother it delighted them every talent has people who they might be the favorite person in the world. for us it is about building relationship, making sure they are having a good time when you look at the names we added last year, cameo is tipping the way tiktok tipped. two years ago you would no have seen justin bieber or j-lo on tiktok, but today if you don't have tiktok it is what are you doing. i think we're at the same tipping point in our business. >> steven, there's so many different directions you can go in with this look forward to see which ones you take

steven, i appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. ♪ ♪ as we head to break, watch the chip stocks, under pressure today. broadcom, the worst performing in snps. the information reports amazon is beefing up its chip-making efforts as it aims to reduce its reliance on oabrdcom we'll keep aneye on that story stay with us we're back in two. some say this is my greatest challenge ever. but i've seen centuries of this. with a companion that powers a digital world, traded with a touch.

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before we go, apple announcing this year's virtual wwdc, that's the worldwide developer conference, is going to kick off june 7th with the tag line "glow and behold. deidre, i think this year's wwdc is especially important because of this move in max toward apple's own chips. they really need to accelerate that to take advantage of, you know, the power that we've seen out of the first offerings there and get people to build directly to that platform i would say we'll see if that happens, but we won't, not at wwdc it will take a while. >> yes so, jon, interpret the glow for us because there's always hints in these announcements, are we finally going to get that long-rumored vr headset, ar glasses? what do you read into that

>> i don't know. not at wwdc. i think they like to focus people on what is actually out there, what they can develop for and drive the ecosystem. maybe it is a vr/ar thing, but probably not the headset. >> yeah, few people know the convention as well as you, jon, so it is a good clue what we might hear later on in the summer overall, financials helping out today. melissa is in for the judge. let's get to the half. >> i'm melissa lee in for scott wapner rising rates up again but not alone. the reopening floundering, small caps getting closer to correction territory, on track to break a five-month winning streak what is working in the market. jenny harrington ceo and portfolio manager. jim lebenthal, josh and pete gentleman theiran. let's check where the markets stand at this hour we have three major averages down, the russell 2000 the rea