steve kovach is here with the story.his is kind of polarizing, mostly because of the reaction i saw the ad i immediately didn't think, my god, humanity is being crushed i did. save the piano >> it was like the dress >> yeah, exactly will i i had the same interpretation, cool, they're showing that the ipad is thin, amazing, they didn't just crush creative tools, but angry birds, arcade machines but, i guess it's like a dark -- >> you have to admit go back to the first ad campaign for the ipod, the colorful sit owet. this ad is no the that >> i understand. it's the weird sonny and cher song, but it shocked me how polarizing this. senator murphy of connecticut was tweeting, saying how upset he was. >> hugh grant is upset about this, all replying to ceo tim cook i get it i understand why this is upsetting to some people, but it's mazing how the interpretation is. this came out 48 hours ago, and it was part of the event they announced the new ipad i thought nothing of it, okay, cool, it's thing. >> apple right now is in the m

steve kovach, thank you so much.ppreciate it very much. >>> all right, we are getting news from mcdonald's, kate rogers has that story. >> some franchisees say a 30% discount for a $5 value meal needs a company investment to be sustainable for the long run. cnbc obtained a copy of the memo to the national owners association, an independent advocate for mcdonald's franchisees, weighing in on the new four for $5 value meal. in it the board writes the fact remains in order to provide the consumer with more affordable options, they must be affordable for owner-operators. mcdonald's vast resources and financial investments are essential to any affordable strategy. bring back the snack packs and drumming up interest for customers with bringing popular drinks from cosmics to franchise stores. it also says, "there is simply not enough profit to discount 30% for this model to be sustainable." mcdonald's declined to comment on the memo. but in the past they said u.s. cash flows are up nearly 50% on average since 2018. last yea

could help in the next cycle in the back half of this year and 2025 for cnbc business news, i'm steve kovachining us now to discuss more is dan yang. >> good morning. >> one concern is the china sales for q1 which is down 19% are the fears rightfully placed or overblown i we have limited visibility in china. >> that's right. we have seen a resurgence from huawei and qualcomm last night resurgence of android premium. that is eating into the apple market share on the other hand, remember apple is entering the earnings with very bad comps. if you remember one year ago, supply chain disruption by the end of 2022 pushed demand into q1 of 2023 this without the numbers are the inflation of the supply chain. >> you are one of the few who puts nuance in it. we rely on data from china we don't have full transparency. a.i. and apple people talk about the need for apple to have a.i. development do you agree with that does there need to be a leap forward for other areas with a.i. proproficiency? >> a.i. is the elephant in the room you have amazon and alphabet and microsoft all giving out pretty good numb

steve kovach joins us with more. >> he is meeting with the elite tech leaders out there.am altman and tim cook and meta ceo mark zuckerberg later this afternoon. he is stopping at the hoover institute at stanford university where he met with former secretary of state condoleezza rice. look at what he posted on social media. no comments from any of the companies over what was discuss in the meetings. we know enough about milei to see why he is embraced by the silicon valley. he is a libertarian and was recently reelected. silicon valley is well known for the libertarian culture. he is promised to open up economic activity in the country after years of isolationist policies. you can't buy an iphone in argentina because of the law that says electronics say electronics have to be made there. he tries to turn argentina into the main tech hub in south america. many of the large tech companies are in the middle of global i investments with a.i. and building data centers all over the world and looking for fresh talent. what is the investment milei wants, frank. >> pictures with t

steve kovach, we'll look for you covering this throughout the day. jason snipe, how about this microsoft? >> yeah, so, you mentioned it, scott. first mover advantage, and i think it's been quiet around their story lately. i think google and meta and amazon have kind of taken the lead in terms of just where the conversation around the market is going. i think a lot of these new technologies are always expensive to start. the focus is going to be on productivity. once productivity increases, you'll see pricing come down on the consumer level and will be immersive for most folks. to generally's point in terms of a.i. and how revolutionary and how productive for all our businesses and enterprise, i think that's where microsoft sits and i think will continue to benefit from the story. >> kevin, you've owned this for a decade. >> we expect a lot out of them. it will be hit and miss. there will be problems in terms of pricing. clearly that's a big number. this will bring surface pros, will bring the hardware. you're putting a button on there, trying to make

our own steve kovach joins us with more on what kboogle has to offer, and is it enough to play with openaie? >> the latest ai features much of what the search janet showed. it won't launch any time soon. when they doing it will only be experimental. their most important product, which is search, will get a revamping called ai overview. they'll roll out to all users next week. it will show a summary at the top of your results page. something you may have seen before. they've been pushing it out to some. sundar pichai said early tests show increased engagement for the newest version of search. >> in general we find it's both overall increasing usage, and when we look at it year over year, it brought traffic to the ecosystem. compared to most of the players, we are prioritizing approaches, which will generate traffic as well. so we are working hard on that. >> in other words, that is exactly what advertisers want to hear. and google says ai overviews will be available to a billion users by the end of this year, but it's not just search, of course, google showed off a slew of performance to it

cnbc's steve kovach filed this report. >> reporter: it is the summer of a.i.ll hear from the three biggest names in tech, google, amazon and apple. we heard from openai on monday. here's the breakdown. openai's event revealed the newest model called gpt-4.0. it is interpret images and voices. no more asking a question and waiting for an answer before you ask another with the assistants li like siri or alexa. and tuesday is google's developer conference expecting more updates to the a.i. model called gemini. the report is we may see a new assistant that sounds similar to what openai showed on monday. then, a week from that, we get microsoft's developer conference on may 21st. expecting a lot of this one to focus on a.i. computers. those are the computers with special processors designed for artificial intelligence tasks. based on the microsoft descriptions, we are expecting qualcomm to launch its first computer chip from the microsoft a.i. pcs. expect more a.i. features in windows 11 and updates to copilot. and the latest is the apple worldwide conference on ju

steve kovach is outside hq in cupertino, california. we set it up, the headwinds versus the tailwinds we'll find out what wins the day. >> reporter: that's exactly it, scott. especially i want to zero in on that china issue you guys were mentioning earlier, and that's, look, we saw the quarter, last quarter, down 13%. expecting it to look similar today. again, it's more than just people not necessarily anyone who wants to buy an iphone buys an iphone. competition is heating up, too you have samsung coming out with a.i. devices you have huawei, showing you the chart here this is showing a 19% drop in iphone sales in the first quarter of this year in china and then look at huawei, up 69%. that is showing us this return of huawei is really having a negative impact on apple and china putting more pressure on them to come up with something with artificial intelligence to tell an a.i. story that they haven't been telling the same way that their peers like google and amazon and meta have been telling. we still don't really know where apple fit

it's going to be a busy day. >> steve kovach, thanks very much. this 'rjuion of the exchange. wee st six minutes away from the fed's decision on interest rates. i will see you on the other side of this quick break. get ready for the countdown to the fed decision. (torstein hagen) in my simple world, there are only three things that matter in human beings. first, they have to be kind. kind. second, they have to be honest. and third, they have to be hard-working. it's very simple. wherever you are in the world, when you come to a different culture, you meet people of very different backgrounds, but you find out that they have the same ambitions and the same fears just like yourself. i'm so sure that travel is good for the world. it's really the best to engage with the locals and the destination. and i think travel helps broaden the human mind and makes us kinder. and that's fantastically valuable. your shipping manager left to “find themself.” leaving you lost. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers q

what were you going to say prior to the report from steve kovach? >> i forgot already. can i weigh in on oracle, though? >> of course. >> okay. i think what's really great about the situation for long-term investors in oracle is that you really have a stock that is on the verge of taking out a new valuation level, but it's not overbought at all. one of the big problems that we ran into in february and march is that there were so many great stories like a.i.-related stories, et cetera, software as a service story, semiconductors, but most of them were, like, at 75 and 80 rsis and, quite frankly, that's just not the case here. so i'm not in the stock, but if i were, i would be sticking with it right now, because i feel as though there's going to be room. so, like the short-term moves, maybe don't pounce on them right away, but this is a chart in an up trend and i like it a lot. >> josh, get in it. this is your type of stock. get in it. i know you. you're going to be in it. >> i think you're going to get 150 on this. >> he was in it. he is in uber which, by the way, jason

so, we'll see how that turns out, too >> all right, steve, thank you >> sure thing. >> steve kovach. and alphabet shares finished the day higher >> yeah. >> i was quite surprised by that, actually more about that they wouldn't be partnered with apple, right? and so, i was very surprised to see that we'll see what they come out with tomorrow. i think it starts at 1:00 p.m., our time i just think, though, that video portion, first of all, i have to think it takes a huge amount of power. >> yes >> huge. what that will do. i mean, it's fairly exciting i hope this is the end of siri which is one of the worst products ever and it's just amazing to me that apple has allowed that to -- so bad -- this is nothing i wouldn't say to a face i do all the time because she's so terrible, but i don't know how they could have allowed it >> i say it to her face all the time we could do it right now if you want this is the point. this is -- i think one of the greatest things for google all of this criticism means, forget the summer of a.i., it's been the year of a.i g google's outperformed microsoft by

draining battery life the reveal coming ahead of the build conference that kicks off tomorrow steve kovach is there, coming to us live from redmond, washington hey, steve >> hey there, mel. yeah, so, microsoft announcing their new generation of pcs ahead of that developers conference, kicking off tomorrow they're calling them co-pilot plus pcs coming from manufacturers like dell, hp, samsung, and microsoft itself they come with a new chip processing on the device, where as before, you needed an internet connection. and microsoft says it ocean%s this crop of a.i. pcs to conference people to upgrade and plans to sell 50 million of them by the end of the year they start chipping next month but the hardware really means nothing without a.i. capabilities on top of that, on the software side, and microsoft co-pilot assistant is getting a number of upgrades on windows, including real-time translation of languages, and recall, that can remember everything you've done on your pc. it will include the latest version of chatgpt, announced just last week, that's coming soon and microsoft took several s

. >>> the microsoft build and developers conference, technology correspondent steve kovach will be in seattle for it. what are we expecting, steve? >> we had two a.i. reveals down and two more to go this week, of course, got the latest from openai and dwogoogle and monday it's microsoft's turn with that build developers' conference, we're expecting new a.i. pcs with qualcomm's first ever pc chip and the software side like new a.i. features in windows and then of course there's copilot, that's microsoft's marquee a.i. assistant, microsoft has been making a big push to sell it to businesses this year, but investors have little clarity on how well it's selling despite all that hype from microsoft. i spent some time catching up with ctos and other execs who decided to buy tools like co pilot to see how it's being received. the answers were picked. no one we spoke to is ready to deploy copilot widely, just testing with a couple hundred employees at a time. they say it's too expensive while they can't quantify the benefit. but not all bad. almost everyone i spoke with said they love copilot

cnbc technology correspondent steve kovach has those details. we'll look ahead to another one in the coming days, but tell us about this. >> yeah, look at that, scott. reddit surging on some actual real news. this is not a meme. reddit revealed a new deal with openai yesterday which allows openai use reddit's data to train its model and will start offering openai tools to users and openai will start advertising on reddit. the deal is similar to one google made with reddit a few months ago and comes as a.i. companies are desperate for more quality data to make their tools smarter and more capable. reddit is a natural place for it full of user generated content with recommendations and opinions on everything from movies to travel tips to the best recommendations for buying your favorite air purifier. also plays into the rivalry we've been seeing between google and openai. search has gotten worse as they stuff more ads into your research and next week google starts rolling out its new a.i. search product, a.i. overview to u.s. users. on the reddit

steve kovach is with us now. steve. >> mortgage rates declined for a third consecutive week. 6.94%, according to data mortgage finance agency freddie mac released thursday. it comes as existing and new home sales fell last month and the number of new housing starts also dropped. >>> 485,000 fidelity customers have over a million dollars in their 401(k) at the end of the first quarter this year, according to the investment giant. fidelity reported an average balance of nearly $1.6 million for those millionaires. but looking at the broader pool at fidelity the average first quarter balance for all 401(k) accounts hit $129,000, up 16% from the first quarter. the median 401(k) balance was $28,900. iphone customers could get up to $349 in a settlement, part of a proposed $35 million settlement on a class action lawsuit, the suit claimed iphone 7 and 7 plus users had audio issues with their devices. but, apple has denied the phones are faulty and did not comment on the settlement. kate, back to you. >> so do you have to

steve kovach joins us now to break down those numbers that's what report was today and that was enough at least initially to push these shares higher yet again. >> yeah. it was up as much as 2% premarket. we thought it was going to close the day in the positive, but look, apple's fortunes might -- in china might be turning around here because the shares pulled back a little bit after rising earlier today after data came out from the chinese government overnight showing iphone sales jumped 52% in april from a year ago. apple's been, of course, struggling in china ever since the pandemic hit, whether from covid related production suts downs or the recent competition coming back from chinese brands like huawei. last earnings report for the march quarter shows china may not be as apocalyptic as counter point had implied this year. going to be pressure on the iphone business through the end of the year, especially for the new model we're expecting this fall which is going to need some impressive ai features to convince people to upgrade and, of course, scott, we're expecting to get our firs

leads me to steve kovach and salesforce.ect in the tech trade has been software, right? it's the area that has not done all that well. we'll see what salesforce delivers. what can you tell us? >> you nailed it, scott. the question for salesforce and other enterprise software companies, where is the ai money coming? we've seen ai sales flow to microsoft, google and amazon and nvidia on the chip side. not much happening with ai software sales. that goes for microsoft too. especially true in the enterprise, salesforce has been hyping its ai platform called einstein since last year. we know the story behind salesforce' turn around last year following those job and cost cuts. ai monetization story, that one less clear for investors. commentary from marc benioff about sales and its data cloud, which it says secures customer data for its ai tools. last quarter he said a quarter of its deals under or over 1 million buy into data cloud. it's still tiny, but salesforce meanwhile has been down 12% over the last three months, scott, und

steve kovach skrojoins us with e >> frank, this is the first launch of ipad models since october of 2022 we have been seeing ipad sales fall for the last four of five quarters because if apple doesn't make new ipads, they don't sell new ipads. this is a small chunk compared to the mac but this time it is important to the top line revenue growth in the june quarter when apple reported last week as they guided to the low single digit growth for top line revenue after falling 4% in the previous quarter a lot of that will come from ipad which will grow again because of the launch today by double digits. that is a big contributor to the top line frank. >> steve, apple talked about a.i. laptops and possibilities there. will we see a.i. ipads today >> i would be surprised if a.i. did not get a mention. you have to keep in mind, frank, this is a hardware event that said, the last hardware they released, the macbook air in march, they framed it as a a.i. computer. i would not be surprised if there is a soft mention of artificial intelligence. maybe it can run things faster the real a.i. announcem

is openai and that is set to steal the spotlight later on today steve kovach joins us with more on theeason and openai steve. >> the summer of a.i., dom it will start this week with the three biggest names in tech with google, microsoft and apple about the latest plans that's not before we hear from openai, the company responsible for forcing the giants to orient around artificial intelligence here is the breakdown. at 1:00 p.m., openai with the virtual event online sam altman said it is not a search engine. the information reported over the weekend will likely be a new vert virtual assistant. tomorrow's google developer conference is more about gemini. the report states we may see a new assistant to what is similar to what openai is revealing today. and on may 21st, microsoft will focus on a.i. pcs. those are the computers designed for a.i. tasks based on microsoft's descriptions of the sessions, we are expecting qualcomm to launch its computer chip for microsoft's a.i. pcs expect more features in windows 11 and more updates to copilot there will be more on the developerer developerer

steve kovach is joining us >> yeah, apple store employees in new jersey will vote whether to become therd retail location to unionize it has been a while since we've seen such a vote there appeared to be an effort around the unionization. but it plenty of labor organization activity still going on including several complaints of unfair labor practices to the nlrb and just this week where they said apple illegal hely stopped employees from itdistributing union activy flyers and tomorrow the apple storehels from distributing union activity flyers and tomorrow the apple storeely from distributing union activity flyers and tomorrow the apple storely o distributing union activity flyers and tomorrow the apple store will vote to authorize a strike. and when all this organizing started over two years ago, apple raised the starting rage to $22 but they said it was part of the annual performance review.age t $22 but they said it was part of the annual performance review.we to $22 but they said it was part of the annual performance review but also a time when the extra market was tight and so the

steve kovach, you go first. >> salesforce after revenue miss and expectations on guidance. not to mention no clear plans for intelligence. and it was the first miss since 2006. so what is going on here? they say weak overall demand for services and revenue misses. and then the lingers revenue question. they are not showing any direct sales on the ai. and he said all the ai models that we talk about so much, they are already commodities and really just don't matter that much. instead the corporate data is more important. and guess what, salesforce generates oodles of that kind of data. here is whe said last night. >> we can take the information and action that to create another level of capability for our customers. so that means that they are sell services to their customers that before they had tremendous white space with. >> they talked about the data cloud which is the named ai product at salesforce and they said 25% of deals over a million bucks included data cloud purchases but no real details there. and that was the same stat they gave a quarter ago. >> so wall street

let's get to steve kovach with more on what to expect. >> the summer of a.i.nference season starting tomorrow for google, microsoft and apple. first, we hear from openai that's, of course, the startup that forced those giants to reorient their businesses around artificial intelligence. it's a virtual event happening today at 1:00 p.m. eastern you can watch it on youtube. here's what we're expecting, though sam altman on x last week knocked down the reuters report. openai was going to launchits own search engine to compete with google and others instead the information reported openai will develop a new assistant like a chatgpt, alexa or siri. and it can interpret images, sound or text. altman said in his teaser, it feels like magic to me seems like openai is trying to front-run the announcements from the three giants i mentioned earlier. the verge reported google may show off an improved assistant powered by its gemini a.i. model. "the new york times" reported on friday apple's siri is going to get a huge generative a.i. update as well plus bloomberg reported

steve kovach has the numbers to wat watch. >> reporter: the big number is the greater china sales.a sore spot for apple. sales have been plummeting in the country thanks to weak demand and competition from huawei why does this matter china contributes up to 20% of the annual sales and apple has yet to find another market to make up for the downturn there it is trying to grow in india and indonesia and vietnam. apple sales in china have not improved with iphone sales down 19% for the first three months of the year in china overall smartphone sales have increased. this is similar to the apple downslide in 2019. the anticipated a.i. announcements could help boost sales in the next iphone cycles in the back half of the year and into 2025. frank. >> all right let's dive deeper into apple with the chief investment officer of albian financial group. jason, good morning from london steve talked about the sales down 19% in q1 how concerning is that for snu. >> it is a concern of misses in china with the competition that is one of the things that apple is facing in the area and as you noted,

speaking with our steve kovach, tim cook did not provide guidance, but said sales would grow in the second quarter. if you remove the $5 billion from the rltsesults, we would h grown this year on a year on year basis. mac sales were up 4%, but below the high watermark set in 2022. services is bouncing back. sales rising more than 14% to $24 billion. when it comes to china, sales were down year on year, but not as bad as feared. what about a.i.? nothing material to note. cook teased the a.i. reveal is coming up soon. frank, shares are up 6%. >> pippa, thank you very much. let's talk more about apple's buyback news and broader markets. joining me now is the senior portfolio manager and strategist at federated hermes. steve, good morning. i want your reaction to the apple earnings report. the huge buyback and also raising the dividend. how is this impacting the markets today? >> it reiterates why some subset of the magnificent seven has been so strong. you have cash flow generation. that cash flow generation allows you to do good things. for example, in a quarter where your sales are down a b

the stock slightly higher today on reports iphone sales in china maybe weren't as bad as feared steve kovach is here with that story. >> it looked like they were about to erase those losses for the year premarket it's fallen off its highs. apple's fortunes in china might be turning around. shares are up following data out from the chinese government overnight showing iphone sales jumped 55% in april from a year ago been a laggard behind its peers and lost its most valuable company spot to microsoft. apple's been, of course, struggling in china ever since the pandemic hit, whether from covid related production shutdowns or the more recent competition coming back from chinese brands like huawei last earnings report for the march quarter showed china may not be as apocalyptic as counter point applied throughout the year sales down 8% that quarter, still bad but not the collapse some analysts thought was going to happen. it was an improvement from the 13% dip in the december quarter and tim cook said during that report iphone sales in mainland china actually grew. today's report seems to be buil

steve kovach, tell us what to look for. >> take two, not immune.s of layoffs that basically every major company. they cut 5% of the workforce, about 600 people. it is ll so they can focus on bigger, moneymaking gains and of course that means grand theft auto. there have been stock fluctuations over the quarter, based on really thin rumors. that grand theft auto 6, the next game, could be delayed, though the company is sticking with its 2025 window. we will pay attention to more precise timing on when it could launch and also could show up in the guidance as take two wraps up its fiscal year 2024. >> think you for that. less than two minutes to go, mike, so what do we need to turn our attention to now? fed to speak doesn't seem to move the needle too much. rates, we will keep an eye there. >> you are right, the fed rhetoric is now more the same. i think it is about the pace of economic growth. it is not really about every wiggle in yields. i mentioned the index. it is pretty much as negative as it has been since 2022 or 2023, meaning we are decelera

. >>> now, steve kovach. we are looking at roblox.as much as earlier. 29% premarket. this is really about the guidance missing expectations in a significant way from the quarter and full year. i caught up with what is going on here in the report. they talked a lot about decreased engagement behind a lot of this and being behind the guidance. he told me that it is more of a technical problem then it is about something about people not wanting to play or spend money. last year, they basically shifted a bunch of features for roblox that don't perform well on android phones , which is the biggest part of the user base. they say they fixed it and he told me they fixed it a few weeks ago. it is performing better. there is a little bit of optimism that they are maybe being a little too conservative in guidance on the call. they want to provide cushion in the guidance to see if the new trend pans out for the rest of the quarter. for now, it is taking a hit down 22%. >> good perspective. thanks. >>> need some perspective on what to expect. >>

steve kovach joins us from seattle with more. steve? >> reporter: hey there, kelly.eah, we're here at the tail end. right now we have microsoft cto kevin scott on stage, giving a lot of demos of chatgpt 4.0. that is, of course, the new language model that chatgpt, open ai launched last year, the one that lets you have these natural conversations. we're also looking, friend of your show, khan, from khan academy is on stage talking about the tudoring benefits. and this is really the big theme of this developer's conference is giving developers these -- the latest and greatest tools to run on microsoft's azure cloud, like i have been saying for so long. that is where microsoft sees the most financial benefit so far from all this artificial intelligence boon. these developers in the room, about 4,000 of them down stairs from where i'm sitting, they're the ones who are beginning to be using this technology, to groundwork of these open ai dr of these ai tools in order to make their own apps and stuff building off of these systems. so right now we're getting that example of

immediately steve kovach with apple and me with rivian, we started running this up the tree didn't getny take at all i don't put any credence to this but it does raise the question, is apple completely done when it comes to the auto companies? remember, they have essentially shut down project titan. they're not going to plan on building a car adam jonas with morgan stanley brings up a great point in a note he put out today and essentially says this, although apple has confirmed it has nixed its apple car project, project titan, it does not mean there may not be any number of areas where apple's broader ai efforts could encompass the automotive value chain. is it possible that somebody in rivian in asia is having a conversation with somebody at apple? you bet. i would hope they're doing that. that's what auto companies are doing with tech companies every single day so, this report by itself, no reason for the stocks to move higher, though you can bet that when rivian reports its results after the bell and during the analyst call, r.j. will get this question >> for rivian's case as well,

billion to the company's market cap the conference call just kicking off at the top of the hour steve kovach's got all the details. hey, steve >> hey, melissa. so, yeah, top and bottom line beats for apple. and let me go over the other numbers here that are really driving the stock up higher. the dividend increase, up to 25 cents a share now. and like we've been talking about, the biggest buy-back ever in corporate history $110 billion and then, some more numbers here by the segments. iphone revenues were slightly missed expectations, $45.96 billion. by the way, that's down 10%. services, though, that's the bright spot in this report here, that was a slight beat, up nearly 14% i talked to tim cook about that one, he said that's driven by app store and other services and also increase in subscriptions that they have. greater china is down 8% that is an improvement, quarter over quarter, it was down 13% in the december quarter guidance, so, breaking with tradition a little bit here, when i talked to tim cook, he gave a little bit of color about the guidance he said to expect june quarter revenue

let's bring in our contributor michelle caruso-cabrera and also steve kovach.oes he want to get out of these meetings? he has a polarized society. the pay so he peso cut 50%. what is his goal? >> he loves technology and wants arrgentina to be the silicon valley of latin america or israel of latin america. wants to burnish his image. he is getting very, very impressive meeting which is many other foreign leaders would like to get. and he would also love to get more foreign direct investment into argentina because he desperately needs the dollars to be invested to address a lot of the issues that you are talking about and things that he is trying to change about argentina. >> steve, can he get what he wants? >> he might be able to. he also met with sam altman and they posted pictures on x. but let's look at what is going on with the ai world right now. we're seeing microsoft especially just make these huge investments all around the world, billions of dollars being invested in ai data centers. part of that is to protection against china, part of that is cultivati

steve kovach.i and talk about executive moves and big hires across the generative ai startups this week including at the two biggest darlings in the space, openai and january droppic. we have more in on what this means we'll see next out of these startups. >> i've been following your conversation, microsoft has grown up, but these gen ai startups are starting to grow up now. also going a little more corporate. number of the most well funded highly regarded startups, they're moving from an all-out focus on building that core technology to turning that technology into products and with a sense of urgency, i should add. there's anthropics new head of product focused to getting tech into users' hand and finding business uses. there's french open source darling mistral hiring a new gm for north america who has held chief revenue officer roles at a number of other tech companies. and answer engine, tyler mentioned this, perplexity it added three advisers who held senior roles or helped build at uber, and

front-running the likes of alphabet and its own developers conference tomorrow here to discuss, steve kovacheirdre bosa you monitored this event >> one big announcement coming out, scott, this is the newest model, the flagship model from openai called chatgpt 4.0. that stands for omnimodal. what this means is it can have a conversation with you, sort of like you and i and deirdre are having a conversation now. you don't have to ask one question, then wait for the answer and ask another question. you can talk or interrupt it if it's not giving you the answer you want or you changed your mind you can kind of ask it again and it has what's called memory, which means it can remember the previous questions you've asked and add on to the conversation that way it's also what's called multimodal, which is a term you're going to be hearing a lot as we hear these a.i. announcements coming from google and microsoft and apple in the coming weeks that means it can also interpret not just text but voice, of course, and images and kind of collate all that stuff and give you the answers you need so, really

software names contributing to those declines and steve kovach has the names and the numbers for us >ok at the tech software etf down 7% on the week so far and it is on pace for its third negative month in a row. and some notable individual laggards that are components of that etf, sales fosforce and get lab. and mongo db down 25% so far after trimming its fiscal year guidance though it is not a pure software name, look at dell shares down more than 17% now, following its earnings report, even though its a.i. server business grew 42%. the problem, no profits and all that sales growth. similar to what we saw from salesforce earnings earlier this week, the lesson here, it is not enough to tell an amazing a.i. story, that's priced into many of the software names already, and investors looking for a.i. margins and profits. and finally, somewhat related, you have snowflake shares down today, following a report its technology was breached and used for recent hacks against ticketmaster and santander bank. shares down off 4.5% >> wow just so many of these reports -- it is unbelievable with th

steve kovach joins us now. >> yeah. apple revenues down 4%. iphone sales down 10%. who cares? biggest stock buyback in corporate history. $110 billion. increasing dividend 4% to 25 cents and guided towards modest growth for the june quarter, an unexpected move as analysts have been trimming june quarter estimates in recent weeks. easing fears around china. sales down. improvement quarter over quarter from 13% drop in december quarter. and ceo tim cook saying iphone sales in china actually grew. countering the narrative we've been hearing the last months. also asked tim cook about his recent visit to china. he told me "i feel great at the extraordinary competitive environment we grew." might come as a surprise. i feel good about china, i think more about long-term than the next week or so. quote/unquote. the services business appears to be over economic slump beating estimates. new record $23.9 billion in sales. up 14% from a year ago. cfo saying on earnings call expect similar growth and services in the june quarter. a.i., nothing much material to share. tried to get fresh det

>> steve kovach was telling you. >> i can't imagine you plug it in and says do not use this. >> start a fire. >> exactly union organizers filed complaints they blame the defeat on the company behavior apple denied wrongdoing. meanwhile, workers in towson, maryland, who voted to unionize now authorized the strike. they said apple has refused to fairly negotiate apple will continue to engage with the union representing the workers in good faith. >>> overnight, softbank reported a $4.6 billion gain for the vision fund in the fiscal year ending in march. the performance of the vision fund helps softbank swing to a quarterly profit with bytedance and u.s. food firm doordash. the biggest gains of the year was the ipo of chip designer arm holdings s softbank has a 90% stake in arm. that stock up 1.5% right now speaking of arm holdings, a report from nikkei asia says the company is planning to launch artificial intelligence by next year it will set up an a.i. chip unit to build a prototype by next spring softbank is in talks with manufacturers including taiwan semiconductor to produce the chi

meanwhile openai may be moving too fast. >> steve kovach, thank you. >> if you wear the shoes, you can'turn them. >> you can wear them much. >> not downside. >> in the mud. >> if there's the slightest -- i don't know about buying shoes. >> i do it online. >> i have it with vaughn's. i don't do it. how do people do it like that? >> you have an ai agent. >> i have a person who does things for me. >>> coming up, gary vaynerchuk is next on building a social media brand. >>> next, follow squauks box on your favorite podcast. listen any time. with every swing and block, your game plan never changed. ♪♪ some still call it luck. let them. because you know what it's always been. inevitable. ♪♪ ♪♪ when it comes to investing, we live in uncertain times. some assets can evaporate at the click of a button. others can deflate with a single policy change. savvy investors know that gold has stood the test of time as a reliable real asset. so how do you invest in gold? sandstorm gold royalties is a publicly traded company offering a diversified portfolio of mining royalties in one simple investment. lear

steve kovach joins us now with more >> a group of well-known investors are involved in the big deal,y, and sequoia capital. xai will run on a super computer, but if you read between the lines it sounds like oracle's cloud packed with nvidia chips musk pitches it with a chat box with humor, and we got through with two weeks of opening ai and microsoft, and it's teasing it will help it catch up, and open ai is working on its next version of jpt also, more perspective here. you can bet a significant chunk of the money is going straight to nvidia to scoop up its best chips that costs tens of thousands of dollars of pop and the other chunk will go to oracle or whatever cloud service if a deal doesn't materialize there. fidelity and sequoia capital are also an investor in the post bust twitter called x, of course, and they witnessed a significant value destruction, and what struck me is this guy destroyed their investment, and they said, give us more, please, we love that >> didn't get the ai side of it, probably >> it's interesting, the valuation and how much they raised, it's so clear th

. >>> let's get back to steve kovach ahead of apple's ipad event. >> two top ipad models, the ipad prog these devices incredibly powerful for artificial intelligence. the example they gave, not too many they showed some document scanning and video and photo editing but we'll find out how this hardware enables artificial intelligence at the conference as for the hardware, the ipad air gets an upgrade. looks the same, faster processor and comes in a bigger size the ipad pro, this is debuting the newest m-chip, this is called the m-4, those mac chips they've been using some of the higher end ipad models use them. again, they're really talking up the artificial intelligence capabilities of this chip. you're looking at it right now, the m-4, saying it unlocks a lot of potential again, this is just the hardware we don't know how apple is really thinking about artificial intelligence in a real way on the software side. so, more to come there, i assume a bunch of accessories new keyboard cases they call the magic keyboard makes your ipad look like a mac book when you click it in there. a new a

steve kovach has been tracking the action and joins us with the numbers and what's really got investorsit's really all about the guidance the guidance for the current quarter and full year is pretty rough. company says it saw a lot of weakness in engagement and turns out the problem is more technical than anything else, according to the company i actually caught up with the coo. he told me at the end of last year the company launched a bunch of new features in the game that caused a few technical hic hiccups. most roblox players use an troid. he even called performance of the game one of the key factors. some other things to watch, though, for ad business, it's rolling out slowly this month they launched video ads within the game. here's another important thing going on at roblox no big layoffs like we've been seeing at other gaming companies like sony, taketwo interactive and this week at microsoft so, a little bit of a different story there to tell, guys. >> how does the competitive picture look for roblox, steve you know, how does that compare with some of their peers that have seen

the keyboard is an important component to that, probably a new update there >> steve kovach, nice toat happens later today. >>> when we come back, the ceo of hims and hers walking back his support of college campus protests a little bit. we'll speak to leadership expert eric dezenhall about the corporate and college response to the situation >>> and in the next hour, two big interviews from d.c. here. gary gensler will join us for an exclusive interview. and former google chairman and ceo, eric schmidt talking all things ai. quk"et awhe. "saw rurns after this. believe you corporate types are still calling each other rock stars. you're a rock star. we're all rock stars. oooo look look at my data driven insights, i'm a rock star. great job putting finance and hr on one platform with workday. thank you! guys, can you keep it down. i'm working. you people are (guitar noises). hand over the air guitar. i've got another one. [crowd chanting] they ignored your potential, dissed your achievements, and mocked your ambition. but it's not the critic who counts, and you know that. from the begin

steve kovach is joining us with more. the money is going out, but not necessarily coming in yet.t wasn't horrible. barely missed on the quarter revenue and for the year. that's enough with a fast grower to cause this big selloff. >> the a.i. story as well. we're seeing shares tanking and dragging the dow down following the miss on revenue expectations and guidance for the second quarter. it was salesforce's first miss since 2006. $9.13 billion. the weak second quarter guidance where executives blaming a variety of vfactors with the tough macro environment, especially in europe, and the lingering artificial intelligence question. ceo marc benioff is talking about a.i., but not direct sales. benioff talked about the corporate data salesforce has. he said that is what companies will leverage. the companies are already commodities and don't matter as much. it is the corporate data that is more important for the a.i. models to tap into. salesforce generates a ton of data. where do the a.i. sales come from? nowhere meaningful yet. on the call, executives talked about the data cloud whi

. >> steve kovach is here. >> and bought by joe kernen voted saturday night whether to become the thirdseen a vote there. that happened about two years ago but a store hasn't voted since the one in oklahoma did in september of '22 plenty of labor organization activity as apple regardless of that including several complaints of unfair labor practices to the nlrb and one this week concerning the world trade center store in inform city where the nlrb set apple illegally stopped employees distributing union flyers while apple still delivers messaging about organizing of its own. more than 30 unfair labor suits against apple processed or about to be heard by nlrb judges tomorrow the store, first to unionize in 2022, will vote whether or not to authorize a strike as negotiations with apple have stalled back when all of this organizing started at apple over two years ago apple raised the starting retail wage from $20 to $22 an hour, though said at the time the increase was part of its annual performance review. you'll remember when inflation was heating up and the labor market extra tight the

steve kovach has more. usually you were on before this on our show. >> i got to sleep this today.you said, openai is frontrunning. the big developer conference right now, they have an announcement of its gpt 4 o which is capable of having natural questions. no more asking a question and waiting for an answer. but just talk to it like you would a friend. you can even interrupt it, ask it to speak in a different tone, translate languages in a real time and a lot more. it is what is called multimodal, so it can process images, text or voice. openai says it will be rolling out in the coming weeks. some people already have it. and they also teased there is going to be a next big thing to be revealed soon. meantime the ceo sam altman wasn't even part of the event but he did publish a blog post calling it the best commute interface i've ever used. also of note, altman called openai a business and will "find plenty of things to charge for." remember it is structured as the nonprofit organization and has been sued by elon musk for allegedly abandoning its original mission and focusing on p