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Nvidia CEO's AI Message, Musk Defends Ketamine Use, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO on U.S. Steel 3/19/24

Jim Cramer and David Faber engaged in wide-ranging discussions about Nvidia’s unveiling of its new AI chips and "Blackwell" platform -- setting the stage for Jim's exclusive interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the company's developers' conference. The anchors reacted to Elon Musk defending his use of the drug ketamine, in comments he made during an interview with former CNN host Don Lemon. David spoke exclusively with Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves about the Nippon Steel-U.S. Steel deal. Also in focus: Unilever plans a spinoff of its ice cream business including Ben & Jerry's, George Lucas backs Bob Iger in Disney’s proxy battle with Nelson Peltz and Trian, Fed meeting day one, Bank of Japan ends negative interest rates.

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Duration:
47m
Broadcast on:
19 Mar 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

Jim Cramer and David Faber engaged in wide-ranging discussions about Nvidia’s unveiling of its new AI chips and "Blackwell" platform -- setting the stage for Jim's exclusive interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the company's developers' conference. The anchors reacted to Elon Musk defending his use of the drug ketamine, in comments he made during an interview with former CNN host Don Lemon. David spoke exclusively with Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves about the Nippon Steel-U.S. Steel deal. Also in focus: Unilever plans a spinoff of its ice cream business including Ben & Jerry's, George Lucas backs Bob Iger in Disney’s proxy battle with Nelson Peltz and Trian, Fed meeting day one, Bank of Japan ends negative interest rates.

 

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At Morgan Stanley, old-school hard work meets bold new thinking. At 88 years old, we still see the world with the wonder of new eyes, helping you discover untapped possibilities, and relentlessly working with you to make them real. Old-school grit, new-world ideas, Morgan Stanley. To learn more, visit morganstandley.com/yus, and investing involves risk, Morgan Stanley, Smith, Barney, LLC. Market moving insight and analysis join Jim Kramer, David Faber, and me, Carl Kainsonnier, on the opening bell hour of CNBC's Squawk on the street. We created a processor for the generative AI era, and one of the most important parts of it is content token generation. We call it this format is FP4. Well, that's a lot of computation. 5X, the token generation, 5X, the inference capability of Hopper, seems like enough. But why stop there? The answer is it's not enough. Jensen Wong unveiling the new generation of NVIDIA's AI chips yesterday at the company's developers conference. Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the street on David Faber, live from Postline at the New York Stock Exchange. Jim Kramer is in San Jose, California. He is at NVIDIA's GTC. He's going to have a live and exclusive. It's both live and exclusive interview with that man right there. Jensen Wong, that'll be in the next hour. And of course, we are very much looking forward to it. Less than an hour from now, in fact, a half hour from now, we get started with trading here at the New York Stock Exchange. Let's give you a quick look at futures. We are in the red. So perhaps a lower open when we begin trading. Let's get to our roadmap. It does start, as you might expect, with NVIDIA's potential AI game changer. The company unveiling its latest, more powerful, artificial intelligence chips, which CEO Jensen Wong says are twice as powerful for training. I am AI models than the current GPUs. Great expectations also underway here, the Fed's March meeting kicking off today. The Bank of Japan, by the way, raising interest rates no longer are they negative in that country. And why Elon Musk thinks investors should want them to keep taking ketamine, saying it's beneficial for Tesla. We start with NVIDIA and the company's new AI chip lineup. There's Jim, and I just throw it over to you. Give me the highlights. You're about an hour or so from sitting down with Jensen Wong. But Jim, what struck you as most significant? What is most important today that was said yesterday in terms of how NVIDIA trades? Okay, I think it's very simple. This new Blackwell chip, it's smarter than a hundred favors. Yep, that's what it looks like. Because basically what he's saying is we're not smart enough. The machines are smarter. David's finally had them. We actually have chips that have learned so much that they have common sense. They can do things that I know you may be concerned about, but I think are major for society, productivity, end waste, build factories, sing. I mean, they can do anything. They can paint, but they also make it so the world's a better place. And that's what we're going to be talking about. All right, let's get more specific on the Blackwell itself, which again, he made the point. It's the name of a platform. It's not a chip. First of all, if you can, Jim, explain to people what that means. Get into some detail if you can. I know I'm sure you will with Jensen, obviously, during your interview. But sort of give us a sense here as to leap that's been made. Sure, I think that you hit on something that's really important, which is it's not just a chip. It is a platform. Now, what does that mean? It means it's filled with software. What does that mean? It's recurring revenue. It's not one off. You get in the ecosystem, you stay in the ecosystem. There are a lot of people who say this is a defensive move. I say it's an offensive move because what this Blackwell can do is use video, use text, many different languages and understand. So you can imagine it can understand, initially it'll understand between a zebra and a horse. In the end, it will know more about zebras and horses than we do. I have to use an animal kind of imagery because this is something that really, Jensen spent a lot of time talking about how it understands video. And if it understands video, then it can do things that we would desperately need in society, which is like have robots to be able to do a lot of jobs. We need them to have people be able to design things that they never be able to design before. By yes, David, I'm going to use it many times mentioned digital twin. A digital twin means that you basically can build anything, do anything with an invidia chip and then actually have it made in real life. Factories, the largest market left, he described it as the final frontier, and yet that's what Blackwell would do better than anything. Yeah, I mean, I got, I don't know where to start with you, Jim. You mentioned robots. I know we had a bunch on stage with them, right? Yes, yes. You know, I've talked about them in the past, obviously Teslas, for example, and what they've been able to do and how advances are being made in terms of the manipulation of hands, for example. What do you see up there? What are the expectations? Does that become a real product line in some way? Well, I caught up with Jensen after yesterday when I saw him later on at an analyst's confab, and he told me that there was a green robot and an orange robot. The green robot wanted to hog the show, came up, was very aggressive. The orange robot was recalcitrant, stayed back, actually stubborn, did not do what Jensen wanted. Now, the problem, David, with this is that actually may be true. All right, well, you're not making me feel any better. Robots are having personalities of their own and not doing what we want them to do, so we're already there. It's already the Will Smith movie. Yeah, didn't take long. Yeah, look, I mean, there was no explanation for why the orange robot hung back, other than just a decision to make it so it was not going to be Jensen. It was the first time he had met the two robots. They didn't know him. He didn't know them. He said this to me, and David, I know that some of it is tongue and cheek, but is there any doubt that you and I can't easily be replaced by the green and the orange robot once they have learned what we talk about? Do you think that we can do better than they can? I don't know, I do think that we will be replaced or and/or all of our consciousness will be uploaded to the cloud anyway, and then they'll just download us back into some sort of robot. Right, well, what's a contract talks? We'll be doing this for a whole lot. What's a contract talks? Yeah, we'll be doing this forever. How much do you think the robots cost to talk? I don't know. I mean, once they're what? I would say zero. The cost of ownership of a favorless anchor. It's, I mean, they call them fabulous, but it's really favorless. Still power. You still got to pay for your electricity or somehow provide, unless maybe they have the nuclear, a little nuclear reactor in them. Everybody has the hope. They just go forever. The grid, the grid is being taxed 5% of years growing because of data centers. When you go into a data center, what do you see? Well, you see some super micro racks. Thank you so much for offering two million shares to take advantage of being out of the S&P and being up more than 250% for the year. You see a lot, some cadence product. You see some synopsis product, but it's dominated by NVIDIA. Now they do not have the Blackwell running. Right now they're using the H100, the H100 is incredible. But Jensen said over and over again that this iteration is much bigger. One of the things I'm going to talk about him with, he spent some real quality time talking about Apple. And no one talks about Apple. You know, it's like Fight Club, the first full of apples. You don't talk about Apple. Right. He did. And maybe that shows you, David, that this man that you're seeing actually has more power than anyone out here and can talk about an Apple partnership, which no one else is able to. Listen, he fills an arena now in a way like it's, you know, a religious experience. So yeah. But you know what he told me, he told me very pointedly. But he pointedly told me in the end, he said, "Listen, I'm a computer engineer. It is really hard for me to be who people want. He is not a rock star. He doesn't want to be a rock star. He's a computer engineer that has great partners and is taking advantage of his product. And I think the misunderstanding of the Woodstock AI, it's just so ill-advised. It's not what's happening here. When the book would stop. When the movie's done and when we look back and see who is at the center of whatever is going to happen, it's going to be him. He's the central character. It's not going to be country Joe and the fish. No, it's going to be him. It's not going to be Tim Cook. Maybe it'll be Elon. But it's probably going to be him at this point. Especially if it all comes down, crashing down when the robots won't listen to us. And they basically have their hands on our necks. Jensen's going to be, you know, the star of that movie. I asked him about that. Will you stop at the Skynet already? Stop, let me actually point you up here. They were speaking to Jensen. I did. I said, "Look, I got this guy as my partner. He just thinks of Skynet." Oh, you're so funny. Listen, I don't know him. I wish I did. I have nothing but incredible respect for everything he's accomplished. And I can't wait for your conversation. I want to ask him. I want to ask, we're going to come back to it, but I do. Powerless and resumption. Did you say incredible respect? Of course I have, of course. How could you not? Look what he's created. Power consumption. Actually, we talked about that a lot. Right, because they talk about this being more powerful, but consuming less power. But I've seen some confusing things, Jim. You know, originally, I mean, in terms of what they call flops, B-series has 2.5 times more flops, bandwidth metrics than current H-series. Overall, has five times better flops, and 30 times better performance. But then, ultimately, we'll still consume more power. Obviously, it's going to, the computing power is way, way, multiples more. But where are we on this? Is it more powerful? Okay, I have prologenous. I have prologenous. First of all, David, it's not calflop. It's a teraflop. Okay. The thing that was really interesting is that prologenous is building these. 500 million, they built this last quarter. Yeah. They go around the country, and they find where the cheapest power is. Right. And the power companies are not, it may be able to do this all over the country. But some are ready. And the grid will be ready by 2030. I know that's a little late. But nuclear's the answer, and we don't build nuclear. All right, so these blackwalls are going to require, ultimately, I mean, it's still going to require a lot more power than we have. Available right now. Yes, it will, but I think that, no, that's not true. There are places that can provide the power at a reasonable price. But eventually, yes, they will not. Because if we're growing in 5% a year, this grid that we have is made for growing about 1% a year. Suddenly, we have it growing 5% a year, which is just too fast. And I think it's a major issue. And Jason speaks about waste. He speaks about climate change. He speaks about what this, all this power could do to the earth. In terms of just making the ocean hotter. I mean, it's all bad. And he's very concerned about it. And he's very concerned about it. That said, the hope perhaps is that generative AI, and/or when we get to true artificial general intelligence, that they'll be able to figure it out. Because it'll be smarter than us. And I think it will. And I think it will. See some solutions that we've gone out. Who's going to figure it out? Aren't capable of. It's not going to be humans to figure out. It is going to be machines that are trained using inference. You put this question in English. It comes back in English. And it has the answer because any one of these Blackwells is smarter than any thousand people that you may have at your company. And by the way, if you have 500 people at your company and you need another 500 computer engineers and you can't find them, you plug in a Blackwell. It's going to be able to do that as well. I mean, obviously we talk about strategy, be talking about the right code at a fairly decent level. And that's been a very important development. But you're saying now it's going to actually be able to design the chip. It's going to design its replacement chip. Blackwell, the Blackwell platform. And design what's coming next. See, I mean, I will use the words that Jensen won't because he's a diplomat. We simply aren't smart enough to do what this machine, when it actually has the data, does. That's the real issue. It can do it faster and smarter than weekends. So there you might say, wait a second, it can replace us. Jensen comes back and says, no, it's a great productivity device. I'm with Jensen. You got to get right with Jensen. That's it. You got to get right. Listen, I'm going to be listening to every word he says in your interview. And I hope you get to some of these. Thank you very much. No, they're 10 million dollars. They're 10 million dollars. It's like, Jensen's sitting on a gold mine. So are our viewers, by the way, if they own their own home. I don't know if you know that, Jim. [LAUGHS] Really? David, can I talk about ketamine for a second? No. No, you can't. No, you can't talk about it. It's a real trouble. What's the problem? Why can't he take it? Johnson and Johnson is ketamine. It's like a regulated gun to what? It's not like you asked me to disclose the SEC. No. This guy doesn't even know when he's not in trouble. This is what he wants. He doesn't know when he comes back. You can talk about ketamine, because Elon Musk did have that interview with Don Lemon, did talk about his drug use of ketamine, or at least referenced it. We're going to get to that. And to some things he said about the roadster, which may have been more interesting and moved to stocks. Walk on the street. Coming right out. Coming right at you after this. Schwab trading is now powered by Ameritrade. To give you a new elevated trading experience, Taylor made for trader minds. Go deeper with think or swim. The powerful award-winning trading platforms. Now at Schwab. Unlock support from the trade desk. Our team of passionate traders who live in brief trading like you do. And sharpen your skills with an expanding library of online education crafted just for traders. All designed to help you trade brilliantly. Learn more at Schwab.com/trading. At the UPS Store, we know things can get busy this upcoming holiday. You can count on us to be open and ready to help with any packing and shipping or anything else you might need. Is there anything you can't do? Um, actually, I don't have a good singing voice. But our certified packing experts can pack and ship just about anything. At least that's good. The UPS Store. Be unstoppable. Most locations are independently owned. Product services pricing and hours of operation may vary. See center for details. Come in today to get your holiday goodies there on time. Elon must defending his use of ketamine. It's a medication that many take to treat depression. This is in an interview with Don Lemon that was posted online yesterday. The Tesla CEO suggested that taking the drug has been beneficial for investors in his companies. Tesla is worth about as much as the rest of the car industry combined. From nothing. So, you know, that's pretty good. As I mentioned, we had the best selling car on Earth last year. So, for our investors standpoint, if there is something I'm taking, I should keep taking it. That's what he says, Jim. You pointed out that it is obviously a medication that is widely used. That, you know, the Wall Street Journal's come after him on this. And so, not unexpected that it would be at least part of this conversation. It's actually just shame. Here's a man who admits that he has depression, admits that he takes a drug that has helped millions of people. And for that, he's pilloried. I mean, I think the guy is basically, I know it's hyperbole to say what he did. But I defend him as much as possible because there are many people who would never be brave enough to admit that they take this drug. And yet, this drug is a lifesaver, lifesaver meaning it saved a lot of people from killing themselves. Yeah. Did not watch the entire interview, but I know a good amount of it also dealing yet again with many of the issues that Musk and I discussed last May in terms of his need to share his every thought on so many different issues, many divisive issues and why he does it. But, Jim, he did offer some things about the new Roadster. And maybe, I don't know if you have a reason why the stock was up yesterday, but maybe this is one reason because he did talk about it sort of having some rocketry stuff in there, you know, a combination of Tesla and SpaceX technology to create something that's not even really a car. Well, he has said over and over again, it's a tech delivery system. Maybe that's what this is. I think that one of the things that's happened, David, if you speak to Steve Schar, a now outgoing CEO of Hertz, the used car value of a Tesla actually is going up in the last month and that's allowed, that's often a floor. That's allowed Elon Musk to raise prices. That's something that is counterintuitive to the to the narrow that we think. But it might be true, David, the writing off of the EV is a little premature. As you and I both know that we're all going to be driving EVs by 2030. I think that this is the bottom in the stock. I said that last night and they had money because I've been waiting for the prices of the used cars to bottom and they are. So I'm excited about the roadster. I'm excited about what he's doing. I just think that we need a refresher. I haven't been a big refresher. This is a big refresher. It does matter tremendously. And in your interview, David, let me ask you. I got asked you about in your interview, did you detect the importance of his mood in terms of creating this? What do you mean? Well, I mean, this is one of the most creative, not the most the most creative person of our era, other than Jensen Wong. And why should we care that he needs a legal substance to be able to create things that you and I can't create? Yeah, that's a valid question. I it's not necessarily one that I even think is really worth worthwhile of great discussion. To your point, sadly, there are a lot of people who deal with mental health issues in this country and you want all of them to get the best treatment they possibly can. Yeah, I worked with J&J on this to be able to see what it can do for people. And it's remarkable. And I just hope that people recognize from this man that he actually just saved a lot of lives. I don't think he meant to, but he did. Yeah, as for his continued posting on X and some of the stuff he says there. Yeah, that's a little, it's a little more problematic. Yeah, he should revert to Princess Bride is where he should limit all his Yeah, I mean, there are definitely some connections, strangely with Henry Ford, sometimes when you read some of his stuff. No, don't say that. Don't say that. That is a very dangerous concept. That's true. Go back to your more papers, the 27 million circulation. I know. The independence. I'm aware of it. I've read obviously the protocols, I know, we all know his history, but it's kind of interesting. A hundred years later. Interesting? Interesting. I never found genocide injury. It's one. Wow. It's one of those years here. That's horrible. It's horrible. I hope that's not true. All right, get your mad dash ready. We'll get back to talking stocks. Okay. And by the way, just in case people don't know, Jim is going to have an exclusive with Jensenwa in the next hour right here on the Squawk on the street television program. Trading a Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills, access new online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos, and more, all curated just for traders. Plus, guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests. No sifting to find exactly what you need, so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn more at Schwab.com/trading. Let's do it. Another cross-country mad dash. Of course, two minutes of the opening bell. Unilever is saying that to accelerate growth, it's the old shrink to grow, Jim. They want to grow up. They want to jettison ice cream. Yeah, it's briars and it's also Klondike, not just Ben and Jerry's. And I want to know, David, as Nelson Peltz did in the boardroom, when are we going to get rid of Nor, which is the soup, but very big business, and then Hellman's right down the block from our world headquarters. When are they going to get rid of those? Why do they just get rid of one point? They're not going to have any food when this is over. They want to be in consumer products non-food, which is smart, given the fact that we know that there are drugs for me to lie, literally, that makes you not interested in Ben and Jerry's. So you think that it would be better off-- Ben and Jerry's taste like coal. Justice. As beauty and well being personal care, home care, nutrition, that's it. Get out of food entirely, what do you think? They're doing what Proctor did, which was very smart. It raised Proctor's margins. It also, of course, raises, but it's PE. It's a very smart move. Not, you know, Unilever needs to do this. I question why they didn't do the whole food. What is it? What do they have to do just one part of the food? What is that about? Nelson Peltz in the boardroom pushed for all of food. But David, Nelson Peltz, I don't know. I'm sure you have something to say about him later. I got to go see Jensen. All right, well, we'll talk about Disney in a little bit later. We are the largest per capita consumer of ice cream America in the world. Just so you know. Did you hear me, Jim? Yes and I'm. Wow. Those people are really a game. They're gamers, those people. Yeah, very loud here. Opening bells, of course, right now. Let's take a look at the real-time exchange. Probably got more red on the board than we had green. Here at the big board, beauty card company. Totally. Maybe that'll try to stock price up. $100,000, it's kind of arbitrary. Over at the Nasdaq Gentex, that's a supplier of dimmable windows and mirrors to the automotive and aircraft industries. All right, Jim, where do you want to start? Well, I think we have to start with the Nvidia. Why do we have to start with the Nvidia? Because I think that almost every company that we talk about, whether it be a technology company or not technology company, wants to get right with Nvidia. And the reason is because everything moves fast or smarter. David, this is a whole, it's a do-over of everything we have. You see, I have this computer. Well, you can't talk to it. You have to type things in. Who needs a keyboard when Jensen's done? I think that what we're seeing is that everything that is electric has to go and change. Everything is digitized. Everything has to go and change. And David, anything that can move, a robot moves better than we can. And robots are human-like because everything's been designed to be for humans. So the robot should look like us. Stop talking about the robots that look like us. That's freaking me out. Well, no, it makes sense. We can't have robots look like something else because everything's dissolving for humans. So the robots have to look like humans and be humans. Robots will look like robots. But smarter. David, you can teach a robot that coffee is hot. And then the robot can teach you that it's Starbucks, not peace. Hey, if NVIDIA is so great, Jim, then why is it a stock down? Because that's up 80s. David, it's been up 80%. Okay, because they're not splitting the stock, I'm going to get a split. That's what I'll do here. I promise I'll get you a split of NVIDIA stock. How's that? That doesn't mean anything. Why are you even confusing people as though a split means something of any fundamental value? I'm just asking after the big presentation yesterday and what seems to be very positive developments for the company, obviously headed up by the Blackwell platform. I'm just curious to see your thoughts about the stock being down over 2% as we get started. I said don't buy the stock. Don't buy the stock around the conference because the conference is not about raising earnings. It's not about forecast beating. It's actually about 10-year thinking. Can you imagine 10-year thinking when we're filled with the room of people who have 10-minute thinking? I mean, they're trying to build a dynasty that I'm trying to build a good first opening drive. It takes time. The stock anticipated is. But the event itself is not what we're talking about. It's just a new way of thinking, okay? It's a way of thinking that's better than what we do. It is not threatening. It's not meant to do anything other than be more productive and smarter, which the world needs. It's got to produce less waste in the end. There's a great, the cost of ownership is lower than what we have, and it's faster, smarter. How can we not want drugs that can be developed in maybe three months instead of three years where we have just a short time of patent protection? So therefore, the drug companies don't even attempt to go after hard things. They will go after the hardest illnesses because of this. They shy away. They go on the easy illness, David, because it takes too long. This is the end of that. This is the end of factories that waste so much that we have to question, question the whole, what they do for the planet. It's the end of a lot of ways we think, and it's all positive. It is. It's positive. Okay. Say something. Well, I'm listening to you. I'm thinking about it, and I'm just not sure I completely share that, but I'm trying to think of this world you're describing with the videos. Do you think it's positive or negative? Do you think that the womb, did you favor the seamstress over the moon? We're going to have a lot of... Where are you on the steam engine? We're going to have a lot of... Fulton, I think, is buried right next to Hamilton, isn't it? We're going to have a lot of free time. We're going to have a lot of free time. So we're going to do it at all. We will be so much smarter, and we will be helped by... And we can feed a video. And we're going to live forever. We're going to live forever. And David, it has common sense. We're going to have robots waiting on us. They have common sense. The robots have common sense. They have common sense. We can teach them common sense. When are they going to decide that we are not essential? That's when are they going to decide that why are we around? No, we program them. We tell them whether we're essential or not. They don't tell us if we're essential. They can't tell us... Even when they have intelligence greater than our own? David, there is no such thing as soil in green. It's people, Jim. It's... Could you do... Could you ever... Could you ever... I can't do Edward Robinson from the Ten Commandments, and then put him in soil in green. I can't do the same thing. All right, let's move on. All right. Let's stay in the same area. It's hard to change everything. It's hard to change everything overnight. We... You and I will continue our... Until we're replaced by robots, we'll continue talking about the future. But AMD shares are also getting hit down 3%. What you saw yesterday... Remote. Yeah, impact on AMD. Well, I mean, look, AMD has chips, okay? But you need the package. You have to have thought added to the chip. You can't just send a chip to some company and say, "Hey, listen, go figure it out." You have to have Jensen's team come, explain to you the software platform, explain to you why it has to be integrated, and AMD doesn't have any. Lisa Sue is incredible, and her chips, she will tell you rival the speed of the H100, but they can't come near what we saw yesterday. I mean, her... But it's not the chips, it's the thought that comes with it. Instead of talking about training and entrance, it's thought. Okay, this produces thought. This is an AI factory. Advanced micro does not have an AI factory. As much as you know, I think the Lisa Sue's great. And her stock's been unbelievable. And just think of it like a factory of thought, okay? It's not a chip, it's a factory of thought. Got it. Okay. All right, yeah, all right. You want to talk a little Disney? As we get closer and closer to the big... to the big vote, the proxy fight, obviously two seats, Nelson Pelt's seeking. The news this morning is that got support from... I mean, perhaps not unexpected. George Lucas supporting Bob Iger. Of course sold Lucas to the company back in 2012. It was half cash, half stock. He got some 37 million shares. Not sure how many he continues to hold, but would make him one of the larger shareholders, if he's anywhere near still, that level, Jim. A larger, in fact, than Ike Perlmutter, with his some 25 million that are really the vast majority of the try-in shares that are being voted here and that they are claiming as their overall three and a half billion dollar investment in the company. Well, what's the stock done since Nelson has decided that Bob Iger is not doing a great job? Well, it depends when you measure it from. Okay, doesn't it? That's fair. And as this try-in's performance, we had Jeff Sonnethullen yesterday. He talks about Nelson being a net destroyer. I'm sorry, not going there. I just think that that's just wrong to say, because you have to talk about what he does in the boardroom, and whether he helps in the boardroom. And that's why I thought that the Jim Stewart piece was so good this week. It was a very positive piece for Pals, the Jim Stewart piece in the time- And Jim Stewart's one of the most thoughtful journalists of our time. I think you might say he is the most thoughtful journalist of our time. He's written some really good books. I'll tell you that much. Lucas told CNBC creating magic is not for amateurs when I sold Lucasfilm just over a decade ago. I was delighted to become a Disney shareholder, because of my long-term time admiration for its iconic brand and Bob's leadership. And when he returned during a difficult time, he says, "I was relieved." And no one knows Disney better. Well, you know what, it wouldn't be interesting if your Lucas has money with try-in. Wouldn't that be interesting to find out? I guess. Why? Do you think he does? Well, you know, stranger things have happened. Yeah, they have. I have no idea. I don't know. We're getting closer. Every- all the big guns are coming out here, so to speak. Obviously, I had Jamie Dimon last week provide me that- or he provided a quote and support of Bob Iger as well. He's not a shareholder for- Is he paid in all- Does Disney do any work with JPMorgan? Yes, we pointed that out many times, actually. I know you were away enjoying some relaxation, but yes, we did. Of course, they are- they are defensive lines. I didn't relax a single day. That's sad. I was studying every day at my vacation. It was rare for Diamond to come out in that fashion and support Iger in the way that he did. But of course, we do have to point out that there was a relationship between the two. Every day is going to have something here. We'll keep watching it. All right. Yesterday, Apple and Alphabet were the big out performers, Jim, on that story in Bloomberg that said that Gemini might be used in some fashion to power the AI or generative AI offering from Apple when we get it. Backing off a bit today, any further reflections on that story from you 24 hours later? It's interesting, yes. Stop was up three at one point. Ended up closing it below the day. I think a lot of people feel that no matter what happens, Apple won't have it fast enough, good enough. You and I both know that Apple doesn't release anything before it's time, so to speak, to quote, Blade Wars and Wells, I thought that Apple's Vision Pro got a real boost here yesterday, and yet people didn't talk about it. So I'm going to go and talk about it with Jensen very early on, because I found a whole new use for the Vision Pro that I didn't realize, which is to be able to sell cars, sell homes, make people realize that you can put yourself in a car and put the, I don't know, the the Blue Ridge mounts and what a sunset looks like while you're driving a car. And that is what Jensen can do for Apple. I think Apple meets that. I think people are searching for uses of the Vision Pro. This is a great one. You are talking about driving a car. Come on, man. Think about everything you've talked about the future, and you're still talking about driving a car? Technology vehicle. Hey, listen, I've ever gone on Lamborghini at 185 miles an hour on the streets of Modena like my wife did. 185 miles an hour on a regular street. Yes, I like cars. I haven't actually. I did go on a Porsche once, 190, too. Also, it's the capital of cheese. Down in a huge, in Dallas, Texas. My friend Kyle Bass was driving that. Yeah, that was a little crazy. Yeah. You know, we're on TV right now. Yeah, so what, what? We're on TV. You want to talk about the Fed? You want to talk to the bank? You want to talk about the Bank of Japan? Fed day, a Fed meeting begins today. Tomorrow, obviously, we get the press conference. You always advise against the press conference, it seems. That's been your take for a while now. Well, the press conference is ridiculous because people raise hands, and it's like, could you please tell me when you're going to cut rates? And then the next guy says, hey, could you give me a sense of when you're going to cut rates? I mean, like, forget it. It's like a conference call with all the other ones saying, well, my number is this. Could you give me the number? Because I really want to get my number right from my model. It's just the same thing. Exactly. Exactly. That's what analysts do. That's what reporters do. That's why they should all be replaced by orange and green robots. We don't get any other colors? We should only get to choose between orange and green. Right now, we just have orange and green. I will ask Jensen about more colors. I'll get everything straight, okay? Yeah. How long are you going to get with him, dude? I'm not coming from the AMD conference, okay? This is not AMD. I'm not coming from here. What is behind you? What is all that stuff? There are hundreds of companies that are partnering with NVIDIA, because NVIDIA is a provider of thought, the sheets. Everybody wants to think, and they want to think smarter. Every company. Do you think the loyt doesn't? They're behind me. There's Cisco. Over there is a series scale. I'm not exactly familiar with their work. But I do see many companies that want a partner, and that's what this is about. This is, in many ways, I'm going to use the very pedestrian term. It is a trade show. It's a trade show. But it's the most important trade show in history. Got it. Well, we're looking forward to the sit-down. Wow, it's getting close. Are you getting nervous? Am I nervous? I have to prepare for this all my life. All my life. There's been one big preparation for this sit-down. From February 10th, 1955 until now, this is what I prepared for. But this is a 20-year process. I'm going to be talking about two kinds of stacks. I'm going to be talking about the computer stack, and then, yes, I'm going to be talking about the stack from Denny's, which also has bananas. It has ice cream, and it also has two eggs and bacon. That's the stack we're talking about. Because, yes, Jensen worked at Denny's. Get ready. He's watching. Which, by the way, is below being a busboy. Because I got the motor from Buspoint Edition. So I know this at the blocking cleaver. Okay. By Mr. Fox. Okay. All right. I hated him. Okay. Go get ready. You've got to get ready. I hate your interview. And then, obviously, there's going to be a lot more on Mad Monday tonight. Jim, we'll see you in the next hour with your special guest, Mr. Jensen Wong. Before we had to break down. Okay, orange robot. Yeah. All right. Only orange and green robots. Time for the bond report. Maybe you look at the treasuries. We're talking 4.314 in the 10-year. Two-year still hanging in there at above 4.7%. We're right back. We're keeping an eye on Shores the U.S. deal up a bit today, but down nearly 17% since President Biden weighed in on Nippon Steel's deal to buy the company for 55 bucks to share in cash. President is saying it's vital that U.S. deal remained domestically owned and operated. competitor Cleveland Cliffs for its part has said it would consider a bid for U.S. deals assets or certainly some of them. If that deal with Nippon Steel were to fall by the wayside. Joining us now in the CNBC exclusive is Cleveland Cliffs CEO Lorenzo Gonzalez. Lorenzo, good to have you. You've been a one-man wrecking crew in terms of kind of bringing the heat on this deal, especially given your relationship with the union versus Nippon Steel's. Why has it been so important to you to try to prevent this deal from actually happening? Actually, good morning Dave. It's a pleasure to be with you this morning. Actually, my position all along was very constructive. My offer was done in a way that was prepared to make things to go through smoothly. And that's why I started with the union, the USW. The USW has contractual rights and I respect that. And that's what's one thing that you still did not respect. And that's when the problems started. So at this point, it's just a matter of waiting. What do you mean when you say that? It's not if it's when. You don't believe there's any possibility that Nippon is going to be able to work a deal with the unions in its favor to be able to close its transaction? I have full conviction that this deal between Nippon Steel and the union will never have it. We have an agreement with the USW. We have the right to bid on their behalf. We understand the Successorship Clause. That's something that clearly Nippon Steel has no clue about. And we are going to prevail. The President of the United States has already spoken. At this point, it's no longer all the government will approve, the government will not approve. The government has already expressed their decision in terms of who should keep ownership of the assets. And it's not a company from Japan. Japan is not a friend. Japan intrayed. Japan would see that pretty differently, Lorenzo, in terms of saying they're not a friend. I mean, it seems hard for some people to imagine that it could really be found to be a national security risk from a CFIUS review. And so how do you think this deal is going to fall apart then? Obviously, the President has indicated he wants the US deal to be a domestically owned. But it's got to be through the CFIUS process, doesn't it? How are they found to be a national security threat? CFIUS will do their work. And CFIUS will generate a report that will land on the desk of the President of the United States. And then the President can accept, reject or modify the report. So basically, the President can do whatever the President wants to do. And first, a Director of Brainard of the National Economic Council expressed the opinion of the government. And the Japanese did not understand. Then the President of the United States himself spoke loud and clear. And apparently, Nippon Steel, that started with an embarrassment with M&A, wants to transform this thing in a diplomatic problem between the United States and Japan. So if that's the case, let's do it. Let's play. Well, what influence have you had then on the Biden administration? Obviously, Dave McCall runs the United Steel Workers Union. We had him on yesterday. He clearly seems to have a strong influence on the President. Have you been behind that as well? We have a very, very strong partnership with AWS. It's unusual. It's not common. And it's a new thing that I believe it's about time for investors to take notice. We can work with organized labor in a constructive way. We don't need to be fighting. We need to be working together. That's what middle class is about. That's what union jobs, good paying, union middle class jobs are about. And the President of the United States is fully committed with this type of agenda. That's what we have. There are those who believe this has simply been your attempt to try to get Nippon Steel to agree to sell you the blast furnaces, take Big River, give you the assets you want, that really you've waged this campaign largely to get them to the negotiating table, but they haven't been willing to do that. And then you've pulled the lever in terms of politically to try to get the Biden administration to come against the deal. Is that it? Is that a fair perception? It's not. It's not. It was the perception until the President of the United States, President Biden spoke loud and clear that the ownership of the assets should stay with the United States. I would be able to do that until they, meaning the Japanese pro-folk, the US government to react the way the President reacted. So at this point, I'm different from the Japanese. I pay attention when the President of the United States speaks. So at this point, there's no more negotiated deal between Cleveland Cliffs and Nippon Steel. Nippon Steel is out. And even the shareholders vote will not do any good. It's like having the attention. When they look around, Lorenzo, you know that they think they still have a deal in place. They have a contract. They're probably going to get a positive shareholder vote in April. You seem to be saying something very different than what they would say, which is we still should be able to negotiate a deal with the unions and why wouldn't the unions want to in some way versus just being left at US Steel with no, you know, no other company owning it. The probably that the Titanic has already hit the iceberg. So at this point, there's no point in pretending that the ship is already is still sailing. The ship is sinking. It's sinking slowly, and we are very patient. We're not going anywhere. We're going to wait until the deal is unraveled, and we'll pick up the piece at the other side. What does that mean picking up the pieces on the other side? Yeah, because US Steel is an ongoing concern, no future, because of the way the deal is disrespected, the US Doug, the way they treated the union is a third-class citizen. There's no situation that Nipun Steel doesn't like, but Nipun Steel is not going to buy, and the US Steel continues as an ongoing concern. So someone is going to be at the other side, and you bet. I will be there, and I will be able to... Well, you were there during the process as well. You bid $54 a share in cash and stock, obviously not far from what was the winning bid, but one of the concerns, Lorenzo, was the antitrust concern, the fact that the combined company, Cliffs and US Steel would have 95% of iron ore production in the US, 100% of blast furnace production among other antitrust issues. How do you get people comfortable with the antitrust risk that clearly made US Steel uncomfortable? Yeah, US Steel got these excuses in order to be able to alienate the union. That's what happened. At the end of the day, automotive is competitive, with many mills, is compared with electric furnaces. United States Steel themselves built Big River to produce automotive, to compete against us. Nucor is building a plant in West Virginia to produce automotive. Steel Dynamics just built a plant in Central Texas to produce automotive, and we have to compete against imports, and we have to compete against other materials like aluminum. So we will handle that when the time is right with the DOJ, and we have a plant, and these things are easily resolved when you know what you are doing. Would you be willing to give shareholders hell or high water protection against the antitrust risk? I'm not going to negotiate with you, Dave, but I know what it takes to get the deal done, and we're going to get the deal done. You're going to get the deal done? Again, to come back to it, right now they have a contract to get bought for $55 a share in cash. And even though the president has said what he has said, nothing's changing that. I guess I just might come back to this question of what gives you the confidence that this deal is a fail? At the very least, the clock is unforgiving. And coming June of 2025, and there's no deal, they do expires. Another thing that can happen if instead of having President Biden, we have President Trump, he gave him personal assurance that he will block the deal at the very beginning, if not on day one, for sure, at the very beginning of this tenure. President Trump, former President Trump told you he would block any deal as well. He said that to you. Have you spoken to President Biden? Has he given you the same assurance? I have not, but my partner, Dave McCall, is in direct contact with the White House, and we have assurance from the Biden administration as well. Lorenzo to be continued, but certainly appreciate your taking time with us and helping explain your side of the story. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the having me. You're welcome. Lorenzo Concalves, CEO, Consolves, excuse me, of speaking to us. You've been listening to the opening bell on CNBC's Squawk on the Street. All opinions expressed by the Squawk on the Street participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBC, Universal, or their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of an opinion. 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