Squawk Pod: Open-sourcing Meta & Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders - 08/10/26 | Audio Only

Bring in show music, please. >> Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, the future of artificial intelligence from a giant in the tech industry, Venode Kosla, billionaire entrepreneur, Sun Micros Systemystems co-founder and a new NFL owner on the big names writing the history of AI. >> Open AI and Enthropic aren't the end of this AI story. They're the beginning. And I suspect we'll see massive expansion of the number of trillion dollar companies impacting fundamental areas of society. >> It's what gamers have been waiting for. But the Grand Theft Auto juggernaut is just another part of Take 2's $40 billion plus content business. CEO Strauss Selnick. >> All things Grand Theft Auto, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has been less than 15% of our total revenue. Plus, Meta's AI for all promises at Paramount, and President Trump reignites his push to fire a Fed governor over mortgage paperwork. >> You don't want to defend >> somebody who has done something that is demonstrabably wrong. >> You can defend the due process, right? >> But you should defend the due process. And then the question is, is this a form of due process? >> It's Monday, August 10th, 2026. SquawkPod begins right now. >> Stander by in three, two, one, Q. Ander. Good morning. Welcome to Spotbox right here on CNBC on this Monday morning. We're live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Sorcin along with Melissa Lee. Joe and Becky are off today. Some news just out and this is interesting from uh Facebook's parent Meta. Mark Zuckerberg laying out a essay with a vision uh for AI uh in a new piece. It's titled the future is for everyone the path to a positive AI future. Zuckerberg saying he's hoping that uh invention rather than automation can serve as the primary purpose of AI. It's part of a larger theme he's been talking about and a lot of the folks in the AI world have been talking about. And he says that super intelligence is broadly distributor at least that's his hope in order to empower everyday people. We've had obviously a lot of backlash. You've seen the booing at uh at some of these commencement speeches and the like meta though and this is maybe the most interesting part about it. announcing a $1 billion fund aimed at investing in communities close to where the company operates data centers. So there's going to become a pool of money uh and it will be uh called the future is for everyone fund. It will be focused uh from what I understand on policemen and firemen and members of these communities. Uh additionally by the way Meta announcing that uh the weights for its AI model called Muse Glimmer will be made open. It's a $30 billion parameter dense model. It says it will be able to run on a consumer laptop. So you'll be able just to get this open openweight model effectively for free. Put it put on your laptop and go. Zuckerberg also appraising open source AI calling it an important force for empowering people and preventing centralization. So there a couple of things to unpack here. Yes. uh one >> Mark was very early actually on the whole idea of open- source openweight models with Llama from the beginning >> right >> um and then >> seemed to pull back when when everybody seemed to be moving toward these closed source models and is now I think leaning in >> you know fullon to the open openweight situation which is just an interesting sort of watching the the pulling and pushing of what's happening in the industry >> I think what's key here is that this can run on a consumer lap an ordinary consumer GPU as opposed to a lot of the other open source models which have been released like a Kimmy K3 or massive massive they're like like the latest Alibaba is 2.4 four trillion parameters and this is 30 billion but for a consumer >> that's what you need >> this drives the cost lower for the consumer right and so that's sort of >> that's a hu huge huge benefit huge step >> the second piece is just both the change in language that I think a lot of people in the AI community in the past two or three months have sort of moved towards which is how can we how can we get people to believe this is actually a technology that is for them that's going to better their lives not take their jobs and take their lives away from them. And then the last piece which is interrelated to that is police officers, firemen, members of communities that are now having these data centers and there's all of this community push back and backlash that we don't want it in our backyard. And here they're saying, look, we're going to put a fund together that's going to be in addition to whatever we're going to be spending on the construction of these these these data centers to give back to these communities. By the way, this is a model that has been uh you know tried and true in so far as for many years companies would live inside communities. They'd give philanthropy. They would do all sorts of things. >> They build communities. >> They would build communities. And by the way, that actually stopped in the past 20 or 30 years. I mean, it really did shift away from the idea of we need to help the communities that we are actually in. It it really just underscores how flatfooted the AI community was in terms of anticipating how they would be received by local communities and the different issues surrounding it including higher energy costs. I mean first you have Governor Hokll with the moratorium here governor Abbott and Texas the Virginia governor stepping in on the proposed merger between Nexa and Dominion >> because of higher energy costs concern that there would be higher energy costs because of this deal and because of the related data centers in the state of Virginia. So, you know, this really underscores the enormous amount of backlash these guys are facing, >> right? >> Well, Berkshire Hathaway profit rising last quarter. Operating earnings climbed 16% year-over-year on strength in the firm's energy, railroad, and manufacturing businesses. Insurance was a weak spot. Underwriting earnings fell 13% from a year ago. Key takeaway here, Bergkshire CEO Greg Ael is starting to put cash amassed by Warren Buffett to work on buybacks and stock purchases. Bergkshire bought back about $4.5 billion dollars of its own stock during the second quarter, up from 235 million in the previous quarter. The company also reversed a recent pattern of selling stocks. It was net buyer of equities with about $20 billion of purchases in the second quarter. Prior to that, Berkshire had sold stocks for 14 consecutive quarters that closely followed cash pile fell by about $30 billion. Second quarter included the closing of the company's acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison. And President Trump reviving his efforts to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. In a letter to Cook that was dated mid last week, White House aid Dan Scavino saying that the president is considering removing Cook from the Fed's board of governors because there is in the words of the letter sufficient reason to believe that you made false statements or one on one or more mortgage agreements. Scavino asking Cook for a written response within three weeks. These are the same allegations that President Trump brought up when he first moved to fire Cook from the Fed last year. The Supreme Court, if you remember, backed Cook in June, but Chief Justice John Roberts said the court's decision didn't stop the president from trying to remove Cook as long as her constitutional due process rights were respected. And the concept here is that that is at least an effort uh to do such a thing. uh in a statement uh an attorney for Cook telling CNBC the allegations against her are quote as baseless now as they were a year ago when uh President Trump tried to remove Governor Cook and interfere with the independence of the Federal Reserve. You know, interestingly, I was out in uh Aspen at the Aspen Economic Strategy Groups meeting last week, and there were a number of FOMC members there as well as the former Treasury uh four or five former Treasury secretaries. And in the hallways, one of the conversations was going to be actually about was about this issue and what would happen uh if the president went after Cook. Most interestingly, the question that they all had was how would Kevin Worsh react >> right >> in terms of the independence of the Federal Reserve? Uh would he back cook? Would he back cook publicly? Uh would he say nothing? Would he um walk her in? I don't know what the what the various permutations this could take. Uh but in terms of these big questions about the independence of the Fed, uh what role and how would how would Kevin handle that particular question was something uh that clearly was on their minds. And this was even before I think they must have had hints that something like this could come down. >> What did those former Fed folks say Worsh should do to preserve Fed credit? Well, I think a lot of them and and and just to just to put some context on it, uh people like Jay Powell were at this meeting. Um people like Hank Pollson were at this meeting. Janet Yellen was at this meeting. Steve Minutuchin was at this meeting. Tim Gner was at this meeting. There was a whole uh bunch of people in that in that category. Um, I think there was a was a sense uh that you needed to protect the independence of the Fed and therefore protecting um Cook to some degree. I mean, I think there's still a question and I think we don't know ultimately what happened uh and what Cook did explicitly >> or didn't do >> or didn't do, right? And so I don't look, you don't want to defend >> somebody >> somebody who has done something that is demonstrabably wrong. >> You can defend the due process, right? you should defend the due process and then the question is is this a form of due process or meaning send a letter is does that is that work or not >> right >> um >> all good questions we'll see I guess what war says or doesn't say >> Paramount Sky Dance reportedly ready to make some commitments to movie theater chains in its campaign to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery Bloomberg reporting Paramount is willing to sign contracts with chains to release 30 films a year theatrically if the Warner Brothers deal is approved that would include exclusive movie theater rights for films for 45 days and no streaming for 90 days. The report says Paramount has offered three-year commitments to AMC and Regal Cinemas, and the company could face penalties if it were to break its word. The commitments are similar to public ones already made by Paramount CEO David Ellison. Uh but this time they would be in writing. The question is whether this would be enough or sufficient >> to satisfy uh these state AGs. I think there's been a real question as to whether ultimately they would actually have to sell off pieces of the studio business uh either big big pieces of IP parts of the DC comic world or the Dune world or something uh to a third party. And there have been examples of times where companies have been forced to effectively stand up a competitor, if you will. Uh but it wouldn't surprise me if if ultimately they were forced to find a way maybe it's a combination of a private equity player uh you know a Sony or an A24 some other kind of studio that would then become a bigger studio by taking some pieces that might solve some of the AG's issues around the movie side of it. Then there's still the TV side of it right >> and whether on the linear end you'd want to get rid of a TBS. The conundrum on the cable side is the cable assets produce a lot of cash for them. And given the loan covenants and there's a lot of of debt in this deal, >> they almost need some of those assets simply to be kicking off cash to pay the loans. And so the question is how you'd actually make all that happen. >> It is amazing that this deal was consummated basically on the notion that this would go through faster. >> Right. >> Right. And here >> that was that was the that was the conce Yeah. Major consideration >> tease will be next. >> Coming up on squawk pod venture capitalist Venode Kosla. He is backing a new startup derived from all the AI staffing changes at Google. >> Google has a very deep bench of researchers. So I'm less worried about Google. They have so much strength and they have younger researchers who get an opportunity to step up. the tech veteran on the big names in Silicon Valley. Investing today and much more when we come back. You're listening to SquawkPod from CNBC. Here's Andrew Ross Sorcin. >> Okay, we've got a great new guest on the program. We haven't had seen him in quite a while. tech pioneer who's uh backing a unique startup that he says could have a great impact maybe even a greater impact than Google or open AI. Joining us right now is not Kosla Kla ventures founder. Good morning to you sir. >> Good morning. >> It's nice to see you. Um you did make a big investment uh well you've been made a lot of AI investments but this this AI investment from last week turning lots of heads in part because uh there's a big impact potentially on Google. So maybe you can speak to it all. Well, it's a stellar team out of Google, a team you seldom get to invest in. It's an area of AI research that really accelerate both AI research and research in the sciences. So, it has this huge potential to benefit uh humanity through accelerated science. What's not to like? >> Well, here's the question that I had and I was thinking about this. You know, I would think that both Google and Anthropic and OpenAI are so ahead of everybody else, we keep talking about AGI and the singularity u that if in fact they are that far ahead of everybody else, uh by the time that almost anybody starts something today, will they be able to catch up and do something that's genuinely unique? >> Well, we think so. I think in this particular area of accelerated scientific research, a great team like this can absolutely not only catch up but get ahead of the curve. >> What do you think the impact on uh on Google ultimately will be? We keep talking about some of these big names uh leaving the company. >> Well, I do think Google has a very deep bench of researchers. So, I'm less worried about Google. they have so much strength and they have younger researchers who'll get an opportunity to step up. So I'm still bullish on Google's ability to make progress in the AI area. Uh but this is a unique team and uh absolutely the team that got them a long long way and so very excited about this particular one without it hurting Google in a significant way. Venom, what what do you think more largely about the economics of what's taking place in the AI EOS ecosystem right now? We have a potential anthropic IPO later this year. Obviously, big questions about what that valuation will look like, what the valuation of open AI will look like. There's conversations about circular financing. Um where how do you see it right now? >> Well, as I look at the investment opportunities and we invest with a very long investment horizon. So when we invest we expect 7 to 10 years before getting any liquidity. In that time frame many many companies will be started now that are worth hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars. I think we are seeing the beginning of this. This is not the end of it. Open AI and anthropic aren't the end of this AI story. at the beginning and I suspect we'll see massive expansion of the number of trillion dollar thing companies impacting fundamental areas of society. So still lots of opportunity to invest in new companies. >> What do you think though of uh sort of the data center ecosystem? We saw Mark Zuckerberg uh put out a fascinating essay this morning, but not just an essay about trying to make AI for people and and these new open await models, but also putting together a billion dollar fund effectively to try to pay communities uh policemen, firemen, and others to want to build data centers uh in their backyard. Something that's not happening right now in the state of New York and even in the state of Texas. >> Well, one, there's enough states that want this growth and investment. I'm not too worried about data center investment, but I do think in general it's a good idea to make sure that people aren't negatively impacted, the electricity rates don't go up. It's very easy for a hyperspectral hyperscaler to uh subsidize electricity for people in the communities where they're setting up data centers. So that's a good idea. Vinard, I also wanted to ask you about another notion within uh Mark's piece and that is that everyone will have free or affordable access to AI tools. So he sees a world in which people should have access to these tools and in a world in which people want more compute power that there will be a dynamic auction process to make sure the costs are as low as possible. If that comes to fruition, does that change the economics of of how we are investing in AI and how these models are constructed and the subscription model that we have currently? No, it doesn't. And it doesn't because you can have an advertising model. OpenAI has a free chat GPT available and Mark is wellversed in advertising models. So he I think there will be a free model and then there will be paid models. If I'm doing serious research, then I do want to go much deeper and uh and spend a lot more money. So uh you know whether I want somebody to give me a search answer in 5 seconds or take 50 minutes or 5 hours to do research uh it'll result in a different kind of payment methods and enterprises definitely will use paid services just they as they have in traditional enterprise software. Venard, what's your reaction been to uh the price of SpaceX and and what that says either about and look there's so many component parts of that business. There's the AI piece, there's the data center piece, there's data centers in space, there's Starlink. I don't know where to begin. >> Uh Starlink is a great asset. The space launch business is a great asset because space launch capacity is limited for the next 5 to seven years. Uh we are investors in Rocket Lab. For full disclosure, I'm very very bullish on Rocket Lab. Uh and SpaceX is good business. Starlink is a good business. I think data centers in space are yet to be proven. I'm somewhat on the skeptical side of it till launch costs decline well below a few hundred a kilogram. Uh why would one price launch there if there's shortage of capacity? further out it may be possible to go much lower in cost and many providers will do that. Uh I have not looked at the economics of SpaceX so couldn't comment on its valuation. >> Okay, that's fair. Uh and then uh we should talk about uh football. You've gotten involved in football. I see by the way there are people uh on Twitter asking you uh they want grass. They want real grass and and are you going to be managing whether you're going to be putting grass on the ground or are you going to be coaching managing? What's how's this all going to work? Look, the Seattle Seahawks is a great franchise and the 12 which is their local fan brand is one of the best brands in the NFL and life sports will be the one area that will be insulated from any disruption AI causes. So, it's a great investment area per se. As to grass or not, that's for management to decide, not for me to decide. >> Are you are you a huge football fan? How did this happen? >> I'm a huge football fan. Me and my son have gone to most NFL games in Bay Area, probably since he was four or five. Uh maybe more than half the home games. And so it is a great opportunity to do a family thing and make a investment that's diversification away from AI and technology in general which is sort of my belly. Uh it was and it's fun. >> It was like a n half billion dollar hedge to your portfolio if you know >> it's a big hedge. >> Uh how about the NBA by the way? What do you think? Well, I've always en enjoyed the NFL more than the NBA personally. >> Okay. So, you're not you're not going to be trying to buy a team. >> I'm not buying in a team in the NBA. And look, life sports is a great area for investment insulated from AI disruption and technology disruption. So, life sports is going to be a good area. Beyond that, it's what you have passion for and NFL is what I have passion for. And a great brand like Seattle is a great franchise to buy. >> By the way, what do you make of what's happening in Seattle though? Because there's a lot of business leaders that are very frustrated with what's happening in Seattle. >> A lot of business leaders frustrated in many cities including San Francisco, California, billionaires tax. Uh so the society will have to sort this out. I do think uh we will need to do more for more people to so they get the benefits of technology and AI progress and others. Uh I I I do think that's a national issue, not a Seattle issue or a San Francisco issue. >> What do what do you think of the billionaire's tax in California these days? Where things stand? >> I think it's a terrible >> it's it's a terrible idea. I floated an alternative which I think is much much better which is also radical. Uh in an oped in the financial times recently I argued that capital gains and ordinary income should be taxed at the same range. There should be no difference because AI is giving capital an advantage, labor a disadvantage and there's no reason to preferentially favor uh capital gains. It it really distributes income the wrong way to the rich people. 40% of capital gains is paid by people making more than 10 million a year. I >> I read that piece and uh my follow-up question to you therefore was going to be uh what was the reaction that you got from your friends in the valley. >> Uh I don't care much about reactions. I care about what's right and what I think is the right solution. there is a real need to have a large sovereign fund to help people who might be displaced by AI. Uh and and and this is one way to create it. 3 to400 billion a year can be created extra taxes by levelizing and making capital gains be the same as ordinary income. and that then has enough funds in a revenuene neutral way to take care of the people impacted by AI. I think that's the right solution. >> I I want to try that one out for Go ahead. >> People making less than $75,000 a year should not pay any taxes. That's only $75 billion. Uh and that should be very very easy to do. And by the way, it's the same number of people impacted by that as voted for Trump. 75 million or so. >> Let me ask you a related question. I was going to try this out on you, and I know you have the $75,000 cap, and I know you want to equalize capital gains and and and income taxes at the same level. Obviously, one of the rationale for a lower capital gains tax is to incentivize investment. Is there a under your plan a way to think about a two-tiered model where maybe the first I don't know uh couple hundred thousand dollars uh in capital gains on any given year might be at a lower rate uh but anything over that uh gets taxed at the at the income level. Yes, in my opad I do say gains on primary income or farms sort of smaller gains which every normal person has should be exempt from this increase in capital gains tax. >> So what would the rate be there for? I mean what would be the cap? >> Well frankly that can be much much lower or zero. >> Venode it's a it's a fascinating one and it's a longer conversation. Uh we love having you on the broadcast and look forward to talking again very very soon. Yes, much longer conversation. I hope some presidential candidate takes up my urging in the financial times stop. >> Thank you. Talk to you soon. >> Still to come on SquawkPod, an interview with Take 2 Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnik. It's going to be a big autumn for video games. Grand Theft Auto 6 will finally hit consoles in November after being announced back in 2022. and an extended trailer of the game that's out exclusively on Netflix in just a few weeks. Is it just the beginning for a Netflix partnership? >> I think historically Netflix has not made big acquisitions. They've grown organically and they've done a great job at it. And as far as us, you know, I don't know. I think we're very proud of the way we've built this company independently. >> We'll be right back. >> Welcome back to Squawk Pod. up in Andrew Q. You're >> watching Squawkbox right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew Aorkin along with Melissa Lee. Take 2 Interactive reporting uh higher sales but widening losses for its first quarter. The big headline was strong pre-order sales for the long- aaited Grand Theft Auto 6. It is due out in November. I've already said the uh Sorcin boys are awaiting this maybe a little too much. Strauss Zelnik is here. CEO of Take 2 Interactive. Yeah, there's a lot of people who want this. And what are you seeing? Uh, it looks really good. So, obviously pre-orders have gone much better than expected. So, >> um, our excitement continues to grow >> and you have to deliver though. I mean, >> I assume you think that you've nailed this thing because this has been a long wait. Trust me, my children will tell you about the wait. >> You know, we never claim victory before it occurs. Uh, I know that our Rockstar Games division has tried to innovate and um understands that as great as the anticipation is, we need to exceed expectations. Um, I believe that we will. >> How much you think of this as a front-loaded I was actually thinking about this this over the weekend when I knew we were going to see you. How much of this is like the like like a movie like like 50% of the sales of something like this happen in the first couple weeks and then it sort of it it drifts off or is it actually go the opposite way over time? >> It really depends on the title. So in the case of Grand Theft Auto 5, it's continued to sell. We've sold 230 million units and it's continued to perform through three console generations. So in that case it was and remains the standard bearer not just for our company but also for the industry over 13 years. Now of course we could never project that to occur again but that but that is an historical um fact. >> Go ahead. >> You said that pre-orders have been unprecedented but you don't know how it'll translate into sales. >> You just to the point Andrew Smith you just can't tell. >> So people might not actually buy it in the buy even more. I I think odds are very high that the pre-orders turn into sales. I think to Andrew's point, we can't tell if that's demand that was pulled forward because of initial excitement of, you know, the most avid consumers or whether it reflects something very different. There's just no history from which to extrapolate, >> right? How do you think about pricing for this for this particular title? >> So, we've established an $80 price point, $100 price point for the regular edition and the premium edition. And I think most people felt that if we wanted to exert it, we had a great deal of pricing power. Our job though, as we see it, is to deliver always way more value to the consumer than what we charge. And we want to do that over and over and over again. We understand that a consumer experience is the intersection of the thing itself and what you paid for it, >> right? >> And so we want people to be thrilled and we would never want people to feel like this is out of my range. >> Are they pre-ordering the $99.99 one or the $79.99 one? >> Both. Yes. Okay. At equal >> actually it is skewing more to the premium edition but that might be a reflection again that of the fact that the most avid consumers are the ones who are pre-ordering. >> What do you get in the $100 version that you don't get in the >> you get additional content >> and then the other question I had is what kind of discounting you think is going to happen or not around Christmas because obviously this is coming out in November. Is there a a shift in in pricing as people get closer to Christmas or do you try to hold hold the price? How much of is it is is up to you versus retailers etc. >> Well, we obviously establish our pricing right? >> And then storefronts can do what they wish. Uh we don't have any ability to control that. So if they reduce the price, they're obviously reducing their margin on the sale. There are situations where certain retailers will price down to drive demand for other things that they sell. And I can't tell what'll happen. I will tell you that we preserved our pricing on Grand Theft Auto 5 for a very long time. Much longer than a standard release of an entertainment property. >> What's happened to the pricing of that product now? >> Well, eventually it comes down over time. Sure. >> But how much does it come down? >> Well, it depend. I mean, we've offered it for as low as I think $20. >> Okay. >> And but it varies. There'll be promotions, but again, that's 13-year-old title. It's been our catalog for a very long time. >> Okay. So my other question is given that that so much of this company uh has become this this one particular game are you already on to the next version of it? >> Oh so let's be clear in terms of the percentage of our revenue all things Grand Theft Auto the Grand Theft Auto franchise uh for quite some time has been less than 15% of our total revenue. So we have a big diversified company we think we have the best collection of owned intellectual property in the business. But one of the things that's been fascinating is the stock has been has almost like tracked what's going on with that game. Am I wrong? >> I mean, I think wrong in that we're very profitable company and I think we do trade on the fundamentals. I mean, I do think we trade on our earnings this year. We expect to deliver over a billion dollars of free cash flow. >> By the end of the fiscal, we expect to be a net cash company. Again, I mean, we're not a story stock. We trade on the fun. >> No, I know. But if you if you follow the headlines and what what some of the investor class they they seem to be very tied up in the future of this game. >> Absolutely. And I think you know some expectations are very very high and I hope they come true. My point is that even in the event we have an extraordinary situation something way outside of anyone's expectations we still have an enormous business in mobile and console and PC outside of all things Grand Theft Auto. We've diversified the company meaningfully. We have 11 intellectual properties that have each sold over 5 million units in an initial release. Uh we have an enormous more than $3 billion topline mobile business with enormous hits and hopefully more coming. >> And NBA 2K was a huge was a big deal. >> NBA 2K set records this year with 12 million units sold in and recurrent consumer spending was up 7% year-over-year. >> I want to ask you about something that seems very different in terms of what you're doing with Netflix on August 27th. So it's GTA 6 an extended look. What what is this going to Can you tell us a little bit about this? I mean, is this like an extended Is it a game trailer? Is it a movie? Is it a show? What I mean, what? >> You have asked all the questions that will be answered on the 27th. And I expect a little bit of a a hint. >> The hint is I think it's really worth watching. It's really worth watching. And six hours after the initial premiere, it'll be on Rockstar's YouTube channels. And of course, it will make its way all over social media. Can you pre-order through the I >> I don't think you need to. >> Okay. Do you think >> since I think of you as a media mogul? And when I first saw this, I thought to myself, do you think Netflix I mean is Netflix really going to get into the gaming business in a whole new way? They've already they're already a little bit in gaming. Could you see Netflix getting into gaming even more? >> Look, they've hired some talented, experienced interactive entertainment executives, and we've made a bunch of deals with them. We've distributed many titles on the Netflix platform and I think, you know, I don't think it's any secret that their goal is to have as many subscribers as they can and they want to deliver the best entertainment to those subscribers. So, it stands to reason that they would they would make their way into the business. How would they do that? >> Yeah. Do you think they need to buy a company like like maybe a company called uh you know, >> Take Two? >> Take Two. >> So, you'll have to ask Ted and Greg, not me, about where they want to go with that. I think they're historically Netflix has not made big acquisitions. They've grown organically and they've done a great job at it. Um, and as far as us, you know, I don't know. I think we're very proud of the way we built this company independently. We're now the largest pure play that's public in the space worldwide. You know, we expect to have over 8 billion in revenue this year. We generate profits year in year out. I don't mean to imply that that's easy or even predictable. We have to get up every morning and do it. But I think if anyone deserves to be an independent company, we do. >> Let me flip it around in another sort of media mogul question for you. If David Ellison called you and said, "Look, I know you're in the gaming business. I got to stand up uh another film business, like I need another company. I got to sell some of my some great IP to uh to amilarate these these state AGs. Would you want to get into the film business?" >> Uh business I know he'll sell maybe he'll sell you Dune, some DC characters, some other things like that. But look, Andrew, I made a decision in 1993, before many of your viewers were alive, that it was time to exit the film business and go into what I believe would be the next huge entertainment business, the interactive entertainment business. Thankfully, it was a good career move. I was right. And that was a tiny little business in those days. >> Look, from my point of view, um the motion picture business is a very difficult business economically. It's a wonderful business creatively. uh now and then selectively we expect to bring our intellectual property to the motion picture and television business with other people's money not our own and I think that tells you how I feel about it >> okay John Selnic it's great to see this great thank you for coming in appreciate it >> that's Squawk Pod for today this Monday thanks for listening and thanks for starting your week with usbox is hosted by Joe Kernan Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorcin tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern or follow Squawk Pod wherever you get your podcasts for the best of our show every day and listen anytime you want. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. We are clear. Thanks guys.