Former Founder of Zynga, Zynga
Squawk Pod: House Minority Leader Jeffries & SpaceX Investor Mark Pincus - 06/25/26 | Audio Only
After New York’s primaries, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) discusses the future of the Democratic Party in a midterm election year. Plus, Zynga founder and Reinvent Capital partner Mark Pincus has written a book, “Life at the Speed of Play.” Pincus discusses his thesis of how to build successful products from good ideas, as well as his investments in SpaceX and Anthropic. Pincus is still waiting for the “technology treasure” invention of the AI age. Plus, CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos explains the surge in Qualcomm and Micron shares.
In this episode:
Hakeem Jeffries, @RepJe...
About Mark Pincus
Mark Pincus has been promoting his book "Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love," published in June 2026. In numerous podcast appearances, he has discussed his "Proven, Better, New" framework for product development, which he described as a "cheat code" that can improve a founder's odds of success. Pincus argued that founders should study and copy successful products before attempting innovation, stating that "the best masters of the craft are the best at copying" and that "all new fails." He also discussed his view that the consumer technology sector is currently "not investable" due to distribution challenges, but said the opportunity to build new consumer products has "never been greater" because of advances in AI and agents. Pincus described himself as an "AI maximalist" and said the consumer side of AI is being "underweighted" compared to enterprise and coding applications. He predicted a transition from a "knowledge worker economy" to a "prompt worker" economy. Pincus also discussed his investment approach, including co-founding a fund called Reinvent with Reid Hoffman focused on finding venture-like returns in mature companies. He noted that he publicly supported Donald Trump before the 2024 election, a decision he said cost him some friendships but that he was "happy" his past self took that stand.
Transcript (51 segments)
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Director0:01
Bring in show music, please.
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Katie Kramer0:04
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, who's in the middle really? A question we can't get away from today, talking about the politics of tech policy with Mark Pincus, the Zynga founder and entrepreneur, is out with a new book on the speed of life.
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Mark Pincus0:21
These unicorns, what I call internet treasures, have not been invented yet.
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Katie Kramer0:27
And a Democratic primary that shook up a few incumbents in New York City in favor of candidates more proudly on the left. The Democrat's leader in the House, Brooklyn's Hakeem Jeffries.
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Hakeem Jeffries0:39
The Democratic Party at its best, the country at its best, believes in a strong floor and no ceiling. In other words, you work hard, you play by the rules in this country, you should be able to live an affordable life, a comfortable life, at minimum, a middle class life.
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Katie Kramer0:55
Plus, memory chip stocks surge.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin0:58
Does the AI buildout get to a point where it's built out? Are we going to keep going till we create God?
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Katie Kramer1:05
Does it make a market?
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Joe Kernan1:06
So, you're saying this time is different?
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Mark Pincus1:08
Yes, I am.
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Katie Kramer1:12
It's Thursday, June 25th. Squawk Pod begins right now.
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Director1:17
Stand Andrew by three, two, one. Up and Andrew to you.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin1:23
Good morning and welcome to Squawkbox right here on CNBC. We're live at the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin back in the chair with Joe Kernan. Becky's off today. So, it's just the boys. Nice to see you, sir.
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Joe Kernan1:35
Good to see you.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin1:36
After an eventful week and a half. Well, you would need to go dissect every day for you because you're on Piers Morgan, you're at conferences, you just got a lot going on.
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Joe Kernan1:53
I've been working, as they say.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin1:55
There was vacation in there.
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Joe Kernan1:56
There was a little vacation in between, a week in the middle.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin1:59
Was there a week?
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Joe Kernan2:00
There was a week in the middle.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin2:02
Have you been working? I work for this network every single day. You've got a lot of different domains involved, right?
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Joe Kernan2:15
As a Renaissance man,
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Andrew Ross Sorkin2:17
It's all in the name of Joe Kernan.
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Joe Kernan2:21
You're like an octopus.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin2:22
And then there's the energy story, which I'm not sure has actually impacted this piece of it just yet. You'd think it would.
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Joe Kernan2:31
This is what's happening in the markets is memory. It really is. But this is good, too. WTI falling back below its level from before the Iran war. It happened fast, didn't it? We spoke with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about falling energy prices and the broader economy just yesterday on Squawkbox.
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Scott Bessent2:50
We went into this on very strong energy footing, on a very strong capex cycle from both the AI and the tax bill. The US economy has really performed and we're going to get to the other side of this conflict. Energy prices are coming down, inflation's going to drop, and the economy I think is going to be accelerating on a non-inflationary basis for the rest of the year and for the rest of the president's term.
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Joe Kernan3:19
So that's the backdrop. It's interesting to watch the debasement trades, dollar trades. Gold has not performed well. Bitcoin has not performed well. The dollar.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin3:35
Bitcoin back up about 61,000 bucks right now. I think we're looking back down.
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Joe Kernan3:39
Well, yesterday we were under 60. We're like 59.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin3:43
Got to 59, went all the way back to about 68 or so. Back to 60 or 59. Up a little bit this morning. But oil is not going to be the headwind that people were worried about. It's happened faster than people thought. We'll see if gas prices come down at the pump. They're about $3.85 or something. And you saw President Trump worrying about or at least raising the idea of gouging. Well, I was going to ask you about that. What is your sense about that?
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Joe Kernan4:18
I understand how he operates.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin4:19
No, but given the criticism...
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Joe Kernan4:20
No, I don't think that.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin4:22
Given the criticism and conversations we've had over the years where people like Elizabeth Warren and Biden were out there screaming about gouging, and these conversations in the morning where you would say you don't agree with it. Well, I mean, obviously there's a lot of things on the populist side. I like this housing bill. I'm not even that disappointed in how it's bipartisan, but there's so many things in there that I think are populist and we've talked about that. The gouging thing when he talks to oil companies, there's a difference between who's selling the gasoline and who's producing and exploring for the oil. There's overlap obviously, but there's refiners, there's crack spreads, there's reasons that prices don't come down immediately. Some of which may include feet dragging. I think like the prime rate, when that goes up it goes up fast. When it comes down the banks are like in molasses.
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Joe Kernan5:24
How much of it is feet dragging versus concern that it's going to go back up?
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Andrew Ross Sorkin5:28
You can check whether it's going back up by looking at the futures. That's what we're looking at. Rick Santelli, while you were out, has been on fire talking about how it's the markets that dictate, and people that didn't think that oil knew what was happening and was ignoring the fundamentals. The only thing you ever look at where the rubber meets the road is in the markets, and oil all along was telling you that this was nearing an end.
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Joe Kernan6:00
Because the story was that he was going to walk.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin6:03
Who was going to...
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Joe Kernan6:05
The administration was going to bulk on Iran. I've actually, I spoke to the president off the record, and he said, 'So what do you think?' And the more I thought about it, I think it's kind of like to a degree...
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Andrew Ross Sorkin6:22
Cutting your losses. I think he went in for what he thought was a good reason and a lot of people agreed with the reason. I would have liked to have seen everything happen. I would like to see a new regime and free Iranian people in a beautiful Middle East. I'd like to see no nuclear weapons. Not all that's going to happen. But at this point, a pragmatic end I think makes a lot of sense. Not another forever war. We're talking about four months, not three or four years. Talking about no boots on the ground. We need a supplemental. I think at this point probably the best move, the Navy's gone over there, none of the centrifuges work anymore. We might get inspectors and we got 60 days to try and get a good deal. Instead of being a neocon, I'm with where you are taking this at this point and I think oil validates that. But the most important thing today is that Micron was supposed to... no way it's up so much.
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Joe Kernan7:37
No way. Everybody said it's going to be a great number, but not enough to satisfy the street.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin7:42
Let's talk about satisfying the street. Two prominent firms, and one of them is Micron, indicating there could be much more to come from the AI buildout. Christina Partsnevos is watching Micron and Qualcomm, which are surging this morning in a huge way, in large part what you're seeing in the NASDAQ right now. Tell us about what's happened here.
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Christina Partsnevos8:01
Yeah, watching it, and I was at the investor day yesterday for Qualcomm. Memory has always just been boom and then bust, but Micron is essentially telling everyone that's completely over, and the stock is up 16% because Wall Street is buying it this time. The reason is 16 long-term customer agreements now signed, 14 of them locking in roughly $100 billion in minimum guaranteed revenue through 2030. So the next five years. Supply also just got tighter. Management just pushed the shortage timeline past 2027, blaming fabs, workers, energy. Samsung and SK Hynix are already catching a bid in Korea off of this. And now over to Qualcomm where shares are also up about 12% after its investor day here in New York yesterday. A new target of $40 billion in non-handset revenue by 2029, nearly double its prior forecast, with roughly $15 billion of that from data center alone, a completely new category. I asked CEO Cristiano Amon just how he locks down supply to deliver on those numbers given everything we just heard from Micron. Listen in.
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Cristiano Amon9:12
I have secured the capacity from the manufacturer as well as memory. I also have memory for what we're doing at accelerator. So, we're excited about that and I think we're very confident in the forecast we provided.
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Christina Partsnevos9:26
So, he's securing capacity at TSMC and signing these long-term agreements that we heard about from Micron. Qualcomm also named Meta as its first customer for its new data center CPU and said it signed two hyperscaler deals for custom chips, one in the United States, one Chinese. I'd push back, is it ByteDance? Amazon? He didn't say anything, but those are the two presumed names. The bottom line is that you have two chip companies, two bets on the same AI buildout. Micron is betting it could break its own boom and bust cycle. Qualcomm is betting it could break its dependence on the smartphone.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin10:06
We're going to see what's going to happen here. I have one question I've been thinking about, especially with the Micron and the Qualcomms of the world.
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Joe Kernan10:12
Micron even more so. Do you say to yourself if you're a shareholder in Micron that this is like the most amazing management team and they're killing it, or do you say to yourself that they got super lucky to even be in this position? The wind is at their back.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin10:28
They didn't expand production in this remarkable way. The wind was at their back, now given what's happened. They didn't expand production, so that's actually on the downside.
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Joe Kernan10:39
Where are their margins going now, Christina? It was ridiculous this quarter and they forecast what, 90% for next quarter or something.
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Christina Partsnevos10:48
87%, which is absolutely insane for any type of AI company. To both of your points, they are very conservative on their buildout. They are increasing their capex to at least over $40 billion next year. $20 billion of that is going to go to construction and clean rooms, which takes a long time to build. But to your point, Andrew, yes, they are gaining an advantage because of the current market dynamics. The demand is so high for all of these AI-type memory chips and they just weren't prepared for the supply. You can almost apply that same type of scenario for Intel. Intel said two quarters ago that their CPUs were just flying out the door, they weren't expecting that and they couldn't meet demand. So that was a symptom of the actual market economies as opposed to a company that is pushing their CPUs forward. Micron is benefiting. They're saying it's no longer a commoditized product because you're signing these long-term agreements that give them revenue visibility and they can determine the pricing right now, which is great for them to keep those margins up. But overall, yes, they are taking advantage of the current market conditions.