Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, the question of our times: how smart is too smart for artificial intelligence? The leaders behind the quickly growing technologies are warning we need to slow down now. Head of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, is very clear. It's all up to us.
If an AI thinks that it has rights, if it thinks that it is deserving of our welfare, then it seems to me that it's going to be much, much harder to be able to turn it off or interrupt it or control it.
And he thinks the big existential conversation is healthy.
We're completely different and we shouldn't anthropomorphically project our experiences into them.
Then are you excited about the NFL starting, October baseball, the WNBA, pickleball? Good news: sports is appointment viewing, streaming, and experiencing. Rich Kleiman, manager for NBA star Kevin Durant on this new economy.
I love the overall popularity of sports as a whole. I think there's more excitement around more optionality.
Plus, the rare chance for a leader to watch his own succession. Warren Buffett stepping down as chairman of the conglomerate he built, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett is the longest serving chairman in the S&P 500, more than 60 years. It's Friday, September 18th, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now.
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernen. Andrew will join us a little later in the show. It's a Friday. We're ready to go. We do have some news just out from Berkshire Hathaway.
Ah, some news. Listen up. The company is announcing today that Warren Buffett will be stepping into the role of chairman emeritus, that is effective immediately. Buffett's son, Howard G. Buffett, will become the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Sue Decker continues as lead independent director and Warren Buffett will remain as a director on the board. In making this announcement, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel, says Warren's impact on Berkshire and its owners is without parallel in the history of American business. The culture Warren built and the values he championed will remain at the heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be their guardian. Now, this has been the succession plan that Buffett himself had laid out for years. Howard has served on the board since 1993 and brings to the role experience as a director of both private and public companies including Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Archer Daniels Midland, Kaggle, and Agrico among others. Warren Buffett wrote a letter to shareholders as part of this announcement and in it he says, 'I have served Berkshire since 1965. 60 plus years in, I still have the best job in the world. That is not something many people my age can say and I have never felt better about what comes next. Part of the reason is Greg. My expectations for him were sky-high from the start and he has exceeded them. He has taken hold of the chief executive officer job in every respect. He's been making the decisions that matter for some time now and I have not had to think twice about any of them.' Buffett goes on to talk about his son's qualifications, having been on the Berkshire board for the last 33 years. Here's what he says about that. 'That is a longer apprenticeship than I served before taking the reins at the age of 34. Greg runs the company. Howard will guard its culture and values, both worth more than anything on our balance sheet. Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against.' Buffett ends the letter on a personal note. He says, 'Serving as your chairman has been the privilege of a lifetime, and I have never taken your trust for granted. Father time always wins. He has however been generous with me. He has given me the opportunity to see Berkshire reach a point where I am more confident than ever about what lies ahead. The company is in excellent hands and I look forward to remaining a shareholder alongside you.' Pretty powerful words marking the end of an incredible chapter at Berkshire. Now, the obvious question is why now? Buffett did turn 96 years old on August 30th, and he's been watching Abel operate for years, not just since he became the CEO earlier this year. Berkshire stock has underperformed the S&P. It's up just 1% versus the S&P's gain of over 11% since Abel took over the company on January 1st. But Abel has made a couple of big deals since he took over, acquiring home builder Taylor Morrison and closing on the acquisition of OxyChem that he had been shepherding since October the year before. He also made an almost $2 billion investment in Tokyo Marine. And he proved Berkshire is still the firm to call when companies are looking for big investments, specifically that $10 billion Alphabet private placement arrangement that Berkshire made in June. Abel told us how it came together when he joined Squawk Box two weeks ago in a script that sounds pretty similar to some of Buffett's deals.
I received the call on a Sunday morning to see if we wanted to participate in their upcoming equity offering. Really no terms or amount were set and I said well I'd get back to him right away and very much consistent with how we manage Berkshire but also how we the governance around it. I called Warren and I said we had a significant opportunity to invest in, continue to invest in Google but in a with a significant block, discussed the size, they hadn't set the size but recommended that we consider 10 billion and Warren and I discussed the size, we discussed the size of discount and I'd recommended 6.5% discount and we were comfortable with that and we went back to them and highlighted we would be interested in a block on those terms and then ultimately consummated the transaction.
We reached out to Greg Abel for comment on this and here's what he shared with us. 'Warren described in his letter today how his role at Berkshire has been the best job in the world. He gave me an extraordinary responsibility, the best job in American business and then the latitude to lead in a manner consistent with Berkshire's culture and values. I look forward to continuing to work alongside Warren with Howard serving as chairman and Sue as lead independent director and I am grateful for that opportunity.' Joe, he's Warren Buffett is the longest serving chairman in the S&P 500 up until this moment today. Obviously more than 60 years puts him with a long lead over just about anybody else. I did look for who was number two on that list and depending on how you measure with some of these it's either Rupert Murdoch or Roger Penske who both have had long runs too depending on when you look at them kind of going into these jobs. But obviously this is something that was set in motion. This has been the plan that Warren Buffett himself has put out there for quite a while.
Both of those other two legends as well. Roger Penske we saw recently with the race down in DC. And there's a big movie that I saw in Telluride about Rupert and the guy he put in charge initially over in London for the Mirror and brought that back to prominence. So kind of interesting. 'Ink' is the name of it. It was good. It was good. I was going through just trying to think of succession in general and how difficult it is and how important it is for a leader that was just incredibly effective and thought of almost like an icon and how difficult it is to find someone and how important that decision is.
To the sometimes it's the most important.
We've seen some bad decisions.
We've seen some bad and difficult, you know, I remember I was trying to go through some of them. Goizueta. Did we ever really, you know, at Coke? Finally, you find someone at Apple the first time, I think, was huge, right? At Apple, the first time Jobs left, they went through this strange...
Yeah. Sculley and Gil Amelio, but then...
So he comes back. Sometimes CEOs have to come back. Bob Iger had to come back.
I remember how hard it was for Disney before Eisner, but then after Eisner, they immediately had Iger. And for when Tim, you know, Tim took over it was amazing for Jobs.
Nobody could have anticipated what Tim could...
I'm not going to mention GE. I always say that I'm not going to mention it but I think Welch to this day is well he's obviously gone but that was one of the things that...
It pained him what happened but...
And then I was thinking do we know about if he just judged Greg since he took over...
I was thinking well Warren wants to make the right decision and wants to be sure he did, but he knows going five years back. So, he's not just judging Greg Abel based on...
Correct. Greg's been at the company for more than 30 years, but most importantly, he has been running this company, started taking over operations years ago, and has been working with Warren. And by the way, they still talk every day. Warren will continue as a member of the board. Obviously, his entire fortune is still wrapped up in Berkshire shares. So this is something that he put so much thought into. He and Charlie Munger, or Charlie Munger passed on this.
I think he feels really good about where things are right now.
The Schultz had to come back.
Couple times. It seems like AG Lafley they had at P&G had trouble and then he came back.
I think you know you can't come back, you know, he's 96 unless we really get moving on this AI stuff. Immortality is a couple of years off.
Still, but well, congratulations to Greg and we'll be watching...
And to Howard and Warren.
Yeah. And Howard, right? I think this is for Warren. This is being able to see something. He has always talked about Berkshire Hathaway like another one of his children and making sure it's in the right hands has been one of the most important decisions I think he's ever made.
How much money they have to use right now? They're still...
Oh, yeah. It's over 300 billion. He's not going crazy right now at these levels. I just and that's a commentary on things and it sounds like Warren agrees with that.
You know, they have always prided themselves on not taking swings they don't have to take. They're waiting for fat pitches, right? That might explain why the stock has underperformed, but in times of turmoil, Berkshire outperforms, right?
Well, let's hope they don't need to, you know. Yeah, I remember Goldman Sachs, you know, to get whatever that and General Electric, those dividends that they were getting on those what were they preferred or...
Preferred convertibles that...
What was it 8% or something?
During the financial crisis.
It was 10 and the premium over conversion wasn't that big.
You're right 10% on a $5 billion investment in Goldman.
You could take all your money and put it there and never do anything else. Right. You know, the biggest single bet we had Ron Baron on the other day and he pointed out that of the $70 billion or $71 billion that he's made for investors over his entire career, 30 billion of that has come from Elon Musk through Tesla and SpaceX. So, it's those big bets that really pay off. In the case of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, it's Apple.
That's a single big swing they have made. Did he get in even wasn't that early?
Yeah. No, but it was back at 200, you know.
What was we talked about it? It had been up I don't know how much it was worth, but it fell to 9 billion after...
I think Jobs had left the first time and people didn't know what it was at that point. Seemed like a gadget maker.
So they had a total cost basis of around 9 to 10 billion. Even after selling a lot of its stake, it's got like $60 billion left in it. So, it's those big swings and when you go all in and you go heavy on it, that's when you really pay off. And that's, you know, if you're a portfolio manager who is not managing based on the index, those are the type of plays you need to see. Really concentrated bets.
It's launch day for Apple. The Pro and Pro Max versions of the iPhone 18 hitting stores with higher price points than previous new device models. This is the first product launch under Apple's new CEO, John Ternus. Prior to taking the company's top job, Ternus served as senior vice president of Apple's hardware engineering. Much of the focus surrounding the new slate of iPhones is centered on Apple's first foldable model, which is called the Duo that will debut in about a month. And again, speaking of those transitions, we've been talking about Ternus, the latest step coming in.
Yeah. He's put in his time at Apple and I think Tim Cook has been very rigorous and thoughtful about who was going to take over his job too.
Pretty cool when it works. I mean Tim or Iger or whatever, but it's bad when it...
When it doesn't. Why do people not want fold? I don't want a foldable phone. Why do people not want foldable?
Oh, I'm kind of curious. I...
You're curious. You're not going to get one?
I'm thinking about it. I want to play around with it because the idea of a larger screen is as I get older, I need a larger screen so I can see it.
But you can I'm constantly trying and trying to blow things up. Sometimes you can't do that. You got to take a picture.
I don't want to carry a tablet around with me, but I might carry a foldable phone that I could make a larger screen out of.
We're both here reading teleprompter and reading stuff close up.
Got to read far and close.
So we're doing Yeah, we're...
We both have ridiculous contact setups. I've got one stronger than the other.
I've admitted to wearing contacts. I didn't know I admitted to it. No, I know. No, it helps. No, it helps. And I got admitted to I have one for you can do it this way. You can have one that lets you see far and one that lets you see close. That's the only way I can do it, right?
