Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, Tech in 25 in the rear view mirror with Reddit trader favorite Cathie Wood of ARK Invest.
What does last year teach us? We must assume that valuations are going to compress.
A longtime Tesla bull, Cathie Wood is staying optimistic. The EV sales environment has been challenged, but the market is shifting its focus to the robo taxi opportunity.
And new year, new diet. The craze over high protein eating. David Protein CEO Peter Ray Hall.
It's the protein of a meal and the calories of the snack is the best way to think of it.
No, you don't. No, you don't have to gag it down.
Plus, a potential chips deal with Taiwan. The Nobel Peace Prize comes to the White House and the brewing panic over a potential billionaire tax in California. Our Robert Frank is on the case.
The tech executives I talked to are certain it's going to pass because it's a tax that only applies to 200 people.
It's Friday, January 16th, 2026. SquawkPod begins right now.
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawkbox right here on CNBC. We're live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorcin.
Davos haircut right over there. Davos high and tight looking.
I need a haircut that would last a month. I find that if I don't do a haircut that's tight enough, then it can go. Then I needed to come back two and a half weeks later.
It's a judgment call because the month-long haircut is something people will notice. The 3-week haircut you might get by with.
Right. That's true. So, you have to with like you're wearing a wig and it never changes.
I've given up. I mean, I either I get it.
You got a haircut, though.
I know. I know. Or I retrofitted my men's hair club membership or something. I don't know what they think. They just they're haters. They just they hate Trump, so they hate my hair.
Meanwhile, the US and Taiwan reaching a trade deal to build chips and chip factories on American soil. Taiwan tech companies will invest in at least $250 billion in production capacity in the US and the Taiwanese government is going to guarantee $250 billion in credit. Now, in exchange, the US will limit President Trump's reciprocal tariffs on Taiwan to 15% and commit to zero reciprocal tariffs on generic drugs, aircraft parts, and some natural resources. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik telling CNBC Taiwan's chips giant TMC for example could also be expanding its Arizona footprint as part of that deal. Lutnik also said that Taiwan based chip companies that don't build plants in the US are likely to face 100% tariffs. So a new move in the chip war but also maybe in the larger geopolitical scheme with China. I imagine that's going to be part of the conversation we'll be having a lot next week in Davos.
The Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corino Machado, this is kind of a sideshow, presented her Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump and what she said was recognition for his commitments to the country's freedom on social media following a meeting with Machado. The president thanked her and called the gift a gesture of mutual respect. President Trump has dismissed the idea of installing Machado as Venezuela's leader to replace ousted leader Nicholas Maduro. Mr. Trump had campaigned to win the Nobel Prize himself, citing some of his foreign policy achievements. The Norwegian Nobel Institute says that the prize cannot be transferred or shared. It's probably obvious that I it's unclear. I read he accepted it. I read in your paper that he it's not clear whether he accepted it. You can't it's not you need to have it awarded to you. I don't really know what it means. But I
mean you can give the medal to whoever you want but doesn't mean they won the prize.
I saw a lot of people with memes saying here's a real president that won that actually won the Nobel Prize. My take on it was that because of Trump and who he is, he will never win the Nobel Prize and he probably should have. And because of Obama and who he was, he did win the Nobel Prize for doing absolutely nothing. So that the whole prize itself has been Now I am going to stay off Twitter. I'll tell you why. Here's why. Because this is what's coming up next week in Davos. I don't think we've said anything about it. And I just I don't need it. I don't need it. I don't need it. We're g It's going to be We're gonna I'm gonna interview on Wednesday. If you don't like it, just keep it to yourself. If you do like it, you can send it in, but I'm not going to I'm not responding to any about hair, about Trump. Like, you can send in some suggested questions. You guys, I'm I'm certainly see those either.
I won't see those either. But that will be I think his big speech is Wednesday at 2:30.
2:30 Davos time. Davos time, right? which is 8:30 East Coast
while we be broadcasting.
Yes. And I will be with you, right?
Cuz I wouldn't miss it. But I may have to leave, but then I'm going to do it after that.
And I I you can offer questions, too. I probably won't answer some of your questions or I won't ask them.
But there'll be, you know, there will be I'm open to yours. Whatever.
got to think about something. I think as a network we're going to put our heads together and it will most likely I think we should keep it to business and economics and things like that. You know, I don't know if I'll ask about
You got to ask about the Nobel and I yeah Nobel Peace Prize. I don't I may or may not. No, I don't know about that. But
you got a few days to figure it out.
Have a few days to figure out the I can study on the plane.
There you go. Well, we are looking forward to it. It's a part of our big coverage for next week. But obviously the interview with the president of the United States top of the list.
Tech industry discovering a potential added penalty in the billionaire tax being floated out in California. Robert Frank looks very distraught. He joins us now with more
Neither. This has become a big controversy on internet and this is all erupted around a provision of that California billionaires tax that some say would penalize founders. So the tax which could appear on the November ballot would impose a 5% tax on the total wealth of people worth a billion dollars or more. But according to some tech founders and investors, those with super voting shares could actually faced a supersized tax. So according to the bill, some say publicly traded shares will be valued at their public price, but non-publicly traded assets could be based on the voting shares, which could be far higher. So take Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They each own around 3% of the shares of Alphabet, but they hold super voting shares that carry 10 votes each, giving them a combined majority of the voting shares. Those shares are valued altogether in the market at around $120 billion, which implies a tax of $6 billion. But if their super voting shares are considered non-public since they don't technically trade as super voting shares, they could face according to some attacks of $60 billion each. Now, Gary Tan, the Y Combinator CEO, saying on X that this provision really gone viral here, it's proof that the wealth tax is poorly designed and designed to drive tech innovation out of California. Now the professors who authored the tax told me this is false as shown by a straightforward reading of the provision. Now taxpayers with publicly traded stocks will be tax based on the market value of their holdings. So they're saying look this is totally clear. There's no question about this. This is just propaganda on the other side. For more on the California wealth tax and how it could affect those who pay and the California economy, sign up for the Inside Wealth newsletter at cnbc.com/insidewealth.
Obviously, these texts and tweets went viral in California because there are a lot of founders with these super voting shares.
I'm sure if you told the IRS that those guys who designed it said that it wouldn't apply to you that the IRS would definitely take your side. California, it's the tax franchise board. That's
I'm sure they say, 'Oh, sorry. We don't if they can get it, they're going to take it, right? If there's an interpretation that allows them to get the
That's the question. The authors say there's just no interpretation that allows it's very clear. There's no interpretation. What are we talking about?
applies only to publicly traded companies. They're saying that because super voting shares aren't traded as super voting shares that it would apply to this. I think that's a legal stretch, but you're right. If there is any legal avenue to pursue it, the tax franchise board might pursue it. Now, the other question is why would they even with private companies
tax super voting as if it's separate from the economics? That's what I don't quite understand. And that's where you would get a bigger tax than the actual net worth of a person. We're going to hear a lot more of this.
nobody we haven't seen any reliable polling. They're still gathering the signatures to actually get it on the ballot. So, it hasn't been ensured that it's got a place on the ballot yet in November. So, they're still going through that process. Once it's officially on the ballot, we'll start to get some polling. The tech executives I talked to are certain it's going to pass.
Because it's a tax that only applies to 200 people and everyone will be for that. Now, that's their argument. I'm a little dubious. Koshi actually has some numbers showing that it's like 40% likelihood of passing
and there's no mechanism unlike so many other situations where people are obviously looking for exits not exits of a state but different ways to maneuver their wealth there is no way out
well Larry Page and Sergey Brin they left they left
no but I'm saying there's no way to move something to a trust or to a this or to a that my understanding was for example that real estate was is not being taxed this way, for example, or certain assets are not so that technically if you decided to sell said shares and turn those shares into hard assets, for example, that they might not be taxed. I don't know how that would work.
Yeah, I mean, we there was reports that Larry Ellison sold his house in December. So I don't know if real estate is excluded, specifically excluded from this. I'll have to check into that. I hadn't heard that. But yeah, I'm sure that a lot of these trusts, there's the Larry Ellison trust, which of course made a lot of headlines with the WBD deal. I don't know if that really gets you out of it because that could be counted as your net worth. Even if that specific asset is outside the state, it's still your asset.
And you're a tax resident of California. That's ultimately the decider.
But we're going to hear a lot more about this.
very complex. And as soon as we get some polling, we're going to start reporting on that. And is your one last thing is your sense that if in fact this goes through and this wealth tax happens, do you think that even more people leave because they think it's going to happen again or do they think, 'Oh, this was a one-time thing and now I don't need to worry about it again.'
What the opposition says is they say it's a one-time thing, but it's going to become repeated. And we've seen that with ballot taxes before. I think even if it passes, it's going to be challenged in court. And I do think legally it's going to be tough for them to win.
And that would be in a state court or a federal court.
Both. Both. It could be challenged on constitutionality grounds in both state and the Supreme Court.
So going to hear about it for a while.
And that's why we're very grateful to have you with the updates.
Tease will be next. Up next on Squawk Pod, Tesla and Crypto Bull. Cathie Wood, the CEO and CIO of ARK Invest, lays out her vision for opportunity in 2026 and beyond. Each of the five major platforms, robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence, especially blockchain technology, and multiomic sequencing, healthcare, those are all very deflationary in their impact.
Joining us right now on the markets, tech, crypto, and her outlook for 2026. Cathie Wood is here, ARK Invest CEO and CIO. 2025 was quite a year both up and down and back again to some degree. When you look at some of the big holdings that you have whether it be Tesla and maybe we get into crypto and everything else where do you think things are headed and to the extent that there were things that you were wrong about frankly in 25 what was the lesson?
Sure. Well great to see you. Happy new year Andrew, Becky and Joe. So yes last year Morningstar had in the Morningstar rankings I think we had three of the top five or four of the top five were ARK funds top performing. Of course we had two big corrections. We had the trade turmoil in April. That was an amazing buying opportunity. And what we do typically is concentrate towards our highest conviction names when we have an opportunity like that. We did that. Same with the government shutdown. That was a little less severe. What did we learn? Well, one of the things that we've learned over the last few years is we can see inflation coming down clearly, but in the reported numbers, it is stuck. And I think a lot of people are wondering, wait a minute, this market is near record high valuations. How can this be? This is a setup for a correction. And we're looking at other periods in history. If you look into the '90s up to '97 I think it was and in the early 2000s we had very strong markets as the multiple moved down. So what does last year teach us? We must assume that valuations are going to compress and we do that in our bottom-up analysis for every company. So but we're pretty excited about the inflation outlook thanks to oil prices, housing prices big time. You see the homebuilders KB Home cutting its prices by 7% and others following and productivity gains, unit labor costs coming down dramatically. I think on a year-over-year basis they're up 1.2% but the last quarter reported they were actually negative. So there are a lot of deflationary pressures and the last one I'll cite is technology. Our focus is exclusively on technologically enabled innovation and in each of the five major platforms robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence especially, blockchain technology and multiomic sequencing healthcare. I saw the CEO of Bio very good. Those are all very deflationary in their impact. So pretty excited. We think the surprises are going to be on the low side of inflation expectations.
Tesla's always been one of your big holdings. In terms of just sales, obviously things have been challenged. But there's a lot of excitement about autonomy. There's a lot of excitement about the Optimus robot. What is your sense of where things stand at Tesla right now?
Yes. The EV sales environment has been challenged but the market is shifting its focus to the robo taxi opportunity. So we're moving from 15% gross margins in autos the hardware to more of a SaaS model where robo taxis this recurring revenue model has margins more in the 70s and 80s and I think as analysts understand that that's where Tesla's going and they start building in the model for robo taxis they see a tremendous opportunity. So, it's been interesting to me to see upgrades even by some auto analysts now that they're beginning to understand that this is not an auto company. Maybe they're working with their tech analysts and understanding the stock a bit better.
So, when you think about autonomous robo taxis and you think about robots, what does that look like? And is there an argument? Look, some of the critics would say, cars aren't working the way they're supposed to be working right now in terms of what's happening with the EV market and some of these other ambitious efforts are going to take a long time to get to a meaningful escape velocity.
Well, we're keeping an eye on how quickly Tesla's footprint is expanding here, and it's expanding a lot faster, I think, than many people expected. And it's interesting to watch Waymo as well. We draw in Texas. We draw the footprint and they're competing with each other. Competition is a good thing. So I think this is actually going to happen faster than most analysts think in terms of the proliferation of robo taxis especially if we get more federal legislation instead of just state by state. On the Optimus robot side, there's a lot of excitement in robotics that in the private markets has been a huge space this past year. We look at an Optimus robot. Our chief futurist Brett Winton working with Sam and Daniel have concluded that an Optimus robot is going to be 200,000 times more difficult to get working correctly relative to a robo taxi. So you'll have waves of Optimus improving with time, but full human is going to be quite difficult. Nonetheless, the robots that we're seeing, pick and pack and lifting things, they're starting to make waves.
Should we talk about Bitcoin? We can talk about SpaceX. I mean, that's going to probably go public this year. What do you think it's going to go public at?
Well, this next round is about $800 billion. So a near doubling. And we wouldn't be surprised to see it become the first trillion dollar company. And especially now that there's a new opportunity, data centers in space to avoid all of the not in my backyard obstacles that Tesla and others are facing. So, we're starting to do the modeling work on that.
How realistic do you think that is? And what do you think the timeline for something like that is? I mean, I know Elon's talked about that. But then there's lots of people who have asked questions about just the practicality of making something like that work.
Yes. We spent our last brainstorm on a good chunk of it on exactly that. And as I said, we're doing our modeling work. As with everything that Elon Musk does, he's going at this from a first principles point of view. He's not looking at how things are done on Earth. He's trying to figure out what's possible in space. So as I said, we're doing our modeling work. We shall see. Before getting on to Bitcoin, Andrew, I want to compliment you on your book in 1929. I'm in April 29 and it's been fascinating for me to say, okay, wait a minute. Are we at all in a situation like that? I think maybe in the private markets we have been, you know, the whole idea, not literally, but of stock clubs back then. But it is fascinating the Fed and the stock market and others wrestling with one another. I don't think we're in the same situation at all, but I wanted to compliment you and I can't wait to finish the rest of the book.
I hope you enjoy the rest of it. But you're right. There are things that feel like parallels in certain ways, but hopefully there's other things that actually don't parallel at all. So,
Cathie has raised a point a lot that when you got more bullish on stable coins being maybe would supplant some of the uses of Bitcoin and I mean stable coins aren't going away. Did that cause you to even slightly lower your very bullish forecast on Bitcoin. Can you just
Yes. That broadcast kind of propagated and everybody thought we were becoming negative on Bitcoin. Not at all. Stable coins are usurping one of the roles that we thought Bitcoin would serve in emerging markets especially. But on the other hand, if you really believe Bitcoin is like gold, digital gold, look at what just happened to gold. If you assume that Bitcoin is going to usurp a lot of gold's role as we get this intergenerational wealth transfer, then our price target net both for stable coins and gold would actually be going up. We're holding it where it is. Our bull case at 1.5 million, base at 750. But I'll tell you what has happened to Bitcoin and all other crypto assets. There was a flash crash on October 10th. And from what we understand there were a lot of leveraged individuals, investors, others hurt. We think that has washed out of the system. We actually think we have it on good sources that it has washed out of the system that correction. It was about a $28 billion hit. We think we're on the other side of that. And so we're seeing the crypto asset ecosystem stabilize and it was a very good test actually very good test. We didn't see Bitcoin go down 75 or 80% like we have in other corrections. It went down 35% which I know is not comfortable but that's a victory in this market.
And where do you land? I mean we've been watching all sorts of folks come up with new treasury companies around Solana and Ethereum and all sorts of other things. How much of that do you think could ultimately crowd out Bitcoin or not?
No. No, I don't think so. I actually think that ETFs are clarifying who the big three are out there. It's interesting whereas in the past you'd have a proliferation you still do of all kinds of assets and coins. From an institutional point of view, the ETFs primarily Bitcoin through strategy, ether and Solana, we own Bitmine and Soulmate those are focusing the institutional mind on the big three and maybe we've got another one coming up in Hyperledger. We will see. So I actually think it's doing the opposite than what we've seen happen in other or will do the opposite that what than what we've seen happen in past bull markets.
Fair enough, Cathie. It is always good to talk to you. So glad you're in the book. I appreciate that very much. Look forward to seeing you in person very soon. So, thanks again and we'll talk to you soon.
Still to come on SquawkPod, the newest trend in health and nutrition in this world of GLP1s protein. The CEO of one of the hottest brands in the game, David Protein joins us, Peter Rayhal, on the special ingredient that makes it all work and where low-fat, high protein food is going next. So, we're using it in sports nutrition. The second best application is chocolate, cocoa butter. Great substitute for cocoa butter, which we have big plans for. And then frying like French fries, potato chips, Dorito type product.
You're watching Squawkbox on CNBC. I'm Andrew Sorcin along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. The popularity of GLP1 weight loss medications has drawn attention to possible muscle loss while on those drugs that sparked an added focus on protein intake. And joining us right now is a guy who has been spending a lot of time on protein. Peter Al is here the David Protein CEO also founder and I should say created RX Bars back in the day. I remember when you were on how many years ago now?
Seven years ago you had sold that to Kellogg quite successfully. You have now have these bars which by the way flying off the shelves. It's a wild situation. I've become actually addicted to some of these bars and for a period of time I shouldn't I don't know if you want to say you couldn't actually buy them. You'd run out.
Yep. You know, we had some
You can buy them on our website, Walmart, Target,
