Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 5/20/26

Summary

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Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer – Episode Summary

Date: May 20, 2026
Host: Jim Cramer (CNBC)
Episode Theme:
A seismic shift in investor focus from enterprise software to hardware and semiconductors – the backbone of the AI revolution – with deep dives on Nvidia, market dynamics amid geopolitical uncertainty, and exclusive CEO interviews (VF Corp and Databricks). The episode also features Cramer’s signature Lightning Round and his “No Huddle” investing advice.

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1. Main Theme Overview

Jim Cramer opens the episode by emphasizing an industry-changing trend: while enterprise software was once tech’s undisputed king, today, hardware—specifically, semiconductors and AI infrastructure—rules the markets. He covers Nvidia’s blockbuster earnings, the drag on traditional software firms, and why investors need to recalibrate in light of AI’s disruptive ascent.

“Enterprise software was the king of tech… But times change. Traditional enterprise software is facing new competition from the much cheaper products you can develop yourself from AI. And the enterprise software cohort… is now growing much more slowly than the physical side of tech: semiconductors, hardware, the tools that allow for the artificial intelligence revolution.”
— Jim Cramer [01:00]

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2. Key Discussion Points and Insights

A. Market Shifts: Hardware Ascendant, Software Stagnating

• Historical Context:
  For decades, enterprise software giants (Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe) delivered high growth and margins with little need for expensive materials. The software subscription model powered Wall Street gains.

• Current Paradigm:
  The emergence of AI-driven, custom-coded solutions threatens legacy software’s pricing power, allowing businesses to build tailored tools without exorbitant enterprise licenses.

• Hardware Boom:
  Semiconductor companies (Nvidia, AMD, ARM, Intel, Broadcom) have become foundational, powering AI’s progress.

“The world has changed… We’re not going back to the way things were. Not now, not ever.”
— Jim Cramer [11:52]

B. Nvidia’s Explosive Growth

• Earnings Recap:

  • Revenue: $81.6B, up 85% YoY, beating expectations by $3B
  • Hyperscale revenues: +115% YoY
  • Free cash flow: $10B above expectations
  • Announced a new $80B share buyback, on top of $40B remaining from current authorization
  • Forward guidance: $91B, $4B over Wall Street projections, even excluding China data center business
  • AI/data center is the main revenue growth driver

• Market Reaction:
  With Nvidia’s size ($5T+ market cap), surprise moves become less likely—the stock “basically flattened” after hours.

“Most of the growth came from the company’s core data center business with Hyperscale revenues up 115%… Now Nvidia has to look hard for places to put all of its money it’s making… After buying back nearly $20B of stock… [it] announced a new $80B share repurchase program… Very bullish.”
— Jim Cramer [03:00–05:00]

C. The AI Surge and Software’s Uncertain Future

• AI’s Role:
  Anthropic, OpenAI, and similar firms are disrupting entrenched software players. Companies can now code custom tools more affordably with AI, reducing reliance on external software.
• Investor Sentiment Shift:
  Portfolio managers, long used to worshipping “software as king,” are being forced to adapt as semis drive market leadership.

“People have asked for years about endless price increases from these [enterprise software] kinds of companies. Now you can have something cheaper and often tailor made for you… The pace of the change though, quite a lot of portfolio managers by surprise.”
— Jim Cramer [06:30]

D. Market Risks: Geopolitics and Macro

• Key Variables:
  • War in the Middle East (Iran/Strait of Hormuz)
  • Oil prices, interest rates, consumer health
• Alternative Market Leadership:
  Should peace break out, rotation could shift to healthcare, retailers, and transports—but as long as geopolitical risks persist, the market’s focus remains on AI hardware.

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nvidia’s dominance:
  “Semis are now in charge. Software is taking a backseat. The biggest companies—Nvidia—because it’s changed the world, especially the software world with artificial intelligence and accelerated computing.”
  — Jim Cramer [10:45]

• AI’s threat to old software:
  “They've got executives asking themselves if they need to pay a lot more for expensive enterprise software, which is so expensive, charges per user… Maybe they can just create AI agents with hardware that can replace the work of hundreds of people. Seems logical.”
  — Jim Cramer [09:20]

• On market “gamesmanship”:
  “This game is just plain ridiculous, people… This is not investing at all… If you want to bet on the prospect of peace in the Middle east, you should go to the prediction markets… If you’re doing these on-again, off-again oil trades, don’t confuse that with investing.”
  — Jim Cramer [42:27]

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4. Interview Highlights

A. VF Corp (North Face, Vans, Timberland) — CEO Bracken Darrell

[13:46–22:24]

• Turnaround Progress:
  VF Corp is recovering: Vans returns to growth, North Face and Timberland strong, Ultra up 45% QoQ. Darrell is optimistic about hitting high single- and eventually low double-digit growth as brands’ reach expands, especially to new demographics.

“We had our strongest quarter of growth in 3 years… We’re kind of closing one chapter which was the total company declining. Now we’re back into growth mode. We’re not going to look back.”
— Bracken Darrell [14:28]

• Appeal to Women:
  Major opportunity to build female market share; new leadership reflects this focus.

“When we get women going—North Face, we’ve barely scratched the surface… Timberland, too. And Ultra is probably 60/40 men/women. All of my potential now…”
— Bracken Darrell [17:15]

• Balance Sheet and Buyout Philosophy:
  Leverage falling below 2.5x; “We have so much organic growth potential; we won’t need [acquisitions] for a while…we really have a lot of growth in our existing business.” [18:13]

• Pricing Power:
  Wide price range from affordable to luxury-collab. “We can sell elevated product up to higher and higher price points and we can collaborate with people like…the really top of the fashion world.” [19:55]

B. Databricks — CEO Ali Ghodsi

[23:56–40:38]

• Private vs Public:
  Databricks is massively profitable, with flexibility on IPO timing—no urgency due to positive cash flow.

“For Databricks, we don’t burn any money at all. $0. So for us, we can choose the timing. This is a good year to be private…a good year where you want to be building, because we’re going through a huge transition in the market.”
— Ali Ghodsi [25:13]

• AI’s Current Barrier:
  Most CEOs see AI’s potential but haven’t deployed it at scale internally. The chief challenge: “AI doesn’t have an intelligence problem. AI has a context problem. How do we feed it that context? And that context is in the data.” [26:10]

• Databricks' Solution (GENIE & Ontology):
  “GENIE ontology…automatically has constructed the graph…snippets of nuggets of information…When you ask a question, it uses this ontology inside GENIE to answer those questions.”
  — Ali Ghodsi [27:08]

• Competitive Advantage:
  Databricks' single “lakehouse” for open data access is foundational to agentic AI, differentiates from rivals like Snowflake.

“We started this whole revolution by data should be open in open formats. It should be in one place, what we call the lake house. That turns out that’s really important for the agentic revolution.”
— Ali Ghodsi [28:44]

• Customer Example:
  Prada moved from Excel to Databricks, now uses AI for real-time analytics on things like who’s buying what product and inventory—previously was guesswork.

“Now they can, with AI in real time, ask questions—who’s buying a purse, who’s buying a shoe…now we can do it with AI, and it just is magical.”
— Ali Ghodsi [39:26]

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5. The Lightning Round (Rapid-fire stock takes)

[40:39–42:02]

• Xometry (partnered with Siemens):
  “Xometry’s growing like a weed. I’m going to invite Xometry on. I don’t know them well enough to opine, but it’s in the right space.”
  — Jim Cramer [41:08]

• Equinix:
  “A great way to play the data set.”
  — Jim Cramer [41:50]

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6. Cramer’s No Huddle: On Trading Geopolitical News

[42:27–44:28]

• Caution Against “Guess Trades”:
  Cramer blasts the market’s knee-jerk trading on rumors of Middle East peace and related swings in oil, airlines, and cruiselines.

“The endless trading has turned these oil sensor stocks into mere playthings…If you want to bet on the prospect of peace in the Middle East, you should go to prediction markets…If you’re doing these…don’t confuse that with investing.”
— Jim Cramer [42:27]

• Discipline vs Guessing:
  Investing requires an edge, not hunches about unknowable events.
  “Rule number one: Do you have an edge? Or are you just guessing? …You need an edge to pull the trigger.” [43:00]

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7. Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|--------------| | Cramer’s Opening Monologue | 00:56–12:22 | | Hardware vs. Software / Nvidia Focus | 01:00–12:00 | | Interview: VF Corp, CEO Bracken Darrell | 13:46–22:24 | | Interview: Databricks, CEO Ali Ghodsi | 23:56–40:38 | | The Lightning Round | 40:39–42:02 | | No Huddle: Cramer on Speculative Trading | 42:27–44:28 |

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8. Episode Takeaways

• Key Macro Shift:
  Semiconductors and hardware are the new “kings” of tech as AI transforms business and investing patterns.
• Nvidia stands atop the market, yet surprise is harder as company size balloons.
• C-level advice:
  • VF Corp in robust turnaround phase, hunting growth with energized brand focus.
  • Databricks is quietly dominating AI/data, solving the “context” problem.
• Investor Guidance:
  Stick to areas where you have real insight; don’t trade macro/geopolitical headlines.

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Tone:
As always, Cramer is energetic, opinionated, direct with his market takes, and seeks to make “Mad Money” both educational and actionable.

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End of Summary

Transcript

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[Jim Cramer]

My mission is simple to make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a bull market somewhere and I promise to help you find it. MAV MONEY starts now. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to MAV Money. Welcome to Kramerica. Other people want to make friends. I'm just trying to make you a little bit of money here. My job not just to entertain, but also to educate you. So call me 1-800-743- CNBC tweet meyimkramer it's incredible how much tech has changed in the last few years Old days, enterprise software was unbeatable. Software help you sell things better, calculate things, forecast things, even organize human resources. It the whole point of it was to disrupt how we did work. And it sure did, saving companies money while making investors fortunes in the process. Enterprise software was the king of tech. It was where the money was. But times change. Traditional enterprise software is facing new competition from the much cheaper products you can develop yourself from. AI. And the enterprise software cohort, once prized for its high growth and lucrative gross margins, is now growing much more slowly than the physical side of tech. Semiconductors, hardware, the tools that allow for the artificial intelligence revolution. Listen, I haven't lost focus on other large issues. The war oil, the price of money, also known as interest rates or the health of the consumer. These are integral to the to all the averages, with The Dow surging 645 points today, S&P jumping 1.08% and the Nasdaq call voting 1.55%. If the war with the RAM were to end, as is rumored, although I honestly can't figure out how that would happen, then you could argue this hardware versus software dynamic is really a sideshow with we'd see interest rates plummet, worries about the consumer would wane. The Fed might even start talking about cutting rates. We'd be buying health care and retailers and transports a whole other group of stocks. But it has. See, as long as the Iranians are shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, or you could say we are on the other end, that that that's off the table. Instead we keep coming back to what's working. And what's working are the hardware stocks that power the data center and the soon to be public artificial intelligence titans like OpenAI and Anthropic. Tonight Anthropic looks like they're going to be wildly profitable because of a huge second quarter saying nothing of course of output, Amazon Matter as well as the AI portion of Microsoft. Not all of Microsoft, just the AI portion. And we talk hardware. The biggest part of that is the company just reported tonight it seems to not be able to get out of its own way right now, which is Nvidia. Now I've been pounding the table in a video since it was trading at a split adjusted price of just under four bucks. I've never hidden my belief in the company and its team led by Jensen Huang, Nvidia just reported. The close delivered another stunning set of numbers. Revenue growing 85% year over year 81.6 billion beating expectations by nearly $3 billion. Most of the growth came from the company's core data center business with Hyperscale revenues up 115% versus the prior year and up sequentially. While I clouds industrial and enterprise revenue grew 74% from the prior year. Company's gross margins were in line. Oh, maybe people don't like that. And Nvidia had an 11 cent bottom line beat off a $76 basis. Free cash flow came in $10 billion above expectations. Now we're at the point where Nvidia has to look hard for places to put all of its money it's making. Every week the company seems to be making multibillion dollar stakes in taking stakes in small component players. New hyperscaler, perhaps optical. But after buying back nearly $20 billion of stock in the current quarter, Nvidia announced a new $80 billion share repurchase program even as it close to $40 billion remaining on his previous authorization. Very bullish companies outlook for the current quarter look good too. Nvidia's guiding for 91 billion in revenue this this quarter roughly 4 billion above the expectations that were 87 billion. Despite the fact that the company still assuming no data center compute revenue from China, it was almost exactly three years ago in May 2023, that envious Nvidia shocked Wall street with roughly $4 billion of upside in its guide for the quarter ahead. That caused a huge gap up for the stock, which never really looked back after that. But now with the Stock up over 600% since then, it's tougher for the company to surprise investors. It's gotten so big the stocks basically flatten after hours trading, which I think is more a reflection on how everyone who wants Nvidia already owns Nvidia. Anything qualitative about the company's earnings? It's hard to get bigger when you're so huge at north of $5 trillion. If you're confused about any of this, I've got some terrific in video coverage tonight for subscribers to the CNBC Investing Club. We do some much more deep coverage than I can do here. You can join at a special rate of just $4 for your first month. Yeah, four bucks go to cnbc.com/kramer club to sign up. Tell me. I don't know why you wouldn't. All right, let's put in video in context though. You need a lot of things for Nvidia or its rivals to make chips. But what you don't need is big time expensive software that this market used to love. Now I won't put software companies out of business. It's not going to happen. They aren't going to make it. So nobody uses Adobe for creativity or Salesforce or Sales. But I does threaten their primacy, their supremacy. It makes them less lucrative by putting an end to their pricing power. Because Anthropic and Compadres make a very convincing case that you can help companies code something very similar practically out of old cloth is not real coding either because you're just asking stuff. Customers have asked for years about endless price increases from these kinds of companies. However, there weren't a lot of alternatives and internal coding was too expensive. Now you can have something cheaper and often tailor made for you. So it's better now. The pace of the change though, quite a lot of portfolio managers by surprise. We got used to the same tech companies leading the way for decades. For a long time, Microsoft was the most important company in the world. The largest, best ever. Why not Microsoft? Software, not hardware. And for decades software ruled the world. Sure, Apple matter because of the iPhone, but the app store gave you the growth and that's all software. For years the market came to love the model of a company that sold proprietary software to the enterprise for fortunes. With the price going up A little bit every single year. These companies had gigantic gross margins because you don't need expensive materials or heavy equipment to create software. That's the kind of baggage you need to make, say semiconductors. The primacy of software goes back to a long way. 861986 Microsoft came public. What by Goldman Sachs. The stock went to a premium and never looked back. I remember for a long time people thought it was ridiculous to some company that made unseen code, whatever that was, could be worth more than the tangible products from GE or Exxon or General Motors.

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Wrong.

[Jim Cramer]

I can't tell you how incredulous people were when 1212 years later, 12 years, Microsoft became the largest company on earth. Software coding it was hard enough to get your head around the personal computer where so much of Microsoft software lived. But far more ironic, the fact that intel, the companion to Microsoft inside the PC, was never worth more than Microsoft. It often trailed its partner of dramatically in valuation. Despite the huge engineering feats that intel accomplished with its ever smaller yet more powerful chips. Microsoft produced Windows by the hundreds of millions of gigantic gross margins because it cost next to nothing to produce that additional piece of software. But the tail and wind tell chips cost fortunes to make, so it was hard to get leveraged. Maybe that's why so many money managers are still at odds with Nvidia now being the largest company on earth. It trouble troubling to them because of what we've seen for so many years. It's happening because Nvidia, its compadres, say amd, ARM Holdings, Intel, Broadcom, among so many others, are what powers AI. And with AI, software just isn't as powerful or as important. Nvidia comes loaded with its own software anyway. When it's combined with Anthropic or Open AI, it can actually create products very similar to the traditional expensive software vendors. Incidentally, that's why Anthropic and open air numbers 1 and 2 in the CNBC Disruptor 50 list. They're disrupting traditional software by lowering the importance of its two corporate buyers. You combine Nvidia hardware with Anthropic or OpenAI, you can easily create applications that are in the same league as pricey enterprise software. That's why everyone seems so scared of traditional enterprise software stocks, especially the ones that have been taken private or now running into so much trouble with their big debt loads. Or look, even a great company like we have tonight with Intuit. The people who run Open Air and Anthropic are incredibly promotional about how their wares can help you imagine new software Products that are better than what you could buy. Yeah, right off the shelf. No, you want these guys? Doesn't matter. They're sown fear into the very fabric of the enterprise. It's one of their biggest selling points by the way to Main street and Wall Street. They've got executives asking themselves if they need to pay a lot more for exact for enterprise software which is so expensive charges per user. When I may let them lay off a bunch of those users. Maybe they can just create AI agents with hardware that can replace the work of hundreds of people. Seems logical. These are the questions that are shifting power to the semiconductor cohort. Go listen to my interview with Lip Bhutan, the CEO of intel on Monday. He he's long been the biggest backer of semiconductor startups arguing that the intellectual property in semis is worth much more than people realize. It is a new era. People semis are now in charge. Software is taking a backseat the biggest companies in video because it's changed the world, especially the software world with artificial intelligence and accelerated computing. Those companies that seem purpose built for Nvidia are disrupting the old world. Led by Microsoft, but including so many others, almost none of which will admit they're in trouble. I mean, no, here's the bottom line. The world has changed. It's fluid. But we're not going back to the way things were. Not now, not ever. Let's go to Gregory in California, please. Gregory. Jim. Jim Parent. I need your advice here because what's up? I have a naughty, naughty kid called astera. She's barely 10 years old and she went public two years ago. And now I have to give you credit because you gave us the green light on this AI infrastructure play right after their IPA. Now when it pulled back to 40 bucks, I bought a full position and then sold half when it doubled. So I'm playing with the houses money. Gregory, we have nothing to worry about. Your plan with the house is money. You can never lose money. You can make a lot of money. I say you hold on, be very happy. As always, you're one of my smartest, if not smartest of our incredibly smart cohort of viewers. And you've done this thing very right. I say you stand pat with what's left. That's what we're trying to do with the club. It's so hard. But we take out our money, we win. It's a new world. Semis are in charge of this market and software's taking a back seat. Even video is not doing anything tonight. Can we take a little longer term. View please on that Money tonight, BF Corp. Is undergoing a major turnaround and I'm checking with the CEO. And a post earnings exclusive in data Bricks came in third in CBC Disruptor 50 list. And I'm sitting down with the CEO to find out more about the path forward for this data company. And with tax season in the rearview mirror, how is Intuit faring on Wall Street? Do not miss my exclusive with the CEO Stable Cramer.

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[Jim Cramer]

What the heck happened to the stock of VF Corp. The apparel company you know as the North Face Vans Timberland, among many other brands. This point, the current what I thought was terrific set of results. Stocks surged in premarket trading, but their outlook was basically in line and the stock got slammed. It finished the day down 3%. You know what? I think this could be a fantastic buying opportunity. Earlier today we got a chance to speak with Bracken Darrell, the turnaround artist, President CEO of VF Corp. Who is so darn smart. Take a look. Well, Bracken, let's start with the quarter that just ended. I thought the quarter was magnificent. You're really getting some momentum here now. The street may not be awarding yet, but I can see the turn. Tell us about it.

[Bracken Darrell]

Well, I'm super excited. You know, we just, we, you know, in Q3, we, we started to see Vans Coming back on E Comm Q4, it grew in total DTC both in the Americas and our total business grew for the full year. So we, you know, we had our strongest quarter of growth in 3 years for the total company in Q4. So we're finishing strong coming out of the year. Had our first full year of growth in three years and we just guided growth next year. So I'm, yeah, I'm super excited. I feel like we're, we're, we're kind of closing one chapter which was the, the total company is declining. Now we're back into growth mode. We're not going to look back.

[Jim Cramer]

And I thought that the brands were in growth mode. Obviously north facing Timberland. Terrific. But I cared more about the fact that it's no longer vans bringing it down.

[Bracken Darrell]

Yeah, I mean our DTC which is in the Americas, which is where we're focused because that's really leading. It's 40% of our global business is growing. So. And it's going to keep growing. So we feel really, really good about that. Vans is, we've got great products coming out. You know, I took this off for you, Jim, so you can see this really. I know everybody's going to want to buy that. It's not available but, but I've got another one back there that is, but we've got so much cool stuff coming and it's just, you know, it's great. And the heat has started.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, I think people don't understand the, the, the kind of makeup of the company because if I see North Face go big and Vans isn't keeping me down anymore. I got a possibility. Not yet. Because you're conservative. You said the turn is going to be long. I see high single digit. If you get bands, a little more momentum and you keep, keep going with North Face with a big brand.

[Bracken Darrell]

Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll raise your bid. I'll take, I'll call that and raise it. You know, I think it's not going to be this year, but in one of the years out, maybe it's next year, the year after that we're going to get back to high single digit growth and we're at some point it's going to touch double digit growth because we've got so much room to grow in all of our brands. As you said, North Face can double from here. Absolutely. Timberland's got strong growth potential. I mean we've never really exploded beyond the yellow boot and we're really working hard on that, as you said, vans used to be a 4 billion dollar brand. Now it went back to a 2 billion dollar grant. So it's got a lot of room to run above that. And then you've got Ultra. I mean, we just. Ultra just grew 45% this quarter. 45%. It's only a $270 million business, but you pile up a few of those and you're going to have a big business.

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah, I saw that. I thought that don't talk enough about Ultra. But you know what else we don't Talk about? There's 50% people in the world, Right. That you're not really appealing to. You know, those 50% are women. You're not doing it with women. And you made that point at the end and it said to me, wait a minute, that we got Greenfield coming if you just strike gold with women.

[Bracken Darrell]

Absolutely. You know, and you know, I put in three of my, top of my four presidents, those four big brands. We just mentioned three of the four women. So believe me, we're on it. We've been focused for vans so far on men to make sure we get our mojo back. But the unlock beyond that is so big, when we get women going north face, we barely scratch the surface on women. Honestly, Timberland too. And an ultra is probably 60, 40 men, women. So all of my potential now, I

[Jim Cramer]

think when I hear the numbers high, single digit or double digit, I think, you know what the man did, what he said he was going to do first when he came on our show. When you came on immediately was you fix the balance sheet. The balance sheet is no longer the question. You took off. First of all, you took off any of like, wow, extension worries. Then you got rid of the stuff, which made me feel like, I don't know, it looks like I'm not going to. It's. It won't hurt them. You've got a growth mode balance sheet now. Tell me who you're looking at. What do you want to buy that would augment.

[Bracken Darrell]

You know, we're going to.

[Ali Ghodsi]

We.

[Bracken Darrell]

I committed to investors publicly the first day I got here, we'd get that leverage ratio down below two and a half before we look at growth, at investments to grow again. And we have so much organic growth potential, we won't need it for a while. But at some point, you know, we go to below two and a half, which we committed in 28. Now even this year, we're guiding to six to two, nine. So that's. This is our 27th, so we're almost a Year ahead of schedule here. But if we get, if once we get below two and a half, we will be looking. You know, obviously I'm not ready to talk about who would be today, but I. There are certainly things out there, but the most important thing is we really have a lot of growth in our existing business. I don't feel the need to buy anything, but that's, that's gravy on top of everything.

[Jim Cramer]

I totally hear that. And I think people should recognize that. It wasn't like you had a, a smooth year. You had tariffs, which I think were very hard to comprehend, particularly, by the way, among investors who just said, you know, what is too complicated? I don't want to touch it.

[Bracken Darrell]

Yeah, yeah, there were tariffs and there was the war at the end of the year. There's, there's all the fears of AI wiping out jobs and hurting the GDP and driving higher unemployment. All those things are always in play. But, you know, I told you this last time I was on. We have so many things in our control. You know, one of the things I love about coming into a company like I did when I did, which was deep turnaround mode and now we're in growth mode, is that we had so many variables to, to play with. Now we're exploiting all those variables. So we're in growth mode and we're going to, we're going to blow that through all of them to get to higher and higher growth.

[Jim Cramer]

Did you keep the cachet? I mean, I always felt that Timberland had much bigger cachet than people realize. North Face, tremendous potential for cachet with, with the celebs, with the social media people. Where are you?

[Bracken Darrell]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the most appealing thing about this particular company, in this particular space. We have brands that have the cachet of luxury, but the price of Main street, you know, and that is a beautiful place to be. I mean, all of our prices, all of our products are affordable. We can sell elevated product up to higher and higher price points and we can collaborate with people like, you know, the really top of the fashion world. And we are, because they do have that kind of cachet.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, you mentioned the affordable brand. The consumer, alternately, depending upon the day, seems to be wavering. I guess maybe the instant DTC would give you the numbers, but where do you see the consumer? Someone who would be willing to pay 124 for 4 timberland, whatever. What is your max price? Because I'm getting worried that your max, your priciest stuff won't move.

[Bracken Darrell]

You know, the Coolest thing about this brand is we have price. We have even in Timberland, which is the highest price footwear we sell on average, which they can sell for 220, and they're selling very well at 220. We've got things you can buy all the way down to 120, $100 in vans, you can buy down to $60 or even 50, but you can also pay up to 120 and beyond. If you don't catch a collaboration early enough, like our satoshi that just launched, you might have to pay $600. And we will. And people are. So there's a wide range on all of our brands and price points. You know, it's one of the. One of the strategies we have is we can elevate up while we continue to sell at the mainstream price point.

[Jim Cramer]

And last thing, America's. You've turned international looks very tough from here. What can you do to make it so that that's next?

[Bracken Darrell]

You know, I really think we just got to execute really, really well in our wholesale channels. We've got a lot of improvement to do there, and we are working hard on it. We've just changed our leader who was running the Americas, who drove the turnaround there, is now taking over the total commercial globe as of. As of the end of last year. So we're excited about him. He's excited about his team. We've got a really great team. We've got a lot of great products coming internationally, too. So it'll take time, but we'll get there.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, you've been consistent. Everything you promised on the show has been right. Other people have gotten ahead of the turn. I rely on what you say because you have been straight with us the whole way. Rock and Darrell presidency of VF Corp. Where I think the turn is going exactly as you predicted. Thank you, Patrick.

[Bracken Darrell]

Thank you so much, Jim.

[Jim Cramer]

Absolutely. I'm on.

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[Charles Schwab Market Update Host (Keith Lansford)]

brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information packed daily market Preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions and key results. And statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] MarketUpdatePodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Jim Cramer]

If you want to get a read on AI. It's not enough to follow publicly traded companies because many of the most important players in the space are still private. Take data bricks, which helps companies take messy, fragmented data, organize it, analyze it, build AI on top of it, and frankly figure out what you have. As of February, this company had $5.4 billion annual revenue run rate and by now it's got to be substantially higher than that as these guys are growing like a weed. Databricks is free, cash flow positive. It's bringing in tons of business. There's a reason this company got $134 billion valuations last private fundraising round. All that helps send databricks to the number three spot on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list. Now that I has entered the agent era, this one's become a heavy hitter. So let's take a closer look with Ali Gadzi. He's the co founder and CEO of Databricks. To learn more, Mr. Gadzi, welcome back to bed, buddy.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Thank you so much. Always great to be on.

[Jim Cramer]

It's great to see you. First of all, I got to go through this rigging rule. I'm sorry, but you know, we got all these people, you know, when is anthropic going to come Bob and open air? Is it filed at Space X? A lot of those companies need money. When I look at your company, I say to myself, here's someone who's in the driver's seat can come public, not come public. Is that not a better way to look at databricks and the other guys, where we play the guessing game all the time?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah. I mean the way to think about it is that if you're burning huge amounts of capital like 10, 20, 30, $40 billion, you need the capital you need to be in the public markets, you have no choice. For databricks, we don't burn any money at all. $0. So for us, we can choose the timing. I think this is a good year to be private, because I think this is a good year where you want to be building, because we're going through a huge transition in the market, in public, in private, all enterprises. This AI revolution is happening. So it's better to build in private right now. And we will be public and we will go public, but I don't think this year is a good time for us.

[Jim Cramer]

All right, so when I first met you, I said, well, wait a second, I see what's going on here. You can take that. Here's the data. But it's your data. You can prosecute, you can ask why, you can inquire things. It seems like ever since I now there's like 100 things you could do if there were five things before. Do you advise your clients, look, you can do this, now, that. And do they avail themselves of it?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, look, I think the thing that is top of mind right now for every CEO on the planet, not just in tech, any CEO, is, wow, these AIs are so amazing. They can do so amazing things, but secretly, and they don't want to admit this, my organization has none of the AI. It's not established. We don't have agentic coworkers doing lots and lots of work. How do I get AI into my organization? And they have plenty of intelligence in the AIs, but why are the agents not working in the enterprise? What's going on? And the simple answer to that is the AIs. If you give them all the data and the context, if you perfectly ask the question with all the context, they will nail the answer every time. So the big question is, AI doesn't have an intelligence problem. AI has a context problem. How do we feed it that context? And that context is in the data. So that's top of mind. Everyone wants to solve this problem. No one on the planet right now doesn't want to have this problem nailed.

[Jim Cramer]

All right, so how about if I had genie, what would I do with it?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah. So GENIE has built into it something called GENIE ontology.

[Jim Cramer]

So genealogy. So you're talking. That's what Palantir taught me with the word ontology.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, they have it too, and they're a great partner. But the way genealthology works is that automatically we already have all the data in what we call the databricks. Lakehouse. That data is sitting there, but It's a lot of data structured, unstructured. So we don't want to have the AIs just go loop through the code and just loop through all the data and search for nuggets. That's what happens today. Today people use a cloud code or they use some other agent, and it just goes through and loops through. Costs a lot of money to loop through all the data. So what we do is we automatically ingenie have constructed the graph. So ontology is a graph, and it has these little snippets of nuggets of information. Like, you know, revenue is calculated this way. Number of employees is found over there. Product categories is here. And when you ask a question, it uses this ontology inside GENIE to answer those questions. So I personally, every meeting I'm at, I'm using genie. Like anything that comes up, I'm asking the question in genie. It's giving the answers a lot of the things that otherwise I would have to wait two, three days or have someone go look up the numbers. Because, you know, you really want numeracy and you want analytical, quantitative accuracy here. Right?

[Jim Cramer]

Right.

[Ali Ghodsi]

This is not about producing text. You want it to produce for you what are the different revenue categories, and you want those numbers to be accurate. So GENIE really excels at that. And a lot of that is thanks to this ontology graph.

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, so tell me, let's say I'm with another outfit. We've had Snowflake on many times, and I hear what you said, and it sounds like, wow, you guys are doing some cool stuff. Isn't it too costly to go from Snowflake to databricks?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Well, I think that's a great company. You know, the two companies have different backgrounds. We grew up in AI, so we started doing AI, you know, in 2009, frankly. And then when the company started 2013, we're at this point synonymous with the data and AI company. If you search for that will come up databricks. You know, their roots are data warehousing, but they're great. They have a great CEO and they're moving fast. And, you know, they're adding capabilities as well. So, you know, there's competition in the market. I think the GENIE ontology is special, though. And I think our open approach to data is also unique and very differentiated from all the other actual vendors. We started this whole revolution by data should be open in open formats. It should be in one place, what we call the lake house. That turns out that's really important for the agentic revolution because you can't grant access for, you know, each of your proprietary silo databases to your agents. The agents just go to this lake house. So the lake house has become the system of record nowadays. So I joke and I call it sora. You know, the system of record for agents. You know, that product name is now available. So well, that's what we call it.

[Jim Cramer]

Last question, I am confused about this. What's the proposition to stay off of your product? I mean if I meet a CEO and they have all their data on prem and they can't prosecute it using databricks, should I make a presumption that perhaps they are old school and not availing themselves of things that would make them more efficient and better what they do?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, I mean all of these guys want to move to the cloud. First of all, the vast majority of Fortune 500 Global 2000 already for the core workloads are in the cloud. But especially because, you know, the GPUs and the AI is in the cloud. But yeah, some are locked down on premise and we're working with them. They want to get out. I haven't heard anyone that says hey, we're on prem, we love it. We're going to stay there. It's much better. The GPUs are better, the AI is better. Leave us alone. You're wrong. Nobody's.

[Jim Cramer]

I don't know anyone, I don't know how we're running a bit. Actually I've run a couple of business but if I were running a database business, of which currently I am aware of one, how I would do it without you because everything's guessing, right? We were just used to the old way we used to guess. We would look at some things. Maybe we have a focus group, maybe we pick a couple of accounts, see what's going on. But isn't that the way it used to be before databricks?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, I wouldn't say we are the only company that's actually enabled that. But yeah, this is, I mean the revolution with data is happening. It's what's enabling that. The key missing piece though is that context. How do you get that context and that data into the agents? And I think that's far from a solved problem even by us. Right. But yes, we're seeing it like, you know, one of my favorite example is Prada. Everyone knows the brand Prada and they used to have all the revenue, all their KPIs, all of this in Excel, in spreadsheets. And so they moved it into our lake based database that we have and Then now they can with AI in real time, ask questions, you know who's buying a purse, you know who's buying a shoe, or you know, tell us about their inventory and so on. So yeah, now we can do it with AI and you know, it just is magical.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, I think it's great to have you on. It's magical to have you on because you speak English and you get the job done and it's a joy to have you because, you know, it's a great guy who's trying to figure out what's right for the business is often very different from a guy who's trying to gain the stock market. And we know many people are trying to do that now. Ali Gadzhi's co founder, CEO of Databricks this is number three of this rep list, but it's probably one of, I don't know, I shouldn't slander the all the other companies, but this is the one that doesn't need to come public. That's the kind of company you really want. Thank you. Great to see you.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Likewise.

[Discover Credit Card Announcer]

Thank you.

[Ali Ghodsi]

So.

[Jim Cramer]

All right, man buddies, back into the. You want to get a read on AI it's not enough to follow publicly traded companies because many of the most important players in the space are still private. Take data bricks, which helps companies take messy fragmented data, organize it, analyze it, build AI on top of it, and frankly figure out what you have. As of February, this company had $5.4 billion annual revenue run rate and by now it's got to be substantially higher than that as these guys are growing like a weed. Databricks is free cash flow positive. It's bringing in tons of business. There's a reason this company got $134 billion valuations last private fundraising round. All that helps send databricks to the number three spot on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list. Now that AI has entered the agentic era, this one's become a heavy hitter. So let's take a closer look with Ali Gadzi. He's the co founder and CEO of Databricks. To learn more. Mr. Gadzi, welcome back to bed, buddy.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Thank you so much. Always great to be on.

[Jim Cramer]

Alex, great to see you. First of all, I got to go through this rigam role. I'm sorry, but you know, we got all these people, you know, when is anthropic going to come up and open air? Is it filed at Space X? A lot of those companies need money. When I look at your company, I say to myself, here's someone who's in the driver's seat. You come public, not come public. Is that not a better way to look at databricks than the other guys where we play the guessing game all the time?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah. I mean, the way I think about it is that if you're burning huge amounts of capital, like 10, 20, 30, $40 billion, you need the capital you need to be in the public markets. You have no choice. For databricks, we don't burn any money at all. $0. So for us, we can choose the timing. I think this is a good year to be private, because I think this is a good year where you want to be building, because we're going through a huge transition in the market, in public, in private, all enterprises. This revolution is happening. So it's better to build in private right now. And we will be public and we will go public. But I don't think this year is a good time for us.

[Jim Cramer]

All right, so when I first met you, I said, well, wait a second, I see what's going on here. You can take that. Here's the data. But it's your data. You can prosecute, you can ask it why, you can inquire things. It seems like ever since I now there's like 100 things you could do if there were five things before you. Do you advise your clients, look, you can do this now, that. And do they avail themselves of it?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, look, I think the thing that is top of mind right now for every CEO on the planet, not just in tech, any CEO, is, wow, these AIs are so amazing. They can do so amazing things, but secretly. And they don't want to admit this. My organization has none of the AI. It's not established. We don't have agentic coworkers doing lots and lots of work. How do I get AI into my organization? And they have plenty of intelligence in the AIs, but why are the agents not working in the enterprise? What's going on? And the simple answer to that is the AIs. If you give them all the data and the context, if you perfectly ask the question with all the context, they will nail the answer every time. So the big question is, AI doesn't have an intelligence problem. AI has a context problem. How do we feed it that context? And that context is in the data. So that's top of mind. Everyone wants to solve this problem. No one on the planet right now doesn't want to have this problem nailed.

[Jim Cramer]

All right, so how about if I had genie, what would I do with it.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah. So GENIE has built into it something called GENIE ontology.

[Jim Cramer]

So GENIE ontology. So you're talking. That's what Palantir taught me with the word ontology.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, they have it too, and they're a great partner. But the way GENIE ontology works is that it automatically, we already have all the data and what we call the databricks. Lakehouse. That data is sitting there, but it's a lot of data structured, unstructured. So we don't want to have the AIs just go loop through the code and just loop through all the data and search for nuggets. That's what happens today. Today people use a cloud code or use some other agent and it just goes through and loops through. Costs a lot of money to loop through all the data. So what we do is we automatically ingenie have constructed the graph. So ontology is a graph and it has these little snippets of nuggets of information. Like revenue is calculated this way. Number of employees is found over there. Product categories is here. And when you ask a question, it uses this ontology inside GENIE to answer those questions. So I personally, every meeting I'm at, I'm using genie. Like anything that comes up, I'm asking the question in genie. It's giving the answers a lot of the things that otherwise I would have to wait two or three days or have someone go look up the numbers because, you know, you really want numeracy and you want analytical to accuracy here. Right?

[Jim Cramer]

Right.

[Ali Ghodsi]

This is not about producing text. You want it to produce for you what are the different revenue categories and you want those numbers to be accurate. So GENIE really excels at that. And a lot of that is thanks to this ontology graph.

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, so tell me, let's say I'm with another outfit. We've had Snowflake on many times and I hear what you said and it sounds like, wow, you guys are doing some cool stuff. Isn't it too costly to go from Snowflake to databricks?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Well, I think that's a great company. You know, the two companies have different backgrounds. We grew up in AI, so we started doing AI, you know, in 2009, frankly. And then when the company started 13 we're at this point synonymous with the data and AI company. If you search for that will come up databricks. You know, their roots are data warehousing. But they're great, they have a great CEO and they're moving fast and you know, they're adding AI capabilities as well. So you know, there's competition in the market. I think the GENIE ontology is special though. And I think our open approach to data is also unique and very differentiated from all the other actual vendors. We started this whole revolution by data should be open in open format. It should be in one place, what we call the lake house. That turns out that's really important for the agentic revolution because you can't grant access for, you know, each of your proprietary silo databases to your agents. The agents just go to this lake house. So the lake house has become the system of record nowadays. So I joke and I call it sora, you know, the system of record for agents. You know, that product name is now available. So well, that's what we call it.

[Jim Cramer]

Last question. I am confused about this. What's the proposition to stay off of your product? I mean, if I meet a CEO and they have all their data on prem and they can't prosecute it using data bricks, should I make a presumption that perhaps they are old school and not availing themselves of things that would make them more efficient and better what they do?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, I mean all of these guys want to move to the cloud. First of all, the vast majority of Fortune 500 Global 2000 already, for the core workloads are in the cloud. But especially because, you know, the GPUs and the AI is in the cloud. But yeah, some are locked down on premise and we're working with them. They want to get out. I haven't heard anyone that says, hey, we're on prem, we love it, we're going to stay there, it's much better. The GPUs are better, the AI is better. Leave us alone. You're wrong. Nobody's.

[Jim Cramer]

I don't know anyone, I don't know how we're running a bit. Actually, I've run a couple of business. But if I were running a database business, of which currently I am aware of one, how I would do it without you, because everything's guessing, right? We were just used to the old way. We used to guess we would look at some things. Maybe we have a focus group, maybe we pick a couple of accounts, see what's going on. But isn't that the way it used to be before databricks?

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yeah, I wouldn't say we are the only company that's actually enabled that. But yeah, this is, I mean the revolution with data is happening. It's what's enabling that. The key missing piece though is that context. How do you get that context and that data into the agents. And I think that's far from a solved problem even by us. Right? But yes, we're seeing it like, you know, one of my favorite example is Prada. Everyone knows the brand Prada and they used to have all the revenue, all their KPIs, all of this in Excel, in spreadsheets. And so they moved it into our lake based database that we have and then now they can with AI in real time, ask questions, you know who's buying a purse, you know who's buying a shoe or you know, tell us about their inventory and so on. So yeah, now we can do it with AI and you know, it just is magical.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, I think it's great to have you on. It's magical to have you on because you speak English and you get the job done and it's a joy to have you because, you know, it's great. A guy who's trying to figure out what's right for the business is often very different from a guy who's trying to gain the stock market. And we know many people are trying to do that now. Ali Gaddi is co founder, CEO of Databricks. This is number three of this rep list but it's probably one of, I don't know, I shouldn't slander the all the other companies but this is the one that doesn't need to come public. That's the kind of company you really want. Thank you. Great to see you.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Likewise. Thank you so much.

[Jim Cramer]

All right, bam buddies. Back yet to the front. It is time for the white records that Thomas Stanford is the grapevine. Blended sound and then the lightning round is over. Are you ready? Ski Death. How's the rifle? Craven's money. Let's start with Brian. Cowboy Brian. Jim.

[Ali Ghodsi]

I'm a club member and your book

[Jim Cramer]

is my investment bible. Oh, thank you. How to do it, how to do it. Let's go. This is a pivotal time for manufacturing. This stock is the third quarter in a row of accelerating growth and improving profit. It has a partnership with Siemens who just bought $50 million of Xometry. Xometry. I know. Xometry's growing like a weed. I'm going to invite Zometry on. I don't know them well enough to opine on the company, but I do know that it's in the right space. Let's get them on the shelf. Let's go to James in Texas. James.

[Ali Ghodsi]

Yes, sir. Thank you for taking my call.

[Jim Cramer]

You're quite welcome.

[Ali Ghodsi]

I'm interested in a company called Equinix.

[Jim Cramer]

Eq Equinix. Yes, it's a great. It's a great way to play the data set. Oh, no, they're giving me the hook. This is some night. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the Lightning Round.

[Charles Schwab Market Update Host (Keith Lansford)]

The Lightning Round is sponsored by Charles Schwab. Coming up, as we wrap up another busy day, Kramer has some final thoughts. Don't miss his no huddle.

[Jim Cramer]

So can we stop this endless trading, please? Every time we get a hint that peace might break out in the Middle east, we see oil go down. Traders reach for Norwegian Cruise, Royal Caribbean, Delta, United, a couple of other airlines. But then when the rumored piece fails to appear, we jettison or short these same companies because they all use a ton of oil. This game is just plain ridiculous, people. I'll tell you what. First, we have no idea what's going to happen Iran. Second, the endless trading has turned these oil sensor stocks into mere playthings. If you were investing, you look for a cruise line that's worked through thick and thin. You go by Viken. Let's take a step back for a second and think about this whole Iran to oil to interest rate trade. Why is anyone even doing this? It's almost inconceivable that the trade could make you money. It's all game of chance, not a test of skill. This is not investing at all. I play blackjack. I like daily fantasy during football season. So you may think it'd be maybe not much of a gambler, but I think if you want to bet on the prospect of peace in the Middle east, you should go to the prediction markets and place your wagers there. Much better idea. But if you're doing these on, on again, off again oil trades, don't confuse that with investing. Honestly, I wouldn't call it trading. I traded professionally for two decades and was fortunate enough to make a ton of money. And every year I did was just not bad. I was taught by some amazing traders who hammered discipline into my head. Rule number one, do you have an edge? Do you know something that's not well known by others? Or are you just guessing? That's not enough. You need an edge to pull the trigger. This war and the indecision of the President are both examples of something that you cannot even for one second claim you have an edge on. Unless you work in the White House, you're simply guessing. You're playing roulette where you have no idea where the ball's going to land. I simply can't understand why people confuse these two efforts, chance and skill. If you want to bet on chance, go to the prediction markets, go to the casino. You, you'll probably save yourself some money because I can't think of a quicker way to lose than just trying to guess the President's next move in the Pershing goal. I like to say, as always, the more markets on my promise just for you right here man. Money. I'm Drew Kramer. See you next time.

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[Charles Schwab Market Update Host (Keith Lansford)]

brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information packed daily market Preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] Market Update podcast or find Schwab Market Update. Wherever you get your podcasts.