
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev discusses his platform’s support for Trump Accounts, as well as his ambition to build a “financial super app.” CNBC’s Diana Olick reports on the effort to build a distributed network of small data centers attached to residential homes, and CNBC’s Dan Murphy is in the United Arab Emirates, reporting on the latest escalations in the region. Plus, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Melissa Lee recap their newsy interview with Gamestop CEO Ryan Cohen, and E! host Keltie Knight recalls the highlights of the Met Gala’s big fashion and money moments. Dan Murphy - 02:55 Diana Olick - 15:53 Vlad Tenev - 21:43 Keltie Knight - 40:02 In this episode: Vlad Tenev, @vladtenev Diana Olick, @DianaOlick Dan Murphy, @dan_murphy Andrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkin Melissa Lee, @MelissaLeeCNBC Katie Kramer, @Kramer_Katie
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Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Bring in show music please.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, we've got a special interview with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev powering the Trump savings accounts for newborns and building the future of money.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
We're building a financial super app serving our customers across any asset class, any financial transaction anywhere in the world.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
A distributed data center network attached to your house. CNBC's Diana Olich reports on innovation on
Diana Olich
the grid span is now making small fractional data centers or they call them nodes that can be put on the side of residential homes.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And the interview you'll only hear on CNBC. And on yesterday's Squawk Pod, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen gave pretty short answers to some big questions about his bid to buy ebay.
I imagine, or I imagined, I don't know which way it goes that there is a genuine rationale for how he thinks he can get there.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Yeah, and he will have to answer all of the questions that we pose to him. I'm sure ebay will ask similar questions.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Plus the money and fashion on the red carpet. E host Keltie Knight was at the Met Gala with Beyonce, Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez and of course the Kardashians.
Keltie Knight
This is a very thought out thing and when you met, you met like Kim Kardashian does not come to the Met to not be the most popular person on Instagram.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
It is Tuesday, May 5, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Stand Anderby in 3, 2, 1. Q Ander
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Good morning and welcome to Squawkbox right here on CNBC. We're live the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. Mandraw Sorkin along with Melissa Lee Joe and Becky are off today, but boy, do we have a lot to talk about this morning. Let's get right now to the Middle east though. The US and Iran exchanging fire in the Persian Gulf. And CBC's Dan Murphy joining us now with more from Abu Dhabi. Good morning, Dan.
Dan Murphy
Andrew, good morning. Well, the conflict in the Gulf has deepened with Iran's latest strikes on the UAE really signaling a potential new phase in this now three month standoff. The Strait of Hormuz was already under severe strain with what many describe as a functional blockade in place. The question now is whether this latest escalation that we're seeing pushes the US towards new military action or back onto a diplomatic track. Of course, overnight the UAE says Iran fired missiles and drones towards the country with one drone striking the Fujairah oil industry zone, sparking a fire there and injuring three Indian nationals. We're still trying to get a clear picture of the damage, but the targeting of Fujairah is really significant. This is a key piece of infrastructure that allows the UAE to export crude outside of the Strait of Hormuz, essentially a workaround to that choke point. So by hitting it, Iran is essentially expanding its strategy beyond disrupting shipping to also pressuring alternative export routes and critical energy infrastructure of America's allies here once again. Now in response, UAE officials have maintained a defensive posture but say they reserve the right to respond. And there is a real frustration here that Iran can still wage this kind of warfare on civilians and and energy assets with little to no repercussions. At the same time, the signals that we're hearing from Tehran remain mixed. Iran's parliamentary speaker warning that a new equation in the Strait of Hormuz is now taking shape and that Iran hasn't even begun yet. The foreign minister of Arsaraqi saying on X there is no military solution to a political crisis. And as for the markets, the reaction here has been interesting as well. Crude has basically been pricing in this prolonged tension for weeks now with the US now escorting ships through the Strait and Iran also warning that traffic could be targeted. In the last few hours, we've been able to confirm that the Danish shipping giant Maersk was actually able to move a ship through, saying one of its commercial vessels successfully transited under US Military protection. That might be part of the reason we've seen oil come off the boil in the last couple of hours. But of course, with crude still trading in the triple digit range here, the risk premium remains firmly in place, even as some traders may be taking profits in the near term.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Andrew and that's the thing I was trying to make some sense of, which was here you have oil prices coming down marginally at a time where here you are talking about things escalating and how much of that is a function of this one chip getting through. And I'm curious, I mean this is a different kind of math equation, how much it costs effectively to escort that one ship through. And that, that math is not mathing either probably. So I think there's, that's, that's a little bit of the, the equation which is if, if every, if every ship to get through has to be escorted, what does that ultimately maybe prices come down a little bit, but there's gotta be a huge cost just even doing that.
Dan Murphy
And not just the cost, but also the insurance premium in particular has skyrocketed as a result of this. If we do see direct US Naval escorts, then that could be bearish crude. It might help to take some of the heat out of this market. But that's not something that the US has signaled at this point either. The president really stopping short of saying that ships will be one on one moved through Hormuz with US military assets. Up until now, this Operation Freedom Project Freedom has been described as a US security umbrella over those vessels. So what this looks like operationally is still pretty unclear at this point. The other point you could add to the pull lower that we're seeing in oil is probably just the general pullback that we have seen in equity trade. Perhaps there is a little bit more bearish sentiment coming through here, at least in the short term. So oil might be caught up in the crosshairs as well. But you're exactly right, Andrew. This reaction is really interest to watch. Typically when we see drones and missiles flying over the UAE in the Gulf states, then that would be a bull case for oil. We would have seen a significant escalation higher in the price that hasn't necessarily materialized or been able to be maintained through the course of the Asia and European trading days today.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Okay, Dan, thank you. Appreciate it. And the Trump administration considering reviewing AI technology before it's released publicly. Source telling CNBC an artificial intelligence working group is under discussion. Could bring together tech executives and government officials to look into insights or I should say oversight procedures really for powerful AI models. Among the ideas floated, a formal review process for the models or an executive order. White House official telling CNBC any policy announcement will come directly from President Trump and talk about potential executive orders amounts to speculation at this point neither OpenAI anthropic have commented on this so far. This would be a whole new take on all of this. Question is whether Congress ultimately needs to do something like this.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Well, I mean, I don't know how it would work. How does the government go into the private sector and say, show us your product before you release it and we'll tell you if it's okay a little bit. And what if it's not?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, it's a little like that. I, I, I'm imagining this is like the fda, right? Show us your, your medicine or pharmaceutical before we're approving it. I mean, you, but you have to build an apparatus, like a big apparatus.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
There has to be a committee there
Andrew Ross Sorkin
and there has to be a process, a whole procedure. But that's a whole new level to all of this. And typically those things have been approved by Congress.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
And how much longer does this take? And does this slow down our CPI in the race against, let's say, China?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Right.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And that's a big question too.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Exact.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Investor Michael Burry made famous by the big short, telling subscribers in his Substack newsletter he sold his position in GameStop after CEO Ryan Cohen made a $56 billion bid to buy ebay. Bury cited worries about debt that GameStop could take on to complete the deal. His interest in the video game retailer helped fuel its meteor's. If you remember, five years ago, and we spoke with GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen yesterday right here on Squawkbok. Here's a little bit of that conversation. I think we can start with the idea that the market cap of GameStop is, call it $11 billion. You have $9 billion on your balance sheet, arguably, if you're, if you're providing effectively all of your stock and then the cash debt gets you to $20,000. You have this letter from TD, that's another $20,000. We're now at $40,000, but we're still off by, call it 16 and the 20. As far as I understand, while it's considered a highly confident letter, meaning TDs saying they're highly confident that they would provide the financing, it's not locked financing. Yeah, we'll see what happens. I hear you. I understand that. I'm just trying to understand where the rest of the money would come from. It's half cash, half stock. I hear you. I'm just saying that that math doesn't get you to the, to the price that you're offering.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
So that's a pretty straightforward question. I don't get it, like, where's the rest of the money?
Dan Murphy
Coming from.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Andrew laid it out for you. Clearly.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I, I don't understand your question. We're offering half cash, half stock, and we have the ability to issue stock in order to get the deal done. But the full details of the offer on our. Are on our website.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
But you're on our air. We thought we'd get.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So. But I don't understand your question. So that was a moment, as they say in the business. It was a moment. It's kind of interesting to watch, to rewatch it in that, in that way. You know, I was hoping to just to understand literally the math. There's a company that said, meaning GameStop, said that they were trying to buy or are trying to buy ebay at a premium to its stock price. What I think he's describing, to be honest, sounds much more like you might call it a merger if you were being polite. Maybe you're saying, I want to merge into this company. You could argue that you're not really acquiring a company if that's the case, or they're buying you is what we're really talking about.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
It just seems like there are a lot of hurdles. I mean, yes, in theory, you can issue loads of stock. You can, you can issue stock, but it would be extremely dilutive. We don't know if they have permission to, you know, if they.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
First of all, it's unclear whether you could actually issue enough shares or stock. But even beyond that, you can't make up money out of nothing. It doesn't.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
You don't print stock.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You don't print stock. I mean, the market cap of the company is $11 billion if you back out the cash that's in the company. I mean, I, I was probably overselling in some ways what some of the math you could do there, which is technically, I think you'd actually probably back out the cash. So if you have $11 billion and you take $9 billion out of the equation, not on top of it, which is what I even suggested, then you're actually. You're $9 billion. You have $9 billion less than you. You had before. I was allowing him to use the stock and the cash. And all I'm suggesting is you, you can't just make. I mean, yes, you can issue more stock, but that doesn't make the stock
Guest Analyst/Commentator
more valuable, and it certainly doesn't make the stock desirable by ebay shareholders.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, that's the other question. If you're an ebay shareholder, why would you do this?
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Why would you agree to that? Why would you agree to a Situation where you're accepting half stock in the deal and the stock is valued at. And presumably there's going to be a collar, presumably there are protections to the ebay shareholders in terms of what they get. And so how does that deal even cross the finish line?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So there's been a lot of speculation about the math online among the supporters of Ryan Cohen and among the supporters of GameStop. A lot of folks have said, look, he's brilliant because he has bought stock options on ebay and therefore is going to make a fortune because this ebay stock, he's put ebay in play and things like that. The complicated part about that is if he has sold those shares in the past day or two, as this is happening, that puts you in a whole. That puts you in a legal conundrum. Because if he were to have come out on Sunday and Monday, just yesterday, and said, I'm buying the company, and then was selling the options as he was doing that, that's when the SEC starts to look at whether you're manipulating the stock. And so I don't, and I don't believe that he's trying to manipulate the stock. I believe, I want to believe genuinely
Guest Analyst/Commentator
that he wants to.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
That he wants to buy the company. And the questions, I would just suggest to those who were very supportive of his answers. The questions were genuine questions. Looking, I think, for genuine answers. I think I just want to understand. He's a smart guy. He's had a lot of success, I imagine, or I imagined. I don't know which way it goes. That there. That there is a genuine rationale for how he thinks he can get there.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Yeah. And he will have to answer all the questions that we pose to him. I'm sure ebay will ask similar questions. These are not questions. It could be any company in the planet. We would ask the same questions.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right. Typically, by the way, when. When companies approach these, what are described oftentimes as bear hugs, they. They announce that they want to buy a company. And frankly, they're typically pressure campaigns to get shareholders, typically of the target, in this case ebay, to call the board and say, we want you to consider this.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Look, look at this.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And so typically that. Typically the buyer is trying to sell them, those shareholders on a vision of not just what is possible, but how they can. They can make it work.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
How would you rate his sales pitch?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
That, I think, is complicated. There's been a lot of pushback in local communities against data centers. One company's answer, put small versions of the side of your home Nvidia and major small and major public home builders are helping them do it. Diana Olich has a fascinating story in this regard on this week's Property Play. What's going on?
Diana Olich
Well, Andrew, it's an unlikely partnership. Span, which is a small startup that makes smart home electrical panels, is teaming up with Nvidia and PulteGroup, a major US homebuilder. SPAN is now making small fractional data centers, or they call them nodes, that can be put on the side of residential homes. The idea is to take advantage of unused electrical capacity on local grids, which the SPAN smart panels can find. Now, a network of these nodes talking to each other across the country is about the equivalent of a mid sized traditional data center. So these could negate the need to build as many hyperscalers and AI cloud providers. Just tap into the node network like a regular data center. Now, Span collaborated with Nvidia using its technology in the system. Span claims it can install 8,000 of these units about 6 times faster and at 5 times lower cost than the construction of a typical centralized 100 megawatt data center of the same size. Now, Pulte Homes is in the early testing phase with these systems, which they have already deployed in a handful of communities. Now why would a homeowner want this? Well, because they would just have to pay one flat fee for electrical and wifi, which Spann said would be roughly 150 bucks total. So a lot less than everybody's normal electric bill. So for much more on this story, as well as my latest podcast with the CEO of a company that is deploying $100 million to put home closings on the blockchain. It is all in this week's Property Play newsletter. Drops in about a half an hour. It's cnbc.com propertyplay guys, you want a data center on the side of your house?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I don't know. What do you, what do you see as the downsides? What do you see as the downsides?
Diana Olich
The downside I think is scaling. Look, they're going to need 8,000 of these little nodes, 8,000 homes to equal one mid sized data center. How quickly can you scale that up? It's a fantastic idea. It's just in the beginning and you do have, you know, 86 million single family homes in the U.S. if you could really get this scaled up, it could work. But I think that's a pretty big lift.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I'm with Elon. I think we should just do it in space. And, and no, by the way, I did that story.
Diana Olich
I did that data centers in space for a long time go to the property play. That was our first one.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
So a Sundar Pichai I mean everybody's
Andrew Ross Sorkin
talking, everybody's talking about it the next and if you can effectively get the racks in space, that's what we're talking about. I mean people talk about data centers. It's effectively getting racks of these things into space, connecting them effectively with lasers, which is not that different than the but you know, Sam Altman thinks it's crazy. I think so. I don't know. Diana thank you.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Cheese will be next.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Coming up on Squawk Pod, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on the rise of prediction markets.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Sports actually is probably like one of the few human things where we have high confidence. It's not going to be automated away. You don't want to watch self driving cars racing around the track.
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Keltie Knight
what made you confident that you could
Guest Analyst/Commentator
do something that hadn't been done before?
Diana Olich
I have no fear of failure.
Julia Boorstin
Trailblazing women, changing the game.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs.
Keltie Knight
Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Life is short and you just gotta think big to accomplish big things.
Julia Boorstin
Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Welcome back to Squawk Pod from cnbc. Prediction markets are earning big money and big attention as youth skyrockets and regulators try to keep up. But who should regulate events based contracts? Betting on what might happen in sports? Is that up to federal derivatives law? Or is it something states should regulate individually like they do now with gambling contracts? That question is currently winding its way through the legal system in this country. The head of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Michael Selig was asked about this yesterday on cnbc.
I do see this potentially going to the Supreme Court. We may have a split at the circuits. We will watch the cases closely. But what's important is we continue to adhere to our federal regulatory statutes and adhere to the law.
Andrew Ross Sorkin takes things from here
to get into that and so much more with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tanov, who's at the table this morning. Good morning.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Good morning.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
We got a whole bunch of things to talk about, but maybe we should start there. You're playing the prediction market space in a very big way. What is your sense of what's going to happen? It sounds like this may go to the Supreme Court and what the intentionality of Congress really was originally, you think, when they put the prediction market world into orbit, if you will.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Yeah, I mean, first of all, we're building a financial super app serving our customers across any asset class, any financial transaction, anywhere in the world. So prediction markets is a new space. It really entered the, the mainstream with the 2024 election. And the thing that I love about it is it's not only a tool to help traders specialize. Now you can specialize in all sorts of, all sorts of things, but it's a great source of information. It's like a compliment to the news.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I think the information piece of it is great, assuming that you believe the information is not being manipulated in some way.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Yeah. And that's true and that's why we're focused and a lot of talk is about, you know, all these issues that prediction market platforms face. And what we've always been saying is, you know, we're coming into this as a regulated financial services company complying with US Laws. And a lot of things get funky when you amalgamate all the, all the offshore platform.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Here's the thing that I, two pieces to this one. I don't know if you saw. There was a study done just in the past. It came out last 48 hours at least on for Polymark and I think for Kalshi where they were suggesting that, you know, it was like the tiniest, tiniest group of people are the ones that are winning, meaning they make up
Guest Analyst/Commentator
the bulk of the trades.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
They make the bulk of the trades. And that most people who are participating are effectively net losers.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
I mean, I, I don't, I haven't dug into the data in detail. We offer a suite of products. For most of our products, they're self directed, which means we're not telling people what to Trade, we're not making recommendations.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
We do have some products that we take on a fiduciary responsibility. We trade on behalf of our customers. For example, Robinhood Strategies, which is our digital advisor. We also have human advisors through trade, pmr. But yeah, I think you can slice and dice this data in many different ways. And the thing that makes it difficult with these types of derivatives markets is sometimes it's hard to look at them in isolation. You don't know if that, if that person is hedging, if I'm speculating, if they have other positions elsewhere, which I think you can always find a way to slice it so that it looks negative. But we're just focused on providing the best access for our customers to this new asset class.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
I understand that you can slice data so that it looks negative, but there have been a number of studies, and academic ones, so not funded by the industry, presumably, that show that retail investors may guess successfully the outcome of whatever event you're talking about. 51% of the time, I think is a stat by one university study. But they get in late. And it's the bots, the algorithms that trade on the contract earlier. They make up much more of the volume. And so because they're going earlier and retail investors are getting in at the very last minute that they are making much more money. There are a number of studies that show that retail investors are at a disadvantage because the activity of algorithmic bots in this market. Is that a concern of yours? I mean, the bread and butter of your platform is helping individual investors. Right. And are you setting them up in a situation where the odds are stacked against them to actually make money because of the way. Because of maybe it's a lack of the bots or.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that the algorithmic bots are a relatively new thing with, with a lot of these AI tools that are coming on. You actually are starting to see some retail investors writing these themselves, you know, the last Claude or, or Codex to generate a strategy for them. And we're thinking about, okay, right now you have to be like a quant or an engineer to do this, but can we make it so that everyone can have access to this powerful technology?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Let me ask you a different one, Sports, because there's a big, you know, sports is now part of the prediction market space that you're playing in. And I don't know if you saw. There was a fascinating interview with Gary Gensler recently, who made the argument.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
That's a name I haven't heard in a Very long time.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right. And the argument he made is he said when he was running the cftc, when the laws were actually changed that allowed for all of this. He said no senator, no congressperson ever discussed the idea that this was going to be used in the context of sports and that had it, had it been uttered even aloud once, this would have never been allowed to happen. Because all of these states rights and states rules that had already been put in place, every senator who was from one of those states would have been like, we're not doing this, this is crazy. And so he said if you actually go look at the intent of what the law is at the time, you, you couldn't get to this place today.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Yeah, I think there's reasonable arguments on both sides of this issue. I'd say the other side of that is that sports is a much bigger chunk of the economy than it was 20 years ago. Right. And you have NBA franchises and. Oh, totally MLB franchises.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I don't disagree. And maybe the law should be updated. I'm just suggesting that the, the law that's being used to allow for prediction markets to play in the sports space currently, or at least the argument and right. There's lawsuits over this is using, using a law that he's suggesting was never intended for that.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
I mean, here's the thing. Sports I think is going to be an increasing chunk of the business and finance world. They're starting to increasingly converge. And for better or worse, I'm not saying necessarily it's a good thing, but if you think about AI automation and the risks, sports actually is probably like one of the few human things where we have high confidence. It's not going to be automated away. You don't want to watch self driving cars racing around the track.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So I don't know if you saw over the weekend, Warren Buffett spoke very briefly at the annual meeting with Becky Quick and made an argument that he talked about the church, meaning the market and then the casino. And he said a lot more people are playing in the casino than they used to.
Becky Quick
I've compared the markets to a church with a casino attached. And, and people can move between the church and casino. And I would say there are more people in the church and more people in the casino. But the casino has gotten very attractive to people. You know, if you're buying one day options or selling them, I mean that is, that's not investing, it's not speculating, it's gambling. Just totally.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I'm curious as someone who's in your business and space introducing New products, including prediction markets and the like. Whether you see that part of it as the casino.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
No, I think that we have a trading side of the business where customers are actively trading and some of them actually are quite systematic and sophisticated about it. And of course, you have some customers who are just, you know, trading because they like a certain team. Right, right. But as with any market, you have lots of participants, but we have people that have strategies like you mentioned earlier. Sometimes they're even systematic and automated. And I think this criticism, the same criticism was given about futures markets 40 or 50 years ago. And you hear it about options markets and even equities markets. So no stranger to it, I think the other thing is, I announced a few days ago, Robinhood retirement is at 31 billion in assets under custody after just a few years. And I think that the unfortunate reality is it's much more enticing to talk about prediction markets than the growth of our passive offerings. Nobody wants to hear or really talk about how fast retirement is growing. I want to talk about how many people are.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I want to talk about retirement. And I also want to talk about the Trump accounts in just a moment. But I have one more question just on the. I wouldn't put it in the prediction markets category, but in the maybe trading category. We had this interview yesterday. I don't know if you saw any of it. Seemed to go a little viral with Ryan Cohen from GameStop. GameStop played a huge role in the history of your company. Oh, yeah. For better or worse. And I was struck by the reaction to the interview, in a way, because it was like a Rorschach test for certain people. There were a lot of what I would describe as. I don't know if they're legacy investors, experienced investors. I don't know what who would say, oh, my God, that made no sense. The math doesn't. Math, this doesn't. Doesn't really work. We don't understand how someone like Orion Cohen's making a takeover bid at a company that's worth $11 billion. How's he buying a company that's worth $56 billion? But there's still a huge number of people online who I imagine are trading on places like Robinhood who are like, you don't understand. This is the man. He's figuring it out. He's doing it.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
It was like a flashback to the. To the meme stock main.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And it was sort of wild. So sort of watch to watch that. I look at the math and go, you have $11 billion. The company you're trying to buy is $56 billion. I don't, I don't know how you, how do you get there, but other people seem to think something very different.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Well, look, Ryan Cohen's incredible entrepreneur, right? I mean, what he did with Chewy.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Oh, no question.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Business. So I wouldn't underestimate him. And you know, he explained half cash, half stock. Right.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Do you understand that?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Did you read the website?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I did read the website. I did read the website. What do you think?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
I mean, I, I don't, I don't know the details of all, you know.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You know math, though. Do you know how to get from 11 billion to 56 billion?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Well, my understanding is they've got some
Andrew Ross Sorkin
cash on the balance, $9 billion of cash. So 9 billion out of 11. So if you were going to do the math, you would actually subtract, frankly, the 9 billion out, and then you'd be left with a company that has $2 billion, and then there's 20 billion. 20 billion, yeah.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
From TD.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Yeah.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
So that's 29, right?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
29, yeah.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
And the market cap of ebay is
Andrew Ross Sorkin
the offer's 56 billion.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
So that's more than half by a little bit. Right.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
But then what would you do to get to the rest?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
I mean. Yeah, again, I, I think it's unclear how that part is going to be.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And why. And why would an eBay shareholder accept that? Right. I mean, that's. That, that's. As I'm just saying. Is that.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Right?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You look at it, you go, this doesn't.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
But going back to your. I mean, to the qu. I mean, I think that at the heart of that question is how much of that sort of spirit still lives on your platform in the form of trades. I mean, we, we've seen meme stock mania, sort of. We see evidence of it here and there. We see, for instance, the, the recent action in Avis was, was crazy. I mean, that. That company, you know, just recently was like a meme stock. The way it shot higher was like. And that was also an engineered squeeze, basically. And so do you still see that? Is that powering you, or are you completely moved away from that?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
I mean, retail has continued to be active even. Even though market conditions in the past three months have been shaky. You know, you've had the macro environment, the crypto winter, the war. But retail has been surprisingly strong. I'd say most of it has been concentrated in the AI trade. Right, right. You're seeing, you know, traditional disruptors, the big semiconductor companies, a lot of interest in memory. But, you know, you do have pockets.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
We're going to run out of time. Trump accounts, it's going to cost you $100 million. What kind of advantage are you going to have over every other player by doing this?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Yeah, so first about the $100 million. I think there was some confusion around this point. We, the, this program will be profitable in the first year. So serving as a government subcontractor, this is under a cost plus model. And we actually think it'll go beyond, it could go beyond. We see, we see us being able to help various governments with, with various things. So we're excited about that. And there are, and the reason the number might seem large is we're gearing up to support potentially a very large number of accounts. I mean, there's 70, 60 plus million children under the age of 18. 5.5 million have signed up already. So we have to, we have to get ready to serve tens of millions, no question.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And then hopefully they're going to all be on boarded onto to Robinhood and stick around. I mean, that's the whole goal.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
I think we see a big opportunity to serve these customers. I mean, of course, at first there's going to be a Trump Accounts app that we've been designing in collaboration, of course, with Eny and the National Design Studio. And this app is going to be really good. The aspiration is to make this the best product that the government has ever been.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
That was my question though. So how do you attract those people onto the Robinhood platform if it's going to be living on another app at least.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
I mean, we're very long term focused with this. Of course, right now the focus is on making the Trump Accounts app as successful as possible. But there's going to be rollovers, there's going to be opportunities. Once these children turn 18, the money can move to other types of accounts. And we're serving as the initial brokerage and trustee for the accounts, which, you know, we're very proud of that position. But again, I'm not spending much time thinking about how to market it beyond just getting the word out about how great of a program this is and how much it'll help the next generation really buy into this country. And the system that we have here
Andrew Ross Sorkin
is a prediction market run that you test that you could put in on your prediction market. Do you believe in five years from now they will be called Trump Accounts or do you think it will be called Invest in America accounts?
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Yeah, that's, that's a good question. Yeah, that's not one I've spent much time thinking about. But there is some precedent. If you look at the Roth ira named after Senator Roth.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
It continued to be called the Roth ira.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Of course, by the way, they may ultimately be the Trump account. I just don't know because there's all sorts of conversations about, you know, whether the Kennedy, the Trump Kennedy center will be the Kennedy, you know, who knows what's going to happen in the future. So.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're just proud to be providing the service. We try to stay out of those types of discussions and stay in our lane of just building the best product that the government has ever been associated with.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
We're up against a heartbreak. Want to thank you for coming in. So much to talk about and we could continue this for like an hour and hopefully we get to do them again.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
Always a pleasure.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thank you. You bet.
Still to come on Squawk Pod E host Keltie Knight recapping a night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The big fashion and big money moments.
Keltie Knight
If Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez want to support the Met, this is where they want to put their philanthropy money. I'm okay with it because the Met is something special and it's special for New York. It's special for the world.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
We'll be right back.
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Keltie Knight
What made you confident that you could
Guest Analyst/Commentator
do something that hadn't been done before?
Diana Olich
I have no fear of failure.
Julia Boorstin
Trailblazing women, changing the game One of
Guest Analyst/Commentator
my favorite pieces of advice. Think about what your boss's boss needs.
Keltie Knight
Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trust me in yourself.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things.
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Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
This is Squawk Pod up and Andrew Q.
Watching Squawk Box right here on cnbc. I'm Andrew Os Orkin along with Melissa Lee. Joe and Becky are off today. The Met Gal is New York City's biggest fashion event. It did not disappoint. The invitation only fundraising benefit had some very big stars and even bigger red carpet looks. Is Kelty Knight covered the event last night and joins us now with more on the whole situation. Tell us about the whole situation. It was all over my my social media feed. It's become a business unto itself in so many ways. And then of course, there's all of the business behind it, 100%.
Keltie Knight
Listen, it was a fantastic night at the Met and I think there has been a lot of talk about the Met Gala this year. The chairs the committee and we have to remember that the money goes directly to support the Met. The Met is the Metropolitan Museum of Art is completely supported by this gala, the Fashion Institute. And so it's very important for them. And it was very important for me when Beyonce showed up looking like an absolute queen. Beyonce made her triumphant return to the met after 10 years, and this time she made it with her daughter Blue Ivy in tow. And blue is the coolest kid you've ever, ever seen. We asked her as she came along the red carpet, you know, how are you feeling? She said, I'm having fun. Jay Z was also on hand to support his wife. It was, it's Beyonce's world. Listen, she came. This is an amazing piece of art that was designed for her. She did change once she was inside to give her speech, but Beyonce was in a great mood last night and she was actually on time, which is sort of shocking. I have spent many Met galas waiting for Beyonce and Rihanna in the rain. And so I was thrilled to see Beyonce show up and show out in such a big way. Another standout look. Sorry.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
No, sorry. I have a question for you and I know it's not a look, but it's the thing that I was thinking about all as I was watching this whole feed. I just saw Devil Wears Prada 2.
Guest Analyst/Commentator
Oh.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Which great film. And of course, as you know, the Emily Blunt character with Justin Theroux, I think are modeled, dare I say, on Jeff Bezos and, and Lauren and therefore. And then they were there. Right. And so I was curious how that all went down inside.
Keltie Knight
Listen, I think that Anna clearly is in on all of it. You know, Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour posed on the COVID of Vogue just this month to celebrate the Met. And so there's really no way that Anna didn't know what the movie is about. That the script, it was sort of on the nose. The Devil Wears Prodigy really is about this, like, billionaire guy coming in and sort of buying the magazine to put his wife on the COVID And so many people thought, oh, this is like a Bezos moment. But again, like, you know, at the end of the day, I'm very happy that we have the Costume Institute. It is very expensive to have these artifacts and pieces as a part of your museum. And I personally love that I can go there and for $19, I can go see this entire exhibit. All year long. These artisans are working on these pieces. This is a part of history. And it does cost money to run these things. And the money has to come from somewhere. And so listen, if Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez want to support the Met, this is where they want to put their philanthropy money. I'm okay with it because the Met is something special. And it's special for New York, it's special for the world. It's special for all of the designers we had on our E show last night. An entire audience of students from the Fashion Institute of Technology watching our show. It's a really big deal in the fashion and creative space. And so anything to keep arts alive is, I think, really important.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
First time visitor in our world since we're on cnbc. Mark Zuckerberg was there last and the Instagram team has been going there for years, I think.
Keltie Knight
But yeah, for sure. Meta had a table last night and I'm sure that Instagram is going wild with this Kardashian look that you're looking at right now. She had seven fittings, flew across Europe to be fit for this look over and over again. We had Chris Appleton, her hairstylist, on our E Show. He discussed that he was bleaching her hair the perfect blonde until 2am in the morning to get the tone right. I mean, this is a very thought out thing. And when you met, you met like Kim Kardashian does not come to the Met to not be the most popular person on Instagram.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Kelsey, what do you think? The call, I was thinking about this. What do you think the cost is for the designers and the night and the celebrities per person. Meaning if you're gonna, if, if somebody like Kim Kardashian is going to show up in that costume, in that costume breastplate and all of the makeup artists and hair folks. And I mean, the whole, the apparatus per person is kind of an extraordinary thing.
Keltie Knight
Yeah, for sure. I mean, this is a really, a collaboration. If you look at someone like Janelle Monae last night that came in this very AI art taking over. You know, art taking over. You know, here it is, Earth taking over. AI and this whole like, this is a custom piece by Christian Siriano. This is priceless. This is a priceless work of art. This is hundreds and hundreds of hours from his atelier. I mean, there is no price you can put on this. But the designers actually do these pieces for free for these artists because they get back mega, mega millions of dollars in, you know, knowledge of their brand. But I'm talking like, these are the best glam teams in the world. I wouldn't be in doubt if her glam team preparation al in the 40, $50,000 range just for her glam.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Kelsey doing math for us this morning as we're all trying to make sense of all of it. Appreciate it very, very much.
Keltie Knight
My glam this morning was free because I slept in my glam from last night's show. So thank you so much.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thanks for waking up early for us. Thanks.
And that is Squawk Pod for today. Thanks for listening. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Thanks to Melissa Lee for sitting in today. You can tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern or get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show right into your ears when you follow Squawkpod. Wherever you get your podcasts and listen anytime you want. Have a great day. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev
We are clear.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thanks, guys.
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Date: May 5, 2026
Host: Andrew Ross Sorkin (CNBC), with Diana Olich and guest Vlad Tenev (Robinhood CEO); Segment with Keltie Knight (E!)
This episode delivers a dynamic mix of news and interviews, centering on two headline topics:
Other segments cover escalating geopolitical tensions in the Persian Gulf, a look at decentralized home-based data centers, ongoing regulatory debates around AI and prediction markets, and reflections on financial innovation.
[03:01 – 07:24]
[07:24 – 08:59]
[09:03 – 15:08 / 30:28 – 34:20]
[15:45 – 18:25]
[21:36 – 37:44]
[39:46 – 45:35]
| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | 01:16 | "We're building a financial super app serving our customers across any asset class, any financial transaction anywhere in the world." | Vlad Tenev | | 03:20 | "Iran fired missiles and drones...with one drone striking the Fujairah oil industry zone, sparking a fire there and injuring three Indian nationals." | Dan Murphy | | 05:26 | "If every ship has to be escorted...there's got to be a huge cost just even doing that." | Andrew Ross Sorkin | | 08:26 | "It's a little like the FDA, right?" | Andrew Ross Sorkin | | 10:42 | "I'm just trying to understand where the rest of the money would come from. It's half cash, half stock." | Andrew Ross Sorkin | | 16:23 | "A network of these nodes talking to each other across the country is about the equivalent of a mid-sized traditional data center." | Diana Olich | | 22:05 | "Prediction markets is a new space...it's a great source of information. It's like a compliment to the news." | Vlad Tenev | | 25:32 | "Can we make it so that everyone can have access to this powerful technology?" | Vlad Tenev | | 26:21 | "No senator, no congressperson ever discussed the idea that this was going to be used in the context of sports..." | Andrew Ross Sorkin (paraphrasing) | | 27:35 | "Sports actually is probably like one of the few human things where we have high confidence it's not going to be automated away. You don't want to watch self driving cars racing around the track." | Vlad Tenev | | 28:27 | "If you're buying one day options or selling them, I mean that is, that's not investing, it's not speculating, it's gambling." | Becky Quick | | 31:58 | "Ryan Cohen's an incredible entrepreneur, right? I mean, what he did with Chewy. So I wouldn't underestimate him." | Vlad Tenev | | 34:30 | "We...see us being able to help various governments with various things." | Vlad Tenev | | 35:29 | "At first there's going to be a Trump Accounts app...aspiration is to make this the best product that the government has ever been [involved with]." | Vlad Tenev | | 40:28 | "It was very important for me when Beyonce showed up looking like an absolute queen." | Keltie Knight | | 43:17 | "If Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez want to support the Met, this is where they want to put their philanthropy money. I'm okay with it because the Met is something special..." | Keltie Knight | | 44:37 | "The designers actually do these pieces for free for these artists because they get back mega, mega millions of dollars in... knowledge of their brand." | Keltie Knight |
Lively debate, insider insight, and an engaging, conversational style anchor the episode. Sorkin’s direct questioning (at times bordering on irreverent) provides punch. Diana Olich and Keltie Knight add color and real-world context. Vlad Tenev’s measured optimism fills the tech/finance angle with a blend of forward-thinking hype and defense against the familiar skepticism surrounding retail trading innovations and government partnerships.
This episode blends market-moving news, future-facing financial product vision, and entertainment industry spectacle—all in Squawk Pod’s signature brisk-yet-inquisitive tone. Listeners get a holistic view: markets in motion, legal/regulatory clashes, the human quirks of high finance, bold experiments in fintech, and the glittering intersection of celebrity and capital.