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AMC CEO Adam Aron & OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor 7/20/26
00:54:24
After The Odyssey’s strong opening weekend at the box office, AMC CEO Adam Aron discusses the shifting entertainment landscape and AMC’s financial results this quarter. Aron also discusses audience appetite for films using AI tools and AI actors. AI is also on the table for the next interview, with OpenAI chairman and Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor. Taylor weighs in on the debate about tokenmaxxing, Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI, and what the future of data sovereignty might look like. He comments on Sam Altman’s public spat with Elon Musk, as well as the push to innovate both stateside and in China. Plus, CNBC’s Eamon Javers reports on the war in Iran, and findings of cyclospora in Taylor Farms lettuce turned out to be a false positive. Eamon Javers - 05:04 Adam Aron - 17:33 Bret Taylor - 39:08 In this episode: Adam Aron, @CEOAdam Bret Taylor, @btaylor Joe Kernen, @JoeSquawk Andrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkin Eamon Javers, @eamonjavers Katie Kramer, @Kramer_Katie
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- [00:00]
Narrator/Host
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Commercial Announcer
Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade. Unlocking the power of thinkorswim, the award winning trading platforms loaded with features that let you dive deeper into the market. Visualize your trades in a new light on thinkorswim desktop with robust charting and analysis tools all while you uncover new opportunities with up to the minute market news and insights. ThinkOrSwim is available on desktop, web and mobile to meet you where you are. It's built by the trading obsessed to help you trade brilliantly. Learn more@schwab.com trading bring in show music please.
- [01:02]
Narrator/Host
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, where's the source of the potential parasite in lettuce? A false positive deepens the mystery.
- [01:13]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Okay, so we basically stopped eating salad for the past couple days here now.
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Joe Kernen
So you're fasting then.
- [01:19]
Narrator/Host
Escalation in Iran. US Military strikes continue. Our Eamon Javers with the latest.
- [01:25]
Eamon Javers
Iranian officials said this weekend they no longer consider the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran to be valid. And that leaves open the question, guys, of how this war can end.
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Narrator/Host
A massive weekend at the Box Office Odyssey's $124 million opening. AMC CEO Adam Aaron.
- [01:45]
Adam Aron
People love to go to movie theaters.
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Narrator/Host
He's not worried about AI upending showbiz
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
if I know that Tom Cruise didn't actually do the stunt.
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Adam Aron
Tom Cruise will always do the stunt.
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Joe Kernen
I know we do our own stunts here.
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Narrator/Host
Plus OpenAI chairman and founder of Sierra Brett Taylor on big technology questions. Where does data sovereignty begin and end?
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Brett Taylor
I think it's very important the CEOs understand, you know, what's mine is mine and what is the AI models is theirs.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
But is it is? That's the question.
- [02:20]
Narrator/Host
It's Monday, July 20th. Squawk Pod begins right now.
- [02:24]
Eamon Javers
Stand and or buy in 3, 2, 1, 2.
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Narrator/Host
Andrew
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
good morning. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live at the NASDAQ market set in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin along with Joe Kernan is Just the Boys this morning on A summer Monday. Becky's off today.
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Joe Kernen
I talked about this. I'm ready now, I guess for this word cyclosporiasis. Yeah, we left out a no there. Make it even more difficult. A new twist in the cyclospiriasis outbreak. Taylor Farms issuing a recall notifying customers that lettuce shipped to 27 states may have been contaminated. Yesterday, though, the FDA said a sample of iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms that tested positive for the parasite was incorrect and concluded it was a false positive. The FDA now says that it has not found any confirmed positive sample results. In a statement, Taylor Farm said it's committed to working with public health authorities as the ongoing outbreak investigation continues. And on Friday in air, we showed a video of Bonapac lettuce in our story about the outbreak. And Bonapac lettuce is not involved in the recall and is not being investigated.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Okay, so we basically stopped eating salad for the past, you know, I don't know, a couple days here now.
- [03:46]
Joe Kernen
So you're so fasting then you're eating nothing?
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, kale is still on the list, but. No, I'm joking.
- [03:52]
Joe Kernen
Kale's kind of salad.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
So my question, though is, is it just totally wrong? What's going on here?
- [03:56]
Joe Kernen
I don't know. I, that was unclear to me what that meant. What's, what's definitely people didn't take back is the explosive diarrhea that many, many people have had. So it's coming from, I assume it's coming from something. And I still think at this point it's probably from some lettuce. What we thought was from Mexico, some of the lettuce. I did not, I did not have any Taco Bell over the weekend. That's something I do occasionally.
- [04:27]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And you thought about it. Was that like on your list and then you saw it?
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Joe Kernen
I wasn't going to go, you know, headlong into to a big taco, you know, to a taco pack, you know,
- [04:38]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
pack to celebrate the World Cup.
- [04:40]
Joe Kernen
Do you know how many Taco Bell commercials there were during the World Cup? Every other commercial is Taco Bell. And so they were tempting me, tempting me to do it. But, but I, you know, discretion is the better part of valor. And I mean, you probably survive. And it's almost like a full colonic, I guess.
- [05:02]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Let's get to the escalation in Iran, which is, you know, its own, its own version of that. After nine straight evenings of US Military strikes, Eamon Javers joins us with more about the latest. Good morning.
- [05:16]
Eamon Javers
Yeah, good Morning, guys. Now take a look at this video here. This is the Associated Press reporting that this appears to show an Iranian missile attack on a US Air base in Jordan over the weekend. Now, although the AP says it cannot verify when and how this particular video was filmed, CENTCOM now says that two U.S. service members were killed in these strikes and a third has gone missing. And tragically, unidentified remains have been recovered. And the US Military says it's working to verify the identity of the person who was killed elsewhere. One U.S. service member was killed and another wounded in northern Iraq during what the Pentagon says was a controlled detonation of a death bound Iranian drone. And talking to reporters last night, President Trump said he feels very badly about the deaths of the US Service members. He said they died on a mission to ensure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon. And CENTCOM said that it conducted a new wave of strikes against Iran at 7:00pm Eastern last night, marking the ninth consecutive night of attacks on that country. The military says the strikes will continue degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the British military said last night that a ship was ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz near the coast of Oman. No information on which ship or who might have targeted it. Iranian officials said this weekend they no longer consider the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran to be valid. And that leaves open the question, guys, of how this war can end and how much more death and destruction will occur before it does.
- [07:04]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Back over to you your sense of what this can actually do. I was talking to some folks in and around the military late last week who suggested, no matter what you did in this context, without boots on the ground, it's going to be almost impossible to either control or really solve this situation anytime soon.
- [07:28]
Eamon Javers
I mean, you know, I'm not a military expert, but that sounds right. And that sounds like what the past several months of strikes have demonstrated, right? That the United States doesn't have the capacity to end Iran's military ability to conduct combat without boots on the ground. And that's a step, politically that the President has been unwilling to take because of the expectation that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops and, you know, some military experts I've seen say up to a year to achieve even a limited mission of just clearing the Strait of Hormuz. That's the kind of commitment that, that it seems like the president politically is not willing to make right now. So you get into these strikes back and forth Each strike in revenge for the last strike. And, you know, you see now a number of US Service members killed over the weekend. You know, the Iranians do seem to be getting better at targeting American facilities and finding where the Americans are and hitting them. You know, the defensive capability is not able to take out every single incoming Iranian strike. And there are bases all over that region. So in that situation, what does the President do? For now, he is, you know, going ahead with these back and forth strikes. You saw earlier, he was pursuing, you know, some kind of diplomatic off ramp. But now the Iranians are saying because of these strikes, we're not even going to follow this memorandum of understanding. So that basically rips up all the diplomacy of the past couple of months. So you're basically back to square one. And it doesn't seem as if there's a really good solution to getting out of this.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Eamon Jabers. Thank you, sir.
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Joe Kernen
Spain downed Argentina one to nothing to win the World cup yesterday. 90 minutes wasn't enough. Spain didn't find the back of the net until the 16th minute of extra time on its 20th shot. President Trump presented the World cup trophy to Spain and stood alongside the team as they celebrated. Speaking to reporters later, he said he took pride in America's success as a host. And before the game kicked off, the President was already proposing another US bid to host the tournament. One big winner from the World cup prediction markets. H2 Gambling Capital estimates that prediction market activity was around 27% of all legal US betting volumes during the World cup, up from 9% at the beginning of the year. And there's just no doubt that it was a rating success in the US and no doubt that Spain probably was the rightful owner of the World cup this time around. I don't know if you saw it. At one point it was, I think it was like 19 shots on goal to zero. Argentina had zero.
- [10:10]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
That was my question.
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Joe Kernen
I also think that Spain, I think I've got this right. Spain allowed one goal in the tournament, not in the game, but in the tournament.
- [10:20]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So I've seen a lot of cool world. I'm not a huge soccer person. I don't know if you're a huge soccer person. I thought there were a lot of games that I watched that I loved. I thought yesterday's was less than exciting.
- [10:33]
Joe Kernen
It's an understatement. The third place game, you saw that 6 to 4, 6 to 4, there were 10 goals that one. I didn't see them. There's people playing. Okay, did you see what's happening? Outside.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Nope.
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Joe Kernen
So maybe that's, maybe that's a.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
They're playing soccer.
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Joe Kernen
An allegory or some type of metaphor for. But we've got three guys out there that are playing soccer in Times Square. No, you know, I think aficionados like in baseball can appreciate a one to nothing extra innings game. But for, for people that like action, it's obviously never going to be good. But I guess the defense and everything else, that, the way Spain sort of just smothered Messi and everything else. There are things to watch, but. Yeah, I agree.
- [11:25]
Dave Farenthold
Right?
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Caller/Guest
Yeah.
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Joe Kernen
No, I had some of my, I had one, one friend of mine say that, all right, I'm finished. It's never going to take hold here in this country. I watched the first half and I'm done. I'm not watching anymore. And then I've had other people say, you know, if you show these, all the soccer fans, just, just introduce them to our brand of football as an idea to see, you know, to compare the two. Not that one's better than the other. I, I have a greater appreciation now. I do. I, I enjoyed it.
- [11:59]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Oh, the athletics. It's awesome. No, it's very, it's just some games can be super exciting and some games can be less than that. But by the way, almost like, I
- [12:06]
Joe Kernen
think it's almost like, you know, we see a lot of runs scored and we see a lot of touchdowns and stuff. I mean, when that goal finally, when Spain finally, I, I even could tell that was a. Did you see the joy in, in Madrid, the crowds and everything? I mean, a goal is really, it's almost like delayed gratification. When you finally do get one. It's pretty damn good. Pretty, pretty darn good, I guess.
- [12:30]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I think we're not into delayed gratification, Americans.
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Joe Kernen
No, no. Especially this generation. Right? I don't know much about this generation though, do I? A strong start at the weekend box office for Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey. It brought in an estimated $124 million in its domestic debut weekend. About 24% of that haul came from large format IMAX screens overseas. The film added another 140 million, bringing the global haul to $264 million. I think it costs, I think that's above what it costs already. We're going to talk about the summer box Office with AMC CEO Adam Aaron. I didn't see it on an iMax, but it's loud. They do that, you know, the. And that's part of the great thing about, about theaters is that you need to Be there. It's one of the reasons.
- [13:25]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Because it'll shake you.
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Joe Kernen
It will. The number of. If it's not cgi. You just can't believe that the movie like this could be made. And Christopher Nolan I guess knows how.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
It knows how Matt Damon, who we love. I think we've had him on the broadcast many times. Do you think that he's. This is his big chance to get an Oscar. You've seen it probably.
- [13:43]
Joe Kernen
I have. I think it's Anne Hathaway's chance to get an Oscar.
- [13:47]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Both of them. And I don't know whether she's get one too. For directing. Yes, probably.
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Joe Kernen
And probably Best Picture. It's big. It's big and grandiose and everything else.
- [13:58]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Matt's only got one for Good Will Hunting when he was as a screenplay with Green Man.
- [14:04]
Adam Aron
It's.
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Joe Kernen
It's a little bit weird that we're finally sort of delving into a classic, you know, Greek mythology. It's hard to. One of the things that's a little weird is the gods are mixed in with the people. You know what I mean? I think Helena, I think is that who shows up a few times and it's just. That's what's kind of hard to understand. He's with a nymph. Not that kind of nymph, but he's with a nymph for about 10 years. I don't know, seven years maybe. That's Charlize Theron living on an island. Can't remember stuff. John Leguziamo is great. Robert Pattinson is a heck of a villain. Tell you that. But I think I was most Anne Hathaway I guess you've seen.
- [14:50]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I think she's so awesome.
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Joe Kernen
She's really amazing as Penelope who waits around. Waits around with all these low life suitors.
- [15:02]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Compared to other Nolan films. Is this the best? I gotta go see it. So I like Oppenheimer.
- [15:09]
Adam Aron
No, I like.
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Joe Kernen
I like Batman.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Batman.
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Joe Kernen
Yeah.
- [15:12]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Okay.
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Joe Kernen
But yeah, you know. And I get a lot of my opinion comes from my son who he's a movie aficionado.
- [15:20]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
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Joe Kernen
He loves Christopher Nolan.
- [15:25]
Eamon Javers
Tease will be next.
- [15:26]
Narrator/Host
Next. Reports of the death of the movie theater business have been greatly exaggerated.
- [15:31]
Adam Aron
Maybe it's not just time to talk about survival. It's time to talk about thriving.
- [15:37]
Narrator/Host
Adam Aron, the CEO of AMC theaters on the massive Odyssey weekend and optimism at the box office.
- [15:44]
Adam Aron
In AMC's 106 year history, this was our strongest quarter ever.
- [15:50]
Narrator/Host
Squawkpod will be right back.
- [15:54]
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- [16:25]
Julian Barnes
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- [17:50]
Narrator/Host
youm're listening to Squawk Pod Standby.
- [17:53]
Eamon Javers
Joe his mic.
- [17:54]
Joe Kernen
Here AMC Entertainment shares jumping on better than expected results including its highest quarterly revenue in the company's 106 year history. Joining us now, Adam Aaron, CEO of AMC Entertainment. Adam, welcome. It's good to see you. It's been a while.
- [18:09]
Adam Aron
Joe, it's great to be on here with you.
- [18:11]
Joe Kernen
The. The demise. The demise greatly exaggerated but I think about the Odyssey this weekend and the Odyssey that you've been on since taking over through Covid and through these gut wrenching just changes in the way the world, the way we view content and how it's delivered. You've had so many things.
- [18:35]
Adam Aron
Yeah.
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Joe Kernen
You've had so many things to get through. Talk about this latest quarter because you have a lot, I guess to crow about. The best in 106 year history of AMC in your view.
- [18:46]
Adam Aron
Yeah, well look, America is fascinated with the Odyssey this weekend. We announced this morning that we had some 4.3 million guests in our theaters globally to see the Odyssey. And that's pretty much the story AMC has been on. And it led to our second quarter, April, May and June of this year where this morning we reported record everything just about our EBIT was $321.4 million up 70% from last year's 189. And last year's second quarter was a strong quarter, Ari. But for the first six months of this year is up $228 million. It's more than two and a half times what it was last year. And as you said in AMC's 106 year history, both for revenue and adjusted EBITDA, this was our strongest quarter ever.
- [19:53]
Joe Kernen
You had to get through obviously Covid and that was tough. Adam. And in this latest thing, you know, imax, it says IMAX ready. It almost seems to me like you can coexist with imax. And I don't see that I'm just going to go to IMAX or I'm just going to go to amc. The entire market gets broadened by the ability to see it on an IMAX screen or if it's IMAX ready. But that didn't hurt AMC necessarily.
- [20:23]
Adam Aron
It was like actually, well, actually, my friend Rich Girlfriend, the CEO of IMAX would like to hear this. We are IMAX and AMC and IMAX is us. We're the such a large IMAX player just right around half of all the IMAX auditoriums in the United States are at AMC theaters. So when you think of imax, you think of us. And we don't just have IMAX auditorium. We have about 750what are called premium large format and extra large format screens. And they were all jumping this weekend thanks to Universal Studios and especially to Christopher Nolan, director extraordinaire.
- [21:13]
Joe Kernen
Your, your fortunes and the movie industry's fortunes are tied to big hits, obviously. But there was an actually an existential question about people were going to just keep going to movies. I guess that happened during COVID and There's big screen TVs and streaming and you know, all these other ways to consume, you know, what Hollywood puts out. Are you ready to close that chapter out and say we will survive like the song?
- [21:44]
Adam Aron
Yes, is the simple answer to your Question. It's also true that as a result of COVID which is six years ago now, there was a lot of experimentation. But what Hollywood has learned over the past several years is people love to go to movie theaters. They've been doing it for over a century. And studio after studio is turning out movie after movie designed for the big screen. If you look at the second quarter, we had six different film titles, one from Universal, one from 8 24, one from Lionsgate, three from Disney, all of which had huge domestic opening weekends exceeding $75 million or more. And it's happening again with Odyssey this weekend. As you probably heard, it looks like Odyssey is going to open right around $124 million. This is because people love to go to movie theaters and Hollywood is responding. I think we've won that fight. And if you look at the size of the box office this year, it clearly is going to be the biggest post pandemic year for the both the global box office.
- [23:09]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Adam, I want you to weigh in on two, two things if you could. One is look, if you look at that list, the big pictures are also for the most part the biggest spenders on these sort of enormous giant films that need to be, that need to be seen in a theater in part because of the extraordinary nature of what's going on on the screen. I'm curious what happens to what I think used to be, for lack of a better term, sort of an adult drama which used to be a big seller at the theaters and whether you think that is now moved in terms of when you think of the kind of mix of films that is, is that move to streamers and that the kind of films that work in, in the theater need to have the sort of extraordinary effects and everything else. Or do you think that changes and returns over time in some other way?
- [24:02]
Adam Aron
Well, it is a great question. And look, our bread and butter is not only the blockbuster, but what you might think of as a medium size, even a smaller movie. We play hundreds of them a year at AMC theaters. Even this weekend a third of our guests were seeing movies other than see and but we're paying a lot of attention to working with various studios to make sure that there's a diverse slate of content. They're not just blockbusters, but there's also smaller and medium sized movies with lots of original ip. And just look at movies that no one would have called in this second quarter. Obsession and Back Rooms. These turned out to be big movies but no one called them advance. So yeah, I think that the theatergoers want to see all kinds of movies. And we, we. We believe that our studio partners are working very hard to make those movies for us. We're not seeding that turf just to the streamers.
- [25:13]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And then the other thing I wanted you to weigh in on is just AI and artificial intelligence in films itself. What your take is on whether you think humans will want to go to a theater to then watch a film that may include actors, may not include actors. We just had Tom Rogers on the broadcast about a week or two ago. He was producing a new film that was literally created by one guy, call him a director and his keyboard and nothing else, which is an extraordinary feat in a certain way. But I'm so curious, as someone who now lives and breathes this, what your take is on, what you think the audience is going to want, be willing to accept, or somewhere in between.
- [25:56]
Adam Aron
Well, let's start with how beneficial I can be at amc. We've been engaged for almost a year now to make our company more effective and more efficient by using AI to run our company better. And yes, it's true that there will be, over time, in the years and decades ahead, some AI in. In creative footage that will wind up hitting movie screens. But I think we're going to see, we're going to be a very fast adopter of using AI back of house to make our company a stronger company, but very slow as an adopter to use AI on our screens. That there's nothing like a writer, there's nothing like a director, there's nothing like a real human actor. We know that audiences love seeing what the creative community can turn out and show those dazzling images on our huge silver screens. It's coming, but I think it will come a little bit more slowly, front of house on the screen than back of house, where it's going to come very fast to make our company more efficient and more powerful as an operator.
- [27:17]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
But you think people are going to want to watch those films if you. If I know that Tom Cruise didn't actually do. Do the stunt, but that facsimile of Tom Cruise did the stunt.
- [27:32]
Adam Aron
Tom Cruise will always do this stunt.
- [27:35]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I know, I know.
- [27:37]
Adam Aron
Yes.
- [27:37]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Yeah, I know what I mean.
- [27:39]
Joe Kernen
We do our stunts here.
- [27:41]
Adam Aron
Yes. So, yeah, I think I love watching Tom Cruise jump his motorcycle off a cliff in Norway and survive it
- [27:52]
Joe Kernen
or
- [27:53]
Adam Aron
get out underneath the belly of an airplane as it took off and all the other things he's done. Yeah. I think there is a strong preference for real film, real creations by humans, by human writers, by human Actors by human directors, by human cinematographers. I think that's what the audience of today wants. And I think for the most part, that's what the audience will continue to receive.
- [28:23]
Joe Kernen
Adam, the demise of movies, theaters, everything. How about the demise of amc? There were times, I think, where you had some visions of, I mean, if you are a negative person, there were some dicey times, I think, in terms of debt loads and things like that. And there were times you had to make tough decisions about diluting shareholders. You had the apes and the meme stock craze and it allowed you at times, I think, to raise much needed capital to pay off debt. How did you just comment on some of the. You know, people get angry because, you know the stock's going up. Then you announce that you got to raise some cash. You had to do that to keep the company afloat. Are you now fine till 2030 or whatever? 2035?
- [29:17]
Adam Aron
Well, that's such a big question. First of all, we still have millions of those apes who are our shareholders. We're so grateful to them. They saved AMC along the way. And so many of them still love AMC today. And they're not only our shareholders, but many of them are our customers in theaters. Look, the movie industry was heavily impacted both by Covid in 2019 and those Hollywood strikes that lasted for five months in 2023. The box office, which was huge and steady for decades, just cratered in 2020. It's been a slow climb out. And yeah, we had to make lots of tough decisions along the way, but we made them. There's actually been a Harvard Business School case written about how well many of our competitors had to go to chapter 11 or chapter 7. AMC survived it all. We threaded the needle. We navigated very tough waters, but we do really well. We did raise a lot of money. We're still here. And we're not just here. We just reported the most successful quarter in our company's hundred and six year history. We ended the quarter with $778 million of cash on hand and we have no significant debt maturities prior to 2029, which is a full three years away. So it's a very good news story at amc. We survived the tough times. And now if you look in this recent rear view mirror about the huge earnings surge in 2Q26 and the first half and 26, maybe it's not just time to talk about survival, it's time to talk about thriving. And that's the mission that we're now focused on going forward I like.
- [31:28]
Joe Kernen
I like the worst possible for my health popcorn in the world. And you know, that's what the. I don't know what that is that you put on it. And I, you know, I have to get it halfway so I can put it on there and then do it again and then I bring salt with me to my seat and everything else. But there, there's healthy popcorn you can get.
- [31:47]
Caller/Guest
I don't know.
- [31:48]
Joe Kernen
I didn't even know about it. Khloe Kardashian, have you heard about this popcorn? It has like protein or something. And you like your own popcorn. Would you ever sell. Do you know about this sort?
- [31:59]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I'm aware of it. I would like to get it because it's less. Supposed to be less carby. More protein.
- [32:04]
Joe Kernen
Protein. Everything that popcorn shouldn't have.
- [32:08]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You'd be a big seller, Adam, you should do your own or buy theirs
- [32:13]
Joe Kernen
called cloud or something because of Chloe. Do you know anything about it?
- [32:18]
Adam Aron
I know everything about it because I've talked to the head of her company, I've talked to some of her key investors. I tasted the popcorn before it went to market. We're happy for her success, but we do are really successful. You know, we sell tons and tons of popcorn every single day. No one on earth sells more popcorn than amc. And we know for a fact that it's an indulgence that people greatly enjoy because they sure buy a lot of it and they have a good time as they.
- [32:57]
Joe Kernen
I had a bucket and I was one person, so that's. And I didn't eat all of it, but I ate almost all.
- [33:02]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So, Adam, are you then thinking of a lighter popcorn?
- [33:09]
Adam Aron
No, I think. I think we're going to go with the tried and true. And as I said, look, we're happy for her success. We're very happy for her success. But, you know, we took our popcorn to the home as well two years back, and it's also a $30 million brand in over 10,000 stores, close to 20,000 stores around the United States. People do love AMC popcorn and they know.
- [33:41]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Adam, I'm not suggesting that you have to do her popcorn. I'm just suggesting there might be two variants of popcorn. Now, I don't know if that's. That's one more skew than you want, but I think there's a huge opportunity
- [33:52]
Adam Aron
actually on my watch, as CEO of the company, we're up to four SKUs of that popcorn. We have our regular solid stuff. We have some. Often we have gourmet caramel corn. We usually have a cheese Corn. We usually have some concoction that we make up. Throwing lots of stuff in right there.
- [34:14]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Joe and I are looking for the lighter version. Adam, we're looking for the lighter version.
- [34:18]
Joe Kernen
I'm sort of the.
- [34:20]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I want the lighter version that tastes like the heavy version.
- [34:24]
Adam Aron
Hey, I have an idea for you. I just thought of it right now. How about deep fried popcorn? You think it. Would that meet your standard of.
- [34:33]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I mean, I think that would be a hot seller. I hate to say it, probably not great for you, but, you know, you know, if it comes with an angioplasty on the side, maybe.
- [34:43]
Adam Aron
Look, we're, we're joking and we're getting. But, you know, for food, I'm going to be serious for a second. Food and beverage is a very important part of what we do.
- [34:54]
Joe Kernen
And your, your, your branded popcorn, too. I've seen that before. Like the collectible buckets. That's going to be additive, right? What, $100 million additive?
- [35:06]
Adam Aron
Eventually. We're on the way. And look, about half of AMC's profitability comes not only from the sale of movie tickets, but the sale of food and beverage in our theaters. It has been a priority at our company over the past several years to try to figure out what Americans want to buy when they go to our theaters in the US and what Europeans want to buy when they go to our theaters across Europe. And we do it pretty well because we sell more food and beverage than any other mass operator, and we are the largest movie theater chain in the world. So I think we understand what our customers want, and we try very hard to give it to them. At this Weekend with Chris Nolan's movie. If you haven't seen it yet, you got to see it on the big screen. We served that food and beverage to 4.3 million people. What a great weekend. Concluding just a great quarter.
- [36:13]
Joe Kernen
All right. Fantastic. Adam, it's good. Good to have you on. Been a while. You look fantastic. No worse for the wear.
- [36:22]
Adam Aron
I just wanted, I just want to say this. It's no secret that back in November on a business crypto London, I had a very mild stroke. The two of you were very complimentary and on air. I greatly appreciate your friendship and I'm happy to report I have made a spectacular recovery. I am in fighting shape and ready to continue to do battle.
- [36:51]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
We're thrilled for you.
- [36:52]
Joe Kernen
Good to hear.
- [36:52]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thrilled for you.
- [36:53]
Joe Kernen
Good to hear that. Thanks. And thanks for doing it here on Squawk Box. Appreciate it, Adam.
- [36:58]
Adam Aron
You bet.
- [36:59]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
See you soon.
- [37:02]
Narrator/Host
Coming up next on Squawk Pod Brett Taylor, chairman of OpenAI and co founder of Sierra. He talks about the evolution of artificial intelligence in the US and in China, plus what the future of AI efficiency looks like and who will bring us there.
- [37:16]
Brett Taylor
At the end of the day it's going to be, you know, how efficient is your inference? And I think the Frontier labs are still far ahead here and I think that's really where the value is going to accrue. Because at the end of the day,
- [37:27]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
you know, as you inference being, every time I put in a prompt I get an answer that's right.
- [37:32]
Brett Taylor
It's essentially how efficient it is to use these models for a particular price point. I think this is an area where the Frontier labs still have a significant advantage.
- [37:42]
Commercial Announcer
This episode is brought to you by
- [37:44]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
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Commercial Announcer
Join host Keith Lansford for this information
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
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- [38:11]
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- [39:03]
Angie Hicks
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- [39:37]
Narrator/Host
This is Squawk Pod from CNBC.
- [39:41]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You're watching SquawkBox right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew Osorkin along with Joe Kernan. We said at the top of the six, just the boys today on this summer Monday. Joining us to talk through everything I this morning at the table, we're thrilled to have Brett Taylor is the co founder of Sierra and the chairman of Open Air. And there is so much debate going on right now in your world about open weight models, Chinese models, token maxing the ROI on all of this and everything in between. I think the biggest thing that's happened even just the past couple of days is this new Chinese model that's open weighed, potentially distilled or maybe stolen. I don't know why we use the word distilled, but from other models, I don't know if it's from yours or from Claude. There's some questions about that. But how do you think about that piece of it? Because literally the debate on X right now among I think a lot of your friends is about what, what this all means.
- [40:40]
Brett Taylor
Well, I like to take it back to first principles, which is why do people choose the model for the task at hand? And I think there's really two topics that I think every time I, I talk to probably 100 CEOs every single month. So I'm pretty plugged into top of mind. And there's two things, which is AI tokenomics, which is how can I know that I'm getting the value from this spend on tokens. And then I'll use the word sovereignty, which is just making sure, like what is my competitive moat in the age of AI as well? And I'll say one thing that I think is a little bit overblown about these open weight models is they're not necessarily cheaper to run. Whether or not they're cheaper to train,
- [41:14]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
you don't care because you're spending because you're using just as many tokens. In fact, they may be less efficient.
- [41:19]
Brett Taylor
Yeah, there's this thing called token efficiency and it turns out the frontier models are much, much more token efficient. And beyond that, by the way, just
- [41:26]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
for the audience, because there's some people who are watching maybe like token, token, what why do we call effectively energy expenditure token? Is that a fair description of what's happening here?
- [41:37]
Brett Taylor
I'll give an overly simplistic view that will tell you why it's wrong. You know, you could think of a token. A token is to intelligence, like a watt is to electricity, like a unit of intelligence. And token efficient means how many tokens does it take to complete a task?
- [41:50]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
To answer the question, You've answered the question.
- [41:52]
Brett Taylor
But they're not. Not every token is actually equal. And you know, if you've used a really advanced model like 5.66 from, from OpenAI, you'll know, actually, wow. The code it writes is a lot better than the previous model. So it's not exactly the right analogy. And that's the thing is, actually, I think what we're seeing is for a lot of tasks, it turns out these frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic are actually just better than these open weight models. And I think it's important for the labs in the United States for any. If you just think about what do you want from a model, you might want it to be fast for some task. Let's say you're looking at every credit card transaction. You might want it to be really cheap because you know this task isn't a frontier task to do. You might actually want the highest level of intelligence if you're an insurance company and you're doing actuary work to be great. I think the US Labs need, for every price, performance, latency, cost, they need to have the best model available. And actually, I think that's more likely than not, just because it turns out that just having open weights isn't actually the main thing driving any of those costs. And, you know, token efficiency, compute efficiency is something that I think the frontier labs are exceptional.
- [42:56]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
But let's also bring the audience that may not be on board with us into the other piece of the conversation about open weight models, in particular, this they're calling Kimi or K3. This is a model out of China that some people believe is as good as, if not better than, open air's 5.6 or fable from. From Anthropic in terms of what it can produce, may be less efficient, but at the same time, ostensibly should be cheaper. And the other question is how you think they created the model. Some people think the model was effectively stolen. Other people think they actually built it themselves. What do you think?
- [43:30]
Brett Taylor
You know, this is my point, which is, you know, is it cheaper to use is the most important part for anyone considering it. And I don't think, I think the jury's out on that.
- [43:39]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right. Cheaper to use for you. You and I. Yes. But there's also a question of how much it cost them to build it. And the reason why that matters is because a lot of the big frontier model makers in the US are spending extraordinary amounts of money to build massive data centers. In part for us to use the models, but in part for you to build the models. And if you could build the models for a lot less, that's a different game too.
- [44:03]
Brett Taylor
Yeah, I think at the. At the end of the day, it's going to be, you know, how efficient is your inference? And I think the Frontier Labs are still far ahead here. And I think that's really where the value is going to accrue. Because at the end of the day,
- [44:16]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
you know, as inference being, every time I put in a prompt, I get an answer.
- [44:20]
Brett Taylor
That's right. It's essentially how efficient is to use these models for a particular price point. I think this is an area where the frontier labs still have a significant advantage. And you're seeing that from everyday use. I mean, the people. Not everyone's used all these models yet. So I don't want to overstate confidence here, but if you're using things like Fable 5.6K 3, 56 is still actually just if you think about what does it take to write this computer program with AI, 5. 6 is leading by most of these metrics. And I think that's what the most.
- [44:48]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So the other piece of this conversation is, we had the CEO of Ramp in here just last week. He actually built a system so you can actually see how much money you're spending at any given moment and whether you're using the right models. Meaning sometimes people are asking the highest end model, you know, what the weather
- [45:07]
Brett Taylor
is, which is driving a Ferrari to
- [45:09]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
the grocery store, which is like a terrible efficient efficiency situation. And we've had other people. Derek, he was on the broadcast earlier this week. He's argued that he's not seeing the. The roi, the return on investment, the potential for AI to transform literally every single thing that we're doing as a
- [45:30]
Eamon Javers
company to build up better services, deliver
- [45:34]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
them at lower prices, and build incredible new experiences. We had Alex Karp in that famous now viral video where he says, nobody's getting their money's worth for all of this.
- [45:47]
Caller/Guest
These people are livid. They're like, I am paying for tokens that create no value. These people are stealing the weights and alpha of my business, and they're creating a wealth tax that does not help the poor. It just punishes. Starts with the billionaires, every single person at this table is going to be paying a wealth tax only to punish us. And the reason for it is because these models have been completely over irresponsibly overselled. And the sell is, it's dangerous for everyone. Which is why I can give it to all your adversaries, but I can't give it to the Department of War or I can't safely give it to an enterprise in this country without being certain that the Alphabet business could transfer to this model tomorrow.
- [46:26]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
How do you think about that piece of it?
- [46:27]
Brett Taylor
Well, I'll bring it to my day jobs here because I actually think the market's in kind of a quirky spot where everyone's worrying about paying for tokens. And it would be like if you signed up for Gmail and you paid per CPU cycle or something. I think we're, I believe where the world is going is paying for outcomes. So that's here. We make agents that help companies drive revenue and drive customer service. But our customers don't pay per token.
- [46:51]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right. This is Sierra. Why don't you explain what Sierra does for those who don't know?
- [46:55]
Brett Taylor
Yeah, so at Sierra we help power things. Like if you call directv or Sirius XM on the phone, you'll talk to an AI agent now rather than a person. You don't need to wait on hold. We just launched a new product called Horizon which are long horizon agents that help people originate loans or do pre authorization for medical procedures and truly drive revenue. But what's really interesting about it is two things. One is you don't pay per token. You pay per outcome. You pay per originated loan or pre or per preauthorization. And number two is we help you develop a competitive moat in AI because we essentially help you compound the data about your customers. So no matter, as frontier intelligence improves, you're actually developing this compounding asset which is the data you know about your customers and your relationships with your customers. And our thinking is it really addresses these two key issues in AI, which is sovereignty and tokenomics.
- [47:49]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Let me ask you a question about your own tokenomics then. So for every time that you're having to process one of these phone calls, I imagine you on your end are having to use an extraordinary amount of tokens. So does the math math for you? Meaning when you have a successful outcome for your client, your customer, and they pay you per success, are they paying you more? I'm hoping you're going to say yes. I'm hoping they're paying you more than what it cost you to actually produce. But I'm not sure.
- [48:21]
Brett Taylor
Yes, they are. And I would argue it's easier for us as a applied AI company to essentially amortize the R and D cost of developing specialized models for low latency voice conversation. That is for every company in the world to do that individually. And I think the solution to a lot of the problems of the AI tokenomics is we don't have a mature applied AI market. So rather than every company licensing tokens and building things from component parts, if we have more companies like Sierra providing these solutions out of the box that can pick up the phone for your toll free number and you pay for those outcomes, we can bear the burden
- [48:57]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
of managing to tell you about the bearing the burden. The other piece of this, and it gets to maybe what the CEO of Ramp was talking about is why are the model companies? Maybe it's the incentives are just misaligned. It doesn't seem, I mean there was a period of time where OpenAI for example or ChatGPT would automatically send you to a certain model, but I don't think it does that anymore currently. And so most of the model makers are sort of forcing you to choose do you want to use the Ferrari or do you want to drive in the Honda today? And most people are choosing the Ferrari. But what should be happening I think is when you say I'm just going to the grocery store, I'll take the Honda, or it should automatically say, well we're going to use the Honda for that, but if you're going to go racing in the afternoon, we're going to put you on the Ferrari. And people aren't doing that. So people think, oh, they're just sort of forcing me to overspend. It's not forcing us, but that, that the sort of human instinct is to choose the, the top, top vehicle.
- [49:56]
Brett Taylor
I think the market's just immature. You know, we've all gotten these weights, these, these new models since what, December of this past year. I think if you fast forward 12 months from now, IT departments be really sophisticated about. So I'll say the industrial applications of AI for your marketing department, you might have one thing for your software engineers, another thing. I think there'll be products and solutions developed in this space to help you. Like the Ramp solution you mentioned. Applied AI companies like Sierra or Harvey in the legal space will be there. So you just don't need to think about the word token at all. So I think we're in this period of immaturity. It's a little Bit like, you know, the mid-80s with the development of mainframes and PCs, or the early days of the Internet in 1997, where if you wanted to get the value from the technology, you had to build it yourself. And if you go back to 97, people are spending tens of millions of dollars just to make a website where people could log in. Right. And now it's easy. And we're just in this early stages of the technology. And I think it's a call for entrepreneurs to develop solutions so businesses don't need to deal with this.
- [50:55]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, let me ask you a separate question. And this maybe gets the open air piece of it, but also your own business piece of it, because there were some fighting words on Twitter last week from Sam, I think, effectively trying to go after anthropic a little bit with the idea that, you know, there's been some claims more recently that there's a view that anthropic is increasingly going into other people's business. The Figma situation is an example of that. Or, you know, Claude, or legal. I mean, they're trying to go into these different areas. And I think Sam was trying to say that OpenAI doesn't intend to do that, but I wonder how you think about that, because invariably these models should be able to one day, if they're so good at what they do, be able to do what your company is doing and everybody else's company is doing.
- [51:41]
Brett Taylor
Well, I think at the end of the day, if you fast forward a few years, intelligence will be widely available. So you're not going to be able to differentiate on intelligence because you can just license it, you can rent it from all these frontier labs like OpenAI. So the big question for every CEO right now is, where is my differentiation? And as I said at Cira, our opinion on this is that the relationship you have with your customers and the interactions you have with your customers can be a durable moat, if you will, in this new age of AI. The way it works with Horizon is, let's say you make an AI agent that originates loans every time it makes a successful sales call, it learns from that and it gets better over time. But that's your information. It doesn't make its way to your competitors or the frontier. But I think if companies are thinking they can differentiate on the models, I think that's what probably a fool's errand. You know, at the end of the day, these are super intelligence agents that are getting better, especially as we get closer to recursive self improvement. So I think at the end of the day, companies need to say, when super intelligence is democratized and widely available, what's my place on this chessboard of the competitive landscape? And that's a very nuanced question.
- [52:46]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
But, but part of that question is, you know, should you be working or partnering with one of the big model makers? I mean, part of the figma story was, oh, my goodness, they're now, you know, they partnered with Anthropic, then all of a sudden, Anthropic's in the design, you know, the cloud design business. Did they figure out stuff from the prompts that were going into it through the Figma relationship? How do you think CEOs should think about that?
- [53:11]
Brett Taylor
I think it's the right question. I mean, you need to understand, you know, what is your competitive dynamics over time. It's why at OpenAI, we've been really investing in our ecosystem. It's why that we. I think it's very important the CEOs understand, you know, what's mine is mine and what is the. The AI models is theirs.
- [53:27]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
But is it Is that's the question, is it? I think that's, by the way, what Alex Karp was getting at when you put the prompt into the system, is what mine is mine really mine?
- [53:36]
Brett Taylor
I think it should be. And most large enterprises have contractual commitments that guarantee that. But it is the right question. And as I said, I think one of the misconceptions I often hear is how can I make my intelligence better than my competitors? And what I'm saying is it's a little bit like the Internet. Everyone's going to have a website. Having a website is not a competitive advantage. Having, you know, intelligence is actually going to be quite democratized and you need to think about what are the things around it, like your customer relationships, that can be durable in the face of this super intelligence.
- [54:06]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You've been asked about it before, but I'm going to ask about it again. This Apple suit suing you, suing OpenAI. This is claiming in a very sort of elaborate way that you were stealing their IP and orchestrating the stealing by effectively not only hiring people from that company, but educating them and instructing them how to take the IP out of the building, if you will. What do you know now?
- [54:31]
Brett Taylor
Well, I can't comment on it specifically because it's an ongoing investigation, but I can say unequivocally, we have no interest in any other company's trade secrets. And, you know, we're just trying to innovate, especially as we think about the future. Of intelligence. I think it will lead to, you know, perhaps devices that go beyond the smartphone. You know, fundamentally, the really interesting thing about AI is we could talk to computers now, right? You know, we don't need to type, we don't need to.
- [54:56]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
But does it concern you though on a trust basis? Because part of the whole issue right now is should other companies trust working with OpenAI? Should they trust working with anthropic? Who do you trust, who do you not trust? And so when you see a lawsuit like that, invariably I'm sure there are companies saying that's happening. How much should I worry about whatever else is happening behind the scenes?
- [55:15]
Brett Taylor
Well, look, we take this very seriously. I don't want to, you know, misrepresent that at all. But as I said, we have no interest in other companies trade secrets and we're really trying to create the best models that every company in the world can depend on with trust.
- [55:28]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I got one more for you because you're the chairman of OpenAI and you follow, I'm sure, Sam and others on X and sometimes there's this back and forth that's kind of remarkable and I want to know what you think as you're, as you're listening to this. So at one point last week, Sam wrote to Elon, homeboy, you're the one selling public market investors on short term space data centers is after Musk went after him on the Apple front. And then Musk is responding by saying after stealing an open AI charity, then you stole Apple's technology and basically tells him that he can come watch the data centers going into space if your parole officer approves. There's something sort of comical about all this, but I also wonder, as the chairman of the company, if you're saying to yourself, I wish my CEO was not on X right now, what I
- [56:20]
Brett Taylor
care about is that OpenAI achieves its mission, that we have the best models available. Fundamentally, we achieve our mission of benefiting humanity with AGI. We live in a very authentic era. Sam leads with his heart and his head. He's authentic on social media and I wouldn't change it. I think he's a remarkable leader. And you know, I sometimes get these things sent to me and I laugh and occasionally wince, but you know, he is who he is and I'm very, very supportive.
- [56:48]
Joe Kernen
Right.
- [56:48]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
It's great to see you this morning.
- [56:49]
Joe Kernen
If you go to a movie and nobody else wants any popcorn.
- [56:55]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Oh, now you're on to popcorn. Back to popcorn.
- [56:57]
Joe Kernen
Will you get the bucket or will? Because it's more Convenient. Or the bag that kind of falls over.
- [57:04]
Adam Aron
Absolutely.
- [57:05]
Brett Taylor
Get the bucket you'll get for one person.
- [57:07]
Joe Kernen
And you'll put that fake stuff on it.
- [57:10]
Brett Taylor
Absolutely.
- [57:11]
Adam Aron
And you'll.
- [57:11]
Joe Kernen
You, you'll save 1400 calories. Damn the torpedoes. And, and salt.
- [57:17]
Brett Taylor
It's the most important part of the film for me. And by the way, when they say they don't want any, they're going to share it. You know they're going to take it.
- [57:23]
Joe Kernen
Andrew, we talked before before, because he had seen the, the Adam.
- [57:26]
Adam Aron
Aaron.
- [57:27]
Joe Kernen
And you want this. What is this? You want this kale based popcorn with. It's all like.
- [57:33]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
No, but I, you know, I'm a feast or famine kind of guy. I go, I go crazy and.
- [57:38]
Joe Kernen
No.
- [57:39]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Sometimes. No, I don't like kale. That's the running joke on the show. No. Some days like a crazy person. And then some days you're trying to be a little bit better, but at a movie. And so if you're at the movie, the idea that they're now selling popcorn, that's like marginally better for you. That seems like you try to get
- [57:54]
Joe Kernen
Adam there to get rid of the old popcorn.
- [57:57]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
No, I'm not trying to get rid of the old popcorn. I'm trying to add one more skew to the variety.
- [58:02]
Brett Taylor
I want us to have nice things.
- [58:04]
Joe Kernen
Yeah, yeah. I'm with Brett on this.
- [58:06]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Brett's gonna. Are you gonna buy the. What did he say he was gonna try to sell? Adam said he was gonna try to sell fried popcorn.
- [58:13]
Brett Taylor
Oh, wow.
- [58:13]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
How do you feel about fried popcorn?
- [58:15]
Brett Taylor
I'm a traditionalist. I have to say. I want the fake butter. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of salt on the bucket. Yeah.
- [58:21]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Okay.
- [58:22]
Brett Taylor
Yeah, we're aligned on this.
- [58:25]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I'm losing. I feel like I'm always losing. Brett, it's nice to see you. Thank you.
- [58:31]
Narrator/Host
And that is Squawk Pod for today. Thanks for listening. Thanks for starting your week with us. Squawkbox is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. You can tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern or get the smartest takes and analyses us from our TV show right into your ears. When you follow Squawk Pod wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great Monday. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow.
- [58:55]
Eamon Javers
We are clear. Thanks, guys.
- [59:07]
Commercial Announcer
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