An NHL Deal with Kalshi CEO & AI with Airbnb CEO 10/22/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer, today on Squawk Pod. Sports books, look out. The first major sports league has inked a deal with prediction markets, Calci and Polymarket. Calci CEO Tarek Mansour on his partnership with the NHL and whether more deals are coming soon. What we have done here, and this is what's most important, we have set up a framework for us to collaborate with a big four league like the NHL. Then Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on new products the travel site has launched to remake your vacation. We imagine what if you can Airbnb more than Airbnb? We launch services, we launch experiences, and since then we've been hard at work.

0:44And how he sees artificial intelligence taking over every corner of the internet. Right now it's like a gold rush. Plus Netflix's membership growth, sales of Barbie dolls are down, Meta and Blue Owl developing one giant data center. And AI chatbots are taking over. I'm not as nervous about that piece of it as you are. Because humans are going to be involved in this. Oh, good. But they maybe aren't that accurate all the time. No kidding. It's Wednesday, October 22nd. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC.

1:27We're live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And, yeah, just speaking of some of those things in AI, I mean, sometimes you get wrong facts from it. Facts. Facts that are wrong. It's one thing for opinions. It's being alternate facts, as Kellyanne Conway wants it. Okay, if you ask two of them what the 1929 adding average was for the Philadelphia Phillies. What year? 1929. You are so nice. Thanks. You believe that? She's running an ad for me. She's running an ad for me. Thank you. No, but with all of them, I've said, are you sure?

2:03You need to check. Oh, yeah. You're right. Sorry. They will cop to it and not even apologize. Oh, mine apologizes to me all the time. I'm sorry. I got that wrong. Well, that's because you don't yell at it. Joe calls it an idiot. Yeah. No, literally. No, it says I violate all the you're not supposed to because they have feelings, too, apparently. Yeah. The big news yesterday was what was happening with the commodities, the precious metals in particular. Gold down nearly 6 percent yesterday. I think it was 5 and three quarters percent. That was its worst day since June of 2013. So a dozen years since it's seen a drop like that.

2:38It's indicated down a little bit weaker once again this morning, down to 4 ,079. But if you look at the drop yesterday, it really just put it back to where it was earlier this month because gold has had such a tear to the upside. The weird thing was there was no real news that premeditated any of this. It was just kind of moving on sentiment or something else. A lot of people viewing this drop as a long overdue pullback for gold. It has run up 20 percent just in the last two months, and it's still up by about 55 percent this year. Silver had a big drop, too. It was down by even more. I think silver fell 7.1 percent.

3:16It settled at 47.04. That was its worst daily performance since just April 4th of this year. And then if you're looking at crypto prices as well, it looks like Bitcoin right now is off by about three and a half percent to one hundred and eight thousand. Now it's correlated. Right. Well, what is it? What's it correlated to gold? Now it's correlated. Right. Right. Crude oil prices at this point, if you take a look at things, you'll see they're up by about one point three percent, sitting right at fifty eight dollars a barrel for WTI. President Trump saying that India's prime minister has assured him that the country will ease purchases of Russian crude oil.

3:53Probably good news just in terms of what we're trying to do on a defense perspective, on defense of Ukraine, but not necessarily great news for the world oil market because obviously oil is fungible. Also, the Energy Department announcing plans to buy a million barrels of oil to start refilling the nation's emergency supply of crude. Good news at these low levels. Right. Let's talk about Netflix. Joe mentioned that at the top. Netflix missing third quarter profit estimates citing an ongoing dispute with Brazilian tax authorities. Now, revenue matched expectations rising 17 percent of the quarter in line with estimates that was driven by membership growth, pricing adjustments in what the company said was its best ever quarter for ad sales.

4:37Netflix's full year revenue growth estimate of 16 percent was in line with previous expectations. Now, Netflix reduced its full-year forecast for operating margin to 29%. That had been at 30 % prior to that. Now, the company's still riding, of course, the success of June's release of K-pop Demon Hunters. Its fourth quarter content slate expected to include the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, a new season of The Diplomat, and Frankenstein is going to be there. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, which I saw. You've seen it. I did. Do you like it? It was long. I like the guy who played Frankenstein.

5:14I don't know why they did not cite my favorite one, though. Black Rabbit. Oh, God. I thought it was so awesome. You watched the final? I have not watched the final episode. Don't tell me what happens. I don't know. I saw it all. No, it's really not. You shouldn't have given him that. No, Jude Law is good. You're baiting him. You've got to suspend all disbelief. No one could be that stupid as Jason Bateman and do so many stupid things over and over and over again. He's an actor, the character. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. I'll give you that. Because he's stupid in real life, too. Although his sister is really smart.

5:52Texas Instruments, yeah? The view through the political prism. Exactly. Is that where we're going here? Texas Instruments shares down sharply. The company forecasting fourth quarter profit and revenue below Wall Street estimates. That's a lack of clarity over semiconductor tariffs plaguing the sector. TI's CEO says when he speaks with industrial customers about investing and building, there's a bit of what he called a wait and C mode. And that stock cut down about 8 percent. Mattel missing third quarter profit and revenue expectations as tariffs continue to dent the company's North American sales.

6:29About half of Mattel's toy sales come from the United States. The company says that North American revenue fell by 12 percent in the third quarter. Global Barbie sales were down 17 percent year over year. Fisher price sales were down 19 percent. Mattel issued full year guidance after pulling targets back in May. Those new projections call for yearly net sales to increase between one and three percent. Earlier in the day, Mattel, Hasbro and Netflix announced that they were partnering to bring toys from the smash hit K-pop Demon Hunters to store shelves. Didn't help Mattel shares that news that they gave us about the guidance down by 5.6%.

7:05And remember, guys, when people were worried about the tariffs and what they would mean, toys were one of the often cited areas that they talked about. And remember, the president at that point said, well, maybe people have to go with one less Barbie doll at Christmas time. And you said Netflix, of course, on the K-pop phenomenon. I had no idea. The K-pop demon thing? That was huge. Yeah, it was big. I know. I didn't watch it, but I know of it. Yeah. Nobody in my house was watching it, but I do know what it is. But it was everywhere. How strange can things get, too? Five seasons of that? I mean, I saw the first one, I think.

7:41The first season of K-pop Demon Hunters? No, Stranger Things. Oh, Stranger Things. That's how strange. He's saying five seasons later how strange it is. I mean, that's pretty strange. I saw the first two seasons. You did? Yeah. Things were very strange in the first season. Yeah. They got stranger in the second season? I didn't see the continuation. Let me tell you something that's even stranger. Can I tell you something that's even stranger? Better? Yeah. That's your segue? I'm trying here. I'm trying. This is strange and interesting and all sorts of things. Meta forming a$27 billion joint venture agreement with Blue Owl Capital to fund and develop the social media company's Hyperion Data Center in rural Louisiana.

8:16Now, Blue Owl is going to own 80 % of that venture. Meta will own the rest and oversee construction. It's slated to be completed in 2030. It's being built on a site. It's roughly 1 ,700 football fields big. It's kind of remarkable. Local utility energy company telling CBC earlier this year that the data center could consume about twice as much electricity as the city of New Orleans on a peak day. Now, what's interesting to me about this is so Blue Owl is effectively in the private credit space. We always talk about sort of where's private credit? Is this leveraged? You know, is the world of AI leveraged?

8:50Well, yes, it is. That's what it is. but it's interesting it's getting now moved off the balance sheet to some degree of these tech companies as they try to form these partnerships to find people who will help them pay for these things i mean i'm trying to we just can't get our head around 1700 football fields or the electricity piece i mean it's the electricity but by the way i don't know if you know how big that is are you just going to gloss over that what is 1700 football fields what's 100 football fields look like it's is it bigger than manhattan bigger than breadbath i wonder might be bigger than Manhattan.

9:20I think when they announced this, it was an unbelievable thing. But I was going to say, there's a number of these data centers that Google and Microsoft and others have tried to open, or at least talked about opening places, and they've effectively shut them down or stopped doing them because the communities don't want them. And their communities don't want them because they think their electricity prices are going to go up, which they are. When I asked them 1 ,700 football fields, how big is that? And And they said, it's approximately the size of a complex, like the one being built by Meta in Louisiana.

9:54Thank you for that comparison. That's where they got the seven. They looked up. But think about that. People are worried about AI taking their job. And now they're going to start worrying about them taking their electricity. So, you know, there's going to be a whole sort of political and policy implication of just how quickly this gets developed. As prices have gone up, and there was a Bloomberg report just in the last month or so that said that for consumers that live near these data centers, their electricity prices have gone up by 2.7 times versus over the last five years since these things have been built.

10:32So the increases that they've already seen, and you talk to the electricity guys, they'll tell you it is a large chunk of it. You talk about this on Squawk on the Street all the time. They've read this map that they've been using for a while over it. So that's how big, like Central Park, think about the immensity of Central Park, and then look how this spreads beyond that. But all of these governors who are begging these companies to come to their states, I think in five years from now, they're going to be wishing this way they never did it. Well, the governors may not be there. Yeah, the governors may not be in charge anymore.

10:58You need maybe some longer-term thinking, but it is interesting what it could mean for the political calculus at that point and the pushback if consumers feel like they are getting the short end of the stick on this. how big is the the biggest when you're dealing with major biggest solar field how many acres i don't know we'll we'll ask chat gpt that too and then we're right we'll be needed for yeah so we can just ask of things yeah and wind fields i mean i see you know wind farms you see those those are take up a lot of space as well i mean i'm still impressed by amazon like data centers when you're driving along.

11:33The largest solar power plant in the world is in China, which covers 235 square miles. That's big. Yeah. That's bigger than 1 ,700 football fields. Much. Some cautionary news about the reliability of AI. New research shows that leading assistants misrepresent news content in about half their responses. Not to worry, though. That's according to the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC. Researchers studied AI assistance, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google's Gemini, for accuracy, sourcing, and the ability to distinguish opinion versus fact. And 45 % of the responses had at least one significant issue.

12:20Sourcing was a major problem for Gemini. My overall issues of accuracy were found in 20 percent of responses from all assistants. So, I don't know. In the news business, it's even worse if you rely on something. That would be a problem. That would be a problem. And I've said anecdotally I knew this was true because I've gotten answers that I know are not right. And then I say, are you sure? And they go, oh, you know, I wasn't sure. I've actually looked a little more closely, and it's the opposite of what I told you. It's a little human. It's a little human. Maybe for you. And after all that, the answers are wrong half the time.

13:02Hey, I got this new drug I designed for you. This is going to be awesome for you. Oh, sorry. That was for some other disease. This is going to kill you. I mean, we've got to get this together quickly. Can we? It's not Six Sigma. 30 % is not Six Sigma. I'm not as nervous about that piece of it as you are. Really? Okay. Why? Because the language models for the scientific ones are... Because humans are going to be involved in this. Oh, good. But, look, I do think that the large language models have... You're going to have small language models that are more destined to do jobs just like that for the science applications on some of those things, too.

13:43That's not going to take a broad vacuum of every bit of information that it can. Grok the other day. That's why I argue with people on Twitter, as you know. So, you know, someone's saying, oh, I hope you like your tax cuts, fat boy. You know, and it's like my tax cuts, my taxes soared under Trump. And, you know, I say and I said to Grock, figure this out. Here's here's X. What happened to those? And I was amazed that it took them like 10 minutes. But the assumptions and the research and everything that they did, they put I don't know why they put property taxes in there. But all they need, it was much easier.

14:21Because property taxes are no longer, if you have a self-adduction. Right, right. AMT, they had to do all that. But just to prove to some schmo that that's obviously not why, or else I would be a Kamala. That's obviously not why you're second up. I'd be a huge Kamala bro if it was based on my own situation. Is Grok better, Sorkin, than some of the others, or could they have all done that? Would I have gotten a similar answer? I like Grok for news. The Crockford News. Yeah, because the Twitter feed is part of it. So you use, how many are you using? I've got, no, I've got three. I've got too many.

14:58Anthropic. You use anthropic, anthropic too. Yeah, Claude. Yeah, I understand what I mean. Okay, I only got chat, GPT, perplexity, and grog. Right. I know we're going off-piece and off-topic. You want to hear just something very funny? Yeah, I do. I was talking to a lawyer the other day. That's the show off-topic. No, I was talking to a lawyer the other day who was telling me that they'd marked up a contract or something, and then they got an email back from somebody else who said, well, here are the changes from Claude. And he writes back. Who's Claude? Who's Claude? Did we hire? Is there a new associate named Claude?

15:33Yeah, that would be. Yeah. And, of course, it was. Yeah. I thought that was kind of funny. And it wasn't a joke. So you need a lawyer. What for, Andrew? What happened? No, I don't need a lawyer. You said you were talking to a lawyer the other day. Yeah, no, I was talking to a lawyer. Oh, no, no. I actually went and spoke about the book to a whole group of lawyers. You're not like motor vehicle or something? No, no, no. Lawsuit? No, no, no. Plagiarism? Not yet. Not yet. Thanks. Yeah, exactly. When you need a lawyer. Yeah. When you need one. Yeah. It's good to have a good one. That's all I have.

16:08Better call Saul. Better call Saul. Exactly. Please. Cheese will be next. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, the NHL goes where no major sports league has gone before, a deal with prediction markets, Calci and Polymarket. What happens to sports books like FanDuel and DraftKings now that the majority of volume on these prediction sites is sports? Calci CEO and co-founder Tarek Mansour discusses it all. I think there is seasonality to prediction markets. So last year, at the end of the year, our most popular category was elections. In mid this year, we had a lot of volume around when there's a lot of market volatility, financials and economics.

16:44And now we're seeing a lot of volume around sports. We'll be right back.

16:53This is Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Becky Quick. The NHL is striking an official partnership deal with Kalshi and Polymarket. This is the first major sports league to partner with the prediction market. And joining us right now to talk about it is Tarek Mansour, who is the CEO and co-founder of Calci. And Tarek, thank you for joining us this morning. This is a big deal. It's the first of the major sports leagues to actually sign a deal, sign a partnership like this. And I guess I wonder, how did this come about? Well, I totally agree. You know, this is a big deal. A big four league like the NHL signing a partnership with Calci is a testament, I think, to our market leadership.

17:35our astronomical growth this year. And I would say the golden standard of market integrity and customer protection that we have established over the last few years. So, you know, it is, I think it's a seminal moment for prediction markets and Cal sheet because, you know, a league like the NHL partnering with us is a strong sign that prediction markets are here to stay. There are already people looking at this. The Wall Street Journal wrote this up and suggested that this is a real assault on the sports books like FanDuel and DraftKings. Do you see it the same way? I don't really think about that in that way.

18:12I mean, look, I think there is a business model disruption here. And we've seen it, you know, with, for example, Airbnb and hotels. We've seen it with Uber and taxis. And so when there is fundamental technological disruption, a technology that transforms an industry, I mean, there are sometimes critics or dissidents that come about, and that's part of the course. What we're really focused on is, you know, building really good product, building it fast, and improve the market diversity for our customers, which, you know, we're leading on all three, and we're going to work hard to keep doing that.

18:48There have been challenges because while the sportsbooks are not allowed throughout the nation, you all are being offered right now everywhere in America. There are sports contracts in all 50 states, even those that restrict the betting on the standard sports books. And there have been some lawsuits that have come from this, an outcry from the gambling industry groups, legal challenges coming from state regulators, and some senators who are taking up against this as well. How assured are you that this can continue in all 50 of those states? We're very confident in our regulated structure and our regulated setup.

19:29You know, we've worked for years with the CFC to regulate prediction markets and, you know, develop a framework for customer protection. This idea that on a federal basis, it has been legalized by the CFTC, but there isn't, that's not to say that there aren't politics there. If there was a change at the CFTC, that could make it more complicated. How confident are you that this can remain something that you can legally do throughout the country? Yeah, you know, we are confident and comfortable with our regulatory setup. So we spent years working with the federal government to regulate prediction markets.

20:04And, you know, when we think about the announcement today, you know, the NHL deal is really about that. It's essentially a validation of the fact that we have established the right set of customer protection and the right set of market integrity measures to protect our markets, but also the game, you know, to enable this product to thrive in all 50 states. And that's why we're seeing the sort of type of customer growth that we're seeing on Kalshi. And, you know, today we're at a billion dollars of monthly transaction volume. And so we're excited to see that keep growing. Yeah, it's been growing rapidly.

20:45In fact, Calci and Polymarket saw notional trading volume rise above$2 billion for the first time last week, in the week that ended last week. Most of your most popular trading categories at this point are sports, correct? Back in 2024, it was mostly politics. Now, in 2025, the last list I saw has something like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I think 8 of the top 10 are sports categories, led by the NFL, and then secondarily, NCAA football. Look, I mean, I think there is seasonality to prediction markets. So last year, at the end of the year, our most popular category was elections. You know, mid this year, we had a lot of volume around when there's a lot of market volatility, financials, and economics.

21:24And now we're seeing a lot of volume around sports. It really depends on what's top of mind and what's trending in people's mind and what people have opinions about or what people want to hedge. Actually, this last week, we've seen quite a bit of volume on sports. And you may have seen the announcement from Underdog, you know, who is going to be hedging some of their positions. So leading sports, sportsbook hedging, laying off risk on CalShit, which is, you know, very much the purpose of these markets. But we're also seeing a rise in volume and things around policy. For example, the government shutdown, where we see startups such as Arrived Homes also hedging some of their risk on the government shutdown.

22:03And what is the latest on the government shutdown? What does the prediction market tell you in terms of when this might end? So we're forecasting 41.5 days, so 42 days for the government shutdown, which would make it the longest in history. Wow. Tarek, I have to ask you, if the NHL is doing this and this deal has been out there, I assume you're in talks with some of the other major sports leagues as well. Is that a correct assumption? It is a correct assumption. I think, you know, what we have done here, and this is what's most important, we have set up a framework for us to collaborate with a big four league like the NHL.

22:42And really, they're kind of taking a market leadership position here in how we develop data sharing to combat fraud, to ensure customer protection, and to preserve market integrity. And I think that same framework that CalShit has developed with the NHL can be replicated across the other leagues. So be on the lookout for more announcements soon. And you're paying a licensing fee. Will you tell us what that licensing fee is? We're not sharing specifics of the deal, but really what we're getting out of this is a little bit of a makeover on the product. So if customers log on to Calci today, what they'll see is, you know, we're using the marks.

23:16So the product looks a little bit more beautiful than it looked yesterday. And we're very excited about that. And what the NHL is getting is our whole suite of customer protection and market integrity measures that will help them preserve the important integrity of their game. Tarek, I want to thank you for joining us this morning. We appreciate your time. Thanks so much for having me. Next on SquawkPod, Airbnb changed the way we travel, how its new products change our experiences when we go around the world. Well, some of us anyway. Is there a feature where I can guarantee I won't meet anyone when I'm on?

23:52Services you can have all to yourself. Squawk Pod is back right after this.