Coatue Founder Philippe Laffont 6/23/26

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1:01Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. A market sell-off tech stocks routed across the globe, we have a special interview with noted investor Philippe Lafont of KOTU. With$90 billion under management, his bets are worth paying attention to, like a stake in SpaceX. Mining is going to move to space. Tourism is going to move to space. Telecom is going to move to space. Data centers in real estate are going to move to space. So it feels like just a really big idea. And big bets on AI. All the stuff around agents and the ability to have thousands of people working for you. That sounds like one of the bigger ideas within my investment career.

1:46What LaFont is betting on next. Are we going to work with Chinese AI companies? Most likely not. I think you'll have the Western AI on one side. They'll have the Chinese AI on the other, and only countries like maybe Brazil, India, and Indonesia will sort of do a bit of both. Plus, all the rest of today's news that got us squawking from Wall Street to Washington to the social media back and forth between Elon Musk and Congressman Ro Khanna, who had big accusations for the world's richest man. Musk immediately took issue with that, and all weekend on X, there was a... He called him Ro the robber.

2:25It is Tuesday, June 23rd. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is out today. Asian markets giving up early gains today, ending deep in the red. South Korea's KOSPI led the decline, falling 10 % in a session that included a 20-minute trading halt. The Kospi, though, has shot up this year, nearly doubling since January 1st. So keep that in mind. Still up 94 % year-to-date. Yeah. Key AI names, SK Hynix, Samsung, both fell more than 12%.

3:10Shares of those companies have also multiplied this year. The Nikkei in Japan fell 3.5 % following eight straight sessions of gains. So check out the charts and then put that today's sell off in perspective. We are also watching shares of SpaceX. That stock coming off a 16 percent drop yesterday following declines of about five and four percent respectively last Wednesday and Thursday. This morning, the stock is trading at about one hundred and forty nine dollars. That is just below the opening price of the IPO of one hundred and fifty dollars. Shares began those trading at the beginning. What was it now?

3:49Seven sessions ago, maybe? Started on Friday. No, not even. It's been about six sessions since this happened. SpaceX stock jumped in its first few days with the company's market value surpassing Amazon's and briefly Microsoft's. This pullback that we've seen over the last few sessions is a decline of about$600 billion in market cap. SpaceX also turning to the bond market for the first time as it looks to raise more money post-IPO. Reports say that the company will probably issue more than$20 billion in bonds with maturities of somewhere between five and 30 years. The company says that it will use proceeds from the debt sale in part to pay back a bridge loan before this IPO that we saw in all of these things.

4:30You know, it's interesting about this. There had been so much concern about what was going to happen, when this stock was going to go into the Nasdaq index. It was 15 days. So all of this activity has happened before it's gone into the NASDAQ. I think there was another index somewhere along the line that put it in earlier. But all of this movement that we've seen to the upside and then the downside was before it got put into the NASDAQ index. So if you were pricing the 30-year bonds, what do you think you'd need to offer to get someone to take a 30-year piece of paper for SpaceX? I mean, you think it's tougher because maybe you don't get the retail investors that you get?

5:08I guess in 30 years they ought to be doing great or they'd be, I don't know. It's just a long way off. My guess would be you'd have to offer a little more just because retail investors are going to go to the stock, not into the bond. I wonder if it's junk. I don't know. That's a good question on the rating. I saw some ridiculous thing on, it's classic. You know, I don't even want to mention the aggregator because it's just, it's so annoying. I wish I'd stop looking at it completely. I know what you're talking about. I'd like to never click on it again so they never get a click. However you do.

5:43One of the things they say, you know, they... So on drudge. Yeah, yeah. They don't care if what they say is either false, misleading, or just complete. They just point to other reports. So this one gets lowest rating possible. So I'm like, oh, wow. Oh, is this for the... It's some ESG rating. And I think someone that knows space says, it might have been Elon. said, yeah, we're not launching a lot of electric rockets at this point. There might be a couple of emissions. But, you know, for drugs, it doesn't matter. Rating, you know, they could care less about, and they'll probably, you know, now I'll be on there.

6:22God knows what. Shares of Google Pay and Alphabet coming off their worst day in more than a year. The stock dropped 5 % yesterday. Alphabet dealing with two high-profile employee exits. Last week, Google's vice president of engineering announced he was leaving the company to join rival OpenAI. Friday, another top engineer said he would leave Alphabet for Anthropic. In addition, a Wall Street Journal interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella may be spooking investors. He called for less dependence on what he called AI giants. and you have any interest in AI giants or AI or futurism or just that.

7:09Technology stocks were in. Philippe is going to be. Philippe Lafont. Last time Philippe Lafont was on at Co2, I think we were asking him, but, you know, he went to MIT. He was a tiger cub. He started this thing in 1999 with, I think,$10 billion. Last time he was on, I think, we said he had 55. He said, no, I got 70. and today it's 90. It's 90 and... Although maybe a little less with the sell-off globally this morning. Maybe, I don't know. Yeah, but he'll be on at 7 in studio and he's got some huge bets on like ASM. He's got NVIDIA. I think he sold almost all of his... He sold down a lot of it.

7:50Well, he's got like 2 % of what he had. So 98%, I would call a lot, something like that. And he's moved into... He's got some interest. He was in Vernova. Which is going to be, you know, they're getting all the orders to power the data center. So long before people figured out and it's tripled since he's been. These are huge numbers that I mean, big numbers when he takes a stake in something. I think ASM is like, I don't know, a lot. 600. Yeah, it was a lot. I read through those notes. And so just where he sees things ahead of, because he's always thinking like the next. He is. I know. How do you be?

8:31I was figuring it out. Andy's French. I talked to him a little yesterday. And you're French. Well, he laughs when I say that. It's capitalism. It's like, it's, you know, he understands capitalism. Right. Maybe not totally comfortable with it. But he understands that we're going to get a long time to talk with him, which is very exciting. By the way, the question they had on SpaceX bonds, they're triple B tier. They are. Yeah, Moody's, Finch and S &P are all rating them triple B. That's not junk. No, not at all. It's investment grade. Mr. Cornyn, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Cotton. On this vote, the yeas are 85 and the nays are five.

9:19The motion to concur is agreed to. The Senate passing that housing bill that would limit the number of single family homes that major investors can buy. The measure passed 85 to 5 and followed months of debate spanning both chambers of Congress. We've talked about it all along. We had Senator Scott on just a couple of days ago talking about it. And this is kind of not just his baby, but one of his babies is meant to make homes more affordable at a time when both major political parties are trying. to spotlight their work to bring down the cost of living ahead of the midterms last week. Lawmakers found middle ground between the House version of the bill, which was viewed as more friendly to Wall Street, and the Senate's version, which included more restrictions on institutional investors.

10:07And the House is expected to vote on the bill later this week. President Trump has signaled his support for the measure, and he could sign it soon. Bipartisan. Crazy. That makes me think that it can't be that great. Elizabeth Warren was talking about it. That's her thing, I know. She was saying, it's not often that I say I'm proud to be a member of the Senate. Maybe that's why I think it might not be so great. We are closer than ever to passing the biggest housing bill since 1990, when the average price of a home in America sold for$150 ,000. Today, 36 years later, the average home is selling for over$500 ,000.

10:47dollars. Well, look, if there are things that you can do that both parties that can agree on and kind of move them quickly to improve, I'm all in favor of it. I'd love to see more bipartisan things because there are things that make complete logical sense. And if you can get enough of those 535 people to agree on it, great. Well, there's, they want to approach housing differently. There's a lot of red tape. That's what the Republicans want to get rid of. But I But President Trump in the populist in the populist in one of his populist streaks is doesn't want big institutional investors. Correct.

11:21Buying up and raising the price of houses. But a lot of times they're refurbishing rentals for people. People got to live somewhere where they own a house or not. I mean, you don't want to totally take the big money out of. And that's why the president has come back to this idea of you need to lower interest rates, too, because lower interest rates would make it more affordable on a mortgage percentage. And you wonder how long Kevin Warsh will have before he gets pressured on that again. When he started at 95, 90, 85, 80, 75, 73. Talking about oil. I was like, what are we talking about? You lost me for a minute.

12:01That's oil. So, well. 73. 73. That comes down significantly. Suddenly, it's not like if I was doing dot plots, I definitely would. Well, he's not going to do a dot plot. He's not. But the idea of raising is, I think, getting less and less. Oh, I agree. But if you're looking for a quick fix to make a price of a mortgage cheaper, that's the easiest way to go at it. Right. And, you know, when everything else takes more time to develop and to show up in the marketplace, the ultimate answer is you've got to build more housing. To build more housing, if there's a bigger supply, it will bring down the prices because it will meet demand.

12:37The reason that. And that takes a long time. The sea change and what we thought the next move in interest rates would be when we went from a cut to no action to a possible raise, a lot of that was oil. Yeah. A lot of it. Yeah. So now oil is 73, but we still got how many years we've been above 2%. What was it, 63 months? 63 months. So that problem is still there, still ingrained, still built into whatever. Right. The stickiness. Yeah. So oil can't solve that. But it at least moved us back to where we weren't absolutely sure the next move was going to be a raise. California Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna challenging Elon Musk to a televised debate of the impact of spending cuts that Musk led during the Department of Government efficiency push.

13:32In an interview with CNBC, Kana said that he wanted to get into what happened at Doge with Musk and explain why he supports a wealth tax. Earlier yesterday on his social media platform X, Musk said that Kana should be sued or even jailed. Musk took issue with Kana's recent citing of a study in The Lancet that claims cuts to the U.S. agency for international development could contribute to the deaths of more than four and a half million children. Doge effectively shuttered USAID as it worked to slash spending. On X yesterday, Musk said the standard applied by Doge was very simple and easy. Provide contact information for the recipients of aid so that we can confirm that it is not fraudulent.

14:13This all really started over the weekend when Ro Khanna made some comments on a podcast where he said, you know, Elon Musk was responsible potentially for the deaths of four and a half million children. and musk immediately took issue with that and all weekend on x there was a he called him roe the robber he said that his stock trades were the most of it well yeah but the actual quote no yeah elon called roe roe the robber but it was on the i've had it podcast and the the quote was exact quote was they're celebrating that he created 4 400 millionaires but they don't talk about the four and a half million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death.

14:58Yeah. By dismantling USAID. Yeah. Called for Musk to be subpoenaed. And then he said that it didn't dismantle it. He just had to prove that it wasn't fraudulent because we know how much fraud was actually found. One of Elon Musk's responses on Twitter was, look, we found a lot of a lot of aid that was being funneled to politicians and to others. And some of them pled guilty with some of the things that went through, too, but got heated very quickly. Ro Khanna came on yesterday and said, I thought he was a defender of free speech. I should be able to say these things. Let's do it together. But Ro Khanna is also kind of vying for the White House potentially.

15:41in the next election. It's not good to indirectly, you know, someone once said that I killed 100 ,000 people because of COVID for supporting Donald Trump. So it's not good to make that leap to, do you think? No, that you're killing people? I mean, loose lips. Think ships? Is that where you're headed? We'll see, yeah. Anyway, this is something that I'm sure we will see more of, and we'll continue to hear about it. Tees will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod,$90 billion under management, a track record of big, successful bets on technology. It's Tiger Cub Philippe Lafont, founder of KOTU. That was one of the bigger mistakes, I think, that I've made in Vedia selling it.

16:27Even he regrets a few things. At what price? I think the question is, should we buy it? But at what price? It's already so cheap. Plus, KOTU's bet to buy land for data centers and its investment in SpaceX right after this.

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18:00Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. I'm producer Katie Kramer. We bring you today Philippe Lafont. He's the founder and portfolio manager of Kotu, an investment vehicle that is both a hedge fund and a venture capital arm and$90 billion under management. Lafont made a name for himself at a different investing firm, Tiger Management. He's one of the Tiger Cub cohort. That's a group of investors who learned from the late Julian Robertson at Tiger. Tiger was one of the very first hedge funds. Now for LaFont, Cotu has been on a tear. About a year ago, it launched the Cotu Innovation Fund, or CTEK, which got a boost from$1 billion of seed money from the offices of Michael Dell and Jeff Bezos.

18:39That fund's holding include things like Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon, Samsung, Kalshi, Micron, and SK Hynix, South Korea's most valuable company.

18:52Also, KOTU launched a venture called New Frontier that began snapping up land for data centers. Turned out to be a pretty good idea. KOTU's portfolio includes SpaceX, Andro, Databricks, and many others. And almost 60 % of its holdings are in IT. The second most represented sector is financials. Now here's our Joe Kernan on set with Becky Quick, kicking off an extended conversation with Philippe Lafont. You're very young to be this incredibly accomplished and wise and everything else. MIT, right? I'm not sure about the wise. That's the only thing, Joe. You're pretty dumb wise, Philippe. But it's great to have you, especially on a day like this, for an extended interview.

19:35you. I guess maybe the first thing I'd ask you before we get into the details of today is, we saw Elon the other day talk about the size of the economy in 10 years, the global economy. An unbelievable number. You have been early, I think, in identifying just how powerful this transformation that we're seeing is. And you, I think last time you were on, wasn't that long ago, Were you at 55 billion or so? Now, 90 billion? Things are moving your way. You know, when you're at the center of everything, it's actually I'm more nervous now than I'm on the edge. I don't like being in the center of everything.

20:20But I think that AI really has the chance of being this really big wave. And as I think about the economy long term, I think you had the sort of the industrial age, maybe a couple hundred years. Then you sort of had the information age. Maybe that was sort of the last 40, 50 years. and now we have this sort of intelligence age. And it just feels to me in terms of the big trend, this is really a big trend. In the past, we got the gas utility, we got the water, we got electricity, we got transportation, we got broadband. Now it seems like intelligence is going to become this utility. For$50 or$100 a month, you just get hooked up to this sort of intelligence network.

21:02And so the world is moving very quickly. And so to your question, is the world going to also grow faster because there's just that much more intelligence? And even if it grows faster, 1 % or 1.5 % a year over 10 or 20 years, the numbers can get big. And that's probably what Elon is referring to. But you were early, and in looking at some of your varied and sundry investments, you saw, when did you start with GE, Vernova? When did you make your first purchase? I think when I look back at sort of what I've done, I started in 2000. Right, with 90. Late 99. It was obviously pretty bad timing. But I only come up in the last 30 years with about five good ideas.

21:53And people say, how many good ideas do you come up with? Probably had five. What are they? I came up with like the Internet stocks a while ago. That's a good one. And then we came up with like the mobile internet and Apple. And when I got to Apple, it was like this onion and you just peel the onion and all these ideas fall off. Just the one big idea, people won't have the internet in their pocket. And so when you go now to AI, you can sort of pick one idea. Okay, AI is going to be big. But then it's like, okay, these brains, these GPUs, they need a house. Okay, data center. They need food. Okay, electricity.

22:33They need cooling like humans would. So you go and look at this. And I think these big trends, what's important as a tech investor is to try to really go deep and sort of unwrap all the different layers. And so obviously energy now is obvious, but maybe a year or two ago, people didn't think how much energy we would need to run all these GPUs. You're even buying land. We are where the data centers need to be. How do you figure out where they're going to put the data centers? I think if you go back upstream all the way to the beginning, right? So you think, okay, I need the GPUs. The GPUs need to be connected.

23:10We need data centers. We need turbines. And then obviously we need land. and part of land is we also need the electricity and then we need the regulators, we need the approvals, we need the zoning and all of that. And obviously there's a lot of pushback now around that. So there's always a battle and we can talk a bit about that. But it feels like potentially we'll need 100 gigawatts or more of power over the next X number of years. And so it'll be interesting to see how much of it gets approved, how much of it gets approved on Earth. And will any of that also go in space? And you ready to jump on that bandwagon, too, at some point when it seems feasible?

23:55You have SpaceX already. You know, we own obviously some SpaceX. On SpaceX, what I would say is the company came out with a trillion and a half or two trillion valuation, obviously a very big valuation. and to me the part to think about there is why is it that so many people think it's that valuable i think sometimes it's easy in life to be like oh this is clearly overvalued we're in a bubble what the heck is going on what is it that people who are waging their own dollars view in the two trillion for me what's interesting in space is sort of like every economic get code that happens here, these gate calls, like mining is going to move to space.

24:41Tourism is going to move to space. Telecom is going to move to space. Data centers in real estate are going to move to space. So it feels like just a really big idea. I don't know exactly if SpaceX was X or Y today, but in 10 or in 15 years, is space going to be a really big idea? This, I would say, fairly high certainty, yes. Can I just ask you, You owned Cursor. SpaceX just made a bid, a$60 billion bid for Cursor in stock. Are you going to keep SpaceX shares or would you cash out? I'm going to keep them. And first of all, once we get the shares, we have to keep them for six months anyway, right?

25:21And so we have to be locked up. Then after that, the decision is more of a portfolio decision. How much do we own on SpaceX as a percentage of everything that we own? Different people will rebalance in different ways. Some people own a lot. We own a significant amount of SpaceX, but relative to everything else, it's not as big for us. And then I think that sometimes some of the biggest mistakes that I've made is I've optimized for the short run, and then it's quite a bad decision over the long run. So I'm just trying to think about SpaceX in that lens. When did you do cursor? Did you know Michael?

25:59I mean, he was the only investor. Yes. No, no, they had a few others. At the very beginning. But he said he knew two guys, they were smart, and he didn't even know what they were going to do. Yeah, he was an MIT undergrad, too. Just started the business. So the bet on Cursor is there's two or three really big models. You've got OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini. Let's call those the big three. And then the question is, is there space for a fourth or a fifth? Grok is there. and cursor i think was really an interesting business and when you invest in these private companies you need a little bit of faith okay can this become a fourth or fifth model and i think grok was falling a little bit behind and thought that bringing the cursor team would be helpful to them you um sold a lot of tesla right you sold a lot of nvidia almost all of it um when i was referring Joe a minute ago as to like optimizing for the short run you're rubbing it in my face that was one of the bigger mistakes I think that I've made in Vidya selling it you know sometimes you're like you could end up being right though sometimes you're like look I've made so much money in this stock and maybe I should so that's what it was it was it was purely based I think when we started looking at it Vidya the stock was I mean I think it's split and stuff the stock was probably$20.

27:24So it's been maybe a 10 bucks over the last period of time. And sometimes you're like, oh, maybe I'm so clever. I can sell out of this and buy that. It rarely works. So you're disappointed that you... Yes. Yeah. Would you buy back at it? Buy it now. Yes. I knew you were going to ask that. I should have said something else. i would say that uh yes it's a great company the only issue i think about with nvidia is there's now other people making similar chips they're not as good he's crazy like you got a good reason for not having it right now i think right you just don't want to say that there's more people that build chips the thing that i find fascinating with nvidia is i think it trades for 13 times earnings next year.