F1 Heads to Miami with Toto Wolff, UAE Leaves OPEC 4/28/26

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1:06On today's episode, breaking news out of the United Arab Emirates. It's a pretty big headline for a random Tuesday morning. Our own Brian Sullivan on the UAE's decision to leave OPEC come May 1st. The UAE was a critical member, not just in terms of oil partnerships, partnerships, but in terms of just sort of the diplomacy itself within the group. The AI race to go public. What concerns may be lurking under the hood at OpenAI and the ongoing race for capital. Whoever goes public first, if you believe that SpaceX is going public first first, meaning a lot of liquidity is going to be taken out of the market.

1:48And then you actually have to get into a race for who comes next. Anthropic or OpenAI. Is it a zero-sum game? Then a different kind of race, Mercedes F1 team principal and CEO Toto Wolff. We tend to be very nostalgic how great the past was. Ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, he's talking F1's ever-evolving regulations. They called it Mario Kart, the new rules they're racing for. What do you say to them? First of all, there's many people that love Mario Karts. But Formula One has always been the pinnacle of racing the fastest engines and the fastest car with the best drivers. and this is still what it is.

2:25Those big conversations, plus how to talk about your family's finances with your family. It's April 28th, 2026, and Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one, cue, 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 and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And OpenAI is reportedly having trouble hitting some internal financial targets. Companies facing increased competition from other AI services like Google's Gemini and Anthropics Cloud. And The Wall Street Journal says Sam Altman's firm missed an internal goal of hitting a billion weekly active chat GPT users.

3:13By the end of last year, firms also said to have fallen short of yearly revenue targets for chat GPT, missed several monthly sales goals. earlier this year. The journal says that CFO Sarah Fryer has told people she's worried that OpenAI may not be able to afford its future computing needs if revenue doesn't grow fast enough. At the same time, the report notes that OpenAI board members are scrutinizing Altman's plans to secure more computing power. Fryer and Altman said in a statement to the journal that they're aligned on buying as much compute as they can and any suggestion that they might be pulling back is, in their words, ridiculous.

3:56And I need another chat pod because I, on Gemini. Mad at all of them? No, mad at Gemini. They don't care if they tell you things that aren't true. They're going to tell you. They may, it's really the expression, they may know nothing, but they're never in doubt. And I always say, wait a second, are you sure? And they go, oh, I wasn't using current information, Andrew. Which one? Give me one. Claude? You can use Claude, but let me just go back to the broader. You want to go back to that? Well, because I think this is an important story because there's a much broader. Because it's, is it indicative of.

4:33Well, no, it's the IPO story, which is there is a race going on between OpenAI and Anthropic to go public first. Whoever goes public first, if you believe that SpaceX is going public first, first, meaning a lot of liquidity is going to be taken out of the market. And then you actually have to get into a race for who comes next. Anthropic or OpenAI. And then you get into a debate over whether you believe that OpenAI's numbers are moving as aggressively and as fast as they would want them to be. And then you get stories like this coming out. They're not going to raise a trillion. The valuation is a trillion dollars.

5:06That's a lot of money. This was Kramer's opening monologue. Is it a zero-sum game? You don't think there's enough money around? That's what Kramer said last night in his opening monologue. Does that make it true? Well, I thought it was very interesting. His point is that, you know, right now everything looks great, but bear markets can be brought on by the Fed, which is probably not going to happen under Kevin Warsh, where the Fed gets too aggressive and raises rates too quickly. But they can also be brought about by money getting soaked up. And all of these three companies will take up a lot of money.

5:34He thinks it's going to come from existing stocks that are there, and he worries a little bit about what could happen. So it's kind of the zero-sum idea. I think there is a bit of a zero sum, but even more broadly than that, if you are one of these companies, it could be zero sum for you. And so the question... You know, all along, you've been, these numbers that have been coming out, it's like that money is just, like you can say, twillion. It's easy to say billion, a hundred billion, but we never really thought necessarily that that money is going to be there when it comes down to it. You're talking about this.

6:07Now we're talking about... All along. We're going back to this sort of circular question about these commitments and whether these companies are going to have enough money on the other side to match the commitment. Right. But interestingly enough, I do think one of the major shifts in the last, call it four months, has been the growth of Anthropic, actually, which if you look at their numbers, you'd say to yourself, maybe they haven't invested enough. The inside track. And you could even argue. Have not. Have not. And you could even argue that OpenAI perhaps hasn't. I mean, one of the things that keeps happening, look, if you talk to people in the business about, you know, we keep talking about Mythos being held back and all this.

6:45One of the reasons that Mythos is a complicated product is because it takes shocking amounts of compute power. And, I mean, shocking. I'm not sure they're going to be able to actually, some of these models, as they get more advanced, it makes it even harder and harder to make it profitable if you keep the pricing where it is. I'm paying, I think, right now$200 a month on Anthropic. How much? $200 a month. Some people pay$200,$200 a month. The average person is paying either zero or paying$20 a month. And even at those numbers, they can't make it. This is not a profitable enterprise. But which is why OpenAI shut down the video.

7:22And this is well, I think that's part of why of why. But so there you get into this whole question mark about sort of who's going to go first. And if you believe that OpenAI is now struggling, what happens to those investments? Open AI is not publicly traded right now, but SoftBank is. And SoftBank was down pretty substantially in trading on Tokyo. Are you in danger of being throttled? All the time. Throttled constantly, and that's part of the other problem. So on Open AI, for example, I'm paying only$24. At one point, I was on their$200 plan. What are you, write another book? Back down to the$24 plan.

7:59And when you're at$24, you will get throttled if you are not using it. I mean, if you're using it too much. And the reason that you pay$200, what do you get out of that? Right now, I'm just experimenting with it so I can understand what's happening. But I've been building apps. I've been making things. I've been trying all sorts of wild ideas. But you didn't build my app. I did not build your app. You suck. I mean, at$200, you're not building my conservative. media app. You built it yourself, my friend. What app did you build? I built all sorts of... Literally, I will build something almost every day.

8:37I built a... I have a daughter you all know named Sydney, and we built a... Do you know what Duolingo is? Yeah. We built a sort of Duolingo-style math app for third graders. Really? A singer? Not Duolipa. You guys are... It's hard. I know. All right. It's hard for you. We make it difficult. So, you know, we are going to have someone on, you know, a little while named Paul Meeks, who knows a lot about tech, supposedly. But what he's saying is he up to this point, he hasn't been asking to see the other end of things where everything starts paying off and working. It's just been the build out has been bullish for everyone.

9:19He's starting to think we need to see some some payoff. And you're saying we're not really seeing any payoff yet. Well, no, I'm saying I think there is going to be payoff. I think on the anthropic stuff, I think there is. And I think on some of the Claude stuff, I mean, on some of the, like, if you're using codecs on ChatGPT right now, that's a pretty great situation. I will also say the image generation on ChatGPT 5.5 literally came out in the last week. Outrageous. So there are things that are happening that are unbelievable. But you should not, I don't think any of us should be surprised that it's going to take a lot of computing power.

9:54because it's very average, a lot of it, at least. I was just explaining. You're using it in the most mundane way. I know, rudimentary. I know I am, and that's going to stay that way. I understand that. It's going to stay that way. But I can imagine, in knowing how you are, I can imagine that you need a lot more computing power to become real AI. And sentient, I don't even know what that means anymore. Right? Or even decent at being agentic AI is no better than it was. I still need to talk to a carbon-based life form. to get any decent answers or planning. So it's going to be a lot of computing power.

10:32So you better watch your, don't eat any more meat, and don't fart, because the carbon footprint is getting... All right, go ahead. All right, now I understand what you're talking about. Carbon footprint. Well, yeah, all of this is antithetical. Yes. If you really think we're going to... Saving the planet, right. In relation to all of this, the other issue that we have going before you get to OpenAI's actual IPO. A nine-person jury was seated in Elon Musk's high-profile lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI. Opening arguments are scheduled to begin today at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California.

11:10Musk claims that OpenAI, which he helped found back in 2015, strayed from its commitments to remain a non-profit lab. Among other things, he has sought to get Altman and OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, both removed from their roles at the company. In a post on X yesterday, OpenAI said this lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor. I don't know if you saw this post, but it got some pretty big blowback on X as well, as you might expect. Elon Musk's company, a lot of blowback and people pushing on this. And this is going to be interesting to see how this plays out with this jury.

11:48Google striking a deal to allow the government to use its AI models for classified work. That's according to the information. A report says that the Pentagon will be able to use Google's technology for any lawful government purpose. That puts it in the same category as OpenAI and Elon Musk's XAI. Earlier this year, Anthropic balked at those kind of usage conditions from the government. And of course, as you know, that led to a fallout between the company and the Defense Department. The United Arab Emirates saying that it will leave OPEC and OPEC Plus as of May 1st. The country's energy minister telling Reuters that that decision was made after a careful look at its strategies.

12:30He said the UAE is doing this at the right time without hugely impacting markets because of constraints on the Strait of Hormuz. Brian Sullivan joins us on the Squawk Newsline. Brian, what are you hearing? Well, it's brand new. I mean, this is breaking news right now. And this is a big change to the global oil order. It's a big change to OPEC as well. The United Arab Emirates was one of the key members, one of the not first founding, but first members of OPEC joining actually before the UAE became a nation. It was just the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Then the UAE was created in 1971. They're doing about 2 million barrels per day.

13:05So they're one of the bigger OPEC producers. They're nowhere near the level of Saudi Arabia or even Iran or Iraq, but they are critical when it comes to holding OPEC together. And I'm going to kind of give you just my inside take, having been to many OPEC meetings when they used to meet regularly in Vienna, Austria, at their headquarters, which is that Salman Ahmad Ruhi, who is the UAE oil minister, he was one of the guys that would kind of bring together some of the warring parties, right? You had groups that were inside of OPEC, mostly Iran, that would want to always do their own thing. And Saudi Arabia and the UAE would kind of go to Iran and say, listen, we're going to give you what you want.

13:45We got to make some deals here and get this, bring everybody together. So the UAE was a critical member, not just in terms of oil partnerships, but in terms of just sort of the diplomacy itself within the group, because everybody likes to think of OPEC as like this one group that's sort of singularly focused on the same thing. It's not true at all. You've got OPEC members from South America, Venezuela. You've got OPEC members from Africa. You've got OPEC members from the Middle least, and then, of course, the PLUS coalition with Russia and others. So this news literally just crossing minutes ago, the UAE, which is about a 2 million barrel a day exporter from OPEC, is leaving the group.

14:23You see OPEC or oil is higher right now. I see that on the screen right there up about 4%. It's unclear what these other priorities may be, but obviously I'm already pinging some people in the UAE and around the world to try to get more context on what is a pretty big headline for a random Tuesday morning. Indeed it is. Brian, thank you. And we look forward to what else you find out on this development. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, Mercedes Formula One team principal and CEO Toto Wolff. After weeks off amid the war in Iran, the team heads to Miami this weekend. Of course, its star driver will be there too.

15:09F1's youngest ever championship leader, Kimi Antonelli. We have taken Kimi under management when he was 11. You know, he was a tiny little boy back then and we took a bet on him. He showed extraordinary results in junior karting. And you can see, you know, many other teams start to take young drivers as young as nine or 10 year olds. Financial growth begins long before the first investment. It comes from understanding what you're building toward, what's at stake, and what success looks like for you. At Oppenheimer, we bring bold thinking guided by the full strength of our expertise to put capital to work building and protecting wealth that lasts generations.

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17:00Welcome back to Squawk Pod with Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross-Organ. Welcome, Becky. Formula One teams are preparing to return to racing this weekend in Miami. An unexpected break led to the cancellation of two lucrative races, one in Bahrain and another in Saudi Arabia, because of the war in the Middle East. So far, Mercedes is dominating the season, winning all three races of 2026. For more on the business of F1, the new regulations, competition, leadership and much more, we want to bring in Toto Wolff. He is team principal and CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team. And Toto, thank you for being here with us this morning.

17:43Thank you for having me. First of all, congratulations. This is a huge start to the season for you. Yeah, it's good. But unfortunately, only the start of the season. And, you know, there's 19 odd more races to go. And we've had a decent start, but everybody's going to continue to develop the cars. Some teams are making a big step here in Miami in the next few days. And we shall see how that pans out for us. The unexpected five weeks off that you all have had because of these two races being canceled. What's it meant? And let's dig in a little more as to what this means for the season, because it's not just those two races being canceled, which, by the way, were two very lucrative races that add up to bigger purses and bigger amounts of money for the teams.

18:27You're also dealing with higher jet fuel costs. And while that may not seem like a big deal, you have to take all of your equipment from city to city around the world. And that does add up, and you've got a cap on how much you can spend on those things. Yeah, exactly. I think first, from a personal side, with all the teams, it was a highly unusual situation because a four-week break right when everything got started is something we've never had. But then work continued to be big. Four weeks break means lots of politics going on, everybody trying to tweak the regulations in their favor. And then there are things we need to do to make the sport even more attractive, particularly on the races.

19:07So that's the kind of impact on the people. And when it comes to the geopolitical situation, We are all part of that. And apart from the, let's say, financial benefits of going to Saudi Arabia or to Bahrain, it is, you know, Bahrain is a legacy race for us. We've been there forever. Jeddah has put on a great show, and these two races are going to be missed. There is a chance that they'll be made up later in the season. At least there's talk of that at this point. Do you think that's possible? Well, it all depends how the situation in the Middle East continues to pan out. We have a few more races there with Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

19:44And hopefully it's going to, you know, calm down a little bit. We may as well go back to one of the races or there might be another, you know, another Grand Prix that would step in. For the three races so far, George Russell won one of them. He is your long-term premier driver. Kimi Antonelli coming in and winning the other two. He's 19 years old, the youngest ever to win a Formula One race like this. He's breaking all kinds of records, including those that have been set by Lewis Hamilton in the past. What are your expectations? How surprised are you? How sure were you that this was going to happen?

20:19Well, first of all, you know, George is such a strong pillar of the team and is the one that has given direction to the team over the last few years as well. So, you know, without having the safety of having George in the car and knowing that he's going to perform, So maybe taking the risk of putting an 18-year-old in the car would have looked very different. But we have taken Kimi under management when he was 11. He was a tiny little boy back then, and we took a bet on him. He showed extraordinary results in junior karting. And you can see many other teams start to take young drivers as young as 9 or 10-year-olds under management.

20:59Happens to be some Americans actually coming over too. And since then, you know, he's been doing great in karting, in the junior formulas, but he's still only been 18. And I don't know how it is, you know, with you, but me with 18, I would have never sustained the pressure in Formula One. So it's unbelievable. Do you think younger drivers are willing to take more risk? I think they are less, I don't think they think about it. No, I know, that's why I'm asking the question. Yes, definitely. Yeah, definitely. You're in your car, you know, everything moves, you need to remember everything moves at the same speed like you.

21:35So everybody around, it's not like you realize how fast you go. And they've done that since they were seven or eight years old. So it becomes the total normality in traveling at 200 miles an hour. But they're kids, and that is what we sometimes forget, that last year he had some really good moments and then some bad. And we said it's the trajectory he needs to take. You mentioned that you think that the sport needs to change. There are things that need to be tweaked, both in terms of the rules that you said people are jockeying for in these last couple weeks. It's so weird. It's the strangest sport that you have rules that change on a constant basis.

22:11And then this idea of something that's better for the audience. What are you referring to? What is that? So first of all, I don't know how it is in the U.S. American sports, but we tend to be very nostalgic how great the past was. and in Formula 1 it was screaming loud 10-cylinder engines revving to 18 ,000. You couldn't bring any kids to the tracks because it was just simply too loud. The cars were fantastic to drive, lots of downforce, but there wasn't any overtaking. So this is what people, hardcore fans today, look back and say, well, it wasn't that great. The truth is we have a very interesting formula that is what the younger fans love today, but it is also a formula that very much relies on the energy that the battery gives.

22:49and we have seen, particularly in qualifying, where you want to have flat-out racing, that you need to recover some of the battery. And like I said, the hardcore fans say, well, that isn't what Formula One was before. But the show on the Sunday is still great and all the data support that. Yeah, there have been some complaints. I think one of the guys has said they called it Mario Kart, the new rules they're racing for it. What do you say to them? First of all, there's many people that love Mario Karts. but Formula 1 has always been the pinnacle of racing the fastest engines and the fastest car with the best drivers and this is still what it is so what I mentioned before in terms of politics it's also gamesmanship the ones that don't perform particularly well under those rules they are very loud and saying well that's not what we like the ones that do very well enjoy it but fundamentally you need to rely on the data and Stefano Domenicali who runs Formula 1 you know says the fans love it through all of the demographic, not only the very young ones, but also the ones that are slightly older, females and men.

23:55And in that respect, the sport is in good shape. We just need to handle it very carefully because that's the holy grail, the DNA of the sport. Lewis Hamilton worked with you for over a decade. A close friend of yours, when he left and went to Ferrari, I know it was probably really tough, but I know you stayed close to him. You're still friends with him. Johnny Herbert recently suggested that he might be facing the end of his natural career racing in Formula One. Maybe it's too soon to call for crazy things like that. But what would you say to somebody who looks at him and sees someone young, like Kimi coming up and really tearing things up?

24:37What do you say to people who have been around for longer or someone like Lewis Hamilton? You know, there is these outstanding athletes, the so-called goats, that they're just better than everyone else. And I think they're also able to carry on in their careers longer than everybody else. You see, Fernando Alonso is still a very strong driver in the US. You know, Tom Brady was taking it far longer than all of the other players. And I think it's the same with Lewis. And we spent a lot of time traveling together. And he said to me recently, well, I think I can do this five or ten years more. and you can see this season is going particularly well for him.

25:11He's competitive. He enjoys what he's doing. So I don't see any reason why this can carry on for a few more years. You saw the movie, right? Yeah. And you just described the movie, I think. Well, Brad Pitt. Yeah. So you can actually, when you look at the movie, you can race until you're 60, no? Yeah, exactly. Maybe not in reality. Toto, thank you. Again, congratulations on a great start to the season and I can't wait to see what you guys do on my head. Thank you for having me. Still to come on Squawk Pod, talking money with your kids. CNBC's senior personal finance correspondent, Sharon Epperson, on what you should say and when.