Moderna & Merck’s Cancer Treatment Win & Figma CEO 8/19/26

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1:03Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The promise of a personalized cancer vaccine. We have the CEO of Moderna, Stefan Boncel. It's a big moment for medicine, big moment for patients. Milestone experimental results that could extend life for patients with the deadly diagnosis of melanoma. Merck's Dr. Dean Lee. We don't know if this is going to be seven years, nine years, but there's a chance that you have an increased ability to be disease-free and for a potentially extended period of time. Then, how Figma is bringing design, code, and AI together for new digital products and weathering investor worry about AI.

1:45CEO Dylan Field on cultivating trust in tech. I will commend OpenAI for the way that they are really holding themselves to account, too. I think that we should see more of that actual holding yourself to account. Plus, founder problems, tariffs, midnight reprieve, election night in Florida, and the popping stock of a Chinese robotics company that is not quite like Elon Musk's humanoids. He's always wanted to make the robots a little smaller and a little less likely to be able to take us over. But might still take your job. Once this really happens, it's a whole different game. It's Wednesday, August 19th, 2026.

2:28Squawk 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 Andrew Ross-Sorkin. Joe is out today. We are coming off three days in a row of declines for all three of the major averages. And for both the S &P 500 and the Nasdaq, yesterday was their worst performance this month. However, you are talking about these major averages making some pretty major moves over the course of this year. Even since the Iran war began, you can look at the S &P up by almost 12 percent.

3:07The Nasdaq is up by about 16 percent. And if you're looking at the NASDAQ 100, it is up by more than 18 percent. It's kind of interesting when you look at how that shapes up against energy. WTI is up about 27 percent over that course of time, and yet equities markets have marched steadily higher. You're looking this morning at energy prices higher once again, up by just over 1.1 percent for WTI, which is trading just under$86 a barrel at$85.93. And then you've got Brent crude up by more than 1 percent as well. It's trading just above$92 at$92.01. Meantime, President Trump paused at 50 percent tariffs that were set to kick in at midnight last night on some products from Canada.

3:47In a post on Truth Social, the president saying he's now delaying those tariffs for three days, quote, based on the fact that Canada and the USA, subject to the finalization of documents, have a deal, exclamation point. The great Keystone XL pipeline long ago killed by sleepy Joe Biden may be awoken from the grave. Now, those tariffs would have hit imports on Canadian products, including wine and hockey sticks. That was in retaliation for what the Trump administration called Canadian trade discrimination in the motor vehicle, alcohol and dairy industries. Many of Canada's moves in those areas came in response to earlier U.S.

4:23tariffs. So we'll see what that ultimately means. When they elected that mayor of New York, they won an NBA championship. when they elect me to become the next United States Senator, the Jaguars might win the Super Bowl. Progressive scoring a surprise victory in Florida's U.S. Senate primary last night. State lawmaker Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, actually beat retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman despite Vindman's 16 to 1 fundraising advantage. We have had Republicans and MPAs that changed their party affiliation to vote for me economy. I believe that organized people beat big money every day.

5:09Nixon will now face Senator Ashley Moody in a race to fill the last two years of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's former term. In the meantime, Florida GOP Congressman Byron Donalds won his party's nomination to be the Sunshine State's next governor. President Trump has endorsed Donalds. Donalds will face David Jolly on the Democratic side. Jolly is a former Republican who became an independent and then a Democrat. Also in Florida, Republican Representative Corey Mills lost his bid for a third term to former TV reporter Ryan Elijah. Mills has faced a series of scandals and was initially endorsed by President Trump.

5:47Interesting, though, to see Nixon and the position that she's taken in this, the socialist. And, you know, the Republicans are pretty happy that she won this. They think that it's going to be an easier... They think it'll help galvanize support on the other side. To bring out support on the other side. Florida is pretty much a red state at this point. But I do think about what Mick Mulvaney said the other day and the strength of the Democratic socialists, the surprising strength that you've seen from New York across the country, the Midwest and different areas and some of these things. Mick Mulvaney was on with this earlier this week and said, you know, Democrats used to rejoice when Trump was doing very well in the polls the first time around when he was running for election because they thought he would be easier to beat.

6:27Right. Wasn't the case. He's proven to be very strong, coming back and winning a second term. And then you've got, you know, the progressives maybe stronger, he thinks, in that same sort of sense. Kind of interesting foreshadowing. Are the Democrats, are they going to run on their own policies or are they simply going to run against Donald Trump? By the way, I don't know if running against Donald Trump is a bad idea given his approval ratings. But it will be interesting to see if the Democrats can rally around any policies whatsoever. whatsoever, or if they're simply saying, well, we're not Donald Trump for vote.

6:59So vote for us. Oh, so that's interesting. Yeah, I don't know. That's what Nick was saying. No, I know. I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't know if I agree with that either, but it did make me think that President Trump was a was and is a very unique. I mean, almost singularly as an individual, I don't know if it was as much a concept. And I think this concept is a little bit harder for for people to swallow. But we'll see. It's been surprising the number of victories that they've had. It has surprised a lot of us who sit at these tables. A new look at OpenAI's revenue as it battles for popularity with Anthrop.

7:40According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI sales grew 18 % between the first and the second quarter to$6.7 billion. Now, some investors were looking for a bigger jump. The journal reporting that OpenAI's operating margin fell further into the red. A report last week said that Anthropik's revenue had jumped 14-fold to$11.5 billion in the second quarter and that the company's run rate was, I think, on pace to be something like$65 billion. So those are some of the issues that I think people are looking at as they're trying to compare both of these companies. Also, Anthropik making plans to grant its seven co-founders special shares with extra voting power.

8:19The information says that the move is meant to help protect that group, which holds a relatively small position in the firm from outside shareholder pressure as Anthropic moves toward what could be the biggest IPO in history. The CEO, Dario Amode, said last year that Anthropic's co-founders hold roughly equal stakes in the company. A source told the information that Amode's position amounts to about 2%. Anthropic is also maintaining a slate of non-shareholder trustees who have the power to elect the company's board. One of the things that's to me fascinating about this story is the idea that there are seven founders.

8:55You know, when you think about when Google, for example, issued its special shares, it was really about Larry and Sergey. You only had to really depend on, in this case, two people. I don't believe that Eric Schmidt had special shares. That's what I was wondering. Was it a trifecta or was it just a two? He might have, but there'd still be three. Seven's a lot. Seven to corral is a different story. So the idea, you know, if a group splinters, all of a sudden the control idea sort of shifts quite meaningfully. Yeah. So it's just interesting to sort of think through the permutations of that, and that it's not, you know, Dario and his sister as the sort of lead full-on controllers.

9:37Yeah. As you've seen in other companies like Warren Buffett with Berkshire Hathaway. Or with the family with Rupert Murdoch, who's gone through some of these things. Or Brian Roberts and his family. They're typically singular things. And even in the family, things can break. I was thinking about yesterday's story with the L.A. Lakers, too. Although she may have the controlling vote herself. She may have the controlling vote, right. A smaller piece of her puzzle on the Lakers. Shares of Unitree Robotics surging more than 460 percent in the company's Shanghai IPO overnight. It's the first publicly traded humanoid robot maker in mainland China.

10:16The company's market value is roughly$50 billion. Unitree shipped more than 5 ,500 humanoid robots last year and sold more than 33 ,000 quadruped. Is that how we say it? It's like working on all fours like a dog, quadruped? I don't know. I think that's it. The quadruped robots. DeepSeek was one of the strategic investors in the IPO, and it plans to collaborate to incorporate its AI models into Unitree's robots. But you've seen the videos yourselves. They can do pretty amazing things. This was a dance they put on, I think it was just last month, where they showed off the synchronization, the incredible acrobatics.

10:55And I will say these robots are a little different than what we've seen from places like Elon Musk. He's always wanted to make the robots a little smaller and a little less likely to be able to take us over because of what you've seen through science fiction, the worries that you can get to iRobot and the things like that. So China doesn't seem to have some of those same concerns. And these robots have been pretty impressive. I mean, this is to me, this is the stuff, you know, people say what's going to happen with AI and taking jobs. But once this really happens, it's a whole different game. It's a whole different game.

11:34Meantime, people may need this next product even more when the robots are doing all of their work and they never get up from the couch or need to. Novo Nordisk testing the pill version of its weight loss drug, Wagovi, to determine the lowest possible dose that people can take and still lose weight. According to a summary on the government database, the trial involves 450 participants. It's scheduled to be completed in 2028. Eight in the U.S., lower dosages of Vagovi cost about half as much as two higher dose forms. So I think they may all be interrelated. Meaning AI, the robots doing all of our work, and then what kind of medicines and drugs we're going to need to, like, persist.

12:18Or if you have more free time, maybe you could get up, work out, and go to the gym. I can only hope. I can only hope. So some of them will hopefully still be waking up and watching us and maybe maybe at the gym right now. Maybe you're at the gym. And if you're at the gym this morning, bravo to you. They're going to be watching Becky Quicker and Andrew Ross Sorkiner. That may be. That may be. The AI versions. We'll be at the gym watching them. Right. Cheese will be next. Next on Squawk Pod, big pharma news from Moderna and Merck. And we mean big. Both stocks surging today on results from a phase three trial of a groundbreaking cancer treatment.

12:56Merck's executive vice president and head of Merck Research Laboratories, Dr. Dean Lee, explains how this works. If you could train your immune cells to be like hunting dogs, chasing the tumor, and you could unleash them. But not only could you unleash them, if you could entrain them to smell out that prey, that would be something. And so in the last 10 years, that's what this result does. And Moderna CEO Stefan Bonsal on the long road it has been and the power of having faith in the science. All my friends told me to not start the company. Seriously. And everybody in the field said this will never work.

13:31We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. Celsius Spritz Vibe Summer Edition is here. Meet the new sparkling limoncello twist flavor, inspired by the vibrant, refreshing flavors of summer in Italy.

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14:51We've been there and solved that. When operations stop getting in the way, it's actually pretty amazing. We configure, optimize, and deliver the tech that runs business. CDW. Make amazing happen. You're listening to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Becky Quick. Shares of Moderna and Merck are surging this morning, and that is no exaggeration. Check it out. Shares of Merck right now up by about seven and three quarters percent. Of course, before those moves, this was a company with a$333 billion market cap. So that is substantial when you're talking numbers. And then check out shares of Moderna. They are up 63 percent, a gain of close to$40 right now.

15:34The stock is now trading at$102. By the way, before that move, that was a stock with about a$25 billion valuation. So you're probably talking$38 to$40 billion now of valuation in the company today. All of this is because of a phase three study that found the combination of mRNA-based individualized neoantigen therapy, or INT, combined with Merckx-Ketruda reduced the risk of recurrence or death in melanoma patients in a phase two and phase three trials that they've been running. Joining us right now for more on this is Moderna CEO, Stefan Bansel, and Dr. Dean Lee, who is the president of Merck Research Laboratories.

16:10And gentlemen, welcome to both of you. Thank you very much. Before we talk numbers and markets and the rest of this, let's talk about what this means on the human level. What you found with these studies, increasing survival and not only increasing survival, but reducing recurrence of cancer for patients who had melanoma that was cut out. and then they were treated at the same time with this gene therapy vaccine. Let's talk about it. Estefan, you've been working on this for a very long time. Yes, Becky, thank you for having us. For 10 years, I will let, you know, my colleague Dean talked about the science.

16:45He's the doctor. But basically, the way we think about it, it's like November 16, 2020, when we announced a phase three of COVID or vaccine. You remember we were on the show that morning. it's a big moment for medicine a big moment for patients we believe that this is just a first step for intismaran plus cathedral we're excited what it's going to mean for patients already just hearing stories from patients in clinical studies has been really heartening and so I'm very thankful for the team that I've worked on this for 10 years that's the type of things we're trying to do at Moderna is take very big scientific clinical bets look at mRNA was a big bet COVID, doing a vaccine in a year was a big bet.

17:29This is a big bet with a few more coming. But this one is going to be very, very profoundly impactful. And all of us have been touched by cancer. Many of us are being touched by cancer now in our family or loved ones. And so just what it means for patients is what gets us so excited. Dr. Lee, let's talk about this particular study. I think it was 1 ,100 patients. Yeah, so what's exciting about it is you're taking Keytruda, which many people know is a really important cancer drug that's approved in 20 different types of cancers. And if you add this personalized cancer treatment based on the technology of Moderna, and you treat patients with a really deadly disease, melanoma, you reduce that risk of recurrence, which essentially means that patients have a better chance of being disease-free and for longer.

18:14And the question will arise as to how long could they be disease-free. So we're going to run this trial out and see. But we have a hint. We did a phase two some years ago, Moderna and Merck. And what we said is after that treatment, after patients were treated, we would look one year. How many people are disease-free? Three years. And I think the five-year results just were provided out there. And what you saw at five years is that many, I would actually say most of the patients who were disease-free one year, three years, were disease-free five years. So we don't know if this is going to be seven years, nine years, but there's a chance that you have an increased ability to be disease-free and for a potentially extended period of time.

18:59Tell us the results of these latest phase two and phase three trials and what that means in the life of a patient versus if they had not had this Keytruda and Merck. Yeah, I mean, the way that I would look at it is if you didn't get the treatment with Keytruda and with the personalized cancer treatment, we already know from phase two that you had a marked improvement in having a chance of being disease-free. It was in the 40 to 50 % from that phase two. And then what we know from that phase two is - 40 to 50 % chance of greater chance of being - Of having a reduced risk. Okay. Right? And then all of a sudden you get to, we've tracked that for the phase two, you know, five years out, it's still there.

19:47So we're hoping that very similar results come out for the phase three. You didn't give specific numbers. Yeah, we didn't give out specific numbers. You said that it met the end point. Yeah, we don't give out specific numbers because, you know, the things that we have to do immediately and we're focused on it is we have to get all the detailed data out to the community, the community of oncologists and scientists. And we're planning to do it at a major oncology meeting, hopefully this fall, and also get that data out through a really respected journal. And that's, we'll have all the details such that people can really interrogate.

20:25I think also in the next few months that we're going to be talking to regulatory agencies because they're going to want to scrutinize our clinical data. And they're not going to just want to scrutinize our clinical data. They're going to want to scrutinize this novel technology that Moderna has put in to make sure that it's as efficacious and safe for broader use. Well, let's talk about that. Keytruda is kind of a miracle drug for cancer. It's been an amazing inclusion to the toolbox for fighting cancer. Different than chemotherapy because Keytruda actually uses your body's immune system to go and fight the cancer itself.

21:03Describe what this new therapy does on top of that, putting Keytruda together with this. The idea of this actually is from the Upper East Side 130 years ago. And the concept is if you could train your immune cells to be like hunting dogs, chasing the tumor, and you could unleash them, but not only could you unleash them, if you could entrain them to smell out that prey, that would be something. And so in the last 10 years, that's what this result does. What Keytruda does, it's a key. It's a Keytruda. It unlocks the key to let the hound dogs out, let the dogs out. But what's critical about the technology that Moderna has created is it's a personalized cancer treatment that allows the immune cells to get the scent, the signature.

21:49Because it's trained on your own. On your own cancer. It's personalized medicine that is trained on your tumor. Your cancer. Yes, I would even say it's individualized. Because personalized in medicine is if you and I have the same mutation, we might get the same drug. It's individualized, which is you will get a different drug. If you're diagnosed with melanoma today and I'm diagnosed by the same doc, you and I will get a different chemical. But we basically, we're going to look at, take a biopsy. We're going to sequence all the letters of the DNA of your cancer cell. We're going to do the same for your healthy cell of your body, most blood work.

22:24when they compare electronically where the mutations are. And we designed and we aim to improve an algorithm to pick 34 mutations that we believe are the most important in your tumor. We put that into one molecule of mRNA, we stitch them together, and we inject that to you in your arm. And that's what Dean was just saying. That's to give your immune system, to give to the dogs, to give the same energy. It's the personalized medicine. Amazing. This is the demonstration of the future. That's what we're talking about. Yes, it's totally individualized. It's using sequencing technology. It's at the molecular level because we know today cancer is a disease of DNA.

23:02And that's why it's so powerful. Does that make it safer in terms of whether the immune system attacks other organs that don't need to be attacked? The hope is there. And the data that we saw from the previous over five years, it's safe. And people are going to scrutinize this data, and they're going to watch it. And I think the FDA and the community will say this is a safe drug that really is efficacious in a patient population that's facing a deadly disease. I know this is a super early question to ask. Do you have any idea what this will cost on the patient side? Yeah, because personalized medicine is not true.

23:39Personalized medicine is very expensive, and how this is all going to work economically. Sure. So we have not discussed price yet because we have not made any decisions yet. The data just came literally a couple of days ago, and the team have been working hard to quality control the data. One thing that is different from, and I'm sure you're thinking about CAR-T cell or cell therapy, is we do not use your own cells to make the product, which from a manufacturing standpoint is very much complex and very expensive, right? So, yes, it's going to be individualized. It's not going to be the same price that's going to make a COVID shot for everybody the same, obviously.

24:13but it's not using cells. So it's a process that we can shrink down and we think we can get it to a price. If it's not using your own cells, what is it using? Enzymes. It's a chemical process. So it's cheaper and faster? Yes. We take your, we're making a treatment based on the excision of the tumor that we got. We studied it in the lab and we sit there and go, what is the signature? What is the scent of this tumor cell compared to all the other cells in your body and is unique to yourself. And so, you know, Stefan and his team, as well as our team, are gearing up to go to regulatory agencies and prepare for a launch.

24:57What do you anticipate in terms of working with the regulatory agencies on this? How long before this can go to market? You know, we generally don't get ahead of our regulatory agencies. I do think they understand the importance of this technology, not just for melanoma patients, but broadly. And what we have seen in our interactions, you know, we just had our approval of Lephrendra, the cholesterol medicine. And what we have found is that the FDA scrutinize these with rigor, but they move with urgency when they know what this means for a field. Yeah. And to build on Dean's point, the agency has been aware of this technology for a long time because they allowed us to start a phase one study to make sure that they felt it was safe to go into a human.

25:45That was a long time ago. They allowed the phase two study. And then all the phase three we talked about have been reviewed by the agency. So, of course, for approval, they need to look at more data, including the phase three data, the manufacturing data. There's a lot of work, but they are familiar already with a lot of technology. You have also, I think, nine other phase two and phase three studies that are in trial for this that are looking for vaccine treatment against cancers of the lung, the bladder, the kidney, stomach and pancreas. How quickly can we see any of those results? Where do things stand?

26:17I think those, I love what you brought up because one of the things that we need to do is we need to scrutinize the melanoma trial to figure out what are the hints that we wish we would do better, what are the things that we did really well. And we immediately have to take those lessons now that we have a positive trial in melanoma and apply it to these other tumor types with the hope that this is not just applicable to melanoma, but potentially might have a broader implication. And I would just remind the viewers that Keytruda, as you said, is a really important drug. The first tumor that it was successful in was melanoma.