9AM HOUR: Cramer's Micron CEO Exclusive in Boise, Walmart Tumbles, Oil Jumps and Yields Rebound 8/20/26

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

With the Discover Cash Back card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

SPEAKER_2 (0:26)

Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. Access new online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos, and more. All curated just for traders. Plus, guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests. And no sifting to find exactly what you need so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn more at schwab.com/trading.

Carl Quintanilla (0:54)

Market moving insight and analysis. Join Jim Cramer, David Faber and me, Carl Quintanilla, on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street.

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer's at Micron HQ in Boise. They've got some news today, which Jim's gonna bring us in just a minute. Meanwhile, futures are a little soft here as the bond market continues to test Treasury. 10 year near 4.7, essentially erasing that decline from that buyback announcement. Walmart, meantime, missing comp estimates for the first time in at least five years. As for oil, about a one month high as the president declares economic warfare on Iran, gas prices around 4.10. Let's begin though with Jim, live at Micron. Jim, busy day for you.

Jim Cramer (1:46)

Yeah, it really is. And we've got an announcement here today. Sanjay Mehrotra is the CEO of Micron, where we are in Boise. He's putting together a research lab. It's kind of thing that, it's almost like a Manhattan project for memory and AI.

And Sanjay is going to talk about it on our show. This is a rather remarkable construction site, one of the largest in the world. And I'm glad that he invited us here because this is all about investing in America manufacturing, Carl and David. It's really exciting.

Carl Quintanilla (2:12)

So we got 10 billion AI in memory. Tell us exactly what the project is.

Jim Cramer (2:20)

Sure. I mean, the idea is that we kind of, we have to have a longer range research opportunity here. This is the kind of thing that used to be done at universities. It's kind of like basic research. We always did applied research at corporations, basic universities. Universities don't do much of it anymore. They're too strapped, they're not interested in doing it. Sanjay Mehrotra wants us to be the world leader in this one particular part of the AI chain, which is memory. Memory, at least when you listen to Elon Musk, he would tell you, memory is now the most important thing. It used to be considered dumb, now it's considered smart.

David, when you get this shift, where you have something that was an afterthought, that is now a lot of people think is the bottleneck, but Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, this is the opportunity, then all I can say is that to see it happen is to realize that we're really much more part of the industrial revolution that's the fourth revolution. It's real, Carl, it's real, and it's very exciting to be here.

David Faber (3:21)

Yeah, of course, interesting to note, many of those universities you cite have had their government funding cut for basic research, but certainly think of Bell Labs, for example, and the incredible advancements.

That company, of course, Ma Bell made many years ago with all of their scientists in New Jersey, Jim. You're at the heart of the story, of course, and I'm looking forward to hearing what Sanjay has to say, both in our show and obviously a longer interview as well. You're going to conduct for Mad Money later in the day. I mean, and it continues to be sort of the key in many ways, as we like to say, Jim, to this market. I think still some grappling over the run rate of revenues at Anthropic and or OpenAI, and whether in some way presages some sort of, I dare even say the word slowdown, because it seems ridiculous when you think about the needs for compute, which I'm sure you'll get to, Jim. But that said, it's still kind of running the show to a certain extent, and in terms of the way some of these names are moving, that we follow so closely in the so-called AI ecosystem.