Exxon’s Profits, Anthropic’s Hacking Revelation, & FIFA’s Debate 7/31/26

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What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:39)
One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs.

**Katie Kramer** (0:44)
Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself.

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Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Powerplayers. New episodes every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.

**Darren Woods** (1:01)
Bring in show music, please.

**Katie Kramer** (1:04)
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod.
Rising crude prices lead to record profit for the US oil industry. ExxonMobil's CEO Darren Woods tells us about the price pressures hitting the industry as the conflict with Iran continues and snarls the critical strait of Hormuz.

**Darren Woods** (1:23)
That resource in the region has to get to market. The strait has to open up. It is the main artery of supply for the world that powers economic growth everywhere. And so eventually those barrels are going to have to flow. And the only question is, how long will it take to get to some resolution here?

**Katie Kramer** (1:42)
The new AI models are so smart, they're the next generation of hackers. Far AI's Adam Gleeve on raising them right.

**Adam Gleave** (1:49)
So suddenly we need to be turning this more into a science or engineering practice with rigorous safety standards and testing rather than the current more organic approach.

**Katie Kramer** (2:01)
And is it too late?

**Joe Kernen** (2:02)
Can we just unplug these bastards at some point?

**Katie Kramer** (2:06)
Plus a tale of two mega cap earnings reports, New York vs. Cauchy and the wild week at World Cup parent FIFA.

**Becky Quick** (2:13)
A FIFA advisor on White House's World Cup panel resigns to protest Infantino's private equity plan. Infantino is the head of FIFA.

**Joe Kernen** (2:21)
Yeah, he spent a couple of weeks with the president.

**Katie Kramer** (2:25)
It is Friday, July 31st, 2026 Squawk Pod begins right now.

**Darren Woods** (2:31)
Stand Becky by in three, two, one, cue.

**Becky Quick** (2:36)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq Market Square in Times Square. There's someone standing right behind me. He's distracting me.

**Joe Kernen** (2:47)
There is.

**Becky Quick** (2:48)
Hi, I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernen. Andrew is out today. It's a Friday and so far it looks like things are looking pretty good, at least if you're a bowl. There's some pretty massive gains for the major averages yesterday. Microsoft shares spiked 16%.
That was their strongest session since the peak of the financial crisis all the way back in 2008 The biggest gains they'd seen in one day in 18 years. That stock trading all the way up at $451.10. You did see meta platforms off by about 8%, but Microsoft added just shy of $450 billion to its market cap. That was the most by any stock in a single day. On the other side of the ledger, meta shares down by 8%.
It was Meta's 11th consecutive decline. That's its longest losing streak ever. But we did see quite a lot of activity yesterday, and quite a lot of movement in what was happening with those major averages. In fact, at this point, Joe, after a pretty volatile week, we are looking at all three of the major averages higher for the week at this moment. NASDAQ 100 is down, but only by about 8 one hundredths of a percent.

**Joe Kernen** (3:54)
Microsoft was early in...

**Becky Quick** (3:56)
But then the gains kept adding.

**Joe Kernen** (3:59)
But it was early in sort of consolidating some of its gains. Remember how, what that company was worth at the top? It was 550 It was all the way up at $550 a share. And that wasn't that long ago. It was like June, mid-June. So it dropped all the way almost to $350.
So it was one of those stocks that we said, wow, the bloom is off the rose for the MAG-7. And if you bought it and you believe in the story, you're getting the award, but it's only back to $450. So $350, $550 right now, if you look at the chart, it's kind of right in, it's regained 50% of the sell-off from a huge move higher in the last year. And it just wouldn't surprise me to see similar action in a lot of these. And it's funny, it'll be Amazon's day but not Meta's day. It'll be NVIDIA's day but not Micron's day.