Kalshi’s ‘Midterms Hub’ & SeatGeek & Serval Automate the I.T. Department 7/23/26

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**Brian Quintenz** (0:58)
Bring in show music, please.

**Katie Kramer** (1:02)
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, our tech future. First, prediction markets and the midterms. Kalshi has rolled out a new hub for elections contracts. Former CFTC commissioner and Kalshi Exchange board member, Brian Quintenz, on the government pushback on PRE.

**Brian Quintenz** (1:21)
These are new markets, so I don't think it's a surprise that states are grappling with a lot of these issues from what the laws are that have been on their books for a long time.

**Katie Kramer** (1:31)
Then the future of work with an AI startup trying to disrupt the IT department, Serval CEO Jake Stauch.

**Jake Stauch** (1:37)
Instead of filing a ticket and waiting for somebody to respond to that, we're actually going to automate that resolution with AI, get you back to the more meaningful parts of your job.

**Katie Kramer** (1:45)
And CEO of SeatGeek, Jack Groetzinger, a customer of Serval and a believer in a more efficient use of your IT guy.

**Jack Groetzinger** (1:52)
We see this as a way to move people from less interested work to more interesting work, get them focused on harder problems.

**Katie Kramer** (1:59)
Those conversations, plus.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:01)
The question of course is, is a reframe of this, the answer unto itself.

**Becky Quick** (2:05)
I'm of two minds when it comes to AI too.

**Katie Kramer** (2:07)
It is Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 Squawk Pod begins right now.

**Brian Quintenz** (2:13)
Stand Becky by in three, two, one, cue, please.

**Becky Quick** (2:17)
Good morning, everyone. 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 off today.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:28)
Meantime, shares of Google Parent Alphabet. They are lower in the pre-market. This, after the company reported second quarter revenue above expectations, 82% growth in Google's cloud business, but overall profit fell short of estimates. Investors are focusing on an increased CAPEX forecast as the company invests in AI. Alphabet now expects to spend between $195 and $205 billion just this year. That's up from a prior forecast of $180 to $190 billion.
Let's show you what CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company's earnings call.

**Sundar Pichai** (3:04)
I do think, you know, it feels like we are in very early innings of what feels like secular shift across multiple areas in our core information businesses. Just the possibilities, when I see what all you can do with absolute frontier capabilities, there's still a lot of work ahead to translate all that into experiences for our consumer users.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (3:34)
Another alphabet, earnings highlights, search revenue growing 17% in the company's other income category, which includes stakes in Anthropic and SpaceX, coming in just shy of $100 billion. What's so interesting to me about the reaction though, in the market right now about the Google piece is just, you know, every time these companies have spent more money recently, you've seen the stocks go up, meaning investors have rewarded what's been happening because they've said, oh, this is the future. This is really the first time where it seems like at least on the margins, investors go, I don't know.

**Becky Quick** (4:09)
And it's not just that. It's Tesla as well. We may talk about that stock a little bit later. It's the first time they've been cash spent that they've put into bigger projects that they're working on longer term issues.
That's the thing you watch for when the street rewards this long term payoff saying we want you to chase it, we want you to win versus when the street kind of pulls back and says whatever. That is the headline that's basically been taken away from every single take on this, the AI spending balloons. A little different than what we've seen at least in recent years.