OpenAI CEO Sam Altman & Amazon CEO Andy Jassy 2/27/26

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Bring in show music, please.

**Zach Vallese** (1:03)
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Zach Vallese. Today on Squawk Pod, a massive fundraise for the massively valuable private company, OpenAI, $110 billion, including from Amazon. Leaders of both companies join us on this news. OpenAI's Sam Altman.

**Sam Altman** (1:23)
The more we see revenue growing, the more we see demand growing, the more we want to invest to be able to serve that.

**Zach Vallese** (1:30)
And Amazon's Andy Jassy.

**Andy Jassy** (1:32)
This is the most significant transformation in technology, maybe business, in our lifetime.

**Zach Vallese** (1:39)
Plus Paramount one step closer to a long-sought prize, the legacy assets of Warner Bros. Discovery.

**Joe Kernen** (1:47)
It's either the end of Hollywood and theaters or it's the magnification of Hollywood.

**Zach Vallese** (1:53)
And we never thought artificial intelligence would come for us.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (1:58)
Such a bonkers and backwards thing to think, because here we have this great innovation, this great technology is supposed to move us forward, which it may, but we could take our jobs in the meantime.

**Zach Vallese** (2:08)
It's Friday, February 27th. Squawk Pod begins right now.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:14)
Stand under by in three, two, one, cue Andrew.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:19)
Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live at the NASDAQ Market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin along with Joe Kernen. Becky is off today, but we got a lot going on this Friday morning. Take a look though at shares of FinTech company Block. They are soaring literally right now up about 20% here. This after the company said it would lay off roughly half of its workers.
Block CFO saying, if the company sees an opportunity to, in her words, move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work, Block's headcount is, in this case, going to go from more than 10,000 people to just less than 6,000 people. And this may be one of those moments about AI and what it does to employment. In a letter to shareholder CEO Jack Dorsey saying that AI tools have changed what it means to run a company. He said, quote, I don't think we're early to this realization. I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion, make similar structural changes. I'd rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively. And if you think about this, if you could cut 50%, 40% of your workforce, which is what these folks are going to be doing literally overnight, what does that mean for the rest of us?

**Joe Kernen** (3:36)
I need a list of companies that are in a position, like Block, where they can do that. You must have some ideas.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (3:43)
Well, I would imagine, first of all, you could look at a lot of the, by the way, the question is whether this is all white collar jobs that you could do this with, whether this is just, you know, in this case, transactional companies, could Stripe do this to itself, for example? Stripe, by the way, may want to buy PayPal. Could PayPal do this to itself?

**Joe Kernen** (4:05)
Okay, well, go give me individual names, then. Give me total, percent total of the S&P 500 that could be something similar. 20%?

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (4:12)
Oh, I wonder whether it's 50%.

**Joe Kernen** (4:15)
50%.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (4:16)
Yeah. Why not?

**Joe Kernen** (4:16)
That's a frightening, and that doesn't even include all the things that we've talked about with truck drivers and, you know, not just AI, but, you know, look at the future. Look at the future five years. Well, there's a lot of them, though.