TikTok Deal Drama, Redoing Quarterly Reports, Musk’s $1B Boost 9/15/25

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David Faber (1:01)

Market insight and analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC Squawk on the Street.

Carl Quintanilla (1:07)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer and David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks look to add to this remarkable stretch of all-time highs as markets get set for this week's Fed meeting, and the headlines just now coming out of day two of U.S.-China trade talks in Madrid. Ten-year 404, a roadmap begins with the Treasury Secretary saying a framework for a TikTok deal has been reached with China. President says he'll speak with President Xi on Friday.

David Faber (1:34)

Shares of Nvidia under pressure this morning after China says the tech giant violated anti-monopoly laws after a preliminary probe. And Elon Musk bought nearly a billion dollars worth of Tesla. Stock is much higher after a very strong day on Friday as well. We'll take a look.

Carl Quintanilla (1:54)

Let's begin though with the president's latest updates on these trade talks with China. Taking to Truth Social this morning, saying, quote, the big trade meeting in Europe between the United States of America and China has gone very well. It will be concluding shortly. A deal was also reached on a certain company that young people in our country very much wanted to save. They'll be very happy. We'll be speaking to President Xi on Friday. The relationship remains a very strong one. Meantime, the Treasury Secretary on the tape a few moments ago discussing a potential deal on TikTok.

SPEAKER_5 (2:24)

I think the framework is for it to switch to US controlled ownership. But again, I'm not going to get ahead of the leaders call on Friday. We have a framework. They'll have to confirm the deal.

Carl Quintanilla (2:39)

David, I think you've been working on this all morning long.

David Faber (2:42)

Well, I've been working on this for like seven years. I mean, no.

Jim Cramer (2:45)

Longer than Sorkin's book?

David Faber (2:47)

That's 1929 That's a hundred-year book. No, since August of 20, right? When we first had the ban that was going to be put in place by President Trump. Of course, the ban that is now in place but is not enforced, that is coming up soon, the deadline. But what I'm trying to understand now, and I can't tell you that I have it at all, is if in fact there is a deal for TikTok, who are going to be the buyers?

You create a new company, you reduce the overall ownership of ByteDance down to a very small amount. Again, Structure also, I wish I could give you real some sense here. Had numerous conversations with any number of people who have had interest in this and you can go guys through so many names, whether it's AppLovin, whether it's Amazon at one point, obviously Oracle, which hosts the servers for TikTok. This was back obviously five years ago when they did that deal. And Silver Lake and you go on and on. I'm just looking at my notes here of all the names, Bobby Kotick and Micros. I mean, so I don't know where we end up Jim, in terms of the actual entity that buys TikTok and controls it, so to speak and who owns that. But obviously very notable that in fact, it looks like they are close to actually having that deal in place.

Jim Cramer (4:15)

Well, the names are fascinating because I think we don't talk about it enough. This is the one. This is the one everybody's on. And I think the president is interested in what he said about tea. But TikTok is a dominant force. You got Reels, which had Zuckerberg, and that's working.

David Faber (4:30)

It's working and Instagram is working, but TikTok is a dominant force in media now.

Jim Cramer (4:34)

Yes, it is.

David Faber (4:35)

And there's a, you know, there are a lot of people who get their news from TikTok, love it or hate it.