GameStop’s Ryan Cohen, a Stapler, & Billionaire Ken Langone 7/15/25

Squawk Pod

CNBC

Business News, Investing, Business, News

4 • 494 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Billionaire philanthropist, Home Depot co-founder, and donor to Andrew Cuomo’s NYC mayoral bid Ken Langone sits for an extended conversation about local politics and the national economy. Langone explains his faith in Cuomo and his perspective on Democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani. GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen made his name on social media at the height of the meme-stock craze; now, he’s auctioning off an infamous stapler (and his underwear) on eBay. In a very rare interview, Cohen discusses GameStop’s past and its future. Plus, Starbucks has called corporate employees back to the office four days a week, and Nvidia plans to resume sales of a key AI chip to China. Ryan Cohen - 14:40 Ken Langone - 29:02 In this episode: Ryan Cohen, @ryancohen Joe Kernen, @JoeSquawk Becky Quick, @BeckyQuick Andrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkin Katie Kramer, @Kramer_Katie

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bring in show music, please.
0:03.0	Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer.
0:07.0	Today on Squawk Pod.
0:09.0	The Meme King.
0:11.0	Ryan Cohen, GameStop CEO, has legendary status among social media-fueled retail traders.
0:18.0	You can post an emoji of something and people go crazy. We have a loyal shareholder base, clearly.
0:24.6	He joins us in a rare interview on his reinvention of the once-left-for-dead video game retailer.
0:30.6	We're a much more profitable business, smaller business, less stores, very strong balance sheet.
0:38.5	And Ken Langone, one of the founders of Home Depot, the philanthropist behind NYU Langone,
0:44.0	and a major donor to Andrew Cuomo in his bid for New York City Mayor.
0:48.5	He's the right ticket.
0:49.9	Now, he didn't do himself justice by his mindset in the primary.
0:54.3	He should have worked his ass off and he didn't.
0:57.2	Plus, Invidia to sell chips in China.
1:00.0	And Starbucks office workers, time to get back to your desks.
1:03.6	It's 2025. Why weren't they at five days a week in 2023? Why?
1:09.2	It's Tuesday, July 15th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one.
1:18.1	Cure, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squackbox right here on CNBC. We're live at the
1:25.0	NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with
1:27.9	Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. The big story of the morning, semiconductor in video planning
1:33.0	to resume sales of a key AI chip to China. The company is saying it's filing applications
1:38.8	with the U.S. government to restart sales of its H-20 graphics processing unit and expects to get the licenses soon.
	...

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