Squawk Pod: OpenAI President Greg Brockman: now is the time to act - 08/17/26 | Audio Only

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  August 17, 2026 at 17:38  |  40:29  |  CNBC
Speakers
Andrew Ross Sorkin — Co-Anchor, Squawk Box
Greg Brockman — Co-founder and President, OpenAI
Keller Clifton — CEO and Co-founder, Zipline
Becky Quick — Co-Anchor, Squawk Box

Summary

Squawk Pod covers Berkshire Hathaway's large new Alphabet stake, OpenAI president Greg Brockman's cybersecurity warning and bullish compute thesis, Zipline's Uber drone-delivery scaling partnership, and political and geopolitical debates including a California billionaire tax.

  • Berkshire Hathaway added $17B to Alphabet, making it its third-largest holding; hosts argue Google's user surface area supports an AI use case.
  • Greg Brockman says AI-driven cyberattacks require urgent cybersecurity upleveling and sees strong growth there.
  • Brockman calls compute the new oil and argues chip depreciation schedules will change due compute scarcity.
  • Zipline and Uber partner to scale drone delivery toward one million daily deliveries.
  • Zipline's CEO cites cost competitiveness, speed, and a strong safety record.
  • The episode also covers billionaire tax pushback, US-South Korea drills, and Iran tensions.
Ideas
Andrew Ross Sorkin Co-Anchor, Squawk Box 2:26
Alphabet's surface area makes it AI winner
Alphabet/Google has been less loved than other big tech and may not have the most advanced AI, but Google's huge user surface area and habitual search use case are converting into AI prompting; Warren Buffett and Greg Abel also backed the new Alphabet stake because they expect it to be an AI winner with the money, capability, and smarts.
GOOG HIGH
Greg Brockman Co-founder and President, OpenAI 14:01
Cybersecurity spending must rise with AI threats
Cybersecurity is at an inflection point: AI automated attacks can chain small vulnerabilities and exposed credentials, so every organization must urgently uplevel cybersecurity as a top priority; defenders have an advantage and AI security is a critical application with lots of growth ahead.
CIBR HIGH
Greg Brockman Co-founder and President, OpenAI 23:53
Compute scarcity makes AI chips valuable
Compute is becoming the new oil and the limited resource of the AI age; demand for solved problems is effectively unlimited, and compute scarcity is so acute that older-generation chips are being used at higher prices, meaning classic 5-6 year depreciation schedules will not hold and anything that provides compute becomes valuable.
SMH HIGH
Keller Clifton CEO and Co-founder, Zipline 35:23
Uber-Zipline drone delivery scaling profitably
Zipline's autonomous drone delivery is scaling fast with the Uber partnership to a million deliveries a day; its cost is now competitive with traditional vehicle delivery at roughly $8-15, it is faster, cleaner, quieter, and safer based on 140 million autonomous miles with zero safety incidents, and it can grow the instant delivery market more than 10x.
UBER MED
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This CNBC video, published August 17, 2026, features Andrew Ross Sorkin, Greg Brockman, Keller Clifton discussing GOOG, CIBR, SMH, UBER. 4 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Andrew Ross Sorkin, Greg Brockman, Keller Clifton  · Tickers: GOOG, CIBR, SMH, UBER