Yahoo Finance Invest 2025 kicks off with Michael Saylor, Vlad Tenev, Alex Karp among attendees

Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Kraken, isn’t losing sleep over IPO fever.

Speaking at Yahoo Finance Invest, Arjun made it clear that while crypto companies are stampeding into public markets, Kraken’s taking the opposite approach: stay private, stay focused.

“We have enough capital on our balance sheet today,” Arjun said. “We don’t want to race to the door just because everyone else is doing it.” For now, Kraken’s strategy is to watch and learn as early crypto IPOs educate the market on what success, and failure, looks like.

Founded in 2011 and legally known as Payward Ventures, Kraken had only raised $27 million in outside capital until this year.

That changed fast. In early 2025, it pulled in $500 million from major names like Apollo, Oppenheimer, and Jane Street, locking in a $15 billion valuation, per Fortune. And that’s not all, Bloomberg claims that Kraken is eyeing another $200-300 million round at a $20 billion valuation.

Despite staying private, Kraken’s started acting public. The company now releases financials, and the numbers are serious: $648 million in Q3 revenue, more than double year-over-year, with $562 billion in transaction volume over the same stretch.

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and founder of Seven Seven Six, told Yahoo Finance Invest that he sees artificial intelligence as a net creator of jobs, not a destroyer.

“I do think more new jobs will be created than removed from the system,” Alexis said, lining up with the view shared earlier by Max Levchin, who argued that AI will allow workers to “do more.”

Alexis pointed out that every major tech shift, from the internet to mobile apps, has created entirely new industries that no one saw coming.

His favorite example? Creators. “Twenty years ago, no one could’ve imagined someone like MrBeast becoming a billionaire through YouTube.” He said the same kind of career explosion will happen around AI, especially in roles we haven’t even invented yet.

But Alexis also called out the education system. If AI is going to transform the job market, schools have to evolve too. “The future of education for K-12 looks a lot more like having guides instead of teachers,” he said. His pitch: personalized AI tutors for every kid, no matter their income, home life, or zip code.

Eric Trump, co-founder of American Bitcoin (ABTC) and longtime crypto advocate alongside Donald Trump Jr., told Yahoo Finance Invest that the crypto industry is about to funnel an unprecedented wave of capital into the U.S..

“I think it’s going to onboard trillions of dollars into the U.S.,” Eric said during his sit-down with Brian Sozzi. He pointed to the global surge in stablecoin demand, saying nations that want exposure to the U.S. dollar are already dumping “trillions and trillions” into USD-pegged stablecoins, 99% of which are dollar-linked.

That demand, Eric argued, puts the U.S. in a powerful position if it embraces the sector. And so far, he says regulatory clarity under his father’s administration is doing just that… and fast.

“Crypto companies were leaving the United States,” Eric said. “They weren’t fleeing to the United States.” That’s changing now, he claimed.

American Bitcoin, launched as a spinout of Hut 8 (HUT), listed on the Nasdaq in September, giving the Trump family a more public footprint in the crypto arena.

And the numbers aren’t small, because Reuters reported over $800 million in crypto-related revenue tied to the family in just the first half of 2025, raising plenty of ethical eyebrows along the way.

Anne Walsh, chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners, told Yahoo Finance Invest that she expects the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates in December, as policymakers try to walk the tightrope between a softening labor market and sticky inflation.

“No matter what happens, we’re looking at a more dovish Fed composition,” Anne said, predicting a shift back to a lower neutral rate, a move she believes will relieve pressure on interest-sensitive sectors and benefit lower-income consumers most.

Anne also sees more cuts coming in 2026, especially if the Fed takes a more measured tone under new leadership.

With Jerome Powell’s term ending in May, all eyes are on President Trump, who’s reportedly narrowed his shortlist to five names: Kevin Warsh, Kevin Hassett, Chris Waller, Michelle Bowman, and Rick Rieder.

“The panel of nominees are all pretty well qualified,” Anne said. “I’m a big fan of Kevin Warsh… Michelle Bowman is amazing… Kevin Hassett’s a dark horse… and I’m also a big fan of Chris Waller.”

Her comments suggest a tilt toward candidates who favor more balanced, less aggressive monetary policy, potentially paving the way for a Fed that leans neutral rather than hawkish.

John D’Agostino, head of institutional strategy at Coinbase, kept it brutally honest at Yahoo Finance Invest: if you’re trying to time the crypto market, you’re probably screwing it up.

“The idea of trying to time the market is the biggest risk,” John said flatly. While prices may be chopping sideways, he pointed to “massive regulatory unlocks” ahead that could trigger major upside, if you’re still in the game when it happens.

John’s advice? Keep it simple. “A sober dollar-cost averaging approach” is the trend right now, especially with institutional adoption quietly accelerating behind the scenes.

Backing him up was Mark Palmer from The Benchmark Company. He reminded the crowd just how early things still are in crypto. “Bitcoin isn’t even an adult yet, it’s still a teenager,” Mark said. And like any teenager, it’s going to be unpredictable, chaotic, and growing fast in weird directions.

Mark added that the same mindset applies to AI investing too. “You’ve got to stay open-minded and flexible right now. Both crypto and AI are still in their early innings.”

Vlad Tenev, the guy who once froze your trades and now wants to deliver your cash in a truck, just introduced Robinhood’s boldest banking feature yet at Yahoo Finance Invest: doorstep cash delivery.

Yeah. You heard that right. Robinhood, the platform retail loves to hate (but still uses), is now borrowing a page from private banking’s luxury playbook. Vlad told the crowd the idea came from watching how high net worth clients avoid the ATM experience entirely.

“They’re not going to an inner city ATM,” Vlad said. “They’re getting cash delivered to their house.”

And now, Robinhood is bringing that same baller-level concierge service to the masses, thanks to a partnership with Gopuff. Cash will show up “discreetly,” no Brinks truck needed.

The delivery feature is part of Robinhood’s expanding banking push, one designed to blur the line between Wall Street elites and everyday traders.

Vlad said that while the world’s gone digital, cold, hard cash still matters, especially when people need it fast and frictionless. “We figured out how to do that for everyone, not just the rich,” he said.

Lael Brainard took a moment at Yahoo Finance Invest to reflect on the one thing she believes Jerome Powell will be remembered for, and it’s not the rate hikes, the dot plots, or the inflation battles.

“The single most important legacy will be [Powell’s] very determined efforts to guard the independence of the Federal Reserve,” Lael said on stage Thursday. She called it a defining move—preserving the Fed’s institutional strength at a time when political noise and public pressure have reached deafening levels.

“That’s the most important legacy he can hand to future Fed chairs,” she said. And more than that, it’s what gives the American public confidence that the system still works. “It means they can trust in low inflation—without needing mass unemployment to get there.”

Lael Brainard, former Federal Reserve Vice Chair and ex-director of the National Economic Council, broke down the current economic reality at Yahoo Finance Invest, and her take wasn’t exactly comforting: AI is saving the economy, but it’s not lifting everyone.

Speaking with Brian Sozzi, Lael laid it out bluntly: “We have a very clear two-track economy.” At the top? The AI sector, thriving thanks to a flood of investment and innovation. But she pointed out a key problem—it’s not hiring. “The leading sector is doing extremely well, but it’s not creating enough jobs.”

Meanwhile, the rest of the economy? Still stuck in the mud. Lael said businesses outside the tech bubble are getting squeezed; starved for capital, still choking on tariffs, and left behind by policy momentum.

Consumer spending is holding steady, but barely, and it’s mostly thanks to wealthier households. Lael warned that affordability stress is dragging sentiment to a three-year low, even though GDP might look fine on the surface. “The economy at the top level is strong,” she said. “But under the hood, it’s really stuck.”

Max Levchin, the techno-optimist behind Affirm, came ready to calm nerves at Yahoo Finance Invest, especially when it comes to AI and the future of work.

Speaking with Brian Sozzi, Max made it clear: he’s not sweating over job loss.

“I’m not at all worried about the loss of jobs. I do think the robots are coming,” Max said, straight-faced. But instead of picturing layoffs and mass unemployment, he sees AI unlocking more interesting, intellectually stimulating roles for humans.

According to Max, this moment feels like past tech revolutions, where automation displaced some jobs but created entirely new industries in return.

Still, he’s not blind to the darker side. “Some will lament the loss of their manual labor,” Max said, acknowledging that transitions aren’t painless. But the bigger danger, he argued, isn’t the AI itself, it’s what bad actors might do with it.

“We need to make damn sure we don’t end up in some Skynet-type world,” Max warned.

Not because the machines are going to become self-aware and attack humanity, but because real people with malicious intent could hijack powerful AI systems to cause chaos.

“Security is important. Safety is important. I think we’re going to solve those problems.”

Max Levchin, founder and CEO of Affirm, dropped a reality check at Yahoo Finance Invest: the future of retail might not involve the retailer at all.

“How will retail adapt to this new world where the transaction happens entirely or primarily inside the bot?” Max asked, pointing directly at the rise of agentic shopping, where AI assistants, not people, make the buying decisions.

Max explained the classic retail logic: you spend time, effort, and ad dollars to win a first-time buyer, but your real profit comes from the second sale, the one that happens when a satisfied customer comes back. But now? That entire dynamic could vanish.

“If the chatbot picks the product, who gets credit for the sale? Will the customer even know where it came from?” he asked. “Will they remember which bike shop had the part ChatGPT helped them select?”

He warned that in this AI-driven world, physical stores may be relegated to “fulfillment centers”, as bots take over curation and purchase decisions. Still, Max doesn’t think traditional shopping is dead.

“Local bike shops and Amazon aren’t disappearing anytime soon,” he said, noting that people still crave a tangible, human discovery experience.

As expected, Michael Saylor isn’t backing down from his ultra-bullish stance on Bitcoin, he’s doubling down. During a viewer Q&A at Yahoo Finance Invest, the Strategy executive chairman told the audience he believes Bitcoin will become a bigger asset class than gold within the next decade.

“We’re in the digital gold rush,” Saylor said. “2035 is the .99 year, that’s when 99% of all Bitcoin will have been mined.” He warned that time is running out for new entrants: “If you want Bitcoin, you need to get it between now and then. The last 1% gets released over a hundred years.”

Right now, Bitcoin’s market cap stands at just over $2 trillion, while gold still towers at approximately $29 trillion. But Saylor says that gap won’t last. “There’s no doubt in my mind, Bitcoin will be a larger asset class than gold by 2035.”

Even as gold has surged 62% year to date, versus Bitcoin’s more modest 10%, Michael sees that as short-term noise in a long-term monetary transformation.

And now… the Bitcoin king is here.

Mr. Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, came out swinging at Yahoo Finance Invest, tossing cold water on the short sellers betting against his company, and he called out Jim Chanos by name.

“Nothing great has ever been created by a short seller,” Saylor said, standing firm in front of a live audience. When asked specifically about Jim, he said: “I don’t really think about Jim Chanos.”

According to Saylor, critics like Jim “don’t understand Bitcoin, digital capital, or digital credit”—and that’s why they keep getting it wrong.

Jim, a veteran short seller, had been publicly shorting Strategy since May. But last week, he quietly announced on X that he closed out his position. Still, the damage shows.

Cryptopolitan reported that Strategy’s stock is down 22% year to date, most of it in the past six months, while Bitcoin is up 10% over the same period. Short interest is still hovering near 8.8%, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Saylor pushed back hard, saying the macro case is stronger than ever. “The irony is the fundamentals of the industry are so much better today than they were 12 months ago,” he said. “You’ve now got an extraordinary risk-reward opportunity. Now is a much better time to invest.”

If you’re still looking at Tesla like it’s just a car company, Dan Ives wants you to wake up.

Dan told the Yahoo Finance Invest crowd that the real Tesla bull case has nothing to do with Model 3s or Cybertrucks. “Robotics, Optimus—that’s what you’re playing for,” he said, pointing directly at Elon Musk’s vision to build a humanoid robot workforce powered by Tesla’s AI platform.

Dan doubled down: “This is the most important chapter ever for Musk and Tesla—the AI chapter. Autonomous tech and robotics.” He called it the best physical AI play on the market right now besides Nvidia, and threw out a number that turned heads: $2 to $3 trillion in future market cap potential if Tesla can execute.

Being a long-term Tesla bull, according to Dan, takes “a lot of patience”—but the upside, he says, blows past anything Wall Street’s priced in so far.

Dan Ives, the Wedbush analyst known for his no-filter metaphors, made one thing clear at Yahoo Finance Invest: retail investors aren’t just part of the market, they’re shaping it.

“Retail investors used to be at the little kids’ table at Thanksgiving,” Dan said with a grin. “Now they’re at the adult table.” And he’s not joking.

According to Dan, this once-overlooked crowd is now a serious force, with real influence on stocks like Palantir, Robinhood, and Tesla. He called them “very informed,” and made it clear: Wall Street’s no longer the exclusive playground of hedge funds and suits.

But Dan wasn’t done dropping analogies.

On the AI boom, he said the market is still undervaluing the scale of what’s coming. “It’s only 10:30 p.m. at the AI party, and this thing’s going till 4 a.m.,” he said, meaning the upside for companies like Nvidia, Palantir, and others is still massive, if investors are paying attention.

“It’s 70% accurate, maybe 85% on the good parts”: Alex Karp gets personal about his relationship with the Oval and Silicon Valley’s changing soul

A mess of Trump derangement syndrome, as he called it, that attempts to villainize him over Palantir’s proximity to Trump-era foreign policy, especially in Iran and border enforcement.

“They can’t process that Trump did some gutsy, effective things,” Alex said. “And since we were involved in some of that tech, that apparently makes me evil.”

Last question: how has Silicon Valley changed politically, and what impact has it had on defense tech?

Alex said, “Ideas don’t change the world. Ideas that make money or win wars do.” And that, to him, is what changed the Valley.

The rise of Palantir, which marries military strength and capitalist execution, forced people to pay attention. He said that even the most ideological corners of the tech world bend when faced with results that dominate battlefields or balance sheets.

“We’re not a neocon company. We want to be so strong, no one dares fight us. That’s what deterrence looks like,” Alex said. He also pointed out that Palantir’s success wasn’t built on elite privilege. “There’s no reason anyone can’t succeed in this system,” according to Alex.

Next on stage: Dan Ives, Max Levchin and Alexis Ohanian on the future of AI and monetization, and whether Silicon Valley’s soul is being bought, or finally growing up.

Alex Karp didn’t waste time. Sitting across from Josh Lipton at Yahoo Finance Invest 2025, the Palantir (PLTR) CEO dove headfirst into the only question that matters right now: AI boom or AI BS?

Alex’s take? There’s two AI markets. One is the fluff—tools that sound fancy but barely move margins. The other is what Palantir is actually building: AI that rewires military strategy, factory floors, and revenue models fast enough to matter.

That second group? According to Alex, it’s eating the rest alive. “We’re in the part of the market that gets paid because it works,” he said, pointing to real-world, quantifiable results Palantir is showing in defense and enterprise deals globally.

When Josh asked what the next decade looks like, Alex flipped the script: Forget Palantir—ask where America will be. “We’re the only country that owns the full tech stack,” he said, warning that this advantage could vanish if regulation chokes innovation or if the U.S. drifts from meritocracy.

He called out Europe’s inability to compete, saying no other region has what America has: chips, talent, execution, and ontology; and they know it.

Then came the defense. Not of AI. Not of geopolitics. But of Palantir’s stock price.

Josh hit him with the usual: analysts say the stock’s too expensive. Alex? He laughed it off. “How often have those same people been right?” he fired back, accusing some analysts of costing everyday investors real gains by steering them away from Palantir early on. He called out the “elitist bias” in analyst reports and said working-class investors were the ones who saw Palantir’s value early, not the finance elite.

And he wasn’t done.

Alex went full populist, saying he meets people across the country (plumbers, welders, truck drivers) who bought Palantir and are now winning because they trusted what the experts mocked. “You know who didn’t get rich? The people reading analyst notes. You know who did? The folks who ignored them and bet on us.”

More from Alex still coming up next. Stay tuned.

Mohamed El-Erian then called out the Federal Reserve, saying it “went to sleep” while inflation quietly baked into the U.S. economy, and now, the system needs a wake-up call.

“There are best practices from around the world that the Fed should be looking at more seriously,” Mohamed said. He pushed for a rethink on everything from structure to goals, especially the Fed’s obsession with the 2% inflation target. “What is the right inflation target in a structurally changing economy? That’s a question we’re not asking enough.”

Right now, at least three Fed officials, including Michelle Bowman, are floating the idea of shifting to an inflation range instead of that hard 2% line in the sand.

But the real turning point could come in May, when President Trump is expected to name a new Fed Chair to replace Jerome Powell. Mohamed suggested that’s the opening to drive long-overdue reform at the central bank.

But the bigger threat, according to Mohamed, is what’s happening on the ground with lower-income Americans.

“This isn’t just a political talking point,” he told Jennifer Schonberger from Yahoo Finance. “Lower-income households are under significant pressure. If they stop spending—not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t—that weakness will climb up the income ladder and start dragging down the entire economy.”

Mohamed El-Erian, the economist and former PIMCO CEO, brought a dose of reality to the AI hype train at Yahoo Finance Invest, warning that while the boom is creating real value, some investors are headed for pain.

“We are in a rational bubble,” Mohamed said. He broke it down into three distinct layers, and none of them are risk-free.

First, the AI frontier: firms building foundational models are raking in billions, but not all will survive. “Not everyone working on these models is going to succeed,” he said. “But they’re all attracting significant investment anyway.”

Second, there’s diffusion, the not-so-sexy problem no one wants to talk about. “Getting AI into the workplace—effectively, comprehensively—isn’t happening fast enough,” Mohamed said, hinting at bottlenecks in adoption that could slow down returns.

And third? The old dot-com playbook is back. “Companies are slapping ‘AI’ on their story and attracting capital, just like the dot-com days.” He warned that chasing the label without substance will end the same way: with some portfolios bleeding red.

Still, Mohamed isn’t bearish on the whole thing. “The aggregate value of what’s being created is significant. That’s where the rationality comes in,” he said. The tech is real, but that doesn’t mean everyone wins.

Stocks are flirting with all-time highs, Bitcoin’s gone full mainstream, and Nvidia has bulldozed its way into the $5 trillion club thanks to the AI boom.

Then you’ve got Elon Musk, who’s eyeing a never-before-seen $1 trillion compensation package that’s got every boardroom across America side-eyeing their own CEO contracts.

But behind all that green on the screen, the U.S. economy’s been weird. Some parts look strong, others are barely breathing.

And just when Wall Street thought it had a grip on the numbers, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history blacked out weeks of critical economic data, leaving investors flying blind.

So yeah, it’s been messy. And that’s exactly why Yahoo Finance picked now to level up its flagship event. This year, the team scrapped the old playbook and went fully digital, fully global.