Finance
Hedge against political cycles is better investment than AI: Van Eck
A major exchange-traded fund and mutual fund manager finds the winning gold trade isn’t talked about as much as the artificial intelligence trade — but maybe it should be.
VanEck CEO Jan van Eck thinks the best investment this year is “the hedge against political cycles.” To him, that means investing in gold.
“It is quietly the best performing asset this year,” Van Eck told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” from the Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach on Monday.
Gold hit another record on Friday, its 37th record this year. As of Friday’s market close, it is up 28% since the start of the year.
Van Eck, whose firm runs the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, expects foreign investments in bullion will continue to give the commodity a boost. It should also help in lifting gold miners higher, which started the year lagging the commodity. But as of Friday, the VanEck Gold Miners ETF has started to outperform, up 31% this year.
“I think you own both because the miners, if they catch up at all, it’s going to rip,” he said.
As for the AI trade, van Eck says it’s “amazing” how investors refuse to give up on it.
“It’s like part of people’s model portfolios, or core portfolios, is to have this tactical overweight to semis. And some of our biggest clients actually bought on the dip over the last week or two,” the VanEck CEO said.
Last month, his firm launched the VanEck Fabless Semiconductor ETF. It’s a companion to its VanEck Semiconductor ETF that excludes companies that run their own foundries, such as Intel.
FactSet reports the new ETF’s top holdings as Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices as of Friday.
“Why spend billions of dollars on building the chips if you don’t have to?” van Eck said. “Nvidia doesn’t build its own chips. So that’s another kind of investment strategy.”
Since launching on Aug. 28, the VanEck Fabless Semiconductor ETF is up a half percent.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Anthropic is in talks to raise a $3.5 billion funding round, significantly more than the amount previously expected, CNBC has confirmed.
The round would roughly triple the artificial intelligence startup’s valuation to $61.5 billion, according to two sources familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public. Lightspeed Ventures is leading the funding, with participation from General Catalyst and others, the sources said.
The financing, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, signals continued investor demand for top-tier AI companies, even in the face of potential disruption from China’s DeepSeek. Anthropic is backed by Amazon and Google, and had initially set out to raise $2 billion, according to a source.
Anthropic declined to comment.
The company’s last private market valuation was $18 billion. Amazon has poured $8 billion into the startup.
Anthropic was founded by early OpenAI employees and is the creator of the popular chatbot Claude. Earlier Monday, Anthropic released what it says is it’s “most intelligent AI model yet. Its so-called hybrid model combines an ability to reason — or stopping to think about complex answers — with a traditional model that spits out answers in real time.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Monday said the U.S. government is inefficient and in need of work as the Trump administration terminates thousands of federal employees and works to dismantle agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Dimon was asked by CNBC’s Leslie Picker whether he supported efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. He declined to give what he called a “binary” response, but made comments that supported the overall effort.
“The government is inefficient, not very competent, and needs a lot of work,” Dimon told Picker. “It’s not just waste and fraud, its outcomes.”
The Trump administration’s effort to rein in spending and scrutinize federal agencies “needs to be done,” Dimon added.
“Why are we spending the money on these things? Are we getting what we deserve? What should we change?” Dimon said. “It’s not just about the deficit, its about building the right policies and procedures and the government we deserve.”
Dimon said if DOGE overreaches with its cost-cutting efforts or engages in activity that’s not legal, “the courts will stop it.”
“I’m hoping it’s quite successful,” he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Dimon also addressed his company’s push to have most workers in office five days a week, as well as his views on the Ukraine conflict, tariffs and the U.S. consumer.
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