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The US House cleared a massive housing affordability bill on Tuesday (local time) aimed at boosting the supply of homes and cracking down on large investors buying up houses. The bill received 358-32 votes in favour and has now gone to Trump for approval View More

The House on Tuesday gave final passage to a bill aimed at lowering costs for homebuyers and reining in private equity. View More

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (FL) speaks on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 17, 2024. Mike Segar | Reuters The U.S. House on Tuesday voted 358-32 in favor of an affordable housing bill aimed at lowering costs for homebuyers and reining in institutional investors, sending the package to President Donald Trump's desk.The legislation, dubbed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, is a rare bipartisan measure in a deeply divided Congress. It advanced out of the Senate on Monday night by a vote of 85-5, after months of debate and different versions ping-ponging between the House and Senate. Lawmakers struck a final deal on the legislation last week.Trump is scheduled to sign the legislation at the Capitol on Wednesday, ahead of a planned meeting with Senate Republicans, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson's office."With final passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, Congress is paving a path back to homeownership for American families who have been locked out for far too long," Johnson said in a statement after the vote. "This transformational legislation will help address the housing affordability problem, reduce regulations so builders can build, limit institutional investing in the housing."market, and bring the American Dream back into reach for millions of young and working families," Speaker Johnson saidDemocrats and Republicans alike are eager to campaign on the legislation, which would remove some red tape to enable more housing to be built and cap the number of single-family homes institutional investors can buy at 350, as affordability is top-of-mind for voters heading into the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans are attempting to protect narrow majorities in both the House and Senate.But the legislation faced headwinds in the House on Tuesday as some conservative hardliners said they would oppose the housing package because it does not include a controversial election bill known as the SAVE America Act, which would require ID at the ballot box and proof of citizenship to register for elections. Trump has been urging Congress to approve the voter-ID bill, despite there being insufficient votes to support it in Congress. Read more CNBC politics coverageSens. Warren, Kelly press Trump administration on effects of tariffs on manufacturingFive things to watch in Tuesday's primary elections in New York, Maryland, UtahRo Khanna challenges Elon Musk to televised debate after online DOGE battle Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., threatened Tueday in several posts to X to jam up the House floor if GOP leaders proceeded with a plan to fast-track the house bill using a procedure known as "suspension," which allows expedited consideration of a measure and requires two-thirds support in the chamber. The SAVE America Act advanced out of the House in February but does not have the votes required to clear the Senate."The House GOP is attempting to move a Senate Bill with NO VOTER ID and NO SAVE AMERICA ACT. I will have to be a NO on rules for this week (and maybe even longer) if they don't stop the games. I am not the only one. Other House Members are frustrated at the games being played. This is a problem," Luna posted.Luna was one of just 32 Republicans who opposed the housing measure on the floor.—Emily Wilkins contributed to this report. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

The greatest wealth transfer is underway, and heirs around the world who are set to inherit billions are preparing to use the money very differently from the generations that built it.  View More

Inside Creative House | Istock | Getty Images The largest transfer of wealth in modern history is underway, and the heirs set to inherit trillions of dollars in family fortunes are preparing to use the money very differently from the generations that built it. Over the next two decades, an estimated $83.5 trillion is expected to pass from baby boomers and older entrepreneurs to their children and grandchildren, according to UBS."The world is entering a historic intergenerational wealth transfer," UBS told CNBC. Billionaire families alone are expected to transfer about $6.9 trillion by 2040. For many wealthy families, the first generation built fortunes in concentrated areas they knew well: family businesses, property, or local blue-chip shares, wealth experts told CNBC. Their children are more likely to be internationally educated, more mobile and open to a wider range of investments."The first generation were 'builders,'" said Elizabeth Hart, CEO and founder of Legacy Wealth Advisors. "Their wealth is usually tied to a single asset class they understand deeply, often a family operating business or local blue-chip shares." By contrast, younger heirs tend to "view wealth through a global lens," Hart said, adding that they are more open to diversified investments across asset classes and markets.That shift could redirect some of the inherited wealth away from traditional stores of family capital, particularly real estate. Hart said that Asian families, in particular, have historically invested "almost exclusively in property for generations," but second- and third-generation heirs are increasingly looking to diversify into other assets and geographies.A Natixis Investment Managers survey found that millennials are far more likely than older investors to seek exposure to private assets, with 53% expressing interest. They are also more likely to discuss cryptocurrencies with advisers, with 62% doing so, while 44% plan to increase or begin crypto investments within the next year.The younger generation also appears more comfortable with risk. Natixis found that 78% of millennials in the Asia-Pacific region want opportunities to beat the market, compared with 38% of baby boomers willing to take risks to get ahead. Money as a means to an end Tobias Prestel, founder of Prestel & Partner, said younger wealth holders increasingly see money less as an end in itself and more as a means to achieve goals."For most elder people, money is a thing, and money is good for more, for most younger ones, money is just a tool," Prestel said. "They are more looking into how the tool is used than enjoying the treasure chest."The changing mindset is also influencing spending habits. Instead of building collections of traditional status symbols, some younger heirs are prioritizing experiences, mobility and international lifestyles. Prestel said younger wealthy individuals are less likely to collect cars and more likely to own residences around the world, combining travel with global property exposure.Interest in sustainability and impact investing is also gaining traction. UBS found that nearly half of next-generation investors are already invested in or keen to learn more about impact and sustainable investing.The transfer is also reshaping how families manage wealth. The bank found that next-generation family members increasingly see inheritance as a transfer of responsibility rather than an eventual financial windfall."My brother and I don't think of inheritance as something we're going to get, but rather as our responsibility to do as good a job as our father did," one respondent told UBS.Yet the transition is not without risks. While the sheer volume of wealth changing hands is unlikely to derail the broader transfer, advisers say the biggest risks to preserving wealth often come from within families themselves."The crack is not a lack of money; it's a lack of communication," Legacy Wealth Advisors' Hart said.Many first-generation wealth creators remain reluctant to relinquish control, particularly in Asia, where fortunes are often closely associated with a family patriarch or matriarch. Meanwhile, heirs are pushing for greater transparency, succession planning and formal governance structures around family assets."Even with a succession plan, the biggest destroyer of wealth is family dispute," Hart added.As fortunes move beyond their founding generation, advisers say successful transfers increasingly depend on preparing heirs for stewardship, not just structuring the assets themselves. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

FedEx posted strong fiscal fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday in the company's last quarter that included the freight business before its spin-off. View More

In this articleFDXFDXFFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT A FedEx delivery van on May 27,2026 in London, England. Peter Dazeley | Getty Images FedEx on Tuesday reported earnings that beat Wall Street expectations on the top and bottom lines.The earnings report marked the last quarter that includes the company's freight business, which spun off into a separate publicly traded company called FedEx Freight on June 1. The company said FedEx Freight paid a cash dividend of roughly $4.1 billion to FedEx Corporation in connection with the spinoff.Shares of FedEx dipped roughly 6% in extended trading.Here's how the company performed in its fiscal fourth quarter compared with what analysts were expecting, according to a survey by LSEG:Earnings per share: $6.31 adjusted vs. $5.96 expectedRevenue: $25.01 billion vs. $24.04 billion expectedFor the period ended May 31, FedEx reported FedEx Express revenue of $21.57 billion, beating StreetAccount estimates of $20.75 billion. The company reported a 3% year-over-year increase in domestic volume and a 3% increase in U.S. priority volume.In the fourth fiscal quarter, FedEx reported net income of $1.6 billion, or $6.60 per share, compared with $1.65 billion, or $6.88 per share, in the year-ago period. Adjusting for one-time costs, including the spin-off and retirement plan adjustments, the company reported earnings per share of $6.31. For the full fiscal year, FedEx reported revenue of $94.7 billion, up from $87.9 billion the year prior. "The momentum you're seeing across our business is proof that our strategy is working," CEO Raj Subramaniam said on a call with analysts. "It's translating to favorable financial outcomes, including very strong free cash flow and FY '26 results that far exceeded our initial FY '26 outlook."The company also said it will now change its fiscal year end from May 31 to Dec. 31, effective earlier this month. For the full year, FedEx said it expects 11% year-over-year revenue growth and adjusted diluted earnings per share of between $16.90 to $18.10.FedEx saw fuel costs rise from $864 million last year to $1.43 billion this year, marking a 66% jump. Company executives said on the call with analysts that FedEx has not seen an impact to demand due to fuel prices. The company also said it saw U.S. pricing rise 10%. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

About 40 million SpaceX shares are sold short, roughly 5% to 7% of the shares that are publicly available to trade, according to an estimate by S3 Partners. View More

In this articleSPCXFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT SpaceX displayed outside the Nasdaq as the company launches their IPO on June 12th, 2026. Adam Jeffery | CNBC SpaceX's sharp pullback from its post-IPO record high is doing little to embolden short sellers reluctant to bet against CEO Elon Musk, even as the shares have shed more than a quarter of their value in just over a week.The rocket company is down about 12% this week and roughly 28% from its June 16 peak, erasing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value after a blistering rally that followed the June 12 initial public offering.Yet bearish bets remain in check. Only about 40 million SpaceX shares are currently sold short, representing roughly 5% to 7% of the company's publicly tradable float of roughly 625 million shares, according to an estimate by S3 Partners. Short selling refers to a trading strategy that allows investors to bet that the price of a stock or security will fall.  Stock Chart IconStock chart iconSpaceX About 60 companies in the S&P 500 currently have short interest exceeding 7% of their float, according to FactSet, suggesting bearish positioning in SpaceX remains relatively modest despite the stock's recent slide.More than 30 million SpaceX shares are currently available to borrow, indicating ample liquidity in the securities lending market. Borrowing costs are also low, with annualized fees below 1%, S3 said."SPCX has attracted active short-selling interest, but the data suggest this is far from a supply-constrained short," Matthew Unterman, head of research at S3, told CNBC. "The current setup looks more like normal price discovery than a classic short-squeeze candidate."For now, many traders appear reluctant to press short positions against a company that remains one of the market's most closely followed growth stories with a passionate retail investor base.Even some of Wall Street's best-known skeptics have stayed on the sidelines. Michael Burry, the investor who famously bet against the U.S. housing market before the 2008 financial crisis, said he had examined several ways to wager against SpaceX but ultimately passed. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

More than 11,000 seafarers stuck in the Persian Gulf will begin to exit through the Hormuz Strait in a large-scale evacuation plan backed by Iran and the U.S. View More

watch nowVIDEO4:2604:26Insurer warns Hormuz tolls could trigger legal risks due to Iran sanctionsInside India More than 11,000 seafarers stuck in the Persian Gulf will begin to exit through the Strait of Hormuz under a large-scale evacuation plan backed by Iran and the United States, the International Maritime Organization said Tuesday."We have secured the necessary safety guarantees and have thoroughly verified the conditions for safe navigation to support these operations," IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said in a statement. The operation will be carried out "in close cooperation with Iran, Oman, all other coastal States in the region, the United States and the maritime industry," Dominguez said. Oman's Navy issued a bulletin saying ships will exit in a phased approach through two temporary maritime corridors to ensure the safety of seafarers.Shipping lanes under the prewar Traffic Separation Scheme, or TSS, are not safe for use right now, according to the bulletin. Iran has mined large segments of Hormuz, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress June 2.Vessels can exit the strait through a route south and a route north of the TSS, the bulletin said. Ships will be individually contacted with departure instructions and their transit day, it said. The evacuation plan comes nearly a week after Iran and the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding to reopen Hormuz. Ship traffic has increased since the MOU was signed, but remains far below prewar levels. Transits tripled to 93 vessels the weekend of June 19 to 21 compared to 32 between June 12 to 14, according to Kpler's ship-tracking service MarineTraffic. At least 39 ships crossed the strait on Monday, according to data shared by Kpler. More than 100 transited each day before the war. Hormuz is crucial to global energy markets, with about 20% of oil supplies passing through the strait before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Tanker traffic collapsed after Iran retaliated by attacking commercials ships, triggering the largest oil supply disruption in history. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

The loans will support the construction of five projects that each host two big nuclear reactors. View More

In this articleCCJFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT A cooling tower is seen at the nuclear-powered Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, U.S. August 13, 2024. Megan Varner | Reuters The Energy Department announced Tuesday that it will provide $17.5 billion in loans to speed the deployment of 10 big nuclear reactors across the U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the loans will lower construction costs and accelerate the deployment of the reactors by up to three years.The loans will support the construction of five projects that each host two big nuclear reactors. The money will help finance complex, big-ticket components that typically take a long time to manufacture and deliver.The five projects will use Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor design that can generate 1.1 gigawatts of electricity, roughly enough to power more than 800,000 homes. Westinghouse will partner with up to five eligible utilities or energy companies on the projects. It already has signed letters of intent with seven potential partners, each with identified project sites.Wright declined to disclose the locations of the candidate sites in a call with reporters. He said final decisions have not yet been made on which sites will receive the funding. "They're geographically spread across the country," the secretary said. Shares of Westinghouse's parent company, Cameco Corp., were up more than 1% after the DOE announcement.The loans will not go directly to Westinghouse, said Greg Beard, who heads DOE's loan office. Instead, the financing will go to five special purpose vehicles, Beard said. Westinghouse and its partners have to contribute nearly $1 billion in equity to each SPV to unlock the loan money, he said. The Trump administration anticipates that the big tech companies will sign long-term power purchase agreements with the projects to support the construction of the reactors, Beard said. The tech sector has played an instrumental role in stimulating renewed demand for nuclear power, as they search for reliable, emissions-free power sources to fuel the data centers they are building for artificial intelligence. Microsoft and Alphabet's Google have signed agreements to support the restart of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Duane Arnold in Iowa, respectively. But the tech sector has not inked a deal yet that supports the construction of a new big plant. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May 2025 that called for construction to start on 10 large nuclear reactors by 2030. Westinghouse subsequently committed to meeting that goal. The AP1000 is the only large reactor design that is licensed to operate in the U.S. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Just a day after making new all-time records, the semiconductor sector is down almost 7% and traders are finding a cheap way to bet on a bigger pivot. View More

In this articleSOXSFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 18, 2026. Jeenah Moon | Reuters Just a day after making new all-time records, the semiconductor sector is down almost 7% and traders are finding a cheap way to bet on a bigger pivot.Options volume in Direxion's triple-levered inverse semiconductor ETF (SOXS) is more than three times the daily average the past month and calls are outpacing puts by more than six-to-one, according to data from ThinkOrSwim.Betting on upside for the fund means betting on downside for chips, as the fund targets 300% of the inverse daily move in the NYSE Semiconductor Index. Levered ETFs have exploded in popularity amid the massive run in chip-stocks the past year, with daily rebalancing flows across regularly in excess of $20 billion, according to an analysis from Barclays equities tactical strategies. Stock Chart IconStock chart iconDirexion Daily Semiconductor Bear 3X Shares, YTD At just over $4 per share, the ETF offers a cheap way for traders to speculate on the direction of the most important sector in the market. About 260,000 options traded, compared to 172,000 in the VanEck semiconductor ETF SMH.More than 84,000 calls were bought in early trading Tuesday, compared to just under 15,000 puts bought. About as many calls were sold as bought, suggesting traders might be hedging bullish bets on the ETF via spreads that will cap the upside if the fund posts more gains like the 24% rally its on today.Eight of the top 10 contracts by volume are calls, with the in-the-money 4-strike and 3.5-strike calls expiring Friday the most popular, according to SpotGamma data.The biggest trade of the session so far was a sale of 300 of the 13-strike puts expiring in January 2028 that brought in $327,000. Selling in-the-money puts is one way for traders to get a "synthetic" long position in the underlying security at a lower cost than buying the stock outright. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Companies are spending big to shape AI policies at the federal level. And the Manhattan House Democratic primary will be a test of where voters stand. View More

watch nowVIDEO3:4803:48AI PACs clash in NY primary race: Here's what to knowSquawk Box AI companies have poured more than $20 million into a New York Democratic primary race that could shape what artificial intelligence policies the federal government ultimately adopts. The race in a Manhattan congressional district pits state Assemblyman and AI safety advocate Alex Bores against fellow Assemblyman Micah Lasher and John F. Kennedy grandson Jack Schlossberg.Two major super PACs affiliated with AI companies are facing off in New York's 12th congressional district — the only congressional race so far where both political action committees are involved. Leading the Future, whose backers include venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, and AI software company Perplexity, spent $8 million opposing Bores, who was a driving force in the state in winning passage of legislation requiring safety and security regulation for powerful AI models. Countering that spending is Public First Action, which has gotten $20 million from Anthropic. The group has supported Bores to the tune of $11 million, according to Federal Election Commission data reviewed by CNBC on Monday. Public First Action President Brad Carson said while the group doesn't reveal its donors, it has gotten support from employees at major AI companies, whom he described as "mid-level people who are very scared about where the technology is going."The massive spending in one House race has become a proxy battle for the future of AI regulation in the U.S. and how heavy a hand government should take as the industry grows and AI gains a broader foothold in society.Leading the Future supports lighter guardrails around the burgeoning AI industry than Public First Action does.Leading the Future's co-leader, Josh Vlasto, said in a statement to CNBC that the PAC "supports passing a national regulatory framework for AI that creates jobs for American workers, helps America win the race against China, and includes strong guardrails that protects the safety of kids, users, and communities." Voters cast ballots at a polling location inside John Jay High School during early voting for a primary election in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Sunday, June 21, 2026. Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images When the PAC was founded in August, it said it would "oppose policies that stifle innovation, enable China to gain global AI superiority, or make it harder to bring AI's benefits into the world."Meanwhile, Public First Action is advocating for more restrictions not only on the outcomes of AI models, but also on how they are created."Safety should be designed into the AI models," Carson said. "Regulating the outputs long, long, long after said problem has arisen does very little justice to the people who are harmed by the AI."That aligns with Bores' view that while AI can be a positive development, it needs to have limits. "Regulation is not going to be the reason we win or lose this race versus China," Bores, an engineer and computer scientist who previously worked at Palantir, told CNBC Monday as he campaigned outside a subway stop. "We can invest in AI that's meant to help doctors diagnose disease, without encouraging the AI that's helping healthcare deny claims. We can get the best of both worlds."While Leading the Future and Public First Action are the two biggest AI PACs so far in the midterm elections, they aren't the only AI groups spending in the race. Several smaller PACs, many with connections to AI companies or Silicon Valley, have sprung up on the "pro-regulation" side. Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen gave $3 million in support of Bores through his not-so-subtly named PAC, You Can Push Back.Anthropic's Dan Ziegler donated heavily to another super PAC, DREAM NYC, which ran an ad saying Bores will "stand up to Trump's billionaire allies." Earlier in June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order asking AI companies to voluntarily provide models to the federal government for assessment of their capabilities ahead of a full release.Another PAC, Guardrails Alliance, has spent only about $258,000 in the race but aims to give a voice to OpenAI employees who are concerned about the political spending by some of the company's executives. Because the district leans heavily Democratic, whoever wins the primary is all but guaranteed to be sworn into Congress next year. Bores is one of eight candidates vying for the seat. Recent polling shows him neck-and-neck with Lasher, and Schlossberg is another serious contender. George Conway, a lawyer who was previously married to former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, is also running. If Bores loses, it might not be a complete victory for the less-regulation crowd. Lasher might not have led on New York's AI regulatory bill the way Bores did, but he voted to approve it in the state Assembly, and his website states that the country "can't leave it up to Big Tech to regulate itself." Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

While Google remains in a position of strength in the eyes of Wall Street, the AI era is complicating the company's story. View More

In this articleGOOGLFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google's annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, May 20, 2025.Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images More than three years into the generative artificial intelligence boom, Google has defied the many skeptics who thought ChatGPT would be the search giant's death knell. But cracks are forming in its core business.Search engine DuckDuckGo is seeing install rates jump by up to 40% a week. Microsoft's Bing reached 1 billion users for the first time last quarter. And Google's search engine traffic is down slightly over the past month, while ChatGPT is up a tick.Google still controls 90% of the search market, its stock price has more than doubled in the past year and revenue growth in the first quarter was the fastest for any period since 2022. But the AI concern persists as more people turn to chatbots as their preferred method to track down information. ChatGPT consistently ranks as the top free app on Apple iOS, and Anthropic's Claude is currently eighth, one spot behind Google Gemini. Meanwhile, another wave of internet users is turning away from AI-powered search altogether in favor of non-AI alternatives. A Pew Research Center study published in March found that about half of Americans felt that AI in their daily lives made them "more concerned than excited." Navigating the internet without it is one coping mechanism and, earlier this month, DuckDuckGo made a "no-AI" search engine with the launch of new browser extensions that allow users to default to noai.duckduckgo.com."A lot of people use Google because Google is like the front page of the internet, but they want to go on these journeys and do the clicking and searching themselves and make their own decisions," said Lily Ray, vice president of search engine optimization and AI search at marketing firm Amsive.Google is also reckoning with the challenge of fending off heavily funded AI upstarts that are paying top dollar for talent ahead of their prospective initial public offerings.Last week, Noam Shazeer, a vice president of engineering and co-lead of Gemini AI, announced he was leaving Google to join OpenAI. And on Friday, John Jumper, DeepMind vice president and engineering fellow, said he was leaving for Anthropic.Alphabet's stock on Monday had its worst day in more than a year, dropping 5%. Analysts at Jefferies wrote in a report that they "don't read the recent departures as a signal that Google is doing less with AI, but rather as another data point in an industry-wide war for talent in which frontier labs are aggressively bidding."A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story. watch nowVIDEO5:1405:14'Fast Money' traders talk tech's AI-driven downturnFast Money For Google, the emergence of generative AI has represented an existential risk of sorts since the launch in late 2022 of ChatGPT, which recently surpassed 1 billion monthly active users. The threat is both that Google loses its dominance and that, in trying to compete in AI, it cannibalizes search in favor of a new way of finding information that doesn't have a proven digital ad model. Ads still account for about three-quarters of the company's revenue. The sky-high margins from advertising allow Google to fund costly long-term bets like Waymo and space-based AI while also spending close to $200 billion on AI infrastructure. At its annual developer conference last month, Google said it would be redesigning the search box for the first time in 25 years, placing the "AI Mode" button directly in the box. The search button is now below the box."This is the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago," Elizabeth Reid, who oversees Google's search organization, said at the event. Additionally, Google's popular image generation tool Nano Banana is also available in the search box by clicking on the plus button. In the Google Search mobile app, a large "AI Mode" click box is nearly the same size as the regular search box. AI Backlash Over the past month, Google's search engine traffic is down more than 1%, according to Ahrefs, while ChatGPT traffic is up a bit. DuckDuckGo, which has long positioned itself against Google as a more private search option, says install rates have been up as much as 75% from before Google's I/O announcement in May. Google has "to strike a balance, because if they go too far with AI, they're going to lose their users," said Amsive's Ray. She called DuckDuckGo's market share "microscopic," but said there's been a big uptick of late. Even Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai recognizes the fears surrounding AI. On a recent episode of the "Hard Fork" podcast, Pichai said people are "rightfully" anxious about what sort of future the technology will create, calling the scale of change unprecedented.Google and OpenAI have both faced wrongful death lawsuits filed by family members of those who allegedly committed violence and self-harm due to their use of chatbots. In March, Google was sued by a 36-year-old man's father, who alleged that the Gemini chatbot convinced his son to attempt a "a mass casualty attack" and to eventually commit suicide.In the search market, DuckDuckGo isn't the only engine responding to a desire for alternatives. Microsoft launched a Bing browser extension called "Bing AI Search Choice," giving users the option to turn off AI chat-like features."AI is doing powerful things for search, but research tells us that not everyone wants to use AI for everything all the time," Jordi Ribas, president of search and AI at Microsoft, wrote in a LinkedIn post about the update. There's also growing antipathy among publishers that have seen traffic from Google searches tank in part because AI is pulling information into summaries at the top of results, eliminating the need to click through. In an antitrust battle with the Justice Department, Google admitted last year in a court filing that the open web is "already in rapid decline," a sentiment that stood in contrast to public comments from company executives. watch nowVIDEO0:3600:36Google loses DOJ antitrust lawsuit over searchPower Lunch Studies from data panels like SparkToro and Similarweb show that roughly 68% of all Google searches now end without a single click to an external website. Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, in an interview last month with TBPN, said his team has predicted declines in search traffic for three years, and "every year it was down more than we forecast.""Last year, I told our teams assume there's no search," he said. "You have to have your businesses plan as if search is zero."Even after Google's slide on Monday, the stock is still up more than 100% in the past year, well outperforming all of its hyperscaler peers. The company has shown an ability to survive and thrive through massive platform changes, most notably the move from the web to smartphones, and has proven to be a major player in generative AI despite a slow start. On the last earnings call, Pichai attributed increased user engagement to AI experiences like AI Mode and AI Overviews, which are major areas of investment. "AI continues to drive search usage and queries are at an all-time high," Pichai said on the call. However, Google turns on AI Overview automatically, meaning, in the words of DuckDuckGo policy chief Kamyl Bazbaz, users are not "given a choice."Reid, Google's search leader, said in a Bloomberg podcast in April that "there's this sort of myth that people want AI or the web.""I actually think what we see is that people want AI on the web together," she said. WATCH: Google moving forward on AI data center without developer Crusoe watch nowVIDEO3:0503:05Google moving forward on AI data center without developer CrusoeClosing Bell: Overtime If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.