Michael Entrayto (3:32)

So, so look I think this was, and I said this in the earnings call a transformational and extraordinary earnings for us. You know the company really hit on all cylinders. We, we, you know we beat on revenue. You know we reaffirmed our annual revenue targets from a nominal perspective we reaffirmed our 2026 air are operating margin targets. Really a great quarter for us by the numbers but also you know extending our product. You know we can't keep up with demand from existing customers which are know historically been AI labs and AI native and cloud but now they're expanding. Yeah. And we're just being overwhelmed by new verticals that are coming in and, and integrating AI at scale into their workflows. Right. And so you know you heard me talk a little bit about some of the, the, the trading and finance companies like Jane street and Hudson River Trading. You know that's adding to you know JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley who are already clients. You know you heard me talk a little bit about some of the physical AI into the robotics space, you know where, where you know great new clients coming on to our infrastructure. It's really exciting. You know stock's going to bounce around. You know we understand that but, but you know one of the, you know one of the best things about being a founder and a CEO and one of the best things about, and one of the hardest things about being a founder and CEO is you know I try to keep my eye on the parts of the business that are succeeding and growing and expanding and you know we're winning the day. Right. We drove down our cost of capital, we expanded our backlog by $40 billion. We, we did all the things that we needed to do. So I'm thrilled with the quarter. I think was fantastic. You know, seemingly there's a little bit of trepidation around next quarter's revenue.

Caroline Hyde (5:44)

Do you? Yeah. How do you get next quarter and indeed the second half, people are optimistic, you're saying? I'm optimistic that profitability will ramp up in the second half. How does that happen?

Michael Entrayto (5:53)

Oh, so, you know, I mean, look, we, it's almost mathematical at some point, right? Like where, you know, you're building infrastructure, that infrastructure takes time to bring online. We are going through a massive buildout across the company right now. It's why the, the, the operating margins have compressed is because we're going through this enormous scaling exercise. As you push through that, all of that infrastructure comes on to billing and once it comes on to billing, you are going to see a sequential expansion of the operating margins until we go from, you know, 1% in Q1 all the way up through low double digits by Q4. And you know, that's sort of baked in because of the infrastructure coming online, the software capacity to deliver that infrastructure. You know, we're highly confident we're going to hit those numbers.

Caroline Hyde (6:46)

There was anxiety about another company, a client, not hitting internal numbers. And I'm talking about OpenAI. And look, Sarah Fry has come on and spoken to colleagues here at Bloomberg News and pushed back against that, saying they're seeing a wall of demand. But how confident are you that your clients are, are seeing that demand and are good for the money, for the build up?

Michael Entrayto (7:03)

Yeah, so one of the things I talked about yesterday during, during our earnings call is that the demand for our paper in the debt markets has been nothing shy of astounding. You know, we did a, one of our delayed draw facilities closed two days ago. The, the clients in it were cohere and OpenAI exclusively. And the, the two things happened. One, it was 5x oversubscribed, which is enormous. It also closed 50 basis points below the marketed range and that is a clear indication of enormous buying interest for financing the paper with regards to paying. Look, you know, OpenAI is an extraordinary company, right. One in 10 people on the planet use their product every year. But you know, and we think that they're in a wonderful position. But we've also built an incredibly diversified portfolio of companies that use our infrastructure. This, this quarter we announced Anthropic. We announced a massive deal, $21 billion with matter. We announced, you know, a $6 billion deal with Jane Street. You know, like the number of clients that are using our infrastructure are expanding. You know, the diversification is expanding. OpenAI is an important client, but one of many.

Caroline Hyde (8:27)

Let's talk about an important partner and in your supply chain, and that's in video, how confident you are with the strength of your relationship there. And videos made deals with you, invested in you, but also doing that with, shall I say, even competitors in this space. Is that ever an anxiety?

David Rischer (8:43)

No.

Michael Entrayto (8:44)

I take that as an incredible affirmation of the fact that the world needs more of this infrastructure. And the demand for the infrastructure and the product that we deliver is, you know, overwhelming. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, Nvidia has got to do what it's got to do for its business. I really focus on my clients and my clients are coming back to us and they are saying again and again, you deliver the best product. The way that your software stack enables our engineers to use it most efficiently, that most cost effectively and most successfully. And therefore we want to buy more. And so the problem that I've got is how do I bring on enough infrastructure to seat and to deliver the infrastructure that my clients are clamoring?

Caroline Hyde (9:29)

Dig into the problems, because there have been delays at times with certain of them coming online, and that's to do with a partnership. What is the biggest chokehold for you at the moment?

Michael Entrayto (9:37)

So, you know, Core Weave is becoming a massive player in the space. And, you know, we are currently approaching 50 data centers that we are delivering infrastructure from. There is no single data center provider that represents more than 17% of our infrastructure. We have a massive effort internal to the company, to go through self builds so that we have greater operational control over the delivery of data center capacity. You know, we're doing all the right things by diversifying to ensure that no single data center can materially impact the trajectory of the company. That is further reinforced by just the size and scale of the installed capacity. Right. So, you know, if you have a gigawatt worth of capacity and a data hall represents, you know, 50 megawatts, you know, you know, and you're bringing 50 megawatt, the impact of a weak delay on 50 megawatts in a gigawatt environment is very different than earlier on when you're bringing on 50 megawatts and you only have 50 megawatts online. A weak delay rattles your entire ability to project where you're going. And we no longer have that problem. We have achieved escape velocity both in terms of our datacenter capacity as well as our revenue as well as our ability to provide guidance into the back half of this year. We're super excited about that.

Caroline Hyde (11:11)

We'll wait for the investors maybe to just react to some of your longer term perspective. Michael in trader there, the CEO of cor. We've on the back of their numbers now. We're also watching shares of Cloudflare after their own earnings report. Look, they're saying they're going to slash jobs. About a fifth of all jobs are going to go. They're giving a forecast for revenue that fell short of analysts expectations. This is again a lean into AI, but it comes sadly at the expense of people and the workforce for them. We currently see the shares off 24% as the really the revenue and the forecast is what is concerning people at the moment. Coming up we'll discuss further that issue of AI, of tech, of jobs, of unemployment on the back of the jobs report and indeed of the likes of Cloudflare. Kara Shies with us, you Work Foundation.

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Caroline Hyde (14:01)

US payrolls beat most expectations and April was actually the first back to back gain for payrolls in a year. But tech jobs have fallen for 16th straight month and that's in many ways being blamed on AI. Let's talk about the AI story here. Because learning artificial intelligence is becoming more and more crucial for workers to get hired. 42% of recent grads, they're still underemployed Kara Shies with US founder, CEO of New Work Foundation Former Head of Business at Matter your your CV stands out. And look, you're saying you want AI to be profitable not just for businesses, but for everyone, including the millions of 25 year olds currently underemployed or unemployed. Cara, you founded this. What's happening with the labor market right now?

Kara Shies (14:46)

Thank you Caroline. Great to see you. Gen Z American workers are graduating in the worst job market in 37 years. As you said, 42% are underemployed. So they're bartending, they're working gig jobs and taking other work that don't require their degree. And it's because traditional pathways are drying up and today's young Americans are graduating without the skills, tools and information they need to get hired in this economy.

Caroline Hyde (15:15)

So the skills, the tools they need, you're bringing that to bear how? Because there is this sudden anxiety that people need to realign themselves for the future of work.

Kara Shies (15:25)

Well, absolutely. And I look at the colleges in America and K to 12 education, there is, you know, rightful caution around using AI. But many of these young people are actively being discouraged from using AI and learning AI while they're in school. And so they're graduating not knowing how to direct these systems, not knowing how to properly set up context engineering and how to apply these AI workflows in transformational ways. Whether they're applying for a marketing job, software engineering or accounting.

Caroline Hyde (15:57)

Accounting I think of just an industry that is being shaken up significantly by new products. This isn't just Gen Z that are suffering at the moment. We see yet more and more layoffs being announced. Cloudflare Today we've had Block coming out with its numbers and showing the rewards it's gaining from having left almost half of its entire employee base coinbase this week. You think they just keep on building? 33,000 tech jobs have been cut in April. What do you think the tech sector is going to look like in the future, Clara?

Kara Shies (16:27)

It's really hard to say, but I think where we're trending right now is really much more usage of AI and specifically AI agents to do a lot of the work that traditionally entry level workers did. And again, that's why it is so important that we equip our young graduates with the tools and information they need and the experience they need to get hired.

Caroline Hyde (16:47)

Is there a backlash? I mean, I've thought of how you and I have sat down over the years and you've talked about the tools you're using, the way you're leaning into Gen 2 ki or just generally writ large. You then see the response to a Reese Witherspoon trying to say that maybe people who look like you and me, women in particular, should start using AI a little bit more. The people are worried about the cost of the environment, the cost of creativity and royalties and payouts. How do you navigate that amongst Gen Z, who may be coming to AI kicking and screaming?

Kara Shies (17:18)

Yes. And as we've done this work with, with the New Work foundation, one of my co founders, Samantha, she is part of Gen Z. And what I've heard from her and her friends is that that a lot of young people today do have these moral objections and concerns around AI. And so what I would say is these are the exact people we want being part of building the solutions so that we can capture their concerns and creatively build the right path forward that addresses what they want, but also doesn't leave them behind in this new economy.

Caroline Hyde (17:47)

You've got this initial set of free tools, job claw, you call one of them Field Report. I want to go into what they really do. But there is a lot of free tools out there. IBM has them, Amazon has them. Look, if you wanted to lean into understanding and building your own repertoire of, of AI talent, you can do it. So why did you have to design something different?

Kara Shies (18:08)

Well, I think we have to address the legitimate moral questions that Gen Z has, just like we said. But then also beyond that, it's almost overwhelming how much information is out there about AI. There are hundreds of thousands of hours of courses, certifications, some of them free, but some of them very expensive. And it's very hard for anyone of any age actually to navigate this. And so what we wanted to do is, is New Work foundation is going job by job, going across the most common entry level white collar roles that that young people are applying for. And we're breaking down exactly what it takes to become a native in doing that job. So whether it's marketing, whether it's software, whether it's investment banking, whether it's legal, whether it's, it's some other role, we're talking to hiring managers that are using AI, asking them to describe in clear terms how what they are looking for has changed in the last 12 months as a result of AI and agents. And we're also interviewing other Gen Z workers who had been struggling to find work but have recently found a job in that particular role so that they can share their tips and tricks.

Caroline Hyde (19:16)

Our show, I'm sure music to many a person's ear if they're listening, if they are among that Gen Z cohort New Work foundation, we appreciate, appreciate your time today. Taking a look now at Today's big number, $6 billion. That's what SoftBank is now targeting for a loan backed by its open air stake after facing some hesitation from creditors. It's all according to people familiar with the matter. It's down from an initial target of $0 billion that it was originally planning. Part of the investor concerns deal with the difficulty of reaching a valuation for an unlisted company like OpenAI, which has been reported as facing some challenges in meeting some internal targets and internal goals. A point that Sarah Fryer has pushed back on when joining our colleagues on Bloomberg News. Let's talk about Space X now. Rival though Its rival is AST Space Mobile and it surged to roughly $25 billion market cap despite generating just $71 million in annual revenue. It's fueled in large part by devoted retail investor clients community known as the Space Mob. For more history, Sana for Shankar with today's big take it is one of the most read stories across our platform today. Sara. So tell us a little bit of what's happening. Who are these people who are loving ast?

Sana for Shankar (20:33)

Yeah. So AST has thousands of retail investors as you mentioned, the Space Mob. And you know they're a little reminiscent of the crowds that used to used to rally around meme stocks like GameStop and AMC. Except the Space Mob really believes in AST Space Mobile. They think it's going to become the next trillion dollar company and they're not in it to make a quick hit. They really believe in the technology. AST is pioneering direct to device technology which are satellites that beam cell reception directly to your mobile phone which is something that satellites traditionally have not done. And so, so they have rallied around the stock. They fixate on every shred of corporate intel from the company. They track their regulatory filings, you know, the planes that ship the company satellites. So they're about as devoted as a fan base to a company as you can get.

Caroline Hyde (21:27)

And that devotion means the stock is up nearly 6,000% over a 22 month period. We're looking at it on a one year basis right now. Talk to us about some of the leadership amongst the space mob. Kook. Who is Kook?

Sana for Shankar (21:42)

So the kook is a, he's a California based private investor. He wants to remain anonymous, but he has just a ton of money in AST Space Mobile. His family's money's in it, you know, for his kids, money, everything. And so he really leads the space. He is one of the most prominent figures around the space mob. And you know, if you follow his expos, he's very emotionally invested in it. And you know, you can track his mood based on how the stock is doing. And so he's really a zany character that, you know, a lot of the other space mobbers follow and watch for signs of his emotional mood and sometimes you can see that reflected in the stock price as well.

Caroline Hyde (22:26)

And his bottom, apparently. Tanner Ottaway, I mean, an extraordinary character. You shine a light on his, put his life savings into AST stock. Son of a Shankar, go read this story. Thank you for joining us on it. We appreciate you coming on now. Intel shares were largely flat for months after CEO Lipp Bhutan took the helm in March of last year, but have since climbed, as you can see, to record highs as he build ties with some of the biggest tech leaders and of course President Trump. Still, core challenges persist for the chip maker. Bloomberg's Big Tech Report Reporter Sarah Fry joins us now because what's so interesting about this story is we've got this conversation to sit down with Bhutan and what are people making of his leadership style? Sarah?

Sarah Fry (23:09)

Well, Ian King talked to many current and former employees and got the picture that while Lip Bhutan has succeeded in rallying this optimism around Intel's future from, from the likes of Donald Trump, Trump, Elon Musk, we have that potential customer deal with, with Apple and others. There still has to be a major change in how the company thinks about its, its products, how it develops them to be high quality, the quality of its factories, all of the work internally still needs to be done to really deliver on that optimism going forward. And so intel, you know, we have these record highs. We have Wall Street's backing. Now we need Lip Bhutan to look inward and rally the company around a vision for that.

Caroline Hyde (23:56)

And he's trying to look in his first interview CEO telling Inking, you got the technology, we've got the talent, we've got the scale to lead again, but leadership is earned through execution. Is he on site enough for that execution? That seems to be a bit of a concern amongst those that Ian interviewed.

Adobe Acrobat Narrator (24:11)

Yes.

Sarah Fry (24:11)

In Ian found that really spending or has spending spent at least a lot more time with customers than he has internally at Intel. And when he does spend time at intel, he doesn't really go into the details with people. He's not a micromanager by any sense of imagination. He is much more of a high level strategy thinker. When he hears somebody's strategy, he sort of quizzes them on the industry from a, from a broad sense. And then if he likes how they think, he backs them and he undo, undoes roadblocks for them and supports them. Sort of like his role as a venture capital investor and board member. Right. But at intel, the, the details really do matter because when you're, when you're thinking about the efficiency of these chips, about the ability for a customer to spend, to make a bet on using one of your, one of your factories, it has to go right, it has

Caroline Hyde (25:05)

to be effective, particularly when the yield rates are only about 65% versus 80% over at TSMC. Sarah Fryer really in editing on a really crucial story. Thanks for joining on it. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. It's another day, another new record high for the NASDAQ 100. We continue to power on maybe the jobless claims. A rosier look on the labor market, even though it's not a rosier look for tech jobs. 16 months of decay clients for the tech industry and jobless claims. But I mean not in jobless claims and non farm payrolls, but consumer sentiment also low. Nevertheless, we're looking at earnings that have been thriving in certain parts of the business. And I want to dial into some of those earnings that we got overnight and in the morning. I'm looking at 3.3% gain for Airbnb. Look, they're dialing up the growth expectations of the investor base right now because they're seeing good growth in the United States. They're even reinvesting, of course, putting money to work to diversify the business. We're seeing Block, well liked, up 6% as they just announced 40% more than job cuts. Well, that's already because AI is making such a difference to the coding within the business and the software stack, but then also the ability to serve clients. And we're seeing profitability being guided higher at that particular company, Coinbase, though they're also announced layoffs earlier this week and revenue sinking. Clearly the turbulence in the crypto market is still hitting. Some of Coinbase's metrics are off by more than a percentage point. DraftKings up 2.8%. There was some relief in the numbers as they see revenue coming in some 17% higher and some signs of growth when it comes to the predictions market. But look, let's stick with earnings more broadly and shares of ride hailing company. Well, Lyft, we're currently up 2.1%, let's call it after the company reported first quarter profit. Actually there was some anxiety among Wall street about the expectations, but it was all being ramped up by spring spending on international expansion. Maybe that's what was hitting in the near term, the profitability metrics. Got to talk to the person who knows all Lyft CEO David Rischer. Look, we've had a volatile trading day for Lyft. There was some pressure as people worried about, well, the amount that you're spending to grow, but you're managing to push back on that. You see to investor base that this is the right use of capital.

David Rischer (27:08)

I really think it is, yeah. I mean, look, we had a record quarter which is always wonderful, almost 5 billion in bookings. EBITDA up 37% year on year, $1.1 billion of free cash flow. So that's great. So when you're in a position like that, that allows you to grow and grow even more. And as you noted, we've done some international acquisitions, just in fact, one announced a couple of days ago. Get in the U.K. look, I think it's a great time to be frankly in the rideshare business because we're a really important part of a lot of people's lives and we're growing like a weed.

Caroline Hyde (27:38)

Growing like a weed. Mandy Bloomberg Intelligence Sort of saying that supply growth for Lyft perhaps is likely to trail some larger peers. I mean, talk to us about the adoption rate, the adoption rate of your offerings, but the adoption rate in particular of autonomous vehicles that you're starting to dabble in.

David Rischer (27:54)

Yeah. So look, I think if you zoom way in, you can always find little things. Right? So we, we delivered about 237 million rides this last quarter. That's a lot of rides, a lot of commuting rides, a lot of rides to the airport and so forth. Now the quarter started off a little bit slow. There are some really intense storms, particularly in New York City where you live, as you know, that brought, you know, rideshare and beg share to sort of zero. So that was an early, you know, kind of headwind. But Look, Valentine's Day, St Patrick's Day, super bowl, these were all, all time highs. And then we had our highest ride month ever in March. So I think that there's a lot of reason to believe that there's still a huge, huge amount of growth here. And then as you say, autonomous vehicles, that's a great product and that's going to be one of the next big kind of growth factors up.

Caroline Hyde (28:35)

Mark Mahaney over at Evercore, really liking the fact that you've got, you know, a record six straight quarter in terms of active riders. But I think where he's liking to see is maybe consumer incentives to just moderate a little bit. Are you being able to do that, David?

David Rischer (28:49)

Yeah, we are. We've gotten a lot of, you know, we think of it as sort of leverage off of consumer incentives. And I'll tell you a particular thing that I'm starting to see more. I, I think it is rewards maxing. Okay. So. Oh no, we've got to relate, right? There you go, there you go. Be careful that where we're going to go with this one. So anyway, no, but look, we've got a deal with United, right, which allows people to both earn points and also spend points on left we have a deal with Hilton, we have an arrangement with Alaska Airlines, we have an arrangement with DoorDash, a super, super important program there that just expanded to Canada. And so what we're seeing people do is, is there, you know, they're taking Lyft rides, they're earning points and they're spending them elsewhere or they're even spending them back on our platform. And yeah, I think it's going to be a thing and I think it's one of the reasons why we're seeing high margin, sort of like black and luxury rides rise even with some consumer concerns still this rewards maxing thing I think is working for people.

Caroline Hyde (29:41)

Rewards maxing of course is a play on all the maxing that we have with looks maxing, all the terms of phrase that Gen Z used. Is it Gen Z like, I mean, I mean how much do you see? How much are you seeing the idea of different age groups responding to your new offerings? Because in many ways I see the more premium offerings coming to a, to an older cohort, a more obviously a Wealthier cohort in many ways, a corporate cohort.

David Rischer (30:06)

You know, I think that's something that's changing over time. I think, you know, back when I was, you know, early in my career, you know, you didn't have an Amex, you know, Platinum card or Chase Sapphire reserve card until you're, you know, old like me now. But no, it turns out actually a lot of kids, a lot of sort of Gen Y, Gen Z folks are early in that ecosystem because they realize that there's a lot of value to be unlocked if they kind of play the game. And I think a lot of them think of it a bit of as almost a play in the game. Like, how can I, how can I do this rewards maxing thing to, to be able to afford to lift black even when I'm in my, in my 20s.

Caroline Hyde (30:39)

Savvy is what they are. And I'm interested, David, in how savvy you are about the landscape for M and A right now. You've made acquisitions. This is where you've been spending your money. Is there more to come?

David Rischer (30:50)

You know, never say never about these things. It's always, you know, a fool's game to predict M and A. But I will say that it's, it's a part of our strategy now. We were not a very acquisitive company for a long time, but now that we've got, you know, the fastest pickup times, great pricing, great service levels all around, we're really thinking of bringing that abroad and that's really where our M and A focus has been, is overseas.

Caroline Hyde (31:10)

Any worries about the consumer right now?

David Rischer (31:13)

No, no. And I know that sounds glib. Of course people are feeling some pain. Our drivers feel a lot of pain at the pump. And so that's why we were the first to get out there with a nice cash back program at the pump. Saves about a dollar a gallon. So, you know, there are reasons I think, of course, for to be concerned, but when we look at the data, you know, we're, we're not seeing that play out.

Caroline Hyde (31:32)

David, it's been a week where I feel that you haven't actually mentioned yet much. I mean, autonomous vehicles is inherently AI. How much they were your workforce using it, how much your workforce responding to having to use it. And is there any stretch at which point you are able to reduce your headcount or hiring on the back of it?

David Rischer (31:50)

You know, I love this question and I think it's really important for people to sort of get their arms around this. Absolutely. Are something like 86% now of our developers, our software engineers are using actively like every single day using AI to write code for them. We're also using it in customer care. We're using all over the place. But I think there's a way of thinking about it which is not so much about cost reduction but about velocity increase and capacity building. You know, our imaginations are huge and we're a customer obsessed company. So we have no shortage of great ideas to innovate on behalf of customers. I think that's really where is going to give us a big edge. Not so much on the sort of, I mean, cost, sure we can maybe save a little bit money, but there's so much more value if we can figure out new great ways for, for riders and drivers to use our platform.

Caroline Hyde (32:34)

Is it a more competitive backdrop right now? Say one more time, is it a more competitive backdrop right now?

David Rischer (32:41)

Well, it is, you know, but, but only in the following sense. You know, remember there are 160 billion rides that people take in their private car every single single year. And I think that's ultimately going to be the real competition for us. Look, it's $50,000 to buy a car, 800 bucks a month plus insurance, plus gas, plus maintenance, whereas Lyft is, you know, 20 bucks a ride. So in a funny way, I think the competition is going to shift a little away from the other guys and a little bit more towards what are good ways for you to spend your money and how can you live your best life.

Caroline Hyde (33:09)

And rewards max.

David Rischer (33:11)

And rewards max, exactly. I'm glad you picked up on that.

Deloitte Narrator (33:14)

I should.

Caroline Hyde (33:14)

And done. David Richard, we love having you on the show. Thank you very much indeed. The CEO of Lyft. Coming up, we take a look at Enhanced is a Peter Thiel backed elite sports competition and performance products company. It's gone public today. More next this Bloomberg Tech.

Dr. Guy Winch (33:32)

For many men, mental health challenges aren't recognized until they've already taken a toll. Work pressure, financial stress, changing relationships and traditional expectations around masculinity can quietly wear men down, often without clear warning signs. In season three of the Visibility Gap, Dr. Guy Winch and his guests explore how these pressures show up, how to spot them earlier, and how men can access meaningful support. Listen to the new season of the Visibility Gap, a podcast presented by Cigna Healthcare.

Adobe Acrobat Narrator (34:02)

Sending a file is easy. Making sure your clients understand the file is the hard part. But with PDF spaces in Adobe Acrobat, you can, you can give your clients the full picture with custom intros, audio summaries and a helpful AI assistant to your docs. So if you want to stop the endless follow ups, do that with Acrobat. Need to make your docs crystal clear? Do that with Acrobat Want to make sure your clients get everything they need to hear? Do that with Acrobat. Learn more@adobe.com do that with Acrobat Support

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Caroline Hyde (35:41)

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Bloomberg Legal/Financial Analyst (35:43)

See complete disclosures at public.com/disclosures.

Caroline Hyde (35:52)

An Olympic style sports event that welcomes performance enhancing drugs is set for later this month in Las Vegas today the company behind that endeavor went public in a merger with a blank check company with Enhanced now as you see trading up 8.8% following the transaction value to $1.2 billion in the SPAC and has backing from the likes of Peter Thiel, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, now the company's CEO, now joins us, Maximilian Martin from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. So gone public.

Sarah Fry (36:20)

Why?

Caroline Hyde (36:21)

Why need that?

Maximilian Martin (36:23)

First of all, hello and thank you to having me on the show today. We're going public because Enhanced is a movement and we want the people in that movement movement not just to be part of it by watching the sports or buying enhancement products through a live enhance platform, but by owning a piece of it too. This is why we've decided to go public and which we're very excited about having done and concluded the transaction today.

Caroline Hyde (36:43)

So there's a is It a retail investment play here more broadly, Maximilian, is it the people that you want to purchase, not only the products, so called longevity products, maybe their peptides, but also those who are then going to come and watch the Enhanced Games?

Maximilian Martin (36:57)

Sorry, can you repeat the question? I didn't catch that fully.

Caroline Hyde (36:59)

Is it a retail investor that you're most focused on?

Maximilian Martin (37:03)

Yes, yes. So I think enhanced as a stock opportunity is really for everyone but I think particularly exciting for retail too because sports traditionally isn't as investable for retail as it is for for example, more institutional like players. This is why we're very excited about retail, particularly getting focused on the opportunity that's ahead of them. Now with us listed on the exchange

Caroline Hyde (37:23)

here, if you look at past media attention on the Games in particular, people have sort of called it Olympics on steroids. Why is it not that from your perspective, Maximilian?

Maximilian Martin (37:36)

Yeah, because steroids is a term that has very many negative associations with it. Many people associated with it to be also illegal. And that is not true for the setup that's been created at the Enhanced Games. What the athletes can actually take at the Enhanced Games are FDA approved substances under a doctor's supervision. And they also, all independent of them, enhancing or not, need to pass medical screenings that we do with them over time to determine whether they're A healthy and B safe to compete. So steroids is really for people thinking about happening in the garage, in the backdoor locker room of a gym, etc. But that's not it. This is out all in the open with the regulation around it that makes enhancements for for the athletes, but then also to consumers that we offer it to safely.

Caroline Hyde (38:21)

Fascinating. Your aim is to evolve mankind into a new super humanity. We'll have you back. Maximilian Martin, thank you very much for joining us today. The CEO of Enhanced now, stablecoins, they promise to make cross border payments cheaper and nearly instantaneous. But it remains a tiny part of the global payment system. Today, with the genius acts set to take effect and banks eyeing the space, the Wall street team took a deep dive into whether the use of the blockchain technology is truly starting to scale.

Wall Street Analyst (38:50)

So you'll hear in the media the trillions of dollars of stablecoin payments today. 99% of that is crypto related. Not the sort of payments we think about which is company to company or even paying remittances person to person. And so we look at this situation today and say how much real payments volume is there out there? And we think it's probably the order of a billion or two a day, which is tiny. The latest estimates we have are $390 billion in the total year and that compares with several trillion dollars of regular payments per day.

David Rischer (39:26)

So a small amount right now, how does it compare with last year and

Michael Entrayto (39:30)

how does it compare with forecast for next year?

Wall Street Analyst (39:33)

The data show is that the volume of real payment transactions using stablecoins probably doubled over the last year. When you look at the volume of stablecoins in circulation, that went from around $150 billion to $300 billion. Today it's doubling, which by any measure is substantial in terms of growth.

David Rischer (39:53)

How much of that is cross border International? Essentially how much of it is domestic?

Wall Street Analyst (39:57)

The vast majority is cross border. It's interesting, we've been looking at the geographic source of those payments with our research partner Artemis Analytics. What they found is about 60% originates from Asia. And that surprised us a little bit because a lot of the talk has been in North America or Europe about the potential of stablecoins.

Caroline Hyde (40:17)

Watch the full Wall Street Week episode Later today at 6:00pm Eastern, 3:00pm Pacific Time. Now, cybersecurity fears are sweeping through global campuses after hackers disrupted a portal used by thousands of colleges, including Harvard and Princeton. Look Infrastructure, which runs the canvas service used by students was forced to suspend the system, sparking warnings that sensitive student data and messages may have been stolen for extortion. Earlier this hour we understood that Cornell University said its own canvas access has been fully restored. Three Mile island, the site of the most famous US nuclear accident is coming back online as soon as mid-2027. That's powered by a long term deal by Microsoft and Constellation Energy to power, yes, you guessed it, applications, chat bots, much more. Bloomberg's Will Wait is here with an extraordinary deep dive into what has now been rebranded, unsurprisingly. But remind those what Three Mile island means to many and why it's so important that comes back online.

Will Wade (41:17)

Okay, to many it means nuclear disaster. 1979, it was the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history. But let's keep in mind, 1979 was like a long time ago. No, last night I actually told my son, hey, I have this big story coming out on Three Mile Island. He's like, what's that? So for a lot of us it has a lot of meaning, but for younger people it has no meaning at all.

Caroline Hyde (41:42)

Well, you don't talk about your job nearly enough at home quite clearly because the nuclear reporter reporting on the sector since 2019, when initially it was all about closures, you're now into this area where it's about reopening this nuclear renaissance. What did you learn by going into what is the rebranded Crane Clean Energy Center?

Will Wade (41:58)

You know what's really fascinating, and if you see the pictures on the story, yeah, it looks old.

Caroline Hyde (42:02)

It does.

Will Wade (42:03)

It looks really old school because it is, because it was like, designed and built in, like, the 60s and, and 70s. And so much of the US nuclear power plants date back to, you know, the last century, because we really haven't built very many of them at all. But right now there's just this insatiable demand for electricity from the big tech companies. It's for AI. It's all for AI. You know, a while ago, they're like, we want nuclear because it's clean. It's going to help us save the world from climate change. And that sort of was a little bit of a motivation, but really the motivation now, it's from tech, it's from AI. It's because there's money involved, a lot of money.

Caroline Hyde (42:43)

I think 30 billion has been invested in nuclear since 2020. But what about the waste? Like what. How has that changed since 1979?

Will Wade (42:51)

Well, that hasn't changed at all.

Caroline Hyde (42:52)

So what are they going to do with it? They're going to do what they've always done, energy.

Will Wade (42:57)

If you go to any nuclear power plant, if you go out back, there's these giant casks where they store the waste. They've always been there. And there's been talk of creating a central repository in the us it's been stalled for political reasons, so that's just not happening.

Caroline Hyde (43:15)

Isn't it funny that the very edge of innovation is sort of being fueled by something that doesn't seem to be innovating very much at all? We're relying on a 1979 building. And how is it innovating? How are we seeing smarts come into play? Will we get a new type of nuclear offering?

Will Wade (43:30)

Yes, that's a good question. There is a lot of innovation in the nuclear space. There's companies developing all kinds of new reactor designs. There's new big ones, there's new small ones, there's new really, really small ones. They want to, like, put them on a shipping container and deliver them to military bases in the middle of nowhere? There's a lot of innovation. It's not here yet.

Caroline Hyde (43:51)

Yet.

Will Wade (43:52)

I really do think it's coming. There's just so much motivation to make this happen. So what are we, 20, 26, 2030, 2030, mid-2030s? I think we'll see some. But not for the next several years.

Caroline Hyde (44:06)

It's a whole new world of uranium enrichment. And you've got so many amazing stories to tell about it. Will Wade here with us on the latest. You've got to go and read it. The big take today. Now we're going to move on and talk about a key company behind Thailand's national AI effort, now called Obon Corp, is suspected, though of helping to smuggle servers containing advanced Nvidia chips to China. That's according to sources who say some of the two and a half billion dollars worth of service sold by Oban or Obo and allegedly went to Chinese AI leader Alibaba. This comes as US Officials are walking a pretty delicate line when it comes to the Trump administration's approach to to Beijing. Earlier this year, the Pentagon added Alibaba and Baidu to a list of companies that aid the Chinese military and then promptly declared the list unpublished. So Bloomberg's tech editor in D.C. michael shepherd, joins us now with this previously unreported details of what is happening with this so called blacklist.

Bloomberg Legal/Financial Analyst (45:02)

Well, Carol, let's turn the clock back to that day in February. It was Friday the 13th. And you, Ed and I on this program, we're trying to pick our jaws up off the floor, figuring out what not only the import of this list being published, but the mystery behind why it was abruptly withdrawn minutes later. What was going on and what would that say about China policy? Well, our colleague Kato Keefe here in Washington set out to find out the back story. And it's revealing, it turns out that the Pentagon had withdrawn two names from the list, dropped two names from the list. Chinese chip makers YMTC and cxmt, they're producers of memory products that are really in demand these days, of course, as we know. And the White House of one of them kept on. When the list was published, the names weren't there. The White House was furious. The Pentagon quickly moved to pull it back in. Since then, we have not seen this list republished and in part because we are in such a delicate moment in this trade truce between Washington and Beijing. That's the one that President Donald Trump announced with Xi Jinping in late October after their meeting. And of course, they have a meeting coming up next week. And this is just the kind of misstep that really can upset the apple cart heading into such a high stakes encounter between leaders of the world's two largest economies.

Caroline Hyde (46:22)

So let's think about next week because there is talk that maybe even future rules of generative AI and the latest greatest. LLM might be something to discussed by Treasury Secretary Besson and others as reporting around that. Mike, I'm interested as to what you think will be achieved and what names will be announced or working together or working apart from each other.

Bloomberg Legal/Financial Analyst (46:41)

Well, it's a great question Carol. And the war in Iran really has overshadowed any of the other initiatives that might be put on the table between President Xi and Trump as they sit down to talk. You know, absent the war, we might have seen more talk about access to American designed chips like from India and amd. The President and his team have cleared the release of the H2 hundreds from Nvidia and comparable products from AMD for sales to China. But the big asterisk is that Beijing so far is really not letting too many of those products in and we haven't seen very many licenses issued from the US side either. So there is clearly some sort of a logjam and perhaps they could get to the the bottom of that. Iran of course could stand in the way. And then there are the complaints from American AI developers OpenAI, Anthropic and Google that Chinese rivals have been distilling unfairly the results of their models to produce rival chat bots at a fraction of the cost. And this has prompted an outcry on Capitol Hill and also steps from the White House to try to rein in and address that practice who we could also see that come up as well. And then of course there is the question of rare Earths Caro, which really lies at the heart of the conflict between the US And China.

Caroline Hyde (48:03)

Well said Bloomberg's Mike Shepard. The feeling we might be retracing some of those talks as we look ahead to next week too with you. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Don't forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the terminal as well as online. Apple, Spotify, Iheart Wishing you a very wonderful weekend. See you Monday. This is Bloomberg Tech.

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