Loading summary
A
When your business evolves, so does your risk of data loss. But Veeam protects workloads of all shapes and sizes, so your data is always on the map. Partner with Veeam for coverage that keeps you moving. With Veeam, it's all good. Get covered@veeam.com that's vet what does being financially invested sound like? A retiree on a cross country drive? Someone with new long term goals? A student getting their start with over 450 to ETFs iShares gives you access to countless market opportunities. IShares by BlackRock the market is yours. Visit www.ishares.com to view your perspectives, which includes investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses and other information you should read and consider carefully before investing risk. Includes principal laws prepared by BlackRock Investments, LLC. Member Finn the Chase Inc. Business Premier card is a painful card with flexibility made for business owners who make things happen. Earn a total of 2.5% cash back on every purchase of $5,000 or more plus earn earn unlimited 2% cash back on every other purchase, giving you unlimited earned potential to invest cash back into your business. Inc. Business Premier is part of a suite of credit cards from Chase for Business designed to meet your needs every step along the way. Learn more@chase.com businesscard Chase for Business make more of what's Yours Accounts subject to credit approval restrictions and limitations apply. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, Huawei's Ascend AI processors were found to contain advanced components from tsmc, Samsung and SK Hynix. This as it works to boost domestic production of AI chips. Plus Rivian is reworking the manual release of its vehicle doors after employees and customers raise concerns over potential safety issues. And Taylor Swift's 12th studio album, the Life of a Showgirl was just released at midnight here on the East Coast. We're going to discuss the Swiftie Effect and we've both listened but now we're tuning in to what's happening in the markets because there are new record high NASDAQ 100 up once again we are seeing the best week in all two weeks or so at the moment about 1.6%, many calling it a high hype bubble. At the moment that's what key investors in tech have been calling it. Had Basil say, look, it's a bubble but it's the right kind of bubble. And we're going to dig into what David Solomon talked about in terms of the tech industry more broadly. He's also seeing concerns about some of the valuations. But dig into also where we've seen a little bit more risk sentiment turning to the upside and it's in crypto, up 9% over the course of the week. Ed, we're back near 100 in excess of $120,000. The Moon Music has changed despite the government shutdown. And look, there's a lot moving right now in Friday's session, but I want to look at one of the big movers over the course the week. It's Samsung and its Korean shares. Four straight weeks of gains trading at its highest level since early 2021. There has been a lot of detailed reporting about Samsung technology going into all kinds of infrastructure projects. But the big Bloomberg scoop, as you know, is about what Huawei in China is doing with Samsung, particularly in the context of high bandwidth memory. So let's get to that report car another teardown. Let's get to how really the global chip supply is is working right now. Bloomberg's Peter Ellstrom joins us. So we get inside the latest greatest chips from Huawei and there's a lot of other companies that are within them. Yeah, that's right, Caroline. We've had a number of scoops about Huawei and specifically what it's doing in AI chips. And the reason is that they're really the the most viable competitor to Nvidia at this point. They have a lot of backing from the Chinese government in particular, where the Chinese government is not just encouraging them to develop these chips, but also encouraging their customers to buy from them and not from other companies too. So what we found is our reporters found that in this teardown inside of the Huawei Ascend chips, which are their AI chips, they've been able to use components from tsmc, Samsung and SK Hynix, as you mentioned. Now these are components that they're not supposed to have access to under the sanctions that they are under the Huawei is under through the US Government. They're not supposed to have access to these components, but they've been able to get them. So they've been able to use TSMC dies. They've been able to use the HBM chips from Samsung and SD SK Hynix. These are somewhat older HBM components. It's the HBM generation 2e which is not the most cutting edge at this point. Now there's a possibility all the companies that we reached out to said that they have, they've cut off while we at this point they're not doing business with Huawei. But in the past, while I was able to buy from them, was able to stockpile from them. So that may be where they got some of these components. So China's Huawei, we found evidence of other nations technology inside of their server designs essentially. But the other part of the reporting and the story speaks to China not being able to supply these core components themselves from their own domestic supply chain. It's a very good point. Yeah. If Huawei stockpiled these components in the past and is now using them as they sell into the market, as they sell these Ascend 910C chips into the market, there is a suggestion that they can't get those from domestic supply and if they can't get them from domestic suppliers right now, that suggests that maybe they're going to run out at some point. So that's one of the concerns about whether they'll continue to be able to sell these chips. As we wrote in another scoop a few days ago, while we is trying to ramp up their production right now, they would like to meet even more of the domestic demand. We anticipate that they're going to be able to actually double production of these 910C chips based on the components that we've seen. So while we is making some progress, they are providing some competition. But many of the companies within China would prefer to buy Nvidia chips if they were able to for political reasons. Bloomberg's Peter Lstrom, who's the executive editor leading our international coverage of tech, really appreciate the reporting. Thank you very much. For more on why the tech markets, Anna Rathbun, CEO and founder of wealth management firm Grenadilla joins advisory joins us now. Let's just start with that reporting. Right. And a lot of the names that were mentioned were ex us, you know, international names. Some of them have ADRs customers. But these stories keep coming up about global supply chain and China's reliance on them. I just wonder what you made of it. Good morning. You know, this reminds me of what happened like a year and a half ago with deep fake in. You know, they said they were able to produce all of this, you know, at a fraction of a cost. But it turned out that it was all Nvidia chips. So I mean, in some ways, am I surprised? No, I don't think, you know, chips is something you can produce, you know, on a dime just because you want to and you tell people to use Huawei chips only. So I am not surprised. But it's also highlights the urgency of the AI race and one of the reasons why there's so much support for it, especially from the US government and also taking stake in some of of our companies, intel for one, you know, some rare earth minerals as well. The race is on. It's very hot and China's going to have to figure it out if it doesn't have internal supply chains because you know, if they're, if this gets found out, then some of their negotiating powers go away because it looks like they're bluffing and it's leading not just to a hot race, but to hot valuations. Are they too hot? You know, I would say compared to what? Right. We haven't had AI before. We haven't had this kind of support behind a tech movement before. And it's not just the us, it's global. Right. I mean we just talked about the race between the US and China. So you know, yes, it feels hot compared to historical standards. But you know, when money goes into something like this and this isn't just a year or two, this has been for a while and we have to ask yourself what is the wisdom of the masses in the markets telling us what is behind this? And I think there's something to pay attention to. Maybe not compared to the valuation, to the historical norms, but think about what the norm in this market new world might be and it might actually just be a little bit higher. Yeah, but that is a lot of hope baked in. We had G on the show yesterday and they're saying, look, the level of revenue that an open air has to bring in to vindicate the investment, the level of money that Nvidia has to continue earning and the worries that we're seeing of Nvidia writing $100 billion equity checks over to an open air and feeding back the loop of demand. Yeah. How are you strategizing and seeing that becoming a reality? No, it's actually very difficult. If you're looking at from a company, by companies standpoint, they're absolutely correct. There's stuff going on that doesn't really justify those high valuations. But if you look at it from an investor, an allocator point of view, if you look at AI as a theme, there are a lot of things going on that's outside of Nvidia and OpenAI. I mean we just heard about it. Tachi, we heard about Caterpillar yesterday, you know, benefiting from some of the AI movements. This is really talking about industries that are not only adjacent to AI, but that adjacency circle is growing wider and wider. And so from an investor point of view, that is what we're really looking at from an AI movement, not just Nvidia and not just the chips. And the story in technology markets this week has been about AI enthusiasm, the infrastructure deals that have come daily, the open air private market valuation of $500 billion. But I think we really need to acknowledge this government shutdown because it's also a factor in markets. How are you looking at that and what are you telling to clients? Yeah, you know, if I'm thinking about government shutdown and the fact that we did not get a labor market report today, this has implications more for old economy sectors. When it comes to tech, it really doesn't even matter that the government is shut down. We saw how many deals that took place today. Not today, this week. Right. So as far as tech is concerned, I don't think it matters, which is a little bit scary. But at the same time it's a little comforting because the government might be shut down for a few more days, maybe weeks. So Anna, when we're just looking at tech not caring, the NASDAQ 100 at a record, record high, it might be out of the S and P is too. Where do you allocate if you still believe in the trade? But just thinking in video or some of the other names would just be overplayed. So earlier I mentioned some of the adjacent industries. Right. So this actually points to the importance of being diversified and not too concentrated on certain names because then you are exposed to idiosyncratic risks. Now when you're looking at the valuations, it is sky high and nosebleed sections. It's difficult to allocate cash into it. Right. So if you're an investor and you're actually, you know, boots on the ground, where do you put cash becomes the problem. And that's where the diversification helps you. This idea of adjacencies helps you. If you already own tech, it's difficult to sell. I mean it's difficult to sell because of the momentum. And in that case, sometimes it's not about selling the whole positions, it's just about being prudent and taking some of the gains, rebalancing your portfolio. So you're taking the gains and, and reallocating it to some of the other sectors that may benefit from it in the future. The idea of a diversified portfolio becomes much, much more important. And Rathbun of Grenadilla advisory. Wishing you a very happy weekend. Meanwhile, we're watching shares of Applied Materials. We broaden out the story on chips a little bit more here and indeed the geopolitical context. We're off by 2.4%. Why? Largest US maker of machinery used to manufacture semiconductors. Semiconductors. But basically they're warning there's going to be a $600 million revenue hit because of the rules that the government is setting the restrictions add to exporting their products to China. Yes, 600 million hit to net revenue. When you send a chip through a fab, the first thing the wafer touches is Applied Materials and the last thing it touches is an Applied Materials machine. That's why we care. Coming up, Rivian is looking to rework its doors over potential safety concerns. We bring you that Bloomberg breaking story next. This is Bloomberg Tech. When your data goes dark, Veeam turns the lights back on. Partner with Veeam to increase your data resilience and get the right data recovery options for any kind of disruption so you can undo the unpredictable and get your data back so fast you won't even have time to miss it. With Veeam, it's all good. Keep your business running. @veeam.com that's V E E A M dot com you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public Public you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there plus an industry leading 3.8% APY high yield cash account. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves the risk of loss including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Crypto trading provided by BAKKT Crypto Solutions LLC. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures the Chase Inc. Business Premier card is made for business owners who make things happen. Designed for high spend and limitless cash back Inc. Business Premier is a painful card with built in flexibility. Get the buying power you need to make large purchases, cover unexpected expenses and help your business grow Earn a total of 2.5% cash back on every purchase of $5,000 or more, plus earn unlimited 2% cash back on every other purchase, giving you unlimited earned potential to invest cash back into your business. From innovation and technology to everyday expenses, Inc. Business Premier is the only business credit card with 2.5% cash back on every purchase of $5,000 or more and is part of a suite of credit cards from Chase for Business designed to meet your needs every step along the way. Learn more@chase.com business card chase for Business make more of what's yours Accounts subject to credit approval restrictions and limitations apply. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC Rivian while it's reworking a key element of the doors in its next generation EV after employees and customers raised concerns over latch design in the vehicles it's already selling. That's according to sources now the move comes just weeks after Tesla faced scrutiny over their powered handle doors. Guess who broke that story? My co host Ed Ludlow alongside Bloomberg's Emily Chang. This is a deep dive into the regulation and some of the regulatory pushback there is to some of the building of these ultimately door handles. But take us inside the car. What's happening. The specific are really important. So the R2 is the next generation EV that Rivian will start building next year. It has decided to make the emergency manual release in the event that the power electronics fail the doors and the vehicle lose power more intuitive simply by positioning positioning it in a more obvious place making the design in the front seats and the rear seats the same. But what sources tell us is that In June of 2024 Rivian did a refresh on the car. It already sells the R1 generation, both the SUV and pickup. And as part of that in lowering component count and to bring the costs down, they they revised the rear door release latch in particular making it less intuitive. It's difficult to find. It's under a cover and what is recognized by both employees. But also we found some some anonymous complaints and then it's a database is it presents a potential safety risk. Talk through the safety risk and some of the incidents we've already seen. Yes, this is on the back of Tesla. You know Bloomberg broke the story that Tesla is revising the design of its doors because of actual cases where there is an accident and the passengers in that Tesla vehicle found it difficult to operate the manual override and power had been lost. What we are not reporting about Rivian is there is no investigation into Rivian and Rivian. Not that we have found a review and has never disclosed any kind of accident where this has been a factor. But it is an acknowledgment from within Rivian that it is a potential safety risk and they've decided for their next car they have to do something different with the design. We do not know if with all one, they will do another redesign to account for what they admit is based on sourcing a mistake. But this is, this is an industry wide thing. Go read the story. And there is the Rivian spokesperson talking about safety being at the center of everything that we do. It's a breaking story. Meanwhile, open a competitor, let's call it Perplexity. It's made its AI browser Comet available for free to users worldwide. The company launched Comet for top tier subscribers in July. Expanding access to Comet takes aim maybe at the dominance of Google's Chrome, which Perplexity of course made a 34 and a half billion dollar bid for earlier in the year. Dmitri Chevalier goes with us in Perplexity's Chief Business Officer. And look, we start by introducing you as an OpenAI competitor, but really this is a Google Chrome competitor. We're focused on building a better Internet on Comet. You know, the browser is due for a major refresh. We want to serve and satisfy the world's curiosity, do a great job answering people's questions and comment is putting us on the path there and super excited to get to share with everyone this week. Dmitry, it also makes people ask different kinds of questions and far more questions, as you've said, from the reaction of users already. Can you give us some statistics? Because we knew that there were millions of people lining up to use this. The UX people are really complimenting you. How many people are using it now? Yeah, so we had millions of people on our waitlist and they're all getting onboarded this week. How many millions? You know you would. It's your job to ask those questions and it's my job to compete against a $3 trillion monopoly. So we're not going to be able to share everything today. But some of the really fascinating stats we're seeing in terms of user engagement is when a user starts being on comment, they ask six to 18 times more questions than they were before. And that's really, for us that in retention are the key markers of success. And that's why we felt, you know, very comfortable and excited to open this up. Dimitri, we're a technology show and you're in the technology industry. And I think one thing that's true of technology is that just being first to something new doesn't guarantee that you capture that market. Right. You know, Apple and the smartphone versus BlackBerry, that's a good example. I'm just at the root of my client question is what is stopping Google now from looking at what you've done with Comet and saying oh, we can do that too. Yeah, well we're actually not new to, we're not the first to browsers. Right. Google's been doing this for over 20 years and their approach to AI is to bolt it on to their existing browser. We've built a a native browser from the ground up. And our biggest advantage when competing against trillion dollar companies is execution velocity. It's the clock speed of iterating and improving the product. You know, if it sounds like you guys were using it back in July, you've probably noticed how much it's gotten better. You've noticed that we launched our Macs users background assistance and the email assistant. And so it's that rate of improvement, particularly in AI where you new foundation model capabilities advance not every six months, but literally every three to four weeks. And so having the clock cycle around incorporating and finding the useful applications of those new capabilities, that's where the alpha is. Dimitri, the chief business officer, what's the monetization pathway for Comet? How are you going to make money from this platform in the end? Yeah, we're fortunate to have a variety of subscription products. Our Perplexity Pro offering Perplexity Max and our only expense is inference. And so we're able to tailor to a given user's needs the right subscription product. And so that that's led to explosive error growth for us just this year. And we're excited about some subscriptions as a path forward looking at your media partners. This is where subscriptions comes in. $5 for direct access to basically Comet plus, which you call is a groundbreaking business model for premium journalism. How does that expand Mitry? Because all these publishers need paying too. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you asked about Comet plus. The Internet deserves not just a better browser, but a better business model. I think we're all exhausted with the traffic and clickbait dynamics that have really led to a race to the bottom on the Internet. And what we're doing with Comet plus is actually aligning economics with the age where publishers get compensated when users directly access their content, when their AI accesses the content and when search index is, is access the content. And this is really taking, you know, a lot of what publishers loved about the Apple News plus model and expanding it to the full the full power of the browser. Talking of Apple, their partnership strategy is going to broaden out from open air. Are you going to be joining briefly? We want to be wherever our users are and our users certainly are on Apple devices and we're confident that the best OEM will want the best AIs integrated deeply into their products. And you know, we're excited for the path ahead there. Dmitri Shevalenko, Chief business Officer for Perplexity Great to have you back on the program. OpenAI has rolled out a new social media like app Sora, powered by the latest version of its AI video generator. Already the toll has has raised concerns about how easily it could be used to create misleading videos. Bloomberg's reporter Rachel Metz has been using it, experiencing it and then writing about it. The idea is that it presents a risk of more misinformation, more content out there that is potentially misleading. And then there's the social element. Just reflect on your experience so far with it. Sure. I mean I think we've seen a lot of concerns over the past several years about how making it easier and easier for people to make videos that show things that didn't actually happen but but appear to show those things in a realistic fashion that can make it easier to spread things that are not true and hurt people potentially. And with this tool, OpenAI has made it extremely easy to do that kind of thing. I made several incriminating looking videos of my boss and I mean stealing kittens from a pet store, keying cars, stealing a car, all manner of mischief and it was really easy. One thing that was also doable, at least until yesterday, is you could take these clips and you could in the draft form without publishing them, you could screen record them on your phone and they didn't have watermarks in that format. OpenAI told me that they have since fixed that, but that made it even easier to share any kind of video without making it clear that it was coming from sorrow or that it was AI generated. This, I mean almost is the playbook of Open. I actually get it into the wild, get people stress testing it, pushing it to the brink and then they learn from it. How has their response response been to your some of your concerns? I mean they obviously do not want people to be disseminating false information and they essentially said they take that very seriously and they're doing, they're making a bunch of moves to make that difficult for users. However, people are going to still be able to get around those rules if they want to. And even with watermarks, it's not clear to me that that would actually make people always say, oh wait, that's an AI generated video. Especially if they're not that familiar with SORA itself. They might just think that that's just some other kind of watermark on the video. The videos that we've just been looking at are of course, AI generated and they are from Open Air themselves. And funnily enough, the cat is not actually riding an ice skater on while she performs. But Bloomberg's Rachel Metz, we so appreciate it. Send us the SafeMoom ones that you've made yourself. We're back with Bloomberg Tech and we have some breaking news regarding China pushing the Trump administration to roll back national security restrictions, of course, on Chinese deals in the United States. What do they say they'll get in return? They're dangling the prospect of a massive investment package. Let's get to all the details. Bloomberg's State Department reporter Eric Martin is one of those that helped break this story. And it really fits in the whole context that Xi Jinping is pushing hard on the US to lift various restrictions and change some of the ways in which it views China. Absolutely. Caroline. This is what we're hearing about seems to be China appealing to Trump's reputation as a deal maker and his, his idea, his focus, the art of the deal, of course, being his most famous writing. And, and just basically looking at how can China get a treatment in the US More similar to some of the other countries who have announced big investment packages in the U.S. including Japan, a commitment, a looser commitment from the European Union as well. And so looking at how China can invest in the US can export more of its product to the US Given that one issue for China and its economy has been weaknessed of the Chinese consumer. And overall, looking at this would be a huge change from what we've seen in the past decade. Remember, it was just a few years ago we saw this congressional committee set up to scrutinize Chinese involvement in the U.S. economy and the U.S. china National Security relationship, economic relationship. So this would be a huge reversal of a decade of US Policy. Bipartisan if this comes to be. Eric, one of our sources is saying that earlier this year China floated or dangled the figure of $1 trillion. Could you just explain that reporting to us? Well, when we're talking about economies, the size of the US Economy and the size of China, what we're hearing from sources is that this one trillion dollar figure was mentioned earlier this year, but it could potentially be down the line even larger in terms of the, the economic size of the two countries and what, what would be big enough to, to really move the dial in the economic relationship. And remember, China has seen a series of proposed deals involving Chinese companies rejected by cfius, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, led by the Treasury Department. So this national security concern has loomed large for many years in the US China relationship and this would be a huge change. It's really hard to overstate how big a change this would be if this deal is reached and if investment in the US is opened in a much bigger way to China and to, to Chinese companies. Bloomberg's Eric Martin, part of the team that broke it. I don't see any like immediate market reaction. I would say that thousands of terminal readers are flocking to the story and we need to, to discuss it a bit more. Let's bring in Ted Mortensen, bad tech strategist, who joins us now. Ted, this story just broke and I sympathize with you sitting in the chair there in that sense, but the idea is basic. After a decade or more of China not being able to put money into this economy here in the United States, Bloomberg's reporting that its tactic is now to say to the US Government, reduce technology restrictions in particular, and that's what might happen. Is somebody covering this sector your reaction? I think this goes back to a decision by the Biden administration of restricting semicap equipment below 14 nanometers almost a year, year and a half ago. And if you really look through that report and how it's transitioning to the Chinese government, they can't manufacture and this is a mat lam clack, et cetera and ASML, they can't manufacture next generation, next generation AI chips if they can't get to that 3 and 2 nanometer node. At the 2 nanometer node where TSM is going right now, the architectures are changing to gate all around and backside power. I think that's really important as you relate to next generation AI architectures, they can't get there. So, so if they're willing to bargain away that technology transfer and in return open up the spigots of investment, not only agriculturally, potentially, but also manufacturing, it really is a huge game changer of how we have, how we have been positioned in the last two years. TED Therefore positioning just from an investor perspective, do we get even higher valuations because there's money coming in and then in video and all the others, kla, for example, and indeed aim at which we're seeing under pressure today because of the $600 million revenue hit they're going to be feeling by yet more restrictions on their equipment going to China. Does that inflate ever further throws a bunch of gasoline on the fire? Because if you look at China, they're probably one of the largest, well their second largest economy in the world and next to the US on AI, they're probably in the number two position. If you don't transition to this next gen AI architecture, whether it be a Gentex or where we're going, you know, just take OpenAI as a benchmark. You risk not only your sovereign economy but more importantly your sovereign defense ability because we are pivoting in the US so quickly on the defense side to AI. It's a dual discussion. I think the other issue is one of geo exposures. Right now the street has really shied its shied itself away from anything with I would say over 10% China exposures because look at amount last night, everybody's gotten better. That would totally open up to open up, open up the investment angle for all those China exposures and right now the largest are probably lam aim at and clack at about 30% exposures they would have. That would take away the bear argument. Ted, whether you meant to or not, you are talking about the three biggest stories of the day. Bloomberg reporting that if you take apart Huawei's Ascend, it has Samsung and SK Hynix in it, the disclosure about applied materials. Do you see a change of US policy coming or not? I just, you know, I go back and look what the Trump administration did to the Middle East. You know, who would have thought that we would open up all the AI technology to Saudi Arabia and others, I think in reply to lower oil prices. This is the art of the deal and right now we're playing chess on four levels and it's very hard for at least the tech investors to decipher, but it would pour a lot of gasoline on the bonfire. Ted Mortenston of BAD brilliant reaction, thank you very much. Talking of the bonfire and valuations and m and a BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners is said to be in advanced talks to buy aligned data Centers in a $40 billion transaction. According to sources, an agreement could be announced in days. Some more Bloomberg U.S. deal Managing Editor Liana Baker, who helped break that story, is with us. Liana, this is yet more euphoria, right? It is and I'm sure on your show, you know You've been following AI almost every day but on my team covering M&A, we actually haven't seen a blockbuster M and A deal. We've seen massive investments in the space, but nothing like a full takeover. So that's why we're so excited about this scoop. That BlackRock GIP is going to be buying aligned data centers potentially within days for about $40 billion. And we're curious if this will lead to more deal making in the space. All the big private equity names, sovereign wealth funds are, you know, involved in this, in this deal. What does the line do, Leona, do we know that? Sure. Well, they have data centers around Phoenix and just around the US and it's part of that trend of, you know, building out the power necessary to sort of just fuel this AI revolution. So maybe not a household name like, you know, Stargate or as splashy as Nvidia putting in 100 billion into open air, but it definitely already has some big backers and more to come, mostly on a baker who leads the deal team. Thank you so much. Italian Tech Week is wrapping up in Turin and Bloomberg Tech Some MacKenzie caught up with Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon, who says he expects the U.S. economy to accelerate into 2026. He also weighed in on the challenges of building significant tech businesses out of Europe. Savings in Europe and capital in Europe needs to come into the risk economy in Europe. You just don't have the scale and scope of the available savings here. Getting deployed into the tech risk ecosystem at the pace that it should when you compare and you look to the way things are deployed in the United States. And in fact, one of the things that happens here is capital from here looks over there. And so there are enormously smart, talented people here are lots of great ideas, capital formation and a real focus on risk taking. Stuff's going to go right, stuff's going to go wrong. But you got to take risk, you've got to deploy capital. This really has to become a bigger center of capital deployment. And also the more we can get the European Union to be operating as an economic union and taking advantage of the 400 plus million people that are here as opposed to the individual states, for lack of a better term, the more we can get the tech economy working that way, I think the better chance we have of reaching your goal, which I think would be a very noble goal for the world. So the more, the more innovation over here, the better for the world. Yeah. So Ursula von der Leyen will be here. So your one message to the European Commission president would be centralizing or capital Capital certainly is there the urgency I you know I'm feeling more urgency when I'm over here. But still, you know, the regulatory process in Europe is slow. Capital markets union for sure. You know, more encouragement of risk taking in capital markets, trying to bring it all together. Consolidation in the banking system instead of national champions in every market. Consolidation in the exchange system instead of champions in every market. You know, those are all things that will make capital formation easier, risk capital formation better and will allow the acceleration of great companies here in these markets. A spinning Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon along with Bloomberg Tech's Tom MacKenzie was a great interview. Go read more about it. Meanwhile, coming up, we're going to talk about another mega a funding round. This time startup Vercel reaching $9.3 billion valuation. We speak with the CEO. This is pretty big tech. You're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there plus an industry leading 3.8% APY high yield cash account. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principle. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member Finran SIPC crypto trading provided by Bakkt Crypto Solutions LLC. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosure the Chase Inc. Business Premier card is made for business owners who make things happen. Designed for high spend and limitless Cash Back, Inc. Business Premier is a painful card with built in flexibility. Get the buying power you need to make large purchases, cover unexpected expenses and help your business grow. Earn a total of 2.5% cash back on every purchase of $5,000 or more plus earn unlimited 2% cash back on every other purchase, giving you unlimited earned potential to invest cash back into your business. From innovation and technology to everyday Expenses, Inc. Business Premier is the only business credit card with 2.5% cash back on every purchase of $5,000 or more and is part of a suite of credit cards from Chase for Business designed to meet your needs every step along the way. Learn more@chase.com Businesscard Chase for Business make more of what's yours Accounts subject to credit approval restrictions and limitations apply. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank NA member FDIC introducing the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio now with AI powered PDF spaces do more with PDFs than you ever thought possible. Need AI to turn 100 pages of market research into 5 insights with a click. Do that with Acrobat. Need templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal. Do that with Acrobat. Need an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report to sound real smart in real time. Do that with the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio. Learn more at adobe.com/do that with Acrobat earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with tech industry leaders in New York ahead of his White House meeting with President Trump. Attendees included Lux Capital's Josh Wolff, RAM CEO Eric Lyman and Vercel CEO Guillermo Roche, according to sources who say the conversations focused on AI and its impact on Israel's economy and military. After the story ran Versailles Roush posted a photo with Netanyahu to X, which has since drawn more than 32 million views and some criticism, raising concerns from both employees and customers. The company's also just done a big raise at a high valuation. Delighted to say that Guillermo Rauch joins us now. Guillermo, let's just start with with the post on X and the meeting Sunday. In the comments, there appear to be employees of Vercel and customers who are reacting. Are you able to quantify for us what that reaction has been and sort of what your response is to it? So thanks for having me, of course. And maybe just to get, you know, all of the noise out of the way and I want to clearly acknowledge that the post did cause quite a bit of pain. I want to obviously say sorry to the well meaning people, you know, people that really care about this topic, people that are hurt by the tension that exists in the world today, but obviously not sorry to the people that are just spewing hate and anti Semitism and the people that have come after our team. So to your point, this has been a special time for our team and obviously our customers. It's. It's a very special time for the world. And maybe I'll give you a little bit of context for the meeting itself, right? As Vercel a leader in developer AI, of course we, you know, get invited to speak with world leaders about topics relevant to education, cybersecurity, AI. I will Play a huge, huge part of the, of the, of the future. Right. And so I always welcome the opportunity to speak with world leaders. Obviously, you know, the reaction to it and the optics matter a lot to us and we're here for our team, we're here for our customers. There hasn't been material changes to the business. A lot of it is noise. You know, there was, there was an ex post with 5 million views from someone that allegedly quit the company. But guess what? We looked upside down and that person didn't work for Vercel. So it kind of also highlights a little bit of the challenges that we see with social media today. Guillermo, I'm grateful that you would come on the show. I think it's important to be honest with the audience. You were going to come on the show earlier in the week anyway. There was a lot of breaking news and we moved things around. But just to be definitive, you haven't had any employee resignations and you've not lost any business at all as a result. Yeah, there hasn't been any material change to the business. There has been impact to our community, by the way, and I, you know, I feel bad about that and our, our ethos of our sell and you know, maybe to tell you a bit of more context about our company, we're all about open source. The reason that I'm here today is because I built a gigantic open source project. We work in public, we engage with the community. We're always listening to feedback. We use that feedback to grow. We use that feedback to contribute directly to source code and make our products better. And this is the kind of things that, you know, world leaders are interested in and this is why they reach out to us. And I welcome that. I don't endorse politicians. I do engage with world leaders and excited to continue our work and to continue to support our community, our customers and most importantly, our team. We appreciate how open you've been about all, all of that, what must have been an anxious time. And I'm interested, therefore, about the story of Vercel more broadly because you come on this show around the context that you have raised money, you are building this business. And I'm interested in particular of how many people wanted to be putting extra money to work in your business and what growth story you're telling them. Yeah, we've been around for a while building what we call the front end cloud. It's the best way to deploy websites and applications. Applications. And it's in the world of what I call pixels. You know, most Applications had some kind of human centric user interface. But ever since I will call it like ChatGPT. The dominant type of application that enterprises and individuals want to create is what we call the agent, which is kind of like a digital coworker. So we announced that we're building the AI cloud. For people listening, this is sort of like the AWS of AI. And one of the goals of this cloud is that when, when you're a developer or a company of any size, you can deploy these agents, make your business more efficient. It obviously caught the interest of investors. We weren't planning to raise additional funds. We had just raised the business is doing incredibly where we just passed $250 million in revenue growing at north of 80% year over year, supporting customers like Under Armour, Nintendo, Porsche and some of the hottest startups on the AI space like Bracks and Ramp and Notion and all of the up and comers. So as you could imagine, the enterprises are thinking, well I have all this up and commerce, all these startups is even individual developers coming after me with AI native solutions. What do I need to do AI transformation myself and that's the cloud. And the Vercel is filling a massive void in the market today. We've talked about the reaction of some of those of your employees potentially and those that actually weren't current employees. But talk to us about how you're keeping them engaged and building with Vercel. Part of this raise was indeed a secondary tender offer. Is that about giving them a liquidity moment? Is that about ensuring you can get the right talent through the door? Yeah, I think employees and community have been super engaged behind our mission. Everyone is sort of galvanized behind the idea of building for the web. One the of our core values at Vercel Vercell is what we call for the web. And I think the spirit of the web and openness is sort of the things that we want to represent, whether it's talking to world leaders or whether it's engaging with the products that we create and putting them in the hands of developers to build a better future. Guillermo, very quick, 30 seconds. Can you share any RR or other financial metrics on how it's going? Yeah, as I mentioned, you know we've publicized that we're at north of $250 million in air are growing at north of 80% year over year, which is world class metrics, possibly unseen metrics for our cloud infrastructure business that spreads a huge array of customers from small startups to the largest enterprises. Health care, fintech, SaaS, marketing, you name it. And we're continuing to build from here where we're taking the feedback. Obviously we're learning from it, we're growing and we're excited about what the future holds world. Appreciate your transparency today. Guillermo Rauch, CEO and founder of Vercel Breaking News. Taylor Swift's 12th studio album, the Life of a Showgirl was just released at midnight here on the East Coast. This on the back of a single podcast appearance. We're going to talk about the album's reception. We're going to do so for Bloomberg's entertainment reporter Hannah Miller. Let me level with you. We did the story on the podcast announcement. I've not yet listened to the album. I've done some original data journalism. Trending number one on Google Trends. Opalite the word trending number two, Taylor Swift data. Go take it from there. Yeah, yeah. She's been dominating the charts on Apple Music and Spotify. Everyone is talking about her on social media. She is the story right now. And you know, we saw her do this promotion ahead of the album. She did, you know, the podcast with Travis Kelsey, her fiance. She is very much banked on her fame. You know, she's been picked and chosen what she's done. She's not overstretched herself with promotion. Everyone knows who she is. I saw an ad with Target so there was a little bit of cashing in there. But just compared to what Cardi B has been out there doing, heavily pregnant on going into various stores in New York City, working it on stage. She just doesn't have to do that. She cuts to the noise. Everyone knows who she is. Everyone wants to tune in. You know, this is the topic of conversation that everyone is going on about right now. I'm not being funny. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on Google Trends. Is Taylor Swift a song or whatever? We're business. Is there some kind of commercial reporting here, some kind of dollar figure that we have Vol. You know we're still waiting on the data and we're going to get, you know, the data on how it's performing on the charts, whether it's going to break records today as the most listened to album. It's already broken records for pre saves on Spotify. Over 5 million people save the album before it came out. And there's also a movie out this weekend about the life of a showgirl. So that'll inject some life into movie theaters. So cross platform blue makes. Hannah Miller, we so appreciate it. Thank you. Now that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech, busy week ahead. While you're also maybe listening to the new album that we are going to be live from, Bloomberg Screen Time in Los Angeles on Thursday, speaking to the best of the entertainment industry. We're going on the road because then on Friday we switch gears and we're going to go all in on defense tech. We're going to be live from Andrew's headquarters in Costa Mesa, California. This is who we're going to be speaking to. You do not want to miss it. And it's been an astonishing week in New York City. Caro Air is again driving markets but geopolitical news flow. It's great to be back with you. I don't really know what else to say other than gear up. Next week is big too. I'm going to say safe flight and good luck with all the breaking news while you're on that plane. Because he's a machine, I have something to listen to right? This is Bloomberg Tech. See you soon. Bloomberg's screen time is where creators and capital connect. My name is Lucas Shaw and I'll be interviewing industry leaders like Warner Bros. Pam abdy and Mike DeLuca, Instagram's Adam Masseri and director Ryan Coogler. Screen Time is where you can go behind the scenes to hear about the strategies and stories powering what the world watches next. Join us live in Los Angeles October 8th and 9th. You can get your tickets@bloomberglive.com screentime and thanks to our presenting sponsors AWS and Corian as well as the supporting sponsors Nielsen Turkish Airlines and Weil, Gottschow and Manjes.
Episode Title: Huawei AI Chips Contain Advanced Parts from Rivals
Air Date: October 3, 2025
Hosts: Caroline Hyde (New York), Ed Ludlow (San Francisco)
Podcast Focus: Technology, innovation, and the future of business
This episode delivers a deep dive into the tech news cycle, highlighting several major stories:
(Segment starts ~07:10)
Headline Scoop:
Bloomberg’s analysis of Huawei’s "Ascend" AI chips revealed the use of advanced components from TSMC, Samsung, and SK Hynix—companies prohibited from doing business with Huawei under US sanctions.
Mechanism of Access:
Although current direct sales are blocked, Huawei likely stockpiled components prior to sanctions or found alternative procurement paths.
“They’ve been able to use TSMC dies. They’ve been able to use the HBM chips from Samsung and SK Hynix. These are somewhat older HBM components. It’s the HBM generation 2e which is not the most cutting edge at this point.”
—Peter Elstrom, 09:40
Implication for China:
The inclusion of foreign technology points to continued dependency on overseas supply chains and exposes the limits of China’s domestic chip industry. If these stockpiles run out, Huawei may not be able to continue production at the same scale.
Market Impact:
Despite these hurdles, Huawei has ambitious plans to double production to meet domestic AI demand, but Bloomberg notes that many Chinese companies would still prefer Nvidia chips if politics didn’t intervene.
(Segment starts ~14:10)
Global Supply Chain Realities:
Rathbun ties the Huawei scoop to a broader observation: true independence in semiconductor production takes years, and China can’t simply “will” a domestic supply chain into existence.
“I am not surprised. But it also highlights the urgency of the AI race... Chips is not something you can just produce on a dime.”
—Anna Rathbun, 15:40
Valuation Hype vs. Reality:
Current AI valuations are "nosebleed," with a “bubble” mentality infiltrating the market—but historical comparisons might be moot as this is a truly unique phase.
“Yes, it feels hot compared to historical standards. But… maybe the norm in this new world might be a little bit higher.”
—Anna Rathbun, 18:00
Investment Strategy:
With high concentration risk in individual AI leaders, Rathbun recommends diversification, especially into adjacent industries that benefit from AI indirectly.
(Segment starts ~31:00)
Issue:
Rivian is revising its next-generation EV door release mechanisms after employees and customers flagged safety concerns—specifically, making the manual release more intuitive in case of electronic failure.
“They’ve decided for their next car they have to do something different with the design. We do not know if they will do another redesign... But this is an industry-wide thing.”
—Ed Ludlow, 34:10
Sector Context:
Follows recent scrutiny and design changes at Tesla. At present, there’s been no major incident or investigation involving Rivian.
(Segment starts ~36:50)
Product Announcement:
Perplexity’s AI browser, Comet, is now free to all, challenging market dominant Google Chrome.
Usage Stats:
Users ask 6–18 times more questions on Comet than on any previous browser—Engagement and retention are spiking.
Competitive Edge:
Perplexity claims faster iteration and native AI integration compared to "bolt-on" approaches from incumbents.
“Our biggest advantage ... is execution velocity. It's the clock speed of iterating and improving the product.”
—Dmitri Shevelenko, 39:30
Monetization:
Mixed subscription model and new “Comet Plus” offers premium journalism with direct compensation for publishers.
(Segment starts ~45:00)
Product News:
OpenAI has launched Sora, a social media-style app powered by its latest AI video generator.
Misinformation Risks:
Sora makes it trivially easy to produce convincingly fake videos, raising the specter of viral misinformation.
“I made several incriminating looking videos of my boss.... It was really easy.”
—Rachel Metz, 46:00
Mitigation:
OpenAI now includes watermarks, but concerns remain about the effectiveness.
(Segment starts ~51:20)
Breaking News:
China is offering a massive investment package—possibly $1 trillion—in return for eased US national security restrictions.
“If this deal is reached and if investment in the US is opened in a much bigger way to China ... it’s really hard to overstate how big a change this would be.”
—Eric Martin, 53:25
Expert Analysis (Ted Mortensen, BAD):
The inability of China to manufacture sub-14nm chips domestically is driving this “grand bargain” scenario; letting US firms back in could radically alter global technology markets.
(Segment starts ~01:00:40)
(Segment starts ~01:07:50)
“You gotta take risk, you've got to deploy capital. This really has to become a bigger center of capital deployment.”
—David Solomon, 01:10:20
(Segment starts ~01:13:30)
Controversy:
Rauch’s photo with Israel PM Netanyahu (during an AI-focused meeting) sparked heated debate and viral criticism online, with concerns from community and customers.
“Maybe just to get all of the noise out of the way ... I want to clearly acknowledge that the post did cause quite a bit of pain.”
—Guillermo Rauch, 01:15:20
Business Update:
Vercel just closed an up-round at a $9.3B valuation, is approaching $250M revenue, and growing 80% Y/Y.
Employee Engagement:
Rauch clarifies there have been no notable resignations or loss of business due to the public controversy.
(Segment starts ~01:24:30)
“They’re not supposed to have access to these components, but they’ve been able to get them.”
—Peter Elstrom, Bloomberg (09:40)
“If they can’t get [components] from domestic supply, that suggests maybe they’re going to run out at some point.”
—Peter Elstrom, Bloomberg (11:00)
“This also highlights the urgency of the AI race ... it’s very hot, and China’s going to have to figure it out if it doesn’t have internal supply chains.”
—Anna Rathbun, Grenadilla (15:40)
“Just being first to something new doesn’t guarantee you capture that market … It’s the clock speed of iterating and improving the product.”
—Dmitri Shevelenko, Perplexity (39:30)
“I made several incriminating looking videos of my boss … and it was really easy.”
—Rachel Metz, Bloomberg (46:00)
“If this deal is reached ... it’s really hard to overstate how big a change this would be.”
—Eric Martin, Bloomberg (53:25)
“You gotta take risk, you’ve got to deploy capital. This really has to become a bigger center of capital deployment.”
—David Solomon, Goldman Sachs (01:10:20)
This jam-packed episode underscores the increasingly global, interconnected, and politically sensitive nature of the technology industry in 2025. From the persistence of gray-market chips inside Chinese AI processors to skyrocketing valuations in the AI sector, the ripple effects stretch across supply chains, corporate strategies, geopolitics, and culture.
For listeners seeking key themes:
For deeper dives, refer to specific timestamps above for each segment of interest.