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Bloomberg Tech Studio
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to
Caroline Hyde
coast with Caroline Hyde in New York
Bloomberg Tech Studio
and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
Ed Ludlow
This is Bloomberg Tech Coming up, Intel says it will join Elon Musk's Terraform project with Space X and Tesla to help refactor Silicon Fab technology.
Caroline Hyde
Plus Broadcom gains on expanded agreements at Google and Anthropic as alternative technology to
Ed Ludlow
Nvidia builds and Bill Ackman looks to make a deal for the world's largest music company. Universal Music Group will have the details,
Caroline Hyde
but we set the context where the markets are still fixated on conflict in the Middle East. We're still all awaiting what happens at 8pm New York Times Today a self imposed deadline by President Trump and anxiety remains as we wonder what will happen in that time frame. We're currently seeing the market off by 1 1/2% at the moment we're down on the NASDAQ 100 big tech really feeling some of the risk off environment and we're seeing Brent crude of course climb some 1.3% as it seems as though the conflict continues to intensify.
Ed Ludlow
At the big breaking news of the morning, intel says in a post on X that it is joining the tariff project that is the initiative by Space Xi and Tesla to build out massive compute or chip capacity. The stock was up almost 5%. One point earlier in the session is now paired Those gains to 2%. Tesla is down 4%. There could be other factors behind that. What is going on? What is it mean? Let's get the details of Bloomberg's chip reporter in King and Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Mandeep Singh and Ian, I'll start with you. We actually don't know a lot but tell us what we do know from two posts, one by Bhutan Intel CEO and the other by the company itself.
Ian King
Yeah, I mean what the company is saying is look, we've got lots of technology that they need, whether it's packaging, whether it's chip design, whether it's manufacturing technology and we're just very happy to be part of this project. How exactly they're going to be part of the project though isn't clear.
Caroline Hyde
Can you give any illumination Mandy? Therefore we turn to you as to what the upside could be. What are your most optimistic, what are your most realistic perspectives of how much this builds Intel's business?
Mandeep Singh
I mean I look at it this way, you know, Elon Musk wants to build data centers in space and every other hyperscaler is spending over $100 billion in CapEx this year to set up terrestrial data centers. So in this case Elon Musk clearly wants to set up fabs instead of focusing on data centers, you know, investments. And his thing is I can build a vertically integrated fab that can make chips for the tourists, the space data centers that he's focused on and for intel, you know, it's just another avenue to capture in terms of this build out of the AI infrastructure that we are seeing around us. Clearly TSMC has a big lead but I think if he were like intel were to focus on space data centers, they could find that opportunity for growth.
Ed Ludlow
Ian, that's a picture of Elon Musk I think down in Santa Clara shaking hands with Bhutan. Seems easy, doesn't it? But as we put in copy in our reporting, the economics of chipmaking are brutal. You have to get it right. Would you help the Bloomberg Tech audience understand the reality of what Tesla SpaceX next they are proposing to do?
Ian King
Yeah, I mean the massive build out that they're proposing would not be supported by the kind of volumes that they are able to consume right now, it probably doesn't make economic sense for them. But if they're doing that in a partnership, if they're doing that to maybe sell silicon to other people, then maybe the numbers do start to add up. But you've got to flip that the other way and say, well, hold on a minute, what's intel up to here? Intel really has its own plants that it needs to fill. So if there's some kind of a bridging arrangement where Tesla becomes a customer of intel, helps give intel orders, and then that branches out into some kind of partnership in the future where they build plants together, then maybe that's a more logical path and probably safer for both of them.
Ed Ludlow
Mandy, the world is changing when it comes to those that are the forefront of compute and those that are consuming it. You know, Tesla designs its own inference chips. For example, current generation AI5 going into a 4i5 and then i6. It's never made its own chips. At the BEI team across all the analysts in the different desks. Are you having to kind of remodel where everyone sits in that world going forward?
Mandeep Singh
Yeah, I mean the ecosystems clearly are determined by which large language model is doing well. I mean just today we heard about anthropology reaching $30 billion run rate that I think is favorable to that anthropic ecosystem that includes Broadcom and TPU's. And look, when it comes to fabs, so far we know everyone is going to TSMC. So it's quite interesting that, you know, Elon Musk wants to develop an alternative to that fab. But as we know, you know, intel has struggled for so many years in terms of reaching that leading node capacity. So from that perspective, it is a pretty big undertaking and it requires a lot of capex. I mean TSMC capex is north of $50 billion. So what would it take to build a fab, you know, in terms of capex investments?
Ed Ludlow
Can I just say one thing as well, Karen Mandeep. I'm sorry, I just want to state it that Terrafab is not included in Tesla's 26 CapEx guide of $20 billion, far beyond what it's ever done. Are just putting it out there and I'll keep saying it until the tariff apps built courage.
Caroline Hyde
It's been a fascinating bit of perspective from all three of you actually because of you're the byline on this story thus far. Ian King, always with all the insight when it comes to Intel. Mandeep, thank you for the intelligence of Bloomberg Intelligence. Let's get you more insight now because Gil or he has already been putting his reaction to paper. Head of tech researcher at DA Davidson. You said the investment bodes well for Intel's turnaround story. Does this really strengthen the balance sheet? How does this look to be boding well?
Gilurie (DA Davidson)
Yeah. So Intel's been busy in its turnaround. It made a really big step in repurchasing 49% of its Ireland fab back from Apollo. And then you have this morning's announcement with Tesla. Intel has all the most important pieces right now. It's a US based company with US based production that makes CPUs and has advanced packaging. These are all things that we need for the future of AI. These are three things that if I said three years ago they wouldn't matter that much. And right now each one of those things is absolutely critical. It's not trivial though that intel will be successful. I think that came up in your conversation with Mandeep. There's a lot of execution ahead. They need to successfully build planes in the us build fabrication for their next waves of technology including this big joint venture with Tesla and then get the yields that make them profitable. As you pointed out, TSMC has been doing this for years with great levels of success and intel still lose money on the fab side and doesn't have enough core customers to have that volume quite yet. It's lining up the customers but it's not quite there yet. And so there's a lot of execution ahead. But in terms of executing on the turnaround, Liberty is doing a lot to make intel an important player in the future of AI.
Caroline Hyde
Gil, do you like the idea because Lipputan came under some well, cynicism or indeed was beaten up a little bit even by on the administration, the United States because they didn't really like the way in which he was proposing it as build it and and then they will come. He wanted to go more like I need the customers for first and then I'm going to go out and build it. Is this enough of a customer that they will therefore start to put back onto the R and D, start to refuel the actual manufacturing and build out that they perhaps it pause on if
Gilurie (DA Davidson)
we believe Elon Musk and the numbers he's been talking about, that's as much scale as you're going to get. His the numbers that he talks about for Xi for Space X, I mean we're talking about building in the U.S. now Elon's talked about having fabrication plants on the moon so if we are to fulfill all of those and Elon gets what he wants, that's plenty of volume. Let's not forget in video, as an investor in intel, that's volume. There's still a relationship with Apple that's a lot of volume. So intel has positioned itself to have the volumes necessary to bring the customers to the table, to have the volumes necessary to be profitable. On the fabrication side, it really is a matter of execution over the next several years to get those customers what they want with the high expectations those those customers have. Let's not forget those customers are being served very well by tsmc. Yeah, this is volume beyond tsmc. But their expectations are still anchored to what they get from tsmc, which is very high yield.
Caroline Hyde
Can we go nitty gritty? Because Tesla has relationships for its own chip building at the moment and they lie with Samsung and they lie with tsmc. So how divert what, what chips in particular expecting to be made by intel or indeed where do we see the supply shift?
Gilurie (DA Davidson)
Well, I'm not sure we got that detail today, but broadly speaking, these days, if you look at the broad patterns, this conversation, the conversation yesterday about Broadcom, Google and Anthropic Meta signing up with AMD, OpenAI signing up with AMD and with Broadcom and continuing to use Nvidia, the approach of all the big players, so the hyperscalers and the big frontier labs, which includes Elon Inc, is to diversify around all of these large chip makers in order to be able to meet this very significant demand that they all have for chips. So they all are still, most of these companies are still mostly reliant on Nvidia, but they want to rely more on Broadcom, AMD and Intel. So they're not beholden to Nvidia, so they have more capacity. What that looks like in terms of mix, I'm not sure they know. I think they're going to move forward and expand as aggressively as they can. And the chip companies that help them the most, that execute the best will get the volumes. That's why execution so important right now.
Caroline Hyde
Gilurie of DA Davison, loving the analysis. Thank you very much indeed. Meanwhile, let's look at shares that aren't gaining at the moment. Apple significant move off by almost 5% at the moment. And as Ed would put it, that's a two standard deviation move at the moment on this particular stock. Why reports out of Nikkei so over in Japan that there are issues, issues with the foldable iPhone engineering snags. Maybe we have to push back test phases for the foldable iPhone. Maybe it pushes back production and shipment schedules. That is what the report is saying, citing unidentified people. We're currently off almost 5% on a down market. Meanwhile, coming up, President Trump ramps up his escalations with Iran. The deal isn't reached by tonight. More on that next. This is Bloomberg Tech. President Trump has escalated threats to Iran, warning that, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight if a deal is not reached. For more Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall joins for more. And it feels as though the rhetoric is dialing up what's happening behind the scenes.
Tyler Kendall
Tyler?
Tyler Kendall (continued)
Hey, Caroline. Well, at this point the indication from the White House is that they are not going to back off of their threat of 8pm Eastern tonight amid reporting that Iran is is now cutting off communication with the US in the wake of President Trump's post on Truth Social, there is reporting that it is unclear if these talks could resume either directly or indirectly ahead of tonight's deadline. Now, the president's post is of course, raising some legal and humanitarian questions, though experts have said that it will ultimately come down to the size and scope of what actually happens tonight because under international law, a military is allowed to strike key infrastructure if it 1, contributes to a military operation, this idea of dual use if a bridge is used to help transport weapons, for example, and two, if civilian harm is minimized. We've already started to see some strikes happening earlier today against military targets in particular, including on Carg island, as Carg island remains absolutely central when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. And yesterday we got a little bit more clarity from this White House that they do need to see a reopening of that waterway in order to agree to any potential cease fire deal. We're going to have to wait to see what happens because in that same post from President Trump, he also said, quote, who knows what will happen. And yesterday he said that he felt that Iran was negotiating in good faith. Caroline, we heard earlier today from Vice President J.D. vance who said that he felt confident that the US would get some sort of response from from Iran ahead of tonight's 8pm Eastern deadline. But this White House maintains that what happens tonight is going to be on how Iran ultimately responds. And so far we have only seen this hard line stance taken.
Caroline Hyde
Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall, we appreciate it. Everything from the White House, meanwhile, big tech stocks, they remain under pressure yet again amid the Middle east concerns. This is a growing chorus on Wall street as she starts making the case for buying the dip, including Goldman's Peter Oppenheimer he says the recent pullback is creating more attractive entry points and that tech valuations have now slipped below the broader global market. Let's continue the debate with RBC Bruin dolphins Janet Muay who says, well last week's equity rebound, you thought it was not one to chase. So do we just stand pat for the time being?
Janet Mui
Janet Caroline, thanks for having me. Yes, I think we just need to stay put for now and monitor the situation. I think the reason why we don't chase the rally from last week is simply because the Iran situation is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. And I think with oil prices staying elevated like this, I think it will put pressure on global growth and of course put upside risk to inflation. And at this point central bank's rate cut agenda is being abandoned. There could be rate hikes going forward and fiscally speaking, global governments will find it very tough to support consumers in any form because of the fiscal deficit situation. So all in all I think from a macro perspective there's still a lot of uncertainty and certainly risk tilted to the downside. So I think it's not really the right moment to chase last week's rally. And as I as we are speaking the markets have seen renewed weakness again because the situation is just so unclear.
Caroline Hyde
How have you been protecting the downside? Janet?
Janet Mui
Yeah, so I think we need to think really deeply about the inflation prospect because if you think about the various scenarios, the path of least resistance is basically elevated oil prices for a prolonged period because even if we see de escalation a lot of the energy assets have been destroyed. So we don't expect near term normalization in terms of oil flows or supply. So inflation being higher in the near term or longer is basically the base case here. So we like energy stock exposure in portfolio to hash against that risk. And the energy majors they pay quite good dividends. So that's another attractive point. And we like gold as an inflation hash and gold price being down from the highs really provide a relatively good entry point. We also like inflation linked bonds because that, you know, it can hedge against that high inflation outlook to bring it
Caroline Hyde
back to technology, which is hard in the current global context. Janet, just at what point do you focus in on fundamental business news? At what point are you looking at the headlines coming from Broadcom expanding its deal? If you're looking at what's happening with anthropics run rate and what that means to the rest of the ecosystem when you're hearing about intel going in with a tariff potentially of course of Elon Musk does any of that drive companies investors to want to go and allocate or do you think for now you just have to sit back amid the global context which is one of the of concern and instability?
Janet Mui
I think the two themes can go in parallel. Obviously the macro risk and the Iran war is front and center and ultimately that affects sentiment. But we always look at the fundamental drivers as well. And even though I was saying that we're not chasing the rally, we have to understand that there has been a lot of discount, heavy discount in selected high quality growth tech stocks. Some of that in software, some of them in the picks and shovels play of the infrastructure play. I'm not going to name names but there are some really attractive discount happening in the past couple of months. So we are, we are closely monitoring that situation. So I think, you know, at the moment we're keeping a bit higher cash level than normal. So certainly if there are further discounting because of the volatility in markets will certainly be finding opportunities to add further to those positions.
Caroline Hyde
How much are they American, how much are they international?
Janet Mui
For the tech sector exposure, both of that is still American exposure because if you look at the tech AI picks and shovels play which remain our favorite because that area we think is very strong growth driver irrespective of, you know, whether some software is going obsolete or not because they are the fundamental layer of the tech, the build out. So, so most of that is American exposure and of course we have some Asian exposure name but I will say most is still American.
Caroline Hyde
Janet Mui of RBC Brewing Dolphin. Tough to talk just stocks and tech, but you managed to do it for us. We really appreciate it. Meanwhile, coming up, Bill Ackman sets his eyes on Universal music group with $65 billion deal. More on that next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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The right technology can strengthen human judgment. That's why Deloitte brings together AI and data analytics with multidisciplinary teams. People with deep industry experience who can challenge assumptions and help you connect the dots across your enterprise. From risk signals to operational pressure points to shifting customer needs, Deloitte helps you see what's coming sooner so opportunities don't slip by and surprises don't spread. It's not just dashboards. It's real clarity in the moments your decisions are made. When models reveal patterns, people can ask ask better questions. When data and people are connected, leaders can move faster with confidence. And when your teams are aligned, smart choices can scale from the frontline to the C suite. Because the smarter your systems, the sharper your instincts. That's how technology makes people better at what they do best. Deloitte Together Makes Progress. Learn more@deloitte.com TogetherMakesProgress and pause really quick.
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Caroline Hyde
Time now for talking tech and first up, aerospace startup Hermes has raised $350 million in funding RAM, boosting its valuation to $1 billion. The Atlanta based company plans to build an unmanned fighter for the US military able to fly at Mach three or three times the speed of sound. Now Hemis is set to use the new capital to build two more planes and ramp up the manufacturing capacity. Plus Blackstone backslid QTS drew about $12.5 billion for debut high grade bond sale that will help fund a Microsoft datacenter. That's according to sources. The bond sale is the latest in a wave of borrowing tied to new infrastructure build ups and datacenter builder Firmness technologies has raised $505 million, valuing the Australian startup at 5.5 billion now. The round was led by Coty Management and participation from Video Firmness says that the cash will go towards the rapid deployment of AI hardware based on forthcoming Nvidia Tech Tech. But over in Asia Pacific region and
Ed Ludlow
well hello again shares of Universal Music Group. This is the Amsterdam trading up 12% on track for their biggest day ever having opened up 24% proposed proposal from Bill Ackman for Universal Music Group the world's largest music company which houses the likes of Taylor Swift, Drake and Sabrina Carpenter. It is a complicated potential deal. Bloomberg's Benoit Butlerlo covers European media and assignment joins us now. It is complicated, unsurprising. You have Ackman deal and music is one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg terminal. Just give us the very basics of what the proposal is.
Benoit Butlerlo
So basically it's a plan to merge Universal Music Group with a blank check company that like man has created for this. It's a merger that would give a valuation of 56 billion euros to Universal. The cash component of the deal is about 9 billion and basically what he wants to achieve is to relocate the listing from Amsterdam to New York as a primary listing. He just made a call to investor and Ackman said that it makes more sense for Universal to be listed in the US Giving that the operational center the decision making is made in the US on the east coast. Yeah and so that's his main point really for for this deal and he said it would make more sense for analysts cover the peers of Universal to cover the company being listed in the
Caroline Hyde
U.S. what's interesting is that of course this has got some skepticism. He can talk to investors all he likes but there's really one key investor he needs to convince who sat over in France as a billionaire. Talk to us about well Vincent Bellora and whether he's going to go along with it.
Ed Ludlow
Yes.
Benoit Butlerlo
So he's really the main shoulder. The largest of universally has about 18% through borrow a his own holding and he has another 10% through company control that the media conglomerate Vivandi that Universal has been spun off actually a few years ago and listed in Amsterdam. So he has a say. And Ackman was really clear today on the call that he has to win over Bolog for this deal to go through. You also said that he said to him that the deal was intriguing and music to his ears. We haven't heard from from below exactly on this so we are waiting for his reaction really.
Caroline Hyde
Thank you Benoit. It's great to have you on live in Paris. We appreciate it. Coming up, Samsung and a far stronger than expected leap in profit this Bloomberg Tech.
Ed Ludlow
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. I want to take A broad look at technology stocks through the NASDAQ 100. We are off session lows but the story is technology stock stocks down, oil higher. Doubts about a U.S. iran deal for a cease fire. There is an 8pm Eastern Time deadline set by the president for Iran to agree to cease fire terms. And that is what the market is digesting within that index and within the technology sector specific movers, we've been over them. Intel is again off its session highs. It had been up almost 5% after announcing its joining Elon Musk Musk's Terraform project. You can recap that on the podcast and then Broadcom it's up almost 4% off session highs but it has an expanding expanded deal with Google for TPU's and the mainstay of that is Anthropic and Anthropic's expanded use and supply of TPU's. Let's get more on that deal. What it means for the world of AI Bloomberg sharing. Ghafari is with us. And like you know, you and I broke the story originally, right. That that anthropic would use TP used to begin with. It started with 1 gigawatt, now three times that. Give us the basics of what we learned and then some more stuff about anthropic financials.
Gilurie (DA Davidson)
Right.
Tyler Kendall
So this is a major expansion. It's going to be several gigawatts. And the context there is that the demand for anthropic products has really shot through the roof in the past few months with the popularity of its clog code coding agent as well as now, as our as their head of sales recently told us, their cloud cowork agent, which is more for general activities beyond just coding. So as they're seeing very, very strong enterprise growth, they're going to need to ramp up that compute.
Caroline Hyde
And what's extraordinary has been the ramp up in that business not only because of the context that they were having a fallout, a very public spat that's still ongoing with the Pentagon right now. But it seems actually that businesses are still coming to them for their technology.
Tyler Kendall
That's right. You know, as Anthropic said in its complaint in the lawsuit against the US Government, that feud with the Pentagon is very serious. And the company did say it put them at risk to lose customers and potentially billions in revenue. But at the same time, you know, the product growth has been, you know, remarkable and it seems like it hasn't, at least for now, stopped them from continuing to see this very strong revenue
Ed Ludlow
growth on enterprise through your reporting. I've learned about adversarial model distillation and you've been talking in this report about anthropic cooperating with OpenAI and Google and historically three companies that may have differing views explain the corporation what it's trying to counter and the basic concept of adversarial model distillation.
Tyler Kendall
Yes. So what that means and it sounds very complex but really it's just the idea that an older AI model can be used to then train or teach a newer model and that the output of that original AI model is what's being used to train the new one. And this happens all the time and it's not controversial for it's being done by a company that's developed their own software to train the next generation of software. But it is controversial when as we're seeing foreign firms in China and elsewhere are starting to essentially what the US companies are saying is sort of rip off or copy their product and then put their the Chinese product out there for free in as an open weight model. And so that's what the companies are working together on. It's rare that you see Anthropic and OpenAI fierce rivals and Google cooperating. But on this front, as we reported they are sharing information about how to detect when firms, especially in China outside the US are using this distillation technique to essentially copy the output of their models.
Caroline Hyde
Frontier Model Forum they set up Shreem Ghafari fantastic reporting across all things and Anthropic, we appreciate it. Meanwhile, let's turn attention to the chips that are needed. Samsung reporting a 750, 55% leap in quarterly profit to hit a record. It's driven by robust demand for those chips. Joining us now is here with us an extraordinary demand for high bandwidth memory. And what's so interesting is how quickly they've turned the tides on what have been a negative narrative for them.
Zuk Yong Lee
Absolutely, that's right. So this quarter from January to March, Samsung reported preliminary earnings that was eight times higher from the previous year and it was higher than the high expectations. And in just one quarter Samsung actually earned more than what it made in entire year of 2025. And this was a preliminary earnings. So we don't have divisional breakdowns between chips, TVs and phones. But on April 30th the company is going to have a full earnings release and also hold the conference call.
Ed Ludlow
You can put some numbers behind how much contribution the memory story and memory chips have made to that, to that blowout prelim report.
Zuk Yong Lee
Yeah, absolutely. So this was definitely the memory story and analysts from the CLSA and Morgan Stanley. They estimate that 90% of its operating profit of 38 billion probably came from its memory chip division. Now we don't have that exact detail from the company yet because this was the preliminary results, but it seems like almost like 90% of the that quarterly earnings have come from the crucial memory department.
Ed Ludlow
And interestingly, shares fell. Maybe some profit taking, maybe risk off with what's happening with the war in Iran. Bloomberg Zuk Yong Lee, thank you very much. With ARM's plans of selling its own chips for the first time, the company is trying to pull off its biggest shift yet with Morgan Stanley today downgrading the company to equal weight on execution risk concerns. From smartphones to data centers, the company is chasing a $100 billion market. Tom MacKenzie sat down with CEO Rene Haas for a deep dive specifically for Bloomberg Tech Europe.
Wesley Chan
We are shifting away from being largely known for smartphones to being around the cloud and AI data centers where in a few years that's our largest business by far and in five years it'll be orders of magnitude larger than what we do in smartphones.
Ed Ludlow
The next episode of Bloomberg Tech Europe is this Friday at 8:30am in London or you can watch it on the terminal, YouTube and on our video hub at bloomberg.com/video Carol go watch me while coming up.
Caroline Hyde
Stay tuned for Leos is on from clips joining us to talk about backing startups powering America's re industrialization efforts. They've been at it for years. They got a big new race to announce this is Bloomberg Tech
Microsoft Narrator
and pause really quick. Wanted to also mention that not Only is Windows 11 Pro designed to help unlock operational efficiency and build long term advantage for your business, it can seriously level up your team's productivity. And since I know you all love stats, guess what I got Microsoft commissioned stats. Compared to Windows 10 PCs, Windows 11 Pro users reported on average 50% faster workflows and collaboration, 42% faster completion of demanding workloads and on average 61% longer battery life. Windows 11 Pro chip to Cloud Security is designed to help employees stay protected and uninterrupted at the office, at home, the coffee shop, wherever they work. Speaking of uninterrupted, you IT managers are going to love this one. The Microsoft Commission survey also reported Windows 11 Pro PCs having a 62% drop in security incidents compared to Windows 10 PCs. Because Windows means Business upgrade to Windows 11 Pro at windows means business.com support
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Ed Ludlow
Enthusiasm for backing startups. That's Caroline, that's me. Backing startups focused on western reindustrialization is showing no sign of slowing down. The latest example venture firm Eclipse has raised $1.3 billion across two funds to back companies building quote the next era of physical industries. Think robotics, manufacturing and energy startups among others. Let's bring in Neil Susan, the founder and CEO of Eclipse and this takes you know total funds way up there. Super interesting the capital commitment to this domain, this vertical and I thought a good place to start your is talk a little bit about the LPs. You know where the money is coming from and how much push you are getting to participate in the deal flow in that reindustrialization movement.
Neil Susan
Ed, great to be here and thanks for having me. We raise capital from US based LPs. It's a nonprofit organization, university endowments foundation, hospital system, etc. We started the firm 11 years ago with one goal and our belief that the economy, that the US economy needs to grow much faster north to a 5% and it's going to happen only from physical industries because they are combining 85% of the world GDP. And to tell you the truth, we kind of forget to build hard companies in this country and we are super excited to be back in the market with capital to support their founders and operators.
Ed Ludlow
You've grown the firm as well in the last couple of years. Joe Pfaff came from T. Rowe Price. You have Jitem Bell, Charlie Mwangi who are alumni of Rivian and Tesla. In Charlie's case, what's the strategy with these two new funds and how are you going to use your talent bench to get out there do something interesting?
Neil Susan
Yeah, we, we don't think ourselves as a venture capital necessarily or growth capital. We call ourselves operators with capital because we believe that in order to build companies that manufacturing chips and building rockets and doing mining, it's required a different model and you need an operators that was on the other sides to support those founders along the journey. And you know I'm joking with my friends that I used to say that this is the best time to build in in this country from Henry Ford or Carnegie or post World War II and actually change my quote to this is the best time to build in this country, period. And we have now the five forces align what we call internally the clips, capital, policy, technology, talent, customer demand. And those forces was not aligned in this country for us to build those type of companies. They were only aligned in one other country that compete with us and it's China.
Caroline Hyde
It's interesting that you say policy is aligned and we've just been out particularly thinking about defense tech, Neal, and for many, yes, the signals are all that demand is being said. But how much money is actually being allocated by the government to startups right now? How much do you need to help fill that gap with some of your follow on funding?
Neil Susan
Yeah, I'm actually sitting right now in a hotel in Washington D.C. going to talk on stage with Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Sri around defense production act. And I cannot remember someone like me is visiting so often Washington D.C. and have the CEO of the largest bank in the world allocating one and a half trillion of JP Morgan to support those businesses. So it's not only we need to do it in order to protect democracy. That of course should be the number one goal. The second thing is there is a significant increase of customer demands by the US governments and others as well capital. And probably the most interesting part Is the talent that the best people in the world right now wants to build companies and physical industries.
Caroline Hyde
Look, you've raised 1.3 billion in total and it's divided, divided between where you're going to be allocating in growth stage. We can understand some of the winners you've already got. We've seen a phenomenal portfolio, an economy you say you've built. But where's exciting at the very early stage? Where do you want to be going out and looking for? Where does the puck move?
Neil Susan
Yeah, it's, it's interesting as you can imagine. I get that question a lot of like okay, you raise new capital which, which, which industries you, you're going to invest. And in some way we talked about different fence building chips, building fabs and doing mining, building batteries 10 years ago. So the reality, physical industries are not new things. They've been here for so long and they are combining 85% of the world GDP and I think bringing those digital tools that we are also familiar from Silicon Valley, anything from physically I know to LMS and others, the latest and greatest in robotics and apply them to the physical world. You basically are going to create the largest companies in the world. I mean you just literally in your show talked about Samsung bidding earnings, you talked about anthropic Google chip, you talked about my friends Rene Haas from AAM moving to a full stack. Everything that is interesting right now is happening in physical industries.
Ed Ludlow
You've done some really interesting deals. So I think about for example also spun out of Rivian. You took it out of Rivian early and wrote quite a large check. You've used similar mechanisms, some scouring spin off some others. Do you have a different way of doing things? Could we see a similar spin off type deal out of this fund?
Neil Susan
Yeah, we. I remember I got the first phone call I think from one of our LPs in 2018 and he was like lior, why the heck you're building a company you're supposed to invest. And I'm like hey, I'm an operator, I like to build companies. I'm not going to stop building companies. And I think you know what you're seeing Ed is the model of how you build companies is shifting as well. Because just based on Caroline, great questions on the defense is you need scale out of the gate. So if you're going to take the traditional seed series A series B series just too slow. And if there is an assets that they can spin out, if there is a talent that they can take, if there is a customer, I can build a company for that demand as an operators with capital tell we have a full flexibility.
Caroline Hyde
Leora, it was great catching up with you. Your Suzanne, thank you. Congratulations. CEO of Clips there and founder coming up. We've got more venture discussions to have. We speak with FPV Managing partner Wesley Shan the evolution of AI Investing. This is Bloomberg Tech.
Ed Ludlow
Not all winners look like AI companies at first glance. Wesley Chan has made a career betting on exactly that idea, backing firms like Canva, which become one of the most widely used AI design platforms. Wesley Chan, FPV Managing Partner, joins us now. And you're in town for Human X which I'll be running over there shortly to speak to Anthropics Mike Krieger. But that's kind of interesting. Like Leo Susan of Eclipse was just talking about that they look at those different domains, how they'll be impacted by AI. I guess for you a little more focused on software and how that might be impacted by AI in a positive way.
Wesley Chan
I think software is one area but we focus on so many different areas areas too. We have a company called Formation Bio that's a drug discovery and development company and they focus on development. It's the only company we know of that's using AI to predict clinical trial results. They pick drugs out, they buy drugs and they figured out using AI that a knee drug that will regrow cartilage in your knee to prevent knee replacements will make it through clinical trial. And so they're taking it through right now. It literally does regrow cartilage in your knees and it's going to prevent knee replacement replacements. And think about this like friends that are skiers, friends that are runners can get rid of having that pesky knee problem when the cartilage goes and I found this drug and they're helping it predict through clinical trials. So that's what we invest in, things like that.
Ed Ludlow
Wesley, would you mind to reflect a little bit on Canva? You know, when we've spoken to various members of the leadership team, they added the adding products. Right. That the offering is widening and it's through. I think that's a pretty fair summary of how they'd put it. But they are growing and getting later stage. Later stage. Just track the journey.
Wesley Chan
Yeah. I invested in Canva 13 years ago and led their Series A. And most people think that Canva is a design company. And the amazing thing is Canva is an AI company today. It is. I just saw a report Mel told me this that ham is the third most accessed way people access AI. And if you think about it, every person under 35 is using Canva today and that's how they interact with AI chat. GPT is number one, Google's number two, canvas number three. And I just use it the other day to go create a presentation. I said, I want to go make this presentation for one of my companies. I want to tell the story about how they're changing the world of accounting. And I used Canva to sort of think through that presentation and use the tools to create that presentation. It's incredible, right? So Canva has distribution and that's sort of the biggest place where people are accessing AI today.
Caroline Hyde
What about distributing to a wider, democratized set of investors? Wesley, you've backed it from early days, but everyone wonders when IPOs are really going to get going.
Wesley Chan
Oh, that's up to Mel. I. We all want her to IPO and we all want her to do very, very well. But you know, when Mel decides that that's the right time, we will all cheer her on and support her and help her ring the bell.
Caroline Hyde
And so when we're thinking about those liquidity moments, you're then thinking about how you allocate recently raised funds into the next generation of Canvas. You're looking at how you're growing future knees. But where, where are your limits? Where, where is it that you catch attention right now? Because it feels as though AIR is disrupting every single industry group at a rate that we just cannot really comprehend.
Wesley Chan
Yeah, it's incredible how, how it's affecting everything. We just did a company called Strand Therapeutics that uses AI to predict how to create cancer drugs using MRNA and to help, you know, cure versions of cancer that, you know, we used to, used to kill people. It's incredible, right? And so, you know, companies like that, we have another company, Invader, that's found multiple drugs, drugs, their next drug that they're, that they're developing and they use AI to figure out how to find drugs out of natural ingredients.
Caroline Hyde
Like. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of biotech here, there's a lot of medical application. Why are you the right person to seek out which of these startups in the medical area is the right one? I mean, your background is, is unique and it's very much deeply intertwined with Google and with what we think of as a software.
Wesley Chan
Yeah, you know, when I was one of the founding partners of Google Ventures and one of the great things is that Google has put billions of dollars into health care companies and medical companies and life science companies and I got to help Start that team. So I've been doing it for 16 years and then we can find these great companies like Invader or Strand. It's such a non obvious use of AI, right. Everybody's talking about AI for presentations or AI for legal or AI for whatever else. And we're thinking about it. How do we cure life threatening diseases using AI? And that's a very non obvious is Contrarian insight.
Ed Ludlow
These companies, where, where geographically are they concentrated?
Wesley Chan
They're everywhere in the world.
Ed Ludlow
That's right.
Wesley Chan
Beauty. You know, Beta is in Boulder, Colorado, Strand is in Boston, Formation is in New York. So we don't care where the company is as long as you're working on something that changes the world significantly.
Caroline Hyde
What about globally, Wesley? How are we faring US ecosystem versus everywhere else?
Wesley Chan
You know, you know a lot of people talk about China, but you know, all of the companies that we're working with are using US models and using, you know, the models behind that we're developing here. So I think the US still has a fantastic lead. And you know, we're heavily invested here in the us we have a few global companies. Canvas obviously in Australia.
Ed Ludlow
Right.
Wesley Chan
But you know, they're also using some of the models developed in the us they're using their own model that they're building in Australia as well with a team they bought called the Nautilus AI. And you know, I think you see this talent everywhere in the world.
Ed Ludlow
Just if we could just ending little bit on Human X, you know, your reflection of the first 24 hours. You know, it was very interesting to be there last night. I was on stage with Dr. Faye Fei Lee. People very engaged with what she had to say about world models as opposed to language models. What do you want to get out of this?
Wesley Chan
I think that there's such an exposure to so many people's ideas. Like no one, no one sat there and thought that on the mobile phone. And we go back to mobile phone 10 years ago when I started investing, right. No one sat there and said like, oh, we use a mobile phone in
Ed Ludlow
the book, a car, right?
Wesley Chan
And if you think about what I will be 10 years from now, you don't know what the heck it's going to do, right? It might, it might cure cancer, it might go do something. The imagination is wonderful and Humanex is bringing all those people together to figure out where we can use AI for things that we never imagined 10 years ago.
Ed Ludlow
Wesley Chan of FPV Ventures, thank you, thank you very much. The crew of Artemis 2 is on their way home. The four astronauts broke the record for distance traveled by humans in deep space. 252,756 miles. And saw the far side of the lunar surface with their own eyes. At around 6:43pm New York time Monday, the Orion spacecraft slipped behind the moon and out of radio contact with Houston. This was the moment just before. To all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you. From the Mars Houston copies.
Caroline Hyde
We'll see you on the other side.
Ed Ludlow
After about 40 minutes, the Orion capsule re established contact.
Tyler Kendall
Houston, we have you the same and it is so great to hear from Earth again.
Ed Ludlow
The crew has been sharing their lunar observations with NASA, received congratulations from President Trump and witnessed a solar occasion. Eclipse is the closest humans have been to the moon in more than 50 years.
Caroline Hyde
Car extraordinary. And look, it's the closest they've been. They want to get even closer. And this is why this mission in many ways is sort of a dress rehearsal of. So it's like what are we hearing about the science, the way in which we're going to get people back on it.
Ed Ludlow
Yeah, early as 2028, you know, to get a human or astronaut landing mission. And the dress rehearsal because it tests the Orion spacecraft, the Square Celeste launch system, you know, that's why we decamped to Kennedy Space center last week.
Caroline Hyde
I mean, it's been emotional and, and very reflective of these astronauts in many ways. But there's still more days to go.
Ed Ludlow
Yeah, there is a geopolitical context of a race against China who want to get to the moon in 2030. But for these three American astronauts and one Canadian is feat of human engineering and human ability. And the world was watching millions of them on the live feeds last night
Caroline Hyde
and now continue to do so. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.
Ed Ludlow
Yeah, a lot to recap, a lot of breaking news. A lot in the markets with or in Iran. And that intel tariff app story recap on the pod, you know exactly where to find it. This is Bloomberg Tech.
T
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Episode Title: Intel Joins Musk’s Terafab Project with Tesla, SpaceX, xAI
Date: April 7, 2026
Hosts: Caroline Hyde (New York), Ed Ludlow (San Francisco)
This episode unpacks several major stories shaping the tech sector:
Throughout, the hosts and their guests maintain a direct, analytical tone, breaking down complex technical and financial developments for a broad audience.
[02:03 – 12:38]
“We’ve got lots of technology that they need, whether it’s packaging, whether it’s chip design, whether it’s manufacturing technology and we’re just very happy to be part of this project.” [03:38]
“Elon Musk wants to build data centers in space... In this case Elon Musk clearly wants to set up fabs instead of focusing on data centers... For Intel, it’s just another avenue to capture in terms of this build of the AI infrastructure that we are seeing around us.” [04:07]
“Intel has all the most important pieces right now. It's a U.S.-based company with U.S.-based production that makes CPUs and has advanced packaging. These are all things we need for the future of AI. Three years ago they wouldn’t matter. Right now each is absolutely critical.” [08:05]
[12:38 – 20:25]
“The approach of all the big players... is to diversify around all of these large chip makers... The chip companies that help them the most, that execute the best, will get the volumes. That’s why execution’s so important right now.” [11:28]
[02:25 – 18:45]
"I think we just need to stay put for now and monitor the situation... Oil prices staying elevated put pressure on global growth and upside risk to inflation.... There’s still a lot of uncertainty, and certainly risk tilted to the downside." [16:01]
[27:03 – 30:54]
“The demand... has really shot through the roof in the past few months... very, very strong enterprise growth. They're going to need to ramp up that compute.” [28:18]
[30:54 – 33:16]
"This was definitely the memory story... almost 90% of that quarterly earnings have come from the crucial memory department." [32:02]
[36:16 – 42:31]
“This is the best time to build in this country, period. We now have the five forces aligned... Capital, policy, technology, talent, customer demand... Only country where that was the case before was China.” [38:10]
[42:51 – 48:26]
“Everybody’s talking about AI for presentations or legal... we're thinking about it: how do we cure life-threatening diseases using AI? That's a very non-obvious... contrarian insight.” [46:28]
[48:26 – 50:21]
“The economics of chipmaking are brutal. You have to get it right.”
— Ed Ludlow, [04:59]
“Intel has all the most important pieces right now... CPUs, advanced packaging, US-based production... Each one of those things is absolutely critical [for AI].”
— Gil Lurie (DA Davidson), [08:05]
“The approach of all the big players... is to diversify around all of these large chip makers...[so they] aren’t beholden to Nvidia.”
— Gil Lurie, [11:28]
“This is the best time to build in this country, period. We have the five forces aligned: capital, policy, technology, talent, customer demand.”
— Neil Susan (Eclipse Ventures), [38:10]
“I invested in Canva 13 years ago... Canva is an AI company today. It’s the third most accessed way people access AI, after ChatGPT and Google.”
— Wesley Chan (FPV Managing Partner), [44:24]
“Formation Bio uses AI to predict clinical trial results for drugs—like a knee drug that regrows cartilage and prevents knee replacements.”
— Wesley Chan, [43:25]
On Artemis 2:
“To all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you. From the moon, Houston copies.” [49:07]
“Houston, we have you the same and it is so great to hear from Earth again.” [49:15]
This episode delivers a comprehensive look at the intersection of advanced semiconductor manufacturing, the rapidly evolving AI supply chain, global market volatility, and the next wave of tech investing—from moonshots to moon landings. Intel’s pact with Elon Musk’s Terafab grabs the headlines, but the broader message is that in this era of uncertainty and competition, both technical execution and strategic partnerships are more essential than ever. The U.S. seeks to reassert its industrial and technological leadership, with startup backers and moon-bound astronauts alike signaling a new confidence and ambition in American innovation.