Bloomberg Tech Podcast Summary

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)

Overview

This episode unpacks several major stories shaping the tech sector:

• Intel’s surprise announcement that it is joining Elon Musk's Terafab project—a bold new initiative aiming to revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing with Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI.
• Rapid realignment in the global AI chip supply chain, including Broadcom's expanded deal with Google and Anthropic, as hyperscalers race to build infrastructure outside Nvidia’s dominant orbit.
• Market turbulence fueled by geopolitical anxieties, especially conflict in the Middle East and President Trump’s ultimatum for a U.S.-Iran deal.
• Venture capital’s new emphasis on re-industrialization, robotics, and physical industries as drivers of U.S. growth.

Throughout, the hosts and their guests maintain a direct, analytical tone, breaking down complex technical and financial developments for a broad audience.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Intel’s Partnership with Terafab, Tesla, SpaceX & xAI

[02:03 – 12:38]

• Breaking News: Intel will join the Terafab project, Elon Musk’s ambitious initiative to build out massive semiconductor fabrication capacity, in alliance with Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Intel stock initially surged ~5% on the news.
• Nature of Involvement:
  • Intel’s strengths in packaging, chip design, and U.S.-based manufacturing are seen as critical for Musk’s vertically integrated vision.
  • (Ian King, Bloomberg chip reporter):

    “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]

  • Intel’s exact operational role in Terafab remains unclear and is not yet included in Tesla’s official 2026 CapEx guide.
• Strategic Rationale:
  • (Mandeep Singh, Bloomberg Intelligence):

    “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]

  • The economics of such a space-based chip fab project are daunting, making partnership and pooling of resources essential.
  • Potential for Intel to shore up its own underutilized fabs via Tesla/SpaceX as customers, with room for further collaboration if initial efforts go well.
• Industry Repercussions:
  • The project aims to break the industry’s reliance on Taiwan’s TSMC, at a time when every major cloud and AI player seeks manufacturing diversity.
  • (Gil Lurie, Head of Tech Research, DA Davidson):

    “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]

2. Global AI Semiconductor Ecosystem Shifts

[12:38 – 20:25]

• Customer Diversification:
  • Tesla’s chip development relationships currently span Samsung and TSMC, and the move with Intel fits a broader industry pattern of diversifying away from Nvidia, the dominant AI chip supplier:
    • Broadcom, Google, and Anthropic deepen their supply relationships.
    • Meta and OpenAI ink new deals with AMD and Broadcom for AI chips.
  • (Gil Lurie, DA Davidson):

    “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]

• Execution is Critical:
  • Intel faces a steep climb—still losing money on its foundry business and lacking sufficient customer volume. It must hit ambitious milestones to keep up with TSMC’s scale and yields.
• Outlook:
  • The AI infrastructure buildout remains red-hot, but the sector rewards only those who execute at scale and with high reliability.

3. Market Turmoil Amid Geopolitical Tensions

[02:25 – 18:45]

• The tech market is in risk-off mode, with the NASDAQ 100 down 1.5%. Oil is climbing as the Middle East conflict intensifies and President Trump sets an 8pm ET deadline for Iran to accept U.S. demands.
• Apple shares slump almost 5% on engineering setbacks for its foldable iPhone, according to Nikkei.
• (Janet Mui, RBC Brewin Dolphin):

  "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]

• Defensive Strategies: Investors are favoring gold, energy stocks, and inflation-linked bonds.

4. Anthropic, Broadcom & the Expanding AI Compute Market

[27:03 – 30:54]

• Anthropic's Growth:
  • Anthropic triples its contract for Google’s TPU chips as the demand for its AI coding assistant and new “cloud cowork agent” soars—despite public disputes with the Pentagon.
  • (Tyler Kendall):

    “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]

• Adversarial Model Distillation:
  • Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are jointly tackling “adversarial model distillation”—when competitors (especially in China) use older, open-sourced AI models to train new ones, raising fears of IP theft.

5. Samsung & ARM: Shifts in Chipmaking

[30:54 – 33:16]

• Samsung’s Blowout Quarter:
  • Samsung reported an 8x surge in profit compared to last year, thanks to high-bandwidth memory chip demand. Analysts estimate 90% of profit is now from memory chips.
  • (Zuk Yong Lee):

    "This was definitely the memory story... almost 90% of that quarterly earnings have come from the crucial memory department." [32:02]

• ARM’s New Strategy:
  • ARM plans to design and sell its own chips, moving beyond smartphones into cloud and AI data centers, despite investor skepticism over execution risk.

6. Venture Capital and the Re-industrialization Push

[36:16 – 42:31]

• Eclipse VC’s $1.3B Raise:
  • Eclipse closes new funds to back “the next era of physical industries”—robotics, energy, manufacturing—with a thesis that U.S. policy, capital, technology, talent, and demand are now aligned for an industrial renaissance.
  • (Neil Susan, Eclipse Founder/CEO):

    “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]

  • He emphasizes an “operators with capital” model—venture partners who’ve run industrial companies themselves, requisite for the scale and speed today’s opportunities demand.

7. AI Venture Investing: Going Beyond the Obvious

[42:51 – 48:26]

• Wesley Chan (FPV Managing Partner):
  • Describes a shift toward investing in companies using AI to solve non-obvious problems:
    • Formation Bio: Uses AI to predict clinical trial outcomes and select drug candidates (e.g., knee cartilage regeneration).
    • Strand Therapeutics: AI for cancer drug development using mRNA.
    • Canva: Now the third most-accessed AI platform globally, behind ChatGPT and Google, thanks to its AI-powered design tools.
  • (Wesley Chan):

    “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]

8. Artemis 2 Lunar Mission—Human Spaceflight Returns to the Moon

[48:26 – 50:21]

• The Artemis 2 crew set a new record for humans in deep space, passing behind the moon and reestablishing contact 40 minutes later. The mission is a dress rehearsal for eventual lunar surface return, in the context of a U.S.-China space race.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “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]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Intel/Tesla/SpaceX Terafab announcement & analysis: 02:03 – 12:38
• AI chip supply chain/Market risk: 12:38 – 20:25
• Anthropic–Broadcom–Google AI infrastructure: 27:03 – 30:54
• Samsung & ARM business strategy shifts: 30:54 – 33:16
• Venture capital – Eclipse & FPV discussions: 36:16 – 48:26
• Artemis 2 mission update & reflection: 48:26 – 50:21

Conclusion

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.