Bloomberg Tech Podcast Summary

Episode: Investors Question Oracle’s Data Center Financing
Date: December 17, 2025
Hosts: Caroline Hyde (New York), Ed Ludlow (San Francisco)
Guests: Brody Ford (Bloomberg, Oracle coverage), Matt Day (Bloomberg, Amazon coverage), Tony Wang (T. Rowe Price), Mandeep Singh (Bloomberg Intelligence), Kim Forrest (Boca Capital Partners), Dara Murphy (Imprint CEO), Lauren Grosch (Bloomberg, Space reporter)

Overview

This episode tackles swirling investor concerns about Oracle’s ambitious data center expansion and the complexities of financing large-scale cloud infrastructure. The show also covers significant moves involving OpenAI, Amazon, Waymo, the evolving AI chip race, recent market performance, and notable startup news. The guests provide expertise on the strategic interplay in tech infrastructure, creative financing structures, and the broader market impacts of these developments.

Main Topics and Key Insights

1. Oracle’s Data Center Financing Turmoil

(Segment begins ~02:10)

• Background: Oracle is undergoing a “historic buildout” of data centers—seen as a high-stakes effort to transform the company and keep up with hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet. However, news broke that a $10B deal for a Michigan data center won’t be financed by its main partner, Blue Owl Capital, raising red flags.

• Investor Nerves: Questions surface over whether lenders see hidden risks. The reporting (from FT and Bloomberg) suggests anxiety around tight schedules and whether Oracle’s ambitious shift is sustainable.

  • Quote (Caroline Hyde, 03:31):
    “If all goes right, it’s transformational for Oracle and the entire industry. But all that needs to happen for that to get off is a couple things falling out. Right. And that’s the issue with what we’re seeing today… That’s giving investors a lot of anxiety that… lenders seeing something that we are not?”

• Distinction on Leases and CAPEX: Oracle is increasingly using off-balance-sheet leases for data center capacity (with long-term commitments up to $300B), as opposed to traditional up-front capital expenditures.

  • Quote (Caroline Hyde, 04:32):
    “What’s becoming more popular is renting the data centers... not pay everything up front and not have that be on your books directly… Oracle is the example that they have about $250 billion that they’re on the hook for over the next 20 years or so.”

• Uniqueness of Oracle’s Challenge: Unlike Microsoft or Amazon, Oracle’s pivot is transformative and exposes the company to higher risk due to its relative newcomer status in hyperscale infrastructure.

  • Quote (Caroline Hyde, 05:32):
    “Oracle’s spending is such a large percentage of its overall company size because it’s making a very ambitious transformation... a lot of things need to go exactly as planned for this to go right.”

2. The "Circular" OpenAI-Amazon Deal

(Segment begins ~06:01)

• Deal Details: OpenAI is in discussions to raise $10B from Amazon; OpenAI recently committed to buying $38B of compute capacity from Amazon over seven years, much of it for Nvidia chips. The new funding could see a move toward using more of Amazon’s own AI chips.

  • Quote (Ed Ludlow, 06:44):
    “So $10 billion in equity so that OpenAI can continue to afford to buy compute… from Amazon and its chips.”

• Implications: This “circular deal”—Amazon financing a customer to buy more from itself—is likened to Amazon’s recent $8B investment in Anthropic (to use Amazon’s AI chips). If OpenAI adopts Amazon’s silicon, it’s a major endorsement for AWS’s chip ambitions and could threaten Nvidia’s dominance.

  • Quote (Caroline Hyde, 07:01):
    “This would definitely be a coup for Amazon’s in-house chip making effort… If OpenAI can make the GPT suite work on top of Amazon Silicon, that’s a big deal for AWS.”

• Market Demand: There’s growing hunger for alternatives to Nvidia due to price, supply, and dependency issues.

  • Quote (Caroline Hyde, 07:48):
    “It means there’s hunger for an alternative to Nvidia... AMD has an OpenAI deal for instance… Amazon and Google’s TPUs are all making a claim.”

3. Investor Perspective: Tony Wang, T. Rowe Price

(Segment begins ~08:11)

• Circular Financing: Wang sees synergy (not just creative accounting) in the OpenAI-Amazon relationship, necessary for rapid tech evolution.
  • Quote (Tony Wang, 08:42):
    “Whenever there’s some type of creative financing, there’s always some scrutiny… But I kind of view it as, you know, there is a synergistic partnership here.”
• AI Chip Competition: Wang sees room for multiple winners due to exponential AI growth—Nvidia is a “merchant platform,” Google’s TPU as “optimized for its stack,” and more.
  • Quote (Tony Wang, 10:08):
    “I don’t think it’s winner-take-all... There are kind of multiple areas, multiple moons, and so they’re all doing their own kind of domain expertise.”
• Oracle’s Bet: Wang believes Oracle is pursuing a generational opportunity, even if market anxiety is currently high.
  • Quote (Tony Wang, 11:29):
    “Oracle definitely sees the demand signals that are probably really strong… a big opportunity that is once in a generation.”
• Investment Strategy: Wang frames AI as a multi-year, multi-phase opportunity: the infrastructure winners now, future focus on application layers.
  • Quote (Tony Wang, 13:39):
    “The next phase probably is on the application layer... large language models… software companies that have kind of been written off... if you’re a Fortune 500 company… you’re going to go to your software vendor...”

4. Market Reaction, Earnings & Tech Startup News

Market Overview

(Market check ~26:57; Oracle focus resumes ~28:42)

• Oracle shares down 5%: Reflecting concerns over its data center leasing and financing.
• Nvidia (+3.7%), Broadcom (-5%), Micron (+2.5%): Micron seen as a beneficiary of surging demand for memory chips needed for AI, but many “picks and shovels” names face volatile sentiment.

Deeper Dive: Data Center Financing with Mandeep Singh (Bloomberg Intelligence)

• Long-Term Bet: Oracle’s massive investments hinge on revenue streams not coming online until 2028–2029. Anxiety centers on whether investors are comfortable waiting so long, especially given OpenAI’s shifting dominance and rising competitors (Gemini, Anthropic, xAI).

  • Quote (Mandeep Singh, 28:42):
    “We are talking about build out of data center infrastructure for things that are going to go live... in 2028, 2029. And... do they have the patience to wait for revenues to show up three years out?”

• Debt vs. Equity: Concerns Oracle may be leaning too hard on debt at a time markets want more equity-based funding.

  • Quote (Mandeep Singh, 31:18):
    “All these companies don’t want to take too much debt. In fact, part of the reason why Oracle’s equity seems to be going down is everyone is thinking maybe they should be raising this money via equity.”

Micron & The Chip Market (with Kim Forrest, Boca Capital Partners)

• High bandwidth memory (HBM) is in short supply and massive demand due to AI. Micron, with limited competition, is well-positioned.
  • Quote (Kim Forrest, 33:51):
    “Very few providers of the big product that I want, which is high bandwidth memory, DRAM... for the foreseeable future, infinite demand is there for this product.”
• Competitive landscape: Amazon, Alphabet (TPUs), and custom ASICs (Broadcom) are seen as chipping away at Nvidia, but room remains for multiple players.
  • Quote (Kim Forrest, 37:24):
    “I think they can all win… Competition always makes it better for the end consumer… It’s also kind of interesting...that companies like Google and Amazon have been able to quickly come out with something that’s very usable.”

5. Notable Startup & Industry Moves

Imprint Payments’ $1.2B Funding

(Segment begins ~38:31)

• Mission: Modernize co-branded credit cards and loyalty programs for major brands using automation and AI.
• Scale & Efficiency: Using AI to minimize the need for manual headcount as the business grows rapidly.
  • Quote (Dara Murphy, 41:23):
    “We get to rebuild what looks like a financial company or even a fintech in the time of automation and AI... At every turn we get to choose are we going to build a new team here?... We can actually scale the company using technology.”

Relativity Space & Eric Schmidt

(Segment begins ~47:08)

• Pivot: The 3D-printed rocket startup has all but abandoned additive manufacturing in favor of traditional methods after burning through $1B. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is now CEO and a major investor (~$800M).
• Vision Shift: Schmidt’s main interest appears to be in launching data centers into space—a growing ambition among Silicon Valley heavyweights for defense/data resiliency.
  • Quote (Lauren Grosch, 48:55):
    “He purchased Relativity for a trend we’ve actually been hearing about a lot lately—putting data centers in space… so far that seems to be the prevailing reason he bought this.”

6. Other Headlines

• Waymo seeks $15B at $100B+ valuation, signaling heightened interest in real-world autonomous vehicles.
• Regulatory and Market Drama: Warner Brothers/Paramount/Netflix deal battle centers on risks around creative financing and backstopping; Jared Kushner’s affinity pulls back from the Paramount bid (20:31).
• Google’s Gemini 3 Flash Launch: New, more affordable, and efficient version of Google’s leading AI model. OpenAI counters with refreshed GPT-5.
• Tesla faces a 30-day sales ban in California over misleading full-self-driving ads.

Notable Quotes

• On Oracle’s risk:
  “A lot of things need to go exactly as planned for this to go right.” (Caroline Hyde, 05:32)

• On AI chip competition:
  “There are many races, maybe many moons.” (Tony Wang, 11:03)

• On the shift from infra to applications:
  “The next phase probably is on the application layer… there could be incumbents that are now leveraging seeing the compute costs go down and... the capabilities and models be more domain specific.” (Tony Wang, 13:39)

• On financing fatigue:
  “We are talking about build out of data center infrastructure for things that are going to go live... in 2028, 2029. And... do they have the patience to wait for revenues to show up three years out?” (Mandeep Singh, 28:42)

• On the future of AI hardware demand:
  “Is it really worth the ROI in terms of spending 5x on the next training run when things seem to be closing down when it comes to all these frontier models...?” (Mandeep Singh, 31:42)

Timed Index of Key Segments

• Oracle Data Center Worries and Financing – 02:10–06:01, 28:42–32:33 (Brody Ford, Mandeep Singh)
• Amazon–OpenAI $10B "Circular" Deal – 06:01–08:11 (Matt Day)
• Investor Reaction: Tony Wang Interview (T. Rowe Price) – 08:11–16:45
• Market Check & Reaction to AI Bubble, Picks and Shovels – 26:57–28:42, 32:33–38:31 (includes Micron and chip sector)
• Startup News – Imprint Payments – 38:31–43:23
• Relativity Space/Eric Schmidt – 47:08–51:13

Tone & Style

The hosts maintain a brisk, analytic, and questioning tone, frequently probing for the drivers behind market moves and potential for systemic risk or opportunity. Guests provide matter-of-fact, expert commentary, with occasional market metaphors ("space race," "many moons," "picks and shovels," "rockets might not make it"). The overall mood is one of uncertainty but continued enthusiasm about the longer-term potential of AI-driven transformation across industries—tempered by realism about execution and capital markets discipline.

Conclusion

This episode is a must-listen for anyone tracking the intersection of tech infrastructure, financial engineering, and AI disruption. Oracle’s foray into hyperscale cloud services faces unusual scrutiny, OpenAI and Amazon are reshaping cloud capital flows, the GPU/AI hardware race is heating up, and startups—from financial services to space—continue to attract bold bets and creative pivots. The episode ends on the note that, even amid anxiety and market volatility, technology’s next inflection points are just over the horizon.