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Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News you allocation right We've been obsessed about GPUs and accelerator cards, but you need to have an equivalent if not greater number of CPU in the design of the server. And that's an area that intel and AMD have done well to get some market share where Nvidia is trying to dominate the whole system and clearly two big moves outsized moves almost car for an analyst upgrade, but intel in particular soaring high at the moment. Yeah wants to watch big points contributors. Let's just flip gears a little bit and talk about, well where's one out on some of their investments of late hedge fund investors well, they haven't had it this good since the aftermath of the financial crisis. Data compiled by industry tracker Hedge Fund Research showing that back in 2025 the industry posted its best year since 2009. Gains are about 12.6% on average, but some scoring much higher than that. Bloomberg hedge fund reporter Hannah Palmer joins us now. And we like to think about the way in which they've all embrace and the quant funds are doing well. But who really shone in 25 and why? Yes. So you know, it's such an interesting year because funds across strategies, across sizes generally did very, very well. And when we look at the big winners, you're looking at some of the tech focused firms. If you look at Whale Walk, they did quite well. If you look at Light street, they got over their high watermark from the really difficult 20 to 23 period. You're seeing some of the best returns over at Bridgewater. If we look at macro. 90%. Exactly. Excellent numbers. So kind of across strategies you're seeing winners across pretty much every Strategy Shaw Over 20% in the multi strategy strategy. So pretty, pretty interesting and good news for investors and hedge funds. You know how when I was growing up in the Bloomberg school of hedge funds 10 years ago on the TV desk, that's what hedge funds do, make cash out of chaos. Isn't that the whole point? Is there anything unique in this bucket of data that we've got about what they're doing differently? AI playing a role, talent stepping up and delivering big performance? Yes. So what makes the year interesting is the volatility that we're seeing is the kind that goes in and out pretty frequently and provides great times to get in on different types of trading opportunities. So AI has been a great lifter for a lot of the tech focused funds. But if you look for example at Viking Global, which Viking doesn't do as much tech and AI as say other funds like other tiger cubs, CO2 for example, they didn't do as well. They were only up about 8.6% putting them lower in the pack of tech funds. Tiger Global, which we typically think of as a tech investor, they did well in their long book but their short positions into those gains putting them also lower in the pack, more than 7% gains. So you know, everyone made money but the real question is who made the double digit games. And you see would like to read good returns from a lot of those sort of popular names. Bloomberg's Hammer Palmer with the hedge fund breakdown. Thank you very much. Now JP Morgan kicked off a week of Big bank earnings today. One area of focus, the impact I could have on spending at those banks. CEO Jamie Dimon insisting the bank will be spending on AI to drive efficiencies but also keep up with competitors. There was a surprise in the expenses number for JP Morgan Organ of the Year 9 billion above what the streets saw. And they wanted to know if I was to blame. Let's bring in Alexandra Visa Day. She's co CEO and co founder of Evident, a platform that benchmarks and tracks adoption across the financial services sector. Was really interesting. Earnings call often is for Jamie Dimon. But this was Wells Fargo's Mike Mayo basically saying like, hey, those expenses seem very high and you've been talking up a lot. JP Morgan is that directly correlated. And Jamie Dimon's point was kind of like we will be spending, it's just not as much as you think we have to because everyone is. Is JP Morgan ahead in this implementation race in the banks? Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was interesting to see the, the discussions today, but sort of stepping back and overall as, as you know, we map the biggest banks in North America and Europe on their AI deployment and JP Morgan is very much leading the outnumber one three and a half years in a row. So they are leading on AI deployment. They are leading on, you know, deploying and embedding AI throughout the bank. They do also spend a lot on tech and a growing proportion of that is on AI precisely to be able to take over time some of these costs out. A lot of the deployment we do see is in those, are in those internal processes, processes and to create the efficiency gains, but also some on revenue uplift. Alexandra, a lot of this question is about when those efficiency gains come. Have they already come? Are they coming in 26 or is it more still longer term from your perspective? Yeah, I mean it's interesting, right, because we're three years into the Jenny journey and that was a journey with that started with a lot of excitement and testing and now use cases moving into production. But there seems to be a real sort of shift in the tectonic plates now where it's looking at fully embedding it across the banks and every, across the bank in every function and line of business. And with that you need to have platform architecture that's built for scale. And what we are definitely seeing is, is some return on investment coming through on the efficiency side. So automation of KYC processes and you know, going into the asset management side, the investment banking and so on and so forth. So really across the entirety of the bank. So it's still early days in terms of the, the actual sort of return and the roi. I still think that there's some years to two it will take for this to really fully come through. And then we've also got agentic use cases coming, you know, going into production. And that's where I believe we're going to see the real impact. But it is going to take another three to four years for agentic and fully autonomous agentic use cases to be fully embedded and to see that, you know, really fundamental and sizable ROI that we know is coming. But it is going to take a couple of years for the Jenny I to fully come through and maybe three to four years for Gentex AI impact to fully come through. It was interesting that basically that question about AI for Mike Mayer was at the tail end of the call. Before that, there was myriad of questions for Jamie Dimon around the Apple onboarding with the credit cards there. But we're also talking more broadly about their investment banking miss and indeed credit card calls. But Alexander, push us forward. We've got a whole host of other earnings coming thick and fast. Where will they be talking about AI most abundantly? Well, so, you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's a time when there are a lot of things going on. So I might not be front and center this time. It has been over the years some of the questions that have been asked in the earnings calls. There's a lot of shareholder pressure to understand where the bank is. We've definitely seen a shift in terms of banks being much more clear and that it is a high priority, that it is part of the senior leadership team and the CEOs are fully understanding that it has to be embedded across the bank and has to be core. So I expect that there will continue to be, not only in the earnings calls, but as we've seen throughout the year and investment days and investor days and in press releases when partnerships and so on are getting produced by the banks. The discussion on AI is an ongoing one and throughout the year, but we've got some earnings growth calls coming through from the big banks. You know, Goldman Sachs has also made a big announcement late last year about their 1 GS 3.3.0 program, which is really about fully transforming the bank end to end, top down, bottom up for, you know, fully embedding AI. So it's going to be really exciting to see what numbers might be associated with that. The leading banks are going to be talking about roi. I believe there has been a lot of of talk with numbers associated with it in the last year. I think that these numbers are probably tip of the iceberg and we're going to see these being updated and upgraded in 2026. Alexandra, we just have 30 seconds but how competitive is JP Morgan in attracting and paying top talent in a very. Yeah, it's, it's very good at getting top talent. It is a place that is known for putting AI first. Jamie Dimon was very clear about that all the way back in 2017 where he said we're going to be an a first enterprise. They are able to attract top talent. They're in competition with the tech sector. Everyone's looking for that top talent that really do the difficult systems. We think everyone's thinking about the shark tanking, taking talent from tech companies that can rethink the processes end to end and completely change the system. Remember, the technology here is just 10% of the problem. 90% of the problem lies in the sort of rethinking of the processes entirely. You almost have to build a digital twin, rethink the process and put it back in. That talent is what J.P. morgan can attract. Alexander was a visit always great to catch up with you. Co CEO Co Founder of Evident we thank you. Coming up we bring you Bloomberg's exclusive conversation with the Baidu CFO Henry he on the US China race from New York. From San Francisco, this is Bloomberg Tech. Every day millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We work round the clock and have the facts at our fingertips. We're fast and effective but incredibly patient. And we're built on Sierra, the leading AI powered customer experience platform. No hold music, just answers and action. Visit Sierra AI to learn more. That's Sierra AI. Support for the show comes from public. On public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures these days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent. Secure any agent Agent Okta secures AI. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lamented the defense industry's risk averse culture and praised Elon Musk during a Visit to the SpaceX Starbase launch site. That was last night. Hegseth announced plans to integrate Musk's GROK AI platform into the Defense Department system and to make the US military a quote AI first war fighting force. Take a listen. We need to be blunt here. We can no longer afford to wait a decade for our legacy prime contractors to deliver the next perfect system, only to find that it's delivered years behind schedule and cost 10 times what it should. Winning requires a new playbook. Elon wrote it with his algorithm. Question every requirement, delete the dumb ones and accelerate like hell. Kara people saying why is PEG set at Space X? Well Space X has $4 billion in government contracts alone just for development, but one of few carriers Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy that's authorized to take Pentagon sensitive satellites to orbit. It's also interesting timing regarding Grok, right? I mean already good Google AI is integrated within Defense Department, but to add GROK at this moment when there's been a lot of concern about what it has been producing in terms of imagery and they're like a notable step forward in that respect in that relationship and deepening. At least a week ago the President put on true social that he wanted to cap salaries of defense companies who weren't performing for their CEOs. Today we have news that the government is taking a significant stake in a top five defense contractor L3. Harris, what do we need to know? Yeah, the idea that they're going to be spinning off an IPO of the unit the missile solutions business. They're going three hours to retain control of the missile solutions business but second half of 2026 they're looking at spinning it off. And we understand the Department of Defense is set to invest $1 billion in convertible preferred security. I mean it's lifted the shares up 2%, up 6% at one point. And meanwhile in Asia, Baidu CFO Henry her spoke with Bloomberg's Stephen Engle about that company's AI spending of over $14 billion. Listen to this interview. In the November earnings call last year we actually disclosed one numbers since earning came out back in 2023 we have invest over 100 billion RMB in terms of investment which is a huge investment that's on the one side. On the other end we do see a great return on that. For example right now our our cloud revenue increasing about 128% on a wire wide basis in Q3 for the cloud. And also we are seeing over kind of 200% growth on the search transformation. So for example last year we only have 3% of the contents are generating for the AI for our traditional search. But right now this number is increasing about 18% and we're seeing kind of three digits increasing on the traditional search to the AI new search. And also for the robot taxi as I mentioned it's actually deliver over a quarter million drives every every week and we're seeing that number is on accelerated a gross paces. So I think the investment we are seeing the good trends of the monetization and the computer on the return. How do you see the difference between how AI is evolving in China versus you know what we've all been following very closely in the mag 7 and what's happening Open air and others in the United States. Essentially there are concerns about over allocation of capital and not getting the kinds of returns. So there could be potentially a bubble. China there are their bubble concerns as well. But there is a bifurcated air space in China as well. The big boys like you and Tencent and Bytedance and Alibaba and then there are new up and comers that are hitting the market in Hong Kong like Mini Max and others. Those LLMs that are starting to make a dent. But you guys have the capital base. Is there a bubble forming as well in the investment in China because of the over investment? I want to call it two tails of the city. Obviously I think if you want to decompose the drivers. I think there are four things. The data model, computing power as well as applications. Right. So I think if you analyze this four different things. US China does have a lot of different contexts. For example right now in the US is a lot of investment on infrastructures but today if you look at electricity, cable network in China is already being built in the past few years. So if you really want to compare on IOI or on the infrastructure side, I think China does have certain advantage on that. And also in the past 10 years of the mobile Internet age in China there are a huge accumulation of data. That data become important for today's inferences because a few years ago everyone has got beautiful foundation model right so so to your question I think in my view any company have a close loop or full stack of the computing power data and ownership of application user cases will be sustainable on AI. Baidu CFO Henry hey there talking a full stack. We're going to talk about Alphabet next coming up. Dan Ives of Wedbush joining us to talk about that deal. The impact of Apple choosing Google's AI to power Siri that's next. This is Bloomberg Tech. New research out today on Apple's plan to use Google's AI to power it. Siri Voice Assistant and much more. Bloomberg Intelligence writing that the deal highlights the cost advantages of Google's Tensor chips over rivals. Analysts also welcome confirmation in the news, which Bloomberg reported late last year. Remember now, Wedbush reaffirmed its $350 price target. It's the highest on the street for Apple after the deal, I'm pleased to welcome Dan Ives, Managing Director Senior Equity Analyst at Wedbush, who has that number. So let's talk about the benefits for Apple first. Why the reaffirmation of 350? Why is this good for them and Apple Intelligence? Look, they've had an invisible AI strategy. I mean if you go back to like the last WWE sees, you felt like Michael J. Fox back to the future, right? There was really nothing there to buy. Finally this is a huge step forward and it's not going to happen internally. Had to happen from Google Gemini looking it comes down to like if they never win DOJ suit, this doesn't happen. So, so it speaks to just brick by brick they're finally building and I think this is going to be instrumental to the valuation for Apple this year. If you look at the statement that was put out, it was very much for the time being this is going to be embedded in Apple foundation models. The idea is that they, they pull away. They are able to get a grip on their own foundational models and indeed Siri becoming actually useful. Do you think they will distance themselves from Google over time? Look, I think there's a better chance of me playing NFL playoffs than Apple doing something internally at this point with the reality is this is also a game of high stakes poker negotiation that's going on to terms of a broader deal with Google that I think they're ultimately going to have to do. Like I think this will be exclusive and because my view is that there's going to be some sort of subscription service freemium. You also need a platform for developers and it comes down to like the revolution like Apple's watch it from the sidelines, from the stands they need to get into the game and that's why we talked about $7500 per share that this adds to the story as they execute on the consumer AI revolution finally going to Cupertino. Dan, you you had advocated on more than one occasion that Apple buy perplexity with this confirmation of Gemini being the underpinning of Siri. Is such a transaction still necessary to your mind? Yeah. And that it's a great point but a lot of that was based on as the DOJ suit was going on with Google there was a sort of period there where Apple needed to do something. Now obviously perplexity came and went. They're clearly not going to do that but once Google won the DOJ suit that was sort of like green light lights on and now it's sort of good time for big tech. And I think that speaks why Apple did the deal. And look you look at Google, Gemini what they've done, you go back a year ago, it's phenomenal and I think Apple is making that bet. It's going to be a much different 2026 and 2025 relative to Apple when it comes to AI. Again carriages made the point that Apple was very careful in the statement to explain which parts of series functionality would be underpinned by by Gemini. The other way of looking at that is to say have they still got a lot of work to do to make serious sort of all encompassing AI assistant. I mean look it's a. It's an Everest like uphill battle because the reality is they've lost so many developers, they've lost so much talent. You've seen a lot changing and look and you know it as well as anyone like the the DNA of Cupertino why that is supposed to come internally and I think Cook recognize look writing on the wall. It speaks to my point that like Cook is not going to leave his CEO and leave this sort of in transition. He has to get the strategy sorted out. It's going to be a work in progress but 2.4 billion iOS devices, 1.5 billion iPhones. It's my view that the consumer AI revolution ultimately comes through Cupertino and this is a first step in that direction. Well obviously, obviously see more about in the spring and of course more wwdc. Some might say it's incredibly savvy to be a light to not have to make all the investments in the data centers to be able to say look, privacy first we're going to lean much more on edge AI. Is that actually going to be a winning formula for Apple in the in the future as models and sophistication develops? Yeah, well but also Apple is in a much different situation because of the unrivaled and install base because of where they play in the consumer. That's why like from a capex perspective they're not Microsoft, Google, you know, many other big tech players but I think they finally hit the point right met the road. They need to do something. They're going to have to incrementally spend but they're basically going to rely on Google as a partner because you cannot have the fourth industrial revolution biggest tech transition in the last 40 years come and go and they don't monetize. And I think that's something that they recognize from front and center and it's key to the stock. I mean realistically like a year from now stocks 350 or lower from here, it's all based on AI and demonetizing it. Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush with the street high price target 350 on Apple. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Karen, what an addition it was. It was. I mean we started with NASA Tech telling us about how this really shows Alphabet's prowess. Then we finish on how it's Apple's future. Don't forget to check out our podcast you can find on the terminal as well as online on Apple and on Spotify. And I have this Bloomberg. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech Tech. Coming up matter and slr Luxor double production capacity for AI powered smart glasses by the end of this year based on growing demand. Plus Microsoft seeks to quell consumer anxiety over the power price impact of data centers pledging to pay utility rates that will cover the company's costs. We discuss and Klarna CEO Sebastian Schmichowski weighs in on President Trump's call for a 10% interest rate cap on credit cards for the year. First we turn our attention to the markets that despite that core inflation print CPI coming in with 2.6%. We're looking at markets under pressure, naturally erasing yesterday's gains. We're off by 2.10of a percent on the NASDAQ 100. These aren't massive moves, but we are still seeing some risk aversion amid the geopolitical turmoil. And whether or not we do indeed get any sort of Fed Pause, seems as though the rate cut is being put to the back burner by the markets at the moment. Edge a lot of meta news this morning. The latest from Bloomberg is that talks with Essel Luxottica are around doubling capacity for Ray ban metas to 22 million units from 10 million units current in store capacity if demand's good. They're talking about maybe according to our sources, 30 million units in the year. Now that drove shares of Essel Oxytocin up in Paris Matter to the downside with other news, the confirmation of recent reporting that they're going to be trimming headcount from the metaverse carrying. Then there's the Microsoft piece of news. Microsoft has a five point plan to basically take responsibility for the cost of electricity associated with data centers. The main one is to cover its costs. But other parts of that are pieces of transparency with the communities where those data centers might impact pricing. And we've done so much reporting on that here at Bloomberg. Let's get out to Bloomberg's tech and industrial policy reporter Maggie Easton, who's in D.C. you were there at the Microsoft presentation. What do they have to say and what are those five points in the plan? Yes. So Brad Smith of Microsoft was in Washington this morning talking about this five point plan. So I think the largest piece of this is of course the electricity costs. So they've said that they're going to work with these local power utilities to ensure that Microsoft is paying for any increase in costs that they're responsible for. Now of course, the caveat there is they're not ensuring bills won't go up due to inflation or other causes. But what they're saying in accordance with what President Trump asked for yesterday, is that if the cost is due to Microsoft coming in with a data center, they're going to ensure that they're paying for that. Yeah. President Trump in a truth social saying that they don't want consumers to pick up the tab. Where else is the tab potentially going to fall? Because this isn't just all about electricity prices. There's other resources that are likely to be stretched. Definitely. So another thing that Microsoft was talking about Just this morning is the local tax base. So historically when these datacenter projects come in, Microsoft and other hyperscalers have received some sort of local incentive and Microsoft is now saying they're moving away from that and they want to make sure that they're increasing the tax base in these local communities to support the schools and yeah, just making sure that they're not accepting local incentives in some cases, even though they are still open to state and federal incentives. Maggie, with the latest from that Microsoft event, we so appreciate it. Let's turn to the business side of the equation. Nancy Tanglas with our CEO Ciofate Tangler Investments. And look, when you're thinking about the exposure you have to Microsoft and these data center build outs more broadly, how much they need to, to factor in the voter, the consumer right now. Well, I think it's super smart for them to get ahead of this. I'm sure they let the President announce it first. But Microsoft has always been good at anticipating under Nadella. And I think being a good citizen in the community is, is important. But it's not the first time we've heard resistance. Tesla got a lot of pushback when they moved to Texas. Texas, they took over a city, you know, they bought people's homes. It was, it was disruptive. And I think we're seeing the same thing, I would argue to a lesser extent with data centers. But importantly, you know, this is, this is what happens in a transformative economy. We saw it also with clean energy, push windmills, you know, solar panels. People don't like that in their backyard. So the fact that they're getting ahead of it, having a goodwill tour, taking on some of the costs, helping the community, I think that's very important. It's interesting that it comes the day after Metta went all in with Meta Compute, hiring new talent, thinking about the way in which they're going to navigate the need for compute from a sovereign perspective, from a leadership perspective. But Nancy, how much do you think that we are seeing companies dive in on this opportunity enough or are we in way some sort of bubble territory when it thinks about the build out? I don't think we are in bubble, Caroline. I mean if you just look at technology stocks in general in the night and 1999, it was something between 70 and 90% lived above the 200 day moving average. And I know you're asking about the build out stocks as well, but in, in this environment we're at 62% which is below the S and P and certainly below bubble territory. So there's some, still a lot of skepticism. We own a lot of the nuclear names, the build out names, and we think there's, I mean, the backlogs are incredible. So I, I don't think that we're in a bubble in that regard. The other big story that we're tracking, Nancy, is matter. Before I give the details, I just. Transparency, as you know, is important to the program. You have a very, very small meta position, but it's fair to say you've been bearish on matter and in particular Mark Zuckerberg, relative to the other tech companies that you're focused on. But they're cutting jobs a portion of the Metaverse team and then shifting the focus to data center, but also to the Ray Ban meta glasses. Right. Which is the modus operandi by which many now interact with matters. Voice based AI. Your thoughts on that? Well, I think it's, the sooner Zuckerberg gets Metaverse out of the vocabulary in the headlines, the better off it is for the company. So I think it's a good move. Overall, I am not probably the target market for the glasses. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I used to say, why would anyone want a camera in their cell phone? So that was about 30 years ago. So I could be wrong about that. But I do think they've obviously identified a market. The demand is there. That's where they should be focused. I never really understood the pivot to the Metaverse and that was frankly one of the reasons we exited the stock because it seemed highly distracting and I couldn't, you know, the commercial value was, was not clear. So I think he's doing the right things and he should, he should pull the band aid off and be done with it. Because the Metaverse, I don't think is the future of the company. The details which Bloomberg reported are the SLR luxottica who make the Ray Ban metas have installed capacity of 10 million units and they're in talks to double that, 20 million units. And if the demand is there this year, 30 million units. But again, it's these things. These are just normal glasses or these things, you know. As an investor that wants to leverage what's coming out of AI development, do you have a clearer sense now of how more widespread human beings actually use an either voice based or text based AI assistant? Yeah, it's hard to measure. You know, one of the things that we don't capture in GDP is free stuff. And for a lot of consumers, AI is free if you're using Google. So what we're looking at is the commercial cases. I think the adoption is much quicker than most people understand. I think we'll start to hear about that in earnings. You know I've hung my hat on productivity growth. We got it again last quarter at 4.9% which was above GDP at 4.3. So we are seeing improvements in productivity which will allow a sort of tepid job market to still be I think a disinflationary force but also will not put further stress on the consumer. Remember to nobody's talking about the fact that new job applications, new business sorry applications have started skyrocketed. So if I'm a coder that's now out of business and I start a company that has exponential value, it's different than when we gutted the industrial belt of the Midwest. So I'm really optimistic on what these gadgets and that the announcement from Apple with Google I think that's super important. It validates Google as the leader. Google's one of our 12 best ideas so we've owned it for a long time. We added it to our value portfolio in August we of 2024. It was a value stock if you remember and now it's probably the leader in in AI. I like that you go there because you've got a new $4 trillion player to add to the pack that is Alphabet Nancy. But I love the way that you push us forward to six best ideas. For example for 2026 Wal Mart among them. They're entering the Nasdaq and of course they're going all in on AI. What are some of the other key bets you're making? We're looking at them now. Oh, thanks for bringing that up Caroline. So Walmart's been a winner so far. AMD is another one of our members. CrowdStrike we think is a tailwinds are going to drive growth in that company even with and the signal acquisition was important. Tesla's in that group brother Dr. Horton we made a bet on housing which has worked so far this year because we thought the administration would jump in and then Quanta which is building out the grid and has an involvement in data centers. So we like all those names for this year. Last year's portfolio was up about 23% even with ServiceNow in the portfolio which was down 27%. So Nancy Tanglar Lafittangla Investments going through the news of the day with us. Thank you very much. Now coming up the Trump administration is said to near a trade deal with Taiwan a move that could boost itself US chips production. More on that next. This is Bloomberg Tech. The Trump administration, well, it's said to be close to a trade deal with Taiwan, a move that could lower tariffs on goods and expand TSMC plan investments in chip production right here in the United States. It's all according to sources. Here with the latest is Bloomberg senior Tech editor Mike Shepard, who can fill in the dots because this is part of a geopolitical puzzle that we continue to try and solve. What really is in Carol, let's start with some of those dots and what the deal taking shape looks like. And it is an important caveat to put in there that it is not yet a done deal. But what we know so far is that tariffs on goods from Taiwan and the US would drop to 15% from the current 20% level. And that would put the shipments from Taiwan on par with goods from South Korea and Japan, which are similar trading partners in areas of things like electronics, which are of such close interest to us. What we would also see importantly is an increase in investment by TSMC on US soil. TSMC was agree to build four additional manufacturing plants in Arizona sometime by the 2000 and 30s and that would come on top of the six manufacturing plants and two advanced packaging facilities that they have already agreed to build. And this is significant because TSMC is such a focus for the US it's the world's leading maker of AI chips. The world's leading chip maker overall, when you think about it, with all the work it does for everybody, AMD and Nvidia in producing those AI chips. But it's also been a focus of geopolitics because of the risk of China that is looming over the Taiwan Strait and is threatened to take the island back by force if needed. So we have details of a US Taiwan trade deal, but you're exactly right, chap. You also have what the US Is doing with Venezuela and then a US interaction or threat with Iran, different countries. But it actually comes right back to America's relationship with China. And it really does. In a trade deal with Taiwan would risk antagonizing China and upsetting the very delicate trade truce that took months to reach. That was the one that reopened the spigot of rare earths, minerals and rare earths magnets to the US and to other trading partners around the world. Those are such a key components and inputs for consumer electronics, for military hardware and for the auto industry. And the threat of a shutoff had really upset the global economy and really threatened to hurt supply chains around the world. Now you add in the US Moving to take over the oil supply in Venezuela. You add in the threat of US Intervention in Iran, the threat of tariffs on Iranian goods against countries that are taking in those Iranian goods. That really is something, especially considering how Iran as a top buyer of Iranian and Venezuelan oil would certainly strain relations with Beijing at a crucial moment. At Bloomberg's Mike shepherd, who leads our coverage at the intersection of politics and technology in D.C. thank you very much, Carrie. Plenty more news headlines out there today and as it's time for talking tech and on that intersection first. Next up, President Trump is calling on Elon Musk's Starlink to help restore communications in Iran as protests continue and a nationwide Internet shutdown enters its fifth day. Iranian authorities have declared Starlink terminals illegal, with the military actively jamming signals and pursuing users. Plus, Malaysia is taking legal action against Elon Musk's X and Xai, accusing them of failing to protect users. Now the move comes days after the country banned grocery block of a sexually explicit content including AI generated images of women and children. Meanwhile, SK Hynix says it plans to spend $12.9 billion to build an advanced chip packaging facility amid rising demand for AI and high performance semiconductors. Now the South Korean company is set to begin construction in April and aims to finish by 2027. Okay, coming up, we're going to speak with Klarna CEO Sebastian Shimmy. Of course, Trotsky, as President Trump calls for a proposed 10% interest rate cap on credit cards for one year. That's next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Support for the show comes from Public. On public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated Assets are completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. 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Message and data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank Naomi Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase & Co. President Trump's proposed 1 year 10% cap on credit card interest rates has sparked pushback from the financial industry. But Klarna's CEO says the plan could level the playing field. In a post on Sebastian, Chimichovsky defended Buy Now Pay Later Lending, saying it delivers lower losses and zero interest credit compared with traditional cards. He joins us now. Thank you for your time, Sebastian. It's great to have you back on Bloomberg Tech. Let's just start simply with your general reaction on the proposal. A 10% one year cap on credit card interest please. Yeah, well look, I think the President is right. You know, the Americans are being ripped off. I mean $160 billion in interest interest charges last year, 31 billion in fees. That is not a financial services industry. It's an extraction machine. So, and we've seen in Europe that putting interchange regulation and interest rate caps in place work, work really well, right? Sebastian Klarna has a credit card. That credit card has an APR of 29% outside of the purchases that are made in pay for plans or buy now, pay later plans. So you do have a credit card that is at the levels the President's talking about. Right. Are you going to reduce the APR therefore based on what the President has directed or proposed? Absolutely. And the thing is, obviously we need to follow regulation as everyone else. But the truth is if you look at the on US business model, those rates are very uncommon. And the majority of our business is built around the buy now, pay later model which actually charges only merchant fees and offers interest free credit for consumers. And that is in huge demand in the U.S. i mean, I think it's, it's quite interesting. If you look at Fed's own data, it shows that credit card rewards redistribute $15 billion annually from the poor to the wealthy. And that high FICO car consumers gain $200 a year, subprime consumers lose $55. That isn't financial product, it's a regressive tax with airline miles. Right. So I think that this is something that's starting to become apparent in the US And I think that all regulation, that makes it for better competition, but more fairer competition is good. Why have that credit card at all with that sort of level of interest rate then Sebastian, if most people are using your other offerings? Well, we, you know, that's exactly the challenge for us. Right. We're competing with an industry that basically by charging so high interest rates is offering very attractive reward systems and so forth. And so we obviously need to adopt to the market. And we're, you know, we're adopting offerings to that market as well. But what we have seen is that we also have a debit card that offers premium benefits. And so we have a plethora of products and the majority of our products are interest free and much more favorable with the customer, more, you know, appreciated by the customer. Sorry. What's interesting is you reference the Fed's own data. When you're looking at some of the other areas of data. I'm looking at the World Bank, Fed bank of Illinois, there's academics in Oregon or Arkansas who have looked into if you cut down interest rate levels, the argument goes, you cut off off access to finance writ large, you get loan sharks doing better. Sebastian, how much do you think people would turn instead to buy now, pay later if they can't have that sort of credit card availability if it was shut down because they didn't have 30% levels anymore? Well, the thing is, right if you, I mean if you look at our Average outstanding balance for us it's about $100 while on the credit card is 5300. And the whole credit card was constructed as in a way that it's trying to get you to revolve every month. That's what all of your spending is on credit. And then it's trying to get you to revolve at that 30% interest. We don't offer revolving, we do installment based because it's safer and better for the consumer. So the point is that if you have a whole industry built on the idea of maximizing out debt, that's also where the majority of that revenue flows from. And what we've proven is that if you offer credit that is more affordable, that's better for the consumer, consumer losses are actually significantly lower as well. Our charge off rate is 0.4%. You know, banks are 4.2. So there's a quite obviously their devastation is maybe they're worried about isn't for the consumers. They need those high interest rates to be able to lend that kind of money if they're having those kind of losses. So our experience is that no, if you're willing to be an affordable lender, there is a huge market opportunity there and consumers show appreciation for that model. So it doesn't have to lend, you know, it doesn't have to mean that you can't offer credit to everyone. But at some point in time when you start Moving above the 30% interest, question is should anyone borrow at that rate? And I'm not sure the answer is yes. Sebastian, who are you speaking to within the Trump administration, if anyone at all? Who do you hope to speak to to understand the plan from this point forward from the administration's perspective? Well, we're as curious as everyone else on how the implementation of this is going to do due to generally speaking, those caps have been implemented on state level in the U.S. right. So we're waiting eagerly to find out how exactly this is going to go about. But again, I think that our experience from Europe is that interchange regulation as well as inter raised caps are actually quite, quite effective way and feels like a fairer way for the American population. Paige Smith, who covers you guys, our colleague in the newsroom made a really interesting point yesterday which is how many people actually know what the APR on their credit card is? Could you reflect on any data that's crossed your desk this morning on inquiries that you've had like has the reaction from the consumer to this been I had no idea I was paying 30% on a credit Credit card. Well I think that's the whole construct of the product, right? I mean they're, they're attracting you with high rewards, they're attracting you with low interest rate and then it changes over time. The point is in the U.S. there was a McKinsey study in 2015 and identified a group of Americans called the self aware Avoiders that are about 20% of the population. Those are people that have been tricked by the credit cards. They found themselves in more depth than they wanted but they paid it back. Their annual household income, income is 20% along higher than the low income households actually. And this is the group that's using Klarna primarily. This is a group that is again self aware avoiders. I sorry to recommend something else but I would actually go and go to Netflix and what credit cards explain. And you see all the hold of tricks that banks have applied to trick people to borrow more than they need to. Sebastian, briefly your global perspective. Where in Europe have they put caps on and how has it worked? Briefly. So it's different across different, different jurisdictions. But basically Germany has among the lowest cap, France has caps. So the German cap if I remember correctly is around 14, 15% in France is close to 1819. So those are caps that are quite effective. There's also other things that people do. It's real time pooling of loan to kind of look at your total exposure to old banks. So there's a number of, I would argue pretty effective ways to help people avoid the most negative type of borrowing. Sebastian, great to have you back on the show. Thank you. Sebastian Chimney Koski Co Founder CEO of Klarna Coming up we talk a bit more about banks for their earnings, what it means for that adoption. This is Bloomberg Tech Foreign. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. There are two big movers in the markets this morning and it's in the chip space to take a look at intel which is now trading at its Highest level since January 2024, highest level in about two years. And AMD also up 5% both on the same analyst update KeyBank basically pointing out that in the data center context both are sold out of their cp. These days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere. You turn every field and every function. 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