Bloomberg Tech – March 11, 2026

Episode Theme:
A sweep across the latest in global tech with deep dives on Oracle's AI momentum, Meta's ambitious custom AI chip plans, Uber integrating Amazon Zoox robotaxis, a major China crackdown on agentic AI, and leadership insights from tech investors and executives.

Hosts: Caroline Hyde (NY), Ed Ludlow (SF)

Main Topics and Highlights

1. Oracle’s AI-Powered Boom and Market Confidence

[02:03–11:42]

• Earnings Beat and AI Demand:
  Oracle posts robust sales ($90B fiscal year run rate) and signals no slowdown in AI computing demand, pushing shares up ~11–12%.

  • CapEx steady at $50B; backlog growing.
  • Execution and credit risk in focus: Will Oracle manage to deliver on investor expectations while managing cash?

• Execution Risk and Market Perception:

  • Analyst highlights strong on-time delivery:

    “90% of what we delivered this quarter was on time or ahead of schedule.”
    — Clay McGlork, Oracle Co-CEO, quoted by Brody at [04:29]

  • Oracle’s share of CapEx in the economy aligns with 2018 levels — not overheated according to Goldman Sachs’ Matthew.

  • Investors fixated on earnings as the main driver of equity prices:

    “80 to 90% of the return comes from earnings. … The outlook for prices is really predicated on do you expect earnings to grow?”
    — Matthew (Goldman Sachs), [06:24]

  • Bullish but measured:

    • S&P 500 earnings growth predicted at 10%, but total return est. at 7% due to expected multiple compression.

• Software Sector Anxiety:

  • Not an existential crisis, more evolution:

    “Reality is probably somewhere in between what we've seen in terms of the status quo and the existential concerns that investors have.”
    — Matthew, [07:52]

• Geopolitical Risk Insight:

  • Market shocks from Middle East conflict are sharp but temporary:

    “After about eight weeks, fundamentals … reassert themselves and the prior trend in financial markets resumes.”
    — Matthew, [09:06]

• Impact of AI on Jobs:

  • Goldman foresees 1M jobs/year displaced by AI, but “more new jobs created than jobs destroyed” over the long run:

    “We think that a lot, if not all of those jobs lost to AI will be replaced by new jobs ... As we think about the net impact longer term, we're bullish.”
    — Matthew, [10:40]

2. Meta’s Homegrown AI Chips: Ambition and Execution

[14:35–18:49]

• Inside Meta’s Chip Lab:

  • Meta is rolling out four new internal AI chips (MTIA series) through 2027, designed to accelerate the company's internal AI workloads (from recommendations to GenAI inference).
    • MTIA 300: In production for ranking/recommendations.
    • MTIA 400: Near deployment, expands into GenAI workloads.
    • MTIA 450 & 500: Targeting advanced GenAI inference; launching in 2027.
  • Speeding up the chip design cycle to match fast-evolving AI model needs.

    “AI models are evolving faster than traditional chip cycles. So Meta is speeding up the design process aiming to improve performance, cost and power efficiency at scale.”
    — Ed Ludlow, [15:37]

• Parallel Sourcing Approach:

  • Meta continues to buy massive GPU capacity from Nvidia and AMD, but custom silicon used where workloads are unique to Meta:

    “The strategy is buy compute at scale from Nvidia and AMD but also use custom silicon where matters. Workloads are uniquely its own ... In the AI race it isn’t just about the models, it's about the compute behind them.”
    — [15:58]

• Acquisitions to Build Talent:

  • Attempted (and rebuffed) buyout of Furiosa (Korean chipmaker); successful acquisition of Revos added 400+ engineers to MTIA teams.

    “We then reported ... Meta was successfully able to acquire Revos and with that its bench of talent … making these four different chips and they're able to do that in parallel with that additional headcount.”
    — Riley Griffin, [17:11]

  • Massive, but undisclosed, investment — billions inferred.

• Chip Rollout Cadence:

  • Aggressive timeline: two new generations annually, next two in six-month increments; 450/500 due 2027.

3. Databricks: Automation, GenAI, and Democratizing Data Science

[19:53–25:38]

• Product Launches & Acquisitions:

  • GenieCode: Autonomous AI assistant automating code-to-production, pipeline monitoring, and auto ML for predictions.

    “Genie Code can build a machine learning model ... it just automates all of that for you.”
    — Ali Ghodsi, CEO, [20:26–21:11]

  • Acquisition of Quotient, focused on quality measurement and monitoring for code/AI outputs (consistency and reliability in AI pipelines).

• Strategy:

  • Broader platform play (“product diversity”): Adding tools for both technical and less-technical employees.
  • Partnerships and in-house adoption of Replit for non-technical business staff.

    “Replit is excellent … these are people that would never otherwise even touch code and they're now using Replit themselves and they're building things that actually work.”
    — Ghodsi, [24:09]

• AI Democratization:

  • Internal use: Among 10,000 employees, 3–4,000 technical, 5–6,000 using low-code/no-code tools.

• IPO Outlook:

  • Not rushing to public markets:

    "I don't think right now is the best time to be public. ... We will be public, but I don't think now is a very good time."
    — Ghodsi, [25:10]

4. China Cracks Down on Agentic AI Apps ("OpenClaw")

[25:38–29:04]

• Government Control vs. Open AI Solutions:

  • Beijing restricts state banks and SOEs from using agentic AI tools like OpenClaw due to security concerns.

  • OpenClaw — rapidly adopted agentic AI (automation via messaging and doc/finance APIs), but creator Peter Steinberger (now at OpenAI) admits security was not initially a focus.

    “He was the first to admit that security and safety wasn't his first focus when building out what has become a hugely popular tool.”
    — Caroline Hyde, [27:52]

  • This mirrors US institutional wariness; now China, seeing both huge consumer/company uptick and risk, is stepping in late.

5. Uber to Offer Zoox Robotaxi Rides

[29:04–33:09]

• Uber–Zoox Partnership Announcement:

  • Robotaxi (Amazon Zoox) rides coming to Uber in Las Vegas (expanding to LA), summer 2026.
  • Initial scale limited; riders will sometimes be assigned a Zoox autonomously based on algorithms—not direct selection.
  • Uber brings distribution/network to Zoox; compared to food delivery strategy.

    “There’s this narrative of it's either or, ... but also using the platform to expand their distribution. ... I see the same thing with Zoox as well.”
    — Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO, [30:11] "Uber is not a ride, it's a platform, a marketplace for increasingly different kinds of rides."
    — Ed Ludlow, [29:57]

• Data Sharing:

  • Uber to share traffic pattern data with Zoox, giving the startup the scale and operational insight required for major events and scaling.

    “The combination of the traffic patterns that we see and the customers that we see, ... with Zoox's proprietary data ... will help Zoox be even more efficient as an entity going forward.”
    — Dara Khosrowshahi, [32:32]

• Business Model:

  • Focus initially on experience, not immediate monetization details. Aim is “customer experience first; the economics take care of themselves over the long term.”
    — Uber/Zoox CEOs, [31:55–32:19]

6. Defense Tech and Reshoring Industrial Capacity

[36:01–41:30]

• Pax VC Launch and US Supply Chain Issues:

  • Michelle Volz, ex-Andreessen Horowitz, founds Pax VC ($50M) to fund early-stage defense, supply chain, and “American dynamism” startups.

    “We've outsourced a lot of our manufacturing overseas to China and now are realizing we need to be able to resupply our weapons ... domestically.”
    — Michelle Volz, [36:45]

• Focus Areas:

  • Robotics, domestic mining for critical minerals, biosecurity, and AI for cybersecurity.
  • Investing in “Pax Technica” — belief that global stability is preserved through technical superiority, not just old models of “Pax Americana.”

    “The eras of relative stability have been defined by who is in power and who has the most technological power.”
    — Michelle Volz, [37:52]

• Venture Perspective:

  • Prefers partnering with early-stage founders who have a “unique right to win.”

    “The founders should be the smartest people in the room. Venture capitalists should not be.”
    — Michelle Volz, [40:25]

7. Other Rapid-Fire Tech Headlines ("Talking Tech")

[41:37–45:02]

• Anthropic:

  • Warns in court that it could lose billions after being labeled a US supply chain risk by the Trump administration; legal battle ongoing.

• Grubhub:

  • Testing drone delivery in New Jersey.

• Nintendo:

  • Huge spike in shares (+10.5%), driven by the "Pokemon Pickopia" game.

• Synopsys/Ansys Deal:

  • Synopsys CEO Sassin Ghazi:

    • AI is essential for handling chip complexity and design/production speed.

    • Reducing design cycle from 18-24 months to ~12 months:

      "That's not possible without injecting AI everywhere in the flow."
      — Sassin Ghazi, [42:55]

    • Not all software is commodity; “engineering” software has deep technical moats based on solvers/physics.

8. Google Invests in "Anti-Slop" Kids AI Content

[45:02–47:20]

• Google’s $1M Backing of Animash:
  • First strategic kids’ content bet (competing with Moonbug) to combat the problem of slop—low-quality, spammy, AI-generated video content on YouTube and YouTube Kids.

    “Slop is what we are now often calling spammy, clickbaity, repetitive, low quality, slimy looking content that you see ... on every major social media platform ... particularly concerning for younger viewers.”
    — Alexandra Levine, [46:11]

Notable Quotes

• Oracle/Goldman Sachs:

  “80 to 90% of the return comes from earnings. … The outlook for prices is really predicated on do you expect earnings to grow?”
  — Matthew (Goldman Sachs), [06:24]

• Meta Custom AI Chips:

  “AI models are evolving faster than traditional chip cycles. So Meta is speeding up the design process aiming to improve performance, cost and power efficiency at scale.”
  — Ed Ludlow, [15:37]

• Uber/Zoox Partnership:

  "Uber is not a ride, it's a platform, a marketplace for increasingly different kinds of rides."
  — Ed Ludlow, [29:57]

• Defense Tech/VC:

  “The founders should be the smartest people in the room. Venture capitalists should not be.”
  — Michelle Volz, [40:25]

• YouTube/AI Content for Kids:

  “Slop is … spammy, clickbaity, repetitive, low quality, slimy looking content … particularly concerning for younger viewers …”
  — Alexandra Levine, [46:11]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Oracle AI Earnings & Markets: [02:03–11:42]
• Meta AI Chips & Strategy: [14:35–18:49]
• Databricks: GenAI Tools & Democratization: [19:53–25:38]
• China Clamps Down on Agentic AI: [25:38–29:04]
• Uber + Zoox Robotaxis: [29:04–33:09]
• Venture/Defense Tech & Pax VC: [36:01–41:30]
• Rapid Tech News (“Talking Tech”): [41:37–45:02]
• Google’s Children’s Content Push: [45:02–47:20]

Tone and Flow

Informative, fast-paced, and deeply focused on the intersection of financial markets, technological innovation, and societal change, with frequent exclusive insights and an emphasis on the business impact of emerging technologies. The hosts’ tone is incisive but approachable, with guests providing special expertise on unfolding trends.

Summary Prepared for Listeners Seeking Core Insights Without Spending an Hour—All Market, Tech, and Innovation Substance, No Ads or Fluff.