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IBM Representative
The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across hr, IT and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM
Ed Ludlow
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News. Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart
Bloomberg Tech Host (Ed Ludlow)
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Ed Ludlow
This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, Open Air unveils its first custom AI chip called Jalapeno, developed in partnership with Broadcom plus SK Hynix is planning to raise $29 billion in a landmark US listing, racing to increase capacity to meet memory chip demand. And Cerebras reports quarterly earnings for the first time since going public. CEO Andrew Feldman joins us later this hour. Let's get to our top story. Custom Silic and OpenAI is tackling one of AI's biggest challenges, the supply and cost of computing. The company unveiled Jalapeno Intelligence Processor. That's the Wafer, a custom AI chip developed with Broadcom, which the companies say carries a 50% lower cost versus a typical AIGP. The focus? Faster, cheaper inference Shares at Broadcom Open pretty higher around 2% were off session highs, but still up a percentage point or so. In a market where tech at the index level kind of flat, this is outperformance. Bloomberg Tech Editor Seth Figguman is here with the details. This is the big picture right. OpenAI is compute constrained, heavily reliant on Nvidia. They want to diversify. What do we need to know?
Seth Figguman
Yeah, that's right. I think, you know, opening I wants to own more of the infrastructure stack, have more flexibility here and then I think importantly use the expertise that it's developed into what makes AI models run better and more efficiently and apply that to the hardware in the same way that I think we're seeing Google do with its TPU's. And the hope would be that over time they can build a chip that's more cost efficient and also better performing and eventually cuts down its own costs.
Ed Ludlow
Bloomberg News spoke to both Hock Tan, the CEO of Broadcom and OpenAI's hardware chief. I guess you know, from Broadcom's perspective there was quite a lot of fighting talk, right? They see a lot of demand for Asics or custom silicon. But what was interesting to me is Hocked Han saying to us they see a world where every frontier lab goes to have a custom chip. Why?
Seth Figguman
Yeah, I mean it gets back to what we said about opening a minute ago. I think giving them the versatility to kind of control their infrastructure stack and build custom hardware that meets their needs. And I think Hock Tan's comment, he's saying there's not that many of these frontier model developers. So I think if you read between the lines, we're kind of talking about is anthropic going to move in this direction and that's certainly a possibility. And to your other point, I think hock10 sounds quite bullish generally on the prospects for this chip and chip chips like it going forward. He sees no limit to the demand for this kind of infrastructure and is predicting that the demand and rollout for this chip next year will exceed his prior estimates for 1.3 gigawatts of supply.
Ed Ludlow
On the open air side, it's the latest example of them being prepared to spend. Did we get any sense from our conversation with the company about how this custom chip will rank in their overall plan for computer whether it's leasing, data center buying, Nvidia chips, etc.
Seth Figguman
Yeah, you know, they remain pretty tight lipped on what the financing for this will look like. We have previously reported that OpenAI plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on these chips with Broadcom part of its hundreds of billions of dollars and in infrastructure commitments. You know, Broadcom has previously said that they are standing up a chip financing vehicle that could help OpenAI's efforts, but it's unclear if that's the primary financing mechanism for what opening I will do here.
Ed Ludlow
Bloomberg's editor, Seth Fikaman. Thank you very much indeed. SK Hynix plans to raise $29.4 billion in its US market debut, a deal large enough to rank among the top five share sales of all time. The listing comes at a time when markets are hungry for memory chips and semiconductor companies are rushing for capital to expand capacity, meet that demand. Bluebox Peter Elstrom, who leads our coverage of Asia Tech, joins us. That's part of it, right? Expand memory fab capacity, raise a lot of money. There's also this idea of like, valuation and prestige of an ADR situation where you get exposure to American investors.
Peter Elstrom
Yeah, that's right. SK Hynix is a company we don't talk about that often on the show, obviously a leading memory chip company, but they often play second fiddle to Samsung, even in South Korea. But what we've seen from them over the past three years is really they've come from quite far behind to essentially the same market cap size as Samsung at this point. And that's largely because they've been so successful in these memory chips for AI applications. The HBM chips that we've talked about before, they essentially HBM chips are DRAM chips stacked on top of each other. And their technology for doing that stacking has been very good. They got Nvidia's blessing. They've been able to jump ahead of Samsung in that market. Quite a fit. Effectively, Samsung has struggled a little bit. So now what we're seeing with this $29 billion fundraising is really them announcing to the US hey, that they're, they're ready to raise this kind of capital. They want more exposure in the US and yeah, they'd like more of that P E multiple that you see with the US Tech companies too. They've traded at a discount to that. If they get some of that ADR exposure, that may give them a little more opportunity to increase that valuation.
Ed Ludlow
And just on the mechanics, Peter. So it will be adr, I believe, on the nasdaq. Do we have a timeline for this? And how much of a surprise was it that SK plowed ahead with this?
Peter Elstrom
Well, it's certainly they've talked about wanting to raise money in the US For a while. So I think in terms of direction, this has been expected. I think in terms of magnitude, it's a bit of a surprise, though. It's a lot of money. As you mentioned, it could be one of the top five offerings of its kind ever. They plan to start trading these ADR is on July 10th. They've talked about that. They still have a couple of steps to go before they formally do that, but that's the plan at this point. They'd be able to raise that money and then as you say, they really want to spend this money on trying to solve this choke point that they've had. In the AI industry where memory chips are in short supply, prices have been soaring, which is driving profits for a bunch of companies, including Micron, as we'll see after the bell today. But they want to be able to build additional capacity in South Korea. They're also expanding in the United States where they have some facilities too.
Ed Ludlow
Bloomberg Tech Executive editor Pete Ellstrom, thank you very much. The AI hardware story and memory in particular are set to dominate market conversation today. We've got the perfect person to speak about it. Celine Wu is a portfolio manager on Lazard Asset Management's global robotics and automation team. She manages the firm's tech and AI focused ETF called Techie or TK Y, an actively managed ETF where SK Hynix and its Korean shares are the top holding. Welcome to the program.
Celine Wu
Thanks for having me.
Ed Ludlow
The situation with the memory makers is fascinating. Demand is exceeding supply. Historically that's an enviable position to be in and the shares of those companies probably reflect that. How do you see investor appetite to be exposed to the memory trade?
Celine Wu
Yeah, I mean the shares have been fantastic. But even after that I think memory stocks still offer a very compelling investment case and here's why. I don't think it's necessarily just driven by temporary supply bottlenecks. Instead I think there's something structure going on in the cycle. For example, memory strategic value is rising, changing to a primary driver for performance. Think about how cloud service providers, one of their largest clients, they are still adding more memory despite the price inflation because this is still the most cost efficient way to maximize their system level performance. And when cost, lots of the. When token demand, excuse me, the token demand is rising on the back of the inference as well as agency AI. I think the bottlenecks in terms of the capacity and bandwidth are becoming even more challenging. And this is a place where memory can come in and help navigate those challenges.
Ed Ludlow
Does it matter that investors will have the opportunity to have US listed shares? 80 hours of SK. How does that kind of change the mechanics of the market for you as well?
Celine Wu
Yeah, I mean clearly the more exposure to more diverse type of shareholder base is clearly a very positive indication for any company in the world, especially when your Fundamentals when your fundamentals are improving. So yeah, super exciting news and looking forward to the development.
Ed Ludlow
A couple of months ago I sitting down with Jensen Wong and I said to him do we even need the textbooks anymore? That would tell us Historically, memory is cyclical. It is boom and bust. All of the evidence suggests that in the context of HBM going into data center it just doesn't behave the same way. What is your thesis on that?
Celine Wu
I mean, I agree with that. I mean like I said, there's something structural going on. Yes, there is certain type of cyclical cyclicality going on in the market but at the end of, at the end of the day what you need to remember is structure side of both demand and supply. Think about the supply side. Despite the fact that all the three major companies are scrambling to add new supply there are three factors that you have to remember. Number one, manufacturing intensity, Manufacturing complexity is rising. Number two, capital intensity to open a new fab is getting more expensive and number three, the difficulty of technology migration altogether are pointing out that overall supply demand balance will stay in favor of the memory stocks. I mean I think that's really great.
Ed Ludlow
I'd love to talk about your actively managed ETF for a moment. TKY Techie Techie launched last April, right? 60 million in assets currently. What I find so interesting about the composition of it is something we've talked about quite recently on the show. There are the capital expenditure deployers and there are the capital expenditure recipients in the same basket. When you look at the top holdings is that a conscious active decision on composition?
Celine Wu
I think it's the competition from our bottom up stock selection and portfolio construction but like you said that's exactly where majority of the capital is invested in currently. I mean on the one hand there are big spenders, big capex vendors that are trying to build new competitive positioning in this space but on the other hand we find a lot of exciting opportunities on the companies that receive this capitals hardware supply chain for example. I think that's why there's more to come. In fact we just recently came from Asia where we sat down with a number of different companies in the supply chain. Everyone is telling us how they are seeing an extended order visibility from customers, how there are more conversations, concerns about LTA's. Everything collectively is highlighting that demand continues to substantially exceed the supply and the demand outlook remains pretty robust as well
Ed Ludlow
in the ETF context It's a very competitive market. How closely are you thinking about flows? And again I think people give you a lot of credit Celine for identifying SK as being just critical to the broader infrastructure build out right now. But you know what happens next to your mind, how do you see the world changing in the Next, I guess six months to 12 months.
Celine Wu
I mean even more than that. I mean that's why we focus on a tech stack and at the top of the stack we have application layer and this is for example where we are going to expect really large opportunities from physical AI. We think physical AI is going to be multi trillion trillion long term opportunity essentially. AI is important because it's a primary driver for productivity gains and historically productivity growth tend to translate to massive economic expansions. I think the same thing is going to happen for AI. All the innovation we are seeing today is eventually going to open up very significant new end markets in physical AI such as fully autonomous transformation transportations as well as a humanoid robot. That's why we are really excited about physically. And in the meantime, that being said, it will still take a couple of years for this to turn into actual corporate earnings. So here's what we focus on instead. Companies with a vertically integrated manufacturing excellence that can speed to the market with scale advantage for example or open source source platform that can expedite the acceleration adoption and everything. And lastly, novel technology companies that can massively benefit from the mass adoption of the application in itself. Something to watch on and something we're still pretty excited about.
Ed Ludlow
Celine Wu from Lazard Asset Management, first time on Bloomberg Tech. Really grateful to have you here. Thank you very much indeed. Now coming up, Matter and Microsoft are leading the spending spree on future datacenter leases, adding tens of billions of dollars just last quarter alone. We'll get into the details next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Okay, Today's big number, $850 billion. That's how much the world's largest cloud computing companies have committed in future data center leading leases leading the charge in the spending spree. Matter and Microsoft both committing tens of billions more just last quarter. Bloomberg's Brody Ford has an astonishing story and a hell of a chart to show us. What I find interesting about this is that these are future leases, essentially leases planned or announced separate from what is already in operation, what they are already contractually committed to.
Brody Ford
It's a really good point. Right? So, so we're talking about 850 billion on data centers which in many cases aren't even built yet. It's they are working through their current projects they have and these are the ones that they've committed to leasing once they're operational. And so a lot of people wonder about what's the long term spending trajectory on data centers. How long does this last? Well, there's $850 billion of leases that are going to be starting in the coming years.
Ed Ludlow
So when I was reading the story I was trying to understand the future cost. It's an amazing chart by the way we're just showing on the screen right now, like the level of capital and the commitment grows. But, but where did their current financial health and balance sheet stand relative to those future commitments? Is there a concern about that?
Brody Ford
I think there's a lot of concerns that seem seem to always ebb and flow around the ROI of all this spending. Right. I mean it feels like every quarter or two the general sentiment flips about whether the market's worried or not. But every hyperscaler seems to agree that they must spend an incredible amount to catch up and I to have enough data center capacity. I think about Microsoft who through a lot of 2025 said we're nervous, we're actually going to put on ice a lot of these leaks, releases and they've come to regret it pretty deeply. And I think a lot of the biggest tech companies, as we can see in this chart, are hoping to avoid that kind of scenario.
Ed Ludlow
Microsoft added $41 billion in commitments to a total of almost $197 billion. Compare and contrast really quick. Oracle.
Brody Ford
Oracle is very interesting because they signed a ton of leases largely for open air and they've been flat for the last 2/4 quarters, which says to us that they're digesting a lot of capacity. Contrast it with somebody like Mehta who is just signing as much as they seem to be able to.
Ed Ludlow
Bloomberg's Brody Ford, thank you very much. Let's get out to New York where Bloomberg's Johan and is standing by. Hi Johan.
Bloomberg Tech Host (Ed Ludlow)
Hi Ed. It's time now for talking tech. First up, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son says he has no plans to retire anytime soon as he looks to capitalize on the 8i boom. Speaking at an annual shareholder meeting, the 68 year old visionary fired back at skeptics saying, quote, the AI revolution has only just begun. Calling it a bubble is an insult. Plus, in the latest showdown between Chinese big tech and national security, Alibaba has sued the U.S. defense Department demanding removal from its blacklist. The e commerce giant called the designation arbitrary and un justified following a US crackdown earlier this month that accused several of China's top companies of aiding Beijing's military. And TikTok parent ByteDance is in early talks to secure a record $20 billion global loan. While the exact use of the proceeds remains unclear, the massive borrowing push comes as the company weighs boosting datacenter and
Ed Ludlow
capital spending at thank you very much, Jihyra. Now coming up on the program, defense startup Hadrian discusses new funding at a $7.5 billion valuation. That would be four times its past or latest value. We're going to discuss that next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
EY Consulting Representative
You have invested in artificial intelligence. Maybe you have pilots or even proofs of concepts that show real promise. The next opportunity is scaling that success across the business. At EY Consulting, we help organizations redesign how work gets done so innovation can move beyond the nascent stage. By addressing architecture, operating models and governance, we help AI deliver real, lasting value at scale. When AI fits how you actually work, that is EY Consulting.
IBM Representative
So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises, so let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business.
Public.com Representative
IBM support for this show comes from public.com if you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge on public. You can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English, like if the Vix hits 25, buy a put option on the S&P 500 or if my cash balance goes above $20,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve the workflow and your agent handles the risk, monitoring the market, watching for your conditions and executing your strategies exactly as defined. An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com market and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com market paid for by Public
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Ed Ludlow
Can AI replace human effort in the realm of scientific discovery? In the latest episode of the Circuit, Bloomberg's Emily Chang spoke to Jennifer Doudna, the inventor of the groundbreaking CRISPR Gene Editing technology about the future of biology. Listen to this.
Jennifer Doudna
Biology is complex. We're not going to be able to simulate our way to an understanding of the human body. We're not going to be able to avoid the need for certain types of testing. I do think there are opportunities to increase the efficiency in which we make discoveries about the way our bodies work and the way they interact with drugs. That will be effective and I think AI will be helpful there. But it's going to come down to training models on the right kind of data and a big need for better and more data for training models if we want to achieve that.
Bloomberg Tech Host (Ed Ludlow)
An OpenAI executive recently suggested that if a discovery happens on ChatGPT, let's say a drug discovery, that OpenAI should get a cut of sales. What do you think of that?
Jennifer Doudna
Good luck.
Paula Sellers
Expand.
Jennifer Doudna
How are chatbots going to change drug discovery? I'm not sure the answer to that yet. I don't know. Lots of people are, of course, very, very hopeful, some very hopeful about it. But I think that innovation is still really in the domain of human beings right now. I'm not seeing chatbots in our own experience innovating. They can be helpful with summarizing data, they can be helpful in writing reports and things of that nature. But I'm not seeing chat bots coming up with a brand new idea for something that nobody else ever thought of.
Bloomberg Tech Host (Ed Ludlow)
So you're saying I can't innovate?
Jennifer Doudna
I don't know if it can't innovate. I just don't think it is right now.
Bloomberg Tech Host (Ed Ludlow)
What about after the AGI moment?
Jennifer Doudna
Well, I never say never, so maybe that'll happen. But I'm not holding my breath.
Ed Ludlow
That was Bloomberg's Emily Chang speaking with Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Laureate and founder of Innovative Genomics Institute. Watch the full episode on Bloomberg television tonight at 6:00pm Eastern or on Bloomberg Originals at 8:00pm Eastern Time. Defense manufacturing startup Hadrian has been in talks to more than quadruple its valuation in a new funding round. According to sources, Bloomberg's venture reporter Rebecca Torrance and I teamed up on this one. So let's go through the basics. Right, these are talks. They're at a certain stage, but they only raise money right at the beginning of this year at a certain valuation. What the jump and what do we need to know?
Rebecca Torrance
That's correct, Ed. So Adrian raised money at a $1.6 billion valuation just in January. They've now had conversations to raise up to $1 billion in this latest round that would more than quadruple Their valuation as you said, to $7.5 billion. The investor demand on this one is pretty significant. We reported that several existing investors are in talks for this one. We should note that when we shout to comment, Hadrian said that the information provided was incorrect, declined to provide further context. That said, we stand by our reporting. This is an area that's extremely hot with investors right now. Defense tech broadly, Hadrian makes facilities to speed up domestic manufacturing and that's been hugely of interest to a lot of folks in Silicon Valley.
Ed Ludlow
I thank you for that. I would also add that spokesperson Hadrian said the reporting was incorrect but declined to add further content.
Seth Figguman
Tax.
Ed Ludlow
I would have done that for you. Thank you very much. There is some reporting that we did about where they approach debt or a lack of approach to that. Just explain that bit.
Rebecca Torrance
Yeah. So building large automated factories often means that companies need to take on debt to take, you know, on the risks of, of building these large facilities. Hadrian currently has four factories. The latest which which opened in March off the back of a $2.4 billion contract with the U.S. navy. So this amount, this up to $1 billion is just equity that they would raise. It doesn't include any debt that they may be discussing.
Ed Ludlow
Rebecca, you did a great job explaining what Hadrian does. It's basically an amazing factory or contract manufacturer generally. What is venture capital attitude right now to defend technology and this whole kind of re industrializing America push?
Rebecca Torrance
There's tons of excitement, excitement here. And investors in Hadrian include Andreessen Horowitz through its American Dynamism Fund, Peter Shields founders Fund, Lux Capital. This effort to sort of reassure manufacturing and create the cycle where consumers and companies can just rely on production and consumption with within the US is of huge interest to these people.
Ed Ludlow
Bloomberg's Rebecca Torrance teaming up with me on that one on hadrian potentially hitting $7.5 billion valuation. Thank you very much. Now coming up later in the show, we're going to sit down with David George, Andreessen Horowitz, general partner on a 16 seeds big bet on Space X conversation that we're really looking forward to right now. This is what technology looks like in financial markets, particularly in equity markets. And we are all waiting for what is a big one. That is Micron reporting earnings after the closing bell right now. Nasdaq 100 modestly higher to flat underperformance in chip stocks and Bitcoin just shy of 61,000 USD per token. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. It's a big moment in time for memory. The biggest headline is probably the SK Hynix will try and raise $29 billion in a US listing, but the trade is going to get its next cue from Micron's earnings after the bell. There's a lot of literature on the Bloomberg about that. The Stock's down about 1.3% right now. It's highly analogous from what we saw in some of the earlier days of Nvidia 2023-2025. Massive growth year on year, both on the top and bottom line. But the market really wants a bullish signal. Not, not that the bottleneck that is memory is unwinding a little on the infrastructure build out, but that the demand has staying power. So that is what we're watching for throughout the course of the day. Another top story, Elon Musk is reshaping his empire's balance sheet. Space X just pulled off a record $25 billion investment grade bond sale, taking on more debt while lowering overall borrowing costs across Musk falling businesses. For more Bloomberg, senior private credit reporter Paula Sallison joins us. How did it go?
Paula Sellers
It went very well that the peak of demand, there were $89 billion in orders for what was ultimately a $25 billion bond deal that allowed the company to tighten or get lower borrowing costs over the course of the marketing process. And investors are very eager to lend.
Ed Ludlow
There is a bit of a history lesson in this. Find it fascinating. So yes, Musk takes Twitter Private X joins xi, XI merges with Space X and then Space X does the biggest IPO in history. And if you look at how they kind of shuffled the deck with the proceeds of the bond sale and what they plan to do in paying down existing loans, it kind of takes us back to square one. Is that right?
Paula Sellers
Well, this was really all one long convoluted way of allowing Xi to become part of an investment grade company and then be able to borrow at those borrowing costs. So, you know, we had the Twitter LBO, which ended up adding about $13 billion of debt and then the XI leveraged loan and held bond sales which added $5 billion of debt. So when Space X acquired xi, there was $17.5 billion of debt with interest rates in the 9 and a half percent to 12 and a half percent range. All of that essentially just got refinanced initially through a $20 billion bridge loan that was then taken out with the investment grade bond sale on Tuesday and now interest rates around five and a half to six and a half percent.
Ed Ludlow
We broke the story in just the days before the IPO that SpaceX had got IG rating from the three main agencies. That was really important. Right. The story right now in the AI space is, is borrowing rating. And the IG rating has proved to be pretty handy to Space X.
Paula Sellers
Absolutely. So there is so much need for capital investment. Companies just can't do it with cash flow. They have to borrow and they're borrowing across all the different debt markets. But the best place to borrow for most of them is the investment grade bond market because it's very large, very deep pockets and it's a cheaper borrowing cost. So being able to get those investment grade ratings just opens up access to capital that makes it so much easier, easier to borrow all this money to finance the build out.
Ed Ludlow
Paula Sellers, and thank you very much indeed in the equity space, SpaceX actually higher again today, $158 per share. Space X. David George Andreessen Horowitz, general partner, is on set with us right now. He led the firm's investment investment in Space X, a stake which is now valued at more than $10 billion. And it's proved to be Andreessen's largest return in history. And you're somebody that I've wanted to say speak to about the company for a long time. There's a lot here, but I think just as an opening reflect on the ipo, David, and I guess not just in a moment in time for Andreessen, but what it, what you think it signified for what is a very big and now quite diverse company.
David George
Yeah. Well, look, thanks for having me on, Ed. Great to be here with you. The IPO is just a milestone in the history of the company. I think it's a great, you know, event for the company to be able to access new investors, access capital that they couldn't otherwise access before. And one of the things that I'm most excited about as it relates to the IPO is the fact that retail was able to partake in such a big fashion. So if you look at the allocation that went to retail as a proportion of the overall IPO, it's around 30%.
Ed Ludlow
Right.
David George
And so if you just take that portion that went to retail, it's almost the largest IPO by itself in the history of IPOs. So I think it's fantastic that.
Ed Ludlow
Why is that important? David, sorry to interrupt you.
David George
Retail has proven to be an excellent group of buyers and holders of stock. So obviously it's a large proportion of the ownership of Tesla, but they also are large owners of the Mag 7 at large. And so I think it's excellent For Space X to be able to access that. I think, you know, in large part retail is large long term thinking which aligns with the way Elon thinks and how he's built Space X. And so I love that they're a big part of it.
Ed Ludlow
Probably the question I get for you most commonly is about the lockup, what will happen? You know, I think a lot of the venture firms would say, well, we will redistribute to our LPs the stock and we expect lots of them to hold. But that would seem to make the retail holders important in what was like a very complex lockup. It wasn't straightforward.
David George
Yeah, look, I think this is a great step forward generally in how lockups are run and I expect for IPOs going forward this is probably going to be the way it's run. So Cerebras did something similar where you have the lockups come off gradually over time. And I think this is good, this is healthy. It allows, you know, the public market investors to be able to buy stock over time as opposed to, you know, at cliff events. For us, we're very long term thinkers. You know, we're, we're happy shareholders of Space X. You know, we think very much about the long term. You know, obviously what makes us so excited about the business is all of the things that can go right for Space X, all the optionality that you have. And so the way that we look at it is you start with the launch business and in order to be successful as a space business, you have to reliably be able to get things to space. And so SpaceX has the infrastructure in an incredible, incredible way to be able to build applications on top. Obviously Starlink is the first one. We expect that with Starship and V3 they've achieved some de risking in terms of what they can bring up to space. Eventually they'll have rapid reusability with multiple launches per day. On Starship, it's a feat of physics magnificence that they can take something that's the size of the, larger than a football field, send it up to space, grab it with chopsticks and then reuse again. They'll rapidly be able to do that and that's going to enable all the applications that they want to build on top.
Ed Ludlow
It also now has a name, starmind. Yes, as of last night. And you know, Elon Musk engaging with, with others on, on X. There are many out there that, that believe that the timeline that was presented in the prospectus for orbital data center, SpaceX said is earning early as 2028. Actually we could see some pull forward on that. Again linked to the tracking of starship. Where do you sit in what's realistic near term?
David George
Yeah, look, I think the biggest hurdle to cross is just rapid reusability of starship. And I think, you know, there's a consistent theme with Elon's companies and certainly in space X which is physics has been de risked and so now it becomes an exit execution question. And so as you think about timelines, we feel like it is inevitable that they can achieve these milestones. It's just a question of how quickly.
Ed Ludlow
Yes.
David George
And at what cost. And so if you have starship that can rapidly, you know, reliably get things up and back to space, we think that's the major unlock for bringing compute to space. I know earlier you were Talking about the $850 billion of CapEx for AI data centers on terrestrial grounds. Right now it's getting harder and harder to get data centers live on, on, on the ground here. I think it's a matter of time before we have it in space. I actually think I like to reframe it a little bit. I don't talk about it as orbital data centers. I talk about them as sort of airplane sized GPU racks in space. So think of it as, you know, something like 72 GPU up in space with big wings that are solar arrays that are kind of the size of a 737. And then you can have many, many of those in space. They've demonstrated that they can do this. They have 10,000 LEO satellites. So we feel like it's a matter of time and execution before they can do that. The physics has been de risked, you know, to the point about how it's getting harder and harder to do this, you know, on the ground. I think at a minimum orbital data centers will be incremental capacity that you can have on top of, on top of what we have on Earth. And I think there's a case that in the fullness of time the economics actually get better than on, than on the ground.
Ed Ludlow
David, the firm Andreessen Horowitz has been involved with musk companies in different ways for about six years. In different ways being xxi the different financial transactions that took place for you, how much was this, this ipo, a referendum essentially on, on Musk himself. Or how central to the fate of this company do you see Elon being?
David George
Yeah, look, Elon is the centerpiece of all of those investment thesis that we had in backing his companies. You Know, he's, he's been remarkably strategic in how he's put the companies together. And you know, he has done very well by shareholders, he's taken care of shareholders. To take takes a lot of pride in that and we appreciate that as his partner, I think as it relates to, you know, the go forward, he's been very smart. He and Bret Johnson and the team at Space X have been very, very smart about capital allocation.
Ed Ludlow
Right.
David George
You know, when they have done acquisitions, they have been remarkably strategic in terms of putting things together first, you know, and putting X with Xi, which is very logical. And then obviously the fit of X, AI and SpaceX together, you know, is undeniable. So we expect that he'll continue to be very smart about capital allocation, take care of shareholders, and we appreciate that.
Ed Ludlow
Where do you stand, David, then, on the transaction that everyone continues to talk about, which is a future where Tesla merges with Space X? Is it rational to your mind?
David George
I go back to the things that he's done in the past and the things that he's done in the past is he has decided to do acquisitions of his companies or mergers of his companies when there is very strong strategic alignment and it makes business sense. So I wouldn't expect it to be any different going forward.
Ed Ludlow
There's this broader idea, if you extrapolate out from, from Elon Musk, that even at the growth stage, late private companies staying private for longer late stage growth, the investment thesis is still around the founder, the person at the top. I don't know how, whether you share that view of others, that even if you are talking in the tens, hundreds of billions of dollars of value, that value is assignable to an individual or a group of individuals.
David George
Yeah, look, I think you can see reflections of this actually in the public markets. So I think you can see this in Elon companies, certainly. I think you could see this with Apple under, under Steve Jobs. I think you could see it with Metta under Mark Zuckerberg. But certainly in the private markets, you know, this is a centerpiece of our investment theses when we're backing companies at any stage, at any size. I recently wrote a piece that basically said Late Stage Venture, which is our asset class, is not about capital markets, it's about founders. Late Stage Venture is about late stage founders and enabling them to think long term, make big decisions and make big bets. And oftentimes they, they choose to do that in the private markets. And so you know, our asset class that we play in, it's about $5 trillion in size it's grown 10x over the last 10 years. It's larger than the Russell 2000. It's almost 20% as large as the NASDAQ. So this has become a real asset class. And I think there's reasons that we should explore.
Ed Ludlow
Why give the asset class a title? What would you call it?
David George
Late stage venture, Late stage privates.
Ed Ludlow
But where the value accrues.
David George
Where the value.
Ed Ludlow
Yeah.
David George
Where the value accrues. Yeah. And, and the centerpiece of the investment thesis is around the founder and the big decisions that the founder has to make.
Ed Ludlow
So a lot of key man risk to model for.
David George
Yes, that's right. But I think the more important thing to model for is what can go right.
Ed Ludlow
Okay.
David George
You know, we always ask ourselves, you know, it's hard to imagine what could go right. And we even see this with mature companies. If you look back at the time when, you know, the iPhone came out, if you look at the 2009 consensus analyst estimate estimates for what Apple was going to do, and that in 2009 for the next four years, and then fast forward four years, they actually beat those numbers by 3x. And that's probably the most covered company in the world. So we like to think with a great founder, with a technology trend on its back, what can go right? And you know, if you look at this last cycle that we've just gone through, pre AI, you know, this cycle of mobile phones, social, e commerce, SaaS, cloud, it all put together. The big story is that that big Trend added about 25 to 30 trillion of new market cap. And I happen to think that on this wave, on the back of this wave, the trend is going to be even bigger.
Ed Ludlow
You had a growth team that manages $22 billion across five funds. But if you think about it holistically, you're basically in the top 15 private companies by valuation, which would have included SpaceX before it went public. How are you now deploying capital, new capital into new companies, you know, with, with those existing investments in mind.
David George
Yeah, look, our whole thesis is we want to be involved in the best companies at the earliest stage possible and then continue to back them every step of the way as they need capital. And often that has been through late stage rounds in the private market because
Ed Ludlow
you have a new, a newer fund, right, which you can deploy capital to out.
David George
We do, yeah. We have, we have our LSV5 late stage venture fund five as we call it. It's our fifth fund. It's about a $7 billion fund that we're deploying out of currently and we see a ton of really interesting opportunities. So you know if you go back to the market that we're seeing and just look at our portfolio at a 16Z in our latest fund, our portfolio dollar weighted is growing over 100% year over year. If you compare that to the size similar sized companies in the in the public markets those companies are growing about 20% year over year. So we put a huge premium on very fast growth, great founders, market leadership and sort of building on the back of the big trends.
Ed Ludlow
Also knowing the cap tables look a bit different like with the mutual funds. Private Growth Equity David George of Andreessen Horowitz Head of Growth and General Partner really grateful to have you on Bloomberg Tech. Thank you very much. Coming up so Cerebras reported its first ever quarterly earnings since going public. CEO Andrew Feldman is joining us. The stock is down 17%. There's a lot to unpack there. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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Ed Ludlow
Cerebrast reported quarterly earnings for the first time since going public last month. Its sales outlook beats Wall street estimates. But still disappointed investors hoping to see the company carve out a bigger slice of the identity center market. Right now, shares down 17.5%, its biggest drop in its quite short history as a public company. What's behind that? CEO Andrew Feldman's with us. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Andrew, you know there was a time where we would talk about the merits of top to tail server ownership, how owning all of the content of now we're going to talk about margin contraction and we're going to talk about the stock being down 17%. That, that to me is kind of the mismatch. The outlook on the sales side beat Wall street estimates. I think a lot of people are trying to understand the sequential margin decline and for me that this is about ramping output for two big customers. Is that true?
Andrew Feldman
Yeah, I think what we did is we put forward a plan and in the start of 26 we shared it with investors as we went public and we're ahead of plan. We delivered record revenues of 191 million, up 92% year over year. And for our cloud business, you know, it was up 167% year over year. We, we beat margin consensus substantially and then we guided for full year year the gross margins would be 10% better than plan. We also shared that in Q2 and Q3 we would go back to, to some of our customers and we would rent back gear that we'd sold them to try and keep up with demand and that would have a margin impact on the order, 10 or 15 points. We did that to keep our customers close to be sure we could keep up with their extraordinary demand for, for our product, for fast inference. And so that was the story
Seth Figguman
on
Andrew Feldman
every metric we put out. We're we're ahead of plan.
Ed Ludlow
Have the proceeds from the IPO actually allowed you to move more quickly in ramping up capacity?
Andrew Feldman
Yeah, I think capacity is these largest constraint right now for everyone. Data centers are and we've significantly increased our, our, our ability and our pipeline for data centers which is now very large. You know, we announced a data center partnership with bell Canada for 120megawatts that will be delivered in 2027. We are pursuing data centers across the US in Canada, in Europe, the Middle East. There are the vast resources that we have now at our disposal give us tremendous advantage in the pursuit of this. The limiting factor data centers
Ed Ludlow
you're talking about like matter of factly is buildings, not necessarily the compute. Right. It's not what you guys are offering. How difficult right now is it to get moving in America, other markets to get planning approval, get the concrete, get the labor, get the thing built.
Andrew Feldman
Now that's the irony of this market that the, the AI market is moving at blistering speed and we are being constrained by data centers which move with the speed of real estate. And so that is a problem that is being confronted by, by everybody in the category, by the hyperscalers, by the NEO clouds, by the new generation clouds. Everybody is confronting this similar problem.
Ed Ludlow
Andrew, Cerebras does not rely on traditional off chip hbm. Would you just explain that the basics of the technology. But how insulated are you from from the memory bottleneck that others are experiencing?
Andrew Feldman
Yeah, that's a really good point. Because of our innovative architecture, because of our wafer scale approach, we don't use hbm. HBM is a type of DRAM and it's made by three companies, one of whom is reporting shortly. Right, that's Micron, Hynix and Samsung. There's a global shortage, it's extremely expensive, lead times are long and we don't use it. So we have a tremendous advantage there. The other constraints in the supply chain for, for many are coas which is a process inside of tsmc. Again we don't use it.
Ed Ludlow
Right.
Andrew Feldman
And the third is capacity at the 3 nanometer node. That space in TSMC factory that makes 3 nanometer chips. Again we don't use it. We, we're at the 5 nanometer node. So our architecture has allowed us to deliver the fastest inference in the world by an order of magnitude while avoiding the main supply supply chain constraints faced by by others in the field.
Ed Ludlow
Can you say hand on heart, not just winning business, but if you actually been able to go to a customer and say we can get this compute online faster than others is for those reasons you just outlined and then actually gone and done it?
Andrew Feldman
Oh for sure.
Ed Ludlow
I mean any case studies we signed,
Andrew Feldman
we for example, we signed our contract with OpenAI on December 24th and had them in full production on February 1st. That's unheard of.
Ed Ludlow
That's quick. That's really quickly. Andrew, this morning Open Air is out with Jalapeno intelligence processor. But everyone is compute constrained. Right? How do you interpret the Frontier Labs going to custom ASICS alongside their other compute options?
Andrew Feldman
And one of the things we've been saying all along is that this market is enormous and is going to be met with a heterogeneous collection of, of architectures for hardware that this market will not be consolidated around GPUs. There will be ASICs, there will be Asics from hyperscalers, there'll be Asics from, from Labs, and then there'll be companies like Cerebras with pioneering architectures who all of us will take big bites of this enormous market. I think one of the things that's difficult to get your head around is just how big the compute market is right now. That one of the things AI does is it it makes tractable for compute much of the world around us. And that really wasn't the case prior to AI.
Ed Ludlow
Andrew, if it's, if the world is simple and it's money that greases the wheels to get your industry going, can we see you come back to capital markets in some form just so you can move quicker?
Andrew Feldman
We have more than 9 billion on the balance sheet, I think so we are, we're really pleased with our, our position there. But of course we are always scanning both the capital markets, both equity and debt for, for ways to accelerate our growth.
Ed Ludlow
Finally, how are you judging success yourself? What is the milestone that you'd pitch to the market to keep closest attention to?
Andrew Feldman
Well, I think, I think if my mother's proud of me, I think that's the biggest thing you can, you can ask for. I think for markets. I think when you lay out a plan that is aggressive and you crush it, that's how you feel good about both your ability to execute and your ability to predict your own execution. And so you know, we, we announced yesterday that we would beat our, our full year. We gave full year guidance that was 10 gross margin points above consensus. You ought to be proud of that. And we got to continue to execute and continue to set extraordinarily high bars and then continue to, to beat them.
Ed Ludlow
Cerebral CEO Andrew Feldman thank you very much indeed. I think Andrew alluded to it. Micron is the the big one after the closing bell. Top line growth almost 300% year on year. Net income growth 1200% year on year. The bar is very, very high. The market, it's very analogous to Nvidia what we saw 2022 to 2025. Massive growth, but investors always wanting more. The stock's down 8. 10 of a percent going into that print. Another stock we're watching today, US fast food chain Wendy. Wendy's surging as much as 42%. But wait, what does that have to do with tech? Well, it appears Wendy's has become the latest meme. Stock target shares shot up. The rankings on stock tweaks climbs. The top of the platform's trending list seems to have been sparked by a now deleted post on Reddit's WallStreetBets forum that urged members to save Wendy's before it's too late. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Recap everything on the podcast. You know where to find it online. Apple, Spotify and Iheart and all the Bloomberg platforms. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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Episode: OpenAI Unveils First Custom AI Chip With Broadcom
Date: June 24, 2026
Host: Ed Ludlow
This episode of Bloomberg Tech focuses on several groundbreaking developments at the intersection of AI, hardware, finance, and industry. The main headline is OpenAI’s unveiling of its first custom AI chip, Jalapeno, produced in partnership with Broadcom. The episode also examines SK Hynix's historic U.S. listing, the AI-fueled memory chip boom, massive future data center investments, the rise of late-stage tech investing, and SpaceX's record bond sale and IPO. It features expert commentary and interviews with industry insiders and executives, giving context, analysis, and forward-looking perspective.
“Hock Tan… sees no limit to the demand for this kind of infrastructure and is predicting demand and rollout for this chip next year will exceed his prior estimates…” (Seth Figguman, 04:12)
“Memory’s strategic value is rising, changing to a primary driver for performance...” (Celine Wu, 08:54)
“Physical AI is going to be a multi-trillion long-term opportunity…” (Celine Wu, 13:18)
“Every hyperscaler seems to agree that they must spend an incredible amount to catch up…” (Brody Ford, 16:34)
"Biology is complex… I do think there are opportunities to increase the efficiency in which we make discoveries… AI will be helpful there. But… a big need for better and more data for training models..." (Jennifer Doudna, 21:39)
“I'm not seeing chat bots coming up with a brand new idea for something that nobody else ever thought of.” (Jennifer Doudna, 22:25) Q: “So you're saying AI can’t innovate?”
A: “I don't know if it can't innovate. I just don't think it is right now.” (Jennifer Doudna, 22:58)
“There is so much need for capital investment… the best place to borrow… is the investment grade bond market because it’s… cheaper borrowing cost.” (Paula Sellers, 29:26)
“If you just take that portion that went to retail, it's almost the largest IPO by itself in the history of IPOs.” (David George, 31:13)
“He has decided to do mergers… when there is very strong strategic alignment and it makes business sense.” (David George, 36:59)
“Late stage venture is about late stage founders and enabling them to think long term, make big decisions…” (David George, 37:44)
“...physics has been de-risked… now it becomes an execution question.” (David George, 33:53) “At a minimum, orbital data centers will be incremental capacity on top of what we have on Earth.” (David George, 35:20)
“...delivered record revenues… beat margin consensus substantially… guided for full year gross margins 10% better than plan.” (Andrew Feldman, 45:08)
“Because of our innovative architecture… we don't use HBM. There’s a global shortage… and we don’t use it. So we have a tremendous advantage…” (Andrew Feldman, 48:15)
“...signed our contract with OpenAI on Dec 24th and had them in full production on February 1st. That's unheard of.” (Andrew Feldman, 49:36)
“This market will not be consolidated around GPUs… there’ll be ASICs from hyperscalers… Labs, and companies like Cerebras…” (Andrew Feldman, 50:09)
On AI Chip Customization:
“The hope would be that over time they can build a chip that's more cost efficient and also better performing and eventually cuts down its own costs.”
— Seth Figguman, 03:19
On the Future of Memory:
“All the innovation we are seeing today is eventually going to open up very significant new end markets in physical AI such as fully autonomous transportations as well as a humanoid robot.”
— Celine Wu, 13:21
On Data Center Spending:
“We're talking about $850 billion on data centers which in many cases aren't even built yet...”
— Brody Ford, 15:42
On AI & Scientific Discovery:
“Innovation is still really in the domain of human beings right now... I'm not seeing chatbots in our own experience innovating...”
— Jennifer Doudna, 22:25
On Orbital Data Centers:
“It’s a matter of time before we have it in space. I actually think I like to reframe it a little bit. I don't talk about it as orbital data centers. I talk about them as sort of airplane-sized GPU racks in space.”
— David George, 34:16
| Timestamp | Topic/Guest | Description | |--------------|------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:58 | OpenAI/Broadcom Jalapeno AI Chip | Major AI hardware announcement | | 03:11–05:19 | Seth Figguman | Analysis of OpenAI’s custom chip ambitions and partnership dynamics | | 05:19–08:08 | SK Hynix IPO (Peter Elstrom) | Historic memory chip listing, market implications | | 08:08–14:38 | Celine Wu (Lazard Asset Mgmt.) | ETF strategy, memory market outlook, structural AI cycle | | 14:38–17:38 | Brody Ford (Data Center Investments) | $850B in data center leasing, market implications | | 21:24–23:07 | Jennifer Doudna | AI’s opportunities and limits for scientific innovation | | 23:44–25:55 | Rebecca Torrance (Hadrian/Defense Tech) | Venture trends and reindustrialization | | 27:50–36:50 | Paula Sellers, David George (SpaceX) | Record bond sale, IPO, Musk’s strategy, retail investors, orbital AI | | 44:15–52:24 | Andrew Feldman (Cerebras) | Earnings, hardware architecture, supply chain, AI compute future |
This summary captures the core dialogues, expert commentary, and market implications from a wide-ranging, content-rich episode on the future of AI hardware, infrastructure, and investment.