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Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast. Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed.
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Ludlow in San Francisco.
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This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, tech helps stocks close in on record highs with MAG7 earnings imminent.
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Plus Bridget Mendel and Northwood it raises $100 million to modernize space infrastructure on.
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Earth and Amazon shuttering its physical stores but doubling down on deliveries. Wal mart, Uber and DoorDash will drop.
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Next to check out more broad moves on the market right now. And because we have a wall of call it worry whether you're thinking about what the Max 7 is going to report. Whether you think about the federal rate decision on Wednesday. A lot for the market to digest but still we pushed to near record highs in the S&P 500. We have up 9 10% on the NASDAQ 100 and I know you're checking on individual movers that been helping some moves in the benchmark.
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Yeah an interesting deal up to $6 billion partnership between Metta and Corning for fiber opt cabling to support matters datacenter efforts over a number of years. You know Corning right it's a key optics supplier to Apple for example. But look at that stock absolutely flying up more than 17%. There's a lot going on as well in the semiconductor space. Micron is long term trying to triage the shortage of supply investing a lot of money up to $24 billion over years in Singapore, that's focus on NAND and then overnight in Korea, SK Hynix. The biggest move is the upside. Basically there's dip buying, there's retail investors coming in and there's a lot of focus. What's happening in the Context of a U.S. korea Trade Agreement agreement where there might be exemptions? Let's get to all of that. Bloomberg Senior tech Editor Mike shepherd joins us now. Let's start with the Micron piece, right? Like the story is well told, if I say so myself on this program about the memory shortage and memory pricing situation. But Micron here is looking at where it can expand supply. It's looking at Singapore. What do we need to know?
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Well, it's looking at Singapore and this is over a 10 year period and $24 billion investment there. And what they're looking at specifically is so called NAND memory. And this is something that is in demand to meet the needs of artificial intelligence chips and processors more broadly. And it's an area of focus because for AI, the memory needs are enormous and they are not fully being met. Of course, Micron competes with Samsung and SK Hynix in memory market and all three companies have warned of increasingly tight supplies. And the supply issue also has spillover effects that it actually touches on smartphone makers and PC makers too because as those companies that we just mentioned shift their efforts to meet the needs of the data centers, the areas for PCs and smartphones risk going wanting in the SSD D type memory and flash memory that is needed for those kinds of devices. So we're seeing that expansion by Micron. This just comes at less than two weeks after Micron cut the ribbon on a $100 billion plant in upstate New York, one that's been a couple of years in coming. So we are watching to see how much more these companies are going to be investing not only in Asia but also in the US as well, and.
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How much more their shares can fly. Just think, S.K. hynix at a new record high even as we see the threat of, well, broader tariffs on South Korea. We know the chip makers are excluded. But SK Hynix at a record because it's going to be benefiting from Microsoft's push into AI chips as well. Mike?
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Well, that's right. I'm glad you brought that up, Carol, because we saw the news yesterday. We all followed it so closely on this plan by Microsoft to introduce a new generation of its Maya AI chip, the Maya 200 and local business paper in South Korea, the Mainly business Newspaper is reporting that as many as 6 SK Hynix HBM3 units will go into each MYA processor. We don't know how many of these Maya 200 processors Microsoft will ultimately have produced for it for its needs for its data centers and for other customers as well. But the promise is big and it signals that there could be a lot of demand for this HBM3E processor that SK Hynix has developed to meet those memory needs. And it could be something else. Now, you mentioned the threat of additional tariffs. The president yesterday warned that the South Korea trade deal could be reworked to jack up the tariff rate on South Korean imports at 25%. For now, we're not seeing anything affecting memory, but we'll be watching that closely because there is a lot of pressure from the administration for more investment by South Korean companies here in the US.
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Mike shepherd breaking it down so well, as always, we thank you. Let's return to US Stocks right now because as you said, they're near record highs. Tech shares have been leading the way again, this is as we brace for earnings season. It comes thick and fast this week. Let's discuss it all with Christina Hooper, chief market strategist and man group. And we still have tariff anxiety. You still have the worries of what the Fed's going to do tomorrow, and yet we push higher. Is that the fundamental analysis we should have, that their numbers are going to be good?
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C
I do think the numbers will be good, but I think there could be obstacles as we move through the year. And first off, I would anticipate that if we do see a big increase or at least a substantial increase in yields on the long end, that could very easily exert downward pressure on tech stock prices. So I think that could be the first problem. But as we move through the year, we could see problems with financing, some issues with nimby.
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Okay, so go there. The financing. You mean around data centers? You think about the anxiety building up around Oracle and the debt that it has to take on?
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Absolutely. I think that that could very well slow down the AI data center build out.
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So.
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So there are a number of different things that could slow progress over the course of the year and really tamp down stock prices.
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Christina. So stocks are near record highs and tech is pushing the way and the NASDAQ 100 up for a fifth consecutive session right ahead of earnings. Explain that, that psychology of the market, why they would push the market higher ahead of what is a critical week for some of the biggest technology names in the world.
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C
Well, there is an old adage, buy on the rumor, sell on the news. And I do think there is a lot of positive sentiment right now around these being able to meet and potentially exceed earnings expectations. So I think that's what's happening right now. I also believe something else is occurring and we have to recognize that the backdrop is an economy that is sputtering. I am in the minority in this view, but I do think the economy is, is facing some very significant headwinds right now. We just saw consumer confidence reading that was the lowest since 2014. And I think what happens typically is in an environment like that, investors move to technology, they move to areas that are more defensive, that can perform well in a variety of different environments. The secular plays and again, tech has been the poster child for, for secular plays for some time now.
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So in that sense, though, like nothing changes. We write in our markets, wrap on the terminal, which is like it's the first thing you read every morning, right? But it says in spite or not, even a slide in consumer confidence could stop the market rally. At the end of the day, we'll go into this earnings period looking at the same things, capital expenditures and top line growth for the biggest companies. And then you'll come back or your peers will say, well, these companies have really strong balance sheets and they're quite well diversified to weather an economic slowdown. Nothing's really new.
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C
Well, I think what is becoming increasingly true is that there is a divorcing, a decoupling between Wall street and Main, and that is most obvious in the tech sector. So we can see strong balance sheets, we can see companies that are performing well. But, and this is a big but, we could see external forces like yields on the long end. The 10 year treasury yield, if it were to get to 5% or higher, I think that would exert downward pressure, especially on tech stock prices.
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So Christine, did you sell into that or do you just load up when the prices get lower and longer term still stay committed to tech. Briefly, please.
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So I would say staying committed longer term to tech, but ensuring you're well diversified, you are taking some profits and moving your exposure. Because tech is not just in the United States, it's also in China where valuations are significantly lower. So this is an opportunity, I think, to diversify portfolios.
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Christina Hooper, chief market strategist at the Man Group, thank you very much. Amazon is closing its Amazon branded grocery stores and automated grab and go markets, eliminating two centerpieces of its push into physical retail and caro. Very interesting here because actually Amazon's continued to push higher since the news. The main takeaway is not that they're closing 14 ghost stores and 58 fresh stores. That small footprint but actually even more committed to delivery. You tell me about the names that dropped in reaction.
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I mean isn't it interesting? Well, exactly to your point, the fact that we see Doordash, they'll see other of those delivery companies, maybe see it deepening the effects from all of this. But what's really interesting as well to sort of take on board is they're also deploying massive scale in terms of bricks and mortar in Chicago. But it's alongside the element that's also going to be helping delivery. It's also going to be about warehouse space. So they're just rethinking the way in which they put bricks and mortar on the ground. Right. But we're looking Wal Mart's off, Uber's off, DoorDash is off. It really speaks. Maybe Amazon investors thinking this is a sign of strength, a good pivot.
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Yeah.
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And lastly, grocery commitment.
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Right.
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Like they're not saying we're done with grocery, they're just saying we're moving it online. And that's reflected in that market reaction.
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I always quite like those Payless stores. They've got to say rest in peace. Coming up, autonomous trucking startup Gatic in new deals. We'll discuss the self driving company's growth with its CEO. That's next. There's a Bloomberg Tech.
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Autonomous trucking company Gas Tech has landed a deal with a major consumer goods company. Gaddock's not named the customer yet but says the deal will double its contracted revenue to $600 million over the next five years. Joining us is Gatic CEO and co founder Galton Narang. Look, I'm going to offer you the opportunity today. The customer, I know that you're not going to I've pushed you over a number of days but I think the main thing our audience wants to get a sense of is this is real. You have trucks on roads with major customers that are paying you and therefore you're booking revenues on it. Take it from there and explain the reality for sure.
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So as you know, Gothic is in the business of autonomous freight. And today we are announcing that we are operating fully driverless freight only. Trucks with no safety driver, no safety observer across real freight operations, multiple markets.
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Today it is smooth like 10 trucks right now.
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Trucks today by year end over hundreds of trucks. But very soon in the coming weeks we'll have over 60 trucks fully driverless on public roads doing Daily commercial operations at scale.
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Talk to us how legislatively this has worked, regulatory this has worked. How have you managed to make this a reality? While yes, we see real impact from Waymo in cars, but in certain states, in certain areas, where are you working?
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So you know, today we are live across multiple markets. This is Texas, Northwest, Arkansas, Phoenix. We work very closely with the regulators at the local level, state level, federal level. And from the early days we decided to focus on automating these regional networks which is within the states. And that's one of the fastest ways to commercialize this technology.
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Commercializing then to where we've talked about 600 million. Just one key customer. What do you think your revenue run rate is going to look like?
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So today we are working with some of the largest companies across retail, grocery, e commerce and distribution. So each of these customers have made multi year commitment. What's unique about these commitments is these are non cancellable commitments where our technology is now being absorbed across their supply chain at scale.
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Those are the customers that you can name. We're showing them on the screen. Kroger, Tyson, Wal Mart. People will say, well if you can't name this one, how real is it? I'm going to put it out there. Right, because we're transparent on this show. The business model is interesting. You don't sell them the trucks. What is the business model?
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So it's an autonomous transportation as a service model.
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As a service.
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As a service, yes. Where we charge a fixed fee per truck per year. And each of these commitment commitments are multi year long. So we have revenue certainty from each of these customers. And that's also very unique compared to some of the other models in our space.
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You have some peers in industry. One of them is Aurora. Right. There are some similarities and differences. One is that they're public, you're private. Sure, let's talk about that first. I mean, you know, you've been pretty open that there's a route to the public markets. What would be the motive to do that?
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So let me start with the fact that we have a lot of respect for all the peers in the space. But what has been our focus from day one is helping our customers move freight from their warehouses to retail stores and doing that at scale. And with this milestone we have been able to prove that it's real, it's happening at scale. So today truly there is no safety driver, no observer on public roads. And in our space, no one can make that claim today.
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Public.
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Well, we are well capitalized today with the very strong Runway and have clear line of sight towards profitability. And we're always evaluating all the options that we have and keeping a very close watch on the market conditions.
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Partners, from a technology perspective, obviously, Nvidia, how much are you relying on the hardware at the moment? How much does that cost base? Where do you look for these partnerships?
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So with our latest generation, generation three, the hardware is fully hardened and we're working very closely with the Nvidia, with Isuzu Motors to mass produce these trucks. And, you know, towards the end of next year, Isuzu's production plant in South Carolina will be up and running and we expect to have these vehicles coming off the line at big volumes. We're looking at tens of thousands of vehicles annually.
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Caroline's already asked this.
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Right.
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But we should go back to it, which is the regulatory environment. Yes. You know, you've launched in these markets because you can. How much do you think we need this federal level framework for you to go from very small to something more substantial, fair.
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So it's very important to like now have a nationwide framework. Right. So we work and we don't. Well, we're working very closely with the current administration to inform them, educate them on the safe rollout of this technology and we expect to have a nationwide framework very soon.
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Come back when you've helped work that one out. Gaultierang. It's great to have some time with you. Got it, CEO. Meanwhile, elsewhere in vehicles, GM CEO Mary Barra says the regulatory shift away from EVs will see slower adoption, but the company is still committed to its EV pipeline. Meg's Matt Miller sat down with the GM CEO Mary Barra. Take a listen.
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The whole industry, we were on a path that we were working to get to 40 to 50% EVs by 2030. So now that the regulatory environment has changed and the consumer incentives have gone, there is going to be slower EV adoption. We're still committed EVs and we've got a great portfolio that we're working on taking cost out of. But in the meantime, we also have a great internal combustion engine platform. And you're right, full size trucks are one of the strengths we have, as well as full size SUVs, midsize crossovers. So we really have a strong lineup across the board and that is really what is fueling our business success.
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I have had as the host of Hot Pursuit, a Bloomberg podcast about cars, the opportunity to drive a lot of your EVs, from the Sierra EV to the Hummer EV to the Escalade IQ and They're fantastic products. Are you, are you not deterred that Americans aren't buying more of these vehicles? You know how capable, how capable they are, you know how useful they are in daily life.
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What needs to happen for more Americans.
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To buy these EVs?
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Well, I think the consumer is very rational when they're making a decision about what car to buy. Let's remember it's one of the most most important and expensive decisions that they make. And one of the things we have to continue to work on to drive EV adoption is a more robust charging infrastructure. And that still is continu continuing to happen. So every quarter more and more chargers are available. I think as we as people in their individual communities see that they've got a robust charging network and believe if they have to go on a road trip, there's that as well, they're going to make that choice.
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That was GM CEO Mary Barra speaking with Bloomberg's Matt Miller. Now coming up, we will dive into anthropic new tool and how it could broadly impact jobs. It's coming up next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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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.
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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 at public.comDisclosures Small businesses.
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Are the pulse of every community they bring people together, create opportunities and drive growth. With a widespread presence in communities across the country, Chase for Business supports small business owners at a local level that makes it possible for you to connect, learn from each other, and grow together. There's a real commitment to seeing small businesses succeed. The Chase for Business team has knowledge and expertise that span a wide range of financial areas. They can help you make more informed decisions as you navigate the complexities of running your business. They'll help your business grow with individual guidance and convenient digital tools all in one place. With that guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn more@chase.com business chase for business Make More of what's Yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JPMorgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase Andre.
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Silicon VAL leaders are joining tech workers decrying tensions in Minnesota after two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal agents. Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei posting about the, quote, importance of preserving democratic values and rights, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an internal memo to staff yesterday. That's what, quote, what's happening with ICE is going too far. That's according to a Bloomberg source. The executive executives joined the chorus of other tech leaders, including LinkedIn co founder Reid Hoffman, Reddit co founder Alexis Ohanian and venture capitalist Vinod Khoestler, who have spoken out.
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A
Carol one to watch let's shift elsewhere for Anthropic right now because it is released a new version of its Claude chatbot called Claude Co Work. They can take actions on a computer, on your computer. Bloomberg opinion columnist Tommy Olson writes that this could have broad repercussions and potentially be painful for some white collar workers, even as Anthropic frames itself as the most safety conscious of the developers. Tommy Olsen joins us now. So the redefinement of the engineering talent right now, the companies you've spoken to, how is Claude's products changing that?
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C
Yeah, I mean, first of all, Claude Cowork is the new product. And before that was Claude Code, which is an AI tool for writing software programs. And that's been around for about a year and it's been getting rave reviews among technologists and coders who can use it to spin up a website within hours. And the people at Anthropic effectively use that tool to build this new tool. They did it in 10 days. They didn't write a single line of code or very Little code.
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Right.
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C
And, and this new, this new version is something that it's sort of like people have been talking about the word agents. That was a big buzzword last year, but it sort of fell flat. There were issues with reliability. This could be perhaps the first mainstream breakout of an AI agent because it does work on your computer, accesses files and applications and you know, I'm not just saying that it does, that people are actually using it. I've used it and, and there's been a lot of general kind of extra excitement and buzz about this tool that is able to just take action, not just, you know, give you research in.
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Parmi industry is paying attention like I think about cs. Caroline was speaking to ammontanasia from General Catalyst. I think he summed it up pretty well. Just listen to this.
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H
Yeah, Claude, it's, it's really redefining the.
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Engineering department and just think about the size of that market, the amount you.
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Spend on tools and engineers to be able to build products and you know, the amount of progress is like Silicon Valley companies now code self rights for most of what they do.
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I think it's a real transformation which clouds really enabled.
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G
There's a, there's a line in your Bloomberg opinion column which by the way is one of the most read things today on Bloomberg about the relevance to Microsoft. You know, Microsoft historically is very good at selling software that you could otherwise get for free. Just, just talk a little bit more about that. You kind of flicked at it.
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C
I just looked at it because I thought co work is pretty much what Copilot could have been and probably should have been. Copilot is the AI tool that's underpinned by chat, CBT, GPT 4.5 or whatever the latest model is. And it has access to all your office tools. So it should be able to, you know, take documents from a particular folder and turn them into a spreadsheet as Claude Cowork can do. But it doesn't have quite that same capability. So I think the speed at which Anthropic was able to do this and using an AI tool to build the software in the first place really speaks to how effective AI coding has become. You know, coders are saying now they don't even write code anymore, they just talk to it in plain language. And the reason I think this is kind of meaningful for other jobs is coding AI coding a tool that can do that can generalize to other domains. This is what Anthropic CEO has been saying. That's why they're moving into health care and who knows what other areas they will move into. But I think because computer code is such a perfect digital representation of the behavior that you and the actions that you can take online, that's why it can be so good as a tool to do other things like operate a computer.
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G
Bloomberg Opinions Palmy Olsen with today's must read. Thank you very much. Coming up, Northwood raises 00 million in its latest funding. We speak with the CEO Bridget Mendla. That conversation coming up next and you don't want to miss it. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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A
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. A quick check on these markets. Nasdaq 100 shows big tech is back on top. We're still up almost a percentage point as we brace for mag7 earnings. Interesting move for bitcoin. Bitcoin, we call it digital gold. Well, it's not getting the debasement trade that real gold is. At the moment we're at 88,246 though just up in the green ever so slightly. Move on to the individual movers. We want you to keep an eye on Amazon, up almost one and a half percent. They're closing Amazon Fresh. Amazon Go stores with some locations are going to be converted to Whole Foods Market stores. Look, they are not moving away from groceries. They're going to sell them online and offline. But really this is about delivery once again. And you also have to look at what's happening over at Pinterest. We're going to dwell on that for a minute. We're off by almost 10%. They are letting go of people less than 15% of its workforce, we understand, but they're planning to reduce office space as well. And Bloomberg Intelligence is saying it likely suggests more aggressive investments in building AI capabilities. Let's dig in with Bloomberg equities reporter Ronstellica, a company that has seen competition ride maybe as we talk more and more about Agenda Ki. We're just talking about it in terms of anthropic, for example.
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G
Yes, good morning.
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H
Thanks for having me. So Pinterest is down quite significantly today.
- [27:39]
F
It does seem like there is a.
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H
Lot of concern that these workforce reductions and other steps that they're taking in terms of this restructuring, that maybe this.
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G
Portends some weaker growth trends at the company. As I'm sure you know, this stock has struggled for quite a bit of time as it really just has a lot of difficulty going up against the bigger players in the space, most notably Metta.
- [28:00]
H
So the stock is quite down and.
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G
I think people are sort of like wondering what's Going to be sort of a catalyst to revive growth here. Ryan, data is fun. I really hope that you agree with that. And so I'm looking at the Bloomberg terminal. The NASDAQ 100 is up for a five day stretch. The first time this year it had a five day stretch at the end of December. So not that long ago. We're right on the cusp of huge earnings and tech is driving this market higher. Why?
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H
Great question. So going into this recent rally, obviously.
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G
There had been a rotation out of tech.
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H
A lot of people looking elsewhere in the market, especially sort of cyclical parts of the market.
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G
There was some concern about tech's earnings.
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H
Is growth decelerating? Is this going to be enough to.
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G
Justify the valuations there? At the same time, people continue to.
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H
View tech as really a port of.
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G
Safety in the market. Continues to be very dominant. It still has the highest growth among the S&P 500 sectors. People remain pretty positive about its prospects.
- [28:57]
H
About the potential of AI. All that is there.
- [28:59]
G
It's not surprising to me to see a little bit of people wanting to.
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H
Jump in, buy that dip, you know, especially ahead of earnings.
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G
Bloomberg's Ryan for Celica with. Oh, sorry, car. I got excited about the data with the earnings preview embraced. Right, let's go to private markets for a second. Northwood has announced, announced it's raised $100 million in new funding led by Washington Harbor Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The Southern California based company makes phased array antennas and other things that help increase satellite connectivity here on Earth. Here with the latest is Bridget Mendla, Northwood CEO. You know Bridget, we've been fortunate to talk to you a number of times over, over the last year. Actually like this is less than a year from your Series A. And the thing that I've learned speaking to you speech, your investors is that you, you move quickly, right? You move quickly on deployment of the tech, but you've also grown. Let's start by just asking like, why did you need to raise $100 million here? There must be a need for that capital.
- [30:00]
D
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for, thanks for having me again. It's great to be speaking with you all. For us, it's really about taking space missions further, faster. I think, you know, you guys have been really tracking the developments in the space industry over the past year, both on the commercial side and on government side, domestically and abroad. There's a ton of enthusiasm for what we can do in space and really changing our, our perceptions on what's possible. Oftentimes there winds up being More friction in taking those space missions live due to the ground. And that's something that has to change. We have to be able to push the boundaries on capabilities and we have to be able to do that on a rapid timescale. So for us, what this funding represents is a significant amount of demand that we've seen from a wide variety of customers and being able to enable their missions to go further faster. So this year has been a really exciting example for us to kind of show what that end to end concept looks like for Northwood. Many people do know us by our phased arrays, which is critical to how we think about the ground, really introducing novel hardware solutions so that we can do more in space. But we view ourselves as an end to end partner for these space missions all the way from the concepts that they are initially coming up with to the time when their data is streaming live and actually delivered to end users. And we've actually done that. We've, we've gone from an initial concept of saying, hey, let's have dynamic links that you can access not just from low Earth orbit, but all the way up to geostationary orbit in the same system. And then let's, let's show how fast we can bring that concept into reality. And so, you know, we're talking today as well about our contract that we closed with US Space Force.
- [31:42]
G
Well, Bridget, let me jump in here like it's a $49 million contract with the Space Force. You know, what will you be doing with them specifically? But also my understanding is like there is a link here between the money that you raised in the Series B and being able to kind of just execute on that contract.
- [31:59]
D
Absolutely. Well, we've already executed on that contract across a number of milestones. So contract was executed and at this point there's been a three month turnaround time from kickoff of that contract to actually delivering links live in the field. So we have those links live in the field already. And so what the funding represents for us is let's scale that model, let's do it more, let's demonstrate how we're able to deploy a global network of this portal product that supports the dynamic links between low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit, but also serve up more space capabilities that we're getting a lot of appetite for. So the funding really represents being able to serve the appetite that we're seeing and hit larger production volumes.
- [32:45]
A
We've been lucky enough to talk to some of your key investors and Mina has been on the show before from Washington Harbor Partners and He put it to Ed that Northwood provides the only viable approach capable of scaling ground station capacity. But you're not actually technically the only approach that could be taken because you could also go to Blue Halo, for example. So what is your unique selling point? How are you differentiated from others that have been winning contracts?
- [33:10]
D
Yeah, I think the way that we view our difference is really for space providers today. They wind up running two companies, they wind up having to run the space mission that they're supporting, but they also have to stitch together a complex value chain of different pieces of the ground. You know, they have to think about ground hardware like you mentioned, you know, Blue Halo, another developer of phased array hardware. But they also have to think about, you know, sites, global shipping, logistics operations around the world. They have to think about the software interfaces and the network backbone attached to that. And so where we find ourselves really differentiated is we take on that full problem scope. And I think, you know, what we've connected with, with Mina specifically on is the importance of being able to deliver the end to end solution and do it on a condensed timeline. And we feel like there's huge value in being able to do that and that's why we've invested in that kind of differentiated approach.
- [34:02]
A
You very kindly said we've been focused on space for quite a while here on the show and many are now trading their eyes on Space X. But are you winning contract? How, how is your relationship being built with Starlink, for example? Are there any talks along that motion?
- [34:16]
D
Yeah, I think for us we've seen significant interest from commercial as well as government use cases. The ambition and the challenge for space just continues to grow. And for ourselves, we've had contact with that company and with other companies and we're excited to have our capabilities just kind of be the proof in themselves that we are the infrastructure provider. That makes sense for a whole host of industry use cases.
- [34:44]
G
Bridget, I know you don't want to focus on this necessarily. You know, you're a former actor, platinum singer, songwriter, you went away, turned to academia, founded Norfolk right at the end of 2022, did a Series A at the beginning of 24, and now here we are. And I think there's a lot of interest to learn. How big is Norfolk now? How many people? What is your footprint? Where are you deployed around the world? Because you have done it quite quickly.
- [35:12]
D
Yeah, we are, we're just around 70 people. We have sites deployed across two continents. At this point in time, we have a full production facility running, not just our phased array product, but two other hardware products that both fit in with that that hardware stack as well as work in complement to it. So excited to be sharing those product lines as well. And this year is going to be a really big year for us. We're planning on deploying 18 sites across five continents, so just continuing to ramp up our production and the offerings that we can provide to the space industry this year.
- [35:48]
G
Bridget, as you know, Caroline and I are very thorough on Bloomberg Tech. Just very quickly, the company did not disclose its valuation. Is Northwood at unicorn status yet? Is that a milestone that you've achieved?
- [36:02]
D
We will not disclose valuation at this point in time, but we're very happy with where we ended up.
- [36:08]
A
Nice answer. Bridget Mendeley of Northwood always have to ask. We appreciate you coming back. Thank you very much indeed. Congrats. Meanwhile, coming up, the landscape it shifts from general AI to highly specialized intelligence systems. We're going to be discussing that with Konstantin Buller, of course, a partner at Sequoia. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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- [39:35]
A
This is Bloomberg Tech and you are looking at a live shot of the principal room. Check out the Bloomberg Tech podcast. Find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify and I Heart. This is Greenback. Moonshot AI has released an upgrade to its flagship model, ramping up pressure in China's domestic air race. Look, the company's K 2.5 model said to outperform its open source peers and can process text, images, videos simultaneously from just a single prompt. Now the release comes ahead of Deep Seeks next major update, which it has been teasing now for weeks. And what you got?
- [40:16]
G
Let's stay on the topic of AI and not just general purpose models, but the rise of artificial specialized intelligence. Joining us now Konstantin Beulah, partner at Sequoia and this is your bet for the year you think and where you will focus your investments going forward. Forward is in the area of do we call it asi? Specialized Intelligence as a place to start. Define that. What is the difference?
- [40:43]
H
Absolutely, Ed Caroline, thanks for having me. 2026 is going to be the year all about AI capabilities in specialized areas and we got a taste of this in 2025 in some pretty big important categories. Think about self driving. We now have Waymos on the streets of San Francisco and many other places and many other places. And Those are operating 10 times safer than the average human driver. 10 times safer. Also you see other specialized areas. Anthropic, for example, focused on coding and in 2025 went mainstream with their cloud code product where developers can choose to work with cloud code agents to prototype and even put software into production much faster. We're going to see a lot more of that in 2026. It's going to be specialized capabilities in many new areas.
- [41:32]
G
Now how big are the checks then you're going to have to write because what Waymo, Anthropic and even like in the legal sector, like a Harvey, have in common is that they are well capitalized at this point. They had to commit a lot of capital to train those specialized models in the first place and then deploy them.
- [41:50]
H
Absolutely. Well, you, you mentioned to Harvey, I'm focused on the early stage investing and in the case of Harvey, they started really small. They basically focused on an area and they said, hey, this is an area we're going to be deep experts in. That's the legal area. And they focus on the actual user obsession. They now have over a thousand customers for the legal tech space and they are kind of a right hand person to the lawyer. In fact, one of their customers said, I would sooner lose my coffee for the year than my Harvey license. My sister's a lawyer, she uses Harvey. She probably say the same exact thing. 2026, we're going to look back at the end of the year and realize how many areas in AI we just couldn't live without.
- [42:30]
A
Constantine, where is next? Therefore, because you actually already have made these bets in these very focused areas and applications of AI we just named Harvey. But you're also in 11 labs if you're thinking about the way in which we're going to interact with with it from a vocal perspective and create ourselves. But where's next? Where hasn't been disrupted?
- [42:50]
H
Absolutely. I'll give two tastes of what's coming next. One in the physical world and then one in the digital world. So in the physical world, we're investors in a company called Verkata. They are the leading AI physical security company and they, they're basically an extension to those physical security guards who walk around a premise and can now monitor an even larger premise for physical security. They help investigations go 30% faster, dramatically faster. And that sounds like a statistic, but let's make it very real. They were working with a major airport that had a bomb threat and they were able to help close that investigation significantly faster. Which means that the airplanes actually boarded flights, got out on time and passengers got to their destination. We're going to see a lot of that now in the digital world. We work with a company called Expo. It's a AI penetration tester. They set out to get really good at finding vulnerabilities in websites and applications. Within six months, they became as good as a human penetration tester, a professional at finding vulnerabilities. Within 18 months, they've actually become best in the world. They're Top ranked on Hackero1, which is the global leaderboard for individual hackers. And they're finding major vulnerabilities at companies, reporting those to the companies, helping them patch them so that the bad guys don't get there. We'll have a lot more capabilities like that in 2026.
- [44:18]
A
What's interesting is how therefore you're going to build and scale at the pace that's necessary. If there's a lot of capital looking for these more specialized areas, there are people building in it. How do you talk to your portfolio companies at this moment? Being like, you need to get that edge, you need to lead the market at this moment, because it's an opportunity that's moving fast.
- [44:37]
H
Absolutely right, Caroline. And you know, we think about the word courage. In 2026. There's been so much focus on the frontier for Open Air and Anthropic and Google and X. They're doing amazing work and it can be intimidating for the early stage founder to say, you know what, I'm going to go up and build an amazing big company in the presence of these giants. But we encourage founders to be courageous in 2026. They know areas, deeply know those areas, specialize in that delight your customers and there will be amazing opportunity. For example, in the health care space, we work with a company called Open Evidence, which helps physicians diagnose really complicated problems. In fact, my wife is a surgeon. She uses Open Evidence to help diagnose problems programs. She takes that extra time and puts it back into patients. That was started by someone who said, you know what? The health care area is so important that it's going to need specialization, it's going to need these specific capabilities. And they've been absolutely right. That type of courage will continue to pay off in 2026.
- [45:38]
G
I started the week with my column about how there's no point using the term seed round anymore because Some of them are in the hundreds of millions of dollars right out the gate with a team of a dozen people. That's the domain that you operate in. But it particularly in the field of AI, how much do you expect that trend to keep happening? You know, you keep saying I invest early, but you know that actually you're not the only person that's looking at asi. And you know, the whole point is standing up sometimes a research lab from, from scratch.
- [46:11]
H
I loved your article. The coconut round, right?
- [46:14]
G
The coconut round or the avocado round or the mango seed round.
- [46:16]
H
Yeah, these massive seeds. I'll say how we think about it.
- [46:20]
G
Sure.
- [46:21]
H
First and foremost, we don't think about the size of the seed, we think about the quality of the company. So we take a step back and we look at an AI business and first of all, we might say this is an AI business that does X, Y or Z and we'll cover the term. I will put our finger over the term AI and say, does it still make sense as a business even without AI? That's test number one. And secondly, if it does, then we say, is this the kind of business that we want to spend years really being company builders for? And once we go through those phases, then we look at the financing dynamics and the size of the round and we decide, hey, is this something that we want to do at that scale? I've consistently found that great founders are willing to pick the best possible partners and shape rounds that are smart for the business in the long term and then attract more and more capital in the years to come. That's how we've been approaching these sizable seed rounds.
- [47:13]
A
Constantine, come back. We always have it. Constantine Bueller of Sequoia. Appreciate it. Now we turn our attention to France because the national assembly there has followed in the footsteps of Australia, passing a bill last night to ban under 15 year olds from social media. Legislation now heads up to France's Senate. The move of course comes as Matter TikTok YouTube. They head to court in the United States over allegations that they misled the public about the safety of their apps. Accusations the companies have rejected.
- [47:43]
G
Ed, coming up, there is no one quite like Jensen Huang. What does that mean for succession planning at Nvidia? We have that discussion next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Many see the future of AI is resting on the shoulders of Nvidia. But the future of the chip maker after its current CEO and co founder Jensen Huang departs one day, well, that's unclear. Bloomberg's semiconductor reporter in King has written a pretty wonderful piece I mean, Jensen Wong has been at the helm of Nvidia for more than three decades. He is the longest 7 Silicon Valley CEO. There is no suggestion that he wants to pack it in, but what you're writing about is. Nor is there any evidence that Nvidia has really done anything in succession either.
- [48:36]
F
Yeah, I mean, you know, with a company that's become as important has to a whole industry and arguably the stock market and the economy as well, usually like to have a better idea of who the people at the top are. And even people like myself who've been looking at this company for a very long time, it's him, right? The whole company is built around him and that's all there is to it.
- [48:58]
A
And what's really interesting is you interview people who talk about how flat the organization is and also how difficult it would be to run by anyone else than Jensen Huang. Can you talk us through who the other, well, key presidents are, but perhaps are not in line to take the throne?
- [49:13]
F
Yeah, I mean, you know, the way to do this is to think about things through Jensen's eyes because he's explicit about this. He created an organization where he wants to know where he believes the CEO needs to know what's going on. And the way to do that is to have less of the traditional corporate structure and just a large group. 40, 50, 60. Depends on the day as to the number he gives you of people who don't directly report to him. They have responsibility, responsibilities.
- [49:40]
G
But we've spoken to Jensen quite a lot in the last few years. There are other people, though, like Colette Kress. The CFO is a highly capable person. But as you write in Silicon Valley and tech, you don't usually hire the CEO from the finance department.
- [49:56]
F
Correct. I mean, you know, Colette has a good reputation on Wall Street. She was brought in and she's obviously presided over the company when it's been enormously successful. But this is a very tech technical job and it's also a very dynamic job. He's on the one hand a science leader and he's on the other hand an advocate and driving the whole industry.
- [50:14]
A
Forward and spends a lot of time on planes. It feels like at the age of 63, Bloomberg. Zane King, thank you very much. I urge our viewers to go read that Deep Dive. It's a great piece. Nvidia's lack clear successor for superstar CEO. That does it, though, for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.
- [50:31]
G
Yeah, there's a lot happening in public markets, markets and in private markets. But we are bracing for big tech earnings in earnest. Check out the pod. So much to recap. You know where to find it on iHeart, Spotify, Apple, and of course in all the Bloomberg platforms as well. Two days into an astonishingly busy week in the world of technology, this is Bloomberg Tech.
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