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- [00:00]
Caroline Hyde
AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. But we don't just talk. We work 247 to solve customer problems. No hold music, just answers. And action. Visit Sierra AI to learn more.
- [00:15]
Miles Miller
These days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere. You turn every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of control control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent, secure any agent.
- [00:44]
Anna Rafman
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- [01:20]
Caroline Hyde
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.
- [01:29]
Miles Miller
Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to.
- [01:31]
Caroline Hyde
Coast coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, the trade warring back to kick off 2026 tech stocks in the green. We analyze the optimism. Plus Tesla's China factory shipments. They rise in December but still drop in 2025. What that says about global EV demand and what to expect from C s this year. We'll go live to Las Vegas to give you a preview of key conversations across our network. We digest what the markets are digesting. We are thinking about a very macro event, a geopolitical event that occurred this weekend. Nicolas Maduro and his wife of course being removed from Venezuela and being brought here to New York following a series of airstrikes that hit Caracas early Saturday. And the market shakes off that geopolitical risk. Thus far we're up more than a percentage point on the nasdaq. We're looking more towards an AI trade. We go under the hood though. There is search for safety. You have seen seeing gold rebound. Remember it sold off hard into the new year trade. Bitcoin currently up 2.9% as we see not just digital gold on the higher side. That's at 93,000 but spot gold at 2.7% higher. I'm looking at the US dollar currently trading flat. But we had seen significant moves in the US Dollar more broadly. And we want to go to that macro level event right now because Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores will face trial that is on narco terrorism charges in New York in the afternoon. Joining us now, Bloomberg, Miles Miller, who stand in Brooklyn right now. Just talk to us about the imminence of the arrival of the ousted president.
- [03:18]
Miles Miller
Yeah, they were taken by a armored Bearcat vehicle to a landing pad in Brooklyn. And then from there they flew across the harbor, past the Statue of Liberty to the Wall street helipad and were motorcaded here. Of course, Nicolas Maduro and his W wife are both here at federal court in lower Manhattan this morning and they're facing narco terrorism charges. Federal prosecutors alleged that Maduro intended to benefit terrorist organizations including farc, eln, Sinaloa Cartel, Trend Agras and the Zetas. And here's what prosecutors say happened from 2000 to 2006 while he was a member of the National Assembly. They say Maduro moved cocaine under the protection of the Venezuelan law enforcement. And if that is not enough, they say that they were able to secure diplomatic passports for some of these drug traffickers to move drugs and money in and out of Venezuela from places like Colombia and Mexico. In one instance, we are told that they use a state oil plane, a plane for the state oil company in order to facilitate the drugs moving in and out. It's not just Maduro and his wife who are charged in this. Their son is charged as well with being part of this drug conspiracy. If convicted, he faces the possibility of life in a supermax prison here in the United States. And we finally got some information about his legal team. We are learning that he's going to be represented by Barry Pollack. That's the same person who represented Julian Assange as well as David Wilkstrom, who represented the brother of Juan Orlando Hernandez, of course, the former president of Honduras who was charged right here in the Southern District and was pardoned just a few weeks ago by President Trump.
- [05:07]
Caroline Hyde
Miles, you stand by in Brooklyn for us, but many wonder how this is being digested in Venezuela. What do we know about how Maduro is being deemed by Venezuelan leadership right now and its people?
- [05:23]
Miles Miller
Yeah, you know, we heard from the vice president of Venezuela that, you know, she did not necessarily agree what would happen there. And she of course, is being the person who is taking control of the country. And it's going to be an interesting time there to see just what she does, how much she'll allow the United States to say, run the state oil company to control the oil in Venezuela. And if she doesn't, what will happen to her? But it's not just what you're hearing on the streets of Venezuela, people who may be frustrated by what they saw. You've got folks on both sides here protesting, folks who believe Maduro should still be in power and want him to be released at his court hearing and those who say they fled to the United States because of Maduro's regime. You know, the, the president said just yesterday that the United States will run Venezuela. Didn't give too many details, but I think it will have a lot to do with the oil and the strategic oil reserves there as well.
- [06:23]
Caroline Hyde
Miles Miller, we so appreciate you, of course, standing live outside, and I correct myself, the Southern District of New York court in lower Manhattan. We'll be returning to you later. Meanwhile, US Stocks, stocks sort of shrugged off these moves. They powered higher this morning as demand for tech shares remained strong even after the ouster of Venezuela's president. Fan worries over geopolitical risks. Let's get you an investor. Take Anna Rafman is here with us, founder and CEO of Grenadilla Advisory. So your advisory is necessary right now. Anna, is it right for the market to shake this off?
- [06:54]
Anna Rafman
Good morning. I don't think this has short term consequences for the markets and I think there's a reason why it's shrugging it off. It's not a short term trading event. I do think that there's a long term consequence of this. I know that energy companies are soaring because of this idea that they will be able to go in and extract some of that oil. But frankly, that's not a 2026 story. The longer play here really is, I think geopolitical think about where oil matters. Russia, seller of oil, China is buyer of oil and of course Middle East. We all know that there's a lot of oil involved there. So if we think about where the conflicts are around the the world and where, where and how the US Is involved in those conflicts, I think this move in Venezuela is more of a chess game. That's a longer run game rather than a short term move.
- [07:42]
Caroline Hyde
Well, boy, has the tech investment community been trying to dissect the chess game that is US China, trade and tariff. How does it affect that in 2026 do you think, Hannah?
- [07:53]
Anna Rafman
Well, you know, throughout 2026, we're supposed to be talking with China about tariffs and at the center of those tariff and trade talks really is rare earth minerals, air chips, all of those things. Right. And so if you're China and you're looking at the development over the weekend and you realize that in terms of natural resources, US has taken control over a lot of the oil that they will need as well. It sort of changes the game. And who has the upper hand in some of these, these talks that we're expecting, expecting to be in 2026. So I think this puts, you know, strategically speaking, the US in a more powerful position in some of these trade talks. So it'll be interesting to see how this all pans out in terms of rare earth minerals and of course, China buying potentially Nvidia chips as well.
- [08:41]
Caroline Hyde
Okay, so strategically thinking for an investor right now, is it wise to be powering video higher to be seeing Tesla rocketing up on the green today more broadly, should the trade be back on for 2026?
- [08:53]
Anna Rafman
I think 2026 is going to be a very interesting year for some of this trade that we've seen powering through the years. I think, first of all, there is this idea that a lot of IPOs will come into play in 2026. We will see how easy or difficult it is for a lot of these companies to fundraise, especially those that have really, really high valuations, whether or not the investors really have the appetite for these things. Things. And as for Nvidia and Tesla, they have other problems, really. I mean, Nvidia has issues with tpu, is coming online. And even though I do think that they have a lot of market share, still, there are things to think about for Tesla. There's also byd. Right. So it's not so much that it is about AI powering through. I think there is real competition out there that these companies seem to be thinking about.
- [09:40]
Caroline Hyde
So it's interesting. We're going to be hearing from Jensen Huang later today at CES from Lisa Su of amd. What do you think they can give to the market that backs up the market share, certainly of Nvidia at least?
- [09:53]
Anna Rafman
Yeah, I think clearer guidance is definitely helpful. I know that the Nvidia has certainly given a clearer guidance for 2026, and there seems to be a lot of demand, but they're going to have to answer to sort of the next best thing. Right. So what's beyond the Blackwell chips? What's beyond the relationships with OpenAI and other big players out there? I think investors need to hear something new in terms of partnerships as well as technological advancement for A lot of this excitement to continue into 2026.
- [10:24]
Caroline Hyde
So where do you stand in optimism versus pessimism for 2026? If at this moment there are still many more questions and perhaps the market isn't factoring in some of the risks, should you be buying in at these levels?
- [10:37]
Anna Rafman
Well, you know, if you're already investing, invested, I think there's room for markets to run but not without any volatility here. I don't think the market is so excited that, you know, analysts looking at 15% year over year growth in the S&P 500 companies, that might be exciting on a fundamental level and hopefully it broadens out to the rest of the sectors in the S&P 500 index. But there are multiples that are very, very stretched. Right. So especially with this talks with China that not only impacts tech but also other areas of the economy. I think we're due for some volatility but weather the volatility by having a robust portfolio and that is always recommended by the advisor community.
- [11:19]
Caroline Hyde
What's been really interesting is, well the ongoing drive dispersion between software and hardware names. We saw that in particular on Friday and our great producer Dan Kurt has been pointing out just the disparity that you saw in software indices. That fell some 3% on Friday and then we rallied in. When you're looking at the semiconductor index in particular more than 4% is that going to continue? How much more support do we need for software to show that it can benefit from the trade?
- [11:45]
Anna Rafman
Yeah, I think 2026 is still going to be a picks and shovels year building these things out and the demand there is for it. That's not something that can be done in a year or two. I think this is is a multiple year story and certainly on the software side there's a lot of experimentation still and if you're a customer sort of subscribing to some of these things and dipping your toes in, there's no guarantee that that's going to be sticky. I mean I think we're thinking about things like SaaS where if you have a subscription to something and you incorporate those software into your day to day, it becomes super sticky. I don't think that's necessarily where we are are with the software on the AI side. I think people are experimenting. So until we can see some stickiness and real incorporation and integration of those software into the day to day of the businesses, I would be a little bit skeptical as well. And I think that's what the markets are actually expressing.
- [12:41]
Caroline Hyde
Fascinating love Getting a little healthy dose of skepticism today from Anarafman, founder CEO of Grenadilla Advisory. Stay well. Happy 2026. Now coming up, the arrest of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro is being watched far beyond Latin America. What it could mean for US Resolve and China, Taiwan relations. This is Bloomberg Tech. Every day millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We work round the clock and have the facts at our fingertips. We're fast and effective, but incredibly patient. And we're built on Sierra, the leading AI powered customer experience platform. No hold music, just answers and action. Visit Sierra AI to learn more. That's Sierra AI.
- [13:31]
Miles Miller
These days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent, secure any agent. Okta secures AI.
- [14:02]
Anna Rafman
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- [14:07]
Caroline Hyde
Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it. Even in cold butter.
- [14:13]
Anna Rafman
Yep.
- [14:14]
Caroline Hyde
Chocolate ice cream.
- [14:15]
Anna Rafman
Sure thing. Barbecue sauce.
- [14:17]
Caroline Hyde
Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water.
- [14:21]
Anna Rafman
Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight.
- [14:24]
Caroline Hyde
Tough stains with new coldzyme technology.
- [14:27]
Anna Rafman
Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide.
- [14:36]
Caroline Hyde
The arrest of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, well, it's reverberating well beyond Latin America. In America, some in Taiwan, well, they're already viewing the move as a signal of US resolve. But the American strike is also stirring concerns that it's offered a template how Beijing could handle tensions with Taiwan. Here to break it down is Bloomberg senior Tech editor Mike Shepherd. You bring us the global geopolitical perspective from a tech insight here. Mike, what should we think for Taiwan and its ability to continue in its current state vis a vis China?
- [15:07]
Miles Miller
Well, there are different schools of thought, Cara, that you mapped out right there. One is from inside China. There is the nationalist perspective that look, this offers us a roadmap perhaps of how we could retake control of the self governed island of Taiwan, which officials in Beijing view as a rogue province, as one that they should bring back into the fold. Meanwhile, in Taiwan and Taipei, officials, they're actually finding, finding some encouragement from the US move in Venezuela as perhaps a way of signaling deterrence against Beijing to try to do anything similar there. And they see it that way for two reasons. One, they find that the US has military superiority over China in this area. China would not be able to pull off the same kind of maneuver that the US Just did on Saturday in Caracas now. And the other reason is that they see that this signals that Trump will exercise US Military power when he sees American strategic interests at risk, and they certainly would be if China moved against Taiwan, which is a linchpin in the global chip supply chain.
- [16:17]
Caroline Hyde
Go there, Mike, the national security implications of Taiwan. Why is that so crucial to the administration?
- [16:25]
Miles Miller
Well, they still see Taiwan as so essential to being able to support a wide range of industries, especially the growing one on which they have placed so many bets, and that is artificial intelligence. Taiwan far and away right now is the world center of production of the most advanced AI chips. Even with all the investment in production that is planned for the US in coming years, years, much of that is not online yet and is really still being produced in Taiwan on the self governed island. So any disruption to that supply chain would be catastrophic, especially for political reasons. If we saw any sort of military action by Beijing against the island, it would be disruptive. And Carol, we remember during the pandemic just how problematic those dislocations in the supply chain were and how they rippled through to the automotive sector and others. And that, of course, was before the advent of artificial intelligence and chat GPT and the wide scale uptake that we're seeing across the economy of this revolutionary new technology and what that would mean if suddenly the world lost access to it. We would likely see the US Respond. It's unclear whether militarily, but certainly with sanctions, together with other nations like Japan and Australia that have already mused about leaping to the island's defense in the event of Beijing trying to intervene militarily. And it's important to remember, while Trump has remained vague about whether he would step in with US Forces to defend the island, the administration just approved an $11 billion package of arms to be sold to Taiwan, which is one of the largest in recent memory.
- [18:06]
Caroline Hyde
Carol, always with the deep analysis. Mike shepherd, thanks for breaking that down. Meanwhile, look, this geopolitical anxiety that we speak of, so no impact on the trade in that part of the world. Look at tsmc. Shares climbed by the most since April as the company rides a wave of optimism of artificial intelligence demand. Bloomberg Tech executive editor Peter Elstrom joins us for more. And we've heard how in many ways there's two ways you can interpret what this impact from Latin America means on Taiwan. But tsmc, great growth, it seems.
- [18:38]
Miles Miller
Yeah, as you were just talking about with Mike, Taiwan really is at the heart of the AI boom right now when it comes to production. As we saw with TSMC, the shares are up by about 5%. Today we had Goldman Sachs raise its price target for the stock. They boosted it by 35%. It's really an extraordinary increase. Increase and what they expect you can see from that stock. TSMC has done very well by making the chips for Nvidia. It also produces chips for Apple and other customers here. But really, Nvidia has given it a ton of momentum recently that's put the company on a tear. Its market cap is now about $1.4 trillion up quite sharply. And Goldman Sachs is telling you that it could run another 40% from where it is right now. So it's really talking about TSMC becoming a $2 trillion company if they can hit that price target. That would largely be based on the momentum behind Nvidia's growth and some of their other customers like Apple.
- [19:34]
Caroline Hyde
And Nvidia has been helping Hon Hai as well with its numbers.
- [19:38]
Miles Miller
That's right. Yeah, exactly. So Honorable reported there some of their financial details for the fourth quarter. Their revenue was up 22%. Honorable Hai makes or makes iPhones for Apple too, which was its very most important business for a long period of time. But it also makes servers that include those Nvidia chips. So it's feeding servers and hardware to the hyperscalers that are building these enormous data centers across the US and across the globe. Really, it has a tremendous amount of momentum because the big hyperscalers, including Microsoft and Google, are boosting their spending by more than 30% this year to. To hundreds of billions of dollars. And that's giving a big tailwind to Honorable Hai. So we saw Hon Hai boost its revenue for the fourth quarter 22%. It came in a couple of billion dollars more than expected at $83 billion. So it has a lot of momentum here. It looks like that demand for air gear is increasing, at least for now.
- [20:34]
Anna Rafman
Yeah.
- [20:34]
Caroline Hyde
And the iPhone 17 did well, as you mentioned, a key supplier, Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai. But he said, going back to the the start of this conversation, this is as we see ongoing geopolitical anxiety around Taiwan. How much are we seeing these names invest in America and continue to do so?
- [20:53]
Miles Miller
Well, they are strategic assets, definitely. As you're talking about with Mike, tsmc, the most important chip maker in the world by a mile because of the Advanced chips that it makes for companies like Nvidia, Nvidia, Apple, etc. Has been building facilities in the United States. It's putting a lot of resources there. It got some money from the Chips act under the Biden administration, has continued to build out those chips. It is making a lot of progress there. It's able to build fabs there that are quite productive, but they're not nearly as advanced as what they can do in Taiwan at this point. And this is part of the justification by the Taiwanese government and also TSMC itself. They want to have their most important, important assets in Taiwan. Partly it's an economies of scale issue. They can travel to those factories much more easily, have the engineers learn from each other within those factories. They want to keep that most advanced production there. It's also frankly a defensive maneuver for the government that if the most important assets are there, they know that the Trump administration or whatever US Government is in power is more inclined to come and make sure that they're protected.
- [21:57]
Caroline Hyde
Peter Elster, from the global perspective, we thank you. Tesla's China factory shipments, they came in today and showed they dropped in 2025, but there was a last minute bump in December where they grew as though as the company struggles with a slowdown in global sales. Look, all of this, as I just mentioned, a little over 97,000 were in December, just the fourth month, month in 2025 that saw an increase. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Craig Trudell on all of this is the author of Hyperdrive newsletter. So to get this straight, Tesla had decent numbers in December in terms of growth month on month and indeed year on year. But it's just woeful for the whole picture of 2025.
- [22:40]
Miles Miller
Yeah, that's right, Caroline. I think, you know, we look at the December number and it's actually, you know, resilient and not just one of the rare up months for the year, but off of a relatively big month a year earlier. And yet when you look at the sort of whole picture for this company, you know, they had shipments throughout the year that were much lower and sort of reflecting this idea that they have some demand issues. And of course when we look at their shipment data, it's, it's both for the local market and for some export as well. So we'll get a better sense in the coming weeks. So just how the sort of retail.
- [23:15]
Caroline Hyde
Sales elsewhere, I mean, it's the second consecutive annual drop when you're looking at China shipments, all of this comes in context that BYD is Now the biggest EV player worldwide. You've also got other competition coming from ex phone makers who pivot into cars.
- [23:29]
Miles Miller
Yeah. And China's market is increasingly cutthroat. You've seen Beijing try to sort of, you know, put some pressure on the industry to knock this off and kind of, you know, get to to a point where pricing is a little bit more rational. And yet we only continue to see manufacturers offer new and more aggressive discounts. And that's been something that Tesla has really struggled to contend with throughout last year and even dating back to, I would say 2023.
- [23:57]
Caroline Hyde
Briefly here in the US there's competition from Lucid.
- [24:02]
Miles Miller
Yeah, and Lucid, I think, like Rivian, is still a long ways behind Tesla. I think both of these companies had ambitions to give Elon Musk more of a challenge and we've not seen that materialize. I think we saw some relatively strong numbers for that company in the fourth quarter and yet you would expect that when they were going from one model to two models. So, you know, big things ahead for them this year as they tried to also bring out a new platform.
- [24:28]
Caroline Hyde
Bloomberg's autos editor, or czar as we like to call you. Craig, great to have some time with you. Tune in tomorrow as we sit down with lucid interim CEO Mark Winterhoff. That's live at ces. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. We check in on these markets that shrug off some geopolitical anxiety of course when galloping higher. In fact on the Nasdaq as you see at 1.1% you are seeing search for a safety though bitcoin maybe up 2.8%. Gold climbs fresh again. And this is after the ouster of Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro, who is set to arrive at a Manhattan court imminently. Now we think about the geopolitical context. We also think about what trade is up to at the start of 2026. And we're back on Nvidia, up 7. 10%. AMD up 6. 10%. We hear from both of these CEOs over in Las Vegas later today at CES. So the market wanting to hear more transparency from these leaders. Palantir Tier shakes off some of the sell off that we saw on Friday. This software AI infused software company is up more than 4%. It's one of the key gainers on the NASDAQ 100. From a points perspective. So too is Alphabet. We're up 5, 10% as still insatiable demand for Google and indeed its Gemini iterations, but also its TPU innovations. Let's Talk more about the AI trade, its resiliency. Bloomberg's tech equity reporter Carmen Reineke is here. And you've been putting pen to paper, thinking all about, about how an AI bubble has been much talked of. Is it reality? Is it going to pop? What have you been hearing in terms of historical context?
- [25:57]
Anna Rafman
Yeah, so looking at this in historical context is really interesting. I think we know that there's going to be a fourth year of talking about AI driving the market. Are we in a bubble? And so when you look at some of the past equity bubbles, there are some differences that investors point out that are important. So for example, the duration of this rally is longer than, than the average of the last 10 equity bubbles. We're at three years, the average is about two and a half, but at the same time the percentage gain is actually much lower. So we're up about 130% on the NASDAQ over the last three years and the average for the last 10 equity bubbles has been more than 240%. So that kind of signals that we're, we're not in the sort of blistering, sort of up cycle upswing in the market that you usually see before a bubble pops. There are also some other key things. You know, investors are still watching really solid fundamentals from the big tech companies and actually pessimism that we saw especially I think gain really over last year. You know, investors really calling for roi, you know, for seeing more innovation from these companies. That's actually a good thing in terms of a market bubble. It very much differs from the dot com era where investors were so excited about the Internet and everything related to that that they kind of overlooked, you know, valuations. Some of the fundamentals of those companies.
- [27:16]
Caroline Hyde
I felt like discerning was the word of December. Everyone was saying investors getting more discerning. They were picking their winners among the trade. How are we set up post sell off of an Oracle? And those companies, they still did extraordinarily well for 2025. But some of that hype did fizzle somewhat as companies and investors try to understand the debt loads of these businesses.
- [27:36]
Anna Rafman
Yeah, and I think the other thing that we're seeing that's good is the broadening of this rally. So yes, people are picking their winners and their losers, but we're also not seeing the biggest gainers continue to have these sort of like astronomical percent gains over the year. So in the Mag 7, for example, only 2 in video and Alphabet, like those were the only stocks that outperformed the S&P 500 last year and you know, the biggest performers or the biggest sort of percentage winners that we saw were other stocks linked to AI. So the memory like the digital storage companies. So that also just shows that the, the rally is broadening out and that is generally more healthy for the market.
- [28:16]
Caroline Hyde
A little bit of health to kick off this 2026. Carmen Reineke, we appreciate it. I stick with the AI build out in particular how secure it is question, growing around in particular power and infrastructure constraints as well. Flex Central is one of the largest privately held data center operators in the United States. 42 data centers across 18 markets here in the U.S. ryan Mallory is the CEO. Please to say you join us now and I want to get for our audience really Ron, how you define where you sit in the overall market. Because right now, from what I understand is you're a colocation offering. So we've got big hyperscalers, got Neo Clouds and then we've got Flexcension.
- [28:51]
Miles Miller
That's correct. And thanks for the opportunity to catch up this morning, Caroline. It's really about, you know, the type of infrastructure that you deploy out there. Flex Central is taking a very pragmatic view on making sure we're able to address the wholesale infrastructure, so the 1 to 20 megawatts, but also making sure that we're able to address the multi tenant capabilities that are out there as well because those are the companies that are going to be consuming the agentic AI capabilities that we're seeing to start to accelerate out there. So, you know, the landscape is starting to separate a bit and Flex Central thinks we've got a very strong position right down that fairway on that wholesale multi tenant collocation marketplace.
- [29:31]
Caroline Hyde
Ryan, that sounds like you want to be diversified. You don't want to just have one particular buyer calling you up saying I will take 100 megawatts from your future project. How are you hearing though from potential clients? Are they wanting you to be their sole provider? You be take entire entirety of their business in certain locations?
- [29:50]
Miles Miller
Yeah, Caroline, you're spot on. We want to make sure that we're diversified in our customer base and you know, the simple answer is yes. We have companies that come to us and say we want to make, you know, we want to take one of your whole data centers and put all of our, you know, gpu, tpu, XP use in those facilities. That's just not where we're going to play. We want to make sure this multi tenant ecosystem environment has a place out in the market and our product set is just perfectly fit for that out.
- [30:21]
Caroline Hyde
There today you talk about GPU, TPU, XPU. What is the constraint right now for all of 2025? It felt like the narrative was it's the chips, but actually then it became the power, then was worries about water. Where are you seeing some of the choke points?
- [30:38]
Miles Miller
Yeah, I mean it's really threefold. We see land, power and supply chain. And supply chain being that of the mechanical infrastructure that goes inside the data system. And so you have to be very focused on all three. And you're not just planning for 26 right now, you're planning for 28 through 30 because you know, this dynamic marketplace and the consumption models that are out there, we've got to be very focused on the long term gains and being able to provision this infrastructure to meet those requirements.
- [31:11]
Caroline Hyde
So where does that infrastructure end up going? We keep talking about innovation, particularly the inference side of things. And people have got anxiety about Nvidia's role going forward as once the models are trained, they're being used. Is it still all about the gpu? Is AMD getting a look in what your clients demand?
- [31:28]
Miles Miller
Yeah, and so it really depends on what the end customer is trying to use the infrastructure for. You know, let's not forget that right now we're shipping five CPUs for every GPU out there. And so this dynamic integration between the CPU world and the GPU world is really starting to form. And that's where this agent capabilities, being able to use multiple services is really starting to drive this demand growth. And you know, when people talk about AI bubbles, I think we're still at the forefront of this AI consumption model to really start to put our hands around that. I think we've got a long Runway to go.
- [32:12]
Caroline Hyde
Long Runway. What does that mean for your Runway? Ryan, as we said, you're one of the biggest privately held operators. I assume you're not just getting calls from clients, but from companies that want to own a bit of your real estate.
- [32:23]
Miles Miller
Absolutely. And so we're looking at this in five and ten year horizons. And so, you know, we've got a firm path over the next five years for that land, for that power and supply chain. You know, we're buying out infrastructure to make sure that we're able to meet this growth trajectory out through, you know, 2030, 2032. Once you get out past that, it's a little bit hard to predict what this infrastructure is going to look like. You know, we're firmly entrenched with, you know, liquid to chip, liquid to rack or and immersion cooling inside the facilities to meet these higher density deployments. But you know, right now we're formally firmly focused on getting out to that 2030-2032 deployment strategy.
- [33:09]
Caroline Hyde
Ryan Mallory, come back. I hope Flex Central CEO operating those data centers across the United States a lot on the East Coast. Meanwhile, coming up, what 2026 has in store for AI regulation. Discuss that with Jessica Nugent, Director of the center of Technology and Innovation with the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
- [33:27]
Miles Miller
This is Greenback these days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent, secure any agent. Okta secures AI.
- [34:01]
Caroline Hyde
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Caroline Hyde
The Trade well, if you're looking at stocks, it's on today, but One of the headwinds industry leaders keep on mentioning is a regulation, one of President Trump. Trump's final executive orders of 2025, remember, was aimed at limiting state regulations, countering what it sees as a patchwork of local laws that industry leaders argue stifles growth. Discuss what 2026 may bring in federal regulation, if any. Let's bring in Jessica Malusian. She is the director of the center for Technology and Innovation with a Competitive Enterprise Institute. You're a nonpartisan policy group. You all argue against heavy regulation to foster innovation. So I have a feeling you're not pro a patchwork approach, but will we ever get a federal approach or at least Congress being able to push forward one?
- [36:17]
Anna Rafman
Yeah. So I think the executive order that you mentioned earlier by President Trump was in one part trying to get some of that done without congressional action. That's probably not going to be a very successful plan. But I think also part of it was trying to create some political pressure for Congress to take on this responsibility and act in place of, as you described, a patchwork of 50 state regulations. There were a thousand of them introduced or passed or considered just last year. And often they're contradictory, often they're heavy handed. Some of them might make sense, but not all of them do. And to ask US Entrepreneurs to operate in that environment is very unrealistic, realistic.
- [37:00]
Caroline Hyde
Well, what's interesting is even despite that executive order, many California lawmakers are still pushing ahead with some of the regulation. And then I think what other Senate Commerce Committee chair, for example, you've had Ted Cruz roll out a package of related legislation. He's doing that back in September. You've had Marsha Blackburn looking to unveil more potential regulation that was announced in December. There's been Democrats in the House as well. Jessica, what is the sensible.
- [37:28]
Anna Rafman
I think we'll start with what's the least sensible, which is that the default situation if Congress does nothing is that you're going to have the most strict regulatory regime. So think California, think New York become the default setting for the entire country. Right. As firms try to comply with this, the big ones might have the money to do that, but smaller guys are going to say, okay, we're just going to comply with the most strict version. Hope that gets us through. So, you know, that's not how any of this was designed to work. And what you need is people on the national stage. That's why we have the commerce clause willing to butt heads even if they disagree. That's what hearings in regular order are for. So the Ted Cruz's and the Marsha Blackburns should talk this out and figure out where we can get to some agreement on this. But this certainly is the purview of Congress and not just the most regulatory strict states or 50 different states.
- [38:17]
Caroline Hyde
Now in many ways is our David Sachs has been thinking about federal regulation from an administration perspective, but also they've been thinking about how some of the innovations in the US are enabled to be sent abroad. And we still think about what Nvidia and its access to China really looks like. How much is that going to be dominating the agenda as well, from your perspective?
- [38:38]
Anna Rafman
I think chips are a part of it, but I think that you correctly identified the issue that looms largest in this debate is that, you know, this really isn't a domestic question so much as we are in fact in a race with China for global dominance. That's just the reality. I think people who are looking at this on that scale understand that tying an arm behind a back with a bunch of state regulations for the US is, is not a great plan for winning. So I think all of those questions, whether it's chip restriction economic exports or creating a regulatory regime as we see in the eu, you know, they have a regulatory regime that's bigger than their sector. We don't want to fall into that trap because this isn't just about benefits to US consumers, which there are many from AI, and the health of our economy, which is significant from AI, but it really is also making sure that as we go forward, the world is running on US AI, not Chinese AI. That's been our approach in a lot of technological times of innovation, but it's certainly never been more important than it is with artificial intelligence.
- [39:44]
Caroline Hyde
Some of the angles with artificial intelligence has been mental health and security of its users and consumers. This is something that we think time and time again has been affecting the social media outlook. There has been a void of federal regulation when it comes to the protection of users on social media. Media over in Australia, you've seen quite drastic steps being taken by looking to disallow Anyone younger than 16 using Companies Matter with Instagram, with Facebook and the like. What do you make of what Australia's done and what we might do in the United States?
- [40:17]
Anna Rafman
Yeah, I mean, Australia is certainly like the first mover in this. Right? It's out on the tip of the spear. I'm not sure it's going to be the silver bullet for everyone's mental health and all the things that make being a teenager difficult that they hope it is, but they're willing to run the experiment for us. And I'm sure that other countries are watching closely and there might be some copycatting there. I think that's a much steeper hill to climb in the U.S. first of all, we have the First Amendment that would be a challenge for a law like this. Kids don't have full rights as adults, but they have some rights. And also these social media companies have their own First Amendment rights to speech. So that also we have a Congress that, you know, it often struggles to get so called must pass legislation done. So I think it's two different environments. We'll all be watching how it goes in Australia so far. It's a lot of kids circumventing the rules with VPNs and other tactics. But and the fact is to these social media companies that are targeted by the laws are born and bred in the US So it's a little bit different politically as well. These are our companies and as we talk about all the time, these are creating a lot of wealth and value for consumers here. And I think we think a little more carefully about how we treat them and what regulations and fines we subject them to than the rest of the world does.
- [41:36]
Caroline Hyde
Jessica Malaysian, director of the center for Technology and Innovation with a competitive enterprise Institute, thanks for joining us. Today, A consumer tech conference CES kicks off in Las Vegas with all eyes on the power and the impact of AI. Let's get more on what we can expect with our own Ed Ludlow. You're already there in Vegas. I'm following in hot pursuit. But Ed, I mean we're going to hear from Jensen Huang is all going to be about showing that innovation and market share still that right?
- [42:05]
Miles Miller
Yeah. It's called the Consumer Electronics show. But the frank reality is you have the CEO of the world's biggest and most most important company talking big picture about AI right there in video are calling this what's next in AI. And it's highly unlikely that they're going to kind of surprise the markets with some new product, but maybe some substantive updates on the product roadmap. Right. Nvidia has this commitment to releasing a new generation of GPU annually. So right now there's a big focus on Blackwell. But what comes next is Vera Rubin and the Rubin generation. A year ago when we were here, it was also kind of the sidelines commentary from Jensen that ruled markets. Right. As it stands, we have a real bottleneck with memory chips. One year ago it was what Jensen had to say about Samsung and their validation of Samsung's high bandwidth memory that sent kind of markets into a tizzy. So the way that investors put this to me is like it's the first proper business day of the year, let's be honest. And you get Jensen, Juan Kino, and there's likely to be some reaction, reaction to that.
- [43:04]
Caroline Hyde
You get Lisa Sue Keynote as well. And what do we hear from the other key player that's not consumer evidently, but is powering the consumer, you know, a little different.
- [43:13]
Miles Miller
Right. You know, Lisa sue and AMD will want to talk about how they are competitive in the, in the accelerator market. And there's an opportunity for them to catch up with Nvidia, particularly in the inference phase. They have a role to play. But what we've seen with AMD historically is they still have a very big foothold in the PC market that's relevant to the consumer, relevant to developers. So with their rise in cpu, perhaps we hear some, some news around that. The big news for them a year ago was that they had their gear going into Dell for the first time. So it will be this mix of like, okay, we're staying competitive in AI, but AMD is still there and thereabouts in PC and also in gaming. Nvidia is less focused on that, but still operates in those markets too, of course.
- [43:52]
Anna Rafman
Yes.
- [43:53]
Caroline Hyde
Origins about your world of gaming TV tech Tech's own Ed Ludlow. We love it. Thank you. For more on cbs, come right here. Tomorrow on Bloomberg Tech, we're going to have some of the biggest names in the industry, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Zeeman, CEO Roland Bush, AMD CEO Lisa Su and so many more. But of course, we do all need to head back now to the Southern District of New York in New York, where Bloomberg's Miles Miller is standing by as we are moments away from vending. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores facing trial on narco terrorism charges. But 10 minutes out. Miles.
- [44:33]
Miles Miller
Yeah, that's right. They will go before Judge Alvin HELLERSTEIN in about 10 minutes time here. Less than 10 minutes now. They cleared the courthouse floor of everybody swept the floor and they'll bring him into the courtroom and then let people come in. This is such a widely watched case that they have several overflow courtrooms in this court. They are alleging that Nicolas Maduro and his wife ran a narco terrorism organization funded narco terrorists using government planes to get drugs in and out of the country. In one case, using the state oil company's plane to fly twice monthly to Margarita island to load up with drugs and Then bring them to other parts of different countries, including to the United States, using government infrastructure to do corrupt acts. Those are the allegations. He will face that judge at 12, and it's likely that he'll enter that plea of not guilty. What is most shocking and very interesting in this case is that he's hired the same attorney that Julian and Assange used, a high powered attorney from Washington to represent him in this case. But these are very serious charges which carry the possibility of life in prison, the possibility that Nicolas Maduro, after trial, could go to a supermax prison for the rest of his life. There are people out here on both sides, supporters of his outside. He'll be able to hear them when he goes into the courthouse or goes into that courtroom here at 500 Pearl street in just about now, five minutes time.
- [46:10]
Caroline Hyde
Local protests, but global ripples. And we're seeing that when we talk here on the tech show about what this means for the future of China and Taiwan. We hear, of course, that the Danish leader, Prime Minister Metta Fredricksen, on their own national TV network saying that if Donald Trump were to attack the Danish island of Greenland, that would mean the end of the Naito Alliance. How global is the mind set over there in Manhattan right now?
- [46:36]
Miles Miller
Yeah, you see the global impact of this pretty clearly, right? Our government, the US Government is trying to go into Venezuela and take control right now of the oil so that China and Russia don't control the oil in Venezuela. And it's actually very interesting. You see people here who are protesting the Chinese Communist Party right here in Chinatown. So it's global, but it's also local.
- [47:04]
Caroline Hyde
To Miles Miller, we thank you so much for coverage throughout the hour and throughout the rest of the day right here on the Bloomberg Network. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Do not forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the terminal. So is online on Apple, Spotify and Iheart From New York, this is Bloomberg Tech.
- [47:23]
Miles Miller
These days, it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent, secure any agent. Okta secures AI.
- [47:55]
Anna Rafman
Bloomberg Daybreak is your best way to get informed first thing in the morning, right in your podcast feed. Hi, I'm Karen Moscow.
- [48:02]
Miles Miller
And I'm Nathan Hager. Each morning we're up early putting together the latest episode of Bloomberg Daybreak US Edition. It's your daily 15 minute podcast on the latest in global news, politics and international relations.
- [48:16]
Anna Rafman
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- [48:21]
Miles Miller
Context you need, find us on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen.