B (2:29)

The question here is how much can.

C (2:31)

That continue to grow? And the, the projections.

B (2:33)

I, I think Jensen Huang was talking.

C (2:35)

About $600 billion in data center spend in 2025. I've heard other estimates, but the number is huge and it continues to grow.

B (2:45)

But John, these. There's only so many companies that can spend 50, 100, $150 billion a year. And that's the kind of scale that.

C (2:54)

We'Re looking at here.

B (2:55)

So does that start to be a.

C (2:57)

Concern and is the future for Nvidia just sort of reliant on what we.

B (3:01)

Hear from CapEx budgets for 2026, for.

C (3:05)

2027, from some of the big hyperscalers?

E (3:07)

Yeah, when you're talking about something of this magnitude, of this scale, you're exactly right. There's only a handful of companies that can move the needle for Nvidia. And even in this most recent quarter there are just two customers who accounted for 44% of all of its data center revenue. That's presumably Microsoft and Meta. And I think it's one company accounted for 23% of all the data center revenue. So just a couple of players are accounting for this and that does introduce a little bit of customer concentration risk. But when you look at for example Microsoft and Meta and we don't know for sure that those are the companies, but assuming they are, I mean Microsoft is planning to spend 100 billion in 2026, an increase of 14% from this year. Meta could spend around the same 100 billion. It's expecting its growth in capital expenditures for AI to accelerate in the coming year. So I would say that things still look pretty good for Nvidia.

B (4:04)

Dan, the big question is not just the amount of spending, but where are.

C (4:08)

They going to spend that money? You know, John brought up Meta and Microsoft.

B (4:13)

They're not really developing their own chips.

C (4:15)

Or doing so effectively. Alphabet would be the other big customer. They are developing TPUs, we have AMD out there. How does Nvidia continue to stay ahead and is that going to be the case for the foreseeable future?

D (4:27)

I think it is the case for the foreseeable future and I think the way that they do it is simply by using their first mover advantage and making the case to would be enterprise customers. Hey, you can't do better than us. Yeah, sure, maybe there are competing chips out there somewhere. They don't have the performance, they don't have the track record. You're not going to get fired choosing us over a competitor. Yeah, sure. Maybe you could save on price if the thing doesn't blow up in your computer. So why not stay? Why not stay with the tried and true player in Nvidia.

B (5:04)

Yeah, that does seem to be the case. There's a lot of. There was a lot of talk even.

C (5:07)

On the conference call about Asics, which is going to be the competitors. The TPUs. Amazon has their own chips. They're, I think, you know, Alphabet has a big business with their TPU business.

B (5:19)

But they're building out their own cloud.

C (5:20)

And they're doing their own vertical integration on that.

B (5:23)

I do want to touch quickly on the China point, because that was a huge topic. H20s, not something that they were able to sell into China last quarter, not.

C (5:32)

In their guidance for the next quarter. But even this morning, we heard that there's discussions with the White House about.

B (5:39)

Potentially again paying that 15% fee to sell Blackwells into China. My question for you guys, is it. Is that going to be a big thing for Nvidia and is China going.

C (5:51)

To want to buy those chips?

B (5:52)

Because, you know, the administration put this out there that they want to get basically China and Chinese tech companies addicted to the Nvidia platform, and China doesn't want to be stuck on the Nvidia platform. So there's really some competing tensions there. Dan, what is the future of this relationship? Because it's obviously something investors are thinking about. Jensen Huang is spending a lot of time trying to get China to be.

C (6:17)

A real market for them.

B (6:18)

But is that going to be something.

C (6:20)

That'S going to be successful for Nvidia?

D (6:21)

It's an interesting question, Travis, because it brings in a whole bunch of geopolitical issues that are kind of beyond the scope of kind of the corporate look. I do think that for Nvidia, Nvidia is smart enough to understand China's geopolitical ambitions are not to rely on a foreign supplier for anything. And so the question becomes, does China have the leverage to do some of the same things that you're seeing the US do in terms of getting foreign companies from the US to locate manufacturing facilities domestically? If China can align its political interests with. With Nvidia's aspirations for global growth without jeopardizing Nvidia's relationship with the US Then that's the. That's the needle that they have to thread. I think that's what Jensen Huang is going to be trying to do. It's a tall order. But if they succeed, then they get both the US And China. That's a huge strategic win.

B (7:22)

This will obviously be a huge story.

C (7:23)

For the market for the foreseeable future.

B (7:26)

Interesting that the stock was up slightly early in trading today.

C (7:29)

Now it's down slightly.

B (7:30)

So not actually that much of a.

C (7:32)

Reaction, which is new for Nvidia. And maybe this is the case where sort of the expectations and the reality for Nvidia have kind of caught up to match each other. Investors and analysts seems to sort of understand what to expect quarter to quarter. But there will be obviously more to come from Nvidia.

B (7:49)

We will come back and talk about another fun AI topic that is Nano Banana.

C (7:53)

You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

B (7:57)

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Google's Gemini released Nano Banana this week. Maybe, maybe the best name that we have in AI right now. I thought that was a fun one. They're at least, they're at least having a little bit of fun with it.

C (8:09)

Instead of these really boring names. Even ChatGPT is just based on a.

B (8:14)

Technical terms, but this is a model that allows you to refine images. My daughter added rainbow unicorns to her background.

C (8:22)

My son gave himself huge muscles.

B (8:24)

So we had a lot of fun.

C (8:24)

With this over the last day or two.

B (8:27)

And that's just kind of the toy side. That's not the actual commercial applications.

C (8:31)

We're seeing this already starting to roll out with Adobe's suite of products and, and I think there's going to be much more of that to come.

B (8:38)

John, is, is this going to be a big deal? I know it's kind of a fun topic, but it actually seems like we may be reaching a point where AI.

C (8:46)

Is going to provide some productivity with some of these tools.

E (8:50)

Well, it doesn't take much poking around Nano Banana to realize that it's actually a really good AI photo editor. It really works well. And all this talk about Alphabet being behind when it comes to AI, that's been the conversation for a couple of years now, and then drops this product, which is really, really turning heads in about the competition in this space. It's all of a sudden looking like, hey, Alphabet is far ahead of everybody else. And you know, this has brought up conversations of if that's the case, if Google is ahead, or if Alphabet is ahead when it comes to Nano Banana, then who is on the, let's say, the wrong side of that development? And so there's questions when it comes to Adobe Photoshop, which is estimated to have 30 to 40% of the market share in this space. All of a sudden people are wondering, is this a Photoshop killer?

B (9:47)

Yeah, that's, that's a big question. But Adobe was really excited about this. You know, they had their own press release saying, hey, we're going to be an early adopter. Of Nano Banana, the, the thing that's.

C (9:57)

Interesting with Adobe is they're also creating their own models. And part of the thesis behind that originally was, you know, if we have a commercial customers and we have to make sure that what those models are training on is commercially viable, that we're not going to get sued, that our customers aren't going to get sued.

B (10:13)

So Dan, is this, does this sort of answer that question? That maybe the model isn't the differentiator for a company like Adobe and they are going to be using these sort.

C (10:25)

Of standard or generic models from a huge model maker like Google?

D (10:29)

A company that has a huge brand in a specialty area like Adobe does, the most important job they have is defending that brand. If that means making partnerships or entering collaborations with companies that could arguably be competitors, if it means adopting some of those third party platforms rather than trying to fight against them, then that's the good move. Because what you want people to think of when it comes to photo manipulation and editing is Adobe. And as long as Adobe has the best tools, no matter where they come from, they get to keep their Adobe brand at the top of mind for the consumers and the commercial customers that they rely on.

B (11:14)

I want to get both of your thoughts on this because I think one of the things that's interesting with artificial intelligence in general and a tool like Nano Banana is you can now create an image right in the Gemini app. You can create it in Photoshop if.

C (11:27)

That'S what you're comfortable with, or you.

B (11:28)

Can use a product like Canva.

C (11:30)

I'm not sure if Canva is actually using Nano Banana right now, but they do have some really great AI tools.

B (11:35)

And that's sort of like the bottom end. Typically disruption comes from the bottom. It does not come from the better products.

C (11:42)

It comes from an easier to use product that sort of proliferates and then gets better and better over time. So, John, I want to start with you.

B (11:48)

Is this the kind of AI tool.

C (11:51)

That, that solidifies Adobe's position in the market, or does this create more competitive pressure from beneath, whether that's from Gemini itself or from a product like Canva or another. Another system like that?

E (12:05)

Yeah, it's a really good question. And one of the things I do want to point out with Nano Banana, and this is something that Google DeepMind itself points out, is that it's still not perfect. It can't really do small faces, it can't spell things correctly. There are fine details that it can't render with the AI. And so when you think about who is using Photoshop, that's a professional community. You have to have those fine details fine tuned. And so I would imagine that Adobe predominantly keeps its professional customers. You'd look at something like a Canva. That's a lot of just regular Joes out there using this for a lot.

C (12:43)

Of YouTube thumbnails would be probably, yeah.

E (12:46)

And so maybe this is something where Nano Banana is ahead of Canva. And so maybe Canva actually has more to lose than Adobe Photoshop.

C (12:53)

That's interesting.

B (12:54)

Dan, what do you think?

D (12:55)

I think that Adobe is smart enough that they will always be looking down at would be disruptors. And if those would be disruptors stay in their lane, if they stay with relatively low revenue areas, if they stay with casual users, then they're not a threat. But if companies, individual companies turn into threats, Adobe's big enough, they can do the big tech thing. They can just pull out their cash, pull out their wallets, do the acquisition and they're small enough that those acquisitions are unlikely to raise antitrust concerns. And one way or the other, they'll, they'll make sure that their competition stays under control.

B (13:37)

I do think one of the takeaways.

C (13:38)

Does need to be that Google is definitely not playing from behind. That's something that John led with and they are in a much better position. They just seems to be figuring out how to make these products useful and.

B (13:49)

Maybe even a little viral. If, if Google can figure out how to go viral, that's going to be.

C (13:53)

A big thing for them.

B (13:53)

I want to touch quickly on one of the news items for one of the hottest stocks over the past few.

C (13:58)

Years, over the last three years. I don't know if you knew this.

B (14:00)

Guys, Spotify Stock is up 540%.

C (14:04)

So they are absolutely doing something right.

B (14:06)

But they're adding social features. This is one of the things they, all these platforms want to be stickier.

C (14:12)

They want to be a social network.

B (14:14)

This is a company that has over 600 million users.

C (14:18)

It's one of the biggest networks of users in the world.

B (14:21)

If you're adding things like DM features where I can, you know, send you.

C (14:24)

My playlist or send you a song.

B (14:27)

Is this a compelling way to make Spotify stickier, Dan?

C (14:30)

Or is this just another company that's going to fail trying to get into the social network?

D (14:35)

Hey, I get it. You want to keep people in your ecosystem. You want to expand the walls of your ecosystem so that you're not having people when they find out a good, when they listen to a good song on Spotify you don't want them going to meta and talking about it there. You want them talking about it on Spotify. But the concern that I have here is we've spent so much time training people when they get a message or a email or something that has an attachment, has something that they're supposed to click and play. We've trained people. All those are bad. That's phishing. You're going to get a problem with your hardware. I'm not sure Spotify can kind of untrain that. And the files, what Spotify is sending, I mean, music files are big, even links to playlists. Then you have to, you know, is the person of Spotify subscribers, they're going to be a sign in that kind of thing. You have to get the interface right. So there's a lot to get right for Spotify to have a good chance of making this work well.

B (15:37)

And are they going to try to.

C (15:38)

Make it commercial too? Would this be bands reaching out with.

B (15:41)

Via DMS and saying, hey, I'm going to be in your area, John, do you want to come to our concert? Maybe a can of worms, but maybe it's worth testing too.

E (15:51)

Yeah, I think that's my biggest fear is that my Spotify inbox starts to be spam messages from all these people. I don't know. I know that it says that, hey, you can reject messages if you want, but still there's going to be something for me to do. And I'm not sure that people actually want this feature. In fact, Spotify used to have messaging inside the app and it got rid of it in 2017 because nobody used it. I would imagine that that is because I think that's how I'm going to be. I'm not going to use it. I think that most people are going to be like me. And so I don't really see this as a game changer for Spotify.

D (16:30)

You heard it here first.

B (16:31)

John doesn't want messages from people he doesn't know.

C (16:33)

So when I send him K Pop Demon Hunter song, he's going to be happily listen to the latest. No, that's right there.

B (16:41)

All right, when we come back, we are going to talk about consumers trading down and where there may be money to be made in retail.

C (16:48)

You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

F (16:51)

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN. You try to be in control of how your info is protected, but many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.

B (17:21)

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Dollar General reported earnings this morning. The big retail trend from all the.

C (17:27)

Other retailers we heard about, heard from a couple of weeks ago was consumers trading down.

B (17:31)

John, how much of their performance is consumers trading down and how much is them just getting better at executing their business?

E (17:38)

Yeah, as far as the stock performance goes, this is better execution on the business. They've never had a demand problem in the last several years. And so once again, their same store sales were up in the most recent quarter 2.8%. I mean, that's not red hot growth, but it's still growth.

B (17:53)

And that compares to some companies that are having negative comps.

C (17:56)

I think Target was negative comps. So whether you're looking at restaurants or retail companies today, same store sales growth is a positive sign.

E (18:05)

Exactly. Any, any growth is continued to be a positive. And Dollar General has had that mostly for this entire time that it's been underperforming the stock. And the, the reason why it's been underperforming is its inventory got too high. It's had an inventory problem since 2022. In the most recent quarter, inventories came down another 6%. We're down to our lowest level since then. And so, you know, this is why they've been having profitability problems is because they've had to lower prices to move inventory. And now we're starting to get past some of that headwind and now profits can bounce back.

C (18:36)

Dan, what did you see in the quarter?

D (18:38)

So it validates for me the investing thesis for Dollar General and it kind of makes shows a mistake that I think that traditional grocery store chains are making. Dollar General made a move to move toward those sort of essential items as a way to get people into their stores. I think grocery stores could have nipped that in the. But they didn't. They took their pricing power for granted. They rode the inflation wave higher. The result of that, Dollar General is now competitive on many staple items and they have aggressive discounts that I think is building habits in consumers. It's like, yeah, come in every week, we have a new flyer, we have new discounts, we have new specials. Those frequent visits I think are adding to traffic in a way that's going to be a long term boost for Dollar General and it could be a long term behavioral shift. That's not just economically sensitive, not just a matter of trading down, but really tapping into the idea of people want the best bargain all the time, no matter what the economy's doing.

B (19:41)

I want to get out of here on this. With all the retail earnings that we've had over the past couple of weeks.

C (19:45)

Where do you think there's opportunities for investors?

E (19:47)

JOHN well, interestingly enough, Travis, I don't think that this Dollar General stock trend is over yet. I mean you're looking at this year they were predicting 580 in earnings per share would be on the high end of what they would earn this year. Now that's the low end and that is roughly about 14% growth. And so they are able to now improve their profits from their low point and they were priced according to the low point. So now as those profits do grow at a double digit rate, as they presumably continue to improve operations, I think the stock still has more room to run.

B (20:23)

Dan what are you looking at?

D (20:24)

I'm a big fan in the dollar Store area of Canada's biggest chain by far. It's dollarama. It's Ticker D O L on the Toronto Stock Exchange, maybe the best name.

C (20:35)

In the dollar store business.

D (20:36)

It is, I'm telling you, it's the nano banana of the dollar store world. It just flows off your tongue and you know they've got a great business too. It's huge market penetration. There's hardly a town in Canada that doesn't have a dollarama ubiquitous store presence, amazingly diverse product mix, more products than you see in the typical Dollar General or US Dollar Store and frankly a lot easier to walk around to find the things you need. The store layouts just a lot easier to navigate than anything that you see in the US Very bullish on dollarama and they've had great returns in recent years.

B (21:12)

Dollarama is one that I have not looked at, so maybe I'll add that to my watch list list. As always, people on the program may have interest in stocks they talk about and the Motley fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes for John Quast, Dan Kaplinger, our production leader, BART chain and and the entire Motley fool team. I'm Travis Hoyam. Thanks for listening to Motley fool money.

C (21:46)

We'll see you here tomorrow.