Jack Pitcher (4:10)

As some of these AI companies are building out the infrastructure and the data centers needed to power their models, they're running into a shortage of memory. There's only a handful of major companies that make the type of memory they need, and the stocks of those have been absolutely soaring this year. A couple of them are South Korean stocks, including Samsung. A few are based in the US like SanDisk. This ETF is a very concentrated bet on four or five of the biggest memory stocks. So it's less risky than only owning one of them and lets investors easily get exposure. There's also some evidence of bigger investors buying this, like hedge funds based on the ticket sizes. But another kind of unique part about this one is they're seeing a lot of overseas retail interest that they expect is from South Korean investors. Retail trading is really popular in South Korea and now that a couple of the biggest Korean companies that manufacture memory have become hot stock marketplace in the US it's become a really popular ETF for Korean investors to trade.

Alex Osola (5:13)

Coming up, we've got some more AI news about Google and the new frontier of AI. That's after the break.

CrowdStrike Narrator (5:25)

Time is your most important asset and AI is transforming the speed of business. Your innovation and how you protect it depends on the technology you choose to trust. AI is changing the world. We're securing it crowdstrike, we stop breaches.

Alex Osola (5:45)

Google has developed a new kind of AI chip. Katherine Blunt, who covers Google for the Journal, says it's meant to meet growing demand for a new wave of AI computing called inference.

Katherine Blunt (5:55)

Inference, it's the computing process necessary to answer a query on behalf of a user. For example, you ask ChatGPT a question, the process that's going on behind the scenes there before a response is generated. That's inference. And inference is becoming increasingly important as we move into an era of agents which are capable of doing things on behalf of a user without explicit instruction from one. So you could instruct the agent to clean up your inbox, then it will go decide how to do that by itself. This particular chip, it's very efficient and it's supposed to be tailored for this process that's becoming increasingly important, Catherine says

Alex Osola (6:35)

the development sharpens Google's rivalry with AI chip giant Nvidia.

Katherine Blunt (6:39)

These are custom made in house hardware that's been developing for many years, largely for its own use. Google needs a lot of these for the AI models and other things that it's developing. There's questions about the degree to which Google will eventually externalize access to its chips, but we've seen the company strike deals to allow anthropic access to its chips, meta access to its chips, and we'll see whether the company takes any sort of other strategic directions in making its chips available.

Alex Osola (7:15)

Georgia Democratic Representative David Scott has died at 80 years old. The longtime congressman is the fifth House lawmaker to die in office since this Congress started last year. He represented a solidly blue district in the metro Atlanta area in the Middle East. Iran has attacked three ships in the Strait of Hormuz and escorted two of them to Iranian waters. U.S. officials said President Trump will give Iran a few days to offer a peace plan, a sign that his cease fire extension won't last indefinitely. Meanwhile, mediators are scrambling to get the diplomatic process back on track. Officials say they're working to arrange a possible meeting between Iran and the US as soon as Friday. And European Union ambassadors have agreed to loan Ukraine More than $100 billion financing vital for Kyiv to sustain its fight against Russia. The approval came after Hungary dropped its veto the end of a month long standoff between Ukraine and Hungary's departing prime minister, Viktor Orban. It's been more than a year since President Trump began his immigration crackdown, and we're starting to get some answers to a long standing policy question what effect do immigrants have on wages and what happens when those immigrants leave? A new Wall Street Journal analysis of government data found there isn't much evidence of widespread disruptions in the labor market or of meaningful benefits to American workers. Journal economics reporter Paul Kiernan joins us now. Paul, what does President Trump say the effect of the immigration crackdown should be on the labor market?

Paul Kiernan (8:47)

The economic rationale that we occasionally hear from President Trump and his allies is that the immigration crackdown will improve labor market conditions for workers who were born in the US For American citizens. If President Trump's hypothesis was holding true, you would probably see faster wage growth for American born workers. That's not what we're seeing. We're seeing wage growth kind of coming down for US Born workers. And you would probably also expect to see fast wage growth in the industries that rely on a lot of immigrants who are in the country illegally. So things like meatpacking, food services and restaurants. And in those sectors, wage growth is mostly below what's happening in the rest of the economy. So in the broader private sector, average hourly earnings rose 3.8% in February from a year earlier. And in the 41 industries that we identified that rely on lower skilled immigrants, they only rose 3.5%.

Alex Osola (9:50)

And you reached out to the White House for this story. What do they have to say about this?

Paul Kiernan (9:55)

They highlighted construction and trucking as sectors where wages have grown and wages are up in those sectors, but they're not really up meaningfully more than they are in the broader economy. The White House also pointed to real wages. So that's how much did your wages rise after inflation and inflation adjusted wages are up. And the White House also argues that labor force participation among people who are in their prime working years is quite strong. It doesn't look like it's risen meaningfully over the Trump administration. It was basically at the same level at various points under President Biden, but it is quite strong.

Alex Osola (10:35)

That was WSJ reporter Paul Kiernan. Thanks so much, Paul.

Paul Kiernan (10:39)

Thanks a lot, Alex.

Alex Osola (10:40)

And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienname, Danny Lewis and Alyssa Luckpat with supervising producer Tali Arbel. I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

Everpass Advertiser (11:05)

Business owners game day isn't just another shift. It's your biggest opportunity. What you show on your screens decides where fans stay. Everpass brings premium live sports together in one streaming platform built for businesses so you can deliver the games your customers want without the hassle. Reliable, easy to manage, and designed for your venue. Make your place the one fans choose. Visit everpass.com to learn more.