Navigated to TSMC Forecast Lifts Peers on Robust AI Demand - Transcript

TSMC Forecast Lifts Peers on Robust AI Demand

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Bloomberg Tech is alive from coast to coast, with Caroline Hyde in New York and VLA lolow into San Francisco.

Speaker 2

This is Bloomberg Tech coming up.

Speaker 3

TSMC posts a strong forecast and results lifting peers, a sign that demand related to AI remains robust.

Speaker 4

This as Open AI focuses on it's infrastructure, striking a deal with Cerebraus for compute and hunting for hardware partners across data centers and consumer devices.

Speaker 3

And the mayor of New York City is suing a delivery tech company, accusing it of breaking local worker protection laws.

Speaker 5

We'll get into that in a moment.

Speaker 4

The first we check in on where the markets are, and actually we're managing to rally in the a's that one hundred after two days of losses.

It's all about that TSMC headline that you were just discussing ed and the rejuvenation in maybe way back into these key AI names and video.

Indeed, one of the key points rides is higher bickerin though not feeling much of the love.

There's also a delayed to a key Senate markup on the market structure Bill so that's putting some pressure on the ecosystem more generally.

But watch for crypto.

But you're looking at TSMC.

Speaker 3

Yeah, the world's most important chip contract manufacturer telling us capital expenditures up to fifty six billion this year, top line growths thirty percent, two markers that.

Speaker 2

The AI demand is intact.

Speaker 3

But ASML, the most important chip equipment making machine making name, first European company in a long time to breach five hundred billion dollars in market value, shares trading at a record high.

Speaker 6

Why.

Speaker 3

Because TSMC is the number one buyer of its gear.

There's a lot to get into.

Let's get to it with Bloomberg's Peter Elstrom out in London.

This TSMC forecast.

Speaker 2

It's big.

Speaker 3

It's big for markets, it's big for the industry, it's big for AI.

Very interesting though to listen to Cca give a note of caution on how to deploying that capital carefully is important.

Speaker 7

Yeah, that's right.

The earnings report from TSMC was very, very strong.

As you said, they forecast that revenue is going to be up close to thirty percent this year.

As you mentioned, they're boosting their capex outlook too.

It's going up more than thirty five percent at the high end of that range, up to fifty six billion dollars.

As you say, that's from forty point nine billion dollars last year, so it's a big boost.

It's very clear who's going to benefit from this, as you mentioned ASML is one of the big beneficiaries.

Its shares were up to a record today, Applied materials up today to a record.

KLA is also up to a record, So you see that these chip equipment makers are definitely benefiting from this.

But as you suggested, cc Way and the call afterwards was not exuberant about this.

He was not reassuring in all respects about the AI trade.

Somebody asked them directly, do you think that we're in an AI bubble at this point?

And he said, yes, you're asking us whether the AI demand is real.

So beyond the capital spending is demand.

On the other side, he said, I'm very nervous about this.

He said, we're investing fifty two to fifty six billion dollars.

If we don't do it carefully, there could be a big disaster for TSFC.

Just to be clear, TSMC is the one that's spending tens of billions of dollars for these new fabs that are going to come online two or three years down the line, and Video is not doing that, and Vidia is just buying chips from them.

Speaker 4

As is Apple and made its chips via TSMC, one of its biggest revenue drivers, and is also trying to stereous as to where the memory story goes as well.

Peter, how did you hear about whether or not that's going to impact high end phones at least?

Speaker 7

Yeah, he touched on a very important point.

There has been a shortage of memory chips, especially for some of these consumer electronics smartphones and the like.

That's partly because there's so much demand for the AI to pair the memory chips with AI that that's squeezing up a lot of the capacity that's out there from Samsung and s K Heinez and Mike Cron in particular, so that's driving up prices.

Ccway was asked about that, he said that he thinks it's going to be manageable going forward.

That is a big issue go especially for smartphones and consumer electronics.

Speaker 3

Peter elite EDG chip fab is a fixed cost fifteen to twenty five billion dollars.

It takes several years to come online, and you can't know what the demand will be when it does come online.

Right, No one as a crystal ball.

But a part of this is geopolitics.

TSMC is at the heart of trade talks between the US and Taiwan and is under pressure to put more capacity in this country, the United States.

Speaker 7

You're touching on a very important point.

Maybe let's start with a company challenge here.

Historically TSMC has done all of its important manufacturing in Taiwan.

It's easier, it's a very contained location where their engineers can share intelligence across the country, across the island.

And now they're trying to also build in the United States and they're building more and more fabs.

So right now the and Taiwanese officials are talking about a trade deal that would lower some of the tariffs for Taiwanese goods going into the United States.

As part of that deal, we understand that TSMC will probably step up its investments in the United States.

They're talking about adding four or five fabs on top of the existing ones that they already planned to build.

So TSMC has said, we don't want to do our most cutting edge chips in the United States.

But there are increasing capacity there that will be part of this deal.

We anticipate that could come.

It could come out publicly over the next week or so.

Speaker 4

Flu Mex Peter Elstrom, thanks so much for the breakdown.

Let's tournal attention to New York City Mayor now Son mum Danny.

He's giving his promise on focusing on better working conditions and pay for food delivery drivers.

Now the city is accusing door Dash and Uber of depriving workers and more than five hundred and fifty million dollars in tips due to changes in their apps.

But an I see is even looking to shut down a company called moto Click, behind the scenes delivery tech company that works with these big platforms using it a breaking local worker.

Speaker 5

Protection laws from Mex.

Speaker 4

Miles Miller has the latest and moto click is a focus for you.

Speaker 8

What's been up to Yeah, according to the Mayor's office, Moto click has not been paying the required minimum wage great and has been deducting canceled and refund orders directly from these workers paycheck.

The city filing a lawsuit in a state Supreme court here in New York City and say that these practices left some of these couriers owing money to the company, and they say that they work with Uber and grubhub and DoorDash.

What is central here is that this is the new focus of the new mayor, primely focus on the gig economy and food and delivery tech and really making sure that these new laws that protect these workers, whether it be wages, whether it be other fairness issues, are top of mine and front and center.

That is what he is announcing today, and he is putting the onus on these companies doing really an education campaign to make sure that these companies know how they should protect their workers.

Speaker 2

What we know is that this company, in particular Notopliq.

Speaker 8

Integrates their point of service program or point of sale programs to generate orders from photographs of receipts really the last mile of that delivery until it gets to your home.

We know that this is really focus off to the Mayor's office because he's appointed a former head of the Enforcement Provision of the FGC, as well as Shuley Sue, the former Labor Commissioner, and he's been a Labor secretary or president wide and he's also getting a lot of advice from Later Kant of course, Brandy MPGC and was very critical of fees and more importantly of the fees of these kind of app companies and what Magely.

Speaker 3

Lumos, Male Miller, Males Miller, thank you very much, and Caro, you know you and I have reflected on this story in the last couple of days that the main thing the audience needs to know is that come January twenty sixth, in that state of city, at least there is new laws.

It's codified, the set of rules that protect the issue that Males has just been out.

Speaker 4

Yeah, motor Click is one issue and quite a significant step that even a city would look to shut a company down.

But also what's been being reported on is the fact that doord Ashneuber make changes to their own apps and when you pay a tip, when you would say it's rational to pay the tip after the service, but it's meant that those tips have come way down for some of these drivers, and they're being accused of costing drivers about five hundred and fifty million dollars in tips.

So is something that they're going to have to navigate and narrate as the story continues.

Speaker 3

We asked what would New York's new mayor do with the tech industry.

This is the sort of early play of what his intentions are and if coming up on Bloomberg Tech, open Ai ramps up its real world ambitions, looking to shure up US hardware supply chains for future devices.

Speaker 2

We have more on next net Next.

This is Bloomberg Tech.

Speaker 5

Open Ai.

Speaker 4

Well, it's looking to bolster its US hardware supply chain.

Company looks to find partners for us to push into consumer devices, into robotics, and also of course into data centers and the Chatchip team maker has put out requests for proposals from various component companies in the United States.

Mer Seth Fiegman, who covers open ai, joins us some more.

This is about a local supply chain, but this is all about signaling where the future revenue is going to be coming from for the company, right.

Speaker 9

It's true some of this isn't keeping with the data center expansion that we've of course talked about before, but the idea of getting into robotics and supply chains for that, there's a little bit of a new development here.

We know that open i has made some key hires on the robotics front.

They haven't really said too much about it in recent months, and this is the first real signal in a while that they're serious about it and serious about focusing manufacturing for it in the US.

Now, I will say, what's interesting is there's the hardware elevant of it, but also they're focusing a lot on the software and building the brains behind these AI robots.

Speaker 3

Are we looking for clues set of what a consumer facing device looks like from open Ai, what form factory is.

As far as I can tell, we still a little bit in the dark there, I think.

Speaker 9

We are, And to be honest, it feels like openie I might also still be a little bitger than Dark Year.

I mean, the last remarks that we heard from Jonie I've since his he was acquired by them, is that there's a dozen or more different design possibilities here for it, and he's almost overwhelmed by the different possibilities here.

But it seems like it might be a subtle device, and I think most folks are expecting something in the next year.

Speaker 3

Bloomberg Seth Figman, who's OURAI editor leading the team there, thank you so much that stay with open Ai.

The company has signed a multi year hardware deal with Cerebrus, giving open ai access to seven hundred and fifty megawatts of computing power.

According to sources, the agreement is valued at more than ten billion dollars and would expand open AI's efforts in AI infrastructure buildout.

Let's get to Bloomberg Senior Tech editor Mike Sheppard.

Speaker 2

Mike, what do we need to know?

Speaker 6

Well, this is just the latest massive data center deal that OpenAI has inc over the past year or in twenty twenty five, we saw them sign a ten gigawatt deal within video valued at roughly one hundred billion dollars in a six gigawat deal with AMD, So this is just another instance of them looking for more hardware suppliers, and it's just another sign that the demand for infrastructure is still there, especially on the hyperscaler side.

Speaker 2

For Cerebrus, this is a big moment.

Speaker 10

This is the deal that the CEO, Andrew Feldman, who has been on this program before, says will launch the company into the big leagues.

They say that their technology runs as quickly and more efficiently than in vidias and they are really trying to challenge the market leader in this space for AI chips and AI hardware and what they are looking to do now is perhaps expand on that, and the company is also in talks for a capital raise of as much as one billion dollars that would take their total valuation to twenty two billion dollars.

Now, this deal is not complete on the rais, but it certainly is drawing more attention to a company that is trying to establish itself as a real market competitor to AMD and Nvidia in this area of AI chips.

Speaker 3

Blue Mags, Mike, thank you very much.

There's many more news stories out there today in the world of tech.

Speaker 11

Caro, there are.

Speaker 5

It's time now for talking tech.

Speaker 4

A first up, Ali Baba is looking to unify its various services in its AI app Quenn.

The company is looking to connect the likes of Talbot, Alipay, Fliggy to the Quenn app, offering users just one single platform to shop, to book, travel, to pay for services for the help of AI prlus Amazon while it's challenging Saxes Chapter eleven filing coming.

The luxury retailer breached a deal tied to selling sax products on Amazon and then its equity stake is now presumptively worthless.

Sax is seeking court approval to access as much as one point sent five billion dollars in financing to pay vendors, payroll and other expenses, and elol Musk's XAI when it's disabled the ability for users to generate sexualized images of real people using its.

Speaker 5

Clock AI chatbot.

Speaker 4

In a post on x then, the company says it has quote zero torrant for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non consensual nudity and unwanted sexual content, and changes up to all users on x when using glock, and they include premium subscribers to ed Okay.

Speaker 3

Coming up, A grid operator cuts its power demand forecast, offering a reality check to the AI boom that conversation's next.

This is Bloomberg Tech, the biggest grid operator in the US.

PGM Interconnection cut its power demand forecast for summer twenty twenty seven by more than two percent to about one hundred and sixty gigawats.

That may seem surprising given that big cloud providers and AI firms keep talking up their need for electricity, and even more so when you consider that PGM manages the region which includes data center heavy Northern Virginias.

Speaker 2

What does all this mean?

Speaker 3

Let's bring in medi Parriearb, CEO of the Washington, DC based International Data Center Authority, a think tag but also global advisor on data centers.

This data set is really important throughout industry.

A lot of people have said, keep watching it.

But what it indicates is that there is a big difference, right MEDI between those projects announced on data center capacity and those that are actually being built and those that are actually utilizing electricity not just contracted for it.

Speaker 2

What do you make of it?

Speaker 12

Yeah, yes, we see this happening all the time.

What's announced is usually very different from what's actually planned and deployed, so reports need to rely on planned projections, not announced projections.

And you know this, this report doesn't really relate to the actual reality of the datalin industry for simple reasons.

First of all, you know the one hundred and sixty four game of what deviation to one sixty gig a what is just two point four percent drop?

And the way power companies work, they try to double the projected average and this is not a significant job in terms of power projection.

However, the fact that the day center industry is actually growing, not by anyways diminishing, is because of the fact that data centers are not just bottlenecked by power, but also by water, by connectivity, by human capital, by policy, taxation, and so many other reasons.

That's why, for example, workforce there is simply not to know people out there to run data centers.

But the most important reasons that this report could be misleading is two reasons.

First, chip maturity, because chips are evolving so fast that it became so difficult for las center owners and operators to build day centers fast enough that before they become obsolete.

It usually takes twenty four most tobilit day center and just we're changing multile basis, but in twenty twenty six, we're predicting that a lot of maturity and clarity.

Speaker 2

Yes, how valuable is this data?

Speaker 3

Right?

Because what PGM does is tell us their forecast for the next five years summertime peak demand, winter time peak demand, and then they tell us that by twenty thirty five they expect that demand forecast to keep growing.

Speaker 2

That's quite a long time horizon.

Speaker 13

Yeah.

Speaker 12

But one of the main reasons that I don't find this report too relevant is because it's totally ignoring onside power generation.

Because because of the slow development of the power companies and then meeting the demand needs of the days of the operators.

A lot of dacent companies are reverting to onside power generation.

If you want to grab a gas turbine, you can't find anything in the market today.

Everything is backloaded.

So a lot of people are reverting to onside power generation, whether it's gas, solar or other means hydro and including asmrs.

You know this, This report totally dismisses the fact that a lot of day center industries relying on onside power generation and not on the grid.

Speaker 14

And that's why you really can depend on the board.

Speaker 4

Many I've seen caterpillars stop go way high because people have been trying to bring on local power generation in this way.

But you do want SMRs.

They're not really out there in the field yet.

I mean that's something that we factor in at least in five years time, right.

Speaker 12

Yeah, I mean the maturity process, you know, governance, everything outside of the country, Nuclear is becoming very popular.

United Arab Emirs, for example, is a nuclear country.

They are building data centers that giga capacities.

So when you look at the world map, nuclear in general is becoming the solution to go to for data centers and SMRs for outside power generation of the way to go.

But in the meantime, there's a transitional fuel, which is natural gas, which everybody is relying on, and that is totally being missed, you know, dismissed in most findings and most sports.

So the projections of power companies trying to provide electes stay on the grid doesn't really reflect the reality of the data center industry growth.

We're going from sixty gigo to three hundred gigabot capacity in just five years, and that's that's not even.

Speaker 14

A very optimistic explanation of the market.

Speaker 12

Is a very conservative projection because looking at the company like Nvidia, where chips and the development of AII is totally blocked and bottlenecked by the development and speed of growth of data centers, you will see that there is no other option where companies like Nvidia are hunting for data center power so that they can sell more chips.

Speaker 5

Can I Can I get this straight?

Speaker 4

Then you think that ultimately this power provider is underestimating how much power we're going to be needing in five years time.

Speaker 14

Definitely is totally underestimated.

Speaker 5

It's the consumer.

Speaker 4

You're someone who goes around and advises governments worldwide about what to do in terms of getting their data centers online.

What does that mean in terms of power prices to the everyday consumer.

Speaker 12

The only way countries can keep up with this is either you need to stop technology from growth, which is not possible, or every day is touched by data centers and AI and the evolution of technology.

Speaker 14

This interview wouldn't be possible.

Speaker 12

The flights everything around us is only possible through technology and ultimately true days, so you cannot stop that.

What you need to do at the national level, government level, you need to make sure that you're provisioning in our power to your people, to your citizens as you don't you don't burden your citizens.

Speaker 14

By the cause of electricity.

Speaker 12

By making sure that you're not just sitting around letting the market drive things you need to.

You need to make sure that you are always ahead of the Unfortunately, governments aren't as informed.

Speaker 14

That there should be.

So that's that's a major tanks for us when we advise governments.

Speaker 4

Many Pravi, We thank you for your time, CEO of International Data Center Authority, A pretty busy man, right now, Let's stick with all maybe that story about power grids by PGN about that outlook for the forecast and bringing blue megs rue Manik, who's been writing up all about this for the un well, unbathed and deep knowledge of power and how it works here in the United States, is a is the outlook of one hundred and sixty the right one?

Speaker 5

Do you think?

How do they come to these sorts of numbers?

Speaker 15

Yeah, just to quickly put context, power demand has been so like flat in PGM that they still haven't touched the all time record that was hit in two thousand and six, which is one hundred and sixty five gigawats, and they won't get there until twenty twenty eight.

So this pullback now for next year of about nearly four gigawatts, that's a lot.

That's four nuclear reactors worth of.

Speaker 5

Power supply.

Speaker 15

And so I think what PGM is trying to do, This is an industry that is overwhelmed with so many requests to build power plan data centers that can consume as much power as cities.

This is all being passed on to consumers, so they're trying to find out what's actually happening and on what timeline, And this is specifically for next year but then and that will affect consumers prices because they had a shortfall of nearly six gigawatts in the capacity auction.

So now that shortfall is smaller, so it has direct costs and consumers.

I think longer term, what you're hearing is right, like those numbers are gonna change a lot.

We might see a hockey stick type of momentum here, right.

Speaker 2

Nor in real quick.

Speaker 3

The reason that this data kind of peaks the interest is that PGM goes back and only includes projects that will take some load that they think are actually going to be real and be built.

Speaker 2

Just explain the methodology they use.

Yeah, this is.

Speaker 15

Actually a new methodology.

They have historically and not had that much insight into what's happening on the demand side.

They usually look at power generation, but this demand is coming so fast that they went back and with the work while working with utilities, looked at which projects have like engineering contracts, construction contracts, and electricity service contracts.

So these are more real.

That's not to say you can't see more, but you are seeing also a huge scramble to write build on site generation.

Speaker 3

Bloombergsnorine Mallick, great reporting, Thank you very coming up.

Hardware makers Apple, HP others feeling the pain of the memory crunch as next.

Rising memory prices starting to make investors nervous, especially when it comes to hardware makers that rely heavily on those components.

You can see it in the stocks.

Shares of Apple and HP have been under pressure this year.

Apple down more than four percent so far in twenty six, Hpa down more than six percent.

Bloomberg Equities reported Ryan Vasellak has been writing about exactly that the situation is right.

Severe, severe demand for memory storage and high bandwidth from the data center is making tight supply for everyone else, shooting prices up.

But now we're seeing it in the equities those names that rely on it most.

Speaker 2

What do we need to know?

Hey, good morning, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 16

So we've been talking a lot about how strong the memory and storage companies have been, especially this year and in recent months, sand Disk, Western Digital, Seagate, Micron.

The flip side of that is those other customers for those companies, like you said, HP del to a certain extent, all these companies that make consumer hardware, they are seeing this in the form of higher memory prices, which is having an impact on their margins.

Speaker 2

On their cost of goods.

Speaker 16

It's really become something of a major concern for these companies, ECHP being probably the most prominent example.

There's a lot of concern about what is this going to mean for their ability to have favorable prices for PCs.

What will raising prices do to demand?

What we'll keeping prices steady due to margins.

A lot of concerns there because memory is a pretty big component for building out PCs and our phones products like that.

Speaker 4

What's interesting is we tie it back to TSMC's results and we hear from the CEO who sort of guided us to the idea that the memory chip price increases actually aren't going.

Speaker 5

To affect that.

Speaker 4

Perhaps Apple so much, they're big customer because they send the high end phones, but really it's an HP and a Dell story.

Is it because they've got less of a margin to be able to take a hit, they have to pass it on to the consumer.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Absolutely so.

Speaker 16

A lot of these companies have like supply agreements that are probably going to last through the first half of twenty twenty six or so.

After that, this equation is going to get a lot tougher.

A lot of the brides in these memory prices has occurred over the past several months, so it is something people are worried about, especially as you look into the second half of twenty twenty six.

I know we just started, but people are already looking there, really looking at what is this going to mean for their margins and how should we consider them on a valuation basis.

If you have this suddenly new you know, increased costs in the form of higher memory chips.

Speaker 3

There is an upside for someone and that is that the memory names themselves.

We were just cycling through the charts right on a one year basis, some of those memory names are up hundreds of percent, some of them more than one thousand percent.

This has changed the fortunes and also I guess the reputation of some of the names like sand Disk, Western Digital.

Speaker 2

Seagate, Rhyme.

Yeah.

Absolutely so.

Speaker 16

Historically a lot of these companies traded at much lower multiples because they had a pretty shorter cycle as far as their boom and.

Speaker 2

Bus cycle goes.

Speaker 16

So you would see something like a PC refresh cycle or an iPhone or smartphone upgrade cycle, and you would see a little bit of a boost in the memory prices, and then you'd see it fall back again, and you'd see the stock sort of reacting along that sort of cadence.

But now you have these new customers, all these hyperscalers, all of this money that's being spent on AI.

That has really changed the kind of equation, the kind of cycle that these companies are operating under.

So you really seem just so much growth coming out of these companies, and really, so far it doesn't seem like it's going to stop anytime soon.

It seems like memory prices are continuing to be biased upwards, and that just has people being very optimistic about their prospects from here, especially since a lot of these companies continue to trade at a discount to your videos of the world and so forth.

Speaker 5

And Estelleka always with some of the most red stories.

Thank you very much.

Let's get a market analysis now.

Speaker 4

In fact, Oshkadeshka is with us senior analyst over at Swiss Code.

Speaker 5

And what's really interesting.

Speaker 4

You've been thinking about some of these bottlenecks, and we think memory is one.

We've been thinking about how infrastructure is one of them as well.

We're thinking about how power is too impact.

How are investors trying to play this?

Are they still worried about an AI bubble.

Are they still all in on the areas that still are in demand.

Speaker 13

Well, there are now bottlenecks where trying to pop.

As you say, one is energy memory chase.

We also have a heavy rise in metal prices, especially copper prices, are pressuring input prices higher, and these pressure and input prices started to worry investors in many segments.

Not all segments are concerned, but many segments, especially hallway companies and data centers, are now feeling the pinch of higher input costs and eventually higher energy prices as well.

And one of the other problems is obviously see the trade tensions, the potential shock to supply chains, and all of that is just playing quite negatively into this AI.

The optimistic AI narrative that we had seen over the past three years.

Speaker 4

And then comes TSMZ that's sort of eased a lot of that anxiety, saying AI demand, we see it, shortly, cautious, but we see it and we build.

What does that mean about the ultimate story?

How much did optimism get brings back?

Speaker 11

Well, it did TSMC beat estimates.

Speaker 13

That was not surprised as just another quarter of very strong results from TSMC, and they say that the demand and AI remains strong and they're building more data and more and more chip plans.

Excuse me, and that also justifies TSMC's building chip plans outside the United States and Japan, in Europe and obviously in the US as well.

Speaker 11

Demands remain strong.

Speaker 13

But building these chip plans and building the data centers requires components, and the components, the supply of components is unfortunately not infinite infinite, so that is going to be a bottleneck, and that's going to be the capacity constraint that could eventually become a headache for the sector and the growth expectations, UPEG.

Speaker 3

If I showed you a long term chart of memory spot pricing, it would be for a number of years basically steady only because of the severity in the surge in the last month.

At this juncture, do we need to start talking about the impact of memory You mentioned energy as well on inflation and have a more economic discussion about what this shock, this bottleneck is causing.

Speaker 13

Well, obviously there are no rising worries about the fact that all these AI demands and resources being limited is going to start pushing prices higher for the memory chips.

Speaker 11

We're talking about very big numbers.

Speaker 13

I mean thirty percent rise only last quarter according to some songs record earlier this month.

And as Ryan also said, I mean, this is a very important component of hardware companies and it will eventually start pressuring their their profit margins and lead to price pressures.

Now, the question is how much of these costs, of the additional costs will be pushed onto the end customers.

The reality is that we do not know.

But the higher the demand, the higher the prices we are going to be going up, and the higher the pressure will be on the profit margins.

There the competition is going to be important.

The higher the competition will the bigger the impact on profit margins, and these companies will not be able to push the prices too high because well then there will be there will be implications on the demands side.

Speaker 3

The memory bottleneck.

Is that going to be the talking point of this technology earning season.

Speaker 13

Well, yes, I think that is going to be one of the major talking points, along with energy and the metal prices as well.

Speaker 11

All of these input prices are rising.

Speaker 13

The other thing that we will be really watching very closely in this earning season is obviously the headline numbers, but not only we will be also looking very closely into how the revenues are being booked and how the loans are also being booked in order to not let the technology companies builders narrative, but also try to dig into the risk that could be underline.

Speaker 5

IPEC, We thank you IPEC.

Os Kadashka.

Great to have you from Swiss.

Quote.

Speaker 4

I mean, we're talking about energy, we're talking about power, and we have some breaking news at the moment.

All regarding the offshore wind band that Trump had imposed has been blocked for a second time in the US court.

So Equinor has run on ruling to resume a US wind project that have been halted by President Trump.

So this all fits into the context of power, the need for it, but also the calmdown on certain green projects from the current administration.

Speaker 3

Okay, coming up, four astronauts landed safely back on Earth last night in NASA's first ever medical evacuation.

When it comes to space, President Trump is more focused on defense.

We'll have the latest on that next.

This is Bloomberg Tech.

Speaker 10

If we don't take Greenland, Russia up, what China will take Greenland?

Speaker 9

And I am not going to let that happen.

Speaker 1

Jure, I'd loved about it, and make a deal with them.

Speaker 2

It's easier we went to one way or the other.

Speaker 5

We're going to have Greenland, President Trump speaking there now.

Speaker 4

One reason the US has stressed its need to take over Greenland is for the Golden Dome Air and Missile defense system.

Let's talk about that, the technical difficulties, the challenges, the operations.

Laura Crabtree, co founder CEO of Exscellon three, a provider of resource management software for the space industry.

And really you've done such a deep dive on how technically difficult Golden Dome will be to execute from a partner perspective, talk us through.

Speaker 10

It, law.

Speaker 17

Yeah, So the biggest challenge, I think is not necessarily going to be just the technology.

Speaker 14

It's going to be the cooperation between the.

Speaker 17

Government and the commercial partners that are providing solutions to the government.

And that is everything from the technology, the acquisition of programs, the operations of those programs, and then everything in between.

And so I think not only the cost is a little bit of a risk, but also the risk of the number of people that need to be involved in Golden Dome and the number of things that need to go correctly for the Golden Dome to be successful program.

Speaker 4

I mean, aside from the fact that the geopolitics of it all.

As Secretary Hegseth has been saying that Greenland is vital to US paths to build the Golden Dome missile defense shield in particular, I'm interested in ultimately whether you think get pulled off in what succession, How is yourself for how are people thinking about aligning partners.

Speaker 17

Yeah, the one thing that I keep going back to is the demonstration of the commercial partnership in companies like SpaceX, the coordination with NASA, the coordination with all of the different partnerships that SpaceX has formed over the life cycle of the company, and all the partnerships that are going to need to come from the Golden Dome.

So I think looking at that and the technological challenges for that, and the communication and coordination, we've taken a look at how much we need to be able to provide our commercial partners to be able to work in concert with the government partnerships that they are forming in the future and right now, so that we can make sure that it is as successful as it can be.

Speaker 3

At this stage, Laurie in a Golden dome, is an idea, a proposal, a plan for missile defense.

But increasingly the focus of the administration, as we discuss at the top, is space as either a war fighting domain or critical domain to defense, you know, leveraging your experience at SpaceX.

But currently, what's your assessment of how this administration is going about that as a priority.

Speaker 17

Well, I think from the discussions I've had, the priority is on acquisition, letting the commercial partners develop technology and then having the government acquire it.

I think there's still some work to be done on acquisition of programs, acquisition of technologies, and then how the partnership actually works between them, and then I think there's probably some financial discussions that also need to be worked out a little bit.

But there Yeah, you're right, it is still in development, so I think a lot of those things are in discussion, and I'm very hopeful that some of the roadblocks that we've seen in the past to government acquisition will be removed going forward.

Speaker 3

I've got to ask you about a first ISS medical evacuation.

You know, SpaceX at the heart of it, but NASA moved incredibly quickly again reflecting on your time in industry, what you made of it, And you know, we say on this program a lot.

The ability to put humans into orbit and return them from ISS is now routine through SpaceX.

Speaker 2

Is that more evidence of that?

Speaker 11

It absolutely is.

Speaker 17

And the partnership that was formed when I started at SpaceX in two thousand and nine, it didn't start as it is right now.

There were still open questions on whether or not SpaceX was going to come to the table with real hardware, with real operational mindset, and we did prove to NASA that we were there to basically run a successful program, and over the course of the number of years that we've been working with them, we've really built a level of trust with NASA such that they can move quickly, they can make decisions quickly, and I think part of that is the underlying software and infrastructure and decision making that has been sort of part of the program from the beginning, and that has enabled them to move quickly and diorbit a crew in a very short period of time, something that is not easy the technologies there.

Clearly, we've returned many humans from space at this point.

However, the decision usually is multiple weeks months, and you know, if you have six months of planning, you know what the weather is going to be, you know exactly who does what, you know the stowage, you know everything.

But in order to move quickly, you need to have all of that very well planned out.

And I think that it is a really nice thing to see the the movement in that.

Speaker 4

And now you've built Epsilon three, and now your customers are not just NASA itself but other rival space companies.

There's a worry that SpaceX is too dominant.

Speaker 5

Would you say it is.

Speaker 11

I would not say it is.

Speaker 17

I would say that we need companies like SpaceX to have a lot of success to show the market how impactful a very, very large and successful space company can be.

And it's also enabling a lot of other companies to get to space quickly and effectively, and also at a cost that is much lower than previous So it's actually enabling the rest of the space economy and I'm really glad to see it.

It's something that I wanted to be a part of from the beginning of my journey in this industry.

Speaker 3

Laura Crabtree, CEO and co founder of Epsilon three, thank you very much crucial to both space and defense tech are rare earths, and on Wednesday, President Trump signed a proclamation aimed at securing US access to critical minerals.

The move to reduce China's dominance in the supply chain has spurred investors to pour money into the startups and companies in the sector, some of which are focused on the green energy transition, joining US as Bloomberg Climate Tech editor Brian Kahan gives some hope what the President wants to do is cut into China's dominance, but actually there's there's a whole industry, a lifeline being provided to green tech.

Speaker 18

Yeah, that's right, it's definitely.

I would say that President Trump is nicely focused on green tech, but there is very much a knock on side effect, yeah, side effect.

Yeah, And well, you know for the green tech industry at this point, they'll take it.

There's a lot of pushback.

You know, we just heard earlier about the offshore win back and forth.

But you know, there are some wins that are happening, and when it comes to rare that is one of those wins we've seen by the President putting in sort of the way of the federal government behind it.

And pushing for this onshoring of the supply chain.

We've seen a major investment from the private sector, including a record set last year of nearly six hundred and thirty million dollars RAN.

Speaker 4

I think it's worth just going that big picture because rare earth extracting them is an incredibly messy and climate impactful affairs.

So is that why green energy gets a lifeline and what types of companies do.

Speaker 5

Well out of this?

Speaker 18

I mean, the companies that are going to get a lifeline out of this are you know, for just one example, EV's if you look at the rare earth you.

Speaker 2

Know who's using rare earths?

Speaker 18

About twenty two percent of all use last year was through evs, vikes, you emobility essentially, So those are the kind of companies that can really benefit from seeing a more diverse supply chain.

Speaker 14

You know.

Speaker 18

In addition to that, there are other parts of the tech industry at largely use them as well as defense.

But I'd say, like when you're looking at where are the biggest gains that could be made, it's going to be emobility that could see the biggest you know, boost from see more rare earth production.

Speaker 3

The national security element clearly important.

Brian, Sorry if this is a dumb question, but where is the president going to find these rare earths if he's not going to get them from China.

Speaker 18

Well, there are a number of ways to kind of get them in some of the interesting ways that we're seeing some of these companies in the US work is actually looking at mining waste.

So there's a company called Phoenix Tailings.

Their big thing is taking mining waste from other processes and basically sort of digging out essentially maybe a one more fancy than digging out, but they're essentially getting the rare earths that are hidden in there out of that mining waste and processing it.

And they've just opened up a plant in New Hampshire actually last year.

You know, they're producing a pretty small amount at this points, about two hundred tons annually.

That's a very small fraction of the six hundred and twenty thousand tons that China produces.

But it shows that there are going to be some unique ways to get into the supply chain beyond just mining them out.

Speaker 19

Of the ground.

Speaker 5

Brian KHM.

Fascinating.

Thanks for joining us.

We appreciate it.

Speaker 4

Now coming up, go to Oracle making a big bet on Nashville.

The workers don't seem to be been on locating at the company's new global at quarters on that next this room leg Tech.

Speaker 3

Oracle may be an attractive bet for investors, but the company is struggling to do a workers to its new global headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.

Belue most Brady for has been covering Oracle's efforts, and what's interesting is, you know, go back a couple of years in Larius and was positioning this is like, this is gonna be world HQ.

Speaker 2

They want people, they're hiring there.

Speaker 3

There are postings, but actually behind Missouri and California, it's actually pretty low down the total workforce table.

Speaker 2

What are they pitching here?

Speaker 19

Right If you're sitting in California or Seattle, which is where a lot of experienced cloud and for social people sit, and you hear let's move to Nashville, maybe you love country music and you're stumped.

But in a lot of cases that we're hearing, they say, oh, you know, there's not a whole lot of industry out there.

What if I move out there and I get laid off?

You know, So this is one of these tales of the tech industry wanting to become more distributed across the US, lower cost of living, lower taxes.

But you know, your talent and workforce is still clustering in these West Coast hubs.

Speaker 4

You've been speaking to local officials over in Nashville, they still seem pretty upbeat.

Speaker 19

Yeah, yeah, I mean they're excited, right.

You hear one of the most important tech companies wants to bring eight thousand workers and develop a new campus.

That's great news for local economic development.

Just the question will be how long does it take to attract all of these people, what does it look like, and does it bring these network effects.

I mean, the campus is on track, they are developing it.

It's just a question of hiring at this point.

Speaker 3

Nashville is a good time.

I can attest to that at a minimum.

But what you were saying about, you know, industry and footprint, This is something's happened with Austin, Texas, right, There is actually more of an industry footprint there.

What about leadership.

Where's Larry Ellison currently basing himself and spending his time?

Speaker 19

Well, that's what's so interesting about the HQ designation, right, I mean, Larry Ellison spends most of the time in Hawaii or Florida, old CEO staff or cast it as well.

What gives Nashville some real credibility though, is that their new co CEO claim of work.

He sits there in Nashville, right, So if you want to cozy up to the boss, you might say, I'm putting the cowboy hat.

Speaker 4

Bloomberg's Brody Ford.

Who would skip a cowboy hat?

That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.

It's great to see Brody out there in San Francisco with you, Ed, right.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's great to have him here.

He's really owns this beat, not just of infrastructure but software as well.

I've got a lot of things in my head about memory, memory chips, and memory pricing.

Recap our discussion on that from the show through the podcast.

You know where to find it on the Bloomberg platforms as well as online on iHeart, Spotify, and Apple.

Speaker 2

This is Bloomberg Tech.

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