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This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Intel says it will join Elon Musk's terra Fab project with SpaceX Xai and Tesla to help refactor silicon fab technology.
Plus Broadcom gains on expanding agreements with Google. Ananthropic is alternative technology to video.
Builds, and Bill Ackman looks to make a deal for the world's largest music company, Universal Music Group.
Will have the details, but.
We set the context where the markets are still fixated on conflict in the Middle East. We're still all awaiting what happens at eight pm New York time today, a self imposed deadline by President Trump, and anxiety remains as
we wonder what will happen in that timeframe. We're currently seeing the market off by one and a half percent at the moment when down on the nas that one hundred Big Tech really feeling some of the risk of environment, and we're seeing Brent Crude, of course, climb from one point thirty percent as it seems as though the conflict continues to intensify ed.
The big breaking news of the morning, Intel says in a post on x that it is joining the terrifab project, that is the initiative by SpaceX, XAI and Tesla to build out massive compute or chip capacity. The SLOCK was up almost five percent one point earlier in the session, is now paired those games to two percent. Tesla is down four percent. There could be other factors behind that.
What is going on? What does it mean? Let's get the details of Bloomberg's chip reporter Ian King and Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Mandeep singing in, and I'll.
Start with you.
We actually don't know a lot, but tell us what we do know from two posts, one by lit boutan Intel CEO, and the other by the company itself.
Yeah.
I mean what the company is saying is we've got lots of technology that they need, whether it's packaging, whether it's ship design, whether it's manufacturing technology, and we're just very happy to be part of this project. How exactly they're going to be part of the project, though, isn't clear.
Can you give any illumination, Mandi?
Therefore, we turn to you as to what the upside could be what are your most optimistic what are your most realistic perspectives of how much this builds Intel's business.
I mean I look at it this way. You know, Elon Musk wants to build data centers in space, and every other hyperscaler is spending over one hundred billion dollars in CAPEX this year to set up terrestrial data centers.
So in this case, Elon Musk clearly wants to set up fabs instead of focusing on data centers, you know, investments, and his thing is I can build a vertically integrated fab that can make chips for the space data centers that he's focused on, and for Intel, you know, it's just another avenue to capture in terms of this build out of the AI infrastructure that we are seeing around us.
Clearly TSMC has a big lead, but I think if he were, like Intel, where to focus on space data centers, they could find that opportunity for growth.
And that's a picture of Elon Musk. I think down in Santa Clara shaking hands with lit Boutan seems easy, doesn't it. But as we putting copy in our reporting, the economics of chip making are brutal. You have to get it right, which you help the Bloomberg Tech audience understand the reality of what Tesla, SpaceX and Xai are proposing to do.
Yeah, I mean, the massive build out that they're proposing would not be supported by the kind of volumes that they are able to consume right now. It probably doesn't make economic sense for them. But if they're doing that in a partnership, if they're doing that to maybe sell silicon to other people, then maybe the numbers do start to add up. You've got to flip that the other way and say, well, hold on a minute, what's Intel up to here? Intel really has its own plants that
it needs to fill. So if there's some kind of a bridging arrangement where Tesla becomes a customer of Intel, helps give Intel orders, and then that branches out into some kind of partnership in the future where they build plants together, then maybe that's a more logical path and probably safer for both of them.
Mandy, the world is changing when it comes to those that are at the forefront of compute and those that are consuming it. You know, Tesla designs its own inference chips, for example, current generation AI five, going into AI four, AI five and then AI six. It's never made its own chips. The BI team across all the analysts in the different desks. Are you having to kind of remodel where everyone sits in that world going forward?
Yeah, I mean the ecosystems clearly are determined by which large angrid model is doing well. I mean, just today we heard of Entropic reaching thirty billion dollar run rate that I think is favorable to that Entropic ecosystem that includes Broadcom and TPUs. And look when it comes to fabs, so far we know everyone is going to TSMC, So it's quite interesting that, you know, Elon Musk wants to develop an alternative to that FAB. But as we know, you know, Intel has struggled for so many years in
terms of reaching that leading node capacity. So from that perspective, it is a pretty big undertaking and it requires a lot of capex. I mean TSMC's capex is north of fifty billion dollars, So what would it take to build a FAB, you know, in terms of capex investments?
Can I just say one thing as well, Karen Mandy, IP, I'm sorry, I just want to state it that terror fab is not included in Tesla's twenty six CAPEX guide of twenty billion dollars, far beyond what it's ever done, But just putting it out there, and I'll keep saying it until the terrorfab's built carriage.
It's been a fascinating bit of perspective from all three of you. Actually, because of Ed, you're the byline on this story thus far.
In King always with all the.
Insight when it comes to Intel, Mande, thank you for the intelligence of BlueBag intelligence. So let's get you more insight now, because Giluri has already been putting his reaction to paper, head of tech researcher at DA Davidson. Look, you said the investment bodes well for Intel's turnaround story. Does this really strengthen the balance sheet?
How does this look to be boding? Well?
Yeah, so Intel's been busy in its turnaround. It made a really big step in repurchasing forty nine percent of its Ireland fab back from Apollo, and then you have this morning's announcement with Tesla. Intel has all the most important pieces right now. It's a US based company with US based production that makes CPUs and has advanced packaging. These are all things that we need for the future of AI. These are three things that if I said three years ago, they weren't matter that much, and right
now each one of those things is absolutely critical. It's not trivial though, that Intel will be successful. I think that came up in your conversation with Mandeep. There's a lot of execution ahead. They need to successfully build planes in the US, build fabrication for their next waves of technology, including this big joint venture with Tesla, and then get
the yields that make them profitable. As you point it out, TSMC has been doing this for years with great levels of success, and Intel still loses money on the fab side and doesn't have enough core customers to have that volume quite yet. It's lining up their customers, but it's not quite there yet, and so there's a lot of execution ahead. But in terms of executing on the turnaround, Libutan's doing a lot to make Intel an important player in the future of AI.
Guild.
You like the idea because Lipbutan came on as some well cynicism, or indeed was beaten up a little bit even by on the administration of the United States because they didn't really like the way in which he was proposing it as build it and then they will come. He wanted to go more like, I need the customers first and then I'm going to go out and build it.
Is this enough of a customer so they will therefore start to put back onto the R and D start to refuel the actual manufacturing and build out that perhaps it paus on.
If we believe Elon Musk and the numbers he's been talking about, that's as much scale as you're going to get the numbers that he talks about four XAI for SpaceX. I mean we're talking about building in the US now. Elon's talked about having fabrication plants on the Moon. So if we are to fulfill all of those and Elon gets what he wants, that's plenty of volume. Let's not forget in video. As an investor in Intel, that's volume. There's still a relationship with Apple, that's a lot of volume.
So Intel has positioned itself to have the volumes necessary to bring the customers to the table, to have the volumes necessary to be profitable on the fabrication side. It really is a matter of execution over the next several years to get those customers what they want with the high expectations those customers have. Let's not forget those customers
are being served very well by TSMC. This is volume beyond TSMC, but their expectations are still anchored to what they get from TSMC, which is very high yield.
Can we go nitty gritty because Tesla has relationships for its own shipbuilding at the moment, and they lie with Samsung and they lie with TSMC.
So how divert what chips in.
Particular expecting to be made by Intel or indeed, where do we see the supply reshift?
Well, I'm not sure we got that detail today, but broadly speaking, these days, if you look at the broad patterns this conversation, the conversation yesterday about Broadcom, Google and Anthropic Meta shining up AMD, Open Ai signing up with AMD and with Broadcom and continuing to use in video.
The approach of all the big players, so the hyper scalers and the big frontier labs which includes Elon Inc. Is to diversify around all of these large chip makers in order to be able to meet this very significant demand that they all have for chips. So they all are still most of these companies are still mostly reliant on Invidia, but they want to rely more on Broadcom, AMD and Intel, so they're not beholden in video, so they have more capacity. What that looks like in terms
of mix, I'm not sure they know. I think they're going to move forward and expand as aggressively as they can, and the chip companies that help them the most, that execute the best, will get the volumes. That's why execution is so important right now.
Gloria Da Davison and Analysis, thank you very much. Indeed, Meanwhile, let's look at shares that aren't gaining at the moment. Apple significant move off by almost five percent at the moment, and as Ed would put it, that's a two standard deviation.
Move at the moment on this particular stock.
Why reports adad nickeo so over in Japan that there are issues with the foldable iPhone engineering snags.
Maybe we have to push back.
Test phases for the foldable iPhone, Maybe it pushes back production and shipment schedules. That is what the report is saying, citing unidentified people. We're currently off almost five percent on a down market. Meanwhile, coming up, President Trump ramps up his escalations with Iran vidill isn't reached by tonight, We're.
On that next. There's a bluemog tech.
President Trump has escalated threats to Iran, warning that quote a whole civilization will die tonight if for deal is not reached for more Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall for more, and it feels as though the rhetoric.
Is styling up what's happening behind the scenes tyer.
Hey, Caroline Well. At this point, the indication from the White House is that they are not going to back off of their threat of eight pm Eastern tonight. Amid reporting that Iran is now cutting off communication with the US in the wake of President Trump's post on a truth social there is reporting that it is unclear if these talks could resume, either directly or indirectly ahead of tonight's deadline.
Now.
The President's post is of course raising some legal and humanitarian questions, though experts have said that it will ultimately come down to the size and scope of what actually happens tonight, because under international law, a military is allowed to strike key infrastructure if it one contributes to a military operation. This idea of dual use. If a bridge is used to help transport weapons, for example, and two
if civilian harm is minimized. We've already started to see some strikes happening earlier today against Larry targets in particular, including on carg Island, as carg Island remains absolutely central when it comes to the strait of her moves. And yesterday we got a little bit more clarity from this White House that they do need to see a reopening of that waterway in order to agree to any potential
cease fire deal. We're going to have to wait to see what happens, because in that same post from President Trump, he also said quote who knows what will happen, And yesterday he said that he felt that Iran was negotiating in good faith. Caroline. We heard earlier today from Vice President jd Vance who said that he felt confident that the US would get some sort of response from Iran
ahead of tonight's eight pm Eastern deadline. But this White House maintains that what happens tonight is going to be on how Iran ultimately responds, And so far we have only seen this hard line stance taken Big.
Mex Tyler Kendall. We appreciate it. Everything from the White House.
Meanwhile, big tech stocks they remain under pressure yet again amid the Middle East concerns.
This is a growing chorus on wool Street.
She starts making case for why did it, including Goldman's Peter Oppenheimer. He says the recent pullback is creating more attractive entry points and that tech valuations have now slipped below.
The broader global market.
Let's continue the debate with RBC Bruined Dolphin's Janet Mui, who says, well, last week's secuity rebound, you thought it was not one to chase, So do we just stampat for the time being?
Janet, Hi, Caroline, thanks for having me.
Yeah, yes, I think we just need to stay put for now and monitor the situation. I think the reason why we don't chase the rally from last week is simply because the Iran situation is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, and I think with oil prices being elevated like this, I think it will put pressure on global
growth and of course put upside risk to inflation. And at this point Central banks rade cut agenda is being abandoned and there could be rate heights going forward, and physically speaking, global governments will find it very tough to support consumers in any form because of the physical deficit situation.
So only know.
I think from a micro perspective, there's still a lot of uncertainty and certainly risk tilted to the downside.
So I think it's.
Not really the right moment to chase the last week's really and as we are speaking, the markets have seen renew weakness again because the situation is just so unclear.
How have you been protecting the downside?
Janet?
Yeah, So I think we need to think really deeply about the inflation prospect because if you think about the various scenarios, the path of list resistance is basically elevated or prices for prolonged period because even if we see the escalation, a lot of the energy assets have been destroyed, so we don't expect near term normalization in terms.
Of oil flows or supply, so.
Inflation being higher in the near term or longer is basically the base case here. We like our energy stock exposure in portfolio to hash against that risk, and the energy major state pay quite good dividends, so that's another attractive point.
And we like our gold.
As an inflation hash and goal price being down from their highs really provide relatively good at our entry point. We also like inflation linked bonds because that you know, it can hash against that high inflation outlook.
To bring it back to technology, which is hard in the current global context. Janet, just at what point do you focus in on fundamental business news and what point are you looking at the headlines coming from broad Comic spanning its deal, if you're looking what's happening with anthropics run Rain and what that means to the rest of
the ecosystem. When you're hearing Matt Intel going in with a terrorfab potentially of course of ed On Musks, does any of that drive companies investors to want to go and allocate or do you think for now you just have to sit back and mid the global context, which is one of concern and instability.
I think the two themes can go in parallel.
Obviously, the macro risk and the Iran wall is front and center, and ultimately that affects sentiment, But we always look at the fundamental.
Drivers as well.
And even though I was saying that we're not chasing the rally, we have to understand that there has been a lot of discount have a discount in selected high quality growth TEX stocks, some of that in software, some of them in the picks and Shovels play of the AI infrastructure play. I'm not gonna name names, but there's some really attractive discount happening in the past couple of months.
So we are closely monitoring that situation.
So I think you know, at the moment we're keeping a bit of a higher cash level than normal.
So certainly if there are.
Further discounting because of the volatility in Marquess will certainly be finding opportunities to add further to those positions.
How much are the American how much are they international?
For the tech sector exposure, also, that is still American exposure because if you look at the tech AI picks and Shovels play, which remain our favorite, because that area we think is very strong growth driver, irrespective of you know, whether some software is going obsolete or not, because there are the fundamental layer of the tech the AI build out. So most of that is American exposure, and of course we have some Asian exposure name but I would say most is still American.
Jenny m of RBC Bruin Dolphin tough to talk just stocks in tech, but you managed to do it for us. We really appreciate it. Me while coming up, blackman sets his eyes in a universal music group. The sixty five billion dollars deal on on that next is a pretty.
Bad tech time now for talking tech.
And first up aerospace startup Permias has raised three hund and fifty million dollars in funding round, boosting its valuations one million dollars. The Atlanta based company plans to build an unmanned fighter for the US military, able to fly at mark three or three times to speed of sound.
Now.
Hews is set to use the new capital to build two more planes and ramp.
Up the manufacturing capacity.
Plus, Blackstone backed QTS drew about twelve point five billion dollars for a debut high grade bond sale.
That will help funder Microsoft Data center. That's according to sources.
The bond sell is the latest in a waiver borrowing tied to new AI infrastructure build ups and data center builder Firmis Technologies has raised five hundred and five million dollars, valuing the Australian startup at five point five billion now. The round was led by co To Management and Participation from Video. Furmas says that the cash will go towards the rapid deployment of AI hardware based on forthcoming and video tech, but over an age of Pacific region.
Well hello again. Shares of Universal Music Group.
This is the Amsterdam trading up twelve percent, on track for their biggest day ever, having opened up twenty four percent. Proposed proposal from Bill Ackman for Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company which houses the likes of Taylor Swift, Drake and Saprina Carpenter. It is a complicated potential deal. Bloomberg's Ben wa Bertelo covers European Media and Attainment joins us. Now it is complicated, unsurprising you have Ackman deal and music.
It's one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg terminal. Just give us the very basics of what the proposal is.
So basically, it's a plan to merge Niversal Music Group with a blunk check company that the legman that has creately did for these It's a merger that give a valuation of fifty six billion euros to Universal cash component of the dv's the belt nine billion. And basically, whether you wants to achieve is to relocate the listing from
Amsterdam to New York as a primary listing. He just made a call to investor and Acman said that it would make more sense for Universal to be listed in the US, giving that the operational center, the decision making is made in the US on the East coast, and so that's his main point really for this deal, and he said it would make more sense for analysts cover the peers of universals to cover the company being listed in the US.
What's interesting is that, of course this has got some skepticism.
He can talk to.
Investors all he likes, but there's really one key investor who needs to convince, who sat over in France as a billionaire talk to us about well Vincent Belore and whether he's going to go along with it.
Yes, So it's really the main shoulder, the largest of universally has a about eighteen percent through Borrowe, his own holding, and he has another ten percent through company controlled that's the media conglomerate viven d that Universal has been spun off actually a few years ago and listed in Amsterdam. So he has to say and Akman was really clear today on the call that he has to win over Borowey for this deal to go through. He also said that said to him that the deal was intriguing and
music to his ears. We haven't heard from from Boroy exactly on this so ever, reasoning for its reaction.
Really thank you, Benmar It's great to have you one life in Paris.
You appreciate it. Coming up Samsung and a.
Quart stronger than expected leaping profit.
Let's goloe back Tech.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. I want to take a broad look.
At technology stocks through then ask that one hundred. We are off session lows, but the store orrious technology stocks down oil higher doubts about a US Iran deal for a ceasepy. There is an eight pm Eastern time deadline set by the President for Iran to agree to cease FA terms. And that is what the market is digesting within that index and within the technology sector specific movers. We've been over them. Intel is again off its session highs.
It had been up almost five percent after announcing it's joining Elon Musk's.
Terror Fab project.
You can recap that on the podcast and then Broadcom It's up almost four percent off session highs, but it has an expanding expanded deal with Google for TPUs, and the mainstay of that is Anthropic and Anathropics expanded use and supply of TPUs. Let's get more on that deal, what it means for the world of Aivan.
I meer suring Gafaris with us.
And like you know, you and I broke the story originally right that the Entropic would use TPUs to begin with. It started with one gigawa, now three times that give us the basics of what we learned, and then some more stuff about anthropics financials.
Right, So this is a major expansion.
It's going to be several gigawatts.
And the context there is and the demand for Anthropic products has really shot through the roof in the past few months with the popularity of its Claud code coding agent as well as now as they're head of sales recently told us their Claud cowork agent, which is more for general activities beyond just coding. So as they're seeing very very strong enterprise growth, they're going to need to ramp up that compute.
And what's extraordinary has been the ramp up in their business, not only because the context that they were having a fallout very public spat that's still ongoing with the Pentagon right now, but it seems actually the businesses are still coming to them for their technology.
That's right, you know, as Anthropics said, and it's complained in the lawsuit against the US government that feud with the Pentagon is very serious. The company did say it put them at risk to lose customers and potentially billions in revenue. But at the same time, the product growth has been remarkable, and it seems like it hasn't, at least for now, stopped them from continuing to see this very strong revenue growth on enterprise.
Through your reporting, I've learned about adversarial model distillation, and you've been talking in this report about Anthropic cooperating with open ai and Google and historically three companies that may have differing views. Explain the cooperation, what it's trying to counter, and the basic concept of adversarial model distillation.
Yes, so what that means, and it sounds very complex, but really it's just the idea that an older AI model can be used to then train or teach a newer model, and that the output of that original eimodel is what's being used to train the new one and This happens all the time, and it's not controversial if it's being done by a company that's developed their own software to train the next generation of software.
But it is.
Controversial when as we're seeing, foreign firms in China and elsewhere are starting to essentially what the US companies are saying is sort of rip off or copy their product and then put their the Chinese product out there for free in as an open weight model. And so that's
what the companies are working together on. It's rare that you see anthropic and open AI fierce rivals and Google cooperating, but on this front, as we reported, they are sharing information about how to detect when firms, especially in China outside the US, are using this distillation technique to essentially copy the output of their models.
Front End Model Forum and they set up Shooing Gafari. Fantastic reporting across all things AI and anthropic.
We appreciate it.
Meanwhile, let's tend attention to the chips that are needed. Samsung reporting a seven hundred and fifty five percent leap in quarterly profit to hit a record.
It's driven by robust demand for those AI joining us.
Now, most you can lee is here with us an extraordinary demand for high bandwidth memory. And what's so interesting is how quickly they've turned the tides on would have been a negative narrative for them.
Absolutely, that's right. So this quarter from January to March, Samsung reported preliminary earnings I was eight times higher from the previous year, and it was higher than the high expectations. And in just one quarter, Samsung actually earned more than what it made in the entire year of twenty twenty five. And this is what's a preliminary earning, so we don't
have divisional breakdowns between chips, TVs, and phones. But on April thirties, the company is going to have a full earnings release and also hold the conference.
Car you can put some numbers behind how much contribution the Memory story and memory chips have made to that to that blowout prelim report.
Yeah, absolutely, so this was definitely the Memory story and the analyst from the CLSA and Morgan Stanley they estimate that ninety percent of its operating profit of thirty eight billion probably came from its membership division. Now we don't have that exact detail from the company yet because this was a preliminary results but it seems like almost like ninety percent of that quarterly earnings have come from the crucial memory.
Department, and interestingly, shares fell.
Maybe some profit taking, maybe risk off with what's happening with the war in around bloombugs, Yuck, youngle, thank you very much. With arms plans of selling its own chips for the first time, the company is trying to pull off its biggest shift yet, with Morgan Stanley today downgrading the company to equal weight on execution risk concerns. From smartphones to data centers, the company is chasing a one
hundred billion dollar market. Tom McKenzie sat down with CEO Renee Hass for a deep dive specifically for Bloomberg Tech Europe.
We are shifting away from being largely known for smartphones to being around the cloud and AI data centers, where in a few years that's our largest business by far, and in five years it'll be orders of magnitude larger than what we do in smartphones.
The next episode of Bloomberg Tech Europe is this Friday at eight thirty am in London, or you can watch it on the Terminal YouTube and on our video hub at Bloomberg dot com.
Slash video.
Go watch me while coming up.
Stay tuned for your Susan from Clips joining us to talk about backing startups powering America's reindustrialization efforts. I've been at it for years and I've got a big new race to announce.
This is blombog tech.
Enthusiasm for backing startups. That's Caroline, that's me. Backing startups focused on Western reindustrialization is showing no sign of slowing down. The latest example, venture Firmer Clips has raised one point three billion dollars across two funds to back companies building quote the next era of physical industries, think robotics, manufacturing, and energy startups, among others. Let's bring in to your susan the under and CEO of Eclipse and this takes you know, total funds way up there.
Super interesting.
The capital commitment to this domain this vertical, and I thought a good place to start your is talk a little bit about the LPs. You know where the money is coming from and how much push you are getting to participate in the deal flow in that reindustrialization movement.
Ed great to be here and thanks for having me. We raise capital from US based LPs. It's a nonprofit organization,
your university endowments, foundation, hospital system, et cetera. We started the film eleven years ago with one goal and our belief that the economy, that the US economy needs to grow much fasters order to a five percent and it's going to happen only from physical industries because they are combining eighty five percent of the world GDB and to tell you the truth, we kind of forget to build hard companies in this country and super excited to be
back in the market with capital to support the founders and operators.
You've grown the firm as well in the last couple of years.
Joe Fuff came from Tiro Price.
You have Jetembao Charlie Mwongi, who are alumni of Rivian and Tesla. In Charlie's case, what's the strategy with these two new funds and how are you going to use your talent bench to get out there do something interesting.
Yeah, we don't think ourselves as eventual capital necessarily or growth capital. We call ourself operators with capital because we believed that in order to build companies that many factoring chips and building rockets and doing mining, it's required a different model and you need an operators that was on the other sides to support those founders along the journey.
And you know, I'm joking with my friends that I used to say that this is the best time to build in this country from Henry Ford or Calnegie or post World War two, and I actually change my quote to this is the best time to build in this country period. And we have now the five forces aligned what we call internally the clipse, capital, policy, technology, talent, customer demand, and those forces was not aligned in this
country for us to build those type of companies. They were only aligned in one other country that compete with US, and it's China.
It's interesting that you say policy is aligned, and we've just been out particularly thinking about defense tech neal and for many yes, the signals are all there, demand is being said, but how much money is actually being allocated by the government two startups right now? How much do you need to help fill that gap with some of your follow on funding.
Yeah, I'm actually sitting right now in a hotel in Washington, DC. I'm going to talk on stage with Jamie Diamond and JP Morgan Sri around Defense Production Act. And I cannot remember someone like me is visiting so often Washington, DC and have the c of the largest bank in the world allocating one and a half trillion of JP Morgan to support those businesses. So it's not only we need to do it in order to protect democracy. That of
course should be the number one goal. The second thing is there is significant increase of customer demands by the use governments and others as well capital. And probably the most interesting part is the talent that the best people in the world right now wants to build companies and physical industries.
Look, you've raised one point three billion in total, and it's divided between why you're going to be allocating in growth stage. We can understand some of the winners you've already got. We've seen a phenomenal portfolio in economy you say you've built, But where's exciting at the very early stage, where do you want to be going out and looking for web?
Does the pub move?
Yeah, cal it's.
It's interesting as you can imagine.
I get that question a lot of like, Okay, you raise new capital, which industries you you're going to invest? And in some way we talked about defense building building fabs and doing mining, building batteries. Ten years ago. So
the reality physical industries are not new things. They've been here for so long, and they are combining eighty five percent of the world GDP, and I think bringing those digital tools that we are also familiar from Silicon Valley, anything from physical AI now to llms and ODLs, the latest and greatest in robotics, and apply them to the physical world. You basically are going to create the largest companies in the world. I mean you just literally in
your show talked about some song bidding earnings. You talked about on Tropic Google Chip, you talked about my friends Renee has from arm moving to a full stack. Everything that is interesting right now is happening in physical industries.
You've done some really interesting deals, so I think about, for example, also spun out of Rivian. You took it out of Rivian early and wrote quite a large check. You've used similar mechanisms, some scarringe thin offs and others.
You have a different way of doing things.
Could we see a s spin off type deal.
Out of this fund?
Yeah? We remember I got the first phone call I think from one of our LPs and twenty eighteen and it was like lyor why the heck you're building a company you're supposed to invest and I'm like, hey, I'm an operator. I like to build companies. I'm not going to stop building companies. And I think you know what you're seeing is the model of how you build companies is shifting as well. Yeah, because just based on Caroline great questions on the defense is you need scale out
of the gate. So if you're going to take the traditional seat series say Series B, series ceds just too slow. And if there is an assets that I can spin out, if there is a talent that they can take, if there is a customer, I can build a company for that demand. Right as an operators with capital, we have a full flexibility.
Yours was great catching up with you your Suzan, thank you, congratulations. CEO of Clips there and founder coming up. We'll get more venture discussions to have. We speak with FPV managing partner West. We shall an evolution of AI investing.
This is Blueberg Tech.
Not all WI winners look like AI companies at first glance. WeSC Chan has made a career betting on exactly that idea, backing firms like Canva, whichs become one of the most widely used AI design platforms. WeSC chan FPV managing partner joins us now and you're in town for Human X, which I'll be running over there shortly to speak to anthropics Mike Krieger.
But that's kind of interesting, Like you or.
Susan of Eclipsed are just talking about that, they look at those different domains how they'll be impacted by AI. I guess for you a little more focused on software and how that might be impacted by AI in a positive way.
I think software is one area, but we focus on so many different areas too. We have a company called Performation Bio that's a drug discovery and development company, and they focus on development. It's the only company we know of that's using AI to predictlmentle trail results. They pick drugs out, they buy drugs, and they've figured out using AI that drug that we we grow corlage in your knee to prevent new replacements will make it through clinical trial.
And so they're taking it through right now.
It literally does we grow corllage in your knees and it's going to prevent new replacements. And think about this, like friends that are skiers, friends that are runners can get rid of having that peski knee problem when their corlage goes and AI found the drug and they're helping it predict through clinical trials.
So that's what we invest in things like that.
Well, see, you mind to reflect a little bit on Canva. You know when we've spoken to various members of the leadership team, they're adding products right that the offering is widening and it's through AI. I think that's a pretty fair summary of how they'd put it. But they are growing and getting later stage and later stage. Just track the journey.
Yeah.
I invested in Canva thirteen years ago and led their Series A and most people think that Canva is a design company, And the amazing thing is Canva is an AI company today it is. I just saw a report mail told me this that Hamber is the third most access to way people access AI. And if you think about it, every person under thirty five is using Canva
today and that's how they interact with AI. Chat jpt is number one, Google's number two, Canvas number three and I just use it the other day to go create a presentation. I said, I want to go make this presentation for one of my companies. I want to tell the story about how they're changing the role of accounting, and I used Camba to sort of think through that presentation and use the AI tools to create that presentation.
It's incredible.
Right, So Campa has distribution and that's prot of the biggest place where people are accessing AI today.
What about distributing to a wider, democratized set of investors, Wesley, You've backed it from early days, but then everyone wonders when IPOs are really going to get going.
Oh, that's up the mail.
We all want her to IPO and we all want her to do very very well. But you know, and when mel decides that that's the right time, we will all cheer her on and support her and help her ring the bell.
And so when we're thinking about those liquidity moments, you're then thinking about how you allocate recently raised funds into the next generation of canvas. You're looking at how you're growing future needs. But where are your limits? Where is it that you catch attention right now? Because it feels as though AI is disrupting every single industry group at a rate that we just cannot comprehend.
Yeah, it's incredible how it's affecting everything. We just did a company called Strand Therapeutics that uses AI to predict how to create cancer drugs using MR and A and to help you know, cure versions of cancer that you know, we used to used to kill people. It's incredible, right,
and so you know companies like that. We have another company in Vada that's found multiple drugs their next drug that they're that they're developing, and they use AI to figure out how to find drugs out of natural ingredients.
Like yeah, yeah, there's.
A lot of biotech here, there's there's a lot of medical application. Why are you the right person to seek out which of these startups in the medical area is the right one? I mean, your background is unique, and it's very much deeply intertwined with Google and with what we think of as as software.
Yeah.
You know, when I was one of the founding partners of Google Ventures, and one of the great things is that Google has put billions of dollars into the healthcare companies and medical companies and like science companies. And I got to help start that team. So I've been doing it for sixteen years. And then we can find these great companies like in Vada or Strand. It's such a not obvious use of AI. Right, everybody's talking about AI for presentations, or AI for legal or AI for whatever else,
and we're thinking about it. How do we cure life threatening diseases using AI? And that's a very non obvious contrary and insight.
These companies, where geographically are they concentrated.
They're everywhere in the world, that's right.
You know, Beta is in Boulder, Colorado, Strand is in Boston, Formation is in New York. So we don't care where the company is as long as we're working on something that changes the world significantly.
What about globally, Wesley, how are we faring US ecosystem versus everywhere else?
You know, you know a lot of people talk about China, but you know all of the companies that we're working with are using US models and using you know, the models behind that we're developing here. So I think the US still has a fantastic lead, and you know, we're we're heavily invested here in the US. We have a few global companies Canvas obviously in Australia, right, but you know they're also using some of the models come developed
in the US. They're using their own model that they're building in Australia as well, with a team they bought called leonot Ai. And you know, I think you see this talent everywhere.
In the world.
Just if we could just ending a little bit on Human X. You know your reflection of the first twenty four hours. You know, it was very interesting to be there last night. I was on stage with doctor fay Felee. People very engaged with what she had to say about world models as opposed to language models.
What do you want to get out of this?
I think that there's such an exposure to so many people's ideas, Like no one, no one sat there and thought that on the mobile phone and we go back to a mobile phone fifteen years ago when it started investing right, no one sat there and said like, oh, we use a mobile phone in the book of car Right, And if you think about what a I will be ten years from now, you don't know what the heck is going to do. Right. It might it might care cancer,
it might go do something. The imagination's wonderful, and Human X is bringing all those people together to figure out where we can use AI for things that we never imagined ten years ago.
Wesley Chan of FPV Ventures, thank you very much. The crew of Artemis two is on their way home. The four astronauts broke the record for distance traveled by humans into deep space two hundred and fifty two thousand, seven hundred and fifty six miles and saw the far side of the lunar surface with their own eyes. At around six forty three pm New York time Monday, the Orion spacecraft slipped behind the Moon and out of radio contact with Houston. This was the moment just before.
All of you down there on Earth and around Earth. Now we love you from the month.
Houston copy.
We'll see on the other side.
After about forty minutes, the Iran caps your re established contact here Sin.
We have you the same, and it is so great to hear.
From Earth again.
The crew has been sharing their lunar observations with NASA, received the congratulations from President Trump, and witnessed a solar eclipse. It's the closest humans have been to the Moon in more than fifty years, Karra.
Extraordinary and look it's the closest they've been.
They want to get even closer.
And this is why this mission in many ways is sort of address rehearse, like what are we hearing about the science, the way in which we're going to get people back on it.
Yeah, early as twenty twenty eight, you know, to get a human or astronaut landing mission and the dress rehearsal because it tests the Orion spacecraft, the.
SLS launch system.
You know, that's why we DeCamp to Kennedy's Space Center last week.
I mean it's been emotional and very reflective of these astronauts in many ways.
But there's still more days to go.
Yeah, there is a geopolitical context of a race against China, who wants to get to the moon in twenty thirty. But for these three American astronauts and one Canadian is feet of human engineering and human ability and the world was watching millions of them on the live feeds last night.
And now continue to do so. Meanwhile. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech Ed.
Yeah, a lot to recap, a lot of breaking news, a lot in the markets with or in Iran, and that Intel Terra fab storry recap on the pod.
You know exactly where to find it. This is Bloomberg Tech