Tech Rebounds Amid Tariff Tensions, Tesla Investors on the Sidelines - podcast episode cover

Tech Rebounds Amid Tariff Tensions, Tesla Investors on the Sidelines

Mar 12, 202542 min
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Episode description

Bloomberg's Jackie Davalos and Sonali Basak discuss tech's market rebound amid Trump's tariff tensions. And, a look at Tesla's future as the company leads the S&P 500 as the biggest decliner so far this year. Plus, SpaceX's next mission: rescuing the two stranded astronauts.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

From the heart of where innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.

Speaker 2

Live from New York Opsinali Basic, and I'm Jackie Devalas in Washington.

Speaker 3

This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.

Speaker 4

Stocks rebound after a positive inflation reading. The relief comes after some market turmoil this week on the back of President Trump's tariffs.

Speaker 3

Plus, we'll dive into what's.

Speaker 4

Behind the retreat from Musk's ev company, with Tesla being the biggest decliner in the S and P five hundred index this year, and SpaceX's Crew ten is launching this evening for a relief mission for NASA astronauts at the International Space Station. Let's get into some of these Intel moves right away with Bloomberg's Mike Shephard. Mike, there's still a lot we don't know about some of this report coming from riders on Intel.

Speaker 3

Fill us in on what we do know.

Speaker 5

Well, one of the questions is really how much of this would ultimately bear fruit. And we had reported about a month ago now that the Trump administration had approached TSMC to perhaps takeover Intel's foundry business That would be a big undertaking, of course, given all the malays surrounding Intel and some of the business complications therein. But it also opened the door to perhaps working together with other companies, and this report would certainly fit into that. However, more

recent events suggest a different direction of travel. Intel announced this one hundred billion dollar additional investment in the US a little more than a week ago with President Donald Trump, and that's the kind of thing that doesn't seem to include or leave room for Intel. Also, there are some thorny problems involved here. One of them is intellectual property. Would TSMC be willing to share some of its precious trade secrets with a company that could, in other ways

also be arrival when it comes to its business. Likewise, integrating some of Intel's operations into TSMC would also involve a lot of work. So there's a lot of skepticisms surrounding this report.

Speaker 6

We'll have to see what actually develops.

Speaker 2

Mike, I want to bring in your broader view here, of course, because you're seeing a market today that is reacting to some of the relief relative to where we were twenty four hours ago in the tariff story. Yet you are seeing retaliatory tariffs coming in from around the world. Looking at the EU and Canada, how are investors' markets digesting the latest coming out of Washington and what is still absolutely uncertain?

Speaker 5

Well, there is a lot of uncertainty, as you put it earlier in the introm malaise. That really seems to be one of the operative words right now when it comes to investors, and especially in the tech sector. When you look at the now is that one hundred It really has taken the brunt of this downdraft and markets. Obviously there was a lot of run up ahead of time in the past year or so on enthusiasm about artificial intelligence, and you know what goes up is now

coming down. But a lot of that is being fueled by uncertainty surrounding the president's tariff policies. And last night during a meeting with top CEOs here in Washington, he signaled that they should be prepared for more. He sees tariffs is a tool for getting companies to invest in the US and he is cited in the past Apple's decision to invest five hundred billion dollars year in the US, and we just talked about TSMC's plans both of those he credited to his own tariff policies.

Speaker 3

Let's talk a little bit more about that meeting. There was a lot of anticipation.

Speaker 4

We saw chip stocks really take a beating last week, but now they're getting a lot little bit of release.

Speaker 3

They're up by about one point six percent.

Speaker 4

What did we learn more from that meeting with tech CEOs earlier?

Speaker 5

Well, the tech CEOs meeting a Monday seemed to be less of a fireworks event, and then the business roundtable meeting last night seemed to be a little bit more of a a more cordial give and take, even given the circumstances that we're seeing in the market and the concerns that CEOs may have about where to take their business in light if the way tariffs could affect their supply chains. We heard Anthony Nary, the CEO, if you'll look Packard Enterprises tell investors on a call last week, look,

we don't know where this is going exactly. There may be some pricing changes. We're going to do the best we can through our supply chain to minimize the impact, but they really don't know where it's going. And that was also echo by the head of Broadcam Broadcom hoked in on a call with investors as well, suggesting that hey, this is really your we don't know where this is.

Speaker 7

Going, Mike.

Speaker 2

We appreciate all your time and all your analysis. That is Bloomberg's Mike Sheppard. Now I quickly want to check in on shares of Tesla as well, because as Mike was talking about a lot of malaise in the tech sector, but not today, and Tesla is the one that's really

leading the Nasdaq one hundred higher. It is still up more than five percent, but remember it was down fifteen percent on Monday, So between Tuesday and Wednesday's gain, we have not recouped all of those losses yet it sure helps that it's up today for the broader Nasdaq one hundred and to zoom out. Now we're going to bring in Amanda Agatti. She is a CIO of P ANDC Asset Management Group. You know, you think about what's happening

in the tech sector. Yes, today is a day of relief, but the MAG seven, the relative underperformance that you have seen. At what point do you see that overhang start to disappear? Really, the only member of the MAG seven that is up here to date is meta.

Speaker 8

That's right, it's great to be with you. Yeah, And I would say that overhang is going to stick around for a while here. The challenges that we're still very much in a purple haze of fiscal policy uncertainty, and it's namely a tariff and trade related policy, and so it's not so much of a direct hit to the underlying fundamentals of the MAG seven. In fact, I think for the most part their business models tend to be

somewhat insulated from it. But the challenges that in this purple haze of uncertainty, there's pretty extreme valuation, multiple compression, and the MAG seven have been priced in your perfection. So we're not seeing fundamentals deteriorate, We're just seeing multiples come down materially until we start to get past some of this growth scare narrative that's been gripping markets. I think it's going to continue to be an overhang.

Speaker 3

Amanda.

Speaker 4

You mentioned fundamentals, they look strong. There was so much reassurance from companies and appeased investors that a lot of the capex going in isn't going to stop. That spig is going to keep going. But are we bracing for a more fragile tech sector. Now, what catalysts going forward do you see kind of providing more assurance to investors that they're not going to be that easy to break.

Speaker 8

It's it's a really great question, and it's a really hard one to answer, and I think that's why tech investors in particular are struggling in this environment, because we are craving more catalysts. We're in a little bit of a lull in terms of innovation, and so the focus these last few years has really been on chips one stock in particular. But where are all these use cases. We need to see broader based use cases, new business models really developing and broadening in terms of adoption across

the market. I think that's really the critical catalyst or next step to this next wave of innovation and perhaps even getting the market rally catalyzed again. So I think it's going to take a little bit of time, given some of this policy uncertainty, but I think it apps Lily could become a tailwind in the second half of this year and into twenty twenty six.

Speaker 6

It's just we're in.

Speaker 8

A little bit of a void at the moment, which is very frustrating.

Speaker 6

Certainly you know, one.

Speaker 7

Interesting part of the tech trade as well.

Speaker 2

As just how much it has contributed to the weakness in the consumer discretionary sector for the S and P five hundred. You think about Amazon, you think about Tesla. In reality, how levered are some of those giant tech names to the US consumer and any potential further weakening.

Speaker 8

Well, I always say that the US consumers and the driver's seed, right, seventy percent of GDP or you know, spending in this consumption is tied is tied to the consumer in some way, shape or form, and so the path for the consumer and the health of the US consumer is critical for all of us in terms of both the market and the economic cycle. But I think you're right to make a little bit of a distinction here in terms of how much influence directly hits some

of those business models. I think the story and the concern is much more around consumers start to get a bit more paralyzed by this policy uncertainty, and so they slow down or even stop spending, which sort of cascades into a more material slowdown than what we're seeing. The earnings growth backdrop is continuing to be strong. It's not so much about one quarter. The full year expectation still looks very strong. The economic cycle looks pretty strong, consumer

spending related data looks solid. So again, it's all about the sort of narrative and this sentiment concern. It's not so much translating into the underlying fundamentals breaking down yet.

Speaker 2

Now when you think about the consumer. Also, we're thinking about the US consumer so much, and you have to wonder whether Europe China is a bigger headwind or tailwind for this group.

Speaker 7

Do you see any risk there?

Speaker 8

I'm most concerned. I think about developed international exposure, and so Europe in p particular, just given some of the continued geopolitical tensions and conflict. You know, are we going to get a resolution out of Russia and Ukraine or not. That's a really critical thing that I think needs to happen. To see signs of life improve in a more material way across the Eurozone. I think it is possible to see a bit of a relief rally. We started to get it at the beginning of the year, and then

we've seemingly seen it falter a bit here. So you know, I am most concerned about that area. I think in terms of emerging markets. More broadly, there's a really attractive valuation opportunity there, so for investors who can be patient, I think this is a very attractive entry point, even in the midst of you know, additional tariff policy aims specifically at China. I think there is a real opportunity set there for investors to be focused on in terms of allocating capital early this.

Speaker 4

Year, Amanda on that emerging market storage is a huge competitor here in the tech space, Are you seeing any interesting opportunities with some of those up and coming companies unveiling new features and AI models every week, I could give investors perhaps another choice outside of the traditional US based tech players.

Speaker 8

Well, I'm never going to bet against our US tech industry just as a general rule, I have a very

home country bias here. But of course, I mean, I think innovation shows up in all different shapes and forms, and so you know, even just what seemingly is old news now, but the deep Seek story that sort of came out of nowhere recently, I think is fascinating in terms of this innovation story being born out of anywhere and sort of this natural comparative or competitive advantage that we have as it relates to AI, automation, robotics, et cetera.

The story continues, and so I think it's really healthy. I think it's important for investors to think much bigger and more holistically than just one or two names. This cycle is very early innings. We have a long, long runway here, and so we are absolutely believers in the secular tailwinds here. And so from a multi asset investor perspective, I think you really do have to look beyond US

equities in this environment, even in private markets. I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity in vcland we'll.

Speaker 4

Have you down as not betting against the US. Amanda Agati from PNC Asset Management, thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, Google deep Mind launches a new branch of its AI model to help robots navigate the physical world.

Speaker 3

We'll get the details after the break. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 4

Google deep Mind has unveiled a new Gemini model that it says helps robots understand the physical world around them.

Speaker 3

Bloomberg's Mark German joined us. Now. Mark, It seems like every.

Speaker 4

Big tech company has been unveiling some kind of new robotics venture as of like, how does Google stack up?

Speaker 9

Yeah, I've been trying to tell everyone on here. Robotics. Consumer robotics is the next big thing in the industry. Right, we had autonomous cars, we had mixed reality AR glasses, we have voice right, but artificial intelligence is going to be at the core of everything. And really the ultimate hardware expression of AI is robotics right, being able to understand how a human acts right, artificially learn from data right, and mimic a human, and that is what a robot is. Right.

And so you've seen Tesla play in this space. Now you're seeing Meta make a big investment in that space. And now today Google is announcing new Gemini models in infrastructure specific to powering robots. So all of these companies want to play in this space. Meta announced versions of Lama right in a big investment to build consumer robots and to be at the center of everything. Meta wants to be the future operating system to power these robots.

But they're going to have a big competitor here with Google right, who has experience building operating systems for first party and third party hardware. And obviously Gemini is right up there with Lama and CHADGBT and the other AI systems. So this is a big deal not only for Google but the industry at large.

Speaker 2

So mark how convincing is this push Because we have seen Google try or Alphabet try to get into the robot world before. I understand is that they shut down a spinoff company that was associated with this. So this time around, what's the difference and how big is the push?

Speaker 9

I think the difference this time is Gemini, Right. The underlying AI technology is much different, It's much more advanced, it's more reputable, right, and now appears to be the time where companies are willing to put in the proper investment, the necessary infrastructure to make robotics happen. Right. Waimo is being has been pretty successful comparatively in the industry, and so what you're seeing is a lot of data collection.

There a lot of experience in autonomy and cameras, and that's technology that Google could ultimately use if it wanted to build its own humanoid. But don't count out Apple. Apple has Skunkworks teams. We're in humanoid robots as well. The big difference is they're not going to publicly release an underlying robotic model, right, in order to support third party robots and other consumer hardware. They're going to go

all in house. They're going to follow the Tesla method that you've seen from the Tesla bot over the past couple of years. So at some point in the next five to ten years, you're going to see real competition between Google, Meta, Apple, Tesla, and Chinese companies and others in consumer robots. So this is this is going to be a really big deal. And some of those movies we've seen over the last several decades, they're starting to come to reality.

Speaker 2

Mark, We thank you so much for your time today breaking it all down for us. That is Bloomberg's Mark German, And as you know, I'm excited about having a robot at home, and we're going to talk more about robots here. Not as pleasant as a story shares of consumer robotics company I Robot. They're sliding today after it warned of quote substantial doubt over.

Speaker 7

Its ability to continue to operate.

Speaker 2

You might remember that the company was once sought after by Amazon for more than a billion dollars and it has begun a foremost strategic of you to evaluate options for more Bloomberg's Vanagasia Perez joins us now on set. Was this warning a surprise, especially given the kind of unicorn standing that it once had, and not totally.

Speaker 10

The company has been losing money and burning cash for the you know, the past at least three years, and then when the Amazon deal fail basically last year, the company lost a big option. It started a strategic review last year. It has cut losses, but it's still loss making, and it has cut expenses, but it's still struggling.

Speaker 4

What does this tell us about the state of consumer demand in this space? As we were hearing it seems like the time horizon for some of these technologies to really get in the hands of consumers takes time, especially for those to get used to them.

Speaker 3

What does this tell us?

Speaker 10

So in the case of this company, I guess it's another example of consumers cutting on discretionary spending. We've seen it in other names like casual lining companies like Hooters considering bankruptcy filing. We've seen it in a broad range of retailers also struggling. So this is another example. And the company mentioned in the going concern warning that consumer

spending could be one of the reasons why. Like weaker consumer spending could be one of the reasons why it doesn't manage to survive, and tariffs was another one that they mentioned as a potential threat to the company's viability.

Speaker 4

Tariff's winging in here as well. Bloomberg'sidna Garcia Perez, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2

Now, some long term Tesla investors are backing away from the stock after falling as much as forty two percent so far this year, and this is as questions arise about the company's future. For more of Bloomberg's Max Chaffin joins us today.

Speaker 7

Now I want to point.

Speaker 2

Out also, of course today people are buying the dips, people are believing the story. Today you have the president himself looking to defend Musk in many ways.

Speaker 7

What is the trouble in Paradise?

Speaker 11

I mean more than defend, you know, wholding a sales event on the White House lawn. The trouble is that Tesla's customer base is not especially trumpy, and that's probably an understatement. You think of a typical Tesla owner, this is like an upper middle class, suburban progressive, or at least a centrist, somebody who cares about the environment.

Speaker 6

You know, these are not Trump voters. These are very.

Speaker 11

Much the constituency that backed Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and to a large extent, Kamala Harris, and those people, which include a lot of Tesla customers, are very mad at

Elon Musk right now. We've seen protests all across the country and the world, including some you know, acts of vandalism, and just this kind of tone of mockery of you know, seeing Elon Musk as kind of a lightning rod for the worst for what these people, these Tesla customers see as the worst excesses of the Trump administration so far.

Speaker 3

Max.

Speaker 4

And it's not just about the political leanings of who's buying some of those cars, but they've recently gotten some pretty good support, especially under the Abiden administration, for ev credits. And I'm having trouble reconciling how Elon Musk can really back Trump in some ways, but his company is somewhat dependent on the government also supporting the transition to electric vehicles.

Speaker 3

How is that working out?

Speaker 11

Yeah, you know, Trump kind of ran to some extent as an opponent of electric vehicles, talking constantly about ending the quote unquote electric vehicle mandate, you know, and in fact sign an executive order early on stating an attention to pull back some of these regulations. Even brought this up during the event yesterday, showing offering it as an example of how selfless Musk is.

Speaker 6

I think from the kind.

Speaker 11

Of bull perspective, like why Tesla investors could be potentially okay with this is the fact that Tesla has a leading market position. So if you remove these subsidies subsidies from electric cars, it arguably hurts GM and Ford and Tesla's.

Speaker 7

Other copetitors more than it hurts Tesla.

Speaker 11

Tesla has wider margins on evs, it's able to better absorb this. Now that said, those companies are bringing out new models and they're stealing customers away from Tesla.

Speaker 7

Right.

Speaker 3

That's Bloomberg'smax Taffkin, Thanks so much for joining.

Speaker 2

Us, and welcome back to Bloomberg Technology.

Speaker 7

I'm Shanalie Bask in New York.

Speaker 3

And I'm Jackie Devalis in Washington.

Speaker 2

It's got to check on these markets because you do have a NAZAQ one hundred that has been fluctuating. We are well off of session lows for the morning, but only up now about six tenths of one percent, and it's trying to fight for dominance. You have the NAZAQ one hundred with only roughly half of its component parts up on the day, the other half of course down the Philadelphia A Semicconductor Index maintaining its lead after a

brutal stretch the last couple of weeks. It is now up about two point three percent heading into midday, and on other movers. This morning, we're going to bring in Bloomberg's Isabelle Lee who joins us now on set Haitianali.

Speaker 12

So there's really a ton of uncertainty in the markets right now. A gauged by city shifted from risk off to risk on, risk on to risk off rather in just six weeks, and really just as liew of headlines crossing the wire this morning from Canada firing back on TIFFs to inflation is really causing some more acts. So

back to inflation, that's a big data today. It showed some signs of easing, but even so economists are anticipating that the escalating trade war will really just drive up prices, and you see waves of selling even in tech high flyers, so Tesla, super Micro and Palan there for instance, have wiped out more than a quarter of their value in the last fourteen trading sessions since they peak, so their losses are more than triple the decline of the S ANDP.

So really a tough market right now, and of course an ass like one hundred tumbled into correction territory last week.

Speaker 4

Isabelle talk to us about what we're seeing in some of those MAGS seven names you mentioned Tesla seeing some relief. What else are we seeing when it comes to the big tech giants that absolutely got battered.

Speaker 12

Earlier this week, they're still really better. Tesla is leading the Lasses and the Magnificent seven index, and you see the rally broadening out, and there are the losers right now. In fact, a note earlier this morning says maleficent seven, and you see that people are now questioning whether the US exceptionalism has cracks. We have Citygroup and HSBC downgrading

their views on US equities this week. I talked to a bank yesterday and they said that they're underweight Magnificent seven, which is really a star contrast to when everyone was just piling in, because if you don't pile in, then you underperform the benchmark. But we have JP Morgan David Lebowitz, which I talked to yesterday, said that, you know, risk premiums have jump, credit market has yet to crack. Economic data at least for now, points to expansion, so bullish overall in the long term.

Speaker 4

That's Bloomberg's Isabelle, thank you so much for joining us. Two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station since arriving aboard Boeing Starliner in June could finally be heading home. That's part of the goal for the SpaceX crew. Ten missions scheduled to launch later today. Joining us to talk about this is Clayton Swoke. He's Deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Speaker 3

Clayton, this is a really big moment.

Speaker 4

Everyone has really become so endeared to Sunny and Butch.

Speaker 3

What did this tell us about what went wrong? And will this ever happen again?

Speaker 6

Well, Jackie, it's funny.

Speaker 3

I was thinking too.

Speaker 13

The one thing that I have as a takeaway is just it's about Sunny and Butch and just their endurance and their patients and their grace, and.

Speaker 3

It's something that I think back on.

Speaker 6

I think I admire that.

Speaker 13

I'm sure a lot of Americans admire that, and people around the world and probably you like me, I get up to that when I'm three hours late at the airport and they've been there since June, so it's a very different thing to think how long that they've been up there and everything that they've been through, But they've

had that poise throughout. I think what we've learned too is that space really can still throw us curveballs, but that we have gotten to the point where we have flexibility and adaptability that we can still do human space fight safely and do that at scale. And that's a lot of credit to NASA on the approach that they've taken to get us here, and then also to SpaceX on whose technology we really relied on to make this happen.

Speaker 2

How do you think about the next apps moving forward when it comes to the star Liner? What do you think is the future from here?

Speaker 13

Well, there's still a lot of things that we don't know. We do know that Boeing has said they want to stay in the space game. It's less clear on what happens next for Starliner specifically. That will depend a lot on what NASA decides with Boeing about certifying that capsule to fly astronauts again into space.

Speaker 3

So we don't really know how long that would take.

Speaker 13

But if we look to the horizon, just with the International Space Station, we're planning for it to deorbit in twenty thirty, so that's less than five years away. So there's really only a few more opportunities really in the grand scheme to bring astronauts to that station, and that window is quickly closing.

Speaker 3

There's been a lot.

Speaker 4

Going on in this space field as of late, and I think it has many people wondering are we in a new space race of some kind? How does the US stack up with what we're doing in the field versus other countries.

Speaker 13

It's really hard to not think about China and all their achievements in space. Right now, there's seven astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station.

Speaker 2

All that thought for a moment here, because we want to bring our audience some live images of President Trump who is greeting the Prime Minister of Ireland.

Speaker 7

The two men are about to take part in.

Speaker 2

A bilateral meeting at the Oval Office. Now we will bring you those headlines as they come in. You could also check for updates on live go on your Bloomberg terminal. Now, Jackie, back to you.

Speaker 4

Talk to us more about how China is really getting to the space race.

Speaker 13

Yeah, there's three Chinese astronauts on their space station Tiangong THII right now as we speak. So they've really made space look routine in a lot of ways that has also been able to do. They're also eyeing the Moon. They want to land Chinese astronauts on the Moon by twenty thirty, so is NASA. I think it's hard to avoid the notion that this is a space race, maybe a moon race.

Speaker 6

Two point zero.

Speaker 13

The United States is still the undeniable space power, lead space power in the world, but China is definitely nipping at our heels.

Speaker 4

Let's talk about who's making us the space power. We hear a lot about SpaceX, but over in Silicon Valley there's a lot of contenders really coming into the four as well. What are you seeing in terms of concentration of who's taking us to the next level.

Speaker 13

SpaceX is the main player right now when it comes to launch, when it comes to broadband from lower thorbit, when it comes to a lot of the things that we rely on to get people and cargo to.

Speaker 6

The space station.

Speaker 13

But there are a lot of other companies that are innovating in Silicon Valley and around the country. You have companies in Pittsburgh and Texas and Florida. They're trying to catch up and come up with new ways to do space, to do it cheaper, to do it more efficiently, to mine asteroids. Even so, there are a lot of up and comers that really will challenge SpaceX's dominance, and it will be their game to lose the overtime because there's a lot of smart people though right behind them.

Speaker 4

Let's talk a little bit about who's behind SpaceX because Elon Musk has been making waves here in Washington for other reasons, but one of the areas that he's poised to potentially benefit from are his relationships in Washington SpaceX potentially getting more contracts. Does his politics detract in any way from the progress that SpaceX can make or does it really operate independently of that.

Speaker 13

SpaceX has led the way for what we call commercial space today, and it has taken a number of years for them to get to where they are. This isn't something that just happened with President Trump's inauguration in January. This has been a long trend where NASA, the Department of Defense, and other customers both commercially and internationally have really grown to depend on SpaceX for launch and then

now for broadband from space. So these are areas that have been trending to that direction for a long time. Those business opportunities that exist in space SpaceX built over the last few years, probably around twenty two thousand and eight, so it's not something new, and they're just really taking advantage of all of that time and effort that they put into this for almost seven to eight years at this point.

Speaker 7

Clayton, we thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2

Of course, fascinating establishments in that space race. That is Clayton Swope from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Speaker 4

Startup Celestial AI has raised two hundred and fifty million dollars in its latest Series C round, valuing the company at two point five billion dollars. It's photonic fabric technology aims to improve speed and efficiency in AI computing. For more on this, Dave Lozowski joins us. Now, Dave, help our views understand how your technology is actually making this part of AI computing that much more efficient.

Speaker 6

Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 14

Yeah, Celestilia is the creators of the photonic fabric, as you'd mentioned, which is the optical interconnectivity technology platform for accelerated computing. So set another way, we're interconnecting AI processors with light. What's happening in AI right now is that

artificial intelligence workloads are growing exponentially. They're now so large trillions of parameters that they need to be partitioned over hundreds of processors, which puts more and more demands on the network as the processor doing the work needs to move across the network to fetch information from another processor's memory, moving back to where the work gets done, and there's no more efficient way to move information than photonically.

Speaker 4

Dave, you managed to snag two hundred and fifty million dollars from some institutional investors by the likes of Fidelity, Tiger, Blackrock, Maverick Capital.

Speaker 3

How do you plan to put this money to use?

Speaker 6

Yeah, we're focused right now on scaling.

Speaker 14

So we have multiple deep collaborative development engagements with the largest hyperscale data center companies on Earth. Right now, we're collaborating with them to integrate our photonic fabric technology into their next generation AI accelerators. These are programs that are on the order of eighteen months, so through the balance of twenty twenty five and into the first half of next year, we're working together to get this technology scaled and qualified.

Speaker 6

So right now the focus is.

Speaker 14

On our volume manufacturing supply chain because our customers are immense scale. They require hundreds of thousands of units to serve their demand.

Speaker 7

You know, Dave back to the fundraising question as well.

Speaker 2

Not only do you have kind of like the blue chip of finance involved in this round, Fidelity, black Rock, but the Mavericks and Tiger part of this. It's interesting when you have those traditional hedge funds getting in.

Speaker 7

They have been cautious in the.

Speaker 2

World of startups, especially with a dearth of public market exits. So bring us behind a conversation what is it about you? And then that served as a good match.

Speaker 14

Yeah, So we took a hard look at the types of investors that we wanted to have involved at this stage in the company's life cycle. So just as you develop a technology for successful qualification and implementation in a large market like artificial intelligence, we are developing and optimizing our cap table for having the rights investors involved, not just at this phase in the company's life cycle.

Speaker 6

But through an IPO.

Speaker 14

Should we make the decision to take the company public over the course the next few years and to have the right investors that can invest with us over the course of the next decade or more so on their ends. The decision, I think was made based on the fact that we are the only company in existence that has the ability to provide optically interconnectivity that meets the requirements

of what are called scale up networks. This is a processor to processor interconnect The gold standard today is in Vidia with Envy Link and in v Switch.

Speaker 6

All of that is run over copper.

Speaker 14

So data communication today between processors at in Nvidia and elsewhere throughout the industry today is entirely electronically over copper.

Speaker 6

With the photonic fabric, we are.

Speaker 14

Changing that, right, We're moving information optically at a fraction of the energy and at much higher bandwidth and lower latency.

Speaker 7

You know.

Speaker 2

An interesting part of your cap table also that I've noticed, and this is an existing.

Speaker 7

Investor, is Porsche.

Speaker 2

And with all that's going on in the world, worries about the consumer, worries about international trade, auto parts also facing risks of tariffs. I'm wondering what role you play in the automobile story. Have they led to meaningful work with you as an investor?

Speaker 14

Two different branches of Porsche. There's Porchia AG, which is the automotive group, which we all know and love. That's my favorite at brand, by the way. And there's Porsche ESI, which is the mothership that it's the holding company for all of the Porsche's family money as well as they control about fifty.

Speaker 6

Percent of the assets of the Volkswaking Group. So this is the.

Speaker 14

Financial arm of Porsche. Now Portia can and certainly we anticipate will be a strategic partner for us as well on the automotive group side, as their requirements for artificial intelligence training and inference will be similar to that of Tesla, who has played kind of a leading role early on in building out AI infrastructure and support of autonomous vehicles.

Speaker 4

Dave, how do you think about kind of diversifying your customer base. You noted that your target clientele those effectively control more than ninety percent of the trillion dollar end market. Do you get to spand past that as the company grows or are you more dependent on those select few.

Speaker 14

Well, like you just said that those select few represent you know, there's eight companies that represent roughly ninety percent of this trillion dollar market, and we'd be fine with just those, right, So, if you think about it, that's a good problem for us to have. And you've got four major hyperscalers, you know, I think the world knows who they are that represent roughly seventy percent of.

Speaker 6

The addressable in market.

Speaker 14

And then you have the ecosystem around them, right, the GPU manufacturers which include Nvidia and AMD, AIMD by the way, being one of our strategic investors as well. And then there are a couple of design services companies which include Broadcomics. Right, so Broadcom is playing a larger role. I think you've heard from their earnings announcement over the last week and a half that they're gaining traction and building custom silicon for the hyperscalers.

Speaker 2

Dave, we thank you so much for your time today. Congratulations on that fundraise. We are looking forward to seeing where.

Speaker 7

It all goes.

Speaker 2

That is Dave Lozowski of Celestial Ai. Now, another AI story that we're watching, Ali Baba is accelerating its efforts to lead in the AI space and they're pushing out an AI model that.

Speaker 7

Can read emotions for more.

Speaker 2

Bloomberg's Peter Elstrom joins us now and I think just back to a couple of days ago, I tried so hard to read this story that Sam Altman posted online about the creative writing exercise that you saw through Open AI, and that does go down to the ability to read beyond the objective and then to be subjective. Right, And so when you think about Ali Baba, how successful are they in emotional intelligence.

Speaker 15

We're seeing this very rapid innovation of AI models really around the world, but China now particularly has gained a lot of attention because of the breakthrough of deep Seek a few weeks ago. Ali Baba is, course of course, best known for its e commerce business. It competes with Amazon in that market. But of late the past couple of months, they've come out with an number of AI models that are quite innovative. They have one called Gwen that it compared with deep Seek and said that it

was ahead on certain metrics. They're also striking an alliance with Apple to be able to provide some of the AI features for the iPhones within China.

Speaker 3

And now we see this.

Speaker 15

The model is called R one omni. They're saying it's able to detect emotions within the people were asking questions and give better answers. Because of that, they can customize in certain ways. Now this fair follows very rapidly on the heels of open Ai, which has tried something like this with their GPT four point five. Now open Ai is charging two hundred dollars a month for that service, and here Alibab is putting this out there for free.

It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that you would see in some other models, but it's a pretty aggressive move into this space, and the China market is not one where you're going to see the American companies play. So it's a pretty far step ahead for Ali Baba.

Speaker 4

Peter, we have about thirty seconds left, but talk to us about how this now stacks Ali Baba up again to some of the players here in the US. Is it really going to depend on things like emotional intelligence?

Speaker 15

Well, it's important to understand how bifurcated these markets are. The Western companies can't get into China. These Chinese companies are largely not competing outside of their own market at this point. So they're pretty separate at this point. But I think what's been surprising to a lot of observers is how quickly some of these Chinese companies have been able to evolve their AI models, especially because they're cut

off from the most advanced chips. You're talking before about the Nvidia chips that are used to train these AI models. Most of the Chinese companies can no longer buy those from the Western world, so they're doing this with some pretty hardcore engineering. Deep Seak in particular show that they could make some advances that would be very difficult in the Western world. That's partly because of the constraints they have on the chip side.

Speaker 2

Peter, we thank you so much for all of your reporting. That is Bloomberg's Peter Alstrom and Jackie. Something I've been thinking about that is interesting about this emotional intelligence aspect of things is if you believe that leadership needs EQ, maybe AI can be your next boss.

Speaker 3

Yeah, let's hope not.

Speaker 4

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a giving me my evel if you know what I mean, right or raise?

Speaker 7

Anyways, is coming up next?

Speaker 2

Remember, speaking of big companies, we are coming out with Adobe earnings after the closing bell.

Speaker 7

It is held up.

Speaker 2

Relatively well in the tech malaise we've seen through the broader market.

Speaker 7

We're gonna take a look at what to expect next. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2

Adobe earnings are out after the closing bell, and we're going to bring in now Anu Ragrana of Bloomberg Intelligence for a look at what to expect. It's interesting because Adobe has held up relatively well relative to a lot of those magneticuden Officient seven names, relative to what you've seen in a lot of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. Is there a story something to buy right now or are there real risks after the market today?

Speaker 6

So sure, Naaliban, you look at it.

Speaker 16

Adobe's probably the cheapest large cap software stock right now, much cheaper than any of its peers, and there is a reason behind it because it is also the most controversial one right now. They have a huge segment, one of the most profitable businesses in the world, their photoshop creative business, which is under threat or perceived threat by a lot of open source models out there now. The company has guided to their annual recurring revenue for their

digital media segment to go up by eleven percent. That's the only number we are looking for when they report, because any kind of disturbance and that number on the downside really is not going to be good for the stock. But meanwhile, if they are able to hold onto it or even raise it, I think that's going to be perceived very well. So that is really something different that's happening from a macroside right now.

Speaker 2

ANURRAD thank you so very much for your time. That is ANURAG run of Bloomberg Intelligence. We are looking forward.

Speaker 7

To your readout after they report.

Speaker 2

To your point, very controversial at the moment, and we are hitting that tail end of earning season, and of course as we hit that tail end, we are also keeping an eye on these markets for you as before we let you go, because we are looking at that Nasdaq one hundred trying to maintain those gains for the day. It has been a volatile morning, but we are back up to one percent worth of gains on that Nasdaq

one hundred. Really the leaderboard here, the Russell two thousand losing its gains though on the day, and the S and P five hundred up but less than you're seeing.

Speaker 7

In big tech.

Speaker 2

The semiconductor is getting some relief, a nearly three percent rise now at two point eight percent, and you're looking at.

Speaker 7

That big come back into the market.

Speaker 2

The dip buyers are on the sidelines and hopping back in. That does it for Bloomberg Technology though today. Don't forget to check out our podcast. You could find it on the terminal and on Apple, Spotify and iHeart this is Bloomberg

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