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This is a Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, talks continue to try and end the US government shutdown, sending airline stocks rallying. We'll discuss how AI could play a role in the future of travel. Plus, tech and media earnings continue with corew Even paramount on the docket after the closing bell, and we'll speak with Matt Mayhan, mayor of San Jose about the city's growing AI infrastructure and its latest data center initiative. First, so check on the market, starting with
the bigger picture and look at that. We are seeing the Nasdaq one hundred surge along with other major indices. This is the US Senate advanced as a plan to end the longest ever government shutdown. There has gone bid lifting tech shares, really driving the rally in equities after the tech sector had been hit the hardest in recent days. Also coming up, we're going to discuss what to expect
from tech and media earnings throughout the hour. Core Weaves results are expected to raise issues about AI spending after last week's sell off. Coryve up one point two percent right now, This after a week where was down twenty two percent. This is also on the heels of others. Spending by tech companies like Meta and Microsoft also paramounts guidance down about three tenths of one percent. Ahead of earnings,
they're expected to report higher revenue and profit. Investors also are going to be on the watch for more details on the company's reported effort to buy Warner Brothers Discovery spending a lot of money too buying up those rights to UFC, and that big deal with the Duffer Brothers.
Well.
A group of eight Democrats on Sunday broke the rest of their party to vote with Republicans to advance a bill to reopen the government on the shutdown's fortieth day. Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall joins us out of Washington, DC for more. Tyler, tell us where we are in the discussion. Where do things stand with the Senate back today?
Yeah?
I hey, Tim, So the Senate advanced this legislation on a key procedural vote, but it still has to go up to debate and then get a final floor vote on the Senate floor, and importantly, any one senator could tie up that process. We have our eyes on Senator Ran Paul, a Republican from Kentucky. He voted against this
legislation and could ultimately delay it. However, the broad understanding here, we're expecting this legislation to advance out of the Upper Chamber and then go to the House later in the week. Once the past of the Senate, there are thirty six hours for House lawmakers to get back to Washington and vote. But we have to look at what's actually in this legislation to see some of those pressure points that could
be building on how Speaker Mike Johnson. This bill would fund the government through January thirtieth and then fund some key agencies through the rest of the fiscal years. Some hardline conservatives may not be happy with that because they didn't get the chance to negotiate those longer spending bills. This also importantly includes a reverse for mass firings federal workers that started on October first, and shields against future
firings through at least January thirtieth. That of course, goes against President Trump's key priority when it comes to reducing the federal WORKFORCET, so that also might face some pushback when House lawmakers get back to town. I'll say, I'm keeping my eye on those moderate Democrats in the House, how they could come over and join Republicans, because that's what we really saw happen when it came to the Senate. They were negotiating, of course, for an extension on those
Affordable Care Act premium subsidies. The Senate wasn't able to get a deal in this legislation, but they were able to secure a promise on a vote for an extension down the line. We're expecting that to happen by the second week of December. See if how Speaker Mike Johnson puts anything similar on the floor. At this point, we haven't gotten in any indications, but I'd expect some House Democrats to push for.
It, all right.
Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall keeping it on everything happening out of Washington, DC. Thanks so much for that, Tyler well shares of major airlines rallying as a potential and to the government shut down nears. That's despite one hundred have canceled flights over the weekend due to weather and the lack of air traffic controllers and President Trump just now weighing in moments ago on true social saying, quote, all air traffic controllers must get back to work now. Anyone who doesn't will
be substantially docked. Nancy Shue leads agent for US at Salesforce, and joins us now to talk about how AI might actually help and be helping in the travel sector. Nancy, good to have you with us from our San Francisco studio.
I got to tell you a.
Lot of my colleagues, a lot of friends had their trips canceled or disrupted over the weekend. It doesn't seem like anything could actually help right now. Accept actual air traffic controllers and actual TSA agents showing up to work.
Tim, thanks so much for having me. We are seeing with the evolving situation right now at the FAA through our own agent platform, Agent Force, that it's really important for companies to have agentic solutions and able in order to serve their customs daring this very critical time where we're seeing a surge in the system. As an example, at Agent Force right now, we work closely with Heathrow. Heathrow has more than eighty million passengers that walk through
their airports every single year. And at Heathrow, you know those passengers are walking in a four and four am in the morning, it could be at noon where they're looking for lost luggage, regardless of the time and day. No, we have an agent with them called Haley that's helping Heathrow passengers right now on the ground, using AI agents to address their customer queries, really using that ability for AI agents to surge capacity for these companies to build
more resilient solutions. And this is critical right now with the FA situation that's breaking. Enabling our customers and all the companies that are using AI agents to flex film a bit of capacity and really better serve those travelers that are on the road today.
Well, I mentioned the President's post on social media just in the last hour or so. The post continues to say that if if you want to leave service in the near future, these are people who are not showing.
Up to work, he says.
He says, you will be quickly replaced by true patriots who will do a better job on the brand new, state of the art equipment, the best in the world that we are in the process of ordering that new equipment. It's come up fairly often in recent months when talking about the challenges at air traffic control and for air traffic controllers here in the US, does Salesforce have any role in the new air traffic control equipment that is being ordered, whether it's software or something else.
What I can share, Tim, is that we have a brand new initiative Mission Force where we're working with national security as well as the US government as well as allied governments to best support them, using technology and bringing them as modern solutions, including RAI to help support national security.
Today, you've got a great view on the capabilities not just now but in the coming years when it comes to this technology within our lifetimes. Do you think AI could replace air traffic controllers?
Tim, We are very excited about the vision of enabling our customers to be successful using Agent Force, our AI agent platform, deploying agents in the travel industry, for example, with customers like Engine Heathrows, Singapore Airlines, Thin Air. For US, it's really about enabling those companies to work in a way where their employees, their humans and AI are partnering closely together to enable that to happen. I'll give you
a very concrete example, Singapore Airlines works closely with agent force. Today, with Singapore Airlines, we have over three point five million AI workflows that are being run today, and those workflows are not actually directly with their customers, but actually servicing the humans on the Singapore Airlines team working closely with them in cases such as when their service representative is helping a customer with a critical issue on the ground.
Our AI workflows are actually summarizing those cases so that those companies, those reps can now better service their customers in real time. We think that the future is very much AI agents and humans working closely together.
Yeah, I certainly understand that from a customer service perspective, Nancy, But from the perspective of this high stress decision making that takes place in a control tower, is that something that could be done by AI and then in the future we could sidestep issues and avoid issues such as these.
AI is a critical part of building a resilient business. And I think we're seeing this right now with this FAA situation. And it's not just the FAA, right you know, right now we're seeing volatility in every market and this
is not news to us. But what's really exciting, I think is that AI agents are actually helping companies become more resilient in these volatile markets, not only in travel with the companies that I listed earlier, but also we have companies like one eight hundred Accountant, right they see massive surges during peak tax season and the types of queries their customers are coming with help four and we're able to, in the case of one eight hundred Accountant,
help them address more than ninety percent of those cases autonomously and to end really serving their customers and ensuring that when you do have surges in the system like that or these black Swan events, AI agents can help these customers be resilient and help them better serve their own customers.
You've mentioned partnerships with Singapore Airlines London's Heathrow Airport, but here in the United States do you have partnerships with airports that where this technology actually could help in terms of air traffic controllers, in terms of helping people who are stranded.
I mean, we have colleagues who they were.
Told over the weekend that they wouldn't even be able to find a flight until Wednesday. And certainly some of that is on the airline, but the core of the issue still has to do with those people not showing up to work on the airport side and the air traffic control side.
TIM, we have customers that we work closely with, like Engine. Engine is one of the leading platforms right now that is helping do travel management for companies. So it's across not just airlines travel flight bookings, but also those hotel bookings and those car rentals that are being impacted as
a result downstream. With a company like Engine, you know, they're handling a large volume of customer queries here in the US today and in those situations, we're today helping them increase or decrease their average handling time by more than fifteen percent, and over thirty percent of those complex bookings that are happening end to end as well as those case resolutions for their customers are being done autonomously using agent Force agents, and the impact of that, TIM
is really helping a company like Engine surge their capacity in this critical period so that they're able to flex up and down depending on what their customers are needing. And right now, of course, the flex is going up.
Nancy Schue, vice President of AI Product at Salesforce, thanks so much for joining us. Today on Bloomberg Tech to appreciate it Well. Coming up, we wait earnings from core Weave and Paramount, both of these companies set to report after the closing bell.
We've got a.
Preview what to expect next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Well, let's take a look at Spotify shares. They've turned lower amid an announcement out of TikTok, the social platform, teaming up with iHeartMedia to create a new TikTok podcast network. The deal will feature up to twenty five new podcasts hosted by TikTok creators. This is the company looks to help creators beyond the TikTok platforms. Spotify shares down about one tenth of one percent, I Heeart Media shares down
about six point three percent. Well, Paramount guidance results do add after the closing bell, with investors heavily focused on a potential bid for Warner Brothers Discovery. Here with more is Bloomberg's Hannah Miller, who covers Media Wow. David Ellison has been very busy in his first few months over
at Paramount sky Dance. Hannah, I know there are a lot of questions about the UFC purchase about the Duffer Brothers deal, about the hiring of Barry Weiss, But is the big question all about Warner Brothers Discovery and whether some or all of those assets go to Paramount's guidance.
Yeah, investors want to hear any updates related to Paramounts multiple bids to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. So far, they've been bidding too low. So we'll see what David Ellison says today if he gives any insight into their strategy going forward.
Are investors on board with him spending this much money?
You know, I think investors are surprised. Some are wondering, you know, hey, why didn't you go for Warner Brothers in the first place instead of Paramount? Might have been less complicated, But you know, they want to see what David Ellison has in store for Paramount. He has a really tech forward approach. He's willing to spend lots of money, So, you know, some in the industry are excited to see what could happen if these two companies fell under the same roof and ownership.
Bloomberg's Hannah Miller follow those results on Bloomberg TV and Radio as soon as they come out. After the bell today. Well, another company that we are watching, Core We've. Shares, the cloud computing firm fell twenty two percent last week.
This emit a broader pullback in the AI trade.
Now investors are watching its results closely as concerns grow over heavy spending by core Weave's customers. Bloomberg's Dina Bass joins us now with more the twenty two percent decline and shares last week. The concern about this idea of some circular financing, the small number of customers that core We've has that really account for a majority of its revenue. What's the thing that investors are watching most closely for with today's results.
Dina, As you said, it's the spending and what they say about it. It's not just spending by Corewave's customers, it's spending by corew weave itself and sort of the debt financing, the debt that they're taking on to do that. Think, you know, across the board some of these companies, investors are sort of betwixt in between. They on the one hand, they want to see spending because it's a solid demand signal.
If companies are spending to expand data centers, it means that they think that they're getting more AI business in the door. When they stop spending, investors are going to worry that that's slowing down. On the other hand, investors are also worried that all of that spending just costs a lot of money and what's what's the return? When
do you start making that back? And so I think for core We, there's going to be a you know, look at what they're saying about demand signals, what they're saying about deals that they've signed about you know, remaining performance obligations, so with deals they've already booked and haven't been able to fulfill, as well as what's going on on the profit or in the case of core We, the loss side, you know, in terms of what they're spending to get to fulfill those those customer obligations.
Can core We've actually get everything it needs to build the capacity or invest in the capacity that it thinks it's customers will need. Can you get the check? Can you get the electricity? Can it get the infrastructure?
Right now, no one is getting everything they need and that's you know Corey, you open AI, Microsoft Meta, nobody is getting as many chips as they want nobody is getting as much power as they think they need. You know, it's all coming online rapidly, but not rapidly enough based on what these companies think the demand picture looks like.
Bloomberg's Dina Bass joins us now and Dina, thanks so much for that update. A reminder, we will have those numbers for you as soon as they break after the bell on Bloomberg TV and a radio as well.
Well.
Let's put all of this spending into context of the broader markets as well. With Hillary Frisch, Senior Research analysts for Software and IT services at Clearbridge Investments, Healy, good to have you on the program.
Thanks for having me.
The existential question that Dina was just talking about, when is this going to pay off? It's not just with Core Weave, it's not just with Microsoft, it's not just with meta platforms. This is the existential question that every investor asking themselves right now.
When will it pay off?
It's the next sistential question.
However, there's a lot of long range planning occurring at present. The commitments that Opening Eye and these ecosystem partners are making are stretched out over a very long term horizon, and as Dina mentioned, I thought she summarized it will nobody can get what they need yet, so it's going to be an ongoing process of seeing allocations, seeing revenues, seeing costs drop, seeing funding, seeing improvement in the across the ecosystem, which will reinforce investor confidence in this.
I think there's a strong belief that.
There is ROI, but investors are paid to evaluate risks as well as reward, and sometimes that pendulum shifts really firm one direction. And say, in the case of an oracle who, similar to core Weave, is supplying a lot of this capacity, that stock had gotten back on Thursday or Friday.
To close to where it had been before the big.
Announcement, the big announcement with o AI, and I think investors are viewing what's good as bad until they get.
Some answers to these questions.
That said, I think there's more good to come, and we'll get milestones along the way proving out the thesis of the ecosystem and the returns.
That thesis of the ecosystem is really something that I'm having trouble to visualizing right now. And no matter how much Mark Zuckerberg tries to explain superintelligence to me, and to shareholders of the company. I still don't understand what that ultimate payoff looks like, not just for meta platforms,
but for the industry in general. Is this something that will only pay off when there's mass unemployment so companies don't have to actually pay for people because machines in AI are doing the work.
Is it an increase in productivity?
We all keep our jobs, but we have these little friends, with these little helpers who help us do it better.
What is it is?
Nobody knows.
I think it's a combination of increased productivity, increased revenue, increased velocity of activity. At a minimum, AI should really supercharge the individual today. The adoption has been very methodical among typical commercial organizations because they have to worry about security and orchestration and liability and all sorts of things. And that's going to be the case. But we are seeing the beginnings of real progress. We're seeing the technologies
in the marketplace start to mature. We're seeing the very beginnings of commercial deployments in production beyond what Palanteer is doing, and so I think we're seeing the beginnings of it. But as we know, technology trends are overestimated in the short term and underestimating the long term, and things move very slowly until they start to move quickly.
And that's just a phenomenon of tech.
But are you using it at all with your job?
Sure?
How Yeah, we're using chat, GPT enterprise, our developers are using cogend tools. But those things aren't easier because the finished product doesn't have to be correct.
I can see what works for me and what doesn't.
But it's a very different phenomenon when you have something tam are facing the broadly employee facing where it has to work out of the box and it can't bring your organization down in trims of liability.
So it's going to be a process for sure.
Yeah.
I was talking about this last week with somebody on our program and they said, they're basically like an intern, these these llms, you know, eager to help out, but you really have to check the work to make sure that it's something that can actually go to print them, something that is actually accurate. Finally, I just want to talk about the overall economic effects of this. A lot of what we talk about when it comes to AI. The real beneficiarias have been the major companies that we
talk about every day on Bloomberg Tech. But when will we start to see these advancements actually affect the bottom lines and the productivity of companies that are not necessarily tech adjacent.
So such a great question, And it's funny because people are attributing layoffs to AI, and I think in part some of those layoffs may come from the need to fund AI, but not directly from the productivity benefits from AI yet.
So in other words, companies spending money on AI rather than people, and that's why they're making investments there rather than in human capital.
Well, they're spending on AI, but there are other things behind the layoffs, meaning people that over hired during the pandemic, especially in the realm of technology. Not all those hires were of the quality that they wanted.
They had to pay a lot for those folks.
And also, companies have been been bracing for an economic town turn. My industry contexts tell me everybody's bracing for a downturn, concern over tariffs, inflation, etc. So I don't think it's directly attributable. But to answer your question directly, I think next year we start to see we're starting to see production workloads going to production Today I think companies will have better worked out the kinks by the
second half of next year. As I mentioned, the technologies are maturing, the costs are plummeting, the rois will rise, and I think into second half of next year are really going to be the first signposts of broader benefits from AI to the average commercial working say.
Hillary Frish, senior research analyst at Clearbridge Investments, thanks so much for joining.
Us on Bloomberg Tech.
Well, coming up, GRAB takes the wheel, investing in a remote driving startup. Speaking of driving, let's take a quick look at Tesla shares. This shareholder is approving a one trillion dollar pay package for Elon Musk last week on the promise that he'll transition the company to focus on AI and robotics. The company likely benefiting from the wider risk on sentiment today too. This is Bloomberg Tech sign
out for Talking Tech. First up, Grab investing sixty million dollars in remote driving service day, with the potential to reach four hundred and ten million dollars.
Check this out.
They allows users to order a car, which is then operated remotely and delivered to the customer.
The deal is expected to close.
In the fourth quarter plus, ta MC posted a sixteen point nine percent rise in sales for the month of October. That's the slowest pace for the chip makers ince February of twenty twenty four. Still, the company on track to meet average analyst estimates of sixteen percent sales in the current quarter and in videas, Jensen Wong remains optimistic about
the AI demand, asking TSMC for more chip supplies. Speaking to reporters in Taiwan, Wong said, quote, the business is very strong and it's growing months by month, stronger and stronger. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Power constraints are slowing parts of Silicon Valley's AI expansion, with two proposed data centers in Santa Clara facing potential delays due to limited utility capacity.
But just south in San Jose, Prolagis has won approval to develop new data centers and manufacturing facilities with a vision that includes five electric substations for power for more. We're joined by San Jose or Matt Mayhem. Matt, good to have you on the program today. The first question I have is really about why San Jose is a good place for facility like this. This is some of the most expensive real estates, the most expensive housing in the entire United States.
Why San Jose.
Well, we're in a really fortunate position in San Jose to have two gigawatts of new power coming online over the next four years.
We're the only city in California.
With that kind of new load capacity, and this particular location is really unique. It's up in North San Jose next to two thirty seven, a large freeway here right next to our wastewater treatment facility, which means access to ample recycled water at a reasonable rate, as well as one of those new transmission lines coming into the city
of San Jose. So, as you mentioned, while the rest of Silicon Valley, which was largely built out, is having to turn data on our projects away, we've just said yes to prologe Is in this proposal to put four hundred megawatts worth of data centers right here in the heart of Silicon Valley. We think it's a really exciting opportunity in terms of economic competitiveness, job growth, tax base, and those infrastructure pieces are right there in place to facilitate it.
You mentioned it's right by a wastewater treatment facility. It makes me think that perhaps this wouldn't be the best place to build affordable housing. Is it fair to say that this is not a site that is zoned for that.
That's part of the benefit here is that in much of the city we're trying to enable housing, mixed juice development, retail, more transit oriented development. This particular site is up next to the bay. You've got wastewater treatment, there's a landfill nearby. Fortunately, servers don't complain about odors, and.
So we think it's the perfect location.
There's also just nowhere else in Silicon Valley with access to recycled water that's so easy. Plus the availability of power that's the biggest barrier. As you know, we've got a thousand megawatts of new power coming online over the next four years in this exact location.
Yeah, explain where that power is coming from, where it's coming online. As I mentioned, one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg Terminal today is about data centers that are just sitting there idle because they cannot get capacity actually hooked up to them to energize them.
That's right, and sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. San Jose is a beneficiary of a decision made by kaisso the independent system operator here in California. Many years ago before we were talking much about AI, they were just looking at general economic growth trends and decided that San Jose had some of the highest growth potential in
the entire state, and they approved new transmission lines. There's one line coming up from the south, one from the north, but they both come into San Jose.
Each is a thousand megawatts. So here's a city that has a million people.
Twelve large city in the country already consumes about one point one gigawatts of power. We have two gigawatts coming online over the next four years. That means we can triple our energy use in the city of San Jose. There's no other city in California, maybe the country, that is set up to triple its energy consumption over the next four to five years. That's a really unique position to be in. We're just blessed with this infrastructure coming online.
We've of course said yes to it, helped facilitate it, been very supportive of it. But we're really optimistic that this means more jobs, not just data centers, advanced manufacturing R and D labs.
We're in a really strong.
Position to capture this technological wave that we're.
In, the power that it will be used by these data centers, the power that's coming online, how is it being generated? I know you have that one nuclear power plant down South Diablo Canyon on the central coast, and some renewables certainly too, wind and solar. How's this energy are you going to be generated?
So the City of San Jose a few years ago set up something called a community Choice aggregator. Essentially that's a mouthful, but essentially the city purchases power on behalf of the users within our city limits. We have used this policy tool to sign twenty year power purchase agreements that enable us to fund new generation capacity. And because we have a commitment to cleaner energy, what we're essentially doing is buying solar and wind compared with storage, and
that's the key. The intermittency issue is real, but when you build enough storage capacity, you can smooth that curve out and actually make it work. And so Santose already has one of the cleanest renewable mixes in the country.
But it's largely because we're using that collective purchasing power to invest in cleaner power, invest in innovation, in the energy sector, and it's it's taken us a long way, and we're going to continue to go down that path because grid scale storage is the way to clean up the grid. You mentioned nuclear. I think that also has to be part of the mix here if we want to really get down our emissions. But I'm proud of the work we've done in San Jose, and there's a lot of runway left.
So is it fair to say that none of the power that will be used to energize these data centers will be you know, quote unquote dirty, non renewable power, carbon based stuff.
Well, I can't guarantee none of it will, because the power is coming off the grid, And so what we're doing is using this projected increase in demand to sign new power purchase agreements that are mostly, if not entirely quote unquote clean. But then that gets added to the grid and moves up the overall mix of renewable on the grid. So I can't promise you that there aren't electrons coming off the grid that are coming from nuclear.
Or a gas plant somewhere.
Certainly, natural gas nuclear are still very much part of the foundation California. Isn't isn't using coal we're using. Geothermal is growing, but it's really been solar paired with storage.
That's where most of the growth is coming from.
And the great thing about growth is you can invest in an innovation, and that's what we're doing, is we're explicitly purchasing solar paired with storage so that we can increase the renewable mix on the grid. Overall, that benefits us and the entire state.
Mayor man any interest yet from some of the large hyperscalers or large tech companies in Silicon Valley for using this capacity, what can you tell us?
We have a very robust pipeline.
PGAE did a cluster study last year that's already outdated because there's so much more demand. I suspect most of those two gigawatts of new power coming online will be spoken for over the next eighteen months. We've got a long pipeline of interested parties, the usual suspects, hyperscalers and
the big data center developers, some advanced manufacturing uses. So PGEN will be updating their cluster study, will get a better look at how much demand there is in the city of San Jose, but last year showed over eight hundred megawatts worth of demand. I suspect it's quite a
bit higher now this year, especially with this news. As you know, for this particular site, Prologist builds for the world's largest companies, the Hyperscalers, the most innovative companies on Earth, and this particular location is a real win win because it doesn't displace housing or retail or any other uses. It's underutilized land next to a waste of our treatment facility that just happens to have a lot of new power capacity and recycled water just adjacent to the site.
So it's kind of the perfect place to do this.
Matt Mahon, the mayor of San Jose, California, thanks so much for joining us.
May Or Mahnon, do appreciate it.
Well, Let's stick with the AI theme and take a look at some movers right now in that space. The Nasdaq and the Philadelphia Semi Index. The socks both up now a ZAK one hundred up one point three percent. The socks up two percent, this as talks are underway to potentially end the month long government shutdown. Chip stocks two on the move in Nvidio more than three percent. Also as investors responding to strong sector fundamentals, accelerating AI spending.
A rally started with TSMC's solid results. All eyes too on core Weave that is slated to report after the closing bell today. Coryve up seven tens of one percent right now, kind of those masks. What happened last week? Sticking with core Weave, let's bring in Bloomberg Equities reporter Carmen Ryanicky Sheet joins us now. Carmen Corewave tough week last week, but the stock has absolutely been on a
tear since it went public. What's the backdrop that the company is facing when it reports results after the bell.
Yeah, so investors are really going to be watching for sort of this balance between revenue growth for Coreve, which is just flying it's expected to double to more than one point three billion, but also the sort of massive spending that it also has while it builds out more
and more capacity for its large hyper scale clients. As you mentioned, Coreeve shares are up more than double still since their IPO, but they are also more than thirty percent below a record high hit a few months ago, and they fell pretty significantly after last earnings on concerns about spending. So that's something we're going to be watching
very closely after the bell today. Stock fell a lot last week when we sort of had this broader AI sell off, but a little bit of a rebound today ahead of those results.
As you note in a recent piece for Bloomberg News, most of Corewave's sales come from Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet.
Are there questions about diversifying that at all.
Yeah, that's something that investors are definitely looking forward to hear if they've added any new clients in this quarter to kind of shift away from the dependence on those few companies. Though I've also heard from sources that it's not the biggest concern because there's just so much demand in this space that even if one of their big clients were to drop them or move on or something,
there are going to be others to rush it. So definitely investors are looking for, you know, are they signing new clients, new customers, But it might not be the biggest concern.
Bloomberg's Carmen Ryana Key check out her reporting and more on the Bloomberg Terminal, and a reminder for instant earnings results and analysis, tune into Bloomberg TV and Radio.
At the close today.
Well coming up Isaiah Taylor, CEO valor Atomics, joins us fresh off of the back of the company's one hundred and thirty million dollar funding round. We're going to talk about the startups plants to remake the US nuclear sector. Next, this is Bloomberg Tech. Power demand, driven in part by AI and the US push to secure key initiatives and key industries has led to efforts to revive America's nuclear power abilities. Startup valor Atomics is seeking to do that
with the next generation reactor. It's just raised a one hundred and thirty million dollars Series A funding round. We're joined by the founder and CEO, Isaiah Taylor. Joins us right now on Bloomberg Tech. Isaiah, good to have you on the program. Congratulations on the rays. When we talk about small modular reactors, you're not alone Nano nuclear, Aklo, new scale, just a handful of the companies working on this technology. What makes Valors different?
Yeah, Tim, It's a huge pleasure to be on with you today and it's a really exciting day for Valor.
It's a great question.
There are a lot of people tackling this very very difficult problem of how do we make all of the energy needs that America has in the future. You know, the thing that sets Valor apart is two things. One is that we're building very quickly. You know, when we started this company, we realized that there was a gap in the physical hardware. We wanted to actually build reactors and test them out very rapidly. I started this company about two years ago, and earlier this year we unveiled
our full, complete thermal prototype of our reactor. That's just incredible speed. We haven't seen that kind of speed in nuclear in a long time. The other thing that sets us apart is that we want to build these to be manufacturable. We're sort of moving away from this era of nuclear that's driven by construction and more into mass manufacturing.
We want to pump these things out like they are a car, like they're a bus, and that's what's going to drive the cost down and also add a lot to safety as well.
Before you pump these things out, though, you've got to build one single example of one that actually works, and here in the United States there is still no example of a small modular reactor that is up and running, that is online, taking your company out of the mix. Just when do you think there will be an example of that in the US.
That's exactly right.
We don't have any small modular reactors running in the US today. And in fact, even though there have been many nuclear startups who have sort of attempted this, there's never been a nuclear startup which has yet split the atom. So I think the next twelve months are going to be extremely exciting. In May of this year, the President signed in executive order ordering three American nuclear companies to
turn on SMRs by July fourth of next year. Our company was one of those companies selected, So I think I can confidently say before July fourth, there will be at least one, we hope three SMRs running in the United States, and we definitely think that Valor will have one of those.
How much do they cost? How much will it cost? What's the ultimate goal?
So the initial goal is to beat natural gas.
I think nuclear absolutely has to compete with natural gas on price, on timeline, on all of these things that developers care about. So that's the initial goal. And that gas plant's going, you know, somewhere between one thousand and two thousand bucks a kilowat, so we want to be at least with parity. Now we're also cleaner, right, So it's not just that we're the same prices, that we're
cleaner as well. But the thing that's interesting about nuclear is that it's actually fairly new and there's a lot to go down the tech tree, right. There's a lot of technological innovation that can happen in the future, so we expect that price to continue dropping. You know, I think about SpaceX when we talk about this, where dockets used to cost fifty thousand dollars a kilogram into orbit and SpaceX pushing them down to two thousand. I think
we're going to look at that level of drop. There's going to be a massive, massive drop in the price as Valor gets really good at making these reactors and makes many of them.
You announced earlier this year that you're suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRCA.
Why are you doing that?
Yeah, you know, I think the thing that is really important in nuclear today is allowing innovation to happen.
Right.
If you think about the role of a regulator, they're trying to figure out how to make sure that we have safety and security across thousands of reactors deployed all over the place. But what was missing in American nuclear was the innovation layer. We need to be able to turn on test units and make sure that they work well, and that's sort of the layer that's missing. So our lawsuit really addresses a gap in how the CODA federal regulations has been written versus how the law is written.
And so, you know, we're excited about that. We're also very excited about the Department of Energy. These executive orders signed earlier this year have also opened up incredible power ways to be able to move quickly, turn our reactors on, safely, test them before we go and scale.
You know, Palmer, we were showing an image there of different investors in the company, Palmer Lucky of Anderil among those investors certainly thinking about the defense space and his involvement there. What are the applications of your technology when it comes to defense for the United States.
That's exactly right.
You know, American military bases all around the world are generally dependent on their local grid for power. This has become a massive vulnerability as grids have become vulnerable to cyber attack, you know, by our competitors, and so this is a way for us to actually secure American military bases abroad. We want to see these reactors deployed on bases.
A couple of months ago, the Janis program was announced under the US Army to do exactly this, to actually put power on military bases that's fully within American control. We think these reactors are perfect for that. This is a nice small form factor that's very easy to construct, powerful enough to power a base if you put a couple of them together. So this is a really exciting opportunity and we're willing to help our country in that way.
We've seen American military basis come under attack in recent years in different parts of the world. How would you guarantee the safety of this technology if it were to come under attack and not lead.
To some sort of meltdown.
Yeah, you know, this is where this particular technology shines. Our reactor is built around a very safe form of nuclear fuel called TRESO fuel. TRESO fuel is very small beads of uranium encased in very heart ceramic layers, and it turns out that these ceramic layers are extremely impervious to many different types of attacks. So if you look at the spectrum of how you build energy around the world, we believe this is actually the safest.
Form of energy generation in the world.
So we're really excited to put it out not on the edge, not only on the edge, but also for data center's heavy industrial power and eventually synthetic hydrocarbon production.
Isaiah, before we let you go, is your company going to be the first US company to successfully deploy and bring online a small modular reactor.
You know, it's a hot race, and there are a lot of awesome people working on the problem. But where I sit today, I do believe that valor Atomics will be the first.
That is absolutely our goal.
Isaiah Taylor, founder and CEO of valor Atomics, joining us from Delaware today. Well, chatbots have become a go to source for millions of people looking for information, amusement, and emotional support. But evidence is mounting that for some people, chatbot interactions can lead to dark places. That's the focus of a big take from Bloomberg's Ellen Hewitt and Rachel Metz. Rachel joins us Now, Rachel, this is a really powerful piece, really scary piece.
For it, I think a lot of people.
You and the team spoke to eighteen different individuals who've either experienced delusions themselves or.
Have a loved one who has what did you find?
We found that this is happening and has happened to all kinds of people. I mean, most of the people that we spoke with were based in the US, but we found through talking to people that there are men and women in all different parts of the US, in different countries, Canada, in the UK, and many other countries besides, who are dealing with this. And it gave us a sense that and it wasn't just people that have a
history of mental health issues in their past. It can be all kinds of people, people that do, people that don't. And it just was really shocking to us how many different types of people had been dealing with this experience.
How do the lllms, how do these chatbots draw people in and keep them there?
I think for a lot of the people that we spoke to, I mean, in every single situation, it started out extremely normally. They were using it for Lennie how to play the banjo, or getting help with real estate things like that. Like these are examples, you know, like very normal things that people would be using this sort of technology for. And then over time, over like a period of weeks, often it would kind of get maybe more philosophical.
It would sort of.
Depend on the user's interests. I mean, these chatboss have become increasingly personalized, so people that are more interested in things like math, for instance, it might sort of move in that direction, or it might tell people slowly over time you have awoken the AI, and people would say really, and it would say yes. And they would say really and it would say yes. So it was very reinforcing and would sort of isolate them from other people in their lives slowly and systematically.
And just in the last thirty seconds that we have with you, the companies their response, how have they responded to this reporting.
I mean we've seen a range of responses, both to us specifically and also generally to a growing number of lawsuits related to these sources of issues. Open AI. I mean, it's made a lot of changes in recent months, especially like adding parental controls, and it's also trying to make it better, make its chat about better at noting these kinds of issues and getting people help.
That's Rachel Metz, who along with Ellen Hewitt, reported on these delusions for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It was a recent big take. Do check it out on the Bloomberg Terminal and at bloomberg dot Com slash Big Take. That is going to do it for this edition of Bloomberg Chech Tech. Don't forget to check out our podcast. You can find another Terminal as well as online at Apple, Spotify, or iHeart.
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