Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news 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 live from New York.
I'm Romain Bostic and I'm Jackie Devallas in Washington. This is Bloomberg Technology coming out. Trump and TSMC are expected to announce a one hundred billion dollar investment in the US.
That's according to reports.
Plus, we'll dig into the potential impact of the US tears on the tech sector, especially chips, as that deadline approaches and Honora dominates the twenty two five oscars while Disney's Hulu takes a hit crashing during the ceremony. We'll have all the details, but first let's get a check on those markets.
What do you see, Romaine, There's a.
Lot to check here right now.
You're looking at a market that has really been on a roller coaster ride. The inter day chart of the NASTAQ one hundred really indicative of that. We came into this morning with an expectation of a continuation of that tech rebound off of that strong rally on Friday, but that got kneecapped about thirty minutes into the sessions, some economic data showing further contraction in the manufacturing sector here in the United States, combined with an increase in the
price index here inflationary pressures rearing their head. But then guess what a little bit of a reprieve came in just around a little bit around ten thirty here in New York City, headlines from the Wall Street Journal saying that the Trump administration does plan to announce further investments in the chip space here in the United States, a one hundred billion dollar commitment from TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor over
the next four years. This may not look like much on your screen, but you did see a rebound in tech stocks. The one percent dropped they were seeing in TSM. They were down about three percent earlier in the session. The rest though, of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index right now straddling the line, Jackie, between gains and losses.
Let's get more on that CSMC deal with Bloomberg's Mike Shepherd, who's joining us now, Mike, what do we know about this potential deal?
Well, we've been able to confirm here what the Wall Street Journal had reported earlier that TSMC will announce at one thirty PM with Donald Trump in the White House plans for up to one hundred billion dollars of investment in the US. And what we know from beforehand from our coverage of TSMC and the big push to expand chips manufacturing here in the US, there were already plans by the company for up to sixty five billion dollars in investment, supported by some money from the Biden era
chipsack programs. But the idea would be to build some plants in Arizona.
They are have one that.
Was actually ed.
TSMC was lured by Trump to Arizona back in twenty twenty. That plan is now up and running, its yields or even exceeding what we typically see from plants by TSMC back home in Taiwan, and there are plans for as many as three more plants as well.
So Mike, give us a CeNSE here, though, when we talk about these dollar commitments, and we've seen a lot of these commitments, what's the follow through? I mean, there was a story on the Bloomberg terminal over the last forty eight hours saying that Intel is having trouble getting some of its chip plants up and running in the timeframe that had originally set out. How much progress has TSMC made so far on those previous commitments, But one.
Of the biggest differences between TSMC and Intel is really the customer base. And Intel has struggled to find customers that would be able to sustain a plan of the skill of the one in Ohio that you just mentioned. And TSMC, on the other hand, it is the world's leading maker of artificial intelligence to chips and the demand for that is insatiable. As we know, they are the leading foundry for Nvidia and in video. We just saw
the earnings last week. Jensen Wang, the CEO of Nvidia, looking ahead to really demand that is hard to meet for their products, Blackwell and others, as this capex that we're seeing globally going into artificial intelligence really seems to be on course to continue unabated. And this actually fits
in with Donald Trump's own vision for artificial intelligence. He wants to make sure that the US remains dominant in this area, and even by having a foreign flagged and owned company like TSMC in the US expanding that does fit his vision. One he articulated before the election of having companies from a broad invest in the United States.
All right, Mike Shepard, a man in DC.
There, as we await that press conference, that announcement by President Donald Trump's schedule for one thirty pm out of Washington, we should point out the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has been on a ride down one percent, up a couple of percent now straddling the line between gains and losses. No help from Nvidia, no help from TSMC, but you are seeing a lot of the other names rally here into that session, Lamb Research, Lattice, and Intel among your big gainers.
Let's bring fionas and got it into the conversation City Index senior analysts to talk a little bit more about the tech trade, and Fiona, I am curious about where sort of the fuel is going to come for the next leg of this. I guess we can call it chip slash AI trade.
Where's that come from?
Yeah, it's a really good point, because you know, it's been a difficult start to twenty twenty five. You know, we've seen that the reflected in share prices, which across the board have struggled since the.
Start of the year.
So you know, I think we're very much getting to this stage where the markets are looking as you correctly pointed out that next catalyst.
But I think it's also worth bearing in mind.
That there are several clients that are just looming over the sector, and I think one of those clouds that we're waiting for a bit more clarity on is what Trump's intending to do as far as export bands are concerned.
You know, there are some sort.
Of reports that potentially we could see more export bands to China coming into place potentially this week. I think once we start to get a bit of a clearer picture of how the Trump administration is looking to position itself as far as the chip sector is concerned, I think that could help at least stem.
Concerns that have been weighing on the sector.
And I think the other thing is that we just also need to get a little bit more clarity I think over the outlook for sort of reduced costs as far as AI is concerned. Obviously, we've had earning season and we've learned a lot. We know that spending is
still high. But I think the whole deep seek disruption, just so the seed of doubt, which I don't feel how been removed yet, So I think we just need a little bit more clarification as to what the outlook is as far as being able to reduce spending on AI CAPEX spending is concerned.
To your point about what Trump's policies mean for the semiconductor sector, there is some concern that tariffs or other policies could eventually lead to price increases in the space. There's been some debate about how much of an effect that would actually have on companies' abilities to offer them at a price that's still appealing to their customers.
Where do you land on that.
Is that something that you're watching as a potential detractor to the space going forward?
Yes, you know, I think that's a really good point.
We do obviously need to consider when we're talking about trade tariffs. We also need to consider about what that means for pricing and potential inflationary pressures that that might cause in those pricing and obviously, you know there are going to be ceilings and limits that you know, prices may potentially reach where customers say, well, actually at that level it's too high, we're going to rain in our orders.
So I think that's something that we need to watch very carefully.
But obviously on the back of that, we also know that there is obviously a huge importance based on tech, based on AI, based on chips, and so you know that they are very much continued to be the future of sort of you know, where the world is going.
So we need to keep that in mind when we think about, you know what.
Level our company is going to say that's too far, that's too high for us right now. So whilst we will be keeping an eye on it, I don't think it's necessarily right now at a point which is causing concern, but it potentially could do in the future if we find that those inflation that those hearoffs do have inflationary impacts.
Are you comfortable, though, Fiona, when you look at the valuations in the market for some of these names that the market has bid up, are you comfortable with those valuations given what you just said, Because.
We've obviously had a very strong run up now we've also had a pullback since the start of the year, so I think that pullback has actually meant shown that the market is pricing in those concerns.
I do think that we need to have more.
Clarity before we're going to see any further increases in valuations while before we see any strong rally higher longer term, I'm still bullish on the sector. I think short term there is a potential for there to be more choppiness as we wait for those points to be clarified.
That City Index senior analyst for your nursing kind of things.
So much for joining US.
President Trump's sweeping tariffs is said to take effect tomorrow, placing new twenty five percent levees on Canada and Mexico and an additional ten percent on China.
More on the global.
Tariffs impact, Christine McDaniel's senior research fellow at.
The Mercada Center, joins us.
Now, Christine, we've heard a lot about terrafts over the last couple of weeks. Talk to us about the scope and scale of these compared to what's been discussed in the past.
So these these are much larger than what has been discussed in the past, not only in terms of magnitude of the terraffs, but also in terms of the amount of trade that it will affect. So, you know, the North American economy is a powerhouse and the US is at the center of that. It's it's a big, you know, big, big part of it. It's a big producer, it's a
big consumer. We have products going back and forth across the border, you know, several times before it ends in a finished product, you know, just looking at the tech and chip sector alone, just doing some back of the envelope this morning, you know, we're talking about fifty three
billion dollars in tariff's pay. So the US imports from Canada about forty three billion worth in tech and chips, and from Mexico it's about one hundred and sixty eight billion, So twenty five percent of that, you know, over fifty billion dollars in tariffs, and that's going to come.
Out of out of the North American economy, you know.
And so whether it's Mexico, US or Canada, you know, depending on different market factors. But it's definitely not going to lower prices for US consumers. And so it's just a matter of how much it will raise prices. And then overall, just looking at the entire North American you know, trading relationship, we're looking at two hundred and twenty seven billion in tariffs, so you know, these are not small numbers.
Yeah, well, let's break it down here into some of the industry specific areas. We focused a lot on this network one kind of the bigger areas like automotives. Obviously commodities are going to be impacted as well. But in the area of technology, are there sort of direct tariffs so we should be looking at that could actually impact technology products that are crossing the border.
Yeah, yes, I mean there's so so many. I mean, so look at the raw materials you know, coming from Canada, the component production that happens in some in Canada, a lot in Mexico, the assembly, testing and packaging that happens largely in Mexico. You know, that will all really hurt
the pricing power of US you know, sellers, US businesses here. Uh, and it will either eat it in the profit margins or they'll pass it on to US consumers and or you know, the Canadians and Mexicans will will take a hit. I mean, we're looking at a sector where there's been what like, have a trillion to a trillion dollars of investment announced just in the US and very recently. So you know, it's the tariffs will will make it's going to be harder to get a good bang for the buck with these tariffs.
Yeah, and of course for a lot of folks, so they're going to start to see those tariffs kick in or for night to night. March fourth, of course, is the deadline at least for those big ones on Mexico and Canada, additional terrifts down the road, and of course these reciprocal terrorists Christine that the President has also spoken about here, you've been on the inside. I mean, you know what goes on inside the Trade Reps Office, you know what goes inside the Department of Commerce, you know
what goes on inside the ITC. Are those mechanisms for debate and more importantly for negotiation still there or is this pretty much a negotiating process that begins and ends with Trump himself?
Yeah. This is a very different USTR Commerce experience, you know, than than what was under George W. Bush administration. The you know, there is an of course interagency analysis and meetings that happened. Uh but but in terms of you know, to what extent that analysis really feeds into and and can affect the president's decision making?
Is you know something else?
I mean, I remember with in the Bush administration, we had you know, a number of interagency meetings where we always were asked, you know, what would be the national economic effect? Is this in the national economic interest? And you know, and and the White House was always interested in the downstream effects, I mean very seriously interested, and that would often come into be a pretty big part of their decision making. You know, you don't necessarily see
that with this current administration. But still early days. I mean there's still several hours.
Of the day left.
And and you know, Commerce Secretary of Lutnik over the weekend said the situation is fluid. That they feel apparently that Canada and Mexico has made a lot of progress on the border. That and they're very happy they've had the lowest crossing ever on the border, but they're still concerned, you know, at Faetanyel continues to come into the country, so maybe it won't be twenty five percent and it
will be something less. So everybody's on the sort of a wait and see approach, which apparently is what they like people to be in that position.
Well, the clock is ticking right now.
Christine McDaniel over at the Mercadis Center a long career of course in Washington. As we now turn our attention to another part of the market that is affected by what's going on in Washington, and that is cryptocurrencies. Over the weekend, the President turned the truth social to announce his plans for a strategic crypto reserve, which would include lesser known digital assets like XRP and Salana. The news ignited and immediate crypto rally, a rally that has pared
back quite a bit over the last few hours. Here Bill down a hire joining us right now who covers crypto for us here at Bloomberg. We have seen a bit of a turnaround in some of these coins.
Well done.
I wish you to point out some of the crypto stocks like Marathon and a few others a micro strategy as well, still in the green. How much stock can we put in that announcement that Trump made over the weekend about this cryptocurrency reserve as well as this big crypto summit that's coming up on Friday at the White House.
I think it's really good question, and the key thing to keep in mind is that we just are lacking a ton of details. So we had the social media announcement over the weekend that mentioned these maybe we can call them lesser known coins, and later the President tweeted again to say that you know, Bitcoin and ether of course are going to be included as well. I think it's very It's not un surprising to see the initial enthusiasm leading to a rally in crisis and then sort
of the comeback. It's something we've seen in cryptocurrencies in the past couple of weeks, in the past couple of months.
It's sort of historically.
Something that's been part of the cryptocurrency market, where you see the initial euphoria and then a drawdown following. You know, maybe once things settle down a little bit and people start to look at the announcement a bit more skeptically, But I do think that we definitely need to just have much more information on the strategic Crypto Reserve before we can make any solid proclamations.
Speaking of skepticism built on I here in Washington, some Republican lawmakers who are allies of Trump have actually pushed back on the notion of using taxpayer dollars to fund risky assets like crypto. So this idea of a crypto reserve, what would that look like in practice? I know it's still a bit theoretical, but could you kind of break that down for us a.
Bit, right, that's one of the key considerations, I think.
And if we think back.
To early January when the initial announcement about the Strategic Reserve was made, I think the administration had said something like it would be funded with seizures, lawful seizures, so you know, whenever there's an FBI raid for example, or something along those lines, because the government does have crypto
holdings from such activities and such actions. So I think the initial idea that was that part of that would be coming from things like that, But we just we just don't know, and I think some of the skepticism that we've seen in the wake of this weekend's announcement does have to deal with that where people are where, where actually would the funding be coming from.
That's Bloomberg's with Donna Halik. Thank you so much for joining us.
Coming up a Texas startup landed spacecraft on the Moon.
We'll discuss what this means.
For the future of space exploration and the US position in the space race.
This is Bloomberg, all.
Right, shares of companies in the space race. We're actually on a pretty wild ride today as well. That was after a private company called Firefly Aerospace successfully landed its first robotic spacecraft on the Moon. That was over the weekend of partnership with NASA that had taking it on its journey on January fifteenth. The spacecraft carrying ten tools and experiments built by NASA, including a drill that would bury itself into the lunar soil to test the temperature.
There you can see some of the other stocks here related to Firefly. Moving on that news, including rocket Lab and AST Space Mobile. Lauren Grush joining us right now to talk a little bit more about what we learned, and this was pretty momentous, only the second time, I believe in history we've got a commercial spacecraft successfully touched down on the Moon, of course a lunar One of the stocks we showed their intuitive machines did it, I think sometime back last year.
Here.
What was his significance of what happened over the weekend, specifically when it came to Firefly lorn right, Well, you.
Just explained it right there. This is only the second time a commercial company has landed a vehicle intact on the lunar surface. But something special about Firefly's landing is they're kind of hailing it as the first fully successful landing because even though Intuitive Machines did land their lander for the first time last year, unfortunately that lander did tip over when it reached the surface. It was coming into fast and so it had to end its mission prematurely.
But with Firefly, it looks like they stuck the landing upright and they even got some really great pictures from the lander right as soon as they made it to the surface. So from all we've seen so far, it looks like a pretty successful mission.
Through and through Lauren, how much room is there for startups that are operating in the space srace to really get in here because a lot of the news that we hear is around SpaceX.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean this specific mission, Blue Ghost was part of an overall NASA effort to help fund private and public companies to develop lunar landers to reach the surface of the Moon. So this is something that NASA really wants a very diverse ecosystem of commercial companies, and so they've been partially funding landers to transport instruments and experiments and tools to the lunar surface to help learn more about the Moon. As part of its ongoing efforts to
eventually land humans on the surface of the Moon. So this is what NASA wants.
They want more.
Companies than just SpaceX, you know, getting all the headlines, and so far it looks like their while they've had some mixed success, are starting to have more success as well.
That's Bloomberg's Lauren Gresh. Thanks for joining us. What are you looking at?
Romain?
All right, Jackie, Jackie, time for talking tech, and first up, we're going to take a look at BYD, the company looking to raise as much as five point two billion dollars in a primary placement. According to terms seen by Bloomberg, the Chinese automaker offered one hundred and eighteen million shares at three hundred and thirty three to three hundred and forty five Hong.
Kong dollars each.
That's a discount of almost eight point four percent of Monday's closing price in Hong Kong, plus Bydu planning to raise one point four billion dollars with an offering of offshore bond sales. According to sources, the deal made price as soon as Wednesday, and would be the first bond offering for China's leading search engine since twenty twenty one. The deal also comes before the company must repay a six hundred million dollars security that's due on April seventh.
And finally, Chinese AI startup Zepou has raised more than one one hundred and forty million dollars as interest in domestic AI rises following deep Seat's meteoric growth. The financing round led by local government back firms and joins existing backers Ali, Baba and ten Cent.
Zipou was last valued at about three.
Billion dollars during its last funding round in May twenty twenty four. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Caroline Hyde and Ed lower offarm Romain Bok.
In New York, and I'm Jackie Deballis in Washington.
Let's go to quick check on markets which have been oscillating all day long. Jackie moving partly on big news out of Washington, moving partly on the back of economic data, and of course moving partly on the back of what we talked about on Friday, which was that recheck of valuations, the dip buyers coming in trying to boost tech stocks that trade fading a little bit here on this Monday morning in video leading the charge down down about five
percent here on the day. But when take a look at the rest of the MAC seven a bit of a mixed bag. You are seeing people come back in the Tesla. You did see a bid earlier in the day into Meta. A lot of people taking a look at that big drop in valuations that we would see over the past few days and weeks, a MAG seven as a whole, Jackie still in correction territory. Maybe that provides a dip buying moment for some investors, but for others, maybe it's just stay on the sidelines.
Lexis Ohanian, the co founder of Reddit, could get involved with another social media platform. Ohanian is joining billionaire Frank McCourt's bid to buy TikTok's US operations as a strategic advisor. That's according to reports from Reuters. Now TikTok's parent company byte Edance is experiencing a reversal of fortunes. That's despite facing a possible ban of TikTok in the US, the Chinese social media company is now valued at more than
four hundred billion dollars. Three major investors marked up the company's value For more on this. Mitchell Green, founder and managing partner of Lead Edge Capital joins us. Now you're an investor in byte Dance, help us understand what this four hundred billion dollar investment really means. Is this coming from byte Dance as other ventures or is this just really a TikTok story?
Jackie, thanks so much for me. I appreciate it is.
I think it's say the value the valuations that people are holding these companies at. And remember, unlike people, you know, the general public, the people valuing these companies have access to the company financials and I'm not going to sit and talk about the financials about private company on TV. However, the the fundamentals, you know, fundamentals of the business that are extremely strong, and I think this is actually more of a Chinese story supporting the fundamentals than a in
a US TikTok story. You know, you know, look at our in our model, we actually zero out the US business and make it worth nothing. And we've done that over the last year or so because there's so much uncertainty with what's going on. Well, well, as you can make work very well value in the business in the US and.
Zero Well, that's what I'm curious about here, Mitchell, because when we talk about this idea is particularly this run up we've seen in a lot of the other stocks in China on this idea that there is not just homegrown in terms of the supply of what's going on to this market, but the idea that the demand itself will also be homegrown. In your model, you think that's enough to justify the run up that we've seen in some of these names.
Chinese business is gigantic.
Keep in mind these valuations you're seeing are as of twelve thirty one. A lot of the Chinese run up is coming in the last month six weeks, and so I actually sust so public comparables. You know, if you were looking at ten Center or Ali Baba, which are probably the two best comps, those stocks have actually dined very well over the last forty five days, and so that wouldn't actually that run upn't even been factored into that four hundred billion dollars in BRYCE.
Talk to us about where this leaves Byte Dance in this broader array of tech companies that are trying to notch a lead in generative AI. Where does this leave Byte Dance And could twenty twenty five be the year that China really makes a dent compared to some of the AI giants we've seen as of late out of Silicon Valley.
I wouldn't bet against China.
They were some of the foremost innovators around e commerce. So if you look at companies like Ali Baba or pdd Pindoto or ten Cent in the gaming space, some of the best innovations around e commerce have come out of China. I would if you read a lot of government Chinese policy around what they're trying to do around whether it's chips, semiconductors, you know, netwar Earth, I would expect that they're going to make a serious play an AI, whether deep is that is that one or is it
some other one. I think Deep Seek does show though that A deep Seat does show that there will be a lot of innovation not only by Chinese companies, but American companies as well, around around AI and the software and using software to make AIM much more powerful and cheaper.
And I still.
Believe AI today is massively hyped and will.
Under deliver in the near term, but over.
The next ten twenty years it will massively like you know, over delivered what people think. You know, people always overestimate the near term and underestimate the long term when it comes to technological change.
I think you're going to see the same thing here.
And you know, I joke in nineteen ninety seven you can build a it can cost you fifty million dollars from some microsystems to build a website. You can build the same website today you and I for ten dollars with that credit card.
The same thing is going to happen with AI.
And so I think we are in the really early ings, and I would expect to see Chinese companies, you know, really, you know, drive to the trying to drive to the forefront of that, just as American companies are going to as well.
Mitchell.
Obviously, here in Washington, we're seeing President Trump ratchet up those tensions with Beijing via tariffs. Chip exports are also part of the uncertainty there. How will the US potentially kneecap China's ability.
To gain ground?
TikTok has been an interesting political story as well.
How are you thinking about the political risks around the company?
And you said you're zeroing it out in your model, but do you think at all that that TikTok story is going to weigh on the byte edance prospects going forward.
I am not a political strategist. I assure you, if you're asking me about what to do.
For political strategy, you should probably do the opposite of anything that I would say. Again, we value the US business at nothing because of so much uncertain What I will say is, if you were to go back and look what happened on the on the weekend that they shut it down, they clearly shut it down. The Chinese dad they were going to be, you know, they were going to be an infringement with a bunch of like you know, service providers who then take legal risks, so
they need to shut it down. Both sides of the aisle in Washington came running to try to keep it open.
So you appear, if you look at from the outside, that.
Both parties in Washington want to keep this app around for I don't know, probably a host of reasons, and so.
I think we just have to watch and see what happens.
But I don't have any Frankly, the fact that you're in Washington and a journalist, you probably have more, you know, more opinions and insight into the political strategy of Washington.
But your your opinion, though is an investor matters in this as well, even if you don't necessarily know all the ins and outs of Washington, Because I I'm curious, Mitchell, about just this idea of the whatever economic or financial relationship the US and China will have in a formal capacity, and if that is a thing of the past to the point where you have to start looking at Chinese businesses in the US is basically being worth nothing, and maybe the flip side of that for US businesses in China.
I mean, when do you get to the point where you feel comfortable in making that call, Well.
We invested in a Chinese company right over the last year, as you bought hit Dan stock, and so we just don't need the math to work given how well the business is doing in China. That being said, I suspect this is all going to get tied up, whether it's tariffs TikTok. I'm sure this is all on the table and that the relevant parties are negotiated and it's all in a bucket, and a lot of this is intertwined again, and I have no unique insight that.
All I know is that I can buy what I was buying when we were buying by Dance.
We did not need to put any value in the US business because of how cheap we were able to buy the overall business related to it. And that's more just about I just don't know if the app's going to stay on or not. Now, what happened six weeks ago would lead me to believe more that some sort of deal will happen.
What that deal looks like is Your guess is as good as mine.
I suspect there will be if some deal does happen. I think one thing that people don't remember here is that sixty roughly sixty ish percent of the company is owned by you know, non Chinese investors, and forty percent is owned by Chinese people. So just some sort of deal spin it out and that forty percent becomes slightly less. Your guess is fine, I would expect if some sort of happens, Yeah, then it will be large US strategics,
better investors. Yeah, the likes of Microsoft, Amazons Oracles versus an individual investor group just given untum of dollars we're talking here, all right, great value, all.
Right, Mitchell, we have to live it there, Mitchell Green, managing partner, Ford Lead Edge Capital. All Right, coming up here, we're going to continue our focus on tech and with a specific focus on AI and that HP deal that we learned about just last week about them buying the AI startups Humane. It's raising a lot of questions about whether the two companies are a good fit. That conversation up next right here on Bloomberg Technology.
One of the key strategies of the company is really about integrating AI into all of our products so customers can experience AID and Humane has key technologies that will allow us to accelerate that development.
The CEO of HP Inc.
They're talking about his company's deal to acquire AI startup Humane, how it's a way for the company to help develop its own AI ambitions. That was the promise, at least for now, though it seems more like it troubleshooting, which has some wondering if HP really is a good fit for the surviving employees of Humane. That's the topic of today's Tech in Depth newsletter, and Bloomberg's and your Tech editor Dana Wollman joins us right now to talk a little bit more about that. This was kind of a
curious acquisition. We all kind of remember Humane. There's that little aipin a lot of hype around it, the reviews of it weren't so much. HP managed to pick this thing up for what one hundred million dollars?
What exactly are they going to do with this?
So HP has said that it wants to incorporate AI into more of its products and specifically have that AI process locally instead of the cloud, and has cited benefits ranging from the cost to the security benefits and just
the general efficiency. And so you're going to I imagine see AI working in the background on products that include computers, even printers, And there is some precedent for this in the industry, just that AI is already used in other consumer products to fine tune things that we might consider boring and maybe not so glamorous. Think TV settings settings on your TV that you wouldn't normally want to dig into or fiddle with.
Yeah, it's impossible. I don't know how Jackie feels about that.
Dana, Well, this is an interesting newsletter because it really highlights just the incredible tech talent former Apple employees that are now at HUMANE and could potentially bring some new hardware into the AI space that perhaps you know, obviously didn't work out in the Humane context, but talk to us about what this reveals about how HP plans to really take on hardware ambitions going forward.
So there are no indications that HP wants to build any AI specific hardware.
The way Humane was dreaming of its.
Looking to work AI into some of its existing kinds of products, and even before this acquisition, Humane had pivoted to developing an AI software platform, kind of what I would describe as the equivalent of a smart home platform, except here we're not talking about the smart home or consumer products. We're talking about a mix of both consumer
and enterprise products. But really the underpinning software meant to power all of these products, and as remain hinted at at the in the intro, it is sort of an odd coupling. HP is known for taking a very conservative approach to its products, and Humane bless them. If anything was ambitious and had some delightfully weird ideas, they clearly didn't work out, But you cannot call Humane conservative.
Certainly.
That's Bloomberg Staane A.
Wolman things. So much for joining us.
You can subscribe to Bloomberg's Tech in Depth newsletter from our analysis and scoop about the business of technology from Bloomberg journalists around the world. But as we get into the potential impacts of tariffs on the tech sector and fintech sector with Bruce Vaughan van Son of Citizens Financial CEO. Bruce, we were just talking about humane that's coming out of HP. You know, they're a hardware manufacturer, and right now a huge question is just what impact tariffs are going to
have on those that have this kind of exposure. You're at the technology conference right now in San Francisco.
What vibe are you getting.
About potential concerns and uncertainty this leaves for tech?
Yeah, I would say that there's a lot of optimism broadly emanating from the conference, and so we see some great innovation and companies making great strides, and I would say the tariff issue is out there, but it's not top of mind. So there's been a think a big backlog in terms of VC owners getting capital back to
their investors. And so we're all waiting for the IPO calendar to finally break through and that logjam to break, and hopefully we'll see deals start to pick up as the year goes by, may be led by a couple big ones in the middle of the year.
How confident are you in that, Bruce. I mean, we came into this year with a lot of optimism that market conditions would be favorable for a lot of these private companies to finally reach the public market. Obviously, a lot has gone on in the last few weeks that have maybe change that thesis, if you will. What gives you the confidence that by the time we get over the next few months, conditions will be ripe for that.
Yeah, I'd say more broadly than just the tech sector, but the rollout of the new Trump administration policies is causing a fair amount of uncertainty, particularly around the tariffs, but there's also some real positives to come, particularly around regulatory policy implementation, around tax and fiscal policy implementation once
legislation is passed. So I think this uncertainty will start to lift as we go through the year, and then that kind of natural dynamic around needing liquidity and the deal calendar picking up will start to manifest itself as we get to the middle of the year and then continue to pick up through the second half of the year.
Bruce, let's talk about one of those potential tailwinds coming out of the regulatory space. The CFPB being gutted by Elon Musk's DOGE could be a boon for the fintech sector. We heard from the Klarna CEO just last month that he was optimistic this could lead to some positives.
For the field. What are you seeing?
How could we see this play out, more startups coming back in expansion.
I think it's still early days to see exactly what it means. Certainly, the CFPB was a very strong regulator and probably more tilted to consumers and focused on kind of controlling what took place in both the banking sector and near banking sector. So I think having a change there and new leadership there will naturally be positive for
banks and for fintech sector. But it's still early days, and I think one of the things that we are focused on is what happens to the supervisory responsibilities on the consumer that still remain with the agencies. We've been doubled up between the CPPB and the agencies in terms of supervision, and so that needs to be rationalized. So a lot to play out on that front. But yes, I think FinTechs are kind of looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
All right, Bruce got to leave it there far too short. Up a conversation Bruce Benson citizens financial CEO and share them in there. All right, Well, Hollywood just held its annual Oscars Awards, and if you tried to tune in through the streaming platform Hulu, well you might have had some trouble. Hulu turning out to be the biggest loser of the night, as the streaming service experience technical glitches at the start and throughout, crashes and locked out customers.
Bloomberg's Lucashaw joins us right now to talk a little bit more about what exactly happened. And this is in the first time, and we've had big events that were put on streaming that for whatever reason, the streaming services just couldn't handle. Was it just too many people trying to get on at the same time.
Look, this is the reason that when you're talking about sporting events or live events, they end up going with broadcasters because they are reliable, they know they're going to work. There seemed to be a couple of different issues with Hulu. There was some crashing, but then also the program sort of ended early. Sometimes when you have things that run long on streaming services, they sort of like default ending.
I didn't have it happened to me last night because I was watching on YouTube TV, but I have had it happen to me. I think with an event on Netflix before and look, streaming is just you know, as silly or basic as it sounds. Live events are a new frontier for streaming and there are going to be kinks to be worked out for the next few years. Remember this is the first time that Hulu had ever shown the Oscars. It seems crazy to think that they should have been doing it with the last few years.
But Disney has a couple of years ahead of it to try to work out the kinks.
So what comes next?
So I mean we talk about I mean Disney, I think has this contract through twenty twenty eight to continue airing the Academy Awards, and with the idea that I would assume whatever new contract is struck is probably going to be much more streaming focus. So is that enough time to sort of work out the kinks?
Yeah, I think it's plenty of time to work it out. I mean, you look at you know, Netflix, even from Mike Tyson, Jake Paul to NFL Christmas Day, not to say that they've compared figured out what they're doing, but they didn't have the same problems. I think most of these companies, it only takes you a year or two. We don't have constant problems with this. You know, Peacock NFL playoff game didn't have huge problems.
There may always.
Be some issues if there are just too many people trying to watch. But yeah, Disney has the rights through twenty eight I still think they're the favorite to keep it. But the Academy is definitely exploring its options in the next few months, and maybe this will make them want to go with a more reliable streaming partner.
Yeah.
Well, for what it's worth, Lucas, for those of us who did watch it on a regular platforms here, it was actually entertaining. I mean, Conan had some nice singers there, and I think some of the winners and losers were a surprise, so a lot of folks. I'm still upset Demi Moore didn't finally get her flowers, Lucas Gott I have to leave it there, Lucas Shaw, who covers all things Hollywood for us out there on the West Coast here at Bloomberg.
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