Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast. with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Tech helps stocks close in on record highs with Mag7 earnings imminent. Plus Bridget Mendler northward. It raises $100 million to modernize space infrastructure on Earth. And Amazon shuttering its physical stores but doubling down on deliveries. Walmart, Uber and DoorDash all drop. Let's check out more broad moves on the market right now.
And because we have a wall of, call it worry, whether you're thinking about what the Mag7 is going to report, whether you're thinking about the federal rate decision on Wednesday, a lot for the market to digest. But still, we've pushed to near record highs in the S&P 500. We have up nine tenths percent on the Nasdaq 100. And I know you're checking on individual movers.
They've been helping some moves in the benchmark. Yeah, an interesting deal, up to $6 billion partnership between Meta and Corning for fiber optic cabling to support Meta's data center efforts over a number of years. You know Corning, right? It's a key optics supplier to Apple, for example. But look at that stock, absolutely flying up more than 17%.
There's a lot going on as well in the semiconductor space. Micron is long-term trying to triage the shortage of supply, investing a lot of money, up to $24 billion over years in Singapore. That's focused on NAND. And then overnight in Korea, SK Hynix, the biggest move is the upside.
Basically, there's dip buying, there's retail investors coming in, and there's a lot of focus what's happening in the context of a US-Korea trade agreement where there might be exemptions. Let's get to all of that. Bloomberg Senior Tech Editor, Mike Sheppard. joins us now. Let's start with the Micron piece, right?
The story is well told, if I say so myself, on this program about the memory shortage and memory pricing situation. But Micron here is looking at where it can expand supply. It's looking at Singapore. What do we need to know?
Well, it's looking at Singapore, Ed, and this is over a 10-year period, a $24 billion investment there.
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Chapter 2: What factors are driving tech stocks toward record highs?
And what they're looking at specifically is so-called NAND memory. And this is something that is in demand to meet the needs of artificial intelligence chips and processors more broadly. And it's an area of focus because for AI, the memory needs are enormous and they are not fully being met. Of course, Micron competes with Samsung and SK Hynix in this memory market.
And all three companies have warned of increasingly tight supplies. And the supply issue also has spillover effects that it actually touches on smartphone makers and PC makers, too, because as those companies that we just mentioned,
shift their efforts to meet the needs of the AI data centers, the areas for PCs and smartphones risk going wanting in the SSD-type memory and flash memory that is needed for those kinds of devices. So we're seeing that expansion by Micron. This just comes at less than two weeks after Micron cut the ribbon on a $100 billion plant in upstate New York, one that's been a couple of years in coming.
So we are watching to see how much more these companies are going to be investing, not only in Asia, but also in the U.S. as well.
And how much more their shares can fly. Just think, SK Hynix at a new record high, even as we see the threat of, well, broader tariffs on South Korea. We know the chip makers are excluded, but SK Hynix at a record because it's going to be benefiting from Microsoft's push into AI chips as well, Mike.
Well, that's right. And I'm glad you brought that up, Carol, because we saw the news yesterday. We all followed it so closely on this plan by Microsoft to introduce a new generation of its Maya AI chip, the Maya 200. And a local business paper in South Korea, the Meili Business Newspaper, is reporting that as many as six SK Hynix HBM3E units were will go into each Maya processor.
We don't know how many of these Maya 200 processors Microsoft will ultimately have produced for its needs, for its data centers, and for other customers as well. But the promise is big, and it signals that there could be a lot of demand for this HBM3E processor that SK Hynix has developed to meet those AI memory needs, and it could be something else. Now, you mentioned
the threat of additional tariffs. The president yesterday warned that the South Korea trade deal could be reworked to jack up the tariff rate on South Korean imports to 25%. For now, we're not seeing anything affecting memory, but we'll be watching that closely because there is a lot of pressure from the administration for more investment by South Korean companies here in the U.S.
Mike Sheppard, breaking it down so well as always. We thank you. Let's return to U.S. stocks right now, because as you said, they're near record highs. Tech shares have been leading the way again. This is as we brace for earnings season. It comes thick and fast this week. Let's discuss it all with Christina Hooper, Chief Market Strategist at Man Group. And we still have tariff anxiety.
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Chapter 3: How is Micron addressing the memory shortage in the semiconductor market?
Like, they're not saying we're done with grocery. They're just saying we're moving it online. And that's reflected in that market reaction. I always quite like those Payless stores, though. Got to say. Rest in peace. Coming up, autonomous trucking startup Gattic inks a new deal. We'll discuss the self-driving company's growth with its CEO. That's next with the Bloomberg Tech.
Autonomous trucking company Gatik has landed a deal with a major consumer goods company. Gatik's not named the customer yet, but says the deal will double its contracted revenue to $600 million over the next five years. Joining us is Gatik CEO and co-founder Gautam Narang. I'm going to offer you the opportunity to name the customer. I know that you're not going to.
I've pushed you over a number of days. But I think the main thing our audience wants to get a sense of is this is real. You have trucks on roads with major customers that are paying you and therefore you're booking revenues on it. Take it from there and explain the reality.
For sure. So as you know, Gatik is in the business of autonomous freight. And today we are announcing that we are operating fully driverless, freight-only trucks with no safety driver, no safety observer across real freight operations, multiple markets today.
It is small though, like 10 trucks right now.
10 trucks today.
But by year end?
Over hundreds of trucks. But very soon in the coming weeks, we'll have over 60 trucks fully driverless on public roads doing daily commercial operations at scale.
Talk to us how legislatively this has worked, regulatory this has worked. How have you managed to make this a reality? Well, yes, we see real impact from Waymo in cars, but in certain states and certain areas. Where are you working?
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Chapter 4: What impact does Amazon's closure of physical stores have on the retail landscape?
Bloomberg's semiconductor reporter Ian King has written a pretty wonderful piece. I mean, Jensen Huang has been at the helm of Nvidia for more than three decades. He is the longest serving Silicon Valley CEO. There is no suggestion that he wants to pack it in. But what you're writing about is, nor is there any evidence that NVIDIA has really done anything in succession either.
Yeah, I mean, with a company that's become as important as it has to a whole industry and arguably the stock market and the economy as well, you usually like to have a better idea of who the people at the top are. And even people like myself who've been looking at this company for a very long time, it's him, right? The whole company is built around him and that's all there is to it.
Ian, what's really interesting is you interview people who talk about how flat the organization is and ultimately how difficult it would be to run by anyone else than Jensen Wang. Can you talk us through who the other, well, key presidents are, but perhaps are not in line to take the throne?
Yeah, I mean, you know, the way to do this is to think about things through Jensen's eyes because he's explicit about this. He created an organization where he wants to know, where he believes the CEO needs to know what's going on.
And the way to do that is to have less of the traditional corporate structure and just a large group, 40, 50, 60, depends on the day as to the number he gives you, of people who directly report to him. They have responsibilities, but...
We've spoken to Jensen quite a lot in the last few years. There are other people though, like Colette Crest, the CFO, is a highly capable person. But as you write in Silicon Valley in Tech, you don't usually hire the CEO from the finance department.
Correct. I mean, you know, Colette has a good reputation on Wall Street. She was brought in and she's obviously presided over the company when it's been enormously successful. But this is a very technical job. And it's also a very dynamic job. He's on the one hand a science leader and he's on the other hand an advocate and driving the whole industry forward.
and spends a lot of time on planes, it feels like, at the age of 63. Bloomberg's Ian King, thank you very much. I urge our viewers to go read that deep dive. It's a great piece. NVIDIA's lack-clear successor for superstar CEO. That does it, though, for this edition of Bloomberg TechEd.
Yeah, there's a lot happening in public markets and in private markets, but we are bracing for big tech earnings in earnest. Check out the pod. So much to recap. You know where to find it on iHeart, Spotify, Apple, and of course on all the Bloomberg platforms as well. Two days into an astonishingly busy week in the world of technology. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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