AI’s Global Capital Race Accelerates | Bloomberg Tech

0:02 Bloomberg audio studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart of Silicon Valley with Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.

0:22 This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, all eyes on Nvidia reporting earnings this week and markets are mixed as Bloomberg reports Nvidia customers have been notified about price hikes, hikes. Plus SoftBank plans a record $6.3 billion retail bond sale, the biggest by any issuer in Japan to raise funds for its investment commitments to open air. And Alibaba's raised $10.2 billion in what was Hong Kong's biggest follow on offering to take the lead in the global air race.

0:51 Let's get right to our top story. Bloomberg reporting over the weekend that Nvidia based AI servers are about to get more expensive. Server makers are telling data center customers that prices are going up more than 15% cases according to sources who have seen those communications. The reason? Soaring memory costs. Sources say the increases hit systems containing Nvidia's Blackwell and Next Generation Vera Rubin platforms. Hikes expected on shipments starting in early 2027. How are markets reacting?

1:21 Very simply, infrastructure stocks are falling in video is down significantly, a seventh straight drop, its longest losing streak since September 2022. Nvidia earnings Wednesday Bloomberg's Carmen Reineke with markets and common what is driving investor sentiment towards this space right now?

1:40 Yeah, so we're seeing a lot of selling pressure here and there's just so much caution I think baked into this space. We've seen so much volatility in the trade overall and Nvidia is the kingmaker here. Right. So a seventh losing day. That's the longest streak, as you said, since 2022. Heading into earnings on Wednesday. People are worried here about peak earnings. Memory costs are high. Nvidia's looking like it's not absorbing those, is passing them on to customers.

2:06 There are big question sort of outstanding about all of the financing that it's put into the market lately and investors really just want to hear more about what the future is of the artificial intelligence trade there. I think more and more concerns coming online that you know, this could be the peak.

2:24 Our markets team leads its wrap with this idea that prices going up for Nvidia based servers is something in the market. Wednesday is the mega event, right? The macro level event that is one company's quarterly earnings. How are markets kind of preparing for for that?

2:40 I mean it's such a huge deal, right? So in video is still the largest stock in the S&P 500. In the NASDAQ it's the largest stock in the market, it commands a major amount of weight and how it moves can move the entire market. The thing that's really interesting here is that earnings have not been a positive catalyst for Nvidia stock for quite some time. So I think it's the last four out of five earnings reports.

3:01 The shares have actually fallen after results even though they've been strong. What investors are really looking at is the sentiment around this report. You know what CEO Jensen Huang says about out the market going forward. If they're seeing demand financing, questions are going to come in. I'm sure there will be questions around these price hikes as well. So a lot of that sentiment. It's really what is the next wave of the artificial intelligence trend. That's what's going to be most important for investors coming up.

3:28 And you know, it's going to affect other parts of the infrastructure trade as well. You know, we're seeing the memory stocks falling today as well. Those are the biggest laggards on the S and P and the nasdaq. That's really important.

3:40 The most common. Reineke with a preview of everything's come this week. That is Nvidia. Thank you very much. Let's get more on the report then. Video systems could see a price hike of 15%. Simon Leopold, managing director of Data Infrastructure at Raymond James, joins us now. This reporting is Based on the OEMs, the server makers going to customers and saying this is what we see happening in the new year. 15% hike, in some cases on, on Blackwell and Rubin Systems.

4:07 Just to start. Your reaction to that?

4:10 Yeah, I'm not surprised by it.

4:13 It's.

4:13 It's been very clear that the cost of memory has been increasing. We have observed and heard the large hyperscale operators forecasting higher capital spending budgets. And the biggest driver for that has been the cost of memory. So there really should be very little surprise. As a matter of fact, given the percentage increase in the cost of memory and the amount of memory required in these AI platforms, 15% really doesn't seem all that demanding when we consider the amount of spending.

4:47 Each Blackwell and Rubin GPU has eight corresponding HBM stacks, which in turn are 12 layers of DRAM. 15%. Could you see that going higher, Simon, with that in mind?

4:59 Well, I think it's possible. The challenge is, is we don't know what Nvidia built into the prior pricing. So there's a lot we don't know at this point. Recall that the Jensen Huang has said repeatedly that they predicted that the amount of memory they need two years ago. So they've been working on locking in supply, they've formed these long term agreements with the multiple suppliers of memory. So there's a significant amount of detail we simply don't know.

5:31 The other factor you have to consider here is the published prices may go up by 15%, but that doesn't mean contracted prices are reflecting that same amount.

5:42 What remains is that demand is running ahead of industry's ability to supply. Right. And I think back to Your note on August 11, that was in response to the deal Nvidia did with those six Wall street firms to be conduits to third party capital. Inevitably, gentleman is going to get questions on circular financing. Right. Just your current thinking about. Inevitably your current thinking of the underpinnings of what's paying for all of this.

6:09 Yeah, I have to be clear on this point because this is among the bigger concerns for investors is this concept of circular financing or vendor financing. And so the consortium that was announced with groups like Black, Blackstone, blackrock, Apollo, kkr, it shifts the risk, it shifts it off of Nvidia's balance sheet elsewhere. And that is most appropriate. But to be clear, I don't love circular financing.

6:40 But let's look through this in the eyes of Nvidia. Nvidia is generating roughly $1 billion of free cash flow every two days. They have a responsibility to put the cash on their balance sheet to work. And if they're big believers in AI like we are, and I'm sure they are, why not invest in the opportunities? So sort of the classic eating your own dog food. I think the optics of circular financing that is putting money into your customers to buy your product, it's not a great look, I totally get that.

7:17 But Nvidia has to put its cash to work. I think what would soften the blow for investors and make the investment community feel better is to see in video being more aggressive in buying back its own stock.

7:33 And you expect them to do that?

7:36 I do.

7:38 I want to talk about the distinction between depreciation and the economic lifetime of a gpu. Because right now what I see is lots of Nvidia executives posting on social media about Vera Rubin being in full production at the same time. Like that KKR BlackRock deal. They're trying to sell that this is a highly utilized cash flow generating asset for many years to come on older obsolete generations. How can both of those things be true at the same time?

8:09 I think they can be true because of the way the market evolves, that the most leading edge applications, the most demanding will require the newest generation of accelerator. And in order to be efficient, in order to have the best profitability, one wants to utilize the most leading edge tool because it will be more efficient, basically fewer tokens pulled. However, we've seen that the older generations, the amperes, the hoppers are still being used.

8:39 And so what we're observing is the market's broadening in that the most leading edge applications, the most demanding applications will require the newest generation. But the older GPUs, the older accelerators have useful lives that could extend many years.

8:58 Some of many of your industry colleagues, including our team at Bloomberg Intelligence, except expect to hear something about China. Does it matter to you if Nvidia can sell some kind of GPU into the Chinese market?

9:10 Honestly, not really because even if there is incremental sales into China, I think we'll look through it and it's the idea that, well, next quarter they could be shut down and cut off. So it's not a predictable stream of revenue. So I think it will be discounted. It's not a bad thing. But because of the unpredictability of ongoing China business, it will be discounted by analysts.

9:37 Really enjoyed this conversation. To start the week, Simon Leopold, managing director at Raymond James, thank you very much indeed. I want to take a look at shares of Paramount, Skydance and Warner Brothers Discovery after Rob Bonta, California's attorney general, called off a meeting with Paramount that was scheduled to happen today. The New York Times reporting the AG accused Paramount of leaking details of a meeting the parties held on Friday. Today's meeting was meant to discuss a settlement of the state's lawsuit seeking to block the merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery.

10:09 There was more movement in the stocks in premarket, kind of more muted and faded in the actual session. Alibaba raises $0 billion in a record Hong Kong share sale. Coming up, we'll have the details of that raise and what it says about China's efforts. That's next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Let's take a look at Today's big number.

10:40 $10.2 billion. That's how much Alibaba's raised in what was Hong Kong's biggest follow on offering. The e commerce giant turned AI player is looking to outsource, spend and outrun Chinese rivals. The shares, which were priced at roughly a 3 1/2% discount to Friday's close on the US listed shares, attracted institutional demand of almost three times the offering. According to sources. The company's shares closed down in Hong Kong, roughly 8.5%. Let's get more on what the race says about the global race.

11:09 Bloomberg's tech editor in D.C. mike Shepherd a follow on just being going to the markets for an already publicly traded company. But Alibaba needs capital. What they want to do with it?

11:19 Well, they need capital just like all the other big companies around the world. And Alibaba, and it's interesting compared to its Chinese competitors, has been willing to spend. They have pledged to put $50, $56.5 billion over the next three years toward the infrastructure that it will need and then includes chips, that includes data centers, and then it's includes other material that would be needed to keep their models running. And it has been paying off for them.

11:48 And when you look at the most recent rankings that were released about 10 days ago by Hugging Face, Alibaba's were at the top. They have more than 3 billion downloads globally and that put them far ahead of their Chinese competitors that we've been talking about Deep Seek and Moonshot, but also against their US rivals. That includes Matter and Google. So they are trying to look lay the groundwork for them to be able to compete globally but also in the internal market there.

12:16 It's not as big as what some of the US let's say hyperscalers are committed to. But we were talking on this program about Alibaba probably being most analogous with Amazon. You know it has E commerce roots and now a massive cloud computing division where it has the mainstay of its AI activity. Just describe the company to us.

12:34 Well, they really are diversified and when we were talking about Alibaba just a few years ago, we were really thinking of it as that online retail powerhouse. But just like Amazon and we heard Andy Jassy talk about their push into chips even they are trying to spread their wings and spread into a lot of other areas and that includes cloud computing. And they have also backed some of these companies that we're also seeing as AI developers.

12:59 Minimax and Moonshot have also gotten an injection of support from Alibaba as well as a way of trying to diversify their holdings and their resources. So they are really in a lot of ways looking at AI as the next frontier and also something that they can integrate into other platforms. If you think about AI and the way that Amazon is trying to integrate it for its users, for its consumers, it's really an essential and it is also something that it can sell then as a cloud computing platform to other customers.

13:31 To shep As a quick sidebar to the main Alibaba story, we saw leadership management participate in the offering, buy shares. What do we need to know?

13:41 Well, I thought that was so interesting too. We looked at the shares dropping in trading earlier today in Hong Kong. It might have raised some questions, well, what does that mean about appetite overall? But they are putting skin in the game and that is chairman and one of the co founders, Josiah. He bought the US equivalent of $10 million of shares and Eddie Wu, the CEO of Alibaba, bought about $5 million of shares. So they are really putting their own skin in the game and they are trying to make sure that they are giving their own personal sign of support to this offering to signal to other investors that they're in it too.

14:20 Bloomberg's Mike Shepard, thank you very much. Let's stick. In Asia, SoftBank is planning the biggest retail bond sale by an issuer in Japan. It's seeking to raise a record 1 trillion yen, or about 6.3 billion USD, in part to fund its investment commitments to OpenAI. Sharon Change from Blue from Bloomberg Intelligence out with a react that says the sale will test retail investor interest amid concerns over both SoftBank's growing spending, but it's expensive exposure to OpenAI as well.

14:48 Sharon Chen from BI joins us now. I want to start with the basics on Japanese retail bond market. Why this is a significant story. SoftBank using that mechanism and testing that market.

15:01 Yep. Hi. Thanks for having me. So I mean as you just pointed out, it's the record bond deal for this market and SoftBank, what's interesting is that the company actually has very good access to the retail bond market. It is the leading issuer in this market and it has strong brand recognition and also offers higher yields. So to as evidence of that, you know, earlier in the year it's already tapped the market twice and raised the equivalent of about $4 billion in hybrid notes.

15:35 So and the other thing is it is actually offering lower cost funding for SoftBank. So if you swap it back into US dollar, it's still significantly cheaper than if the company had to issue US dollar bonds.

15:48 So for SoftBank, the cost of capital is like a big factor. But like what are the other motivations for them to do this? And I guess for the tech and credit desk that you're on, do we see them coming back to this market?

16:00 Yep. So this brings me to the company's funding shortfall. So we calculate that it probably still needs another at least $20 billion even after this bond deal and after it raised about $10 billion from an open air backed margin loan. So that's quite a sizable amount and a lot of that? Well, it's mainly coming from a $40 billion bridge loan that matures in March and that was raised mainly to fund the commitment to OpenAI. So yes, we do expect further fundraising from the company.

16:34 This could come in the form of the US dollar euro bond market, issuance, dividends. But also the company has, you know, a large portfolio of tech stocks, the largest being aam. So I think it can leverage that portfolio. So for example, upsizing an ARM bank margin loan or selling down some of its minority stakes in companies such as Intel.

16:57 Is there investor demand to support SoftBank?

17:02 It depends which market you're talking about. I mentioned the retail yen bond market and how it has to proven its ability to access that market. Now in the offshore bond market, actually its bonds are trading quite wide and I think it faces quite weak technical support because it is the second largest offshore bond issuer from Japan excluding the banks. So you know, being a high yield company, that is quite a large amount of debt outstanding and I think supply risk is also a concern for investors.

17:35 Sharon Chen from Bloomberg Intelligence staying up late for us in Singapore. Super grateful, thank you very much. Want to get over to New York where Bloomberg's IRA and is standing by with many more tech stories out of Asia. Hi.

17:46 You hire Exactly, Ed. That's the focus in talking tech. First up, ByteDance is challenging AI rivals like Tencent by consolidating the resources behind two of its AI developer products to bolster China's most popular chat. Bottom Sources say the team behind the coding platform tray and agent building tool Cozy are being merged into Daobao. Plus, fast fashion giant Sheehan is seeking to raise as much as $1.8 billion in its long awaited Hong Kong IPO. The retailer is offering 280 million shares, 4,950 Hong Kong dollars each, giving the firm a market cap of just under $27 billion.

18:26 It's a sharp drop from its peak value. And Tesla and at least eight other automakers in China are recalling millions of cars over safety concerns regarding door handles which have led to multiple fatalities and vehicle entrapment. Four million cars are a part of this crackdown, with Tesla accounting for nearly 3 million of those. Ed?

18:51 Okay, thank you, Hira. The Trump administration is proposing adding a new fee for H1B workers hired within the US disrupting hiring plans for many employers. The fee of a little over $100,000 would apply to all petitions for H1B workers subject to an annual statutory cap, including those with master's degrees, and would generate $8.8 billion annually, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Now coming up, Apple's cutting jobs to focus on new devices and artificial intelligence.

19:22 Got the details? Next, this is Bloomberg Tech. Apple's cutting jobs across teams responsible for the Siri digital assistant and the Vision Pro headset. All this part of an effort to focus on new devices and on artificial intelligence. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who leads our coverage of Apple Apple broke this story Friday, but I want to recap it. This is just reprioritizing, right? Mark, what are the details of the report you put out?

19:55 Yeah, so Apple's cutting jobs in three central areas. One team is the Vision Pro team, so the group called VPG responsible for the headset. The second is Siri. In the third is a team called Intelligent Systems Experiences, which really comes down to integrating AI for features through the operating system and services. So let me start with the Vision Pro. This is more of your traditional layoff where they're cutting teams and scaling back things in this particular area.

20:23 So they had a team working on gaming initiatives for the Vision Pro. That team has been completely dismantled and laid off. The second is their Immersive video Group. This is the team making virtual reality videos for the Vision Pro, one of the top selling points. They're scaling that back. They're cutting jobs there, they're cutting investments there, and they are going to drastically reduce the number of videos they produce in house for the Vision Pro, instead pushing that off to third parties for Siri and the Intelligent Systems Experience Team, that's part of the software engineering organization, they're cutting jobs there as well to open up roles for people who can work on the new underlying infrastructure for Siri AI.

21:04 So looking to develop faster, looking to bring in talent that is more specific towards that new infrastructure for that new voice assistant and their upgraded Apple Intelligence, which launches this fall for the first time.

21:17 I also really enjoyed this weekend's Power on what you were writing about is the idea of Apple's foldable phone and how this product could bring some magic back to the Apple story. You've been pulling on your experience with Samsung's Foldable. You've been thinking about what, you know, the details of the Apple foldable. What can you tell us?

21:37 Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty pumped for the foldable phone. I think it's going to do particularly well for Apple in China as a status symbol. You know, the amount of people who use foldable phones globally is not high. It's about 1 1/2% of the global phone market. Is foldable phones, but it's actually double that in China, Right? So the vast majority of foldable phones in use in the world are in China. So that's going to be pretty successful for Apple there, I believe.

22:02 But I'm really into the size of it. I'm really into how you have this small thing that can fit in your pocket and you open it up and it's about the size of an iPad mini. So all in all, pretty pumped for this new device and looking forward to getting my hands on it in just a few weeks.

22:17 Every Sunday, Mark publishes Power on. I really recommend you subscribe and read it packed up full of detail. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, thank you very much indeed. Now coming up is Nvidia reports earnings this week. It's also facing pressure from new competitors with some of the details in the chip race coming up next. Again, the stock under pressure, down for a seventh straight session, worst run of decline since 2022. This is what markets look like broadly. Nasdaq's down.

22:41 It is chip stocks that are leading us lower. Bitcoin at almost $80,000 a token. We've got more on that soon halftime. This is Bloomberg Tech. Okay, welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Markets are treading water a little bit, but we're seeing some severe declines in the chip makers that are leading us lower overall. There was that Bloomberg report over the weekend that some of the server makers have told Nvidia customers to expect price hikes banks into the new year.

23:16 We also have some breaking news that I believe is crossing the Bloomberg terminal. The US is set to impose a 7.5% tariff on Chinese goods over allegations of excess manufacturing capacity. That's before a planned summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump next month. According to sources, the move would restore Trump's second term duties on China to around 20%, a level Beijing's previously said is consistent with its trade truce with Washington. Those come on top of other levies imposed during Trump's first term and then extended during the Biden administration.

23:49 I'm looking for some market reaction. If we get any, we'll bring it to you. Nvidia's earnings on Wednesday are likely to serve as a reminder of the company's commanding position in the chip sector. But it's facing pressure from new competitors, startups and big tech alike, including including some of its own customers. Bloomberg's infrastructure reporter Dina Bass is with us. Just a fascinating read and you open with the case study of Amazon. Right? And this boast almost that Amazon has now regularly that it's becoming one of the biggest chip makers.

24:20 Nvidia's world's changing. Bring us the reporting.

24:23 Sure.

24:24 Look, Nvidia is still by far the dominant player in the chip market, but there's a few things that are going on here. One, no customer can get enough Nvidia GPUs so they're looking for any viable alternatives that they can find to the market. In terms of AI workloads is increasingly shifting to inference workloads. The running of the models rather than the training of the models. That's an area where Nvidia has less of a lock and where it's useful to have different types of inference chips for, you know, that are better at different tasks.

24:53 And you're also actually seeing a resurgence around agentic AI workloads of the cpu, which you know, was basically for a long time ill favored for AI tasks. And so those are some of the things that are changing. Apart from Amazon Google, we're seeing a surge in fundings of AI chip startups. Last week we saw Etched announced that they've quadrupled their valuation since December. Bloomberg reported a company out of the UK called Fractile is raising now also at a valuation that's five or six fold where they were raising, you know, just half a year ago.

25:29 And the Frontier labs are looking at their own silicon. You had a report on Friday that Anthropic has brought in a veteran of the industry to kind of oversee its own push into hardware. Who are we talking about? What do we need to know?

25:43 Sure. Anthropic confirmed to us on Friday that they've hired Amir Salak was a founder of the TPU program at Google. Also ran the TPU program for a number of years before leaving Google Google a couple of years ago for a private equity firm. You know, one of the clearest signs that a company is looking at doing its own custom silicon is watching the hiring and order. Chips are expensive. They require a lot of patience and a lot of expertise.

26:10 And when you see a company start to staff up on people that have done this before, it's an indication that they are getting serious. Anthropic has because of the job listings over the last few weeks, weeks finally confirmed that they are looking at this. They are doing this at OpenAI is already further along, you know, having unveiled their jalapeno chip which they will talk about more tomorrow at the Hot Chips conference.

26:34 Bloomberg's Dina Bass, thank you so much. Let's stick with Nvidia Citi Index Financial markets senior analyst Fiona Senkoto joins us. And you know, it's a week where in Wednesday we have Nvidia's quarterly earnings earnings and on Friday we have Jackson Hole. And lots of people in markets would debate which is the bigger event. Let's say it's in video, which is bigger for you.

26:56 You know what, I think Nvidia is going to be extremely important. I mean, it does feel like the AI trade has sort of been a little bit on the back burner recently. It hasn't been front and central. And I think Nvidia earnings will bring this very much back to a clear firm focus for the markets. But obviously, as we know, you know, this not only affects Nvidia, this, these earnings affect risk sentiment more broadly and impact sort of, you know, the wider indices, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ.

27:25 So I think as far as that's concerned, it is going to be really key. Obviously expectations are high, the bar is high, but we've got, as you mentioned, Jackson Hole. I think we may be disappointed by Jackson Hole given that Fed Chair we Walsh tends to be a little more, has been less in favor of giving out forward guidance. So I think we might find the actual amount of information we get from him may be too limited.

27:48 The expectation on Wall street is Nvidia will have sales 92 to 95 billion dollars. They will double adjusted earnings from the same period a year ago. But those are just numbers. What is it Nvidia has to say to keep the market believing in this story?

28:06 Yeah, you know, the numbers are expected to be good. The bar is high. Even forward guidance is going to be very key, expecting to exceed 100 billion for the first time. And I think what's actually going to be key here is the level of AI demand. You know, we want to see that datacenter spending by these sort of AI hyperscalers is continuing to grow at a level that is supportive of valuation. So, I mean, we know that the share price has come off the record high slightly, but it is still up a good 18% across the year, well ahead of the S&P 500.

28:43 So, you know, we're going to need to see that the demand is accelerating at a level that is supportive of that share price.

28:52 How worried are you and your clients about the issue of circular finance?

28:57 Say it's definitely a worry that sort of looms in the background. I think, you know, what we see is when we get some solid results, that often tends to just push those concerns away a little bit. And when the deals start coming through, that raises More puts more focus back onto that circular financing story, then that can just raise those concerns over the bubble story. But I think at the end of the day that, you know, we know that the narrative is very strong, we know that it does bring some real world use and therefore this isn't necessarily a bubble in the terms that we've seen it previously.

29:40 But I do also think that, you know, these earnings are going to be watched very closely in order to make sure that that can sort of smooth over any of those concerns.

29:49 We're just showing a chart that, you know, Nvidia heads into the print with a pretty low multiple. I'll just remind the audience that the stock's down for a seventh straight session worst run of declines or matching the run of declines it saw in September 2022. Where's the potential upside from video? What can Jensen Wong say that gets everyone euthoric again?

30:09 I think it's just that idea that the demand is growing fast enough did value to, to justify valuation. That is what the market is going to be very, very focused on because you need to be able to decide that forward earnings are going to be growing at a level that suits the share price and that's what the market will want to see.

30:31 How interested are you in Bitcoin at the moment? We're tracking data on ETF flows, biggest in about 10 months. Anyone in your world really looking at it?

30:40 It's, it's, it's definitely showing signs of revival. I mean it's been a very slow few months as far as I can concerned and Bitcoin is concerned. But I think, you know, we are starting to see potential for the stars aligning. You know, as you mentioned, ETF flows are returning. We've seen the strongest ETF week last week of inventory flows since October. You've seen this idea of sort of potential of improving liquidity expectations due to comments from the U.S.

31:14 treasury Department and their support of the, the bond market. And then you've also got this idea of potentially lower regulatory risk premium which is also supportive. So it does feel that there are several factors which are lining up now to support Bitcoin. We obviously saw that show short squeeze last week. What's going to be really key now is to see whether we can see this actually extend gains on buying rather than the short squeeze. I think that's going to come down to core PC.

31:43 It's also going to come down to what we get from Federal Reserve Chair Walsh on Friday, if anything.

31:51 Fiona Cinco de City Index Financial Markets Senior Analyst Setting US up for the week. Thank you very much indeed. Let's take a look attrade.xyz, a little known market built on top of crypto exchange Hyper Liquid which allows speculators to buy and sell blockchain based oil derivatives continuously even when traditional markets are closed. The platform's generated some $500 billion in trading volume since launching in October. Bloomberg's migration is here to tell us more about it. Really interesting story.

32:22 Let's start with the basics, the concept of Perth. What's Hyper liquid and everything else that we need to understand. Yeah, sure.

32:28 So swap are a type of futures contracts that do not expire and Hyper Liquid is a trading platform with this namesake blockchain where it allows traders to trade such products.

32:42 There is a push to bring Hyper liquid to the US like if you look at the headline 247 markets of great interest. All kinds of of parts of the Bloomberg audience explain that push.

32:54 So basically what's happening is that because the traditional markets are usually closed over the weekends where you know, most people cannot really look at or have an idea where the market is going to be at during the weekends, especially when there's like breaking news. So places like have Hyper Liquid provide a platform where people can get an idea where market is going to be when it opens on Monday. I think the idea is that you don't want that kind of market remains offshore outside the US Right.

33:23 Because currently Hyper Liquid or Trade XYZ are not like open in the US So I think bringing this type of markets onshore to the US is very important. Especially you know, Wall street is based here in the States.

33:36 Part of your reporting is that Trade XYZ is out there lobbying regulators. What's the argument that that they're making?

33:43 I think the main argument is that I think they want to show that how important it is. Especially I think you have a platform where you can trade futures contracts tied to stocks or you know, things like pre ipo. These are all happening in the US but you know, these platforms that are only allowed outside of us are just, I think logically speaking for these people, these just don't make a lot of sense. So I think there are a lot of them pushing regulators I think to be more innovative and to allow these kind of markets to be legally offered here in the States.

34:15 We are sharing with the story. Thank you very much. Now coming up, a South Korean AI startup aims to create K pop robot idols backed by industry veterans like G Dragon. Got the details next. This is Bloomberg Tech. The AI boom is roiling not only South Korea's markets, but its cultural industries. Here's a look at one entertainment startup that is not only embracing AI, but betting Robot idols are the future of K Pop Bloomberg Asia Entertainment Reporter so he can Reports from Seoul as much

34:54 as Samsung and SK Hynix have thrust South Korean markets into the spotlight this year, the worldwide popularity of groups like BTS and Blackpink, shows like Squid Game and beloved romantic dramas have been an economic boon long before the meteoric rise of large language models, music, films, video games and other Korean cultural industries generated over $113 billion in revenue last year and more than $15 billion in exports. They employ about 690,000 workers, more than double the combined number as a memory giants.

35:29 South Korea's entertainment sector has grown more experimental and ambitious as competition intensifies. One startup looking to disrupt K Pop's traditional idol system is Galaxy Corporation. It's looking to blend AI characters and life size robot idols to create content without the limitations of human performers. CEO Choi Yong Woo says they are not looking to replace people, but create

35:51 new IP Robots can learn everything at once and immediately perform it for people, whereas it might take a person a month or two to learn the same material. The time savings are enormous and it all happens simultaneously. Once the training is complete, there's no need to do it again, so we can immediately have a robot trainee debut in New York. It doesn't require the three, five or 10 years of preparation that humans need. That's how AI is changing everything.

36:17 Galaxy was founded in 2019 and started as a TV production studio behind the Netflix hit Physical 100. Its current roster includes K Pop superstar G Dragon, actor Song Kang Woo from the film Parasite and San Francisco giants right builder Ri Jong Woo. Galaxy has now opened a 16,500 square meter robot park in Seoul where visitors can interact with around 50 different types of robots. Choi plans to open new robot theme parks in other major cities including Dubai, and run a robot Idol tour from next year.

36:47 Among its partners is Unitree, China's first publicly traded humanoid maker.

36:54 Even if the hardware the robot is made in China, combining it with software made in Korea and joining forces to go global holds great significance. Above all, I believe these robots will become part of people's lives as new editions are released, including special editions of their favorite celebrities that they can collect.

37:11 While Galaxy is showcasing one of the first real world use cases for these robots, Choi says discussions on global guidelines need to take place.

37:19 Who is Iron Man?

37:20 AI is already part of our lives. What's somewhat disappointing though, is that we don't yet have global guidelines that match its development. Whether that means global laws, systems to protect against risks or security frameworks. The same wave is now coming with physical AI and we must not make the same mistakes again. We need to establish global guidelines to ensure that robots do not harm our lives.

37:42 Galaxy is now preparing for what could be the first major overseas listings by a K pop agency with the goal to file for an IPO in New York and Seoul by late next year. The company has raised about $150 million so far and is targeting an overseas pre IPO round this year. Galaxy's planned debut will be a test of whether the next generation of entertainment companies creates next stars or codes them so. A. Kim, Bloomberg News, Seoul.

38:11 Something else. AI is rewriting applicants resumes in the face of picture perfect AI generated or edited CVs, recruiters are turning traditional techniques to sift through candidates. Bloomberg's finance editor in London, Tom Metcalfe, joins us with the story. Well, that's a problem. Every single resume on a recruiter's desk being perfect. How do they work out what's legit and what's not?

38:35 Yeah, effectively they're going back to the old ways, I suppose. There's a great quote in the, in this story about how frankly, if you don't know someone, you know, an actual person at the company you're applying for, you know, in many cases it's almost not worth applying for. And you know, this goes back to those skills that, you know, generation, generation have always said are the most key, like network in making sure, you know, it's not, you know, you actually produce those results.

38:58 And what's interesting really is just, you know, the sheer quantity of basically, as you say, pitch perfect application applications that are coming through. So. And it's that paradox as well, right? Like every company these days wants people with AI skills. But the irony is, is those who are deploying them in their applications that's actually in some way almost punishing applicants because no one can distinguish or discern them.

39:21 Right. In the era, there are some telltale signs like a slot video generated from AI and in text, if you're confused did with a cv, that's, that's the result of AI. How do you know?

39:34 Well, as a few kind of key words which, you know, that we can all probably recognize like trusted right hand, you know, that slight sense of the uncanny, which I'm sure we've all had, you know, on emails, is almost like too perfect. Right. And that's really sort of I guess the crux of the problem is, you know, one of the most traditionally useful ways companies could distinguish between people is now effectively redundant. In finance, something like 84% of all applications now are run through AI.

40:01 So effectively there's that huge kind of baseline and, you know, the applicants who can kind of succeed that are basically the ones with the human skills and the ones who kind of really, really craft kind of an individual CV rather than one, you know, through a machine.

40:16 Is there some kind of great employer clamp down to push back against this or at least try and discern the real person behind a cv?

40:26 Yeah, I mean, it's a reliance on those sort of tests, those assessments. Yes. Effectively everything's probably becoming more involved. And you know, the other thing they do, which is really interesting debate there is like, you know, they're looking for any signs that it has been AI generated which might cut out a whole bunch of applicants. And yes, 84% of the people are kind of relying on AI. You know, they've got to all think of ways, you know, that they don't get cut in the first call just because, you know, quite intelligently, they're using the tools available to them.

40:56 Bloomberg's some Metcalfe in London. Thank you so much for joining us. Now coming up, we're going to get back to Nvidia as investors prepare for the super bowl of earnings season. Stock down 2%, down for a seven straight day. We'll have the details. This is Bloomberg Tech

41:13 Foreign.

41:20 Let's get back to the stock. Everyone will be watching this week. Nvidia shares right now down 2%. On track for a seventh straight day of declines. Earnings print Wednesday after the market closed. Bloomberg equities reporter Ryan for Static is with us. This is it. Treading water is probably not the right phrase, but all focus this week will be on Nvidia.

41:40 Yeah, this is going to be a very important test for people to really gauge the temperature of the air trade as it stands right now. I don't know how much people are really expecting Nvidia to really turn around the whole market and really lift sentiment here. But certainly it is sort of the major company in the industry. Everyone's going to be watching it. Everyone wants to know what is it seeing as far as its outlook? What is it going to say about demand, about pricing, about all the components that are out there that build up this infrastructure?

42:08 We got some pretty positive reads from the hyperscalers in terms of their commitment to spending. But now we really want to see the main supplier of AI chips. What do they have to say about where things are going from here?

42:20 Let's get stock specific media is up 13% year to date, slightly outperforming the S&P 500. It's down for a seventh straight session. So going into the print, we're looking at a pretty low, low multiple ahead of the results. Where does the stock sit right now?

42:35 Oh yeah, you said seven straight days in the negative. I believe that's the longest since 2022. So this is certainly an interesting kind of setup for the stock right here. Now when I talk to people about what they're expecting, they do say, you know, the multiple does look low. They say that, you know, we're expected to have growth something around 90% this year. That's supposed to slow and then keep slowing going forward. So this is a company that's on sort of a path of growth deceleration.

43:00 But people still view it as a very high quality company, especially within AI and chips. It's certainly a lot cheaper than names like intel or amd. So there's certainly a lot of people who continue to be very positive on it. But the fact that we're seeing some air come out of it ahead of the report, I just, it just shows you that maybe sentiment is just not what it was certainly a couple of years ago when Nvidia was just the absolute hottest name around and we led

43:24 the show on the report from Bloomberg over the weekend that server makers have been telling Nvidia customers price hikes are coming on the latest generation servers. Bloomberg's rhyme basilica with the equities view. Thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Look, the story this week will be in video Nvidia's earnings which are Wednesday after the market close. There has been a lot happening in infrastructure in that Bloomberg report is a must read recap.

43:48 That conversation and all the reporting on the podcast, you know where to find it on all the Bloomberg platforms and on Iheart, Spotify and Apple. Stay with us through the week. It is a big week and there is a lot more to come From San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech.