Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Open-AI, Broadcom Sign 10-Gigawatt Pact for Chips, Networking
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- 0:24Speaker 2: Man Deep sing joints this year because we want to
- 0:26Speaker 2: get some more details on this Broadcom deal, because again
- 0:28Speaker 2: moving the stock big time, help you propel the Nasdaq
- 0:32Speaker 2: to a nice move today. Man Deep sing is a
- 0:33Speaker 2: senior techalyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's been telling us about
- 0:37Speaker 2: AI for like a couple of years now. And folks,
- 0:39Speaker 2: if you don't really know what AI is, and you
- 0:41Speaker 2: have access to the Bloomberg terminal, just go type in
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- 0:49Speaker 2: send you to the Definitive report, really large report on AI.
- 0:54Speaker 2: What is it, how to play it, and what's the
- 0:57Speaker 2: future of AI. It is the definitive Research Report Lomall
- 1:00Speaker 2: Street on AI, and Man Deep Singh is the blame
- 1:02Speaker 2: for that. Mandy, talk to us about this Broadcom deal.
- 1:06Speaker 2: Here lay it out for us. What does it mean
- 1:08Speaker 2: for broadcommon for just kind of an open AI as well.
- 1:13Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean loc Open AI is going after heaving
- 1:17Speaker 3: as much compute capacity as they can, and they did
- 1:21Speaker 3: first ten gigawatts with Nvidia, six gigawatts with AMD, and
- 1:25Speaker 3: now ten gigawats with Broadcom. And the difference here is
- 1:30Speaker 3: with Broadcom they get to use their own chips, and
- 1:34Speaker 3: Vidia and AMD are what we call merchant silicon. They exactly,
- 1:40Speaker 3: I mean, that's basically generalized chips where you can deploy
- 1:44Speaker 3: the workload you want, whether it's from open AI or
- 1:47Speaker 3: Microsoft or any other vendor. In the case of custom silicon,
- 1:51Speaker 3: which is what Broadcom does, a company like open AI
- 1:56Speaker 3: or Google. Google makes up almost you know, fifty plus
- 2:01Speaker 3: of Broadcom's AI revenue. So Google has their chip called TPUs.
- 2:05Speaker 3: They use it for everything run on Google's platform, whether
- 2:10Speaker 3: it's YouTube, whether it's AI, whether it's cloud. Everything inside
- 2:15Speaker 3: Google's run on their TPU. So opening eyes strategy here
- 2:19Speaker 3: is to use an approach which is similar to Google
- 2:22Speaker 3: GPUs because it saves you a lot of money. I mean,
- 2:25Speaker 3: imagine an Nvidia AI chip costs you thirty grand. A
- 2:31Speaker 3: custom silicon that Broadcom is making for Google costs you
- 2:35Speaker 3: six grand. That's the cost differential we are talking about.
- 2:40Speaker 3: And it's not because Nvidia has to spend thirty grand
- 2:44Speaker 3: to make that chip. They have a seventy five percent
- 2:46Speaker 3: gross margin on the chip that they're selling to the customers.
- 2:49Speaker 3: So Nvidia's cost is also low, but they mark up
- 2:52Speaker 3: the price of their silicon. Same thing with AMD. In
- 2:55Speaker 3: the case of Google, they are going directly to Broadcom
- 2:59Speaker 3: to make that chip a far lower price and it's
- 3:01Speaker 3: for their own use, which is why they don't have
- 3:04Speaker 3: to pay the markup to Invidio or AMD. And that's
- 3:07Speaker 3: why having your custom silicon strategy is so good because
- 3:11Speaker 3: it really saves you. So one gigaw with Nvidia silicon
- 3:15Speaker 3: would cost you about forty to fifty billion. One gigawart
- 3:18Speaker 3: with a Broadcom open AI silicon would cost you twenty
- 3:22Speaker 3: five to thirty billion. So if you're talking about, you know,
- 3:25Speaker 3: thirty to forty percent cost differential, and it's huge. I
- 3:28Speaker 3: mean in the context of what these guys are trying
- 3:30Speaker 3: to do, you know, scaled the infrastructure.
- 3:33Speaker 4: In addition to that distinction, there's also no investment or
- 3:36Speaker 4: stock component to this open Ai Broadcom deal, which makes
- 3:40Speaker 4: it different from the deals that it struck with Nvidia
- 3:43Speaker 4: and AMD. So I guess my question is how would
- 3:45Speaker 4: open Ai finance the purchase or the chips in general?
- 3:50Speaker 3: That's a great question because right now they have to
- 3:52Speaker 3: do a lot of financing. It's one thing that's a
- 3:55Speaker 3: common thread in the Invidia transaction where even though in
- 3:59Speaker 3: Vidia is putting ten billion dollars in open Ai, they
- 4:03Speaker 3: still have to find the remainder of the money. So
- 4:06Speaker 3: if you imagine, you know, forty to fifty billion dollars
- 4:09Speaker 3: per gigawatt ten gigawatts costume around five hundred billion, Nvidia
- 4:15Speaker 3: is already investing up two hundred billions, so they still
- 4:18Speaker 3: have to figure out the remainder of four hundred billion.
- 4:21Speaker 3: In the case of AMD, I mean, yes, they are
- 4:23Speaker 3: getting some stock, but you still have to figure out
- 4:26Speaker 3: the financing for that, you know, three hundred billion or so.
- 4:30Speaker 3: Here it's the same thing. You need the money and
- 4:33Speaker 3: Opening eyes bed is if we keep ramping up our revenue,
- 4:37Speaker 3: that is obviously a big source of the funding. We'll
- 4:40Speaker 3: do a lot of private deals because we already have
- 4:42Speaker 3: the buy in from these big player whether it's Nvidia
- 4:46Speaker 3: or Microsoft and other sovereign providers, and I think it's
- 4:52Speaker 3: a lot of scale game right now, because once we
- 4:55Speaker 3: keep hitting our milestones, we'll keep raising more money. And
- 4:58Speaker 3: that's the hope.
- 4:59Speaker 2: When it comes to one name I hadn't heard during
- 5:02Speaker 2: all this dance between all these tech companies is Apple. Yeah,
- 5:06Speaker 2: what's going on there? Glaring absence exactly.
- 5:09Speaker 3: I think that's the right way to frame it. And look,
- 5:12Speaker 3: at some point, I think they are going to go
- 5:14Speaker 3: the Broadcom route. Out of the three partnerships that Openei
- 5:18Speaker 3: has had, a company like Apple will never go for
- 5:22Speaker 3: merchant silicon. I mean, look at what they have done
- 5:24Speaker 3: in their own devices. It's all custom silicon. And that's
- 5:28Speaker 3: where if I had to pick a strategy for Apple,
- 5:32Speaker 3: it will likely be custom silicon using Broadcom or Marvel
- 5:35Speaker 3: or one of these asay providers. But the hard thing
- 5:38Speaker 3: for them is because they have missed out all the
- 5:41Speaker 3: action in the past three years, it's so hard to
- 5:44Speaker 3: catch up. Even if you throw money and you know
- 5:47Speaker 3: your CAPEX dollars, the time is off the essence, and
- 5:51Speaker 3: the longer they delay this, I feel either is Broadcom
- 5:55Speaker 3: or a partnership with Google. Now that antitrust is behind,
- 5:58Speaker 3: so they may very adopt Google's LM across their the
- 6:03Speaker 3: huge That will be huge. But I think you know,
- 6:07Speaker 3: with the regulatory overhand going away, that could be a
- 6:10Speaker 3: very likely strategy.
- 6:11Speaker 4: Apple has a ton of cash. It can't buy its
- 6:14Speaker 4: way to a solution here.
- 6:16Speaker 3: Who do you buy? I mean these are all scale
- 6:18Speaker 3: players and Broadcom. Maybe you could say Marvel is a
- 6:23Speaker 3: smaller player. But you need the best and chips. That's
- 6:26Speaker 3: why everyone is buying Nvidia because they have the highest
- 6:29Speaker 3: performance per what. So you can't really get a second
- 6:33Speaker 3: or a third player because then you compromise on the
- 6:36Speaker 3: performance per what when the biggest constraint out out there
- 6:39Speaker 3: is power, So you know you need the leading player
- 6:42Speaker 3: when it comes to the chip side of the equation.
- 6:45Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 6:52Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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- 7:02Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 7:06Speaker 2: Let's get back to what's happening in the markets. One
- 7:09Speaker 2: of the concerns, and Scarlett mentioned a couple of times
- 7:11Speaker 2: here today is credit markets. Do we have some concerns
- 7:15Speaker 2: out there. First Brands, for example, their challenges there have
- 7:19Speaker 2: really spooked some parts of the credit market. We want
- 7:22Speaker 2: to get the latest on what's going on there. Were
- 7:24Speaker 2: checking with Steve Man Bloomberg Intelligence Global Autos and Industrials
- 7:27Speaker 2: research analysts. Steve from your perspective, just tell us for
- 7:31Speaker 2: the people out there that don't know who First Brands is,
- 7:34Speaker 2: who are they and what happened? Yeah.
- 7:37Speaker 5: First Brand is a big, huge aftermarket parts supplier. They
- 7:45Speaker 5: you know, some of the brands are really well known
- 7:47Speaker 5: in the markets. Parts include like break pads, engine oil filters,
- 7:54Speaker 5: windshow wipers. So a lot of these are just very
- 7:58Speaker 5: fast where parts that everyday consumers by.
- 8:06Speaker 4: Yes, okay, so it's something that's quantifiable, it's knowable to consumers.
- 8:12Speaker 4: And it kind of shocked everyone when it ran into
- 8:15Speaker 4: financial problems. And I know that everyone's still trying to
- 8:18Speaker 4: uncover how much of this is perhaps corporate malfeasance or
- 8:21Speaker 4: there might be some fraud going on. But it happened
- 8:24Speaker 4: at the same time that another company named Tree Color
- 8:27Speaker 4: was also falling apart, and both of these are tied
- 8:30Speaker 4: to the auto sector. They're not making cars and selling
- 8:33Speaker 4: cars directly, but you know they are tied to the
- 8:36Speaker 4: business of selling cars or the business of taking care
- 8:39Speaker 4: of car consumers afterwards. What does that say about the
- 8:44Speaker 4: car industry?
- 8:45Speaker 2: Steve, Yeah, I.
- 8:47Speaker 5: Think those two insidances really freaked out the market. Based
- 8:52Speaker 5: on our research, I think those are really contained situation
- 8:56Speaker 5: to those companies and don't feel there's a broader end pack.
- 9:00Speaker 5: But you never know. You know, the markets based on
- 9:04Speaker 5: investors sentiment. But we did some research on the impact
- 9:09Speaker 5: on the after after market, the parts market. You know,
- 9:13Speaker 5: companies like O'Reilly, AutoZone and Advanced Autoparts are unlikely to
- 9:18Speaker 5: see impact on their supply chain. Like I said earlier,
- 9:23Speaker 5: these are high commodity parts. Uh, there's a lot of
- 9:26Speaker 5: producer that actually produce wipers and brake pads, not just
- 9:30Speaker 5: first brands. So it's not going to impact the consumer.
- 9:35Speaker 5: It's not going to impact companies like O'Reilly AutoZone.
- 9:38Speaker 3: It actually may be.
- 9:39Speaker 5: Beneficial to the aftermarket retailers and in terms of higher prices.
- 9:46Speaker 2: How important are these after market retailers. I mean, it
- 9:48Speaker 2: seems I keep hearing reading your research that people are
- 9:51Speaker 2: holding onto their cars longer and longer and longer, and
- 9:54Speaker 2: therefore this after parts it's a pretty good business, and
- 9:57Speaker 2: it's a.
- 9:58Speaker 5: Very good business. It's a relatively high margin business, great
- 10:03Speaker 5: for cash flow. So in this instance with First Brand,
- 10:07Speaker 5: you know, companies like O'Reilly AutoZone doesn't really on a
- 10:11Speaker 5: financial perspective, doesn't really deal with First Brands. You know,
- 10:15Speaker 5: they buy parts from First Brands. Uh, these these they
- 10:20Speaker 5: but they pay the financial institutions. And this financial institution
- 10:25Speaker 5: actually pays First Brand through these what we call supplier
- 10:31Speaker 5: agreements finance agreements. So there, you know, these auto parts
- 10:34Speaker 5: retailers are actually shielded from what's happening with First Brands.
- 10:39Speaker 4: The news, of course today is that First Brands is
- 10:42Speaker 4: founder and CEO Patrick James, someone that a lot of
- 10:45Speaker 4: people don't know and haven't heard of. He is resigning
- 10:49Speaker 4: because of course the company is facing an investigation over
- 10:52Speaker 4: its finances, and he will be replaced by Charles Moore
- 10:55Speaker 4: as an interim CEO. This is very inside baseball, Steve,
- 10:58Speaker 4: But what I wanted to get to is this idea
- 10:59Speaker 4: that a lot of people are not overly concerned that
- 11:02Speaker 4: this spells broader problems. At what point might you get
- 11:05Speaker 4: a little bit more concerned.
- 11:08Speaker 5: I think if there's a contagion in fact, which I
- 11:13Speaker 5: think is a low real probability. The other issue is
- 11:18Speaker 5: a supply chain. Is it gonna if first brand does
- 11:23Speaker 5: stop operations and stop producing parts, Does it impact the
- 11:28Speaker 5: supply chain of like o'rally and AutoZone. I think temporary
- 11:32Speaker 5: it does. But what really could happen is that o'rally
- 11:37Speaker 5: and AutoZone will probably raise prices and it actually will
- 11:40Speaker 5: help juice up their margins.
- 11:43Speaker 2: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 11:50Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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- 12:00Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 12:04Speaker 2: M and A media likely to be some type of
- 12:08Speaker 2: media activity M and A activity in the media spaces.
- 12:10Speaker 2: Some of these companies need to consolidate even more to
- 12:13Speaker 2: get even more scale to compete against the Netflix of
- 12:16Speaker 2: the world, not to mention the Amazons and the Apples and
- 12:19Speaker 2: so on and so forth. So one of the deals
- 12:21Speaker 2: that's out there potentially is sky Dance, Powermount maybe doing
- 12:26Speaker 2: a deal with Warner Brothers Discovery. Let's see where we
- 12:29Speaker 2: are right now. There's been a lot of rumors and
- 12:31Speaker 2: a lot of news reporting about a potential hookup in
- 12:33Speaker 2: between these two companies. KEITHA, wrong and nothing. She looks
- 12:36Speaker 2: at this stuff. She's the US media analyst for Bloomberg
- 12:39Speaker 2: Intelligence located in our Princeton, New Jersey office. Githa. I mean,
- 12:44Speaker 2: the scuttle butt is, you know, Paramount is interested in
- 12:48Speaker 2: buying Warner Brothers Discovery, but I don't. We haven't seen
- 12:51Speaker 2: Warner Brothers really open to a deal, at least not
- 12:54Speaker 2: at the prices that have been bandied about. What's the latest?
- 12:57Speaker 3: Yeah, the latest, Paul is?
- 12:58Speaker 6: I mean, as you just said, there have been rumors
- 13:01Speaker 6: now ongoing about this, these possible sale dogs for over
- 13:05Speaker 6: a month. Over the weekend, you know, Lucas Shaw and
- 13:09Speaker 6: Bloomberg News basically broke the story that Warner Brothers did
- 13:13Speaker 6: receive an offer for twenty dollars a share, but David Zaslav,
- 13:18Speaker 6: the CEO of Warner has basically rejected that offer as
- 13:22Speaker 6: being too low. Now we know from some prior reporting
- 13:25Speaker 6: that he had been looking for something like about forty
- 13:29Speaker 6: dollars a share. So obviously that's a huge, huge gap
- 13:32Speaker 6: right there.
- 13:33Speaker 2: And I'm just looking at the size of these companies.
- 13:35Speaker 2: I mean, Warner Brothers has a Warner Brothers Discovery has
- 13:38Speaker 2: an enterprise value of more than twice that of Paramount.
- 13:44Speaker 2: How's that math going to work?
- 13:46Speaker 6: Yeah, So this is what we've been kind of, you know,
- 13:49Speaker 6: scratching our heads about. So initially, when we had, you know,
- 13:51Speaker 6: the news come in, one of the big pieces that
- 13:54Speaker 6: was mentioned was that this was going to be a
- 13:57Speaker 6: majority cash deal and a lot of the funding was
- 14:00Speaker 6: going to come from the Ellison family. Now, things seem
- 14:03Speaker 6: to have changed a little bit last week because we
- 14:07Speaker 6: heard that private equity players were getting involved. So Apollo
- 14:10Speaker 6: was one of the names that was mentioned. It looks
- 14:12Speaker 6: like Paramount had approached Blackstone, but maybe they were not
- 14:15Speaker 6: really that interested. Legendary was also thrown into the mix.
- 14:18Speaker 6: So we're not completely sure just yet whether you know,
- 14:22Speaker 6: Paramount is going to proceed with a higher offer with
- 14:25Speaker 6: some of these external sources of financing, or whether really
- 14:28Speaker 6: the Ellison family is kind of going to you know,
- 14:30Speaker 6: step in and you know, basically fund majority of the acquisition.
- 14:35Speaker 2: Well, it's not like you can't afford it. I just
- 14:37Speaker 2: typed in Rich, go Rich. That's the list of the
- 14:40Speaker 2: top most wealthy people in the world. According to Bloomberg,
- 14:43Speaker 2: mister Ellison is number two, with a networth of three
- 14:45Speaker 2: hundred and fifty billion dollars. So there's certainly some capital
- 14:49Speaker 2: there to be deployed either. What's the sense of timing here?
- 14:52Speaker 2: I know, Warner Brothers Discovery, they're actually pursuing kind of
- 14:56Speaker 2: a parallel path, which is there separating their businesses a
- 14:59Speaker 2: little bit. Tell us about that.
- 15:01Speaker 6: Yeah, So, you know, I really think here the odds
- 15:03Speaker 6: are in Warner Brothers Discoveries favor. And I say that because,
- 15:06Speaker 6: as you just pointed out, they are on this path
- 15:08Speaker 6: to separating the two companies. They're separating out the TV networks,
- 15:11Speaker 6: which really doesn't have a great growth outlook, from their
- 15:14Speaker 6: streaming and studio assets, which by the way, is just
- 15:17Speaker 6: doing extremely well. The studio has had an absolutely fantastic
- 15:21Speaker 6: run this year. They're making up almost thirty percent of
- 15:23Speaker 6: the box office. They've had hit after hit, so they
- 15:27Speaker 6: really are on a winning streak. And this is what
- 15:29Speaker 6: I think gives David Zaslav a lot of confidence that
- 15:33Speaker 6: he can get top dollar for at least the streaming
- 15:36Speaker 6: and studio part of the business. The real problem, Paul,
- 15:39Speaker 6: and you know this very well, is what the outlook
- 15:41Speaker 6: is going to be for the TV networks. And that's
- 15:43Speaker 6: where I think it's a little bit of a double
- 15:44Speaker 6: ed sword, because the paramount offer right now is for
- 15:47Speaker 6: the entire company, which means he gets to offload, you know,
- 15:50Speaker 6: the TV networks doesn't really have to worry or think
- 15:53Speaker 6: about it. The thing is, if he waits and you know,
- 15:56Speaker 6: pursues the split, of course streaming and studios is going
- 15:58Speaker 6: to do really well. But then again we're we're stuck
- 16:01Speaker 6: with the you know, the TV network business without you know,
- 16:04Speaker 6: much of really a future, a proper future, good outlook
- 16:08Speaker 6: for it. So so that's really where the dilemma is
- 16:11Speaker 6: for the Warner Brothers Discovery management team.
- 16:14Speaker 2: Well, what's interesting here, I think, particularly if you're a
- 16:17Speaker 2: banker or a lawyer trying to put a deal together,
- 16:19Speaker 2: is we have a willing seller here. Mister Zazov has
- 16:22Speaker 2: stated he's willing to sell and stated that it probably
- 16:25Speaker 2: makes sense for this industry to consolidate. Even more so,
- 16:28Speaker 2: it sounds like it's just going to come down the price.
- 16:32Speaker 6: It is going to come down absolutely to price. I mean,
- 16:35Speaker 6: he's already kind of said on multiple occasions that you know,
- 16:40Speaker 6: there are people who are interested, especially in the streaming
- 16:42Speaker 6: and studio part of the business. He is going to
- 16:44Speaker 6: push hard, very hard for you know, on the on
- 16:47Speaker 6: the price front. We know he's a really tough negotiator,
- 16:51Speaker 6: but I'm not really sure how much amount is going
- 16:54Speaker 6: to be willing to pay up for this.
- 16:56Speaker 2: So broadly speaking, for these networks, the good to zero
- 17:00Speaker 2: with code cutting, cord cutting, they.
- 17:03Speaker 6: Won't go to zero, Paul, but they're definitely I mean,
- 17:06Speaker 6: the floor has been going lower and lower, so you
- 17:08Speaker 6: very well know that. You know, at its peak, PayTV
- 17:11Speaker 6: households were somewhere at about one hundred and four million
- 17:14Speaker 6: in the country. Today they're at about sixty five million.
- 17:19Speaker 6: The idea, or at least the thinking on the street,
- 17:21Speaker 6: is that this is probably going to go to somewhere
- 17:23Speaker 6: like about forty million, maybe in the next three to
- 17:26Speaker 6: four years, but who knows. I mean, the rate of
- 17:28Speaker 6: decline has been pretty dramatic. I mean, even when Warner
- 17:31Speaker 6: Brothers and Discovery came together a few years ago, remember
- 17:35Speaker 6: they had projected fourteen billion dollars in ebitdah. That number.
- 17:39Speaker 6: We never got anywhere close to that number. This year,
- 17:41Speaker 6: we're looking at something like about eight and a half
- 17:43Speaker 6: billion or nine billion in ibadah. So there's it's just
- 17:46Speaker 6: such a big gap, and that's just because of the
- 17:48Speaker 6: dramatic decline in the TV network business.
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