Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / BI Weekend: Rocket Deal, Restaurant Spending, Gen AI
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Intelligence
- 0:11Speaker 1: with Alex Steel and Paul Sweeney.
- 0:13Speaker 2: The real app performance has been in US corporate high yield.
- 0:17Speaker 3: Are the companies lean enough? Have they trimmed all the fats?
- 0:19Speaker 2: The semiconductor business is a really cyclical.
- 0:22Speaker 1: Business, breaking market headlines and corporate news from across the globe.
- 0:26Speaker 3: Do investors like the M and A that we've seen?
- 0:29Speaker 2: These are two big time blue chip companies.
- 0:32Speaker 3: Window between the peak and cunt changing super fast.
- 0:36Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence with Alex Steel and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio.
- 0:42Speaker 2: On Today's Boomberg Intelligence Show, we dig inside the big
- 0:44Speaker 2: business stories impacting Wall Street and the global markets.
- 0:47Speaker 3: Each and every week we provide in depth research and
- 0:49Speaker 3: data on some of the two thousand companies and one
- 0:51Speaker 3: hundred and thirty industries our analysts cover worldwide.
- 0:53Speaker 2: Today, we'll look at a big deal in the M
- 0:55Speaker 2: and A space that will create a mortgage behemoth.
- 0:57Speaker 3: Plus we're going to discuss the rising costs of food
- 0:59Speaker 3: and wow that's effecting the consumer.
- 1:01Speaker 2: But first we begin with research. Bloomberg Intelligence recently put
- 1:04Speaker 2: out on ten companies to watch for in the second
- 1:06Speaker 2: quarter of twenty twenty five and for more on this.
- 1:08Speaker 3: Liz Paul and I were joined by Tim Craig, head
- 1:10Speaker 3: Bloomberg Intelligence Global Chief Content Officer.
- 1:13Speaker 2: We first asked him to give us a broad scope
- 1:16Speaker 2: of the company he's looking at.
- 1:17Speaker 4: So just as a reminder, these are all based off
- 1:20Speaker 4: of focus ideas, which for us in Bloomberg Intelligence are
- 1:25Speaker 4: high conviction out of consensus views where we see catalysts
- 1:29Speaker 4: ahead that can actually change the market's mindset around these companies.
- 1:34Speaker 4: So you've talked about the weight on consumer sentiment and
- 1:40Speaker 4: things along those lines. Well, Dollar Rama, which is a
- 1:45Speaker 4: dollar store up in Canada has yeah, exactly, They're going
- 1:51Speaker 4: to face slower wage growth, higher inflation. We've not seen
- 1:57Speaker 4: estimate cuts yet for Dollar Rama, like we've seen a
- 2:00Speaker 4: dollar Tree and dollar stores and whatnot. We think that's coming.
- 2:05Speaker 4: Another one that is interesting if you want to throw
- 2:09Speaker 4: on as well the whole tariff concept is PDD. You
- 2:12Speaker 4: might not have heard of this, but this is one
- 2:14Speaker 4: of the big Chinese companies that trade tech companies that
- 2:17Speaker 4: trades in New York. They own Timu, which is that
- 2:23Speaker 4: ultra low priced e commerce platform in the States. There's
- 2:29Speaker 4: their bigger platform is one in China, they're going to
- 2:34Speaker 4: have constraints on what they can bring in at the
- 2:37Speaker 4: right price, and they're also investing pretty heavily outside the
- 2:41Speaker 4: US to grow their non US platform beyond China. So
- 2:45Speaker 4: again we think that there's estimate cuts there to come.
- 2:47Speaker 2: Hey, Tim, One of the more looking at this list,
- 2:49Speaker 2: one of the more controversial calls, I think is Tesla.
- 2:53Speaker 2: Steve Manner, the analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence covering the auto business,
- 2:57Speaker 2: he's pretty positive on Tesla here despite the stock price
- 3:01Speaker 2: in there. I guess the concern about Elon Muskin is focus.
- 3:04Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, you could throw this in with tariffs,
- 3:08Speaker 4: with policy, et cetera, and clearly it's taken a shellacking
- 3:11Speaker 4: from a stock price perspective. We see two things going
- 3:15Speaker 4: on here. Number One, there's been a lot of talk
- 3:19Speaker 4: about how their sales have been disappointing as of Leyden.
- 3:22Speaker 4: Is that because of politics, We think, frankly it's because
- 3:26Speaker 4: of the model transition with the new Model Y coming out,
- 3:30Speaker 4: orders even in China have been good, and we would
- 3:34Speaker 4: expect to see sales to pick up as we proceed
- 3:36Speaker 4: through the second quarter and on ind to midyear. You've
- 3:40Speaker 4: also got a really underappreciated battery storage business that is
- 3:46Speaker 4: also starting to ramp up. So we see two catalysts
- 3:49Speaker 4: here to play out that people aren't focused on because
- 3:52Speaker 4: of all the other noise.
- 3:53Speaker 3: And here's one for Paul here Cracker Barrel, Oh yeah,
- 3:57Speaker 3: is on your list again. I've never been.
- 4:00Speaker 2: Now, Tim, he lives in London.
- 4:02Speaker 4: You go to New.
- 4:04Speaker 3: York City, man like, I don't know what I'm going
- 4:06Speaker 3: to see.
- 4:06Speaker 2: Tim grew up in southwest Virginia. He knows.
- 4:10Speaker 3: I mean I'll eat it. If you buy it and
- 4:12Speaker 3: eat it, I mean give it to me, I'll eat it.
- 4:14Speaker 3: Let's put it that way, all right, talk to us about.
- 4:16Speaker 4: Really good I've crack. Cracker Barrel falls into the restructuring
- 4:25Speaker 4: reorganization bucket. And there's another one on the list as
- 4:28Speaker 4: well that actually may be good for you, Alex. I'll
- 4:32Speaker 4: come back to But cracker Barrel three years of estimate cuts.
- 4:36Speaker 4: There's next to no buys on this on this stock.
- 4:39Speaker 4: And from an underlying business perspective, they've made some wholesale revamps,
- 4:44Speaker 4: the menu, their approach to service. Uh, they're remodeling stores,
- 4:49Speaker 4: and we think that there's an inflection to come from
- 4:52Speaker 4: the standpoint of earnings trends. Notwithstanding the economy, this one's
- 4:57Speaker 4: already been beaten down, and we think that there's an
- 4:59Speaker 4: up decided to come Carrying's the other one carrying? Yeah?
- 5:04Speaker 4: So again three years of estimate cuts, you think who
- 5:07Speaker 4: is carrying? Well, their biggest label is Gucci. There you go,
- 5:12Speaker 4: Alex and if.
- 5:13Speaker 3: I only discount him, let's be clear.
- 5:15Speaker 4: Yeah, So new CEO at Gucci, a new head designer
- 5:21Speaker 4: at Gucci. We think there's a rejuvenation at hand, and
- 5:25Speaker 4: it's not in the estimates.
- 5:27Speaker 2: So again, Tim, let's just step back a little bit.
- 5:30Speaker 2: European markets really performing well, certainly relative to the US market.
- 5:34Speaker 2: What are your clients saying here?
- 5:36Speaker 4: So I think there are a couple of things coalescing. Three.
- 5:42Speaker 4: In fact, you take tariffs and all the concern that's
- 5:45Speaker 4: going on. You take deep seek and that raising the
- 5:50Speaker 4: specter of g Is there a different dynamic in the
- 5:53Speaker 4: world of tech that's been driving US markets and US exceptionalism.
- 5:58Speaker 4: And then you have a big European defense initiative and
- 6:02Speaker 4: imperative with Germany coming out with what people around here
- 6:07Speaker 4: are calling the Bazooka. And you add these together, there's
- 6:11Speaker 4: a growth idea developing in Europe. There's concern about what's
- 6:16Speaker 4: going on in the US. And if you look at
- 6:19Speaker 4: our economists, they see as much of a hit on
- 6:22Speaker 4: US growth and inflation as they see it anywhere outside
- 6:27Speaker 4: of Mexico and Canada. So you know, all of that
- 6:30Speaker 4: weighs on the US and Europe is an alternative, and
- 6:35Speaker 4: obviously we've talked a lot about how it's valued relative
- 6:38Speaker 4: to the States. I think that creates a money flow issue,
- 6:42Speaker 4: a money flow opportunity, just like it does for China.
- 6:44Speaker 5: All right.
- 6:45Speaker 3: Thanks to Tim Craig had Bloomberg Intelligence, a global Chief
- 6:47Speaker 3: Content Officer, Each week we look at research from Bloomberg
- 6:51Speaker 3: n EF previously known as New Energy Finance. They're the
- 6:54Speaker 3: team at Bloomberg that tracks and analyzes the energy transition
- 6:57Speaker 3: from commodities to power, transport, industries, building, and ag sectors.
- 7:01Speaker 3: This week we looked at the growing enthusiasm for nuclear
- 7:05Speaker 3: power for more.
- 7:06Speaker 2: Guest hosts Isabelle Lee and I were joined by Chris Gaddomski,
- 7:09Speaker 2: Bloomberg and EF lead nuclear analysts. We first to ask
- 7:12Speaker 2: Chris what his thoughts are on nuclear power as a
- 7:15Speaker 2: source to fuel AI expansion.
- 7:17Speaker 6: It's a great technology for supplying clean, carbon free twenty
- 7:24Speaker 6: four to seven base load power. However, there's a mismatch
- 7:29Speaker 6: between the demand for the electricity. Data centers say they
- 7:33Speaker 6: would like to have the electricity right away tomorrow, if
- 7:37Speaker 6: not sooner, and any new nuclear capacity in the US
- 7:42Speaker 6: is not going to come online until after twenty thirty.
- 7:46Speaker 6: I mean you may have one or two outliers come
- 7:48Speaker 6: on beforehand, but before you have a reliable demonstration of
- 7:53Speaker 6: the technology. Because these are all new technologies being built,
- 7:58Speaker 6: we'll be looking for after twenty thirty, So possibly we
- 8:01Speaker 6: could miss the first wave of advanced reactor contribution to
- 8:05Speaker 6: the AI developments.
- 8:09Speaker 5: Why is nuclear construction in the West barely budgeting, whereas,
- 8:12Speaker 5: in for instance, Asia Pacific region it's booming.
- 8:15Speaker 6: There's two big reasons for that. One, the price at
- 8:19Speaker 6: which the Chinese, for example, can build a nuclear power
- 8:23Speaker 6: plant is much lower than we can in the US,
- 8:26Speaker 6: and that's the function the fact that China right now
- 8:29Speaker 6: is building twenty eight nuclear power plants. We have built
- 8:33Speaker 6: two in the last ten or fifteen years, and so
- 8:37Speaker 6: they will build six nuclear power plants at the same site,
- 8:40Speaker 6: and the construction team moves from one reactor to the
- 8:43Speaker 6: next reactor to the next reactive reactor h reactor subsequently
- 8:47Speaker 6: costs less than the first. So to China to build
- 8:51Speaker 6: reactors for maybe one fifth to one quarter of what
- 8:53Speaker 6: the US can build, it makes sense for them to
- 8:56Speaker 6: build a lot of nuclear power plants. We've lost the
- 8:59Speaker 6: x tease and the desire to build a lot of
- 9:03Speaker 6: large nuclear power plants. To cite some advantages and significant
- 9:08Speaker 6: benefits to the technology, talk to.
- 9:10Speaker 2: Us about small modular reactors. Is that a solution.
- 9:16Speaker 6: Yeah, it is a solution because the not dynamic has
- 9:20Speaker 6: has has changed in the past. We've seen let's build
- 9:24Speaker 6: large reactors to get economies of scale in size. The
- 9:27Speaker 6: conversations talk, well, let's build a lot of small reactors
- 9:30Speaker 6: and get down the learning curve as quickly as we can.
- 9:34Speaker 6: So there are only two small modi reactors operating modern
- 9:38Speaker 6: ones operating in the world, one in China, one in Russia.
- 9:41Speaker 6: China is building another one. Russia is planning to build
- 9:44Speaker 6: another one, but they haven't yet broken ground on that.
- 9:48Speaker 6: So it's a technology that presents a lot less risk
- 9:52Speaker 6: to the utility or the hyperscaler who is buying it.
- 9:57Speaker 6: There's no big deployment risk. There is technology risk because
- 10:02Speaker 6: these are all first of a kind, and so with
- 10:05Speaker 6: the first of a kind project, especially in the nucle
- 10:07Speaker 6: power business, there's a lot of uncertainty with regards to
- 10:10Speaker 6: schedule and cost, and so people are thinking about this.
- 10:14Speaker 6: A lot of the utilities of are making plans to
- 10:17Speaker 6: go forward. The US and Canada the UK are leading
- 10:20Speaker 6: the effort, and so it's going to take some time
- 10:23Speaker 6: before those first reactors, small, major reactors, and advanced reactors
- 10:27Speaker 6: across the finish line.
- 10:29Speaker 5: We know that new nuclear projects are coming online slower,
- 10:33Speaker 5: But do you think this administration will change that or
- 10:36Speaker 5: is it going to be status quo.
- 10:37Speaker 6: The Trump administration in its first time first term was
- 10:44Speaker 6: very very pro developing uranium the equivalent of drill baby
- 10:49Speaker 6: drill from the uranium sector, and to a certain extent
- 10:54Speaker 6: that uranium has bounced back up. The current administration now
- 10:58Speaker 6: is favorable towards nuclear. Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy,
- 11:02Speaker 6: has a pedigree from Berkeley and MIT to the leading
- 11:06Speaker 6: academic institutions regarding nuclear, and I think that they are
- 11:10Speaker 6: very pro nuclear. However, the big question is how much
- 11:14Speaker 6: government funding will be used to support nuclear reactor construction.
- 11:19Speaker 6: That's something that we're still working out and trying to
- 11:22Speaker 6: understand Chris.
- 11:23Speaker 2: I finished the first season of the TV show Landman,
- 11:26Speaker 2: so I now consider myself an expert in the oil
- 11:29Speaker 2: and gas business, and I think my takeaway is, you know,
- 11:33Speaker 2: listening to energy providers and energy users, we're going to
- 11:36Speaker 2: need everything. We're going to need fossil fuels, We're gonna
- 11:39Speaker 2: need the wind, We're going to need solar, all that
- 11:41Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Maybe nuclear. How do you think about that?
- 11:47Speaker 6: Yeah, my take is that we certainly do need nuclear.
- 11:50Speaker 6: If you look on a geopolitical basis, you have China
- 11:54Speaker 6: building twenty eight reactors, large reactors. Also, as soon as
- 11:57Speaker 6: it passes are post twenty third, they'll have more nuclear
- 12:01Speaker 6: power plants operating than we do. The Russians are very,
- 12:04Speaker 6: very aggressively building nuclear power plants not only in Russia
- 12:07Speaker 6: but in Middle East and establishing one hundred year relations
- 12:10Speaker 6: with that, and I think that has caused a lot
- 12:12Speaker 6: of concern for the US government saying, hey, listen, we
- 12:15Speaker 6: need to sort of offer a viable alternative option for
- 12:20Speaker 6: new nuclear in the years ahead. And I think it's
- 12:22Speaker 6: a very very solid ambition. Biden dedministration called for two
- 12:27Speaker 6: hundred gigawats of extra nuclear capacity. That's tripling what we
- 12:31Speaker 6: have right now, and so there is a tremendous need
- 12:35Speaker 6: for it, and I think there has a place. It's
- 12:37Speaker 6: not a solution for all the problems, but it works
- 12:40Speaker 6: very well for many types of applications.
- 12:42Speaker 2: Our thanks to Chris Gadomski, Bloomberg and EF lead nuclear analyst.
- 12:47Speaker 3: All right, coming up, we're going to break down the
- 12:48Speaker 3: future of AI empowering data centers.
- 12:50Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in
- 12:53Speaker 2: depth research and data on two thousand companies and one
- 12:55Speaker 2: hundred and thirty industries. You can access Bloomberg Intelligence via
- 12:58Speaker 2: bi go in the terminal Paul Sweeney and.
- 13:00Speaker 3: I'm Alex Steele, and this is Bloomberg.
- 13:07Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 13:11Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
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- 13:17Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 13:21Speaker 3: We move now to the M and A space.
- 13:23Speaker 2: This week we heard that the online mortgage provider Rocket
- 13:26Speaker 2: is acquiring mister Cooper Group, the country's largest mortgage servicer it's.
- 13:31Speaker 3: An all stock deal valued about nine point four billion dollars,
- 13:34Speaker 3: and this will create a mortgage behemoth that handles one
- 13:36Speaker 3: in every six mortgages in the US.
- 13:39Speaker 2: For more, guest host Isabelle Lee and I were joined
- 13:41Speaker 2: by Page Smith, Bloomberg News consumer finance reporter. We first
- 13:45Speaker 2: asked Page to explain the latest deal and what mister
- 13:47Speaker 2: Cooper is.
- 13:48Speaker 7: Mister Cooper is more is best known, I would say,
- 13:51Speaker 7: in the mortgage servicing side of things, So it's sort
- 13:54Speaker 7: of after the fact, you've got your mortgage, but who
- 13:56Speaker 7: were you actually interacting with, you know, gears down the line,
- 13:59Speaker 7: it's actually going to be mister Cooper. But this is
- 14:02Speaker 7: a big deal for Rocket because they've kind of they've
- 14:05Speaker 7: been trying to position themselves as sort of a one
- 14:08Speaker 7: stop shop for consumers finance offerings, so think credit cards
- 14:13Speaker 7: in addition to your mortgage and you know, now theoretically
- 14:19Speaker 7: your mortgage servicing rights. So it's it's a pretty big
- 14:22Speaker 7: deal for this company based in Detroit. Dan Gilbert a
- 14:25Speaker 7: pretty prominent person in the finance yep, pretty big in
- 14:29Speaker 7: sports as well. But nine point four billion dollars, it's
- 14:33Speaker 7: a big deal for these folks.
- 14:34Speaker 5: We have Rocket also striking a deal to acquire Redfin,
- 14:37Speaker 5: which is a real estate brokerage. How will that build
- 14:40Speaker 5: into this one or if they're even connected at all.
- 14:43Speaker 7: Certainly it's it is basically sort of from a sort
- 14:46Speaker 7: of a nose to nose to toe, if you will,
- 14:49Speaker 7: of the home buying experience. Everything will sort of be
- 14:53Speaker 7: under this Rocket umbrella. It you know Redfinn as you
- 14:58Speaker 7: as I think a lot of folks will you know
- 15:00Speaker 7: quite well, is this platform for buying and selling homes
- 15:04Speaker 7: and it would be sort of a starting point for
- 15:07Speaker 7: the home buying journey. Rocket is well known for originating,
- 15:11Speaker 7: getting or creating mortgages, and now mister Cooper is well
- 15:15Speaker 7: known for sort of the servicing of mortgages. So it's
- 15:17Speaker 7: it is kind of from start to finish of the
- 15:19Speaker 7: home buying process.
- 15:20Speaker 2: Theoretically, they got a lot of debt on their bouncy
- 15:23Speaker 2: because I being a former banker, I don't look at
- 15:25Speaker 2: stock market values. I look at enterprise value to include
- 15:28Speaker 2: the debt. It's eighteen point five billion dollars because that's
- 15:30Speaker 2: what you get paid on. You get paid on enterprise
- 15:32Speaker 2: a so that is a big, big number there. Talk
- 15:37Speaker 2: to us about the mortgage business. I mean, is it
- 15:39Speaker 2: doesn't seem like there's a lot of deals happening in
- 15:41Speaker 2: the business.
- 15:42Speaker 7: Well, I mean, I think we can look at interest rates.
- 15:45Speaker 7: It's certainly been a tough time for home buyers and sellers,
- 15:48Speaker 7: and that also weighs on these home on these home lenders.
- 15:53Speaker 7: It's a tough time for folks who kind of have
- 15:56Speaker 7: put their eggs all in one basket, which is the
- 15:58Speaker 7: home lending business. But that's kind of what Rocket has
- 16:02Speaker 7: been aiming to do, is to really branch out and
- 16:04Speaker 7: diversify their business so they're not so interest rate reliant
- 16:09Speaker 7: or exposed rather which they have been in the past.
- 16:12Speaker 7: And frankly that's showed up in their earnings over the
- 16:14Speaker 7: past couple of years. So I chatted with CEO U
- 16:18Speaker 7: and Krishna over the summer. Actually we did kind of
- 16:22Speaker 7: a deeper dive into Rocket and the company, and one
- 16:24Speaker 7: thing that he told me then was that artificial intelligence
- 16:28Speaker 7: is actually a big bet that they're making to really
- 16:30Speaker 7: try to boost the business and make that home buying
- 16:33Speaker 7: process truly as smooth as possible for the customers, to
- 16:36Speaker 7: kind of amp up their offerings and we'll see how
- 16:40Speaker 7: it works out. With for them in the end, But
- 16:41Speaker 7: so far numbers look pretty good.
- 16:44Speaker 5: What's this deal expected? Were you hearing chatter before? Did
- 16:47Speaker 5: it's completely shock you?
- 16:49Speaker 7: I was not hearing chatter before, and it seems like
- 16:52Speaker 7: the market is responding in kind of an interesting way.
- 16:54Speaker 7: But we're going to continue to follow the story and
- 16:57Speaker 7: see how this kind of fits into the broader rockets.
- 17:00Speaker 2: Who do they compete against? Do they compete against the
- 17:03Speaker 2: banks that make the loans or the banks that make
- 17:05Speaker 2: the loans usually just syndicate them away, right.
- 17:07Speaker 7: Well, I kind of take a different take on that
- 17:09Speaker 7: since I cover consumer and finance kind of broadly. I
- 17:12Speaker 7: think of folks who are kind of trying to be
- 17:14Speaker 7: that one one stop shop for consumer the consumer finance experience.
- 17:19Speaker 7: So for me, I think of you know, so FI
- 17:22Speaker 7: technologies for example, that is like a they have a
- 17:26Speaker 7: lot of lending opportunities for consumers, but they do a
- 17:29Speaker 7: heck of a lot of other business as well. Robinhood
- 17:33Speaker 7: even coming at it from the investing side of things
- 17:35Speaker 7: now offering banking products for folks, That's kind of how
- 17:39Speaker 7: I think about it in terms of competitors. But that's
- 17:42Speaker 7: just from a fintech consumer finance perspective when it comes
- 17:45Speaker 7: to home lenders. You know, other big folks in the space,
- 17:48Speaker 7: the space. I was just looking at some data by
- 17:50Speaker 7: Inside Mortgage Finance that placed United Wholesale Mortgagees number one,
- 17:55Speaker 7: Pennymac is number two, and Rocket as number three.
- 17:58Speaker 2: Penny Mac is what I use. Anything that rings a bell? Okay,
- 18:02Speaker 2: Dan Gilbert just for what it's worth. Kids on the
- 18:05Speaker 2: rich top list of Bloomberg all the wealthy people, he
- 18:08Speaker 2: comes in at number sixty two. Well they're not bad.
- 18:10Speaker 2: Net worth of twenty eight point seven billion dollars up
- 18:13Speaker 2: two point six billion.
- 18:14Speaker 8: Year to date.
- 18:15Speaker 7: Yeah, he's a force in Detroit. I would say some
- 18:18Speaker 7: of our colleagues out of the Detroit Bureau did a
- 18:20Speaker 7: great story on him last year. If you're interested in
- 18:23Speaker 7: the terminal, All.
- 18:23Speaker 3: Right, thanks to Paige Smith, Bloomberg News Consumer Finance Reporter,
- 18:27Speaker 3: we move next to the artificial intelligence sector.
- 18:29Speaker 2: Guest host Normal Linda and I were joined by John Lynn,
- 18:32Speaker 2: chief business officer at Equinox.
- 18:34Speaker 3: Equinex is the largest global data center provider and is
- 18:37Speaker 3: listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol.
- 18:39Speaker 4: E q i X.
- 18:41Speaker 2: John lenn joined to discuss the future of AI empowering
- 18:44Speaker 2: data centers, and I began the conversation by asking John
- 18:46Speaker 2: to explain what Equinox does.
- 18:49Speaker 8: We're really the fundamental digital infrastructure provider of the world,
- 18:52Speaker 8: building two hundred and sixty eight data centers across seventy
- 18:55Speaker 8: four market If you're the guys, we are the guys
- 18:57Speaker 8: building and connecting all of these cloud provide and enterprises,
- 19:01Speaker 8: making all of that data available for AI.
- 19:03Speaker 9: And it's really interesting because I was just speaking with
- 19:05Speaker 9: him during the break saying that I cover US real
- 19:09Speaker 9: estate stocks, I cover real estate investment trusts, and that's
- 19:11Speaker 9: exactly what falls in that patch. This is my guy.
- 19:15Speaker 9: So wonderful to have this conversation. But I think that
- 19:18Speaker 9: there's often people don't really when you think about data centers,
- 19:21Speaker 9: they don't often think about the people that are actually
- 19:23Speaker 9: providing the real estate for data centers. So can you
- 19:26Speaker 9: talk a little bit about how equinics differs from maybe
- 19:29Speaker 9: for thinking about a data center itself, but more or
- 19:31Speaker 9: less the fact that you guys are acquiring properties and
- 19:33Speaker 9: doing it that way.
- 19:34Speaker 8: Yeah, you can think about it as full scope development,
- 19:36Speaker 8: where I mean we're going from raw land getting their
- 19:38Speaker 8: entitlements and then building the entire data center and then
- 19:41Speaker 8: operating that for perpetuity essentially. And our focus is around
- 19:45Speaker 8: making sure we're getting as many customers as possible into
- 19:48Speaker 8: the facilities and really interconnecting their data flows together, which
- 19:51Speaker 8: is pretty unique in the data center space, which has
- 19:54Speaker 8: also been a great opportunity for us to participate in
- 19:56Speaker 8: the AI growth.
- 19:57Speaker 2: What are you guys seeing here? What are you seeing
- 19:59Speaker 2: from your client and the people you talk to about
- 20:02Speaker 2: kind of their needs going forward? Because right now, I
- 20:05Speaker 2: think in the marketplace, if you look at like Nvidious
- 20:07Speaker 2: stock and some of the other stocks that trade around
- 20:09Speaker 2: the AI theme, twenty twenty five has not been a
- 20:11Speaker 2: good year, after obviously phenomenal extraordinary growth in twenty three
- 20:14Speaker 2: twenty four, maybe before that. How are you viewing the
- 20:18Speaker 2: growth here in AI and from your end of the business,
- 20:20Speaker 2: the real estate side.
- 20:21Speaker 8: Yeah, First, I'd just say, you know, AI is a
- 20:23Speaker 8: portion of the demand for data centers, but data center
- 20:26Speaker 8: as a whole are powering everything that everybody is doing,
- 20:28Speaker 8: right like listening to this broadcast, you know, ordering food
- 20:31Speaker 8: for lunch, you know, trading, trading on the exchange, et cetera.
- 20:35Speaker 8: I mean, you need computers for everything nowadays, and that's
- 20:38Speaker 8: still continuing. I think, you know, digital transformation is not
- 20:40Speaker 8: in the early stages anymore, but we're far from done,
- 20:43Speaker 8: and so that is just the secular driver that will continue.
- 20:46Speaker 8: From the eye landscape, I'd say obviously a huge amount
- 20:49Speaker 8: of interest and excitement and I think the it caught
- 20:52Speaker 8: the imagination of everyone, and I'd say, right now what
- 20:55Speaker 8: we're seeing is like exciting use cases that are really
- 20:59Speaker 8: providing durable value, right. And I think it's still early
- 21:02Speaker 8: stages for many of that across the general business landscape,
- 21:05Speaker 8: but that's what gets me fundamentally excited. You look at
- 21:07Speaker 8: a company like a Bristol Meyers squib a customer of ours.
- 21:10Speaker 8: They're doing drug discovery using videogpus and like being able
- 21:14Speaker 8: to increase and accelerate their time to therapeutics. That's fundamentally
- 21:18Speaker 8: going to improve like human life, right, and I think
- 21:20Speaker 8: that there's so many different aspects that AI can improve
- 21:23Speaker 8: based on that.
- 21:23Speaker 9: So run us through some of your biggest customers, who
- 21:25Speaker 9: do you all work with.
- 21:26Speaker 8: Certainly the cloud providers are some of our top customers.
- 21:29Speaker 8: We've got over two thousand different network providers as well.
- 21:32Speaker 8: The Genesis of the company was really around how do
- 21:35Speaker 8: we help the Internet scale? And that ended up being, well,
- 21:37Speaker 8: how do we help the globes telecommunications and data flows scale.
- 21:41Speaker 8: And so when you think about all of the cloud providers,
- 21:44Speaker 8: how do they connect to the end customers, that's through
- 21:46Speaker 8: our facilities. And then as we've built that landscape, we've
- 21:50Speaker 8: ended up basically becoming the place where enterprises put their
- 21:53Speaker 8: most trusted assets. When you think about then, whether they
- 21:56Speaker 8: have some workloads that are in the public cloud, well,
- 21:59Speaker 8: they're going to have some that are going to have
- 22:00Speaker 8: ownership and control of themselves. When they put those in
- 22:03Speaker 8: our facilities, it lets them glue that infrastructure together and
- 22:06Speaker 8: become like one super powerful environment.
- 22:09Speaker 2: And folks, Equinics is a publicly traded company. Eqix is
- 22:14Speaker 2: the ticker. It's got a market cap of eighty one
- 22:17Speaker 2: billion dollars. And if you want some research on it
- 22:20Speaker 2: and you're on the Bloomberg terminal, Jeffrey Langbaum was my
- 22:22Speaker 2: reat analyst. He covers eqix. You can go big and
- 22:25Speaker 2: that's where you find the research on Equinox. John talk
- 22:30Speaker 2: to us about the global formfront and we know you
- 22:31Speaker 2: guys are global here, where are you seeing growth stronger
- 22:36Speaker 2: growth versus weaker growth.
- 22:38Speaker 8: Yeah, I'd say across the landscape, there's still quite a
- 22:41Speaker 8: bit of demand for data center activity. You know, we're
- 22:43Speaker 8: particularly excited about some of the emerging markets Southeast Asia
- 22:46Speaker 8: for instance. It's certainly growing quite a bit. But you know,
- 22:50Speaker 8: based off of a lot of the recent Surgeon AI
- 22:52Speaker 8: and kind of the use cases set up for that,
- 22:54Speaker 8: just a tremendous amount of growth in the US over
- 22:57Speaker 8: the course of the last two years.
- 22:58Speaker 9: So, I mean, when we think about your creditors in
- 23:00Speaker 9: this broader landscape, there's obviously digital realty trust when we're
- 23:03Speaker 9: thinking about publicly traded routes here in the data center space,
- 23:06Speaker 9: and if you look over the past five years, we
- 23:09Speaker 9: have equinic shares that have risen forty percent, but that's
- 23:12Speaker 9: compared to digital realty that's risen about eleven percent. What
- 23:15Speaker 9: do you think that you all are doing differently than
- 23:16Speaker 9: your competitors.
- 23:18Speaker 8: I think one, it's our focus around really driving diversity
- 23:23Speaker 8: of customer and like kind of having an ecosystem that
- 23:26Speaker 8: we've built around the value that we're doing, and so
- 23:28Speaker 8: that's incredibly important for us. Like for the AI trade,
- 23:31Speaker 8: for instance, we're focusing not just on capturing some of
- 23:34Speaker 8: these large training footprints, but really, how do we make
- 23:36Speaker 8: sure we're getting all of these AI players and exposing
- 23:39Speaker 8: them to the rest of our customer base and really,
- 23:40Speaker 8: again that fuel becomes additional growth across our entire portfolio.
- 23:46Speaker 2: Do you develop and build data centers or do you
- 23:49Speaker 2: just buy existing we develop and build? Where are you
- 23:53Speaker 2: developing and building these days? And if you say Texas.
- 23:56Speaker 8: Or Florida, Well, we're building all around the world. I
- 23:59Speaker 8: think we've got sixty eight current like major construction projects
- 24:02Speaker 8: across it. Yeah, so it's we're very active.
- 24:05Speaker 2: Wow, how about it?
- 24:07Speaker 9: It's really it's a big company in this. I mean, yeah,
- 24:10Speaker 9: people think about you guys have to come to my path.
- 24:15Speaker 8: It's a beautiful space.
- 24:17Speaker 9: So what is your you know, what are your thoughts
- 24:18Speaker 9: for people who are saying that, you know, the tech
- 24:20Speaker 9: rally has run too far? You know, maybe we have
- 24:23Speaker 9: CAPEC spend that's just you know, bloated. There's so much
- 24:25Speaker 9: spending in this space. Is this a place to be
- 24:27Speaker 9: investing right now? When we think about AI and places
- 24:30Speaker 9: of that.
- 24:31Speaker 8: Regard, I think the long term trend around this is
- 24:35Speaker 8: going to be inevitable, right, I think it's certainly we're
- 24:36Speaker 8: creating durable value, not just for you know, kind of
- 24:39Speaker 8: the planet and all of our customers, but but for shareholders.
- 24:42Speaker 8: I think the the amount of investment in the space,
- 24:44Speaker 8: and like the numbers are candidly like eyewatering right now.
- 24:47Speaker 8: And so but a lot of that I think is
- 24:48Speaker 8: just capital accumulation rather than deployment. And you know, compared
- 24:52Speaker 8: to a lot of other markets in the real estate side,
- 24:55Speaker 8: it's actually a little hard to kind of overbuild just
- 24:58Speaker 8: because there's so many natural like limiters in terms of
- 25:01Speaker 8: the way we want to scale, from utility power availability,
- 25:04Speaker 8: to supply chain to you know kind of just the
- 25:07Speaker 8: amount of trades you need to be able to build
- 25:09Speaker 8: and operate these facilities. And so I think that that
- 25:12Speaker 8: helps kind of provide more rationality than you know, in
- 25:15Speaker 8: some some real estate markets where you know, you can
- 25:17Speaker 8: throw up a shell pretty easily, you can you can
- 25:19Speaker 8: kind of just like convert and overbuild. In this case,
- 25:22Speaker 8: it's a very long development cycle, and so I think
- 25:24Speaker 8: you'll you'll see kind of some self metering there.
- 25:26Speaker 2: Our thanks to John Lynn, chief business officer Equinics.
- 25:29Speaker 3: Coming up in the program, we're going to break down
- 25:31Speaker 3: the rising cost of food and how that's affecting the consumer.
- 25:33Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in
- 25:36Speaker 2: depth research and data on two thousand companies and one
- 25:38Speaker 2: hundred and thirty industries. You can access Bloomberg Intelligence via
- 25:41Speaker 2: b I go on the terminal. I'm Paul Sweeney and.
- 25:43Speaker 3: Am Alex Steele, and this is Bloomberg.
- 25:53Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch the program
- 25:57Speaker 1: live weekdays at ten a m. Eastern on app Cocklay
- 26:00Speaker 1: and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can
- 26:03Speaker 1: also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New
- 26:06Speaker 1: York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 26:11Speaker 2: We turned out to the restaurant industry this week. Guess
- 26:14Speaker 2: so was normal? Lindon I were joined by Michael Halen,
- 26:16Speaker 2: Bloomberg Intelligence senior restaurant and food service analysts.
- 26:18Speaker 3: He joined to discuss the rise and costs of food
- 26:21Speaker 3: and how that's affecting the consumer.
- 26:23Speaker 2: First asked Michael to break down his most recent research
- 26:25Speaker 2: on restaurant spending.
- 26:27Speaker 10: Restaurant space is unique. We were in a restaurant recession
- 26:30Speaker 10: last year. Higher prices, Yeah, higher prices really kind of
- 26:34Speaker 10: you know, the you know, the low income consumer kind
- 26:37Speaker 10: of pushed back against higher prices.
- 26:38Speaker 4: Right.
- 26:39Speaker 10: QUSR has been raising their prices since twenty twenty. The
- 26:42Speaker 10: rest of the restaurant industry has been raising prices since
- 26:44Speaker 10: twenty twenty one. So last year was kind of that
- 26:47Speaker 10: restaurant recession. This year, you know, we see you know,
- 26:51Speaker 10: higher income consumers with a better balance sheet. Right, Crypto's
- 26:55Speaker 10: up significantly. Home prices are still rising, right, and so
- 26:59Speaker 10: you know, for that reason, we think that this is
- 27:02Speaker 10: going to be a better year. And we still think
- 27:03Speaker 10: so in the data that we've seen and from a
- 27:06Speaker 10: lot of the CEOs that we've spoken to. The weakness
- 27:09Speaker 10: in February was broad based, and to me that's less concerning.
- 27:14Speaker 10: I would be more concerned if they said, listen, low
- 27:16Speaker 10: income consumer pulled back even harder, the middle income consumer
- 27:20Speaker 10: started to pull back harder, that would be more concerning
- 27:23Speaker 10: to me. Broad Based tells me that, well, it was
- 27:25Speaker 10: really cold. We got snow all over the country, including Sarasota, right,
- 27:30Speaker 10: and New Orleans. It was the coldest January in thirteen
- 27:35Speaker 10: years or so, right, and the flu was really bad.
- 27:38Speaker 10: So for me, it really seems that people were just
- 27:42Speaker 10: sick of the weather and sitting on the couch waiting
- 27:44Speaker 10: for things to open up. We have some weekly data
- 27:46Speaker 10: for early March, and data got better.
- 27:49Speaker 9: So what data are you looking at when it comes
- 27:51Speaker 9: to consumer health? I know you said there's some that
- 27:53Speaker 9: you don't really pay as much attention to.
- 27:55Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 27:55Speaker 10: For the restaurant stuff, we use black box intelligence. We
- 27:59Speaker 10: get very good industry level and sub segment level seems
- 28:02Speaker 10: source sales traffic and check data. When I'm looking at
- 28:06Speaker 10: the consumer, you know, it's kind of dated right now
- 28:08Speaker 10: because it comes out quarterly, But I'm looking very closely
- 28:10Speaker 10: at credit card balances and so credit card balances, credit
- 28:13Speaker 10: card delinquencies, autal on delinquencies. They are still rising, but
- 28:17Speaker 10: at a much lower slower pace than they were early
- 28:21Speaker 10: last year, so it's a rate of change improvement. We're
- 28:25Speaker 10: also looking at CPI declining, real income's rising, and savings
- 28:29Speaker 10: rates rising, right, and so to me, those are all
- 28:33Speaker 10: good things for the low income consumer, right, So yeah,
- 28:37Speaker 10: we're not so concerned about that that consumer sentiment data.
- 28:41Speaker 2: How about terraffs, How does that impact the average restaurant
- 28:44Speaker 2: if they're buying food and that type of stuff.
- 28:46Speaker 10: Yeah, Listen, if you're a mom and pop shop and
- 28:49Speaker 10: you're importing you know, Italian or Japanese items, stuff like that,
- 28:55Speaker 10: it could hurt.
- 28:55Speaker 4: Right.
- 28:56Speaker 10: For most our chains, they're sourcing a very large majority
- 29:00Speaker 10: of their products in the United States. You know, Chipotle
- 29:03Speaker 10: was one everyone was worried about their saying, it's gonna
- 29:05Speaker 10: be like thirty basis points impact to their food.
- 29:08Speaker 2: So the block prices aren't going to go crazy.
- 29:10Speaker 10: Yeah, it's gonna be like thirty basis points for the
- 29:12Speaker 10: Alvocado prices, right, And they've for years they've been you know,
- 29:15Speaker 10: expanding beyond Mexico in terms of sourcing. One of the
- 29:18Speaker 10: companies that we cover that has probably the most exposure
- 29:21Speaker 10: overseas is Darden. They said they actually import about twenty
- 29:25Speaker 10: percent of their items. Part of that is they have
- 29:28Speaker 10: an Italian chain, right, but also it's just cheaper for them,
- 29:32Speaker 10: and so they're working on sourcing domestically and in other
- 29:36Speaker 10: places to try to ease some of that pain. So
- 29:38Speaker 10: even though it's a twenty percent number, it can be
- 29:40Speaker 10: much lower than that, So the restaurants aren't going to
- 29:43Speaker 10: be impacted that harshly.
- 29:45Speaker 9: How are consumers adjusting to the price increases. Are people
- 29:48Speaker 9: just saying, Hey, I want to go out, I want
- 29:50Speaker 9: to eat, so I'm just going to pay more even
- 29:52Speaker 9: sell or are they a bit more resistant?
- 29:54Speaker 2: If so, witch groups, it's a case shaped recovery, right.
- 29:57Speaker 10: And so chains like Chilis, I mean, they just posted
- 30:01Speaker 10: a thirty percent comp in the United States over a
- 30:04Speaker 10: five percent comp. We've never seen that before for a
- 30:07Speaker 10: chain that's been around as long as But they're bringing
- 30:09Speaker 10: in younger consumers, wealthier consumers that are willing to spend, right.
- 30:14Speaker 10: And so the top slant of the K, people with money,
- 30:18Speaker 10: they're doing just fine, and they're still spending at restaurants, right.
- 30:20Speaker 10: It's the people on the bottom slant of the K.
- 30:22Speaker 10: It's these chains that are catering to low income consumers, right,
- 30:26Speaker 10: that are getting that pushback. Either they're you know, going
- 30:29Speaker 10: to restaurants less frequently, they're doing more shopping at the
- 30:31Speaker 10: grocery store, or and when they do go to the restaurants,
- 30:34Speaker 10: oftentimes they're ordering off the menu, or they're ordering less drinks, apptizers,
- 30:38Speaker 10: desserts and stuff like that.
- 30:40Speaker 2: Hey, Mike, how about labor real quick? Thirty seconds, bus boys, dishwashers,
- 30:44Speaker 2: migrant labor migrant labors cut off here is that can
- 30:46Speaker 2: be a problem for some of these restaurants.
- 30:48Speaker 10: Well, it's a concern for the restaurant and industry in general.
- 30:52Speaker 10: Most of our companies are compliant, they are right, and
- 30:55Speaker 10: so they're not really too worried about it.
- 30:57Speaker 2: Our thanks to Michael Halen, Bloomberg Intelligence scene restaurant and
- 31:00Speaker 2: food service analyst.
- 31:01Speaker 3: This week, Bloomberg Intelligence hosted its fourth Generative Artificial Intelligence
- 31:05Speaker 3: Conference and there were some great lineups in terms of
- 31:08Speaker 3: how you apply and mag jen AI for more.
- 31:11Speaker 2: Alex and I were joined by Julie Choice, CMO of
- 31:14Speaker 2: Sarah Bros. We first to ask Julie where she thinks
- 31:17Speaker 2: we are with the changing views of AI.
- 31:20Speaker 11: Well, I think that AI is really kind of hitting
- 31:23Speaker 11: the mainstream more. I think that you know, chatchipt surfaced
- 31:28Speaker 11: at the end of was that twenty two? I mean technically,
- 31:32Speaker 11: I think the first model came out in twenty twenty two,
- 31:35Speaker 11: and it's been almost two and a half years since then,
- 31:38Speaker 11: and chatchipt has found its way into so much of
- 31:42Speaker 11: our lives, and so people are more comfortable with AI, right,
- 31:45Speaker 11: and so now I think we're just shifting into okay,
- 31:49Speaker 11: AI can be a part of my life. But it's
- 31:52Speaker 11: still early days.
- 31:54Speaker 3: So where do you sit then, in the in the
- 31:56Speaker 3: pyramid for AI?
- 31:58Speaker 11: So we are Cerebras makes this beautiful chip which is
- 32:01Speaker 11: basically AI infrastructure. We are the equivalent of Nvidia, so
- 32:06Speaker 11: in video GPUs, it's just an alternative type of processor
- 32:11Speaker 11: for AI. So we are the underlying compute that's powering
- 32:15Speaker 11: the training and running of models like CHET GPT.
- 32:19Speaker 2: I guess one of the questions now is people are
- 32:21Speaker 2: trying to just get a better handle on what the
- 32:23Speaker 2: compute needs are going forward. Gensen Wong at Nvidia remains
- 32:28Speaker 2: extraordinary bullish about that, and he has been, you know,
- 32:31Speaker 2: the voice of AI for many investors for the past
- 32:35Speaker 2: couple of years. Where do you think we are in
- 32:36Speaker 2: that compute need?
- 32:37Speaker 11: Oh my goodness, I completely agree with Jensen Hang. I've
- 32:41Speaker 11: been following Jensen kind of unofficially as a mentor. I
- 32:45Speaker 11: find him to be an incredibly inspiring leader. I agree.
- 32:50Speaker 11: I think that the compute needs for AI are ever
- 32:53Speaker 11: increasing now with models like GPT four O which and
- 32:59Speaker 11: the whole one series. These are like these reasoning models. Right.
- 33:03Speaker 11: I'm here in New York to go to the generative
- 33:05Speaker 11: AI scaling event that Bloomberg is hosting, and it's all
- 33:09Speaker 11: about this like inference time. Compute. Inference time requires a
- 33:14Speaker 11: tremendous amount of compute, and so we're still just scratching
- 33:19Speaker 11: the surface of how much compute is really needed for
- 33:22Speaker 11: this extra level of intelligence.
- 33:24Speaker 3: And do you play in the inference and the LM
- 33:27Speaker 3: space like the training and the usage you do both?
- 33:30Speaker 4: Yes?
- 33:30Speaker 11: Okay, yes, so cerebversus in both training and inference.
- 33:34Speaker 3: What is has demand for your products changed at all
- 33:38Speaker 3: since deep Seed came out in terms of pricing or
- 33:40Speaker 3: in terms of demand.
- 33:42Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean deep Seak happened in January and it
- 33:45Speaker 11: was such a big moment for the industry and we
- 33:49Speaker 11: immediately within forty eight hours of the news that big day,
- 33:52Speaker 11: we added deep Seek to our catalog of models. And
- 33:55Speaker 11: so what we do is we offer Lama models, Deep
- 33:59Speaker 11: Seek models, and other kinds of models to the developer
- 34:02Speaker 11: community right in our cloud. And our differentiation from GPUs
- 34:07Speaker 11: is that we're like twenty to seventy times faster in
- 34:10Speaker 11: terms of like that response time when you put in
- 34:14Speaker 11: a query. Our responses are about twenty to seventy times
- 34:18Speaker 11: faster because of the architecture being bigger, So deep Seek
- 34:22Speaker 11: really created this moment of developers coming at us saying,
- 34:25Speaker 11: oh my god, you guys have the fastest deep Seek.
- 34:28Speaker 11: We want to you know, we want we want that,
- 34:30Speaker 11: we want to see what that can do. And that's
- 34:33Speaker 11: led to a lot of prototyping. But what we do
- 34:35Speaker 11: see is that when it comes to developers that are
- 34:38Speaker 11: building AI businesses, there's a lot more usage of Lama.
- 34:42Speaker 11: So Meta Lama is probably still the most popular open
- 34:46Speaker 11: source AI model that is downloaded at least from the
- 34:48Speaker 11: Cerebraus cloud. And then we have customers like Perplexity and
- 34:52Speaker 11: mistral Alpha Sense based here in New York that are
- 34:56Speaker 11: kind of serving their adapted Lama models as well as
- 34:59Speaker 11: their own custom models.
- 35:01Speaker 2: So the deep Seak issue for the industry was, Hey,
- 35:06Speaker 2: here's this Chinese company coming out with an AI solution
- 35:11Speaker 2: at a much lower cost. Is that good or bad
- 35:15Speaker 2: or neither good or bad for the AI evolution?
- 35:19Speaker 7: Oh?
- 35:19Speaker 11: I think it's very good because deep Seek was a
- 35:23Speaker 11: state of the art model when it came out. It's
- 35:26Speaker 11: still one of the best models in the world, especially
- 35:28Speaker 11: I think with their at V three. And what it
- 35:32Speaker 11: proves is that when you can open source this level
- 35:35Speaker 11: of intelligence, You're bringing down the cost to developers and
- 35:40Speaker 11: it increases developer creativity. And so one of the things
- 35:45Speaker 11: that Cerebras is super passionate about is providing developers with
- 35:48Speaker 11: the best models open source or custom you know, fastest
- 35:52Speaker 11: at the best price. And so we were just very
- 35:55Speaker 11: excited when Deepseak open sourced, and clearly like the developers
- 35:59Speaker 11: were very excited as well. It was definitely kind of
- 36:01Speaker 11: an inflection moment.
- 36:03Speaker 3: In terms of what you're most excited about right now, Like,
- 36:06Speaker 3: what's the coolest use case you've seen when it comes
- 36:09Speaker 3: to training and when it comes to in fronts.
- 36:11Speaker 11: Fantastic question. So for training, I'm going to bring up
- 36:14Speaker 11: a healthcare use case. So one of our favorite partners,
- 36:19Speaker 11: and you know, we shouldn't have favorites, but I really
- 36:22Speaker 11: appreciate the work that Mayo Clinic has done in Cerebras.
- 36:26Speaker 11: They have been able to train world leading foundation model
- 36:29Speaker 11: using genomic data, and the point of their genomic model
- 36:34Speaker 11: is to help patients of rheumatoid arthritis. I have a
- 36:38Speaker 11: family member who's been struggling with this terrible disease for
- 36:41Speaker 11: a decade, and this AI model can help her find
- 36:45Speaker 11: the medicine that actually works much more quickly. I didn't
- 36:49Speaker 11: realize that actually rheumatoid arthritis generally forty percent fail rate
- 36:55Speaker 11: in terms of aligning the right medicine to the patient.
- 36:58Speaker 11: And so really proud of the work that the mail
- 37:01Speaker 11: Clinic team has done in partnership with Cerebris, training that
- 37:05Speaker 11: model super fast on our chip, releasing it in probably
- 37:08Speaker 11: less than nine months of development time. Wow on the
- 37:11Speaker 11: training side. On the inference side, I'm very excited to
- 37:14Speaker 11: be working with companies like Perplexity as well as Mistral.
- 37:18Speaker 11: These are some very very AI forward companies leading the
- 37:22Speaker 11: way in terms of disruptive search experiences for consumers and
- 37:27Speaker 11: amazing chat assistance, especially in Europe, and we're powering their
- 37:32Speaker 11: super fast results.
- 37:34Speaker 2: Your company, are you seeing any impacts of just the
- 37:37Speaker 2: uncertainty surrounding how this TWERFF policy will evolve? Is it
- 37:41Speaker 2: and your customers saying, you know, we're just going to
- 37:43Speaker 2: wait a little bit before we place an order or
- 37:44Speaker 2: something like that.
- 37:45Speaker 11: No, Actually, it's really all systems go Okay. Our customers
- 37:49Speaker 11: want the fastest inference speeds, they want the smartest models
- 37:52Speaker 11: in their applications. We're not waiting to find out. There's
- 37:56Speaker 11: no time to wait. We have to deliver the fastest
- 37:59Speaker 11: compute to the best Custos commers in the world.
- 38:01Speaker 3: Our thanks to Julie Choi, CMO of Sarah Bross.
- 38:04Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
- 38:09Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday,
- 38:13Speaker 1: ten am to noon Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the
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- 38:24Speaker 1: always on the Bloomberg terminal