Trump's TSMC Investment, Hulu Oscar Glitches
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This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.

Live from New York, I'm Romain Bostic.

And I'm Jackie DeVallos in Washington. This is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up, Trump and TSMC are expected to announce a $100 billion investment in the U.S. That's according to reports. Plus, we'll dig into the potential impact of the U.S. tariffs on the tech sector, especially chips, as that deadline approaches. And Enora dominates the 2025 Oscars while Disney's Hulu takes a hit.

crashing during the ceremony. We'll have all the details, but first let's get a check on those markets. What are you seeing Romain? - There's a lot to check here. Right now you're looking at a market that has really been on a roller coaster ride. The intraday chart of the NASDAQ 100, really indicative of that.

We came into this morning with an expectation of a continuation of that tech rebound off of that strong rally on Friday. But that got kneecapped about 30 minutes into the session. Some economic data showing further contraction in the manufacturing sector here in the United States, combined with an increase in the price index here. Inflationary pressure is rearing their head.

But then guess what? A little bit of a reprieve came in just around, a little bit around 10.30 here in New York City. Headlines from the Wall Street Journal saying that the Trump administration does plan to announce further investments in the chip space here in the United States. A

a $100 billion commitment from TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor, over the next four years. This may not look like much on your screen, but you did see a rebound in tech stocks. The 1% drop they were seeing in TSM, they were down about 3% earlier in the session. The rest, though, of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index right now straddling the line, Jackie, between gains and losses.

Let's get more on that TSMC deal with Bloomberg's Mike Shepard, who's joining us now. Mike, what do we know about this potential deal? Well, we've been able to confirm here what The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier, that TSMC will announce at 1.30 p.m. with Donald Trump in the White House plans for up to $100 billion of investment in the U.S. And what we know from beforehand from our coverage of TSMC and the big push to expand chips manufacturing here in the U.S.,

There were already plans by the company for up to $65 billion in investment, supported by some money from the Biden-era CHIPS Act programs. But the idea would be to build some plants in Arizona. They already have one that was actually lured -- TSMC was lured by Trump

to Arizona back in 2020. That plant is now up and running. Its yields are even exceeding what we typically see from plants by TSMC back home in Taiwan. And there are plans for as many as three more plants as well.

So, Mike, give us a sense here, though. When we talk about these dollar commitments, and we've seen a lot of these commitments, what's the follow-through? I mean, there was a story on the Bloomberg terminal over the last 48 hours saying that Intel is having trouble getting some of its chip plants up and running in the timeframe that it originally set out. How much progress has TSMC made so far on those previous commitments?

Well, one of the biggest differences between TSMC and Intel is really the customer base. And Intel has struggled to find customers that would be able to sustain a plan of the scale of the one in Ohio that you just mentioned. And TSMC, on the other hand, it is...

the world's leading maker of artificial intelligence to chips and the demand for that is insatiable as we know uh... they are the leading foundry for invidia in invidia we just saw the earnings last week uh... jensen wong the ceo of invidia uh... looking ahead to really uh... you know demand that is hard to meet for their products blackwell and others

as this capex that we're seeing globally going into artificial intelligence really seems to be on course to continue unabated. And this actually fits in with Donald Trump's own vision for artificial intelligence. He wants to make sure that the U.S. remains dominant in this area. And even by having a foreign flagged and owned company like TSMC,

in the U.S. expanding, that does fit his vision, the one he articulated before the election, of having companies from abroad invest in the United States. All right, Mike Shepard, our man in D.C. there, as we await that press conference, that announcement by President Donald Trump, scheduled for 1.30 p.m. out of

Washington. We should point out the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has been on a ride, down 1%, up a couple of percent, now straddling the line between gains and losses. No help from NVIDIA, no help from TSMC, but you are seeing a lot of the other names rally here into that session. Lam Research, Lattice, and Intel among your big gainers. Let's bring Fiona Sincotta into the conversation, Citi Index Senior Analyst, to talk a little bit more about the tech trade. And Fiona, I am curious about

where sort of the fuel is going to come for the next leg of this, I guess we can call it chip slash AI trade. Where's that come from? Yeah, it's a really good point because, you know, it's been a difficult start to 2025. You know, we've seen that reflected in share prices, which across the board have struggled since the start.

So, you know, I think we're very much getting to this stage where the markets are looking, as you correctly pointed out, that next catalyst. But I think it's also worth bearing in mind that there are several clouds that are just looming over the sector. And I think one of those clouds that we're waiting for a bit more clarity on is what Trump's intending to do as far as export bans are concerned. You know, there are some concerns.

sort of reports that potentially we could see more export bans to China coming into place potentially this week. I think once we start to get a bit of a clearer picture of how the Trump administration is looking to position itself as far as the chip sector is concerned, I think that could help at least stem concerns.

that have been weighing on the sector. And I think the other thing is that we just also need to get a little bit more clarity, I think, over the outlook for sort of reduced costs as far

as AI is concerned. Obviously, we've had earnings season. We've learned a lot. We know that spending is still high. But I think the whole deep-seek disruption just sowed a seed of doubt, which I don't feel has been removed yet. So I think we just need a little bit more clarification as to what the outlook is as far as being able to reduce spending on AI and CapEx spending is concerned.

Fiona, to your point about what Trump's policies mean for the semiconductor sector, there is some concern that tariffs or other policies could eventually lead to price increases in this space. There's been some debate about how much of an effect that would actually have on companies' abilities to offer them at a price that's still appealing to their customers. Where do you land on that? Is that something that you're watching as a potential detractor to the space going forward?

Yes, you know, I think that's a really good point. We do obviously need to consider when we're talking about trade tariffs, we also need to consider about what that means for pricing and potential inflationary pressures that that might cause in those pricing. And obviously, you know, there are going to be

ceilings and limits that you know prices may potentially reach where customers say well actually at that level it's too high we're going to rain in our orders so I think that's something that we need to watch very carefully but obviously on the back of that we also know that there is obviously a huge importance based on tech based on AI based on chips and so you know that they are very much continue to be the future of

of sort of where the world is going. So we need to keep that in mind when we think about at what level are companies going to say that's too far, that's too high for us right now. So whilst we will be keeping an eye on it, I don't think it's necessarily right now at a point which is causing concern, but it potentially could do in the future if we find that those tariffs do have inflationary impacts. Are you comfortable though, Fiona, when you look at the valuations in the market for some of these names,

that the market has bid up. Are you comfortable with those valuations given what you just said? Because we've obviously had a very strong run-up. Now, we've also had a pullback since the start of the year. So I think that pullback has actually meant showing that the market is pricing in those concerns. I do think that we need to have more clarity before we're going to see any further...

increases in valuations before we see any strong rally higher. Longer term, I'm still bullish on the sector. I think short term, there is a potential for there to be more choppiness as we wait for those points to be clarified. That's Citi Index Senior Analyst Fiona Sincotta. Thanks so much for joining us.

President Trump's sweeping tariffs is set to take effect tomorrow, placing new 25% levies on Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on China. For more on the global tariffs impact, Christine McDaniel, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, joins us now. Christine, we've heard a lot about tariffs over the last couple weeks. Talk to us about the scope and scale of these compared to what's been discussed in the past.

So these are much larger than what has been discussed in the past, not only in terms of magnitude of the terrorists, but also in terms of the amount of trade that it will affect. So, you know, the North American economy is a powerhouse, and the U.S. is at the center of that. It's a big...

you know, a big part of it. It's a big producer. It's a big consumer. We have products going back and forth across the border, you know, several times before it ends in a finished product. You know, just looking at the tech and chip sector alone, just doing some back of the envelope,

this morning, we're talking about $53 billion in tariffs paid. So the U.S. imports from Canada, about $43 billion worth in tech and chips. And for Mexico, it's about $168 billion. So 25% of that, over $50 billion in tariffs. And that's going to come out

of out of the North American economy. And so whether it's Mexico, U.S., or Canada, depending on different market factors, but it's definitely not going to lower prices for U.S. consumers. And so it's just a matter of how much it will raise prices. And then overall, just looking at the entire North American economy,

trading relationship, we're looking at $227 billion in tariffs. So, yeah, these are not small numbers. Yeah. Well, let's break it down here into some of the industry-specific areas. We focused a lot on this network, on kind of the bigger areas like automotives. Obviously, commodities are going to be impacted as well. But in the area of technology, are there sort of direct tariffs that we should be looking at that could actually impact technology products that are crossing the borders?

Yes, I mean, there's so many. I mean, so look at the raw materials, you know, coming from Canada, the component production that happens in some in Canada, a lot in Mexico, the assembly, testing and packaging that happens largely in Mexico, you know, that will all really hurt the pricing power of U.S. sellers, U.S. businesses here.

And it will either eat into their profit margins or they'll pass it on to U.S. consumers and or the Canadians and Mexicans will take a hit. And we're looking at a sector where there's been, what, like half a trillion to a trillion dollars of investment announced just in the U.S. and Europe.

recently. So, you know, the tariffs will make it's going to be harder to get a good bang for the buck with these tariffs. Yeah. And of course, for a lot of folks, they're going to start to see those tariffs kick in overnight tonight. March 4th, of course, is the deadline, at least for those big ones on

Mexico and Canada, additional tariffs down the road, and of course these reciprocal tariffs, Christine, that the president has also spoken about here. You've been on the inside. I mean, you know what goes on inside the Trade Rep's office. You know what goes inside the Department of Commerce. You know what goes on inside the ITC. Are those mechanisms for debate and, more importantly, for negotiation still there, or is this pretty much a negotiating process that begins and ends with Trump himself?

Yeah, this is a very different USTR commerce experience, you know, than what was under George W. Bush administration. The

There is, of course, interagency analysis and meetings that happen. But in terms of to what extent that analysis really feeds into and can affect the president's decision-making is something else. I remember in the Bush administration, we had a number of interagency meetings where we always were asked, what would be the national economic effect? Is this in the national economic interest?

And, you know, and the White House was always interested in the downstream effects. I mean, very seriously interested. And that would often come into be a pretty big part of their decision making. You know, you don't necessarily see that with this current administration.

But it's still early days. I mean, there's still several hours of the day left. And, you know, Commerce Secretary Letnick over the weekend said the situation is fluid, that they feel apparently that Canada and Mexico have made a lot of progress on the border, and they're very happy they've had the lowest crossing ever on the border ever.

But they're still concerned, you know, if fentanyl continues to come into the country. So maybe it won't be 25 percent. Maybe it will be something less. So everybody's on a sort of a wait and see approach, which apparently is, you know, what they like people to be in that position. Well, the clock is ticking right now. Christine McDaniel over at the Mercatus Center, a long career, of course, in Washington. As we now turn our attention to another part of the market that is affected by what's going on in Washington, and that is cryptocurrencies.

Over the weekend, the president turned to Truth Social to announce his plans for a strategic crypto reserve, which would include lesser-known digital assets like XRP and Solana. The news ignited an immediate crypto rally, a rally that has pared back quite a bit over the last few hours here. Valdana Hyer joining us right now, who covers crypto for us here at Bloomberg. We have seen a bit of a turnaround in some of these coins, Valdana. We should point out some of the crypto stocks, like Marathon.com,

and a few others, a micro strategy as well, still in the green. How much stock can we put in that announcement that Trump made over the weekend about this cryptocurrency reserve, as well as this big crypto summit that's coming up on Friday at the White House? I think it's a really good question. And the key thing to keep in mind is that we just are lacking a ton of details. So we had

the social media announcement over the weekend that mentioned these, maybe we can call them lesser known coins. And later the president tweeted again to say that Bitcoin and Ether of course are going to be included as well.

I think it's very, it's not unsurprising to see the initial enthusiasm leading to a rally in prices and then sort of the comeback. It's something we've seen in cryptocurrencies in the past couple weeks, in the past couple months. It's sort of historically something that's been part of the cryptocurrency market where you see the initial euphoria and then a

a drawdown following, you know, maybe once things settle down a little bit and people start to look at the announcement a bit more skeptically. But I do think that we definitely need to just have much more information on the strategic crypto reserve before we can make any solid proclamations.

Speaking of skepticism, Vildana, here in Washington, some Republican lawmakers who are allies of Trump have actually pushed back on the notion of using taxpayer dollars to fund risky assets like crypto. So this idea of a crypto reserve, what would that look like in practice? I know it's still a bit theoretical, but could you kind of break that down for us a bit? Right. That's one of the key considerations, I think. And if we think back to

to early January when the initial announcement about the strategic reserve was made. I think the administration had said something like it would be funded with seizures, lawful seizures, so whenever there's an FBI raid, for example, or something along those lines, because the government does have crypto holdings from such activities and such actions. So I think the initial idea was that

part of that would be coming from things like that, but we just don't know. And I think some of the skepticism that we've seen in the wake of this weekend's announcement does have to deal with that, where people are questioning where actually would the funding be coming from.

That's Bloomberg's Madonna Hallrich. Thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, a Texas startup lands its spacecraft on the moon. We'll discuss what this means for the future of space exploration and the U.S. position in the space race. This is Bloomberg.

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We're actually on a pretty wild ride today as well. That was after a private company called Firefly Aerospace successfully landed its first robotic spacecraft on the moon. That was over the weekend, a partnership with NASA that had taken it on its journey on January 15th. The spacecraft carrying 10 tools and experiments built by NASA, including a drill that would bury itself into the lunar soil to test the temperature there. You can see some of the other stocks here.

related to Firefly moving on that news, including Rocket Lab and AST Space Mobile. Lauren Grush joining us right now to talk a little bit more about what we learned. And this was pretty momentous. Only the second time, I believe, in history we've had a commercial spacecraft successfully touch down on the moon. Of course, Lunar, one of the stocks we showed there, Intuitive Machines, did it, I think, sometime back last year here. What was the significance of what happened over the weekend, specifically when it came to Firefly, Lauren?

Right. Well, you just explained it right there. This is only the second time a commercial company has landed a vehicle intact on the lunar surface. But something special about Firefly's landing is they're kind of hailing it as the first fully successful landing because even though Intuitive Machines did land their lander for the first time last year, unfortunately, that lander did tip over when it reached the surface. It was coming in too fast. And so it had to end its mission prematurely. But with Firefly's

It looks like they stuck the landing upright, and they even got some really great pictures from the lander right as soon as they made it to the surface. So from all we've seen so far, it looks like a pretty successful mission through and through. Lauren, how much room is there for startups that are operating in the space race to really get in here? Because a lot of the news that we hear is around SpaceX.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this specific mission, Blue Ghost, was part of an overall NASA effort to help fund private and public companies to develop lunar landers to reach the surface of the moon. So this is something that NASA really wants, a very diverse ecosystem of commercial companies. And so they've been partially funding landers to transport instruments and experiments and tools to the lunar surface to help learn

more about the moon as part of its ongoing efforts to eventually land humans on the surface of the moon. So this is what NASA wants. They want more companies than just SpaceX, you know, getting all of the headlines. And so far it looks like their efforts, while they've had some success, are starting to have more success as well. That's Bloomberg's Lauren Gresh. Thanks for joining us. What are you looking at, Romain? All right, Jackie, time for Talking Tech. And first up, we're going to take a look at BYD.

the company looking to raise as much as 5.2 billion dollars in a primary placement according to terms seen by bloomberg the chinese automaker offered 118 million shares at 333 to 345 hong kong dollars each that's a discount

of almost 8.4% to Monday's closing price in Hong Kong. Plus, Baidu planning to raise $1.4 billion with an offering of offshore bond sales. According to sources, the deal may price as soon as Wednesday and would be the first bond offering for China's leading search engine since 2021. The deal also comes before the company must repay a $600 million security that's due on April 7th.

And finally, Chinese AI startup Zipu has raised more than $140 million as interest in domestic AI rises following DeepSeek's meteoric growth. The financing round led by local government-backed firms and joins existing backers Alibaba and Tencent. Zipu was last valued at about $3 billion during its last funding round in May 2024. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Caroline Hyde and Ed Lowe are off. I'm Romain Bostic in New York.

And I'm Jackie Duvallis in Washington. Let's get a quick check on markets which have been oscillating all day long. Jackie, moving partly on big news out of Washington, moving partly on the back of economic data, and of course moving partly on the back of

of what we talked about on Friday, which was that recheck of valuations, the dip buyers coming in, trying to boost tech stocks. That trade fading a little bit here on this Monday morning. The NVIDIA leading the charge down, down about 5% here on the day. But when you take a look at the rest of the MAG7, a bit of a mixed bag.

You are seeing people come back into Tesla. You did see a bid earlier in the day into Meta. A lot of people taking a look at that big drop in valuations that we would have seen over the past few days and weeks. A MAG-7 as a whole, Jackie, still in correction territory. Maybe that provides a dip buying moment for some investors, but for others, maybe it's just stay on the sidelines.

Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, could get involved with another social media platform. Ohanian is joining billionaire Frank McCourt's bid to buy TikTok's U.S. operations as a strategic advisor. That's according to reports from Reuters. Now TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is experiencing a reversal of fortunes. That's despite facing a possible ban of TikTok in the U.S. The Chinese social media company is now valued at more than $400 million.

billion dollars. Three major investors marked up the company's value. For more on this, Mitchell Green, founder and managing partner of Lead Edge Capital, joins us now. You're an investor in ByteDance. Help us understand what this $400 billion investment really means. Is this coming from ByteDance's other ventures or is this just really a TikTok story?

Jackie, thanks so much for having me on. Appreciate it. I think it's the valuations that people are holding these companies at. And remember, unlike people, you know, the general public,

The people valuing these companies have access to the company financials. And I'm not going to sit and talk about the financials about, you know, private company on TV. However, the fundamentals, you know, fundamentals of the business are extremely strong. And I think this is actually more of a Chinese story supporting the fundamentals than a U.S. TikTok story. You know, look, in our model, we actually zero out

the U.S. business and make it worth nothing. And we've done that over the last year or so because there's so much uncertainty with what's going on. You can make work very well, value in the business in the U.S. is zero. Well, that's what I'm curious about here, Mitchell, because when we talk about this idea, particularly this run-up we've seen in a lot of the other stocks in China, on this idea that there is not just homegrown in terms of the supply of what's going on to this market, but the idea that the demand itself

will also be home-grown. In your mock, you think that's enough to justify the run-up that we've seen in some of these names?

The Chinese business is gigantic. Keep in mind, these valuations you're seeing are as of 12/31. A lot of the Chinese run-up has come on in the last month, six weeks. And so, I actually—so public comparables, you know, if you were looking at Tencent or Alibaba, which are probably the two best comps, those stocks have actually done very well over the last 45 days. And so that wouldn't actually—that run-up, it hasn't even been factored into that $400 billion in price.

Talk to us about where this leaves ByteDance in this broader array of tech companies that are trying to notch a lead in generative AI. Where does this leave ByteDance and could 2025 be the year that China really makes a dent compared to some of the AI giants we've seen as of late out of Silicon Valley?

I wouldn't bet against China. They were some of the foremost innovators around e-commerce. So if you look at companies like Alibaba or PDD, Pinduoduo or Tencent in the gaming space, some of the best innovations around e-commerce have come out of China.

I would, if you read a lot of government Chinese policy around what they're trying to do, around whether it's chips, semiconductors, you know, rare earths,

I would expect that they're going to make a serious play in AI, whether DeepSeq is that one or is it some other one. I think DeepSeq does show, though, that there will be a lot of innovation, not only by Chinese companies, but American companies as well, around AI and the software and using software to make AI much more powerful and cheaper. I still believe that.

AI today is massively hyped and will under-deliver in the near term. But over the next 10, 20 years, it will massively like...

you know over delivered what people think you know people always overestimate the near term and underestimate the long term when it comes to technological change i think you're going to see the same thing here and you know i joke in 1997 you could build a cost you 50 million dollars from sun microsystems to build a website you can build the same website today you and i for 10 bucks for 10 dollars with our credit card the same thing is going to happen with ai and so i think we are in the really early innings and i would expect to see chinese companies

you know, really, you know, drive to the, try to drive to the forefront of that, just as American companies are going to as well. Mitchell, obviously here in Washington, we're seeing President Trump ratchet up those tensions with Beijing via tariffs. Chip exports are also part of the uncertainty there. How will the U.S. potentially kneecap China's ability to gain ground? TikTok has been an interesting political story as well.

How are you thinking about the political risks around the company? I know you said you're zeroing it out in your model, but do you think at all that that TikTok story is going to weigh on the ByteDance prospects going forward?

I am not a political strategist. I assure you if you're asking me about what to do for political strategy, you should probably do the opposite of anything that I would say. Again, we value the U.S. business at nothing because of so much uncertainty.

What I will say is if you were to go back and look what happened on the weekend that they shut it down, they clearly shut it down, the Chinese did, because they were going to be in infringement with a bunch of service providers who then take legal risks, so they need to shut it down. Both sides of the aisle in Washington came running to try to keep it open.

So you appear, if you look from the outside, that both parties in Washington want to keep this app around for, I don't know, probably a host of reasons. And so...

I think we just have to watch and see what happens. But I don't have any. Frankly, the fact that you're in Washington and a journalist, you probably have more opinions and insight into the political strategy of Washington. But your opinion, though, as an investor matters in this as well, even if you don't necessarily know all the ins and outs of Washington. Because I am curious, Mitchell, about just this idea of

of whatever economic or financial relationship the US and China will have in a formal capacity. And if that is a thing of the past to the point where you have to start looking at Chinese businesses in the US as basically being worth nothing and maybe the flip side of that for US businesses in China, I mean, when do you get to the point where you feel comfortable in making that call?

Well, we invested in a Chinese company right over the last year as we bought White Dance stock. And so we just don't need the math to work, given how well the business is doing in China. That being said, I suspect this is all going to get tied up, whether it's tariffs, TikTok. I'm sure this is all on the table.

the relevant parties are negotiated and it's all in a bucket and a lot of this is intertwined. Again, I have no unique insight into that. All I know is that when we were buying ByteDance, we did not need to put any value in the U.S. business because of how cheap we were able to buy the overall business related to it. And that's more just about

I just don't know if the app's going to stay on or not. Now, what happened six weeks ago would lead me to believe more that some sort of deal will happen.

What that deal looks like is, your guess is as good as mine. I suspect there will be, if some deal does happen, I think one thing that people don't remember here is that roughly 60-ish percent of the company is owned by...

you know, non-Chinese investors and 40% is owned by Chinese people. So just some sort of deal, spit it out, and that 40% becomes slightly less, your guess is fine.

I would expect if some sort of deal happens, that it will be large U.S. strategics that are investors, the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, versus an individual investor group, just given the quantum of dollars that we're talking here. This is a very valuable week. All right, Mitchell, we have to leave it there. Mitchell Green, managing partner for LeadEdge Capital.

All right, coming up here, we're going to continue our focus on tech and with a specific focus on AI and that HP deal that we learned about just last week about them buying the AI startup Humane. It's raising a lot of questions about whether the two companies are a good fit. That conversation up next right here on Bloomberg Technology.

I'm Alpine skier Michaela Schifrin. I've won the most World Cup ski races in history. But what does success mean to me? Success means discipline. It's teamwork. It's the drive and passion inside of us that comes before all recognition. And it's why Stiefel is one of the fastest growing global wealth management firms in the country. If you're looking for success, surround yourself with the people who will get you there.

At Stiefel, we invest everything into our advisors so they can invest everything into their clients. That means direct access to one of the industry's largest equity research franchises and a leading middle market investment bank. And it's why Stiefel has won the J.D. Power Award for Employee Advisor Satisfaction two years in a row.

If you're an advisor or investor, choose Stiefel. Where success meets success. Stiefel Nicholas & Company, Inc. Member SIPC and NYSE. For J.D. Power 2024 award information, visit jdpower.com slash awards. Compensation provided for using, not obtaining the award.

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One of the key strategies of the company is really about integrating AI into all of our products so customers can experience AI at the edge. And Humane has key technologies that will allow us to accelerate that development. The CEO of HP Inc. there talking about his company's deal to acquire AI startup Humane.

how it's a way for the company to help develop its own AI ambitions. That was the promise, at least. For now, though, it seems more like IT troubleshooting, which has some wondering if HP really is a good fit for the surviving employees of Humane. That's the topic of today's Tech In-Depth Newsletter.

And Bloomberg Senior Tech Editor Dana Woolman joins us right now to talk a little bit more about that. This was kind of a curious acquisition. We all kind of remember Humane. It's that little AI pin. A lot of hype around it. The reviews of it weren't so much. HP managed to pick this thing up for, what, $100 million. What exactly are they going to do with this?

So HP has said that it wants to incorporate AI into more of its products and specifically have that AI process locally instead of the cloud and has cited benefits ranging from the cost, the security benefits, and just the general efficiency. And so you're going to, I imagine, see AI working in the background on products that include computers, even printers.

And there is some precedent for this in the industry, just that AI is already used in other consumer products to fine-tune things that we might consider boring and maybe not so glamorous. Think TV settings, settings on your TV that you wouldn't normally want to dig into or fiddle with. Yeah, it's impossible. I don't know how Jackie feels about that.

Dana, well this is an interesting newsletter because it really highlights just the incredible tech talent. Former Apple employees that are now at Humane and could potentially bring some new hardware into the AI space that perhaps, you know, obviously didn't work out in the Humane context. But talk to us about what this reveals about how HP plans to really take on hardware ambitions going forward.

So there are no indications that HP wants to build any AI-specific hardware the way Humane was dreaming of, but it's looking to work AI into some of its existing kinds of products. And even before this acquisition, Humane had pivoted to developing an AI software platform, kind of what I would describe as

the equivalent of a smart home platform, except here we're not talking about the smart home or consumer products. We're talking about a mix of both consumer and enterprise products, but really the underpinning software meant to power all of these products. And as Romain hinted at in the intro, it is sort of an odd coupling. HP is known for taking a very conservative approach to its products.

And Humane, bless them if anything, was ambitious and had some delightfully weird ideas. They clearly didn't work out, but you cannot call Humane conservative, certainly.

That's Bloomberg's Dana Wollman. Thanks so much for joining us. You can subscribe to Bloomberg's tech in-depth newsletter for more analysis and scoops about the business of technology from Bloomberg's journalists around the world. But as we get into the potential impacts of tariffs on the tech sector and fintech sector with Bruce Vaughn,

Van Son of Citizens Financial, CEO. Bruce, we were just talking about Humane. That's coming out of HP. You know, they're a hardware manufacturer. And right now, a huge question is just what impact tariffs are going to have on those that have this kind of exposure. You're at the technology conference right now in San Francisco. What vibe are you getting about potential concerns and uncertainty this leaves for tech?

Yeah, I would say that there's a lot of optimism broadly emanating from the conference. And so we see some great innovation and companies making great strides. And I would say the tariff issue is out there, but it's not top of mind. So there's been, I think, a big...

Big backlog in terms of VC owners getting capital back to their investors. And so we're all waiting for the IPO calendar to finally break through and that log jam to break. And hopefully we'll see deals start to pick up as the year goes by, maybe led by a couple big ones in the middle of the year.

How confident are you in that, Bruce? I mean, we came into this year with a lot of optimism that market conditions would be favorable for a lot of these private companies to finally reach the public market. Obviously, a lot has gone on in the last few weeks that have maybe changed that thesis, if you will. What gives you the confidence that by the time we get over the next few months, conditions will be ripe for that?

Yeah, I'd say more broadly than just the tech sector, but the rollout of the new Trump administration policies is causing a fair amount of uncertainty, particularly around the tariffs. But there's also some real positives to come, particularly around regulatory policy implementation, around tax and fiscal policy implementation once legislation is passed.

So I think this uncertainty will start to lift as we go through the year. And then that kind of natural dynamic around needing liquidity and the deal calendar picking up will start to manifest itself as we get to the middle of the year and then continue to pick up through the second half of the year.

Bruce, let's talk about one of those potential tailwinds coming out of the regulatory space. The CFPB being gutted by Elon Musk's Doge could be a boon for the fintech sector. We heard from the Klarna CEO just last month that he was optimistic this could lead to some positives for the field. What are you seeing? How could we see this play out? More startups coming back in? Expansion?

I think it's still early days to see exactly what it means. Certainly, the CFPB was a very strong regulator and probably more tilted to consumers and focused on kind of controlling what took place in both the banking sector and near banking sector. So, I think having a change there and new leadership there

will naturally be positive for banks and for fintech sector. But it's still early days and I think one of the things that we are focused on is what happens to the supervisory responsibilities on the consumer that still remain with the agencies. We've been doubled up between the CFPB and the agencies

in terms of supervision and so that needs to be rationalized so a lot to play out on that front but yes uh... i think fintech sir uh... kind of looking forward to seeing how this uh... plays out harper's gotta leave it therefore too short of a conversation bruce fans on citizens financial c_e_o_ and chairman there are well hollywood just held its annual oscars awards and if you tried to tune into the streaming platform hulu

Well, you might have had some trouble. Hulu turning out to be the biggest loser of the night as the streaming service experienced technical glitches at the start and throughout, crashes and locked out customers. Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw joins us right now to talk a little bit more about what exactly happened. And this isn't the first time. And we've had big events that were put on streaming that, for whatever reason, the streaming services just couldn't handle. Was it just too many people trying to get on at the same time?

Look, this is the reason that when you're talking about sporting events or live events, they end up going with broadcasters because they are reliable. They know they're going to work.

There seem to be a couple of different issues with Hulu. There was some crashing, but then also the program sort of ended early sometimes when you have things that run long on streaming services. They sort of like default to ending. I didn't have it happen to me last night because I was watching on YouTube TV, but I have had it happen to me, I think, with an event on Netflix before. And look, streaming is just, you know, as...

Silly or basic as it sounds, live events are a new frontier for streaming, and there are going to be kinks to be worked out for the next few years. Remember, this is the first time that Hulu had ever shown the Oscars. It seems crazy to think that. They should have been doing it for the last few years. But Disney has a couple years ahead of it to try to work out the kinks. So what comes next, though? I mean, we talk about... I mean, Disney, I think, has this contract through 2028 to continue airing the Academy Awards. And with the idea that...

I would assume whatever new contract is struck is probably going to be much more streaming focus. So is that enough time to sort of work out the kinks?

Yeah, I think it's plenty of time to work it out. I mean, you look at Netflix, even from Mike Tyson, Jake Paul to NFL Christmas Day, not to say that they've completely figured out what they're doing, but they didn't have the same problems. I think most of these companies, it only takes a year or two. We don't have constant problems with this. Peacock

NFL playoff game didn't have huge problems. There may always be some issues if there are just too many people trying to watch. But yeah, Disney has the rights through 28. I still think they're the favorite to keep it. But the Academy is definitely exploring its options in the next few months. And maybe this will make them want to go with a more reliable streaming partner.

Yeah, well, for what it's worth, Lucas, for those of us who did watch it on regular platforms here, it was actually entertaining. I mean, Conan had some nice singers there, and I think some of the winners and losers were a surprise to a lot of folks. I'm still upset Demi Moore didn't finally get her flowers. Lucas, I'm going to have to leave it there. Lucas Shaw, who covers all things Hollywood for us out there on the West Coast here at Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg Technology. Caroline Hyde will be back at some point, and so too will be Ed Ludlow. I'm Romain Bostic. Please don't forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the Bloomberg Terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. This is Bloomberg. ♪

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