US Discusses Curbing AI Chips | Bloomberg Technology Full Show 10/15/2024
From the hardware, innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow. Live from san francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology tighter chip controls. Bloomberg reports the US is reviewing caps on chip sales to the Middle East from companies like India.
Meanwhile, dell says it's ready to ship servers with Nvidia's Blackwell AI accelerators assign production of the chips back on track. We speak to a key executive and days after Tesla wowed crowds with its Optimus AI robots, we now know they were remotely operated by humans after all. We start with news that could have a major impact US A.I.
chip manufacturers, including NVIDIA. Sources tell Bloomberg News that the Biden administration and officials have discussed capping sales of advanced A.I. chips to certain countries, the sources add. Officials are specifically focused on Persian Gulf countries that have shown a growing interest in AI datacenters. Looking at the markets, these are the
names that are impacted in video AMD Intel. It's worth noting in that reaction that a part of the declines that if you're just joining up have accelerated in the last 30 minutes is a really ugly earnings print from ASML, which we'll get to momentarily. Bloomberg's Ian King joins us in San Francisco. Okay, so the US is looking at some of these Middle East nations because we know they're throwing a lot of money behind AI. Previously US officials were looking at China and capping export of A.I.
chips to them. What do we know about this latest initiative about blocking access to the accelerators? Yeah, I mean, this is obviously the key choke point. The one thing that Washington can do to really control what happens, who gets what capabilities. The concern is, as you said, about China, but what will the Middle East do in terms of allowing access to these capabilities to China as on a remote basis, All kinds of considerations, all kinds of concerns. We've used export controls up until now. Now we're looking at perhaps a more broader blanket approach for our audience and Bloomberg Technology. Sometimes they struggle to understand what it is the US is trying to prevent.
And accelerator is a high performance chip and it goes into a data center. How is it that any government can say to a company, okay, we cannot allow you to sell your best thing to any market? That's basically what they're trying to do. Right. That's exactly it. It's trying to basically place a cap on the capabilities of a country or a company and stopping them from having the ability to develop an advanced AI model, which, as we know, can have all kinds of capabilities. And once it's out there in the wild, who
knows what happens with it. Okay. Let's get to the breaking news of the last 30 minutes. ASML, which is Europe's most valuable company, but also a leading maker of chip equipment. Chip making equipment has given us earnings and a pretty ugly forecast. It has cut its gross bookings outlook for fiscal 25 to a much more narrow range. And as we can see on the screen, its shares have reacted very negatively.
What do we learn through that metric? Yeah, I mean, bookings are really the the the way that a company says, hey, this is roughly what our revenue is going to be. There's given point. It's a lead indicator. These machines, as we know, are absolutely enormous. They take a long time to make. So it's very much a leading indicator of demand for the whole of the industry. Let's look at some of the other names that are impacted.
So ASML makes the machines which manufacture the chips. It doesn't make the chips themselves. Why is it then that names like Home Video and AMD Intel saw their own declines accelerate? What is it that we're learning about the sector as a whole? A couple of things here. One might be more ASML specific, but in
general, chip equipment is the leading indicator. You buy equipment, particularly ASML is way ahead of time thinking about what you're going to be doing this time next year. But ASML is look at that customer base. Basically, they have three customers, two of those customers. Samsung and Intel right now are in cutback mode. They're in trouble mode. There is a link between the first story we covered and ASML, which is the United States, along with allies, has also looked at the mechanism of controls on chip making equipment. And ASML has been at the center of that
in the context of extreme ultraviolet lithography. Please take it from there and just explain why these machines are so critical and why governments want to control them. Yeah, I mean, you've got a production line, lots of different machines made by lots of different companies. Applied Materials here, KLA ten core
here, Tokyo Electron. But the keystone piece of equipment is ASML. If you want to make an advanced chip, you need their EUV machine. And they're not allowed to export those to China because at least Washington doesn't want China to have that capability. And interesting in all of this and I
kind of mentioned a moment ago, this is Europe's most valuable company. They are a Dutch company, but with a footprint here in Silicon Valley, customers here in America where they do. In business principally, where are their biggest customers for everything advanced, I mean, they have basically 60% of their revenue comes from Intel, Samsung and more importantly, TSMC.
So all over the world, wherever these factories are, but really concentrated in these companies that want to make the world's most advanced chips. Bloomberg's In Kang who lead semiconductor coverage at Bloomberg. Thank you very much. Now, earlier today, the US Department of Justice deputy attorney general heads out though she spoke exclusively on Bloomberg's the opening trade and said this about the importance of competition. I think that history has shown us that
the considered judgment of regulatory bodies and legislative bodies across the world has really been that competition fuels entrepreneurship and innovation in a way unlike anything else. And that's why competition rather than consolidation or concentration of power is prized in both regulatory and enforcement schemes across the world. Okay. Those are the top news items in tech today. Let's bring in Lisa Eriksson, head of Public Markets Group at US Bank. $480 billion in assets under management. Let's get the investor analysis. Two pieces of semiconductor industry news, right? Bloomberg reporting that the US is looking at export controls of air chips in the Middle East and then ASML cutting its gross bookings outlook.
What is your assessment of where you want to treat the chip industry right now? Because for so long it has been the center piece, I think for a lot of investors attitude at least towards the technology sector. Lisa. Well, certainly what's going on in the chip industry and in technology in general is key for the U.S. stock market simply because it is such a large weight and an influence not only on the capitalization and its price performance, but also in terms of a large share of the earnings drivers of what's going on in the S&P 500. So we do view any guidance and forward outlook coming out of the third quarter earnings season from the technology industry as a whole, including chips, as certainly one thing to keep an eye on. We are encouraged, even though we're very early in the earnings season by initial reports of continued CapEx spend, both on technology in general as well as for AI related products. But again, as these earnings reports
continue to come out, we'll want to monitor for further impact. You know, the reporting on the export controls to the Middle East. It states quite clearly this is the Biden administration thinking about it.
And in November, we have an election where the administration might change. I will not ask you to comment on that reporting, but there must be an element where investors have to factor in the election as one factor or one risk in their approach to markets. How do you approach that, Lisa? Well, the election certainly is a toss up with the polls and the prediction market so close. And to your point, whatever policy comes out of the election, whether it's in the president, presidential race or in both houses of Congress, can make an impact on, again, how the economy is impacted by regulation and other issues. So we are monitoring that very closely,
obviously, right now. There are some different views on where regulation may head. And so we just need to see what the outcome is as we move forward into these next few weeks. The I guess, calendar fourth quarter or the month of October for earnings will be really interesting. Do you think that we'll find ourselves
in the context of big tech, the Mag seven in in rude health or are you kind of expecting to go into this earnings season braced for some signs of things tapering off, at least in the context of this US economy. Well, certainly if you look at the expectations for third quarter earnings compared to two Q, investors actually have already adjusted for the fact that the economy and also corporate profitability and revenues are slowing. So just as an example, in the second quarter we came in on the S&P 500 and earnings said about 11% and they're only expected to be about 3.9% in the third
quarter. That being said, 3.9% for the third quarter is still a very solid number and we believe that is certainly very achievable, especially since the bar for that number it started earlier a few months ago at higher levels and has come down to 3.9%. So that bar seems pretty reasonable and investor expectations have been dampened. So we do view it as an achievable number. Lisa, what is the one thing that the
technology investor must look at most closely in 2025? Well, certainly, again, both the ongoing health of the consumer in terms of demand for products, but more importantly as well, the appetite for CapEx is going to be important. And so, again, looking for that for forward guidance that's coming out of these third quarter earnings reports and also the demand and spend and proclivity for, again, that technology, particularly air demand, is really going to be key as we look at what's coming out of those guidance numbers. Lisa Eriksson, head of Public Markets Group at US Bank. Really great to have you on the program. Thank you very much. Let's take a quick look at shares of Apple, which touched an intraday record high in the session actually earlier this morning. Apple unveiled a new iPad mini that it hopes will attract consumers to its early January today offerings.
The tablet has an 8.3 inch screen and Apple has a 17 pro chip to power Apple intelligence, which is due for release later this month. The new iPad mini costs $499 for the Wi-Fi model and $649 for the version that has a cellular connection. It goes on sale October 23rd. Now, coming up on the program, too good to be true. A major reveal on the human touch, the help testers. Optimus Robots appear to come to life. More of my reporting about that in just
a little bit. Let's go back to Asimo. This is a big story. The shares in Europe are now down 12.6%, which I make the biggest drop intraday since 2002.
Very simple. They only book half the orders, half the orders in the quarter that analysts were expecting, but they also lowered guidance for fiscal 25. They lowered the range of gross bookings. And as Iain King of Bloomberg News explained, this is a leading indicator. This is a chip equipment maker, the
machines that make the chips. And it tells us looking forward that this is a sector that might be bracing for things to cool off. We will continue to track this story, given the severity of that decline.
ASML down 12 and a half percent. This is Bloomberg Technology. Hey, it's time for talking tech. And first up, Ericsson shares soar after announcing third quarter earnings that beat analysts expectations. The company also announced a 55% sales growth across North America. The strength, thanks in part to a major partnership with AT&T.
Plus, IBM is looking into misconduct allegations facing a top executive in China. A letter in line accuses Chairman of accepting vouchers from external partners and violating the company's expense policies. IBM confirmed the letter is authentic when reached by Bloomberg News, Chen declined to comment.
And Warner Brothers Discovery's Max is planning a major debut across new Asian markets. It comes as competitors like Disney and Amazon are scaling back investment in the region. Max recently launched in Japan through a partnership with a local streaming platform and plans to launch in Australia in the first half of next year. Now, Bloomberg's learned that humans were remotely controlling some of Tesla's Optimus Robot prototypes. At its recent showcase, Elon Musk told the crowd the humanoid Androids would be, quote, the biggest product ever. But he did not disclose that they had human helpers on the night. The event was intended to generate
investor buzz for upcoming products, but principally a robotaxi bean bags. Max, check in at Businessweek. And Elon joins me now. And what we reported in the story, Max, yesterday, what sources told me is that this was kind of classic Elon. Three weeks before the event, he went to the team, the optimist team, and said, I want optimists at the event. And they said, well, we don't have time to get the software ready. Teleoperation is our only option here and now we know Teleoperation was what was happening. Yeah, I mean, it does undercut some of
the impact of the event, you know, looking at the way people reacted to it, you know, the optimist robots, I would say was sort of the biggest surprise. The thing that seemed to, you know, excite the investors and attendees the most. And as you said, the fact that they were using teleoperation essentially remote control, it really makes it clear that although there may be some mechanical breakthroughs here, it's not clear how far Tesla has really come on A.I., which which, if you remember, is the whole purpose of this whole thing. You raise an important point which was
going into this because we reported intensely about it. The focus was Robo Taxi. And on Friday, the morning after the event, the stock fell 10% in large part, I think because there was a lack of detail about a future proprietary ride hailing app. Would you share that assessment? Yeah. I mean, I think the problem here is that the Robotaxi story is still very much a story and nothing about the event kind of went against that.
The event was held on a soundstage. I mean, you're talking about the teleoperation of these Optimus Robots, but you could make a similar critique about the cars that were unveiled right there. They're running on a close course, you know, a handful of stops, custom software not totally clear that the cars themselves were running exclusively on either. So, again, you know, you have Elon Musk selling a vision of the future, but not necessarily showing a ton of progress in the present. Elon Musk is often late, but as you know, across many of his companies, he often does get there in the end. And that's kind of the sentiment that's been shared.
So what do we think will happen with a robotaxi and and an optimist bot will end a proprietary ride hailing app. Go for it. I mean, as you say, you are Musk is often often late and he's achieved a lot. This is one area where he has not achieved as much as he said. You know, he's been promising robotaxis essentially next year for years. And we saw him do it again.
You know, in 2026, 2027, you could kind of hear in his voice during the event a lot of uncertainty about when exactly this would happen. And the problem is that or it's both a problem and an opportunity. Musk has clearly sort of swerved the company into this direction, saying that this is essentially the future of everything. It's such a big market. So I think investors are going to are likely to give him a lot of leeway here because, of course, it's a big opportunity and it's Elon Musk, as you say.
But but nothing is nothing should be taken for granted. Bloomberg's Max champion of Ireland and Businessweek, thank you very much. Coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, Dell is set to start shipping out servers with the newest video chips I'm going to speak with offer fellow president of Dell Infrastructure Solutions Group.
Next, this is Bloomberg Technology. All right Nvidia's rollout of its next gen Blackwell chips begins with Dell. The largest seller service says they're ready to begin shipping out devices with the chip next month, a sign that production of Blackwell is back on schedule. We're joined now by Arthur Lewis, president of Dell Infrastructure Solutions Group. And much has been reported and made about Blackwell a delay or no delay? I guess the starting point is to ask you, Arthur, if this was a surprise to you that you were able to adjust or pivot and then ship next month unexpectedly. At first. It's great to be back and thank you for having us on your show.
No, not not expect not unexpected at all. You know, we've been working on this very, very hard. If you think about, you know, the innovation that we've been delivering, you know, from, you know, the start of the 96 A.D.
to, you know, what we announced at Dell Technologies World from, you know, Rex scaled infrastructure. You know, we talked about the fact that Grace Blackwell product was, you know, on the roadmap and, you know, would be heading for customer testing in the second half of this year with general availability coming next year. So we're just following through on the commitment that we made back at the beginning of this year. So the last three months of the year, calendar year are going to look a lot better for Dell now, aren't they? Yeah, we have some really exciting products. You know, customers are facing density
and power constraints in terms of these large, you know, rack infrastructure. And so we have three, you know, significant product announcements that we had today at OCP. You know, number one is the Z 9712, which is the, you know, Grace Blackwell 72 and Inc form factor.
This product, air cooled, is 25 times more efficient than the 100. But in addition to that, we're bringing density to compute. We also announced a Turin based A&E system all direct to chip liquid cool. That does two amazing things. Number one, it solves a density problem by providing 27,000 cores, Iraq. And secondly, it's highly perform it up to 60 times faster than the previous generation.
The industry industry wide are not making margin on this. Are you going to make margin on this? And if so, how? Yeah. So I think, you know, we showed that we were able to make margin in Q2 achieving 11% operating income for the overall ISG business. You know, our job is to remove the
shroud of complexity and mystery around generative AI and deliver value to customers, and we will be rewarded for that value in the Tier two CSP space, as well as in the enterprise space, where we have even more opportunity to attach more of our service and and storage offerings and networking offerings. It was interesting what you were talking about there on the air cooling side. Everyone keeps asking me about liquid cooling. What is the Dell position on liquid cooling? BLACKWELL Right. You were sampling the technology before you shipped it, and you must have thought a little bit about a pivot to liquid cooling, perhaps. We've been talking about liquid cooling
since the beginning. You know, we have air cooling, liquid assisted cooling rear door heat exchangers, heat capture cabinets and direct a chip liquid cooling. You know, once you get into the 1000 watt TDP range, this is where direct a chip liquid cooling is absolutely mandatory. But we have a wide variety of offerings that span the air cooling the liquid assisted Eric cooling the heat capture cabinet, the rear door heat exchangers, as well as the direct a chip liquid cooling. Not all environments are ready to support liquid cooling, but our portfolio is comprehensive and broad and supports all of the requirements that customers have to deliver the most dense and energy efficient infrastructure in the market.
Arthur, before we let you go, give us insight into the reality of Black Well, volumes, this is small, right? Or is there some actual scale here to production? Look, our volumes is, you know, contemplated in the guidance that we provided at the end of Q2. If we have any update to that guidance, we'll update that in Q3. But, you know, we're very excited about the amount of innovation that's being driven in this space. If you think about, you know, where we
were at the beginning of the year, we were talking about rack infrastructure with 62, 64 and 72 GPUs. Now we're up to 96 and 128 GPUs. And we're talking about, you know, scalable systems. I mean, think about this. Had 768 GPUs interwoven to operate as one system with integrated networking for maximum throughput. It's just amazing what we're seeing. Arthur Lewis is Dell Infrastructure
Solutions Group. It's really great to have you back on the program. Thank you. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Stay tuned for special coverage ahead of an exclusive interview between former President Trump and Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait. This is Bloomberg.
2024-10-16 20:38
