CEOInterviews.AICoreWeave Shares Drop After Forecast Sparks Growth Fears | Bloomberg Tech 5/8/2026

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Caroline Hyde0:03

Bloomberg Tech is live from coast-to-coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech.

Discussing the company's earnings of CoreWeave, breaking down the jobs report and impact of AI on today's workforce with Clara Shih. Can we bring down more earnings with Lyft's CEO David Risher.

But first we check in on markets moving on an international basis. Some sort of peace deal between the U.S. and Iran and the focus is also an optimism around jobs data coming in stronger for the active gains we had in at least a year.

Tech I'm afraid down for 16 straight months in terms of the information technology area. Even as consumer confidence lags, it is about the AI trade, it is about big tech.

I just want to shine a light on what is happening with CoreWeave. The context is this company is up 90% year-to-date in the run-up to these earnings. We see some anxiety as we see the forecast moving up to some of the higher expectations. CEO Michael joins us in the studio. Earnings are always tough when the market has built up a lot of optimism around the business. So why do you think that a little bit concerned about the forward-looking guidance when it comes to revenue?

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Michael Intrator1:37

I said this in the earnings call, I think this was a transformational, an extraordinary earnings for us. The company really hit on all cylinders. We beat on revenue, we reaffirmed our annual revenue targets from a nominal perspective. We reaffirmed our 2026 ARR targets. Really a great quarter for us by the numbers but also extending our product. We can't keep up with demand from existing customers, which have historically been AI labs and AI native and cloud.

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Caroline Hyde2:25

And now they are expanding?

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Michael Intrator2:29

And we've just been overwhelmed by new verticals that are coming in and integrating AI at scale into their workflows. You heard talk a little bit about some of the trading and finance companies adding to J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. You heard me talk a little bit about some of the physical AI into the robotics space where great new clients coming onto our infrastructure. It's really exciting. Stocks are going to bounce around. We understand that. But one of the best things about being a founder and a CEO and one of the best and hardest things about being a founder and CEO is I try to keep my eye on the parts of the business that are succeeding and expanding. We are winning the day. We drove down our cost of capital. We expanded our backlog by $40 billion. We did all the things we need to do. I'm thrilled with the quarter, I think it was fantastic.

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Caroline Hyde3:41

Seemingly there's a little bit of trepidation around exporters. The second half, people are optimistic. You are saying I'm optimistic that profitability will run up in the second half. How does that happen?

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Michael Intrator3:58

It's almost mathematical at some point. You are building infrastructure and infrastructure takes time to bring online. We are going through a massive buildout across the company right now. It's why the operating margins have compressed, because we are going through this enormous scaling exercise. As you push through that, all of that infrastructure comes onto billing and once it comes onto billing you're going to see a sequential expansion of the operating margins until we go from 1% in Q1 all the way up through low double digits by Q4. That is sort of baked in because of the infrastructure coming online, the software capacity to deliver that infrastructure. We are highly confident we are going to hit those numbers.

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Caroline Hyde4:49

There was anxiety about another company not hitting internal numbers and in talking about OpenAI. Sarah Frier has come on and spoken in pushback against it saying they are seeing a wall of demand, but how confident are you that your clients are seeing that demand?

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Michael Intrator5:05

One of the things I talked about yesterday during earnings call is that the demand for our paper in the debt market has been nothing shy of astounding. We did one of our delayed draw facilities two days ago. The clients in it were -- and OpenAI exclusively. One, it was five x oversubscribed, which was enormous. It also closed 50 basis points below the market. And that is a clear indication of enormous buying interest for financing the paper. But in regards to paying, OpenAI is an extraordinary company. More than 10 million people on the planet use their product every year. We think that they are in a wonderful position. But we've also built an incredibly diversified portfolio of companies that use our infrastructure. This quarter we announced Anthropic, we announced a massive deal, $21 billion with Meta. $6 billion deal with Jane Street. Number of clients using our infrastructure are expanding. Diversification is expanding. OpenAI is an important client.

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Caroline Hyde6:29

Let's talk about an important partner in your chain that is NVIDIA. How confident you are about the strength of that relationship. NVIDIA has made deals with you, invested in you, but also doing that with your competitors in the space. Is that ever anxiety?

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Michael Intrator6:48

I take that as incredible affirmation of the fact that the world needs more of this infrastructure and the demand for the infrastructure, the product that we deliver is overwhelming. At the end of the day, NVIDIA has got to do what it's got to do for its business. I really focus on my clients and my clients are coming back to us saying again and again you deliver the best product. The way that your software stack enables our engineers to use it most efficiently, most cost-effectively and most successfully, and therefore we want to buy more. The problem that I've got is how do I bring in enough infrastructure to deliver the infrastructure that my clients need?

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Caroline Hyde7:31

Dig into the problems because there have been delays at certain times with the partnership. What is the biggest call for you?

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Michael Intrator7:43

CoreWeave is becoming a massive player in the space. We are currently approaching 50 that we are delivering infrastructure for. There is no single data center provider represents more than 17% of our infrastructure. We have a massive effort in terms of the company to go through self build so that we have greater operational control over the delivery of data center capacity. We are doing all the right things by diversifying to ensure that no single data center can materially impact the trajectory of the company. That is further reinforced by just the size and scale of the capacity. If you have a gigawatt of capacity and -- represents 50 megawatts and you are bringing 50 megawatts, the impact of a one-week delay is very different than earlier on when you are bringing on 50 megawatts and you only have 50 megawatts online. That delay rattles your entire ability to project where you are going and we no longer have that problem. We have achieved stable velocities of the terms of data centers of the capacity as well as our revenue, as well as our ability to provide guidance. We are super excited about that.

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Caroline Hyde9:14

Waiting for investors to react to some of your longer-term perspective. CEO of CoreWeave. We are also watching shares of Cloudflare. They are saying they are going to slash jobs, about 1/5 of all jobs are going to go. This is again a lean into AI but it comes, sadly, at the expense of people and their workforce. Currently seeing shares of 24% as the revenue in the forecast is what is concerning people at the moment. Coming up, we will discuss that issue with AI and tech with jobs and unemployment of the back of the jobs report and indeed with the likes of Cloudflare. Clara Shih is with us from New Work Foundation. This is Bloomberg Tech.

U.S. payrolls beat most expectations. But tech jobs have fallen for a 16th straight month and in many ways that is being blamed on AI. This talk about the AI story here because learning artificial intelligence becoming more and more crucial for workers to get hired. 42% of recent grads are still underemployed. Former of business at Meta. Your CV stands out and you're saying you want and to be profitable not just for businesses, but for everyone including the millions of 25 year olds currently underemployed or unemployed. You founded this. What is happening with the labor market right now?

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Clara Shih10:49

Thank you, great to see you. Gen Z American workers are graduating in the worst job market in 37 years. As you said, 42% are underemployed, so they are part-time, they are working gig jobs and taking other work that don't require their degree in it because traditional pathways are drying up. Today's young Americans are graduating without the skills, tools and information they need to get hired in this AI economy.

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Caroline Hyde11:20

So the skills, tools they need, you are bringing that to bear. How? There is this sudden anxiety that people need to realign themselves to the future of work.

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Clara Shih11:33

I look at the colleges in America and K-12 education, there is real caution around using AI, many of these young people are being actively discouraged from using AI and learning AI while they are in school. So they are graduating not knowing how to direct these systems. Not knowing how to properly set up context engineering and how to apply these AI workflows into transformational ways whether they are applying for a marketing job, software engineering or accounting.

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Caroline Hyde11:59

Accounting I think of just an industry that is being shaken up significantly by new AI products. This isn't just Gen Z suffering. We see more and more layoffs being announced. Cloudflare today. Showing the reward that is gaining from having left almost half of its entire employee base. Coinbase. They just keep on building. 33,000 tech jobs have been cut in April. What do you think the tech sector is going to look like in the future?

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Clara Shih12:28

It's hard to say but I think where we are trending right now is much more usage of AI and specifically, AI agents to do a lot of the work that traditionally entry-level workers did. That's why it is so important we equip our young graduates with the experience they need to get hired.

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Caroline Hyde12:50

Is there a backlash? You and I have talked about the tools you are using, the way you are leaning into agentic AI. You then see the response to Reese Witherspoon trying to say women in particular should start using AI more. People are worried about the cost to the environment, the cost to creativity, and royalties and payouts. How do you navigate that with Gen Z?

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Clara Shih13:19

As we have done this work with the New Work Foundation, one of my co-founders, Samantha, she is part of Gen Z. What we have heard from her and her friends is a lot of young people have moral objections and concerns around AI. These are the exact people we want being part of building the solutions so we can capture their concerns and creatively build the right path forward that addresses what they want but also does not leave them behind in the new economy.

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Caroline Hyde13:54

You have this initial set of three AI tools. I want to go into what they do. There are a lot of free tools out there. Amazon has them. If you want to lean into understanding and building your own repertoire of AI talent, you can do it. Why did you have to design something different?

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Clara Shih14:13

I think we have to address the legitimate moral questions Gen Z has, just like we said. Beyond that, it is almost overwhelming how much information is out there about AI. There are hundreds of thousands of hours of AI courses, certifications. Some free but some very expensive. It is very hard for anyone of any age to navigate this. We wanted to go job by job across the most common entry-level, white-collar roles young people are applying for. We are breaking down exactly what it takes to become AI native in doing that job. Whether it is marketing, software, banking, legal, some other role, we are talking to hiring managers using AI, asking them to describe in clear terms how what they are looking for has changed in the last 12 months as a result of AI and agents. We are also interviewing other Gen Z workers who have been struggling to find work but recently found a job in that particular role so they can share their tips and tricks.

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Caroline Hyde15:19

Clara Shih, I am sure that is music to many ears listening. New Work Foundation. We appreciate your time.

Nintendo was about to get more expensive. The company is hiking the console price from $450 to $500. Nintendo says it will now rely on software for much of its income this year. Plus, the first step towards what is called a satellite approach to semiconductor production. Sony is partnering for a new venture to build robots and cars. Baidu's chip unit is planning a dual IPO seeking a valuation of nearly $15 billion. That is a massive leap from its valuation in December. It looks to fuel China's AI ambitions. Coming up, SoftBank is slashing the planned $10 billion opening as investors grow cautious. More on that next. This is Bloomberg Tech.

Taking a look at today's big number. $6 billion. That is what SoftBank is now targeting for a loan backed. That is all according to people familiar with the matter. It is down from the $10 billion it was planning. Part of investor concerns deal with difficulty of reaching a valuation for an unlisted company like OpenAI which has been reported as facing challenges meeting internal targets and goals, a point Sarah has pushed back on. Its rival has surged to a $25 billion market cap. It is fueled in large part by devoted retail investor community known as the Space Mob. Here is more on today's Big Take. It is one of the most read stories across our platform today. Tell us what is happening. Who are these people loving AST?

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Reporter17:43

Yeah, so, AST has thousands of retail investors, the Space Mob. They are a little reminiscent of the crowds that rally around meme stocks like GameStop except the Space Mob really believes in AST SpaceMobile. They believe it will become the next big company. They really believe in the technology. AST is pioneering satellite directly to your mobile phone. They have rallied around the stock. They fixate on every shred of corporate intel from the company. They track regulatory filings, the planes that shift the satellites. They are about as devoted as a fanbase to a company can get.

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Caroline Hyde18:43

That devotion means the stock is up nearly 6000% over 22 months. Talk about leadership amongst the Space Mob. Who is Kook?

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Reporter19:00

A California-based private investor. He wants to remain anonymous. He has a ton of money in AST SpaceMobile. His family has money in it. He believes the Space Mob. He is one of the most prominent figures around the Space Mob. He is very emotionally invested in it. You can track his mood based on how the stock is doing. He is a zany character a lot of the other Space Mobbers follow and watch for signs of his emotional mood. Sometimes you can see that reflected in the stock price as well.

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Caroline Hyde19:46

An extraordinary character who put his life savings into the AST stock. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate you coming on.

Intel shares have been largely flat for months but have since climbed to record highs as he builds ties with tech leaders and President Trump. Challenges persist for the chipmaker. Sarah Frier joins us because what is so interesting is you have this sit down. What are people making of his leadership style?

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Sarah Frier20:27

Ian King talked to many current and former employees and got the picture that while he has succeeded in rallying the optimism around Intel's future from the likes of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, we have a potential customer deal with Apple and others, there still has to be a major change in how the company thinks about its products and how it develops them to be high-quality. All of the work internally still needs to be done to deliver on the optimism going forward. Intel, we have these record highs. We have Wall Street backing. Now we need to look internally.

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Caroline Hyde21:17

Leadership is earned through execution. Is he on-site enough for that execution? That seems to be a concern.

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Sarah Frier21:28

He has spent a lot more time with customers than internally with Intel. When he does, he does not go into the details with people. He is not a micromanager. He is much more of a high-level strategy thinker. When he hears somebody's strategy, he quizzes them on the industry from a broad sense. If he likes how they think, he backs them and supports them, sort of like his role as a venture capital investor and board member. At Intel, details do matter. When you're thinking about the ability for a customer to make a bet on using one of your factories, it has to go right. It has to be effective.

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Caroline Hyde22:22

Particularly when the yield rate is 60% versus 80% at TSMC. More coming up. Lyft first quarter earnings disappoint Wall Street expectations. The company is spinning on international expansion. David Risher next, Lyft CEO. This is Bloomberg Tech.

Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Maybe the jobless claims are rosier on the labor market even though it is not a rosy look tech jobs. 16 months of decline for the tech industry. But consumer sentiment also low. Nevertheless, earnings have been thriving in certain parts of the business. I'm looking at 3.3% gains for Airbnb, looking at dialing up the growth expectations right now because they are seeing good growth in the United States. Even reinvesting money to diversify the business. They've just announced 40% job cuts. That's already because AI is making such a difference in the business. Also the ability to serve clients, seeing profitability higher. Coinbase also announced layoffs earlier this week. And revenue sinking, clearly the crypto market is still hinting some of Coinbase's metrics up. DraftKings seeing some relief in the numbers and some signs of growth when it comes to the predictions market. But stick with earnings more broadly. 2.1% after the company reported first-quarter profit. Some anxiety among Wall Street about the expectations but it was only ramped up by spending on international expansion. Maybe that is what was sitting in the near term the profitability metrics. We had a volatile trading day for Lyft as people worried about the amount you were able to grow. You seem to have pushback on that, that this is the right use of capital.

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David Risher24:47

We had a record quarter which is always wonderful. Almost $5 billion in bookings, over $1 billion of free cash flow. So that's great. When you are in any position like that, that allows you to grow even more and as you noted, we've done some international acquisitions. I think it is a great time to be in the rideshare business because we are really part of a lot of people's lives and growing like a weed.

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Caroline Hyde25:13

Growing like a weed. Mandeep saying that supply growth for Lyft is trailing some larger peers. The adoption rate of your offerings and the adoption rate of autonomous vehicles is starting to double.

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David Risher25:28

If you zoom way in, you can always find little things. That's a lot of rides. A lot of rides for the airport. The quarter started off a little bit slow. There is some really intense storms particularly in New York City where you live that brought the rideshare and bank shared to zero. But look, on Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Super Bowl, these are all-time highs. And then we had our highest ever in March. I think there's a lot of reason to believe there is still a huge amount of growth here and as you say, autonomous vehicles, that's a great product.

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Caroline Hyde26:14

Mark over at Evercore really liking the fact that you got a record 60 straight quarter in terms of active riders but I think what he's looking to see is maybe consumer incentives to just moderate a little bit. Are you being able to do that?

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David Risher26:25

We are. We think of it as leverage and I'll tell you a particular thing I'm starting to see more. I think there is a rewards-maxing.

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Caroline Hyde26:37

Oh no.

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David Risher26:38

Be careful where you go with this one. People can both earn and spend points on Lyft. We have a deal with Hilton, we have an arrangement with DoorDash that just expanded to Canada. So what we are seeing people do is they are taking Lyft rides, earning points and spending them elsewhere or they are spending them back on our platform. I think it's one of the reasons we are seeing the high margins rise even with some consumer concerns. Still, this rewards-maxing thing is working for people.

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Caroline Hyde27:21

Rewards-maxing is a play on all the turns of phrase that Gen Z use.

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David Risher27:23

Gen Z likes maxing.

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Caroline Hyde27:29

How much are you seeing the idea of different age groups responding to your new offerings because in many ways, see the more premium offerings coming to an older cohort and in many ways a corporate cohort.

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David Risher27:43

I think that is something changing over time. Back when I was early in my career, you didn't have an Amex Platinum card or Chase Sapphire Reserve card. But no, it turns out a lot of kids, a lot of Gen Z folks are early in that ecosystem because they realize there's a lot of value to be unlocked if they play the game. And a lot of them think how can I do this rewards-maxing thing to be able to afford a Lyft Black even when I'm in my 20s.

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Caroline Hyde28:16

Savvy is what they are and I'm interested in how savvy you are. You made acquisitions. This is where you been spending on money. Is there more to come?

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David Risher28:28

Never say never but it is always a fool's game to predict M&A. I will say it is part of that strategy now. We were not a very positive company for a long time but now that we've got asterisk times, great pricing, great service levels all around, that is really where our M&A focus has been, is overseas.

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Caroline Hyde28:49

Any worries about the consumer right now?

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David Risher28:51

No. I know that sounds glib, our drivers feel a lot of pain at the pump with a nice cashback program, saves about one dollar per gallon. There are reasons of course to be concerned, but when we look at the data, we are not seeing that play out.

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Caroline Hyde29:07

It's been a week where I feel you haven't actually mentioned AI yet. How much is your workforce responding to having to use it and is there any stretch at which point you are able to reduce your headcount or hiring on the back of it?

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David Risher29:31

I love this question. Something like 86% of our developers, our software engineers are using actively. But I think there is a way of thinking about it which is not so much about cost reduction, but about velocity increase and capacity building. Our imaginations are huge so we have no shortage of great ideas to invade on behalf of the customers. I think that's really where AI is going to give us a big edge. Cost certainly can save a bit of money but there were so much more value to figure out for riders and drivers to use our platform.

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Caroline Hyde30:13

Is it a more competitive backdrop right now?

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David Risher30:19

Well, it is, but only in a sense. Remember there are 160 billion rides that people take every single year. And I think that's also going to be a real competition for us. It's $50,000 to buy a car plus insurance, plus gas, plus maintenance. Lyft is $20 a ride. In a funny way I think the competition is going to shift away from the other guys and more toward what are good ways to spend money helping you live your best life?

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Caroline Hyde30:45

And rewards-max.

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David Risher30:47

Exactly, glad you picked up on that.

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Caroline Hyde30:49

We love having you on the show. Thank, indeed.

Coming up, we take a look at the elite sports competition performance products company that is going public today. Up next on Bloomberg Tech.

An Olympic style sports event that welcomes performance-enhancing drugs is set for later this month in Las Vegas. Today the company behind the endeavor went public in a merger with a blackjack company. Enhanced trading up 8.8%. Valued at 1.2 billion dollars and has backing from the likes of Peter Thiel, and former Coinbase CEO. The company CEO now joins us from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Gone public why?

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Maximilian31:52

First of all, thank you for having me on the show today. We are going public because Enhanced is a movement and we want the people in that movement not just to be part of it by buying enhancement products, but owning a piece of it. This is why we've decided to go public which we are very excited about.

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Caroline Hyde32:13

Is it a retail investment play more broadly? The people you want to purchase not only the products, but also those who are going to come and watch the Enhanced Games?

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Maximilian32:25

Can you repeat the question, I didn't catch that fully.

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Caroline Hyde32:28

Is it the retail investor you're most focused on?

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Maximilian32:35

Enhanced is for everyone but particularly for retail. Sports traditionally isn't as investor-friendly as it is for more institutional players. This is particularly focused on the opportunity.

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Caroline Hyde32:53

If you look past media attention on the games in particular, people have sort of called it Olympics on steroids. Why is it not that from your perspective?

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Maximilian33:09

Steroids is a term with many negative associations, many people associate it with being illegal and that is not true for the setup that has been created at the Enhanced Games. But the athletes can take our FDA-approved substances under doctor supervision and they are also, independent of them enhancing or not, need to pass medical screenings over time to determine whether they are healthy and safe to compete. So steroids is what people think of as happening in a backdoor locker room of a gym, but that is not it. This is all in the open. With clear regulation around it. These enhancements for the athletes but also consumers that we offer it to.

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Caroline Hyde33:52

Your aim is to evolve mankind into a new super humanity. We will have you back, thank you very much for joining us today.

Stablecoins promised to make payments cheaper and nearly instantaneous but it remains a tiny part of the global payments system today. The Genius Act set to take effect, the Wall Street Week team took a deep dive into whether the use of the blockchain technology is truly starting to scale.

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Analyst34:19

So you hear in the media the trillions of dollars for stablecoin today. 99% of that is crypto-related. Not the sort of payments we think about which is company to company or even paying person-to-person. We look at this situation and say, how much payments volume is around that? We think it is $1 billion to $2 billion a day, tiny. We had $300 billion in the total year. That compares with several trillion dollars already per day.

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David Risher34:52

A small amount now. How does it compare with last year and forecasts for next year?

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Analyst35:02

The data shows the volume of real payment transactions using stablecoins probably doubled over the last year. When you look at the volume of stablecoins, it went to $300 billion. It is doubling, which by any measure is substantial in terms of growth.

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David Risher35:21

How much of that is cross-border, international? How much is domestic?

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Analyst35:25

The vast majority is cross-border. Looking at the geographic source of the payments with our research partner, what they found is about 60% originates from Asia. That surprised a little bit because a lot of the talk has been in North America or Europe.

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Caroline Hyde35:45

Watch the Wall Street Week episode later today. Cybersecurity fears are sweeping global campuses after hackers disrupted a portal used by thousands of colleges including Harvard and Princeton. They were forced to suspend the system sparking warning sensitive data may have been stolen for extortion. We understood Cornell said its own campus access has been fully restored. Coming up, U.S. officials are walking a delicate line when it comes to the Trump administration's approach to Beijing. Details next. This is Bloomberg Tech.

Three Mile Island, the site of the most famous U.S. nuclear accident, is coming back online as soon as mid 2027 as part of a long-term deal to power AI applications and much more. He is here with an extraordinary deep dive into what has been rebranded. Remind those what Three Mile Island means to many.

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Will Wade37:01

To many, it means nuclear disaster. 1979, it was the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. But let's keep in mind 1979 was a long time ago. That is what I told my son. I had this big story coming up on Three Mile Island. What is that? For a lot of us, it has a lot of meaning. But for younger people, it has no meaning at all.

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Caroline Hyde37:25

You don't talk about your job nearly enough at home. You are now into this area where it is about reopening, a nuclear renaissance. What did you learn?

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Will Wade37:45

What is fascinating, if you see the pictures, it looks old-school because it is. It was designed and built in the 1960s and 1970s. So much of U.S. nuclear power plants date back to the last century. We have not built very many of them at all. There is this insatiable demand for electricity from the big tech companies. It is all for AI. A while ago, they were like, we want nuclear because it is clean, it will help us save the world from climate change. That sort of was a little bit of motivation. But really, motivation out from tech, because there is money involved.

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Caroline Hyde38:25

A lot of money, I think $30 billion has been invested in nuclear since 2020. What about the waste? Has that changed since 1979?

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Will Wade38:36

It has not changed at all. If you go to any nuclear power plant, if you go out back, there are giant casks where they store the waste. It has been stalled for political reasons. It is not happening.

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Caroline Hyde38:58

The edge of innovation is being fueled by something that does not seem to be innovating much at all. We are relying on a 1979 building. How is it innovating? Will we get a new type of nuclear offering?

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Will Wade39:13

That is a good question. There is a lot of innovation in the nuclear space. There are companies developing all kinds of new reactor designs. There have been big ones, new small ones, really small ones. They want to put them on a shipping container and deliver them to military bases in the middle of nowhere. There is a lot of innovation. It is not here yet. I think it is coming. There is so much motivation to make this happen. 2030, mid-2030s, I think we will see some, but not for the next several years.

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Caroline Hyde39:51

You have sold the amazing stories to tell about it, Will Wade. We are going to talk about a key company behind Thailand's national AI effort. It is suspected of helping to smuggle servers containing advanced NVIDIA chips to China according to sources who say some of the $2.5 billion of servers sold allegedly went to Chinese AI leader Alibaba. This comes as U.S. officials are walking a delicate line when it comes to the Trump administration's approach to Beijing. Earlier this year, the Pentagon added Alibaba to a list and then declared the list unpublished. Michael Shepard joins us with the previously unreported details of what is happening with the so-called blacklist.

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Michael Shepard40:49

Let's turn the clock back to the day in February. It was February 13. You and I on this program were trying to pick up our jaws off the floor trying to figure out the import of the list being published and the mystery why it was abruptly withdrawn minutes later. What was going on? What would that say about China policy? Our colleague set out to find out the backstory. It's revealing. It turns out the Pentagon had withdrawn two names from the list, two Chinese chipmakers, producers of memory products that are in demand these days. The White House wanted them kept on. When the list was published, the names were not there. The White House was furious. The Pentagon quickly moved to pull it back in. Since then, we have not seen the list republished. We are in a delicate moment in the trade truce between Washington and Beijing. That is the one President Trump announced with Xi Jinping in late October after their meeting. Of course, they have a meeting next week. This is just the kind of missteps that could upset the apple cart heading into a high-stakes encounter between leaders of the world's two largest economies.

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Caroline Hyde42:04

Let's think about next week because there is talk even future rules of generative AI might be discussed. I'm interested as to what you think will be achieved and what names will be announced working together or apart from each other.

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Michael Shepard42:24

Great question. The war in Iran has overshadowed any of the other initiatives that might be put on the table between President Xi and President Trump as they sit down to talk. Absent the war, we might have seen more talk about access to American designed chips like from NVIDIA and AMD. The president and his team have cleared the release of H200s and comparable products for sale to China. Beijing is not letting many of those products in. We have not seen very many licenses issued from the U.S. side either. There is clearly some sort of logjam. Perhaps they could get to the bottom of that. Iran could stand in the way. Then there are complaints from American AI developers that Chinese rivals have been distilling unfairly the results of their models to produce rival chatbots at a fraction of the cost. This has prompted an outcry on Capitol Hill and stepped from the White House to try to rein in and address that practice. We could also see that come up as well. Then there is the question of rare earths which was at the heart of the conflict between the U.S. and China.

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Caroline Hyde43:52

That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Don't forget to check out our podcast. Wishing you all a very wonderful weekend. See you Monday. This is Bloomberg Tech.

CoreWeave Shares Drop After Forecast Sparks Growth Fears | Bloomberg Tech 5/8/2026

About Michael Intrator