Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll. I'm in Brussels, where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made. And I'm Caroline Hepker in London. We're the hosts of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast. We're up early every weekday, keeping an eye on what's happening across Europe and around the world. We do it early so the news is fresh, not recycled, and so you know what actually matters as the day gets going. From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now. And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy. We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break. So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens. It's smart, calm and to the point. And it fits into your morning. You can find new episodes of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast by 7am in Dublin or 8am in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, all eyes are on a high-stakes meeting between President Trump and China, Xi Jinping. This is NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang gets added to the trip last minute. Plus, Anthropic is looking to raise at least $30 billion in fresh financing, an evaluation of more than $900 billion in what could be its largest funding round yet. And we speak with Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf as the company hits a $61 billion valuation in his latest funding round. Today's big story, President Trump's meeting with China's Xi Jinping. And Trump is joined on his trip by a host of tech leaders, including, in the end, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang as a last-minute addition, thrusting AI and tech into the spotlight before the high-stakes summit. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall for more, who joins us from Beijing. Set the scene. What do we need to know? And my goodness, what a fanfare last night when Jensen Wang was spotted on the runway in Alaska. Right. Ed, I mean, we saw this last minute addition. He caught Air Force One during a refueling stop in Anchorage. Now, the White House says that the addition comes because Jensen Wong was able to make a scheduling change that we did hear from President Trump in a post on Truth Social where he appeared to be unhappy with media coverage that the NVIDIA CEO originally wasn't on the manifest of travelers that we had in terms of those CEOs that are attending. Now, Of course, the big ticket item, I don't need to tell either of you, would be whether or not President Trump pushes the Chinese government to have Chinese buyers for the now greenlit H200 NVIDIA chips. So maybe there will be some sort of discussions around that. I'll also throw on your radar that it is our understanding that Washington and Beijing are in talks about potential cooperation when it comes to keeping a dialogue open around artificial intelligence. That could be also one of those deliverables that we see out of this meeting tomorrow between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The administration maintains that they want trade to be the top priority here. Just look at the other list of CEOs. It is our understanding that they represent some of those sectors where we could see some Chinese purchase agreement commitments, including the Cargill CEO when it comes to agriculture and the Boeing CEO also being here on the ground in Beijing. But Ed and Caroline, at this point, it's hard to avoid that Iran will be looming very large over this conversation. In fact, a senior administration official who briefed us reporters before we headed over here to Asia did say that behind closed doors, President Trump is going to push the Chinese president when it comes to the country's stance around Iran during this conflict, including how Beijing remains the largest buyer of Iranian crude. Lumo's Tyler Kendall, live from Beijing. We so appreciate it. Thank you. Let's check on the broader markets because it's a volatile trading session. One point we're in the red on the Nasdaq 100. We're now back in the green. We're up about six tenths of a percent. Leading the pack is, of course, chip makers once again in terms of points. But I shine a light on what's happening in China. The Golden Dragon, that is the Nasdaq Golden Dragon Index, which is really basically the trading of Chinese names here in the U.S., the ADRs. We're up three and a half percent. There is a lot of excitement about what one Jensen Wang could mean for Chinese tech. This is really tied to the NVIDIA story. And NVIDIA itself is now up almost 3% and trading at a record high, up for a sixth straight day, matching the run it had in early April. And the story is really simple. A lot of those Chinese AI-specific names, Minimax, GPO, the examples we've got. I mean, look at those gains. That's astonishing overnight on the idea that there might be something here that Tyler just outlined. Something here, something certainly for the market to continue to chew on as we just see relentless exuberance around AI. Fiona Sincott is with us, Citi Index Financial Markets Senior Analyst. And Fiona, is there rationality to the moves in the Chinese names on the back of hope that they'll get access to more powerful chips? Is that something that you're looking to come out of the geopolitical event in China? I mean, it's something we've got our eyes on. So I think, you know, that would be the absolute icing on the cake as far as those stocks are concerned. And that's what we're sort of starting to see priced in is that optimism that that could potentially be on the table. I mean, the fact that we saw that late edition of Huan Jiangseng joining the delegation to the U.S., I think has really just sort of spurred on those hopes. And I think this sort of broad, more broadly speaking, I think there is just a level of excitement surrounding Trump's trip to China. And I think that's sort of really evident as we're seeing, you know, the Nasdaq push higher, even though we've got sort of those concerns regarding inflation and the sort of fundamental backdrop, which normally would weigh down the tech index. We have been talking about the impact of the latest economic data on the markets, but I want to stay focused on what's happening in China. How does the market interpret and price in this delegation of CEOs that we're showing on the screen right now? Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Chuck Robbins, and as we've all mentioned, Jensen Wang with the president. What is it the market thinks that does? This is like the who's who. You know, it's literally the top list of the CEOs from the US that you could wish for to go to speak to China regarding trade, regarding, you know, what moved forward in AI, in chips. I mean, you know, the potential for these two economies to actually get sort of further agreements surrounding such enormous topics would be massive. And I mean, you know, I don't think we can underestimate that. I mean, if we just think about sort of, you know, for example, chips, which, you know, have been a massive part of the story, the rally in recent weeks. You know, if we think about it, the U.S. is very much dominating the sort of the AI computing power at the top of the technology stack. But at the bottom, you've got China controlling much of the supply chain, critical minerals needed to manufacture semiconductors and advanced electronics. So, you know, if there are these two economies are deeply independent on each other. So the more agreements, the more synergies that they get together, the better that's going to be. Look, we are seeing just the run up in semiconductors, hardware in particular, continue. Even if we took a breath yesterday, we're back on and in the green today, Fiona. And it's notable that we're awaiting an IPO. Could be priced today, likely to start trading tomorrow with Cerebris. How are you thinking about the appetite among your clients to get more exposure, particularly for these very AI specific names? Yeah, there's been an extremely ramping up of demand over the last few weeks. I mean, it's definitely caught the markets by surprise, I think. We've seen that rally come, especially given the fact that we did see a little bit of a more depressed outlook towards these stocks at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. But that has definitely moved forward. We're seeing that our clients are really very interested still in their stocks, which is interesting because I think technically the position is looking a little bit overdone. So I think, you know, there is room for some consolidation, potentially a pullback here. But I think broadly speaking, the longer term trend is still looking very positive. Yeah, I mean, that's the question for me. What happens next? Right. You know, technology stocks basically are still at record highs, irrespective of what's happening around the world. So what does happen next and why? What is the big swing factor in markets for you? Yeah, completely. I mean, this is what's really interesting, isn't it? I think is the fundamental backdrop that we have is far from ideal. So I think, you know, if we look about what could happen next, I mean, supposing we do get the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in the coming weeks, That would make the backdrop suddenly much more favorable, which potentially could mean there could be more gains to be had, not just in AI, not just in tech stocks, but potentially across the board. But I think if that doesn't happen, we're still seeing this solid demand for tech and AI. And I think there is a potential, as I said, for it to slow, even for there to be some consolidation or a pullback, just given the fact that we are technically so overdone. But I think as far as the chart is looking, there isn't anything on there that's telling us that there are reversals coming any time soon. And so for the time being, the side of least resistance does appear to be upwards. And is that global, Fiona? As we're talking about China, we talk about the US, but Europe, ASML has been a key name. We think about what's been happening in Japan, in South Korea, which, of course, was shaken over the last couple of trading days because of talk of maybe some sort of citizen dividend and a sharing of the wealth of AI. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the Cosby, I think, is a really interesting example. We've seen the volatility there really come up. I mean, that had some extremely strong gains before we had that pullback. But I think that's an interesting point that's being made there about the sort of the dividend, the people's dividend on AI, that tax on AI. Is that something that could potentially be a risk point further down the line more globally? That's something I would be watching out for. But I think for now, this is a global story that we're looking at as far as AI is concerned. And that demand for tech is definitely back on. Fiona Sincoro of City Index, great to have you back on Bloomberg Tech. Thank you very much. Now, coming up, we're going to speak with Anderil CEO Brian Schimpf as the company hits a $61 billion valuation in its latest funding round. That's next. This is Bloomberg Tech. A new chapter in global growth is being written, and much of it is happening in Africa. Africans need to invest. There are deals to be done and business to be won. I'm Jennifer Zabasaja. Every week on the Next Africa podcast, we track capital flows and political shifts shaping the continent's future. The digitalization of Africa is going to power its growth. Reading the world of something like HIV is possible. Population growth is so enormous in Africa. Listen to Next Africa on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Defense tech startup Anduril has rocketed to a $61 billion valuation after a fresh $5 billion raise led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, almost twice the valuation it stood at one year ago. It underscores surging investor appetite for AI driven defense tech Joining us now is Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf And Brian it good to have you back with us on Bloomberg Tech Thank you so much Happy to be here This is confirmation a little bit of what we reported about a month a couple of months ago But actually, when you come on the program, a lot of the questions we get for you are operational. So let's take the $5 billion that you've raised. How much of that is to get Arsenal 1 done, built, and all of the other operational timelines that you guys are holding yourselves to imminently? Yeah, so as a business, you know, we're entering this period where production is the name of the game. So the vast majority of our capital goes to scaling our factories, building out our production workforce, funding all that inventory, and really just getting that ramp to production working. And we're increasing production revenue something like 250% over the year, just year over year. So just a huge ramp in what we're seeing in terms of demand for our technology. Domain, talk about it. How much breadth are we seeing the geopolitical conflicts? They have sadly increased and we're still seeing this focus on the need for defense tech, but we know that the money is often still spent on primes. Yeah, I mean, look, we are still relatively young as a company. We're nine years in. We've been very successful by any measure for a company at that age in the defense world. And the fraction of the market we're actually addressing right now is still quite small. But where we are seeing a lot of demand is particularly around things like counter-drown and air and missile defense. That's where you look at the current conflict. This is a huge issue. This is a huge area where we're seeing massive increases in what the customers want, our electronic warfare systems, our surface-to-air missile systems. And then the other capability that we're seeing a lot of demand on that was just announced today was a multi-year procurement of a low-cost cruise missile that we call Barracuda. The department is buying thousands a year of these, and we're ramping these at just an unprecedented pace and being able to get these out to help with that critical munitions shortage and the ability to sustain these conflicts and provide the deterrence we need. Brian, just humor me on this one. The $5 billion is sufficient to finish Arsenal 1 and start the production ramp? Yeah, so we are already ramping production with the money we had in the bank. This is really about how do we continue to fuel that growth. I don't think we're going to see Arsenal 1 be done anytime soon because I think the demand we're going to continue to see and the amount we're going to have to continue to scale is just going to ramp and ramp over the next several years. This is a good problem to have, right? And so we're benefiting from the private markets and the ability to fund these very aggressive ramps. And it's a huge testament to the American capital system that we can fund these things very, very quickly. It was interesting to go through a letter to your shareholders. You wrote back in January, actually, and like kind of foretelling what was to come in the year. There's still a bit of a mystique about Anderil, right? So I think Palmer Lucky, one of your co-founders, has talked about the idea that half of Anderil's products aren't really known about. There's particular interest in the next wave of subterranean weapon systems. Could you talk as far as you can about where those get built, you know, the next phase of life for Anderil beyond what the initial focus of Arsenal 1 is? Yeah, so the purpose of the board letter was to lay out a lot of the, you know, kind of why of what are we doing. What's made us successful is we look at, you know, with the shifts in technology, the shifts in warfare, what are the capabilities that are going to be needed over the next five or ten years? And how can we start to invest to bring those forward? So, you know, we're working on a whole plethora of different products. You know, everything expanding the air and missile defense portfolio we're working on. You know, new domains we're operating in. Palmer's always experimenting with the latest and greatest technologies and figuring out what you can do that nobody thought possible. So we just have a constant source of new ideas, how technology can apply. But fundamentally, we look at this question of what are going to be the dominant technologies over the next 10 or 20 years. And what we're seeing in Iran, what we're seeing in Ukraine is that this idea of just the sheer volume of munitions that are exchanged and the need to defend against that, these are critical capabilities that in any world will need to be solved for. And so a lot of our focus is really around these ideas of, you know, how do we provide the right strike capabilities, the right intelligent targeting capabilities, and the defense of these as well. at the right price. And I'm really interested, Brian, in some of these new ideas come from the administration itself. And the Golden Dome project is one of those new ideas that, according to current budget forecasts coming from the Congressional Budget Office, could be up to $1.2 trillion of the ultimate project. Now, I know you're among the companies have been awarded initial contracts. Brian, what do you make of how much this could end up costing and its worth. So a lot of those estimates are based off of what this would have cost historically, right? And that was based around building these things that are extremely expensive and extremely exquisite where you're talking, you know, 10, 20, $30 million a shot to, you know, actually provide that defense. Well, with commercial technologies, taking a smarter approach, using a lot of proven, you know, capabilities that already exist and adapting them for this problem, We believe you can get this to a much more efficient place. And probably even more than the price is can you even produce it? And today, that's one of the major concerns, right? We shot something like a decade of tomahawk production in 72 hours. It's just a crazy rate that we're consuming these things. And the ability to replenish these becomes a critical issue. So our view of this is these are solvable problems. You can do it in a more efficient way than has been historically executed. And I think that, you know, being able to execute this at a national scale is achievable now in a much more aggressive timeline at a much more efficient price than I think people have historically imagined. OK, you get asked this a lot. Palmer Luckey gets asked this a lot. Trey gets asked it a lot. But when you do a round of this scale and you look at the composition of it, who's not there? People want to know about the rationale for Andrew going public, why there weren't more crossover investors. You know, this is the first time actually, Brian, the three of us have had to talk in length because when we were with you in October, the president made some news about China. So just talk us through Brian Shim's thinking on an Anderil IPO. So we want to build one of the most impactful businesses in the world. Like that's our goal, right? We want to seriously move the needle for the U.S. and allied warfighters, provide the right deterrence capabilities and do it at an immense scale. That is fundamentally what we care about. The rationale for going public is a lot less than it used to be. The private capital markets have grown in scale. The ability to fund a business like ours. When we were doing this a few years ago, we were at the upper end of what capital raises look like in the private market. We are a fraction of an AI fundraiser at this point. And so the amount of capital that is available and wants to support these types of companies is massive. So we're not in a rush to go public, right? We don't need to do it from the perspective of capital availability or liquidity. We can provide liquidity to our early investors, our employees, in relatively straightforward ways. There's a lot of means to do that. So a lot of the historic reasons of why you rush to go public don't really exist anymore. So for us, the question is, when does it actually make sense? And for us, it's, you know, we've proven that our business model works. We've proven that we can scale. And, you know, the fundamental economics of the business are shown to be, you know, as successful as we want to be. You know, a high growth company that can operate at high margins. That's fundamentally what we want to show. And when we feel like we've shown that, that's a perfectly reasonable time to go public. So we're not in any rush. We don't have any pressure to do it. It's great. Yeah. Yeah, but investors want a stake, particularly retail. And I know you've been outspoken about the secondary market. Look, today, Anthropic, I think it's yesterday, just put out a new blog saying that, look, there are some areas in which Anthropic seems to be trading on a secondary market, and they call them stock scams in some areas. They say it's issuing fraudulent share certificates in the private artificial AI developer. Are you warning about that still? How worried are you about Andril shares trading fraudulently on a secondary market? Look, we try to control our cap table tightly and make sure that every investor we have, we understand who they are. They're in it for the long haul, and they're in it for the right reasons. There is a lot of very bad actors that exist trying to hawk things that are just not allowed. And we've seen a lot of prosecutions and other things related to this. This is not a new issue. And so I think there's a problem here. I think the government's responding to it. Can you name the companies? Like, are there any secondary market providers you take issue with in particular? Sorry, just briefly. Name names. No, I mean, look, like the reality is it's mostly individual bad actors. Very few of these, you know, second market brokerages or listing things are inherently the problem. The issue is investors, you know, not even investors, these brokers misrepresenting what they have access to. And that's not good in a public market. It's not good in a private market. So I think it is a problem. But it's something that we do everything we can to control and try to help curtail. And it's affecting every one of the companies who are interested in the private markets. Brian, you've been generous with your time. Before we lose you from the program, the president's visit to China, the timeline of the threat to Taiwan, 2027. What's Anderil's thinking on that? Look, diplomacy is good. We're in the deterrence business. We do not want there to be conflict. And I think the president going and engaging with Xi is a fantastic thing. And I'm very excited to see what comes out of this. And, you know, we're also providing a lot of technology to Taiwan, supporting them in every opportunity we can, because we believe that they need the right capabilities and to have the right deterrence. And, you know, the long talked about window of 2027, kind of the period of maximum danger. I think it is true. You know, I don't think anyone believes that it was a, you know, January 1, 2027, an invasion begins. But it highlights a period where the PRC has more established military capability and the U.S. and Taiwan at a relative disadvantage compared to other points in time. And so it is a period of significant risk. And with all of the complexities going on in the world with Iran, with Ukraine, with all the other areas that are hotspots in the world, it creates a significant stress on the U.S. military. So I think this is the opportunity for diplomacy is good to try to ensure that nothing does happen and try to find a scenario that preserves the status quo that is working reasonably well. And that's honestly what I hope for out of this summit. Brian Schimpf, fascinating. All things geopolitics, all things who are raised, $61 billion valuation, the Andrew Hill CEO. We so appreciate your time today. Look, it's expected to be the final day of evidence in the closely watched trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI Yesterday Sam Altman told jurors he was quote extremely uncomfortable with Musk insistence on having full control of the startup in its early days Musk you remember is suing OpenAI his former co and Microsoft alleging that they abandoned the ChatGPT maker altruistic mission Let's get more with Bloomberg's AI editor, Seth Figerman. So what seems to have transpired or what's being articulated by Sam Altman is that at some point, you know, Musk actually was thinking about a profit side of it, thinking about trying to earn control and indeed was then thinking bequeathing it to his children if he died, right? As one does. Yeah, a little bit of a dramatic testimony there. So much of OpenAI's counter argument to Musk's claims here is that really his frustration is that he was not able to control and be CEO of OpenAI in the way that he is with all his other ventures. And so Sam Altman recounted a conversation with Musk where he allegedly said that, you know, if and when he were to die and he was in control of opening eye, he would pass it along to his children. Now, you know, that's opening eye saying it. But Altman also said that, you know, Musk wanted control in the early days, but wasn't really willing to sign documentation saying that control would lift at some point. In his own testimony, Musk has said, yeah, he might have had control early on, but the expectation was more investors would come in and eventually he wouldn't have that same level of control. We beg Seth Figerman. We so appreciate the roundup. We have some breaking news, though, that we must hit because crossing the terminal right now, Arm and its majority owner, SoftBank, reportedly tried to buy Cerebrus in an evenly split cash and stock deal that would have valued the upstart at $100 billion, according to sources. This all happened weeks before the chipmaker was due to make its public debut, of course. The person who's been busy breaking that story and also come anchoring this show on air is one Ed Ludlow. Talk us through it as to this was happening in the background during May. Yeah, look, Cerebrus is going to list tomorrow, right? And this happened at the beginning of May. They very clearly said, no, we're not interested. But Arm and SoftBank, which majority owns Arm, tried. Why? Very interesting. We can get into it in the back half of the show because there's a lot more to come on Bloomberg Tech. welcome back to bloomberg tech let's get back to that news that broke just a few moments ago arm and its majority owner soft bank tried to buy cerebrus that's according to sources my understanding is this all happened in in the last couple of weeks early may and it's just before cerebrus the chip maker is due to go public Thursday, they were rebuffed. You know, Cerebrus said no. My understanding is Armistice Bank would have happily paid a premium, big premium. But Cerebrus backs itself and its leadership backs them. And the investors back them to do this alone as a public company. I mean, look at the demand for its IPO. It's going to be pricing today. We understand it's going to price at the top end of the marketed range up to $160 plus. Right. We're seeing maybe the biggest amount raised in a semiconductor name since Arm went public. Maybe even more of the green shoe allotment is used. But why would Arm and Cerebris have been sort of a useful synergy here? Well, because, you know, Arm goes from being a chip designer to wanting to be a chip maker, like actually sell directly into the market. And Cerebris in this in this phase of inference in AI, the broader infrastructure play, it backs itself as well. Anyway, I should just probably note that all of the parties involved declined to comment or did not immediately respond to comment to Bloomberg. We should check in on markets because markets are being driven by what's happening in Beijing. The Nasdaq 100, modestly high, four tenths of a percent. U.S.-listed Chinese companies, that's the Golden Dragon China Index, up four percent. A big part of this is NVIDIA. Shares of Chinese AI model developers in particular surged after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang was announced to be joining President Trump's China trip. Shares of Minimax and GPO on the hopes of progress on NVIDIA's ability to sell chips into China. Look at those gains overnight. Bloomberg's Chinese equities reporter Henry Ren is with us. Henry, look at those gains overnight. I mean, the response in Asia trading was interesting. Yeah, that's right. So the last minute trip by Jensen Huang is boosting the morale of mainland traders. We're seeing double digit gains in the likes of Zhipu and Minimax as well, the Chinese model makers, but not limited to that. That has obviously spread to today's U.S. trading session as well. We see Alibaba, JD, the likes of those Chinese tech names also trading higher in mainland session. We have the ChinaX index, which is China's equivalent of Nasdaq for those young tech companies also soaring to a record. So there are some optimism that China and U.S. could strike some form of deals on chip exports. And remember that NVIDIA has gained approval from Washington to sell H200 chips into China since end of last year. But still, there are some hopes that more powerful models can be used. Really interesting that you bring up Alibaba, because actually Alibaba, Tencent, they gave us fundamentals as well. They came out with their earnings and thus far they're investing a ton. But the return on that investment from AI investment just doesn't seem to be there yet. Yeah, that's the huge issue that the market is focusing on today with both company reporting results. So probably we can start from Alibaba. So the company, I think it does reassure investors because it said its cloud revenue grew by about 40 percent in the first quarter. And that's the key number that market has been focusing on. That's an acceleration from the quarter earlier. So it does show that there are some AI trajectory going on. And in the meantime, it's also saying that for its AI-related revenue related to its models, as well as application services, that will reach about 10 billion RMB for the June quarter. So that's a helpful additional disclosure as well. So it does show some AI momentum. But at the same time, that capex has been soaring, as you mentioned. Yeah. Meanwhile, Tencent reported the slowest pace of revenue growth in over a year. Henry Ren, it's always great to catch up with you and the latest on all things China and AI. But now let's take a look at today's big number. It's around AI and it's over $900 billion. This is Anthropix targeted new valuation, according to sources who say the company is in early talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in fresh financing. It could set the stage for what may be the largest funding round yet for the company. Though the deal has not been finalized, no term sheet has been signed. Natasha Mascarenes, who joins us now, who helped break this story alongside Ed. And just tell us a little bit about the inbound, almost the love letters they've been receiving from potential investors. It's a great way to describe it, Caroline. I mean, a few weeks ago, these were conversations that were coming completely unsolicited from Anthropics backers. Now we have reporting that they are engaging in those conversations and discussing a round that could see them raise at least 30 billion. And sources are telling us that the round could close as soon as the end of this month. It's one that we're tracking very closely and definitely the biggest update we've had on the round throughout this circus of interest. You know, the private markets are alive, you know, to put it mildly. And it's interesting, Natasha, you know, Anthropic feels comfortable now with this valuation. We've gone from a place in just the last two or three weeks where they rebuffed offers and said, no, we don't want to do this. But the main thing that's happened in the interim is that Claude continues to have momentum, enterprise adoption of Anthropic, and then there's the MIFO's government angle. Give us the sort of awkward elephant in the room, which is that if they close this round, they will have a valuation higher than OpenAI. Absolutely. I mean, this is a massive narrative shift around Anthropic, and we've been covering it relentlessly. Our understanding is that the investor interest far exceeds how much Anthropic will actually end up accepting from investors. And so you are seeing them maybe be picky on valuation, lead investor. The term sheet is not officially signed as of our reporting last evening, but we do expect that to change, you know, as fast as we're able to confirm it. And so the real question and what we're looking at next is, let's say Anthropic closes this round, as per our sources, as soon as the end of this month. Does this change their IPO timeline? Does it need to change their IPO timeline? I mean, you guys just had Brian Shimp from Anduril on the show who was saying that Anduril is raising just a quarter of what AI financing is. I'm curious what you think, Ed, about if this does, you know, change when we see the S-man officially filed for Anthropic. Well, it depends what happens with SpaceX June, July. does that suck oxygen out of the room? But again, if the private markets provide, what's the need to go public? Bloomberg's Natasha Mascarenas teaming up on another big twist and turn in the anthropic story. Some breaking news regarding Misraal, the AI giant of France, is apparently developing a new AI model for banks who lack access to mythos. This is all about cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Already, Misraal of France had been working with local European banks to have a new model that would stress test cyber risks around the banks and more broadly in their systems. Well, now we understand those banks, of course, have been wanting access to Mythos. And now Mistral is looking to develop this new model that can uncover cybersecurity vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed and scale. That reporting all according to Bloomberg sources. Okay, Vardaspace is planning to send medicines from United Therapeutics into orbit to explore the use of microgravity in creating drugs. It's one of the first commercial research deals to develop medicine molecules in space and then return them to Earth, though the mission's still in its early stages. I speak with our CEO, Will Brewery. Let's talk timeline. This is an exciting development for you guys because it's a real commercial opportunity. When does it happen? What are the steps to start working with United? Yeah, thanks for having me, Ed. It's happening now, which is really exciting. The research has been done for decades, And so now we're moving into the commercial phase. VARTA has been flying for years. And so this commercial endeavor will be putting drugs into space in the next year. We're working on those drugs right now in the lab with United. And when they're in space, what are you hoping to prove? What are you hoping to see? Where does this drive United? So the most confusing thing about VARTA is the space part. If you just imagine we had an anti-gravity technology. It's good to admit it. If you imagine we had an anti-gravity technology where we could manipulate chemical systems on Earth to improve formulations in a way that would otherwise be impossible, and by formulation I mean going from an IV bag to a shot or better bioavailability, then it would make total sense. Now, as shipping to space is becoming just shipping, we can access microgravity in a way that helps patients today. I've had the opportunity to sort of interact with, I don't know if you call it a spacecraft or if you call it a mini factory, but just go through the basics of who's the launch provider, what happens when you get into low-Earth orbit, and then how long typically is the spacecraft or capsule in orbit? Sure. So I'll even step back just because we're so excited about this United announcement today. First, we work with the customers before we even get there, and we develop a microgravity-enabled formulation on the ground in our lab in cooperation and partnership with United. Once those microgravity-enabled formulations are ready for flight... What does that look like, microgravity-enabled formulation? It means that the temperature profile, the concentration, all the parameters that would go into any other drug formulation now has the option of turning off gravity during the process, which means we can make a new outcome for patients. So then what we do is once we have that formulation, we load it into our spacecraft. Our launch provider is SpaceX. We put our spacecraft onto a Falcon 9 rocket. Dedicated or rideshare? Rideshare, which is great because now we get to take advantage of good costs and frequent availability to space. So now the spacecraft separates from the rocket like it would any other satellite So it looks like a satellite to SpaceX You can fit 20 of these things on a single rocket It now orbiting the Earth We do the manufacturing process where there isn gravity affecting the sedimentation of the crystals And then once those properties are locked in, our spacecraft flies itself back to Earth, lands in Australia, and now we have the drug for patients. And what does it help patients with? I mean, how is this going to unleash a whole new area of medicine? It's wild because gravity is a fundamental force of physics, so it's extremely broad technology. Anything from bioavailability to shelf stability. A classic example that was flown on the International Space Station was going from an IV bag to a shot. So imagine you're in rural America and you don't have access to a clinic. You now have access to the drug because that same drug can be form factored into a shot instead of an IV bag. And that shot can come to you instead of you having to go to the clinic. We're showing images, right? This is images of VARDA returning to Earth. So this sounds ridiculous. And I'll say it anyway. you try and land uh in australia that seems quite easy australia is quite big actually it's not like how restrictive is that that landing pad of one continental nation yes yes so more than try i mean we've done this now four or five times um and uh the reason i say four or five one of them was in utah and the rest were in australia how'd that go in utah oh it was great i mean you know that was our first mission success i see yeah um the thing that's nice about australia is it's a commercial range, so we don't need to get in the way of the military operations that are happening at our test ranges, so we can not disturb them while landing commercially. But it's great. I mean, it makes the process way easier. You're excited about United Therapeutics, deal. Where next? What does this prove out for others? Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Because it's such a broad technology that affects so many drugs, you know, United is kind of in the future, and they have been for quite some time. And so we're really lucky to work with such a crack team. But this technology is broad, so it applies to a wide variety of pharmaceuticals for a wide variety of patients. Well, as that starts to go up into space, come back, join us, Wilbur A. CEO of Vata Space, on that new announcement. Meanwhile, there's been plenty of announcements coming out about agentic commerce and international expansion from a firm. It's just been reporting yesterday at the company's 2026 investor forum. The fintech company is laying out a bold roadmap to $100 billion in annual volume. Look, CEO Max Levchin, I'm pleased to say, joins us in New York, and I'm sad I'm not there next to you, Max. But tell us about what your I know. I know, too far. But I'm interested in what you told the investors, the analyst community in New York yesterday and for the next few days. How do you get to that sort of volume? Where are the growth factors? You know, the exciting thing is that literally everything we have been working towards is coming together and working incredibly well. We held a similar event three years ago and promised investors will get to $50 billion of gross merchandise volume, our merchant sales that we power. And we will do so by maintaining, while maintaining our profit margins between 3% and 4%. We'll grow at 20% per year or so. That was the story we told them three years ago. We've now come back. We're now basically at that $50 billion mark. You would expect us to slow down. But instead, we told our investor base yesterday, we expect to grow 25% compounding, so five points extra. And we intend to up the floor of our profitability from three to 3.75%. So not only are we growing faster, not only are we reaching more consumers, more merchants, we intend to do this more profitably. And we feel it's just getting better and better for us. So that's the headline. And, you know, I had a lot of conversations yesterday that seemed to indicate that our investors quite enjoying the news. Max, just very simply, why is a $100 billion volume target the right target, the right metric? When people try and understand a firm, like you come on the show often and we talk about the different offerings and some of the newer products that you're doing. This kind of North Star or achievable goal, probably to your mind, it's really interesting that you've set that as it. You know, it is just a waypoint. We have absolutely no intention of slowing down or stopping at 100. It's just another nice round number that we can set our sights to. But we do see an incredible market pull. Consumers are ready. They are coming to us. We are now seeing inbounds from consumers that didn't discover us at the point of sale, which is the usual way, just signing up for a firm, asking us to send them a card so they can transact everywhere. That's been a huge pull. That's contributed to our growth tremendously. Merchants come to us saying, I've seen your logo on my competitor's sites. I know you're driving 10, 20% more sales for them. You should do the same for us. Let us sign up. You should promote our sales events. Tell us, merchants, in your app because we're now reaching 15 million monthly consumers and so on. So just the tremendous amount of we're finally a real scalable thing that every constituent cares about a lot is what gives us the confidence to go towards this new milestone. Analysts liked it, like RBC talking about the pending industrial bank charter. That could be another strength area. the fact that you've got competitive advantage, but take us to the future and the agentic commerce future because we talk about it a lot on the show and you are already doing deals with Google. What does that look like in terms of how I'm going to be having a relationship with a firm going forward? I think it's going to be incredible. I cannot be more excited about this new AI-powered future in many different facets. As an engineer, as a coder, I love what we have today. As a consumer, as a buyer of complicated things, I love the help that AI provides me when I research the finer points of whatever it is that I'm after now. A firm is a great tool of buying things that are meaningful. When it matters, that's when consumers come to us. They want anything from a bicycle to a couch to an espresso machine. During those moments, you want to know that the financing choice you're making has your back, that you're not going to get hit with some unexpected fees. You know exactly when you're going to start and stop with your payments. That's what we've built. and agents just make it that much easier to bring to the end consumer. And the brand we've built allows people to trust us. The fact that we're able to partner with LLM providers allows us to be right there when consumers are searching and doing their research. So it's just an incredible incremental growth engine that we found. Max, you're again emphasizing the word built. You do that often. But how does quickly Max Lefcin think about M&A in a firm's future? You know, we've looked for years. We haven't found anything in the last few, so never say never. But we have so much to do just with the team that we have. It's, you know, when opportunities come up, we'll, of course, look at them. But we're very focused on building. Affirm CEO Max Levchin back on Bloomberg Tech. Thank you very much for your time today. Now, coming up, we're going to get back to what to expect from President Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping. And will AI be in focus? Probably. This is Bloomberg Tech. On April 4th, 2023, around two in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, The Killing of Bob Lee. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. over Mythos and speculation about its potential cybersecurity risks. And Nebius, well, it's emerging as a powerhouse in the AI data center Gold Rush, reporting a 684% jump in first quarter sales on increased demand for its own data centers. The company competes with a range of neocloud startups like CoreWeave that rent out computing resources to AI developers. Ed. OK, let's get back to what everyone's talking about today, and that's President Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping. And what to expect? Bloomberg's senior tech editor, Mike Shepard, joins us from DC. Go to our senior tech editor because there is a big delegation of tech CEOs with the president. Jensen Wong is with him. And those are the issues on the table. Those are, and Ed, you know, the addition at the last minute and a really dramatic move of Jensen Wong to the trip certainly thrust artificial intelligence to the center of the discussions. It's unclear what sort of progress we will actually see in the areas that are most dear to NVIDIA, and that would be gaining more access to the Chinese market. They have one U.S. permission to sell those H200AI chips to customers in China, but Chinese authorities have been reluctant to allow their own producers to buy those chips en masse. And the reason is they want to promote and protect their own domestic chip-making industry, led by Huawei, led by CameraCon and SMIC. And yet there is the tension on the other side. They want their own artificial intelligence companies The model developers also to gain an edge, and they have been clamoring for that. And today we did see shares of Minimax, Knowledge Atlas, and even today U.S.-traded shares of Alibaba and Baidu all climb on the prospect that there could be more compute going to China. Talk to us about the names that were already solidified as going, because Qualcomm's going, Micron's going. Companies with exposure to China, they want to increase. Where would they be fitting in to the ultimate demand equation here? Well, the broader demand equation, of course, for Micron, they have their own separate issues with China where they are almost company non grata at a certain level. Their role in the memory market is really key as well. And it's something that for chip makers and developers worldwide, they want to have a piece of being able to contribute to the creation of AI processors, not only designed by NVIDIA and by AMD, but by other companies as well. So they could be looking to push into there. And same with Qualcomm. Qualcomm, of course, has a lot of business when it comes to chips for mobile phones, and that could be a way in there. More broadly, when we look at this trip and its agenda, though, Caro, it's interesting that we see the White House Science and Technology Policy Advisor, Michael Kratzio, is there. And this could signal that AI and discussions around the technology will be really front and center. We could see the U.S. raise concerns about the practice of distillation that we have seen where AI models are unfairly extracted and also a working group created to discuss AI. Mike Shepard, across all the latest coming between those key talks in Beijing at the moment, we appreciate you rounding it up. But that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech right here from San Francisco. We've got to get back to that breaking news that you helped break, Ed, earlier this hour. Talk us through why Arm was potentially looking to buy Cerebrus. Yeah, Arm and SoftBank tried to buy Cerebrus. Cerebrus said no, they will go public tomorrow. But Cerebrus makes supercomputers at scale for inference. And that's where the AI story is right now. That, of course, all according to Bloomberg sources. Recap that story and many others on the podcast. You know where to find it. Apple, Spotify, iHeart and all of the Bloomberg platforms. This is Bloomberg Tech. I'm Francine Lacqua, an award-winning journalist. And I've got a new podcast. Leaders with Francine Lacroix from Bloomberg Podcasts. I've interviewed everyone from heads of state to fashion icons about the news of the moment. But I've always been curious, who are these people as leaders? I don't think there's one right way to be a leader. Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no decision. Listen to new episodes every other Monday. Follow Leaders with Francine Lacroix wherever you get your podcasts.
