Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - July 10th, 2026

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1:54that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. Tim is off this week. Now, it was a volatile week for global markets. That included an escalation of tensions again between the United States and Iran that sent oil prices higher and their peace deal once again in doubt.

2:47We also had a focus on global relations, including the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, thanks to the NATO summit in Turkey. And then we also had investors parsing the latest Fed minutes for clues on the direction of U.S. interest rates. All of this as the tech trade churns as some strategists talk up a rotation out of high-flying chip stocks to the more subdued hyperscalers, which have way, way underperformed the overall market. This is all against a backdrop of investors increasingly questioning the momentum against the massive and pricey cost of that AI build out. All right, it was a lot again.

3:22With that in mind, this week, the ever-changing AI narrative. Plus, navigating the high-stakes world of advanced manufacturing and industrial supply chain with Lippi Sternheim, CEO of ReAlloy, and the rush to decouple critical defense supply chains from China from the U.S. defense industrial base. He covered it all. Also, a sobering look at the accelerating human and economic costs of climate change and why extreme heat isn't the only impact shocking scientists, courtesy of our Bloomberg Green team. All of that to come, we begin with the AI build and the evolving conversations around the activity and its return on investment, especially as Wall Street focuses on the big tech hyperscalers.

4:03On that, we caught up with longtime investor Rudina Ciceri. She's founder and managing partner at Glasswing Ventures. She invests in companies where artificial intelligence is the core architectural foundation. She joined me alongside Bloomberg Tech host Ed Ludlow and Bloomberg News credit reporter Emily Grafeo, who was in for Tim this week. We want to get into, though, what we feel like is the evolving AI story. Ed is here with us in studio. And then we want to bring in longtime investor Rudina Ciceri. She's founder and managing partner at Glassweek Ventures. She invests in companies where AI is the core architectural foundation.

4:35And so she's been thinking about the next generation of winners. She joins us from Boston. Hey, great to have you here, Rudina, with Emily. and of course with Ed. I'm curious about how this conversation around AI continues to evolve. We are now talking so much about the memory names. How do you see it? Well, hello, Carolyn. Good to see everyone. I think fundamentally, we are seeing the overall demand for AI-related infrastructure and all the way up to the application layer continue to be strong. And in my view, the shifts that we are seeing in the market sort of reflect the scarcity or overestimation of scarcity along the value chain.

5:15So on the point around NVIDIA and others, are we seeing the correction because we expected more scarcity while on the hyperscalers are the valuations coming back because it's becoming a lot easier to track the sources of revenue that these players will have. And by the way, we think of the hyperscalers as that sort of fundamental layer of the software infrastructure layer, but each of them are much more vertically integrated with their own chips. So in many ways, we're seeing the market move toward vertically integrated players from the chip layer all the way to the foundation models, rather than just the CapEx spend.

5:53I don't know that we're out of the CapEx demand. I think that's a multi-multi-cycle, multi-year level of demand. And I do think that perhaps we're correcting a bit for the overestimation of scarcity. You mentioned revenue, and I'm curious, Rudina, if you can talk a little bit more about just how critical it is for investors like you to be able to pinpoint whether the spending on AI is actually translating into tangible revenue and whether we've seen that yet. Thank you, Emily. I think it's interesting because I'm a very early stage investor. So I often say I back to brilliant researchers out of a lab and we build out a monetization plan.

6:36If anything, I would bifurcate between the next gen application layer, AI companies where not only are we seeing revenue, but the scale from zero to multimillion, hundreds of millions is a matter of months rather than a matter of years. So if anything, we are seeing acceleration. Now, beneath that, two fundamental questions. Why? Is it because, especially on the enterprise side and even consumers, we are all experimenting and trying a lot of things. Thus, is the revenue sustainable or is it a leaky bucket? Second question, though, is really pertaining to the adoption of AI more systematically.

7:17So, having moved beyond the, I'm going to experiment with this in-house build tool or with a chat function of Claude or ChatGPT to something more serious. In that case, we're seeing demand for AI products to become much more of an important component, not just to the tech stack of enterprises, but to their actually business models and go to markets. You know, Radina, what's interesting about what you and the team at Glasswing are looking at, it's so timely for today with this Morgan Stanley hyperscaler story. So you are looking at AI native SaaS, various layers of the software stack. every time I speak to one of the CEOs of the hyperscalers, I always ask them, you seem to be pitching and working on the same kinds of technologies that your customers already do.

8:07So how do you respond to that? The idea that the hyperscalers, the cloud computing companies, let's call them what they actually are, are going to want to offer the same tools that you might back at that early stage? So thank you, Ed. The underlying question is, where is the mode for the startups relative to the incumbents. And I think the mode depends. Some of it has to do with, you know, vertical plays. You know, I recently backed a company called Modern Industrials. They are developing an end-to-end demand planning for distributors of lumber and building materials. Very, very specific. Tens of billions type of opportunity a year in terms of the revenue they can generate.

8:50But if Microsoft or Anthropic or OpenAI are going to that level of specificity, we have something to worry about. By the same token, who will be their customer? So they have to draw a line to your very astute question around where am I going to stop competing with my customers? And, oh, by the way, is there value in being highly, highly specialized? My view is that there is. And the value doesn't necessarily lie in the models. it actually lies in the highly specific albeit not as broad data sets which then you know deliver much you know superior outputs i would say if i'm i'm pharmaceutical maker or like in the medical field right and like i would say that i want a data set that i'm going to play with and that's very related to my field i don't need to know about the rest of the stuff that some of the large language models are doing yeah or they 100 or radina they you know you something you said a moment ago is really interesting you are backing not companies necessarily we'll work out the business plan later you're backing the researchers out of the lab and like that that applies at the late stage as well right the founder-led thesis but those people also have specialisms right does it matter to you if they have a core team of not just computer scientists but in bio biology biochemistry etc yeah so let me parse what what i intended with what i shared in the case of the modern industrial i'm very much going in with a very clear understanding of how it's monetized what's the roi for the customer so in many ways that's extremely tangible and very clear around the tam pricing competitive dynamics my my earlier comment related more to the what i would call frontier tech.

10:33So we have already achieved what we have achieved with the large language models. What comes next? We backed a company called Recursive AI. It's about the models correcting themselves to get around the next set of issues like hallucination and other problems that the large language models have. There's a whole paradigm of neo labs and new researchers that are bypassing in many ways the capabilities of the current incumbents. Think about Liquid AI, multi-multi-multi-billion dollar company. They're actually doing all the processing at the edge. It's actually a whole different sort of way to bypass the need that we currently have on compute.

11:15So in those cases, you solve one of the compute problems or the energy problem or the performance of the models, and then you worry about monetization. So it's not pie in the sky, I'll beg to smart people, and someday they will deliver something. It has a purpose, but you might not know the pricing. Kind of like how many of us would have guessed that pure consumption pricing was going to be the model. Does that make sense? One contemporary difference, though, is that that group of three or four people can raise a billion dollars out of the gate or several hundred million dollar seed round at crazy valuation based on the value of their own intellectual capital?

11:53How does Glasswing even participate in early stage valuations like that? Very good question. So our core product is actually, you know, the more typical pre-seed stage rounds. We have a pool of capital and a product called access checks, where we write, you know, small$1 to$2 million access checks in these gigantic rounds to have a seat at the table, to have a seat to the ecosystem, to support the founders and participate with those that actually make it big. So while our core checks are focused on building the companies from the ground up in the more typical fashion that you think of early stage venture, we absolutely get access to the big guys.

12:33And it's important. There are benefits for both. Hey, speaking of the big guys, I just got time for maybe one or two more last questions. I'm thinking about SpaceX, which does go into the NASDAQ 100. on XAI. What's your thought about that company, which seems to be, to some extent, coming from behind, but it's got certainly deep, deep pockets? It's emerging more and more. I think, in many ways, I think of Elon's companies as all being intertwined with one holding and the holding being Elon himself. I think it'll be interesting to see what he does with XAI vis-a-vis SpaceX and maybe even what happens with Tesla eventually.

13:10they are catching up. I think performance has improved. And to be perfectly honest, in the circles that sort of are leveraging the most cutting edge models, XAI is starting to become a real contender. Definitely coming from behind, though. Are people talking more about XAI? Yeah, increasingly because of Cursor, right? Like the Cursor acquisition moving so quickly, people pay close attention because it's such a widely used tool. All right. And yet, even with cursor now, you know, the next generation saying we've bypassed cursor. So things are moving so very fast. What becomes, I go back to what becomes sustainable versus what is the flavor du jour?

13:52We shall see. You know, and it's fascinating too. Rudina, thank you so much. Rudina Cessari, founder and managing partner at Glasswing Ventures. We always appreciate your view. I have to say, I had more and more conversations I have with folks where companies are using a lot of different LLMs. They're saying they're starting to get more discretionary in terms of who's got access to what because there is a cost. Well, real quick, the reason people loved Cursor is you could swap in Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini model and change it. Now Elon owns it. They're going to be allowed to do that? It's a big question.

14:22It is a big question. Hey, listen, I'm so glad you're here this week. We're going to reach out to you a bunch. of course our Ed Ludlow. Catch him on Bloomberg Tech, 11 a.m. on Bloomberg Television.

14:56slash top funds. Across all fund share classes of Fidelity, Fidelity Advisor Shares, and Fidelity ETS as of 6-15-2026. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary, massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from earth. I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.

15:37And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me, and I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now?

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16:54Hey, you might recall last month, we talked about this, I believe, the G7 meeting of global leaders. The group agreed that no single country should supply more than 60 % of their imports of rare earths by 2030. It's all an effort, Tim, to reduce their reliance on China. Yeah, the G7 leaders will aim for further reduction in their dependencies with a view to limiting exposure to 50 % as soon as possible beyond 2030. Meantime, U.S. Pentagon allowing critical minerals plants to build on U.S. Army bases, leasing land to companies that will build and operate critical mineral processing plants. I think a lot of people are wondering how long that takes and sort of like what the timeline is for that.

17:31And what's the structure between the government and really public-private sector? But it's a way to get around the environmental review. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So there's a lot going on in this space. We've got a great voice on this. Lippie Sternheim is president and CEO of the U.S.-based mine-to-magnet rare-earth company, Realloys. It's about a$923 million market cap company. Stocks up about 86 % year-to-date, rallying nearly 6 % in the past two days. Still down more than 20%, though, since late June. Stock was added to the Russell 3000, Tim, just on Monday. The company also appointing a new CEO last week.

18:04Lippie joins us from Boca Raton, Florida. Lippie, good to have you on the program. you last joined us back in mid-May. How has your world changed since then? So far, so good. Thanks for having me on again. Last week, as you know, we announced that we partnered with the Army, which is very exciting. We raised$100 million in equity, also exciting. You mentioned the new CEO, but it's actually a CFO. Craig Cunningham just joined us with a very good background in this business, and he joins us now. And as we shuffle around and get ready for the next push in what we're doing in the rare earths. You mentioned the army and you asked the question about how long.

18:43I mentioned to you guys last time, it's not an overnight business to get 40 years of Chinese dependency off the table, but we're working really hard to make the 2027, January 1st, DEFAR's deadline and help revitalize the government organic industrial base by partnering with them and building our facilities on army bases. Are there certain army bases that you've already identified where you will be building your facilities? So right now we're talking about Tool Utah, which is us and another company, I believe they're in the boron business that the army is putting in that army base. But there's a few army bases and it's continuous talks of which is the best locations for the manpower, the power.

19:28One of the big issues, as you mentioned, is environmental when it comes to these things. So wherever it's most best and most convenient to do so the army is looking for a big push to get this to the finish line and to make america in its strategic uh rare earths and its stockpiles and all of that in-house and on the shore how does all this work the funding the ownership rights the time to build like who's in charge if you're building uh on army bases so obviously it's a it's uh an art at least with the army it's a new it's public private partnership which this is new to have it on the army basis but it tells you about how strategically important it is for the government and the army and the military to actually have the supply under their purview in their hands.

20:11As we go along here, I think in the next few weeks, in the next few months, we'll give updates, obviously, exactly specifics and things like that. Right now, it's about where their best capabilities are and where their best buildings are. And in kind, they get to access for them and all their intervention, industrial-based customers, the final products. But who owns it? Like, do you, you're going to, yeah, are you going to spend money to build it all? Yes, we will. Like I said, that's why we did a fresh, we have 100 million funding. We're pretty well funded for this. It's a public-private partnership with the Army's benefits of the land.

20:46Like I said, environmental, as I mentioned, it's not that you can just shoot through because it's the Army bases. You still have to go through things, but you're dealing with the Army and you're dealing with government sites. It's obviously a lot more efficient and easier and the people behind it want it done. So hopefully that'll help, especially in our case, Because as you know, we're doing it in a way that's helpful and better for the environment in the first place, as I mentioned last time I was on. But contrast that with how long it typically would take if you weren't doing this on an army base.

21:14And you did have to work with different stakeholders within a municipality or within a local government. It would take much longer. Nobody in the government moves at the speed of light. The army, on the other hand, is its own, I would guess it's its own entity in some way, shape or form. and they can move things and they move fast. Army is the, you know, the best we have. You talked about the environment. And, you know, we were talking with our own Joe Doe, who like follows all this space. And one of the questions that came to mind is if you guys plan to metallize yourself, and this is where you strip away the oxygen, you convert the raw, rare earths, right?

21:50And the mind earths into, you know, metallic elements. But you guys have been working, I think, on a process that is better for the environment. So what can you share with us on that? So we've come up with a way of hydrofluoric acid-free processing. As you know, I mentioned last time on the show, the processing currently that we do is in Saskatchewan. As I mentioned, rare earth. We're mainly focused on heavy rare earths. I believe we're the only one that's specifically focused on the military defense industrial base, which is what they need. It's the heavy rare earths, and most of those have uranium and thorium radioactive materials.

22:24Saskatchewan is permanent for that. That's where it's easy to do. The metallization that you mentioned, which is taking it once it's in powder form to turn it into metals and then from there into magnets, that's definite that it's going to be here in the U.S. The processing for the moment is still in North America, but still in Canada at the moment. And we'll see how that goes in as far as bringing it here. But you will be doing it. And I'm just curious if you do, how do you work alongside in conjunction with companies like Vulcan, USA Rare Earth, and Energy Fuels? So some of the companies you mentioned are in the magnet business, some of them are in the mining business.

22:58We work with some of the ones you mentioned, and some of the ones are just irrelevant to us. But for the most part, this is not, I've always said that Realloys was not a company, you know, with a mine and trying to make a business at the end. We're more of a consortium of all the right partners, and now with the Army, the best partner of all. And that brings the government as well and all their capabilities, et cetera, to make this a mine-to-magnet story. So all of the above with all of the companies that can help us or be, you know, like I said, some of them are magnet makers. We're in touch with them, qualifying materials with them and things like that.

23:31So it's not a non-competitive thing where you have your own thing and you can't talk to anybody else. One thing I want to ask you, and if you go back six, eight months, I feel like Tim and I were nonstop talking about this in terms of rare earths and the government just so in talking about it a lot too. Is the U.S. government for this area and beefing up production here in the United States, is the support the same? Is it more or is it a little bit less? The support from the government is from all different sides and all different factions of the government. It's all there. They're happy to help.

24:08They're eager to help. And this, again, with this deal with the Army, it's them helping behind the scenes. And anything that can help us with the partnership is things that they're offering. Again, it'll take time, but I think you'll see more from us on that later. But the U.S. government under this administration has created this business where it's a viable business. You know, the G7 and the caps that they put on with the 60 percent, that helps the China dumping, which I was asked about that previously. It helps them on the light side, definitely. In our case, there's a law of DFARS on January 1st.

24:40Anything and everything that the government can do to make sure that in the next few years, this is a North American business. This is an alloy, Western alloy business they're doing. There's no question this administration has done more for this sector than anybody else. I couldn't imagine anybody doing more. So that's what I wanted to talk about. And I want to try to get specifics about your expectations from how the U.S. government is going to help. And certainly we have the army basis element of this. But I mean, does it get to the point where members of the U.S. armed forces are actually doing work for you?

25:14I think that's still to be ironed out. So I don't want to speak ahead of myself, but the answer I think is yes. They'll be involved. They want to know the processes. They can follow. I mean, it's on their base ultimately. So they can see how, what, when, and where it works. I think it's in the best hands when it's there, but it's still a private company, private operation as a partnership. It's a public private partnership. What are you waiting to hear still from the government about commitments? At the moment, we're just seeing all that it's going to take. And as I said, first step one is figure out where the best place is, what's there, what the capabilities are, what they can help with, whether it's the environmental side or other sides.

25:49And then we're always talking to them about funding to scale up in a bigger and bigger way. They want as much as possible in their purview, and they want as much as possible in America, obviously. So anything they can do, and it comes down to funding as well from various departments, they're eager to help, and we're in talks to try to get done on the scale that we want to get done in the time frame that we want to get done. You know, the production that we'll do this year and the production we'll be doing in the beginning of next year is a start, but there's quite a defense space with all the wars going on, with everything that's going on.