Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - June 12th, 2026

0:01With LPL Financial, we provide the services to help push you forward. When it comes to your finances, your business, your future, the only question should be, what if you could? Pit advertisement, Anna Kendrick is not a client of LPL Financial LLC and receives compensation to promote LPL. Investing involves risk including potential loss of principal LPL Financial LLC member FINRA SIPC. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions.

0:36Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Never bet against American grit or American energy. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

1:22Podcasts, 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, a topsy-turvy week for global markets driven by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. It seems never ending. The U.S. and Iran exchanging strikes, jolting their two-month-old truce and endangering talks aimed at securing lasting peace in the Middle East.

2:07Meanwhile, Wall Street going all in on Elon Musk's SpaceX, which debuted on the Nasdaq on Friday in a record-breaking IPO. Investors scrambling for a piece of the space giant. Also the AI giant. Also the owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter. And maybe, just maybe, as some analysts have told us, maybe it'll be part of Tesla or Tesla will be part of that in the future. So then throw in the Boring Company and then Neuralink and whatever else, right? Elon does a lot. Robots, like all of it. Investors certainly scrambling for a piece of the space giant. For a full breakdown of this record IPO, head on over to the Bloomberg Terminal or Bloomberg.com.

2:47With that as our backdrop, another mega cap tech company was also on our mind this past week. That was Apple, Bloomberg's managing editor for global consumer tech and our in-house Apple expert, Mark Gurman, who correctly forecast many months ago, maybe what was coming when it comes to AI and Siri. Well, he unpacked the details further from this past week's Apple Annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Everything from the biggest overhaul of Siri to, yes, a foldable iPhone, although that really wasn't part of the announcements. But what Mark reminded us, you read inside all the details and that's where you find out about this possible or expected foldable iPhone.

3:25Plus, as AI continues to seemingly reshape everything, including the corporate landscape, pressure on the American worker is growing. Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo weighs in on what needs to be done to avoid significant dislocations in the labor market. And we can't talk about AI without being reminded of all the energy it requires and all the sources needed to meet that demand, including nuclear. The CEO of Nanonuclear, James Walker, gives us an update on those much-talked-about SMRs, small modular reactors. And later on, we catch up with the director of the hit Broadway show, Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York.

4:01All that to come, we begin with a closer look at one of the world's most valuable companies. We are talking about Apple. We are indeed. This past Monday, Apple unveiled a new AI strategy at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference out on the West Coast, aiming to provide practical improvements and features that the company believes everyday consumers will actually use. For more, Bloomberg's Emily Grafeo and I caught up with our in-house Apple whisperer. Bloomberg's managing editor for global consumer tech, Mark Gurman. My big takeaway is that Apple has just reset its AI strategy, its Siri strategy, and its underlying software platforms because they have a blockbuster next three years of new hardware products that they need to get right.

4:41And what you've seen from Apple lately is that the gate to some of their hardware products coming out on time, being successful, working as advertised, has been AI and has been the underlying operating systems. And so for the foldable iPhone, AirPods with cameras, three smart home devices, new iPads and touchscreen Macs to come out and sell at their peak needs to work properly and they need to get the software and AI story in shape. And they did just that. Obviously, they can't come out and say because of their culture that this is why they're doing that. But from what I'm telling you is that this is all about enabling this next generation suite of hardware under incoming CEO John Tarnas.

5:20So are they finally caught up in AI compared to the other big tech companies? No, they're where they should have been two years ago. They're not caught up in, you know, in any shape or form. But what we also saw is Apple roll out AI in a way that is for mass consumers. Their new LLM, their new on-device Siri technology, also hitting to the cloud, is effective. This is what mass consumers are going to use. Don't forget, a third of the world is using these Apple products. And so I think their approach that they're taking is super smart for the mass consumer. But at the same time, I think if Apple was capable of rolling out these whiz-bang features and developer tools, things like Codex, things like OpenClaw, they would do just that.

6:02And they will probably get there eventually. Obviously, they got a helping hand from Google and Anthropic and OpenAI this time around. But I do think they are in a very fair place for consumer expectations today. And their brand is super strong. And so people are going to keep buying the product. So I think they're in a decent place, an adequate place. All right. So decent place for consumers. I mean, it's not on par with some of the other high flyers, certainly in the tech space. So what will it take for investors to get more impressed? What do we need to see from Apple? And maybe how long does it take for it to get there?

6:36Investors are going to need to understand that for the next few years, Apple is not going to be a AI winner in terms of the way that they think about AI winners today. they're going to need to recalculate their investment thesis around is the apple product story the overall cohesive story strong are the new hardware products industry leading and don't forget apple's always been a hardware company at its core 80 of the revenue is from the hardware the other 20 services and they've been doing good in services and they've been doing good in hardware but the hardware needs to be in a place where it's actually excellent again and my hope as a consumer is that these new software features are going to try to push the hardware into a great place, an excellent place.

7:23So we'll see if that happens. And that includes, you did have another story out about the iOS 27 overhaul and all these related software updates, what it says about the foldable phone from Apple. So what did you glean from all of that? Yeah, this three-year roadmap of major new hardware products, the first one is the foldable phone. You'll see the new CEO introduced that in early September. The new iOS obviously is going to run on this phone, so it's chock full of hints about the upcoming device. I'm pretty excited for it. It's going to have a widescreen display, excellent reliability and durability.

7:58So I think it's going to be a pretty compelling product. Mark, before we let you go, we do want to get your reaction to this Apple news saying that under EU regulators' extreme interpretation of the Block Digital Markets Act. What do you make of just the regulation in Europe and how much it's going to stifle Apple's growth projections here? I don't like what the EU is doing at all. Let's take Apple and growth and Apple as a company aside. If I'm a consumer in the EU, someone like me who loves tech, wants to try out these new features, wants these breakthrough new products and software enhancements, I'm upset with the EU because I just want this stuff and I want my Apple ecosystem to work as advertised as it's supposed to work.

8:42If I'm a developer, which the EU said they're putting these rules in place to protect competitors, to protect third-party app makers, I'm really angry. Because if I'm a developer in the EU, I'm not able to introduce new AI apps, all these features that take advantage of the new frameworks, these new platforms. And I want to be able to do that in order to make money for my small app business. So I'm not really sure who the EU is helping here. That was Mark Gurman, Bloomberg News Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech. Apple's news was overdue for many investors who were concerned that Apple was falling behind on its AI strategy.

9:17More broadly, this is all part of a massive and expensive race between the big tech giants to be at the center of this latest tech disruption that's upending how we live, how we work, how we play. And when it comes to how we work, that's creating opportunities. It's also creating job losses. For more on what this could mean for the future of the U.S. labor force, Carol and Emily Grafeo spoke with Gina Raimondo, 40th U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Biden. She was also the 75th governor of Rhode Island. I am an AI forward person. I think that the U.S. does and needs to continue to lead in this global AI competition.

9:56And that means, of course, being ahead with the technology, but it also means having a strategy for people, right? I mean, we're not going to win the global AI race if we have great technology and sky-high unemployment. And so I think it's time for the country to get very serious about changing the way we support people when they change jobs and the way we train people, because we have to bring all Americans along. This cannot just be AI for the big tech and not bring everyone along. And so with this announcement, as I understand what MED is doing here, the thing I really liked about it was they're paying people while they do the training.

10:36And I know from when I was governor, I was a leader in a lot of these apprenticeship and training programs. People can't afford to do a six-week or six-month training program and not get paid. They're not going to finish that training program. First, I think it's good that companies in America are stepping up to say, let's get innovative and try to support workers. But I think it's important to say, we're going to pay you while you get trained. And if you graduate, and if you get your credential, there will be a job at the end of that training. Secretary, you wrote a guest essay for the New York Times earlier this year.

11:15It was entitled, America Cannot Withstand the Economic Shock That's Coming. What do you think the country, the Trump administration and lawmakers from both parties really need to do to address this very much feared economic and labor disruption that AI is expected to unleash? We have to prepare for it. I think it is a transition. I do believe AI will create new jobs. Every technology has created disruption and job loss, but over time, new jobs, new industries, many, many, many, many millions of jobs in our economy today did not exist even 20, 30 years ago. So I think we're going to get to that place.

12:02However, there will be a transition. And I worry that during that transition, if we're not thoughtful and purposeful, too many Americans could be on the losing end of that transition. And so we need to get very serious right now and create new training initiatives like the one we're talking about. But that is not enough. Training is not enough. We need new incentives for companies to redeploy people. We need new, you know, like a new safety net to help people transition from one job to the next. And so I think this calls for some pretty urgent action with the government, with employers. You know, it's an all hands on deck moment to create a people strategy to get us through this transition.

12:47It's a U.S. race. It's a global race. If we don't get this right in terms of how we are approaching it and protecting our labor force, but at the same time making sure that we are making the right investments and moves when it comes to AI, when you've got China and the government in their deep pocket, will that put potentially the U.S. at a disadvantage in many ways? Yes, it will. I've spent as much time as anyone thinking about how to protect America from China and how to compete with China technologically, economically, militarily. And we need to do both. I personally oppose over-regulating AI or regulating the technology to a point that it would stifle innovation.

13:30However, I also would oppose putting our blinders on and letting AI out into the world without a plan for our workforce. Because truthfully, if we do that, and if we wound up with extremely high unemployment, we won't win the AI race with China. We won't. We will then have political unrest, economic unrest, deep recession, and frankly, a regulatory backlash. So I see no other alternative than to do both. We can do it. America has consistently risen to the challenge in the face of these big challenges before. And if everybody works together, we can do it again. Our thanks to former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Emily Grafeo joining us again later this hour.

14:16Coming up, tech giants are building tomorrow's world, and yet, will there be enough power to run it all? Enter all kinds of energy, including nuclear. The CEO of Nanonuclear joins us when Bloomberg Businessweek continues. This is Bloomberg.

14:34So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions. Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts.

15:16Learn more at brex.com slash AF. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan, equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.

15:51This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa. Play Bloomberg 1130. The rapid scaling of AI and data centers has created an unprecedented demand for electricity, and the race to power it has officially entered a new regulatory phase. Earlier this year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the construction permit application for Nanonuclear's Kronos microreactor. It marked a major milestone for commercially ready, grid-independent nuclear power.

16:31Nanonuclear also signed a strategic partnership with tech giant Supermicro to explore building more of these Kronos microreactors directly alongside next-gen AI server racks. For the latest update on how close they really are to building and deploying something real, we caught up with James Walker, CEO at Nanonuclear Energy, alongside Will Wade. He's Bloomberg News energy reporter. I would argue that objectively we're in the lead in the commercial microreactor race. I think we're the only micro-reactor company that submitted a construction permit application to the NRC, which is the federal regulator.

17:04So if someone's going to be first to build a first-of-a-kind, full-scale, full-power reactor system, it'll be us. Well, let's talk about Antares. They had their big breakthrough. That's the criticality demonstration through the DOE's reactor pilot program. That feels, like, notable, no? It's notable, definitely. To get something critical is no small feat. But it's a different thing to take a reactor critical at a zero power reactor and then build a full scale, fully operational net power producing reactor system that's commercially licensed. These are different challenges. One is for what we're shooting for.

17:39We have a commercial site. We don't need the DOE program to assist us. And we're gearing towards a commercial license where we can then go on to sell working systems that we can demonstrate at full scale. We've seen that the DOE program has almost a dozen companies working for that criticality. You're not part of that program, right? Can you talk a little bit about... You're not. Yeah, absolutely. So actually, there's five companies that have submitted a construction, commercial companies that have submitted a construction permit application to the NRC, and none of those five were part of the DOE program.

18:14And the reason why is that us and the other four were just too advanced for that program. We already had our site. We already had our NRC engagement and the benefits of the doe program were not there for us there was no funding for that program we already had a site and the doe program does not give us a commercial license whereas the nrc route does so there's the doe program it's good to expedite development of concept reactor systems if you're shooting for the commercialization of your systems you still need to go that nrc route and that's where me and well our company and the other four that have submitted of that construction permit application are gearing towards.

18:53So different programs. And if you were sufficiently far along in terms of your commercial development, there weren't very many benefits of being part of this DOE program. I kind of wonder that too sometimes, because it goes through the DOE instead of the NRC. So that puts you on track to build a commercial plant when exactly? Can you give us some details there? So yeah, sure. So actually, we've already done all the geotechnical drilling on the site, and we've submitted that construction data. We should get permission to start construction sometime in 2027. Once we get that data with that permission back, we'll immediately start that construction process next year.

19:31By about 2029, the reactor will be almost completely constructed. And I would imagine 2030, we'll have a full-scale, fully power-operating reactor system, net output of power that's fully licensed and ready for commercial sale in 2030. What if energy demand starts to decline? Will that make you pull back? Maybe it's a silly question, but I will think about it. No, no, no. It's a good question. Because I will say the Cerebris CEO and one of the, I believe, co-founders, Andrew Feldman, right, at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco said there's plenty of power out there. That was his view. He says it's just not near where it needs to be.

20:09It's not easily accessible. So build the data centers next to those power sources. Perhaps, perhaps. That was his view. But I'm just wondering if for some reason, let's just go there, that we don't need as much power. Three years is a long time out, or three and a half years. A lot can happen between now and then. Could it slow the progress that you have laid out for us or that you plan? Well, I mean, he's part of the tech industry. And the tech industry has been making massive investments into nuclear for a reason. And the reason why, I mean, you've seen it from Microsoft, from Meta, from AWS, from Amazon, and they're making those nuclear inroads.

20:44And they're not doing it because there's abundant power. They're doing it because there's a massive projected bottleneck of power. And the reason why is that to actually get the grid up to a point where we'll be able to outlay the projected amount of power the tech industry needs, you'd need to put something like $5 trillion into the grid infrastructure. Now, that's not their business. But if you have a nuclear power station that can be co-located and off-grid and put wherever you want advantageously, you know, providing that baseload power, you've de-risked your industry. And then China doesn't catch up your AI industry.

21:17So there's one opinion against the massive weight of hundreds of billions, if not billions of dollars coming from tech industry. So I would follow the money. The only thing I will say, and Will, you help me out here. I feel like I remember, I can't remember who I was talking to and just said, listen, a lot of the hyperscalers were making bets and deals with a lot of utilities and they were hedging their bets. And it wasn't necessarily all of those contracts or promises or agreements or conversations were going to pan out. They just wanted to make sure they had power. Yeah, there's been some talk that they're putting money here and they're putting money there and they're putting money in this thing over here.

21:52And they only need one of those to pay off, not necessarily all three. They just don't know which one is going to be. Right. So I do wonder. So again, go ahead, James. Yeah. No, go ahead. I was just going to say, you know, you're right. Like the tech companies and other industries, they're energy agnostic. They don't care where it comes from. It could be a geothermal or hydro or whatever. The challenge that they face is an infrastructure one. And already there's quite a lot of backlash against data centers, rising utility bills, things like that. And the feedback we're getting is that they're increasingly looking at models where they want to be off grid.

22:24So they're out of sight, out of mind. Now, if you want to do that and you want to have baseload power, you've only, you're stuck with nuclear unless you're going to build massive transmission lines and gas pipelines all around the country they do have some my understanding is some are powered by generators right now yes but the the issue is if like say your generator what's powering that generator is it diesel like yeah that's the problem are you going to be chucking it in and also like they do still have a clean energy mandate now they're producing a lot of carbon emissions and like if what's the scale up going to be like are you going to need more generators And also the other thing too is that the amount of downtime that can be sustained by a data center on an annual basis is like minutes, maybe less than that.

23:07And like, that means that you're going to need a constant output of power. If there's anything wrong with your generator, that's it. You've already missed your targets. The highest capacity factor of all energies is nuclear and capacity factor is a measure of consistency of output. If you need that baseload power and you need that to be absolutely consistent as much as you can make it so, you're sort of stuck again with nuclear power, which is why they keep coming back to it. Hey, James, just real quickly, a yes or no. Nano went public a few years ago. This is a Will Wade question, but I'm squeezing it in.

23:39Are we seeing so many IPOs now because these companies need money? Yes or no? Yes, I would say. It's a hot market. They're all chasing the cash. Our thanks to James Walker, CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy, and to Will Wade, Bloomberg News energy reporter. Some big tech hyperscalers, as you know, are driving the AI boom. They include Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, and they have made massive bets on nuclear energy to power the AI boom. Meantime, Elon Musk and others talk about building them and powering them in outer space. Our next guest is concerned about a problem he sees, though, right here on planet Earth, climate change.

24:15And a recent action by the Trump administration to dismantle what he writes is a scientific establishment long considered a national treasure and the envy of the world, and is now a blueprint for deliberate ignorance. Those are the words of Mark Gongloff of Bloomberg Opinion. He's a columnist who covers climate change. This is a$386 million system of buoys and other devices spread across two oceans. We spent that$386 million 10 years ago. So these are taxpayer dollars that were already spent. And this system was supposed to last another 15 years after that. So this is a 25-year project to study everything about the oceans.

24:57And that includes how fish are doing, how coral reefs are doing, the temperatures, chemistry, and also important currents and patterns of water. And one of the big ones is the thing that, you know, you might hear a lot about, which is the AMOC, which is this current that runs from the Gulf Stream at the equator all the way around and helps keep Europe from freezing over. And everybody's really obsessed with that thing. And we get lots of data from these boys that tell us what's going on there. And in fact, there's a cold blob that's just shown up that's got people a little anxious about whether that means that this system is slowing down a little bit, which could cause problems.