Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - March 20th, 2026

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1:33Bloomberg 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. This week, a Fed decision, a big gathering of the company that's among those most talked about when it comes to the AI spend and build. Also, the war we are not talking about.

2:17And the Kaushche co-founder fights back against criminal charges filed this past week. That in Tim's exclusive interview with Kalshi's Tarek Lansour. Plus, while the U.S. war in Iran has dominated headlines, a sobering reminder. The war in Ukraine now in its fifth year. On that, the CEO of Keevstar, it's the largest telecom and digital operator in Ukraine, on the realities of war and how they're keeping millions of users online in the conflict zone. All of that to come, we begin with the company seemingly at the epicenter of the tech world and AI also has the world's largest market cap. We're talking about NVIDIA.

2:54At the company's big annual AI gathering, it's known as GTC. It was held this past week in San Jose, California. CEO Jensen Wong announced that the company is betting on a total AI factory takeover with its newly unveiled Verirubin platform central to that plan. And what really caught our attention, the headline from the company that moved markets and moved its stock, that its AI processors would generate$1 trillion in sales at NVIDIA through the end of 2027. Jensen also said the$1 trillion projection for AI chip sales doesn't capture other product offerings and signal that total revenue will surpass that level as the company pushes into new markets like autonomous vehicles.

3:36At the event, it secured deals with Uber and Lyft to power its fleet of robo-taxis and also a slew of other announcements with many other companies and their own AI offerings. Mandeep Singh is Bloomberg Intelligence Global Head of Technology Research. He tells us NVIDIA is becoming more than just a chips company. They're trying to expand the ecosystem and they want to convey to the street that it's not just about the data centers, but also about autonomous vehicles with the Uber and Lyft partnership. So physical AI is a big theme for NVIDIA. And their whole thing is, we are a systems company. Don't treat us like a chip provider who's just supplying the GPUs.

4:18We do end-to-end systems. But how much do they make from just the chips versus how much they make from these other markets? I mean, right now, it's all data center driven. Exactly. And the idea is that they want to show that there's this physical AI or these robots that are going to be folding our clothes and doing our dishes, and that's going to be powered by NVIDIA. You cover Uber and Lyft, you cover ride sharing. Is there a future there for NVIDIA inside these cars? I mean, it's a moonshot for me. And all these hyperscalers have moonshots. In the case of Alphabet, we know Waymo has paid off, but it took more than 10 years for that to get to a certain point.

4:58So from that perspective, I think it's still ambitious in terms of revenue generating opportunity. But look, I think that's what you can do as a CEO is to say that you have technology that is pervasive, that is not too niche. And NVIDIA has proven, you know, the fact that they're guiding to trillion dollars in revenue through 2027 is a testament to the fact that they have expanded the addressable market in a big way. Address that number because we did see the stock pop in the aftermarket on it and then it pulled back again. And all of us were kind of like searching through and like reminding us about what they've said.

5:36Was that a big upgrade in terms of their forecast or not really? It certainly is from a growth perspective. 2027 growth numbers, consensus numbers are at least 5 % above where consensus was based on this 1 trillion guide. The reason why they are not getting the credit from investors right now is because it's all driven by NVIDIA's supply agreements. They have locked in TSMC supply. I would argue if Google GPUs have more supply, they would be growing faster too. So right now, because the market is so supply constrained, if NVIDIA is saying they have locked in 70 % of TSMC's wafer capacity, well, guess what?

6:21Anyone else who wants to make a chip cannot make a chip because there is no supply of TSMC wafers. That's amazing. 70%. Yes. Wow. That's amazing. And they prepaid$95 billion. NVIDIA did. If you look at their just recently reported quarter, they had$95 billion in prepaid commitments to their suppliers, notably TSMC and some of the memory guys. So they own it and it's harder for everybody else. I would argue Google TPU is a very close second to NVIDIA. The problem is they cannot ramp up supply. So explain how that constricts a company like Broadcom or AMD. So Broadcom also guided$400 billion in revenue for 2027, which is why I think NVIDIA gave that 2027 number.

7:12So Broadcom says$100 billion, NVIDIA says a trillion? Trillion through 2027. So if you kind of do the back of the envelope math, it equates to about$500 billion in revenue for 2027. So from a ratio perspective, Broadcom and NVIDIA are currently at, you know, Broadcom has a 10 to 15 % market share. NVIDIA has almost 75%. And then you have AMD. That ratio is still more or less in line in 2027. And that's why they guided to that. But the$500 billion extra figure, does that imply no growth then in the industry that year? Or for NVIDIA that year? if they're bringing in$500 billion this year in that category and$500 billion next year?

7:57No. So right now, they're at a$215 billion run rate in data centers. In 2026, it goes to$375 billion. So that's like a 70%. And then for 2027, it gets to$500 billion, which is another 35 % growth. So their growth is still astronomical when you think about a company of this scale, growing at 70 % and then 35%. That's phenomenal. So there's nothing to take away from what they are doing in terms of execution and how they're ramping up. But partly that has to do with how well they have managed the supply chain. It's like the Apple days, when Apple was ramping up iPhones, they had a lock on the supply chain.

8:41Similarly, you see that with NVIDIA. They have manage the supply chain extremely well in an environment where everyone is supply constrained. NVIDIA did a great job of managing that. Man, Deep, in terms of NVIDIA putting that lock on the supply chain, is that because the visibility and the actual orders, they're there? Like, I keep wondering, how much are they kind of locking in just to make sure they own it, right, and have it as the demand comes in? Like, how much are they guaranteed actually comes to fruition? Well, they have the best performing chip. And that's why, you know, I said it's really a tight race between NVIDIA and Google TPUs.

9:19Everyone else is behind. And so from that perspective, the fact that hyperscalers are still 60 % of NVIDIA's$500 billion revenue in 2027, just goes to show that there is no other place to go. If Meta wants to add AI infrastructure capacity, they have to get NVIDIA chips. Same thing, even Google, with their TPUs, is a big NVIDIA customer. Why? Because that's the only way to add AI infrastructure capacity, not with their own TPUs. They cannot make more TPU chips. So that's why all these hyperscalers are still such a big chunk of NVIDIA. It's pretty remarkable, right? Yeah, I'm looking at... I mean, in terms of really no competition, or at least they're not in the position of where NVIDIA is at this point.

10:05I think that supply factor is huge. If TSMC was to somehow raise their supply of chips, then I think Google TPUs has a shot at really ramping up faster. But until that happens... Are they not doing that or they can't do that? You can see TSMC's CapEx for 2026. And all the CapEx, it takes about 18 months to ramp up a fab for it to be online. So this is, you know, the lead times are quite long when it comes to ramping up supply of TSMC's manufacturing capacity. Just a few of the headlines on partnerships. Salesforce teams with NVIDIA on AI agents. Hyundai, Kia, NVIDIA expand autonomous driving partnership.

10:48IBM announces expanded pack with NVIDIA. Salesforce, I mentioned, STMicroelectronics to partner with NVIDIA. The headlines go on, HPE unveils AI factory supercomputing advancements with NVIDIA. Does everybody want to work with NVIDIA? I mean, if you have a 75 % market share in one of the fastest growing areas in the enterprise market, and everyone sees it's going to be a trillion dollar market, then yeah, you go with that 75%. Here's one, L 'Oreal expands AI partnership with NVIDIA. I think it's just one. L 'Oreal. They're planning to use 50 % of free cash flow for investor returns. Is that smart when they say they're going to do buybacks, dividends?

11:32It is the Apple playbook. To me, Apple did exactly that in terms of being shareholder friendly with their buybacks and reducing the share count. You're seeing that. Such great stuff. As always, Mandeep Singh of our Bloomberg Intelligence team. From NVIDIA to another company that is so important to the AI spend, OpenAI. This past week, our Ed Ludlow reported that OpenAI is in advanced discussions to form a joint venture with private equity firms to bolster adoption of its AI software. For more on that story, plus Meta's deal with the AI data center developer Nebius, they call it a NeoCloud. We caught up with Bloomberg Tech co-host Ed Ludlow.

12:12So$1 trillion, which is a range between 2025 and the end of 2027. The prior figure was$500 billion, which was stated on October 28th of last year, over a period of five fiscal quarters through the end of calendar 2026. So what this new number is,$1 trillion between 2025 and the end of 2027, It doesn't represent an acceleration nor an expansion of the outlook that NVIDIA had kind of given. It's not saying that growth is accelerating beyond the prior trend. What they are doing is making that outlook further out. They're telling us what they see through the end of next year, 2027. And the market reaction represents the line chart.

13:06Bring up your GIP on the terminal of NVIDIA shares. massive spike when Jensen Wang said it on stage and then Wall Street did the math. They realized this was just the natural progression of how things would go if things stayed at what he announced in October. Yeah. I mean, it's very, very complicated because you can't say this is what they're tracking out on a per quarter basis going forward. The original forecast was just Blackwell-Rubin systems. It was stated out loud by Jensen Wang on October 28th. And then it was a mismatch between a forecast for five fiscal quarters against a dateline of the end of this calendar year, 2026.

13:45There's another data point within it. And I posted the slide on X. There's a pie chart that they shared with it. What's really interesting is that NVIDIA is saying that 60%, 6-0 % of that revenue opportunity is coming from the hyperscalers still, just those four big cloud computing providers. And the reason that's important is that that with NVIDIA has been something very closely tracked, how much they're reliant on the hyperscalers only, and how diversified their customer base is. And it seems as if actually it swung back to being heavily, a majority being around the hyperscalers. You know, I did the same thing because I saw the number and I'm like trying to understand, I'm like, where's that?

14:26I need some context. And I was looking at, was it the CES reporting that But Ian and you guys all did reporting and at that point was talking about$500 billion, right, in revenue by the end of 2026. And I think an opportunity that it could eclipse that. So we need to kind of, I don't know, is there a question you would ask Jensen at this point off of this number or off of this? Yeah, why didn't you guys file an 8K or put it in writing so the market could understand it? And actually, I don't know, I think that the market might sympathize with me on that question. But is the reason it's because he wants something flashy for this event that he holds twice a year?

15:09In the sequence, the video will be available for people to watch back, right? But in the sequence of presenting that number, what Jensen Wang was saying was, I presented to you this$500 billion figure, and then he kind of made a joke that no one gave them credit for it or no one was wowed by it. And he paused and he said, as I stand right here today, we now see$1 trillion through the end of 2027. And for them, it was a really big moment. What I would say is when that$500 billion came out after GTCDC, what happened was the sell side went away and baked it into what they modeled. And then that started showing up in the estimates.

15:51And so at least we can say, oh, aren't we lucky that in the coming days, maybe people, you go on MODL on the Bloomberg and those numbers will be updated a little bit. What about the latest from Vera at NVIDIA and how this changes the equation in hardware? Is this new to you? NVIDIA has been hinting for a few months that they're going to go harder after the CPU market. And that was confirmed first with CoreWeaver as having access to it and then Meta as the CPU being sold as a standalone product. If you look at the market right now, in the moment that the headlines hit, there's no sharp reaction in AMD or Intel to the downside because the market's kind of baked that in that NVIDIA would do this.

16:37CPUs are not as valuable to NVIDIA as GPUs are. the cost per CPU, and where the CPU fits in the server design. It's a general purpose processor. It doesn't have the sort of AI workload specific use case that a GPU has. But it's an addressable market that NVIDIA can go over to boost the overall TAM and do something different that they've not already done. And there are loads of use cases where you might have data center infrastructure built that NVIDIA's GPUs are not a part of the plans, but that that CPU would come in quite useful. Our thanks to Ed Ludlow, co-host of Bloomberg Tech. We talked with Ed just after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong predicted the company's flagship AI processors would generate a trillion dollars in sales through 2027.

17:29You can catch that full conversation on our podcast feed. Coming up, the war we're not talking about and how one company is surviving and keeping people digitally connected. The CEO of Keevstar joins us. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg.

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19:57Let's create smarter business. IBM. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube. While the U.S. and Israeli war in Iran has dominated headlines since it began more than three weeks ago, let's not forget another multi-year war rages on. We are now in the fifth year of the full-scale war in Ukraine. Russia continues to target the nation's energy and communications hubs, yet the Ukrainian digital ecosystem has proved remarkably resilient.

20:34Helping lead the way on that is Kyivstar. It is Ukraine's largest mobile operator. By integrating Starlink's direct-to-cell technology, the company says they have managed to connect over 5 million users directly to satellite networks, bypassing damaged towers and keeping its people online. For more on the war and how the company continues to operate, and for a post-earnings conversation, We made a call to Kyiv and spoke with the president and CEO of Kyiv Star Group, Oleksandr Komarov. OK, it's almost normal war during the war. OK, we adopted a lot. OK, so I can give you only one example. So during the December, February, 30 percent of time, our network was on the alternative sources of energy like batteries and generators.

21:19Wow. But at the same time, network was fully operational across the country. So this is, from my perspective, a good reflection of where we are. Yeah, go ahead, Carol. How do you do that, though? How do you, are you constantly repairing and fixing things? Or how do you how do you keep things operational? Situation is relatively stable, across the territories under Ukrainian control. Okay, the only one threat is a shy heads, drones or missile threats that are not so fundamental for the so well distributed infrastructure like telco operator. Of course, we are suffering a lot in the areas that are close to the frontline.

21:59And we are doing our best in order to restore and recover as soon as possible. And this is very much because of the heroism of our people and preparation and actually certain experience that we were able to gain during these four years in the war. We are doing a lot in order to strengthen our resilience. We did a lot of investments into the redundancy. We did a lot of investments, almost 100 million, into the energy resilience. So from our 16 ,000 sites right now, we can run almost 6 ,000 sites on the generators, and this number is increasing. On the batteries, we can run network literally for up to 10 hours without energy at all.

22:44Alexander, I don't want it to sound crass how I'm asking this because it's a business question, but that's kind of how you've presented the challenge here. When you run a network in a way that has to be resilient during wartime and you talk about using generators or other sources of backup power, that costs a lot more money and hits the bottom line in a different way than if you didn't have to rely on those resiliency measures. How much more is it costing you? Actually, we see a certain decline of our marginalities in the beginning of the war. This is from the position that Kyivstar used to be the best by marginality telco across the globe.

23:26With a record high 67 % EBITDA margin, we are right now at the level of 56 % EBITDA margin. The biggest challenge for us is how to, let's say, combine this resilience necessity to be extremely focused on our daily operations with the development. And this is, I think, what we are doing in a really well, I will say, very well organized and a good format, you know, being able to achieve a quite significant diversification of our business from a pure telco in a mobile and fixed market leader in a mobile and fixed business to the digital service provider with a telco license. We finished this year with almost 16 % digital revenue that is partially related to the telco, but produced by the services like digital health, entertainment, right-hailing, big data.

24:18Well, on the cost side, does the new war in Iran and the higher energy prices associated with that hit margins in this current quarter? to some extent we adopted since the beginning of the war Ukrainian market was characterized by a relatively low energy prices before the war but because of the shortage, because of the destroyment of the production facilities by the Russians and necessity to import energy from the neighboring countries right now Ukrainian business is working on the eastern European and sometimes even Western European tariffs. Okay, and from this perspective, I think that we are quite okay.

25:04Okay, we adopted this growing cost. Okay, and we are doing some proactive steps how to hedge this cost in the future. Maybe you saw what we did our first small investments into the solar power plant. And this is the way how we can increase resilience and redundancy of the energy supply, but from another perspective, this is the way how we can hatch electricity cost on the consolidation level of the Kyivstar Group. You know, Alexander, that was one of the things I was curious about. Like you mentioned, you're combining resilience with development and, you know, how much you can do of just keeping the company, you know, running day to day and your employees safe and meeting what your customers need amid a war versus thinking about strategy longer term and how you want to commit funds, CapEx, what have you, to build out the business longer term.

26:01It sounds like you're able to do that. Yes, yes. The reality company is performing quite good. We have support of the shareholders. And I can give you probably the best example how we see the combination of the, let's say, growing resilience and redundancy with the development. We were, and we are actually the first European operator to launch direct-to-cell services provided by Starlink. Okay, so we see this at the development because we believe that actually the future is incorporation between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks. That's why we are doing this proactive step. But at the same time, we provide this service to our customers for free, taking into account the current circumstances and major fundamental humanitarian need to stay online within very difficult circumstances, sometimes circumstances that are dangerous to your life.

27:01Yeah. Hey, one of the things I'm curious about when you say Starlink, do you think at some point that is what kind of replaces some of the traditional telecom mobile service companies? Is that kind of where things are going? I don't think so. I think that the future in cooperation rather than competition, okay, every country is quite unique. It's a difficult regulatory framework. And somehow, satellite networks have a fundamental disadvantage. Okay, this fundamental disadvantage is open sky necessity to have open sky when you're using satellite services. So moreover, where it's a major issue with capacity, and it will be extremely difficult to service high-density cities like Kyiv, New York, London, with satellite technologies, if the number of customers will increase.

27:54But at the same time, we see a number of fundamental use cases where we can use satellite technology in order to expand our geographical coverage, to optimize our investments into the geographical coverage, to ensure emergency communication for every customer, independent from the terrestrial network that is actually under daily attacks from the Russian side. So in other words, that technology can supplement traditional terrestrial cellular technology, but because it doesn't necessarily have the same coverage indoors or in homes, it won't replace it in your view ever. Yeah. Yes, I think so. So, Alexander, I'm curious about the Ukrainian customer right now and how spending has shifted in recent years as this economy has entered a wartime economy, as different members of the economy have gone off to fight, come back from fighting, gone off to fight again, and that sort of thing.

28:55What does your customer base look like specifically in Ukraine right now? the biggest issue is demographic crisis and immigration crisis that we are facing in ukraine so we have right now according to different sources around 30 32 million ukrainians in ukraine okay and unfortunately it is slowly decreasing because of the war because of the migration as an example we have on a monthly base around 2 million customers being serviced abroad these These are Ukrainian migrants out who are still connected to the Ukraine through key star services with their relatives, with their services in Ukraine, with their state provided services, banking services in Ukraine.