Intel Said to Seek Apple Investment as Part of Comeback Bid

26:20And that's really exciting. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. We're all kind of finding our way through it. Chris, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And yeah, good luck. Good luck. Thank you as well. Chris Nicholas, he's the president and CEO of Sam's Club. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube. Carol Masser, Tim Stenevek live here at the Plaza, Bloomberg Global Business Forum. Leaders, and one of the big topics this week that we've seen as world leaders are in town and also as it's climate NYC is everything and anything to do with artificial intelligence.

27:03I mean, we can kind of stay away from headlines here every single day. Just today, Microsoft partnering with OpenAI rival Anthropic to help power its workplace AI assistant. Anthropic founded by former OpenAI employees, Carol, it's one of the largest competitors to OpenAI, a key player in the industry. Yeah, just coming on the heels of one of the big stories that we covered this week, NVIDIA announcing it will invest as much as$100 billion in open AI to help with that build out of data centers. So there's a lot going on. When it comes to AI, it's all about partnerships. And we have a great guest to talk about that.

27:33Lane Dilg is former head of strategic partnerships, global affairs at open AI. She's had a career in law, politics. She served as special senior, actually senior counsel to then Senator Kamala Harris. And she's also worked at the Department of Justice. I'm rushing, but you have this incredible public-private background. So when you think about AI, I don't know. How do you make sense of just, it just feels frenetic, the amount of money, the amount of activity, the amount of headlines that come every day? Yes, there obviously is so much happening, so many big deals in the news, and those big deals in the news do have real-life implications for all of us.

28:09So incredible, as you mentioned, to see the NVIDIA and OpenAI deal showing that NVIDIA will provide chips to OpenAI up to 10 gigawatts, and also make an investment,$100 billion, obviously shoring up OpenAI's credit and providing a real runway for OpenAI. Those kinds of deals we are seeing almost weekly right now. You mentioned Microsoft and Anthropic as well. So a very, very competitive landscape and a landscape that is moving extremely quickly. It's kind of funny to hear about Microsoft partnering with Anthropic, given that Microsoft is a huge investor in OpenAI. What do you make of that? What's the world that we're living in when you have these strange bedfellows?

28:48Yes. I think everyone is watching all of these different pieces. From an adoption perspective, people are looking at how many different companies will individual companies work with. So, do you want to work with one AI model? Do you want one AI model provider? Do you want to work with many? Microsoft also has in-house AI. They have the partnership with OpenAI, and now you see them with Anthropic. Well, can you, um, we've had some folks come on our program and say, okay, there's been so much funding. There's been so much money chasing these companies. There are also those people who say, we're kind of just going to wait until the dust settles because we think there could be this commodity issue when it comes to LLMs.

29:28What separates one LLM from another? What separates Claude from chat GPT? And I fully were asking somebody who was at chat Yes, at OpenAI. So that's where this question is coming from. A great question, though, because obviously now I use all of them to try to stay up to date on where everyone is. And I also speak with the different companies about sort of what their trajectory will be going forward. I do think the models are somewhat different just for users. They provide responses a little bit differently. They're friendly in different ways. They're useful in different ways. And so there's some personal preference.

30:02I do think that we will start to see differentiation in areas like material science, chemistry, biology, as people really move into these more specific domains, where different model providers lean in, who they work with and how, will become important in terms of what you can do to solve problems with the technology. And I think the other piece, as you see with the NVIDIA OpenAI deal, we often say infrastructure is destiny. It is true that there is also this massive race for compute, and that is because to continue the research and development, to continue to make the progress, you need compute, and compute requires a lot of energy.

30:43So we don't know yet whether there will be differentiation there or not, but everyone racing to make sure they have the compute they need to continue development. You run your own advisory firm and you're dealing with kind of innovation and partnerships, right? And working with other companies. But I want to go back to what Tim said. I mean, I think there was when the NVIDIA deal came out that there was concerns that it was a sign of a bubble. That it's NVIDIA partnering with OpenAI. Obviously, it's the company, ChatGPT, so identified when it comes to AI at this point. But this idea that NVIDIA needs a marketplace to keep buying its chips.

31:18So, I'm just curious. I mean, at some point, I don't know, what are you hearing from companies as you talk to them? Are they a little cautious at all? Is there any nervousness about this incredible spend and this incredible build-out? Yes, a great question. Obviously, financial experts around the world asking many of these questions. I think, you know, we previously thought that NVIDIA may not be able to supply enough. So, interesting to now hear people say, well, they are, you know, trying to find a consumer. A home for their chips, it feels like, right? Yeah. So I think that conversation happening on both sides.

31:53My own personal view is that we are not yet anywhere close to maxing out the demand for compute and chips. And when we are, then you may actually see that model development is stalling or something else. But I just don't think we're there right now. I am curious, when you were at OpenAI, and we know you left a few months ago, and now you have your own advisory firm. Is the phone ringing off the hook of people saying, help me, I need to find this? And what are they looking for? Yes. So it is true that people are looking for lots of answers. They're looking for answers to the macroeconomic questions.

32:28They're looking for answers to help them guide investments. But then teachers and health care providers are looking at, you know, what is the potential? How do I take care of my workforce and also take care of those I serve at the same time? What is the pace of adoption? I'm excited to be here today with Bloomberg Philanthropies working on the Mayor's Challenge, which is a competition they run around the world for mayoral innovation for city services. And so many people in that space saying, where are the opportunities for innovation? And we're seeing such interesting proposals there as well. I just want to say, I actually had a meeting with a giant company.

33:07I'm not going to say who it was. We've heard of them. Yeah, everybody's heard of them. But it was like we were talking about, they were asking me about how I'm using AI. I was asking them. And it's like we're all kind of fumbling our way through. And we have courses that have come up at Bloomberg to kind of help us figure our way through this company. They're just kind of like somebody figures something out and they do kind of a show and tell. But it's interesting how we're trying to find our way through this. Yes. I've heard two CEOs at the Frontier Labs really say the pace of scientific progress on the AI side is much faster than the pace of implementation and adoption.

33:40It's hard. These are large institutions with lots of people. You have to actually figure out what is the right way for your company, for your school, for your business. And that takes some time. You know, I use ChatGPT all the time, personally. I use it at work, too. We have the paid version at work, but I have the free version on my phone. And when it tells me I can't use it anymore, I just go over and use Claude. How do you prevent that? Like, how do you get me to pay for it? How do you monetize all the free users when so much compute is being used? Yeah, I think, you know, same with any product.

34:08in a certain way, you want yours to be the go-to. You want yours to be the most useful, the one that you turn to to solve the problems that are most important to you. And I think the companies are competing in that and we'll see fits and starts. But you do, you get accustomed to one product or another. Will we be paying for it? Well, I mean, or is there going to be advertising? Yeah. So I think, you know, right now you can pay for different levels of access. I think that is meaningful, both for individuals and for businesses. I use the paid accounts across all of the different companies, which may seem crazy, but I want to see where the capability really is.

34:44So I do think that is the monetization that you're seeing primarily. And I'm not a tax professional, but that's a business expense, I would imagine. So talk to your accountant. Yes. Take your notes. I am curious about, we mentioned that you were senior counsel to Kamala Harris when she was senator. Actually, I have been senior counsel to a senator, but most recently I was senior advisor in the Department of Energy. Oh, I'm so sorry. That was the notes I had. I'm so sorry. I do think, though, about the intersection of technology and politics. And I feel like every decision is made with a careful glance at the White House.

35:22So talk to me about that and how that might, I don't know, kind of impact the deals that are done and how they're done. Yes, absolutely. I think you see a lot of that in the infrastructure space. So if you look at the models, they, as we talked about, require compute, but compute also requires energy. And as we look at competition between the United States and China, I think people feel really good about our talent. They feel really good about our workforce. They feel really good about our innovation. But we do need to get more energy on the grid, and we need to do that fast. And so I think you see this all-of-the-above approach, but also disagreement over what is that all-of-the-above approach?

35:58How does it work? Do things need to be grid-connected or not? And most importantly, how do we make sure that consumers have the electricity they need at the prices they need while we power all of this AI? Well, is it ultimately going to be everybody, especially the hyperscalers, probably doing their own energy development on site, that kind of thing? I think you'll see a mix. Just like you see a mix in the financial deals, I think you'll see a mix both to hedge risk, but also because it'll be opportunistic. We need the energy as fast as we can get it. I just want to end with what this does to the American workforce, the global workforce.

36:29Dario Amadei over at Anthropic has been really outspoken about how this could just decimate white-collar jobs. You agree? So I think there was a conference in San Francisco that people are watching just last week about what the different scenarios are. I think we don't know the answers yet. And so from a policy perspective, we need to be planning for multiple scenarios. It's critically important that we understand both the data of how are jobs moving, where are the transitions happening, and also look at the social safety nets and other things to make sure that if there is dislocation, we're doing the reskilling, we're doing the training to get people into a place that is productive.

37:05You've seen the tech up close. You know what it can do. What keeps you up at night? What keeps me up at night is, as always, it's the humans. It's our human potential. It's our ability to step into this technology. And it's also what we can do with it for good or for ill. And I think that that's the space where I'd like to see the policy focused. Are you worried about the bad side of AI? I'm worried about humans using AI for bad purposes is what I worry about more than the doomers who are more concerned about what we would call alignment issues. I think the science on alignment is pretty strong and will continue to be strong and people will be alarmed if it's not.

37:40But the question of what can you do with the technology is a hard one. We are about to all get more powerful. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. Need to leave there. I feel like we could talk a lot more about this and we will probably in the future. I hope you can come back. Yes. Lane, thank you so much. Lane Dilg, she's former head of strategic partnerships and global affairs over at OpenAI. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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40:18Let's talk about healthcare for a second. It doesn't always work the way people expect it to. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know the feeling. The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optum are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated. for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together.

40:56Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optum.com to see how. 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.

41:36Not 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. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Or watch us live on YouTube. Carol Masser along with Tim Stenevek, we are live here at Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Forum. We're going to continue with some great conversations from this event. Yeah, the event brings together heads of state business leaders to address the world's most urgent challenges and opportunities.

42:14Among those challenges and opportunities is sustainable economic development. And that's where Lori Kerr comes in. She's the chief executive officer of FinDev Canada. It's Canada's bilateral development finance institution. She joins us on set here at the Plaza Hotel. How are you? I'm great. It's really great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. It's good to have you here. I feel like our conversation this year would be a lot different than our conversation last year if we were to have that. We're going to get to that in a minute. You invest in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, in a world that many would argue is turning inward.

42:44How do you convince Canadians that what you're doing is in their best interest? Well, I mean, if I quote some of the recent speakings of our own prime minister, he certainly recognizes that when developing countries prosper, Canada prospers as well. It's a time to really lean into global partnerships to build resilience and global economic growth. how do you prioritize how to do that? Because I'm sure there's a lot of folks saying, we need help. Absolutely. And quite honestly, like the demand is limitless for what FinDev Canada offers and other bilateral development finance institutions. So how we approach our financing and investment decisions is, of course, we have to have commercial sustainability.

43:25That's what we're going to. We want to have vibrant markets. And we also look through three impact lenses. We have three impact lenses through which we work that informs all of our financing and investment decisions, climate and nature action, gender equality, and local market development. Has to check on all of those in order for it to happen or no? Not all of them because different types of investments in financing opportunities will address one or more of them. We obviously look to try and have positive contribution across each of those, but not everything ticks every box, so to speak. I feel like in this administration, in the environment that we're in in the United States, those boxes would not exist under this current administration.

44:06How do you think about that? Well, again, it's a real wonderful opportunity for Canada to show global leadership. And again, when developing countries prosper, Canada prospers and the world prospers. So it's an opportunity for us to continue with looking at having impact in the markets that we serve. So with the U.S. pulling back on foreign aid, with the U.S. dismantling USAID, which certainly is controversial here in this country, as I'm sure you're aware, Does it mean more of an opportunity for Canada? Or net-net, does it hurt Canada and does it hurt the world in the long run? Well, I think certainly there's a lot of hugely, hugely negative impacts from a huge amount of the age, a bathtub sort of a plug being pulled, so to speak.

44:49But we have to look at that as an opportunity, right? As I mentioned when we just started, that demand for development finance is steep, but now it's really infinite. because the U.S. has traditionally played such a very big role in development aid and in development finance. So in a way, it's a tremendous opportunity for countries like Canada and like-minded countries to lean in. Laura, I'm always interested in the specifics of things. So talk to us about some things that where there have been investments made and what's the outcome. Yeah, absolutely. So let me give you one example. So we were established in 2018.

45:21So we're the youngest bilateral development finance institution. And one of our very first investments is in a company called Climate InvestorOne, and they're supporting energy transition across Africa, across Asia, and across Latin America. So in 2018, we made a$20 million equity investment, and now they've been able to raise$800 million. 80 % of that is dispersed across 16 renewable energy projects. Six of them are already in operation. So that's renewable energy on grids. That's diversification of energy matrices. That's supporting local economic growth. So really having a positive impact. So they've been a really great example of how using public resources through development finance can really mobilize private capital and show that commercial viability and positive impact in climate can go hand in hand.

46:09We have been speaking about the potential economic effects of a pullback in aid by the United States and other countries filling that gap. But as we just heard just moments ago, We were speaking with Mahmoud Mohildan, who basically said the era of developing countries being helped by other countries is over, in his view. Do you agree with him? Interesting. So what I would say, it's definitely a repositioning, right? I think we've, for the last, you know, 15, 20 years, it's been an era. And the era is changing for sure. So there's disruption in this system. Again, I do think that there are many countries that are still looking to play their part, believe that there is a role, like Canada believes there is a role for Canada to play in development.

46:56So it's a reordering, it's a reawakening, and it's much more about partnership, I think, going forward. Do you think about it from an immigration perspective at all? The idea that if you are able to improve conditions in other countries, the people who live in those countries will not feel forced migration? Absolutely. I think, you know, Canada is differently situated than many of our European friends and partners in terms of the immigration issue. But certainly, you know, one of the value added of supporting local market growth and local market development through the private sector is providing jobs.

47:30When you provide jobs, you provide incomes. When you provide incomes, you have a growing middle class. When you have a growing middle class, you actually provide export opportunities for countries like Canada. when you provide good jobs, people are happy to stay at home and work and thrive in those local economies. So it's a reinforcing benefit, let's say, of supporting emerging markets. What's been the biggest impact on your world as a result of what I would say is a conflicted relationship between the US and Canada now, which is kind of amazing to kind of get your head around it. Anybody who's, you know, studied trade or history, who'd have thought, but this is where we are a little bit today.

48:06But what has been the impact on your world because of it? Yeah. So in the development finance world, it's been a huge disruption. I mean, the U.S. has been such an enormous player in development finance, as I said earlier. So we're all having to reposition ourselves. It's providing a lot more opportunity and an impetus really for collaboration amongst the DFI community. So the bilateral DFIs, we're a humble, but we're really a mighty bunch and we really need to be supercharged. We co-finance and we co-invest as sort of as a matter of course, we're again, a very collegial. Well, who else is stepping up with you and you feel like really kind of, all right, so if the U.S.

48:42isn't going to be so active in it, what other country or so on and so forth that are working more closely with you? Yeah. So we work a lot with, so the bilaterals. So for example, with Pro Parco in France, with British International Invest in the UK, with FMO in the Netherlands, with DEG in Germany. So, I mean, there's a number of the European development finance institutions that we work with. We also do co-finance with the IFC. And in fact, just this week, we're really happy to be closing on$125 million worth of transactions to two banks in Central America, Banco Industriale in Guatemala. So we're providing a$75 million loan.

49:22Guatemala is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in Central America. Use of proceeds entirely for climate finance, so climate-smart agriculture and green buildings. And then the other transaction is$50 million to Bengal del País in Honduras, and that's one of the poorest countries in Central America. There, we're also supporting climate finance, renewable energy, water and sanitation, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises, micro and small medium-sized enterprises and women-owned and women-led micro and small. Because, I mean, I always think about all the micro-lending and stuff like that.

49:53You do it for women, right? And the impact that it has on a family in particular. How do you make sure that the money is used efficiently? And, you know, there were so many stories, at least with U.S. money that went out, where you'd find that, okay, well, grants that went to certain organizations weren't necessarily used in the most efficient way or even used for what they were supposed to be used for. How do you make sure that there's not sort of a... Fraud? Yeah, I didn't want to say fraud. I just want to say there's somebody who sort of takes more than they're supposed to. Sure. So, I mean, we're in the commercial financing business, right?

50:29We provide financing and investment. We have a higher risk appetite than commercial capital. But, you know, again, we want to provide, we want to support commercially viable solutions. Part of the impact framework that we as development finance institutions bring to the fore is sort of the rigor and vigor around the impact and the reporting. So, you know, we do go in and we have the measures and the metrics to actually be on the ground and make sure that we're getting the information back, the data back. We go out and verify that. So, again, it's the depth around measurement, impact, evaluation, and reporting that makes us thrive and allows us to actually have impacts in the markets that we serve.

51:07All right. I think we have to leave it there, unfortunately. Can we run out of time? We run out of time. That was fast. Lori, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon.

51:43Bloomberg Terminal.

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