SpaceX Wins $4 Billion Contract for US Golden Dome Satellites

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0:30The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping 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 you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day.

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2:01The Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. SpaceX has won a contract for more than$4 billion to build satellites to track foreign aircraft and missiles as part of President Trump's Golden Dome defensive shield. Sana Pashankar is a Bloomberg News space reporter. Sana joins us from the Washington, D.C. area. Sana, what did you learn about SpaceX and the Golden Dome in this scoop? Totally. So essentially, yeah, SpaceX has won a contract where they will be developing satellites that track airborne targets, you know, like foreign aircraft and cruise missiles.

2:45So anything that's flying through the air, they are going to be developing satellites that track those, detect those, and then, you know, alert the military authorities that need to know about them. Um, historically, you know, um, the military has used ground-based sensors and aircraft, military aircraft to monitor the skies. Um, but by kind of putting that detection capability in space, you can see more, you have less blind spots, um, and it's actually less risky, um, because, you know, satellites are a little bit harder to target than moving aircraft. So is the theory that this would integrate with preexisting structures like NORAD, North com, you know, Cheyenne Mountain is not just a part of movie lore.

3:26It's an actual thing. My dad used to work there where the job was to do exactly this. Did you get to go to? I did. And it was really cool. Yeah, we absolutely did get to go inside the mountain. It's very cool. How does this integrate with the system that already exists? And is there a back end of this where if they track these things and there is an incoming thing identified by these new technologies, how will the U.S. respond? Yeah, so they are working to basically integrate space-based capabilities, a lot of ground-based capabilities through this command and control group, which is a group of a couple of different companies, including Palantir, Anderl, and actually SpaceX to integrate space-based capabilities and all these things across the United States.

4:08That's actually a separate part of Golden Dome that SpaceX is involved in. They're involved in multiple fronts. That's what we're learning over time. But exactly how those will be integrated with the different commands, as you're mentioning, is not really known. We're getting fewer and fewer. We're getting some details about Golden Dome recently, but still is including the exact architecture is not really well known. Sana, I'm going to have to leave it there, but thanks so much for jumping on and joining us on this breaking news. Congratulations on the scoop. Once again, SpaceX wins a$4 billion contract for US Golden Dome satellites.

4:45I can't check SpaceX stock because, well, that has not gone public yet. The expectation is next month,$1.8 trillion valuation. We'll, of course, have everything SpaceX here on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. Sana Pashankar, Bloomberg News, space reporter with The Scoop. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

5:10The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping 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. Support for the show comes from Public. Public is an investing platform that offers access to stocks, options, bonds, and crypto. And they've also integrated AI with tools that can assist investors in building customized portfolios.

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6:31That's public.com slash market. Add paid for by Public Holdings. Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor, crypto services by ZeroHash. Sample prompts are for illustrative purposes only, not investment advice. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. If you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention, and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions.

7:19The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at CINFIN.com. 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. I know Charlie's probably made his plans for the summer because he actually plans far in advance. I know Christina has not. But you know what? I'm not great at plans. Well. I'm not great at plans. First, you've got to request the time off. And then you've got to decide where you're going to go.

7:53Again, things I'm not good at. But I could do like a spontaneous road trip. Well, Bloomberg Intelligence did the heavy lifting. They surveyed the 2026 vacation plans of 1 ,000 adults. 66 % expect to spend more on vacations in 2026 than they did the prior year. And it's actually happening even as many are staying closer to home. They're citing safety concerns tied to geopolitical instability. And for lower-income travelers, higher costs are largely unavoidable, driven by inflation. That's right. When we talked to them about it this past weekend, people still want to travel. So they are finding ways to do that, even if it means not going overseas, if it means staying closer to home.

8:26they want to have a high-end experience but that's not always possible so if that's not possible they're going to find the vacation they can afford and they're still going to go over anything else over clothing over almost any other voluntary spending metric it is travels all right we want to get out there for more on travel and the consumer we're joined by zachary president of red roof the company has brands that include red roof in red roof plus and more and more than 700 properties in the u.s canada and japan it's 100 franchise at this point zach good to have you with us. How are you? I'm doing great.

8:54Thank you. How are you? We're doing pretty well. By the way, Christina, we can have you at Roto-Rof any time you want. I know you said you want to travel. We should talk afterwards. Maybe you can force this planning. Again, my other co-anchor gives me a hard time about this all the time. So how is the summer shaping up? I mean, you're in an interesting business because you franchised everything out. So you're asset light, but you still hear from your franchisees about demand and what they're seeing. What are they telling you? Absolutely. We're very close to them. You know, summer is actually shaping up to be a very good summer so far.

9:23So Deloitte published that 45 million Americans plan to take summer vacations this year. And more than 80 % of them are going to stay at hotels. So it's looking good for us. Now, the momentum really started in the beginning of 2026 when you think about it. Q1 was really good, a really good quarter overall. April was a very strong month. It continues into May. So when you actually look at the end, by the end of April, the hotel rough bar, you know, was up 4 % year over year. And that's really good. It's not only driven by occupancy, it's also driven by rate. Now, the K-shaped economy is real. I mean, I can tell you that a lot of this growth was driven by luxury and upscale.

10:07So we at the mid-scale and economy, we have not seen that much of growth yet. We are seeing bigger demand from an occupancy perspective. So occupancy is up, which is the first time we've seen that in the last two and a half years. But the price, our guests are still price sensitive, and we can see that. But that really, luxury was up 7.2 % this year until end of April, versus economy and mid-scale barely up. But we are seeing a shift from the last two and a half years, and that's a good sign. Now, that momentum is carrying into the summer as we're seeing it. You know, there's a lot of things happening this summer.

10:48So really, event planning is taking place at a high level. We're seeing a lot of people go to concerts. Concert events are very popular. Weddings, reunions, charity events are being popular these days. And also, I mean, we're going to celebrate 250. So the booking pace for the 250 is very strong right now. And we all know the FIFA World Cup. Those markets are going to do great. Not only the hotels, but also the economies of those markets are going to be really good. I think it's not as people expected, but it's still going to be a strong performance overall. So we're really excited about the summer.

11:29And so when you look at those urban markets overall, because of this event planning, pace is very good. We're seeing a very good pace. But the really good thing that we're seeing as well is road trippers are deciding to get on the road. They're driving. So our interstate hotels are facing. Even with higher gas prices. Even with higher gas prices. I mean, think about it. How much of your customer is booking in advance? And how much of your customer is doing what we used to do as kids? You drive until you can't drive anymore. You pick a chain that you know or trust or recognize. And that's where you stay for the night.

11:59Most of our customers are booking in the last two to three days. They are. Yes. Yes. So it's a short booking window. But, you know, they're finding great deals. I mean, we're doing a really good job in making sure we're creating the summer campaign. We just rolled out our summer campaign, finding your roots, right? It's creating that emotional sentiment with our guests. And, you know, on Route 66, it's like get on the road, travel, take your family, take your kids. And that's resonating. So when you look at the last two weeks since we rolled out this campaign, over 4 ,000 families have actually enrolled in the campaign.

12:38And we expect thousands and thousands more to actually do more of this. And that's exciting to see because, you know, I mean, it's been tough in a sense for a lot of the lower income, you know, guests in that sense. So anything we can do to offer value, obviously create consistency and reliability on the property level, that really helps the travels. From a business standpoint, if we're looking at, like you just said, you haven't seen as much growth on the price end from your customer, right? They still can only pay what they can pay. How does that impact, if your bookings are already pretty solid, your plans for expansion, what you want to do next, if you're looking at not a huge increase in margins coming in for booking those same rooms?

13:20Yeah, look, I mean, first we have to build the occupancy. So we have to make sure that our hotels are ready to build the occupancy. We have to make sure that we're creating the promotions to bring people in, having experience. And how do you do that? What is your customer most looking for? So they're looking for value and comfort. So clean and comfort is really our model on the economy level and at a good price, you know, so there's value in it. And so it's a winning formula that way. Zach, Christina asked about expansion. you have some Canada news announcing that you're expanding into Vancouver.

13:52You announced that earlier this month. Why Vancouver? Why Canada? Why not? You're already in Japan. I know. This is really exciting. It's very strategic for us right now. First, we have a brand recognition. A lot of Canadians used to travel to the U.S. Used to? Used to travel to the U.S.? Well, those Canadian to U.S. travel numbers are not good at the moment. But yes. Yes, yes. But they know Red Roof. They've seen Red Roof along the way. Maybe they stayed at Red Roof. So brand recognition is already there, and that's really important. But when you look at the economics right now, Canadians have shifted their travel.

14:31It's the beginning of early last year. They shifted. They started traveling more into Canada, you know, and that really has created record performance in the Canadian number. I mean, 2025 was the highest on record in Canada performance. Average rate over$200 and average rate over$128. No concern about the Canadian consumer. Canada edging into a technical recession. Weak business and government spending drove a slight contraction in the first quarter. No concern? No concern. Really? No concern. We believe that Canadians will continue traveling within Canada, and we are positioned well into expansion in a great market.

15:13And then we're going to Vancouver. So when you look actually on a micro level in the Vancouver market, that's a very high entry, high to barrier entry. So less supply, no supply, but a lot of demand. So it's a great partnership. We're going to open our hotel on June 15th. It's 168 unit, fully renovated inside and out in Vancouver Airport. Vancouver, Vancouver. Yes. And it's a great city to visit. Zachary, love it. Thank you so much for joining us, Zachary President over at Red Roof. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for coming in. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

15:52What if you could have more wins, more support, more sound effects? At LPL Financial, we like the sound of that because LPL offers more. Advisors, what if you could have more ways to help your clients? Ready to invest? What if you could find an advisor that really understands you? When it comes to your finances, your business, your future, at LPL, we ask, what if you could? Paid advertisement. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. LPL Financial LLC member FINRA SIPC. Support for the show comes from Public. Lately, it feels like there are two types of investing platforms.

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17:04That's public.com slash market. Add paid for by Public Holdings. Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor. Crypto services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. If you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention, and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions.

17:48The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at c-i-n-f-i-n dot com.

18:23sales outlook that far surpassed analyst estimates. It was fueled by demand for servers that power the AI work. Dell CFO David Kennedy spoke to Bloomberg Tech's Ed Ludlow last night after earnings. It's a tremendous start to the quarter, obviously, in the year ahead, built on real, durable and accelerating globally the amount of infrastructure that's needed out there. So really more broad base and, you know, AI demand, if you like, beyond the GPU in terms of the opportunities ahead. That was Dell CFO David Kennedy speaking at Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow just yesterday after earnings. For more, we bring in Wu Jin-ho, senior hardware and networking analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

18:58He joins us from our Princeton Bureau. The results that we got from Dell yesterday that are causing this stock to surge higher today, does that completely change how you look at demand for this technology? Hey, Tim, that's the best question I've received all day. Thank you. It's fine, it's fine. I don't want to have to follow that. That's fine. Not a problem. I mean, look, a cyclical move or a better than expected cyclical move like this doesn't drive a stock like this. This is more of a structural move. What's happening is that the demand for compute, there's a big shortage in the demand for compute.

19:38And I think that is not only driving the AI server demand, but also the traditional servers demand. that might be durable beyond fiscal 27 or calendar 26, but into 27 and 28. Okay, so for the uninitiated, who are going to ask less amazing questions than Tim Stenovic, where are you really seeing this? I mean, I was surprised looking through this as well, that yes, it is a lot of AI, it is a lot of servers. When you look at the breakdown between software and hardware, what is driving this, or is it a combination of both? Yeah, so let's break down the numbers in terms of the guidance increase, right?

20:16If we look at the guidance increase, they raised their guidance by about$25 to$27 billion. AI servers, they raised it by about$10 billion, from$50 billion to$60 billion. Look, those are fantastic numbers, quite frankly. But the rest of the business, traditional servers, PCs, storage, that went up$15 to$17 billion in terms of the guidance. So what it's telling me is that traditional server business as well as PC business is stronger than expected. Now, what's driving some of that is because of the memory inflation that's pulling forward a lot of demand so they want to avoid higher prices. But I do think that there's legs to this demand because margins are going up in the back half of this year.

21:03So we are talking about durability of the traditional businesses, which is supposed to be a, you know, I've heard the term dinosaur a lot, which is supposed to be a dinosaur business. It no longer is. So who right now is doing the buying? Are these firms that are doing inference and they've moved past training, Wujin? Yeah, no, it's, you know, if you think about the, from the AI server standpoint, it's the neoclouds as well as the sovereigns. Think about the core weaves of the world, the nebbias of the world, you know, even G44 out in the Middle East, they're not seeing a slowdown on that demand at all.

21:37If anything, we're still in the early innings of that demand uptick. I'm wondering, as you look at the places that they grew and some of the companies that are choosing Delta rent that computing power. You've got CoreWeave, you've got N-Scale Global Holdings, as well as a lot of corporate clients and major AI providers. Why does Dell have an edge here? What are they doing differently that's drawing these companies kind of into the fold? Well, as a throwback to the 90s, you've got to get a Dell. Yeah, dude, you're getting a Dell. There's also this great meme, I don't know if you've seen it, that if you onboard to a company and they hand you a MacBook, you should be concerned about a bubble or a startup flop.

22:14But if you onboard and they hand you like an old Dell, you know you're good. That's stability. Like, you know where you're at. What a world. And I think you have the point right there, right? Because there's a couple of things that's going on in all seriousness. We're talking about a company that, like, excluding the AI business, we're talking about a$100 billion business. They have the operational scale, they have the distribution scale, and also the supply scale, right? There aren't many companies that can do that. And when you need your AI servers tomorrow or the time when you need it, there are only a handful of companies that can do it.

22:47Dell, Supermicro, and Lenovo. And from a scale perspective, I put my money on Dell. Why? Well, primarily because they have the supply chain relationships. They have, and when I talk about supply chain relationships, they have the NVIDIA relationships. So if you know that you can get the GPUs, have it assembled and manufactured correctly, and shipped on time when you need it. Again, Dell is one of the top-notch executors in terms of the AI server story. Yeah, and this year, Wujin shares of Dell are up a whopping 220, wow, 280%, sorry, 230 % at this point. Just very briefly, 10 seconds. Is this concerning at all to you?

23:34Right now, if it is a structural change, it's not. you should see a multiple re-rate. All right, there we go. Woo Jin-ho from our Bloomberg Intelligence team joining us from Princeton. This 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. Tim, you mentioned we're continuing on a theme here today, but one of the things that has caused a lot of controversy, we were talking earlier about social media and how we all kind of missed on social media laws, regulations, protections, and that's the next front in AI.

24:17One of the big things is AI versus IP. That's, of course, shaping up to be one of the big battles of the new digital age. Who has the right to learn from this universe of human-created material? Can AI companies scrape IP without paying for it? What are the repercussions if they don't? Yeah, I mean, we see publishers going after some of these LLMs because they're trying to prove that these models were trained on the intellectual property from their reporters, from their writers. There's some pretty prominent and significant lawsuits happening right now. You're even seeing it in the art world from these estates of painters who have long since passed, but they're seeing their work replicated pretty directly in these AI genera and who wins and who has standing.

24:55It's fascinating. So joining us now is Deborah Harper. She's the founder and CEO of Fan Club AI, which is seeking to help solve or at least bridge some of these problems. Debra, there's currently 125 plus active AI copyright lawsuits. You guys are trying to solve some of these issues. Talk to us a little bit about what is the top line? What does your company do? And how are you trying to address some of these concerns? Well, thank you for having me today, Tim and Christina. I'm excited to have this conversation because like you say, it certainly is a very topical one. We've launched Fan Club AI to solve the mass scale intellectual property rights crisis that we are seeing created by generative AI.