US Insists Talks Ongoing Even as Iran Rejects Trump Outreach

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1:27IBM. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies and trends shaping today's complex economy. plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Let's go now to Washington, D.C., to what we're hearing from the White House. As we've reported, the Trump administration has compiled a list of a dozen demands along three points that Iran would get in return.

2:19We also know Iran has said thanks, but no thanks. I want to bring in Michelle Jembrisco. She's White House and a national security editor for Bloomberg News. She joins us from our Washington, D.C. Bureau. Michelle, I just want to bring everybody up to speed on what we heard from Caroline Levitt just now. Some some other headlines too soon to say if the U.S. is satisfied with the Iran regime change. Control of uranium is a point of conversation. Still, how did her statements that we that she just made to the press in the last hour or so gel with what we heard in that 15 point plan and what we've heard from the president?

2:54Well, there's a lot of work here, Tim. And I think, you know, the first off, what we heard from Caroline Levitt today is not consistent with what we heard from Iran earlier today, which should come as no surprise. I mean, the two sides have been trying to jawbone each other definitely at odds, and especially because we don't know exactly who the U.S. is purporting to be negotiating with on the Iranian side. It's hard to kind of parse who's saying what from the regime's angle of events. And now on that 15-point plan that Bloomberg reported on earlier, Caroline Levitt referred to that and cautioned against speculating via such a proposal.

3:34Of course, she doesn't want to, you know, she uses the tried and true line of not wanting to negotiate through the press. She did acknowledge that there are some elements of truth, as she said, to that plan, but that, you know, no one should take that as sort of the final negotiating end piece that the U.S. is operating with. Now, at the same time as we have that U.S. proposal, of course, we have Iran's own counter demands today earlier, you know, demanding. And we've been through this before, especially with Dan just before me, but demanding that, you know, the U.S. issue, U.S. and Israel issue a guarantee of no further attacks, that they issue war reparations, among other things.

4:15And then key, especially for our Bloomberg audiences, is that, you know, Iran is stipulating that they want to retain sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz. So there's a lot at play here. We haven't really moved forward, it seems, in any way to end the conflict. And as we approach the fourth week, we're kind of nearing that time frame where the U.S. has said that they would like to be concluding and winding down this war. Hey, Michelle, you know, we've been talking in the newsroom before we went on air about this 20 point plan that President Trump and the White House has come up to end the war between Israel and Gaza, like going back to that, that really is yet to be delivered on.

4:54And so we're thinking about this 15-point plan, which we know Iran has already pushed back on. I mean, what is it that, is it just some kind of offeramp, just getting something out there to kind of save face perhaps for both sides? And they can say we agree to this, and yet nothing's really signed officially, and it just lets everybody to put down the weapons. Is that kind of what we're expecting? Well, one thing I think is key to remember here, Carol, is that the White House hasn't publicly issued this 15-point plan. It's something that we've reported on, that we heard through other sources, and they have since said, you know, like nothing is official until Trump says it is so, which, you know, Caroline Levitt herself often jokes about, you know, she could be overturned in five minutes by a true social post.

5:36So, you know, we could hear differently from the president himself on what is sort of on the negotiating table at this point. But I think what that proposal and the reports of it do show is just kind of the breadth of the issues at hand and what the U.S. is trying to put forward as the negotiating points with Iran.

6:07but also what they're trying to kind of work toward in a resolution to this conflict, which, as we've been saying, are two very starkly different sides to this conflict. Well, as Carol has mentioned, Caroline Levitt reiterated a four to six weeks timeline for the Iran operation. Also today, we learned details on the president meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. he's just out on social media saying that it was originally postponed due to our military operation in Iran. It's been rescheduled. It will take place in Beijing on May 14th and 15th, and that the First Lady and the President will also host President Xi and Madam Pang for a reciprocal visit in Washington, D.C.

6:50at a later date. Should we look at that May 14 to 15 date as maybe a bookend for this conflict? Well, that was precisely the question that our own Mario Parker put forward to Caroline in the briefing. And I think what we saw is Caroline herself and others in the administration continue to be at pains to kind of separate the two. They don't want the Iran war issue to be clouding the eventual Trump-Xi summit, even as they publicly acknowledge that this was the reason for the delayed trip that was supposed to take place at the end of this month. So I think, you know, that remains to be seen how it might, how the Iran's Iran wars conflict timeline might play into the eventual trip.

7:37And if it might be delayed further or if it will color it in some way or change location, that's still up for grabs. I mean, it's a long way till till May. But as for now, I think the White House is at least trying to keep those two issues separate. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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10:29MyPolicyAdvocate.com. 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. Well, we like to remind everybody that Amazon, Home Depot, FedEx, UPS, also Giga Cloud Technology are just some of our next guest big customers. We're talking about the$125 billion market cap company. It is a warehouse logistical read. It is Prologis that is massive. And it owns, develops, and manages logistical warehouses for the biggest companies like we just mentioned.

11:05and they've got more than 1.3 billion square feet in 20 countries. So what a great person to get a view in terms of the macro of what's going on around the world, considering, Tim, our backdrop. Shares up about 3 % so far this year. We've got Dan Letter with us, CEO of Prologis. He joins us here in the studio. Dan, good to see you again. You just took over as CEO, though we've spoken just a few months before that. I want to start with what Carol mentioned in the macro, because we are just squarely focused on an increase in oil prices as a result of the war in Iran, what that means for consumers, what it means for business leaders.

11:39How are you looking at the macro environment? Yeah, well, first, thanks for having me. Great to be here with you, too. I look at the macro environment right now, and I think about all the chaos and turbulence our customers have been through going back to COVID. Six years ago, the world was shut down, right? Over the course of these six years, think of all the geopolitical events, post-COVID, the rate hikes and how that impacted our customers. And I actually look at these customers and I realize they've built a lot of endurance. They actually, this turbulence is more of a feature of the environment that we're living in today.

12:21And I look back to a conference where we were talking to investors a couple weeks ago, actually right after the weekend of the original Iran bombing. And we were telling our customers, 2026 started really strong. 2025 was our second largest leasing year ever. And we were seeing that go into 2026. Does that continue? There's a lot that's happened. It's just, I think, kind of shocking. And we talk about this so much. No one expected some of the things that have come at us, Dan, in 2026. So since that, that was just a few weeks ago or a month ago or so, that update, and that you were talking with, like, is that optimism still there?

12:59And is your outlook on 2026 still the same? So what we see at this time is customers don't necessarily pull back. I look back to last year at this time. We had expressed a little caution that led into what was Liberation Day, right? And you see customers just look around and see what's going on and then lean in. they make long-term decisions, five, seven, ten-year decisions when they're working with us. And so they're really kind of seeing through that noise. And when you look at these decisions they're making, it's really only three to five percent of the overall cost of the supply chain. So no people who were maybe going to sign a contract that backed out or anything like that?

13:36Well, we hadn't seen that. And it's really just a matter of they digest it. And then they, it comes in different forms. Maybe you end up seeing some short-term leasing or, But certainly no pullback. What about when it comes specifically to data centers? Because last time we talked with you about the data center activity you're seeing. And in that time, a lot has happened. We've heard from different companies. Microsoft is renting a Texas data center that was dropped by Oracle and OpenAI. Are you seeing any signs of weakness or slowdown or changing trends when it comes to the data center business?

14:07So our data center business was really born from our higher and better use business. When you have 6 ,000 buildings, 14 ,000 acres of land, close to 78 % of the world GDP, that is where the next wave of the economy is. That's where data centers need to be. And we have deep relationships with these hyperscalers. We have a fortress of a balance sheet. And every megawatt we can deliver over the next three years is in some sort of lease discussion right now. And we have 5.7 gigawatts of power that we control or are in its advanced stages. Meaning you're at full capacity in terms of negotiations right now.

14:39We're at full capacity. So nobody else could come to you right now and say we're interested in the next few years and you have an option for them. No, that's not not the case. Just the next three years of power that we can deliver. Right. These hyperscalers, these major data center users are heavily focused on near term power and we're focused on delivering power much longer beyond that. And so we're certainly in discussions beyond that for the next three years. And that's where this 5.7 gigawatts of power will come in. So that's the power you've secured. Right. So we've secured 1.8 gigawatts.

15:11And then we have 3.9 gigawatts that we call in the advanced stages, which means it's a year or two behind. But again, think of the universe of opportunities we have behind that 5.7. You have the opportunity. Which is just the size of our platform. All right. So then I'm going to say, are you looking to secure even more power? Absolutely. Yeah. We are working. And remember, we're a global company. As you said, we're in 20 countries. And so we're working around the tier one, tier two markets in the United States. We work around the flap D markets in Europe. And we're starting to see it actually in Latin America and Japan as well.

15:45So has anything changed because of the war? Or is really everybody kind of looking through this? Because we talk about an energy environment. You know, we've talked a lot about LNG specifically because Qatar has lost about 30 % of their capacity. And that's going to take three to five years to build. There's going to be a floor where energy prices are higher. And so I'm just curious, has any of that impacted you guys in terms of how you think about outlook, build, spend, costs? Well, as it relates to logistics real estate, again, it's 3 % to 5 % of the overall costs. And our customers need to make these decisions long term, and they want to be close to those population centers.

16:21So can't necessarily sit back and wait. Can I just throw one thing out there? This could be a little wacky, but it's Elon. And so that's kind of wacky. But we've talked this week, right, about data centers in space. Is that something you are thinking about and how that might impact you guys? Because you obviously are doing this on Mother Earth. And I'm just wondering, is that just something that... We're going to stick to these 20 countries that we're focused on. No Mars, Pluto, Earth. I think there's plenty of opportunity for us for the foreseeable future, but maybe ask me in 10 years. Okay. Yeah, but to Carol's point, with that getting so much discussion right now, why are you just focused on terrestrial?

17:02I mean, I know it would have sounded crazy a year ago to be talking about this, but this is something that a lot of people think is the future of these data centers. Well, we do this business 100 % on a build-to-suit basis. So we have leases in place before we put a shovel in the ground, and we have so much opportunity in front of us, we don't need to be thinking about another vector to grow this data center business. Yeah, that's pretty fascinating. What would change your mind, though, in terms, would it have to be an economic slowdown, which some have talked about, depending on when this war ends, or even if we start, if we see inflationary pressures continue and whether there's demand destruction that slows down essentially the global economy, a lot has to fall into place, as you know.

17:42Is that what would maybe change your outlook? Or again, because everything's locked in place, if the economy slows down, what kind of impact might that have on you guys? Or does it matter, because you've already kind of signed things and are moving ahead, because it's longer term? When I think about our core business, the building blocks for our core business is 70 % of the U.S. GDP is consumption. Our buildings are close to the major population centers in the United States. So on top of that, there's the e-commerce secular demand driver. We've been talking about e-commerce for a long time. Pre-COVID, e-commerce penetration as a percentage retail sales was in the 17-ish percent rate.

18:23Now it's like mid-20s. We see that growing another 75 to 100 basis points a year through the end of the decade. That alone is additional demand on top of that. So there's a big tailwind for our growth. But if there was an economic slowdown, that could be a problem. Or would that not even impact? That's what I'm trying to think. One thing I forgot to mention is e-commerce, for every dollar retail sales, it needs 3x the warehouse space. because think of all the activities that happen in the brick and mortar and the returns happen there. There's the stock in the back. And then with e-commerce, there's been that proliferation of SKUs.

19:00And all of us, we're looking for speed and we're looking for choice, right? And so that's been a big driver. And you may see flat retail sales, but you'll see e-commerce penetration. That e-commerce penetration is great news for logistics real estate. On that, I'm interested in the joint venture that you guys announced last week. $1.6 billion JV with GIC to build to suit warehouse development. Why partner with GIC? Why not do this solo? Well, we've long been developing on our balance sheet, but now look at our development business. We can build$43 billion more of logistics space in our land bank alone, not buying any more land.

19:37On top of that, we have this data center business. Wait, say that one more time. That's tremendous. We have$230 billion worth of AUM today at the end of last quarter. We can build another 43 billion of logistics buildings on our 14 ,000 acres of land. That's 240 million square feet. We can grow the company 18 % without buying another piece of land. Then we have this data center business. Think about it from a megawatt perspective. If you build a powered shell that's on the continuum, powered shell over here, that's about$2.5 to$3 million a megawatt. You go out this side of the continuum, and that's a turnkey.

20:13That's everything soup to nuts built out. that's 15 million a megawatt. So think about how big that data center development could be. So we're looking at diversifying our capital stack there and our partners, great to have a new partner with GIC here. They want a piece of this development business. And we're doing that to help build bigger relationships globally. 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. For more on OpenAI and what they are up to ahead of a potential IPO, let's head to Bloomberg News at San Francisco Bureau and to Bloomberg AI reporter Rachel Metz.

20:58Rachel, when Sora first came out, I mean, even before it came out, when we just saw the capabilities of it, when nobody could use it except for OpenAI employees, we were all like, this is crazy that this type of video that looks so real can be generated by AI When we tried it, people thought it was, I think, really, really novel. What ended up happening? Why did it not stick? I mean, I think that an overarching theme here is OpenAI is trying to simplify what has become a pretty vast portfolio of different kinds of AI products. And I mean, the fact of the matter is that generating video is extremely computationally intensive.

21:38And if there is one thing that OpenAI has not quite enough of, it's compute. I mean, the company is very, very, very hungry for more compute. So this is an easy thing, I think, to say, hey, you know what, like, this is interesting, and it looks cool, but it is not our core product. And if we need compute, let's put it toward other things. so that in my mind that may be part of it as the company and the company is trying to sort of like unify slim down some of its product line a little bit which has gone in a lot of different directions the codex for coding is really important to them chat gpt is really important to them and i think trying to figure out how people are going to pay and pay over time for these products and keep using them.

22:29Are they just trying to be like Anthropic? I don't know if they're trying to be like Anthropic, but I think they have realized that coding, using AI as a coding assistant is a really good application for them, and it's something that people may be willing to pay for over time. And also, it seems like a number of these companies are realizing that once they make their models good at completing coding tasks, they're also able to expand that out into some other things, such as different kinds of office work. I mean, ultimately, these companies have to make money, right? And what they're doing is very expensive to build and to run.

23:07So they have to figure out ways that they can up the revenue. Yeah, that's what that's about, right? Right. We're how old now into kind of this process, Rachel, what, three years and counting. And right now you got to think about, okay, a lot of money's come in, a lot of investors excited, a lot of hype, a lot of activity and actions. And then you got to think about return on investment. What's the long-term viable business model, right, as the landscape continues to evolve and get more competitive? Absolutely. And I'm not sure that anybody has really cracked the code for that with AI imagery, whether it's still images or videos.

23:42I mean, AI video is still very early days and it's there's no getting around the fact that it takes a lot of computing power to build and to run these kinds of models. So and you need people then to pay for that. And right now the companies are heavily subsidizing that stuff. And there's just you know, you can only do that for so long and you need to find like a market fit at some point. And you'll notice people have not been talking about it that much. You haven't seen anything really splashy that obviously uses Sora or other competing companies' products either. It's just a very tricky market.

24:20But it's still really early days for that type of technology. And it does seem really promising, especially when it comes to, and we're going to talk with Chris Palmieri in a few minutes about the Disney side of things. But I mean, that was a potential billion dollar investment in open AI and to license the license IP from from Disney to open AI to then create, you know, these characters for AI shorts. Does that do is I guess my question is, are consumers not interested in this? Do we know a difference at this point between what is AI generated and what isn't? Does that matter for consumer tastes?

25:00I mean, I'm not sure if it's really at this point in like the cycle of this technology, if it matters that much how the consumers feel about it. I mean, it does. Obviously, it does matter. And we are consumers. And I think people do care about knowing whether something is a generated or not. I mean, ultimately, they probably care how it looks and how how how it feels to watch something that's that's either AI generated or animated. But really, I think there's a lot of mixed feelings at the studio level about whether or not they want to use this kind of software, how they want to use this kind of software.