Donald Trump’s new favourite billionaire

0:02Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, August 28th. And this is your FT News Briefing. NVIDIA delivered a solid earnings report. And Venezuelans are really into crypto right now. Plus, SoftBank's Masa Yoshisan and Donald Trump are two peas in a pod. And that's good for business. The two play golf together regularly. The two chat regularly. Masa, as a risk taker, as a very, very wealthy man, appeals to Trump, appeals to his sensibilities. I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

0:47The tech giant at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom showed resilient growth last quarter. U.S. chip designer NVIDIA reported earnings yesterday. The company's revenue was up 56 % year-on-year and slightly above estimates. And this report was a biggie for investors. They've become increasingly jittery about the financial payoff of all this AI investment and excitement. But even with the solid figures, investors were still nervous. The company's shares fell in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

1:25Cryptocurrencies are transforming Venezuela. People are flocking to them as an alternative because the country's currency is flailing. But is crypto a serious challenger to the bolivar? Here with me to discuss is the FT's Joe Daniels, who's been covering this. Hey, Joe. Hi, Mark. So where are we seeing cryptocurrency usage crop up around Venezuela? Well, we're seeing it crop up everywhere. It's used in neighborhood stores. It's used in retail chains. It's used by some people to pay rent. It's used for all sorts of transactions in the country. Chainalysis, a firm that monitors crypto uptake, says it surged 110 % in the last year that they have data for.

2:09Wow, that's insane. So what is behind the surge, Joe? Well, driving the surge is economic instability in Venezuela, which is one of the most distorted economies in the world. Venezuela has a highly authoritarian government that has instigated kind of socialist policies, which have completely distorted and warped the economy with price controls and currency controls. And it's dealt with hyperinflation in the last decade. As a result, people don't have faith in the currency. The Bolivar currency has lost 70 % of its value between October and June this year. People are just desperate for some kind of currency that is much more usable, much more fungible than the Bolivar.

3:03So we've seen an uptake in dollars. And crypto is kind of a natural development of that because getting a hold of physical dollars in cash in Venezuela is not that easy. It sounds like there aren't a lot of options here for people, and that's why they're turning to crypto. How does the government feel about crypto? Well, the government has had a checkered history over crypto. First off, they'd floated the idea of launching their own kind of oil-backed cryptocurrency called the Petro. It went nowhere. They have a crypto-regulating body, which is currently being investigated by Venezuelan authorities over corruption.

3:46within the system that is widely regarded as corrupt. So the government's attitude on crypto has kind of shifted quite a bit, both in terms of promoting cryptocurrencies and then cracking down and saying that they are a method for corruption within the government. Joe, given all this, do you think that cryptocurrencies pose a real challenge to the Bolivar in Venezuela? I think it's possible. Cryptocurrencies, just like US dollars and the Brazilian real or the Colombian peso in the border regions, all of these different currencies represent different payment methods because people don't want to use Bolivars because they devalue so quickly.

4:35And as a result, people losing faith in their own currency, That's obviously a huge problem and it poses challenges to the economy. You have a shadow currency being widely used. You have more transactions taking place outside of regulators' oversight. Joe Daniels covers South America for the FT. Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Mark.

5:02British boardrooms seem to love a fresh face. In the first quarter of this year, more than half of FTSE 100 companies chose external candidates as their new CEO. That's according to a non-profit called 25x25. That is way higher than rival markets. A little less than a third of the S &P 500 welcome newcomers, and Germany's DAX had a little less than a quarter. So why are UK companies gunning for outsiders? Well, it seems like it comes down to poor planning. 25 by 25 surveyed UK board members. They found that companies lacked internal leaders who could manage sudden upheaval or who could reposition the organization for growth.

5:43And the impacts go well beyond the boardroom. The 25 by 25 initiative found failures in succession planning could present a risk to the broader economy.

6:00SoftBank founder Masayoshi Sun is a legendary tech investor. And now he's one of Donald Trump's favorite investors, too. Sun led a big investment in OpenAI and pushed SoftBank to buy$2 billion worth of Intel stock earlier this month. It's part of SoftBank's U.S. dealmaking spree that's turned Sun into an unofficial diplomat between Washington and Tokyo. Here with me to talk about this is the FT's David Keohan. Hey, David. Hey, nice to be here. Okay, so just to start us off, SoftBank is a tech-heavy investment fund. It has invested in a lot of U.S. companies like Uber and, more infamously, WeWork.

6:39What's different about what's happening over the past two months or so? So if we think about SoftBank's evolution, a long way back, it used to be kind of an operating company. Masayoshi-san was the guy who brought the iPhone to Japan. And then through the Vision funds, the tech-heavy investment vehicles, it made what were for a while very concentrated bets, including the disastrous one on WeWork, and then quite a few smaller bets. What's different this time, both for SoftBank and in the US, is that Masayoshi-san is concentrated entirely on AI. He's concentrating a lot, increasingly, a lot of his firepower in the United States.

7:17And how much of this recent investment can we actually attribute to Sun's relationship with Trump? He would be doing some of this anyway. What he's currently signed up for, what he's agreed to do, in terms of the fundraising for OpenAI, in terms of the$2 billion stake in Intel, these are minority stakes. Where it gets more interesting is what could come next. The FT has reported that SoftBank has had designs on Intel's foundry business, which would actually make the semiconductors and would be considered a very strategic asset. Massa is also one of the leads on the Stargate project, which is this 500 billion data center build out with OpenAI and Oracle and some other funders.

8:01And he has designs on this very ambitious project to bring semiconductor equipment makers, materials, to Arizona. So if he goes from being somebody who has minority financial stakes, someone who owns physical assets, I think the relationship to Trump would be incredibly important. Why do you think they're so buddy-buddy? Well, firstly, Masa Ersasana is very good at this. He's very good at getting close to people in power. He is extremely charismatic. And I think Massa knows how to appeal to Trump. I mean, we promised a hundred billion in investment and got on stage with Trump. And then a couple of months later, he was in the White House with Sam Altman of OpenAI, with Larry Ellison of Oracle, giving Trump another huge win in terms of the Stargate investment.

8:55The two play golf together regularly. The two chat regularly. They're just very close because I think Massa as a risk taker, as a very, very wealthy man, appeals to Trump, appeals to his sensibilities. And he also is able to say to Trump, you know what, I get Japan. Japan is a very important ally. I'll help you there. I'm so glad that you brought that up. I'm really curious, David, what are you hearing from Japanese officials, Japanese diplomats about how they feel about the relationship between Sun and Trump? NASA's relationship with Donald Trump is very clearly an asset to the Japanese. Obviously, Masayoshi-san is a businessman.

9:35He is acting in self-interest. So Japanese diplomats are both intrigued and keen to take advantage of this relationship, but also wary and frustrated because increasingly he is seen as a gatekeeper. He is seen as the guy who filters some of the conversations between Tokyo and Washington. as one of the people we spoke to said. And I think it's probably true to say that Tokyo bureaucrats who are trained to approach things in a certain way probably also see Masayoshi-san as someone they cannot fully control or understand because he is outside of the norms of Tokyo and the way he operates. Similar to Donald Trump, maybe another thing that allows them to see Aitai.

10:20That's the FT's David Kiyohan. Thanks, David. Thanks so much. That was good fun.

10:28You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

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