Capital One’s $5B Brex Buy, Intel’s Sales Slump & OpenAI’s Greg Brockman Goes MAGA | Jan 23, 2026

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the Informations TI TV. My name is Akash Pastrucha. It is Friday, January 23rd. First up today, Intel revenue fell 4 % in the fourth quarter from the year prior, despite a bump in its AI business. We will talk through the results with an analyst. We'll then speak to the CEO of crypto company BitGo, which IPO'd on Thursday. The company became the first crypto firm to go public so far this year. And we had some big fintech news as well. Capital One agreed to acquire payments and credit card startup Brex for more than$5 billion. We will discuss the deal with our managing editor, Laura Mandero.

0:52We've also got some more editors coming on the show for this week's Editor's Cut. We're talking through the big questions around this week's TikTok news and also OpenAI's ads play. And finally, we are going to close out the show with our big read from our weekend section. Today, we are taking you inside the big political donations from Greg Brockman at OpenAI, and we'll talk to our reporters about what it tells us about Silicon Valley and politics at large. It's going to be a fun show, so let's get right on into things. Intel reported its quarterly results yesterday. Revenue fell 4 % in the quarter from the year prior, despite a bump in its AI business.

1:30I want to bring on Frank Lee, Global Head of Technology, Hardware, and Semiconductor Research at HSBC to help us break it all down. Frank, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Frank Lee All right. Thanks for having me on. So what stood out to you from the earnings yesterday? Frank Lee Alley Yeah, so I think there's a couple of themes you can get from the earnings. I think the positive theme was that the server CPU demand looks quite strong. This is a point that management, I think, emphasized a few times. They've also referenced the fact that, you know, we're seeing more and more impact from AI making its way.

2:04And part of the agentic AI story is also driving, you know, much stronger server CPU demand. So I think that on a macro level was positive. However, I think, as you pointed out, the guidance on revenue was disappointing. And also the data center also looked to be down sequentially when, you know, when in fact the demand is strong and are sold out. So I think it raises a question about their execution, especially in their own production, that's not quite catching up. Now, they do expect capacity constraints should start to ease by the end of the first quarter. But I think, again, it goes back to the question of, you know, an execution issue in light of the fact that, you know, the demand is quite strong enough.

2:43Remind us of the context here around these capacity constraints, because we hear supply chain issues ebbing and flowing. Sometimes they're more of an issue when they're not. But where are we in that story and how much confidence do you have that it actually will improve the way that the company says? Yeah, so I think, you know, there's a couple of things that are impacting the overall supply side. One is Intel's own ability to produce the chips through their own fabs. And secondly, on a component level, there's going to be some issues as well, especially on the memory side, especially on an upstream raw material called ABFs.

3:18And so I think there's some uncertainty in terms of how much of it is their own issue and how much of it is just the component bottleneck from outside parties will be an impact going forward. Tell me a little bit about how much demand there is from Intel's chips, for Intel's chips broadly in this post-NVIDIA world. The company has been through certainly a roller coaster of sorts, but how much demand is there for Intel's technology today? Yeah, so I think if you look at the server CPU side, a good reference point would be that ever since the AI story started taking off a couple of years ago, the overall server CPU demand has generally been flat.

4:02We haven't seen any growth. As we know, the first year of AI, everybody was really, the CSPs were really focusing on AI investment and prioritizing that over the regular server side. But this year, what we're starting to see from the supply chain is that we could see something close to a 30 % to 40 % year-on-year growth. But because of supply-side issues, perhaps we're going to see a lower growth, but still probably somewhere around 15 % to 20 % for the overall industry. So if you compare it to what we've seen over the last few years, it's basically flat growth. This is a really strong number.

4:36So I guess the question now is that demand is there, but can Intel actually take advantage of that? And what do you think about the valuation broadly? We wrote a column this week at the information looking at the valuations for Intel and then for TSMC. And we were looking at it on a multiples basis. And based on certain multiples, I should say, we published this before the earnings. So, you know, might have changed slightly based on how the results went. But if you look at some multiples, I mean, Intel earlier this week was trading higher than TSMC on some measures. Now, what do you think of that?

5:17What do you make of the valuation broadly? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, I think the thing with Intel is that it's not a simple story now because you have, besides the core chip business, you have this geopolitical aspect of trying to be an independent foundry and trying to compete with TSMC at some point. And this has been one of the areas we've been less confident on. And I think one of the reasons, you know, shares have reacted as negative as it has been is that beyond just the fact that they're not able to, they still have capacity constraints, it's the foundry outlook, you know, the independent foundry outlook.

5:53I think the market's gotten a little bit bullish about, you know, more customer engagements, which we acknowledge. But customer engagement don't mean actual orders yet. They don't mean actual revenues. So I think the market got a little ahead of itself thinking that, given its position, given the US government owns Intel, that more and more customers are going to want to sign with Intel. We think the intent is there. The problem is they need to deliver, which is still too early to tell these days. So in terms of going back to your valuation argument, it's definitely valid. If you look at TSMC, which is in a monopolistic position, it trades on a significantly lower multiple.

6:27But if you also take this conversation on a broader level, other AI stemming network companies such as NVIDIA and Broadcom arguably trade also at lower multiples with higher certainties in terms of their earning profile. Last question for you. We've seen some reporting and some headlines around Intel maybe potentially considering some acquisitions to bolster its business, maybe some investments. There's always a talk about, hey, is Intel a better company inside a broader business? Walk me through your calculus around what acquisitions you think Intel could make to really turbocharge its business.

7:08Or on the flip side, I mean, do you think it's better as part of a bigger company? I think, you know, the complexity of Intel is that ever since they've announced they wanted to get into the foundry business, it's been a very controversial move. Is it better for them to basically be asset light? I mean, this is what AMD has done the last couple of years by working exclusively with TSMC. And that's proven, looking back, to be a great strategy because that's when their market share gains on the server and PC started to climb. But at the same time, I think Intel is in a difficult position because it has to be kind of the national champion now and now the U.S.

7:47government involvement. So I think they basically, they're doing the right things as far as my view is, which is to focus on the core business, which seems to be what they're doing. They're not going to fully invest on Intel 14A and their foundry business until they get more certainty about customers and orders. So I think they're doing the right things for the moment in order to improve their returns. But it's going to take time. And I think that's why the market gets a little ahead of itself whenever they see a lot of headlines. but bottom line you know they need to start delivering on earnings which we haven't quite seen yet great well frank i want to thank you for coming on and chatting with us that is frank lee from hsbc here on ti tv okay bitgo went public on thursday marking the ipo of another closely watched crypto company shares jumped in their first day of trading even though crypto prices have taken a major tumble over the past few months joining me now is mike belshi co-founder founder and CEO of BitGo.

8:47Mike, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Hey, Akash. Thank you for having me. Well, congrats on the IPO. It's a big milestone for you and the company. I want to understand your calculus behind the decision to go public right now in this moment, because if you look at crypto markets, it's been a little bit of a bleak couple months, but you weathered it and said, no, we're going public. And the stock market seemed to have a a good reaction to it, but why now? Yeah, great question. Look, a lot of what we've done over the last, you know, 12 years of our existence is make sure we're as transparent as we can possibly be as a company.

9:25That's meant, you know, how do we audit our technology? How do we do our SOC audits? What insurance do we have? What regulatory background do we have? And as you know, we've been constantly upgrading all of these parts. Most recently, we just moved to an OCC, Federal National Bank Charter. So this is all part of being ready for the world's largest financial institutions become able to come into our space. And we think it's actually a really important unlock. So last year, 2025, tremendous regulatory unlock. All of a sudden, I'm here in New York right now, major firms all up and down Manhattan previously had been blocked from touching digital assets by way of the regulatory landscape.

10:09And now all of a sudden they're in. So our TAM has literally doubled. Being a public company allows us to serve them. It's much more easy for them to be able to come in and do diligence on a company like us as a public company than previously as a private company. So it's just a continued evolution of what we've always done. And then lastly, in terms of the stock price, I mean, I do care about the stock price. I don't want to say I don't. But this is a long-term view we have in the company. Look, we're building infrastructure. We think it's all about growth. I think if you look at the performance of the company over the last 12 years, you know, we've raised less money than pretty much any of our competitors by a lot.

10:43we've got more market share than our competitors. And we think that our status, not just here in the US, which people are familiar with, but also fully regulated in Europe and in the Middle East and in Singapore. So we can meet our clients where they are. And we think this is all poised for growth. So the stock price is where it's going to be. Being a public company actually shows to all of our clients our continued dedication to being completely transparent. Come and take a look at who BitGo is, what we do, see our books, see how we run it, and hopefully become clients. I want to ask you about the decision to allocate a significant portion of your shares to individual investors and having them access them through brokerages like Robinhood.

11:24This was something that the Wall Street Journal had some good reporting on. What was the rationale here on that? Look, I think ultimately it's, you know, your stock, you're trying to get it out to a broad distribution. And the retail channels have changed over the years. To be honest, I don't think the IPO process is fully adapted to what's possible here. I mean, we can go direct to retail through a whole bunch of channels. I was amazed and impressed at the quality of information that we got during the IPO process about the retail investors and their interests. So, look, we think ultimately this brand, our company will have a big impact and interest to retail clients.

12:05I think we saw tremendous demand from the retail channels. really proud that we put about 25 % straight up into retail. So let me ask you this. Is that strategy for everyone? I mean, there's a clear connection here between, well, clear, maybe not clear, but there's a seeming connection here between the individual investors and the idea that crypto has been very popular on some of these trading platforms like Robinhood. I mean, is allocating those shares or the distribution to individual investors, is that for every company? Do you think this will become more mainstream broadly or is this just a crypto thing?

12:48Look, I think retail deserves more credit. There's certainly a time in history where retail did not have as much information about the companies that they might be investing in. It was difficult for them maybe to participate at the same level. Look, all the way back to GameStop a few years ago, it was very clear. Like the retail investors, while they can band together and do interesting things on their own, they are very educated in terms of what's going on with stock. So part of our world is we want to be transparent. We welcome that scrutiny wherever it comes from. I think it's easier for traditional IPOs to have picked a small set, let's say 200 various investors.

13:32and then you can try to understand what they're selling and buying patterns are going to be and you can try to get more predicted stock output. I don't know if that's really meaningful other than for a short term. For the long term, we're going to build this. We're going to continue to distribute more stock out over time just like every other company does. And a lot of that lands in retail at some point. You have to be a company that can handle being directly connected to retail. Lastly, though, look, tokenized equities are coming. I was just going to ask you, there are crypto companies now that have tokenized your stock.

14:07And do you approve of that? Well, they're able to do that, actually, without even talking to us. So, you know, that's fine. Right, right. So maybe, but where do you, you know, do you like it? Well, look, I think if you play out what's going to come next in terms of the technology adaptation with, you know, tokenization, It gives an ability for an issuer like Bitco to have a direct relationship potentially with their equity holders. And, you know, of course, this is something that's not new to crypto. But who are your shareholders matters? And can you give them incentives? And can you work with them and actually bring them into the fold in a better way?

14:42There's perfectly great examples where this has happened before. Berkshire Hathaway does this as well, not in a technology way, but in a manual way. So imagine the future that BitGo could have clients, they bring one share into a BitGo wallet. We know completely that they are a shareholder and now we can address them in more interesting ways. So I think there's a lot of good positive future coming. For the retail folks out there that did participate in the BitGo IPO, thank you. I hope most of you are understanding BitGo and really looking for the long term. And I would welcome every single one of you to go sign up for a BitGo account.

15:21and check it out and see. So let me ask you a question here then on this, where you see IPOs going then? You've just gone through the IPO process through maybe not as traditional a process as it would have been maybe 10, 15 years ago, but still a pretty traditional IPO process. Yeah. What does the IPO of 15 years from now look like? I mean, what is your vision for how that process goes? I mean, how you end up raising the money, how the distribution works? Just talk future sense with me. Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think we've seen over the last 20 years, the U.S. capital markets have fallen behind a little bit, right?

16:00Like we have fewer companies in the capital markets than we've had. And I think most of this comes down to we've made it really expensive for companies to hit the public bar. So that's unfortunate. I've heard Paul Atkins, the chair of the SEC, also lament that we want more great companies trading on the U.S. capital markets. They are the greatest capital markets in the world. Of course we want more. And so we have to find the right balance between regulatory and cost burden and companies out there. Technology is going to pave the way here. It's going to pave the way in terms of how we address those regulatory needs.

16:38It's going to pave the way in terms of new options to go public. But the main thing about tokenization, in my opinion, is that it opens the door for innovation. So everything related to equities in the past has been tied up on a small number of now very established big company brands. You recognize their names as broker dealers in the world. And you can't really innovate around it. But once you're able to take tokenized equities, we basically have an open banking system for equities. And now we can start to see the innovation flourish around all kinds of different applications. So the main hurdle that you see this overcoming is the cost of going public, the cost of going through the motions of an IPO.

17:20Look, I'm not sure that we've really covered the costs very well. The U.S. has a few things which are complicated here. We did pay our attorneys a lot of money to do this process with us. Once you're a public company, your exposure is very different. You get a lot of warnings coming into the public world. Insurance goes through the roof because they know you're going to get sued. We live in a very litigious United States. So, look, some of those things are not fixable just with technology. In terms of the mechanics of how you do this, of course, that gets better. But, yes, look, securities have to be traded under the rules of the SEC, and that's the Exchange Act of 1933, Investors Act of 1940, all that kind of stuff.

18:05So that doesn't go away just because you add technology. All right. Great. Well, Mike, I want to thank you for coming on. Congrats on the new listing. And we look forward to talking to you again soon. That is Mike Belshi, the co-founder and CEO of BitGo here on TITV. OK. Capital One is buying Brex for$5.15 billion. It is one of the most noteworthy fintech deals that we have seen in a long while for many different reasons. I want to bring on Laura Mandaro, who wrote a column on the transaction last night in our Dealmaker newsletter. Laura, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Hi, Akash.

18:44I should correct you. It was Corey. Corey and I worked on it together. Oh, okay. Well, I'm happy to talk about it. We had a lot of discussions about it. Corey wrote it. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. Well, it's all a team effort here, And Dealmaker is written by many reporters in the newsroom and many editors, too, at times. So anyway, let's talk about Brex. So did this deal surprise you? Because I was kind of shocked. Yeah. I mean, we have, for the last year, been trying to report out what will happen with Brex. You know, like many companies that raise a lot of money at very high valuations during the low interest rate period, as you, Akash, know very well, those valuations did not look to represent the value of their business once rates fell.

19:38And fintechs were a particularly acute segment reflecting that disconnect between the low interest rate period and the post period. I mean, there was such a rush. We're all about AI these days, but I was just looking at some of the stories we did in that period. And I think there was$121 billion raised by fintechs in just 2021. So, you know, it was a bubble and then there was a reset. And depending on the company, they dealt with it in many ways. I mean, Ramp, their big rival, and I'm sure you'll ask about that took a down round. So they sold shares at a lower valuation. And that was probably more reflective.

20:30But Brex had raised so much money, I don't think they were compelled to do anything like that, at least in terms of new capital raises. They did some internal recapitalization for their employees, which we can talk about. But so we never saw sort of a headline new number. But the secondary markets proved to be, you know, pretty prescient. There were some trades and bids and offers on sites like Caplight that had been pricing the company around$4 billion. So, you know, we knew something was, you know, at least in terms of the headline price, something was changing. And, you know, was it going to be another round or was it going to be, you know, were they going to try to do an IPO?

21:16I think these were all open questions. So now you mentioned the employees, and we obviously have the investors that poured all this money into the company. The big question here around this deal is, who wins here? Is this a good deal? Was it a good price? When you compare the price to the valuation it used to have, it's about half of what, less than half, I guess, what it was. At the same time, I mean,$5 billion is a lot of money, so somebody got something. Where do you stand on this? I mean, that's the key. And the context is very important. I mean, before I got on the show, I was looking at the stock market performance of some of the venture-backed IPOs last year, and particularly Klarna, Chime, which is a fintech, which would be a comparable.

22:02I mean, these are all down substantially. Like, Klarna's down nearly 40%. I mean, the IPOs have really, I mean, you know, they may have been hits for the investors selling shares. But I mean, the stock price has tumbled. If they sold at the IPO. Yeah, that's right. There are lockups, right? So you can't sell on day one, nor is that seen as a good thing. And so, I mean, you know, if you're an investor in Chime and buying very, very early at pennies on the dollar, I think we have reported over some of those early rounds. Sure, it's still a great return. But, I mean, last year, I think, gave investors and founders a lot of information about what the IPO market was like, right?

22:49You could go public. You'd probably be at a much lower valuation than your private valuation. I think that's pretty established. And, you know, it may not be hitting it out of the park as a public stock. So a$5 billion price tag, while, you know, at first blush, you're like, wow, that's a lot lower than$12 billion. it is kind of money in the hand, right, for investors and employees. It's, first of all, there's cash, which doesn't hurt, and Capital One stock. And Capital One stock's been up in the last year. So, I mean, it's not, you know, it's not a, it's not, you know. It's a good deal. I mean, it's a deal that, you know, everyone's looking for a deal.

23:30So to the extent that it is a deal, it's a good deal. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, back to the column, our dealmaker column, I mean, we re-topped it once we saw the Brex deal, but the column I had written, it was sort of speaks to this moment, which was about how, you know, there was a decline in VC funds making new investments last year, which really speaks to, you know, VC funds are having trouble fundraising. Why are they having trouble fundraising? You know, outside of the very, very big ones, of course, like Andreessen. But there are a lot of VC funds that are having trouble fundraising because they don't have exits.

24:10They don't have IPOs and M &A to return cash to their investors like universities and pensions. And when you don't return cash, you don't necessarily get more cash in. So this is the kind of transaction that I think universally for three years, people have saying, would be healthy for the market. And we just haven't seen as much. So, you know, the investors should at least get their investments back, if not with a return because of the sales price and this is preferred stock. And then Corey wrote that, had reporting that the company, and we hadn't known this, had repriced the employee stock options in the past couple years.

24:56So that these options were kind of priced to reflect the true valuation of the company. And so they weren't underwater, so to speak. I want to ask you one more question. You mentioned the ramp of this all, and that's what people are talking about that a lot online, that here's a company that raised, I think, what was it, three consecutive funding rounds last year, or they announced it last year. They're contrasting that with Brex. The broader question that I have for you, Laura, is, I mean, look, the purpose of fintech was to disrupt, in some ways, the traditional financial system. And here you have Capital One, you know, basically eating one of these fintech disruptors, you could say.

25:41You know, do you see this? Do you see more of this coming potentially as these fintech companies? It's not just Brex and Ramp. I mean, you know, we saw a couple go public. But there's a lot of these smaller fintechs, I'm sure, that are hanging around that are looking for some kind of an exit. Are we going to see more of these acquisitions? I mean, I'm sure many of their investors would hope so, right? And historically, these big banks and big banking companies have been pretty acquisitive. There's always trouble integrating. And we've seen that a lot, too, over the last couple of years, especially with fintech.

26:17But yeah, I mean, this could be a signal in the market that there are more to do. I mean, I don't, you know, I think the bigger question is, will there be enough deals to kind of resolve so many of these private tech startups that have been created? And I don't know. I think it's tough. There was a lot of money put into this space. And maybe some of them will pivot to some degree. I mean, I think that with Ramp and Brex, you can see sort of by their messaging, you know, it was very, especially with Brex, very payments oriented. A couple of years ago, now they're, you know, you hear more about software and AI agents.

27:02Yeah. I mean, like the fintech story that we're seeing play out now from the funding boom four years ago, I mean, you know, it's like there's probably an 18-month lag on like all the crypto startups that raised all the money. And then there's maybe a two-year lag on what we're going to see with the AI startups that are raising all this money. So it's sort of like we're just seeing this cycle unfold. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I was talking to Corey and, you know, it does, you know, there is, I think, you know, clearly there can be a disruptor in this space, this corporate card expense space. But can there be two to five?