Nvidia's Huang Can Navigate US-China Risks: Cleo's Kunst

Bloomberg

6 days ago

Live on Bloomberg TV
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00:00Sarah, I recognize that we're giving you these headlines out of context, but I guess my question to you is how much should we still not understand about what the US government intends to do with sales of US technology to China? And by that measure, how much uncertainty is there around the growth potential for some of these companies? I mean, China represents a $15 billion datacentre market. Absolutely. The reality is that there is uncertainty everywhere. We might know as much as the government does. Right, because a lot of these sort of tariffs, a lot of these bans feel like they're happening in real time. They're happening in sort of a reactive manner. And so it is very much kind of anybody's guess. That being said, one thing that I keep coming back to is that Jensen is not new to having to navigate the U.S. and China. This was a problem with the last administration. He's somebody who understands the Asian markets incredibly, incredibly well, obviously. And so I think that he is probably the best suited CEO for this almost impossible task of guessing what two very mercurial superpowers are going to do on a day to day basis about where he can sell his product. Let me just correct myself. I meant $50 billion data center market in China by 2026. Sara, I'm glad you bring up Jensen's ability to navigate both markets. Is there another CEO or is there another company that kind of is in the middle of all this in the same way that Nvidia is? You know, I think obviously Taiwan Semiconductor, which is, you know, long been one of my favorite names on the street. You know, they're in Taiwan, so they certainly understand this well. And we've seen a lot of their supply chain move out of Taiwan over the last, you know, handful of years for for sort of China centric reasons. And now they're that's probably good for them as they navigate, you know, the U.S.. And so, yes, there are other leaders, I think, particularly who have a deep understanding of China, of the Asian market and where this technology is going. The problem with the U.S. side of the equation is you can't really understand deeply what's going to happen because it changes day by day. And there isn't necessarily a huge, coherent strategy there. Absolutely, Sarah. And I mean, I'm just going through the 10-Q now, and we should just point out to our viewers, I mean, they are spending a lot of time in this 10-Q, not only talking about the export controls on the U.S. side, but also, of course, a lot of the regulations on the Chinese side as well as they call it, a very complex situation, almost a way too long and lengthy to read here on air. But it's something I think every investor should check out. And I hope that Jensen is asked about this on the conference call at five. I do want to ask you, though, about just the investor ability right now in this space beyond in video. I mean, you run a VC fund, you've got several investments in AI startups, like for a Thought Lighter, Athena and a few others as well. When we talk about sort of the next phase of the A.I. trade, if you will, there investment trade, where do you think that success will be in terms of the application, in terms of the use cases and of course in terms of the companies? Of course. I mean, I've got to talk my book, right? I have a really interesting range of names. Companies like Brock with a Q, not not the Elan one with a K, you know, And they are a team that that spun out of Google early on to make tensor processing units originally for self-driving cars. And so they're doing some really, really interesting stuff at the chip level. And that's a name that, you know, I see a ton of secondary interest from I am holding. But, you know, I think that that's a name that's going to continue to do really well. I have other names like Kobold Metals, which is a Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos backed, really interesting company that uses A.I. for rare Earth mineral mining. And so, you know, they have been doing some really exciting stuff recently, too. And so I think that the A.I. trade is here to stay. It's just that we've moved, I think, really far away from the sort of chat bots open I of last year. Yeah. And now see more actual use cases. Well that's an I'm curious with some of these companies and not necessarily the ones in your portfolio, I mean I've seen quite a few that are basically just taking, you know, open air or something or a software layer over that and calling it a new product. We're are we getting innovation out of this? I mean, beyond the big boys that we know have actually created something new, is there real innovation? Yeah, I think there is. I think that there is innovation in terms of where the technology is going. I think that a lot of it day to day is going to be baked in and we're not necessarily going to feel it. One of the funny things when people say, you know, when is Apple going to get in the air game is what do you think Siri is? Right. But we're so used to it on a day by day basis or when you Google and even if you're not using Gemini, Google's Google's A.I. solution, the some of those snippets that you're getting at the top, the the order in which they're ranking your questions, your algorithms on social media, that's all I the best day AI is not something that has to sort of announce itself as A.I., It's just whatever you're looking for, whatever you're doing is better, is easier, is simpler. And I think that that's the layer that people sort of take for granted, even though there's a lot of really interesting day to day innovation there.