Intro
Tim Stenovec anchors Bloomberg Tech in for Ed Ludlow on a Jackson Hole Friday, working through Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's first symposium address and what it did to yields, the collapse of the Advent-Stripe pursuit of PayPal, and a court ruling that the Trump administration must lift its ban on Anthropic. Bloomberg reporters take the day-after Nvidia trade, SK Hynix's approach to Japan's memory industry and China's chip, robot and delivery giants, and the hour closes with Lisa Abramowicz interviewing Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey in the rain at Grand Teton.
Host: Tim Stenovec, in for Ed Ludlow
Also on: Isabel Lee, on the markets; Michael McKee and Lisa Abramowicz, in Jackson Hole; Max Gokhman, head of AI and digital asset solutions at Franklin Templeton; Ryan Gould, Bloomberg Deals reporter; Hanfeng Tao, CEO of Spirit AI, with Bloomberg's Minmin Luo; Yahaira Anand, on Talking Tech; Rachel Metz, in San Francisco; Ryan Vlastelica, in Chicago; Mike Shepard, in Washington; Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England
Published: 28 August 2026 on Bloomberg Tech
Listen on Omny | 50 min
Key Takeaways
Warsh set a standard instead of a forecast, and the market read it as a hike
"We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do." — Kevin Warsh, in sound played from the speech
McKee: the CPI on September 12 feeds straight into the September 16 meeting
The marginal AI capex is no longer funded out of free cash flow
"most of the marginal extra capex is getting funded through debt. A lot of it in off-balance sheet vehicles and private credit." — Max Gokhman
Franklin Templeton has an agentic coworker sitting in its investment committee
Gokhman says it is supplementing analysts rather than replacing them, and changing what the job is
The chips-and-shovels trade now runs through South Korea and Taiwan rather than the hyperscalers
Gokhman, relaying Nvidia's call: "our margins might take a very small hit to like 71, 72%" on memory prices
Advent and Stripe abandoned what would have ranked as one of the biggest ever leveraged buyouts
A $60.50-per-share offer put PayPal around the $50 billion mark, against roughly $300 billion at one point on the five-year chart
A judge ordered the federal Anthropic ban lifted, and it is still not a switch to flip
A DC court has yet to rule, and the Defense Department is not required to use Anthropic's products
Spirit AI's CEO expects robots to get their ChatGPT moment inside three years
"we will definitely welcome the ChatGPT moment for robots in the next three years" — Hanfeng Tao
The memory squeeze is a decade-long story that is already in consumer prices
"the memory squeeze that we are seeing is something that will last through 2030" — Mike Shepard, relaying SK Hynix's CEO
Bailey's objection to forward guidance is that it drifts into unconditional promises
"I think the problem with forward guidance, and I think Chair Warsh put his finger on this, is that it tends towards making unconditional statements about policy."
Bailey will not be called a hawk or a dove, and sees UK second-round effects as subdued
Whether AI is inflationary depends on which shock arrives first
"if we get the demand shocks ahead of the supply shocks, then you will get pressure on inflation upwards" — Andrew Bailey
Nvidia's quarter drew almost no negative analyst commentary
"I'm not hearing anything negative really at all about Nvidia." — Ryan Vlastelica
Affirm Jumps, Nvidia Takes a Breather, and the Two-Year Yield Moves on Warsh
Bloomberg's Isabel Lee opened the hour with Affirm shares jumping around 8%, after rising double digits earlier to the highest since at least August 2025
The company beat earnings estimates and, alongside Shopify, announced plans to expand some of its services in Australia
Stenovec noted Affirm's Max Levchin was due on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily in the 2 o'clock hour
Nvidia was underperforming the rest of the megacap group the day after results, which Lee framed as a normal breather
"we know that yesterday, Nvidia added nearly $450 billion in the company's stock. This is the second largest one-day gain just trailing after Microsoft." — Isabel Lee
She cited Bloomberg Intelligence calling the quarter jaw-dropping and JPMorgan calling it better than expected
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were close to flat minutes after Warsh spoke, but the bond market moved
Lee: Warsh vowed to keep inflation under 2%, said financial conditions are not currently restrictive, and said interest rates remain the Fed's predominant tool
The two-year yield was up nearly seven basis points; the 10-year was roughly flat
Michael McKee on What Warsh Actually Signaled
"Warsh did not promise that rates are going up, and he did not suggest that rates are going up, but he did suggest that if inflation doesn't come down, then the Fed has work to do, which the markets are reading as rates will go up." — Michael McKee
The CPI on September 12 is the next big input into the September 16 meeting, and a reacceleration would put real pressure on the Fed to start raising
"Warsh came in here with a cloud over his credibility, and I think he leaves with the markets feeling very reassured at this point." — Michael McKee, pointing to a flattening yield curve
Stenovec asked about Warsh's claim that forward guidance slowed the policy response to inflation in 2021, and McKee said there is not empirical evidence for it
McKee's version of the argument: officials make projections, and then stay wedded to that past forecast even when the data change
A lot of people on the Fed would disagree with that
"The Fed is behind the curve because they make their forecasts basically once a quarter. And the market updates its forecasts every five seconds." — Michael McKee
McKee expects changes to the dot plot, which he called the forward guidance Warsh does not like
Franklin Templeton's Max Gokhman on AI as a New Factor of Production
Stenovec read Warsh's line back to him: "we recognize that AI is a new variable, potentially a new factor of production", followed by open-ended questions about whether AI lifts productivity across the economy
Gokhman took the factor-of-production framing as the key point, calling it "an entirely new avenue in which we can boost productivity, in which we can change the economy"
Gokhman says his firm is seeing meaningful productivity gains from the same technology it invests in
He both buys the companies driving the AI trade and deploys their tools inside Franklin, alongside systems the firm builds itself
"We have an agentic coworker that sits with me in our investment committee and works just like an analyst, except an analyst that has perfect recall"
He says the change shows up in the results of the portfolios
Asked whether he is hiring fewer analysts, Gokhman said it is much more supplementing at this point, and is changing what the analyst role is
Less fact-checking and model-building, more time taking meetings with other researchers and having debate
He described it as a powerful coworker happy to do the important but less exciting work humans would rather skip
The AI Capex Has Run Past Free Cash Flow
Stenovec relayed Warsh calling business capex "the seed corn of future economic growth", and saying more than half of this year's capex growth can likely be ascribed to the AI build-out
"most of the marginal extra capex is getting funded through debt. A lot of it in off-balance sheet vehicles and private credit." — Max Gokhman
Alphabet against Amazon is his worked example of investors starting to price the difference
Alphabet said it would boost capex significantly without connecting it to demand, and the stock underperformed after
Amazon boosted capex meaningfully and pointed at demand coming in from AWS, and got a much better reaction
Gokhman called investors underwriting the spend a healthy development, and said markets need that fiscal prudence right now
"we're kind of past this initial phase of spend everything you got and the demand will come"
The next step is tying capex to consumer demand and working out the ROI of AI
Chips and Shovels, and Where the Margin Moved
Gokhman likes the "chips and shovels trade" and looks all the way down the supply chain, past Nvidia to the companies building its components in South Korea and Taiwan
He named SK Hynix, Samsung and TSMC
Names that traditionally carried worse margins than the software-side hyperscalers have had that flipped by demand for memory and GPUs
Even Nvidia guided to a slightly softer margin, which Gokhman read as a tell about power in the supply chain
"our margins might take a very small hit to like 71, 72%" — Max Gokhman, relaying Nvidia's earnings call
Nvidia expects to pass on almost all the cost and eat a little margin because of memory prices
Advent and Stripe Walk Away From PayPal
PayPal shares were down about 12% on the news that the Advent-Stripe consortium had abandoned its pursuit
Bloomberg Deals reporter Ryan Gould has tracked the story since February, when Bloomberg reported Stripe's interest in part or all of PayPal
By July the consortium had put a $60.50 per share offer to PayPal
Gould thinks that is the point at which the PayPal board reckoned the offer was undervaluing the stock
The scale is the interesting part: a company valued in the region of $300 billion at one point on the five-year chart, taken out at around the $50 billion mark
On what a buyer would have done with it, Gould pointed at Advent rather than Stripe
Advent is one of the largest private equity funds, privately held and managed by its partners, with a big network of payments businesses PayPal could bolt onto
Stripe, like PayPal, is a pioneer in payments in its own way
On whether PayPal is now in play, Gould said analyst reaction is refocusing on the company's growth challenges, with a recently arrived CEO mid-turnaround
"it's been a hard place to be as a public company in the past sort of two or three years, particularly since the pandemic"
He expects short-term pressure from the lack of a deal, but thinks it probably plays out okay in the long term
Stenovec's aside: look no further than the so-called PayPal mafia and what those people have gone on to do
Spirit AI's Hanfeng Tao on a ChatGPT Moment for Robots
In a taped conversation with Bloomberg's Minmin Luo, the Spirit AI CEO said current robots can deliver paper to an office printer, place paper, pens and water on desks, and put unused paper into a shredder
"These skills were actually unimaginable half a year ago" — Hanfeng Tao, who said the robots do it in open and randomized scenarios
"we will definitely welcome the ChatGPT moment for robots in the next three years"
His definition: teaching a robot a new task in one to two minutes, or a few simple actions, and having it learn in scenarios it has never seen
That would let companies deploy robots into new fields at very low time and monetary cost
In five years Tao expects large-scale commercial applications in industry and commercial services, including hotels, catering, retail and logistics
Asked how he holds an advantage in a crowded Chinese field, Tao drew the line at the body
Unitree and its peers are very strong at making the physical bodies; Spirit AI works on the brain
Turning robots from dancing and running into labor is a brain problem, in his framing
Spirit AI's robots do power battery handling and logistics sorting for partners including CATL and JD, in early commercial trials
Sorting tens of thousands of product types would be impossible with traditional programming, so it takes a model that can recognize them and pick them precisely
Sales run to several hundred units, and China is the main market because it has the richest application scenarios, the most comprehensive data, and supply chain and engineering talent
Globalization is a long-term strategy rather than a current one
Talking Tech: CXMT, SoftBank and Meituan
Yahaira Anand: CXMT, China's most valuable stock, posted a nearly tenfold jump in first-half revenue with profits also surging, which the chipmaker attributes to tight global memory supply
The results came a month after CXMT pulled off China's second biggest IPO in Shanghai
SoftBank is seeking another $10 billion loan to help refinance debt tied to its OpenAI investments, according to people familiar with the matter
SoftBank is expected to invest close to $65 billion in OpenAI by October
Meituan surprised with roughly $400 million in operating profits where analysts had expected a loss of more than $100 million
Competition in China's delivery market is easing, so Meituan is spending less on discounts and incentives
A Judge Orders the Anthropic Ban Lifted
A US judge ruled the Trump administration must lift its ban on Anthropic's AI technology for federal agencies, finding the ban was not adequately justified and was based on a desire to make a public example of Anthropic for criticizing the government
Bloomberg's Rachel Metz said it is not as easy as flipping a switch: Anthropic won in a California court but still needs a DC court to go its way
The ruling was explicit that the Defense Department keeps its options
The judge said the department is not prevented from taking lawful actions that were available to it before the supply chain risk designation
It does not have to use Anthropic's products, and already works with other AI companies including OpenAI
Stenovec restated what was at issue: Anthropic did not want its technology used for mass surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons deployment, and the government resisted any restrictions on national security grounds
Anthropic, OpenAI and 100 Other Organizations Warn on AI-Enabled Hacks
More than 100 tech and financial services organizations are warning that businesses and governments must do more to prepare for and defend against AI-enabled hacks, and are urging action as models improve
Metz said the warning follows a handful of incidents over recent months involving cyber-capable models, specifically from OpenAI and Anthropic, with one of Meta's models involved in an incident as well
"we've made these models. They are so good at defending against cybersecurity threats, but they also conversely could be used for the opposite to perpetrate those kinds of threats." — Rachel Metz, on the companies' own framing
The concern is that the same capability gets misused by bad actors, so defenses need shoring up now
The Midday Check, and Where the Market Settled
On the second markets check, Isabel Lee had Affirm popping by 8% and Nvidia going the other way, down by nearly 2%
She called the previous day's move the second largest one-day gain in history, trailing only Microsoft
About an hour after Warsh spoke, the S&P was higher by four tenths of one percent and the Nasdaq higher by three tenths
The two-year yield, which Lee noted is more sensitive to imminent policy moves, was higher by nearly 10 basis points; the 10-year by just two
Later in the hour Stenovec had the S&P 500 higher by two tenths of one percent, with the Nasdaq 100 down about a tenth at 29,632
Lisa Abramowicz on a Hawkish First Jackson Hole
Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowicz said the speech was incredibly informative and produced a hawkish result
"He came out and he said that we will not tolerate above target inflation for this long. We are not satisfied."
Warsh treated the 2% core PCE target as absolute and would not undermine it in any capacity
Abramowicz said the granular walk through the components of PCE was exactly what markets wanted, a gauge of how inflation is coming through beyond oil prices, tariffs and the AI shock
He gave no reaction function, but gave enough concrete material to feed into one
The show played sound from the speech, which had ended about an hour earlier
"The responsibility for 65 months of sustained elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank, and that's where it belongs." — Kevin Warsh
"We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do." — Kevin Warsh
Asked whether "here is my standard" differed from previous chairs, McKee said not particularly
It was not forward guidance, but guidance in the sense that he watches the inflation data and does not think it is coming down fast enough
He never said the words raise rates, which is what markets inferred, and McKee thinks that is what he wanted
Abramowicz broke in to note Warsh mentioned hikes in two capacities, the mountain kind and the rate kind, with the walk about to happen in pouring rain
The Perp Walk in the Rain
Warsh led the traditional walk with Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and the Bank of Canada's Tiff Macklem, in a downpour
"The Fed does not call it the perp walk. And they insist this is a totally spontaneous decision by the chair to take a walk." — Michael McKee
McKee's history of it: about 10 years ago, before the chair's speech was televised, newspaper photographers and TV crews asked the Fed for a photo opportunity and the walk was the answer
The chair grabs another central banker and they walk out and pretend they are looking at the scenery
McKee could not remember it ever raining like this
"Andrew Bailey and Kevin Warsh are the only two people in Grand Teton National Park who are wearing suits and ties today." — Michael McKee
The rest of the audience is in jeans and casual shirts at what McKee called a casual dress conference
Macklem was in a sport coat and no tie, which McKee put down to him being a Canadian outdoors kind of guy
"I talked to him about it last night and he said, this is me and I'm not going to give it up." — Michael McKee, on Warsh's formality
Abramowicz: "kudos to them for walking in the pouring rain and looking as though it wasn't pouring, but it actually increased the pace of precipitation as they were walking, too."
Stenovec said he felt bad for the team, since a Jackson Hole shot usually comes with beautiful mountains in the background
Nvidia's Blowout, a Day Later
Stenovec set it up: projected sales growth of 70% for the next fiscal year, the biggest rally since 2025, more than $400 billion added in a single day, and a market cap over $5 trillion, with shares down about 1.8% as the dust settled
"I'm not hearing anything negative really at all about Nvidia." — Ryan Vlastelica
He said people compared it to the start of the AI era, when Nvidia was posting upside surprises of 50 to 100% above expectations
Positioning had not allowed for that scale of surprise, which is why the stock moved as dramatically as it did and lifted the whole AI ecosystem
Vlastelica said the print substantiated the hyperscalers' aggressive capex targets and made AI spending look durable and persistent several quarters out
It was hard to find many people who found real negatives in the report
SK Hynix Courts Japan's Memory Industry, and the Squeeze Reaches Consumers
Bloomberg's Mike Shepard: CEO Kwak Noh-jung spoke to reporters in West Lafayette, Indiana, after breaking ground on a $4 billion advanced packaging facility, the first of its kind in the US
He wants partnerships with Japanese companies specifically in NAND flash memory
NAND preserves data when the power is off, which matters as the AI boom moves into inference, taking trained models and putting them to work
A model stored on flash saves some of the bandwidth needed from the high bandwidth memory SK Hynix supplies for Nvidia chips
"the memory squeeze that we are seeing is something that will last through 2030" — Mike Shepard, relaying the CEO
"You'll remember it raised twenty six point five billion dollars with a sale of U.S. traded shares." — Mike Shepard, on SK Hynix's US market debut last month
Those American depositary receipts are up 9.3% since then, which Shepard reads as demand for both the shares and the products
Stenovec brought it back to consumers, citing Apple saying in June that iPhone prices would rise in September along with some products already on shelves
Shepard said those prices are here to stay, and that Apple and Microsoft have both talked about raising prices and about the complications for their supply lines
Andrew Bailey on Warsh's Speech and the Trouble With Forward Guidance
"it's a cardinal rule that we don't comment on each other's monetary policy" — Andrew Bailey, before commending the speech as one of real substance
He singled out Warsh's points on the framework of monetary policy and on forward guidance
"I think the problem with forward guidance, and I think Chair Warsh put his finger on this, is that it tends towards making unconditional statements about policy."
Bailey's own distinction: monetary policy is in the business of making policy forwards, so it has to be described in terms of the future, but the decisions are always conditional
He said there is even greater uncertainty at the moment, particularly about the immediate situation
On 2021, "as a veteran of that period", he said COVID was such a huge shock that there was enormous demand on central banks to step forward and put the tools to work
That is not the world now, and he does not think unconditional statements about policy work in that sense
His opening line to Abramowicz, after the walk: "I'm just keen to take some of the rain back to Britain"
Bailey on UK Second-Round Effects and Whether a Fed Hike Forces His Hand
Bailey said UK second-round effects from the energy shocks look quite subdued so far, alongside a labor market that has been softening for some time
That is why he takes the view the Bank can watch the situation for the moment, though every meeting has to come back to it
The test he applies is Warsh's: whether underlying inflation is going back to target, and over what period
On AI and growth: "we need to see faster growth in the UK. We need to see faster productivity growth. And I think AI and robotics are a critical source of that."
Abramowicz put it to him that markets currently expect the Fed to hike, and asked whether currency differentials and competition for capital force the Bank to match
Bailey said the Fed will act on its own remit and for reasons to do with the US, and the Bank will take decisions to do with the UK
"We don't say, well, they've done this, so we'll have to do it as well."
An open economy means the rest of the world feeds into the UK inflation outlook, and that is how the Bank takes it in
Bailey on a Divided Committee and the Long-Run Debt Question
Abramowicz described the Bank's split votes against a Fed run of unanimous decisions, and asked what advice he would give Warsh on handling division
Bailey declined to give advice and defended plurality as the point of the institution
Nine members exist to produce different views and deliberation, in a room for more hours than they care to remember
The Bank now publishes paragraphs giving each member's individual view, an innovation that followed work Ben Bernanke did for it
The monetary policy statement remains very clearly the view of the majority
"I don't characterize myself as a hawk or a dove."
The question came after Abramowicz cited his own colleague Catherine Mann, who describes herself as hawkish, and Beth Hammack of the Cleveland Fed saying inflation has been too high for too long
Bailey said the majority of the Bank's committee has been in the same place as him
Asked about politicization when central bank decisions move government budgets, Bailey named balance sheet management as the most complicated area
The Bank has a decision in September that he would not prejudge
He wants a balance sheet with scope to act in future and less interest rate risk on it
Bailey put the debt question inside the long-run challenges of developed economies: aging populations, and the post-Cold War defense expenditure dividend now running in reverse
Those are not direct challenges for monetary policy, but they hit fiscal policy and debt levels, and the long-run projections say they have to be managed
On the G20 in Asheville the next morning, Bailey said the calendar had simply shifted from February and July to the end of August, and would not read anything stronger into the proximity to Jackson Hole
Bailey on Whether AI Is Inflationary or Disinflationary
"if we get the demand shocks ahead of the supply shocks, then you will get pressure on inflation upwards" — Andrew Bailey, with the opposite if supply arrives first
He said AI will bring both demand shocks and supply shocks, and that the sequencing is the question
Those demand shocks can come through in asset markets
The economic historian in him, as he put it, notes that past general purpose technology innovations do not share the same pattern
Warsh gave markets a standard rather than a forecast, and the two people best placed to read him took the same lesson from it: McKee said the Fed will act if underlying inflation does not fall fast enough, and Bailey, sitting next to him in the rain, spent his interview arguing that no central bank should be promising anything in advance.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Nvidia (The day-after story all hour: 70% projected sales growth, nearly $450 billion added in a session, and guidance that margins take a small hit on memory costs)
PayPal, Stripe and Advent (The abandoned buyout: a $60.50-per-share offer that put PayPal around the $50 billion mark, against roughly $300 billion at one point)
SK Hynix (Wants NAND partnerships in Japan, is building a $4 billion US packaging plant, and says the memory squeeze runs through 2030)
Anthropic (Won a California ruling forcing the federal ban to be lifted, still faces a DC court, and co-signed the AI-hacking warning)
Franklin Templeton (Gokhman's firm, running an agentic coworker inside its investment committee and reporting meaningful productivity gains)
Spirit AI (Builds the robot brain rather than the body; several hundred units a year, in early commercial trials with CATL and JD)
Alphabet and Amazon (Gokhman's paired example of capex discipline: Alphabet's spend was not tied to demand and the stock underperformed, Amazon's was tied to AWS and did not)
Affirm (Shares up around 8% on an earnings beat, with an Australian expansion alongside Shopify)
OpenAI and SoftBank (SoftBank seeking another $10 billion loan against debt tied to its OpenAI stake, with close to $65 billion expected to be invested by October; OpenAI is also a Defense Department supplier and a co-signer of the hacking warning)
CXMT (China's most valuable stock; a nearly tenfold jump in first-half revenue on tight memory supply, a month after China's second biggest Shanghai IPO)
Meituan (Roughly $400 million in operating profit where a loss above $100 million was expected, as delivery discounting eases)
Unitree (Named by Tao as very strong at the physical bodies, which is where Spirit AI does not compete)
Apple and Microsoft (Both flagged higher prices and supply-line complications from the memory shortage, with Apple's iPhone increases due in September)
Samsung and TSMC (Named with SK Hynix as the supply chain Gokhman would own instead of the hyperscalers)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Ben Bernanke's work for the Bank of England (Bailey credits it for the Bank's move to publish paragraphs giving each committee member's individual view)
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