Ian King, the Bloomberg technology reporter who broke the MediaTek story with Ed Ludlow that morning, explains what Nvidia bought, what the Taiwanese chipmaker does, and why a company known for smartphone silicon is now chasing the data center. This is the first of eight segments in the episode, each summarized separately; the Talking Tech news read and the market wrap that ran between segments are covered here rather than repeated in the others.
👤 Guest: Ian King, technology reporter at Bloomberg in San Francisco, who broke the MediaTek story with Ludlow that morning
🎙️ Host: Ed Ludlow, anchor of Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco
👥 Also on: Yahaira Anand, Bloomberg Television reporter, who presented the Talking Tech block
📰 Published: 31 August 2026 on the Bloomberg Tech podcast feed
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 43 min
Key Takeaways
Nvidia is selling the fabric, not just the chip — a rival accelerator is welcome as long as it plugs into NVLink
"And what Nvidia is saying is, hey, use our link, use this fabric, they call it, and to bind everything together and it'll all work better."
A data center's performance is not the sum of its components but how well they link, King said
The pitch to a hyperscaler building its own silicon is go it alone, inside our framework
"Use it inside our house and that'll help you."
Amazon's own chip announcement during earnings still leaves it buying some Nvidia parts
The $3.5 billion went in as convertible bonds, not stock, and it is Nvidia's biggest investment outside the US
Ludlow told the audience the paper converts into equity
MediaTek is the Taiwanese Qualcomm in phones and wants to be the Taiwanese Broadcom in the data center
Smartphone processors and modems, a large presence in China and worldwide, and by unit numbers one of the biggest chipmakers
"which is a more lucrative business" — the reason for the move
Shein is going public in Hong Kong at roughly a quarter of its 2022 private valuation
"The stock fell as much as 17% in gray market trading after its $1.7 billion IPO."
SK Hynix is scouting Japanese sites on two criteria
The chairman told Bloomberg it wants locations with "good power and good water"
Nvidia's Answer to Custom Silicon Is to Sell the Wiring Around It
Ludlow opened the programme on the deal: Nvidia investing $3.5 billion in Taiwan's MediaTek, a partnership that brings MediaTek's custom AI chips into Nvidia's architecture by plugging so-called XPUs into Nvidia high-speed networking and memory technology. He noted the deal could revive concerns about circular financing as Nvidia invests across its own ecosystem, and said Jensen Huang had until now been a little dismissive of the threat from the custom chips the hyperscalers and frontier labs are building.
King took the technology view first.
The performance of a data center is a linking problem, not a component problem. How good the individual parts are matters less than how well they all connect
The offer is Nvidia's fabric. "And what Nvidia is saying is, hey, use our link, use this fabric, they call it, and to bind everything together and it'll all work better."
So the pitch to a company that wants to build its own accelerator is not don't — it is do it here. "So what he's trying to do is even if you want to go it alone, even if you want to use your own stuff, use it inside our framework."
"Use it inside our house and that'll help you."
The commercial logic follows from that. If companies want to do their own thing, as Amazon did with the announcement made during earnings, they will do it anyway — and they are still going to be using at least some of Nvidia's chips, so it works business-wise
The instrument matters. "This is Nvidia buying convertible bonds that convert into equity." Ludlow said Bloomberg had confirmed the $3.5 billion is Nvidia's biggest non-US direct investment
What MediaTek Is, and Why the Comparison Changes Depending on Which Business You Mean
Ludlow asked the question a US audience needs answered: what is MediaTek comparable to here?
"This is a very important company that nobody really pays that much attention to."
In phones, the comparison is Qualcomm. "Think they're the Taiwanese equivalent of Qualcomm." It makes smartphone processors and smartphone modems, has a large presence in the China market and worldwide, and by unit numbers is one of the biggest
In ASICs, Ludlow put it, they are more like Marvell or Broadcom. King agreed: "That's right. This is what they're trying to do."
The move is out of phones and into the racks. "They're trying to basically take that expertise that they've developed in smartphones and expand that into the data center, which is a more lucrative business."
What they are replicating is the Broadcom and Marvell service — a customer such as Google or Amazon arrives with an idea and a set of specifications, and the ASIC house takes it the rest of the way
Ludlow closed the segment by noting the story was one of the most read on the Bloomberg platforms that day.
Talking Tech: Shein Lists at a Quarter of Its Peak, SK Hynix Shops Japan, Z.ai Misses
Yahaira Anand presented the programme's Talking Tech block, three items with no analysis attached.
Shein's Hong Kong debut is being priced against a much smaller company than the one investors last valued. Shares on the gray market were under pressure ahead of the Tuesday listing
"The stock fell as much as 17% in gray market trading after its $1.7 billion IPO."
That values the fast-fashion company at about $26 billion, against a valuation of nearly $100 billion in 2022
SK Hynix is studying Japanese manufacturing sites as it races to meet AI demand. The chairman told Bloomberg it wants locations with "good power and good water"
According to a source, a small acquisition or a partnership with a Japanese company is also on the table
Z.ai missed. First-half revenue grew nearly fivefold to $142 million but came in about 30% below analyst estimates, despite a market value up more than 800% since the company's January listing
The Tape: Risk-Off Everywhere Except Chips
Ludlow gave the market picture twice, and both times the split was the same.
Technology stocks were lower, with a flare-up in the Middle East driving risk-off sentiment into the market
Chip stocks were outperforming and modestly higher, in large part because Nvidia had held on to the gains it made after the MediaTek announcement
Closing the programme, he named anxiety in the Middle East with Iran as probably the biggest factor, with outperformance in chips because of Nvidia
King's bottom line is that Nvidia has stopped arguing with custom silicon and started selling the wiring it has to sit in, which keeps Nvidia inside a data center it did not win the accelerator socket in.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Nvidia and MediaTek (The $3.5 billion convertible bond investment and the NVLink Fusion partnership that lets a customer's XPU drop into Nvidia's networking and memory)
Qualcomm (King's comparison for MediaTek's phone business — "the Taiwanese equivalent of Qualcomm," making smartphone processors and modems)
Marvell and Broadcom (The comparison for MediaTek's ASIC ambition: the houses that take a customer's chip specification the rest of the way)
Amazon (Named as the hyperscaler that announced its own chip work during earnings and still buys at least some Nvidia parts)
Google (Cited alongside Amazon as the kind of customer that arrives at an ASIC house with a specification)
Shein (Gray-market shares down as much as 17% before the Hong Kong debut, valuing it at about $26 billion against nearly $100 billion in 2022)
SK Hynix (Studying Japanese manufacturing sites, with the chairman naming power and water as the criteria and a small acquisition or partnership on the table)
Z.ai (First-half revenue up nearly fivefold to $142 million, about 30% below estimates, with the market value up more than 800% since January)
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