# Nvidia Earnings Beat, SpaceX Files IPO, Samsung Reaches Deal to Avoid Strike

An episode of [Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia Edition](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1663863437), 21 May 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/58e85be7-dbb5-4043-afed-af80014dc0b3/49ca9c2d-00e2-4e03-a0cb-b45100123070/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=27143354-63aa-4ac5-965d-af80014dc0d3

Business and finance news from the Asia-Pacific. Nvidia Corp. aims to rely less on giant data center operators and predicts other businesses and governments will become a bigger source of revenue for its chips and computing products to support artificial intelligence ambitions. The company faces growing competition from chipmakers trying to carve out a piece of the AI computing business, and major buyers of Nvidia's technology are developing their own in-house components. In other news, SpaceX filed publicly for what stands to be the largest-ever initial public offering, revealing billions in losses and the super-voting share plan allowing Elon Musk to keep the company under his control. The rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence giant is giving the billionaire the power to outvote anyone else, and promising him outsize rewards, including as many as 1 billion shares, if he can pull it off, according to a filing Wednesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. To break it all down, we spoke to Daniel Newman, CEO of the Futurum Group. Plus - In a last-minute reversal, Samsung Electronics Co. reached a tentative deal with its labor union, averting a potentially crippling strike that had been scheduled to start Thursday at the world's largest memory chipmaker. The South Korean company said in a statement late Wednesday that "labor and management have reached a tentative agreement on wages and the collective bargaining agreement." The company's union also confirmed suspension of plans for a strike that had been planned for May 21 to June 7. Samsung's stock rose about 5% in pre-market trading on Nextrade. Bloomberg TV hosts Haidi Stroud-Watts and Shery Ahn spoke to Tom Kang, Director at Counterpoint Research. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm deg Krisner. Let's
[0:14] Speaker 2: begin today with Nvidia. After the US closed, the company
[0:18] Speaker 2: gave an upbeat sales forecast. Revenue in the current quarter
[0:21] Speaker 2: will be ninety one billion dollars plus or minus two percent.
[0:25] Speaker 2: Nvidia also authorized an additional stock buyback plan worth eighty
[0:29] Speaker 2: billion dollars, and the company at the same time boosted
[0:33] Speaker 2: its quarterly cash dividend to twenty five cents from one cent. Now.
[0:37] Speaker 2: For the latest quarter, in Vidia's revenue was better than
[0:40] Speaker 2: expected and gross margin was in line with forecast. Let's
[0:44] Speaker 2: take a closer look at the story on in nvidio
[0:46] Speaker 2: with Daniel Newman of the Futurum Group. Daniel, thanks for
[0:50] Speaker 2: being here. Give me your reaction to what we learned
[0:52] Speaker 2: after the bell from Nvidia.
[0:55] Speaker 3: In Vidia, it continues to deliver. It's almost like the
[0:58] Speaker 3: market has grown to expect it. The whisper numbers are high,
[1:02] Speaker 3: they outstripped the they outperformed the whisper numbers, and then
[1:06] Speaker 3: the market has sort of, you know, shown this slight,
[1:10] Speaker 3: you know, lack of enthusiasm for these great results. But
[1:13] Speaker 3: you have to look at what they delivered and say,
[1:15] Speaker 3: this company is doing everything right. What were the things
[1:18] Speaker 3: that investors were concerned about. They were concerned about can
[1:22] Speaker 3: they continue to hit the growth into the next quarter.
[1:24] Speaker 3: So the guide they were concerned with the gross margin
[1:28] Speaker 3: that was a problem a few quarters ago. They have
[1:30] Speaker 3: it back at that seventy five percent number. They have
[1:33] Speaker 3: you know, authorized the buybacks. They raised the dividend by
[1:35] Speaker 3: twenty five x this quarter. And of course they're doing
[1:38] Speaker 3: that because they are a tremendous growth story. But in
[1:41] Speaker 3: some ways, as they go above five trillion in valuation,
[1:44] Speaker 3: they can't keep up with these small public companies in
[1:48] Speaker 3: the infrastructure space that are that are doubling and tripling
[1:50] Speaker 3: each quarter right now as this AI infrastructure build out
[1:53] Speaker 3: continues to happen, so almost a victim of its own success.
[1:57] Speaker 3: But in Vidia has delivered tremendous numbers and they are
[2:00] Speaker 3: doing all the right things in the market, and they
[2:03] Speaker 3: continue to be the biggest and arguably the most important
[2:06] Speaker 3: company in the space.
[2:07] Speaker 2: So when you look at the build out of the
[2:08] Speaker 2: AI infrastructure story, on a call with analyst and video set,
[2:13] Speaker 2: it's expecting AI is spending to reach between three to
[2:16] Speaker 2: four trillion annually by the end of the decade. To
[2:19] Speaker 2: your point, there's going to be a point in time
[2:22] Speaker 2: where we begin to hit a wall. I mean it's
[2:25] Speaker 2: hard to know when. Do you have a sense of
[2:27] Speaker 2: one that might occur.
[2:30] Speaker 3: We actually just published our AI infrastructure forecast for twenty
[2:34] Speaker 3: thirty today, Doug, on this day of Nvidia's earnings, maybe intentionally,
[2:38] Speaker 3: and we actually are close to in line. We had
[2:41] Speaker 3: two point seven trillion by twenty thirty. But let me say,
[2:43] Speaker 3: I think it's really important that across the space, US
[2:46] Speaker 3: as analysts, pundits, the market sort of commentators have been
[2:50] Speaker 3: wrong almost throughout this entire process of AI revolution. To
[2:55] Speaker 3: the downside, we have continuously underestimated the speed of growth,
[2:59] Speaker 3: and we're seeing it in in thropics inflection. We have
[3:03] Speaker 3: seen it in you know, the growth of Google. This
[3:05] Speaker 3: week at Google Io, sundarp Pa Chai mentioned that they're
[3:08] Speaker 3: processing three quadrillion tokens. I mean that number. Most people
[3:12] Speaker 3: can't even comprehend that three quadrillion tokens a month right now.
[3:17] Speaker 3: So the demand side is flying. We have this continued
[3:19] Speaker 3: capacity constraint where we don't have enough energy, we don't
[3:22] Speaker 3: have enough memory, and now we have a new constraint
[3:24] Speaker 3: with CPUs, which Jensen mentions he has a twenty billion
[3:27] Speaker 3: dollar order book potential. He's got a ligne to twenty
[3:31] Speaker 3: billion dollars in compute CPU, not just the GPU revenue.
[3:35] Speaker 3: So we have demand continuing to grow while capacity continues
[3:39] Speaker 3: to be constrained. So there really is no reason to
[3:42] Speaker 3: believe that this boom cannot continue beyond twenty thirty. And
[3:47] Speaker 3: I would say it's hard to argue against you know, Jensen,
[3:50] Speaker 3: because he's been right when a lot of the people
[3:52] Speaker 3: that have said this slowdown is coming have continued to
[3:55] Speaker 3: be wrong.
[3:55] Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you mentioned Anthropic because we learned today
[3:58] Speaker 2: that the company is on pace for its first profitable
[4:01] Speaker 2: quarter a surgeon revenue obviously being driven by demand for Claude.
[4:06] Speaker 2: The company's AI model revenue is expected to double quarter
[4:10] Speaker 2: on quarter to about ten point nine billion in the
[4:13] Speaker 2: current period. Is there a point when a company like
[4:17] Speaker 2: Anthropic or even open Ai begins to lose a bit
[4:21] Speaker 2: of pricing power here and we have to begin to
[4:24] Speaker 2: rethink revenue projections.
[4:27] Speaker 3: I think there is a revenue normalization that will somewhat
[4:32] Speaker 3: provide a test to the market as to just how
[4:35] Speaker 3: fungible and how inelastic this demand really is. Doug right now.
[4:41] Speaker 3: We know that open AI and Anthropic and others have
[4:44] Speaker 3: done a lot of subsidizing of tokens to users to
[4:49] Speaker 3: entice more demand. And look, we're out there every day
[4:53] Speaker 3: talking to enterprises, you know, hundreds of enterprises every month,
[4:56] Speaker 3: and the token demand inside of enterprises is growing. You know,
[5:00] Speaker 3: we said we saw a number of about two and
[5:02] Speaker 3: a half times over the last six months. Like I said,
[5:05] Speaker 3: at Google's event, they showed a number of something like
[5:07] Speaker 3: seven times increase in token demand. But as the bills
[5:11] Speaker 3: come do so as companies CFOs start to see the
[5:14] Speaker 3: bill for all this token usage, there's going to be
[5:17] Speaker 3: some additional scrutiny. We don't think that the concerns are
[5:22] Speaker 3: going to be outstripped by the utility. I think companies
[5:25] Speaker 3: are seeing tremendous value those that are leading into AI
[5:28] Speaker 3: in terms of productivity and efficiency. But I do think
[5:31] Speaker 3: the normalization as Anthropics starts to charge what it really costs,
[5:35] Speaker 3: because you're mentioning that they're going to turn profitable. But
[5:38] Speaker 3: we've all seen over the last few quarters it's had
[5:40] Speaker 3: a number of issues with having enough compute capacity for
[5:44] Speaker 3: its customers. So they may get profitable for a moment,
[5:47] Speaker 3: but then they're going to have to flip the switch
[5:49] Speaker 3: and buy a whole bunch more compute. But as Jensen said, today,
[5:52] Speaker 3: compute is revenue, compute is profit, and for a company
[5:55] Speaker 3: like Anthropic, it's going to have to continue to invest,
[5:58] Speaker 3: but I think those profits will be substantial.
[6:01] Speaker 2: On the other side, we also learned after the bell
[6:03] Speaker 2: that SpaceX has filed publicly for its IPO. The company
[6:07] Speaker 2: is a step closer to becoming the world's largest ever
[6:10] Speaker 2: initial public offering. I think they're targeting as much as
[6:12] Speaker 2: seventy five billion in this listing, which would give SpaceX
[6:16] Speaker 2: evaluation of more than two trillion. How do you feel
[6:19] Speaker 2: about the SpaceX IPO?
[6:22] Speaker 3: Space is an incredibly exciting market. It leaves a lot
[6:27] Speaker 3: of speculation, right for a company that's still loss making
[6:32] Speaker 3: to justify a multi trillion dollar valuation, while a company
[6:36] Speaker 3: like Nvidia at five trillion making forty eight billion in
[6:39] Speaker 3: cash flow, having so much cash it doesn't know how
[6:41] Speaker 3: to allocate all the dollars. But in some ways the
[6:43] Speaker 3: market has not allowed it to continue to grow at
[6:46] Speaker 3: nearly the same rate as other companies. I think there's
[6:49] Speaker 3: a lot of speculation there, but I think what SpaceX
[6:52] Speaker 3: did and what I saw that they announced that I
[6:54] Speaker 3: think is going to be so enticing, besides it just
[6:56] Speaker 3: being an Elon Musk company, besides it being part of
[6:59] Speaker 3: the next, you know, the next technological revolution after even AI,
[7:04] Speaker 3: which is space Is. They mentioned that they have, you know,
[7:07] Speaker 3: what they believe is more than twenty five I think
[7:09] Speaker 3: it was more than twenty five trillion dollars in tam
[7:13] Speaker 3: So the potential of it as one of only a
[7:16] Speaker 3: very small number of companies that is monetizing space becomes
[7:20] Speaker 3: something that I think speculators and those that are long
[7:24] Speaker 3: term investors and those that follow innovators like Elon Musk.
[7:28] Speaker 3: They've been in Tesla, they've been following the SpaceX, you know,
[7:32] Speaker 3: IPO for a long time, they're going to want to
[7:34] Speaker 3: run into it. So I don't see it having a
[7:36] Speaker 3: problem raising the money. I don't see it having a
[7:38] Speaker 3: problem coming out at that valuation. I do think there
[7:41] Speaker 3: could be some scrutiny to the business's performance in its
[7:43] Speaker 3: early years that happened to companies like Meta or Facebook
[7:47] Speaker 3: back in the day, But I think over time, if
[7:49] Speaker 3: it's able to execute. It's it's one of a very
[7:51] Speaker 3: small number of companies that's going to be operating within
[7:55] Speaker 3: a huge TAM addressable market, and if they're able to
[8:00] Speaker 3: they are an end of only a few, and that
[8:02] Speaker 3: valuation could end up making sense in the long run.
[8:05] Speaker 2: I'm wondering about the role of government in everything that
[8:07] Speaker 2: we're talking about. We're being told that the White House
[8:10] Speaker 2: is planning to release its executive order, perhaps as soon
[8:14] Speaker 2: as this week, on cybersecurity and AI safety. Now it
[8:18] Speaker 2: would seek to support a little bit more where cybersecurity
[8:22] Speaker 2: comes to intersect with advanced AI models. Maybe some sort
[8:27] Speaker 2: of voluntary framework for AI developers to inform the government
[8:31] Speaker 2: about new releases. Are you concerned about maybe the government
[8:36] Speaker 2: restraining or somehow putting certain parameters in place that could
[8:41] Speaker 2: negatively impact the industry.
[8:43] Speaker 3: It feels like there's a need for a level of collaboration,
[8:47] Speaker 3: and I don't believe this administration wants to do anything
[8:50] Speaker 3: to slow down markets, but I do think when you know, recently,
[8:53] Speaker 3: when Dario of a Day from Anthropic talked about Mythos,
[8:59] Speaker 3: which was their model, and all the capabilities that it
[9:02] Speaker 3: had to potentially identify vulnerabilities that you know in cybersecurity
[9:08] Speaker 3: that presented tremendous issues to infrastructure. I think the idea
[9:14] Speaker 3: that AI could help move this along needs to be
[9:16] Speaker 3: done in cooperation and collaboration with government. So I do
[9:21] Speaker 3: think we need a framework. I don't want to see
[9:24] Speaker 3: that framework start getting down to municipal and state levels
[9:27] Speaker 3: where every state, for instance here in the United States
[9:30] Speaker 3: has their own or every contry. We need some framework.
[9:33] Speaker 3: But having said that, we also have to continue to
[9:36] Speaker 3: let industry evolve because the economic growth, the twenty plus
[9:40] Speaker 3: trillion dollars of growth in the economy that's expected from
[9:43] Speaker 3: AI and just a handful of years to come, could
[9:46] Speaker 3: be you know, stifled substantially if government takes too active
[9:50] Speaker 3: of a role. So they're gonna have to find that balance.
[9:53] Speaker 3: But I do believe there needs to be a framework.
[9:54] Speaker 3: There needs to be a level of collaboration because people's
[9:57] Speaker 3: data and you know, the integrity of our systems, whether
[10:00] Speaker 3: it's financial services systems, whether it's our utilities and infrastructure,
[10:04] Speaker 3: all of that needs to be secure and we need
[10:06] Speaker 3: to make sure that we're working towards that even as
[10:08] Speaker 3: these models continue to get exponentially better.
[10:11] Speaker 2: Good stuff, Thank you so very much. Daniel Newman from
[10:13] Speaker 2: the futurem Group joining us here on the Daybreak Asia podcast.
[10:24] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Daybreak Asia Podcast. I'm dek Krisner.
[10:28] Speaker 2: Samsung Electronics has reached a tentative deal with its labor
[10:31] Speaker 2: union and this has averted a potential strike that had
[10:34] Speaker 2: been set to begin on Thursday. This tentative deal includes
[10:38] Speaker 2: a special performance bonus system as well as an average
[10:41] Speaker 2: wage increase of six point two percent this year, plus
[10:45] Speaker 2: improved child support payments and housing loans. Now, this news
[10:50] Speaker 2: follows days of back and forth brankmanship along with high
[10:53] Speaker 2: pressure negotiations, and that's where we begin our conversation with
[10:57] Speaker 2: Tom Kong. Tom is director at Counterpoint Research, and he
[11:01] Speaker 2: spoke with Bloomberg TV host Heidi Stroud, Watts and Sherry On.
[11:05] Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your reaction to some
[11:09] Speaker 1: of the terms that we've seen so far.
[11:13] Speaker 4: So you can say that they've reached an agreement right
[11:17] Speaker 4: in the middle, so this is more of a concession
[11:23] Speaker 4: from both sides.
[11:24] Speaker 3: But I'd say that.
[11:26] Speaker 4: Samsung Electronics actually made a decision that is kind of
[11:31] Speaker 4: new to them because this is the first time they've
[11:34] Speaker 4: gone through intense negotiations with the labor union which really
[11:40] Speaker 4: didn't exist a couple of years back, and it's the
[11:43] Speaker 4: first time they faced the risk of a full strike,
[11:48] Speaker 4: So you can say that this was the first time
[11:52] Speaker 4: for both sides and it took a bit longer, but
[11:55] Speaker 4: this was expected.
[11:59] Speaker 1: How does it compare to what sk Heinechs, for example,
[12:01] Speaker 1: did last year when they allocate a ten percent of
[12:03] Speaker 1: their operating profit to work or bonuses.
[12:08] Speaker 4: Yeah, you can, so that's the interesting thing. So they
[12:11] Speaker 4: reached pretty much a similar agreement, but it took much longer,
[12:16] Speaker 4: So I'd say this is more of a first time
[12:20] Speaker 4: kind of learning lesson processed for both sides, the company
[12:26] Speaker 4: and the labor union. They could have reached this, you know,
[12:31] Speaker 4: far earlier than now, but considering that this is the
[12:35] Speaker 4: first time they're going through this process, it was expected
[12:39] Speaker 4: it would take longer than this. But you know, they
[12:43] Speaker 4: made it.
[12:44] Speaker 3: Right before the day of the strike, so.
[12:48] Speaker 4: I think they got a pretty much similar deal to
[12:51] Speaker 4: ske Heinex.
[12:54] Speaker 5: The agreement, however, tentative, is obviously coming as a relief
[12:57] Speaker 5: to investors and others that are watching this situation comes
[13:01] Speaker 5: so close to disruptive strikes, right, But does it also
[13:04] Speaker 5: suggest that perhaps we could end up at this point
[13:07] Speaker 5: sooner rather than later.
[13:08] Speaker 3: Again, so we.
[13:11] Speaker 4: Believe that the negotiation. Negotiation is also a skill and
[13:18] Speaker 4: it takes experience. So going through this for the first time,
[13:21] Speaker 4: there are lots of hiccups and a lot of drama,
[13:25] Speaker 4: but we think that they've understood that both sides have
[13:32] Speaker 4: to win and going through a full strike, no one
[13:36] Speaker 4: is a winner. So probably in the coming years this
[13:39] Speaker 4: process will become more smooth and they will be able
[13:42] Speaker 4: to reach a mutual agreement much earlier than this. So
[13:47] Speaker 4: I would say that for the first time, not going
[13:51] Speaker 4: through the strike, or at least starting the strike, was
[13:57] Speaker 4: a success.
[14:00] Speaker 5: Is this really the main risk that's now being removed
[14:03] Speaker 5: from the horizon for Samsung? For you, Tom, because we
[14:05] Speaker 5: know that in terms of the business, in terms of
[14:07] Speaker 5: the chip business, we're expected, we're expecting, I should say,
[14:11] Speaker 5: samtime to continue building up this record breaking profit in
[14:14] Speaker 5: across many many quarters.
[14:17] Speaker 4: Yeah. So we're tracking the memory market very closely and
[14:22] Speaker 4: every month we measure the price, and our latest research
[14:26] Speaker 4: shows the price is still going up. So we think
[14:30] Speaker 4: Q two might be an even better quarter, so they
[14:34] Speaker 4: will break records once again, and I think the labor
[14:38] Speaker 4: union knew that and so they wanted to make it
[14:40] Speaker 4: deal quickly. So I think the boom that Samsung is
[14:45] Speaker 4: going through will still continue. Of course, there is an
[14:48] Speaker 4: end to this, but it won't be Q two. It
[14:52] Speaker 4: will probably last throughout this year. Towards the end of
[14:56] Speaker 4: the year, we'll have to see how the memory price
[14:58] Speaker 4: is fair. But currently the demand is strong and supply
[15:02] Speaker 4: is constrained. So the first factories that were invested last
[15:06] Speaker 4: year will probably start production next year. So that's why
[15:09] Speaker 4: we're thinking of this year.
[15:11] Speaker 2: That was Tom Kong, director at Counterpoint Research, speaking with
[15:14] Speaker 2: Bloomberg TV host Heidi Stroud, Watts and Sherry On bringing
[15:18] Speaker 2: you their conversation here on the Daybreak Asia Podcast. Thanks
[15:24] Speaker 2: for listening to today's episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
[15:28] Speaker 2: Edition podcast. Each weekday, we look at the story shaping markets, finance,
[15:32] Speaker 2: and geopolitics in the Asia Pacific. You can find us
[15:35] Speaker 2: on Apple, Spotify, the Bloomberg Podcast YouTube channel, or anywhere
[15:40] Speaker 2: else you listen. Join us again tomorrow for insight on
[15:43] Speaker 2: the market moves from Hong Kong to Singapore and Australia.
[15:47] Speaker 2: I'm Doug Chrisner and this is Bloomberg,

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