Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Mon, 16 Dec 2024
Episode 475: Neal and Toby explain how CEOs from the biggest tech companies are trying to woo Donald Trump ahead of his presidency. Next up, how Broadcom road semiconductors all the way to $1 trillion. Then government officials sound off against the drones that have been flying around the northeast. Hot Wheels and those who hate daylight saving time are our winners or the weekend, and finally a look at the week ahead. Build your Range Rover Sport at landroverusa.com Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - James Patterson Book Donations 03:00 - Tech CEOs Charm Trump 07:30 - Broadcom hits $1T 11:45 - Drone Update 17:50 - Winners of the Weekend 24:10 - Week Ahead Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What heartwarming story does Neil share at the beginning?
Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today it's not Barbie, it's not Lego. The best selling toy in the world is... Yeah, you're gonna have to wait for that. Then it's a bird, it's a plane.
No, it's a drone hovering over New Jersey. But in reality, it's probably a plane. It's Monday, December 16th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Chapter 2: How are tech CEOs trying to charm Trump?
The holiday season is full of heartwarming stories of generosity and giving back. And I got another one for you right here. Last week, the extremely popular author James Patterson handed out $500 holiday bonuses to 600 employees at independent bookstores across the country.
It's a tradition he started in 2015, inviting thousands of booksellers to apply and picking hundreds of winners from the nominees. In a statement, Patterson said, booksellers save lives, period. I'm happy to be able to acknowledge them in all der Hard Work this holiday season.
I mean, it does warm the heart. James Patterson is also a juggernaut. He sold more than 425 million copies of his book. His total income over the last decade is estimated at 700 million dollars. That being said, his books have been described as a literary equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He's often been criticized for co-authoring a lot of his stories, but
A lot of people enjoy Kentucky Fried Chicken, Neil. And if it means some of his profits go towards these independent booksellers, sometimes you just have to tip your cap and say that is a good deed. Now a word from our sponsor, the Range Rover Sport. That's right, Neil. We're finishing off the year in style.
Style is a great word for it, because the new Range Rover Sport oozes class. Each model offers a sophisticated take on sporting luxury, so you can cruise in style, but also get a little adventurous with its off-roading capabilities. It's a dual threat, Neil.
Focused on road performance, but with world-famous off-road capability. It's the fire and ice of cars, the Toby and Neil of cars.
Okay, but who's the off-road power and who's the on-road cruising?
I think you're giving some off-road vibes these days.
Could be the 5 o'clock shadow. If you want a taste of the finer things and the wild side, build your Range Rover Sport at LandRoverUSA.com today. America's top tech moguls are marching one by one to Mar-a-Lago, a pilgrimage they hope will repair a rocky relationship with President-elect Trump and curry favor with the upcoming administration.
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Chapter 3: What factors contributed to Broadcom reaching a $1 trillion valuation?
Chapter 4: What is the current situation with drone sightings in New Jersey?
Could be the 5 o'clock shadow. If you want a taste of the finer things and the wild side, build your Range Rover Sport at LandRoverUSA.com today. America's top tech moguls are marching one by one to Mar-a-Lago, a pilgrimage they hope will repair a rocky relationship with President-elect Trump and curry favor with the upcoming administration.
Letzte Woche war es Google's Sundar Pichai und Apples Tim Cook, die den Weg von Kalifornien nach Palm Beach machen. Vor Weihnachten war es Metas Mark Zuckerberg. Und diese Woche wird Amazon-Founder Jeff Bezos Abendessen mit Trump haben.
Mittlerweile schreiben Meta, Amazon und OpenAI's Sam Altman Checks zu Trump, mit allen drei sagen, dass sie letzte Woche 1 Millionen Dollar an seinen inauguralen Fund zahlen würden. For some historical context, it is not unusual for CEOs to cozy up to an incoming administration.
The White House sets policies that will have major impacts on their companies, and they want to make sure their interests are being heard. This has been going on for decades. But for the tech industry in particular, it is a striking reversal. Silicon Valley and Trump were no fans of each other during his first stint in the White House and shortly thereafter.
It's certainly a sign of the times that Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, who a few years ago had been a major Democratic supporter, said last week it was a time of great promise for our nation.
Yeah, after keeping the Trump administration or the Trump campaign at a little bit of an arm's length during the campaign season, a lot of these CEOs are saying, you know what, I do not want to risk being on bad terms with Trump. Let's go speak with him face to face. Let's go to Mar-a-Lago and just see what he's about and see if we can create this relationship.
The thing about some of these inaugural fund donations, too, is what it does is guarantee you some face time with Trump in advance, because Donors to the inauguration fund do get invitation to inauguration ball, access to a candlelit dinner with the Trumps, and then they also have access to a reception with a cabinet pick.
So what you are seeing is paying a million dollars, saying like, I do want to have more opportunities to have FaceTime with you. And also one thing about inaugural committees is that they are pretty low stakes in terms of donations. They are seen as a very normal thing for companies to do to seek favor. Es gibt auch ein bisschen Patriotismus, ohne zu sehen zu werden, dass es sehr partizipal ist.
Ich würde nicht zu viel davon lesen, dass sie alle genau 1 Millionen Dollar anbieten, weil es dir den Zugang zu den Events gibt. Und es ist eine eher normale Sache, eine zukünftige Regierung zu machen.
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Chapter 5: How are government officials responding to the drone issue?
Chapter 6: What are the winners of the weekend?
So what you are seeing is paying a million dollars, saying like, I do want to have more opportunities to have FaceTime with you. And also one thing about inaugural committees is that they are pretty low stakes in terms of donations. They are seen as a very normal thing for companies to do to seek favor. Es gibt auch ein bisschen Patriotismus, ohne zu sehen zu werden, dass es sehr partizipal ist.
Ich würde nicht zu viel davon lesen, dass sie alle genau 1 Millionen Dollar anbieten, weil es dir den Zugang zu den Events gibt. Und es ist eine eher normale Sache, eine zukünftige Regierung zu machen.
I want to talk about one of these tech moguls that is going to Mar-a-Lago this week, Jeff Bezos, because I think he is a good example of what can happen when the relationship with the president goes sour. During the first administration, Trump's first administration, he repeatedly bashed Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, for negative coverage. And that did translate to the business world.
Amazon contends that they lost out on a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the federal government to Microsoft because Trump did not like Bezos. So that was a big business impact for Amazon because of that rocky relationship. So now you're seeing Bezos make the trek to Mar-a-Lago. He moved to South Florida. Reportedly he's become friends with Jared and Ivanka down there. And he's hoping to
Not make amends, because he probably thinks he didn't do anything wrong, but trying to reestablish that relationship. Because the one thing all these guys have in common is they're catching up to Elon Musk. Elon Musk already has that bromance with Trump and there is the potential that Elon Musk could use that power to cut them out of lucrative business deals.
Right, he is the other power player that CEOs are also trying to figure out how to navigate the relationship, because a lot of those CEOs could be aware that Musk could just punish his business rivals, could push them to the side. Sam Altman is obviously a big one of those. Elon Musk has reputedly sued OpenAI, saying...
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Chapter 7: What does the week ahead look like for tech and politics?
Er hat gesagt, dass Elon die richtige Sache machen wird, weil er sagt, dass es, quote, I mean, that could be a very optimistic look at the situation, but the reality is that Elon now has a ton of power in the administration. He could wield it one way or the other, and CEOs are trying to figure out how to navigate him as well as navigate Donald Trump.
There is a new entrant into the 13-figure club. Chipmaker Broadcom pulled up a chair to sit at the $1 trillion market cap table just before the weekend. After reporting breakout fourth quarter earnings, the stock jumped 24% to creep into uncharted territory and has now doubled in value this year. Unsurprisingly, it's been AI that has pushed Broadcom into the big leagues.
It supplies advanced AI hardware to big tech companies, much like NVIDIA, but also has a robust software business as well. AI revenue is up 220% this year, and it's gotten to the point that when Broadcom does well, shares of NVIDIA and competitors like AMD shrink on fears that incumbent AI stalwarts could lose market share to the surging Broadcom.
Looking forward, the company's CEO, Hawk Tan, expects its AI opportunity to reach $90 billion by 2027, powered by what it calls hyperscaler customers, which are those companies like Meta and Google that require large-scale data centers. Neil, Broadcom is not a name that a lot of people know off the top of their heads, but they will soon.
The last time I will say I thought about Broadcom was six years ago in 2018. And that was when Broadcom tried to buy Qualcomm for $120 billion. It would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, tech acquisitions of all time. Speaking of Trump, he blocked that deal from going forward because at the time Broadcom was based in Singapore and this was blocked over national security concerns.
Turns out Broadcom did not name Qualcomm at all. Since 2018 Broadcom shares are up 760%. Qualcomm's up 165%. And the S&P 500 is up 119%. So Broadcom easily outpacing the other guys. And that's really because of this AI revolution with ChatGPT in 2022. Sales of its AI chips are up a lot. Sales of its non-AI chips are down. So without AI, Broadcom is probably looking a little more like Qualcomm.
And now it's in the $1 trillion club.
That being said, though, its CEO, Hochtan, loves to take these big swings. I mean, it tried to acquire Qualcomm for the biggest tech acquisition ever, but it's also recently bought VMware for $61 billion. VMware helps with server virtualization. Das Vmware-Deal trägt nur Microsofts Verkauf von Activision, Blizzard und Dells Verkauf an, als die größten Tech-Deals jemals.
Es hat auch in 2018 einen Software-Vendor für 19 Billionen Dollar gekauft. Es hat auch eine Verkaufsverkauf von einer Sicherheitsfirma für 10 Billionen Dollar in 2019. Hochtan liebt es, auf diesen Shopping-Sprits zu gehen. Er liebt es, Broadcom als Mittel zu verkaufen. Aber Broadcom ist ein bisschen anders als Nvidia in dem Sinne, dass Nvidia GPUs verkauft, grafische Prozessunits.
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