Techstrong Gang – June 27, 2024

Hey, everyone. Happy Thursday. It's another tech strong kind of gang day.

And, uh, we've got, you know, the EU is on the warpath looking for some Microsoft scalps. It seems we've got Broadcom still trying to figure out that VMware kind of puzzle. And is Nvidia sustainable?

I'm not talking about their stock price. All that and more today on Textron Bank. Hi everyone.

Welcome to our Thursday edition of Text and Gang Gear. We're happy to have you join us. As I mentioned in the opening, we've got, uh, the EU on the war path.

We've got Broadcom, VMware News, and we've got a little Nvidia as well as a special role Bob, at the end of today's show. But before we jump into it, let me introduce you to our gang members for today. Our, our first, uh, well, first up I always like to lead with Mitchell, Mitchell, uh, Ashley, who is a CTA with Futurum group, as well as our CTO here and a regular on the gang.

Mitchell, good to have you on today, everything. Well, great to be here. Everything's, uh, great in, uh, Colorado State.

All righty, well, starting off in Colorado, we're gonna go further west where our next two gang members are today. They're both out in Cali, in the Bay Area, I think. Um, let me first introduce you to our shiny new penny of an editor here, John Schwartz.

John has, I've Never described that way, but thank you very much for saying, terming it that way to turn a phrase, damn, You've never been described as a pretty shiny new penny tell, probably not. And then also joining us in California. She's been on with us before.

She's some of the futur of group and marketing expert and just a great, I, I enjoy having her on our shows with us. It's our gang member, Lisa Lar. Hey Lisa, how are you Doing great, Alan.

Thrilled to be back on the Textron Gang. Cannot wait to break into these topics today. Fantastic.

Good to have you on. And then joining me here, ed, in the, uh, Techron HQ in Booker Rat to Florida, not sunny Booker to Florida. I'll add today it's rainy is our Echo Insights editor and analyst for sustainability and all things green it.

Bonnie Schneider. Hi Bonnie. Hi.

A great to meet you. Thanks tat thank you for coming here and coming in. Um, alright, so as I mentioned the, you know, the eu, these guys, they don't, they take no prisoners and then they don't mess around.

They are now after Microsoft for bundling teams, it seems. John, you wrote an article over on Techron ITSM around it. Why don't you kick us off here?

What's the story? Sure. I, I guess it's Microsoft's turning the barrel with, uh, regulatory issues.

So the eu, as you said, is investigating Microsoft's bundling of teams to Office 365 and Microsoft 365. They think it's unfair competition for Slack and others. The investigation kind of dates back to a 2020 lawsuit that was filed by Slack, which has since been acquired by Salesforce.

Microsoft did make some modifications for teams in Europe, but apparently it wasn't enough. Now they're facing fines of up to 10% of their annual revenue, which would be about $20 billion. And it's scrambling to address the issue through its president who's, uh, Brad Smith.

Now, this interesting to me is that this is the same Brad Smith, who over the past several years has adopted an almost holier than thou attitude about big tech adhering to regulatory laws. Well, Microsoft largely went unscathed. You know, Microsoft's advantage was they had the big face off showdown with the Justice Department in the nineties for predominantly in the nineties and could of learned how to stay on the good side of the law.

But, um, now they're, uh, targeted the EU action. And it's interesting, Alan, because this came a day after the EU admonished apple for violating the new Digital Markets Act, which just went into effect. Apple's already been fined nearly $2 billion for its app store policies, and that too stems from a lawsuit this time by Spotify in 2019.

So I guess what's happening is these regulatory bodies, especially in Europe, are following up on these lawsuits. They're taking several years, but they are really dropping the hammer on these guys. Uh, it's gonna be interesting because the EU is much more aggressive and much more progressive in terms of, it's a regulatory stance, and it's also much harder on privacy than in the us Also, it has laws, which we don't, that are up to date.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens, uh, to be, to me, and I'll maybe I was gonna ask Lisa about this. Uh, does this really matter though, to the customers, or even, does it even damage the brand name for these companies? Because these actions and these lawsuits are, and investigations are gonna take years to unravel and unpack.

At the end of the day, what, what Microsoft is doing is it's a, it's a very common go to market strategy. It's pardon, bundles and the product, the intent of a product bundle, you know, is to really increase sales, which it did, uh, to improve customer satisfaction, which we have mixed data on. And also to improve competitive advantage, which is what the EU doesn't like.

But at the end of the day, I think customers have the option to not use teams. Now, slack and, and Zoom and others are also saying it's not just the bundling of teams, it's the interoperability problem that makes it difficult for those other platforms to work with other Microsoft tools. So Microsoft responded from a messaging perspective last year saying, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna unbundle teams in the EU in Switzerland, and the eu, the e uh, uh, EC came back and said, insufficient.

So dial it back to April. Just a few months ago, Microsoft said, okay, we'll unbundle this globally. Um, I took a look at the market share 'cause that's something that was interesting to me.

And I was looking at, um, what Gartner, uh, Forrester, IDC were saying, and Microsoft does have significant market share in collaboration, cloud collaboration, unified communications, slack and Zoom have pretty good market share as well. So I'm not sure that it's going to be a big hit from Microsoft. I think what Microsoft is doing from a messaging perspective is saying, or, uh, is we're now gonna give customers choice, which is what Mark Benioff was talking about on Twitter earlier this week, that it's about listening to what customers want.

So I think it's gonna be interesting. Microsoft has 10 weeks to respond to this, to see how they respond, what the message is coming up through their customer's voice, that, how that directs how they respond further. Yeah, I was gonna kinda switch to, to Mitch and Mitchell.

Um, in terms of developers, does this muddy the waters at all or does it impact them in any, in any way? Or do they, do they just continue to, to, to forge forward? I I think it, it ties probably as much or more to the user experience, Sean.

So, and, and part of what Lisa is, is referring to, if you can unpack bundling, right? There's bundling for pricing to get a better price. There's also bundling as in integrating it more tightly in, in the products.

And because collaboration is such kind of goes hand in hand with 365, whether you're using office and you wanna have a meeting and share a document, or you're talking about calendaring an email. If, if teams is markedly easier to use or gets in the way of trying to use another service like Zoom, for example, or, or Slack or whatever it might be, that's when it really becomes an issue. Then they have a kind of an unfair advantage.

We, we all expect Microsoft to be front and center about have we have teams, we'd love to have you use it, make it easy to use. It's kinda back in the, the search engine wars of what gets bundled with the browser, right? Which search engine do they make it hard to, to, uh, add it to that?

It's kind of the same thing here. We're just talking about with collaborations for meetings. So I, I think it comes down to if I have to go through two or three steps to set up a meeting using Zoom and I can do it in one and team.

Okay, is that because Zoom is harder to use or is it because Microsoft has just made it harder for that, uh, for the end user to use it with, with the rest of them 365? I, I have, I have some thoughts on this. As one might imagine enough with beating up the big tech vendors, right?

What do let, let's send Microsoft into battle. Let's, you know, I I'm reminded of the, uh, Monty Python, right? Just flesh wound.

Let's cut off one arm, half a leg, just a flesh wound. Get it out there because, you know, the Chinese and all of, and vendors from other parts of the world, they, they, they're rubbing their hands in Glee saying, okay, these guys, you know, you give the capitalists enough rope, they'll hang themselves. And that, that is, you know, we, we live in a world where a lot of, uh, a lot of buyers are looking to cut the amount of vendors they deal with.

I want more bundles, I want more interoperability. I want one throat to choke instead of having to deal with 86 different vendors, right? This is not Internet Explorer automatically being put into Windows.

And when you buy a Windows pc, you automatically got Internet Explorer. This is teams as part of Office 365, which by the way also includes PowerPoint and Word and Excel and you know, a, a number of other optional bundled items in there. That's, that's Microsoft's advantage for, for building out this office.

But it doesn't come to fault on the machine. You have to proactively download Office 365 the same way you have to proactively install Slack and or Zoom or, or Citrix, uh, not Citrix, Cisco, uh, WebEx or, or whatever else you want to use for collaboration. I, I'm all for free and fair marketplaces, but I'm also all for that companies deserve to benefit from good work and good work.

Microsoft is done here is they've transitioned what was a stodgy old office program into a, a SaaS product, and it bundled in some best of breed type of functionality. And it, I I just think the EU is totally off base here. And John, to your point about does the end user care when we're talking $20 billion Mm-Hmm, that's a, that's a lot of care.

I don't care what the end user cares about. How many, you know, 20 Is a lot of money. I think also with the eu, um, just judging us some of the other rules and, and everything, one of their key areas is transparency.

So if enough people complained and said, like, even though though you said you're making the choice to download it, then that's gonna raise the eyebrow and it'll be also interesting 'cause what Lisa said, I agree with as well, the messaging now behind it that gonna linger that message. Oh, Microsoft is, is not being honest with you. How are they not being honest though?

Y you know, it's interesting to me, there's a certain irony with all these regulatory issues and there, there's so many, I mean, there's not just in Europe, but especially also now in the US is that the customers have never been happier with the products they have, I think based on usage, based on their dependence on the products. So I guess what we now see this pivot towards how competitors are hurt. And so what we see in this case with Slack and even the Spotify case involving Apple is, is the company's going to law enforcement and in a sense acting as, as the, uh, as a partner in pro in prosecuting a case against their competitor.

And I think that is actually the impetus for most of these investigations. It's actually coming from the third party software developers, Right? Those are the people complaining, And these are the people that are complaining.

They are basically the driving force behind these investigations. It's not independently Justice Department or FTC, they're, I think they are very dependent on these third parties. And it takes a, it takes a couple of years, but eventually it lands Microsoft now as in Hot water after years of kind of being unscathed, the skating by was, was adhering by the rules and now Liquid finds itself.

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm not a fan of this particular one. I, I and, and I'm no Microsoft Amboy, but you know what they're done. I mean, and so what's next is, well, Lotus isn't around anymore, but does someone else make a spreadsheet that says, uh, uh, you know, bundling Excel in Office 365 gives Microsoft an unfair advantage, and we're gonna buy hit them for that.

We happens doing Google. I mean, I'm surprised Google, probably Google has already said that Office 365 is unfair because it, it, it competes with us. That's, that this goes against the spirit of what, what battle should be won in the marketplace by having a superior product, not by lobbying governments to, to handcuff, you know, companies.

Right? Well, this, I think there's a bit of regulatory regret though, too, by some of, by some of the folks you mentioned, Alan, um, internet Explorer and I think about Netscape dating myself Yeah. And navigator, and maybe perhaps they think, well, not much was done, not enough was done back in the late nineties.

And look what happened in Netscape. We don't, we don't want this to happen again. But you're right.

I mean, teams is later to market it. It's, it did a phenomenal job. I mean, I, I use it as often as I use Slack or I use Zoom or WebEx.

So in a sense, the, the spoils go to the victors who are, have the products that people embrace. The, I'm sorry, Mitch, lemme just jump real quick on the internet Explorer one. Yes, I was a big Netscape fan too.

We even use Netscape web server. But you know what, so Mozilla was given every advantage, right? That, that Netscape didn't have.

And it didn't win, it lost, it, it, you don't see many people using Firefox anymore. What did win was Google's product, and it made based on chromium and, you know, irony of ironies, Microsoft's new edge or whatever they call their browser is also a chromium based browser. And, and, you know, Google wound up Google, I think still dominates that market.

Um, so you know, the best of intentions by governing and regulatory agencies lying the road to perdition, right? Um, I, I just, the, the world economy and, and you know, the marketplace need to, to win out here. You, you can't, you, you just can't handicap these companies like that and, and expect them to remain competitive.

Well, to me it seems that this is intersection of two lines, right? Regulatory and competitiveness. As soon as Microsoft catches up to, you know, before that team, right?

We were using every other product to do this. Now with the addition of teams is that caught up with, uh, in functionality and, and usability and people started adopting it. Now the competitors go to the regulatory agencies and say, this is unfair, right?

Because they're Microsoft and they're big and they've got captured the customers, et cetera. Well, to your point, Alan, that's, that's part of the advantage that they have. The real question is, are they doing something that's truly unfair or is it just that you know, that they're using our products and our product suites and it comes bundled with that.

And beyond that it's, you know, just us competing in the marketplace or is real, is Microsoft really doing something that's unfair? That's very unclear. In this case, we haven't, I haven't seen anything that says, here's the practice you're doing, like in an antitrust kind of suit.

Here's the, the pricing, or here's the way you're, you are boxing out the competition so they can't compete and work with your products. Yeah, I, I, I dunno, I'm at a loss. But you know what?

I think we've given it, it's 15 minutes of frame of fame. Four more. Four more.

We're gonna take a break here on text Ga gang. We're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about, you know, did Broadcom bite off more than it could chew in VMware? Or was it maybe less than it expected to chew?

We'll, we're gonna talk about that. We're back here. You're watching Textron Gang Cloud native now is the web's leading resource for the growing cloud native ecosystem.

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Our next topic for today involves our friends at Broadcom. And you know, they, they have been, uh, working and evolving the VMware portfolio and they recently came out with a, a, a functionality of streamlined DevOps workflows. And actually, Mitch, you know, you know a lot about this particular one.

Why don't you take it? Sure. Let, lemme kind of kick things off.

Um, you know, VMware's in the news for a lot of topics, for a lot of reasons, um, after being acquired by, by Broadcom, they've, they made an announcement they're coming out with, with actually rebranding vSphere as Cloud Foundation. Yeah. And that term is something you see in other cloud services that kind of implies things like patterns and architectures and blueprints for how to, how to do things, templates, if you will.

And that's precisely, precisely what they've done is create templates that make it kind of easier for DevOps teams and I would imagine platform engine years to also self-provision their environments for doing development testing, et cetera, uh, on top of their private cloud. So it, it's, you know, we're, we're seeing VMware in addition to its strength in the operational kind of side of, of the world, whether it's, uh, in private cloud or, or in public cloud somewhat, but also trying to get into the DevOps workflow, into the software development workflow. And, uh, so it isn't just about containerizing your application and building your own environments.

You could be doing that on top of, uh, on top of, uh, VMware vSphere in effect, um, for development tests all the way into production. So it's, it's interesting to see that they're trying to move up. Of course they have tan Zu Kubernetes, and this ties into the, the, the grid service that's available for that.

So VMware continues to expand and kind of move up the stack somewhat, and this seems to be a, a good move for that. I'm cu curious, um, Elisa, your perspective on this too, given, um, Broadcom kind of in the market and being, I mean, excuse me, VMware being acquired by Broadcom in the, in the market and what the perceptions are and maybe what some of the things, is this gonna help them with their customers? Interestingly, I go back to the four piece of marketing here.

Pricing, positioning or, uh, the first two things that jumped out at me, obviously consolidating 168 products, 9,000 SKUs, and they were very vocal in the last few months about, we made it really challenging for our customers to be able to, uh, to integrate. We kind of left our customers out to being the systems integrators and they didn't really get that single consistent experience. So they've been very vocal, um, in their messaging about the challenges that they're aware that they delivered to the audience.

I thought that was a, a a a, a wise transparent view. But I also go back to Broadcom's acquisition strategy in its past kind of the acquire X sort of thing there. So, uh, we know some of the things that they're doing is they wanna make consistent changes to deliver that consistent customer experience, which is what customers want.

They are also updating to a subscription model. So a big change there for VMware and that their go-to market strategy to me shows Broadcom is listening to the existing VMware customers. With that said, we know Hawk 10 has been very vocal about we're gonna be investing heavily in RD, which to me signifies not a lot of investment in marketing.

So I think what they're gonna be focused on here is of existing customers. I don't see them, I see them working on cross-sell opportunities here as they make things easier, more consistent and, and really respond to what the, the DevOps teams want. But I think they're gonna be focused on helping the most profitable customers stay.

And I don't see them really going after with this net new logos Fair. I, you know, look, with all due respect to Broadcom and VMware, VMware had issues. Has issues, right?

And, and probably the biggest issue I think from VMware is the, the move in the market from just infrastructure as a service on top of a hypervisor to true cloud native platform as a service. And, and tan zu is, is their bet for cloud native and Kubernetes and, you know, platform as a service, but the bulk of their revenue in their customers are using v what was vSphere and, and the other, you know, hypervisor based products. And so, you know, I think Broadcom knew this going in, that they were buying in, in what, in essence is a, is a diminishing asset in, in the marketplace if they didn't revitalize things and, and, and kind of modernize it, if you will.

So I, I think this represents an attempt at doing that. There's two, two pieces of it. Number one is getting tansu bigger, better, you know, having a better, better, bigger chunk of the, of the cloud native market.

And number two is, you know, it's more than just renaming. I I think it's, it's making cloud foundation, if that's the new word, more relevant to today's cloud audience. And, um, whether that is going to influence DevOps teams or workflows or, or make it more, uh, cool if you will, to, to, to the user base is, is remains to be seen.

I, I, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sold on it seems to me They've gotta win over the platform engineering crowd. 'cause that's more and more who's providing these platforms to development and test multiple environments, which also in some cases do DevOps. They, they manage the DevOps tools as well.

But that seems who I would go after. And I didn't see that in, I'm sorry, go ahead, John. Oh, No, I I think he's right.

Ultimately, probably the goal is to provide the platform engineers and application developers with the frictionless experience. You know, the one thing I I really quick, quick aside, whenever I hear the words Broadcom and VMware, I get triggered into thinking about user confusion and pricing threading. And I think one of the goals here is to make pricing for VMware software more consistent across multiple platforms.

Because there exists this perception that the company raised prices when it eliminated perpetual licenses for VMware software. So if that's their ultimate goal, perhaps there's a lot of value in that, I would help. Well, they also be, besides trying to make pricing more uniform, they also, you know, I don't know if it was open source or they just made free a lot of the kind of VMware, you know, the consumer if you will, you know, products that they don't wanna play it, right?

They're trying to streamline, I think the VMware product line to concentrate on, you know, make their bets where they want to, they think they'll get the greatest return. Yeah. The, the the desktop products that now are free, right?

Essentially Mm-hmm. For individual users, you know, that's not what their bread and butter is, it's in the data center. No, they're giving them away for free.

They're, it's clearly, and that's where Broadcom plays, right? That's where their hardware is too, in the data centers and, and so forth. So it, it'll be interesting to see, and I also, Mitchell, you and I discussed this, I, I guess it was on the DevOps chat podcast we just recorded.

Um, it'll be interesting to see how long a runway they give tan zu to make real headway in the, uh, in the cloud native space, right? Because you know, the old saying, if you're not in the top three, get the heck out. And so if Dan Zoom's not the top three, how long is Broadcom gonna stay in there?

Well, that's another reason why I think you have to push beyond IT ops or cloud ops, um, for VMware, because those decisions don't usually get made, made by IT ops. That's, that's made as part of the kind of op, the, it, it, or the application stack, right? That we're running for Kubernetes or running other tools within, again, tends to go back to platform engineering.

So I think they've gotta win over that crowd in a big way to really, I think they could make some substantial headway if they did that. Agreed. Agreed.

Well, More explorer is coming up in just, sorry, Alan, the more explorer legacy, uh, show coming up in just about six weeks or so. So it'll be interesting there to see what additional messaging and positioning we hear. Um, Mitch, to your comment, are they gonna be expanding their target audience?

Are they're gonna be going up that stack that maybe we'll find out more? I suspect we will in about six weeks time. Great point.

I hope we'll have some FU folks there. I bet we will. Good.

I'm looking forward to seeing that. All right, let's take a quick break here on Textron Gang. Coming back.

You know, we were lucky to have Bonnie Schneider here. She is our, uh, sustainability and green IT expert, and we're going to hear from her regarding nvidia. Just give us a moment.

Hey, we're back here on Textron Gang. You know, as I mentioned right before the break, we're really lucky to have Bonnie Schneider here as part of our Textron gang, and she's been part of Textron now for a year or more. You know, Bonnie's background, if you don't know, is as a professional meteorologist.

She's also a, a multiple time author on, on climate change and, and what's going on in the world. And she's been manning the, the Echo Insights desk here, which is really around sustainability, green IT initiatives, et cetera. And, you know, she's developed a real expertise in this.

And, and at some point you go, you cross the chasm from going to talking to people and learning about a subject to becoming an expert on the subject. And given Bonnie's background in meteorology and climate change and sustainability, the natural progression is for her to, in and of herself to become an analyst expert in the field. And, and that's what she is.

So you're gonna see a lot of new content from Bonnie around her opinions on issues around sustainability and green it, and she's here to tell you about her first one. Go ahead, Bonnie. A great introduction.

Well, you know, uh, we've been talking a lot over the past week of Nvidia being the world's most valuable company. Now I know that that news, uh, teetered a little bit earlier this week, but still, um, it's their, their rise has been monumental to follow. So I was curious to see about the sustainability initiatives that the CEO Jensen Huang is an, is taking on, um, with the introduction of Blackwell, GPUs and, and to see how that all shapes up.

So I took a closer look at Nvidia. Hi everyone, I'm Bonnie Schneider with your ego tech analyst insights NVIDIA's ascendants to the world's most valuable publicly listed company highlights its dominance in the AI chip market. But this rapid rise also raises questions about AI's environmental impacts.

For example, this year alone, NVIDIA's high-end microchips are projected to surpass the power consumption of entire small nations. This presents a significant sustainability challenge. How can tech innovation align with eco responsibility?

NVIDIA's, CEO Jensen Huang offers a unique perspective. He argues that the use of millions of AI GPUs will actually reduce overall power consumption. The CEO says this is achievable.

Through accelerating computations and enabling more efficient inferencing, NVIDIA's upcoming Blackwell, GPUs will consume up to one kilowatt each. Despite their high powered usage, they are designed to complete AI tasks faster, potentially saving on overall energy use. Nvidia is also leveraging generative AI in their intelligent product recommendation tool, which helps create digital twins for complex industrial products.

Optimizing design and minimizing waste can Nvidia maintain its top spot in AI while effectively managing its carbon footprint. The ongoing efforts of the world's most valuable company suggest a promising path forward. NVIDIA's balance of AI innovation with sustainability will be key to its long-term success and future global impact.

As you can see, Jensen Twang does have a very innovative way of seeing how energy use and AI can actually intertwine, especially when processes are done faster. In his opinion, you're using less energy. He also talked about, uh, as well, um, using AI to create off grid energy.

So I think this thinking out of the box, rather than looking at it, the glass is half empty, is glass is half full. Is is part of the perspective. We're gonna use AI to do great things.

Yes, it's going to tap and show our energy grid, but perhaps we can use AI to create additional grids to look for power sources we never even thought were possible. Interesting. You know, to me it sounds a little like alchemy.

We're gonna turn lead into gold. Yeah. But, um, that's me, yang.

Anybody else have anything to say? I Have a question for Bonnie, and by the way, we, we love Bonnie, love the work that you're doing. We're so privileged to have you here.

Um, I'm curious your sense of the credibility, um, of your conversation, uh, with him about this. Now, obviously there's messaging and telling the story and sometimes there there's more story than than fact. What's your sense of it are?

Do you think there's a lot of credibility behind what they're doing? Yeah, I really do. Especially when you look at their rapid rise, uh, to success.

I think we don't know yet. You know, one of the things that's tough about this is that it's very hard to measure the amount of energy AI uses, how to track it. That's still, um, being discovered and figured out.

So it's sort of a good, this is a good point in history to say what he's saying that, you know, this is actually gonna save us energy because we don't really have the data to say that he's wrong. So I think judging on his success so far, um, that we're likely to see that. And one of the other things that's what's fascinating about Nvidia is all the partnerships that they're doing with different energy companies, you know, to stay on top of it, to do real time monitoring, um, as well to, to get the answers for that.

But using AI also as, as a part of climate solutions is, is another big area I think that a lot of these big tech companies are getting into and will continue, continue to do. You know, we just had a report, Alan, we're talking about this with Google, um, in Finland, how they're doing a state-of-the-art new data center that's going to, um, help to heat the entire community around it. So it's, it, it is interesting to see the innovations.

It's a really smart story. Bonnie, um, I, you know, one quick question, I'm sorry to interrupt. No, no question I wanna ask you about is the peers of Nvidia who are relatively older have been grappling with this.

I'm thinking about Apple and Google and their efforts in terms of environmental responsibility. Do you think Nvidia, because it is relatively younger, has some sort of advantage? You mentioned the embrace of, of ai, but maybe there's technology that's come along that makes it easier for them to, to can address the carbon footprint?

Yeah, I do. And I think with this, uh, Blackwell chip in particular, it's, it's, it's projected to be 25 times more efficient than any other previous model. So they're going into this saying, yes, we're using the eye, but, but what we're developing, um, processes everything faster.

And like I was saying earlier, that will in turn use less energy. So I absolutely think that, You know, John, the, I'm sorry, go ahead Lisa. Sorry.

Um, thanks. I took a look at NVIDIA's FY 24 sustainability report, and, and the things kind of much to your point, and Bonnie to yours that, that struck me were all of the customer examples they provided when they say Nvidia accelerated computing saves energy, and they have got data there that shows that, um, before it was consuming 10 x to 20 x more cost and energy. They also talked about to, to Bonnie's point training AI consumes energy, but applying AI saves energy.

They talked about some customers there, Portland General Electric, for example, how they're using Nvidia AI inside electric meters to direct more renewable power resources to the power grid. I think their, the, the, it struck me as the numbers, the customer, um, the, the proof points that they had was, was quite transparent and I think lends a lot of credibility to what we're doing. I think you're right.

I think that transparency is key because it would be one thing if they were to argue, well, we're not really using a lot of energy. We know that that's not the case. So, um, taking this approach and seeing how AI can, um, be in turn to be used in tandem with a power company to optimize energy is key.

And, and I think they're leading in this space for sure. Thank your point, Bonnie, them, them being a newer company, a younger company as opposed, you know, we know a lot of other folks who are coming or working on coming to market with their chips, right? With AI chips.

Um, but take an intel for example, that's, that's doing their own fab now. It, it, it, it's one thing for Intel to come out with a story around green and, uh, sustainability for their AI chip, but that, that's in the context of the larger intel story, right? And how green eyes is Intel seems to me Nvidia is in a position to really claim a space in sustainability and what they're doing that they can differentiate from others because they can holistically talk about that story much greater than an existing, uh, chip company.

I think that, that, that makes sense, especially when you think of who's leading in sustainability. Typically Apple comes to mind. Um, but you're right.

I think that as a younger company, um, and, and as a leader of course in the AI industry for sure, um, they could definitely, um, have the opportunity to do that. And they also talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of their sustainability program. When I was impressed to read that 50% of their board of directors is made up of racially or gender diverse people.

So they're maybe as a newer company, they're, they're taking that well-rounded ESG approach, which doesn't include de and I, They're definitely a child of their times, but before we saint them, okay, first sainthood upon them. Nvidia Yeah, Saint Nvidia. But you know, before we do that, let's also remember a large part of this is a knee jerk reaction to the fact that their chips are blowing up power.

You, you know, and for a good reason, right? Everybody wants ai, everybody wants to run AI calculations and, you know, computations and all of those AI usages and, and with these chips are blowing up, uh, you know, our ability to support them with electricity. Yeah.

And, and, and heat dissipation and, you know, the whole data center space, if, you know, they, to a certain extent, they created a problem and they're now trying to solve it. They're Trying to get ahead of the problem that they're creating. Right?

Exactly. And, you know, there's a little bit of self-service going on here. Sure.

You know, I hope, hope No in the EU hears that and an investigation, but one of The competitors has to go to the eu And Right. One Intel will probably go there and say, Hey, and VI here is unfairly heating the planet. So tune in tomorrow.

We, we talking about, yeah, there's so much stuff. There's so much unknown, you know, we know that our electric grid is aging, um, and we just don't know yet how much can it handle. And I think that's going to be, um, something that we'll see going forward.

And if you look at what Jensen h says that it looks like the, the AI will help solve that problem too. So I agree with there has be some balance there. Yeah.

I mean, and I'll just close this one out with, you know what, our, our friends, if you chair Daniel, uh, Newman, CEO of rum has had, uh, several interviews with Jensen. They are available, I think they're on the six five media site if that fu group site. So if you want to, you know, hear from Jensen directly, I'd direct you to go check those out as well.

We're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back with, uh, uh, an Andy Rooney kind of segment here from our good friend Rob, Bob, Bob Ruman. We'll be right back here. You're watching Techstrong Gang.

Ever wonder with the tech brothers who have made a lot of money in technology, do with it all. Bob Ruman does. In fact, he thinks that buying big mansions and islands in the Caribbean is just the low hanging fruit.

He thinks he's more to be had. Let's take a listen. Alright, so this is a story about Tech Bros.

And it goes like this. Elon Musk's net worth in 2023 was about $232 billion. And in 2024, Tesla's going to give him another $46 billion in a pay package.

That's a lot of money. How much money? Well, for a little, all me, if I were to spend a million dollars a year, it would take me 232,400 years to spend it all a almost a quarter of a million years to spend that amount of money that's longer than homo sapiens have been walking around Planet Earth.

But it may sound like a lot of money, but I don't think Elon Musk has it lying around in cash. He probably has a lot of it in non lucid assets, but that doesn't mean he couldn't buy some serious stuff. So for example, he could buy an aircraft carrier, right?

A Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, a Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier costs $37 billion. That's a drop in a bucket for Musk. Take loan, put up some of his Tesla stock and he's rowing the seven Cs and an aircraft carrier.

There might be not be any planes on the aircraft carrier, but who cares? He has the aircraft carrier go forward, Elon. Now, I don't think Elon wants an aircraft carrier.

I think what he wants is a lot of satellites and he has 'em. Elon Musk has about 1,655 satellites circling Planet Earth. That's more than the Chinese Ministry of Defense.

That Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and the European Space Agency combined. In other words, Musk and his companies are just as big a player in space as nasa. And maybe if he wanted to, he could have his own space force.

He has all the stuff, he has the money, he has this technology, and he could hire the people, send them the space in his own rockets, and he's patrolling planet Earth. Now, here's something to think about. What happens to the public space when private individuals take over?

What happens when the tech bros have more spaceships, satellites, and communication infrastructure than a sovereign state? Let's go one step further. What happens when these tech bros become a sovereign state?

I mean, if it walks like a duck and if it talks like a duck, then it's a sovereign state. Oh, no, no, no. I mean, it's a duck.

I mean, a private corporation could never become a sovereign state, could it? Oh, I don't know. Maybe that's something to think about.

Yeah, I love watching, I love hearing from Bob and role Bobby. He has a unique wit view of the world, I would say. It's not just mansions and islands.

They also buy beautiful resorts. That is the case here with Boca Raton. Not gonna get into it.

But, um, thank you Bob for that. And thank you for watching us on Text and Gang. You know, we're Doug going five days a week, and that means tomorrow, Friday we'll be back with a whole new show.

Our gang will be assembled and, uh, topics of the day to be discussed. But until then, uh, John, Mitch, Lisa, Bonnie, thanks for joining. I'm Alan Shimel.

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