Nvidia was AI's linchpin. Now what?

Hey, was there any big technology news today? From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Thursday today. This one is the 12th of November. Good as it always is to have you along, everybody. I kid, of course, Jensen Huang leaving the company he has been running for 33 years is a very, very big deal. On the theory, though, that the details of the news of the day you have surely seen or heard by now, we on this program are going to talk bigger picture. This is a corporate governance story. It's a markets story. It's a national security story. But it's also an industry story, an industry of which NVIDIA is the white hot company. It is not going too far, I think, to say that without this company, artificial intelligence would not be the factor in this economy that it is. So we have got Megan McCarty Carino on the phone to talk this over. She's the host of Marketplace Tech. She's been covering AI from Silicon Valley for us for years. Hey. Hey, good to be here. So test my premise, would you? NVIDIA is the white hot center of AI right now. And without it, AI wouldn't be what it is in this economy. True or false? I'm going to say true there. You know, most of the sort of breakthroughs in AI that we have seen leading up to this, you know, AI moment that we're in have been reliant on computing power, you know, make the models bigger, give them more computing power. And that computing power is coming overwhelmingly from NVIDIA. A large part of what's going on in AI, the AI industry, the AI economy generally, is financing, right? These guys are borrowing and spending. Hundreds of billions of dollars. NVIDIA is at the center of that, too. That's right. So, you know, we talk a lot on the show about circular financing, this sort of web of interdependencies in AI. NVIDIA is at the center of that web. It has all these little, you know, nodes coming out from it. It has taken major equity stakes in AI companies, to which it also sells chips, OpenAI, XAI, Anthropic. It also operates a big venture capital. It's a big venture capital arm that provides seed funding for startups, many of which also rent or buy its chips. It's also a major investor in the kind of AI infrastructure supply chain. So, yeah, very central role there in terms of the finance. Jetson Huang has his leather jackets. He's got the sneakers, I think, that he wears. The comparisons, of course, are made to Steve Jobs and Jobs as a salesman for computers and Apple specifically. Huang played that role, like, for the entire industry, yeah? Yeah, you know, I think. Jetson has sort of been seen as one of the most sort of forceful and convincing voices for what you might consider like a positive, normal vision of AI progress, which I think stands kind of in really stark contrast to some of the stuff that we hear from the leaders of Anthropic or OpenAI, the kind of alarmist doom and gloom. I think it's a view that really endeared him to the Trump administration, for sure. But I think there were a lot of people in the room that were kind of like, oh, well, I'm in the tech industry, who hoped that Jetson's reputation for being this very competent and kind of trustworthy straight shooter, that he could provide a counterpoint to that doom and gloom narrative that we hear so much. Have you been out and about today? Did you go to the store? Did you run to Starbucks or whatever? I have not been out and about. I've been stuck glued to the computer. All right. Well, let's hypothesize. What's the vibe in Silicon Valley today? That's my question. You know, I think it's we're a place that's prone to earthquakes. It feels like an earthquake has hit, for sure. You know, I mean, when I first started reporting on NVIDIA, people didn't even really know how to say the name. It was like, is it Navidia? Is it, you know? And now it's a household name. It's kind of the center of gravity for the entire tech industry. You know, we went earlier this year, we were looking out over this ever-expanding campus. Of NVIDIA in Santa Clara. And, you know, looking around at all of the data centers that were popping up, you know, still being constructed and just all full of NVIDIA chips. It has changed the landscape of Silicon Valley, even down to sort of like the, you know, the little prosaic picayune details of the Denny's in San Jose. I went there a couple of years ago. This is the sort of origin story of NVIDIA, where Jensen and his friends, you know, they're his co-founders, supposedly, you know, hatched the idea for a video game, you know, graphics processing chip company 30 years ago over Gram Slam Breakfast. And this place was, at the time, two years ago, in the process of changing a plaque on their special corner booth. You know, they had to keep updating what the valuation of NVIDIA was. And I don't know, maybe they're having to change it this week, too. Go on the other one. Anyway, Megan McCarty Carino, the host of Marketplace Tech. Thanks, Megan. Thank you. At the close today, the manager of that Denny's would indeed had to get another plaque. NVIDIA market cap just a hair under $4 trillion as of the close today. Shares off 5-ish percent for the session. Not, honestly, all that bad, considering it has been a rough six or eight months for ticker NVDA, though. Shares have roundtripped back to where they were this past March. More broadly. In American market capitalism, the major indices were down just a little bit. We will have the details when we do the numbers. Inflation is the economic through line this week, or it was until the Jensen Huang thing. Number of prices were Tuesday. Wholesale prices are tomorrow. And yes, energy is a factor. But as Marketplace's Justin Ho reports, there is an oldie but a goodie still playing along as well. Wolf Tooth Components is a bike parts manufacturer in Minnesota that makes a lot of its products out of aluminum. Co-owner Brendan Moore says after the president announced his steel and aluminum tariffs a year and a half ago, one of his suppliers raised prices immediately. And then we had another one that said, well, when we start paying this, you're going to start seeing a price increase. And then we had another one that said, well, when we start paying this, you're going to more says some suppliers have slowly passed along those import taxes over the past year and a half. And he says those price increases are happening more now that the president's tariff policy seems a little more certain because up until recently, we didn't know what the tariffs were going to be long term. Now, it seems like the tariffs that are in now are pretty legally durable. So we can plan around that. Prices are also rising in other tariff sensitive categories, including autos, also electronics and other consumer goods, says Kathy Bosjansic. Chief economist at Nationwide. Household supplies, personal care products, jewelry, watches, clothing, apparel. Bosjansic says the initial tariff shock could start to fade into next year. But Jason Miller at Michigan State University says tariffs are designed to protect domestic manufacturers, and that could give them a reason to keep raising prices going forward. They're now in a better bargaining position with their customers to keep passing on higher costs and or even more. To even just continue to raise their prices because they're facing less competition. That's why tariffs can keep putting pressure on inflation for years after they're first imposed. I'm Justin Howe from Marketplace. Here with a tale of two cities, Jackson and Pinedale, Wyoming. Jackson, home to resorts and celebrities and multi multi-million dollar homes. Pinedale, 75 miles away, home to not a star. It's a single soplight. Ranchers and oil and gas workers live there. And some of the people who work in and service the industries and resorts, 75 miles away in Jackson. It is also one of the fastest growing areas in that state. And it's a case study in local development and building housing that local workers can afford. Marketplace's Caitlin Tan has our story. A few blocks off Pinedale's main street is a ranch-style three-bedroom home. Rachel Daniels just moved in. So a cute little sitting room, a little gas fireplace. She's house-sitting for a woman who owns multiple homes in the area. This is all hers except for that bookcase, my bookcase. I brought like four, I brought four pieces of furniture. Her rent is pay the utilities and shovel the snow. The house is for sale, just shy of half a million dollars. She can't afford to buy it, but she house-sits regularly because it's a way for her to stay in Pinedale, where she can keep hiking in the mountains and swimming in glacial lakes. To make ends meet, she's patched together with her family. Several gigs. I work at a Napa Auto Parts. I host trivia. I'm a gardener in the summer up in Jackson. And what am I missing? Bartender. Altogether, Daniels covers her bills and saves a little money by living in a camper in the summer. But she doubts she'll ever buy her own home here. I can afford up to a $175,000 house. Seven years ago, those existed here. But now? the average home is about $450,000. Bringing that number to a close, down is top of mind for Pinedale's Mayor Matt Murdoch, who's in his town hall office. Murdoch, who's in cowboy boots, lives here for small-town reasons. Pinedale's an amazing community. The people are great. You know, we don't lock our doors. We have moose and deer walking through our town. Murdoch says that's what appealed to a lot of people who moved here during the pandemic, plus vast public lands and limited government. You know, you can take your dog, shoot your gun, and start a fire around here. And if you're, say, a remote worker moving from California or the East Coast, a half-million-dollar house here sounds like a deal. But that's not who Murdoch is worried about. I'm just doing a survey right now, and we have, you know, just a, you know, 46 percent of the public service workers I surveyed are considered leaving because they can't afford to live here. That's fire. That's EMS. That's sheriffs. To keep them here, as well as other people who can't afford the rising prices, Murdoch wants the private sector to do something. So you have a couple of developers who now want to build houses, which increases inventory. Inventory means prices should come down. That inventory could end up being hundreds of houses on both ends of town, single-family, townhomes, duplexes. For now, it's just a few developments and some proposals. But even that makes longtime locals Greg and Martha Potasny, Nick, uncomfortable. Their home is tucked down a gravel road on a big lot with a pond in front. This is where hockey started in Plainville. You know, it'd be frozen, and we'd clean the snow off, and the kids would play hockey. Across from them is a hayfield, about 75 acres that's a hangout for moose, fox, deer. A commercial developer bought it, and according to its draft proposal. There'd be a house right here. It would have been a duplex. The draft proposes around 200 units, a strip for businesses, a grocery store, paved parking. The Potasnyks don't love it, but they aren't totally opposed to development. They say they just want it done right. They point out the new bright yellow Dollar General as an example of development that could have been done a little better. You know, you have to plant trees around every parking lot. There are ways to do it. And even some people who need housing in Pinedale, including house sitter Rachel Daniels, are skeptical of commercial developers. They say they're not going to be able to afford those houses. That's because some townhomes already going up on the other end of Pinedale are being advertised as 640 square feet for a little over $300,000. In Pinedale, Wyoming, I'm Caitlin Tan for Marketplace. RAND put out a paper earlier this year. It's 2026 State of the American Teacher Report, among the findings of which was that 57% of U.S. public school teachers say they are burned out. 78% said that since the pandemic, they had thought about quitting. Leaving a profession doesn't necessarily have to be the end of the line, though. Here's today's installment of our series, Clocked Out. Stories all this week about how leaving the traditional workforce can lead to some new opportunities. My name is Maddie Weisner. I'm located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I own Open Studio Sewing, a fabric store and community sewing space. I feel like I've had a very long and winding path. I actually did do AmeriCorps right out of undergrad, working with high school students, doing some of the things that I've been doing for a long time. dropout prevention. So I did that for a year. Then I was like, these kids in high school are really struggling. Like, I want to go help them when they're younger. And then I became a kindergarten teacher for three years. It was really hard, especially my first year. I had 28 students in my class, no classroom aid. It was probably the hardest year of my life. Second year was better. And then the third year, I moved back to Minneapolis, where I'm from. And I was still teaching kindergarten. And then I moved back to Minneapolis, where I'm from. And this was COVID now. And I didn't really have a lot of help. And so in March of that year, I was just like, okay, I just don't think I can handle this emotionally anymore. And so I quit teaching. I had absolutely no plan when I quit teaching. But I had some money left over from when I did AmeriCorps right out of undergrad. And I decided to take some fashion classes at our local technical school. And I was like, I'm going to do this. I really liked them. And I was good at it. And I started teaching private sewing lessons out of like a really tiny little studio space that I rented. And then I just started kind of building my business from there. We've been open for almost a year and a half. It's been a huge learning curve. Like I had never even worked in a store and I don't have any business background or like education or anything. Sometimes I feel like I have no clue what I'm doing. And like one day it'll be like really busy in the store and we'll have a lot of sales and I'll be like, oh my gosh, I'm amazing at this. Like business is going great. I can't believe I did this. And then the next day it's really slow. And I feel like I'm a complete failure and like everyone hates my business, but it's grown a lot. I have two employees and then we just transitioned to S-corp status, like maybe six months, so I feel like pretty proud of how things are going like for a year and a half. And I don't know, I was nervous that I wasn't going to have a paycheck for like years. So it's pretty good. Pretty good indeed, right? Maddie Wisner, owner of Open Studio Sewing in Minneapolis. This series we cannot do without you. Let us know what doors are opening or closing in your life. Marketplace.org slash clocked out. Coming up. Oh no, what if suddenly BLS goes dark? Oh no, indeed. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials down 189 today, about four-tenths percent, 52,297. NASDAQ dipped 100 points, almost four-tenths percent, finished at 25,338. 66, the S&P 500 dropped 26 points, also about four-tenths percent, 75,92. AI companies, sure, we can do that. AMD, they make chips, so our shares gain about five-and-nine-tenths percent. Intel slid about two-and-one-tenths of one percent. Alphabet, shares up one-and-eight-tenths of one percent. You are listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. I was on a plane the other day when I was off and there were and rows and rows of first-class and business-class seats, and relatively speaking, few seats in the back of the plane, which is where I was headed. And I, being the business and economic reporter that I am, said, oh yeah, that's because premium is where the money is. Well, enter now JetBlue, which unveiled its new first-class seats this week. They look just like all the other two-by-two big chairs at the front of the plane that all the other domestic planes have, but JetBlue has been losing money for years and has been banking on premium-paying passengers to put them back in the black, as Marketplace's Kelly Wells reports. Airfares are getting more expensive, but so is running an airline, especially ever since the Iran war started. The cost of energy at the moment is such that it's hard for airlines to make money. Suzanne Neufong, CEO of the Global Business Travel Association, says that's why airlines are doubling down on the premium offerings. They're making more money on those premium seats than they are with the seats that are way in the back for that. They're making more money on those premium seats than they are with the seats that cost-conscious traveler. And they're making more money on those seats because there's a market for them. Charles Duncan with investment company Altitude X Aviation Group gives two reasons for that. One, coming out of COVID, things have changed. I mean, consumers are valuing travel and experiences more. So even as life gets more expensive, we still pay to go places. And two, the K-shaped economy is real and that upper half of the K are willing to pay for premium. If the economy right now makes first-class tickets feel out of reach for many, the wealthy are still wealthy and still want them. If you are a coach flyer, airline journalist David Slotnick with The Points Guy says the new seats might still bring good news. If they can make the revenue up that way, then they're not necessarily going to raise fares the same way for the standard economy fares. But they bring bad news, too. Slotnick says making those big roomy seats at the front of the plane likely means taking a bit of legroom from everybody else. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. We got the October Consumer Price Index a couple of days ago. We'll get the Producer Price Index tomorrow, both of them courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As good as BLS data is, and to be clear, it is. Very, very good. There is always room for something different. Which gets us to the Bloomberg Price Project. It's a price tracker extraordinaire launched last week by Bloomberg Economics. Anna Wong is their chief U.S. economist. Good to have you on the program. Happy to be here, Kai. So you go to the higher ups of Bloomberg Economics and you say, I've got this project I want to do. What was the pitch? Well, actually, the pitch was from people outside of the company. So it actually started when the BLS commissioner was fired last summer, if you recall, because of a really weak jobs number. Then suddenly a lot of Wall Street clients were like, oh, no, what if suddenly BLS goes dark or what if we cannot trust BLS numbers anymore? We need a private alternative that has wide distribution platform. That's the pitch, really. We were told to do this. Fair enough. Fair enough. What? Well, you've got to do what the clients want, right? You've got to do what the public wants. Tell me now about, in layman's terms, please, what this thing is. What's the special sauce that you have? Yeah. So, you know, the BLS, every month they collect roughly 100,000 price quotes. You know, field agents would go into, say, Best Buy and then, like, start looking at the shelf and collecting data. For us, because Bloomberg has so much alternative private sector. We decided to take an approach where, well, why don't we take as many data points as we could? And in this case, every month we collect a couple millions of data points. And they range from grocery scanner prices to corporate sectors to credit cards data, all kinds of data. And try to compile, reconstruct the CPI in a similar spirit as BLS and see whether we track the BLS number. And how did you do? I mean, we just got started. We talked about CPI the other day. Yeah. So, on a year-over-year basis, our tracker, our alternative CPI is looking hotter than the BLS. That is to say more higher inflation. Yes, higher inflation. Recently, when BLS published the October CPI report, they actually were not able to publish the year-over-year number because a year ago there was a government shutdown. However, Bloomberg Price Project, because we… We track prices continuously since last year. We do have that number. And we have a headline reading of around 4.6% in October. But I think the bottom line is that inflation is pretty hot. Yes, it is. Sorry, you caught me unawares. I was like, yes, it is hot. I don't think we need to… Please go on. The subtext, I guess, of what I hear you saying is that you guys have a granularity in your data that perhaps the BLS… The BLS doesn't have, just because you have so much more of it. I would say BLS have it underneath their data, but they just didn't publish it. They don't publish it. So somebody must have collected a 55-inch Samsung TV with smart chip card or whatever. But we publish it. So we are trying to be transparent about it. We wanted to show the granularity to tell a deeper story. There is a very hot… There is a very localized area, several localized areas of inflation, but it's not very diffused. It's definitely nowhere as diffused as 2021 and 2022. And so I think the Fed has a tough job because how do you deal with almost like a K-shape on the inflation? We see both deflationary forces and inflationary forces underneath the hood. Right, right. Speaking of underneath the hood, I mean, people have been after the BLS to exceed. They've been after the BLS to expand its data set for years now, and here you are doing it. One imagines that maybe someday people are just going to look to you instead of the BLS. Well, wait. First of all, I think nobody can substitute for BLS. Our goal is to be a supplement to them. And in fact, we are going to be giving a seminar to BLS. And I think this is like the private sector can serve as like a push for more innovation. But, of course, BLS is encountering a lot of additional difficulties. And I think that the private sector does not. For example, the federal budget. And we are about marching into another year where there's a lot of chatter about potential debt ceiling issues and maybe another government shutdown. But our hope is just that it serve as a supplement. And we are still benchmarked to BLS in many ways. Right, right. It's a fascinating project. Anna Wong is Chief U.S. Economist at Bloomberg Economics. Anna, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Thanks, Guy. All right, we've got to go. Too much me talking, not enough time. Our daily production team is Andy Corbin, Mika Ellison, Maria Hollenhorst, Sarah Leeson, Sean McHenry, and Sophia Terenzio. Will Story is the supervising senior producer. And I'm Guy Rizdahl. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.