Episode summary
TikTok Seals Deal to Operate in the US After Years of Drama | Bloomberg Intelligence
Bloomberg Intelligence
· · Hosts: Paul Sweeney, Scarlet Fu · Guests: Matthew Schettenhelm, Angelo Zino, Ed Ludlow, Elliott Stein
Summary
TikTok’s long-running U.S. legal and political fight appears to be ending with a deal that transfers parts of its U.S. operations to American investors and keeps the app operating in the country. The analyst said the arrangement looks like a resolution that should let TikTok continue under a new U.S.-majority structure, though there are still questions about whether it fully matches the law and whether there is enough separation from ByteDance. Oracle and other U.S. investors would oversee U.S. data, but the analyst said the missing contract terms make it hard to know how complete the safeguards really are.
Intel disappointed investors with weak guidance even as demand is improving. The equity analyst said the bigger problem is supply, not demand, and that Intel was caught flat-footed with inventory and manufacturing constraints. He pointed to the 18A node as the key fix, with yield improvements needed for better supply later in the year.
The conversation also covered Nvidia, where Chinese officials may allow H200 chip orders, and the analyst said that would matter because the addressable market in China is currently zero. On the legal side, the litigation analyst said Donald Trump’s $5 billion suit against JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon over alleged debanking looks weak, because the bank’s contracts allowed account closures and no clear law was identified as violated.
Key takeaways
- The analyst said TikTok’s new U.S. structure looks like the end of a “long lingering drama,” but its compliance with the law is still not fully clear.
- Oracle-led oversight of U.S. data is meant to address Chinese access concerns, yet the analyst noted the deal does not clearly spell out operational separation from ByteDance.
- Intel’s problem is supply, not demand, and the analyst expects 18A yield improvements to matter most for second-half recovery.
- The analyst said Nvidia could benefit if China allows H200 imports, because China is currently a zero-revenue market for that chip.
- The litigation analyst said Trump’s JPMorgan case is likely vulnerable to dismissal because the contract allowed account closures and the complaint does not cite a clear law broken.
Notable quotes
“This looks like a resolution that that should keep Tik Tok continuing to operate in in the United States”
“it it's looking like this might be the end of this saga and it might let tick tick- tock continue under this new structure”
“The bigger issue is that they are supply constrained in many respects”
“the biggest bottleneck across the supply chain right now is absolutely um the the memory bottlenecks”
“I don't think it does”
How the episode opens
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Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube. Tik Tok, Chinese parent Bite Dance, they have closed a deal to transfer transfer parts of their US operations to American investors, securing the app's future in the US and avoiding a shutdown, which I know is big for the gajillions of folks that are on Tik Tok.
Matthew Shutton joins us here. He's a media litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's based down there in Washington DC.
Matt, talk to us about this deal for Tik Tok. This seems to be, I guess, probably the best outcome for certainly Tik Tok users. What what do you what do you make of it?
Yeah, I think this is uh you know getting to be the end of this long lingering drama that this big open question of how um is this effective ban on on this app going to play out? This looks like a resolution that that should keep Tik Tok continuing to operate in in the United States and under a a new structure um that that is majority owned in the US itself. I think there are real questions about whether this really adheres to all the limits in in the law that Congress adopted, but at the same time, I'm not sure there's going to be much will to to push back on that at this point.
it it's looking like this might be the end of this saga and it might let tick tick- tock continue under this new structure.
So, one of the concerns I think a lot of folks kind of carried was didn't want the Chinese government to access have access to US uh uh residents data, their personal information.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- tiktok us deal
- bytedance operations
- intel earnings guidance
- nvidia h200 ai chips
- jpmorgan trump lawsuit
Companies and tickers mentioned
- INTC
- NVDA
- JPM
- TikTok
- ByteDance Ltd.
- CFRA Research
- Intel Corp.
- Nvidia Corp.
- JPMorgan Chase & Co.
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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