NVDA GTC, M&A Wiz / Goog $32 B Deal, April 2 Tariff Uncertainty; Huawei Belt & Road; ChatGPT

**Brad Gerstner** (0:00)
If we impose high structural tariffs, and if we allow this crazy Biden-era diffusion rule to stay in place, which makes it hard for us to export our chips, I literally think it's unilaterally disarming America in the race to AI. Yeah. I think it's a very bad decision.

**Bill Gurley** (0:21)
And positive for Huawei, right?

**Brad Gerstner** (0:24)
It's going to lead to a Huawei Belt and Road. Bill, it's good to see you.

**Bill Gurley** (0:41)
Good to see you, Brad. As you can see, I'm wearing the Florida Gator hat here as we kick off March Madness. I'm very fortunate that the school that I went to and the team that I rode the bench for is at the top of the heap. We've got, we're the fourth seed according to the NCAA, but in Vegas, we're number one on championship odds. So, it's an incredible team, a great young coach, super deep, talented all the way down, four bigs that are all legitimate, incredible guard play, unselfish. I give them a good shot.

**Brad Gerstner** (1:23)
So, do you have them winning at all?

**Bill Gurley** (1:27)
In my bracket, yes. I mean, yes, but that there's some bias, I will admit there's some bias in there.

**Brad Gerstner** (1:32)
Can you tell us who else is in the championship game?

**Bill Gurley** (1:36)
I'd have to look at the bracket to make sure.

**Brad Gerstner** (1:41)
Well, I have to say, it's good to be reminded that it's March Madness, but it feels like it's global madness, just in terms of the pace of everything going on in the world. I can't believe I was in Washington last week, and there's a lot of exciting stuff going on with regard to Invest America on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

**Bill Gurley** (2:01)
Congrats on that.

**Brad Gerstner** (2:02)
That I'm thrilled about the pace of AI, the pace of these changes coming out of Washington, a lot of which I think is really fantastic. But it's certainly unsettling the markets. And then the last couple of days, I've been down at GTC, the big Nvidia developer event. While there's a lot of uncertainty in the world, I'm super bullish on where all of this is headed. And this is one of those moments at times where I just feel like you have to hold these two competing but simultaneous truce, that things really are accelerating, and that we're getting ourselves in a position for this period of the Golden Age. But still, some of this caution is warranted in the short run, as we try to figure out how it all unfolds.

**Bill Gurley** (2:49)
And for those that listen to us regularly, they'll know that many months ago, you expressed this concern that some of the changes were going to create disruption in the financial markets, and that you were getting more cautious. And that played out. I guess everything moves fast these days, but that played out extremely quickly. And so the markets have corrected the Mag-7. I think the Cover of Barons had the list of the Mag-7 and how down they all are. And so, yeah, I mean, anytime you get a correction, then people immediately want to know now what, right? And so, has the air come out that you expected and now it's something different or do you remain cautious?

**Brad Gerstner** (3:31)
I think that was like on February 4th or February 6th, we did that pod and I said, you know, well, I think the golden age will come. The first we have to go through this golden age of uncertainty, right? That we had kind of maximum political uncertainty, maximum economic uncertainty, maximum technological uncertainty, that causes discount rates to go up, you know, causes risk premiums to go up, causes multiples to come down. And the first leg of that, I think the NASDAQ is down about 10% since that moment. I think a lot of the components of the NASDAQ are down much more, 20, 30%, right, since that moment. And I think that's just the gas of uncertainty being let out. And just in the last week or so, Bill, we started rolling over to the second potential leg of concern, which is fear of recession and growth.
And so, what I would tell you...

**Bill Gurley** (4:24)
Which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Like if people fear. Yeah.

**Brad Gerstner** (4:28)
Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, in fact, what everybody is now wringing their hands about, right, is where are we today? So, I think it's a mixed message. So, let me give you a couple of the data points that we're looking at, we're collecting on both sides of the message. You know, first, I would say that kind of the negative data points have been gathering steam. What are those?