From: Laurent Chekroun (MAKOR CAPITAL MARKET) At: 10/26/25 19:04:23 UTC+1:00
Subject: The Information : Vinod Khosla Talks AI, Power and Why Businesses Struggle With
Vinod Khosla Talks AI, Power and Why Businesses Struggle With New AI Services
The Takeaway
Enterprise AI adoption struggles due to unqualified internal staff.
AI product margins are expected to increase healthily into the 2030s.
AI’s circular financing deals pose no systemic risk, Khosla says.
Vinod Khosla thinks companies which say they’re struggling to get a return on their spending on artificial-intelligence services may be doing it wrong. In an interview with The Information’s TITV this past week, he said “most enterprises who are executing AI are doing it with their people who are not qualified to execute.” In contrast, when businesses hire an AI specialist firm to help them, “it goes swimmingly well.”
Khosla is one of the most experienced venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, whose firm was a very early investor in OpenAI, among many others. That makes his take on the state of play in AI worth listening to. In the TITV interview, he talked about current developments in AI, the risks inherent in the AI ecosystem right now, power generation and other topics.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of the interview. The full video is here.
Akash Pasricha: Our subscribers at The Information know your career very well. They will know that you are a steadfast optimist, and one of the guiding mantras in your career has been that skeptics never did the impossible. It feels like right now, even for people who are very bullish on AI, the technology, there is enough reason to be at least somewhat skeptical on AI, the business. Is there anything that you are skeptical about right now?
Vinod Khosla: Well, to start with, I think if you’re going to do something significant, you’re going to have to be an optimist. But not only just an optimist, a knowledgeable optimist. There are too many skeptics who live in the past and will extrapolate the past to invent the future. That’s a bad thing to do. Inventing the future you want is the right way, and optimism is key to that.
Having said that, I think the one thing I don’t know and there’s things I can reasonably project and things I can be uncertain about. The thing I’m uncertain about is timing of various breakthroughs that we expect to see in the next two years, five years, ten years. Almost certainly it’s easier to predict AI in 2035 and probably 2030, than it is to predict it today and what will happen next year. So I’m not skeptical, but I’m less certain about the pace of development of certain capabilities that are essential to expanding use of AI.
Right. Well, let’s talk about the current state of play. One of the topics that has been talked about a lot in our coverage are the margins that a lot of these companies have on their AI products, whether it’s cloud services or even AI application companies. And one of the challenges that we’ve highlighted is that margins are slim right now. How do you think this goes in the long run?
Vinod Khosla: I think the way to look at margins is when AI is a substantial business. Yes, it’s [a] large business, tens of billions of dollars, but it’s not hundreds of billions of dollars. And so the question to ask is where will margins stabilize? I think some of it depends on R&D breakthroughs by the various companies and knowing who gets what breakthrough, which is, as I said, uncertain with respect to who and timing. I’m pretty optimistic about what OpenAI is doing. I do think if you provide value and you have differentiated models, you will have good margins. Look, at the pace at which pricing is declining, both in supplying inferencing to the AI companies and the price at which things are sold, it’s hard to predict the dynamics. But it will settle down [with] good returns on capital invested. So I’d be surprised if we don’t have healthy increasing margins well into the early 2030s.
And which of the two levers do you think is more likely to get pulled on most? The idea that costs will go down for these chips that are very expensive right now. Or on the flip side, we had one of your founders on the show, Amjad Masad from Replit. He talked about this idea that the models might not get cheaper, but rather he’s looking to actually increase his prices to widen his margin. So which one of those two levers do you think is most likely to widen margins in the next couple of years?
Vinod Khosla: So there’s a number of ways in which cost of supplying inference will go down. One, chips will become more economical in per inference. I do think the algorithms will get much better, which means the software will get better in the amount of compute needed per inference. So there’s two vectors. You can make the algorithms 10X more efficient over time. I think that will happen. The cost of chips will go down for a given number of inferences. So both those are vectors for cost reduction.
The question of pricing on the input side, what customers will pay, will be a function of value. If Amjad—and I love that company and what Amjad is doing—if he keeps adding more and more value, he will be able to charge more. So that’s a question of value addition. And that’s where there’s lots of headroom. You know when you’re kicking something that costs, say, a professional, an accounting professional, for example, or a design product designer, and you’re paying them $100 to $300 an hour and your cost is $1 to $3 an hour, you have lots of pricing room if you can provide more complete solutions. So I do think, price per hour of worker-time equivalent will increase pretty dramatically. Also as well, as well the decline in costs per inference. This business will be healthy starting, let’s say, 2030 and beyond, when scale data centers will be in operation.
How do you square that with this matter of buyers of enterprise software—businesses in general—they are struggling to find the value right now, at least on an ROI basis, for much of this AI software. The reason I’m asking the question is because we’re talking about raising prices. They’re not seeing the value right now. They’re very slow to adopt this AI software. So how do you square those two realities right now?
Vinod Khosla: So you have to look at a couple of factors. One, where is the value being provided great. In software development it’s absolutely great value. So companies like Replit and Cognition, which we are both investors in, Cursor included, all growing very, very rapidly, because they’re adding real value. So there are functions in which the product isn’t complete or mature. And so you need almost so much hand-holding, the economics break down. I would say another factor that most people haven’t considered, most enterprises who are executing AI are doing it with their people who are not qualified to execute. It’s like saying, hey, we have a race car and Joe Blow can go drive it, and he’s not going to get most of that race car.
So they need to hire different people?
I think they need to take a very different approach. They take an online IT software person, say build an agent for me and hope it works great. It’s not the way it’s working. So generally if you take a company like Distyl, which is in our portfolio, if they execute a project for a large Fortune 500 company, it goes swimmingly well. If in-house people in the same company executed, it goes very poorly. So, and each of these, even the in-house people will get better over time, so the third or fourth generation of execution will do better because their people will get trained, but they’re really not qualified to operate in this area. While the AI native companies are able to get real value, and they’re even able to pick the projects that will be valuable and the projects that are more experimental.
I want to pivot to talking a little bit about some of the circular deals that we’ve seen happening in the AI sector. I mean, Nvidia, for instance, has been at the center of some of these circular financing arrangements. Do these concern you at all?
Vinod Khosla: Well, they don’t, they do and they don’t. It’s hard to tell what the details are behind each of these deals. If Nvidia is financing customers to buy their chips, that could be perfectly reasonable. Look, General Motors finances its cars too, when a consumer buys it, it’s just a regularized business. The question is hidden in the contracts that are mostly not publicly available: Who’s taking on what part of the risk? Is it an enterprise? Are you saying a customer you’re financing is viable or not? Are you saying the risk is the customers’ or their customers if they’ve done a contract with somebody else to buy X million dollars of inferencing? So where’s the risk hidden? Well, in fact is the key question before one can opine. And frankly, most of those risks and who takes what risk is in the fine print and not visible to almost anybody outside?
I take your point on the fine print. I guess what I’m sort of trying to assess here is the systemic risk in the circular financing at large. And of course, I take your point about, for example, General Motors financing the purchase of a car. But, you know, in a world where you have a chip company investing in OpenAI, OpenAI buying cloud compute from Oracle, Oracle buying chips from Nvidia. That is a sort of circular loop that I think a lot of people have sort of raised flags about. Does that whole cycle not raise any flags for you or cause any concern?
Vinod Khosla: Well, I would say I don’t care. I don’t care for the following reason. If Nvidia is taking a bad credit risk, that’s their problem, right? But if Nvidia loses $50 or $100 billion, does it kill the company? Probably not. And I suspect [Nvidia CEO] Jensen [Huang] is pretty smart about what credit risks he’s taking, with which customer. Is Oracle taking a larger risk? Possibly. It depends on the details of the contract between Nvidia and Oracle and Oracle and OpenAI or other people buying their cloud service.
So you have to think of it as traditional business and say where does the risk lie? If Oracle goes under, for example, because they took the risk of $100 billion spend and then get that back, then it’s their problem if Oracle disappears from the scene. Do I care? No. I hope they don’t. I think the ecosystem will be healthier, but people are selectively taking risk. You know, Coreweave’s taking a lot of risks with the money that belongs to certain lenders, to Coreweave. Do the lenders have risk? I don’t know. Does Coreweave have risk? And Oracle’s doing the same thing, it’s taking risk. But I don’t know the details of these contracts.
But broadly speaking the level of risk that this has has become sort of ubiquitous throughout this AI ecosystem that doesn’t concern you at all?
Vinod Khosla: I would say the fundamental notion of will there be more demand for API inference calls doesn’t concern me at all. The fundamental is how many inferencing calls we’ll see in 2030 and 2035. That generally doesn’t concern me because I believe AI will add a lot of value. Look, US economy’s $15 trillion of labor alone—just labor costs in the US economy $15 trillion. If you could replace 5 trillion of that, there’s plenty of room for inferencing to be paid for, if you can do that. So again I say the fundamental is, is there a demand for AI inferencing the next five years and next ten years, I’m not worried about that. has learned how clever a contract and who takes on risk if demand is slower or faster to emerge? … I’m not responsible for a lender financing a data center. If they fail, their problem, not mine. I care about the innovation ecosystem that drives more API calls in AI.
Who do you think has the best chance of challenging Nvidia?
Vinod Khosla: Well, obviously AMD is trying things, Arm is trying things, Broadcom is trying things. Nvidia is in an unenviable position because they have so many different things they can do in parallel because the cash flow they have right now. Do I know all of Jensen’s plans inside and how many different things he’s trying? No. In fact, nobody outside really knows when he’s going to announce what my bet is he has a pretty precise roadmap to 2030 and beyond. So hard to say.
So there’s no one company that you are really sort of putting your eggs in here in terms of… I think this company is closest on Nvidia’s tail right now.
Vinod Khosla: Well, AMD is doing pretty well by signing, looking at their deals. Broadcom is doing pretty well. But are they going to grab majority share and be larger than Nvidia. I wouldn’t expect that today. Can they take reasonable shares, especially at slightly lower margins? Yes.
And what about all these chip startups that are popping up.
Vinod Khosla: Well I’ve seen a lot of specialized chip startups that do one thing. You can run your whole model locally in your shop. Well that’s that’s a market. It’s not as large as the data center inferencing market. So there’s many submarkets that the chip startups can do ok in.But I haven’t seen the chip startup that could completely blow everybody away. Now, if you have a sudden breakthrough in photonic chips that can do multiply, accumulate inferencing functions, and cut the power consumption by 70% for inferencing, that’s entirely possible, even likely sometime in the next five years.
And I hope some of those show up because it changed the power equation, how much power we need for AI. Frankly, most of the data center investment can be repurposed with a new kind of chip that gets slotted in. Photonics is pretty promising. I suspect digital semiconductor chips are going to be hard to beat Nvidia at, in a massive way. In specialized segments of the market, you can beat them but generally you’d have to have a radical breakthrough in technology. Photonics is one of them. There’s a few others, but I see the most promising candidate for an alternative to Nvidia becoming from photonics if one can scale it, and photonics typically is hard to scale.
I want to close by talking about the energy side of of the AI equation. You, of course, have been an energy for a long time. You’ve made big bets on fusion among many other technologies. And the question that I want to help get your perspective on is this idea that a lot of these energy bets are going to still take years to scale? Meanwhile, the energy demands that AI will need to satisfy, those demands are right now. And so help us reconcile this idea that we need power now, and it’s going to still take several years for many of these new energy technologies to scale.
Vinod Khosla: So the simplest way, very, very short term, to address electricity demand in the country is pricing. This is why the economics of marketplaces work. Prices will go up some, as we consume more pricing for data centers. Data centers themselves can be aggressive sources of power management. You can consume at certain times of the day for training runs and other times of the day for inferencing. You can dial up the performance or dial down the performance. So data center input of electricity itself is a variable that’ll probably be part of electricity trading.
There’s some good startups in that area.
I think there’s a short term solution which I think is super hot geothermal. I think we can get to gigawatt scale. If you imagine a couple of extra gigawatts of demand emerging every year. Some of it will be met through pricing energy appropriately. Some of it will be met through shorter term projects. Geothermal is one that’s much shorter term than, say, fusion, fusion’s a possibility but fusion to me will take the longest…but we’ll have an array of factors. We’ll have more natural gas turbines coming on. We do have companies where you can start with natural gas and switch to hydrogen whenever the economics warrant it. So there’s a number of ways to adjust, but it is a non-trivial problem.
And so all these data centers that companies like OpenAI are springing up very quickly. I mean, the simple question I wanted to get your take on is, do we have enough power for these facilities?
Vinod Khosla: Well, first thing to keep in mind, it takes a couple of years to build a data center. There’s a few hacks, but fundamentally, if you’re trying to add a gigawatt of data center, which is about $30 billion of spend, it’ll take a couple of years. I don’t think that’s a six month or 12 month or even an 18 month project.
Then there’s demand-based electricity consumption as a tool. And then I think things like geothermal and other technologies will come along. Some of them will be natural gas fired. I hope there’s no more coal facilities. Mainspring installs capacity for data centers that can switch seamlessly from natural gas to hydrogen when you want to go clean, so you can decide how much you want to pay for power and what carbon reduction you want, and increase the carbon reduction over time. So that’s one solution. All I’m saying is there’s an array of tools …not non-trivial. This will be a serious issue. And policy is trying to address it. But I do think there’s many solutions.
Last question for you. You know, you wrote this op ed for us a couple months ago in The Information, about the bonkers valuations in AI right now. And one of the things that you mentioned in the piece was that you think that venture capital as an asset class is likely to shrink over the coming ten years. And I wanted to ask you what the repercussions of that are in your mind. The obvious one that I thought was perhaps startups might actually get better because there’s less capital to go around and the better ones would get picked. Is that the main repercussion of this, or what are the other repercussions that you see happening?
Vinod Khosla : I think that op ed was misinterpreted a little bit. What I said was AI valuations in general are bonkers. For the best companies they’re not bonkers and if as a venture capitalist, you have access to those two, three, 4% of the startups, there will be huge wins. You will do well. You will have great returns. The people who are plowing money in without having special access to these opportunities for whatever reason, will suffer in venture capital as a class, I think broadly, for funds raised in ‘24 and ‘25 will have decreasing returns, returns lower because they’re not getting access to good deals early. They’re paying higher prices much later. Some of the robotics valuations are getting bonkers. I would venture to guess 95% of those startups will lose money.
So the take home here is we need special access to deals essentially to be successful?
Vinod Khosla: It’s more than that. I think I like to say most AI startups will lose money, but more money will be made than lost. That means it’ll be highly asymmetric: 2 or 3% of the startups will account for 85-90% of the valuation by 2035 of market cap of companies. So that asymmetry, which has generally been true in venture capital, but will be significantly more asymmetric in AI because of this valuation wave, I think is the reason we will see average returns decline and the best returns for the top firms will do okay, will do well, in fact, because AI is such a large opportunity.
LVMH’s Art Foundation Brings Caillebotte Masterpieces to New York
The two paintings will remain on show for three weeks at Louis Vuitton's temporary flagship on 57th Street.
Gustave Caillebotte's "Boating Party," circa 1877-1878
PARIS — Louis Vuitton’s temporary flagship on 57th Street in New York City boasts special features including a restaurant and towers of trunks — and for the next three weeks, it will also host a couple of museum-grade paintings.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton has partnered with Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for an exhibition of two major works by French Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte, underscoring the growing synergies between fashion and art, even as public funding for culture dries up on both sides of the Atlantic.
Visitors can book free tickets to view “Boating Party,” held in the permanent collection of the Musée d’Orsay, and “Young Man at His Window,” acquired by the Getty museum in 2021.
The exhibition will run from Tuesday until Nov. 16 in a temporary Espace Louis Vuitton gallery space located on the fifth floor of the Vuitton mega-store, which opened last November while the brand’s historic Fifth Avenue flagship undergoes extensive renovations.
It comes on the heels of the “Caillebotte: Painting Men” exhibition, which bowed at the Musée d’Orsay in 2024, before traveling to the Getty museum and then the Art Institute of Chicago, where it concluded its run on Oct. 5.
Jean-Paul Claverie, adviser to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton chairman and chief executive officer Bernard Arnault, said the institutions joined forces to present the paintings in New York, where Caillebotte’s work does not have a major museum presence, before they return to their respective homes.
“It’s a gift to the people of New York and to anyone visiting the city,” said the executive, who oversees the group’s arts and cultural patronage.
The initiative stems from Vuitton’s ongoing partnership with the Musée d’Orsay. The French luxury brand is helping to fund a three-year renovation program at the museum, and has supported exhibitions including the Caillebotte show, reflecting its broader ambition to position itself as a cultural entity.
Vuitton has also used the museum, known for its vast collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, for several runway shows by Nicolas Ghesquière, its artistic director of women’s collections.
The New York exhibition underscores parent company LVMH’s role as a major player in the art world, with a 30-year history of patronage including a 43-million-euro donation that allowed the French state in 2021 to acquire “Boating Party,” classified as a national treasure.
“The acquisition of the Caillebotte was a major milestone. It is the most valuable ‘national treasure’ ever acquired for France’s public museum collections,” said Claverie.
Recently, LVMH also contributed to the appeal launched by the Louvre to acquire “The Basket of Strawberries” by Jean Siméon Chardin, which had a starring role at Jonathan Anderson’s first menswear show for Dior in June.
A Funding Crisis
Paul Perrin, director of conservation and collections at the Musée d’Orsay, said the resources at LVMH’s fingertips dwarf the museum’s 3-million-euro annual budget for acquisitions — making the luxury conglomerate a formidable ally for France’s cultural sector.
“The relationship goes both ways: for luxury brands, it adds to their cultural cachet, while for museums, it’s an opportunity to connect with broader audiences and to highlight the enduring relevance of historical art,” he said.
“The fashion sector gets a huge amount of media attention and is closely followed by younger generations in particular. Presenting a Chardin painting in a fashion show is a way to reaffirm the importance of art and museums, and of introducing the world of museums to audiences who might not typically engage with it,” he added.
Perrin noted that the Musée d’Orsay was satisfied that the Espace Louis Vuitton meets all the safety criteria for displaying “Boating Party” — a sensitive point given the recent high-profile robbery of priceless jewels from the Louvre.
“Whenever we exhibit works from the Musée d’Orsay in a new venue, we never do so without first conducting a full site assessment to ensure that the location meets all the necessary criteria,” he said. “Even if this venue was not originally designed for museum exhibitions, it checks all the boxes.”
Katherine E. Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, said she carefully weighed the pros and cons of teaming with the luxury group, though she emphasized that the partnership is with the Fondation Louis Vuitton, not the brand.
“Obviously the thing you want to be attentive to, if you start partnering with luxury, is the fact that it starts to feel elite and starts to therefore feel exclusive — but if you look at it in another way, you’re actually reaching whole new audiences,” she said.
As a nonprofit operating foundation based in California, the J. Paul Getty Trust is self-financing and also hands out grants. It has partnerships with institutions including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History, which is temporarily closed due to the U.S. government shutdown.
“We’re acutely aware of the fact that the sector, especially the publicly funded sector, is under a lot of duress right now, and we’ve had conversations about what that implies for the way we do our own work,” Fleming said.
With the Trump administration imposing restrictions on grants awarded by federal agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts, demand for private funding has sharply increased.
“One of the things that’s really creepy about this moment is that the well-intentioned impulse is to say, ‘Oh, well, those who have the means should run in and plug the gaps.’ But really, the only message that that will convey is that the private sector should be taking care of this, and there is no obligation whatsoever from the public sector,” Fleming remarked.
“In the short term, it feels like a smart thing to do, but in the long term, it really isn’t,” she added. “We’re trying very hard to stick to our own very carefully thought-through strategies, without having our head in the sand.”
A Long-term Vision
In France, the private sector’s involvement in the art world is more recent than in the U.S.
Since its opening in 2014, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has emerged as a key player in the local museum landscape, with its recent David Hockney retrospective drawing almost one million visitors.
Corporate and individual donors in France are entitled to generous fiscal deductions, which has led critics to complain that private art foundations and major acquisitions are in fact heavily subsidized by taxpayers — a source of growing controversy given the political chaos triggered by President Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to push through austerity measures.
“Of course, we’re sensitive to these concerns. It’s a lot of money, and 43 million euros for a painting can seem like an absurd sum to many French people,” acknowledged Perrin. “It does mean an effort on the part of all French citizens, but without this system, we couldn’t afford this type of acquisition. That’s why it’s important to explain how it works and why it matters.”
LVMH often finds itself in the crosshairs of public debate, but Claverie — who has worked alongside Arnault since 1992 — insisted the billionaire’s approach is both long-term and disinterested.
“His vision was rooted in the belief that the group’s success — whether in France or abroad — also depended on the enduring prestige and worldwide influence of French culture,” the adviser said. “Our commitment to cultural patronage has never been driven by tax benefits. We do it out of a genuine passion for culture.”
Claverie sees no contradictions in the marriage of art and commerce. There are six Espace Louis Vuitton galleries worldwide, with current exhibitions including works by Wolfgang Tillmans in Munich, Andy Warhol in Tokyo and Yayoi Kusama in Osaka.
“I really think art can be everywhere,” he said. “The Louis Vuitton flagship in New York is more than a store — it’s a place of emotion and discovery.”
Bloomingdale's x Burberry's year-long partnership culminates in a festive takeover of Bloomingdale's 59th Street flagship and Lexington Avenue windows for the holidays.
Bloomingdale’s is getting ready to usher in the holiday season with a campaign titled “Happy Together,” which will run the gamut from the flagship’s windows and immersive in-store experiences to exclusive collaborations and curated gifts.
At the heart of the season is Bloomingdale’s x Burberry, a yearlong collaboration culminating in a takeover of Bloomingdale’s 59th Street flagship. The partnership features an exclusive Burberry takeover of The Carousel, the retailer’s revolving pop-up shop, which goes in Nov. 6. Merchandise will be showcased across the store with dedicated capsules in each category. Every element in the shop will reflect Burberry’s craftsmanship and British sensibility, from ready-to-wear to accessories and gifting.
“The holidays at Bloomingdale’s are defined by a sense of magic; of excitement and inspiration,” said Olivier Bron, chief executive officer of Bloomingdale’s. “This season, our collaboration with Burberry brings that spirit to life — uniting two icons with a shared passion for craftsmanship, storytelling and innovation. Together, we’ve transformed our flagship into an experience that celebrates heritage, connection, and the joy of the season in a distinctly Bloomingdale’s way.”
Josh Schulman, CEO of Burberry, said, “We’re thrilled to partner with Bloomingdale’s to create festive experiences that capture the magic of the season. Together, we will be lighting up New York with a giant Burberry check scarf across the iconic facade and curating exclusive capsule collections. With over 70 years of shared history, this partnership is a celebration of craftsmanship and festive joy. It’s a privilege to bring the essence of timeless British luxury to such an iconic destination in the heart of New York City.”
Bloomingdale’s will also offer guests an immersive brand experience, providing a destination to discover Burberry’s signature outerwear and essentials. Another key feature is a red-check capsule collection. The flagship’s Lexington Avenue windows and facade will be designed in collaboration with Burberry, and will be “steeped in tradition, wrapped in warmth, and infused with the magic of the season,” according to the retailer.
A 360-degree digital campaign will aim to drive awareness and engagement for Bloomingdale’s x Burberry, featuring a full wrap of The New York Times in print, a homepage takeover, media placements, including out-of-home, and a multipart email series that celebrates Burberry’s heritage and holiday storytelling.
Discussing how the Burberry partnership came together, Bron told WWD, “We’re actually celebrating 70 years of partnership with Burberry this year so it’s been a long-lasting relationship. We share the same creative vision and respect for craftsmanship and innovation. There’s this balance between innovation and heritage, and I think that’s very Bloomingdale’s. It’s a very natural collaboration. We love their values that are very aligned with ours.”
Under Schulman, Burberry is reinventing itself, modernizing the brand and building a new era, said Bron. “I think our stories are very much aligned, and we have a very close relationship. We’re very excited about the partnership,” said Bron.
According to Bron, Burberry fits well with the “Happy Together” theme. The brand will take over the Lexington Avenue windows, will do visual moments in the store, the Carousel moment, and exclusive collections. “It’s very special because it’s a very inclusive, very immersive experience of Burberry within our stores and across all platforms,” said Bron.
Bloomingdale’s will also do a Burberry light-up bow in the classic Burberry check on the facade. Bron noted that there will be a window unveiling on Nov. 19 for top clients, partners, and New Yorkers. The Grammy-nominated, Brit-Award winning artist Raye will perform as part of the 2025 holiday window unveil.
Kevin Harter, vice president, integrated marketing and fashion office at Bloomingdale’s, said the red-check capsule will run the gamut from accessories and women’s and men’s apparel to kids’, along with two different holiday teddy bears, one of which is wearing a Burberry cashmere scarf, that will benefit the Child Mind Institute. In addition to the Carousel’s Burberry merchandise, there will be a Burberry pop-up shop on the fourth floor that opens Nov. 6, as well as in 12 branch stores.
Bron said he’s optimistic about holiday. “We are feeling pretty good. First, because the current trend of the business is extremely strong. So that’s good. We think it will keep going during this holiday moment. Holidays are always a very special moment, particularly at Bloomingdale’s. So we feel very optimistic about what’s coming. We also think these collaborations around this ‘Happy Together’ theme will very much resonate with our customers and ecosystems. This excitement and energy and the traffic we’re seeing in the store during this period is actually tremendous. So we’re feeling very excited about what’s coming in the next few weeks.”
The Third Avenue windows are also built around the “Happy Together” theme.
Other activations at Bloomingdale’s include Studio 59 by Baccarat, an in-store bar experience; Alice + Olivia x 40 Carrots, a festive takeover once again of Bloomingdale’s cafe; a Canada Goose pop-up with personalization and discovery elements, and “Gift Yourself” presented by Bloomingdale’s American Express Card, a gifting activation for shoppers.
Another key activation is Santaland: Happy Together, featuring Burberry bears and interactive holiday moments.
Bloomingdale’s annual philanthropic partnerships include No Kid Hungry, where customers can contribute by rounding up their in-store purchases to the nearest dollar or by adding a donation at online checkout. (Nov. 1 to Nov. 30). To kick off the campaign, No Kid Hungry chefs and restaurant partners will host special cooking demonstrations in select stores, helping to raise both awareness and funds for the cause. In addition, Bloomingdale’s is supporting Child Mind Institute. Throughout December, shoppers can round up in-store purchases or add a donation at online checkout.
China EV Maker Seres Plans to Raise Up to $1.7B in Hong Kong Offer
Seres, which is already listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, expects to finalize the offer price by Nov. 3
Seres Group aims to raise up to $1.70 billion in a Hong Kong stock offering, selling 100.20 million shares.
The company’s 2024 revenue was $20.37 billion, a 306% increase from the previous year, and it achieved profitability.
Hong Kong’s equities market saw HK$182.9 billion raised in the first nine months of 2025, a significant increase.
Chinese automaker Seres Group 601127 -0.64%decrease; red down pointing triangle aims to raise up to $1.70 billion in a Hong Kong stock offering, joining the ranks of companies looking to list in one of the world’s most active equity fundraising markets.
The company, focused on new energy vehicles, is planning to sell 100.20 million shares at a maximum offer price of 131.50 Hong Kong dollars, equivalent to $16.92 per share, Seres said Monday.
Seres, which is already listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, expects to finalize the offer price by Nov. 3, with shares expected to start trading on the Hong Kong exchange from Nov. 5
Hong Kong’s equities market has emerged as one of the most active for listings this year. Funds raised through initial public offerings and secondary offerings in the first nine months of 2025 totaled HK$182.9 billion, a sharp increase from the HK$55.6 billion raised in the same period last year, according to Hong Kong stock exchange data.
The EV company has already secured commitments from cornerstone investors who have agreed to subscribe to over 45% of the offer size.
Some of the cornerstone investors include state-owned Chongqing Industrial Parent Fund, Hong Kong-listed China MeiDong Auto, a unit of the U.K.-listed Schroders, and South Korea’s Mirae Securities.
Securing cornerstone investors before a listing lets companies market their offerings more effectively to institutional and individual investors. That is especially important during periods of heightened market volatility.
Seres is a technology company focused on new energy vehicles, including research and development, manufacturing, sales, and services.
Its revenue in 2024 was 145.1 billion yuan, equivalent to $20.37 billion, a 306% increase from a year earlier. Additionally, Seres turned profitable in 2024, reporting net income of CNY5.9 billion.
CICC and China Galaxy International are acting as joint sponsors for Seres’s Hong Kong offer.
‘Yellowstone’ Creator Taylor Sheridan to Leave Paramount for NBCUniversal
Sheridan’s hits for Paramount include ‘Tulsa King’ and ‘Landman.’ In addition to TV shows, he will make movies for NBCUniversal.
Taylor Sheridan will join NBCUniversal after his Paramount contract expires.
Sheridan will create films for Universal Pictures and TV content for NBC and the Peacock streaming service.
NBCUniversal also signed a first-look deal with Sheridan’s production partner 101 Studios, effective in 2026.
Prolific movie and television producer Taylor Sheridan, known for hits including “Yellowstone,” “Tulsa King” and “Landman,” has signed a deal to join NBCUniversal when his contract with Paramount expires, according to people familiar with the matter.
Sheridan has become one of the most reliable creators and producers for Paramount over the past several years and has been one of the biggest providers of shows for the Paramount+ streaming service.
Sheridan’s departure is a potentially big blow to Paramount. However, he will stay involved in all his shows there and won’t depart for NBCUniversal until 2029, after his current contract expires, the people familiar with the matter said.
At NBCUniversal, Sheridan will create films for its movie studio Universal Pictures as well as TV content for NBC and the Peacock streaming service.
News of Sheridan’s eventual exit was earlier reported by Puck.
Sheridan’s decision to leave comes less than three months after David Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired control of Paramount from Shari Redstone’s National Amusements.
Ellison previously said in an interview with CNBC soon after closing the Paramount acquisition that he hoped to keep Sheridan making shows for the company for many years to come.
Known for shows featuring old-school and frequently older male heroes often confronting changing times, Sheridan was initially seen as making shows that appealed more to middle America than coastal elites. However as his shows have become more popular, his audience in urban markets grew.
Besides his television shows, Sheridan’s film credits include “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water.”
While his shows are successful in the ratings, they are also costly to produce. In 2023, a Wall Street Journal article detailed the inner workings of Sheridan’s operation including how the writer-producer has far more freedom than most producers. He often shoots at ranches he owns in Texas where he can bill Paramount as much as $50,000 a week, the Journal reported.
NBCUniversal has also signed a first-look deal with Sheridan’s longtime production partner 101 Studios that takes effect in 2026.
Two U.S. Navy Aircraft From Same Carrier Crash Into South China Sea
Incidents coincide with President Trump’s visit to Asia and are under investigation
A U.S. military helicopter and a jet fighter from the USS Nimitz crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes on Sunday.
All five crew members from both aircraft were rescued and are in stable condition; the cause of the crashes is under investigation.
The incidents occurred during President Trump’s visit to Asia and after the USS Nimitz’s deployment to the Middle East.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—A U.S. military helicopter and a jet fighter from the same aircraft carrier crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other on Sunday.
The two aircraft’s five crew members were rescued and are in stable condition, the U.S. Pacific Fleet said on X. Both aircraft had taken off from the USS Nimitz, America’s oldest aircraft carrier that is returning to its home base on the U.S. West Coast for decommissioning scheduled for next year.
The cause of both crashes is under investigation, the fleet said.
The USS Nimitz had been deployed in the Middle East as part of the Pentagon’s response to attacks by Yemen-based Houthi rebels on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The crashes coincide with a visit by President Trump to Asia and follow a series of mishaps over the past year on another aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, during its deployment to the Middle East.
The Pacific Fleet said an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter went down in the South China Sea around 2:45 p.m. local time on Sunday while conducting what it said were routine operations. Thirty minutes later, an F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter crashed into the same waters, the fleet said. The jet’s two crew members ejected before the aircraft went down and, like the helicopter crew, were safely recovered by the carrier’s search and rescue teams.
The South China Sea is one of the world’s most contested waterways, where Beijing’s claims for territorial waters clash with those of several Southeast Asian nations. The U.S. military has worked with allies in the region to preserve freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, which is a thoroughfare for about one-third of global maritime trade.
Tuition fee rises may not stop universities in England going under, says regulator
Chair of the Office for Students told the FT most institutions were ‘on a journey to balancing income with expenditure’
A high-profile university could still collapse despite a rise in tuition fees “stabilising” the finances of higher education in England, the chair of the sector’s regulator has warned.
Edward Peck, chair of the Office for Students, told the Financial Times most universities were “on a journey to balancing income with expenditure” but that some institutions could yet fail, and called on vice-chancellors to strengthen governance to avoid insolvencies.
Peck’s comments come after the UK government last week laid out a long-awaited strategy for higher education, vowing to overhaul research funding, strengthen regulatory oversight and legislate for inflation-linked increases in tuition fees in a bid to improve the sector’s finances.
“Increasing fees linked to inflation has stabilised most institutions in their current position . . . but there is still risk,” Peck said, describing a cash crunch caused by alleged mismanagement at Dundee university this year as a “wake-up call” for the sector.
“The OfS has paid too little attention to governance,” he added, while urging universities to see themselves as “autonomous organisations” and improve financial oversight in order to minimise intervention by the regulator.
“That’s got to be our approach in the future, to be as collaborative as possible . . . There’s no benefit to them or us in having a stand-off . . . they need us more than we need them at the moment.”
Many of the proposed reforms in the post-16 education and skills white paper — which reiterated Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge that two-thirds of people enrol in a university or technical degree or an apprenticeship by the age of 25 — have been welcomed by universities.
But institutions have warned that plans to fund maintenance grants for domestic students through a levy on international student fees will dent the government’s drive to boost the economy and further damage their finances, already hit by the rise in employer national insurance contributions.
Peck said the white paper’s emphasis on “a shift back to vocational technical education” presented an opportunity to “rethink what it means to go to university”, with incentives for universities to specialise and align with the government’s industrial strategy.
Asked about the planned levy on international student fees, to be set out in the Budget next month, he claimed it would demonstrate the benefits of overseas students to the public but acknowledged it would require universities to make “difficult judgments” about raising international fees.
Overseas undergraduates are charged up to £38,000 a year in tuition, far above the £9,535 paid by their English peers.
The OfS, set up in 2018, has repeatedly criticised universities’ “overly ambitious” projections for international recruitment after the previous Conservative government tightened visa policy in a push to slash immigration, leaving some institutions on the brink of collapse.
Peck, a former vice-chancellor of Nottingham Trent university who joined the regulator in July, said that while the sector’s forecasts now showed more “realism” and worst-case scenarios had not come to pass, some providers would have to take further steps to ensure a “viable future”.
These would include new models, such as the proposed merger between the universities of Kent and Greenwich, Peck said, adding that he was aware of no other tie-ups at present but expected to see more in future.
Stricter governance regimes — a key concern of the white paper, which called for “diverse skills and capability” to reduce the risk of boards signing off “unachievable plans” — were also needed, he added.
“Some institutions have not got ahead of the problem fast enough, and persuaded themselves that their student projections or financial forecasts were going to be realistic when they weren’t,” said Peck, adding that the sector was quickly learning that “the professionalism needed to run a university is not that dissimilar to a large business”.
Although the OfS preferred a university-led approach, ministers and the regulator would “need to give more consideration” to shaping the sector if providers were slow to act on the white paper’s recommendations, Peck noted.
The OfS plans to take a more hands-on approach in some areas, such as franchising and exploitation of students by recruitment agents, and the white paper pledged to increase the regulator’s powers in law.
Peck said a stronger remit would allow the watchdog to root out “bad actors in the system” more quickly.
Delivering the government’s ambitious reforms would probably require a bigger budget, but the OfS had set efficiency targets that would allow funding to be recycled into frontline regulation, he added.
Fees from regulated institutions accounted for most of the body’s £33.2mn budget in the 2024-25 financial year, with an extra £1.5mn in government funding to support its work on financial sustainability.
The OfS has been criticised for its pro-competition philosophy and lack of intervention, with a highly critical review last year calling on it to take a “more proactive” approach to “emerging risk”.
Peck admitted that there was “a lot of truth” in the idea that the OfS had “misunderstood distance for independence” and vowed to better engage with the sector, noting that it did “a great job for students most of the time”.
Chinese drugmakers shift from copycats to global innovators
Reforms, faster development and lower costs have turbocharged growth
Chinese drugmakers have struck a record number of deals this year to sell their assets overseas, sending biotech stocks surging as investors bet the country will become a driving force in global drug discovery.
There have been 93 overseas licensing deals in the first eight months of 2025, worth a combined $85bn, according to Chinese data provider PharmCube — with domestic companies selling the international rights to homegrown drugs. The total value of deals is on track to hit its sixth consecutive annual record, underscoring the speed at which the country’s pharmaceutical sector is internationalising.
Meanwhile, the rapid growth of clinical trials and drugs in early-stage development from companies, including Jiangsu Hengrui and Akeso, indicates that the trend of Chinese biotechs selling their drugs to global pharmaceutical companies is set to continue — a stark reversal from a decade ago.
“Ten years ago, China didn’t have a biotech sector to speak of. For the most part, the companies were developing generic drugs. Fast forward to today, and every big pharma is doing most of their shopping in China for novel therapies,” said Brad Loncar, an expert on Chinese biotech.
Beijing introduced reforms in the mid-2010s that made it easier for biotech companies to raise capital and pursue innovation. These changes, coupled with the relative speed and low cost of doing drug development and clinical trials, have turbocharged the industry’s growth. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng biotech index has surged more than 80 per cent this year on growing investor excitement.
Jiangsu Hengrui
China’s transformation from a copycat manufacturer of drugs developed overseas to a hub of homegrown research is exemplified by Jiangsu Hengrui. Founded in 1970, it spent the first two decades as a small-scale state-owned manufacturer of low-cost antiseptics. In the 1990s, it started developing generic anti-cancer drugs. It was privatised in 1997 and began investing in building its own research capabilities. Today, it has one of the most diversified pipelines in the country, spanning weight-loss therapies, oncology drugs and Alzheimer’s treatments.
Tony Ren, Head of Asia Healthcare Research at Macquarie Capital, said Hengrui was “a bellwether” for China’s pharmaceutical industry.
“The company offers a rare combination of proven R&D processes, a number of global outlicensing deals, China-centric sales skills, professional management and sound corporate governance,” he said.
Hengrui has struck licensing agreements with Merck, Braveheart Bio and Glenmark in the past year alone. In July, it agreed a deal with UK pharmaceutical company GSK to develop up to 12 medicines.
“In China, you can scale and test medicines in human beings much faster than in the US or Europe,” said Loncar. “If you have an idea for a drug, you can get an answer about whether it works a year or two earlier in China.”
For many Chinese biotechs, the surge in international partnerships has provided much-needed capital after a difficult few years marked by drug pricing reforms that squeezed profit margins on domestic sales.
Zhao Bing, a pharmaceutical analyst at Huajing Securities, said that Chinese biotechs can be vulnerable to fluctuations in revenue from licensing agreements, which are tied to achieving specific milestones in clinical trials while also funding much of their growing research and development spending.
Hengrui’s international deals have highlighted a concern for Chinese pharma companies seeking to get international approval for new drugs. The US Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly rejected one of Hengrui’s cancer drugs, citing questions about quality control at its manufacturing sites.
Akeso
Guangdong-based Akeso has captured investor attention for its advances in oncology. Ren described the company as “very good at drug discovery and clinical execution”.
Akeso’s lead therapy, ivonescimab, has been greeted with a mix of enthusiasm and scepticism. The bispecific antibody, which targets two cancer pathways, was approved in China last year — the first therapy of its kind to reach the market — sending its shares up more than 90 per cent in 2025. It was initially approved for use in patients with lung cancer who had already undergone treatment, but its application has since been expanded.
In Chinese trials, ivonescimab outperformed Merck’s Keytruda, the world’s best-selling cancer drug, in preventing tumour progression. “There’s a bull-bear debate between people who believe the Chinese data,” said Loncar. “The potential value of this drug is exponential if it is better than the greatest cancer drug of all time.”
However, in a recent global Phase 3 trial, the therapy failed to replicate those results among North American and European patients, with their cancers returning and advancing faster than in Chinese studies. Analysts say it is too early to judge the drug’s global prospects, as Akeso expands testing for other cancers, including colorectal.
While ivonescimab remains the company’s key drug, Akeso also has a broad pipeline across oncology, autoimmune and metabolic diseases. Analysts highlight its growing focus on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) — these deliver targeted chemotherapy directly to cancer cells, minimising damage to healthy tissue.
ADCs have become a focus for China’s biotech sector, playing to its strengths in large-scale lab experimentation. “Developing ADCs involves huge amounts of trial and error,” said Zhao. “It’s an engineering problem — and China has a surplus of engineers.”
Legend Biotech
Legend Biotech is based in New Jersey, but has its roots in China and its biggest shareholder remains China-based GenScript. Legend is among China’s leading gene therapy developers. It rose to prominence after a 2017 partnership with Johnson & Johnson to develop a CAR-T therapy for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. The landmark deal came in for some criticism at the time as a risky bet on China’s then nascent biotech industry, but it helped to spark the current wave of licensing deals.
While US groups have poured resources into gene therapy, many have been held back by soaring costs and regulatory hurdles in their home market. In China, by contrast, regulators have supported the field by allowing earlier human trials and more flexibility in how they are designed.
Legend’s Carvykti therapy with J&J — which aims to re-engineer a patient’s immune cells to target and destroy cancer — was approved last year in China for patients with myeloma that had recurred after previous treatments.
But while Chinese regulators have nurtured innovation, low domestic drug prices have forced companies to look abroad to recoup investment. “One huge disappointment has been that the commercial sales for China’s drug sector have never bloomed,” said Loncar.
“It has some of the lowest prices for drugs in the world. Nearly all of the success of these companies — and their booming stock prices — hinges on their ability to succeed in the US.”
US government debt burden on track to overtake Italy’s, IMF figures show
Washington to become more indebted than European nations known for fragile public finances for first time this century
The US government’s debt burden is on track to exceed levels in both Italy and Greece for the first time this century, according to IMF forecasts, underscoring the parlous state of America’s public finances.
General government gross debt in the US will rise by more than 20 percentage points from now to reach 143.4 per cent of the country’s GDP by the final year of the decade, IMF forecasts show, exceeding previous records set after the pandemic.
That comes as the IMF estimates that the US budget deficit will hover above 7 per cent of GDP every year until 2030 — the highest of any rich nation tracked by the fund for this year and the rest of the decade.
Italy and Greece have long been highlighted by economists for their fragile public finances. Both countries were at the heart of the euro area sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012, with Greece requiring a bailout and restructuring overseen by the IMF and EU.
But government debt burdens in both European countries are projected to be on a downward trajectory at the end of the decade as they keep a tight grip on their budget deficits.
By contrast, the US debt-to-GDP ratio will still be rising in 2030, according to the IMF data released this month, with the Congressional Budget Office expecting it to increase for decades thereafter.
“It is a symbolic moment, and according to the CBO the projections are for US debt to carry on rising — that is the impact of running perpetual deficits,” said Mahmood Pradhan, head of global macro at the Amundi Investment Institute.
“But Italy has a weaker growth outlook than the US, so this should not be read as meaning Italy is out of the woods.”
As it boasts the global reserve currency, the US has much more borrowing capacity than European nations.
However, said James Knightley, US economist at ING, “many US politicians and investors look down somewhat on Europe and its slow growth and struggling economies, but when you have metrics like this, the conversation changes”.
The US federal deficit expanded rapidly under the Biden administration, despite unemployment hovering around record lows. The IMF projections show officials believe the Trump administration is doing little to address the problem.
Joe Lavorgna, economic counsellor to US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, said this month that the Trump administration had made progress in cutting spending and raising revenues through tariffs on US imports.
“What people are missing is the fact that much of the improvement in this year’s fiscal deficit has happened from April onwards,” Lavorgna told the Financial Times.
US gross general government debt has remained below the levels of both Italy and Greece since at least the beginning of the millennium, according to the IMF data. The gauge is a broad measure of indebtedness that includes both central and local government.
An alternative measure — net government debt, which offsets financial assets — shows the US still around 10 percentage points below Italian levels of indebtedness at the end of the decade.
Joe Gagnon, of the Peterson Institute think-tank, said the net measure was a better read on the US’s debt burden, as it closely reflects the portion of debt that investors need to hold. “But this net measure is rising too,” he said.
By contrast, the IMF expects Italy’s net debt burden to be falling from 2028 onwards. It did not give net debt projections for Greece.
Italy has long struggled to curb its debt load because of feeble GDP growth rates, with the IMF forecasting growth of just 0.5 per cent this year and 0.8 per cent in 2026.
Still, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has won plaudits from foreign investors for its efforts to pare back Rome’s budget deficit. This year, Italy is forecast to end the year with a primary surplus of 0.9 per cent of GDP, higher than its initially forecast 0.5 per cent.
Rome expects a fiscal deficit — which was 8.1 per cent of GDP in 2022, the year Meloni took office — of 3 per cent of GDP this year, which would allow Italy to exit the EU’s excess deficit proceedings a year earlier than planned.
“There is a continuing, cautious approach to fiscal policy,” said Filippo Taddei, senior European economist at Goldman Sachs.
DBRS Morningstar upgraded Italy’s sovereign rating from “A low” to “BBB high” this month. Analysts say Italy’s quest to strengthen its public finances has been buoyed by its access to more than €200bn in funds from the EU’s pandemic recovery programme.
Carlo Capuano, deputy head of the sovereign rating team at Scope Ratings, said Italy also benefited from a pick-up in the labour market and higher tax collection, buoyed in part by growing use of digital payments.
By contrast, Gagnon said the US political situation made it difficult to see how the country’s yawning deficits could be narrowed, no matter who was in power.
“Democrats don’t want to cut spending and Republicans don’t want to raise taxes,” said Gagnon. “They both want to cling on to that. I don’t know when that dynamic will change.”
Maury Obstfeld, a former IMF chief economist who is now a professor at Berkeley, said any forecast that the US’s fiscal position was sustainable “has to be based on wishful thinking about future US productivity growth, tariff revenue, demographics or interest rates, or possibly all of the above”.
