Stacey Smith
Senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and co-host of Bloomberg Businessweek’s Everybody’s Business podcast; formerly a host and correspondent for NPR’s Planet Money and The Indicator, covering business, economics, productivity, and the future of work.
Cerebras Seeks $4.8 Billion as AI Compute Demand Lifts IPO Market
Bloomberg Technology’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow framed Cerebras’ upsized IPO as part of a wider shift in which AI infrastructure is drawing capital across chips, data centers, power, payments and security. Bloomberg’s Rebecca Torrence said the Cerebras offering was more than 20 times oversubscribed, while other guests argued that investor demand is being supported by earnings growth, capacity constraints and expanding use cases rather than chips alone. The broadcast’s through-line was that the AI buildout is becoming a market-wide infrastructure trade, with financing, energy supply, stablecoins, cybersecurity and local hardware all pulled into the same investment case.
Rising Productivity Has Not Settled AI’s Role in the Labor Market
Bloomberg’s Stacey Vanek Smith describes a $400 wager between Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Northwestern’s Robert Gordon over whether US productivity growth will average 1.8% from 2020 to 2030. Smith says recent data, including 2.9% year-over-year growth in early 2026, suggest productivity is improving, but she cautions that the figures do not show how much is due to AI. The central dispute is whether AI is making workers more productive, or whether layoffs are raising output per hour by reducing labor hours.