logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2022
31m 43s

Money Talks: Moonshooters

The Economist
About this episode

This week Microsoft announced its biggest ever deal, spending $69bn on games publisher Activision Blizzard to advance its ambitions in gaming and the metaverse. The world’s most powerful tech companies are racing to splash their cash on frontier technologies. We crunch the numbers on where they are investing their billions and ask whether these new corporate moonshots will supercharge productivity or further entrench the giants’ dominance in the future.


Rachana Shanbhogue hosts, with Kevin Scott, chief technology officer of Microsoft, and Margrethe Vestager, competition commissioner for the European Union. 


Sign up for our new weekly newsletter dissecting the big themes in markets, business and the economy at economist.com/moneytalks 

For full access to print, digital and audio editions, subscribe to The Economist at www.economist.com/podcastoffer



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next
Dec 2021
Money Talks: 2021 unwrapped
From Ever Given to Evergrande, via empty crisp packets and the metaverse, host Henry Tricks leads a brave band of The Economist’s finest through the tribulations and triumphs of the past year in business, finance and economics. The team unpack the data that made their jaws drop, ... Show More
32m 57s
Dec 2021
Money Talks: Meet the cryptokings
Four men hold the keys to a $2trn market. Our finance correspondent Matthieu Favas speaks to some of the most powerful people in the world of cryptocurrencies—the founders of the most important crypto exchanges—to find out what it takes to stay on top in the most volatile market ... Show More
35m 36s
Dec 2021
Money Talks: The not-so-great resignation
The idea that the pandemic has prompted people to quit their jobs en masse fills corporate earnings calls, headlines and social media. But do the data hold up? Host Patrick Lane investigates what is really going on in the labour market. Will the Biden administration usher in a ne ... Show More
28m 37s
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2023
Money Talks: The trillion-dollar question
For over three decades, the people most excited about Nvidia’s chips have been gamers. They used its graphics cards to render games in super-high definition. But over the last 15 years Nvidia has slowly established itself as the go-to provider of chips and software to the booming ... Show More
43m 12s
Jan 2022
Microsoft and the Metaverse
Microsoft announced this week that it was acquiring Activision Blizzard, the maker of video games such as Call of Duty and Candy Crush, in a deal valued at nearly $70 billion.Microsoft, the owner of Xbox, said the acquisition was a step toward gaining a foothold in the metaverse. ... Show More
23m 2s
Jun 2021
Money Talks: Ride shares
The company that owns China’s leading ride-sharing app is expected to float on the stockmarket in New York next month, in what could be the biggest IPO in the world this year. We examine its ambitions and its plans to beat the competition. And, what about the inflation in the roo ... Show More
24m 20s
Nov 2022
Money Talks: The tech reckoning
Most of America’s biggest technology firms are having a bad time - and not just the ones who have been recently acquired by a mercurial billionaire. More than $1tn has been wiped from their market value in recent weeks. Is the sell-off just investor jitters? Or is it a symptom of ... Show More
35m 28s
Jun 2024
How Nvidia Became the World’s Most Valuable Company
Nvidia has dethroned Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company! Tune into The Morning Brief podcast to explore its meteoric rise, its dominance in the AI sector, and the strategic brilliance of CEO Jensen Huang. With a $3.335 trillion market cap and GPUs in high deman ... Show More
31m 21s
Jan 2024
The Intelligence: Workers of the world, delight!
Labour markets are changing in all kinds of ways, thanks to ageing societies, hot-running economies and technological boosts. It all adds up to a golden age for workers. As part of our series on democracy around the world, we examine the coming election in Britain (09:35). And In ... Show More
23m 30s
Jan 2024
The Intelligence: Workers of the world, delight!
Labour markets are changing in all kinds of ways, thanks to ageing societies, hot-running economies and technological boosts. It all adds up to a golden age for workers. As part of our series on democracy around the world, we examine the coming election in Britain (09:35). And In ... Show More
23m 30s
Apr 2024
Big Tech Faces Earnings Test
P.M. Edition for April 22. The so-called Magnificent Seven stocks shed a combined $950 billion in market value last week, the largest on record. Wall Street Journal banking reporter Charley Grant says upcoming earnings offer an opportunity to stop the slide. And OpenAI CEO Sam Al ... Show More
12m 40s
Jul 2023
A big win for Microsoft’s Activision deal
Jeremy Hunt has ordered ministers to find more than £2bn to fund public sector pay rises this year, JPMorgan is trying to scoop up Silicon Valley Bank’s clients, and a US court denies a watchdog’s request to block the Microsoft-Activision merger Mentioned in this podcast:Nvidia i ... Show More
9m 49s
Oct 2023
Money Talks: Goldin rules
It’s that time of year when an economist is woken by an early call from the Nobel Committee in Sweden. This year, it was the turn of Claudia Goldin, whose work has revolutionised our understanding of gender in the labour market. And on this week’s podcast, we speak to her.Hosts: ... Show More
44m 59s