Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia Edition · Oct 2, 2026 · 22m · 16m saved
With Yukio Kani, chairman and CEO of JERA
JERA, the company Bloomberg's own host calls "the world's largest gas trader," just agreed to help build a $15 billion AI data center outside Tokyo — its first step into a business it has never been in before.
Most utilities sell power and stop there. JERA's chairman says the hyperscalers now building data centers need speed more than anything else, and that his company's gas plants already have the land and grid connections to give it to them.
"The key is speed to power. The hyperscalers really want to have power within the one or two years." — Yukio Kani
Kani has run JERA, a joint venture between TEPCO and Chubu Electric that is the world's largest buyer of liquefied natural gas, through the energy-price shock of the past four years, and is now betting the same LNG and power infrastructure can be repurposed for an entirely different customer, on Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia Edition.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it. 22 minutes of audio, 6 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
China's consumer stocks are down about 18% over six months while tech has risen the same amount
Bank of America's strategist jokingly calls it "selling what people consume and buying what machines consume"
The yuan just hit its strongest level in about four years, even as stocks and bonds signal caution
Japan's Tokyo inflation print came in hot, and economists now expect the Bank of Japan to hike in December, not October
JERA, Dell and a data-center builder are putting up a $15 billion AI data center near Tokyo, backed by Apollo Global
JERA's own math implies a $150 billion future build-out if it scales its AI power plans to four gigawatts
LNG benchmark prices have more than doubled in a year, with Europe's gas storage already low ahead of winter
1. People Sell, Machines Buy
China's Golden Week holiday began Thursday, and Bloomberg's Winnie Su told the Daybreak Asia podcast the usual pre-holiday bump in consumer spending has not shown up in consumer stocks.
"We're talking about consumer stocks down about 18% in the past six months. And the tech sector actually has risen pretty much the same amount during that period." — Winnie Su
Su said a Bank of America strategist summed up the divergence for her.
"This year's trend is a lot about selling what people consume and buying what machines consume." — Winnie Su
She attributed the consumer weakness to soft property and retail-sales data from August and said investors are not expecting a large new stimulus package, because Beijing appears focused on hitting its existing growth target rather than exceeding it.
