Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is a
Speaker 1: live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New
Speaker 1: York and Eva Low in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Warner Brothers reopens negotiations
Speaker 2: with Paramount Skuidance after it proposed or hinted at raising
Speaker 2: its bid and sweetening other terms of its offer plus
Speaker 2: renewed selling in several tech giants are weighing on stocks
Speaker 2: with lingering anxiety over the outlook for AI, and Thrive
Speaker 2: Capital raises more than ten billion dollars in its largest
Speaker 2: fund ever, giving the firm an expanded war chest to
Speaker 2: invest in AI. Welcome to Bloomberg Tech, and this is
Speaker 2: what markets look like right now. We've carried over the
Speaker 2: holiday weekend in the US to the same anxiety and
Speaker 2: we're going to talk later in the program about the
Speaker 2: contradiction right now hard of the AI trade and as
Speaker 2: that one hundred off five percentage point chips kind of
Speaker 2: dragging us down mag seven Bitcoin at sixty seven thousand
Speaker 2: US dollars per token. Of course, it continues to trade
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven, but over the weekend, a kind
Speaker 2: of three day period there was a lot of geopolitical
Speaker 2: tension driving it. Our top story is Warner Brothers Discovery
Speaker 2: reopening talks with paramount S Guidars. Netflix has issued them
Speaker 2: a waiver they can do so. It's a seven day
Speaker 2: waiver through the February twenty third, by which point they
Speaker 2: either need to give a.
Speaker 3: Sweetened, improved bid or something else needs to happen. Let's
Speaker 3: get the details.
Speaker 2: Bloombose Lucas share leads our screen time team and coverage
Speaker 2: of media and entertainment. This is actually a little bit
Speaker 2: more difficult to understand that then simply negotiations reopening. Talk
Speaker 2: us through the deadlines, the timeline and what's new Lucas well.
Speaker 4: The news is obviously that Warner Brothers decided to talk
Speaker 4: to Paramount. They have not been speaking for a couple
Speaker 4: of months. Paramount kicked off this wholesale process last year
Speaker 4: when it kind of sent over an an uninvited to
Speaker 4: offer basically for all of Warner Brothers Discovery. It then
Speaker 4: spent a couple of months increasing its offer for every
Speaker 4: few weeks.
Speaker 5: Trying to win.
Speaker 4: It lost the Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery has spent
Speaker 4: the last couple of months sort of trashing Paramount. Both
Speaker 4: sides kind of waging war in public, if you will.
Speaker 4: But Paramount has gradually increased more and more pressure, addressed
Speaker 4: more of the board's concerns, and is now at a
Speaker 4: point where I think Warner Brothers Discovery feels both out
Speaker 4: of pressure from its shareholders and just because they're sort
Speaker 4: of tired of this, that they want to engage with
Speaker 4: Paramount for a week, see what happens, and if they
Speaker 4: can reach a better deal then obviously you know that
Speaker 4: the board is going to do its fiduciary.
Speaker 2: Duty, and we had some reporting about this over the
Speaker 2: weekend before the formal announcement this morning. Part of this
Speaker 2: is one of Paramount's bankers signaling to the board that
Speaker 2: there will be an improved offer, but that they haven't
Speaker 2: yet made their best offer.
Speaker 3: What do we know about that?
Speaker 4: Well, Paramount has been saying for a couple of months
Speaker 4: that its offer is not last and final, and Warner
Speaker 4: Brothers Discovery shareholders have been waiting for Paramount to increase
Speaker 4: the offer from the thirty dollars a share. To your point,
Speaker 4: some a representative of Paramount's guide Ace had indicated to
Speaker 4: someone on the board of Directors of Warner Brothers Discovery
Speaker 4: that they would go up to thirty one dollars a share.
Speaker 4: My suspicion is that thirty one dollars a share still
Speaker 4: won't cut it. So the question is Paramount going to
Speaker 4: go to thirty two, thirty three, thirty four, thirty five,
Speaker 4: and at what point is that beyond what Netflix is
Speaker 4: willing to match, because keep in mind that Netflix still
Speaker 4: has a deal with Warner Brothers Discovery and has the
Speaker 4: right to match any superior Paramount offer.
Speaker 3: Netflix has come out with.
Speaker 2: I think we're talking about this offline, A strong statement,
Speaker 2: a lengthy statement, just summarize what Netflix's position is here
Speaker 2: and where they fit into the idea that negotiations now
Speaker 2: are open for a window of time between Warner Brothers
Speaker 2: Discovery and Paramount's guidance.
Speaker 4: Well, some of those sort of public hostilities or disagreements
Speaker 4: that I referred to earlier, I think, or what Netflix
Speaker 4: is really seeking to attack with it state.
Speaker 3: You know, they are getting very tired.
Speaker 6: Of Paramount saying that Paramount.
Speaker 4: Has a clearer path to regulatory approval and offers a
Speaker 4: superior deal. And so Netflix goes through all the reasons
Speaker 4: why regulators might be concerned about a Paramount deal including
Speaker 4: some of their international financing and the concentration owning two
Speaker 4: different movie studios. And that is also a jumping off
Speaker 4: point for Netflix to argue that the Paramount deal would
Speaker 4: be worse for Hollywood because Paramount would be a heavily
Speaker 4: indebted company that would have to cut billions of dollars
Speaker 4: in costs, whereas Netflix is buying a studio that it
Speaker 4: doesn't have in house, and so it would preserve most
Speaker 4: of those jobs.
Speaker 2: We're just showing the bi Bloomberg Intelligence react, by the way,
Speaker 2: which is pretty punchy. Netflix should walk away as Warner
Speaker 2: m and A drama heats up. Maybe we'll get to
Speaker 2: Githa later in the week. Bloom most Lucas, sure you've
Speaker 2: led the way on the reporting on this one.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Let's go back to markets.
Speaker 2: Jitters around the software sector are sending investors in search
Speaker 2: of safety. Some of the industry's biggest names have lost
Speaker 2: hundreds of billions of dollars in market value so far
Speaker 2: this year to spending anxiety. Bank of America's latest fund
Speaker 2: manager survey shows a record share of investors think companies
Speaker 2: are overspending. This as the four largest US tech firms
Speaker 2: project roughly six hundred and fifty billion in combined spending
Speaker 2: this year. Let's get the latest with Ted Watson bed
Speaker 2: managing partner. This is the heart of the AI trade
Speaker 2: right now. The contradiction in AI either AI is going
Speaker 2: to change the old economy in the new economy or
Speaker 2: we are in an AI bubble and for lots of
Speaker 2: people both can't be true at the same time kind
Speaker 2: of reflected in the trading of recent days.
Speaker 3: Where do you sit on that dead I.
Speaker 7: Think if you if you look at the agentic acceleration,
Speaker 7: this is something you can't ignore in relationship to traditional sets.
Speaker 7: I mean, the problem with the reason why the IGV
Speaker 7: is down over twenty two percent year.
Speaker 6: Of to day.
Speaker 7: Is people have a real worry on how to model
Speaker 7: these traditional SaaS companies from a free cash flow perspective,
Speaker 7: a multiple free cash.
Speaker 6: And that's the big problem.
Speaker 7: I think over the weekend two days ago when OpenAI
Speaker 7: bought open claw, that just gave more credence to the
Speaker 7: segentic explosion. If you look at some of the token
Speaker 7: growth that you're seeing, and this is why the cloud
Speaker 7: titans can't keep up with compute demand is some of
Speaker 7: the token growth that you're seeing our triple digits month
Speaker 7: over month. This is not sequential. This is not you
Speaker 7: over year, this is month over month growth.
Speaker 2: Can I just jump in there real quick? So I
Speaker 2: didn't expect you to go to open ai, open claw.
Speaker 2: That blew up right over the weekend on social media.
Speaker 2: And what I'm trying to do is understand the story
Speaker 2: of how public market investors are treating this versus what
Speaker 2: we see in private markets that clearly is a consolidation
Speaker 2: of different platforms, right is try and unpick that for me?
Speaker 7: I think it's it's really a debate between the old
Speaker 7: and the new. And I think when you when you
Speaker 7: can't model the old going back to that SaaS assumption
Speaker 7: on free cash flow multiples and you're looking at this
Speaker 7: acceleration on a gentic people just are getting out of
Speaker 7: the way, to be quite honest with you, and they're
Speaker 7: going to six other sectors that are more infrastructure related.
Speaker 7: And the feeling is that some of the traditional SaaS
Speaker 7: companies will have problems going from a traditional SaaS model
Speaker 7: to a consumption model, which is.
Speaker 6: All the agent base.
Speaker 7: And it's a mess. It's an absolute mess. If you're
Speaker 7: a software investor trying to model these.
Speaker 2: Companies ted with respects, I don't I don't think you
Speaker 2: really answer my question, which is, you know, the contradiction
Speaker 2: of the old and new economy software more recently being impacted.
Speaker 2: And then are we or are we not in an
Speaker 2: AI bubble? You mentioned cash flows. One of the introsting
Speaker 2: pieces of math that people are doing is the capital
Speaker 2: expenditures commitment of the hyperscalers and its impact on cash
Speaker 2: flow or proportion of cash flow. Basically cash flow is
Speaker 2: getting wiped out. How do you feel about that?
Speaker 7: I think it's a problem X of Google and Meta
Speaker 7: which have their supporting businesses on the advertising that can
Speaker 7: actually make up that free cash flow where I get
Speaker 7: pushbacks names like Amazon and even Microsoft to some degree,
Speaker 7: to a more limited degree, but if you look at Amazon,
Speaker 7: I mean they essentially had to lay off a very
Speaker 7: large component of their white collar employment based to maintain
Speaker 7: even getting to neutral free cash flows.
Speaker 6: So it is an issue.
Speaker 7: One of the things that we are not talking about
Speaker 7: is memory. And when you have this token, I would
Speaker 7: say acceleration and you have inference also expanding. We have
Speaker 7: a huge memory problem and I would almost put it
Speaker 7: at a crisis level where you're not going to have
Speaker 7: enough memory to support this compute over the next two years.
Speaker 6: That's a real issue out there.
Speaker 2: Next week you can video Ports reports its earnings and
Speaker 2: it's the biggest beneficiary of the capsule expendensis numbers we
Speaker 2: talked about. To this point, it has shown massive real
Speaker 2: top line growth. What would it need to show evidence
Speaker 2: to carry the rest of the market with it next
Speaker 2: Wednesday evening.
Speaker 7: I think number one, they have to they have to
Speaker 7: assure investors that they don't have a memory problem, which
Speaker 7: they don't. I mean, Jensen was so far ahead of
Speaker 7: this memory issue by locking up supply.
Speaker 6: That's number one.
Speaker 7: Number two is some of the blackwall numbers as well
Speaker 7: as transitioning.
Speaker 6: The timing of Ruben is also very very important.
Speaker 7: This is a real change an infrastructure on Reuben, and
Speaker 7: I think anything that they I can assure investors that's
Speaker 7: on track, and the adoption of Ruben from a system
Speaker 7: perspective is now cannibalizing any of their business as it
Speaker 7: relates to for example, Google's TPUs or infant soldiers.
Speaker 6: They've got to play in both realms.
Speaker 2: Ted Mortenson of BED, I think you've set us up
Speaker 2: for a number of weeks to come, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Indeed they're coming up.
Speaker 2: Fords charges ahead with a more affordable next gen EV
Speaker 2: shares a little softer, but came back after headlines hit
Speaker 2: We're gonna go under the hood next Sploomberg Tech. Ford
Speaker 2: may have taken a nineteen point five billion dollar hit
Speaker 2: to overhaul its EV business last year, but the US
Speaker 2: car maker is out to prove that it hasn't retreated
Speaker 2: altogether from electric vehicles. For reveal details of how it's
Speaker 2: engineering a next gen EV platform to go further on
Speaker 2: a single charge and still start at thirty thousand US dollies.
Speaker 3: To do this, the.
Speaker 2: Company's head of EV's Doug Field, told Bloomberg it had
Speaker 2: to start with a clean sheet for its organization and
Speaker 2: design process. Let's get more with bloombergs Keith Norton, who
Speaker 2: has covered this company inside and out since nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: And it's important to be specific here, right. This was
Speaker 2: an engineering exercise, the Universal EV. What did they actually
Speaker 2: do to engineer out cost and stay in the game.
Speaker 8: Well, as you said, they did it far from Detroit.
Speaker 8: This was set up in California. It was led by
Speaker 8: Alan Clark, who's a former Tesla engineer, and they've just
Speaker 8: they sweat the details. It's like improvement by a thousand cuts.
Speaker 8: And they've managed to shrink the size of the battery
Speaker 8: on the CV. The battery is the most expensive component
Speaker 8: of an electric vehicle, while at the same time extending
Speaker 8: the range by about fifty miles. That's just one of
Speaker 8: many engineering gains they made, which is the reason they
Speaker 8: can field this vehicle at thirty thousand dollars as a
Speaker 8: starting price, which is twenty thousand dollars below the average
Speaker 8: price of a new Current America today.
Speaker 2: We spent about forty five minutes on the phone with
Speaker 2: Doug Field, which was really interesting exercise.
Speaker 3: There is a pathway here, right.
Speaker 2: It starts twenty twenty seven with a pickup truck and
Speaker 2: they go basically from skunk works to reintegrating back into
Speaker 2: the might of Ford with distant maybe distant Keith ambitions
Speaker 2: on L three systems. What's the sort of timeline from
Speaker 2: here of this UEV platform please.
Speaker 8: Yeah, not exactly that far distant. They're going to come
Speaker 8: with the Eyes off the Road Level three semi autonomy
Speaker 8: in twenty twenty eight, so a year after they launched
Speaker 8: this vehicle, they'll offer buyers the option of getting this
Speaker 8: semi autonomous size off the road, hands off the wheel feature.
Speaker 8: So their point is they can put a feature like
Speaker 8: that on an inexpensive car in the thirty thousands, which
Speaker 8: is unusual. Normally those sorts of bands technology features show
Speaker 8: up first on very high end luxury cars closer to
Speaker 8: six figures.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: The approach from Ford thus far has been to electrify
Speaker 2: the big winners, thinking mocky, thinking f one fifty lightning
Speaker 2: that that's gone now, right, and the focus is that's
Speaker 2: gone right, and the focus is China. So put that
Speaker 2: context out there for us. Why this approach ground up,
Speaker 2: starting from fresh is the right way to counter that?
Speaker 2: The cost basis of a Chinese EV company.
Speaker 8: Right, So the advantage the Chinese have is in price.
Speaker 8: I mean, there's a Chinese EV in China for ten
Speaker 8: thousand dollars. Not likely that would come here. But they
Speaker 8: have a big price advantage even if you make a
Speaker 8: car ready for the US market. But they also have
Speaker 8: a technology advantage. They have, you know, cars that are
Speaker 8: essentially an extension of your of your smartphone smart cars,
Speaker 8: So you need to compete against them both on price
Speaker 8: and technology. That's what Ford says it's doing with this
Speaker 8: because of the approach they've taken. It's not just an
Speaker 8: affordable vehicle, they say, but it's a desirable vehicle with
Speaker 8: lots of good features.
Speaker 2: Bloombers Keith Norton, who again has led the charge on
Speaker 2: covering this industry and this company for a long time,
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Apple.
Speaker 2: It's touting an in person experience event in New York, Shanghai,
Speaker 2: and London for a March fourth product launch, suggesting a
Speaker 2: lower key showcase than often held at its Cupatino campus.
Speaker 2: Let's get out to Bloomberg's Consumer Tech and Apple Managing
Speaker 2: editor Mark Gumman. There's the event and how they'll do
Speaker 2: it right. Different to the kind of keynote style format
Speaker 2: in Coupatino, but it's harder the products. And I think
Speaker 2: you were on very recently kind of telling us what
Speaker 2: we should expect from this.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a lot in the pipeline for the first
Speaker 9: half of this year. I don't think that everything is
Speaker 9: going to show up at this event. There's just too
Speaker 9: much stuff for you to have in one showcase. But
Speaker 9: if you think about why would you need an event.
Speaker 9: Why would you need an in person experience in three
Speaker 9: different places London, Shanghai, New York. Right these are as
Speaker 9: big of multi metropolitan areas in the world as you
Speaker 9: can get. It means they're launching something pretty significant. So
Speaker 9: my eyes are on this new low cost MacBook. It'll
Speaker 9: be in the seven hundred to nine hundred dollars range.
Speaker 9: It will be their first MacBook powered by an iPhone chip.
Speaker 9: It'll be slightly smaller than the MacBook Air, but the
Speaker 9: price point is a really big deal. This has the
Speaker 9: potential to really overshadow Chromebooks and some of the PCs
Speaker 9: we're seeing out of the Windows market right now.
Speaker 3: So this is a really big deal.
Speaker 9: The other new things that are in the pipeline for
Speaker 9: the first half of this year new MacBook pros, new
Speaker 9: MacBook Airs, the iPhone seventeen e, as well as new
Speaker 9: iPad entry level and iPad Air models. I would think
Speaker 9: that we would at least get the seventeen e by
Speaker 9: this event at the latest.
Speaker 2: I want to say something up for our audience because
Speaker 2: you put me on the spot the other day. I'm
Speaker 2: running a MacBook Pro with M four that's my work
Speaker 2: one at home I've got a twenty twenty macair running
Speaker 2: in one, and you quite rightly pointed out I should
Speaker 2: upgrade when they hold these events. How quickly do the
Speaker 2: new products hit the shelves quickly?
Speaker 9: When it's a spec bump, they're rolling out within a
Speaker 9: few days. The longest delay is usually about a week,
Speaker 9: two weeks maybe maximum, but it's usually pretty quick.
Speaker 2: Flamous Mark German, who's been on top of the reporting
Speaker 2: on this well in advance, thank you very much. Coming up,
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss just how big a market the
Speaker 2: physical AI space can be.
Speaker 3: That's where Na over from Berkley's. That's next. This has
Speaker 3: been bog.
Speaker 2: Tech, a report from Berkley's projects that by twenty thirty five,
Speaker 2: physical AI could be a trillion dollar market thanks to
Speaker 2: advances in brains, brawn and batteries. So where are the
Speaker 2: investment opportunities along that value chains? I need to tuttle
Speaker 2: over Barkley's head of thematic if I see see research,
Speaker 2: and the author of that report joins us now in
Speaker 2: many ways, so I need to say it's an update.
Speaker 2: You know you're keeping the research alive. So we have
Speaker 2: the one trillion addressable market twenty thirty five. But digging
Speaker 2: down into the notes, actually, autonomous driving is a really
Speaker 2: big part of this for you.
Speaker 10: That's right.
Speaker 11: Our latest research shows that physical AI could really become
Speaker 11: a trillion dollar market by twenty thirty five. That's ten
Speaker 11: times higher than where the market is currently valued at.
Speaker 11: And that trillion dollar estimate spans four key robotics categories,
Speaker 11: autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, advanced automation, and drums.
Speaker 10: And Look, while I have.
Speaker 11: Really strong conviction that the late twenty twenties and the
Speaker 11: early twenty thirties will be the decade of the robot
Speaker 11: I also think that growth and adoption.
Speaker 10: Will likely come in stages rather than all at once.
Speaker 11: I can see how autonomous vikos could lead the trend
Speaker 11: and said the stage, And in fact, nearly half of
Speaker 11: that estimate of the market growth comes from autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 11: or in dollar times, that's about five hundred billion dollars
Speaker 11: by twenty thirty five. I think, also intuitively this makes
Speaker 11: a lot of sense because autonomous vehicles clearly have a
Speaker 11: head start.
Speaker 10: The technology has been around for nearly a decade.
Speaker 11: Now, the production process is there, it can leverage an
Speaker 11: existing automotive supply chain, and I think more importantly, the
Speaker 11: AI models needed for autonomous vehicles can work with a
Speaker 11: much bigger real world driving data set that's collected from
Speaker 11: millions of eCos out there, and that's a very different
Speaker 11: story if you're compared to where humanoid robots are at
Speaker 11: the moment.
Speaker 2: So if you follow the arc of what happened with
Speaker 2: autonomous driving, what needs to happen for humanoid robots for
Speaker 2: them to make a meaningful contribution to your one trillion
Speaker 2: dollar forecast for addressable market by twenty thirty five.
Speaker 11: I think the number one challenge that humanoid it's a
Speaker 11: phase right.
Speaker 10: Now is the lack of physical AI data.
Speaker 11: And that's because when you think about humanoid robots, they
Speaker 11: really bridge the gap between the cognitive.
Speaker 10: The digital, and the physical world.
Speaker 11: And in the physical world, the laws of mechanics and
Speaker 11: physics apply. A humanoid robot needs precise instructions if it's
Speaker 11: going to function and perform properly in an unstructured world
Speaker 11: that is made for humans. Take a simple example such
Speaker 11: as lifting a box. This is a very simple task
Speaker 11: for us humans. We have inbuilt dexterity, we have inbuilt intelligence.
Speaker 11: We know exactly what we have to do. But a
Speaker 11: humanoid robot needs precise instructions. It needs to know exactly
Speaker 11: how much force to apply, where to apply that force,
Speaker 11: and that simple example can get really tricky if something changes,
Speaker 11: For example, the box is actually heavier than expected, if
Speaker 11: the surface is slippery, that means that the robot needs
Speaker 11: a new set of instructions.
Speaker 10: And the challenge is that there is no dictionary out there.
Speaker 10: There is no single database that can.
Speaker 11: Tell us, look for a fifty pounds box, you need
Speaker 11: this amount of energy, this amount of force. All that
Speaker 11: needs to be built from scratch in order for the
Speaker 11: technology to scale and to become more more useful in
Speaker 11: the real world.
Speaker 2: In both cases autonomous driving and humanoid robotics, and actually
Speaker 2: you could extend that to autonomous drone technology as well.
Speaker 2: There is a great emphasis on China, how far aheaded
Speaker 2: is in commercializing the technology, but also supply chain dependency.
Speaker 2: A lot of that supply chain has historically originated from China.
Speaker 3: How does that show up in your research?
Speaker 10: So it's clear that China leads.
Speaker 11: I think it deploys robots on a completely different scale.
Speaker 11: For example, in twenty twenty five, we estimate that nearly
Speaker 11: fifteen thousand humanoid robots were deployed worldwide.
Speaker 10: Eighty five percent of those were installed in China. You
Speaker 10: get a similar story if you look at other types
Speaker 10: of robotics technologies like industrial automation.
Speaker 11: There we're talking about fifty to sixty percent of the
Speaker 11: units are installed in China. If you compare these figures
Speaker 11: to what's happening in the US, the numbers.
Speaker 10: Look very different.
Speaker 11: Low teams for humanoid robots and even single digits for
Speaker 11: industrial for industrial.
Speaker 10: Robots, so the scale is very different.
Speaker 11: So China has the advantage in terms of technology, also
Speaker 11: access to raw materials.
Speaker 10: Take for example, critical minerals, rare earths.
Speaker 11: You need a lot of those components to build some
Speaker 11: of these very very specific physical components that go into
Speaker 11: a robot. So there are different chunks of the supply
Speaker 11: chain where China can really can really kick in. So
Speaker 11: all that comes together. But having said that, it's the
Speaker 11: early stages. I think we are just scratching the surface
Speaker 11: in terms of what physical AI can do, and I
Speaker 11: see lots of potential for that adoption to accelerate in
Speaker 11: other parts of the world.
Speaker 10: Starting with the US and even potentially in Europe.
Speaker 3: In a couple of years signs so needs to thutter
Speaker 3: over of barkleys.
Speaker 2: It's great to have you back on Bloomberg Tech with
Speaker 2: your updated research.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: So news crossing the Bloomberg terminal, Palenteer says it has
Speaker 2: moved its headquarters to Miami, Florida from Denver.
Speaker 3: They made the announcement.
Speaker 2: Via a pretty straightforward and simple post on x the
Speaker 2: social platform. The shares kind of haven't really moved from
Speaker 2: where they were trading anyway, but an interesting story will
Speaker 2: continue to track now. Coming up on the show, bitcoin
Speaker 2: having a tough time after the long weekend. We're going
Speaker 2: to scuss what's ahead for cryptocurrencies. A lot of focus
Speaker 2: on geopolitical risk right now.
Speaker 3: And of course, while it was a US holiday.
Speaker 2: On Monday, bitcoin trading twenty four to seven around the world.
Speaker 3: Do you see since Friday? That's what it looked like.
Speaker 2: Market's actually not as anxious as they were when we
Speaker 2: woke up. It's halftime. This is Bloomberg Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to Bloomberg Tech if.
Speaker 3: You're just joining us.
Speaker 2: Volatility has gripped Wall Street, particularly when it comes to
Speaker 2: conversation around the AI trade. Right now, then, as that
Speaker 2: one hundred is actually just a little bit softer three
Speaker 2: tenths of percent. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index or SOCKS was
Speaker 2: down two percent. We're now off by two tens of
Speaker 2: one percent. Again, we're seeing volatility in video one of
Speaker 2: those names participating in it. There are some news stories
Speaker 2: that want to pick out while we get the opportunity.
Speaker 2: Gemini Space Station. The cryptoic Stange, founded by the Vinkel
Speaker 2: Twins and iPod a few months ago, is down fourteen
Speaker 2: percent basically in the months that followed the IPO.
Speaker 3: A lot of the C suite has left.
Speaker 2: They confirmed this morning the CFO, chief legal officer, chief
Speaker 2: operating officer all left. That's putting volatility in that name.
Speaker 2: In the crypto adjacent space and generally speaking, cryptocurrencies are
Speaker 2: struggling to find clear direction. After a weekend rally fizzled,
Speaker 2: e raising a small bounce that briefly took Bitcoin close
Speaker 2: to seventy one thousand US dollars per token on Saturday.
Speaker 2: It has been a tough run for crypto, especially with
Speaker 2: Bitcoin posting four straight weeks of losses. There is one
Speaker 2: person who I rely on to help with this, and
Speaker 2: that is Bloomberg's cross at reporter Isabelle Lee. So most
Speaker 2: of America was on a holiday on Monday. In the
Speaker 2: United States, Crypto is a twenty four to seven thing,
Speaker 2: and it's a global thing. But it was interesting to
Speaker 2: kind of track from Friday through to this morning where
Speaker 2: you net out sixty seven thousand US dollars. Partoken and
Speaker 2: the stories on the Bloomberg are about geopolitics.
Speaker 12: Bitcoin never sleeps, but over the weekend and during holidays.
Speaker 12: We must recognize that liquidity is thin. But to your point,
Speaker 12: we've seen four s rate weeks of losses and there
Speaker 12: are just a lot of things going on. We have
Speaker 12: renewed geopolitical tensions when it comes to Iran. FED rate
Speaker 12: cuts are back end focused, especially after last week's inflation report.
Speaker 12: We also have AI concerns on my inbox, as I'm
Speaker 12: sure yours is. It's just full of AI concerns about
Speaker 12: whether this selloff we're seeing will spill over the tech sector.
Speaker 12: So all of that is causing Bitcoin, which is now
Speaker 12: really a risk asset, moving a lot in step with NESDAC.
Speaker 12: It's really edging lowers, so that's what you're seeing. It's
Speaker 12: interesting because we still have the original bitcoin proponents saying
Speaker 12: that this is a haven. This is what you buy
Speaker 12: and comes when it comes to when there's geopolitical tension,
Speaker 12: inflation fears. But for now it's definitely behaving like a
Speaker 12: risk acid.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Isabelle Lee with the crypto summary, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Latest thirteen F filings from Soros Fund Management has revealed
Speaker 2: that it's doubled its steak in Microsoft, jumping from about
Speaker 2: one hundred and two thousand shares to two hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty three thousand shares. Here with the latest of Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Hedge Fun reporter Hemma Palmer, what do we need to
Speaker 2: know here about Soros?
Speaker 13: Right, so when we look at his move here doubling
Speaker 13: his steak in Microsoft, this is a stock that, as
Speaker 13: we now have seen with the beginning of the year,
Speaker 13: has become incredibly volatile, down twenty three percent since the
Speaker 13: end of the third quarter. So you know, these thirteen
Speaker 13: f's today are actually quite insightful because we're seeing positioning
Speaker 13: ahead of what's been a chaotic start to the year.
Speaker 13: So as we can see who made the right best,
Speaker 13: who is probably in pain, the stock's not doing too well.
Speaker 13: Soros also added to Apple, Nvidia, and Amazon, and there's
Speaker 13: been pain interesting board it has.
Speaker 2: It's interesting the thirty and F exercise. Either you start
Speaker 2: with the hedge fund or the fund, or if you're me,
Speaker 2: you kind of look at the change of positions of
Speaker 2: the names.
Speaker 3: University of Texas came up. Why yeah.
Speaker 13: So on the flip side, they actually trimmed their Microsoft
Speaker 13: steak and their Amazon position. They ramped up their Apple holding,
Speaker 13: which has been less painful for them as we look
Speaker 13: at through the end of September. When we look at
Speaker 13: these filings through till now, they do have a large
Speaker 13: portfolio over three hundred positions, so we saw some good
Speaker 13: rotation in that. But the interesting rove there was ramping
Speaker 13: up Apple and also trimming.
Speaker 2: Microsoft, Bloomberg, Semmapana across all the thirty and f's.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. All right, a lot more to
Speaker 3: come on the show.
Speaker 2: Startup Mesh is out to build the quote largest optical
Speaker 2: manufacturing footprint outside of Asia, lasers, optics, everything AI. That
Speaker 2: conversation's next with a funding raise. This is Bloomberg Tech, Elon, Musk,
Speaker 2: SpaceX and Xai recently merged are competing in a secret
Speaker 2: Pentagon contest to develop voice controlled autonomous drone swarming technology.
Speaker 2: According to sources, it's a one hundred million dollar prize
Speaker 2: that only a handful of companies were selecteds to take
Speaker 2: part in. Here with the story, bloombergs Katrina Manson, this
Speaker 2: was a fascinating read. It's a kind of new domain
Speaker 2: for SPACEXXAI. It's a contest. What do we need to
Speaker 2: know here?
Speaker 14: This is really the frontier of the future of war.
Speaker 14: This is everything that folks like Stop Killer Robots and
Speaker 14: others have been warning about. This is the Pentagon trying
Speaker 14: to experiment with completely new tech that has so far
Speaker 14: been failing its experimental and this is a moment really
Speaker 14: where the AI companies are coming to the fore quite unexpectedly.
Speaker 14: Elon Musk is the very same person who's said that
Speaker 14: he would have nothing to do with new tools for
Speaker 14: killing back in twenty fifteen when he signed onto an
Speaker 14: open letter from AI researchers and roboticists saying we do
Speaker 14: not want autonomous weapons. And now this is the Appentagon
Speaker 14: trying to create autonomous weapons. These are weapons that can
Speaker 14: select and engage targets of their own accord. The contest
Speaker 14: is not explicitly saying they will be doing that, but
Speaker 14: they are saying that drones will be moving around and
Speaker 14: taking commands from voice and turning those into digital instructions.
Speaker 2: I don't know that the price money is necessarily that.
Speaker 2: The main headline for SpaceX right. What you do really
Speaker 2: well in your reporting is explain where the technology's at
Speaker 2: and where you know where various institutions want it to
Speaker 2: get to. So we have drones, but it's this swarming
Speaker 2: idea in the I guess defense use case what needs
Speaker 2: to be cracked.
Speaker 14: I think there are four stages. First, as you say
Speaker 14: there are drones. Everyone's become familiar with drones because of
Speaker 14: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Elon Musk himself said
Speaker 14: in twenty twenty four that if there is a major
Speaker 14: power war, it's going to be a drone war. So
Speaker 14: everyone is very focused on what that might look like.
Speaker 14: In the case of a US traina contest over Taiwan,
Speaker 14: people have flown multiple drones together. That's not the same
Speaker 14: as a swarm. A swarm really is where the drones
Speaker 14: talk to each other, they interact with each other, and
Speaker 14: ultimately potentially carry a payload or a weapon and can
Speaker 14: drop that weapon on a target. Weaving in ai to
Speaker 14: do that for targeting, automatic targeting recognition, and in this
Speaker 14: case to take a command from someone giving a voice
Speaker 14: instruction and turn that into a movement or an action
Speaker 14: is relatively uncharted territory.
Speaker 2: I should say that SpaceX and XAI did not respond
Speaker 2: to our request for comment, which is pretty normal procedure
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 3: What they are doing is hiring.
Speaker 2: Some interesting roles bikostally, but you know in the classic
Speaker 2: talent pools of Silicon Valley, what areas.
Speaker 14: This is DC in the West Coast, and of course
Speaker 14: SpaceX a long term defense contractor, but never an offensive
Speaker 14: weapons nothing ever so explicit. And XAI, I mean, this
Speaker 14: is grok, this is x We're all going to post
Speaker 14: the story on afterwards. They are now hiring for people
Speaker 14: with clearances and that's a real change. They're looking for
Speaker 14: people with secret clearance and top secret clearance.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Katrina manson Top Reporting, Thank you very much. There
Speaker 2: are so many other news headlines in the world of tech.
Speaker 2: Time now for Talking Tech and first Start and Propics.
Speaker 2: Talks to extend a contract with the Pentagon are being
Speaker 2: held up over additional protections. The company wants to put
Speaker 2: on its clawed tool and Propic wants to put guardrails
Speaker 2: in place to stop Claude from being used for mass
Speaker 2: surveillance of Americans, or to develop weapons that can be
Speaker 2: deployed without a human involved. According to sources, Depentagon wants
Speaker 2: to be able to use Claude as long as it's
Speaker 2: deployment doesn't break the law. Plus five Capital has raised
Speaker 2: more than ten billion dollars for its largest fund, Yet
Speaker 2: the venture firm founded by Josh Kushner draw far more
Speaker 2: demand than it could accept, turning away billions of dollars
Speaker 2: from prospective investors. The interest underscores the success of several
Speaker 2: of its portfolio companies, including open Ai, SpaceX, and Stripe,
Speaker 2: and sticking with capital, the firm just back to startup
Speaker 2: building optical transceivers that are crucial for data centers. The
Speaker 2: startup is called Mesh Optical Technologies and was founded by
Speaker 2: SpaceX alumni, and it's raised fifty million dollars led by
Speaker 2: Thrive to scale manufacturing of the technology in the United States.
Speaker 2: The company's co founder and CEO, Travis Preshiers, joins US,
Speaker 2: Now this is such an interesting field.
Speaker 3: It's one that Nvidia has.
Speaker 2: Looked at the use of optic optics in GPU is
Speaker 2: also OPU is.
Speaker 3: Being looked at.
Speaker 2: Let's start with what you're offering, the actual technology itself,
Speaker 2: which we wrote about this morning.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 15: And yeah, we're we just announced that our our company,
Speaker 15: Mesh Optical, coming out of Stealth. Here we are standing
Speaker 15: up high volume optical manufacturing of these optical interconnects that
Speaker 15: are used for all GPU clusters. So anytime you hear
Speaker 15: someone talking about a GPU cluster, there's four to five
Speaker 15: of these optical transceivers for every one GPU. And so yeah,
Speaker 15: we're excited to offer our first product as what we
Speaker 15: call a linear pluggable optic and it's at like a
Speaker 15: one point six terabit per second data rate, which is
Speaker 15: like what the state of the art will be in
Speaker 15: the coming years and all these GPU clusters.
Speaker 2: Jere, you were at SpaceX for about five years. You're
Speaker 2: the laser guy right working on the technology stack that
Speaker 2: helps satellites communicate. Essentially your co founders also SpaceX alumni
Speaker 2: in slightly different domains. But how is that transferable to
Speaker 2: what you're doing here in the first instance with the transceivers.
Speaker 15: Yeah, great question, and no, I was super excited to
Speaker 15: have part of a lot of the team that I
Speaker 15: worked with there flying the Starlink laser medice, and we're very.
Speaker 5: Proud of what we did there.
Speaker 15: And you know, I think about the job here every
Speaker 15: day and I feel very similar, about very similar to
Speaker 15: what I was doing at SpaceX.
Speaker 5: And you know, SpaceX, the space Lazer.
Speaker 15: Team was quite small and a very awesome team, and
Speaker 15: we're building the same thing here, a very small, like
Speaker 15: technical oriented team with really talented individuals, and the day
Speaker 15: to day feels very similar.
Speaker 5: We're you know, building standing.
Speaker 15: Up high volume production, trying to deploy as much hardware
Speaker 15: as possible, and co locating the talent right next to
Speaker 15: the manufacturing line, and so yeah, it feels very similar.
Speaker 2: This is about more than the underlying technology, right. This
Speaker 2: is a field where the supply chain is dominated by China,
Speaker 2: and so one of your ambitions is to is to
Speaker 2: exceed that bring capacity to the United States. And you
Speaker 2: put a timeline at twenty twenty seven on that. This
Speaker 2: is a big, sort of big debut funding around. But
Speaker 2: what's the roadmap from here? You're going to need more capital.
Speaker 2: What are your priorities?
Speaker 15: Yeah, our priority is to build as many optical interconnects
Speaker 15: as possible and deploy as many of those as we can.
Speaker 15: So for the immediate term, it's getting to high volume
Speaker 15: of this first device we're making, while at the same
Speaker 15: time planning for our long term ambitions of doing space
Speaker 15: based laser communication and eventually one day propelling spacecraft with photons.
Speaker 2: Right, right, So explain that distinction, right in the first instance,
Speaker 2: who's the customer data center on Earth and then in
Speaker 2: the future there is a distinction on this happening in space.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, So first customer, you know, we've got to
Speaker 15: help the US deploy this compute on the ground as
Speaker 15: fast as possible. And you know, there's a big vulnerability
Speaker 15: in the supply chain with regards to optics and the
Speaker 15: way those optics are assembled and manufactured all overseas, and
Speaker 15: standing up a secure supply chain outside of uh, you know,
Speaker 15: Asia and China specifically, really helps us leverage our product
Speaker 15: into all of these data centers on the ground. And
Speaker 15: when we show how much volume we can do on
Speaker 15: the ground, it's you know, then we have to start
Speaker 15: pushing that volume to space, and we'll be the one
Speaker 15: strategically set up to do that.
Speaker 3: Just real quick.
Speaker 2: On Frive Capital a big day for them and they're
Speaker 2: leading you around. Why is it important that they are
Speaker 2: backing you.
Speaker 15: Yeah, they from the beginning have just been ready to
Speaker 15: go with us.
Speaker 5: And deploy quickly.
Speaker 15: And you know, our goal is to stand up this
Speaker 15: volume production as fast as possible. And they were also
Speaker 15: willing to work as fast as possible with us, and
Speaker 15: we really appreciate appreciate them, like back in the founder
Speaker 15: and also wanting to accelerate.
Speaker 2: From the time that you're at SpaceX. Clearly like the
Speaker 2: bigger vision has changed right now, space based data center
Speaker 2: like that, that's what we're going towards. Do you expect
Speaker 2: to work with your old company and with Elon Musk
Speaker 2: to try and pitch the technology back into them.
Speaker 15: You know, I'd always love to keep working with them
Speaker 15: and help I just want to help connect as much
Speaker 15: compute and send probes to deep space as much as possible,
Speaker 15: and whoever we can work with on.
Speaker 5: That, I'm very excited to do that.
Speaker 15: And you know, connecting everything from the ground to space,
Speaker 15: it's going to need to transition to optical because RF
Speaker 15: reaches a limit and optical photons are much more efficient
Speaker 15: and power efficient and the things the constraints on the
Speaker 15: ground are power, and the constraints in space are also power,
Speaker 15: and so it leads very well for what we're making here.
Speaker 2: We are we're hearing that a lot on the show
Speaker 2: of Late Photons of the Future. Travis Pasheer is co
Speaker 2: founder and CEO of Mesh. Thank you very much. Now,
Speaker 2: coming up, digital talent manager Night raises a new funding
Speaker 2: round as it looks to expand its business.
Speaker 3: We have more on that next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 2: Talent management firm Night has raised seventy million dollars to
Speaker 2: expand its business across music, sports, gaming, and live events.
Speaker 2: Knights founder and CEO Reduction joins us. Now this is
Speaker 2: this is digital Hollywood, right and the management of top talent.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to grow through venture. What do you need
Speaker 2: the funds for?
Speaker 16: Yeah, we're going to use it for a few different things.
Speaker 16: I mean, we're primarily focused on talent management here at Night,
Speaker 16: but we do have a venture studio. You know, we've
Speaker 16: gone onto fun things like feastables and tone with Kaisanat,
Speaker 16: and so for us, I think like the thesis was
Speaker 16: always that talent of the future are born on the Internet.
Speaker 16: That is very much still our thought going into the
Speaker 16: future and so we're going to use that to be like,
Speaker 16: what we think is the Internet's media company.
Speaker 2: Which platforms right now are launching careers. I know that
Speaker 2: that is a broad question, but if we talk to
Speaker 2: the giants in broadcasting and streaming, or we talk to YouTube,
Speaker 2: right they would all kind of accept that it is
Speaker 2: a battle for eyeballs, even if they're slightly different mediums.
Speaker 2: So which platform you're seeing launch the people that you
Speaker 2: hope to serve?
Speaker 16: Yeah, I think there's two that stand out to me,
Speaker 16: especially in my industry. YouTube obviously being the first, Like
Speaker 16: we just saw that they announced they have almost thirteen
Speaker 16: percent of connected TV watch time, So they're beating Netflix,
Speaker 16: they're beating Amazon, they're beating HBO.
Speaker 15: You know.
Speaker 16: The next one is TikTok. I think just primarily because
Speaker 16: of the discoverability of content through short form, like it
Speaker 16: doesn't matter if you have ten followers or a million followers,
Speaker 16: Like a good video can get a lot of use
Speaker 16: and go viral.
Speaker 3: And so I think that has.
Speaker 16: Created a lot of careers just because of that top
Speaker 16: of funnel that's created regardless if you have followers or not.
Speaker 2: You you've been at this a while, right, this is
Speaker 2: not as if Night just suddenly came about Overnight's ten
Speaker 2: years of work. I think now at this stage the
Speaker 2: timing of the rays, what was the strategy behind that read.
Speaker 16: Yeah, we've grown very linear over the last ten years,
Speaker 16: you know, through signing different talent through the Venture Studio.
Speaker 16: It felt like a perfect time for us. You know,
Speaker 16: we feel like we've never been more right than we
Speaker 16: are right now in our thesis of Internet native talent
Speaker 16: being the future of celebrities. And so for us, like
Speaker 16: the last ten years, we're all about, like how do
Speaker 16: we educate, how do we continue to represent the biggest
Speaker 16: talent on the Internet. You know, we think the next
Speaker 16: ten years like attention is the currency. You know, we
Speaker 16: think that individuals are more or consumers are more loyal
Speaker 16: to individuals now more than ever. And so as we
Speaker 16: continue this thesis, you know, this is a company that
Speaker 16: hopefully I can run for the rest of my life.
Speaker 16: We'll see, but I think, like, you know, the next
Speaker 16: ten to twenty years, like we still believe in this
Speaker 16: like internet first talent born on the Internet, the future
Speaker 16: state of celebrity is born on the Internet. And so
Speaker 16: it felt like the perfect time for us to make
Speaker 16: a larger move.
Speaker 2: You've done some some m and a for one of
Speaker 2: a better expression. Two thousand and four, Night acquires the
Speaker 2: Roost podcast network.
Speaker 3: Last year Experiential Supply Co.
Speaker 2: Is this kind of the plan now, like the seventy
Speaker 2: million dollars can go towards some interesting properties like that.
Speaker 16: Yeah, we've done those organically off the balance sheet. Like
Speaker 16: we've always been a profit company, you know, We've had
Speaker 16: a successful career, and so we bought the Roost for
Speaker 16: Warner Brothers when they were looking to sell that asset.
Speaker 16: Really like building our media sales apparatus. Acquiring Experiential Supply
Speaker 16: was you know, another thesis that we're going to continue
Speaker 16: to run after. Like we do think the world lives
Speaker 16: on the Internet, and we do think the future state
Speaker 16: of celebrities are born on the Internet. But we also
Speaker 16: think that consumers value in person experiences more than ever
Speaker 16: in the future. We are still bullish on live events
Speaker 16: and experiences for individuals, and so that was a lot
Speaker 16: of bad acquisition. You know, the money will go towards
Speaker 16: you know, buying things that makes sense for the culture
Speaker 16: that we've built here over the last ten years. Businesses
Speaker 16: that we think intersect with the Internet, and so a
Speaker 16: lot of what we're going to look at going forward
Speaker 16: is as things in those categories.
Speaker 2: Read from Night's perspective. How do you think about what's
Speaker 2: happening with Warner Brothers, Discovery, the Netflix part, the Paramount's
Speaker 2: guidance part. You know, does it have some ripple effect
Speaker 2: in your world where the talent's heads get turned about
Speaker 2: the health of industry wide or it's just not a concern.
Speaker 3: No, it does.
Speaker 16: Like I think the issue is just the consolidation of
Speaker 16: all these companies provides less buyers in the ecosystem, and
Speaker 16: so you're seeing a contraction of shows getting sold and
Speaker 16: we've now seen that over the past three to five years.
Speaker 3: I think that's just going to continue.
Speaker 16: I think the consolidation, you know, worries a lot of people,
Speaker 16: Like we are based in Los Angeles, although we aren't
Speaker 16: necessarily traditional Hollywood, you know, we do have shows and
Speaker 16: have sold shows to those streaming services. I think the
Speaker 16: interesting place where we sit as a company is that
Speaker 16: ninety percent of our client roster sees YouTube or being
Speaker 16: a large YouTube or TikTok creator as the endgame for them,
Speaker 16: Like they want to be large Internet personalities. They want
Speaker 16: to control their intellectual property. They want to can control
Speaker 16: their editing and have final cut and final say in
Speaker 16: the product. And so I think it affects us way
Speaker 16: less than it maybe affects the traditional talent management companies
Speaker 16: whose revenue concentration is primarily through entertainment services that's provided
Speaker 16: from a TV network or a Netflix. Where ours, like
Speaker 16: the primary revenue source is YouTube, ad sense, brand sponsorships.
Speaker 16: It's very different, and it's although it does affect us,
Speaker 16: it's on a much smaller scale.
Speaker 2: Reductcher, founder CEO of Night, It's great to have you
Speaker 2: on Bloomberg Tech. Thank you very much. So does it
Speaker 2: for this assition of Bloomberg Tech. What we were just
Speaker 2: discussing right this morning's news that Netflix is issued a
Speaker 2: waiver to Warner Brothers Discovery allowing them to negotiate with
Speaker 2: paramounts guidance. It's seven days through February twenty third, and
Speaker 2: Paramount either has to improve their bit or something happens
Speaker 2: with Netflix, which is a bit softer. They came out
Speaker 2: with a strong statement saying that they feel very confident
Speaker 2: in their existing bid and you can definitely go back
Speaker 2: listen to the conversation looking sure in markets More.
Speaker 3: Broadly, we are seeing volatility.
Speaker 2: We had some serious declines at the index level, the
Speaker 2: NASDAK one hundred, the mag seven names, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index,
Speaker 2: they were all markedly lower. Now actually the socks is higher,
Speaker 2: but there has been volatility coming with that. Will continue
Speaker 2: to track it. As I said, please recap. We have
Speaker 2: the podcast. You know exactly where to find it on
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg terminal as well as online Apple, Spotify and
Speaker 2: iHeart this is Bloomberg Tech.