Speaker 1: And Caroline hired everybody Meg's world headquarters in New York,
Speaker 1: and I met Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Technology coming up. More job cuts on Twitter as Elon
Speaker 1: Musk continues cost cutting at the social network, and we
Speaker 1: have more on tech layoffs, says Palanteer unveils reductions as well,
Speaker 1: and today's Bloomberg Big Tape focuses on how the Ford
Speaker 1: F one fifty lightning is actually built with materials alleged
Speaker 1: to be damaging. The Amazon and those who call it
Speaker 1: home will bring you the details from that reporting class,
Speaker 1: we'll talk all things social media is Snapchat dives into
Speaker 1: the world of AI and meta in unveils a new
Speaker 1: tool aimed at protecting children. All that and so much
Speaker 1: more coming up. First, foremost, we get to those markets,
Speaker 1: but of a reprieve after the sell off the previous week,
Speaker 1: we're up six tenths of a percent on the NASAC
Speaker 1: all country World and next, also on the highest side,
Speaker 1: Europe gets a bid. This largely feels that it's to
Speaker 1: do with boring costs. At the moment, they tricked down
Speaker 1: a little bit. If you're looking at US treasuries, we're
Speaker 1: just saw some buying, So maybe a bit of reassessment
Speaker 1: as to whether we're buying the dip, whether it comes
Speaker 1: to equities or indeed bonds. Let's flick it on. Let's
Speaker 1: look at what's not being bought on the dip right now. Actually,
Speaker 1: Crypto after one has been a pretty phenomenal for January
Speaker 1: February a little bit less. So we're still if you
Speaker 1: look at a two day basis from the point that
Speaker 1: we're tracking at, it is up about two percent, but
Speaker 1: we're still below that twenty four thousand mark, even on
Speaker 1: a day that we saw US dollar weakness. Yeah, from
Speaker 1: the macro to the micro. When I look at individual names,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of energy in EV related stocks in
Speaker 1: the market. Pardon the pun. Tesla up five and a
Speaker 1: half percent that performance and Tesla reinstates Elon Musk as
Speaker 1: the world's richest man according to Bloomberg. L gets that later.
Speaker 1: Fisk At up thirty percent. It's its debut year of production, Karen.
Speaker 1: They're saying that on an annual basis, they will see
Speaker 1: profit on an EBIT dar basis being positive in twenty three,
Speaker 1: which is staggering. Then life Cycle up four percent have
Speaker 1: been almost as much as twelve percent, but they've got
Speaker 1: a DOE loan. We're going to talk to the CEO
Speaker 1: about how they use those funds. Moving to the downside,
Speaker 1: Meta actually kind of bucking the trend of Megacattech down
Speaker 1: half of percentage point that you mentioned. Palenteer actually down
Speaker 1: for a seventh straight session. That breaking news from our
Speaker 1: colleagues in the print newsroom about how they're going to
Speaker 1: cut staff less than two percent when it comes to Palenteer,
Speaker 1: which is interesting, but this was a company that kind
Speaker 1: of pledged not to make these kinds of cuts. Well,
Speaker 1: you can see on a seven day basis. Actually it's
Speaker 1: a stock that suffered, as you know, Caroline, it's not
Speaker 1: just Palenteer, right. Twitter also seeing this fresh wave of
Speaker 1: job cuts, the layoffs hitting employees across the company, including
Speaker 1: engineering and product team, sources telling Bloomberg some employees learned
Speaker 1: the news via an email, others finding out because they
Speaker 1: couldn't log onto internal systems. Bloomberg's cut. Wagner here in
Speaker 1: San Francisco joins us for more. Not that surprise, really,
Speaker 1: are you? No? Unfortunately? Not right. I mean we've seen
Speaker 1: a slow trickle now for a while, but this one
Speaker 1: felt more significant. Right. It did happen unfortunately on a
Speaker 1: Saturday night, Right, So a lot of employees are enjoying
Speaker 1: their weekend, and as you pointed out, some got email saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know your job has been terminated. Others are simply
Speaker 1: trying to get into the system can't and they kind
Speaker 1: of deduced from that. So not great, but to your point,
Speaker 1: not surprising when we know how much they're trying to
Speaker 1: cut costs over there, cut any theme as to where
Speaker 1: they were being cut from, or any key executives that went, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really heavy into the product org actually, and
Speaker 1: you know, if we've been hearing from a lot of
Speaker 1: people that they're having a tough time figuring out who's
Speaker 1: left in product over there, we did see several founders
Speaker 1: of companies the Twitter had acquired over the years get
Speaker 1: laid off. Now they had been the company had been
Speaker 1: trying not to lay those folks off. The thinking was
Speaker 1: that you know, they might have bigger stock award grants,
Speaker 1: for example, having sold the company to Twitter. They didn't
Speaker 1: want to expedite that type of thing. But in this case,
Speaker 1: you know, several of those founders were laid off, including
Speaker 1: Esther Crawford, who you know, sort of became a little
Speaker 1: bit a famous, if you will, as someone who was
Speaker 1: sleeping in the office early on in Twitter's Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going to ask specifically about Mista crawl Fitz.
Speaker 1: She was one of these people, as you and I
Speaker 1: reported at the time, that kind of aligned herself pretty
Speaker 1: quickly of Elon Musk publicly tweeting about the things that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was wanting staff to do. She's gone, She's gone.
Speaker 1: What do we know about that? I mean, she was
Speaker 1: pro Musk. Yeah, I mean, well you know this better
Speaker 1: than I even do ed. But like you know, you
Speaker 1: can be committed Elon Musk, but that doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: it's reciprocated, right, And I think this is just yet
Speaker 1: another reminder to people who you know, work at companies
Speaker 1: that he runs that, Like you know, this is a job, right,
Speaker 1: And she was running Twitter Blue, which, as we know,
Speaker 1: is the subscription service that they're trying to build and
Speaker 1: m I don't think the adoption of that has been great.
Speaker 1: I certainly don't consider that anything to do with her.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that people necessarily want to pay for Twitter.
Speaker 1: But I guess my point is is like when you're
Speaker 1: high profile, when you're running an important product, you know
Speaker 1: that does not save you necessarily. When it comes to
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, there's some interesting reporting around stock compensation as
Speaker 1: well for those that remain at Twitter and how they're incentivized. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: what are we trying to make of the way in
Speaker 1: which this business is being run? Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: this is clearly an incentive to encourage the people who
Speaker 1: are still there to continue to show up and work hard. Right.
Speaker 1: Imagine you're you're working at Twitter today, You've made it
Speaker 1: through now multiple rounds of job cuts. You're probably looking
Speaker 1: around and close to seventy five eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: people you were working with six months ago are no
Speaker 1: longer there. Like, if you're Elon Musk, you need to
Speaker 1: convince those people, hey, there's a there's a future here, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you should stick around because this thing is going to
Speaker 1: get turned around. And a big part of that, of course,
Speaker 1: is what will your compensation look like. Up until now,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of questions about what it would
Speaker 1: be like to own any part of a private Twitter.
Speaker 1: He's hoping to change that. We still want to know
Speaker 1: the details, but you know, presumably if you're going to
Speaker 1: stick around, you want to know that you have some
Speaker 1: skin in the game as well. Well. Put Katawagner, we
Speaker 1: thank you as always for jumping on these sorts of
Speaker 1: stories for us and probably busy on Saturday too talking
Speaker 1: about compensation. And I'm just looking, what was it that
Speaker 1: the red headline that came across the terminal just after
Speaker 1: the market shut once again? You know, Musk himself doing
Speaker 1: pretty well from a conversation perspective. Yeah, he's once again
Speaker 1: the world's richest person according to Bloomberg's rich index. Rihgo
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg jumping back above Bernard or no. And
Speaker 1: it's all about Tesla gains, right, you look at the
Speaker 1: breakdown of his wealth, a big chunk of it, of course,
Speaker 1: his Tesla stock and Tesla up another five and a
Speaker 1: half percent today. We've been waiting on this to happen
Speaker 1: for a few days. But that's why we keep talking
Speaker 1: about him, him and all his companies. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: let's delve into his companies a little bit for a
Speaker 1: moment as well, because what you're the man who covers
Speaker 1: all things space. SpaceX had one a little bit of
Speaker 1: a setback this morning. Yeah, well, stacks. It's a really
Speaker 1: interesting one. This was for the Crew six mission Okay
Speaker 1: to Fairy Astronauts three NASSA one Russian Cosmot to the
Speaker 1: International Space Station. There was a technical issue, so they're
Speaker 1: now delayed to the early hours of March second. But
Speaker 1: that's also meant curiously, Caroline, they've had to delay other
Speaker 1: launches for Starling, and it just speaks to how I
Speaker 1: guess effective SpaceX is at putting people and objects into orbit.
Speaker 1: That they're managing all of this once, but it was
Speaker 1: so rare for them not to go off as scheduled.
Speaker 1: Usually it's weather, right that this was a technical delay.
Speaker 1: We've always talking about the weather an awful lot over
Speaker 1: here in New York and over there in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what also we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: haven't we add is FSB. That's the update to well,
Speaker 1: it's a meta at the moment with Tessa as the
Speaker 1: way in which you're the idea as you can drive
Speaker 1: these cars automatically. It's a software update and then they'll
Speaker 1: be able to in some ways drive themselves. But it
Speaker 1: looks as though there's been a hindrance that particular part
Speaker 1: of the story as well right, and so they've stopped
Speaker 1: rolling it out pending at a software update. Essentially, Remember
Speaker 1: the background to this was the Nitzer enforced recall. It
Speaker 1: was a software update that was required because they founded
Speaker 1: a crash risk associated with those using FSD beta. The
Speaker 1: fix is made remotely right over the air update. But
Speaker 1: we're micro focus on how Tesla keeps its customers safe.
Speaker 1: Precisely three hundred and sixty three thousand vehicles, as you say,
Speaker 1: had been recalled already. I mean we keep focused on that,
Speaker 1: we keep our eye train and in fact at EV's
Speaker 1: more generally because there was a phenomenal story part of
Speaker 1: our reporting that's known as the Big Take. Each day
Speaker 1: you do a deep dive into something that's really specific
Speaker 1: that you've got to get a hands around, and today
Speaker 1: it was a Blueberg investigation that traced that actually the
Speaker 1: aluminium as I would say aluminum if you're American in
Speaker 1: a Ford F one fifty, if you trace it back
Speaker 1: through the supply chain, it comes from a refinery in Brazil.
Speaker 1: There's actually accused of sickening thousands of people. It's damaging
Speaker 1: the Amazon want to bring in one of the reporters
Speaker 1: behind this very story Sheridan Prasso. Sheridan, just talk to
Speaker 1: us about the company involved here, because this isn't actually
Speaker 1: that this molta or the mining capacity isn't coming from Ford.
Speaker 1: They're sourcing it elsewhere. That's right. The company is called
Speaker 1: Norris Kidro our Heedro, as some other people say. It's
Speaker 1: based in Norway. They have a refinery in the Amazon
Speaker 1: in Brazil, and that refinery has been operating for many
Speaker 1: years and the people who live around it about eleven
Speaker 1: thousand people have joined a class actual lawsuit and they
Speaker 1: say that the company is polluting the environment, they are
Speaker 1: drinking water is undrinkable, and that they actually want to
Speaker 1: bring a case against Norse Chydro in a court in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands to seek compensation for the pollution that they
Speaker 1: allege is making them sick. Ford did, of course come
Speaker 1: back a spokesperson you've spoken to within your reporting. Ford
Speaker 1: is committed to a supply chain that exceeds minimum regulatory
Speaker 1: compliance requirements, they say, and respects human rights, including the
Speaker 1: right to cleaner and clean water. But ultimately, how focused
Speaker 1: our companies such as Ford to their supply chain at
Speaker 1: the moment to ensuring that they're ethical, So it's quite complicated.
Speaker 1: Supply chains are very difficult to trace in order to
Speaker 1: find out that this. These products from the Amazon go
Speaker 1: into the four f one fifty in the EV and
Speaker 1: in the one fifty. Both they make up the exterior panels.
Speaker 1: Almost all the aluminium that you can see on the
Speaker 1: outside of the F one fifty its origins are in Brazil.
Speaker 1: And the way that you trace this is you look
Speaker 1: at the box site mine that's in the middle of
Speaker 1: the rainforest. It has expansion plans. It's already three times
Speaker 1: the size of Manhattan. It wants to expand another size
Speaker 1: of Manhattan to DeForest that area. Get the box site
Speaker 1: out of the middle of the Amazon, take it to
Speaker 1: this refinery that is alleged to be polluting, and then
Speaker 1: it's smelted in Quebec, and then it goes to the
Speaker 1: parts makers in the United States, and then from there
Speaker 1: it goes to Ford. And so you look at the
Speaker 1: entire aluminium supply chains, of course going into almost all
Speaker 1: the aluminum that we do have in the United States.
Speaker 1: But the way to tell the story and the way
Speaker 1: to look at it is through Ford and to track
Speaker 1: the specific parts all the way back to their origins.
Speaker 1: And the Amazon, so not supply chains are so difficult
Speaker 1: to trace and so non transparent. I think it's difficult
Speaker 1: for the end user to necessarily know where the origins
Speaker 1: are in the Amazon. It difficult to trace. But you
Speaker 1: did do a fantastic job of the big take in
Speaker 1: doing exactly that, but in reverse right, start with r
Speaker 1: F one fifty lightning, work backwards and we get to boxite. Right,
Speaker 1: So explain to our audience how we work out how
Speaker 1: the contamination is happening. My understanding is that bok site
Speaker 1: is then processed to alumina, and alumina is basically the
Speaker 1: white powder from which aluminum aluminium, as I used to say,
Speaker 1: is derived. What have we learned about how that contamination
Speaker 1: is happening within the Amazon itself? That's right. So boxite
Speaker 1: mining itself is kind of a dirty business. They use
Speaker 1: strip mines to clap up the earth a lot of
Speaker 1: the runoff from the bok site and this particular mine
Speaker 1: it's called MRN in the middle of the Amazon, in
Speaker 1: the rainforest. For many years they were just kind of
Speaker 1: large quantities of box site tailing waste into a nearby
Speaker 1: lake and polluting the environment that people rely on There
Speaker 1: to live, their fish, their water supply, their water for washing,
Speaker 1: their drinking water. Everything was affected by this mining operation.
Speaker 1: Even years later. It's impossible to clean it up people,
Speaker 1: they're told me when I went there to go and
Speaker 1: talk with them. So that's one of the aspects of
Speaker 1: the contamination that you see at the very source. Of course,
Speaker 1: MRN itself says they are operating within legal parameters and
Speaker 1: they take measures to try to minimize the impact on
Speaker 1: the environment. That said, box sye running itself is actually
Speaker 1: quite you know, destructure for the environment to a large extent.
Speaker 1: And then the box site travels eight hundred miles down
Speaker 1: the Amazon River. I followed the trail of the box
Speaker 1: site run all the way down the Amazon River to
Speaker 1: the end to the refinery itself. Making making alumina, the
Speaker 1: white powder that becomes aluminum, is itself a very difficult,
Speaker 1: coal burning intensive process. That that technology has been around
Speaker 1: for one hundred years. It hasn't changed all of that much.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it you add caustic soda and line
Speaker 1: to this solution and you store the waste of that.
Speaker 1: They take measures to try to make sure it doesn't
Speaker 1: escape into the environment. The people who live around it
Speaker 1: say that it does, right, Bloomberg shared impress Caroline, that
Speaker 1: is the definition of in the field reporting, if ever
Speaker 1: I've seen it in The response is that Ford now
Speaker 1: have to go back and look at their supply chains,
Speaker 1: a story that will continue to track. Shares of lithium
Speaker 1: battery recycler life Cycles spike today after the company announced
Speaker 1: it's getting a three hundred and seventy five million dollar
Speaker 1: loan from the Biden administration, and that is for the
Speaker 1: expansion of a New York recycling plant joining us now.
Speaker 1: Is life Cycle CEO R J. Koja interesting? This is
Speaker 1: the second time Caroline and I've spoken to your industry
Speaker 1: in recent weeks about ade loan. My question is really
Speaker 1: how much of a stopgap? This is? Right, because you
Speaker 1: take scrap and you recycle it, but there isn't that
Speaker 1: much scrap around and so I'm wondering how much you
Speaker 1: actually needed this cash to keep operations going as this
Speaker 1: industry ramps up. Yeah, great to be on it. And look,
Speaker 1: I think that's a bit of a misnomber. I thought,
Speaker 1: actually a big misnomer. So life Cycle we're commercial business today,
Speaker 1: think of it as urban mining. We purely focus on
Speaker 1: lithmine batteries like we today have four commercially operational sites
Speaker 1: that are full of lithmine batteries of all types. To
Speaker 1: think of scrap from the making of batteries, but even
Speaker 1: energy storage systems EV batteries, evy batteries for example, from recalls.
Speaker 1: I think people don't realize as they go on the
Speaker 1: road there's a lot more batteries to be recycled and
Speaker 1: of course consummatronic so we continue to grow. I think
Speaker 1: we've more than doubled our feed and take over the
Speaker 1: last year. So I think that's a commonly said thing,
Speaker 1: there being a lack of feed, but we have continued
Speaker 1: to see a very rapid growth through a customer base.
Speaker 1: If the scrap is not so limited, how high are
Speaker 1: the bids that you're having to put in to obtain it.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested out Jay's getting to the economics
Speaker 1: of the business right now rather than in the future
Speaker 1: when more scraps available. Sure, so ticket step back. So
Speaker 1: there's really two parts of recycling. It's often like grouped
Speaker 1: into one, but there's really pre processing and post processing.
Speaker 1: Preprocessing is where you take the scrap into the batteries,
Speaker 1: go to an intermediate product. Post processing is to a
Speaker 1: finished chemical or good, so we do both. That's where
Speaker 1: a spoken home model reverse logistics. You know, through the
Speaker 1: first step, I'd say, look that part, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of advantages there that helps to secure the feed.
Speaker 1: That's been a very important part of our journey. But
Speaker 1: the real margin at the end of the day is
Speaker 1: through the second step, through the making of the battery
Speaker 1: grade lithium nickel cobal That's what we're going to be
Speaker 1: doing at our Rochester Health facility in Rochester, New Yark.
Speaker 1: That's what this conditional commitment is for the loan, the
Speaker 1: three hundred seventy five million dollars loan. So look, I say,
Speaker 1: over our next one to your journey, that's a key
Speaker 1: inflection point for us to eke out that lithium value,
Speaker 1: that nickel value, that cobalt value in the batteries. Just
Speaker 1: to remind us, of course, all of this, the focus
Speaker 1: the financing coming from the US government is to ensure
Speaker 1: that we have a more secure supply chain right here
Speaker 1: in the United States. How much will you be supplying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you think about an EV terms or over
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand evs equivalent of materials that will be
Speaker 1: producing at the back end, if not more, we'll be
Speaker 1: producing another fact which will help to understand. Will you're
Speaker 1: producing up to eight thousand, five hundred tons of lithium
Speaker 1: carbonate EAR. That may not mean much to folks, but
Speaker 1: in the United States today the production is five thousand tons,
Speaker 1: So I don't think many people have clued in that
Speaker 1: will actually be the largest source of lithium production in
Speaker 1: the United States, albeit from recycling as opposed to mining.
Speaker 1: My name, of course is an important part of the equation,
Speaker 1: but it's inherently long lead. So one of the key
Speaker 1: advantages we can deliver is a faster time to marketing
Speaker 1: and to your perspective. The customer base is it largely evs?
Speaker 1: Is it storage? Who are we going to be really
Speaker 1: seeing you supply too? Yeah, so predominantly evs for sure.
Speaker 1: You know, as ED was opening in the beginning there.
Speaker 1: As you make batteries, it's not perfect. It durings level scrap.
Speaker 1: LG is one of the largest EV manufacturers batter manufacturers
Speaker 1: in the world. They're an investor in customer of life cycle.
Speaker 1: So that's a great you know, steady state growing you know,
Speaker 1: base of us for feed But interestingly, We've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of other segments growth, for example, energy storage, residential utility,
Speaker 1: so each of the segments were in all types of
Speaker 1: mind batteries continue to have significant growth. We thank you
Speaker 1: are j for coming on all about securing this new loan,
Speaker 1: this focus on growth our j Cocha of life cycle.
Speaker 1: Thank you great house and time. Meanwhile, coming up, we're
Speaker 1: going to turn to today's talking tech. We're going to
Speaker 1: look at Snapchat jumping into the world of guess what
Speaker 1: an AI chatbot details to follow and as we had
Speaker 1: to break another story we're following and it's actually a
Speaker 1: senior US cybersecurity leader that it's spoken to just very recently. Well,
Speaker 1: she's urging that Microsoft and Twitter do step up their
Speaker 1: protocols when it comes to use the security. Jen Easiley,
Speaker 1: the director of Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, says BAG software
Speaker 1: unsafe practices are fueling ransomware attacks. The span essential services
Speaker 1: from energy to supply to food production to hospitals meaning schools.
Speaker 1: She pointed to Apple actually is a bit of a
Speaker 1: role model for companies to look to. Thissciblime Bag Buy
Speaker 1: things to watch from this year's Mobile World Congress. Number
Speaker 1: one Artificial Intelligence think chat GPT that is on everyone's lips.
Speaker 1: Number two the metaverse. Is it the future or is
Speaker 1: it just a fad? Number three the challenge to Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's starling the space industry is burgeoning? Will there be
Speaker 1: a response from Europe? Number four? It's quit or less
Speaker 1: about the mobile phones. Frankly, it's much more about the
Speaker 1: automaker's healthcare defense lining along five G and the opportunities there.
Speaker 1: Number five. Shina is here in force defiance, it seems
Speaker 1: from the operators, some of which like Huawei, are blacklisted.
Speaker 1: That was Bloomberg's Tom McKenzie at the Mobile World Congress
Speaker 1: in Barcelona. And it's time now for talking tech, a
Speaker 1: look at the tech stories making headlines in Silicon vat
Speaker 1: Valley and beyond. Let's kick things off with Nokia, the
Speaker 1: finish maker of five G technology, rebranding with a new
Speaker 1: logo to try and get away from its mobile phone routes.
Speaker 1: Nearly a decade after they stop producing the devices, the
Speaker 1: company's still dealing with perceptions that it does produce phones.
Speaker 1: The announcement and revamp comes alongside a set of new
Speaker 1: strategic pillars intended to enable faster growth as the world
Speaker 1: increased Singly adopts five G mobile technologies, and show Me
Speaker 1: unveiling wireless augmented reality glasses, the concept device from the
Speaker 1: Chinese phonemaker designed to let users gesture via its embedded
Speaker 1: camera to select an open app, swipe through pages, and
Speaker 1: also exit apps to return to the start page without
Speaker 1: using a smartphone. It's the company's latest attempt to build
Speaker 1: momentum in an arena that's yet to become mainstream. And finally,
Speaker 1: Snapchat entering the world of artificial intelligence, the social media
Speaker 1: company unveiling an AI enabled chatbot, becoming the latest major
Speaker 1: tech company to roll out features powered by open ais
Speaker 1: GPT technology. Snapchats My AI bot will be pinned to
Speaker 1: the top of the apps chat tab, letting users engage
Speaker 1: directly with the AI as they would with friends on
Speaker 1: the popular photo sharing and messaging app Carolina. I think
Speaker 1: you and I both saw this headline and thought, okay,
Speaker 1: the latest name. Why snap Why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: I mean they've got a r prows. Many would say
Speaker 1: that perhaps perhaps artificial intelligence is a clear area that
Speaker 1: they're going to be good at, but it's notable that
Speaker 1: you've got to pay right three dollars ninety nine, Like
Speaker 1: it's not month in terms of a subscription, but it
Speaker 1: really is trying to just be a little perk if
Speaker 1: you're a Snapchat Plus member at the moment. And what
Speaker 1: were they advocating that use it for? Sort of writing
Speaker 1: love letters of to cheese obsessed friends about yes cheddar
Speaker 1: cheddar fans can talk cheese with the AI. But you're right,
Speaker 1: they're charging for it. It's a value add our BI
Speaker 1: colleagues Bloomberg Intelligence pointing out also kind of makes their
Speaker 1: first party data offering more attractive to the advertisers as well.
Speaker 1: Ah Well said, it's always about trying to close that
Speaker 1: loop and sure that they become a little bit more
Speaker 1: addictive to the user or maybe a little bit more
Speaker 1: addictive to the advertiser as well. Welcome back to Belween
Speaker 1: their technology. I'm Caroline Hine in New York and I
Speaker 1: Mead love Loo in San Francisco. Let's talk drones. Caro
Speaker 1: Skydio raised two fifty thirty sorry million dollars to expand
Speaker 1: its factory tenfold, a financing deal that gives studio at
Speaker 1: two point two billion dollar evaluation. CEO Adam Bury joins
Speaker 1: us to discuss Adam how difficult was it to raise
Speaker 1: those funds in this environment. Well, look, I think we're
Speaker 1: fortunate to be serving a customer base that's just critical
Speaker 1: to how our civilization runs. You know, we're serving national
Speaker 1: defense customers, we serve public safety. A number of our
Speaker 1: customers use our drownes for critical infrastructure inspection. So it's
Speaker 1: not to say that we're totally detached from the mainline economy,
Speaker 1: but this is core stuff that helps our civilization function,
Speaker 1: and there's some degree of independence, And you know, I
Speaker 1: think we're at a moment in time now where these devices,
Speaker 1: these drones that started off looking like consumer choice have
Speaker 1: really proven to be critical tools to help all these
Speaker 1: industries run and function. And it's also become equally clear
Speaker 1: that we can't be relying on drones that are calling
Speaker 1: home to China to take instructions. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of themes in play that I think are really important
Speaker 1: and and this is something that we take seriously as
Speaker 1: a company, and I think that's part of the reason
Speaker 1: why we were able to do the fundraising even in
Speaker 1: the face of a challenging macroeconomic environment. It's also not
Speaker 1: just the sum of money. I was looking at the
Speaker 1: investors backing you, and you basically have a split of
Speaker 1: strategic investors in relevant defense industries and then sort of
Speaker 1: classic venture capital names which are more important for you.
Speaker 1: Does it matter where the money comes from in terms
Speaker 1: of opening doors to new markets, Well, it definitely matters
Speaker 1: where the money comes from, and we're fortunate to have
Speaker 1: a great group of investors going back over the life
Speaker 1: of the company. Now, you know, in this funding round,
Speaker 1: we're especially excited to be adding Axon as one of
Speaker 1: our strategic investors. So Axon is a great partner of ours.
Speaker 1: They're a leader in the public safety technology space. You know,
Speaker 1: they make tasers, they make body cameras, and we're partnering
Speaker 1: them now to bring drones and real time aerial situational
Speaker 1: awareness into their product portfolio. So that's an example of
Speaker 1: a technical partnership, but go to market partnership or we're
Speaker 1: already doing things to help our joint customers be successful,
Speaker 1: and we were very excited to bring them on as
Speaker 1: an investor as part of this round. We're also excited
Speaker 1: to have Video reinvesting in the company. So Nvidia has
Speaker 1: been a great partner of our since the very beginning.
Speaker 1: You know, we started working together in twenty fourteen before
Speaker 1: the explosion of AI computer vision, machine learning. But their
Speaker 1: chips are at the core of our products and really
Speaker 1: help make our stuff possible. Going back to ax On
Speaker 1: as a strategic investor, some of them queried whether you,
Speaker 1: with the funding, start to expand the offering too. At
Speaker 1: the moment, of course, you offer natural drones the capability,
Speaker 1: but some are saying, maybe you start to offer the
Speaker 1: client base the ways in which you then use the
Speaker 1: data that's gathered. Would you look down that direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great question. So we're most focused on making
Speaker 1: it frictionless and automated to capture the data, get it
Speaker 1: up to the cloud, and then make it useful however
Speaker 1: we can for our customers, and the way that people
Speaker 1: want to use the data varies quite a bit by industry.
Speaker 1: So public safety, the integration with Axon and their evidence
Speaker 1: management system is great. You know, we're not going to
Speaker 1: build our own digital evidence management system and hooking in
Speaker 1: with a partner like Axon where they're aggregating body camera
Speaker 1: data data from other other sensors in the public safety
Speaker 1: space with grown data makes a lot of sense. In
Speaker 1: other customer bases that we serve, for example, energy utilities.
Speaker 1: What they really care about is extracting insights. They're looking
Speaker 1: for damage, you know, RUSS cracks things like this and
Speaker 1: their infrastructure, and it's kind of a different technology landscape
Speaker 1: and a different partner landscape to enable things like that.
Speaker 1: So we're most focused on the capture and getting the
Speaker 1: data to the cloud and then working with the right
Speaker 1: set of partners to make the data useful for our customers.
Speaker 1: And in large part, the way in which you've sort
Speaker 1: of discussed that you're almost able to move through this
Speaker 1: economic environment no matter what is because in large part,
Speaker 1: in the same way we're just talking about batteries being
Speaker 1: made or recycled here in the US, it's about making
Speaker 1: drones here in the US, rather than depending on China.
Speaker 1: Where are you intend of the technological divide between US
Speaker 1: China dronemaking. Yeah, So it's historical perspective on the drone
Speaker 1: industry is interesting. I mean, these things started off basically
Speaker 1: like radio control toys, and this is actually the world
Speaker 1: that I grew up, and I grew up flying radio
Speaker 1: control airplanes. I didn't start doing it because I thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be a career, but essentially what
Speaker 1: happened is the drone industry threw out of the RC
Speaker 1: helicopter industry, and that was a manufacturing base that came
Speaker 1: up in China, and so that's where drons started being built,
Speaker 1: and Chinese companies still control a dominant share of the market.
Speaker 1: But I think we've reached a point in time where
Speaker 1: it's just not tenable to be relying on these systems,
Speaker 1: especially for DD customers, but even for public safety, for
Speaker 1: critical infrastructure operators, and so that is certainly a major
Speaker 1: theme in play. But I think the other really important theme,
Speaker 1: and for us, you know, I think the one that's
Speaker 1: going to be more important over the long term is
Speaker 1: the transition from manually flown drones to autonomous drones. So
Speaker 1: the sort of status quo state of play in the
Speaker 1: industry today is if you have an expert pilot knows
Speaker 1: what they're doing flying the drone, you can do some
Speaker 1: useful stuff, and we see examples of that value being
Speaker 1: proven everywhere. But the future of these things is automation.
Speaker 1: The drone should fly itself, it should live in the background,
Speaker 1: collecting data whenever it's needed, and you shouldn't need to
Speaker 1: have an expert pilot they're flying it, and that's really
Speaker 1: what we're all about as a company. We bet very
Speaker 1: big on AI computer vision when we started, and we're
Speaker 1: seeing those bets payoff and really come to life with
Speaker 1: our customers now. So one of the products that we
Speaker 1: announced at the end of last year is the dock
Speaker 1: and Remote Operation system, where rather than needing to have
Speaker 1: a pilot on flight to fly on site to fly
Speaker 1: the drone, it lives in a charging base station, it
Speaker 1: can fly itself on demand, it can be commanded remotely
Speaker 1: over the Internet. And this just totally changes the paradigm.
Speaker 1: So we see a future where every substation, every power plan,
Speaker 1: every police station, every construction site has a dock drone
Speaker 1: that's available to respond to emergencies in real time or
Speaker 1: to just on a regular schedule collect the data. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the real opportunity in the industry. So
Speaker 1: the national security implications of drones certainly matter, but the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that we're leaning into is the automated future. Well, Adam,
Speaker 1: you know, the opportunity was born. I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say out of the war in Ukraine that put
Speaker 1: a lot of spotlight on the use of drone technology.
Speaker 1: How big a chunk of your business is military, and
Speaker 1: looking forward, you know you kind of more dependent on
Speaker 1: military contracts than some of your other customers and their
Speaker 1: end markets. Yeah, it's a great question. It's a really
Speaker 1: important topic area for US. So again, the historical perspective
Speaker 1: here is kind of interesting. We started is basically a
Speaker 1: consumer focused company, but at this point DoD is a
Speaker 1: major part of our customer base, and I think that's
Speaker 1: thanks to some really forward leaning folks within the US
Speaker 1: military who realized that these civilian drone technology was essentially
Speaker 1: outpacing the traditional defense systems. You know, the drone that
Speaker 1: you can buy as a consumer or as as a
Speaker 1: private company that costs a few thousand dollars in most cases,
Speaker 1: has more advanced capabilities, more usable, as more accessible than
Speaker 1: the traditional military system that might cost a few hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. And tragically, Ukraine has really put an exclamation
Speaker 1: point on this. You know, civilian drones have become strategically
Speaker 1: super relevant, and they've also highlighted the deadly implications in
Speaker 1: many cases of using groans that are calling home to
Speaker 1: China and aligned with Chinese foreign policy. So we've been
Speaker 1: a part of this for years now and we're seeing
Speaker 1: those trends really come to a head in Ukraine. Yeah well,
Speaker 1: well said I mean, and we talk about the growth,
Speaker 1: we talk about course the applications and some of them
Speaker 1: more emotional than others. But we thank you so much
Speaker 1: Adam Bury for spending some time in a skydoco on
Speaker 1: the latest series Funding Round. Thank you, you know, while
Speaker 1: coming up how to close agenda gap but the help
Speaker 1: of tech Spring that collective, Courtney Lancula is going to
Speaker 1: be joining us. Tell us more line from the nicey
Speaker 1: floor and as we head to break watching. She has
Speaker 1: a FISA which she is in early stage talks to
Speaker 1: acquire the cancer therapy develop a siegeon for a deal
Speaker 1: that could exceed forty billion dollars Fizer down more than
Speaker 1: two percent in traditional training. This is blue mug Now.
Speaker 1: Today the VC Springbank Collective hosted the Closing Bell at
Speaker 1: the New York Stock Exchange. Why well, it's shining a
Speaker 1: light on companies and their portfolio who are building the
Speaker 1: infrastructure to help close the gender gap, addressing the long
Speaker 1: overlook needs of women of caregivers of working families. For example,
Speaker 1: let's bring in Courtney lan Coola, own a partner of
Speaker 1: Spring Bank Collective for more on this Live from the
Speaker 1: Nice Sea and Courtney. The light that you want to
Speaker 1: shine is a trillion dollar I believe opportunity you see
Speaker 1: hiding in plain sight. But how is it affecting working
Speaker 1: families right here right now? Well, I think the opportunity
Speaker 1: is enormous as a trillion dollars, as you say, and
Speaker 1: we see it in kind of three big buckets. So
Speaker 1: firstus the future of inclusive work, making better jobs for
Speaker 1: women and caregivers across the board in the economy, especially
Speaker 1: in the frontline workers. Also, secondly thinking about the booming
Speaker 1: care economy, so a lot of times we think about
Speaker 1: that as healthcare, but it's also childcare, eldercare, certain areas
Speaker 1: of women's health underserved. And then the third area is
Speaker 1: really thinking about sort of the next wave of financial
Speaker 1: health and progress for families. And there's an incredible role
Speaker 1: that tech can play in building in all three of
Speaker 1: these solution areas. And we feel really excited about opportunity. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what's being built we see when you go to
Speaker 1: the website, the amount of builders that you shine a
Speaker 1: light on, some of them women, people of color on
Speaker 1: I'm interested is they're specifically trying to fix. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: some of the founders that we had ringing the bell
Speaker 1: with us today, I'll give you an example of a
Speaker 1: company called Wealthy. So Wealthy is building a care coordination
Speaker 1: layer and it is sold through employers as a benefit
Speaker 1: for their employees. So think about if my mom lives
Speaker 1: in Florida and she falls and she breaks her hip,
Speaker 1: God forbid, Suddenly I have a lot of work that
Speaker 1: I need to do. Right, somebody needs to call and
Speaker 1: fight with her insurance company. Potentially, someone needs to find
Speaker 1: the best physiotherapist in town. Somebody needs to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get her a ride there. That's usually the
Speaker 1: burden that falls to what we call the alpha daughters
Speaker 1: or those working women who are in the prime, sometimes
Speaker 1: called the Sandwich generation or the Panini generation. And what
Speaker 1: Wealthy really does is support that the caregiver, usually a
Speaker 1: family caregiver, usually a woman, as we know, and take
Speaker 1: some of that burden off of her hands. The second shift,
Speaker 1: and what we find with clients of Wealthy and the
Speaker 1: end users is that women are far more likely to
Speaker 1: stay in the workforce. They're far less likely to resign,
Speaker 1: need to go part time or take a leave of absence.
Speaker 1: So in this content economic which is such a bizarre
Speaker 1: one in many ways, where we have an incredibly type
Speaker 1: labor market, but we're all worrying about a slowing economy,
Speaker 1: worrying about companies deza to be spending on benefits such
Speaker 1: as this. Where are we in the client security to
Speaker 1: be paying for companies stalled ups and help fuel their
Speaker 1: growths in this way? Well, I think that's what I
Speaker 1: love about being able to ring the bell today. We
Speaker 1: did just have our portfolio companies. We had their biggest
Speaker 1: clients with us too. We had merc we had Oscar,
Speaker 1: we had AIG, we had Bank of America. These are
Speaker 1: huge employers and they don't just employ white collar knowledge
Speaker 1: workers in the tech industry, where we know typically benefits
Speaker 1: have been really generous. A lot of these companies employ
Speaker 1: a large number of frontline and hourly workers, and they
Speaker 1: are realizing that in this climate of an extremely tight
Speaker 1: labor market, when care falls through, people do not show
Speaker 1: up to work. If you think about the railroad strikes
Speaker 1: that we just went through this past fall, they were
Speaker 1: about these care issues. I think fundamentally, they were about
Speaker 1: paid leave, paid sick leave, and they were about scheduling
Speaker 1: and absence management. I really think you don't have to
Speaker 1: peel the layer back on the onion very far to
Speaker 1: think about those as care issues. Most people take a
Speaker 1: sick day because their child can't go to school or
Speaker 1: to daycare, right, And so I think that these issues
Speaker 1: of care and the needs of care workers and also
Speaker 1: unpaid caregivers, they're really striking at the heart of the
Speaker 1: American economy right now. And so I feel really encouraged
Speaker 1: when I think about the large employers Nicey listed that
Speaker 1: we had with us there today and these young innovative
Speaker 1: companies they are committed to working together. I think even
Speaker 1: in this environment, we are not seeing a pullback on
Speaker 1: this new and emerging category of caregiving benefits. We think
Speaker 1: it could be a ten billion dollars spend by employers
Speaker 1: in the next ten years per year. Well, Courtney, you've
Speaker 1: taken us to the opportunity, right, Caroline, and I have
Speaker 1: so many ventch capitalists on the show that will talk
Speaker 1: about the IRA, for example, right, the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 1: and making sure they have portfolio companies that our positions
Speaker 1: take advantage of that public sector spending and all of
Speaker 1: the kind of wide benefits, but that's all about energy
Speaker 1: and about electric vehicles. Seldom are we discussing issues of
Speaker 1: healthcare or basically what all basic society will needs. That
Speaker 1: seems to be where you see opportunity. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we see a huge opportunity. And I'll try an analogy
Speaker 1: out on you. But I think the same way that
Speaker 1: we are waking up to the fact that as an
Speaker 1: economy we have been addicted to artificially cheap fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: I think we are also finding through the COVID crisis
Speaker 1: and beyond that we are also addicted to the artificially
Speaker 1: cheap labor of women and caregivers. And when we don't
Speaker 1: value that care, just like when we don't properly value
Speaker 1: the cost of burning fossil fuels, there are a huge
Speaker 1: economic implications. So BCG just published a report saying if
Speaker 1: we do not fix the care crisis, both the paid
Speaker 1: worker crisis as well as the burden on unpaid caregivers,
Speaker 1: it will cost the US two hundred and ninety billion
Speaker 1: dollars of GDP. That is more than a full point
Speaker 1: of GDP growth by twenty thirty. So there is a
Speaker 1: huge opportunity when we think about the IRA. I love
Speaker 1: this too. We get very excited about green jobs. I'm
Speaker 1: excited about them too. But for every soular technician that
Speaker 1: we need to produce in the next ten years, we
Speaker 1: need to produce twenty nurses, and so there is a
Speaker 1: huge opportunity to think about retraining, how to make nursing
Speaker 1: jobs better, how to apply things like generative AI to
Speaker 1: really frankly pretty mundane and difficult and burnout related tasks
Speaker 1: like charting and taking notes and things that we know
Speaker 1: really dragged down the hours of paid medical professionals. So
Speaker 1: I just get really excited about the opportunity that there
Speaker 1: is in care. I think there's a great intersection with
Speaker 1: technology and care, and I think we're frankly at the
Speaker 1: very early gettings here. So how do you discern which
Speaker 1: names in your portfolio are going to be disruptive? Taught
Speaker 1: us about where you're investing across the startup curve and
Speaker 1: kind of the time horizons some of these companies realizing
Speaker 1: the benefit of your thesis. So we're a very early
Speaker 1: stage fund, and I think it speaks so that we're
Speaker 1: very early in the s curve for I think the
Speaker 1: general pool of venture capital and risk, capital overall getting
Speaker 1: turned onto these issues, and so I feel really excited
Speaker 1: about the rate of company formation in our thesis. When
Speaker 1: we started a few years ago, most of the founders
Speaker 1: we met, frankly were like me. They were women, they
Speaker 1: were mid career. They had met a problem and they
Speaker 1: wanted to go and build around it. They were not
Speaker 1: traditional tech founders, they were not necessarily engineers. Many of
Speaker 1: them have gone on to build amazing businesses, and living
Speaker 1: that problem is really powerful. I think what I feel
Speaker 1: excited about is that as the venture ecosystem starts to
Speaker 1: churn and get excited about this, as we start to
Speaker 1: see things like Andreas and Harrowitz having a sort of
Speaker 1: American dynamism agenda which very much centers some things around care,
Speaker 1: we're seeing mainstream capital get interested in this, and we're
Speaker 1: also seeing more traditional profiled founders get interested in this too.
Speaker 1: We're seeing more engineers, we're seeing more tech talent. We're
Speaker 1: seeing people who haven't necessarily met the problem, but they
Speaker 1: have the foresight to see the problem and they're building
Speaker 1: for it too, because they see that it's a huge
Speaker 1: economic opportunity in a place to make money. It's not
Speaker 1: just about fixing a problem that they're personally passionate about.
Speaker 1: What about the LPs out there? What about the source
Speaker 1: of funding that you turn to? Have they acknowledged this issue,
Speaker 1: They acknowledge this problem. They acknowledge that they need to
Speaker 1: put capital to work here. They do. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: an incredible group of LPs and I feel really proud
Speaker 1: to call them our investors and to go to work
Speaker 1: for them every single day finding great companies. I think
Speaker 1: that impact capital, traditional capital, frankly, corporate capital. A lot
Speaker 1: of traditional sources of capital for investment are recognizing that
Speaker 1: there is a big white space here. It is true
Speaker 1: you're pointing out this is not something which is kind
Speaker 1: of maybe common on the Technology Show, But I think
Speaker 1: that's also an opportunity to make a huge amount of money,
Speaker 1: is to be able to get in and to see
Speaker 1: the opportunities before they become really obvious to everyone else.
Speaker 1: I tell you, what we are talking about an awful
Speaker 1: lot on the Technology Show is jobs that are being
Speaker 1: lost within the technology space, as you just sort of enunciated.
Speaker 1: And I'm interested as to whether that suddenly means the
Speaker 1: companies that back or awash with talent and people are
Speaker 1: wanting to go and work and fixed real world problems
Speaker 1: or is that yet to come to bear in some way,
Speaker 1: because in many ways, you look at the job stata,
Speaker 1: you look at the jobless claims that are meant to
Speaker 1: be out this week, and we don't seem to be
Speaker 1: seeing those numbers yet. Absolutely, I think the war for
Speaker 1: talent for the best talent is always going to be ferocious,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really matter where we are in the
Speaker 1: economic cycle. But I think that there is a larger
Speaker 1: group of folks who are certainly amenable to switching right now,
Speaker 1: to joining and as you say, pursuing something which maybe
Speaker 1: sits with them a little bit more strongly from a
Speaker 1: mission and a purpose standpoint, and also which really touches
Speaker 1: the real economy. I think it's probably a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to work on building a gaming startup, but I
Speaker 1: may not have the same kind of reward building something
Speaker 1: in care infrastructure or the future of inclusive work, or
Speaker 1: thinking about how do we bring all of these incredible
Speaker 1: productivity tools we have at work and then do something
Speaker 1: for families so that we're using something other than a
Speaker 1: whiteboard and a marker to manage our teams at home.
Speaker 1: Courtney Line Cooler founding partner of the Springbank collective. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your time from near Mic appreciate thanks.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys. There is a new tool to tackle online sextortion.
Speaker 1: Take it Down is a free to use service that's
Speaker 1: being funded by the tech giant matter And to try
Speaker 1: and tackle the rising rates of what is known as sextortion.
Speaker 1: This is why a child perhaps is forced or tricked
Speaker 1: into sharing an intimate photo of themselves with someone else online.
Speaker 1: They are then threatened, blackmailed even to stop that photo
Speaker 1: of being shared more widely. Cases are perhaps more than
Speaker 1: doubling or sextortion in twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: so says one not for profit, and it's actually teenage
Speaker 1: boys that are being most commonly targeted at the moment.
Speaker 1: So how does it work? This is a web based
Speaker 1: tool where you can anonymously share a video or photo
Speaker 1: your worried is going to be distributed widely online. It
Speaker 1: is then using this tool, never actually leaving your phone,
Speaker 1: but on the web browser able to give it a
Speaker 1: sort of digital fingerprimut as known as a hash. They
Speaker 1: are then shared that hash with other social media platforms
Speaker 1: that they can take down any photo or video that
Speaker 1: this is recognized with and ensure that it isn't distributed
Speaker 1: more widely. The National Center for Exploited and Missing Children
Speaker 1: is driving this forward with the platforms that Meta owns
Speaker 1: like Instagram, like Facebook, and others are also involved at
Speaker 1: the moment, platforms like only Fans, pornharp U Bow. But
Speaker 1: they're hoping that more will come online to this. And
Speaker 1: of course there's all occurs at a time where big
Speaker 1: technology companies worldwide are being asked to do more to
Speaker 1: protect children online. Let's focus on this. We know this
Speaker 1: is a global push. Who's seeing governments trying to create
Speaker 1: policy head around protecting children in the UK and Europe?
Speaker 1: And I thought this was also a key area to
Speaker 1: look today. The story that China in particular is looking
Speaker 1: in many ways to be focusing on what the ways
Speaker 1: in which they regulate children's consumption of small short video
Speaker 1: right in particular, I think of TikTok, I might think
Speaker 1: of Instagram reels. It's interesting once again China looking to
Speaker 1: curb that in some way and make a policy basically
Speaker 1: around it. Yeah, it mirrors kind of what we've seen
Speaker 1: out of China in twenty twenty two, even going back
Speaker 1: further than that with the video games industry right where
Speaker 1: there's two parts to it. The Chinese government has been
Speaker 1: taking action against the big tech giants, but also looking
Speaker 1: at industries where there's a lot of user data involved
Speaker 1: and where perhaps society or cultural values are targeted. That
Speaker 1: seems very much like what's happening here with regards to
Speaker 1: the video names, and it is your Billy billies and
Speaker 1: your ten cents that could be impacted. This is bloom
Speaker 1: Meg technology.