Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is alive
Speaker 1: from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York
Speaker 1: and Edla Lolow in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Tech coming up.
Speaker 3: Tech socks fowards oil prices spike again, stoking fears the
Speaker 3: war in Iran will further crimp energy supplies a fuel inflation.
Speaker 4: Plus, we hear from Michael Dell and the US Energy
Speaker 4: Department Under Secretary for Science about Dell's work with the
Speaker 4: federal government on Ai.
Speaker 3: And new details emerged on Apple's entry into the foldable
Speaker 3: phone category.
Speaker 2: We'll break it down key headlines.
Speaker 3: Iran Supreme Leader has called for the strait of hermuz
Speaker 3: to remain closed and warn that new fronts may be
Speaker 3: opened if the war persists.
Speaker 2: Here with the latest in.
Speaker 3: The Middle East is Bloomberg Jermana Vissecchi live from Dubai.
Speaker 3: And you know those are the two red headlines on
Speaker 3: the terminal, right, the latest in public address from Iran
Speaker 3: Supreme Leader that start there.
Speaker 2: But conscious of course.
Speaker 3: That in real time drone attacks continue across the region,
Speaker 3: including where.
Speaker 5: You are exactly that ed and it is day thirteen
Speaker 5: now of the Iran war with no signs really that
Speaker 5: things are letting up. And you know, as you can see,
Speaker 5: we have actually started working from home today. Many institutions
Speaker 5: around Dubai have actually advised their employees to be working
Speaker 5: from home out of precaution. There hasn't been a formal
Speaker 5: evacuation notice issued, but I think what has happened in
Speaker 5: the last twenty four hours is the intensity of the
Speaker 5: strikes has really taken on a different dimension. And what
Speaker 5: you're seeing here is, you know, the UEE has been
Speaker 5: extremely successful at intercepting many of the projectiles that have
Speaker 5: been headed towards them. Out of all of the projectiles
Speaker 5: that Iran have fired, about two thirds have been directed
Speaker 5: towards the UAE alone, just to give you an idea
Speaker 5: here of Kant. But that's not to say that some
Speaker 5: of the fallen debris isn't causing damage on residential buildings,
Speaker 5: which is exactly the situation that we're in. So out
Speaker 5: of an abundance of precaution, we are, of course broadcasting
Speaker 5: for home. But I will tell you that the tone
Speaker 5: still coming out of Iran is one of defiance. We
Speaker 5: had the first statement a couple of hours ago coming
Speaker 5: through from the new Supreme Leader, the son of the
Speaker 5: prior Supreme Leader, and he was saying that they will
Speaker 5: maintain the closure of the Straits of Hormos. They are
Speaker 5: very aware of the cost that this is inflicted on
Speaker 5: the global economy and global energy infrastructure, and they've also
Speaker 5: warned that new fronts could open up and that they
Speaker 5: will continue to strike on US acids. This coming after
Speaker 5: a very intense twenty four hours of more vessels being
Speaker 5: targeted around the Persian Gulf, more fuel depots also being
Speaker 5: hit set a flame. We've had disruption and oil supply
Speaker 5: and analysts essmates vary, but any way you look at it,
Speaker 5: as long as the straits mains closed, what you're going
Speaker 5: to continue to see is this upward push on the
Speaker 5: price of oil.
Speaker 4: And Jamana I can only imagine the stress that's putting
Speaker 4: you on and all of your colleagues, your family at
Speaker 4: the moment to all to us them a little bit
Speaker 4: about what you think the impact is written large on
Speaker 4: your part of the world. The UAE not an oil force,
Speaker 4: it is a financial force. But how do you think
Speaker 4: that this focus on all prices as well is changing
Speaker 4: the tone in the Middle East?
Speaker 5: Well, Ue obviously some very notable OPEC producer and so
Speaker 5: you know there are two dimensions to this.
Speaker 2: Of course, the focus.
Speaker 5: From an economic perspective is maintaining the flow of oil
Speaker 5: and ensuring that production doesn't get permanently halted or disrupted.
Speaker 5: What has happened is some of the key OPEC producers
Speaker 5: from the region, the likes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, iraq Uee,
Speaker 5: have had to manage their production levels simply because they
Speaker 5: don't have any capacity left in their store. They're looking
Speaker 5: for other ways to get that oil out. You've probably
Speaker 5: heard about this East West pipeline in Saudi Arabia that
Speaker 5: Saudi Arabia are leaning on as well. In the UAE,
Speaker 5: there's also Fugera, a pipeline that bypasses the straits as
Speaker 5: options to get the oil out.
Speaker 2: But beyond the oils dimensioned.
Speaker 5: As you say, look these are this is a part
Speaker 5: of the world that has spent decades painting this image
Speaker 5: of a place where financial the financial ecosystem constructure. They've
Speaker 5: created the whole ecosystem around it to bring in capital
Speaker 5: and to bring an investment from abroad. And you even
Speaker 5: saw it when President Trump made a visit almost a
Speaker 5: year ago to this part of the world talking about
Speaker 5: the investments and the opportunities in terms of artificial intelligence
Speaker 5: and the diversification strategies that these economies are pursuing. At
Speaker 5: risk here is that these projects are being severely tested
Speaker 5: by and undermined by the geopolitical developments with really no
Speaker 5: end in sights. And of course this is the reason
Speaker 5: why GCC states have been one for ages trying to
Speaker 5: avoid the scenario and two actively trying to work the
Speaker 5: diplomatic channels to make it stop.
Speaker 4: Emos Jamana Vissecci, We so appreciate you coming live for
Speaker 4: us from Dubai. Stay safe, Thank you. Now look. A
Speaker 4: pro Iranian digital activist group Handala, has claimed credit for
Speaker 4: a cyber attack against medical technology making a Striker Now.
Speaker 4: The attack crippled the company's global operations, with many Striker
Speaker 4: employees around the world unable to work due to the
Speaker 4: breach so all. According to a source and a memoc
Speaker 4: by blombag News, Striker is still investigating the breach and
Speaker 4: doesn't know when its systems will be back online. Joining
Speaker 4: us now are the details? Is bloombag to Patrick Howell
Speaker 4: O'Neil from our cybersecurity team. And it's actually not the
Speaker 4: company Striker that's telling us it's an Iranian impact cyber hack.
Speaker 4: It's Iran itself. How do we know that Striker is
Speaker 4: dealing with this?
Speaker 6: So yesterday a little bit after midnight Eastern time, computers
Speaker 6: began to turn off and strike your offices around the world.
Speaker 6: It was a bit of a frantic scene. Employees trying
Speaker 6: to once they realized what was going on, unplugged the
Speaker 6: computers to save the data, and it interrupted operations around
Speaker 6: the world for the company.
Speaker 2: Employees were sent home. I mean, it was a full stop.
Speaker 6: Data was wiped on the computers and even on phones
Speaker 6: and devices, even personal devices for employees that had you know,
Speaker 6: corporate software on their computers, on their phones rather and
Speaker 6: then Hondala posted taking credit for the attack and saying
Speaker 6: it was in response to a suspected US strike of
Speaker 6: an Iranian school and has said that.
Speaker 7: They have a ton of data.
Speaker 6: But Striker is it appears really recovering and getting back
Speaker 6: on its feet.
Speaker 2: Patrick, this is a case study.
Speaker 3: Right Handala is a pro ranean distractivist group. What can
Speaker 3: you tell us about Iran's broadest strategy cyber strategy? In
Speaker 3: response to what the United States has thus far enacted
Speaker 3: in the region.
Speaker 6: When you think about Iran's cyber strategy, you can easily
Speaker 6: put it into the context of iran strategy overall in
Speaker 6: this war, which is that it's defined by asymmetry. I mean,
Speaker 6: you can think about drones, missiles, the kinetic space for sure,
Speaker 6: and the cyberspaces just like that. They are looking ways,
Speaker 6: looking for ways to impose cost on Israel, on the
Speaker 6: US and on partners of those countries, and so there
Speaker 6: are opportunistically looking for companies with connections, companies that will
Speaker 6: make usplash. There's a big propaganda value for doing things
Speaker 6: like this.
Speaker 2: What the actual.
Speaker 6: Impact is economically, The long term impact of this company
Speaker 6: is to be determined, but it's a major propaganda win
Speaker 6: for Iran, and you can expect continued opportunistic attacks like
Speaker 6: this from the country.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Patrick how O'Neil, thank you very much. The conflict
Speaker 3: in Iran and across the Middle East continues to bring
Speaker 3: investor attention back to defense technology. Joining us to discuss
Speaker 3: is Lauren Webster Piper Sandler, Managing director of Investment Banking.
Speaker 2: And that's your expertise.
Speaker 3: It's not just cyber But I look at the Bloomberg
Speaker 3: terminal every morning for the last couple of weeks, and
Speaker 3: the stories that are up there in the realm of
Speaker 3: tech are to do with defense technology. Must have the
Speaker 3: same conversation with clients on a data.
Speaker 8: Basis, absolutely, And I think there's a couple of thematics
Speaker 8: that are really driving investor interest in the category. And
Speaker 8: it certainly started before the current conflict.
Speaker 9: One was this push across.
Speaker 8: The West US, Canada, Europe for sort of sovereign reindustrialization
Speaker 8: of their defense space. A lot of investment pouring into
Speaker 8: we want to buy what we build in our borders. Two,
Speaker 8: more recently, the rotation out of the software sector. The
Speaker 8: sell doun on AI concerns that money hasn't just sat
Speaker 8: on the sidelines, it's been plowing into industrial space is
Speaker 8: like defense technology. And then third third, the current conflict
Speaker 8: is certainly bringing kind of a microscope to the space
Speaker 8: and really getting investor interests there.
Speaker 3: In a war scenario, it's hard to determine what actually
Speaker 3: has changed. Right, One of the data sets we track
Speaker 3: is non classified or declassified dollars that go to the
Speaker 3: legacy for ballistics, right, and they go to the same players,
Speaker 3: the vast majority still to Lockheed, etc. Are you seeing
Speaker 3: actually this new group of largely private companies get real
Speaker 3: tangible traction in this environment.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, certainly.
Speaker 8: And there's a couple pockets that really plug into the
Speaker 8: ballistics space. And you're right, like, we have a huge
Speaker 8: resupply requirement there after expending so many in the current conflict.
Speaker 9: But one is in sort of the launch capability, and.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of investor interest going into particularly private
Speaker 8: companies to be able to fuel the launch capability for
Speaker 8: those ballistics ammunitions. So that's one pocket. The other one
Speaker 8: is actually kind of the picks and shovels around the industry.
Speaker 8: We have a whole manufacturing base we need to reconstitute
Speaker 8: here in Europe saying the same thing, we need to
Speaker 8: have our supply chain within our borders, and so it's
Speaker 8: not just ship subs ballistics, but it is the supply
Speaker 8: chain around that entirely.
Speaker 4: Go a little bit learn not just in defense tech,
Speaker 4: but we think about cybersecurity at this moment as well.
Speaker 4: We were just hearing about what's happened with Stryker. How
Speaker 4: much is that a point of interest? How much of
Speaker 4: people willing to take on what has been some software
Speaker 4: anxiety around that area.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so, I think I think you're right
Speaker 8: around sort of the interest and where it was, particularly
Speaker 8: in the SaaS sell off.
Speaker 9: I mentioned previously.
Speaker 8: Cybersecurity was not immune to the sell down, but we
Speaker 8: see it. I see it as somewhat overblown for a
Speaker 8: few reasons. One is, companies like Strike or others, they
Speaker 8: know the threat is still very real in there, and
Speaker 8: they need effective cybersecurity tooling. So efficacy is super important
Speaker 8: and a lot of the AI solutions are just starting
Speaker 8: to get there. Two is cybersecurity is actually going to
Speaker 8: continue to be a place that wins. It's a beneficiary
Speaker 8: from plugging AI capabilities into it, and so I think
Speaker 8: you're going to see cybersecurity companies continue to do quite well.
Speaker 8: They've done better than the broader software market given both
Speaker 8: the threat and the opportunity from some of the new
Speaker 8: AI technology learn not that.
Speaker 4: Any of that set themselves apart that have managed a
Speaker 4: sell themselves as a platform, not some sort of single
Speaker 4: point of service, but well broadly have intertwined gender to
Speaker 4: AI ahead of the curve.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you certainly saw last week Crowdstrikes earnings come out
Speaker 8: and just really strong performance from the business around this
Speaker 8: platform story. Look, it has end points, millions of endpoints,
Speaker 8: billions of endpoints that it is monitoring, and that is
Speaker 8: a data.
Speaker 9: Mote in the AI in the AI era. Second, they
Speaker 9: are using AI to really drive.
Speaker 8: Security outcomes for their customers, So you saw that bright
Speaker 8: spot in their earnings for sure.
Speaker 2: What are you modeling for to happen in the duration
Speaker 2: of this conflict? What you are as a team discussing.
Speaker 3: Through the lens of different asset prices and how long
Speaker 3: you think, particularly the volatility in oil, Right, that's the
Speaker 3: end opinning of what's going on. But the simple question
Speaker 3: is having anything it's kind of lost.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I wish I had a crystal ball for that.
Speaker 8: But certainly you know there's going to be near term disruption.
Speaker 8: We have seen multiple points of that this year, first
Speaker 8: the AI sell off.
Speaker 9: In the market, now the conflict.
Speaker 8: But I think long term, we see a few opportunities
Speaker 8: with a significant growth outlook, and those continue to be
Speaker 8: defense technology going from largely private to public over time,
Speaker 8: and we're really excited about that and we will see yeah, certainly,
Speaker 8: but in cybersecurity, we expect to see a bounce back
Speaker 8: to as well on Webster.
Speaker 4: It's been great having you on today of Pipistana. Thank
Speaker 4: you for your time. Coming up, another eye popping valuation
Speaker 4: in the AI boom, but going to that private market
Speaker 4: we just discussed Cursor could nearly double its worth to
Speaker 4: fifty billion dollars. That conversation next, this is pretty bad tech.
Speaker 3: Cursor is reportedly in talks and a new funding round
Speaker 3: that would value the company at around fifty billion dollars,
Speaker 3: nearly double its valuation from just last fall, all according
Speaker 3: to sources. So the latest Bloomersons hash Mascaranas broke the
Speaker 3: story with the team, there's a lot of interesting Cursor.
Speaker 3: There has been for quite some time. They've moved quickly,
Speaker 3: grown the product. But this is a big jump in valuation.
Speaker 3: What are the details on the round? Who are the players?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Absolutely so.
Speaker 10: Earlier this month we reported that Cursor has topped two
Speaker 10: billion an annualized revenue. That's up from around one hundred
Speaker 10: million in annualized revenue at this time last year. So
Speaker 10: the revenue growth has just been insane, which is basically
Speaker 10: investor catnip in this industry. We've also been watching Cursor
Speaker 10: focus on more in house model efforts, which I would
Speaker 10: expect is a big part of why they need to
Speaker 10: raise new capitals so soon after their last round closed
Speaker 10: just a few months ago. You know, we don't know
Speaker 10: the lead investors just yet, but we do know. I mean,
Speaker 10: just looking at the market, so many companies are hitting
Speaker 10: revenue milestones or even new funding milestones. With yesterday Replet
Speaker 10: announcing that they had raised at nine billion and.
Speaker 4: Natasha, I mean, we've got the reput CEO joining us
Speaker 4: a little late in the show, and it just feels
Speaker 4: that all of these companies are able to thrive simultaneously.
Speaker 4: The fact that all we talk about is Anthropic and
Speaker 4: it's cowork and it's coding a bit capabilities open a
Speaker 4: eyes as well, but still this space.
Speaker 9: For Cursor, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 10: I mean it's it's a little bit of a cliche
Speaker 10: that it's not a winner takes all market, because at
Speaker 10: some point it does dip over into it. I mean,
Speaker 10: when Cursor launched its product in twenty twenty three, in
Speaker 10: developers eyes, all the big names of AI were missing.
Speaker 10: Open Ai didn't have a product, Anthropic didn't have a product.
Speaker 10: They were the model layer helping these companies, but once
Speaker 10: they saw Cursor's growth, you know, and other growth. We
Speaker 10: absolutely saw them put more efforts into their own products.
Speaker 10: My expectation is this year, similar to last year, we
Speaker 10: will see consolidation in this space. Last year we saw
Speaker 10: windsor or of a smaller company get acquired by Cognition.
Speaker 10: I am watching the same thing this year because to
Speaker 10: your point, despite the immense growth, there are just so
Speaker 10: many players.
Speaker 3: You know, see a lot of headlines on the Bloomberg right,
Speaker 3: Lovable is one out of Sweden.
Speaker 2: I think that's raised money.
Speaker 3: By the way, Curser didn't reply to comment on our story,
Speaker 3: but I did put on X that Basically, as far
Speaker 3: as I can tell, Replic, Cursor, and clud Code just
Speaker 3: all do the same thing in a slightly different way.
Speaker 3: It is a competitive field, the AI coding agent space.
Speaker 4: It's immensely competitive.
Speaker 10: I mean, think about also this whole idea of people
Speaker 10: being worried that their jobs are going to be automated away.
Speaker 10: You see engineers trying all the products, but they are
Speaker 10: going to pick one at some point, and so right
Speaker 10: now it feels like there's this arm rates to figure
Speaker 10: out which is going to be the preferred coding assistant
Speaker 10: or software development assistant and you know, day by day
Speaker 10: we see these companies go ahead.
Speaker 2: To head on it.
Speaker 4: Natasha, it's great. You're so much the breaking us in
Speaker 4: the private area. Thank you very much. In Dean, Natasha Mascaron, is.
Speaker 3: There software firm at Lassian is joining rivals blaming AI
Speaker 3: for massive staff reductions. The Sydney based company plans to
Speaker 3: cut sixteen hundred jobs, about a tent of.
Speaker 2: Its global workforce.
Speaker 3: The most ready forward has the software spaceed details. It
Speaker 3: is the latest one right. The scale is not perhaps
Speaker 3: the same as what we heard from Block a little
Speaker 3: while back, but you have the details. Why is it
Speaker 3: Lassian doing this and what to doing?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 11: This is the cool thing to do now if you're
Speaker 11: a software company, right, if you want to cut costs,
Speaker 11: you say it's doing to AI. A couple of years
Speaker 11: ago it was that you were flattening management layers, and
Speaker 11: today it's that AI is changing the market. And there
Speaker 11: is some truth to that, right. I mean, Elassian stock
Speaker 11: is down fifty percent on this year, and a lot
Speaker 11: of that is because investors are scared they're not adapting
Speaker 11: to AI correctly. So there is certainly some truth that
Speaker 11: AI fuels these cuts. But it's probably not quite as
Speaker 11: direct as some of these management memos make it out
Speaker 11: to me.
Speaker 4: Oh, the old AI washing debate continues, Brody, and you've
Speaker 4: just been breaking the news last week the Oracle was
Speaker 4: likely to be laying off many thousands of people that
Speaker 4: might be understood, and after their earnings, it feels as
Speaker 4: though they've filed some formal paperwork. All of this seems
Speaker 4: to be building. Are we going to hear it from
Speaker 4: other software names? We've got more earnings coming after the Bell,
Speaker 4: for example.
Speaker 11: I think it's likely that we're going to keep hearing.
Speaker 11: I mean, this whole AI job displacement question has been
Speaker 11: going for years, and it seems like it's only ramping up. Yeah,
Speaker 11: I mean tonight we have Adobe. Notably, they haven't done
Speaker 11: a big scale layoff, and they're firmly in this bucket
Speaker 11: of a company that is kind of really facing a
Speaker 11: lot of skepticism from the market about their ability to
Speaker 11: compete in this AI era.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's Brody Ford, thank you very much, indeed on all
Speaker 4: things AI, and unfortunately work at displacement. But let's talk
Speaker 4: about Netflix now. Maybe shelling out up to six hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars to Qua afflex AI startup into Positive. That's
Speaker 4: according to sources familiar with the deal. Now the movement
Speaker 4: mark one of the biggest purchases ever for the streaming giant.
Speaker 4: Here with more Blueberg's Luca Sure who covers all things
Speaker 4: media and entertainment, and well, they couldn't get Warner Brothers Discovery,
Speaker 4: so they're going in on AI. And actually it's cash
Speaker 4: portion is less, but there's some quotas they should hit.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean the the price was initially described to
Speaker 12: me as six hundred million dollars. I spoke to a
Speaker 12: knot different people where there is an earnout that would
Speaker 12: get to six hundred and perhaps even more. The initial
Speaker 12: upfront money is less than that, but still a big
Speaker 12: payday for a company that nobody even knew existed. Really
Speaker 12: until Netflix announced this deal, you know, Ben Affleck had
Speaker 12: been out there giving some really interesting public statements on AI,
Speaker 12: but it seemed just as sort of a curious filmmaker,
Speaker 12: not as someone who'd started his own company.
Speaker 3: The performance triggers are interesting when you just stop and
Speaker 3: look at what Interpositive does right. The tools that it
Speaker 3: makes allows filmmakers to alter existing footage. Talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about that Lucas. Why it's useful to Netflix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's useful on a couple of fronts.
Speaker 12: One is, this is an AI company that is founded
Speaker 12: by a filmmaker. It's for filmmakers, And if you listen
Speaker 12: to Ben Affleck talk, you know they don't They don't
Speaker 12: train on a bunch of existing work that's already out there.
Speaker 12: You're not going to run into copyright issues in the
Speaker 12: way that Google, Facebook, Open AI, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Are. You are supposed to upload your movie.
Speaker 12: As you're making it or your TV show, and the
Speaker 12: model will train on what you have put into it
Speaker 12: and can then help you change your shots, adapt your shots,
Speaker 12: take things out, adjust certain backgrounds. And so it's exactly
Speaker 12: what Hollywood should want in an AI product, which I
Speaker 12: think is helpful to Netflix because most people in Hollywood
Speaker 12: are going to be very mistrustful of companies like Netflix
Speaker 12: and Amazon when it comes to AI. They're going to
Speaker 12: assume that they are out to do sort of what
Speaker 12: you were just talking about with with Brody Right job displacement.
Speaker 4: This is a lot of money. How lo is the
Speaker 4: scale of the engineering talent, the scale of the company.
Speaker 4: How long has been Affleck been building this basically in stealth.
Speaker 12: The company is only a couple of years old, the
Speaker 12: staff is still quite sparse. I think the number caught
Speaker 12: a lot of people, including myself, off guard, which is
Speaker 12: one of the reasons why we ended up reporting it
Speaker 12: right that the news that Netflix was buying this company
Speaker 12: had already been announced. What I was most interested in
Speaker 12: was when I heard how much they had paid for it.
Speaker 12: But my understanding is that, you know, the company had
Speaker 12: been out looking to raise money in the private markets
Speaker 12: and was getting evaluation north of a billion dollars, and
Speaker 12: so when they had the opportunity to sell, they didn't
Speaker 12: get a price quite that high, but it had to
Speaker 12: be pretty significant for them to consider doing it and
Speaker 12: essentially become a proprietary technology for Netflix.
Speaker 3: It is interesting we started the segment by saying, like
Speaker 3: for Netflix, biggest acquisition or deal ever and sort of
Speaker 3: completely have forgotten about and look past what happened with
Speaker 3: the Warner Brothers Discovery bid.
Speaker 2: Fold that in where we're at with it.
Speaker 12: Waiting on what it's going to happen with Warner Brothers
Speaker 12: in Paramount right, Netflix is pretty much out. Paramount CEO
Speaker 12: David Ellison was on the Warner Brothers lot this week
Speaker 12: talking to some senior staff. They're trying to get that
Speaker 12: deal approved by the fall so that they don't have
Speaker 12: to start paying that the ticking fee they have that
Speaker 12: would make their acquisition of Warner Brothers even more expensive.
Speaker 3: Bloo invested Kashaw, who is managing editor, leads our screen
Speaker 3: Time team with the reporting.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Apple.
Speaker 4: Well, let's entry into the foldable phone category. The long
Speaker 4: awaited device is set to have an iPad like feature
Speaker 4: when it's fully opened, according to sources lets Kmore and
Speaker 4: bloombergs Mark gum And, who of course wrote the story,
Speaker 4: So well, there's going to be a screen on the front,
Speaker 4: but also the internal screen is going to feel more
Speaker 4: like an iPad Mini.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this is pretty exciting.
Speaker 13: So if you've used an iPad Mini, it has about
Speaker 13: an eight inch screen, and now this foldable phone, it
Speaker 13: will be kind of small when it's closed, but when
Speaker 13: you open it up, it'll be the size of an
Speaker 13: iPad Mini. So basically an iPad many you can fit
Speaker 13: in your pocket. And so with that, you're going to
Speaker 13: see an updated version of iOS twenty seven later this year,
Speaker 13: and some of the key features will be iPad like
Speaker 13: layouts for apps that'll run standard iOS. The other cool
Speaker 13: things here is that it'll be a little different from
Speaker 13: past foldables and that it'll have better durability, and then
Speaker 13: it'll also have a reduced crease, so it'll have a
Speaker 13: market leading crease so to speak. Right now, most foldable
Speaker 13: phones you see that line in the middle on the
Speaker 13: Apple version, it'll be much less visible.
Speaker 7: So that's going to be pretty nifty.
Speaker 13: And obviously this is going to be probably north of
Speaker 13: two thousand dollars, so it's obviously a good thing that
Speaker 13: they have the technology a little superior to what's on
Speaker 13: the market today.
Speaker 3: Mark take us inside Apple, not just in the story
Speaker 3: you put out yesterday or overnight, but but all the
Speaker 3: reporting on this product over the last few months. Does
Speaker 3: management feel like this is big for the direction that
Speaker 3: Apple wants to go, that it's going to be one
Speaker 3: of the most high volume products, things like that.
Speaker 7: I actually think it's going to be pretty niche.
Speaker 13: You know, they'll sell some maybe five to ten percent
Speaker 13: of overall iPhone units in a year will be the
Speaker 13: foldable phone. But it is going to be niche from
Speaker 13: the get go, obviously because that price point, which puts
Speaker 13: it at about double what you're paying for sort of
Speaker 13: the baseline profones, and obviously some people like the current candy.
Speaker 7: Bar style, so the slab of glass style.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 13: They're also working on new versions of the regular profone,
Speaker 13: so you'll see an eighteen Pro and eighteen Pro Max
Speaker 13: in the fall.
Speaker 7: Big focus there is on processor and camera.
Speaker 13: The phones will look basically the same as the current versions,
Speaker 13: and then a year later, as early as twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 13: you'll see more of an edge to edge phone with
Speaker 13: more curved glass. In honor of the products twenty year anniversary.
Speaker 4: In Meg's mot Guman always with it will think xactly
Speaker 4: we thank you. Now in Washington, Tech John Dell has
Speaker 4: been holding an event with its biggest customer, the US government.
Speaker 4: Earlier Ed spoke with Dell CEO Michael Dell and under
Speaker 4: Secutuary of Science at the US Department of Energy that
Speaker 4: Stario gil who spoke about using AI to advance scientific discovery.
Speaker 4: Take a listen.
Speaker 3: A lot of the themes that you're trying to get across,
Speaker 3: and I don't know what conclusions you've reached in the
Speaker 3: last hour with your colleagues sat next to you, is
Speaker 3: that either government is getting it right in the United States,
Speaker 3: or they're not in where they're allocating resource, where they're
Speaker 3: deploying policy to build critical national AI infrastructure. What are
Speaker 3: the conclusions you've reached today.
Speaker 14: You know, we're seeing in government a number of the
Speaker 14: projects advanced from the pilot phase to production phase. And certainly,
Speaker 14: you know Dario can speak to the ambitious initiatives, but
Speaker 14: you know we are you know, we have built a
Speaker 14: platform for open scillable systems to enable all the great
Speaker 14: sciences occurring in the national labs and beyond. Certainly we
Speaker 14: have a fabulous example in the DOWT in a cluster
Speaker 14: that we're beginning to deploy, and all this is about
Speaker 14: accelerating science, scientific discovery and progress. And certainly you know
Speaker 14: that's that's a huge parorty. So great to be here
Speaker 14: with our largest customer, and you know, we're very mission
Speaker 14: focused and making sure our solutions are enabling the mission
Speaker 14: wherever it occurs, whether that's in space, out in the
Speaker 14: field and everywhere else does go.
Speaker 3: There are case studies, right we could talk for example
Speaker 3: about the progress you've made with any RSC, but zooming
Speaker 3: out for a moment, if you will, from the DOES perspective,
Speaker 3: why is AI infrastructure now such a core part of
Speaker 3: of national security and energy security implications.
Speaker 15: Well, because we're in the midst of computer revolution, and
Speaker 15: AIS have the heart of that revolution, and it is
Speaker 15: going to transform how science and engineering are practiced in
Speaker 15: our nation. The Monday before Thanksgiving, President Trump sign an
Speaker 15: executive order to launch the Genesis Mission, and within that mission,
Speaker 15: we seek to harness this computer revolution to double the
Speaker 15: productivity and impact of America's trillion dollars a year R
Speaker 15: and D ecosystem and science and engineering are at the
Speaker 15: heart of our progress and capabilities in national security, in discovery, science,
Speaker 15: in energy, in health. And the example of the partnership
Speaker 15: that we have with the Downes system in NURSK in
Speaker 15: one of our seventeen national laboratories exemplifies the power of
Speaker 15: using AI to accelerate.
Speaker 3: Science toge is and mister Dell sent next to you
Speaker 3: delivering supercomputers to the timeline you'd expect.
Speaker 15: Yes, one of the So, for example, in that system
Speaker 15: that we're standing up, we already have an early access
Speaker 15: program where we stood up the first generation of nodes
Speaker 15: of the Nvidia GPUs system is going to be operational
Speaker 15: for the science community mid twenty twenty seven. So I
Speaker 15: think one of the characteristics we're seeing right now is
Speaker 15: that we used to have supercomputing projects that would take
Speaker 15: a decade to build. Now we're building these things in
Speaker 15: two years, and that's a big, big change in terms.
Speaker 2: Of the velocity with which it's moving. One of my
Speaker 2: quotes the government is doing is sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 14: There, please try out leveraging the integrated rack scalable systems
Speaker 14: that we're building for commercial and enterprise. And obviously there
Speaker 14: are enormous buildouts in AI data centers as you'r weld
Speaker 14: aware ed and and so they'll kind of again leveraging
Speaker 14: that open scalable architecture that we built will accelerate the
Speaker 14: government's progress in all of its AI infrastructural requirements.
Speaker 3: That was Dell CEO, Michael Dell and Darry O'Gill, under
Speaker 3: Secretary for Science at the US Department of Energy. Now
Speaker 3: coming up, startup Sunday raise one hundred and sixty five
Speaker 3: million as it works toward bringing dishwashing and laundry folding
Speaker 3: robots into your home. Speak to the CEO.
Speaker 2: Next. This is Wimberg Tech.
Speaker 4: AI coding startup replet has raised four hundred million dollars
Speaker 4: in a Series D round led by B to B
Speaker 4: investor Georgian founding the company at nine million dollars. Joining
Speaker 4: us to discuss the latest funding is Replet CEO. I'm
Speaker 4: Jad Masad. Wonderful to have you with us, A'm Janden.
Speaker 4: What's the money going to be used for? Because you're
Speaker 4: building it up in a swift formation.
Speaker 16: Yeah, there's a lot of product innovation to be done,
Speaker 16: so we're hiring more people in R and D. You know,
Speaker 16: Replet is kind of expanding beyond just code. We think
Speaker 16: that code has become the universal interface for knowledge work.
Speaker 16: So we're seeing customers of ours. They're not just building apps,
Speaker 16: although that's a big use case. They're building automations that
Speaker 16: are building slide decks, they're building marketing materials. They are
Speaker 16: doing all sorts of things with a replets. So we're
Speaker 16: expanding that, but we're also expanding internationally. We're seeing a
Speaker 16: lot of excitement around Replet and places like in Japan,
Speaker 16: South Korea, I'll say the Middle East. We have this
Speaker 16: big partnership with out Arabia and that's growing across the
Speaker 16: Middle East, but also Asia. We were just in India for
Speaker 16: the AI summit there and there's tremendous excitement there. We've
Speaker 16: partnered with a Razor Pay it was also a customer,
Speaker 16: and we're bringing kind of the raplets superpower to developers
Speaker 16: in India.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot to do.
Speaker 4: I have to do the follow up of if you
Speaker 4: are with significant exposure and growing in Saudi Arabia, how
Speaker 4: have things been in the last couple of weeks? Is
Speaker 4: that still growing as quickly as you anticipate it is?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 16: We haven't seen any any disruption to growth or day
Speaker 16: to day operations. Obviously, wish the best of the people
Speaker 16: there and hope things helpe we get to pece system
Speaker 16: as possible.
Speaker 2: I'm dad. You may see this is not fair.
Speaker 3: But if you put replt alongside Cursor, right alongside poor Code,
Speaker 3: there are different functions. There are different strengths, but the
Speaker 3: base functions are similar.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You actually also have a lot of investors in common
Speaker 3: with Cursor. How do you manage that and just basically
Speaker 3: say no, like no, this is what Replet does. This
Speaker 3: is how we're different, This is our motor, what we're
Speaker 3: doing best.
Speaker 16: Yeah, So if you look at our customers, our customers
Speaker 16: buy Cursor buy clod code, but they buy them for
Speaker 16: their core engineering teams. What are the rest of the
Speaker 16: company using code? Is democratized now anyone can build applications,
Speaker 16: can build software, and the most innovative companies in the
Speaker 16: world are opening their eyes to that and saying we
Speaker 16: don't want to be left behind. We want our product
Speaker 16: managers to be able to ship software. We want our
Speaker 16: designers to prototype and get in front of customers as
Speaker 16: early as possible.
Speaker 2: And that's not just startups. This is like we're talking about.
Speaker 16: You know, eighty five percent of the Fortune five hundred
Speaker 16: companies are using replet and in the primary departments is
Speaker 16: primarily outside of engineering, so we don't really compete with them.
Speaker 2: Had to head on deals.
Speaker 3: The benchmark right now in Silicon Valley. Again, you can
Speaker 3: tell me if I'm wrong, but it's ars. You know
Speaker 3: how real these businesses are coming in? How quickly take
Speaker 3: us inside report? How's things going financially?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean last year we grew one hundred UCTs.
Speaker 16: We went from two point five million to two hundred
Speaker 16: and fifty million dollars. I said last year that it
Speaker 16: looks like we're going to be headed to a billion
Speaker 16: arr in twenty twenty six and we're on track. So
Speaker 16: I think that's that's really exciting. But we also spend
Speaker 16: a lot of time just making sure enterprise adoption is
Speaker 16: going as planned because you know you mentioned Cursor and
Speaker 16: clod Code, they're going after established markets. What we're telling
Speaker 16: enterprise is that now you need to decentralize innovation. This
Speaker 16: is we're creating a new category of you know, anyone
Speaker 16: can code the enterprise. So so the thing we're most
Speaker 16: proud of recent as the adoption in the enterprise.
Speaker 3: I'm je Masad Replet CEO. It's great to have you
Speaker 3: back on Bloomberg Tech. Thank you very much. We have
Speaker 3: more funding news. Robotics firm Sunday has reached a nearly
Speaker 3: one point two billion dollar valuation following one hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty five million dollar funding round. The startup is using
Speaker 3: AI to develop a robot that can do housework and
Speaker 3: plans to launch a testing program later this year. Sunday's
Speaker 3: co founder and CEO, Tony Job, joins us now in studio.
Speaker 2: We just showed some video of Memo. You weren't able
Speaker 2: to bring Memo with you.
Speaker 3: It's quite quite big and quite heavy, but it's an
Speaker 3: interesting use case.
Speaker 2: What are you going to use the funding for.
Speaker 3: I guess in the first instance, to kind of accelerate
Speaker 3: this testing program so that I can have one in
Speaker 3: my home, or anyone watching Bloombo Tech right now can say,
Speaker 3: all right, I'll get one of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 17: I think the bid of program is a really great
Speaker 17: way for us to all kind of exercise our muscle.
Speaker 17: I've deployed these robusts into real peoples toms, which is
Speaker 17: the first time these general purpose robusts are deployed to
Speaker 17: like real homes as well as decleaning the research focus
Speaker 17: that we have internally.
Speaker 3: I chair my family in town and they're here to
Speaker 3: watch the show today and they know full well that
Speaker 3: you know in the living room is the laundry and
Speaker 3: it's not folded because of the difficulty in training me
Speaker 3: to do it. What is the technical challenge on the
Speaker 3: hardware side, but also software side, dexterity to get the
Speaker 3: robot to fold laundry?
Speaker 17: Yeah, yeah, I think the breakthrough is really about the
Speaker 17: AI that is behind it. You think about GENI as
Speaker 17: a AI that generate images and texts, but we use
Speaker 17: it to generate actions. I think one of the most
Speaker 17: important part is how we gather the data to train
Speaker 17: this really powerful AI. And what we do is we
Speaker 17: develop this glove club memory gloves, and essentially we give
Speaker 17: it to people so that they can do the laundry
Speaker 17: in their own homes, and we capture that data to
Speaker 17: train our robusts to do the same thing.
Speaker 4: Skill capture gloves, So basically that's giving the data, the
Speaker 4: underlying data so that the robot can learn. This was
Speaker 4: sort of a breakthrough that you made in academia, Tony,
Speaker 4: But I'm interested as to how the beta is going
Speaker 4: and how many people actually want them in their homes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a huge way list.
Speaker 17: We have more than three thousand people who spend like
Speaker 17: thirty minute like filling up this whole sand of forum,
Speaker 17: and we're actually in the process of selecting people who
Speaker 17: will be participating in it this year.
Speaker 4: It's all about getting robots in the wild. Now, I'm
Speaker 4: interested Tony as to We've been watching a lot of
Speaker 4: these videos basically on fast forward, they're going at four
Speaker 4: times the speed than they actually do. What do you
Speaker 4: think your biggest learning will be in the wild. Where
Speaker 4: do you think there will be issues? Where do you
Speaker 4: think they'll really overcome a lot of the concerns people have.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I think for us, we're actually not super worried
Speaker 17: about speed because essentially, if your laundry, if all your
Speaker 17: houseworks can be done by the robot, it's essentially like
Speaker 17: you go to work and you come back to work
Speaker 17: after eight hours and all the work is done. So
Speaker 17: the part that we're really dis thing is we do
Speaker 17: not actually need to train on data that is collective
Speaker 17: from the robot because we have this whole fleet of
Speaker 17: memory developers, so our interest and our users interests are
Speaker 17: almost perfectly aligned. We want feedbacks, we don't necessarily need
Speaker 17: the data from your homes.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Tech executive producer Jackie Lopez has come in with
Speaker 3: probably the most important question of the day, which is
Speaker 3: will it.
Speaker 2: Come with the hat? And why does Memo have a hat?
Speaker 3: For me, probably a more important question, particularly because it's
Speaker 3: not bipedal, right, is what are you going to charge
Speaker 3: for it?
Speaker 2: And how are you going to charge? What's the model?
Speaker 17: Yeah, I think the way we think about the robot
Speaker 17: we build is almost a perfect example of MVP, which
Speaker 17: is a minimum viable product that we try to simplify.
Speaker 2: We try to lower the cost.
Speaker 17: So in the beginning when we sell it, we're going
Speaker 17: to sell it for around ten kuss dollar. But just
Speaker 17: like personal computers, just like phones, so we'll get cheaper
Speaker 17: over time.
Speaker 2: But it comes with the hat.
Speaker 17: Yes, the hat is really interesting because we essentially imagine
Speaker 17: a world that the robots are everywhere, the ubiquitous rates,
Speaker 17: and we really want to make eye contact with the robot.
Speaker 17: And instead of putting a camera us inside the eyes
Speaker 17: of the robot, we essentially hide it underneath the hat,
Speaker 17: so it looks a lot more natural. You can make
Speaker 17: eye contact with it.
Speaker 2: It's cute.
Speaker 4: Tony Jiao, thank you, CEO Sunday, come back. Tell us
Speaker 4: how that testing in the wild continues. Investors have been
Speaker 4: clamoring for early access to share private companies like SpaceX
Speaker 4: before their IPOs, but they're turning to the wild world
Speaker 4: of special purpose vehicles or SPVs. They act kind of
Speaker 4: as a middle man structure whose main asset is shares
Speaker 4: of other private companies, but there are some questions around
Speaker 4: who really owns the stock or if it even exists.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's Bailey Lipschaltz joins us some more, and you really
Speaker 4: do this wonderful deep dive. Look, not every SPV is
Speaker 4: born equal. Some are more questionable than others. But what's
Speaker 4: amazing is that sort of co founders of Andrail or
Speaker 4: the hottest IBO candidates are getting sent well SPV terms
Speaker 4: that they know they haven't issued shares too.
Speaker 2: They know they haven't issued shares too.
Speaker 18: They're very They're a company that is very outspoken about
Speaker 18: pushing back against these and just kind of the potential fees,
Speaker 18: and they're if you go on X Palmer and Matt
Speaker 18: are very vocal about not wanting this to be a thing.
Speaker 18: And the big question is if there's a market, why
Speaker 18: aren't people investing in it? And it goes to the
Speaker 18: whole debate about capitalism. Right, if you are willing to
Speaker 18: take on these fees and willing to take on the
Speaker 18: risk to buy Androil at two and a half times
Speaker 18: its latest funding round and pay a fee to a manager.
Speaker 18: From the management perspective, why not they're offering the deal
Speaker 18: And from the investor perspective, hopefully you did your due diligence.
Speaker 3: Bailey to quote the Great Shrek, and much like ogres,
Speaker 3: SPVs can have layers.
Speaker 2: That was good layers, Donkey.
Speaker 3: And that within it buries a very complicated web of
Speaker 3: extra fees and what Carol was talking about understanding within
Speaker 3: those layers, if the stock's even there a tool in
Speaker 3: the end, if there is actually ownership of real cap
Speaker 3: table position in a private company.
Speaker 18: Yeah, and I think that goes back to the question
Speaker 18: of if you're invested in a co invest on the
Speaker 18: cap table in an SPV, a so called clean SPV, congratulations,
Speaker 18: That makes all the sense in the world. If you're
Speaker 18: being pitched an email that's saying, hey, pay me two
Speaker 18: and ten for access to this SPV. But that's on
Speaker 18: top that SPV is investing in another SPVs that's charging
Speaker 18: another to and ten, and that's investing in another SPV
Speaker 18: that's charging two and twenty.
Speaker 2: Well, congratulations.
Speaker 18: Even if those shares do exist, which there are questions
Speaker 18: around that, if there is a liquidity event like an
Speaker 18: IPO or a sale, you may be thinking that you're
Speaker 18: only paying the initial fees, but in reality what you
Speaker 18: end up getting distributed is much much smaller because of
Speaker 18: those carry fees in that management fee.
Speaker 4: Look, FOMO inspires a lot about and already you started
Speaker 4: to see that behavior in this there is fraud or
Speaker 4: at least allegations of fraud.
Speaker 18: Yeah, and one person settle for those charges allegations of
Speaker 18: fraud that they shares never actually existed. So cold outreach,
Speaker 18: wire me your money. And even though I'm promising you
Speaker 18: not providing those documents that I actually own the shares
Speaker 18: of said private company or said fund, I'm putting it
Speaker 18: in my bank account. And we have seen settlements already.
Speaker 18: And the more people I talk to you, the more
Speaker 18: this is potentially the tip of the iceberg because you
Speaker 18: don't have these issues come to light until there is
Speaker 18: a forced event. So when there is an IPO, when
Speaker 18: people say, hey, looking for those SpaceX shares I owned,
Speaker 18: well maybe they don't end up getting transferred to your account,
Speaker 18: and that's where the issues show up.
Speaker 2: Bloombost baby lip shots with the big take. Thank you
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 3: That does it carry for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 4: Your father and I should come in all the time
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