WEBVTT - Using Software for Sustainability Solutions

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<v Speaker 1>Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

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<v Speaker 2>This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and tim

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<v Speaker 2>Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio Sounds of Bono the Edge and

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<v Speaker 2>other members of You two, you know, wrapping up their

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<v Speaker 2>residency at the Stay one hundred and sixty six foot

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<v Speaker 2>tall two point three billion dollar orb in Las Vegas,

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<v Speaker 2>known as the Sphere.

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<v Speaker 3>Carol, you and I talk about it all.

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<v Speaker 1>The time, Rewhind because we want to be there.

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<v Speaker 2>Catching the show. Needless say, we haven't made it yet.

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<v Speaker 2>It's not looking so good, not yet, not yet.

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<v Speaker 1>You're still young.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Well they're going to be done in a few days.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, there'll be somebody else there, that's true, all right.

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<v Speaker 1>Well maybe the next best thing I guess to not

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<v Speaker 1>getting there is getting some time with the company that's

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<v Speaker 1>the official tech partner for you two, helping to enable

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<v Speaker 1>the high def imagery. We're welcoming in our studio Jonathan Martin.

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<v Speaker 1>He's the president of the data management provider WEKCA and

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<v Speaker 1>as we said, he's here in studio.

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<v Speaker 4>Welcome, Welcome, thank you, great to be here.

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<v Speaker 1>Tell us about your company WEAKCA so WECA.

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<v Speaker 4>Is an AI native data platform that allows large AI

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<v Speaker 4>environments to be built.

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<v Speaker 1>So it was a year and a half ago would

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<v Speaker 1>you be talking about AI so much.

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<v Speaker 4>So we've been talking about AI for probably the last

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<v Speaker 4>five years, but it does seem to be reasonably hit

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<v Speaker 4>these days. So about two hundred and seventy five of

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<v Speaker 4>the world's largest companies are using Wekker today, eleven out

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<v Speaker 4>of the Fortune fifty, and one of those obviously was

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<v Speaker 4>the sphere.

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<v Speaker 1>What are companies mostly using you for?

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<v Speaker 4>So they're using is for building very large scale data pipelines.

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<v Speaker 4>So if you imagine the companies building these AI environments

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<v Speaker 4>are deploying very large volumes of GPUs, thousands, tens of

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<v Speaker 4>thousands of GPUs, and they want to be able to

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<v Speaker 4>serve data very very quickly, very very scalably, very very

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<v Speaker 4>efficiently to those GPUs to make sure that the GPUs

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<v Speaker 4>are running as fast as they can. So typically when

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<v Speaker 4>they deploy Wekka, they'll see that things like training times

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<v Speaker 4>for AI on the models will shrink, you know, anywhere

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<v Speaker 4>from ten to one hundred times. If you can imagine

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<v Speaker 4>what you could do with one hundred times more in

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<v Speaker 4>a day, it's a pretty incredible impact.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, So privately held company privately company YEP raised a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of money last year, raised one hundred and thirty

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<v Speaker 2>five million dollars in a series defunding round what's the

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<v Speaker 2>plan for going public or an exit here for these investors.

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<v Speaker 4>So we're really focused on building the next great data

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<v Speaker 4>company to come out of Silicon Valley. I think we

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<v Speaker 4>have an absolutely incredible opportunity ahead of us. As you said,

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<v Speaker 4>AI is huge right now, but there are many, many

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<v Speaker 4>other sectors You've been talking about some of them earlier

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<v Speaker 4>this afternoon, like media and entertainment, life sciences, financial services

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<v Speaker 4>that are reimagining themselves.

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<v Speaker 3>How do you see AI playing a role in what

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<v Speaker 3>they're doing.

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<v Speaker 4>So, media and entertainment is leveraging AI massively. A lot

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<v Speaker 4>of generative is being used for character development, backgrounding, sequencing,

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<v Speaker 4>in between ing. So lots and lots of generative in

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<v Speaker 4>media and entertainment.

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<v Speaker 1>So I get it with you too, right. You helped

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<v Speaker 1>create the visuals around.

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<v Speaker 4>It, Yeah, so we completely did it. So two things.

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<v Speaker 4>So we gave them the platform on which they could

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<v Speaker 4>build those visuals. So you can imagine that that is

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<v Speaker 4>a very very unique environment for sixteen K screens one

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<v Speaker 4>hundred and sixty four thousand independent channels of audio. That's

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<v Speaker 4>that's targeted three seats at a time. So the sound

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<v Speaker 4>in there is absolutely beautiful, and they're streaming data about

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<v Speaker 4>four hundred and two gigabytes a seconds.

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<v Speaker 1>Tell us about some other customers, like, I get that,

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<v Speaker 1>but there's not a million spears.

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<v Speaker 4>There's not a million space.

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<v Speaker 1>But give us an idea of the kind of your

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<v Speaker 1>typical customer and what they're doing with your we're doing

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<v Speaker 1>with you with wekka, and what they're using what you provide.

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<v Speaker 4>Typically so many many other media and entertainment companies. So

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<v Speaker 4>a lot of the shows that Union families watch. A

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<v Speaker 4>lot of the broadcast studios in the sky are built

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<v Speaker 4>on Wekka. But we're also very strong in things like financial.

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<v Speaker 1>Services broadcast studios in the sky.

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<v Speaker 4>So when they're building, so for example, if you want

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<v Speaker 4>to go and build, if you've got you know, four

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<v Speaker 4>or five studios around the world, they pull all of

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<v Speaker 4>their content into into a cloud based studio. You have

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<v Speaker 4>maybe another thousand or two thousand reporters out there with

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<v Speaker 4>camera phones putting them all into the media base. So

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<v Speaker 4>a lot of broadcast networks are building these studios in

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<v Speaker 4>the sky where they're having people pull all the data

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<v Speaker 4>into into a cloud built on Wekka, and then they're

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<v Speaker 4>having the producers and everybody pull from those streams. Not

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<v Speaker 4>one like people people who you will definitely know.

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<v Speaker 3>Yes, Hey, I want to talk more about investors.

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<v Speaker 1>Use people like traditional networks, traditional news networks are not yet.

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<v Speaker 3>Checking.

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<v Speaker 4>All right, Well, you're in the building, so maybe it

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<v Speaker 4>exactly introduce me to your friends.

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<v Speaker 2>So the other other investors include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE,

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<v Speaker 2>Micron Ventures. You got Nvidio in here, you got Qualcom Ventures, Samsung.

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<v Speaker 2>Are you using any of their hardware?

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<v Speaker 4>So we're software company, I know, but are you in

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<v Speaker 4>terms of like developing this stuff? So, but we run

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<v Speaker 4>as what we call reference architectures. So you can buy

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<v Speaker 4>Wekka from HP, you can buy it from the you

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<v Speaker 4>can buy it from Dell. You can buy it from

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<v Speaker 4>super Micro.

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<v Speaker 3>What is it? What do you mean by that? Is

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<v Speaker 3>it like white label?

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<v Speaker 4>So it's sold as a worker product and it's packaged

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<v Speaker 4>with hardware from Dell or hpoper Micro. You can also

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<v Speaker 4>buy the same product. And this is one of the

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<v Speaker 4>things that's extremely unique about its absolutely the same product

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<v Speaker 4>on any of your cloud marketplaces. So you can buy

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<v Speaker 4>it on AWS or Google or Azure or OCI.

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<v Speaker 3>Who's the biggest competitor you're concerned about.

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<v Speaker 4>M honestly ignorance at the moment, Like a lot of

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<v Speaker 4>people are just doing the same old, same old, same old.

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<v Speaker 4>These AI workloads are very, very different. They require extreme performance,

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<v Speaker 4>they require extreme scale, they require simplicity and shareability, and

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<v Speaker 4>they require you to have the ability to build these

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<v Speaker 4>pipelines across data centers and cloud environments.

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<v Speaker 1>A lot of extremes. And we've talked about this a lot,

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<v Speaker 1>whether it's autonomous vehicles and so on and so forth,

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<v Speaker 1>the use of energy and power to do all of this.

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<v Speaker 1>How are you guys focusing on this and making we

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<v Speaker 1>do it in a greener way?

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<v Speaker 4>So Sam Altman got on stage at Davos this year

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<v Speaker 4>and said that the world doesn't appreciate the power requirements

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<v Speaker 4>of AI and the AI revolution. That's absolutely what we see.

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<v Speaker 4>So these GPUs, if you have a thousand GPUs, they

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<v Speaker 4>consume about a megawatt of power. People are buying GPUs

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<v Speaker 4>these times in tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands, so massive, massive,

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<v Speaker 4>massive power requirements. So there's a big focus on sustainability

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<v Speaker 4>and how do we do this in a greener way. Interestingly,

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<v Speaker 4>our the series D that you mentioned was led by

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<v Speaker 4>Al Gore's fund, which is the Generation Investment Management Fund.

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<v Speaker 4>We were the second investment out of their Green Data

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<v Speaker 4>Fund because we help organizations massively reduce the amount of

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<v Speaker 4>infrastructury they require to get the same result. So typically

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<v Speaker 4>for every petabyte of wekka that you buy, you save

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<v Speaker 4>about two hundred and sixty tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

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<v Speaker 4>When we're talking about environments that are hundreds of petabytes

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<v Speaker 4>breaking into exobytes. Tho's on massive savings.

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<v Speaker 1>So you talked about kind of news, you talked about entertainment.

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<v Speaker 1>Where else is WEKA being used? Give me an idea.

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<v Speaker 4>Life sciences, so personal medicine, A lot of the MR

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<v Speaker 4>and A vaccines were developed on wekka. So computational chemistry,

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<v Speaker 4>structural biology, all of the FDA approvals we done on us. Again,

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<v Speaker 4>because we can massively compress walclock time. What may may

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<v Speaker 4>have taken you twelve days, we can now do in

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<v Speaker 4>four hours.

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<v Speaker 2>We love numbers here at Bloomberg. You're a private company,

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<v Speaker 2>but I'm going to look for some numbers here. We

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<v Speaker 2>just heard from Salesforce CEO Mark Bennioff, who said he's

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<v Speaker 2>excited about the all the spend going into it this year.

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<v Speaker 2>How much have you seen spend go up for wekka?

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<v Speaker 4>So we are tripling each year and of triple for

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<v Speaker 4>the last three years. Top line revenue, top line revenue.

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<v Speaker 3>They are, are you profitable?

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<v Speaker 4>We're a private company. That's okay.

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<v Speaker 1>You could tell us even if you're private, yes or

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<v Speaker 1>no question.

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<v Speaker 4>So we're focused on growth right now. We're focused on growth.

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<v Speaker 1>Fascinating. I'm quite not quite sure way to go because

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<v Speaker 1>I feel like I have a million questions, But having

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<v Speaker 1>said that, we have a smart investment in audience. You're

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<v Speaker 1>at least for the moment. But what is it I

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<v Speaker 1>don't know whether it's your AI exposure or you're exposure

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<v Speaker 1>to different industries. What is it that you think they

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<v Speaker 1>can kind of take away from this conversation that we're

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<v Speaker 1>having with you that you think that they should know.

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<v Speaker 4>About Probably the simplest way to think it doesn't have

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<v Speaker 4>to be.

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<v Speaker 1>Company specific, but more broadly what you are seeing.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

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<v Speaker 4>So, so, first of all, we are very very early

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<v Speaker 4>in the AI revolution. We are you know, twenty twenty

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<v Speaker 4>three really saw the early adopters in the market, grabbing training,

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<v Speaker 4>grabbing in the world at large, the world at largest,

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<v Speaker 4>it's very very very early early adoptors. Even geographically it's

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<v Speaker 4>very very spotty. West coast of the US. AI is

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<v Speaker 4>very very hot, East coast not so much. You go

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<v Speaker 4>to Dubai, you go to Saudi, you go to q

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<v Speaker 4>eight incredible investment, You go to Taiwan, you go to Singapore,

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<v Speaker 4>you go to Korea. Incredibly AI in AI and AI

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<v Speaker 4>and not just not just AI, in all the infrastructure

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<v Speaker 4>to build an AI industry. So you go to Saudi,

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<v Speaker 4>they're building dozens of universities to churn out AI graduates.

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<v Speaker 4>So it's government level investment in the infrastructure. There is

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<v Speaker 4>the market or the market is.

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<v Speaker 1>Just got about fifteen seconds.

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<v Speaker 4>Yeah, super super early. So the best way to think

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<v Speaker 4>about Weka really is in AI AI environments. Wekka is

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<v Speaker 4>to data what Nvidia is to compute.

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<v Speaker 1>Very interesting. Come back soon and keep us updated. Jonathan Martin,

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<v Speaker 1>he's preident of Weka joining us here in studio