Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: From the Heart where Innovation, money and power.
Speaker 3: Collie in Silicon Valley, Nbon This is Bloomberg Technology with
Speaker 3: Caroline Hyde and Ed Love Love.
Speaker 4: I'm Caroline Heindel Bloomberg's Well headquarters in New York, and
Speaker 4: I med Love Low in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Coming up in the next hour. Cisco shares under pressure.
Speaker 4: That's after delivering a disappointing outlook again along with plans
Speaker 4: to cut thousands of jobs.
Speaker 6: We have a story plus coinbase earnings out after the bell,
Speaker 6: but shares jumped this morning after receiving an upgrade from
Speaker 6: JP Morgan. Bitcoin holding above fifty two thousand dollars. Will
Speaker 6: break down the numbers and hedge.
Speaker 4: Funds buy into some of the biggest names in tech.
Speaker 4: Fourth quarter Amazon, Intel, and Video among some of the
Speaker 4: favorites that was revealed and yesterday's thirty NEFT filings. We're
Speaker 4: going to walk through the winners and the losers. But
Speaker 4: first let's check in on a key loser that is
Speaker 4: a mover on the day. Some breaking news Teminos based
Speaker 4: over in Europe.
Speaker 7: Confident.
Speaker 4: It says the company this is a software technology story
Speaker 4: in the finance space, so it's confident in the strength
Speaker 4: of their operations, so their financial cash position as well.
Speaker 4: This is after a short note was put out on
Speaker 4: the company six that's the benchmark manager over in Switzerland
Speaker 4: saying that Teminos is suspended from trading until further notice.
Speaker 4: We'll have more in that story as and when needed,
Speaker 4: but for the time being, let's get back to the
Speaker 4: macro picture of what's happening in US trading aside.
Speaker 7: Of what's happening in Europe. We're off by two.
Speaker 4: Tens percent on a NASDAK, some big tech names just
Speaker 4: rolling over coming off a record highs and we're pulling
Speaker 4: down two year yield though actually managing to dive.
Speaker 7: A little bit.
Speaker 4: But this is as we get that retail data that
Speaker 4: showed that not everything is quite as rosy in the
Speaker 4: US economy. Retail sales just falling that little bit lower
Speaker 4: in January under what had been anticipated. Maybe the Fed
Speaker 4: does cut in the second quarter yields. For I'm looking
Speaker 4: at what's happening in the dollar versus the Japanese yen.
Speaker 4: Dollar under pressure across the board all the g G
Speaker 4: ten currencies, but notable even against the yen. Now this
Speaker 4: is as we see Japanese economy as a whole fall
Speaker 4: into a recession, and the yen has been under pressure
Speaker 4: of late. And now as we want to have a
Speaker 4: little look what's happening in the great world of crypto,
Speaker 4: because we're going to dive so much more into ecosystem
Speaker 4: the VC money going into crypto a little bit later
Speaker 4: in the show, but for now we're coming off of
Speaker 4: our hives. But we're still about forty fifty two thousand
Speaker 4: dollars when it comes to the og that is bitcoin
Speaker 4: and what if you've got on the micro.
Speaker 6: A lot going on. Let's start with Cisco cutting jobs.
Speaker 6: Cisco is revising its full year guidance. The story customers
Speaker 6: are worried about the economy. They're pulling back on networking spending.
Speaker 6: We'll get more details on that later in the program.
Speaker 6: I would say Cisco is not down as much as
Speaker 6: it had been earlier in the session. Alphabet parent of Google,
Speaker 6: also interesting. One of the big movies to the downside.
Speaker 6: The information is reporting that open ai is working on
Speaker 6: its own search powered by being not drawing a direct link.
Speaker 6: But there seems to be some pressure resulting from that story.
Speaker 6: In Video one of the interesting stories of the thirteen
Speaker 6: f situation. They're putting money into a lot of the
Speaker 6: ecosystem that their AI accelerations are supporting.
Speaker 5: Will dig into that, and finally Amazon.
Speaker 6: I put those there because basically when I last checked,
Speaker 6: and Video jumped above Amazon in the ranking of biggest
Speaker 6: companies by market cap.
Speaker 5: It's a pretty close run race right.
Speaker 6: Now, but when you compare them in terms of revenue,
Speaker 6: it's just such a fascinating story. And within Video earnings
Speaker 6: on deck next week that is certainly one where we
Speaker 6: have to think about the valuation. DoorDash is the other one.
Speaker 6: After market. The gig economy has been the story of
Speaker 6: the week. DoorDash reports it's up one point seventy five percent.
Speaker 6: Does it benefit from the same things that Uber and
Speaker 6: Lyft told us in the last seven days or so, Karra, That's.
Speaker 7: What we've got to focus in on.
Speaker 4: We've got the perfect guest to really talk us through
Speaker 4: some of the key earnings still to come and that
Speaker 4: have been in the past. Ever course, Mark Mahoney is
Speaker 4: joining us on the array that has been.
Speaker 7: Let's just start on dash push us forward. Seems as
Speaker 7: though the consumer is resilient.
Speaker 4: And so some of these gig economy companies are resilient, Caroline.
Speaker 8: I think that's right. I think your interpretation is correct.
Speaker 8: That's sort of what we learned from Uber and Lyft. Now,
Speaker 8: these are all marketplaces, and so you've got to focus
Speaker 8: on two things, the consumer demand dynamics and also the
Speaker 8: supply dynamics. But the read throughs there, I think we're
Speaker 8: sort of equally positive. Lift and Uber talking about twenty
Speaker 8: five thirty percent rise in number of drivers on a
Speaker 8: year over year basis. Drivers couriers, couriers in the case
Speaker 8: of Uber Eats, Uber Delivery, so.
Speaker 9: And that's for a variety of different reasons.
Speaker 8: But I do think that the services just become better
Speaker 8: working experiences. There's been a lot of technical improvements in
Speaker 8: terms of the app for the couriers, for the drivers,
Speaker 8: and I think the economics have got better. There's better
Speaker 8: pay to be had, So anyway, all of that should
Speaker 8: come through. We should see in door Dash's numbers tonight. Now,
Speaker 8: this company's going to give four to your guides in there.
Speaker 8: You know, companies are usually conservative going to give four
Speaker 8: to your guides, So that could be a risk factor here,
Speaker 8: But I think the overall macro trend I think is
Speaker 8: positive for door dash and the gig economy trends I
Speaker 8: think are specifically very positive for dash Mark.
Speaker 6: There is one story that everyone has been talking about
Speaker 6: in the past twenty four hours. It is the case
Speaker 6: of the errands zero. Have a listened to this really quick.
Speaker 3: Look at the growth, look at the fundamentals of the financials,
Speaker 3: and to be very clear, this was it was a
Speaker 3: bad error, but it was one zero in a press
Speaker 3: release and you know a lot of other pages, and
Speaker 3: of course we corrected it within seconds of finding it.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, like with any mistake, I
Speaker 3: think it's not so much about the mistake itself, it's
Speaker 3: also about how you correct for it. And we've corrected
Speaker 3: for it obviously in the moment putting out new materials,
Speaker 3: but also doing a really deep process s type including
Speaker 3: having our own internal audit team, a separate team look
Speaker 3: and figure out how we can make sure we never
Speaker 3: make a mistake like this again.
Speaker 6: There is That was David Risch Lift CEO talking to
Speaker 6: us yesterday.
Speaker 5: Mark. Have you ever seen anything like that in your career?
Speaker 8: No, I hadn't, and I remember, you know, looking at
Speaker 8: the press release, looking at the five hundred BIPs of
Speaker 8: guided margin expansion and then hearing the CFO talking about
Speaker 8: fifty BIPs that I world around by chairs a way
Speaker 8: eight or there's a problem here, but no, I haven't.
Speaker 9: But look, it's a mistake.
Speaker 8: And I think David's comments were right, which is, well,
Speaker 8: make mistakes. That's that's that's not terribly interesting. What's interesting
Speaker 8: is how people react to them and whether they, you know,
Speaker 8: come out admit that they made a mistake and correct it.
Speaker 8: And I think they did a decent job of doing that.
Speaker 8: It's it's it's unfortunate, but you know, the markets at
Speaker 8: the end of the Day's how with Bobus. I mean
Speaker 8: the margins are still improving, uh and uh, and the
Speaker 8: demand chats are a better and there are focusing on
Speaker 8: free cash flow.
Speaker 9: I mean, that's just a there's a profitability inflection point here.
Speaker 8: All of these businesses, if you give them enough scale,
Speaker 8: you give them enough revenue growth, don't get the profitability.
Speaker 8: People were very uncertain about that when the IPOs lift
Speaker 8: an uber curve back in twenty nineteen, even more uncertain
Speaker 8: during COVID, but it's come through. These companies have grown,
Speaker 8: their bases are built up, their drivers, supplies improved, their
Speaker 8: their consumer demand has improved, and through all of that
Speaker 8: profits so starting to really show up, and the investors
Speaker 8: are reacting very positively that they should be.
Speaker 7: Jazz didn't react positively to Airbnb.
Speaker 4: Mark K know you've been looking at that stack the
Speaker 4: company and deciding whether ultimately it should be a long
Speaker 4: term bet or not. What do you make of Airbnb
Speaker 4: as it does see just a little bit of cooling
Speaker 4: in the band.
Speaker 8: Well, it's the highest multiple stock in travel trades, like
Speaker 8: thirty times thirty five times earnings. I do prefer booking
Speaker 8: a BKAT and I do prefer Expedia Expe to airbab.
Speaker 8: Airbnb's results were fined. They we thought they were going
Speaker 8: to have to warrant about their March border. They did,
Speaker 8: But just because you had a real tough compy, you
Speaker 8: had to pulled forward a demand beginning of twenty twenty
Speaker 8: three that people just had to remember. And why did
Speaker 8: you pull forward of demand until early twenty twenty three
Speaker 8: Because everybody wanted to travel, but this was in a
Speaker 8: by by Western centers. It was high inflation environments, and
Speaker 8: so people booked early so that they could avoid prices.
Speaker 9: Bikes during the summer.
Speaker 8: Those price bikes, by the way, didn't happen, but people
Speaker 8: were concerned about earlier in the year.
Speaker 9: So you have put forward of demand created tough comps.
Speaker 8: But as we'll go through the year, I think Airbnb,
Speaker 8: spine the growth listen or what are you oh?
Speaker 7: A technical difficulty mark?
Speaker 5: I think we oh, you're back.
Speaker 9: And that's the Olympics and every legal benefit mark.
Speaker 6: We lost you for a second there, but that gave
Speaker 6: me a chance to look at my Bloomberg terminal. Alphabet
Speaker 6: paranor Google's the biggest points drag on the Nasdaq one
Speaker 6: hundred this morning. The story the Information is reporting is
Speaker 6: that open ai is coming with its own search partly
Speaker 6: powered by Being. The stock seems to be reacting with
Speaker 6: down three percent on the A shares. What do you
Speaker 6: make of that? You know, Alphabet's company you cover.
Speaker 8: I'd be surprised if open Ai, with an integrated search
Speaker 8: engine with Being would really take away search share from Google.
Speaker 8: You'd have to do a lot of things to take
Speaker 8: away search share from Google. You have to come up
Speaker 8: with a much better search product. You can't just have
Speaker 8: a meet to products. So if Google's going to trade
Speaker 8: off three percent I probably buy the stock just based
Speaker 8: on that. I think that correction will be corrected, but
Speaker 8: we'll see. There's more competition arguably now for Google Search.
Speaker 8: I just think Google searches continue to improve. I think
Speaker 8: some of these Gemini features that they're rolling out are
Speaker 8: going to improve Google Search. So I'll take the other
Speaker 8: side of a three percent correction on market share fears
Speaker 8: for Google.
Speaker 5: Mark.
Speaker 6: We just have thirty seconds of the ginormous universe of
Speaker 6: tech companies you cover who won earnings period so.
Speaker 8: Far, Amazon and especially Meta. Everybody's spending more on Meta
Speaker 8: today and margins and profits are arising there dramatically. Metal
Speaker 8: looks like a really well positioned company in stock for twenty.
Speaker 6: Four all right, I have a coast, Mark Mahanean, as
Speaker 6: I said in massive universe of different technology companies cover.
Speaker 5: That's why I love having you on the show. Thank
Speaker 5: you very much.
Speaker 8: Cisco's the backbone of the Internet, as you know, and
Speaker 8: there routers, network server business, these things, their.
Speaker 4: Switches are truly important to bring it.
Speaker 2: In cash flow, but the future is in services.
Speaker 6: That was David Barnson, their CEO of the Buns and Group.
Speaker 6: And the thing is things didn't really transpire that way.
Speaker 6: He was speaking twenty four hours ago. But last night
Speaker 6: Cisco out with some pretty negative news, cutting headcount by
Speaker 6: five percent, revising their full year guidance, and saying, our
Speaker 6: customers are worried about the economy, so they're pulling back
Speaker 6: on spending it. At the same time, that ripple effect
Speaker 6: from AI, it's just not there for Cisco. I want
Speaker 6: to bring in bloomboats. Brodie Ford out in New York City.
Speaker 6: I mean, for me, that was the story, the difference
Speaker 6: between networking and infrastructure, the Hyperscali's data center, Cisco's not
Speaker 6: quite there yet.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think this is a song we have heard
Speaker 10: before that corporate customers are a little worried.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 10: Cisco said that they bought all this stuff over the
Speaker 10: last couple of quarters, right, all of this infrastructure for
Speaker 10: servers and internet, and they're saying, wait, let me install
Speaker 10: all this stuff before I buy more, because that looming
Speaker 10: recession could still be there. So, yeah, those corporate IT budgets.
Speaker 10: As much as people have said that they are coming back,
Speaker 10: it's clear from Cisco that folks are still a little
Speaker 10: bit anxious.
Speaker 4: And what's interesting is last quarter they missed stockfell and
Speaker 4: Chuck Robins said, I wish I could blame the Macro
Speaker 4: and I'm not back this time.
Speaker 7: He kind of blamed the Macro.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's not blaming a big a position that
Speaker 4: they made.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Absolutely, twenty eight billion dollars for Splunk. It is on
Speaker 10: the way. It has not closed yet. Big companies will
Speaker 10: often say that mergers don't necessarily cause job reductions.
Speaker 5: It seems like they usually do.
Speaker 10: Right, They're about to bring in a couple thousand workers
Speaker 10: from there's going to be overlap there, and I think
Speaker 10: most people watching us say that this is kind of
Speaker 10: preempting some of that overlap or an environment where companies
Speaker 10: want to keep profits as high as they can keep
Speaker 10: expenses low. I would expect part of this is due
Speaker 10: to that Splunk acquisition and.
Speaker 4: Spunk have been laying off workers as well, and anormation
Speaker 4: maybe or just reacting to how the market is and
Speaker 4: just fold in whether if they are blaming Macro this time,
Speaker 4: how much Also just people have just sat on a
Speaker 4: lot of gear and they haven't deployed it yet.
Speaker 10: Ultimately, absolutely hardware it takes time to install, right, I Mean,
Speaker 10: there was a period where there's all these backlogs and
Speaker 10: people couldn't get the things they needed, whether that was
Speaker 10: en routers or computers. That eased up and people started buying.
Speaker 10: They said, let me get it while I can, right,
Speaker 10: And I think now they're sitting on a lot of
Speaker 10: this stuff and they're not wanting to buy more. At
Speaker 10: least that's the narrative we heard during the earnings call
Speaker 10: last night.
Speaker 6: The numbers are that they've revised their full year sales
Speaker 6: Garden guidance down by around two to three billion dollars
Speaker 6: five percent. Headcount trim is about four thousand staff, so
Speaker 6: it's it's not severe, but it doesn't inspire confidence. Tell
Speaker 6: us about the partnership with Nvidia, because I think there
Speaker 6: is some optimism from the cell side analyst this morning
Speaker 6: that that might plot them apart forward.
Speaker 10: Yes, there is some optimism there, but I will also
Speaker 10: say that if I wanted to count off all the
Speaker 10: companies I've heard of with partnerships with Nvidia, I wouldn't
Speaker 10: have enough fingers, right. I mean, it's hard to tell
Speaker 10: exactly how much uplift we get.
Speaker 5: Brady Ford, you going sorry, you're right, no, No.
Speaker 10: Another funny wrinkle here is that in the networking space.
Speaker 10: Cisco has been unquestioned for a long time. We have
Speaker 10: another funny merger coming Hpe and Juniper and then expressly
Speaker 10: say that we are doing this to take on Cisco.
Speaker 10: I think that will take, you know, a number of
Speaker 10: quarters to see whether that really hurts them or not.
Speaker 10: But I think that is another wrinkle here, that there
Speaker 10: is a looming competitive concerns. So one more thing to
Speaker 10: consider here. Maybe in Vidia can't save them.
Speaker 7: Oh, in Vidio not to the rest of this time.
Speaker 4: It has been to Thesco of certain share prices today
Speaker 4: of others that will dig into in a bit later.
Speaker 4: Brodie Ford Rank, you always a joy to.
Speaker 7: Have on the show.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, coming up AI started AI startup Lander is now
Speaker 4: to one point five billion dollar valuation.
Speaker 7: It's the latest funning round it.
Speaker 4: CEO is going to be joining us, Stefan Allaman joining
Speaker 4: us next ed.
Speaker 7: But you've got something to look.
Speaker 6: Ahead to, Yes, super Micro, this speaks to every story
Speaker 6: we've just covered. The stock is now up two hundred
Speaker 6: and thirty six percent year to date, nine percent in
Speaker 6: the session. Bank of America initiating coverage with a by
Speaker 6: rating one thousand and forty price target. This is basically
Speaker 6: what Cisco is not. It's everything in the data center
Speaker 6: and the server design, apart from the AI accelerator itself.
Speaker 6: So they're a real beneficiary of the infrastructure build out
Speaker 6: we're seeing and they've massively outperformed every index, even in
Speaker 6: Vidia by many factors. And so this is one that
Speaker 6: we want to talk about more. Super micro computing up
Speaker 6: nine percent. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 7: Time now for talking tech.
Speaker 4: And first up, a SpaceX rockets blasted off in the
Speaker 4: middle of the night, aiming to make the first touchdown
Speaker 4: of a US made spacecraft on the Moon in fifty years,
Speaker 4: called an Oversea The spacecraft, built in Houston, is based
Speaker 4: initiative machines of the company behind it and will make
Speaker 4: its touchdown attempt on February twenty second. Meanwhile, chip maker
Speaker 4: Rhnessus agreed to buy software firm Altium for nearly six
Speaker 4: billion dollars, the biggest acquisition yet for the Australian listed
Speaker 4: company by a Japanese buyer. Now Rnessas, which is a
Speaker 4: Toyota supply is looking to lower its reliance on making
Speaker 4: automotive chips.
Speaker 7: Plus Taiwan stop.
Speaker 4: Benchmark surge to its highest level on record, boosted by
Speaker 4: what expectations.
Speaker 7: Of strong AI demand.
Speaker 4: The tai x rallied that says TSMC, which has a
Speaker 4: waiting of around thirty percent of the index, reported its
Speaker 4: January sales and the rose almost eight percent from a
Speaker 4: year ago. It really is propelling the chipmaker's market capitol
Speaker 4: record five hundred seventy five billion dollars. It's enough to
Speaker 4: surpass Visa to become the world's twelfth most valuable company.
Speaker 7: And what have you got on ai?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 6: Lambda, which provides cloud computing services and computers to train
Speaker 6: AI software, is announcing a Series C funding round three
Speaker 6: hundred and twenty million dollars, valuing the company at one
Speaker 6: point five billion dollars. The financing was led by billionaire
Speaker 6: Thomas tools us Innovavid Technology, and includes participation from the
Speaker 6: likes of B Capital, sk Telecom, as well as Bloomberg Beta,
Speaker 6: the venture capital arm of Bloomberg Bloomberg LP, of course,
Speaker 6: the parent company of Bloomberg Television. Let's bring in Labda
Speaker 6: CEO Steven Stephen Balaban to join us for more. Let's
Speaker 6: go back to basics. What is it that Lambda does?
Speaker 6: What do you build and what do you offer?
Speaker 11: Lambda is an AI compute platform. We have GPU servers,
Speaker 11: GPU workstations, and GPU cloud service that we provide to
Speaker 11: AI developers.
Speaker 6: And so this money is a significant series C. We've
Speaker 6: done a lot on this show about the buildout and
Speaker 6: IAI infrastructure. We're literally talking server designs going into data
Speaker 6: centers normally run by the hyperscalers. What are you going
Speaker 6: to take that cash.
Speaker 5: And do with it?
Speaker 11: Well, we're going to be deployed tens of thousands of
Speaker 11: new and video GPUs into our data center and to
Speaker 11: providing those GPUs as part of our cloud service.
Speaker 4: Okay, go back to the origin story here, Stephen, because
Speaker 4: it's an interesting one.
Speaker 7: You weren't always in this game.
Speaker 4: In fact, you were making facial recognition technology and ways
Speaker 4: in which I could augment my face RAI and then
Speaker 4: your own bills for your own cloud consumption got too high,
Speaker 4: so tell us that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 11: So LAMB just started off as a face and image
Speaker 11: recognition software development company. So we were AI engineers ourselves,
Speaker 11: and we ended up getting a really high cloud service
Speaker 11: bill and we figured, you know what, it was a
Speaker 11: lot more cost effective for us to redesign and reimagine
Speaker 11: what an AI cloud should look like in the age
Speaker 11: of training neural networks and inferencing neural network and so
Speaker 11: that's how we pivoted into the cloud business that we're
Speaker 11: in today.
Speaker 4: And Stephen, I really want to try and understand competitors
Speaker 4: versus frenemies.
Speaker 7: I find it very hard.
Speaker 4: To basically get to grips with who you're servicing, who
Speaker 4: your clients are, because it looks as though some of
Speaker 4: your clients are even some of the hyperscalers ultimately.
Speaker 7: You're going in competition with.
Speaker 4: Can you just tell us how ultimately you think the
Speaker 4: layer of the land will look like in.
Speaker 7: Five years time.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So Landa's customers include, you know, trillion dollar market
Speaker 11: cap Fortune five hundred companies, companies that are major enterprises
Speaker 11: like Rakuten who are integrating AI into their products and services,
Speaker 11: and venture back startup companies like any Scale, and so
Speaker 11: you know, we really primarily provide and cater towards that
Speaker 11: AI developer, and that's that's who who we've been basically
Speaker 11: providing our services to.
Speaker 6: Steve, I'm just really interested on the hardware side of
Speaker 6: this story. So you know, I'm assuming that you are
Speaker 6: building out your infrastructure with DGX or HGX, right the
Speaker 6: broader server design. But what's happening right now in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty four, remarkably quickly as we're kind of moving from
Speaker 6: this focus on training to inference and understanding the energy
Speaker 6: and compute load for inference, do you then start looking
Speaker 6: elsewhere like AMD that I three hundred x. How do
Speaker 6: you transition your own footprint in business?
Speaker 11: So look, today Lambda is exclusively providing in video GPUs
Speaker 11: and the reason for that is because that's what the
Speaker 11: market's demanding, right you know, it's very simple. We are
Speaker 11: a compute provider that technically speaking, and from our software
Speaker 11: architecture and our software platform is agnostic to what the
Speaker 11: underlying accelerator platform is. But so far today we've been
Speaker 11: pure in video.
Speaker 6: Let's look at the valuation and let's look at the
Speaker 6: money you raised. Valuation is high. Talks me about the
Speaker 6: reality of your business from a revenue generation standpoint, Which
Speaker 6: markets you operate in outside of North America, the number
Speaker 6: of customers you have. I think we're just we're learning
Speaker 6: about you, and we're thinking, well, hold on, this sounds
Speaker 6: like you're a really key part of the system.
Speaker 11: So Land has been pretty under the radar, but we
Speaker 11: have over ten thousand customers. In fiscal year twenty twenty two,
Speaker 11: we did over one hundred million dollars of shipped gap revenue.
Speaker 11: Last year we did over two hundred and thirty seven
Speaker 11: million dollars of ship revenue. So we already have a
Speaker 11: pretty substantial business. And in terms of valuation, I think
Speaker 11: that you're looking at these these revenue multiples and you're
Speaker 11: probably thinking, Wow, that's actually quite reasonable given the growth,
Speaker 11: given the customer base, and given the sheer amount of revenue.
Speaker 4: Hew I'm the CEO, Stephen Bellavan. Thank you so much
Speaker 4: for your time on the talks of fundraise.
Speaker 7: What you're going to be deploying in on Welcome back
Speaker 7: to bluebo Teleology. I'm Karen had in New York and I.
Speaker 6: Med love Loow in San Francisco. I want to focus
Speaker 6: in on crypto for a minute, and in particular bitcoin,
Speaker 6: what else We're above fifty two thousand US dollars per token.
Speaker 6: There is some momentum here from the lunar New Year.
Speaker 6: There is a concentration on the data around netflows into
Speaker 6: the spot ETFs that are available, and as we discussed
Speaker 6: on this show, some people are thinking about the imminent
Speaker 6: harving that's coming in April, but this is the highest
Speaker 6: level since December of twenty twenty one. We've been at
Speaker 6: that level for a few days now. Kind of interesting
Speaker 6: that is on the pure risk asset asset that is
Speaker 6: bitcoin on the equity side, and crypto related stocks were
Speaker 6: zeroed in on Coinbase, partly because coinbased reports after market,
Speaker 6: and I think there's an expectation here.
Speaker 5: That Wall Street might get surprised with profit.
Speaker 6: In Coinbase's case, I always look at the chart and
Speaker 6: there is quite clearly a close correlation at the moment
Speaker 6: between the trading we see in Coinbase the movement that
Speaker 6: we see in bitcoin. But JP Morgan, one of the
Speaker 6: more bearish names on coinbase ditched a very short lived
Speaker 6: call that they had on the stockol there. I want
Speaker 6: to go to DC and bring in Bloombose, Kaylee Lines.
Speaker 6: I mean that for me is a lot of different stories,
Speaker 6: but Coinbase really in focus today.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Absolutely to your point about how short lived this JP
Speaker 12: Morgan bearish call was. The call was just made on
Speaker 12: January twenty third, essentially saying that Coinbase was going to
Speaker 12: suffer because enthusiasm around these spot bitcoin ETFs was going
Speaker 12: to deflate and that would lead to lower volumes there
Speaker 12: for lower revenue potentially for Coinbase. What we have seen, though,
Speaker 12: and you were just speaking of it, is instead a
Speaker 12: rally in not just bitcoin but ethereum as well, bitcoins
Speaker 12: above fifty two thousand dollars, and so today JP Morgan
Speaker 12: is actually saying that as you have these higher prices,
Speaker 12: that is going to translate into better business for Coinbase
Speaker 12: as an exchange because the higher volumes do you have
Speaker 12: obviously more activity and higher value when you're deriving a
Speaker 12: fee based on value.
Speaker 7: All of that could add up.
Speaker 12: To a more positive earnings picture for the company, and
Speaker 12: of course we're going to get detail into what exactly
Speaker 12: that earnings picture really looks like after the bell today.
Speaker 12: As you said, most analysts do still expect Coinbase is
Speaker 12: going to post a loss. The average analyst estimate is
Speaker 12: a loss of about sixteen million dollars or so. But
Speaker 12: there are some who actually think we could see a
Speaker 12: surprise profit, including Oppenheiner and Needham, which is looking for
Speaker 12: an income of about one hundred and three million dollars.
Speaker 12: So we'll see if we are indeed surprised come a
Speaker 12: few hours from now.
Speaker 6: Bloomberg's K Lines, one of the hosts of Bloomberg Crypto,
Speaker 6: which honestly is a show that you really need to
Speaker 6: be plugged into right now.
Speaker 5: Great to catch up for you at a DC caro.
Speaker 5: What do you got We're on.
Speaker 4: Crypto sec check Auriganza. He's sat down with our own
Speaker 4: David Weston to explain his reasoning, but can't behind all
Speaker 4: of those approvals of those bitcoin ets spot bitcoin lines
Speaker 4: take listening.
Speaker 13: Several years ago, back in twenty twenty one, there was
Speaker 13: a product that went live, so to speak, an exchange
Speaker 13: traded fun wrapped around these bitcoin futures at the Chicago
Speaker 13: Mercantil Exchange. And then a different set of products came
Speaker 13: to us and asked a lists on the stock exchanges.
Speaker 13: And while we had denied like two dozen of these
Speaker 13: over about five years, a court in Washington said no,
Speaker 13: they thought we had not gotten that right, and they
Speaker 13: remanded it back to us, And I thought, really the
Speaker 13: most sustainable thing forward was to approve these given the
Speaker 13: court ruling. In terms of the statistics, we really do
Speaker 13: look out ensure as best we can there's not fraud manipulation.
Speaker 13: But one of the challenges on the bitcoin markets, David
Speaker 13: is so much of its traded on trading platforms that
Speaker 13: are non compliant with our laws. Now, bitcoin's not a security,
Speaker 13: but there are trading on those platforms a lot of
Speaker 13: other crypto tokens. Without prejudging anyone, I'd be careful that
Speaker 13: with hundreds of other crypto tokens on there, likely there's
Speaker 13: other securities and in court in a number of these
Speaker 13: cases in front of various judges and panels, and so
Speaker 13: the American public when you're investing in something like bitcoin
Speaker 13: to be aware one it's a highly speculative asset. Number two,
Speaker 13: it's generally trading on some platform that is not fully
Speaker 13: compliant with the securities loss for other things they're doing.
Speaker 13: And number three, I admit sin is think about what
Speaker 13: use case? What is the actual use case? When you
Speaker 13: buy one hundred shares of XYZ stock, you kind of
Speaker 13: know what's behind that company, what that they're there is.
Speaker 4: A sec chair Gary Gensler, and well we can stick
Speaker 4: to all things bitcoin ets. The approvals that have prompted
Speaker 4: some optimism throughout the entire crypto ecosystem basically, and it's
Speaker 4: been accompanied therefore by an optique in funding and VC funding.
Speaker 4: After six quarters of decline. I used to say, Pitchbook's
Speaker 4: fourth quarter cryptop what is out today and we can
Speaker 4: speak with the analysts behind it. Robert Lee joining us
Speaker 4: for more, And well, let's pick up where Garrigan's are
Speaker 4: left off, because you actually highlight within the report perhaps
Speaker 4: some of the regulatory uncertainties that hang over these crypt
Speaker 4: native exchanges. I'm thinking particularly of the decentralized exchanges.
Speaker 7: Unit swip on the like.
Speaker 4: How is that affecting optimism or not in ultimately backing
Speaker 4: these companies and seeing them grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think look, invest serves have looked at these
Speaker 2: you know, sexualized the changes and seeing what's happened over
Speaker 2: the last you know, eighteen months or so. Yep, a
Speaker 2: lot of the bad actors have been flushed out. Are
Speaker 2: there more bad actors out there? Possibly? But you know,
Speaker 2: I think investors feel a lot more confident in how
Speaker 2: they can assess and diligencies bad actors. You know, they
Speaker 2: really have the tool us to do that now. So
Speaker 2: we know that regulations are going to come and you
Speaker 2: know that that is a big challenge for investment, especially
Speaker 2: here in the US. So, you know, the last time
Speaker 2: we spell probably six eight months ago, said the regulation
Speaker 2: arbitragy isn't really there yet. You're starting to see that now.
Speaker 2: So the longer that we have, you know, this regulatory
Speaker 2: uncertainty here in the US, we're going to start seeing
Speaker 2: more innovation continue to move abroad. And you speak to
Speaker 2: investors and you look at all a lot of the
Speaker 2: big investments in Q four, they happen outside of the US.
Speaker 2: So investors, they're traveling the world now, they're you know,
Speaker 2: they're not sitting in San Francisco comfortable having founders come
Speaker 2: to their offices anymore, not in the crypto space. They're
Speaker 2: traveling around and they're going to conferences in Europe and
Speaker 2: in Asia to meet these founders, and that's what you're seeing.
Speaker 2: So you know the regulation is gonna be a pretty
Speaker 2: difficult aspect, and you know it's gonna be a big
Speaker 2: concern here in the US. But then you know, if
Speaker 2: that's if the legislation doesn't happen here, regulators doesn't get
Speaker 2: act together here, then then investors going to find opportunities elsewhere.
Speaker 4: And the opportunities are finding abroad and maybe even here
Speaker 4: in New York. As cristicks And would like to say
Speaker 4: from a sixteen, SI's crypto, what are you what sort
Speaker 4: of things are being built. It feels as though a
Speaker 4: lot of it is back on bitcoins since the spot
Speaker 4: Bitcoin ETF but it's about making it well scalable ultimately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've we it is in the research is
Speaker 2: that the layer twos for bitcoin is a pretty interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 2: We've seen a lot of development in it in the
Speaker 2: last year, so we're starting to see a lot of
Speaker 2: investments happen as well. You know, bitcoin historically was just
Speaker 2: a digital store of value and maybe some for payments.
Speaker 2: Now you're starting to see these layer twos that enables
Speaker 2: programmability and turning bitcoin really into a computing platform very
Speaker 2: similar to ethereum. And with that you can have all
Speaker 2: these applications be built on a DeFi, n F T S, gaming, uh,
Speaker 2: stable coins. So you're starting to see that come to space.
Speaker 2: So this year, you know, with the spot bitcoin ets
Speaker 2: with the having happening in April, and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: bitcoin becoming this computing platform. That's a very strong bulish
Speaker 2: case for bitcoin.
Speaker 6: Robert were banging in the middle of one Q and
Speaker 6: in the context of the money flowing into companies in
Speaker 6: the crypto industry, broadly. We found we focused so much
Speaker 6: on how tough it was last year. You see any
Speaker 6: green shoots in one queue about the kind of trajectory
Speaker 6: for at least DC backing of cryptos startups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I think the theme that you're gonna see
Speaker 2: in this next cycle is what are the real world
Speaker 2: use cases for crypto? So we're looking we see a
Speaker 2: lot of tokenization. We talked about this in the past,
Speaker 2: you know, that was a huge theme last year. You know,
Speaker 2: we talked about physical infrastructure, so deep in there's another area.
Speaker 2: We've seen a lot of investments, especially now with AI
Speaker 2: training using compute power to do that. We saw tomorrow
Speaker 2: or together AI. They raise this huge round one hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars plus round last quarter and also incentivized marketplaces,
Speaker 2: so marketplaces that uses tokens to you know, like a
Speaker 2: brain trust to let users come on and have tokens
Speaker 2: to facilitate the way that they transact online. So you're
Speaker 2: gonna start seeing a lot of that. We're very seeing
Speaker 2: a lot of investments in that, and that's what investors
Speaker 2: to focus on. The things have fundamental business models that
Speaker 2: are more durable, and then they have a path to scale.
Speaker 6: Tho, all right, pitch book cryptoanalyst Robert Lay. Great to
Speaker 6: have you on the program.
Speaker 5: Thank you know.
Speaker 6: Coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, we're going to discuss
Speaker 6: how one SaaS platform is helping hourly employees access their
Speaker 6: childcare subsidies. Merzer co founder and CEO Currendzau joins us.
Speaker 5: Next. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Tackling the maze that is government childcare subsidies that is
Speaker 4: now with the help of a SaaS platform.
Speaker 7: Merser is promising to do.
Speaker 4: That, having just closed a three point three million dollar round.
Speaker 4: Mrza co founder CEO Saransau joins us for more and
Speaker 4: Zeran just go through how hard ultimately the problem is
Speaker 4: and how a SaaS platform is the best way to
Speaker 4: fix it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's start with how childcare and work so
Speaker 1: deeply intertwined. So the top reason parents quit their jobs
Speaker 1: or cut back on hours is childcare. Forty percent of
Speaker 1: parents are in.
Speaker 7: Debt over childcare.
Speaker 1: So when we zoom out to that tangled web that
Speaker 1: you're referencing, we're talking about billions of dollars allocated each
Speaker 1: year to help low income families access the childcare they
Speaker 1: need to work, and yet only about twenty percent of
Speaker 1: those families are getting those dollars.
Speaker 7: So what's happening here.
Speaker 1: It's really varied and fragmented across the country. So for example,
Speaker 1: a family of four here in New York making sixty
Speaker 1: five k yere would have access to government subsidy. That
Speaker 1: same family in Pennsylvania would not. The family here in
Speaker 1: New York can use those subsidies to pay grandma, so
Speaker 1: if you work the night shift, that's pretty critical.
Speaker 7: But then that same family in Ohio wouldn't be able to.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to a nationwide employer trying to
Speaker 1: solve this for their employees, it is such a tangled web.
Speaker 1: It's really hard.
Speaker 7: That's where SaaS comes in.
Speaker 4: Okay, so tell us a little bit about who is
Speaker 4: using this platform already that you built.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're really excited to be working with a
Speaker 1: global food service company supporting their hourly workers. And this means,
Speaker 1: you know, the impact is pretty huge. For a worker
Speaker 1: who makes thirty five k a year on average, that
Speaker 1: extra ten thousand dollars or so in government childcare subsidy
Speaker 1: is life changing.
Speaker 6: Saren, getting publicly available funds is so difficult in so
Speaker 6: many different industries. You know there are specialist VC firms
Speaker 6: that only back companies like yours that do this.
Speaker 5: How does the technology work?
Speaker 6: How is your SaaS platform able to expedite something that
Speaker 6: everyone knows moves painfully slowly.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at the core for families, we make it beautifully simple,
Speaker 1: brutally simple. We take a few easy pieces of information
Speaker 1: like how many kids you have and how old they are,
Speaker 1: what's the number of folks in your household, what's your
Speaker 1: household income? And then based on where they live pinpoint
Speaker 1: very specifically, what the eligible what the programs they're eligible for,
Speaker 1: and then we, through the beauty of SaaS, make it
Speaker 1: as easy as possible to apply our dream. And what
Speaker 1: we're doing is one click. It's just like checking out.
Speaker 4: Online, and you've got the backing to prove it. Thus far,
Speaker 4: with that three point three million coming from the likes
Speaker 4: of Firework Ventures as well as Portage, we thank you
Speaker 4: for the time, mez A, co founder CEO si Ran.
Speaker 4: So meanwhile, look, let's just stick with technology's impact on
Speaker 4: families this time though.
Speaker 7: Kids and smartphones.
Speaker 4: What started is a WhatsApp group for local parents who
Speaker 4: wanted to hold off on buying their kids smartphones. It's
Speaker 4: quickly turned into a national movement in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 4: amassing thousands and thousands of like minded parents, launching more
Speaker 4: than fifty regional groups across Britain. Johnny us Now is
Speaker 4: one of the founders on Smartphone Free Childhood, as it's
Speaker 4: called Claire Fanhalf and Claire, I'm really interested in ultimately
Speaker 4: your driver here.
Speaker 7: You must have.
Speaker 4: Kids of a certain age that are demanding smartphones, and
Speaker 4: you're trying to find a way of navigating that.
Speaker 14: Exactly. I've got seven and a nine year old, and
Speaker 14: I was sort of becoming increasingly horrified about the fact
Speaker 14: that actually, in a couple of years, the normal is
Speaker 14: that my child, my daughter, will get a smartphone. And
Speaker 14: I just felt like, this is all the evidence is
Speaker 14: telling me this is not going to be good for her.
Speaker 14: But equally, all the evidence is telling me that actually
Speaker 14: this is what everyone does. And I felt like this
Speaker 14: was just not something I wanted to do. And so yeah,
Speaker 14: I set up a group just over a week ago.
Speaker 14: There were two of us, and we thought we'd just
Speaker 14: it would just be us, that we would, you know,
Speaker 14: kind of share some tips and resources and get some
Speaker 14: solidarity made with a small group and as you said,
Speaker 14: it's gone completely viral and thousands of people joined overnight,
Speaker 14: and we've realized that actually we're not alone in feeling
Speaker 14: like this, and actually a lot of people are clearly
Speaker 14: really really worried about this too and really want to
Speaker 14: talk about it together.
Speaker 4: I mean, your my leading stat is almost one hundred
Speaker 4: percent of twelve year olds have a smartphone, and I
Speaker 4: wonder what ultimately you think you can achieve through this. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: you're using technology to kind of try and fend off
Speaker 4: technological use by your children. But what do you say
Speaker 4: to the investors that listen to this show, well, those
Speaker 4: that are backing Apple to keep on selling smartphones or
Speaker 4: social media to keep on targeting all age rangers.
Speaker 14: I think what I would say is that actually it's
Speaker 14: absolutely fine for children to have a phone, but investment
Speaker 14: needs to be put into what we would call a
Speaker 14: brick phone or a dumb phone for children. Smartphones are
Speaker 14: not good for them. We know now we have enough
Speaker 14: data because the people who've got smartphones as children and
Speaker 14: are adults, and we know that the younger a child
Speaker 14: gets a smartphone, the worst their mental health is very
Speaker 14: clear and the evidence so I think the investment need
Speaker 14: to switch into giving it really cool brick phones for
Speaker 14: children that they can text and call on. But they
Speaker 14: don't need to do any more than that. In our
Speaker 14: from my perspective, the only reason a child leads are
Speaker 14: smartphones because everyone else has got one, and that is
Speaker 14: the norm that we are trying to change.
Speaker 6: Claire, I am not a parent yet, but I was
Speaker 6: once a child, believe it or not. What I'm struggling
Speaker 6: here with is what is the principal concern. Is it
Speaker 6: the hours of usage or is it the risk that
Speaker 6: parents feel their children are exposed to because simply a
Speaker 6: smartphone gives access to the internet.
Speaker 14: So I think there are three main risks here. Number
Speaker 14: one is the impact it has on mental health. You know,
Speaker 14: it triggers anxiety, you know using smartphones, we know it
Speaker 14: has a range of impacts on well being. It's also
Speaker 14: about what we would call the opportunity cost. So it's
Speaker 14: the things that children.
Speaker 9: Are not doing.
Speaker 14: So in recent years we've switched from a play based
Speaker 14: childhood to a screen based childhood, and we know that
Speaker 14: all children, of course, if they have the choice between
Speaker 14: playing outside the screen, they go for the screen. So
Speaker 14: it's the things that they're not doing, which is really
Speaker 14: really worrying. And it's also the huge amount of content
Speaker 14: that they are opened up to which they are not
Speaker 14: ready for. You know, they are now seeing the most
Speaker 14: shocking things on smartphones, and I think actually parents are
Speaker 14: quite a lot of parents are not aware of what
Speaker 14: their children are looking at and they're seeing images that
Speaker 14: they can't unsee.
Speaker 6: Essentially, Claire, I would note that if it's an iPhone
Speaker 6: or even a Samsung phone, there are very clear parental
Speaker 6: control instructions on the websites of those companies that parents
Speaker 6: can use. I carried a great job of setting out
Speaker 6: the movement. Incredible what you did in a short space
Speaker 6: of time. Has anyone in the UK government or a
Speaker 6: representative from Apple or a representative from Samsung reached out
Speaker 6: with you to try and work with you on this.
Speaker 14: We've had a lot of yeah, a lot of MPs
Speaker 14: coming forward, so politicians from the UK wanting to talk
Speaker 14: to us about it. We haven't had any tech companies
Speaker 14: get in touch yet. But what we want to do
Speaker 14: is work with the tech companies and say that it's
Speaker 14: actually a great opportunity design a really cool phone that
Speaker 14: every twelve.
Speaker 9: Year old wants.
Speaker 14: It doesn't need to have Internet on it. It can
Speaker 14: just be a cool you know, whatever brand you want.
Speaker 14: But at this moment, no, we haven't had anyone reach out.
Speaker 14: What we're doing is just empowering parents.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 14: We want the change to come from parents themselves, and
Speaker 14: then we believe that schools, government, tech companies.
Speaker 9: Will all follow if we vote with our feed I.
Speaker 4: Cannot tell you how much of our time has taken
Speaker 4: up discussing among friends about what to do about this
Speaker 4: at the moment and this critical ages of children so
Speaker 4: fascinating to bring it to our attention, maybe we just
Speaker 4: call it brick phone childhood. The co founder A Smartphone
Speaker 4: Free Childhood, we thank you, Claire Fairni.
Speaker 6: Has thirteen F filings revealed that Hedge Funds brought into
Speaker 6: some of the biggest tech names in the fourth quarter
Speaker 6: to chase what has been a scorching rally fueled by
Speaker 6: growth in AI. Let's go out to Bloomberg's Hemma Palma
Speaker 6: in New York. You look across the headlines and the data,
Speaker 6: which tech names were hot and which tech names were not.
Speaker 15: Yes, so tap tech names, Amazon, Navidia, Intel, These were
Speaker 15: some of the most popular buys that we saw in
Speaker 15: the last quarter of last year, Nearly fifteen million shares
Speaker 15: of Amazon was bought in the last quarter. On the
Speaker 15: flip side, Meta one of the least popular stocks. A
Speaker 15: lot more selling on that, but that made me more
Speaker 15: because of portfolio management, people wanting to reduce their position
Speaker 15: if the stock did really well, or taking profits, so
Speaker 15: it may not necessarily be a bullish bet. Nike and
Speaker 15: Pfizer also popular cells.
Speaker 4: Interestingly, we have seen some other cells and some big
Speaker 4: share reaction on the back of it. I think what
Speaker 4: Berkshire Hathaway is selling.
Speaker 7: Down on paramount?
Speaker 4: More broadly, where is sort of the force of direction
Speaker 4: going more across all of the board here?
Speaker 7: Is there any theme that we can see?
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean I think generally you're seeing a pushing
Speaker 15: into the market again, more interest in some of the
Speaker 15: big tech stocks. A lot of these are household names
Speaker 15: that we all sort of know and we talk about
Speaker 15: a lot in the show. But you're seeing, you know,
Speaker 15: if we look at CO two, for example, there was
Speaker 15: a decent amount of rotation their portfolio. They took twenty
Speaker 15: nine new positions, they sold fifteen Salesforce was one of
Speaker 15: their bigger buys. It's now their eleventh biggest holding worth
Speaker 15: about five hundred million dollars, so that's pretty sizable. They
Speaker 15: took a new steak in Apple. On the flip side,
Speaker 15: if we look at Tiger Global, there really wasn't a
Speaker 15: whole lot of activity, so you do see a disparity
Speaker 15: between different firms and how they examined the space. They
Speaker 15: only bought two new stocks they sold out of eleven.
Speaker 15: The ones they did buy were relatively small, small stakes,
Speaker 15: so you do see some dispersion too.
Speaker 5: A real quick kenna. What's going on with Viking?
Speaker 15: Yeah, so Viking they do some tech stocks, but they've
Speaker 15: also done something really interesting. They got out of their
Speaker 15: metal position entirely. That was a stake where about a
Speaker 15: billion dollars, so it's a pretty sizable move there. They
Speaker 15: ramped up their position a Progressive, which is an insurance
Speaker 15: company so they do non tech stuff too, and they
Speaker 15: ramp that up by about fivefold, so another significant uptick there.
Speaker 7: Absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 4: We love how you managed to break it all down
Speaker 4: for us and look at the valley that met has had.
Speaker 4: As you're saying, maybe some needed to rebalance their portfolio.
Speaker 7: Hema, Palma.
Speaker 4: Always great to have some time with you on these
Speaker 4: thirteen f's.
Speaker 5: Ed.
Speaker 4: What's interesting is in Video was not only bought, but
Speaker 4: it's also having to file its own thirteen f's. It's
Speaker 4: actually a buyer of companies SoundHound IAI actulutely spiraling because
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 6: And he's putting billions of dollars in the private markets
Speaker 6: as well. It's been very active in recent quarters.
Speaker 7: Meanwhile, that is it for this edition of Bloomberg.
Speaker 6: Technology Recap on the pod wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 5: We are everywhere. This is Blomberg Technology