Speaker 1: From Mahard. We're Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon
Speaker 1: Vallet NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and
Speaker 1: Ed Ludlow.
Speaker 2: Ed Ludlow here in San Francisco, Caroline hides off today.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology coming up on the program. Full
Speaker 2: coverage of the tech companies making headlines, from Virgin Galactics
Speaker 2: spaceflight to Micron's earnings, and even Coinbase calling for a
Speaker 2: dismissal of its sec suit.
Speaker 3: We got you covered.
Speaker 2: Plus AI video startup Runway raising an additional one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty million from Google, Nvidia and other investors. We
Speaker 2: had the exclusive interview with the CEO and you may
Speaker 2: know him from Man Versus Wild, but now Bear Grills
Speaker 2: is tackling disinformation and pushing for digital literacy using AI.
Speaker 2: He joins us later this hour to discuss his new initiative.
Speaker 2: Let's get a check in on the Micron. Micron giving
Speaker 2: a bullish outlook suggesting that we're coming out of the
Speaker 2: trough when it comes from memory chips, but the market's
Speaker 2: not buying it. There is debate on the street about
Speaker 2: whether this recovery the micro has outlined is going to
Speaker 2: happen as they suggest, Let's get the reaction in the
Speaker 2: analysis and bring in Bloomberg's Mandeep saying of Bloomberg Intelligence
Speaker 2: man deep the recovery the trough.
Speaker 3: Are you buying it well? So they had some mixed
Speaker 3: data points.
Speaker 4: If you look at the guidance, clearly that was above consensus.
Speaker 4: But when you look at the inventory days going up
Speaker 4: to one sixty five from one fifty, we thought, you know,
Speaker 4: their fiscal two Q the last quarter was going to
Speaker 4: be the peak. So clearly they're writing down less inventory.
Speaker 4: Last quarter they wrote about one point four billion. This quarter,
Speaker 4: they only wrote four hundred million dollar off inventory. And
Speaker 4: they didn't give us enough data points around their Generative
Speaker 4: AI exposure. They talked about how bandwidth high bandwidth memory,
Speaker 4: but they didn't give us like quantification of how much
Speaker 4: exposure it is, how it's gonna ram. So that's why
Speaker 4: I would say it was a mixed quarter. But look,
Speaker 4: I mean, at the end of the day, there are
Speaker 4: three players in memory, and if generative AI is a
Speaker 4: secular Tilwyn and we are in the early innings, I
Speaker 4: think you could extrapolate that there will be memory demand
Speaker 4: just because it goes hand in hand with the chip
Speaker 4: and the computer capacity.
Speaker 2: I love nerding out on d RAM and nand I
Speaker 2: always love nerding out in DRAM and Nand the thing is,
Speaker 2: it's such a commoditized chip. And the story that Micron
Speaker 2: was trying to paint was that all of the laptop makers,
Speaker 2: PC makers, smartphone makers, they built up the inventory, and
Speaker 2: they'd work through the inventory and they were going to
Speaker 2: start ordering again. But actually that kind of contrasted with
Speaker 2: the outlook for the markets. How many PCs we think
Speaker 2: will ship this year, how many smartphones we think will
Speaker 2: ship this year? What did you learn, Mandy through Micron's
Speaker 2: commentary in that respect.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they lured their PC shipment forecast for this
Speaker 4: year smartphone shipment as well. They lured it by a
Speaker 4: couple of percentage points. So, look, I think near term,
Speaker 4: given their high exposure to PCs and smartphones that makes
Speaker 4: up almost seventy percent of you know, their DRAM sales.
Speaker 4: So you could argue that given the high exposure they
Speaker 4: have to these two pockets, which are unlikely to recover
Speaker 4: in the second half, it makes sense, you know that
Speaker 4: they still have work to do in terms of working
Speaker 4: through the inventory and the orders aren't going to come
Speaker 4: back so soon, and they're cutting back supply, which I
Speaker 4: think is a positive. When you think about the dynamics
Speaker 4: of a commoditized space, the supply demand balance is key.
Speaker 4: So they are reducing their supply. They would hope Samsung
Speaker 4: and s k Heinis are doing the same. And what
Speaker 4: it could do down the line, you know, second half
Speaker 4: to twenty twenty four or twenty twenty five, is you
Speaker 4: could see a big pop in pricing because right now
Speaker 4: pricing declines are moderating, but no one is expecting prices
Speaker 4: to go up for memory. If the supply demand balance
Speaker 4: is restored, you could see that pricing pop up given
Speaker 4: the tail Vince we're talking about from generator to AI.
Speaker 2: Here on Bloomberg Technology, we follow the d ram man
Speaker 2: neat seeing of Bloomberg Intelligence.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. So let's get out to New Mexico.
Speaker 2: Virgin Galactic officially launching and landing in the last few
Speaker 2: minutes its first ever commercial spaceflight.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Lauren Grush.
Speaker 2: Space reporter in chief, out there in New Mexico. Lauren,
Speaker 2: what just happened?
Speaker 5: Well, actually you just missed it. The crew just arrived
Speaker 5: back from their spaceflight here at the Spaceport America, everyone celebrating.
Speaker 5: You might be able to hear some cheers next to me.
Speaker 5: At the moment. It's all smiles as a picture perfect
Speaker 5: flight today. Unfortunately you might see the clouds behind me.
Speaker 5: They did obscure our view here from the ground, but
Speaker 5: everything went smooth during the actual flight.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the context of this mission is it's the
Speaker 2: first commercial mission, the sixth in total that they've breached
Speaker 2: the fifty mile mark above Earth's atmosphere. It seems strange
Speaker 2: to kind of look so far ahead, but what's next?
Speaker 2: I mean, what is Virgin Galactic going to do? Because
Speaker 2: this is a company that has struggled for years, had
Speaker 2: some real tragedy, and is way behind its original schedule.
Speaker 5: I mean, it really was leading all to this point, right,
Speaker 5: And so what happens next is they need to start
Speaker 5: launching regularly, and then they need to up the frequency
Speaker 5: of their launches. So the plan at the moment is
Speaker 5: to do monthly launches here on out. The next one
Speaker 5: is scheduled for August. This today's flight was a research
Speaker 5: mission with the Italian Air Force, but soon they're going
Speaker 5: to be opening up to that eight hundred list of
Speaker 5: private astronauts that they signed up many years ago. So
Speaker 5: soon we might be seeing some high earning flyers fly,
Speaker 5: potentially as soon as August.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the dual fusilage aeroplane takes the craft to
Speaker 2: fifty thousand feet, they separate ignition seventy second, burn fifty miles.
Speaker 2: What was that experience like on the ground? Is their
Speaker 2: nervousness there at Spaceport America? How is your heart racing, Lauren?
Speaker 5: Oh, definitely, there's a thing that I like to call
Speaker 5: launch nerves that happens with every single flight, whether it's
Speaker 5: say rocket that launches from the ground or one like
Speaker 5: Virgin Galactics that takes off from the air. Definitely, in
Speaker 5: the seconds beforehand, you can feel the energy kind of
Speaker 5: started to tighten on the ground. We were hoping to
Speaker 5: see the ignition ourselves, but we didn't see it.
Speaker 1: However, we were able to watch.
Speaker 5: It from the live stream. They had big cameras out here,
Speaker 5: and once that happened, you know, everyone just kind of
Speaker 5: let out that relief and cheers and claps and applause
Speaker 5: were happening. So it was a really special moment to
Speaker 5: be here among all of the employees who've worked really
Speaker 5: hard to get to this point because it has been
Speaker 5: a very long time in the making for them.
Speaker 3: All Right, Bluemos Lauren Grush on the ground in New Mexico.
Speaker 2: She messaged me in the moment and said, sonic boom
Speaker 2: as it was coming back down. Thank you for your
Speaker 2: live reporting. We'll stick with you throughout the day, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Now next up Coinbase looking to get their sec lawsuit dismissed,
Speaker 2: saying it lacks merit. Earlier we spoke to the company's
Speaker 2: chief legal off Sir Paul greul.
Speaker 6: Or an exchange a commission to now claim two years later,
Speaker 6: more than two years later, somehow we were running an
Speaker 6: unlawful enterprise when their mandate requires to consider the protection
Speaker 6: investors and their very namely requires them to apply the
Speaker 6: expertise and securities and exchanges.
Speaker 3: It doesn't, It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: Let's bring in Broomberg, Shnali Bassack, who conducted that interview.
Speaker 3: Shnali, what else did you then?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a few things.
Speaker 7: First of all, remember our coinbasis stock has been flying
Speaker 7: in the face of a lot of these crackdowns this year.
Speaker 7: It's more than one hundred percent ed this year, and
Speaker 7: at the same time you have it up today as well.
Speaker 1: This is more than one hundred page.
Speaker 7: Response that coinbas has filed against the SEC saying that
Speaker 7: it intends to ask to dismiss this case, saying that
Speaker 7: it goes beyond existing law. Now listen, One interesting part
Speaker 7: of this is the argument that they make about the
Speaker 7: SEC allowing for the IPO in the first place and
Speaker 7: going through the disclosure forms already.
Speaker 1: Our own Bloomberg reporter Oli Vspiel makes this great point.
Speaker 7: That a lot of securities experts wonder whether you know,
Speaker 7: really this is about the SEC requiring disclosure more than
Speaker 7: identifying the legalities inside of a coinbase's business, which lists
Speaker 7: more tokens now than it did at that time. It's
Speaker 7: certainly a very interesting case and a bell weather for
Speaker 7: so much of this industry. And it also comes at
Speaker 7: the same time as coinbase being listed as the custodian
Speaker 7: for black rocks ETF tied.
Speaker 1: To spot Bitcoin.
Speaker 7: So really, on two fronts here, one is a very
Speaker 7: tense story, another one is one of hope that that
Speaker 7: will be approved that bitcoining TF sometimes soon.
Speaker 3: So I'm looking at shares.
Speaker 2: We're up two point four percent in the session, right,
Speaker 2: they want the suit thrown out. So is this a
Speaker 2: real legal move or is this posturing in a bigger process.
Speaker 7: Well, listen, not only do you have Paul Growell, who's
Speaker 7: the chief legal officer formerly worked at Facebook, seriously in
Speaker 7: tune with the innovative landscape out there, not his first rodeo.
Speaker 7: You also have them working with Sullivan and Cromwell, which
Speaker 7: is one of the biggest financial law firms in the world.
Speaker 1: Walk tell more than Hudre and pay lawsuit.
Speaker 7: We've had them tell us a few times now that
Speaker 7: they would take this to the Supreme Court if need be.
Speaker 7: So they're very serious about fighting this to the end,
Speaker 7: no matter how much uncertainty that creates an interim.
Speaker 2: All right, Bloomberg Shinali Bassak bringing us that reporting and
Speaker 2: exclusive conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you. We will track that story now.
Speaker 2: Coming up on Bloomberg Technology Chat GPT's open AI is
Speaker 2: being accused of stealing vast amounts of personal information for
Speaker 2: its artificial intelligence models. Will bring you the latest on
Speaker 2: that next. I'm seeing some breaking news across the Bloomberg terminal.
Speaker 2: Pokemon Go maker Neantic is closing the studio and canceling
Speaker 2: the game Neantic CEO announcing that.
Speaker 3: Move in a blog post. We will track that stories.
Speaker 2: So many of you are tracking Pokemon Go some other
Speaker 2: breaking news. We are getting Savers Value Village opening price
Speaker 2: twenty four dollars seventy seven cents. It's IPO was eighteen
Speaker 2: dollars a share, So Savers Value Village opening a twenty
Speaker 2: four dollars seventy cents a share. This discount store that's
Speaker 2: listing and pricing in this morning session. We will continue
Speaker 2: to track how that performs. We've had some energy a
Speaker 2: little bit in the IPO market in recent weeks. Wow
Speaker 2: fast hearts of the show. This is Bloomberg Technology. Let's
Speaker 2: go back to that breaking market's news. Savers Value Village
Speaker 2: opened at twenty four dollars seventy seven cents a share,
Speaker 2: having priced its IPO at eighteen dollars. That currently gives
Speaker 2: it a market cap of about three point nine billion dollars.
Speaker 2: We're trading in this moment at twenty four dollars forty
Speaker 2: cents a share, bouncing around, but it's interesting some energy
Speaker 2: in the IPO market. This is the fifth biggest side
Speaker 2: of the year based on money raise. We talked about
Speaker 2: Carver the fast casual restaurant chain with a Mediterranean slant
Speaker 2: just a week ago, wasn't it. So we're seeing some
Speaker 2: some back, not so much the technology sector, but get
Speaker 2: on your Bloomberg terminal, and that is what Savers Value
Speaker 2: Village looks like right now. Open in twenty four dollars
Speaker 2: seventy seven cents, trading twenty four to forty one after
Speaker 2: pricing at eighteen.
Speaker 3: All right, let's move on. It's time for talking tech.
Speaker 2: And first up chat GPT creator open ais being accused
Speaker 2: of stealing vast amounts of personal information to train its
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence models a one hundred and fifty seven page lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Plaintiffs are alleging open ai violated privacy laws by secretly
Speaker 2: scraping three hundred billion words from the Internet, tapping books, articles, websites,
Speaker 2: and posts, including personal information that was obtained without consent.
Speaker 2: We will continue to track that and seek OpenAI's comment.
Speaker 2: And Microsoft CEO guaranteed that Activision, Blizzard's top selling Call
Speaker 2: of Duty title will stay on rival Sony's PlayStation. This
Speaker 2: comes after Microsoft called its own CEO and Activision CEO
Speaker 2: to testify in San Francisco Federal court that the company
Speaker 2: sixty nine billion dollar tie up won't hurt competition in
Speaker 2: the markets for console and subscription based games, plus sticking
Speaker 2: with gaming. Sega dismissed speculation it may be the target.
Speaker 3: Of acquirers like Microsoft.
Speaker 2: The studio behind Sonic the Hedgehog stressed it intends to
Speaker 2: remain part of a bigger Japanese entertainment conglomerate. Co COO
Speaker 2: Suji Utsumi told Bloomberg News. While the game publisher maintains
Speaker 2: a close relationship with Microsoft, it is not open to
Speaker 2: acquisition talks.
Speaker 8: While we if you honor, I mean they are the
Speaker 8: value us a lot. So you know, we we still
Speaker 8: work force louse of Microsoft. They always show you know,
Speaker 8: you know, our respect. So we've being you know, really
Speaker 8: having you know, I meanship with them, and we really
Speaker 8: appreciate that they, you know, somehow value us.
Speaker 1: Does Sega have any intention to be acquired?
Speaker 8: No, very simple not.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 3: Let's get to another top technology story.
Speaker 2: Lena Khan's Federal Trade Commission has already filed three cases
Speaker 2: against Amazon.
Speaker 3: Now she's gearing up for the big one in the
Speaker 3: coming weeks.
Speaker 2: The FTC plans to file an antitrust lawsuit focused on
Speaker 2: Amazon's core online marketplace. Joining us to talk more about
Speaker 2: this reporting is Bloomberg News is Leah and Eiland.
Speaker 3: Leah, We've learned a lot what a source is telling us.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so we're expecting the big one sometime later this summer,
Speaker 9: possibly as soon as next month. This is a long
Speaker 9: running FTC investigation that actually started four years ago this month.
Speaker 9: Our story this morning actually got a look at the
Speaker 9: first information request the FTC sent to them, and it
Speaker 9: was very broad. I asked a lot of questions about
Speaker 9: their online marketplace, how they deal with third party sellers,
Speaker 9: and the relationship they have with Apple over selling Apple
Speaker 9: products on the marketplace.
Speaker 3: Over the past two.
Speaker 9: Years, since Lena Khan took over the FTC, they've really
Speaker 9: focused a lot on Amazon. As you mentioned, they've now
Speaker 9: sued the company three times in the past month over
Speaker 9: consumer protection violations. But this one is sort of expected
Speaker 9: to be the really big one that takes aim at
Speaker 9: Amazon's big moneymaker.
Speaker 2: We're looking at shares of Amazon down nine ten percent
Speaker 2: in the session, but clearly a concern.
Speaker 3: When I read the story.
Speaker 2: On Bloomberg dot com, I thought a lot about Lena Khan,
Speaker 2: the individual, what this means for her in her role
Speaker 2: at the FTC. What have you learned about how active
Speaker 2: and how involved she is in this process.
Speaker 9: She's been very, very involved since taking over two years ago.
Speaker 9: When she took over in June of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 9: so two years ago. This month, she sort of reorganized
Speaker 9: the entire way that the FTC has been looking at Amazon,
Speaker 9: including giving the investigators some specific lines of questioning to
Speaker 9: sort of look into. She put a new person in
Speaker 9: charge of the case, a fellow academic by the name
Speaker 9: of John Newman, and they really bulked up the number
Speaker 9: of people who are involved in this case. The Trump
Speaker 9: administration had opened it, but they had really focused a
Speaker 9: lot of their resources in the case that the FTC
Speaker 9: brought against Meta, and con has really moved to focus
Speaker 9: the agency more on Amazon because she sort of believes
Speaker 9: that the Trump administration really didn't give it the attention
Speaker 9: that it deserved.
Speaker 2: All Right, bloombos Lea and Iland with that exclusive reporting
Speaker 2: alongside our own an edge and check it out on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg dot com. All Right, the world's dealmakers are down
Speaker 2: roughly a trillion dollars in one of the worst years
Speaker 2: for takeovers and stock market listings in a decade.
Speaker 3: That's the year on year.
Speaker 2: Drop in the value of M and A and IPOs
Speaker 2: in the first half, a period in which inflationary pressures,
Speaker 2: financing constraints, geo political tensions. The list goes on mixed
Speaker 2: activity across regions and sectors that according to Bloomberg data
Speaker 2: excluding COVID impacted twenty twenty, it's the smallest first half
Speaker 2: total in a decade and blow the average for the period.
Speaker 2: All right, let's stay global and bring in Sekinder sne
Speaker 2: Cassidy CEO of Zero, the cloud based small business platform
Speaker 2: is based in New Zealand and bringing into accounting, payroll
Speaker 2: and workforce management solutions to customers globally, which's also via
Speaker 2: some of the largest tech companies in the worldlike Google
Speaker 2: and Amazon. Good morning, warning it welcome to bin the technology.
Speaker 2: When you heard that about the first half of this year,
Speaker 2: I go straight to thinking about what you've seen. Broadly,
Speaker 2: think about all of your customers and the platforms you offer.
Speaker 2: You must get a pretty good lens into the health
Speaker 2: of the tech sector.
Speaker 10: We certainly do. Actually, I think we get a look
Speaker 10: into the health of this small business economy globally. Because
Speaker 10: of course Zero has over three point seven million subscribers
Speaker 10: that are predominantly small businesses call it five to fifty employees.
Speaker 10: And I think what we see is a pretty mixed picture.
Speaker 10: On the one hand, and I'm sure this is no
Speaker 10: surprise to you. On the one hand, you have rising inflation,
Speaker 10: you know, supply chain getting more expensive with that high
Speaker 10: interest rates, but on the other hand, still low unemployment rates,
Speaker 10: new business formation is still happening, and of course you
Speaker 10: have talent shortages.
Speaker 3: So what we hear from.
Speaker 10: Our small businesses is this is a time of uncertainty
Speaker 10: and mixed signals, but it's also time where they really
Speaker 10: need to manage their cash pretty carefully.
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in the company global customer base, global footprint,
Speaker 2: Australasian origins.
Speaker 3: Yes, you're here with me in San Francisco. What's that like?
Speaker 10: Well, I think this is about the company turning its
Speaker 10: attention globally. I mean, if you look at zero, you know,
Speaker 10: the original disruptor really in cloud based accounting started out
Speaker 10: of New Zealand from Rodgery, an X accountant himself, but
Speaker 10: really has grown the UK our second biggest market, North
Speaker 10: America obviously a big home for small businesses worldwide, and
Speaker 10: I'll sell important for zero.
Speaker 3: We have to talk about the landscape.
Speaker 2: I think about quick Books as an example here in
Speaker 2: the US doing some battle with them.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yes, Look I think around the world, Zero and QuickBooks
Speaker 10: run into each other.
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting this is an Elon musk Mark zucker
Speaker 2: Bog situation.
Speaker 10: I'm just saying, and quite frankly, that is a total
Speaker 10: distraction for us. We care about getting our business done
Speaker 10: for our customers. Yes, of course we see them in
Speaker 10: every market, but I think the most important thing to
Speaker 10: land is that for all of us in this area,
Speaker 10: the real big winner is just moving people from offline
Speaker 10: to online. Cloud adoption of small business accounting is actually
Speaker 10: for the behind things like website building, but it offers
Speaker 10: so much efficiency for small businesses. So we're all just
Speaker 10: trying to bring those small businesses online.
Speaker 2: I think what we learned from the collapse of Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley Bank, which was in the context of payroll and banking,
Speaker 2: but under duress small technology business as well. They have
Speaker 2: to pivot and they change. It is the tough macro
Speaker 2: environment kind of acting as a catalyst among your customers
Speaker 2: to kind of change how they do business.
Speaker 10: Use technology of course, and it's a tale of two cities.
Speaker 10: First of all, if you are not a venture backstartup,
Speaker 10: and the majority of our customers, you're small businesses of
Speaker 10: every dimension who have never had the benefit quite frankly,
Speaker 10: venture funding. They're paranoid about cash and cash management all
Speaker 10: the time.
Speaker 3: I think we can.
Speaker 10: Agree that Silicon Valley Bank and i'd say companies that
Speaker 10: have been funded in tech are particularly nervous about their
Speaker 10: cash management.
Speaker 2: Right now, you've done some headcount trims. The sector is
Speaker 2: looking at headcount reduction. How have you managed that? And
Speaker 2: let me ask you very quickly, is that in response
Speaker 2: to AI and the ability to use AI or is
Speaker 2: it just a macro issue.
Speaker 10: Actually, for us it was very simple. The company is
Speaker 10: tremendously high growth, but we just want to get more
Speaker 10: disciplined and create more operating leverage for our own business,
Speaker 10: and so we're focused on profitable growth, but customer first.
Speaker 2: So kinder syne Cassidy CEO zero giving us the global
Speaker 2: take what it's like to be a global player in technology.
Speaker 2: Now coming up, artificial intelligence company Seeker and acclaimed outdoorsman
Speaker 2: Bear Grills a teaming up to combat misinformation in digital spaces.
Speaker 2: He joins me next to talk about that new collaboration.
Speaker 2: He's looking at AI and the new survival skill, and
Speaker 2: as we had to break, we're watching shares of Netflix
Speaker 2: after City raised its price target on the stock, saying
Speaker 2: the streaming service has performed well since announcing that ad
Speaker 2: supported subscription plan and the introduction of course paid sharing
Speaker 2: the password crackdown. City now expects eighty two million new
Speaker 2: subscribers and ten point six billion dollars of incremental revenue.
Speaker 3: Based on the more bullish ad tier estimates.
Speaker 2: The company increased the price target and opened a quote
Speaker 2: positive catalyst watch ahead of second quarter results.
Speaker 3: Netflix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look we're up four ten tove percent in the session.
Speaker 2: Some values around the corner, and I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of conversation to be had around the competitive pressures
Speaker 2: on some of these streamers. Welcome back to bloombow Technology,
Speaker 2: ed love low here in San Francisco, thinking about the markets,
Speaker 2: and look we're treading water. Think about the Nazet one
Speaker 2: hundred very tech heavy index basically flat, up three tenths
Speaker 2: up zero point zero three.
Speaker 3: Percent in the session.
Speaker 2: The story is really about the Fed and traders bedding
Speaker 2: that we will get two rate hikes by year end
Speaker 2: that sent yield higher. Sometimes when you push higher, you
Speaker 2: look at those stretch valuation tech names on the nazet
Speaker 2: one hundred. We see them come down, but we are
Speaker 2: essentially flat. Some names in the green, some dames lower.
Speaker 2: I'm checking Apple up two tents one percent. One hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety dollars. Seventy cents a share would give Apple
Speaker 2: market Kappa three trillion. We are on watch for that,
Speaker 2: but some way off it. We need a few tenths
Speaker 2: of a percent more of a gain to see that.
Speaker 2: JD dot Com a US listed shares of the Chinese
Speaker 2: company moving to the downside down two percent. Its founder
Speaker 2: has registered to sell stock that may be having an impact.
Speaker 2: And Microsoft also in seeing the big news story this
Speaker 2: Thursday is that Microsoft and open ai are going to
Speaker 2: help Moodies investor Services build a generative AI tool for
Speaker 2: use in movie's customers. Not doing much taboost to stock
Speaker 2: up two ten to one percent, just flagging it as
Speaker 2: an example that some of the AI headline hype is
Speaker 2: not necessarily moving the needle when it comes to these
Speaker 2: equity markets. Now, I want to take a moment to
Speaker 2: quickly highlight some of the content coming from Bloomberg Originals.
Speaker 2: On tonight's episode of the Circuit, Emily Chang meets with
Speaker 2: Hailey Beaber, who talks about founding her skincare company road
Speaker 2: the bubble of celebrity beauty brands and social media backlash.
Speaker 11: I do feel like there was a fatigue. I felt
Speaker 11: like when I announced the brand. Of course, there was
Speaker 11: people that were like, Oh, here we go, here's another one,
Speaker 11: and I'm like, I get that, I understand. I'm also
Speaker 11: coming from the point of view where I'm like, trust me,
Speaker 11: I know, but this is my approach and it is
Speaker 11: different to other people.
Speaker 3: To watch more of that in you with Hailey Bieber.
Speaker 2: Watched The Circuit with Emily Chang tonight ten pm in
Speaker 2: New York on Bloomberg Television, or stream it from APM
Speaker 2: Eastern on Bloomberg Originals. Let's get back to Bloomberg, Technology
Speaker 2: and AI. One of the fears behind fully embracing artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence is the spread of dis and miss information. It's
Speaker 2: part of why digital AI company Seeker and acclaimed survivalists
Speaker 2: Bear Grills have committed themselves to giving young people the
Speaker 2: tools necessary to make informed decisions about online content. I'm
Speaker 2: delighted to say that joining us now is Bear Grill's
Speaker 2: TV hosts and of course author of You Versus the World,
Speaker 2: the Bear Grills Guide to Never Giving Up. Let's get
Speaker 2: right to it, Bere. I know you as somebody who
Speaker 2: advocates the importance of survival skills. Why is computer literacy
Speaker 2: or even engagement with AI the next survival skill to
Speaker 2: your mind?
Speaker 12: Because I think young people need to be in powered
Speaker 12: with modern day survival skills that are going to be
Speaker 12: relevant for their life and empowering for their life. And
Speaker 12: in terms of survival, you're not going to get more
Speaker 12: of a wild worth frontier than helping kids decipher and
Speaker 12: discern and be wise and be smart about information about
Speaker 12: where they're sourcing information from. And you know, I think
Speaker 12: we've never had a time in history where it is
Speaker 12: so challenging for young people to be smart, to be empowered,
Speaker 12: to be digital survivors, to be digitally literate, and to
Speaker 12: have an understanding of what is real and what is
Speaker 12: you know, propaganda or misinformation. So Seeker speaks to that.
Speaker 12: I'm really proud to partner with them because we've build
Speaker 12: this whole thing called Mission Seeker. It's all about helping
Speaker 12: young people go on their own little adventures, whether it's
Speaker 12: a humanitarian thing or whether it's an environmental thing, and
Speaker 12: build this community. But through this process, we're trying to
Speaker 12: help them learn skills they're going to be really powerful
Speaker 12: and relevant for their life. And Seekers clever, you know,
Speaker 12: they kind of they score the reliability of all the
Speaker 12: sourcing of information and try and use AI in a
Speaker 12: positive way to help young people bear.
Speaker 2: What are the basics from a technology standpoint If I'm
Speaker 2: a young explorer, how do I engage with Mission Seeker?
Speaker 2: What is it that I'm doing literally at the computer
Speaker 2: or on my smartphone.
Speaker 12: Well, first of all, Seeker is a search engine, you know,
Speaker 12: that's what it is, a search age and this family
Speaker 12: friendly is for young people, and it's going to use
Speaker 12: this AI technology.
Speaker 3: To help score the reliability.
Speaker 12: Of information coming in everything from clickbait to sourcing, to transparency,
Speaker 12: all of that. And then within that we've built this
Speaker 12: Mission seeker dot Com, which is basically it's like an
Speaker 12: education adventure platform for young people to share their adventures.
Speaker 12: So it's sort of it's a motivating thing to get
Speaker 12: young people to be able to then use the Seeker
Speaker 12: technology in their life. But we've got some great young
Speaker 12: ambassadors leading the way for us who are already out there
Speaker 12: shooting really fun humanitarian and environmental missions. And every month
Speaker 12: we're going to set a new one. And people all
Speaker 12: around the world have started to get involved with this
Speaker 12: to shoot them and film their own little adventures and
Speaker 12: build this community. And like I say, you know, it's
Speaker 12: trying to do something good in this AI space where
Speaker 12: you obviously hear a lot of negativity and you know
Speaker 12: AI is going to be so dangerous, and of course
Speaker 12: new technology everyone's always nervous and new technology nobody likes change,
Speaker 12: do they apart from a baby with a wet diaper?
Speaker 3: An interesting analogy. What is the catalyst?
Speaker 2: I mean here on Bloomberg Technology, we've been talking about
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence day out, day and day out for a
Speaker 2: long time, but we recognize that November and chat GPT
Speaker 2: becoming available to the public had a global effect. What
Speaker 2: was it for you that got you thinking that you
Speaker 2: need to be involved here.
Speaker 12: And the sort of the things that actually put some
Speaker 12: you know, parameters and boundaries and positive you know things surrounded.
Speaker 12: Technology is always the second phase to come.
Speaker 3: You know. The first thing is the technology, isn't it?
Speaker 3: And it goes at a.
Speaker 12: Million miles an hour, and something like chat GBT comes
Speaker 12: along and everyone's in it, and there's there's a good
Speaker 12: part of that, but there's always going to be a
Speaker 12: bad part as well. And you know, it really is
Speaker 12: you know when I say it's a tsunami of information
Speaker 12: not only coming at young people but also then being
Speaker 12: generated and put out, and we're sort of trying to
Speaker 12: then put some tools.
Speaker 3: Is tools the right word?
Speaker 12: I suppose it is tools around it to then help
Speaker 12: kids are smart themselves, they know it, you know, they're
Speaker 12: they're they're much smarter than we often give them credit for.
Speaker 12: But you've got to resource them with the tools to
Speaker 12: be able to be smart. And I think ultimately that's
Speaker 12: what Seeker is about, and their mission, Seeker is about
Speaker 12: trying to make a fun adventure platform to bring kids
Speaker 12: into that space.
Speaker 2: Bear Grylls, we are familiar with you and your programs
Speaker 2: and your books going out into the wilderness and using
Speaker 2: as few tools as possible. Paradoxically, I'd like to ask
Speaker 2: you which artificial intelligence tools you do engage with yourself,
Speaker 2: how you use the technology in your day to day life.
Speaker 12: Well, first of all, I'm not a kind of a
Speaker 12: digital dinosaur like that. I'm not like, oh, we've got to,
Speaker 12: we can't. You know, you've got to.
Speaker 3: You've got to.
Speaker 12: You've got to embrace technology. You've got to embrace change.
Speaker 12: You've got to use it. You know, if you think
Speaker 12: survivors of old, they were always using the latest stuff,
Speaker 12: whatever would help them. And I think as a modern
Speaker 12: day explorer, we need to be the same as a
Speaker 12: modern day survivor. We've got to be part of that.
Speaker 12: You've got to use technology. I definitely use AI in
Speaker 12: various ways. And I think as a parent it's our
Speaker 12: responsibility to provide young people and to provide our kids
Speaker 12: with with resources that are really practical and are going
Speaker 12: to help our kids become digitally smart and literate. So
Speaker 12: for me, I use before we partner with them, and
Speaker 12: I thought, I really like this. This is actually a
Speaker 12: family friendly search engine tool that is doing a lot
Speaker 12: of the hard work for me. You know, in terms
Speaker 12: of scoring, the reliability of information coming in. Nothing is
Speaker 12: going to be perfect, but it's you know, and that
Speaker 12: soon I was coming fast. But it's trying to do
Speaker 12: something that speaks to that problem which all of us
Speaker 12: know is an issue of young people and where they
Speaker 12: source their.
Speaker 3: Information bear grills.
Speaker 2: So I was in no way suggesting that you're not
Speaker 2: a technologist. And when you move into your next initiative
Speaker 2: and you engage with technology, come back onto the show,
Speaker 2: onto Bloomberg Technology and discuss it with you with us.
Speaker 3: Thank you for your time. I love it, ed do
Speaker 3: you take care of my friend all the best? Thank
Speaker 3: you bye.
Speaker 2: Now coming up, we'll sit with AI, but also bring
Speaker 2: in crypto and we'll be joined by NFX partner Morgan Bella.
Speaker 3: More on that.
Speaker 2: Next, this is Bloomberg Technology. Let's bring in Morgan Bella,
Speaker 2: general partner at NFX Capital Management, a VC firm investing
Speaker 2: in gaming, generative, AI, fintech, crypto.
Speaker 3: The list goes on.
Speaker 2: So also the co founder, of course of Libra, which
Speaker 2: was Facebook zone attempt at a cryptocurrency. It is today's
Speaker 2: VC spotlight. Good to see you, Thank.
Speaker 1: You for having me. Great to see you in person.
Speaker 3: We could talk about anything. Let's talk about AI.
Speaker 2: NFX is moving, is acting on what's happening all around
Speaker 2: us here in San Francisco Silicon Valley. How are you
Speaker 2: doing it from an investment standpoint of course?
Speaker 13: So one question I have and that I've been asking
Speaker 13: is what does it mean? People are like, are you
Speaker 13: investing in AI? And like, yes, like what is an
Speaker 13: AI company? In that every company kind of needs to
Speaker 13: be an AI company?
Speaker 2: Well, people differentiate though between AI native and AI adjacent
Speaker 2: is one way of splitting it up.
Speaker 3: Yes, so for you, what is the priority or what
Speaker 3: is the focus?
Speaker 4: There?
Speaker 13: So two different answers. One is it feels similar to crypto? So,
Speaker 13: as mentioned, I was spending most of my time in crypto,
Speaker 13: and when we looked at a crypto company, we always said,
Speaker 13: what is this company actually? Is it a marketplaces company?
Speaker 13: Is it a fintech company? Is it a media company
Speaker 13: for which crypto is the rails that enables it to
Speaker 13: do something that couldn't be done before? And we're viewing
Speaker 13: AI companies similarly, which is what is this actually? Is
Speaker 13: it a legal tech company? Is it a fintech company?
Speaker 13: Is it a marketplace company for which they are using
Speaker 13: AI to do something that hasn't been done before? So
Speaker 13: that's one lens and the second lens is this leap
Speaker 13: frogging piece which I will shamelessly show that I wrote
Speaker 13: about recently, which is the concept that AI will move
Speaker 13: into industries that were were are underserved by SaaS.
Speaker 3: Look, can you give me an example, a tangible example.
Speaker 1: A legal industrys Okay.
Speaker 2: Uh we we do not uh pay CEO Josh Browder
Speaker 2: has but been on the show, and so it's about,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of a similar use case you're all
Speaker 2: fits is in Hayes Valley. We try to make this
Speaker 2: show global, but what I keep hearing is that everything
Speaker 2: that's happening in AI is happening here. And we had
Speaker 2: Gary Tan of y Combinator on the show two days
Speaker 2: ago and he called Hayes Valley cerebral Valley because to
Speaker 2: his mind, all of the talent that are working on
Speaker 2: llms and foundation models and the VC's backing them, you
Speaker 2: can find in several isolated blocks of that neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Do you recognize that? Do you agree with that statement?
Speaker 1: I very much agree with that statement.
Speaker 13: I didn't know we're going to be talking about Hayes
Speaker 13: Valley in San Francisco, but I'm very happy too.
Speaker 2: So why is it a thing, you know, for the
Speaker 2: global audience. Why are we talking about this tiny neighborhood
Speaker 2: in San Francisco which is a tiny city, geogra tiny city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tiny neighborhood in a tiny city.
Speaker 13: So I joined the firm about three years ago, and
Speaker 13: our office was downtown, so near where we are right now,
Speaker 13: and with all due respect, we're currently on the Embarcadera,
Speaker 13: which is a beautiful part of downtown. We were in
Speaker 13: a beautiful part of downtown, and I felt very strongly
Speaker 13: that we had to move the office into a more
Speaker 13: residential area in the heart of the city because I
Speaker 13: felt that for the first time, people that were in
Speaker 13: San Francisco were choosing to be here cause they wanted
Speaker 13: to be here, versus they had to be here.
Speaker 3: And this is first pandemic.
Speaker 13: This was January twenty twenty one, okay, but that you
Speaker 13: saw actually the residential areas coming to life in ways
Speaker 13: that they weren't before. So we spent a lot of
Speaker 13: time looking for commercial real estate in a residential neighborhood,
Speaker 13: which is hard to find because of infrastructural reasons in
Speaker 13: San Francisco, and we landed in Hayes Valley, which, for
Speaker 13: those who don't know, San Francisco is like a hand
Speaker 13: and Hayes Valley is right in the center of the hand.
Speaker 13: We're currently over here like along the water and kind.
Speaker 1: Of by Luck.
Speaker 13: I like to think that maybe we wilded into existence
Speaker 13: in some way. Hayes Valley is now known as Thribol Valley,
Speaker 13: as you mentioned, which is a comment on all of
Speaker 13: the AI companies and all of the AI talent that
Speaker 13: you're seeing, And it really does feel alive in a
Speaker 13: way that I haven't seen in a neighborhood in San Francisco,
Speaker 13: and I've been here for ten years.
Speaker 2: Real terms, a lot of people that watch Bloomberg Technology
Speaker 2: are founders, early stage or otherwise. They are investors in vcs.
Speaker 2: They're just people that enjoy technology. And the way that
Speaker 2: Gary tampered it is that if you go to I'm
Speaker 2: not going to name my favorite, if you go to
Speaker 2: any cafe in Hayes Valley, you tell me you're after
Speaker 2: the show that you can literally bump into a brilliant
Speaker 2: mind in the field of AI. Is it literally as
Speaker 2: granular as that?
Speaker 1: It is literally as granular as that.
Speaker 13: So you walk around Hayes Valley and you bump into
Speaker 13: people that are working on interesting things. Like last week,
Speaker 13: there's a little green area in the center of the
Speaker 13: center of the neighborhood and I ran into someone who
Speaker 13: I knew from the Crypto World who was speaking with.
Speaker 1: This AI founder.
Speaker 13: And then also like you'll walk around and literally, like
Speaker 13: how they talked about in the nineties, you'll see garage
Speaker 13: doors open and people on their computers, and you'll literally
Speaker 13: see on the telephone polls flyers for AI Happy Hours,
Speaker 13: AI Hakathans very quickly.
Speaker 2: Are you seeing the same energy and crypt which is
Speaker 2: your background, the same entrepreneurship and energy.
Speaker 1: The energy is still there. However, there is this.
Speaker 13: Classification of person that my partner James Currier calls fruitflies,
Speaker 13: the people who you know fly around.
Speaker 1: To the sweetest thing. And I think some of.
Speaker 13: Those fruitflies have gone from crypto to AI to the
Speaker 13: Hayes Valley comment though, my partner James Currier, who moved
Speaker 13: here in the nineties, also talks about how Silk and
Speaker 13: Valley and what brought him here was the creator culture
Speaker 13: and how when you came here, anyone you would bump
Speaker 13: into at a cafe or on the street was building
Speaker 13: something and that was really exciting. And then he talks
Speaker 13: about how it transitioned into the money culture and how
Speaker 13: everyone you talked to was telling you about their Tesla.
Speaker 1: Lamborghini or whatever.
Speaker 13: And it feels like for the first time, he said,
Speaker 13: in the past thirty years. It we're back at that
Speaker 13: creator culture feeling in specifically Hayes Valley and that's nice
Speaker 13: to feel, all.
Speaker 2: Right and Facts General partner Morgan Bella, good to catch
Speaker 2: up in person here in San Francisco. And now coming
Speaker 2: up runway securing in a dish or one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty million dollars in funding from some big names in
Speaker 2: the world of tech. We're going to sit down and
Speaker 2: exclusive with the CEO and Bloomboat's Rachel Metz, who leads
Speaker 2: the AI charge.
Speaker 3: That is next. This is Bloomberg