Speaker 1: From markhard where Innovation of Money and Power Collie in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, NBN.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
Speaker 3: I'm Karene Heidel Bloomberg's world head quarters in New York
Speaker 3: and Ludlow's assignment in Sun Valley. This is Bloomberg Technology
Speaker 3: coming up. Elon Musk launches his competitor to open AI.
Speaker 3: We'll bring you all the details of his sick company
Speaker 3: x AI, and we'll talk big tech regulation. That's his
Speaker 3: FTC Chairlea and it Khan appears before a House Judiciary
Speaker 3: Committee hearing on the oversight of the competition regulator. More ahead. Plus,
Speaker 3: the former CEO of crypto Leender Celsius is arrested, charged
Speaker 3: with fraud and sued by three regulatory agencies over the
Speaker 3: company's collapse. We'll bring you their details, but first let's
Speaker 3: get ahead of these markets once again. We're on the
Speaker 3: high note, Abigail do little.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a solid rally here at Caroline and
Speaker 4: for some of the indexes, three to four days in
Speaker 4: a row, big Tech.
Speaker 5: It's best day since the end of June. So the
Speaker 5: tech buyers are out.
Speaker 4: This, of course is the Bloomberg Dollar Index and yields
Speaker 4: are lower. We'll take a look at.
Speaker 5: That in a moment.
Speaker 4: But the New York Fang Index pure Megacaptech up one
Speaker 4: point eight percent, one of the big helps alphabet of
Speaker 4: four point nine percent. I was just searching the tape
Speaker 4: right now to see if anything new has come out.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure that anything new has come out. But
Speaker 4: what as on the year into today? We had Google
Speaker 4: up about thirty eight percent on the year, not so shabby,
Speaker 4: but when you compare that to Meta's one hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty percent move on the year, perhaps some investors looking
Speaker 4: up for looking for a potential catchup trade. Amazon also
Speaker 4: up two point two percent, of course, record prime day
Speaker 4: sales numbers. As for one of the big drivers, again,
Speaker 4: the Bloomberg Dollar Index down for a fourth or fifth
Speaker 4: day in a row, the longest losing.
Speaker 5: Streak of the year. But take a look at the
Speaker 5: two year yield.
Speaker 4: It is over the last week down thirty four basis points.
Speaker 4: Again on that cooler CPI and then the PPI print today,
Speaker 4: inflation concerns are.
Speaker 5: Fading, so that means that valuation.
Speaker 4: Concerns on big tech stocks with yields down also fading
Speaker 4: and maybe the idea that the FED is going to
Speaker 4: stop its hiking cycle sooner rather than earlier anticipated. One
Speaker 4: thing I will point out, though, Caroline, there is still
Speaker 4: the possibility that big tech could get volatile. If you
Speaker 4: take a look at the vix relative to the Vixen,
Speaker 4: there is.
Speaker 5: A six point spread.
Speaker 4: So investors still worried about tech at some point over
Speaker 4: the next three months, but just not right now.
Speaker 5: And then finally, Meta.
Speaker 4: Over the last four days surging today of course the
Speaker 4: announcement or the idea, the ft report that they may
Speaker 4: be planning to commercialize their AI product to compete, of
Speaker 4: course with both Apple or excuse me, Microsoft and Alphabet
Speaker 4: and that on top.
Speaker 5: Of threads in the year of efficiency.
Speaker 4: Well again, Caroline, Meta on the year up about one
Speaker 4: hundred and sixty percent.
Speaker 3: Phenomenal outperformance a migail, thank you so much. Well, let's
Speaker 3: talk about who else is looking into the world as
Speaker 3: AI at the moment. Edel Musk taking to Twitter spaces
Speaker 3: to discuss the launch of his CHATCHBD rival Xai hamm'ing
Speaker 3: last night. He says, a company's mission is to understand
Speaker 3: the true nature of the universe.
Speaker 6: Prominent safety standpoint I think a maximumly curious AI one
Speaker 6: is that that is trying to sort of understand the universe.
Speaker 6: Is I think going to be pro humanity from the
Speaker 6: standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than my humanity.
Speaker 3: Joining us for more. Ed Ludlow out there in sun
Speaker 3: Valley where I'm pretty sure this is a hot topic.
Speaker 7: It's a hot topic, and XAI was a hot topic
Speaker 7: in the last twenty four hours understand the true nature
Speaker 7: of the universe. And I've spoken to so many sources
Speaker 7: in the AI industry here on the phone. They don't
Speaker 7: really know what it is that they're building, right. Is
Speaker 7: this a company that's building a foundation model or large
Speaker 7: language model like Inflection AI did separate to Open AI
Speaker 7: in GPT three point five, or are they doing something
Speaker 7: kind of more niche or specific in the field of
Speaker 7: machine learning. What we know is they're hiring in the
Speaker 7: Bay Area and they've assembled this all male roster of
Speaker 7: tenured Google DeepMind researchers and also some pretty key names
Speaker 7: from academia in Canada.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it is being a charge notable,
Speaker 3: as you say, at the moment, not a particularly diverse
Speaker 3: set of people, but certainly with a wealth of experience
Speaker 3: for across private markets and indeed from academia. As you say, ultimately,
Speaker 3: he said for months that he wants to perhaps bring
Speaker 3: some sort of competition to open ai. He's been frustrated
Speaker 3: by the team with Microsoft. He's worried about it's for
Speaker 3: profit nature after he stood down for the board in
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. But what ultimately does he want out of this?
Speaker 3: I remember what was it back in March he was saying,
Speaker 3: hold on, we need to put a pause for six months,
Speaker 3: and then he's actually busily building himself.
Speaker 7: So spoke about this exact issue of read Hoffmann yesterday.
Speaker 7: You know, he acknowledged that open AI's origins are all
Speaker 7: directly tied to Elon Musk. He was an early investor,
Speaker 7: he was in on that initiative. But the way that
Speaker 7: read Hoffman put it, Carrie said, I'm askance at the
Speaker 7: idea that this is somebody who signed that pause petition
Speaker 7: and yet in the interim carried on with his own
Speaker 7: efforts in the field of AI. It doesn't really add up.
Speaker 7: We know his concerns are sort of existential. Still working
Speaker 7: on it.
Speaker 3: He is, and you're still working on staying with us
Speaker 3: for a moment ed hold type because we're going to
Speaker 3: join the conversation now with Gerbert Kawasaki, President and CEO
Speaker 3: Ross Gerber, who, of course, you were an investor in Twitter,
Speaker 3: You became an investor in the what when Twitter went private?
Speaker 3: You stuck with it. It of course was folded into
Speaker 3: the now parent company x and now we have the
Speaker 3: birth of Xai. Look, given your expertise within Tesla as
Speaker 3: well and a firm commitment to that company. Is he
Speaker 3: too busy? Is Elon Musk now a sixth company he's leading?
Speaker 2: Well, yes and no.
Speaker 1: I think that of course Elon's been too busy for
Speaker 1: a decade now and somehow has survived. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of these projects he spearheads and puts a
Speaker 1: lot of like sort of initial inertia into and then
Speaker 1: he turns him over to really competent leadership and he
Speaker 1: builds great teams of engineers that we know he's good at.
Speaker 1: And that's what he's doing with Xai. And I don't
Speaker 1: think he's really quite sure yet what it will be.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the genius of Musk, is you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of builds these teams with a general goal.
Speaker 1: But the what will come out of this, I'm sure
Speaker 1: he has no idea yet, but it'll be probably pretty interesting.
Speaker 7: Russ was the idea of XAI in the incorporation documents
Speaker 7: for ex scoop at the time you invested, No, I
Speaker 7: mean that.
Speaker 1: That so they kind of said, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot we don't know he will do within this structure,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's really about acquiring Twitter.
Speaker 2: But I think if you really understand Elon, he always.
Speaker 1: Sees things way further than that I do, as far
Speaker 1: as like the way he sees the future. And Twitter
Speaker 1: is just a wonderful source of data to build an
Speaker 1: AI company around, don't you think so? I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there is a grand vision of He's got the data,
Speaker 1: and that's why he's protecting it so much with the
Speaker 1: limiting of the scraping of the data from Twitter, as
Speaker 1: he's trying to protect his data because he knows it's
Speaker 1: super valuable.
Speaker 2: Twitter data is way more valuable than metadata, you know.
Speaker 1: Metadata, you know, is much more personal about people, and
Speaker 1: Twitter data is really all about the world.
Speaker 2: So if you're worried about humanity and sort of bigger issues.
Speaker 1: I think Elon, you know, is building something that could
Speaker 1: be incredible as always.
Speaker 7: Really, When the x Ai Twitter handle tweeted you know,
Speaker 7: questions to its following, I replied saying, how many the
Speaker 7: h one hundreds do you have in reference to Nvidia's
Speaker 7: most powerful GPU related to building of lms and the
Speaker 7: inference side. Lots of people replied and said, what are
Speaker 7: you talking about? Elon's got Dojo, So what's your interpretation
Speaker 7: of the read through between Xai and the work that
Speaker 7: Tesla's done historically in machine learning neural networks?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm not really an engineer. I'm not
Speaker 1: an engineer. In fact, I feared these passes in school.
Speaker 1: So my understanding of it is, if you're going to
Speaker 1: build AI quickly, you need in video chips because they're
Speaker 1: scaling chips that are crucial to this. And Tesla has
Speaker 1: their own AI chips and they're building autonomy around them
Speaker 1: and they design their own ships, and then they have Dojo,
Speaker 1: which is really like a training mechanism, which would really
Speaker 1: speed up the process of learning through this AI mechanism.
Speaker 1: But I don't see any way around them buying Mattoman
Speaker 1: video chips is really the hugest winner in the AI
Speaker 1: revolution being, you know, the brains behind AI and the.
Speaker 2: Hardware brains, So I think that it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: You know. The Nvidia and.
Speaker 1: The Tesla chips are kind of similar, I think, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and they.
Speaker 2: Serve the same purposes.
Speaker 1: But Tesla designs its own ships and designed its own training,
Speaker 1: and that is something that people should pay very close
Speaker 1: attention to, because this is really Elon's expertise. Actually, he's
Speaker 1: not going into something he you know, like out of
Speaker 1: his range, like Twitter, you know. So I'm very bullish
Speaker 1: on this, you know, And of course I think he's
Speaker 1: the right person.
Speaker 3: There is a different leader for Twitter now, Ladie Acarino
Speaker 3: as a CEO. But I'm interested more broadly on the
Speaker 3: return on investment that we're likely to be getting from this,
Speaker 3: and ultimately, this is a lot of the time. When
Speaker 3: he bought Twitter, it was about more than just the
Speaker 3: of course, the profitability and the rewards there. It was
Speaker 3: about building something he thought were ultimately be better for humanity.
Speaker 3: So is SpaceX to a large extent now we see
Speaker 3: it with XAI. How much you pay attention to some
Speaker 3: of the concerns he ultimately has around AI's risks, of course,
Speaker 3: he's got the Center for AI Safety on board as
Speaker 3: an overseer of this new venture.
Speaker 1: I think his concerns are very legitimate, and I'm really
Speaker 1: happy he's bringing them up very early in the process
Speaker 1: of this technology, because if somebody would have done this
Speaker 1: during the development of social media, it might have prevented
Speaker 1: the mass amount of harm that Facebook and Instagram and
Speaker 1: other social media's that's caused our youth, for example. And
Speaker 1: so the fact that he's stepping on early and saying
Speaker 1: we do need to look at the guardrails around this
Speaker 1: because the opportunity for abuse, misinformation, and then ultimately bad
Speaker 1: outcomes from AI are a possibility. And so I think
Speaker 1: his focus on this early on is actually a great thing.
Speaker 1: And I think he's in a position where he can
Speaker 1: build a company with very long term focus because it's
Speaker 1: a privately held company with investors like myself who really
Speaker 1: don't care about the short term at all.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he's really in the right position to execute US.
Speaker 3: I remember when you joined US, I believe to really
Speaker 3: vent some frustration about leadership at Tesla distraction concern. You
Speaker 3: are so concerned about it, you were wanting to help
Speaker 3: take a board seat to help drive this company forward.
Speaker 3: What changes now with the birth of you at another company?
Speaker 3: You say, he's been too busy for about a decade,
Speaker 3: But what gets sacrificed here as an investor in his
Speaker 3: other companies.
Speaker 2: Well, two things.
Speaker 1: One, he did find a CEO for Twitter, and all
Speaker 1: the things I was pushing for have happened now, from
Speaker 1: advertising to secession planning and changes of the board.
Speaker 2: And we've seen the stock recover.
Speaker 1: So it's been a hugely successful campaign economically for me
Speaker 1: and my clients and for Tesla's shareholders.
Speaker 2: So I've been really happy about that.
Speaker 1: I don't look at XAI as like such a distraction Twitter,
Speaker 1: because with Twitter he was really like getting killed every day.
Speaker 2: He still gets killed.
Speaker 1: Every day with half his decisions and just his whole
Speaker 1: thing on Twitter has been I think somewhat detrimental, if
Speaker 1: not very detrimental to his image. But like when you
Speaker 1: look at doing an AI company, that's like right up
Speaker 1: as Alley, and he's most competent and capable of leading
Speaker 1: a team in this area without really distracting him. And
Speaker 1: there's lots of ancillary benefits that Tesla and his shareholders
Speaker 1: will get from this development versus Twitter, where I think
Speaker 1: the risk reward was much worse for the Tesla shareholders
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 7: Ross also in the news cycle Activision Microsoft. You are
Speaker 7: an Activision shareholder the merger of say that the chance
Speaker 7: of this deal going ahead eighty to eighty five percent.
Speaker 7: The FTC filed it's appeal last night. What do you
Speaker 7: see is the chances of this deal going through?
Speaker 2: We'll just with pull this.
Speaker 1: We sold most of our Activision in the last two
Speaker 1: days after the FTC decision at over around ninety dollars
Speaker 1: a share er above. We felt the risk reward of
Speaker 1: just more time. It's a cash heel at ninety five,
Speaker 1: so we've moved on. So just out of disclosure. So
Speaker 1: I do think the FTC is going to lose again.
Speaker 1: Linda Kon and FTC have way overstepped their bounds, taking
Speaker 1: very weak cases to court to hurt competition in in
Speaker 1: in gaming.
Speaker 2: They hurt competition, They weren't helping at all, and.
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, the FDC needs to really
Speaker 1: reconsider what their purpose is because we're a capitalistic you know,
Speaker 1: society and businesses by other businesses, So they need to
Speaker 1: find better cases, and there are plenty of good cases
Speaker 1: they can jump in on.
Speaker 2: How about the live golf PGA situation. Where's the FTC there?
Speaker 1: They should be blocking that one hundred percent, so you know,
Speaker 1: they should need to focus on something a little bit
Speaker 1: more meaningful.
Speaker 3: We're going to let you get back to some well
Speaker 3: earned golf playing now, it seems for us because you're
Speaker 3: on vacation and you came on just for us in California.
Speaker 3: We thank you very much. In Degaba Kawasaki president and
Speaker 3: CEO Ros Gerbert and our very own ed LaAlO who
Speaker 3: is not on vocation, but he's out there in some
Speaker 3: valley working extremely hard for us, and we're going back
Speaker 3: to him in a minute. Thank you both. Huawei and
Speaker 3: it's disclosing for the first time it's annual income from
Speaker 3: its patent licensing deals, showing the company is making in
Speaker 3: well more than five hundred sixty million dollars last year
Speaker 3: from the part of the business. After of course, this
Speaker 3: business model of old was kind of upended by US
Speaker 3: sanctions of the Chinese tech player joining us now to
Speaker 3: see how this galvanizes growth of the future. Stephen guisles
Speaker 3: with us. He's the US Chief Intellectual Property Council at Huawei.
Speaker 3: As long as Anni Perdy, He's Huawei USA Cso, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: both great to have you, Stephen. Just a lot of patents,
Speaker 3: thousands that Huawei has. How do you ultimately look to
Speaker 3: monetize all of this? You've been launching this licensing website
Speaker 3: as well, just in the last few days, you're providing
Speaker 3: details of how you're going to have bilateral licensing programs.
Speaker 3: Would you sell to Apple and the like? Even within
Speaker 3: these sanctions? How these sorts of conversations go with big
Speaker 3: tech giants.
Speaker 8: Well, So, regardless of Huawei sales, our patent portfolio covers
Speaker 8: many of the telecommunications products globally. So, for instance, in
Speaker 8: five G alone, we own approximately twenty percent of all
Speaker 8: standard essential patents globally for five G. So where our
Speaker 8: competitors or other marketing entrants are using five G technology,
Speaker 8: they would need to pay for a license from Huawei.
Speaker 8: We're not, though, primarily concerned with monetizing making revenue.
Speaker 9: In fact, one.
Speaker 8: Of the drivers of releasing the number five hundred and
Speaker 8: sixty million dollars in revenue last year from patent licensing
Speaker 8: was to show that, in the grand scheme of things
Speaker 8: within Huawei, that patent licensing is not our business emphasis. Certainly,
Speaker 8: my team, we're proud of the work that we've done
Speaker 8: globally in licensing, and for two years straight we've been
Speaker 8: positive in patent licensing. But Huawei certainly is a product
Speaker 8: and services company. So this is transparency to allow people
Speaker 8: to see within context that it still is the productization
Speaker 8: that Huawei is driving for Andy.
Speaker 3: Therefore, hol must define what Huawei is now because in
Speaker 3: many ways you have pivoted. You were survival mode now
Speaker 3: it's more focused on B to B. How do you
Speaker 3: summarize really what Huawei stands for now.
Speaker 10: Well, we are now at a new normal phase of
Speaker 10: the evolution of this company. The context is there's technologies converging,
Speaker 10: five G software, cloud centered technologies, artificial intelligence, all these
Speaker 10: things are converging. So our strategy with an incredible investment
Speaker 10: in R and D. We now have one hundred and
Speaker 10: fourteen thousand people in R and D out of our
Speaker 10: two hundred and eight thousand dollars two hundred and eight
Speaker 10: thousand employee mixture. So we've been adjusting our portfolios to
Speaker 10: bring value to the network carriers, the enterprises, to the consumers,
Speaker 10: embracing the key trends of digitalization, intelligence, and carbon neutrality,
Speaker 10: helping to reduce the carbon footprint. So we are a
Speaker 10: company about connecting the world, about bringing technology to every home,
Speaker 10: every company, every organization, and frankly, it's really exciting to
Speaker 10: be a member of this an employee.
Speaker 9: Of this company.
Speaker 3: Money is hard, and you know this while having worked
Speaker 3: with the White House prior to Huawei to do this,
Speaker 3: while navigating such sanctions. Do you ever see a world
Speaker 3: in which that will be alleviated in this currency of
Speaker 3: political environment.
Speaker 10: Well, there's an awful lot of countries in the world
Speaker 10: that are eager to do business with us, and thousands
Speaker 10: of companies to partner with us. And in fact, when
Speaker 10: you look at the world, we have formed digitalization partnerships
Speaker 10: and Global Fortune five hundred companies with two hundred and
Speaker 10: sixty seven of the Global Fortune five hundred and seven
Speaker 10: hundred cities. So we're not so can learn about what
Speaker 10: we can't do. We're excited about what we can do
Speaker 10: and how we're bringing the technology to the world, including
Speaker 10: five point five G and including our pangu ai and
Speaker 10: AI for industry approach, which is I think going to
Speaker 10: generate quite a bit of revenue.
Speaker 3: Okay, I like that you went to the AI. How
Speaker 3: much focus is there on AII P at the moment.
Speaker 8: Stephen, Well, I'll defer to Andy on the on the AI.
Speaker 10: Yeah, So our company looks at the larger world where
Speaker 10: the future of computing is everywhere. There's going to be
Speaker 10: an intelligent world. There's going to be Internet of everything,
Speaker 10: and five G and increasingly five point G are going
Speaker 10: to help bring that about. We think artificial intelligence is
Speaker 10: going to rewrite everything, and so our lead for Huawei Cloud,
Speaker 10: for example, Zang Ping Ghan has said the Pegu model
Speaker 10: of AI is not about writing poetry. It's not generative
Speaker 10: AI like the most publicity and these models. The Pangu
Speaker 10: model empowers every industry with in effect an intelligent system
Speaker 10: to make them more productive, more efficient in a real
Speaker 10: learning environment. Frankly, when we look at the future, we
Speaker 10: believe Ken who our vice chairman, has said that when
Speaker 10: you look at AI, generally ninety eight percent of AI
Speaker 10: will be industry in some agriculture and only two percent
Speaker 10: will be consumer. So hopefully the United States is going
Speaker 10: to really get all in about the benefits of digitalization
Speaker 10: and transformation.
Speaker 3: Certainly, so it feels that way when in terms of
Speaker 3: the level of conversation we have here on the show
Speaker 3: about AI in the US. We want to thank you
Speaker 3: both Stephen Guyser of course US Chief Intellectual Property Council
Speaker 3: at Huawei and Annie Perdi Huawei USA CSO. And while
Speaker 3: coming up, No, we're talking about FTC Charley in a
Speaker 3: Khan just with Roscerber a moment ago. Well, in fact,
Speaker 3: she's up in the House of the moment testifying for them.
Speaker 3: We'll have all of the details. Next, this is Blomberg.
Speaker 3: Senator Elizabeth Warren says she applauds the FTC for trying
Speaker 3: to take on Microsoft and its merger with Activision Blizzard.
Speaker 3: Is what she had to say on Bloemberg's balance of
Speaker 3: power last night.
Speaker 11: The merger itself is not legal, but we have an
Speaker 11: opinion from the judge. I want to commend the FTC
Speaker 11: for taking on hard cases, taking on big companies, taking
Speaker 11: on cases that in the past off and just slid through,
Speaker 11: but that are clear violations of the law. I applaud
Speaker 11: what the FTC has done and I say stay after it.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, underway, the FTC Charley and Khanna is currently testifying
Speaker 3: before the House Committee on the Judiciary on Oversight. In fact, well,
Speaker 3: let's get to Blueos Katie Lyones, who was busy conducting
Speaker 3: that interview with Senator Warren, and well, she's a Democrat,
Speaker 3: and she speaks highly of a Democrat led FTC at
Speaker 3: the moment, but it's kind of partizan and certainly that
Speaker 3: committee that Lena Khan's in front of at the moment
Speaker 3: is an embdem of that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, exactly right, Caroline. I just returned from Capitol Hill.
Speaker 12: I was standing outside that hearing room, and Democrats I
Speaker 12: spoke with, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, did have kind words
Speaker 12: for the FTC Chair Republicans, though not so much in
Speaker 12: the hearing room. Chair con has been accused of being
Speaker 12: a bully, of her leadership being a disaster and outside
Speaker 12: of it. And I spoke to several Republican members who
Speaker 12: sit on the committee who suggested that she's an ideologue,
Speaker 12: politicized and that her losing record shows that she's pursuing
Speaker 12: cases that don't actually have the law on their side.
Speaker 12: A lot of criticism of her leadership of the FTC
Speaker 12: and the degree to which she has pushed this kind
Speaker 12: of anti competition agenda. To summarize their words, I would
Speaker 12: note also that this is coming as she is trying
Speaker 12: to fight the fight on the Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal.
Speaker 12: Of course, as Senator Warren was just speaking with us
Speaker 12: about last night, the idea that the judge ruled against her.
Speaker 12: In that case, the FTC does plan to appeal. When
Speaker 12: I saw chair Con walking into the hearing room earlier,
Speaker 12: I asked her why she was appealing if she thought
Speaker 12: that appeal would be successful. She didn't answer either of
Speaker 12: those questions.
Speaker 3: Caroline, she's answering questions now, Kayleie lyons. I'm sure we'll
Speaker 3: be there putting more to her very soon. We really
Speaker 3: appreciate the time. Thank you. Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology.
Speaker 3: I'm Karen hid in New York. Quick check on the
Speaker 3: markets for you. Because we are higher. We are higher
Speaker 3: because inflation is cooling. We only had some CPI yesterday.
Speaker 3: We get PPI today and it adds some fuel to
Speaker 3: the Nasdaq one hundred, Big Tech on top. We're see
Speaker 3: the two year yields just chrishnd no lower at the moment.
Speaker 3: That's the opposite way of saying it. I should say
Speaker 3: spiral lower by some thirteen basis points. At the moment,
Speaker 3: four spot sixty one is where we trade. We're seeing
Speaker 3: Bitcoin actually getting a bit as well as the dollar
Speaker 3: goes lower, up one point eight percent. Still have that
Speaker 3: thirty thousand or thereabouts level. Moving on and go to
Speaker 3: some individual names, because boy, Amazon Prime Day and days
Speaker 3: as it was did well. We're up more than two
Speaker 3: percent for Amazon, and we're seeing Alphabet actually getting a
Speaker 3: bye well a higher price target at least for Morgan
Speaker 3: Stanley up more than four and a half percent on
Speaker 3: the day. Is once again see to be the moon
Speaker 3: music around Bard. It's Ai really managing to win some
Speaker 3: hearts and minds there. We're also seeing continued focus from
Speaker 3: the business on well where it now managers is all
Speaker 3: of this, We're seeing the Golden Dragon China Index. This
Speaker 3: is the NASDAK Golden Dragon up almost well two percent.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 3: We're seeing China once again committing to well stop punishing
Speaker 3: their tech sector instead start supporting them. It seems to
Speaker 3: be the read across the investor market right now. We're
Speaker 3: currently up two percent on some of those big publicly
Speaker 3: traded Chinese companies that trade here in the US. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: let's talk a little bit of what sels is happening
Speaker 3: in the US and a bit of a crackdown on
Speaker 3: crypto still. The former chief executive of the bankrupt crypto
Speaker 3: lender Celsius rested today charged with fraud in addition to
Speaker 3: being sued by three regulatory agencies over the company's collapse.
Speaker 3: Places say Bloemberg's Adson Investoral is joining us for more
Speaker 3: and will we anticipating this?
Speaker 13: You know, we knew that the investigations were ongoing, and
Speaker 13: last week actually I had reported that the CFTC you know,
Speaker 13: had their investigators had determined that Alex Mishinski and Celcius
Speaker 13: had broken their rules and that basically the commissioners were
Speaker 13: just going to take a vote if they agreed, And
Speaker 13: we knew SEC and SD and Y we're also looking
Speaker 13: at this, so a little bit anticipated, but you know,
Speaker 13: it's always uh, you know, we don't know until we know.
Speaker 3: What is the read across Now because we have, i mean,
Speaker 3: ultimately in some bitcoin prices we stabilized, it feels as
Speaker 3: though the noise the storm has started to dial down,
Speaker 3: even though of course we have the SEC really focused
Speaker 3: on some of the key big crypto players here in
Speaker 3: the United States. But what does this ultimate focus on
Speaker 3: the demise of Celsius mean for the rest of the sector.
Speaker 13: You know, I think it means that we're going to
Speaker 13: continue seeing these sort of enforcement actions, you know, specifically
Speaker 13: for companies that were part of the turmoil last year.
Speaker 13: You know, we've now seen criminal charges against executives at
Speaker 13: Terraform Labs, which was the issuer of that terror USD
Speaker 13: stable coin that collapsed last May. We've seen criminal charges
Speaker 13: brought against Sam Bankman freed of FTX, and so now
Speaker 13: these Celsius charges. You know, it's all pointing to the
Speaker 13: fact that we can expect there to be a lot
Speaker 13: of enforcement going forward.
Speaker 3: And to a point, I mean, just run us through
Speaker 3: exactly what is being alleged of Alex because I think
Speaker 3: the fact that maybe he was not playing as many
Speaker 3: others would wanted him to is kind of key for
Speaker 3: the crypto ecosystem as well to show that there was
Speaker 3: wrongdoing involved here.
Speaker 13: So there are slew of allegations, as you mentioned, there
Speaker 13: are three regular later lawsuits in addition to these criminal charges.
Speaker 5: But at the core of.
Speaker 13: It, it's basically that they're alleging that he lied about
Speaker 13: the financial success of the company, including the amount that
Speaker 13: the company raised in its initial coin offering. They're alleging that,
Speaker 13: you know, the firm was placing risky bets and then
Speaker 13: not disclosing that to investors that they were manipulating the
Speaker 13: price of the of Celsius's native token CEL. So it's
Speaker 13: a lot of misleading customers, misleading and there's that sort
Speaker 13: of vibe. And we also know that there are criminal
Speaker 13: charges brought against another as Sociates executive, the former chief
Speaker 13: revenue officer. So you know it's not just Mashinski here.
Speaker 3: We will follow it. Sivers Film, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for bringing us up to speed in the latest. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: we want to take a hard turn here and think
Speaker 3: about an area of focus when it comes to black
Speaker 3: technologists and entrepreneurs and vcs. Because Black Tech Week starts
Speaker 3: on Tuesday and it's in Cincinnati now, connecting CEOs and
Speaker 3: investors to rising black entrepreneurs. Back by headlines like I
Speaker 3: siray if she isn't busy on the Barbie tour, Black
Speaker 3: Tech Week aims to really bridge the gap between minority
Speaker 3: communities in the tech and business world. Joining us sound
Speaker 3: really policed to say, is like hip CEO Cannis Matthews
Speaker 3: and also Bracken as well, and who also is running
Speaker 3: this event and who's going to be involved in it.
Speaker 3: Revolt CEO Data Avio Samuels and both of you. Welcome
Speaker 3: Candice to you first. You brought this from originally, I
Speaker 3: think it was born in Miami, Florida. You've ordered Cincinnati.
Speaker 14: Why, oh, think about all the Fortune one hundred companies
Speaker 14: in Cincinnati. It's a great place to connect black entrepreneurs
Speaker 14: to enterprise contracts. And that's what we did our first
Speaker 14: year and we'll continue to do that. I think you
Speaker 14: probably know that one percent of the US GDP is
Speaker 14: invested into venture capital. Yet venture capital accounts for like
Speaker 14: this fifty seven percent of the US market cap.
Speaker 5: We want to make.
Speaker 14: Certain that black founders are involved with that, and Cincinnati
Speaker 14: is the right place to do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's talk about an entrepreneur leader, a business leader,
Speaker 3: and in fact someone that many I'm sure will want
Speaker 3: to emulate. Just did have you your your background, the
Speaker 3: fact that you were, by the age of twenty five
Speaker 3: already got a Bao duke. You're then at Stanford getting
Speaker 3: your MBA, You're now leading one of the fastest growing
Speaker 3: media companies out there. And I'm interested as to what
Speaker 3: you want to be able to speak about. Talk about
Speaker 3: c and Shine a light on because many might feel that, well,
Speaker 3: you're to replicate.
Speaker 15: Yeah, the notion about me being hard to replicate always
Speaker 15: breaks my heart because I believe that in order for
Speaker 15: black people to succeed, it can't be that you have
Speaker 15: to have the perfect background, right, it can't be that
Speaker 15: you have to go to Duke University in Stanford University
Speaker 15: in order to make it.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 15: I'm hopeful and excited to talk about while in Cincinnati
Speaker 15: at Black Tech Week is this notion of the importance
Speaker 15: of black people owning and controlling our own narrative. Black
Speaker 15: people across the world have had a perception issue, which
Speaker 15: I think absolutely contributes to the policy issues that we have.
Speaker 15: And those perception issues are driven by the stories and
Speaker 15: the negative stories that have plagued us for hundreds of years.
Speaker 15: And so if you want to change the perception, you
Speaker 15: have to change the story. If you want to change
Speaker 15: the story, you have to change the storytellers. And so
Speaker 15: I'm excited to have a conversation about the importance of
Speaker 15: changing the story, changing the narrative. How we can do
Speaker 15: it in businesses like mine, of course, but in tech,
Speaker 15: what are the stories we're telling within the tech industry space.
Speaker 15: What are the stories that we're telling in our marketing,
Speaker 15: even just the way that we show up as tech
Speaker 15: leaders entrepreneurs.
Speaker 9: That's the conversation. I'm excited there.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly why Shawan Diddy Combs set up Revolt
Speaker 3: and you now lead it. Can is I'm interested in. Therefore,
Speaker 3: the perception, many would say, the perception of this economy
Speaker 3: is one that is slowing, that one where vcs go
Speaker 3: back to backing entrepreneurs they know, understand and have already
Speaker 3: proved successful, That banks lend to people that look like
Speaker 3: them that fear, and ultimately that it's the women, the minorities,
Speaker 3: the people who are new to entrepreneurship and VC that suffer.
Speaker 3: Is that something you're seeing or is that just a
Speaker 3: wrong perception.
Speaker 2: That's just the wrong perception.
Speaker 14: If we can invent a narrative, we can reinvent it
Speaker 14: a narrative. And so the entire week next week, you're
Speaker 14: going to see amazing founders who are growing big things.
Speaker 14: I mean, look, Procter and Gamble just acquired a company
Speaker 14: from a black founder, Monti Rodriguez from Mayel. She's built
Speaker 14: an amazing, amazing business that will be a one billion
Speaker 14: dollar brand. Soon, and so eg Xitavio said, it's just
Speaker 14: time to make certain that people under stand that this
Speaker 14: is available, that these founders are out there, and really,
Speaker 14: if they're not looking, they're missing out in an opportunity
Speaker 14: of a lifetime.
Speaker 3: Datavia. Of course, many would at the moment be wanting
Speaker 3: to see a commitment, whether it be from big companies
Speaker 3: continuing to put money into diversity to ensure that we
Speaker 3: get diversity at the founding of companies when indeed, when
Speaker 3: we're seeing the building blocks of AI at the moment
Speaker 3: everyone's discussing artificial intelligence, worried about the bias they're in
Speaker 3: ensuring that there are diverse voices at the very top
Speaker 3: of these companies. How are you seeing the landscape change
Speaker 3: as you go throughout your leadership of a business. How
Speaker 3: do you how does it drive you as a leader
Speaker 3: of color at the moment.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I think that I think that we're all here
Speaker 15: for a very specific reason. Right when you look at
Speaker 15: the unfortunate murder of George Floyd, without question and my industry,
Speaker 15: it sparks noise. It made people want to behave differently.
Speaker 15: That's where we see advertisers and brands start to come
Speaker 15: out with these commitments about growing black on media, and
Speaker 15: if you think about what it took to make that happen,
Speaker 15: like you literally had to have a man murdered for
Speaker 15: nine minutes, the whole world had to be shut down
Speaker 15: to be able to watch it in order for people
Speaker 15: to then have that desire and that momentum to create change.
Speaker 15: And so my belief and what I say all the
Speaker 15: time is we are the people who are here for
Speaker 15: a reason. Whether you're sitting in my seat, or candidscy
Speaker 15: or you're the CMO of PNG McDonald's Google, I don't
Speaker 15: care what it is. We are all here in this
Speaker 15: very specific moment in time for a very specific reason,
Speaker 15: and it is up to us to create change, to
Speaker 15: shift the algorithm.
Speaker 9: And my opinion for all oppressed people.
Speaker 15: Of course, I'm leading a charge and a revolution to
Speaker 15: fight for black leaders, black community, black culture, and black storytellers.
Speaker 15: But I think this is a moment where we all
Speaker 15: need to look around and say it is the job
Speaker 15: of the oppressed to be on the side of the oppressed.
Speaker 15: How do we fix the world and change the world
Speaker 15: going forward?
Speaker 3: Da Javier has that got harder given the economy, given
Speaker 3: people's ability to put money between behind marketing and advertising.
Speaker 15: For you at the moment out question, I mean, I
Speaker 15: think the last two years, you know, we can always
Speaker 15: brag about the growth of Revolt has had.
Speaker 9: We always talk about how are.
Speaker 15: The fastest growing black owned media company in the world.
Speaker 15: Right now, that said, you can absolutely feel the momentum
Speaker 15: start to slow, even if you weren't looking at the
Speaker 15: momentum slowing. What I would say is, you know, right
Speaker 15: now REVOLDA is probably doing work with you know, one hundred,
Speaker 15: two hundred and fifty of the top five Fortune five hundred.
Speaker 9: Where are the other three fifty? Right?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 15: When this thing first happened, the the the data that
Speaker 15: was out there was saying that black on media is
Speaker 15: one percent of the total industry.
Speaker 9: That was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 15: Well, od Ages just reached the report that says even
Speaker 15: after doubling the industry over the last two years, we're
Speaker 15: just now getting to one percent. And so we're still
Speaker 15: very much in this challenge where black folks and black
Speaker 15: on media are getting kinneys, and the energy around fueling
Speaker 15: the dreams of transforming the media landscape by fueling black
Speaker 15: on media is getting is getting smaller.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the cool say the discussion around Black Tech
Speaker 3: Week the amount of fortune five hundred executives or focus
Speaker 3: that there is on your community at the moment, Candae, Well,
Speaker 3: within that fortune five hundred, less than a percentage of
Speaker 3: it are CEOs who are people of color and I'm
Speaker 3: into or at least black. I'm interested in your perspective, Candice,
Speaker 3: and whether what you want people who've come to your
Speaker 3: event to take away what key points If I'm a
Speaker 3: budding entrepreneur who wants to continue to and drive this change,
Speaker 3: what two or three things can I go away and
Speaker 3: do to easily start to bring about change from myself?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: I mean we are the change.
Speaker 2: We don't staff regardless.
Speaker 14: I mean Tope from Calendly bootstrapped his business to the
Speaker 14: point where then people noticed what he was doing. We've
Speaker 14: got Dlally from Fearless in Baltimbore, who's bootstp wrapped his
Speaker 14: business to a billion dollar valuation. And so we're going
Speaker 14: to keep pushing and we're going to keep doing It
Speaker 14: is harder, and that is unfortunate, but we are and
Speaker 14: people are taking notice that interreasing coming in to look
Speaker 14: at companies, capitalized drive kpor, new voices, our own fund Lightship.
Speaker 3: Capital, which is remind us fifty million.
Speaker 14: Meat, Yeah, we have a fifty million dollar fund.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that's been committed at the moment.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 3: Come to us when you've got some checks to talk
Speaker 3: about as well, and the companies you're backing. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: we wish you were a very good week.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Lightship founder and CEO Can thank you very mean and
Speaker 3: Revolt CEO Datavio Samuel thank you both very much. Indeed. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: coming up, look, we're going to be looking at that
Speaker 3: VC Outlook, we're just talking about a sixteen Z about Lighthouse.
Speaker 3: What about the VC pulse right now? Carl Stamford, lead
Speaker 3: VC analyst at Pitchbook, I'm afraid it's not pretty for
Speaker 3: Q two. This's a Bloomberg pitchbook out with this latter
Speaker 3: support on the health of the VC world and the
Speaker 3: result el that's somewhat mixed. Let's bring in Pitchbook lead
Speaker 3: VC analyst Kyle Stamford for Today's VC Spotlight and Carl,
Speaker 3: I mean I say mixed. They're pretty ugly. Actually, if
Speaker 3: you're continuing to look at Q.
Speaker 16: Two, yeah, I mean, unsurprisingly, VC stayed pretty pretty.
Speaker 9: You know, tepid.
Speaker 16: In Q two we had deal count kind of level
Speaker 16: off around four thousand deals, which I should mention is
Speaker 16: above any quarter before twenty twenty one. But deal value
Speaker 16: is still really low.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 16: It's getting pushed up by Open AI and pushed up
Speaker 16: by Strip Steel this year, but excess look really really dismal. Obviously,
Speaker 16: the public market has not opened up yet for VC
Speaker 16: backed companies M and A is still really low as well.
Speaker 16: Obviously with you know, the FTC, you know, still making
Speaker 16: sure that they are putting pressure on the M and
Speaker 16: A market, we haven't seen much movement there either.
Speaker 3: Can you break it down geographically a little bit for
Speaker 3: US as well, Kyle, because often on this show we're
Speaker 3: trying to represent that, Look, technology is being built everywhere,
Speaker 3: technology is being backed everywhere. But look, really Europe and
Speaker 3: Asia in particular seem to have a mark slowdown.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 16: I mean, I think when you're comparing the US versus
Speaker 16: some of the other markets, US is much more developed,
Speaker 16: there's much more there's a larger group of large investors
Speaker 16: that are able to really push up that deal value.
Speaker 16: So it's gonna look a little less of a dampened
Speaker 16: market than when you look at Europe or in Asia
Speaker 16: Asia two as well. China obviously having a very difficult
Speaker 16: time with their BC market. There's been a lot of
Speaker 16: tensions between the US and the Chinese governments, which is
Speaker 16: pressuring the market.
Speaker 17: There as well.
Speaker 16: So you know, US has stayed relatively strong compared to
Speaker 16: the other markets around the world, but still still dampened.
Speaker 3: Here and other particular rays of light. I felt like
Speaker 3: everyone was really rather hanging the hat and AI would
Speaker 3: come to save the day in terms of the startups
Speaker 3: that are getting backed. Is that something you see in
Speaker 3: the numbers?
Speaker 16: Yeah, right, well, I think it's a little more. You know,
Speaker 16: it's a little different than that, right generator. AI obviously
Speaker 16: getting a lot of attention right now, getting a lot
Speaker 16: of investment as a subsector of AI that is seen,
Speaker 16: you know, an increase over what we would have seen
Speaker 16: in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty one, but AI
Speaker 16: in general is not gonna pull back. The venture market overall.
Speaker 16: The investment indu AI is lower than what we saw
Speaker 16: in twenty twenty one as a broader market, so everywhere
Speaker 16: we look, venture is a little bit slower than it
Speaker 16: was in twenty twenty two, which is much slower than twenty.
Speaker 3: Twenty one, and of course that IPO market is firmly
Speaker 3: shot for the time being unless you're a salad based
Speaker 3: company or perhaps some energy drink that worn deed, a
Speaker 3: water company if it's called liquid death, I think is
Speaker 3: at some point looking at an IPO in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four it seems to be the news. But second, I
Speaker 3: mean exits limited, if any.
Speaker 9: Very limited.
Speaker 16: Right, we're still at about twelve billion in exit value
Speaker 16: generated this year. You know, the record of twenty twenty
Speaker 16: one was about seven hundred and seventy five billion, So
Speaker 16: right there you can see how much lower that market is.
Speaker 16: You know, that's seventy seven seventy seven and a half
Speaker 16: billion dollars. A lot of the eighty six percent was right.
Speaker 16: Cava obviously was a nice exit for VC, but it's
Speaker 16: not a tech company, and so it's not gonna bring
Speaker 16: back the IPO marketing and material way. We're still looking
Speaker 16: for those s ones to be filed, you know again, yeah, again,
Speaker 16: if you're a salad company or if you're a liquid
Speaker 16: death water company, you've made that move, but we haven't
Speaker 16: seen any material movement from the tech companies yet.
Speaker 3: And do you think regulation is hindering it too. In
Speaker 3: terms of big tech spending.
Speaker 16: Yeah, of course, right. You can think of Microsoft or
Speaker 16: Amazon willing to take on the FTC because they have
Speaker 16: the cash behind them to do it. But if you're
Speaker 16: making a billion dollar deal, are you gonna sende hundred
Speaker 16: million dollars to fight the FTC to get that deal done?
Speaker 16: Maybe not right, But I think when we look at
Speaker 16: the public markets too. Obviously, with the number of unicorns
Speaker 16: we have in the US and where around eight hundred,
Speaker 16: IPO is going to be the more common route for
Speaker 16: those unicorns to go public or to to exit, and
Speaker 16: without the public markets willing to accept the kind of
Speaker 16: you know, growth at all costs models, we're gonna se
Speaker 16: a lot of these companies continue to wait out the
Speaker 16: exit market.
Speaker 17: Wait.
Speaker 3: Mark Kyle Stamford, we thank you always for shining Alne
Speaker 3: what's happening in the world of VC and money flows.
Speaker 3: We thank you from Pitchworck.
Speaker 17: Bob is I think one of the great CEOs of
Speaker 17: our time. I think he cares a lot about Disney.
Speaker 17: He's been a great steward. I think he's uh, the news.
Speaker 2: Doesn't surprise me. I didn't have any I learned about
Speaker 2: it here. I didn't. I didn't actually know in advance.
Speaker 17: But I think it's part of what you want CEOs
Speaker 17: to be doing, which is acting like owners and feeling
Speaker 17: that the important thing is the legacy of the company
Speaker 17: that they hand on to their successors, to employees, to society.
Speaker 17: And I think Bob is that guy.
Speaker 3: Gray Lock Partners. Read Hoffman there reacting to the news
Speaker 3: that Barbaiaga's contract was extended at Disney. Sat there talking
Speaker 3: to him was Ed Ludlow right now, still in Sun Valley,
Speaker 3: and its interesting read Hoffman talking about Bob Eiger in
Speaker 3: that way. I think, almost exactly word for word, one
Speaker 3: of the best CEOs ever seen with Steve Pagliuca. As
Speaker 3: well of being capital it clearly I people are relieved.
Speaker 7: It's been the universal response, and you know, the boards
Speaker 7: thinking on this is that it's continuity of leadership and
Speaker 7: it gives more time for succession. And I think if
Speaker 7: there's still the question market is succession. You know, during
Speaker 7: that extended interview with CNBC, Iiger was really quick to
Speaker 7: make the point that this is partly what it's about.
Speaker 7: It gives them more time for whoever comes next. But
Speaker 7: if you look at some of the cell side reaction
Speaker 7: or the market reaction, they basically point to this as
Speaker 7: being evidence that they hadn't come up with anyone, that
Speaker 7: the internal candidates weren't good enough. So there are still
Speaker 7: questions about the future of this company. But Eiger's on
Speaker 7: the job, and how.
Speaker 3: Much did that upset some of the potential successes who
Speaker 3: are currently there in Sun Valley with him?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 3: I understand there's Josh Damario of course, got the Parks
Speaker 3: chair and their TV chief there. We've got film Bass
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 7: So what sources have been telling is that the CEO search,
Speaker 7: in terms of like interviews round has been ongoing anyway.
Speaker 7: And you know, during that interview earlier this morning, Eiger
Speaker 7: did say or disputed the idea that internally people aren't
Speaker 7: ready to step up. He said, actually he thinks they are,
Speaker 7: it's just that they need more time for this transition.
Speaker 7: What so interesting is how candid he was about things
Speaker 7: that Disney got wrong. He stood by Disney Plus being
Speaker 7: priced at six P ninety nine because they knew that
Speaker 7: the time they wanted subs, but they got the marketing wrong.
Speaker 7: And there are other parts of the business linear TV
Speaker 7: sports where He's like, look, I'm going to act. But
Speaker 7: universally the response is Bob Iger is the right man
Speaker 7: for the job. He's the only person that can get
Speaker 7: this giant that is Disney transitioning into a more digital,
Speaker 7: streaming focused business that is profitable.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, the conversation other than streaming wars, what else are
Speaker 3: you gonna hip an I on for the day?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that there's just this massive overhang with
Speaker 7: Activision and Microsoft. Do you see appeal was a bit
Speaker 7: of a surprise, came really quickly. Then what's the response
Speaker 7: from the companies? We have a July eighteenth deadline, and
Speaker 7: you and I love a deadline. It gives us something
Speaker 7: to talk about until that point. Hopefully they'll extend it.
Speaker 3: Oh, Ed, I know you're going to be pushing up
Speaker 3: to those deadlines and getting the great news for us.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Of course, edlar Low out there
Speaker 3: in Sun Valley. That does it for this edition of
Speaker 3: Blueberg Technology. You do not want to forget to check
Speaker 3: out a podcast. Find it on the terminal as well
Speaker 3: as online on Apple, on Spotify, and on iHeart from
Speaker 3: New York, I've from Ida home. This is Bluebg Technology.