Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news from the heart of
Speaker 1: where innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
Speaker 2: Live from New York. I'm Caroline Hyde.
Speaker 3: And I'm Mike Sheppard and Washington. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Coming up metas all in on AI with plans to
Speaker 4: boost capital expenditure to up to sixty five billion dollars
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty five, plus a choppy start to chip
Speaker 4: earnings with global semi stocks falling after Texas Instruments is
Speaker 4: the latest to underwhelm and what'll be joined by Frank
Speaker 4: McCourt on the future of TikTok in the US and
Speaker 4: his bid for the social media platform. At first, we
Speaker 4: check in on these markets, Mike, which are still treading
Speaker 4: near record highs.
Speaker 2: The NASAC is up almost two percent with the course
Speaker 2: of the week.
Speaker 4: But we draw down a little bit as we of
Speaker 4: course see the weight of some chip stocks causing a
Speaker 4: little anxiety. Look at his industrial automotive end markets that
Speaker 4: still prove wheak. Texas Instruments again falling on from s
Speaker 4: k Heinix, which had a little bit of an underwhelming
Speaker 4: earnings report as well. They're seeing the smartphone weakness, but
Speaker 4: AI still really managing to drive forward. Broadcom is on
Speaker 4: the higher side when it comes to the socks. Why's
Speaker 4: broad come up because of our nex stock. Let's have
Speaker 4: a look at what's happening with Meta today, because they
Speaker 4: see from Mark Zuckerberg almost front running his own earnings
Speaker 4: report next week to say that they are committed to
Speaker 4: spending on AI, data centers, people, infrastructure, and indeed we're
Speaker 4: starting to see it up nineteen percent.
Speaker 2: We're at a record high for Meta.
Speaker 4: Let's get out to Kurt Wagner for more, because this
Speaker 4: is all about upping its capital expenditure to whopping sixty
Speaker 4: five billion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's about fifty percent more than what we
Speaker 5: saw in twenty twenty four, which was a big amount
Speaker 5: thirty eight to forty billion, and a lot of people
Speaker 5: a year ago, Caroline, were sort of worried is Meta
Speaker 5: overspending here? Right? And here they are jumping up even higher.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think you hit it right there, which
Speaker 5: is that this is an AI play, right, This is
Speaker 5: data centers, these are GPUs, this is you know, trying
Speaker 5: to keep pace with Open AI and Microsoft and Google
Speaker 5: and all these other companies that are investing so heavily.
Speaker 5: It's been a huge focus for Mark Zuckerberg over the
Speaker 5: last couple of years and clearly will continue to be
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: Kurt. We've seen some investors express concern about whether there
Speaker 3: is an overspend in AI, but today they seem to
Speaker 3: be giving a little bit of grace to Meta. Why
Speaker 3: is that in metas case?
Speaker 5: Well, I think this is the most exciting technology that
Speaker 5: Meta could be investing in.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: If you're a meta investor and you say, hey, what
Speaker 5: would you rather do have Mark Zuckerberg put twenty billion
Speaker 5: dollars into AI or twenty billion dollars into you know,
Speaker 5: the metaverse?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 5: And obviously those things are related. A lot of the
Speaker 5: A technology will ultimately power the metaverse. But my point
Speaker 5: simply being is that I think this is the avenue
Speaker 5: where investors are okay with overspending.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 5: Even Mark Zuckerberg told our own Emily Chang last summer, Hey,
Speaker 5: a lot of us are going to overspend, but that
Speaker 5: is a better outcome than waking up ten years from
Speaker 5: now and realizing you missed the boat on this whole thing.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner, Thank you. And it was a big
Speaker 3: week for chip stocks as President Trump announced Project Stargate
Speaker 3: to help boost AI infrastructure, but weakness in traditional memory
Speaker 3: markets is limiting that euphoria. For more, we're joined by
Speaker 3: Peter Elstrom of Bloomberg. Thank you, Peter. Peter, we are
Speaker 3: seeing that this AI wave is not lifting all boats.
Speaker 3: Can you talk a little bit about what happened with
Speaker 3: sk Heinex and Texast Instruments for example, and then more broadly.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Ska Honicks is a Korean company that doesn't get
Speaker 8: that much attention, doesn't get the kind of attention that
Speaker 8: Nvidia does, but it's very related to them. In Vidia
Speaker 8: makes the AI accelerators and Ska Honicks makes the memory
Speaker 8: that are paired with those accelerators to be able to
Speaker 8: run these AI models. So it's a pretty good bill
Speaker 8: weather of what's going on in the AI market now.
Speaker 8: It's earnings results, by almost any measure, were quite strong.
Speaker 8: Revenue was of seventy five percent, their operating profit was
Speaker 8: up twenty fold, but it wasn't enough for investors. The
Speaker 8: shares actually declined about three percent yesterday. There's been some
Speaker 8: softness in that market, and that sort of sent some
Speaker 8: concerns throughout the market, including here into Europe and into
Speaker 8: the US yesterday. It just goes to show how high
Speaker 8: the expectations are in this market. You would think that
Speaker 8: sixty five billion dollars in spending on AI will get
Speaker 8: you something of a rally in stocks, but that's not
Speaker 8: what we're seeing so far.
Speaker 4: Yeah, any Broadcom really managing to garnering any love from
Speaker 4: that because it's a supplier to Meta so too is
Speaker 4: in video that's on the downside, and maybe that's more
Speaker 4: in line with what we're seeing with Texas instruments. It
Speaker 4: underwhelms on its numbers, but it's the end markets of autos,
Speaker 4: of industrials of actually maybe where we'll see some tariffs
Speaker 4: being hit from China too.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there are different kinds of concerns around Texas instruments.
Speaker 8: They play a bit more into the traditional markets, as
Speaker 8: you say, into the auto market in particular. We could
Speaker 8: have teriffs impact some of those in markets. It's not
Speaker 8: clear exactly how that's going to spend. And also Trump
Speaker 8: has been talking about rolling back some of the subsidies
Speaker 8: for evs, which take a lot of these ships too.
Speaker 8: So there's some softness and some more traditional size parts
Speaker 8: of the chip market here that may be impacting Texas
Speaker 8: instruments and overall just raising concerns about whether some of
Speaker 8: these valuations have gotten ahead of themselves from AI into
Speaker 8: some of these other areas.
Speaker 4: Peter Elstrom manering the tech with the politics.
Speaker 2: We thank you so much on all things chip. President Trump.
Speaker 4: They're speaking as he boards Air Force one in Nashville,
Speaker 4: North Carolina, visiting. Of course family is affected by Hurricane Helen.
Speaker 4: But he spoke much more about Federal Emergency Management Agency,
Speaker 4: wanting them to see less involvement in hurricane recovery and
Speaker 4: more state involvement when it comes to these sorts of
Speaker 4: natural disasters.
Speaker 2: Also speaking about OPEC, the view.
Speaker 4: On cutting oil prices, and indeed he was speaking that
Speaker 4: a little bit about some of the immigration policies, and
Speaker 4: indeed once again criticizing some of the water policies in California.
Speaker 4: He pans to visit California next and regarding those LA wildfires.
Speaker 4: But Mike, we have much more on President Trump's policies.
Speaker 3: We do, and he has these big ambitions for the
Speaker 3: US to become an AI superpower. As we heard him
Speaker 3: talk about at Davos yesterday. This is touching off a
Speaker 3: global tech race, and we're joined by Michelle guid To,
Speaker 3: the CEO of the Kroc Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue,
Speaker 3: to talk us through it. Michelle, we have seen this
Speaker 3: week the Stargate venture announced and then Meta today talking
Speaker 3: about a big investment in AI and in data centers.
Speaker 3: Those are all private sector initiatives. Are they going to
Speaker 3: be enough to keep up with what rivals like China
Speaker 3: in particular, are doing with state driven investment?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Thanks, thanks for that. Mike. Well, I think what we're
Speaker 9: seeing in the first five days of the second Trump
Speaker 9: administration is America First also means innovation first, and as
Speaker 9: you pointed out, there is a lot of momentum with
Speaker 9: private sector companies now stepping up their game to invest
Speaker 9: in the future of the United States becoming what the
Speaker 9: President has said will be the world capital of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 9: the world capital of cryptocurrency. And that's really important because
Speaker 9: China wants to hold that title. And China is also
Speaker 9: pouring a lot of its own government money, billions and
Speaker 9: billions of dollars into building out data centers, building out infrastructure.
Speaker 9: They're building eight new massive data hubs. They're approving ten
Speaker 9: nuclear power plants every year. They have a national initiative
Speaker 9: called Eastern Data Western Compute. So to see private sector
Speaker 9: companies United States all of a sudden really cranking up
Speaker 9: their investment in this strategic capability for the United States
Speaker 9: as good news.
Speaker 3: Michelle, You've talked in the past about the importance of
Speaker 3: democratic allies working together in this area of tech. Yesterday,
Speaker 3: also at Davo's, we heard Donald Trump talking about tariffs
Speaker 3: and differences over regulation with the European Union. How does
Speaker 3: that complicate joint efforts to say counter China.
Speaker 9: Well, you know, with trusted allies and partners, you can
Speaker 9: also be really honest and they are honest conversations going
Speaker 9: on about what it takes to work together and to
Speaker 9: be effective economically, to be effective technologically in order to
Speaker 9: compete against China. And the innovation first approach is really
Speaker 9: interesting because the opposite of that, the alternative to that,
Speaker 9: is a regulatory first approach. We've seen what happens with that.
Speaker 7: Just look at Europe.
Speaker 9: The report that Mario Dragi release just a few months
Speaker 9: ago outlined how painful it's become for Europe. They have
Speaker 9: to pay eight hundred billion dollars a year just to
Speaker 9: catch up in terms of tech competitives. In fifty years,
Speaker 9: they haven't created a single company that's got greater than
Speaker 9: one hundred billion dollar market cap. All of their unicorns,
Speaker 9: a third of their unicorns are fleeing the EU. So
Speaker 9: we have to change that because the Europeans, our friends
Speaker 9: in the Indo Pacific, Latin America, all across the world
Speaker 9: are really important partner. So we need to be on
Speaker 9: the same page in terms of how we power innovation
Speaker 9: at the same time we are powering oternational security.
Speaker 4: Michelle, it's interesting that the previous administration, in the last
Speaker 4: days of the Biden administration, did put some pretty tough
Speaker 4: focus on Nvidia, for example. Then it's a bitity to export,
Speaker 4: particularly to China. How much might that hinders some of
Speaker 4: the very successful companies here in the United States with
Speaker 4: the ongoing geopolitical tension.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think we'll see some developments with the new
Speaker 9: Trump administration on where they're going with export controls. Well,
Speaker 9: remember that started under the first administration was carried forward
Speaker 9: by the Biden administration.
Speaker 7: We'll see where that goes.
Speaker 9: But I think you can tell that this administration is
Speaker 9: very focused on innovation and national security at the same time.
Speaker 9: So we've got a bolster us and allied innovation and
Speaker 9: leadership so that we win and our values are represented
Speaker 9: in technology. At the same time, we can also protect
Speaker 9: national security. And as President Trump said in his inaugural address,
Speaker 9: America can do the impossible. It's what we do. And
Speaker 9: to balance those two things with our allies. I think
Speaker 9: we're headed on a trajectory toward that.
Speaker 2: But it takes time.
Speaker 4: These one hundred billion dollars of investment up to five
Speaker 4: hundred billion dollars can't go into the ground immediately to
Speaker 4: start getting data centers up and running. It takes years,
Speaker 4: and yet we might see an impact on goods coming
Speaker 4: from China in months.
Speaker 2: Is that a key issue? Is that a national security risk?
Speaker 9: Well, I think this administration has signaled that this all
Speaker 9: needs to happen as fast as possible. They've used the
Speaker 9: word unleash many times, unleashing American energy, unleashing American innovation,
Speaker 9: declaring an energy emergency in order to really catalyze and
Speaker 9: accelerate what we're doing there, We're going to need so
Speaker 9: much more energy to power these data centers that power ai.
Speaker 9: Open Ai and Goldman Sacks I think had estimate it.
Speaker 9: We're going to need fifty gegawatts of new incremental energy.
Speaker 10: In order to do that.
Speaker 9: We're dusting off all nuclear power plants, so you're right,
Speaker 9: that has to happen really fast. And the great part
Speaker 9: is that we've got private sector companies now on board
Speaker 9: that are going to turbo charge our effort.
Speaker 4: Chere, Geida, It's always great to have you on the
Speaker 4: crowd Institute for Tech Topoonmacy at Perdu, we thank you.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 4: Look, open ai is joining a growing number of tech
Speaker 4: companies bending on so called AI agents. We're going to
Speaker 4: talk about what Operator is capable of and some of
Speaker 4: the concerns. This is blue Meg technology. Let's turn to
Speaker 4: the latest product out of open Ai, the startup launching
Speaker 4: its AI agent.
Speaker 2: Of course, this is all regarding Operator.
Speaker 4: Apparently it can put you flights, plan your grocery orders,
Speaker 4: even complete purchases for users. We're joined now by bloomgg's
Speaker 4: Rachel Metz, who I'm told is wearing some lipstick that
Speaker 4: Operator already.
Speaker 2: Bought for you.
Speaker 11: This is correct. I used Operator yesterday to do a
Speaker 11: whole bunch of different things, just trying it out really
Speaker 11: quickly to sort of put it through its paces. One
Speaker 11: of the things I did well, actually it relates to you.
Speaker 11: You were wearing a nice neutral shade of lipstick a
Speaker 11: few days ago that I happened a spot and I
Speaker 11: asked Operator to pick out a neutral lipstick shade for
Speaker 11: me from Sephora and purchase it. And it did, And
Speaker 11: then I went to Sephora and picked it up and
Speaker 11: I'm wearing it now.
Speaker 3: Rachel. Investors have been looking for this breakthrough functionality with AI.
Speaker 3: Are we getting any closer with this?
Speaker 11: I think it's still a little bit tricky to tell,
Speaker 11: but it is very clear that they're putting a lot
Speaker 11: of time and resources into trying to figure out new
Speaker 11: ways that they can integrate these tools into people's lives.
Speaker 11: Operator is meant to be pretty general purpose, as you
Speaker 11: might have noticed from the way they were positioning it.
Speaker 11: You mentioned caroline, grocery orders. I think you might have
Speaker 11: mentioned planning flights. These are all like different things that
Speaker 11: the average person can totally envision doing themselves that they
Speaker 11: might not like doing posted to some of the other
Speaker 11: agent type software that's already out there that's more inward
Speaker 11: things like coding. I feel like we're definitely seeing this
Speaker 11: the idea of this at least being spread as more
Speaker 11: of a mass market thing, even though operator is only
Speaker 11: available to a small number of Opening Eyes users who
Speaker 11: want to pay two hundred dollars a month for it
Speaker 11: as part of a larger service.
Speaker 4: Almost beta testing as it does tend to do. Rachel Metz,
Speaker 4: great to have you, and I like the way that
Speaker 4: you encompass that there is competition how there as well.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology and Caroin Hide in New.
Speaker 3: York and I'm Mike Sheppard and Washington.
Speaker 4: Quick check on these markets, Mike, because we are at
Speaker 4: near record highs and that's that one hundred is up
Speaker 4: almost two percent on the week we just pulled back.
Speaker 4: It's chip stocks that are in focus as we underwhelm
Speaker 4: on Texas instruments following skhinex's numbers.
Speaker 2: But Bitcoin up two point eight percent.
Speaker 4: Remember a flurry of executive orders that I know you've
Speaker 4: been watching, and came among them yesterday was the AI
Speaker 4: and the crypto order. Maybe we get some sort of
Speaker 4: overall bitcoin reserve, but it's not.
Speaker 2: A bitcoin reserve, it's a digital asset.
Speaker 4: Reserve and Bitcoin took a bit of a hit yesterday,
Speaker 4: but we're back at one hundred and six thousand.
Speaker 2: Move on, individual names you need to keep an eye on.
Speaker 4: We've had started the earning season and Verizon is among them.
Speaker 4: We're currently seeing it up one one point two percent,
Speaker 4: as they managed to beat in terms of almost half
Speaker 4: a million being added for new phones. Tesla up a
Speaker 4: quarter of percent. They're having to put over and over
Speaker 4: the air update to basically technically recall Chinese cars, but
Speaker 4: here in the US they're doing model wise. New ericson
Speaker 4: down thirteen percent on the back of telecoms equipment not
Speaker 4: selling as expected.
Speaker 3: Mike Carol, Let's turn to TikTok. Now this is such
Speaker 3: a big issue in Washington. We're joined by Frank McCord,
Speaker 3: executive chairman of McCourt Global and founder of Project Liberty,
Speaker 3: which had made a formal offer to acquire the social
Speaker 3: media giant less than two weeks ago, not long before
Speaker 3: the band deadline. Frank, I wanted to start with the
Speaker 3: reprieve that President Donald Trump signed hours after taking office.
Speaker 3: How has that complicated efforts by you and other bidders,
Speaker 3: perhaps to get byt dance to come to the table
Speaker 3: to talk about a sale.
Speaker 7: Well, I really hasn't complicated anything from our perspective, Mike,
Speaker 7: we just continue to, you know, chug along and we're prepared.
Speaker 12: Here.
Speaker 7: We're hanging around the hoops, so to speak, waiting for
Speaker 7: Bike Dance to make a decision, and if it takes
Speaker 7: a little bit more time, so be it. But you know,
Speaker 7: we feel we're in a really unique position to buy
Speaker 7: us TikTok. We're the only ones that actually put a
Speaker 7: bid in and submitted to the Department of Justice before
Speaker 7: the original deadline and where we were ready to roll
Speaker 7: but for a signature from BYT Dance. So we continue
Speaker 7: to be ready. We have more and more conversations. There's
Speaker 7: more and more excitement around this. We had a fabulous
Speaker 7: couple of days in Davos where there was great, great
Speaker 7: excitement around the project. So yeah, I remain optimistic and
Speaker 7: I think we just have to give BYT Dance time
Speaker 7: to sort this out, but I believe they will. You're
Speaker 7: buying us TikTok without the Chinese technology is the way forward.
Speaker 3: What if you heard back from Byte Dance in response
Speaker 3: to this offer, Have they been engaging much at all
Speaker 3: and would President Donald Trump be in position to perhaps
Speaker 3: help you get them to really get the discussions going.
Speaker 7: Well. My hope is that President Trump can be you know,
Speaker 7: a deal maker here and help get this deal done
Speaker 7: by convincing by Dance to actually sell us TikTok and
Speaker 7: not shut it down. I mean, those are the two
Speaker 7: choices here, and by Dance themselves have been pretty silent.
Speaker 7: I mean, they've acknowledged receipt of our offer, but I
Speaker 7: think quite frankly, they're they're digesting everything. I think their
Speaker 7: hope originally was relief from the Supreme Court, which they
Speaker 7: did not get, as you well know. And now I
Speaker 7: think they're in a new reality and so they're confronted
Speaker 7: with a shutdown or a sale, and we believe that
Speaker 7: a sale is the best way forward. It will keep
Speaker 7: the app lit up and as I say, without the
Speaker 7: Chinese technology, why not sell?
Speaker 2: Who have you been talking to? Where's the excitement in Davos?
Speaker 7: It's interesting. We had a little house called Future House
Speaker 7: that on the promenade, and the promenade was lined with
Speaker 7: different AI products being marketed and so forth. It was
Speaker 7: the theme really of Davos this year. And Caroline our house,
Speaker 7: Future House had a long line outside.
Speaker 4: Of people who want to invest with you, though, Frank,
Speaker 4: you speaking to mister Bees, for example, because he's joined
Speaker 4: another consort him, it.
Speaker 7: Seems well, mister Beasts has joined all consortiums, so he's
Speaker 7: interested in keeping his his options open. I've talked to Jimmy,
Speaker 7: others have talked to Jimmy. You've read the reports that
Speaker 7: he has not aligned with a single bidder, But put
Speaker 7: that aside. I think the people that were really interested
Speaker 7: in of course, they're interested in seeing what will happen
Speaker 7: with TikTok. But as I've said over and over again,
Speaker 7: this is an opportunity to actually reimagine how the Internet
Speaker 7: works and give people ownership and control of their identity
Speaker 7: and their data and their relationships. And that's very exciting
Speaker 7: to people, and including by the way, TikTok influencers.
Speaker 4: And that is what sets you apart the fact that
Speaker 4: you're building to a new tech stack basically, and a
Speaker 4: decentralized one at that. Frank, what does it mean to
Speaker 4: potentially work with the US government? Would you want to
Speaker 4: have the US government also buying? In fact talking to
Speaker 4: the US government. We're just going to have to listen
Speaker 4: in to President Trump. Just one moment, Frank sit with us.
Speaker 4: We were just asking you if you'd work alongside Trump.
Speaker 4: He's thinking about potentially in the US the government owned
Speaker 4: a piece of TikTok.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, we absolutely want to work alongside President Trump,
Speaker 7: and I think he could be very, very helpful. I
Speaker 7: do think ultimately the US TikTok is going to be
Speaker 7: in the hands of the private sector and totally disentangled
Speaker 7: from the Chinese technology. I think that's really clear in
Speaker 7: the legislation and was made doubly clear. You know on
Speaker 7: pages five and six of the Supreme Court decision that
Speaker 7: their Congress is looking for a complete disentanglement. And that's Caroline,
Speaker 7: which puts us in a unique position because we have
Speaker 7: the tech stack. We've been building it for the last
Speaker 7: five years to move the user base and the data
Speaker 7: onto This is.
Speaker 4: A story that will evolve. We thank you so much
Speaker 4: for your patients. Coming on from Rome, Frank mcort, executive
Speaker 4: Chairman of the Court Global and founder of Project Liberty.
Speaker 4: We hope we will come back as the negotiations continue.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about how this is impacting TikTok users and
Speaker 4: the brands that use it. Rachel tipographs founder and CEO
Speaker 4: make Macks, an e commance marketing platform for multi channel brams.
Speaker 2: What did they make of a sudden going black? Did
Speaker 2: brands pull away from spending on TikTok? It's been wild.
Speaker 13: January eighteenth, ten pm, New York Time, we saw TikTok
Speaker 13: brand traffic go to zero percent. It stayed that way
Speaker 13: for fifteen hours. Traffic started to come back January nineteenth, twelve,
Speaker 13: fifteen pm, and for about two business days it held
Speaker 13: at zero point five percent of our traffic. In the
Speaker 13: last two business days it has risen. It now represents
Speaker 13: around fifteen percent of our total traffic. I've been coming
Speaker 13: on the show now for two years.
Speaker 2: You've heard me.
Speaker 13: Say TikTok typically is thirty five percent of our traffic.
Speaker 13: Based on this meteoric rise in the last two business days,
Speaker 13: we at mcmack believe that we're going to get back
Speaker 13: to normal rates on Monday, Rachel.
Speaker 3: What is the fallout for businesses that are tied in
Speaker 3: some way or another to TikTok from all the uncertainty
Speaker 3: surrounding whether will continue, whether there will be a purchaser.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so I think the delta between fifteen and thirty
Speaker 13: five percent is essentially all those fortune one thousand brands
Speaker 13: that are feeling very skittish right now with the uncertainty
Speaker 13: and who's going to be the new parent owner as
Speaker 13: well as just the overall view right now of the
Speaker 13: Supreme Court. They don't want to be held liable and
Speaker 13: typically they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on that platform.
Speaker 13: So there is a large set right now of the
Speaker 13: fortune one thousand brands that are just waiting to see
Speaker 13: what the outcome is.
Speaker 4: Going to be, make sure they have to make decisions
Speaker 4: and whey to allocate right now, we're just seeing some
Speaker 4: of your data.
Speaker 2: Who's winning?
Speaker 13: Yeah, So these brands, they're heavily reliant obviously on their
Speaker 13: marketing budgets. It's how they drive demand generation and sales.
Speaker 13: So in the last I would say two weeks, we
Speaker 13: have watched spend move out of TikTok as well as Meta.
Speaker 13: We can circle back on that into Alphabet, which is
Speaker 13: paid search, YouTube, DV three sixty and pinterest. The reason
Speaker 13: why is that brands are looking for reach, conversion and
Speaker 13: brand safety. Alphabet absolutely delivers on reach and conversion. They've
Speaker 13: made enormous efforts around brand safety since all of the
Speaker 13: challenges YouTube had in twenty twelve, and then Pinterest. I've
Speaker 13: been on the show, I talked about it. It's a
Speaker 13: dark horse that no one talks about. It's the safest
Speaker 13: place on the Internet and brands are moving dollars there
Speaker 13: because Pinterest can drive conversion as well. So the big
Speaker 13: winners are Alphabet and Pinterest. The reason why we've also
Speaker 13: seen a decline in meta traffic in the month of
Speaker 13: January has everything to do with the announcement Zuckerberg made
Speaker 13: two and a half weeks ago when he announced that
Speaker 13: fact checking was going to be removed from the platform.
Speaker 13: Brands once again fell skittish. Brands care about their long
Speaker 13: term brand equity, their brand safety, and whenever a platform
Speaker 13: becomes political, they reallocate dollars to platforms that they have
Speaker 13: more confidence in their brand safety.
Speaker 3: Rachel, we were just talking to a prospective bidder for TikTok.
Speaker 3: What does all this churn mean for its value and
Speaker 3: perhaps ultimate purchase price.
Speaker 13: I'm personally skeptical of what's going to happen with this
Speaker 13: divestiture if it goes into the hands of a new
Speaker 13: US parent owner. TikTok is not TikTok without the algorithm.
Speaker 13: The community is based on the app automatically pushing you
Speaker 13: like minded people. That's what makes TikTok so magical. With
Speaker 13: a new US parent owner, if they can't replicate the
Speaker 13: magic of that algorithm, I know with significant confidence people
Speaker 13: are going to move out of TikTok.
Speaker 2: We saw it in the last two weeks.
Speaker 13: It's so easy to build a new community in a
Speaker 13: new app. Will be red Note, will it be blue sky,
Speaker 13: will it be Pinterest? Only time will tell, and so
Speaker 13: I have trepidation on what's going to happen From a
Speaker 13: brand advertiser standpoint. They're going to go wherever eyeballs and
Speaker 13: engagement are, so brands can move their dollars very easily.
Speaker 13: I think we've all seen that in the month of January.
Speaker 13: It's like trading on Wall Street media buying. You can
Speaker 13: move a dollar from one platform to the next in
Speaker 13: a second.
Speaker 3: Rachel Tippograph, founder and CEO of Mick Mac, we thank
Speaker 3: you more. Coming up next, this is Bloomberg. Now let's
Speaker 3: talk about open Ai, SoftBank and Oracle and their plans
Speaker 3: to open the first data center associated with the one
Speaker 3: hundred billion dollar Stargate venture. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Brody
Speaker 3: Ford for more Brody. There's been a lot of talk
Speaker 3: about this project that was heralded at the White House
Speaker 3: on Wednesday with President Donald Trump, and that included the
Speaker 3: prospect of a lot of jobs being created. But you've
Speaker 3: got some findings that just maybe that's not quite so.
Speaker 12: Yeah. On Tuesday, Trump said one hundred thousand American jobs open.
Speaker 12: AIS doubled down on that number, but we got our
Speaker 12: hands on some documents from the government down there showing
Speaker 12: that there is a guarantee of a whole fifty seven
Speaker 12: full time jobs. Obviously a far cry from the one
Speaker 12: hundred thousand range. Of course, when you build a data center,
Speaker 12: you're going to employ thousands of construction folks. Those jobs
Speaker 12: go away at some point, and then the people needed
Speaker 12: to keep things running. It's this much smaller number. This
Speaker 12: is just one project of what will likely be many,
Speaker 12: but it certainly kind of throws a bit of water
Speaker 12: on the idea that data center infrastructure is a massive
Speaker 12: long term job creator for this country.
Speaker 4: Fifty seven is so stark brody. And then we wonder
Speaker 4: what the sixty five billion dollar capex coming from Meta
Speaker 4: is going to mean in terms of jobs as well
Speaker 4: as the data centers here in the US. Just thinking
Speaker 4: about the players involved the Oracle. Now Oracle's busy also
Speaker 4: potentially being thrown out. There is a bidder for TikTok,
Speaker 4: but it's an infrastructure provider to TikTok, And I'm just
Speaker 4: interested about what you're hearing in terms of supporting TikTok
Speaker 4: when it comes to Oracle, Visa, VI, Apple, and Alphabet.
Speaker 12: Right, we're in this interesting moment where Trump says, hey,
Speaker 12: it's cool, keep working with TikTok. We're gonna figure something out.
Speaker 12: I go on my phone. I'm an Android user. I
Speaker 12: can't download TikTok. I already have it. Same thing with Apple.
Speaker 12: Oracle says, hey, you're paying us a lot of money
Speaker 12: to run your servers. We're gonna keep doing it, right,
Speaker 12: And so we had some exclusive details on that today
Speaker 12: that going back even to twenty twenty one twenty twenty two,
Speaker 12: TikTok was one of the most important early customers for
Speaker 12: Oracle's cloud. I mean, this is really kind of like
Speaker 12: close to their heart as it relates to them becoming
Speaker 12: a major infrastructure provider. Like you know, we found that
Speaker 12: they had special code names for TikTok. They called it
Speaker 12: talysis internally because it was so top secret. And so,
Speaker 12: I mean, this is a big business line and they're
Speaker 12: not going to want to turn that off unless they
Speaker 12: really have to.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's party forward.
Speaker 10: Thank you, Cara, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Mike, it's time for talking tech and first art,
Speaker 4: we're looking at shares a Twilio as you see surging today.
Speaker 4: The company reported preliminary fourth quarter revenue growth at top
Speaker 4: down assessments. The software maker also announcing its Investor Day
Speaker 4: that it authorizes a two billion dollar shareback pil plan
Speaker 4: plus data Bricks said it has raised more than fifteen
Speaker 4: billion dollars in funding from investors include Meta and Countries
Speaker 4: to Singapore and Kata. The software maker now holds a
Speaker 4: valuation of sixty two billion dollars and says it plans
Speaker 4: to use a financing for investments, acquisitions, and international expansion.
Speaker 4: And shares of American Express, as you see, just trading
Speaker 4: off of their record highs today, at least the credit
Speaker 4: card company reporting fourth quarter expenses that were somewhat higher
Speaker 4: than expected, even as profits increased twelve percent, with higher
Speaker 4: than expected spending during the holidays. I talked with the
Speaker 4: CEOC squery and he's still committed to tech spending. He
Speaker 4: says that the business is becoming more and more digital
Speaker 4: and automated. We continue to invest in tech in a
Speaker 4: big way. Now, coming up, how YouTubers have propelled Trump
Speaker 4: to a second presidency.
Speaker 2: We're on that story.
Speaker 10: Next, this is Bluemad technology.
Speaker 4: Breaking news on Apple from our own Mark German. And
Speaker 4: this coming so we understand that a key executive, Kim
Speaker 4: of woraf company veteran, will be moving to help whip
Speaker 4: the area of AI and Siri into shape. Vorath is
Speaker 4: a vice president and she's in charge at the moment
Speaker 4: of program management. She's since moved to the AI and
Speaker 4: Machine Learning division, according to people with knowledge of the matter,
Speaker 4: top deputy therefore to the AI chief John Gandriaria. And
Speaker 4: all of this is as we understand, the people are
Speaker 4: not publicly announcing it, but being ulstering the AI vision
Speaker 4: of Apple, which many feel has been behind some of
Speaker 4: those technology peers.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about a peer alphabet.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about YouTube because we want to do a
Speaker 4: deep dive now into the role played by some key
Speaker 4: YouTubers in particular some of the podcast makers that we
Speaker 4: understand and potentially helped propel the second administration of Trump.
Speaker 4: We want to get to Davey Alba, who has done
Speaker 4: an absolute beautiful deep dive for our big take on
Speaker 4: all of this.
Speaker 2: And Davey just talked to us a little.
Speaker 4: Bit about why you were first interested in the likes
Speaker 4: of Joe Rogan and the role they played via YouTube.
Speaker 6: Yeah, of course, you know, we started to realize that
Speaker 6: the power centers in media and tech were really shifting,
Speaker 6: and I think you know, seeing Joe Rogan be at
Speaker 6: the inauguration and actually in the Capitol rotunda over the
Speaker 6: past weekend is really symbolic of the shifting media landscape.
Speaker 6: We wanted to understand what kind of power he had
Speaker 6: and the messages that he and a cohort of other
Speaker 6: podcast masters who are wildly popular onto what they put out.
Speaker 6: So we started to listen to these podcasts and ended
Speaker 6: up analyzing almost thirteen hundred hours of footage.
Speaker 4: Two thousand YouTube videos. Is what you watched over the
Speaker 4: last two years? How similar? How's the messaging been?
Speaker 6: Briefly, the messages have been extremely similar. There are overlapping
Speaker 6: talking points and the way the podcasters painted a picture
Speaker 6: of America was that it's in a desperate place with
Speaker 6: soaring inflation, migrant streaming across the border. You know, public
Speaker 6: schools have gone too far with their gender policies, and
Speaker 6: it's just stunning to see how often these messages are
Speaker 6: repeated and the fact that this became more political as
Speaker 6: the election neared.
Speaker 4: Dave Alba, it's a must read. We urge our viewers
Speaker 4: to go and see it. But that does it for
Speaker 4: this edition of Blue Bag Technology. Don't forget to check
Speaker 4: out our podcast, This is Bloomberg Technology.