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Speaker 2: Today's complex economy brings together business, finance.
Speaker 3: Business as it insights.
Speaker 2: The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Comcast with Carol Mass and
Speaker 2: Tim Sten Events Business Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 4: Today, we're going to bring you some of our favorite
Speaker 4: conversations from the event. We'll hear from leaders across the
Speaker 4: tech sector, including CEOs, podcasters, and even a Nobel laureate.
Speaker 4: First up this hour, we spoke with Anne Romandi. She's
Speaker 4: the chief operating officer of Asauna.
Speaker 5: I want to bring in Anne Rimondi.
Speaker 4: She is COO of Asauna, the productivity platform. She joins
Speaker 4: us here on set at the Bloomberg at the Bloomberg
Speaker 4: Technology Summit. Shares of asanafel by twenty percent on Wednesday.
Speaker 4: The company's first quarter results prompted a downgrade by HSBC,
Speaker 4: despite the fact that revenue came in right on the
Speaker 4: average analiss estimate. The company also Carol raised its full
Speaker 4: year non gap operating margin guidance as it was reflecting
Speaker 4: our confidence and our ability to drive durable, profitable growth
Speaker 4: even in the face of macroeconomic uncertainty.
Speaker 6: There's a lot coming at companies. And Ramandi is COO
Speaker 6: and head of business at Asana. Company has a three
Speaker 6: and a half billion dollar market cap and she's here
Speaker 6: on site.
Speaker 7: Nice to have you here with us.
Speaker 8: Great to be here. Good, it's so great to see
Speaker 8: both of you. And excited to be here at the conference.
Speaker 7: It's great to have you here. We love the energy.
Speaker 6: Tell us though, about this macro environment and the macro uncertainty.
Speaker 7: That's still out there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think a lot of it is just slowing
Speaker 8: down some of the bigger decisions that customers are making,
Speaker 8: whether that's site full spail transformation or a lot of
Speaker 8: larger consolidation initiatives. But the bright spots we're seeing is
Speaker 8: companies are leaning really heavily into AI and so that's
Speaker 8: where we are also really excited. We launched AI, which
Speaker 8: is an add on to the Asana platform, and that
Speaker 8: performed really well in Q one, and it didn't fully
Speaker 8: launch until sort of the second half of Q one,
Speaker 8: but that's where we're seeing a lot of customer excitement.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you brought up AID because that's exactly where
Speaker 4: I want to go. I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 4: what I heard from Dario amade over at Endthropic. I
Speaker 4: think it was just last week he told Axios that
Speaker 4: we could see some real workforce destruction in the next one.
Speaker 5: To five years.
Speaker 4: AI could lead to ten or twenty percent unemployment if
Speaker 4: and he could destroy about half of all entry level
Speaker 4: white collar jobs. If that happens, that would be really
Speaker 4: bad for companies that make productivity software like Asana.
Speaker 8: Now, what we're seeing is, and you know, Anthropic is
Speaker 8: a very important partner of ours, Dustin, our founder and CEO,
Speaker 8: is quite involved there. There's the bigger concern of disruption
Speaker 8: of jobs.
Speaker 7: I think what we're seeing.
Speaker 8: With our customers though, is the ones that are kind
Speaker 8: of staying ahead. They see the opportunity right right now
Speaker 8: is human and AI collaboration. Because as far as you know,
Speaker 8: we're seeing, AI is not fully replacing entire jobs. I
Speaker 8: think what AI is really good at is automating a
Speaker 8: lot of tasks that right now could allow people to
Speaker 8: be more productive.
Speaker 4: So we're right, do you c AI fully replacing jobs
Speaker 4: in the next one to five years, Like Dario Amide says,
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 8: Think I'm in the physician to predict quite as well
Speaker 8: as Doris. But I do think we see, you know,
Speaker 8: with our customers. What we see is they're very intentional
Speaker 8: of there are some jobs that are likely the most
Speaker 8: likely to go away, the ones that are tasks that
Speaker 8: can be and in some ways you want to be
Speaker 8: replaced by AI so people can be doing things that
Speaker 8: are more creative and more productive. I think there are
Speaker 8: some jobs that will be changed with AI where A
Speaker 8: is going to be an integral part of how people
Speaker 8: do their jobs. And then what we're hopeful for is
Speaker 8: that there's a whole set of new jobs that are
Speaker 8: that only people can do.
Speaker 7: So I do think.
Speaker 8: We're right in the midst of uh, you know, transformation
Speaker 8: at a rate that we probably haven't seen before.
Speaker 7: But what we're really focused.
Speaker 8: On is like helping companies manage through that transition by
Speaker 8: enabling their existing employees to embrace AI in their workflows.
Speaker 6: And one thing I want to ask you about is
Speaker 6: I think all of a sudden, tim and I think
Speaker 6: feel it in terms of the use of AI, where
Speaker 6: it was kind of like, ohyeah, everybody else is using it,
Speaker 6: and all of a sudden, we're really leaning in big Yeah,
Speaker 6: finding it super productive, but that innovation or innovative.
Speaker 7: Cycle is moving really quickly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I do wonder what it means for a
Speaker 6: company like you where you are kind of facing that
Speaker 6: speed and then hoping to continue to differentiate yourself from
Speaker 6: everybody else who's also.
Speaker 7: Moving really fastest. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, one of the things that we're saying is like,
Speaker 8: at least for our business, why we're investing so heavily
Speaker 8: in AI is that we do see a shift ultimately
Speaker 8: from seat based in so to consumption base and so
Speaker 8: wanting to be ahead of that. I think the other
Speaker 8: thing that we're really seeing that's important to sort of
Speaker 8: focus on is like, how can the companies enable employees
Speaker 8: to understand how the LMS work be proactive in where
Speaker 8: they're applying and deploying AIG education.
Speaker 7: Side there really there, really really is.
Speaker 8: The other thing that we're seeing is you were mentioned
Speaker 8: like now everyone's using it, but what we're also finding
Speaker 8: is that when it is very bottoms up and in
Speaker 8: every single tool and everybody's got a chat bop, companies
Speaker 8: actually aren't realizing the either the productivity gains or the acceleration.
Speaker 8: The companies that are moving ahead are doing it in
Speaker 8: the very tops down coordinated way, which isn't always how
Speaker 8: technology has been adopted in the past.
Speaker 7: But with AI, I think that.
Speaker 8: Strategic view on where you're going to deploy AI is
Speaker 8: really critical to actually realize the gains.
Speaker 4: Let's talk a little bit of the macro economic environment.
Speaker 4: You've got a great view of the global economy. Where
Speaker 4: are you seeing strength where you're seeing weakness?
Speaker 8: Yeah, geographically for us, we're actually seeing quite a bit
Speaker 8: of strength internationally in emia in Japan.
Speaker 7: Does that surprise us that?
Speaker 8: You know, that doesn't be given all the things in
Speaker 8: the macro But I think for us in particular the
Speaker 8: segments and the verticals that we're in outside of tech,
Speaker 8: a lot of companies are continuing to you know, invest
Speaker 8: in technology, invest intentionally in AI. We see that in manufacturing, energy,
Speaker 8: financial services, healthcare.
Speaker 4: But is this is this a function of actual strength
Speaker 4: in those economies or is it a function of these
Speaker 4: are the sectors.
Speaker 5: That are finally adopting this technology.
Speaker 4: So the tech sector was the first sector to do that,
Speaker 4: obviously your core customer base, but now you're seeing your
Speaker 4: tools being adopted by other types of companies the latter.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that they're really embracing, Hey, how can they be
Speaker 8: intentional and active in not only adopting collaborative work management,
Speaker 8: but AI on top of that.
Speaker 6: I got to ask you just be cast today the
Speaker 6: press conference from the White House, there's a lot said
Speaker 6: about Elon. It was a long one, and it does
Speaker 6: feel like the romance, the big tech romance between President
Speaker 6: Trump and Elon Musk is over.
Speaker 7: Is that a good or bad thing for the tech community?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 8: I do not know if I am the expert to
Speaker 8: answer that question.
Speaker 6: I wonder he's on there rate, you know, and he's
Speaker 6: he's I think Elon is going out on social I
Speaker 6: mean a little aggressive at this.
Speaker 7: Point after being like this, it seems like I.
Speaker 8: Think underlying what we should all be focusing on as Hey,
Speaker 8: with uncertainty in the global macro, what can we do
Speaker 8: to make sure the most important businesses and companies and
Speaker 8: innovations are being invested in and accelerating, right, or a
Speaker 8: different way to say it, Roumy is like we're trying
Speaker 8: to figure out, like how do we control the good
Speaker 8: roll levels? Yeah, and know that we're in a you know,
Speaker 8: relatively volatile and political environment.
Speaker 7: Yeah, to say the least.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Tim ask you about you know, growth geographically, and
Speaker 6: we talked I feel like we talked a lot about
Speaker 6: what's going on overseas. How do you describe the US
Speaker 6: market right now and willing to do the capital spend,
Speaker 6: whether it's on software, whether it's you know, that's your world.
Speaker 7: But what is kind of your take on that.
Speaker 8: The sentiment we're hearing, especially from our larger customers is
Speaker 8: a lot more intentionality. I would say, and there aware
Speaker 8: there's a bad yard, there is, there is and then
Speaker 8: I think there's you know, again depends on the sector
Speaker 8: they're trying to figure out from a priority standpoint one,
Speaker 8: how much do you invest in AI and where? And
Speaker 8: then everything else technology wise? You know, I do think
Speaker 8: there's we're seeing a lot more movement towards consolidation, which
Speaker 8: is which really was sort of the after effects of
Speaker 8: like the technology bloat during the pandemic.
Speaker 4: Speaking of the tech, we're seeing in prints and costs
Speaker 4: actually down, a gentic workflow is making in roads. Job
Speaker 4: growth particularly and tech has been slow or is trending down.
Speaker 4: What does all this mean to your seat based revenue
Speaker 4: model and where really are we are in that transition?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean we're actively looking to you know, sort
Speaker 8: of balance from a fully seat based to a hybrid
Speaker 8: of seat based and consumption based. And we also think
Speaker 8: there's a sub segment of customers ultimately that may be
Speaker 8: spending more on consumption and we're already seeing early signs
Speaker 8: of that, probably in more like our mid market customers
Speaker 8: who are now spending as much on seat as they
Speaker 8: are on AI and the credits. So I think that's
Speaker 8: like good, you know, positive news in terms of a transition,
Speaker 8: and so we're can you know, continue to invest in
Speaker 8: how we might help customers.
Speaker 7: Sort of shift in that direction.
Speaker 6: One of last question is I think something we talked about,
Speaker 6: you know, all of these programs that AI will make
Speaker 6: us more productive, no doubt about it. But going back
Speaker 6: to that idea of like what jobs does it take
Speaker 6: that headcount, like, ultimately does it make us more productive?
Speaker 6: We don't need so many people. And then coming back
Speaker 6: to you, guys, we're not going to need as much
Speaker 6: in terms of demand and product from everybody.
Speaker 7: Here's that cycle going to play out?
Speaker 8: Possibly One of the things you know, Dustin, our CEO
Speaker 8: and founder often talked about is like, hey, what this
Speaker 8: evolution may look like again depending on the kind of company,
Speaker 8: what problems they solve, what products they.
Speaker 9: Bring to market.
Speaker 8: Is that they will start to see a shift from
Speaker 8: payroll spend to sort of AI consumption spend. And you know, Tim,
Speaker 8: you mentioned, hey, we're seeing costs come down. One of
Speaker 8: the things we really provide is choice for customers to
Speaker 8: actually transparently pick the models depending on the workflow, how
Speaker 8: complex it they So there's andy they can choose that
Speaker 8: And so I think that's going to be really critical too,
Speaker 8: is like it's not all models against you know, sort
Speaker 8: of like all problems really being able to pick judiciously.
Speaker 4: That's Ann Ramandi, the chief operating officer of Asana.
Speaker 6: You're listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 6: coming out more conversations from our trip out west to
Speaker 6: the Bloomberg Tech Summit. I'm Carol Masser with Tim Stenebeck.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 6: Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 6: Taking a look at some of our favorite conversations from
Speaker 6: the Bloomberg Tech Summit.
Speaker 4: Up next, we hear from Florian Cybel, co founder and
Speaker 4: CEO of Quantum Systems, Carol By early twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: This is remarkable. When I was pre praying for this,
Speaker 4: drones were accounting to sixty to seventy percent of the
Speaker 4: damage and destruction cause to Russian equipment in the world.
Speaker 4: This is according to data from the UK based think tank,
Speaker 4: the Royal United Services Institute.
Speaker 6: You got to say, the way we think about warfare
Speaker 6: has definitely changed dramatically. And this is where Florian Cybel
Speaker 6: comes in. He's a former German Army helicopter pilot, an
Speaker 6: aeronautical engineer who a decade ago founded a company called
Speaker 6: Quantum Systems. It makes multi sensored drones. Now ninety percent
Speaker 6: of its sales go to the military sector, and it's
Speaker 6: provided thousands of drones to Ukraine specifically, and so we're
Speaker 6: kind of.
Speaker 7: Dying to talk to him.
Speaker 4: Flora Cybele joins us from Italy, Florid.
Speaker 5: Good to have you with us. I know there's a
Speaker 5: little bit of delay.
Speaker 4: We appreciate you taking the time and stand up a
Speaker 4: little late. In Europe for US on Bloomberg Business Week Daily.
Speaker 4: First big question that I have for you is, given
Speaker 4: what you know about Sunday's drone attack, were any of
Speaker 4: your drones actually used in that attack?
Speaker 10: So what we know not as in a way that
Speaker 10: they would act as being the ultimate weapon.
Speaker 11: All of the drones that we are building are.
Speaker 10: Used for ISR missions, which is intelligence, suwans and reconnaissance.
Speaker 10: So that means we are spotting potential targets. So our
Speaker 10: drones have wings, we have flight time of several hours,
Speaker 10: and then we've we fly deep into anti enemy territories,
Speaker 10: so we we spot and then then then other type
Speaker 10: of drones come in.
Speaker 4: Do do your drones ultimately replace the capabilities of aircraft
Speaker 4: such as the U two spyplane.
Speaker 11: Well, you know, there's there's a reason for every asset
Speaker 11: to have and I think you know mostly you know,
Speaker 11: war times are times of change, and new doctrines are happening,
Speaker 11: and and every war that is coming up will not
Speaker 11: start as as the as the last one ended.
Speaker 10: So you know, I'm not really sure if the next
Speaker 10: war will be all about drones. But but what I
Speaker 10: can say now, definitely it's it's a vehicle for Ukraine.
Speaker 11: To to fight off Russia because.
Speaker 10: They did not have enough conventional weapons to take to
Speaker 10: take them to the battlefield the way would have expected.
Speaker 10: So I mean they were just very curious and then
Speaker 10: using what they.
Speaker 11: Have and and and then that's where we are. And
Speaker 11: you know, this is technology changing the way things happen.
Speaker 6: Well, that's where Florine I kind of want to go.
Speaker 6: I think after that drone strike by Ukraine in Russia,
Speaker 6: we had so.
Speaker 7: Many conversations in the newsroom.
Speaker 6: About, oh my gosh, like warfare just continually to change
Speaker 6: very dramatically. My dad and his three brothers all thought
Speaker 6: in World War World War two, excuse me, a lot
Speaker 6: of hand to man to man combat was just a
Speaker 6: very different type of warfare. You know, we've seen the
Speaker 6: gamification of warfare. How does drones kind of make it
Speaker 6: safer on one level in terms of not putting people
Speaker 6: at the kind of right at the top, you know,
Speaker 6: the front line, if you will, But at the same
Speaker 6: time make it easier for someone to flip a switch
Speaker 6: and send drones into combat.
Speaker 10: You know, you use the word that that describes it
Speaker 10: quite well, which is gamification. You know, it's it's using
Speaker 10: a lot of technology that yeah, was spilling over from
Speaker 10: adjacent industries like cell phone technology. You know a lot
Speaker 10: of the small stuff chips, batteries, cameras that that they
Speaker 10: weren't just not available a few years ago to companies
Speaker 10: like US. And you know, the cell phone industry basically
Speaker 10: allowed us all to disrupt classical defense military companies because
Speaker 10: now you know it, it's available to everybody. And and
Speaker 10: China is very strong in that regard. And I think
Speaker 10: what has to happen now is we need to rebuild,
Speaker 10: specifically in the US, but also in Germany and Europe.
Speaker 10: We need to rebuild the industrial base to be capable
Speaker 10: of producing thousands, ten thousands, one hundred thousands of these units.
Speaker 12: It's it's not.
Speaker 10: About like a few multi hundred million dollar aircraft anymore.
Speaker 10: It's about large numbers are treatable platforms. You know, you
Speaker 10: want to saturate your adversary. And and there's companies like
Speaker 10: Quantum and and you all in the US that are
Speaker 10: changing the rules how we play.
Speaker 6: Florine, I am curious there is there somebody, an entity,
Speaker 6: a country that you will not sell to.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, in Germany, all of what we do
Speaker 10: is very regulated, and so we have a German Export
Speaker 10: Control Authority which is called BATHA, which is very much
Speaker 10: in line with NATO and the German governmental official position,
Speaker 10: and so we have to we have to fulfill these
Speaker 10: guidelines and guard Yeah, and so it's basically impossible for us,
Speaker 10: you know, from a legal perspective, for example, to sell
Speaker 10: into countries like Iran and Russia and China. But also
Speaker 10: you know then that that that's the legal perspective on it.
Speaker 10: And then we obviously we as the founders and we
Speaker 10: together with our investors have made it very clear that
Speaker 10: even though if we could sell to certain countries, you know,
Speaker 10: we we we we have to feel comfortable with that
Speaker 10: as a company. So for example, Saudi Arabia is probably
Speaker 10: one of those those countries that would would be quite
Speaker 10: obvious that we could sell to, but we would probably
Speaker 10: have a discussion before do so.
Speaker 4: You mentioned investors. The company is back by Peter Till
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about that in just a minute.
Speaker 4: Before we get there, I want to talk about the
Speaker 4: opportunity outside of Europe, because for much of the past
Speaker 4: three years you have been selling your drones to Ukraine,
Speaker 4: but you did just open a one hundred and thirty
Speaker 4: five thousand square foot facility here in California. What is
Speaker 4: the opportunity in the US market.
Speaker 10: I think that that was a very smart decision, you
Speaker 10: know what, to do that because the US DUD is
Speaker 10: the single largest Department of Defense in the world, and
Speaker 10: obviously Europe as a total is about the same size,
Speaker 10: but it's very fragmented into twenty six members state countries.
Speaker 10: So going to the US and entering that single biggest the.
Speaker 11: Market was a must do for US.
Speaker 10: There were a lot of people saying that it's going
Speaker 10: to be hard for a non US company to do well,
Speaker 10: but I think we managed to do so. You know,
Speaker 10: I have I've spent two years of my life in
Speaker 10: the US, one year in high school, one year when
Speaker 10: I was trained as a professional helicopter pilot in Fort Rauca, Alabama.
Speaker 10: So I think I picked a little bit up of
Speaker 10: the way of how America works and what's the life
Speaker 10: over there and how the people do business. And so
Speaker 10: I was very lucky to hire an excellent CEO coming
Speaker 10: from the drone defense industry, and he was setting up
Speaker 10: a Quantum Inc. In More Park and he has been
Speaker 10: doing incredibly well, and so I think you know, it's
Speaker 10: it's not the US or Europe. I think part of
Speaker 10: our mission is also to in these uncertain times of
Speaker 10: what we see at the moment where the US is
Speaker 10: trying to break away from Europe, that economic companies that
Speaker 10: are on the free market, Yeah, act as a glue
Speaker 10: maybe to together us through these times, because you know,
Speaker 10: the US has been always the biggest ally to Europe,
Speaker 10: especially what is coming up tomorrow D Day, and you know,
Speaker 10: we want to pay back a little bit here and
Speaker 10: so for me, it was a natural thing to go
Speaker 10: to the US.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Okay, So we are Bloomberg and we are always curious
Speaker 6: about interesting startups and as they are growing. And as
Speaker 6: to mentioned, you are backed by Peter Thiale. You just
Speaker 6: raised about one hundred and one hundred and eighty one
Speaker 6: million dollars a financing round, valuing you at more than
Speaker 6: a billion dollars. So kind of going into that unicorn status.
Speaker 6: When is the IPO if there is one, will.
Speaker 7: Be Europe, will be the United States? What will you
Speaker 7: guys do it?
Speaker 11: It's unclear at the moment.
Speaker 10: Right now, we're doing very well.
Speaker 12: We're probably going.
Speaker 10: To raise one or two more rounds, you know, being
Speaker 10: on the on the capital market also means you're very
Speaker 10: transparent in what you do. And you know, these big
Speaker 10: government contracts we are after there either zero or one
Speaker 10: and you know, we don't want to end up being
Speaker 10: the goal of you know, speculative betting on us or
Speaker 10: against us on Wall Street. So I think we'll take
Speaker 10: like one or two more years, one or two more
Speaker 10: financing rounds, and then probably as we are a German company,
Speaker 10: we could look into doing a European IPO or as
Speaker 10: you said, you know New York Stock Exchange, probably ten
Speaker 10: depends a little bit also on how well we do
Speaker 10: with our US facility. As you said, we have heavily
Speaker 10: invested in one hundred and thirty five thousand square foot
Speaker 10: We need to fill that with business. We expect the
Speaker 10: US government to give us more contracts to pay back
Speaker 10: that we invest so heavily into the US now, and
Speaker 10: then it's an open decision, I would say as of today.
Speaker 6: Well, it's always you know, interesting, we talked so much
Speaker 6: about here. We are in San Francisco, you know, the
Speaker 6: heart of Silicon Valley, you know, nearby innovation that happens
Speaker 6: around the world. You are based in Munich, How does
Speaker 6: that startup environment differ there over Europe, in Munich specifically
Speaker 6: versus maybe elsewhere versus the United States, for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So you know, having lived in the United States and
Speaker 10: having met a lot of US investors in the last six, eight,
Speaker 10: ten years, you can definitely say that the spirit of
Speaker 10: go big or go home or think big is definitely
Speaker 10: part of Silicon Valley culture, whereas in Germany we have
Speaker 10: excellent engineering, I would say, at very decent price and
Speaker 10: cost of living. So I think there's a there's an
Speaker 10: advantage for both locations to be Obviously, especially in the beginning,
Speaker 10: I was always a little bit celloius looking at the
Speaker 10: amound and the number of companies that are still being
Speaker 10: founded in the US.
Speaker 12: So it's so.
Speaker 10: Much more and bigger than Europe. But I think we're
Speaker 10: catching up. You know, what has happened in the last
Speaker 10: two or three years. It's clear for us now in
Speaker 10: Europe that we are on our own. We need to
Speaker 10: reinvent ourselves, we need to define.
Speaker 12: Who we are, who we want to be in that world,
Speaker 12: you know, and.
Speaker 10: Germany always has been the place of great world leading
Speaker 10: tech companies. I think we have just not had that
Speaker 10: in the last one or two decades, and I think
Speaker 10: it's time to change that again and we are ready
Speaker 10: to do that.
Speaker 4: Hey Floren, before we let you go, I know you're
Speaker 4: focused on these UAVs that are really about reconnaissance, but
Speaker 4: I want to pick your brain a little bit about
Speaker 4: the areas of innovation, especially here in the US, because
Speaker 4: back in March, the US government awarded Boeing the new
Speaker 4: Air Force F forty seven stealth fighter. Yet there's sort
Speaker 4: of a lot of controversy around this because it's still
Speaker 4: going to be crew based, though the President did say
Speaker 4: we'll be able to fly remotely. Should the US right
Speaker 4: now or should countries be investing in any crewed aircraft
Speaker 4: right now? Or is the future one in your view UAV?
Speaker 10: I think the future is unmanned. It's definitely about robotics
Speaker 10: and unmanned systems. The question is how fast will that happen.
Speaker 10: I think the UK has just brought up a new
Speaker 10: defense policy, they call it twenty forty forty, saying twenty
Speaker 10: percent will be or should be assets, classical assets like
Speaker 10: there used to be so man fighter jets, forty percent
Speaker 10: ISR and intelligence, and forty percent unmanned drike strike capability.
Speaker 10: So I think it's it's not either or I think
Speaker 10: it's a combination both, but definitely more than we used
Speaker 10: to see. And you know, I don't know if the
Speaker 10: forty seven is going to be man or unmanned. Probably
Speaker 10: these high value assets will still be manned, but they
Speaker 10: will definitely not fly into into enemy territory. I think
Speaker 10: they have a standoff capability extreme long range radar range
Speaker 10: because they're so super expensive. But let's see, you know,
Speaker 10: it's changing. Maybe in the next war will be not
Speaker 10: fought on drones. Maybe it's in space.
Speaker 4: That's Florian Cybel, co founder and CEO of Quantum Systems.
Speaker 6: You're listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 6: Coming up more conversations from our trip out west to
Speaker 6: the Bloomberg Tech Summit. I'm Carol Masser with tim Stenoveek.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 6: Thirty Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 6: taking a look at some of our favorite conversations from
Speaker 6: the Bloomberg Tech Summit.
Speaker 4: Up next, we hear from r J Scarrange, the CEO
Speaker 4: of Rivian.
Speaker 7: All right, we've got a really great guest. We want
Speaker 7: to get right to.
Speaker 6: Marj Sparrange is with us. He's, of course, head of
Speaker 6: the sixteen billion dollar market cap automaker. We're talking about Rivian.
Speaker 6: We talk about this company all the time with us
Speaker 6: at Bloomberg Tech Summit here in San Francisco, and we
Speaker 6: have Ed Ludlow, a member our team coast of Bloomberg
Speaker 6: Technology who knows this company so well. Hey, one thing
Speaker 6: I want to start with Rja is there's a lot
Speaker 6: going on between Elon and Donald Trump.
Speaker 7: It seems like it's over and it's not going well.
Speaker 6: So I'm just curious have you been able to kind
Speaker 6: of win market share or anything as a result of
Speaker 6: kind of Elon's position at DOGE And I'm just curious
Speaker 6: how it.
Speaker 7: Might play out here. Yeah, I mean, I think I testimony, Yeah, I.
Speaker 13: Think in general, it's the thing has been surprising is
Speaker 13: just how politicize a lot of things have become so
Speaker 13: electric vehicles become politicized. Specific brands within the electric vehicles
Speaker 13: past for politicized. And so what we've tried to do
Speaker 13: as a brand, really really focused on is to focus.
Speaker 12: On what we stand for, the products, the ratch meets.
Speaker 13: And you know, there's a famous Michael Jordan quote which
Speaker 13: is we have Republicans. You know, he'said Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 13: both by Nikes.
Speaker 12: And it's the same thing with Rivians. I'll go to
Speaker 12: Rivian events.
Speaker 13: I was just in New York and yeah, there's it's
Speaker 13: such a beautiful mix of backgrounds, perspectives, cultures that are
Speaker 13: drawn to what we're building as a brand. Right and
Speaker 13: we're about to launch what we call it R two,
Speaker 13: which is a lower price vehicle starts at forty five
Speaker 13: thousand dollars and that product will even you know, broaden
Speaker 13: the aperture even more.
Speaker 14: And so I think asking is if there's net positive
Speaker 14: effect for you from this environment on sales.
Speaker 12: I think that's what she was asking.
Speaker 14: I think you're benefiting from this environment movement?
Speaker 7: Have you benefited from it?
Speaker 13: I think there are a lot of customers who are
Speaker 13: looking for brand that they want to connect with, so
Speaker 13: that we're seeing that for sure.
Speaker 4: Sort of on that thinking about the politics of this
Speaker 4: rare earth, I mean, you and the team have been
Speaker 4: really clear that you've been working to educate the Trump
Speaker 4: administration when it comes to the complexities around processing rare
Speaker 4: earth here in the US. Are you still concerned about
Speaker 4: accessibility to rare earths?
Speaker 13: Well, first, i'd say I appreciate that the administration recognizes
Speaker 13: this is an issue that's important, and I think that
Speaker 13: we've done a lot of work and spent a lot
Speaker 13: of time with the administration on this topic. I think
Speaker 13: this is perhaps one of the biggest topics surrounding, you know,
Speaker 13: the trade tensions with China. It's it's well, it's well
Speaker 13: documented that a vast majority of the world's processing for
Speaker 13: these rareth medals happens in China.
Speaker 12: So this is.
Speaker 13: Something that you know, we're going to continue to be
Speaker 13: very focused on, continue to have concerns about until.
Speaker 12: We start to see it really move.
Speaker 5: What's your backup plan?
Speaker 12: We have many backup plans.
Speaker 4: If you can't get access to these rare eers for
Speaker 4: some reason, you rot an extended period of time, which
Speaker 4: are essential in making ads and batteries.
Speaker 13: What do you do so what we've we've done, we've
Speaker 13: spent time on over the last several months, is to
Speaker 13: build alternative supply chains. But they're not they're not elegant
Speaker 13: because they're not set up for scale, and and a
Speaker 13: lot of people beyond us are also trying to build
Speaker 13: these alternative supply chains. So I think, you know, the
Speaker 13: hope is that in the short to medium term we
Speaker 13: see this open back up. And I think in the
Speaker 13: long term we're probably going to see both investment into
Speaker 13: building earth capacity outside of China and then innovation to
Speaker 13: remove rare earth's from products. You know, so if you
Speaker 13: take in an electric vehicle, the reason this is so
Speaker 13: important is the motors use permanent magnets. Then permanent magnets
Speaker 13: have earth metals, you know, things like dysprosium and all
Speaker 13: those things on the periodic.
Speaker 12: Table that we forget about the yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 13: Those those earth metals are needed in the magnets. But
Speaker 13: you can create electro magnet to power the rotor. You know,
Speaker 13: the rotors are spinning part of the motor. But then
Speaker 13: you've got to get power to the rotors so that
Speaker 13: you can do it with a brush, you can do
Speaker 13: it with induction, so it's a more.
Speaker 12: Complex motor product, but it does remove the complexity of
Speaker 12: global trade around the area.
Speaker 7: Is a little time away.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 13: Gonna it's not you can't flip your design over overnight.
Speaker 13: But I would say I think a lot of the
Speaker 13: auto industry is going to start finding innovative ways that
Speaker 13: are perhaps maybe a little more expensive, that reduced to
Speaker 13: rely on somewhere.
Speaker 14: People wonder how nimble you are there, Like, do you
Speaker 14: remember when we first met seven years ago with respect
Speaker 14: your suppliers really wouldn't engage with you because of scale.
Speaker 14: So if you have had to pivot a little bit
Speaker 14: because of policy, particularly for planning for our two, have
Speaker 14: you been able to a get your spires to listen
Speaker 14: to you and be effect to change.
Speaker 12: Yeah, we've talked about the slide.
Speaker 13: I mean, our relationship with suppliers and leverage we have
Speaker 13: with those supliers is so much stronger today with our
Speaker 13: two and what's to come than what we had, you know,
Speaker 13: in twenty nineteen or twenty twenty, even twenty eighteen. But
Speaker 13: I'd say the thing that's really helpful for us in
Speaker 13: our toos, it's not as if this is a surprise
Speaker 13: we saw you know, if you're going into summer of
Speaker 13: last year, we saw some of these tensions already rising
Speaker 13: between the United States and China, and that was.
Speaker 12: As we were planning for and sourcing are two.
Speaker 13: So we contemplated and in many ways anticipated a lot
Speaker 13: of these situations we're now dealing with in terms of tariffs,
Speaker 13: in terms of trade restrictions happening. So in the medium
Speaker 13: to long term, it's we're pretty well covered. In the
Speaker 13: short to medium term, you know, things get shut off.
Speaker 13: That's really challenging. And so that's where I think the
Speaker 13: Earth challenge is that if this this happens, we're off.
Speaker 13: It just creates a lot of pressure on a very
Speaker 13: thin non China supply chain.
Speaker 14: I still think there's a lot of interest in Rivian.
Speaker 14: What I hear is there's also a lot of interest
Speaker 14: in also your your micro mobility spin off. Would you
Speaker 14: consider kind of de risking yourselves a little bit by
Speaker 14: allowing outside investors to write you a check into that
Speaker 14: venture and then get you some capital, or de risk
Speaker 14: your own balance sheet in that respect.
Speaker 13: So we spun this micromobility portion of Rivian out, and
Speaker 13: we actually raised outside capitals. We brought we brought one
Speaker 13: hundred and five million dollars in at the start of the.
Speaker 12: Year, which is from a clip, which is from a clip.
Speaker 13: Exactly right, and so it's now independently financed from Riview
Speaker 13: and it's you know, it's a really exciting set of products.
Speaker 12: We're going to show those products in the fall.
Speaker 14: But with the venture to look at even further outside
Speaker 14: happit til to get go in a little bit.
Speaker 13: We could, yeah, we could, but but we're really happy
Speaker 13: with where it is. It's it's it's exciting to build
Speaker 13: a new business with the strength of all the Rivian
Speaker 13: technologies is starting right.
Speaker 6: That's our Ja Scarringe, Rivian CEO.
Speaker 4: Coming up next, we hear from Ahmed al Dahl, VP
Speaker 4: of Generative AI at Meta.
Speaker 6: I want to just kind of set this up because
Speaker 6: Bloomberg News recently reporting artificial intelligence coding startup Replet is
Speaker 6: in talks.
Speaker 7: It was in talks, maybe still in talks.
Speaker 6: We'll find out with investors for a new funding round
Speaker 6: that would almost triple its valuation too, about three billion dollars.
Speaker 7: That was according to people.
Speaker 6: Familiar with the matter, and so that was really underscoring
Speaker 6: Silicon Valley investors appetite for companies using AI for software development.
Speaker 6: I do feel like, Tim, that's the phase we've moved into.
Speaker 4: Well, let's ask you, and we've got Amjod Messad here,
Speaker 4: The thoughder and CEO of RUG joins us here at
Speaker 4: the Bloomberg Technology summ At twenty twenty five in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Comment on the fundraising and where you are in that.
Speaker 4: Can you confirm the report?
Speaker 15: We're always in talks with investors. We've grown a lot,
Speaker 15: We've we've.
Speaker 3: Grown just this year over ten x Uh.
Speaker 7: You're talking about top like wow.
Speaker 4: So you're always in talks until you're not. And you
Speaker 4: go public as a company, you're always in talks until
Speaker 4: you're not. Yeah, are you currently raising this route?
Speaker 3: Things are moving winny fast. Okay.
Speaker 15: So even when you're in talks and then you grow
Speaker 15: that much, you know, it's like.
Speaker 6: I'm talk to us about that growth, Like, who is
Speaker 6: it that's tapping into what you guys are doing specifically?
Speaker 15: Yeah, so you know, it's all sorts of people so
Speaker 15: replet as opposed to say, you know, cursor windsor for
Speaker 15: claud code or other things.
Speaker 3: We're trying to make it so that anyone is a programmer.
Speaker 8: So you you.
Speaker 15: You know, I could encourage anyone of the audience to
Speaker 15: go to the app store on.
Speaker 3: Their start making software.
Speaker 15: So the kind of users that we have AD companies
Speaker 15: tend to not be the software engineer. We do have engineers,
Speaker 15: but for example, product managers for the first time.
Speaker 3: Can go from an idea to a product without even
Speaker 3: talking to an engineer.
Speaker 7: How does that happen?
Speaker 15: So we created a software development agent. It was the
Speaker 15: first software development agent on the market. Now we got
Speaker 15: a lot of copycats, but basically, it takes the user command,
Speaker 15: breaks down the problem into different tasks, starts coding their
Speaker 15: different files, runs the program, tests, the program takes the screenshot,
Speaker 15: looks at it, and then talks to the user, Hey
Speaker 15: did I build what you told me to build?
Speaker 3: And then there's a conversation with the user.
Speaker 4: I just did a big piece on due Lingo, and
Speaker 4: so this is fresh on my mind.
Speaker 3: They're a customer. They are a customers.
Speaker 4: So that's interesting because what I read was they, you know,
Speaker 4: they're known for languages, but they had chess. What is
Speaker 4: a new area where they're branching out into and you
Speaker 4: can learn how to do.
Speaker 5: Chess on the platform.
Speaker 4: Apparently it was created by a designer and a product manager.
Speaker 16: They used a program called cursor. Would that be a
Speaker 16: competitor to you? Uh, that would work in tandem. They
Speaker 16: work in tandem. We compete on the margins, but they
Speaker 16: work intends. A lot of time people start with replet,
Speaker 16: create a prototype, okay, ticket a cursor, they iterate on it.
Speaker 4: So if product managers and designers are doing this, where
Speaker 4: does that leave software engineers.
Speaker 15: I think software engineers are gonna be like a layer
Speaker 15: of deeper. So you always need the infrastructure engineer, you
Speaker 15: always need the platform engineer, the AI engineer, and so
Speaker 15: the specialized low level engineers job is safe.
Speaker 3: But the fuel creating products anyone can make it now.
Speaker 4: But their jobs, these specialized folks might be safe. But
Speaker 4: maybe you don't need as many of them as you do.
Speaker 3: Now, that's that's safe to assume.
Speaker 15: But net net, there's gonna be a lot more developers.
Speaker 15: They might not have gone to computer side in school,
Speaker 15: but day to day they're making software.
Speaker 12: Wow.
Speaker 6: But that's a big shift because I just feel like
Speaker 6: the story that we have said for many years now
Speaker 6: is software engineers, coders, you guys are safe, right because
Speaker 6: every company is a technology company. And every company needs
Speaker 6: coders and figuring out how to do systems. You're saying, no,
Speaker 6: that's not the case anymore. Well, let me put it,
Speaker 6: because everybody can be a coder.
Speaker 3: Let me put it this way.
Speaker 15: Every company in the world even today is limited by
Speaker 15: how many software engineering resources they have. That is one
Speaker 15: of the limiting factor to growth in our economy in general, right,
Speaker 15: and so we're basically removing.
Speaker 3: That limiting factor.
Speaker 15: And I think that's gonna that's going to create a
Speaker 15: lot better products and services. Companies like dual Lingo can
Speaker 15: go from language to chess, and a lot.
Speaker 3: New startups are going to be created.
Speaker 15: Icy startups are all platform every day, and so the
Speaker 15: economy is just going to be a lot more dynamic.
Speaker 4: Are you doing the inference on your platform? Are you
Speaker 4: doing it for it's on your platform? We or do
Speaker 4: you use do you have to contract that out to
Speaker 4: a third party?
Speaker 3: So we uh so, meaning what kind of models?
Speaker 15: So we so we use a collection of models, some
Speaker 15: of them we trained and hosted, but we rely a
Speaker 15: lot of it on a topic. We rely on on
Speaker 15: some Google models like Gemini, Flash and clod Code. Uh
Speaker 15: you know, these are what's what's happening in the l
Speaker 15: M space is that there's so many tools out there,
Speaker 15: open source, tool source whatever. As an application layer company,
Speaker 15: our job is created the best product possible, whether we
Speaker 15: have whether we pick you know.
Speaker 3: The model off the shelf or chaine our model. It's engineering.
Speaker 3: It's not AI research, it's engineering. I'm John.
Speaker 6: What I am hearing is that what your tool would
Speaker 6: be really incredible for is for smaller sized companies who
Speaker 6: maybe can afford to like hire software engineers. Like I
Speaker 6: have an idea, tell me, like, where is your business
Speaker 6: the growth the most? Is it small size? Its size?
Speaker 6: Large sized companies? Give us an idea and just got
Speaker 6: about forty five seconds.
Speaker 15: So you're right, small sizes where we're seeing the most growth.
Speaker 15: But in terms of contract value, it tends to be
Speaker 15: mid market and enterprise. We have Fortune five hundred companies
Speaker 15: and the way they use it is to unblock. Everyone
Speaker 15: in the enterprise has ideas to improve the business. But
Speaker 15: there's a limited number of engineers, and so these people
Speaker 15: are seeking the tools. Yeah, and it's starting to be
Speaker 15: productive with them and repletus them.
Speaker 3: There's one of the big tools.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's Ahmed al Dahl, vice president of generative AI
Speaker 4: at Meta that does it.
Speaker 6: For this hour, Bloomberg Business Week Next hour will bring
Speaker 6: you even more from the Bloomberg Tech Summit out in
Speaker 6: San Francisco this past week. I'm Carol Masser with Tim Stenebec.
Speaker 2: You are listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch
Speaker 2: us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern.
Speaker 2: Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Business or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, taking
Speaker 6: a look at some of our favorite conversations from the
Speaker 6: Bloomberg Tech Summit. First up this hour, we spoke with
Speaker 6: Windows Snyder. She's the CEO of Thistle Technologies.
Speaker 4: There's this common refrain that if it's connected to the internet, Carol,
Speaker 4: it can be hacked.
Speaker 6: It feels like a really smart thing to be like
Speaker 6: kind of keep in mind, like, Okay.
Speaker 4: We know computers and like our email accounts can be hacked,
Speaker 4: but what about baby monitors, doorbell cameras, routers, and yes,
Speaker 4: even the humble washing machine.
Speaker 6: Listen, if it ain't work in we're gonna have some problems.
Speaker 6: This is where Windows Snyder comes in. She's the CEO
Speaker 6: over at Thistle Technologies. They specialize in security infrastructure for devices.
Speaker 7: No Window has led teams building protections into.
Speaker 6: Phones, laptops, desktops, and web browsers. She's done this at companies. Yeh,
Speaker 6: you're going to know who they are. We're talking about Apple,
Speaker 6: We're talking about Intel. We're also talking about Microsoft and Mozilla.
Speaker 4: She's featured in Business Weeks one to watch in technology.
Speaker 4: It's a guide for the people you'll be hearing more
Speaker 4: about in the near future. You joined this year at
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Tech Summit in San Francisco. Help me understand how
Speaker 4: the solution works because you're selling your solution to the
Speaker 4: companies that then consumers buy from.
Speaker 5: So your B to B correct, we are your B
Speaker 5: to B.
Speaker 4: So what is the infrastructure that you create that protects
Speaker 4: my doorbell from being.
Speaker 17: A sure So we build the capabilities that the device
Speaker 17: developers can incorporate into their products that allow them to
Speaker 17: reduce the attack surface of these devices, which means the
Speaker 17: number of entry points into the system or the areas
Speaker 17: that are most vulnerable, like the device is most vulnerable
Speaker 17: during update and update is one of those things that's
Speaker 17: really hard to get right and really easy to get wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 17: so because it gets implemented differently in every different environment.
Speaker 17: That's one of the areas that we target as an
Speaker 17: area to provide a lot of security resilience. Additionally, validating
Speaker 17: the update is coming from where you expect it tom
Speaker 17: by evaluating a cryptographic signature on it that could be
Speaker 17: validated by a key that's stored in hardware.
Speaker 6: Wait a minute, I don't even think about that being
Speaker 6: like a like a cyber attack, but I guess that
Speaker 6: would be a great place for people to do it.
Speaker 7: How often does that happen?
Speaker 17: Well, the FABI recently released a report that showed that
Speaker 17: the organized crime was using vulnerable routers home routers right
Speaker 17: to string together bought networks that were basically these devices
Speaker 17: never get updated, so they're going to persist for you know, indefinitely.
Speaker 4: When I talk to people like you, I selfishly always
Speaker 4: ask about your own security hygiene and like what products
Speaker 4: that you actually personally incorporated into your life and what
Speaker 4: you were boid.
Speaker 17: So for the home user, it's incredibly difficult because a
Speaker 17: lot of these devices, you're just kind of it's a
Speaker 17: black box. You just get what you get, and there's
Speaker 17: not much you can do to to mitigrate and risk
Speaker 17: from those devices. At the enterprise, you've got a little
Speaker 17: bit more of an opportunity. But as a former CISO myself,
Speaker 17: they're difficult to manage. They are uninspectable. If there's an
Speaker 17: update available, it's very often very difficult to get it deployed.
Speaker 7: It's actually a struggle.
Speaker 4: What would you say to somebody a consumer? He says, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: ring doorbell, it's owned by Amazon. They're a legit company.
Speaker 4: Hero Is I think owned by Amazon also, it's legit.
Speaker 4: Amazon will take the necessary precautions to protect me.
Speaker 5: What would you say to that.
Speaker 17: Amazon has a very large, very good security team. That's fantastic.
Speaker 17: But there's so many devices out there. I mean, I'm
Speaker 17: wearing like two just from like here down, I've got
Speaker 17: two devices over it.
Speaker 4: So you've got an Aura ring for our listeners in
Speaker 4: an Apple Watch exactly.
Speaker 17: But in your home you might have a smart TV,
Speaker 17: you might have a baby monitor, you might have an
Speaker 17: even smart op And there's so many there's so many
Speaker 17: different kinds of devices. Your printer, they might not all
Speaker 17: get the same level of security rigor that your ring
Speaker 17: doorbell might. That's a that's a that's a good device.
Speaker 5: That's I would.
Speaker 4: I would welcome a hacker to make my printer work better, That's.
Speaker 1: What I would.
Speaker 6: So you're talking about hacks, right, Like why do I
Speaker 6: care about my printer?
Speaker 5: You know, like what is it? Is there already mess stop?
Speaker 6: But is it a case that it doesn't work or
Speaker 6: are you saying that there's a security thing we need
Speaker 6: to be concerned about.
Speaker 17: Well, the printer in the enterprise or at home is
Speaker 17: the place where we take all of our most sensitive
Speaker 17: documents and store them on paper. Right, So if you're
Speaker 17: an attacker and you're sitting on that printer, you have
Speaker 17: access that information. But even that is not necessarily what
Speaker 17: they're doing on your printer. If you compromise the printer,
Speaker 17: you're using it to launch an attack against a more
Speaker 17: sensitive system. And now since you're on the network, you've
Speaker 17: got a more privileged position, so it's.
Speaker 5: The weakest link essentially exactly.
Speaker 4: So I take back what I said about a hacker
Speaker 4: going into my printer.
Speaker 5: I do not welcome that, all right.
Speaker 6: So I helped me out here because I have a
Speaker 6: husband who loves technology, and so our lights are I
Speaker 6: don't know, heating system, like music, everything is controlled by
Speaker 6: something and it kind of drives me crazy.
Speaker 7: But I mean, does that make a home more vulnerable?
Speaker 6: Or like, how do you I don't know, like what
Speaker 6: things shouldn't we automate or use technology?
Speaker 17: So I can tell you to go set up a
Speaker 17: device network and keep it separate from the network that
Speaker 17: your laptops use, but that's not really practical advice because
Speaker 17: most consumers can't set that up. The real emphasis should
Speaker 17: be on the folks that build those So, for example,
Speaker 17: in Europe, the Cyber Resiliency Act is forcing these device
Speaker 17: makers to make sure that they're doing security updates, make
Speaker 17: sure that they are building security resilience.
Speaker 7: In from the start.
Speaker 5: Should we have that here in the US.
Speaker 17: We definitely need to make sure that device makers are
Speaker 17: doing the work.
Speaker 4: That's Windows Snyder, CEO of Thistle Technologies.
Speaker 6: Up next, we'll hear from Jennifer Downa. She is founder
Speaker 6: of the Innovative Genomics Institute and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.
Speaker 4: I want to get an update on where we are
Speaker 4: in your view with gene editing technology. I think everybody
Speaker 4: saw the story the ten month old baby who received
Speaker 4: the world's first personalized gene editing treatment was released from
Speaker 4: the hospital. I mean, this is really exciting stuff. It
Speaker 4: looks like chrisper gene editing tech saved his life. When
Speaker 4: does this treatment not make headlines? When will more patients
Speaker 4: get it?
Speaker 7: We have to scale the approach.
Speaker 18: I think what's very citing about baby kJ beyond the
Speaker 18: immediate impact on him and his family, is the opportunity
Speaker 18: to make this technology available to many more people. And
Speaker 18: that's exactly where our institute is focused.
Speaker 6: Jennifer, is this the holy grail in terms of fixing
Speaker 6: all that ails us?
Speaker 13: Like?
Speaker 6: Do you see it going to a point where we're
Speaker 6: born and we're scanned, and we see here's the problems,
Speaker 6: here's the problems, and we do the edit at an
Speaker 6: early basis, Like, is.
Speaker 7: That where this comes?
Speaker 19: Well maybe in the future.
Speaker 18: I think at the moment, I think what we're looking
Speaker 18: at in the near term is an opportunity to fix rare.
Speaker 7: Disease, right, mut I mean this in a good way, and.
Speaker 18: That's great, right, But in the future, what about for others,
Speaker 18: you know, for kind of more broadly, what kind of
Speaker 18: impact is it going to have? I think in the future,
Speaker 18: we're looking at opportunities to prevent.
Speaker 7: Disease yeah, exactly how do we get there?
Speaker 19: Ye like, what do you like?
Speaker 7: How do what's what's needed? Is it twenty and also
Speaker 7: how long?
Speaker 9: Well, I think a couple of things.
Speaker 18: One is, I'd love to see us scale the end
Speaker 18: of one the rare disease approach, because I think that
Speaker 18: creates a pipeline for expanding the opportunities for more patients
Speaker 18: to participate. And Then secondly, I think we have to
Speaker 18: continue to look for ways to ensure that editing is
Speaker 18: done safely and effectively. What are the right ways to
Speaker 18: regulate it, what are the right ways to test it?
Speaker 18: That's all key to expanding it into more patients.
Speaker 4: I want to talk funding here for research because in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, American University has received about sixty billion
Speaker 4: dollars in funding that went to every single state in
Speaker 4: the US, universities in every state. Much of it has
Speaker 4: gone to research that's at risk right now. How has
Speaker 4: public funding fueled your pioneering work.
Speaker 18: Well, we had a grant from the Department of Energy,
Speaker 18: was our very first grant to work on CRISPER, and
Speaker 18: I met with the Secretary of Energy last week. I
Speaker 18: told him that if we hadn't had that grant, we
Speaker 18: couldn't have started the research. So it's really important that
Speaker 18: we have federal dollars to support curiosity driven science that
Speaker 18: drive new innovation.
Speaker 5: Is that at risk right now?
Speaker 7: It's a risk, it is.
Speaker 18: And the other thing I think to point out is
Speaker 18: that the federal funding of science creates a huge, highly
Speaker 18: trained workforce here in the United States. That create the
Speaker 18: people that are trained to go into pharmaceutical companies, to
Speaker 18: go into biotech.
Speaker 9: A lot of them become.
Speaker 18: Entrepreneurs here in the Bay Area and elsewhere. They drive
Speaker 18: the future with innovation.
Speaker 6: What would you say, Jennifer to people who are listening
Speaker 6: and say, well, I don't understand why an academic institution
Speaker 6: like a Harvard or that has a multi billion dollar endowment,
Speaker 6: why do they.
Speaker 7: Need federal money, you know, to do R and D.
Speaker 6: So help us understand why that is so important for
Speaker 6: America and our academic universities and institutions to have that
Speaker 6: federally funded research.
Speaker 7: Why is that so important?
Speaker 18: Well, it's very important because we need to fund the
Speaker 18: kind of out there, high risk but potentially very high
Speaker 18: benefit research that drives the future.
Speaker 19: Companies aren't going to do that.
Speaker 18: Investors don't want to put money into things that are unproven, and.
Speaker 7: The university you're going to do that on their own?
Speaker 18: They can't, you know, they just don't have the resources
Speaker 18: to do it. Private company private universities that have, you know,
Speaker 18: resources that go beyond what we have at public schools
Speaker 18: like mine.
Speaker 7: Can do maybe more than the rest of us.
Speaker 18: But most universities simply do not have the funding to
Speaker 18: support them.
Speaker 7: I want to push because you understand this world.
Speaker 6: So what if they say, well, wait a minute, so
Speaker 6: don't build another football stadium or don't you know what.
Speaker 7: I mean, like spend that money on doing R and
Speaker 7: D if it's.
Speaker 18: So important, right, But I think you know, the thing
Speaker 18: to understand is that the federal government has traditionally invested
Speaker 18: in science, really since World War Two. It ended in
Speaker 18: a way that has returned more than two and a
Speaker 18: half dollars for every dollar invested. And that comes from
Speaker 18: the companies founded, the intellectual property, the patents issued, all
Speaker 18: of the inventions that have been created, all of the
Speaker 18: cures that we're now seeing crisper and other things that
Speaker 18: is really a direct result of federal funding.
Speaker 4: We're seeing a decline of interest that seems like from
Speaker 4: venture capitalists right now in funding these to the companies.
Speaker 4: Back in twenty twenty, DC money raise rotie therapy companies
Speaker 4: peaked three point three billion dollars. It's been moving lower
Speaker 4: since to just a few hundred million.
Speaker 5: Dollars last year. That's according to Feel FORMA. What's going
Speaker 5: on here.
Speaker 18: I think that, you know, I've been around a few
Speaker 18: years and I've seen I've seen some cycles, you know,
Speaker 18: and this is not unexpected in biotech.
Speaker 9: This has happened before.
Speaker 18: I think what happens is that, you know, sometimes there's
Speaker 18: you know, there we go through moments when there's a
Speaker 18: lot of excitement about a field or maybe even a
Speaker 18: whole sector, like biotech, and that was true in the
Speaker 18: early twenty twenties, and then there was a kind of
Speaker 18: a check on that people realizing that, gosh, it's hard
Speaker 18: to make drugs, you know, and it takes a bit
Speaker 18: of time, and so I think there's been a pullback.
Speaker 18: I think that the baby kJ story and some of
Speaker 18: the other things happening right now with gene editing in particular,
Speaker 18: are just so inspiring that I'm hopeful that investors will
Speaker 18: re engage and realize the opportunity ahead.
Speaker 4: Speaking of engaging, and kind of back to the side
Speaker 4: of this. Have you had a chance to speak with
Speaker 4: vine Pisad then you had a befd's division that oversees
Speaker 4: gene editing.
Speaker 18: I think the FDA has played a central role in
Speaker 18: regulating new therapies like Crisper. They are clearly excited about
Speaker 18: the opportunities that the story of babykj Offer, and I
Speaker 18: think we have a great partnership with them.
Speaker 6: You mentioned the other things that gene editing are doing,
Speaker 6: and maybe not everything gets into the headlines, but give
Speaker 6: us an idea of kind of the broad impact or
Speaker 6: the broader impact that it maybe has already had.
Speaker 18: Right Well, you know, a couple things immediately come to mind.
Speaker 18: One is programming immune cells to fight cancer. That's ongoing
Speaker 18: with Crisper, and there are many companies and academic.
Speaker 19: Groups working on that.
Speaker 18: We have opportunities in other areas like cardiovascular disease. And
Speaker 18: then you know, thinking ahead, looking at ways that we
Speaker 18: might treat neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's, etc. I think that's also
Speaker 18: a very interesting opportunity with Christoper.
Speaker 6: One thing I always wonder is that there is a
Speaker 6: massive business already established treating cancer and Alzheimer's so many
Speaker 6: different things. Does that ever slow the progress of something
Speaker 6: that has the potential to be so impactful like gene editing.
Speaker 7: I'm always curious about that disconnect.
Speaker 6: It's a big business, right, taking care of all of
Speaker 6: us and what ails us, especially as we get older.
Speaker 18: It is, and you know, both cancer and heart disease
Speaker 18: are really.
Speaker 7: Multiple diseases, aren't they Right.
Speaker 18: There's a lot going on there saying with their own
Speaker 18: degenerative disease. So I think the answer is we just
Speaker 18: need everything we have to treat these disorders.
Speaker 4: That's Jennifer dudda founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute and
Speaker 4: a Nobel Laureate in chemistry.
Speaker 6: You're listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 6: Coming up more conversations from our trip out west to
Speaker 6: the Bloomberg Tech Summit. I'm Carol Masser with Tim Stenoviek.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Speaker 2: Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App.
Speaker 2: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
Speaker 2: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg's Business Week,
Speaker 4: taking a look at some of our favorite conversations from
Speaker 4: the Bloomberg Tech Summit.
Speaker 6: Up next, we hear from Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics.
Speaker 4: Robots and warehouses doing repetitive tasks that humans now do,
Speaker 4: but doing them better and not getting injured.
Speaker 5: Carold.
Speaker 4: It sounds like the stuff of the future, But Agility
Speaker 4: Robotics is one of the few companies that's doing this
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they really are. Check us out. It's got five
Speaker 7: foot nine inch robots.
Speaker 6: Working at a warehouse containing products made by spanks, has
Speaker 6: technology and testing at Amazon dot Com facilities, and that
Speaker 6: really makes Agility really one of the few humanoid bought
Speaker 6: companies with machines currently performing useful task for customers. If
Speaker 6: you are wondering if it's happening, folks, it's happening.
Speaker 4: Peggy's the former CEO of the augmented reality tech for
Speaker 4: Magically if she's held senior roles at Microsoft and Qualcom.
Speaker 4: She joins us here in San Francisco the Bloomberg Tech Summit.
Speaker 5: Welcome.
Speaker 4: It's been reported that a companies are testing digit you're
Speaker 4: humanoid robot. It's what we're talking about. When will it
Speaker 4: go beyond testing though to actually scale. Apparently they're only
Speaker 4: about one hundred of these that are out in the
Speaker 4: field right now.
Speaker 9: Well, we have gone beyond testing.
Speaker 19: We are actually commercially deployed as of one year ago
Speaker 19: in GXO facilities, which is a third party logistics provider
Speaker 19: who sends spanks out.
Speaker 4: At this point, we do we do so how many
Speaker 4: are out there in the field right now?
Speaker 19: There's a handful of them, but they're getting ready to
Speaker 19: get a hundred oh total. We only have about one
Speaker 19: hundred out in the field that the company has made.
Speaker 19: But at GXO we have a handful of those, but
Speaker 19: they're looking at next steps on how to scale that
Speaker 19: beyond that facility.
Speaker 6: Peggy, is it all about logistics at least for the
Speaker 6: beginning and for a long time, Like, I'm.
Speaker 7: Just curious how this explodes.
Speaker 19: Yeah, that was the right entry point for a couple
Speaker 19: of reasons. One is the robot is capable of doing
Speaker 19: that today.
Speaker 9: It was made for work.
Speaker 19: It can pick up heavy containers even if things are
Speaker 19: rolling around in it and still be stable and set
Speaker 19: it down. It can move things from A to B
Speaker 19: over and over and over again. Logistics happens to be
Speaker 19: an area where there's a huge labor gap. These are
Speaker 19: challenging jobs, very physically challenging. They have a repetition, they're
Speaker 19: a little bit mind numbing.
Speaker 9: They're just hard jobs.
Speaker 19: Have caused a lot of injuries and things. Hard to
Speaker 19: fill these jobs. So because of that demand, we are
Speaker 19: able to bring our robots in.
Speaker 7: How expensive are they and how quickly it kind of
Speaker 7: makes sense?
Speaker 6: That's true's no vacation time, maintenance, they don't fight with
Speaker 6: each other. Seriously, how much do they cost? And like
Speaker 6: for a company, how quickly does it make sense?
Speaker 19: Yeah? Right now we talk about them in the rain,
Speaker 19: very low volume of say a luxury vehicle, but that's
Speaker 19: coming down.
Speaker 9: Very very quickly. With volume.
Speaker 19: We believe we have line of sight to about twenty
Speaker 19: five K thirty K for these industrial robots. We'll be
Speaker 19: in that environment for a while now, before say we
Speaker 19: get into the homes, where I think the price is
Speaker 19: going to have to come down much much further.
Speaker 4: The big risk that by the way, we're speaking with
Speaker 4: Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics.
Speaker 5: Peggy, the sort of.
Speaker 4: Golden goose of this stuff is working alongside humans in
Speaker 4: a way that's not at a risk to the health
Speaker 4: of the humans, where a robot's not going to like
Speaker 4: bump them and hurt them.
Speaker 5: How do you do that?
Speaker 4: Because that seems to be something that is really really challenging.
Speaker 19: It is super challenged to alan right now exactly they
Speaker 19: have to today work inside of a work selle, which
Speaker 19: are these gates that go up about waist high.
Speaker 9: It keeps humans back.
Speaker 5: Because human's back and not robots.
Speaker 19: Case robots, yeah right, because they're.
Speaker 5: Very I'm thinking about they're very curious.
Speaker 19: Humans want to get in there and see them, So
Speaker 19: it keeps humans back. But the robots themselves are human
Speaker 19: sized and sometimes they fall, they trip, or you know,
Speaker 19: things just like humans do. And so you have to
Speaker 19: be able to handle those situations in a very controlled manner.
Speaker 19: Sometimes they're carrying fifty pounds of weight. That has to
Speaker 19: be something that you bring the robot down in a
Speaker 19: very controlled way so that no one gets hurt.
Speaker 9: You don't want an arm coming around. How do you
Speaker 9: do that? Super challenging.
Speaker 19: We figured it out at Agility and we'll be demoing
Speaker 19: that before the end of the year. It's called cooperative safety.
Speaker 19: We can be around humans.
Speaker 5: You know. One thing that I've learned over the last
Speaker 5: few months is that China is doing this really, really well.
Speaker 4: We have reports that there's a higher density of robots
Speaker 4: for human on Chinese factory floors.
Speaker 5: Than here in the US and then here in Japan.
Speaker 4: A source feature in a Bloomberg story just a couple
Speaker 4: of weeks ago said there are fifty or sixty company
Speaker 4: in China, he thinks working on humanoid development.
Speaker 5: Now are we behind?
Speaker 19: I would say yes and no. They do have a
Speaker 19: plethora of robots out there. Some of what is termed
Speaker 19: humanoids aren't actually I mean humanoids usually have two arms,
Speaker 19: two legs ahead. Some of them are simple robot arms
Speaker 19: and things like that. So if we separate those out
Speaker 19: and say just what are the humanoids doing, there's very
Speaker 19: few that we see doing real heavy industrial work. Oftentimes
Speaker 19: it's very lightweight. It's only a handful of skills. I
Speaker 19: think from an innovation standpoint, the US is still ahead
Speaker 19: of China in this hysteria.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, so wait a minute, because I think we
Speaker 6: think about like the automation part that China has done
Speaker 6: really really very well. But you're saying with humanoids, you
Speaker 6: think the US is ahead.
Speaker 19: I think we are still ahead. We have not seen
Speaker 19: first of all, safety incorporated in their humanoids.
Speaker 9: You must have safe humanoids.
Speaker 19: You cannot let them out of the work cell where
Speaker 19: the big markets are without that.
Speaker 3: You need an e.
Speaker 19: Stop for instance, an emergency stop on the back.
Speaker 9: You need to hit that.
Speaker 19: If something goes wrong. It's just like an electronic bing.
Speaker 7: Can I get one for this?
Speaker 5: They do have that in the World Robot, the best
Speaker 5: selling children's book. Well they do.
Speaker 19: Okay, See they're ahead.
Speaker 3: They are ahead.
Speaker 6: So I am curious about oversight though, like yeah, is
Speaker 6: like what is the capacity for someone to go in
Speaker 6: and affect a program? Like how does it work? Are
Speaker 6: once a human eye is out there? Are they completely independent?
Speaker 6: Or is there some over like how does yeah?
Speaker 9: So a couple of things.
Speaker 19: We are actually working with US government on the standards
Speaker 19: for humanoids.
Speaker 9: None exists right now.
Speaker 19: They need to work with on that. We work with
Speaker 19: a group called A three and they then input the
Speaker 19: results of that into folks like oh ship.
Speaker 7: Part of defense?
Speaker 5: Oh no, would would it go under David all.
Speaker 3: Crept?
Speaker 19: It will probably cross paths with David.
Speaker 6: At some point, all right, so continue.
Speaker 9: So you need you need that.
Speaker 19: But we've taken safety seriously from day one. Because of
Speaker 19: the power in these machines, you have to take it seriously.
Speaker 19: If if a program, if something should happen, you don't
Speaker 19: want an arm to fling around and knock you over
Speaker 19: and do perhaps more damage. So that and also the
Speaker 19: data on it has to stay very protected. Just like
Speaker 19: anything in a corporate IT infrastructure, You've got to keep
Speaker 19: the data protected. So we think of all of those things.
Speaker 6: Are they using data from the cloud, do they have
Speaker 6: their own like on site on premise both.
Speaker 19: We have quite a bit of compute on the robot
Speaker 19: itself and we're also connected to the cloud. We need
Speaker 19: to step into an enterprise environment, so we have to
Speaker 19: plug into their warehouse management systems. We have to talk
Speaker 19: to the other types of robots like autonomous mobile carts
Speaker 19: and conveyor belts. Those are all types of automation and
Speaker 19: we have to talk to all of those in order
Speaker 19: to work safely in that environment. And by the way,
Speaker 19: to take over those tasks that they can't find humans for.
Speaker 9: We have to be able to plug in as if.
Speaker 4: It was a human You're not the only one here
Speaker 4: in the US who's working on this. I don't know
Speaker 4: if you saw Brett Adcock from jan RAI was here,
Speaker 4: They're also working on humanoids. How does your robot differ
Speaker 4: from Brett's.
Speaker 19: Well, we're here today with our robot who will walk
Speaker 19: autonomously onto the stage today and upon my input, will
Speaker 19: execute on my commands.
Speaker 9: So that's one big.
Speaker 4: Difference, and it sounds like the Figure AI robot does not.
Speaker 5: Do that at this point.
Speaker 9: I haven't seen it. Okay, possibly has anyone seen it?
Speaker 19: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Okay, I couldn't you care?
Speaker 4: Ask Brett, Well, we could do Carol. Do you remember
Speaker 4: that show many years ago? This is like when I
Speaker 4: was a kid, BattleBots, where they had like remote control
Speaker 4: cars robots that would like violently attack each other.
Speaker 5: I could see like a little cage match.
Speaker 6: Between actually that you've seen some video over in China.
Speaker 7: Yeah, different robots.
Speaker 4: Kind of digit and like a Figure AI robot.
Speaker 19: Yeah, we actually have really taken a stand that we
Speaker 19: would never arm our general purpose robots. If we do
Speaker 19: as we first and foremost have to have trust with
Speaker 19: the humans.
Speaker 5: So we won't talk that The fact that you have
Speaker 5: to say that I think.
Speaker 12: Is the story.
Speaker 7: No, it is a story like I'm thinking we just talked.
Speaker 6: About drones in terms of yeah, that's impacting warfare, and
Speaker 6: I just think about all this stuff getting into the
Speaker 6: wrong hands, like how.
Speaker 7: Do we control that.
Speaker 19: Well, we've already seen some of that out of China.
Speaker 19: You see armed humanoids in videos and things. I think
Speaker 19: the US has to have a response to that obviously,
Speaker 19: and that they should have that kind of tech.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 19: My point is our current general purpose robots are not
Speaker 19: meant for that at all, and because we need to
Speaker 19: build trust in the environment.
Speaker 4: Well, you never will you rule out ever using your
Speaker 4: robots for security place.
Speaker 9: I mean, we've never ruled that out.
Speaker 19: I just want to make it very clear that what
Speaker 19: we have today is not meant for that. And you
Speaker 19: do see videos of that coming out of general purpose
Speaker 19: robots in China.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I will say that that is terrifying.
Speaker 4: Well, we've read startups are doing trials in China from
Speaker 4: sorting garbage, delivery, medicines, and nursing homes. You're thinking about
Speaker 4: using these for elder care, but also patrolling the streets
Speaker 4: alongside police officers and on the other hand, guiding.
Speaker 5: Museum for us.
Speaker 19: Yeah, those are all great use cases. I think it
Speaker 19: is because you're putting a human in harm's way every
Speaker 19: time a policeman walks out onto the street.
Speaker 9: I think better to have a robot.
Speaker 7: I think it doesn't have to be armed.
Speaker 19: It doesn't. Yeah, in a hazardous situation there's been some
Speaker 19: sort of nuclear problem, send a robot in, don't you know?
Speaker 9: Send in humans?
Speaker 7: I want to ask you.
Speaker 6: City recently projected that the market for the machine humanoids
Speaker 6: and related services will search to about seven trillion by
Speaker 6: twenty fifty, and the world could be populated by six
Speaker 6: hundred and forty eight million human like bots by that
Speaker 6: What might that world look like?
Speaker 7: Take us there?
Speaker 19: Well, I think that world doesn't happen first until their safety.
Speaker 19: So we have to show that these robots can be
Speaker 19: side by side with humans in a very safe manner.
Speaker 19: But then you should think of it as a tool.
Speaker 19: And the same way farmers used to plow fields with oxen,
Speaker 19: and now they have machines that do it. This will
Speaker 19: be a tool that will give you choice. Some people
Speaker 19: might want to use their robot to cook. You might
Speaker 19: enjoy cooking. You say no, just do the laundry.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 19: So that or you should think of it as giving
Speaker 19: you choice to take manual labor.
Speaker 9: Off your head.
Speaker 7: So we could have every household has their own humanoid.
Speaker 6: I would wind to do like tasks like it'll be affordable.
Speaker 5: I would say two hours a night, right, it's like
Speaker 5: every day.
Speaker 6: I mean you could see every household having absolutely yeah, yeah, where.
Speaker 5: We let you go? Funding?
Speaker 4: How you're thinking about the business. The information reported just
Speaker 4: a couple months ago in March, and you're raising four
Speaker 4: hundred million dollars at a pre investment valuation at one
Speaker 4: point seventy five billion dollars.
Speaker 5: Can you give us an update? Has that round closed?
Speaker 19: That is ongoing and we have the funds will be
Speaker 19: used to make our next generation robot, which is going
Speaker 19: to be awesome. It's going to have a ten to
Speaker 19: one work to charge ratio on batteries, which means one
Speaker 19: hundred minutes of work ten minutes of charge. It's back
Speaker 19: out the around the floor again.
Speaker 9: It can take full shifts.
Speaker 5: It's got many more rounds ten seconds. How many more
Speaker 5: rounds of financing?
Speaker 12: Of course?
Speaker 9: I think this is it.
Speaker 4: That's Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics.
Speaker 6: You're listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 6: Coming up more conversations from our trip out west to
Speaker 6: the Bloomberg Tech Summit. I'm Carol Messer with Tim Stenebek.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: You are listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch
Speaker 2: us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern.
Speaker 2: Listen on Apple CarPlay and the Android Auto with the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 6: taking a look at some of our favorite conversations from
Speaker 6: the Bloomberg Tech Summit.
Speaker 4: Up next, we hear from o c Emilkpari, a CEO
Speaker 4: of Code with Class.
Speaker 6: For years, we have been talking easily about learning to
Speaker 6: code being pretty much a guarantee to getting a good job.
Speaker 7: Keep in mind, just learn the.
Speaker 5: Code, Carol, That's what you said.
Speaker 6: Learn, you know, let your kids grow up to be coders,
Speaker 6: because basically every company is a technology company and they
Speaker 6: need coders to kind of manage their businesses, grow their businesses.
Speaker 7: It's been all about that.
Speaker 6: So many stories about those who've gone to coding boot
Speaker 6: camps and then found very lucrative work at some of
Speaker 6: the biggest tech companies. But there is a question now,
Speaker 6: and you know it if you've been listening to us
Speaker 6: here from San Francisco about AI and software applications that
Speaker 6: maybe can teach any buddy, Tim and me to be coders.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so should we actually be teaching coding? If that's
Speaker 4: the world where we're entering. We're going to post this
Speaker 4: question to Ocmioquaria, CEO of Code with Class. It's a
Speaker 4: nonprofit that works, in its own words, to close the
Speaker 4: gender equity gap in tech. Ohsi joins us here on
Speaker 4: site of the Bloomberg Tech Summit in San Francisco. It's
Speaker 4: great to see you. It's been more than a year.
Speaker 7: Hi, friends who spoke.
Speaker 4: A lot has happened. I don't think we talked about
Speaker 4: AI at all.
Speaker 9: No, we didn't have time.
Speaker 5: So that's the question that I have for you.
Speaker 4: Are we are we in an environment right now where
Speaker 4: we should actually be telling these young kids.
Speaker 5: To learn how to code?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 20: I mean that is the question of the hour, So
Speaker 20: thank you for posing it. I think when we think
Speaker 20: about the work that we do, we're actually thinking more
Speaker 20: broadly than actually time spent hands on keyboard producing code.
Speaker 7: There is a lot that you can.
Speaker 20: Learn from a set of skills that are durable and transferable.
Speaker 20: When you learn to code, you're learning computational thinking. You're
Speaker 20: learning a way of solving problems decompose using them. You're
Speaker 20: learning to find patterns and create abstractions. You're learning to
Speaker 20: think algorithmically.
Speaker 7: These are all skills that we.
Speaker 20: Believe are transferable to problem solving in any domain.
Speaker 5: What's it? It's called code.
Speaker 7: With COLOSSI now called code with coloss Yeah?
Speaker 5: Should it be called code with classy? Should it be
Speaker 5: called something else?
Speaker 20: Well? Maybe?
Speaker 16: I mean we're not really it's a term that you
Speaker 16: would use to.
Speaker 20: Well, so we think about technical literacy. Technical fluid doesn't
Speaker 20: have the same ring, you know, branding aside, we've always
Speaker 20: had that sort of ethos to the work that we do.
Speaker 7: That really, we are.
Speaker 20: As proud of the young people in our programs who
Speaker 20: go on to get CS degrees as we are the
Speaker 20: ones who don't. So we have folks in our community,
Speaker 20: for instance, one young woman who became a lawyer right
Speaker 20: and took her fluency in technology to help create technical
Speaker 20: policy right.
Speaker 7: And so the point that we're.
Speaker 20: Making is that technology is infused in all parts of
Speaker 20: our life. And if you want to have a fruitful career,
Speaker 20: you should know fundamental technology skills.
Speaker 6: But what kind of technology skills I before or describe that?
Speaker 7: You know, the advantages of.
Speaker 6: People learning to recognize patterns and some different things. And
Speaker 6: it said to me, Wow, God, that sounds like AI
Speaker 6: and that sounds like a large language model. So I'm
Speaker 6: just kind of trying to understand what the future generations
Speaker 6: or younger generations, what in technology do they really need
Speaker 6: to know, because I feel like at this point they
Speaker 6: really need to know how to converse with a chatbot
Speaker 6: or with AI to get smart answers like So, help
Speaker 6: me understand how you guys see this evolution of what
Speaker 6: they need to learn when it comes to technology.
Speaker 20: Sure, so when you think about producing a product in
Speaker 20: the world, there's more than just developing the code, right.
Speaker 20: Part of it is understanding what is possible with technology?
Speaker 20: What's the problem I want to solve first and foremost
Speaker 20: with technology? How do I make trade offs among all
Speaker 20: the different features that I might put in that product.
Speaker 20: So the actual process related to building technology and putting
Speaker 20: it into the world and finding value in product market fit,
Speaker 20: as they like to say, is a process that involves
Speaker 20: a fluency with the technology beyond just producing the code. Yes,
Speaker 20: it is helpful to have a software agent or aissisted
Speaker 20: software help you produce the lines of code that are necessary,
Speaker 20: but you need that background in technology to architect the system,
Speaker 20: to maintain the system, to figure out how to integrate
Speaker 20: it with other parts of the world and other partners. Right,
Speaker 20: So the fluency and again the confidence to understand how
Speaker 20: technology works is still going to be a baseline requirement.
Speaker 20: We may spend zero time spending time coding because AI
Speaker 20: assistants or agents are doing that for us, but we're
Speaker 20: using our fundamental understanding of the technology to advance the field.
Speaker 20: And then I would say there's all there's still room
Speaker 20: and innovation on the frontier models in chip design. Right,
Speaker 20: these are all still places where we haven't reached the apex.
Speaker 20: We still want to make progress in these fundamental foundation technologies,
Speaker 20: and so we need people who are still getting the
Speaker 20: PhDs and studying the sort of basic fundamentals that are
Speaker 20: going to help advance the next inflection point in computing
Speaker 20: that we haven't discovery.
Speaker 5: Right before we.
Speaker 4: Let you go, we just spoke to Tom Giles, our
Speaker 4: senior executive editor for Global Technology here and he said,
Speaker 4: one of the big takeaways is the conversation and tech
Speaker 4: policy and what's going on in Washington. And I'm curious
Speaker 4: because you worked at tech companies, you worked in philanthropy,
Speaker 4: You've worked in politics, you worked on Hillary Clinton's twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen campaign. When it comes to tech policy right now,
Speaker 4: what is the White House doing right and wrong? In
Speaker 4: your view when it comes to tech?
Speaker 20: Well, look, I think the Executive Order sort of highlighting
Speaker 20: the importance of having AI education broadly accessible.
Speaker 19: I think that is.
Speaker 20: A good statement to make in general, as we're thinking
Speaker 20: about building a few future workforce and thinking about American
Speaker 20: competitiveness globally. I think that is something that I can
Speaker 20: get behind.
Speaker 5: That's O. C. M.
Speaker 4: Yolkparia, CEO of Code with Classy Up.
Speaker 6: Next, we hear from Ashley Mayer, co host of the
Speaker 6: Great Chat podcast. Hey listen very much to a part
Speaker 6: of our world today. We've got a podcast. Everybody's got
Speaker 6: a podcast. Great Chat, though, is a.
Speaker 7: New one that debuted I think about three months ago.
Speaker 6: Episodes include conversations that can kind of go in a
Speaker 6: lot of places. Llm's AI AI maybe taking our jobs,
Speaker 6: the best place to do a startup that's as likely
Speaker 6: to be heard as our Courting Eggs Forever twenty one's demise,
Speaker 6: and also.
Speaker 4: Views on the new code we've got with us here
Speaker 4: at the Bloomberg Tech twenty five, Ashley Mayer co hosted
Speaker 4: a great chat podcast. Actually, co founder and general partner
Speaker 4: at the early venture firm Coalition Operators.
Speaker 6: Tell us about this podcast because my understanding, I think
Speaker 6: it was a LinkedIn post that you guys talked about.
Speaker 6: I think you did that. It was like a feisty
Speaker 6: dinner and all of a sudden, here we got to
Speaker 6: a podcast. Tell us about what you guys were.
Speaker 7: Thinking in the mission here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, be careful before you go to a
Speaker 1: dinner with a group of friends, because you might end
Speaker 1: up starting a podcast. The five of us had a
Speaker 1: dinner and last ball. It was a fun, feisty conversation
Speaker 1: about the tech industry, and we joked at that dinner,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we should have a podcast. There are
Speaker 1: so many podcasts that are you know, more news driven,
Speaker 1: more informational, have guests, but we sort of thought that
Speaker 1: maybe a more conversational, conversational format was good, and so
Speaker 1: that podcast turned into a group chat, and that group
Speaker 1: chat turned into a podcast and Great Chat was born.
Speaker 6: Can I say it almost felt like Sex and the
Speaker 6: City for the Czech worlds a little bit, because you
Speaker 6: guys will cover a lot of what's going on in
Speaker 6: the world more generally, but then you'll talk about, you know,
Speaker 6: some executive moving to metow or something, and you kind
Speaker 6: of get into the nitty gritty of it.
Speaker 1: Sex and the City for nerds maybe, yeah. And I
Speaker 1: think what we try to do is demystify a lot
Speaker 1: of the headlines everyone seeing. I mean, the five of
Speaker 1: us have worked in tech our whole careers as investors, operators, founders.
Speaker 1: My co host Sally has been in media herself, and
Speaker 1: so we try to break down like the biggest headlines,
Speaker 1: the biggest topics in tech and make them accessible, especially
Speaker 1: to a younger generation of people coming into this industry.
Speaker 4: You guys are a venture capital so you understand that
Speaker 4: things need to make money eventually. Yes, we're in a
Speaker 4: world where anyone can do a podcast, so there's a
Speaker 4: big difference between sort of the caller daddies and Joe
Speaker 4: Rogan's of the world, and then the newer entrants that
Speaker 4: don't necessarily have the traction is this right now making
Speaker 4: money as the goal for it to make money?
Speaker 1: No, not currently, although you know, never say never. We're
Speaker 1: very much in scrappy mode. We're really doing this from
Speaker 1: a place that we saw a gap in the ecosystem
Speaker 1: and if I'm gonna be a little feisty here myself.
Speaker 1: We found one of the few areas of white space
Speaker 1: in tech commentary, which is the we're all women. And
Speaker 1: we felt like a lot of the biggest voices in
Speaker 1: the tech industry were very loud, very prominent, often billionaire men,
Speaker 1: and we thought maybe we could bring a different a
Speaker 1: different line.
Speaker 4: You're not saying any names, but I know, I think
Speaker 4: I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 7: There may be a podcast. It's a group of four.
Speaker 1: Men who are very loud.
Speaker 4: As I did watch Me Loud on HBO.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you watch Mountainhead on HBO.
Speaker 1: Just onto fun fact, I worked for one of those
Speaker 1: podcast hosts back in the day.
Speaker 3: What did you.
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 1: I learned the power of narrative and the stories we
Speaker 1: tell each other and ourselves about our industry determine who
Speaker 1: gets funded, who gets the benefit of doubt, where top
Speaker 1: talent goes, and this stuff really matters.
Speaker 6: But it's so indicative of how many conversations have we
Speaker 6: had about women in tech, but and specifically female founded
Speaker 6: companies just fighting for capital and to get recognized. Why
Speaker 6: is that still a problem and how can you guys
Speaker 6: use your format in your.
Speaker 7: Platform to maybe help that. Yeah, and also as venture
Speaker 7: capitalists in your own right.
Speaker 1: Totally, And I mean I'm an emerging fund manager myself.
Speaker 1: I have to raise money for my fund, and so
Speaker 1: it's very much a thing, listen. I think just having
Speaker 1: examples of people who are maybe underrepresented, who are visible,
Speaker 1: who are doing the thing and putting ourselves out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're very much in this like anti DEI era,
Speaker 1: which which comes with both I think some negative implications
Speaker 1: for how people and are focusing their time and efforts.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, you know, we
Speaker 1: all get to put our chips on the table and
Speaker 1: build things ourselves and elevate other people who are doing it.
Speaker 6: Actually, just push back against EO, push back against women,
Speaker 6: push back against anyone who maybe isn't just a.
Speaker 7: White male born in America. That's kind of how it
Speaker 7: feels right now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, with your platform, are you afraid to speak out
Speaker 6: against that. I mean, because I think there is a
Speaker 6: lot of fear among leaders about you know, the White
Speaker 6: House eater.
Speaker 7: Hearing something and not liking it. So tell me about that,
Speaker 7: and how does it make it also harder for you
Speaker 7: guys to raise money?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I am at a small fund. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I'm not too worried about President Trump watching
Speaker 1: this interview and coming at me and listen. I think
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, my job as an
Speaker 1: investor is to fund the very best founders I can find.
Speaker 1: I do super early stage investing really is a bet
Speaker 1: on the founder. I don't have a diversity mandate. We
Speaker 1: never have a coalition, but we have very diverse networks,
Speaker 1: the diverse pipeline of deals, and so we have a
Speaker 1: diverse portfolio. And in an ideal world, that's how it
Speaker 1: works in my opinion, right, versus having to have dedicated programs,
Speaker 1: specifics leaves of dollars going to you know, early stage
Speaker 1: fund founders. I think that you know, as the venture
Speaker 1: eco system diversit sized the pool of founders who get
Speaker 1: capital of diversities.
Speaker 4: Ashley, before we let you go curious about what's exciting
Speaker 4: to you out there, we're not an ecosystem in technology
Speaker 4: where venture capitalists are throwing money at, like you know,
Speaker 4: at based games or food delivery apps or that sort
Speaker 4: of thing. Right now, a lot of it's going into robotics,
Speaker 4: a lot of it's going into AI.
Speaker 5: Where are you seeing the money go well, I mean.
Speaker 1: Excited about a lot of the macro trends that other
Speaker 1: people are. I have a partner who is actively building
Speaker 1: a company in the AI space called trib Ai. We
Speaker 1: see incredible aideal flow from her, and she so sort
Speaker 1: of really has a real time pulse on what the
Speaker 1: biggest AI platforms are doing, how enterprises are adopting. I
Speaker 1: have another platfor partner who runs city Block Health, which
Speaker 1: is a massive healthcare startup. We're seeing incredible breakthroughs in
Speaker 1: the healthcare ecosystem, especially the intersection of health and AI.
Speaker 1: But at the highest level, I think there's never been
Speaker 1: a better time to be an emerging investor and an
Speaker 1: early stage investor because so many things are changing about
Speaker 1: the world. Right from a technological perspective, a platform shift
Speaker 1: is really changing everything. From a regulatory perspective, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a wild West, but change
Speaker 1: is generally good. For early stage startups. Culturally and from
Speaker 1: a media perspective, the way startups build their brands, go
Speaker 1: to market, find their customers is changing, and so that
Speaker 1: for me is so exciting.
Speaker 7: These moments of change.
Speaker 1: Ore where the most opportunity comes from.
Speaker 4: That's actually my co host of the Great Chat podcast,
Speaker 4: and that.
Speaker 6: Does it for this special edition of Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 6: focusing on our favorite conversations from the Bloomberg Tech Summit
Speaker 6: this past week in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
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