Speaker 1: From Mahard where Innovation for Money and Power Collie in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley NBN.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
Speaker 3: Live from San Francisco.
Speaker 4: This is Bloombo Technology paramount up as the Nickelodeon and
Speaker 4: MTV parent follows Warner Brothers in a big write down
Speaker 4: of its cable TV networks and cybersecurity firm. Akami jumps
Speaker 4: as the DVOS specialist post strong numbers amid scrutiny of.
Speaker 3: The cybersecurity sector.
Speaker 4: Plus tech for Kumala, we speak to the technology leaders
Speaker 4: and Silicon Valley Democrats backing the Vice president's bid for.
Speaker 3: The White House.
Speaker 4: I want to get straight to financial markets and the
Speaker 4: NASDAQ one hundred, very tech heavy index. You have the
Speaker 4: megacaps and the higher multiple software names. What you're seeing
Speaker 4: is a five day chart of the Nasdaq and it
Speaker 4: is completely flat, zero percent over the course of the week.
Speaker 3: But there is peril within that.
Speaker 4: Because if the NAZDAT one hundred closes down negative on
Speaker 4: a weekly basis, that would mark five straight weeks of
Speaker 4: declines for that index, which is the worst week run
Speaker 4: of weekly drops going back to May of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: If it's positive, it snaps a four week declined streak,
Speaker 4: which it had seen in April, and things look a
Speaker 4: little bit rosier. We are worried about growth, we're worried
Speaker 4: about a little bit geopolitical risk, but earnings have been
Speaker 4: a mixed picture, where in aggregate we're probably feeling better
Speaker 4: about the technology sector in part AI infrastructure.
Speaker 3: That brings us to TSMC. The chipmaker.
Speaker 4: Sales grew by forty five percent in July on strong demand.
Speaker 4: In particular, it would seem for AI accelerators. Those are
Speaker 4: the usadrs or US listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor, up
Speaker 4: eight tenths of a percent in the US session bloombergs
Speaker 4: Ian King is here with me in San Francisco. The
Speaker 4: data is for the month, and we're trying to sort
Speaker 4: of extrapolate out and say, well, for the quarter, what
Speaker 4: does that look like? But I guess big picture it's
Speaker 4: bullish because TSMC is the chip factory for the world.
Speaker 5: Basically, no exactly all roads lead to into Yeah, and
Speaker 5: I'm forty five percent is dramatic, right, that's tremendous compared
Speaker 5: to where we were last year. But we have to
Speaker 5: put that in context. Part of that was last year
Speaker 5: things were depressed. A lot of smartphone market related chip
Speaker 5: orders weren't that great. But if you're worried about this
Speaker 5: AI infrastructure build out, if you're worried about what Invidia
Speaker 5: is buying, what AMD is buying, what even Intel is
Speaker 5: buying these days, this tells you Nope, they're still putting
Speaker 5: orders in and those factories are still working flat out.
Speaker 4: Okay, In very simple terms, TSMC is a contract manufacturers,
Speaker 4: So the biggest chip names go to TSMC and say,
Speaker 4: here are our very special chips.
Speaker 3: Make them for us please.
Speaker 4: That brings me to Nvidia, which reports August twenty eight,
Speaker 4: and they are the market right now for AI accelerators.
Speaker 4: Look ahead to August twenty eight and what we're kind
Speaker 4: of expecting, and does TSMC kind of inform what we
Speaker 4: might get?
Speaker 5: I mean to an extent, yes, I mean TSMC has
Speaker 5: a lot of customers, and Video is one of the biggest.
Speaker 5: But Apple is also a huge customer. Qualcom is also
Speaker 5: a huge customer, so it's not a direct linear relationship there.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, everything we've heard, all of
Speaker 5: the concerns we've heard about in video, can it continue
Speaker 5: this growth rue. Nobody is doubting the fundamentals of demand.
Speaker 5: We're also as you've seen lots of reports about some
Speaker 5: problems with some new tips that they've had. Yes, but
Speaker 5: they've come out themselves and said the still demand for
Speaker 5: our olds. Yes, some worry about it.
Speaker 4: That was specifically about design or engineering issues around Blackwell,
Speaker 4: which would be the latest generation accelerator. TSMC is interesting
Speaker 4: because it's literally concentrated in Taiwan a lot of the activity.
Speaker 4: But the story here in the United States has been
Speaker 4: the flow of public money from the Chips Act or
Speaker 4: government money to onshore our industry. And there's a piece
Speaker 4: on the Blueberg Terminal by Mackenzie Hawkins about how now
Speaker 4: present day much of that money has been allocated from
Speaker 4: the Chips Act. What are the numbers behind that and
Speaker 4: what's the impact been.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the key point that she makes in
Speaker 5: her story is the hard work has been done, which
Speaker 5: is like, hey, we're going to give you this, We're
Speaker 5: going to give you this, but nothing has actually, no
Speaker 5: checks have been mailed, right, this is all promissory right.
Speaker 5: And as a US taxpayer, like we both are, that's
Speaker 5: actually a smart thing because you want to see these
Speaker 5: things built and in operation before you actually pay for them.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: This is, you know, a very complex industry and it's
Speaker 5: very brutal economically, as we've seen with what's happening at Intel.
Speaker 5: So you want to make sure that these things actually
Speaker 5: get built, the equipment goes in, and then the money
Speaker 5: gets distributed.
Speaker 4: As you've educated our audience on for it for quite
Speaker 4: a while. Now takes a lot of time to build
Speaker 4: manufacturing capacity for jips as well. Bloomberg's Ian King here
Speaker 4: in San Francisco, thank you. Let's get back to that
Speaker 4: story about Paramount that we alluded to at the top.
Speaker 4: Actually an interesting or positive reaction.
Speaker 3: In the shares.
Speaker 4: It is a write down of six billion dollars on
Speaker 4: the legacy cable TV networks. Very similar to the news
Speaker 4: this week that we got from Warner Brothers Discovery. There
Speaker 4: are some points of distinction with Paramount in terms of
Speaker 4: the properties and some other news in there as well.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's Hannah Miller is back in New York City. So
Speaker 4: Paramount the numbers on the right down the story behind
Speaker 4: the write down specific to Paramount.
Speaker 3: What's going on, Yeah, So it's.
Speaker 7: Very similar to Warner Brothers Discovery. Where they're writing down
Speaker 7: the value of their traditional TV networks. And this is after,
Speaker 7: you know, the streaming wars have broken out. You know,
Speaker 7: they've taken to reevaluating their cable television as streaming continues
Speaker 7: to grow more and more popular.
Speaker 3: What's different here is.
Speaker 7: That with Paramount, you have the backdrop of its deal
Speaker 7: with sky Dance that is expected to finalize in the
Speaker 7: first half of twenty twenty five. You know, there's still
Speaker 7: a forty five day period where you know, people can
Speaker 7: submit competing offers, but there is a lot of bullishness
Speaker 7: around Paramount because of this pending deal.
Speaker 4: I'm reading through your story on Paramount. By the way,
Speaker 4: Hannah Miller, pretty new to this beat. How busy have
Speaker 4: you been in those first few weeks of covering the
Speaker 4: media industry? But Paramount part of the story is cost
Speaker 4: reduction in cost cuts as well. Is that directly related
Speaker 4: to the write down or is that a different story.
Speaker 7: So before you know, we learned about this write down,
Speaker 7: you know, there's this whole five hundred million dollar cost
Speaker 7: cutting effort that Paramount has undertaken. And then Skydance has
Speaker 7: also identified two billion dollars worth of cost efficiencies. So
Speaker 7: all of this has played into that they're working to
Speaker 7: tighten the belt. Another big piece of news coming out
Speaker 7: of the earnings call yesterday was that there are layoffs
Speaker 7: coming that fifteen percent of the US workforce is going
Speaker 7: to be cut before the end of this year. So
Speaker 7: there's a lot going on with Paramount as it prepares
Speaker 7: to final this deal with Skuyddance.
Speaker 4: Hannah, I think I said this to you in the
Speaker 4: show twenty four hours ago, but I always tried to
Speaker 4: find the technology story within this, and what's common between
Speaker 4: those two names is the pain in the Legacy TV
Speaker 4: network side is because of the move to streaming. But
Speaker 4: actually Paramount streaming business just based on the growth numbers,
Speaker 4: it seems like they're doing okay.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So for Paramount, they actually loss subscribers for their
Speaker 7: Paramount Plus streaming service during the second quarter, and that
Speaker 7: was because of a one time event the end of
Speaker 7: this deal in South Korea.
Speaker 1: They're very optimistic about it.
Speaker 7: Otherwise, you know, they have seen revenues increase there, so
Speaker 7: you know, despite this setback, like other companies like Warner Brothers,
Speaker 7: they're very excited about their streaming service.
Speaker 4: I was referring to revenue jumping thirteen percent, But you're
Speaker 4: exactly right. Paramount Plus Service lost two point eight million
Speaker 4: subs due to that South Koreas you just outlined Bloomberg's Hanamella,
Speaker 4: Happy Friday.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for your reporting. Now coming up
Speaker 3: on the.
Speaker 4: Show, Roger Leed, the creator of layoffs dot Fyi, a
Speaker 4: website for tracking tech layoffs, is going to join us
Speaker 4: to discuss all the job cuts in aggregate that have
Speaker 4: been announced in his data, and it's timely. Let's take
Speaker 4: a quick look at shares of Cisco. They had been
Speaker 4: positive or hire this Friday session. Cisco now softer six
Speaker 4: tenths of one percent. Reuter's is reporting that Cisco will
Speaker 4: lay off thousands of employees in a second round of
Speaker 4: job cuts this year, and that Cisco could announce those
Speaker 4: job cuts as early as Wednesday of next week. It
Speaker 4: did move the shares and Wednesday of next week, by
Speaker 4: the way, August fourteenth, Cisco reports earnings. We'll keep an
Speaker 4: eye on that story and see if Bloomberg has any
Speaker 4: advancements on it.
Speaker 3: Be right back.
Speaker 4: This is Bloomberg Technology. We should keep talking about tech
Speaker 4: jobs and layoffs. Over one hundred and twenty six thousand
Speaker 4: tech employees have been laid off so far in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four, with companies increasingly citing AI as a reason
Speaker 4: for the job cuts. I want to bring in Roger Lee,
Speaker 4: who's start founder and the creator of layoffs dot fyi.
Speaker 4: It's a platform that's dedicated to tracking tech layoffs since
Speaker 4: the COVID nineteen pandemic in twenty twenty and you and
Speaker 4: I were just discussing this during the commercial break. I
Speaker 4: look at all of the news headlines and the cadence
Speaker 4: of headlines probably starting early June through to now. But
Speaker 4: you've got the data, so summarize the scale of what's
Speaker 4: happening in the industry right now versus prior years where
Speaker 4: we saw heavy layoffs as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, So corn and layoffs and FI.
Speaker 6: We've tracked now one hundred and twenty six thousand tech
Speaker 6: employees laid off so far in twenty twenty four. The
Speaker 6: good news that's actually down forty two percent from the
Speaker 6: same time last year. And if you look at the
Speaker 6: quarter on quarter trends, tech layoffs have generally been leveling
Speaker 6: off since their peak in Q one of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 6: Of course, it has spiked a little bit in the
Speaker 6: past couple of weeks. The bad news, twenty twenty four
Speaker 6: is still on pace to have more layoffs than any
Speaker 6: other year this decade except for twenty twenty three. And
Speaker 6: of course it's all a small comfort if you're one
Speaker 6: of those one hundred and twenty six thousand people laid off.
Speaker 4: We just illustrated that point, Roger with a chart which
Speaker 4: was showing your data at layoffs still FYI.
Speaker 3: And then here's the point that I was making.
Speaker 4: Those are big names, right, Intel, Tesla, SAP in Germany, Cisco,
Speaker 4: We just broke that reporting on in the stock move AI.
Speaker 4: So what you're to may or may not track, is
Speaker 4: is there a reallocation of resource to new jobs if
Speaker 4: the justification is AI.
Speaker 6: That's definitely what we're seeing in a lot of the
Speaker 6: company's announcements for the layoffs that tech companies are increasingly
Speaker 6: citing AI as the reason. You know, for example, earlier
Speaker 6: this week, Dell cut thousands of employees as part of
Speaker 6: a sales team reorg that included creating a new team
Speaker 6: focused on AI sales. And then earlier this year, you Know,
Speaker 6: into It laid off one thousand, eight hundred employees and
Speaker 6: cited that they're doing so so they can invest and
Speaker 6: make more hires to help build Eye into its text
Speaker 6: crop software, and it is definitely an allocation of resources.
Speaker 6: You know, building AI is expensive, and according to salary
Speaker 6: tracker comprehensive dot Io, a senior AI engineer in the
Speaker 6: Bay Area earns two hundred and eight thousand dollars per
Speaker 6: year just in base salary, and that's sixteen percent more
Speaker 6: than a non AII engineer and doesn't even include stock.
Speaker 6: So if you include stock options equity, that pay package
Speaker 6: can total easily half a million to a million dollars,
Speaker 6: not to mention all the costs involved in infrastructure and
Speaker 6: hardware for building AI.
Speaker 8: So you know, the economic environment still tight.
Speaker 6: Companies are finding that the only way to increase investment
Speaker 6: in AI is to cut cost elsewhere, and hence all
Speaker 6: the layoffs that we've been seeing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as Bloomberg Technology producer Margarite Galleryini just reflected on
Speaker 4: in our team chat, maybe we're in the wrong line
Speaker 4: of work because it's lucrative if you are a computer
Speaker 4: scientist or software engineer in that space. There's a point
Speaker 4: you made a minute ago about twenty twenty four. We
Speaker 4: are in early August and so let's try and extrapolate out.
Speaker 4: I look at the number of companies, for example, rather
Speaker 4: than the jobs in aggregate that are making these announcements.
Speaker 4: Have you a sense in the direction of travel for
Speaker 4: the remainder.
Speaker 3: Of the year. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Typically what we see is that Q one and Q
Speaker 6: four and to be the biggest quarters for layoffs. That's
Speaker 6: often because companies do their annual budgeting around the end
Speaker 6: of year, which leads to those layoffs, Whereas the middle
Speaker 6: of the year, you know, summer period that we are
Speaker 6: right now, actually tends to be slower.
Speaker 3: In terms of layoffs.
Speaker 6: Obviously, there's some notable exceptions that you see on the
Speaker 6: screen here.
Speaker 3: So unfortunately, I would.
Speaker 6: Expect that pech layoffs may pick up again as we
Speaker 6: head towards the end of the year and early next year,
Speaker 6: as companies take stock of their year forecast into next year,
Speaker 6: do their annual budgeting and decide whether they have the
Speaker 6: right team to move forwards.
Speaker 4: So let's do something else and do this and aggregate.
Speaker 4: You know, you started tracking this data at the early
Speaker 4: days of the pandemic. How does this four year period
Speaker 4: or so compare to history. I think about the dot
Speaker 4: com combubble, the global financial crisis.
Speaker 3: Are the ways to compare and controst.
Speaker 4: Roger, Yeah, stop to say, you know layoffs AFII.
Speaker 6: We started in twenty twenty, so don't have the numbers
Speaker 6: from those those two time periods.
Speaker 8: Although I will say.
Speaker 6: The scale of the tech industry is just so much
Speaker 6: bigger than during the dot com era or even the
Speaker 6: global financial crisis, So in aggregate numbers, I believe that
Speaker 6: this current period of layoffs is going to be the
Speaker 6: most that we've ever seen in the tech industry, just
Speaker 6: because the scale of the tech industry and the number
Speaker 6: of people working in this industry is so much higher
Speaker 6: now than in previous years.
Speaker 4: Roger Lee, creator of Layoffs, FYI, thank you for your
Speaker 4: analysis and sharing your data with us, and the chart
Speaker 4: depiction in particular really helps to illustrate what's happening in
Speaker 4: this industry. We're also going to look at shares really
Speaker 4: quickly of ak am I. We're going to be having
Speaker 4: a conversation up next with the CEO. But in the
Speaker 4: cyber space, this is a d DOOS specialist.
Speaker 3: You see the stock off session.
Speaker 4: Highs, but up almost ten percent a good quarter. But
Speaker 4: the question that the analysts in the street has is
Speaker 4: this is a company that's maybe inconsistent in the number
Speaker 4: of quarters it strings together. A conversation coming up with
Speaker 4: Tom Layton, who is the CEO of Akamai. Maybe he'll
Speaker 4: push back on that. What the streets view of his company.
Speaker 4: We'll see. This is Bloomberg Technology. It's time for talking
Speaker 4: tech and in the news. The owner of the company
Speaker 4: behind Timu, Colin Wang, has become China's richest person, amassing
Speaker 4: a fortune of forty eight point six billion US dollars.
Speaker 4: That's according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Hung's rise has
Speaker 4: been fueled by China's changing shopping habits and expansion outside
Speaker 4: of the region. With its TMU brand, plus Amazon Incs
Speaker 4: an e commerce deal with TikTok and Pinterest. Users can
Speaker 4: now link their profile from the social media platforms to
Speaker 4: their Amazon accounts, allowing customers to buy products directly from ads.
Speaker 4: This is social shop becomes more popular here in the
Speaker 4: United States, and Turkey's Instagram ban hits female entrepreneurs. Orders
Speaker 4: drown up from female led businesses who relied on the
Speaker 4: popular social media platform to drive sales. Turkey abruptly blocked
Speaker 4: access to Instagram on August second, without explaining why that
Speaker 4: was a very e commerce themed and focus selection of
Speaker 4: news stories out there today. The earning story also continues,
Speaker 4: and we continue to look at cybersecurity and Akamai. The
Speaker 4: company reported earnings after the closing belt Thursday. Co founder
Speaker 4: and CEO Tom Layson joins us now for more.
Speaker 3: There are loads of words.
Speaker 4: And adjectives and praise used by the cell side Tom
Speaker 4: a clean print, strong quarter growth, But what there's less
Speaker 4: discussion of is why what were the specific factors in
Speaker 4: the quarter.
Speaker 3: That put Akamai up from Well, we.
Speaker 9: Have several market leading products, and security obviously very important
Speaker 9: today given the large number of damaging attacks, ransomware, data exfiltration,
Speaker 9: and our enterprise.
Speaker 2: Compute business doing very well.
Speaker 9: You know, we talked about just really getting started in
Speaker 9: that aspect of the business this year, and now we
Speaker 9: think we'll exit the year at a one hundred million
Speaker 9: dollar a year annual run rate and revenue with a
Speaker 9: lot of exciting potential for the future. And I think
Speaker 9: those are great proof points that investors are now seeing.
Speaker 3: On the enterprise side. I find that very interesting.
Speaker 4: Is it demonstrative of broad strength in your client base
Speaker 4: those industry sort of willingness to spend or is this
Speaker 4: something specific that Achimi is doing that allows you to
Speaker 4: sort of outperform in a difficult environment.
Speaker 9: Well, security is important for every major enterprise, even in
Speaker 9: tough economic times, which we're seeing some of now, and
Speaker 9: we have the market leading products and.
Speaker 2: The major enterprises really need them to be safe.
Speaker 9: And in compute, I think we have a very compelling
Speaker 9: value proposition. You know, we can provide better performance at
Speaker 9: a much lower price point. And when you can do
Speaker 9: that and help a major enterprise save money, well, this
Speaker 9: is a good time to be able to have that happen.
Speaker 4: Tom strength in the areas you outline compute security and
Speaker 4: then a little weakness in CDN. I would like to
Speaker 4: talk about what's happening in your industry overall. I think
Speaker 4: we start with CrowdStrike, endpoint Specialist u DDoS. But what
Speaker 4: was that weak and situation like for Akamai. Was there
Speaker 4: any tangible positive read through for you or any way
Speaker 4: that you capitalized on what happened?
Speaker 9: Well, we don't use that software ourselves, so there was
Speaker 9: no impact to Akamai, and we helped our customers you
Speaker 9: know where we could, But that was an area where
Speaker 9: we don't really do business I think there were a
Speaker 9: lot of learnings for the industry as a whole. You know, first,
Speaker 9: it really is clear you just can't be doing updates
Speaker 9: all at once everywhere in the world. You know, most
Speaker 9: of the time that's okay, but eventually you're going to
Speaker 9: have an unintended consequence, and if you update the entire
Speaker 9: world at one time, you've got a disaster. You know,
Speaker 9: that's a lesson we learned at Akamai pretty painfully about
Speaker 9: twenty years ago, and ever since then. You know, we.
Speaker 2: Phase our updates.
Speaker 9: After you've been through QA and you're confident, you still
Speaker 9: just go one stage at a time, so in case
Speaker 9: there's something that was unanticipated, you catch it before you
Speaker 9: cause a problem. I think also there's a much better
Speaker 9: understanding that reliability matters, and it takes a lot of investment,
Speaker 9: but you see what happens when when you have something
Speaker 9: like this. I think enterprises will pay a lot more
Speaker 9: attention to reliability going forward.
Speaker 4: I hear you on that I'm not a cyber expert
Speaker 4: by any means, and I know that a lot of
Speaker 4: CIOs cyber managers CSOs watched this program and for them,
Speaker 4: top of mind is a sort of academic debate agent
Speaker 4: versus agent lost delivery or security of that delivery of security?
Speaker 4: Do you see though, away from the academic debate on
Speaker 4: the best security systems action, your enterprise customers saw the
Speaker 4: news cycle and picked up the phone and said, we
Speaker 4: are changing how we do cyber.
Speaker 9: No there, you know, they were just trying to get
Speaker 9: out of the disaster. I think going forward there'll be
Speaker 9: a time of reflection into how do you prevent this
Speaker 9: from happening? How do you keep a vendor from you know,
Speaker 9: having this consequence. And it's not just a situation of
Speaker 9: having multiple vendors, because might even increase the problem because
Speaker 9: of any one of them.
Speaker 2: Has a big issue.
Speaker 9: You got a problem, but really selecting vendors who put
Speaker 9: the extra effort and investment into making sure things stay
Speaker 9: reliable as reliable as possible.
Speaker 4: Tom, I guess closer to home for you, a higher
Speaker 4: profile d doos attack on Azure in June. What did
Speaker 4: you make of that and Microsoft's handling it and how
Speaker 4: did it impact you?
Speaker 9: You know, DDoS attacks are probably the oldest kinds of
Speaker 9: cyber attacks out there.
Speaker 2: They go back more than twenty years as well.
Speaker 9: You know, that's an area where we have leading services
Speaker 9: to help defend customers. In fact, you know, just last
Speaker 9: week we saw one of the top ten DDoS attacks
Speaker 9: of all time coming out of the Middle East.
Speaker 2: You know, with the war there, we're able to.
Speaker 9: Defend a very important financial enterprise from that kind of
Speaker 9: an attack. So even though it's been around a long time,
Speaker 9: we are still seeing some very large DDoS attacks and
Speaker 9: it's important for enterprises to have stayed.
Speaker 2: Up the art defenses.
Speaker 4: Even today, did us Tom Layton, CEO of Akamai. It's
Speaker 4: great to have you back on Bloomberg Technology on your
Speaker 4: strong quarter, but also I appreciate discussing news of late.
Speaker 3: Now coming up on the show, we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about how some.
Speaker 4: Of the worlds in tech think about Kamala Harris's campaign
Speaker 4: with Tech for Kamala co founder Shannon Nash and also
Speaker 4: Matt Mahn, the mayor of San Jose. That conversation is
Speaker 4: coming up next Q the Beautiful Pictures Expedia eight point
Speaker 4: six percent strong quarter, positive discussion about the summer months,
Speaker 4: different to what we heard from Airbnb. An interesting one
Speaker 4: to track this is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 1: I am now officially the Democratic number. You're in Atlanta Georgia.
Speaker 10: When President Biden was on the ballot, Democrats had basically
Speaker 10: conceded to losing the state.
Speaker 7: Now that it's Vice President Kamala Harris democratcy, all seven
Speaker 7: swing states are back in play.
Speaker 10: Kamala Harris is well known, but she is not well defined.
Speaker 3: She's not somebody I've researched to in depth.
Speaker 11: She's kind of laid low, But that's kind of what
Speaker 11: Vice presidents doude.
Speaker 7: You're going to see both Democrats and Republicans defining her
Speaker 7: in the ways they want those voters to see her.
Speaker 7: Success for Harris will mean sustaining the momentum that's been
Speaker 7: fueling her historic run.
Speaker 10: I get chills when I think about that, just being
Speaker 10: a part of history, understanding that we have someone who
Speaker 10: represents our communities.
Speaker 6: She's also like a really dynamic candidate, especially for younger
Speaker 6: people like us.
Speaker 12: See people, if you asked a month ago, they probably
Speaker 12: would have said that the country is not ready. But
Speaker 12: now people are rethinking that and they're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 12: this could actually happen and I could be a part
Speaker 12: of it.
Speaker 4: You can watch the full story of that at Bloomberg
Speaker 4: dot com and some of the recent guests here on
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Technology have also been weighing in on the election
Speaker 4: and Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3: Listen to this.
Speaker 2: There's going to be huge amounts of money that come
Speaker 2: in on both sides.
Speaker 13: I think there are a lot of people like myself
Speaker 13: who are really enthusiastic and excited about what the Kamala
Speaker 13: Harris campaign stands for.
Speaker 1: She's been a longtime supporter of the tech industry.
Speaker 8: She will do very well in the debate, and she's
Speaker 8: she's all over a high energy.
Speaker 13: She's from the Bay Area. She understands technology, she understands innovation.
Speaker 1: She shares a lot of values that many of us
Speaker 1: in the tech industry have, particularly with regard to immigration.
Speaker 13: And ensuring that we are continuing to drive innovation in
Speaker 13: this country.
Speaker 4: Let's keep the conversation going with Tech for Kamala, a
Speaker 4: grassroots group of about twelve hundred tech workers that just
Speaker 4: came out in support of the Democratic candidate. Tech for
Speaker 4: Kamala co founder former Wing CFO Shannon Nash joins us
Speaker 4: now alongside the Mayor of San Jose, Matt Mahon and Shannon.
Speaker 4: Good morning, Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Those points made
Speaker 4: in those sound bites and the backing that this new
Speaker 4: organization is giving actually are the same points that many
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley voices bench capesis in particular made in backing
Speaker 4: of JD Vance. And I just want to point that
Speaker 4: out because we've sort of had equal coverage here on
Speaker 4: the program. But what compelled you in the first instance
Speaker 4: to be a part of this movement and what is
Speaker 4: it that you see in Kamala Harris as being the
Speaker 4: right president for the technology industry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll start really quick with that.
Speaker 14: I think what we've had is a few people with
Speaker 14: big microphones, if you will, to be able to talk
Speaker 14: about their support.
Speaker 1: Of Trump and Van.
Speaker 14: Why we founded Tech for Kamala was to give voice
Speaker 14: to the over seven million tech workers, people who work
Speaker 14: every day at some of the most well known tech
Speaker 14: companies vcs, founders, operators, engineers, marketers, you name it, and
Speaker 14: all the industries that are related to tech. To give
Speaker 14: voice to other people who actually feel completely different and
Speaker 14: in fact are supporting Kamala Harris for all of the
Speaker 14: work that she has already done in supporting things like
Speaker 14: responsible AI, STEM education, just being a real innovative leader.
Speaker 1: So that is why we founded the organization, and.
Speaker 14: I gotta tell you, ed, within like a week, we
Speaker 14: had over twelve hundred people who wanted to jump on
Speaker 14: the bandwagon and also announce their support.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's one vote for one person.
Speaker 14: Whether you have a lot of money or a big microphone,
Speaker 14: we still all get one vote. And so this movement
Speaker 14: has aiming to give voice to the millions of people
Speaker 14: who have one vote and want to make sure that
Speaker 14: their vote is heard.
Speaker 4: Maya, mayhe your city, San Jose is just so closely
Speaker 4: and intimately linked to the technology industry as well. You
Speaker 4: come at this, I guess from the political perspective, but
Speaker 4: why do you think that the technology industry is an
Speaker 4: important voice in backing your preferred candidate.
Speaker 15: Well before I was mayor of San Jose, which is
Speaker 15: the capital of Silicon Valley with nearly one million residents,
Speaker 15: really the hometown for tech's workforce and home to many
Speaker 15: leading technology companies like Adobe, Zoom, Cisco.
Speaker 8: Paipal, and on and on. I was in the tech
Speaker 8: sector myself.
Speaker 15: In fact, I first met Kamala Harris about a decade
Speaker 15: ago at Airbnb, which was just down the street from
Speaker 15: a startup that I was involved.
Speaker 8: In founding and leading, and I was very impressed with her.
Speaker 15: You know, she came in sharing her work on public safety,
Speaker 15: which continues to be top of mind for all of us,
Speaker 15: and she has great experience there.
Speaker 8: But she also engaged with a number of us who
Speaker 8: were tech.
Speaker 15: Entrepreneurs and founders around innovation topics. She understood the importance
Speaker 15: of having a diverse workforce and supporting immigration, intellectual property,
Speaker 15: and the kinds of infrastructure investments that we need in
Speaker 15: common sense approach to regulations.
Speaker 8: So, you know, really excited that she's the top of
Speaker 8: the ticket.
Speaker 4: Shannon the Man makes an interesting point, which is policy
Speaker 4: specific policy when it comes to technology, antitrust, artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people are asking questions, are
Speaker 4: there specific ways that Vice President Harris will be different
Speaker 4: from President Biden's administration on the policy side as it
Speaker 4: relates to tech.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Look, what I think that she's coming out with
Speaker 14: a lot of our policies. As you know, she's got
Speaker 14: ninety days or less. Right in terms of making her
Speaker 14: voice heard, what I will say to you is that
Speaker 14: we believe in an administration that continues some of the
Speaker 14: things that President Biden was working on. I think that
Speaker 14: she will also bring a fresh perspective. You know, she's
Speaker 14: from here, she was an attorney general. She has spent
Speaker 14: a lot of time, as Matt has said, really listening
Speaker 14: to you know, what would be innovative for tech.
Speaker 1: And so I think that we're going to see a
Speaker 1: lot of policies and things.
Speaker 14: That are really helpful for the tech industry, but also
Speaker 14: that are inclusive. And I think that's really important to
Speaker 14: point out about, you know, something that I think a
Speaker 14: lot of people in tech would like to see.
Speaker 3: Man man local issues.
Speaker 4: You know, our guests in that SoundBite and challenge just
Speaker 4: now reflect on Kamala Harris being from the Bay and
Speaker 4: outside of technology. There are issues actually statewide, but the
Speaker 4: clearing of encampments or encampments suitepes for EXAs following the
Speaker 4: Scotis Grants past decision. It's an interesting case study. How
Speaker 4: do you feel that that issue will be addressed by
Speaker 4: the Harris campaign and how central is an issue do
Speaker 4: you think it will be in a presidential election?
Speaker 15: At Lodge, look, I want a partner in the White
Speaker 15: House who is not going to use Silicon Valley or
Speaker 15: California more broadly merely as a punching bag. I want
Speaker 15: a partner who is pragmatic, who understands our region, who's
Speaker 15: going to help us deal with the very real challenges
Speaker 15: we face. You mentioned homelessness, which is an area where
Speaker 15: we are getting more pragmatic. San Jose saw fifteen percent
Speaker 15: reduction last year. We need a partner in Washington who's
Speaker 15: going to help fund innovative solutions.
Speaker 8: Same goes for public safety.
Speaker 15: That's an area where I appreciate that Kamala Harris has
Speaker 15: been a pragmatic centrist and I think the right approaches.
Speaker 4: May men, I just jump in and ask, you know,
Speaker 4: from the Trump Vans perspective, the messaging of that campaign
Speaker 4: is that Kamala Harris has been responsible for what they
Speaker 4: see as being big issues with Bay Area in California cities.
Speaker 4: Your city is under the microscope to that extent. Are
Speaker 4: you worried about that message resonating from the Trump Vans campaign.
Speaker 15: No, I'm not, because I think Kamala Harris has a
Speaker 15: record that stands on its own and she can speak
Speaker 15: to her policy positions, which it's you know, it's kind
Speaker 15: of ironic.
Speaker 8: She gets attacked from both sides for being too tough.
Speaker 15: On crime or being associated with what some perceive as
Speaker 15: California's crime problem, I think she's right down the middle,
Speaker 15: and that's exactly where I am somebody who understands her
Speaker 15: has to be consequences for committing crime, but we also
Speaker 15: should invest in rehabilitation and support those with addiction and
Speaker 15: helping them get treatment.
Speaker 8: So I think she's got the right pragmatic approach.
Speaker 15: And we need that kind of partner in Washington we
Speaker 15: navigate some very real challenges of our state faces.
Speaker 4: Shannon, I want to finally go back to the idea
Speaker 4: that we talked about at the start, that many came
Speaker 4: on this program and said jd. Vance understands entrepreneurs He
Speaker 4: has been a venture capitalist, whether you see that as
Speaker 4: a positive or otherwise. They see him as being supportive
Speaker 4: of technology because of his direct industry experience. What would
Speaker 4: your answer to that be, And do you see the
Speaker 4: same level of support for entrepreneurship from Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: I think that Kamala Harris.
Speaker 14: Actually I see more support quite frankly from Kamala Harris
Speaker 14: for entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1: I think that she has shown that already just by the.
Speaker 14: Simple fact that you know, you've reported on how quickly so.
Speaker 1: Many people have mobilized.
Speaker 14: It hasn't even been two weeks, right in terms of
Speaker 14: supporting her and supporting this ticket, I think her VP
Speaker 14: pick is.
Speaker 1: Also really impressive.
Speaker 14: And so what I would say to you was, it's
Speaker 14: one thing to have people come on this show with
Speaker 14: big microphones. It's another thing to listen to the people,
Speaker 14: the seven million people that are in tech, listen to
Speaker 14: what they're interested in with their interested in for their future,
Speaker 14: for their families. Who in the White House will most
Speaker 14: represent them? And I think that that clear choice is
Speaker 14: Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: Tech for Kamala co founder and former Wing CFO Shannon
Speaker 4: Nash and San Jose mayor Matt Mehn, Thank you both. Okay,
Speaker 4: I want to go back to markets and look very
Speaker 4: quickly at what's going on. As a reminder, it's kind
Speaker 4: of a big moment for the NASDAQ one hundred. On
Speaker 4: a five day basis, we are basically flat, completely flat,
Speaker 4: as you can see on your screen. But if the
Speaker 4: index drops on a weekly basis, that will be five
Speaker 4: straight weeks of declines, the worst run of weekly declines
Speaker 4: going back to May of twenty twenty two. If we
Speaker 4: end in positive territory by more than about two tenths
Speaker 4: of a percent on the week. Then that would snap
Speaker 4: four straight weeks of declines, and I guess the narrative
Speaker 4: would be a little bit different. Is a big factor
Speaker 4: in video isn't until August twenty eighth. That's kind of
Speaker 4: where we're looking. Bitcoin check out as well. Early in
Speaker 4: the week, when we had that big financial market pressure
Speaker 4: on Monday, bitcoin was nearer to fifty thousand US dollars.
Speaker 3: It's now nearer to.
Speaker 4: Sixty or just above sixty thousand US dollars per token.
Speaker 4: But you can see it's kind of traded in an
Speaker 4: interesting sideways pattern throughout the week, and it's becoming part
Speaker 4: of the discussion around the election that we just had.
Speaker 4: Coming up on the show, we're going to be joined
Speaker 4: by Alexandra Berbie. You get the Private markets take investor
Speaker 4: at Sound Ventures for her investing thesis on how to
Speaker 4: approach AI from the VC perspective. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: This is Bloomberg Technology, and you're looking at a live
Speaker 4: shot of the principal room. Check out the Bloomberg Technology podcast.
Speaker 4: You know where to find it on the terminal as
Speaker 4: well as on Apple, Spotify, iHeart.
Speaker 3: This is Gwenberg.
Speaker 4: Okay, it's time for VC Spotlight, and today we're taking
Speaker 4: a look at Sound Ventures. It's an early stage VC
Speaker 4: firm founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy is Siri, which
Speaker 4: is invested in companies like Airbnb, Spotify, Open Ai, and more.
Speaker 4: The firm currently has over a billion dollars in assets,
Speaker 4: and Sound Ventures investor Alexandra Burbie joins us now, having
Speaker 4: recently joined the firm herself. It's good to have you
Speaker 4: here in San Francisco in person. Interesting move. Yes, could
Speaker 4: we start there and talk about, you know, how that
Speaker 4: happened Sound why you wanted to go and work with Ashton?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 11: So I got to know the team actually over the
Speaker 11: last couple of years and had really just had an
Speaker 11: admiration from Afar for what they were building. And I
Speaker 11: think as the firm has evolved one they've invested in
Speaker 11: some of these incredible companies and some of the best founders,
Speaker 11: and the way that those founders speak about them really
Speaker 11: spoke to me.
Speaker 3: And I think as an angel.
Speaker 11: Investor, I'd had the opportunity to work with a lot
Speaker 11: of early stage companies at the later stage at my
Speaker 11: previous firm. I had also seen some of those companies
Speaker 11: that had made it through ten years with Sound as
Speaker 11: a partner, and often they had mentioned that their their
Speaker 11: favorite investor on their cap table. And so when you
Speaker 11: hear that type of feedback, it's hard to not want
Speaker 11: to get involved. And so I joined the team a
Speaker 11: couple months ago and it's been a great.
Speaker 3: Experience so far.
Speaker 4: The particular interest that I have in Sound is the
Speaker 4: approach to AI application layer, foundation, layer, infrastructure. It's basically
Speaker 4: everything we talk about in the show every single day.
Speaker 4: Do you have a particular focus within those three buckets
Speaker 4: or are you going to approach all three?
Speaker 11: So we are generalists as a firm, and i'd say
Speaker 11: that within that. Of course, where we're spending all of
Speaker 11: our time is in AI. I think it'd be silly
Speaker 11: not to be saying that. But the way that we've
Speaker 11: kind of broken out our fund is in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 11: we launched a thematic fund, which was on the AI
Speaker 11: foundational layer. So we invested in companies like Opening I,
Speaker 11: like Hugging Face, like Anthropic, and that was our thematic fund.
Speaker 1: We use those thematic funds.
Speaker 11: To actually work in parallel with our flagship funds. So
Speaker 11: the flagship fund is where I sit and I spend
Speaker 11: time with companies across the application layer, infrastructure, and then
Speaker 11: the everyday software layer, which is the companies we've been
Speaker 11: investing in for fifteen years. But now they're using AI
Speaker 11: to their advantage. So there are companies that are using
Speaker 11: AI to speak to their customers better, to get to
Speaker 11: market quicker, to be more.
Speaker 1: Effective at what they do.
Speaker 11: And in that way, we are really investing exclusively in
Speaker 11: AI companies. But it's because every company needs to be
Speaker 11: an AI company in some form or another, or frankly,
Speaker 11: they'll get left behind.
Speaker 4: How the firms runs really interesting. There are very large
Speaker 4: firms with people who are over the place. There are
Speaker 4: small firms that are just here in the city. You're
Speaker 4: here in San Francisco. Sound has a relatively large presence
Speaker 4: in SOCOW.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: So you'll be focused on the Bay Area or how
Speaker 4: is that going to work?
Speaker 11: I mean, it's really we're focused on where innovation is
Speaker 11: and so to the extent that that's in the Bay Area,
Speaker 11: of course, we're going to be here. To the extent
Speaker 11: that's in New York and LA, of course, we're going
Speaker 11: to be there, and wherever it is throughout the us
Speaker 11: throughout the globe.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll spend time.
Speaker 11: And so from that perspective, i'd say we're not regionalized
Speaker 11: by any means, but we do spend time with founders
Speaker 11: in all of those places, and we tend to try
Speaker 11: to meet them in prison.
Speaker 4: So you were over at g squared, another name known
Speaker 4: to us here on Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3: But kind of like consumer or consumer.
Speaker 4: Internet focused background, you're going to carry that forward and
Speaker 4: merge with AI.
Speaker 3: Or is that an area you've kind of left behind? Yeah?
Speaker 11: So I think that my background has always been generalist
Speaker 11: to a fault, and so I think that I've spent
Speaker 11: time in many different industries on purpose, and it's been
Speaker 11: very deliberate to have that kind of breadth of experience
Speaker 11: and also breadth of founders that I've worked with, and
Speaker 11: so at Sound, i'd say.
Speaker 1: That carries on.
Speaker 11: Many people actually think about Sound as being an exclusively
Speaker 11: consumer firm as well, and that's a misnomer. I'd say
Speaker 11: that people are surprised. Tell them that we've invested it,
Speaker 11: get lab at the seed or sent to one at
Speaker 11: the series seed. You know that that surprises people, and
Speaker 11: so you know, I like that element of surprise one.
Speaker 11: But I do think that having a consumer background is
Speaker 11: actually really helpful for the enterprise because consumer companies think
Speaker 11: about brand day one. That's their bread to get it
Speaker 11: telling stories exactly, and the enterprise it takes a lot
Speaker 11: more for them to get to that go to market,
Speaker 11: and they're focused on their product day one, and they're
Speaker 11: focused on the technical side of building out their team.
Speaker 11: We can be a really helpful storyteller because we have
Speaker 11: this consumer lens, and we're actually able to help them
Speaker 11: in a very differentiated way because consumer is part of
Speaker 11: our roots.
Speaker 1: And so I think that actually bringing.
Speaker 11: The two of those together is something I'm very excited
Speaker 11: about and I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 4: Alexandra berbeus sound Bench is great to have you so
Speaker 4: early on in your time at a new firm, accounset
Speaker 4: in San Francisco. Okay, coming up, Musk sued an advertising
Speaker 4: group of organizing a boycott of ads on X.
Speaker 3: Now that group.
Speaker 4: Is shutting down, will have the details next. This is
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Technology. It's the final few days of the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four Olympics in Paris, and the Global Sporting Showcase
Speaker 4: has been going viral daily. It's not just sports taking
Speaker 4: on the Internet by storm, but also chocolate muffins. Norwegian
Speaker 4: swimmer Henrick Christiansen, now known as the Muffin Man, went
Speaker 4: viral on TikTok for videos about his love for the
Speaker 4: muffins in the Olympic Village cafeteria, gaining more than twenty
Speaker 4: million views. Another breakout star is Turkish shooter Usa d Ketch,
Speaker 4: who went viral for winning the silver medal in air
Speaker 4: pistol shooting without using any equipment. The athlete caught the
Speaker 4: attention of Elon Musk, who posted a meme of the
Speaker 4: shooter on x okay. The Global Alliance for Responsible Media,
Speaker 4: a prominent coalition of advertisers, dissolved yesterday, just days after
Speaker 4: Elon Musk's x filed a lawsuit against it over organizing
Speaker 4: a boycott of the platform's advertisements. The coalition says the
Speaker 4: whole ordeal has quote drained its resources and finances, prompting
Speaker 4: it to stop its activities. Joining me on set Bloomberg's
Speaker 4: asha counts, I've done a lot of reporting over the
Speaker 4: years on Musk's litigation. It's a tool that he uses,
Speaker 4: but I just explained basically what happened in a twenty
Speaker 4: four hour period.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it was so fast.
Speaker 10: So he filed this lawsuit earlier this week, and the
Speaker 10: basis of the lawsuit was that this organization caused advertisers
Speaker 10: to flee the platform. Now, part of what the Global
Speaker 10: Alliance Responsible Media does is set guidelines around the type
Speaker 10: of content and ad can pro next to you. So
Speaker 10: you can imagine a big advertiser like an app or
Speaker 10: a Disney wouldn't want their ads next to pro nazi content.
Speaker 10: And so after they, according to Musk, right led to
Speaker 10: this boycott, he got upset.
Speaker 1: He filed this lawsuit, and now they're.
Speaker 10: Dissolving because they don't have the resources to sort of
Speaker 10: fight back. And this is a tactic Musk is done
Speaker 10: over and over again. As you mentioned, right, he did
Speaker 10: this last year with two organizations. One was a research organization,
Speaker 10: another nonprofit because they found harmful content on the site.
Speaker 10: So this is at tackle that he uses when his
Speaker 10: advertising business is threatened.
Speaker 4: Earlier this week on the show, we played some of
Speaker 4: the SoundBite of Lindy Yakarino, the CEO of X, what
Speaker 4: she had to say about it. You can go back
Speaker 4: and watch that episode. You've also been writing about misinformation
Speaker 4: it's important, but it's kind of falling off the priority
Speaker 4: lists in some places. This is your Tech Daily. What
Speaker 4: is it that you're trying to outline here?
Speaker 1: I mean it feels like a shift, right.
Speaker 10: I think this is something that's been happening for years,
Speaker 10: but this moment feels different. I mean, we saw this
Speaker 10: with the warrant between Israel and Hamases. Again we're seeing this,
Speaker 10: of course, as you mentioned around the UK rights misinformation circulating,
Speaker 10: and the problem is the social media platforms may catch it,
Speaker 10: they may label it, they may take it down, but
Speaker 10: by the time they do, there's already millions of views
Speaker 10: on this.
Speaker 3: We well, on the UK riots.
Speaker 4: I've been tracking what's happening in the UK, my home country.
Speaker 4: Of course, it's also who is involved in the sharing
Speaker 4: of that information. So one thing Musk has been caught
Speaker 4: up in is sharing some what appeared to be articles
Speaker 4: about that situation that ended up being not a real
Speaker 4: news article.
Speaker 3: That's one example.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a great example. It's a terrifying example. He
Speaker 10: shared a fake article from the Telegraph, and Telegraph later
Speaker 10: came out and said, you know, we never created that,
Speaker 10: but he shared it and it got almost two million views.
Speaker 3: Before he took it down, right, and maybe he did
Speaker 3: take it down.
Speaker 1: He did take it.
Speaker 3: Down, he did well.
Speaker 10: It was deleted by their original creator, I believe, but that.
Speaker 1: Was, you know, within the hour.
Speaker 10: But again, almost two million views by that time, so
Speaker 10: the damage is done in some ways.
Speaker 4: Bloombergsasha counts important reporting. Thank you that for this edition
Speaker 4: of Bloomberg Technology. Just big thanks to everyone in the
Speaker 4: control room in New York, Jackie John Justin, Marguerite Pyle
Speaker 4: here in San Francisco, and all the studio crew.
Speaker 3: Check out the podcast. It's been a big week.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to recap on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, and
Speaker 4: all of the Bloomberg platforms. From San Francisco. This is
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Technology.