Speaker 1: From Mahard where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed lud Love.
Speaker 2: I'm Caroline Heine and Bloomberg's weeldead quarters in New.
Speaker 3: York, and I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Technology coming.
Speaker 2: Up full coverage on Tesla's release of the cyber truck,
Speaker 2: of the years of development delayser manufacturing snags. Will bring
Speaker 2: you the details on the long awaited and rather expensive
Speaker 2: electric vehicles.
Speaker 3: An open AI is sticking with a plan to let
Speaker 3: employees sell shares in the company through a tender offer.
Speaker 3: We'll have more on the company's plans. Amid the tumult
Speaker 3: over Altman.
Speaker 2: Plus ex CEO Linda Jacarino is backing her boss after
Speaker 2: his insults to brands backing.
Speaker 4: Away from the platform.
Speaker 2: We'll bring you the memo to start so much more
Speaker 2: throughout this hour, Let's look at what's happening in the markets.
Speaker 2: Because first day of the new month, and where I'm
Speaker 2: mentioning two up to tens of a percent nothing to
Speaker 2: be sniff. That's certainly nowhere near the ten percent rally
Speaker 2: that we saw throughout the month of November one of
Speaker 2: the best months that we've had in at least years.
Speaker 2: It's the summer of twenty twenty two two year yield.
Speaker 5: Though.
Speaker 2: The fact that we've got bonds and stocks rallying at
Speaker 2: the same time fed J. Powell of course speaking out
Speaker 2: talking about AI in particular how everyone's trying to fathom it,
Speaker 2: but also, of course the leader of the Federal Reserve
Speaker 2: is also largely talking about how they're on pace potentially
Speaker 2: just to be equal balanced in terms of where the
Speaker 2: infratiory pressures are going. So everyone anticipating that we're on
Speaker 2: hold for the rest of this year and maybe we
Speaker 2: see great cuts as soon as the second half of
Speaker 2: next year. Bloomberg Dollar Index therefore falls on the back
Speaker 2: of this two we're off by three tens percent. Let's
Speaker 2: have a look at what is rallying though, and I'm
Speaker 2: looking at what's happening in the world or crypto up
Speaker 2: three percent on the day thirty eighty eight hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty about is where we're training, but one point eclipsing
Speaker 2: what has been a nineteen month high. So if you
Speaker 2: have to go all the way back to summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. When you last all these sorts of lefeves,
Speaker 2: A thirty eight thousand some now ed calling for that
Speaker 2: forty thousand dollars level to be eclipsed by the end
Speaker 2: of the year.
Speaker 4: But if you've got on the micro.
Speaker 3: Well, our top story and that is Tesla finally launching
Speaker 3: the cyber truck. Shares down one percent and off session lows.
Speaker 3: The news is the pricing. Really we get three variants
Speaker 3: of the cyber truck, and these are the details of
Speaker 3: what it looks like. A rear wheel drive, all wheel drive,
Speaker 3: and then I can't believe it's called this cyberbeast version.
Speaker 3: And I guess that the main takeaway if we start
Speaker 3: with the rear wheel drive is just the case study.
Speaker 3: At the low end, the price is about fifty percent
Speaker 3: above what Tesla marketed it at in twenty nineteen when
Speaker 3: they first unveiled it. I was there in Hawthorne. You'll
Speaker 3: remember on stage the glass smash window six nine hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety dollars before incentives, before gas savings, two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty miles range. But here's the kicker. This low
Speaker 3: end variant is not available until twenty twenty five. The
Speaker 3: two higher end available next year twenty twenty four. We've
Speaker 3: got a really fantastic guest joining us right now. Sandy
Speaker 3: row is the CEO of monro In Associates, also known
Speaker 3: as the Teardown Titan, and Sandy, you have been on
Speaker 3: the ground in Austin for the last three days. You've
Speaker 3: been driving cyber truck, you've been in the factory, you've
Speaker 3: been speaking to executives. Let's start with the price points.
Speaker 3: What's the conclusion that you draw on the pricing that
Speaker 3: Tesla released.
Speaker 5: Well, I got a chance to drive the Beast and
Speaker 5: that that was the vehicle that they gave me to
Speaker 5: fool around with. It Definitely, it's wicket fast, It's unbelievably comfortable.
Speaker 5: I would put it in with other one hundred thousand
Speaker 5: dollars vehicles. Now I don't know the other two products
Speaker 5: at all because I didn't really get a chance to
Speaker 5: test those, but the one that I had, the cyber truck, Beast,
Speaker 5: definitely as quick. I Don'll scare the daylights out of
Speaker 5: most people. And if you've got it there, there's a
Speaker 5: video of the cyber truck and a portion nine to
Speaker 5: eleven taken off from the line doing a quarter mile
Speaker 5: and the Tesla wins, but it's towing another nine to
Speaker 5: eleven beat the nine to eleven towing a nine to eleven.
Speaker 5: It's fast. It's extremely it's extremely fast.
Speaker 3: It's very very Sandy. Sandy. I called you at the
Speaker 3: top of the show the tear down Tight, and I
Speaker 3: just want to explain to audience your principally be an
Speaker 3: automotive engineer, right, and you kind of rose to prominence
Speaker 3: because you take new vehicles, tear them apart, right down
Speaker 3: to the individual nuts and bolts, and assess what they're
Speaker 3: made of, assess their efficiency. You have been in the factory,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to ask you, based on the design
Speaker 3: of this vehicle and what you saw down in Austin Giga,
Speaker 3: how many do you think they're going to be able
Speaker 3: to build initially this year or the remainder of this
Speaker 3: year next year.
Speaker 5: That's kind of a tough question because there's a lot
Speaker 5: that determines whether or not you're going to be able
Speaker 5: to push out those products. A lot of it has
Speaker 5: to do with the supply chain, and there's a lot
Speaker 5: of things that of push you in different directions as
Speaker 5: far as launch is concerned. What I saw was running
Speaker 5: at sixty jumps per hour, and that's kind of normal.
Speaker 5: The rest of the factories that I've seen, the breast
Speaker 5: of the tessel factories are running at forty three forty two,
Speaker 5: forty three seconds per cit or per station. That's FAST's
Speaker 5: that's really fast. So if they could keep that momentum
Speaker 5: up in twelve months, they should be able to do
Speaker 5: easily two hundred and fifty. It depends on how many
Speaker 5: you know, how many shifts you've got and whatnot, but
Speaker 5: they should easily be able to do two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty thousand a year at that rate, two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty to five hundred thousand, depending on how many shifts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and certainly muff saying that two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand units possible by twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: I'm interested, Sandy.
Speaker 2: And ultimately, how does this disrupt the pickup truck market
Speaker 2: at large? You keep on showing the sort of f
Speaker 2: one fifty in particular the ev competitor there, and how
Speaker 2: the price point is a lot cheaper that even though
Speaker 2: E La Musk himself said, look, it looked expensive at
Speaker 2: the time, how do you think it compares to the
Speaker 2: rest of the market.
Speaker 5: Well, everybody's been trying to say that they're all pickup trucks,
Speaker 5: but really and truly, there's a distinct user difference between
Speaker 5: the Rivian, the lightning, the cyber truck, and say something
Speaker 5: like the like the hummer. They they're they're not really
Speaker 5: tuned to attack the same market. They all can do
Speaker 5: pickup truck kind of work. But I think that the
Speaker 5: average person who's got a construction company is probably going
Speaker 5: to be going for a lightning. The guy who wants
Speaker 5: to go to the grocery store and every once in
Speaker 5: a while pick up a two by four, that's probably
Speaker 5: the Rivian kind of story. The hummer, I don't know
Speaker 5: who that is, but I can tell you for me,
Speaker 5: I I'm going to be brutally frank here. I'm trying
Speaker 5: to get a hold of two of them, and and
Speaker 5: one is going to be my drive because for me,
Speaker 5: if you're an outdoorsman, you've got quads, you got hunting
Speaker 5: on your mind, hunting or fishing or whatever, this is
Speaker 5: the This is the truck for you. This this, this
Speaker 5: is what I'm truly looking for. I have a lightning
Speaker 5: at the at the office. My wife owns a ribbean,
Speaker 5: uh like I say, I don't know an awful lot
Speaker 5: about Jim has never never offered me one of their
Speaker 5: hummers for driving. But but for me, what I want
Speaker 5: is the I want a sober truck.
Speaker 4: Okay, you want it Sunday Brand.
Speaker 2: What is any criticism then? What is it that might
Speaker 2: be a slight worry when you go and take that
Speaker 2: pick up?
Speaker 5: Yeah? The I drove it for a few hours and
Speaker 5: the only time, the only time that I had a
Speaker 5: problem with the thing was it was when I had
Speaker 5: to try and still here. Yeah. So anyways, the only
Speaker 5: the only thing that I had that was an issue
Speaker 5: was was when I was going up and I took
Speaker 5: it into a parking garage. And that's scared the living
Speaker 5: lights out of me because it's a very big vehicle
Speaker 5: and it was very difficult for me to determine where
Speaker 5: the corners of the car. And I really didn't want
Speaker 5: to smash I didn't want to smash Tesla's car. So
Speaker 5: I I made the suggestion to the guys and I said, hey,
Speaker 5: you know what, really and truly I need I I
Speaker 5: can't see out of the I can't see where the
Speaker 5: corners are. How about you put up you know, utilize
Speaker 5: the cameras at the front of the vehicle and uh,
Speaker 5: and make it so I can see where the corners
Speaker 5: are with relationship to the walls of the of the
Speaker 5: what do you call it parking garage? That it was
Speaker 5: going on right, and the said, oh, no problem, just
Speaker 5: a software thing. Well, we can probably make that as
Speaker 5: a running change.
Speaker 3: That was the only Sandy. Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt
Speaker 3: your Sandy. I just want to make sure we get
Speaker 3: to this. I guess you haven't had a chance yet
Speaker 3: to do a teardown of the cyber truck for obvious reasons. Now,
Speaker 3: I guess will you do a teardown? But also I
Speaker 3: think the materials here are so important. This is your expertise, right,
Speaker 3: the reinforced steel, the forty eight vault architecture, the wire
Speaker 3: driving all of these things. What's your assessment of that
Speaker 3: design and material.
Speaker 5: Drive by wire is long. I'm going to do that
Speaker 5: one first because that is the thing that is the
Speaker 5: biggest differentiator. Drive by wire. I wouldn't really want to
Speaker 5: do that unless it was forty eight volts system. Going
Speaker 5: from twelve to forty eight volts is huge, I mean
Speaker 5: a gigantic advantage. The system that they've got is a
Speaker 5: double and triple redundancy. So all those naysayers in Washington
Speaker 5: Initiative folks even they had to kind of like nod
Speaker 5: their head and say, Okay, the fact that you've got
Speaker 5: both front steering and rear steering, you've got ten degrees
Speaker 5: of rear steering, means that you can spin this thing
Speaker 5: around like a top. It's really really, really easy to drive,
Speaker 5: especially in parking lot or tight corner type of applications.
Speaker 5: It's spectacular in that respect. The yes, the uh, the
Speaker 5: maneuverability is wonderful. The fact that I've got the ability
Speaker 5: now to have lock to lock at three hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty degrees means that I never have to take my
Speaker 5: hands off the string wheel. It's basically three hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty degrees, you're never you're never going in a complete circle.
Speaker 5: So that makes the uh, that makes the string wheel
Speaker 5: a thing of the past, and everybody's going to be
Speaker 5: going to a yoke.
Speaker 3: Now, Sandy, there's a specific I'm sorry to interrupt you
Speaker 3: saying there's a specific material we have to get to.
Speaker 3: So Elon Musk is talking about how bullet well the
Speaker 3: windows because Elon Musk is talking about how bulletproof it is,
Speaker 3: and he demoed firing a machine gun at it and
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan with a steelhead arrow at it. It makes
Speaker 3: dentse is bulletproof. But what about the glass right that
Speaker 3: I saw Franz do a demo of the window. It
Speaker 3: didn't smash this.
Speaker 5: Time, no, but it would tell you about a shot.
Speaker 3: Well exactly, I made that observation on X because last
Speaker 3: time it was a metal ball bearing, this time it
Speaker 3: was a baseball. But here's my point in my question
Speaker 3: to conclude, what did they tell you there on site
Speaker 3: that they failed to mention during the presentation because they
Speaker 3: didn't talk about the range extender during the presentation and
Speaker 3: they didn't confirm if the glass is bulletproof too.
Speaker 5: Okay, so the glass being bulletproof, the glass that's in
Speaker 5: a normal vehicle, I'm pretty sure it's going to be
Speaker 5: a good temperate glass. And yeah, you could throw rocks
Speaker 5: or snowballs or something like that earlier, but an iron
Speaker 5: ball or a bullet not so much. The thing is,
Speaker 5: though you can buy glass that is bulletproof and you
Speaker 5: can put it in it adds an awful lot of
Speaker 5: extra weight and a huge amount of costs. Let's get
Speaker 5: back to the steel. The stainless steel that they're using
Speaker 5: is a three hundred series stainless steel. For those folks
Speaker 5: that are into technology, it's austenitic, and which means that
Speaker 5: it's non magnetic, and it's quite a bit tougher and
Speaker 5: it won't everything does break down eventually, but it would
Speaker 5: be classified as a true stainless steel. The thing that
Speaker 5: makes it even more impressive or important is that when
Speaker 5: they cold form it, they move it from oustinite to
Speaker 5: Martin site. It probably doesn't mean anything to most people,
Speaker 5: but if you know anything about material science, a Martin
Speaker 5: Cidic structure means that you're moving into something that's really hard.
Speaker 5: So normal steel is not even measured on a rock
Speaker 5: well S scale. But the body structure, the body panels,
Speaker 5: the reason that they can contain bullets of multiple calibers
Speaker 5: and quite frankly, multiple velocities. The reason that it can
Speaker 5: do that is because it's Martin cidic and Martin's site
Speaker 5: is pretty dramatic. You can't you can't believe how tough
Speaker 5: that is, and so that's kind of like what's happening.
Speaker 5: So the steel comes in relatively strong, then it goes
Speaker 5: through cold forming, which basically strengthens it even more. Then
Speaker 5: it goes into one more a little like the air
Speaker 5: bending and whatnot that they do for some of those
Speaker 5: linear lines, like you're showing it right now, you've got
Speaker 5: that line that goes straight across the vehicle. That is
Speaker 5: absolutely something that makes it a whole lot stronger. So
Speaker 5: anytime you can put a bend or a rainkle in
Speaker 5: a piece of sheet metal, that's great. I had no
Speaker 5: idea how they were doing that, but I did get
Speaker 5: a chance to. I did have a chance to look
Speaker 5: at the assembly line. I saw the machines that are
Speaker 5: that are manufacturing it's the Trump machine. It's actually, I
Speaker 5: mean it's it's quite simple, a lot simpler than I
Speaker 5: than I thought. So, yeah, it's it's it's really well engineered.
Speaker 5: And then of course, yeah, the illuminance for the castings
Speaker 5: and whatnot. Also, again, they created their own their own
Speaker 5: material science. It flows incredibly well, like, yeah, we're.
Speaker 2: Gonna have to we're gonna have to leave it there, Sally,
Speaker 2: But I cannot tell you how much you are preaching
Speaker 2: to the right choir here in terms of the intricacies
Speaker 2: of the material science the technology that really goes into
Speaker 2: these tiles and these pick up Sanny Monroe, We thank you, CEO. A.
Speaker 2: Monroe and Associates. Open Ai is tender offer, it's on
Speaker 2: and it can value the AI company at eighty six
Speaker 2: billion dollars. Open Ai is sticking with its plan to
Speaker 2: let employees sell shares and giving them atually little bit
Speaker 2: of extra time a month in fact, to decide whether
Speaker 2: to take part in it. That's been in Bloemberg's Max
Speaker 2: Chraffkin for more because this was the ongoing question, wasn't
Speaker 2: it after all of the termill would ultimately be the
Speaker 2: demand And clearly there is enough demand right well.
Speaker 6: And during the upheaval there was this big question of
Speaker 6: is this company valuable anymore? Is this company even really
Speaker 6: a company? Now we've seen you know, reinstitution of Sam
Speaker 6: Altman and Greg Brockman the president, this newly reconstituted board.
Speaker 6: Clearly Microsoft is on board with this whole business. They're
Speaker 6: going to have an observer seat on the new board.
Speaker 6: And yes, and the tender offer is moving forward, which
Speaker 6: will be really great obviously for employees. I mean it's
Speaker 6: going to be primarily a way for people who own
Speaker 6: shares to cash out, which is going to mean employees,
Speaker 6: but is also of course a sign of healthiness for
Speaker 6: the company.
Speaker 3: Overall. We're just showing the makeup of the new transitional board.
Speaker 3: And just to note to our audience, Marry Summers is
Speaker 3: a paid contributor to Bloomberg's Wall Street Week. For me,
Speaker 3: this story does put the spotlight on Microsoft right partly
Speaker 3: because all the staff were going to defect Microsoft had
Speaker 3: Sam Outman not come back, but the non voting observice.
Speaker 3: When I posted that we'd broken that story, Max, everyone
Speaker 3: asked me, what does that even mean? And remember Satir
Speaker 3: de Nadella said surprises are bad.
Speaker 6: Well, okay, I mean a non voting board, see doesn't
Speaker 6: mean much. I guess in theory what it means is
Speaker 6: what happened the last time is would not happen again
Speaker 6: in the sense that they wouldn't be as surprised as
Speaker 6: they were. So Microsoft had only a couple of minutes
Speaker 6: of notice when Sam Altman was fired the last time,
Speaker 6: so this time one assumes they would have a little
Speaker 6: bit more notice.
Speaker 3: Beyond that, I think it's more of.
Speaker 6: A signal of Microsoft's position with respect to open AI.
Speaker 3: They have a little bit more leverage now.
Speaker 6: So the old board included a couple of board members
Speaker 6: who I would say were not as aligned with Microsoft's interests.
Speaker 6: This new board, i'd say is more pro Microsoft, more
Speaker 6: in the Sachin and camp, and the board seat reflects that,
Speaker 6: or the board absorb observer seat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, many people were trying to sort of say capitalism one. Well,
Speaker 2: ultimately maybe capitalism was always winning, but we've got more
Speaker 2: of a focus, perhaps on profit over safety. Dare I
Speaker 2: say no on that that's going to be in any
Speaker 2: way perhaps completely backseat. We still got to see what
Speaker 2: the rest of the board looks like because at the
Speaker 2: moment they've noted this is undiverse. Brett Taylor's been trying
Speaker 2: to talk about that that needs expanding, and so too
Speaker 2: does Ultimately the recovery process need to be borne out
Speaker 2: these the competition.
Speaker 6: Well, and here's the thing, we still don't know if
Speaker 6: there are going to be huge differences. We still have
Speaker 6: many of the same things that led to the last craziness. Right,
Speaker 6: nonprofit Ostensibly a board that's supposed to still be focused
Speaker 6: on safety is supposed to still be willing to, you know,
Speaker 6: shut this thing down if it ever gets two out
Speaker 6: of hand, and still you have Microsoft, which has this
Speaker 6: huge interest in the company, you know, more than ten
Speaker 6: billion dollars worth of money. Its entire corporate strategy depending
Speaker 6: on this third party that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't control.
Speaker 6: So in a lot of ways, we're where we were before,
Speaker 6: which for Microsoft is going to be fine. They were
Speaker 6: doing well with this relationship, but there is still a
Speaker 6: lot of uncertainty and an investigation.
Speaker 3: Ed, Yeah, an investigation into what originally happened, led by
Speaker 3: an independent party. Check out Max Chafkins Bloomberg BusinessWeek's story
Speaker 3: Microsoft's lack of control of open Ai remains a wild card.
Speaker 3: Now coming up on the show, ouch Tiger Global's biggest
Speaker 3: venture fund, racking up an eighteen percent paper loss the
Speaker 3: end of September. We're going to bring you those details.
Speaker 3: Coming up next. This is Bloomberg Technology All right. Time
Speaker 3: for Talking Tech, And first off, Apple and paramount to
Speaker 3: reportedly in talks to bundle their streaming services at a
Speaker 3: discounted rate. The Wall Street Journal says discussions are in
Speaker 3: the early stages and some operational details are still unclear.
Speaker 3: More companies had been resorting to bundling packages to make
Speaker 3: their offerings more affordable and attractive and Meta says there's
Speaker 3: no harm done by making its artificial intelligence technology widely available.
Speaker 3: Metas chief AI scientists Sane lucun It touted the importance
Speaker 3: of sharing tech while other companies might be more protective.
Speaker 3: He spoke about advancing AI at a faster rate, saying quote,
Speaker 3: if you do this in secret, you will fall behind.
Speaker 3: Plus ex CEO Lindy Acarino sent a memo to employees
Speaker 3: showing her support of owner Elon Musk after his comments
Speaker 3: this week which insulted brands that are backed way from
Speaker 3: advertising on the platform. She called Musk candid and profound
Speaker 3: and added quote, no matter how hard they try, we
Speaker 3: will not be distracted by Sideline critics who don't understand
Speaker 3: our core mission. Karrot.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be discussing that much more a little
Speaker 2: bit later in the show, but for now, ed we
Speaker 2: want to dwell on the fact that while stocks are rallied,
Speaker 2: bonds are rallied in the month of November, not all
Speaker 2: has been that pretty for some big venture bets of late.
Speaker 2: Just take Tiger Global Management, biggest venture fund. Get this,
Speaker 2: It racked up eighteen percent loss at the end of September.
Speaker 2: That's after slashing valuations for some of the key companies.
Speaker 4: In its portfolio.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg actually learning that the fund marked down firms ranging
Speaker 2: from an AI powered email company to a privacy search
Speaker 2: engine of course tug dot Co, but most notably some
Speaker 2: of their crypto beets absolutely decimated in terms of original valuation.
Speaker 2: Of course, Tiger Global did not comment for this story,
Speaker 2: but we do get some more context from Bloomberg News
Speaker 2: Wall Street reporter Shnali Bassak. And I mean, for me
Speaker 2: what took my breath away was the Bord eight Yacht
Speaker 2: Club and open see I mean ninety percent marked down
Speaker 2: from an original valuation.
Speaker 4: I mean that kind of feats of hubris.
Speaker 7: And you remember also remember Board eight Yacht Club bought
Speaker 7: in other big investors like Arie Brogard's Lion Try and
Speaker 7: you have Philip Laflan's Co two coming into open CE
Speaker 7: as well. There was a time that open C was
Speaker 7: an IPO darling. If you remember, they had hired the
Speaker 7: former cfl Lift who then had left open C subsequently
Speaker 7: and now is working at Splunk, I believe, but remember
Speaker 7: open C I had been caught in the caught here
Speaker 7: is here of the regulatory uncertainties that would surround the
Speaker 7: rest of the investment industry in crypto, but even more
Speaker 7: so because NFTs versus token listings and other types of
Speaker 7: assets were under the ire of the SEC. So yes,
Speaker 7: a severe write down. When you look at how Tiger
Speaker 7: Global has taken this position, We've seen similar at rivals.
Speaker 7: But as you say, this has not been limited to
Speaker 7: the crypto industry for these big investment firms.
Speaker 3: Snali thirty seconds but a big scoop on Binance vip
Speaker 3: trade is getting a heads up on recent proceedings.
Speaker 7: They did know ahead of time, and of course because
Speaker 7: we know that cz was in the UAE and they
Speaker 7: don't have an extradition treaty with the United States, that
Speaker 7: it was not just about the founder here. This showed
Speaker 7: you the extent to which the rest of the traders
Speaker 7: were concerned about how finance would dissolve the settlement and
Speaker 7: be able to get through it.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, which of course have.
Speaker 2: Been cryptos has sweet spot. Welcome back to Bluemo Technology.
Speaker 2: I'm Caline Heid in.
Speaker 3: New York and I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Look, Caro,
Speaker 3: I don't want to put a downer on things, but
Speaker 3: final day of the week, and this is what markets
Speaker 3: look like on a weekly basis, and as that one hundred, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's basically flat, actually zero point zero two percent on
Speaker 3: the week. But I guess we are headed potentially halfway
Speaker 3: through the trading day through a down week. There's been
Speaker 3: a bunch of FED speak out their earnings are having
Speaker 3: a real impact on the trajectory of the NASDAK one
Speaker 3: hundred in the last twenty four to forty eight hours,
Speaker 3: which of course is made up of some of those
Speaker 3: higher multiple software names that have reported earnings. Dell also
Speaker 3: a big impact on markets this Friday. An important piece
Speaker 3: of news that I want to bring our audience look
Speaker 3: at some of the EV makers, including the legacy automakers
Speaker 3: transitioning to EV. The Biden administration has set the limits
Speaker 3: for a foreign entity of concern. Basically, the rule is
Speaker 3: that if a company involved in the battery supply chain
Speaker 3: has more than twenty five percent foreign ownership in the
Speaker 3: context of China, than any car that includes a component
Speaker 3: or a material tied to that company, an FEOC will
Speaker 3: not be eligible for the seventy five hundred dollars federal
Speaker 3: tax credit. Really important when you consider the supply chains
Speaker 3: of all of these US automakers who are sourcing not
Speaker 3: just the battery packing component but the raw materials with
Speaker 3: some association with Chinese companies.
Speaker 4: Ashley.
Speaker 2: This really dovetails into ultimately the conversations that are going
Speaker 2: on in the release at the moment, because all world
Speaker 2: leaders have kicked off the COP twenty eight Climate Summit,
Speaker 2: and it's over in the UAE to buy in particular
Speaker 2: with pledges to boost investment in green solutions and calls
Speaker 2: for more decisive action to cut queenhouse gases.
Speaker 4: Let's just get the latest on the ground.
Speaker 8: Day two of COP twenty eight started with an early
Speaker 8: win for developing nations. An agreement was reached for a
Speaker 8: Last and Damage Fund designed to help vulnerable countries deal
Speaker 8: with more extreme weather stoked by global warming. A number
Speaker 8: of leaders, from King Charles to President Norrendramodi and President
Speaker 8: Da Silva, and also you and Secretary General Antonio Guterrez
Speaker 8: address the plenary, delivering an urgent message on fighting climate change.
Speaker 9: The climate challenge is not just another issue in your inbox.
Speaker 9: Protecting about climates is the world's greatest test of leadership.
Speaker 8: Other key areas we're still watching out for on the
Speaker 8: agenda are potentially in agreement to expand renewable investment and
Speaker 8: potentially a plan to phase out fossil fuels. Jennifer's Abasaja
Speaker 8: from COP twenty eight Bloomberg News Dubai.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jennifer, Saveasaga. They're reporting on the ground ed. What
Speaker 2: if you've got well.
Speaker 3: Let's stick with the COP twenty eight climates Summit the
Speaker 3: discussion and bring in Avenge Capitalists is investing in that space.
Speaker 3: Joining us now is Andrew b Managing director at Obvious
Speaker 3: Ventures and Obvious Ventures, a VC firm that invests exclusively
Speaker 3: in startups addressing climate, health and finances. I always ask
Speaker 3: this question. In the Middle East there is a really
Speaker 3: important meeting of world leaders going on and business leaders,
Speaker 3: and at the other end of the chain, you're investing.
Speaker 3: How much attention do you pay to what's going on
Speaker 3: in Dubai right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think all eyes are on Dubai right now.
Speaker 1: For sure. They're trying to solve the biggest challenge of
Speaker 1: our generation, climate change, and when we try to tie
Speaker 1: it together, what I'm focused on is watching how many
Speaker 1: founders are headed over this year. That's very different than
Speaker 1: in the past. We're seeing entrepreneurs from around the world
Speaker 1: deciding this is the place to be right now, and
Speaker 1: that's exciting.
Speaker 3: I moderated a panel at T Economy Climate right at
Speaker 3: the start of the year, and we were considering a
Speaker 3: lot of these big picture items, and the panel was
Speaker 3: split on whether you go for a startup whose future
Speaker 3: is dependent on public subsidy policy but also government money
Speaker 3: paving the way for their future. How do you approach that.
Speaker 1: We look at those as tailwinds. We try to find
Speaker 1: companies that are going to build the future we all
Speaker 1: existed in the world. We do that in fintech, we
Speaker 1: do that in healthcare, we do it a lot in climate.
Speaker 1: But when we think about subsidies, whether it's in healthcare,
Speaker 1: whether it's in climate, those are add ons. We don't
Speaker 1: rely on them as the sole business model.
Speaker 2: Of course, there's much handwringing at the moment Andrew about
Speaker 2: ultimately what events such as COP twenty eight can ultimately
Speaker 2: achieve in terms of agreement and indeed policy. But then
Speaker 2: in terms of incentivizing corporate and corporate America at that
Speaker 2: how are you seeing companies still marching towards a focus
Speaker 2: on climate change, even though perhaps the political environments changed
Speaker 2: somewhat on it.
Speaker 1: Look, we've been doing this a long time. I was
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur in the solar space in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: Climate change was like a thermostat setting at that point. Right,
Speaker 1: we've come a long long way. We've seen two orders
Speaker 1: of magnitude cost reductions in solar and wind, and these
Speaker 1: are now the cheapest solutions out there. So not only
Speaker 1: are we seeing corporations show up looking for solutions and
Speaker 1: I think showing up in mass in Dubai looking for
Speaker 1: solutions and asking each other almost Davos like trying to
Speaker 1: find the answer, trying to solve the puzzle. But we
Speaker 1: see founders in Silicon Valley and around the world showing
Speaker 1: up with incredible ideas to help transform our global economy.
Speaker 2: Let's dig into those ideas. Because you're someone who's led
Speaker 2: change a big business. I think how you're leading distributed
Speaker 2: generation over at what is I mean the largest clean
Speaker 2: energy develop here in America. But when you're looking at
Speaker 2: the startups Andrew, where is the innovation coming? What problems
Speaker 2: are we not seeing that are avaiable to be fixed?
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley spent the last twenty years digitizing the global
Speaker 1: economy now we're going to decarbonize it, and I think
Speaker 1: we're sort of in early innings, even though it's been
Speaker 1: about a decade of huge growth. I think McKenzie and
Speaker 1: Goldman are talking about a trillion to a trillion and
Speaker 1: a half dollars of new investment every year just to
Speaker 1: decarbonize the energy sector. And we feel that well underway.
Speaker 1: Solar and wind are now much more cost effective than
Speaker 1: coal and natural gas in most of the world. For
Speaker 1: new generation. You guys have had a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: already this morning on electric vehicles and we're seeing that
Speaker 1: transformation really start to take hold. Those are areas that
Speaker 1: we're very excited about. I would just mention three things. Mobility.
Speaker 1: We love the electrification of everything. There's a lot more
Speaker 1: to do to electrify every form of transportation around the world.
Speaker 1: We're very interested in scale finding ways that we can
Speaker 1: get past all of the bottlenecks, particularly on the electricity grid.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of startup work going on in software
Speaker 1: and hardware to blow past a lot of the bottlenecks
Speaker 1: that we're facing. And then of course, AI, AI and
Speaker 1: climate there's a really exciting well intersect.
Speaker 3: Let me jump in here we discussed a generative AI tool,
Speaker 3: or at least the underpinnings of a large language model,
Speaker 3: is an accelerant in the healthcare or biotech space. The
Speaker 3: use cases are obvious. Less obvious is how AI actually
Speaker 3: accelerates climate tech, makes it come to market quicker or otherwise.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean we've been early on in using
Speaker 1: AI in different fields. We were early in recursion pharmaceuticals
Speaker 1: and they did that in the healthcare space. I think
Speaker 1: you're going to see a lot of companies show up
Speaker 1: in client with some similar ideas. There'll be deep tech
Speaker 1: concepts how we use AI to help and generative AI
Speaker 1: to help us think through things like battery chemistry. But
Speaker 1: I also think there's a lot in the information sector
Speaker 1: that will be very exciting, crossing AI and all of
Speaker 1: the things like Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Bloomberg and Green.
Speaker 1: There'll be AI attached to that because big companies are
Speaker 1: looking to AI for solutions and we're not ready yet,
Speaker 1: but we will have some announcements soon about an investment
Speaker 1: in that space.
Speaker 3: And when you have those announcements, you know where to
Speaker 3: find us here at Bloombay Technology. Come Back Andrew Beebe
Speaker 3: of Obvious ventsis thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Now sticking with technology that addresses climate and climate change.
Speaker 3: A cutting edge AI named Athena has been enlisted in
Speaker 3: the battle against bushfires in Australia as it braces for
Speaker 3: an escalating fire hazard this summer. I have listened to this.
Speaker 10: It went down in history as Australia's Black Summer, a
Speaker 10: nineteen week period in late twenty nineteen and early twenty
Speaker 10: twenty when twenty four million hectares of the country burned.
Speaker 10: That's an area half the sign of California or the
Speaker 10: entire United Kingdom. The smoke circled the globe. Now the
Speaker 10: stage is set for a possible repeat. This map from
Speaker 10: the National Council for Fire and Emergency Services showing large
Speaker 10: areas of Australia facing increased fire risk. Bloomberg Economics is
Speaker 10: forecasting property and casualty insurance costs in Australia to the
Speaker 10: year ending June twenty twenty four could be well above
Speaker 10: the ten year average of three billion dollars.
Speaker 11: So this FIA season, we've seen a significant drying out
Speaker 11: of the landscape following three years of above average rainfall.
Speaker 3: That's particularly that bive.
Speaker 11: Average rainfall has promoted grass growth and an obviously increase
Speaker 11: in fuel, and then we've started to see really dry
Speaker 11: spring went through there into spring, so we're seeing an
Speaker 11: elevated risk.
Speaker 10: To help combat that risk, the Fire Service has commissioned Athena,
Speaker 10: a world first firefighting AI. Athena analyzes data from weather forecasts,
Speaker 10: wind direction, terrain structures, populated areas and even social media
Speaker 10: feeds to predict the fire's next move and what's at risk.
Speaker 12: It takes a map of those fires and it then
Speaker 12: predicts what they'll do over two hours, four hours, twelve hours,
Speaker 12: and it will also tell us what structures or assets
Speaker 12: will come into threat. That we can have more than
Speaker 12: one hundred fires burning at any one time and this
Speaker 12: stops us potentially making any mistakes or missing something.
Speaker 10: Pathena's modeling is also supported by data provided by the Pyrotron,
Speaker 10: a bush fire simulator built after Black Summer by government
Speaker 10: research body the CSIRO. The Fire Service is also outed
Speaker 10: Australia's largest firefighting helicopter for the coming summer, hoping history
Speaker 10: doesn't repeat, but ready in case it does.
Speaker 2: Paul Out on Bloomberg, Sydney Now coming up more on AI,
Speaker 2: but chutch Ept's version it was made of course accessible
Speaker 2: to the general public a year and a day ago,
Speaker 2: and the AI praise it hasn't phased out since we're
Speaker 2: going to discuss all of that next.
Speaker 13: This is Bloombo Technology.
Speaker 2: Time now for our VC roundup and Louis Bacon's more
Speaker 2: Capital Management and the publisher of the British tabloid Daily Mail,
Speaker 2: when they're launching a new venture fund called Renowned Capital Partners.
Speaker 4: That's according to.
Speaker 2: Sources, the fund will invest in early and growth stage
Speaker 2: private companies focused on the world's transition to clean energy. Plus,
Speaker 2: Pakistan is launching a VC fund for local early stage
Speaker 2: startups in an effort to lure global investors back, and
Speaker 2: the government said the firm fund is aiming to allocate
Speaker 2: as much as ten.
Speaker 4: Million dollars annually.
Speaker 2: And the Biden administration has forced Prosperity seven. Now that's
Speaker 2: Saudi a Ramco's VC firm to sell it shares in
Speaker 2: an AI startup rain Ai. That's of course back by
Speaker 2: Open Ai and co founder Sam Altman. This exit the
Speaker 2: kind of broader implications really for Saudi Arabia's growing investments
Speaker 2: in US technology and its close to ties which.
Speaker 3: Ed we have you got an AI well a lot
Speaker 3: more to talk about and look, Sam Altman, one year
Speaker 3: of chat GBT being released Open Ai, as you said,
Speaker 3: Carra released chat GBT to the public a year and
Speaker 3: a day ago. The AI crise has not stopped. Millions
Speaker 3: of people, intellectual capital, real capital money has poured into
Speaker 3: this industry from all over the world in a twelve
Speaker 3: month span. Let's keep the conversation going and bringing Dan O'Connell,
Speaker 3: whose chief artificial intelligence and strategy officer for dial Pad
Speaker 3: AI Unicorn valued at two point two billion, backed by
Speaker 3: Indres and Horowitz, Google Ventures and Iconic. I know that
Speaker 3: you guys would say we were in AI earlier than that.
Speaker 3: We're an AI company our own right, But I just
Speaker 3: ask you to reflect on the last twelve months, even
Speaker 3: if it's through the lens of your own AI company,
Speaker 3: based on what open ai has done.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I think what has happened over the past twelve
Speaker 14: months is democratization of AI, where I think everybody on
Speaker 14: the planet suddenly sees the opportunity of it AI can
Speaker 14: bring and a craft pretty much every piece of software
Speaker 14: in every industry that's there. So I think the hype
Speaker 14: is real and we're going to see lifts proliferate over
Speaker 14: the next you know, in the next couple of years.
Speaker 3: Caroline and I always want to approach this from a
Speaker 3: technology perspective. You have built your own foundation model at
Speaker 3: ann you call it Dialpad GPT. You did that yourselves.
Speaker 3: But there's always a choice, you know, go to open
Speaker 3: AI or another open source platform. Why do it yourself.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Fortunately we have been in AI for a number
Speaker 14: of years. Dell Pad acquired my business, which was one
Speaker 14: of the first real tends to be trek emission engines
Speaker 14: called Talkaq in twenty eighteen. So fortunately at that time
Speaker 14: we sat on this proprietary data set. We had a
Speaker 14: team that knew about these technologies and how to leverage them,
Speaker 14: and it became really evident for us that, look, we
Speaker 14: don't want to have when we talked about AI, we
Speaker 14: don't want to be a wrapper around a third party API.
Speaker 14: We want to control our innovation. We want to control
Speaker 14: the price and the scalability and the accessibility of that.
Speaker 14: And so I think AI is a fundamental differentiation in
Speaker 14: the market and we want to own that piece ourselves
Speaker 14: because we believe that we can provide a better and
Speaker 14: enhanced experience to every one of our customers.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of the wrapper companies have
Speaker 2: perhaps realized the reasoning behind that of laid down.
Speaker 4: But what about the competition?
Speaker 2: How much more fast and furious has it become for
Speaker 2: you in the last twelve months.
Speaker 14: Absolutely, I think it's a talent war right now out
Speaker 14: there in terms of finding people that know how to
Speaker 14: leverage these technologies. You know, when you talk about AI
Speaker 14: experts and understand natural language processing and speech recognition and
Speaker 14: large language models, there's probably thousands of them, and that's
Speaker 14: going to obviously proliferate and step over the course of
Speaker 14: the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: But very much so.
Speaker 14: The worry that is out there is, look, do these
Speaker 14: large language models available as an API suddenly make AI
Speaker 14: easy for everybody?
Speaker 1: And I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 14: I think these large language models are good at some
Speaker 14: very horizontal use cases. But I think what you'll see
Speaker 14: play out over the course of this next year is
Speaker 14: proprietary large language models that are going to be industry
Speaker 14: specific and use case specific. Much of what we've done
Speaker 14: much similar to our approach and dial pad.
Speaker 2: What about big corporates desire to actually build themselves too,
Speaker 2: and the fact that we now have open source and
Speaker 2: closed source offerings.
Speaker 4: Have you been impressed by the.
Speaker 2: Fact that certain CTOs wanted to do themselves? How have
Speaker 2: you found that sales discussion with some of the companies
Speaker 2: that you work with.
Speaker 14: Yeah, And I don't think there's a right or wrong
Speaker 14: approach at this moment in time. You know, Fortunately for
Speaker 14: dial Pad, we had a team of experts and a
Speaker 14: proprietary data sent then know how to do this. And
Speaker 14: I think, you know, some startups are going to approach
Speaker 14: a foundational model today through open AI or anthropic or
Speaker 14: Inflection or Google Vertex, And I think that the question
Speaker 14: is going to be whether those foundational models are going
Speaker 14: to provide use case specific or industry.
Speaker 3: Well and the business as well. Right, you know, you
Speaker 3: start your career at Google two thousand and three. Everyone
Speaker 3: that I speak to you in ad sales, yep. Everyone
Speaker 3: I speak to at that time is like, well, we
Speaker 3: were kicking around the hacky sack and chatting about AI
Speaker 3: and a bigger pig away, and we're now going to
Speaker 3: make money from this venture.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 14: And I think the case is like when you're talking
Speaker 14: about the biggest opportunity is I think in contact center
Speaker 14: in sales organizations to say, look, we can provide instant
Speaker 14: the ability to instantly infer customer satisfaction from any conversation,
Speaker 14: never send out a survey. We can guide people through conversations,
Speaker 14: we can automate the note taking into a system of record,
Speaker 14: and those are things that every business on a planet
Speaker 14: in sales and support struggles.
Speaker 4: With Dan O.
Speaker 2: Connell, we thank you for some of those insights and
Speaker 2: looking back on the past twelve months, looking forward to
Speaker 2: a chief ourtificial Intelligence and strategy officer over.
Speaker 4: At dllpad.
Speaker 3: Okay, so news that cross the Bloomberg in the last hour,
Speaker 3: Walmart says that it isn't advertising on x. That's according
Speaker 3: to a router's report in which they cite a spokesperson
Speaker 3: who says Walmart has found better use of other platforms
Speaker 3: to reach their customers. It comes the day after Linda
Speaker 3: Yakarimo sent a memo to staff backing Elon Musk on
Speaker 3: his expletive laden message to advertise. Lets bring in Bloomberg's
Speaker 3: tech editor Sarah Fryar together we report on this memo.
Speaker 3: What are the big takeaways?
Speaker 15: Well, basically, Linda Yakarino is trying to spin the Yvon
Speaker 15: Must appearance a deal book in which he told advertisers.
Speaker 4: To go f themselves if.
Speaker 15: They don't want to spend money on X, and that
Speaker 15: if the company fails, it will be their fault. And
Speaker 15: Yakarino speaks to staff calling this this appearance at the
Speaker 15: conference candid and profound. She said, our principles do not
Speaker 15: have a price tag. So essentially she is backing Musk
Speaker 15: and saying, Okay, yeah, advertisers, if you don't like the
Speaker 15: way we work, go spend your money somewhere else. And
Speaker 15: Walmart here is so sure we'll do that.
Speaker 12: I mean.
Speaker 15: The reason the thing you have to remember here is
Speaker 15: that Twitter ads are not really as effective in many
Speaker 15: for many businesses as ads on Meta as on Google,
Speaker 15: because the targeting is just not as specific. They work
Speaker 15: really well for events, they work really well for say,
Speaker 15: if there's the super Bowl. You have all the tension
Speaker 15: here for big brands, So for a company like Walmart
Speaker 15: you could see some effectiveness potentially, but when you get
Speaker 15: down to that specific micro targeting that other companies are
Speaker 15: able to do, it's kind of easy to knock Twitter
Speaker 15: out of your budget and decide to go elsewhere, which
Speaker 15: is why it's more I guess risky for somebody like
Speaker 15: Lindia Karino to come out and say to dare them
Speaker 15: essentially to take their money away.
Speaker 2: Certainly not afraid of making her own role that much harder,
Speaker 2: it seems, say we thank you so much for the
Speaker 2: breaking that down on the memo that, in fact, when
Speaker 2: had Ludloe had written that. Meanwhile, I mean from concerns
Speaker 2: about X perhaps a lord that surrounding misinformation on the platform,
Speaker 2: We're going to talk now about some bloodlines for billions
Speaker 2: of people when they're seeking facts. When it comes to
Speaker 2: AI images, they're flooding the web right now, and it's
Speaker 2: proving pretty key for Google, isn't it. The Bloomberg opinion
Speaker 2: writers Pame Olson and laying Hey, they've created this quiz
Speaker 2: on the Bloomberg using real and AI photos to just
Speaker 2: show like how hard it is to distinguish that the
Speaker 2: currently I mean, look at them at the moment, which.
Speaker 3: Will hold on, let's try it out. Yeah, float like
Speaker 3: a butterfly, sting like a b A is definitely the
Speaker 3: legit one. A.
Speaker 4: I would say that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say a boom next, Oh, I mean Maya
Speaker 2: Angela had I read at a wedding. I'm going to
Speaker 2: say B is the real one there.
Speaker 3: And one of them is AI generated Oh nice, Okay.
Speaker 2: Manage this one's harder Joan of Arc. Now, to be honest, I'm.
Speaker 3: Around as you are. Yeah, I wasn't around at the
Speaker 3: time of Joan of Arc and they're both painting. I
Speaker 3: would go with A. Let's go with A.
Speaker 4: Okay, are you right? Oh, look, we're cleaning up on
Speaker 4: this one.
Speaker 2: And now, okay, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go B.
Speaker 3: Sure we got it wrong.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's our first dud. This one, I think is.
Speaker 3: This is hard.
Speaker 4: I think it's obvious.
Speaker 3: Okay, go ahead, go ahead. I think it's B.
Speaker 2: I would be right. But actually that's quite a good one.
Speaker 2: That is to ultimately, wa guess that one's AI or not.
Speaker 3: B is clearly high definition. Let's make this the final one.
Speaker 12: One.
Speaker 4: Come on, we can do this.
Speaker 3: It's hard. B oh, I think that.
Speaker 4: Might be right ed.
Speaker 2: At least we've got Winston Churchill right, But that actually
Speaker 2: is showing just ultimately how easy it is to fool
Speaker 2: to make it difficult. The fact that we already got
Speaker 2: one wrong in general. I think I went through it
Speaker 2: and got like eight out of ten. But what's notable
Speaker 2: is some AI creative photos are becoming the most popular
Speaker 2: answer on Google now because people are being so confused
Speaker 2: by them. The peace really leads in particular with the
Speaker 2: selfie of a main image now that comes up for
Speaker 2: tank Man. Now, of course this is meant to be
Speaker 2: originally a very famous photo that now is an AI
Speaker 2: selfie that's on there must be proving totally misineeding.
Speaker 3: So the point is it's a fantastic tool if you
Speaker 3: go perfectly to create something, but if you see something
Speaker 3: in circulation on social media, it's about authenticating it, knowing
Speaker 3: that it's real, the story that you and I tell
Speaker 3: on this show every single week.
Speaker 2: And ultimately it's down to a companies such as Google
Speaker 2: that thinks of itself as the AI prowess to be
Speaker 2: able to tackle the AI issues that are currently being
Speaker 2: born out for its own platform with a technology. But
Speaker 2: I mean, that was a fun way to end. What
Speaker 2: is this edition of BlueBag Technology?
Speaker 3: Don't forget and thank you for listening to the podcast
Speaker 3: wherever you're getting your podcasts from New York City and
Speaker 3: San Francisco this is Bloomberg Technology,