Speaker 1: From Marhart where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Loved Love.
Speaker 3: And Live from New York and San Francisco. This is
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Technology coming up. Apple iPhone confidence but regulatory risks.
Speaker 4: Details ahead, Plus Business Week's definitive story on Rivian's ev
Speaker 4: turnaround plan, and.
Speaker 3: A look at Neuralink and its competitors as Musk tease
Speaker 3: up a new implant.
Speaker 5: The first.
Speaker 3: Let's check in on the broader tech index right now, Ed,
Speaker 3: I'm afraid that soothing of concerns around inflation has not
Speaker 3: driven up the tech stocks.
Speaker 5: Bond markets.
Speaker 3: Yes, they are on fire, but today the NASAC is
Speaker 3: off by one point two percent. Some key players on
Speaker 3: the downside in video being one, but you're looking at
Speaker 3: us the key names that are currently under pressure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Apple, and Apple is a big points drag. There
Speaker 4: are so many headlines out in the first instance, with
Speaker 4: the stock at one point in the session on track
Speaker 4: for its biggest drop since March. Bank of America up
Speaker 4: raising its price target to two hundred and fifty six
Speaker 4: dollars a share from two hundred and thirty, seeing confidence
Speaker 4: in a refresh cycle for the iPhone. Then there's the
Speaker 4: Bloomberg reporting that Apple is said to its suppliers, we
Speaker 4: want to boost iPhone shipments by ten percent. There's some
Speaker 4: growing momentum around the iPhone story, up eighteen percent or
Speaker 4: so year to date, but by no means one of
Speaker 4: the best performers on the Nasdaq one hundred. And then
Speaker 4: there's that that you talked about regulatory risk Apple avoiding
Speaker 4: sanctioned in the EU.
Speaker 6: Give me the details.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really think though at the moment, we are
Speaker 3: seeing this Apple concern at the moment, and the fact
Speaker 3: that EU regulators are basically forcing them to open up
Speaker 3: the wallets situation, the fact that we're seeing fintech being
Speaker 3: our eyes on the prize may be a boost to PayPal,
Speaker 3: but ultimately this is the way in which regulators have
Speaker 3: decided that big techniques stop opening up their walled gardens.
Speaker 3: And Anna rag Rana is exactly the person we should
Speaker 3: speak to about this bingleg intelligence and just I set
Speaker 3: for us Apple under pressure big tech more broadly on
Speaker 3: the day. But as that articulates, there's some good moon
Speaker 3: music around iPhone supply and demand, but at the same
Speaker 3: time there are the these regulatory risks that are forcing
Speaker 3: business model change.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: You know, Apple's performed really well over the last few months,
Speaker 7: and you know, if you go back in April, I
Speaker 7: mean I think it's up what thirty five forty percent
Speaker 7: since then, it's you know, the rebound has been driven
Speaker 7: a lot by Apple's AI story, which I think has
Speaker 7: resonated well with investors. Now, yesterday was probably the first
Speaker 7: big time news we got in terms of iPhone shipment improvement,
Speaker 7: and I don't remember in the last several years really
Speaker 7: looking at that kind of a news, and I think
Speaker 7: that really says that there is a lot of you know,
Speaker 7: if you could say, hype slash expectations about the iPhone
Speaker 7: sixteen and what it could do to Apple's top line.
Speaker 4: And the other big story is that Apple has avoided
Speaker 4: a fine from the EU because it's opened up it's
Speaker 4: mobile wallets technology to others. It's made a concession. How
Speaker 4: do you think that impacts the iOS ecosystem?
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, the the Apple CFO commented a few
Speaker 7: quarters ago that the app store revenue form EU you know,
Speaker 7: accounts for about seven percent of that particular radio's sales,
Speaker 7: so it's really not that big of a deal. Frankly,
Speaker 7: now this is nothing new. We are seeing EU really
Speaker 7: cracking down on all big US firms. I don't think
Speaker 7: it's going to stop anytime soon. I don't think these
Speaker 7: cases are going to go away. But frankly, speaking from
Speaker 7: a financial point of view, it's not going to hurt
Speaker 7: them as much as you know.
Speaker 6: The headline suggest.
Speaker 4: Anirag Rana or Bloomberg Intelligence. Thank you very much. I
Speaker 4: mentioned there were many headlines about Apple. Apple and Microsoft
Speaker 4: have dropped plans to take board roles at open Ai
Speaker 4: in a surprise decision amid growing regularly regulatory screws. Me
Speaker 4: here in San Francisco, Bloomberg Technology Senior executive edit said
Speaker 4: Tom Giles, give us the details of this Bloomberg reporting.
Speaker 4: Microsoft's investment in open Ai as well known. But Apple
Speaker 4: was due to get a board observer role. Now neither
Speaker 4: of those are going to have a board and solve
Speaker 4: observer role.
Speaker 6: Yeah ed.
Speaker 1: Open AI's board was starting to get really crowded with
Speaker 1: big powerful tech company, the most powerful tech companies in
Speaker 1: the world. That's a bad look when you are under
Speaker 1: regulatory scrutiny, when everybody is worried about a concentration of
Speaker 1: power and money around open ai. The basically one of
Speaker 1: the biggest, if not the biggest LM biggest generative AI companies,
Speaker 1: was just getting too chummy with Microsoft and Apple.
Speaker 5: That was the concern, a concern that actually is global.
Speaker 6: Tom.
Speaker 3: We were just talking how the EU has been focused
Speaker 3: in on Apple. They were focused in on Microsoft sort
Speaker 3: of ultimately doing a form of M and A here
Speaker 3: by stealth. Now without the board seats, does that drive home?
Speaker 5: That isn't the case.
Speaker 1: So Microsoft is the biggest investor in open ai, to
Speaker 1: the tune of thirteen billion dollars. It's a massive investment.
Speaker 1: Microsoft is weaving open AI's technology into a lot of
Speaker 1: its own products. Apple is doing the very same thing.
Speaker 1: It's not an investor to that degree, but it is
Speaker 1: using open ais technology throughout its software to make it
Speaker 1: basically to get people to spend more time on their iPhone,
Speaker 1: to make the iPhone more useful. Both of these things
Speaker 1: are basically showing how important open ai is and how
Speaker 1: important the relationship is with big tech companies that want
Speaker 1: to get a piece of the hottest generative AI property
Speaker 1: in the world. And that's where regulators are having a
Speaker 1: hard time. They're worried about competition. They're worried about other
Speaker 1: companies getting access to this technology. They're worried about concentration.
Speaker 1: And this is where you're seeing it start to come unraveled.
Speaker 1: Removing those board observer rules for both of them, and.
Speaker 4: Even that might not be enough. Sources telling Bloomberg that
Speaker 4: you know, regulators here in the s will still look
Speaker 4: at Microsoft because they're like, you didn't notify us in
Speaker 4: advance about this deal. Bloomboks Tom Giles, who leads our
Speaker 4: technology coverage around the world, thank you so much sticking
Speaker 4: with big tech. We're also watching shares of Google and HubSpot.
Speaker 4: Google down, Alphabet the parent company of two percent, HubSpot
Speaker 4: up nine ten percent. The reporting the Alphabet has shelved
Speaker 4: this interest in HubSpot. A story of beIN tracking here
Speaker 4: across the newsroom, Caro, what's up next in the show?
Speaker 3: Oh, a story that is beautifully written by Nana Man
Speaker 3: and yourself. We're talking Rivian's race against Tesla more and
Speaker 3: how the company is taking an alternative route to woo
Speaker 3: those Tesla customers.
Speaker 5: As a Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: It's time for talking tech and first up, Leap Motors
Speaker 4: makes a deal to go global Stalantis has partnered with
Speaker 4: the little known Chinese EV maker, investing one point six
Speaker 4: billion dollars for a twenty one percent stake. The joint
Speaker 4: venture would allow Stilantis to access Leap motors advanced tech
Speaker 4: features while allowing Leap Motors to build and sell their cars.
Speaker 4: Installance's global network plus Lucid Motors says they're still continuing
Speaker 4: to raise cash. Bloomberg spoke with CEO Peter Rawlinson earlier today.
Speaker 8: This is a capital invents intensive business and we do
Speaker 8: need to raise more money.
Speaker 6: And we will at opportune moments in time on the future.
Speaker 6: Our vision is to be a major player here.
Speaker 4: The company has license deals with the likes of Aston
Speaker 4: Martin and said they're in discussions with others and auto
Speaker 4: plants get a lifeline. The Biden administrations awarding one point
Speaker 4: seven billion dollars to retool at risk or show to
Speaker 4: manufacturing and assembly plants across eight states, converting them to
Speaker 4: support EV manufacturing. The funding is being made available through
Speaker 4: the Inflation Reduction Act and is subject to negotiations and
Speaker 4: other reviews before becoming final.
Speaker 3: Character Look, we are going to stick on this EV
Speaker 3: train ed yourself and mister Max Traffkin are out with
Speaker 3: a really in depth piece on Rivian and VW's partnership.
Speaker 3: What sparked it, how the ev maker is basically banking
Speaker 3: on the anti Tesla crowd, and Ed just walks through.
Speaker 5: Who you first spoke to.
Speaker 3: There's this particular well sort of person we hear from
Speaker 3: who sums up how a lot of Tesla people and
Speaker 3: owners feel right now.
Speaker 4: As we spoke to many of them. There's like this
Speaker 4: great body of former Tesla fans, fanboys, owners, you know,
Speaker 4: that community online that's basically defected to Rivian for lots
Speaker 4: of reasons. And I think Max would agree it's not
Speaker 4: very difficult to find them, is it, Max? You know,
Speaker 4: this was one case study. We spoke to several of them,
Speaker 4: the point being that that was Rivian's original audience. Is
Speaker 4: that audience now and they got a lot to do.
Speaker 3: Right Yeah.
Speaker 9: And what you see when you talk to a lot
Speaker 9: of Rivian owners, it's it's kind of it's interesting because
Speaker 9: it tells you a lot about the where the ev
Speaker 9: industry is going and maybe also where Tesla's going or
Speaker 9: where Tesla has at times gone wrong. It's not that
Speaker 9: these people are necessarily big Tesla haters. They're not the
Speaker 9: folks on X who are you know, you know, talking
Speaker 9: talking about shorting the stock or anything. They are just
Speaker 9: often just car people who are interested in EV's, much
Speaker 9: more interested in evs, say than in robotaxis or wild
Speaker 9: promises about brain implants or whatever, and also interested in
Speaker 9: new models. I mean, and when you when you look
Speaker 9: at where Tesla has has arguably made some mistakes and
Speaker 9: where Rivian has done well, I mean, I think if
Speaker 9: Tesla comes out with a cyber truck that looks something
Speaker 9: like the Rivian R one t, which is their pickup truck,
Speaker 9: I think it would have been a much more successful launch.
Speaker 9: And so it's it's an interesting sort of cross road situation.
Speaker 4: I really wanted to do this story, Caroline, because I've
Speaker 4: covered Rivian for many years and I've never had an
Speaker 4: experience in my career where a company has gone from
Speaker 4: like such ethoric highs to like really down in the doldrums. Right,
Speaker 4: this was the sixth biggest IPO in US history, you know,
Speaker 4: the biggest since Facebook, and now the stock would make
Speaker 4: you think that it's like a Fiscal or Elucid, but
Speaker 4: to their credit, like Rivian's a different beast Carrot.
Speaker 5: They actually make evs.
Speaker 4: What we wanted to do is explain how they're going
Speaker 4: to get to that next stage, which is to get
Speaker 4: nearer to Tesla.
Speaker 3: I like that they actually make evs a max to
Speaker 3: that point, though they haven't been producing them at the
Speaker 3: rapid clip. The many thought, and well, they have got
Speaker 3: a new prototype that actually is just a prototype.
Speaker 5: When we kind of get the R three.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you have sort of two situations going on. One
Speaker 9: is just their car manufacturing is difficult, and you know
Speaker 9: it's we've seen this with many of these automotive startups.
Speaker 6: It takes them longer than they want.
Speaker 9: Rivian also faced a lot of supply chainallenges, especially during
Speaker 9: the pandemic. The thing is with evs, right, they've they're
Speaker 9: selling a lot of these very expensive SUVs and pickup trucks.
Speaker 9: They are getting really good reviews. But the truth is
Speaker 9: and and R J. Scurringe, the CEO of Rivian, UH
Speaker 9: spoke to Ed and I about this, but like, there's
Speaker 9: just a limited number of people who want these things.
Speaker 9: What what the industry needs and what climate advocates need
Speaker 9: is more affordable cars, and and Rivian is trying to
Speaker 9: get there and get there as quickly as they can.
Speaker 9: We have the art they're working on the R two,
Speaker 9: the factory in normal Illinois, that's Central Illinois. They're they're
Speaker 9: they're really starting to get ready already. Uh you know
Speaker 9: when I was out there a few weeks ago. And
Speaker 9: and the plan, the long term plan is this R three,
Speaker 9: which is again this kind of like almost mythical at
Speaker 9: this point, cheap electric car, the electric car that everyone
Speaker 9: can afford, but it definitely is a long way from
Speaker 9: being real.
Speaker 6: Well, it's also like they're.
Speaker 4: Running out of cash. And I think that one of
Speaker 4: the important points that we make in the story is
Speaker 4: some of the reasons why they pivoted to write Max,
Speaker 4: and that is they were running out in money, partly because,
Speaker 4: according to our sources, the DOE said, if you want
Speaker 4: some of this money from the Inflation Reduction Act, you
Speaker 4: have to change your position on unions. And we understand
Speaker 4: that that's just not happening right now.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you had this frantic scramble. I mean, the weird
Speaker 9: thing is Rivian of course has lots of cash. It's
Speaker 9: just that the automotive that that making cars is so
Speaker 9: expensive that they're burning even more. And it was looking
Speaker 9: you know, you know, as we wrote this story, increasingly
Speaker 9: unlikely that they were going to be able to open
Speaker 9: this plan in Georgia, Ed, as you said, looking to
Speaker 9: the to the Biden administration, to the to the federal government,
Speaker 9: like many companies, and you know, ultimately.
Speaker 5: Not getting there.
Speaker 9: As we report in the story, these negotiations are ongoing.
Speaker 9: It's possible they will reach some sort of deal. But
Speaker 9: in the meantime, this VW infusion is huge for Rivian.
Speaker 9: It takes a lot of the pressure that this company
Speaker 9: is on and of course that's why the stock you know,
Speaker 9: went way up when when the deal was announced.
Speaker 5: And I love how we stock. We started on stock and.
Speaker 3: One of the greatest pieces that you have out of
Speaker 3: there is is how the main owner of Tesla say
Speaker 3: there's two types of Teslo owners, those who are the
Speaker 3: stock owners and those who actually own the cars.
Speaker 5: All of this is such great reporting from both of you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Max Chafkin and of course Ed Lulo just
Speaker 3: across the RJ Scarrange story.
Speaker 4: Okay, Today for our AI and Action segment, we're joined
Speaker 4: by Lynn Chow, who's the CEO of Fireworks AI, to
Speaker 4: discuss the company's latest Series B funding round. Fifty two
Speaker 4: million dollars, but also their plans for the future of AI.
Speaker 4: So Fireworks is interesting to me, LeAnn and welcome to
Speaker 4: the program. You describe yourselves as lightning fast inference platform.
Speaker 4: So in the first instance, the basics of what a
Speaker 4: lightning fast inference platform.
Speaker 10: Is definitely Thanks for having me here, d and Fireworks
Speaker 10: we are. We have deliver one of the fastest, the
Speaker 10: most cost efficient infrast engine using our propriety technology. By that,
Speaker 10: we want to address the challenge of many applications. They
Speaker 10: require very low latency to drive responsive product experience and
Speaker 10: very low costs to deliver viable, sustainable business.
Speaker 5: It's very difficult because.
Speaker 10: Large language models are big, so deliver all these prec
Speaker 10: requirements are really challenging, and here we focus on helping
Speaker 10: those applications to get there.
Speaker 4: This is something that is targeted at both developers but
Speaker 4: also potentially enterprise customers. So if I were one of
Speaker 4: those two groups, a developer or running a large enterprise,
Speaker 4: how would I use Fireworks? Give me some examples or
Speaker 4: case studies.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we have many customers ranging from leading startups to
Speaker 10: fortune five hundred companies using Fireworks to disrupt the status
Speaker 10: called and the startups using fireworks to drive iterative new
Speaker 10: creative ideas and native companies using fireworks to deliver new
Speaker 10: products events, Fortune five hundred companies to use fireworks to
Speaker 10: drive productivity. We have leading airsrs like Krasna, Cursor, Sourceware, Liner,
Speaker 10: our Prime.
Speaker 3: We've seen some of your clients. Now we're seeing actually
Speaker 3: some of your investors as well. I mean this is
Speaker 3: a who's who of not just VC, but of strategic
Speaker 3: investors in videos, in AMDs, in Mongo dB, is in Lynn.
Speaker 3: How was the fundraising experience?
Speaker 10: Yeah, we are blessed to be supported by so many,
Speaker 10: like the industry leading investors of Sekoya. We also have
Speaker 10: investors for Nvidia, MD and Mongo dB joining force. We
Speaker 10: plan to use this funding to signific investing in following areas.
Speaker 10: Number One, to expand our influence offering and our ecosystem,
Speaker 10: to expand into the best and latest hardware provider about
Speaker 10: Nvidia and MD right and build much tighter integration with
Speaker 10: factor database and database management systems. And starting with Mongo
Speaker 10: dB strategy partnership.
Speaker 3: We're actually looking at sort of how the system works
Speaker 3: a little bit right now, just going back to your
Speaker 3: affordable basically generative AI production platform. That's we see what
Speaker 3: you are, your production platform. You're helping companies use general
Speaker 3: to AI. But what I like is the fact that
Speaker 3: you think the generative AI's future isn't in large language models,
Speaker 3: not these massive closed source ones, but actually think it's
Speaker 3: about open source models, smaller ones, finer tuned. What is
Speaker 3: the future compound AI systems?
Speaker 6: Right, So we.
Speaker 10: Started for our large language model because the larger groups
Speaker 10: model are very powerful and magical, but those single models
Speaker 10: are now sufficient as we're surrounded by rich content as
Speaker 10: we're having this interview and conversation, we actually use audio
Speaker 10: and the visual information and fireworks. We want to use
Speaker 10: the new funding to make a big shift towards a
Speaker 10: compound AIR system that can orchestrate across multiple single models
Speaker 10: with various different modalities, and then air tools to reach,
Speaker 10: for example, the latest news from Bloomberg or my personal
Speaker 10: calendars or personal to do list, and build the totality
Speaker 10: of a great application experience.
Speaker 4: I think it'd be really beneficial to our audience to
Speaker 4: explain how different it is building on an application, specifically
Speaker 4: in the inference domain, relative to the training process of
Speaker 4: a large language model. I think a lot of what
Speaker 4: Caroline and I have focused on in the last two
Speaker 4: years or so, is everyone everywhere building large language models
Speaker 4: or other words training the model on specific data sets.
Speaker 4: So what's that experience been like for you as you've
Speaker 4: built fireworks right?
Speaker 10: So we are hyper focused on our inference for the
Speaker 10: following reasons. Because most of the technology they are going
Speaker 10: to power a consumer facing or developer facing application, and
Speaker 10: those applications has a lot of users. And when you
Speaker 10: scale your product, that means you're going to quickly scale
Speaker 10: your business and your influenced costs will also quickly scale.
Speaker 10: So scalability, reliability and maintaining very expensive models in production
Speaker 10: in a reliable way is very important. So we predict
Speaker 10: that market is going to create a huge amount of
Speaker 10: expense and that's where the enterprise is leading into to
Speaker 10: solve influenced problems.
Speaker 3: Minchaw cfi Works AI on the latest funding round and
Speaker 3: thank you for your time now. Earlier at Back of
Speaker 3: America Breakthrough Technology Dialogue, Blimba caught up with but Jills Meyer,
Speaker 3: partner likes being venture partners to discuss look AI and
Speaker 3: come to markets, take a listen.
Speaker 11: What we're obviously seeing and I think we would have
Speaker 11: anticipated seeing is is API core pricing coming down? Now,
Speaker 11: I think the most dangerous our perspective is perhaps the
Speaker 11: most dangerous perspective to have at times like this, when
Speaker 11: technologies are changing so rapidly, is to think that we
Speaker 11: know what the answer is going to be. We don't, right,
Speaker 11: But here's what we believe, which is that in a
Speaker 11: world in which the volume of calls expands exponentially, which
Speaker 11: we will is more and we will see as more
Speaker 11: and more enterprises adopt generative AI. And now, if you
Speaker 11: think about an agentic world where each of us may
Speaker 11: have multiple agents operating on our behalf, and enterprises will
Speaker 11: have agents operating on their behalf also making calls, well,
Speaker 11: then the volume of calls that are made on these
Speaker 11: foundation models is going to be absolutely massive, right, And
Speaker 11: so while the price per call may come down, the
Speaker 11: volume of calls will be extremely high, and we expect
Speaker 11: compute costs to decline. And so I would argue in
Speaker 11: that world, these companies at scale will absolutely be able.
Speaker 6: To make a profit. It, right, But we don't know.
Speaker 6: These are things that we don't know.
Speaker 11: But I think it's it's dangerous to be too rigid
Speaker 11: with a particular point of view, and we're remaining open
Speaker 11: minded about all of these possibilities.
Speaker 8: Is there pressure that you put on some of these
Speaker 8: some of these companies around monetization. Are you getting to
Speaker 8: that point where you're having those conversations you need to
Speaker 8: start monetizing some of these products.
Speaker 11: Well, look, I think I think these founding teams recognize,
Speaker 11: given the cost of compute and the capital intensity of
Speaker 11: these businesses, there's only two ways you can you can
Speaker 11: manage the capital intensity. One is you will keep raising capital.
Speaker 11: The other is you've got to you've got to earn revenue.
Speaker 11: And I think the answer will be both. You can't
Speaker 11: rely on the capital markets. The private markets have been
Speaker 11: have embraced these companies so far, right with these companies
Speaker 11: raising billions of dollars and most recently Xai raising close
Speaker 11: to seven billion dollars. So capital is available, but you
Speaker 11: can't you can't.
Speaker 6: Assume that will always be the case.
Speaker 11: And I think we're beginning to see companies like open
Speaker 11: Ai and Anthropic begin to scale revenue very fast.
Speaker 8: Okay, interesting in terms of the venture capital world and
Speaker 8: the structure within that sect. So Lightspeed's done something really interesting,
Speaker 8: which is looking at this continuation funds, so essentially allowing
Speaker 8: investors or to take about a billion dollars of stakes
Speaker 8: in your portfolio company, so freeing up about a billion
Speaker 8: dollars across a portfolio. It's a P style structure. What
Speaker 8: is the rationale behind that?
Speaker 11: Yeah, the rationale behind that is that companies are staying
Speaker 11: private for longer, and at the same time we want
Speaker 11: to be.
Speaker 6: Able to support those companies.
Speaker 11: Yet recognize that some of our LPs that are investors
Speaker 11: in the funds that are invested in those companies, it's
Speaker 11: important to drive liquidity back to them. And so how
Speaker 11: do we solve both of those problems. Well, it is,
Speaker 11: for example, to take a set of what are still
Speaker 11: very healthy companies that are compounding in value and put
Speaker 11: them into what we call a continuation vehicle where the
Speaker 11: underlying LP base may change. Right.
Speaker 6: That provides liquidity.
Speaker 11: To LPs that want it, others may not, and they
Speaker 11: can roll over, and it enables Lightspeed to continue to
Speaker 11: steward those positions and continue to be a partner to
Speaker 11: those companies.
Speaker 3: Coming up, we discuss in the Brain synchron CEO on
Speaker 3: how the company's brain computer interface is using open ais tech.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 5: Ed love Low in San Francisco, Parin Hi right here
Speaker 5: in New York and Ed. We had some big macro
Speaker 5: data today.
Speaker 3: CPI cooling once again, that inflationtory pressure dialing back.
Speaker 5: But it is not good news for stocks.
Speaker 3: Sure money paus into the bomb market as we start
Speaker 3: to anticipate could it even be three.
Speaker 5: Rate cuts this year?
Speaker 3: But we're down one point seven percent on the bigger
Speaker 3: benchmarkin a's that one hundred. Why, I mean largely because
Speaker 3: we've got big tech selling off in video, Apple, Alphabeta
Speaker 3: and who's who of the big tech candidates. Maybe we're
Speaker 3: seeing profit taking at this moment. Maybe you're questioning valuations.
Speaker 3: Just remember New Street Research put out a note but
Speaker 3: yesterday saying maybe we do think that we're fully priced
Speaker 3: in at these levels in video, for example.
Speaker 5: But move on to some of the individual movers.
Speaker 3: TSMC actually down almost three and a half percent this
Speaker 3: after they hit a new record. Remember one trillion dollar company,
Speaker 3: eighth biggest in the world. Their numbers showed forty percent
Speaker 3: growth in the previous quarter. But once again, maybe we're
Speaker 3: seeing some profit taking for TSMC, Netflix. We've got earnings
Speaker 3: coming up city getting a little cautious ahead of those
Speaker 3: numbers Tesla of five five ten percent. It had had
Speaker 3: almost an eleven day running streak. A Musk has more
Speaker 3: on his mind, it would see made at the moment too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's Musk all the time. Because of
Speaker 4: all of the companies that ease at the helm of
Speaker 4: one of them, must's brain computers startup. Neuralink aims to
Speaker 4: implant its device into a second human patient in about
Speaker 4: a week and to have devices and a few more
Speaker 4: patients by the end of this year. It's all according
Speaker 4: to a video update we got from Elon Musk yesterday.
Speaker 4: Joining me on set in San Francisco is Bloomberg Sarah McBride,
Speaker 4: who does a very good job of keeping across not
Speaker 4: just Neuralink chaos, but I would say brain implant related
Speaker 4: technology stories. I mean, that's the news right that they
Speaker 4: say they're making progress towards a second patient. But what
Speaker 4: else did you learn in the presentation?
Speaker 2: Well, it was very interesting when they implanted the first patient,
Speaker 2: it went wrong a little bit, some of the threads
Speaker 2: started retracting from his brain. So to me, the most
Speaker 2: interesting thing was the steps they said they would take
Speaker 2: to mitigate for that. So one of the things they're
Speaker 2: going to do, for example, is implant the device more
Speaker 2: aligned with the curvature of the skull, and they're going
Speaker 2: to try to place the threads that drop down from
Speaker 2: that device in a more targeted way in the brain tissue,
Speaker 2: and they're going to implant them deeper.
Speaker 4: This was kind of classic. This was it was classic
Speaker 4: Elon Musk related company stuff where he's like on X
Speaker 4: the platform he owns, and saying, oh, by the way,
Speaker 4: we're going to go live in five minutes. And yet
Speaker 4: this team of people in like a conference room who
Speaker 4: were some of those people, I guess we're not as
Speaker 4: familiar with Neuralink as we might be with space X
Speaker 4: and Tesla on those other important people around.
Speaker 2: Him, right, So he had a team of for execs
Speaker 2: with him. Sitting immediately to his right was doctor Matthew McDougall,
Speaker 2: the chief surgeon at Neuralink, who kind of i'd say
Speaker 2: gave most of the updates, and to the rate of
Speaker 2: him was Djsio, the president of Neuralink. He's recently been
Speaker 2: promoted to president. They also had the person in charge
Speaker 2: of software and also in charge of the brain implants
Speaker 2: in the bases themselves.
Speaker 5: Sarah.
Speaker 3: There was the mixture, of course of short term practical
Speaker 3: use cases of brain injury, spinal injuries enabling people to
Speaker 3: use phones and computers. But then there's the long term
Speaker 3: and then there's the brash elong coming front and center
Speaker 3: once again. What do you say is to mitigate the
Speaker 3: longest civilizational risk of AI? Can you articulate why he
Speaker 3: thinks neuralink is apart for that?
Speaker 2: Well, his ideas that AI could end up being a
Speaker 2: malevolent force and so our brains will need aug mending
Speaker 2: to combat that, and if you put implants in our brains,
Speaker 2: we'll kind of have superhuman powers. He's talked about how
Speaker 2: we might be able to communicate wordlessly or just download
Speaker 2: languages essentially into our brains, and he thinks those types
Speaker 2: of superior functions will help us fight AI if we need.
Speaker 3: To, Sarah McBride on the latest and in fact, we
Speaker 3: now want to talk about the fact that there are
Speaker 3: competitors in the space, Sara mcgriders. We've been writing about one,
Speaker 3: of course, when it comes to neurotech and the neuralink
Speaker 3: rival is Syncrom.
Speaker 5: We're going to talk about it's just.
Speaker 3: Announcing that it's actually partnering more with AI, tapping open
Speaker 3: AI's news technology to really help paralyzed patients communicate by
Speaker 3: using their brain device. Here for more synchron Ceo Tom Oxley, Tom,
Speaker 3: it's great to have you in the studio, and sometimes
Speaker 3: I imagine it feels as neuralink takes the oxygen in
Speaker 3: that out of the room when it comes to these
Speaker 3: neurotech devices. But you have got ten patients using yours,
Speaker 3: and how is open AI's integration going to be helping them?
Speaker 12: So the idea of a BCI is that you can
Speaker 12: help people who are paralyzed who can't control their bodies
Speaker 12: to express themselves. So the problem with paralysis is a
Speaker 12: lack of autonomy, and it's a problem in medicine that
Speaker 12: hasn't really got many treatment options. If you're paralyzed, you
Speaker 12: do rehab and there's not many treatment options. So huge
Speaker 12: unmet need, massive potential for a large market to develop.
Speaker 12: So it's exciting. I think ALON for focusing on this
Speaker 12: field is great. I'm not sure about that future vision
Speaker 12: around the idea about fighting AI, where I think there's
Speaker 12: a much more important short term use case to help
Speaker 12: a massive medical need and so we're very focused on
Speaker 12: applications that are going to improve patient's autonomy. And so
Speaker 12: when the Chatchipit four O, the multimodal GPT came out,
Speaker 12: we realized that there was this was a huge ability
Speaker 12: for patients who lack the ability to engage in the
Speaker 12: world to improve both inputs and outputs with the system.
Speaker 3: How can you give us explanations of how GPT four
Speaker 3: is going to enable those that can't as you communicate,
Speaker 3: interact with what's happening around them in the room for example.
Speaker 12: So the multimodal it takes inputs from text, from vision,
Speaker 12: and from audio, so multimodal inputs, and then it can
Speaker 12: use all that to generate prompts that enable the users.
Speaker 12: In our case, we can use our hands to interact
Speaker 12: with prompts. In patients that are paralyzed, you can't engage
Speaker 12: with prompts. So we took the opportunity to build into
Speaker 12: a chat feature, which we just released a demo of today,
Speaker 12: where the multimodal GPT generates the language prompt for our
Speaker 12: users and then so that's the input. The output is
Speaker 12: the selection of the prompt to then generate a next action.
Speaker 12: But the BCI sits in the middle. The BCI sits
Speaker 12: in the middle. The BCI represents your ability to make
Speaker 12: a true and that's what you lose if you're paralyzed.
Speaker 12: You lose your ability to engage and make choices. You
Speaker 12: become dependent on other people. So the BCI is a
Speaker 12: digital representation of what you want to do, and the
Speaker 12: future of the link between BCI and AI is how
Speaker 12: the direct link from the brain to make selections with
Speaker 12: prompts lets you engage with the digital world.
Speaker 4: Tom, it's good to see you again, Carrie. Tom and
Speaker 4: I were on stage together a couple of months ago
Speaker 4: in San Francisco, and you were talking at that time
Speaker 4: about the progress that could be made with your your
Speaker 4: different delivery system. Right, So Neurer link is straight into
Speaker 4: the brain through the skull. You guys do this through
Speaker 4: the cardiovascular system. What has the LM unlocked in terms
Speaker 4: of your cadence of putting it into the real world.
Speaker 4: You know that was something I was fixated on with
Speaker 4: you when we were talking.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there are advantages.
Speaker 12: So they're really we see two approaches of getting into
Speaker 12: the brain, cutting open the head and going in with
Speaker 12: cables or coming in through a blood vessel using a
Speaker 12: stent based procedure, and so that's how we're differentiated. We
Speaker 12: think this is going to be the natural solution in medicine.
Speaker 12: There's many examples of minimally invasive approaches scaling into market stents, pacemakers,
Speaker 12: and critically. The infrastructure to deliver its scale already exists,
Speaker 12: and we think that's going to be the natural progression
Speaker 12: of this technology. The challenge is that we don't have
Speaker 12: as much information coming out of the brain. So the
Speaker 12: key has been how can we use the information out
Speaker 12: of the brain to deliver navigate and select, which is
Speaker 12: basically how you control a platform. So we have a
Speaker 12: interaction method which delivers navigate and select. We're using that
Speaker 12: Apple iOS accessibility platform to deliver that, and now we're
Speaker 12: infusing LM such as Multi Medal Chat GPT to allow
Speaker 12: our users to make choices interacting with prompts in a
Speaker 12: way which is amazing. So Mark, one of our users
Speaker 12: in Pittsburgh, has been using this system and we just
Speaker 12: released the demo today of how he's using it, and
Speaker 12: we're really excited about, you know, using especially our open
Speaker 12: AI are going to be moving forward with the new
Speaker 12: programs bringing in video as an endpoint into the RAPI
Speaker 12: is going to be very exciting for our patients. But
Speaker 12: that's going to be the future. AI for Knowledge and Selections,
Speaker 12: BCI for expression of intent.
Speaker 3: This is beyond hard, complicated and expensive.
Speaker 5: Are you looking to raise funds? Do you have a
Speaker 5: healthy pipe rune of people interested.
Speaker 3: In backing and expanding your project.
Speaker 12: We're very lucky to have investors that we're excited about.
Speaker 12: Kosler and Archventures and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 6: We have.
Speaker 12: We have decent runway for a little while, but we
Speaker 12: will be We'll be looking to raise shortly.
Speaker 4: Saint Chron CEO Tom Oxley, thank you, Caroline. I want
Speaker 4: to bring you some breaking news from myself and Dana Hole.
Speaker 4: Tesla plans to delay the unveiling of its Robotaxi or
Speaker 4: its Robotaxi day until Octo. You remember, Caroline, that it
Speaker 4: had been scheduled for August eighth. But what I'm hearing
Speaker 4: from sources, and what Danna's heard from her sources, is
Speaker 4: that they just want more prototypes. I'm actually also hearing
Speaker 4: that there's a bit of a rethink on the design
Speaker 4: and that this is all kind of happened in the
Speaker 4: last twenty four hours or so. It's an interesting development.
Speaker 4: I don't really know what to make of it, other
Speaker 4: than you see the stock their carrot moving down significantly.
Speaker 6: What does that tell you?
Speaker 3: Sudden plunge that everyone had started to look at August
Speaker 3: the eighth.
Speaker 5: This was the fixation, wasn't it. When we got the
Speaker 5: delivery numbers that underwhelmed.
Speaker 3: The excuse coming from the street was that no, but
Speaker 3: everyone wants to think.
Speaker 5: About what August the eighth means.
Speaker 3: What's the longer term vision ultimately of Teza. Their share
Speaker 3: price run up ahead of this headline ed has been
Speaker 3: pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 5: Last ten days.
Speaker 3: We've had forty billion dollars in market capitalization and suddenly
Speaker 3: we sell off. What an amazing scoot that you've just
Speaker 3: brought us.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I've asked Elon Musk what's going on.
Speaker 4: We've asked him to come on the progress and to
Speaker 4: comment on the story, etc. The big picture here is
Speaker 4: really interesting because the original thesis was when you buy
Speaker 4: a vehicle from Tesla, it comes with all the hardware
Speaker 4: and software you need for self driving. So when your
Speaker 4: lease ends, either Tesla takes a vehicle back from you
Speaker 4: and they put it into a fleet or the middle
Speaker 4: ground was that you can opt in to put your
Speaker 4: ev from Tesla into the fleet, much like you might
Speaker 4: put your home on Airbnb. But the third iteration that
Speaker 4: was outlined to us at the AGM was that they
Speaker 4: want to also do a purpose built ROBOTAXI, so you'd
Speaker 4: have a combinational three on what is a proprietary app,
Speaker 4: much like an uber. The stock now down four percent,
Speaker 4: and I guess it investors to your point are saying, well,
Speaker 4: this was supposed to be it like we were going
Speaker 4: to learn what the plan is, and now we might
Speaker 4: be waiting a little longer.
Speaker 3: And we can now bring in one Max Chafkin who
Speaker 3: races back to set to be discussing that this was
Speaker 3: the fixation of so many not the Tesla owners, but
Speaker 3: the Tsla owners, a lot of those that particularly believe
Speaker 3: in the long term vision is about robotax division.
Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely, And I mean there were huge questions when
Speaker 9: Elon Musk said they were going to have this launch
Speaker 9: on August. Dave, you know, there was you know, is
Speaker 9: it going to be an affordable car and the sense
Speaker 9: of a car you might want to buy. Is it
Speaker 9: going to be a ROBOTAXI, is it gonna have a
Speaker 9: steering wheel? You know, lots of questions like that, and
Speaker 9: I think investors were sort of just going with it,
Speaker 9: right because Elon Musk, as we've talked about on this
Speaker 9: show many times, has a very good track record. And again,
Speaker 9: the reaction you're seeing from the stock is a reaction
Speaker 9: to the uncertainty and like, is it If it's just
Speaker 9: a few months delay, probably no big deal. But I
Speaker 9: think there are real questions, profound questions about robotaxis and
Speaker 9: how real this is in the near term. And then
Speaker 9: on top of that, you have questions about Tesla's ability.
Speaker 6: To market cars.
Speaker 9: Right, well, what does this mean for someone who just
Speaker 9: wants to buy an affordable electric car NX.
Speaker 4: I'm just looking at the Bloomberg terminal, you know, a
Speaker 4: decline of five point five percent for what it's worth
Speaker 4: is putting tests on track for it biggest drop since
Speaker 4: April thirtieth, now down more than six percent, So investors
Speaker 4: are kind of looking at this. I also want to
Speaker 4: talk with you about the kind of academic approach to
Speaker 4: self driving. So Tesla has a vision based platform. It
Speaker 4: does not use lidar radar, but Karen and I were
Speaker 4: talking while you're running down the stairs the set about
Speaker 4: the idea that initially this was if you owned a Tesla,
Speaker 4: that Tesla would end up in a fleet, much like
Speaker 4: you put your home on Airbnb, and then to our surprise,
Speaker 4: they go to a purpose built robotaxi. So what do
Speaker 4: you make of the purpose built robotaxi bit? And I
Speaker 4: guess the delay is in part a lack of information
Speaker 4: about that strategy.
Speaker 9: I think there are probably a number of things going
Speaker 9: on here. I mean, as we know from previous reporting,
Speaker 9: there has been a lot of tension inside of Tesla
Speaker 9: over exactly how this should go. I mean Elon Musk
Speaker 9: as he personally has made clear, you know, believes in robotaxis.
Speaker 9: I think there are many people inside of Tesla who
Speaker 9: liked the as a vision, but are are sort of
Speaker 9: more open to the skeptical arguments.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 9: The thing that I've thought all along making this a
Speaker 9: somewhat unrealistic plan is just that you have companies like
Speaker 9: Cruise and Waimo that have been working very hard and
Speaker 9: spending billions of dollars and making lots of you know,
Speaker 9: doing lots of work to negotiate with various local partners
Speaker 9: and so on, and they haven't gotten that far right,
Speaker 9: Like like waimo is doesn't have that many vehicles, it
Speaker 9: isn't in that many locations. It's going to be very
Speaker 9: hard for Elon Musk to just switch this on. And
Speaker 9: I think if you're talking about like the trade offs
Speaker 9: between a personal vehicle and a robotaxi vehicle, that creates
Speaker 9: an additional complication.
Speaker 4: As we point out, you know, he often doesn't get
Speaker 4: it in the timeline he says he will, but he
Speaker 4: often gets there in the end with those products. Max
Speaker 4: traffickin thank.
Speaker 6: You so much.
Speaker 3: Heusing so Europeans thought up developing AI software for just
Speaker 3: raised rather mammoth three hundred and eighty seven million dollars.
Speaker 3: It plans to use this new funding to expand its
Speaker 3: presence in European nations bordering Russia.
Speaker 5: And what are you looking at?
Speaker 4: I'm looking at all the things a Bloomberg anchor is
Speaker 4: expected to look at, Caroline, global inflation, interest rates, macro uncertainty,
Speaker 4: because they've all pulled down global VC deal making. But
Speaker 4: in US at least, it's an oil doom and gloom
Speaker 4: with deal activity increasing on account basis for each of
Speaker 4: the past three quarters a positive sign that deals are
Speaker 4: getting done. Speaking all downward, Carl Stanford, lead VC analyst
Speaker 4: at Pitchburg. You know, the data is so important, even
Speaker 4: if it's backward looking, Kyle, because you know, we get
Speaker 4: a lot of the reporting each quarter about deals that
Speaker 4: are done, but then you see it in aggregate after
Speaker 4: the fact. Those three macro points. Why in the US
Speaker 4: is there less pressure from them?
Speaker 13: So I don't I don't think that there is less
Speaker 13: pressure when you actually died deep into the data. What
Speaker 13: we're seeing now is companies coming back to market that
Speaker 13: haven't raised since twenty twenty one or early twenty twenty two,
Speaker 13: and so the time that they spent you know, kind
Speaker 13: of kicking the can down the road for financing, through layoffs,
Speaker 13: through slower growth, through extending their run their can. Now
Speaker 13: they're coming back to market to raise. There's still a
Speaker 13: huge amount of dry powder in the in the US
Speaker 13: as well. We're talking about two hundred ninety five billion
Speaker 13: in dry powder then needs to be put to work.
Speaker 13: So there is equity deals getting done, which is a
Speaker 13: positive sign from an interest standpoint, But many of those
Speaker 13: companies are just now coming back to market and kind
Speaker 13: of inflating the number of companies raising at the.
Speaker 3: Moment, So they've white knuckled it. They managed to get through.
Speaker 3: How many of them have had to make themselves an
Speaker 3: AI related play as well.
Speaker 13: But we're seeing about twenty six percent of deals being
Speaker 13: completed into AI companies, whether they are you know, foundational
Speaker 13: true foundational models with llms or kind of vertical applications
Speaker 13: using open AI to do some sort of their business model,
Speaker 13: you know, fifty percent of deal value as well. I
Speaker 13: think everything is pointing toward AI. If you're an LP,
Speaker 13: you want to get into an AI fund, If you're
Speaker 13: an investor, you want to get into an AI company.
Speaker 13: If you're a company you want to somehow pivot to
Speaker 13: an AI business model. I think it's kind of the
Speaker 13: big talk of the market right now.
Speaker 4: So we're showing us VC deal activity by quarter backward
Speaker 4: looking and then two Q extrapolate out about what you
Speaker 4: see for the rest of the year.
Speaker 6: Kyle, Sure.
Speaker 13: The first thing I want to point out is that
Speaker 13: of that fifty five point six billion, about fifteen billion
Speaker 13: of it is from two deals, the core Weave, you know,
Speaker 13: eight point five billion dollar deal and then the open
Speaker 13: AI or XAI I'm sorry, six billion dollar deal, right,
Speaker 13: So that's really inflating the top line value. Where we
Speaker 13: see the rest of the year going is obviously going
Speaker 13: to be driven by any large deals that happen, but
Speaker 13: it's going to be continued to be relatively slow for
Speaker 13: the middle of the pack to the lower quality companies.
Speaker 13: I think what we're seeing now is high quality companies
Speaker 13: getting those deals done. If you look in the data,
Speaker 13: valuations look really high compared to really any year. But
Speaker 13: what is again what is happening is was companies are
Speaker 13: raised on high valuations in the past are coming and
Speaker 13: raising again now. And if they're higher quality that it's
Speaker 13: boosting up that median value or pre money valuation they
Speaker 13: were seen. It's not necessarily the market strength that it
Speaker 13: would actually portray from just looking at the data.
Speaker 3: Carl Stanfan always bringing us the latest and greatest in VC.
Speaker 5: We thank you from pitchbook. This is meg Technology.
Speaker 4: President Biden is steadily losing support from a part of
Speaker 4: the country that knows image and stagecraft the best Hollywood.
Speaker 4: Since the debate, heavy hitters including George Clooney, Super Agent,
Speaker 4: Aria Manual, Netflix's read Hastings in Airess, Abigail Disney have
Speaker 4: all called on Biden to drop his re election bid.
Speaker 4: Clooney is a lifelong Democrat who helped raise thirty million
Speaker 4: dollars for the president at an event last month and
Speaker 4: said Democrats can pray for a miracle in November, or
Speaker 4: they can speak the truth. Some in Hollywood are now
Speaker 4: even turning against media mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who serves as
Speaker 4: a co chair of Biden's reelection campaign, and it's one
Speaker 4: of the president's top donors who they say has intentionally
Speaker 4: shielded Biden's decline until now.
Speaker 3: Karen and onto the other candidate in the presidential race,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. He's going to speak at Bitcoin twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four conference. It's this month and it's all according to
Speaker 3: the events organizers, and it's going to be an address
Speaker 3: that would highlight well his growing embrace at the crypto industry.
Speaker 3: That's discussed with Bluemotion, Shinali Bassak and Wes got all
Speaker 3: of crypto Twitter talking that he's going to be at
Speaker 3: this event, and it does seem to be more and
Speaker 3: more of the Republican viewpoint that this is something to
Speaker 3: win on that has.
Speaker 14: Been a massive debate and that is seemingly where things
Speaker 14: are coming off, especially when you've had such serious pushback year,
Speaker 14: not only from the Securities and Exchange Commission, but President
Speaker 14: Biden himself when it comes to certain aspects here the
Speaker 14: Biden Ministry's approach to how legislation has been crossing the
Speaker 14: lines in Congress. And so remember we're sending here at
Speaker 14: a moment where such little progress has been made on
Speaker 14: key stable coin bills, for example, and there's a hope
Speaker 14: here that perhaps a change in an administration will really
Speaker 14: start to dilute some of the influence some of the
Speaker 14: stronger voiced ancher crypto members of Congress have had, think
Speaker 14: Shared Brown, think Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 5: The idea here that a more.
Speaker 14: Republican president, but also more Republican lawmakers in Congress overall
Speaker 14: will really start to cause a dent in how the
Speaker 14: industry has been approached in the last four years.
Speaker 4: Italies, with the reporting that we had that Vivek Ramaswami
Speaker 4: mask Trump and Crypto is the common point for the emotion.
Speaker 4: Ali Bassett, thank you, good.
Speaker 3: Show character, what a thick of fass show, great reporting
Speaker 3: on Rivian and has great breaking news on Tesla from
Speaker 3: you as well.
Speaker 5: That does it from this edition of Being Bag.
Speaker 4: Technology recapital in the podcast, we missed a few shows
Speaker 4: this week, but we are back of New York and
Speaker 4: San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology