Speaker 1: From Marhart where Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde.
Speaker 2: And Ed Ludlow.
Speaker 3: Live from London for the Bloomberg Technology Summit. I'm Caroline Hyde.
Speaker 2: And I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3: Coming up. We'll have full earnings coverage.
Speaker 4: Ahead is Spotify reports the results, and Google and Microsoft
Speaker 4: we're going to.
Speaker 3: Deliver after the bell, We've got you covered.
Speaker 2: Plus, we'll hear from Reddick co founder Alexis o'hanian to
Speaker 2: talk his investments in AI and crypto are they living
Speaker 2: up to the hype?
Speaker 4: And with the Bloomberg Tech Summit underway in London, we'll
Speaker 4: hear from executives from Anthropic Delivery and so much more so.
Speaker 2: After the bell we get the giants Microsoft in alphabet.
Speaker 2: There's going to be interested in the cloud division of
Speaker 2: those two names, right, There always is, But there will
Speaker 2: also be intense interests in artificial intelligence. I guess by
Speaker 2: this stage we ask how is that showing up in sales?
Speaker 2: All of the R and D and investment in large
Speaker 2: language or foundation models, are they actually making any money
Speaker 2: from it? Top of mine right now is what's top
Speaker 2: of the list. Spotify on track for its biggest jump
Speaker 2: since January thirty first of this year, trading near its
Speaker 2: highest level since July. Top line beat, bottom line beat,
Speaker 2: premium subscriber beat, monthly active users beat. Let's get straight
Speaker 2: to the details with Bloomberg's Ashley Carmen and Ashley I
Speaker 2: guess the question is what is in the earnings playlist
Speaker 2: for Spotify? What were the top numbers?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the big headline item is that Spotify turn
Speaker 5: to profit in the third quarter at thirty two million
Speaker 5: euro and that definitely was a surprise for analysts who
Speaker 5: were expecting a pretty significant loss.
Speaker 4: And they'd say it's an inflection point.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us what really been the drivers of
Speaker 3: growth here?
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6: So over the past year, we've seen significant cost reduct
Speaker 6: whether it be looking to lease real estate that they
Speaker 6: previously rented, significant calling back on their podcast efforts, all
Speaker 6: of that. Plus in July they initiated their first price
Speaker 6: hikes on their standard plan in quite a while, which
Speaker 6: we're starting to see some of the revenue growth from
Speaker 6: that decision.
Speaker 2: Actually here on Bluemog Technology, we've talked a lot about
Speaker 2: what they've been doing in the artificial intelligence contexts and
Speaker 2: in the podcast context And it's interesting, right because they
Speaker 2: kind of did not green light some projects. They made
Speaker 2: cost cuts, headcount reduction, but if you look at the
Speaker 2: earnings that's showing up in a positive way.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they are really mentioning this year as their quote
Speaker 6: unquote efficient year. They're really trying to find all these
Speaker 6: different efficiencies, whether it be through AI, but really truly
Speaker 6: through this cost cutting and trying to make sure they're
Speaker 6: delivering on the businesses that they're pursuing.
Speaker 4: Well, we see total active views as well as some
Speaker 4: twenty six percent more than half billion. It's clear that
Speaker 4: we're seeing some well key year of efficiency starting to
Speaker 4: benefit in terms of growth too. Actually, Carmen, it's great
Speaker 4: to have some time with you, thank you very much,
Speaker 4: and deep breaking down the Spotify numbers and in need
Speaker 4: the rally that we saw in the shares and and look,
Speaker 4: that just sets us up for why there is so
Speaker 4: much optimism around some of these big tech names that
Speaker 4: are set to report after the bell, Microsoft.
Speaker 3: Alphabet of course, parent at Google going to be coming
Speaker 3: a little bit later.
Speaker 4: Let's bring in Ana agran Or a Bloomberg intelligence for
Speaker 4: what we can expect from Microsoft first and are we
Speaker 4: expecting key revenue growth here as well?
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, the number really to catch for is
Speaker 7: their cloud revenue. I mean it's a slight deceleration from
Speaker 7: last quarter, but guidance for next quarter I think is
Speaker 7: going to be really critical because in the software world,
Speaker 7: Microsoft is the you know, the biggest player in AI
Speaker 7: or anything generated AI right now. So I think that's
Speaker 7: really where our eyes are going to be, our years
Speaker 7: are going to be. You know, when they talk about
Speaker 7: guidance for next quarter.
Speaker 2: You know the battleground that I love to track and
Speaker 2: a rag is the hyper scale cloud, right and I
Speaker 2: think sure it's topline growth forecasts for around twenty seven percent.
Speaker 2: I know we're so excited about artificial intelligence, we genuinely are,
Speaker 2: but ultimately, how much do you focus on the bread
Speaker 2: and butter business?
Speaker 8: See?
Speaker 7: Right now, the bread and burder business is not going
Speaker 7: to accelerate the way the cloud should over the next
Speaker 7: twelve to eighteen months. So that's why we really trying
Speaker 7: trying to figure out if enterprise customers are still in
Speaker 7: the cost cutting mode or have they started to invest
Speaker 7: Because that data point I think is the single most
Speaker 7: important thing for technology companies because unless that happens, you know,
Speaker 7: you're not going to see a recovery in a lot
Speaker 7: of these valuations that have gotten beaten up over the
Speaker 7: last you know, couple of I would say, what.
Speaker 4: Was what about spending at the moment? Anak how much
Speaker 4: are they willing to be investing in their own business?
Speaker 4: Because boy, they've been investing in open Ai.
Speaker 7: Yeah, see the investment part I am. I personally, I
Speaker 7: am not concerned about whether you know, I think it's
Speaker 7: going to remain strong for all cloud providers only because
Speaker 7: the backlog or the long term models are still there.
Speaker 7: People need to invest and you know, move away from
Speaker 7: on premise infrastructure. So I'm not concerned about CAPEX as
Speaker 7: much as some you know, maybe investors are. But you know,
Speaker 7: from my site, I think it's going to continue for
Speaker 7: for many years to come.
Speaker 2: All Right, I was being a bit sassy about cloud
Speaker 2: and artifisial intelligence. Get it sasy software as a anyway,
Speaker 2: Anna rag Rana of Bloomberg Intelligence, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Let's get at Google's results after Caroline love that I
Speaker 2: know I knew you with all right, hard pivot Google's
Speaker 2: after the bell. Who else is here but Mandy seeper
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Intelligence, Mandy ads it's going to be a story
Speaker 2: of how the ad business is done. We talked just
Speaker 2: there about the sort of bread and butter business for Microsoft.
Speaker 2: Is that what Bloomberg Intelligence looks for in Google's context
Speaker 2: as well?
Speaker 9: Yeah, and to me, you know, the bogie for YouTube
Speaker 9: is quite low. When you think about Search, you know,
Speaker 9: growing at nine percent consensus expectations and YouTube at ten percent.
Speaker 9: You have to wonder why is YouTube not growing faster
Speaker 9: when Meta is expected to grow twenty one percent? And
Speaker 9: the real comparison here is YouTube shorts versus Meta reels.
Speaker 9: Meta reels we know is a ten billion dollars run
Speaker 9: read business. They have three exit over the last twelve months.
Speaker 9: I think investors want to know what's going on with
Speaker 9: YouTube shorts and if it's going to drive that top
Speaker 9: line growth. And on the cloud side, I mean, look,
Speaker 9: I mentioned about large anguid models. The good thing with
Speaker 9: Google Cloud is they don't have a legacy business where
Speaker 9: you know, Google Cloud is going to cannibalize its legacy business.
Speaker 9: It's all incremental revenue from AI and large anglid models.
Speaker 9: And I think if they give any details around the
Speaker 9: licensing of their large anguid models, that would be quite interesting.
Speaker 3: Mandid.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of handwringing though previous couple of
Speaker 4: quarters about well the competitive threat that generator of AI
Speaker 4: certainly maybe coming from being Finally have they managed to
Speaker 4: shake off any anxiety that search is going to be
Speaker 4: upended here?
Speaker 9: I mean, Caroline, this search is one business that has
Speaker 9: still the strongest mode. And granted, you know GPT got traffic,
Speaker 9: you know, the one hundred million users, but when you
Speaker 9: look at the ad revenue, I don't think it's gonna
Speaker 9: make a dent, at least for now and over time. Look,
Speaker 9: Google has the advantage that they have over four billion
Speaker 9: monthly active users with search, and even if you know,
Speaker 9: the volume goes down because they are more large anguage
Speaker 9: models doing searches, they still have the distribution. And so
Speaker 9: to me, Search will continue to grow, you know, high
Speaker 9: single digit and it's all about the other drivers, the
Speaker 9: YouTube and the cloud that's going to accelerate the growth
Speaker 9: through double digits.
Speaker 2: Madip, there's part of this week which is the kind
Speaker 2: of timing and structure of it. So Alphabet kind of
Speaker 2: reports first, and you have meta Snap down the road
Speaker 2: and Alphabet or Google kind of set the tone for
Speaker 2: social media companies that make money from ads. Do you
Speaker 2: expect it to play out that way that way this
Speaker 2: week as well?
Speaker 10: No.
Speaker 9: I think it's going to be tough for the smaller
Speaker 9: players simply because companies are still prudent about their sales
Speaker 9: and marketing spend and they want to focus on the
Speaker 9: highest ROI, and we know the highest ROI is search
Speaker 9: and meta, Instagram and you know the social media, large
Speaker 9: social media properties. I think Snap and Pinterest will have
Speaker 9: easier comms, So that's good, But in terms of acceleration,
Speaker 9: it's too early to say that we are headed for,
Speaker 9: you know, a big rebound in AD spending next year.
Speaker 4: Man name saying a Bloomberg Intelligence, We thank you so
Speaker 4: much as we look ahead to those big earnings and
Speaker 4: a key discussion about AI. We've got more of that
Speaker 4: to come from One Alexis Ohanian, founder of VC firm
Speaker 4: seven seventy six.
Speaker 3: Co founder of course of Reddit.
Speaker 4: He's just sat down with our own at Ludlow. Listen
Speaker 4: to it in a minute. Listen bloom Bag Technology.
Speaker 3: Time now for talking tech.
Speaker 4: First up, in Vidia in processes from arm holdings to
Speaker 4: develop chips for personal computers. Sources say that in Vidia
Speaker 4: plans to make CPUs.
Speaker 3: You know, we always associated with GPUs, but they would.
Speaker 4: Run on Microsoft Windows and go on sales in as
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five. Now AMD is also working with ARM
Speaker 4: based processes. Of course, that's a chip design company to
Speaker 4: move is really all putting pressure on the rival Intel,
Speaker 4: which makes similar technology for PCs.
Speaker 3: Also talking to AI chips.
Speaker 4: The startup Rebellions is hoping to raise abou one hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars in global investors. Based in South Korea, the
Speaker 4: startup is in talks over Series B financing. They may
Speaker 4: value the company at more than half a billion. Rebellions
Speaker 4: is one of several players trying to capitalize off of
Speaker 4: the rapid appeal of artificial intelligence software. Plus a group
Speaker 4: of bipartisan centers will host yet another crop of tech
Speaker 4: leaders and executives discuss well how to regulate this AI.
Speaker 4: It will be the second in a series of forums
Speaker 4: led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and indeed the
Speaker 4: VC billionaire Mark and Risen is expected to attend and
Speaker 4: then the previous forum took place on sept to the
Speaker 4: thirteenth and included pearances from well Elon Musk for example, ed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's stick with the artificial intelligence conversation. Earlier today,
Speaker 2: I caught up with Alexis o'hanian, the founder of seven
Speaker 2: seven six of course the co founder of Readit as well.
Speaker 2: We discussed his approach to investing in AI companies and
Speaker 2: how he's thought about the hype around AI this year.
Speaker 10: Have a listen, there's a lot of hype right now.
Speaker 10: I've been investing in the space for over a decade,
Speaker 10: back when it was just narrow AI companies, you know,
Speaker 10: seating companies like Athellis and Cruise. So this is really
Speaker 10: now a big breakthrough. Generalized AI is a giant buzzword,
Speaker 10: but there is some real special truth there, and we're
Speaker 10: looking for companies that are using this technology to enhance
Speaker 10: the user experience and outside of ways. It really is
Speaker 10: as simple as that, and we're seeing across the portfolio
Speaker 10: from AI produced dubbing like Deep Tune to sports media
Speaker 10: Rita's been companies like score Plates. It's not about just
Speaker 10: the buzzword, it's about how are you improving users' lives
Speaker 10: using this technology effortlessly.
Speaker 2: When I was looking through the port you know, the
Speaker 2: examples of score play and deep tune. You kind of
Speaker 2: split it maybe into a tool, an AI tool which
Speaker 2: we call generative AI, and then an existing technology platform
Speaker 2: which is kind of improved or added to using AI.
Speaker 2: You know, explain to us why score play and deep
Speaker 2: tune fit those two kind of categories and why you'd invested.
Speaker 3: In them for sure.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, as the owner of two professional sports teams,
Speaker 10: I know how important media management is and this process
Speaker 10: of actually capturing the clips, the photos or everything happening
Speaker 10: on the pitch or in the stands, and then you know,
Speaker 10: getting those out to the athletes, to social media, to
Speaker 10: your media partners. That is a ton of work, and
Speaker 10: software should automatically be able to seamlessly make all that
Speaker 10: happen way more effectively. But now you layer in AI
Speaker 10: and you have something that now does it ten times faster.
Speaker 10: Whether it's identifying you know, this is Sidney LaRue, this
Speaker 10: is her kicking a goal, this is the door dash
Speaker 10: logo visible, and so all of that stuff can now
Speaker 10: be automated away and so smaller teams can get far
Speaker 10: more done. And it's not reinventing a whole new technology.
Speaker 10: It's leveling up existing software that already has deep relationships
Speaker 10: with customers. And so there are going to be these
Speaker 10: types of companies that have strong moats and lock in
Speaker 10: that are going to win. And you know, there's going
Speaker 10: to be big winners in.
Speaker 3: The space as well.
Speaker 10: Chat GBT is probably the most famous one, which I'm
Speaker 10: not an investor in, though I really should have bugged
Speaker 10: Sam about that a lot earlier. You know, I use
Speaker 10: it to tell bedtime stories with my daughter, and so
Speaker 10: you're seeing this very generalized, you know, approach from NLM
Speaker 10: like Open Eye that's going to solve a lot of
Speaker 10: problems for a lot of people, and then much more
Speaker 10: specific approaches that are solving at least right now, strong
Speaker 10: business needs and you know, offering it like any other
Speaker 10: subscription as a service business.
Speaker 2: Just real quick if you do bug Sam Altman. I
Speaker 2: reported last week that there's a tender off underway right
Speaker 2: and there's pretty big, big blocks of shares on the
Speaker 2: secondaries market. Yes that you know value open AI eighty
Speaker 2: six ninety billion, more than one hundred billion. Some of
Speaker 2: the prospectus that I've seen, is that a way for
Speaker 2: you to get in or do you just you just
Speaker 2: stay away? From open Ai given its late growth stage.
Speaker 10: I am such an early investor. I want to be
Speaker 10: there at the point of inception all the way to
Speaker 10: maybe the Series A. That's that's when we like leading
Speaker 10: and writing that first check. At this stage, I still
Speaker 10: think there is value, but it's not you know, it's
Speaker 10: above my pay grade. I enjoy I enjoy being super
Speaker 10: early and right, but you know, it's still it's going
Speaker 10: to continue to surprise us. I think what these technologies
Speaker 10: are able to do, and yes, there is a ton
Speaker 10: of hype, but I do think the sky is the limit.
Speaker 10: And I've known Sam since he did y Combinator together
Speaker 10: back in two thousand and five, and one thing he
Speaker 10: has never lacked is ambition. And so if there's anyone
Speaker 10: who can turn this into you know what all the
Speaker 10: sort of hype is about, it would be him.
Speaker 2: So a big emphasis there on artificial intelligence. Alexis Hani
Speaker 2: and seven seven six found a co founder of Reddit.
Speaker 10: I have been in crypto for over a decade. I
Speaker 10: have invested through every single winter, and none of them
Speaker 10: phase me. They're all healthy because they sort of clear
Speaker 10: out the tourists and the grifters in every sector, in
Speaker 10: every industry, and I think here we're seeing a response
Speaker 10: to my guests, a sort of broader macro and global uncertainty.
Speaker 10: And what's wild is I know, for some viewers it
Speaker 10: may seem a little surprising that people would find safety
Speaker 10: in a volatile cryptocurrency like bitcoin, but the fact that
Speaker 10: it is truly decentralized and the fact that it is
Speaker 10: backed by conviction, you know, to me, bitcoin has never
Speaker 10: felt really all that different from gold.
Speaker 3: Ah the age old digital gold.
Speaker 4: Alexasirhanian there are seven seven six, just talking a little
Speaker 4: bit more about his thesis around Web three, around crypto,
Speaker 4: around bitcoin, and of course it has just hit thirty
Speaker 4: five thousand dollars for the first time this year. Of course,
Speaker 4: it's all kind of based on fresh demands, some of
Speaker 4: them maybe for resilience in conflict, others well because we
Speaker 4: think an ETF is going to be signed off sometimes
Speaker 4: soon for spot bitcoin. Let's talk about it all with
Speaker 4: Amy James, co executive director of Web three Working Group.
Speaker 4: You join us, and of course a lot of our
Speaker 4: advocacy work is about making sure everyone has got the
Speaker 4: access the information to be able to be playing a
Speaker 4: part in Web three. The ATF exposure, the ability to invest.
Speaker 4: Is that really what's behind this thirty five thousand dollar pop.
Speaker 1: It could be absolutely thank you so much for having
Speaker 1: me on the show, just wanting to say that before
Speaker 1: you get started. And it absolutely could be the speculation
Speaker 1: that that's happening. And it also could be the economic
Speaker 1: uncertainty as the previous guest was talking about, that is
Speaker 1: driving people into bitcoin because it is potentially a more
Speaker 1: stable asset over time. I personally think that the bitcoin
Speaker 1: price action is the least interesting aspect of bitcoin, and
Speaker 1: it's the technology underneath it that is far more important,
Speaker 1: more exciting, and will have a much more profound impact
Speaker 1: on our daily lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Amy, this is why I'm so excited to have
Speaker 2: you on the program. You know, you can see it
Speaker 2: as bitcoin as a currency and the underlying blockchain technology
Speaker 2: what makes it secure? If bitcoin has this kind of
Speaker 2: upward trajectory thirty five thousand dollars now, Sunny Singh was
Speaker 2: on the show last week talking about above one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand at some point next year. Does that help the
Speaker 2: technology become accepted and utilized in societies around the world.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely right. Every time we have a ball run,
Speaker 1: more and more people find out about the technology. It's
Speaker 1: the price action that is, you know, the kind of
Speaker 1: headline that gets people drawn in.
Speaker 3: But once they once they come.
Speaker 1: Into the space, they learn about the technology that really
Speaker 1: has the potential to reshape the foundation of the Internet
Speaker 1: and return it to its original vision of being a
Speaker 1: free and fair marketplace for ideas. And so you know,
Speaker 1: as they say, bear markets are for builders, and we
Speaker 1: have been in a bear market since the Terra Luna
Speaker 1: collapse in May of last year, and during that time
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of building has happened. And now I
Speaker 1: would say that the deep PIN sector of the cryptospace,
Speaker 1: which stands for decentralized physical infrastructure networks, is poised to
Speaker 1: be sort of the breakout hit of this next bull run,
Speaker 1: similar to NFTs and stable coins in previous runs.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, another acronym.
Speaker 4: So talk to us about deep in and what decentralized
Speaker 4: physical infrastructure It actually feels a lot more real, tangible.
Speaker 4: What exactly is it that you're building me?
Speaker 1: That's right, So decentralized physical infrastructure networks, I like to
Speaker 1: call them the plumbing of the web. So just as
Speaker 1: we rely on water flowing from our tap, we rely
Speaker 1: on these networks for the things that we do every day,
Speaker 1: the things that allow us to be on this video
Speaker 1: call together for you to broadcast your show to the world,
Speaker 1: things like video trans coding with networks like live peer,
Speaker 1: things like file storage networks. Those would be protocols like
Speaker 1: r weave and IPFS. File coin is what most people
Speaker 1: would know that as. And then also for things like
Speaker 1: GPU rentals, which I'm sure you know. GPUs have been
Speaker 1: a really constrained product because of supply issues, and so
Speaker 1: builders have had a hard time getting their hands on
Speaker 1: them to train their AI models, and marketplaces like a
Speaker 1: cash network are making those available on a rental sort
Speaker 1: of basis so that they can use them when they
Speaker 1: need them without having to outlay a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: cash to purchase them and also really having to help
Speaker 1: overcome those supply issues. So these networks are going to
Speaker 1: return the Web to its decentralized shape. What we've seen
Speaker 1: over the eras of Web one, Web two, and Web
Speaker 1: three is a change from a decentralized structure in the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the web and Web one, when everybody
Speaker 1: ran it on their own computers, and then it became
Speaker 1: centralized as We've entered this big heech.
Speaker 2: Era and web three really really quick, just before we
Speaker 2: run out of time here very quickly, just on what
Speaker 2: you said, is the United States a good place for
Speaker 2: this dream to become realized? Is a regulatory jurisdiction very quick.
Speaker 1: So our hope is that it will be right now,
Speaker 1: it is very precarious, and I think that the industry
Speaker 1: feels very nervous about what will happen. We have some
Speaker 1: great champions in the legislatorture who are helping to move
Speaker 1: that forward, and we wish them the best and hope
Speaker 1: that they are successful, because if not, we do face
Speaker 1: the really serious danger of losing the tech industry here
Speaker 1: in the US.
Speaker 2: All right, Amy James at the WED three working group
Speaker 2: here on Bloomberg Technology, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Caroline Hyde in London.
Speaker 2: And I'm Ed Lovela in San Francisco. I think you'd
Speaker 2: agree that this sort of candor third quarter earning season
Speaker 2: Artificial intelligence is what we're going to look for in
Speaker 2: terms of how's all of the news, all of the
Speaker 2: R and D actually showing up in the top line
Speaker 2: of these businesses invest in AI what do you have
Speaker 2: to show for it AI everything?
Speaker 4: And how many hundreds of times is it going to
Speaker 4: be cited in various earning releases.
Speaker 3: I know you'll be counting that one uphead, but in.
Speaker 4: Fact it has been front and center and our own
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Technology Summit today right here in London, and in
Speaker 4: fact we were hearing from Joe Kaplan and Bropic co
Speaker 4: founder and chief science officer, who waited on howard Thropic
Speaker 4: has made commitments to hold itself accountable for safer and
Speaker 4: more ethical AI.
Speaker 3: He spoke to Bradstone, haven't listen.
Speaker 11: One thing that we'd really like to see, And that's
Speaker 11: sort of part of part of the reason why we're
Speaker 11: excited to have started Anthropic is we think that there
Speaker 11: should be kind of a race to the top on
Speaker 11: safer AI, more ethical AI in preparation for the fact
Speaker 11: that we believe there will be more powerful systems on
Speaker 11: the horizon. So I think the goal is for there
Speaker 11: to be competition in the direction of safer and more
Speaker 11: reliable systems. So as to sort of make that concrete,
Speaker 11: we recently made a set of commitments, a responsible Scaling policy.
Speaker 11: Responsible scaling commitments about basically standards that will hold ourselves
Speaker 11: to as we build more powerful systems. So the current
Speaker 11: systems we have now like Claude two, we have information security,
Speaker 11: we have constitutional AI. We think that that's sufficient, but
Speaker 11: we're imagining systems that are effectively able to operate autonomously,
Speaker 11: a system that might be able to sort of install
Speaker 11: itself and run itself on new computers all on its own,
Speaker 11: or a system potentially that might be used by bad
Speaker 11: actors to say, build or operate cyber weapons, other kinds
Speaker 11: of other kinds of other kinds of weapons. We all
Speaker 11: know that current AI systems are really helpful to software
Speaker 11: engineers for coding, but if you take that a step further,
Speaker 11: the more powerful equivalent systems could be used used for hacking.
Speaker 11: So we're very concerned about those possibilities and even more
Speaker 11: speculative possibilities over the next few years. And so we
Speaker 11: made a set of commitments about the sort of information
Speaker 11: security and the level of safety and robustness to what's
Speaker 11: called red teaming, where people try to break these models
Speaker 11: to get them to violate their principles and do something bad.
Speaker 4: Jared Kaplan, then Eanthropic co founder chief, starts efforts talking
Speaker 4: with Bradstone.
Speaker 3: Let's still keep to.
Speaker 4: Talking about artificial intelligence and Synthashia is with us, the
Speaker 4: world's leading AI video creation platform for enterprises. It's making
Speaker 4: video production simple and intuitive without the need for cameras
Speaker 4: or studios.
Speaker 3: Very pleased to say that Victor Rippabelli is with us.
Speaker 4: He's a Synthesia CEO, part of the inaugural list of
Speaker 4: Bloombag UK tech startups to watch as well. So Victor, great, congratulations,
Speaker 4: wonderful to see you singled out as really wanted to
Speaker 4: be watching and boy is everyone watching AI and boys
Speaker 4: the UK government watching AI?
Speaker 3: How much do you think.
Speaker 4: This conversation around, well, the direction of travel the guardrails
Speaker 4: has changed since you were first building this company.
Speaker 8: I think what we've seen we've been building for almost
Speaker 8: seven years and has always been a topic for regulators,
Speaker 8: always been a topic for the take country. Of course,
Speaker 8: this is in many ways not new technology. It's just
Speaker 8: had its moment where I think the world really woke
Speaker 8: up to the fact how powerful these technologies are going
Speaker 8: to be and how much they're going to be a
Speaker 8: part of everything in our lives. The chet ChiPT moment
Speaker 8: as we usually call it, which happened late last year.
Speaker 8: I think really just gave us a version of this
Speaker 8: technology that was incredibly accessible. Everyone with the Internet connection
Speaker 8: and an email address could sign up and try to
Speaker 8: play around with these tools to see all the amazing
Speaker 8: things they can do, but also discover some of the
Speaker 8: pitfalls of these technologies and some of the things we
Speaker 8: have to watch out for. And the government right now
Speaker 8: is obviously very focused on how we put the right
Speaker 8: guard rails, but at the same time capture all the
Speaker 8: amazing opportunity.
Speaker 3: So Thedia, of course, has captured the attention of a
Speaker 3: lot of clients. I mean, what is it.
Speaker 4: You're in forty seven percent of Fortune one hundred companies
Speaker 4: already using it, I mean hundreds thousands if not deploying
Speaker 4: your videos. Why what are they doing to use your
Speaker 4: tech in particular.
Speaker 3: How are they working with it?
Speaker 8: So the core thing is that we live in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty three and people want to watch and listen to content.
Speaker 8: They don't want to read that much anymore, and for
Speaker 8: most people in their private lives, this is actually how
Speaker 8: they consume content. Like most people spend a lot of
Speaker 8: time on YouTube, TikTok and listen to podcasts reading is
Speaker 8: on the decline, no matter if you like that or not.
Speaker 8: But in the sector, it's really difficult to produce audio
Speaker 8: and video content, right, like filming things with a camera,
Speaker 8: recording things to the microphone. If you compare the production
Speaker 8: process to writing a work document and making a PowerPoint slide,
Speaker 8: for example, it's very very different.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 3: What we offer is.
Speaker 8: An alternative to traditional video production where you just like
Speaker 8: you would make a PowerPoint presentation, you simply select your avatar,
Speaker 8: you type out the script. You make these very kind
Speaker 8: of simple videos and for the enterprise, but this means
Speaker 8: that now they can train their employees or their customers
Speaker 8: way better than they could before. So the information retention
Speaker 8: of watching a video is around eight to ten times
Speaker 8: as high as we read something in text. That really
Speaker 8: is the utility that our customers get out of using SYNTHESIAIK.
Speaker 2: So thank you for explaining how the technology works. One
Speaker 2: of the stories we've covered here on the show is
Speaker 2: in the context of the Israel mass war and video
Speaker 2: content in circulation on social media platforms that purports to
Speaker 2: be one thing, but in reality is not that thing.
Speaker 2: It is fake or false. In some cases, video game
Speaker 2: video which is claimed to be video of what's happening
Speaker 2: on the ground. What is Synthesia doing to make sure
Speaker 2: that video content generated through the platform is not shared
Speaker 2: in such a way that is not used by bad
Speaker 2: actors to share false information.
Speaker 8: When we found the company, we did it on an
Speaker 8: ethical framework, which is around consent, control, and collaboration of
Speaker 8: the free seas as we call them. Content is around
Speaker 8: any avatar advice that we reproduced. The likeness of it
Speaker 8: is done with full consent from whoever's voice, a likeness
Speaker 8: that is second one around control, it's around content moderations.
Speaker 8: So we have very strict policies in place, but what
Speaker 8: kind of content you're allowed to create and what kind
Speaker 8: of content you're not allowed to create, and we monitor
Speaker 8: that both with automatic systems and also humans in the loop.
Speaker 8: For example, if you're creating news like content on current events,
Speaker 8: that's only allowed if you're on an enterprise plan, which
Speaker 8: means that we know who you are, and we know
Speaker 8: that you have a good reputation and most likely a
Speaker 8: well known media company. So we have a lot of
Speaker 8: safeguards in place to make sure that the technology isn't misused.
Speaker 8: In the case of what you're talking about, here. That's
Speaker 8: sort of a different technologies than hours hours around the
Speaker 8: AI avatars talking to the camera presenting something, whereas what
Speaker 8: we're seeing here right is so something is then an
Speaker 8: involvement of some of the disinformation and misinformation tactics that's
Speaker 8: been deployed the last ten twenty.
Speaker 3: Years, where you take a video of.
Speaker 8: An explosion, for example, that actually happened five years ago,
Speaker 8: where you say it happened yesterday. Now we're getting to
Speaker 8: a point where computer graphics is getting good enough to
Speaker 8: actually fool people into thinking that something that might have
Speaker 8: been done in a gaming engine is actually happening in
Speaker 8: real life. I think the ultimate technological solution to this
Speaker 8: is around fingerprinting content that we generate both with AI
Speaker 8: but also things we capture with a camera, so we
Speaker 8: can begin to build a provenance chain of where content
Speaker 8: came from, who created it, and I'm watching the original
Speaker 8: or edited version of it. It's a really our technical problem,
Speaker 8: but we're working on it with Adobe. Google is working
Speaker 8: on as well, and I have a lot of optimism
Speaker 8: that this technology will be are part of the media
Speaker 8: landscape within the next couple of years.
Speaker 3: Absolutely fascinating. We could talk to you for much longer.
Speaker 4: Sadly we can't, but the Synthesia CEO there, Victor Ripperbelly,
Speaker 4: UK based startup course ed. We've been focusing a lot
Speaker 4: on those that are currently being built right here in
Speaker 4: the capital of the EAED.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so important to have you there on the
Speaker 2: ground in London. Coming up we will have more from
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg Technology Summit and here from more of the
Speaker 2: startups on our Bloomberg Startups to Watch list. That's next.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 12: Earth ecosystems are delicately balanced, but they're under threat from
Speaker 12: our actions, and so monitoring biodiversity will allow business leaders
Speaker 12: to opt for more sustainable practices with so many data points,
Speaker 12: though traditionally that's been easier said than done.
Speaker 13: So Nature Metrics is a global nature technology company. We
Speaker 13: make biodiversity measurable by analyzing the tiny traces of DNA
Speaker 13: that all organisms leave behind in the environment. The process
Speaker 13: works by literally just taking water in a syringe and
Speaker 13: pushing it through a filter like this, and it captures
Speaker 13: all of the DNA from the water. So the water
Speaker 13: comes out the other side and all of the DNA
Speaker 13: from the water gets stuck inside and then this is
Speaker 13: sent to our lapse for analysis. So it's something that
Speaker 13: literally anybody anywhere.
Speaker 3: In the world can do. Yes, I got some.
Speaker 13: Strange looks when I went to investors and said.
Speaker 4: I'm going to revolutionize the scale of biodiversity monitoring and
Speaker 4: they went, what, Well, who's going to pay for that?
Speaker 13: I mean, buidiversity is not important enough for anyone with money.
Speaker 13: But actually that was wrong because there was a there
Speaker 13: was a market already, particularly in companies that were doing
Speaker 13: environmental impact assessments. Don't let perfect be the enemy of
Speaker 13: the good.
Speaker 3: Especially if you're a scientist.
Speaker 13: You can often feel like it's got to be ready
Speaker 13: to publish or ready to write a PhD paper on
Speaker 13: or you've tested it fifteen times before you go out
Speaker 13: and start using it, and you have to take such
Speaker 13: a different approach.
Speaker 4: In business, let's stick with startups here in Europe. Well,
Speaker 4: actually there's one that's been a key exit for the
Speaker 4: tech scene here in the UK, and we were discussing
Speaker 4: it at the Tech Summit just on today, online food
Speaker 4: delivery company Delivery. In fact, the CEO was just telling
Speaker 4: me that it is fielding ten thousand job applications a
Speaker 4: week in the United Kingdom and as one hundred percent
Speaker 4: committed to remain in the country. I sat down with Willshoes,
Speaker 4: the delivery CEO, earlier at the Bloomerg Technology Summit.
Speaker 3: Take listen.
Speaker 14: We're still well above where we were pre COVID, but
Speaker 14: I think what happened is as COVID on wound, we
Speaker 14: then also were hit with a extremely high inflation on
Speaker 14: the food side. So in some of our markets you've
Speaker 14: had food inflation three x that of wage inflation. So
Speaker 14: the UK was in that position probably about nine months ago.
Speaker 14: Now some of that subsided, and so if you look
Speaker 14: at that, for many people, what was I think a
Speaker 14: regular purchase sort of became discretionary. But for people who
Speaker 14: maybe are in London or in more affluent areas, it's persisted, right,
Speaker 14: And so what really we've seen is as inflation has
Speaker 14: slowed down for food, we're starting to see more and
Speaker 14: more recovery, which is good, but it's tough when it's
Speaker 14: three x out of wage inflation.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 4: You've also those seen improvements, as you say you weren't
Speaker 4: standing still, You've made changes to the app.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, what how have.
Speaker 14: You watched I'd say, you know, the big ones grocery right,
Speaker 14: it's you know, it's over eleven percent of our business.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 14: We've built that over kind of three to four years
Speaker 14: from a standing start, so that's been really great.
Speaker 10: We've built some.
Speaker 14: Dark stores called hop which is a compliment to our
Speaker 14: grocery business. We've done a lot of different things, but
Speaker 14: I think the thing I'm probably most proud of in
Speaker 14: the last twelve months is just a series of really
Speaker 14: sort of i'd call them incremental improvements to our service reliability.
Speaker 14: So for example, a better new user address flow, or
Speaker 14: for example, a better handover when the writer shows up,
Speaker 14: to really minimize code for example, Yeah, like a code
Speaker 14: right to minimize these sort of like errors that can happen,
Speaker 14: And the cumulative impact of those are very, very large,
Speaker 14: And the collective creativity it takes to actually do all
Speaker 14: of those things, to me, is as important as the
Speaker 14: shiny new thing like you know, grocery or a rolling
Speaker 14: out pharmacy.
Speaker 4: Or the shiny new thing on everyone's lips right now,
Speaker 4: which is AI. I mean, how have you inherently been
Speaker 4: an AI company for ages?
Speaker 3: You just haven't been. It wasn't sexy, so you didn't
Speaker 3: so much talk about it.
Speaker 14: I don't know if I can go that far, but yeah,
Speaker 14: I mean it's definitely a question we get asked a
Speaker 14: lot about and we've been definitely utilizing jen Ai.
Speaker 3: So in what way?
Speaker 14: I think a few different ways. We have in our
Speaker 14: employee version of the app a recommendation engine, so you
Speaker 14: can type I want, you know, a healthy Mexican sort
Speaker 14: of you know meal, or within this caloric range, you
Speaker 14: can type something. It doesn't always work, if I'm honest,
Speaker 14: but it gives cting it it's it is iterating and
Speaker 14: it comes back with what is our increasingly better and
Speaker 14: better recommendations. That's one thing we're doing on the consumer side.
Speaker 14: I think on the customer care side, we've done a
Speaker 14: lot of really cool things where Jenna I will summarize
Speaker 14: the last ten interactions with the consumer and then tell
Speaker 14: the agent, hey, do we think this consumer is happy?
Speaker 14: And what's the summary of how the last few interactions
Speaker 14: went without having to look all the stuff up yourself.
Speaker 14: I think something like that's been really really powerful.
Speaker 3: Will shoot delivery CEO there. Meanwhile, look, you want to
Speaker 3: order a takeout, well you've got.
Speaker 4: To pay for it, So let's talk about that space
Speaker 4: here in the UK right now, the fintech landscape Britain
Speaker 4: is well imursioning one. Monso is one of the largest
Speaker 4: digital bangs in the UK, if not the found in
Speaker 4: eight years ago. Monso wants to be one and one
Speaker 4: stop shop basically the key app customers turned to in
Speaker 4: order to manage their entire financial lives. Is on bluemg's
Speaker 4: UK Startups to Watch, And we're now very pleased to
Speaker 4: welcome from the company the CEO Sujata Party.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks so much for joining us, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: So we are all about financial inclusion, all about focusing
Speaker 4: on people basically in the UK, realizing you don't need
Speaker 4: to be wealthy to invest, but also how easy it is.
Speaker 3: How much of a cultural shift is that.
Speaker 15: I think it's money causes a lot of anxiety. That
Speaker 15: is a commonality. You don't have to be wealthy or
Speaker 15: poor to feel anxious about your money, and certainly all
Speaker 15: the research we've shown shows that it is one of
Speaker 15: the biggest barriers people have to advancement. Right you can
Speaker 15: change the world through money, education and healthcare, and so
Speaker 15: money is definitely the common thread. Certainly, when we launched
Speaker 15: our most recent investments product, what we found was that
Speaker 15: seventy percent of people in the UK did not know
Speaker 15: where to turn to to find something easy and accessible
Speaker 15: to start investing, and sixty percent of people said that
Speaker 15: they didn't have enough money to get start investing, which
Speaker 15: is counterintuitive, right, which is why actually our investment product
Speaker 15: that we launched in partnership with Blackrock allows you to
Speaker 15: invest with as little as a pound, Because how are
Speaker 15: you going to learn the muscles and learn the habits
Speaker 15: to be able to help you grow your money if
Speaker 15: you don't actually get access to it and have some
Speaker 15: one there by your side to help you learn.
Speaker 3: What has been the recipe? Do you think of Monzo's
Speaker 3: scale in the UK? It was a different way of marketing.
Speaker 4: It's a different way of organically growing. What has it
Speaker 4: Monso been able to offer other than you know, you
Speaker 4: came from Amex, the CEO came from These are another
Speaker 4: age old financial institutions.
Speaker 3: What was this fintech doing differently?
Speaker 15: Yeah, well it's not just one thing. I think if
Speaker 15: it was, somebody would have replicated it by now. But
Speaker 15: we have quite a very different business model than mostly right,
Speaker 15: we have eight point four million customers, three hundred thousand
Speaker 15: small businesses and growing and that growth momentum is accelerating.
Speaker 15: We're growing by almost two hundred thousand customers a month
Speaker 15: and mostly by word of mouth, so there's an incredibly
Speaker 15: strong customer advocacy there. We're known for our hot coreld card.
Speaker 15: I think some of our uniqueness starts with just the
Speaker 15: fact that we build really delightful, intuitive products, and we
Speaker 15: build them for and with our customers. So you know,
Speaker 15: in the very early days, we invited customers literally into
Speaker 15: our offices and they were able to tell us what
Speaker 15: they wanted and we built with them. Even now, at
Speaker 15: eight and a half million customers and counting, we're still
Speaker 15: talking to them. We have more connection points across our
Speaker 15: business and almost any other company or a single product
Speaker 15: might have five hundred points of feedback in it in
Speaker 15: just a single month, So we're hearing from them and
Speaker 15: we're acting on it really nimbly.
Speaker 3: But there's the products that we build.
Speaker 15: We also own our own tech stack, and that's industry leading,
Speaker 15: and we continue to invest in it. That means that
Speaker 15: we can be both resilient, which is important when you're
Speaker 15: dealing with people's money, but also be able to be
Speaker 15: nimble in terms of speed to market and create inventive
Speaker 15: things that nobody else has done before. And then finally,
Speaker 15: we're not sharing our margins with a lot of other suppliers,
Speaker 15: so we can invest in customer value.
Speaker 2: So Jata, you heard the delivery CEO there talk about inflation.
Speaker 2: We're very conscious about the jobs market in the UK,
Speaker 2: interest rates, all these fun things. But you talk about
Speaker 2: being nimble, and I wondered if Monzo kind of thrives
Speaker 2: in this environment when the consumer has to make kind
Speaker 2: of really proactive decisions about their money, or if you're
Speaker 2: subject to the same challenges, is sort of traditional buyers.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a great question.
Speaker 15: Actually, I think we're built for kind of all stages
Speaker 15: of finance, but we really come into our own right now.
Speaker 15: So if you think about it, we're able to give you,
Speaker 15: whether it's a simple savings challenge or helping you open
Speaker 15: a pot to be able to set goals. We launched
Speaker 15: an instant access product, savings product with no barriers to entry,
Speaker 15: no lock up periods. We had over eight hundred and
Speaker 15: fifty thousand customers pour into that in the last six
Speaker 15: months and start to be able to make their money
Speaker 15: work harder for them.
Speaker 3: We launched a home ownership solution to.
Speaker 15: Allow people to get visibility of their mortgage within our
Speaker 15: Monzo product, and that allows them to think about we
Speaker 15: can help them give nudges on what's the right loan
Speaker 15: to value ratio, how do you might maybe get access
Speaker 15: to a better rate, and what might you do in
Speaker 15: terms of paying it down over time our investments product.
Speaker 15: You might say, actually, this is the wrong time to
Speaker 15: launch an investments product, but we've found is that like
Speaker 15: a quarter of people out there actually saying this cost
Speaker 15: of living crisis is making them think about investing more
Speaker 15: than ever, and so we want to help them proactively
Speaker 15: build that muscle.
Speaker 3: Great tows some time with you. Thank you for joining us,
Speaker 3: Thanks for having meat. Of course, the Monzo's coo.
Speaker 2: Meta was sued by California in a group of more
Speaker 2: than thirty states overclaims that it's social media platforms Instagram
Speaker 2: and Facebook exploit youths for profit and feed them harmful
Speaker 2: content and carry This is a company that faces a
Speaker 2: lot of litigation at the moment, and.
Speaker 4: Indeed so to Do, the parent company of YouTube, so
Speaker 4: To does TikTok so to do a lot of these
Speaker 4: social media companies, and it's notable that Meta was showing
Speaker 4: the response there.
Speaker 3: They've reacted by saying that they.
Speaker 4: Share the agg's commitment to providing teens with safe, positive
Speaker 4: experiences online. But they've already introduced more than thirty tools,
Speaker 4: they say, to support tools and their families. So it's
Speaker 4: notable that these attorneys general are being sort of pushed
Speaker 4: that back by Meta. Will be interesting if they comment
Speaker 4: about it amid their earnings, which come out what them
Speaker 4: the twenty.
Speaker 2: Fifth Yeah, and we stick with that story in twenty
Speaker 2: four hours time.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bluebow Technology.
Speaker 2: Don't forget check out the podcast apples Spotify, iHeart