Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news from Mahard.
Speaker 2: We're Innovation, Money and power. Collie in Silicon Vallet NBN.
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
Speaker 4: I met Ludlow in San Francisco. Caroline hides off today.
Speaker 4: This is Bloomberg Technology coming up SpaceX weighing a tender
Speaker 4: offer that would value the company at two hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 4: Details ahead, plus a bloomberg scoop, Alphabet and Meta in
Speaker 4: talks with Hollywood studios to use their content for AI
Speaker 4: video generation and Canva takes on Adobe users with work
Speaker 4: tools to speed up it's growth. Let's get a quick
Speaker 4: check in on the markets. Lots of green on the screen.
Speaker 4: Happy Friday, What a nice way to end the week.
Speaker 4: You're looking at the Nasdaq one hundred Tech Heavy Index,
Speaker 4: the SOX or Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, both rebounding moving higher
Speaker 4: after UMich inflation expectations. Data made us feel a bit
Speaker 4: better that the world would be comfortable with rate cuts.
Speaker 4: Both of those indices have the ability to close at
Speaker 4: fresh record hides yields going nowhere, We're going to talk
Speaker 4: about Ether throughout the program. It's down in the session
Speaker 4: one percentage point thirty seven hundred and twelve dollars, but
Speaker 4: it's on track to have its best week in a year.
Speaker 4: Lots to discuss with the potential of spot ether ets
Speaker 4: with Bloomberg's Shnali Bassek. Let's go to the private markets.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg is reporting that SpaceX is considering a tender offer
Speaker 4: that would value the company at two hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 4: A tender offer is where the company allows staff, employees
Speaker 4: and some early investors to sell the shares that they
Speaker 4: already own existing shares to outside investors. The price is
Speaker 4: set by Elon Musk and the CFO, and it's agreed
Speaker 4: with basically a lead outside investor. And what we're hearing,
Speaker 4: according to one source, is that that price could be
Speaker 4: one hundred and eight to one hundred and ten dollars.
Speaker 4: So you do the math and that would be a
Speaker 4: jump in valuation to two hundred billion dollars. That's a
Speaker 4: pretty big number. Let's talk about it with Bloomberg's Max Chafkin,
Speaker 4: member of the Elon Inc. Podcast Team, storied columnist at
Speaker 4: Bloomberg BusinessWeek covering technology, and someone that's covered Elon Musk
Speaker 4: companies closely. The main point for me, irrespective of the
Speaker 4: mechanics is simple, SpaceX evaluation keeps going up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think the last number we had heard, the last
Speaker 3: private valuation we'd heard, was one hundred and eighty billion,
Speaker 3: So you know, this is a pretty sizable jump.
Speaker 2: It's also a reflection.
Speaker 3: Look, this is a fairly mature company it and it's private.
Speaker 3: So if you need to be able to find a
Speaker 3: way Elon Musk needs to find a way to give
Speaker 3: employees and some of these venture capitalists who may you know,
Speaker 3: may need to get out or want to get out,
Speaker 3: a method to do that. And of course, as you said, ed,
Speaker 3: because SpaceX has so much dominance in the large market,
Speaker 3: it's not hard to find other investors willing to take
Speaker 3: over these shares and take them over, you know, at
Speaker 3: a premium.
Speaker 4: You've documented throughout your career. Like the early days of SpaceX,
Speaker 4: things were very hard financially precarious. But now SpaceX basically
Speaker 4: dominates the industry for sending payload human and inorganic from
Speaker 4: Earth into orbit. Just summarize where they are in this industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so thanks to this long collaborative, a long collaboration
Speaker 3: with NASA, and I think NASA deserves a lot of
Speaker 3: credit here for you know, essentially backing SpaceX with early contracts.
Speaker 2: But they are are now as.
Speaker 3: You said, you know, the way that the US sends
Speaker 3: people and supplies up to the International Space Station, that's
Speaker 3: a very lucrative business. You know, there is a possibility
Speaker 3: the US would like to get another source. You know,
Speaker 3: Boeing is working on its own, its own systems there.
Speaker 3: So it's not like there's no competition. But when you
Speaker 3: take a few steps back and look at like just
Speaker 3: the volume of launches worldwide, SpaceX is dominating and it's
Speaker 3: it's it's sending up a very large percentage. And with
Speaker 3: the expansion of Starlink, you know, which is Elon Musk
Speaker 3: sort of internet satellite internet platform, that's created this additional
Speaker 3: demand for launches, this additional traffic that is coming, you know,
Speaker 3: on top of these very substantial government contracts.
Speaker 4: Max, I just want to share Elon Musk's post on
Speaker 4: X again with our audience. So we publish the story,
Speaker 4: and as so often is the case, a user on
Speaker 4: X took a screen grab of the article and this
Speaker 4: was must spon. SpaceX has no need for additional capital
Speaker 4: and will actually be buying backshares. We do liquidity rounds
Speaker 4: for employees and investors every six months approximately. My take
Speaker 4: on that is that he's basically confirming the Bloomberg reporting.
Speaker 4: And the main point that we make in the story
Speaker 4: is that in a tender they don't issue any new
Speaker 4: shares anyway, and they don't gain any proceeds from the sale.
Speaker 4: It's a transaction between the employees and the would be buyers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read it the same way.
Speaker 3: You know, every now and then you have a tender
Speaker 3: offer that could come with some additional funding, and I
Speaker 3: think part of the reason he probably chimed in is
Speaker 3: just to clarify that, no, this is not an effort
Speaker 3: to raise capital. This is just an effort to allow employees,
Speaker 3: early investors whoever, to exit their shares. Now, you do
Speaker 3: wonder is Elon Musk going to be among the shareholders.
Speaker 3: Obviously he's the world's richest man, but he still owns
Speaker 3: a huge amount of SpaceX, and you know, it would
Speaker 3: be interesting to see if he were were somebody who
Speaker 3: would unload shares, although you know, I don't think we
Speaker 3: have any indication that that is going to happen, But
Speaker 3: that's something that I'm going to keep my eyes on
Speaker 3: as this story develops.
Speaker 4: I did write to him and I did ask him,
Speaker 4: so Elon Musk, if you're watching, please reply to my
Speaker 4: email max Starship Attempt number four, Test number four as
Speaker 4: early as June fifth. You know, that could move, but
Speaker 4: just face on how successful Starship Test three was, you know,
Speaker 4: set the scene for us of what a Starship Test
Speaker 4: four might look like in your mind.
Speaker 3: So I think it's important to keep in mind they
Speaker 3: haven't made it into an orbit yet, but they have
Speaker 3: made it into space, and I think it's just important
Speaker 3: to keep in mind that this is going to be
Speaker 3: a long process, right, Like, this is a totally new spacecraft.
Speaker 3: We've seen the previous launches and you know, in sort
Speaker 3: of fireballs, but ending in a fireball is not necessarily
Speaker 3: a failure for this aircraft.
Speaker 2: Right, they are still in development mode.
Speaker 3: This is not you know, this is a situation where
Speaker 3: things are going to progress slowly because ultimately here the
Speaker 3: goal is to have a functional, reusable, and much much
Speaker 3: larger spacecraft than has ever been you know that has
Speaker 3: ever flown that you know, Elon Musk believes could be
Speaker 3: useful to you know, send missions to Mars. There's so
Speaker 3: many what IF's there, you know, I mean, despite the
Speaker 3: fact that this is using technology that that you know,
Speaker 3: SpaceX has been developing over a long period of time,
Speaker 3: the size is different, the scale is different, and then
Speaker 3: there are questions about what exactly do you do with
Speaker 3: this in the interim, because you know, I don't think
Speaker 3: we're gonna have a Mars colony, you know, in the
Speaker 3: next couple of years, and and Elon Musk is gonna
Speaker 3: want to find something to send into space to fill
Speaker 3: up these giant rockets.
Speaker 4: Starship test for as soon as June fifth, but if
Speaker 4: it happens on that date, we'll see Bloomers match traffickin
Speaker 4: What a way to end the week, Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Sticking in the world of Elon Musk because artificially intelligence
Speaker 4: startup Xai is slated to complete a funding round in
Speaker 4: June that could value the company at more than twenty
Speaker 4: four billion dollars, which includes its latest influxu of cash.
Speaker 4: That's according to a source. The source also said the
Speaker 4: final close still hasn't happened in the deal, but the
Speaker 4: company is getting closer to its six point five billion
Speaker 4: dollar target in terms of the rays over the next
Speaker 4: few weeks. Canva just unveiled its biggest redesign in more
Speaker 4: than a decade, and it's Canva creat event in Los
Speaker 4: Angeles yesterday, with new workplace products like Canva Enterprise, a
Speaker 4: new subscription to meet growing demand and adoption by larger organizations.
Speaker 4: There's a lot more in there as well, and let's
Speaker 4: bring in Cameron Adams, who's the chief product officer, one
Speaker 4: of the co founders of Canber. You know, I've used
Speaker 4: Camber on and off as an individual creator over the
Speaker 4: last decade basically, but it's a significant redesign and I
Speaker 4: wanted to get right to what prompted that why you
Speaker 4: felt this was like time for Canva two point zero.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's great to hear that you've used it ed
Speaker 5: Over the last few years, we've seen more and more
Speaker 5: people bringing Camera into the workplace and using it with
Speaker 5: their teams and across their enterprise, and we thought now
Speaker 5: is the perfect time to give Camera a bit of
Speaker 5: a glow up to make sure that the interface and
Speaker 5: the user experience really matched what people were doing in
Speaker 5: the workplace, and also coincided with the launch of our new.
Speaker 4: Canber Enterprise package. Which is really.
Speaker 5: A product offering design for large organizations where thousands, tens
Speaker 5: of thousands of people are using Canber and giving people
Speaker 5: like CIOs and it teams the tools that they need to.
Speaker 4: Roll out Camber at scale for.
Speaker 5: Multiple teams within their organization, for the thousands of folks
Speaker 5: that are using it and be able to give each
Speaker 5: of them a customized experience.
Speaker 4: You know, it's one of these situations where like Canva
Speaker 4: is like this global startup and you blink and it's
Speaker 4: grown so quickly, one hundred and eighty five million monthly users.
Speaker 4: You're hitting like more than two billion dollars in revenue.
Speaker 4: But I want to go a layer deeper than that.
Speaker 4: You know, you talk about enterprise. Do you have a
Speaker 4: clear split in what is basically an individual consumer user
Speaker 4: base and enterprise base.
Speaker 5: Part of Canva's growth over the last ten years has
Speaker 5: been a passionate community and they take Canva themselves. From
Speaker 5: using it in their personal lives or their side hustle,
Speaker 5: they often take it into their workplace and they'll be
Speaker 5: one person using it and then spread it through their team.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's their marketing team, maybe it's their sales team,
Speaker 5: and it just grows and grows and grows, and we
Speaker 5: see this rampant growth in so many companies now where
Speaker 5: we've got Canva used in ninety percent of the Fortune
Speaker 5: five hundred and in a lot of those places, literally
Speaker 5: thousands of people using Canva and camera enterprise is away
Speaker 5: for that company to then consolidate that usage, make sure
Speaker 5: that all of their IP is on the same platform,
Speaker 5: that they're all paying through the right channels, and that
Speaker 5: those teams can work and collaborate with one another.
Speaker 4: Okay, I go on the Canva website. I'm just going
Speaker 4: to just lay this out from a very simple perspective,
Speaker 4: and I look at all the things that are offering
Speaker 4: from docs, social media and video creation projects. You guys
Speaker 4: are gunning for and taking on Adobe, right, that is
Speaker 4: what you're trying to do here.
Speaker 5: Ever, since day one, we've identified this whitespace in the
Speaker 5: market that no one was really looking at. Between productivity
Speaker 5: and creativity. There's an intersection there that is really interesting
Speaker 5: and it's obviously resonated with people. We've got one hundred
Speaker 5: and eighty five million people that use the platform now
Speaker 5: and we continue to grow like crazy.
Speaker 2: So we've really proved.
Speaker 5: Out this next generation of visual content creation that needs
Speaker 5: to happen for all types of folks, from marketing to sales,
Speaker 5: to HR to creatives. And we're continuing to see amazing growth,
Speaker 5: so people are obviously resonating with what we're putting out.
Speaker 4: Cameron, you are the chief product officer, and we've talked
Speaker 4: about the redesign, we've talked about the offering, but we're
Speaker 4: also one of the co founders, so let's talk about
Speaker 4: what happens next for Canva. You are growing, You're a
Speaker 4: richly valued startup. Do you go in the IPO direction
Speaker 4: or Figma was not able to merge with Adobe. Do
Speaker 4: you look at the M and A direction? Where's your
Speaker 4: head at?
Speaker 5: We don't have much to share yet on IPO. We
Speaker 5: actually recently did secondary for our staff and it was
Speaker 5: one of the most subscribed secondaries in history, which was
Speaker 5: a real vote of confidence from existing investors who wanted
Speaker 5: to reinvest, and we also brought on a whole suite.
Speaker 4: Of high profile new investors.
Speaker 5: So we're happy with where we're at at the moment
Speaker 5: and definitely do not want to acquired by anyone.
Speaker 4: All right, Cameron Adams, you product officer and one of
Speaker 4: the co founders of canber really appreciate the update. It's
Speaker 4: been interesting to track your company's growth. Come back and
Speaker 4: see us soon. I just want to correct something that
Speaker 4: was part of a discussion we had earlier with Max Chafkin.
Speaker 4: We were talking about Starship and Starship four. The test
Speaker 4: is going to happen as soon as June fifth, according
Speaker 4: to SpaceX. But something Max said. He said that Starship
Speaker 4: three had not reached orbital velocity. Actually, in that test
Speaker 4: started three from March, Starship did reach orbital velocity, and
Speaker 4: so I just want to correct that thing that Max said.
Speaker 4: But we'll get back to that launch later in June.
Speaker 4: Coming up on the program. Here's what we're going to
Speaker 4: be talking about on Bloomberg Technology, a lot of crypto
Speaker 4: discussion and a lot in the world of startups. Stick
Speaker 4: with us. This is Bloomberg Technology. Okay, it's time for
Speaker 4: talking tech and first stop. Source Code Capital is raising
Speaker 4: one of China's largest VC funds with the target of
Speaker 4: three hundred million dollars. That's according to sources, who say
Speaker 4: the fun goal is preliminary and could change. Source Code
Speaker 4: Capital was one of byte Dance's earliest backers, and if successful,
Speaker 4: will mark its first major investment vehicle since early twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one, plus, TikTok is making it easier for content
Speaker 4: creators to make money, although unofficially announced users have noticed,
Speaker 4: the threshold to join its Affiliates program dropped from five
Speaker 4: thousand to just one thousand followers. Affiliates can post videos
Speaker 4: promoting products sold through the TikTok shop and collect commissions
Speaker 4: on those sales. The latest move could help bring in
Speaker 4: users and bolster opposition to a US law that would
Speaker 4: horse parent company Bike Dance to sell the app or
Speaker 4: face being banned. And finally, open Ai is releasing past
Speaker 4: employees from a non disparagement clause that tied together their
Speaker 4: exit contracts and equity awards. Workers raise concerns after a
Speaker 4: Vox report last week on the clause that would allow
Speaker 4: open ai to clawback stock if employees spoke out against
Speaker 4: the company. OpenAI issued an apology for the contract and
Speaker 4: says it would remove the language from exit paperwork going forward.
Speaker 4: And a top story on Bloomberg, Alphabet and Meta have
Speaker 4: held discussions with major Hollywood studios about licensing content for
Speaker 4: use in the tech giant's AI video generation software. That's,
Speaker 4: according to sources, that's bringing Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, who leads
Speaker 4: our screen time coverage and broke that story. So that's
Speaker 4: interesting because these are some sizable deals. We're talking about
Speaker 4: who's involved and who's involved in the conversation.
Speaker 6: The way to think about it is, there are conversations
Speaker 6: happening between anyone with you know, a big AI video model,
Speaker 6: so that's Open AI, with Sora, it's Alphabet, it's Meta
Speaker 6: and Hollywood companies. Much as you're seeing conversations between you know,
Speaker 6: the large language models more related to texts than news organizations,
Speaker 6: you're going to expect to see that on the video
Speaker 6: side with film and television studios. The differences is that
Speaker 6: while we've seen some news organizations brokeer deals with AI companies,
Speaker 6: and we've also seen lawsuits, and on the music side
Speaker 6: we've also seen some deal making in some lawsuits, the
Speaker 6: video side is a little less mature at the moment.
Speaker 6: There are a lot of conversations happening. People describe them
Speaker 6: as sort of wide ranging and parts of sort of
Speaker 6: larger business development conversations between some of these big tech
Speaker 6: companies and big media companies. But you've see media companies
Speaker 6: show sort of different willingness you know, it seems like
Speaker 6: Warner Brothers Discovery may be a little more open to
Speaker 6: doing deals than say a Disney or a Netflix.
Speaker 4: I feel like the AI industry is doing laps of
Speaker 4: Hollywood right now. Like you report to March, Open AI,
Speaker 4: we're over in having very similar conversations. Who's kind of
Speaker 4: got the upper hand? Like is it the sellers of
Speaker 4: the content that are in a position of power here? Well,
Speaker 4: it's a.
Speaker 6: Subject of some debate, right You know, on the one hand,
Speaker 6: you could argue that the people who have the AI
Speaker 6: models have the upper hand because they tend to believe
Speaker 6: that using a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 4: Can be fair use.
Speaker 6: And they may just there's some who believe that they've
Speaker 6: sort of already scraped a lot of information that Hollywood
Speaker 6: companies have, for example. On the other hand, you know,
Speaker 6: there is a going there's going to be a big
Speaker 6: debate over who ultimately controls things that may there may
Speaker 6: even be a debate between the studio and the talent.
Speaker 6: Right there's some kerfuffled this week involving Scarlett Johanson and
Speaker 6: Open AI, And I've seen some credible people argue that
Speaker 6: right now, the companies like Disney or Warner brother Discovery
Speaker 6: have a decent amount of leverage because they have something
Speaker 6: that these companies want, and so they might as well
Speaker 6: try to extract the most favorable terms, while the AI
Speaker 6: models are still very nathant and not that powerful.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's lucas sure with another important piece of reporting on
Speaker 4: screen time, Thank you. Let's get to another big story
Speaker 4: in the world of Bloomberg Technology. Into It shares slid
Speaker 4: by the most in more than a year after the
Speaker 4: company reported losing one million customers who use its TurboTax
Speaker 4: service for free, stoking concerns about demand for the software.
Speaker 4: Joining us. Bloomberg's Brodie Ford in part of the problem
Speaker 4: here is that a lot of what's on offer you
Speaker 4: can find somewhere else for free in some cases.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, what's so surprising here is a big
Speaker 7: part of Into its valuation is this idea that once
Speaker 7: you use it, it's rare to stop using it because
Speaker 7: you get all your data in there, it becomes very easy.
Speaker 7: It'll import previous year's information. I mean, I've certainly used
Speaker 7: TurboTax the last couple of years because it's very easy.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 7: But yeah, seeing one million free users lead that makes
Speaker 7: investors say, hold up, what's going on at the low
Speaker 7: end of this market here? And yeah, part of it
Speaker 7: is that there are other places that you can get this.
Speaker 7: I mean, one example is that the federal government had
Speaker 7: a pilot program this year where about one hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty thousand people used it and they could get a
Speaker 7: similar service for free.
Speaker 4: I did something highly unusual this year. I was a
Speaker 4: TurboTax user. I did something that no one's doing. I
Speaker 4: hired a human being and engage with a human being
Speaker 4: to do my taxes for me, like the ANTIAI play.
Speaker 4: The point there is that there are other things into
Speaker 4: it does, right, It's not just TurboTax. They're trying to
Speaker 4: be like a one stop shop for financial data or tools.
Speaker 4: Is that enough to keep them going well?
Speaker 7: That was the total dynamic that we saw in the
Speaker 7: earnings this year. You were certainly on these results that
Speaker 7: people liked the high touch, you know, assisted methods that
Speaker 7: in subways replaces your local tax store. So at the
Speaker 7: high end of the market that the ed Lovelow's they
Speaker 7: actually were doing very well. But for people who are
Speaker 7: saying like A, I don't need this, CPA, I'm not
Speaker 7: doing this. You know, they're the ones who might have
Speaker 7: turned over to you know, your tax layers or all
Speaker 7: these sites that look a little fishy but probably work,
Speaker 7: you know fairly.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I should maybe no comment on the complexity
Speaker 4: of human versus website taxes. Hey, just real quick. You
Speaker 4: probably heard a minute ago that we had Cameron from
Speaker 4: canvar on and just the last thing you said, we
Speaker 4: don't want to be acquired. Kind of thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4: What do you make of it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it's not a total because you think
Speaker 7: about who would acquire Canva, it would have to be
Speaker 7: a massive company, probably with some creative overlap, you know,
Speaker 7: with some pretty small universal companies. What call it, Mike
Speaker 7: after a Dolby. We saw what happened when Adobi tried
Speaker 7: to acquire a Figma. They weren't allowed to do it.
Speaker 7: I would be very, very shocked if some of these
Speaker 7: M and A lawyers said that they thought they could
Speaker 7: get a Canva acquisition through with anybody who had the
Speaker 7: money to buy them.
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's Brady Ford always love having on the program. Happy Friday,
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Ed
Speaker 4: Ludlow in San Francisco. We're feeling good this Friday. We're
Speaker 4: ending the week on a high in the equity market,
Speaker 4: so let's get to the NAZAQ one hundred. The NAZAK
Speaker 4: one hundred is kind of my go to tech heavy index.
Speaker 4: It's trading at a record high. But I guess as
Speaker 4: we end the week, we're also on track for the
Speaker 4: fifth straight week of gains, which is, wait for it,
Speaker 4: the longest streak of weekly gains going back to February.
Speaker 4: So the story this week has very much been about
Speaker 4: Nvidia propping up the market frankly following its blockbuster earnings.
Speaker 4: Others moved to the downside. But we had that kind
Speaker 4: of softer secondary data this morning consumer inflation expectations that
Speaker 4: made us think that maybe rate cuts will happen at
Speaker 4: some point this year after all. Who knows. The other
Speaker 4: big story of the week, of course, is what's happening
Speaker 4: in the world of crypto markets. I want to go
Speaker 4: to my dear friend Bloembotionhnali bassek Over in New York,
Speaker 4: who's going to tell me all about ether.
Speaker 8: Hello, We're going to talk about it ed because of course,
Speaker 8: it has been a week of whiplash, and let's see
Speaker 8: how far we've come before. We talk about the implications
Speaker 8: here on what it would mean for the SEC to
Speaker 8: formally approve a spot ether et app. If you take
Speaker 8: a look here, this is bitcoin on the screen, and
Speaker 8: you do have a trading now over sixty eight thousand.
Speaker 8: But what did it take to get there? Not only
Speaker 8: did we have earlier this year the approval of those
Speaker 8: spot et apps, and remember there was a significant run
Speaker 8: up into bitcoin into that time. We had tremendous inflows
Speaker 8: into those et apps after they were launched, and you
Speaker 8: saw even more of a run up. And remember though
Speaker 8: in that time we also had the havening where there
Speaker 8: was more interest in bitcoin, and of course though you
Speaker 8: still see it kind of plateauing since then, and so
Speaker 8: you do have to wonder how much has been baked in,
Speaker 8: how much more will be flowing in Now that the
Speaker 8: initial exuberance is out of the way, we are trading
Speaker 8: below the highs of over seventy thousand, closer to seventy
Speaker 8: four thousand, nearly that we hit back in February, and
Speaker 8: really leveling off here under that seventy thousand dollars mark. Now,
Speaker 8: let's flip up the board here, because Ethereum has had
Speaker 8: similar gains. You've seen it rise actually more on a
Speaker 8: percentage basis this year so far. Then you've seen a bitcoin.
Speaker 8: You have seen, of course, almost a sixty three percent
Speaker 8: rise in ethereum to date, but a very similar trajectory.
Speaker 8: As you look at this chart at tracks pretty closely
Speaker 8: and more recently, a lot of excitement into that ethereum,
Speaker 8: approval of that spot etf into more recent days that
Speaker 8: have brought you back closer to thirty seven hundred.
Speaker 4: Now I want to talk.
Speaker 8: This little more because this is a lesser known asset
Speaker 8: to the wider public than say Bitcoin is. Of course
Speaker 8: bitcoin you think of as digital gold. So then what
Speaker 8: narrative does ethereum take on and kind of get the
Speaker 8: same public kind of excitement as Bitcoin had in an
Speaker 8: etf rapper. Now ethereum as you talk to guests moving forward,
Speaker 8: it has a lot of use cases. There are a
Speaker 8: lot of people building on ethereum, but it's more native
Speaker 8: than bitcoin in the sense that people who are familiar
Speaker 8: with cryptocurrency will understand ether more closely perhaps and the
Speaker 8: broader public. So creating that narrative into the ETS is
Speaker 8: another big question. Flipping up the board one more time
Speaker 8: here There's another big player that I want to talk about,
Speaker 8: and that is Coinbase, Because, of course, when it came
Speaker 8: to Coinbase, this again where bitcoin trading all cryptocurrency assets
Speaker 8: came to play, a lot of people were worried about
Speaker 8: what it would mean to have those ETFs for Coinbase.
Speaker 8: Yet you see coinbases surged ever since, and there are
Speaker 8: a few reasons for that, one being that people have
Speaker 8: been active in the cryptocurrency trading markets, another reason being
Speaker 8: that they have been custodians to a lot of the
Speaker 8: ETFs that I've launched. But a third reason that I
Speaker 8: would give you and into the Ethereum ETFs ad that
Speaker 8: a lot of people are watching closely is Coinbase has
Speaker 8: this thing that they call Base, and on Base you
Speaker 8: are building layer twos on ethereum.
Speaker 3: So the use.
Speaker 8: Case for ethereum over the next couple of years can
Speaker 8: be fascinating. Coupled with that ETF, let's see how it
Speaker 8: all goes.
Speaker 4: I'm all about the base emotionally, Pasek Happy Friday. Perfect
Speaker 4: setup joining us now is can be to go to
Speaker 4: Delta Blockchain Fund general partner and actually I think that
Speaker 4: was the perfect setup to the perfect guest around this
Speaker 4: just real quick something that Shnaali said. If bitcoin is
Speaker 4: the digital gold, then ether is what in your mind
Speaker 4: digit oil, and that's what's going to oil. Okay, extrapolate,
Speaker 4: give me more on that.
Speaker 1: So think of it ed like you have goal, which
Speaker 1: is as a saving currency which you use. But think
Speaker 1: about how oil is running everything. It was always supposed
Speaker 1: to be a gas EAT as a gas to run
Speaker 1: products on top of etherium, and that set up etherium
Speaker 1: as a technology layer. And if you want to build
Speaker 1: as you just talked about Base and said you love base,
Speaker 1: anything which is working on Polygon, working on optimism, building
Speaker 1: on building on base. Ultimately all those layer two at
Speaker 1: the end settles on E and on etherium, and then
Speaker 1: use the currency EAT as the gas price, which is
Speaker 1: the oil. So it's basically you can create as many
Speaker 1: cars as possible, you need to have the same fuel,
Speaker 1: which is ethereum out there.
Speaker 4: There's basically like three things you have to untangle. There's
Speaker 4: like the live market action or pricing on bitcoin or
Speaker 4: in this case ether right, and then in the middle
Speaker 4: is the underlying technology which will debate, and then the
Speaker 4: third is trying to track the relationship with the two.
Speaker 4: And I think like when I think about Shanali's chart
Speaker 4: the lead up to spot bitcoin ETF approval, Bitcoin hit
Speaker 4: new records right Ethereum, which we're showing right now, has
Speaker 4: had an astonishing run up in recent days and weeks.
Speaker 4: It almost caught people by surprise. But I think you
Speaker 4: would make the point that it hasn't hit its record.
Speaker 9: Yet now now I mean, I mean I have gone
Speaker 9: on the record at Bloomberg before and have said that
Speaker 9: I do not expect EDF to be approved this year,
Speaker 9: and even a week back, if you would have asked me,
Speaker 9: I would have said, no, I don't think so. I
Speaker 9: think it has been a very big political push because
Speaker 9: of the election year, and somewhere you have to say
Speaker 9: the Republican candidate being so pro crypto have made Democrats
Speaker 9: to really pay attention to it.
Speaker 1: That's suddenly, out of the blue, we have a very hushed, hushed,
Speaker 1: unprepared EDF approval. We're still waiting for the trading to happen,
Speaker 1: but the market expectations in the last two days got
Speaker 1: built in, but it's not really there. We have not
Speaker 1: crossed four k eight, all time high prices for four
Speaker 1: point four so I feel like combination of unexpectations, combination
Speaker 1: of liquidity crunch in the traditional market. At the end
Speaker 1: of the day, the trade five because of the global circumstances,
Speaker 1: high inflation prices, high interest rates. Really there is not
Speaker 1: much more liquidity. And also the markets didn't close the
Speaker 1: trade fire. Markets didn't close very well yesterday. So I
Speaker 1: think the combination of all that stuff has also hit
Speaker 1: the dampen the liquidity on Ethereum.
Speaker 4: Tavita we right often that the Ethereum blockchain is the
Speaker 4: most widely commercially used. Why is that important?
Speaker 1: I think it's the developers network, right. You can have
Speaker 1: multiple companies making the same product, but if one company
Speaker 1: is very reliable. Ethereum has been one of the first ones.
Speaker 1: It is actually the first. It has been reliable since then.
Speaker 1: It hasn't broken. It has got congested once or twice
Speaker 1: because of NFTs or mean coins, and it has really
Speaker 1: survived very well and got back. You have the biggest
Speaker 1: developer community, you have the biggest security, most DeFi protocols
Speaker 1: which has multi billion dollar asset under management built on
Speaker 1: Ethereum has not really got hacked. From the Ethereum network side,
Speaker 1: there could be a whip to crack out there, but
Speaker 1: not from the Ethereum side. So I think it is
Speaker 1: more about the trust, and not only the trust based
Speaker 1: on which is the best network to build, but what
Speaker 1: has really relied over time to give you the result.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why Ethereum has continued to prosper.
Speaker 1: And also the decentralization, which is very people usually don't
Speaker 1: talk about it, but Ethereum foundation role to stay away,
Speaker 1: just build the product and let people use it the
Speaker 1: way they want to use it, which we don't see
Speaker 1: too much in other layer ones and layer twos is
Speaker 1: basically an ideal way to go about it.
Speaker 4: Kavita, Goodta, thank you, Happy Friday. Delta Blockchain Fund general partner,
Speaker 4: and I wonder if that takes off like etherium or
Speaker 4: ether the digital oil to block Bitcoin's digital gold. We'll see.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about it on the social media's coming up
Speaker 4: on the program, We're going to be joined by Zoom
Speaker 4: founder and CEO Rita Narayan about how she's disrupting the
Speaker 4: student transportation industry. I was crunching the numbers with Bloomberg's
Speaker 4: Marguerite Gallerini about the scale of US school district buses.
Speaker 4: This is one that you don't want to miss everything.
Speaker 4: Ev next, this is Bloomberg technology. Okay, let's get plugged in.
Speaker 4: It will be the first all electric bus fleet serving
Speaker 4: a major US school district starting this coming August, Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley startup Zoom will provide seventy four electric buses to
Speaker 4: the Oakland School District, and the buses will also supply
Speaker 4: two point one gig or hours of electricity to the
Speaker 4: Bay Area power grid, which is enough energy for around
Speaker 4: three to four hundred homes. Zoom CEO and founder Richard
Speaker 4: Narayan joins me here on set. This is a really
Speaker 4: interesting development. In fact, a lot of our audience will
Speaker 4: be probably surprised that it's taken to this point to
Speaker 4: have the first school district or electric fee. Just explain
Speaker 4: that the deal that you've done with Oakland.
Speaker 10: Thank you Ed for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 10: So electric school bus is having a moment right now.
Speaker 10: Or Clan Unified will be the first major school district
Speaker 10: in the country to be one hundred person electric and
Speaker 10: we have enabled this by a few things. First, there
Speaker 10: is a tremendous support of the grants, including the Clean
Speaker 10: School Bus Initiative Act and the local level grants that
Speaker 10: are available in excelerating the energy transition. And the second
Speaker 10: thing very unique about this is that all seventy four
Speaker 10: buses are enabled with bi directional charging plugged into our
Speaker 10: VTOG platform can supply energy back to the grid when
Speaker 10: these buses are not used for transportation, which is typically
Speaker 10: in the evenings and summer, which is also a peak
Speaker 10: demand of energy. So it is pretty amazing. Given the
Speaker 10: Oakland community is really affected by the poor quality of
Speaker 10: air and the customer rates, this is a tremendous opportunity.
Speaker 4: We were just looking at the scale of where Zoom
Speaker 4: operates around the country this morning. The team were also
Speaker 4: kind of crunching the numbers on how far this still
Speaker 4: is to go. So when you think about US school districts,
Speaker 4: I make it that there's about five hundred thousand school
Speaker 4: buses you know, across the country, and many of them
Speaker 4: still run on diesel. So if that's true, you've got
Speaker 4: a long way to go to electrify. How is that
Speaker 4: pace going to play from here?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Absolutely. Zoom actually today is in fourteen states, serving fourth
Speaker 10: housing plus school across the country and expanding nationally quite rapidly.
Speaker 10: So for a fundamental foundation and playbook that we have
Speaker 10: developed in Oakland using our VTG technology, and the entire
Speaker 10: playbook for electrifying the buses and working with all the
Speaker 10: partners in the ecosystem can be now extended and be
Speaker 10: available to all the other districts. Typically people were doing
Speaker 10: just one or two pilots or deployments at very low scale.
Speaker 10: With this kind of a deployment, now their news is
Speaker 10: very positive for the other districts across the nation.
Speaker 4: Where does the money come from to electrify school fleets?
Speaker 10: So you'll be surprised to know that electric school buses
Speaker 10: are still two to three times more expensive than the
Speaker 10: diesel buses, and that is one of the reasons that
Speaker 10: the adoption has not been so much faster and Zoom
Speaker 10: has been able to do this deployment at scale because
Speaker 10: of multiple reasons. One is there are tremendous support available
Speaker 10: from the federal and state grants that is enabling us
Speaker 10: to reduce the cost of the buses. And second is
Speaker 10: electric school bus is actually the largest battery on wheels.
Speaker 10: It is four to six times Tesla battery with a
Speaker 10: very predictable local commute pattern, and it's not used for
Speaker 10: transportation in the peak demand of energy. There's no other
Speaker 10: asset which has such a unique pattern and this allows
Speaker 10: us to give energy back to the grid and reduce
Speaker 10: the price of the bus and brigid at.
Speaker 4: Par with the digital buses. Zoomcier and founder Rattuna Ryan
Speaker 4: Greats having the show. Thank you, Let's move from buses
Speaker 4: to drones. Idea Forge Technology is one of India's largest
Speaker 4: drone companies and is now eyeing US market to listen
Speaker 4: to this.
Speaker 1: Bunk it.
Speaker 11: Meta is a bit rusty at assembling drones, though he's
Speaker 11: been doing it for two decades now, first as a
Speaker 11: young IT engineer and now as the co founder and
Speaker 11: CEO of Idea Forge Technology, India's largest public listed drone maker.
Speaker 11: Over two thirds of this drone is made in India,
Speaker 11: most of it by Meta's company, while some key elements
Speaker 11: like battery cells, propellers and motors are still important.
Speaker 12: Down from making the autopilot which is the brains of
Speaker 12: the drone, the entire software, the hardware design, everything is us.
Speaker 12: We make the ground control software. We make our own payloads,
Speaker 12: which are the various sensors that are being used for
Speaker 12: ensuring that the customer can get their intelligence. In terms
Speaker 12: of outcome or the mapping data, etc.
Speaker 11: In this suburban Mumbai facility, Idea Forward manufactures over three
Speaker 11: thousand drones a year that it sells mostly to Indian
Speaker 11: government entities for mapping, surveillance and other defense related work.
Speaker 11: Government support to the low drone industry includes innovation grants
Speaker 11: and production incentives. Drone imports are banned and exports are
Speaker 11: slowly being liberalized in an effort to make India a
Speaker 11: major commercial and defense drone harp by the year twenty thirty.
Speaker 11: There is government as marketmaker, therefore one of the largest
Speaker 11: customers in this business. Without this support, would the Indian
Speaker 11: drawn industry be able to stand on its own.
Speaker 12: Government as a market maker is not a choice, It
Speaker 12: is an imperative because for anything to do with governance, security,
Speaker 12: or monitoring of large assets land, it's all government. What
Speaker 12: policies will do is unlock certain private sectors and segments
Speaker 12: even more aggressively, when we look at delivery as a
Speaker 12: use case, which we have very large private use logistics.
Speaker 12: Then we look at inspections as a use case that's
Speaker 12: again a very large private use.
Speaker 11: India's drone market and manufacturers lag far far behind China,
Speaker 11: Home to Dji, the world's biggest drone company, but nowadays
Speaker 11: Chinese drones are less welcome in the US, which is
Speaker 11: the world's largest drone market. Meta was in the US
Speaker 11: earlier this year scouting to customers.
Speaker 12: So I think it's a great opportunity for you know,
Speaker 12: companies from India to explore that market opportunity. And I
Speaker 12: think particularly for US because some of the offerings that
Speaker 12: we have have adequate differentiated flavor as far as the
Speaker 12: use cases are concerned, for example, public safety on a
Speaker 12: daily basis, we are enabling our public safety users who
Speaker 12: use the systems in a manner that they can effectively
Speaker 12: manage situations on ground like police and police riots, traffell.
Speaker 11: All of that, both local and export market opportunities need
Speaker 11: to expand rapidly for India's drawing industry to take off.
Speaker 11: Ida Forger's laudable making India success offers a run week
Speaker 11: for the over three hundred drawn companies in the country,
Speaker 11: from small players supplying hobbyists to large conglomerates like the
Speaker 11: Irani Group bitching for big defense contracts.
Speaker 4: Memorial Day weekend is upon us here in the United States,
Speaker 4: and one startup is offering an alternative to traditional vacation,
Speaker 4: with Daications offering the opportunity to rent out amenities at
Speaker 4: resorts without having to stay overnight. Joining us as the
Speaker 4: CEO of Resort Past Michael Wolf, who previously served as
Speaker 4: the COO of Class Past. And that's an interesting backstory.
Speaker 4: We'll get to tell me about the size of this market, right,
Speaker 4: like a digital marketplace for dacations. Yeah, well, thanks for
Speaker 4: having me ed.
Speaker 13: We enable day access to the luxury hospitality industry, so
Speaker 13: you're not staying overnight at the hotel, but you can
Speaker 13: use all the amendees things like pools, cabanas, all the
Speaker 13: amendis you've always wanted to use, but just for the day.
Speaker 13: So we've sent over three million people to hotels already
Speaker 13: and we're just getting started.
Speaker 4: I am a religious membership points guy right at hotel
Speaker 4: chain specific airlines. A lot of that has interrupturability with
Speaker 4: my credit card. Do you see those people as competition, No.
Speaker 13: We see them as partners. We actually already work with
Speaker 13: some of the top major credit card companies, and we're
Speaker 13: speaking to a lot of our hotel partners about integrating
Speaker 13: into their loyalty programs. So we work with all of
Speaker 13: the top hotels. We just announced a large partnership with Hilton,
Speaker 13: the second largest hospitality company in the world. We work
Speaker 13: with Ritz, Carlton, Marriott, higat all of the major flags
Speaker 13: and we are spanning those relationships every single day.
Speaker 4: Explain the technology to me, how are you booking sales
Speaker 4: or revenue in each transaction?
Speaker 13: Yeah, so we are both the consumer app and website
Speaker 13: that you go to to find these incredible local dacation experiences.
Speaker 13: But we're also the entire B to B technology stack.
Speaker 13: So when you go check in, let's say at the
Speaker 13: Ritz Carlton and Bell Harbor, they're using our technology to
Speaker 13: check you in set inventory, set pricing, look at competitive data.
Speaker 13: We've invented the entire category from the consumer side all
Speaker 13: the way to the business side.
Speaker 4: Let's take Memorial Day as an example. Of course, Memorial
Speaker 4: Day in the US honoring our full in men and
Speaker 4: women of the Arms services. But when you have a
Speaker 4: holiday weekend like this, is there a big spike for
Speaker 4: you on the app and the website. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 13: People want to experience local luxury without traveling. So right now,
Speaker 13: for example, this summer, we're expecting three times as many
Speaker 13: people to want to travel within one hundred miles then internationally,
Speaker 13: so our business absolutely spikes on weekends like Memorial Day
Speaker 13: and July fourth, where we'll send tens and tens of
Speaker 13: thousands of people to over fifteen hundred local hotels.
Speaker 4: Michael, if there is a fancy resort or hotel out
Speaker 4: there that's skeptical they don't want to do business with you,
Speaker 4: tell them why they should. Tell them why the dacation
Speaker 4: really works. Yeah.
Speaker 13: The reason why it works is that they're already allowing
Speaker 13: guests from the local community into their hotels every single day.
Speaker 13: They might be at their bar, or at their restaurant,
Speaker 13: or maybe even their spa, and this is no different.
Speaker 13: It's just monetizing another piece of the hotel. It's really
Speaker 13: around the revenue maximization and yield management that hotels are
Speaker 13: so smart about in their room product, but they've never
Speaker 13: done it in the rest of the spaces of the
Speaker 13: hotel and resort pass enables them to generate that anslayer
Speaker 13: revenue and this is why we've been able to work
Speaker 13: with truly the top luxury flags in the world like
Speaker 13: Four Seasons, Rich Carlton, Obert's Fairmont, and we're just getting started.
Speaker 4: Michael Wolf fasult Pass CEO the dacation. It's a new one.
Speaker 4: Have a great Memorial Day. Thank you for joining us
Speaker 4: here the program that does it. For this edition of
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Technology, It's been a pretty astonishing week in video
Speaker 4: was the mainstay of that week, but we continued a
Speaker 4: lot more to check out, a lot more to recap.
Speaker 4: Really grateful to all of you that are listening to
Speaker 4: the podcast on a daily basis and so many of
Speaker 4: you giving great feedback about it too. Find it on Apple, Spotify, iHeart,
Speaker 4: and of course on all the Bloomberg platforms. For the
Speaker 4: final time this week from San Francisco, this is Bloomberg Technology.