Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is alive
Speaker 1: from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New York
Speaker 1: and ever though in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Wall Street is shedding
Speaker 2: stocks it thinks are on the wrong side of the
Speaker 2: AI revolution.
Speaker 3: Plus Twilio founder Jeff Lawson has a new company, Nuclear Fusions,
Speaker 3: startup Inertia. We'll discuss how the surging demand for electricity
Speaker 3: is powering big.
Speaker 2: Energy bets and shares of lift plunging off of the
Speaker 2: company's latest earnings results. Will be joined by CEO David
Speaker 2: Risher to unpack it all.
Speaker 3: But first we turn our attentions to these public markets
Speaker 3: that are actually being whip swored. On the day we
Speaker 3: get the big jobs data that signals their strength, people
Speaker 3: start to backtrack, maybe on when or where we could
Speaker 3: see some sort of rate cut and it impacts treasuries,
Speaker 3: but stops actually manage to having been in the red.
Speaker 3: Now shake it off for up a tenth per percent
Speaker 3: on then, as that one hundred managed climb back after
Speaker 3: yesterday's lows. Bitcoin, though I'm afraid no respite from the
Speaker 3: selling there were of by three percent sixty six thousand,
Speaker 3: and what are.
Speaker 4: You looking at underneath the hood.
Speaker 2: I'm going to run through the earnings so that we're
Speaker 2: going to get through throughout the hour. Lift is down
Speaker 2: or on track to be down the most since August
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four. Its profit outlook has the street
Speaker 2: a little bit worried because they don't have the answers
Speaker 2: on why that outlook is weaker than consensus. T Mobile
Speaker 2: actually missed on wireless subscribers in the court of gone,
Speaker 2: was lower and is now higher three percent in the session,
Speaker 2: and then Shopify be estimates. But there seems to be
Speaker 2: this concern out there with the stock on track for
Speaker 2: its biggest drop since April last year, that AI is
Speaker 2: coming for it. That is a common theme we've heard
Speaker 2: for a little while now.
Speaker 5: Charac it is.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at the Software index.
Speaker 3: It's once again down by three point three percent, so
Speaker 3: clearly having a torrid time as those rising fears just
Speaker 3: about AI of pummeling shares of companies at risk been
Speaker 3: caught on the wrong side of the new technology, from
Speaker 3: small software makers to big wealth management firms. Just yesterday
Speaker 3: at tax Strategy tool ed it rolled out by a
Speaker 3: little known startup called Altruist.
Speaker 6: She has a Charles.
Speaker 3: Schwab, Raymond James LPO financialist. You'll see absolutely tumbling. Let's
Speaker 3: get more on Blueboge Tech equity reporter Common Rhynicky. You've
Speaker 3: been all over the implications and Anthropick's one thing. To
Speaker 3: have these smaller LLM or AI offerings start to rule markets,
Speaker 3: that's quite something.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think what it really shows here is that
Speaker 7: kind of everyone's at risk right Investors have been so
Speaker 7: quick to punish the shares of companies that might be
Speaker 7: in the crosshairs here of any new innovation or disruption
Speaker 7: from AI, and it really marks kind of a shift
Speaker 7: or it's sort of two truths that are happening in
Speaker 7: the market right now. One the sphere of an AI
Speaker 7: bubble and sort of overspending and that the technology won't
Speaker 7: live up to the hype, and then on the flip
Speaker 7: side that the technology it's here and it's really good
Speaker 7: and it's going to disrupt, you know, entire parts of
Speaker 7: the market. So we're seeing these little pockets sell off
Speaker 7: on these new things that are coming out, and investments
Speaker 7: are really just trying to see what's next.
Speaker 2: We were talking about your your story as a team
Speaker 2: common just really one of the most read on the
Speaker 2: terminal and on dot com. There are names in there
Speaker 2: that are familiar, like some of the wealth managers for example,
Speaker 2: and then there are names that really like even we
Speaker 2: haven't heard of go through those impacted specifically.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so some of the ones that were most impacted yesterday,
Speaker 7: you know, Charles Schwab was one, Raymond James LPL Financial.
Speaker 7: But then we've also seen you know, some stocks across
Speaker 7: Europe also get hit. Not you know, super high profile
Speaker 7: I think for some of us here in the US,
Speaker 7: but you know, last week it was things you know,
Speaker 7: into it saw a little bit of a sell off. Also,
Speaker 7: tax you know, programming just really all over sort of
Speaker 7: across the board. Insurres you know, had a little bit
Speaker 7: of of a sell off as well. So it's a
Speaker 7: very broad range of stocks that we're seeing here get hit,
Speaker 7: and there is not there's not an easy way to
Speaker 7: really think about what could be next.
Speaker 4: Come in, Ryanikey, She's going to be writing what's next.
Speaker 3: We so appreciate it for more on the software sell off,
Speaker 3: but still the demand for hardware. We're joined by on
Speaker 3: Care Crawford, EVP put Photio manager over an outjo and
Speaker 3: you recently updated your twenty twenty three paper AI and
Speaker 3: the declining cost to create.
Speaker 4: Your thesis is now playing out in real time.
Speaker 3: You've been writing, When AI can write software, the cost
Speaker 3: to create the software plummets. I believe the market is
Speaker 3: starting to question the terminal value of these businesses. I
Speaker 3: will be more challenging. It will be more challenging for
Speaker 3: companies who are not AI native. So how much longer
Speaker 3: could this pressure build for?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 8: I think again, when the terminal value is changing and
Speaker 8: you don't really know what the end point is, it's
Speaker 8: difficult to put a multiple on these stocks.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 6: I would say that we're getting a.
Speaker 8: Little bit of a phenomenon of the baby's getting thrown
Speaker 8: out with breathwater in that all stocks are going down
Speaker 8: regardless because there is such a fear factor right now,
Speaker 8: and not all of the software stocks are created equal, right,
Speaker 8: and there are going to be some beneficiaries, But one
Speaker 8: thing is for sure, the entire industry needs to rethink.
Speaker 8: And you know something that the Shopify CFO said this
Speaker 8: morning that I thought was really interesting. He wrote, he said,
Speaker 8: the rules of what is possible are being rewritten real time. Yeah,
Speaker 8: And I think that's what you're seeing is when you
Speaker 8: can create.
Speaker 6: Bespoke software on the fly. And that's today.
Speaker 8: What happens five years from now when these llms and
Speaker 8: these you know, self coding mechanisms are actually even more
Speaker 8: powerful by orders of magnitude. So anything digital, any digital asset,
Speaker 8: you must call to question as to what is its future.
Speaker 4: But this knee jerk of sell first, ask questions later?
Speaker 3: What questions are you now asking to decide where you
Speaker 3: can bossom pick which ones aren't going to be disrupted?
Speaker 8: So I think it becomes again a very much a
Speaker 8: stock pickers mark because there are some you have to
Speaker 8: understand the architecture of how some of the software is
Speaker 8: actually being built. I would say things like point Solutions
Speaker 8: that are in the small to MidCap space very difficult
Speaker 8: to own because that kind of end market that they're
Speaker 8: addressing can easily get you served by, you know, companies
Speaker 8: that are bigger or adjacent businesses, you know, so you
Speaker 8: it's very difficult to own some of those. I think
Speaker 8: companies that are larger cap, more platform like companies, parts
Speaker 8: of those businesses.
Speaker 6: Are at risk, not the entire thing.
Speaker 8: We'll still have SaaS it will just exist at a
Speaker 8: different margin structure, different growth rates than we are used to.
Speaker 6: So how do you pick?
Speaker 8: I think you have to understand the differences between all
Speaker 8: the software. Security is not the same as enterprise software,
Speaker 8: not the same as you know, mid and small cap
Speaker 8: point solutions. So you have to be almost very very
Speaker 8: deliberate in what you're looking at, and not just by
Speaker 8: the group.
Speaker 2: We've been zeroed in on this software story for so
Speaker 2: many days in a row now and earnings of course,
Speaker 2: but we should discuss the stronger than expected US jobs report,
Speaker 2: payrolls in January rising by the most and more than
Speaker 2: a year unemployment faoling unexpectedly. What does that signal for
Speaker 2: the tech sector? What do our audience need to understand
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 8: So look, I think I think we're living in two
Speaker 8: separate regimes right now, in that you know, the tech
Speaker 8: sector is going through its own hiccups with understanding the
Speaker 8: what AI will do to it. On the other hand,
Speaker 8: you have the hardware sector inside of tech, which is
Speaker 8: faring much better than software because they are the beneficiaries
Speaker 8: of all of this AI and the infrastructure spending. So
Speaker 8: how do would I read the unemployment report and attach
Speaker 8: it to AI, I think today or over the next
Speaker 8: few weeks, they're kind of not connected to one another,
Speaker 8: and I won't read anything into it for the tech sector.
Speaker 2: That would suggest that we are still zeroed in on
Speaker 2: the capital expenditures numbers that will come from the Hyperscalers
Speaker 2: and others, and that that will be the yardstick by
Speaker 2: which we judge continued growth right for the bands of
Speaker 2: this year. And how important a data set is that
Speaker 2: going to be for you this year, Anka, I.
Speaker 6: Think very much.
Speaker 8: I think besides the Hyperscaler CAPEX numbers, I think we
Speaker 8: have to look at demand. Token growth in the month
Speaker 8: of January was twenty five percent growth month over month
Speaker 8: from December. If you annualize that, that means token growth
Speaker 8: for the year is going to be fourteenfold what we
Speaker 8: saw last year.
Speaker 6: Fourteen full token growth.
Speaker 8: And that is just a measure of the amount of
Speaker 8: intelligence that we are we are asking the system or
Speaker 8: AI to do for us.
Speaker 6: That is an incredible.
Speaker 8: Amount of demand that is being put into the system,
Speaker 8: and we will need an incredible amount of capex to
Speaker 8: support it. And I will remind everyone we are in
Speaker 8: the very early innings of adoption of artificial intelligence and
Speaker 8: so that CAPEX number actually is necessary, and it doesn't
Speaker 8: really scare me because as we as we move forward two, three,
Speaker 8: four and five years, I do believe that our world
Speaker 8: is changing in such a dramatic way that we are
Speaker 8: going to need this kapex.
Speaker 2: Uncle Crawlford, about a great to have you back on
Speaker 2: the program. Thank you very much. Coming up, time to
Speaker 2: launch SpaceX meet Xai. Yai may be key for the
Speaker 2: company's next launch. Bloomberg Intelligence just initiated coverage and we
Speaker 2: have it next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 3: SpaceX's acquisition of Xai has many wondering what the company's
Speaker 3: next chapter will look like. The profitable rocket maker is
Speaker 3: set to merge the AI startup, which is what he cause,
Speaker 3: burning billions as it races to compete with other AI players.
Speaker 3: All of this comes as SpaceX that you're looking at now,
Speaker 3: is expected to IPO later this year. Today, UMEG Intelligence
Speaker 3: has launched coverage as a combined entity and says the merger,
Speaker 3: along with the planned IPO, could help fund investment in
Speaker 3: larger launch vehicles and space based data centers. As new
Speaker 3: reports suggests the IPO could value the company as much
Speaker 3: as one point five trillion dollars for more want to
Speaker 3: bring in a dream team. Roome meg Intelligence Roundtable. George
Speaker 3: Ferguson's senior aerospace and defense analyst and manly seeing global
Speaker 3: head of Tech Research, has been thinking about the Tesla implications. George,
Speaker 3: we start with you on SpaceX. How much is it
Speaker 3: a burden or a help to be now aligned with
Speaker 3: XAI because it's certainly cash burn. Meanwhile, you think revenues
Speaker 3: are what up to the tune of ten billion for
Speaker 3: certain parts of SpaceX, so if not more.
Speaker 10: Yeah, So we think launch is worth probably as revenue
Speaker 10: generating probably at least ten billion, and we think that
Speaker 10: this satellite constellation Starlink is probably eightish nine ish billion.
Speaker 10: My colleague John Butler did the work on that, so
Speaker 10: we're up actually probably closer to twenty billion. Look, I
Speaker 10: think the combining with XAI is all about sort of
Speaker 10: strategy and funding AI, I mean manned people of course
Speaker 10: talk to it deeper, but I think that AI business
Speaker 10: needs a lot more investment. I think Musk wants to
Speaker 10: push it up in its competitiveness, and so I think
Speaker 10: you put it inside this broader offering for SpaceX in
Speaker 10: order to help move some money.
Speaker 2: That way, Mandy, the combination you know, long term, it's
Speaker 2: about compute in space right satellite space form factor data
Speaker 2: center of XAI. In your research, continuing to look at
Speaker 2: what we reported as being a potential tie up between Tesla,
Speaker 2: XAI and SpaceX give me a thesis.
Speaker 11: Well, so the way XAI has been looking to monetize
Speaker 11: is through consumer subscriptions so far, and when I stack
Speaker 11: them against let's say an open Ai, you know, they
Speaker 11: are nowhere close to the scale that OpenAI is or
Speaker 11: Gemini is in terms of consumer subscriptions. On the enterprise side, yes,
Speaker 11: they have that big defense contract, but that's where you know,
Speaker 11: the XAI revenue run rate is close to one billion,
Speaker 11: and compare that to Anthropic and the others. There's not
Speaker 11: growing at the same pace.
Speaker 6: So because all these.
Speaker 11: Large angrid models are converging and growing really fast, you
Speaker 11: have to ask yourself, how are they going to fund
Speaker 11: the next training run? And you need that sort of
Speaker 11: funding to really keep up in terms of how these
Speaker 11: models are developing. So I think the merger is really
Speaker 11: an attempt to make sure that they don't lack the
Speaker 11: funding because all these companies are tapping you know, the
Speaker 11: private market, the debt market, and you know, as a
Speaker 11: combined entity, they've already sort of come up with the
Speaker 11: one point two five trillion.
Speaker 6: Yes, they go public, probably.
Speaker 11: One point five trillion could be achievable, but it's a
Speaker 11: very high valuation multiple that they already have.
Speaker 4: Mandy.
Speaker 3: What's interesting in your research is you really compare and
Speaker 3: contrast how many individual users are going to a standalone GROQUEI.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not many, but there are.
Speaker 3: Plenty of US Tesla users out there who could be
Speaker 3: using it. How much should they need to lean in
Speaker 3: to ensure that adoption is brought to bear in that respect?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you make a great point.
Speaker 11: The digital assistant use case within a Tesla makes perfect sense.
Speaker 11: I mean, why would they not deploy Rock inside a
Speaker 11: Tesla as a digital assistant? And you already have you know,
Speaker 11: ten million cars on the road where you could potentially
Speaker 11: deploy that. So from that perspective, the feedback loop can
Speaker 11: be very fast in terms of you know, them deploying
Speaker 11: the product, the feedback in terms of how well it's
Speaker 11: doing and constantly improving that. But you need that consumer
Speaker 11: adoption because that's what all these lms you're competing against, Google,
Speaker 11: Gemini and.
Speaker 4: More guardrails as well, I might add.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and that's where Grock so far has been kind
Speaker 11: of I feel like they haven't really caught up in
Speaker 11: terms of implementing the right guardrails, and people feel skeptical
Speaker 11: about implementing them on the enterprise side, so there is
Speaker 11: work to be done on that front.
Speaker 2: This is a big moment where Bloomberg Intelligence is initiating coverage,
Speaker 2: deep research of a big private entity that we think
Speaker 2: will go public, right, George, the data in the deck
Speaker 2: is so valuable. You're tracking the size of the Starlak consolation,
Speaker 2: You're tracking launch cadence, and then our forecasted financials. Which
Speaker 2: of those are going to be most important now that
Speaker 2: SpaceX is hard pivoted to the Moon from Mars, George,
Speaker 2: very quick.
Speaker 10: So I guess where I see the money really being
Speaker 10: generated from as the concl the satellite constellation around the Earth,
Speaker 10: and that's going to bring broadband revenue, and it's going
Speaker 10: to bring director sell revenue. The pivot to the Moon
Speaker 10: and Mars, I think is a little more about sort
Speaker 10: of marketing than it is about revenue generation. I'm all
Speaker 10: about revenue and profit generation.
Speaker 2: George ferguson Man deep seeing blue meg intelligence coverage of
Speaker 2: SpaceX and XAI appreciate it a lot. There's a lot
Speaker 2: going on in the world of Elon Inc. Jimmy Barr
Speaker 2: Tony Wu, co founders of XAI, have announced they're leaving
Speaker 2: the company after less than three years. By my count, Carroe,
Speaker 2: that means that half of the about dozen initial founders,
Speaker 2: which includes Elon Musk, have now gone.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's to be expected when you see such
Speaker 3: a difference in the architecture of the business. Now it's
Speaker 3: subsumed into space X. What does that mean in terms
Speaker 3: of the founding principles of this business? But is there
Speaker 3: any read through Look, we're looking at their statements, their
Speaker 3: resignation posts that they actually put on X. Of course,
Speaker 3: what do you make of it, ed if someone who's
Speaker 3: so deeply within the Elon Musk space, We.
Speaker 2: Just don't know. When I read the merger documents, you know,
Speaker 2: it was pretty clear and we reported this right that
Speaker 2: XAI would operate as a standalone subsidiary because remember SpaceX
Speaker 2: is subject to ITEAR rules the use of technology and
Speaker 2: defense applications. Is that it is it about the reports
Speaker 2: that Musk has been frustrated about the pace of ROX deployment.
Speaker 2: But these are notable people who are leaders in field
Speaker 2: and talents everything in this game.
Speaker 3: And boy is a competition hot at the moment with Anthropic, Withnai,
Speaker 3: with Xai, we continue to track at me while coming up.
Speaker 3: Google another AI player that we keep golying on, but
Speaker 3: it's also adding the way to shop within its AI search.
Speaker 3: We'll discuss with the company's general manager of Ads and Commerce.
Speaker 4: Stick with us as Bluembag Tech.
Speaker 2: Google is adding shopping features to its AI search and
Speaker 2: Gemini chatbot. The move comes as tech companies more broadly
Speaker 2: look for ways beyond subscriptions to make money from the
Speaker 2: AI tools. Let's discuss with Vigistron Novas and Google's vice
Speaker 2: president and general manager of Ads and Commerce. There's always
Speaker 2: been a relationship at least you know, for me personally
Speaker 2: as well, between Google searching and then getting.
Speaker 5: To a product.
Speaker 2: But in AI mode, that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: AI mode there's just a more direct interaction to a
Speaker 2: transaction right where you can go ahead and buy something
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 5: How big are moments that for Google?
Speaker 12: It is a massive moment for us. We see this
Speaker 12: as not just a big moment for Google just sort
Speaker 12: of stepping back in the last year, what we see
Speaker 12: is shoppers have really changed their behaviors they are now
Speaker 12: Typically shoppers had to pick between shopping fast or shopping smart,
Speaker 12: and with AI, that trade off is kind of disappearing.
Speaker 12: And therefore businesses now need a new playbook and a
Speaker 12: lot of what they're doing now is all about how
Speaker 12: to empower them and an AI mode. What we're seeing
Speaker 12: is people's search behavior is completely evolving, from keyword search
Speaker 12: to conversation or search, they upload pictures, There's so much
Speaker 12: multimodal input that comes in, and that's just a moment
Speaker 12: for us to rethink how we do the whole thing.
Speaker 5: VIJA.
Speaker 2: Anyone that watched the Super Bowl will know that the
Speaker 2: inclusion of ads within a generative AI tool is let's
Speaker 2: not say controversial, but that people are deciding if it's
Speaker 2: what the consumer wants. Right, if you're interacting with an
Speaker 2: AI do you want an AD to pop up? And
Speaker 2: you've been testing different ad formats as part of this,
Speaker 2: what do you think the consumer wants?
Speaker 12: Yeah, obviously we spend a lot of time figuring out
Speaker 12: what consumers want. We've had a twenty five year history
Speaker 12: in satisfying human curiosity with search. In all of these experiences,
Speaker 12: as have been a big part of that, and they
Speaker 12: work because they're helpful and assistive to the person in
Speaker 12: the moment. Now, with what's happening with AI mode, what
Speaker 12: we see is the conversational modality is changing. It is
Speaker 12: a moment for us to reimagine what ads are possible
Speaker 12: and what will actually work. And there's a lot of
Speaker 12: experimentation that we're doing. In fact, we have a couple
Speaker 12: of announcements on that, but the foundations of what makes
Speaker 12: this work continue from what we've learnt all these years,
Speaker 12: and that's really based on a foundation of trust and safety.
Speaker 3: Trust safety then tell us about how you become entrepreneurial
Speaker 3: in your thinking, how you become creative in your thinking
Speaker 3: that these don't feel unnerving to the purchaser.
Speaker 4: They feel natural, organic and useful.
Speaker 9: Let me actually give you an example.
Speaker 12: So let's say you're in AI mode and you want
Speaker 12: to purchase a lamp for your bedroom and you talk
Speaker 12: to the you tell AI mode about your the de
Speaker 12: call you like it's a modern decor, you want a
Speaker 12: certain kind of lamp, this is a color, And you
Speaker 12: get to a point where you know the product that
Speaker 12: you want, you see the product that you want, the
Speaker 12: feature that we just launched today, lets you purchase it
Speaker 12: right there.
Speaker 9: In that moment.
Speaker 12: Now you're still very much in control of the purchase. However,
Speaker 12: a lot of the grunt work of getting from what
Speaker 12: I want to when I have it is removed in
Speaker 12: this process.
Speaker 9: So this feels a system.
Speaker 12: This feels natural, and it's based on the same principles
Speaker 12: that we've.
Speaker 9: Done a lot of things before. Direct offers.
Speaker 3: Who can I buy from when I found the perfect lamp?
Speaker 3: Is it just at saan Wayfair? You've got partnerships there.
Speaker 3: How is this expanding across the entire remit of partners
Speaker 3: that you have.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So direct office is an opportunity for retailers to
Speaker 12: provide us a very specialized discount that our AI actually
Speaker 12: matches with people during their shopping journeys and gives them
Speaker 12: this very personalized discount, and it.
Speaker 9: Allows retailers to just close the.
Speaker 12: Sale in that moment because they motivate people to do this.
Speaker 12: And the way it's going to scale is just we're
Speaker 12: currently running.
Speaker 9: A pilot with a lot of retailers.
Speaker 12: There will be more that and come on board and
Speaker 12: they just have to participate.
Speaker 9: And this is a new ad format.
Speaker 2: The technology needs to work for me. It's still a
Speaker 2: technology story. So you want whatever appears in AI mode
Speaker 2: to be relevant to the query. You know, that has
Speaker 2: been a criticism of other generatsive AI tools. What's come
Speaker 2: up in front of me has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. How's Google solving for that?
Speaker 9: There are many aspects to that.
Speaker 12: I think it goes back to the foundation cod foundations
Speaker 12: of search in general. We are in the constant quest
Speaker 12: to make the results more relevant. One of the things
Speaker 12: that can help in this space is also understanding the
Speaker 12: context of the user better and AI mode is good
Speaker 12: in that sense because we do have the opportunity to
Speaker 12: go back and forth with the user.
Speaker 9: So the questions we have as a follow on all
Speaker 9: of these things help us learn a little bit.
Speaker 12: More about the person, so we have the best shot
Speaker 12: at producing results that are more relevant for them.
Speaker 3: Very briefly, you talked about safety and privacy. It's a
Speaker 3: criticism particularly of Elizabeth Warren, for example, worrying that you're
Speaker 3: pushing people into making well purchases that they otherwise wouldn't
Speaker 3: there privacy, how do you tackle that.
Speaker 4: The way.
Speaker 12: The fact that the foundations is people today have choice
Speaker 12: to go purchase something or not. There are many many
Speaker 12: opportunities that you have to click on that buy button
Speaker 12: in many places, in many different products. Those same principles
Speaker 12: of control and choice continue to exist in this domain
Speaker 12: as well, and it's still on the person to choose
Speaker 12: to click on that button and make that purchase.
Speaker 3: VIDIA, it's been great having you Google's VideA Universe, and
Speaker 3: we thank you. Coming up Twilio founder Jeff Lawson. It's
Speaker 3: got a new company. It's a nuclear company. He joins
Speaker 3: us to discuss the energy startup four hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million dollars Series A. That's next disciplining big tech. Welcome
Speaker 3: back to Bloomberg Tech. Checking in on these markets which
Speaker 3: have been whipswored by macro data. By of course, jobs
Speaker 3: coming in stronger than expected. What does that mean for
Speaker 3: an overall policy from the Federal Reserve in terms of
Speaker 3: rate cuts coming maybe July rather than June. But I'm
Speaker 3: looking at individual stock store on the move. Check out
Speaker 3: the earnings story coming from Lyft, a surprise revenue miss
Speaker 3: on their fiscal fourth quarter.
Speaker 5: Look.
Speaker 3: Bookings are good, people are wanting to ride with Lyft,
Speaker 3: But what about that profitability therein What about the revenue drivers?
Speaker 4: What about the expansion outside the US.
Speaker 3: We're going to have that conversation with the CEO a
Speaker 3: little bit later, as you can see a painful day
Speaker 3: off by fifteen percent, move on to some of the
Speaker 3: other just keep indexes.
Speaker 4: Look, this is the pushing the pull in the market. Software.
Speaker 3: We have more anxiety about the latest AI formats, LM developments,
Speaker 3: latest ways in which business models are getting disrupted, whether
Speaker 3: it's in your financial services, whether it's in your legal services,
Speaker 3: but also whether more broadly it's about what software is
Speaker 3: going to do for you in the longer term and
Speaker 3: how much you can charge for it. Software under pressure
Speaker 3: again down three point six percent. That rotation continues, but
Speaker 3: still the Kapax is there. Still the hardware is there.
Speaker 3: Still the high bandwidth memory.
Speaker 4: Anxiety and lack of it is there. And Micron goes higher.
Speaker 3: So we're seeing still those chip maker's ed in the green.
Speaker 4: What are you looking at?
Speaker 5: It's the private markets.
Speaker 2: Surging demand for electricity is powering big investments and energy
Speaker 2: among them. Fusion startup Inertia, co founded by Twilio founder
Speaker 2: former chairman and CEO Jeff Lawson, which just closed a
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty million dollars Series A funding round.
Speaker 2: Jeff Lawson, co founder and CEO of Inertia's with us.
Speaker 2: It's good to have you back on Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 5: Thanks great to be there.
Speaker 2: A completely different field. It's not just fusion. I think
Speaker 2: that let's start by you introducing us to Inertia, because
Speaker 2: a fusion powered plant is completely continent your case, and
Speaker 2: you cracking extremely powerful lasers, a sentence I never thought
Speaker 2: i'd say on this show. Take it from there.
Speaker 13: Well, Inertia is the commercial fusion energy company. That's because
Speaker 13: in order to commercialize the technology, you need to prove
Speaker 13: the science. So we are resting on the scientific proof
Speaker 13: that it was made several years ago. You probably read
Speaker 13: about it at Laurrence Livermore National Lab, and now we
Speaker 13: are here to take it out of the lab and
Speaker 13: bring it to the grid. And we do that in
Speaker 13: three ways. One, of course, start with proven science. Number two,
Speaker 13: we're gonna go build the world's most powerful laser. In fact,
Speaker 13: the laser we're gonna build is a million times more
Speaker 13: powerful than the one they use over at Laurence livermore
Speaker 13: it's twenty times more efficient and one tenth the size.
Speaker 13: Then we're gonna go build the world's first fusion fuel
Speaker 13: target manufacturing plant. And then lastly, we're gonna bring all
Speaker 13: those things together into a grid scale one point five
Speaker 13: gigawatt power plant that we hope to bring online in
Speaker 13: the twenty three.
Speaker 5: There's a lot there.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of we are going to with lasers,
Speaker 2: like we break the story about Substrate for example, which
Speaker 2: is also using X rays in lithography that was born
Speaker 2: out of the National Labs here in California. There's some
Speaker 2: interesting tangents there. That's all to say, it sounds like
Speaker 2: you probably need four hundred and fifty million dollars to
Speaker 2: get started. If you're gonna pull all of this off.
Speaker 2: What's the first priority.
Speaker 13: Well, usion energy is not a chief endeavor, so yes,
Speaker 13: it will be capital intensive. That's why we're so happy
Speaker 13: to be starting off with such a great group of
Speaker 13: investors for our Series A. And if you think about it,
Speaker 13: commercialization really requires three things. First of all, you need
Speaker 13: proven science, so we've got that. Second is you need
Speaker 13: a great team. And so for a team to go commercialize,
Speaker 13: you've got my co founder and US the lead designer
Speaker 13: of the experiment at Laurence Livermore that achieved this huge milestone.
Speaker 13: My other co founder might Done ran the program that
Speaker 13: designed the power plant based on that experiment. And then
Speaker 13: I'm bringing business experience to the domain as well. And
Speaker 13: so you look at the team that we're building, which
Speaker 13: is a team that isdigned to commercialize. And the third
Speaker 13: thing you need is funding. And that's why this funding
Speaker 13: announcement is such a big part of our story.
Speaker 3: What's interesting is you hit while the iron is hot,
Speaker 3: so to speak, in terms of a need, an energy need,
Speaker 3: and it's coming from the very top.
Speaker 4: It's coming from the administration.
Speaker 3: Just listen to what a key administration official told us today.
Speaker 14: Now we're facing this AI arms raised with China. We
Speaker 14: need more power, we need energy. The way to have
Speaker 14: energy addition is to stop stop getting rid of the
Speaker 14: stuff that already works. And of course that includes our
Speaker 14: fossil fuel baseload and the PGM market. Seventy percent of
Speaker 14: the power was coming from hydrocarbons during those storms. I mean,
Speaker 14: America and the world is dependent on it is going
Speaker 14: to be in long future.
Speaker 3: US and Teri Sectuary there Doug Bergham speaking Jeff, how
Speaker 3: quickly can you provide this very much needed alternative energy source.
Speaker 13: Well, I think investment in new energy sources is always
Speaker 13: a long term play. No matter what kind of energy
Speaker 13: you're talking about, it takes time to develop the technology.
Speaker 13: Our goal is to have the first fusion pilot plant
Speaker 13: online in the twenty thirties available to start producing grid
Speaker 13: scale energy. And our solution is a grid scale answer
Speaker 13: to our energy problems, which can provide enough power to
Speaker 13: power a million homes or a medium to large sized
Speaker 13: city at any one point in time.
Speaker 5: And that's just the first plant.
Speaker 13: After that we'll move on to building the second, the third,
Speaker 13: the fourth, and keep stamping these things.
Speaker 3: Out, stamping these fusion things out, which could go either direction.
Speaker 4: I love talking about the big lasers. I also love
Speaker 4: talking about big magnets. Jack. Why was this the technology
Speaker 4: you bet on when it comes to nuclear fusion.
Speaker 13: Well, the reason why we're betting on the laser based
Speaker 13: fusion approach is because it has actually worked. The basic
Speaker 13: science of our approach thanks to more than sixty years
Speaker 13: of work in the national labs and more than thirty
Speaker 13: billion dollars invested by the government to get to this
Speaker 13: huge milestone where it actually produced energy, and so now
Speaker 13: that is the time when you want to go commercialize.
Speaker 13: And that experiment was first proven in December of twenty
Speaker 13: twenty two, but since then has been now run many
Speaker 13: times and in fact increase the yield or the amount
Speaker 13: of energy it creates multiple fold. And so that's why
Speaker 13: this is the time to take it out of the
Speaker 13: lab and bring it to the grid because of the
Speaker 13: proven science that has demonstrated.
Speaker 2: Is the skepticism the pause is that we have been
Speaker 2: talking about this technology for quite a long time. Projections
Speaker 2: are always wrong. And when it gets commercialized, do you
Speaker 2: have a kind of line of sight to that, will
Speaker 2: you do it in California, for example, or is that
Speaker 2: just not realistic in this state? You're looking elsewhere in
Speaker 2: the United States. Give us the kind of like plans
Speaker 2: operationally to make this real absolutely well.
Speaker 13: We have a twelve to twenty four month period right
Speaker 13: now where we are approving the design validation of the
Speaker 13: things we're going to go manufacture. Then we've got a
Speaker 13: multi year stage where we're going to go actually make
Speaker 13: the prototypes of our laser units of our target manufacturing plant,
Speaker 13: and after that that's when we break round on the
Speaker 13: plant itself, where we put the plant we have not
Speaker 13: yet decided. I think that's up for a determination over
Speaker 13: the next several years. But the key thing for us
Speaker 13: is that this is not about basic science. The thing
Speaker 13: that introduces a lot of uncertainty into these types of
Speaker 13: innovations is basic science. You never know if it's going
Speaker 13: to work tomorrow or a decade or one hundred years
Speaker 13: from now, or maybe never.
Speaker 5: But when you're talking about.
Speaker 13: Engineering, bringing a product to market, doing an industrial scale
Speaker 13: up to go build bigger laser, there's more targets. You know,
Speaker 13: those are the kinds of things that are predictable. Think
Speaker 13: about you know, Apple. Every year they're bringing a brand new,
Speaker 13: really hard to manufacture, incredibly innovative device to market in
Speaker 13: terms of our new iPhones, and they figure out how
Speaker 13: to take it to a factory and make a billion
Speaker 13: of them. Well, that's basically what our approach is. It's
Speaker 13: just we're making lasers and targets and bringing those together
Speaker 13: into a plant.
Speaker 2: Jeff, over a period of many years, you came on
Speaker 2: this program as the leader of a public company, whether
Speaker 2: the stock was up, down or sideways, and in difficult
Speaker 2: moments right now, software, which was your former love, former domain,
Speaker 2: is having a difficult moment because people are concerned that
Speaker 2: AI will just render it obsolete. Which you just tell
Speaker 2: me what you're making of that moment and you know
Speaker 2: your former company, but the field.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 13: I mean I did make this call back then, which
Speaker 13: was to say that I believe that software as a
Speaker 13: service companies would struggle in this AI era. Not because
Speaker 13: people are going to go ask Claude to go just
Speaker 13: make them their own SaaS. I don't think that's the reason,
Speaker 13: but because per seat pricing is going to be a
Speaker 13: big challenge. In fact, services that are back end infrastructure
Speaker 13: APIs like tulio is, I think those are the services
Speaker 13: that win because they provide the services that agents are
Speaker 13: going to be able to plug into and be able
Speaker 13: to build all sorts of new and interesting use cases.
Speaker 13: But I think the idea that you've got a workflow
Speaker 13: that's based on a number of employees you have doing
Speaker 13: that workflow, I think those companies can get disrupted.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what you're seeing in the markets
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 3: And Jeff, is it an overreaction from your perspective because
Speaker 3: many are just throwing everything out baby with bath water,
Speaker 3: rather than being discerning about whether this is a platform engagement,
Speaker 3: whether or not it's just a change in the way
Speaker 3: of pricing the offering in the future.
Speaker 4: Rather than having to rebuild from the ground up.
Speaker 13: Well, I'm firmly in the camp of not throwing away
Speaker 13: babies with bathwater, and so I think that over time
Speaker 13: investors will discern which companies are well poised for success
Speaker 13: in this era as well as which ones are going
Speaker 13: to struggle because they have the innovator's dilemma based on
Speaker 13: their pricing models.
Speaker 2: Jeff Lawson, co founder, CEO of Inertia, former CEO and
Speaker 2: co founder of Twitter, really appreciate all of that. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much. Carry it more news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's time now for talking tech. Up ed and
Speaker 3: first up AI. Humanoid robotics start up Atronics raise five
Speaker 3: hund twenty million dollars in a new funding round, valuing
Speaker 3: the company more than five point five billion dollars now.
Speaker 3: The fresh capital will support the commercialization of its Apollo
Speaker 3: robot and help expand scale its systems.
Speaker 9: Plus.
Speaker 3: Chinese AI firm Jpoo says it is set to release
Speaker 3: GLM five, an upgrade to its flagship model with a
Speaker 3: new version is designed to handle more complex coding and
Speaker 3: ingenetic tasks, putting it in direct competition with Anthropics clawed Opus.
Speaker 3: She says GLM five will officially roll out on Thursday,
Speaker 3: and China's top chip maker s miic or Smith is
Speaker 3: wanting that the surge and AI chip spending.
Speaker 4: Maybe pulling forward years.
Speaker 3: Of future demand, increasing the risk that some data.
Speaker 4: Center capacity can ultimately sit ig.
Speaker 3: AI related infrastructure investment is projected to exceed three trillion
Speaker 3: dollars in the next five years, according to Moody's Ratings.
Speaker 2: Okay, coming up, we'll discuss lifts and with LIFT CEO
Speaker 2: David Risher.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg Tech. Okay.
Speaker 2: Shares of lifted down around fifteen percent, on track for
Speaker 2: the biggest drop since August of twenty twenty four. The
Speaker 2: stock's under pressure, but in the company's earnings, the company
Speaker 2: kind of set out on working on a global expansion
Speaker 2: and new product offerings. Lift CEO David Risher is here
Speaker 2: with us in San Francisco. I want to go to
Speaker 2: the core business because you know, I'm going to get
Speaker 2: to Roba Taxi shortly. But you know, like the things
Speaker 2: that are good for you are black Chaufford rides, airports,
Speaker 2: those are higher value and so like my interpretation of
Speaker 2: reading all the analyst response at least is that they
Speaker 2: looked at the kind of profit outlook and said, that's
Speaker 2: a bit below what we expected. What were the factors
Speaker 2: behind that? If those kind of high value segments are doing.
Speaker 15: Great, I mean, it's so much a good question, right, Look,
Speaker 15: we had a blow up order and so record bookings, accelerating,
Speaker 15: record profits, never been higher, record cash flow, record customers. Okay,
Speaker 15: so all that is really good, and what it shows
Speaker 15: is the customer obsession is what drives profitable growth.
Speaker 5: Now there's no question it.
Speaker 15: Sounds like analysts are looking at things like margin, but
Speaker 15: as you just pointed out, a lot of our biggest
Speaker 15: growth is actually in the highest value mode, it's highest
Speaker 15: margin modes. So we've got a lot of conviction that
Speaker 15: we're in a good place and only getting better.
Speaker 2: You and I spent some time together at the end
Speaker 2: of last year and we went kind of a bit
Speaker 2: deeper on the robotypes plan. Yeah, it's through partnerships and
Speaker 2: it's leveraging what you believe is a strength in fleet management.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 2: Succinctly update us on everything that's due to happen, then please.
Speaker 15: Oh my good I mean, this is gonna be a
Speaker 15: big year for self driving cars, right, and let's start
Speaker 15: with sort of the big picture. When self driving cars
Speaker 15: come on to a network like cars, it tends to
Speaker 15: expand the market. And you would expect that because it's
Speaker 15: a cool new product. It's reliable. You know, you can
Speaker 15: kind of space out, you can text and not worry
Speaker 15: about a driver over hearing a phone call something like that.
Speaker 15: So that's really good. Okay, So then what happens is
Speaker 15: you've got to make sure that you're well positioned with
Speaker 15: all the best players in the market. If you're on
Speaker 15: our in our business, we are. We've got way more
Speaker 15: partnership as you know. We've got a buy do partnership
Speaker 15: that we've just announced is going to be live in
Speaker 15: London later this year. We just worked out an agreement
Speaker 15: with the city of Hamburg in Germany to be the
Speaker 15: first robotaxi provider there. So that's wonderful. So you've got
Speaker 15: the partnerships, you've got the cities lined up, and now
Speaker 15: you've got to be able to manage this fleet. And
Speaker 15: as you just said, this is not the sexy part,
Speaker 15: but it's so important. You've got to be able to
Speaker 15: make sure these cars are charged, clean and ready to go.
Speaker 15: We have a flex Drive subsidiary that's been doing that
Speaker 15: for years. We think we're the best in class, and
Speaker 15: our goal is to be maybe five percent cheaper than
Speaker 15: any other place with higher quality to put robo taxes
Speaker 15: on the network.
Speaker 3: Cheaper That doesn't immediately make me think profit driving David
Speaker 3: in that way. And so like talk about your targets.
Speaker 3: You've got this one billion EMIT del by twenty twenty
Speaker 3: seven and Lumberg Intelligence is warring.
Speaker 4: That looks pretty ambitious at this stage.
Speaker 15: Well, so when I say cheaper, I mean the lowest
Speaker 15: cost way right. And that's the thing is, I want
Speaker 15: our cost position to be really good. To your point,
Speaker 15: like our goals, which we set out a couple of
Speaker 15: years ago, our top line growth of twenty of fifteen
Speaker 15: percent mid teens.
Speaker 5: Year on year.
Speaker 15: We're very much on track for that, and bottom line
Speaker 15: growth getting to a billion dollars of adjusted EBADOT which
Speaker 15: will be four percent margin.
Speaker 5: Very much on track for that.
Speaker 15: But what it means is you've got to be really
Speaker 15: smart about managing your costs. You've got really good about
Speaker 15: kind of managing your quality, and we're doing really well
Speaker 15: on both.
Speaker 5: We've just made progress.
Speaker 15: As I say, we've got our best profitable, highest profitable
Speaker 15: quarter just to bask you.
Speaker 3: For I think therefore, go back to the av world
Speaker 3: because there is this ongoing anxiety that the competition is
Speaker 3: just going to get so fierce?
Speaker 4: Are you set up to win?
Speaker 3: What are you saying to convince the investor base they
Speaker 3: shouldn't be setting off your shareside this?
Speaker 15: Yeah, I think that the way to think about avs
Speaker 15: is they're going to be good for the whole industry,
Speaker 15: the rideshare industry, because, as they say, it's a good
Speaker 15: new product at a lower cost. And I think why
Speaker 15: we are particularly well positioned is we have demand that
Speaker 15: runs to the two three four million people a day level,
Speaker 15: So we have lots of demand for this, and you
Speaker 15: know what they want.
Speaker 5: They want a fast, reliable pick up. It's going to
Speaker 5: get them where they want to go.
Speaker 15: Sometimes they'll want to be driven by a human, sometimes
Speaker 15: by a robot.
Speaker 5: Just kind of depends.
Speaker 15: And so this idea of a hybrid network, I think
Speaker 15: it's a real strength, particularly when you sort of marry
Speaker 15: it with fleet is.
Speaker 2: There a case study for you to reflect on in
Speaker 2: real terms. Then like Atlanta, mame mobility. What are you
Speaker 2: learning there, by the way, what's the status of it
Speaker 2: in terms of like fully, driver lists, et cetera.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 15: So we're in Atlanta, have we still have safety drivers
Speaker 15: in the car just to make sure everything is going well?
Speaker 15: And you know, because we want this to be an
Speaker 15: incredibly high quality, incredibly safe experience.
Speaker 5: What we're learning is people love it. I mean, this
Speaker 5: is the interesting thing.
Speaker 15: People before they when they hear about av's are often
Speaker 15: a little skeptical. They sound like, I'm not sure I'm
Speaker 15: going to be excited about taking a car that's driven
Speaker 15: by a robot. You know, five minutes later they've kind
Speaker 15: of fallen in love.
Speaker 5: And that cialization is highlight. What's the mentric? Yeah, super high,
Speaker 5: super high.
Speaker 15: Basically, I mean as much supply as we can get
Speaker 15: we can put on the road, because there's plenty of
Speaker 15: demand for these things. I think if you want to
Speaker 15: look at a case study for broadly speaking, maybe look
Speaker 15: at the transition from DVDs to streaming. Right it's a
Speaker 15: similar sort of technology shift, and look how big streaming
Speaker 15: is today compared to DVDs in the past.
Speaker 5: It's going to be that kind of wave, Stevin.
Speaker 3: You know what else, I love a lot of New
Speaker 3: Yorkers love the bikes, and boy has this snow made
Speaker 3: things really difficult. Hate to get personal hit, but I mean,
Speaker 3: look at these pictures. I am really struggling to get
Speaker 3: my bike out. I'm really struggling to get it back in.
Speaker 3: How much of a hit is this to have to
Speaker 3: refund customers? How much are you thinking about what the
Speaker 3: city and you can work together with to make this
Speaker 3: a really costly business for you in these sorts of temperatures.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean, look, this has been a big, big
Speaker 15: learning for us. Obviously there's a huge snowstorm. I'm told
Speaker 15: that we're about seventy five percent dugout right now, which
Speaker 15: is amazing, but that takes a lot of work, a
Speaker 15: lot of just physical labor to make sure the bike
Speaker 15: stations are available. I think people have taken something like
Speaker 15: half a million rides in the last couple of days,
Speaker 15: which is pretty amazing considering the cold and the snow. Anyway,
Speaker 15: working super closely with the city on it really making
Speaker 15: sure that the availability of these bikes, which as you say,
Speaker 15: we run behind the scenes as highs we can get it.
Speaker 2: I asked Bloomberg Tech producer Justin Now to pop his
Speaker 2: head out the window and check, because like here in
Speaker 2: the bay, obviously we don't get confronted by snow. But
Speaker 2: you know, I went back and read my history about
Speaker 2: the kind of micro mobility part of the business. It
Speaker 2: is a smaller part on revenue spasis, but clearly it's
Speaker 2: still important to you.
Speaker 5: It is. How important?
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean, look, as you say, financially it's relatively small,
Speaker 15: but this is the future. Look, when you talk about
Speaker 15: av's that's part of the future. When you talk about micromobility,
Speaker 15: people Once people get on an e bike, it's I
Speaker 15: say this sometimes it's kind of like meeting a person
Speaker 15: who's just started pickleball, Like they have to tell you
Speaker 15: about it, how amazing this thing is same with e bikes,
Speaker 15: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So it's like, so this is sometimes you can see
Speaker 5: the future.
Speaker 15: And if you look out three, five, ten years, you're
Speaker 15: going to see more people on e bikes. You're going
Speaker 15: to see more people in self driving cars, and you know,
Speaker 15: and of course you're also going to see people in
Speaker 15: human driven cars.
Speaker 5: And that's what we're building.
Speaker 4: Just a personal request. I really want less e bikes,
Speaker 4: one of the bogs down one the ones. We will
Speaker 4: fight for them. Here lift David Rischer.
Speaker 9: So appreciate your time.
Speaker 4: I got to think about my health, David. I've got
Speaker 4: to think about my health.
Speaker 15: Thank you, gotcha.
Speaker 3: Well, coming up, we're going to head to a discussion
Speaker 3: on Instagram and Adam Massari is set to testify today
Speaker 3: in a jury trial examining whether social media companies built
Speaker 3: their products to be addictive for kids. More on that next.
Speaker 3: This is a Bloomberg Tech. Later today, Instagram head Adam
Speaker 3: Maisari will become the first social media boss to take
Speaker 3: the stand in a case alleging the products, like those
Speaker 3: from Meta and YouTube are designed deliberately to addict users.
Speaker 3: A's discussed this from Bloomberg social media reporter Alex Levine.
Speaker 3: There are plenty of cases, plenty of claims, but it
Speaker 3: really does start in La today with Anna Massari.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 16: And I think the interesting thing is we've seen these
Speaker 16: conversations play out over so many years. At this point,
Speaker 16: Massi testified before Congress already, as did you know many
Speaker 16: of the big tech CEOs, including some of them like Zuckerberg,
Speaker 16: who we're going to be seeing.
Speaker 9: Testify in this trial.
Speaker 16: Most Area testified half a decade ago, and we're still
Speaker 16: start of talking about the same things. I think the
Speaker 16: key thing that is different now is that most of
Speaker 16: the past legal challenges to social media companies have centered
Speaker 16: on the content that users have posted, and for the
Speaker 16: most part, tech companies have been able to wiggle their
Speaker 16: way out of any accountability for that because of a
Speaker 16: little known statue called Section two thirty, which basically just
Speaker 16: lets them off the hook legally for things that people
Speaker 16: post on the platforms. The key difference now is that
Speaker 16: it's not about the content that users are posting that
Speaker 16: they're arguing is harmful. What they're arguing is harmful is
Speaker 16: actually the design. So they're making this a personal injury.
Speaker 16: They're making personal injury claims here, saying that it is
Speaker 16: the algorithm that prioritizes engagement, that it is the scrolling,
Speaker 16: that that is what is that it is personal injury,
Speaker 16: the personal injury being like addiction being body dysmorphia and
Speaker 16: all these issues we've heard about, and that it's more
Speaker 16: about that than it is about.
Speaker 5: The actual content.
Speaker 2: Alex, That's the bit that I once understand, and so
Speaker 2: in this case, right just go a bit deeper. The
Speaker 2: plaintiffs are arguing what has happened to them, and of course,
Speaker 2: like when Miss Massi takes the stamp, what is it
Speaker 2: that the companies themselves or the platforms are arguing in
Speaker 2: response about the addictiveness or not of the design of
Speaker 2: the platform.
Speaker 16: So a lot of the claims that you know, we've
Speaker 16: been hearing over the years about the sorts of mental
Speaker 16: health harms to young users are going to be some
Speaker 16: of the same things that we were hearing about in
Speaker 16: this trial. One of the plaintiff's lawyers, just I believe
Speaker 16: earlier this week, was describing these platforms as if they're
Speaker 16: a digital casino. So we're going to hear a lot
Speaker 16: of the same sort of addiction, you know, addiction claims
Speaker 16: and sort of what that has led to from a
Speaker 16: mental health perspective. I think what the company is really
Speaker 16: going to be focusing on, and that we might hear
Speaker 16: from most SARI today, is that they believe that they have,
Speaker 16: you know, the sorts of programs and features and tools
Speaker 16: in place within the company that are really showing that
Speaker 16: they do care about protecting children. I think though that
Speaker 16: that that it remains to be seen. It remains to
Speaker 16: be seen sort of what else is in the testimony today?
Speaker 3: It's also about legal precedents, right, because we're going to
Speaker 3: have meta But then we're looking to TikTok and others.
Speaker 16: Sure, and I think and so TikTok and Snap settled
Speaker 16: their pieces of this.
Speaker 5: They're not off the hook for for you know, other
Speaker 5: for for like.
Speaker 16: Other parts of the trials that are going to be
Speaker 16: playing out through the rest of the first quarter or
Speaker 16: second quarter. But I think that what we've seen is
Speaker 16: that a lot of times these companies just sort of
Speaker 16: try to throw money at the issue to make it
Speaker 16: go away. And I think, and I think, here we're
Speaker 16: we're at this may be the start of a much
Speaker 16: longer process.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Alex Lavigne, thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 3: That forgets to check out the podcast, you can find
Speaker 3: it on the terminal, on a line on Apple and Spotify.
Speaker 9: This is Bloomberg Tech m