November 14, 2025 • 42 mins
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss the latest moves in tech stocks as skepticism grows about whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in December. Plus, Thinking Machines, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, is in talks to raise funding at a $50 billion valuation. And Cursor CEO Michael Truell discusses the AI-coding startup’s latest fundraise at a $29.3 billion valuation.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is live
from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York
and Eva low in sentrancs go.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is Bloomberg Tech, Coming up Tech socks, whip saws,
Skepticism grows about the FED being able to cut interest rates.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
In December plus Thinking Machines, the AI startup founded by
former Open Ai exec Mir Marati, is in talks to
raise funding at fifty billion dollar valuation.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And we sit down with the CEO of Cursor after
it raised two point three billion dollars in a funding
valuing the company twenty nine point three billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Carter massive private sector funding valuations. But let's get to
the public sector, because we are being whip sored on
the day.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
That we are flat if you're going your five day stretch.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The NASNAC is currently flat as a pancake, as we
might say over in the UK. But at the moment,
we are still seeing this questioning, question of valuations, questioning
of sustainability of CAPEC spend from the big AI players,
question of what the Federal Reserve does next. So we
dig into key assets that see volatility this week but
I'm looking at Crypto has been in the eye of
the form. We're off by seven percent, let's call it.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
On Bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
More broadly, we're seeing a lot of pullback in terms
of the ETF buying. We see another more than eight
hundred million dollars washed out in terms of outflows from
those ETF products.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
D The mood music of the market has changed this
Friday in the context of technology best laid plans. I
was going to tell you that Tesla and n Video
was two of the biggest decliners. Actually both now positive territory,
but over the course of the week, probably in Video
more than any other, has had volatility, starting the week
with a really big jump, then declining on news flow
(01:50):
actually an aggregate over the course of the week, it's
basically flat. But then there's the Super Bowl next week
with its earnings. Are we really talking about the FED
or are we really talking about an AI bubble and valuations?
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Probably both at this point.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Character Yeah, and let's get to both of those key
elements we want to dissect. Blueing b TV Markets correspondent
Norah Melinda is here to really break down what felt
like the start of the day of a risk of rally.
The risk off is still there in crypto, but we're
really getting whip sored in the stock market.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
We're seeing a lot of whip song in the market
and a lot of conversation here about a potential AI bubble.
But when you think about valuations from the S and
P five hundred more broadly, we haven't even seen a
five percent decline in the S and P five hundred
since April. So we do have folks over at Truer
Securities really talking about the fact that maybe this is
time for a correction because this is a longer period
than we've seen opposed to normal here, as we haven't
(02:40):
seen a correction here for the broader market.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Norah'm going to let you and the audience in on
a secret. I was going to take a vacation next week. Okay,
check my calendar. Super Bowl Wednesday. In video earnings. We've
got to talk about it and one of the reasons
it's great to having the program. Let's talk about it
through the lens of the options market and what that's
telling us about how they've looked at their calendars and
(03:04):
how they're preparing for that print.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Well, a lot of activity happening here in the options market,
as you mentioned in Vidia of course being the super
Bowl event for the market next Wednesday post market, but
we are seeing call options here on the vis what
strikes around sixty here and set to expire right before
the Nvidia earnings come out. So it really is showing
you a bit of a glimpse into the options market
and what that means is we think about volatility more
(03:27):
broadly and what that means for the broader market.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Someone's taking a bit of a holiday at least until
November the twenty fifth.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
That's Michael Barry.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
We understand a course, he's been winding down his sec
at least for Sion Asset Management, but he really sparked
off this whole narrative about how we assess assets and
ultimately the deterioration of them when it comes to GPS and.
Speaker 6 (03:48):
Chips right, and he is talking about the fact that
potentially a lot of these tech companies are using it
to pad artificially their earnings here. So when we think
about tech companies and the fact that we do see
them flying high, we're seeing evaluations super intense here, We're
seeing them very high. It just really begs the question
more brobvious to whether or not these tech companies are
running further beyond what fundamentals will actually allow.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Invokes Nora Melinda with the tech market. Look, thank you
so much. Let's keep the discussion going and break down
the signals and the economy how they trickle into business.
Natalie Gallagher is principal economist and director at Board, an
AI powered enterprise planning platform providing macro analysis and strategic
guidance to global companies on business, investment and economic policy.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
It's been a difficult week.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
We planned this morning show with the narrative in the
market right now that this is about the FED and
what they will or won't do in December, but actually,
over the course of the week, it wasn't about that
at all. It was about valuations in an AI bubble
or not an AI bubble? What's the real driving force
right now? That's top of mind for the people you
speak to.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
Yeah, you know, the debate has absolutely intensified when we
talk about are we in an AI bubble? And there's
really there's two sides to the story. On one side,
it doesn't appear to be as cut and dry as
maybe a repeat of the dot com bubble, and that's
because we have spending on real capital contracted services. We
also see profitability, right, We see revenue growth when we
(05:16):
look at enterprise planning, when we look at productivity tools, advertising,
and third and foremost, we also see that the hyperscalers
have some pretty resilient balance sheets to fall back on.
Speaker 8 (05:27):
Now, there's absolutely risk right as we as.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
We approach the potential for an AI bubble, but it's
not as cut and dry.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Let's try and link it to the Fed.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
You know, why does it matter if the Fed does
or does not cut interest rates again in December?
Speaker 7 (05:42):
Yeah, it matters extensively, especially for a sector like tech
because it's so rate sensitive. When we look at discounted
cash flows, we look at M and A activity. You know,
the Federal Reserve was already flying partially blind back in October.
Very likely data is going to continue to be delayed
or offset as we get into December, and.
Speaker 8 (06:01):
So that elevates the risk of a flower Reserve.
Speaker 7 (06:03):
Misstep that's going to have an outsized impact on tech.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
What's having an outsized impact on the economy is AI investment.
In many ways, it's underlying why we see GDP growth.
But I've been speaking to CEOs of late and underneath
the hood, they're saying this economy is weak, and actually
we're seeing companies Verizon this week, Amazon earlier, they are
laying off tens of thousands of people in many ways
(06:28):
to try and right side their cost base. Natalie, what
are you actually hearing from the companies that leave right now?
Speaker 5 (06:34):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (06:34):
What I'm actually hearing is that there's really two sides
to the economy right now. Right it's regularly called a
K shaped economy.
Speaker 8 (06:41):
So you're absolutely right.
Speaker 7 (06:42):
We have AI valuations that are really driving business investment
and overall economic growth. R and D spending. For example,
it was up fifteen percent in Q two. That is
the highest it's been since the dot com era. Now,
when we talk about what's also sort of channeling economic growth,
those AI valuations, they're allowing higher income consumers to continue
(07:03):
to drive growth in the economy.
Speaker 8 (07:04):
And that's why it's so important as.
Speaker 7 (07:05):
We get into twenty twenty six, we really have to
talk about what does the tech sector look like and
what does AI look like in the next twelve months.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Now, Natalie, I'm going to ask more of a complex
one now, and I want your take just more broadly
on women's thinking about the AI bubble.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Michael Barry.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Many in the media have been talking about this depreciation
of certain assets. In particular, we're trying to work out
just how long an NVIDIAGPU lasts.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
You has hit three.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Years, four years, five years, and the company is sort
of doing accounting wouldn't say tricks, but accounting changes to
try and understand how long these assets really last. From
your perspective, what is the asset that we should be analyzing,
What is the underlying accounting we should be keeping an
eye on, you.
Speaker 8 (07:46):
Know, I would say even broader picture.
Speaker 7 (07:48):
What we really need to track is the investment that's
been taking place right There's been a significant investment way
really across assets, and.
Speaker 8 (07:56):
This is just part of the broader story.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
What we're really going to need to see from an
eggnomic perspective, is this translate into meaningful productivity growth. If
we don't see that, then we risk a capital misallocation story.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Just a couple of minutes time, we're going to go
talk about applied materials the chip equipment maker, but that
story illustrates that Right now, there is still an issue
with tariffs and with China and with trade policy. How
is that impacting the global economy right now?
Speaker 8 (08:25):
Right now?
Speaker 7 (08:25):
You know, we saw an immediate de escalation when we
had the US China trade talks back in October, and
so that removed an immediate headwind, but it also introduced
a structural issue. Right we have an annual renegotiation.
Speaker 8 (08:38):
Period for example.
Speaker 7 (08:39):
Now, what that does in in broader sense, what tariffs
do is they create a situation where companies don't have
quite the forward guidance that they would like. Because we're
talking about investment cycles that are seven to ten years. Realistically,
we're getting about one year visibility and two overall prices.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We're about to get a bit of visibility next week
with our so called super when it comes to videas fundamentals.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
But when you're.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Giving analysis, when you're thinking about strategic advice, do you
think the commitment to continue spending by big aipays is
there and is there globally at the moment, Natalie.
Speaker 7 (09:13):
I absolutely think it continues to be have a lot
of weight behind it. Now, what I also see when
I look at the numbers is that there's been sort
of a clear shift in investment strategy towards evidence based
investment rather than just spending on faith alone.
Speaker 9 (09:29):
You know, we.
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Absolutely saw this with how investors responded to share prices
following the earnings release back in October.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It's been great having you come back to Natalie gallagha
As she's principal economist at Board.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
We appreciate it. Look, it just teased us Apply Materials.
Let's go there.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I'm just going to flip on from Tesla and a
video and show you what's happening in Apply Materials Stop
right now, because we're off now only.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
By three tenths of a percent.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
This company was sinking as much as six percent at
the opening of trade. We will worried about the current
quarter sales that are suffering largely because of a decline
in Chinese business in particular that is a significant about
thirty percent, let's called it. Twenty nine percent of total
fourth quarter sales were from mainland China and they declined
some eight percent year on year. What are we thinking
about this fiscal year? Look, we've just been talking about
(10:12):
Taras and we know the outlook isn't great. But it's
interesting how much this stop wants to rebound, how much
the market wants to rebound, right now Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Coming up.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Former opai executive Mirror Marti's startup Thinking Machines Lab could
soon rank among the world's most valuable private companies. Give
you the latest in the funding talks. Next Sploomberg Tech.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Thinking machines Lab the AI startup founded by former open
ai executive Mirror Maurati. It could become one of the
most valuable private companies less than a year after I launched.
According to sources, the startup is in talks to raise
funding and a fifty billion dollar valuation, quadrupling its value
from July. Let's get more from Rachel Metz who worked
on this story. Well, their very own ed Ludlow and
(11:03):
shrin KAfari. Look is their fundamental growth? This is vindicating
this sort of fifty billion or is it on the
backing that she was there in such a leadership position
over at open Ai.
Speaker 10 (11:15):
I mean, it's a very young company and they have
released a product, so it is possible that they're seeing
a lot of traction that they haven't spoken about publicly yet.
For their product, it's called Tinker and it helps people
and companies fine tune AI systems. But it's not clear
how much growth they could actually have right if they've
been around for less than a year, so it's pretty
(11:37):
tremendous so that they'd be in tox with this kind
of money and valuation.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
When we broke the story, people on social media kind
of blew up and they were saying, oh, that would
be twenty five billion dollars per blog post because the
company has only ever done.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Two blog posts.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
But what we did get the sense that this is
Mira Marati right, that she is out there talking to
investors about this.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
It's her.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
She's the face of that explained to our audience who
she is, why she's important, and I guess the intellectual
capital that she gives that place.
Speaker 11 (12:10):
Sure.
Speaker 10 (12:10):
So Murti has been in the tech industry for a
long time. She has been an Open AI or had
been an Open AI for a number of years and
was an executive there. So she was at the company
through before things sort of like exploded with the brief
ousting and rehiring of Sam Altman. In fact, she was
very very briefly named CEO during that whole debacle. So
(12:35):
she has a lot of experience dealing with crisis and
also with a company that's grown very very quickly in
AI and she has attracted a tremendous roster of talent
at this company.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Thinking, yeah, dig into that talent, Rachel, because she actually
drew over with her an awful lot of ex Open AI, well,
actual co founders going with her.
Speaker 10 (12:55):
Absolutely, yes, quite a number of early employees. She has
co founded. One of the co founding employees over there,
John Shulman, with her. And also there are people advising
the company that used to work at OPENINGI. So it's
a very deep bench of experience from that company, but
also from other companies as well. But open Ai in particular,
(13:17):
there was a quite an exodus of talent from that
company to her company.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And again, the reason this is extraordinary it was only
February that they kind of came into existence publicly. July
raised at a twelve billion dollar valuation. Now November talks
for fifty billion dollar valuation, maybe more. Bloomberg's Rachel match,
thank you very much. Turning to media paramount, Netflix and
Comcast are eyeing potential bids for Warner Brothers Discovery. Meanwhile,
(13:43):
the company has amended CEO David Zaslav's contract to secure
his pay in the event of a sale. For more,
let's bring in Bloomberg's Felix Gillette who joins us. Now
there's a deadline to this, the bid part, and so
there's some mechanics to why Warner Brothers Discovery took this step.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (14:02):
I mean, now we know that the deadline for the
first bids is a week from yesterday, November twentieth, So
that's coming up fast. And I think this is another
signal that, you know, big transaction potentially could be coming
down the pipeline sooner rather than later. You know, they
changed Thatslov's compensation package to account for all these different possibilities,
(14:23):
you know, whether it's a sale of the whole company,
whether it's a partial sale, or potentially if there is
no sale and the company goes through with its planned
original plant spin off of the you know, the cable
networks from the studio and streaming business next year.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It's interesting. Now that's a reverse spin off. Initially it
was going to be Warner Brothers. It was spun off.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
The actual bit of.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Movies and the magic and the streaming and cables were
going to be left with Discovery Global, and now it's
the other way around. But whatever the case, Detasazlov's saying
I'm committed until twenty thirty. Unless he's been he you know,
has to leave because the company is bought.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
From your perspective, you're hearing more that.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
The insiders would like it as a whole sold, or
would they like it sold for parts into different players.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Depends on who the bidder is.
Speaker 12 (15:09):
I mean, Paramount Skydance clearly wants the whole thing. They're
happy to take the cable networks that would fit in
with their portfolio and give them additional scale. But if
you're talking about Netflix, they have no interest in the
cable networks. They just want, you know, the studio's business,
the library, the HBO Max side of things. Comcast you
(15:30):
could see maybe going either way, but really they want
the studio, the library in terms of scale, getting their
streaming business. Peacock, I think they're worried that if they
don't do a big transaction like this, you know, it's
going to be very difficult to keep up with Netflix
and Amazon the years ahead.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Fish, you've already answered this, but let's leave our audience
with the what we know, So explain just very quickly
again the deadline and where we think these bids stand.
Speaker 12 (15:56):
Yeah, the deadline for the first bids is a week
from yesterday, Thursday, November twentieth. We think these three companies
are going to submit bids, and you know, the Warner
Brothers Discovery is saying that they're hoping to get this
decided one way or the other by the end of
the year. So we at least now have a very
concrete timeline for how they're going to deal.
Speaker 11 (16:15):
With these bids.
Speaker 12 (16:16):
They've been out there meeting with the bidders, you know,
presenting their financials, going through the library and plans.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
So this has happened quick.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Now seemingly a fifty eight billion dollar offer from Paramount's
guidance is not enough. Bloomberg's Felix Jellette. We appreciate you
breaking it down Chinese e commerce platforms. They saw strong
sales during the country's month long shoppings event Singles Day
(16:47):
now an AI integration emerged as a major growth driver
of that. Let's peak with Jacob Cook, his co founder,
a CEO of wpic So Marketing and Technologies, which helps
global brands expand their reach in Asia, and boy have
we seen the reach of Singles Day into weeks into months.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
But all the numbers actually good.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
When you take into well the idea that it is
longer than on previous times.
Speaker 11 (17:10):
Yeah, we did a like for light comparison.
Speaker 13 (17:12):
We think it's about fourteen point eight percent up over
last year, which is actually much better than expected. We
think this is the strongest one since twenty twenty one,
and that's they ran a week earlier and a couple
of days later. But even taking that into account, we're
pretty optimistic at the Chinese consumer right now.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Okay, where is the Chinese consumer right now?
Speaker 11 (17:32):
Well, middle class growth was pretty good.
Speaker 13 (17:35):
You know, Ali Bob is now reporting numbers, especially with
their eighty eight VIP program that's also really strong and
that's focused on a more upscale consumer. They're reporting thirty
percent up in that particular category, so.
Speaker 11 (17:48):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 13 (17:49):
Middle class consumers are what people have been worried about
over the last couple of years. He has been pressure
and employment, so that really didn't play any consequences here
For this eleven eleven it was great. You know, we're
seeing close to fifteen percent growth year over year, which
is already the largest shopping festival.
Speaker 11 (18:06):
So these numbers are pretty optimistic.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
But we're in a position where we can look at
all of the Chinese technology companies that participate in this
and say this specific company one they are ahead. Ali
Baba is the one I'm thinking about most because in
early October the shares hit I think, the highest level
since twenty twenty one. But there's no sort of tangible
evidence that any one company, at least from what I
(18:31):
can see on the Bloomberg terminal, did any better or
AI made any more impact than any other in this period.
Speaker 11 (18:39):
Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 13 (18:41):
I think for sure the destination platforms as opposed to
the social commerce platforms did better here.
Speaker 11 (18:46):
So let's JD that's Ali.
Speaker 13 (18:47):
Baba there definitely we think much stronger growth than the
Doyan or red node platforms.
Speaker 11 (18:54):
But AAR really did.
Speaker 13 (18:55):
I mean, the business advisor that Ali Baba released is
quite effective. You know, it made things a lot more efficient.
Despite that growth of fourteen point eight percent that we
think they came in at, you know, ad spend growth
was much lower than that, which means that acquisition costs
have come down. And Ali Baba is really making it
more efficient to find your customers. And I think what's
(19:16):
going to happen as a result of that is we're
going to see a lot more ad shift maybe away
from the doin and tiktoks next year into Ali Baba platform,
I think, which is going to further drive that growth.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Jacob, what did you learn about the health of the
Chinese economy?
Speaker 13 (19:31):
You know, this came in better than expected for us
too as well. You know, so we see really solid
growth and we've seen this what we looked at. We
saw labor pressure also picking up in terms of salaries
and the amount of household income recently. So this wasn't
totally unexpected. But I think if there was any apprehension
about the stability of that middle class consumer or upper
(19:52):
class consumer, I think that should be over and I
think we're putting into a really good twenty twenty six
in terms of the story about the Chinese consumption.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I mean, the government's been there to prop it up.
There's been subsidies so many ways. People would say that
they should be able to buy this moment, what is
it that they buy in terms of domestic brands versus
well the companies that you advise who are trying to
access Asia.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
At this moment.
Speaker 11 (20:15):
Yeah, I think it's all over the place. I mean
when we look at again.
Speaker 13 (20:17):
When I was talking about the Ada Vip and we
look at that middle and upper class consumer, we would
see a lot more of the important products consumed by
that demographic. So that's what's driving a lot of that
growth right now. But you know, I think that a
lot of the local brands, especially you know, mainly TikTok
and Dillion focused a little bit more price conscious. But
I think what happened again, you know Ali Baba's business advisor.
(20:41):
You know, we expected, you know, in terms of the
price recommendations, to drive pricing down. We thought that was
what it was going to do, but we were actually
pleasantly surprised. In some cases it had actually recommended that
price has come up, which has been good for margins.
So I think all of those factors, you know, put
into place, I think foreign brands are going to be
a little bit more focused on that mark good for
next year seeing a little bit more margin growth and
(21:02):
top line revenue growth.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Steven Engel, our reporter over in Asia, did a beautiful
wrap up of like the ways in which they are
targeting using e commerce, social media and.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
The influence of influencers.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
But how are you seeing AI and some of the
ways in which technology are helping some of the brands
that you represent, well, I.
Speaker 13 (21:22):
Think just from being on the ground, this year was
very efficient. I mean, you know, it did run for
a month, Sales were spread out different categories, which made
it really great to operate. I mean, if we go
back to ten years ago, is kind of bring your
toothbush and pillow to work because you were there twenty
four hours around the clock.
Speaker 11 (21:40):
This year.
Speaker 13 (21:40):
The preparations, the AI, just the assistance in general and
efficiencies really kind of made it great for operators and
it kind of reduced the stress level on people's operations.
So that was great and we'd expect that to continue
on into next year.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Jacob Cook, C of WPIC Marketing Technologies. You always on
the ground and then somewhere stunning like Vancouver.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It's great to have you back on the show.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Let's tech a check on these markets because we're all
over the place today. Look, we started much in the red.
We had anxiety building once again, tech valuations, what the
Federal Reserve might be able to do in December, what
economic data is going to tell us?
Speaker 4 (22:27):
And then the rebound kicked off.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
We're up four tenths of percent is Video and some
of the key other players, particularly Micron, Microsoft Broadcom, all
turn into the green. We're now up four tenths of
a percent, but on the week we're still under some pressure.
Bitcoins still hunt some pressure, well by six point six
percent over the course of the week, So we really
are seeing that that asset class is in the line
of fire. Even as the NASDAK bounces on this day
and helps draw it draw it to a weekly gain,
(22:49):
the bitcoin area does not. This therefore means that certain
stocks that are particular proxies to cryptos are having a
terrible time of it. Strategy off by fifteen percent. Look,
it was down as much as nine teen percent over
the course of the five days. In fact, its overall
valuation of the market cap of the company is now
somewhat below that of its overall bitcoin holdings. Right now,
(23:09):
so far has the sell off gone. We understand according
to other reporting that Michael Sailor's still buying bitcoin at
this particular moment they end.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
There's a lot going on in private markets this week.
The name Cursor has been on the tip of the
tongue of big names across tech, including Sachi, Nadella and
Jensen Wang, and it's vibe coding software has been on
the tips of the fingers of employees at the likes
of Nvidia, Salesforce and PwC. Now the company has roughly
tripled its valuation in just a few months, raising two
(23:40):
point three billion dollars at a twenty nine point three
billion dollar valuation. Michael Tryll, Cursor CEO, joins us now
in San Francisco. Let's get the rounds out of the way,
because there is an awful lot to discuss about what
Cursor is doing and how Curse has been being used.
But my goodness, we've raised quite a lot of money
(24:01):
quite quickly from the last time we raised money at
a much higher evaluation.
Speaker 5 (24:04):
Why and what does it mean to you?
Speaker 9 (24:07):
Well, first, thank you for having me. We raise this
money to invest deeply in research. And we are this
company that's something in between a product company and then
also an AI and models company, and in parts it's
an important product lover for us to do our own
investment in product specific models and that's something we've been
doing for many years.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
This lets us do that in a bigger way.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
It's AI coding, and you know I was in Washington,
DC for GTCDC. Jensen one goes on stage and he
made a very pointed remark that software generally speaking, is
now worth paying for, and he used Cursor as the
case study. Would you actually talk us through the case study?
Nvidia is a big company, It has many of its
(24:50):
own engineers. How are they using Cursor, what are they
using it for, and how are you charging them for it?
Speaker 9 (24:56):
Well, we've been really happy to see not just the
accelerating demand in our market, but also the success in
our deployments with customers. There was actually a study that
came out recently that showed that customers after they switched
to our agent get forty percent more done and in.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
The productivity reference for the engineered themselves, the workload that
they're trying to get through.
Speaker 9 (25:16):
Yes, okay, it's looking at plor requests, merged and metrics
like that, but folks are seeing lots of success out
in the field. And so to Jensen's comment, the ROI
of buying the tool is just has been so high
for many of our customers, which makes us really happy.
And on the pricing front, there's two components. One is
a seat component where we look at usage, we look
(25:36):
at how many people are using Cursor every month within
an account, and then pricing matches that, and then if
folks are using the product in a really, really deep way,
there's also a usage component, similar to a data breaksource snowflake.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
What's interesting is vibe coding was all the lexicon in
the past few months, and many people felt that it
was individual.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
So paying the twenty dollars for a Cursor.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
And really doing it and really feeling the power of
understanding and being able to prompt. How about now what
you call AI coding? Is this more of an enterprise play?
Is it more of a sit at home and play
at being a developer play?
Speaker 9 (26:11):
We serve professional development teams and in particular professional engineers
or are ICP, and so when we use the term
A coding, it's to underline that we care. You know,
there are some folks that experiment with the tool for prototypes,
but the core use case, the reason the vast majority
of customers are using Cursor is to get real work
(26:32):
done in their real jobs, and that means shipping carefully
in professional codebases at the highest degree of quality.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
We were just talking about all the CEOs of the
Magnificent seven and others who have.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Been using Cursor been talking about Cursor.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
They must have been calling Cursor, Michael.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
How many imbounds you're getting on companies wanting.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
To buy you at this moment.
Speaker 9 (26:54):
We've been really excited to see demand both across the
Mac seven out of seven of the mag seven actually
our customers, and we're really happy about that. But then
also staples of the real economy like Starbucks and PwC
and Hilton and Budweiser, and then many digital natives like Stripe, Adobe, Uber, Nvidia,
(27:14):
Shopify and.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Others like that.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
I'm going to jump in there and just quickly because
so go for it.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
Please. Yeah, you're not.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Answering exactly my question. Has anyone been trying to buy you?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I can't talk about things like that here.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
You can talk about them here. Bloomberg Tech is the
right place for it. What you've been doing is shopping yourself.
Find that very interesting. You used M and A to
address your own talent requirements growth by Design. What was
behind that move and what was the problem you were
trying to solve for in doing that?
Speaker 9 (27:48):
Growth by Design was a talent agency that we had
worked with for a long time, and the folks that
were running that business. We got to know over many
months working with them on building the team, respected recruiting
leaders in the industry, and we started talking with them
a few months ago about whether they would come in
house and join us to lead talent for us. And
(28:09):
this is a strategy that we've taken kind of across
the board, whether it be an R and D, go
to market, GNA. We look for the best people in
our industry and sometimes conveniently or inconveniently, they are running
their own companies.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
What's so interesting is how fierce the talent fight has
been in many ways Michael taught to us about where
you are getting your talent from, how you're going to
see that growth by design is going to bring on
even more of the best people to work and build
your business.
Speaker 9 (28:37):
Still, largely folks that join us we reach out to,
and that's through knowing past colleagues of theirs, and we
invite them to interview.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
But more and more we're.
Speaker 9 (28:50):
Scaling that and trying to diversify how we find folks,
and then we have a deep interview process where, for instance,
on the engineering side of things, we invite folks and
for two whole days to spend two days with us
going and turned on a project, and that's both giving
them lots of information on us as a company that
also gives us really great signal about whether they're going
to be affect when they join.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
You've grown incredibly quickly, and you've joined us on this
program to explain how Cursor is being used in the
real world and generating real revenues. But if you had
to reflect honestly on what's still difficult for you and
curs and what some of the I guess barriers or
headwinds are to your industry or you specifically, what are they?
You know, what is it that you need to see
(29:33):
change right now? But we have a long product journey left.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
We're addressed at the very start of how we think
building software and coding is going to change over the
course of the next few years. And I think it
can be really really easy for folks who are removed
from writing code all day to stay in touch with
just how far away we are from all of software changing.
And despite all of the change over the past few years,
there's still so much further to go. And so in particular,
(29:59):
we're very focused on making Cursor not just more productive
for individual engineers, but now helping teams broadly and helping
across the software development life cycle.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Those that we regard as leaders of industry have talked
about the AI displacement of jobs or not displacement of jobs,
and actually, as it relates to Cursor, you know, many
take the view that it's not AI that's going to
take your job, it's somebody that uses AI that's likely
to take your job, just through the lens of what
(30:27):
Cursor sees through his customers and internally, where do you
sit on that debate?
Speaker 9 (30:32):
Michael, Definitely, in the data that we have, we don't
see that. We see the fold of who's participating in
the software development life cycle expanding, and that's more engineers
getting within the fold and growing seats within engineering accounts
and growing engineering teams. But that's also folks in support
or in design helping to do small changes within a
(30:54):
production code base too.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Michael Trueau, Cursor CEO, thank you very much for coming
back here on luvent Tech and SF what you.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Got fascinating conversation, But now it's time for talking tech
head and first up, Jeff Fezios's Blue Origin nails a
major milestone it's next to Glen New Glen rocket booster
safely landed on a platform in the Atlantic after launching
a pair of small satellites on its way to study Mars.
Now that makes Blue Origin only the second company after
(31:20):
Elon Musk's SpaceX to successfully recover a booster, fittingly named
never tell Me the Odds.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
Plus.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Emirates is reportedly partnering with SpaceX is Starlink to bring
faster in flight Wi Fi to its fleet.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Now that's according to sources.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
The deal could be announced at the Dubai Air Show
on Monday, so the service will still need government.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
Approval before it can be deployed.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
And in a rare split between a chip maker and
its biggest customers, Amazon is joined in Microsoft in backing
legislation that could restrict Invidio's chip exports to China.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
According to The Wall Street Journal, the.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Proposal would require chip makers to meet US demand before
shipping to come trees under arms embargos ed Okay.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Coming Up founder's fund is backing startup Netek, aiming to
supply AI to small businesses and we mean small businesses.
We're going to speak with the CEO, Melissa talking about
next this is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
In a show of continued confidence, founder's fund is backing
Netik for the third time in a row.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
It's the kind of support and.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Sustained support that the firm has previously on is shown
to the likes of Cognition AI or andill Now. Netik
has raised twenty three million dollars in a Series B
funding round aiming to talk quick businesses and contractors with
advanced AI tools. Melssa top max here Netics CEO Melissa
this is about main street, this is about h fax,
this is about contractors coming in repairing. Why target that
(32:52):
part of the market.
Speaker 14 (32:55):
Well, thank you for having me, Caroline. I think for
us it's very important there. We're bringing frontier AI to
the industries that are the backbone of American economy.
Speaker 8 (33:04):
I think a lot of startups.
Speaker 14 (33:06):
Are existing in Silicon Valley that backs maybe developers, but
for us, we want to back these industries and large
companies in these industries in HVAC, plumbing, electric, solar, consumer
health and bring the frontier AI for them and help
them make more revenue.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Why doesn't some of the enterprise offerings thus far be
fit for purpose for these small and medium sized enterprises.
Speaker 14 (33:32):
Yeah, I think these workflows are really deep. So I
think Ed was telling me actually just yesterday about adding
heat pump to his own home.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
Yeah, he did add a heat pumps my home. Yeah,
hopefully it's working really well.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
It works, but it was very difficult process. It was delayed.
There you answer the question, but.
Speaker 14 (33:50):
Yes, yeah, it's exactly like Ed's experience, right, trying to
reach out to a company that might help you and
help you immediately because you have that need. Now, so
what we help with these industries with They all actually
face seasonality and volatility and have to have deep workflows
with their customers like AD.
Speaker 8 (34:10):
So the other.
Speaker 14 (34:11):
Solutions that might give you point solutions or easy workflows
will not work with these essential services that are serving
millions of consumers out there in America.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
My small house in northern California is one end of
the scale. The other is data center build out and
Jensen one was speaking about this at GtC and DC.
I'm going to read you some of his quote. But
in order for us to win that the market, we
need mechanical engineers, electric engineers, plumbers, construction, skilled craft labor.
We need mountains of them. We need mountains of them,
(34:44):
and that's going to create lots of jobs and it's
going to be fantastic for the United States. But we
need a lot more. He seems to be suggesting that
that skilled labor that you want to work with with
contractors isn't there.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Is that your experience, there's.
Speaker 14 (34:58):
Definitely labor shortage in these markets. We need more people
to go in and get trained in these industries for
our country. And it's not just for data centers. It's
actually as we have access to more tools, the energy
need is increasing from consumers and businesses, data centers across
the board, and we're going to need this labor to
(35:18):
be able to power it all.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Talk to us about total addressable market here, Melissa, because
it is such an obvious play to sort of make
sure that Main Street is equipped here.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
But why haven't more tackled it. What are you seeing
in terms of the need?
Speaker 14 (35:34):
I think when you're building a business in this area,
the mission is the most important thing. All of us
at Netek truly care about bringing AI to the backbone
of American economy and to the physical world.
Speaker 8 (35:47):
I think this is maybe not.
Speaker 14 (35:49):
The sexiest area that the Silicon Valley companies are building
in one, it's very difficult. You have to get integrated
with companies very closely. We partner with large private equity
firm and large enterprises in these industries and to really
learn their workplace.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
So I think that's the root of Caroline's question though,
right if I said small businesses earlier, actually you work
with some bigger businesses as well. But you know, the
basic question is can a contractor or a small firm
of engineers, plumbers, whatever, afford to pay for your software?
That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 14 (36:20):
Yeah, I think the question is about does that contractor
a solo contractor or maybe a few people do they
need AI today?
Speaker 8 (36:28):
Right?
Speaker 14 (36:29):
I think in there in that type of small business level,
if anything, capacity and labor being able to go take
on more jobs is the more problem. Then maybe investing
the small capital you have to AI tools. This is
why we actually started with more mid market and large enterprises,
because they're at a point that they can invest for
more growth with AI tools versus.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
Not just real quick.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
If you and Jensen wangare so much on the same page,
have you actually met with him and.
Speaker 5 (36:56):
Talked about this.
Speaker 14 (36:57):
I did not, but I got to listen to him
in DC when he was talking for the AI Executive
Order and I was front row and loved that he
talked about this type of jobs because I think we
need to encourage the young people to go into skilled
labor a lot more as AI does displace job in
more computer backed maybe small menial task areas. These are
(37:22):
the jobs that are not replaced for the next one
hundred years.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Melissa to magnetic see are great to have you on Bloombotech.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
AI is reshaping holiday retail. Google is testing new AI
tools through its Gemini platform aimed at making search and
check out more seamless. It's part of a broader push
to bring agenticai into everyday shopping. Here with more is
Lenian Rincom, Google VP of Consumer Shopping product This is
interesting because we're going from the domain of AGENTICAI and
(37:59):
we're trying to take it to how consumers already you search,
marry them in the context of retail.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
How does it work and why is it important?
Speaker 15 (38:09):
Yeah, So agentic tech is, you know, relatively new, and
we're really focusing on bringing agentic ai for consumer problems
that really matter to consumers. And so for example, taking
the tedious parts of shopping and having AGENTICAI, which is
AI that does things on behalf of the user.
Speaker 8 (38:24):
So, for example, with price.
Speaker 15 (38:25):
Tracking, you know, we have the scenario of you see
a product, maybe the price is too high. You can
track the price and we will auto buy the product
for you. On the other hand, for example, let's say
you have a particular product. Let's say La Buboo is
one of the products of the season, and you want
to find it near you. It will actually make all
the calling for you for nearby businesses and tell you
whether it's in stock.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Do you have any evidence or data that this technology
change results in an actual purchase or more that increases
the likelihood that the consumer goes through with it.
Speaker 15 (38:57):
I mean, anecdotally, we do see that consumers are really
loving this in the sense that both consumers and merchants
actually especially for the agentic calling, because it's allowing consumers
to have more confidence let's say that the product is
actually in store.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
There are some that perhaps don't want others agents coming
and making purchases.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
They want that direct relationship.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
We've seen reports of Amazon doing a season desist on
perplexity because of creiment's being made.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
How do you think you'll navigate the ecosystem in that way.
Speaker 8 (39:25):
Lilian, Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 15 (39:28):
You know, I think all of this agentic technology is
very nascent, and again at Google, we're really starting with
what are those real problems that consumers have and always
giving consumers control of the experience. So in that agentic checkout,
for example, as I mentioned, you know, we're starting with
a real user need, right, which is a lot of
times people will see a product maybe it's too expensive.
(39:49):
We let you track the price of the product, We
alert you when the product has reached that price, and
then you can auto buy, essentially have Google buy that
product for you on your behalf. And in this case
for the merchant, it's good in the sense that, you know,
maybe they would have lost that customer otherwise, right, maybe
they weren't ready to buy it at that price, And
so we think this is good for merchants and also
for consumers.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
On the backhend, Lilian, we've got a beautifully geeky audience.
What is it that you've managed to do in the
last few months years that is just allowed for this,
that is now seeing the agents able to run run
free and make purchases on one's behalf safely.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
Yeah, I think again. So a lot of this is new.
Speaker 15 (40:31):
I will say that, you know, on the agentic calling piece,
we have been doing things like duplex, which you may
or may not be familiar with, which is where we're
using AI to essentially call a business on your behalf
for some years actually, you know, since twenty seven, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
I think the restaurants have been doing it for me
for a long time.
Speaker 8 (40:48):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 15 (40:49):
On the calling piece, I think we've been doing this
for a long time, and we're really finding real user needs,
you know, for tedious parts of shopping where we think
it can help. On the agentic calling piece, also tracking
the price is something that we've done over some time.
This year, we've actually gotten down to the variant level.
So for example, if you see a shoe that you like,
it really matters the size and the color of the shoe,
(41:11):
and so now we're able to agentically, you know, really
track that price.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
And then the buying.
Speaker 15 (41:17):
Really what we're doing there is we are instantiating a
browser and really adding a product to the card on
the merchant side and letting you buy it.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
The question is always what happens next and how is
this going to go? At the enterprise scale. The issue
with agentic AI is that you need many agents to
be able to communicate with one another. In fact, in
the consued think about an airline app, for example, and
they maybe use a different software platform to book the
flight originally. Are you encountering those problems? You know, Gemini
(41:45):
and what's outside of Google's control?
Speaker 15 (41:48):
You know, I would say that it's still nascent. So today,
for example, a lot of our merchants and the way
that they show up is actually through relationships that we've
developed over the years. So we have something called the
shopping graph, which is, you know, fifty billion product listings
of all these merchants around the world. But as you say,
over time, you know, potentially you'll imagine a world where
merchant has an agent and we will be interacting between
(42:11):
the Gemini agent and that agent as well.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah, Lillian and Rincon of Google.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Fascinating as we head towards holidays, taking a little bit
of the to.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Do list off our plate. Thank you for stopping by.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
And meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
And what a week it's been. What a week We've
got coming.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
It's the super Bowl and video Earnings.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Next week It's been a weird Friday where markets kind
of quite severely down, and now we're kind of up
a little bit, and I think everyone's just ready for
the weekend. Don't forget to check out the podcast. It's
a great thing to do on a weekend. You can
find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify,
and iHeart from San Francisco and.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
New York City. This is Bloomberg Tech
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is live
from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York
and Eva low in sentrancs go.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is Bloomberg Tech, Coming up Tech socks, whip saws,
Skepticism grows about the FED being able to cut interest rates.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
In December plus Thinking Machines, the AI startup founded by
former Open Ai exec Mir Marati, is in talks to
raise funding at fifty billion dollar valuation.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And we sit down with the CEO of Cursor after
it raised two point three billion dollars in a funding
valuing the company twenty nine point three billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Carter massive private sector funding valuations. But let's get to
the public sector, because we are being whip sored on
the day.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
That we are flat if you're going your five day stretch.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The NASNAC is currently flat as a pancake, as we
might say over in the UK. But at the moment,
we are still seeing this questioning, question of valuations, questioning
of sustainability of CAPEC spend from the big AI players,
question of what the Federal Reserve does next. So we
dig into key assets that see volatility this week but
I'm looking at Crypto has been in the eye of
the form. We're off by seven percent, let's call it.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
On Bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
More broadly, we're seeing a lot of pullback in terms
of the ETF buying. We see another more than eight
hundred million dollars washed out in terms of outflows from
those ETF products.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
D The mood music of the market has changed this
Friday in the context of technology best laid plans. I
was going to tell you that Tesla and n Video
was two of the biggest decliners. Actually both now positive territory,
but over the course of the week, probably in Video
more than any other, has had volatility, starting the week
with a really big jump, then declining on news flow
(01:50):
actually an aggregate over the course of the week, it's
basically flat. But then there's the Super Bowl next week
with its earnings. Are we really talking about the FED
or are we really talking about an AI bubble and valuations?
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Probably both at this point.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Character Yeah, and let's get to both of those key
elements we want to dissect. Blueing b TV Markets correspondent
Norah Melinda is here to really break down what felt
like the start of the day of a risk of rally.
The risk off is still there in crypto, but we're
really getting whip sored in the stock market.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
We're seeing a lot of whip song in the market
and a lot of conversation here about a potential AI bubble.
But when you think about valuations from the S and
P five hundred more broadly, we haven't even seen a
five percent decline in the S and P five hundred
since April. So we do have folks over at Truer
Securities really talking about the fact that maybe this is
time for a correction because this is a longer period
than we've seen opposed to normal here, as we haven't
(02:40):
seen a correction here for the broader market.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Norah'm going to let you and the audience in on
a secret. I was going to take a vacation next week. Okay,
check my calendar. Super Bowl Wednesday. In video earnings. We've
got to talk about it and one of the reasons
it's great to having the program. Let's talk about it
through the lens of the options market and what that's
telling us about how they've looked at their calendars and
(03:04):
how they're preparing for that print.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Well, a lot of activity happening here in the options market,
as you mentioned in Vidia of course being the super
Bowl event for the market next Wednesday post market, but
we are seeing call options here on the vis what
strikes around sixty here and set to expire right before
the Nvidia earnings come out. So it really is showing
you a bit of a glimpse into the options market
and what that means is we think about volatility more
(03:27):
broadly and what that means for the broader market.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Someone's taking a bit of a holiday at least until
November the twenty fifth.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
That's Michael Barry.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
We understand a course, he's been winding down his sec
at least for Sion Asset Management, but he really sparked
off this whole narrative about how we assess assets and
ultimately the deterioration of them when it comes to GPS and.
Speaker 6 (03:48):
Chips right, and he is talking about the fact that
potentially a lot of these tech companies are using it
to pad artificially their earnings here. So when we think
about tech companies and the fact that we do see
them flying high, we're seeing evaluations super intense here, We're
seeing them very high. It just really begs the question
more brobvious to whether or not these tech companies are
running further beyond what fundamentals will actually allow.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Invokes Nora Melinda with the tech market. Look, thank you
so much. Let's keep the discussion going and break down
the signals and the economy how they trickle into business.
Natalie Gallagher is principal economist and director at Board, an
AI powered enterprise planning platform providing macro analysis and strategic
guidance to global companies on business, investment and economic policy.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
It's been a difficult week.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
We planned this morning show with the narrative in the
market right now that this is about the FED and
what they will or won't do in December, but actually,
over the course of the week, it wasn't about that
at all. It was about valuations in an AI bubble
or not an AI bubble? What's the real driving force
right now? That's top of mind for the people you
speak to.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
Yeah, you know, the debate has absolutely intensified when we
talk about are we in an AI bubble? And there's
really there's two sides to the story. On one side,
it doesn't appear to be as cut and dry as
maybe a repeat of the dot com bubble, and that's
because we have spending on real capital contracted services. We
also see profitability, right, We see revenue growth when we
(05:16):
look at enterprise planning, when we look at productivity tools, advertising,
and third and foremost, we also see that the hyperscalers
have some pretty resilient balance sheets to fall back on.
Speaker 8 (05:27):
Now, there's absolutely risk right as we as.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
We approach the potential for an AI bubble, but it's
not as cut and dry.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Let's try and link it to the Fed.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
You know, why does it matter if the Fed does
or does not cut interest rates again in December?
Speaker 7 (05:42):
Yeah, it matters extensively, especially for a sector like tech
because it's so rate sensitive. When we look at discounted
cash flows, we look at M and A activity. You know,
the Federal Reserve was already flying partially blind back in October.
Very likely data is going to continue to be delayed
or offset as we get into December, and.
Speaker 8 (06:01):
So that elevates the risk of a flower Reserve.
Speaker 7 (06:03):
Misstep that's going to have an outsized impact on tech.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
What's having an outsized impact on the economy is AI investment.
In many ways, it's underlying why we see GDP growth.
But I've been speaking to CEOs of late and underneath
the hood, they're saying this economy is weak, and actually
we're seeing companies Verizon this week, Amazon earlier, they are
laying off tens of thousands of people in many ways
(06:28):
to try and right side their cost base. Natalie, what
are you actually hearing from the companies that leave right now?
Speaker 5 (06:34):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (06:34):
What I'm actually hearing is that there's really two sides
to the economy right now. Right it's regularly called a
K shaped economy.
Speaker 8 (06:41):
So you're absolutely right.
Speaker 7 (06:42):
We have AI valuations that are really driving business investment
and overall economic growth. R and D spending. For example,
it was up fifteen percent in Q two. That is
the highest it's been since the dot com era. Now,
when we talk about what's also sort of channeling economic growth,
those AI valuations, they're allowing higher income consumers to continue
(07:03):
to drive growth in the economy.
Speaker 8 (07:04):
And that's why it's so important as.
Speaker 7 (07:05):
We get into twenty twenty six, we really have to
talk about what does the tech sector look like and
what does AI look like in the next twelve months.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Now, Natalie, I'm going to ask more of a complex
one now, and I want your take just more broadly
on women's thinking about the AI bubble.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Michael Barry.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Many in the media have been talking about this depreciation
of certain assets. In particular, we're trying to work out
just how long an NVIDIAGPU lasts.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
You has hit three.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Years, four years, five years, and the company is sort
of doing accounting wouldn't say tricks, but accounting changes to
try and understand how long these assets really last. From
your perspective, what is the asset that we should be analyzing,
What is the underlying accounting we should be keeping an
eye on, you.
Speaker 8 (07:46):
Know, I would say even broader picture.
Speaker 7 (07:48):
What we really need to track is the investment that's
been taking place right There's been a significant investment way
really across assets, and.
Speaker 8 (07:56):
This is just part of the broader story.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
What we're really going to need to see from an
eggnomic perspective, is this translate into meaningful productivity growth. If
we don't see that, then we risk a capital misallocation story.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Just a couple of minutes time, we're going to go
talk about applied materials the chip equipment maker, but that
story illustrates that Right now, there is still an issue
with tariffs and with China and with trade policy. How
is that impacting the global economy right now?
Speaker 8 (08:25):
Right now?
Speaker 7 (08:25):
You know, we saw an immediate de escalation when we
had the US China trade talks back in October, and
so that removed an immediate headwind, but it also introduced
a structural issue. Right we have an annual renegotiation.
Speaker 8 (08:38):
Period for example.
Speaker 7 (08:39):
Now, what that does in in broader sense, what tariffs
do is they create a situation where companies don't have
quite the forward guidance that they would like. Because we're
talking about investment cycles that are seven to ten years. Realistically,
we're getting about one year visibility and two overall prices.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We're about to get a bit of visibility next week
with our so called super when it comes to videas fundamentals.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
But when you're.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Giving analysis, when you're thinking about strategic advice, do you
think the commitment to continue spending by big aipays is
there and is there globally at the moment, Natalie.
Speaker 7 (09:13):
I absolutely think it continues to be have a lot
of weight behind it. Now, what I also see when
I look at the numbers is that there's been sort
of a clear shift in investment strategy towards evidence based
investment rather than just spending on faith alone.
Speaker 9 (09:29):
You know, we.
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Absolutely saw this with how investors responded to share prices
following the earnings release back in October.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It's been great having you come back to Natalie gallagha
As she's principal economist at Board.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
We appreciate it. Look, it just teased us Apply Materials.
Let's go there.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
I'm just going to flip on from Tesla and a
video and show you what's happening in Apply Materials Stop
right now, because we're off now only.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
By three tenths of a percent.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
This company was sinking as much as six percent at
the opening of trade. We will worried about the current
quarter sales that are suffering largely because of a decline
in Chinese business in particular that is a significant about
thirty percent, let's called it. Twenty nine percent of total
fourth quarter sales were from mainland China and they declined
some eight percent year on year. What are we thinking
about this fiscal year? Look, we've just been talking about
(10:12):
Taras and we know the outlook isn't great. But it's
interesting how much this stop wants to rebound, how much
the market wants to rebound, right now Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Coming up.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Former opai executive Mirror Marti's startup Thinking Machines Lab could
soon rank among the world's most valuable private companies. Give
you the latest in the funding talks. Next Sploomberg Tech.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Thinking machines Lab the AI startup founded by former open
ai executive Mirror Maurati. It could become one of the
most valuable private companies less than a year after I launched.
According to sources, the startup is in talks to raise
funding and a fifty billion dollar valuation, quadrupling its value
from July. Let's get more from Rachel Metz who worked
on this story. Well, their very own ed Ludlow and
(11:03):
shrin KAfari. Look is their fundamental growth? This is vindicating
this sort of fifty billion or is it on the
backing that she was there in such a leadership position
over at open Ai.
Speaker 10 (11:15):
I mean, it's a very young company and they have
released a product, so it is possible that they're seeing
a lot of traction that they haven't spoken about publicly yet.
For their product, it's called Tinker and it helps people
and companies fine tune AI systems. But it's not clear
how much growth they could actually have right if they've
been around for less than a year, so it's pretty
(11:37):
tremendous so that they'd be in tox with this kind
of money and valuation.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
When we broke the story, people on social media kind
of blew up and they were saying, oh, that would
be twenty five billion dollars per blog post because the
company has only ever done.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Two blog posts.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
But what we did get the sense that this is
Mira Marati right, that she is out there talking to
investors about this.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
It's her.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
She's the face of that explained to our audience who
she is, why she's important, and I guess the intellectual
capital that she gives that place.
Speaker 11 (12:10):
Sure.
Speaker 10 (12:10):
So Murti has been in the tech industry for a
long time. She has been an Open AI or had
been an Open AI for a number of years and
was an executive there. So she was at the company
through before things sort of like exploded with the brief
ousting and rehiring of Sam Altman. In fact, she was
very very briefly named CEO during that whole debacle. So
(12:35):
she has a lot of experience dealing with crisis and
also with a company that's grown very very quickly in
AI and she has attracted a tremendous roster of talent
at this company.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Thinking, yeah, dig into that talent, Rachel, because she actually
drew over with her an awful lot of ex Open AI, well,
actual co founders going with her.
Speaker 10 (12:55):
Absolutely, yes, quite a number of early employees. She has
co founded. One of the co founding employees over there,
John Shulman, with her. And also there are people advising
the company that used to work at OPENINGI. So it's
a very deep bench of experience from that company, but
also from other companies as well. But open Ai in particular,
(13:17):
there was a quite an exodus of talent from that
company to her company.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And again, the reason this is extraordinary it was only
February that they kind of came into existence publicly. July
raised at a twelve billion dollar valuation. Now November talks
for fifty billion dollar valuation, maybe more. Bloomberg's Rachel match,
thank you very much. Turning to media paramount, Netflix and
Comcast are eyeing potential bids for Warner Brothers Discovery. Meanwhile,
(13:43):
the company has amended CEO David Zaslav's contract to secure
his pay in the event of a sale. For more,
let's bring in Bloomberg's Felix Gillette who joins us. Now
there's a deadline to this, the bid part, and so
there's some mechanics to why Warner Brothers Discovery took this step.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (14:02):
I mean, now we know that the deadline for the
first bids is a week from yesterday, November twentieth, So
that's coming up fast. And I think this is another
signal that, you know, big transaction potentially could be coming
down the pipeline sooner rather than later. You know, they
changed Thatslov's compensation package to account for all these different possibilities,
(14:23):
you know, whether it's a sale of the whole company,
whether it's a partial sale, or potentially if there is
no sale and the company goes through with its planned
original plant spin off of the you know, the cable
networks from the studio and streaming business next year.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It's interesting. Now that's a reverse spin off. Initially it
was going to be Warner Brothers. It was spun off.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
The actual bit of.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Movies and the magic and the streaming and cables were
going to be left with Discovery Global, and now it's
the other way around. But whatever the case, Detasazlov's saying
I'm committed until twenty thirty. Unless he's been he you know,
has to leave because the company is bought.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
From your perspective, you're hearing more that.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
The insiders would like it as a whole sold, or
would they like it sold for parts into different players.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Depends on who the bidder is.
Speaker 12 (15:09):
I mean, Paramount Skydance clearly wants the whole thing. They're
happy to take the cable networks that would fit in
with their portfolio and give them additional scale. But if
you're talking about Netflix, they have no interest in the
cable networks. They just want, you know, the studio's business,
the library, the HBO Max side of things. Comcast you
(15:30):
could see maybe going either way, but really they want
the studio, the library in terms of scale, getting their
streaming business. Peacock, I think they're worried that if they
don't do a big transaction like this, you know, it's
going to be very difficult to keep up with Netflix
and Amazon the years ahead.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Fish, you've already answered this, but let's leave our audience
with the what we know, So explain just very quickly
again the deadline and where we think these bids stand.
Speaker 12 (15:56):
Yeah, the deadline for the first bids is a week
from yesterday, Thursday, November twentieth. We think these three companies
are going to submit bids, and you know, the Warner
Brothers Discovery is saying that they're hoping to get this
decided one way or the other by the end of
the year. So we at least now have a very
concrete timeline for how they're going to deal.
Speaker 11 (16:15):
With these bids.
Speaker 12 (16:16):
They've been out there meeting with the bidders, you know,
presenting their financials, going through the library and plans.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
So this has happened quick.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Now seemingly a fifty eight billion dollar offer from Paramount's
guidance is not enough. Bloomberg's Felix Jellette. We appreciate you
breaking it down Chinese e commerce platforms. They saw strong
sales during the country's month long shoppings event Singles Day
(16:47):
now an AI integration emerged as a major growth driver
of that. Let's peak with Jacob Cook, his co founder,
a CEO of wpic So Marketing and Technologies, which helps
global brands expand their reach in Asia, and boy have
we seen the reach of Singles Day into weeks into months.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
But all the numbers actually good.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
When you take into well the idea that it is
longer than on previous times.
Speaker 11 (17:10):
Yeah, we did a like for light comparison.
Speaker 13 (17:12):
We think it's about fourteen point eight percent up over
last year, which is actually much better than expected. We
think this is the strongest one since twenty twenty one,
and that's they ran a week earlier and a couple
of days later. But even taking that into account, we're
pretty optimistic at the Chinese consumer right now.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Okay, where is the Chinese consumer right now?
Speaker 11 (17:32):
Well, middle class growth was pretty good.
Speaker 13 (17:35):
You know, Ali Bob is now reporting numbers, especially with
their eighty eight VIP program that's also really strong and
that's focused on a more upscale consumer. They're reporting thirty
percent up in that particular category, so.
Speaker 11 (17:48):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 13 (17:49):
Middle class consumers are what people have been worried about
over the last couple of years. He has been pressure
and employment, so that really didn't play any consequences here
For this eleven eleven it was great. You know, we're
seeing close to fifteen percent growth year over year, which
is already the largest shopping festival.
Speaker 11 (18:06):
So these numbers are pretty optimistic.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
But we're in a position where we can look at
all of the Chinese technology companies that participate in this
and say this specific company one they are ahead. Ali
Baba is the one I'm thinking about most because in
early October the shares hit I think, the highest level
since twenty twenty one. But there's no sort of tangible
evidence that any one company, at least from what I
(18:31):
can see on the Bloomberg terminal, did any better or
AI made any more impact than any other in this period.
Speaker 11 (18:39):
Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 13 (18:41):
I think for sure the destination platforms as opposed to
the social commerce platforms did better here.
Speaker 11 (18:46):
So let's JD that's Ali.
Speaker 13 (18:47):
Baba there definitely we think much stronger growth than the
Doyan or red node platforms.
Speaker 11 (18:54):
But AAR really did.
Speaker 13 (18:55):
I mean, the business advisor that Ali Baba released is
quite effective. You know, it made things a lot more efficient.
Despite that growth of fourteen point eight percent that we
think they came in at, you know, ad spend growth
was much lower than that, which means that acquisition costs
have come down. And Ali Baba is really making it
more efficient to find your customers. And I think what's
(19:16):
going to happen as a result of that is we're
going to see a lot more ad shift maybe away
from the doin and tiktoks next year into Ali Baba platform,
I think, which is going to further drive that growth.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Jacob, what did you learn about the health of the
Chinese economy?
Speaker 13 (19:31):
You know, this came in better than expected for us
too as well. You know, so we see really solid
growth and we've seen this what we looked at. We
saw labor pressure also picking up in terms of salaries
and the amount of household income recently. So this wasn't
totally unexpected. But I think if there was any apprehension
about the stability of that middle class consumer or upper
(19:52):
class consumer, I think that should be over and I
think we're putting into a really good twenty twenty six
in terms of the story about the Chinese consumption.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I mean, the government's been there to prop it up.
There's been subsidies so many ways. People would say that
they should be able to buy this moment, what is
it that they buy in terms of domestic brands versus
well the companies that you advise who are trying to
access Asia.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
At this moment.
Speaker 11 (20:15):
Yeah, I think it's all over the place. I mean
when we look at again.
Speaker 13 (20:17):
When I was talking about the Ada Vip and we
look at that middle and upper class consumer, we would
see a lot more of the important products consumed by
that demographic. So that's what's driving a lot of that
growth right now. But you know, I think that a
lot of the local brands, especially you know, mainly TikTok
and Dillion focused a little bit more price conscious. But
I think what happened again, you know Ali Baba's business advisor.
(20:41):
You know, we expected, you know, in terms of the
price recommendations, to drive pricing down. We thought that was
what it was going to do, but we were actually
pleasantly surprised. In some cases it had actually recommended that
price has come up, which has been good for margins.
So I think all of those factors, you know, put
into place, I think foreign brands are going to be
a little bit more focused on that mark good for
next year seeing a little bit more margin growth and
(21:02):
top line revenue growth.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Steven Engel, our reporter over in Asia, did a beautiful
wrap up of like the ways in which they are
targeting using e commerce, social media and.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
The influence of influencers.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
But how are you seeing AI and some of the
ways in which technology are helping some of the brands
that you represent, well, I.
Speaker 13 (21:22):
Think just from being on the ground, this year was
very efficient. I mean, you know, it did run for
a month, Sales were spread out different categories, which made
it really great to operate. I mean, if we go
back to ten years ago, is kind of bring your
toothbush and pillow to work because you were there twenty
four hours around the clock.
Speaker 11 (21:40):
This year.
Speaker 13 (21:40):
The preparations, the AI, just the assistance in general and
efficiencies really kind of made it great for operators and
it kind of reduced the stress level on people's operations.
So that was great and we'd expect that to continue
on into next year.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Jacob Cook, C of WPIC Marketing Technologies. You always on
the ground and then somewhere stunning like Vancouver.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
It's great to have you back on the show.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Let's tech a check on these markets because we're all
over the place today. Look, we started much in the red.
We had anxiety building once again, tech valuations, what the
Federal Reserve might be able to do in December, what
economic data is going to tell us?
Speaker 4 (22:27):
And then the rebound kicked off.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
We're up four tenths of percent is Video and some
of the key other players, particularly Micron, Microsoft Broadcom, all
turn into the green. We're now up four tenths of
a percent, but on the week we're still under some pressure.
Bitcoins still hunt some pressure, well by six point six
percent over the course of the week, So we really
are seeing that that asset class is in the line
of fire. Even as the NASDAK bounces on this day
and helps draw it draw it to a weekly gain,
(22:49):
the bitcoin area does not. This therefore means that certain
stocks that are particular proxies to cryptos are having a
terrible time of it. Strategy off by fifteen percent. Look,
it was down as much as nine teen percent over
the course of the five days. In fact, its overall
valuation of the market cap of the company is now
somewhat below that of its overall bitcoin holdings. Right now,
(23:09):
so far has the sell off gone. We understand according
to other reporting that Michael Sailor's still buying bitcoin at
this particular moment they end.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
There's a lot going on in private markets this week.
The name Cursor has been on the tip of the
tongue of big names across tech, including Sachi, Nadella and
Jensen Wang, and it's vibe coding software has been on
the tips of the fingers of employees at the likes
of Nvidia, Salesforce and PwC. Now the company has roughly
tripled its valuation in just a few months, raising two
(23:40):
point three billion dollars at a twenty nine point three
billion dollar valuation. Michael Tryll, Cursor CEO, joins us now
in San Francisco. Let's get the rounds out of the way,
because there is an awful lot to discuss about what
Cursor is doing and how Curse has been being used.
But my goodness, we've raised quite a lot of money
(24:01):
quite quickly from the last time we raised money at
a much higher evaluation.
Speaker 5 (24:04):
Why and what does it mean to you?
Speaker 9 (24:07):
Well, first, thank you for having me. We raise this
money to invest deeply in research. And we are this
company that's something in between a product company and then
also an AI and models company, and in parts it's
an important product lover for us to do our own
investment in product specific models and that's something we've been
doing for many years.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
This lets us do that in a bigger way.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
It's AI coding, and you know I was in Washington,
DC for GTCDC. Jensen one goes on stage and he
made a very pointed remark that software generally speaking, is
now worth paying for, and he used Cursor as the
case study. Would you actually talk us through the case study?
Nvidia is a big company, It has many of its
(24:50):
own engineers. How are they using Cursor, what are they
using it for, and how are you charging them for it?
Speaker 9 (24:56):
Well, we've been really happy to see not just the
accelerating demand in our market, but also the success in
our deployments with customers. There was actually a study that
came out recently that showed that customers after they switched
to our agent get forty percent more done and in.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
The productivity reference for the engineered themselves, the workload that
they're trying to get through.
Speaker 9 (25:16):
Yes, okay, it's looking at plor requests, merged and metrics
like that, but folks are seeing lots of success out
in the field. And so to Jensen's comment, the ROI
of buying the tool is just has been so high
for many of our customers, which makes us really happy.
And on the pricing front, there's two components. One is
a seat component where we look at usage, we look
(25:36):
at how many people are using Cursor every month within
an account, and then pricing matches that, and then if
folks are using the product in a really, really deep way,
there's also a usage component, similar to a data breaksource snowflake.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
What's interesting is vibe coding was all the lexicon in
the past few months, and many people felt that it
was individual.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
So paying the twenty dollars for a Cursor.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
And really doing it and really feeling the power of
understanding and being able to prompt. How about now what
you call AI coding? Is this more of an enterprise play?
Is it more of a sit at home and play
at being a developer play?
Speaker 9 (26:11):
We serve professional development teams and in particular professional engineers
or are ICP, and so when we use the term
A coding, it's to underline that we care. You know,
there are some folks that experiment with the tool for prototypes,
but the core use case, the reason the vast majority
of customers are using Cursor is to get real work
(26:32):
done in their real jobs, and that means shipping carefully
in professional codebases at the highest degree of quality.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
We were just talking about all the CEOs of the
Magnificent seven and others who have.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Been using Cursor been talking about Cursor.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
They must have been calling Cursor, Michael.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
How many imbounds you're getting on companies wanting.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
To buy you at this moment.
Speaker 9 (26:54):
We've been really excited to see demand both across the
Mac seven out of seven of the mag seven actually
our customers, and we're really happy about that. But then
also staples of the real economy like Starbucks and PwC
and Hilton and Budweiser, and then many digital natives like Stripe, Adobe, Uber, Nvidia,
(27:14):
Shopify and.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Others like that.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
I'm going to jump in there and just quickly because
so go for it.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
Please. Yeah, you're not.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Answering exactly my question. Has anyone been trying to buy you?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I can't talk about things like that here.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
You can talk about them here. Bloomberg Tech is the
right place for it. What you've been doing is shopping yourself.
Find that very interesting. You used M and A to
address your own talent requirements growth by Design. What was
behind that move and what was the problem you were
trying to solve for in doing that?
Speaker 9 (27:48):
Growth by Design was a talent agency that we had
worked with for a long time, and the folks that
were running that business. We got to know over many
months working with them on building the team, respected recruiting
leaders in the industry, and we started talking with them
a few months ago about whether they would come in
house and join us to lead talent for us. And
(28:09):
this is a strategy that we've taken kind of across
the board, whether it be an R and D, go
to market, GNA. We look for the best people in
our industry and sometimes conveniently or inconveniently, they are running
their own companies.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
What's so interesting is how fierce the talent fight has
been in many ways Michael taught to us about where
you are getting your talent from, how you're going to
see that growth by design is going to bring on
even more of the best people to work and build
your business.
Speaker 9 (28:37):
Still, largely folks that join us we reach out to,
and that's through knowing past colleagues of theirs, and we
invite them to interview.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
But more and more we're.
Speaker 9 (28:50):
Scaling that and trying to diversify how we find folks,
and then we have a deep interview process where, for instance,
on the engineering side of things, we invite folks and
for two whole days to spend two days with us
going and turned on a project, and that's both giving
them lots of information on us as a company that
also gives us really great signal about whether they're going
to be affect when they join.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
You've grown incredibly quickly, and you've joined us on this
program to explain how Cursor is being used in the
real world and generating real revenues. But if you had
to reflect honestly on what's still difficult for you and
curs and what some of the I guess barriers or
headwinds are to your industry or you specifically, what are they?
You know, what is it that you need to see
(29:33):
change right now? But we have a long product journey left.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
We're addressed at the very start of how we think
building software and coding is going to change over the
course of the next few years. And I think it
can be really really easy for folks who are removed
from writing code all day to stay in touch with
just how far away we are from all of software changing.
And despite all of the change over the past few years,
there's still so much further to go. And so in particular,
(29:59):
we're very focused on making Cursor not just more productive
for individual engineers, but now helping teams broadly and helping
across the software development life cycle.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Those that we regard as leaders of industry have talked
about the AI displacement of jobs or not displacement of jobs,
and actually, as it relates to Cursor, you know, many
take the view that it's not AI that's going to
take your job, it's somebody that uses AI that's likely
to take your job, just through the lens of what
(30:27):
Cursor sees through his customers and internally, where do you
sit on that debate?
Speaker 9 (30:32):
Michael, Definitely, in the data that we have, we don't
see that. We see the fold of who's participating in
the software development life cycle expanding, and that's more engineers
getting within the fold and growing seats within engineering accounts
and growing engineering teams. But that's also folks in support
or in design helping to do small changes within a
(30:54):
production code base too.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Michael Trueau, Cursor CEO, thank you very much for coming
back here on luvent Tech and SF what you.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Got fascinating conversation, But now it's time for talking tech
head and first up, Jeff Fezios's Blue Origin nails a
major milestone it's next to Glen New Glen rocket booster
safely landed on a platform in the Atlantic after launching
a pair of small satellites on its way to study Mars.
Now that makes Blue Origin only the second company after
(31:20):
Elon Musk's SpaceX to successfully recover a booster, fittingly named
never tell Me the Odds.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
Plus.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Emirates is reportedly partnering with SpaceX is Starlink to bring
faster in flight Wi Fi to its fleet.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Now that's according to sources.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
The deal could be announced at the Dubai Air Show
on Monday, so the service will still need government.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
Approval before it can be deployed.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
And in a rare split between a chip maker and
its biggest customers, Amazon is joined in Microsoft in backing
legislation that could restrict Invidio's chip exports to China.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
According to The Wall Street Journal, the.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Proposal would require chip makers to meet US demand before
shipping to come trees under arms embargos ed Okay.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Coming Up founder's fund is backing startup Netek, aiming to
supply AI to small businesses and we mean small businesses.
We're going to speak with the CEO, Melissa talking about
next this is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
In a show of continued confidence, founder's fund is backing
Netik for the third time in a row.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
It's the kind of support and.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Sustained support that the firm has previously on is shown
to the likes of Cognition AI or andill Now. Netik
has raised twenty three million dollars in a Series B
funding round aiming to talk quick businesses and contractors with
advanced AI tools. Melssa top max here Netics CEO Melissa
this is about main street, this is about h fax,
this is about contractors coming in repairing. Why target that
(32:52):
part of the market.
Speaker 14 (32:55):
Well, thank you for having me, Caroline. I think for
us it's very important there. We're bringing frontier AI to
the industries that are the backbone of American economy.
Speaker 8 (33:04):
I think a lot of startups.
Speaker 14 (33:06):
Are existing in Silicon Valley that backs maybe developers, but
for us, we want to back these industries and large
companies in these industries in HVAC, plumbing, electric, solar, consumer
health and bring the frontier AI for them and help
them make more revenue.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Why doesn't some of the enterprise offerings thus far be
fit for purpose for these small and medium sized enterprises.
Speaker 14 (33:32):
Yeah, I think these workflows are really deep. So I
think Ed was telling me actually just yesterday about adding
heat pump to his own home.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
Yeah, he did add a heat pumps my home. Yeah,
hopefully it's working really well.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
It works, but it was very difficult process. It was delayed.
There you answer the question, but.
Speaker 14 (33:50):
Yes, yeah, it's exactly like Ed's experience, right, trying to
reach out to a company that might help you and
help you immediately because you have that need. Now, so
what we help with these industries with They all actually
face seasonality and volatility and have to have deep workflows
with their customers like AD.
Speaker 8 (34:10):
So the other.
Speaker 14 (34:11):
Solutions that might give you point solutions or easy workflows
will not work with these essential services that are serving
millions of consumers out there in America.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
My small house in northern California is one end of
the scale. The other is data center build out and
Jensen one was speaking about this at GtC and DC.
I'm going to read you some of his quote. But
in order for us to win that the market, we
need mechanical engineers, electric engineers, plumbers, construction, skilled craft labor.
We need mountains of them. We need mountains of them,
(34:44):
and that's going to create lots of jobs and it's
going to be fantastic for the United States. But we
need a lot more. He seems to be suggesting that
that skilled labor that you want to work with with
contractors isn't there.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Is that your experience, there's.
Speaker 14 (34:58):
Definitely labor shortage in these markets. We need more people
to go in and get trained in these industries for
our country. And it's not just for data centers. It's
actually as we have access to more tools, the energy
need is increasing from consumers and businesses, data centers across
the board, and we're going to need this labor to
(35:18):
be able to power it all.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Talk to us about total addressable market here, Melissa, because
it is such an obvious play to sort of make
sure that Main Street is equipped here.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
But why haven't more tackled it. What are you seeing
in terms of the need?
Speaker 14 (35:34):
I think when you're building a business in this area,
the mission is the most important thing. All of us
at Netek truly care about bringing AI to the backbone
of American economy and to the physical world.
Speaker 8 (35:47):
I think this is maybe not.
Speaker 14 (35:49):
The sexiest area that the Silicon Valley companies are building
in one, it's very difficult. You have to get integrated
with companies very closely. We partner with large private equity
firm and large enterprises in these industries and to really
learn their workplace.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
So I think that's the root of Caroline's question though,
right if I said small businesses earlier, actually you work
with some bigger businesses as well. But you know, the
basic question is can a contractor or a small firm
of engineers, plumbers, whatever, afford to pay for your software?
That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 14 (36:20):
Yeah, I think the question is about does that contractor
a solo contractor or maybe a few people do they
need AI today?
Speaker 8 (36:28):
Right?
Speaker 14 (36:29):
I think in there in that type of small business level,
if anything, capacity and labor being able to go take
on more jobs is the more problem. Then maybe investing
the small capital you have to AI tools. This is
why we actually started with more mid market and large enterprises,
because they're at a point that they can invest for
more growth with AI tools versus.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
Not just real quick.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
If you and Jensen wangare so much on the same page,
have you actually met with him and.
Speaker 5 (36:56):
Talked about this.
Speaker 14 (36:57):
I did not, but I got to listen to him
in DC when he was talking for the AI Executive
Order and I was front row and loved that he
talked about this type of jobs because I think we
need to encourage the young people to go into skilled
labor a lot more as AI does displace job in
more computer backed maybe small menial task areas. These are
(37:22):
the jobs that are not replaced for the next one
hundred years.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Melissa to magnetic see are great to have you on Bloombotech.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
AI is reshaping holiday retail. Google is testing new AI
tools through its Gemini platform aimed at making search and
check out more seamless. It's part of a broader push
to bring agenticai into everyday shopping. Here with more is
Lenian Rincom, Google VP of Consumer Shopping product This is
interesting because we're going from the domain of AGENTICAI and
(37:59):
we're trying to take it to how consumers already you search,
marry them in the context of retail.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
How does it work and why is it important?
Speaker 15 (38:09):
Yeah, So agentic tech is, you know, relatively new, and
we're really focusing on bringing agentic ai for consumer problems
that really matter to consumers. And so for example, taking
the tedious parts of shopping and having AGENTICAI, which is
AI that does things on behalf of the user.
Speaker 8 (38:24):
So, for example, with price.
Speaker 15 (38:25):
Tracking, you know, we have the scenario of you see
a product, maybe the price is too high. You can
track the price and we will auto buy the product
for you. On the other hand, for example, let's say
you have a particular product. Let's say La Buboo is
one of the products of the season, and you want
to find it near you. It will actually make all
the calling for you for nearby businesses and tell you
whether it's in stock.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Do you have any evidence or data that this technology
change results in an actual purchase or more that increases
the likelihood that the consumer goes through with it.
Speaker 15 (38:57):
I mean, anecdotally, we do see that consumers are really
loving this in the sense that both consumers and merchants
actually especially for the agentic calling, because it's allowing consumers
to have more confidence let's say that the product is
actually in store.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
There are some that perhaps don't want others agents coming
and making purchases.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
They want that direct relationship.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
We've seen reports of Amazon doing a season desist on
perplexity because of creiment's being made.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
How do you think you'll navigate the ecosystem in that way.
Speaker 8 (39:25):
Lilian, Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 15 (39:28):
You know, I think all of this agentic technology is
very nascent, and again at Google, we're really starting with
what are those real problems that consumers have and always
giving consumers control of the experience. So in that agentic checkout,
for example, as I mentioned, you know, we're starting with
a real user need, right, which is a lot of
times people will see a product maybe it's too expensive.
(39:49):
We let you track the price of the product, We
alert you when the product has reached that price, and
then you can auto buy, essentially have Google buy that
product for you on your behalf. And in this case
for the merchant, it's good in the sense that, you know,
maybe they would have lost that customer otherwise, right, maybe
they weren't ready to buy it at that price, And
so we think this is good for merchants and also
for consumers.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
On the backhend, Lilian, we've got a beautifully geeky audience.
What is it that you've managed to do in the
last few months years that is just allowed for this,
that is now seeing the agents able to run run
free and make purchases on one's behalf safely.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
Yeah, I think again. So a lot of this is new.
Speaker 15 (40:31):
I will say that, you know, on the agentic calling piece,
we have been doing things like duplex, which you may
or may not be familiar with, which is where we're
using AI to essentially call a business on your behalf
for some years actually, you know, since twenty seven, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
I think the restaurants have been doing it for me
for a long time.
Speaker 8 (40:48):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 15 (40:49):
On the calling piece, I think we've been doing this
for a long time, and we're really finding real user needs,
you know, for tedious parts of shopping where we think
it can help. On the agentic calling piece, also tracking
the price is something that we've done over some time.
This year, we've actually gotten down to the variant level.
So for example, if you see a shoe that you like,
it really matters the size and the color of the shoe,
(41:11):
and so now we're able to agentically, you know, really
track that price.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
And then the buying.
Speaker 15 (41:17):
Really what we're doing there is we are instantiating a
browser and really adding a product to the card on
the merchant side and letting you buy it.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
The question is always what happens next and how is
this going to go? At the enterprise scale. The issue
with agentic AI is that you need many agents to
be able to communicate with one another. In fact, in
the consued think about an airline app, for example, and
they maybe use a different software platform to book the
flight originally. Are you encountering those problems? You know, Gemini
(41:45):
and what's outside of Google's control?
Speaker 15 (41:48):
You know, I would say that it's still nascent. So today,
for example, a lot of our merchants and the way
that they show up is actually through relationships that we've
developed over the years. So we have something called the
shopping graph, which is, you know, fifty billion product listings
of all these merchants around the world. But as you say,
over time, you know, potentially you'll imagine a world where
merchant has an agent and we will be interacting between
(42:11):
the Gemini agent and that agent as well.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah, Lillian and Rincon of Google.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Fascinating as we head towards holidays, taking a little bit
of the to.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Do list off our plate. Thank you for stopping by.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
And meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
And what a week it's been. What a week We've
got coming.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
It's the super Bowl and video Earnings.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Next week It's been a weird Friday where markets kind
of quite severely down, and now we're kind of up
a little bit, and I think everyone's just ready for
the weekend. Don't forget to check out the podcast. It's
a great thing to do on a weekend. You can
find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify,
and iHeart from San Francisco and.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
New York City. This is Bloomberg Tech
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