August 14, 2025 • 42 mins
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss Apple’s AI push, which relies on robots, a lifelike version of Siri, and home security devices. Plus, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins talks about AI sales and the impact of tariffs following the company’s earnings report. And WHOOP CEO Will Ahmed defends his company’s decision to keep its blood oxygen tracker operational despite a request from the FDA to disable it.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is a
live from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New
York and Eva Low in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Can Apple be the
AI comeback kid? Details on the company's push into robots
and a lifelike Siri.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Plus, we talked to the Cisco CEO, Chuck Robins, fresh
off earnings, the company seeing AI sales pick up but
remains cautious on its outlook.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Perhaps and Bitcoin retreats from record highs are reminder to
investors that the ditital asset remains a volatile.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
One and it's AI that that is story for Apple
because as tech giants are really trying to plot their
AI focus, it's plotting it's comeback. The efforts centers on robotics,
on lifelike syriad as you said, and home security. Yesterday,
some two percent as investors bet this move could really
help Apple and get its mojo back. Let's go to
Mark German, who breaks the story yesterday on the future
(01:09):
of AI. Today, we're going into blood Oxygen readings as well,
but start with the AI focus.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
What can we expect?
Speaker 5 (01:16):
You know, Apple is a hardware company, right, all these
companies Chat, GPT, Google, Gemini, Microsoft, they have all these
AI features, but from a consumer standpoint, it really hasn't
been monetized. How does Apple monetize its products well by
selling hardware, getting people to go to Apple stores and
buy new stuff every year or two. And so they're
(01:36):
going to replay that strategy when it comes to artificial intelligence,
and the way they see AI is by integrating it
and creating devices around the smart home, home cameras and robotics.
So the company is working on several items that are
reported yesterday. The centerpiece of the strategy is a tabletop robot.
This is essentially a virtual companion that you would have
(01:57):
in your bedroom on your nightstand, you could have in
your office on your desk, can have on a kitchen counter.
It uses a robotic arm to move around in space.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
It's like an.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
iPad that can move through thin air on that robotic limb.
He could help you get things done through your day.
You can hold conversations with it. If you're having a
conversation with another human being, it can even interject and
jump in as if it's a third person in the room.
Speaker 6 (02:21):
You can consume video on it.
Speaker 7 (02:22):
It has FaceTime.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
There's also a smart home POB basically a home pod
with a screen coming out next spring. This is going
to have similar functionality to that device, without the conversational
abilities and without the robotic arm. And they're developing a
suite of home security in home automation products designed to
rival what Amazon has been doing with a ring and
(02:46):
Blink and what Google has been doing with Nest and
other companies of course in the space include ADT and Roku.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
There is a software component, and that is Siri.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You write about a lifelike Siri, sources describe it to
you park.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Well, the lifelike Siri is the ability to hold conversations,
help you get things done, interject into conversations with other
human beings as if it's another person in the room,
very similar to what you're seeing on voice mode from Chat,
GPT and from Gemini and some of these other LM
based assistants. There's also a revamp next year to Siri
(03:23):
on the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac that's coming.
It's an underlying infrastructural change, but there's also a redesign,
like a visual redesign to Siri coming as well to
the iPhone and iPad on the home devices. Specifically, they're
going to be creating a visual personality for Siri. Obviously Siri,
obviously you heard it and you spoke to it. Now
(03:45):
you're going to be able to see it too. If
you remember Microsoft Clippy's Clippy from the nineties and the
early two thousands in Microsoft Suite of Office apps, including Word,
something similar to that. It floats around your display. You
can interact with it at any time. They're actually trying
to create a virtual character, either based on a memoji
or the finder icon that's the filesystem logo that Apple's
(04:08):
used for years on the Mac.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Very briefly mark the Blood Oxygen the workaround versus Messimo's
fight on Apple.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Is it going to make much of an effect in
the long term?
Speaker 5 (04:20):
You know, it's interesting because this workaround is, like you said,
a real workaround. You're not going to have the blood
Oxygen app like you had before on the Apple Watch. Instead,
the sensors will be used and that will allow you
to read that data on the phone itself through the
health app.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
So it took them two years.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
The US Customs Agency finally allowed them to do this
workaround and it comes at a pretty opportune time. In
a few weeks they'll be announcing the next Apple watches,
and now they'll be able.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
To market in the US. Blood oxygen saturation tracking is
part of that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Bloomberg's Mark Guerman, who leads our coverage of consumer electrolics
and broke detail on what happens next on Apple for
more and what Apple's doing than I's web Bush joins us.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Look.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Mark's reporting moves the needle right. We know that this
tabletop robot will be the centerpiece on the hardware side.
We know that Siri will be made more lifelike. Has
this changed things for you, Dan in what you're modeling
for Apple? And to kind of comeback that many think
that Apple needs to have in the AI domain, Look.
Speaker 8 (05:21):
In their AI strategy has been a disaster, and you
know it's if you look at every other big tech company,
you know Apple is massively behind. And I think when
you look at this as a potential opportunity, I think
Street is basically shrugged the shoulders. I mean robotics, Apple's
going to come out in another device. Look look it
(05:43):
up in AI Bok, a Microsoft book and meta. I
mean it speaks to our view right now, it's an
F one race and Manza. It's all passing thereby an
Apple and cooker watch from a park bench drinking a cappuccino.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's actually a really interesting I think maybe veiled dan
reference to WWDC, which opened up with the F one sequence.
If you remember, then that puts the emphasis back on Siri.
What how much better does Siri need to be then?
If it is to be a tool use daily by
technology users around the world in the same way that
chat GPT is an Apple on my iPhone?
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Look, what's just call it? It is like Siri.
Speaker 8 (06:26):
Nothing's going to happen internally, I mean internally, this has
been a disaster. Right If you go back to WWDC,
it felt like Michael J. Fox back to the future
moment in twenty sixteen. They continue to promise what's on
the come, what's next? They're going to have to do
an acquisition. I mean, look, it's just it's the reality
of the situation. It's not happening internally, and there's no
(06:49):
one on the street that believes any innovation is coming
out of Apple when it comes to AI organically.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Dan, you still got an outperform and a two and
seventy dollars price target on Apple.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
You're sounding way more.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Cautious than your money perspective is leading us.
Speaker 8 (07:07):
Yeah, look to get to two seventies. No, AI, this
is a stock that's going to move higher. And even
saw what happened last week with the tariffs, Cook obviously
playing nice in the sandbox with Trump, that was a
huge relief and the stocks had to move. And I
think there's a stock that could go to two seventy
or potentially two eighty without AI. But for this to
be a three point fifty four hundred, four hundred and
(07:30):
fifty dollars stock, it's AI and it's not happening internally.
And I think that's the problem that the street has
is that things like robotics next Gen or three thousand
dollars buys to four thousand dollars. It's all about software
and it comes down to like they need two essentially,
and we've talked about perplexity. Other acquisitions are going to
(07:53):
have to do. It's not happening internally. That's just the reality.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
What's interesting, Dan is the notes you have been putting out,
for example today, have been more around. As you just said,
there was a relief when Tim Cook was alongside President
Trump last week. Well, this week it's all been about
what President Trump has meant for in video of AMD
and for paying to play. What do you make of
the moves that we've seen and to gain access in China.
Speaker 8 (08:19):
Look, it speaks to I mean, you know a godfather quote, right,
I mean it's a deal you can't refuse. And I
think the reality is is that big tech CEOs are
learning the new rules.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
Of the game.
Speaker 8 (08:31):
Now, of course it's wed godfather of AI, Jensen and video.
They need to do with fifteen percent, it's breadcrumbs relative
to getting into a China market. They can't give this
the fall in a silver platter, and I viewed as
bullish and it's going to put more fuel in the
engine of this AI round.
Speaker 7 (08:49):
Dan super quickly.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
We broke the story last week that Dojo is no
more at Tesla, and Musk has come out on x
ray and kind of explained it the focus on AI
five and a six.
Speaker 7 (09:01):
But how did you react to that. I don't think
I saw a note.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And what do you think about the stop gap between
those generations of customs silicon?
Speaker 8 (09:08):
Yeah, that that's a great story that you guys, Broke,
I mean I view it as this is to me,
it's more certainty that Xai. They're going to have a
massive investment XAI. That'll come at the shareholder meeting, but
it speaks to our view. It's why Tesla stocklifting. I
think more and more recognizing this is going to be
a holistic strategy Tesla Xai.
Speaker 6 (09:28):
It's all about autonomous and robotics.
Speaker 8 (09:30):
And I think that was a view you kind of
read through the tea leaves that that was my view.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
That nice web Bush. Great to catch up with you.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Meanwhile, coming up, ciscosio Chuck Robbins joining us to discuss
the company's earnings, the state of AI infrastructure demand.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So Cisco shares it down about one point two one
point three percent. They've made an effort earlier in the
session to kind of bounce back. We got this full
year revenue outlook for fiscal twenty six. Some analysts felt
it was a little cautious, but we're seeing AI infrastructure
orders pick up. Delighted to say that we're joined now
by Cisco CEO Chuck Robins, and actually, Chuck, I'm going
(10:20):
to ask you something that I felt like the analyst
community didn't really get to, and that is that there
is this big products refresh happening mere term overcoming years.
And I feel like you've been trying to talk about
Cisco as a platform offering for a while and if
we look at that fiscal twenty six outlook is that
baked into that where Cisco is a platform offering and
(10:41):
you folded security into it. That's kind of what I
think people want to know.
Speaker 9 (10:46):
Yes, well, first of all, thanks for having me, and
I do I want to thank the team and all
of the Cisco folks for just a great year. We
obviously had good order growth in Q four we had
the great performance in the AI infrastructure order. We actually
reported that we had taken down a approximately a billion
dollars of revenue from those orders, which was something that
(11:07):
everybody wanted to talk about. We talked through how we
filled the progress kicking in on security, and then to
your point, this product refresh cycle that we are beginning
will happen over years, and honestly, we just turned on orderability.
Large customers take a lot of time to evaluate put
these things in labs before they.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Put it in their critical infrastructure.
Speaker 9 (11:30):
But the points you make about the platform is really
important because as we get into agentic AI, with the
low latency constant communication that's going to occur, we're going
to have to do security in the network.
Speaker 6 (11:45):
There is no other alternative.
Speaker 9 (11:46):
You cannot introduce latency by sending it to a security appliance,
and we are the only company that has both networking
and security technology to fuse it together to create that
platform effect that you're describing.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
AI is a double edged sword, Chuck, It's margin dilutive.
How do you think about that?
Speaker 9 (12:07):
Well, I think we have always had a portfolio of
products that had various margin profiles. I mean, we had
a point in our history where the Tolco and the
service provider world was as much as thirty five thirty
six percent of our business, and that was a different
margin profile than the enterprise and so we just manage
it the same way we have all along.
Speaker 6 (12:25):
So I'm not too worried about that.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Meanwhile, Chuck, that massive opportunity ahead that you articulate with
AI infrastructure, that bringing in of two billion of orders,
the billion dollars of revenue already. Is it the platform
offering that helps you push out and fend against some
of the other competitors that want in on that.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Of course HPE is trying to get in. You've got
broad Com. Is that how you set yourself apart?
Speaker 9 (12:47):
Well, I think the key to remember with this is
that it's networking systems and it's optics. That's primarily what
we're selling for AI infrastructure, and there's really only three
companies on the planet that can deliver the networking silicon
that these customers require, and we're one of them. And so,
you know, they're looking for low power requirements, they're looking
for meeting their dates, they're looking for speed, bandwidth deployment,
(13:09):
you know, and we're hitting that right now with them.
And we've really built great relationships. If you if you
go back five or six years ago, I had to
try to convince people that we were rebuilding relationships here.
And even if you go back fifty twelve fourteen months
ago when we gave them the target of one billion
dollars in orders, I think there were a lot of
skeptics and the team actually delivered really well and we
have great relationships with these customers.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Now we are joined by Chuck Robins, Cisco CEO, and
you know, you beat your things that previously others were
cynical of, but the market moves with you. Many wanted
even more in terms of your full year revenue guidance.
Some are even going as far as to say that
maybe you're suggesting a little bit of a cautious it
spend for the next fiscal year.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
Do you abide by that, Chuck, No, we don't see that.
Speaker 9 (13:53):
We see we haven't seen any sort of slowdown at all.
The only place we've seen that challenge, as has been reported,
in US Federal our product order growth was seven percent.
If you take out US Federal, we grew ten percent.
And if you think about security, same thing. If we
take out a US federal we grew double digits and
security on orders. And I also talked about the fact
(14:16):
that if we look at the fiscal year that we
just entered, our US Federal team is actually forecasting a
return to growth, so hopefully that won't be a head
win in the next year. So we haven't seen anything meaningful,
but we're also cognizant that we were operating in a
pretty complex and dynamic environment.
Speaker 7 (14:33):
Chuck.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We love to talk about the big projects on Bloomberg Tech,
the big data center projects. Are there any specific examples
of projects you're involved in that do you think are
really needle moving for Cisco?
Speaker 9 (14:46):
Well, all the cloud providers are needle moving, and over
time the neo cloud segment as well as the sovereign
clouds we think are going to will be a big
part of our business. Also we're just getting started in those.
If I hit on a few of those. The sovereign
AI data centers that we talked about in UAE as
well as in Saudi are the early ones. We're having
(15:06):
discussions in other Asian countries, in Africa, in Europe, you
have this push for on prem sovereign applications, So from
geopolitical perspective and a risk perspective, they want more control
over the tech stack that they have in their countries.
So that's more of a sovereign play, and we're one
of the unique companies who can actually deliver say Splunk
(15:27):
on prem or they're asking for WebEx on prem, which
we can do so. And then the neo clouds we
could talk about as well, but that's another emerging opportunity
for US.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I don't think many appreciate the scale of Cisco. Sometimes
you've got a lot of credit by the way, on
this program at least about how you've communicated tariff's impact.
But you're basically one of the biggest and leading network
chip producers globally, and this is an administration that wants
more US manufacturing. So you have the volume of gear,
(15:57):
you design your own chips, TSMC makes them for you.
The economics kind of works in your favor. Have you
made some commitment to do what this administration is trying
to do, which is take that process that you've mastered,
but just bring it to the States in some form.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Well, I think that much like you know, Nvidia, AMDUS others,
there are a lot of companies that actually rely on
TSMC the for the fabrication of the silicon, and they've
obviously made commitments on their side to actually build out
capacity in the United States, and so we're happy to
see that happening. The thing that people don't really realize
(16:36):
is that we've maintained a US manufacturing footprint all along,
and so we have a footprint in the US today
that we can look at expanding. But I think it's
just important for us right now to wait and see
exactly where all this stuff lands. If you go back
to twenty eighteen when the China tariffs hit. Our teams
have made moves and mitigated roughly eighty percent or so
(16:59):
of those, and so we just continue to look at
these things as they come out, figure out what the
best plan of action is, and then we act.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
When you think about planning ahead a business continuity, Chuck,
when you see what's happened with MD and Video and
the deal they've cut to access China, when you think
about exporting more broadly, you're thinking that might come your
way of pay to play in the future.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
I have no idea.
Speaker 9 (17:24):
We wake up every day and we try to figure
out what's transpired and what's happening in the world, and
how do we react to it. I've talked about over
time that the current crop of CEOs in the United
States have basically been operating in times of uncertainty or
crisis or certainly very dynamic environments, and so we're all
(17:45):
used to just dealing with whatever changes are coming our way.
You know, there's the old saying that you can deal
with the world as it is or how you'd like
it to be, and just we just wake up and
we deal with what comes at us and try to
plan a accordingly, try to do scenario planning, but then
deal with.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
It as it is.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
And when you're controlling your own destiny. You've been doing
a bit of M and A and you mentioned the
Sprung coffering and how that helps you access the likes
of view Up for example. Anymore M and A on
the rise in particularly when it comes to AI.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
We're always looking Our strategy hasn't changed. Obviously, valuations are
quite frothy in that space. But if there's something that
helps us advance our strategy more effectively, then we're always
willing to take a look at it. I would say
that M and A is not the strategy. We have
our product strategy and our solution strategy for our customers,
(18:38):
and if there's an acquisition that helps us accelerate that,
then that's what we're really interested in. And you think
about places like AI, infrastructure or security or observability.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
In those kind of areas, they're always interesting to us.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Chuck, how's the relationship with Nvidia evolving since it was
all announced?
Speaker 6 (18:55):
It's great.
Speaker 9 (18:56):
Our team and their team's execs had dinner last night
and we're working on architectures for Neocloud architectures for the enterprise.
We're working on go to market, joint go to market together.
So I'd say it just continues to get stronger. And
we're really on the front end now of a lot
of the technology integrations that we've been working on, and
we're on the front end of the real enterprise wave
(19:20):
of this AI. If you think about it, it started
in the back end networks of the cloud providers.
Speaker 6 (19:25):
It's moving.
Speaker 9 (19:26):
It's obviously going to have an impact on the front
end networks, it's going to have an impact on the
enterprise and even the telco business that we saw this quarter.
We had telco and cable. Our orders were up greater
than twenty percent, and a lot of that was attributed
to their preparation for AI.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Chuck Robins, Cisco CEO and Fantastic speak with you today,
Time Now for Talking Tech and First Up and Video
partner on HI. But it's expecting sales of its servers
to more than double this quarter. The company sees one
hundred seventy percent rise in revenue just from its AI service,
(20:02):
but executives are warning look that consumer electronics business could
shrink this year as it faces potential US tariffs plus
Oracle is coming back. Jobs in its cloud unit are
coming in the latest company to take steps to control
costs amid heavy spending on AI infrastructure. Now, according to sources,
more than one hundred and fifty jobs work cut in
the Seattle area, which traditionally the unit's hub. Oracle said
(20:23):
last year it was moving its headquarters to Nashville, and
the company currently has more jobs listed in Tennessee and
any other stake And Airbnb will.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Now allow guests to.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Reserve some US trips without paying up front, and a
feature is.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Called reserve now, Pay later.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
It lets use this book in advance without the need
to pay the full amount till eight days before the
end of the listening's cancelation period. Now, the move comes
after the company of horse worn last week of moderate
gains through the remainder of the year.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And if we got okay coming up prices a Bitcoin
and ether down following stronger than anticipated inflation. But crypto
and crypto related companies, it's been on a bit of
a tear recently to talk about what is going on
in the crypto market. Next, let's think about some of
the names you've been looking at. Apple had a really
strong day yesterday, a little softer today, nine percent.
Speaker 7 (21:11):
Cisco.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
We've just had that conversation with Chuck Robbins and the
market will digest his outlook. Core weaves down eleven percent.
It fell twenty one percent yesterday. Is basically the cost
of its build out in its scaling is spooking investors.
Check out our interview from yesterday. It was a big one.
This is Bloomberg Tech. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. I'm
(21:41):
looking at the crypto frankly and also sort of the
industry at large. It's been like a very heavy news
flow twenty four hours. If you take about bitcoin and
ether in particular, we were pushing fresh record highs. Largely
is like this appetite for risk assets. But then we
got this PPI print or wholesale inflation print that that
was high and there was a little jitter. And it's
not just stocks. You see that in the specific digital
(22:04):
currencies as well. Bullish in its second day of trading
up another nine percent after an astonishing day yesterday. We
just throw that in there, given you know, it's sort
of an adjacent crypto platform, but that would indicate that
in that single name, at least Caroline there's still a
lot of bullish sentiment out there. I can't believe I
did that gross.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Let's move on, will excuse you and pardon you the pun.
Let's stick with a crypto market and bullish sentiment across
the world. Cavitagupta is with us, founder and general partner
of Delta Blockchain Fund. It's a venture firm focusing on
early stage blockchain innovation and computer to that end, is
it helpful or not that there is a lot of
risk on attitude in the market that is pushing us
(22:42):
into new IPOs, into the cryptosphere when also it is
dictated by macro perspective and where interest rates are going.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Is it helpful for the formation of new businesses right
now or one hundred percent?
Speaker 10 (22:52):
But what's happening with digital asset treasures in the market
like five hundred million dollar new digital asset TRUSS three,
five hundred million dollar for hyper liquids for also assets
which are not luted coming into the market directly at
NASDAK now listed having access is creating a very interesting
by pressure for the first time in.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
The history EAT.
Speaker 10 (23:13):
Actually we have a shortage of EAT available in the
market to buy because we have over four billion dollar
treasuries coming into the market to buy eat. That's it,
and so we are seeing a lot of changes.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Let's move into that because this is the micro strategy
or now strategy strategy of basically being able to hold
bitcoin initially, now moving to eat Salana other assets on
basically your balance sheet using it as a treasury. It's
starting to trickle down into slightly more riskier asset paths.
I mean, just look at what listed yesterday or five
on the NASTAC. They've done a spac where we're seeing
(23:48):
now they're going to be buying up World's Liberty coin,
yes one that you can't trade freely anyway as a crypto,
and now they're having a publicly traded entity that's going
to be there eventually to buy up a.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Load of that asset.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
It's got, you know, the Trump's involved, the wickoffs involved.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Is it good to see that happen in your ecosystem?
Speaker 10 (24:11):
I think it's good and bad at the same time.
The good is that there is an appetite. There are
people who are pumping in a billion dollars into entities
like this, right, so there is definitely a demand for it,
which is really good for the crypto market. The downside
is where does the buck stop?
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Right?
Speaker 10 (24:27):
And so we are now seeing assets which don't even
have a billion dollar FTV in the market coming in
and raising three hundred million, four hundred millions and completely
going crazy, and not only.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
In US and reads how investory they're raising.
Speaker 10 (24:40):
A bunch of them are crypto investors, like most of
the crypto funds, including ours, are now doing a lot
of digital asset tressrees. But apart from that also a
lot of retail investors and institution investors who do not
have access still because there is no ATF of Salana,
there is no ETF of Souis, so where do they
get access to these? And that does raise a question, Hey,
(25:03):
is it another pump and dump on the Wall Street
from crypto market to now Wall Street? And who is
really going to have a real exit liquidity here? It's
still going to be the insider circle or outsider or
is it the new landscape for it at least for
next two and a half three years till we have
the Trump government.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
KIVIDA, you invest at the earliest stage, at the bottom
of the curve, those founded on the technological underpinning of everything.
Speaker 7 (25:28):
We're talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
But I see robin Hood and Stripe and the bigger
FinTechs and the banks looking at stable coin in particular
wanting to do their own thing. How disrupted is that
to you? You know, if you at that scale that
activity is happening and you have all of your portfolio
companies doing something at a different scale.
Speaker 10 (25:46):
Yeah, it's very fascinating. Thanks it for that question, because
now we are completely as an early stage investment fund.
We are going into a space where we have demand
for so many acquisitions of our companies and so many
brain powermand Like some of the top banking CEOs, which
four years back would not even give me a day,
give me a second in their schedule, are now hosting
(26:08):
us for dinners trying to understand how are these cross
chain stable coins gonna settle, How are the money markets
and reposts and all these eels are gonna happen, And
everybody wants to do their own stable coin settlement platform
and want to issue.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Their own stable coin. I have a feeling in next.
Speaker 10 (26:25):
Year and a half, not only Circle, We're gonna have
like twenty IPOs of some of the top companies, try Probinhood.
I'm pretty sure Square is gonna come on the block
for that Facebook and Instagram will have their own stable coin.
It's only going to be about who's going to have
a distribution and everybody's gonna have their stable cooin blockchain platform.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Now, okay, more Proaly, if everyone's getting into the spaces
stable coins, if we're seeing companies being developed more and
more activity in the space, how do you protect any
downside here? Or is it just doing your due diliges
and showing that you understand how tradable the asset is
that you're getting into. And indeed the future of actually
the digital asset is. From a project perspective, I.
Speaker 10 (27:03):
Think the fundamental of investing in digital assets will always
remain the same technology.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Is it scalable?
Speaker 10 (27:09):
Of course, now we have a new Now we have
a new exit place acquisitions by some of the top companies.
So is it an institutional adoption product? Can the founders
take it to let's say a top bank and say, hey,
we can settle all your repos on this. But the
other part of this is if I just look at
the liquid fund, which is doing way better than a
lot of early stage investment in the technology platform just
(27:31):
because where the market is today, I'm realizing that digital
assets restrend is not done yet. It's going to go,
and it's still not there at the peak because more
and more people in Hong Kong market, UK market, a
lot of smaller European and Asian markets are now suddenly
waking up to it, and that's the demand we are getting.
Anything under billion dollar FTV is now going into those
(27:52):
Asian markets and completely raising another layer of investments, and
that excites me, bothers me and makes me very curious.
Speaker 7 (28:01):
At the same time, tov to go to.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
A general partner at Delta Blockchain Fund. It's great to
have you back on the show. Thank you very much.
Now coming up, parag Agrowole, the former CEO of Twitter
who's squared off against Elon Musk.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Well he's back.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
He's got a new AI startup and he's going to
join us to talk about that experience and what he's
doing now. This is Bloomberg Tech, the former CEO of
(28:37):
what was then known as Twitter. Parag Agrowole has moved
on from his days sparring with Elon Musk and he
stepped into the world of AI startups. Agrowyle's new company,
Parallel Web Systems is building a tool to help AI
agents navigate the web.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
Parag Agroyle joins us.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Now, it's good to see you back in the world
of technology, at least publicly, back in the world of technology.
You know, I was reading about parallel web systems, the
idea that the customer is the AI agent, and it's
just a place to start. Tell us about this startup,
what you're doing, why you're doing it.
Speaker 11 (29:10):
Hey, Ed, First of all, thank you so much for
having me after leaving Twitter. One of the things I
was doing was this writing a bunch of code, tinkering around.
I was actually building AI agents a couple of years
ago that were mostly collecting information from the web, bringing
it back to me so that I could create it.
(29:32):
And I had a couple of realizations doing so. One
that the AI agents are going to be the primary
customer of the web going forward. They will use the
web a lot more than humans ever have. And two,
the web that exists isn't built for them. It's not
ready for them. Everything I and so many people have
(29:54):
built over the last thirty years has been built for
humans and for eis. Their needs are different, and that's
the problem that we're starting at Parallel, and.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
That's why we describe EI.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
Agents as a primary customer for all the technology that
we're building.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
There is actually some news that we're breaking here right
which is that you've raised around thirty million dollars for Parallel.
You know, that's a lot out the gate. Just tell
us about about how that went, that came about and
the team that you've built.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
We when we've started with this vision or visions like
a big vision in order to really transform what the open.
Speaker 6 (30:33):
Web looks like.
Speaker 11 (30:35):
Doing so requires reimagining from the ground up every part
of the infrastructure that spans the crawl, the index ranking systems,
reasoning systems, completely new interfaces built for a systems. And
as we sort of thought about what it would take
to build all of this, I think that was the
(30:55):
appropriate amount of money to raise. The team we have
is also the one needed to take on this problem.
The team around me is the team that built a
lot of the key primitives of the current human web,
whether it be at social networks like Twitter and Snap,
or at scripe and even marketplaces at Airbnb and so
(31:19):
the best people who've sort of built the previous version
of the web, recognizing ways in which it does not
serve the needs of what's coming. Yes, have now come
together to build this future web aar We too.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Had started off by saying the customer is the agent here,
but who actually is the customer?
Speaker 4 (31:37):
And seeing the integration with.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Lindy for example, with AI agents, but more broadly, who
buys you? Whose problems you solving? Is it those of
open AI and perplexity you are busy building the agentic platforms.
Speaker 11 (31:49):
I think one way to think about our customer set
right if you think of any piece of software or
any workflow, both of those are changing. They're changing by
incoorporating models like lllms into them that give them intelligence. Now,
once you have those, it almost feel silly to not
have access to the open Web in order to serve
(32:12):
your customers or do your Workflorce.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
Let me give you an example.
Speaker 11 (32:15):
We work with an insurance a large insurance company. One
of the things they do is underwriting, wherein there's a
bunch of people that spend thirty minutes, perhaps even two hours,
understanding a business they're about to underwrite, to understand everything
about it and discover all long tail risk signals anywhere
(32:35):
on the web. Now they've been doing that with human
operations forever. As we started working with them and they
incorporated our APIs into how they do things, combining all
of the data from the web with all of the
internal proprietary information that they have collected, they're actually able
to outperform humans meaningfully, not just in terms of cost
(32:59):
and how you can do things, but in terms of quality,
because it turns out humans cellucinate it too.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Briefly, Parak, you built parallel web systems hot on the
heels of a very combative few years having led Twitter,
but you were known as building the machine learning systems
over Twitter and now X.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
What lessons have you learned to bring to this new company.
Speaker 11 (33:23):
One, A lot of the lessons from the past no
longer apply when you're thinking of building machine learning systems.
When we're building those at Twitter at twenty fourteen, they
look very very different from the systems we are now
able to build, velocity at which we were able to move,
and the kinds of problems we are able to take on.
(33:45):
What remains similar, though, for people who've been doing machine
learning for a while, is the mindset of solving problems
end to end, understanding evils, dealing with stochastics, systems, and
I think those are the lessons that truly inform us.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Parrague, Sun Valley twenty twenty two. I was there, I
remember seeing you there, and then everything that followed, just
for the first time, reflects a little bit on what happened.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
In Yeah please.
Speaker 11 (34:20):
What happened was we built over eleven years that I
was at Twitter, one of the most consequential platforms to exist.
It allowed everyone to speak and hear directly from others,
and there is nothing like it, and I'm very proud
(34:40):
of what I was able to achieve there with my years. Now,
of course there was a lot more to be done.
It remains a platform that matters in the world.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
But my new mission pulls.
Speaker 11 (34:55):
A thread from that, which is how do you keep
the web open. It's the same mission around allowing everyone
to publish openly on the web, around every AI being
able to access what everyone is publishing freely. There is
(35:15):
a risk on the open web, wherein we might have
a bunch of payballs and silos, and an AI model
from one vendor is able to access certain parts of
the web, while the agent you might run on your
computer using open source software cannot And that's not the
future I want and that's why we're building Parallel all.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Raight Agrowell, thanks for joining us, found our CEO Parallel
Web Systems and of course pre you to see the
CEO of Twitter. Fitness ban maker Woop is refusing to
disable it's blood pressure tracking tool following warnings from the
FDA saying that the company is operating as a medical device.
(35:58):
Joining us now to discuss CEO Will almed Will, what's
your view that the FDA does not have authority in
this moment. Your wellness not medical device.
Speaker 12 (36:10):
Well, thanks for having me on you know Whoop spent
the last three years developing a very innovative feature called
blood Pressure Insights, and this takes our wrist worn wearable
alongside a calibration with a cuff and is allowed to
provide you with a daily estimate of your blood pressure
and in turn it also then gives you insights how
(36:30):
your blood pressure may be affecting other things in your wellness.
This could be sleep, stress, nutrition, a variety of different
wellness factors, and the FDA has come forward saying that
they believe that this should be regulated now. The twenty
first Century Cures Act makes it very clear that wellness
intended features are not supposed to be regulated by the FDA,
(36:55):
and the FDA is intended to actually just regulate medical
devices that are diagnosing something. So there's this key question
of intended use. And you can see this with other
physiological metrics like r A monitoring for example, where HORRY
monitoring has wellness applications and medical applications.
Speaker 6 (37:13):
The wellness applications.
Speaker 12 (37:15):
Might be things like exercise or stress monitoring or sleep monitoring,
and we do all that and then alternatively, there could be,
you know, a diagnosis for a fib and that would
be an example where.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
The fall will That's what the FDA is interpreted, right,
But you're a smart guy and you employ lots of
smart people, why not just go through the FDA process
in the first place, kind of foreseeing that this might
come up.
Speaker 12 (37:42):
Well, you have to understand there's different use cases, right.
One use case for blood pressure is around wellness, and
there's other use cases that might be a medical diagnosis.
And we're certainly looking at you know, cleared products as
well on a longer term horizon. But we're providing a
lot of value today and following the law again the
twenty first century Cures Act makes it very clear if
(38:04):
a product is intended for a wellness use case, it's
not supposed to be regulated by the FDA. So then
the fundamental question becomes, does blood pressure have wellness intended
use cases? We believe it does, right, There's an avalanche
of pure reviewed research that shows that blood pressure, not
surprisingly is influenced and influences other aspects of your wealth.
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Will why call it medical grade? Why market it that way?
Speaker 12 (38:32):
Well, we recently came out with the Whoop five DOTZHO
and the Whoop MG, and a key distinguishing factor between
the WOOP five dot OHO and the MG is that
the MG has a medically cleared feature on it. Now,
both of those products have a number of wellness features
associated with it. The WOOP MG happens to have an
ECG monitor as part of that that can detect aphib
(38:55):
and by the way, we spent two and a half
years working with the FDA to have that cleared feature.
So that is the distinguishing factor between those two hardwares.
And I want to be very clear in the app
there's an enormous number of medical disclaimers explaining what is
for wellness and what is for medical capabilities.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Well, you've said this is a misunderstanding. What happens next?
Will you continue to fight the FDA on it or
in the background are you trying to reach some solution.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
We have a lot of respect for the FDA.
Speaker 12 (39:29):
I mean, we've engaged with them on a number of
different features over the years. We think in this specific
case they have it wrong, and so we're going to
continue engaging.
Speaker 6 (39:37):
With them on it.
Speaker 12 (39:38):
We've responded to their warning letter outlining how we feel
about this and why we think we're following the law,
and we look forward to continuing to engage with them
on it.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Well, that must take up headspace and ultimately your time.
How does that impact your future product roadmap? How does
more broadly, the FDA acting this way affect innovation more broadly?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Do you think ultimately?
Speaker 12 (40:02):
I think that you know, innovation needs to be able
to thrive in the United States. Whoop is one of
the first wearables in the world that can measure blood
pressure accurately from the risk that's a really big deal,
and it's also being accepted in fifty other markets around
the world.
Speaker 6 (40:18):
So, you know, we want.
Speaker 12 (40:20):
To make sure that there's policies that are consistent here
in the US that really allow companies to innovate and
to operate. It's also worth noting, you know, we have
a lot of people using this every single day, and
overwhelmingly if you look at the feedback from our members,
they absolutely love this feature and they talk about how
accurate it is and how it's helping them understand their wellness.
(40:42):
So we feel like we're on the right side of history,
and we're going to continue educating the FDA on what
we're doing.
Speaker 6 (40:48):
Well.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I'm very quickly I'm not a Whoop user, but I'm
very conscious that in the Premier League and other international
football players, it's very in the public conscience. I just wonder, like,
is this a good pr moment for you to fight
America's regulator.
Speaker 6 (41:05):
I think in the long.
Speaker 12 (41:05):
Run we'll be on the right side of history, and
that maybe in a very short period of time too.
I think that fighting for innovation, fighting for Americans access
to health data is the right thing to do. And
I've spent thirteen years building this company. When I first started,
the idea that you could measure sleep or heart rate
accurately from the wrist seemed impossible, and now we're able
(41:28):
to do blood pressure accurately from the risk. That's a
really big deal and I think it should be celebrated
as long as there's the right guidelines in place and
the right education in place for members to understand how
to use it. And that's what we've done with this feature,
and that's why we're proud of it.
Speaker 7 (41:44):
Whip CEO Will Almed, Thank you very much, Caro.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Ah great conversation to round out. What is the end
of this edition of Bloomberg Tech Ed programming note, make
sure to check out the next edition of Bloomberg Tech Europe.
Tom McKenzie can be exploring how AI is changing the wing.
We work six thirty am London time on Friday.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
And give and I have twenty seconds. I didn't expect.
We have a podcast and you know where to find it.
It's on the Internet and it's also on the Bloomberg
platforms and you should listen to it and to recap
the show from New York City and London.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
This is Bloomberg Tech
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is a
live from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New
York and Eva Low in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Can Apple be the
AI comeback kid? Details on the company's push into robots
and a lifelike Siri.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Plus, we talked to the Cisco CEO, Chuck Robins, fresh
off earnings, the company seeing AI sales pick up but
remains cautious on its outlook.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Perhaps and Bitcoin retreats from record highs are reminder to
investors that the ditital asset remains a volatile.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
One and it's AI that that is story for Apple
because as tech giants are really trying to plot their
AI focus, it's plotting it's comeback. The efforts centers on robotics,
on lifelike syriad as you said, and home security. Yesterday,
some two percent as investors bet this move could really
help Apple and get its mojo back. Let's go to
Mark German, who breaks the story yesterday on the future
(01:09):
of AI. Today, we're going into blood Oxygen readings as well,
but start with the AI focus.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
What can we expect?
Speaker 5 (01:16):
You know, Apple is a hardware company, right, all these
companies Chat, GPT, Google, Gemini, Microsoft, they have all these
AI features, but from a consumer standpoint, it really hasn't
been monetized. How does Apple monetize its products well by
selling hardware, getting people to go to Apple stores and
buy new stuff every year or two. And so they're
(01:36):
going to replay that strategy when it comes to artificial intelligence,
and the way they see AI is by integrating it
and creating devices around the smart home, home cameras and robotics.
So the company is working on several items that are
reported yesterday. The centerpiece of the strategy is a tabletop robot.
This is essentially a virtual companion that you would have
(01:57):
in your bedroom on your nightstand, you could have in
your office on your desk, can have on a kitchen counter.
It uses a robotic arm to move around in space.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
It's like an.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
iPad that can move through thin air on that robotic limb.
He could help you get things done through your day.
You can hold conversations with it. If you're having a
conversation with another human being, it can even interject and
jump in as if it's a third person in the room.
Speaker 6 (02:21):
You can consume video on it.
Speaker 7 (02:22):
It has FaceTime.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
There's also a smart home POB basically a home pod
with a screen coming out next spring. This is going
to have similar functionality to that device, without the conversational
abilities and without the robotic arm. And they're developing a
suite of home security in home automation products designed to
rival what Amazon has been doing with a ring and
(02:46):
Blink and what Google has been doing with Nest and
other companies of course in the space include ADT and Roku.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
There is a software component, and that is Siri.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You write about a lifelike Siri, sources describe it to
you park.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Well, the lifelike Siri is the ability to hold conversations,
help you get things done, interject into conversations with other
human beings as if it's another person in the room,
very similar to what you're seeing on voice mode from Chat,
GPT and from Gemini and some of these other LM
based assistants. There's also a revamp next year to Siri
(03:23):
on the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac that's coming.
It's an underlying infrastructural change, but there's also a redesign,
like a visual redesign to Siri coming as well to
the iPhone and iPad on the home devices. Specifically, they're
going to be creating a visual personality for Siri. Obviously Siri,
obviously you heard it and you spoke to it. Now
(03:45):
you're going to be able to see it too. If
you remember Microsoft Clippy's Clippy from the nineties and the
early two thousands in Microsoft Suite of Office apps, including Word,
something similar to that. It floats around your display. You
can interact with it at any time. They're actually trying
to create a virtual character, either based on a memoji
or the finder icon that's the filesystem logo that Apple's
(04:08):
used for years on the Mac.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Very briefly mark the Blood Oxygen the workaround versus Messimo's
fight on Apple.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Is it going to make much of an effect in
the long term?
Speaker 5 (04:20):
You know, it's interesting because this workaround is, like you said,
a real workaround. You're not going to have the blood
Oxygen app like you had before on the Apple Watch. Instead,
the sensors will be used and that will allow you
to read that data on the phone itself through the
health app.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
So it took them two years.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
The US Customs Agency finally allowed them to do this
workaround and it comes at a pretty opportune time. In
a few weeks they'll be announcing the next Apple watches,
and now they'll be able.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
To market in the US. Blood oxygen saturation tracking is
part of that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Bloomberg's Mark Guerman, who leads our coverage of consumer electrolics
and broke detail on what happens next on Apple for
more and what Apple's doing than I's web Bush joins us.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Look.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Mark's reporting moves the needle right. We know that this
tabletop robot will be the centerpiece on the hardware side.
We know that Siri will be made more lifelike. Has
this changed things for you, Dan in what you're modeling
for Apple? And to kind of comeback that many think
that Apple needs to have in the AI domain, Look.
Speaker 8 (05:21):
In their AI strategy has been a disaster, and you
know it's if you look at every other big tech company,
you know Apple is massively behind. And I think when
you look at this as a potential opportunity, I think
Street is basically shrugged the shoulders. I mean robotics, Apple's
going to come out in another device. Look look it
(05:43):
up in AI Bok, a Microsoft book and meta. I
mean it speaks to our view right now, it's an
F one race and Manza. It's all passing thereby an
Apple and cooker watch from a park bench drinking a cappuccino.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's actually a really interesting I think maybe veiled dan
reference to WWDC, which opened up with the F one sequence.
If you remember, then that puts the emphasis back on Siri.
What how much better does Siri need to be then?
If it is to be a tool use daily by
technology users around the world in the same way that
chat GPT is an Apple on my iPhone?
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Look, what's just call it? It is like Siri.
Speaker 8 (06:26):
Nothing's going to happen internally, I mean internally, this has
been a disaster. Right If you go back to WWDC,
it felt like Michael J. Fox back to the future
moment in twenty sixteen. They continue to promise what's on
the come, what's next? They're going to have to do
an acquisition. I mean, look, it's just it's the reality
of the situation. It's not happening internally, and there's no
(06:49):
one on the street that believes any innovation is coming
out of Apple when it comes to AI organically.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Dan, you still got an outperform and a two and
seventy dollars price target on Apple.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
You're sounding way more.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Cautious than your money perspective is leading us.
Speaker 8 (07:07):
Yeah, look to get to two seventies. No, AI, this
is a stock that's going to move higher. And even
saw what happened last week with the tariffs, Cook obviously
playing nice in the sandbox with Trump, that was a
huge relief and the stocks had to move. And I
think there's a stock that could go to two seventy
or potentially two eighty without AI. But for this to
be a three point fifty four hundred, four hundred and
(07:30):
fifty dollars stock, it's AI and it's not happening internally.
And I think that's the problem that the street has
is that things like robotics next Gen or three thousand
dollars buys to four thousand dollars. It's all about software
and it comes down to like they need two essentially,
and we've talked about perplexity. Other acquisitions are going to
(07:53):
have to do. It's not happening internally. That's just the reality.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
What's interesting, Dan is the notes you have been putting out,
for example today, have been more around. As you just said,
there was a relief when Tim Cook was alongside President
Trump last week. Well, this week it's all been about
what President Trump has meant for in video of AMD
and for paying to play. What do you make of
the moves that we've seen and to gain access in China.
Speaker 8 (08:19):
Look, it speaks to I mean, you know a godfather quote, right,
I mean it's a deal you can't refuse. And I
think the reality is is that big tech CEOs are
learning the new rules.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
Of the game.
Speaker 8 (08:31):
Now, of course it's wed godfather of AI, Jensen and video.
They need to do with fifteen percent, it's breadcrumbs relative
to getting into a China market. They can't give this
the fall in a silver platter, and I viewed as
bullish and it's going to put more fuel in the
engine of this AI round.
Speaker 7 (08:49):
Dan super quickly.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
We broke the story last week that Dojo is no
more at Tesla, and Musk has come out on x
ray and kind of explained it the focus on AI
five and a six.
Speaker 7 (09:01):
But how did you react to that. I don't think
I saw a note.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And what do you think about the stop gap between
those generations of customs silicon?
Speaker 8 (09:08):
Yeah, that that's a great story that you guys, Broke,
I mean I view it as this is to me,
it's more certainty that Xai. They're going to have a
massive investment XAI. That'll come at the shareholder meeting, but
it speaks to our view. It's why Tesla stocklifting. I
think more and more recognizing this is going to be
a holistic strategy Tesla Xai.
Speaker 6 (09:28):
It's all about autonomous and robotics.
Speaker 8 (09:30):
And I think that was a view you kind of
read through the tea leaves that that was my view.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
That nice web Bush. Great to catch up with you.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Meanwhile, coming up, ciscosio Chuck Robbins joining us to discuss
the company's earnings, the state of AI infrastructure demand.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So Cisco shares it down about one point two one
point three percent. They've made an effort earlier in the
session to kind of bounce back. We got this full
year revenue outlook for fiscal twenty six. Some analysts felt
it was a little cautious, but we're seeing AI infrastructure
orders pick up. Delighted to say that we're joined now
by Cisco CEO Chuck Robins, and actually, Chuck, I'm going
(10:20):
to ask you something that I felt like the analyst
community didn't really get to, and that is that there
is this big products refresh happening mere term overcoming years.
And I feel like you've been trying to talk about
Cisco as a platform offering for a while and if
we look at that fiscal twenty six outlook is that
baked into that where Cisco is a platform offering and
(10:41):
you folded security into it. That's kind of what I
think people want to know.
Speaker 9 (10:46):
Yes, well, first of all, thanks for having me, and
I do I want to thank the team and all
of the Cisco folks for just a great year. We
obviously had good order growth in Q four we had
the great performance in the AI infrastructure order. We actually
reported that we had taken down a approximately a billion
dollars of revenue from those orders, which was something that
(11:07):
everybody wanted to talk about. We talked through how we
filled the progress kicking in on security, and then to
your point, this product refresh cycle that we are beginning
will happen over years, and honestly, we just turned on orderability.
Large customers take a lot of time to evaluate put
these things in labs before they.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Put it in their critical infrastructure.
Speaker 9 (11:30):
But the points you make about the platform is really
important because as we get into agentic AI, with the
low latency constant communication that's going to occur, we're going
to have to do security in the network.
Speaker 6 (11:45):
There is no other alternative.
Speaker 9 (11:46):
You cannot introduce latency by sending it to a security appliance,
and we are the only company that has both networking
and security technology to fuse it together to create that
platform effect that you're describing.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
AI is a double edged sword, Chuck, It's margin dilutive.
How do you think about that?
Speaker 9 (12:07):
Well, I think we have always had a portfolio of
products that had various margin profiles. I mean, we had
a point in our history where the Tolco and the
service provider world was as much as thirty five thirty
six percent of our business, and that was a different
margin profile than the enterprise and so we just manage
it the same way we have all along.
Speaker 6 (12:25):
So I'm not too worried about that.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Meanwhile, Chuck, that massive opportunity ahead that you articulate with
AI infrastructure, that bringing in of two billion of orders,
the billion dollars of revenue already. Is it the platform
offering that helps you push out and fend against some
of the other competitors that want in on that.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Of course HPE is trying to get in. You've got
broad Com. Is that how you set yourself apart?
Speaker 9 (12:47):
Well, I think the key to remember with this is
that it's networking systems and it's optics. That's primarily what
we're selling for AI infrastructure, and there's really only three
companies on the planet that can deliver the networking silicon
that these customers require, and we're one of them. And so,
you know, they're looking for low power requirements, they're looking
for meeting their dates, they're looking for speed, bandwidth deployment,
(13:09):
you know, and we're hitting that right now with them.
And we've really built great relationships. If you if you
go back five or six years ago, I had to
try to convince people that we were rebuilding relationships here.
And even if you go back fifty twelve fourteen months
ago when we gave them the target of one billion
dollars in orders, I think there were a lot of
skeptics and the team actually delivered really well and we
have great relationships with these customers.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Now we are joined by Chuck Robins, Cisco CEO, and
you know, you beat your things that previously others were
cynical of, but the market moves with you. Many wanted
even more in terms of your full year revenue guidance.
Some are even going as far as to say that
maybe you're suggesting a little bit of a cautious it
spend for the next fiscal year.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
Do you abide by that, Chuck, No, we don't see that.
Speaker 9 (13:53):
We see we haven't seen any sort of slowdown at all.
The only place we've seen that challenge, as has been reported,
in US Federal our product order growth was seven percent.
If you take out US Federal, we grew ten percent.
And if you think about security, same thing. If we
take out a US federal we grew double digits and
security on orders. And I also talked about the fact
(14:16):
that if we look at the fiscal year that we
just entered, our US Federal team is actually forecasting a
return to growth, so hopefully that won't be a head
win in the next year. So we haven't seen anything meaningful,
but we're also cognizant that we were operating in a
pretty complex and dynamic environment.
Speaker 7 (14:33):
Chuck.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We love to talk about the big projects on Bloomberg Tech,
the big data center projects. Are there any specific examples
of projects you're involved in that do you think are
really needle moving for Cisco?
Speaker 9 (14:46):
Well, all the cloud providers are needle moving, and over
time the neo cloud segment as well as the sovereign
clouds we think are going to will be a big
part of our business. Also we're just getting started in those.
If I hit on a few of those. The sovereign
AI data centers that we talked about in UAE as
well as in Saudi are the early ones. We're having
(15:06):
discussions in other Asian countries, in Africa, in Europe, you
have this push for on prem sovereign applications, So from
geopolitical perspective and a risk perspective, they want more control
over the tech stack that they have in their countries.
So that's more of a sovereign play, and we're one
of the unique companies who can actually deliver say Splunk
(15:27):
on prem or they're asking for WebEx on prem, which
we can do so. And then the neo clouds we
could talk about as well, but that's another emerging opportunity
for US.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I don't think many appreciate the scale of Cisco. Sometimes
you've got a lot of credit by the way, on
this program at least about how you've communicated tariff's impact.
But you're basically one of the biggest and leading network
chip producers globally, and this is an administration that wants
more US manufacturing. So you have the volume of gear,
(15:57):
you design your own chips, TSMC makes them for you.
The economics kind of works in your favor. Have you
made some commitment to do what this administration is trying
to do, which is take that process that you've mastered,
but just bring it to the States in some form.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Well, I think that much like you know, Nvidia, AMDUS others,
there are a lot of companies that actually rely on
TSMC the for the fabrication of the silicon, and they've
obviously made commitments on their side to actually build out
capacity in the United States, and so we're happy to
see that happening. The thing that people don't really realize
(16:36):
is that we've maintained a US manufacturing footprint all along,
and so we have a footprint in the US today
that we can look at expanding. But I think it's
just important for us right now to wait and see
exactly where all this stuff lands. If you go back
to twenty eighteen when the China tariffs hit. Our teams
have made moves and mitigated roughly eighty percent or so
(16:59):
of those, and so we just continue to look at
these things as they come out, figure out what the
best plan of action is, and then we act.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
When you think about planning ahead a business continuity, Chuck,
when you see what's happened with MD and Video and
the deal they've cut to access China, when you think
about exporting more broadly, you're thinking that might come your
way of pay to play in the future.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
I have no idea.
Speaker 9 (17:24):
We wake up every day and we try to figure
out what's transpired and what's happening in the world, and
how do we react to it. I've talked about over
time that the current crop of CEOs in the United
States have basically been operating in times of uncertainty or
crisis or certainly very dynamic environments, and so we're all
(17:45):
used to just dealing with whatever changes are coming our way.
You know, there's the old saying that you can deal
with the world as it is or how you'd like
it to be, and just we just wake up and
we deal with what comes at us and try to
plan a accordingly, try to do scenario planning, but then
deal with.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
It as it is.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
And when you're controlling your own destiny. You've been doing
a bit of M and A and you mentioned the
Sprung coffering and how that helps you access the likes
of view Up for example. Anymore M and A on
the rise in particularly when it comes to AI.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
We're always looking Our strategy hasn't changed. Obviously, valuations are
quite frothy in that space. But if there's something that
helps us advance our strategy more effectively, then we're always
willing to take a look at it. I would say
that M and A is not the strategy. We have
our product strategy and our solution strategy for our customers,
(18:38):
and if there's an acquisition that helps us accelerate that,
then that's what we're really interested in. And you think
about places like AI, infrastructure or security or observability.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
In those kind of areas, they're always interesting to us.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Chuck, how's the relationship with Nvidia evolving since it was
all announced?
Speaker 6 (18:55):
It's great.
Speaker 9 (18:56):
Our team and their team's execs had dinner last night
and we're working on architectures for Neocloud architectures for the enterprise.
We're working on go to market, joint go to market together.
So I'd say it just continues to get stronger. And
we're really on the front end now of a lot
of the technology integrations that we've been working on, and
we're on the front end of the real enterprise wave
(19:20):
of this AI. If you think about it, it started
in the back end networks of the cloud providers.
Speaker 6 (19:25):
It's moving.
Speaker 9 (19:26):
It's obviously going to have an impact on the front
end networks, it's going to have an impact on the
enterprise and even the telco business that we saw this quarter.
We had telco and cable. Our orders were up greater
than twenty percent, and a lot of that was attributed
to their preparation for AI.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Chuck Robins, Cisco CEO and Fantastic speak with you today,
Time Now for Talking Tech and First Up and Video
partner on HI. But it's expecting sales of its servers
to more than double this quarter. The company sees one
hundred seventy percent rise in revenue just from its AI service,
(20:02):
but executives are warning look that consumer electronics business could
shrink this year as it faces potential US tariffs plus
Oracle is coming back. Jobs in its cloud unit are
coming in the latest company to take steps to control
costs amid heavy spending on AI infrastructure. Now, according to sources,
more than one hundred and fifty jobs work cut in
the Seattle area, which traditionally the unit's hub. Oracle said
(20:23):
last year it was moving its headquarters to Nashville, and
the company currently has more jobs listed in Tennessee and
any other stake And Airbnb will.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Now allow guests to.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Reserve some US trips without paying up front, and a
feature is.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Called reserve now, Pay later.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
It lets use this book in advance without the need
to pay the full amount till eight days before the
end of the listening's cancelation period. Now, the move comes
after the company of horse worn last week of moderate
gains through the remainder of the year.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And if we got okay coming up prices a Bitcoin
and ether down following stronger than anticipated inflation. But crypto
and crypto related companies, it's been on a bit of
a tear recently to talk about what is going on
in the crypto market. Next, let's think about some of
the names you've been looking at. Apple had a really
strong day yesterday, a little softer today, nine percent.
Speaker 7 (21:11):
Cisco.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
We've just had that conversation with Chuck Robbins and the
market will digest his outlook. Core weaves down eleven percent.
It fell twenty one percent yesterday. Is basically the cost
of its build out in its scaling is spooking investors.
Check out our interview from yesterday. It was a big one.
This is Bloomberg Tech. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. I'm
(21:41):
looking at the crypto frankly and also sort of the
industry at large. It's been like a very heavy news
flow twenty four hours. If you take about bitcoin and
ether in particular, we were pushing fresh record highs. Largely
is like this appetite for risk assets. But then we
got this PPI print or wholesale inflation print that that
was high and there was a little jitter. And it's
not just stocks. You see that in the specific digital
(22:04):
currencies as well. Bullish in its second day of trading
up another nine percent after an astonishing day yesterday. We
just throw that in there, given you know, it's sort
of an adjacent crypto platform, but that would indicate that
in that single name, at least Caroline there's still a
lot of bullish sentiment out there. I can't believe I
did that gross.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Let's move on, will excuse you and pardon you the pun.
Let's stick with a crypto market and bullish sentiment across
the world. Cavitagupta is with us, founder and general partner
of Delta Blockchain Fund. It's a venture firm focusing on
early stage blockchain innovation and computer to that end, is
it helpful or not that there is a lot of
risk on attitude in the market that is pushing us
(22:42):
into new IPOs, into the cryptosphere when also it is
dictated by macro perspective and where interest rates are going.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Is it helpful for the formation of new businesses right
now or one hundred percent?
Speaker 10 (22:52):
But what's happening with digital asset treasures in the market
like five hundred million dollar new digital asset TRUSS three,
five hundred million dollar for hyper liquids for also assets
which are not luted coming into the market directly at
NASDAK now listed having access is creating a very interesting
by pressure for the first time in.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
The history EAT.
Speaker 10 (23:13):
Actually we have a shortage of EAT available in the
market to buy because we have over four billion dollar
treasuries coming into the market to buy eat. That's it,
and so we are seeing a lot of changes.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Let's move into that because this is the micro strategy
or now strategy strategy of basically being able to hold
bitcoin initially, now moving to eat Salana other assets on
basically your balance sheet using it as a treasury. It's
starting to trickle down into slightly more riskier asset paths.
I mean, just look at what listed yesterday or five
on the NASTAC. They've done a spac where we're seeing
(23:48):
now they're going to be buying up World's Liberty coin,
yes one that you can't trade freely anyway as a crypto,
and now they're having a publicly traded entity that's going
to be there eventually to buy up a.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Load of that asset.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
It's got, you know, the Trump's involved, the wickoffs involved.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Is it good to see that happen in your ecosystem?
Speaker 10 (24:11):
I think it's good and bad at the same time.
The good is that there is an appetite. There are
people who are pumping in a billion dollars into entities
like this, right, so there is definitely a demand for it,
which is really good for the crypto market. The downside
is where does the buck stop?
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Right?
Speaker 10 (24:27):
And so we are now seeing assets which don't even
have a billion dollar FTV in the market coming in
and raising three hundred million, four hundred millions and completely
going crazy, and not only.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
In US and reads how investory they're raising.
Speaker 10 (24:40):
A bunch of them are crypto investors, like most of
the crypto funds, including ours, are now doing a lot
of digital asset tressrees. But apart from that also a
lot of retail investors and institution investors who do not
have access still because there is no ATF of Salana,
there is no ETF of Souis, so where do they
get access to these? And that does raise a question, Hey,
(25:03):
is it another pump and dump on the Wall Street
from crypto market to now Wall Street? And who is
really going to have a real exit liquidity here? It's
still going to be the insider circle or outsider or
is it the new landscape for it at least for
next two and a half three years till we have
the Trump government.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
KIVIDA, you invest at the earliest stage, at the bottom
of the curve, those founded on the technological underpinning of everything.
Speaker 7 (25:28):
We're talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
But I see robin Hood and Stripe and the bigger
FinTechs and the banks looking at stable coin in particular
wanting to do their own thing. How disrupted is that
to you? You know, if you at that scale that
activity is happening and you have all of your portfolio
companies doing something at a different scale.
Speaker 10 (25:46):
Yeah, it's very fascinating. Thanks it for that question, because
now we are completely as an early stage investment fund.
We are going into a space where we have demand
for so many acquisitions of our companies and so many
brain powermand Like some of the top banking CEOs, which
four years back would not even give me a day,
give me a second in their schedule, are now hosting
(26:08):
us for dinners trying to understand how are these cross
chain stable coins gonna settle, How are the money markets
and reposts and all these eels are gonna happen, And
everybody wants to do their own stable coin settlement platform
and want to issue.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Their own stable coin. I have a feeling in next.
Speaker 10 (26:25):
Year and a half, not only Circle, We're gonna have
like twenty IPOs of some of the top companies, try Probinhood.
I'm pretty sure Square is gonna come on the block
for that Facebook and Instagram will have their own stable coin.
It's only going to be about who's going to have
a distribution and everybody's gonna have their stable cooin blockchain platform.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Now, okay, more Proaly, if everyone's getting into the spaces
stable coins, if we're seeing companies being developed more and
more activity in the space, how do you protect any
downside here? Or is it just doing your due diliges
and showing that you understand how tradable the asset is
that you're getting into. And indeed the future of actually
the digital asset is. From a project perspective, I.
Speaker 10 (27:03):
Think the fundamental of investing in digital assets will always
remain the same technology.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Is it scalable?
Speaker 10 (27:09):
Of course, now we have a new Now we have
a new exit place acquisitions by some of the top companies.
So is it an institutional adoption product? Can the founders
take it to let's say a top bank and say, hey,
we can settle all your repos on this. But the
other part of this is if I just look at
the liquid fund, which is doing way better than a
lot of early stage investment in the technology platform just
(27:31):
because where the market is today, I'm realizing that digital
assets restrend is not done yet. It's going to go,
and it's still not there at the peak because more
and more people in Hong Kong market, UK market, a
lot of smaller European and Asian markets are now suddenly
waking up to it, and that's the demand we are getting.
Anything under billion dollar FTV is now going into those
(27:52):
Asian markets and completely raising another layer of investments, and
that excites me, bothers me and makes me very curious.
Speaker 7 (28:01):
At the same time, tov to go to.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
A general partner at Delta Blockchain Fund. It's great to
have you back on the show. Thank you very much.
Now coming up, parag Agrowole, the former CEO of Twitter
who's squared off against Elon Musk.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Well he's back.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
He's got a new AI startup and he's going to
join us to talk about that experience and what he's
doing now. This is Bloomberg Tech, the former CEO of
(28:37):
what was then known as Twitter. Parag Agrowole has moved
on from his days sparring with Elon Musk and he
stepped into the world of AI startups. Agrowyle's new company,
Parallel Web Systems is building a tool to help AI
agents navigate the web.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
Parag Agroyle joins us.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Now, it's good to see you back in the world
of technology, at least publicly, back in the world of technology.
You know, I was reading about parallel web systems, the
idea that the customer is the AI agent, and it's
just a place to start. Tell us about this startup,
what you're doing, why you're doing it.
Speaker 11 (29:10):
Hey, Ed, First of all, thank you so much for
having me after leaving Twitter. One of the things I
was doing was this writing a bunch of code, tinkering around.
I was actually building AI agents a couple of years
ago that were mostly collecting information from the web, bringing
it back to me so that I could create it.
(29:32):
And I had a couple of realizations doing so. One
that the AI agents are going to be the primary
customer of the web going forward. They will use the
web a lot more than humans ever have. And two,
the web that exists isn't built for them. It's not
ready for them. Everything I and so many people have
(29:54):
built over the last thirty years has been built for
humans and for eis. Their needs are different, and that's
the problem that we're starting at Parallel, and.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
That's why we describe EI.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
Agents as a primary customer for all the technology that
we're building.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
There is actually some news that we're breaking here right
which is that you've raised around thirty million dollars for Parallel.
You know, that's a lot out the gate. Just tell
us about about how that went, that came about and
the team that you've built.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
We when we've started with this vision or visions like
a big vision in order to really transform what the open.
Speaker 6 (30:33):
Web looks like.
Speaker 11 (30:35):
Doing so requires reimagining from the ground up every part
of the infrastructure that spans the crawl, the index ranking systems,
reasoning systems, completely new interfaces built for a systems. And
as we sort of thought about what it would take
to build all of this, I think that was the
(30:55):
appropriate amount of money to raise. The team we have
is also the one needed to take on this problem.
The team around me is the team that built a
lot of the key primitives of the current human web,
whether it be at social networks like Twitter and Snap,
or at scripe and even marketplaces at Airbnb and so
(31:19):
the best people who've sort of built the previous version
of the web, recognizing ways in which it does not
serve the needs of what's coming. Yes, have now come
together to build this future web aar We too.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Had started off by saying the customer is the agent here,
but who actually is the customer?
Speaker 4 (31:37):
And seeing the integration with.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Lindy for example, with AI agents, but more broadly, who
buys you? Whose problems you solving? Is it those of
open AI and perplexity you are busy building the agentic platforms.
Speaker 11 (31:49):
I think one way to think about our customer set
right if you think of any piece of software or
any workflow, both of those are changing. They're changing by
incoorporating models like lllms into them that give them intelligence. Now,
once you have those, it almost feel silly to not
have access to the open Web in order to serve
(32:12):
your customers or do your Workflorce.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
Let me give you an example.
Speaker 11 (32:15):
We work with an insurance a large insurance company. One
of the things they do is underwriting, wherein there's a
bunch of people that spend thirty minutes, perhaps even two hours,
understanding a business they're about to underwrite, to understand everything
about it and discover all long tail risk signals anywhere
(32:35):
on the web. Now they've been doing that with human
operations forever. As we started working with them and they
incorporated our APIs into how they do things, combining all
of the data from the web with all of the
internal proprietary information that they have collected, they're actually able
to outperform humans meaningfully, not just in terms of cost
(32:59):
and how you can do things, but in terms of quality,
because it turns out humans cellucinate it too.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Briefly, Parak, you built parallel web systems hot on the
heels of a very combative few years having led Twitter,
but you were known as building the machine learning systems
over Twitter and now X.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
What lessons have you learned to bring to this new company.
Speaker 11 (33:23):
One, A lot of the lessons from the past no
longer apply when you're thinking of building machine learning systems.
When we're building those at Twitter at twenty fourteen, they
look very very different from the systems we are now
able to build, velocity at which we were able to move,
and the kinds of problems we are able to take on.
(33:45):
What remains similar, though, for people who've been doing machine
learning for a while, is the mindset of solving problems
end to end, understanding evils, dealing with stochastics, systems, and
I think those are the lessons that truly inform us.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Parrague, Sun Valley twenty twenty two. I was there, I
remember seeing you there, and then everything that followed, just
for the first time, reflects a little bit on what happened.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
In Yeah please.
Speaker 11 (34:20):
What happened was we built over eleven years that I
was at Twitter, one of the most consequential platforms to exist.
It allowed everyone to speak and hear directly from others,
and there is nothing like it, and I'm very proud
(34:40):
of what I was able to achieve there with my years. Now,
of course there was a lot more to be done.
It remains a platform that matters in the world.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
But my new mission pulls.
Speaker 11 (34:55):
A thread from that, which is how do you keep
the web open. It's the same mission around allowing everyone
to publish openly on the web, around every AI being
able to access what everyone is publishing freely. There is
(35:15):
a risk on the open web, wherein we might have
a bunch of payballs and silos, and an AI model
from one vendor is able to access certain parts of
the web, while the agent you might run on your
computer using open source software cannot And that's not the
future I want and that's why we're building Parallel all.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Raight Agrowell, thanks for joining us, found our CEO Parallel
Web Systems and of course pre you to see the
CEO of Twitter. Fitness ban maker Woop is refusing to
disable it's blood pressure tracking tool following warnings from the
FDA saying that the company is operating as a medical device.
(35:58):
Joining us now to discuss CEO Will almed Will, what's
your view that the FDA does not have authority in
this moment. Your wellness not medical device.
Speaker 12 (36:10):
Well, thanks for having me on you know Whoop spent
the last three years developing a very innovative feature called
blood Pressure Insights, and this takes our wrist worn wearable
alongside a calibration with a cuff and is allowed to
provide you with a daily estimate of your blood pressure
and in turn it also then gives you insights how
(36:30):
your blood pressure may be affecting other things in your wellness.
This could be sleep, stress, nutrition, a variety of different
wellness factors, and the FDA has come forward saying that
they believe that this should be regulated now. The twenty
first Century Cures Act makes it very clear that wellness
intended features are not supposed to be regulated by the FDA,
(36:55):
and the FDA is intended to actually just regulate medical
devices that are diagnosing something. So there's this key question
of intended use. And you can see this with other
physiological metrics like r A monitoring for example, where HORRY
monitoring has wellness applications and medical applications.
Speaker 6 (37:13):
The wellness applications.
Speaker 12 (37:15):
Might be things like exercise or stress monitoring or sleep monitoring,
and we do all that and then alternatively, there could be,
you know, a diagnosis for a fib and that would
be an example where.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
The fall will That's what the FDA is interpreted, right,
But you're a smart guy and you employ lots of
smart people, why not just go through the FDA process
in the first place, kind of foreseeing that this might
come up.
Speaker 12 (37:42):
Well, you have to understand there's different use cases, right.
One use case for blood pressure is around wellness, and
there's other use cases that might be a medical diagnosis.
And we're certainly looking at you know, cleared products as
well on a longer term horizon. But we're providing a
lot of value today and following the law again the
twenty first century Cures Act makes it very clear if
(38:04):
a product is intended for a wellness use case, it's
not supposed to be regulated by the FDA. So then
the fundamental question becomes, does blood pressure have wellness intended
use cases? We believe it does, right, There's an avalanche
of pure reviewed research that shows that blood pressure, not
surprisingly is influenced and influences other aspects of your wealth.
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Will why call it medical grade? Why market it that way?
Speaker 12 (38:32):
Well, we recently came out with the Whoop five DOTZHO
and the Whoop MG, and a key distinguishing factor between
the WOOP five dot OHO and the MG is that
the MG has a medically cleared feature on it. Now,
both of those products have a number of wellness features
associated with it. The WOOP MG happens to have an
ECG monitor as part of that that can detect aphib
(38:55):
and by the way, we spent two and a half
years working with the FDA to have that cleared feature.
So that is the distinguishing factor between those two hardwares.
And I want to be very clear in the app
there's an enormous number of medical disclaimers explaining what is
for wellness and what is for medical capabilities.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Well, you've said this is a misunderstanding. What happens next?
Will you continue to fight the FDA on it or
in the background are you trying to reach some solution.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
We have a lot of respect for the FDA.
Speaker 12 (39:29):
I mean, we've engaged with them on a number of
different features over the years. We think in this specific
case they have it wrong, and so we're going to
continue engaging.
Speaker 6 (39:37):
With them on it.
Speaker 12 (39:38):
We've responded to their warning letter outlining how we feel
about this and why we think we're following the law,
and we look forward to continuing to engage with them
on it.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Well, that must take up headspace and ultimately your time.
How does that impact your future product roadmap? How does
more broadly, the FDA acting this way affect innovation more broadly?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Do you think ultimately?
Speaker 12 (40:02):
I think that you know, innovation needs to be able
to thrive in the United States. Whoop is one of
the first wearables in the world that can measure blood
pressure accurately from the risk that's a really big deal,
and it's also being accepted in fifty other markets around
the world.
Speaker 6 (40:18):
So, you know, we want.
Speaker 12 (40:20):
To make sure that there's policies that are consistent here
in the US that really allow companies to innovate and
to operate. It's also worth noting, you know, we have
a lot of people using this every single day, and
overwhelmingly if you look at the feedback from our members,
they absolutely love this feature and they talk about how
accurate it is and how it's helping them understand their wellness.
(40:42):
So we feel like we're on the right side of history,
and we're going to continue educating the FDA on what
we're doing.
Speaker 6 (40:48):
Well.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I'm very quickly I'm not a Whoop user, but I'm
very conscious that in the Premier League and other international
football players, it's very in the public conscience. I just wonder, like,
is this a good pr moment for you to fight
America's regulator.
Speaker 6 (41:05):
I think in the long.
Speaker 12 (41:05):
Run we'll be on the right side of history, and
that maybe in a very short period of time too.
I think that fighting for innovation, fighting for Americans access
to health data is the right thing to do. And
I've spent thirteen years building this company. When I first started,
the idea that you could measure sleep or heart rate
accurately from the wrist seemed impossible, and now we're able
(41:28):
to do blood pressure accurately from the risk. That's a
really big deal and I think it should be celebrated
as long as there's the right guidelines in place and
the right education in place for members to understand how
to use it. And that's what we've done with this feature,
and that's why we're proud of it.
Speaker 7 (41:44):
Whip CEO Will Almed, Thank you very much, Caro.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Ah great conversation to round out. What is the end
of this edition of Bloomberg Tech Ed programming note, make
sure to check out the next edition of Bloomberg Tech Europe.
Tom McKenzie can be exploring how AI is changing the wing.
We work six thirty am London time on Friday.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
And give and I have twenty seconds. I didn't expect.
We have a podcast and you know where to find it.
It's on the Internet and it's also on the Bloomberg
platforms and you should listen to it and to recap
the show from New York City and London.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
This is Bloomberg Tech
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