July 23, 2025 • 41 mins
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss the newly released U.S. AI Action Plan, which centers on open-source development and aims to expand national data center capacity. Plus, the US National Nuclear Security Administration is among the organizations targeted by hackers exploiting a Microsoft SharePoint flaw. And, Tesla, Alphabet, and IBM are among the companies releasing earnings after markets close.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Bloomberg Tech is alive from coast to coast, with Caroline
Hide in New York and Ed Lavelow into then Rince's goal.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Tech earnings are in focus,
with Texas Instruments and AT and T already out and
looking to Alphabet and Tesla after the bell today, Plus
the Microsoft.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
SharePoint hack hits the US Nuclear Weapons Agency as the
tally grows of organizations breached, and the.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
White House unveils its AI action plan, including the promotion
of a rapid buildout of data centers for AI.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Meanwhile, let's check in on these markets because maybe then,
as that one hundred is lagging some of the other
key benchmarks today, the enthusiasm for the SMP, for the
Dow post, that Japan trade deal not quite filtering through,
We've got more anxiety around individual earnings that you're digging into.
Currently flat on the Naskak one hundred key tech benchmark.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
What are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, we're kind of trying water to tonight, right, But
the two earnings that are our AT and T, which
is also completely flat the story. They just didn't hype
themselves up as much as some of their peers had
taken advantage of policy. We'll get into that in just
a minute, but look at Texas Instruments down twelve point
three percent.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Do the math on tariffs.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Maybe part of this, Carrow is that for a company
that makes chips that go into basically everything, they can't
do the math on tariffs.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
And I think that's where we go.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We do because one hundred thousand customers, they couldn't tell
us who is dragging inventory forward or not.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
In King joins us for more.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And look, this is the worst fall in the stock
since two thousand and eighty in.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Yeah, they're having a very bad day. And it's not
because the numbers are terrible, they're absolutely not. It's more
of a directional thing. And it's more because, as you
guys just alluded to, they're kind of pressing the wrong buttons,
the fear buttons for the market right now, which is
tariffs are going to have an impact. Maybe they're having
an impact already. Frankly, we don't know. And that was
(01:59):
really then of the call yesterday, and obviously analysts and
investors this morning did not like that.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Ian.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
In your interview with CFO Raphael Lazardi, he basically said
this idea, right, we have all these customers in all
these different domains. It's hard of us for us to
keep track. But executives on the call also talked about
the idea that in the current period, the order data
is quite strong.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Yeah, I mean the way that they described it was
that it was kind of long, nonlinear, that when there
was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to
happen with tariffs, at the beginning of the quarter, we
had a kind of a spike very strong orders, and
then after that things kind of evened out a little
bit more and followed normal patterns. But that is the
kind of thing that analysts and investors have kind of
(02:44):
been looking for as like a sign that this demand
that we're seeing isn't real demand, that it's this inventory
build up that Caroline just sort of alluded to that
this kind of pulled forward.
Speaker 6 (02:54):
So again, the numbers were good, right.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
Sixteen percent then forecasting eleven percent growth.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
The problem is that people are concerned about how much
of that is real and how much of that can continue.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
What's the reader cross Because NXP sort of signaled this,
but Texas Instruments is the Bellweather.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
Yeah, Texas Instruments is a more diverse company than an XP.
What they have in common was auto and what Texas
Instruments said about automotive, which is, as you know, one
of the great hopes for the chip industry. Things haven't
got better yet. We perhaps or a bit of pull
forward in China. And again this is a you know,
this should be turning into a positive story. This should
(03:37):
be sort of heading upwards and making everybody smile again.
And it's not right. So that as we look at
other companies throughout this earnings period, companies that are trying
to do well in auto, perhaps the company is like Qualcomm,
which is part of the IDA versification story. People are
now concerned about this area. People are now concerned more
in general.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Blue Magsie King, thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Another company that's out of earnings is AT and T
shares have been slipping. They're now flat after the company
reiterated a profit forecast that fell short of analyst estimate. Still,
the company saw rapid wireless phone subscriber growth, adding four
hundred and one thousand customers with the help of increased
perks and incentives in the second quarter. For more Bloombers.
(04:21):
Kelsey Griffiths is here in Washington, DC. So basically investors
are saying, well, hold on a minute. One of your
big rivals, Verizon big themselves up what they've been able
to do because of President Trump's policies, particularly around tax i.
Guess the reader cross is that they're disappointed AT and
T's not doing the same thing exactly.
Speaker 7 (04:39):
So what we saw this Maureene is that AT and
T became a bit of a victim of inflated Wall
Street expectations. After a Verizon ended up posting these really
good numbers, they ended up updating their full year forecast,
and I think the market was kind of hoping that
AT and T would do the same. Now, AT and
T did adjust their numbers a bit, but it wasn't
(05:03):
anything as dramatic as we saw a Verizon.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Meanwhile, what was dramatically better than Verizon was the amount
of net ads they're making in terms of phone use.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Kelsey just push us forward.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Therefore, on AT and T, perhaps what was baked in
because these stocks have run up this year.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
That's right.
Speaker 7 (05:19):
AT and T is on a really good growth trajectory
and they're seen as this pretty steady you.
Speaker 6 (05:25):
Know growing business.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
They've been investing a lot of cash into their Fiver
subscriber ads, and although they were a little short of
expectations this quarter, that is still an area where they're
predicting massive growth.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
They were bullish about their commitment to investing in this country.
This is a theme Caroline and I've discussed with AT
and T in the past. What did the CFO say
they're going to prioritize and what's the kind of level
of investment that they're talking about here.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
That's right, So in the wake of the big beautiful bill,
all companies, including Verizon and AT and T are looking
to really invest in their networks. They're looking at these
tax savings and kind of thinking about how they're going
to spend that. For AT and T, we've heard that
they're going to invest an extra billion or so in
(06:13):
the fiber network, I believe per year. And then we're
also going to see some pretty big contributions to the
employee pension plan.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
We'll keep an eye on it.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Kelsey Griffiths, we thanks so much on the wrap up
on AT and T, But now let's get some other
earnings context and what we expect to come after.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
The closing bell today. Of course it's Alphabet.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Brad Ericsson, internet analyst that obviously Capital Markets joins us
now and you've got I think it's about a two
hundred dollars price.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Tag outperform on Alphabet.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
How can they live up to the prior to this
day ten day run up, a longest winning streak for
Alphabet that we've seen since twenty ten.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Rat.
Speaker 8 (06:48):
Yeah, there's a couple of kind of cross current things
going on. I think first on the fundamental side, we're
going to see really good numbers our checks through the quarter.
We're fairly strong, and I do expect them to print
upside tonight. So I think that's kind of why you've
seen the market price that in a little bit and
run the stock up here in front of the print
(07:08):
off setting that maybe not quite as good from a
from a forward set of perspective, is that once they
print numbers tonight, say what they say, then we've got
to sit around and wait two three four weeks for
this regulatory decision out of the judge that the obviously
will we'll scare some people, so and let's.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Just think about that regulatory overhang. And we love reading
your notes and really we're talking about how this is
a strong fundamentally company but challenged thematically in a waiting
regulatory wild card. We await what Judge Meta says in August.
But when you think about the challenge thematically, any numbers
that you're going to be looking at that would tell
you that there is competition in terms of search that
(07:49):
CHATCHBT is eating in to their breadwinner.
Speaker 8 (07:53):
Yeah, I mean they'll they'll obviously again, they'll print the
numbers tonight. I do expect them to be good and
so just objectively on that piece of it, I think
they'll have a really strong case and story to tell
on the conference.
Speaker 6 (08:05):
Call around why AI is good for their business.
Speaker 8 (08:08):
They're not going to directly address sort of the competitive threats,
but they will definitely be I think in a good
position tonight to position AIS as sort of nothing but
a good thing for the business.
Speaker 6 (08:20):
But yeah, I think the point of our note was
the numbers will be good.
Speaker 8 (08:24):
They can say what they want, but the reality is,
so long as you know chat GPT, Perplexity, anthropic, there's
a number of companies that are really making a lot
of headway on the AI front. Everyone's well aware of
that bare case that AI narrative against Google's core business
is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 9 (08:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The technology story I see is quite simple. How does
the Gemini model become more embedded across all of Google's business?
But I guess i'd love to know where you want
to see it show up in the financial results to
give you faith that the payoff is there.
Speaker 8 (09:00):
Yeah, you know, I think the most important piece and
it's not.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
I don't think it gets enough focus. Is Gemini the model?
Speaker 9 (09:07):
Right?
Speaker 8 (09:08):
Partially, it's just because of the brand. People have learned
the name. It's obviously driving the Gemini app, and that
is important. Where we're actually really focused is certainly on
AI overviews.
Speaker 6 (09:19):
But bringing Gemini to AI mode, I call it the
my mom test. Right when my mom.
Speaker 8 (09:25):
Is suddenly using some of these tools, we know they're
really hitting sort of broad based. In fairness, my mom
doesn't do a lot with technology, So there it is.
But the point is that if you're spoon feeding AI
mode to people that would ultimately just be coming to
Google for normal purposes, and you've got the power of
a really solid set of Gemini models, that's where I
(09:45):
think it becomes to a bigger and bigger tailwind.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
For these guys.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Brad.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
We got the White House's AI action plan this morning,
twenty three pages. I printed it out for you, so
for some light reading. Later in the program, we'll get
into the detail and the politics of it. But the
simple question is whether or not Alphabet is going to
be a beneficiary of what this administration wants America to
do in AI.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Do you think it will be.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
Generally yes, But I do think there's going to be
more and more attention paid to how sort of equitable
the value distribution is of AI. I think that's something
we spend a lot of time thinking about these days,
which is, I think if you look at the parts
and pieces of what we know of AI today, it
would suggest that a lot of the value could accrue
(10:35):
to only a very few number of companies. And I
don't think that's going to work bigger picture from a
regulatory perspective.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
And the reason we like Google in that perspective is.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Google is the distributor of traffic right the biggest one
on the Internet, and I don't see that changing, and
so I actually think that plays quite well into the
regulatory framework going forward.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Let's go to regulatory overhang just the last case though, Brad,
because that is the cloud you signal coming in August.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
What do you brace for.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Do you think Judge Meta would break up the company?
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Shorty answer is we don't. We don't think so.
Speaker 8 (11:10):
I think that we have we ascribe kind of a
lower probability to that. But there's sort of two or
three things we think about. Number one is you're not
going to be able to pay for placement nd fall search.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
We're pretty certain that's that's that is going away.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
Two, there could be some some sort of opening up
the kimono on data that Google has to competitors. We
actually don't think that matters that much, but that could
certainly play out. And then the third one is the
divest at your potential of Chrome, and there are stances.
You know, Chrome's not a business, it's a product. I
think the maybe the dj comments sort of ignored that
(11:45):
piece in their aspirations to have that piece of it removed,
and so ultimately you can they could force them to
do that. It's certainly possible, but then you're introducing a
whole other set of issues, as we've seen Perplexity, open AI,
all these companies talking about opening browsers right, it's clearly
going to be very important for distribution.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
Seems incredibly arbitrary to sort of.
Speaker 8 (12:11):
Hand away Google's browser in the hands of another when
they're saying that is going to be critical to the
technology innovation here for the future.
Speaker 6 (12:18):
It would just be handing value away. So we see
low likelihood of that happening.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Brad ericson RBC Capital Markets into the analysts, pushing ahead
to alphabet after the bell, thank you.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
The other name after the bell is Tesla.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
This is a stock that's down seventeen percent year to date,
it's up half a percent in the moment, and the
data carro is like probably biggest dropping revenue for a
decade year on year, but the street probably looking past
that because it's not about selling cars anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
It's not it's about one man really and his vision.
And let's just stick with Elon and Elon's enpart because actually, look,
you took a look at the language the fine print
included in the tender off of this going on for SpaceX, right,
and you notice that there's a new little warning just
tucked in there about his potential to get more involved
in politics.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, so what we saw was the risk factors section
in the tender documents that valued SpaceX at four hundred
billion dollars. Right, and this is what it literally says.
It acknowledges that Musk was previously a senior advisor to
President Trump.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
As part of DOGE.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
But also this is the key bit, may in the
future serve in similar roles in devote significant time and
energy to such roles. The reason that's important right now
and analogous to Tesla, is that Tesla investors are also
saying all we need to hear is that Musk is
committed to the company and other companies, not necessarily what
his political beliefs. So I think that's kind of what
(13:35):
we're watching for.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And look, he's been trying to signal that on X
right he's sleeping, eating, repeating work.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Amid a little bit of like childcare.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah, seven days a week back at the company. But
there's this big overhang about the America Party, and people
on X are saying, will he even address the America
Party thing during Tesla's earnings calls.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
That's the state of play right now.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, Well, we keep our eyes on it. More coming
up up right now on the Microsoft SharePoint TCAD. It's widening.
Speaker 9 (14:09):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The number of companies and organizations that have been breached
by the hack on Microsoft's SharePoint has going to about
four hundred entities now, but it's according to Bloomberg reporting
that this includes the US National Nuclear.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Security Administration, which of course oversees the design of nuclear weapons.
For more, Bloomberg's Jake Bleiberg joins us and just how
extreme are these hacks?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
What sort of information do we understand that they've managed
to gather?
Speaker 10 (14:32):
So we're still learning about what they're gathering, and it's
a hard question to answer.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
In a lot of cases.
Speaker 10 (14:38):
The thing we know they've taken in at least some
instances are signing credentials, user names, passwords, other information that's
used to secure systems. And that's particularly concerning because it
means the hackers can potentially branch out from what the
one system they got into here, Jake.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
When Bloomberg break the storyline last night about this particular
agency being hacked that is responsible for the development and
disposal of nuclear weapons, understandably, loads of Americans on social
media were like.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
What on earth are we in trouble?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Do we know the limits of what the hackers were
able to gather what is the agency's response. I think
it's a time where we just like, here's the reality
of the situation.
Speaker 10 (15:21):
So what are reporting shows so far is that there
wasn't sensitive or classified information taken from this nuclear agency,
and that the classified information within it and most other
government agencies is sort of sectioned off from the type
of system that was easily breached in this attack. However,
(15:46):
as I just mentioned, one of the concerns here is
that once the hackers get in, they may be able
to branch out and burrow in elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Now, what's interesting is the number of agencies in companies
and entities has been identified by Dutch cyber company at
the moment, this one being I Security. They're saying it's
largely US based, but actually very international. What has Microsoft
been identifying? They've of course told us who pers actually
the hackers are, but how are they keeping us abreast
of this?
Speaker 10 (16:13):
So Microsoft has told us that at least two Chinese
state backed hacking groups are behind some of these attacks,
and that there's another group based in China that is
carrying out attacks to what we know is that the
servers that were made vulnerable by this attack, for the
common micro or soft software SharePoint are spread out all
(16:37):
over the globe, and that the number that we're potentially
vulnerable is in the thousand, it's not the hundreds.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
So the scope of this is.
Speaker 10 (16:45):
Really something that's still coming into view. And you know,
Microsoft up to now has not told us how many
of their customers have experienced breaches, Jake.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Many Microsoft customers watch this program, many Microsoft employees watch
this program. What has Microsoft told us in terms of
their response and how they're handling it.
Speaker 10 (17:04):
So Microsoft moved quite quickly to roll out patches to
this vulnerability once they became.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
Aware of it.
Speaker 10 (17:12):
They rolled out a patch over the weekend and more
during the week to sort of try to close this
door and keep it shut.
Speaker 6 (17:21):
But what we've heard from other.
Speaker 10 (17:23):
Security researchers is that once the hackers are in, you're
still potentially vulnerable. Closing the door once they're in the
house doesn't solve your problems, and that really requires sort
of continuing to search and understand did we.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Get hit.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Bloombergs Jake Bleiberg with ongoing reporting.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
It's time now for talking tech and first up, Uber
is testing a ride option in the un The match
is female riders and drivers now. The safety feature is
already available in some international markets. The pilot will launch
in Los Angeles, San Fransle, us Go, and Detroit in
the next few weeks.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Has long been offered by Lyft Plus.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Sonos has named interim leader Tom Conrad as chief executive officer.
The appointment is a vote of confidence in his effort
to get the struggling audio company back on track after
a disastrous software launch that hurts sales and force the
company to layoff workers.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
And the UK's antitrust watchdog.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Is proposing giving Apple and Google's Android so called strategic
market status now. The move would pave the way for
regulation of their mobile operating systems, app stores and mobile
web browsers.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Ed a stick with Apple, it's launching a new version
of its device insurance plan Apple Care. The new twenty
dollars a month plan can cover up to three devices.
Bloomberg Sam Kelly has the details. So often have I
tapped into Apple Care having dropped this thing on the floor?
What's new about it? Why are they updating it?
Speaker 10 (18:51):
HI?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Good morning?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (18:53):
So, basically, this new twenty dollars a month subscription allows
you to have three different devices of any different base.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
And also you could have.
Speaker 11 (19:00):
A newer iPhone or a Vision Pro or an Apple
Watch and for twenty dollars, it will protect against spills, accidents,
crack screens, you can talk to somebody twenty four seven
if you have it, help battery replacements before Previously, the
company has long offered a subscription plan where you can
(19:21):
opt into the same type of thing for the iPhone,
but you would have to pay for it almost a
la carte. So if you had an Apple Watch, you'd
have to do just that, you'd have to do the iPhone.
This bundles packages everything very nicely together for twenty dollars
a month, and in theory there could be some savings
here for some consumers as well, and obviously a subscription
play for Apple as well.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Let's go there because I can see what the appetizing
for consumer, particularly if there's loss and theft coverage.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
What is in this for Apple?
Speaker 11 (19:48):
Yeah, so this is a major play for Apple. Again,
you know, devices and insurance isn't exactly it doesn't sound
sexy on the service, but there is a major play here.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So basically the services to.
Speaker 11 (20:00):
In general is Apple's second biggest money maker behind the iPhone.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Not only is it the.
Speaker 11 (20:05):
App Store, there's Apple TV Plus, there's Apple Fitness, there's iCloud.
So here with Apple Care you're able to keep you
have two billion devices out there. This is people who
maybe have one device ensured.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
If that this is.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
Money that they would be able to make, and it
would in theory, help upset some of the different challenges
that they're seeing right now around the Apple Store or
lagging behind AI in certain areas, against competitors trying to
drum up subscription sales in general. And this is money
that potentially people might not be paying, but they might say,
you know what, for twenty dollars a month, if my
(20:42):
phone breaks, if I lose it, maybe this is enticing
enough for me to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Where all the limitations though, for me, I think the
off putting thing is, Yes, I can see you want.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Into opt in if you're buying a new device, but
then to get.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The oldest stuff that you already have, and should you
kind of go to get it diagnostically tested, Yes.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
You do.
Speaker 11 (20:57):
So you have to go through a short sort of
a several minutes testing to make sure that the screen
is okay, you know, the battery they want to make
sure everything is okay before your insurance, almost like health insurance,
they want to make sure things are okay.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
But it does go back four years.
Speaker 11 (21:14):
So you might say, you know, I have a brand
new iPhone, but I haven't bought an Apple Watch in
quite a while, and so this might be a way
for you to say, oh, you know, maybe I can
opt into something a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Bloomberg'smartha Kelly, great analysis.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
We appreciate it. Welcome back to Bluemberg Tech. Let's check
in on these markets.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Because actually tech it's kind of under performing some of
the other major benchmarks today. There is uplifted euphoria around
Japan US trade deal.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Is there more to come?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
But on the big tech benchmark were flat on the
NASA one hundred, we had some key earnings that drag us.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Lower from a point's perspective. Let's dig into them.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Texas Instruments and we talked about it at the top
of the show.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
It is having its worst day since two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Clear global tariffs impact to the business, but the executives
can't all articulate.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
How much is there is a pull forward.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
On the previous quarter and it just didn't live up
to the expectations of investors. Meanwhile, we're also down on
SAP and trading in Europe. We've just closed the market,
were off by five.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Percent again, Tariff headwinds, the dollar.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Weakness impacting this particular software business.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
At okay AI.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Leaders are gathering here in Washington as President Trump is
set to give an address on his AI roadmap for
the United States. Details that it includes the rapid buildout
of data centers and the removal of quote onerous AI regulations.
Bloomberg's Michael Sheppard joins us with more. We've both printed
it out, all twenty three pages. We haven't read the
(22:40):
entirety of it, skimmed it, but we've been talking for
a while about how the focus of the document, it's
infrastructure related, the American technology stack and the energy to
support it is their substance to it, and.
Speaker 12 (22:54):
Well, the substance will really bear out over time mat
as we see a lot of administrations and all those
up administration, but all of its predecessors have flooded Washington
with these sorts of policy directives in the past, and
the catch here will be to see whether they can
actually gain some traction with this document, not only with industry,
but also with Congress, with the federal bureaucracy, with the
(23:17):
agencies that they currently oversee, and then at the state
and local level too. They have to make sure that
a lot of this can be done. And it's an
onerous process. They talk about removing onerous regulations, but they
will have a lot of digging to do on it.
That is, to cut some of the red tape that
they talk about right in the beginning of the report.
To also try to pave the way not only for
(23:39):
the data centers, but for the energy needed to power them.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
That's a big deal.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
It's a big pillar of this.
Speaker 12 (23:44):
And then also you talked about this, and we've talked
about this on the program before too, and it was
in your conversation with David Sachs just last week. Building
AI globally on the American tech stack. That's another pillar
of this document and it's something we'll have to watch
to see how they implement, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Sort of helping promote exports to an extent. Mike dig
into what they're looking at abroad right now, because yes,
there's been anxiety about states going it alone, but meanwhile
Europe's on top of AI regulation.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
How do they counteract that.
Speaker 12 (24:15):
Well, what they're trying to do first is set the
tone here in use when it comes to regulation of
AI by pursuing what they consider to be a lighter
touch CARO. More importantly, though, they are focusing on deployment
of technology and the infrastructure that is needed to power
it abroad, and that is why in part you saw
the relaxation of the export curbs on Age twenty eight
(24:37):
chips from Nvidia to China. And this is a step
that the administration sees and certainly one that Jensen Wang endorses.
That's needed to be able to have American companies, especially
in Vidia, competing in China so that it doesn't make
it so easy for China to be able to export
its own technology, perfected at home, to other markets as well.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
And that's a really critical step for them.
Speaker 12 (25:00):
They've articulated here, and President Donald Trump will be signing
orders later today to implement parts of this plan. Among them,
we expect to see orders instructing US export agencies to
take steps that would enhance deployment of American technology and
export of not only just the chips themselves, but everything
(25:21):
that goes with it, for the software and everything else too, Caro,
Max Mike.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Shephard with the latest on the report.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
We appreciate it that for more in the future of
AI and President Trump's Action Plan, Naarena singers with us
Cudo AI CEO. You really look at the way in
which we can implement AI from a governance perspective, from
a rose tolerance perspective, from a cultural perspective within businesses Navarna,
when you're looking at this report, when you're thinking about
AI being more hands off, more pro growth, is that
(25:49):
the right way?
Speaker 9 (25:51):
Well, good to see you, Caroline, and today we really
commend the White House on launching the AI Action Plan.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
I think if you dive a little bit deeper into
the AI Action Plan, there's a key, key.
Speaker 9 (26:01):
Statement and sentiment which is the bottleneck to harnessing AI's
full potential is not necessarily the availability of models or
tooled an application. It is slow adoption and central to
that is lack of trust. And I think, as you
know that Tredo AI has been on this journey to
embed that trust in the full AI life cycle, and
(26:23):
I think the AI Action Plan is really diving deep
into it with how do you standardize evaluations, how do
you actually bring more transparency to AI so that you
can fuel.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Growth, but all that growth has.
Speaker 9 (26:35):
To be grounded in trust, and that's what the Action
Plan is focused on.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Navarena Impillar.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
One of the document, which is titled Accelerate AI Innovation.
Something very high up is the commitment to encourage open
source and open weight AI, and I thought that was
really interesting the prominence of it within the document. Why
is it important that this administration focuses on open source
and open way AI.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, ed, great question.
Speaker 9 (27:04):
I think we've seen historically that open source really contributes
to more innovation and in artificial intelligence, especially with the
United States leading, we are finding a lot of great
innovation is coming from our open source ecosystem. So the
focus in the AI Action Plan on open source further
strengthens the capability for everyone else to build on top
(27:27):
of AI innovation at large scale.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
There is a really heavy emphasis on deregulation, cutting red
tape to facilitate the infrastructure side of this. Does that
concern you that that's the plan as opposed to I
guess a codified or framework piece of rulemaking around AI.
Speaker 9 (27:52):
So, as you know, creed OI serves some of the
largest global two thousand companies in the world, and what
we are finding is governance and oversight and control of
AI systems is not just tied to regulation.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
It is really about.
Speaker 9 (28:06):
Understanding these AI systems and making sure that you have
the right you know, not only standards, but also some
guardrails which are in place. So what we are going
to see I think coming out of this AI Action
Plan as stated, is a focus on more contextual evaluations,
which are paramount for making these systems happen. I would
(28:26):
like to see Obviously the CI action plans stretch a
little bit further into standardizing what does good look like
for AI and more to come on that soon.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Navarna, let's just tick into the global perspective you have
and the fact that the context is this is a
race and this is a win. It takes sol us
versus China. Is that what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Absolutely?
Speaker 9 (28:49):
You know what has been really important is this isn't
just a policy moment. I really believe this is a
moonshot moment for US and to continue lead leading and
artificial intelligence, US will need to lead with trust and
that's how we are going to unlock the power of
this technology.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So this is our arms race.
Speaker 9 (29:09):
United States is leading, and it's going to be critical.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
How we bring.
Speaker 9 (29:13):
Our allies and partners together on this journey by grounding
them in trust, oversight, and right responsibility is going to
be key.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So when we go back to the open source question,
that feels in reaction to what happened with deep Seek
and China, and ultimately is that do you think where
this sentiment is coming from and what does that mean
for the players here in the United States is all
in our meta's viewpoint.
Speaker 9 (29:39):
You know, Caroline, that's a great question. You know, United
States has been leading in artificial intelligence and we will
continue to maintain that leadership. The open source focus is
a really pivotal one because if we want to lead,
especially with heart sciences, in using artificial intelligence, building on
each other's work has always been foundational to how open
(30:00):
source works. So I don't think this is in reaction,
but this is a continued leadership from the United States
perspective in terms of how we are going to lead
an artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Verna saying of credo AI, great to have you back
on the show.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
This is bloombg Tech and you are looking in a
live shot at the principal room.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Check out the bloombg Tech podcast.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify,
and iHeart. This is Bloomberg compliance startup vanter Well. It's
raised one hundred and fifty million dollars in its Series
D round, bringing its valuation to over four billion dollars now.
(30:43):
The eight year old company helps businesses stay in line
with rules and regulations around managing and storing customer data.
Banta's CEO and co founder, Christina Kacciopo joins us. Now,
So the one hundred and fifty million what does that
help you do?
Speaker 13 (30:55):
It helps us continue to help our customers build and
demonstrate trust across the internet.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Okay, demonstrates trust across the internet. I mean it immediately
makes me think of today's news flow. We're worrying about
Microsoft and the hack there. I mean, is this something
that you're worrying about more broadly, that security isn't strong enough,
particularly when it comes to access to third parties.
Speaker 13 (31:16):
Yeah, I think what we've seen is security online. It's
an increasing concern. This has been true for years, It
been true for decades, it will continue to be true.
And it's not because smart people aren't working on it.
Lots of smart people are. It is just an increasingly
hard cat and mouse game as adversaries get stronger and
stronger now with AI as well, and so it is
increasingly hard for businesses to build out trustworthy platforms, secure
(31:40):
customer data, and we hope vantas a part in helping
them do that.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Twelve thousand of them already customers that you're helping.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
What has been the demand like for your own AI
applications AI agents in particular.
Speaker 13 (31:51):
Yeah, we launched our AI agents earlier this year. We've
seen great reception from customers. I think we've had the
agent's kind of automated a lot of manual worker customers.
We're doing customer It's like Duo Lingo and Ramp and
Snowflake are all using the AI agents to automate kind
of what we're manual security and compliance workflows.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
What's interesting is the way in which you want to
expand now is by looking not just at companies, but
at governments and government agencies.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
We can show your customers.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
We can also show the vcs that are continuing to
back you, one of whom, of course is well the
business of Craft Ventures and that we associate with David Sachs.
Is he going to be able to open doors for you?
Speaker 13 (32:35):
You know, what we've heard from David and Craft is
David is very focused on Washington, DC. He left an
incredibly strong team at Craft, but there's kind of strong
guardrails and in place between those two teams. So we
really enjoy working on you know, with the folks at Craft,
and you know, separately we're pursuing engagements in DC. But
from what I hear, David's really engaged with us work
(32:55):
with the government.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And do you think just in the current administration and
environment that they are more willing to work up with
startups such as yourself that government now is a more
accessible area for your company.
Speaker 13 (33:07):
I think so we've seen this government be very receptive
to software providers. They want to get more software into
the government, save time, save money for taxpayers. And there's
programs like fed Ramp twenty x, this pilot that is
going through to help software providers prepare better and faster
to serve the government. Because US government is just a
(33:28):
different sort of customer than almost any other in the world.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
It is, and what I'm interested there for is how
you beef yourself up to meet that demand. You said
that you want to continue to expanding, continuing to help
your own clients that you already have. Where are the
bottlenecks for you? Is it about hiring more talent? Is
it more about a marketing play just getting into.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
The orbit of other businesses.
Speaker 13 (33:51):
Talent is a huge part of it, and we are
only as good as the people who.
Speaker 6 (33:55):
Work at Vanta.
Speaker 13 (33:56):
At Vanta and there are all sorts of different pieces
of that. So AI talent is definitely a part of
it for a very hot area of the market. I'm
sure you're covering the government pieces another one again that
is just a specialized skill set. And so we are
hiring across the board, lots of roles, lots of opportunity.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And where are you hiring.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I know you've been beefing up offices in London, You've
been put data centers in Australia.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
How global does this get? Quite global?
Speaker 13 (34:21):
So we've got five global officers around the world follow
the Sun coverage for our customers. We also in the
US have folks spread out across the country, which we've
found to be a very successful hiring strategy over the
last five years.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Christina and Kechiopo.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
We will let you get back to that hiring strategy
and running the business. The CEO and co founder of
Vanter congratulations on the rays.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Tesla.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
It is set to report earnings after the bell. The
quarter was a busy one, but the re engagement of
CEO Elon Musk the launch of the company's robot taxi
service in Austin the most Creatrudell is here to tell.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Us well, whether investors are going to care about the.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
F fundamental business picture, which is an ugly one. We're
expecting revenues to fool the most severely in more than
a decade.
Speaker 14 (35:07):
Yeah, and I think, you know, we only have to
go back a quarter for you know how Musk is
likely to approach you know tonight's call where you know,
he said something to the effect of kind of look,
don't don't look at what's going on now, cast your
gaze on you know, this bright shiny object on a hill.
Speaker 13 (35:26):
Uh.
Speaker 14 (35:26):
You know that that is likely what we're going to
have a sort of repeat of here, because this is
a company that it's it's fundamentals are in really rough shape.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
Uh.
Speaker 14 (35:35):
You know the car business. Uh, not only is it
is it not growing anymore, but it's actually shrinking pretty substantially.
And you know, they did indicate earlier this year that
the energy business, which has been a source of growth,
is going to get hit hardest by by tariff. So
you know, the the leaning into the robotaxi messaging, the
AI story is absolutely what we can expect to hear
(35:58):
from Musk tonight.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
It's also not just tarifs that they're exposed to, but
are pulling away of support for ev measures. Does that
ultimately matter when you're thinking of a company that is
valued at one hundred and forty two times projective profit?
Do they care about what happens from a support perspective
for buying.
Speaker 14 (36:16):
I think that's that's got to come up at some
point on tonight's call, right, is where are regulatory credit
revenues headed? Because there's a lot of concern particularly about
you know, the state of affairs in the US where
you have you know, as part of the Big Beautiful Bill,
you had the zeroing out of penalties for not meeting
fuel economy standards. So that sort of source of revenue
(36:40):
where other manufacturers who are having trouble meeting those numbers
they no longer need to go to Tesla for help.
You know, there's also the Trump administration going after the
California ZEV mandate, and you know also on the EPA
front tailpipe emission standards. So really sort of across the board,
there's less and less reason for Tesla's rivals to have
(37:03):
to turn to Musk and say, hey, we need some
help from a regulatory perspective.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
And that's been a huge source.
Speaker 14 (37:09):
Of revenue for this company over the years.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And how much does that matter for plowing money into
the future bets As Nick Kolos over at Data Trecks
puts it in our story, I think ninety five percent
of the valuation of Tesla is basically based on its futures,
which are optimists, which are ROBOTAXI. But is that at
risk if we don't have the cash cap.
Speaker 14 (37:30):
Yeah, I mean we're talking when we talk about just
how much revenue you know, over the years, going back
to you know, since this has been a public company,
we're talking about over twelve billion dollars. That's a substantial
amount of money, and a lot of that has is
weighted towards just the last few years, where we've seen
you know, steadily Tesla report more and more of this revenue.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
And so when you if then when you.
Speaker 14 (37:53):
See that reverse and also this company is no longer
to generate cash from its its car business because that
is no longer growing, and yet it has all of
these you know, operations to tend to, you know, with
with plans that are underutilize. This starts to become a
real issue. And you do have to sort of question
(38:15):
if these robotaxi statements sort of don't pan out, what
what next? You know, what what can investors sort of
count on, you know, from from Tesla to sort of
steady things and get back to a state where you
can feel comfortable putting that sort of multiple on the stock.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Can they count on elon being focused on the business? Crowtidel,
We thank you so much for looking ahead to after
the bell, and look let's continue looking at because we've
got IBM coming up as well.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
And it's flipping the script at the moment.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
This is once some relic of another era and big
Blue is back.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
As our Brodie Ford says, let's just.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Talk about how this company has steadily convinced investors that
it can grow.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
You put it perfectly right.
Speaker 15 (39:00):
I mean, IBM has been talking about re orienting around
software and services since the nineties. People didn't really believe
them until a year or two ago, and you can
see it in the stock price right that investors are
really trying to starting to buy into this idea of
an IBM based around largely infrastructure, software and consulting. The
(39:22):
real star right now is that software picture, led by
the acquisitions of red Hat and Hashi Corp. This year,
And if you look at large scale software companies, most
of them are struggling to really keep growing revenue steadily.
IBM is doing it, making a better profit picture stick
your business. Clearly Wall Street is happy about it.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
They are sending the shares up thirty percent so far
this year, Brody. But the flying the ointment has been,
of course global narrative of trade issues and worry about
people really playing money into consultancy. How much do you
think the Genai piece of that is going to be
eroded because they've already done what six billion dollars in business,
but largely through consulting.
Speaker 6 (40:05):
It's a really good point.
Speaker 15 (40:06):
Yeah, Consulting is the other half of the IBM empire,
and that really has struggled because when the economy looks funky,
what do you do, you can see your consulting projects,
and so IBM has booked a lot of business and
consulting for Jenai products. You know, these big companies saying, hey,
which tools do we use?
Speaker 6 (40:23):
We're confused.
Speaker 15 (40:25):
What is kind of an issue is that this is
coming at the expense of traditional consulting, and so it
may not be a net increase. But what we've seen
so far is that as long as software keeps getting purchased,
investors are willing to overlook the choppy consulting.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Well for now, analysts none of them say buy nine
to hold, just for say, sell Bloomberg's Brodie Ford across
IBM or waiting for your reporting after the bill when
it breaks. But meanwhile, that does it for this edition
of Bloomberg Tech. Don't forget to check out our podcast.
You can find it on the terminal as well as
online on Apple.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Spotify, and iHeart.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
And don't forget to tune into Ed Ludlow as he's
over in the White House, of course, listening in on
the AI summit and what that will bring in terms
of the look ahead from President Trump. We've also got
S and P five hundred and at session highs records
across the board that sack just lags a little bit,
though today it is Blue Bag Tech
Bloomberg Tech is alive from coast to coast, with Caroline
Hide in New York and Ed Lavelow into then Rince's goal.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Tech earnings are in focus,
with Texas Instruments and AT and T already out and
looking to Alphabet and Tesla after the bell today, Plus
the Microsoft.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
SharePoint hack hits the US Nuclear Weapons Agency as the
tally grows of organizations breached, and the.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
White House unveils its AI action plan, including the promotion
of a rapid buildout of data centers for AI.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Meanwhile, let's check in on these markets because maybe then,
as that one hundred is lagging some of the other
key benchmarks today, the enthusiasm for the SMP, for the
Dow post, that Japan trade deal not quite filtering through,
We've got more anxiety around individual earnings that you're digging into.
Currently flat on the Naskak one hundred key tech benchmark.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
What are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, we're kind of trying water to tonight, right, But
the two earnings that are our AT and T, which
is also completely flat the story. They just didn't hype
themselves up as much as some of their peers had
taken advantage of policy. We'll get into that in just
a minute, but look at Texas Instruments down twelve point
three percent.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Do the math on tariffs.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Maybe part of this, Carrow is that for a company
that makes chips that go into basically everything, they can't
do the math on tariffs.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
And I think that's where we go.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We do because one hundred thousand customers, they couldn't tell
us who is dragging inventory forward or not.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
In King joins us for more.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And look, this is the worst fall in the stock
since two thousand and eighty in.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Yeah, they're having a very bad day. And it's not
because the numbers are terrible, they're absolutely not. It's more
of a directional thing. And it's more because, as you
guys just alluded to, they're kind of pressing the wrong buttons,
the fear buttons for the market right now, which is
tariffs are going to have an impact. Maybe they're having
an impact already. Frankly, we don't know. And that was
(01:59):
really then of the call yesterday, and obviously analysts and
investors this morning did not like that.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Ian.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
In your interview with CFO Raphael Lazardi, he basically said
this idea, right, we have all these customers in all
these different domains. It's hard of us for us to
keep track. But executives on the call also talked about
the idea that in the current period, the order data
is quite strong.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Yeah, I mean the way that they described it was
that it was kind of long, nonlinear, that when there
was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to
happen with tariffs, at the beginning of the quarter, we
had a kind of a spike very strong orders, and
then after that things kind of evened out a little
bit more and followed normal patterns. But that is the
kind of thing that analysts and investors have kind of
(02:44):
been looking for as like a sign that this demand
that we're seeing isn't real demand, that it's this inventory
build up that Caroline just sort of alluded to that
this kind of pulled forward.
Speaker 6 (02:54):
So again, the numbers were good, right.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
Sixteen percent then forecasting eleven percent growth.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
The problem is that people are concerned about how much
of that is real and how much of that can continue.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
What's the reader cross Because NXP sort of signaled this,
but Texas Instruments is the Bellweather.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
Yeah, Texas Instruments is a more diverse company than an XP.
What they have in common was auto and what Texas
Instruments said about automotive, which is, as you know, one
of the great hopes for the chip industry. Things haven't
got better yet. We perhaps or a bit of pull
forward in China. And again this is a you know,
this should be turning into a positive story. This should
(03:37):
be sort of heading upwards and making everybody smile again.
And it's not right. So that as we look at
other companies throughout this earnings period, companies that are trying
to do well in auto, perhaps the company is like Qualcomm,
which is part of the IDA versification story. People are
now concerned about this area. People are now concerned more
in general.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Blue Magsie King, thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Another company that's out of earnings is AT and T
shares have been slipping. They're now flat after the company
reiterated a profit forecast that fell short of analyst estimate. Still,
the company saw rapid wireless phone subscriber growth, adding four
hundred and one thousand customers with the help of increased
perks and incentives in the second quarter. For more Bloombers.
(04:21):
Kelsey Griffiths is here in Washington, DC. So basically investors
are saying, well, hold on a minute. One of your
big rivals, Verizon big themselves up what they've been able
to do because of President Trump's policies, particularly around tax i.
Guess the reader cross is that they're disappointed AT and
T's not doing the same thing exactly.
Speaker 7 (04:39):
So what we saw this Maureene is that AT and
T became a bit of a victim of inflated Wall
Street expectations. After a Verizon ended up posting these really
good numbers, they ended up updating their full year forecast,
and I think the market was kind of hoping that
AT and T would do the same. Now, AT and
T did adjust their numbers a bit, but it wasn't
(05:03):
anything as dramatic as we saw a Verizon.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Meanwhile, what was dramatically better than Verizon was the amount
of net ads they're making in terms of phone use.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Kelsey just push us forward.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Therefore, on AT and T, perhaps what was baked in
because these stocks have run up this year.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
That's right.
Speaker 7 (05:19):
AT and T is on a really good growth trajectory
and they're seen as this pretty steady you.
Speaker 6 (05:25):
Know growing business.
Speaker 7 (05:28):
They've been investing a lot of cash into their Fiver
subscriber ads, and although they were a little short of
expectations this quarter, that is still an area where they're
predicting massive growth.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
They were bullish about their commitment to investing in this country.
This is a theme Caroline and I've discussed with AT
and T in the past. What did the CFO say
they're going to prioritize and what's the kind of level
of investment that they're talking about here.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
That's right, So in the wake of the big beautiful bill,
all companies, including Verizon and AT and T are looking
to really invest in their networks. They're looking at these
tax savings and kind of thinking about how they're going
to spend that. For AT and T, we've heard that
they're going to invest an extra billion or so in
(06:13):
the fiber network, I believe per year. And then we're
also going to see some pretty big contributions to the
employee pension plan.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
We'll keep an eye on it.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Kelsey Griffiths, we thanks so much on the wrap up
on AT and T, But now let's get some other
earnings context and what we expect to come after.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
The closing bell today. Of course it's Alphabet.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Brad Ericsson, internet analyst that obviously Capital Markets joins us
now and you've got I think it's about a two
hundred dollars price.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Tag outperform on Alphabet.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
How can they live up to the prior to this
day ten day run up, a longest winning streak for
Alphabet that we've seen since twenty ten.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Rat.
Speaker 8 (06:48):
Yeah, there's a couple of kind of cross current things
going on. I think first on the fundamental side, we're
going to see really good numbers our checks through the quarter.
We're fairly strong, and I do expect them to print
upside tonight. So I think that's kind of why you've
seen the market price that in a little bit and
run the stock up here in front of the print
(07:08):
off setting that maybe not quite as good from a
from a forward set of perspective, is that once they
print numbers tonight, say what they say, then we've got
to sit around and wait two three four weeks for
this regulatory decision out of the judge that the obviously
will we'll scare some people, so and let's.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Just think about that regulatory overhang. And we love reading
your notes and really we're talking about how this is
a strong fundamentally company but challenged thematically in a waiting
regulatory wild card. We await what Judge Meta says in August.
But when you think about the challenge thematically, any numbers
that you're going to be looking at that would tell
you that there is competition in terms of search that
(07:49):
CHATCHBT is eating in to their breadwinner.
Speaker 8 (07:53):
Yeah, I mean they'll they'll obviously again, they'll print the
numbers tonight. I do expect them to be good and
so just objectively on that piece of it, I think
they'll have a really strong case and story to tell
on the conference.
Speaker 6 (08:05):
Call around why AI is good for their business.
Speaker 8 (08:08):
They're not going to directly address sort of the competitive threats,
but they will definitely be I think in a good
position tonight to position AIS as sort of nothing but
a good thing for the business.
Speaker 6 (08:20):
But yeah, I think the point of our note was
the numbers will be good.
Speaker 8 (08:24):
They can say what they want, but the reality is,
so long as you know chat GPT, Perplexity, anthropic, there's
a number of companies that are really making a lot
of headway on the AI front. Everyone's well aware of
that bare case that AI narrative against Google's core business
is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 9 (08:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The technology story I see is quite simple. How does
the Gemini model become more embedded across all of Google's business?
But I guess i'd love to know where you want
to see it show up in the financial results to
give you faith that the payoff is there.
Speaker 8 (09:00):
Yeah, you know, I think the most important piece and
it's not.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
I don't think it gets enough focus. Is Gemini the model?
Speaker 9 (09:07):
Right?
Speaker 8 (09:08):
Partially, it's just because of the brand. People have learned
the name. It's obviously driving the Gemini app, and that
is important. Where we're actually really focused is certainly on
AI overviews.
Speaker 6 (09:19):
But bringing Gemini to AI mode, I call it the
my mom test. Right when my mom.
Speaker 8 (09:25):
Is suddenly using some of these tools, we know they're
really hitting sort of broad based. In fairness, my mom
doesn't do a lot with technology, So there it is.
But the point is that if you're spoon feeding AI
mode to people that would ultimately just be coming to
Google for normal purposes, and you've got the power of
a really solid set of Gemini models, that's where I
(09:45):
think it becomes to a bigger and bigger tailwind.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
For these guys.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Brad.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
We got the White House's AI action plan this morning,
twenty three pages. I printed it out for you, so
for some light reading. Later in the program, we'll get
into the detail and the politics of it. But the
simple question is whether or not Alphabet is going to
be a beneficiary of what this administration wants America to
do in AI.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Do you think it will be.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
Generally yes, But I do think there's going to be
more and more attention paid to how sort of equitable
the value distribution is of AI. I think that's something
we spend a lot of time thinking about these days,
which is, I think if you look at the parts
and pieces of what we know of AI today, it
would suggest that a lot of the value could accrue
(10:35):
to only a very few number of companies. And I
don't think that's going to work bigger picture from a
regulatory perspective.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
And the reason we like Google in that perspective is.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Google is the distributor of traffic right the biggest one
on the Internet, and I don't see that changing, and
so I actually think that plays quite well into the
regulatory framework going forward.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Let's go to regulatory overhang just the last case though, Brad,
because that is the cloud you signal coming in August.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
What do you brace for.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Do you think Judge Meta would break up the company?
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Shorty answer is we don't. We don't think so.
Speaker 8 (11:10):
I think that we have we ascribe kind of a
lower probability to that. But there's sort of two or
three things we think about. Number one is you're not
going to be able to pay for placement nd fall search.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
We're pretty certain that's that's that is going away.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
Two, there could be some some sort of opening up
the kimono on data that Google has to competitors. We
actually don't think that matters that much, but that could
certainly play out. And then the third one is the
divest at your potential of Chrome, and there are stances.
You know, Chrome's not a business, it's a product. I
think the maybe the dj comments sort of ignored that
(11:45):
piece in their aspirations to have that piece of it removed,
and so ultimately you can they could force them to
do that. It's certainly possible, but then you're introducing a
whole other set of issues, as we've seen Perplexity, open AI,
all these companies talking about opening browsers right, it's clearly
going to be very important for distribution.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
Seems incredibly arbitrary to sort of.
Speaker 8 (12:11):
Hand away Google's browser in the hands of another when
they're saying that is going to be critical to the
technology innovation here for the future.
Speaker 6 (12:18):
It would just be handing value away. So we see
low likelihood of that happening.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Brad ericson RBC Capital Markets into the analysts, pushing ahead
to alphabet after the bell, thank you.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
The other name after the bell is Tesla.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
This is a stock that's down seventeen percent year to date,
it's up half a percent in the moment, and the
data carro is like probably biggest dropping revenue for a
decade year on year, but the street probably looking past
that because it's not about selling cars anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
It's not it's about one man really and his vision.
And let's just stick with Elon and Elon's enpart because actually, look,
you took a look at the language the fine print
included in the tender off of this going on for SpaceX, right,
and you notice that there's a new little warning just
tucked in there about his potential to get more involved
in politics.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, so what we saw was the risk factors section
in the tender documents that valued SpaceX at four hundred
billion dollars. Right, and this is what it literally says.
It acknowledges that Musk was previously a senior advisor to
President Trump.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
As part of DOGE.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
But also this is the key bit, may in the
future serve in similar roles in devote significant time and
energy to such roles. The reason that's important right now
and analogous to Tesla, is that Tesla investors are also
saying all we need to hear is that Musk is
committed to the company and other companies, not necessarily what
his political beliefs. So I think that's kind of what
(13:35):
we're watching for.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And look, he's been trying to signal that on X
right he's sleeping, eating, repeating work.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Amid a little bit of like childcare.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah, seven days a week back at the company. But
there's this big overhang about the America Party, and people
on X are saying, will he even address the America
Party thing during Tesla's earnings calls.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
That's the state of play right now.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, Well, we keep our eyes on it. More coming
up up right now on the Microsoft SharePoint TCAD. It's widening.
Speaker 9 (14:09):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The number of companies and organizations that have been breached
by the hack on Microsoft's SharePoint has going to about
four hundred entities now, but it's according to Bloomberg reporting
that this includes the US National Nuclear.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Security Administration, which of course oversees the design of nuclear weapons.
For more, Bloomberg's Jake Bleiberg joins us and just how
extreme are these hacks?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
What sort of information do we understand that they've managed
to gather?
Speaker 10 (14:32):
So we're still learning about what they're gathering, and it's
a hard question to answer.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
In a lot of cases.
Speaker 10 (14:38):
The thing we know they've taken in at least some
instances are signing credentials, user names, passwords, other information that's
used to secure systems. And that's particularly concerning because it
means the hackers can potentially branch out from what the
one system they got into here, Jake.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
When Bloomberg break the storyline last night about this particular
agency being hacked that is responsible for the development and
disposal of nuclear weapons, understandably, loads of Americans on social
media were like.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
What on earth are we in trouble?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Do we know the limits of what the hackers were
able to gather what is the agency's response. I think
it's a time where we just like, here's the reality
of the situation.
Speaker 10 (15:21):
So what are reporting shows so far is that there
wasn't sensitive or classified information taken from this nuclear agency,
and that the classified information within it and most other
government agencies is sort of sectioned off from the type
of system that was easily breached in this attack. However,
(15:46):
as I just mentioned, one of the concerns here is
that once the hackers get in, they may be able
to branch out and burrow in elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Now, what's interesting is the number of agencies in companies
and entities has been identified by Dutch cyber company at
the moment, this one being I Security. They're saying it's
largely US based, but actually very international. What has Microsoft
been identifying? They've of course told us who pers actually
the hackers are, but how are they keeping us abreast
of this?
Speaker 10 (16:13):
So Microsoft has told us that at least two Chinese
state backed hacking groups are behind some of these attacks,
and that there's another group based in China that is
carrying out attacks to what we know is that the
servers that were made vulnerable by this attack, for the
common micro or soft software SharePoint are spread out all
(16:37):
over the globe, and that the number that we're potentially
vulnerable is in the thousand, it's not the hundreds.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
So the scope of this is.
Speaker 10 (16:45):
Really something that's still coming into view. And you know,
Microsoft up to now has not told us how many
of their customers have experienced breaches, Jake.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Many Microsoft customers watch this program, many Microsoft employees watch
this program. What has Microsoft told us in terms of
their response and how they're handling it.
Speaker 10 (17:04):
So Microsoft moved quite quickly to roll out patches to
this vulnerability once they became.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
Aware of it.
Speaker 10 (17:12):
They rolled out a patch over the weekend and more
during the week to sort of try to close this
door and keep it shut.
Speaker 6 (17:21):
But what we've heard from other.
Speaker 10 (17:23):
Security researchers is that once the hackers are in, you're
still potentially vulnerable. Closing the door once they're in the
house doesn't solve your problems, and that really requires sort
of continuing to search and understand did we.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Get hit.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Bloombergs Jake Bleiberg with ongoing reporting.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
It's time now for talking tech and first up, Uber
is testing a ride option in the un The match
is female riders and drivers now. The safety feature is
already available in some international markets. The pilot will launch
in Los Angeles, San Fransle, us Go, and Detroit in
the next few weeks.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Has long been offered by Lyft Plus.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Sonos has named interim leader Tom Conrad as chief executive officer.
The appointment is a vote of confidence in his effort
to get the struggling audio company back on track after
a disastrous software launch that hurts sales and force the
company to layoff workers.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
And the UK's antitrust watchdog.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Is proposing giving Apple and Google's Android so called strategic
market status now. The move would pave the way for
regulation of their mobile operating systems, app stores and mobile
web browsers.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Ed a stick with Apple, it's launching a new version
of its device insurance plan Apple Care. The new twenty
dollars a month plan can cover up to three devices.
Bloomberg Sam Kelly has the details. So often have I
tapped into Apple Care having dropped this thing on the floor?
What's new about it? Why are they updating it?
Speaker 10 (18:51):
HI?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Good morning?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (18:53):
So, basically, this new twenty dollars a month subscription allows
you to have three different devices of any different base.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
And also you could have.
Speaker 11 (19:00):
A newer iPhone or a Vision Pro or an Apple
Watch and for twenty dollars, it will protect against spills, accidents,
crack screens, you can talk to somebody twenty four seven
if you have it, help battery replacements before Previously, the
company has long offered a subscription plan where you can
(19:21):
opt into the same type of thing for the iPhone,
but you would have to pay for it almost a
la carte. So if you had an Apple Watch, you'd
have to do just that, you'd have to do the iPhone.
This bundles packages everything very nicely together for twenty dollars
a month, and in theory there could be some savings
here for some consumers as well, and obviously a subscription
play for Apple as well.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Let's go there because I can see what the appetizing
for consumer, particularly if there's loss and theft coverage.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
What is in this for Apple?
Speaker 11 (19:48):
Yeah, so this is a major play for Apple. Again,
you know, devices and insurance isn't exactly it doesn't sound
sexy on the service, but there is a major play here.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So basically the services to.
Speaker 11 (20:00):
In general is Apple's second biggest money maker behind the iPhone.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Not only is it the.
Speaker 11 (20:05):
App Store, there's Apple TV Plus, there's Apple Fitness, there's iCloud.
So here with Apple Care you're able to keep you
have two billion devices out there. This is people who
maybe have one device ensured.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
If that this is.
Speaker 11 (20:21):
Money that they would be able to make, and it
would in theory, help upset some of the different challenges
that they're seeing right now around the Apple Store or
lagging behind AI in certain areas, against competitors trying to
drum up subscription sales in general. And this is money
that potentially people might not be paying, but they might say,
you know what, for twenty dollars a month, if my
(20:42):
phone breaks, if I lose it, maybe this is enticing
enough for me to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Where all the limitations though, for me, I think the
off putting thing is, Yes, I can see you want.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Into opt in if you're buying a new device, but
then to get.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The oldest stuff that you already have, and should you
kind of go to get it diagnostically tested, Yes.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
You do.
Speaker 11 (20:57):
So you have to go through a short sort of
a several minutes testing to make sure that the screen
is okay, you know, the battery they want to make
sure everything is okay before your insurance, almost like health insurance,
they want to make sure things are okay.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
But it does go back four years.
Speaker 11 (21:14):
So you might say, you know, I have a brand
new iPhone, but I haven't bought an Apple Watch in
quite a while, and so this might be a way
for you to say, oh, you know, maybe I can
opt into something a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Bloomberg'smartha Kelly, great analysis.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
We appreciate it. Welcome back to Bluemberg Tech. Let's check
in on these markets.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Because actually tech it's kind of under performing some of
the other major benchmarks today. There is uplifted euphoria around
Japan US trade deal.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Is there more to come?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
But on the big tech benchmark were flat on the
NASA one hundred, we had some key earnings that drag us.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Lower from a point's perspective. Let's dig into them.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Texas Instruments and we talked about it at the top
of the show.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
It is having its worst day since two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Clear global tariffs impact to the business, but the executives
can't all articulate.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
How much is there is a pull forward.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
On the previous quarter and it just didn't live up
to the expectations of investors. Meanwhile, we're also down on
SAP and trading in Europe. We've just closed the market,
were off by five.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Percent again, Tariff headwinds, the dollar.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Weakness impacting this particular software business.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
At okay AI.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Leaders are gathering here in Washington as President Trump is
set to give an address on his AI roadmap for
the United States. Details that it includes the rapid buildout
of data centers and the removal of quote onerous AI regulations.
Bloomberg's Michael Sheppard joins us with more. We've both printed
it out, all twenty three pages. We haven't read the
(22:40):
entirety of it, skimmed it, but we've been talking for
a while about how the focus of the document, it's
infrastructure related, the American technology stack and the energy to
support it is their substance to it, and.
Speaker 12 (22:54):
Well, the substance will really bear out over time mat
as we see a lot of administrations and all those
up administration, but all of its predecessors have flooded Washington
with these sorts of policy directives in the past, and
the catch here will be to see whether they can
actually gain some traction with this document, not only with industry,
but also with Congress, with the federal bureaucracy, with the
(23:17):
agencies that they currently oversee, and then at the state
and local level too. They have to make sure that
a lot of this can be done. And it's an
onerous process. They talk about removing onerous regulations, but they
will have a lot of digging to do on it.
That is, to cut some of the red tape that
they talk about right in the beginning of the report.
To also try to pave the way not only for
(23:39):
the data centers, but for the energy needed to power them.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
That's a big deal.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
It's a big pillar of this.
Speaker 12 (23:44):
And then also you talked about this, and we've talked
about this on the program before too, and it was
in your conversation with David Sachs just last week. Building
AI globally on the American tech stack. That's another pillar
of this document and it's something we'll have to watch
to see how they implement, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Sort of helping promote exports to an extent. Mike dig
into what they're looking at abroad right now, because yes,
there's been anxiety about states going it alone, but meanwhile
Europe's on top of AI regulation.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
How do they counteract that.
Speaker 12 (24:15):
Well, what they're trying to do first is set the
tone here in use when it comes to regulation of
AI by pursuing what they consider to be a lighter
touch CARO. More importantly, though, they are focusing on deployment
of technology and the infrastructure that is needed to power
it abroad, and that is why in part you saw
the relaxation of the export curbs on Age twenty eight
(24:37):
chips from Nvidia to China. And this is a step
that the administration sees and certainly one that Jensen Wang endorses.
That's needed to be able to have American companies, especially
in Vidia, competing in China so that it doesn't make
it so easy for China to be able to export
its own technology, perfected at home, to other markets as well.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
And that's a really critical step for them.
Speaker 12 (25:00):
They've articulated here, and President Donald Trump will be signing
orders later today to implement parts of this plan. Among them,
we expect to see orders instructing US export agencies to
take steps that would enhance deployment of American technology and
export of not only just the chips themselves, but everything
(25:21):
that goes with it, for the software and everything else too, Caro,
Max Mike.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Shephard with the latest on the report.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
We appreciate it that for more in the future of
AI and President Trump's Action Plan, Naarena singers with us
Cudo AI CEO. You really look at the way in
which we can implement AI from a governance perspective, from
a rose tolerance perspective, from a cultural perspective within businesses Navarna,
when you're looking at this report, when you're thinking about
AI being more hands off, more pro growth, is that
(25:49):
the right way?
Speaker 9 (25:51):
Well, good to see you, Caroline, and today we really
commend the White House on launching the AI Action Plan.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
I think if you dive a little bit deeper into
the AI Action Plan, there's a key, key.
Speaker 9 (26:01):
Statement and sentiment which is the bottleneck to harnessing AI's
full potential is not necessarily the availability of models or
tooled an application. It is slow adoption and central to
that is lack of trust. And I think, as you
know that Tredo AI has been on this journey to
embed that trust in the full AI life cycle, and
(26:23):
I think the AI Action Plan is really diving deep
into it with how do you standardize evaluations, how do
you actually bring more transparency to AI so that you
can fuel.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Growth, but all that growth has.
Speaker 9 (26:35):
To be grounded in trust, and that's what the Action
Plan is focused on.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Navarena Impillar.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
One of the document, which is titled Accelerate AI Innovation.
Something very high up is the commitment to encourage open
source and open weight AI, and I thought that was
really interesting the prominence of it within the document. Why
is it important that this administration focuses on open source
and open way AI.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, ed, great question.
Speaker 9 (27:04):
I think we've seen historically that open source really contributes
to more innovation and in artificial intelligence, especially with the
United States leading, we are finding a lot of great
innovation is coming from our open source ecosystem. So the
focus in the AI Action Plan on open source further
strengthens the capability for everyone else to build on top
(27:27):
of AI innovation at large scale.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
There is a really heavy emphasis on deregulation, cutting red
tape to facilitate the infrastructure side of this. Does that
concern you that that's the plan as opposed to I
guess a codified or framework piece of rulemaking around AI.
Speaker 9 (27:52):
So, as you know, creed OI serves some of the
largest global two thousand companies in the world, and what
we are finding is governance and oversight and control of
AI systems is not just tied to regulation.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
It is really about.
Speaker 9 (28:06):
Understanding these AI systems and making sure that you have
the right you know, not only standards, but also some
guardrails which are in place. So what we are going
to see I think coming out of this AI Action
Plan as stated, is a focus on more contextual evaluations,
which are paramount for making these systems happen. I would
(28:26):
like to see Obviously the CI action plans stretch a
little bit further into standardizing what does good look like
for AI and more to come on that soon.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Navarna, let's just tick into the global perspective you have
and the fact that the context is this is a
race and this is a win. It takes sol us
versus China. Is that what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Absolutely?
Speaker 9 (28:49):
You know what has been really important is this isn't
just a policy moment. I really believe this is a
moonshot moment for US and to continue lead leading and
artificial intelligence, US will need to lead with trust and
that's how we are going to unlock the power of
this technology.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So this is our arms race.
Speaker 9 (29:09):
United States is leading, and it's going to be critical.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
How we bring.
Speaker 9 (29:13):
Our allies and partners together on this journey by grounding
them in trust, oversight, and right responsibility is going to
be key.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So when we go back to the open source question,
that feels in reaction to what happened with deep Seek
and China, and ultimately is that do you think where
this sentiment is coming from and what does that mean
for the players here in the United States is all
in our meta's viewpoint.
Speaker 9 (29:39):
You know, Caroline, that's a great question. You know, United
States has been leading in artificial intelligence and we will
continue to maintain that leadership. The open source focus is
a really pivotal one because if we want to lead,
especially with heart sciences, in using artificial intelligence, building on
each other's work has always been foundational to how open
(30:00):
source works. So I don't think this is in reaction,
but this is a continued leadership from the United States
perspective in terms of how we are going to lead
an artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Verna saying of credo AI, great to have you back
on the show.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
This is bloombg Tech and you are looking in a
live shot at the principal room.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Check out the bloombg Tech podcast.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify,
and iHeart. This is Bloomberg compliance startup vanter Well. It's
raised one hundred and fifty million dollars in its Series
D round, bringing its valuation to over four billion dollars now.
(30:43):
The eight year old company helps businesses stay in line
with rules and regulations around managing and storing customer data.
Banta's CEO and co founder, Christina Kacciopo joins us. Now,
So the one hundred and fifty million what does that
help you do?
Speaker 13 (30:55):
It helps us continue to help our customers build and
demonstrate trust across the internet.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Okay, demonstrates trust across the internet. I mean it immediately
makes me think of today's news flow. We're worrying about
Microsoft and the hack there. I mean, is this something
that you're worrying about more broadly, that security isn't strong enough,
particularly when it comes to access to third parties.
Speaker 13 (31:16):
Yeah, I think what we've seen is security online. It's
an increasing concern. This has been true for years, It
been true for decades, it will continue to be true.
And it's not because smart people aren't working on it.
Lots of smart people are. It is just an increasingly
hard cat and mouse game as adversaries get stronger and
stronger now with AI as well, and so it is
increasingly hard for businesses to build out trustworthy platforms, secure
(31:40):
customer data, and we hope vantas a part in helping
them do that.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Twelve thousand of them already customers that you're helping.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
What has been the demand like for your own AI
applications AI agents in particular.
Speaker 13 (31:51):
Yeah, we launched our AI agents earlier this year. We've
seen great reception from customers. I think we've had the
agent's kind of automated a lot of manual worker customers.
We're doing customer It's like Duo Lingo and Ramp and
Snowflake are all using the AI agents to automate kind
of what we're manual security and compliance workflows.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
What's interesting is the way in which you want to
expand now is by looking not just at companies, but
at governments and government agencies.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
We can show your customers.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
We can also show the vcs that are continuing to
back you, one of whom, of course is well the
business of Craft Ventures and that we associate with David Sachs.
Is he going to be able to open doors for you?
Speaker 13 (32:35):
You know, what we've heard from David and Craft is
David is very focused on Washington, DC. He left an
incredibly strong team at Craft, but there's kind of strong
guardrails and in place between those two teams. So we
really enjoy working on you know, with the folks at Craft,
and you know, separately we're pursuing engagements in DC. But
from what I hear, David's really engaged with us work
(32:55):
with the government.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And do you think just in the current administration and
environment that they are more willing to work up with
startups such as yourself that government now is a more
accessible area for your company.
Speaker 13 (33:07):
I think so we've seen this government be very receptive
to software providers. They want to get more software into
the government, save time, save money for taxpayers. And there's
programs like fed Ramp twenty x, this pilot that is
going through to help software providers prepare better and faster
to serve the government. Because US government is just a
(33:28):
different sort of customer than almost any other in the world.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
It is, and what I'm interested there for is how
you beef yourself up to meet that demand. You said
that you want to continue to expanding, continuing to help
your own clients that you already have. Where are the
bottlenecks for you? Is it about hiring more talent? Is
it more about a marketing play just getting into.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
The orbit of other businesses.
Speaker 13 (33:51):
Talent is a huge part of it, and we are
only as good as the people who.
Speaker 6 (33:55):
Work at Vanta.
Speaker 13 (33:56):
At Vanta and there are all sorts of different pieces
of that. So AI talent is definitely a part of
it for a very hot area of the market. I'm
sure you're covering the government pieces another one again that
is just a specialized skill set. And so we are
hiring across the board, lots of roles, lots of opportunity.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And where are you hiring.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I know you've been beefing up offices in London, You've
been put data centers in Australia.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
How global does this get? Quite global?
Speaker 13 (34:21):
So we've got five global officers around the world follow
the Sun coverage for our customers. We also in the
US have folks spread out across the country, which we've
found to be a very successful hiring strategy over the
last five years.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Christina and Kechiopo.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
We will let you get back to that hiring strategy
and running the business. The CEO and co founder of
Vanter congratulations on the rays.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Tesla.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
It is set to report earnings after the bell. The
quarter was a busy one, but the re engagement of
CEO Elon Musk the launch of the company's robot taxi
service in Austin the most Creatrudell is here to tell.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Us well, whether investors are going to care about the.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
F fundamental business picture, which is an ugly one. We're
expecting revenues to fool the most severely in more than
a decade.
Speaker 14 (35:07):
Yeah, and I think, you know, we only have to
go back a quarter for you know how Musk is
likely to approach you know tonight's call where you know,
he said something to the effect of kind of look,
don't don't look at what's going on now, cast your
gaze on you know, this bright shiny object on a hill.
Speaker 13 (35:26):
Uh.
Speaker 14 (35:26):
You know that that is likely what we're going to
have a sort of repeat of here, because this is
a company that it's it's fundamentals are in really rough shape.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
Uh.
Speaker 14 (35:35):
You know the car business. Uh, not only is it
is it not growing anymore, but it's actually shrinking pretty substantially.
And you know, they did indicate earlier this year that
the energy business, which has been a source of growth,
is going to get hit hardest by by tariff. So
you know, the the leaning into the robotaxi messaging, the
AI story is absolutely what we can expect to hear
(35:58):
from Musk tonight.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
It's also not just tarifs that they're exposed to, but
are pulling away of support for ev measures. Does that
ultimately matter when you're thinking of a company that is
valued at one hundred and forty two times projective profit?
Do they care about what happens from a support perspective
for buying.
Speaker 14 (36:16):
I think that's that's got to come up at some
point on tonight's call, right, is where are regulatory credit
revenues headed? Because there's a lot of concern particularly about
you know, the state of affairs in the US where
you have you know, as part of the Big Beautiful Bill,
you had the zeroing out of penalties for not meeting
fuel economy standards. So that sort of source of revenue
(36:40):
where other manufacturers who are having trouble meeting those numbers
they no longer need to go to Tesla for help.
You know, there's also the Trump administration going after the
California ZEV mandate, and you know also on the EPA
front tailpipe emission standards. So really sort of across the board,
there's less and less reason for Tesla's rivals to have
(37:03):
to turn to Musk and say, hey, we need some
help from a regulatory perspective.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
And that's been a huge source.
Speaker 14 (37:09):
Of revenue for this company over the years.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And how much does that matter for plowing money into
the future bets As Nick Kolos over at Data Trecks
puts it in our story, I think ninety five percent
of the valuation of Tesla is basically based on its futures,
which are optimists, which are ROBOTAXI. But is that at
risk if we don't have the cash cap.
Speaker 14 (37:30):
Yeah, I mean we're talking when we talk about just
how much revenue you know, over the years, going back
to you know, since this has been a public company,
we're talking about over twelve billion dollars. That's a substantial
amount of money, and a lot of that has is
weighted towards just the last few years, where we've seen
you know, steadily Tesla report more and more of this revenue.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
And so when you if then when you.
Speaker 14 (37:53):
See that reverse and also this company is no longer
to generate cash from its its car business because that
is no longer growing, and yet it has all of
these you know, operations to tend to, you know, with
with plans that are underutilize. This starts to become a
real issue. And you do have to sort of question
(38:15):
if these robotaxi statements sort of don't pan out, what
what next? You know, what what can investors sort of
count on, you know, from from Tesla to sort of
steady things and get back to a state where you
can feel comfortable putting that sort of multiple on the stock.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Can they count on elon being focused on the business? Crowtidel,
We thank you so much for looking ahead to after
the bell, and look let's continue looking at because we've
got IBM coming up as well.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
And it's flipping the script at the moment.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
This is once some relic of another era and big
Blue is back.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
As our Brodie Ford says, let's just.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Talk about how this company has steadily convinced investors that
it can grow.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
You put it perfectly right.
Speaker 15 (39:00):
I mean, IBM has been talking about re orienting around
software and services since the nineties. People didn't really believe
them until a year or two ago, and you can
see it in the stock price right that investors are
really trying to starting to buy into this idea of
an IBM based around largely infrastructure, software and consulting. The
(39:22):
real star right now is that software picture, led by
the acquisitions of red Hat and Hashi Corp. This year,
And if you look at large scale software companies, most
of them are struggling to really keep growing revenue steadily.
IBM is doing it, making a better profit picture stick
your business. Clearly Wall Street is happy about it.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
They are sending the shares up thirty percent so far
this year, Brody. But the flying the ointment has been,
of course global narrative of trade issues and worry about
people really playing money into consultancy. How much do you
think the Genai piece of that is going to be
eroded because they've already done what six billion dollars in business,
but largely through consulting.
Speaker 6 (40:05):
It's a really good point.
Speaker 15 (40:06):
Yeah, Consulting is the other half of the IBM empire,
and that really has struggled because when the economy looks funky,
what do you do, you can see your consulting projects,
and so IBM has booked a lot of business and
consulting for Jenai products. You know, these big companies saying, hey,
which tools do we use?
Speaker 6 (40:23):
We're confused.
Speaker 15 (40:25):
What is kind of an issue is that this is
coming at the expense of traditional consulting, and so it
may not be a net increase. But what we've seen
so far is that as long as software keeps getting purchased,
investors are willing to overlook the choppy consulting.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Well for now, analysts none of them say buy nine
to hold, just for say, sell Bloomberg's Brodie Ford across
IBM or waiting for your reporting after the bill when
it breaks. But meanwhile, that does it for this edition
of Bloomberg Tech. Don't forget to check out our podcast.
You can find it on the terminal as well as
online on Apple.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Spotify, and iHeart.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
And don't forget to tune into Ed Ludlow as he's
over in the White House, of course, listening in on
the AI summit and what that will bring in terms
of the look ahead from President Trump. We've also got
S and P five hundred and at session highs records
across the board that sack just lags a little bit,
though today it is Blue Bag Tech
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