June 10, 2025 • 44 mins
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss Meta’s plans for a new ‘Superintelligence’ AI group. Plus, Apple expands its deal with OpenAI. And the CEO of United Launch Alliance says NASA has alternatives to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is a
live from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New
York and Eva Low in Sentrancisco.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Mark Zuckerberg personally assembling a super intelligence team to help
Meta hit artificial general intelligence.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Plus.
Speaker 5 (00:32):
Apple expands its relationship with Open AI and introduces a
new software redesign called liquid Glass. We'll recap WWDC.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And we speak with the ULA CEO about the spat
between Elon Musk and Donald Trump and what it means
for the space industry.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
But first we check out what's happening in the markets,
some cautious trading. We've got big bond sales, fifty eight
billion dollars, a three year debt coming due. We keep
an eye on what the yields are doing, but we
also keep an eye on what's happening in London, China.
The talks continue. We're cleaning onto games up about a
tenth of a percent. Remember the S and P near
a record high ed. What are you looking at?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Our top story and that is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
assembling this super intelligence team. Bloomberg Reporting citing sources that
he wants fifty people. He wants them sitting close to
him at HQ all to go after Agi and in
Meta's case, the stock kind of up with the focus
of the markets on trade talks right now. But this
is very much Caro founder mode activated.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
Let's tick in on the founder mode. Brnimbos kert Wagner
joins us now, who helped break down this story, and
it feels as Oh, Mark Zuckerberg is rallying his troops,
has got his own personal WhatsApp for this well party,
he calls it.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (01:44):
We've been told that he's essentially more involved in recruiting
for this team than he has ever been at the
company in more than twenty years. This is something that
has you know, he's had a fire lit under him
back in April when their Lama four model was released
and quite frankly disappointed people, right, not only disappointed experts
(02:05):
outside the company who are reviewing the model, but disappointed
people internally. And we're told that Zuckerberg at that time
really said, Okay, I need to be heavily involved. I
need to go out and recruit these people myself to
get the absolute best talent and that is what he
has spent his last two months doing, literally hosting people
at his homes in Palo Alto and like Tahoe to
(02:25):
try and close these deals and sign these these AI
experts and scientists.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I've been hearing for a while that Meta is offering
like salaries of two million dollars plus to a lot
of engineering talent. But Mark Zuckerberg is doing the phone
calls right. The question now is what is the motivation,
you know, Meta versus the rest of the field.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When it comes to the pursuit of Agi.
Speaker 7 (02:48):
Yeah, everyone's going after Agi.
Speaker 6 (02:50):
And the way it was described to me by someone
the other day is, look, you know, it doesn't matter
if you're the third person, the third company to get
to AGI. It only matters if you're first.
Speaker 7 (03:00):
Right.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Not only is that going to be a feather in
your cap for future recruiting for you know, kind of
the symbolism of being the first company to get there,
but it's also going to give you a massive head start,
as you know, for your products. So if Meta is
to get their first Meta AI's chatbot is going to
be more widely adopted, their ray banglasses will be more
widely adopted.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
So the idea of getting to AGI is.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
A massive race because of all of these other implications.
And that's one of the reasons that Zuckerberg, who is
super super competitive by the way, that's why he's putting
himself at the forefront of this effort.
Speaker 7 (03:31):
At Meta right now, chez.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Been winning nineteen percent if you're looking at the competitive
street code. But what about Scale AI and the investment there,
how does it fit in?
Speaker 6 (03:41):
Yeah, So, as we reported over the weekend, a multi
billion dollar investment is expected to go into Scale AI.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
I think there's sort of two parts to this one.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
There's the investment in what SCALEI is doing as a business,
the tech. Also the sort of relationships that they've developed
with with the government and having clients like that, I
think is something that's appealing to Meta, who has not
historically been in that bitline of business. But I think
there's also a recruiting element to this story. Right Alex Wang,
the CEO of Scale AI, is expected to join this
(04:13):
new super intelligence team that we reported about last night.
I believe there are other Scale AI employees who were
probably contribute to this team as well, So there's sort
of a sharing of talent as well that I think
is a part of this expected deal which I imagine
we may hear about sometime in the very near future.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Kurt, when Zuckerberg is inviting these engineers into his homes
like in Lake Tahoe, What is his pitch? What a
source is saying that he thinks Meta is doing well?
What Meta has an advantage in over the rest of
the field.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
He's leaning quite heavily into Meta's resources.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
You know, he's from what we've heard, he's talked about
the cash flow at the company, the strong advertising business,
and the fact that they have the tens of billions
of dollars on hand to go pursue these very spense
of AI improvements.
Speaker 7 (05:01):
Right.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
A lot of the other companies aired as you know,
they're about raising money. They're out fundraising constantly to try
and get that cash flow in the building. Meta already
has that. So here's out saying, look, we have the resources.
I'm giving you the runway to do all of this stuff.
You know, come work for me where you will never
want for anything, essentially, right, So a big part of
the push is Meta as a financial behemoth here, who
(05:25):
can actually get this thing done?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Behemoth. I wish we had more time to discuss that.
Bloombo's Kurt Wagner, thank you very much. Sticking with AI,
Apple introduced AI powered features at its Developers conference, including
an expanded relationship with open Ai, but a new software
redesign called liquid Glass, with a transparent menu and a
glassy look.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Bloombo's Mark gum And has.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
All the details in our discussion of Apple WWDC. We
say that liquid Glass is the most significant design overhaul
for an OS interface ever.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
What did you make of it? And what do we
need to know?
Speaker 8 (06:03):
Yeah, So the significance of this interface change is how
broad it is.
Speaker 7 (06:08):
Right, It's available.
Speaker 8 (06:09):
On all of Apple's devices. This is the first time
they're doing a user interface revamp across all the devices.
And it's also interesting because it sets the stage for
future Apple devices. Right in terms of hardware, the Apple
devices are going to get more of glassy, Right. You're
going to see curve glass edges on the twentieth anniversary
iPhone in two years. So having an olive glass interface
(06:31):
with a lot of transparency sets the stage for that.
And so from that standpoint, it's great. I've been using
the new UI on all of my devices since yesterday
when the betas came out, and I think it's really great,
and I think it's also going to improve dramatically between
now in September when it's all released. And so if
you're a developer and you have an extra phone or
(06:53):
you want to take a little bit of a risk,
I would encourage anyone to try out the new look.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
So that's cool. But why then, unless like Angelo Zino
saying this whole event was a dud, why is there
such a deafening silence around Siri?
Speaker 8 (07:06):
For example, Mark Well, because Wall Street basically cares about
buzzwords because buzzwords are wike at the share price moving
in either direction. And you didn't hear a whole lot
as we anticipated and talked about in advance about AI
or Siri. Apple is essentially taking an AI gap year
at the worst possible time. They're not promising any new
(07:28):
AI features right now. I don't anticipate that they're going
to start doing so again until June of twenty twenty six.
Apple Intelligence obviously was a flop. They're doing their best
to try to show people that they are here too
with AI without going too far and making these promises.
What they have done is partnered with Chat GPT and
(07:48):
a few more features, so you can take a screenshot
now and chat, GPT can analyze what's on your screen.
Of course you could have done that with the app already,
but this is a bit of a shortcut. And then
they have new developer tools that happened to third party lms,
including JGBT. But yeah, to be clear, as we've been
talking about the fact that Apple is nowhere near any
of its competition in AI is a massive failure on
(08:12):
all levels.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
The stock fell one point two percent yesterday Monday. It's
now up around one point two percent, so we've kind
of balanced out the trading in this Market's more to
do with trade talks than I guess anything idiosyncratic. I
found that probably the most significant piece of news relevance
WWDC to be that access for third party developers to
on device llms, because you think about the app store
(08:37):
that we have today and the ecosystem across operating systems.
The whole point of WWDC mark is the developers right
explain that piece of news and why the developer community
cheered it.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
So the foundation models that are available for Apple's own
AI features are now available to third party developers, so
there are frameworks and software tools now for developers to
build their own AI Features'll be making it easier than
ever for developers, and by the way, there's millions of
them on the Apple platforms to develop AI futures for
their own apps. But just a step back in terms
(09:09):
of the features themselves, right, Most consumers who use these
devices just want them to be better, want them to
be easier, and so Apple went after the core competencies.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
If you look at the.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
Three apps that were revamped and improved yesterday, the three
were Safari, Phone and Camera, which are probably the most
used apps on most people's iPhones.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
And then two additional apps that.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
Got a little bit of love were Photos and Messages,
which probably rand out the top five. They weren't as
significant as the first three. So Apple made major improvements
to the apps that people are using every day. For
iPad users, the new iPad operating system finally makes the
iPad like a computer, right, and so that is a
huge feature that people, including myself, have been asking for
(09:51):
for years. So there's a lot of us in the
Apple community who are actually pretty thrilled with the improvements
that were made. But taking a step back still, this
is focusing on these os franchises that have been around
for decades rather than pushing us into these next generation
in our faces based around AI. So you have to
juggle both. Apple's doing a great job managing the current,
(10:13):
but we've not seen a lot that's giving us confidence
about the future.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
Bloomberg's Mark German, We thank you so much on the
Apple round up. Meanwhile, let's just look at what Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, is up to in terms
of it stop climbing following a report from Reuters that
it has signed a deal to provide cloud services to
open Ai. Open Ai will use the additional computing capacity
for training and running its models. Both companies declining to
comment Reuters it's a game of front of.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Me zed okay, coming up, Trade talks resume in London
between the United States and China. We're going to have
the latest details next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 9 (10:57):
We are doing well with chin China's not easy.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
We want to open up China, and if we don't
open up China, maybe we won't do anything.
Speaker 9 (11:07):
But we want to open up China.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
It'll be a great thing for China, a great thing
for the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
That was President Trump commenting after the first day of
trade talks between the US and China in London, and
day two is now underway. Bloomberg's Amory Horden joins US
from London. Amh what do we need to know?
Speaker 10 (11:27):
Well, you need to know is at the moment there
is no update. We still see both delegations having another
day of trade talks. They did have a break around
two o'clock local time. They have been back at the
negotiating table inside Lancaster House. We were waiting to hear
for potentially any breakouts in terms of the United States
getting what they want, which is an advanced pace of
(11:49):
rare earth and magnets, and the Chinese side getting a
bit of an easing of export controls, which is what
Kevin Hassett, the NEC director had said. At the moment,
talk are still ongoing, but there is really a time
clock to this because Treasury Secretary Scott Besson has to
be back on Capitol Hill tomorrow he is testifying in
(12:10):
front of the House Ways and Means Committee, So they
really are in a time crunch to wrap up these negotiations.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
Talking of timing, Amory an interestingly timed piece in the
People's Daily over in China the front page Huawei found
us saying, look, these restrictions on us, then I'll say about.
Speaker 10 (12:30):
Right, And that's what a lot of people were talking about,
remember during Deep Seek. And this is something that the
Nvidia CEO, Jensen Wang had said to me when I
caught up with him briefly before he had that meeting
a month or so ago with Donald Trump in the
Oval Office, the President of the United States. Obviously they
likely were probably going to talk about their chip controls.
And he told ed recently that China has become quite
formidable and that China is neck and neck really with
(12:52):
the United States. They are not far behind. And that's
really what the Huawei founder was saying in this local daily.
It is really notable that in these talks in London,
very different than the talks four weeks ago in Geneva,
that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik is here.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
It means that those chips.
Speaker 10 (13:09):
Potentially those export controls are on the table.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
I'm Marie Hoden doing amazing work in London. We really
appreciate it. Look, let's just check in on how Chinese
stocks have reacted to all of this. They have been volatile.
We've been higher early in trade, but at the beginning
it really was down and down. We remain in the
red once again. This is the trade talks that we
say have been resuming. You're seeing Golden Dragon index and
as that golden draggoning an index off by three tenths
(13:33):
of a percent as we speak, Ali Baba off by
eight tenths. JD off by more than a percentage point.
Tiffany Wade is here on place to say, senior portfolio
manager at Columbia thread Needle Investments manages a cool six
one hundred and twenty one billion dollars in assets. Tiffany,
how much is riding on these days of talks? How
much do you think ultimately does make a decision for
you within your portfolio.
Speaker 11 (13:52):
Yeah, I think we've seen the market react really well
over the last couple of weeks to certainly a reduction,
and some of the terriffs are China and other companies
countries as well. This would be very critical, I think,
especially for the tech sector, especially talking about export restrictions.
There are certainly parts of the tech sector, like Nvidia
most recently the electronic design automation companies that have been
(14:13):
very hurt by export restrictions in tariffs. So for certain
pockets of the market, I think this would be very
impactful to see some of these trade negotiations play out.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Tiffany, how much of a risk premium is the president
when you look at any corner of the technology market
and you say, I am going to bet on a
company that this president has recently spoken favorably about or
not favorably about, as the case may be, and talking
of course about the volatility that he brings to any
(14:43):
trade negotiation, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 11 (14:46):
It creates a lot of pause when you're thinking about
companies that may be in focus from the president. Companies
that have been talked about are sectors that have been
talked about recently. But the worry as an investor is
what will happen next that we haven't planned for or
that we didn't see coming. So I think that, you know,
companies that have been spoken about, have been targeted, are
reflecting a bit of a risk premium, and you see
(15:08):
this in a lot of the tech companies that are trading,
you know, at discounts to where they were trading over
the last couple of years, certainly relative to their own multiples,
but also relative to the index as well, so I
think that's reflected in some of the stocks. But again,
the concern is what happens next because it's hard to predict.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
Boy does Tim Cook want to know what happens next
as well? And his own salt trading below usual multiples.
They've been in the eye this storm. When it comes
to the supply chain side of things, what do you
make of the desire to make companies ultimately build a
US perhaps be less profitable. Does that make them as
appetizing as an investment?
Speaker 11 (15:44):
It certainly doesn't. It hurts the profit margins, as you mentioned.
I think it'll be interesting to see how all of
this plays out because it takes multiple years to build
a factory here. It probably takes longer than you know
President Trump is going to.
Speaker 12 (15:57):
Be in office.
Speaker 11 (15:58):
So the announcement we've seen from companies building here, you know,
maybe some of them make sense economically, maybe some of
them are paying lip service.
Speaker 12 (16:06):
To the administration. But it'll see.
Speaker 11 (16:08):
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. But
it's it's interesting that Apple specifically has has been a
little bit more defiant.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
More defined, but perhaps more distracted. Is what people worry
about the fact that they are not playing catch up
to this AI game is people had hope with WWDC.
What did you make the event?
Speaker 11 (16:25):
Yeah, I thought the event was a little bit disappointing
for Apple. We were expecting to hear more exciting updates
around Apple intelligence, around AI, maybe around AI being incorporated
into Siri, and instead I think we saw more updates
on improving the user interface, more features on existing applications.
You know, the applications that maybe incorporate the most AI
(16:47):
would be their updates on visual intelligence or live translation,
but those also feel like they're playing a little bit
of catch up versus applications that are already in the
market from other providers.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
And my Bloomberg terminal, Apple seems to be the top
holding in the Columbia Large Growth funds, so let me
know if that's right. But I think like so far
this year, Apple has been trading on trade risk, right
on tariff risk, And when we were like literally in
the car on the way to APPLEWWDC, we're asking ourselves,
has this name started trading on that AI concern yet
(17:18):
or not.
Speaker 11 (17:19):
I think we've seen that a little bit around the
WWSDC event, and we certainly saw that after the event
yesterday where people were a little bit disappointed that there
wasn't a big AI announcement coming out of the keynote presentation.
So I think we're seeing that a little bit. But Apple,
like a lot of big tech companies, I think, are
still trying to figure out their strategy around AI and
are putting a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Tiffany, you set yourself up for this by saying the
big question is what happened happens next for the technology sector?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
What happens next?
Speaker 11 (17:50):
I think we're still very positive on the tech sector
for the rest of the year. There's a lot of
good tail wins for the sector. Obviously, tariffs and next
four restrictions could come out of field for the rest
of the year, but there's a lot of good tailwinds
for earnings growth, including AI investment that continues to be
very strong across multiple parts of the market. If we
look at earnings growth expectations for the rest of the
(18:13):
year or for the full year, the tech sector is
still expected to grow much faster than the rest of
the market. And as I mentioned before, a lot of
the valuations across certain subgroups of tech look very attractive
versus their history.
Speaker 12 (18:25):
So we're still very positive on the sector.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
Are you positive on the commitment of capital coming from
these companies? Look at what Mount Zuckerbug's doing, devoting his
own time, his own dining table, but also shape quantities
of cash to make sure that he tries to win agis.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Isn't it?
Speaker 12 (18:39):
Yeah? Absolutely? And he's not alone.
Speaker 11 (18:41):
Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon are all making huge investments into AI,
and I think that has a great knock on effect
for parts of the semiconductor equipment, parts of software, other
parts of the economy, including industrials that all feed into
that AI infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Tiffany wade Be of fread Needo Investments, thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Uber and Wave. They are set to plan their first
trial run of fully autonomous vehicles in London. It is
a move that could pay the way for commercial robotaxi
services in the United Kingdom. Let's get on what this
really means with Andrew Grant of Bloomberg NEF and really
your focus and analysis here is what London means for
the growth story of robotaxes. More broadly, why is it
(19:29):
difficult to trial run there?
Speaker 13 (19:32):
Well, I mean, let me start by saying that London
is a big market for Uber. They often cited as
one of their five most important cities globally and the
earnings calls and their reports. So this is a big
development that they are working with their partners to start
deploying to planning to deploy robotaxes in London. But these
types of streets are different from where we've seen the
(19:53):
majority of robotaxes in the past, places like Phoenix, Arizona
in Austin, Texas, where you have varying weather conditions, roads
that haven't been around for nearly as long as some
of the London streets which have their own quirks.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
You lead our coverage of mobility right at BNF, and
you know that in any robotaxi setup, you have the
self driving tech, hardware, software, somebody owns the vehicle, somebody
operates the ride hailing app, and somebody manages the fleet.
I'm looking at this announcement from Uber and Wave and
I think there's a few names and pieces missing.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 13 (20:31):
In a robotaxi service, it really does take a village.
You need different parts of this value chain that are
going to contribute different skill sets and different capital requirements
and different payoff periods. So if you are looking at
what is essentially a partnership here between two tech companies
Wave and Uber that mostly work with software, there's a
(20:52):
few other players that need to manage the hardware and
manage the on the ground operations. So as you mentioned,
that will be things like people like Company that will
actually end up owning the vehicle. And in the past,
Uber's been a bit hesitant to own and operate large
fleets of vehicles, but they have shown that they are
willing to take over some of the operational aspects with
(21:13):
some of their partnerships, for instance, their partnership with Weimo
in Austin, some of their partnership with with we Ride
which is underway in the United Arab Emirates, where they're
taking over some of the fleet operating aspects. But you
did right there, we're missing kind of who's going to
own these fleets, who they're going to work with on
the charging side, if they are electric vehicles, which they
(21:37):
do seem likely to be at this stage, and all
the other details around maintenance and repair of these vehicles
as they function as robotaxis.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
Andrew Grant, a Bloomberg ne ef these on ability coverage.
We really appreciate it. Welcome actively Medtech and Caroline Hyder.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
New York and I Meed love Low in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
When I look at technology markets right now, it's kind
of the mag seven, those big megacap tech names that
are driving the narrative. Part of that is because investors
keeping YEM trade talks in London. But there are some
iliosyncretic items, some news items. We talked earlier about the
reports of open Ai looking to Alphabet and Google for
more cloud capacity.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
Sign called liquid Glass. We'll recap WWDC and.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
We speak with the ULA CEO about the spat between
Elon Musk and Donald Trump and what it means for
the space industry.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
But first we check out what's happening in the markets,
some cautious trading. We've got big bond sales, fifty eight
billion dollars, a three year debt coming due. We keep
an eye on what the yields are doing, but we
also keep an eye on what's happening in London, China, US.
The talks continue. We're cleaning onto games up about a
tenth of a percent. Remember the S and P near
a record highed.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
What are you looking at our top story, and that
is Meta CEO Mark zuckerberb assembling this super intelligence team.
Bloomberg reporting citing sources that he wants fifty people, he
wants them sitting close to him at HQ, all to
go after AGI. And in Meta's case, the stock kind
of up with the focus of the markets on trade
talks right now. But this is very much Caro founder
(23:14):
mode activated.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
Let's tick in on the founder mode. Primos kert Wagner
joins us now, who helped break down this story, and
it feels as oh, Mark Zuckerberg is rallying his troops,
has got his own personal WhatsApp for this well party,
he calls it.
Speaker 7 (23:30):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
We've been told that he's essentially more involved in recruiting
for this team than he has ever been at the
company in more than twenty years. This is something that
has you know, he's had a fire lit under him
back in April when their LAMAFOV model was released and
quite frankly disappointed people, right, not only disappointed experts outside
(23:52):
the company who are reviewing the model, but disappointed people internally.
And we're told that Zuckerberg at that time really said, Okay,
I need to be heavily involved. I need to go
out and recruit these people myself to get the absolute
best talent. And that is what he has spent his
last two months doing, literally hosting people at his homes
in Palo Alto and like Tahoe to try and close
(24:12):
these deals and sign these these AI experts and scientists.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I've been hearing for a while that Meta is offering
like salaries of two million dollars plus to a lot
of engineering talent. But Mark Zuckerberg is doing the phone
calls right. The question now is what is the motivation
you know, Meta versus the rest of the field when
it comes to the pursuit of Agi.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
Yeah, everyone's going after Agi.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
And the way it was described to me by someone
the other day is, look, you know, it doesn't matter
if you're the third person, the third company to get
to Agi. It only matters if you're first.
Speaker 7 (24:47):
Right.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Not only is that going to be a feather in
your cap for future recruiting for you know, kind of
the symbolism of being the first company to get there,
but it's also going.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
To give you a massive head start, as you know,
for your products.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
If Meta is to get their first Meta AI's chatbot
is going to be more widely adopted. Their ray ban
glasses will be more widely adopted. So the idea of
getting to AGI is a massive race because of all
of these other implications. And that's one of the reasons
that Zuckerberg, who is super super competitive by the way,
that's why he's putting himself at the forefront of this effort.
Speaker 7 (25:18):
At Meta right now, chez.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
Been winning nineteen percent if you're looking at the competitive
street code. But what about Scale AI and the investment there,
how does it fit in?
Speaker 6 (25:28):
Yeah, So, as we reported over the weekend, a multi
billion dollar investment is expected to go into Scale AI.
Speaker 7 (25:35):
I think there's sort of two parts to this one.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
There's the investment in what SCALEAI is doing as a business,
the tech. Also the sort of relationships that they've developed
with with the government and having clients like that, I
think is something that's appealing to Meta, who has not
historically been in that bitline of business. But I think
there's also a recruiting element to this story. Right Alex Wang,
the CEO of Scale AI, is expected to join this
(26:00):
new super intelligence team that we reported about last night.
I believe there are other Scale AI employees who were
probably contribute to this team as well. So there's sort
of a sharing of talent as well that I think
is a part of this expected deal, which I imagine
we may hear about sometime in the very near future.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Kurt, when Zuckerberg is inviting these engineers into his homes
like in Lake Tahoe, what is his pitch? What a
source is saying that he thinks Meta is doing well?
What Meta has an advantage in over the rest of
the field.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
He's leaning quite heavily into Meta's resources.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
You know, he's from what we've heard, he's talked about
the cash flow at the company, the strong advertising business,
and the fact that they have the tens of billions
of dollars on hand to go pursue these very expensive
AI improvements. Right, a lot of the other companies, and
as you know, they're about raising money. They're out fundraising
constantly to try and get that cash flow in the building.
(26:56):
Meta already has that. So he's out saying, look, we
have the resources. I'm giving you the runway to do
all of this stuff. You know, come work for me
where you will never want for anything, essentially, Right, So
a big part of the push is meta as a
financial behemoth here, who can actually get this thing done?
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Behemoth? I wish we had more time to discuss that.
Bloombo's Kirk Wagner, thank you very much. Sticking with AI,
Apple introduced AI powered features at its Developers conference, including
an expanded relationship with open Ai, but a new software
redesign called liquid Glass, with a transparent menu and a
glassy look. Bloombo's Mark Gunman has all the details in
(27:35):
our discussion of Apple WWDC. We say that liquid Glass
is the most significant design overhaul for an OS interface ever.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
What did you make of it? And what do we
need to know?
Speaker 8 (27:50):
Yeah, So the significance of this interface change is how
broad it is. Right, it's available on all of Apple's devices.
This is the first time user interface revamp across all
the devices. And it's also interesting because it sets the
stage for future Apple devices. Right in terms of hardware,
the Apple devices are going to get more of glassy.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
Right.
Speaker 8 (28:11):
You're going to see curve glass edges on the twentieth
anniversary iPhone in two years. So having an old glass
interface with a lot of transparency sets the stage for that.
And so from that standpoint, it's great I've been using
the new UI on all of my devices since yesterday
when the betas came out, and I think it's really great,
and I think it's also going to improve dramatically between
(28:34):
now in September when it's all released, and so if
you're a developer and you have an extra phone or
you want to take a little bit of a risk,
I would encourage anyone to try out the new look.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
So that's cool. But why then analysts like Angelo Zino
saying this whole event was a dud? Why is there
such a deafening silence around Siri? For example, Mark.
Speaker 8 (28:55):
Well because Wall Street basically cares about buzzwords because buzzwords
are wok at the share price moving in either direction.
And you didn't hear a whole lot as we anticipated
and talked about in advance about AI or Siri. Apple
is essentially taking an AI gap year at the worst
possible time. They're not promising any new AI features right now.
(29:15):
I don't anticipate that they're going to start doing so
again until June of twenty twenty six. Apple Intelligence obviously
was a flop. They're doing their best to try to
show people that they are here too, with AI without
going too far and making these promises. What they have
done is partnered with chat GPT in a few more features,
so you can take a screenshot now and chat GPT
(29:39):
can analyze what's on your screen. Of course you could
have done that with the app already, but this is
a bit of a shortcut. And then they have new
developer tools that tap into third party lms, including jet
GBT but yet to be clear. As we've been talking
about the fact that Apple is nowhere near any of
its competition in AI is a massive failure on all levels.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
The stock fell one point two percent yesterday Monday. It's
now up around one point two percent, so we've kind
of balanced out the trading in this market's more to
do with trade talks than I guess anything idiosyncratic. I
found probably the most significant piece of news relevance WWDC
to be that access for third party developers to on
(30:20):
device lllms, because you think about the app store that
we have today and the ecosystem across operating systems. The
whole point of WWDC mark is the developers right explain
that piece of news and why the developer community cheered it.
Speaker 8 (30:35):
So the foundation models that are available for Apple's own
AI features are now available to third party developers, so
there are frameworks and software tools now for developers to
build their own AI features. So this will be making
it easier than ever for developers. By the way, there's
millions of them on the Apple platforms to develop AI
futures for their own apps. But just to step back
(30:56):
in terms of the features themselves, right, most consumers who
use these devices just want them to be better, want
them to be easier, and so Apple went after the
core competencies. If you look at the three apps that
were revamped and improved yesterday, the three were Safari, Phone
and Camera, which are probably the most used apps on
most people's iPhones. And then two additional apps that got
(31:18):
a little bit of love were Photos and Messages, which
probably rund out the top five. They weren't as significant
as the first three. So Apple made major improvements to
the apps that people are using every day. For iPad users,
the new iPad operating system finally makes the iPad like
a computer, right, and so that is a huge feature
that people, including myself, have been asking for for years.
(31:39):
So there's a lot of us in the Apple community
who are actually pretty thrilled with the improvements that were made, but.
Speaker 7 (31:45):
Taking a step back still.
Speaker 8 (31:46):
This is focusing on these OS franchises that have been
around for decades rather than pushing us into these next
generation in our faces based around AI.
Speaker 7 (31:55):
So you have to juggle both.
Speaker 8 (31:57):
Apple's doing a great job managing the currents, but we've
not seen a lot that's giving us confidence about the future.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
Bloomberg's Mark German, We thank you so much on the
Apple round up. Meanwhile, let's just look at what Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, is up to in terms
of its stock climbing. Following a report from Reuters, then
it has signed a deal to provide cloud services to
open Ai. Open Ai will use the additional computing capacity
for training and running its models. Both companies declining to
comment Reuters. It's a game of front of me zed okay.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Coming up, Trade talks resume in London between the United
States and China. We're going to have the latest details next.
This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 9 (32:43):
We are doing well with China. China is not easy.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
We want to open up China, and if we don't
open up China, maybe we won't do anything.
Speaker 9 (32:54):
But we want to open up China.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
It'll be a great thing for China, a great thing
for the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Trump commenting after the first day of trade talks between
the US and China in London, and day two is
now underway. Bloomberg's Amory Horden joins US from London.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Amh what do we need to know?
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Well, what you need to know is, at the moment,
there is no update.
Speaker 10 (33:16):
We still see both delegations having another day of trade talks.
They did have a break around two o'clock local time.
They have been back at the negotiating table inside Lancaster House.
We were waiting to hear for potentially any breakouts in
terms of the United States getting what they want, which
is an advanced pace of rare earths and magnets, and
(33:37):
the Chinese side getting a bit of an easing of
export controls, which is what Kevin Hassett, the NEC director
had said. At the moment, talks are still ongoing, but
there is really a time clock to this because Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessett has to be back on Capitol Hill
tomorrow he is testifying in front of the House Ways
and Means Committee, So they really are in a time
(34:00):
crunch to wrap up these negotiations.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
Talking of timing amory an interestingly timed piece in the
People's Daily over in China, the front page, Huawei found
us saying, look, these restrictions on us, then I'll say.
Speaker 10 (34:12):
Bad, right, And that's what a lot of people were
talking about, remember during Deep Seek. And this is something
that the Nvidia CEO, Jensen Wang had said to me
when I caught up with him briefly before he had
that meeting a month or so ago with Donald Trump
in the Oval Office, the President.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Of the United States.
Speaker 10 (34:30):
Obviously they likely were probably going to talk about their
chip controls. And he told ed recently that China has
become quite formidable and that China is neck and neck
rearly with the United States. They are not far behind.
And that's really what the Huawei founder was saying in
this local daily. It is really notable that in these
talks in London, very different than the talks four weeks
(34:50):
ago in Geneva, that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik is here.
It means that those chips, potentially those export controls are
on the table.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
Iri and doing amazing work in London. We really appreciate it.
Look let's just check in on how Chinese stocks have
reacted to all of this. They have been volatile. We've
been higher early in trade, but at the beginning it
really was down and down. We remain in the red
once again. This is the trade talks that we say
have been resuming. You're seeing Golden Dragon index and as
that golden dragging an index off by three tenths of
(35:20):
a percent as we speak, Ali Baba off by eight tenths.
JD off by more than a percentage point. Tiffany Wade
is here when place to say, senior portfolio manager at
Columbia thread Needle Investments Manages is a cool six one
hundred and twenty one billion dollars in assets. Tiffany, how
much is riding on these days of talks? How much
do you think ultimately does make a decision for you
within your portfolio.
Speaker 11 (35:39):
Yeah, I think we've seen the market react really well
over the last couple of weeks to certainly a reduction
in some of the tariffs on China and other companies
countries as well. This would be very critical, I think,
especially for the tech sector, especially talking about export restrictions.
There are certainly parts of the text actor like Nvidia
most recently the electronic design automation companies that have been
(36:00):
very hurt by export restrictions in tariffs. So for certain
pockets of the market, I think this would be very
impactful to see some of these trade negotiations play out.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Tiffany, how much of a risk premium is the president
when you look at any corner of the technology market
and you say, I am going to bet on a
company that this president has recently spoken favorably about or
not favorably about, as the case may be, and talking
of course about the volatility that he brings to any
(36:29):
trade negotiation.
Speaker 11 (36:31):
Yeah, I think it creates a lot of pause when
you're thinking about companies that may be in focus from
the president. Companies that have been talked about are sectors
that have been talked about recently. But you know, the
worry as an investor is what will happen next that
we haven't planned for or that we didn't see coming.
So I think that, you know, companies that have been
spoken about, have been targeted, are reflecting a bit of
(36:53):
a risk premium, and you see this in a lot
of the tech companies that are trading, you know, at
discounts to where they were trading over the last couple
of years, certainly relative to their own multiples, but also
relative to the index as well. So I think that's
reflected in some of the stocks. But again, the concern
is what happens next, because it's hard to predict.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
Boy does Tim Cook want to know what happens next
as well? And his own stop trading below usual multiples.
They've been in the eye this storm. When it comes
to the supply chain side of things, what do you
make of the desire to make companies ultimately build a
US perhaps be less profitable. Does that make them as
appetizing as an investment.
Speaker 12 (37:30):
It certainly doesn't. It hurts the profit margins.
Speaker 11 (37:32):
As you mentioned, I think it'll be interesting to see
how all of this plays out because it takes multiple
years to build a factory here. It probably takes longer
than you know, President Trump is going to be in office.
So do the announcement we've seen from companies building here.
You know, maybe some of them make sense economically, maybe
some of them are paying lip service to the administration,
(37:54):
but it'll see. It'll be interesting to see how this
plays out. But it's it's interesting that Apple specifically has
has been a lot little bit more defiant.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
More defined, but also perhaps more distracted. Is what people
worry about, the fact that they are not playing catch
up to this AI game as people had hoped with WWDC.
What did you make the event?
Speaker 11 (38:11):
Yeah, I thought the event was a little bit disappointing
for Apple. We were expecting to hear more exciting updates
around Apple Intelligence, around AI, maybe around AI being incorporated
into Siri, and instead I think we saw more updates
on improving the user interface, more features on existing applications.
You know, the applications that maybe incorporate the most AI
(38:33):
would be their updates on visual intelligence or live translation.
But those also feel like they're playing a little bit
of catch up versus applications that are already in the
market from other providers.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
And my Bloomberg terminal, Apple seems to be the top
holding in the Columbia large cap growth funds, so let
me know if that's right. But I think like so
far this year, Apple has been trading on trade risk,
right on tariff risk, and when we were like literally
in the car on the way to Apple WWDC, we're
losing ourselves. Has this name started trading on that AI
(39:03):
concern yet or not.
Speaker 11 (39:05):
I think we've seen that a little bit around the
WWSDC event, and we certainly saw that after the event yesterday,
where people were a little bit disappointed that there wasn't
a big AI announcement coming out of the keynote presentation.
Speaker 12 (39:18):
So I think we're seeing that a little bit.
Speaker 11 (39:19):
But Apple, like a lot of big tech companies, I think,
are still trying to figure out their strategy around AI
and are putting a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Tiffany, you set yourself up for this by saying the
big question is what happens next for the technology sector?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
What happens next?
Speaker 11 (39:37):
I think we're still very positive on the tech sector
for the rest of the year. There's a lot of
good tailwinds for the sector. Obviously, tariffs and nextpoor restrictions
could come out of left field for the rest of
the year, but there's a lot of good tailwinds for
earnings growth, including AI investment that continues to be very
strong across multiple parts of the market. If we look
at earnings growth expectations for the rest of the year
(39:59):
or for the full year, the tech sector is still
expected to grow much faster than the rest of the market,
and as I mentioned before, a lot of the valuations
across certain subgroups of tech look very attractive versus their history.
So we're still very positive on the sector.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
Are you positive on the commitment of capital coming from
these companies? Look at what mort Zuckerberg's doing devoting his
own time, his own dining table, but also share quantities
of cash to make sure that he tries to win agis.
Speaker 12 (40:25):
Isn't it? Yeah? Absolutely? And he's not alone.
Speaker 11 (40:28):
Microsoft to Apple, Alphabet, Amazon are all making huge investments
into AI, and I think that has a great knock
on effect for parts of the semiconductor equipment, parts of software,
other parts of the economy, including industrials that all feed
into that AI infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Tiffany Wade of Columbia Freadnido Investments, Thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
Uber and Wave. They are set to plan their first
trial run of fully autonomous vehicles in London. Move that
could pay the way for commercial robotaxi services in the
United Kingdom. Let's get on what this really means with
Andrew Grant of Bloomberg NEF and really your focus and
analysis here is what London means for the growth story
of robotaxis More broadly, Why is it difficult to trial
(41:16):
run that.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Well?
Speaker 13 (41:18):
I mean, let me start by saying that London is
a big market for Uber. They often cited as one
of their five most important cities globally and the earnings
calls and their reports. So this is a big development
that they are working with their partners to start deploying
or to planning to deploy robotaxis in London. But these
types of streets are different from where we've seen the
(41:39):
majority of robotaxis in the past, places like Phoenix, Arizona,
in Austin, Texas, where you have varying weather conditions, roads
that haven't been around for nearly as long as some
of the London streets which have their own quirks.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
You lead our coverage of mobility right at BNF, and
you know that in any robotaxi setup, you have the
self driving tech, hardware, software, somebody owns the vehicle, somebody
operates the ride hailing app, and somebody manages the fleet.
I'm looking at this announcement from Uber and Wave and
I think there's a few names and pieces missing.
Speaker 13 (42:17):
Yeah, exactly, in a robotaxi service, it really does take
a village. You need different parts of this value chain
that are going to contribute different skill sets and different
capital requirements and different payoff periods. So if you are
looking at what is essentially a partnership here between two
take companies Wave and Uber that mostly work with software,
(42:38):
there's a few other players that need to manage the
hardware and manage the on the ground operations. So as
you mentioned, that will be things like people like a
company that will actually end up owning the vehicle. And
in the past, Uber's been a bit hesitant to own
and operate large fleets of vehicles, but they have shown
that they are willing to take over some of the
(42:58):
operational aspects with some of their partnerships, for instance, their
partnership with Waimo in Austin, some of their partnership with
will we Ride, which is underway in the United Arab Emirates,
where they're taking over some of the fleet operating aspects.
But you did right there, we're missing kind of who's
going to own these fleets, who they're going to work
(43:19):
with on the charging side, if they are electric vehicles,
which they do seem likely to be at the stage,
and all the other details around maintenance and repair of
these vehicles as they function as robotaxis.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Andrew Grant, a Bloomberg nef these on ability coverage, we
really appreciate it. Now's the breaking news for you because
talks are ongoing in London and according to US official
US and China trade talks will continue. We're going to
bring you any details of what is being discussed at
the moment. Amory Horden has been outside of course Lancaster
and been thinking about how these talks are evolving, what
(43:57):
ultimately it means ed for the focus on semiconductors in particular.
What's we got coming up?
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Okay, we're going to be joined by Tory Bruno, United
Launch Aliance CEO to discuss the outlook for the space
business in the midst of Trump and Elon's spat.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
This is Bloomberg Tech
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is a
live from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New
York and Eva Low in Sentrancisco.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Mark Zuckerberg personally assembling a super intelligence team to help
Meta hit artificial general intelligence.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Plus.
Speaker 5 (00:32):
Apple expands its relationship with Open AI and introduces a
new software redesign called liquid Glass. We'll recap WWDC.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And we speak with the ULA CEO about the spat
between Elon Musk and Donald Trump and what it means
for the space industry.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
But first we check out what's happening in the markets,
some cautious trading. We've got big bond sales, fifty eight
billion dollars, a three year debt coming due. We keep
an eye on what the yields are doing, but we
also keep an eye on what's happening in London, China.
The talks continue. We're cleaning onto games up about a
tenth of a percent. Remember the S and P near
a record high ed. What are you looking at?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Our top story and that is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
assembling this super intelligence team. Bloomberg Reporting citing sources that
he wants fifty people. He wants them sitting close to
him at HQ all to go after Agi and in
Meta's case, the stock kind of up with the focus
of the markets on trade talks right now. But this
is very much Caro founder mode activated.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
Let's tick in on the founder mode. Brnimbos kert Wagner
joins us now, who helped break down this story, and
it feels as Oh, Mark Zuckerberg is rallying his troops,
has got his own personal WhatsApp for this well party,
he calls it.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (01:44):
We've been told that he's essentially more involved in recruiting
for this team than he has ever been at the
company in more than twenty years. This is something that
has you know, he's had a fire lit under him
back in April when their Lama four model was released
and quite frankly disappointed people, right, not only disappointed experts
(02:05):
outside the company who are reviewing the model, but disappointed
people internally. And we're told that Zuckerberg at that time
really said, Okay, I need to be heavily involved. I
need to go out and recruit these people myself to
get the absolute best talent and that is what he
has spent his last two months doing, literally hosting people
at his homes in Palo Alto and like Tahoe to
(02:25):
try and close these deals and sign these these AI
experts and scientists.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I've been hearing for a while that Meta is offering
like salaries of two million dollars plus to a lot
of engineering talent. But Mark Zuckerberg is doing the phone
calls right. The question now is what is the motivation,
you know, Meta versus the rest of the field.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When it comes to the pursuit of Agi.
Speaker 7 (02:48):
Yeah, everyone's going after Agi.
Speaker 6 (02:50):
And the way it was described to me by someone
the other day is, look, you know, it doesn't matter
if you're the third person, the third company to get
to AGI. It only matters if you're first.
Speaker 7 (03:00):
Right.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Not only is that going to be a feather in
your cap for future recruiting for you know, kind of
the symbolism of being the first company to get there,
but it's also going to give you a massive head start,
as you know, for your products. So if Meta is
to get their first Meta AI's chatbot is going to
be more widely adopted, their ray banglasses will be more
widely adopted.
Speaker 7 (03:20):
So the idea of getting to AGI is.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
A massive race because of all of these other implications.
And that's one of the reasons that Zuckerberg, who is
super super competitive by the way, that's why he's putting
himself at the forefront of this effort.
Speaker 7 (03:31):
At Meta right now, chez.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Been winning nineteen percent if you're looking at the competitive
street code. But what about Scale AI and the investment there,
how does it fit in?
Speaker 6 (03:41):
Yeah, So, as we reported over the weekend, a multi
billion dollar investment is expected to go into Scale AI.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
I think there's sort of two parts to this one.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
There's the investment in what SCALEI is doing as a business,
the tech. Also the sort of relationships that they've developed
with with the government and having clients like that, I
think is something that's appealing to Meta, who has not
historically been in that bitline of business. But I think
there's also a recruiting element to this story. Right Alex Wang,
the CEO of Scale AI, is expected to join this
(04:13):
new super intelligence team that we reported about last night.
I believe there are other Scale AI employees who were
probably contribute to this team as well, So there's sort
of a sharing of talent as well that I think
is a part of this expected deal which I imagine
we may hear about sometime in the very near future.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Kurt, when Zuckerberg is inviting these engineers into his homes
like in Lake Tahoe, What is his pitch? What a
source is saying that he thinks Meta is doing well?
What Meta has an advantage in over the rest of
the field.
Speaker 7 (04:46):
He's leaning quite heavily into Meta's resources.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
You know, he's from what we've heard, he's talked about
the cash flow at the company, the strong advertising business,
and the fact that they have the tens of billions
of dollars on hand to go pursue these very spense
of AI improvements.
Speaker 7 (05:01):
Right.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
A lot of the other companies aired as you know,
they're about raising money. They're out fundraising constantly to try
and get that cash flow in the building. Meta already
has that. So here's out saying, look, we have the resources.
I'm giving you the runway to do all of this stuff.
You know, come work for me where you will never
want for anything, essentially, right, So a big part of
the push is Meta as a financial behemoth here, who
(05:25):
can actually get this thing done?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Behemoth. I wish we had more time to discuss that.
Bloombo's Kurt Wagner, thank you very much. Sticking with AI,
Apple introduced AI powered features at its Developers conference, including
an expanded relationship with open Ai, but a new software
redesign called liquid Glass, with a transparent menu and a
glassy look.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Bloombo's Mark gum And has.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
All the details in our discussion of Apple WWDC. We
say that liquid Glass is the most significant design overhaul
for an OS interface ever.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
What did you make of it? And what do we
need to know?
Speaker 8 (06:03):
Yeah, So the significance of this interface change is how
broad it is.
Speaker 7 (06:08):
Right, It's available.
Speaker 8 (06:09):
On all of Apple's devices. This is the first time
they're doing a user interface revamp across all the devices.
And it's also interesting because it sets the stage for
future Apple devices. Right in terms of hardware, the Apple
devices are going to get more of glassy, Right. You're
going to see curve glass edges on the twentieth anniversary
iPhone in two years. So having an olive glass interface
(06:31):
with a lot of transparency sets the stage for that.
And so from that standpoint, it's great. I've been using
the new UI on all of my devices since yesterday
when the betas came out, and I think it's really great,
and I think it's also going to improve dramatically between
now in September when it's all released. And so if
you're a developer and you have an extra phone or
(06:53):
you want to take a little bit of a risk,
I would encourage anyone to try out the new look.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
So that's cool. But why then, unless like Angelo Zino
saying this whole event was a dud, why is there
such a deafening silence around Siri?
Speaker 8 (07:06):
For example, Mark Well, because Wall Street basically cares about
buzzwords because buzzwords are wike at the share price moving
in either direction. And you didn't hear a whole lot
as we anticipated and talked about in advance about AI
or Siri. Apple is essentially taking an AI gap year
at the worst possible time. They're not promising any new
(07:28):
AI features right now. I don't anticipate that they're going
to start doing so again until June of twenty twenty six.
Apple Intelligence obviously was a flop. They're doing their best
to try to show people that they are here too
with AI without going too far and making these promises.
What they have done is partnered with Chat GPT and
(07:48):
a few more features, so you can take a screenshot
now and chat, GPT can analyze what's on your screen.
Of course you could have done that with the app already,
but this is a bit of a shortcut. And then
they have new developer tools that happened to third party lms,
including JGBT. But yeah, to be clear, as we've been
talking about the fact that Apple is nowhere near any
of its competition in AI is a massive failure on
(08:12):
all levels.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
The stock fell one point two percent yesterday Monday. It's
now up around one point two percent, so we've kind
of balanced out the trading in this Market's more to
do with trade talks than I guess anything idiosyncratic. I
found that probably the most significant piece of news relevance
WWDC to be that access for third party developers to
on device llms, because you think about the app store
(08:37):
that we have today and the ecosystem across operating systems.
The whole point of WWDC mark is the developers right
explain that piece of news and why the developer community
cheered it.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
So the foundation models that are available for Apple's own
AI features are now available to third party developers, so
there are frameworks and software tools now for developers to
build their own AI Features'll be making it easier than
ever for developers, and by the way, there's millions of
them on the Apple platforms to develop AI futures for
their own apps. But just a step back in terms
(09:09):
of the features themselves, right, Most consumers who use these
devices just want them to be better, want them to
be easier, and so Apple went after the core competencies.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
If you look at the.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
Three apps that were revamped and improved yesterday, the three
were Safari, Phone and Camera, which are probably the most
used apps on most people's iPhones.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
And then two additional apps that.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
Got a little bit of love were Photos and Messages,
which probably rand out the top five. They weren't as
significant as the first three. So Apple made major improvements
to the apps that people are using every day. For
iPad users, the new iPad operating system finally makes the
iPad like a computer, right, and so that is a
huge feature that people, including myself, have been asking for
(09:51):
for years. So there's a lot of us in the
Apple community who are actually pretty thrilled with the improvements
that were made. But taking a step back still, this
is focusing on these os franchises that have been around
for decades rather than pushing us into these next generation
in our faces based around AI. So you have to
juggle both. Apple's doing a great job managing the current,
(10:13):
but we've not seen a lot that's giving us confidence
about the future.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
Bloomberg's Mark German, We thank you so much on the
Apple round up. Meanwhile, let's just look at what Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, is up to in terms
of it stop climbing following a report from Reuters that
it has signed a deal to provide cloud services to
open Ai. Open Ai will use the additional computing capacity
for training and running its models. Both companies declining to
comment Reuters it's a game of front of.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Me zed okay, coming up, Trade talks resume in London
between the United States and China. We're going to have
the latest details next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 9 (10:57):
We are doing well with chin China's not easy.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
We want to open up China, and if we don't
open up China, maybe we won't do anything.
Speaker 9 (11:07):
But we want to open up China.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
It'll be a great thing for China, a great thing
for the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
That was President Trump commenting after the first day of
trade talks between the US and China in London, and
day two is now underway. Bloomberg's Amory Horden joins US
from London. Amh what do we need to know?
Speaker 10 (11:27):
Well, you need to know is at the moment there
is no update. We still see both delegations having another
day of trade talks. They did have a break around
two o'clock local time. They have been back at the
negotiating table inside Lancaster House. We were waiting to hear
for potentially any breakouts in terms of the United States
getting what they want, which is an advanced pace of
(11:49):
rare earth and magnets, and the Chinese side getting a
bit of an easing of export controls, which is what
Kevin Hassett, the NEC director had said. At the moment,
talk are still ongoing, but there is really a time
clock to this because Treasury Secretary Scott Besson has to
be back on Capitol Hill tomorrow he is testifying in
(12:10):
front of the House Ways and Means Committee, So they
really are in a time crunch to wrap up these negotiations.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
Talking of timing, Amory an interestingly timed piece in the
People's Daily over in China the front page Huawei found
us saying, look, these restrictions on us, then I'll say about.
Speaker 10 (12:30):
Right, And that's what a lot of people were talking about,
remember during Deep Seek. And this is something that the
Nvidia CEO, Jensen Wang had said to me when I
caught up with him briefly before he had that meeting
a month or so ago with Donald Trump in the
Oval Office, the President of the United States. Obviously they
likely were probably going to talk about their chip controls.
And he told ed recently that China has become quite
formidable and that China is neck and neck really with
(12:52):
the United States. They are not far behind. And that's
really what the Huawei founder was saying in this local daily.
It is really notable that in these talks in London,
very different than the talks four weeks ago in Geneva,
that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik is here.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
It means that those chips.
Speaker 10 (13:09):
Potentially those export controls are on the table.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
I'm Marie Hoden doing amazing work in London. We really
appreciate it. Look, let's just check in on how Chinese
stocks have reacted to all of this. They have been volatile.
We've been higher early in trade, but at the beginning
it really was down and down. We remain in the
red once again. This is the trade talks that we
say have been resuming. You're seeing Golden Dragon index and
as that golden draggoning an index off by three tenths
(13:33):
of a percent as we speak, Ali Baba off by
eight tenths. JD off by more than a percentage point.
Tiffany Wade is here on place to say, senior portfolio
manager at Columbia thread Needle Investments manages a cool six
one hundred and twenty one billion dollars in assets. Tiffany,
how much is riding on these days of talks? How
much do you think ultimately does make a decision for
you within your portfolio.
Speaker 11 (13:52):
Yeah, I think we've seen the market react really well
over the last couple of weeks to certainly a reduction,
and some of the terriffs are China and other companies
countries as well. This would be very critical, I think,
especially for the tech sector, especially talking about export restrictions.
There are certainly parts of the tech sector, like Nvidia
most recently the electronic design automation companies that have been
(14:13):
very hurt by export restrictions in tariffs. So for certain
pockets of the market, I think this would be very
impactful to see some of these trade negotiations play out.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Tiffany, how much of a risk premium is the president
when you look at any corner of the technology market
and you say, I am going to bet on a
company that this president has recently spoken favorably about or
not favorably about, as the case may be, and talking
of course about the volatility that he brings to any
(14:43):
trade negotiation, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 11 (14:46):
It creates a lot of pause when you're thinking about
companies that may be in focus from the president. Companies
that have been talked about are sectors that have been
talked about recently. But the worry as an investor is
what will happen next that we haven't planned for or
that we didn't see coming. So I think that, you know,
companies that have been spoken about, have been targeted, are
reflecting a bit of a risk premium, and you see
(15:08):
this in a lot of the tech companies that are trading,
you know, at discounts to where they were trading over
the last couple of years, certainly relative to their own multiples,
but also relative to the index as well, so I
think that's reflected in some of the stocks. But again,
the concern is what happens next because it's hard to predict.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
Boy does Tim Cook want to know what happens next
as well? And his own salt trading below usual multiples.
They've been in the eye this storm. When it comes
to the supply chain side of things, what do you
make of the desire to make companies ultimately build a
US perhaps be less profitable. Does that make them as
appetizing as an investment?
Speaker 11 (15:44):
It certainly doesn't. It hurts the profit margins, as you mentioned.
I think it'll be interesting to see how all of
this plays out because it takes multiple years to build
a factory here. It probably takes longer than you know
President Trump is going to.
Speaker 12 (15:57):
Be in office.
Speaker 11 (15:58):
So the announcement we've seen from companies building here, you know,
maybe some of them make sense economically, maybe some of
them are paying lip service.
Speaker 12 (16:06):
To the administration. But it'll see.
Speaker 11 (16:08):
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. But
it's it's interesting that Apple specifically has has been a
little bit more defiant.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
More defined, but perhaps more distracted. Is what people worry
about the fact that they are not playing catch up
to this AI game is people had hope with WWDC.
What did you make the event?
Speaker 11 (16:25):
Yeah, I thought the event was a little bit disappointing
for Apple. We were expecting to hear more exciting updates
around Apple intelligence, around AI, maybe around AI being incorporated
into Siri, and instead I think we saw more updates
on improving the user interface, more features on existing applications.
You know, the applications that maybe incorporate the most AI
(16:47):
would be their updates on visual intelligence or live translation,
but those also feel like they're playing a little bit
of catch up versus applications that are already in the
market from other providers.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
And my Bloomberg terminal, Apple seems to be the top
holding in the Columbia Large Growth funds, so let me
know if that's right. But I think like so far
this year, Apple has been trading on trade risk, right
on tariff risk, And when we were like literally in
the car on the way to APPLEWWDC, we're asking ourselves,
has this name started trading on that AI concern yet
(17:18):
or not.
Speaker 11 (17:19):
I think we've seen that a little bit around the
WWSDC event, and we certainly saw that after the event
yesterday where people were a little bit disappointed that there
wasn't a big AI announcement coming out of the keynote presentation.
So I think we're seeing that a little bit. But Apple,
like a lot of big tech companies, I think, are
still trying to figure out their strategy around AI and
are putting a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Tiffany, you set yourself up for this by saying the
big question is what happened happens next for the technology sector?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
What happens next?
Speaker 11 (17:50):
I think we're still very positive on the tech sector
for the rest of the year. There's a lot of
good tail wins for the sector. Obviously, tariffs and next
four restrictions could come out of field for the rest
of the year, but there's a lot of good tailwinds
for earnings growth, including AI investment that continues to be
very strong across multiple parts of the market. If we
look at earnings growth expectations for the rest of the
(18:13):
year or for the full year, the tech sector is
still expected to grow much faster than the rest of
the market. And as I mentioned before, a lot of
the valuations across certain subgroups of tech look very attractive
versus their history.
Speaker 12 (18:25):
So we're still very positive on the sector.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
Are you positive on the commitment of capital coming from
these companies? Look at what Mount Zuckerbug's doing, devoting his
own time, his own dining table, but also shape quantities
of cash to make sure that he tries to win agis.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Isn't it?
Speaker 12 (18:39):
Yeah? Absolutely? And he's not alone.
Speaker 11 (18:41):
Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon are all making huge investments into AI,
and I think that has a great knock on effect
for parts of the semiconductor equipment, parts of software, other
parts of the economy, including industrials that all feed into
that AI infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Tiffany wade Be of fread Needo Investments, thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Uber and Wave. They are set to plan their first
trial run of fully autonomous vehicles in London. It is
a move that could pay the way for commercial robotaxi
services in the United Kingdom. Let's get on what this
really means with Andrew Grant of Bloomberg NEF and really
your focus and analysis here is what London means for
the growth story of robotaxes. More broadly, why is it
(19:29):
difficult to trial run there?
Speaker 13 (19:32):
Well, I mean, let me start by saying that London
is a big market for Uber. They often cited as
one of their five most important cities globally and the
earnings calls and their reports. So this is a big
development that they are working with their partners to start
deploying to planning to deploy robotaxes in London. But these
types of streets are different from where we've seen the
(19:53):
majority of robotaxes in the past, places like Phoenix, Arizona
in Austin, Texas, where you have varying weather conditions, roads
that haven't been around for nearly as long as some
of the London streets which have their own quirks.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
You lead our coverage of mobility right at BNF, and
you know that in any robotaxi setup, you have the
self driving tech, hardware, software, somebody owns the vehicle, somebody
operates the ride hailing app, and somebody manages the fleet.
I'm looking at this announcement from Uber and Wave and
I think there's a few names and pieces missing.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 13 (20:31):
In a robotaxi service, it really does take a village.
You need different parts of this value chain that are
going to contribute different skill sets and different capital requirements
and different payoff periods. So if you are looking at
what is essentially a partnership here between two tech companies
Wave and Uber that mostly work with software, there's a
(20:52):
few other players that need to manage the hardware and
manage the on the ground operations. So as you mentioned,
that will be things like people like Company that will
actually end up owning the vehicle. And in the past,
Uber's been a bit hesitant to own and operate large
fleets of vehicles, but they have shown that they are
willing to take over some of the operational aspects with
(21:13):
some of their partnerships, for instance, their partnership with Weimo
in Austin, some of their partnership with with we Ride
which is underway in the United Arab Emirates, where they're
taking over some of the fleet operating aspects. But you
did right there, we're missing kind of who's going to
own these fleets, who they're going to work with on
the charging side, if they are electric vehicles, which they
(21:37):
do seem likely to be at this stage, and all
the other details around maintenance and repair of these vehicles
as they function as robotaxis.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
Andrew Grant, a Bloomberg ne ef these on ability coverage.
We really appreciate it. Welcome actively Medtech and Caroline Hyder.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
New York and I Meed love Low in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
When I look at technology markets right now, it's kind
of the mag seven, those big megacap tech names that
are driving the narrative. Part of that is because investors
keeping YEM trade talks in London. But there are some
iliosyncretic items, some news items. We talked earlier about the
reports of open Ai looking to Alphabet and Google for
more cloud capacity.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
Sign called liquid Glass. We'll recap WWDC and.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
We speak with the ULA CEO about the spat between
Elon Musk and Donald Trump and what it means for
the space industry.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
But first we check out what's happening in the markets,
some cautious trading. We've got big bond sales, fifty eight
billion dollars, a three year debt coming due. We keep
an eye on what the yields are doing, but we
also keep an eye on what's happening in London, China, US.
The talks continue. We're cleaning onto games up about a
tenth of a percent. Remember the S and P near
a record highed.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
What are you looking at our top story, and that
is Meta CEO Mark zuckerberb assembling this super intelligence team.
Bloomberg reporting citing sources that he wants fifty people, he
wants them sitting close to him at HQ, all to
go after AGI. And in Meta's case, the stock kind
of up with the focus of the markets on trade
talks right now. But this is very much Caro founder
(23:14):
mode activated.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
Let's tick in on the founder mode. Primos kert Wagner
joins us now, who helped break down this story, and
it feels as oh, Mark Zuckerberg is rallying his troops,
has got his own personal WhatsApp for this well party,
he calls it.
Speaker 7 (23:30):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
We've been told that he's essentially more involved in recruiting
for this team than he has ever been at the
company in more than twenty years. This is something that
has you know, he's had a fire lit under him
back in April when their LAMAFOV model was released and
quite frankly disappointed people, right, not only disappointed experts outside
(23:52):
the company who are reviewing the model, but disappointed people internally.
And we're told that Zuckerberg at that time really said, Okay,
I need to be heavily involved. I need to go
out and recruit these people myself to get the absolute
best talent. And that is what he has spent his
last two months doing, literally hosting people at his homes
in Palo Alto and like Tahoe to try and close
(24:12):
these deals and sign these these AI experts and scientists.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I've been hearing for a while that Meta is offering
like salaries of two million dollars plus to a lot
of engineering talent. But Mark Zuckerberg is doing the phone
calls right. The question now is what is the motivation
you know, Meta versus the rest of the field when
it comes to the pursuit of Agi.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
Yeah, everyone's going after Agi.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
And the way it was described to me by someone
the other day is, look, you know, it doesn't matter
if you're the third person, the third company to get
to Agi. It only matters if you're first.
Speaker 7 (24:47):
Right.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Not only is that going to be a feather in
your cap for future recruiting for you know, kind of
the symbolism of being the first company to get there,
but it's also going.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
To give you a massive head start, as you know,
for your products.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
If Meta is to get their first Meta AI's chatbot
is going to be more widely adopted. Their ray ban
glasses will be more widely adopted. So the idea of
getting to AGI is a massive race because of all
of these other implications. And that's one of the reasons
that Zuckerberg, who is super super competitive by the way,
that's why he's putting himself at the forefront of this effort.
Speaker 7 (25:18):
At Meta right now, chez.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
Been winning nineteen percent if you're looking at the competitive
street code. But what about Scale AI and the investment there,
how does it fit in?
Speaker 6 (25:28):
Yeah, So, as we reported over the weekend, a multi
billion dollar investment is expected to go into Scale AI.
Speaker 7 (25:35):
I think there's sort of two parts to this one.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
There's the investment in what SCALEAI is doing as a business,
the tech. Also the sort of relationships that they've developed
with with the government and having clients like that, I
think is something that's appealing to Meta, who has not
historically been in that bitline of business. But I think
there's also a recruiting element to this story. Right Alex Wang,
the CEO of Scale AI, is expected to join this
(26:00):
new super intelligence team that we reported about last night.
I believe there are other Scale AI employees who were
probably contribute to this team as well. So there's sort
of a sharing of talent as well that I think
is a part of this expected deal, which I imagine
we may hear about sometime in the very near future.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Kurt, when Zuckerberg is inviting these engineers into his homes
like in Lake Tahoe, what is his pitch? What a
source is saying that he thinks Meta is doing well?
What Meta has an advantage in over the rest of
the field.
Speaker 7 (26:32):
He's leaning quite heavily into Meta's resources.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
You know, he's from what we've heard, he's talked about
the cash flow at the company, the strong advertising business,
and the fact that they have the tens of billions
of dollars on hand to go pursue these very expensive
AI improvements. Right, a lot of the other companies, and
as you know, they're about raising money. They're out fundraising
constantly to try and get that cash flow in the building.
(26:56):
Meta already has that. So he's out saying, look, we
have the resources. I'm giving you the runway to do
all of this stuff. You know, come work for me
where you will never want for anything, essentially, Right, So
a big part of the push is meta as a
financial behemoth here, who can actually get this thing done?
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Behemoth? I wish we had more time to discuss that.
Bloombo's Kirk Wagner, thank you very much. Sticking with AI,
Apple introduced AI powered features at its Developers conference, including
an expanded relationship with open Ai, but a new software
redesign called liquid Glass, with a transparent menu and a
glassy look. Bloombo's Mark Gunman has all the details in
(27:35):
our discussion of Apple WWDC. We say that liquid Glass
is the most significant design overhaul for an OS interface ever.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
What did you make of it? And what do we
need to know?
Speaker 8 (27:50):
Yeah, So the significance of this interface change is how
broad it is. Right, it's available on all of Apple's devices.
This is the first time user interface revamp across all
the devices. And it's also interesting because it sets the
stage for future Apple devices. Right in terms of hardware,
the Apple devices are going to get more of glassy.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
Right.
Speaker 8 (28:11):
You're going to see curve glass edges on the twentieth
anniversary iPhone in two years. So having an old glass
interface with a lot of transparency sets the stage for that.
And so from that standpoint, it's great I've been using
the new UI on all of my devices since yesterday
when the betas came out, and I think it's really great,
and I think it's also going to improve dramatically between
(28:34):
now in September when it's all released, and so if
you're a developer and you have an extra phone or
you want to take a little bit of a risk,
I would encourage anyone to try out the new look.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
So that's cool. But why then analysts like Angelo Zino
saying this whole event was a dud? Why is there
such a deafening silence around Siri? For example, Mark.
Speaker 8 (28:55):
Well because Wall Street basically cares about buzzwords because buzzwords
are wok at the share price moving in either direction.
And you didn't hear a whole lot as we anticipated
and talked about in advance about AI or Siri. Apple
is essentially taking an AI gap year at the worst
possible time. They're not promising any new AI features right now.
(29:15):
I don't anticipate that they're going to start doing so
again until June of twenty twenty six. Apple Intelligence obviously
was a flop. They're doing their best to try to
show people that they are here too, with AI without
going too far and making these promises. What they have
done is partnered with chat GPT in a few more features,
so you can take a screenshot now and chat GPT
(29:39):
can analyze what's on your screen. Of course you could
have done that with the app already, but this is
a bit of a shortcut. And then they have new
developer tools that tap into third party lms, including jet
GBT but yet to be clear. As we've been talking
about the fact that Apple is nowhere near any of
its competition in AI is a massive failure on all levels.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
The stock fell one point two percent yesterday Monday. It's
now up around one point two percent, so we've kind
of balanced out the trading in this market's more to
do with trade talks than I guess anything idiosyncratic. I
found probably the most significant piece of news relevance WWDC
to be that access for third party developers to on
(30:20):
device lllms, because you think about the app store that
we have today and the ecosystem across operating systems. The
whole point of WWDC mark is the developers right explain
that piece of news and why the developer community cheered it.
Speaker 8 (30:35):
So the foundation models that are available for Apple's own
AI features are now available to third party developers, so
there are frameworks and software tools now for developers to
build their own AI features. So this will be making
it easier than ever for developers. By the way, there's
millions of them on the Apple platforms to develop AI
futures for their own apps. But just to step back
(30:56):
in terms of the features themselves, right, most consumers who
use these devices just want them to be better, want
them to be easier, and so Apple went after the
core competencies. If you look at the three apps that
were revamped and improved yesterday, the three were Safari, Phone
and Camera, which are probably the most used apps on
most people's iPhones. And then two additional apps that got
(31:18):
a little bit of love were Photos and Messages, which
probably rund out the top five. They weren't as significant
as the first three. So Apple made major improvements to
the apps that people are using every day. For iPad users,
the new iPad operating system finally makes the iPad like
a computer, right, and so that is a huge feature
that people, including myself, have been asking for for years.
(31:39):
So there's a lot of us in the Apple community
who are actually pretty thrilled with the improvements that were made, but.
Speaker 7 (31:45):
Taking a step back still.
Speaker 8 (31:46):
This is focusing on these OS franchises that have been
around for decades rather than pushing us into these next
generation in our faces based around AI.
Speaker 7 (31:55):
So you have to juggle both.
Speaker 8 (31:57):
Apple's doing a great job managing the currents, but we've
not seen a lot that's giving us confidence about the future.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
Bloomberg's Mark German, We thank you so much on the
Apple round up. Meanwhile, let's just look at what Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, is up to in terms
of its stock climbing. Following a report from Reuters, then
it has signed a deal to provide cloud services to
open Ai. Open Ai will use the additional computing capacity
for training and running its models. Both companies declining to
comment Reuters. It's a game of front of me zed okay.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Coming up, Trade talks resume in London between the United
States and China. We're going to have the latest details next.
This is Bloomberg Tech.
Speaker 9 (32:43):
We are doing well with China. China is not easy.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
We want to open up China, and if we don't
open up China, maybe we won't do anything.
Speaker 9 (32:54):
But we want to open up China.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
It'll be a great thing for China, a great thing
for the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Trump commenting after the first day of trade talks between
the US and China in London, and day two is
now underway. Bloomberg's Amory Horden joins US from London.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Amh what do we need to know?
Speaker 5 (33:13):
Well, what you need to know is, at the moment,
there is no update.
Speaker 10 (33:16):
We still see both delegations having another day of trade talks.
They did have a break around two o'clock local time.
They have been back at the negotiating table inside Lancaster House.
We were waiting to hear for potentially any breakouts in
terms of the United States getting what they want, which
is an advanced pace of rare earths and magnets, and
(33:37):
the Chinese side getting a bit of an easing of
export controls, which is what Kevin Hassett, the NEC director
had said. At the moment, talks are still ongoing, but
there is really a time clock to this because Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessett has to be back on Capitol Hill
tomorrow he is testifying in front of the House Ways
and Means Committee, So they really are in a time
(34:00):
crunch to wrap up these negotiations.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
Talking of timing amory an interestingly timed piece in the
People's Daily over in China, the front page, Huawei found
us saying, look, these restrictions on us, then I'll say.
Speaker 10 (34:12):
Bad, right, And that's what a lot of people were
talking about, remember during Deep Seek. And this is something
that the Nvidia CEO, Jensen Wang had said to me
when I caught up with him briefly before he had
that meeting a month or so ago with Donald Trump
in the Oval Office, the President.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Of the United States.
Speaker 10 (34:30):
Obviously they likely were probably going to talk about their
chip controls. And he told ed recently that China has
become quite formidable and that China is neck and neck
rearly with the United States. They are not far behind.
And that's really what the Huawei founder was saying in
this local daily. It is really notable that in these
talks in London, very different than the talks four weeks
(34:50):
ago in Geneva, that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik is here.
It means that those chips, potentially those export controls are
on the table.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
Iri and doing amazing work in London. We really appreciate it.
Look let's just check in on how Chinese stocks have
reacted to all of this. They have been volatile. We've
been higher early in trade, but at the beginning it
really was down and down. We remain in the red
once again. This is the trade talks that we say
have been resuming. You're seeing Golden Dragon index and as
that golden dragging an index off by three tenths of
(35:20):
a percent as we speak, Ali Baba off by eight tenths.
JD off by more than a percentage point. Tiffany Wade
is here when place to say, senior portfolio manager at
Columbia thread Needle Investments Manages is a cool six one
hundred and twenty one billion dollars in assets. Tiffany, how
much is riding on these days of talks? How much
do you think ultimately does make a decision for you
within your portfolio.
Speaker 11 (35:39):
Yeah, I think we've seen the market react really well
over the last couple of weeks to certainly a reduction
in some of the tariffs on China and other companies
countries as well. This would be very critical, I think,
especially for the tech sector, especially talking about export restrictions.
There are certainly parts of the text actor like Nvidia
most recently the electronic design automation companies that have been
(36:00):
very hurt by export restrictions in tariffs. So for certain
pockets of the market, I think this would be very
impactful to see some of these trade negotiations play out.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Tiffany, how much of a risk premium is the president
when you look at any corner of the technology market
and you say, I am going to bet on a
company that this president has recently spoken favorably about or
not favorably about, as the case may be, and talking
of course about the volatility that he brings to any
(36:29):
trade negotiation.
Speaker 11 (36:31):
Yeah, I think it creates a lot of pause when
you're thinking about companies that may be in focus from
the president. Companies that have been talked about are sectors
that have been talked about recently. But you know, the
worry as an investor is what will happen next that
we haven't planned for or that we didn't see coming.
So I think that, you know, companies that have been
spoken about, have been targeted, are reflecting a bit of
(36:53):
a risk premium, and you see this in a lot
of the tech companies that are trading, you know, at
discounts to where they were trading over the last couple
of years, certainly relative to their own multiples, but also
relative to the index as well. So I think that's
reflected in some of the stocks. But again, the concern
is what happens next, because it's hard to predict.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
Boy does Tim Cook want to know what happens next
as well? And his own stop trading below usual multiples.
They've been in the eye this storm. When it comes
to the supply chain side of things, what do you
make of the desire to make companies ultimately build a
US perhaps be less profitable. Does that make them as
appetizing as an investment.
Speaker 12 (37:30):
It certainly doesn't. It hurts the profit margins.
Speaker 11 (37:32):
As you mentioned, I think it'll be interesting to see
how all of this plays out because it takes multiple
years to build a factory here. It probably takes longer
than you know, President Trump is going to be in office.
So do the announcement we've seen from companies building here.
You know, maybe some of them make sense economically, maybe
some of them are paying lip service to the administration,
(37:54):
but it'll see. It'll be interesting to see how this
plays out. But it's it's interesting that Apple specifically has
has been a lot little bit more defiant.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
More defined, but also perhaps more distracted. Is what people
worry about, the fact that they are not playing catch
up to this AI game as people had hoped with WWDC.
What did you make the event?
Speaker 11 (38:11):
Yeah, I thought the event was a little bit disappointing
for Apple. We were expecting to hear more exciting updates
around Apple Intelligence, around AI, maybe around AI being incorporated
into Siri, and instead I think we saw more updates
on improving the user interface, more features on existing applications.
You know, the applications that maybe incorporate the most AI
(38:33):
would be their updates on visual intelligence or live translation.
But those also feel like they're playing a little bit
of catch up versus applications that are already in the
market from other providers.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
And my Bloomberg terminal, Apple seems to be the top
holding in the Columbia large cap growth funds, so let
me know if that's right. But I think like so
far this year, Apple has been trading on trade risk,
right on tariff risk, and when we were like literally
in the car on the way to Apple WWDC, we're
losing ourselves. Has this name started trading on that AI
(39:03):
concern yet or not.
Speaker 11 (39:05):
I think we've seen that a little bit around the
WWSDC event, and we certainly saw that after the event yesterday,
where people were a little bit disappointed that there wasn't
a big AI announcement coming out of the keynote presentation.
Speaker 12 (39:18):
So I think we're seeing that a little bit.
Speaker 11 (39:19):
But Apple, like a lot of big tech companies, I think,
are still trying to figure out their strategy around AI
and are putting a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Tiffany, you set yourself up for this by saying the
big question is what happens next for the technology sector?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
What happens next?
Speaker 11 (39:37):
I think we're still very positive on the tech sector
for the rest of the year. There's a lot of
good tailwinds for the sector. Obviously, tariffs and nextpoor restrictions
could come out of left field for the rest of
the year, but there's a lot of good tailwinds for
earnings growth, including AI investment that continues to be very
strong across multiple parts of the market. If we look
at earnings growth expectations for the rest of the year
(39:59):
or for the full year, the tech sector is still
expected to grow much faster than the rest of the market,
and as I mentioned before, a lot of the valuations
across certain subgroups of tech look very attractive versus their history.
So we're still very positive on the sector.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
Are you positive on the commitment of capital coming from
these companies? Look at what mort Zuckerberg's doing devoting his
own time, his own dining table, but also share quantities
of cash to make sure that he tries to win agis.
Speaker 12 (40:25):
Isn't it? Yeah? Absolutely? And he's not alone.
Speaker 11 (40:28):
Microsoft to Apple, Alphabet, Amazon are all making huge investments
into AI, and I think that has a great knock
on effect for parts of the semiconductor equipment, parts of software,
other parts of the economy, including industrials that all feed
into that AI infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Tiffany Wade of Columbia Freadnido Investments, Thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
Uber and Wave. They are set to plan their first
trial run of fully autonomous vehicles in London. Move that
could pay the way for commercial robotaxi services in the
United Kingdom. Let's get on what this really means with
Andrew Grant of Bloomberg NEF and really your focus and
analysis here is what London means for the growth story
of robotaxis More broadly, Why is it difficult to trial
(41:16):
run that.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Well?
Speaker 13 (41:18):
I mean, let me start by saying that London is
a big market for Uber. They often cited as one
of their five most important cities globally and the earnings
calls and their reports. So this is a big development
that they are working with their partners to start deploying
or to planning to deploy robotaxis in London. But these
types of streets are different from where we've seen the
(41:39):
majority of robotaxis in the past, places like Phoenix, Arizona,
in Austin, Texas, where you have varying weather conditions, roads
that haven't been around for nearly as long as some
of the London streets which have their own quirks.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
You lead our coverage of mobility right at BNF, and
you know that in any robotaxi setup, you have the
self driving tech, hardware, software, somebody owns the vehicle, somebody
operates the ride hailing app, and somebody manages the fleet.
I'm looking at this announcement from Uber and Wave and
I think there's a few names and pieces missing.
Speaker 13 (42:17):
Yeah, exactly, in a robotaxi service, it really does take
a village. You need different parts of this value chain
that are going to contribute different skill sets and different
capital requirements and different payoff periods. So if you are
looking at what is essentially a partnership here between two
take companies Wave and Uber that mostly work with software,
(42:38):
there's a few other players that need to manage the
hardware and manage the on the ground operations. So as
you mentioned, that will be things like people like a
company that will actually end up owning the vehicle. And
in the past, Uber's been a bit hesitant to own
and operate large fleets of vehicles, but they have shown
that they are willing to take over some of the
(42:58):
operational aspects with some of their partnerships, for instance, their
partnership with Waimo in Austin, some of their partnership with
will we Ride, which is underway in the United Arab Emirates,
where they're taking over some of the fleet operating aspects.
But you did right there, we're missing kind of who's
going to own these fleets, who they're going to work
(43:19):
with on the charging side, if they are electric vehicles,
which they do seem likely to be at the stage,
and all the other details around maintenance and repair of
these vehicles as they function as robotaxis.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Andrew Grant, a Bloomberg nef these on ability coverage, we
really appreciate it. Now's the breaking news for you because
talks are ongoing in London and according to US official
US and China trade talks will continue. We're going to
bring you any details of what is being discussed at
the moment. Amory Horden has been outside of course Lancaster
and been thinking about how these talks are evolving, what
(43:57):
ultimately it means ed for the focus on semiconductors in particular.
What's we got coming up?
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Okay, we're going to be joined by Tory Bruno, United
Launch Aliance CEO to discuss the outlook for the space
business in the midst of Trump and Elon's spat.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
This is Bloomberg Tech
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.