March 26, 2025 • 42 mins
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde discusses the fall in Mag 7 stocks as tariff worries loom. Plus, the CEOs of Anthropic and Databricks speak exclusively about a new partnership to bring Claude AI models to enterprise customers. And new data from EMARKETER projects Elon Musk’s X is on track to see sales growth, as advertisers react to Musk’s new political power.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news from the heart of
where innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Ludlow live from New York.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm Caroline Hyde, and this is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
The Magnificent seven is in the reader sell off in
tech megacaps as Trump's trade war is still on the horizon.
Plus an exclusive conversation with the CEOs of Anthropic and
Data Bricks, who are out with a new partnership to
bring claud models to the enterprise and advertisers return to
X with the platform Projector to post a jump in
advertising sales.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
That's according to new research.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Will bring you those X exclusive numbers later this hour,
but first we check in on a market that is
sinking once again. Then as that one hundred off by
nine tenths of a percent, but we're seeing the Magnificent
seven all training lower and.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
By some significant numbers.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Move on and have a look at what's underneath the
herd as we still try to digest what happens in
terms of tariffs and ultimately what valuations should be at
for big tech. We're off by three point six percent
again for Tesla.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
This is as we see the downwards of.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Directory continue after the European numbers bone ill for the company.
We're looking at fundamentals that continue to get under pressure,
and indeed in videos.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Off by four percent. We're seeing all the points.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Drags from mag seven. I shine like what's happening with ARM.
We'll get to that in a moment. But the legal
tip for tats are going on with qual Common ARM
and I'm looking at Amazon off by one point four percent.
Maybe the one that's starting to look like is more
juicy from a valuation perspective, Let's get to it with
Ryan Valastelica, who is with us, and this is another
day of stress on the valuations of the Magnificent seven.
(01:57):
Let's just go to in video and some of the
reasons we're seeing the sell off from a macro perspective,
Is this about the economy?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Broadly speaking, yes, I would say that is the case.
There's a still a lot of uncertainty about tariff policy,
about the implications for overall economic growth, the outlook for
the consumer, the outlook for businesses. We are seeing signs
of businesses or maybe pulling back on investments is because
they are not sure what the tariff situation is going
to be, what the economic outlook is going to be.
All that kind of frozen activity, all that uncertainty is
(02:28):
really just causing people to take some profits if they
still have them, and just you know, kind of take
a pause and step back.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
But when you step back, you start to look at
the valuations, You look at the fundamentals, and you've done
exactly that. For example, Amazon not been trading at these
sorts of price to future earnings levels in years.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
Yeah, so some of these names, you know, at the
start of the year, there were a lot of concerns
about valuations. Those concerns are a lot smaller now just
given how much some of these names have come down.
So in the case of Amazon, they have pretty strong
earnings growth. They've been really focusing on efficiency and cost
cutting things that are really improving their profitability. That is
really driving the multiple down. The multiples about half of
(03:08):
what it was over the longer term. It is cheaper
than Apple now, and just a few years ago Apple
was several times cheaper than Amazon. So is quite the
flip in narrative when it comes to tech valuations. Amazon
is cheaper than other retail names like Walmart and Costco.
It's a stock that, you know, given people continue to
have pretty optimistic views about its long term growth potential
(03:28):
the multiple here, it wouldn't surprise me if you start
seeing people look at a name like this, say, to
really come off its lows. The fundamentals look pretty intact.
Still a lot of you know, earning's growth potential and
revenue growth potential ahead even in a rockier economic climate.
Maybe that's why they start taking a look at a
stock like this.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
But who is taking a look at a stock like this?
Speaker 6 (03:47):
Ryan?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
You get so much inbound and response to your stories.
Are people starting to want to catch what seems like
a falling life?
Speaker 5 (03:54):
You know, that's something I've heard, the falling knife thing.
I do think people still feel like these are pretty
safe companies. Isn't broken even if some of the arrogance
let out, even the multiples come down a little bit more.
I don't think people are really concerned about the long
term prospects of these companies. There can still consider to
be very dominant in their field, and even if we
see a weaker economic outlook, it wouldn't surprise me if
(04:16):
we saw Amazon, for example, maybe consolidate its market share,
especially in online retail or retail. Overall, cloud business remains
very strong and has an AD business that's growing a lot.
There's certainly a lot of positives you can point to here,
even if we see a lot more volatility in the
short term.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Ran Rasselica, we thank you from a macro perspective across
Magnificent seven. Meanwhile, just take a look at ARM and
coal Comb once again. Now this is as Arms trading
significantly lower today. As you can Seequalcomb, as is being reported,
has begun a global antitrust campaign against the chip designer,
alleging in private meetings that ARM is guilty of anti
(04:53):
competitive behavior. So all according to sources, and we want
to get the analysis of all of this in Mandy
saying from Bloembag Intelligence, and for me it immediately becomes
a question.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Of just what a distraction this is.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But ultimately this is Qualcom coming out and feeling and
stating that ARM is getting competitive with them and therefore
stopping access to their technology, to their designs.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
Yeah, and especially when it comes from one of your
top two customers in the case of ARM, you know,
Qualcom is a top two customer. It's never easy. So look,
ARM did bring a lawsuit back in twenty twenty four,
which they ended up losing against Qualcomm, and to me,
it reminds me, you know what Qualcom faced against Apple.
(05:40):
I mean, I remember twenty seven to twenty nineteen they
had the back and forth where Apple was using Qualcom
technology and Qualcomm didn't go you know, anywhere with sort
of getting more royalties from Apple. So I think ARM
is in a weak position here given you know, I mean,
Qualcom is using all the IP that ARM has to
(06:01):
offer and paying for it. And you know, granted they
made that acquisition of Nuilla, but at the end of
the day, they're still using ARMS instruction sets and it's
hard to really prove that, you know, Qualcomm is doing
anything wrong. So I'm not surprised that they are going
all in with this centi trust campaign, but I think
ARM is in a weaker.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Position coming complaints to the European Commission. We understand the
sec in the US Career Fair Trade Commission, Man Deed,
I just want to get the perspective of the companies.
Qualcombs declined to comment. Suppose people from this regulators also
declining arms, saying it's confident it will prevail.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
But I go to the distruction perspective here.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Because they say they remain focused on enhancing innovation. Does
innovation generally dip when companies are locked in what might.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Be a year long, years long legal disputes.
Speaker 7 (06:54):
Yeah, and especially you know with the AI market moving
so fast with inferencing. I mean everyone is trying to
come up with new designs in terms of how to
do infencing faster. So you're right, it is a distraction.
And in the case of Qualcomm, they have expressed interest
and even Intel. I mean granted Intel has a new
CEO now and we don't know what they will end
(07:14):
up doing with the overall business, but clearly Qualcomm has
ambitions on the CPU side, and really they want to
do much more with the infance in hip beyond smartphones.
So to your point about distraction, I mean all the
back and courts and the lawsuits do seem like a distraction.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Many people wanting to go beyond the smartphone in this environment.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Man Deep saying thanks for joining us. Coming up, we're.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Here from the CEOs of Anthropic and Data Bricks on
their brand new partnership aipolicies under the Trump administration and
so much more. This is brume meg Technology, dat to
(08:00):
Bricks and Anthropic just announced a five year partnership to
offer anthropic models and services on data bricks. Basically, it's
bringing Anthropics Claude models directly to ten thousand companies. Tim
Centevic sat down when the Anthropic CEO Dario Mmoda and
Data Bricks CEO Ali.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Gotzi to discuss what this means for their customers.
Speaker 8 (08:20):
What it really means is that you can use securely
Anthropic inside data bricks. You can get all that intelligence,
especially all the programmability these models. Claud are really good
at programming, and you can use that for data science
and you can use it together with all the data
that we have. So enterprises have been storing their data
with data bricks for the last decade. How do you
(08:42):
build AI that can reason on that data. So we're
super excited to bring those llms and that data together
in the partnership.
Speaker 9 (08:49):
Daria, we know what all is getting out of it,
what are you getting out of it?
Speaker 10 (08:54):
So we're really excited to bring Claude to a wide
range of enterprise customers. Claud Claud models are growing very fast.
Models are you know, the API revenue is growing growing
at something like a twenty x annualized rate.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
But we want to make.
Speaker 10 (09:11):
Sure that our models can meet all the requirements that
complex enterprise customers have. Uh and we can do this
with the help of data bricks, as Olie was saying,
we can take our models, which are the world best
for coding and many other tasks, and use use data
bricks as tools to operate on the customer data and
(09:32):
we can work together to secure that customer data and
you know, make sure that customers can be assured that
they get the proper security experience. Both companies value things
like safety, security, privacy, things that enterprise customers greatly value.
Where's the fastest area of growth for you? You know,
I think I think, by far and away, the fastest
(09:52):
area of growth is code. Claud models are better than
anything out there by wide margin in terms terms of
how they code. We power a large number of players
in the space, including Cursor, Codium, Cognition, GitHub, Copilot, First Sell,
source Graph, many many others that I'm that I'm not
(10:13):
even mentioning, and we're starting to build an ecosystem around
this area. Now, all that said, we also have partners
in many other areas. We have partners in the financial space,
we have partners in the biomedical and scientific research space.
Speaker 11 (10:28):
We work with.
Speaker 10 (10:29):
Companies in the legal and productivity space. So it's it's
pretty broadly spread. But among those areas, I think Code
has by far been, you know, growing the fastest.
Speaker 9 (10:38):
I'm curious about your each of your views on the
administration and what we've seen thus far out of Washington
and David Sachs he's crypto and AI zre Ollie, what
does he mean for your business?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
I think it's great that.
Speaker 8 (10:51):
We have people that actually understand the tech that are
in the government. I think it's early days, so you know,
we're working together to figure out what's the best way
to bring value to our customers.
Speaker 11 (11:01):
How are you working together? Are you in touch with them?
Speaker 8 (11:04):
Yeah, I mean we've we've uh, you know, we've given
our feedback on you know, AI policy and other things
and their requests of that. And I think the government's
requested broadly from the industry.
Speaker 11 (11:14):
So we're excited. Daria, What about you. Are you in
touch with the administration.
Speaker 10 (11:17):
Yeah, we're we're you know, we're in touch with this administration.
Just like we've been in touch with the last administration
as well. You know, the thing I like to say is,
you know, you know, AI has big impact, big implications
for society. So it's very important for anthropic to be
about the policy and not about the politics. So we
don't care which you know, you know, regardless of which
administration is in office at the present time. We have
(11:40):
a we have a set of things that we think
it's it's good to do, you know, good to do
in AI policy. And you know, we've told the same
thing to the Trump administration that we've told to the
Biden administration. We have folks that we've we've we've talked
to in this administration just like the last administration, and
we've delivered exactly the same message both times. We aim
to be assistant, we aim to be non partisan and
(12:03):
offer our view of how to make the industry go best.
Speaker 11 (12:07):
What is the US government's role? Well, what what should
the US government's role be in your view?
Speaker 10 (12:12):
Yeah, So we laid this out in our RFI submitted
to to the OSTP that I think that was a
couple a couple of weeks ago. But you know, things
that we've emphasized include I won't get the complete list here,
but include export controls on chips to China, testing of
models for national security risks such as bio or or
or cyber risks. The government should have a role in
(12:34):
provisioning as much as much energy as possible. The government
should help to secure AI labs. We're very concerned about security.
We talked a lot about security, you know, as part
of this partnership. But another kind of security is you know,
we're worried about our our models and our technology being stolen.
So those are those are a few of the areas
where I think the government can have a constructive role.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Anthropic CEO Dario Amada and Data back CEO Ali Gotzi
with our very owned tim Sthenomic and look, let's stick
with global competition around AI models.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
It is top of mind for US.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Tech companies because ever since deep Seat launch, the Chinese
tech industry has been flooding the world with more AI models.
Nu Mergs Peter Elstrom joins us for more and beta.
It feels like every day there is yet a new
update or a new release coming from deep Seak and
so many others.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Is that the cadence we're getting?
Speaker 12 (13:25):
Yeah, I think you're pretty much exactly right. It has
been almost every day that we've been seeing these new
AI services and models that have been introduced from Chinese companies.
We count at least ten of them over the past
two weeks, and those are really just the major companies.
This is Baidu and Ali, Baba and ten Cent. At
Anc Group also came out with some AI breakthroughs, and
(13:48):
really what they're doing is they're putting a lot of
pressure on the profit models that we're seeing in Silicon Valley,
where they're providing open source AI services that people can
use and modify and incorporate into their technology to be
able to use all of the know how the AI
models without paying some of the prices that you would
have to pay if you went to more premium models
like open AI, like Google in particular. So they're putting
(14:11):
some downward pressure on those companies. In particular, they've been
mostly focused on the China market so far, but they
certainly have global ambitions and we'll see how far they
take that.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Ultimately, it feels as though this is a rerun of
what if we've seen in plenty of industries. You think
of China and evs, you think China of solar. They've
driven down the costs.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
And the prices.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
But what does this mean. What's the implication through a
US competitor.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Is it a bad thing? Got to be good for customers?
Speaker 12 (14:36):
Yeah, those are very interesting parallels if you look at
evs or you look at solar panels. Certainly there are
some negative implications for other countries around the world. It's
not exactly clear how this is going to play out though.
At this point they are driving down profits in certain
areas of the AI industry, but they're probably shifting the
competition to other areas like execution. Who can actually build
(14:57):
the services to connect some of that AI AI know
how with the corporate needs for example, or consumer needs.
And you're going to see a lot of innovation, certainly
out of Silicon Valley and the companies that we were
just talking about, and also out of China. Overall, it's
probably good for the AI market. You get rapid commercialization
of these services, you get lower prices, you get some
(15:18):
robust competition, and that will probably lead to more innovation
down the line.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And certainly Apple CEO Tim Cook been going to that
home of innovation of late at Hanzu Blomberg's Peter Elstrom,
we thank you so much all things China.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
It's time now for talking tech.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
First up, Google's Gemini gets an upgrade. The company's released
version two point five of its AI model that it
says is capable of reasoning before responding and resulting in
better performance and accuracy, and the latest model.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Is available to use Google's Ai studio and Gemini app us.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Open Ai is now making is simpler to edit images
in chat ChiPT livestream. On Tuesday, the company showed how
users could now refine images in CHATCHYBT with a series
of conversations. Now, according to open Ai, the program will
now also be able to better create diagrams in for
graphics and logos for professional use. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Grog
(16:16):
is making political ways in India. The AI chatbot that
must described as maximumly truth seeking, has made some controversial
responses around Indian politics, including criticizing Prime Minister and Arrando
Modi and praising opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. Groc's replies is
said to have sparked a political firestorm within the Indian
government as they take a look at making action against
(16:37):
users who prompt for those responses, Let's just stick with
Elon Musk because for the first time since the billionaire
acquired X, where Grok is the social media platform is
on pace to see advertising revenue grow. That's according to
research firm e Marketer. Jasmin Embergs with US vice president
and principal analysts for e Marketer, and you've brought us
this research exclusively, Jasmine, where did the data come from?
(16:59):
How you tracking this increase?
Speaker 13 (17:02):
But the data is from our proprietary forecast here at eMarketer,
and we have a multi source methodology where we have
a team of forecasters that regularly goes through a variety
of different sources from third party research firms to interviews
with advertisers and looks at broader macroeconomic and digital advertising
trends to put together these forecasts.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
The drivers of growth there forward.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Those advertisers that are returning, are they coming back with
a feeling of joy and desire to spend or is
there something else going on here?
Speaker 13 (17:33):
Look first, I would say that this is a recovery,
not a rebound. Even with the growth that we are projecting,
X's ad business in twenty twenty five is still going
to be smaller than Twitter's ad business was back in
twenty nineteen, and to your question, some of this growth
is actually being driven by fear. There are plenty of
advertisers out there now who see spending on xcess kind
(17:56):
of a cost of doing business in order to mitigate
any potential legal or financial repercussions. The problem, of course,
is that fear is not a sustainable motivator. Luckily, for
x it's not just fear that's driving this growth. It
has also been able to secure a new base of advertisers,
including small and medium sized businesses, which is something that
(18:19):
Twitter historically struggled with. The problem there is that these
advertisers have less money to spend, and so while they're
helping to prop up the growth, we're still not seeing
spending levels reach the same heights as they were prior
to musks takeover.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Okay, so take us back to you.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Put the two and a quarter billion dollars basically expected
for twenty twenty five, what is that versus pre forty
billion dollar acquisition by Elon and where does it go
from there?
Speaker 13 (18:48):
So it's smaller than it was in twenty nineteen, And
of course Twitter saw very strong growth like other social
ad businesses during the pandemic, which means that pretty much
all of that growth that it gained is lost.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
We're still expecting.
Speaker 13 (19:02):
The ad business to continue growing in twenty twenty six
and twenty twenty seven, which is the end of our forecast,
but of course we have less visibility into those years
because the situation is still incredibly volatile. There's still a
lot of concerns about brand safety among advertisers, and as
those attitudes continue to evolve, we could see shifts in spending.
(19:23):
Of course, there's also the economic uncertainty that's impacting advertising budgets,
as well as the uncertainty at TikTok, so there's a
lot of different moving parts that could change how advertisers
spend their budgets.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
When you talk of the advertisers who are coming back,
whether it's through feral or a desire to access new products,
have the main ones that took on air on comeback
as Disney comeback, for example.
Speaker 13 (19:49):
We don't have an exact list of all of the
advertisers that have returned. What we do know is that
many of the big tech advertisers have returned. There was
also reports that Apple, for example, which was once a
target of musks has returned, but there's plenty of evidence
to show that many of these companies are returning to spend,
though again not at the same levels as previously.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
I like how you brought in TikTok there as well.
We're all waiting as to what April the fifth really brings.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
But would X benefit.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
From TikTok being taken off the scene. It feels like
it's always a Meta driver rather than an X driver.
Speaker 13 (20:23):
So the biggest beneficiaries of TikTok disappearing would be Meta
and YouTube. Because of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, there
are obviously the most natural fits for users, for creators,
and for advertisers. In January, we actually released an analysis
that showed that about fifty percent of reallocated TikTok AD
dollars in the US would go to Meta and YouTube.
(20:46):
There would be you know, other spending two other platforms,
potentially also X, but mostly to other social platforms like Snapchat,
perhaps even Pinterest. We saw some of that during TikTok's
brief shutdown, as well as other players competitors to TikTok
and other industries thinking about retail media like Amazon or
(21:09):
even streaming services because TikTok touches so many aspects of
our digital lives.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Very briefly, we've only got about thirty seconds. The competitors
to X, are they thriving or not?
Speaker 13 (21:21):
Well, what's been really interesting to see is there's been
a resurgence now as well in growth in some of
these competitors. We saw after the election, of course that
Threads and Blue Sky saw many new users coming onto
the platform, and that seems to be sticking. But even
as X has lost users, both of those platforms remain
significantly smaller.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
A's Menemberg. Great to have you back, e Marketer. We
appreciate it. Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology. I'm Karen
Hid and New York.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Go quick check on these markets.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Because of a few days of stability, we're coming back off.
Maybe we're selling some of the moves that we've seen
in the last couple of days when we're taking a
few profits after Monday's stellar charge higher of more than
two percent on this particular benchmark, and we sustained growth yesterday,
but we're now a five percentage point and really it's
a magnificent seven that tuguslower. We're off by eight point well,
(22:17):
got that's one point eight percent. Let's call it on
this particular index, and really it's the likes of in
video which are off by a significant amount.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
So to is Tesla. Take a look at what that
particular name is doing. We know it's volatile.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
We know that the bulls like Kathy would remain in
this name, but we're currently off by almost four percent.
Had a dramatically good day on Monday, pushing up more
than nine ten percent. However, we did then get the
byd strength. We also got the worries about European sales
and we see some of that come off on Tesla.
Rivian off by three tens and percent. There's some interesting
news there of a spinoff when it comes to smaller
(22:49):
mobility forms of transport. Let's get to that work with
Bloomberg's David Welch and I just want to go to
the news on Rivian in particular. We understand that they're
spinning off what's going to be called Also they're investing
up to one hundred million dollars coming from another player,
Evolve as well. This is about small mobility. Where is
there a gap in the markets that David.
Speaker 14 (23:11):
You know that there's a market for smaller urban type
vehicles that you don't need to go as far on
a charge as the bigger vehicles Rivian sells. I think
one of the issues Rivin has is right now they're
selling expensive pickup trucks and SUVs that happen to be electric,
and people like them. They're sort of a unique style
(23:32):
compared to what Tesla has and compared to what Ford
and General Motors sell for electric pickup trucks. But they're
still very pricey for what they are at the end
of the day, and it's tough for them to get
scale and really drive their costs down just selling those vehicles.
And they've got other models coming they would have more
mass appeal. But I think with something like this, you know,
the industrial logic behind it would be you're selling more
vehicles and getting your battery costs down, which ultimately is
(23:54):
how any of these EV companies are going to get
into profitability. They've got to get those costs down, and
you can't do it on fifty thousand trucks an issue
easy year.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
They call it Microme Mobility Company for also, and I
correct myself that it's Rivian and a VC firm Eclipse,
who are going to be helping finance all of this.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
I mean, this.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Comes at a time where the competition does seem pretty fierce,
even though that Chinese competition can't make its way into
the United States. Globally, all eyes on EV, all eyes
are more efficient and cheaper models. David compare what's happening
with Tesla at the moment. Just why the pressure continuing
on the start?
Speaker 14 (24:30):
Yeah, Tesa's It's really an interesting case here. I get
asked this all the time. Is that the political pressure
because of Euon's stance and is his closeness to Donald Trump?
And I think that's probably true on the margin, maybe
more than that. There's really not data that tells us
how much of that is true. But EV sales were
flattening out even before Eon became essentially part of the
(24:53):
Trump administration. So they were already losing growth rates as
a company. And a lot of that is petition from China. Bui,
d we Auto, of those players over there. They have
very good products, they're coming on strong. It's tougher for
foreign companies operating in China to get the sales they want.
That includes Tesla. I think there is political pressure in
Europe that's causing Tesla to loose some sales. And Dan,
(25:15):
don't forget they're changing over the model Y, which means
they've got production down. That always cuts sales for any
car company. I think that's also a big piece of it.
And then the thing you just mentioned competition. You know,
in Europe you've got all the European automakers adding more
evs and coming on pretty strong. In the US, you've
got Hondai Kia selling a lot of new product. General
(25:36):
Motors is bringing out a lot of new EV's and
they're ramping up production right now. So there's competition here
that wasn't here two or three years ago that Tesla
has to deal with. And by the way, you know
the model hy is being changed over. But this is
a this is a product line that's pretty stale with
the exception of cyber Truck, and cyber Truck is too
quirky to sell in really big numbers.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Suddenly, as David Wells, thanks so much for joining us. Meanwhile,
let's just go to another key stock you cook. Coop
and I on game Stop is having a stellar day.
It's up the most since June of last year. That's
as bitcoin is interestingly off by one undre quarter percent
eighty six thousand. But these two stories are linked. Game
Stop is up more than fifteen percent because they announced
(26:18):
after their earnings yesterday that they are indeed going to
move forward with having bitcoin on their own balance sheet,
and another company that's doing it or following Michael Saylor
of course with strategy, but many others have done it.
Block for example, think of the way in which they
saw crypto on their balance sheet. Bitcoin currently off by
one and quarter percent, so GameStop and not enough to
drive it higher. But this comes in the context of
(26:39):
a major crypto summit that's underway in DC at the moment,
and legislation regarding digital assets is of course making its
way through Congress. Joining US now is Blockchain Association CEO
Kristin Smith.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
I just want to start on.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
The idea of more companies storing bitcoin or other crypto on.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
The balance sheet.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Is that because the moon music is changing? Is that
because regulation is fine creeping through?
Speaker 7 (27:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 15 (27:02):
And I think we've had such progress in Washington, Caroline
that I think it's pretty clear across institutions, across traditional companies,
across those who are managing treasuries of large organizations, that
digital assets are something they should be thinking about. I
was down in up in New York last week at
the Digital Assets Summit, and the amount of enthusiasm and
(27:25):
excitement amongst the trade FI and institutional investors was was
really great. And I think that's extending to companies as well.
So I think it's smart. I think something a lot
of companies are looking at, and I think we're going
to see more announcements like this going forward.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
It's smart because game Stop gets a pop in its
stock when actually it's revenues are down twenty eight percent
year on year.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
There may be to sort of harness what feels.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Like a feel good effect that retail likes to trade off.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
So tell us actually fundamentally.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
How this sort of helps businesses and how you see
regulation in particular supporting crypto right now.
Speaker 15 (28:01):
Yeah, Well, I think the regulatory clarity is key. This
is something that the industry has been talking about for
many years. Now we're seeing a lot of progress. We've
seen a lot of actions taken to undo the damaging
policies that were put in place when Gary Gunsler was
the head of the SEC, and we're seeing Congress do
a lot of work to establish and put the legislation
(28:23):
in place that we need. It seems like every week
here in Washington we have another vote on crypto. You know,
two weeks ago we had the Senate Banking Committee, which
very rarely holds markups, had a vote on stable coin legislation.
We're expecting a House committee to do the same on
the counterpart legislation next week. We also have the final
(28:44):
vote to undo the tax policy that President Biden put
out at the very very last days of his term.
Is going to be repealed by Congress this week. So
we're seeing steps. There's a lot of momentum. There's still
a lot of work to do, but I think, you know,
we've got the White House, we've got the leaders in
the House and the Senate are all communicating, they're all
(29:05):
talking together, and they all want to get this done.
And I think it's a cornerstone of sort of the
administration in Congress's priorities for making the US more competitive,
more innovative, and more modern. And so I think that does,
going back to your original question, give companies some comfort
that they can look at at these assets as something
(29:26):
that will be more stable, that will be welcome, and
something that they need to be thinking about going forward.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Whil's not being tackled you'd like to see tackled from
a regulatory perspective, Kristin, You know.
Speaker 15 (29:36):
It's interesting they're really covering the list. I think it's
two steps. Like I was saying, the first step is
undoing the policies of the past. We've seen the SEC
dismiss litigation across the board in the industry. We're seeing
Congress fix this IRS rule that was enacted late in
the administration. And we're seeing agencies like the occ UNDO
(29:59):
some of the letters and interpretive guidance that they had
put in place over the past four years. It made
it very difficult for crypto to integrate with the banking world.
And then, you know, in terms of what we need
to get done, we need a stable coin framework, we
need a market structure framework. But I think there's also
a lot of interesting things going on with tokenization. The
SEC just announced yesterday they're doing a series of round
(30:22):
tables on various topics and are trying to figure out
what they have within the existing authority that they have
that they can do to help make this space more competitive.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
So, you know, we're.
Speaker 15 (30:32):
Really excited about it.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It's a lot of work to do.
Speaker 15 (30:34):
I think everyone in the crypto policy space feels like
they're ready for a vacation. But we're not gonna let
down now. We've got a lot of work to get
done and potentially a short time to do it. But
I think once in place, it will be lasting and
it's something that will allow the US to be competitive
for decades to come.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Briefly, Kristen, is enough thing done to sort of get
rid of the tonishing effect that KRYPTI sometimes have the
idea that David Sachs, for example, has done a lot
to make explicit. He's sold down his assets, his exposure
to all these things. But when you've got well, ultimately
game stops like a mean name getting in on bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
And then you have some sense, and I don't know it's.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Not factual, but there's a sense from those out there
that many ways people are benefiting from crypto doing well
over in the administration.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Is enough being done to tackle that?
Speaker 15 (31:26):
Yeah, you know, I think that's an interesting question. I think,
you know, David Sachs took a steps that were absolutely
appropriate for him to do by selling off his positions
and funds and various investments I think that is a
smart thing to do, you know. I do think there
are a lot of folks within the Trump family that
are obviously very interested in this space. But I think
the important thing though, this is really important work that
(31:51):
we need to get done and get across the finish line.
And I think there are a lot of different policy
makers across the agencies, Congress and others that are really
committed to doing this and that this is something that
should benefit everyone who wants to participate in this ecosystem,
including corporations and trad FI and institutional investors, et cetera.
(32:12):
So I think this is a space that's only going
to grow over time and that we'll see more innovation
that is built on top of these blockchain networks.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Christmas Smith. Always great to have you on the show.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Thank you, Blockchain Association CEO, you are coming up more
and trad five meets Fintech. Mercury hits a three and
a half billion dollar valuation after raising three hundred million
dollars in its latest round. Will be speaking with the
CEO in Madaconlex. This is Blomberg Technology. Fintech firm Mercury
(32:52):
has just announced a Series C funding of three hundred
million dollars. It's been led by Sequoia Capital and the
latest round helping push the company's evaluation and a half
billion dollars.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Here to discuss is imad Achun.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Mercury CEO, And well, what the money is for? Therefore, Iman,
I understand there's new products coming along.
Speaker 16 (33:11):
Yeah, we've actually been profitable for the last ten quarters.
We did five hundred million revenue last year, so we're
really seeing this money is kind of helping us invest
in new products, but also giving us a cushion kind
of we could do for future acquisitions and things like that.
Last year we launched a bunch of new products, including invoicing, Accounts, Payable,
(33:34):
and Mercury Personal. So we're expanding from serving just businesses
to consumers as well.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
You've got to go there, M and A.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Where would you want to do inorganic as well as
organic growth?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Then yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 16 (33:47):
We made an acquisition last year in the accounting space,
but yeah, you know, we haven't we haven't announced anything else.
But the interesting thing about banking is there's a lot
of places to expand, both in terms of types of customers.
So we kind of expanded in the last few years
from startups to e commerce and professional services as well
as well as kind of these new products that we
(34:08):
can build on top of it. We really want to
reimagine banking, so it's not just kind of, you know,
a dumb account that doesn't do anything. We really wanted
to help biber people's finances and help them run their
company in the easiest way possible.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Reported that Sequoia Capital was particularly impressed by the way
you hand handled the influx of demand coming after the
collapse of SVB, and certainly Mercury and Brex were everywhere.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
We were talking that.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Amount of client deposits that came in. How much have
you retained? How have you managed to build from that moment?
Speaker 16 (34:41):
Yeah, yeah, we had two billion and basically that one
week time period, we retained ninety five percent of them
six months later, and we've grown significantly since then. So
just last year we grew transaction volume by sixty four percent.
Where you know, our scale is much much bigger than
even two years ago when that SBB failure I happen.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
You're not technically a bank, so how are you thinking
about broadening out? You of course have relationships with underlying
banks that give you the ability to help with these products.
We also think of building software ultimately, what do you
want to be thought of? How are we going to
say this is what mercury is in five years time.
Speaker 16 (35:19):
Yeah, we kind of think about like reimagining banking. So
you know, one of the benefits of working with kind
of partner banks is we actually work with a sweet
network underneath the hood. So we provide everyone five million
in FDIC insurance, so the vast majority of the deposits
we have actually FDIC insured. And we work with kind
of two main partner banks right now, Choice Financial and
(35:40):
Column Bank. And you know, we kind of think like
if there was a software company that built great software
for banking, what would it be. And that's the whey
we think about like kind of broadening out the suite
and really want to redefine banking or a banking shouldn't
just be a bank account. It should be a lot more.
And I think in ten years it will be weird
to do invoices not from a bank account. It will
(36:02):
be weird to kind of have spend management and corporate
card that's not part of your banking.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
You're using funds I understand to help give liquidity to
your talent, your workforce, or doing a tender offer. But
many will be thinking where's the next step? The exit?
In many ways, what in ten years time will merchur
we be publicly listed, Will you have been bought by someone?
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Will you bought others?
Speaker 16 (36:25):
Yeah, you know, I don't think of this as like
a thing I want to exit. I want to run
this company for the next twenty years. There's a lot
we can do and we will do. I think being
public along the way is part of the journey. So yeah,
there's nothing in minute. We only actually launched six ish
years ago, so I still think of us as as
a pretty young company. But yeah, it's important for employees
(36:47):
to have access to some liquidity rather than you know,
waiting another ten years or whatever it is till we
go public. So we wanted to provide that as an option.
I'm sure lots of them want to, you know, buy
houses or do nice things for themselves. And yeah, I
think as we're profitable, it makes sense to make that
available to our employees.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
In mad it's great speaking with you and Mada Alphen
come back, Mercury CEO.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Congrats on the rays.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Meanwhile, scientists, they are laying the foundation for a field
that may blur the lines between the biological and the synthetic.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
It's called biocomputing.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Human neurons emerge the chips with startups building sci fi
alternatives to traditional hardware. Could the living human brain cells
end up actually powering AI? Primer It's the latest bluem
meg original series takes a deep dive into this. This
is a simulation of Pong, the iconic nineteen seventies arcade game,
(37:41):
where you use this paddle to stop this ball from
getting past you.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
It's a pretty simple game for US humans.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
To learn, and as well, quite recently, with advancements in AI,
computers can learn it too.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
But today Pong.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Has a new kind of player, not a computer human.
A cluster of living human brain cells on top of
a silicon chip can play pomp yep.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Researchers in a.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Lab taught a tiny clump of neurons too, in a sense,
play this video game, but it's more than just a game.
Some believe merging biology with computing could upend our approach
to artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
AI is a massive, often.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Volatile, global market, with people looking all over for a
competitive edge. In twenty twenty five, private sector companies teamed
up to invest more than five hundred billion dollars in
AI infrastructure alone. But what if the building blocks of
that infrastructure include living human brain cells with the promises
(38:47):
and challenges of our own biology.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Sounds like sci fi, right, Well, we're kind of on
our way.
Speaker 16 (38:54):
Science fiction talked about this.
Speaker 15 (38:56):
I love thinking about the Hollywood stuff, like are we
really computers?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Our computers really human?
Speaker 5 (39:03):
My life has been focused on how can you elictit
intelligence from brain cells in a dish?
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Tune in tomorrow for the second episode of Primer on
Bloomberg TV at six pm Eastern. US officials they're not
permitted to use a messaging app Signal to share sensitive
information yet today The Atlantic has released the near complete
(39:31):
transcript of a Signal chat where top US officials discuss
military plans. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Mike Shepherd for the
technology angle of all of this, But before we get
into Signal and its intricacies, the broader context here is
that we're getting more and more information. What exactly was
said in this conversation.
Speaker 6 (39:49):
Well, that's right, Kerain. This is an episode that is
not going away. Much to the Trump administration's chagrin. They
are seeing this really carry on through days, and in
many ways it is a jaw dropping blunder of operational security,
according to experts and many lawmakers on Capitol Hill who
heard from and really pushed hard back at the top
(40:14):
intelligence officials in the US government who were appearing before
them for a hearing. And the question is why were
these officials using this app to discuss something so sensitive?
And we can see now from the full Atlantic transcript
that yes, this was sensitive and potentially classified information about
the details of strikes that would be to that were
(40:36):
to be waged against Houthi rebels in Yemen. And this
raises all sorts of questions about operational hygiene and security
hygiene that are being put forth by senators, including the
top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Mark Warner, in that hearing.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
As you say that many intelligence people and experts were attending,
might just go back to signal though, because this all
came to light because the wrong person was c seed
in the chat and not being Jeffrey Goldberg over at
the Atlantic. But why would it not be appropriate to
be used in this sensitive manner? What's the worst that
can happen?
Speaker 6 (41:12):
Well, actually, we're getting an example of the worst that
could happen. Let's say it wasn't Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic,
the editor in chief, a Washington veteran, someone who is
widely known across town and who I worked with many
many years ago. Let's say, for instance, it was instead
somebody from the hoothy side who saw those war plans
and could alert the rebels about what might be coming.
(41:35):
It could also be another US adversary that had a
window into operational planning or other sensitive information. If they're
using signal for this, what else are they using it for?
And that is what we also don't know.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Now there's a.
Speaker 6 (41:49):
Reason why, beyond just adding the wrong person to the chat,
which I guess maybe we're all guilty of doing at
one time or another in our own lives. There is
the risk that your phone could be infected with spyware,
somehow compromise in another fashion that would allow observation of
message traffic and other information. And this is why the
Defense Department and other US intelligence agencies require sensitive conversations
(42:13):
to be carried internally on secured networks and in secured spaces.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Mike Shepherd. The story continues to Unfold. Thanks of bringing
it to us. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition
of bloom Bag Technology. You do not want to forget
to check out our podcast. Can find it on the
terminal as well as online.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
On Apple, Spotify, and iHeart This is bloom Meg Technology.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news from the heart of
where innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Ludlow live from New York.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm Caroline Hyde, and this is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
The Magnificent seven is in the reader sell off in
tech megacaps as Trump's trade war is still on the horizon.
Plus an exclusive conversation with the CEOs of Anthropic and
Data Bricks, who are out with a new partnership to
bring claud models to the enterprise and advertisers return to
X with the platform Projector to post a jump in
advertising sales.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
That's according to new research.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Will bring you those X exclusive numbers later this hour,
but first we check in on a market that is
sinking once again. Then as that one hundred off by
nine tenths of a percent, but we're seeing the Magnificent
seven all training lower and.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
By some significant numbers.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Move on and have a look at what's underneath the
herd as we still try to digest what happens in
terms of tariffs and ultimately what valuations should be at
for big tech. We're off by three point six percent
again for Tesla.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
This is as we see the downwards of.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Directory continue after the European numbers bone ill for the company.
We're looking at fundamentals that continue to get under pressure,
and indeed in videos.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Off by four percent. We're seeing all the points.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Drags from mag seven. I shine like what's happening with ARM.
We'll get to that in a moment. But the legal
tip for tats are going on with qual Common ARM
and I'm looking at Amazon off by one point four percent.
Maybe the one that's starting to look like is more
juicy from a valuation perspective, Let's get to it with
Ryan Valastelica, who is with us, and this is another
day of stress on the valuations of the Magnificent seven.
(01:57):
Let's just go to in video and some of the
reasons we're seeing the sell off from a macro perspective,
Is this about the economy?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Broadly speaking, yes, I would say that is the case.
There's a still a lot of uncertainty about tariff policy,
about the implications for overall economic growth, the outlook for
the consumer, the outlook for businesses. We are seeing signs
of businesses or maybe pulling back on investments is because
they are not sure what the tariff situation is going
to be, what the economic outlook is going to be.
All that kind of frozen activity, all that uncertainty is
(02:28):
really just causing people to take some profits if they
still have them, and just you know, kind of take
a pause and step back.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
But when you step back, you start to look at
the valuations, You look at the fundamentals, and you've done
exactly that. For example, Amazon not been trading at these
sorts of price to future earnings levels in years.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
Yeah, so some of these names, you know, at the
start of the year, there were a lot of concerns
about valuations. Those concerns are a lot smaller now just
given how much some of these names have come down.
So in the case of Amazon, they have pretty strong
earnings growth. They've been really focusing on efficiency and cost
cutting things that are really improving their profitability. That is
really driving the multiple down. The multiples about half of
(03:08):
what it was over the longer term. It is cheaper
than Apple now, and just a few years ago Apple
was several times cheaper than Amazon. So is quite the
flip in narrative when it comes to tech valuations. Amazon
is cheaper than other retail names like Walmart and Costco.
It's a stock that, you know, given people continue to
have pretty optimistic views about its long term growth potential
(03:28):
the multiple here, it wouldn't surprise me if you start
seeing people look at a name like this, say, to
really come off its lows. The fundamentals look pretty intact.
Still a lot of you know, earning's growth potential and
revenue growth potential ahead even in a rockier economic climate.
Maybe that's why they start taking a look at a
stock like this.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
But who is taking a look at a stock like this?
Speaker 6 (03:47):
Ryan?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
You get so much inbound and response to your stories.
Are people starting to want to catch what seems like
a falling life?
Speaker 5 (03:54):
You know, that's something I've heard, the falling knife thing.
I do think people still feel like these are pretty
safe companies. Isn't broken even if some of the arrogance
let out, even the multiples come down a little bit more.
I don't think people are really concerned about the long
term prospects of these companies. There can still consider to
be very dominant in their field, and even if we
see a weaker economic outlook, it wouldn't surprise me if
(04:16):
we saw Amazon, for example, maybe consolidate its market share,
especially in online retail or retail. Overall, cloud business remains
very strong and has an AD business that's growing a lot.
There's certainly a lot of positives you can point to here,
even if we see a lot more volatility in the
short term.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Ran Rasselica, we thank you from a macro perspective across
Magnificent seven. Meanwhile, just take a look at ARM and
coal Comb once again. Now this is as Arms trading
significantly lower today. As you can Seequalcomb, as is being reported,
has begun a global antitrust campaign against the chip designer,
alleging in private meetings that ARM is guilty of anti
(04:53):
competitive behavior. So all according to sources, and we want
to get the analysis of all of this in Mandy
saying from Bloembag Intelligence, and for me it immediately becomes
a question.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Of just what a distraction this is.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But ultimately this is Qualcom coming out and feeling and
stating that ARM is getting competitive with them and therefore
stopping access to their technology, to their designs.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
Yeah, and especially when it comes from one of your
top two customers in the case of ARM, you know,
Qualcom is a top two customer. It's never easy. So look,
ARM did bring a lawsuit back in twenty twenty four,
which they ended up losing against Qualcomm, and to me,
it reminds me, you know what Qualcom faced against Apple.
(05:40):
I mean, I remember twenty seven to twenty nineteen they
had the back and forth where Apple was using Qualcom
technology and Qualcomm didn't go you know, anywhere with sort
of getting more royalties from Apple. So I think ARM
is in a weak position here given you know, I mean,
Qualcom is using all the IP that ARM has to
(06:01):
offer and paying for it. And you know, granted they
made that acquisition of Nuilla, but at the end of
the day, they're still using ARMS instruction sets and it's
hard to really prove that, you know, Qualcomm is doing
anything wrong. So I'm not surprised that they are going
all in with this centi trust campaign, but I think
ARM is in a weaker.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Position coming complaints to the European Commission. We understand the
sec in the US Career Fair Trade Commission, Man Deed,
I just want to get the perspective of the companies.
Qualcombs declined to comment. Suppose people from this regulators also
declining arms, saying it's confident it will prevail.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
But I go to the distruction perspective here.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Because they say they remain focused on enhancing innovation. Does
innovation generally dip when companies are locked in what might.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Be a year long, years long legal disputes.
Speaker 7 (06:54):
Yeah, and especially you know with the AI market moving
so fast with inferencing. I mean everyone is trying to
come up with new designs in terms of how to
do infencing faster. So you're right, it is a distraction.
And in the case of Qualcomm, they have expressed interest
and even Intel. I mean granted Intel has a new
CEO now and we don't know what they will end
(07:14):
up doing with the overall business, but clearly Qualcomm has
ambitions on the CPU side, and really they want to
do much more with the infance in hip beyond smartphones.
So to your point about distraction, I mean all the
back and courts and the lawsuits do seem like a distraction.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Many people wanting to go beyond the smartphone in this environment.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Man Deep saying thanks for joining us. Coming up, we're.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Here from the CEOs of Anthropic and Data Bricks on
their brand new partnership aipolicies under the Trump administration and
so much more. This is brume meg Technology, dat to
(08:00):
Bricks and Anthropic just announced a five year partnership to
offer anthropic models and services on data bricks. Basically, it's
bringing Anthropics Claude models directly to ten thousand companies. Tim
Centevic sat down when the Anthropic CEO Dario Mmoda and
Data Bricks CEO Ali.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Gotzi to discuss what this means for their customers.
Speaker 8 (08:20):
What it really means is that you can use securely
Anthropic inside data bricks. You can get all that intelligence,
especially all the programmability these models. Claud are really good
at programming, and you can use that for data science
and you can use it together with all the data
that we have. So enterprises have been storing their data
with data bricks for the last decade. How do you
(08:42):
build AI that can reason on that data. So we're
super excited to bring those llms and that data together
in the partnership.
Speaker 9 (08:49):
Daria, we know what all is getting out of it,
what are you getting out of it?
Speaker 10 (08:54):
So we're really excited to bring Claude to a wide
range of enterprise customers. Claud Claud models are growing very fast.
Models are you know, the API revenue is growing growing
at something like a twenty x annualized rate.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
But we want to make.
Speaker 10 (09:11):
Sure that our models can meet all the requirements that
complex enterprise customers have. Uh and we can do this
with the help of data bricks, as Olie was saying,
we can take our models, which are the world best
for coding and many other tasks, and use use data
bricks as tools to operate on the customer data and
(09:32):
we can work together to secure that customer data and
you know, make sure that customers can be assured that
they get the proper security experience. Both companies value things
like safety, security, privacy, things that enterprise customers greatly value.
Where's the fastest area of growth for you? You know,
I think I think, by far and away, the fastest
(09:52):
area of growth is code. Claud models are better than
anything out there by wide margin in terms terms of
how they code. We power a large number of players
in the space, including Cursor, Codium, Cognition, GitHub, Copilot, First Sell,
source Graph, many many others that I'm that I'm not
(10:13):
even mentioning, and we're starting to build an ecosystem around
this area. Now, all that said, we also have partners
in many other areas. We have partners in the financial space,
we have partners in the biomedical and scientific research space.
Speaker 11 (10:28):
We work with.
Speaker 10 (10:29):
Companies in the legal and productivity space. So it's it's
pretty broadly spread. But among those areas, I think Code
has by far been, you know, growing the fastest.
Speaker 9 (10:38):
I'm curious about your each of your views on the
administration and what we've seen thus far out of Washington
and David Sachs he's crypto and AI zre Ollie, what
does he mean for your business?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
I think it's great that.
Speaker 8 (10:51):
We have people that actually understand the tech that are
in the government. I think it's early days, so you know,
we're working together to figure out what's the best way
to bring value to our customers.
Speaker 11 (11:01):
How are you working together? Are you in touch with them?
Speaker 8 (11:04):
Yeah, I mean we've we've uh, you know, we've given
our feedback on you know, AI policy and other things
and their requests of that. And I think the government's
requested broadly from the industry.
Speaker 11 (11:14):
So we're excited. Daria, What about you. Are you in
touch with the administration.
Speaker 10 (11:17):
Yeah, we're we're you know, we're in touch with this administration.
Just like we've been in touch with the last administration
as well. You know, the thing I like to say is,
you know, you know, AI has big impact, big implications
for society. So it's very important for anthropic to be
about the policy and not about the politics. So we
don't care which you know, you know, regardless of which
administration is in office at the present time. We have
(11:40):
a we have a set of things that we think
it's it's good to do, you know, good to do
in AI policy. And you know, we've told the same
thing to the Trump administration that we've told to the
Biden administration. We have folks that we've we've we've talked
to in this administration just like the last administration, and
we've delivered exactly the same message both times. We aim
to be assistant, we aim to be non partisan and
(12:03):
offer our view of how to make the industry go best.
Speaker 11 (12:07):
What is the US government's role? Well, what what should
the US government's role be in your view?
Speaker 10 (12:12):
Yeah, So we laid this out in our RFI submitted
to to the OSTP that I think that was a
couple a couple of weeks ago. But you know, things
that we've emphasized include I won't get the complete list here,
but include export controls on chips to China, testing of
models for national security risks such as bio or or
or cyber risks. The government should have a role in
(12:34):
provisioning as much as much energy as possible. The government
should help to secure AI labs. We're very concerned about security.
We talked a lot about security, you know, as part
of this partnership. But another kind of security is you know,
we're worried about our our models and our technology being stolen.
So those are those are a few of the areas
where I think the government can have a constructive role.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Anthropic CEO Dario Amada and Data back CEO Ali Gotzi
with our very owned tim Sthenomic and look, let's stick
with global competition around AI models.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
It is top of mind for US.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Tech companies because ever since deep Seat launch, the Chinese
tech industry has been flooding the world with more AI models.
Nu Mergs Peter Elstrom joins us for more and beta.
It feels like every day there is yet a new
update or a new release coming from deep Seak and
so many others.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Is that the cadence we're getting?
Speaker 12 (13:25):
Yeah, I think you're pretty much exactly right. It has
been almost every day that we've been seeing these new
AI services and models that have been introduced from Chinese companies.
We count at least ten of them over the past
two weeks, and those are really just the major companies.
This is Baidu and Ali, Baba and ten Cent. At
Anc Group also came out with some AI breakthroughs, and
(13:48):
really what they're doing is they're putting a lot of
pressure on the profit models that we're seeing in Silicon Valley,
where they're providing open source AI services that people can
use and modify and incorporate into their technology to be
able to use all of the know how the AI
models without paying some of the prices that you would
have to pay if you went to more premium models
like open AI, like Google in particular. So they're putting
(14:11):
some downward pressure on those companies. In particular, they've been
mostly focused on the China market so far, but they
certainly have global ambitions and we'll see how far they
take that.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Ultimately, it feels as though this is a rerun of
what if we've seen in plenty of industries. You think
of China and evs, you think China of solar. They've
driven down the costs.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
And the prices.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
But what does this mean. What's the implication through a
US competitor.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Is it a bad thing? Got to be good for customers?
Speaker 12 (14:36):
Yeah, those are very interesting parallels if you look at
evs or you look at solar panels. Certainly there are
some negative implications for other countries around the world. It's
not exactly clear how this is going to play out though.
At this point they are driving down profits in certain
areas of the AI industry, but they're probably shifting the
competition to other areas like execution. Who can actually build
(14:57):
the services to connect some of that AI AI know
how with the corporate needs for example, or consumer needs.
And you're going to see a lot of innovation, certainly
out of Silicon Valley and the companies that we were
just talking about, and also out of China. Overall, it's
probably good for the AI market. You get rapid commercialization
of these services, you get lower prices, you get some
(15:18):
robust competition, and that will probably lead to more innovation
down the line.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And certainly Apple CEO Tim Cook been going to that
home of innovation of late at Hanzu Blomberg's Peter Elstrom,
we thank you so much all things China.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
It's time now for talking tech.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
First up, Google's Gemini gets an upgrade. The company's released
version two point five of its AI model that it
says is capable of reasoning before responding and resulting in
better performance and accuracy, and the latest model.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Is available to use Google's Ai studio and Gemini app us.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Open Ai is now making is simpler to edit images
in chat ChiPT livestream. On Tuesday, the company showed how
users could now refine images in CHATCHYBT with a series
of conversations. Now, according to open Ai, the program will
now also be able to better create diagrams in for
graphics and logos for professional use. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Grog
(16:16):
is making political ways in India. The AI chatbot that
must described as maximumly truth seeking, has made some controversial
responses around Indian politics, including criticizing Prime Minister and Arrando
Modi and praising opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. Groc's replies is
said to have sparked a political firestorm within the Indian
government as they take a look at making action against
(16:37):
users who prompt for those responses, Let's just stick with
Elon Musk because for the first time since the billionaire
acquired X, where Grok is the social media platform is
on pace to see advertising revenue grow. That's according to
research firm e Marketer. Jasmin Embergs with US vice president
and principal analysts for e Marketer, and you've brought us
this research exclusively, Jasmine, where did the data come from?
(16:59):
How you tracking this increase?
Speaker 13 (17:02):
But the data is from our proprietary forecast here at eMarketer,
and we have a multi source methodology where we have
a team of forecasters that regularly goes through a variety
of different sources from third party research firms to interviews
with advertisers and looks at broader macroeconomic and digital advertising
trends to put together these forecasts.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
The drivers of growth there forward.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Those advertisers that are returning, are they coming back with
a feeling of joy and desire to spend or is
there something else going on here?
Speaker 13 (17:33):
Look first, I would say that this is a recovery,
not a rebound. Even with the growth that we are projecting,
X's ad business in twenty twenty five is still going
to be smaller than Twitter's ad business was back in
twenty nineteen, and to your question, some of this growth
is actually being driven by fear. There are plenty of
advertisers out there now who see spending on xcess kind
(17:56):
of a cost of doing business in order to mitigate
any potential legal or financial repercussions. The problem, of course,
is that fear is not a sustainable motivator. Luckily, for
x it's not just fear that's driving this growth. It
has also been able to secure a new base of advertisers,
including small and medium sized businesses, which is something that
(18:19):
Twitter historically struggled with. The problem there is that these
advertisers have less money to spend, and so while they're
helping to prop up the growth, we're still not seeing
spending levels reach the same heights as they were prior
to musks takeover.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Okay, so take us back to you.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Put the two and a quarter billion dollars basically expected
for twenty twenty five, what is that versus pre forty
billion dollar acquisition by Elon and where does it go
from there?
Speaker 13 (18:48):
So it's smaller than it was in twenty nineteen, And
of course Twitter saw very strong growth like other social
ad businesses during the pandemic, which means that pretty much
all of that growth that it gained is lost.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
We're still expecting.
Speaker 13 (19:02):
The ad business to continue growing in twenty twenty six
and twenty twenty seven, which is the end of our forecast,
but of course we have less visibility into those years
because the situation is still incredibly volatile. There's still a
lot of concerns about brand safety among advertisers, and as
those attitudes continue to evolve, we could see shifts in spending.
(19:23):
Of course, there's also the economic uncertainty that's impacting advertising budgets,
as well as the uncertainty at TikTok, so there's a
lot of different moving parts that could change how advertisers
spend their budgets.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
When you talk of the advertisers who are coming back,
whether it's through feral or a desire to access new products,
have the main ones that took on air on comeback
as Disney comeback, for example.
Speaker 13 (19:49):
We don't have an exact list of all of the
advertisers that have returned. What we do know is that
many of the big tech advertisers have returned. There was
also reports that Apple, for example, which was once a
target of musks has returned, but there's plenty of evidence
to show that many of these companies are returning to spend,
though again not at the same levels as previously.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
I like how you brought in TikTok there as well.
We're all waiting as to what April the fifth really brings.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
But would X benefit.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
From TikTok being taken off the scene. It feels like
it's always a Meta driver rather than an X driver.
Speaker 13 (20:23):
So the biggest beneficiaries of TikTok disappearing would be Meta
and YouTube. Because of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, there
are obviously the most natural fits for users, for creators,
and for advertisers. In January, we actually released an analysis
that showed that about fifty percent of reallocated TikTok AD
dollars in the US would go to Meta and YouTube.
(20:46):
There would be you know, other spending two other platforms,
potentially also X, but mostly to other social platforms like Snapchat,
perhaps even Pinterest. We saw some of that during TikTok's
brief shutdown, as well as other players competitors to TikTok
and other industries thinking about retail media like Amazon or
(21:09):
even streaming services because TikTok touches so many aspects of
our digital lives.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Very briefly, we've only got about thirty seconds. The competitors
to X, are they thriving or not?
Speaker 13 (21:21):
Well, what's been really interesting to see is there's been
a resurgence now as well in growth in some of
these competitors. We saw after the election, of course that
Threads and Blue Sky saw many new users coming onto
the platform, and that seems to be sticking. But even
as X has lost users, both of those platforms remain
significantly smaller.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
A's Menemberg. Great to have you back, e Marketer. We
appreciate it. Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology. I'm Karen
Hid and New York.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Go quick check on these markets.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Because of a few days of stability, we're coming back off.
Maybe we're selling some of the moves that we've seen
in the last couple of days when we're taking a
few profits after Monday's stellar charge higher of more than
two percent on this particular benchmark, and we sustained growth yesterday,
but we're now a five percentage point and really it's
a magnificent seven that tuguslower. We're off by eight point well,
(22:17):
got that's one point eight percent. Let's call it on
this particular index, and really it's the likes of in
video which are off by a significant amount.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
So to is Tesla. Take a look at what that
particular name is doing. We know it's volatile.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
We know that the bulls like Kathy would remain in
this name, but we're currently off by almost four percent.
Had a dramatically good day on Monday, pushing up more
than nine ten percent. However, we did then get the
byd strength. We also got the worries about European sales
and we see some of that come off on Tesla.
Rivian off by three tens and percent. There's some interesting
news there of a spinoff when it comes to smaller
(22:49):
mobility forms of transport. Let's get to that work with
Bloomberg's David Welch and I just want to go to
the news on Rivian in particular. We understand that they're
spinning off what's going to be called Also they're investing
up to one hundred million dollars coming from another player,
Evolve as well. This is about small mobility. Where is
there a gap in the markets that David.
Speaker 14 (23:11):
You know that there's a market for smaller urban type
vehicles that you don't need to go as far on
a charge as the bigger vehicles Rivian sells. I think
one of the issues Rivin has is right now they're
selling expensive pickup trucks and SUVs that happen to be electric,
and people like them. They're sort of a unique style
(23:32):
compared to what Tesla has and compared to what Ford
and General Motors sell for electric pickup trucks. But they're
still very pricey for what they are at the end
of the day, and it's tough for them to get
scale and really drive their costs down just selling those vehicles.
And they've got other models coming they would have more
mass appeal. But I think with something like this, you know,
the industrial logic behind it would be you're selling more
vehicles and getting your battery costs down, which ultimately is
(23:54):
how any of these EV companies are going to get
into profitability. They've got to get those costs down, and
you can't do it on fifty thousand trucks an issue
easy year.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
They call it Microme Mobility Company for also, and I
correct myself that it's Rivian and a VC firm Eclipse,
who are going to be helping finance all of this.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
I mean, this.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Comes at a time where the competition does seem pretty fierce,
even though that Chinese competition can't make its way into
the United States. Globally, all eyes on EV, all eyes
are more efficient and cheaper models. David compare what's happening
with Tesla at the moment. Just why the pressure continuing
on the start?
Speaker 14 (24:30):
Yeah, Tesa's It's really an interesting case here. I get
asked this all the time. Is that the political pressure
because of Euon's stance and is his closeness to Donald Trump?
And I think that's probably true on the margin, maybe
more than that. There's really not data that tells us
how much of that is true. But EV sales were
flattening out even before Eon became essentially part of the
(24:53):
Trump administration. So they were already losing growth rates as
a company. And a lot of that is petition from China. Bui,
d we Auto, of those players over there. They have
very good products, they're coming on strong. It's tougher for
foreign companies operating in China to get the sales they want.
That includes Tesla. I think there is political pressure in
Europe that's causing Tesla to loose some sales. And Dan,
(25:15):
don't forget they're changing over the model Y, which means
they've got production down. That always cuts sales for any
car company. I think that's also a big piece of it.
And then the thing you just mentioned competition. You know,
in Europe you've got all the European automakers adding more
evs and coming on pretty strong. In the US, you've
got Hondai Kia selling a lot of new product. General
(25:36):
Motors is bringing out a lot of new EV's and
they're ramping up production right now. So there's competition here
that wasn't here two or three years ago that Tesla
has to deal with. And by the way, you know
the model hy is being changed over. But this is
a this is a product line that's pretty stale with
the exception of cyber Truck, and cyber Truck is too
quirky to sell in really big numbers.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Suddenly, as David Wells, thanks so much for joining us. Meanwhile,
let's just go to another key stock you cook. Coop
and I on game Stop is having a stellar day.
It's up the most since June of last year. That's
as bitcoin is interestingly off by one undre quarter percent
eighty six thousand. But these two stories are linked. Game
Stop is up more than fifteen percent because they announced
(26:18):
after their earnings yesterday that they are indeed going to
move forward with having bitcoin on their own balance sheet,
and another company that's doing it or following Michael Saylor
of course with strategy, but many others have done it.
Block for example, think of the way in which they
saw crypto on their balance sheet. Bitcoin currently off by
one and quarter percent, so GameStop and not enough to
drive it higher. But this comes in the context of
(26:39):
a major crypto summit that's underway in DC at the moment,
and legislation regarding digital assets is of course making its
way through Congress. Joining US now is Blockchain Association CEO
Kristin Smith.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
I just want to start on.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
The idea of more companies storing bitcoin or other crypto on.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
The balance sheet.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Is that because the moon music is changing? Is that
because regulation is fine creeping through?
Speaker 7 (27:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 15 (27:02):
And I think we've had such progress in Washington, Caroline
that I think it's pretty clear across institutions, across traditional companies,
across those who are managing treasuries of large organizations, that
digital assets are something they should be thinking about. I
was down in up in New York last week at
the Digital Assets Summit, and the amount of enthusiasm and
(27:25):
excitement amongst the trade FI and institutional investors was was
really great. And I think that's extending to companies as well.
So I think it's smart. I think something a lot
of companies are looking at, and I think we're going
to see more announcements like this going forward.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
It's smart because game Stop gets a pop in its
stock when actually it's revenues are down twenty eight percent
year on year.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
There may be to sort of harness what feels.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Like a feel good effect that retail likes to trade off.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
So tell us actually fundamentally.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
How this sort of helps businesses and how you see
regulation in particular supporting crypto right now.
Speaker 15 (28:01):
Yeah, Well, I think the regulatory clarity is key. This
is something that the industry has been talking about for
many years. Now we're seeing a lot of progress. We've
seen a lot of actions taken to undo the damaging
policies that were put in place when Gary Gunsler was
the head of the SEC, and we're seeing Congress do
a lot of work to establish and put the legislation
(28:23):
in place that we need. It seems like every week
here in Washington we have another vote on crypto. You know,
two weeks ago we had the Senate Banking Committee, which
very rarely holds markups, had a vote on stable coin legislation.
We're expecting a House committee to do the same on
the counterpart legislation next week. We also have the final
(28:44):
vote to undo the tax policy that President Biden put
out at the very very last days of his term.
Is going to be repealed by Congress this week. So
we're seeing steps. There's a lot of momentum. There's still
a lot of work to do, but I think, you know,
we've got the White House, we've got the leaders in
the House and the Senate are all communicating, they're all
(29:05):
talking together, and they all want to get this done.
And I think it's a cornerstone of sort of the
administration in Congress's priorities for making the US more competitive,
more innovative, and more modern. And so I think that does,
going back to your original question, give companies some comfort
that they can look at at these assets as something
(29:26):
that will be more stable, that will be welcome, and
something that they need to be thinking about going forward.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Whil's not being tackled you'd like to see tackled from
a regulatory perspective, Kristin, You know.
Speaker 15 (29:36):
It's interesting they're really covering the list. I think it's
two steps. Like I was saying, the first step is
undoing the policies of the past. We've seen the SEC
dismiss litigation across the board in the industry. We're seeing
Congress fix this IRS rule that was enacted late in
the administration. And we're seeing agencies like the occ UNDO
(29:59):
some of the letters and interpretive guidance that they had
put in place over the past four years. It made
it very difficult for crypto to integrate with the banking world.
And then, you know, in terms of what we need
to get done, we need a stable coin framework, we
need a market structure framework. But I think there's also
a lot of interesting things going on with tokenization. The
SEC just announced yesterday they're doing a series of round
(30:22):
tables on various topics and are trying to figure out
what they have within the existing authority that they have
that they can do to help make this space more competitive.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
So, you know, we're.
Speaker 15 (30:32):
Really excited about it.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It's a lot of work to do.
Speaker 15 (30:34):
I think everyone in the crypto policy space feels like
they're ready for a vacation. But we're not gonna let
down now. We've got a lot of work to get
done and potentially a short time to do it. But
I think once in place, it will be lasting and
it's something that will allow the US to be competitive
for decades to come.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Briefly, Kristen, is enough thing done to sort of get
rid of the tonishing effect that KRYPTI sometimes have the
idea that David Sachs, for example, has done a lot
to make explicit. He's sold down his assets, his exposure
to all these things. But when you've got well, ultimately
game stops like a mean name getting in on bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
And then you have some sense, and I don't know it's.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Not factual, but there's a sense from those out there
that many ways people are benefiting from crypto doing well
over in the administration.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Is enough being done to tackle that?
Speaker 15 (31:26):
Yeah, you know, I think that's an interesting question. I think,
you know, David Sachs took a steps that were absolutely
appropriate for him to do by selling off his positions
and funds and various investments I think that is a
smart thing to do, you know. I do think there
are a lot of folks within the Trump family that
are obviously very interested in this space. But I think
the important thing though, this is really important work that
(31:51):
we need to get done and get across the finish line.
And I think there are a lot of different policy
makers across the agencies, Congress and others that are really
committed to doing this and that this is something that
should benefit everyone who wants to participate in this ecosystem,
including corporations and trad FI and institutional investors, et cetera.
(32:12):
So I think this is a space that's only going
to grow over time and that we'll see more innovation
that is built on top of these blockchain networks.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Christmas Smith. Always great to have you on the show.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Thank you, Blockchain Association CEO, you are coming up more
and trad five meets Fintech. Mercury hits a three and
a half billion dollar valuation after raising three hundred million
dollars in its latest round. Will be speaking with the
CEO in Madaconlex. This is Blomberg Technology. Fintech firm Mercury
(32:52):
has just announced a Series C funding of three hundred
million dollars. It's been led by Sequoia Capital and the
latest round helping push the company's evaluation and a half
billion dollars.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Here to discuss is imad Achun.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Mercury CEO, And well, what the money is for? Therefore, Iman,
I understand there's new products coming along.
Speaker 16 (33:11):
Yeah, we've actually been profitable for the last ten quarters.
We did five hundred million revenue last year, so we're
really seeing this money is kind of helping us invest
in new products, but also giving us a cushion kind
of we could do for future acquisitions and things like that.
Last year we launched a bunch of new products, including invoicing, Accounts, Payable,
(33:34):
and Mercury Personal. So we're expanding from serving just businesses
to consumers as well.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
You've got to go there, M and A.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Where would you want to do inorganic as well as
organic growth?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Then yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 16 (33:47):
We made an acquisition last year in the accounting space,
but yeah, you know, we haven't we haven't announced anything else.
But the interesting thing about banking is there's a lot
of places to expand, both in terms of types of customers.
So we kind of expanded in the last few years
from startups to e commerce and professional services as well
as well as kind of these new products that we
(34:08):
can build on top of it. We really want to
reimagine banking, so it's not just kind of, you know,
a dumb account that doesn't do anything. We really wanted
to help biber people's finances and help them run their
company in the easiest way possible.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Reported that Sequoia Capital was particularly impressed by the way
you hand handled the influx of demand coming after the
collapse of SVB, and certainly Mercury and Brex were everywhere.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
We were talking that.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Amount of client deposits that came in. How much have
you retained? How have you managed to build from that moment?
Speaker 16 (34:41):
Yeah, yeah, we had two billion and basically that one
week time period, we retained ninety five percent of them
six months later, and we've grown significantly since then. So
just last year we grew transaction volume by sixty four percent.
Where you know, our scale is much much bigger than
even two years ago when that SBB failure I happen.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
You're not technically a bank, so how are you thinking
about broadening out? You of course have relationships with underlying
banks that give you the ability to help with these products.
We also think of building software ultimately, what do you
want to be thought of? How are we going to
say this is what mercury is in five years time.
Speaker 16 (35:19):
Yeah, we kind of think about like reimagining banking. So
you know, one of the benefits of working with kind
of partner banks is we actually work with a sweet
network underneath the hood. So we provide everyone five million
in FDIC insurance, so the vast majority of the deposits
we have actually FDIC insured. And we work with kind
of two main partner banks right now, Choice Financial and
(35:40):
Column Bank. And you know, we kind of think like
if there was a software company that built great software
for banking, what would it be. And that's the whey
we think about like kind of broadening out the suite
and really want to redefine banking or a banking shouldn't
just be a bank account. It should be a lot more.
And I think in ten years it will be weird
to do invoices not from a bank account. It will
(36:02):
be weird to kind of have spend management and corporate
card that's not part of your banking.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
You're using funds I understand to help give liquidity to
your talent, your workforce, or doing a tender offer. But
many will be thinking where's the next step? The exit?
In many ways, what in ten years time will merchur
we be publicly listed, Will you have been bought by someone?
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Will you bought others?
Speaker 16 (36:25):
Yeah, you know, I don't think of this as like
a thing I want to exit. I want to run
this company for the next twenty years. There's a lot
we can do and we will do. I think being
public along the way is part of the journey. So yeah,
there's nothing in minute. We only actually launched six ish
years ago, so I still think of us as as
a pretty young company. But yeah, it's important for employees
(36:47):
to have access to some liquidity rather than you know,
waiting another ten years or whatever it is till we
go public. So we wanted to provide that as an option.
I'm sure lots of them want to, you know, buy
houses or do nice things for themselves. And yeah, I
think as we're profitable, it makes sense to make that
available to our employees.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
In mad it's great speaking with you and Mada Alphen
come back, Mercury CEO.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Congrats on the rays.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Meanwhile, scientists, they are laying the foundation for a field
that may blur the lines between the biological and the synthetic.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
It's called biocomputing.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Human neurons emerge the chips with startups building sci fi
alternatives to traditional hardware. Could the living human brain cells
end up actually powering AI? Primer It's the latest bluem
meg original series takes a deep dive into this. This
is a simulation of Pong, the iconic nineteen seventies arcade game,
(37:41):
where you use this paddle to stop this ball from
getting past you.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
It's a pretty simple game for US humans.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
To learn, and as well, quite recently, with advancements in AI,
computers can learn it too.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
But today Pong.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Has a new kind of player, not a computer human.
A cluster of living human brain cells on top of
a silicon chip can play pomp yep.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Researchers in a.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Lab taught a tiny clump of neurons too, in a sense,
play this video game, but it's more than just a game.
Some believe merging biology with computing could upend our approach
to artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
AI is a massive, often.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Volatile, global market, with people looking all over for a
competitive edge. In twenty twenty five, private sector companies teamed
up to invest more than five hundred billion dollars in
AI infrastructure alone. But what if the building blocks of
that infrastructure include living human brain cells with the promises
(38:47):
and challenges of our own biology.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Sounds like sci fi, right, Well, we're kind of on
our way.
Speaker 16 (38:54):
Science fiction talked about this.
Speaker 15 (38:56):
I love thinking about the Hollywood stuff, like are we
really computers?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Our computers really human?
Speaker 5 (39:03):
My life has been focused on how can you elictit
intelligence from brain cells in a dish?
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Tune in tomorrow for the second episode of Primer on
Bloomberg TV at six pm Eastern. US officials they're not
permitted to use a messaging app Signal to share sensitive
information yet today The Atlantic has released the near complete
(39:31):
transcript of a Signal chat where top US officials discuss
military plans. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Mike Shepherd for the
technology angle of all of this, But before we get
into Signal and its intricacies, the broader context here is
that we're getting more and more information. What exactly was
said in this conversation.
Speaker 6 (39:49):
Well, that's right, Kerain. This is an episode that is
not going away. Much to the Trump administration's chagrin. They
are seeing this really carry on through days, and in
many ways it is a jaw dropping blunder of operational security,
according to experts and many lawmakers on Capitol Hill who
heard from and really pushed hard back at the top
(40:14):
intelligence officials in the US government who were appearing before
them for a hearing. And the question is why were
these officials using this app to discuss something so sensitive?
And we can see now from the full Atlantic transcript
that yes, this was sensitive and potentially classified information about
the details of strikes that would be to that were
(40:36):
to be waged against Houthi rebels in Yemen. And this
raises all sorts of questions about operational hygiene and security
hygiene that are being put forth by senators, including the
top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Mark Warner, in that hearing.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
As you say that many intelligence people and experts were attending,
might just go back to signal though, because this all
came to light because the wrong person was c seed
in the chat and not being Jeffrey Goldberg over at
the Atlantic. But why would it not be appropriate to
be used in this sensitive manner? What's the worst that
can happen?
Speaker 6 (41:12):
Well, actually, we're getting an example of the worst that
could happen. Let's say it wasn't Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic,
the editor in chief, a Washington veteran, someone who is
widely known across town and who I worked with many
many years ago. Let's say, for instance, it was instead
somebody from the hoothy side who saw those war plans
and could alert the rebels about what might be coming.
(41:35):
It could also be another US adversary that had a
window into operational planning or other sensitive information. If they're
using signal for this, what else are they using it for?
And that is what we also don't know.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Now there's a.
Speaker 6 (41:49):
Reason why, beyond just adding the wrong person to the chat,
which I guess maybe we're all guilty of doing at
one time or another in our own lives. There is
the risk that your phone could be infected with spyware,
somehow compromise in another fashion that would allow observation of
message traffic and other information. And this is why the
Defense Department and other US intelligence agencies require sensitive conversations
(42:13):
to be carried internally on secured networks and in secured spaces.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Mike Shepherd. The story continues to Unfold. Thanks of bringing
it to us. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition
of bloom Bag Technology. You do not want to forget
to check out our podcast. Can find it on the
terminal as well as online.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
On Apple, Spotify, and iHeart This is bloom Meg Technology.
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