May 27, 2025 • 43 mins
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss Salesforce's plan to acquire Informatica for $8 billion after an earlier attempt fell through. Plus, they look at how Apple is coping with the threat of a 25% tariff if it doesn't move iPhone production to the U.S. And Elon Musk is set to address SpaceX workers about plans to reach Mars
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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 Ludlow.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Live from New York and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up, Salesforce will acquire Informatica for eight billion dollars,
one of the biggest ever deals with the company for
the next phase to they I driven.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Growth plus Apple shares coming off their longest selloff in
more than three years.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Is attacks from the White House escalate.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And Elon Musk turns his attention back to his rocket
company SpaceX and will lay out his vision to all
in an ex line stream later today. But first we
check it on the markets. Ed, we're a kind of
rocketing higher on this space as well. We're currently up
one point eight percent, let's call it on the NASA
one hundred. You're seeing strength as consumer sentiment manages to
show some encouragement as we see maybe encouragement when it
(01:16):
comes to US and European trade talks. And it's game
on after what was a down week last week. But
you'll look at some of the biggest movers in the index.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, we have a deal, and that deal is between
Salesforce and the cloud data management platform, Informatica, eight billion
dollar deal.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
As you said, twenty five.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Dollars per share going to Informatica and Salesforce saying that
they're going to use a combination of cash and some
debt to finance the deal.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
But this is kind of interesting. It's a second bite
of the apple.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Informatica now twenty three dollars eighty cents in the session,
confirmation of earlier Bloomberg reporting. A lot more to learn
about what happened, not just in the last few days,
but in the last year exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And let's get to someone who helped break this scube
on Friday, Leanna Baker. It was a Friday story when
it comes to this round of.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
Em and a.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
But of course Salesforce had I di Informatica a year ago.
Speaker 6 (02:04):
We've been tracking it also since the deal fell apart.
But once you have a deal, you know, get scuttled
and not happen. You have to be really sure that
it's going to happen. So late Friday we heard that
this could be coming, you know, as early as this week,
and we sort of went for it here and we
were trying to understand what a change for Salesforce. Well,
for sure, what's changed is that they're paying two billion
dollars less than they were a year ago, So they
(02:26):
definitely look smart in that respect.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Right a year ago informatic Well, what changed for Informatica
is it shares were above thirty dollars a year ago.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
And when we broke the.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Story Friday, I think it was somewhere around twenty dollars
or so. How Salesforce is funding this, the sort of
mechanics of the deal, Salesforce's history of EM and A,
how much of this was surprising to the team.
Speaker 6 (02:50):
So Salesforce is sort of a juggernau An M and A.
They came in the crosshairs of activists investors a few
years ago. Both of you covered that really closely, where
Benioff's A position strategy was under the spotlight. So he
sort of took a breather for a few years, and
here he's back in a big way with this eight
billion dollar acquisition. You might recall in the fall we
broke another story Salesforce pot Own, which is a smaller
(03:13):
deal at one point nine billion. So Salesforce still has
been doing deals, but you know, this is the largest
in a while. Historically Slacked was larger, and they also
did Tableau software many years ago. So this is a
company that just loves inorganic growth and it's back on
track in terms of getting those deals.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I mean they also bought MuleSoft, which of course actually
competes with Informatica. So how is the regulatory process going
to look?
Speaker 6 (03:37):
So analysts are watching this overlap between the companies. It'll
definitely be a test to see how Salesforce and Marke
betting off or maybe viewed under this administration. So we'll
be tracking that closely. But for what we understand, they
got this deal done. It didn't stop them from getting
it announced, and we'll see what comes next.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Bloombergsianna Baker, who leads our deal's team, Thank you very much.
It's get some markets reaction and a head of market
analysis at RBC bre In Dolphin. It's an interesting headline, right, Janet,
we have some M and A in the software space
just as a moment in time. How do you see
that playing out more broadly for SaaS and software corners
(04:15):
of the tech market.
Speaker 7 (04:18):
Hi Ed thanks for having me. I think that's very exciting.
Speaker 8 (04:21):
I think AI is still driving a lot of these
excitement and what we are looking is that there's some
more consolidation in the industry.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
I think our companies want to deepen.
Speaker 8 (04:33):
And strengthen their capability in AI driven growth in our
data analytics and CRR management, and also developing further in
the cloud. So I guess this is a very exciting
and sort of builds up further the case for that
long term AI investment.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I'm just looking at shares of Nvidia. They're up now
three percent in the session. The macro event of the week,
the macro event, it's probably in Video's earnings after the
market closed on Wednesday night on your desk for your
clients in your world. Is it a macro level event
something like in video earnings.
Speaker 8 (05:12):
Yeah, definitely. I think everyone is very excited about it.
I think what we'll be looking at is definitely the
profit margins. It is getting harder and harder to defend,
and also, of course the rampop of Blackwell and how
the servers data services are basically digesting the inventores and
(05:35):
also sovereign AI.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
I think that's a very important tailwind.
Speaker 8 (05:40):
For Nvidia in the future, and I think, of course
commentaries on the geopolitic situation sells to China and things
like that.
Speaker 7 (05:49):
And also I think.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
In general, I think the valuations of Nvidia is not
demanding at all.
Speaker 7 (05:56):
It's only twenty five times for earnings.
Speaker 8 (05:59):
But I think I guess the market is still having
doubts on the digestion of those AI chips, given that
the hyperscalers have already spent hundreds billions of dollars and
how much of that sovereign AI and stargate is going
to compensate for that, And I think we're still in
this digestion phase. So it'll be very interesting to hear
how the executives are going to comment on that.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So do you need to hear that bullishness, that ultimate
demand being pushed forward and really enthusiastic guidance coming from
Jensen to build around the AI theme once again outweighing
what has been geopolitics that weighs down on some of
these hardware names.
Speaker 8 (06:38):
I think, so, I think we actually need to see
a pretty bullish guidance. The problem is that the stock
has risen I think about forty percent since slow and
to get even high to break the previous high. I
think we need more good deals. And as I said,
there's still a lot of concerns on geopolitics. I mean
(06:59):
President Trump has canceled that aidefield and rule, but for
sure if something else is coming. So I guess there's
still a lot of concern on the competitive landscape. China
is very close behind, you know. I guess we need
a lot of good news for the share prices to
power ahead.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And just take stock for a moment of the on
flought of headwinds we've had from a geopolitical nature. We're
about to dig into Apple. Of course the tariff anxiety there,
but also the tip for tap that might come back
if Europe does indeed have its eye on big tech
in terms of yet more digital services taxes. Ways to respond, Janet,
how hard is it to invest in big tech big
(07:37):
US names at the moment?
Speaker 7 (07:41):
To be honest, I think the long term story is intact.
Speaker 8 (07:43):
I think these are great growth compounders that I don't
think people are doubtful of their potential and their long
term growth. But the problem is that in near term
there's still so much uncertainty on a tariff and I
think even if the tariffs are scaling back or pause
or whatever, I think at the end of the day,
some of these big tech companies that are highly linked
(08:05):
in the supply chains will still see some erosion in.
Speaker 7 (08:09):
Their profit margin. Right, So I guess that's the concern.
Speaker 8 (08:12):
And the thing is they're already very big and it
is very hard to grow at such a fast pace
going forward. So I guess given the valuations have come
back up again after the recent valley, I guess investors
are going to be back in a more cautious mode
going forward.
Speaker 7 (08:29):
We need more good news. We need our trade US.
Speaker 8 (08:32):
We will need more AI good news, we need more
better economic.
Speaker 7 (08:37):
Data from the US and lower inflation.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
For example, Janet, is there a corner of the technology
sector that's underappreciated by the market.
Speaker 7 (08:51):
I think, I mean for US.
Speaker 8 (08:53):
Right, we are more enthusiastic on the AI pets and
shovels play. But as I said, I think the recent
rally has moved back up some of those valuations. I
think software remains a good place to be given that
it is arguably less impacted by tariff and I think
(09:13):
there's still a lot of innovation going on. I think
I think some of the share price movement in big
tech companies, for example, Apple has been quite negative, and
I think obviously it is impacted by geopolitics and tariffs,
but I guess investors are also looking for some new innovation,
new products, pipelines and things like that, like new features
(09:36):
on AI.
Speaker 7 (09:36):
I think in April were able to deliver that.
Speaker 8 (09:39):
I think that can offset some of that worries and
may potentially recover from the recent negative share price reaction.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We're going to be digging into that, but a moment,
a little bit more on Apple January. Obviously, Ruandolphin head
a market analysis thank you coming up, as they say,
well after a list getting a bit of a reprieve
after its longest sell off we've seen in more than
three years. But Trump's tas threats could introduce more volatility.
I can discuss that in a moment. But ed, we've
got some breaking news on moving Trump Media.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, did you see DJT, the parent company of Truth Social.
So the stocks down more than nine percent the news
it's a pretty simple story. Trump Media is going to
raise two and a half billion US dollars in capital
to buy bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
There was some tropy trading I think.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
We opened markedly higher, we are now very much down
more than nine percent.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
We'll continue to track that story.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
Carro.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
This is plumbag technology. Take a look at shares of Apple,
the tech giant finally in the green after eight straight
(10:51):
days of losses. Still, Apple remains the mag seven's worst
performing stock in twenty twenty five, having fallen twenty one
percent so far.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Yeah, todate Bluembos.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Ryan for Seneca writes today the iPhone maker faces still
more pain, and he joins us. Now, Ryan, where is
that pain coming from from the stalks perspective?
Speaker 10 (11:11):
Hey, thanks for having me on so obviously, last week
we got the surprise announcement about tariffs specifically on Apple
if it doesn't bring its manufacturing to the United States.
This was later expanded to include all smartphone makers. But
I think just the level of political uncertainty remains extremely
elevated for Apple. Obviously, we saw so much volatility following
(11:32):
the initial tariff announcement in April.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
There was then, you know.
Speaker 10 (11:36):
Exemptions provided for a certain electronics category, a sort of
a pause.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
With respect to China.
Speaker 10 (11:41):
We saw another tariffs against the European Union, which were
also paused. So just the back and forth really has
investors and analysts struggling to kind of figure out what
is the impact that Apple going to be, how do
they navigate this kind of environment, and what is going
to be the sort of knock on effects with respects
to its earnings, its margins, with the demand, with pricing.
Still a lot of very fundamental questions surrounding the company
(12:04):
right now.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
What's so interesting is we had Gil Luria on the
show last week really talking from DA Davison Analysis, saying
it's surprised at how poorly Tim Cook seems to be
navigating this on a political perspective, but also there's so
many other headwinds that are boveting the company right now.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 10 (12:22):
They've already been struggling with their AI offerings. Growth has
been pretty tepid, especially world up to other megacap companies
for quite some time. The multiple remains sort of at
the higher end of things. There are a lot of
issues that have investors kind of looking around and saying,
if you're going to buy a big tech company, what
is really the argument for owning Apple over other ones
that offer stronger growth or all over multiple or a
(12:43):
stronger AI position. Or they don't come with this kind
of political risk. So certainly all the sort of headwinds
are stacked up against Apple in a way that they
are not for the other megacap tech stocks.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Set the scene for US then year to date for
the mag seven Apples down twenty one percent. But what
does the rest of the field look like you cover
each of these names.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Other names are doing pretty well.
Speaker 10 (13:03):
There's been obviously a great deal of volatility, but some
names have recently broken back into the green for the year.
I mean, I think a lot of these companies continue
to have a lot of really you know, adamant supporters.
They are still well liked on Wall Street. The most
recent earning season showed pretty durable growth trends. A lot
of them deal in market positions that don't have too
(13:24):
much tariff impact, like software or just internet services, online advertising.
You know, there's some sort of second derivative move if
you consider the impact to just economic growth and so forth.
But otherwise the names are doing pretty well. Apple is
really an outlier here, and the only one that's pretty
close to it is Tesla, although I think I checked
this morning and that stock is down about thirteen percent
or so. This year, so the degree to which that
(13:44):
one is even lacking is far lower.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Ran, Sorry, Ran Plastelica, It's great to have you. Or
is some really well read stories, We appreciate it. Let's
just go back to the nuts and bolts of the
Apple story with Karenina and Anasy just create a strategies
president and principle analyst and going back to well the
torrent of truth social posts that were out on Friday
first focused on Apple, but then spreading their way. It
(14:07):
would feel from Trump that all foreign made smartphones would
potentially be looking at a twenty five percent tariff, does
happen in some way end up having an edge in that.
Speaker 11 (14:19):
You know, the phone is still the most valued device
that consumers are caring and so hitting on smartphones when
initially Trumpets said that they were going to be exempt,
is going to be you know, hard for everybody. If
you're looking at the US market, Samsung and Apple are
dominating the market and so having tariffs apply to Samsung
(14:43):
as well, who will have limited availability to make devices
here in the US, is going to be hard for Apple.
Is all about juggling the short term and the longer
term prospect, trying to balance not upsetting the president for
above say, time, not upsetting China either because it's a
big market for them as well.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And India where they've been shifting manufacturing currently. Not What
does Tim Cook do to satisfy all players right now?
Speaker 11 (15:12):
I think buying time is probably his best option, and
so making whatever promise he can make of investing in
the US. Obviously, if you're thinking about repositioning the production
here in the US, we're talking way further than the
term that term is going to be serving, and so
buying time for the next two to three years might
(15:35):
be all that is needed for now.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
The way that Tim could it Tim Cook put it
in twenty seventeen, I think it was on stage with
Fortune magazine, is that in China you could fill a
football stadium with specialist tooling engineers, and in America you
couldn't fill a room, a meeting room with that same
level of skill set. You know all about vertical integration
and how the iPhone is assembled and all different hands
(16:00):
that touch one handset. Just try and help our audience
understand what it would mean not to move an iPhone
factory to America, but everything else that comes with it.
Speaker 11 (16:10):
That is what is impossible to do. I mean moving
the supply chain and then food production here is really
impossible unless you're willing to invest, and not just from
an Apple perspective, but from a government perspective. You know,
billions of dollars in replicating this and investing ten plus
years to do so. I think what you can aspire
(16:32):
to do is, you know, an assembled in America the
same way as you have designed in Cupertino on the
back of a device. That is the short term hope.
You know, everything else is really more a fairy tale.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Apple shares fell last week when a headline crossed the
Bloomberg terminal the Open AI was buying Johnny Ives hardware
startup io for six point five billion dollars to make
a suite of devices.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Your action, please, Carolina Milanacy.
Speaker 11 (17:03):
You know that is definitely pressure that right now Apple
could do without. You know, they have Apple Vision pro
very successful in enterprise from an interest perspective, not necessarily
a volume perspective, but hasn't really hit consumers for a
range of things from the price point to the ecosystem.
So hearing you know somebody that has worked for Apple
(17:27):
so closely and maybe didn't leave on best terms coming
with open AI. So you're bringing together daisore point for
Apple right now with Apple Intelligence plus a competition from
a glass or you know, some kind of XRAR play.
(17:47):
Definitely not a good moment for Apple.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Not a good moment, but only for cell ratings. On
the stock, it's still very close to a three trillion
dollar company. Can they swiftly turn things around? Nay, we
galvanized growth here, Carolina.
Speaker 11 (18:03):
I do think that we are going to have some
of the answer in a couple of weeks at WDC,
when we're going to see possibly like Mark German was
reporting a redesign from an OS perspective Beth for iPhone,
watch a Mac, but also hearing awfully some improvement on
the or some development on the Apple intelligence part. I
(18:28):
think ultimately Apple is still from a vendor perspective, from
a consumer point of view, the one that has the
strongest ecosystem and that can tie in consumers both from
a services perspective and hardware. And I think that the
point that is getting people scratching their heads right now
is how long it's been taken from an Apple intelligence perspective.
(18:50):
But I still believe that ultimately are they have all
the pieces that can come together to really continue to
develop their ecosystem wrong way and police of their customers curly.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
In a millienacy of creative strategy. It's great to have
you back here on Bloomberg Technology. Thank you know. Coming up, Mark.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Zuckerberg's effort to get close with President Trump have given
him direct access to the White House.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
But what's that actually done for his company? We have
more on that next. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to win over Maga World have brought
the Meta CEO close to the President Trump and his administration,
But according to the latest Bloomberg Big Take, Zark's efforts
have yet to bear significant fruit for the social media company.
Joining us with more is Bloomberg's Riley Griffin, one of
the authors of that big Take. It's so deeply reported
and it's to look at how Mark Zuckerberg has almost
(19:57):
like changed himself over a period of time to kind
of align with this administration. But the conclusion of the
piece is that for Meta, it's not yet opened any
doors in a way that helps the company's profile.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Absolutely.
Speaker 12 (20:11):
My colleague Kurt Wagner and I spoke with more than
fifty people for this story, which spans several decades really,
and what we found is that the efforts to pivot
towards Trump and his administration have not yet borne the
fruit that the company so desires. And one of the
case in points of that strategy, and it's perhaps failing
(20:31):
so far, has been Mark Zuckerberg's attempts to end the
FTC trial that you and I have spoken so often
about Ed Mark Zuckerberg ended up taking the stand, but
that was one of the moments that might show some
of the weakness of this strategy.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I love going through the piece the frequent flier visualizations
of how often he's on his plane trying to go
back and forth to Washington. But also what stunned me
was just how little respect ultimately it seemed that previous
President Biden had for Mark Zuckerberg and also many for Metta.
Speaker 12 (21:04):
Yes, that was one of the most interesting lines of
reporting for me too, Caroline. What we found was that
the Biden administration did not have a productive relationship with
Meta over years, and that President Biden himself, even dating
back to when he was a vice president, was incredibly
skeptical of the social media giant, and Mark Zuckerberg personally.
(21:25):
We learned that you called him behind closed doors little TOWRP,
among other perhaps more colorful terms. And this really came
to a head during the COVID nineteen pandemic as misinformation spread.
There was that notable moment where Joe Biden, President Joe
Biden called Meta, said Meta was killing people as it
(21:47):
was spreading misinformation online.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Hey, real quick, how's morale inside Meta? Right now?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
You learn very quickly in Silicon Valley that a company's
figurehead doesn't necessarily reflect its workforce.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (21:58):
Well, Meta is full of tens of thousands of employees,
so obviously there's a wide range. But what we've found
is that a lot of employees are really discontent with
this approach. They're holding secret book clubs to talk about
Sarah wyn Williams memoir Careless People, they are having wellness checks.
(22:19):
Many folks have believed that Meta had done layoffs in
an effort to quell descent. The company obviously denies that claim,
but it's sour inside the company.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Bloomberg's Roley Griffin, it's a very long piece. I heard.
You should go and read it. Some deep dives there
coming up. Cutting the cost of satellite manufacturing. What I
Founders Fund is doubling down on demand in the space
sector for its latest investment in Indurosat. This is Bloomberg Technology.
(22:58):
Welcome back to bloom Bag Technology and Caroline Hide in
New York.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Now I met love Low in San Francisco. Some momentum
in the market's character.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Certainly is when it comes to stocks. Just check out
what's happening on the NASDAG best days. It's about mid May.
We are hired by the tune of two percent. In fact,
only four stocks of this major benchmark are actually in
the red. What's the moon music about? Is about macro.
It's about consumer sentiment looking better. It's about the bond
market looking a little bit calmer. Is about, of course,
that key macro event that is in Vidio's numbers, coming
(23:25):
as soon as tomorrow. But I'm also looking at Bitcoin
actually not catching that upward draft. It's interesting one hundred
and nine thousand. Look, we still need those all time highs,
but it's notable that we haven't followed stocks higher. Move on,
and though have a look at what ectes are doing
in response to a bitcoin play. Everyone wants to be
Michael Saler nowadays, the strategy strategy being born out with Trump,
(23:45):
the DJT take care as it's known Trump media, they're
going to be selling stock to buy bitcoin. It spends
it lower by eleven percent of the moment. But I'm
looking at pdd woful, the worst performing the nasat one hundred.
This is, of course the owner of Timu. What it
looks as though, of course, geopolitics trade anxiety plays out
with profit tumbling some forty seven percent ed, but notably
(24:06):
no future path that looks pretty. They have to invest
to change up the business model at all.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Right, let's go from public markets to private markets and
head to space. Bulgarian satellite manufacturer in Durosat has announced
it's raised forty three million euros that's around forty nine
million US dollars. This latest funning round was there by
Peter Teal's Founder's fund, delighted to bring in in Durosat
CEO Right Rychev and founders fun partner Delian Asparov, who
join us from Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. And I'll start with you.
(24:35):
You have managed to change the way that satellites are
manufactured and also how profitable that business is. So why
do you need to raise this money. What are you
going to do to expand your production of those next
gen satellites?
Speaker 13 (24:48):
Yeah, so, first of all, we didn't believe that there
will be a part of them shifting the way that
humanity builds the next future infrastructures in space, which in
a simple thums means, how do we put multiple new
sensors like cameras, traders, navigation systems of the future as
fast as humanly possible to orbit? And how do we
objectively lower the data to cost as little as one
(25:10):
door per gigabyte of any type of space data. And
the way that we approach this problem is basically trying
to our best to build a satellite that was from
day one designs for manufacturing, which is very unusual in
a traditionally very hardware centric industry where everyone is usually
building tailor made solutions for every individual missions.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
We believe that's the way to go.
Speaker 13 (25:31):
We have leveraged a lot of our experience in the
region of the center Eastern Europe concerning automotive designs, medical
robotic industries, and we have tried our best to embed
those into the satellite design.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Tellian, you are Bulgarian and I know this is a
really big moment view and important to you. You see
in Duro sat As being to Bulgaria almost like what
TSMC is to Taiwan.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Just explain your pieces there.
Speaker 14 (26:00):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, as being a native of the country,
I had a predisposition to you know, sort of find
an investment here for a long time, but only if
it met the sort of standard you know, founder's fund
the bar and as you know ed, we've been a
big investor in a ton of the you know, leading
aerospace companies everything obviously from behemoths like SpaceX, where we
were early and consistent backer, but also in some of
(26:21):
the next generation you know sort of companies that are
coming up, you.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
Know, Impulse led by Tom Muller.
Speaker 14 (26:25):
Varda, the company that I incubated, hadrian focus on automated
CNC manufacturing.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
But one of the core thesis.
Speaker 14 (26:31):
That we wanted to you know, sort of focus on
as we see this you know, sort of explosion in
the industry was somebody that was focused on you know,
mass manufacturing of satellites, but in a way that more
closely resembles you know, you were talking about Apple early
on the show, something that looks more like a consumer electronics,
Apple manufacturing line. Then how the vast majority of satellites,
even STARTLINGK satellites are assembled today, which is very tailored,
(26:53):
one off, super custom made. If you look at the
you know, sort of average American satellite in terms of
its overlap with the autumn motive consumer electronics for medical industries,
there's very little. And so for a long time I'd
kind of given up on the thesis of actually being
able to invest in somebody in this category. The thesis
was always find somebody that's like the you know, sort
of Dell for satellites.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
But you know, I'd been.
Speaker 14 (27:12):
Catching up with Reicho and in Daro SAT for several years,
and you know, he had very little funding to get
going on the company, and so he had to use
some of these more consumer electronics automotive supply chains to
build up his satellites and steadily made.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Them bigger and bigger.
Speaker 14 (27:26):
Revenues got bigger and bigger, to the point where in
Q four of last year, even though I'd always had
this sort of you know, negative bias towards Bulgaryus, I
was like, God, if I tell Peter that he hired
a Bulgarian and he wants to invest in a Bulgarian company.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
He's going to kick me out of the room.
Speaker 14 (27:38):
Obviously, he's going to say, you know, del you're crazy.
But at some point, the numbers, the quality of the technology,
the culture of the team, the fact that they've you know,
invested into the local university programs to start to train
their own next generation talent.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
That's what I mean when I talk about, you know, sort.
Speaker 14 (27:51):
Of the TSMC of Bulgaria, where it's both this national
jewel in this very technologically you sort of forward sector,
but deeply integrated in the society. The point where you know,
if you're a fifteen year old Bulgarian, you know your
physics is your computer engineer, mechanical engineer. All you can
dream is the daily graduate university and getting it the
go work from right jail.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
So right show. We hear about the thesis. We know
that the revenue is are climbing, but how can you
be like Apple in terms of profitability, in terms of margin?
How profitable are you?
Speaker 13 (28:20):
Well, there is a lot of components in achieving profitability.
I'm happy to say that we went on the market
selling satellites in early twenty eighteen and we became profitable
that same year, which usually never happens for a space company.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Usually they need like a.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
Decade at best.
Speaker 13 (28:35):
And ever since, our business grows between two and three
times zero over in terms of revenue, and every single
line of our business today has an average gross margin
between seventy seventy five and seventy seven percent. So I
think we're pretty close to those type of metrics. But again,
we are all only focused on the challenges that we
really want to bring the industry to a completely new
level and scale. And I believe honestly, at the end
(28:58):
of the day, the attentive still the products and the
execution of the team would leads to anyway immense market opportunity.
And this is what we're hoping to achieve with our
new inclobal partners from Founders Fund.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And those partners Delian Can they be other of your investments?
Just thinking of SpaceX as you mentioned Varda, which of
course a precedent of how much are you going to
turn to in durosap for your equipment?
Speaker 14 (29:22):
Yeah, I mean, look, as you know, we're you know,
sort of looking at the next generation vehicles across the portfolio.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
If you just look at the economics of what right
show is offering.
Speaker 14 (29:30):
It is just vastly differentiated relative to anything that you
can find either in the European or the American market.
Right if you think about the sort of traditional aerospace suppliers,
think folks like you know, Airbus, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Blue
Canyon Space Systems.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
All of their components are these things that are based.
Speaker 14 (29:46):
Off of like nineteen seventy technologies that have been ever
so slowly iterated on. And there is benefit to that
that they have flight heritage, but there's so much stuck
and not able to take that sort of monumental leap forward.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
So I won't comment on the specific companies, but I can.
Speaker 14 (29:59):
Already is part of how I got alerted to Endurero
was because we already had a significant amount of the
founder's fund portfolio and some of the broader Silicon Valley
funded Defense, TAC and you know space startups already as
customers of his. You know, as I started to analyze everyone,
I realized there was an arms dealer, there was a
Dell for satellites already. It just happened to be this
Bulgarian company that you know, for a long time, I
(30:21):
just wasn't sure that I could take seriously, you know,
given that I knew that I had this predisposition towards Bulgaria, and.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
To have these margins that we're.
Speaker 14 (30:27):
Talking about, I mean the fact that you can build
a space company profitably, growing quickly at seventy plus percent margins.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
I mean, those are the things that you see in.
Speaker 14 (30:34):
You know, sort of consumer electronics behemoths like Apple. But
if you look at the like average American aerospace or
defense company, these are all like you know, best case
twenty thirty percent margins, burning hundreds of millions of dollars
before they ever get to any semblance of profitability. And
all of these things never get to this level of margin.
This is why when you look at everything from Planet
Labs to Maxar to Iridium, all these companies that you
know operate in the satellite world, they never trade above
(30:58):
like three x revenues because there's no growth manager profitability.
When you look at the right righteous business insane, the
ce these metrics, you almost look like a traditional Silk
and Valley SaaS company in terms of margin and growth.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Right, let me ask you this to finish, what's your
strategy for manufacturing in the United States in the future.
Speaker 13 (31:16):
I'm proud to say that the majority of our business
is already in US and we are heavily involved in
supporting the local ecosystem. We have quite advanced team in Denver.
Already we are assembling and operating satellites.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
For our US customer based from US.
Speaker 13 (31:30):
So I really consider that there is no such dramatic
difference between what we do in Bulgaria and in Europe
and generally and what we are planning to do even
expand for the US. Just to give you the context,
we have already invested significant amounts millions just starting last year,
way before there was this tension that drived between the
two continents, and I think this extension is will be
very healthy for our business. I mean, we need to
(31:52):
learn how to do local stuff better than anyone else.
We need to empower the local ecosystem.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
And I think we also.
Speaker 13 (31:57):
Bring the knowledge and don't know how and a little
bit of innovation that will be very healthy for the
US marketing journal.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Right ol Rachel CEO of Jurosat dellian Asparov, partner at
Founder's Fund. We appreciate your time. Thank you both from Sophia,
Bulgaria coming up a new company started by the founder
of quantum computing firm Righetti. They aims to use quantum
to address cost and energy bottlenecks in scaling AI.
Speaker 15 (32:20):
That's next, there's a Bloomberg technology.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
The name Chad Brigghetti may be familiar to those in
the quantum computing world. Now, the quantum computer entrepreneur and
physicist is launching a new company called Signaldry. It aims
to use quantum to address cost and energy bottomnecks that
are associated with AI. Delight to say, Chabrighetti joins us. Now,
I think we will get to the backstory of your
involvement in the earlier days of this industry. But what
(33:00):
is the objective of the new company and what is
different about the new company's technology?
Speaker 16 (33:07):
HI great to be here today.
Speaker 17 (33:08):
Signtry is building quantum accelerated AI servers to exponentially speed
up training.
Speaker 16 (33:15):
And inference for these large models.
Speaker 17 (33:17):
As you've heard about, there's growing energy requirements, power requirements
that are very challenging to meet, and there's growing costs
for training new models, and ultimately quantum can provide a
solution to that with these exponential speed ups. In the
last few years, there's been new algorithms developed that can
exponentially speed up things like stochastic gradient descent or low
rank adaptation that are critical for training and inference in
(33:40):
large models, and really bring in about the accessibility, affordability,
and sustainability of true widespread adoption of AI.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
We were recently at Nvidia gtc's Quantum Day. We did
a special show where many sort of the leaders in
this field joined us and kind of what struck me
is they all sat there on stage with Daco Jensen
Wang is how many companies are working on this, how
many publicly traded companies. And I give you that preamble
to ask, why do we need a new company focused
(34:09):
on this task? Why can the technology been developed by
all these others, including the namesay company founded, not crack
it themselves.
Speaker 17 (34:18):
It's a great question and I've thought about that as well,
and ultimately that led me to starting Signaltry with my
co founder Adelia Friedsen, who also worked with me at
Righetti and helping the company public in twenty twenty two. Ultimately,
all of these companies that are out there today are
making tremendous progress. There's been tremendous advancement just in the
last three years alone, new CUBA types like neutral atoms
and photonics have you know, you know, advanced as much
(34:41):
or even more.
Speaker 16 (34:41):
Than supermarket and cubits have.
Speaker 17 (34:43):
And ultimately what we see is an opportunity to combine
these different modalities within a single fault tolerant architecture.
Speaker 16 (34:50):
And we thought about, you know, and then on the.
Speaker 17 (34:52):
Flip side of that, to take a laser focus on
accelerating these compute challenges in AI. Ultimately, over the past
two or three years, AI it's become so useful and
so widely use that it's redefined. It's basically created a
new abstraction layer for computing hardware. And with that computer
hardware itself needs to evolve and change. If you look
at the quantic computing companies that are out there right now,
(35:14):
even the public ones and the one that I built
in Regetting Computing, all of those roadmaps, their plans for
five ten years out were locked in before AI became
the dominant compute paradigm. And so today we see an
opportunity to bring a new architecture that is specifically focused
on accelerating training and inference, on lowering the cost and
energy requirements. And also at combining different Cubitt modalities because
(35:36):
all the companies today also are sideloaed with respect to
their technology choices, which again were made before AI became
the dominant paradigm. So we're bringing multiple different Cubitt types
together within a single fault tone and architecture explicitly built
for AI.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Chad, do you need more money to do this because
at the moment you're backed by Y Combinator. I'm sure
you've got some money made on your previous company, But
how much you need outside investment?
Speaker 17 (35:59):
Well, of course this is deep technology in the end,
and the size of this market if you can crack this,
when quantum really comes online and starts to impact AI
training and inference costs, it's going to be a trillion
dollar market. And we see this as completely inevitable. Ultimately,
nature it self runs on quantum mechanics in the most
information rich environments at the lowest level of nature. We
(36:19):
use quantum mechanics to process that information, and quantum reflects
that mirrors at reality and ultimately is a more efficient
way of computing long term.
Speaker 16 (36:27):
So we're going to use this in conjunction with GPUs,
in conjunction with large deal classical infrastructure.
Speaker 17 (36:32):
It's an enormous opportunity, and ultimately we believe that when
our multi modality quantum architecture comes online that is not
you know, other single modality architectures aren't ultimately going to
be able to compete with it. We will absolutely need
to raise additional capital going forward. The company is just
getting going. We're launching and you know, publicly announcing the
(36:53):
company today, So.
Speaker 16 (36:55):
We're in the early stages. But we're really excited.
Speaker 17 (36:57):
Our team is growing very fast, and we're you know,
we're very excited what the next few years old.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Chad to be personal about it. How has Regetti responded?
It bears your name. I'm sure it's a help in
many ways for you because your name is still so
legendary within quantum. But how did they respond when they're
also teaming up the Quanta in Taiwan, which is a
server maker and looking at the adoption of quantum there.
Speaker 16 (37:22):
Yeah, well, ultimately you need to ask the boat and
the team there.
Speaker 17 (37:27):
I think with respect to the progress towards ai these
are deep architectural choices that need to be made early
on in establishing your hardware roadmap and your company vision
and plan, you need, the DNA, you need to be
you know, early on in the organization, and once those
things get locked in, there are forces that make it
(37:47):
very challenging to to you know, to adjust that vision,
to adjust those roadmaps, because it relates to all of
your partnerships, it relates to your talent base, it relates
to how you think and talk about the technology internally
and your culture.
Speaker 16 (37:58):
So ultimately, we think being.
Speaker 17 (38:00):
Started started from the very get go focused on AIS,
the singular killer application for quantum technologies. Getting the right
team together very early on in developing an architecture, leveraging
multiple different CUBA types that are needed to ultimately reach
the combination of cost, speed and scale to unlock these
AI applications is the winning.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Approach to this, Chad, it's great speaking with you, Chad Raghetti,
his new company, Siguldry, appreciate you joining shares of China's bid.
They extended losses for the second day and it's Hong
Kong trading. They're down here in depository receipts as well.
This after the electric car maker announced sweeping price cuts
up to thirty four percent on some of its vehicles.
As his competition at home intensifies for the sector. Grimberg's
(38:43):
David Welch joins us. Now, how fierce is the price
competition in China?
Speaker 18 (38:48):
David, It's the one market where you really have price
competition is in the Chinese market because the domestic players,
they so dominate their home market and there are very
few export are import into the market. That tariffs aren't
really wreaking havoc on it the way it is in
other parts of the world, so you don't have companies
looking to raise prices to deal with tariffs. They're all
(39:10):
domestic anyways, and they get all their parts, batteries, everything domestically,
so they don't have that kind of pressure. The pressure
is still there as it has been for a few
years to lower prices and gain market share, probably try
to get some of the foreign players out of the market.
That's been going on for a long time. It's why
General Motors and Volkswagen have struggled, is why Tesla is struggling.
And I think you have companies like Bid and shall
(39:31):
Mate who have such They've had a lot of growth,
they want to keep it going, so they're going to
keep splashing prices too to gain that market share.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
You mentioned Tesla.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
The other battleground that we compare Tesla to bid On
is Europe, and the data over the holiday weekend in
the US was that, you know, Tesla is suffering in
Europe because of the political backlash of Ela Musk. There's
also BYD doing well.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
There, that's right.
Speaker 18 (39:58):
You know, the Chinese automakers have done very well to
gain a lot of ground there and Tesla's got a
lot of problems in that market. I think Europeans, particularly
with this new round of tariffs fifty percent being announced
by Trump. Elon must being close to Trump, I think
that that's going to continue to hurt the brand. It's
going to continue to kind of put a shadow over
Tesla in the market. They've also got stale product. The
(40:20):
Europeans have a lot of evs. Now. Chinese competition is there,
even though that's getting hit with some tariffs, but it's
not good for Tesla in that market, and I think
only fresh products would help them out. Even if Elon
were to say tomorrow he's quitting Dose and going back
to running Tesla, that doesn't really change what's happened with
his brand in terms of the politics with some American
(40:43):
buyers and with a bunch of European buyers, so that
trouble is going to stick around for a while.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
I think Bluebeg's David Welch in Detroit, thank you very much,
stick with elon mask. He's set to address his SpaceX
workforce today. Among the discussions will be his long term
goal for the company of sending humans to Mars. All
this head of a scheduled test flight with the company
Starship Rocket six thirty pm Local time, bloombergs Lauren Grushes.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Here set the scene.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
You and I used to attend these kind of elong,
big picture, star based moments in person.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
What are we expecting him to talk about?
Speaker 9 (41:15):
Yeah, I would say I would expect probably some of
the same hits that he normally does. You know, he
gives these Starship and Mars updates about once a year
or so. But you know, every time he does give
one of these discussions, he gives a few new tweaks.
Speaker 19 (41:28):
Maybe there's some new timelines, some new changes, new upgrades
to the hardware for Starship. Wheres the plan?
Speaker 9 (41:35):
So you know, I think we'll be listening for some
of the same old phrases. You know, preserving the light
of consciousness.
Speaker 19 (41:42):
Is a big one, but also looking forward to some
maybe updates on timelines and where what we might expect in.
Speaker 9 (41:52):
The year ahead for certain milestones that they need to achieve.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Well, big day for Starship. How are we bracing ourselves
because the last two tests so ended an explosion?
Speaker 19 (42:02):
I would say the stakes for this flight are particularly
high because of those explosions you mentioned.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
The last two flights did not end well.
Speaker 9 (42:10):
Both ended in debris streaming over the sky over the Gulf,
and so hopefully they have fixed the problems from those
two flights.
Speaker 16 (42:20):
SpaceX did provide an update.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
Saying they know the causes for both of those explosions,
that they were actually distinctly different in terms of what
caused them, and that they have provided the appropriate design
and hardware fixes.
Speaker 16 (42:35):
So we'll see if that holds.
Speaker 19 (42:36):
I think we'll all be holding our breath at about
the eight minute mark, which was when both of those
flights terminated.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Early, Lauren, we just have twenty seconds, But remind us
the ultimate goal, which is getting humans to Mars, and
how Starship fits.
Speaker 19 (42:50):
Yes, so Starship is the primary vehicle for which SpaceX
intends to send humans to Mars.
Speaker 20 (42:58):
Also has a contract with NASA to land humans on
the moon with the vehicle, and eventually Starship will be
the primary vehicle that SpaceX uses to launch everything in
the future.
Speaker 9 (43:08):
So a lot is writing on the vehicle.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Bloomberg's low Andngrush a busy day. We appreciate it now.
That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Ed Tune in tomorrow for a special edition of Bloomberg
Technology looking at Nvidia's earnings at six thirty pm Eastern
Time three thirty pm Pacific and big thanks everyone that tunes.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Into the podcast. Listen to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
You know where to find it online on Apple, Spotify, iHeart,
and all the Bloomberg platforms. This is Bloomberg 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 Ludlow.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Live from New York and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up, Salesforce will acquire Informatica for eight billion dollars,
one of the biggest ever deals with the company for
the next phase to they I driven.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Growth plus Apple shares coming off their longest selloff in
more than three years.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Is attacks from the White House escalate.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And Elon Musk turns his attention back to his rocket
company SpaceX and will lay out his vision to all
in an ex line stream later today. But first we
check it on the markets. Ed, we're a kind of
rocketing higher on this space as well. We're currently up
one point eight percent, let's call it on the NASA
one hundred. You're seeing strength as consumer sentiment manages to
show some encouragement as we see maybe encouragement when it
(01:16):
comes to US and European trade talks. And it's game
on after what was a down week last week. But
you'll look at some of the biggest movers in the index.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, we have a deal, and that deal is between
Salesforce and the cloud data management platform, Informatica, eight billion
dollar deal.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
As you said, twenty five.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Dollars per share going to Informatica and Salesforce saying that
they're going to use a combination of cash and some
debt to finance the deal.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
But this is kind of interesting. It's a second bite
of the apple.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Informatica now twenty three dollars eighty cents in the session,
confirmation of earlier Bloomberg reporting. A lot more to learn
about what happened, not just in the last few days,
but in the last year exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And let's get to someone who helped break this scube
on Friday, Leanna Baker. It was a Friday story when
it comes to this round of.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
Em and a.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
But of course Salesforce had I di Informatica a year ago.
Speaker 6 (02:04):
We've been tracking it also since the deal fell apart.
But once you have a deal, you know, get scuttled
and not happen. You have to be really sure that
it's going to happen. So late Friday we heard that
this could be coming, you know, as early as this week,
and we sort of went for it here and we
were trying to understand what a change for Salesforce. Well,
for sure, what's changed is that they're paying two billion
dollars less than they were a year ago, So they
(02:26):
definitely look smart in that respect.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Right a year ago informatic Well, what changed for Informatica
is it shares were above thirty dollars a year ago.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
And when we broke the.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Story Friday, I think it was somewhere around twenty dollars
or so. How Salesforce is funding this, the sort of
mechanics of the deal, Salesforce's history of EM and A,
how much of this was surprising to the team.
Speaker 6 (02:50):
So Salesforce is sort of a juggernau An M and A.
They came in the crosshairs of activists investors a few
years ago. Both of you covered that really closely, where
Benioff's A position strategy was under the spotlight. So he
sort of took a breather for a few years, and
here he's back in a big way with this eight
billion dollar acquisition. You might recall in the fall we
broke another story Salesforce pot Own, which is a smaller
(03:13):
deal at one point nine billion. So Salesforce still has
been doing deals, but you know, this is the largest
in a while. Historically Slacked was larger, and they also
did Tableau software many years ago. So this is a
company that just loves inorganic growth and it's back on
track in terms of getting those deals.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I mean they also bought MuleSoft, which of course actually
competes with Informatica. So how is the regulatory process going
to look?
Speaker 6 (03:37):
So analysts are watching this overlap between the companies. It'll
definitely be a test to see how Salesforce and Marke
betting off or maybe viewed under this administration. So we'll
be tracking that closely. But for what we understand, they
got this deal done. It didn't stop them from getting
it announced, and we'll see what comes next.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Bloombergsianna Baker, who leads our deal's team, Thank you very much.
It's get some markets reaction and a head of market
analysis at RBC bre In Dolphin. It's an interesting headline, right, Janet,
we have some M and A in the software space
just as a moment in time. How do you see
that playing out more broadly for SaaS and software corners
(04:15):
of the tech market.
Speaker 7 (04:18):
Hi Ed thanks for having me. I think that's very exciting.
Speaker 8 (04:21):
I think AI is still driving a lot of these
excitement and what we are looking is that there's some
more consolidation in the industry.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
I think our companies want to deepen.
Speaker 8 (04:33):
And strengthen their capability in AI driven growth in our
data analytics and CRR management, and also developing further in
the cloud. So I guess this is a very exciting
and sort of builds up further the case for that
long term AI investment.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I'm just looking at shares of Nvidia. They're up now
three percent in the session. The macro event of the week,
the macro event, it's probably in Video's earnings after the
market closed on Wednesday night on your desk for your
clients in your world. Is it a macro level event
something like in video earnings.
Speaker 8 (05:12):
Yeah, definitely. I think everyone is very excited about it.
I think what we'll be looking at is definitely the
profit margins. It is getting harder and harder to defend,
and also, of course the rampop of Blackwell and how
the servers data services are basically digesting the inventores and
(05:35):
also sovereign AI.
Speaker 7 (05:37):
I think that's a very important tailwind.
Speaker 8 (05:40):
For Nvidia in the future, and I think, of course
commentaries on the geopolitic situation sells to China and things
like that.
Speaker 7 (05:49):
And also I think.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
In general, I think the valuations of Nvidia is not
demanding at all.
Speaker 7 (05:56):
It's only twenty five times for earnings.
Speaker 8 (05:59):
But I think I guess the market is still having
doubts on the digestion of those AI chips, given that
the hyperscalers have already spent hundreds billions of dollars and
how much of that sovereign AI and stargate is going
to compensate for that, And I think we're still in
this digestion phase. So it'll be very interesting to hear
how the executives are going to comment on that.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So do you need to hear that bullishness, that ultimate
demand being pushed forward and really enthusiastic guidance coming from
Jensen to build around the AI theme once again outweighing
what has been geopolitics that weighs down on some of
these hardware names.
Speaker 8 (06:38):
I think, so, I think we actually need to see
a pretty bullish guidance. The problem is that the stock
has risen I think about forty percent since slow and
to get even high to break the previous high. I
think we need more good deals. And as I said,
there's still a lot of concerns on geopolitics. I mean
(06:59):
President Trump has canceled that aidefield and rule, but for
sure if something else is coming. So I guess there's
still a lot of concern on the competitive landscape. China
is very close behind, you know. I guess we need
a lot of good news for the share prices to
power ahead.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And just take stock for a moment of the on
flought of headwinds we've had from a geopolitical nature. We're
about to dig into Apple. Of course the tariff anxiety there,
but also the tip for tap that might come back
if Europe does indeed have its eye on big tech
in terms of yet more digital services taxes. Ways to respond, Janet,
how hard is it to invest in big tech big
(07:37):
US names at the moment?
Speaker 7 (07:41):
To be honest, I think the long term story is intact.
Speaker 8 (07:43):
I think these are great growth compounders that I don't
think people are doubtful of their potential and their long
term growth. But the problem is that in near term
there's still so much uncertainty on a tariff and I
think even if the tariffs are scaling back or pause
or whatever, I think at the end of the day,
some of these big tech companies that are highly linked
(08:05):
in the supply chains will still see some erosion in.
Speaker 7 (08:09):
Their profit margin. Right, So I guess that's the concern.
Speaker 8 (08:12):
And the thing is they're already very big and it
is very hard to grow at such a fast pace
going forward. So I guess given the valuations have come
back up again after the recent valley, I guess investors
are going to be back in a more cautious mode
going forward.
Speaker 7 (08:29):
We need more good news. We need our trade US.
Speaker 8 (08:32):
We will need more AI good news, we need more
better economic.
Speaker 7 (08:37):
Data from the US and lower inflation.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
For example, Janet, is there a corner of the technology
sector that's underappreciated by the market.
Speaker 7 (08:51):
I think, I mean for US.
Speaker 8 (08:53):
Right, we are more enthusiastic on the AI pets and
shovels play. But as I said, I think the recent
rally has moved back up some of those valuations. I
think software remains a good place to be given that
it is arguably less impacted by tariff and I think
(09:13):
there's still a lot of innovation going on. I think
I think some of the share price movement in big
tech companies, for example, Apple has been quite negative, and
I think obviously it is impacted by geopolitics and tariffs,
but I guess investors are also looking for some new innovation,
new products, pipelines and things like that, like new features
(09:36):
on AI.
Speaker 7 (09:36):
I think in April were able to deliver that.
Speaker 8 (09:39):
I think that can offset some of that worries and
may potentially recover from the recent negative share price reaction.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We're going to be digging into that, but a moment,
a little bit more on Apple January. Obviously, Ruandolphin head
a market analysis thank you coming up, as they say,
well after a list getting a bit of a reprieve
after its longest sell off we've seen in more than
three years. But Trump's tas threats could introduce more volatility.
I can discuss that in a moment. But ed, we've
got some breaking news on moving Trump Media.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, did you see DJT, the parent company of Truth Social.
So the stocks down more than nine percent the news
it's a pretty simple story. Trump Media is going to
raise two and a half billion US dollars in capital
to buy bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
There was some tropy trading I think.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
We opened markedly higher, we are now very much down
more than nine percent.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
We'll continue to track that story.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
Carro.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
This is plumbag technology. Take a look at shares of Apple,
the tech giant finally in the green after eight straight
(10:51):
days of losses. Still, Apple remains the mag seven's worst
performing stock in twenty twenty five, having fallen twenty one
percent so far.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Yeah, todate Bluembos.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Ryan for Seneca writes today the iPhone maker faces still
more pain, and he joins us. Now, Ryan, where is
that pain coming from from the stalks perspective?
Speaker 10 (11:11):
Hey, thanks for having me on so obviously, last week
we got the surprise announcement about tariffs specifically on Apple
if it doesn't bring its manufacturing to the United States.
This was later expanded to include all smartphone makers. But
I think just the level of political uncertainty remains extremely
elevated for Apple. Obviously, we saw so much volatility following
(11:32):
the initial tariff announcement in April.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
There was then, you know.
Speaker 10 (11:36):
Exemptions provided for a certain electronics category, a sort of
a pause.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
With respect to China.
Speaker 10 (11:41):
We saw another tariffs against the European Union, which were
also paused. So just the back and forth really has
investors and analysts struggling to kind of figure out what
is the impact that Apple going to be, how do
they navigate this kind of environment, and what is going
to be the sort of knock on effects with respects
to its earnings, its margins, with the demand, with pricing.
Still a lot of very fundamental questions surrounding the company
(12:04):
right now.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
What's so interesting is we had Gil Luria on the
show last week really talking from DA Davison Analysis, saying
it's surprised at how poorly Tim Cook seems to be
navigating this on a political perspective, but also there's so
many other headwinds that are boveting the company right now.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 10 (12:22):
They've already been struggling with their AI offerings. Growth has
been pretty tepid, especially world up to other megacap companies
for quite some time. The multiple remains sort of at
the higher end of things. There are a lot of
issues that have investors kind of looking around and saying,
if you're going to buy a big tech company, what
is really the argument for owning Apple over other ones
that offer stronger growth or all over multiple or a
(12:43):
stronger AI position. Or they don't come with this kind
of political risk. So certainly all the sort of headwinds
are stacked up against Apple in a way that they
are not for the other megacap tech stocks.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Set the scene for US then year to date for
the mag seven Apples down twenty one percent. But what
does the rest of the field look like you cover
each of these names.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Other names are doing pretty well.
Speaker 10 (13:03):
There's been obviously a great deal of volatility, but some
names have recently broken back into the green for the year.
I mean, I think a lot of these companies continue
to have a lot of really you know, adamant supporters.
They are still well liked on Wall Street. The most
recent earning season showed pretty durable growth trends. A lot
of them deal in market positions that don't have too
(13:24):
much tariff impact, like software or just internet services, online advertising.
You know, there's some sort of second derivative move if
you consider the impact to just economic growth and so forth.
But otherwise the names are doing pretty well. Apple is
really an outlier here, and the only one that's pretty
close to it is Tesla, although I think I checked
this morning and that stock is down about thirteen percent
or so. This year, so the degree to which that
(13:44):
one is even lacking is far lower.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Ran, Sorry, Ran Plastelica, It's great to have you. Or
is some really well read stories, We appreciate it. Let's
just go back to the nuts and bolts of the
Apple story with Karenina and Anasy just create a strategies
president and principle analyst and going back to well the
torrent of truth social posts that were out on Friday
first focused on Apple, but then spreading their way. It
(14:07):
would feel from Trump that all foreign made smartphones would
potentially be looking at a twenty five percent tariff, does
happen in some way end up having an edge in that.
Speaker 11 (14:19):
You know, the phone is still the most valued device
that consumers are caring and so hitting on smartphones when
initially Trumpets said that they were going to be exempt,
is going to be you know, hard for everybody. If
you're looking at the US market, Samsung and Apple are
dominating the market and so having tariffs apply to Samsung
(14:43):
as well, who will have limited availability to make devices
here in the US, is going to be hard for Apple.
Is all about juggling the short term and the longer
term prospect, trying to balance not upsetting the president for
above say, time, not upsetting China either because it's a
big market for them as well.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And India where they've been shifting manufacturing currently. Not What
does Tim Cook do to satisfy all players right now?
Speaker 11 (15:12):
I think buying time is probably his best option, and
so making whatever promise he can make of investing in
the US. Obviously, if you're thinking about repositioning the production
here in the US, we're talking way further than the
term that term is going to be serving, and so
buying time for the next two to three years might
(15:35):
be all that is needed for now.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
The way that Tim could it Tim Cook put it
in twenty seventeen, I think it was on stage with
Fortune magazine, is that in China you could fill a
football stadium with specialist tooling engineers, and in America you
couldn't fill a room, a meeting room with that same
level of skill set. You know all about vertical integration
and how the iPhone is assembled and all different hands
(16:00):
that touch one handset. Just try and help our audience
understand what it would mean not to move an iPhone
factory to America, but everything else that comes with it.
Speaker 11 (16:10):
That is what is impossible to do. I mean moving
the supply chain and then food production here is really
impossible unless you're willing to invest, and not just from
an Apple perspective, but from a government perspective. You know,
billions of dollars in replicating this and investing ten plus
years to do so. I think what you can aspire
(16:32):
to do is, you know, an assembled in America the
same way as you have designed in Cupertino on the
back of a device. That is the short term hope.
You know, everything else is really more a fairy tale.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Apple shares fell last week when a headline crossed the
Bloomberg terminal the Open AI was buying Johnny Ives hardware
startup io for six point five billion dollars to make
a suite of devices.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Your action, please, Carolina Milanacy.
Speaker 11 (17:03):
You know that is definitely pressure that right now Apple
could do without. You know, they have Apple Vision pro
very successful in enterprise from an interest perspective, not necessarily
a volume perspective, but hasn't really hit consumers for a
range of things from the price point to the ecosystem.
So hearing you know somebody that has worked for Apple
(17:27):
so closely and maybe didn't leave on best terms coming
with open AI. So you're bringing together daisore point for
Apple right now with Apple Intelligence plus a competition from
a glass or you know, some kind of XRAR play.
(17:47):
Definitely not a good moment for Apple.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Not a good moment, but only for cell ratings. On
the stock, it's still very close to a three trillion
dollar company. Can they swiftly turn things around? Nay, we
galvanized growth here, Carolina.
Speaker 11 (18:03):
I do think that we are going to have some
of the answer in a couple of weeks at WDC,
when we're going to see possibly like Mark German was
reporting a redesign from an OS perspective Beth for iPhone,
watch a Mac, but also hearing awfully some improvement on
the or some development on the Apple intelligence part. I
(18:28):
think ultimately Apple is still from a vendor perspective, from
a consumer point of view, the one that has the
strongest ecosystem and that can tie in consumers both from
a services perspective and hardware. And I think that the
point that is getting people scratching their heads right now
is how long it's been taken from an Apple intelligence perspective.
(18:50):
But I still believe that ultimately are they have all
the pieces that can come together to really continue to
develop their ecosystem wrong way and police of their customers curly.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
In a millienacy of creative strategy. It's great to have
you back here on Bloomberg Technology. Thank you know. Coming up, Mark.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Zuckerberg's effort to get close with President Trump have given
him direct access to the White House.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
But what's that actually done for his company? We have
more on that next. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to win over Maga World have brought
the Meta CEO close to the President Trump and his administration,
But according to the latest Bloomberg Big Take, Zark's efforts
have yet to bear significant fruit for the social media company.
Joining us with more is Bloomberg's Riley Griffin, one of
the authors of that big Take. It's so deeply reported
and it's to look at how Mark Zuckerberg has almost
(19:57):
like changed himself over a period of time to kind
of align with this administration. But the conclusion of the
piece is that for Meta, it's not yet opened any
doors in a way that helps the company's profile.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Absolutely.
Speaker 12 (20:11):
My colleague Kurt Wagner and I spoke with more than
fifty people for this story, which spans several decades really,
and what we found is that the efforts to pivot
towards Trump and his administration have not yet borne the
fruit that the company so desires. And one of the
case in points of that strategy, and it's perhaps failing
(20:31):
so far, has been Mark Zuckerberg's attempts to end the
FTC trial that you and I have spoken so often
about Ed Mark Zuckerberg ended up taking the stand, but
that was one of the moments that might show some
of the weakness of this strategy.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I love going through the piece the frequent flier visualizations
of how often he's on his plane trying to go
back and forth to Washington. But also what stunned me
was just how little respect ultimately it seemed that previous
President Biden had for Mark Zuckerberg and also many for Metta.
Speaker 12 (21:04):
Yes, that was one of the most interesting lines of
reporting for me too, Caroline. What we found was that
the Biden administration did not have a productive relationship with
Meta over years, and that President Biden himself, even dating
back to when he was a vice president, was incredibly
skeptical of the social media giant, and Mark Zuckerberg personally.
(21:25):
We learned that you called him behind closed doors little TOWRP,
among other perhaps more colorful terms. And this really came
to a head during the COVID nineteen pandemic as misinformation spread.
There was that notable moment where Joe Biden, President Joe
Biden called Meta, said Meta was killing people as it
(21:47):
was spreading misinformation online.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Hey, real quick, how's morale inside Meta? Right now?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
You learn very quickly in Silicon Valley that a company's
figurehead doesn't necessarily reflect its workforce.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (21:58):
Well, Meta is full of tens of thousands of employees,
so obviously there's a wide range. But what we've found
is that a lot of employees are really discontent with
this approach. They're holding secret book clubs to talk about
Sarah wyn Williams memoir Careless People, they are having wellness checks.
(22:19):
Many folks have believed that Meta had done layoffs in
an effort to quell descent. The company obviously denies that claim,
but it's sour inside the company.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Bloomberg's Roley Griffin, it's a very long piece. I heard.
You should go and read it. Some deep dives there
coming up. Cutting the cost of satellite manufacturing. What I
Founders Fund is doubling down on demand in the space
sector for its latest investment in Indurosat. This is Bloomberg Technology.
(22:58):
Welcome back to bloom Bag Technology and Caroline Hide in
New York.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Now I met love Low in San Francisco. Some momentum
in the market's character.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Certainly is when it comes to stocks. Just check out
what's happening on the NASDAG best days. It's about mid May.
We are hired by the tune of two percent. In fact,
only four stocks of this major benchmark are actually in
the red. What's the moon music about? Is about macro.
It's about consumer sentiment looking better. It's about the bond
market looking a little bit calmer. Is about, of course,
that key macro event that is in Vidio's numbers, coming
(23:25):
as soon as tomorrow. But I'm also looking at Bitcoin
actually not catching that upward draft. It's interesting one hundred
and nine thousand. Look, we still need those all time highs,
but it's notable that we haven't followed stocks higher. Move on,
and though have a look at what ectes are doing
in response to a bitcoin play. Everyone wants to be
Michael Saler nowadays, the strategy strategy being born out with Trump,
(23:45):
the DJT take care as it's known Trump media, they're
going to be selling stock to buy bitcoin. It spends
it lower by eleven percent of the moment. But I'm
looking at pdd woful, the worst performing the nasat one hundred.
This is, of course the owner of Timu. What it
looks as though, of course, geopolitics trade anxiety plays out
with profit tumbling some forty seven percent ed, but notably
(24:06):
no future path that looks pretty. They have to invest
to change up the business model at all.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Right, let's go from public markets to private markets and
head to space. Bulgarian satellite manufacturer in Durosat has announced
it's raised forty three million euros that's around forty nine
million US dollars. This latest funning round was there by
Peter Teal's Founder's fund, delighted to bring in in Durosat
CEO Right Rychev and founders fun partner Delian Asparov, who
join us from Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. And I'll start with you.
(24:35):
You have managed to change the way that satellites are
manufactured and also how profitable that business is. So why
do you need to raise this money. What are you
going to do to expand your production of those next
gen satellites?
Speaker 13 (24:48):
Yeah, so, first of all, we didn't believe that there
will be a part of them shifting the way that
humanity builds the next future infrastructures in space, which in
a simple thums means, how do we put multiple new
sensors like cameras, traders, navigation systems of the future as
fast as humanly possible to orbit? And how do we
objectively lower the data to cost as little as one
(25:10):
door per gigabyte of any type of space data. And
the way that we approach this problem is basically trying
to our best to build a satellite that was from
day one designs for manufacturing, which is very unusual in
a traditionally very hardware centric industry where everyone is usually
building tailor made solutions for every individual missions.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
We believe that's the way to go.
Speaker 13 (25:31):
We have leveraged a lot of our experience in the
region of the center Eastern Europe concerning automotive designs, medical
robotic industries, and we have tried our best to embed
those into the satellite design.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Tellian, you are Bulgarian and I know this is a
really big moment view and important to you. You see
in Duro sat As being to Bulgaria almost like what
TSMC is to Taiwan.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Just explain your pieces there.
Speaker 14 (26:00):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, as being a native of the country,
I had a predisposition to you know, sort of find
an investment here for a long time, but only if
it met the sort of standard you know, founder's fund
the bar and as you know ed, we've been a
big investor in a ton of the you know, leading
aerospace companies everything obviously from behemoths like SpaceX, where we
were early and consistent backer, but also in some of
(26:21):
the next generation you know sort of companies that are
coming up, you.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
Know, Impulse led by Tom Muller.
Speaker 14 (26:25):
Varda, the company that I incubated, hadrian focus on automated
CNC manufacturing.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
But one of the core thesis.
Speaker 14 (26:31):
That we wanted to you know, sort of focus on
as we see this you know, sort of explosion in
the industry was somebody that was focused on you know,
mass manufacturing of satellites, but in a way that more
closely resembles you know, you were talking about Apple early
on the show, something that looks more like a consumer electronics,
Apple manufacturing line. Then how the vast majority of satellites,
even STARTLINGK satellites are assembled today, which is very tailored,
(26:53):
one off, super custom made. If you look at the
you know, sort of average American satellite in terms of
its overlap with the autumn motive consumer electronics for medical industries,
there's very little. And so for a long time I'd
kind of given up on the thesis of actually being
able to invest in somebody in this category. The thesis
was always find somebody that's like the you know, sort
of Dell for satellites.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
But you know, I'd been.
Speaker 14 (27:12):
Catching up with Reicho and in Daro SAT for several years,
and you know, he had very little funding to get
going on the company, and so he had to use
some of these more consumer electronics automotive supply chains to
build up his satellites and steadily made.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Them bigger and bigger.
Speaker 14 (27:26):
Revenues got bigger and bigger, to the point where in
Q four of last year, even though I'd always had
this sort of you know, negative bias towards Bulgaryus, I
was like, God, if I tell Peter that he hired
a Bulgarian and he wants to invest in a Bulgarian company.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
He's going to kick me out of the room.
Speaker 14 (27:38):
Obviously, he's going to say, you know, del you're crazy.
But at some point, the numbers, the quality of the technology,
the culture of the team, the fact that they've you know,
invested into the local university programs to start to train
their own next generation talent.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
That's what I mean when I talk about, you know, sort.
Speaker 14 (27:51):
Of the TSMC of Bulgaria, where it's both this national
jewel in this very technologically you sort of forward sector,
but deeply integrated in the society. The point where you know,
if you're a fifteen year old Bulgarian, you know your
physics is your computer engineer, mechanical engineer. All you can
dream is the daily graduate university and getting it the
go work from right jail.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
So right show. We hear about the thesis. We know
that the revenue is are climbing, but how can you
be like Apple in terms of profitability, in terms of margin?
How profitable are you?
Speaker 13 (28:20):
Well, there is a lot of components in achieving profitability.
I'm happy to say that we went on the market
selling satellites in early twenty eighteen and we became profitable
that same year, which usually never happens for a space company.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Usually they need like a.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
Decade at best.
Speaker 13 (28:35):
And ever since, our business grows between two and three
times zero over in terms of revenue, and every single
line of our business today has an average gross margin
between seventy seventy five and seventy seven percent. So I
think we're pretty close to those type of metrics. But again,
we are all only focused on the challenges that we
really want to bring the industry to a completely new
level and scale. And I believe honestly, at the end
(28:58):
of the day, the attentive still the products and the
execution of the team would leads to anyway immense market opportunity.
And this is what we're hoping to achieve with our
new inclobal partners from Founders Fund.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And those partners Delian Can they be other of your investments?
Just thinking of SpaceX as you mentioned Varda, which of
course a precedent of how much are you going to
turn to in durosap for your equipment?
Speaker 14 (29:22):
Yeah, I mean, look, as you know, we're you know,
sort of looking at the next generation vehicles across the portfolio.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
If you just look at the economics of what right
show is offering.
Speaker 14 (29:30):
It is just vastly differentiated relative to anything that you
can find either in the European or the American market.
Right if you think about the sort of traditional aerospace suppliers,
think folks like you know, Airbus, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Blue
Canyon Space Systems.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
All of their components are these things that are based.
Speaker 14 (29:46):
Off of like nineteen seventy technologies that have been ever
so slowly iterated on. And there is benefit to that
that they have flight heritage, but there's so much stuck
and not able to take that sort of monumental leap forward.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
So I won't comment on the specific companies, but I can.
Speaker 14 (29:59):
Already is part of how I got alerted to Endurero
was because we already had a significant amount of the
founder's fund portfolio and some of the broader Silicon Valley
funded Defense, TAC and you know space startups already as
customers of his. You know, as I started to analyze everyone,
I realized there was an arms dealer, there was a
Dell for satellites already. It just happened to be this
Bulgarian company that you know, for a long time, I
(30:21):
just wasn't sure that I could take seriously, you know,
given that I knew that I had this predisposition towards Bulgaria, and.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
To have these margins that we're.
Speaker 14 (30:27):
Talking about, I mean the fact that you can build
a space company profitably, growing quickly at seventy plus percent margins.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
I mean, those are the things that you see in.
Speaker 14 (30:34):
You know, sort of consumer electronics behemoths like Apple. But
if you look at the like average American aerospace or
defense company, these are all like you know, best case
twenty thirty percent margins, burning hundreds of millions of dollars
before they ever get to any semblance of profitability. And
all of these things never get to this level of margin.
This is why when you look at everything from Planet
Labs to Maxar to Iridium, all these companies that you
know operate in the satellite world, they never trade above
(30:58):
like three x revenues because there's no growth manager profitability.
When you look at the right righteous business insane, the
ce these metrics, you almost look like a traditional Silk
and Valley SaaS company in terms of margin and growth.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Right, let me ask you this to finish, what's your
strategy for manufacturing in the United States in the future.
Speaker 13 (31:16):
I'm proud to say that the majority of our business
is already in US and we are heavily involved in
supporting the local ecosystem. We have quite advanced team in Denver.
Already we are assembling and operating satellites.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
For our US customer based from US.
Speaker 13 (31:30):
So I really consider that there is no such dramatic
difference between what we do in Bulgaria and in Europe
and generally and what we are planning to do even
expand for the US. Just to give you the context,
we have already invested significant amounts millions just starting last year,
way before there was this tension that drived between the
two continents, and I think this extension is will be
very healthy for our business. I mean, we need to
(31:52):
learn how to do local stuff better than anyone else.
We need to empower the local ecosystem.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
And I think we also.
Speaker 13 (31:57):
Bring the knowledge and don't know how and a little
bit of innovation that will be very healthy for the
US marketing journal.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Right ol Rachel CEO of Jurosat dellian Asparov, partner at
Founder's Fund. We appreciate your time. Thank you both from Sophia,
Bulgaria coming up a new company started by the founder
of quantum computing firm Righetti. They aims to use quantum
to address cost and energy bottlenecks in scaling AI.
Speaker 15 (32:20):
That's next, there's a Bloomberg technology.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
The name Chad Brigghetti may be familiar to those in
the quantum computing world. Now, the quantum computer entrepreneur and
physicist is launching a new company called Signaldry. It aims
to use quantum to address cost and energy bottomnecks that
are associated with AI. Delight to say, Chabrighetti joins us. Now,
I think we will get to the backstory of your
involvement in the earlier days of this industry. But what
(33:00):
is the objective of the new company and what is
different about the new company's technology?
Speaker 16 (33:07):
HI great to be here today.
Speaker 17 (33:08):
Signtry is building quantum accelerated AI servers to exponentially speed
up training.
Speaker 16 (33:15):
And inference for these large models.
Speaker 17 (33:17):
As you've heard about, there's growing energy requirements, power requirements
that are very challenging to meet, and there's growing costs
for training new models, and ultimately quantum can provide a
solution to that with these exponential speed ups. In the
last few years, there's been new algorithms developed that can
exponentially speed up things like stochastic gradient descent or low
rank adaptation that are critical for training and inference in
(33:40):
large models, and really bring in about the accessibility, affordability,
and sustainability of true widespread adoption of AI.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
We were recently at Nvidia gtc's Quantum Day. We did
a special show where many sort of the leaders in
this field joined us and kind of what struck me
is they all sat there on stage with Daco Jensen
Wang is how many companies are working on this, how
many publicly traded companies. And I give you that preamble
to ask, why do we need a new company focused
(34:09):
on this task? Why can the technology been developed by
all these others, including the namesay company founded, not crack
it themselves.
Speaker 17 (34:18):
It's a great question and I've thought about that as well,
and ultimately that led me to starting Signaltry with my
co founder Adelia Friedsen, who also worked with me at
Righetti and helping the company public in twenty twenty two. Ultimately,
all of these companies that are out there today are
making tremendous progress. There's been tremendous advancement just in the
last three years alone, new CUBA types like neutral atoms
and photonics have you know, you know, advanced as much
(34:41):
or even more.
Speaker 16 (34:41):
Than supermarket and cubits have.
Speaker 17 (34:43):
And ultimately what we see is an opportunity to combine
these different modalities within a single fault tolerant architecture.
Speaker 16 (34:50):
And we thought about, you know, and then on the.
Speaker 17 (34:52):
Flip side of that, to take a laser focus on
accelerating these compute challenges in AI. Ultimately, over the past
two or three years, AI it's become so useful and
so widely use that it's redefined. It's basically created a
new abstraction layer for computing hardware. And with that computer
hardware itself needs to evolve and change. If you look
at the quantic computing companies that are out there right now,
(35:14):
even the public ones and the one that I built
in Regetting Computing, all of those roadmaps, their plans for
five ten years out were locked in before AI became
the dominant compute paradigm. And so today we see an
opportunity to bring a new architecture that is specifically focused
on accelerating training and inference, on lowering the cost and
energy requirements. And also at combining different Cubitt modalities because
(35:36):
all the companies today also are sideloaed with respect to
their technology choices, which again were made before AI became
the dominant paradigm. So we're bringing multiple different Cubitt types
together within a single fault tone and architecture explicitly built
for AI.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Chad, do you need more money to do this because
at the moment you're backed by Y Combinator. I'm sure
you've got some money made on your previous company, But
how much you need outside investment?
Speaker 17 (35:59):
Well, of course this is deep technology in the end,
and the size of this market if you can crack this,
when quantum really comes online and starts to impact AI
training and inference costs, it's going to be a trillion
dollar market. And we see this as completely inevitable. Ultimately,
nature it self runs on quantum mechanics in the most
information rich environments at the lowest level of nature. We
(36:19):
use quantum mechanics to process that information, and quantum reflects
that mirrors at reality and ultimately is a more efficient
way of computing long term.
Speaker 16 (36:27):
So we're going to use this in conjunction with GPUs,
in conjunction with large deal classical infrastructure.
Speaker 17 (36:32):
It's an enormous opportunity, and ultimately we believe that when
our multi modality quantum architecture comes online that is not
you know, other single modality architectures aren't ultimately going to
be able to compete with it. We will absolutely need
to raise additional capital going forward. The company is just
getting going. We're launching and you know, publicly announcing the
(36:53):
company today, So.
Speaker 16 (36:55):
We're in the early stages. But we're really excited.
Speaker 17 (36:57):
Our team is growing very fast, and we're you know,
we're very excited what the next few years old.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Chad to be personal about it. How has Regetti responded?
It bears your name. I'm sure it's a help in
many ways for you because your name is still so
legendary within quantum. But how did they respond when they're
also teaming up the Quanta in Taiwan, which is a
server maker and looking at the adoption of quantum there.
Speaker 16 (37:22):
Yeah, well, ultimately you need to ask the boat and
the team there.
Speaker 17 (37:27):
I think with respect to the progress towards ai these
are deep architectural choices that need to be made early
on in establishing your hardware roadmap and your company vision
and plan, you need, the DNA, you need to be
you know, early on in the organization, and once those
things get locked in, there are forces that make it
(37:47):
very challenging to to you know, to adjust that vision,
to adjust those roadmaps, because it relates to all of
your partnerships, it relates to your talent base, it relates
to how you think and talk about the technology internally
and your culture.
Speaker 16 (37:58):
So ultimately, we think being.
Speaker 17 (38:00):
Started started from the very get go focused on AIS,
the singular killer application for quantum technologies. Getting the right
team together very early on in developing an architecture, leveraging
multiple different CUBA types that are needed to ultimately reach
the combination of cost, speed and scale to unlock these
AI applications is the winning.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Approach to this, Chad, it's great speaking with you, Chad Raghetti,
his new company, Siguldry, appreciate you joining shares of China's bid.
They extended losses for the second day and it's Hong
Kong trading. They're down here in depository receipts as well.
This after the electric car maker announced sweeping price cuts
up to thirty four percent on some of its vehicles.
As his competition at home intensifies for the sector. Grimberg's
(38:43):
David Welch joins us. Now, how fierce is the price
competition in China?
Speaker 18 (38:48):
David, It's the one market where you really have price
competition is in the Chinese market because the domestic players,
they so dominate their home market and there are very
few export are import into the market. That tariffs aren't
really wreaking havoc on it the way it is in
other parts of the world, so you don't have companies
looking to raise prices to deal with tariffs. They're all
(39:10):
domestic anyways, and they get all their parts, batteries, everything domestically,
so they don't have that kind of pressure. The pressure
is still there as it has been for a few
years to lower prices and gain market share, probably try
to get some of the foreign players out of the market.
That's been going on for a long time. It's why
General Motors and Volkswagen have struggled, is why Tesla is struggling.
And I think you have companies like Bid and shall
(39:31):
Mate who have such They've had a lot of growth,
they want to keep it going, so they're going to
keep splashing prices too to gain that market share.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
You mentioned Tesla.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
The other battleground that we compare Tesla to bid On
is Europe, and the data over the holiday weekend in
the US was that, you know, Tesla is suffering in
Europe because of the political backlash of Ela Musk. There's
also BYD doing well.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
There, that's right.
Speaker 18 (39:58):
You know, the Chinese automakers have done very well to
gain a lot of ground there and Tesla's got a
lot of problems in that market. I think Europeans, particularly
with this new round of tariffs fifty percent being announced
by Trump. Elon must being close to Trump, I think
that that's going to continue to hurt the brand. It's
going to continue to kind of put a shadow over
Tesla in the market. They've also got stale product. The
(40:20):
Europeans have a lot of evs. Now. Chinese competition is there,
even though that's getting hit with some tariffs, but it's
not good for Tesla in that market, and I think
only fresh products would help them out. Even if Elon
were to say tomorrow he's quitting Dose and going back
to running Tesla, that doesn't really change what's happened with
his brand in terms of the politics with some American
(40:43):
buyers and with a bunch of European buyers, so that
trouble is going to stick around for a while.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
I think Bluebeg's David Welch in Detroit, thank you very much,
stick with elon mask. He's set to address his SpaceX
workforce today. Among the discussions will be his long term
goal for the company of sending humans to Mars. All
this head of a scheduled test flight with the company
Starship Rocket six thirty pm Local time, bloombergs Lauren Grushes.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Here set the scene.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
You and I used to attend these kind of elong,
big picture, star based moments in person.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
What are we expecting him to talk about?
Speaker 9 (41:15):
Yeah, I would say I would expect probably some of
the same hits that he normally does. You know, he
gives these Starship and Mars updates about once a year
or so. But you know, every time he does give
one of these discussions, he gives a few new tweaks.
Speaker 19 (41:28):
Maybe there's some new timelines, some new changes, new upgrades
to the hardware for Starship. Wheres the plan?
Speaker 9 (41:35):
So you know, I think we'll be listening for some
of the same old phrases. You know, preserving the light
of consciousness.
Speaker 19 (41:42):
Is a big one, but also looking forward to some
maybe updates on timelines and where what we might expect in.
Speaker 9 (41:52):
The year ahead for certain milestones that they need to achieve.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Well, big day for Starship. How are we bracing ourselves
because the last two tests so ended an explosion?
Speaker 19 (42:02):
I would say the stakes for this flight are particularly
high because of those explosions you mentioned.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
The last two flights did not end well.
Speaker 9 (42:10):
Both ended in debris streaming over the sky over the Gulf,
and so hopefully they have fixed the problems from those
two flights.
Speaker 16 (42:20):
SpaceX did provide an update.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
Saying they know the causes for both of those explosions,
that they were actually distinctly different in terms of what
caused them, and that they have provided the appropriate design
and hardware fixes.
Speaker 16 (42:35):
So we'll see if that holds.
Speaker 19 (42:36):
I think we'll all be holding our breath at about
the eight minute mark, which was when both of those
flights terminated.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Early, Lauren, we just have twenty seconds, But remind us
the ultimate goal, which is getting humans to Mars, and
how Starship fits.
Speaker 19 (42:50):
Yes, so Starship is the primary vehicle for which SpaceX
intends to send humans to Mars.
Speaker 20 (42:58):
Also has a contract with NASA to land humans on
the moon with the vehicle, and eventually Starship will be
the primary vehicle that SpaceX uses to launch everything in
the future.
Speaker 9 (43:08):
So a lot is writing on the vehicle.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Bloomberg's low Andngrush a busy day. We appreciate it now.
That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Ed Tune in tomorrow for a special edition of Bloomberg
Technology looking at Nvidia's earnings at six thirty pm Eastern
Time three thirty pm Pacific and big thanks everyone that tunes.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Into the podcast. Listen to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
You know where to find it online on Apple, Spotify, iHeart,
and all the Bloomberg platforms. This is Bloomberg Technology.
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