April 18, 2024 • 42 mins
Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow break down TSMC's first quarter earnings report as the company scales up profit, but scales back its outlook for a chip market expansion. Plus, Google fires 28 employees after they were involved in protests against Project Nimbus to provide Israel's government and military with AI and cloud services.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
From Marhard where Innovation, money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Love Love.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I'm Caroline Heind of blomgg's world headquarters in New York.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Now I'm Ed Lodlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Coming up, we'll break down to t SMC's first quarter
earning support. This is the company scales up profit, but
scales back. It's outlook for a chip market expansion.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Plus, Google fires twenty eight employees after they were involved
in protests against Project Nimbus to provide Israel's government and
military with AI and cloud services. Will bring you the details.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
And Cisco's plan for keeping AI systems safe from attack
artificial intelligence itself. Of course, we'll discuss the company's new
safeguarding approach and so much more throughout this app. At first,
and we check in on these markets and actually a
little bit of optic in the NASZAC in some of
those technology stocks to say we're up about five tens
per percent.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Now elsewhere, we've sort of been trending water.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We'd been digesting what has been quite a harsh sell
off throughout the week in stocks and indeed in bonds
as we really start to digest just two cuts for
the rest of the year, if that coming from the
Federal Reserve tenure yields still up again four basis points
four point six three is kort of where we currently
are standing. We lost some of our technology. We'll get
it back in a minute. We're currently seeing the vics
on the downside, though, so some of that volatility that
(01:41):
we've seen in the fear index in that gauge just
dampening down. We're down just about seventeen level. Remember we
spike to nineteen on the back of geopolitical risks at
the beginning of this week.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Move on, have a little look at what's happening in
the world of.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Crypto, because we had been, in fact seeing a bit
of a rebound. We're up almost five percent on the day,
but look we're still languishing out about a sixty three
sixty four thousand dollar level. We dig into crypto a
little bit more in a moment, and what are you
watching on the micro.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Well, we are going to look at alphabet pairent of Google.
The shares a higher half percent they have been down
earlier in the session. Very shortly in the program, we're
going to go to our reporter davely Album and find
out about these jobs that were cut or the firing
as a result from the protests. Very well read Bloomberg,
Terminal and online. A lot of interest in that story.
The chip sector is the main focus of readers again
(02:28):
this Thursday. Let's start with TSMC. It's now down on
the ADR's three point eight percent have been much lower,
giving us a maintenance of that capex guidance. Very strong
in AI, weakness in smartphones. Remember this is the world's
biggest contract manufacturer of semiconductors. And then a Bloomberg exclusive,
Micron is softer half a percent. Bloomberg reporting that it's
(02:49):
going to get about six point one billion dollars in
grants from the US government as part of the Chips Act.
Grants only, but there's a loan component as well, and
it could come as soon next week. There's a lot
to discuss, and for that we go to Bloomberg's Ian King,
who leads our semiconductor coverage. Let's start with TSMC. The
world pays attention at the moment when TSMC gives US numbers.
(03:12):
We learned that AI is strong, high performance computer is strong,
potentially smartphone is weak. What was your takeaway?
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Yeah, I know, that's absolutely right. They've confirmed basically the
fears and hopes of everybody who's watching semiconductors right now.
Smartphones were down steeply, and people will be concerned that
that to read on Apple and what's happening to the iPhone,
particularly in China. On the flip side of that, HPC
high performance computing, which is obviously in video, AMD and
(03:42):
all of the very large, very expensive chips were strongly.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Pair that then with the news that we had with
ASML yesterday and the fact that chip equipment perhaps isn't
so in demand.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
What ISSMC really trying to signal here?
Speaker 5 (03:57):
What they're trying to signal really is you know that,
as usual, they have the best read on what's going on,
and they're really confirming what's going on in terms of
these end market forces. We've been waiting for the smartphone
market to come back for a long time. It is
coming back in China, but unfortunately it's coming back for
chips that are probably being made outside the Western ecosystem.
(04:18):
So that's a concern there for the geopolitics, ASML is
a longer term read on the confidence of a small
group of companies, doesn't have as much of an indication
on what's happening in the short term.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Let's talk about Micron and Bloomberg's reporting that it will
get six point one billion grant allocation from the Chips
Act to build capacity in the United States. There's a
loans component as well. The sources are telling us this
we get announced next week. What do we know about
the package Micron's been awarded.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
Yeah, I mean, as ever, the companies want more, They
want as much as they can probably get. This is
being seen as roughly what commensurate with sort of microns
role in the value chain here. Remember they make memory chips.
That production, as with advanced logic, has been moving to
East Asia for the last few decades. This is the
(05:11):
Biden administration saying, hey, we haven't forgotten about memory. That's
important to You need that in your phone, you need
that in your data center. So they're enabling Micron to
at least bring some production back to this country.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And we've heard time and time again from the CEO
Motor really talking about you need to make it worth
my while though I could be building manufacturing abroad for
much cheaper, where in the US is he going to
be putting it? And really does it make economic sense?
Speaker 5 (05:38):
It makes economic sense if you get the government subsidies.
What Sanjay has said all along, as you pointed out,
and a lot of his colleagues have said the same thing.
The government here needs to do the bare minimum, which
is to close that gap in terms of what it
costs between the US and places like Singapore, South Korea,
Taiwan where those facilities are currently being made with a
(06:00):
lot of government support, with tax regimes, with all of
these things which helped large capital projects like that. He's
looking at upstate New York, and he's looking at the
home base of Micron, which is in Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Bloomberg Ian king always on for us. We so appreciate
the analysis when it comes thick and fast across the
trip sector.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Meanway.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Meanwhile, let's get to Huawei.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Let's release its latest series of smartphones today, sustaining its
momentum after that breakthrough Mate sixty, Remember that device that
helped erode Apple's dominance over in China.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
In that high end segment.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Now the poorer seventy smartphone series starts at seven hundred
and sixty dollars, then goes up from them, matching in fact,
the price point of an iPhone fifteen n.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
All right. Coming up on the program, Google fires employees
staging protests from California to New York over a contract
with Israel. We can have that report next. A quick
check on Trump Media and Technology shares hire fourteen percent
in the session, adding to the gains of yesterday. Class
expect trading. There's a lock up until September. A lot
of activity in warrants market. This is the Spack one
(07:06):
oh one. We're seeing a big deer, now a big rebound.
This is Bloomberg technology. Time for Talking tech. And in
(07:26):
the news, Elon Musk is apologizing for incorrectly low severance packages.
The Testa CEO made the rare apology via email and
said it has come to his attention that some severance
packages were incorrectly low and it will be corrected immediately.
The news comes after Tesla slashed global headcomt by more
than ten percent as the ev baker struggles with slowing
(07:49):
demand for electric vehicles. Plus, Apple CEO Tim Cook is
meeting Singapore's incoming Prime Minister at the tail end of
his most extensive Southeast Asia tour in years. There's the
company searches for new growth markets and manufacturing locations to
offset headwinds in China. The trip could pave the way
for a more aggressive sales campaign in a densely populated
(08:11):
region where Android phones from Samsung, Chaomi and the Oppo
dominate the market. And Delivery said orders return to growth
with a two percent increase in the first quarter, driven
by strong progress in the food delivery company's international segment.
Users place seventy three point five million orders in the
first quarter. The London based company kept its guidance for
(08:32):
the year unchanged.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Carro.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Now, there's another story that we're currently following ed and
Google has fired twenty eight employees after they were involved
in protests against a one point two billion dollar joint
contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military
AI and cloud services.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Now.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
The protests took place across Google offices in New York
and Seattle and California, and were led by the No
Tech for Apartheid organization. Google said physically in other employees
work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a
clear violation of our policies and completely unacceptable behavior. Joining
us nay now A please to welcome Davey Albert, who
(09:11):
has helped report on this very sensitive story ultimately daily.
And the protests came a day before an all important
Israeli government approval right for a five year strategic plan
to transition to cloud. It's called Project Nimbus, and this
was sensitive for certain employees.
Speaker 6 (09:27):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean especially in the in the midst
of the war between.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Israel and Gaza.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Employees have really been activated about this issue and have
been organizing to try to protest the way that their
work contributes to tools that would then serve the Israeli government,
which again is engaged in war. And so they say
that they have a right to you know, ban to
(09:59):
get and object to this use of their work, and
that US labor law actually protects them from sort of
consequences from the company, discipline from the company, because they
believe they are within the rights to come together over
this issue.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Davey, in your story, you present a very clear chronology
of what happened and the perspective of both sides of
the situation. When I put on social media you were
coming on the show. One of the questions I got
most commonly was could you tell us a bit more
about the roles of those that were fired, what we
know about those specifically, because it was quite a broad
(10:42):
protest and we're saying less than fewer than thirty people
actually lost their jobs.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
So from the workers we spoke to, several of them
were software engineers, some of them worked on cloud, and
there were even some employees who were involved in speaking
out against Project Nimbus who work for DeepMind, which is
Google's AI lab. You know, these these workers tend to
(11:10):
not have specific visibility into exactly what Israel is doing
with their technology because these contracts are so siloed and
workers don't you know, directly work on on the tools
that the Israeli government might use, but they build the
tools that the Israeli government can then use for any purpose.
(11:33):
There's been prior reporting that, you know, the cloud services
that the Israeli government uses is on their own instance,
private instance of Google Cloud, and so from that perspective,
you know, employees can't see inside of that cloud that's
on Israeli soil and being used by Israeli government. But
(11:57):
these employees have in obviously following the news and believe
that their work may be not so in a straight
direct line, but still does contribute significantly to the way
that the technology that Israel is now using and deploying
(12:20):
in the war with Gaza.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
When you say Gaza actually not quite right, the war
between Israel and Hamas. Of course, Hamas deemed of course
a an issue a terrorist organization by the EU and
the United States. Davey, I'm really interested in perhaps is
this a tone shift in any way coming from the
very leadership of Alphabet and indeed Google. I mean, so Nopitchai,
(12:44):
how much has he had to weigh in here and
decide what the outcome is.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
Yeah, it absolutely is a shift in tone. For so long, really,
the founding culture of Google has been, you know, to
foster this sense of open debate and employees are encouraged
to speak out about anything really having to do with
their work. Those were in the early days, but then
(13:11):
over the years employees have really started to ban together
over important social issues. You know, in twenty eighteen or so,
there was organizing around sexual harassment allegations from leadership at
the company and sort of the way that they wanted
(13:34):
women to be able to speak out about their experiences,
so there was a walkout from employees around that issue,
and other issues have also galvanized these employees, you know,
in twenty twenty, with the killing of George Floyd and
organizing around the Black Lives Matter protests, that was another issue.
(13:55):
But this really has emerged as a particularly sensitive point
for Google, this particular issue with Israel, and the company
appears to be sending a message that they aren't going
to tolerate this kind of workplace activism anymore.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Davey, you talked about how that the workforce has been galvanized.
You note in the final paragraph of your report that
despite the response from Google, many employees feel that they're
getting support. Is that happening contemporary eraneously and is there
any sense that these strikes or sit ins will continue
or if this is the end of it now? It's
(14:38):
hard to say.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
Google sent a very strongly worded message to all employees,
essentially saying this is not this is not something they
will tolerate, that it is against company policy. At the
same time, you know, we've heard from employees who have
been keeping an eye on the internal messaging that's been
(15:00):
happening at the company, and several people are actually quite
upset by this move from the company, and maybe it'll
take a while for them to do another action, but
it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
This could continue on for many more months.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
We showed Google's full response and communication at the top
of the segment, and you can go and read Davey
and Julia's story and see it in Writing for Yourself
on bloomberg dot com. Bloomberg's Davy outur thank you harnessing
the power of AI to keep AI software safe from attack.
(15:42):
That's the promise of Cisco's latest product, Hypershield. I want
to go straight to Cisco's exiti Vice president and general
manager of Security and Collaboration G two Patel. This is
classic Cisco, right. You want to do more on services
and software, but just explain the technology you're going to use.
AI is the defense tool against an attack on AI infrastructure.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Well, security is actually one of the most pressing issues
of our time, and AI is actually being weaponized quite
a bit by malicious actors, so it only makes sense
for us to also use AI effectively to provide machine
scale defenses to organizations.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So we launched what I.
Speaker 7 (16:23):
Would call probably one of the most consequential innovations in
the history of Cisco in the area of cybersecurity in
the past forty years, and it's called Cisco Hypershield. And
our goal over there is to fundamentally re imagine security
for this AI world web at AI scale, because it's
(16:44):
very hard to go out and handle these threats at
human scale GJU.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It's been interesting because time and time again people have
come on saying, look, with AI as the aggressor, we
can also use AI as the protector. You really talk
about this being a radically new approach. How is it radical?
How is it that new from what's already.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
On the market.
Speaker 7 (17:02):
Yeah, I think it's important because you need to make
sure that there's a certain set of building blocks that
are built on top of which you can build these solutions.
And we now have some very advanced technologies around hardware acceleration,
around AI that can allow us to build these very
sophisticated capabilities.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
There's many examples.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
I'll give you one particular one the amount of time
that it takes from when a vulnerability is announced in
the market, two when an exploit happens by malicious actors
is now down to single digit days, and I think
I wouldn't be surprised if it goes down to hours
or minutes in the next few in the near future.
And so what we've done is we've actually seen that
(17:42):
the amount of time it takes to patch that infrastructure
is actually still twenty two to forty five days.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So you've got this massive.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
Gap from when an exploit happens and how long it
takes to patch the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
We've solved that problem because what.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
We can do now is within minutes, have a shield
that can put in front of infrastructructure that has not
been updated, that has not been patched, so that you
can protect the organization from critical infrastructure attacks that might
happen to hospitals or financial services organizations and so on.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
You talk u about the building blocks, what we're talking
about is data centers, rows and rows of service stacks.
And we know that that infrastructure build out is happening.
It's happened, and the spend is committed for more of it,
is the spend committed to hypershield? Is anyone actually buying
this service from you in parallel with that infrastructure build out?
Speaker 7 (18:35):
Well, This was the first day that we announced it
to our customers. We had about we had many of
the leading chief information security officers over here in the
UK where we announced this product, and the most common
phrase that I heard was this is completely game changing.
And in fact, one of the customers told me I'd
like to have two and so I think if you
(18:56):
care about cybersecurity and if you care about your critical
infrastructure being protected, it's going to be very obvious for
you to make sure that you can allocate some focus
on something like Cisco hypershield. And the reality is is
this is the only one in the market. There's no
one else who quite handles the problem the way that
we are over here.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Of course, all of this is surrounding the partnership and
increasing partnership that you've been talking through with in Video.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
How integral is in Video's practice beIN within this.
Speaker 7 (19:24):
And the way that we think about this is you
have to work with the ecosystem at large rather than
being completely kind of a wall garden. So and Video
is a very important player in AI, and we want
to make sure that we partner with them so that
we can build security specific models. We actually take our
technology and optimize it for their GPUs and so we
will continue to work with Nvideo and others in video.
(19:45):
We've enjoyed a great partnership with them already and this
one just extends that further.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
GD what in video offers is expensive, and everyone's been
talking about the rush to harness chips, to harness energy,
the expense that's coming in this new world of general
to aire.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
How expensive?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
What can you price point your new AI cybersecurity prevention.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
App So the way that we are going to go
out and price this is by workload. We haven't announced
the exact pricing yet. This is going to be general
availability around the August timeframe, and so between now and
August we will make sure that we actually have more
information on pricing. But our philosophy is the price for
mass market, right. We want to make sure that we
have high unit volume so we can get to many,
(20:28):
many customers within a very quick amount of time.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
So you see, there is a human safety net element
of this. You're not handing over complete control to the
defense of critical infrastructure. Just explain the safety net.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
The way I think about this is humans are always
apprehensive of something automated taking over and so remember the
day's ed when you actually had to update your iPhone
and you would actually back it up three times before
you started updating it. Now you don't worry about it
because there's that trust that gets built over time. And
so what we've done is we've actually made sure that
customers have the option of having a human in the loop,
(21:02):
so if you do want to auto update your systems,
that you actually have the ability to make sure that
that can be approved by you and it doesn't happen automatically,
but when you feel comfortable, you have the option of
having that be completely transparent to you so that you
can then start focusing on higher order bid items.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Tit. You've used the word customers a lot. We just
have thirty seconds, but just explain who the market is here.
The users you're selling to.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Our market is.
Speaker 7 (21:28):
Every large organization, mid sized organization and small organization that's
interested in making sure that they can protect the data
centers from attacks from a cybersecurity standpoint at aiscale.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
G two.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
So great to spend some time with you live from
your garage.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
We joke you're actually at the McLaren Center over in
the UK. We've got some nice parts in the background.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
So is Goo Executive vice president and general manager of
Security and Collaboration Cheta Fintel.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Thanks for joining us on the day of the announcement.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Ed Ludlow here in San
Francisco and.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Karen Hyder in New York.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Let's get you a quick check on these markets because actually,
well still the economic data comes strong.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Ah, there you are, Joel. Nice to see you, our for.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Mour manager, just shining a light on some of our
market check. I want to go back though to the
macro for a moment, because before we get into the
individual names, I want to shine light the fact that
we have been seeing overall the Nasdaq on the higher
side of things, are up about five tens aer percent
of there or thereabouts. We've also seen, of course, an
introduction to the bomb market just selling a little bit.
We seeing a bit of a sell off. We seem
to be wanting to commit to some of the individual
(22:36):
names that are on the move today. So I'm going
to shine a light on Netflix earnings coming thick and
fast after the bell, up six tens of a percent.
We're expecting about a fourteen percent increase in revenue for
its fiscal first quarter. Netflix juggernaut faces a high barbow
after one hundred and twelve billion dollar rally. We've got
emphasis on the downside after its numbers. Of course, Indian
key player in the technology space, actually underwhelming when it
(22:57):
came to overall revenues. We're looking at MicroStrategy up more
than six percent, some of the individual crypto names doing
well ed Why because crypto is bouncing on the day
at least, although we see and of course some profit
taking of late.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
All right, let's keep the conversation going around cryptso and
bringing Thomas Perfumo crack in head of strategy to mass.
I have been invited to not one, but two bitcoin
harving parties tonight. Whether I go to either of them
remains to be seen. But it got me thinking that
for many this is something that is interesting to be celebrated,
(23:33):
you know, it's coming in the calendar. For others they
focus on the supply mechanics of what it does to
the market. Where do you focus your attentions?
Speaker 8 (23:42):
So for me, I think of the takeaways for the
bitcoin having and falling into two different spectrums. Firstly, it
underpins why we believe bitcoin is the soundest form of money.
There's a whole host of reasons why on the demand
side of teams like global liquidity, twenty four seven, three
sixty five, market access, permission, permission lists and so ship resistant,
like all these nice qualities for why bitcoin served as
(24:03):
a good form of money. But on the supply side,
you know, how reliably can you plan around a currency
and bitcoin because of the having, you know that there's
only ever going to be twenty one million bitcoin in existence,
and so on. The second part of the takeaway here
is that this Bitcoin having in particular, you know, we
celebrated every roughly four years, but this one is the
(24:25):
most symbolic, in my opinion, in bitcoin's history and even
looking forward, because at a time when you have people
who are looking at their conventional currencies, inflation, interest rates,
and the economic environment that they live in, they see
this alternative form of currency, Bitcoin, and it's something that
has this really crisp story, this idea that as of tomorrow,
when the having takes place, ninety four percent of all
(24:48):
bitcoins that will ever exist will have been mined, and
less than one percent. We'll see less than one percent
inflation in the circulating supply of bitcoin going forward, so
that's a really powerful story I think for people, yes,
and why they're having is so.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Important tom Us, there will be a big section of
our audience watching thinking what has this got to do
with me? Is there a chance that they wake up
in global financial markets? The world has been changed by
this harving.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
No, the having in of itself isn't going to be
a cataclysmic event. We're not talking about a raptor here.
But what it is doing is it's reinforcing the narrative
of bitcoin as sound money, and in our opinion, the
adoption of bitcoin and of crypto takes time. This is
something that is a very innovative technology. It's very different
from how people use money today. And so this is
something that's going to take place over five, ten years,
(25:36):
twenty years, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
And you're going to think of it as.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Almost like a change in culture and a change in
understanding of how people transact with one another. And so
when we think about this having in particular, nothing super special,
but again like an important milestone, particularly in this time
and age, and we love to celebrate it.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Thomas, I want to get a glimpse of what you're
seeing in this unique position over at kracken at the moment.
Because yes, the reason many have said that this harving
is unprecedented is because where crypto has been priced at before,
where Bitcoin has been at all time highs, that hasn't
happened before in the other times.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
But there has been money taken off the table of late.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Why has there been new money just trying to resettle
when we have this risk occurrence, we've had geopolitical tensions,
Why do we suddenly see such a fallen price.
Speaker 8 (26:23):
Yeah, so there's definitely a lot of volatility when it
comes to bitcoin in general. I wouldn't say that we've
reached any kind of peaks. So historically, if we look
at prior all time highs, we start to see these
massive sessions of all time highs, so like fifteen twenty
all time highs within a single month on a day
to day basis, and that's when you see in the
volatility peak to one hundred percent or so. With bitcoin,
(26:45):
we've only seen a handful of all time highs in
the last month. It is a little bit of head
of schedule versus the other three having events we've seen,
but nothing crazier out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yet, what I like to.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
Think about when it comes to the price action, is
it's a momentous occasion. You will come in, they see
the price level, they're like, I want to participate, and
you get a little bit of that momentum play. But
we still have a lot of new entrants coming into space.
The Bitcoin ETF for example, twelve billion dollars a new
NetFlow coming into the cryptocurrency sector.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
A whole lot of people are.
Speaker 8 (27:15):
Coming in, signing up for accounts and buying bitcoin for
the first time. So this is just something you have
to kind of space out over the long term, and
you're going to have these ups and downs along the way.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
More broadly, how have you been thinking about that new
inflow into Bitcoin coming into other parts of the crypto ecosystem.
What's been interesting is perhaps and the other old coins,
we've just seen a churn a movement within it, rather
than perhaps money coming into Bitcoin and then going, oh,
I'm going to play in their worlds of Salona. Now,
what do you think about that movement coming from Bitcoin
eight into the other or coins.
Speaker 8 (27:45):
Yeah, these rotations ebb and flow, and it depends on
the trend at the time. And so when we see
in twenty twenty For example, we had that momentous occasion
called de five Summers, so everyone was going and playing
around with ethereum tokens, and the reason was because you
had the maturation of those applications that had been invested
in back in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, so they were launching.
(28:06):
You started to see the application and the network FECs
built up from there, and then that led into rotation
into bitcoin, etc. Here we have the having event, the
US Bitcoin etf as the catalysts for people getting interested
in so bitcoin comes first.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
As far as other alternative.
Speaker 8 (28:23):
Currencies, whether they're tokens or other layer ones like solana ethereum.
A lot of that's driven by whatever application exists that
people are starting to really adopt early on. And one
of the interesting things, in my opinion, is that the
last cycle back in twenty one, you had tens of
billions of dollars come into the space to develop new
projects and whatnot. We're talking at this point about three
(28:44):
years of maturation, and so that investment cycle, we kind
of have these dark horses. We don't know exactly what
application is going to come out, but we're really excited
about it, and some stuff that's proliferating right now would
be things around like GameFi in the crypto space. So
we'll have to see from bitcoin where it goes come back.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
It's been too too long time us for FuMO of
Atkrack and he's head a strategy.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
We thank him for talking all things crypto with us.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Now let's talk all things IPOs because we've started to
get a few more. The CEO of I Bought A,
Brian Leach, is joining us straight from the New York
Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Why have you decided that.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
For your business model, which is all about giving cash
back rewards when you're purchasing groceries, maybe even your gas,
Why is it now the time to show your technology
solution on the public markets?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 9 (29:31):
We think it's the perfect time because our mission is
make every purchase rewarding. Sixty percent of Americans are living
paycheck to paycheck, Seventy five percent are financially insecure. We've
given away one point eight billion dollars to help people
make those ends meet.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
We've also gotten.
Speaker 9 (29:47):
To a point in our company where we've built out
a large network and are beginning to see those network effects.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
We've had six straight quarters where.
Speaker 9 (29:53):
We've been profitable on an adjusted ebit our basis cash
flow positive, net income positive, so we feel it's a
great time to come to the markets, raise some money,
and invest even more in our platform.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
One of our social media editors, DM Martine, poses a
big picture question for you around extreme couponing. She is
a self confessed I bought a user. Is that a
story you're telling the street that it made economic difficulty
or how consumers behave extreme couponing's coming back.
Speaker 9 (30:24):
It's true that there are certain people who we like
to think of as professional savers head on our platform.
Our direct to consumer app has fifty million registered users,
many of them are proud extreme savers.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
However, it's also important to note.
Speaker 9 (30:37):
That we power the first ever manufacturer offer cash back
program for Walmart, for Dollar General, for Family Dollar, for Kroger,
and these are much more everyday purchases occurring from people
with a lot broader type of background, not all of
whom are shopping to the sale. They're encountering these offers
as they're searching for products online, as they're building a basket,
(30:59):
and we're able to move markets for the largest brands
in the world. So it's a combination. But I do
think that in environments that are like this one inflationary
as well as every day environments, it's always something that's relevant.
You know, people shop for groceries one point six times
a week. Eighty seven percent of Americans use at least
one coupon a year on their groceries, so it's not
(31:20):
a discretionary category and it's relevant in all climates.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You took a risk coming to the market at this moment,
and it looks like it's going to be paying off.
Your shares indicated at one hundred and seven hundred and
twelve being reported at the moment.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
You priced at eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
So having marketed below that, there's been real interest in
your company.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Tell us the marketing pitch now.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Because you are very integral within a relationship to Walmart,
can you therefore get other big grocery stage practitioners on board.
Can you white label for others out there at the moment?
Speaker 9 (31:52):
Absolutely, Caroline, We've already begun to build a network with
Walmart at the center. They are strategic investors in Ibada,
but we also have Kroger Dollar, General Family, Dollar, Exxon
Shell and app Card, which represents over three hundred other
grocery retailers using our network to pull in rewards content on.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
A white label basis.
Speaker 9 (32:12):
We think that that's going to be a very broad
and attractive network, and it's really a network effect business.
The more of these publishers sign up, the more we're
able to attract advertisers to bring offers in, the more
we're able to fulfill our mission on behalf of the
end consumer, which is to make every purchase rewarding.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Brian, what's the Ibada AI story.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
That's right?
Speaker 9 (32:33):
AI is critical to the future of Ibada. We are
really helping to create a next generation platform for what
we call performance marketing, meaning we don't charge for impressions
and clicks. We only get paid when our clients sell
a product. They want to put the right offer with
the right amount in front of the right consumer at
the right time. Gone are the days of your grandmother's coupon.
(32:53):
This is not a one size fits all solution. The
level of sophistication we have is because forty five percent
of our eight hundred employees are technologists and we've been
doing AI for years, using it to find personalization algorithms,
machine learning, and we'll continue to invest.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
In that ED, we want to be thank you. I
bought a CEO Ran Leach, thank you so much. Meanwhile,
coming up, well, we're going to be talking to a company, ED.
Who are we gonna be speaking with?
Speaker 4 (33:19):
The Maving Clinic CEO Kate Ryder. Big expansion on a
fertility program, really impoort New York City conversation is coming
up next Carriage and stock Marketing news.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, this is a company that you know we're just
talking about IPOs. There one that opod not long ago,
not more than a few years ago, is thinking about
actually going private twenty three and meters speaking with Jaki
of course, the woman behind this business that more than
almost fifty percent reports that look, she's not liking it
being undervalued in the public markets.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
We see a pop on the idea that it might
be taking private. This is Groom Meg.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Technology, New York Tech Unicorn Maven Clinic, it's the largest
virtual clinic for women and family health announced that there's
expanding it's award winning fertility and family building program. The company,
(34:11):
which is founded back in twenty fourteen, it's raised three
hundred million dollars. They're about investors including General Catalyst, Sequoya
Looks Capital, to name but a few, and well peace
to welcome to the show. Mavin Clinic founder and CEO
Kate Ryder for more and Kate, You've got more than
two thousand clients using your product, and I want to
understand when you go to them and say, this is
the benefit that you're going to garner by offering this,
(34:32):
what is it?
Speaker 10 (34:33):
Well, you know, clients right now are really interested in
supporting their working families, and so I think it's been
you know, COVID was certainly a moment where working families
were really stretched. And I think in general, women's health,
whether it's fertility, whether it's pregnancy, menopause, is just an
area that has been so underfunded, underserved from an experience standpoint,
that employers really lean in to support these journeys.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
And so they can do that with MEMN so.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
They can understand that they get talent talent acquisition to
have retention of gen z and millennial. But already statistics
you give clients like this is the return on investment
you get when bringing in Mayven Clinic.
Speaker 10 (35:08):
Oh yeah, I mean fertility and maternity as a bundle
are often one of the top health care costs that
employers face and so with us, we're a triple bottom
line business. Number One, we can reduce costs and one
of the most costly areas of healthcare. Number two, we
can help attract and retain some of the most important talent.
I mean, forty five percent of workers say that they
really look for the fertility benefits and family building benefits
(35:28):
at companies today to see how they're going to be
cared for. And number three, from an equity lens and
a health equity lens, you know, employers can really lean
in here and solve some of I think our healthcare
system's biggest challenges when it comes to supporting you know,
women and families on these journeys.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Challenges being where do I get this sort of advice?
How do I get it for both men and women?
And indeed, how do I get the right, truthful, right
advice The business that you'll building, I mean, Boyce is
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
We have been through some different economic environments. How is
it going.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
How you seeing adoption in the US and indeed from
international businesses.
Speaker 10 (36:03):
Yeah, Well, we grew our revenue to ninety five percent
last year, and so even though it was a year
where I think there was a lot of uncertainty about
the macroeconomy. This is still an area where employers and
health plans are really leaning in because again there's just
so much catch up to do. Twelve percent of our
member base is international, and so that's another big area
that we're seeing continued growth in. You know, the a
(36:23):
multinational is looking to bring again that equitable lens to
family building and across the world. It's you know, that's
really different whether you're in a public system, what the
regulations are, and so how do you how do you
bring that same access to everybody? And so you know,
we work, we were we were we were talking with
our client Amazon about our global family building benefit with
(36:44):
them and our partnership over the summer, and so we
work with a lot of companies like that.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Having birthed in the UK and the US, I can
attest the slightly different talking about your business stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, we just had a border on they've just gone public.
How much all the.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Companies that are invested in you, the VS see saying
hey you ordering so what with a ninety five percent
increase in revenue last year that you were able to say, look,
we're almost profitable, we should be going.
Speaker 10 (37:07):
Public or you're like, no, no, wait, wait this up, well
not this year, but you know, I think that it's
certainly where we would like to end up. You know,
for us, we're really lucky to have a board that
really sees the long term and so we're certainly headed
in that direction. But I think we there's just there's
a lot of products we're still launching at the moment,
and you know, the markets are different these days than
(37:28):
they were three years ago, and so we would you know,
we're holding ourselves to a very high standard so for
when we get to the public markets will continue to
grow versus I think what's happened in the past with
some companies where after the six month b lockup ends,
you know, the share price kind of falls.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And what about competition?
Speaker 10 (37:46):
Competition? I mean, honestly, our biggest competition is still the
status quo.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
You know.
Speaker 10 (37:51):
There there it's hard to change a build a category
and change mindset and you know, that's what we've been
working on for ten years. And I feel like five
percent and run the way into the product romot. But
but yeah, I would say satus Quo is the biggest,
the biggest challenge, and it's something that you know as
we continue to see more brand awareness and more celebrities
(38:12):
and more member stories around why fertility benefits matter, why menopause, pregnancy, pediatrics.
You know that that's that's that's really helpful.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
It takes a while.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's just shift a mindset. We thank you for coming
on talking all about it. As new products get rolled out,
name in clinic founder and CEO, Kate Rider, we thank her.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Congress it's on fast track.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
To approve a bill aimed at forcing TikTok's Chinese parent
that's White Dance to divest it's controversial ownership stake or indeed,
you know, we'll have to see an exit of the business.
Let's bring in Bloomberg's Alex Brunker for all the details. Now,
this suddenly injects new life into this conversation we're having
a lot a month or so ago. The how is
looking at fast tracking it by tying it to well
(39:03):
relief or money towards Ukraine and indeed towards Israel.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Correct, that's exactly right.
Speaker 11 (39:09):
We had a prior bill that did basically the same
thing that this one looks to do pass in the
House already. It ran into some pushback from senators who
thought that the timeline for divestiture was too short.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So what House Speaker.
Speaker 11 (39:21):
Mike Johnson has done is basically put this in a
wrapper with really key items like aid for Ukraine and
aid for Israel, things that appeal to both sides of
the aisle, and made some of those changes. They've extended
the deliberation period for a divestiture to kind of satiate
some of the concerns from key senators.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
So we do.
Speaker 11 (39:40):
Expect this to be voted on on Saturday. We do
believe that this will pass the House again in this
wrapper of bills, and in a very DC fashion the
Senate and Joe Biden said they would both quickly take
this effort up if it passes the House on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
I think there's just still so many questions how this
would work, whether it's next month, next year. You make
a really interesting observation in your Tech Daily that the
concern is Chinese interference, which is you write, is largely
hypothetical at this point. So TikTok's face with a divest
or ban. You and I reported last month of the
month before that the company's position is we're just not
(40:19):
going to do it.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
That's right.
Speaker 11 (40:22):
They will push for legal challenges before this becomes a
divestiture situation. Byte Dan certainly does not want to actually
carve out this really valuable asset, and I do expect
that in that year long almost a year that they
would have to fight this or figure out some kind
of separation, they will be fighting tooth and nail. We've
(40:43):
heard from the company that they plan on leaning into
a First Amendment argument. I'm sure that both them and
their supporters will be picking apart the specific language of
the bill because ed as we wrote back then, this
still remains a really unprecedented situation to have such a
large consumer tech company actually forced to separate from its
(41:04):
owner by any country, particularly the US, where the social
media industry kind of has its home.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
In TikTok's competitors, and what if there's a ban. You
cite some data for the Center for Economic Policy Research
that you'd literally have to pay college students, as an example,
to delete the app from their phone.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
That's right.
Speaker 11 (41:26):
They say fifty nine dollars a month or over seven
hundred dollars a year is what you'd have to pay them.
That's no small dollar amount for a college student.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
But this ban is actually.
Speaker 11 (41:35):
Not going to be paying its users to relinquish TikTok.
It's almost a payment in kind. Congress is saying we'll
protect you from this kind of invisible existential threat of
China and their potential influence or data hoovering capabilities. So
I do expect that folks could be pretty upset. But
with the new deadline, there's an important distinction in timing.
(41:55):
Had the original bill passed along this same timeframe, had
sent it, passed the bill and Biden signed it into law,
that deadline for a divestiture would have come right around
the election. With this extension and timing, this actually pushes
that decision into the next presidential administration past the election.
And I'm sure that politicians don't want to be making
(42:17):
the argument right around election day to their important young
constituents why they shouldn't be, you know, looked at negatively
if they in fact voted to pass this bill.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
Alex Brunke bringing it to us and in her Tech Daily,
go read it.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
We thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Meanwhile, that does it for this incredibly busy edition of
Bloomberg Technology Yet.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah, lots of recap in the podcast. You know where
to find it. On the Bloomberg platforms, as well as
on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. From New York City and
San Francisco, this is Bloomberg technology.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
From Marhard where Innovation, money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Love Love.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I'm Caroline Heind of blomgg's world headquarters in New York.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Now I'm Ed Lodlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Coming up, we'll break down to t SMC's first quarter
earning support. This is the company scales up profit, but
scales back. It's outlook for a chip market expansion.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Plus, Google fires twenty eight employees after they were involved
in protests against Project Nimbus to provide Israel's government and
military with AI and cloud services. Will bring you the details.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
And Cisco's plan for keeping AI systems safe from attack
artificial intelligence itself. Of course, we'll discuss the company's new
safeguarding approach and so much more throughout this app. At first,
and we check in on these markets and actually a
little bit of optic in the NASZAC in some of
those technology stocks to say we're up about five tens
per percent.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Now elsewhere, we've sort of been trending water.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We'd been digesting what has been quite a harsh sell
off throughout the week in stocks and indeed in bonds
as we really start to digest just two cuts for
the rest of the year, if that coming from the
Federal Reserve tenure yields still up again four basis points
four point six three is kort of where we currently
are standing. We lost some of our technology. We'll get
it back in a minute. We're currently seeing the vics
on the downside, though, so some of that volatility that
(01:41):
we've seen in the fear index in that gauge just
dampening down. We're down just about seventeen level. Remember we
spike to nineteen on the back of geopolitical risks at
the beginning of this week.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Move on, have a little look at what's happening in
the world of.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Crypto, because we had been, in fact seeing a bit
of a rebound. We're up almost five percent on the day,
but look we're still languishing out about a sixty three
sixty four thousand dollar level. We dig into crypto a
little bit more in a moment, and what are you
watching on the micro.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Well, we are going to look at alphabet pairent of Google.
The shares a higher half percent they have been down
earlier in the session. Very shortly in the program, we're
going to go to our reporter davely Album and find
out about these jobs that were cut or the firing
as a result from the protests. Very well read Bloomberg,
Terminal and online. A lot of interest in that story.
The chip sector is the main focus of readers again
(02:28):
this Thursday. Let's start with TSMC. It's now down on
the ADR's three point eight percent have been much lower,
giving us a maintenance of that capex guidance. Very strong
in AI, weakness in smartphones. Remember this is the world's
biggest contract manufacturer of semiconductors. And then a Bloomberg exclusive,
Micron is softer half a percent. Bloomberg reporting that it's
(02:49):
going to get about six point one billion dollars in
grants from the US government as part of the Chips Act.
Grants only, but there's a loan component as well, and
it could come as soon next week. There's a lot
to discuss, and for that we go to Bloomberg's Ian King,
who leads our semiconductor coverage. Let's start with TSMC. The
world pays attention at the moment when TSMC gives US numbers.
(03:12):
We learned that AI is strong, high performance computer is strong,
potentially smartphone is weak. What was your takeaway?
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Yeah, I know, that's absolutely right. They've confirmed basically the
fears and hopes of everybody who's watching semiconductors right now.
Smartphones were down steeply, and people will be concerned that
that to read on Apple and what's happening to the iPhone,
particularly in China. On the flip side of that, HPC
high performance computing, which is obviously in video, AMD and
(03:42):
all of the very large, very expensive chips were strongly.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Pair that then with the news that we had with
ASML yesterday and the fact that chip equipment perhaps isn't
so in demand.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
What ISSMC really trying to signal here?
Speaker 5 (03:57):
What they're trying to signal really is you know that,
as usual, they have the best read on what's going on,
and they're really confirming what's going on in terms of
these end market forces. We've been waiting for the smartphone
market to come back for a long time. It is
coming back in China, but unfortunately it's coming back for
chips that are probably being made outside the Western ecosystem.
(04:18):
So that's a concern there for the geopolitics, ASML is
a longer term read on the confidence of a small
group of companies, doesn't have as much of an indication
on what's happening in the short term.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Let's talk about Micron and Bloomberg's reporting that it will
get six point one billion grant allocation from the Chips
Act to build capacity in the United States. There's a
loans component as well. The sources are telling us this
we get announced next week. What do we know about
the package Micron's been awarded.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
Yeah, I mean, as ever, the companies want more, They
want as much as they can probably get. This is
being seen as roughly what commensurate with sort of microns
role in the value chain here. Remember they make memory chips.
That production, as with advanced logic, has been moving to
East Asia for the last few decades. This is the
(05:11):
Biden administration saying, hey, we haven't forgotten about memory. That's
important to You need that in your phone, you need
that in your data center. So they're enabling Micron to
at least bring some production back to this country.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And we've heard time and time again from the CEO
Motor really talking about you need to make it worth
my while though I could be building manufacturing abroad for
much cheaper, where in the US is he going to
be putting it? And really does it make economic sense?
Speaker 5 (05:38):
It makes economic sense if you get the government subsidies.
What Sanjay has said all along, as you pointed out,
and a lot of his colleagues have said the same thing.
The government here needs to do the bare minimum, which
is to close that gap in terms of what it
costs between the US and places like Singapore, South Korea,
Taiwan where those facilities are currently being made with a
(06:00):
lot of government support, with tax regimes, with all of
these things which helped large capital projects like that. He's
looking at upstate New York, and he's looking at the
home base of Micron, which is in Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Bloomberg Ian king always on for us. We so appreciate
the analysis when it comes thick and fast across the
trip sector.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Meanway.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Meanwhile, let's get to Huawei.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Let's release its latest series of smartphones today, sustaining its
momentum after that breakthrough Mate sixty, Remember that device that
helped erode Apple's dominance over in China.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
In that high end segment.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Now the poorer seventy smartphone series starts at seven hundred
and sixty dollars, then goes up from them, matching in fact,
the price point of an iPhone fifteen n.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
All right. Coming up on the program, Google fires employees
staging protests from California to New York over a contract
with Israel. We can have that report next. A quick
check on Trump Media and Technology shares hire fourteen percent
in the session, adding to the gains of yesterday. Class
expect trading. There's a lock up until September. A lot
of activity in warrants market. This is the Spack one
(07:06):
oh one. We're seeing a big deer, now a big rebound.
This is Bloomberg technology. Time for Talking tech. And in
(07:26):
the news, Elon Musk is apologizing for incorrectly low severance packages.
The Testa CEO made the rare apology via email and
said it has come to his attention that some severance
packages were incorrectly low and it will be corrected immediately.
The news comes after Tesla slashed global headcomt by more
than ten percent as the ev baker struggles with slowing
(07:49):
demand for electric vehicles. Plus, Apple CEO Tim Cook is
meeting Singapore's incoming Prime Minister at the tail end of
his most extensive Southeast Asia tour in years. There's the
company searches for new growth markets and manufacturing locations to
offset headwinds in China. The trip could pave the way
for a more aggressive sales campaign in a densely populated
(08:11):
region where Android phones from Samsung, Chaomi and the Oppo
dominate the market. And Delivery said orders return to growth
with a two percent increase in the first quarter, driven
by strong progress in the food delivery company's international segment.
Users place seventy three point five million orders in the
first quarter. The London based company kept its guidance for
(08:32):
the year unchanged.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Carro.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Now, there's another story that we're currently following ed and
Google has fired twenty eight employees after they were involved
in protests against a one point two billion dollar joint
contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military
AI and cloud services.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Now.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
The protests took place across Google offices in New York
and Seattle and California, and were led by the No
Tech for Apartheid organization. Google said physically in other employees
work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a
clear violation of our policies and completely unacceptable behavior. Joining
us nay now A please to welcome Davey Albert, who
(09:11):
has helped report on this very sensitive story ultimately daily.
And the protests came a day before an all important
Israeli government approval right for a five year strategic plan
to transition to cloud. It's called Project Nimbus, and this
was sensitive for certain employees.
Speaker 6 (09:27):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean especially in the in the midst
of the war between.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Israel and Gaza.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Employees have really been activated about this issue and have
been organizing to try to protest the way that their
work contributes to tools that would then serve the Israeli government,
which again is engaged in war. And so they say
that they have a right to you know, ban to
(09:59):
get and object to this use of their work, and
that US labor law actually protects them from sort of
consequences from the company, discipline from the company, because they
believe they are within the rights to come together over
this issue.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Davey, in your story, you present a very clear chronology
of what happened and the perspective of both sides of
the situation. When I put on social media you were
coming on the show. One of the questions I got
most commonly was could you tell us a bit more
about the roles of those that were fired, what we
know about those specifically, because it was quite a broad
(10:42):
protest and we're saying less than fewer than thirty people
actually lost their jobs.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
So from the workers we spoke to, several of them
were software engineers, some of them worked on cloud, and
there were even some employees who were involved in speaking
out against Project Nimbus who work for DeepMind, which is
Google's AI lab. You know, these these workers tend to
(11:10):
not have specific visibility into exactly what Israel is doing
with their technology because these contracts are so siloed and
workers don't you know, directly work on on the tools
that the Israeli government might use, but they build the
tools that the Israeli government can then use for any purpose.
(11:33):
There's been prior reporting that, you know, the cloud services
that the Israeli government uses is on their own instance,
private instance of Google Cloud, and so from that perspective,
you know, employees can't see inside of that cloud that's
on Israeli soil and being used by Israeli government. But
(11:57):
these employees have in obviously following the news and believe
that their work may be not so in a straight
direct line, but still does contribute significantly to the way
that the technology that Israel is now using and deploying
(12:20):
in the war with Gaza.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
When you say Gaza actually not quite right, the war
between Israel and Hamas. Of course, Hamas deemed of course
a an issue a terrorist organization by the EU and
the United States. Davey, I'm really interested in perhaps is
this a tone shift in any way coming from the
very leadership of Alphabet and indeed Google. I mean, so Nopitchai,
(12:44):
how much has he had to weigh in here and
decide what the outcome is.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
Yeah, it absolutely is a shift in tone. For so long, really,
the founding culture of Google has been, you know, to
foster this sense of open debate and employees are encouraged
to speak out about anything really having to do with
their work. Those were in the early days, but then
(13:11):
over the years employees have really started to ban together
over important social issues. You know, in twenty eighteen or so,
there was organizing around sexual harassment allegations from leadership at
the company and sort of the way that they wanted
(13:34):
women to be able to speak out about their experiences,
so there was a walkout from employees around that issue,
and other issues have also galvanized these employees, you know,
in twenty twenty, with the killing of George Floyd and
organizing around the Black Lives Matter protests, that was another issue.
(13:55):
But this really has emerged as a particularly sensitive point
for Google, this particular issue with Israel, and the company
appears to be sending a message that they aren't going
to tolerate this kind of workplace activism anymore.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Davey, you talked about how that the workforce has been galvanized.
You note in the final paragraph of your report that
despite the response from Google, many employees feel that they're
getting support. Is that happening contemporary eraneously and is there
any sense that these strikes or sit ins will continue
or if this is the end of it now? It's
(14:38):
hard to say.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
Google sent a very strongly worded message to all employees,
essentially saying this is not this is not something they
will tolerate, that it is against company policy. At the
same time, you know, we've heard from employees who have
been keeping an eye on the internal messaging that's been
(15:00):
happening at the company, and several people are actually quite
upset by this move from the company, and maybe it'll
take a while for them to do another action, but
it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
This could continue on for many more months.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
We showed Google's full response and communication at the top
of the segment, and you can go and read Davey
and Julia's story and see it in Writing for Yourself
on bloomberg dot com. Bloomberg's Davy outur thank you harnessing
the power of AI to keep AI software safe from attack.
(15:42):
That's the promise of Cisco's latest product, Hypershield. I want
to go straight to Cisco's exiti Vice president and general
manager of Security and Collaboration G two Patel. This is
classic Cisco, right. You want to do more on services
and software, but just explain the technology you're going to use.
AI is the defense tool against an attack on AI infrastructure.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Well, security is actually one of the most pressing issues
of our time, and AI is actually being weaponized quite
a bit by malicious actors, so it only makes sense
for us to also use AI effectively to provide machine
scale defenses to organizations.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So we launched what I.
Speaker 7 (16:23):
Would call probably one of the most consequential innovations in
the history of Cisco in the area of cybersecurity in
the past forty years, and it's called Cisco Hypershield. And
our goal over there is to fundamentally re imagine security
for this AI world web at AI scale, because it's
(16:44):
very hard to go out and handle these threats at
human scale GJU.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It's been interesting because time and time again people have
come on saying, look, with AI as the aggressor, we
can also use AI as the protector. You really talk
about this being a radically new approach. How is it radical?
How is it that new from what's already.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
On the market.
Speaker 7 (17:02):
Yeah, I think it's important because you need to make
sure that there's a certain set of building blocks that
are built on top of which you can build these solutions.
And we now have some very advanced technologies around hardware acceleration,
around AI that can allow us to build these very
sophisticated capabilities.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
There's many examples.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
I'll give you one particular one the amount of time
that it takes from when a vulnerability is announced in
the market, two when an exploit happens by malicious actors
is now down to single digit days, and I think
I wouldn't be surprised if it goes down to hours
or minutes in the next few in the near future.
And so what we've done is we've actually seen that
(17:42):
the amount of time it takes to patch that infrastructure
is actually still twenty two to forty five days.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So you've got this massive.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
Gap from when an exploit happens and how long it
takes to patch the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
We've solved that problem because what.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
We can do now is within minutes, have a shield
that can put in front of infrastructructure that has not
been updated, that has not been patched, so that you
can protect the organization from critical infrastructure attacks that might
happen to hospitals or financial services organizations and so on.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
You talk u about the building blocks, what we're talking
about is data centers, rows and rows of service stacks.
And we know that that infrastructure build out is happening.
It's happened, and the spend is committed for more of it,
is the spend committed to hypershield? Is anyone actually buying
this service from you in parallel with that infrastructure build out?
Speaker 7 (18:35):
Well, This was the first day that we announced it
to our customers. We had about we had many of
the leading chief information security officers over here in the
UK where we announced this product, and the most common
phrase that I heard was this is completely game changing.
And in fact, one of the customers told me I'd
like to have two and so I think if you
(18:56):
care about cybersecurity and if you care about your critical
infrastructure being protected, it's going to be very obvious for
you to make sure that you can allocate some focus
on something like Cisco hypershield. And the reality is is
this is the only one in the market. There's no
one else who quite handles the problem the way that
we are over here.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Of course, all of this is surrounding the partnership and
increasing partnership that you've been talking through with in Video.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
How integral is in Video's practice beIN within this.
Speaker 7 (19:24):
And the way that we think about this is you
have to work with the ecosystem at large rather than
being completely kind of a wall garden. So and Video
is a very important player in AI, and we want
to make sure that we partner with them so that
we can build security specific models. We actually take our
technology and optimize it for their GPUs and so we
will continue to work with Nvideo and others in video.
(19:45):
We've enjoyed a great partnership with them already and this
one just extends that further.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
GD what in video offers is expensive, and everyone's been
talking about the rush to harness chips, to harness energy,
the expense that's coming in this new world of general
to aire.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
How expensive?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
What can you price point your new AI cybersecurity prevention.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
App So the way that we are going to go
out and price this is by workload. We haven't announced
the exact pricing yet. This is going to be general
availability around the August timeframe, and so between now and
August we will make sure that we actually have more
information on pricing. But our philosophy is the price for
mass market, right. We want to make sure that we
have high unit volume so we can get to many,
(20:28):
many customers within a very quick amount of time.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
So you see, there is a human safety net element
of this. You're not handing over complete control to the
defense of critical infrastructure. Just explain the safety net.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
The way I think about this is humans are always
apprehensive of something automated taking over and so remember the
day's ed when you actually had to update your iPhone
and you would actually back it up three times before
you started updating it. Now you don't worry about it
because there's that trust that gets built over time. And
so what we've done is we've actually made sure that
customers have the option of having a human in the loop,
(21:02):
so if you do want to auto update your systems,
that you actually have the ability to make sure that
that can be approved by you and it doesn't happen automatically,
but when you feel comfortable, you have the option of
having that be completely transparent to you so that you
can then start focusing on higher order bid items.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Tit. You've used the word customers a lot. We just
have thirty seconds, but just explain who the market is here.
The users you're selling to.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Our market is.
Speaker 7 (21:28):
Every large organization, mid sized organization and small organization that's
interested in making sure that they can protect the data
centers from attacks from a cybersecurity standpoint at aiscale.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
G two.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
So great to spend some time with you live from
your garage.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
We joke you're actually at the McLaren Center over in
the UK. We've got some nice parts in the background.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
So is Goo Executive vice president and general manager of
Security and Collaboration Cheta Fintel.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Thanks for joining us on the day of the announcement.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Ed Ludlow here in San
Francisco and.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Karen Hyder in New York.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Let's get you a quick check on these markets because actually,
well still the economic data comes strong.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Ah, there you are, Joel. Nice to see you, our for.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Mour manager, just shining a light on some of our
market check. I want to go back though to the
macro for a moment, because before we get into the
individual names, I want to shine light the fact that
we have been seeing overall the Nasdaq on the higher
side of things, are up about five tens aer percent
of there or thereabouts. We've also seen, of course, an
introduction to the bomb market just selling a little bit.
We seeing a bit of a sell off. We seem
to be wanting to commit to some of the individual
(22:36):
names that are on the move today. So I'm going
to shine a light on Netflix earnings coming thick and
fast after the bell, up six tens of a percent.
We're expecting about a fourteen percent increase in revenue for
its fiscal first quarter. Netflix juggernaut faces a high barbow
after one hundred and twelve billion dollar rally. We've got
emphasis on the downside after its numbers. Of course, Indian
key player in the technology space, actually underwhelming when it
(22:57):
came to overall revenues. We're looking at MicroStrategy up more
than six percent, some of the individual crypto names doing
well ed Why because crypto is bouncing on the day
at least, although we see and of course some profit
taking of late.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
All right, let's keep the conversation going around cryptso and
bringing Thomas Perfumo crack in head of strategy to mass.
I have been invited to not one, but two bitcoin
harving parties tonight. Whether I go to either of them
remains to be seen. But it got me thinking that
for many this is something that is interesting to be celebrated,
(23:33):
you know, it's coming in the calendar. For others they
focus on the supply mechanics of what it does to
the market. Where do you focus your attentions?
Speaker 8 (23:42):
So for me, I think of the takeaways for the
bitcoin having and falling into two different spectrums. Firstly, it
underpins why we believe bitcoin is the soundest form of money.
There's a whole host of reasons why on the demand
side of teams like global liquidity, twenty four seven, three
sixty five, market access, permission, permission lists and so ship resistant,
like all these nice qualities for why bitcoin served as
(24:03):
a good form of money. But on the supply side,
you know, how reliably can you plan around a currency
and bitcoin because of the having, you know that there's
only ever going to be twenty one million bitcoin in existence,
and so on. The second part of the takeaway here
is that this Bitcoin having in particular, you know, we
celebrated every roughly four years, but this one is the
(24:25):
most symbolic, in my opinion, in bitcoin's history and even
looking forward, because at a time when you have people
who are looking at their conventional currencies, inflation, interest rates,
and the economic environment that they live in, they see
this alternative form of currency, Bitcoin, and it's something that
has this really crisp story, this idea that as of tomorrow,
when the having takes place, ninety four percent of all
(24:48):
bitcoins that will ever exist will have been mined, and
less than one percent. We'll see less than one percent
inflation in the circulating supply of bitcoin going forward, so
that's a really powerful story I think for people, yes,
and why they're having is so.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Important tom Us, there will be a big section of
our audience watching thinking what has this got to do
with me? Is there a chance that they wake up
in global financial markets? The world has been changed by
this harving.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
No, the having in of itself isn't going to be
a cataclysmic event. We're not talking about a raptor here.
But what it is doing is it's reinforcing the narrative
of bitcoin as sound money, and in our opinion, the
adoption of bitcoin and of crypto takes time. This is
something that is a very innovative technology. It's very different
from how people use money today. And so this is
something that's going to take place over five, ten years,
(25:36):
twenty years, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
And you're going to think of it as.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Almost like a change in culture and a change in
understanding of how people transact with one another. And so
when we think about this having in particular, nothing super special,
but again like an important milestone, particularly in this time
and age, and we love to celebrate it.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Thomas, I want to get a glimpse of what you're
seeing in this unique position over at kracken at the moment.
Because yes, the reason many have said that this harving
is unprecedented is because where crypto has been priced at before,
where Bitcoin has been at all time highs, that hasn't
happened before in the other times.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
But there has been money taken off the table of late.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Why has there been new money just trying to resettle
when we have this risk occurrence, we've had geopolitical tensions,
Why do we suddenly see such a fallen price.
Speaker 8 (26:23):
Yeah, so there's definitely a lot of volatility when it
comes to bitcoin in general. I wouldn't say that we've
reached any kind of peaks. So historically, if we look
at prior all time highs, we start to see these
massive sessions of all time highs, so like fifteen twenty
all time highs within a single month on a day
to day basis, and that's when you see in the
volatility peak to one hundred percent or so. With bitcoin,
(26:45):
we've only seen a handful of all time highs in
the last month. It is a little bit of head
of schedule versus the other three having events we've seen,
but nothing crazier out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yet, what I like to.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
Think about when it comes to the price action, is
it's a momentous occasion. You will come in, they see
the price level, they're like, I want to participate, and
you get a little bit of that momentum play. But
we still have a lot of new entrants coming into space.
The Bitcoin ETF for example, twelve billion dollars a new
NetFlow coming into the cryptocurrency sector.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
A whole lot of people are.
Speaker 8 (27:15):
Coming in, signing up for accounts and buying bitcoin for
the first time. So this is just something you have
to kind of space out over the long term, and
you're going to have these ups and downs along the way.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
More broadly, how have you been thinking about that new
inflow into Bitcoin coming into other parts of the crypto ecosystem.
What's been interesting is perhaps and the other old coins,
we've just seen a churn a movement within it, rather
than perhaps money coming into Bitcoin and then going, oh,
I'm going to play in their worlds of Salona. Now,
what do you think about that movement coming from Bitcoin
eight into the other or coins.
Speaker 8 (27:45):
Yeah, these rotations ebb and flow, and it depends on
the trend at the time. And so when we see
in twenty twenty For example, we had that momentous occasion
called de five Summers, so everyone was going and playing
around with ethereum tokens, and the reason was because you
had the maturation of those applications that had been invested
in back in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, so they were launching.
(28:06):
You started to see the application and the network FECs
built up from there, and then that led into rotation
into bitcoin, etc. Here we have the having event, the
US Bitcoin etf as the catalysts for people getting interested
in so bitcoin comes first.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
As far as other alternative.
Speaker 8 (28:23):
Currencies, whether they're tokens or other layer ones like solana ethereum.
A lot of that's driven by whatever application exists that
people are starting to really adopt early on. And one
of the interesting things, in my opinion, is that the
last cycle back in twenty one, you had tens of
billions of dollars come into the space to develop new
projects and whatnot. We're talking at this point about three
(28:44):
years of maturation, and so that investment cycle, we kind
of have these dark horses. We don't know exactly what
application is going to come out, but we're really excited
about it, and some stuff that's proliferating right now would
be things around like GameFi in the crypto space. So
we'll have to see from bitcoin where it goes come back.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
It's been too too long time us for FuMO of
Atkrack and he's head a strategy.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
We thank him for talking all things crypto with us.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Now let's talk all things IPOs because we've started to
get a few more. The CEO of I Bought A,
Brian Leach, is joining us straight from the New York
Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Why have you decided that.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
For your business model, which is all about giving cash
back rewards when you're purchasing groceries, maybe even your gas,
Why is it now the time to show your technology
solution on the public markets?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 9 (29:31):
We think it's the perfect time because our mission is
make every purchase rewarding. Sixty percent of Americans are living
paycheck to paycheck, Seventy five percent are financially insecure. We've
given away one point eight billion dollars to help people
make those ends meet.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
We've also gotten.
Speaker 9 (29:47):
To a point in our company where we've built out
a large network and are beginning to see those network effects.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
We've had six straight quarters where.
Speaker 9 (29:53):
We've been profitable on an adjusted ebit our basis cash
flow positive, net income positive, so we feel it's a
great time to come to the markets, raise some money,
and invest even more in our platform.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
One of our social media editors, DM Martine, poses a
big picture question for you around extreme couponing. She is
a self confessed I bought a user. Is that a
story you're telling the street that it made economic difficulty
or how consumers behave extreme couponing's coming back.
Speaker 9 (30:24):
It's true that there are certain people who we like
to think of as professional savers head on our platform.
Our direct to consumer app has fifty million registered users,
many of them are proud extreme savers.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
However, it's also important to note.
Speaker 9 (30:37):
That we power the first ever manufacturer offer cash back
program for Walmart, for Dollar General, for Family Dollar, for Kroger,
and these are much more everyday purchases occurring from people
with a lot broader type of background, not all of
whom are shopping to the sale. They're encountering these offers
as they're searching for products online, as they're building a basket,
(30:59):
and we're able to move markets for the largest brands
in the world. So it's a combination. But I do
think that in environments that are like this one inflationary
as well as every day environments, it's always something that's relevant.
You know, people shop for groceries one point six times
a week. Eighty seven percent of Americans use at least
one coupon a year on their groceries, so it's not
(31:20):
a discretionary category and it's relevant in all climates.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You took a risk coming to the market at this moment,
and it looks like it's going to be paying off.
Your shares indicated at one hundred and seven hundred and
twelve being reported at the moment.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
You priced at eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
So having marketed below that, there's been real interest in
your company.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Tell us the marketing pitch now.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Because you are very integral within a relationship to Walmart,
can you therefore get other big grocery stage practitioners on board.
Can you white label for others out there at the moment?
Speaker 9 (31:52):
Absolutely, Caroline, We've already begun to build a network with
Walmart at the center. They are strategic investors in Ibada,
but we also have Kroger Dollar, General Family, Dollar, Exxon
Shell and app Card, which represents over three hundred other
grocery retailers using our network to pull in rewards content on.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
A white label basis.
Speaker 9 (32:12):
We think that that's going to be a very broad
and attractive network, and it's really a network effect business.
The more of these publishers sign up, the more we're
able to attract advertisers to bring offers in, the more
we're able to fulfill our mission on behalf of the
end consumer, which is to make every purchase rewarding.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Brian, what's the Ibada AI story.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
That's right?
Speaker 9 (32:33):
AI is critical to the future of Ibada. We are
really helping to create a next generation platform for what
we call performance marketing, meaning we don't charge for impressions
and clicks. We only get paid when our clients sell
a product. They want to put the right offer with
the right amount in front of the right consumer at
the right time. Gone are the days of your grandmother's coupon.
(32:53):
This is not a one size fits all solution. The
level of sophistication we have is because forty five percent
of our eight hundred employees are technologists and we've been
doing AI for years, using it to find personalization algorithms,
machine learning, and we'll continue to invest.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
In that ED, we want to be thank you. I
bought a CEO Ran Leach, thank you so much. Meanwhile,
coming up, well, we're going to be talking to a company, ED.
Who are we gonna be speaking with?
Speaker 4 (33:19):
The Maving Clinic CEO Kate Ryder. Big expansion on a
fertility program, really impoort New York City conversation is coming
up next Carriage and stock Marketing news.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, this is a company that you know we're just
talking about IPOs. There one that opod not long ago,
not more than a few years ago, is thinking about
actually going private twenty three and meters speaking with Jaki
of course, the woman behind this business that more than
almost fifty percent reports that look, she's not liking it
being undervalued in the public markets.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
We see a pop on the idea that it might
be taking private. This is Groom Meg.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Technology, New York Tech Unicorn Maven Clinic, it's the largest
virtual clinic for women and family health announced that there's
expanding it's award winning fertility and family building program. The company,
(34:11):
which is founded back in twenty fourteen, it's raised three
hundred million dollars. They're about investors including General Catalyst, Sequoya
Looks Capital, to name but a few, and well peace
to welcome to the show. Mavin Clinic founder and CEO
Kate Ryder for more and Kate, You've got more than
two thousand clients using your product, and I want to
understand when you go to them and say, this is
the benefit that you're going to garner by offering this,
(34:32):
what is it?
Speaker 10 (34:33):
Well, you know, clients right now are really interested in
supporting their working families, and so I think it's been
you know, COVID was certainly a moment where working families
were really stretched. And I think in general, women's health,
whether it's fertility, whether it's pregnancy, menopause, is just an
area that has been so underfunded, underserved from an experience standpoint,
that employers really lean in to support these journeys.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
And so they can do that with MEMN so.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
They can understand that they get talent talent acquisition to
have retention of gen z and millennial. But already statistics
you give clients like this is the return on investment
you get when bringing in Mayven Clinic.
Speaker 10 (35:08):
Oh yeah, I mean fertility and maternity as a bundle
are often one of the top health care costs that
employers face and so with us, we're a triple bottom
line business. Number One, we can reduce costs and one
of the most costly areas of healthcare. Number two, we
can help attract and retain some of the most important talent.
I mean, forty five percent of workers say that they
really look for the fertility benefits and family building benefits
(35:28):
at companies today to see how they're going to be
cared for. And number three, from an equity lens and
a health equity lens, you know, employers can really lean
in here and solve some of I think our healthcare
system's biggest challenges when it comes to supporting you know,
women and families on these journeys.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Challenges being where do I get this sort of advice?
How do I get it for both men and women?
And indeed, how do I get the right, truthful, right
advice The business that you'll building, I mean, Boyce is
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
We have been through some different economic environments. How is
it going.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
How you seeing adoption in the US and indeed from
international businesses.
Speaker 10 (36:03):
Yeah, Well, we grew our revenue to ninety five percent
last year, and so even though it was a year
where I think there was a lot of uncertainty about
the macroeconomy. This is still an area where employers and
health plans are really leaning in because again there's just
so much catch up to do. Twelve percent of our
member base is international, and so that's another big area
that we're seeing continued growth in. You know, the a
(36:23):
multinational is looking to bring again that equitable lens to
family building and across the world. It's you know, that's
really different whether you're in a public system, what the
regulations are, and so how do you how do you
bring that same access to everybody? And so you know,
we work, we were we were we were talking with
our client Amazon about our global family building benefit with
(36:44):
them and our partnership over the summer, and so we
work with a lot of companies like that.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Having birthed in the UK and the US, I can
attest the slightly different talking about your business stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Well, we just had a border on they've just gone public.
How much all the.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Companies that are invested in you, the VS see saying
hey you ordering so what with a ninety five percent
increase in revenue last year that you were able to say, look,
we're almost profitable, we should be going.
Speaker 10 (37:07):
Public or you're like, no, no, wait, wait this up, well
not this year, but you know, I think that it's
certainly where we would like to end up. You know,
for us, we're really lucky to have a board that
really sees the long term and so we're certainly headed
in that direction. But I think we there's just there's
a lot of products we're still launching at the moment,
and you know, the markets are different these days than
(37:28):
they were three years ago, and so we would you know,
we're holding ourselves to a very high standard so for
when we get to the public markets will continue to
grow versus I think what's happened in the past with
some companies where after the six month b lockup ends,
you know, the share price kind of falls.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And what about competition?
Speaker 10 (37:46):
Competition? I mean, honestly, our biggest competition is still the
status quo.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
You know.
Speaker 10 (37:51):
There there it's hard to change a build a category
and change mindset and you know, that's what we've been
working on for ten years. And I feel like five
percent and run the way into the product romot. But
but yeah, I would say satus Quo is the biggest,
the biggest challenge, and it's something that you know as
we continue to see more brand awareness and more celebrities
(38:12):
and more member stories around why fertility benefits matter, why menopause, pregnancy, pediatrics.
You know that that's that's that's really helpful.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
It takes a while.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's just shift a mindset. We thank you for coming
on talking all about it. As new products get rolled out,
name in clinic founder and CEO, Kate Rider, we thank her.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Congress it's on fast track.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
To approve a bill aimed at forcing TikTok's Chinese parent
that's White Dance to divest it's controversial ownership stake or indeed,
you know, we'll have to see an exit of the business.
Let's bring in Bloomberg's Alex Brunker for all the details. Now,
this suddenly injects new life into this conversation we're having
a lot a month or so ago. The how is
looking at fast tracking it by tying it to well
(39:03):
relief or money towards Ukraine and indeed towards Israel.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Correct, that's exactly right.
Speaker 11 (39:09):
We had a prior bill that did basically the same
thing that this one looks to do pass in the
House already. It ran into some pushback from senators who
thought that the timeline for divestiture was too short.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
So what House Speaker.
Speaker 11 (39:21):
Mike Johnson has done is basically put this in a
wrapper with really key items like aid for Ukraine and
aid for Israel, things that appeal to both sides of
the aisle, and made some of those changes. They've extended
the deliberation period for a divestiture to kind of satiate
some of the concerns from key senators.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
So we do.
Speaker 11 (39:40):
Expect this to be voted on on Saturday. We do
believe that this will pass the House again in this
wrapper of bills, and in a very DC fashion the
Senate and Joe Biden said they would both quickly take
this effort up if it passes the House on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
I think there's just still so many questions how this
would work, whether it's next month, next year. You make
a really interesting observation in your Tech Daily that the
concern is Chinese interference, which is you write, is largely
hypothetical at this point. So TikTok's face with a divest
or ban. You and I reported last month of the
month before that the company's position is we're just not
(40:19):
going to do it.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
That's right.
Speaker 11 (40:22):
They will push for legal challenges before this becomes a
divestiture situation. Byte Dan certainly does not want to actually
carve out this really valuable asset, and I do expect
that in that year long almost a year that they
would have to fight this or figure out some kind
of separation, they will be fighting tooth and nail. We've
(40:43):
heard from the company that they plan on leaning into
a First Amendment argument. I'm sure that both them and
their supporters will be picking apart the specific language of
the bill because ed as we wrote back then, this
still remains a really unprecedented situation to have such a
large consumer tech company actually forced to separate from its
(41:04):
owner by any country, particularly the US, where the social
media industry kind of has its home.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
In TikTok's competitors, and what if there's a ban. You
cite some data for the Center for Economic Policy Research
that you'd literally have to pay college students, as an example,
to delete the app from their phone.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
That's right.
Speaker 11 (41:26):
They say fifty nine dollars a month or over seven
hundred dollars a year is what you'd have to pay them.
That's no small dollar amount for a college student.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
But this ban is actually.
Speaker 11 (41:35):
Not going to be paying its users to relinquish TikTok.
It's almost a payment in kind. Congress is saying we'll
protect you from this kind of invisible existential threat of
China and their potential influence or data hoovering capabilities. So
I do expect that folks could be pretty upset. But
with the new deadline, there's an important distinction in timing.
(41:55):
Had the original bill passed along this same timeframe, had
sent it, passed the bill and Biden signed it into law,
that deadline for a divestiture would have come right around
the election. With this extension and timing, this actually pushes
that decision into the next presidential administration past the election.
And I'm sure that politicians don't want to be making
(42:17):
the argument right around election day to their important young
constituents why they shouldn't be, you know, looked at negatively
if they in fact voted to pass this bill.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
Alex Brunke bringing it to us and in her Tech Daily,
go read it.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
We thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Meanwhile, that does it for this incredibly busy edition of
Bloomberg Technology Yet.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah, lots of recap in the podcast. You know where
to find it. On the Bloomberg platforms, as well as
on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. From New York City and
San Francisco, this is Bloomberg technology.
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