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This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneviek on Bloomberg Radio.
All right, everybody, you are listening to Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Master, along as Stephen Carroll in for Tim Stenovik this week Stephen of Porus, host of Bloomberg day Break Europe. But really nice to have you here in New York. And I'm just curious do you talk about AI as much as we do?
Oh?
Yeah, it's everywhere it is, right, And I mean, look, it's also the question of every person that has a new idea or a new use for it makes you start to think, then, well, what part of our lives are not going to be touched by AI?
Well, I love it when people say that AI is going to be a long time before like we really get impacted in terms of society, because I just I'm waiting for the AI anchors broadcast. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. But it's also it sounds like coming for lawyers.
Yeah if well, look for many it's already arrived. The legal industry is one that can see multiple consequences from the arrival of AI. So in one way, first of all, it's an extremely legally complex field. So the arrival of AI and to a lot of industry is going to
create a lot of work for lawyers. But there are other huge opportunities to revolutionize the way in which a sector which you know sometimes has been thought about being a bit old fashioned, could change, and could change pretty dramatically.
So talk about this. We've got Eleanor Lightbody with us.
She's CEO at Luminance, which has developed a legal large language model and recently raised forty million dollars as it expands into the Dallas market. Alan, are great to have you with us on the program today. Can you, first of all, just explain to us how does your technology work? Is this lawyer GPT?
Not quite so. Look as I'm sitting here in New York at the moment, and I'm looking outside a window, and there are people in every building, pretty much in every corner of this world who are receiving contracts, they're reviewing them, they're processing them, and they're deciding what to do with them. As that stands, it's very time consuming, it's very manual, it's very expensive, and it can introduce
a lot of risk. And so what Luminance is doing is that we're automating a lot of those low level tasks that pretty much every business is faced with on a daily basis. But it's much border than it's much more specific than just a chat GBT rapper. I think that's really really important. We've built a proprietary, purpose built large language model that was only trained on legal contracts, and that's really really key because if you were using something like chat GPT to dress problems in legal I
suppose because it's been trained across the whole Internet. I mean, it's amazing, isn't it like creating a contract or writing a poem for you? But fundamentally, it's been trained to give you an answer at all costs. And when you're working in the legal environment, you need an AI that knows when to hand back the answer to the human and knows when it doesn't know the answer. And that's really what sets us apart.
I'm curious hasn't been put to work yet.
Yes, absolutely, tell us how it's.
Working out and any snags or problems, and how you continue to tweak it. Yeah.
Absolutely so.
Look, we have over seven hundred customers now around the world and in the US alone. In the last eighteen months, our US customers have increased by two hundred and twenty five percent, with the likes of AMD all the way through to Panda Express and Hitachi all using US. And I think fundamentally, how are business using US and why business is using AI for legal Well, they're all faced
with the same problem. They're all faced with exploding in boxes they're trying to get through, they're all faced with increasing regulations, they're all faced with having to answer business questions on a second by second basis. So they're looking at AI to help them automate and augment that pretty much end to end. And what does that look like in practice, Well, that's I suppose being used for the creation of contracts. AI being used to help accelerate the
process in negotiating contracts. So instantaneously, if someone receives a contract with our AI, they can press a button and the AI will tell them what clauses they can agree to which ones they can't, what the risk is, and what language they should use instead, and then AI being able to answer any business questions of all of their contracts, which a great example would be Yokogawa used to spend about seven days answering business questions. That's now reduced down
to fifteen minutes at a maximum. So really, that end in nature is how businesses of all different sizes are really using the AI. You asked, what are some of the limitations? Will look at the moment, the way that the AI is being built, it's really to automate those low value, repetitive tasks. It's not to do the complex reasoning,
and it's not to do the complex advice. But fundamentally, if you can free up people's time so that they've got more space to focus on that, then that's absolutely amazing.
I'm wondering, are there areas of law which lend themselves to using your technology with the clients that you're working with, you find there's specific sectors where this really works well, or perhaps others where there's still development to be done before it can be before it can be applied.
I think this is like it's a universal, it's kind of reaching companies universally in the sense that most companies in the world are having to review very similar contracts. Let's think about your NDAs, your sales agreements, your DPAs, and fundamentally all of those, all those companies want to accelerate the work that they're doing with those contracts. They want to get through them faster so they can really focus on other things. And so that's really where AI
can help businesses. That and the fact that it can really highlight key business obligations of what you've agreed to in the past, identify key information instantaneously. That's really what I think is super powerful. If you're using AI to help you negotiate your multimillion pound deal, you might use it to help you summarize the key information in that contract, but you're probably going to want to spend more time on it than just you know, relying on it to do all of the work.
I'm curious, your company started in a Cambridge dorm room back in twenty fifteen, so that's almost ten years ago. So you guys were doing this sort of thing way before we all started talking about large language models, right and generator of AI. So help us understand kind of what you were doing. How the last year and a half in terms of a whole different level of AI has maybe changed the game, if at all, or impacted you.
Yeah, so it's I mean, it's been unbelievably exciting over the last two years. You know, our Aarsgreen five X, and I think let's cast our minds back to twenty fifteen when Adam and Graham had the founder started the business.
They started it in the Innovation Park at the University of Cambridge, and they started it because they had noticed that a lot of their friends were lawyers and they were commenting on the hours that were being put in and sunk into very similar work, and Adam and Graham were like, look, AIS getting change the way in which humans interact with data and with content. I think we
should build something for this. And really they sold first to law firms because they wanted to get data, because they knew that any AI company that was addressing this problem, data was absolutely key. And so they spent years working with the law firms and then they kind of moved into the in house legal teams because fundamentally they realized that the AI worked across all different industries, so it hasn't.
I suppose we've been doing AI before it was cool and the changes and the developments in the models is great because you can combine them with some of the other forms of working and selling down a contract. And so the combination of what we call an analytics AI and then genitive AI really allows us to set ourselves apart in this market.
I wonder how what your view is on how lawyers need to be trained differently to be able to take advantage of having your tools as well. People invest a lot of money and going to law school, especially in this country, and I wonder does it need to be overhauled to fit into an AI world.
Well, I think most people spent a lot of money or spend a lot of money going into law school not to review and not to review very similar contracts to the junior lawyers right exactly. They've probably quite pleased that the AI can help them with that and get that off of their desk. I think, look, what we're seeing is AI is being used really to help them
accelerate their training. So a lot of our companies will use it so that their paralegals or their first year's associates can get access and insights into how other people within the organization have negotiated different contracts. It's fantastic at retaining institutional knowledge. So I think that that's what we're
going to start to see more of. Is that, whether that's you know, in the classroom or whether that's in real life, people will start adopting AI to help accelerate, whether it's their work or whether it's their knowledge, because really that's key to the success of their profession.
Makes me wonder too if it cuts in on those hourly you know costs that lawyers charge because it's like, hey, I just you know, through it in the ai'm are more.
High value work.
I think is the part of it as well. Be interesting as well, and are great to talk to you. Thanks for joining us and their lightbody there CEO at Luminance joining us as discussing legal large language models.
Not lawyer GPT. No, that's what we learned that yet.
This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
We'll continue our coverage of Climate Week in New York. We've got that and the un Chaneral Assembly happening as well. But we're thinking about some of the businesses that are using new technology in ways which help the planet. This ahead of our big broadcasts we have tomorrow as well, their Chat Innovation Price Summit happening in the Plaza Hotel here in New York, and we'll be there thinking about some of those innovation and solutions that can help in
the climate world too. So we want to talk about one company operating in this space. Archive uses its tech tech to help big fashion brands launch their own resale sites. They're working with the lights of Doctor Martin's North Face and Oscar Dela Reenta. Emily Gittins is with us. She's co founder and CEO of Archive, and she joins us from Berkeley in California. Emily, great to have you with us on the program. Why do brands want to be
associated with second hand versions of their clothes? This is something that I've been trying to get my head around when trying to understand. I know it's a big thing. I know people use websites to resell clothes all the time, but getting the brands involved is a really interesting development.
Absolutely, yeah, thanks thanks for having me on the show.
So you know, this is a huge market already, the global secondhand market is a two hundred and thirty billion dollar market today and for gen Z, forty percent of their clothing is secondhand. And so brands are realizing that there is this huge market for their product that is happening today mostly on third party marketplaces, and they're really interested in owning not only that customer experience, but also that revenue stream and helping shift to a more sustainable business model as well.
And so there's some of the reasons that brands are getting involved.
So explain that relationship working with them and what is kind of the business model, the profitability for you guys, also what they get out of it.
Absolutely, Yeah, So how this works is we build software and tools that allow brands to launch a resale business and then grow it to be you know, a significant portion of their overall business.
So that means you could go on to the north face dot.
Com north Faces e commerce site and actually buy secondhand products through the brand facilitated through our software.
You know.
For brands, originally this was really for a sustainability reasons that they were getting into this, trying to reduce their overall footprint by encouraging more secondhand shopping and less new production. What they've learned is that actually this is just a totally new revenue stream for them, and the margin on that that revenue stream can be quite high, sometimes even
higher than on full price business. And so really they're thinking about it as a business case and a new growth part of their business that is very fast, fast growing and profitable.
So you guys are business to business correct.
That's right.
Yeah, we're the behind the scenes software provider that is facilitating the software for brands to launch their own reselle business and brands can brand that however they want. So we have you know, New Balance, Reconsidered or north Face Renewed, Dot Marketings REWAAR just some examples of the brands we're working with today.
I wonder is it how the conversation goes with some of the brands though, because if we're thinking about, you know, the Oscar dell Aronas of this world is the prestige brand? Is that a very different conversation you're having at them when you're saying, look, I know that everything you make is unique and amazing and brilliant, but there's also a market for it to be resold.
That's right.
Yeah.
I think with the luxury sector, this is much more about highlighting the history, the heritage, the vintage pieces of their brand and owning that customer experience that customers are too often today having in maybe thrift shot stores or vintage stores, but not directly through the brand. It's a little bit of a different conversation for the more mass brands, that's part of it.
You know.
Sometimes we'll auction off really interesting North Faced products from collections from long ago, but it's also a new acquisition channel for them, right. You know, for a lot of these brands, people are priced out of full price product and maybe buying lower quality items from a different brand. Being able to give them this discounted product in a way that you know, still represents the quality and the excitement around the brand is a really powerful reason for them to do it as well.
Emily, I'm wondering if the brands that you guys are working with, as you mentioned Oscar, Jala, Renta, Dak, Martin's North Face, are they realizing too that the resale customer is different from the customer who buys things that are brand new.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, So over fifty percent of the customers who are shopping resale through our brands brand partners are completely new to the brand.
And have never shopped with them before.
So it's really reaching that person that is priced out of full price product and bring them into the brand, you know, having them fall in love with the product and then over time stay within that ecosystem for the brand and even for the customers that are already brand customers, they generally see a higher lifetime value for that cohort.
So people are.
More excited about the brand when they have this resell option. They know they can resell full price product if it doesn't work out, and so they're shopping across new and used with higher lifetime value as well.
Is it a generational story as well? You know, is it gen Z being influenced by thrifting brands on TikTok that's you know, got them into the idea of owning, you know, secondhand clothes.
Absolutely yeah, I mean gen Z are obsessed with thrifting. They're obsessed with secondhand and not buying stuff new. It's like I said, it's forty percent of their closet. So a really big part of how they're shopping today is already secondhand. And brands want to have a piece of that, but interestingly, we have actually seen it across all generations where for some of our brands, the customers getting involved with this are a.
Lot older, but the fact that they can do this through the brand, they can go back and maybe resell and buy pre loved items through a brand that they know and trust versus a marketplace, is compelling them to.
Start for the first time, which is exciting to see too.
It made me wonder about something like the Real Real or something like that, what does this kind of cut into their business? I mean it has to, I guess ultimately, right or I don't know. What are you hearing?
Yeah, I mean it's this is a very fast growing market.
It's going to secondhand is going to grow by one hundred billion in the next four years.
So there's a lot of opportunity out there.
And I think the way I think about it is when I'm buying new products, sometimes I like to go to a retailer and buy across a lot of brands. Sometimes I like to go direct to a brand and just buy directly through them. And so we see the secondhand market evolving in a similar way where there's always going to be a place for cross brand marketplaces like the Real Real or vined, but also brands.
Will want to own that direct piece of the business.
I love vintage.
I'm curious, do you have vinded very od I've really started recently actually, so this is something that is a new world to me. And you know, in London I have a great range of charity shops that I shop from, but I feel like that this is this is elevated
to a different level. But Emily, I had a question around the idea of is this also a quality control issue for the brands that they can make sure that the versions of their products that are out there are of a certain quality because they've at least had a touch with the process of resale.
Absolutely.
Yeah, Authentication, especially in the luxury sector is a huge risk for brands and they're seeing knockoffs on other marketplaces, and so one of the reasons to take this in house is to control that whole process. And we can put in place a lot more authentication measures because we're partnering directly with the brand than what's possible otherwise. So yeah, it's a really good point. I'm glad to hear that you're buying one secondhand as well.
Yeah, exactly. I think we all are right. I kind of love it, I have to say I also like the idea. I do think about the environment, environmental impact, right, because we talked about the fashion industry so often and the impact it has, you know, whether it's making a pair of genes, but even much more broadly about kind of disposable fashion, right fast fashion, and the impact it has on the environment. So I do think it's a smart thing for people to be doing. Talk to us
at bit we are Bloomberg. Talk to us attleit more about your growth numbers, because they sound pretty dramatic, but give us an idea. You've been doing this for a bit, are you profitable? What's the growth plans here?
Yeah, we're seeing a huge amount of growth. We've been around for three or four years, where you know.
Still a startup, but now working with fifty global brands, including the likes of you know, New Balance, the north Face, Martin's, these brands that really want this to be a large proportion of their business. And so with that, we're seeing our business grow really significantly year on year and a lot more appetite.
I think what's been exciting.
Is, you know, maybe three years ago we were going out and talking to brands about why they should do this, and now they're coming to our knowing that this is going to be such a big part of their growth going forward.
Where do you see the growth path coming from? Is it going to be those higher end brands who are you getting the most interest from?
Yeah?
I would say it's everything from kind of the massive the market up to the luxury brands across honestly a range of different categories. We have a lot of success with kids brands with accessories like handbags, you know, outdoor brands, women's where men's wear, and even starting to have conversations outside of fashion too, which is a really interesting thing as we think about the other categories out there too.
Yeah, I think what the kids' marketplace, it's kind of interesting. I'll say at Bloomberg there's like almost an internal marketplace, like somebody, oh.
Well, I feel like that's everywhere.
Especially because when they're little, right, because you barely use something and then someone's like, okay, here, you've got to take this like it's brand new, please like keep make use of it.
Yeah, no, I mean look, and it kind of opens up a whole other world as well outside of fashion. Where else would you be thinking of going?
Yeah, I mean home brands, kids gear, right, not just the clothing, but think about all of the things you buy buy winging of kids and that can be put back into use, electronics, gear like bikes and skis, things like that. I think that the world is our oyster. And I think, just to touch on your your sustainability piece, Carol, the fashion industry alone contributes eight percent of global greenhouse gas and gass emissions, which is you.
Know, three x air travel.
When you think about adding kind of home and all of the consumption that we do for all types of products, that is a huge impact that we're having from producing new stuff. And a lot of times the right product exists, it's just in someone else's hands today.
So how do we make it easier for consumers to match up there?
Yeah, it totally makes it make sense, and it certainly is something that's on consumers a lot more consumers minds when they go to do shopping. What's next for you guys, though? Do you stay? Do you stay you know, capital raises, stay private for a little bit longer? What's you're thinking in that front?
Yeah, we'll stay private for a little bit longer and likely raise some more capital at some point, and I think just continue to grow.
Look, we're having a lot of success in the US, in particular with the fashion industry, but thinking about international expansion, category expansion, and expanding our product to ultimately serve brands better and allow them to grow.
This into a more significant portion of their business.
What would be your next key international market.
Oh, I'm from the UK, so that's a big one for us. A lot of demand from the UK and the rest of Europe. Honestly, we're seeing a lot of consumer behavior change and policy change over in Europe, so countries like in Scandinavia, Germany.
France really far ahead of this trend on a lot of France. So I think we'll be their scene.
Very cool staff, and I do think it's really so much more of a way people are shopping increasingly. I've done it like for a wedding for you know, just you can really tap into some great brands, some great things at a much reduced cost.
Yeah, indeed, Emily, thanks so much for joining us. Emily Gitttens, their co founder and CEO of Archives, speaking to us from Berkeley in California. I think the high end. Part of this is the really interesting growth area. If you were able to access luxury brands in the way that's
affordable and it can build. From the company's point of view, it makes sense as well, because it can build that brand loyalty that might turn into the you know, when someone moves up in income bracus, they might then be able to affoid something new.
You know, absolutely, especially if it's like the first time you're buying something right and you're like, Okay, I kind of like this, so let me buy another.
Remember your first designer handbag, Carol Masser.
I might be gifted, Yeah, which is really killer. Carol Masser along with Stephen Carroll here on Bloomberg Business Week. Stephen in for Tim. He's normally host of Bloomberg Daybreak Asia Europe.
I mean I could do both.
You could do probably all of it, you know what you normally do a tease of do Bloomberg Daybreak Asia, Like at the end of our show, I'm just a default.
Yeah, everything everywhere.
Ale at once Burg Daybreak Europe.
Thank you, You're very welcome.
It was a Monday.
Look well, actually, do you know what this kind of speaks to what we're going to talk about next because we're going to delve into a big global issue as well that we're going to be talking about. We've mentioned that it's Climate Week here in New York as well, but it's also World Alzheimer's Month, and World Alzheimer's Day was on the twenty first of September as well, and of course the real aim of that event is try
and raise awareness about this illness. It just is affecting so many people all over the world.
Yeah, it's about fifty five million people that are believed to be living with Alzheimer's disease or other dementias. In the US alone, we're talking about almost seven million people, and that includes about two hundred thousand people under the age of sixty five with what they call younger on
site Alzheimer's. So let's get to it, because I do feel like when we talk about the medical world, our healthcare, our treatments, that this is one of the things that a lot of companies, drug companies in particular, are working on to find a better way to treat it, find it, cure it if you will, kind of one of those holy grails. So on that we welcome Doctor Alicia al Jasiras Simmich, Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the
Mayo Clinic, with us from Rochester, Minnesota. Doctor, it's great to have you here with Stephen and myself when it first of all give us an idea of kind of where we are in terms of Alzheimer's. We through out some numbers, but it does sound like are we seeing more younger individuals getting it? Tell us what we are seeing on a global scale.
Yes, you know, what we're seeing is in an increased number of individuals that are being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, in part because of the newer diagnostic options that are available, as well as the availability now of disease therapist to treat the disease and slow down the progression of the symptoms, so that that availability of therapies now has increased the need for diagnostic testing.
Can you explain to us the importance of early diagnosis and how that feeds into then somebody's both care that they need, but also how it affects the evil of the disease.
Yes, absolutely, you know. The early diagnosis is critical for patients presenting with symptoms of cognitive decline because the earlier that we can diagnose the patients with Alzheimer's disease. The earlier and the more timely the therapists will be. And the therapists that are available available today are meant to be used in patients where when the symptoms are still mild, because that's when they are more effective in slowing down
the progression of the symptoms. And even in individuals that might not be eligible for the newer therapists, having an early diagnosis can help with lifestyle changes that might still benefit and improve their quality of life for a longer time.
Can you give us some examples of what those lifestyle changes are. I think this is just an issue that so many of our listeners will be thinking about. This is something that is affecting I think of us. It's fair to say, so, what changes in how one's lifestyle might shift if you did have an early diagnosis?
Yes, absolutely, you know. There are a number of modifiable lifestyle changes that have been described. Diet, exercise, smoking, These are all all different areas that can be approached to modified and improve their home.
So tell us about the tests that you guys have developed. What do we need to know and is it put into effect yet? Or put into use.
Yes, absolutely so the tests that we develop it is it measures one of the early changes that happen in the brain of patients with Alzheimer's disease, and this change is the accumulation of a protein name or call a beta amyloid, and these protein accumulate and forms black in the brain that eventually leads to the symptoms the patients developed.
The test that we offer, which is called peet out to seventeen, is a blood test that allows for the detection of those the accumulation of that beta amyloid protein.
In the brain.
And how widespread is that testing being available? How quickly can it be? Can it be made available to a wider number of people?
Yes, actually it is available to any provider around the world. Can order these test through Mayo clinic laboratories, and we do require that a provider actually ordered the test, so this is not a test that can be ordered by patients. And we also need to keep in mind that these tests at this time have been optimized to detect Alzheimer's diagnose Alzheimer's disease in patients with symptoms, so it is very important that it is performed in pais presented with
symptoms of cognitive decline. But any provider can order that on their patients.
What kind of symptoms, because, as you said, it's important to catch all of this early in order for a better outcome. So what kind of symptoms should be more likely so that a patient knows to go to their doctor and maybe ask about it.
Yes, so in general, you know, there are symptoms of mild what we refer as mild cognitive impermits, so maybe some forgetfulness and some memory loss and sush. But what happens is that when these patients will go to the provider, they will do a number of a battery of tests to look at their cognitive performance, whether they can recall some objects or names, and various cognitive testing which then
can determine whether they have a mild cognitive imperment. And those are the ones that will benefit modes from these tests at this time.
What sort of interesting you getting?
What the demand is there for this test from providers and is it from the US alone or is it more global?
No, we receive samples from around the world actually, and there has been great interests. We are surpassing the test volumes that we have originally predicted. So there is a lot of excitement for the test because there is a need to be able to have a non invasive test that can help diagnose patients.
Just real quickly ten seconds. Is it covered by insurance? Typically yes, it.
Is covered by insurance, but the amount that is inverts. It depends on the insurance provider.
Is an expensive test real quickly, It's.
Cheaper than other modalities that are available today, such as the head which involved are looking for access all tuning the brain or a c SF this kind
Of doctor Alisha Aljaciras SMIC, thank you so much