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This is Bloomberg Business Week Insight from the reporters and editors that bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Weekend Podcast. This coming week a new chapter in American politics, as Donald Trump will be sworn in as the forty seventh President of the United States, his second term, and one that the technology community will be watching, whether it's about the US China tech war and access to advanced technology, to rules around autonomous driving cars, or oversight in policies on artificial intelligence.
Tim, it's a lot, There's a lot in the global tech world that could be affected. Time will certainly tell regarding what policies actually come down from the Trump White House in the meantime. Ourt take this week includes whether the pullback and autonomous driving by GM is a cautionary tale about the bigger investment play in AI.
And speaking of AI, the company who's chatchipt kicked off the AI craze over two years ago. We are of course, talking about open Ai co founder and CEO Sam Altman on the company's first two years, getting fire elon and more.
Plus US China relations around American technology and really advanced global technology overall have led to a US China tech war and race. A company that has found itself at the center of it all, Huaweih. We get into the secret history of China's most powerful company, and.
Then later on in our second hour, the founder of Libby Wines on going all in on non alcoholic options, also what to spend your bonus on.
You got a bonus?
No comment?
And the CEO of the experiential hospitality company Pursuit on sky Lagoon and Iceland or riding the gondola in amph Canada. We'll also talk with one of the daughters of the late Martin Luther King Junior about his legacy, Donald Trump, and the state of racial equality.
All of that to come. We begin with a column by Bloomberg Business Week's Max Chafkin on the shift in the mood around self driving cars despite billions of dollars in investments.
Carol, I took my first ride in a WEIMO. You were so excited back in November in San Francisco.
I was blown away.
You were You just couldn't stop talking about I still.
Talk about it.
That's like boring for our audience because I keep talking about it. Max. Have you been on Have you been in one?
I have?
Yes.
What'd you think?
I think it's very impressive. I think that there are real.
Questions about just how widely we're going to see these things be deployed and.
Whether it's a profitable business anywhere in the near term.
So a few weeks after I took that ride in the Weimo, Mary Bara at GM basically shuts down the cruise division at General Motors.
Yeah.
This was the GM's version of Weimo. It was GM's robot taxi business. And the thing about this that was kind of surprising. This happened in December. Uh. There were lots of warning signs. There had been UH there had been a very serious accident involving a cruise vehicle in San Francisco. The company had been tangling with regulators. There
were reasons to think something like this is coming. On the other hand, we're talking about a major AI effort at a major American company getting essentially killed just at the time when everybody in the world, You and and all the guys in Silicon Valley and everyone else are talking about how great these these self driving cars aren't and also how you know, AI chatbots are gonna be doing customer service and maybe writing news articles and taking all of our jobs. And so so you got to
ask yourself, like, what is going on here? Is there is there just a sort of a unique problem at GM, which is an explanation that you've seen offered, or maybe there are things here that, despite GM's problems, signal challenges ahead for all of these companies. And that's kind of the argument that I make in this business.
We call them that.
Yeah, like you could look at this and say, wow, great news for weimo their main.
Competitor has just given up.
On the other hand, I would argue that the challenges that Cruz faced, which you know there there was, there was definitely some mismanagement.
There was a very bad accident, and I think.
What you know, pretty much everyone would agree was a poor response to that accident actually led to a criminal admission of criminal behavior on the part of GM, but that they also had massive losses and a pretty small fleet. I mean Cruz spent GM spent ten billion dollars over about a decade, a little less than a decade, getting a few hundred cars in a very small number of places.
And if you look at Weaimo, as great as those rides are, and you know, Weymo's, especially in San Francisco, have become something of a tourist attraction.
People go there.
Oh yeah, and they wanted to you know, they want to like enjoy the they're in Silicon Valley. That aside, we're still talking about a very small fleet in a limited way. And Google Alphabet the parent company of Google, which also owns Waymo. They don't break out the finances of Weimo, but if you look at their other Vets division, which is of which Weimo is like the main the most famous one, probably the most substantial operation, it has
burned through thirty seven billion dollars over period. So again we're talking about rides that almost certainly cost a lot more than they bring in.
Mine was twenty nine dollars.
Well, and you know what's kind of crazy is you are such a safety net totally and so like I thought, oh my god, you're going to be freaking out like you were in the car for half hour.
Yeah, it's about half hour ride, which I didn't know you could take a half hour drive in San Francisco and still be in San Francisco.
But you were totally comfortable.
Yeah, totally comfortable. I was excited about it, And in fact, I was visiting a friend who lived outside of the She lived just north of the city, and she drove me back into the city, specifically to a place just after the edge where I could actually get into a Weimo and she said, we had some friends visiting recently and their kids really wanted to ride on the trolley. So we went into the city and we decided instead of riding on the trolley, we'll all get in a way.
So that you're absolutely right Max about these things.
It's it's like a cable car.
And I mean, you're bringing up a couple of issues that I think should give people pause, especially if you're, you know, building a financial model like I think it's.
Important to say that what Weimo has done.
And honestly, a lot of what Creus did was very impressive technically impressive. They have managed, as you said, to take humans mostly out of the loop and drive safely in a very difficult urban environment. But doing that requires all sorts of compromises. It creates all sorts of costs. You know, these these vehicles are very expensive. They have these huge sensor arrays. You have large staffs of people making sure they don't do anything bad and then sitting
around responding to customer complaints. You know, when a car gets stuck in a parking lot or something, there's a button you have to press on the WEIMO and a customer service PAS to essentially like troubleshoot your You're supposedly driverless car.
So it's like, so there are a bunch of issues that are are problematic.
I think if you're seeing this as some investors are, as a real replacement for like uber or lyft. On the other hand, as a thing you can do when you're done riding a cable car, it seems really really fun.
So what's going on and why Mary Barr and others may be rethinking it? Expectations too high timing issue, the infrastructure not there yet, technology not completely there, So like what is it?
Yeah?
Absolutely so I think it's all. It's basically all the things you mentioned now. Now the most important thing is that in twenty twenty three, a cruise vehicle got into an accident, actually hit a pedestrian, ran a pedestrian over. It wasn't the initial impact was actually not really the fault of the driverless car. It was the pedestrian was hit by a human driver, knocked in the path of the cruise, the cruise breaked, and then what happened next
is what was really trying bubbling. You know, a normal person hits somebody on the road, they get.
Out, they make sure they're okay.
Hopefully in this case, the crews just drove to the side of the road, dragging this woman twenty feet along with it. And so you're you're talking about an incident that doesn't happen in a normal car and doesn't and you know, you're there there. There have been reports on this that this led to a huge back and forth with cruise and federal regulators and California regulators. Fines were paid, as I said, so so, so there's that, and then there's the fact that GM had been making these huge
promises about this thing. I mean, what was so stunning is Mary Barra at this like as recently as twenty twenty three was saying this is gonna be a fifty billion dollar a year business, and like.
Just over a year later, Yeah, they pulled the plug.
So so right, so and and so.
Part of it, of course is the is the sense that there maybe there's a breach of faith, right, the like relationships with the regulators are really important, but also losing huge amounts of money and having already moving probably not as quickly as they wanted, and now with this
latest thing having to move potentially even slower. I just think the economics here are not that great, and and so, and the accident created a bunch of pressure on the on the division that wasn't there maybe would have been able to go go along for a lot longer. WEAMO was a little different, partly because Google is a much you know, is a very profitable company and and way MOO benefits from an essentially unlimited cash uh cash cushion or or as as it's you know, it's up to
the CFO of alphabet. But but you know, a relatively generous situation. WEAMO also, unlike Cruz, has moved a little bit more slowly in terms of like commercial adoption. They you know, I think I think people in the industry think that Cruz was operating somewhat more aggressively and in that sense.
But but if you talk to experts in the.
Self driving car world, right, they all expect that there will be additional incidents like this because it's just a numbers game, right. As you said, humans create a lot of car crashes. Even if robots are much much better than humans, you're still going to see some very messy situations and that's going to create further uncertainty.
Enter Elon Musk has entered the chat and he's entered the White House as well as the New York Times reports he's going to have some potentially some office space at the White House where he gets things done. He has the ear of the President. The Robotaxi that he promises, he says, has built a better mouse trap for cheaper than weimo. Can he pull it off?
Well? I mean the question is, Kenny, what do you want him to pull off?
And I think I should say one thing Mary Barratt said when she folded the robotax thing that they were going to roll the cruise technology into their existing vehicles, which is more or less what Elon Musk has done. Right. I think if you look at Tesla, they have a great aid ass that stands for like an assistant a driver assistant system, a system where it can take control of the car, but you're there, You've got your hands ready to grab the wheel at any times.
It's very much not a robot taxi.
And Elon Musks bet is that they can somehow by some combination of extreme you know, hardcore Elon Musk style technical prowess and you know, putting pressure on or maybe just asking the Trump White House to change the regulator environment, they'll be able to get to you know, full robotaxis
really quickly, you know, as quickly as this year. And I think when you look at where Waymo and Cruse are and how long they've spent and how many miles they've done in terms of driving without a steering wheel, you got to ask yourself, is Elon Musk being realistic? I mean, no amount of no relationship with President Trump, can you know, magically make a technology that isn't ready for primetime ready for primetime?
That was Max Chafkin, columnist for Bloomberg business Week and the co host of the Elon Inc. Podcast, also the author of the contrariant Peter Teel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of power.
You know, it's kind of interesting, right in terms of really the shift that we have seen in terms of self driving cars, right. I mean it's staggering the amount of money GM. But you think about something like Alphabet right, Google that they have spent on self driving cars. It's a lot of money. And yet you are feeling a dialing down. And maybe it's just I don't know, our infrastructure not quite there. Tim, I don't know. You took a ride and we're blown away.
Yeah, I thought it was amazing. But Max brought up some good points that this is a really contained environment in a small section of a city.
Right.
It only works in San Francisco in you know, in that area. Yes, there are way mos in other parts of the country, but can you imagine a vehicle like that here in New York City. Max also bringing up the point that Uber is really efficient. It's like cheap to get somebody up on your smartphone, ring Lyft as well, and it's quick and you know they give you a ride somewhere like that system works pretty well right now.
And I will agree that all these this technology makes driving much more safer, all right? Coming up, Sam Altman on Chat GPT's first two years, Elon and artificial intelligence under Donald.
Trump, Bloomberg BusinessWeek sat down with the open aa co founder for a wide ranging interview. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
It's more than two years since things were kind of quiet over at open a high wage back in November of twenty twenty two. Is a startup so small and sleepy that the owners didn't bother tracking their web traffic, so reminds us and writes Josh Tyrangle, who caught up with the open AI co founder and CEO Sam Altman to talk about his infamous four day firing, how he runs the company, thoughts on another co founder, e Elon Musk, of course, and the impact of a Trump presidency on
AI and more. It's all in the conversation. We welcome Bloomberg BusinessWeek freelance contributor Josh Tieringele. He is, of course, former editor of Bloomberg Business week and he joins us from New York City. Hey, Gosh, great to have you here with us. I have to say, this has to be one of the most sought after individuals to talk to. When he does an interview, we all kind of sit up and listen. How did this come together and why did he want to talk now?
You know, I've spoken to him a bunch of times over the last couple of years, and he reached out basically saying, look, it's been two years since GPT launched, it's been about a year since the board firing. I think he was eager to kind of put a bunch of this stuff behind him. It's probably tired of being asked questions about it, so he invited me to come out and really talk through it all and do it
at some considerable length. You know, we spent two and a half hours together just really rehashing it and did a past present future.
So it was really his initiative.
You talked about, and I think one of the most interesting takeaways for me Josh was the drama that occurred when he was briefly outed as CEO. We're going to get to that in just a few minutes before we get there though, is the origin story of the company. Not everyone knows how it was started, who started it, who was involve what was top of mind when you sat down within to talk.
You know, I think he was in a reflective mood. Anniversaries are pretty arbitrary. Some people observe them and get sentimental around them, some people don't. I think that he was feeling very much like, you know, this is a
different company today than it was two years ago. You know, when we talked about the sort of founding myth, you know, companies that are successful get you know, it sort of hardens, and there's this belief that there was this kind of founding dinner at Open AI where all the founders came together declared their intent and that was the beginning. And in fact, what he wanted to correct the record on is it really started because he was a deep AI nerd, you know, a decade and a half ago when it
was not particularly cool. As he was monitoring progress, he really pursued Elijah Sutzkyer, who was you know, he's co founder and who was a researcher who was really pretty deep into you know, pursuing artificial intelligence. Sam Relaid pursued him, and he just wanted to say that the first thing for him was this dinner the two of them had, and that dinner produced a lot of the sort of philosophical research driven take that's still very much at the core of Open AI.
Josh did they have at that time, and as you know, if there were kind of multiple dinners these guys had and starting to think about the concept I guess of the company or what they wanted to do. But did they have any idea a kind of what they were dealing with? As you note in the story that Sam Altman said, even thinking about doing this was like cancelbal cancel the ball, So you know, it was kind of
not something anybody was considering doing. But did they have any concept that two years later like this is might kind of been where we would be.
It's a sort of eight year overnight success, right. I think that they felt like they could scale artificial intelligence. They didn't quite know, you know, what that journey would look like, but they were pretty confident that they were going to be able to make AI happen and make AI.
Happen for ordinary consumers.
Obviously there's tons of twists and turns, but yeah, they did have a pretty strong sense this is what they're going to be able to do, and they actually saw their the size of the company, which was quite small, as a distinct advantage in those days.
Yeah, one of those twists and turns I promised you'd get to it was his revouster from the company explain how it went down differently than what's been reported. What's the inside story there.
The key component is just that there's been complete opacity around exactly what happened. You know, there was this sort of four day hostage taking where nobody quite knew what the future of the company was going to be. We knew that the basic details, which are that he had been fired and the board had fired him for what they had termed is not being consistently candid.
Didn't know what about, didn't know what they were referring to. He says, still he's not totally.
Sure what they're referring to, and I think, you know, in the piece, I kind of challenge him a little bit.
I think ultimately what it comes.
Down to, and what he talks about is that, you know, the company was founded with this very you know, noble and pure ideas about AI research.
What they determined along the way.
Is that if you're going to be competitive in the field of AI, and if your product is going to be meaningful, you need to be able to pivot.
You need to be able to devote.
Very large sums to compute, which is the you know, the process of actually training these AI models, and that there was a divorce coming.
With that board.
The board was genuine in its convictions that AI needed to be monitored a certain way. There was some sort of schism coming. It feels like that schism was inevitable. Sam in the interview says he probably should have been aware that there was greater risk of that schism than he actually was. He says he doesn't have great EQ on these things. But you know what we really get out of the piece is just him telling us, moment
by moment, what those four days were about. The negotiations to come back, the brief window where it looked like he was coming back and there would be no issues.
Then the board named Emma Cheer.
As a CEO, and ultimately, you know, the kind of rebellion from within the company that brought him back and I think led to changes that were probably inevitable. In the future, we may look back on this and say, you know, this was a company that could have done all of these things over the course of a couple of years, and they ended up doing them over the course of a couple of months as a result, So
it may have turned out to be a blessing. At the same time, he you know, clearly it's a strange and traumatic experience to be not only fired in public, but then to be dangling for four days in public while there are reporters outside your door, reporters outside the door of your former company. So I think he was trying to put that in perspective, and I believe we got more information on it than has ever been out there before.
Just put a very strange episode. Even looking back.
On it now, Yeah, it's like watching you know, I feel like a streaming series when we were reading or going through it. Having said that, does he feel like Josh that the board that the company is but find is behind him, does he feel kind of comfortable or does he feel like he's sot obsessed to look over his shoulder and kind of gauge where everybody is.
Well, it's a completely new bor that he had a large role in composing. I think that the brief firing was an occasion to basically say, look, are you in with the new vision or are you going to leave? They've had a bunch of attrition, some of it high profile, some of the lower profile. He seems completely at home inside the company, completely comfortable. I think that they are on the right trajectory as far as he sees it, So I don't think there's discomfort there.
What about moving forward in the future, You know, the illly is not there anymore. Elon Musk, of course, isn't there anymore. Microsoft has made huge investments in open AI, but has also doing their own thing. Anthropic is out there. You got Meta Platforms doing its own thing as well. What does the landscape look like from Sam Allman's perspective?
Right now?
Competitive? It's super competitive. You know, there's trillions of dollars in profits to be made by AI by the identification of AI. Everybody is seeing the same thing. At some point the marketplace will diversify, but they kind of choose more of a lane. But right now they're all competing with these very large models of AI to get to
the to the brass ring. You know, I think they feel very comfortable that because they were there first, and because they're pretty disciplined about what they're actually pursuing, which is as a research focused company getting to artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence whatever may come beyond, they are able to attract talent there. You know, there are other
companies have beer warchest. They are successfully getting talent. But it's going to be a battle, and I think it's going to be a three to five year battle to determine who really owns the AI space, what pieces of it do they own. And he's determined that not only does open Ay want chat cheapt to be a very successful product within it, but that that product is not the end goal. The end goal is advanced technology, even
beyond what we're seeing now. So he's pretty clear what he sees for their company.
What does that look like though, And that's one area that I'm having trouble envisioning. And maybe it's because I'm not in the heart of Silicon Valley, maybe it's because I'm not necessarily using chat GPT to its full potential. But what does that world of AGI look like or that world of AI in the next three to five years, Like, how are our lives going to be different?
Well, look you're not wrong. I mean, this is one of the confounding aspects of being alive during AI is that the people pursuing AI are research scientists for the most part, but they speak like preachers, right, They speak with this sort of evangelizing faith about what's coming. But when you ask them, you know, as I asked Sam, like,
what in your mind is artificial general intelligence? What he gave me was a sort of decent definition, and at the end of it he said, and if we achieve that, that would be AGI ish, right, And so there is a lack of precision in our terms when we talk about what AI is and what we talk about AGI, and so it's confounding, it really is. It is not on you, though, It is on the industry to ultimately come up with these definitions of what it is so that people can figure out what it means for their lives.
This is not standard technology. This is way more disruptive. And I think, you know, there's a ripple between these companies and the potential consumers. I don't think it's the consumers who are to blame for that. Were not yet at a place where everybody agrees on what these things are.
Josh it sounds like he thinks, based on the interview, that he thinks Elon could be continue to be trouble for them going forward.
I simultaneously think Sam is very sincere and certainly not above being tactical, and so knowing full well.
That our interview would be read far and wide.
I'm certain that he said things knowing other people would read them, and so the idea that maybe he was creating some distance between his view of the Trump administration Elon Musk would certainly.
Benefit open AI. You know, he knows Elon better than us.
I think that I've heard from many people that Elon is very sincere about his concerns about artificial intelligence.
Yeah.
Also, I can't deny he has an artificial intelligence company that competes with open AI. So I took that answer in particular to be fairly tactical.
He said he thought he could get more lawsuits and might be dropped from Elon, but he also thought he didn't think Elon would abuse his political power in the end.
Yeah, and many people have told me the same thing, which is it Elon is one hundred percent sincere when it comes to technology, but that when it comes to.
Competitive corporate warfare.
He'll do anything, and so I think Open AI, much like everybody else in the space, is kind of prepared for anything so long as Elon is, you know, in a position to influence the Trump administration's policies.
Something that Elon has talked about has been the dangers associated with AI and with AGI. What did Sam Altman tell you about dangers that could come up as a result of this technology?
You know, he has been fairly consistent that he thinks in the.
Short term, you know, there's biological weaponry concerns, that the ability for AI to be used in creating small time proliferation of weaponry. He thinks it's likely to happen and we need to be on the lookout for it, and that in the longer term, we don't know what AI is capable of. You know, his feeling very strongly again coincides with his self interest. Is it the only way to move this forward is to actually make a product, test it regulated, as opposed to be concerned about things
that you don't know regarding AI and its capabilities. So, yeah, that's what he sees. That's it's you know, a pretty standard view from the industry. There are still people at the edges who believe that the risk of existential risks from AI is as high as twenty percent. I think that's a little bit of an outlier, but people think that we're going to be in for it for sure, as people come up with new and nefarious uses.
For the tech.
Josh only got about a minute left. You get into so much, including energy demands of AI and the data centers and impact climate. But I am curious in these final seconds what stood out for you in this conversation.
I'm really interested in how people run companies like this. I did not know how granular he really is.
You know, they now have a couple of thousand employees, they have hundreds of millions of users, and he is in on those research meetings. He's in the slack channels, and they are parts of the company that he that he really delegates other people to handle. That's interesting. It's a it's a different kind of style from other folks. He's also very reflective and analytical. You know, he came from y Combinator, which was largely this uh, you know, nurturing fund.
Which scouted CEOs. It's very aware of what he's good at and bad at.
As a CEO, and that kind of reflection is not common in many of the CEO interviews I've done, so you know, I was both impressed by it and I found that to be, you know, relatively abnormal.
Well, thank you so much, Josh, really appreciate the time. Josh, of course, is Bloomberg BusinessWeek freelance contributor and also former editor of BusinessWeek, and you can catch the whole story in the issue current issue of Bloomberg Business Week, also online and on the Bloomberg terminal. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern up on applecar Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Our next guest says, it's quote the most powerful technology company that China has ever built.
No, we're not talking about ten Cent, which this month was blacklisted by the Biden administration for alleged links to the Chinese military. Nor are we talking about Ali Baba or JD dot Com or Matswan.
We're talking about Huawei, the privately held maker of telecom equipment that came into focus in twenty eighteen when the company's chief financial officer, menguan Zhou, was arrested in Canada at the request of the United States. And it's an incident that's set off a diplomatic uproar and complicated relations between the United States, China, and Canada.
For a deep dive on the company, we caught up with Eva Doe, technology policy reporter at the Washington Post and the author of the new book House of Huawei, The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company.
I think to many people where they've heard of Huawei is from their smartphones, which for years has been one of the largest smartphone brands in the world. But really the reason it's become such a policy concerns it's also the largest maker of the equipment that goes into phone and internet networks around the world. And of course these networks they carry all sorts of information, you know, phone calls, emails, internet traffic, and from that perspective, it's become something that
policymakers have become very concerned about. Is this one company and its global footprint. It's far head and shoulders the dominant supplier in developing nations around the world, and even in Europe is a dominant supplier in many countries.
You know, one thing we want to ask you. You know, we've spent a lot of time over the last few years talking with Andy Purty, who was the chief security officer for Huawei America. You would come in every few months, Yeah, and we would talk to him about kind of the strained er growing strained relationships certainly in the tech environment.
About Huawei not being a security risk to the United States.
Right exactly. And so I am wondering in this environment access to an administration you've got Elon Musk, you know, a certainly high profile member of the tech community. I mean, what are your expectations of Huawei having a strong communication line with the incoming Trump administration and maybe it's future changing in a more favorable way here when it comes to the United States.
I think if that happens, that they make this kind of rebounding communications in the United States, that would be defying expectations in that the incoming Trump administration. If you look at who is in Trump's team, there's there there's a lot of security hawks, a lot of people have been vocal critics of China for many years, and so I think what we can expect is for policy to be, you know, even more stringent than it has been in recent years as far as control of technology being transferred
to China. And from that point of view, I would say it's it's hard to see where the bright spot is for Huawei in the US market and the foreseeable future.
Oh that's interesting, okay.
So I have a few questions around this, one of them being the opportunity for Huawei outside of the US, because you know, we've talked a lot in the past few years about China's growing influence with the Belton Road initiative, and I'm wondering from a cybersecurity perspective, from a telecom infrastructure perspective, are they able to use that as a lever in any way?
Well, I think so, And part of that is just there have been so few alternatives in this market. There's very few players, and so the question is if you don't use Huawei, what do you use for these developing countries. And so that's sort of been what officials in many of these countries have been saying, which is, you know, the United States wants US to take Huawei equipment out,
but what do we do then? Sort of the only comparable vendors for the most part have been European companies whose equipment is far more expensive, and that's just outside of the budget for many countries to do. So. Part of the US policy under the Biden administration has been to programs to develop new competitors making this kind of gear so that countries do have an alternative if they if they actually want to switch EVA.
I am curious, you know, you really get into the details of the history of this company that I think most people didn't even think about until we had the problems and the issues right of a few years ago. Why is it important to understand the history of this company in light of the security considerations that many global leaders are concerned about when it comes to this company.
Yeah, I think part of it is just understanding how we got to this point where the US and China are so acrimonious and there's so much distrust, especially regarding the technology industry now, and so I think Huawei is such a good case and that it was one of the very first private tech companies founded in China in the early eighteen hundreds, and it's been on the front
waves of these changing sentiments. You know, China's globalization, that heady period where China was very much embraced by the world and these tech companies were embraced by the world and moving towards you know, this current moment when you know, the fear that China is a real rival and adversary, capable adversary to the United States is so on the front forefront of policy decision making today.
Okay, So bring us to twenty eighteen. When the company CFO Menguanzhou was arrested in Canada. It set off that unprecedented diplomatic uproar. She was held for years as this played out in the courts. What happened there?
Yeah, So that that was the moment and the rubber kind of hit the road. So for years there have been these concerns bubbling up in the United States and other Western countries about Huawei, but it really was that moment when the CFO was detained and at the same point the Trump administration put these sort of unprecedented sanctions on Huawei that sort of moved us to a new sort of Cold War esque era.
In a sense.
It's a big part of the story is about the shift in China over the years that Huawei has existed. Listen, you did a ton of research on this, interviews, archival research, You have reported from China, You've reported from Taiwan during your career. Can you answer the question for us whether or not Huawei is a security risk to the United States?
A security risk, I would say probably, and that's something that's outside strictly the company's control, and that what we've seen. I think the clearest evidence we've seen has come out in Edward Snowden's leaks, which is that tech company's equipment can be used by and is used by intelligence agencies who find backdoors or build back doors into them even without the company's knowledge. So in a way, it's not entirely in Huawei's executives' hands. They can say, you know,
our equipment is safe. We're doing everything that we can, but it's not entirely the company's control.
I am curious just for size and scope, something we're very into certainly here at Bloomberg. What are the capabilities? I mean, how should we be thinking about them? In terms of Huawei surveillance systems, which are used by governments all over.
So this has very much become something that's part like a new business line, these sort of citywide survey lens systems. That has to do with you know, data networks becoming fast enough that you can transmit huge amounts of data, so you can have video cameras and other sorts of sensors all across the city that are just streaming all sorts of information. And there's a number of governments around the world that are using these systems from Huawei. Yeah,
and it's very controversial. Huawei is not the only company that supplies them. IBM was actually the US company was actually the first company that started supplying these kinds of systems. But yeah, it's very much a debate, ongoing debate about just how much data governments should be collecting and to what degree citizens have privacy or not.
You know, Tim and I we spend a lot of time I'm sure you do too, as we know, talking about large language models, generative AI. What's next in terms of the impact continuing to track, So I think about what you are saying, what you have learned in the context of Huawei. You know, their role, whether it come, whether it's five g in terms of communications. Are AI
technologies the AI races on. We know that. So I'm just wondering, how are you thinking about that next chapter and the concerns that we should have considering Huawei's dominance.
Yeah, so Huawei is going to continue to be in the in the conversation for this AI era. So they are China's most advanced company for designing these chips that drive these AI systems, and so China has been importing huge amounts of US chips for years to build you know, their big data centers for large language models, and US sanctions have really been tightened in the past couple of years, which means they're more reliant on Huawei tips than ever before.
So are they being hurt by these restrictions and maybe not having access and you know, we continue to see headlines about what this means for Nvidia being able to share you know, it's higher and technology. I mean, are they is China is Huawei being hurt as a result of all of this or does it just make them double down? From what you have learned, does it just make China and Huawei double down to make sure that they have the best and greatest.
Well certainly they've very much been hurt in that. If you look at their trajectory before these sanctions began, they were growing year after year at enormous clip, and now that growth has stopped. I think the question during the first Trump administration was, you know, can they survive? And so the question, so the answer to that is clear now that you know they're too important to China that China is not going to let this company die. It's
going to do everything possible for it to survive. That being said, yeah, they've very much been sort of hurt and slowed down by by these growing restrictions from the United States.
It's interesting too, because it's not a publicly held company. It's a privately held company. Ownership structure, what is it? Who owns it? And do they remain Does it remain a private company for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, so it's privately held, but with the shares dispersed among numerous current and former Huawei employees. And that for years has been a major part of the incentive program of how Huawei's founder and they got engineers to work incredibly hard towards this cause, which was part of their compensation. Was in the dividends they would receive even from the company's performance. Since it's privately owned, that means it does not have much of the scrutiny of a publicly owned company.
There's definite, definitely limitations of what they have to disclose to the public. And they also aren't at the winds of the stock market. And so that's been actually part of their success and that they've been able to execute really long term plans and sort of long term expensive investments that you know, short term investors would not necessarily be on board with. And so at at this point,
it's hard to see why Huawei would go public. They have plenty of funding China's state policy banks are very supportive when they need funding for their projects, and so it's probably going to remain private for the foreseeable future.
I think about you know, people who are listening. I mean when the Bloomberg audience, right, there's obviously investors, there's consumers, you know, and they continue to look at their goods and their security breaches and so on and so forth, pecially when it comes to telecom. How I mean the consumer based do they they need to be concerned right? And they I assume you're going to say they want their governments to make sure that they're overseeing global technology because
this is the new world order. And to be fair, I mean, can we say that US companies I mean, I mean, obviously I would assume the US government is not involved in those technologies. I mean, it's not apples to apples. It's different, right when it's China and the Chinese government when it comes to some of their big companies, particularly tech companies.
So one thing is just that technology systems are hacked all the time, and probably hacked more than the average consumer would would realize. And so to an certain extent, it is just what is your risk level if you work for the government, if you work for you know, certain sensitive industries, Yeah, you probably want to think twice about exactly what kind of equipment you're using. And in fact,
your employer probably has already guidelines in place. For the average consumer, you know, there is a certain risk that your data could be hacked, but that probably existed whether you knew it or not.
Even just one last question, got about a minute and a half here, what was the most revealing thing to you in writing this book, doing the deep dive, going into the archive, talking to so many different voices. What was again the most revealing thing in this process for you.
I think one of the most fun parts for me was just seeing all the places and all the historical moments where Huawei popped up while I was sort of researching in archives in the US and China and around the world, and it really gave me an appreciation of companies like this just all plugged in how they are affected and how they affect events going on around the globe.
You know, in China, for the Hong Kong the historic Hong Kong Handover, when Hong Kong was returned from being a British colony to China, Huawei was there and helping to do the service of video surveillance for it. You know, for the Arab Spring, the Iraq War, uh, Huawei.
Was on the ground.
Uh.
So they were there far more than a consumer company. When you supplied the phone and internet networks, it was our crucial and the first thing that you're you're expected to be furred on the ground with anything big happening.
Listen, great stuff, and so glad we got so much time. Even though she's take Dnology policy reporter at Washington Post. Her new book House of Wahwei.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the CEO of Attractions and hospitality company Pursuit on the demand and costs of outdoorsy experiences.
Plus a daughter of Martin Luther King Junior on her father's legacy, racial equity, and the upcoming Trump presidency.
First up this hour, you or your friends maybe partaking in the trend known as dry January. That's where you put down booze for the month last weekend. You might recall our Bloomberg Pursuits team even gave us some of the best mocktails to try, and we are already seeing declines in alcohol consumption. We've talked about those trends a lot on air and at the same time arise in non alcohol options.
Two years after launching low alcohol products, the California based wine maker Libby Wines is now shifting its entire focus to non alcoholic beverages. Grant Hemingway is co founder and CEO of Libby Wines. He stopped by it to chat a share a glass or two about Libby's latest offerings.
John my now co founder, and I actually were connected through some mutual friends and yes, a beer guy and a winemaker getting together. John did cut his teeth in that sessionable category, but I think it was one of those early indicators for him and for me watching from afar, that this moderation wave was was forthcoming and we really wanted to lean into my way.
Did you really see this moderation.
Wave coming one hundred percent?
What were you seeing specific?
I mean, the crystal ball that we saw was which we couldn't have predicted was going to be this self regulating meaning there are a lot of people out there and there's these buzzword terms zebra striping or bookending.
Which is what that means.
So a session, it's like a drinking session or a socializing session in which you have a full fledged cocktail or a glass of wine and then you mix over to a non alcoholic.
Okay, So it seems to me that this.
Is the consumption pattern happening for those that still are consuming not the abstainers, which seem to be growing also by the day.
What can I ask you while you I know you had talked about it because you don't really drink. You used to drink some alcohol.
Yeah, and even you know, to be fair, I did have a sip of like a really nice stout that my wife opened the other night. I get really bad headaches when I drank, and when what I found was that the less I drank when I did drink, the worse the headaches got. With less alcohol. Yeah, and I thought to myself, you know, it's not worth after drinking one beer to wake up and have my my day the next day completely ruined. So I don't know if
it's like an allergy or something, but it was. Unfortunately, it was very easy for me to stop drinking because I wasn't drinking that much anyway. But what I noticed grant and maybe it's just kind of like a bias of where I am in life, but a lot of my friends were having kids, they were getting into their forties. They were like, if I, you know, if I need to be up early, I can't be staying out late. I need to be prioritizing rest and sleep and this was how they were dealing with that, and.
That's our exact experience. To my wife and I.
We have two kids back in California, and really started to almost like this self awareness or observation that we were just not drinking wine as much and it was a lifestyle thing.
We know, had young kids and we were.
Managing careers and alcohol was kind of getting in the way of that. And so it was kind of that moment that light bulb were kind of set out and surveyed the competitive set and nothing was really enticing from a qualitative perspective. But I had been eighteen years in wine making and this was a big loss, Like, why am I not drinking.
The product that's supporting our career?
Well, what are your friends in the wine industry say, Because they're getting hit hard right now.
We're getting hammered.
It's concerning, I mean the downward and you just reported on the Surgeon General like that's there's an anti alcohol movement, which I don't know that I'm all for in our business, I would say I'm four, But generally speaking, this moderation is a cultural movement, and I think the wine is she's really waking up to it and look no further than the results at the register.
Yeah, and you know it's funny to watch, you know, kind of old television where people are constantly smoking and had a cocktail. I even think of like my dad coming up from work and had kind of a serious you know, spirits and cocktail, you know, fairly regularly when we were younger, and then eventually all of that stuff started to go away, even with his generation and easing of it.
Have you heard of California sober?
What is it now?
What is it?
California?
And so yes, California fairly California sober as you abstained from alcohol, but you partake in to see.
Or everything else, everything else?
Wait wait is he flushing?
No?
Well no, this is just the bronzing that I get from being a California.
So let's let's talk about because you brought us a couple of sparkling You brought us a sparkling white and a sparkling Rose, and I'm curious about I'm going to pour some and you can kind of walk us through it. But like, tell us, because Tim and I have actually tried some non alcoholic beverages and some better than others, we can say, so tell us about how what went into making this.
I think that was shared around.
Yeah, the biggest white space for me was was trying to take a wine maker's perspective with a wine drinking expectation.
Please, it's our expert.
And so I really tried to deconstruct the whole wine making process. So where the grapes growing, when are we picking them, how are we fermenting them, making sure that the non alcoholic was the end result, and so the whole process.
Oh, do you have a glass? Do you already have or did you ready past the glass? Folks, you're the sausage, the sausage and non alcoholic wine is being made great, so go ahead, please.
So the whole process for me was trying to appeal to a wine drinker's expectations. And so the dealcalization or alcohol removal process is very aggressive. It's not as exact as we'd like, and hopefully technology keeps improving. But you remove a lot of the aromatics, the texture, and certainly the alcohol, which is a massive component to the integration of the overall wine experience. So you're limiting, eliminating fourteen roughly fourteen percent.
Of your product.
That's the thing that really interesting. We spoke to Duncan far earlier, not yet of Bloomberg Intelligence. He's a consumer products analyst, and he talked about this at the top of our program today, that the technology to remove alcohol has gotten so much better in recent years. He mentioned caliber when he was a kid being a terrible alternative
to like it was like the alcohol freak Guinness. He called it drain back up what I don't know what he can right now, like it was draino or something, And so what is the technology and how has it gotten so good? Like how do you do it?
It's a filter or there are various ways that you're doing alcohol removal, but it basically is a molecular weight.
It's pretty nice.
Thank you, This is good.
I appreciate it.
And we're a tough craft.
The process though, it's very extracted on weight and it's selective, but it's not perfect. And so the the the imperfections are the removal of aromatics and then removal of varietal character. And so that's why some of you know, some of the early entrants you might have seen are adding a lot back to try and replace, but it's not adequate.
And so with this like it's very bright, it's very refreshing.
I gotta be honest. When Grant walked in with it, I saw it and you opened it up. I was thinking to myself, Am I going to be drinking Martin Ellie's right now?
Yeah?
That's what it?
Right?
Yeah, and I'm not.
I mean, this is.
Martin Ellie's the apple juice right.
That we get your your kid New Year's Eve? Yeah, this is not the sparkling apple juice. This is something different. It is closer to wine for sure.
So is it essentially and forgive me because I was kind of running around pouring and stuff, but so is it wine just with the alcohol pulled out one hundred percent?
It's it's fully fermented grapes from California, right, that we reduce or eliminate the alcohol from and then go through the uh you know, flavor composition or formula and then carbonated up to basically a prosecco level. So it's it's really meant to replace that spark perseco level.
Yep.
Yeah, what does.
Your consumer research told you about when people buy this and they drink it, if they drink more than they drink of the counterpart with alcohol in it?
I mean, my own consumer research is telling me I drink much more of it because there's not the guilt or the shame of knowing like oh I have to be tempered or tall it like temper my consumption on this because of what I have on the horizon. So there's I think what you mentioned athletic at the top of the call. They have done such a phenomenal job on matching quality that people don't have to compromise anymore
on what they want for a beer occasion. That needs to happen in the wine category, and I think there is a massive wake up call. We talked about the downtick in wine sales.
Please, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.
I'm gonna start pouring the rose. So what's the different same process for.
The same exact process, just different grapes produced in a kind of in a rose style. You hear that clanking, that's the swing top we've got on the bottle so that you can so you.
Can put a close it, pop it back in the fridge.
Would you like, I'm okay, you're good, Yeah, ok I've got a drive very funny.
So you close it, pop it back in the fridge, and it stays.
Yes, that was one of our learnings from Like I think in terms of trying to be innovative around the wine category is like, you're never going to see a champagne bottle with a swing top on it or a proscco bottle.
They're etched in tribution.
This is nice to try this, and so with the addition of the swing top, we wanted to really do preservation.
Can you do can you softer touch a little bit?
Right? Yeah?
Nice?
Yeah?
Are you planning to do any non carbonated versions?
Absolutely? Yeah, R and D. I'll admit sparkling was more in my repertoire and our wheelhouse easier to do.
I would say it's easier.
To replicate or replace a sparkling.
But the still wine category, I think is very It's a huge opportunity for the category if we're to nail a Chardonnay or a savingon Blanc or a pan and a war a lot of drinkers out there, and you talked about who is this consumer, It is definitely the wine consumer that is self moderating.
What I'm also finding is bars, restaurants, parties, social events, professional events have increasingly non alcoholic options that are not soda.
Huge real estate being being garnered by the mocktails and commanding quite a price. But I think it's about, you know, more options for inclusive occasions, making sure that everyone is able to participate and not feeling sheepish or needing to you go with the line in a Seltzer water as the chameleon.
All right, So you introduce this October?
Is that October?
All right? So I know this, but we're bloomberg. So give us any indications of the kind of demand you're anticipating or maybe already seeing.
So in eighteen years in wine and this would be the fifth startup for me, I've never seen something like this. And to your point, October, we didn't have a lot of data behind us. Yeah, but we have gotten so many fortunate retail programs in anticipation of dry January. Big moment and timing could not be you know, we're blowing aware goals and obviously the proof will be in the pudding with repeat business and velocity. But the early adoption has been through the.
Roof funding, self funded, raised money, have you done it?
Raised? A fair bit of money, went to the outside for the first time, but John and I actually self funded. The initial wine is very capital intensive business. You guys likely know this, but we feel like the.
Category is not a fad. This thing is here to stay. It's going to keep growing.
The retailers are now starting to get behind it, which is a massive win.
Well, Happy Drid January. Yes, promised to come back soon and listen. Thos are going grant having co founder and chief executive officer of Libby Wines. This is Bloomberg.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
How does a trip to Banff to do some gondola riding or cycling sound or visiting fjords in Alaska to gaze upon Glacier's wales and sea lions.
It sounds amazing. How about also maybe a whitewater rafting trip in Montana. Got to say yep, sign us all up for all of it, and you can experience all of them courtesy of a company known as Pursuit. The company calls itself a pure play hospitality and attractions company.
David Berry is president and CEO of Pursuit. He stopped by our studio to talk about the demand and the growing demand for outdoor travel.
What's unique about our business in sites, seeing and attractions and hospitality is everyone in the world loves a beautiful view.
Doesn't matter where you're from.
It doesn't matter what language you speak, doesn't matter whether you can ski or golf, or you have any athletic ability at all.
All you have to do is love a beautiful view.
Well, it's interesting, what does the environment the you know, for tourism. We've talked about coming off the pandemic. All people want to do is experience things and go out and do things. They want to get out of their house to do things. Is that continuing or give us some perspective versus what you've seen over the last couple of years.
Well, what's everyone looking for? And then my opinion, they're looking for authenticity. So no one goes to Iceland to experience Alaska. They're going for very unique things around the world, and so buy less stuff, do more things.
Life is precious. This is no dress rehearsal Right.
You might as well go and see and do the amazing things that you would like to do. And that's really what makes our business model work, and that you know, we're in a rather unique position. We have a ten year head start, a ten year track record of great investments that have driven shareholder value, and it's a way for us to position ourselves into the future, continue to grow and think of iconic, unforgettable and inspiring experiences.
So, David, the demand though, continues at the pace you've seen over the last year or two, like, give us an idea in terms of what consumers are up to.
I think consumers are excited.
And yes, there are certain segments of the consumer base that are more pro sensitive, but in the markets that we're dealing with, folks are ready to go and spend money on great experiences, and you've just got to work hard to deliver to people's expectations.
Fourteen attractions around the world, twenty eight lodges, fifty one restaurants and other dining experience. You've got fifty one retail stores. How do they all come together to offer sort of a package. Because when I see some of these experiences, I say, Okay, this is a good one off here. But how do you get to control the entire experience with these assets?
So think of pursuit as a house of brands, not a branded house. So think of human behavior. And you had mentioned Banff. Might you know you're planning a cycling
trip to BAMF with your buddies. Sounds good, you're planning there common so he knows Tim a little bit, do some searching and upcoms, and you search BAMF as a destination, and then the next thing you enter in the search bar is great things to do in bamp Damn Up it comes Lake Minlwauka, boat tours or the BAMF gondola or any of our different experiences.
So we're lucky.
We get to surf behind the power of the destination, which drives search results and drive.
But all those things are your assets that you mentioned. Correct, Okay? So I want to bring in Elizabeth Sedrin's comment from a little earlier today.
She was one of our producers.
Here's one of our producers.
She said, are they trying to compete with a company like Veil Resorts? And I said to myself, Oh, I said to Elizabeth, I don't think they are. But now after hearing you say that, you remind me of what
happened over the last twenty years. And I think Elizabeth was right when Vale Resorts bought Colorado Mountain Express and now rebranded at Epic Express, or especially Sports Ventures, the chain of rental shops where you rent skis and stuff, so then they control every different aspect of a tourist dollar that comes out.
So I spent three decades in skiing in a former life, and I can tell you the one thing that's very different in our world is we're not getting involved in skiing. So I don't need snow and I don't need anyone with an ability to ski. So all you have to do to enjoy our experiences is enjoy a beautiful view.
And so we have a simple strategy refresh, build, buy, So refresh existing experiences, build things that are unique and connected for guests to visit and enjoy, and then buy things that we think fit our platform.
But the idea is you want a customer to go to one of your locations or one of your experiences and hopefully continue to do other experience.
It's correct, Yeah, you want a guest to really think about when they're visiting a destination. How do they connect with what is authentic in that destination and what is unique and different because so much of the world is the same when you travel, So if you can create uniqueness, a guest then enjoys going from one experience to another.
Okay, not apples to apples. Our Charlie Pellett is a big cruiser, a lot of cruise ships. We talked to the Carnival CEO. I'm like, I'm saying, not apples to apples. But there are often repeat customers and I've done pieces where I'm on a cruise ship and they're like, yeah, this is my thirteenth cruise or my twentieth cruise. If you will, how many of the people who do some one of your experiences come back and do others.
I do think we have less frequency than the cruise industry in terms of that really devoted, participative type visitor.
But what we do have is folks that really enjoy an experience, say in the Canadian Rockies, and the next year they're looking to go to Alaska and experience that, or they've somehow gotten onto the Pursuit website through a variety of different things, and they realize we have an amazing attraction in Iceland called sky Lagoon, And so they weren't really planning to go to Iceland through US, but all of a sudden they're going to Iceland and have
an experience that they know, Wow, the BAF Gondola is so much fun. I'm pretty sure sky Lagoon's going to be fun.
Do people know that the Jasper Skytram or that BAMF Gondola is owned by Pursuit?
Some do, some don't.
We brand everything sort of an experience by Pursuit, but we want the experience in Jasper to be very unique and connected to Asper.
Jasper is a very unique place.
If you told a citizen in Jasper that we want you to be like BAMF, you know they would come for you with the pike and the muskets. Right, It's not what they want. They want their experience in Jasper to be truly unique. So uniqueness and authenticity is.
The order of the day.
Is expansion of where you offer up new locations, David, are you thinking very carefully about You want to make sure that while it's a different experience, the level is the same, so that people understand the Pursuit brand stands for something.
Yeah, I can cover our criteria for acquisition and growth really quickly. So one, is it iconic, is it unforgettable? Is it inspiring? Does it have perennial demand? Are there big barriers to entry? Is it an ebitdal margin that's attractive? So we run at thirty percent ebadal margin before public company costs, which a great margin.
Do we want to go down to fourteen? Well? No, it's got to be something.
That we think is going to be able to be improved. And then finally we look for good neighborhoods. What I mean by that is Gudrula law, good property protection, good places to do business in that our investments will be well protected.
Where you thinking about expanding to or buying assets in.
So firstly, I mean we're very lucky and that we've identified a couple of growth leavers. One is internally within the business where we can invest and make things better, and we've put about two hundred million dollars aside for that growth over between now and twenty twenty nine. But on the acquisition side, what are we looking for. It's got to be iconic, it's got to be unforgettable, got to be inspiring. So Dona's pretty iconic place, a good example.
Well, what could you acquire in a place like that that would add to your portfolio?
You know, I'm not sure I would say even if I knew, but I think the opportunities we have are really global in nature. We're very concentrated North America Q two Q three, So the benefit of being doing something counter seasonal if we could. You know, we're very weighted to the calendar of Q three in North America, so we've got opportunity counter seasonally and that leads you to different locations around the world. So yeah, if we could be busy December to April, that'd be even better.
Soolobal acquisitions at some point absolutely.
Now, I mean the benefit of this transformation of the sale of GS and the repositioning of Pursuit and our new clean, strong balance sheet is guess what, We've got a great pipeline, we've got a great plan, we've got a great strategy, and now we've got great drive powder to go do somethings.
So we're excited.
So I'm going to say yes, global acquisitions, man, So talk to us about pricing. David. I'm just curious, and I know we talked a little bit in the break before we got back here live on air, but I'm just curious, what is give us an idea of range kind of things. So we have an idea.
It really depends on the experience. So we have some attraction products that are very accessible for people, and you can do that based on time of day, tim how old.
Are kids two and six?
Let's say, all right, so you travel from the East Coast to Banff and at eight o'clock in the morning, your kids are wide away because it's ten o'clock New York time, and they're bouncing around the hotel room looking for something to do. You, my friend, are a prime character to take a breakfast program and a gondola ride with little kids.
Yeah, that sounds about it like Carol, maybe a little more relaxed.
As Yeah.
So there's the sleeping crowd, and there's the early morning crowd, my friend, and you're part of the early morning crowd. So there's a good example of your pricing and providing an experience that's well suited to someone at that particular time of day is part of.
The business strategy to make sure that you've got different price points.
You bet and your price dynamically, and you also work hard to provide value. So we get asked all the time, you're going to continue to take price. Real question is are you going to continue to improve experiences? Because when you improve experiences, you have pricing power. It's not just taking price and making everybody angry.
Work something on sale or offering a discount or something like that.
You're always going to have channels a distribution where you're potentially, if you have a time of day that you want to move more folks into, you're going to price that advantageously. But can you create an amazing product that people are going to feel comfortable paying a fair price.
For I I You said earlier that the a big difference between you and the ski industry and the big conglomerates out there now is that you're not focused at all on skiing. Does that make you less concerned about climate change?
Well, I think the benefit for us is where we're not focused on any particular athletic skill that you need to enjoy a product. All you need to do is enjoy a beautiful view. So in our summer destinations, climate change is less of a factor, but we're very sensitive to We have one planet, and we want to make sure that we do everything we can to protect this.
Planet and be mindful.
And if you go to our website, you'll see a thing called Promise to Place where we talk about sustainability, respect and community. Those are the three things we spend a lot of time on. We report very candidly. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable, but we tell the truth about what we're doing and what's working and what's not working, and what we're going to do to make it better.
So I am curious in terms of running a business, labor like hospitality, we talk about it a lot, and access to enough workers. Do you guys have all the workers that you need?
We do.
And what makes that happen is people want to voice. They want to work in a place where their opinion is respected and heard. They want to understand what is the greater purpose of this organization. We do multiple team member surveys in a year. The amount of comments we get are incredible. I do a live town hall broadcast every month where people can ask questions anonymously, and they do. And so it's all those things that work to create culture.
So a culture of respect, a culture of innovation, a culture of great leadership and genuine interest in others will drive great hospitality experiences.
Okay, what's an experiential trend that you're seeing happen right now that you haven't tapped into yet, Like, what what do you see out there? Like I want to go do that because that looks really cool. I've never done it before. We don't offer it.
I think that there are things that involve winter product in exotic destinations that people are experimenting with, and so that might be any gluo in the northern lights, and you know in Iceland at sky Lagoon, we will get complaints every once in a while, like I came for the northern lights and they did not appear.
Can you make that happen?
Nay, Mother Nature?
You just smile and you know, I'm only God's assistant. I can only do so much. But the benefit of looking at how do you continue to innovate? And we're lucky we work in a vibrant, relentless, restless culture that always wants to innovate, and so we have teams. Every day they're waking up with a great idea. So there's not one thing, specifically, tim that I would say. I would just say There's a thousand things the team's working on right now that are exciting.
Starting out as a ski instructor, it worked out pretty well.
You're pretty happy, right.
I'm pretty like somehow I made it here, I don't know on your show, so I'm could cross my fingers and try not to say anything dumb.
Well really fun. Let us know has the year progresses, and let us know how things are going.
You bet, Thank you so much.
Love to hear back from you. David Barry, He's president and CEO of Pursuit, joining us right here in studio.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple, Cofflay, and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Well, as all of you know, Monday is Martin Luther King Junior Day, a federal holiday that celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Junior.
Right, And just a reminder, of course, Martin Luther King Day also happens to fall on January twentieth, which is the day that President elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated this Monday. We Tim and I will be doing a special edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek that afternoon looking at the new incoming administration and all the policies that may come down. So we want to get into that and more with our next guest, who has a certain very personal story
and attachment of course to Martin Luther King Day. We are joined by Reverend doctor Bernice King. She's the chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Junior Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which is also known as the King Center. She is the daughter of Martin Luther King, Junior and her mom, Coretta Scott King, founder of the King Center. Doctor King, so nice to have you here with us. You know, Monday for many it's a holiday. Well, nice
to have you here. For many more, it's also a reminder of our difficult past around race relations and discrimination. What does the day mean to you? Honoring your dad?
Well, it's an opportunity, obviously for us to not just commemorate his life, but to really look further into his teachings. He was not just a civil rights leader, he was a teacher. He left us a blueprint as to how to create a just, humane, equitable, and peaceful world.
And every year.
One of the things that I encourage is that we study him more because he spoke about things that we as a nation and world needed to do to fight against what he saw as a trip with poverty, racism, and militarism as a threat to our humanity. And so here we are once again this year, and as we inaugurate a new president.
Those teachings don't change, they stay the same. What we have to.
Do is to connect to them and to connect to the spirit of that movement so we can continue to move our nation and world forward.
I was going to ask you just to follow up. You said, you know, your dad leaving us a blueprint. How would you think he's doing how we are doing today with that blueprint?
Well, you know, he said to us, and where do we go from here?
Chaos the community in nineteen sixty seven, the book that he published then that we must find a way to live together as brothers, and he meant humanity as brothers and sisters, or together we would be forced to perish as foods.
And I think we've not found the way to do that.
I think he further divided around different ideologies instead of trying to spend time learning in spite of our differences.
How do we live together?
How do we create a coexistence where we don't co annihilate one another?
You know?
How do we create a world where everyone has decent and affordable housing and access to healthcare?
You know?
How do we ensure that people who may end up in the homeless population, how do we ensure that that is short lived and we create a pathway to people to reclaim their lives. How do we create a fair distribution of wealth in this nation? He talked about having a radical redistribution of wealth. He didn't talk about it in the sense that we just have to remove wealth from someone else, but we have to figure out how do we balance our economy so that people can have
enough to do well. And then, of course he talked about how do we respect who we are from different cultures and different backgrounds. We'll never all agree on everything, and will never all like each other, We'll never all think alike, but we certainly can spend time learning how to live together. So that takes a lot of listening, curiosity, It takes a lot of courage, It takes a lot of humility.
It takes compassion.
These are all the things that he taught us through the spirit and the heart of nonviolence that he led that movement in.
Well, it's that last point that I want to talk about, doctor King, because we've been talking about over the last few months the dismantling of DEI programs at many companies. If I just look at the stories that are one of our reporters, Jeff Green, has written in recent months, here's some headlines. Walmart under fire from investors for cutting DEI programs, Meta retreats from diversity and inclusion, appeasing Trump. Amazon is halting some of its diversity and inclusion programs.
McDonald's walks back DEI goals in the latest corporate retreat. Other companies including Deer and more.
And we talked about Corporate America, you know, did hire more black workers for a while and then it stopped.
How do you like, how do you in an environment such as this where seeing things seem to not necessarily be going in that direction? How do you have optimism?
Well, always have optimism because there are always people, you know, like Target and Costco and others who who choose to follow the pathway that we all know is for the best of our nation and our world. But if we don't have an inclusive economy as a nation, then we're not going to survive in the global economy.
And so I think there are going to be some.
Hard realities we're going to be faced with in a few years. If what those who have ought to remove DEI have done, you know.
It's going to show certain results.
I think it's up to certain courageous leaders to combine forces.
And stand against this.
It really, at the end of the day, it's really not about the language anyway, you know, It's about who we are as a people. Do we have a love centered way of leading our cultures? In corporate America, you know, in our educational institutions when we look a lot around at our different cultures, do we have everyone that's needed
in terms of representation at the table. You know, whether you call it DEI, you call it representation, or you call it a belonging culture or for us, the beloved community. How do we create beloved community cultures? Because at the end of the day, it's about the outcomes. So if they remove the names, they remove what they call DEEI, But then they are still committed to getting to certain outcomes.
Then maybe there's no problem.
But if removing it also means that we're not going to ensure that we have cultures that reflect who we are as a nation and even as a world, then it just means those of us who practice non violence are going to have to organize and stratle our chives and come up with plans to put pressure where is needed.
Doctor King, what do you think white Americans still don't understand about Black America today and what do you believe it will take to achieve true racial equality.
Well, the first thing is Black America is not trying to take anything from anybody.
I think that's the first thing people need to understand.
There's this threat, like you know, if Black America were in charge, they will remove.
Us and nothing to be further from the truth.
If you study the history of our race, we've always been holistically. It doesn't mean there are exceptions in every racial grouping, but if you study as a whole, we're very forgiving people.
We are very inclusive culture.
We tend to stand, you know, with what is right and what is fair and what is just. And I think there's a misnomer that if we are in these roles, we may do what others do. I think there's a misnomer as to who we are that you know, we just get jobs or we get opportunities just because we're black.
No, we're very qualified.
If you spend any time on social media, you see the number of young children out of the black community who are finishing college and getting PhD degrees when they're not even fifteen yet.
They're not even fourteen yet.
So we have a very intelligent, very skilled community. And it doesn't take anything away from anybody else's community who has intelligent and skilled individuals. And so the biggest thing Daddy says a little very powerful. He said, people hate each other because they don't know each other.
They don't know each other because they don't communicate with each other.
They don't communicate with each other because they're separated from each other. And so as long as we keep division and separation, then the myths can continue to be the truth. So we have to find a way, as I said, to learn to live together and cross some of these boundaries and not allow whatever every other commentary may say about you know, any community to rule the day.
I need to come and connect with you. I need to learn more about it.
I need to spend time with you, I need to experience your culture. It doesn't mean I may embrace all of it, but I have a greater understanding of it. And I think that's what a love centered person, a compassionate person, a curious person. Right, we're doing a person more importantly, who wants to see a better world.
Well, you know, we we think about We've only got about a couple of minutes left here, but we are thinking about Martin Luther King Day on inauguration Day, incoming President Donald Trump and what his administration might bring in terms of policies and what it means for Black Americans in equality in the United States. You know, we kind of get the sense that your dad, you know, tried to engage power to influence change. She seemed very pragmatic
and yet took those risks. Do you think your father would try to engage with the right, the conservative right, to get them to better understand the implications of their positions or is that not even possible? And again, only about a minute and a half here.
Oh, it's always possible. Non violence believes in the impossibility. Non violence actually can help overcome what seems to be impossible.
So through strategy and plan.
When he went to see Johnson and Johnson said, look, I've done as much as I come the civil rights Right now, I can't get the votes on voting rights. Daddy went back and said, well, we're gonna have to get him some power. We're going to have to help him figure that out. So in this administration, we got to figure out where are the connection points. You know, who are the people in the administration we might be able to have access to who may understand that can then translate the message.
It's about strategy, and nonviolence helps you with that.
Do you have faith in the Trump administration helping out? I have the Black community.
I have faith in God, and I believe in the power of a collective conscience that is committed to freedom, justice and quality.
And I believe it is possible.
That's why our theme is, you know, mission Possible, protecting freedom, justice and equality. Excuse freedom, justice and democracy through the spirit of non violence three sixty five, which is Kingy and non violence is taught and demonstrated by my father.
That's what I have faith.
In, doctor King. Just twenty five seconds left here, What do you hope every American kind of thinks about when it comes to our country here.
I want them to remember that as a humanity, we have been to these places before. Maybe not literally us, but human beings have been in difficult, challenging times. We come from those individuals, and we too have the capacity to rise to the occasion and meet the challenges and move our nation and worl for.
Thank you so much for finding time for us. Our thoughts with you, certainly as we prepare for the holiday and to mark his memory and his legacy on Monday. That is Reverend Doctor Bernice King, chief executive Officer of the King Center, joining us from Atlanta. This is Bloomberg.
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