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Hey, back with the season tech View to help us kind of make sense of all this with Lash is through McAfee, Principal research scientist at MIT. He's the author of a new book, The Geek Way, The Radical mindset that drives Extraordinary Results. He joined us last week, but we wanted to have him back on after the news of Sam Altman happened on Friday. He's also a visiting Fellow in Technology and Society at Google, that is Andrew McAfee, where he's working with Google on research related to the
societal impacts of generative AI. And Andrew joins us on Zoom from Boston.
Andrew, great to have you back with us. Radical Mindsets your book, you write about that in it. Sam Altman and open EI do they kind of fit into that in your view?
You know, they were certainly operating like a fast charging, high performing geek company, and then this very strange episode started to unfold on Friday.
So what how do you from someone who has watched technology, has seen trends, seen innovation, how are you looking at this and what's the significant thing kind of longer term, especially as we all expect of AI to be a part of our lives forever.
Probably I absolutely expect that, and I think this is just a crystal clear case study of the importance of good old fashion, boring corporate governance and running a good board. This feels like a huge enforced error on the part of the Open AI board and I still don't quite understand it.
Yeah, I think you're not the only one who doesn't quite understand it. We don't even know why he initially was fired at this point, and we're kind of following every move of will here, won't he go back to open AI. It doesn't sound like even Satinadella at Microsoft Carol knows why he was fired.
Yeah, I mean that's what's interesting.
I mean, is it important in your view, Andrew, that we know every detail in terms of how this ends, or what is ultimately the important thing that we get out of this, or how it ends?
In your view, I don't think we're ever going to know all the details, but we do know that if you have an extraordinarily popular, very effective CEO at growing a tech company, the board might not want to fire that person with almost with no notice, really without apparently engaging on a lot of back and forth with him, not for any fraud or misconduct or malfeasance, but because
of some other kind of vague problem. If the board is going to take that fairly rash step, they probably want to alert their major investors, their biggest business partners, their employee base, and give them time to get ready for all that, they didn't appear to do any of that, and when they were frantically negotiating over the weekend to try to bring him back, that all fell apart, and it fell apart to the extent that the huge majority of the employees of the company have signaled that they
will walk away. Whatever you think the board's duty is, I can't see how it includes destroying that much value, hollowing out the employee base of the company. And if the mission of the Open Ai Foundation is to advance safe AGI for humanity, I do not see how these actions support that mission at all.
Hey, Business School, this is a case study of how not to do things. Basically, there are.
Plenty of examples of that. By the way, there is plenty.
They're all that right often usually.
You know, I'm wondering. You know, Tim was really smart in terms of our discussions that we've been having around this about what seems to be maybe at odds, and that is this debate about a need for balance of pushing generative AI, this technology, expanding, exploring it to reach its potential, but with also having an ethical line because
of the potential of it to do wrong. Although I would go back to you know, the Cold War and missiles and the battle to have the greatest and best in terms of military and how that could bring the end to civilization. So I'm trying to kind of figure out what is at risk if we get this wrong.
Help me hear, Yeah, whatever is at risk? If your organization organization's mission is safe AI, and you believe apparently that a for profit company is not the right way to accomplish that mission, then doing things that let your CEO and again, almost all of the employees wind up at an AI building for profit company. They appear right now to be a lot of them to heading to Microsoft.
That is not accomplishing the goals of your mission. I personally am not worried about the existential the alignment risk of AI. All very powerful tools bring risks and harms with them, and they demand vigilance, and we got to be careful about it. I don't think AI is any big exception to that trend or requires us to do radically different things. We just have to be vigilant stop the bad uses.
That is really really surprising for me to hear from you, Andrew, because I hear from you know the worst case scenario when it comes to this stuff as Okay, what if AI developed some sort of super bug or biological weapon, or in fact, you know in the Elon Musk school, essentially become sentient and more powerful than human beings. Why does that not worry you?
I mean, I read a lot of science fiction as a kid, too. I think terminator sci fi scenarios are not great guides to policy, are not great guides to using this very powerful, very beneficial toolkit. I do think that there is a risk that AI, for example, could be used to as part of an effort to engineer bad bugs or bioweapons. Great, why are we focusing on a AI and not gene editing and not gene sequencing technologies?
And why are we letting anybody apply to molecular biology and genetics doctoral programs and distributing that knowledge very freely? There are, again, there are risks in the modern world. Let's not be naive about that. But singling out AI as the lynchpin that's going to make everything bad happen, I just think that's wrong. I think that's a misallocation of our effort demonizing technologies that will be super beneficial to us. I think as allows the idea.
Well, let's move away from the superbug concern and more to the concern that it will become a sentient being that is more powerful and smarter than us and essentially a higher order being over us. Essentially, Yeah, why does that not concern you?
You know, my friend and colleague Andrew Ing, who is himself a fantastic AI researcher, says it's theoretically possible. I love his phrasing. He said, it's like worrying about overpopulation on Mars. We have so many more important things to worry about. We have to accomplish an energy transition in the twenty first century. We have too high a disease burden. There are too many people in dire poverty around the world.
I believe that AI might be the most powerful tool that we've ever come up with to help us solve these global planetary challenges facing humanity. And we're sitting around worried about the terminator when there's not a shred of evidence that AI has become sentient or taking control of anything that we don't want it to. I think it's like bad sci fi mixed bad policy.
Andrew full transparency.
You're working with Google on research related to the societal impacts of generative AI.
I am curious that what.
Is the balance you all at Google are pursuing when it comes to reach AI, generative AI, reaching its potential, but also being smart about it and careful with it.
Yeah. Thanks for that, because I really want to make clear here I am just talking about my own personal views. I am not representing Google's views on this. I actually am not on top of everything that Google believes. What I do know because I read the statement like the rest of the public did, that Google stance is that we need to be bold and responsible. I think we are in danger of walking away from the bold part in an overabundance of not just caution, but fear about
things that we just don't have any evidence for. I want to say this again, this is my view, not necessary Google's view.
I think andrew everything that we've talked about in terms of fears. Personally, again, I'm speaking personally in terms of this, and I'm almost a lay person when it comes to this stuff. The thing that most concerns me about generitive AI is misinformation and the ability for bad actors to use that misinformation at scale to control.
Outcomes like happens in social.
Media exactly, not that different than a lot of accusations that we saw fly in the wake of twenty sixteen and twenty twenty elections here in the US. But if you thought a bot army of people, you know, in Eastern Europe with social media were scary, then what about an actual bought army of generative AI that's able to you know, do this stuff at scale.
Andrew, Now that's a harm that we should be worrying about. Because I got fooled by that picture, that photo alleged photo of the Pope and the puffy white coat.
He looked good.
I thought the Pope was wearing a puffy white coat. Look, I really did got I got taken in by a photo realist deep fake. These are actual challenges, and like you say, bad actors are going to weaponize generative AI to do all kinds of harm or try to do all kinds of harm. This is a real risk, it's a real harm. I have faith in our ability to deal with the harms that technology brings us. I think we can find ways to have trusted sources that will verify whether a thing is a deep fake or not.
All of us have the new sources that we run to when we see something that might be true or might not be true. We can strengthen those kinds of institutions and those kinds of responses. We can also educate people to be more discerning consumers of the news. These are all things that we can and should do sitting around worrying about the terminator instead, As I said, it's just a huge misallocation of our attention.
I think the terminator coming to life is more realistic than educating the large populace with news judgment. But I'm a cynical person.
I guess that's a little cynical.
Yeah, I know.
All right, everybody.
What's interesting too, though, is you know you talk about you know, you have faith to deal with the harms of this technology maybe will ultimately bring us, should there there be some guardrails in place, you know, shamy once you know full you know, shame or fully one.
Shame on you for me twice, shame on you know. You know what I mean. You know what I mean.
Okay, George W. Bush Rich shut.
But I guess my point is, whether it's social media, whether it's crypto, there's a lot of things out there that it's like, oh, I guess we should have.
Been doing this.
Is there something we should have in place at this point when it comes to generative AI.
I think what we should have in place is a very agile system for becoming aware of the harms and dealing with the harms as they crop up. For example, after smartphones were out for a while, we learned that a bunch of losers were using them to take pictures of the skirts of women, you know, as they commuted to work on the subway. We didn't not a love the smartphone. We didn't make smartphone makers apply for a
license to use a camera. We didn't make all of us apply for a license to have a camera equipped smartphone. Around the states anyway, lots of legislatures acted really quickly to make that particular use of the phone illegal. The best response to the harms that come up is my preferred approach for dealing with these. I don't trust me or you or anybody else to sit around right here and correctly anticipate all of the things that will happen and all of the effective ways to head that off.
I just don't.
All right, We're going to leave it on that note. I'm so glad we got some more time with you.
Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT, author of a new book, The Geekway, The radical mindset that drives extraordinary results. Also the visiting fellow and Technology and Society over at Google. Joining us on zoom from Boston. Andrew, thank you so much for be well.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or want us live on YouTube.
It's the most wonderful time.
With the kids, all right, everybody.
So, there are a lot of retail earnings that have crossed the Bloomberg terminal, but we do want to go to there, and those were earlier in the session, but we do want to mention. We just talked about Nordstrum, and really what is kind of freaking investors out here in the aftermarket is the company's outlook seeing fiscal year just at EPs of a dollar ninety to two ten. They had seen one eighty to two twenty and Tim, we've been covering it, but the stock. Let me just pull it up.
It is down well now, it's.
Just actually a little higher, up about nine tenths of a percent in the aftermarket, but it's bouncing around. It was selling off earlier, but we had a lot of retail earlier today as well.
Yeah, Low's shares took a hit after the company cut it's annual forecast. Best Buy slumped after reporting third quarter comp sales that trailed the average analyst estimate. Coals tanked earlier today after the company reported third quarter sales. Dick's Sporting Goods. It was kind of mixed bag, although I guess you could say kind of Dix was the outlier here. It raised its profit forecast.
Uh.
You know, and I mentioned that story that richer Americans are starting to pull back on their spending. There's a lot of questions and a lot to get to when it comes to the strength of the American consumer.
I think that's a really important one because we talk about trading down. Mary Lou Gardner has a lot to say about the retail sector. She's Associate Partner for Consumer Packaged Goods, Retail and Logistics at Inphosis Consulting. She joins us on Zoom from Naples Florida, Mary Lou how's the retail group doing? And I know it's not oranges to orange, not everybody has the same story, but how would you sum up the retail sector and how is the US consumer doing?
Well?
You know, the US consumer is still feeling that tremendous pressure from three areas, the rising interest rates, the credit card debt has gone through the roof, and the savings that they had coming out of the pandemic has you know, really decreased or deflated, and so they're getting more anxious every day what to spend, where to spend it, and their decisions in terms of discretionary spending are getting more regimented every single day.
So does any of this surprise you what we heard from these companies not just in the last ten minutes, but in the last twenty four hours, Dick sort of experience.
No.
I mean, I think we had some leading indicators with Target and Walmart last week as well. Right, they saw that in October spending really started to slow down in the back half, which gets everyone nervous for the holiday selling season where retail you know, that's their bread and butter. And right now, the forecast for the retail selling season is that it's going to be the slowest in the slowest growth in the past five years, only expected to
be up three to four percent. So I think, you know, what you're starting to see is they're looking forward for the next three months based off of even what they've seen in October and said this could be a little bit of a year for us. We're not going to get the profits we thought, and we're not going to see the salts or they're going to be spread out over time.
What does holiday hiring trends tell us about the holiday season?
Well, I mean, the NRF also has said that they expect that trend to be down about forty percent, and what we've.
Seen so far, we said forty percent.
Forty percent from from twenty twenty one, which was that recent high. So Walmart's a perfect example. They have not hired any seasonal hires.
Wow, so I remember seeing Amazon hiring tens of thousands, But that's typically what.
It does, right, That's what it typically does.
You know what it's mostly You know, we haven't heard from Amazon that they haven't been hiring. Macy's cut down their hiring significantly across the board. There are just less there's you know, three hundred and forty five thousand to four hundred and forty five thousands what they're predicting, which is forty percent down from twenty twenty one.
So you mentioned it to the peak of twenty twenty one. How does this compare to twenty nineteen, because I'm trying to figure out how much is just getting back to normal, how much is there's something going on consumers are feeling pressured, which certainly seems to be the case at this point because it feels like there's more and more evidence of that. But give me an idea of how this what we are seeing and how it compares to twenty nineteen pre pandemic.
I don't have the exact twenty nineteen numbers, but this slowdown is so significant in the hiring, and you know, there's the combination of the shift to e commerce, so there's probably maybe more hiring there less right in the retail brick and mortar, you know, with you know, using Amazon as one of the examples, but it still is. It's concerning in a couple of ways that if you think about how retailers have spread, like kind of the importance of the holiday season and they keep pulling it
forward and pulling it forward. I think the consumer's got some fatigue and along with the pressures. So if retailers are not hiring, which is what we've seen, and I don't know the exact numbers to twenty nineteen, I can get them for you another time, but it would show to me that this that drop of thirty up to forty percent is nothing we've ever seen before. It would shift by ten to fifteen percent over the years depending
what was happening in the economy. But we have that, like I said that, you know, triangulation of that pressure on the consumer, and you know, I know a lot of people that have said that they're pulling back as well, and people who can well afford to were just there's so much economic uncertainty, as we all know, and it just makes people nervous.
You know. I got to ask you, and I know you're not a markets person, I know you cover retail, but there is this there does seem to be this disconnect from what we're seeing in equity in the bond markets in terms of the way that people are thinking where we are in the economy and where the feed is based on what you know and what you see in your work as a consultant who covers retail, would you say that we're in a recession or a recession is on the horizon.
And maybe like a consumer like consumer spending.
Recession, consumer economy.
Correct, but the consumers are on the brink of I think the consumer spending is on the brink of a recession based off of all of the concerns and all the noise we hear about, you know the fact that debt has gone up significantly and people have lost their savings. They have to stop spending at some point.
Right, we talked about yesterday people tapping into the four oh one ks.
Today wealthier people, you know, training down essentially.
So what does this mean in terms of retail names, more fallout, more consolidation. I don't know, how do you think about that?
Yeah, I definitely think we're going to see some fallout. I mean, it was listen to you earlier about the whole Nordstrom UH announcement, and that's been on the brink of disaster for a while now. And when when you start to see and you know, the prestige market has has definitely collapsed and has been challenged. So if that market collapses, and then in between we've had the consolidation
and we've had kind of the Amazon takeover happening. We're going to see, you know, a continue to see a shift in what the retailed landscape looks like and how it's defined and less about brick and mortar, more about e commerce. But what it looks like today and what it looks like three years from now, I think is going to be very very different, similar to what we saw coming out of the pandemic.
That's that's so, I mean, I'm I'm really hearing a lot of concern from you. What are you telling clients in order to do? What are you client telling clients to do in order to prepare for where you see they consume are going?
So getting really really smart about understanding your consumer, your consumer preferences, your consumer shopping behaviors, what are they responding to right now? Leveraging more of our AI and mL to really understand and be targeted in your assortment, Be
very discreet, and not carry too much inventory. I mean, you've seen over the years retailers have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble around the inventory levels, and there's been some whispers that they're concerned about that again this year. Potentially that if the spending doesn't happen as people had hoped it was going to happen, they'll be hung with inventory and we'll have heavy disk markdowns again. So another cyclical problem.
Interesting.
So we're trying to tell people to be really smart about that and be targeted and be thinking about it now right even before you get to the end of the season, and be hung with all that inventory.
Interesting.
Interesting, I'm so great to talk with you so Timeley Mary Lou Gardner, Associate Partner for Consumer Packaged Goods, Retail and Logistics overfac Consulting.
Joining us on zoom.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business app and YouTube. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
All right, folks, Tim and I have just been pouring over this Nvidia press release. Stock still down a little bit, about nine tens of a percent in the aftermarket, but it was taking a little bit of a bigger hit earlier. So let's get to it. Because back with us is Dan Morgan, so glad to have them with us. Follows the tech sector, and obviously and Vidio he's senior portfolio manager at Sonova's Trust.
He's on the phone from Atlanta.
Dan, help us out here, because it looks like it's a big beat on.
A lot of level.
I mean, expectations were really high, okay, but they.
Met them and then some stock still down about nine tens percent, one percent off the lows in the aftermark market. Tell us about the quarter that was in the outlook.
Hi, Carol high Tim. You know, if you look at these numbers, at least the headline numbers, it's hard to find a flaw, right, because they beat on revenue for the third quarter eighteen point one two billion versus sixteen point one eighth and then they their estimate going into the fourth quarter was twenty billion plus or minus two percent.
Consentius was around seventeen point eight one billion. Huge beat in data center, which is where the AI chips are housed, coming in at fourteen point five billion versus about twelve
point eight billion. That's a forty one percent increase year over year and you know, earnings were a beat, So to be honest with you guys, this stock traded up in anticipation of blowout numbers because I don't want to say anything leaked out, but there were a lot of reports saying that channel checks were showing that they were doing very well in terms of selling their AI chips, and I just think that it's you know again, Caroll and Tim with those situation is where it's like buy
on the rumors, sell on the news because I can't see the flaws in this report.
What about the China element? Here? One of the headlines that we have on the Bloomberg terminal in Video saying that it expects sales of sales to China to decline significantly in the fourth quarter, but the decline will be offset by growth in other regions. How should investors take that information?
We're right, Tim, you know, China is probably going to be the major focus on this upcomings conference call. Everyone's going to be asking about their China business. We know that in Video generates about twenty to twenty five percent of their sales from China. There are two core ships that they sell an AI which is the H one hundred and the A one hundred have Chinese equivalent H
eight hundred and A eight hundred. We also know they have a slew of new chips coming out that are going to be focused just on the Chinese market, that
are supposed to meet all these new restrictions. So yeah, I think that quote Tim, because that's kind of in the the act of everybody's mind in terms of little worry surrounding in video, and the fact that they mentioned it on the initial report, I think raises the big red flag and that could be why Tim and Carroll will seeing the stock kind of sell off a little bit on this news.
Yeah, you bring up a good point about where the revenue comes from. If you have Bloomberg terminal, all you got to do is type in FAGO on the terminal and you go over to segments by geography, and you can see that foreign revenue accounts for about sixty nine point three percent of the company's total revenue in the in twenty twenty three. Carol, twenty five point nine percent of that came from Taiwan. A wopping, let's see twenty one point four percent of that came from China.
But what's interesting, I want to go back to the outlook, they talked about revenue in the current period about twenty billion, I think give or take.
What was it, two percent?
Yeah, two percent upside.
Downside are Ian King writing that the estimate that some were projecting was as much as twenty one billion?
Was it?
Like you said, just the case of that, people just wanted more, expected.
More, you know, Carol and Vidios turned to the poster dog for Whisper numbers, right, Remember the.
Whisper We used to talk about that.
Yeah, yeah, we used to talk there was an estimate and then there's the Whisper numbers. So we're back to the Whisper numbers. It sounds like with m video. So yeah, I think you're right, even though it's a huge beat, right because the as estimate was seventeen point eight one billion. Again, they keep putting these matrix to go higher and higher and higher, and it just gets to the point where you know, you just can't please.
Right, to be fair, the stock's now up about eight tens of a percent in the aftermarket, So it's like some where somebody like slapped somebody on the face and said, did you look at the numbers?
But maybe, I mean maybe maybe in look it's tough to look at what happens. You know, winternings come out before the call and before the market's open in the morning, so we you know, take yeah, take moves. It's early. We take the moves of the grain of self. But maybe, Carol, you know, there were some there, maybe there was a block trade, or maybe people saw this as an opportunity just off of you know, all time highs to sell stock.
I't no, that's fair, that's fair.
Having said that, Dan, I do wonder, you know, when I think about Nvidia, I'm like, well, who's going to take share from Nvidia?
Who will?
Yeah? And that's that's an interesting question because if you look at the data center space right now, their total revenues that they generate is about twice of the combined competitors right which is Intel, AMD, Marble. But they do have companies like MD, like Marble that are coming out with new chips that are going to be introduced in that space. Intel has Falcon stores. They also have their Habana which is supposed to be coming out here soon.
So I think that may be another thing that's on a lot of people's minds, which is, you know, right now on video is seventy eighty percent as you know of the AI chip market. Really, these other companies have been a little bit slower to come out with their competing chips, but they are coming down the road, right. AMD has the mi I three hundred, You've got Marvel
Technologies which has already introduced their PM four DFP. So will they be able to be still the king of the mountain, right or are they going to have to share a little bit of market share with some of these other companies. And there are flw of chips that are going to be coming out here in the next six to twenty four months from some of these competitors that I mentioned, and it'll be interesting to see if maybe buyers want to start using an am d jip.
Okay. I got to ask you this because everything this week comes back to Sam Altman, but I mentioned this earlier, Dan and Amid the drama over the reporting of Sam Alman's auster at open AI last week and the ongoing discussions that our team is reporting that he's having with the board of open AI to return, we learned that Sam Altman was had some outside projects. He was trying to raise money for a chip competitor to take on in VideA. Could a startup actually emerge to take on in VideA?
You know, Tim, I think it would just be really tough because, you know, we Carol and I always followed in video. We thought it was a big gaming chip, and they had all the cash cow and money that was coming in from that. They use that to leverage it to go into the AI space. So it would be really hard to take on the likes of some of these companies that we mentioned, just because of the sheer size and the amount of cash they have. I
don't think they could raise enough money. So I'm not as worried about a startup like the one that you mentioned. I'm more thinking in terms of some of the older names that have these new chips coming out.
Okay, so just got about a minute and a half left. What would you ask on the conference call? You mentioned about China coming up? But what is front of mind or for you in terms of the Nvidia story.
Dan, Well, the China issue which we mentioned, and also how does Nvidia continue to defye gravity in regards to the data center space? Right? We know that asier we look at all these competing in IAS programs in terms of AWS and GCP. We're seeing growth rates slowing down, and yet we see continued increase spending towards Nvidia, the AI space and the data center. So will they eventually
fall suit to this slowdown? So obviously getting a little bit more information about how they're seeing the data center space and why they're growing when everyone else is deaccelerating.
Would you buy or sell on this news today? Just got about twenty seconds left here.
Yeah, Carol, and Vidia has been a long time stock on our buy list. Obviously for clients that have the proper investment objective or risk tolerance and they don't own it, it would be something that we look at. You know, stock's not crazy. It's forty five times fiscal year twenty twenty four earnings and we're already going in the fourth quarter. So everybody hangs their hat on that trailing multiple. But it's not that overpriced if you look at the Ford growth rate expectations sometimes.
Of earnings only of two hundred and forty percent this year, Carol, Yeah, stock still dead about one percent, but it is like you look at the dynamic growth that we continue to see at this company.
Dan Morgan have a great evening and a great holiday. Dan Morgan over at Sonova's Trust.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or want us Live on YouTube.
It's time out for another edition of Bloomberg Plugged In. It's your weekly book at Ed's, and all is not well when it comes to the world of EV's. Earlier today, Carol, we got the news that Ford is reducing capacity and hiring plans at a battery plant that it's building in Michigan because it sees weaker demand for EV's. Remember, sales off it's signature F one fifty lightning plug and pickup fell forty six percent in the third quarter.
All right, So let's see what Brendan Joan has to say about that. He is president and CEO at Blank Charging. It's a two hundred and forty one million dollar marketcap company trades on the NASDAK. It of designs, makes, owns, and operates EV charging stations, and the company says it's contracted soldier deployed nearly eighty five thousand charging ports around the world. He joins us on zoom from Miami Beach. Excuse me on the phone from Miami Beach, Florida. Hey, Brendan,
great to have you here with us. Doc took a hit today, down about seven percent, your dad about sixty seven percent year today. Before we talk about the business, because you guys had a good quarter, what are you hearing from your investor relations teams about what's going on? Why is the share pricing so much pressure to the downside.
So yeah, I think the whole industry, if we look at the EV charging industry and then more broadly at the EV industry in general, we've been under a lot of pressure for the past year. There's a marked difference from the frothy years that we saw about eighteen months plus ago to where we are now, and all the infrastructural companies seem to be suppressed at a much lower valuation. And if you listen to the advisors, you know what everybody's saying is the same thing. It's great to be
a growth company, but we're focusing on profitability now. So you've got to continue to grow and you've got to give us a definitive path towards profitability, and that's what we've done on blank. We give them the timeline and a target and we intend to get there by December of twenty twenty four.
Well, you're not going to grow if they don't grow the number of evs that are out there significantly. And I think that's an important thing that I want to get from you, Brendan, is what's going on with with EV's. I thought evs were the future, and now on some dealership lots they can't get rid of these things fast enough.
Yeah, I mean, there's some micro issues in the in the industry, but when we look at aggregate sales both globally in the United States, they're up year over year and continue to be up. Eight percent was the sales pen rate on a US basis. In California, it was twenty two percent. In one of the earlier months of the quarter, it was actually at twenty five in California. You know, California has the twenty thirty five mandate of nothing but internal of EV's can be sold in the state,
and several other states have adopted that same thing. So I think we're certainly seeing a little bit of a downplay in the sales volume. But over time, you know, based on regulation and OEM commitment, well, we're going to see an uptick. And when you look at the broader numbers, you know, we're looking at a twenty thirty number of just thirty five percent EV penetration rate, and that would necessitate a need for thirty million chargers within the United
States alone. So while there's some blips right now, we're still encouraged by the overall economic positiveness of the whole space, especially the states that are mandating evs and zero sales of internal combustion engines.
Brendan unfortunately only have about forty five to fifty seconds left here. How do you compete though, with the likes of Tesla that continues to open up its charging network and capabilities to other automakers.
Yeah, well, Tesla is primarily a DC fast charge. Our owner operated model BLINK is a full on vertically integrated sales model where we sell chargers. The majority of the chargers we sell are L two chargers and we own and operate them as well. So Tesla is primarily highway based charging. We provide charging in the metro, we provide charging in the home. We for charge charging a multi family dwelling, and we do it when we install an our operator as far less the cost the expense of
DC fast charging. So it's a completely different business model. But we'll also be deploying chargers that can charge Teslas and if we look more broadly at what our number one customers who plugs in the blank bloom Tesla.
Drivers listen, Promise to come back soon when we have a little bit more time. We would love to continue this conversation. Brendan Jones is the President CEO at Blink Charging, joining us on the phone from Miami Beach, Florida. We continue to watch Nvidia in the aftermarket now just down about nine tenths of a burs set, looking for some headlines coming off of that analyst call.
Will continue to monitor.
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