Global business news twenty four hours a day. If Bloomberg dot com the radio plus Mobile act and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg business flash from Bloomberg World Handquarters. I'm Charlie Pellot. SMP five hundred Index now at a seven month high amid signs of steady job gains that indicate the economy is strong enough for higher interest rates as early as this summer. Stocks to close at or
near the best level of the day. SMP up five to one oh five, a gain of three tents of one percent, and has stack up nineteen, a gain of four tenths of one percent. Down Industrials up forty eight points, a gain also of three tenths of one percent. So the SMP now at one oh five, the Dow at seventeen thousand, eight hundred thirty eight, Gold down a dollar sixty the ounce to twelve thirteen ten, a drop of
point one percent. Ten You up ten thirty seconds, Deal there one point eight percent, and Crew down six cents forty eight nine. Apparel a drop of point one I'm Charlie Peloton. That's a Bloomberg business flash. You're listening to taking stock with bim box and Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio. Uber in the news on two very big front fronts. Uh, there's a big settlement being considered that would leave Uber
and lift drivers as independent contractors. And of course these are two the biggest names in the on demand economy. And uh, it might avoid policy changes that would have would force them to rethink their business models. Okay, so there you go, this whole question of you know, how
you treat Uber workers right the demand economy. Ah, Saudi Arabia isn't paying any attention because it looks like the Saudi Arabian public Investment Fund, their big sovereign wealth fund, is going to be investing over three billion dollars in Uber. Uber joining us now is a Ja Chopra general partner Trinity Ventures, joining us from San Francisco. He's a long time Silicon Valley BCNE. He's got lots to say about this. Welcome and Ji, thanks for joining me. Glad to be here.
So let's start on the settlement because that is something that has been going on for a while. It's it's already controversial because there's been some settlements and the companies are changing the way they hire their workers. And the kind of contracts they make, So maybe those previous constraints won't apply. Now, what's important to you as a VC,
as a potential investor? Yeah, so I think, UM, this issue about ten workers whore contractors versus doubly two employees who are hourly um, you know, full time employees for the company. UM, is you know, going to not be resolved with this settlement. I believe that this will be just a stepping stone in that direction, and we will continue to see UM more and more legal issues around
this over the next several years. UM. Still, eventually perhaps regulations might might change, UM so that you know, all of the Uber drivers and other on demand workers you get a fair play. UM. I don't think this issue is going to be resolve. It just one settlement that's going on right now. If you were an investor in Uber, would you sell now? Would you say, oh, if they're going to start changing the rules of the game in terms of government regulations and the way we can pay
and higher workers, it won't be as profitable. Or would you say, hey, look, especially if I'm in Uber, there there are the name in the in this whole, this whole area now and they're going to continue to grow and they'll they won't make that much difference. I would sell some of my shares. I think the company has got pretty good prospects, but also a lot of challenges.
They have a big battle that they're fighting in China, which with the company called d D which is a local competitor there that just you know, strengthened itself by a billion dollar investment from Apple, So they are now more formidable competitors. So they've got that challenge. They've got the issue that they're not profitable in that market, They're not profitable in Europe, and they may be ostable in certain cities in the US, so they've got an overall
profitability problem. And then they have this looming issue of autonomous cars. Because when autonomous vehicles become more prominent than all of a sudden, one of the main advantages that Uber has, which is that the drivers are bearing all the burden of the automobile, including the cost of the automobile, the insurance, the maintenance, and so forth, sort of goes away. And now Uber's model shifts from being asset light, in
other words, they don't have any assets. The drivers have to worry about that to asset heavy where they have to actually own or leave cars, and so that transition could be a pretty tricky one for them. So I would sell some, but I would hold quite a bit of it. And for sure, you know, we're at the the Internet in the North American International Auto Show in Detroit a few months ago, and four GM, all these they're they're rushing into this space. So they're going to
have definitely also a lot of competition there. So the Saudi so three billion dollars. The Saudis are trying to diversify their economy right in their going to end up with you know, a very big, big amount of global investment. Are they making a mistake to put their money in Uber? Now? I think they're looking at it primarily as a financial investment. UM. This is something that you know, UM sovereign funds do
from time to time. They do so very selectively. They do so in companies where the outcome is fairly certain to be successful. It's just a magnitude of success that is not clear. I think that's certainly true for Uber. They are going to be a successful company, it's just are they going to be Facebook size or they're going to be smaller. That's the question in terms of evaluation
a few years out. So they're making a financial bet and and I think that's that's how they have They probably thought about it and figured that they can buy five percent at this point in time. It also implies that Uber is probably not thinking of going public in the new future. They'll probably take this capital and deal with some of the problems that I talked about earlier, the challenge in China, the profitability, the issue with autonomous vehicles. So I think this is a good thing for Uber
from that standpoint. So Jay Training Training Ventures in the Bay Area, very big prestigious VC firm fed Reserve. We don't know when they're gonna start raising rates, but they're gradually making this turn. Right, there's going to be less liquidity, certainly a lot of the activity less several years in Silicon Valley people reaching for Yale that's kind of been supported by that. Is this gonna affect you? And and I guess even more broadly, what are you where are
you looking now for VC for investment opportunities? I think that if you look at the major transformations that are going on in our industry and the technology front, which is the mobile device and its implications UM and the core transformation from on premise deployment of technology to in cloud. We are just in the middle of a major industries are still in the earliest stages of being transformed. If you look at transportation, for example, we are in the
first innings of autonomous cars. I mean it's just the beginning with people like Tesla and others that are giving some capability to drivers which are automated. I think there's a lot more that's going to happen. If you look at the entire medical sector, the way the records are kept, the way delivery of medical services, particularly developing countries, there's so many opportunities in this sector. If you look at education,
we're probably even before the first inning. So I think there are huge opportunities because of these major transformations with a powerful computer and everybody's profit called the mobile phone and the cloud computing. J. H. Oprah, thank you so very much joining us from Trinity Ventures in San Francisco. This is taking Stock. Thanks for joining us today on
Bloomberg Radio. Up next Bloomberg Law, tackling the big issues of the day on the legal front from all their business and monetary angles that's coming up now on Bloomberg Radio.