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Let's go to one of our favorite tech investors. Kathy Would, founder, CEO and CIO of ARC invest joins us around the table to talk about this world. Kathy, we want to get into your tech investments, we want to get into your views, but we got to put this question to you around H one B visas and this new application fee.
What do you make of it? What's the impact?
Well, again, this is part of President Trump's negotiating process, and I think he's negotiating quite intensively right now with India. I think India would be have the biggest impact here in terms of, you know, workers in the United States. So I think this is a little bit like tariffs, and it's going to capture all the headlines and it's going to really take the oxygen out of the room.
Because there's a lot of really good fundamental activity happening in the United statesating relating to policy.
Well, a lot of that, a lot of the innovation, a lot of that Silicon Valley kind of goodness really comes from the talent and the labor pool.
We've been talking about this for quite some.
Time in terms of how do you train your engineers. You train Americans to do a lot of what Silicon Valley depends on foreign workers to do. Does this impact innovation in Silicon Valley and doesn't impact megacap tech stocks tech.
Companies that are dependent on this.
Well, from what we know of this administration, they ultimately want to keep students who have been educated in the US, foreign students that have been educated in the US in the US. So really, I just think this is part of the negotiation with India and that when all is said and done, we're probably going to loosen up the H one visa visa program.
But in the short term, is that going to have an impact on tech companies.
I think what it's going to do is force tech companies to do what they're already doing and that has become more efficient. And the other thing to note is, uh, you know, coding is changing dramatically. The number of coding jobs and openings has dropped dramatically. Because of AI, all of us can become coders. You've heard a vibe good.
That's a lot of faith gout.
You know, this is natural language programming generative AI is prompting chat GBT to get your programs going.
We can all do that.
That's simplifying it, but I do think it gives you a sense of the kind of productivity, that possibilities that are possible, that that will impact these tech companies longer term.
Come takes me on to my next question. Is Chinese tech getting out perform US tech from a stock market point of view over the next year.
Well, you know, the valuations are quite different. They're they're roughly half of what they are in the United States. We're very impressed at how quickly China is moving here. I think the Deepseek moment gave us an opportunity to understand that China is very focused on the open source software movement.
We forced them into that.
US did because our company stopped selling into China out of fear of IP theft. So they've gone the open source route and are moving very quickly.
I think competition is a good thing.
It's a good thing for the United States, it's a good thing for China. I also think what's good about China recently is it is focused now on the idea that maybe commoditization has gone too far, especially in the
electric vehicle space, so called involution. They are thinking that means whatever that means, so they're thinking that, and it is true it is expensive to develop these large language models, even though they say it's not a lot of pre training that takes place before you get a deep seek And if you're not profitable as a company, you're you're going to have a lot of trouble competing in that space. So I think even that is changing, which is interesting.
When does AI become profitable? When can I assume a margin on AI? And I'm talking about the large language model companies here, huge amount of investment going in at the moment, Kathy and everybody scratching their head wondering does all of it deliver? Does all of it produce a rate of return? Are we going to have to see some sort of Subbuterian sort of clearing of the clearing of the market at some point? What does that look like? What is your sense of kind of where we are at the moment.
I think that the number of companies competing, truly competing in the large language model space has shrunk.
These aquihires that.
Open AI and meta that's all about you know, other companies not making it so.
That the prices is already solved.
The process has.
Started, but do you think is going to win?
Well, I think the.
Big four right now are Open, Ai, Anthropic, XAI, and Gemini those four, and we don't know if this is going to be a four horse race or a two horse race. Let's see over time how they leapfrog one another, and they are doing that regularly.
It's very interesting.
But you ask about profitability companies that are not hiring people, the number of new job openings is falling. They are already enjoying huge productivity increases. That's why margins have been sustained even with the tariff hit recently. In fact, tariff's being put in place. The counter to that is, okay, we have to cut costs.
And that has been and.
They're willing to pay twenty dollars a month, some are willing to pay two hundred dollars a month, and those who are replacing PhDs, they're willing to pay two thousand dollars a month or more.
And so as long.
As these companies get that signaling that companies are willing to pay, they will continue to invest in this race.
Kathy, you say competition is a good thing. We've talked about the landscape. Let's talk about you. So there's a lot more tech, innovation, robotics, ETFs out there.
Now, how do you plan to compete? It's a great question, Lizzie. I think our differentiation is our research. We have what I believe is the first sharing economy company in the asset management space. When it comes to research, we give our research away. We have given our Tesla model away
for example, approach, yes, the open source. From that point of view, I think we have a very loud voice out there when it comes to innovation, and I think some of the calls we've made start in twenty fifteen with bitcoin and at the same time roughly Tesla, Pallenteer, Coinbase, Nvidia in the earliest days, we were there when most people thought it was a PC gaming chip company. So I think we've got a loud voice. You're asking about conversion because we have these other companies out there which
with huge distribution. Well thanks to Bloomberg, you know, we are able to share with you our research, and it's research that others aren't doing in quite the same way.
But when you look at the numbers arcs of about forty percent this year, flows are absolutely flat. What can you do about that? If great performance just isn't drawing people in.
Well.
What's interesting about that is most active managers are outflowing today, So the fact that we're flat is very interesting. And what's more interesting to us and very gratifying having entered UK and Europe, is that we are about to cross one billion dollars here in Europe and the UK, which in two years time we acquired rise in two years ago, is very significant.
I think.
I think here in Europe a quarter of our reader base, even before we launched was in Europe and the question was when are you coming to Europe. So we are getting the flows here in the UK and Europe, and we're really excited about the momentum behind those flows.
Kathy, I want to get your take on a deal that was preliminarily announced on Friday between the United States and China when it comes to TikTok, and I think you're a unique person to have this conversation with given your early exposure to Chinese tech stocks. TikTok has now been We're still waiting for all the details, but we understand is being given seven board seats to Americans. There's
a question of a licensing agreement. There's a question of some of the holders, including the Murdos or Larry Ellison, among others. What kind of precedent does that set for you as someone who is exposed to Chinese tech. Is this the new norm or is this an idiosyncratic story.
I think this is idiosyncratic. I think during our election President Trump promised that he would be open minded to keeping TikTok us. It's so important to the young people and many more people in the United States. So I do think it's a one off, special case. I also think it's a part of a broader negotiation with China. I think if anyone can re enact a Nixon in China moment, it is President Trump. He has been toughest on China. Everyone trusts that he will strike a good deal.
In everyone in the US trust he will strike a good deal with China, and I think we're probably going to get more better than expected news longer term. You'll hear a lot of saber rattling in the meantime, but this is one indication of that.
If TikTok a good investment, if the US has more hold over it, and counter to that is byedance, a good investment. If this is a deal that's being created.
You know, the one question we always have when there is a breakup like that is does a company lose some of the network effect in some way? Now they were already supposed to be separate China and the US.
We'll see, We'll see.
TikTok has been an amazing company. Has taught us a lot. This is what I mean about Chinese competition. They taught our companies a lot. I will say. I will say that a company called Vine in the US was the precursor, and Twitter at the time bought it was not able to activate it in the way TikTok has.
TikTok ran away with that. You would you want a piece of it?
You know, we have to do a deeper dive when we get into the data room.
Kryptos down a little bit. Bitcoin's selling off this morning, like these kind of levels of you buya Rosilla.
Well, we've been increasing our exposure generally to the digital asset space. I think Bitcoin has been the leader of the back. The others are following. Ether has followed now Solona and hyper liquid is a new one, the new kid on the block. We think this is three revolutions in one a monetary revolution, a financial services revolution, and really,
in a much broader sense, a digital property rights. Immutable property rights online never happened before, only possible because of blockchain technology.
Okay, down by a round, cryptozed down big coin is that around two? Said this morning Kathy grac very much. Indeed, Kathy Wood, founder and CEO of ARC invest