Amazon Exclusive, Uber Demand, Putting Trust in Ark

conversation with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. His thoughts about the economy, unions, and regulation, plus how his relationship with Jeff Bezos has evolved since he got the top job, and is Uber recession resistant to Eodara Kasra Sha he seems to think, so what he's planning to do to keep it that way if the economy gets any worse and our invests Cathy Wood defending her flagship et S week performance, why

she says investors to just trust him now. I did sit down for an exclusive and wide ranging interview with Amazon CEO Andy Jase. We spoke about everything from the economy to unions to the role of Jeff Bezos at the company today. But first I asked about Dave Clark, who spent more than two decades climbing the ranks at Amazon to become its consumer chief. He resigned abruptly last week and just announced he's joining the logistics software startup

flex Port. Here's what Jesse had to say about his departure. Different people want to do different jobs with different responsibilities at different times, and it's incredibly personal. And I think Dave wanted a different gig at this point, and I don't begrudge him at all. I mean, Dave saided so much to Amazon or the last twenty three years, and particularly over the last two and a half years, which have been among the most crazy in the history of Amazon.

And I think that if you want to build a business that lasts a hundred plus years and that lasts all of us, you have to get used to these sort of transitions and make sure that you're you know, you're doing the right succession planning and you've got the right talent to to keep building the business. And you know, we've done that historically and I expect we'll do it again. Um Elon Musk just came out saying he has a super bad feeling about the economy, Tesla laying off ten

percent of his staff. Jamie Diamond says he's preparing for an economic hurricane. The World Bank just slashed its forecast for global growth. How do you feel about the economic climate. Well, I wasn't planning on giving any guidance today, please, but super bad or super super bad? I think, Uh, there's some things that it relates to Amazon that are useful to remember, you know. I think the first pieces, remember the scent of the of the worldwide retail market, segment

share is offline. And if you believe that that equation is going to flip at some point, which we do, I think it will who will flip over a long period of time. But if you believe that the companies that have great customer experiences like we do, I think are gonna are gonna do all right. And you know, and that and great customer experiences mean you have really broad selection, low prices, and very fast delivery that's reliable

to customers. You know. I also think that if you look at different down turns um you know, should we have one at some point and we've been through a few obviously in the twenty five years that I've been at Amazon. Customers change their habits, you know, they tend to be pickier about what they buy and when they buy and who they buy from, and they often pick the partners and the companies that they trust, you know, and they have great customer experiences like the dimensions I

mentioned earlier. UM And so you know, I also think there's you know, those two reasons, those two factors give me some optism that even if we have a downturn, that we have the potential to still grow. I would say that regardless though, we have so many things that we believe we can do better for customers. We have a roadmap that's you know, probably three to five years long,

and we're going to continue to invent. We're going to continue to be insurgent, and we have a lot of work to do to get to where we think we ultimately can get for customers. Everyone's very curious about Jeff's role these days. What kind of executive chair he really is. He said when he left that he'd focus his attention and energies on initiatives that he really cares about as at Amazon. But from the outside, it looks like he's really focusing on philanthropy, he's focusing on space. What kind

of an executive chairman is he? Well, he you know, Jeff is always going to be involved and um he has you know, I'm I feel very lucky to have been in Amazon for twenty five years. I feel very lucky to have worked directly for Jeff for twenty of them. And we have a really close relationship and have for a long time, and I think we share a lot of the same value is about customers and um, how important is to optimize for customers and how high standards

they need to be. Um, you know, given how easy it is for people to switch, and the importance of invention and speed, and so I know, I just feel very lucky to have had the chance to work so closely with him. We still talk all the time. It's it's very useful for me to be able to seek his counsel. He did the job for so long and

and he's always made himself available. So is your relation I mean, he was your only boss for twenty five years, right, is your relationship fundamentally different than it was when you were the head of of course, you know, every every single job you have, the relationships different. You know. Remember the first couple of years I worked for Jeff, I worked is what we call his shadow then, which really

like a chief of staff. And that was different than when I was starting AWS, which was different from when we got AWS going, and it was, you know, a business that was starting to do well. And and it's different when I'm in the CEO role. But you know, the constant has always been that we have a great relate ship, and we collaborate really well, and I think that we listen to one another. And um again, for me to have the ability to bounce different things off

from and seek his council is very valuable. And he's still focused on Amazon. He still has focused on Amazon. Yea. Um. Amazon is poised to become the biggest private sector employer in the world, second only right now Walmart is in that spot, but Amazon will probably soon surpass it. First vote to unionize at an Amazon warehouse, I know you've

been spending a lot of time at warehouses. When you look at someone like Chris Small's who I think some people look at as this modern day hero who got fired pulled off this union vote, what's your message to someone like him, Your message to the folks who think maybe we should join a union. Well, I know, I think that the first thing to be clear about is that employees get to make that choice whether they want to have a union or not. They always have had

that choice and it continues to be their choice. And you know, we happen to think they're better off without a union or a number of reasons, including the fact that you know, it's it's much harder when you have a union to have a direct relationship with your manager and to get things done quickly. So if you see something on the line that you think could be better for your your team or you or you or customers, you can't just go to your manager and say let's

change this. You know, there's a whole process in bureaucracy that you have to go through to be able to do that. You know, and and we get you know, when there's a union, we're going to get the feedback filtered by what the union decides is worth bringing up. And we'd much rather hear from every employee whatever is on their mind. And so, you know, I think if you want to continue to have the structure that we've had for all this time, you have to have really

competitive benefits. And then I think if you look at Amazon's they're very unusual in this space. We champion the fifteen dollar minimum wage, several years ago. The starting salaries now over eighteen dollars an hour, which you know is more than double the federal minimum wage. You get full health insurance in four oh one k and twenty weeks up to twenty weeks of parental leave. And if you want to get a college education, you haven't had one.

We have a career choice program that's our fulfillment Center associates to be able to do so. That is a very unusual and compelling set of benefits, and those were all accomplished without a union. So, you know, I think that we realized that we you know, we have to continue to work on the relationship with our our employees, and we need to continue to provide the right benefits, and you know, we need to continue to work on safety,

and that's our intention. My exclusive interview there with Amazon CEO Andy Jasse, you can catch the full interview at Bloomberg dot com. We're gonna have much more from the Bloomberg Tech Summit coming up. Jet fuel price hikes, flight cancelations, what does it all mean for summer travel? Will exped CEO Peter Kern has traveled here. He will join me next. This is Bloomberg welcome, Welcome back to the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco, where we are live from the

City Club. Summer is here, But well all of your travel plans come off without a hitch. I'm joined out by Expedia CEO Peter Kerrent, who can help us answer that question. Thank you for flying on down here to join us today from Seattle. So, look, there were a ton of flight cancelations over Memorial Day weekend, jet fuel prices, pilot shortages, hotels struggling to get enough staff. How is all of this going to affect our summer travel plans

because we've been dying to travel. Yeah, well, clearly everyone's going to travel somehow. I think there will be disruptions. I mean, we're seeing in Europe, we're seeing in the US. Obviously, the shortages of staff create a problem, and we'd love to see more planes in the air. We'd love to see hotels open to full capacity. But in the meantime, I think people are finding options wherever they go, sometimes

vacation rentals, sometimes hotels. Uh, they're finding flights domestically if they can't find them internationally, and uh, you know, and we're seeing just about everything filling up. So I think it's going to be a busy time either way. But there will always be issues when you're traveling. Well, Delta just cut capacity for example, for the foreseeable future. How long does this go on for? Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, with the talk that we see on your shows and all the shows about the you know, potential recession, the inflation issues, what the Fed is doing, I think it's obviously going to make some companies be more conservative about letting the rope out and getting more aggressive. You know, we were expecting increases in capacity in late summer for international travel. We'll see what happens there. So you know, we're hopeful. We we'd like to see the airlines expand

we'd like to see hotels again open to capacity. But you know, I think a lot of CEOs I talked to will probably watch and wait, and we'll tend on the careful side, which will continue to constrain supply keep prices up, which is not great for the consumer. But you've all seen the prices up um and that looks like it's going to sustain itself for a while. So if Elon Musk has a super bad feeling about the economy. What is Peter Kerrent think, Well, I'm no elon Musk

but uh and I definitely don't tweet about anything. But I would say, you know, from what we can see of the of the US market and the Western markets where you know, there's still markets where people can't travel in a pack and that's still going on, but there's tons of pent up demand. We've seen people wanting to rebound and overspend into travel. They were buying lots of stuff you had Andy on today, you know, they were

buying a lot of stuff through COVID. They underspent travel and they saved a lot of money and we're seeing that rebound and that savings probably come into spending on travel. So that looks pretty robust for us when that runs out of gas and what you know, the how the economy lands, who knows. But as we say at our company that you know, we're in a multi trillion dollar market, we're tiny fraction of it, still as big as we are, so we got plenty of room to continue to grow

regardless of the company. You and I last spoke around earnings about a month ago, and you said, well, maybe we'll see some rerouting from Paris to San Diego. How much of that is happening, You know, we haven't seen it. Again. You go to Paris, all the luxury hotails are completely sold out for the summer um. So we're not seeing a lot of rewriting down. Again, I think people have been planning for this big summer and they're you know,

they're all booked way ahead and everything's booked up. I think as that rolls off, we don't know, but we're not seeing a lot of rewriting down to people looking for cheaper alternative. But could this potentially be delayed to the fall or holiday travel? And yeah, again no signs yet. There's no like magic date out in November where everything falls off a cliff. We're not seeing it in terms of booking ahead. But you know, we're not making any

predictions either. Obviously there's a lot of noise in the market. There's gas prices and home prices, and we're mindful of that. But again that's where I think we'll see maybe adjustments to the demand and perhaps a d R start to come down, you know, prices on air and and uh and hotels, etcetera. But um, so far, there's no sign of easing on price, and there's no real sign that

demand is shrinking. Well, speaking of pricing, you just added some new technology that enables customers to track prices to figure out when the best time is to fly. This is something that Google has been offering for a while. Hopper, you can get it there as well. You know, why, why should folks choose expedient? And in some cases, are you even discouraging people from from buying now if they no? No, what we're really trying to do is give people confidence.

One of the biggest issues that consumers face when picking airline tickets is fear that they're picking the wrong thing at the wrong time. They're going to buy it too early and pay too much, or too late and pay too much. So we're trying to give them predictions. So because we have a lot of data, so we can show you what might happen to the price, and we're trying to give you tracking so if you if you're not ready to purchase, you don't feel like, oh my god,

I have to make a decision. You can wait and track it and when you feel like it's the right time, you can do it. So what we're doing is really more than just tracking a single fight and a single price. We're tracking a whole route system across all their lines and saying, Okay, if you want to NonStop from San Francisco to New York and you check the price and you're not ready to buy, you can watch it and maybe in a week it moves down or up you'll

make a choice. So airlines see it as an opportunity for us to give customers confidence to book, and that's what they want. So what does this all mean for Expedia's business? Obviously we've talked about the share price. Um, there's it's not just Expedia. What the shares are down. And you've got this uncertainty around the travel season coming up ahead, you know what's your Yeah, we don't think

about it in short term. We think about in the long term, and we're not spending a lot of time, and we're obviously thinking about a potential recession, but we're not we're not planning for it or or valuing our business that way. We're doing the work to really upgrade the technology. We've talked about it a lot. We've changed,

we're changing the whole stack. We're really innovating around customer experience, like flight tracking and other tools to shop more confidently, discover better products, find the right fit and match for you, which we don't think has really been in the travel sector for decades. So we're focused on that work and you think that's gonna unleash a ton of business for our supply partners, and focused on how that will help

our B two B business. So there's a lot of opportunity and a lot to work on, and we're not worried about the rest. What are your summer travel plans? Any plans to live on v r b O Verbo excuse me? Planning to send big part of July working in London with our teams there and staying in the Verbo. So that's that's my summer so far. All right, Well, thank you for making the trip. Take a trip. I've got some plans which I will not share television Peter Current,

CEO of Expedia, thank you. Good to have you here in person. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology Live from our big tech summit in San Francisco. In the world of E t F, there are few as influential as Kathy would However, our investment management is suffering a steeper drop in assets than almost any other u s E t F this year, and of course Tesla a big one

of their bets. She spoke exchools we with our very own ad Ludlow about why if you look at our performance, our flagships performance from the low and COVID to the peak in February twenty one, that was increase Innovation solves problems. We had a lot of problems through the coronavirus. Innovation solves problems. We were rewarded accordingly since then peak to trough. When we hit our trough, thank goodness, we're pasted it down.

Why inflation and interest rates? So there is this and it's really interesting to be here um Walmart territory because I think we're learning a lot from the retailers now and we're talking about what we learned about infet yes uh so uh. The fear of rising interest rates uh and inflation out of control has grouped the market and of course, and that's the equity market. If you look at the fixed income market, it does not agree with this. The three year, I mean the ten year treasury bond.

Deald is three that that instrument should be one of the most responsive to inflation fears. Right, so three which suggests GDP growth three to four percent during the next ten years. So it's not being corroborated by the fixed income markets. And I don't think, I don't think that we are in a period where we can't extricate ourselves from this. In fact, the inventory stories are a very good example of why, of why inflation has become a problem.

You know, the scrambling to bring more and more inventory to satisfy demand, stay at home demand went into overdrive. And I believe the narrative in the last year inflation gave purchasing managers this idea that, Okay, what's the worst that could happen if I build inventories. The worst that could happen is that I'm able to deliver inventory profits sell at a higher ice. Well, that's not going to happen.

That's not going to happen when we see I've never seen inventory um surges like this in my career, and I've been around for a long time. So UH at Walmart, at at Target, uh at at coal, so very broad based. Uh And so I think we're going to see a lot of discounting and this and what's beginning to happen now just at the margin, and we're seeing it because our strategy is now starting to outperform the rest of

the market. I've never been in a market where the market has gone to new highs and we are hitting loads. I've never been in a market so there's been and it hasn't been supported by the fixed income market. So we'll see what happened. Kathy Wood there with our at Ludlow's CEO of Park Investment Management at the UP Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas. Welcome back to a special edition of

Bloomberg Technology. I'm emily changing at the City Club of San Francisco for our Bloomberg Technology Smit, where You've had a host of special guests, including Uber CEO dar Causmashat, who spoke exclusively to my colleague Bradstone about the current economic climate and how it could impact Uber's business. Take a listen. We don't see any signal of a recession

coming now. What's different about us than most companies out there is that, just as you saw during the pandemic, a shift from spend on services to spend on retail, that shift is now going back to services and we are the definition of a service right moving around travels back, et cetera. So I do think that our service is benefiting from the shift back. Certainly the reopening helps our mobility business or mobility businesses growing at very very high rates,

highly profitable. The delivery business, delivery of everything at home, continues to be strong. Uh So at this point we don't see any signal whatsoever. We have gone through recessions in South America, Mexico and Brazil in the past, and what you see doing those recessions is that as a labor pool eases up, and certainly we don't see signs of that yet here or in in Europe. Uh. More

drivers come onto the platform. Uh And as more drivers come onto the platform, the platform continues to grow, service levels get better. So I think versus many other companies, we don't have large large asset base. Our cost base essentially adjusts. In stronger economy, cost base increases as earners and drivers earned much more money, and weaker economies, as you get more drivers into the marketplace, their earnings adjust as well. So I think we are relatively were session resistant.

If it happens, I certainly hope it doesn't happen right now. The signal on the street is things are really strong and the spend on services continues to be quite robot Okay, you said you'll treat hiring as a privilege and be delivered up about the pace, but you didn't mention potential layoffs. And I wonder because other companies and some of your competitors are having to consider it. How you feel about layoffs at uber um, we don't think they're necessary at all. Right.

The perspective at uber is that in Q one, for example, if you look at our girl spokings, they're up thirty nine percent on a constant currency basis. Uh. We are one of those companies. While our delivery business benefited from the pandemic, our mobility business is absolutely benefiting from the reopening. We talked about guidance of twenty eight and a half to twenty nine and a half billion and growth bookings in the next quarter, profitability increasing two forty million to

two hundred seventy million. So the business is growing at a healthy hace. However, with an uncertain environment out there, we should be more cautious. You know, there's much more uncertainty as you look forward six to twelve months. Uh. And my message to our employee basis, We're going to be careful. We feel really good about the business and

the trends, but let's not get carried away. And the environment is one that demands caution, and I do think that in a tougher environment, the scale players right, we're the largest player on a global basis. We're the only player that has the portfolio of go Get. We have a platform advantage in terms of our riders turning into eaters, our couriers turning into drivers, etcetera. We have structural advantages over the smaller players. You can catch the full interview

with Dura kauser shot. He's e of uber at Bloomberg dot com. Now turning to the gaming world and the so called metaverse and a Twitter poll conducted at our summit, we asked what will the metaverse have the most drastic impact on? The overwhelming majority said gaming Joining me now and hand. She's the CEO and chairwoman of Super League Gaming. Good to see you here in person, Thank you for coming. Nice. So using something interesting on stage, which is that you

don't like to use the term metaverse. Why is that there's a little backlash right now because a lot of people are wondering about this bigger metaverse play that we're really probably five to ten years away from. But metaverse games are open world platform games as we call them, have been around for over a decade. Games like Minecraft games where they give you a set of tools and you make the game yourself and you invite friends in and so it has creation, collaboration, and most of all,

it's social. It's really a digital cul de sac. And so we focus a lot on how we bring brands into metaverse experiences to reach those gen zum players. And I do think the good news is is gaming is than the trojan horse for the greater metaverse because it's existed for some time and it's a very successful platform, but you don't see it until five to ten years out. I think the big meta is a ways off. It's

kind of like the Internet right, new wild terrain. And the difference about the metaverse though, for gaming is that it's so social, it's so community based, um. And so what's exciting in some ways is the Internet failed us

in many ways, right, especially the ad model for the Internet. UM. It became a nuisance, it became disruptive, It didn't fully deliver because it interrupted the user's experience and what we focus on a super league is ways to bring brands in that's really engaging and immersive and allows brands to reach this very elusive audience, but meet them right where they are in games and enhance those experiences for them. The big meta. I like that, and I start using

the big meta. Okay, so in the big meta, how how much is our real world self separate from our digital self? Like, are we going to lose track of where we are who we are? It's a really good question. I mean, on one hand, you can always worry about some of the security concerns and the blurring of those lines. But when I think about the younger generation and we talked to them, and we talked to their parents, I

actually feel that there's more po positives and negatives. First of all, gen Z does not see a difference between their digital and physical life. It's just their life. And they do want their their digital selves and their physical selves to align to the same values and interest And you know, this is the way I look at it. I talked about a little bit earlier in the summit. Today.

You know, a five year old picks their Minecraft I D and the world hasn't yet boxed them in or made any decisions about who they're going to be one day, So their aspirational self comes through, and maybe that means that they feel more limitless in their physical life as well. So I think there's just as many positives to establishing your digital self. Um, instead of it being an act as as older generations might do, it's more of a

genuine interest in what they want to be. Now. Cheryl Sandberg, longtime CEO of Meta, just resigned this week and she's leaving in the fall, and you know she would have had to evolve this very long standing business bottel for the metaverse? Is advertising the business model of the future in the metaverse? And will it really translate? Well, you know, I think it's just as much the digital to physical crossover.

Right Like when you were interviewing you know, Andy Chassis earlier today and he talked about of retail still happening physically. Imagine if a brand can get to a young person in the metaverse, engage with them either because they're an existing customer or because they're a new customer, and then the ways you can create crossover. So I think it's

actually more than anything an acquisition and retention channel. So are you saying maybe I would make fewer bad online purchases because in the metaverse, maybe I get to try stuff on. Certainly, there will certainly be a game for that where you can try on all of your fashion and have your friends react right and get real time feedback.

But you know, think about things like if you have a gaming avatar, and right now you buy for that avatar, say a pair of Nike shoes or a Gucci cape, your propensity now to want to bring that brand into your physical life is much higher. And so it's actually a very affordable, accessible way for brands to get to know a new batch of cons. What company or kinds of companies are going to own the metaverse? Oh gosh. I mean, it'll be very interesting to see in the

role of crypto throughout all of it, and blockchain as well. Um, I think right now it's going to continue to be gaming lead, and so look for those big players like the Microsoft Tones, Minecraft, Roadblocks, Epic who is now opening up their Unreal engine as well inside Fortnite. Look for gaming to continue to lead. And I think what I'm excited about is the next place where gaming will lead. And I think that's around education and being a new entry point for kids to learn about STEM. All right

and hand Super League Gaming CEO. Good to see you here, any person. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you. Okay, coming up, rethinking the pivot to crypto. What coin bases hiring freeze means for workers that flock to digital assets? That is next. This is Bloomberg. Welcome back to Bloomber Technology Live from our flagship technology summit. As crypto, we're talking krypto now became more of a hot commodity. Workers rushed to careers

in digital assets. But with coin based announcing a hiring freeze and crypto markets boiling, some young employees are rethinking that pivot. Joining us now, Michelle By, a partner at Sequoia Capital. Michelle, get to see you here in person, Yes, thank you for having me. Okay, So let's talk about what's happening in crypto coin bases hiring phrase. It certainly doesn't look good what's happening in the industry right now? Yes, So the thing to remember at crypto is there always

ups and downs. Is a very volatile sector, especially before we get a better regulatory framework in place. But Sequoia has been investing for fifty years in a lot of market cycles and is no stranger to the cycles in crypto. So the thing to remember is, you know, founders in the space expect ups and downs, and every company is different. So I work very closely with f t X. Sequoia is a proud partner there, and they're not doing a hiring freeze. They are well capitalized and ready to take

advantage of this period. So there's a huge range in the way companies are reacting to the downturn and asset prices, and long term we are still very optimistic that the best companies will actually extend their advantage and come out even stronger. So would you say that in the case of coin based then there was a mistake in execution. They grew too fast. You know the big public company now yeah, I think less big than it was. Yes, many public company CEOs, you know Sequoia works and company

is seed through public. So many public company CEOs have had to deal with their stock price changing and a market that valued growth pivoting to one that valued profitabilities. So this is a change many people are going through. I think the important thing to remember those that cryptos very diverse and so there are a lot of companies very well positioned who are not struggling to make quite

an impact in the future. So and obviously Sequoia has a huge portfol Leo and you've got workers moving between companies all the time. Do you see employees rethinking, oh, should I go to a crypto company or maybe I should stay at Apple or Google for a little while longer. Yeah, we see actually quite a valuable market in the talent market for startups. So we think one positive of this period for the startups that play their cards right is that they'll actually be able to hire talent they probably

wouldn't have been able to before. And so in many ways, this loosening in the talent market could be very beneficial for those leading companies to you know, stack their staff and their teams with top talent from these companies. So we're pretty optimistic actually that those companies will be able to succeed, even if there's some near term shift happening. So if Sequoia could send that R I P. Good Times memo now like at this moment, what would the

headline be. I think we gathered our founders earlier this year to talk about how to deal with this downturn and how to plan for it, and the key message was adapting to indoor. So what we've learned through so many cycles is that you know, focusing on R and D and extending your product advantage is one of the

most important things you can do during this time. And so really capitalizing on this to put yourself ahead of your competitors while also potentially trimming in other areas depending on how you've been running your business, are the most important thing. And so we think the best companies can come out stronger, but they have to survive long enough to have that chance. So where is Sequoia placing its crypto beets now? Where do you see the most opportunities

for growth? Very similar areas, So our conviction is very unrattled by this, you know, honestly, it's just really the

same on a tenure horizon. We're hoping that crypto can grow from the millions of users into the billions, and for that to happen, we're investing in a broad number of areas, from infrastructure to financial applications to internet applications that are based on blockchains, and so we're very excited, especially about the infrastructure and developer tools that we're seeing that will help more companies be able to build more resilient, safe,

and more secure applications. All right, so does it matter if bitcoin gets back to sixty in your view or you know, doesn't The price doesn't matter long term. We're not investing for the prices of the assets. We're investing behind the founders and the companies. So FT Experiences that we work with is a great example. They're building an exchange that we think could be a really amazing product for cryptodrivatives markets. And so whether the price goes up

or down, people are still trading. And that's a founder, you know, it's a perfect example of what we look for with an incredible founder, a great market opportunity, and so the price doesn't matter as much. It's really the long term business that we're excited about. Okay, Michelle buy a partner at Sequoia. Great to have you. Thank you for sharing your view of the future things so much.

Weymo is clearly a leader in the autonomous space. Uh. And this is actually a pretty deep partnership with Weymo where we now have we're going to have access to Billy of miles driven as it relates to their autonomous driver. Uber CEO dar Kaswa Shy. They're speaking at the Bloomberg Tech Summit about a new partnership with Weymo, and of course remember these two companies were bitter rivals. So how did it happen? I'm joined out by Weymo coat CEO to Key Drama Kondo t teacher. Great to have you

with us. I know you just ran from the stage, so thanks for Let's talk about how the partnership is gonna work. Yes, you know in the future, does this mean Weymo trucks on Uber's network. Yes, so we Wemo will partner with carriers and shippers and they will have trucks with the Wemo driver on them, our fit generation drivers what we're using right now on Timelore trucks, and then those trucks, shippers and carriers will have the opportunity to opt in to the Uber Freight network and you know,

paying the vision for us. These are trucks that are taking anything you can imagine criss crossing the country of the world, exactly long haul trucking, So massive long haul truck across say Tucson, Arizona to Houston or Dallas, to Houston, major major shipment of goods across the country. And the reason this is so important is we've reserved the capacity for billions of miles on this network because we believe as two companies that we can improve the efficiency of

how goods move. So Uber and Weymo long ago rivals that date all the way back to Travis Kline, the co founder of Uber and Anthony Lewandowski, co founder of Google Car, Like, how did you get past a really long and drawn out lawsuit? You know, I'm really happy to say that the way mo Via team and the Uber Freight team have focused on what we actually are here for right which is improving road safety, improving this

long haul trucking and logistics opportunity. And Dar and I have from the beginning had a really good sort of upfront direct relationship, which I appreciate. So let's talk about how far AMO has come. Because I rode in the Google Car in and just a couple of days ago, my colleague Tom Giles rode in the Weymo of today. How much has that experience changed in eleven years? This was this is yeah, that's today, Yeah, this is today.

So today we have the fifth generation Wemo driver, which is what you say on the all Electric I pace. Here in San Francisco, we have employees who are taking right only which means no human behind the wheel rides, and we have members of the San Francisco community taking also taking rides as trusted testers. In addition, we've announced that we are expanding to downtown Phoenix, where the same

vehicles there and our employees are taking rides. And we've also started having employees take rides to and from the Phoenix Airport, which is really exciting because it's the first time that any autonomous vehicle company is figuring out how to navigate UH and airport. So and I, well, I ask you this every time we talk, but I guess the real question is when can I in a major

city open an app and hail a way. So right now you can in the Phoenix metro area, right, and you're devalace in testing in San Francisco, But when does this become more available available? So I think you know, what we really focused on is what does it take to go from one city to now three g o s one platform to now across multiple platforms. And that's

what we've been able to do. One of the things we've learned in doing that is it's operating a service that's actually the learning curve, right, You've got to learn how to not just make sure the technology works and is see, but how do you delight the writers? What does that experience look like? And so one of the areas that we've found wonderfully delightful is when people are using right hailing and there's no driver in the car, no human driver in the car, the window driver only,

they immediately start casting their music. Right. Those kinds of features are what allow people to come back and feel like this is their third space. So the question you're asking is what's your roadmap? And I'm not telling you that, But what I am telling you is we're spending time

learning a lot. And in Phoenix, Phoenix metro area, our service has been up and going almost two years now, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and those writers continue to make a value part of their So what's going to differentiate a way mow from a self driving test left from a zooks from You know, there are a bunch of different companies Aurora now working

on self driving technology. Yeah, I think you'll have to see what those companies are really focused on that really important first step, which is getting to removing the driver. As we all remove the driver, and we've done that now a couple of years ago, then you figure out what your value proposition differentiation is going to be. I have no idea what there is it's going to be. I just know who ares? How about regulators? How much progress do you really think you're making on getting regulators

comfortable with the safety of this. So the safety is really the focus of the federal government, and so right now it's largely a permissive framework where companies have the opportunity to submit safety report. Um there hasn't been a

lot of detailed movement at the federal level. Of the state level, there has been and we you know, our teams work with all levels of government at the state level, as we're even seeing here in California, the states, both legislators and regulators are trying to figure out how best to advance this technology while doing so safely. How often do you get to ride? I love to ride. So when I go to Phoenix, every time any family member says they're going to be there, any friend, I try

to go and take a ride. And then of course now that it's right here in San Francisco, I do rides on Are you like taking notes and sending them back to the course of course? Yes, alright, alright, alright, So so let's say five years where five years in a lot of cities? How many okay, and a lot of cities. And also, you know we have right yelling. We also have the say trucks, so our trucks will be on roads moving goods safely. Um. And then we have local delivery and so you know, your meals or

groceries or hopefully coming to your house. And is this going to go global? I mean definitely we're focused on is there a market that is more exciting than another? Internationally? There are a lot of really exciting har right, because the question is how does this skip? Right? Yeah, I think that's right, and we're really we're in the early

days of focusing on that right now. Scale, you know, and operating across three geos and two platforms is the beginning of learning what you have to do all the rails that have to be laid in order to do that. Two Kedramkana, co CEO of Wemo, Great to have you here. Thank you said, I need my ride. It's been eleven years. I'm coming to you for that, okay, and that doesn't

for a special addition of Bloomberg Technology. At the City Club in San Francisco, We've had some fascinating conversations, amazing guests, Amazon CEO Anti Jase Wars, Dara Kasrashahi, Michael Meeboch, the CEO of master Card. You can catch all of that at Bloomberg dot com. And we've got a great show lined up for you tomorrow. Arianna Hoffington will be with us and George Kurtz. This is Bloomberg