Amazon Gets in on AI and Ether Rises After Update

We're going to dive deep into the world of crypto as Ether tops two thousand U S dollars after its software update went off without a hitch. John wuerav Labs joints to discuss plus, how does a four day work week sound. We'll speak with Nobel Prize winning economist Christopher Sarides, who says AI it may increase productivities so much will shave a day off your weekly work calendar. At first, a big name and a big outperformer in the market is Amazon as well. You look at the gains the

stock has made. It took it a while to get going after they introduced two new large language models. We're going to talk a lot about this throughout the day on Bloomberg Television, but it's focused pretty firmly on cloud customers, a tool for generating text, but also a sort of platform to foster an ecosystem of AI. That stock up eight tens of percent on a two day basis, but

really jumping higher caroline in this early trading of Thursday's session. Yeah, and the Titan announcement all came within a focus from Amazon CEO Andy Jase on or where they're going to be investing. It's his second annual letter to shareholders, and he read a pledge to keep putting money into big, long term mets despite those cost cuts and an uncertain economy. He's moving ahead with a global expansion, looking at efforts to become a bigger player on groceries and healthcare and

of course as a generative AI part. Let's talk all of that with Bloomberg's Spencer Soap, and let's go to the old school Amazon and they might say that AI is an old school for them too, but let's talk about groceries. Let's talk about e commerce. I mean, where are they looking to expand there on groceries in e commerce? Just because there's such huge consumer spending categories, and it's

not really new. You know, Amazon has been trying that for a while now, you know, groceries more than a decade, and then they had that the big Whole Foods acquisition several years ago, which has kind of fallen flat. They've got this new iteration of a supermarket. They've tried, they tried Amazon Go. They've had a lot of false starts on it, but it's still just such a huge spending category.

And then it doves tails nicely with healthcare, particularly pharmacy, and Amazon is trying a lot of the same old tricks that other big retailers try, like you know, cheap, cheap prescription drugs. You know, everybody and his brother does that, so it's it's not really differentiating, but they remain they remain important targets for Amazon just as a way to grow revenue because there's so much money spent in those in those areas spend. So the commentary around AWS is

really interesting. You know, this has been the cash cow for Amazon, and let yeah, Jasse points out the short term headwinds the challenges facing AWS, and then gave us this kind of long time horizon of how well it can do even the next decade. Yeah, and he was he was definitely trying to you know, fleck back to history where Amazon faced difficult economic conditions and prevailed, you know, did made the hard decisions, made tough choices, but still came out at the end of the at the end

of the tunnel. Anythink, trying to emphasize that Amazon is still a strong company, that that can emerge through this uh, through it through a downturn, and come out stronger on the other end. And it's really the one area where he can kind of gin up some some excitement and enthusiasm. You know, that's really what he had to do with this letter. The stocks down you know, about half nearly

nearly half from its pandemic highs. You know that that rips you know, not just investors, but also employees who get a lot of their compensation by the by the stock value. Then also all of the cuts of deteriorated morale. So he's got to you know, it's a heavy lift for him, but he's got to do something to try to try to energize this company right now. And at the end of the letter he tries to do just that.

With the focus on artificial intelligence, trying to remind us that for decades they've been looking at machine learning, they're looking at chip investment there, but just talk to us about the large language models that are being offered and what makes it different because it's not a chatbot. Yeah, and I think what Amazon is really trying to say is listen. You know, if you look at the history in the marketplace model, they just kind of want to

be in the middle of it. Amazon wants to position itself as a as a as a marketplace where you go to access these tools, and as long as it's got people coming for those tools, it's going to get the best tools that people want exposure to. So I think it's really looking looking to make itself, uh, you know, a marketplace for ideas and a can do it for these ideas to be utilized. Right Bloomberg Spencer, Soapa or Addie Seattle, thank you and stay with us on Bloomberg Television.

We have a conversation later today with AWS CEO Adams Alpski that you don't want to miss at two pm East and eleven am Pacific. I've been speaking carow to some AWS custom this morning. We certainly have some interesting AI related questions to put to him. And another key story that we're following SoftBank moving to sell more of

its stake in Chinese Internet. John Ali Baba, I'm winding with that initial bed that spurred Massochi's son to really take ambitions to invest billions of dollars into other startups, trying out some pieces safe more is isabel Lee and why sell out and in what way are they setting out? So this is really interesting. So SoftBank is looking to sell a majority of its steake to China to really trim to Availibaba, to trim it stake in China and

to raise fund. So this is quite a move because from holding a majority stake at one point around thirty four percent, they're whittling it down to four percent three point ninety eight to be exact. So this year they're looking to sell seven billion worth of shares. That's following

last year where they sold around twenty nine billion. And the important thing to note here is that these are prepaid forward contracts, which means that they could still buy back the shares, but from the previous deals they just didn't hold on to those and just sold them. And this all comes at a time that the Vision Fund bet the bets are startups to SoftBank, I just haven't fed that overall business. Well, it's why the market's interpretation

of this is so interesting. You know, it says something about China and investors exposure to China, but it also says quite a lot about soft Bank, right about what do we take away from this, about how soft Banks having to maneuver given the losses that it suffered from its startup bets. So this is really quite a pivotal

moment because you're right, there's so many things at play here. First, for SoftBank, they lost a lot of money when they were investing a lot of money in Vision Fund, and as we know, a lot of those startups are now

fledgend companies. And SoftBank said that they want to exercise regular they want excess financial prudence, they want to just cut back on risks, and they also want to raise money for the chip making design firm they're looking to take a public called arm But at the same time, this comes at a time when Ali Baba two hundred billion giant has broken down into six units, six baby babas as some people have called it. But we don't know how that's going to play out, because clearly there

will be favorites. For instance, how bout that's a pow joel of Ali Baba, Likely that will do well, but what about the others. So there's so many factors that play here. China is now looking to really be more friendly to entrepreneurs, but then who still knows. I mean, this comes after several years of intense crackdown on Chinese tech giants. Ali Baba included all Right bloombergs Isabel Lee on the China Tech Beat. Thank you. Let's talk crypto.

Let's talk ef right now at top two thousand dollars for the first time since August, after a widely anticipated software upgrade to what is the most commercially important blockchain went pretty according to plan and worries those initial rapid outflows, it seemed to be proved unfounded to see yup more than five percent as we speak. John Woo, president of Ava Labs building smart contracts platform Avalanche, is with us. Always great to have you in the house. It's nice

to see you, Carol. Let's talk about what this upgrade means. I know that there's interoperability with Ethan, your platform that you're building. Is this going to help yet further just build back a little bit of confidence in the space a little yes. I mean it's a fantastic thing in the sense that going from proof for work to proof for stake basically decreases the energy requirement to run ethereum.

The short term relief is basically it went without a technical glitch and there was not as much selling of eth out of this. So that's why ethereum is breaking through two thousand and the whole space is actually frankly doing decent, but it's important to understand why it's sing

so well and who's buying it and that kind of thing. Yeah, because there is This is where we get the distinction between Bitcoin, which generally is just an asset and meant to be a store of value, then got e which the hope is around smart contracts, That hope is around adoption. But is that going to become an obvious use case right here, right now because we don't wait for the killer DAP And it does, and that is a use case for people in the crypto ecosystem in order to

get yield. Now they can stake their ethereum, So that's very positive for in etherium, in crypto asset people. In fact, a lot of this rally we've seen in the last year to data to speak, it's been a better asset class than any other asset class, even tech stocks. Is because it's been driven by on chain people, crypto natives,

and also international people. It's not so much that new money or the institutional adoption interesting and naturally it's all about well teasing out potentially future international and institutional adoption at the moment end where well, there's an NFT week going on here in New York and of a plenty of people focusing on the upgrade. But were you doing some sort of watch party out there at SF No,

no watch party for me. For context, John twenty four hours ago, Kate Lawrence of bloc Celerat was on, We're talking about how for the industry, right amid all of the volatility in the pricing of certain tokens, people still watch the technological for the technology grow updates. My question is why why is it such a key moment for an industry to track the underlying technology that powers those platforms.

So earlier I just said that the rally has been drawn by native crypto people and in my opinion for this asset class that continue to grow in price, at least, you really really need institutional buyers to come into the space. And for real institutional buyers to come into the space, you need real utility, real world use cases, and you're seeing that. You know, one of the big things for NFT NYC this time around versus last year is that

although there are fewer people here, there's quality brands. A lot of brands are coming to see how the NFT construct can help them with their loyalty plans and loyalty programs and also increase engagement. So you're seeing some real use cases and discussion of building real things for big brands. You know, John, when last you were on with us is the afternoon the SVB collapsed, and you were going to come on and talk about what we're talking about

right now, and we got sidetracked. In of all the volatility in recent weeks in markets, the industry's access to funding, what are you seeing in New York City among that NFT conversation is that a marketplace that's back on track and that people are kind of optimistic about investing in. So you're not seeing the OTC markets or the on ramps like FIAT like through coin Base into the crypto

ecosystem really picking up. Yet they are still hesitant, but the excitement inside the ecosystem of crypto has been reinvigorated. Most of this price rally, people who don't realize happened right after SVB. It was a reminder to the crypto native people as to why they got into this space originally, the mistrust they have for large institutions. You know, that's why bigcoin became very popular after two thousand and eight. And because of that reminder, I think it reinvigorated the

crypto native community. We saw a lot of uptick in Bitcoin and if maybe not so much the old coins job, but talk to us about your own initiatives right now, because you say there's utility, there's purpose. Big brands, well, you've got some key financial players coming on to try and understand how they can use blockchain technology, right name

some of the people and what you're really building. So from what I'm seeing, especially in the US asset managers, they want to be involved in the space, but they're hesitant. They're not sure of the regulatory framework, and they need to learn the technology better. So this is why we announced yesterday a project called Spruce, which is a public blockchain permission only by the ky c k y b AML functionality. We're doing this in part with Wellington, trow

Price and whis Entry. What they're going to experience is what the ability to see the power of execution and settlement in real time, the cost savings of putting this in this system together, and it's a safe place because it's a token valueless transfer. So it's a test net, but they will be able to experience an institutional defy component. No one's been able to do this so far, and this is gonna be the first time they can really

explore defy. John, I get what the Spruce test net offers to both the buy and sell side in terms of access. You're a businessman, I'm actually quite curious about how you make money off this model. What is the business that you've created here? Well, first we have to create adoption, and this is the first step towards adopting this. So All the Labs is a software technology company. At some point we will provide services no different from AWS

for things in the cloud. Instead of storage and compute power. Services will be providing different features and tools for developers and for places like Wellington or Tiro or Wisdom Tree to create their own applications, for them to create their own them or their marketplace, for them to create their own lending barring DAP. And right now we've gotten partners in the applications and we've gotten the traditional institution to try things out and see what DeFi is all about. John,

we have a lab's good to catch up. Thank you for coming back on the show. Now coming up. In an effort to reduce its reliance on China, Apple is putting India in the spotlight and tripling production in what's now considered the world's fastest growing smartphone market. Caroline sick with India because we're also watching shows of emphasis. Sales outlook look pretty disappointing. End that really under schools just how clients are tightening it budgets. They're trying to weather

this economic slowdown. Is a sea off by ten percent in the last couple of days. From New York and from San Francisco, this is ret It's time now for talking tech trucking startup Trailler. Well, it's winding down its business in Pakistan and stopped taking new orders last month. It's according to sources, now says the Egypt based platform that connects hippers to carriers. I was looking to exit

an economy that's going through one of its biggest crises. Meanwhile, US purchases from machine of machines from Taiwan to make computer chips they rose to a record hive seventy one million in March. That says the Biden ministration here is working to reinvigorate the domestic chip industry. Taiwan saw its USX sports wherese one the forty two percent in the month in March from a year earlier. It's all according

to data from the Ministry of Finance. An Apple assembled more than seven billion dollars worth of iPhones in India last fischool year, tripling the production there after accelerating a move beyond China. Now the iphonemaker now makes almost seven percent of its phones in India, according to sources and ed we're going to stick on that theme. Yeah, it's a really key piece of reporting in an ongoing situation for Apple. That's bringing Anna Agran, a senior tech analyst

at Bloomberg Intelligence, so in shore. Apple is building more iPhones in India and exporting more iPhones in India. In your fundamental analysis, what's the net result for Apple financially. Yeah, so, you know, when you look at it, I think it's just more of a supply chain issue than financial because, frankly speaking, the best supply chain is in China. It's taken about twenty years to build that. So they build it anywhere outside it's going to be slightly more expensive

in the first few years. But frankly speaking, when we saw back in November when because of COVID the iPhone pro factory shut down, it did have an impact on them financially. That too, plus the ongoing geopolitical tensions between the US and China. You know, it is in the best interest of Apple and Apple shareholders that they diversify the supply chain outside of China to other regions, whether

it's Vietnam, India, Mexico, or almost everywhere. I would say, and what about the end user in India as well. It's not only about supply from there, it's the demand there that they want to satiate. You Yeah, I think this is one of one of the most fun things. You look at it. You know, if Apple's installed base in India is so small compared to the population, which means it is going to be a very big growth

market for them over the next decade. They're opening a store next you know, next week in India, and you know, we have looked at some numbers. So if they are about let's say, six hundred million smartphones in India, you know, Apple only plays in that ten percent of the market. I mean, they have a very small market share, not

even ten percent there. The market share is miniscal. Less than five percent of Apple's iPhone revenue comes from India based on artwork, and I think this is this is a big growth opportunity for them in the coming years, and largely because as the middle class in India you know, becomes richer and and and it's more affluent, they're able to afford a luxury product like Apple. You know, currently

that market is dominated by Android. We also reported that like local regulations require you know, components sourced and supply chain source within that nation. Apple seems to be kind of rethinking it's global strategy right now when it comes to India. How quick does that ramp in market opportunity come. It seems like this is a long term project, right Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it is going to be a long term project because you know, but I mean, as you can think about it.

If ninety percent of the iPhones are under let's say, you know, three hundred four hundred dollars, I shouldn't say iPhone, but of the smartphones are under three hundred dollars, Apple doesn't play in that market, so it's can't even tap

into it. But it's as that middle class becomes more raflu when they are richer, the per capita income goes up, and I think that's more of a five to ten year trend rather than something that will happen over the next couple of years and giving us the global perspective. We love it. Granna, thank you of Blomberg Intelligence. Let's talk about now we Work a bench just started by we Work and a private equity firm, Roan Group. Oh, accordingly,

it's defaulted on a loan for a San Francisco office tower. Now, the two hundred and forty million dollars loan was for a building in San Francisco's Financial District, which is owned by funds managed by the venture formed by we Work and Roan back in twenty nineteen. That was to buy an oversea with estate led. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Caroline Hide in New York and Imed Ludlow here in San Francisco. It's going to check on those markets. Caroline.

This is what your technology sector looks like in the equity space, and that's that one hundred continuing to push higher, up one point six percent. You've got the kind of softening of data both on the jobs and inflation front, which is kind of fueling the idea that actually, when you come to the FED in this rate hiking cycle,

we might be nearing the end. You can see out performance as well in the US listed shares of Chinese technology companies and bitcoin off session high as we were at a fifty week high on that bitcoin, but kind of pulled back a little bit near thirty thirty thousand,

five hundred dollars per token. A lot of movement in the single names in the stock market around AI, Amazon pushing higher, both based on the annual shareholder letter from CEO Andy Jats up three point five percent, but also the news around their large language models, which I know

you're going to get into. Other names gaining C three AI and some giving games back big Bear down seven percent, all of them kind of looking at how to use generative AI tools, but in their enterprise or cloudspace, which

is where Amazon is really focused. Carrect Yeah, Big Bear looking to potentially sell more stock in the future, supply wearing a lower But let's go back to where you're just hinting out the Amazon News because it's joining Microsoft, it's joining Google, it's joining everyone basically in the generative AI race. End announcing technology aimed at its cloud customers in particular, as well as marketplace for AI tools from

other companies. Now, the Amazon Web Services unit announced not one, but two of its own large language models, one designed to generate text and another that could help power web search personalization. But and it's big, but plans to release a chatbot as yet. But let's dig into this whole world of generative AI and in particular chat GPT. The revolution that basically seems to have opened, could it actually open for productivity to mean that you and I have

just a four day workweek. Let's ask Nobel Prize winning labor economists. Sir Christopher Pisorealis is with US recently said that the labor market could adapt quickly enough your work has been so thoughtful about automation, the impact of technology on the way in which we can be productive. Do you think we'd really get to a four day work week? I think so, yeah, I think it's feasible. I mean,

let me put it that way. If you see the skills or the componenses that companies are demanding now they're mostly demanding, it's basically down to data processing. Data is the big resource that companies have now, it's data processing. It's communication of that process. Seem to both subordinates and light managers. Now when you get it technology that chatter GPT or other language, well, you basically have the analysis of that day right in front of you ready, much

faster than you must can do it. Well, that's what we mean by higher productivity, and Professor, get the machinery to do it. Then obviously then we have spare time ourselves and we have your money because we are more productive. At the same time, Professor Pusaridis, we asked our audience if they share your optimism on the impact of generative AI and a four day work week. This is what they had to say. The results fifty two percent of respondents fifty three percent saying that a four day work

week is coming soon because of generative AI. Twenty nine percent of them said, not in our lifetime. What is the timeline that you see. Is this a decade out from being true? I would think so, I would place it at a decade. Yeah, I was thinking twenty thirty maybe, But these things are usually slower, And actually, if I were to recommend it, to advise someone about it, I would advise to be slower because it is going to

require some readjustments of the things we're doing. I mean, not least about families, schooling, education, you know, I mean, we might have full day week in the labor market, but you do have to take into account and what happens with schools, for example, do they also have a full day week? What happens with public services, what happens with the people who will work there? You know, it's it's it's it's a complicated union. It's feasible and if

there is will you're going to find a way. Well, you want your Nobel Prize from work on the impact of regulation on policy on the labor market. So is it regulation and policy that needs to sort of be

the car that leads a horse there? Yes, they keep problem with the combination of good regulation so it doesn't stifle the labor market, which is basically what I studied from my Noble winning work work which will call frictions and at the same time making sure that it allows enough flexibility to the people to show their individual individual talents in the labor market, you know, to sort of unleash that talent if you like, and do the things they are doing best, which my work I call matching

and the equality of matching. So essentially the way that the labor market will work in the best way is to improve the match between the worker and the capital equipment that that worker has, and I would include computers and software as the capital equipment that the worker has, and at the same time make sure that sufficiently well regulated that it doesn't lead to fraud to abuse of the technology. As I mentioned before, you know, these technologies

are very they're very difficult to monitor. Yeah, and they are open to abuse, and we need to work very hard to think how to avoid that. Circristopher to that point, I mean, you let enough field funded review of the effects of automation on jobs, and a lot of the time there is a pushback from individuals from unions, from a nervousness of what it means for all of us. We see it in school children at the moment. We see it in people coming through university, people terrified of

what generative AI really means for their skill set. How important is it to win hearts and minds and make sure that everyone feels that this actually builds on their skills, not detracts on them or put them out of work. Exactly, we need to train people, We need to give better information and show that it doesn't require that much upskilling to ensure that you can have a good job. Unfortunately, that comes from two different directions the way I see it.

One of them is that is that people have naturally conservative in if we had changed, you know, if they're setting their ways, we're okay, you know what's all these new technologies they are going to disrupt us. They're going to make us change. That's the way that unions, for example, especially in Europe, actually that's the way they look at it. They try. Now now we have to we have to educate them somehows when we say we have it is not really so much to get academics like myself, but

also the relevant government departments, employers, associations. But throughout modern history, technologies has changed our lives and has changed for the better. I mean, just think if we resisted electricity, for example, now where we will be. You know, it's we had so many you know, if we if we resisted, we will have all those appliances in our homes to that have made life so much easier. So that's one. That's

one direction that is coming. The other one is that a lot of work you read now and what you hear about new technologies, it's about how many jobs would be lost, exactly three hundred medium jobs. But they never talk about how many jobs are going to be created. Because Professor pissardes that this is the human tension in the story, Right, will my job be eliminated by artificial

intelligence tools? Are there specific sectors, specific areas of the technology industry where you think, yeah, generative AI is just it's just going to eliminate the need for a certain role. Oh, you can't think of plenty of those, you know. I mean, take legal assistance. What is a legal assistant? The job may have gone already. If it hasn't gone, an will

go already. You basically have a lawyer who needs an assistant to go through all previous court cases, through all those legal books, through all those arpheads to find all the information is relevant to your case. Now, just as up chatter GPT tell me about sagic case, what do we know? And you get your four pages with all the information that you're a legal assistant will have got working seven for several days. You know, there are jobs

that we've disappeared. But those those people, they are educated, they are highly people that can be more creative than our coad rooms going through pages and pages of script. So Christopher, Caroline and I have played with many of these generative AI tools. We've experimented using them for scripts in television news. I think both of us are relatively confident we won't be out of the job, at least in twenty twenty three. What other areas of the economy

is productivity unlocked? Forget about replacing jobs. How does this make money for global economy? Is really quick? Okay? Number one data processing. If we use these technologies to generate more data, then they're all businesses with benefit from knowing more about their customer. You know the famous KYC No, you're a customer, We can get better information, and if we have better information, we can target our market in a much better way, less time, more productive, more money.

And that's why I'm saying that we're going to have enough money that we can go on their fourth day week and have an extract on the weekend, which is which is wonderful at least what I'm saying. Yeah, it will be wonderful to have one next day. Wow, I think many people think it would be wonderful. London School of Economics Professor Nobel Prize winning economists, Sir Christopher Pissaridis,

thank you for your time. Now coming up, we're going to get the pulse on the VC ecosystem in the first quarter of this year with pitchbook lead VC analyst Carl Stanford, who's going to break down the firm's latest reports and data. That's next. This is blamed Berg time for the VC round up. Lot of Mattica is looking to raise four hundred and twenty five million euros that's four hundred and sixty seven million dollars for a milan IPO this year and it's seeking evaluation of around five

billion dollars including debt. The Italian gambling company backed by Apollo operates its Italy's regulated gaming market, is also active in online sports, bedding, and slot machine segments. Relativity Space plans to abandon future flights of its Terran one rocket, less than a month after it first tested the three

D printed vehicle. The company will instead shift operations towards a previously planned larger rocket in hopes of filling a growing market need and better competing with industry leader leader space X and Bicosal. Venture firm Lux Capital has raised one point one five billion dollars in new funds that it plans to invest in startups focused on science and deep technologies, including biotech and artificial intelligence. It's the largest fund to date, and we'll be called Lux Ventures eight,

taking the firm's total assets under management beyond five billion dollars. Caroline, I've got a nice close up of you there, a little bit of a technically which of ourselves a little lovely. Meanwhile, I mean it's interesting that you talk about a new fund coming from Lux Capital, because we're going to talk to us now about VC and perhaps how it's been

stifled of late. Kyle Stamford, Today's VC spotlighters. Here here's the lead VC analyst O rout pitch Book, which just released its data about the health of the VC ecosystem in the first care of twenty twenty three, and health being the operative word here, right, How healthy or not healthy is it depends which you you are a comparing team. Comparing to twenty twenty one, it is not healthy at all. Comparing it to any year before that, it's holding up

a little bit better than what the data might look like. Right. Exits are way down five point eight billion dollars in exit val you generated, extremely low. That will have impacts down the road. Fundraising was also low at eleven point seven billion close in Q one. That will have knock on effets down the road. But deal count is surprisingly high. We're asking me about thirty thirty nine hundred deals closed in Q one, which is higher than any quarter before

twenty twenty one. So okay, and so that deal count, where are those checks being written at the moment? I'm not talking sect from talking like geography. Is it with that home in New York but you'll usually on the West coast? How does it break down from an America and global perspective? Sure, we're still seeing about you know, fifty percent of the deal count in the US is happening in San Francisco, New York, Boston, or LA. Those are by far the four largest markets, and San Francisco

has dropped a little bit. Only about eighteen and a half percent of the deals were completed in San Francisco, which had been above twenty percent every year until now. So I think it's three quarters in the road there. But venture is getting much more diversified in the US. Right We've had four thousand funds closed in the past four years. Those are in the Midwest, They're in Miami, they're in Awesome, They're kind of everywhere rather than just

being siloed into San Francisco and New York. Kyle, there are so many dichotomies and contradictions right now. On a day where Lots Capital comes out and says one point one five billion in new funds, largest ever single funds, and yet the data shows it's not being deployed. I was at startup Grind last night. Everyone is so optimistic about early stage precede getting checks written. Why is there this contradiction between the backward looking data and the vibe

right now in this community? Right Well, I think we have to go back to those four thousand funds they were closed. A lot of those are going to be small funds one hundred fifty million under two hundred fifty million, which you're going to focus on the early stage. That area. The market is also much further away from you know, the public volatility that we've seen are the you know, the interest rate hikes that are really impacting the late

stage and venture growth stage. So optimism is coming back to seed in early stage. I think this quarter one was the highest medium valuation at seed that we've ever seen our data at thirteen million dollars, which is, you know, extremely high and you know, double what we're seeing even three years ago. So there is optimistic at the early stage, especially because it's so far away from kind of the public market in the problems that we're seeing at the

late stage. Kyle, you seem like a glass half full kind of guy. Let's go to the world of crypto and talk about your report. In the plunge in funding back to sort of twenty twenty or pre twenty twenty levels, what's happening in that sector. Well, again, I think, you know, crypto was the you know industry of this of the market two years ago, right, everything was happening through crypto. It was Web three, it was blockchain, it was everything

that has now switched shifted over to AI. If you're an AI startup and you have you know, a novel use of the technology for general AI or some other like I AI technology that can increase the efficiency of these companies, that's where investors have shifted their focus now right again, looking for the you know, the emerging technology that they can really ride the tail winds on for the next few years. Told the Mark Grace, I guess, Caroline, my point is that on the ground, there's energy and

optimism across all these spaces. John Wu earlier was in New York for a reason. Right he's having meetings talking about a very specific section of the crypto market. I mean, what are you hearing out there on the East Coast, Well, I'm hearing a bat a load of invitations that are going around the block at the moment, because it's an FT NYC and everyone's got a various event to go, and we've still got big VCS companies willing to put money on and to work to entertain, to bring people

together to talk about growth. Cayle what's interesting for me and I love your takers, whether you can tell us about the pool of capital going towards diverse founders or not. Because we know that the NFT space is largely built by guys. Are we seeing women people of color managing

to get checks in this environment? We're still seeing female founders, you know, not raised nearly the amount of capital that we would like to see, or we'd hope to see with all the talk in narrative around you know, getting more checks to that, you know, those founders over the past few years, but when you kind of zoom out further, there is more a lot more money going to those founders now than we have seen, you know, ten years ago,

even five years ago. The past few years, there have been you know, quite a few women who have started their own funds who are focusing on women founders and helping get money to that aa in the market, but it just hasn't happened as fast as you know, we would hope. I guess what is the prediction, the outlook, the forward looking nature of all of this, Kyle, You know, there's discussion around a mild recession in the back half of this year. How does that manifest itself in private

markets and for the world of startops. Sure. I mean what we're looking at really from that perspective is that late stage and venture growth stage of the market. There's a huge number of companies there. I think we pulled a stat that showed that the number of companies that are privately backed at the late stage has grown over to has more than doubled in the past five years. That's a huge number of companies that need a lot of capital, and a lot of that capital that is

coming from hedge funds, mutual funds, private EU funds. Really built up the deal value of the past few years. They've gone away, so that area the market without the exit opportunities that they really need to release the pressure the venture market, they're in for a very struggle struggle year or you know, long struggles until that money is able to come back and get the money they need to grow. Kyle, great to have you in the house

here in New York. We thank you for it. Carl Stamford, lead VC analyst Over at Pitchbook, an Air National guardsman is being sought by US agents on the intelligence league that according to a person familiar with the matter, who says Jack takesi Era is the focus of the Documents League. Pro Bloomberg's Amory Horndon joins us now with the details, Amh, what do we know, Well, there's just a lot of reports right now about this is the individual, as you mentioned,

twenty one year old National guardsmen. The reports are that when these leaks happened, he was stationed at Fort Bragg. And there's still a ton of a ton of questions though that are out there. One is how and why this individual had access to these documents, and the documents that were posted on this discord chat at months ago, actually they have marks in them, clearly they were folded. So how did this individual get access and post these documents online is going to be one of the biggest

questions obviously facing this investigation. And also, of course are there any more leaks actually out there, because remember this happened months ago and we're only finding out some of these stories. And for intelligence officials it's incredibly concerning because they're worried that potentially some of these documents have insight

into how the US gathers intel. Interesting though, earlier this morning, as Biden is in Ireland on an international trip, He said that they were quote getting close to this individual and we could end up with an arrest today, A Marie, we need to bring it to us, and of course there is a deep technology element to all of this and the way it was distributed across Discord. We want to thank you for bringing us the latest Bloomberg's Amory Horden. Meanwhile,

that does it for this edition of Blog Technology. Yeah, we have a really key conversation coming up with the AWS CEO. I want to get into the detail around what generative AI is going to do for Amazon. So much to recap four days in almost the weekend, busy day markets. Don't forget the podcast. You can get the podcast for the show on the terminal, Apple, Spotify, iHeart wherever Caroline you get your podcasts. Yeah, big show, big show, and more to come with your interview that's coming up

two pm in New York time. But of course the CEO of Amazon Web Services, we can't wait for it. We're going to talk much more about generative AI across the shows today from New York. This is Bloomberg