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Ed Lovedlove.
Live from New York and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology. And there's change at Apple as the CFO mice three steps back and the iPhone maker promotes from within. We have the details on Apple's new finance chief.
A Meta calls out the White House. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the government pressured Facebook to censor their COVID post during the pandemic and he regrets giving in.
Meanwhile, the NFL Kelsey Brothers wind big a one hundred million dollar podcast deal with Amazon after Taylor Swift helped spump the audience.
JD dot Com five billion dollar share buy back positive for the US listed shares. Why it's a really tough environment right now for e commerce in China. This is something that is shareholder friendly while the macro picture deteriorates. And we're going to get a bit more on that as well.
Kart, Yeah, because it is ugly out there for Pinduo Duo PDD. Once again, let's focus in on some that are trying to support the market others that are hurting the brand Vasthelka and Ryan, it really was a shock to the system that PDD wasn't doing as well as had been anticipated, that even the cheap stuff isn't selling in China. What do does that mean from a broader context when it comes to China.
Warning thanks for having me.
You know, there's a lot of concern about the strength of the Chinese economy right now, and seeing a company like this, which is so tied to the consumer, seeing them really give a pretty tepid outlook, pretty cautious, is certainly a reason to have some sort of broader concerns just about the state of things there and what the outlook is for China going for We did see that stock drop I think more than twenty percent yesterday. It
is down a little bit more today. So there are just some broader concerns now about just the strength of you know, one of the biggest economies in the world.
So ryanthjd dot com story is kind of a read through one where they are trying to do something to I guess, disassociate themselves with the wider e commerce picture in China and buybacks always cheer up investors.
Yeah, absolutely, And this of course comes after Walmart recently closed outs at Stake and JD, so there's certainly been some costs for concern for those investors. Obviously they are trying to signal, you know, it's still a focus on scheerholder value and so forth. So yeah, five billion buyback never bad headline.
I am just really interested in ultimately the context of China and appetite to be buying into what are sold off names? What point do we get lured back in Because we saw real volatility around US tech names at the start of August and people bought the dip. Why not in China at the moment, Ryan.
I think there are just some broader macro cons learns about their economic outlook, whereas people are feeling a little bit more positive about the US people are anticipating rate cuts. It seems like a lot of the major megacap tech stocks here in the United States continue to post pretty
strong fundamentals, pretty strong trends. AI remains a huge focus, and of course, you know, the biggest players in AI are all here in the US, and that's just you know, very easy decision I think for people to continue looking at US names, continue buying US big.
Tech, that picture tells the story as of this morning session. Bloomberg's rhyme Bastelica, thank you very much. Let's get a closer look at tech stocks this morning and think about the equity markets and what is a massive week in each Chisholm is the director of Quantitative market Strategy Fidelity Investments. And there is this like big macro event happening on Wednesday. I don't know if you've heard about it. It's called
Nvidia second quarter earnings. But what's so interesting is like the timing comes after many weeks of very clear capital expenditures guidance. So you track that data and you ask yourself, what does it tell us? I know that you look at capex to sales and you might have a different story. Denise, Yeah, I do have a different story.
I mean, there is a lot of concern by investors around how much technology companies are going to have to spend in terms of CAPEX, and that might be a signal of sort of the peak of the cycle. But when you look at the data for the overall technology sector, CAPEX is just starting to pick up now. And when you look at capecs relative to sales, it's actually declined over the last year and it's in the bottom half of the distribution. I think that that is the unique
part this time in terms of technology. The free cash flow generation is much much different than anything that we've seen in the past. So on that free cash flow generation, the stocks are actually still cheap on price to free cash flow on a relative basis versus the rest of the market, which actually cushions the blow to the extended fundamentals have peaked and may slow, so some of that mean reversion might actually be priced.
In index level discussion to be had. You know, I know that you don't track a specific name, but there's this fantastic chart right which shows that when the S and P five hundred moves a percentage point nine direction, it's usually in Nvidia's fault and the market there's not much left thereafter. What do you make of that, the sort of dependence on that high concentration of single names at the index level, Denise.
Yeah, we have a lot of data on historical market concentration, and it's true we haven't seen the market become this concentrated this quickly over the last year or be this concentrated since you know, basically the eighties or the late seventies. But that concentration level in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean it's a negative signal for the market going forward. The market can stay heavily concentrated for unextended period of time.
We certainly saw this in the forties and fifties, which is not to say that that's the exact parallel, But I think what's more important to me, as much as there's been a bifurcation between cap weighted indusses and equal weighted indocy really lagging, I think that a lot of the signals that I'm seeing suggests that there might be a much more broadening out over the next year on a relative basis, where it's not just technology stocks being
the dominant leaders, and the market might actually encompass more maybe interesst rate sensitives and more cyclical sectors outperforming as well. I think the unique part of this cycle was around technology fundamentals. Technology fundamentals did something on an aggregate level that I've never seen in my database going back to the sixties, which is go from bottom quartile growth bottom
quartile growth to top decile growth in under a year. Well, when that happens, that begets that relative outperformance we've seen. But as the starting point from this level, it doesn't necessarily mean technology will lag the market, as those cash flows and earnings growth might actually be durable. But it does usually mean that it makes room for other sectors to outperform as well.
What's so interesting, though, is how one sided the mack it is on the single name. At the moment, analysts sixty six of them say buy and VIDIA zero say sell. But then I go to the SMP more broadly, and the price targets just aren't that many ahead of where we currently trade at the moment at fifty six twenty eight, and well most of the analysts actually see lower than that.
So when we do give up leadership so to speak, with the big tech names in the mag seven, is it not going to be If they lag, it won't be made up for by the other smaller players that suddenly do rally.
Well, I think you could end.
Up in this situation where the big names just potentially tread water with a catchup trade in the equoated indices. I think that the big difference that investors are concerned about is what we saw happen in two thousand, which is the mags let's call it the MAG seven this time versus the technology bubble last time was going down
on an absolute basis. When you're talking about just maybe lagging or hanging in in terms of a relative perspective and growing into those multiples, I think that that's a much different story from a risk reward perspective, and it sets up the rest of the market that really hasn't seen the earnings growth recovery that we've seen in those cap weighted indices to still play out over time, which gives dominance to that equal weighted potential or down the cap spectrum relative performance.
Do ultimately, though, does technology still look like it will outperform to the extent that we've almost become immune to look?
I think it looks like a positive risk reward to me. And I say that because a after you've seen fundamental inflection like we've seen, the sector continues to outperform about seventy percent of the time because those free cash flows and earning's growth tends to be durable. And this goes back to the fact that when in a lot of my data twenty twenty two looked like either a very soft hard landing or a very hard soft landing, but
it did look like a landing. And if that was in fact a landing, then we are in the early to mid stages of what could be a multiple year recovery, and that includes in terms of technology earnings growth. So if you couple that sort of durable cash flow on the valuation disconnect, which is to say that they're still on the bottom half of the distribution of relative free cash flow, I think you have a positive.
Risk reward denise very quickly. Historically, when the S and P five hundred gains double digits in one h it does well in the second half of the year. Will that happen, that's correct.
Well, I can't tell you if it will happen, But you know the math, which is a ball in motion, tends to stay in motion. And it's all around the fact that usually the stock market gets it right. And by that I mean it might actually be telling you something that you don't really know already, which is that more of the S and P five hundred might be discounting a hard landing than you think.
Just such deep historical analysis, we love it Denistchism, thank you so much for joining you great to be here, Director of Quantitative Marketing Strategy over at Fidelity Investments.
I meanwhile coming up.
Close to look at Polaris Dawn.
That didn't happen.
SpaceX's first spacewalk mission has been delayed ed.
What are you watching? I'm not going to share as a Walmart story that broke in the last ten minutes. The company wants to expand its online marketplace. This is the digital platform for third party vendors. You're thinking about competition with the likes of Amazon and Etsy and what they're doing. It's just adding more stuff to it. Think about pre owned watches, collectible trading cards. Is all part of an announcement they made out of San Francisco this
morning for their seller's conference. Not doing much. The booster stock up three tens to one percent. Well track it. This has been a big technology.
Taking a look now at SpaceX. The company has delayed that launch of a rocket carrying four private astronauts to space, part of what was going to be a groundbreaking mission aimed at performing the world's first commercial spacewalk.
Pilaris Dawn.
You want to get out to be Megsla and Grass who's been all over this once again.
Helium.
It's a recurring theme with these space issues.
Yeah, helium is prone to leaking. It is a small molecule, so it can find its way out of various small crevices. But this is just comes with the territory of following rockets and rocket launches. There's always some kind of delay, but hopefully it won't be too lengthy for and hopefully we'll see this launch takeoff soon.
They basically have a backup window every morning at the same time, right the way through the weekend, so I imagine it will go off. A big part of this is not necessarily the crew of Claris Dawn. It's the space suits, and you wrote about that last week in the Business of Space newsletter, like and subscribe. Tell me about the space suits and why they're so key to what's due to take place in the mission.
Yeah.
So, for people who have followed SpaceX up until now, you might be familiar with SpaceX's so called space suits. But the space suites that we've seen up until this point are really just pressure suits which are used by the astronauts. They're worn when they fly to space when they come back from space, and they're really mostly meant to be used in the case of an emergency, in
case the capsule depressurizes or there's some unforeseen event. What SpaceX built for this specific purpose is a space walking spacesuit, and it's really meant to be used for this exact reason for being able to leave the vehicle perform repairs on the outside of a spacecraft. For this mission, SpaceX is just going to test out the durability of the suits.
But these suits look pretty cool. They definitely look like the sleek white design of the pressure suits that we've seen, but they're supposed to be able to withstand the vacuum of space. Even better, they have heads up displays inside of them, and they have the signature SpaceX sile that we've all come to know and love.
I mean, absolutely fascinating as to whether or not we're going to be missing in I mean the new way in which we see the suits evolved. Lauren ed was just tell it, talking us through the fact that we're going to be seeing a new launch window every single day. But ultimately, how quickly can things like helium lenk be recovered.
From It's hard to speculate on this. I think when it comes to SpaceX, I am always amazed at how quickly they're able to kind of turn things around. If you recall, you know, about a month ago they had a failure with their Falcon nine rocket while launching some Starling satellites, and they were able to get back to launch within just a couple of weeks. So SpaceX has definitely garnered a lot of experience by launching so frequently, so it may be something that is easy to fix
with this particular mission. I don't think SpaceX wants to be taking any chances. It's probably one of their riskiest missions that they've done to date. They'll be going to a much higher altitude than astronauts have gone to in a very long time, so I think they just want to make sure everything is buttoned up, so it's possible they might take some extra care with this particular healing week.
I mean, I mean there is risk in this mission seven hundred kilometer altitude approximately for the spacewalk. Only two of them will do it. And what I find so amazing is like the cruising quarantine basically right now, and yet Jared Isaacman's on Twitter X saying or don't worry, we know exactly what's going on. We're talking with SpaceX. He's kind of key to this because he went on Inspiration four as well.
Yeah, Jared Eisaman has definitely become an interesting SpaceX figure. He has bankrolled the development of this program and also helped to fund this flight, and he'll be flying again in the future too. He didn't just buy this one flight. He has kind of invested in an entire program, research and development program called Polaris, and this just is the first part of that. It'll eventually culminate with the first crude launch of SpaceX's Starship Rocket, which is that massive
vehicle that they've been building in South Texas. I assume that Jared will be on that as well. We'll have to wait and see that because we still have some development road to get through. But yeah, he's definitely become a dominant figure in the SpaceX community.
Okay, see three point thirty eight am Eastern time tomorrow, bloom Osler and Grush maybe thank you. Another big story we're tracking is Apple. Longtime Apple CFO Luka Maistrie will step down from the job at the end of the year. Handing the role to top deputy deputy Kevin Perek after more than a decade. More in the announcement, we go to Bloomberg's Mark German, I guess why why step back and why the number two getting promoted?
Yeah, I mean, this is really not that interesting in the sense that this has been long planned. Apple has been telegraphing this for the last year or so. If you recall, at the end of last year, one of Luca ma Astree's top two deputies, Cii Casey, she resigned and then later became the CFO of Sonos, and to me at the time, that became pretty clear they were preparing for a transition and that it was not going to be her job, but.
Rather Kevin Perek's. John Kevin Perek had.
A series of responsibilities related to market research, financial analysis, preparation for earnings, investor relations, and then he picked up Saiori Casey's responsibility over financial planning and analysis at.
The end of last year.
He actually moved into her office at that time, and he has been the heir apparent for several months now to Luca Astree. He had been shadowing may Street. He had been working very closely with Apple's executive team and Tim Cook. So this is something that has been in the works for several months now. Luca just turned sixty, right, He's been in the corporate environment. He's been a CFO for decades now. He's obviously made a lot of money
at Apple. Luca actually at some points in his career has commuted many, many miles to the Apple campus.
This is obviously a very tough role.
It's not a role you want to be in for more than a decade probably with everything at stake. He took over for Peter Openhimer in twenty fourteen.
So it made sense.
The bigger picture here is you're sort of probably going to see a big turnover of Apple's executive team over the next few years. And this strategy where they're not really allowing these executives to fully retire and just you know, play golf or you know, fly their planes or what have you and have them stick around a smaller role.
This is now the.
Third executive in a row in the last four years that we've seen do this. The question is how long is Luca going to stick around in this new role. And then one thing I know investors are curious about Perak. Everything I've been told and everything that I believe is that he's ready for this role. And I don't expect any hiccups.
As you say, he's going to be overseeing information technology and real estate functions, we understand, but in that reduced role. Meanwhile, Mark, all of this is in the broader context of they've got to still be selling shit phones. They've got to be innovating.
And September the ninth.
We understand is and we're going to be getting our eyes on the latest new phones.
Yeah, September ninth, the iPhone sixteen line, new AirPods, new Apple Watches will all be introduced, and then we'll get the performance of how these phones did from Kevin Krek at the end of January that during his first earnings call SCFO, and all expectations are we're going to see some decent growth in the holiday period over the iPhone
fifteen pro. There were no major new Apple watches a year ago, no major new AirPods a year ago, so they've sort of set themselves up for a little bit of a layup to give themselves some nice growth in the holiday period.
Wel Gumman, as always, we thank you so much time now for talking tech. First up, LG Electronics is considering an initial public offering for his India business to having a booming stock market to help hit a target seventy five billion dollars in electronics revenue by twenty thirty. Here's what LGCS and William Show had to say about the market opportunity in India.
In India, we boast a number one market share in every single product. So as you know, India is one of the fastest growing markets in the world and the India will be continued to be a key market for our growth. But it's not about just the product sales. We aim to be the national brand in India. So as a company who have grown and loved by Indian people, we understand we should grow with Indian people and providing the product and solutions which will make eventually their life better.
And to the.
IPO, yeah, I understand there's increased interest in Indian market among global investories.
It's the first time in South Korean company has spoken publicly about an Indian debut, subject of persistent market and media speculation. Plus Sony while it's raising its price of its PlayStation five in Japan by nineteen percent to nearly eighty thousand Japanese yen or five hundred and fifty US dollars,
almost four years into the console's life cycle. The surprise move comes even as PS five sales actually slowed, and Sony is widely expected to refresh its offering with a more powerful Mint cycle revamp of the console in coming months. One they all watching, I'm sure ed, what have we got coming up?
Okay, big story Mark Zuckerberg alleging that Facebook was pressured by the US government to censor content related to COVID nineteen during the pandemic. That story's next. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Welcome back to Bloomberg te anology of Karaine Hyde in New York.
Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Meta is interesting as well. Caro, give us the headline behind what's going with Meta. It was a big one that broke last night. Backward looking not doing much of the stock. It's completely flat. But this is a story that on social media and elsewhere everyone's talking about.
It is because CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been penning a letter to Congress where he alleges that Facebook was pressured by the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID nineteen. He says he regrets the company's decision to accede to the demands for more and pleased to say we're John Babloomberg's Asha counts and this is to the Committee on the Judiciary of the US House of Representatives. Why put forward this viewpoint right now?
Asia?
I mean, it's such a contentious time, right We're going into the election, We're just a couple months away. Content moderation has been a topic of conversation for a long time, but it feels like even more so election policies, so change employees that do things like content safety have been fired or like, oh and Matt has been taking a
step back from politics and news. So the timing of it sort of makes sense to me as we head into the eve of a really consequential election, and it's almost like Zepbywork's saying we're not going to do the things that we did in the past during this election.
There are kind of two storylines here at ASIA. There's the allegation that Facebook was pressured by government officials, and then there's the admission of regret on the actions that Meta or Facebook did take at the height of the pandemic. What were those actions? What were the kind of things that Meta or the Facebook platform did when it found certain content relating to COVID nineteen.
I mean, it was pulling certain content, right If content was considered a misinformation or misleading, it was either pulling that content. Sometimes there was a note that was directing people to CDC resources or saying that this has not been verified. It was those sorts of things. So it was a mix of labeling things. But then also some post and content were removed, which you know, as Zuckerberg said,
he sort of regressed at the time. At the time, some people felt like that was sinistering and voices were not being heard. And so there was a lot of things that were happening at the time. And again, like this sort of movement and the moment in social media, a lot of these companies are pulling back from taking down content like that. They're either just labeling it and leaving it up all together, or they're just not doing anything.
So it's a very different environment than it was even just a couple of years ago.
But still governments pushed back on that, and we see what's just happened to the CEO of Telegram for the fact that they leave a lot of content unmoderated. We'll get into that in a moment Asia, But on the nuts and bolts of things, it was still Meta's ultimate decision on what to take down. It's just they felt that the pressure was unnecessarily coming from the government. Right.
That was one of the key things that I took away from it as well, Like Stonerbrick knowledged, we made the decision. We took down the content. They have control over their own platform. They didn't like the pressure that they were feeling, but again they did ultimately make the decision and themselves, and the decision rests with them regardless.
Right with both Asha counts on a really top story on the Bloomberg Today. Thank you very much. Let's keep a conversation going. Joining us for more on Meta is Frank McCourt, junior executive chairman of McCourt Global and founder of Project Livity, a movement essentially that aims to make the Internet a safer place, but that includes on social media platforms. And Frank, let's start very simply with your reaction to mister Zuckerberg's letter.
Yeah, good to see you again.
I think that we're at a really key moment here, and we have seen in the last few months.
The window shifted. There's a real real change.
You know, you saw Congress recently best Coosa with overwhelming numbers. There's huge judges rolling on a Google and the antitrust. I think that there's a real, real sea change here happening, and people are fed up with with uh, you know, the way the Internet is being used and the way
these big platforms are exploiting individuals. I see this, quite frankly, as a cynical attempt to you know, by Mark to you know, uh, to shift the focus from from Facebook and Meta and Instagram and all the of the different product products of Meta, away from the habits of Meta and the exploitive nature of the platform and the fact that it's it's it's surveilling you know, millions of Americans to being a victim, quite frankly, and I think that that's not right.
It's uh, we we should keep our eye on.
The ball here and what's really really going on and not shift this to a news story about Biden and Facebook being a victim.
I I think it's it's just not correct.
Well, frank should any administration have the power, if the allegations made by Mark Zuckerberg and that letter are correct, have the power to put pressure on a specific company or social media platform to act on specific content.
Of course, not in norse should the platforms have the power. And this is the whole point of Project Liberty. And what we're saying is the look our information, our identity, our data, our information, our personal information. This is something that is in this day and age, is our virtual being, is our personhood, It's who we are. Individuals should be deciding what gets how their.
Content gets used.
We shouldn't be having these big platforms make these decisions. It's it's crazy to have these platforms surveil us, scrape our data and then and have this power. We don't, of course don't want the government to be able to do it. But do we want a few big companies to do it either?
I think not. It's just it's the same end result. We just don't We want the power to come back to people. Enough is enough on this, but.
People aren't always great.
Frank, to be perfectly honest, And when I'm thinking what's happening in France for the Telegram co founder and CEO he did too little to help protect children. Ultimately, is their accusation they allowed the spread of child's sexual abuse material. At what point and what line do you draw when the companies do need to get involved. That's such a hard one to fathom, really.
Well, Carolyn, your question assumes that the companies are in the first instance, surveilling us, scraping our data, collecting it, and then we're asking them to do something with all that personal information they have. I think we need could change how the internet works so individuals have the power and they have control of their identity and their data
and they're not manipulating. You know. What comes to my mind here is that we're talking about censorship and how this all works, and it it's these algorithms which are so powerful. It's we can't be thinking of of censorship in an old, pre interate way when these this algorithmic behavior that uh in, these algorithms that that are applied to this massive amount of our personal data is in and this exploitation is happening. Algorithms and censorship, they just they're they're.
At odds with one another.
The algorithms are preventing us from actually having coherent discussions you know, I what what I think about is what Jack Dorsey said in Oslo in June. You know, he said, too much discussion about free speech and not about but not enough discussion about the.
Lack of free will.
And Frank, we're all having this, this circular conversation, and what's broken is the technology.
Well, you and Jack Dorsey a line in perhaps seeing decentralization as the answer. And you have the project the protocol, decentralized social networking protocol, and you want that ultimately to be the reworking. That's why you had a bid out on TikTok to sort of rework the way in which these social media platforms work, can make them decentralized. But how would a decentralized social media platform stop inaccurate information, the spread of child sexual abuse.
Well, so, first of all, technology alone is not going to stop all bad human behavior. But getting people back in charge of their lives, of their virtual self, owning their personhood, having agency making decisions is a critical first step.
Of course, we need to hold people accountable.
Remember the Internet, Caroline, when it was started, was a decentralized piece of technology.
It was there to connect us and make us smarter. It moves civilization forward.
It only became centralized over the course of the last twenty or twenty five years. It's been colonized by a few companies. And what is the practice. They scrape our data, they surveil us twenty four to seven, and now we're asking them to figure out censorship.
And moderation and so forth. Frank quick the hands of individuals.
Apologies to cut you off, but very briefly, have have you still got money to buy TikTok?
You still want to buy it.
We still want to buy it. And because the reason.
We want to buy it, and I want to make it clear, I don't want to be the CEO of a social media platform.
I want to.
Catalyze this change to this new Internet where individuals own and control their data. So we see TikTok as a massive opportunity, a fantastic opportunity to bring one hundred and seventy million users over to an internet where they're in charge of themselves, their identity, and their data, and by the way, they receive value for that data as well. They're still going to have to be practices and accountability
for good human behavior. But we don't want the government or these big platforms deciding what's good for each of us.
I don't believe I'm niclette Gina.
Great to have your the show. We appreciate it. Founder at Project Liberty coming up a conversation with the CEO of Cribble.
It's Clint Sharp.
He's just been leading the company to record break and growth since twenty eighteen.
Data infrastructure startup Cribble announced it's raised a new funding round, bringing its valuation to three point five billion dollars. It's an unusually high number for a company that's not focused exclusively on AI in the current fundraising climate, but there's a lot more to it to discuss. Clint Sharp, CEO of Cribble, with me on set in San Francisco. I've heard so many people say that management of data is
the key tool of this. There are many names that sit within that field, but let's start with the basics of what Kribble is and does.
So we're a data engine for IT and security, which is helping customers deal with this massive growth in data. Your data is growing in a twenty eight percent compound growth rate, and I've asked one thousand customers this question. You know, is budget growing at that rate, and the answer is universally.
Now ah, okay, so we're driving the growth, we're looking for money, and I'm interested therefore, Clint, where that three and a half billion goes to.
Yeah, so we will be continuing to fund our international expansion, product growth, and continued growth in.
APH specifically.
So we're really excited to continue to fund our growth and global expansion.
There's a phrase or a term I've not used in sometimes centaur status, which is basically marketing speak for I think Bessema invented it or coined it. But one hundred million dollars or so in and you're recurring revenue upwards. That shows some growth. But where do you go from here? I mean, I'm assuming that at that valuation things are going pretty well in real terms for you.
Yeah.
So we're growing from a streaming company into a broad spectrum data platform that's helping people deal with it and security data which helps them operate the systems that operate the business. It's an underserved and so the growth is really a reflection of the value we're providing to customers.
Kent.
What's so interesting is, of course you're helping streamline data. Many would immediately go of course, that's all to do with artificial intelligence, But ultimately, is that the near time issue of all your clients or are they faced with other issues and is it not all about AI?
So we hear a lot of AI fatigue and our customer base, you know, every vendor that's sitting down in front of them, every keynote that they go to, is all about the technology. And we're embedding AI into our technology to help people better understand their data, be able to more quickly and easily configure their systems. But they want to know what the AI technology is going to do for them, as opposed to being about the technology itself.
I want to date that deeper an AI fatigue, that that is something you think is short term or are you worried that maybe all of the investment that many companies big and small have made was a little bit overdone.
I mean, I think this is an Internet scale disruption in technology. Certainly, I think that.
But if you look at the.
Gap between when these trends start and when the value starts to be received, there's a pretty big gap in that time. And so in that time there's a lot of talk about what will happen as opposed to being backed by customer success and what value they're actually seeing from the technology.
And so we really focused.
On making sure that our customers know what exactly we're doing for them.
Well more than three hundred million to go spend three and a half billion dollar valuation, We appreciate and coming on to talk and see the business. Cribble CEO Clint Sharp meanwhile at the money for some like Cribble, but not for others, particularly for the movement to diversify Silicon Valley and technology. More broadly, groups like Girls in Tech and Women who Code, they're closing up shop, while other not for profits are trying to rebrand their efforts to
just stay afloat. Adriana Gascoyne, founder of Girls in Tech, joins us now to discuss Adriana, you've had to unwind the not for profit that you built.
Why it's a tragedy.
I built at seventeen years ago and it was a huge need then, it's still a huge need now. I truly believe diversity is crucial. Having diverse workforces is crucial in developing the most optimal, amazing, innovative technology products and services. And in two thousand and seven, there was such a disparity of our gender in the tech space, and so I wanted to launch an organization that would encourage and empower women to take risks and enter into the field.
It's an amazing, amazing field. I learned so much. I feel like we were growing and building such so many amazing products and services. I wanted women to be a part of that.
Right.
I was one of thirty five employees back in two thousand and seven, and I was the only woman, and I was the only woman person of color, And so I knew that when I launched the organization, the goal was to get to create awareness, get more women involved and talk to them, meet them, see them, hear their stories, encourage people to sort of reach for the stars and launch their own businesses. Move to the ladder b CEOs. So you know, seventeen years later, we're in thirty five countries.
But Adriana, you've got the scale. But why you then closed because money turned off? Why are people no longer funding your business? Your company are not for profit?
Correct?
Money turned off? I would say twenty twenty three was probably the hardest fundraising year for US in record. Over the last seventeen years, and I think it started with COVID issues, people closing their doors, businesses closing their doors. Then it turned into high tech layoffs, budget cuts, re orgs, and then it turned into the BLM movement. Believe it
or not. Even though we support people of all backgrounds and races and genders, we want to make sure we wanted, we needed funding and a lot of the corporate funders ended up going to organizations that focus on the black population. Uh, and so we lost out on some of that funding. And then it turned into sort of.
The D and I backlash.
So during the high tech layoff issue in reorbs where companies were freezing their dollars, they were also realizing that in many cases D E and I policies, training programs, initiatives were not working. And so there was a huge group of D and I executives at Fortune five hundred companies that were getting laid off and then as a result, the budgets closed as well, which hurt us.
Adriana Gascoyne, founders of Girls in Tech.
Thank You, Amazon is making a three one hundred million dollar bet on the Kelsey Brothers and fl squars. Travis and Jason Kelsey will join Amazon's Wondering with that podcast New Heights you Most. Chris Palmry joins us with the details. Hot on the Heels are the corner Daddy deal that we saw with Sirius XM. Now it's kind of the antithesis kind of a podcast took us through why the number is so high?
Well, this is kind of sort of amazing thing about the podcast industry. So last year, the big story was retrenchment. Everyone was canceling shows, Companies were getting sold, people were being laid off. This was after a few boom years where people were just throwing money at podcasts, and now twenty twenty four, it's an entirely different story. And what we're seeing is kind of the winners of just being
paid exorbitant sums. So certainly the Kelsey brothers the latest, but as you mentioned, Alex Cooper, Joe Rogan, all these people were renewed their contracts at very fat prices and so so you know, these are all the big media companies. In some cases they're changing you know, who's you know, distributing the show, and they're paying up for the top talent.
I'm a listener of New heights. I'm sure that Travis and Jasons to the Bloomberg Technology podcast. I'm certain that they do. The deal details are pretty interesting. You know, Wondering is going to do a lot for distribution. There's an advertising component. Somebody did them a good deal.
Yeah, and not just the traditional stuff like you mentioned, you know, ad sales, it's merchandise.
It's really kind of a wrap around deal, which.
You know, given the sum one hundred million dollars over three years, Yeah, you'd expect Amazon would and they're Wondering Subsiria would want something out of this, yeh. But you know this is you know, this is everyone's trying to bundle these premiere podcasts into their services, and so this is this is you know, everyone is trying to get a piece of every part of the deal, and they're all.
Trying to get a piece of the elephant in the room that is Taylor Swift.
Chris.
This is why the podcast suddenly got a jump as well.
For sure.
I mean it started in twenty twenty two, you know, it was doing okay, but really took off last September when Travis and Taylor announced they were dating and she started peering at games and you know, a huge surgeon in.
Viewership after that.
And I'm sure you know a lot more women than I would probably normally listen to this podcast too, So you know, it's it's definitely another part of the Swift universe.
Chris in fifteen seconds, tell me what's happening with Paramount.
Well, the bidding war part of it is over. Edgar Bromfin dropped out and it looks like David Ellison will move forward with his deal supposed to close in the first half of next year. But you know, we're never out of the woods quite with Paramount. There'll be probably lawsuits and regulatory issues.
Bloomber's Chris Pound, Mary, our entertainment editor, thank you.
That does it for this rather busy edition of Bloomberg Technology. Big day tomorrow.
Yeah, coming up tomorrow we have a special edition of Bloomberg Technology featuring an exclusive interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Woks thirty pm Eastern Time. This has been back Technology