From Mahard where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Vallet NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hide and Ed Ludlow.
I met Ludlow in San Francisco. Caroline hides off this week. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up from the program. Apple's Vision Pro is officially for sale. We'll discuss early demand for the pricey product and why big names like Spotify, Netflix in YouTube are snubbing the device, plus Forward announcing plans for production cuts the f one to fifty lightning
electric truck. More on a weakening demand picture for evs and the fourteen hundred employees impacted by that pullback, and Amazon's one point four billion dollar deal for i robot is expected to be blocked by the e use antitrust watchdog, sending shares of the rumber maker plunging. All that and so much more. Happy Friday. It is the end of a shortened week because of the US holiday. This is
what financial markets look like in the technology context. And as that one hundred upper percentage point, let's be honest. The big story, the single name of the week has been Apple. Catalysts are both the upside and the downside. On a five day basis, we are up two point four percent and we're headed for our second consecutive weeks
of gains. Remember, one big catalyst was Bank of America's upgrade to buy with some enthusiasm about what Vision Pro does on the hardware and services side of the top line. For Apple, you can now place a pre order for a Vision Pro. But if you go on the website, you'll notice one thing. The date of delivery is getting pushed back further and further. We have the perfect voice, Bloomberg's chief correspondent, Mark German with us. Now, let's start
with the data we see in real time. If you try to orso a vision Pro, right now, what do you see?
Yeah, Ed, thanks so much for having me us always. That's right.
The Vision Pro went on sale for pre order this morning five am Pacific time, and right now, if you're going to place a new order, it's likely if you're doing it for an online delivery, not to come until mid March. You're seeing between March eighth and March fifteenth, for all three storage capacities two hundred and fifty six gigs, half a terabyte, and a terabyte. Now, if you're trying
to do in store pickup. The first day of availability is also booked up, but depending on the sizing of the headset that you need, you do a face scan when you order it, and it gives you a custom size. There's about twenty five different sizes. You may be able to get pick up in the first couple of days availability, but for the most part, if you're doing a delivery to your home, you're not gonna be able to get one deep into March.
I think that you know, we're using the delivery date as a kind of proxy for early demand, and the vision pro is going to be initially a pro like high price, point, small volume, niche product. But it does seem like there is demand there.
You agree with that people are quite excited about this product. There is absolutely demand. Now, it's unclear exactly what the slips mean, right. It could be a combination of demand, a combination of supply, a combination of both. You could be seeing really low demand but really really low supply.
So it's not entirely clear what it means. But based on what I'm seeing on X when I'm seeing on other social media platforms, the usual suspects, so to speak, The early adopters in the Apple community are all over this thing. I ordered one personally, as you know, I
have a deep interest in Apple products. So it's people sort of in my category early adopters, big time Apple fans, people that really want to learn more about the company, that are buying misting for now, and I imagine once some tech enthusiasts start trying it in an Apple detail store storing on February second, they'll get about a twenty twenty five minute demo. You'll see sales go up as well.
On that opening weekend. They'll have some inventory for non pre orders, but the company itself, they're expecting a pretty strong opening couple of weeks, but for sales to taper from there, which is what you would expect from a
new major product category at this price. The people who want to buy this thing have been wanting to buy it for months now, since it was introduced in June, so they're going to get their orders in early and then it's really going to take price cuts in new generations of this product to really expand market share for Apple and the VR space and make it a real revenue maker.
Right. It follows the format of the iPhone right, you have Vision Pro, but I guess we're waiting on the Vision Songs Pro at a later date. The newsflow this week has been astonishing when it comes to Apple, and in the context of Vision Pro, we did a lot of reporting about the developers or content creators that are choosing not to make a Vision Pro specific application. Tell us those names and what we've learned.
Yeah, someone deeply involved in development of the product told me it's going to be the applications that make or break this product. And right now you're seeing some of the top tier platforms designing to not participate. I'll give you three names.
Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify.
Spotify is interesting, but you can use that through the web, and it's a music streaming service. And who really knows or cares, to be honest, if this is going to be a great platform for music listening. But Apple's really positioning this as a video and a movie watching device. And if you're not going to have YouTube or Netflix applications on here, that's a real drawback now. So they certainly have Max Disney plus Peacock.
ESPN, NBA, you name it.
But the two biggest streaming services in the world, right, YouTube and Netflix not being on there is a real omission, and it's potentially a problem for Apple out of the gate. Now, I have some theories as to why they're not participating. I think both are taking a wait and see approach. In the case of Netflix, maybe they don't want to prop up a rival in streaming who has Apple tv Plus.
But at some point you may see enough people tell YouTube and Netflix they don't want to use their services anymore. If you're not on the Apple Vision pro, then they'll have to get on there. But I think that's going to take a while. They're okay to lose one thousand users, but if you start seeing tens of thousands of people saying we're not going to subscribe anymore over this, they'll have to make a change. But of course that's going to take many many months, if not longer.
Mark. The final story I want to touch on is in the context of the European Union. But if you're an iPhone user and you go into a store or grab some food, you can pay by tapping your iPhone on the receiver. And what Apple seems to be doing now in the context of regulatory action, is opening up that technology to some of its competitors explain that one.
Yeah, it's interesting. So this morning, you know, the European Union, so that Apple had agreed to open up the NFC chip to third party payment serve. So right now, that tap to pay feature you described ed only could work with Apple Pay Apple service if you're a third party, if you're a Chase, if you're an Amex, you can't integrate your own tap to pay service using that hardware component through your application. Now Apple sit there agreeing to open that up to change that. It's funny because on
March seventh, they're going to be doing that anyways. Right March seventh is when the Digital Markets Actor.
EO kicks in.
That is a requirement of the DMA to open up things like NFC, to open up the app sort of third party billing services.
Right, so Apple.
Basically said they're going to be doing something that they're already planning to do in two months anyway, So not necessarily a womin here for Apple. You know, there is a scenario where they might lose a little royalty on Apple Pay because of this, but if it continues to fend off regulators and avoid multi billion dollar fines, that certainly is a positive for the company.
Okay, Apple up eight ten percent in the session, up two percent on the week, And I highly recommend that you subscribe to Marks and Us there to power on because you summarize all that on a weekly basis. Bloomberg's Mark German, chief correspondent, turn into some breaking news just out on the Bloomberg terminal open. AI CEO Sam Altman is seeking billions of dollars specifically in an effort to
secure supply for AI chips. It is part of a broader initiative that we're reporting here in Bloomberg myself and colleagues, including Dina Bass, that the aim is to set up a series of fabs globally plants or factories with specific dedication to capacity for these AI chips. Let's get right to Bloomberg's Dina Bass, one of the co bylines with me on this story. And Dina, you know, we've done
a lot of reporting on this kind of initiative. We know that Sam Outman was looking at chips, but actually what's new here is the focus on capacity future capacity.
Yes, that's right.
So in the kind of week of the exam of an ouster, we you know, add you and a couple of other reporters reported this chip initiative, but I think the belief or assumption was that what open ai would be doing here similar to what Microsoft is doing, is similar to what Google does, is similar to what aws that Aprontat does, which is design their own artificial intelligence chips.
In reality, what we hear from our sources is that we're often trying to address is the chip shortage, that there's not enough fabrication capacity to make enough chips.
Now that's been.
Going on for a while.
But what open ai in m Altman want.
Will address is actually not the current shortage. It's you know what our sources tell us at Veltman fears that there will be a significant shortage a couple of beers
out from now. So when we come to the end of the decade, if artificial intelligence is as pervasive as s m Altman thinks it will be, if you remember, he's very focused on heading towards AGI artificial general intelligence, then there will simply not be in his view, enough processors for what he thinks is going to go on at that point.
There are still many questions about how mechanically this would work. Right, you know what I'm hearing you're hearing is that there's all these talks with all kinds of investors to raise a huge sum of money, tens and tens of billions of dollars. But in reality, it's not just as simple as saying, Okay, great, we've got the funds, let's build a load of chip factories wherever we want. You know, the market is dominated by TSMC, Samsung and a hopeful
newcomer and Intel. What do we know about what's on the table here in terms of the proposed way this would work.
So what we're.
Hearing is an otment is now on the stage of, as you see, putting together sort of a group of partners. So some of that is the capital the investors who is going to fund all of this, and some of that is talking to the existing chep fab companies. We're not you know, we're not hearing that open AI wants to, you know, start learning how to pour concrete or anything like that. This is a really complicated business with really just about three competitors in it, and you know, it
takes a ton of expertise to do. So what we're hearing is that the idea would be to work with the people that know how to do this, but again to figure out a way to dramatically expand the capacity so that five years from now the industry doesn't find that it's not in a position to produce what's necessary an arm to view.
I just want to relate to our audience that open Ai, Intel, SoftBank, TSMC, Microsoft, and G forty two, which is a firm that we had reported in the past wanted to give Sam Outman money for this, did not respond to Bloomboat requests to comment or decline to comment. Samsung in particular, just a key name in the fab space, didn't respond to our
request for comment. But the takeaway that I have is that forget what happened with Sam Outman's short departure from open Ai and then return He's able to go out there and talk to people, raise money, and come up with these big plans, which, let's be honest, this is a bold move in the context of how chip manufacturing actually works.
Right, absolutely, And he was obviously in Daubos this week, so we will see if anything comes out of any meetings there as he tries to protect together some sort of consortium behind this. You mentioned Microsoft, you know we have reported previously have reported again today that Often has help talks with Microsoft about this idea and that the software giant remains interested, you know, potentially in being being a part of it. Again, they declined to comment as well, but.
You know what we're reporting.
In what we're reporting, you see Sam trying to put together the pieces of what he would need to do this, to put together financial backing. As we mentioned in the story, they're also been talking with soft Bank and to put together the expertise around Chippan manufacturing. And as you said, this is a this is a much more dramatic initiative,
and there's various forecasts for the AI chip field. You know, there are some people who feel that there will might be enough, and there are some people that feel that the industry is on a trajectory to increase the number of AI chips that are manufactured.
That will be just fine, And the reality is that will will be fun right, And all I was saying is that what we're reporting, the reality of is that it's the world's leading AI company trying to have a more direct control over its supply chain.
For one of a better summary, Bloombostina Bass great to work with you on this story. Thanks for joining the show. Now, another story that we're tracking is Forward. It says it's going to reduce the number of workers that are making its F one fifty lightning truck, and that is due to demand for electric vehicles weakening. About fourteen hundred employees will be impacted that work on the assembly lines for
F one to fifty lightning. I want to bring in my friend and colleague, Keith Norton out of Detroit, and Keith, you know this is directly linked to what we already knew. The F one fifty lightning production this year will be half what for previously estimated. But just explain mechanics of how they're carrying that out.
Yeah, So they are, as you said, eliminating fourteen hundred people at the foin fifty lightning plant. Interestingly, and seven hundred of them will move over to an internal combustion engine plant here in Detroit that builds the Ford Bronco suv and Ranger pickup truck because those traditional gas fueled vehicles are selling very well. So they're adding a third crew to that plant while going down to one shift at the lightning plant. It really does reflect on this
weakening demand that we're seeing for electric vehicles. Sales of electric vehicles are still up, but their growth has slowed dramatically. UBS sees their growth at about eleven percent.
In the US this year.
Last year, electric vehicle sales grew by forty seven percent.
And therein is the story, right Keith, that you know they're saying they're still demand globally, it's just even less than are already load exptions. And at the same time, we've got to make sure we build enough of our popular combustion engine cars. Tell us that the summary of the EV story with Forward, all I see is lightning, and all I see is Marqi, n Okay transit. What
are their bigger picture plans from this point? You and I did a lot of reporting on that historically, but things kind of seem a bit stale.
Yeah, So what they have is their first Gen EV vehicles out there, which you know arrived, as you recall ed with a lot of fanfare, but they've really slowed. They've also cut production of the Mustang Maqui. There's incentives
on that. Now they're really talking up their next Gen EV vehicles, which will be ground up electric vehicles with all kinds of digital capabilities that are, you know, to be discovered by consumers, but they promised they'll be very exciting, but those are still a ways away twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, and that's one of the reasons uvs actually cut forward week to hold from buy. They feel like the payoff fund forwards EV strategy is going to take longer than expected.
All right, Bloomber's Keith Norton on the Auto beat, Adam Detroit. It's great to catch up. Thanks for joining the program. They're coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, and all European commercial crew is on its way to the International Space Station, the first time that all the seats are occupied by Europeans. We're gonna have those details coming up next. I'm also taking a look at shares of AMD. We're currently up
three and a half percent in the session. AMD pushing fresh record highs and what's so interesting about it is its outperformance relative to Nvidia. They closed a record high Thursday. The momentum in that stock continues. It's a twelve percent gain on the week. And this is a name that in the next couple of weeks reports earnings. What are we looking for? I three hundred x the AI accelerator. What do we want to know? How many of them
are they really selling in the real world. But investors seem really bullish around this name as one of the picks and shovels, as Karro calls it in the AI space. This is Bloomberg Technology three two one significant bid for power. They're on the way SpaceX rocket blasting off yesterday carrying the first all European commercial crew to the International Space Station. It's a landmark mission for europe space industry, which frankly has been struggling to get off the ground due to
a number of delays on the launch system side. I want to bring in Bloomberg Space correspondent Lauren Grush. You know, this is kind of business is normal for SpaceX, for Axiom, It's an important moment with an all europe And crew and for commercial spaceflight also important. Just give us the basics of this mission.
Sure, So this is actually the third mission for Axiom Space, which is a company based in Houston hoping to build their own private space stations in the future, and basically these missions that they've been doing with SpaceX. They held a contract to do a number of these missions to
the International Space Station. They're a bit like practice missions pre cruiser missions to an Axiom has its own private space station orbit which it's hoping to launch this decade, So this is giving them kind of a dress rehearsal for when they send humans to their own station one day.
What you said is really interesting. I kind of see the mission as as more evidence or momentum of the public sector space agencies handing over to the private sector to get this done. And you know that I love the numbers, right, SpaceX charges like what fifty five million dollars a seat to carry people up. And then the idea is that Axiom wants to be like the travel operator, you know, the broker, the middle man. Is Is that a good summary?
That's essentially what's happening with these axiomissions. And then eventually, you know, they'll move to their own space station. But yes, the idea is to eventually transfer kind of the or give the keys over to the commercial space industry. You know, right now the main destination for astronauts in lower orbit is the International Space Station, which is overseen by NASA. But you know, eventually the space station will have to
come down. It's destined to stay up until the end of the decade, but the idea is eventually private space stations will take over what the International Space Station has provided for astronauts, and Axiom Space hopes to be one of those companies to take over the reins when the space station has to eventually come to its end.
Lauren, real quick. I know you cannot be in two places at once, but while we speak, there's a key lunar mission being carried out by Japan Space Agency. Just give us a quick summary of what's happening above our heads.
Yes, so, this morning Japan attempted to land its first probe on the service of the Moon, and we.
Were kind of left in a.
State of ambiguity when they said that it landed, but they could not confirm the status of the lander. I believe we just got confirmation that it did indeed land. They secured a signal, but are not sure if it's generating power with its solar panels, which is not necessarily a good sign. I believe there is a press conference going on as we speak, so maybe we can get more details once I sign off.
Here from Planet Earth. For all views on space, Bloomberg's Louren Brush it's great to have you on the program. Next week, the story is all about earnings and into that valuations are high and expectations are high. How does AI God, that's a lot, isn't it factor in to that equation? Next week in the newsflow too clear, movers I wrote out down twenty seven percent. Amazon is hired
by half a percentage point. Bloomberg reporting that according to sources, the EU will move to block the one point four billion dollar acquisition by Amazon of I Robot because they have not offered remedies and they've not addressed the EUS
concerns with arguments. And what's interesting about this. Ten days ago the EU Competition Chief, Margaret a vest There joined me here in this studio, and at that time we knew that Amazon had not offered remedies, and she said, very simply, we need to understand them, what their arguments are. Have listened to this.
In any merger, it is so that if we have concerns, it is for the businesses either to address these concerns by debunking them or by addressing them by coming up with remedies that will solve the problem. And if a company say we will not come.
Up with remedies.
Well, then, of course we expect that they have good arguments that our concerns should not be sustained. And we are still in the process of assessing our concerns compared to a situation where we do not have a remedy to the concerns that we have have drawn up.
So that was the EU Competition Commissioner ten days ago talking to me about this Amazon I Robot deal, saying we don't have remedies, so we need good arguments on why this deal should proceed. I want to bring in Bloomberg to Mark Bergen out of London and Mark what do we know? Because it seems like Amazon did not have good arguments, and it also seems like the issue here is that some kind of meeting has taken place.
You know.
Our understanding, according to sources, is that there was a meeting between EU officials and there was a meeting between Amazon representatives and the had been informed that the EU intens to blot that deal. I think we're having some issues or reporter will go back to it later on. I want to stick with m and A and acquisitions. Valsoft, the Montreal based company specializing in acquiring and growing vertical software Businesses announce the closing of a one hundred and
seventy million dollar funding. Investors include Co two and Viking Until I'd Save also CEO Sam Yusif and my good friend Bling Vaccinali Bassak join us now and Sonali. I'm gonna let you take it away in a second. But Sam, this is an unusual financial transaction, so you're raising money, but the investors are basically handing it over to you so you can go shopping.
Yes, basically, we thanks love for having me on first, Sonali, it's a pleasure to be here.
Basically, we're at.
A point where we twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three were very good years for MNY with interest rates going up, uncertainty around the economy.
For a cerin acquire like us, it was a good environment.
We deployed the capital, did really well, and we went out to the market to you know, get additional funding to execute on our pipeline.
And we had.
Option to raise money through equity, but we had this offer from Kristuan Viking that involved you know, hybrid type of arrangement where they give us money and there's a payment in kind rather than cash.
Interest allowing us.
To preserve maximum liquidity to execute our pipeline and diminish the dilution. Given that we had such a clear way to allocate the capital, we decided to go with something like that because we could increase the value of the company and create more shareholder value that way and delay a little bit the equity financing.
Sam tell us about the process here, because there are a lot of questions about crossover investor big hedge funds in the venture capital space. How hard was it to raise money at this point in time and why did you go to Viking in CO two.
Yeah, well, Viking was already an investor in the company. They bought.
Fifteen percent or so equity stake back in twenty twenty two and twenty three, and then they chose to participate in this funding, backing us to do more what we've been doing. Could Sue has this new crossover fund that suited our needs perfectly? For us, It wasn't hard to raise equity. I think there's a big divergence that's happening in the market between you know, speculative growth and sort
of quality. Valsov's business model is around mission critical software and the serial acquisition of these small to mid size companies.
The market is consolidating, and.
Valsov has been able to build a global platform to be a significant player that consolidation. The market participants appreciated that and wanted to be part of it.
Sam, what about the valuations you're seeing in the market. Presumably they're still falling, So how are the pricing mechanisms behind what you're buying assets for.
So what we saw happening in the market is around the twenty twenty two you know, mid twenty twenty two and all of twenty twenty three.
It was a good market for us.
So we're like a value is the buyer we're looking at, you know, buying things that.
We feel could be a creative to our shareholders.
So with interest rates going up, private equity being a little bit more cautious, the private equity portacoles doing a little less deals, there was an exceptional environment for us because we are cash buyers. We do deals on unlevered basis, and we saw our record pipeline and that continues for now. But you could see, you know, like with the rally that's been happening in the markets, we're starting to see a little bit more competition than we saw over the course of twenty twenty three.
What about the potential to go public? If you think about your own path moving forward and the rivals around you, the potential things that you could buy. Are the public markets attractive or are people preferring private ends.
I think for for a company like ours, the market will be would be reactive like the private market interests and indication of that, and I think we we it would be our plans to execute on an IPO potentially in the next you know, twenty four months or so, if the opportunity.
Comes sam in the market, but also in your operations. I got to ask, how's AI factored into all of this?
Yeah, of course it's the jury remains out.
I mean there's there's I was reading about this this new Star by Shamat Palapatilla the eighty twenty where they're promising to build eighty percent of the futures at ninety.
Percent less of the cost. Our feeling is we deal in vertical.
Market software, so the integrations in a specific industry are very difficult to replicate and give us a barrier of entry, like we haven't seen any meaningful impag We haven't seen any impact at all other than the fact that it's enabled us to offer more to our customers.
For a similar price, and so far.
It's given us some efficiency in terms of we support our customers.
There's efficiency around that.
We've seen the productivity of our developers who up significantly and that's accelerating. The jury remains out. I think it's still not clear, but you could see a world or or software companies become more efficient, and you could also see a world where software companies could become a little bit more commodity, especially more horizontal companies.
Also CEO sam Yusef and bloomd octionality. That's thanks to you both. Some breaking news crossing the bloom Bag terminal within Google deep Mind. Some of its key scientists are in talks to leave and start a new AI startup. Bloom Bag also reporting that those scientists are well looking at fundraising in some big numbers are involved. Let's bring in Bloomberg smart Bergen who is out in London. Mark, you led some of the reporting on this. What do we know?
We don't know a great deal, but we do note that the names are involved are two key long term scientists at deep Mind, which is like being long long considered probably the most leading AI research.
Lab in the world. They're based in Paris, where there's a lot of activity around French AI. We saw the miestrel ai, the Open AI competitor that came up last year and it's now worth two billion. This is a round, we've heard, an initial funding round potentially they're in talks with investors at two hundred million euros, which is a huge amount even for generative AI. But these are researchers that two of them at least, that have had multiple experience.
One of them was involved with the Alpha Go paper, if everyone remembers that from twenty sixteen, where deep Mind built that algorithm that was the first to ever master the game of Go, and it was the seminal work in the field.
All right, Bluebo's Mark Bergen, who is one of the team add in Europe and here in San Francisco reporting out that story. And to your point, two hundred million euros, I mean Mistrel's debut fundraising round was just north of one hundred million US dollars. These are big sums for a two person act that we've seen a lot of activity around in recent months. Thank you very much. Now, coming up here on Bloomberg Technology. We continue talking about all things tech M and A in twenty twenty four
with Masha Butcher from day one Ventures. My goodness, as Friday's go, there is a lot going on. That conversation is coming up next. This is Bloomberg Technology. After the Adobe Figma deal was called off, where do we stand in M and A and particularly in looking ahead to twenty twenty four? Delighted to say we're going to talk about that with Masha Butcher in today's VC Spotlight. She is the general partner and founder of Day one Ventures, an early stage VC firm but with lots of asset
under management. At Masha, we got obsessed in September about a very short lived IPO window, and then we kind of lamented that a lot of deals got shut down. If you're a vented catalyst with a portfolio of maturing companies, what are your options in twenty twenty four? What do you advise them to pursue?
I think, first of all, Pigama's banner was the most interesting and most of important companies of our time. That's creating a tone of value for freelancers and for early stage entrepreneurs and for people, and this deal being call of.
Meant a lot.
I think first of all, it meant for later stage investments that looking to invest in later stage and right now that investors realize, as you had a deal and there is someone who wanted to acquire your portfolio companies and ready to pay sizeable amount for this opportunity, it might not go through because some.
Of the regulator might not let this deal to go through.
This is first and I do think it will lead to decreased the amount of investments in later stage. I think for early stage it would also mean a lot. If this deal went through, it would have been seven billion dollars of fresh capital that it would go back to vcs, to some of.
The early investors in Cligma.
So it's seven billion dollars that would have gone to top tier funds and some other funds that have invested in Figma earlier that they could reinvest in other opportunities and right now they wouldn't be able to do so.
And I think it's.
Also influency early stage in different directions. Right now, everyone understand if you invest in a company in a very early stage at five to ten billion viediation like our fund does you do still can have very good and sizable returns because you have secondary opportunity. You could still make a lot of money. If your company has an advanced billion, it doesn't have to grow as far as
twenty billions. So I do think mid term it will increase competition on early stage, on the stage where we're operating.
The AI case study is very interesting because if you look at early private market investor enthusiasm and take some examples like healthcare or biotech, those types of companies do seem right for acquisition for mature or long standing publicly traded healthcare companies, right that they could be a destination for it. For a smaller firm with a microfocus.
Well, I think AI is very exciting.
I personally think that they are is the only way for us to solve some of the most pressing problems that's related to climate change, that related to some horrible disease like cancer, and it's really there one of the very few ways in the world to increase equality and to give economic opportunities to let us develop places and
less develops part of the population. But I do at the same time, if UAI company, culturally you're so different and you operate so differently compared to the rest of economy is that I don't think it's a good past way for any progressive air company to be acquired by old school big public companies invite for in any other field. So I actually do think we will be in the world when AI companies will be bigger than their old
school companies that's not AI companies. And I do think that in a few years from now, I wouldn't honestly tell you which company would be bigger Open AI, Microsoft, I actually need to work thinking that it would be Open AI. And we can use this analogy when we think about any other A companies.
Musha, what is twenty twenty five all look like for you? You know, where are you going to be focused in writing checks? Thematically or geographically?
I'm really focused on humans my entire career from two perspectives. On the one hand, I think there's like only one topic right now that's as exciting for me as AI, and this is future of human And I think there very different things that falls into this bucket.
That can have to do with longevity and health.
It has to do with future of reproduction, it has to do with mental health.
I do want to explore.
What it is future of human and I do think there are different new leaders like Brian Johnson that pushing the boundaries of what's possible. And I do think Brian himself creating a burse for so called blueprint economy when people will organize the.
Entire lifestyle around that.
I do like to say that future of consumer is longevity, because I think you can get too healthy and you can't get too happy.
And more and more people finding out about.
The opportunity to improve their house, to improve their mental health.
To improve their relationships. So I think future of human is really interesting. And I'm kind of investors that.
Invest very early, and I invest in founders, and I keep being excited about meeting new founders, which is different from.
Anyone else and can change the world.
I think tech founders and tech entrepreneurs are the ones that will drive the biggest change for humanity and definitely change for the better. And I'm very hopeful to meet new companies and find out what are the other crazy things that I come up with that will change the world that we live in right now with such a big spid.
Day one Benchres general partner and founder Marsha Bulcher. Great to have you on the program and good to catch up. Thank you. Now we're also going to stick with AI for the rest of the program. Okay. Ai powered wearables are taking on smartphones, a new crop of pins, monocles, smart sunglasses. We're all coming to market and are trying to challenge the dominance posed by traditional smartphone. I want to bring in Bloomberg's Sharing Gafari, who's been writing about
this in her newsletter. I must say at CES this was the thing. AI is real. It's in these devices. What have you been writing about? That's right.
I think we're seeing the most hype and excitement around AI wearables since perhaps ten years ago when Google Glass first came out. You know, people are really trying to capitalize on the rapid advancements that have been made on the software side with Jenai and bring that into hardware.
A part of this story is a bet that human beings change how they interact in terms of communication. Right. Humane is what we're showing on the screen. Now, we've had the CEO on the show, but it's going to be different from having something physically in your hands. Seems to be the main takeaway.
Correct The idea is for a lot of these devices. They're not aiming to miss necessarily completely replace the smartphone right out, but try to be a supplement to it, kind of like how we have an Apple Watch, so humane is a pin that you can attach to your clothing. There are monocles that you can add to your glasses.
Meta has its smart ray bands, and then of course we're seeing Apple's Vision Pro, which is a lot more heavy duty, and you know, it seems like it's being pitched very much in an enterprise fashion as well, coming out next week.
And a few monocle the monocle three hundred dollars from Brilliant Labs, aipowder. It makes me think about that emoji, which you know, I'll post it on X after this, but we have fifteen seconds. Which of all those things are you most inclined to use?
You know, for me, it's the classic sunglasses.
Actually, on a recent trip to Hawaii, I crushed my normal analog glasses and I had to use Meta's ray band testers that I had for fun, and they kind of, you know, we're sort of seamless because they looked like again, regular shades. I didn't look strained if I was walking around in public wearing them. So for me, something that's sleek and designed well and looks normal is what I about.
Them, all right, Bloomberg Shrien Gafari check out her newsletter, Thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Check out the pod. By the way, new Time starts next week. This is Bloomberg Technology.