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Live from New York. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up. Bitcoin saws close to ninety thousand and then pulls back as tech market shows signs of fatigue. We discuss where next for the Trump rally. Meanwhile, Tesla takes a breather after a forty percent surge since the election. Are the Elon Inc. Investments overdone? And fundamentals and focus as we dig into earnings with Shopify president among the executives joining
the show. But first we just check in on what perhaps is a slight pullbuck for what has a phenomenal rally across tech companies and indeed across crypto. We're down just by about a ten per percent on the Nasdaq one hundred. Nvidia still on the higher side. Tesla drags us down from a points perspective after a real rapid run up. Says the election results on Wednesday, I'm looking
what's happening in the world of crypto? What by one and a half percent at one point this number was so close to ninety thousand dollars in excess of eighty nine thousand, we draw back someone after we see technical signs of overbought if you're looking at the RSI, But overall we're also just seeing maybe a pause in the realities that have been a more than one hundred percent jump in bitcoin so far this year and a more than three trillion dollar market capitalization of the ecosystem in
and of itself when you're looking at digital assets. Shanali Bassack is here for more, and boy have we come far, and maybe just.
A bit of a pause here, a bit of a pause to your point, that ninety thousand dollars level is one to watch, I would say, Caroline. What it's incredible is even those in the crypto community watch what was happening this week with r because it was so stunning rise Jess yesterday alone. And you have to remember since before the election, bitcoin was trading at under seventy thousand dollars and so that rise to almost ninety thousand dollars. If you bought one bitcoin the day before the election,
you're almost twenty thousand dollars richer for it. And you're seeing crypto link stocks also take a breather. The coin base for examples, take just their eight day gain. It is seventy five percent. So the run up you've seen is just tremendous, and you have to also take a note.
How much news there still is to come.
Typically in a new administration, you would see an SEC chair, for example, step down quite swiftly. We don't know how Gary Gensler is going to behave in this scenario, but any new SEC chief under a Trump administration would really be very telling for the direction of the industry. There are laws that are waiting to be passed when it comes to stable coin. There are questions about whether they will be a play out of the promise.
Of a strategic bitcoin reserve.
And later today we'll be talking to Marathon as well, and we'll talk a little bit about that mining promise, this kind of made in America crypto story, and how possible that is and how quickly that could.
Ramp up as and when it becomes the crypto capital of the United States. At least that's the promise, Shanali. There are people though, in the meantime, making a whole lot of money. You just mentioned about how much you'd be up if you've been long bitcoined, But it took us through some of the billionaires doing well.
Yeah, think about Mike Novogratz alone, for example, and he is a few billion dollars richer just off the most recent rally, and it really is just wealth simply tied to crypto. The Winklevi as well, Winklevoss twins of course, have had a tremendous comeback story. And you think about not just the most recent comeback and how much they've gained in the most recent rally, but where they were just.
A couple of years before.
The CEO of Binance as well, remember he had retained his stake in the cryptocurrency exchange.
And when we think.
About this as well, how are they making money? It's not just their holdings in bitcoin, but of course the enterprises that they oversee and the variety of assets they hold in the crypto community.
You are seeing here.
Now not just the surge you've seen in Bitcoin alone, but things like Solana and dogecoin, and then the exchanges, as we've talked about, that are owned by the likes of cz when it comes to finance and coinbase alone, and Brian Armstrong a billionaire as well.
Shanali Beassek. You're going to want to hear more from her and her show Billibog Crypto twelve pm Eastern today, So appreciate you joining. Meanwhile, let's get to what it means for the rest of the market. Joe's as with us. He's managing partner at Millennia Capital, the tech fund focused
on VC and growth equity investments. And Joe, we come to you not only because of your expertise in the world of enture capital, but also the former hat used to wear in monetary policy making over at the Federal Reserve. Many now wondering if these markets have rallied too far, particularly if you think about infraationy pressure is coming. What do you think is going on o the Fed right now?
Look, let's start from the top.
So I think the next two years are going to be really, really good for investments, So let's start with monitored policy. There's the easing cycle, not only in the US but globally, so capital is flowing back into financial markets, equity markets, and that will take kind of a year to materialize.
But the easing cycle will continue even with tariffs.
On them, because once the ship starts pivoting, it just doesn't stop overnight. And even if let's say we thought the terminal rate was going to be twenty a half, maybe now with teriffs and other stuff, maybe they'll end it at three percent. That's still going to be a lot easier than today at five percent. And then on the other side of fiscal policies, on the fiscal policy side, you're going to see the administration and the Congress working together to put a lot of I think stimulus into
the economy, into the real economy. So when you come by monitor and fiscal you've got two things working at once. And that's why you know, I'd expect they're really economy to grow by two to three percent for the next few years. And if you're in tech investing, if you're kids, you'll probably benefit. So the rally we're seeing, I think is an early reflection of that. And I don't think this rallies even stop or past.
Okay, so who leads us higher? And the moment on the day and video still manages to be above water when the rest of the tech market pulls back a bit, is it still the AI winners that lead the charge?
It has to be because you know, AI is just the latest thing in tech, and you never want a short innovation human progress. AI is just the latest wave in innovation. And so we're in your or in the second ending of this AI cycle that's going to run for ten to fifteen years, and so AI is going to track Let's see, let's say real TDP is in a row two percent without AI. I think with AI, real TDP will probably grow by three percent approximately cager
over the coming years. And AI is not only attracting a lot of investments, but it's also going to spin off a lot of applications.
We're seeing someone that inventory capital.
You see AI in robotics, you see AI in search, AI in healthcare, and AI AI agents.
So in a coming two to five.
Years, you're going to see a lot of new categories coming out and with a lot of new products, businesses and in bestwins. And that's kind of what's going to drive real GDP forward.
So when people question the return on AI, when people are wondering, Okay, look, I see the hyperscale is putting ever more money into in video, but I'm not seeing impact my life or indeed broad now you say, just patients two things.
One, these things grow like this, it's you know, we're at that early inflection point. The second thing, which I'll give like a very silly analogy that I've given our partners and I think my our.
Partners love it.
Let's say you have a few plans in your house you're looking at every single day.
You're like, you're not growing.
You go on vacation for weeks, you come back, the plan's gotten twice taller. So I think that the naysayers are looking at these things every single day. But what you got to do as an investor is to take a step back, check on these businesses and your portfolio companies every three to six nine months. You'll see that there's actually a lot of progress being made in our portfolio,
in our ecosystem. We're seeing entrepreneurs coming out of incumbents every single day, coming out of some of the companies that STA build a landa and they're.
Building new businesses.
It does take two to five years to really building enduring business. Probably more so, I think we're just being a bit impatient.
I'm looking at a portfailure. Now, we've got some interesting companies and let's just take for example, SpaceX, LED by one Elam Musk, who is now very close to the seat of power. How much does that make you feel as ultimately your view on Elon Musk being able to handle all these different roles is different job titles, whether or not it's an official role in the cabinet or not. Do you still want to be backing the companies that he builds?
Well, Look, we're very fortunate to have invested in many companies that are category leaders in AI in various sector's cloud. And I think on this entrepreneur, and I can't talk too much about it. The one thing that I'll say is, and I'm gonna use another silly analogy, you don't bet against the greatest entrepreneur of all time before he's even
hit his prime. And I think, you know, so, I think whether it's this company or other companies, we take a long view and in fact, post liquidity events for these investments with distribute stocks to our investors as the management from scaling offices and our capital.
Base is long term focused.
So I think we're going to be holding these stocks for the next five, ten, fifteen years, and we're really betting on what's coming for you know, down the pipeline.
Do you bet against companies he's taken issue with because he's taking an issue with opening.
No, No, like I think that in you know, again, we're long AI, We're long tech, we're long innovation, We're long of the American economy. And I think that I think, you know, there are some folks I've encounters who are really really negative on some of these things.
And what I'll say is.
You can short a stock in the short term, but you can't short any economy. If you're short innovation, human spirit, and the real economy, you might not do so well. So sometimes these stocks will come come up and down, both in public and private markets. But again, as a long term investor, we're supposed to hold a long view and just being these companies for five, ten, fifteen years, and I think we'll do fine.
What about China or other countries that are trying to build tech ecosystems that the US is ultimately potentially going to start pushing against even harder.
You look, I was in the UK, I was in Dubai, I was in Asia, and I think you know there's you know, we're in a UK based ad company, we're in one in Israel and you travel around the world, the US is by far the category leader in this AI race. Everybody else is miles behind, and there's two, three and four might not be you know, are probably very far behind. And I think that this race is only starting just I don't see sort of our positions
being challenged yet. But I think competition is greatright because you makes you work harder. But I think if you look at our portfolio, our theusis is we think that this AI boom is going to drag tech earnings and tech growth by a big amount, and that I think in the next ten years we're going to look back like how we looked at the Internet and be like, why don't we invest more?
That plant is going to grow a lot of wofully hopefully going to have him here in the studio. Managing partner and Millennium Capital Shopify shares say that twice plenty it's soaring at the moment. Look we're having the best days. It's May twenty twenty three, after the reported third quarter of sales that climbed twenty six percent. This is a sign that the Canadian e commerce company is really gaining
momentum with big enterprise clients. European growth. We're going to dig into it with the shop OFFI President, Harley Finkelstein. Great to have you back on the show, Harley, and just talk to us about the growth trajectory here and how you're seeing a shift in particular to enterprise clients. Can you talk us through it?
Absolutely, I mean it was a great quarter, certainly.
GMV was up twenty four percent to sixty nine billion, revenue was up twenty six percent to two point two billion, and free cashual margin expanded in nineteen percent. So I think what you're seeing is you're seeing us grow both the top land but also the bottom line. And I think the other thing that, as you sort of point out, which we're really excited about, is that more merchants are coming to Shopify across verticals, across geography, and even across
sizes of merchants. In one area that I'm especially proud of is the headway we're making bringing the biggest brands on the planet on to Shopify. In fact, this quarter alone, we saw sixteen enterprise launches on Shopify. Companies like Hanes and on Running and Off White and Victorious secret To
coming to us as well. And so I think We're really substantial that we're not just an e commerce company for a domestic type of merchant, but we can handle the largest businesses that want to sell globally.
And as you said, companies that are globally based as well. Europe really shining a light where many would perhaps feel that the European economy might not vindicate that. Tell us about the growth in Germany and France and the light.
Yeah, it's remarkable.
I mean, you know, we think about international from two sort of vectors. The first is when you set up for Shopify, how can we make it really easy to be default global as opposed to just think about your home country as your total adressable market on Shopify using things like managed markets, you can immediately sell everywhere. But the other vector is also merchants that come to Shopify.
And if you look at international GMV that outpaced North America at over thirty percent year on year in Q three. European specific GMV grew over thirty five percent in Q three year on year, that was led by UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. And if you look at the merchant base itself, international merchants increased by thirty six percent year over year.
So we're seeing success, certainly in North.
America and the English speaking world, but we're all seeing a lot of success right now in era.
A lot of that has been perhaps you've been enticing these new clients because you in particular hardly have been willing to spend on sales and marketing. How much does that remain more than three hundred million dollar endeavor on a quarter?
Yeah, I mean the way we think about first of all, up until very recently, you know, the focus on Shaft was product and we only started building our go to market engine specifically for the enterprise in the last you know, two years or so, and it's really starting to work. When you combine really good, strong execution on go to market with really great marketing, the results speak for themselves.
The way we think about marketing, though, is very scientific.
We have very strong guardrails in eighty month payback is that we look for and when we see opportunities to spend to get a proper return in a proper you know, payback period, we spend and if we don't, we do pull back. But the content that the entire philosophy around marketing is ROI driven. We experiment if we see results, we double.
Down and many singling out the operating margin nineteen percent. Liking that. So sticking to that particular focus, I'm interested in the expansion. Basically, you've always been known as this provider of tools for mum and pop shops, and now clearly it is growing. The enterprise size is growing, the international focus is growing, and also wholesale is growing. What about this B to B element, It's pretty remarkable.
I mean, you know, this all started because of existing merchants on Shopify who are very very strong and direct to consumer, you know, selling director to the end consumer began to ask us if we can also help them sell wholesale sell to their on the B to B side of things, and so we started probablybout two and a half years ago, put in together a very compelling product. You allow existing merchants to also sell to also sell
to to in a B to B fashion. The end result is that a lot of B to B only exclusive merchants began to come to Shopify, companies like Carrier that are using shopla to sell industrial heating and cooling, you know, pieces of technology and engines. And the result is that B to B GMB grew over one hundred and forty five percent your of UR and Q three. That's five consecutive quarters of triple digit B to B
GMB growth. And so you know, you use a great term before you said, you know, we started as as SMB and specific, but now we're also seeing a lot of success around B to B internationals we talked about, but also offline we are now powering many more large, complex multilocation merchants. In fact, offline GMB was a twenty
seven percent year on year. And what you're seeing when you sort of bring this all together is we are creating this unified, single retail operating system so that large brands and small brands can come to us and sell across every single surface area.
We've got very little time, Hallie, but what do you put in place if we are going to see more tariffs, how will that affect your business?
I mean, we've been operating for twenty years. I've been a shop life for more than a third of my life, and we've seen a lot of administrations come in. Our job is not to try to predict exactly what's going to happen. Whatevery administration is going to do. Our job is to arm our merchants with everything you need to be successful no matter what comes out. And like I said, we've been doing that for more than two decades. We will continue to do that.
Haney Finkelstein. Great to have you shop a five President. Thank you. Now let's turn our attention to this year Singles Day Hall. It appears to be one of the biggest yet all according to China's biggest e commace platforms like Ali Baba, like JD dot Com which all is you a raft of numbers showing robust growth showing the country's biggest anial online shopping Gala. But there are some selective disclosures going on from some of the tech leaders.
An investors are at to concern they're getting a kind of incomplete picture. Henry Wren has got the inside track for us. What are we worried about? Henry?
So Yeah, this year marks the fifteenth anniversary.
Of Single Stay.
But unlike the previous years where when you have those e commerce platforms throwing our huge watching parties disclosing sales states on our to hour basis, these companies just disclose data on selective basis. For example, JD dot Com said that shoppers on its platform increased by twenty percent, while premium shoppers on Ali Baba's team Ol platforms they increased fifty percent. But as you said, these are all selective disclosures.
Alternative data. For example, third party providers said gmbs on e commerce platforms during period increased by twenty seven percent year over year.
But we also have to take that with a pinch of salt as.
Well, because these days e commerce platforms are elongating their double eleven discount period to almost a month, which is the longest in the fifteen years of history. So all those kinds of data need to take in with a pinch of salt. And as we know, the macro is still weak in China, the housing market is still in the downturn, and consumers are still cautious.
So is just Singles Day losing significance.
Yeah, you can say that because the Single Day has been running for almost a month and it came actually right after the National Day holiday, which is in early October, So you can say that those two events are just packed.
Up along with each other, along with each other.
But also in the meantime, we are having other shopping events around the year as well. For example, sixty one eight is another event that people are watching about. So we can say that there are indeed a sharper fatigue at this period of time because there are so many discounts going on.
All over the year.
Henry Wren, we so appreciate it. Meanwhile, let's turn our attention to Snap for a moment. Shares, as you'll see, under pressure by more than four percent. Reports that Trump is expected to try and holt a TikTok ban that been reported by the Washington Post affecting some of the social media companies today. This has been big technology. Make a quick look at Tesla shares because the stock is
giving away a little bit of its past gains. Boy has it run up on the forty percent since Trump's election. The market cap in excess of one trillion dollars once again. But it's not just Hasler that we're focusing on the market. Love for Elon Musk has been focusing elsewhere as well. Support is buying up speculative assets linked to the billionaire, like dogecoin, like closed end fund Destiny Tech one hundred, the many retail investors hoping to profit from Donald Trump's reelection.
Primbergstnitza Tagova is here with the inside track of what has the retail community and others been buying up.
Yeah, we've really seen incredible euphorium among retail traders. Just to zoom out and look at retail trader activity, we're seeing a record to retail trailer activity and options, and retail traders got to options when they want to chase that upsite, when they want to chase the games we're seeing in Tesla. There is for example, a leverage the TESTWATF, which allows investors to get two times the games of Tesla.
It's been one of the most traded tools.
Investors are really looking to double their beds go and of course, looking at Destiny one hundred, the games have been incredible. We had more than two hundred and eighty percent today. Obviously some of the games have faded, but we had volatility so high that trading was halted, really really high retail activity. And of course dogecoin, which in the whole crypto space we're seeing really really strong activity.
Dosh cooin is actually one of the currencies that.
Was outperforming Bitcoin, so the speculity fever there is very very strong.
Of course, go back to the Destiny one hundred. What exactly is this closed end fund and why when it's down twenty five percent? We know that it's a volatile kind of product to be trading. Why do people have concerns about it?
Well, obviously this has exposure to a lot of private market companies that have our heart liquid vehicles and thirty.
Loads to SpaceX for example. That's why people are betting on.
It thirty eight percent of that front SpaceX. So when we see voltility in SpaceX, obviously the.
Moves are so big on the upside and the downside. If we go back a few months back, we remember the stock was up more than thousand percent.
It was really heavy volatility.
And what we saw with Teswall in the much smaller scale is obviously the company was struggling for quite some time and now the games are much bigger. But of course in a company like SpaceX that is private and it's more liquid, we see a lot more volatility. But the fund of course is relatively small. But we see similar funds who have exposers to SpaceX. For example, there is a Barren fund that was down on the year.
It's now up on the year just because of that SpaceX game. So It's incredible how much it can give in terms of performance.
Sunny has whether there's a leverage three x Tesla ETP that's currently traded over in London, just down on the day, but well, they will get you a long term chart on some of these things, but they have certainly been a winning formula since the election. Denisa over great reporting. We appreciated. Welcome back to me med Technology. I'm Caroline
Heide in New York. Let's get a quick check on these markets that are perhaps just taking a bit of a breather after a phenomenal run higher post the election results of Wednesday last week. We're just down by about two tens percent on the nastat one hundred. Some of the key names that drive us lower from the points of perspective is Tesla that we've just been shining a light on after a forty percent run higher since the election. Bitcoin off of those highs. At one point it was
ever so close to ninety thousand dollars. We now pull back a little bit as the technical indicators show that we are overbought. We'll dig into it in a moment, but let's get on to some of the individual names, because there is some key news out Honeywell, the best points provider on the upside when you're looking at the
nastat one hundred more than three percent. Elliot Investment Management and Activist Investors has built a five billion plus position in Honeywell, pushing for a breakup of the industrial giant that in our space is very focused on aerospace and automation. It is indeed a tech name. Nvidia up by two point two percent. We're seeing some chip strength above and beyond really for Nvidio, but not so for the rest
of the market. Will dig into why chips have been a little bit weaker In a moment, Soft Bank off more up by more than a percentage point. We shine a light on the ADRs. This is it's reported its biggest quarterly profit in two years. Successful Indian listings are coming, but then really trying to get those coffers back so Massa can make his next beep, which is all around ai Remember they took a half billion dollar position in
open Aiye's latest fundraising round. We want to talk about Asia a little bit more as well, and a key Southeast Asian tech company reported earnings grab shares really rising today after the right hailing and Delivery leader posted third quarter earnings that exceeded expectations. We said its earnings forecast for the year. Peter Ue joins us. He's grab CFO Peter Ooh, it's been a long day for you. We appreciate you coming on the show and just talk to
us a little bit about what's driving the growth. We saw what seventeen percent increase in revenue and your forecasts to where everyone's exuberant.
Sure, we saw very strong result in Q three, Caroline, and what we're seeing his strong momentum in our business. We have more users on our platform ever before, and we're seeing growth acceleration on our on demand business with some mobility and deliveries business, and a lot of this is really driven by all the new product sets that we've been rolling out over the last three quarters and
those are really coming into action now. And also our financial services business continues to be our fastest growing segment today, So we're firing in all cylinders. Strong demand is we exit the year to one of our big most busiest quarter, which is the holiday season that.
We have in front of us.
How much are you still having to focus in on the cost cutting side, The focus on net profit over and above perhaps expanding the market share as it was before revenue growth at all costs.
Sure. Yeah. So one of the things about Q three, which is was a very strong set of results, it was also not on the top of also on the bottom line.
So what do we see.
We saw high adjusted EBIDAB. We posted the highest ninety million dollar quarter adjusted EBIDA, which is the eleventh consecutive quarter EBIDA improvement. We also posted net profit for the business and also cash flow. Now we're balancing both growth and profitability, and what we're doing is making sure also that the top of the funnel, the demand is strong.
We're continuing to capture those demands, but at the same time also balancing costs and also making sure that operating leverage as a business continues to continue to grow and continue to sustain. So we're balancing both and you've seen them in the third quarter of our results where you're seeing the growth in the top and also the profitability on the bottom.
You're balancing investors' desires as well for all some returns when it comes to buybacks. For example, JP Morgan, analyst saying, look, with these healthy free cash flows, maybe you could raise prospects for an increase in buyback programs. Would you do that? Beta.
We have a buyback program in place today and it's a five hundred million dollar buyback program. It's we initiated in the first quarter of this year. We're about forty percent of the way through there, so we still have some ways to go, and we're continuing to make good momentum in the buyback program. And what I would say is,
think about our capital allocation framework is three things. One is making sure that we're investing in the organic growth of our business, and we're seeing that plan coming into play with all the new products that we've been investing in. Organic growth is our highest yield and we're going to continue to invest when it comes to more M and A opportunities in organic growth, the bar is extremely high
for us now. When we do have excess liquidity, we do want to return them to our shareholders, and you've seen our first step in doing that earlier this year by this five hundred million dollar buyback program.
Okay, JP, Morgan ANDAs might have to hold on a little bit longer for any articulation of arrays in the next one, But what about the areas of growth about it, whether it's the financial products, but also advertising as well coming to your platform. That's something we've seen with Uber, which is a big holder of your stock and back of the company. How are they going How much will we see that contribute to revenue going forward?
Sure? Yeah, Advertising actually is a love component about business which is growing very.
Fast at the moment.
Actually we're at a clip now where it's doing two hundred million dollars from an annualized basis. Now, if you look at the penetration of advertising, we're continuing to grow that as a revenue as a percentage of our deliveries GMB. We finish the quarter at one point six percent and we continue to grow that and we're also up on a euro of a year basis. And one of the things that we're seeing also it's helping our merchants. We are bringing in more merchants onto our platform also for
their advertising services. It's a win win situation. Also we bring them traffic back to them and we see actually the advertising to be still a lot of outside in front of us. So we're going to continue to double down an advertise as well as also as we continue to also look to expanding a growth street delivery also that will also bring another layer of advertising business for us.
With overall, it feels as though, as you said, you're firing on all cylinders. The share price up a lot on the day, but I just want to take a longer term perspective here, because if you do put in a five year chart of your stock, it is down significantly from previous highs, and many have been trying to understand also just the extent of the growth in the market, particularly when you've got some macro headwinds for Southeast Asian consumers.
Can you just tell us about where next for the next five years to get perhaps the share price back at those all time highs.
Sure, I mean, if you step back on Southeast Asia, six hundred and sixty million people, fifty percent of those population are under the age of thirty. It's a smartphone and first Nations. We operate in eight country, seven hundred cities, which is pretty much the whole of Southeast Asia today, and we still believe that we're still underpenetrated where GRAP operates today. So if you look at my mobility business today,
you're looking at high single digit penetration. If you look at deliveries business in the mid teen so there's still a long way to go. And if you look at the financial services side of our house, also, sixty percent of Southeast Asians are underbanked or underserved, so there's a big tam opportunity for us. And what we're seeing is from a macro perspective and from a demand it's not slowing down if anything. Actually it's going through a strong momentum.
And one of the components that we're seeing actually is the level of tourism in Southeast Asia. Tourism is a very critical component, very influenced sector of Southeast Asian economy, and we're seeing continual increase of tourism into all the different countries in Southeast Asia, especially coming out of the COVID days to where we are today, and we're capturing those markets. But one of the biggest beneficiary actually of tourism in the right handling as well as the food
delivery site. So if you look at from a longer term perspective, and I'll just side a third party report that came out last week that over the next five years, the digital economy of Southeast Asia, where their mobility deliveries will be growing at double digit kgar growth. So we're very bullish on Southeast Asia and we're going to continue to double down on Southeast Asia, and we're going to by doing actually more products and services for our customers.
He recently brought that listeners to our CFO briefing recently and staying up for us and to hop us midnight in your time. We appreciate it. Peace ere we grab CFO now. In other earnings in Finia and Germany's biggest chip maker, says it sees a turnaround by the end of twenty twenty five fiscal year. The company forecasts they drop in sales in the first quarter, but then it expects a return to double digit growth by the fourth quarter.
Gloomberg spoke with Infinian CFO a little bit earlier. Take listen, we.
See a much more pronounced seasonality in terms of inventory management by major customers, so they are many their inventories very very strictly towards their kalinda and fiscal year end.
Fininche has pushed high. Let's just take a look at the rest of the market in megxemniy graffeos with us and is it about earnings? Is it still about the election. What are you keeping around?
It looks like the market is just taking a breather because we had the biggest five day run up in the S and P five hundred all year that concluded yesterday, So it seems like people had really been bidding up the Trump trade. Kinds of stocks, Internationals were lower, and now we're seeing a little bit more strength there. Bitcoin was one of the big Trump trades that we're also
seeing take a breather. So I would say overall, long term investors are still pretty bullish that Trump's policies will support sectors like financials, tech names, bitcoin, but today people maybe taking some profits. There was a note from City that said that the post election advance in US stocks could run out of steam as investors start to take profits. Investors sent is favorable, but valuations overall looking stretched. And when I look in like some names in particular, the
semiconductors are doing pretty poorly today. And what's really interesting, Caroline, is that in Vidia's higher, and Video is up over two percent, but the SAC Semiconductor index is lower. There's only four names in that index today that are higher, and you can really see that the weakness in the semi names is pretty broad based in video's games can't even carry that index into positive territory today.
Micron one of the worst performers, and there're mad some notes out of some analysts about weakness and centain areas of particularly focused on chips, and overall we're seeing the weakness in certain chips and also maybe in some of the social media companies on the back of the Washington Post report that maybe we do see a TikTok ban overturned by Trump, But then we're next in terms of the next set of assets that you keep an eye on, and indeed the earnings the fundamentals that we're likely to
still get from businesses.
So I'm watching ten Cent because we have those earnings coming up pretty soon. This will be one that investors are watching because a lot of people are focused on China's macro economic picture and how companies in China are going to fare with more stimulus, Is it working, is it trickling down into businesses. Tencent is actually outperforming the US ad rs, are outperforming the S and P five
hundred this year. They're up about thirty five percent, and analysts are actually saying that they expect Tencent to sustain or even accelerate the pace of revenue growth. And because they're not an e commerce company, they might not be as exposed to any weakness in China like some of their big megacap Chinese competitors are. But yeah, I guess I'm going to be watching that name watching.
Disney for a little bit later in the week as well, Amanie Grafair. Always great to have on the show. We appreciate it. May while coming up a big announcement from a major player in the field of general to AI right, a CEO co founder may have been joins us next
on a fundraising announcement. This is blue meg technology. AI startup Writer already helps clans like Loreal, like Spotify, like Uber produce corporate content and as major growth plans, and today the generative AI platform is announcing to spearhead that growth two hundred million dollars in a series C funding round here with more. Writer, CEO and co founder may have been congratulations, it's a big valuation as well of
one point nine billion dollars. What are you going to use that two hundred million dollars to do?
Oh, thank you so much, Caroline. It's wonderful to be here, We're going to use the money for the next buildout of the next phase of writer autonomous AI systems that can plan and execute complex enterprise workflows across systems, across teams. It's that across systems part that has gotten Adobe and Salesforce and Workday really excited. We have a shared vision for how systems can can talk to each other to make generative AI incredibly, incredibly valuable in the enterprise.
Salesforce is actually one of your investors, and Salesforce is an area that is also focusing very much on agentic AI, building agents to make me and you and everyone far more productive when in the workplace. How are you different? How are you additive?
Yeah?
So four years ago, right, we started working on pioneering the enterprise generative AI category, and Salesforce has been a customer for a very long time, and what we have heard from them and others over those four years is enterprises want complete end to end solutions, right, and that's our full stack PLATH. It's LMS with retrieval, with observability, with guardrails, all in one package, helping them get to
value faster. It's a little different than what Salesforce has built into their platform, which is very complementary, complimentary.
Where is therefore the competition Is it an open AI which has been doubling down on its enterprise focus.
So right now enterprise gener of AI is everything everywhere, all at once. It is very confusing for the enterprise buyer. But this is why architecture matters, and our architecture is winning. Investors in this round have underwritten, you know, extraordinary growth in the enterprise because we're helping folks get these mission critical use cases to production. Folks like Mars, like Uber, like Qualcom, like Kenview, very powerful use cases that are accelerating their businesses.
So for those that are frustrated at the moment when they come on they say, I don't see the return on investment in AI, I want to know where it's making us all that much more productive. Is it all about content generation? Is it all about marketing? Where else do you expand to?
Yeah?
I mean we have helped companies cut down legal compliance reviews by more than seventy five percent. We've helped folks increase revenue on their retail channels more than twenty percent, from dog food to face creams. We've helped our customers get their products to market, So it goes way beyond the marketing function. Any function within your company that can use a knowledge assistant, a knowledge retrieval application is benefiting from writer.
Therefore, this money does it get really attributed? It into talent at the moment? What is your blocker to scale at the pace that you want to scale at?
May?
Yeah, well, we're building our next generation of LLMS models that are trained on data that is vision, text and action together. So our vision is enterprises that are more intelligent, more creative, faster as a result of autonomous AI that can architect these complex workflows.
So to that point, where do you attribute this money? Like you're talking about how the real focus is going to be on the product and invasion the lars language models that are the eye all of this. But is it therefore getting more salespeople out there? Is it about actually underlying engineering talent that.
You need to be fun It is both engineering and go to market. On the engineering side, we are hiring AI engineers, we are hiring full stack engineers. On the go to market side, sales and CS people, we take a really differentiated approach to how we partner with customers. It's incredibly intimate and for us, the series C is really doubling down on our engineering talent and our go to market talent.
May Heabib great to catch up with your congratulations, CEO and co founder of writer Time Now for talking tech. First up, Netflix says seventeen million viewers are watching it shows with advertising every single month, nearly double the total from May. Netflix plans to make advertising a major revenue source to complement subscriptions, though its ad business is still pretty small compared to its peers.
Plus.
Argentine fintech company Walla has raised three hundred million dollars from investors. Evaluation of two pint some five billion dollars is the latest funding hale of for one of the most valuable startups in that in America, backed by the likes of Soros Fund Management, Gold and Saxon Tencent. Meanwhile, sticking with VC, Donald Trump Junior won't be joining his
father's administration, instead joining seventeen eighty nine Capital. It's a VC firm that invests in conservative leaning companies that call into sources when. The firm was founded by Trump donor Ome and Mallick and has essued ESG principles to instead follow its own acronym EIG Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Growth. Now let's just stick with the Trump impact on certain areas.
And indeed you're on MUSK because Threads a Blue Sky, the rival social networks that look a lot likely on musks X have seen an influx of new users since election night in the US. That's says People's c alternatives and must small right leaning platform. Let's break it all down with Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner and Kurt anecdotally, I've seen it on Threads, people saying I'm joining post the election, But is it happening on mass Is their data to prove this out?
Yeah, I'm seeing it anecdotally as well. My feed on both services has just been full of people sort of introducing themselves, saying, Hey, I'm just coming over to see you know, the water's warm on this side, leaving X. But the numbers seem to suggest this is happening as well. So Blue Sky says it has added seven hundred thousand new users in the last week. They now have fourteen point five million total accounts that have been created, so
seven hundred thousand is a pretty significant jump. For them in one week, and then Threads was the number one free app in the US App Store yesterday, the first time it had been in that number one spot in a couple of weeks since before the election. So you can see, you know that both kind of rival services are having a little bit of a spike here, a little bit of a moment as people, as you say, are are looking for an alternative to X.
How are they using things like threads. People have many ways of seeing that matters not wanted to be a place for political discussion. But is it therefore going to Threads or is it people behaving in a different manner.
Yeah, I think people want to go to three and sort of feel like they're getting that Twitter experience. But to your point, because Meta is sort of leaning away from politics, they're not getting it for the most part, and so as a result, I see a lot of mixed kind of bag, right. I see some people who who try to talk politics they're not really getting that
engagement and they're complaining about it. I know, for me, on election night, I remember, excuse me, the day after the election, I pulled something up on Threads that I thought was brand new, you know, election related information I found it, it was more than twenty four hours old, right, so it's not really a great place right now for
breaking news. I think for people who used Twitter and use x for news and especially political news, they're probably not going to scratch that itch over on threads right now. But remember this platform is not even two years old. It's not even a year and a half old, so it's still sort of figuring out exactly what it's for.
But it does have a large audience to do that.
And briefly, I mean, it hasn't switched on ads yet. Interestingly, in Europe, we've been reporting that there's going to be less personalized ads for Meta in Europe. But there's also news that maybe we see TikTok not banned in the US. That's something that you've been talking about a lot. Is that impacting Meta and other social media companies?
It very well could, right because if TikTok does ultimately get banned in January, the number one company that should benefit would be Meta because they have a direct clone of the TikTok product with reels in Instagram. Right, So if TikTok kind of survives and continues, a lot of that upside that people might be baking into MetaStock price is going to go away, so I think it's logical to think that if Meta is down, it could be related to this idea that Trump might try.
To save TikTok Cut Wagner. Great reporting, We appreciate it. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of blombg Technology. Do not forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart from New York. This is the blomleg Technology