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Bloomberg Tech Live in San Francisco

May 09, 202442 min
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Episode description

Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow take the pulse of the world of technology at the Bloomberg Tech live event in San Francisco as they sit down with CEOs and visionaries driving change. They speak with the CEOs of Arm, Hugging Face, Writer AI and more as part of this live special. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1

From our heart.

Speaker 2

We're Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.

Speaker 3

Live from sunny San Francisco and Caroline Hyde.

Speaker 4

And our Ed Ludlow.

Speaker 5

This is a special edition of Bloomberg Technology. Coming up will bring you live coverage from our technology event as we speak with the CEOs and visionaries that are driving change in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Speaker 3

Now at this hour, we're speaking with the CEOs of Arm, of Hugging, Face, of Writer, AI and more as part of our live special.

Speaker 4

And a lot more to come.

Speaker 5

We'll push your head to our keynote speakers later today. That includes Adam Newman, Whitney Wolf Heard, Evan Spiegel and more.

Speaker 4

And while it.

Speaker 5

May not be a surprise to anyone too, did it's certainly not a surprised to us. Artificial intelligence is probably the overriding theme of the event. It's AI everything, even in some cases if you're not an AI company.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean I think it has to be. Even if you're not the AI company at heart, you're thinking about how you adapt to it, push it forward and bring out the productivity. But Ultimately, how do we live up to the hype? The valuations are so extraordinary in the private markets, they've been pretty heavy in the public markets as well. Are we really seeing the level of producted divity and growth and real use cases?

Speaker 5

Do mindication that these events are always very interesting, very engaging. Everyone's very positive, But I would say in the background, there's a talent war, frankly, and people are running out of cash.

Speaker 4

So we've got to ask those difficult questions too.

Speaker 3

And geopolitics, how are you navigating the issue of China as well? So so much to talk about in here and the now. We're talking about one key infrastructure playing When it comes to artificial intelligence, we're of course going to be talking about the chip design firm ARM, which has really bounced offlows in terms of its share price throughout the trading of today. We're currently over the last

two days down by one point few percent. Coming out after the bell with its earnings, tapid forecast head was what the market seemed to be focusing in on, even though they absolutely smashed it in terms of their fiscal fourth quarter numbers and their fourth first quarter. To look ahead, let's stick in to some of that caution with Renee has is the arm CEO. Renee wonderful to have time with you. And look, there does seem to be a worry about your full year forecasts? Are you being cautious?

Speaker 2

Well, thanks both for having me Ed and Caroline. We just came off a record year in terms of revenue. We were up twenty percent a little bit over twenty percent our fiscal twenty three from twenty twenty two, and we're actually forecasting even higher growth this year, north of twenty percent. And we also signaled to the markets yesterday that in twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, we see

that growth continuing. So we have incredible visibility to our business and we're very, very confident of growth rate going forward.

Speaker 5

We're just seeing your shares actually ticking to positive territory rene up now six tenths of one percent. The underlying story is the build out in AI infrastructure. Right, we're talking about data center powered GP by GPUs. Your numbers were good. Tell me about the underlying demand then about the long term and the addressable market you think is either intact or is not.

Speaker 3

Well.

Speaker 2

I think this AI buildout, as you describe, or maybe said another way, just expanding capacity to run these foundation models, to do more and more training, to do more and more inference.

Speaker 3

We really are only.

Speaker 2

At the very beginning because when you start to think about the capabilities that this could unleash, whether it's around healthcare, farmer research, productivity, gains, call centers, we're still in the very very early days. That all starts with having to do this level of training and inprints in the cloud, but it ultimately will find itself in every single edge device, whether that's a PC, your smartphone, your car, and whether it's all those devices I've mentioned from the data center

to the edge devices. They all run on ARM. So we have incredible visibility to where this is all going, which is why we're very confident in the growth rates. They're also one of the big problems you've got with all of these AI data centers is around energy and power. So power efficiency being so key, it's what ARM is

really good at. Increasingly we're seeing the most complex applications moving to ARM and most sophisticated training ship on the planet that was just announced Grace Blackwell, Well that's based on ARM.

Speaker 3

Okay, so you're managing to really think that you're going to be the server play as well as the PC play, the cell phone play, and I want to focus in on the cell phone play, Renee, because that's been where your bread and butter has been in history. How are we looking from a smartphone perspective? Is the market looking strong to you? We've had many a mixed message coming from China to MOD for example.

Speaker 2

Overall, what we've seen the smartphone market briftly for ARM has been quite a good growth rate in terms of royalties. Our version nine which is now being used in many of the premium mobile phones, that drives a higher royalty rate for ARM. There's also more complex CPUs that go into that that's also better for ARM and going forward carrolling.

One of the things that we're seeing, and it's not just in smartphones, is that as these AI models are moving so fast, the hardware can't keep up with the software. The software innovation is happening so quickly that by the time the hardware is ready to run those models, everyone wishes they had more performance, they had more efficiency.

Speaker 4

So what does that mean for ARM?

Speaker 2

It's driving growth in our licensing activity. People are looking to do more and more design ships faster and faster, and that's all good for us going forward. So I think going forward you're going to see more and more innovation happening, not only in the smartphones, across all these edge devices.

Speaker 3

What's interesting in AY is it's hard to keep up with the pace of geopolitical change as well. The latest news coming that Huawei, of course is not going to have access to poll Kong to Intel chips. You were, of course a UK based company, but are affected by US policies. Has this impacted your business? The limitations of Huawei's access to chip designed to chip technology to licenses.

Speaker 2

Yeah, So that issue they referred to specifically was when Huawei was placed on the entity list I think twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, companies had to apply for a license to exempt them to ship to Huawei. So a number of companies asked for those licenses, they got those licenses. Now those licenses are being revoked. We don't follow in that category in any way, shape or form. We didn't apply for any licenses at the time to share. We complied

with the export controls as they were laid out. So there's really a non event for us in terms of what you're seeing with Qualcoman or Intel.

Speaker 5

We are speaking live to the ARMS CEO, Renee has We're on the ground here at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco. Last week, Renee Christiano mom was on the show telling Caroline and I, this is the year of the AIPC. You were asked about that on your earning school last night and you gave a slightly different answer. And maybe it's not the year of the AIPC more the twelve to thirty six month window. And you don't want to see just one PC supplier, you said you'd like to

see two or three. What's your beef with Qualcom?

Speaker 1

Now?

Speaker 2

When I look at the PC ecosystem, one large ecosystem has already moved to ARM in a very big way. Apple is now one based on ARM. All the Apple silicon is based on ARM. And you see amazingly good products relative to what they've delivered, fantastic battery life, performance, thin and light, no fans. When you think about the Windows market, it's a very different market. It's highly fragmented.

You have lots of different players. The ecosystem matters, the channel matters, price points matter, high end gaming machines versus low end devices that are like cloud enabled. So what does all that mean. It generally has meant that breath vendor choice, multiple options to provide a full scope is what matters. And what I'm hearing is over the next couple of years, the Windows ecosystem is going to be

able to afford that. And I think over the next two three years, I do believe Windows Unarmed will be real. I think you'll see multiple players, multiple price points, multiple units, and I think you'll see meaningful market share that we start to gain the kind of performance you see in the other ecosystem. I think we'll find its way into the Windows ecosystem.

Speaker 4

Rennie, I wanted to talk about geography really quick.

Speaker 5

We're here in San Francisco, right there's a lot about Americas are in d focus on AI related chips.

Speaker 4

Are you seeing this sort of equivalent activity in.

Speaker 5

Europe, for example, any of your customers outside of those markets.

Speaker 2

Yeah, well I'm in San Francisco today too, so I will see you a little bit later. But in general, I think the geopolitics are something that all tech CEOs are now having to figure out and work with AI models, foundation models, sovereign clouds, thinking about what level of training takes place in a country, versus outside the country where the weights sit, et cetera. That these are all the kind of things that politicians have never really had to

think about in the past. So we're involved in a lot of those conversations, whether that's in the United States, whether that's in Europe, and really just trying to understand it because any lawmakers in all these jurisdictions are just trying to figure it all out. And as I mentioned before, as the software and models are moving so fast, it's difficult for everyone to keep up. But we are central to all those discussions.

Speaker 3

Renee, what's been keeping up is your valuation?

Speaker 4

Boy?

Speaker 3

I mean, do you think there's too much exuberance around AI valuations out there? Are you going to make the most of it? By well, we talked to one point of listing in the UK too.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, I don't think about the valuations as much as I just think about the AI opportunity, which I frankly believe is undercalled in terms of just what it's going to mean relative to society and what it can do for our planet. I think again we are in very very early days in terms of the capabilities of what this can unleash for our society incredibly excited to be part of it. But I don't think we're

part of a hype cycle at all. I think there's a lot of innovation taking place, and you know, frankly, the innovation that's taking place, any inventions that we're seeing, it's just breathtaking. So no, I don't personally view it as a hype cycle at all.

Speaker 5

They has I'm CEO really grateful you actually be here with us later today on site at Bloomberg Tech. Your stock open pretty low, and I think it's just a little bit higher now during the conversation we've had.

Speaker 4

Thank you so much.

Speaker 5

All Right, coming up on the program, we're going to be joined by Clem DeLong, CEO of Hugging Face. That's coming up next. Stay tuned, we'll be right back. Is Bloomberg Technology. Welcome back to this special edition of Bloomberg Technology live in San Francisco at the Bloomberg Tech event and artificial intelligence Surprise.

Speaker 4

Surprise is sort of the overarching theme.

Speaker 5

We've got a pretty good guest to talk about that with and discuss all things large language model with Clemed Along, CEO of Hugging Face. You made this prediction which we're going to hold you to account on that by the end of this calendar year, and I appreciate we're not even halfway. Source models would be equivalent to the best closed source models. Give us a status check of that prediction place.

Speaker 4

I think it's already happened.

Speaker 6

Open source now is better than closed source for most use cases. We've specialized customized models on the companies like data sets. I have my meta reband glasses here that are powered by Lammatri.

Speaker 4

Right.

Speaker 6

We've seen so many now use cases being powered by open source models, and most of the big tech companies are now publishing open models. Just last month, we've seen Apple releasing open models on hogging Face. We've seen Nvidia, we've seen Snowflakes, We've seen Data Bricks, we've seen Microsoft. All of them now are publishing open models.

Speaker 5

There maybe some people in attendance who don't agree with him, which is why I asked the question.

Speaker 3

Well, also Microsoft published one and then quickly with DURI some of the reporting because they hadn't stress tested the large language model enough. I hadn't whittled out some of the toxicity checks. In particular, how are you feeling about the way in which large language models are growing and the way in which governance is developing around it.

Speaker 6

Well, we're starting to see that the most important question is concentration of power. Right for such an important technology, you don't want a world where just a few companies are controlling.

Speaker 3

It, but that is the world we live in.

Speaker 4

I don't think so, I think more and more.

Speaker 6

What we're seeing is that with open source you can actually distribute power more and you want to reduce the gap between the most powerful companies and the rest of the world, not only other companies but policy makers, non profits, academia and all of that.

Speaker 4

And that's the purpose of open source.

Speaker 6

It reduces the gap between the most powerful companies and the rest of the world, and that's what creates kind of like a sustainable, balanced future for AI and technology.

Speaker 5

It's a conversation where you're going to have all day long and you point out that basically open source allows more groups to go.

Speaker 4

To work on it.

Speaker 5

The problem is, as we're learning the tens of billions of dollars it takes to train models with yes, tens or hundreds of billions of parameters, and then you go lower down and now what we're hearing is that actually there are the folks doing this running out of cash? Are you seeing that as well?

Speaker 6

So it's more less true because for example, now you can use Lamastri that really has been closely but that meta has released and finds units for a very small amount of money. That's why I'm hugging face. There's over one million models that have been trained by companies, and a lot of these companies are very small and don't have like really really big big budget. I feel like today every single company has to build their own AI

otherwise they run the risk of being left behind. And that's what we're seeing, and it doesn't require any more really really big budget. An interesting point though, that we're going to see this year though, is that we'll need to find for AI companies better business models. That's what kind of like you hinted at, something we really focused on at Talking Face. We are looking grateful to be close to profitable, which is very unusual for AI companies.

But we're starting to see that there are some ways to generate revenue and not burn insane amounts of compute for AI startups today.

Speaker 3

I mean, how on that profitability perspective of yours, how many paying customers do you now have Can you give us an update. You've got a million models. What about paying customers?

Speaker 6

We have more than ten thousand paying customers out of the over one hundred thousand organizations, more than four million AI builders that are using our platform, and I think we found the right balance between monetizing, especially with like big companies that are using the platform in.

Speaker 4

Private enterprise companies exactly in.

Speaker 6

Order to fund all the free community, open source work that we're doing, and that is always going to stay open source and free.

Speaker 3

Of course, I want to go back to what I was saying though about people running out of cash. You actually put out a really interesting call on x basically saying, look, I'm here if you need me. Hugging face is here. If there are good people out there building interesting businesses but you're running out of money, we could be a home for you. Are you making acquisitions? Is it acquihiring that goes on them?

Speaker 6

We make some acquisitions. We're going to have interesting announcements in the next few weeks.

Speaker 3

I oh, don't taaser, but that's interesting.

Speaker 6

But I think in geneoin AI you're going to see more and more MNA because, as you said, I think a lot of companies took very risky bets. A lot of them are running out of money. And at the same time you have other companies like Hugging Face and others that are successful enough to be homes. Some of these M and A is going to weird, right, We've seen that happening in Lidit with Deck with some.

Speaker 5

Usual marriage with necessity rather than choice.

Speaker 4

May's.

Speaker 6

Yes.

Speaker 5

One thing that's good about summits like these Bloomberg Tech by the way, we can go around the room and ask who you're going to be shopping for. That's going to be interesting. But you get all these people in one place. You've also used the time that you've been in San Francisco because you're up in Seattle, right, Miami or Miami Apologies, you've been hiring, you've been interviewing candidates. Is that just a function of the best candidates being

here in this city? How wide are you casting your net?

Speaker 4

Yeah?

Speaker 6

I think I think San Francisco is still the heart of technology and the I right, there's so much talent, so much so many interesting companies, so many interesting big technology companies being here that it's important for us to kind of like you have a foot on the ground here. We have a team already here, but we're also hiring community for hugging face here.

Speaker 3

Applications being taken.

Speaker 6

Yes, there's a really massive fight and struggle for AI talents right now with inflation of packages everywhere. But what we're seeing is that when when you have a mission that's like interesting two candidates like we open source, then you can attract really good talents. That's one of the reasons why. Also we're seeing big tech doing more and more open source. Right if you look at Meta with all the great work.

Speaker 3

That favorites, you keep on. I mean you've only really mentioned number three. You're trying to cajole Google into coming even more open source.

Speaker 6

I think as long as companies contribute to the world and to the field, if we've open source, we open research, I think it benefits everyone. I think we've we've lost a little bit this way in the US for the past few years. If you look at AI five years ago, most of it was open source and open science. It changed a little bit when some companies started to make

money and and changing their approach to things. But I think it would be positive for the world to get back to an AI domain that is more open, more transparent, more inclusive.

Speaker 5

And you asked a calendar date now, by the way, because you told us you're going to announce.

Speaker 4

The news when you're ready four weeks. Yeah, we're holding you.

Speaker 3

Thanks clems on, our joy to have you with us and let you get to your breakfast where he's holding court here seeo hugging face. What a great conversation. Welcome back to this very special edition of Blue Meg Technology, Live in the Heart in San Francisco. All the grain and the good of industry movers shakers when it comes to artificial intelligence, in particular the academics, but the companies behind it, the CEOs, and notably also the investors. And

this is an interesting one for the investor base. Right, we potentially have a new large language model getting at a decent evaluation.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 5

So, I think what we reported last night is that xa I, the AI company started by Elon Musk and which he built out pretty quickly, is closing this kind of mega funding round eighteen billion dollar valuation. The thing is that we've learned right over the last year or more that is not actually that eyewatering. A number the numbers involved are not that iwak it wasn't he.

Speaker 3

Actually raising an awful lot considering an eighteen billion valuation.

Speaker 5

Yes, I think we've reported sort of up to six billion dollars. The thing is that the compute costs a mega and I took a phone call this morning saying, look past the cash and start asking whether the XAI has got access to the GPUs. Now Elon Musk has an existing relationship with Nvidio Jensen hung in the Tesla context, but it's a good gossip for the Bloomberg Tec event.

Speaker 4

It's a good thing to discuss well.

Speaker 3

And ultimately who are the investors? What we've seen I think really the rise in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, it's been corporate VC.

Speaker 4

Yes, of course, a strategic investor.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you've got Sequoia Capitals being incredibly active, who were going to have to co capital on a little bit later. But then more at the seed of the funding the series A series people. Amount of money necessary for these large language les means and video has to be a player or a Google has.

Speaker 5

And what I heard is that Jared Birchall, whose head of Musk's family office, has been in the Middle East tolling the sovereigns a lot of that.

Speaker 4

Stuff going on.

Speaker 3

Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg Technology right here in San Francisco. An event is upon our hands that has all to do with artificial intelligence and what to continue that conversation? Right here, right now at the Bloomberg Tech Summit is writer CEO Mayhabim, who joins us now, who has been doing Janata AI for the enterprise before everyone else got with the program. You both rate in twenty twenty, you've got an enormous chunk of change from

Iconic Capital and other key investors. And how does it feel with everyone trying to surge in on the enterprise opportunity here? How are you standing out? I'm making sure that you keep the keys like ubers and clients that you already have.

Speaker 7

Yeah, it's actually really exciting to see all of the investment. Right We've been working on this, my Covaner and I for ten years previously in a machine translation startup, and so to see all of this attention is actually amazing. But the way we stand out, I think, is with a really differentiated platform that helps enterprises with the last mile, which is ninety percent of the work in AI.

Speaker 5

May You've been on the show a number of times over the last two years or so, and each time I always reflect on sort of the rate of change for the industry, but also grow for your company. Clem DeLong of Hugging Face just gave us some numbers about the sort of size and scope of how they're doing if you say close to profit or near profit or something like that, but just tell us about your company and how it's doing.

Speaker 7

Yeah, I mean, it's been an incredible rate of change. When we started the company, we knew AI was going to be better at people at reading and writing, and that has certainly happened. We now say, if you can write it, you can build it, because AI is not just the technology, it's the way to build new technology.

But building AI apps is actually still quite difficult, and so the rate of change of just what we've been able to do, I mean, it's hundreds of enterprise customers, hundreds of thousands of users, thousands of applications that are in production. So a lot of this kind of question around, like how you get applications from POC to scale. You know, we've been doing that for years now and it's just had a tremendous impact on the growth.

Speaker 3

Of the business.

Speaker 5

You have some relatively new work on models, right, so tell us about the kind of the latest and greatest on the tech side of your offerings.

Speaker 8

Yeah.

Speaker 7

So, over the past few months, we've introduced vision as a capability into a platform. We've launched Palmyra in thirty two languages that really really high quality, beating human benchmarks our customers tell us. And next up for us our large reasoning models, so software that write software, which we're really excited about being able to go from you know, work substitution to real work reinvention and orchestration using AI.

Speaker 3

At the very start, you said basically ninety percent of the work isn't just getting the right language, large language model in the door, but it's implementing it. It's all the other bells and whistles that go to ensure that you get operational efficiencies that you put it to your own workflows. What are some of the best ways you're

seeing and being harnessed. What are some of the worst ways, Because everyone's still waiting for this Eureka moment where all of our exuberants around AI actually makes a real difference.

Speaker 7

Around one hundred percent, there are fifteen hundred lms, right, if large languine hundred Yeah, I mean, and.

Speaker 3

They can pass the MCAT and the LSAT.

Speaker 7

So if lllms were the answer, everyone would have the generative AI program of their dreams, right, But that's not the case. There's so much work to get the data and the context and the workflow from the business user into the application, right, And that's what our platform does.

It's this collaborative inner that combines the LLM with all of those building blocks, and that's where the magic is because the llms themselves need so much more context about the business to be able to do what customers need them to know.

Speaker 3

You said before that basically large language models are going to be commoditized. The foundational models are going to be commoditized, particularly from a consumer perspective. Where then does the value ultimately end up lying? Because there are so many people trying to fix problems using generative AI, A lot of them are coming to you to try and be bought or helped at the moment, I assume because they're running out of money themselves. Yeah, there's certainly a lot of air.

Speaker 7

Being sucked out of a room by big tech, right, but there's still a ton of opportunity for startups. Microsoft has to build for the lowest common denominator, right, so individual productivity is very different than team productivity and team workflows. So even though it feels like we're going to go through sort of a big consolidation phase, I do think there's still a ton of opportunity for for stars. We have made a small acquisition that will announce soon, and

I think we'll make others. So there certainly is a real high barrier for entry to come in and serve the enterprise. But it's still there's so much blank white open space for startups to help enterprises compete.

Speaker 5

It's interesting maybe that you use the c word consolidation. I don't think glem DeLong went as far as using the word consolidation, but I think you know, you said something a moment ago about big tech sucking the oxygen out of the room. It goes to the open source closed debate. I assume you sit on the open source side, but just wigh in.

Speaker 3

So we're kind of in the middle.

Speaker 7

So our models are proprietary, A bunch are on hugging face so later generations of models, but our latest models are are closed source.

Speaker 3

But by being in the middle.

Speaker 7

What enterprises really need is the ability to audit right and have the transparency around training data and all sorts of things related to the models they don't really want, like the last mile cumbersomeness of necessarily like fine tuning or running the models themselves is what we're finding. And so like in the in the kind of sucking the air out of the room, the confusion around what vendors to turn to and how to actually get great applications shift.

That's where That's where I think there's still a lot of confusion in the enterprise, and I think there's still all that work to be done to minimize hallucinations.

Speaker 3

To ensure that we're seeing a clarity of where the underlying data is coming from and you're not having copyright issues. Give us clarity on your business. Now, have you been approached to be bought? Are you remaining independent? Are you raising more money?

Speaker 7

So there's there's a really long, i think, product journey for us to really realize our vision. So I'm really excited about remaining independent. It used to be a year ago that I would say, you know, lms are for the rudgery, the work you don't want.

Speaker 3

To do today.

Speaker 7

The capabilities are so incredible, they're as good as us. But the future is work where you get to do the work you want to do and lllms do the rest, right because one person's drudgery is another person's creative passion, and that's kind of compelling.

Speaker 3

Vision for the future of work.

Speaker 7

We're not seeing enterprises come up with. Yes, we talk to hundreds of companies a week, and that really feels missing right now. Kind of executives painting a vision for what AI looks like inside their companies in a way that brings people along. So there's a lot to do both in you know, kind of bringing our vision into the world and helping companies achieve theirs.

Speaker 8

Right.

Speaker 5

A CEO may have be great to catch up here at Blue veg Tech in San Francisco.

Speaker 3

She slies every week from some Franciscot and on and I'm back.

Speaker 5

That's what we're hearing, the world of the CEO in the world of AI on a plane coming out here.

Speaker 4

We're going to be joined by Stephanie Jang.

Speaker 5

Partner at Sequoia, for her take on investing in AI startups. Stay with us, we'll be right back. This is Bloomberg Technology. Welcome back to this special edition of Bloomberg Technology. We're back together live in San Francisco a Bloomberg Tech, our annual conference, and here at the Tech Summit, we've got to talk about investing the first checks into those new and early AI startups. We have a fantastic guest for

today's Visa Spotlight, Stephanie Jan, partner at Sequoia. You guys are so busy, you are writing lots of checks, but the new companies being founded in AI are not the same as they were one year ago, and certainly not eighteen months or.

Speaker 4

Two years ago.

Speaker 5

Just give us the sort of timeline of where we are now in this industry way.

Speaker 1

First of all, thank you so much for having me at Caroline. It's an absolute joy to be here. We're at a really interesting time in AI today, seven years from the advent of the transformer, four years.

Speaker 3

Since the advent of the GPT three moment.

Speaker 1

I think twenty twenty four is going to be a monumental year for AI.

Speaker 3

And here's why. I think this year is.

Speaker 1

Going to be a step function leap in digital intelligence, everything from video to AI agents to robotics. I also think that this year is going to be the year we see a shift in the ecosystem to a thriving ecosystem with many winners in the models area across closed source, open source, large models, small models, and third, I also think this is the year we start to see AI commercialization at scale.

Speaker 3

And at Sequoia, we've been really busy.

Speaker 1

As you noted, we're highly selective about the companies that we partner with, but this year, in just the first four months alone, we've invested in ten new AI companies, everything from new foundation models to new AI native applications.

Speaker 3

I love being went through the history like seven years ago since the transmission model. I mean it was twenty years ago just over that Sequoia wrote the first check into in video, and now we think there's still that company really owning really the oxygen in the room.

Speaker 5

And the value vest right they writing checks of their own is a strategic investment.

Speaker 3

And I'm interested therefore exactly to AT's point, how competitive is it out there to get those first checks in ho Who are you seeing coming? Is it the corporates that are wanting to write checks? Is it VC's wanted to write checks.

Speaker 1

It's an incredible ecosystem right now, with everyone pouring money into the AI ecosystem. I think it's very much reflective of the opportunity that we see in AI, the large market opportunity that is to come. I actually think that we're still in the very early innings.

Speaker 3

Of all of this.

Speaker 1

Well, you know, it's the classic saying of we overestimate in the short run, but we really underestimate in.

Speaker 3

The long run. And video has done a wonderful.

Speaker 1

Job of being such a critical hold in the ecosystem with hard we're driving compute, but also now with so many software tools and the entire developer ecosystem they've built around them. So I think that we're just in the early innings and there's a lot more to come.

Speaker 3

We were just speaking with Clem from Hugging Face Anadeine Mayhembib, who highlight the fact that it's really expensive to do this and video chips are a putty penny. How are you seeing the companies that you back able to sustain the investment they need to make. How do you make sure the checks you write you're going in the right direction and not just sort of going into the pool of training money.

Speaker 1

Yeah, well, I think that the classic conventional wisdom is that incumbents with scale, data, capital and distribution have a natural advantage, and that's absolutely correct. It also costs a lot to build these models because of compute and for AI talent, but I also think that there are so many nimble ways for a startup to compete. Specifically, I think the next leap is really around one high quality data, specifically high quality labels of data and targeted domain specific data.

Speaker 3

Second, it's really about what you do with that data.

Speaker 1

Reinforcement learning with human feedback I think will really shine in this next era.

Speaker 3

It's an idea.

Speaker 1

Derived from reinforcement learning, but here an agent actually also learns on the fly with human feedback, and that's what's so brilliant about chat topt for example. And finally, I think that you really differentiate not just on model performance, which is where all the capital goes into, but it's also around product distribution and the entire product experience that you offer.

Speaker 3

To the end customer.

Speaker 5

You use the word incumbent, I think we should probably talk about who those incumbents are because the point that may have even right made to a certain extent claim from Hogeyface is that big tech and where I think we're talking about alphabet Microsoft in the first instance, are sucking the oxygen out of the room. From a capital perspective, a talent perspective, you invest in the preceed and seed sage.

Speaker 4

Do you find that be true?

Speaker 1

Well, I think that incumbents absolutely have an advantage, as we just outlined, but I also think that new startups have a shop scales. At AI actually recently released the survey last week where they interviewed thousands of developers on their most popular models, and the ones that actually came into light were GPT four, GPT three point five, and Gemini as the most popular models used. But we're also starting to see new players come into play with models

that are just as competitive in performance. I'm really excited about the open source model ecosystem enabling many more new players to come into play. LAMA three, for instance, is so powerful. The new eight billion PARAMETERAR model is a longer trained, small model that I think will become a really powerful building block for new developers to build new applications on top of and to build new models around it. It's going to drastically reduce the cost of what it takes to build new experiences.

Speaker 5

We are increasingly talking about Beta and its competence in building large language models. You speak highly of them. Where do you see them they? I think, Zuckerberg said on the Cool last week, we want to be the world's leading AI company.

Speaker 4

Where are they in that journey?

Speaker 1

I think that they have an incredible advantage, and not just because of the capital that they're willing to pour into play, but also because of the entire treasure trove of data that they hold, all this proprietary UGC content that they can really use to train their models. One of the things I'm really excited to see them enter the scene with this year is a new generative video foundation model, similar.

Speaker 3

To what we saw with Sora and open Ai.

Speaker 1

To me, the most powerful thing that unlocked was that the methodology we take for building large language models and digital intelligence works for video as well. You take a diffusion transformer model and you just scale it with enough video dat and compute and meta has a wonderful advantage given the entire treasure trow of content they have.

Speaker 3

To compete in the bosom.

Speaker 1

And then what they're doing with Lama three I think is game changing entirely. It opens the playing field for everyone themselves new startups, lowering the cost for a thriving ecosystem with many winners.

Speaker 3

Come back when you've got more checks you can announce in that thriving ecosystem. Such a joy to be here with you. Thank you so much for having it, Caroline, and having by Sequoia partner Stephanie Chan. Welcome back to this special edition of Bloomberg Technology, the heart of San Francisco, big event upon our hands and every year in fact, Rumbag Business Week releases in tandem. It's a list of

tech wants to watch. But these are the startup founders, the big tech managers, the mom he investors as well, who of playing a big role in shaping text future and joining us now is one of these ones. To words please to welcome you did madame Amazon vice president for of course the worldwide operations side of the business, your first interviews. It's taking on an enormous role of more than a million people that you manage the focus of getting my package to me in the swiftest way,

most cost efficient manner as possible. Can I just ask what your day looks like? What is a day in like?

Speaker 8

Well, first, Caroline and thank you for having me it's supposed to be here.

Speaker 5

Yeah.

Speaker 8

For me, really, my day starts, you know, fairly early in the morning. But you know, it starts with thinking about, you know, the team I've got.

Speaker 4

You know, we've got a very very broad team all around the world.

Speaker 8

We've got four thousand different locations that we operate around the world, and really it's focused on how do we continue to innovate on behalf of customers that do it in a way that puts safety.

Speaker 4

And people at the forefront.

Speaker 8

And so my day is really focused on innovation across four different spectrums.

Speaker 4

Safety, really the.

Speaker 8

Customer experience with delivery speeds innovating, especially with what's happening with technology finding new ways, you know, whether that's through robotics our operations to make things more efficient and driving you when you're.

Speaker 5

Talking about the technology, we're talking about everything from the fleets, right so there's a transition to sustainable energy in the fleet context, talking about robotics in the fulfillment centers, and dare I say AI in tracking the data? What's the biggest investment focused for you right now? And technology roll out?

Speaker 8

You know, we've got technology all across our operations and there's really two things that I would maybe thematically talk about. One is, we do have a lot of investments in automation and robotics that are going on, especially with how

quickly things are accelerating with General VII. We have investments on really novel foundational models that look and use the high quality data that we've gathered in source as we ship tens of millions of products every day, and those going to help make some of those robotic solutions more generalizable as well as make them more efficient.

Speaker 4

And the second is we've.

Speaker 8

Been working on a set of really inventive robotic solutions over the last few years that are finally reaching maturity and scale and we'll start to roll out starting this year. Both those are really exciting and it will be transformative for operation.

Speaker 3

I mean, you've got to be inventive because Annie Jase is asking you to focus on costs, but I'm sure the innovation in a way does longer term once you made the investment strip out some of the costs, but ultimately does that come at a sacrifice of labor. How do you talk to those people that you are so key when you focused on to ensure that they feel that are being augmented not replaced.

Speaker 8

You know, the best thing I can talk about is our history. You've deployed seven hundred and fifty thousand robots over the last decade across our operations. We've done that while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. And you know what's really interesting and not a lot of people know, is we've created dozens of new classic jobs, your skilled jobs,

technical jobs. And what we've learned in that process is that one of the most important things that you can do you as a company in this world of generatively I and robotics, is to really focus on investing employees.

So we've launched two different programs. One is a twenty twenty five off skilling pledge that really helps train people for this new workplace in the future, and a Yeah Ready program that's generally available to everybody that's really focused on investing in helping provide a skill training.

Speaker 4

Over two million people.

Speaker 8

So really focusing on people alongside the investments who are making in general.

Speaker 4

VI in Revidy, we just have thirty seconds.

Speaker 5

What's your one personal goal for the year, something you want to achieve.

Speaker 8

You know, for me, there's more than one, but I'll quickly I'll try to answer it quickly. The first and the highest priority for us is safety, and we want to be the safest workplace across the industries we operate in making measurable and really remarkable progress in that area. I want to company to invest in that. And the second is to compete to improve the convenience for customers and delivery speeds is an area of focus.

Speaker 3

Congratulations on being one of the key ones to watch. Phenomenal the amount of people who manage young age that you are, madame. We thank you, Amazon vice President of Worldwide Operations. Meanwhile, I mean from ones to watch of individuals to everything you've got to watch coming up, because this is going to be an amazing set of conversations. I'm going to be speaking with a key chip leader. Of course, you're going to be speaking about the future and technology. Who have you got lined up?

Speaker 5

Yeah, I'm going to talk to Tom Oxley of synchron I'm going to talk about brain implants and what the right method of putting a electrode into one's brain is.

Speaker 3

I love asual casuals perspective. Renee James is joining me and Perco. Look, this is the question that having just spoken with Renee the other Renee and chips of arm. Where is the market share being taken by these newer players, taking from AMD, from Intel, even potentially in video.

Speaker 5

Thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of Bloomberg Technology. It's great to be back together in the field, but we actually have a full day ahead, so many great guests stay with us. Thank you for tuning in from San Francisco at Bloomberg Tech for this is Bloomberg

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