From markhard where Innovation, Money and Power co line in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed.
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Live from New York and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up. Chips in focus as equipment maker of prime materials. It does the points on its forecast, while Texas Instruments scores cash from the Chips act Plus.
Epic Games launches a new mobile storefront. After years of legal wrangling with Apple and Google and.
Seagrammare Edgar Brundman Junior as close to making a rival offer for Paramount is a bidding war brewing. First. I was checking on these markets because it is a good week.
Ed.
If you are along these markets, then that's that one hundred having its best week in the year since November. We're almost five percent. That is a call one point three trillion dollars being added to the overall benchmark. And it is a significant well sigh of relief post volatility of the last couple of weeks. Once again, we've got some consumer data just showing sentiment is on the up to date. It counts counteracts some of that weakness, and
the housing data on the day. No, we're just done a little bit on the day, but it is a strong week. What are you looking at on the microad I'm.
Going to go straight to Applied Materials and a company that makes the machines that make the chips. It's down three percent, be in the courter gone, but there were really high expectations in its forecast for the current period. Where the market wants to see that all this investment around AI in particular is translating into more equipment or chip manufacturing equipment investment. We'll get to that in just
a moment. The other top story in the semiconductor space, Texas Instruments set to receive one point six billion dollars in Chip ACT grants and three billion dollars in loans the Buying Administration announced today marks the latest major award from the program that's designed to boost American semiconductor manufacturing. We're joined by Bloomozi and King here on set in San Francisco. A lot of the money's been allocated Texas
Instruments makes all kinds of more basic chips. Just the terms that they've agreed with the administration here.
Yeah, I mean, the way to look at this is nothing is set. A lot of money has been promised, But from a taxpayer's perspective, it's like, Okay, you have to do this, you have to go into production, actually build this, and then we'll give you the money. So that's the way to look at it from a general perspective. The flip side of it, Wall Street is like, this is how many dollars, how many cents on the EPs that they'll be gaining, how much less CAPEX will be spending.
Still, they are spending a lot, and it is all about the focus on chips at the moment and the focus on AI. Just take us back to applying materials moment in because look, the numbers were good, but the forecast perhaps just not living up to the AI euphoria.
Yeah, I mean there are two things going on here. Anything that's to do with high end logic, which is for data centers and by extension, AI is doing really well. There's a lot of demand for that. On the flip side, some of the types of chips that say, are for automakers or for industrial equipment, there's not a lot of strong demand growth there at the moment, So perhaps machinery orders for that particular sector are a little bit weaker. There's kind of a balance of factors going on there.
That automotive parts kind of consistent with NXP that we've heard it on an ongoing basis. Just real quick, what's the difference between applied materials and ASML. You know, if you think about what those machines are actually used for.
Yeah, I mean think about applied Materials as much more generalists. They make a whole range of different pieces of equipment. ASML is very specific. It's making lithography. They're essentially the lasers that are burning the holes to make the pattern on the chips. Applyed Materials is putting materials on those silicon wafers.
Bloombergsy and King, thank you very much. Let's take a closer look at chips globally. Japan is applying foreign trade regulations to chip making equipment as part of its effort to secure stable supply chains, The Ministry of Finance said earlier today, foreign investors are now required to give prior notice when conducting direct investment in equipment tieds chip making. This in an effort to address the risk of key technology leaks and interesting global story carrac and so.
Much going on with ships. In fact, overall they are weighing on the overall benchmarks today because of that apply materials number. Just get broad a look at the tech market right now. Janet Mumors with us RBC Brewint, head of market Analysis, and Janet, we've had an extraordinary few weeks. To put it bluntly, what are you making of AI euphoria reality and what it means for the tech benchmarks right now?
Hi, good one night, Caroline, Thanks for having I think one thing is that the evaluations are some of these megacap starks and AI exposed starks have come down. I think that is good news for in sirs who are not invested yet. They can actually get in with a better valuation into companies that still have great long term prospects.
And I also think that the rebounds, the very quick rebound that we've seen suggests that, you know, if the data is okay, continues to suggest that the US economy is still growing.
You know, there's still a lot of demand for these high quality sauce.
And I will say our position would be to keep being focused on high quality growth companies, which a lot of these AIS old starts are. And I think some of the observations from companies' guidance, from the big tech companies for example, is that they prefer to actually spend more on AI instead of being left behind. So I think that this is still very much a very important trade.
Why then, was everyone suddenly so nervous around it, Janet? Why do you think that, Yeah, we're still twelve percent of of our highs on the socks and next, But why haven't we managed to rebound to the extent that has your level of conviction?
Yes? I think so.
Generally speaking, a lot of focus is still placed on the economic data.
We got some relief I think in.
The past week or so with solid economic data and slower inflation, but I think there are still uncertainty surrounding that. I think particularly for cheap companies. I think the politics of that still played a pretty important part.
I remember when esmlt.
UH and then there is this suggestion that Donald Trump is going to uh, you know, make a stricter for US companies to export high tech equipment and things like that, and also of course the Biden administration tightening the stands.
I think these are still ongoing concerns.
So I think that is the reason why the cheap makers are not bouncing bad as much as the other wider stocks.
Janet Hired zed in San Francisco. I've been reading your research and you've been thinking about reads real estate investment trusts. So have I, and I've been writing about how you can look at their pipeline in the context of data center investments. I didn't realize it was such a focus of opportunity for some of the reads out there. Is that an area that you look for for data sets to kind of work out how long this investment cycle has to run.
Yes, I think in terms of reads, I think data center is one of the more resilient areas actually throughout the previous sell off, and I think that that is still a very valid investment point. But what we're looking at in terms of reads is basically broadening out of the other reeds area because simply the valuation has gone
much more attractive. And I think particularly right now, we're at the stage where the fan is going to cut interest rates, and you know, expectation is building that they will be you know, further cuts well into twenty twenty five and beyond, so I think, you know, being a very interest rate sensitive sector is likely to benefit from this monetary policy development, and I think the valuation is just adding to that attractive Jesus.
Earlier in the show, Caroline was looking at the NASA one hundred on the weekly basis. We've had a lot of conflicting economic data. What has the data all told by Friday Afternoon told you about the state of the global economy.
I think everything is still fine.
I think the labor market is obviously is lowing down, but it is actually as expected, and in fact, it is a trend that the Fatter Reserve would like to see. If you look at the job opening unemployed person is going down, but it is basically what I would describe at a normalization back to where it's pre COVID.
So I think this is all positive development.
I think we're saying a slowdown in consumer because the savings are being depleted, but I think the key thing is that real wage book is very much positive. I think that that is a very fundamental supportive factor out there. So overall speaking, the economy is still fine, slowing but as expected, and we're not seeing the economy falling off a cliff, and soft lending is still very much in play here.
Janet what is then the most important piece of data in the next few weeks. Is it fed Macro? Is it August twenty eighth in video results.
Yeah, Nabidia is It's definitely a very important corporate earnings I think yeah, that would be a very important point for us to watch. Basically we know the volatility around that event and the ability to actually spill over to the rest of the megacap industry. And also investors will be seeking validation on whether that AI orders is still very strong. And of course I think any data that relates to the labor market will be a big focus.
I think inflation side of things, we got more confirmation that is okay and unlikely to see a volatility around inflation, So I think labor market data for sure.
Such such a good question by Caroline though August twenty eight from Video and Macro level event. Maybe Janet Mouie, RBC Brewing, head of Market Analysis. Great to have you back on the show. Thank you very much. Now, coming up, we're going to be joined by Josh Chapman, who is a managing partner at Convoy, a firm focused on the video games industry, and we're going to discuss epic Games's new mobile storefront, which is out today. By the way,
heading to break, we're looking at shares of Rivian. I broke this story overnight with Kyle Porter that they've had to pause the line that makes the delivery vans for Amazon due to a part shortage. The stock declines are really accelerated in the session, almost three percent. It won't affect long term their production targets. They'll make that up. They're not changing guidance, and all the workers will We've paid,
et cetera. But it's interesting that this continues to be an issue in the supply chain for Rivian, such a closely watched ev name. Keep tuned, Stay tuned. This is Blombow Technology.
Epic debut for Epic Games, A Fortnite maker is launching a new mobile storefront after four years of legal wrangling with Apple and Google over their app store practices, now the Epic CEO saying it may have lost up to one billion dollars in revenue after Fortnite was removed from Apple's App store Whennipek tried to circumvent that fee with its own storefront back in twenty twenty, joining us now Josh Chapman managing partner of Convoy and look, it's returning
to iPhones in Europe, to Android devices worldwide? Can people get it? Access it? What's the pickup?
Right now?
You can only access the Epic Games Store in the EU if you're on the iOS, and globally on Android. As you mentioned, it is an absolute pain to download on both stores. So Apple and Google are fighting this tooth and nail that I just watched some videos that came out this morning. We're going to be trying it all day today. Is this is requiring anywhere from ten to twenty steps. There's lots of flags and alerts on both phone devices saying hey are you sure? Are you
sure you want to download this? So these stores are going to fight this tooth and nail.
An Apple spokesperson clarified to Bloomberg that it is a five step process in Europe at least, not fifteen. I'm glad to have you on the show.
Right.
You're a firm that invests in video games startups that want to disrupt the industry. That's what Sam Sweeny's trying to do. The argument that if you have more stores, you have a more competitive market. One hundred and eighty billion dollar video games market, half of which is mobile. Is he right about that argument?
He is right that there is It is better for the games industry if there are more stores, more options, and more competitive pricing. That said, I think what he's fighting for is fantastic and will be positive in this development today is positive for the games industry. That said, Apple is well within their right having the platform they've built, to defend it as much as they can, and so the courts of the US have decided that yes, they're not a monopoly. They but they have to allow for
third party payments to be processed. Essentially, the way I read that and the way we read that as a firm here at Convoys that that's kind of a meet in the middle. Right, let's let them do off platform payments. But you're not a monopoly, and you got to let Epic Games launch a store on your app store.
I mean, the reason that this is happening for iOS in Europe and not here is because the Digital Markets Act and the fact that Europe's decided that Apple is acting as a gatekeeper in some way Google too with these app stores, and they've got to change. But often what happens in Europe ends up happening here in the US.
So when if you're saying they're pushing and fighting tooth and nail, will we ever see it occurring here in the US unless there's our own antitrust issues that are set to bear here.
So it took about four years to get to this point just in the EU. So I think that we're looking at another just a prediction three to five years before we see this really happen in the United States unless a huge ruling comes down from the Supreme Court in the United States, if they decide to take this court and take the appeal, which they rejected I believe earlier this year last year. And so I think we're
looking at a very long drawn out battle. And in the meantime, Apple is making billions and billions a week off of the app store. In about sixty to seventy percent of all revenue on Google's App Store and on Apple's App Store comes from the video gaming space alone. And so the reason why they were fighting, yeah, well.
Let me just jump in and Carra, I'm sorry us we're talking about that Apple side of the story. Let's be under no illusions. Epic want to make money from this arrangement, right, they have the target of one hundred million downloads by a certain period of time. Ambitious. Will they be successful is the question.
I think Epic Games is going to make a lot of money off of this move today. I think they'll make it primarily through Android globally, and then I think they'll secondarily make it on iOS. I think it'll be in that order of magnitude. But Epic Games as a private company that owns Fortnite and Rocket League and Fall guys. They have now recently launched uefn, which is basically their Roadblocks competitor. They watched Roadblocks have success, so they're launching
their own sort of user generated content platform. This is a continued effort for Epic Games to increase their margin. Profile Mobile is a perfect way to do that, and whether that's an acquisition or an IPO in the future, Epic Games is playing their hand very well and this will work out in their favor for sure.
I think the data showed that some thirty five million people played Fortnite for more than six hundred million hours in July on Xbox in PlayStation. Just give us the context of how popular Fortnite is compared to the rest of the gaming landscape.
Before Fortnite was kicked off the app Store, we as a firm did an estimate that Fortnite was responsible alone for almost one percent of all revenue on the Apple App Store before it was kicked off. That was sort of an estimate that we kind of did internally. The significance that Fortnite is is a title on console, which you just mentioned is absolutely massive, and on mobile, which is more accessible globally around the emerging market countries especially,
which is why Android's important. Fortnite is, you know, one of the top five forever titles we call them forever titles in the game and industry in the world right alongside that as things like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto and many others.
Josh Chapman, managing partner at Convoy, a particularly great voice to have on a daylight today, Thank you very much. There's another big story in the world of entertainment. We're looking at Paramount seagramat Edgar Brontham Junior is close to making an offer four Paramount Global, setting off a potential bidding war for the film and TV company that owns
CBS in MTV. That's because the Bloomberg's Hannah Miller and Hannah I will say the same thing to you I said several weeks ago, I'm confused and I have deja vu. So that there's a new bidder and then another bidding war. Good morning, yes, good morning.
So yeah, we know Bronklin has been interested in Paramount for a while and things have shifted since then. You know, obviously there's this Skydance deal that has been agreed to, and that there's this forty five day go shop period. So it looks like Bronfman is going to put in a bid, But unlike his earlier interests, he's no longer working with Bain Capital on this and has been discussions with a couple of different entities, including Roku Fortress and the film producer Stephen Paul.
So I'm sat here as a B class shareholder, not voting, trying to work out what ultimately is going to be better for me. How does he push away from what David Ellison is going to offer in terms of technology, in terms of studios, How is he going to make a different kind of appeal.
Yeah, so you know, Brockman is coming in with years of experience in the Badia industry. He's arguing that this is a better deal for shareholders. You know, he is saying that he can take this company to the next level. And we were putting this potential bin together. But it'll be interesting to see what happens. Ultimately, it's up to Sherry Redstone, her holding company, National Amusements, think is the biggest shareholder in Paramount, and what she says, what she
says goes. If she prefers guidance, that's what's going to be.
Anna Milla telling it straight. We thank you so much. Let's talk politics and creators because as the election campaign picks up, the creator economy has been on the administration's mind. Two hundred content creators will be credentialed to cover the twenty twenty four DNC in Chicago next week. This follows actually the White House itself hosting the Creator Economy Conference, where it convene a group of digital creators and professionals
to discuss the industry's most pressing issues. Let's talk about it with LTK co founder president Ama Ven's Box who you weren't there yourself, but a lot of the influencers that you represent that you help monetize were there. Why is it important? Why why are we seeing such political interest in the influencer economy right now?
Well, our LTK team was on the ground, they were there, And you know, when I think about creators and politics, I don't know of any better marketing machine than the RNC and the DNC. And what we're seeing is that even government is realizing that in order to reach people, you need to be where they are. They're spending six and a half hours a day on their phones, they're in these aggregated content channels. The content that they're viewing
is created by creators themselves. The new media has arrived, it's here, and it was hugely validating for the Creator Economy Conference to be held at the White House. This is an industry that we started thirteen years ago. The word influencer was only added to the dictionary five years ago, so we've come a long way. This was a really big moment for our entire industry.
And what can I get political with you for a moment. I don't want anyone to take sides, but just from a perspective of a creator, an influencer who's doing it better at the moment, who's managing to reach the US voter base via influencers most efficiently. Is it DNC Democrats? Is that are and see Republicans?
You know, both are using these tactics, and they both used them for the last several elections, and we've seen it across all of the different platforms. That said, I think, really this is important for the entire industry. Whether you are someone who as a creator that is following politics, who is reporting on politics, this is it. It's a
validating moment. And for some creators they don't want to touch the elections at all, But I think what this points to in this moment is that they are looking to see that this industry is important and that they need to be thinking about the things they're thinking about. And there are definitely a handful of things the air Top of Mind that we showed up in Washington to talk about what.
Are the protections here for voters that creators, as we are calling them, get it right, that it's accurate, that it's not false or fake information.
Well so for our creators. Joe Biden stood up and he said, you know you are the new media. You're the new way that people are being reached. We know that people are not just listening and thinking about sentiment that they're actually acting on the things that their influencers that they follow are telling them. We're seeing that, you know, consumers are buying five billion dollars with the products from these creators every year, so they're voting with their wallet and not just with their mind.
So there's a huge responsibility.
That comes from being a creator and the acknowledgement that this is the new media is one of the most important things as a creator. There are really key, three key things that are our top of mind when it comes to politics. I'd love to share that you guys are interested.
Just fifteen seconds, just got wonderful.
Well, we're thinking about the content that's taken and monetized directly and indirectly and without a license, without permission or benefit to that creator. We're thinking about the implications of creator content being taken to train AI again without the license, permission or benefit to the creator. And then I think, finally, it's really important that this industry was built on innovation. How are we protecting the innovators who are creating it?
And that's really in the court system through legislation. Thank you so much.
Okay, lta HO founder and President Ambven's box. Sorry we ran out of time, but thank you for coming on the show.
Welcome back to Bluemotechnology and Caroline.
Hide in New York and I'm Ed Lovelow in San Francisco. I want to go back to the chart you showed at the top of the show, and that's that one hundred. But on a five day basis, we're actually on track for a second consecutive week of weekly gains. But five percent over five days is actually the biggest weekly gain on that index since November of twenty twenty three. And
it's amazing how the narrative changes. It was just two weeks ago that we'd had four straight weeks of declines and we were perilously close to a fifth straight week of declines, going back the worst run since twenty twenty two. Economic data is really whipsawing us about and as you point out, August twenty eighth and Nvidia earned is this macro level event. There's a really big story out there.
In a specific mover, Autodesk continue to use a controversial sales strategy after promising investors it would stop, and then ignored internal warnings about the risks of doing so. According to previously unreported internal documents. The reporter with those documents Bloomberg's Brody Ford, this is so interesting. So basically management have been said told don't use this, there are risks. They carried on using it, and you found out about it. Take us from there.
Yeah, taking a step back and April, Autodesk said, Yo, we cannot file our financial disclosures. We'll come back to you, and the whole market said, oh my god, what's going on here. This is unheard of for the size of a publicly traded company. Eventually they said that yeah, we had some problems with these deals, but it was still
somewhat vague. And so what we found out through these documents is that Autodesk pledged to stop doing a specific kind of deal that essentially frow loads the cash flow. I'm not going to board with the details. But they kept doing it quietly. And the reason they kept doing it is because they were reliance on these deals to meet free cash flow targets. Right. We see in these documents that employees warned executives, hey, this might hurt our
long term revenue. This increases the chances of us making a serious mistake, maybe like the one we saw earlier this year. But they pledged on because you know, you gotta meet those financial targets.
But this had big ramifications. The accounting probe finished in May, the board decided to remove the clifford Is CFO. I mean, what more could they do to make everyone take this seriously.
Correct?
Yeah, they removed the CFO. The board decided that a little bit earlier this year, and since then activists investors Starboard has entered the stocks, saying, in part the handling of this probe was not good enough that investors didn't get enough accountability. They didn't really know what happened. How wide was the pool of knowledge here? And again what these documents show is that the pool of knowledge was
quite wide. I mean we see executives signing off on these deals saying that, hey, we got to meet these targets. You know, let's pursue them.
In terms of.
Ramifications, Starboard is requesting things like considering whether the current CEO is still the right guy for the job, as well as the kind of traditional activist stuff like let's raise margins and you know all that kind of thing.
Brady, real quickly, forgive me this one. Just the basics of what Autodesk is and does and why people might or might not.
Know it totally. Autodesk is like Adobe for the physical world. That bridge behind you, probably Autodesk was used in some capacity to design it, right, most buildings you see their software was designed for. They have a very interesting vertical that they really own. It's one of those kind of large software markets you almost don't think about because they are so entrenched in their market. It's a very interesting set of very.
Offer Bloomberg's Brady Ford with another top piece of reporting Carrot.
Yeah, absolutely on it. Meanwhile, just switch gears ed. We're going to look at fintech for a moment because Revolute said that a secondary share sale that allowed it basically to give employees some liquidity for their stakes value. The company at get this forty five billion dollars the new valuation for the UK unicorn. It's up from thirty three billion price tag that it received back in twenty twenty one.
And actually that's the interesting point here, And like many of its rivals in fintech, Revelue hasn't had to raise money since then in recent years, and it's allowed it to basically avoid those sharp declines of valuation that many peers have suffered. But at the same time, let's go
to another peer. Let's go to a European fintech that's saking liquidity, and it's Klana, and it is inching ever closer to its USIPO next year, with sources saying that the company is seeking a valuation of around twenty billion dollars now. The Klana CEO joined Bloomberg Daybreak Europe earlier today to discuss those plans and his outlook for the company. Just take a listen.
People really appreciate mostly about is that two years ago this business was you know, very much attractive, growing fast
in the US, but also loss making. And in just two years we have increased revenue by fifty percent, we have increased gross profit by one hundred percent, and we reduce costs in thirty percent, which means that now we're are you know, profitable And I think those kind of financial performances obviously do raise the eyeboras a little bit with investors also, as we have, due to AI, committed
to continue shrinking the company. We've already gone from four to half thousand to three and a half thousand in the last year, and we are committed to continuing on that path, not by layoffs but simply by natural attritionids.
You've been an early mover on Jenai, and you reached down to Sam Moltman of chat GBT open ai pretty pretty early on in all of this. What's been one of the most surprising things that stood out to you as you've embedded some of this genai across the business.
Yeah, I think that it is to me in a way.
I would actually partially say that like I was even you know, kind of pulled into the hype a year ago. We're a little bit like we you know again self driving cars. You know, we used to read about them in the press every day and then you would look out the window and like, where are they? Where are they not happening? And now it's actually happening. And I think that like to somebody, I was almost like drawn into the hype.
A year ago as well.
It's like, okay, in the year you know, the whole thing will already have like totally dramatically change everything, and now you almost had the opposite. You hear people say, oh, we tried it, and give us the results and so forth.
But in tonally, what I'm seeing to plan is that it is working.
It's just it will take a little bit for other time before it will have the full implications to us. We've already had delivered so fantastic results, but we were super excited.
What's coming in the.
Next twelve months before we let you go? It's about you Look, what do we win you back? You're going to list in the US. That's a suggestion, that's the expectation. What does Europe and the UK need to do? Is there anything they can do to win this listing?
Well, one thing that I have said to regulators in the year, because there's been so much discussion in Brussels as well, how do we create a competitive market? And I have suggested and actually get some positive from some of the foreign ministers, was invited with all the finance binases over you, is that I think that if if Europe will never you know, will never agree on like where should listing shuld the big stock market be? Is in Prairies, is it Frankfurt, is it you know whatever,
European country? So the only way to actually get this to work is if if you would mandate all the stock sciations in Europe so that any stock that is listed in one is automatically trading in another. I think that could reach the critical mass to create an investor base that is, you know, similar size that one we see in the US, because that's really one of the
biggest challenges when you make US comparisons. If the company like ours is already mostly US business from revenue size, it will have to be a you know, a similar size of investment base and stock market size to make it a relevant listening point.
That was clan A CEO Sebastian shimi at Kowski. Coming up on the program, We're going to be joined by Hibba Amva from the Ericsson Immigration Group to discuss the impact of the election on H one B visas and in turn the world of technology.
Caro, I just want to go back to that question of dual listings and what certain nations and territories have to do to woo over other companies, because get this av point. It's a new Jersey based company software company it's considering actually second listing outside of the US and Singapore. People with knowledge of the matter have been saying it would be a deal that basically bring US infrastructure software firm a step closer to some of its big backers.
Remember they had a big chunk of change from Temasek. This is blue big technology.
The H one and by visa policy is really critical for the tech industry, and Trump does not have a positive track record there. So I think having a president who understands the importance of immigration in this country is really critical.
Venture capitalist Shrewdi Shah one of the signatories of VC's for Kamala group supporting the campaign of Kamala Harris. And as we look ahead to the DNC that' starts next week H one B visas, I think it'll be a topic that's type of mind, certainly off of the tech industry. That's bring in our next guest to discuss him. Advert partner with the ericson Immigration group, And I ask you there, Hibbert,
will we get much clarity? Do you need more clarity from the position of the immigration from the Democratic ticket?
So I think that the companies that operate in the tech industry, as well as the AI industry, semiconductor, basically any industry in which the United States wants to be a global leader and continue to dominate, they're definitely looking for a lot more clarity when it comes to what the next president's policy is going to be with respect
to high skilled immigration. And the reason that this is so important for companies, particularly in the tech sector, is because there is a heavy reliance on visas like the H one B visa, because when it comes to employees who have the necessary STEM skills that these companies are looking for, demands still very much outweighs supply, and so whoever the next present cident is going to be, it's really really important to point out that what we really
need for the success of the tech industry and other industries is an immigration policy that actually reflects a twenty first century economy.
Hebert. Former President Trump actually gave some detail on how he'd approach visas, particularly those originating from students of US universities, on the All In podcasts, and then he discussed it with Bloomberg in July as well. Have you had any detail or sense from the Harris ticket on a specific approach to technology relevant visas?
So what we know about Vice President Harris is that she definitely has close ties to the tech industry. There were two hundred tech leaders who came out and endorsed her publicly. Now, as you mentioned, the DNC is right around the corner. So we're definitely going to learn a
lot more here in the next few days. But what most people are expecting of Vice President Harris is that she's going to continue President Biden's approach to high skilled immigration, and President Biden's approach has been in large part walking back Trump era policy.
I wonder if we could sort of take a bipartisan look at the mechanics of getting a visa in the federal administration of visas. I got my first visa in twenty eighteen under the Trump administration and had to renew it in the chaos of COVID. But how easy procedurally is it now in this day state, right this moment to get an H one B.
So it's not necessarily as difficult as it was during the Trump administration. The experience that a lot of immigration practitioners had during the Trump administration was that the process
was a lot longer and it felt somewhat inefficient. I think that that's why it's really important to watch what the results of this election are going to be because some of the concerns that the companies have experiences, whether or not policy pertaining to H one B visas and policies surrounding high skilled immigration are actually going to act as a deterrent and discourage high skill talent from coming to the United States and making the United States their home.
And if that happens, then companies are going to run into issues in terms of whether they can remain competitive because they may not necessarily be able to hire the best and brighters from around the world.
And perhaps we see what occurred back in previous administration where Canada suddenly got a lot of high skill perhaps versus the United States. What about other types of visas? We all focus in so much on an H one B, but I came in twenty eighteen on an L one. I mean, how many other routes are there to be and contribute to the US economy.
I think that there are several other routes, but the eligibility standards are a little bit more controlled and restricted. And that's why the H one D visa is so important. It's the type of visa that a lot more people could potentially be eligible for, and as a result, it's the most frequently leveraged employer sponsored visa by several industries, including the tech industry. And so with respect to policy,
when it comes to high skilled immigration. You know, WOLS policy surrounding H and B visas is definitely going to be top of mind. It's really important to continue to have immigration policy that actually encourages talent to come to the United States and innovate, because the next time somebody you know, founds the next Google or the next Tesla, we still want that to be an American company.
Cuba and the ericson Immigration Group, thank you very much. There are other news headlines out there in the world of tech. Carry yeah, it's.
Time for talking tech. First up, we're going to discuss SpaceX announcing it will launch a me faned satellite to track super bolluters. Now, Carbon Mapper is a nonprofit behind the satellite, and it will be the second methane detecting satellite launched in the past six months. This reflects basically growing scrutiny around the greenhouse gas and the satellite's low cost to atmospheric monitoring. Meanwhile, you tariffs, they're slowing the
influx of Chinese made evs. In July now, according to research from Data Force, the number of new electric vehicles from Chinese manufacturers registered in the EU found forty five percent in June. Look, that's his carmakers actually rushed to get their products to dealers before the towers took effect on July fifth, and Jack Mars backing of course and Groove, and it's said to be in discussions to acquire Chinese
healthcare platform howds dot com. That's acording to sources now a group is seeing and looking to integrate its tech within the website and an effort to basically beef up its AI services in healthcare.
The ORB before you is made by a startup called Tools for Humanity. If it looks all too dramatic, that's sort of the point. The backers of the company, which include Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, have put two hundred and fifty million this venture and want folks to take notice of their ORB. This is because they want to use it to scan the irises of as many people around the world as possible, all as part of their main project known as world Coin. If you allow
world Cooin to scan your iris, two things happen. You get a small chunk of the world Coin cryptocurrency, and you're certified as a real, living human, which the company hopes will lead to a reduction in fraud on the Internet and provide better access to banking and social services. Critics, however, are wary about the ethics of biometric collection and the possible exploitation of users from developing countries.
You can check out the full episode of that Bloomberg original's piece on Bloomberg dot com and joining us now is the co founder of worldcoin himself, Alex Blania Alex, Welcome to Bloomberg Technology. In Ashley Vance's Very Deep Tell BusinessWeek's story, he talks about how when you describe worldcoin to someone the project, it can sound nuts, and you were cited as saying that you think there's just a five percent probability five that you'll succeed. How do you arrive at that number?
I think it's just a very ambitious project. And Ashley and I talked about massive success, like a large percentage of the kind of people in the world actually signing up and verifying with our services. I think that's just a lo perability. I think we will we will increase the probertly over time and do our best to succeed. But I think with very kind of very ambitious technology company, that's that's probably what you're looking at and just try to be realistic about that.
Give us the elevator pitch of what success looks like, Alex, Well, the problem is that you will solve.
So Semini started working on this company four and a half years ago and one of the one of the main ideas was, of course that AGI and kind of general AI progress will continue, and so we started a company called Tools for Humanity with the simple goal of building tools for humanity scale that we think will turn out to be very very important in a world in
which AI will become increasingly powerful. And one of the problems that are very easy to understand is that on social media X for example, it will be really really hard to distinguish if you're interacting with a real human or if you're interacting with an AI. And we believe that this will turn out to be a very very critical problem for our democracy for many really things, for many things that we care about, to protect many of us services against influenced by AI, and really make sure
we only interface with humans. And so basically for years back, we thought about how that would work and what technology would need to build, and so that's what we did.
We built about biometric.
Device that we distribute all of the world, and we allow everyone.
To verify in everyone being so far six million unique humans. I think it is in growing verified by the ORB. But the issue here is how many of those humans actually understand what it is that they're giving you and why they're giving it. There is an argument that people are standing in line in Ecuador and in developing nations thinking they're just going to get reward with a little bit of money and giving over a lot of data that they don't really understand. How you counteract that.
Well, they don't. In fact, they don't give us anything. We don't store any data that the network does to storing data. It's implemented in a self custodial way, and it uses what's called zero knowledge proofs to give you truly fundamental privacy guarantees. That's one, and then second, I would argue that you don't understand most of the technologies
you're using. That's also not the point. I think you understand why you're doing it and what comes up for you, but I don't think you have to understand every detail about technology, And that would be my.
Response, Alex, You've spent a lot of time flying around the world with Sam Autman to countries trying to convince them if they've placed a ban on the technology, to overturn it. You've had success in South career in Kenya. There are other countries where it stands. What is the concern that you hear most consistently from them?
So we only actually hit one band and that is that is Hong Kong. We paused another in other countries to work with regulators, but that is what we expected. This is a very new technology and there's many questions to we ask for regulators.
That is their job.
So we we really work with regulators and respond to the questions and their main concerns. Our main questions is nothing that I think would really surprise you. It is what happens to the data, how does technology work? And all of that of course an increasing detail, but we're really happy to answer to these questions and regulators around the world.
Alex, we've just got a minute or so left. What is the benefit to humanity that you want to provide with this technology?
Well, I think I think it will turn out to be truly critical. I think services like x social media, many things that we care about, will otherwise be really hard to use or are very easy to influence, and so I think for our democracy, for things that we care about, we will need such technology and I hope we can contribute with that.
Thanks Plannia, come back on as you continue to build the amount of people using it. Of course, co founder of world Coin and also humanity, we appreciate it. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Yep, another week of earnings, economic data and innovation recap it on the podcast. You know where to find it on the terminal, Apple, Spotify, and iHeart big thanks to the team in New York City with Caro and out with a crew here in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.