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Collie in Silicon Valley, Nbon This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Love Love.
I'm Caroline Heindel Bloomberg's Well headquarters in New York, and I med Love Low in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up in the next hour. Cisco shares under pressure. That's after delivering a disappointing outlook again along with plans to cut thousands of jobs.
We have a story plus coinbase earnings out after the bell, but shares jumped this morning after receiving an upgrade from JP Morgan. Bitcoin holding above fifty two thousand dollars. Will break down the numbers and hedge.
Funds buy into some of the biggest names in tech. Fourth quarter Amazon, Intel, and Video among some of the favorites that was revealed and yesterday's thirty NEFT filings. We're going to walk through the winners and the losers. But first let's check in on a key loser that is a mover on the day. Some breaking news Teminos based over in Europe.
Confident.
It says the company this is a software technology story in the finance space, so it's confident in the strength of their operations, so their financial cash position as well. This is after a short note was put out on the company six that's the benchmark manager over in Switzerland saying that Teminos is suspended from trading until further notice. We'll have more in that story as and when needed, but for the time being, let's get back to the macro picture of what's happening in US trading aside.
Of what's happening in Europe. We're off by two.
Tens percent on a NASDAK, some big tech names just rolling over coming off a record highs and we're pulling down two year yield though actually managing to dive.
A little bit.
But this is as we get that retail data that showed that not everything is quite as rosy in the US economy. Retail sales just falling that little bit lower in January under what had been anticipated. Maybe the Fed does cut in the second quarter yields. For I'm looking at what's happening in the dollar versus the Japanese yen. Dollar under pressure across the board all the g G
ten currencies, but notable even against the yen. Now this is as we see Japanese economy as a whole fall into a recession, and the yen has been under pressure of late. And now as we want to have a little look what's happening in the great world of crypto, because we're going to dive so much more into ecosystem the VC money going into crypto a little bit later in the show, but for now we're coming off of
our hives. But we're still about forty fifty two thousand dollars when it comes to the og that is bitcoin and what if you've got on the micro.
A lot going on. Let's start with Cisco cutting jobs. Cisco is revising its full year guidance. The story customers are worried about the economy. They're pulling back on networking spending. We'll get more details on that later in the program. I would say Cisco is not down as much as it had been earlier in the session. Alphabet parent of Google, also interesting. One of the big movies to the downside.
The information is reporting that open ai is working on its own search powered by being not drawing a direct link. But there seems to be some pressure resulting from that story. In Video one of the interesting stories of the thirteen f situation. They're putting money into a lot of the ecosystem that their AI accelerations are supporting.
Will dig into that, and finally Amazon.
I put those there because basically when I last checked, and Video jumped above Amazon in the ranking of biggest companies by market cap.
It's a pretty close run race right.
Now, but when you compare them in terms of revenue, it's just such a fascinating story. And within Video earnings on deck next week that is certainly one where we have to think about the valuation. DoorDash is the other one. After market. The gig economy has been the story of the week. DoorDash reports it's up one point seventy five percent. Does it benefit from the same things that Uber and Lyft told us in the last seven days or so, Karra, That's.
What we've got to focus in on.
We've got the perfect guest to really talk us through some of the key earnings still to come and that have been in the past. Ever course, Mark Mahoney is joining us on the array that has been.
Let's just start on dash push us forward. Seems as though the consumer is resilient.
And so some of these gig economy companies are resilient, Caroline.
I think that's right. I think your interpretation is correct. That's sort of what we learned from Uber and Lyft. Now, these are all marketplaces, and so you've got to focus on two things, the consumer demand dynamics and also the supply dynamics. But the read throughs there, I think we're sort of equally positive. Lift and Uber talking about twenty five thirty percent rise in number of drivers on a year over year basis. Drivers couriers, couriers in the case of Uber Eats, Uber Delivery, so.
And that's for a variety of different reasons.
But I do think that the services just become better working experiences. There's been a lot of technical improvements in terms of the app for the couriers, for the drivers, and I think the economics have got better. There's better pay to be had, So anyway, all of that should come through. We should see in door Dash's numbers tonight. Now, this company's going to give four to your guides in there.
You know, companies are usually conservative going to give four to your guides, So that could be a risk factor here, But I think the overall macro trend I think is positive for door dash and the gig economy trends I think are specifically very positive for dash Mark.
There is one story that everyone has been talking about in the past twenty four hours. It is the case of the errands zero. Have a listened to this really quick.
Look at the growth, look at the fundamentals of the financials, and to be very clear, this was it was a bad error, but it was one zero in a press release and you know a lot of other pages, and of course we corrected it within seconds of finding it. So I think, you know, like with any mistake, I think it's not so much about the mistake itself, it's
also about how you correct for it. And we've corrected for it obviously in the moment putting out new materials, but also doing a really deep process s type including having our own internal audit team, a separate team look and figure out how we can make sure we never make a mistake like this again.
There is That was David Risch Lift CEO talking to us yesterday.
Mark. Have you ever seen anything like that in your career?
No, I hadn't, and I remember, you know, looking at the press release, looking at the five hundred BIPs of guided margin expansion and then hearing the CFO talking about fifty BIPs that I world around by chairs a way eight or there's a problem here, but no, I haven't.
But look, it's a mistake.
And I think David's comments were right, which is, well, make mistakes. That's that's that's not terribly interesting. What's interesting is how people react to them and whether they, you know, come out admit that they made a mistake and correct it. And I think they did a decent job of doing that. It's it's it's unfortunate, but you know, the markets at
the end of the Day's how with Bobus. I mean the margins are still improving, uh and uh, and the demand chats are a better and there are focusing on free cash flow.
I mean, that's just a there's a profitability inflection point here.
All of these businesses, if you give them enough scale, you give them enough revenue growth, don't get the profitability. People were very uncertain about that when the IPOs lift an uber curve back in twenty nineteen, even more uncertain
during COVID, but it's come through. These companies have grown, their bases are built up, their drivers, supplies improved, their their consumer demand has improved, and through all of that profits so starting to really show up, and the investors are reacting very positively that they should be.
Jazz didn't react positively to Airbnb.
Mark K know you've been looking at that stack the company and deciding whether ultimately it should be a long term bet or not. What do you make of Airbnb as it does see just a little bit of cooling in the band.
Well, it's the highest multiple stock in travel trades, like thirty times thirty five times earnings. I do prefer booking a BKAT and I do prefer Expedia Expe to airbab. Airbnb's results were fined. They we thought they were going to have to warrant about their March border. They did, But just because you had a real tough compy, you had to pulled forward a demand beginning of twenty twenty
three that people just had to remember. And why did you pull forward of demand until early twenty twenty three Because everybody wanted to travel, but this was in a by by Western centers. It was high inflation environments, and so people booked early so that they could avoid prices.
Bikes during the summer.
Those price bikes, by the way, didn't happen, but people were concerned about earlier in the year.
So you have put forward of demand created tough comps.
But as we'll go through the year, I think Airbnb, spine the growth listen or what are you oh?
A technical difficulty mark?
I think we oh, you're back.
And that's the Olympics and every legal benefit mark.
We lost you for a second there, but that gave me a chance to look at my Bloomberg terminal. Alphabet paranor Google's the biggest points drag on the Nasdaq one hundred this morning. The story the Information is reporting is that open ai is coming with its own search partly powered by Being. The stock seems to be reacting with down three percent on the A shares. What do you make of that? You know, Alphabet's company you cover.
I'd be surprised if open Ai, with an integrated search engine with Being would really take away search share from Google. You'd have to do a lot of things to take away search share from Google. You have to come up with a much better search product. You can't just have a meet to products. So if Google's going to trade off three percent I probably buy the stock just based on that. I think that correction will be corrected, but we'll see. There's more competition arguably now for Google Search.
I just think Google searches continue to improve. I think some of these Gemini features that they're rolling out are going to improve Google Search. So I'll take the other side of a three percent correction on market share fears for Google.
Mark.
We just have thirty seconds of the ginormous universe of tech companies you cover who won earnings period so.
Far, Amazon and especially Meta. Everybody's spending more on Meta today and margins and profits are arising there dramatically. Metal looks like a really well positioned company in stock for twenty.
Four all right, I have a coast, Mark Mahanean, as I said in massive universe of different technology companies cover.
That's why I love having you on the show. Thank you very much.
Cisco's the backbone of the Internet, as you know, and there routers, network server business, these things, their.
Switches are truly important to bring it.
In cash flow, but the future is in services.
That was David Barnson, their CEO of the Buns and Group. And the thing is things didn't really transpire that way. He was speaking twenty four hours ago. But last night Cisco out with some pretty negative news, cutting headcount by five percent, revising their full year guidance, and saying, our customers are worried about the economy, so they're pulling back on spending it. At the same time, that ripple effect from AI, it's just not there for Cisco. I want
to bring in bloomboats. Brodie Ford out in New York City. I mean, for me, that was the story, the difference between networking and infrastructure, the Hyperscali's data center, Cisco's not quite there yet.
Yeah, I think this is a song we have heard before that corporate customers are a little worried.
You know.
Cisco said that they bought all this stuff over the last couple of quarters, right, all of this infrastructure for servers and internet, and they're saying, wait, let me install all this stuff before I buy more, because that looming recession could still be there. So, yeah, those corporate IT budgets. As much as people have said that they are coming back, it's clear from Cisco that folks are still a little bit anxious.
And what's interesting is last quarter they missed stockfell and Chuck Robins said, I wish I could blame the Macro and I'm not back this time.
He kind of blamed the Macro.
Yeah, and he's not blaming a big a position that they made.
Yeah.
Absolutely, twenty eight billion dollars for Splunk. It is on the way. It has not closed yet. Big companies will often say that mergers don't necessarily cause job reductions.
It seems like they usually do.
Right, They're about to bring in a couple thousand workers from there's going to be overlap there, and I think most people watching us say that this is kind of preempting some of that overlap or an environment where companies want to keep profits as high as they can keep expenses low. I would expect part of this is due to that Splunk acquisition and.
Spunk have been laying off workers as well, and anormation maybe or just reacting to how the market is and just fold in whether if they are blaming Macro this time, how much Also just people have just sat on a lot of gear and they haven't deployed it yet.
Ultimately, absolutely hardware it takes time to install, right, I Mean, there was a period where there's all these backlogs and people couldn't get the things they needed, whether that was en routers or computers. That eased up and people started buying. They said, let me get it while I can, right, And I think now they're sitting on a lot of this stuff and they're not wanting to buy more. At least that's the narrative we heard during the earnings call last night.
The numbers are that they've revised their full year sales Garden guidance down by around two to three billion dollars five percent. Headcount trim is about four thousand staff, so it's it's not severe, but it doesn't inspire confidence. Tell us about the partnership with Nvidia, because I think there is some optimism from the cell side analyst this morning that that might plot them apart forward.
Yes, there is some optimism there, but I will also say that if I wanted to count off all the companies I've heard of with partnerships with Nvidia, I wouldn't have enough fingers, right. I mean, it's hard to tell exactly how much uplift we get.
Brady Ford, you going sorry, you're right, no, No.
Another funny wrinkle here is that in the networking space. Cisco has been unquestioned for a long time. We have another funny merger coming Hpe and Juniper and then expressly say that we are doing this to take on Cisco. I think that will take, you know, a number of quarters to see whether that really hurts them or not. But I think that is another wrinkle here, that there is a looming competitive concerns. So one more thing to consider here. Maybe in Vidia can't save them.
Oh, in Vidio not to the rest of this time.
It has been to Thesco of certain share prices today of others that will dig into in a bit later. Brodie Ford Rank, you always a joy to.
Have on the show.
Meanwhile, coming up AI started AI startup Lander is now to one point five billion dollar valuation.
It's the latest funning round it.
CEO is going to be joining us, Stefan Allaman joining us next ed.
But you've got something to look.
Ahead to, Yes, super Micro, this speaks to every story we've just covered. The stock is now up two hundred and thirty six percent year to date, nine percent in the session. Bank of America initiating coverage with a by rating one thousand and forty price target. This is basically what Cisco is not. It's everything in the data center and the server design, apart from the AI accelerator itself.
So they're a real beneficiary of the infrastructure build out we're seeing and they've massively outperformed every index, even in Vidia by many factors. And so this is one that we want to talk about more. Super micro computing up nine percent. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Time now for talking tech.
And first up, a SpaceX rockets blasted off in the middle of the night, aiming to make the first touchdown of a US made spacecraft on the Moon in fifty years, called an Oversea The spacecraft, built in Houston, is based initiative machines of the company behind it and will make its touchdown attempt on February twenty second. Meanwhile, chip maker Rhnessus agreed to buy software firm Altium for nearly six billion dollars, the biggest acquisition yet for the Australian listed
company by a Japanese buyer. Now Rnessas, which is a Toyota supply is looking to lower its reliance on making automotive chips.
Plus Taiwan stop.
Benchmark surge to its highest level on record, boosted by what expectations.
Of strong AI demand.
The tai x rallied that says TSMC, which has a waiting of around thirty percent of the index, reported its January sales and the rose almost eight percent from a year ago. It really is propelling the chipmaker's market capitol record five hundred seventy five billion dollars. It's enough to surpass Visa to become the world's twelfth most valuable company.
And what have you got on ai?
Okay?
Lambda, which provides cloud computing services and computers to train AI software, is announcing a Series C funding round three hundred and twenty million dollars, valuing the company at one point five billion dollars. The financing was led by billionaire Thomas tools us Innovavid Technology, and includes participation from the likes of B Capital, sk Telecom, as well as Bloomberg Beta, the venture capital arm of Bloomberg Bloomberg LP, of course,
the parent company of Bloomberg Television. Let's bring in Labda CEO Steven Stephen Balaban to join us for more. Let's go back to basics. What is it that Lambda does? What do you build and what do you offer?
Lambda is an AI compute platform. We have GPU servers, GPU workstations, and GPU cloud service that we provide to AI developers.
And so this money is a significant series C. We've done a lot on this show about the buildout and IAI infrastructure. We're literally talking server designs going into data centers normally run by the hyperscalers. What are you going to take that cash.
And do with it?
Well, we're going to be deployed tens of thousands of new and video GPUs into our data center and to providing those GPUs as part of our cloud service.
Okay, go back to the origin story here, Stephen, because it's an interesting one.
You weren't always in this game.
In fact, you were making facial recognition technology and ways in which I could augment my face RAI and then your own bills for your own cloud consumption got too high, so tell us that.
Yeah.
So LAMB just started off as a face and image recognition software development company. So we were AI engineers ourselves, and we ended up getting a really high cloud service bill and we figured, you know what, it was a lot more cost effective for us to redesign and reimagine what an AI cloud should look like in the age of training neural networks and inferencing neural network and so that's how we pivoted into the cloud business that we're in today.
And Stephen, I really want to try and understand competitors versus frenemies.
I find it very hard.
To basically get to grips with who you're servicing, who your clients are, because it looks as though some of your clients are even some of the hyperscalers ultimately.
You're going in competition with.
Can you just tell us how ultimately you think the layer of the land will look like in.
Five years time.
Yeah, So Landa's customers include, you know, trillion dollar market cap Fortune five hundred companies, companies that are major enterprises like Rakuten who are integrating AI into their products and services, and venture back startup companies like any Scale, and so you know, we really primarily provide and cater towards that AI developer, and that's that's who who we've been basically providing our services to.
Steve, I'm just really interested on the hardware side of this story. So you know, I'm assuming that you are building out your infrastructure with DGX or HGX, right the
broader server design. But what's happening right now in twenty twenty four, remarkably quickly as we're kind of moving from this focus on training to inference and understanding the energy and compute load for inference, do you then start looking elsewhere like AMD that I three hundred x. How do you transition your own footprint in business?
So look, today Lambda is exclusively providing in video GPUs and the reason for that is because that's what the market's demanding, right you know, it's very simple. We are a compute provider that technically speaking, and from our software architecture and our software platform is agnostic to what the underlying accelerator platform is. But so far today we've been pure in video.
Let's look at the valuation and let's look at the money you raised. Valuation is high. Talks me about the reality of your business from a revenue generation standpoint, Which markets you operate in outside of North America, the number of customers you have. I think we're just we're learning about you, and we're thinking, well, hold on, this sounds like you're a really key part of the system.
So Land has been pretty under the radar, but we have over ten thousand customers. In fiscal year twenty twenty two, we did over one hundred million dollars of shipped gap revenue. Last year we did over two hundred and thirty seven million dollars of ship revenue. So we already have a
pretty substantial business. And in terms of valuation, I think that you're looking at these these revenue multiples and you're probably thinking, Wow, that's actually quite reasonable given the growth, given the customer base, and given the sheer amount of revenue.
Hew I'm the CEO, Stephen Bellavan. Thank you so much for your time on the talks of fundraise.
What you're going to be deploying in on Welcome back to bluebo Teleology. I'm Karen had in New York and I.
Med love Loow in San Francisco. I want to focus in on crypto for a minute, and in particular bitcoin, what else We're above fifty two thousand US dollars per token. There is some momentum here from the lunar New Year. There is a concentration on the data around netflows into the spot ETFs that are available, and as we discussed on this show, some people are thinking about the imminent harving that's coming in April, but this is the highest level since December of twenty twenty one. We've been at
that level for a few days now. Kind of interesting that is on the pure risk asset asset that is bitcoin on the equity side, and crypto related stocks were zeroed in on Coinbase, partly because coinbased reports after market, and I think there's an expectation here.
That Wall Street might get surprised with profit.
In Coinbase's case, I always look at the chart and there is quite clearly a close correlation at the moment between the trading we see in Coinbase the movement that we see in bitcoin. But JP Morgan, one of the more bearish names on coinbase ditched a very short lived call that they had on the stockol there. I want to go to DC and bring in Bloombose, Kaylee Lines. I mean that for me is a lot of different stories, but Coinbase really in focus today.
Yeah.
Absolutely to your point about how short lived this JP Morgan bearish call was. The call was just made on January twenty third, essentially saying that Coinbase was going to suffer because enthusiasm around these spot bitcoin ETFs was going to deflate and that would lead to lower volumes there
for lower revenue potentially for Coinbase. What we have seen, though, and you were just speaking of it, is instead a rally in not just bitcoin but ethereum as well, bitcoins above fifty two thousand dollars, and so today JP Morgan is actually saying that as you have these higher prices, that is going to translate into better business for Coinbase as an exchange because the higher volumes do you have obviously more activity and higher value when you're deriving a fee based on value.
All of that could add up.
To a more positive earnings picture for the company, and of course we're going to get detail into what exactly that earnings picture really looks like after the bell today. As you said, most analysts do still expect Coinbase is going to post a loss. The average analyst estimate is
a loss of about sixteen million dollars or so. But there are some who actually think we could see a surprise profit, including Oppenheiner and Needham, which is looking for an income of about one hundred and three million dollars. So we'll see if we are indeed surprised come a few hours from now.
Bloomberg's K Lines, one of the hosts of Bloomberg Crypto, which honestly is a show that you really need to be plugged into right now.
Great to catch up for you at a DC caro. What do you got We're on.
Crypto sec check Auriganza. He's sat down with our own David Weston to explain his reasoning, but can't behind all of those approvals of those bitcoin ets spot bitcoin lines take listening.
Several years ago, back in twenty twenty one, there was a product that went live, so to speak, an exchange traded fun wrapped around these bitcoin futures at the Chicago Mercantil Exchange. And then a different set of products came to us and asked a lists on the stock exchanges.
And while we had denied like two dozen of these over about five years, a court in Washington said no, they thought we had not gotten that right, and they remanded it back to us, And I thought, really the most sustainable thing forward was to approve these given the court ruling. In terms of the statistics, we really do look out ensure as best we can there's not fraud manipulation. But one of the challenges on the bitcoin markets, David is so much of its traded on trading platforms that
are non compliant with our laws. Now, bitcoin's not a security, but there are trading on those platforms a lot of other crypto tokens. Without prejudging anyone, I'd be careful that with hundreds of other crypto tokens on there, likely there's other securities and in court in a number of these cases in front of various judges and panels, and so the American public when you're investing in something like bitcoin
to be aware one it's a highly speculative asset. Number two, it's generally trading on some platform that is not fully compliant with the securities loss for other things they're doing. And number three, I admit sin is think about what use case? What is the actual use case? When you buy one hundred shares of XYZ stock, you kind of know what's behind that company, what that they're there is.
A sec chair Gary Gensler, and well we can stick to all things bitcoin ets. The approvals that have prompted some optimism throughout the entire crypto ecosystem basically, and it's been accompanied therefore by an optique in funding and VC funding. After six quarters of decline. I used to say, Pitchbook's fourth quarter cryptop what is out today and we can
speak with the analysts behind it. Robert Lee joining us for more, And well, let's pick up where Garrigan's are left off, because you actually highlight within the report perhaps some of the regulatory uncertainties that hang over these crypt native exchanges. I'm thinking particularly of the decentralized exchanges.
Unit swip on the like.
How is that affecting optimism or not in ultimately backing these companies and seeing them grow.
Yeah, I think look, invest serves have looked at these you know, sexualized the changes and seeing what's happened over the last you know, eighteen months or so. Yep, a lot of the bad actors have been flushed out. Are there more bad actors out there? Possibly? But you know, I think investors feel a lot more confident in how they can assess and diligencies bad actors. You know, they
really have the tool us to do that now. So we know that regulations are going to come and you know that that is a big challenge for investment, especially here in the US. So, you know, the last time we spell probably six eight months ago, said the regulation arbitragy isn't really there yet. You're starting to see that now. So the longer that we have, you know, this regulatory uncertainty here in the US, we're going to start seeing
more innovation continue to move abroad. And you speak to investors and you look at all a lot of the big investments in Q four, they happen outside of the US. So investors, they're traveling the world now, they're you know, they're not sitting in San Francisco comfortable having founders come to their offices anymore, not in the crypto space. They're traveling around and they're going to conferences in Europe and in Asia to meet these founders, and that's what you're seeing.
So you know the regulation is gonna be a pretty difficult aspect, and you know it's gonna be a big concern here in the US. But then you know, if that's if the legislation doesn't happen here, regulators doesn't get act together here, then then investors going to find opportunities elsewhere.
And the opportunities are finding abroad and maybe even here in New York. As cristicks And would like to say from a sixteen, SI's crypto, what are you what sort of things are being built. It feels as though a lot of it is back on bitcoins since the spot Bitcoin ETF but it's about making it well scalable ultimately.
Yeah, so we've we it is in the research is that the layer twos for bitcoin is a pretty interesting phenomenon. We've seen a lot of development in it in the last year, so we're starting to see a lot of investments happen as well. You know, bitcoin historically was just a digital store of value and maybe some for payments. Now you're starting to see these layer twos that enables programmability and turning bitcoin really into a computing platform very
similar to ethereum. And with that you can have all these applications be built on a DeFi, n F T S, gaming, uh, stable coins. So you're starting to see that come to space. So this year, you know, with the spot bitcoin ets with the having happening in April, and I think, you know, bitcoin becoming this computing platform. That's a very strong bulish case for bitcoin.
Robert were banging in the middle of one Q and in the context of the money flowing into companies in the crypto industry, broadly. We found we focused so much on how tough it was last year. You see any green shoots in one queue about the kind of trajectory for at least DC backing of cryptos startups.
Yeah, definitely. I think the theme that you're gonna see in this next cycle is what are the real world use cases for crypto? So we're looking we see a lot of tokenization. We talked about this in the past, you know, that was a huge theme last year. You know, we talked about physical infrastructure, so deep in there's another area. We've seen a lot of investments, especially now with AI training using compute power to do that. We saw tomorrow
or together AI. They raise this huge round one hundred million dollars plus round last quarter and also incentivized marketplaces, so marketplaces that uses tokens to you know, like a brain trust to let users come on and have tokens to facilitate the way that they transact online. So you're gonna start seeing a lot of that. We're very seeing a lot of investments in that, and that's what investors
to focus on. The things have fundamental business models that are more durable, and then they have a path to scale.
Tho, all right, pitch book cryptoanalyst Robert Lay. Great to have you on the program.
Thank you know.
Coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, we're going to discuss how one SaaS platform is helping hourly employees access their childcare subsidies. Merzer co founder and CEO Currendzau joins us.
Next. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Tackling the maze that is government childcare subsidies that is now with the help of a SaaS platform.
Merser is promising to do.
That, having just closed a three point three million dollar round. Mrza co founder CEO Saransau joins us for more and Zeran just go through how hard ultimately the problem is and how a SaaS platform is the best way to fix it.
Yeah, so let's start with how childcare and work so deeply intertwined. So the top reason parents quit their jobs or cut back on hours is childcare. Forty percent of parents are in.
Debt over childcare.
So when we zoom out to that tangled web that you're referencing, we're talking about billions of dollars allocated each year to help low income families access the childcare they need to work, and yet only about twenty percent of those families are getting those dollars.
So what's happening here.
It's really varied and fragmented across the country. So for example, a family of four here in New York making sixty five k yere would have access to government subsidy. That same family in Pennsylvania would not. The family here in New York can use those subsidies to pay grandma, so if you work the night shift, that's pretty critical.
But then that same family in Ohio wouldn't be able to.
So when it comes to a nationwide employer trying to solve this for their employees, it is such a tangled web. It's really hard.
That's where SaaS comes in.
Okay, so tell us a little bit about who is using this platform already that you built.
Yeah, so we're really excited to be working with a global food service company supporting their hourly workers. And this means, you know, the impact is pretty huge. For a worker who makes thirty five k a year on average, that extra ten thousand dollars or so in government childcare subsidy is life changing.
Saren, getting publicly available funds is so difficult in so many different industries. You know there are specialist VC firms that only back companies like yours that do this.
How does the technology work?
How is your SaaS platform able to expedite something that everyone knows moves painfully slowly.
Yeah.
So at the core for families, we make it beautifully simple, brutally simple. We take a few easy pieces of information like how many kids you have and how old they are, what's the number of folks in your household, what's your household income? And then based on where they live pinpoint very specifically, what the eligible what the programs they're eligible for, and then we, through the beauty of SaaS, make it as easy as possible to apply our dream. And what
we're doing is one click. It's just like checking out.
Online, and you've got the backing to prove it. Thus far, with that three point three million coming from the likes of Firework Ventures as well as Portage, we thank you for the time, mez A, co founder CEO si Ran. So meanwhile, look, let's just stick with technology's impact on families this time though.
Kids and smartphones.
What started is a WhatsApp group for local parents who wanted to hold off on buying their kids smartphones. It's quickly turned into a national movement in the United Kingdom, amassing thousands and thousands of like minded parents, launching more than fifty regional groups across Britain. Johnny us Now is one of the founders on Smartphone Free Childhood, as it's called Claire Fanhalf and Claire, I'm really interested in ultimately your driver here.
You must have.
Kids of a certain age that are demanding smartphones, and you're trying to find a way of navigating that.
Exactly. I've got seven and a nine year old, and I was sort of becoming increasingly horrified about the fact that actually, in a couple of years, the normal is that my child, my daughter, will get a smartphone. And I just felt like, this is all the evidence is telling me this is not going to be good for her. But equally, all the evidence is telling me that actually this is what everyone does. And I felt like this
was just not something I wanted to do. And so yeah, I set up a group just over a week ago.
There were two of us, and we thought we'd just it would just be us, that we would, you know, kind of share some tips and resources and get some solidarity made with a small group and as you said, it's gone completely viral and thousands of people joined overnight, and we've realized that actually we're not alone in feeling like this, and actually a lot of people are clearly really really worried about this too and really want to talk about it together.
I mean, your my leading stat is almost one hundred percent of twelve year olds have a smartphone, and I wonder what ultimately you think you can achieve through this. Interestingly, you're using technology to kind of try and fend off technological use by your children. But what do you say to the investors that listen to this show, well, those that are backing Apple to keep on selling smartphones or social media to keep on targeting all age rangers.
I think what I would say is that actually it's absolutely fine for children to have a phone, but investment needs to be put into what we would call a brick phone or a dumb phone for children. Smartphones are
not good for them. We know now we have enough data because the people who've got smartphones as children and are adults, and we know that the younger a child gets a smartphone, the worst their mental health is very clear and the evidence so I think the investment need to switch into giving it really cool brick phones for children that they can text and call on. But they
don't need to do any more than that. In our from my perspective, the only reason a child leads are smartphones because everyone else has got one, and that is the norm that we are trying to change.
Claire, I am not a parent yet, but I was once a child, believe it or not. What I'm struggling here with is what is the principal concern. Is it the hours of usage or is it the risk that parents feel their children are exposed to because simply a smartphone gives access to the internet.
So I think there are three main risks here. Number one is the impact it has on mental health. You know, it triggers anxiety, you know using smartphones, we know it has a range of impacts on well being. It's also about what we would call the opportunity cost. So it's the things that children.
Are not doing.
So in recent years we've switched from a play based childhood to a screen based childhood, and we know that all children, of course, if they have the choice between playing outside the screen, they go for the screen. So it's the things that they're not doing, which is really really worrying. And it's also the huge amount of content that they are opened up to which they are not
ready for. You know, they are now seeing the most shocking things on smartphones, and I think actually parents are quite a lot of parents are not aware of what their children are looking at and they're seeing images that they can't unsee.
Essentially, Claire, I would note that if it's an iPhone or even a Samsung phone, there are very clear parental control instructions on the websites of those companies that parents can use. I carried a great job of setting out the movement. Incredible what you did in a short space of time. Has anyone in the UK government or a representative from Apple or a representative from Samsung reached out with you to try and work with you on this.
We've had a lot of yeah, a lot of MPs coming forward, so politicians from the UK wanting to talk to us about it. We haven't had any tech companies get in touch yet. But what we want to do is work with the tech companies and say that it's actually a great opportunity design a really cool phone that every twelve.
Year old wants.
It doesn't need to have Internet on it. It can just be a cool you know, whatever brand you want. But at this moment, no, we haven't had anyone reach out. What we're doing is just empowering parents.
You know.
We want the change to come from parents themselves, and then we believe that schools, government, tech companies.
Will all follow if we vote with our feed I.
Cannot tell you how much of our time has taken up discussing among friends about what to do about this at the moment and this critical ages of children so fascinating to bring it to our attention, maybe we just call it brick phone childhood. The co founder A Smartphone Free Childhood, we thank you, Claire Fairni.
Has thirteen F filings revealed that Hedge Funds brought into some of the biggest tech names in the fourth quarter to chase what has been a scorching rally fueled by growth in AI. Let's go out to Bloomberg's Hemma Palma in New York. You look across the headlines and the data, which tech names were hot and which tech names were not.
Yes, so tap tech names, Amazon, Navidia, Intel, These were some of the most popular buys that we saw in the last quarter of last year, Nearly fifteen million shares of Amazon was bought in the last quarter. On the flip side, Meta one of the least popular stocks. A lot more selling on that, but that made me more because of portfolio management, people wanting to reduce their position if the stock did really well, or taking profits, so
it may not necessarily be a bullish bet. Nike and Pfizer also popular cells.
Interestingly, we have seen some other cells and some big share reaction on the back of it. I think what Berkshire Hathaway is selling.
Down on paramount?
More broadly, where is sort of the force of direction going more across all of the board here?
Is there any theme that we can see?
Yeah, I mean I think generally you're seeing a pushing into the market again, more interest in some of the big tech stocks. A lot of these are household names that we all sort of know and we talk about a lot in the show. But you're seeing, you know, if we look at CO two, for example, there was a decent amount of rotation their portfolio. They took twenty nine new positions, they sold fifteen Salesforce was one of their bigger buys. It's now their eleventh biggest holding worth
about five hundred million dollars, so that's pretty sizable. They took a new steak in Apple. On the flip side, if we look at Tiger Global, there really wasn't a whole lot of activity, so you do see a disparity between different firms and how they examined the space. They only bought two new stocks they sold out of eleven. The ones they did buy were relatively small, small stakes, so you do see some dispersion too.
A real quick kenna. What's going on with Viking?
Yeah, so Viking they do some tech stocks, but they've also done something really interesting. They got out of their metal position entirely. That was a stake where about a billion dollars, so it's a pretty sizable move there. They ramped up their position a Progressive, which is an insurance company so they do non tech stuff too, and they ramp that up by about fivefold, so another significant uptick there.
Absolutely fascinating.
We love how you managed to break it all down for us and look at the valley that met has had. As you're saying, maybe some needed to rebalance their portfolio.
Hema, Palma.
Always great to have some time with you on these thirteen f's.
Ed.
What's interesting is in Video was not only bought, but it's also having to file its own thirteen f's. It's actually a buyer of companies SoundHound IAI actulutely spiraling because of it.
And he's putting billions of dollars in the private markets as well. It's been very active in recent quarters.
Meanwhile, that is it for this edition of Bloomberg.
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