From Mahard where Innovation of Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde.
And Ed Ludlove a Meed Ludlow in San Francisco. Caroline Hyde is off. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up on the program. Facing mega fines, the European Union opens investigations into Apple, Google and Meta in the first probes under the Block's Digital Markets Act. We go live to Brussels Plus will take a deep dive into the Justice Department's
lawsuit against Apple as her own. Mark German argues the case is missing an opportunity to address more pressing concerns, and Lucid getting a one billion dollar cash injection from its biggest investor provide the troubled electric car maker with a needed lifeline. Will discuss that and so much more through the hour. Let's get right to Lucid. Look at Lucid shared in the US session, now up eight percent that had been as high as around twenty percent following
the market open. This is a private placement of convertible stock. It takes the Saudi PIF and its affiliates investments and Lucid to six and a half billion dollars all told. A lot more to discuss on that later in the program. These are the meggacap technology shares that we're watching in a session this Monday. They are all moving to the downside. Apple down a percentage point, It's down twelve percent year to date, Alphabet pairent of Google down more than a
percentage point, Meta down seven ten to one percent. We have an EU probe of each of those companies under the Digital Markets Act. This is what EU Anti Trust chief Margreta Vesta said earlier today.
These are serious cases. We've been able to solve that with merely a discuss. It would have been resolved by now. So we opened for good reasons because we find that if this invertise come at compliance solutions, if they persist, then consumers will not have the choice that they were promised by the Digital Markets Act.
Let's go to Brussels and Bloomberg Samuel Stalton, Sam just outline the basics of these probes under the Digital Markets Act and how they relate to those US technology companies.
Yeah, good afternoon here from Brussels, ED and indeed we're back here again the EU facing up to the dominance of big tech. And this is the news today that the European Commission has opened five Yes, that's five investigations under its new Digital Markets Act rules targeting Apple, Google
and Meta. Now how serious is this really? Well, it's certainly a statement of intent from Brussels, but it clearly wants to enforce as robust as possible these new digital competition rules, which only took hold just eighteen days ago on March seventh.
So we played that click from vest there and one of the questions she got in the press conference, which I'm assuming you were in, was is this a bit front run? Is this you moving quickly? And she basically said, no, you know, we are moving in a timely fashion. We're also showing the potential risks to these technology companies. This explain what finds if they were to be fined, these tech companies could be facing under an EU action.
Yeah, So from today, the Commission will aim to conclude these investigations into Apple, Google and Meta within a period
of about twelve months. At the end of that twelve month period it will adopt what's called a non compliance decision, and with that power, it has the capacity to find these companies up to ten percent of its global turnover for those types of breaches under the and also it has these additional powers in the case of repeated infringements to find these firms up to twenty percent of their global annual revenue or even mandates the breakup of some
of these companies. So it's a very very serious matter. We're not quite at that stage yet. As I say, there's this twelve month period to go through and til the Commission comes to a decision, but that kicks off today.
And for a little size and scope, Apple's revenue in twenty twenty three was three hundred and eighty three billion dollars, so twenty percent of that is a hefty chunker change. But in Samuel Stalton in Brussels, terrific reporting. Thank you. The euprobe isn't the only anti trust story coming out of Apple last week. The DOJ here in the US father suit accusing Apple of violating antitrust laws and suppressing competition in the culmination of what was a five year
probe into the company. I want to speak to John Bergmeyer, legal director at Public Knowledge, and go a bit deeper on this. We were reflecting last week this was a big story. You know, from a market's perspective, it's rare that a stock shows the pressure of an antitrust action. What is your assessment of how strong the DOJ case is against Apple?
I think it's very strong.
They listed about five behaviors that are not intended to gather up all the different complaints that people have about Apple, but rather the five behaviors that they think most probably violate the law.
So tho you know, God.
No, I'm sorry, John, Please continue your thought.
Yeah.
Those include using the app store monopoly to prevent certain categories apps from competing, blocking banks from accessing the NFC chip and other matters, and those classic exclusionary behaviors where companies that have a dominant market share, market power, monopoly power, whatever you want to call it, they're usually prevented from doing things that block out competitors. I think the DJ put forward a very compelling narrative showing how Apple, for you US, has done just that.
The Apple argument in this is essentially that the consumer does have choice right that they Apple are the maker of a creative market. Do you think that that a competitive market right in that they offer developers the opportunity to make a living, to make apps that are competitive with one another. Does that give them any chance of warding off this fight from the DOJ, I don't.
I don't think so.
If you're a developer, you have no choice but to develop for both iOS and Android. And I really doubt that the majority of iPhone customers buy iPhones because specifically of these exclusive practices. Apple makes excellent products. No one's denying that I have an iPhone and I love it. The question is not whether Apple makes good products and whether it competes, but whether it can use its product to control other markets like smartwatches or payment apps.
John, you work at public knowledge, and I'm summarizing that the goal of public knowledge is to make sure that each part of the technology and its stakeholders have a say in the future.
Right.
One of the things that gets debated in the antitrust context is who is it serving? Who is it protecting? And the argument from the DOJ is that it is protecting the consumer. Right, it is making sure that it ends in a policy change at Apple that would allow for the consumer to have greater choice. But does that actually ever happen? Does that actually ever become the end result?
I think it does very frequently with anti trust cases, they do take a long time to litigate, and antitrust is not the only tool that policymakers have to protect consumers. But here, you know, I repeat again Apple, The DOJ is not suing Apple for having products that are too
good or too integrated. It's suing Apple for blocking competitors from doing the same thing on the Apple platform, which is so dominant that if you're a competitor, if you're a competitor, or if you're an Apple developer, you simply have no choice but to develop for the iPhone.
You just mentioned there that it's not the only tool. We often talk about regulating through the courts, but there is also, of course lawmaking on Capitol Hill. Is there an avenue do you think for Apple to reach some kind of settlement with the DOJ where they could just work this out behind closed doors?
You know, I really couldn't predict whether to be a settlement. Apple's going to file an answer to the DOJ's complaint. That's going to set forth east side of the story. And like I say, litigation often takes years to develop. In the meantime, though Congress is not sitting on its hands, and other regulators around the world are not sitting on
their hands. Congress introduced a bill it did not pass a while ago, called the Access Act, which would have opened up the app store monopoly just a little bit. And as you've just reported in Europe, you know Europe is taking action.
There's litigation in Australia.
So it's going to be a very complicated situation, I think globally for Apple, and ultimately maybe it isn't their interest to try to settle and try.
To resolve some of these disputes.
But Apple so far has shown that it just wants to fight tooth and nail and resist any attempt to regulate over changes behavior.
It is getting complicated. As you point out, Apple is facing antitrust scrutiny on two fronts, the DOJ in the US and under the digital market apps in Europe. And I just want to say, because it was REMISSI of me not to that. If you read the Bloomberg story, each of the companies Apple, Alphabet and Meta gave a pretty full response saying we are compliant with the DMA. So I encourage our audience to go and look at
those responses. John Bergmeyer, legal director at Public Knowledge. Thank you very much now, sticking with Apple for a second, Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed plans to invest further in supply chain, stores and research in China. State Media says he also made the promise in a meeting with Beijing's Commerce Minister. Cook also spoke at the annual China Development Forum, saying AI will be an essential tool for helping businesses reduce their carbon footprints.
We would not be able to recover the level of material that we do today for recycling without AI. I mean it's already fundamental in our calculation, and I think it provides an enormous tool and the toolkit for every company that's wishing to be carbon neutral or to lower their emissions by substantial amount.
Okay, So, Lucid trading up around five to six percent right now at its session. Higher have been up twenty one percent as the company received a one billion dollar cash injection from its biggest investor, in affiliate of Saudi Arabia's public Investment Fund, providing electric car maker Frankly with a further lifeline. Here to discuss his Bloomberg's Global Auto's editor Craig Throudew and London, I mean you and I have been following Lucid a long time, well before the
reverse merger with this fact that took them public. But the point of that is that we've also tracked the billions of dollars that the PI, the PITH, PIF and its affiliates have put in. Just bring us on to speed on how much cash Saudis have put into Lucid so far.
Yeah, I mean this is you know, people talk about the Federal Reserve put, you know, the FED put. This is the PITH put, if you will. This is another billion that the Saudis are putting into Lucid. This is on top of a five point four billion that that Lucid has said has already been put in by their
biggest shareholder, and it really was necessary. I mean, it's it may be the case that this is not the last capital race that we see this year, because this is a company that, you know, going into twenty twenty four had only a little bit over four billion on its balance sheet and there were some expectations among animal us that you know, roughly all of that could be
accounted for in cash burn this year. And so you know, Lucid has been a company that you know, when it was going public through a reverse merger was looked at as you know, a potential Tesla challenger. It's really struggled to live up to those expectations and get you know, manufacturing going right. I think it let a lot of investors down, with their outlook for this year being really just a small increase from last year's production.
Yeah, that seems to be the story of Lucid, right. I think they're guiding to nine thousand units this year. It's a premium price point they needed eighty five hundred last year. But at the same time, there's an EV problem generally. Where does Lucid sit within that?
Yeah, I mean I think there is some hope that maybe moving into a new segment into sport utility vehicles with the gravity would be you know, a big help for them. They to your point, are playing at the higher end, and the level of competition there is particularly high.
In the US.
I think we've seen you know, so much more you know, fighting up at the upper ends of the market where we haven't really seen as we have in China, you know, cutthrough competition among you know, cheap evs, and so you know, when you have when you have to go up against more established players like the Mercedes you know and BMW's
of the world. It's really tough, and Lucid has compelling product that the issue that they've had is not being able to make enough of it and to be able to to make U you know, their their evs without losing a ton of money. Uh, you know, the more they're making, the more they're losing. And that's not a trend that can be sustained.
As Elon Musk has teased them about in the past, prose types of easy production is hard. Overnight, Bloomberg News spoke to the CEO c at L, the world's biggest maker of batteries for evs. What were the main takeaways from that interview.
I think one of the big ones, of course, was an exclusive that ed you were a part of earlier this year. This idea that c at L did have some equipment that was idle in China that Tesla is going to make use of by making more batteries at
its factory in Nevada. I think this is a company that, you know, is really sort of pressing ahead in spite of the fact that we're seeing an ev slowdown and you know, sort of vowing to continue to add capacity, and I think we're seeing this sort of you know, broader trend, whether it's c at L on the battery side or by D which makes both EV's and batteries.
You know, the real dominant players in China are sort of pressing their advantages over the others and you know, continuing to add capacity, cut price, and you know, the question is going to be, you know, how much longer some of the you know, lesser companies in China can sustain themselves, you know, in the face of the big getting bigger and getting all the more aggressive to sort of, you know, drive out the players who can't keep up.
Bloomberg's Global Cars editor Craive Trudell. Great to have you on the program. Thank you. Now coming up here on Bloombog technology, a shakeup at Stability AI and it's c suite, more on the resignation of CEO m A. Musqut. Next, we're also taking a look at shares of Boeing. You must have seen this story up eight ten to one percent, way off session highs. CEO Dave Calhoun will step down
at the end of this year. There are pretty sweeping overhauls of leadership Larry Kellner will not stand for reelection as chairman and stand deal the guy on the right hand side of you the screen, the guy that led the commercial business in the commercial airplane division is also departing with immediate effect. That is the big story out of the aerospace industry this Monday. This is Bloomberg Technology. Okay,
it's time for talking tech and in the news. Match Group is naming two directors to its board following talks with activist investors. Elliott Management, the owner of dating apps Tender and Hinge, will add Instacart chief marketing officer Laura Jones and Zillo co founder Spencer Raskoff to its board immediately. Match also said its signed an information sharing agreement with Elliott in an effort to quote facilitate ongoing collaboration towards value.
The company plans to update shareholders on its strategy at an upcoming investor day. Plus AI chips startup Elian raises sixty million dollars in a Series B funding round led by Samsung and Tiger Global. The company provides tech that unifies semiconductors to work more smoothly and faster. The funding comes as the leader of a semi conductors in Nvidia put forward its path of combining chips to work as one, relying on the work of companies like Elian to help
realize their goals, and this is a big one. Stability AI CEO M. A. Mustik has resigned. The move comes amid quarrels with investors and waves of senior staff departures at the British AI startup. In a blog post released Friday, Stability AI said it's COO and CTO will serve as interim co CEOs. The company's best known for his image generation tool Stable Diffusion, and it helped kick off the AI frenzy, reaching a value of one billion dollars in
twenty twenty two. I want to bring in somebody who was at the heart of the reporting on this story, Bloomberg's Rachel Metz, and I don't say that lightly. You covered every single step in this story. But ultimately Emmad has resigned.
What do we know well, we know that he said that he is stepping down to work on solving the concentration of.
Power in AI.
We had been thinking for a while that he may be stepping down, and we'd heard rumors about it. We were aware that some of the people behind the original version of stable Diffusion, who had been in the company for quite a while, we're leaving the company. So perhaps this helped shift his decision. It's a little bit unclear at this point.
What I've learned over the last few months of you're reporting, Rachel, is that there's the company that can all cannot be well known, and then there's the tool, right, the generative AI tool. In this case, stable diffusion works well, doesn't it It isn't well known and leading piece of technology.
That's correct. It is well known.
It is a leading piece of technology. It was originally developed by a handful of researchers in Germany, and imaed stepped in and offered to pay for compute to further train this existing model. Previously it was called latent diffusion. They renamed it stable diffusion, and IMA decided to spread it far and wide, essentially through Stability AI, and that helped bring it to the public and popularize it and really touched off a lot of what we're seeing now in terms of the generative AI boom.
So, what's left at Stability AI, or should I say who is left at Stability AI?
This is a good question, and we're trying to figure out some of this now.
I mean in terms of like top.
Tier researchers, I'm not sure if there are that many people left there.
Some of the best best people just left.
Trying to we have, like you know, we're trying to figure out, like who on this list of names from some of their biggest research papers is actually still there. We're going to have to take a look and see what's happening very soon.
You have to remember who put the companies in these positions right used to get their name out there. Here are some of the investors behind stability AI.
CO two and light Speed, and then there's also a bunch of smaller and individual investors as well that went through like multiple rounds. I mean, it's important to remember also that stability AI didn't just emerge fully formed in the summer of twenty twenty two.
It was originally created.
As a way to use I think it was AI to help with COVID related research or rounding up COVID related research, if memory serves, and then it sort of shifted gears at a.
Certain point, probably in early twenty twenty two.
All right, Bloonbose, Rachel Mets who as I say, you have been all across the spilid Tai story for months, and we appreciated reporting.
After years in the making, the United States Department of Justice has filed its antitrust lawsuit against Apple, threatening its underlying business model. The government is taking aim at Apple's policies surrounding super apps, cloud gaming services, messaging, tap to pay, and support on the iPhone for third party smart watches. While Apple has clearly had a negative impact on partners like component suppliers and app developers, the first iteration of the DOJ's case doesn't really.
Prove about Apple has harmed consumers.
Apple has already addressed several of the DOJ's complaints, pledging to adopt rcs to enable better texting between iPhones and Android devices, and the company has shown that it will add new features for developers in the cloud gaming in super app spaces. The DOJ is right that the Apple Watch is favored over third party smart watches and that Apple blocks third party apps from using the NFC chip in the iPhone.
For tap to pay.
Apple should absolutely address both concerns, but for now it seems likely that the entire lawsuit will take a few years to result in major changes. Still, I ultimately expect Apple to crack the iPhone open in the same vein as it is doing in the European Union because of the Digital Markets Act. All of that being said, the DOJ is still distracting from some real issues by focusing on result matters, including making frivolous claims that Apple is behind the downfall of the Amazon firephone.
A decade ago.
Still, things can change quickly, especially when new evidence emerges in a trial. Ultimately, the lawsuit seems a bit frivolous, But there is a lot that Apple has changed, and there's a lot that it can still change. I'm Markerman for Bloomberg News.
That was this week's Power On with Boomers. Mark German. Let's take a quick look Apple shares with down more than a percentage point in the session. There the probe by the European Commission in Europe in the context of the Digital Markets Act. When we covered the DOJ suit last week, the stockfell four percent Thursday, biggest drop since August, but the entirety of its decline year state's about twelve percent. It's a stock that's starting to feel the antitrust pressure.
We talked about that in two fronts, just real quick on the DMA, and Apple spokesperson did tell Bloomberg that Apple feels it is fully compliant with the DMA. This is bitcoin, and you noticed that jump just before we came on air, back up towards seventy thousand US dollars per token. There is a calendar moment coming up. Bitcoin is approaching its highly anticipated halving event, which was lower
the supply of newly minted bitcoin from minors. Bitcoin of course hit records after each of the last three harvings got a good guest view. Let's bring in Strike CEO Jack Mallers, who I have discussed this with before. But Jack, just give me your thoughts on the harving.
What's going on? Ed, I miss you brother.
You look good.
The bitcoin having, yeah, of course, man, the.
Having is a huge deal.
So just to be clear, everyone is aware of the fixed supply of bitcoin. There will only ever be twenty one million, but not all twenty one million have been issued to the world yet, and so bitcoin is on a fixed issuance schedule. Satoshi programmed when he launched he or she here they launched bitcoin on how those would be issued out.
We're at about.
Nineteen million out of twenty one so far. In every ten minutes, more and more get issued, and the having is when that issue ince schedule gets cut in half. So the supply, the forced sellers, those that pay money to produce bitcoins, which then have to sell it to pay for their costs, that's.
Going to be halved.
And so the really simple way to think about it, ed is if demand remains the same and the bitcoin sold gets cut in half, should have an impact on the price to the upside. So it's a big event and we're all pretty excited about it.
Jack, have a healthy and robust debate here, but just give me a moment to outline a counterpoints, because you've been in the camp for a while, right that there is only ever going to be twenty one million bitcoin and so prices have to go up. That's kind of the argument you've made, if you'll just give me that, and you've talked about in the context of hyperinflation, don't be holding dollars, But I would point out that the market doesn't see further inflation, it doesn't see more inflation
to come. And if you'll allow me, if you look at this morning's trading in terms of liquidity. I think thirty to forty billion dollars worth of bitcoin was out there in the market. So there are counterpoints to the thesis that you've outlined. Is that the end of your point, end of my point, Please proceed, Okay.
Yeah, I was trying to be played. I mean, let's dumb it down.
The problem with central planning money, which is such a core technology to society working.
Think about it, Ed.
You go to work every single day and you pour your blood, sweat and tears all of the time you spend on this planet in exchange for what.
Money.
So the central planning of money convolutes and complicates so much of the inner workings of society.
Let's go back to basics. Our government is in debt, right, yes or no? The US government? That is what all governments. Right. Our government's in debt. Okay.
Traditionally, Ed, if I owed you twenty bucks, I'd have two options. I'd one have to default on that and say, you know what, Ed, I hope you still consider me a good friend, but I'm not going to make hole on that twenty dollars.
The other is I could pay it back.
Those are classically the two options that anyone in debt has right now. The government, because they centrally plan and control our currency, unfortunately, has a third and that's that they can print more money, devalue the debt that they have and that they owe, and allocate more capital to themselves. So our government can't default. The US, the United States of amer cannot default on debt. It would collapse the entire planet. We also cannot afford to pay it back.
So if you just like listen, I didn't even go to college, brother, this is just one oh one basics how the world works. If we can't default and we can't pay it back, what's the only option that they have to do, no matter what they sit and tell you at the FED chair meetings and all of the economists.
They have to issue more dollars.
And so if there's going to be more pieces of green paper, you want them competing for the most fixed thing. Right, there's more dollars that are competing for a fixed amount of bitcoin. And yes, real estate's going to go up too because there's more dollars competing for real estate. But they can make more real estate, they can find more gold, they can't make any more bitcoins.
And that's just. I mean even a college dropout can understand that.
My friend da let me jump in and again just reistrate your The basic argument is that they are only ever going to be twenty one million bitcoin and the finality of that, what am I trying to say? The supply constraint on that is what we'll provide up with momentum. I have many questions for you. I think, put your Strike CEO hot on and let's talk about payments. Give
me an update on the state of crypto payments. We've got a lot of questions about this about real world adoption because we kind of over the market mechanics of bitcoin.
Now.
I think, at this point, what are you saying out there globally?
I think the biggest I don't know if it's tension, the biggest story is stable coins for sure. Here's my personal take. A Bitcoin is the only neutral value transfer.
Protocol for the world.
We view it at Strike as the single value transfer protocol for planet Earth. Now that sounds like a lot of gobblygook. What I actually mean by that is bitcoin is the only physical digital instrument. So a stable coin is just an IOU for a bank deposit. It's like an innovation to AH but you have counterparty risk with the issuer, with regulators, with where the bank posit is
held at that bank, what if they're fractional reserve. So bitcoin's the only physical instrument on the Internet that we can move globally, so we view it as the way. It's like the TCPIP of value transfer to the web. But the problem, I think is that consumers around the world prefer stable coins because of their relative stable value to bitcoin. So when you have emerging markets like in Africa, like Latin America, all through Latin America.
They find it difficult to stomach the volatility.
If you're living paycheck to paycheck, bitcoin can be an intimidating asset. So where we are spending a lot of our time is trying to meet the consumer demand of Africa of Latin America, where bitcoin the technology is just so far ahead of everything else, but the dollar value is valuable to consumers in these regions. So I think that's going to be a lot of the payments innovation over the next few years is the marrying of those two counts.
Well, just a quick follow up on that. So geography was one of the other questions that we got so for example, you know, how's the l Salvador HQ going as one example, But you mentioned I think Africa in Latin America, do you kind of have we only have a few second chatter. Do you have a specific list of countries to which you've actually expanded service.
Yeah, we just launched Strike Africa.
I think Listen, every single person on the planet is dealing with Fiata basement is dealing with What I explain is the fact that their government has to issue more of their currency.
So access to bitcoin is paramount.
Is the killer use case because it's the only thing that no one on the planet can create more of. And then for payments, we think it's fascinating to disrupt cross border payments. I mean, the fact that I can move something physical like a water bottle or my iPhone from here to Nigeria but it's a bitcoin is crazy, man. The cost should really come down there. So Africa we've launched.
Europe is up next, Latin America after that. We're on a war path to bring a bitcoin focused consumer experience to the world no alt coins, and we're doing well.
I'm curious to see where this goes.
Jack, I actually have a question for you in real time through the ib on. The Bloomberg terminon is going to read it to you, Jack. How can the blockchain sustain itself if the miners who are validating the transaction mine less and less new coins. That's a direct question to you for more audience.
Yeah, So the miners get paid fees, so every single transaction is a fee associated with it, So miners in theory collect revenue. There's been blocks as of recent where the fees actually are more than the issuance reward.
But the bitcoin protocol also auto.
Adjusts itself, and the difficulty required to mind blocks changes by how many people are money as well.
So the protocol is built to sustain itself.
And this is also a problem that is way out in the future. I think sometimes when people get stressed out, listen, the bitcoin price is outpacing the havings.
Right.
Bitcoin is going up multiples more than the issuance is being had. Bitcoin's already up over one hundred percent in the last calendar year.
Right.
So I think that this is an anxiety inducing problem that we may face in twenty thirty, forty fifty, one hundred years. But the answer is Sutoshi's intention was transaction fuse is that people pay for block space, pay to get transaction finality and that should sustain the network.
Plenty Stroke CEO Jack Mallis, thank you for fielding my questions. Thank you for fielding audiences questions. We'll get you on in the near future. Now coming up on the show, Frontline Ventures wants to accelerate transatlantic expansion for B to B software companies in both the US and Europe with a brand new fund. We're going to talk more about that next for Frontline Ventures partner Zoe Chambers. Stick with us.
This is Blion by Technology. Okay. Frontline Ventures recently raised two hundred million dollars across two new funds with a goal of accelerating transatlantic expansion for B to B software companies that's in both the US and Europe. I want to bring in Frontline Ventures partner Zoe Chambers for today's VC Spotlight. So what qualifies then as a transatlantic B to B software company? What would a startup or founder have to offer you to get a check out of those funds?
Well?
Absolutely, First of all, thanks so much for having me this morning, ed As you mentioned my name, Zoe Chambers and I'm one of the partners here at Frontline for Ventures. So we have two complimentary strategies. We have a European early stage fund that looks to be the first institutional check into startups that really are globally ambitious and look to want to accelerate their market entry into the States.
And then we have a growth stage fund which invests Series B to D and looks at helping those companies enter into the European market. And we have done that so far with companies that include Mosaic mL which is now part of Data Bricks, Van to Lattice, Attentive, and Navan.
I find that really interesting. Does it reflect a deficit of talent or a deficit of companies operationalized in one market versus another, or is it just the opposite that if you want to grow a really good software or SaaS company, you kind of need to be in those markets. That's exactly it.
It's that point.
So fundamentally, seventy percent of global software spend comes from the US in Europe, and in fact, seventy percent of benure capital dollars is also in those two markets. So our whole fund strategy centers around the core belief that you have to access and win in both the US and Europe if you truly want to be, you know, a category leader and go on to IPO.
So it's more about the.
Most talented want to have a foothold in both of those geographies because they are just so important.
So when Frontline is looking for this talent that the founders tell me about the firm and how it's set up, do you have people transatlantic as well in terms of your offices.
We absolutely do.
So we have folks in San Francisco, in New York, in Dublin, and in London, and that kind of follows not only kind of where talent is, but equally the key for landing spots when you are a US company who expands into Europe tends to be London, Dublin, Amsterdam and Berlin and then the other way around. You know, San Francisco, New York absolutely too, very strong, mature ecosystems, and so of course we have partners.
On the ground there Frondline Ventures partner Zori Chambers. Two new funds two hundred million dollars going after the transatlantic startup. Thank you for joining us, appreciate it so Instagram users are taking to rival platforms, for example x to voice some outrage. The parent company Meta quietly rolled out a feature that limits political content by default when it comes to suggested posts. I want to bring in Bloomberg's Kaylee
lines out of DC. This is an interesting one. It is like user protests just explain the story to me.
Well, this is interesting ed because actually both Instagram and Threads, of the two platforms here, had announced that these changes were coming in a blog post back in February, essentially saying they were no longer going to be proactively recommending political content. They said at the time that if you decide to follow accounts that post political conduct, they don't want to get between you and their posts. But they also don't want to proactively recommend content from accounts that
you don't follow. So this isn't about who you follow, it's about who you don't and that not coming up in your explore page, explore page for example, or reels when it relates to political content. So now it's the default setting that you won't see that political material in
less you select to. In response, some have said maybe this is a way to reduce misinformation or inflammatory content being circulated in an election year, but others are saying that they could limit political discourse in an election year. There is also a lot of concern about how exactly the companies are defining political content, what exactly that means,
and how they're categorizing it. In that same blog posts Instagram put out last month, they suggested it could be potentially related to things like laws, elections.
Or social topics.
Obviously that's a pretty broad basket, and so in response, you're getting users on all ends of the political spectrum that seem to be unhappy with this. Right landing users have suggested this could be yet another example they see of efforts to censor conservative speech in particular, but even some on the right say they see this as an
attempt by the platform to limit pro Palestinian conflict. So it's just another example of the difficulty between policing content, making sure misinformation doesn't circulate, but also abiding by First Amendment rights granted with the right to free speech.
It's an interesting case study in the election year because Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is kind of being proactive saying well, here's a new policy, but the user base doesn't like it. Has the company updated its messaging or said anything more recently that suggests they might make a change, not that I have seen ed.
Now it becomes a question of whether a change could
be enforced in terms of policing this content. We have seen just last week, for example, the Supreme Court hearing arguments in the Murphy versus Missouri case, essentially a lawsuit that was brought against the Biden administration arguing that the Biden agencies, like the CDC for example, went too far in their efforts to pressure platforms, including what was then Twitter even Meta, to take down information related to the twenty twenty election, for example, the validity of the results,
the efficacy of COVID nineteen vaccines. We're still going to away of ruling from the Supreme Court in that case, but it could have actually pretty sweeping ramifications for the way that these social media platforms police their content.
So it's a question of whether laws could.
Actually enforce any kind of change on the part of these platforms, not just whether they'd left to change policy themselves.
All right, Bloomer's Kaylee lines out of DC really appreciate the reporting. Let's talk markets again after last week's public listings. Could the us IPO window finally be reopening like properly. Next in line is Ibota, the consumer tech company which offers cash back rewards on various purchases through the Ibota Performance Network, mobile app and website. Guesses on the story Bloombo's Katie ruth I, remember you guys reporting last week
about the banks involved in this one. Update me on where this name's at.
That's right? So we had you know, scoop that they had hired bankers late last year, and then last Friday the filing came out that they revealed their financials indicating that they planned to go public in the coming weeks.
Okay, so Ibota, am I saying that right? Ibota? I think that's right.
Ibota, as I bought a thing.
That's what the company told me. Oh rather than Robot, I bought a thing. Okay, tell me the basics of the business, Like, is this one we're hyped about? Is this an exciting tech name?
So it almost hails from the Groupon era, It's from more than a decade ago. It's coupon related, although it is different than Groupon, but you can get cash back at you know, a lot of different retailers particularly groceries. They have a large partnership with Walmart. Walmart is a strategic investor here and so yeah, they help, you know, users make money while shopping, or at least get a portion of the money they're spending back.
Valued at one billion dollars Series D Round twenty nineteen. Another IPO for us to be excited about. Blimber's Katie Ruth, great reporting, Thank you very much. So that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. It was going to be a slow Monday, and it became a very busy
news heavy Monday. Recap the show on the podcast. Wherever you're getting your podcasts, we're publishing it to the Bloomberg platforms like the Bloomberg Terminal on websites, but we're also putting in podcasts on Apple Spotify, and iHeart why because lots of people listen to podcasts on platforms like that, and I know that Joe Rogan's up there, but Bloomberg Technology it's a pretty good podcast too. This is a short week. Remember it's a market's holiday at least in
the US. This Friday earnings has kind of been and gone, so we're still continuing to follow what's going on in the antitrust context. What's going on with crypto markets, in particular Bitcoin from San Francisco because Carros out, this is Bloomberg technology. Have a great day.