From Marhart were Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Loved Love.
Lie from New York and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up. Pamela Harris and Donald Trump squaring off in their first presidential debate.
We talked the tech angles and.
The crypto sector, nursing declines as betting markets reveal new momentum for the vice president. Markets react to the debate.
And Amazon that's big on Britain looking to expand its cloud business with a ten point four billion dollar UK investment plan. The first is market sink. Let's get straight to the first US president debate that saw former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris trading on the handling of America's semiconductor industry and the feature of AI.
Well, let's be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we've ever seen in the history of America. He invited trade wars. You want to talk about his deal with China. What he ended up doing is under Donald Trump's presidency, he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military.
First of all, they bought their chips from Taiwan. We hardly make chips anymore because of philosophies like they have and policies like they have. I don't say her because she has no policy. Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window. She's going to my philosophy now.
In fact, I was going to send her a mega hat.
Blomberg's David Gura is in Philadelphia. You were there for the live action, David, We focus on the tech angle.
But what did you draw from the debate?
Well, welcome back to what you just played there.
I mean, I think that was a more robust exchange on policy than we saw many of the topics that were covered during the course of that debate. So there were questions about former President Trump's tariff's policy, and of course He's doubled down saying that he's going to impose more blanket tariffs, not just on China, but on Mexico
as well other countries. So I thought that that was kind of an illuminating moment and something that Vice President Harris then spoke about afterward were the investments that the Biden administration has made in trying to boost semiconductor production here in the United States during this administration, and also noting the fact that when you look at tariffs and tariffs have been levied on China when it comes to semiconductors, in fact, it has been the Biden Harris administration that
has elevated them even more so. Look, this was more than ninety minutes long. It went longer than we thought it would go. Was there's little policy at the beginning, but we saw diversions from that pretty quickly, and I think, you know, to the gree to which economics was discussed. Trade was one moment again where I thought there was at least some spirited back and forth between these two candidates getting to subsubstance on that issue.
Guys Harris kept in line with the administration's policy that everything to do with chips from a restriction standpoint is in the interest in national security. And then Trump went after the track record right what they did or didn't do over the last four years. It's hard to see where an aggregate we've landed. David, you know, look at social media and the reporting on the Bloomberg terminal. What is the net result of that debate last night.
Well, I go back to what I heard from Governor Gavin Newsom of California before this debate. I said, how pivotal is and how important is it? What difference could this make? And he said, think of it like World War One, where it's going to be something determined by inches, not anything more than that. This is such an incredibly close race between these two candidates, it would be folly to think that a good performance in that debate would have a sizable impact in raising a candidates stature in
the polls. Conversely, if there were a bad performance, that would have a negati effect, dramatically negative effect on those polls as well. I think you're right. I mean, you look ahead here. We've got fewer than sixty days until this election. Both of these candidates, I think rightly recognize this is going to be a very hard fought campaign and one that's going to be decided fundamentally by just
a few thousand voters. And it's rather extraordinary to say when you look at the whole population of this country and the voting electorate. We talk about swing states, it's more granular than that. Of course, you all know that as well. We're talking about districts in particular. So I think what we're going to see is in effort to capitalize and whatever ment in these candidates got last night,
carry that onto the campaign trail. Vice President Harris going down to North Carolina tomorrow, then back up to Pennsylvania, those two swing states over the course of this week. Donald Trump making the pilgrimage out to California for a press conference at the end of the week, when in Nevada and Arizona as well. So they're going to be back on the trail here, trying to talk their book, trying to do all they can to woo those undecided voters again a very small sliver of the US electorate.
And of those voters, Taylor Swift now coming out endorsing Kamala Harris, which we'll get to in more detail later in the program. David Gourr on the ground, Thank you very much. Let's continue with the CKS reaction to last night's debate. Bluebogs abail do a little with us, and I think this is cross asset. What are you seeing?
It is certainly cross asset, and it's interesting right now, stocks down broadly, the S and P five hundred and the nasack down more than one percent. I think that has less to do with the debate and has more to do with other factors of uncertainty. Relative to the reaction to the debate, I would say right now, DJT is one of the better signals in terms of what investors saw, with the stockdown about fifteen percent, the worst day since April.
So I would say this is.
Clearly a vote away from the Trump trade, if you will, and one way that the markets are backing VP Kamala Harris. In fact, if we take a look at the betting odds, just yesterday, both candidates had been at fifty two percent a piece. This after former President Donald Trump, right when Kamala Harris got into the race, led her by let's call it twenty percent. She then led Donald Trump by
about twelve to fifteen percent. But again yesterday, going into that debate, fifty two percent a piece, the spread five to seven percent apart in favor of VP Harris. So this is another way markets are telling you that they thought that Kamala Harris's performance was at least stronger, and or do they think that she will in fact be
elected in November. In fact, if we dig in just a little bit deeper and we take a look at what could be a Harris trade, which would be green energy, it would be healthcare that goes toward Medicare Medicaid along with the home builders. It's interesting that's one area that is actually not favoring her right now. One of her policies for the best that we know is a twenty five thousand dollars tax credit excuse me, down payment for
first time homebuilders. Some of the homebuilders that are geared toward those early homebuilders or home buyers, they are down today, but those.
Other areas are higher.
And then finally, if we round it out with a look at crypto, some clearly Donald Trump is in favor of crypto.
Actually this is the VIC.
So we do have the VIC signaling overall Caroline the idea of risk off rising, and that's what crypto would signal too. It's down about three percent on the day. If you look at crypto is another way of looking at as a tell on risk on risk off. It's being down confirms the VIX and stocks down confirms a six the VIC higher and stocks down that investors are a little bit uncertain, but overall, the debate right now
signals that investors are a little bit more favorable. I would argue toward VP Herris and that uncertainty into November while it's rising.
Abigail Dodittle with a wrap up, We thank you.
There's also, of course, the macro picture at play with inflation print today and a risk off tone. Let's dig in with Cerah Malic, head of Equities and fixing. Come at, Chief investment officer ever atte Neuven. So great to have you in the studio.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I mean, when one factors in political concerns or lead at least uncertainty, and then you have the uncertainty of what inflation is doing, what the Fed's going to do, how do you measure up those risks?
I think, yeah, there's three factors driving the markets right now versus seasonality. Second, of course is the election and then the economy. So second half of September for the past four years in a row on on average, tends to be the worst period for the markets for the year. So we're just approaching that and look where we already are. The election I think creating some uncertainty, mostly around expiration of tax cuts and What will that mean in terms
of inflation? Could cost up to four points six trillion to renew those for whichever candidate wins the election. But I think the real main event is the economy. Inflation coming out today higher than expected. With CPI driven by shelter. People are worried that the economy is slowing, and inflation
isn't slowing fast enough. It holds the FED back. I think we get twenty five basis points this month for a cut, and then we may have a slow start to FED cuts if inflation remains sticky, and that is concerning because economic data is slowly moving to the downside.
What does that mean there for around one's portfolio diversification key but people have been putting so much money into seven key names when it comes to technology, does tech continue to outperform?
I think tech will outperform as rate cuts six. We can break down tech into three buckets semiconductors, software and megacaps. So software has been the laggard year today. That's where we're most interested. We think there's some attractive names there. It's under owned by portfolio managers, market leading companies like Microsoft and Salesforce. Salesforce in particular looks kind of cheap on evaluation basis, people could as rate cuts happen, could
start spending more on their products. Semiconductors probably a little more downside to go and a typical downturn that segment goes down thirty to forty percent. We are not there yet, so I think semis as we approach twenty twenty five, we could see an inflection point as twenty twenty five could be when people start a replacement cycle post COVID and then megacap you need to be selective. We have
Meta and Nvidia dominating returns this year. I think people are waiting to see monetization of artificial intelligence for some of those companies return on investment, So megacap you need to be selective. A company we like is Apple, where it's a low cap X play for them to get AI into their phones. That iPhone replacement cycle is slowly starting this year we'll pick up next year. Is more AIS into those phones. I think Apple is the attractive play in megacap.
Sarah, do those themes you've outlined continue through the second half of the year into next year irrespective of the outcome of the election. I'm particularly thinking about the megacaps and your commentary on the chip sector, I.
Think, well, first of all, on a macro basis, inflation and the economy will continue to be themes throughout this year. I think for semiconductors, you know, the biggest stuff reason for them to inflect will be a replacement cycle. For the socks, you know, whether we're manufacturing and global supply chains onshoreing versus offshoreing could be someone of a bigger issue depending on which candidate wins. Software, I think is more of a rate play, and as companies start to
spend more on software and the stocks evaluation. So I think mostly it's the fundamentals is stay intact and which candidate wins the election doesn't have a huge impact on them, but it could have somewhat because we also have to worry about regulations and the degree of regulations on some of these megacap companies.
Sarah, I sat on my sofa for like everyone around the country, hoping that AI would come up in the debate. The question for markets is how much longer does this trend have to run? Listen to what Mike Wilson said on Bloomberg Television earlier today, we just.
Got overcooked on the whole AI theme. Doesn't mean it's over We've written about this extensively, like we're not believers that this is going to change productivity materially in the short term.
That's a long term story.
And that's why I asked you about the election. Does it happen irrespective of the outcome, Do you agree that this AI trade's overcooked right now?
Well, definitely became overcrowded from an investment point of view, and with any new structural change in the technology landscape like artificial intelligence, which I think is here to say, there's going to be fits and starts, and what people have been worrying about since the July tenth peak is where is the where are the signs of monetization and what is the return on investment on this tens of billions of AI investments that technology companies have made and
that companies are making in order to improve their revenue growth and improve their efficiencies and productivity. That's what we're not seeing yet. So I think we are in a bit of a plateau or a pause for this stocks, for these stocks until we start to see more clear signs of what it really means. In the impact on businesses.
Not surprisingly, consumer technology companies are seeing positive impacts from AI meta with its targeting ads on Facebook, on Instagram, and also Amazon, which is targeting what people more efficiently should be buying. But in other areas like manufacturing companies, we're not seeing the yield increases yet. And I think that's the other nontech areas of the economies where we want to see that impact of artificial intelligence c matic.
So good to have you here from van We appreciate it coming up, so it mentions Amazon we get to dig in as it continues to expand its cloud business in the United Kingdom.
Well details next.
This is pretty big technology.
Amazon says it would spend ten point five billion dollars in the UK to grow its cloud business, adding to a string of recent expansion moves in Europe and giving Britain's new labor government a welcome investment boost. Bloomberg's Matt Day, who covers Amazon, joins US now from Seattle, and Matt, you and I have covered many of these deals, right.
I think about Virginia where AWS in particular pledges. I think it's thirty five billion through twenty forty, but it's still a significant bet on Amazon's footprint in the United Kingdom.
Yeah, it is, and it's about in line with what they should be spending there. You look at the UK chunk of sales for Amazon. This probably makes sense within the context of Amazon's capex because they are spending just a ton on data centers, as you mentioned.
You know, this year alone, we've had.
Announcements in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, in Europe and Germany and in Spain and now United Kingdom, just a kind of a full force of a wusay whe they're going to stay relevant the cloud market by expanding more than anybody else.
Yeah, give us context to the race here, the need for compute to satisfy demand.
So it's at least two separate things. One is sort of the ongoing move to the cloud. Company has on plugging their data centers favor of rented computing power. You know, that's Amazon, that's Microsoft, that's Google. You've also had this AI cocktail thrown in there, where folks have just had to ramp up their budgets to afford these pricey chips, to afford the.
Cooling that makes them happen.
And then just on top of that, you know, power is scarce just about everywhere you look. So it's a real kind of land grab on of big cloud companies to build new campuses, to expand kind of as quick as they can to meet this new emerging command.
Matt, Caroline and I will spare you from the UK political component of this story, although the Chancellor of the Checker Racial reas rating no time to kind of point out this is a big win for UK PLC. The business is interesting. Every time we talk about Amazon awsis footprint in Europe on this program, I know that quite a lot of Amazon staff will engage on LinkedIn. There's a lot of them there. But how does it compare to their presence in North America and elsewhere.
Well, their biggest hubs are in North America, right, that's where the majority of their data center investment over time has then, you know, but they are going more international and they are going into sort of smaller and smaller markets. If you roll back the clock many years, you know, it used to be they invested in kind of big
centralized data center locations. I believe that was outside of Paris in the EU, and then slowly over time they've kind of gone down and said, you know, listen, not only do we need points of presence in in local markets, but we need to spend you know, billions of dollars in local markets to take advantage of the opportunities there to be close to just the big corporates who are demanding cloud computing.
What about taking advantage of benefits at certain government's offer.
Is that part of the game, you know?
It is?
You know, I think Amazon, you know, certainly wants any incentives that are on offer or wherever they go. But I'm not sure it's it's necessarily the driving force. If you listen to Amazon's critics, you know, they will say, listen, if you map their data centers, it just maps out.
To where their customers are.
Right So certainly policy would play a role. I'm just not sure the market thinks it's a very big one.
Matt Day, great to have the expertise, thank you. In today's AI and Action, we are taking a look at Corti. It's a global AI engine designed for healthcare with AI that not only takes practitioner notes, but it helps with quality assurance of journals with prompts and helps document every patient interaction. And the company just announced the higher form of Microsoft and Phillips executives to help me the company's expansion here in the United States. Courty CEO Andreas Cleve
joins US. Now, why is the US such a focus.
It's the most important healthcare market in the world. It's where I myself live and I'm a patient, and it's a place we feel very excited to work in as some of the best providers and pairs are there and I think they'll be the cornerstone of building the most important solutions for healthcare.
What do you offer those practitioners, those experts, Because we're all trying to find out what the return on AI investment is, what do you offer healthcare practicingers.
Actual time back? And that's a promise that's been promised a lot of times having been here for a while, so we were founded as a research company back in twenty sixteen to prove we could research and find ways of delivering safe and trustworthy AI.
And that's exactly what we give today to providers.
We have a solution you can build into whatever tool or application you use, and here are are Real time AI actually helps deliver on some of these promises by doing medical coding. We do summaris we do documentation and in the end help them carve back some of that time loss to administration.
Andreas a startup founded in twenty sixteen, is a little bit refreshing. Actually, there have been many new companies formed in the last two years in this area. So in that time you built up data one hundred million customer interactions. What's the benefit that the health system gets from those interactions? Now?
Yeah, Yeah, I am excited as an entrepreneur to see so much AI being adopted, but I am still astounded by the amount of AI that's being deployed in healthcare today that isn't built for healthcare. We see a lot of model today who are as good as doing haiku or finding a great kitchen recipe as they are at doing healthcare AI. And what we're offering is obviously an
AI that solely built for healthcare. We have been here for a while researching on this, publishing on this, and partnering with some of the best providers to build an AI that is only tuned to one thing, and that is listen to healthcare providers and pairs and actually deliver automations and augmentations that really work.
The difficulty in this country is insurance and established healthcare systems. Have you been able to navigate that?
I think the way we think about it a lot is to ensure that we don't just come with yet another application. So what we want to come with is a technology that you build into whatever you use already today and that can be used both by payers and providers. So today we're lucky that more than one hundred thousand patient interactions are flowing through Cordy across all fifty state in the US. And ultimately I just heard this from
a doctor the other day. It actually helps them ensure that they are more on point also and handing over patients data or documentation between let's say a peer and provider.
Let's exactly talk about patient data. There's a lot of anxiety about it running through various people's hands.
Andreas, how are you ensuring the security?
So we are originally a company from Denmark and the Cold North in Scandinavia in Europe, so in our DNA is compliance, we are from the most regulated part of the global healthcare system and also known to be one of the best healthing systems, and we have been lucky enough to be partnering with the European Union and their legislative arm when they wrote the AI Act, and we've been lucky enough to work with them on GDPR, so into the engine of cority and all the technology we've built,
compliance and data safety is among them. And that means that we are not taking data, we are not appropriating data, we're not misusing data. As we come from a market that's driven by patients, and those patients they give each other health care for free, and we really have an ethos of ensuring that patients come first, and that's I think very core to what we believe in andress.
The most recent piece of news for you is all of the sort of top talent you've been hiring from both tech and healthcare. How difficult and how expensive was that.
It's definitely been a big challenge. I think there's a lot of hype around AI startups, but I think we've been lucky to see some of the best talents in healthcare meeting customers providers, payers all the time who really want to get on this AAR journey, but they've maybe
not yet found the provider that actually was trustworthy. So we've been lucky enough to show them that and Luckily, we keep hearing that from patients and providers who start using it that they actually see the outcomes they want. And I think that entices a lot of the sort of the titans of our industry to come and see.
If it's real, and luckily.
When they see it, they actually want to join.
Cool to CEO, Andreas Cleve. Great to have you on the program. Thank you.
Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology. I'm Karen Hider, New York and.
I med lod Low in San Francisco.
Check on these markets that have been under pressure post the CPI print, of course, ed Look, we've got a bit of risk aversion creeping into the markets. Were off of our lows, but still the nast that one hundred is dragged on by about nine.
Tenths of a percent.
We seem to see a slight move to the havens, that is, the bond market Felds currently flat. We had seen more of a bid a little bit earlier in trading. Look, but the overall question is can the FED be cutting to the whacking proportion of a fifty basis point as soon as September most now daling that back to a twenty five basis point expectation. Therefore, maybe just when coming out of some of these more risk on trades, i'd talk of that within the spectrum of Bitcoin off by
more than two percent. But of course, maybe that's the political reflection of the debate of yesterday, when you know, former President Trump is deemed a more crypto pro candidate and perhaps maybe the market feeling his before moments was lackluster versus that of VP Harris. Let's move on and have a look at what the individual movers are looking
like in terms of technology. Look the bid up in certain solar names more than nine percent high for First Solar, that again being deemed perhaps a fallout of what was a strong performance by VP Harris yesterday. And also looking what's happening with Armholding once again rising some three percent. This is more back to its V nine chip design.
Maybe that's been integated into the new Apple chip. And look, really Morgan Stanley once again singling this name out as one of its best forward focuses for sort of edge AI as they're calling in and Tesla look biggest points drag on the NASDAC wanted to call it out more than two and a half percent lower ed.
What are you looking.
At Waimo, the autonomous driving arm of Google parent Alphabet, has been making some progress of late. Autonomous ride hailing has hit more than one hundred thousand weekly paid rides across Waymo's first markets, and the companies also published new data showing it's done twenty two million rider only miles to date with no one in the driver's seat. Joining us to discuss Waymo co CEO Tequidra Maurakana, who last week was also named in Times one hundred Most Influential
in AI list for twenty twenty four. Good morning to you, Tequidra. When we said you were coming on the show, lots of people have very sort of granular questions about the paid rides, so let's start there. You know, what is the average distance taken, the average fare per ride, and a bit more about the economics of what you've achieved.
Yeah, thank you so much Ed for having me, and I would love to hear more about your experience because I've been watching your social engagement.
Like so many of our riders. So you said it.
You know, we've reached over one hundred thousand rides per week across.
San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Those the distances that people travel and how they're using a service very wildly between those locations. In San Francisco, we're finding that like thirty six percent of people are actually using the service to connect with transit, you know, which is really surprising for us. So that's like depending on where they are in the city, it could be like about a three mile ride to get to a transit or to get to work. Other people are using it to run errands and to doctor's appointments, So it
really depends. And when you talk about the economics, you know, we're a premium service, and so people are paying for the consistency and the safety of the Waimo driver in the Waimo one service.
Under the sort of co ceo model, you're really focused on the commercialization of what Weimo has been doing for quite a long time. And just going back to what you just said, Yeah, I use way Moo often. I also use Tessa's FSD supervised and was using crews and you know, the experience is interesting, but I'm trying to think about how I would use it in the course of my normal life, and for me, SFO is a
big thing. So when am I going to be able to go down to SFO in a way moo from here on Peer three Embarcadero, and what's the progress you're making there.
Yeah, So, you know, when we launched in Phoenix, one of the early early engagements was with the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport and so now we offer twenty four to seven pickup at the curb side there.
You know, it's a process.
We were the first autonomous vehicle company to receive FA approval to be able to do that kind of pickup, and so we're deeply engaged with SFO officials so that we can do exactly that kind of pickup.
The other thing that we're also deeply engaged in with.
Our employees right now is fully autonomous rides on freeways because you know, people want to take trips to and from the airport and they want to do it on freeways, and so we have that going in Phoenix. We have it also in San Francisco with our employees right now. And both of those are really critical unlocks for us, and we're really focused on it right now. And you know, doing everything with safety at the center of how we move.
It's iterative, it's deliberate and it's it takes what it takes to get it right.
Let's dwell on that safety to Quiedra and thank you for joining us day because SMP actually cut us to you calling out WEIMO as the front runner in the field of avs in the United States. But they do say challenges remain, including an ongoing investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
How are you discussing that?
How are you looking at your safety data?
So we're really really proud.
I mean we you know, found in two thousand and nine as a Google self driving car project. Our company culture is built around safety, and it's built around the transparency of our safety. You know, there's not one measure of safety, so we've built a lot of measures and
a lot of transparency. In last week, we launched the Safety Hub, and we're the only company that's sort of putting all of our data out there for academics, the media, everyone to engage with it and understand why it is that we know that we are through the data improving road safety. You just had some of the stats up right, like reducing the number of air bag deployments injury causing crashes.
I mean, this is why we exist right. Level four technology should make the road safer for humans, for pedestrians, for cyclists, vulnerable road users, and we're showing that that's the case. But we're still with the NITSA investigation, engaging demonstrating that you know, engaging at every level of government is what you have to do when you're the first
to do this. No one's reached this level of scale, and so we understand NITSA has a role to play, and we also have a role to play in being very transparent.
And for that you need money and luckily you've got a large amount of it five billion coming from Alphabet. Just tell us about the investment needs, the focus of that S and P again calling out in the need for this sort of capital investment to drive the US forward.
Yeah, so super fortunate to be backed by Alphabet as well as our other external investors. You know, we're laser focused on scaling this technology and so that investment, while it's a big number, doesn't represent a significant growth in our overall trajectory because we've been very diligent.
About bringing down our cost structure over time.
And so you saw us in the last couple of weeks introduce our sixth generation driver. When you see us introducing a new technology or a new approach to our go to market strategy, one of the things that you can think about is that's going to make scaling our business more efficient over time. And so that's what we're really focused on doing, and having the backing of Alphabet is a great, great place to be Ti.
Keijra, what's your relationship like with Ruth Korat. I had my sort of final quarterly earning school with her at the last call, and she's focused on other things. Now, how will you work together as she kind of transitions to a different function at Alphabet.
Yeah, so Ruth is going to remain involved, right She's taking on this role as president, and she's investment officer and we are obviously a really important investment for Alphabet, and so she's been involved since I joined the company.
She's a very very ardent supporter of.
Weimo and I look forward to continuing to work with her in this new capacity.
Takeidra, as you know, I kind of have a hands on experience of your competitive landscape. What do you make of sort of testless strategy with robotaxi in a proprietary ride hailing app and also why sort of is your approach different and going to succeed to them or to a cruise for example.
You know, this sort of question of competitive landscape I think is so interesting because we are in the business of trying to make the road safer, and we are in the business of doing it in a way that takes the human out of the.
Lip for two reasons.
One is it expands the number of people who have access to mobility options. Right, if you don't need a driver's license, if you don't have to sit behind the wheel, then Waymo's a perfect opportunity for you. And hopefully any level four that actually any level four system that actually makes you know a road safer, will be there.
And so that's the way we think about it.
And so when I think about some of the other approaches that people are taking, I think, if you need a driver's license or if the human has to take over, it's just very different and it's not you know, we're heads down focused on our strategy, which is a level for technology.
Thank you for talking us through the strategy today, my mon Coco Takeidra Mama Kana.
We appreciate your time.
Now coming up, we'll be joined by a Liz Yang, head of Growth and Azuki for her take on the presidential debates impact on crypto markets.
Well, they're same line. This is Bluemeg technology.
It's gone viral. Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris. She made the announcement just minutes after the debate of yesterday, wrapped through a social media post, as you can see, featuring her cat as she calls herself a childless cat lady.
We understand the reference there.
She says she is voting for Harris because quote, she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.
Bloomberg Opinion. David Lee is with us now, Dave.
It feels though that underlying all of this is artificial intelligence, and you point.
That out on your piece.
Yes, I mean this was the thing that Taylor Swift says, I kind of motivate her to speak out and publicly endorse the Harris campaign. I mean, she may have done it anyway, but she made a specific point of bringing this up in her post. She said there had been misinformation posted about her by Trump on truth social suggesting that she had been that she was endorsing him, and
some of her fans were supporting him as well. And so what I think this kind of represents is, you know, the first kind of major impact we've seen from the use of.
AI in an election.
We've heard researchers warn that deep fakes and other kind of misinformation using AI would perhaps influence voters, and this is kind of what's happened, although it's come from a rebuttal rather than the original content itself, and Taylor swift response is going to be seen by many more people than the original post part by Trump.
As you point out in your opinion column, we can only speculate if Swift would have endorsed Harris had that fake endorsement not happened. But then there's like the Taylor Swift effect, right, and you know, you try and make sense of a presidential debate. What's your conclusion in the column about the impact Taylor Swift coming out and endorsing Kamala Harris will have on this election race? Opinion Tech columnist davely Go, Well, I.
Think one of the things we've seen in the past when Taylor Swift has brought herself into politics, which we know she does very very carefully, and with a great deal of thought. Is that what we typically see is voter registrations among young people, among young women in particular, tends to jump to go up quite considerably, So I imagine we'd see that happen again here. There's questions of how much of that translates to people actually going.
To the polls.
But put it this way, Taylor Swift's endorsement, and it's certainly one you prefer to have then not have, right, so, particularly when it's done in a way that is drawing attention to one of the major criticisms of Trump, which is that he makes things up and puts them on his website.
Wienberg Opinions davely appreciate it. Go check out his column. Meanwhile, let's get to where other youthful voters have been looking crypto, and more importantly, let's look at bitcoin because it is actually under some pressure today after the last two training days off by a quarter of percent. Call that CPI, but maybe also call it a reaction to the US
presidential debate. Let's discuss with Lizziang's head of growth at True Labs, and Liz I'm really interested more broadly in how crypto is being used as a gauge for the former president Trump's performance or chances of being re elected.
There are several different ways. So firstly, if you look up the price of bitcoin, you can consider that as a proxy for how the crypto sectory views Trump's chances of being elected and the upcoming president election. This is because Trump has come out as a staunchly pro crypto candidate,
forcing the Democrat's hand on the issue of crypto policy. Now, if you look at prediction markets like polymarket, what's really really fascinating is that almost in real time, viewers were able to track crypto sector's sentiment around the timestamps of when each candidate came up with their respective arguments.
Liz I was doing something similar last night because we'd reported on it. We said, okay, if you want to follow some sort of real time sentiment, look at specific crypto assets at trade twenty four to seven. What I couldn't work out was is this just a clear situation where Trump is the crypto candidate and Harris is not, or there's just not a thorough understanding of policy for either candidate.
It's a really good question.
So overall, when you take a look at markets like prediction markets. Information is of course imperfect, but I think that's a reflection of the American populace at lar in terms of how they vote. What I think is very powerful about tools like polymarket, other prediction markets, as well as political meme coins or politifyed coins is that they're a way to be able to gauge the barometer in
terms of sentiment. And I think that if you take a look at previous selections, there's been enormous appetite in terms of using statistics to track where sentiments at, so for example five thirty eight, and I see polymarket and politify meme coins as a natural extension of this behavior.
Let's just talk about how the campaign Trump campaign more broadly has embraced crypto non fungible tokens me, but also this liberty financial world. Liberty financial it seems to be a DeFi potential protocol doesn't seem to be live yet, but being talked around, particularly by his sons.
What do you make of that particular project.
I think Trump is trying to put his money where his mouth is, and he's trying to enter into these various different forays to show his you know, dedication and interest in the cryptospace.
Where do we go from here? I mean, there comes a point where the markets can continue doing what they're doing, be their prediction or specific asset you track, or people look elsewhere. What's your kind of hunch in that respect, So.
When it comes to tools like prediction markets and meme coins, I see this as a natural extension of behavior that actually started during the pandemic with Wall Street bets. And what happened during then is that because of the pandemic, people were starved for social contact with their friends and family, and they were able to form these bonds with other traders on such forums. So what it means is that for a lot of younger people, investing is not necessarily
just about ROI. It's also about Internet culture and memes and also entertainment as well as community. And where I see political meme coins coming out of this, or polified tokens is that it really is a natural successor of
this kind of trend. So with politify meme coins that it combines financial nihilism with political satire, with Internet grown culture as well as entertainment, So really transforming how the younger generations not only looking at investing, but participating in the political process.
Liz Yang, head of growth at a Zuki and Kira Labs.
Let's talk about Sony's PlayStation five. It's got a refresh and the company is debuting a UPS five.
Pro, but it comes with a premium price tag. Megs.
Jason Shadd joins us some more hoof it's called people by.
Surprise, seven hundred dollars for the PlayStation five Pro. There was a meme way back in the day when the PlayStation three was announced because they came up on stage and said that'll be five hundred and ninety nine US dollars. That was a whole meme in Now it's one hundred dollars more. So I guess the memes have to keep up with inflation too.
I was taken aback Jason because as you know, like I'm a loyal, avid PlayStation user. It's my console of choice. But when you think about the console market as a whole, this is like PlayStation raising prices when the market is kind of going to other direction, right like kids today. Apologies for the expression, but they're doing something different with gaming.
Yeah, it's funny.
I think that if I can offer a few words in PlayStation's defense, here are at least trying to understand where they're coming from.
So the PS five Pro, this is not a new console.
This is a model of the PlayStation Vibe that will essentially play the same games at more vivid graphics, higher refresh rates, and better resolutions. Essentially, this thing is meant for tech officionadas, the same types of people who maybe bought an Apple Vision Pro or are getting a new phone every year. So this is not meant for kids
or the mass market. This is a model that is meant for people who have money to spend, who don't really care about price quite as much and just want the highest end gear.
In fact, I saw a good stat here.
This is from Matt Piscatella, and analyst for Circana, and he said that the PS four Pro or sorry, the PS four Pro, which was a refresh of the PlayStation four, the last generation console, accounted for thirteen percent of total lifetime PS four units, so not a significant amount, and I expect this will be a similar This will play a similar role in the market.
Told to me about a lack of disk drive Jason.
Yeah, man, I had a conversation not too long ago at a party in La where I was talking to an executive for one of these big console companies and I was like, huh, it's funny the the market is moving to digital pretty quickly.
And he was like, now, Jason, it's a red There. A large and very large.
Percent of customers are buying their games digitally these days. Are not even buying bothering with discs. You guys are about stalking about game stop. That is why they've been on the dancing for a long time. And so I think Sony sees the disk drive as an accessory, and it is you can buy one as an add on.
They see it as not necessary for the large majority of people.
And in fact, I.
Would say that the next generation of consoles, it's very likely that they will not come with dis drives, and that disk drives will be will be add ons for those as well.
I have so much nostalgia for a disk Jason super quick the details of pre ordering and when PS five Pro actually comes.
Out, Yes, it comes out, I believe November sixth, and it is seven hundred dollars and pre orders they're going to make available.
I believe in the next couple of weeks. I believe in two weeks or so.
Some of those FX price point differences from the UK and EU as well. Want to watch plame most Jason Schreyer, joy to have you.
Thank you. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology ED. Don't dwell on your nostalgia for discs.
I know, but I will play some PlayStations today. Now, don't forget recap the show on the podcast. You know where to find it on the Bloomberg terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify and iHeart huge. Thanks to everyone out in New York City, the team here in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology