Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is a live from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New York and Ev Low in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Huaweis of Sundai Processors. We're found to contain advanced components from TSMC, Samsung and sk Heinez. This is it works to boost domestic production of AI chips.
Plus, Rivian is reworking the manual release of its vehicle doors after employees and customers raise concerns over potential safety issues.
And Taylor Swift's twelfth studio album, The Life of a show Girl, was just released at midnight here on the East Coast. We're going to discuss the swifty effect.
And we've both listened, but now we're tuning in to what's happening in the markets because there are new record high and now's that one hundred up once again. We are seeing the best week in all weeks or so at the moment, about one point six percent. Many calling
it a hype bubble at the moment. That's what key investors in tech have been calling in mad bezos say, look, it's a bubble, but it's the right kind of bubble, and we're going to dig into what David Solomon talked about in terms of the tech industry more broadly, he's also seeing concerns about some of the valuations.
But dig into.
Also where we've seen a little bit more risk sentiment turning to the upside. And it's in crypto of nine percent over the course of the week, ed when back near one hundred in excess of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The moon music has changed despite the government shutdown end.
Look, there's a lot moving right now in Friday's session, but I want to look at one of the big movers over the course of the week. It's Samsung, and it's Korean shares four straight weeks of gains, trading at
its highest level since early twenty twenty one. There has been a lot of detail reporting about Samsung technology going into all kinds of infrastructure projects, but the big bloomberg scoop, as you know, is about what Huawei in China is doing with Samsung, particularly in the context of high bandwidth memory. So let's get to that report carect another tear down.
Let's get to how really the global chip supply is working right now Blue Max Peter Elstrom joins us. So we get inside the latest greatest chips from Huawei, and there's a lot of other companies that are within them.
Yeah, that's right, Caroline.
We've had a number of scoops about Huawei and specifically what it's doing in AI chips, and the reason is that they're really the most viable competitor to Nvidia at this point. They have a lot of backing from the Chinese government in particular, where the Chinese government is not just encouraging them to develop these chips, but also encouraging their customers to actually buy from them and not from
other companies too. So what we found is our reporters found that in this teardown, inside of the Huawei ND chips, which are their AI chips, they've been able to use components from TSMC, Samsung and s K Heinees. As you mentioned, now, these are components that they're not supposed to have access to under the sanctions that they are under the Huawei
is under through the US government. They're not supposed to have access to these components, but they've been able to get them, so they've been able to use TSMC dies. They've been able to use the HBM chips from Samsung and SKA Heinix. These are somewhat older HBM components. It's the HBM Generation two E, which is not the most cutting edge at this point. Now there's a possibility. All the companies that we reached out to said that they've cut off Huawei at this point, they're not doing business
with Huawei. But in the past while I was able to buy from them and was able to stockpile from them, so that maybe where they got some of these components.
So China's Huawei, we found evidence of other nations technology inside of their server designs essentially, but the other part of the reporting and the story speaks to China not being able to supply these core components themselves from their own domestic supply chain.
It's a very good point. Yeah, if Huawei stockpiled.
These components in the past and is now using them as they sell into the market, As they sell these to send nine ten C chips into the market, there is a suggestion that they can't get those from domestic supply And if they can't get them from domestic suppliers right now, that suggests that maybe they're going to run out at some point, so that's one of the concerns about whether they'll continue to be able to sell these chips.
As we wrote in another scoop a few days ago, Huawei is trying to ramp up their production right now. They would like to meet even more of the domestic demand. We anticipate that they're going to be able to actually double production of these nine ten seed chips based on the commonents that we've seen.
So Huawei is making some progress.
They are providing some competition, but many of the companies within China would preferred by in video chips if they were able to for political reasons.
BLOBX Peter Elstrom, who's the executive editor leading our international coverage attech really appreciate the reporting. Thank you very much for more and why to tech markets. Anna Rathban, CEO and founder of wealth management firm Grenadilla Joins Advisory joins US. Now let's just start with that reporting, right And a lot of the names that were mentioned were x US you know, international names, some of them have a d r's, but these stories keep coming up about global supply chain
and China's reliance on them. I just wonder what you made of it.
Good morning.
You know, that reminds me of what happened like a year and a half ago with Deep fake in. You know, they said they were able to produce all of this, you know, at a fraction of a cost, but it turned out that it was all in video chips.
So I mean, in some ways, I'm I surprised.
No, I don't think, you know, AI chips is something you can produce, you know, on a dime just because you want to, and you tell people to use Huawei chips.
Only, So I am not surprised.
But it also highlights the urgency of the AI race and one of the reasons why there's so much support for it, especially from the US government and also taking you know, stake in some of our companies Intel for one,
you know, some rare earth minerals as well. The race is on, it's very hot, and China's going to have to figure it out if it doesn't have internal supply chains, because you know, if this gets found out, then some of their negotiating powers go away because it looks like they're bluffing Anna.
It's leading not just to a hot race, but to hot valuations.
Are they too hot.
You know, I would say compared to what, right, we haven't had AI before, We haven't had this kind of support behind a tech movement before. And it's not just the US, it's global, right, I mean we just talked about the race between US and China. So you know, yes,
it feels hot compared to historical standards. But you know, when money goes into something like this, and this isn't just a year or two, this has been for a while, and we have to ask yourself what is the wisdom of the masses and the markets telling us what is behind this? And I think there's something to pay attention to, maybe not compared to the valuation to the historical norms, but think about what the norm in this new world might be and it might actually just be a little bit higher.
Yeah, but Ana, that is a lot of hope baked in.
We had GQG on the show yesterday and they're saying, look, the level of revenue that an open AI has to bring in to vindicate the investment, the level of money that in video has to continue earning, and the worries that we're seeing of Nvidia writing one hundred billion dollar equity checks over to an open AI and feeding back the loop of demand. How are you strategizing and seeing that becoming a reality?
No, it's it's actually very difficult if you're looking at from a company by company standpoint. They're absolutely correct, there's stuff going on that you know, doesn't really justify those high valuations.
But if you look at the it from.
An investor with an allocator point of view, if you look at AI as a theme, there are a lot of things going on that's outside of Nvidia and open AI.
I mean, we just heard about Hitachi, we.
Heard about Caterpillar yesterday, you know, fitting from some of the AI movements.
This is really talking about industries that are.
Not only adjacent to AI, but that adjacent cy circle is growing wider and wider, and so from an investor point of view, that is what we're really looking at from an AI movement, not just Nvidia and not just the chips.
I know, the story and technology markets this week has been about AI enthusiasm, the infrastructure deals that have come daily, the open AI private market valuation of five hundred billion dollars. But I think we really need to acknowledge this government shutdown because it's also a factor in markets. How are you looking at that and what are you telling to clients?
Yeah, you know, if I'm thinking about government shutdown and the fact that we did not get a labor market report today, this has implications more for all the economy sectors.
When it comes to tech, it.
Really doesn't even matter that the government is shut down. We saw how many deals that took place today, not today this week, right, So as far as tech is concerned, I don't think it matters, which is a.
Little bit scary.
But at the same time it's a little comforting because the government might be shut down for a few more days, right, maybe weeks, So.
Anna, when we're just looking at techno caring, then that's that one hundred at a record high.
It might be added the S and P A is too.
Where do you allocate if you still believe in the AI trade? But just thinking in video or some of the other names would just be overplayed.
So earlier I mentioned some of the adjacent industries, right, So this actually points to the importance of being diversified and not too concentrated on certain names, because then you are exposed to idiosyncratic risks. Now, when you're looking at the valuations, it is sky high and nosebleed sections.
It's difficult to allocate cash into it.
Right, So if you're an investor and you're actually you know, boots on the ground, where do you put cash becomes the problem, and that's where the diversification helps you.
This idea of adjacencies helps you.
If you already own tech, it's difficult to sell.
I mean, it's difficult to sell because of the momentum.
And in that case, sometimes it's not about selling off all positions. It's just about being prudent and taking some of the gains, rebalancing your portfolio. So you're taking the gains and reallocating it to some of the other sectors that may benefit from in the future. The idea of a diversified portfolio becomes much much more important.
And Rafan, I've grenna did our advisory, wishing you a very happy weekend. Meanwhile, we're watching shares of applied materials. We broaden out the story on chips a little bit more here and indeed the geopolitical context we're off by two point four percent. Why largest US make of machinery used to manufacture selling conductions semiconductors, But basically they're warning there's going to be a six hundred million dollar revenue hit because of the rules that the government is setting.
The restrictions end to exporting their products to China.
Yes, six hundred million hit to net revenue. When you send a chip through a fab to the first thing the way for touches is applied materials and the last thing it touches is an applied materials machine. That's why we care. Coming up, Rivian's looking to rework its doors over potential safety concerns. We bring you to Bloomberg breaking story next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
Rivian while it's reworking a key element of the doors in its next generation EV after employees and customers for its concerns over latch design in the vehicles it's already selling.
That's according to sources.
Now the move comes just weeks after Tesla face scrutiny over their powered handle doors.
Guests who broke that story my.
Co host ed Ludlow alongside Bloomberg's Emily Chang. This is a deep dive into the regulation and some of the regulatory pushback there is to some of the building of these ultimately door handles. But take us inside the car what's happening.
Yeah, the specifics are really important. So the R two is the next generation ev that Rivian will start building next year. It has decided to make the emergency manual release in the event that the power electronics fail that the doors and the vehicle lose power more intuitive simply by positioning positioning it in a more obvious place, making the design in the front seats and the rear seats the same. But what sources tell us is that in June of twenty twenty four, Rivin did a refresh on
the car. Had already sells the R one generation, both the sub and pickup, and as part of that, in lowering component count and to bring the cost down, they revised the rear door release latch, in particular, making it less intuitive. It's difficult to find it's under a cover and what is recognized by both employees. But also we found some anonymous complaints and then it's a database. Is it presents a potential safety risk?
Talk through the safety risk and some of the incidents we've already seen.
Yes, So this is on the back of Tesla and a Bloomberg broke the story that Tesla is revising the design of its doors because of actual cases where there is an accident and the passengers in that testa vehicle found it difficult to operate the MANU override and power had been lost. What we are not reporting about Rivian is there is no investigation into Rivian and Rivian not that we have found, and Rivian has never disclosed any
kind of accident where this has been a factor. But it is an acknowledgment from within Rivian that it is a potential safety risk and they've decided for their next car they have to do something different with the design. We do not know if with R one they will do another redesign to account for what they admit is based on sourcing a mistake. But this is an industry wide thing.
Go read the story and there is the Rivian spokesperson talking about safety being at the center of everything that we do.
It's a breaking story. Meanwhile, open Ai competitor, let's call it Perplexity.
It's made us AI browser Comet available for free to use as worldwide. The company launched Commet for top tier subscribers in July.
Expanding access to Commet.
Takes aim maybe the dominance and Google's Chrome, which Perplexity of course, made a thirty four and a half billion dollar bid for earlier in the year. Dmitriy chevel Enco's with us in Perplexity's chief business officer, and look, we start by introducing you as an open Ai competitor, but really this is a Google Chrome competitor.
We're focused on building a better Internet. On Comment, you know, the browser is due for a major refresh. We want to serve and satisfy the world's curiosity and do a great job answering people's questions, and Comment is putting us on the path there and super excited to get to share with everyone this week, Demitrio.
It also makes people ask different kinds of questions and far more questions. As you've said from the reaction of users already, can you give us some statistics because we knew that there were millions of people lining up to use this the ux people are really complimenting you.
How many people are using it now?
Yeah, so we had millions of people on our wait lists and they're all getting onboarded this week.
How many minutes.
You know?
You is your job to ask those questions, and it's my job to compete against a three trillion dollar monopoly, so we're not going to be able to share everything today. But some of the really fascinating stats we're seeing in terms of user engagement is when a user starts being on Commet, they asked six to eighteen times more questions
than they were before. And that's really you know, for us, that and retention are the key markers of success, and that's why we felt very comfortable and excited to open this up.
To me.
True, we're a technology show and you're in the technology industry, and I think one thing that's true of technology is that just being first to something new doesn't guarantee that you capture that market, right, you know, Apple and the smartphone versus BlackBerry. That's a good example. I'm just at the root of my question is what is stopping Google now from looking at what you've done with Commet and saying, oh, we can do that too.
Yeah, well, actually, not new to We're not the first of browsers, right. Google's been doing this for over twenty years, and their approach to AI is bolted onto their existing browser. We've built a AI native browser from the ground up, and our biggest advantage, you know, when competing against trillion dollar companies is execution velocity. It's the clock speed of iterating and improving the product. You know, if you know it sounds like you guys were using it back in July,
you've probably noticed how much it's gotten better. You've noticed that we've launched for our Max users background assistance and the email assistant, and so it's that rate of improvement, particularly an AI where you new foundation model capabilities advance not every six months but literally every three to four weeks, and so having the clock cycle around incorporating and finding the useful applications of those new capabilities, that's where the alpha is.
Demitri, the chief business officer, what's the monetization pathway? For comment? How are you going to make money from this platform in the end.
Yeah, we're fortunate to have a variety of subscription products, our Perplexity pro offering Perplexity Max and our only expense is inference, and so we're able to tailor to a given user's needs the.
Rate subscription product.
And so that's led to explosive air R growth for us just this year, and we're excited about subscriptions as a path forward.
Looking at your media partners, this is where subscriptions comes in five dollars for direct access to basically comet plus, which you call is a groundbreaking business model for premium journalism.
How does that expand.
Meet because all these publishers need paying too.
Yeah, well, I'm so glad you asked about comment Plus.
The Internet deserves not just a better browser, but a better business model. I think we're all exhausted with the traffic and clickbait, you know, dynamics that have really, you know, led to a race to the bottom on the Internet. And what we're doing with comment Plus is actually aligning economics with you know, the AI h where publishers get compensated when users directly access their content, when their AI accesses the content, and when search index is access the content.
And this is really taking you know a lot of what publishers loved about the Apple News plus.
Model and expanding it to the full power of the browser.
Talking of Apple the AI partnership strategy, it's going to broaden out from Open AI.
Are you going to be joining?
Briefly, we want to be wherever our users are, and our users certainly are on Apple devices, and we're confident that the best OEMs will want the best ais integrated deeply into their products, and you know, we're excited for the path the head there.
Dmitri Schevalenko, chief business officer for Perplexity great heavy back on the program. Open ai has rolled out and you social media like app Sora, powered by the latest version of its Ai video generator. Already, the toll has raised concerns about how easily it can be used to create misleading videos. Bloomberg's AI reporter Rachel Metz has been using it,
experiencing it, and then writing about it. The idea is that it presents a risk of more misinformation, more content out there that is potentially misleading, and then there's the social element. Just reflect on your experience so far with it.
Sure, I mean, I think we've seen a lot of concerns over the past several years about how making it easier and easier for people to make videos that show things that didn't actually happen but appear to show those things in a realistic fashion. That can make it easier to spread things that are not true and hurt people potentially. And with this tool, open ai has made it extremely
easy to do that kind of thing. I made several incriminating looking videos of my boss, and I mean stealing kittens from a pet store, keying cars, stealing a car, you know, all kind of all manner of mischief, and it was really easy. One thing that was also doable, at least until yesterday, is you could take these clips and you could in the draft form without publishing them. You could screen record them on your phone, and they
didn't have watermarks in that format. Open ai told me that they have since fixed that, but that made it even easier to share any kind of video without making it clear that it was coming from Soro or that it was a I generated.
This, I mean almost is the playbook of open ai. Actually get it into the world, get people stress testling it, pushing it to the brink, and then they learn from it. How has their response been to your SEMMI, your concerns.
I mean, they obviously do not want people to be disseminating false information, and they essentially said they take that very seriously, and they're doing They're making a bunch of moves to make that difficult for users. However, people are going to still be able to get around those rules if they want to, and even with watermarks, it's not clear to me that that would actually make people always say, oh wait, that's.
An AI generated video, especially if they're not that.
Familiar with Sora itself, they might just think that that's just some other kind of watermark on the video.
The videos that we've just been looking at are of course AI generated, and they are from open Ai themselves. And funnily enough, the cat is not actually riding an ice skater.
On while she performs, but removed.
Rachel mets, we so appreciate send us to Seth Eighmuan ones that you've made yourself. We're back with Bloomberg Tech and we have some breaking news regarding China pushing the Trump administration to roll back national security restrictions of course on Chinese deals in the United States.
What do they say they'll get in return? They're dangling the prospect of a massive investment package. Let's get to all the details.
Bloomberg's State Department reporter Eric Martin is one of those that help break this story, and it really fits in the whole context that Hijinping is pushing hard on the US to lift various restrictions and change some of the ways in which it views China.
Absolutely, Caroline, this is what we're hearing about seems to be China appealing to Trump's reputation as a deal maker and his idea, his focus the Art of the Deal, of course being his most famous writing, and just basically looking at how can China get a treatment in the US more similar to some of the other countries who have announced big investment packages in the US, including Japan a commitment to a looser commitment, but from the European Union as well, and so looking at how China can
invest in the US, can explore more of its product to the US, given that one issue for China and its economy has been weakness of the Chinese consumer, and just overall looking at this would be a huge change from what we've seen in the past decade. Remember it was just a few years ago we saw this Congressional committee set up to scrutinize Chinese involvement in the US economy and the US China national security relationship economic relationship.
So this would be a huge reversal of a decade of US policy bipartisan if this comes to be eric.
One of our sources is saying that earlier this year, China floated or dangled the figure of one trillion dollars, Could you just explain that reporting to us.
Well, when we're talking about the economies, the size of the US economy and the size of China, what we're hearing from or says is that this one trillion dollar figure was mentioned earlier this year, but it could potentially be down the line even larger in terms of the economic size of the two countries, and what would be big enough to really move the dial in the economic relationship.
And remember, China has seen a series of proposed deals involving Chinese companies rejected by Syphius, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States led by the Treasury Department. So this national security concern has loomed large for many years in the US China relationship, and this would be
a huge change. It's really hard to overstate how big a change this would be if this deal is reached and if investment in the US has opened in a much bigger way to China and two Chinese companies.
Bloombergs Eric Martin part of the team that broke it. I don't see carry any immediate market reaction. I would say that thousands of terminal readers are flocking to the story, and we need to discussed a bit more. Let's bring in Ted Mortenson, bed tech strategist who joins US. Now, Ted, this story just broke and I sympathized with you sitting in the chair there in that sense. But the idea
is basic. After a decade or more of China not being able to put money into this economy here in the United States, Bloomberg's reporting that its tactic is now to say to the US government, reduce technology restrictions in particular, and that's what might happen as somebody covering the sector, your reaction.
I think this goes back to a decision by the Biden administration of restricting SEMIICAP equipment below fourteen animeters almost a year a year and a half ago. And if you really look through that report and how it's transitioning to the Chinese government, they can't manufacture and this is am Lamb Clack, et cetera. In ASML, they can't manage manufacturer next generation AI if they can't get to that
three and two nanimeter node. At the two nanimeter node where TSM is going right now, the architectures are changing to gate all around and backside power. I think that's really important as you relate to next generation AI architectures.
They can't get there.
So if they're willing to bargain away that technology transfer and in return open up the spicketts of investment not only agriculturally potentially, but also manufacturing. It really is a huge game changer of have how we have been positioned in the last two years.
Ted therefore positioning just from an investor perspective, do we get even higher valuations because there's money coming in and then in video and all the others KLA, for example, Anadeed aim At, which we're seeing under pressure today because the six hundred million dollar revenue hit they're going to be feeling by yet more restrictions on their equipment.
Going to China does that in flight ever further.
It throws a bunch of gasoline on the fire because if you look at China, they're probably one of the largest wealth there's second largest economy in the world, and next to the US on AI they're probably the number
two position. If you don't transition to this next JENNYI architecture, whether it be a Gentic or where we're going, you know, just take open eye as a benchmark, you risk not only your sovereign economy, but more importantly your sovereign defense ability because we are pivoting in the US so quickly on the defense side to AI. It's a dual discussion. I think the other issue is one of geo exposures.
Right now, the street has really shied, it's shied itself away from anything with I would say over ten percent China exposures because looking at AM at last night, everybody's gotten bid. Right that would totally the open up the investment angle for all those China exposures, and right now the largest are probably lamb aim At and Claque at about thirty percent exposures they would have that would take away the Bear argument.
Ted whether you meant it or not, you are talking about the three biggest stories of the day. Bloomberg reporting that if you take a part Huawei's as send, it has Sam Summon s k Heinitz in it, the disclosure about applied materials. Do you see a change of US policy coming or not?
I just you know, I go back and look what the Trump administration did to the Middle East. You know, who would have thought that we would open up all the AI technology to Saudi Arabian others. I think in reply to lower oil prices. This is the art of the deal, and right now we're playing chess on four levels and it's very hard for at least the tech investors to decipher. But it would pour a lot of gasoline on the bonfire.
Ted Mortenston of bed Brilliant Reaction, thank you very much. Talking of the bonfire and valuations and M and A, black Rocks Global Infrastructure Partners is said to be in advanced talks to buy Aligned data centers, a forty billion dollar transaction, according to sources in agreement could be announced in days and more. Greenberg Us Deals Managing Entity Leanna Baker, who helped break that stories with us. Leanna, this is yet more AI euphoria, right it is.
And I'm sure on your show, you know you've been following AI almost every day, but on my team covering M and A, we actually haven't seen a blockbuster M and A deal. We've seen massive investments in the space, but nothing like a full takeover. So that's why we're so excited about the scoop that Black Rocks GIP is going to be buying Aligned data centers. Potentially within days for about forty billion dollars, And we're curious if this
will lead to more deal making in the space. All the big private equity names, sovereign wealth funds, are you know, involved in this in this deal?
What does the line do, Leana? Do we know that?
Sure?
Well, they have data centers around Phoenix and just around the US, and it's part of that trend of you know, building out the power necessary to sort of just fuel this AI revolution. So maybe not a household name likes you know, Stargate or as splashy as in video putting out one hundred billion into open AI, but it definitely already has some big backers and more to come, mostly.
Anna Baker, who leads the deal's team. Thank you so much. Italian Tech Week is wrapping up in Turin, and Bloomberg Text Tom McKenzie caught up with Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO David Solomon, who says he expects the US economy to accelerate into twenty twenty six. You also weighed in on the challenges of building significant tech businesses out of Europe.
Savings in Europe and capital in Europe needs to come into the risk economy in Europe. You just don't have the scale and scope of the available savings here are getting deployed into the tech risk ecosystem at the pace that it should when you compare and you look to the way things are deployed in the United States. And in fact, one of the things that happens here is capital from here looks over there, and so there are enormously smart, talented people. Here, are lots of great ideas,
capital formation, and a real focus on risk taking. Stuff's going to go right, Stuff's going to go wrong, but you've got to take risk, You've got to deploy capital. This really has to become a bigger center of capital deployment.
And also, the more we can get the European Union to be operating as an economic union and taking advantage of the four hundred plus million people that are here as opposed to the individual states for lack of a better term, the more we can get the tech economy working that way, I think, the better chance we have of reaching your goal, which I think would be a very noble goal for the world. So I mean, the more the more innovation over here, the better for the world.
So us live on the line will be here.
So your one message to the European Commission President would be centralizing or capital most certainly the urgency.
I you know, I'm feeling more urgency when I'm over here, but still, you know, the regulatory process in Europe is slow. Capital markets union for sure, you know, more encouragement of risk taking in capital markets, trying to bring it all together. Consolidation in the banking system instead of national champions in every market, consolidation in the exchange system instead of champions
in every market. You know, those are all things that will make capital formation easier, risk capital formation better, and will allow the acceleration of great companies here in these markets.
A spinning Goldman Sachs here David Solomon along with Bloomberg text Tom McKenzie was a great interview.
Go read more about it.
Meanwhile, coming up, we're going to talk about another mega AI funding round, this time start up Versell reaching nine point three billion dollar valuation.
We're gonna speak with the CEO. This is BlueBag Tech.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netnyahoo met with tech industry leaders in New York ahead of his White House meeting with President Trump. Attendees included Lux Capitals, Josh wolf Ramp CEO IC Glyman, and Vercell CEO GMO Rush, according to sources who say the conversation's focused on AI and its impact on Israel's economy and military.
After the story, ran Versales Roush posted a photo with Netnyahu to X, which has since draw more than thirty two million views and some criticism, raising concerns from both employees and customers. The company's also just done a big raise at a high valuation, delighted to say that GMO Rush joins us now, GMO, let's just start with the post on X and the meeting Sunday. In the comments, there appear to be employees of Versaell and customers who
are reacting. Are you able to quantify for us you know what that reaction has been and sort of what your response is to it.
So thanks for having me, of course, and maybe just to get you know, all of the noise out of the way. And I want to clearly acknowledge that the post did cause quite a bit of pain. I want to obviously say sorry to the well meaning people, you know, people that really care about this topic, people that are hurt by the tension that exists in the world today, but obviously not sorry to the people that are just spewing hate and anti Semitism and the people that have
come after our team. So to your point, this has been a special time for our team and obviously our customers. It's a very special time for the world. And maybe I'll give you a little bit of context for the meeting itself, right, As versall a leader in developer AI, of course, we you know, get invited to speak with world leaders about topics relevant to education, cybersecurity, AI I would play a huge, huge part of the of the of the future, right and so I always welcome the
opportunity to speak with world leaders. Obviously, you know, the reaction to it and the optics matter a lot to us, and we're here for our team, We're here for our customers. There hasn't been material changes to the business. A lot of it is noise, you know. There there was an ex post with five million views from someone that allegedly quit the company, but I guess what we looked upside
down and that person didn't work for over sale. So it kind of also highlights a little bit of the challenges that we see with social media today.
Yam, I'm grateful that you would come on the show. I think it's important to be honest with the audience. You were going to come on the show earlier in the week. Anyway, there was a lot of breaking news and we moved things around. But just to be definitive, you haven't had any employee resignations and you've not lost any business at all as a result. It has hosts.
Yeah, there hasn't been any material to change to the business. There has been impact to our community, by the way, and you know, I feel bad about that and our ethos of our sell and you know, maybe to tell you a bit more contents about our company. We're all about open source. The reason that I'm here today is because I built a gigantic open source project. We work in public, We engage with the community. We're always listening
to feedback. We use that feedback to grow, We use that feedback to contribute directly to source code and make our products better. And this is the kind of things that you know, world leaders are interested in, and this is why they reach out to us. And I welcome that. I don't endorse politicians. I do engage with world leaders and excited to continue our work and continue to support our community, our customers, and most importantly our team.
We appreciate how open you've been about all of that what must have been an anxious time.
And I'm interested.
Therefore about the story of Versell more broadly, because you come on this show around the context that you have raised money, you are building this business, and I'm interested in particular of how many people wanted to be putting extra money to work in your business and what growth story you're telling them.
Yeah, we've been around for a while building what we call the front end cloud. It's the best way to deploy websites and applications, and it's in the world of what I called pixels. You know, most applications had some kind of human centric user interface, but ever since I will call it like CHATBT the dominant type of application that enterprises and individuals want to create is what we call the AI agent, which is kind of like a digital coworker. So we announced that we're building the AI
cloud for people listening. This is sort of like the aws of AI. And one of the goals of this cloud is that when when you're a developer or a company of any size, you can deploy this agents make your business more efficient. It obviously caught the interest of investors. We weren't planning to raise additional funds. We had just raised.
The business is doing incredibly where we just passed two hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue, growing at north of eighty percent year over a year, supporting customers like under Armor, Nintendo Portie, and some of the hottest startups in the AI space like Brex and Ramp and Notion in all of the up and comers, so as you could imagine, the enterprises are thinking, well, I have all this up and commercial these startups, these even individual developers
coming after me with AI native solutions, what do I need to do AI transformation myself? And that's the AI cloud and the versail is filling a massive void in the market. Today.
We've talked about the reaction of some of those of your employees potentially and those that actually weren't current employees, but talk to us about how you're keeping them engaged in building with versall. Part of this raise was indeed a secondary tender offer. Is that about giving them a liquidity moment? Is that about ensuring you can get the right talent through the door.
Yeah.
I think employees and community have been super engaged behind our mission. Everyone is sort of galvanized behind the idea of building.
For the web.
One of our core values at Versells what we call ford the Web. Anythink the spirit of the web and openness is sort of the things that we want to represent, whether it's talking to world leaders, so whether it's engaging with the products that we create and putting them in the hands of developers to build a better future.
A gailmo very quick thirty seconds. Can you share any ar R or other financial metrics on how it's going.
Yeah, As I mentioned, you know, we've publicized that we're at north of two hundred and fifty million dollars in AR growing north of eighty percent year of ear, which is world class metrics, possibly unsen metrics for our cloud infrastructure business that spreads a huge array of customers from small startups to the largest enterprises, healthcare, fintech, SaaS, marketing, you name it, and we'll continued to build from here.
We're taking the feedback obviously, we're learning from it. We're growing, and we're excited about what the future.
Holds appreciate your transparency Today Kmo Ralph CEO and founder of their.
Cell Breaking News.
Taylor Swift's twelve studio album, The Life of a Show Girl was just released at midnight here on the East Coast. This on the back of a single podcast appearance. We're going to talk about the album's reception. We're going to do so with Bloombo's entertainment reporter Hannah Miller. Let me level with you. We did the story on the podcast announcement.
I've not yet listened to the album. I've done some original data journalism trending number one on Google trends, Oprahlite, the word trending number two, Taylor Swift data take it from there. Yeah.
Yeah, She's been dominating the charts on Apple Music and Spotify. Everyone is talking about her on social media. She is the story right now. And you know we saw her do this promotion ahead of the album. She did you know, the podcast with Travis Kelce, her fiance. She is very much banked on her fame. You know, she's been picked and chosen what she's done. She has not overstretched her self with promotion. Everyone knows who she is.
I saw an ad with Target, So there was a little bit of cashing in there, but just compared to what Cardie Bee has been out there doing, heavily pregnant on going into various stores in New York City, working it on stage, she just doesn't have to do that.
She cuts through the noise. Everyone knows who she is, everyone wants to tune in. You know, this is the topic of conversation that everyone is going on about right now.
I'm not being funny one, two, three, four, five, and six on Google trends. Is Taylor Swift a song or whatever we're business? Is there some kind of commercial reporting here, some kind of dollar figure that we.
Have or you know, we're still waiting on the data and we're going to get, you know, the data on how it's performing on the charts, whether it's going to break records today as the you know, most listen to album. It's already broken records for pre saves on Spotify. Over five million people saved the album before it came out. And there's also a movie out this weekend about the life of a show girl, so that'll inject some life into movie theaters.
So cross platform. Bloomberg's Hannah Miller, we so appreciate it. Thank you now.
That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech Busy week ahead. While you're also maybe listening to the new album. We are going to be live from Bloomberg screen Time in Los Angeles on Thursday, speaking to the best of the entertainment and Instagram.
We're going on the road because then on Friday we switch gears and we're going to go all in on defense tech. We're going to be like from Anderill's headquarters in Coasta Mesa, California. This is who we're going to be speaking to. You do not want to miss it. It's been an astonishing week in New York City. Caro like AI is again driving markets but geopolitical news flow. It's great to be back with you. I don't really know us to say other than gear up. Next week is Big two.
I'm going to say say flight and good luck with all the breaking news while you're on that plane, because he's a machine and I.
Have something to listen to. Right This is Bloomberg Tech Season