From Marhard. We're Innovation Money and Power co Line in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and.
Ed Ludlow.
Live from Roomberg's World headquarters in New York.
And Caroline Hyde and I'm Ed Lovelow as if by Magic also in the Big Apple.
This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up and Intel it plunges after disappointing investors with its forecast. We're going to be sitting down with the Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger to break down the company's results.
For bet Amazon and Microsoft facing FTC probes about their investments and partnerships with AI companies, Details ahead and salesforce.
Look, it's adding to a brutal string of tech layoffs in twenty twenty four, announcing its slashing seven hundred workers.
Well, look, there's just a single point of focus in tech right now, which is Intel. The stock in the session down more than ten percent intraday, biggest dropping around a year. If it closes down beyond ten percent, it will be the biggest drop since the end of twenty twenty one.
What is going on?
Well, the outlook has us worried, particularly about how Intel is faring in the market for chips that go into data centers. But remember they're also growing this fledgling foundry business and there was just a lack of detail. We don't know who the customers are, but there also doesn't seem to be enough dollars committed to that foundry and fab business. We're going to be speaking later in the
hour with Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel. If you're watching on Bloomberg Television, you're on the terminal ibs, contact us on social media with your questions because there are lots of questions to ask on where are we at in this turnaround plan that bat Gelsinger has kind of put in front of investors for a number of quarters.
Right now, Cara and ed a lot of what he's been hoping for is well the wins of positivity coming from AI investment. But let's just talk about AI in a different way right now from the regulatory perspective, because the FTC has launch an inquiry into Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft on their investments and partnerships with companies like Anthropic, like open Ai, those private companies. This is part of a study on how artificial intelligence is impacting competition in the
tech industry and used to say bluemeggs. Jackie Davlas are AI expert and also Washington expert joins us now and Jackie. The FDC here is really trying to garner as to whether or not these are kind of M and A deals by a backdoor.
Well, when you look at it, they're not small deals. They might be creative and that it's not a traditional mergers and acquisition steal. But the FTC is well aware of that. And the reason they are on their radar is because it's a massive amount of money. It's nineteen billion dollars collectively between the thirteen billion Microsoft committed to open AI, the two billion that Anthropic raked in from Alphabet, and then the almost four billion.
It got from Amazon.
These are enormous stay and the FTC wants to understand should they be subject to the same types of merger rules. Now, they're not the only regulators that got that have these companies on their radar. The UK started their own inquiry in December, and then you had the European Union also starting to take a look at whether they should be kind of looked at like a merger would. Earlier this month, you.
Know, Jackie.
The FTC has the who's who of megacat tech in their sites and the leaders in building of lms. But I want to go to Microsoft specifically because of being the world's most valuable company as it stands, but also the Microsoft OpenAI thing is somewhere.
Something We've done a lot of reporting on.
What is Microsoft's response been to the news of the last twenty four hours.
They defended the partnership and actually said that the US has been ahead in AI because of these partnerships. Their top competition's lawyer also said that they look forward to providing the information the FTC needs to really assess the nature of this relationship. But you're absolutely rated. Microsoft here is arguably more at risk than perhaps some of these
other companies. Microsoft has overhauled its entire product line to integrate open AI's AAI technology and large language model into the most ubiquitous tools and its most profitable tools it has. And so of course, whether the FTC decides that there's nothing to see here, that these partnerships are valid, that's one outcome, But then the other one could mean untangling these partnerships in some way. And this is where Microsoft is arguably more exposed.
Kay Bloomberg's Jackie Davlos out in DC with the reporting.
Thank you.
Let's continue the conversation with Christina Kafara, co founder and vice chair of the Competition Research Policy Network at the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. She's a specialist in antitrust and it is advised on high profile landmark competition cases on behalf of the tech companies Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and many others. We've been through the detail, but
the timing for me is really interesting. There has been a large body of reporting, most of it from Bloomberg, about regulators around the world looking at the relationship between mega cat tech and the new players in AI. Why do you think the FTC is acted now.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. The reason this announcement by the FDC is significant is that it is the first of the regulators who is actually doing a wide ranging type of investigation over these partnerships. As your reporter mentioned, the uk CMA, the UK regulator, the European Commissioner already looking into this specific partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft, but there is a border focus in
the FDC's announcement and what's behind it. And it is really common to all of these regulators that I certainly would describe them as a triad of fairly progressive regulators European Commissioned, the UK Regulator, and the US agencies. What's common between them is an anxiety that essentially we do not want to see the same playbook unfold again. What has happened in the past is that regulators has been very slow in intervening. For the first decade and the second decade, really.
There's been a reluctance to intervening these sectors because there was a sense that anti trust is really a problem that affects law, innovation sectors, an analog rather than digital.
And things will take care of themselves. So anti trust intervention as being late, and this is really what is powering the anxiety. The regulators are we cannot let this playbook unfold yet again. We need to be vigilant, We need to be seen to be doing something.
Christina, what about the anxiety? Is it a reality that anxiety that basically these partnerships are more than partnerships, They are indeed em and a they are indeed control.
Oh.
Absolutely, the anxiety extends to this because The concern internal to the agencies is that boardrooms have internalized that the climate of enforcement has become more hostile to deals. I mean, if you think about Microsoft activision into two years and
it is int obit there. So there is a general awareness that doing deals is much more difficult now, and there is an anxiety that companies are effectively the fact to circumventing merger control by dressing up these relationships as partnerships. So this is certainly the second leg of the anxiety. We've been too late, We've not done enough, and now we are exposed to the rest that these companies are actually doing deals by the backdoor. So that's really.
Why Christian significant, Caroline and I have covered so many these FTC inquiries on this program Bloomberg Technology. All of them slightly different, but the question they all share in common is to whose benefit is the FTC acting. You know, people are worried about AI, but there's also a broad body of people that say this could really help humankind. It's very expensive to achieve, and those names that are the subject of this inquiry are those with the capital
to drive the progress. Does the FTC put any weight on that latter argument?
Of course, and I think Lina Khan in her announcement yesterday emphasized at the beginning that these points are well taken. I think humanity to the extent possible wants to benefit from this. And of course we're all aware that there are massive investments that need to be put into this, which is why these players out at the forefront of development. That said, we have a recent history, which is a history of failure of engaging with these questions and why
one doesn't want to prejudge the outcome. One needs to be vigilant because we have spent the last ten years, certainly in Europe, but I reside trying to pursue exposed investigations of conduct. You're at that point in the US too, you have an number of complaints. How many years will it take before anything will move? Before everything comes even to a court?
The google Christina's when you look at what's happening in Europe, they're actually taking regulatory action that forces a change. Will we see actually companies front run this.
In Europe? What you've seen is because anti trust has failed spectacularly to deliver so far, we've been at it for fifteen years. There hasn't been a moving of the dial. There hasn't been a single anti trust decision on Google and others that has actually changed the situation on the ground. So we pivoted to regulation. Now it remains to be seen whether this is regulation which is now being implemented it's going to move the dial itself. These are all experiments, Frankly.
The sense is therefore that if you kind of try and correct the issue when the monopolies are established, where market power is established, when power is entrenched, you struggle, you are not going to be able to effectively undo that power. And so the notion of looking at it early and looking at what the nature of this partnership, for example, is so, what are the potential issue here? I mean, think about this industry as a supply chain
that's practicalized. Never mind that there is at the bottom a lot of competition. The issue is the power at the level of the inputs, the power the level of the models. Now, if that power is very concentrated, then the question that I relate us need to ask is how will that input which is essential to all of these products the general models be effectively supplied, will be supplied on conditions that are these advantageous that are extracted.
That that exploi is actively remove the ability of arders to compete. The fact that at the product level there's thousands of people implementing AI application, it's jolly good. But if there's only one, two or three suppliers of this, then the question becomes will they preference themselves? Will they have advanced notice of the work Christina x development?
Will they and.
To conclude, will they effectively favor the development of technology ways that suit them?
Some food for thought for sure, Christina Kafara, We thank you for the time and the expertise Center of Economic Policy Research over in London, Happy weekend. Meanwhile, sticking on a theme of AI open, AI CEO Sam Altman when he's actually visiting leaders in South Koreas se in conductor industry this week. This is as he's weighing, of course, a pretty ambitious move into chip production. Altman has arrived in Seoul last night and he's touring some songs chip
fabrication plants today. According to a source, he's also scheduled to meet the CEO of rival s k Heinex to discuss ways to collaborate and something.
We're reporting that yeah, big time.
So in another effort to cut costs, Salesforce is now the latest big tech company resorting to layoffs. Gloomberg's Brody Ford has details and Brody Salesforce has already kind of number of staff. This time. It's small than percentage form, But seven hundred is nothing to be sniffed.
At, right, Yeah, it's tempting to say that, hey, a year ago there was you know, seven thousand people cut. Now it's seven hundred, so we don't care so much. But it's still What it shows to us is that the tech industry is still focused on cutting costs, and this may become a more regular part of the year. Right, It's like we're going back to nineteen fifty and ge and stack ranking.
Right.
We saw this with Microsoft, Amazon, Google. Companies that made big cuts last year are doing well financially still see it in their interest to trim a couple percentage points periodically, So I expect this to be a trend to continue.
The point of difference from this time last year is, yes, the size of the c but if you go on any website of those that have cut Salesforce, Microsoft, whatever, they're also hiring and where they're hiring is clear as day.
Brody, Yeah, where there. I mean, it's two letterers. We've been here and every day for the last year and a half. AI Right Salesforce has told me that they're really hiring for engineering roles and for those who are going to market for their AI products. I think a lot of companies salesforce more than most, really focused on pairing back these traditional sales and marketing rules. Yeah, so now they're kind of investing in what's going to bring
them further. And you know, unfortunately for some workers, it is probably cheaper to fire than hire externally than it is maybe to retrain some of your people.
Goodbye marketing, Hello computers, Bloombog's Brody forward, Thank you very much. Now coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, we go back to Earning's coverage and we sit down with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger amid the company's results that often investors a disappointing forecast in the stock down significantly as a result. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg Technology. Welcome to
our Bloomberg television and radio audiences worldwide. The focus Intel and the chip makers earnings a forecast for the current period that makes the market nervous about Pat Gelsinger's turnaround plan for Intel, some worry about its data center business and a fledgling foundry business. I'm delighted to say we are joined by Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. The stock is down more than ten percent. What is it that the market is not understanding here for Intel?
Well, thanks, Ed, and always a pleasure to be with you and Carolyn on the show.
First, we've finished a great year.
At Q four, beat on top and bottom line, finishing a year that was comfortably ahead and showing the transformation journey that we're on, and.
We believe we're putting points on.
The board for a law term transformation of this iconic company. In light of that, Hey, the Q one, you're at the low end of seasonal, So we think the market reaction is a bit overstated in that respect. We understand it, but our company, our employees are doing an incredible job at delivering our process technology, restoring product leadership, defining new categories like the AIPC. We're on a multi year journey and we're not going to be judged on a ninety
day shot clock. We are out to rebuild this company and we had a great twenty three and I'm confident in a grade twenty four for this company.
Pat there were there were so many questions on the call about your foundry business, and for our global audience, that's the sort of contract manufacturing business where you make chips for others, and you seem to say that you didn't get as many committed dollars as you thought you might, and I wonder what's standing in the way of that customers committing to backing your foundry business.
Yeah, and we're very comfortable with the progress. You know.
We said that we'd have one on our leading edge Node eighteen A as it's called, and we delivered four for the year. We also found that there was a lot of momentum in our packaging business where we now have five major customers on our advanced packaging technology and we said, hey, we went from four billion to over ten billion of lifetime deal values.
So good momentum.
But most importantly is the process technology itself. Are we back to a leadership technology and we're hitting all the milestones this audacious five nodes and four year plan and all the milestones are on track to have us back to process leadership in twenty five and as I say, a foundery company, they want to know that if they
design on us, they can build the best products. And we're gaining momentum in delivering on exactly that promise, and so proud of my team's for delivering on such an audacious plan.
We're on track.
What about track for AI accelerators not just AI on the PC, but I put it bluntly, pat and videos run away with this, when or can you regain any sort of leadership in that space?
Yeah, and clearly that's been an area of strength for them. We appreciate that they've as I say, focused on that for many years and the market has come their way in a strong way. But our roadmap is gaining momentum. Goudy two, we said, we're seeing a significant expansion in the customer pipeline.
That we have.
We're ramping up supply, so I'll say we're chasing to have enough supply to meet marketing. We're well underway on our next generation Gouty three as it's called, with four x the compute, two x the network in the lab, gaining really really good early debug in bringing that product to market later this year. So we feel like, hey, you know, yes, we have a lot of work to do here, but the momentum is building, the market is looking for alternatives, and our roadmap is strengthening is we
go through the year. But more importantly, Carolyn, is this idea that last year was the year of high end training. This year it's about how do I use those models? And that's much more about the enterprise strength. 're Intel is at the edge in the PC and in the enterprise data center. So we see the market coming our way in AI in twenty four and twenty five.
And let's go to that core segment. Let's go to data centers. Because you promised that you are not losing market share there, how do you show that evidence of that path?
In Q four?
Our estimates are we are about flat in market share in Q four, So clearly we lost share weakness of products, but that's now being overcome. We are executing on our product roadmap and we're ahead of schedule on the products for twenty four. We're seeing great momentum for the twenty twenty four product line, good execution, and I'm very happy to say we sent our first twenty twenty five product on eighteen A already into fab ahead of schedule, so
our execution momentum as building. We see that we've stabilized our market share, and now it's time for us to rebuild where we were before, and we have the products and the strength to go do it. Really proud of our team's progress here.
For our Bloomberg television and radio audience worldwide, we're speaking with the Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, and Pat when I've been down to Santa Clara and sort of seeing the reality of Intel, it's always strikes me as being more multifaceted than say in video, right, and it's a high end performance GPU. A part of that is the packaging, A part of that is your differentiation with Foundry. But I go back to Caroline's point on the core business.
What seems to be happening in the context of data center is CPU and I just wondered if you'd explained to our audience what you think is happening in that market, specifically on the CPU side.
Yeah, and then the CPU last year was clearly here there was more energy on the GPU right for these high end training systems. But as we come into this year, we think there's going to be more balanced between the CPU and the accelerator marketplace. Clearly we're going to be
participating more in the accelerator. But the strength of Intel has been our Xeon, the core data center CPU and you know, coming out of World Economic Form and Davos and CEES, I probably met with fifty customers and the enthusiasm that they have and the traditional strength that Intel has in the enterprise. And you know, we're in year twenty of the clouded and sixty percent of computing is in the cloud, but eighty percent of the data remains
on prem in the enterprise data center. That's where Intel is uniquely strong, and our CPUs and accelerators are going to unlock that capability for our customers. This is an exciting time for us to really enable them to use those models. And that's the strength for Intel and our CPUs.
Pat When I look at the cloud and the hyperscalers themselves, the really interesting story is their in house design work and they're in house silicon progress. Do you consider that a factor in how your own business in the data center and cloud side performed and how you think it will perform going forward.
Yeah, And one of the things that I said at is Intel has the opportunity of a hundred percent of the AI market for it.
Because we're going to have our product.
Offerings Xeon is strong showing up with greater improvement in our Accelerator product line, but we're also going to be a foundry and all of those internal programs that you see at Amazon and at Google and a Microsoft. Hey, I want to be the foundry for those and all of the competitors' products. I want to be the foundry for them as well as we're seeing the momentum of
our packaging technology. So when you think about it that way, Intel uniquely is the company that has the opportunity to participate in one hundred percent of the AI market with our products and our foundry, and that's exactly what we're intent upon doing.
Has any of the weakness in demand thus far been because of this in house design and build commitment from some of these companies, or have you already managed to sort of seal verbal approval that you'll be doing these for them from a foundry business at this point.
I'd say it's pretty early.
I don't think it's really affected the market that much, Carolyn, so far, but I do think this forward looking view is a unique one for intel that we do get to participate in both sides of that market. There's a lot of energy here as the cloud vendors are saying, how do I have a more cost effective solution for these large training and inferencing demands of generative AI? And for that every one of them has these projects underway and we're engaging with all of them as we speak.
So I really see that as a long term opportunity. Takes multiple years for those to materialize, but our technologies as they gain momentum are showing up at just the right time to satisfy a unique AI market for those cloud vendors.
And we've just been hearing how within this change that we see around AI, so comes a change in talent. And many of these companies. Are you in any way having to reorientate your own workers, your own colleagues, Pat, are you having to let go of people?
Well, every day it's focused on talent and in the technology industry. Carol talent right is one of our CFOs used to say, he said, we start with sand, right, the second most plentiful material on earth, and everything else is talent between then and delivering our products and technology. So this idea of talent is so critical to our
markets now. Intel has a well tenured and very capable base in bost software and in hardware, but we're reorienting them very fast to the AI requirements, to data skills, to software skills. But we build on a very firm foundation and we're making good moves to bring additional talent into the company as well to continue to have the best people to do the best products to enable the
best customer experience that they could possibly have. And a great example of that is the AIPC, where we're unquestionably defining the category, have a strong roadmap and delivering on it at scale with ISVs and our OEMs in the marketplace today.
Pat, before we let you go, you mentioned eighteen A. You in the past have been kind and explained to me what it takes to jump generation to generation on the manufacturing side and kind of the process to retain and regain technology leadership. So in the time small time we have left, what evidence do you have that that beautiful chart you drew from me on the whiteboard is playing out the way that you expected to.
Well, we delivered the design collateral.
It's called a PDK and Q four of last year, we've seen our customers expand against that, and most importantly, we sent our first major product into the fab just before Earning's Call started, ahead of schedule.
And if you can take.
A big processor design like a server chip and send it with stable design rules into manufacturing, that's a pretty definitive statement of momentum. And we're adding customers and we have seventy five test chips in the plan right now, so lots of customers are saying, let me try my design.
And importantly, we have our Foundry day. You know, this opening of the doors of Intel Foundry coming up in February, so a moment for the ecosystem, the EEDA partners, the IP providers, and our customers to show up and see the progress that we're making. And for the first time we'll talk about what comes after eighteen A.
You know, we're not finished. You know the Moore's Law.
We are the stewards until the periodic table is exhausted. We ain't finished, and we're confident we're the company that's going to keep innovating in process technology for decades to come.
Moore's Law.
Indeed, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, thank you, Caroline. You and I have also been talking about that it's an election year and first and foremost, in the coming week, you have all of the social media CEOs in one place. Meta, for example, is adding further measures to protect teams from unwanted contact by turning off their ability to receive direct messages from anyone they don't follow or aren't connected to
on Instagram by default. They're also increasing parental controls. These measures come ahead of a Senate hearing on online child sexual exploitation, where the CEOs of Meta, x, TikTok, Snap, and Discord will testify next week.
There is a lot to pass over.
Let's break it down with Sharon Franco, head of Legal and public policy at Uboa, Paris based social discovery platform for gen Z, which has just unveiled its own reference document on universal safety principles for young people online.
Welcome to the program.
We're very familiar with getting all of the CEOs of social media companies in one place and lobbing questions at them because cynicism or skepticism is what does it achieve?
Yes, so I cannot speak for a platform by now and head over your life as you will, so it dies matter. I think that's speaking set up and the die makes cita, but I.
Expoke of that we're just having some struggles hearing you
at the moment. Let us just focus in on your microphone for a second, because I think that we are going to be hearing from the UBO perspective is, of course, this is a company that's building in collaboration with Meta and some of these other companies, social media companies, Away in which you can sort of self police Away, in which they can put in guardrails and in many ways use artificial intelligence as a means of not just a worry when it comes to exposure for children, but more
of a tool to heal and a way in which that companies can identify when there's bad behavior going on, when there's child exploitation potentially happening across that platform.
Remember that this hearing next week was due to happen before the holidays, and my understanding from sources is they couldn't get their BacT together and the CEOs couldn't be in one place a one time.
You raise really good points. I brought up the election cycle.
You bring up AI and the thing that you and I hear all the time in the cybersecurity context is all of the.
Great tools that we have to advance our work and things at home.
The threat actors have to amplify malicious content. So it's going to be interesting if that's the point of focus that the lawmakers go after, because often when you get all these CEOs one place, they don't focus really.
On, well, sandlights, Isn't it unfortunate point the.
Conversation, as Sharon, I believe your your microphones back up and running, So let's go with that. You know, what is it that you think the industry, the social media industry needs to demonstrate to the public in the coming week.
They need to demonstrate them I think it's already something that is already a work in progress that needs to demonstrate that they are invested and committed into tackling the issues and protecting children's online. But I think that now we need to focus on solution, and I expect from this hearing, for example, that it will be focused on solutions or peressional solution, practical solutions. I think that the purpose that the SAY is looking for with this hearing
not only having an overview of the issues. Because we know the issues, we know the impact of the use of social media and the risk that the children are facing and using these platforms. But now we need to focus on operasional solutions and that's the work that we've been doing as you go. Also really since the beginning of the company, working on finding solutions, practical solutions.
Let's talk about them. Man. In many ways, you are trying to ensure that someone is the age they identify themselves as, in particular, whether that's using photos and artificial intelligence to identify where they are indeed older or younger than the age they've put in. Anyone under thirteen shouldn't be used in the app. How have you done that from a privacy perspective? How have you done that from an opt in perspective?
You're pointing out one of the biggest issue when you talk about putting in place of parisional solution to in terms of safety, it's the privacy obligation. So as you know, you boys a French company, so we are Europeans. Or privacy and with the GPR is something that comes natural for us, and that's why since the creation of the company, we've been developed all our products safety pride design but also privacy by design is the work that we need to do at the same time, and it's doable. I mean,
we can do it. It's just a question of priority and also a question of at what moment you start to think about this question of compliance with privacy that
you that you need to take in consideration. And for example, one of the work that we've been doing is working with all the institution and administration in France but also in UK for example, to work on what's obligation we need to integrate and the work that we've been doing with the French standard Organization, we've created we created a working group with this agency and we in this working group we had a lot of companies.
Like a Meta for example.
We're also ENGOs child protection ENGOs, but also institutions and agencies such as the French that are protection authority for example. And we've came up with one hundred pages of operational solution giving a guidelines and recommendation on how to protect my nods online, how to protect my nots on social media, how to moderate content, how to work on age assurance. Because there's a lot of solutions today that we can use.
You've come here to talk to lawmakers to show off this document and to see whether or not will be adopted. Has it landed on air? Is that welcoming? Are these sorts of one hundred pages that you've given going to work in the United States as well as in Europe and the UK.
We hope, So we hope so that that's a purpose that there's no reason why it shouldn't work because we have all the we face all the same issues in terms of risk, but we also now kind of ending at a point where the legislation in terms of privacy but also of child protection and social media legislation, it's kind of not the same everywhere, but we are heading all in the same direction. So there's no there's no
no reason why it shouldn't work here. As I said, Meta was part of this working group for example, and uh and uh, and we had no difficulty ending up on something that we are all agreed on. And that's that's the way we should That's the thing we should
keep in mind to day. Multi stake order work is the way we we will achieve This of us and who will achieve and having a social platform that protects children and that's that are safe for them, that's really the gold that we all want to achieve and it's yeah.
Sharon Franco, thank you for talking us through this document and of course many can go out there and see it what you've made at You've both the head of legal and public policy there. Meanwhile, coming up, we'll take a deep dive into healthcare investing and more. That's with the Obvious Ventures. Stick with us. The VC Spotlight is room meg Technology. Let's talk about investing from a venture perspective, particularly in health tech. Right now, VC Spotlight is upon us.
Obvious Ventures co founder and managing director Vischelle Fasiche is with us Obvious over one billion dollars in assets and management and how much you've been able to put to work as you kick off the new year, how much you're seeing opportunities to write new checks at the moment.
First of all, thanks very much for inviting me here. Ed and Caroline great great to be here at Obvious. We've been busy. As you said, we have over one billion dollars under management. We believe at Obvious that the most valuable companies of our times would be companies which are solving humanity is biggest challenges.
We believe that if we focus.
With this intentionality around three broad areas. One is planet health, human health, and economic health. We'll create amazing companies for our times, and this kind of investing is what we call world positive investing.
What I find so interesting about this area, Michel, is if you take health as an example, being a piece of software or even in the hardware space in North America, you're trying to build a product in a company that's selling it to a highly regulated sector, doing business with private and public orgs that have to go through tender processes that move really slow. And I wonder how difficult that makes life for you when you're trying to write
an early check to a company. Who's the future you're assessing.
Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, all of us can agree that we believe that we're not getting banged for our healthcare buck. There's huge amount of opportunities in our healthcare system. We spend four trillion dollars in our healthcare system, but our outcomes are not that great as compared to other similar nations. We have an aging population, and this aging population is going to put more pressure on our healthcare system as well as our
healthcare workers, who are wonderful friend tine workers. Healthcare is a regulated industry. Things move slowly, but it's good as new innovations come like AI that because of regulation, we are able to be very thoughtful upfront to make a positive den and solve these big problems in healthcare.
Visa.
I'm in New York today, just hopped over from San Francisco, where I'm normally based. Caroline, and I love to get the scoop. Okay, we just had JP Morgan where all of your industry pairs were in the city, all of the bankers, all of the vcs, all of the startup founders, and all of the bigger biotech companies. Is there any movement in the days that have followed, you know, any deals that have crossed your desk is a direct result of JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.
Yeah, I know.
JP Morgan always brings all the industry players here in our wonderful city in San Francisco. I think the critical thing all of us are talking about is what are the kind of big problems and what are the solutions? At obvious we focus on three broad areas in healthcare. One believe our healthcare payment system has to come of move towards more outcome driven versus paying for services only, and the industry calls this value based approach of healthcare.
Number two, we believe the infrastructure of healthcare right now is being powered from a technology point of view for episodic care and for billing, and we need to move towards more holistic care, more longitudinal care, and thanks to new technologies like generative AI in future, move towards more intelligent care so that we can provide excellent care for
every human being on the planet. And number three, from a biology point of view, we believe biology is not very well understood, so computational approaches as a way to decode biology so that we can build amazing drugs at great prices, fast timelines, and in personalized ways. So all the industry people are thinking about that at JPM, and we at Obvious have been investing in these three areas.
How much are you thinking and how much your founders thinking about a political change and about potential for policymaking to be different under potentially a different president come the end of this year.
Yeah again, I think all of us, whether we are Democrats or Republicans, we all agree that we are not getting banked for our healthcare bark and because we are not getting a bank for our healthcare work, all of us need to figure out how do we move towards solutions and supporting solutions. We are investing in innovation economy. We are thinking about what would happen in next ten years. We don't think about kind of you know what is
going to happen in next quarter. And these problems are real and there's potential for companies will be using your technologies.
Like Jennerald b I, Obvious Ventures co founder and managing director Vishor Vashish thank you so much for your time. It's time for talking tech and first start. This is something I reported overnight with our.
Deals team and Ian King Chips.
Startup Sarah Brass Systems is considering an initial public offering as soon as this year. Bloomberg sources say that AI supercomputer maker is aiming for the second half of the year. An IPO corend value Sarah brafs above the four billion dollar figure it achieved in its last round in twenty twenty one. And Microsoft is warning others about a Russian state sponsored hacking group. Last week, Microsoft accused the group, known as Midnight Blizzard or Cozy Bear of hacking into
its executive's emails in December twenty twenty three. Earlier this week, HPE reported a data breach that was likely caused by the same group. Plus, after securing fifty million dollars in funding from investors, Crew Trim has officially become India's first AI startup to gain a billion dollar valuation. In mind, there's only been one month since the debuted. It's LLLM Caroline.
Wow, things move fast. Meanwhile, so does the world of crypto. Let's just get a check in on where bitcoin is, because actually it's above forty one thousand dollars. It's well off the highs that we've seen in the month or so. But is there a slow down in outflows from the all important gray scale? Bitcoin trust strategist seem to think that maybe if we can slow that outflow, maybe we'll see some resilience in the price of bitcoin. Let's talk
about the tokens. James Stephens with US BlueBag Intelligence and James, why should outflows of an ETF matter, particularly to a price point?
Yeah, I mean so, the outflows of an ETF. They are part of the entire pie that makes up the price of bitcoin. Because you were dealing in spot bitcoin at the end of the day, So outflows of the etf are selling of bitcoin. That said, we've had net inflows since these things launched on the spot bitcoin ETFs in the US. You look at a little more broadly, though, you can see that open interests of futures in the
CME Bitcoin futures that's down. You've had a little bit of outflows from Canadian ets, You've had a little bit of outflows from European bitcoin ETFs. So net, there has been net outflow. But what a lot of people seem to be missing is like these are just a piece of the pie. There's a lot of other things going on here. These are a small percentage point in what's actually happening to the bitcoin price.
I'm reading the Bloomberg terminal and there's this sort of narrative around rebounding back toward forty two hundred US dollars betoken. But if you just look at a char we kind of tumbled down from that January eight high and we're having a sprightly uptick. Explain that that trading action relative to the actual mechanics of the products that have come online in the last three weeks.
Yeah, so, I mean from my point of view, it's kind of been sideways since like January, right, So we had on the ETF launch, we had a massive spike up to forty nine, but for the most part we've been in this low forties ranges, dip below forty a little bit here and there, but I think a lot of the selling, I mean, we knew this was going to happen. There was a lot of money that was tied up in GBTC, institutional capital capital from bankruptcies like FTX DCG has a lot of money tied up in
here that they probably need access to themselves. They're the parent company of grey Scales GBTC. So there's been like force selling in the market because people they want to get their capital out. But there has also been buying on the other side of this, So there was undoubtedly foreselling that caused what we've seen the in recent weeks.
I think people are expecting this to slow down. We've seen some of it hinted at this, Like Caroline mentioned, we only saw three hundred and ninety four million come out of GBTC yesterday, which is which is a low of over the last couple of weeks James.
Great to catch up with you never dials down when it comes to the world of the new ats you thank you from Blueberg Intelligence that does it for this edition of Bluemeg Technology. Nice to have you here.
Thank you.
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