From Mahart where Innovations, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
I'm Caroline Heide of Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York.
Ed Ludlow, He's off today. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Nazac's ten and a half billion dollar deal. We've got to talk about it. The financial software maker Denz are being bought. We'll bring the details of the exchange operators push into software. Plus, we'll break down the biggest takeaways from Xboxes Summer showcase, and none other than Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming CEO. And we'll speak with a former president of Tesla who currently sits on the board at GM.
He's going to discuss why the ev makers charging stations are quickly becoming the industry standard.
First, let's check in on these markets.
Actually, SMB five roundred back in that ballmarket territory to cent off of its previous lows, managed to hold into them ahead of.
The Federal Reserve.
This week, in fact a jam pack week, we're hearing from Mike ni Key CPI prints retail data coming forward, and also the ECB back of Japan, you name it. There's big macro data on deck. Now's that one hundred pushing up tech outperforming on the day, we're up nine tenths percenters. Many feel that, look, we're going to get a pause at least from the Federal Reserve, the Central Bank to the world, and that means interest rates just could be keeping on a steady path for at least
the next month. Bitcoin off by more than a percentage point. Yet again, we're still seeing some woes of regulatory risk being priced in. At the moment, we're off to twenty five eight hundred and thirty two is where we trade. Let's move on to some of the micro moves in
terms of the individual stocks to watch Apple. I mean, when you've got a point higher on Apple, when you're moving up three tens three quarters of a percent, no wonder big tech manages to outperform, still getting that sort of hazy rosy glow post their announcement of their latest product and a lease. Tesla also at more than a percentage point. We're going to dig into how this is a record run twelve straight days against for Tesla's We think about how perhaps slightly un sexy world of charging
is becoming the piesta resistance to this particular company. And we've got to talk about the downward trajectory of the company that is Nasdaq, so not the benchminent world course, it operates the benchmarket. It's all about indices, but it's also about software, about technology data.
It's off by thirteen.
Percent because a bit of M and A in the air. This Monday, NASDAK agreeing to buy financial software maker Adenza ten and a half billion dollars. Look, it's the exchange operator's biggest ever deal. We want to bring in other than our M and A expert now with Bloomberg opinion one Ed Hammond. And this is a company that has already made MNA to build up the software offering to be able to provide more than just prices.
Is it about reducing volatility?
It is about reducing volatility, I think, Fanasdek it's about reducing the independence on the markets. And obviously right now the markets are highly volatile and probably will continue to be volatile for some time. And this is something they've been you know, as you say, through M and A and indeed organically have been trying to build out for a while, sort of moving away from that pure dependence
on markets, and this takes them in that direction. I think it's the biggest deal in their history, and obviously that's the way they're trying to sell it to investors. But if you just look at the way the shares are trading today, investors do not seem so taken with the idea as perhaps nos Deck would like them to be.
Yeah, and some of the numbers perhaps a little underwhelming when you think about the size of the deal and the solutions business is there for going to become seventy seven percent of total revenue from seventy one percent today, So what really is this ten and a half billion dollars going to be buying them? Because it doesn't even be that are creative to their revenue immediately.
Yeah, I don't think it is set accreative to their revenue immediately. I think this is part of a long term plan and a plan to as I say, rebalance the business away from the volatility that they've talked about, and investors maybe you know, look, they're looking at this and thinking this will be a good deal over time, but that may take a while to sort of come to fruition and to sort of bear the rewards that
the narzdeck obviously hopes it will. I think the other thing here is, look, it is just a very big number in terms of pure dollar act. That is a it's a big deal. It's much more sizable than anything else, know stack I've ever done. And also they are giving away as part of the consideration for the deal, they're giving away to Tomo Bravo a significant amount of stock.
Toma Bravo I think will become the second largest sholder with a shade under fifteen percent of the total, right behind Boors Dubai.
And a board seat as well, and a.
Board seat to Holden Spat, who is you know, obviously a very very senior and very successful person within Tomo Bravo.
Yeah, I mean talk to us about how this company, Agenza was even built really by Toma Bravo.
It's a classic Tomeo Bravo play. Something they do a lot of something. Actually they're sort of the industry leader in and something of a pioneering which is that they buy a technology asset, having already identified other technology assets that they could buy and put together with it to sort of create a bigger, better company. You know, some people would perhaps pejoratively call that a roll up strategy.
I think of it.
With them, it's it's slightly different because they're actually maybe just buying you know, two or three of these businesses and trying to make a sort of you know, a some greater than the past. They did that here with two companies, Axiom and a company called Calypso which they brought a few years ago, and they've put them together under a single leadership within their firm.
And then obviously a finding an.
Exit like this, and they've done it before, either selling companies that they've put together as a sort of single deal or taking them public through the IPO markets.
Ed, so great to have you with us.
Thank you very much to need Ed Hammond on the Nators big deal in the markets, We're going to turn our attention to a man who knows how to make an M and a deal or to himself and talk to CEOs about it, but also someone who's looking at how we're building the next big giants in technology, particularly when comes to AI. Daniel Newman is with us his Forturum Group CEO right here in New York, and you yourself have done a fair bit of and a you've
looked to build owned businesses. Are you expecting more M and A in this market? More generally, it's interesting in the time where interest rates arriving and we know that NASA's actually taking on debt to do this, that it's an interesting moment for companies to be trying to beef themselves up.
I still think there's a lot of consideration about valuation. You know, we've seen the technology market come back, so those valuations have started to rise back up. But with this rapid onset of generative AI, companies have to move
faster to move their businesses in the right direction. Karen, if you think about it, we saw in less than seven months an onset of a new technology, and in the last four weeks we've seen that go from something that you had to specialize skill in house to now being able to use something like Google's Generative App Builder to be able to take your entire business and build new apps.
Companies have to move quick.
And M and A does give that advantage of moving faster than building things in house.
Yeah, perhaps a little bit of respite from the whole thing being about generative AI in this particular deal. But talk to us about where you are seeing generative AI just suck all the oxygen from the room. You've been putting out some thought leadership around, well, who's going to be the next in video, who's going to be the next trillion dollar company to add to the club?
Yeah, well, about two and a half years ago, carolen I actually called it in video, would be the next trillion dollar company.
And on ai or hy on Ai on ai.
Now, part of it had to do with the potential of the arm deal, but I said either way, it was the only company that fully committed to it. Every
other company was kind of dabbling in it. Jensen never wavered, and when the market sort of vacillated, even back to about a year and a year ago last summer, when it was down to lows around one hundred dollars, people were saying, oh, it's done, you know, metaversus don ais slow, and then all of a sudden you see it rise back, and everyone's like they're not surprised.
But people just ride the trends.
And the truth is that all this generative value you hear about whether it's open ai, whether it's barred, whether it's hugging face in these large language models. Right now, they're being trained on in video. Now, are there other companies could could? Amd, Intel, Broadcom, Marvel, These other semi companies play a big part. I think there's going to
be a second company, Caroline that has to rise. But right now in video's got the route and that's why it's accelerating so fast is because no one else can offer. It's the completeness of the Nvidia stack.
I mean, you mentioned valuations and they're just eyewatering in video currently trading versus future.
Earnings at fifty one times. I mean, it's interesting.
We've been thinking about Oracle, whose earnings come out after the bell. They're being piled into because they've got a less extraordinary valuation, but still a focus on AI. Who are the other companies that you're starting to call could be trillion on a company?
Some of them obviously are that I had Google and Microsoft and there I actually put Oracle on my recent list of companies. And that's because the data, the enterprise data, the rich data that sits in the Oracle ecosystem is going to have to be utilized to give companies a competitive advantage. Right now, the open AI ecosystem has almost become table stakes. Every company can tap into it. Every company can use it. You look at what Bloomberg's doing with its own GPT. You have all this rich data
and that's the competitive differentiator. So does Oracle, so does SAP. Another company I really like is Service Now. I've had a number of conversations with CEO Bill McDermott about it. I think he really gets kind of this aggregation that's going to take place of software. Nobody wants to tap into a CRM and ERP and HTM, all these different tools. They want to hit one aggregation layer. They want to prompt something and say give me the thirty day forecast.
Just ask it, just like we ask Google.
But right now we got all these systems of record and they're really they're not that friendly to use. So this is where generators could really make a difference.
To that point.
I mean, every day we have another company coming on to talk to us about how they've introduced generative AI into their offerings. Will there ultimately still be the room for all of these enterprise software companies as they stand, or are you saying, actually you need an aggregator as such?
Well, you know I'm here in New York to go here from Mark Benioff. He's going to do the salesforce. AI launched today. Every company seems to have a story, and we're kind of listening right now. And what I'm finding is there's two things the market's listening for. One is, can you clearly help them market understand how you're going to monetize AI content, meaning you know, adding its table stakes.
There are some companies that's always been there and people aren't seeing a lot of value because they were already pricing it in. There's other companies where it's obvious and a parent and those companies have gotten a huge jolt.
So as I see it, you know the AI run is.
Going to take place as companies can start to articulate what is the addition of AI bringing to the table for their customers and are they able to charge any more for it and all these software comings. Right now, it seems like it's table sakes. They have to put it in, but our customer is willing to pay any more for it, and that hasn't been clear yet.
Has the hype gone too far? Then?
Well, I think the usability the utility of this generative AI is pretty immense, and so the hype hasn't necessarily gone too far, But has the market gotten a little bit frothy on it? How long is it going to take to catch up? I mean, look, the reason Nvidia has gone so far is because it's the shovels, the picks and axes, and it's also all the software to
develop it. But at the edge, at the software and on all these devices, the utilization of generative, it's pretty unclear how we're going to update our spreadsheets to show future values.
So I think we've gotten a little bit ahead of ourselves.
But there's no doubt that our world is going to change and the way we work and how productive we are, it's all going to be driven by these new AI technologies.
Really well articulated. Thanks so much for being here, Go enjoy the event. Daniel Newman of Forture Group.
We thank him.
Meanwhile, coming up gaming news, pick them fast out of Microsoft Xbox updates, new games. We're talking about the platforms as well, so much to digest the Microsoft Gaming CEO, Phil Spencer.
He joins us.
Next, and let's just take a quick look at Microsoft shares as we had to break because of course, this is a company that's been fueled on artificial intelligence.
Hopes and dreams. It's pairing with open Ai.
How much are we starting to see a focus on its own m and a of course activision Blizzard?
Will that become reality? How much of a gaming.
Win can it be to take away some of the extraordinary peal that its rivals have had. It also within the console market, rap three tens percent this bloom back.
It's going viral. You econdo missed it.
Yesterday's Microsoft just wrapping up its annual summer showcase for Xbox, announcing well thirteen new games from its own studios, not to mention the third parties, an update to its current Xbox series s with some improved storage and please to say, coming off of some of the adrenaline Russia. Is Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming CEO, joining us to yesterday's event in LA and you talk about the platform, you talk about the additions from the gaming line up in particular, and Phil,
you call it your most ambitious games. Ever, just how crucial is it that Starfield becomes a blockbuster for you?
I think in general, our first party games library is important for us for many different reasons. Starfield's obviously a big show that we focused on. We gave it over forty minutes with the Starfield direct but all of the games. I mean, one of the things I was very proud of the show yesterday was the diversity of games, games
for everybody. We want to love a lot of people to love Starfield, but from the opening of Fable to games like flight simulator, Forts and Motorsport, we want to have games for everybody, and the quality of those games is very important Xbox.
Let's talk about some of the prior lack of quality, if I can say it in a sort of slightly brutal mannun to you, Peel, because there is this worry about red Fall in particular, and what ultimately have been the lessons you learned from what many might see as a kind of flop when it was introduced a few a month or so ago. How are you going to differently support your own game studios in the back of that.
Yeah, you know, we came off a really good run in twenty twenty one. The studio behind Redfall also did games like Death Loop, which was incredibly well received. We had Hi Fi Rush earlier this year. But gaming is a creative endeavor and teams are going to try to do ambitious things, and we want to hit our goals with everything we try to do, and sometimes that won't happen and you hit it exactly what we need to do.
We need to learn, internalize what we could do better improve our process, and I believe we've done that, and I think the reaction to the show yesterday shows that gamers have a really high anticipation for the games that are coming to Xbox.
Is your process then more hands on.
And we definitely have tried to be hands on all the way through the process. I'd say when we acquire a studio or build a new team, the thing we want to do is work really closely with them to allow them to be the best version of the team that they can be. We've been working on Starfield with the team at Bethesda Game Studios for really years now to make sure we're going to build the right game, and helping teams realize their true vision.
Is definitely part of what it means to be part of Xbox.
Of course, the big elephant in the room is what you might still be buying, Phil and with twenty seven, what was it other games coming on tap?
As?
You say more than ten being produced in turning by your own game studios already and does this mean.
That you kind of don't need Activision Blizzard.
The thing that's always been unique to us when we've looked at Activision Blizzard King is the capability they have on mobile. And I know it gets lost sometimes, but the largest gaming platform in the world are people playing on their mobile phones. Activision Blizzard, through their acquisition of King, through the growth of Candy Crush, through the growth of Call of Duty Mobile, the work that they've done with
Blizzard on mobile devices. That was the thing that really attracted us to Activision was actually the work that they're doing on mobile, and I'm encouraged by that is going to achieve its goals of being a global gaming platform for the over three billion people who play video games. We need to be relevant on mobile and on console and on PC, and we think Activision is an important part of that.
It is an uphill battle, though it is really hard to change hearts and minds on the CMA.
Do you think you can do that?
Particularly with the news We understand that Activision itself is going to be granted permission to intervene in the legal dispute.
Now I've been involved in this process now for over a year. It's been a learning experience for me and I reflect on our process with the European Commission, where we spend a lot of time listening to concerns, coming up with solutions that met the needs of the regulators. And as you know, we received approval in the European Commission. If you include the countries of Europe, we have approval
I think in forty plus markets right now globally. You mentioned we're going to focus on the UK, We're going to focus on the US with that same approach. We want to listen to the concerns. We want to come up with active solutions that we believe we can implement and come to a good outcome for us.
And we remain confident that we can do that.
If and I'm sure this is an awful thing to have to think about, but everyone's got to think about all the outcomes. If you don't get it. What is your future for mobile gaming? Will you build internally? Is it about other acquisitions?
It could be about both. I mean we're definitely building internally.
Now.
We have more Xbox users on mobile than we've ever had, but we're so small, and obviously in mobile specifically, you have two big companies in Apple and Google that really control every game that somebody sees on those platforms and all of the monetization.
So for us to.
Achieve our goals globally, we are going to have to find a way to build more presence on mobile. We think ABK is a great way to increase competition in the gaming market given that the largest gaming platform, mobile is controlled by two other companies. So we think it's a benefit, but it is not the strategy and to itself.
The strategy itself finding new players, finding creators. We have more games being built on Xbox than we've ever had in our history right now in that mix of millions of players finding all of these games that creators are building is the magic of what we have with Xbox, and we need to extend that to mobile.
And it's the way you talk about you want diversity, not only diversity of people building the games, but the use how you actually consume them. Cloud gaming of course a key feature in that in many ways, Phil, But it's interesting the UK took issue with cloud gaming worrying about your deal sort of killing that nascent space EU saying you would be a pro competitive kickstart to cloud streaming market. How is the cloud streaming market going? Is it growing at the rate you see and want?
Because what is it? Only about one to three percent of the entire gaming market.
Yeah, you're very right, like cloud is very small right now in the gaming in the gaming business, and even kind of on top of being small, it's usually kind of a secondary use case for somebody who's already playing on console, already playing on PC and while they're maybe traveling here in Los Angeles, not saying I'm doing this, maybe I am that I'm here, I didn't bring my console and connecting to my console games via the cloud
is a great way for me to keep playing. That that means it's not really a separate market than what I'm doing on console or PC today.
It's actually this secondary use.
Case that's a majority of what we see in the cloud and why we're really adamant that what we see as clouds is additive to how players play today. It does give us angles into other devices like smart TVs, tablets, and mobile phones, but it's people engaging with their Xbox games when they're away from their Xbox, and we think that's a good use case.
Let's talk about your Xbox then to finish Series S of course, getting more storage. Series X you've got more supply. How is the environment, the macro environment for selling this right now, because you're still very much in the third position.
Yeah, in the console space position console. You're absolutely right, we're in third behind Sony and Nintendo. But our strategy is really about players, and we love the plays we find on console, like it is Xbox after all, and people like to play on their console. And as you mentioned, we just brought out or bring out the September that
the new Xbox series s with more storage. But whether players are playing on our consoles, buying our consoles, playing on PC where we're seeing tremendous growth, or playing over the cloud, we really stay focused on how do we find new players. Console is a great market for us. We will continue to invest in the hardware, but our success does not depend only.
On our own hardware sales.
And it's great to see so many players playing Xbox across so many different devices, finding their friends, having their game library, subscribing to game Pass, or buying games however they decide to build their library. It's really about choice and finding new customers.
Did you have any second disperse to actually game this weekend film.
I am playing a lot of Diablo for this weekend.
Pil spencer, finding extra hours that the rest of the world doesn't have it. We thank you so much for spending time from Microsoft Gaming the CEO there have a good rest of your Diablo playing.
Time.
Now for talking tech.
First up, UK Prime Minister Ishi Sunak taking steps to really drive home that Britain could be a key hub for AI research and regulation, announcing that AI labs such as Will Google's deep Mind have agreed to give the UK priority access to its research so now also outline plans for an AI task force. During a London Technique
panel with deep Mind CEO Demis has harvest Now. Earlier today, Bloomberg spoke exclusively with his Harvest, where he shared well his thoughts about AI tools how it can lead to scientific and medical breakthroughs.
I think in the next decade, if you, I think it could be very possible that we could build these kinds of AI tools to help the world's experts and medical researchers make some fast breakthroughs in all of these types of areas, as we've seen with Alpha fold where we've now used it to fold all two hundred million proteins known to science, and we did that in just
over a year on our computational system. So that kind of acceleration, we like to call it science at digital speed, I think, is going to come to a lot more fields, including medicine.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andrews and Horowitz it's fanned to open its first international office in the UK. The new London based office, set to open later this year, will be established by the firm's crypto investment arm A sixteen Z Crypto. The move comes amid a stark industry crackdown, of course, by US regulators, and thousands of Reddit group moderators are pushing back against the platform's plan to charge third party app developers for access to the site's data.
Millions of users will be locked out of their favorite subredits in the coming days as the pages go dark, so Reddit spokesperson saying the company needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high usage third party apps. Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology. I'm Karen Hide in New York. Let's check in on these markets because nas that the benchmarks still pushing up higher. We've got so many on deck in terms of the macro. This week of course,
got CPI print tomorrow. Here in the US, the Federal Reserve come Wednesdy, got the ECB to B digesting.
The bag of Japan.
All of this actually managing to see some stability in the US two year at the moment. So bob market's current at four point six percent, is it priced in for a pause in the Fed's move come June? But then what about July? Do we see yet another hike? We seen ten straight hikes thus far. Remember Nasdak, the owner of this benchmark nas that company is currently doing a big bit of M and A today ten and a half billion dollars, So want to watch as they get into more the.
Software and services side of the business. Bitcoin under pressure just a little off by nine tenser percent.
We're gonna be drilling into that a little bit more with Silmark VC a little bit later. But Bitcoin has been, of course under duress from a regulatory perspective. Let's move it on and see what's happening in the world of individual movers because well, interesting focus that we've been having overall on Oracle up six percent ahead of its numbers.
People feeling really optimistic AI the driving force. But also remember this as a company that trades at twenty one times earnings, when viotain trades at fifty one times future earning. So maybe it's a better entry point if you're betting on AI biogen. Some hope they're around, in particular Alzheimer's
drug being developed with a partner over in Japan. At one point eight percent, as some of the advisors to the FDA seemed to be liking some of the work done there, and Tesla up a percentage point record run twelve straight days, it could well be closing out on the higher side as yes, we priced in AI optimism, but we.
Also well start to look at their.
EV charging stations are set to become the industry standard for GM adopting the company's supercharger network. I mean, you please have got an expert who can talk across all of this. John McNeil's here with our CEO of DVX Ventures as well as well a former president of Tesla sits on the border. GM also started countless companies yourself, I think it was six.
Do you have anything to do with it? Were you? If you're a board member of GM and you used.
To work with Tesla, you know, advising Mary and the team behind the scenes for sure, but this was really driven by Mary and Elon and Mary recognizing that the biggest barrier to EV adoption is charging.
I have friends that say, should I get an electric vehicle?
They're often the first issue is where did I get a charged and their charges reliable? And the charging standard that has been in place outside of Tesla hasn't been that reliable. One out of four times you pull up to a charger, it doesn't work. And Marry and the GM team saw that, and they said, this is a barrier to adoption. The Tesla standard is better, it's more reliable, it doesn't break when you drop it, it's easy to handle, and therefore, to get more people in evs, we are
to adopt the better standards. So it's a little bit like a beta max VHS moment where companies are choosing sides on which standard is going to.
Prevail, and it seems to be, of course, Tesla's standard. You were there several years ago now, but was that ever a part of the game plan own the EV space because it's a nice little money spinner. I mean, one analyst think thing is three billion dollars a year.
It could be.
Yeah, it was originally just conceived to get people to get in evs and to feel confident that if they were going to take a trip that there would be a charger.
There for them.
Now, I think you're right, this is a bit of an AWS moment for Tesla where they're taking something that's been a cost burden for them and turning it into a revenue source.
Ultimately, are there any issues with the way in which we see mass adoption using Tesla? I mean, we think about here in New York, everyone, the very governors, mayors, people trying to ensure that there's investment in EV charging and not always turning to.
Tesla for that.
Will that be competition in the space or we'll just admit that it'll end up being in Tesla world that we live in.
I think there'll be competition in the space because essentially with Tesla's done here is they've open sourced their technology to the industry. So GM is going to be building chargers and its own chargers, but on the Tesla standard, and I think you're going to see more and more of the charging networks moving to this standard because it's just a better standard taught to us.
A little bit more about where you're seeing opportunities within the EV space. Is you alsoone who's correct me if I'm wrong. DBX, the venture company that you've built in twenty twenty you first founded, it has a different model, not only in how you charge fees and the like, but it's ultimately about building companies within your incubating ideas and bringing a CEO.
To match with that.
That's exactly right.
You're trying to fix the world of EBAs.
Yeah, yeah, we are.
We're active because this ecosystem is going to grow so quickly. Like we're talking about chargers now, and there are forty thousand fast chargers in the US, there are four.
Million in China.
It just gives you a sense of the growth that we're going to see here as we convert from gas cars to electric cars, and we're playing in that space.
So you're right.
We were different in then our fund charges no fee, no carry. But we're also different in that we invent the companies from the start and we own one hundred percent of them from the start. And so we've got a company called Kirby, which is for EV and gas cars where the cars are serviced in the customer's driveway.
Eighty percent of what you can fix in the customer's car.
We figured out at Tesla was was something you could do in a customer's driveway. So Kirby shows up, it fixed the car.
Magically.
You don't have to go anywhere, sign anything, do anything, and it takes all this hassle out of the maintenance of these kinds of cars.
What do you see about the last mile in general and the offering there. You were executive of Lyft for about a year when it went public, and I'm thinking about the way in which I get to work, which is biking.
This is a company that's under duress. We all know this, and we have sat.
Down with a new CEO and he's talked about perhaps a sale not being off the table. How do you see us all future of transit if ultimately VC backed companies kind of can't quite work out the business model wants they're public.
I think there are, like you said, in the last mile, there are opportunities for rides that are less than a mile. It's typically like a biker, a scooter. More than a mile, it may be an electric bike in more than three or five miles, it's probably some sort of vehicle like a car. And so there are companies that have been successful in this space. Tier in Europe is one where
it's got micro mobility spread across the continent. Same with Bolt and here in the US line and so you've had successful micromobility models emerge that are VC backed and are poister return capital or investors. So I think we'll see more of the future of micromobility that's electric.
Do you think lift will be around as a name in that last mile?
I think the industries is structured for two players at least, so I don't think we're going to see a structural.
Monopoly with just one.
And so I think here in the US you're going to continue to see Uber and Lyft douke it out city by city.
John, it's been great having some time with you.
Thank you for giving us the areas that you're looking to build in and some of the experience and the companies to sit on boards of John McNeil, of course DVX Ventures I hear in New York wastelits.
Some of his time.
Meanwhile, let's talk about another story that we'll continue to watch. South Korean prosecutors, in particular accusing a former Samsung executive stealing trade secrets. The sixty five year old was arrested Monday for allegedly working with a Taiwanese backed company steel blueprints and designs in order to replicate an entire chips plant in China that the case could spot tensions, of course between US allies Career and Taiwan, two of the most important centers for chip making.
Coming up, we could talk about well the world of fertility.
Pinnacle Fertility partnering with Tomorrow Life Sciences to adopt the world's first and only automated platform for the safe management and storage of frozen eggs and embryos. Talking about technology in healthcare. Right next, this is Bloomberg Pinical Fertility. It's just announced that it has partnered with Tomorrow Life Sciences to adopt the world's first and only automated platform for the safe management and storage of patients frozen eggs and embryos.
I'm please to welcome to the show to talk about all this, Beth Son Right, CEO of Pinnicle Fertility, as well as Tara Kamont, CEO Tomorrow Life Sciences, and Beth I want to start with you because you bring to what it is one of the largest fertility networks a business acumen here with your background and consulting, and I'm thinking of how in which you think even the macro environment, that this is the time to invest in such technology what you drew you there, Beth.
Well, Caroline, it's really interesting. The fertility industry is changing very rapidly right now, and you'll see more and more large employers actually beginning to give their employees access to fertility treatments that they've always needed.
But never been able to afford.
So you see employers like wal Mart and Starbucks and Amazon increasing this access. You also see this trend through education and social media for young women who aren't ready to have children now but now understand that they might want to later. See of this increasing demand for fertility preservation. And when you take these two things together, you realize that we have just like really unsurpassed numbers of patients coming into fertility clinics right now, and the industry has
yet to change with technology. So it's so critical that we meet patients with the technology they need and improve our operations within our clinics and our partnership with Tomorrow is just one step towards this technology revolution and that's happening in healthcare.
And Tara, you bring that tech, You've now reached what fifty clinics at least about twenty percent of the market share overall. And it is this discussion, I mean, it's become less taboo. Ultimately, we're discussing it more within friendships. Is there more money being brought into the system as well?
There's a tipping point absolutely.
Tomorrow as an innovation and a technology company is fast becoming the new standard of care in the field. As Beth alluded to, the field over its forty five years of existence has seen huge growth and has encountered incredible medical ad advancements over those years, but really the tools and the technology to support these clinicians have not kept up.
We're at a point today whether are millions of frozen eggs and embryos being managed and stored around the world and even in the US here, and yet those systems that manage these incredibly precious, valuable specimens are still for the most part, manual, paper based, inefficient life with risk error and really in dire need and overdue for technology and innovation, streamlining, whether it's clinicians or patients, or to your point, with money coming into the field financial investors,
and there's been a huge amount of capital come into the field in the last few years. The future of fertility is certainly tech enabled and we're proud to play a leading role in that transition.
And Beth, how easier sell or not was it to your partners, the physicians and you are aligned with how much was an easier sell to your own financial back is that this is the wise investment and where else might be the next step?
You know, it's actually quite a difficult cell. And I think Terror could also speak to this with tomorrow. But when you have a high science industry like fertility, where success for patients has has you know, changed and innovated over the time, but changing and operation and you know, accessing new technology scary, it's not what healthcare is good at, and it takes a lot of time and attempt and takes massive rollouts. So this was not an easy step.
I think Pinnacle Fertility is really innovating in technology and in this space, and clinics that opt into joining the Pinnacle network. No ahead of time that we're going to
be very tech focused. Were all doing one medical records platform, and we are all looking towards the next innovation in the field, especially within our operational model, to be able to sort of service patients with sort of this next generation of technology that they're really looking for, whether it be texting a navigator in someone who can coordinate their care forty hours a week to better understand sort of what comes next in their journey to being able to
see their embryos in storage and a safe environment in the same tech platform. So from sort of start to finish at Pinnacle, we are very much checked forward and looking at all of the different innovations and putting them into our network. But each rollout and each change needs to be very thoughtful and it's actually quite a hard sell. So kudos to our physic some Lar network for choosing this as a team.
And Tara Qudos to your selling expertise.
I'm sure in some way I'm interested in the next innovation for you.
I mean, I hate to talk about AI, but I'll talk about AI because that's all anyone in the tech world wants to discuss. At the moment, where are you seeing tomorrow life sciences lean into where is your industry currently thinking the next area of fertility management can come from from a technology perspective.
Well, look, I think you know. We've started with what one could argue is almost the hardest part of the IVF lab today, the management of these millions of frozen eggs and numbryers. And I'm completely aligned with Beth as she talks about patients and patient demanding increased care and
better standards and transparency. I think as a demographic today, the patients that we see seeking fertility help, whether that be to build their families through IVF or the increasing, significantly increasing numbers of younger women turning to fertility preservation and freezing their eggs, these people and patients are looking for safety. They're demanding safety, They're demanding transparency, They're demanding
a better standard of care. And that's something that by employing something like the Tomorrow platform, with its digitization of specimen management and then its automation of processes within the lab, we remove and reduce potential points of failure that existed
within manual systems by ninety four percent. So the whole world is becoming educated around how technology and innovation can really be enablers for the next forty five years of IVF and certainly automating further upstream within the lab elsewhere into what are still heavily heavily manual, fairly inefficient, high workload processes. Is there's a huge amount of work still to be done there that Tomorrow's planning to lead the way in and AI, you know you mention it. It
is obviously the hot topic. There's already AI beginning to find its way into the IVF lab when it comes to things like assessing and selecting embryos or sperm or eggs within the within the IVF process.
So I think all of that to say we are just.
At the beginning of this journey, but the beginning of this journey for.
This part of healthcare as a whole.
We have a huge gap.
Between the number of people in this world who need help building their families and the number of people that.
The fertility healthcare sector serves today.
And we can only close that gap by embracing technology and innovation, whether it's automation, AI, machine learning, or so on. And we're excited to be partnering with clinics like Pinnacle and others to be leading the way in that revolution and really increasing safety, transparency and ultimately access to care for patients.
Let's keep talking about it. To our kamand thank you very much.
Indeed to our life science is Beth Snaik of Pinnacle Fertility. We really appreciate you both joining us on the news. It looks as though we have yet further breaking news coming to Google, which will be hit with a formal antitrust complaint from the European Union as soon as Wednesday and could ultimately lead to yet further findes. Remember, Alphabet, the owner of Google, has already had some eight billion euros and EU penalties thus far.
This we ended.
The so called statement of objections could be coming midweek. It's going be this escalation and really the focus on what is its advertising technology that look drives most of the US firm's revenue overall, and the new charges will target the core therefore of its units ad tech business model. We understand, and it's the most I mean significant and current.
Five year mandate that the EU's.
Had in terms of looking at Alphabet, We're currently still up two tenths of a percent, so no great shock to the market as it stands.
We will wait that breaking news come Wednesday.
Now, let's just pivot away from the world of alphabet to what else everyone's watching when it comes to regulators, and it's right here in the United States. Crypto of course are playing close attention to really a number of laws suits so far brought by the SEC against certain
crypto related companies. Joining US now to share her thoughts on whether this helps hinders the sector in general, her own investment philosophy around it at Lease Colleen still Mark, founder managing Partner VC with eighty five million dollars in assetsunder management. It's always so great to catch up with earliest, particularly as you're so straight talking when it comes to
ultimately what this all means, what if a bitcoin? It's interestingly the price perspective has been relatively resilient amid what have been some hefty focus coming from the SEC, whether it be Binance, whether it be Coinbase.
How much does.
The impact and the focus on exchanges have on the underlying technology for.
You, It's great to see you, Caroline. So the actions taken against Coinbase and Binance are of course very different. In coinbases case, the SEC is purely focused on which of the cryptocurrency's coinbas lists on in exchange should be defined under the current current regulatory framework.
Is unregistered securities.
And here it's important to note that there's a distinction between bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and that was in fact referenced by the SEC and the guidance they provided before these actions and then again with the actions taken. And specifically, what they're looking at is that there's no company or team in bitcoin that can control the supply or affect
the rate of issuance. And where that's not true in the cryptocurrency space, under the current regulatory framework, crypto may be considered in unregistered security, and this is what the SEC's action against coin based explores.
Ultimately, do you think it's.
Beneficial for the sector in general that we get some sort of regulation, I mean, regulation is being driven in the UAE, in Hong Kong, in the UK in any ways, many feeling that there's a bit of a void here in.
The United States.
But even if it is not actually in any way affecting what bitcoin is or how and which it is processed, it can't be a great It can't serve adoption in general, particularly either by corporates or by consumers in terms of willingness to hold in trade.
Yes, so of course it's positive for bitcoin. There's no effect because bitcoin and is decentralized and not covered under the SEC's actions for cryptocurrencies, this could be an existential threat. The SEC has suggested that the current regulatory framework applies to crypto, and so what coinbase will argue, will fight in court, is whether or not that's an appropriate framework to guide crypto regulatory the regulatory regime going forward. Clarity
around that will be positive for the ecosystem broadly. Now. At the same time, bills will be advanced to adjust a framework or to design a framework specifically for crypto, and so it's important to coinbases to see the cadence with which that advances and how that matches up against the pace we move through the courts with these SEC actions.
How does it change the way in which you want to be investing right now?
If at all is it?
Are you're seeing it mora opportunities to be investing in companies at the moment around the bitcoining coasystem in particular, I know you back the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
Right So, because we're focused on bitcoin and because we've been conservative in our approach to how we understand bitcoin interacts with current regulation. It actually doesn't affect Stillmark at all. So instead we're focused really on what the best and brightest founders in the space are advancing, and much of that has been in the lightning space, exactly as you say. So we are seeing increased adoption in the lightning space,
including from large enterprise. So for example, recently Group of Salinas out of Mexico announced a partnership with Ibex Mercado to adopt lightning for payments.
Alise, I always wish we had long ago. Thank you so much amid the breaking news ATLAS. Colleen Fanning managing partner at Stillmark, of course my husband does indeed, a senior manager at Coinbase from New York.
This is Bremberg