Lyft's Record Earnings and Coinbase's BlackRock Pact (Podcast)

a serious player on Wall Street. Is the crypto winter starting to thaw? We will discuss and an estimated food process in the U S goes uneaten. We will chat with a startup using AI to help grocers to ave up to thirty four million pounds of food from going to waste. I want to get back to with results with our own Jackie Davalos, who covers the company for us along with Uber and door Dash. So look, good numbers from Lift, you know, is this the start of

a broader trend? Have left and Uber fully recovered from the pandemic. They're certainly edging a lot closer now. Those numbers for rides are still a little bit under pre pandemic levels. But what we could see here is that they're not sacrificing their profits in order to really boost

those numbers. And you saw that come through just st even in the language that the CEOs were imparting to analysts that look, you know, we went through really rigorous cost cutting measures in the second quarter, and it was tough to bear with employees being laid off and hiding

off that car rental business. But what we're seeing is that airport travel is incredibly strong, a lot of that coming from air trouble rebounding um and you're also seeing you know, these markets a battles between Uper and Lift intensifying. But I think a lot of the concern around Lift was that they were going to see some of that market share and their attempts to stay profitable, but we were not seeing that come through so far. Well. I

did speak to Uber CEO Dar Causershi earlier this week. Again, Uber's results strong as well and big positive investor reaction. Take a listen to what causera he had to say. The marketplace is more balanced. The number of new drivers that we're adding in the US is up over se on a year. On your basis surges down e t A s or down. Uh. So the business is really hitting on all cylinders and it's reflected in the stock prus which is great. So does a rising tide lift

all boats? You know, if it's it's certain seems to be because if you think about this shared rebound, both Uber and Lift are benefiting from that. But where we started to see some of the divergence was in the adagies that they were taking to really get those drivers back. That's really what's also driving the strong ridership because the more drivers you have to meet the demand, the lower

your fares are going to go. More people are going to get back to the platform instead of you know, opting to take the taxi, a yellow cab or the subway. And so you know, Lift acknowledged that, you know, a lot of that spend that really spooked investors last quarter was really coming through in fairs to consumers. They were the ones bearing a lot of that cost burden. And now that you're seeing way times coming down, you're seeing fares come down. Uh, those ridership levels are recovering. Uh.

In following suit. Meantime, if you did look for a weakness in ubernvers and you pointed this out to me, Jackie, it was in food delivery. On the other hand, we're seeing strong numbers from DoorDash. What is DoorDash doing better than Uber in this case? You know, I think with DoorDash, they are just uh if. They started off as a pure play core business that's focused on food delivery, and they've refined that to a t and you can really

see that come through their convenience business. They projected is going to be profitable by the end of the year, and that's fairly impressive considering that they just launched it less than two years ago. And so with Uber, you know, it's taken time for them to really um tweak the way they match, you know, certain orders with whoever is on the road, and now that they're really trying to cross sell the rides and the delivery to both drivers and consumers, they've had a lot of work to do

on the algorithm side, but they're certainly catching up. All right, Jackie Davilos, thank you so much for Evanus dig In. We'll be watching how these UH on demand companies fair over the next quarter. Elon Muski is boysed to take questions at TESSAs annual shareholder meeting dubbed the Cyber Around, taking place at his new plant in Austin, Texas. This year's discussion is expected to focus on a potential stock split and corporate transparency on everything from battery sourcing to

workplace diversity. Here to discuss saw that and more. Steve Wesley, managing partner at The Wesley Group and a former TESTA board member, Steve always going to have you back with us. So what are you expecting this year? Well, first, I think you're to see some awfully happy shareholders. Look. Test the share price up just this year alone. Second record revenues sixty three point six or fifties six point three billion dollars last year, growing to eighty seven billion dollars

this year. That's sixty year of a year of growth. No one in the auto industry is coming close to that. Second profitability, No one expected Tesla's gross or net margins. The other majors like Volkswagen, Triota, people who are making cars for years down at six percent. This would be their twelfth consecutive quarter of profitability. That's awfully good news for investors in five factories up running full bore so it's no surprise to me the Testless flirting at trillion

dollar evaluation. We'll see if we can hold it. But the big question today is going to be about corporate governance e s g. How does Testla deliver on those issues? It should be fascinating. Meantime, we are entering a really tough phase potentially in the economy. Even Elon Musk has said he has a super bad feeling about it. How does Tesla fair in a recession? Are people necessarily dropping money on new electric cars? Well, the fact of the

matter is Testless posting record sales. So if you want to buy a Testa today, you're looking at a year long wait. There is huge demand. The interesting thing is how many can you actually manufacture? And that's where it gets interesting. I think Tesla is gonna go from five thousand vehicles sold in one to one point five million this year. Other firms GM Ford aren't selling a action of that. So the real question is who's figured out

supply chain? Who has factories up and running again? Teslate five factories we know Fremont, California, Texas, Germany, China all gearing up the full capacity, most of the others, and yet to break ground, so there's a lot of ground to catch up. We'll see how the others do so. With production still the main challenge, you know, and and how much does that have to do with continuing supply chain issues. Well, they're all intertwined. And again I served

on the board it testsed ten years ago. I think we made a lot of the mistakes in the book. But they've grown up and they're hitting the ground running now. Plus they have long term supply chain relationships in place. That's why they're able to grow literally sixty seventy percent a year. It's heartbreaking to watch firms like Lucid, and I'm really pulling for They make a beautiful car, but they said they would produce twenty tho units this year.

That's a pittance. Then they dropped it to twelve. Now they've dropped it to six, So tough news for Lucid. Reminder fall of us, it's a little harder to make electric vehicles than you might think. It took Tesla ten years to get where they are today. It's gonna be hard for others to catch up. We'll see how General Motors, Ford and the others do. Well. Let's talk about the competition.

Which competitor are you most optimistic about? And you know which of these companies are really going to give Tesla potentially run for its money. Well, let's start at the beginning. Mary Bar at General Motors said, we're going to catch up with Tesla. By they're not. They've produced first half of the year eight thousand electric cars. Uh, they're way behind. They're struggling with supply chain, struggling with manufacturing. Ford appears

to be rising for the ashes. They're going to sell and sold twenty five cars already this year with the E four one, fifties a great car, and the Mustang, So they're rising for the from the ash is well, General Motors is literally and figuratively trying to put out fires. So as much as I'm pulling for GM and four, it doesn't look like they're going to be the real challenger anytime soon. Volkswagen it's a whole head of steam up. They're gonna go over two evs first half of the

year more by year end. They're producing about half what Tesla is, but eight times more than Ford and GM combined. So VW is in a strong place global supply chain, manufacturing facilities on every continent deep pockets. If anybody has a shot to catch Tesla in the short term, it's Volkswagen. Longer term, don't count out the Chinese. The world's largest producer of batteries, Chinese government subsidizing their batteries, currently producing more than half the evs the world, and it's the

biggest auto market. So Chinese are gonna come on quicker than people think in the near term. I'm just hoping as many American companies make the cut as possible. Don't forget thirty new EV companies have coming to the market in the last year, precisely the time the economy is slowing down. Expect to shakeout in the marketplace. Be careful, you're betting on winners, not the losers. Meantime, you've got the Twitter side show going on for Elon Musk and

even you. When we when we last spoke about this, we're not happy about his behavior. It's been a huge distraction. Many Testa shareholders and Tesla owners aren't happy about it. How much do you think that has hurt the brand? Has that hurt the Tesla brand hasn't hurt the Elon Musk brand. Well, look, it's a deal of two cities. On the way hand, you've got a nearly trillion dollar company, the most powerful brand in the auto world, with zero

marketing budget. If anybody had told you that would happen five years ago, they would have said that's a dream come true. But I think it could be too much of a good thing, and I think for many people, including the SEC, it appears to be something of a distraction. Uh and it's something that I think it needs to be changed over time. People need to realize this is

a multi trillion dollar SmackDown. Who's going to control the global EV market, not just for cars but trucks as well, and who's going to control the next big thing, which is the move to autonomous vehicles. This is going to be cut throat competition. I think Tesla needs to throw every ounce of focus they can and staying in the driver's seat. Let me give you one example. Tesla's had the best, longest range, least expensive, most reliable batteries in

the sector. They're now developing their new revolutionary eight battery composition. It should be better at range, cheaper and greener than anything ever made. But c A t L, the world's biggest battery manufacturer in China claims to have some leap frog advantages. This is going to be a fascinating SmackDown. Tesla is going to need all the focus they can get. I'd keep the side shows to a minimum. Whoever win this next round is going to have done something special.

If Tesla wins the autonomous race, it could be a two trillion dollar company. That would be quite a trick. All right, Uh, Steve Wesley, always good to have you here. What's the group managing partner? Thank you for stopping by. Okay, coming up Meta's brand new reward on global threats and in particular, how the company is tackling a Russian troll farm. Have more on that from a top Meta executive. Next, Mrs Bloomberg. Meta says it just shut down a Russian

troll farm. The Facebook parent company releasing the quarterly report that outlines the actions it's taken against fake accounts and hackers who tried to create the appearance of support for Russia's war on Ukraine. Vanemo, global threaten Intelligence strategy lead out Meta joined us now from more on this, So talk to us about this particular operation. Just how widespread and effective was it? Well in terms of being widespread, it was really trying to hit everywhere across the Internet

pretty much all at the same time. What we had was a troll farm, so an organization run from St. Petersburg and Russia that was hiring people off the street to run fake accounts kind of everywhere on the Internet. They could think of those reports of fake accounts on YouTube, Telegram, TikTok, Twitter, We found them on Instagram, UM, and what they were trying to do was make it look like there was large scales support for the Russian innovasion of Ukraine. So

that's the widespread effect. But in terms of effect, all we saw was that they weren't very good at what they did. UM. A lot of their fake accounts kept on getting caught by the automated systems before we even investigated them and took them down. Real people kept on calling them out as trolls UM. And there were even cases when they would try to steer people towards celebrities or influences on social media and then they put their

own account. So, for example, at one point they tried to steer people towards the UK Foreign Secretary Liz Trust and instead of finding the Foreign secretaries favorite page on Facebook. They found something that hadn't been used since twenty eighteen, so they were trying to spread themselves wide. But nothing we saw show that they were actually having much of an impact this time. So it sounds like this particular operation wasn't very sophisticated. How unique was this operation? Is

this something that you've seen before. We've seen attempts like this before in lots of different parts of the world. So so we've taken down troll farms in the past, for example in Nicaragua, in Albania, we've taken down other activity by Russian trolls as well. But there was an interesting twist to this case, and it's that the operation

was really working in two halves. It was running a public channel on Telegram which was trying to, if you like, crowdsource comments which were supporting Russia, and when it didn't get real crowdsource comments, it would use the fake accounts to go in instead, And it's the same operation running all these things. And then what the people behind the operation would do would be they do in the interviews on Russian state TV and supportive media and say, look,

what a great job we're doing. So It's like there were multiple layers of deception nestled inside one another, almost like a Russian doll. But ultimately they were trying to make it look like they were effective, but they were using fakes to do it, and then the fake has gone caught. In general, how effective has Russian have Russian

disinformation campaigns actually been. Over the course of the last several months of this war on Ukraine, we've taken down I think about half a dozen different Russian operations that have been targeting Ukraine recently, so since the war began. In general, what we've seen is that they've been struggling to get any kind of real engagement, but we've also seen that they keep on trying, and this is the

time to keep our foot on the gas. What we really need to do is take these operations as a lesson. We need to learn from them, and we need to keep looking because we know threat actors like this are not going to go away. We need to take them seriously, and each time we find something like this, we need to explain to people. Here's what it was, Here's how it worked, Here's the kind of content that they were pushing, Here's the way they were operating because this time around

they weren't very good at what they did. But we need to prepare for the next time. And that's what as threatning investigators we always have to be ready for. Are you speaking directly with other big tech companies Apple, Google, TikTok, Twitter about coordinating efforts on this front. Whenever we do a threat report like this, we share with industry partners, we share with researchers, we share with we share with the public. Right we report these things and that's because

we found that that influence operations. They're a bit like mold growing in your house. They grow best in dark places, and so when you find them, there's two things you really need to do. You need to clean them up, but the on you need to shine a light on them as well. You need to move them into a bright place. And we've always found that the more we can share information about these operations, the more we can make people aware of how they behave it's harder for

them to come back. What keeps you up at night? I mean we're heading into the U S mid terms here in the United States? Have you seen activity rising on that front. I'm a threat investigator, so investigations keep me up at night. It's it's what we all do on the team. UM. In terms of the mid terms, sorry, we haven't seen any upticking activity so far. For example, this Russian operation that we've taken down was really focused on the war in Ukraine and it was all about

pushing the Russian point of view. But again, operations like this are a lesson and one of the big things from the Russian operation was that what they were trying to do was use a fake operation to make a more public operation look like it was working. And this is something we call perception hacking. It's trying to fool people that there's something big going on, if you like. It's like dropping an ice cube into the water and saying,

look as an iceberg underneath. And that's the kind of tactic which could be very easily transferred to other areas. So we have to take threat actors like this serious. Just because they were ham fisted this time around doesn't mean that they will be the next time. And so what we're looking out for as investigators, and the thing that's keeping us up at night is making sure we

keep ahead of whatever trends are out there. Meantime, we've been following this story about TikTok and the Chinese government or an entity supported by the Chinese government trying to set up a stealth account on TikTok to target Western audiences with propaganda. You know, is this something that concerns you? If you look at our FRET reporting over the last few years, we've taken down operations from around the world.

We have seen operations from China, Iran, India, um. I think it's more than fifty different countries that we've We've seen operations coming in from more than two dozen different languages, and it seems like the idea is out there that influence operations are a thing. There's something that many different

countries come run. And our job is threatned investigators, is to go and find them, and particularly really to shine a light on them and to share information about them as widely as we can, because the more different lies we can get on this, the more we can try and catch them. With the Russian troll Farm, it was really interesting the way it was exposed was the troll farm was trying to hire people off the street and

telling them, Hey, come and work for us. One of the first people they hired turned out to be an undercover journalists to expose the whole operation. Fascinating Meta executive Bennimo Global Threat Intelligencely, thank you Ben for sharing all that with us. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm emily changing San Francisco legacy names and streaming and media out with more earnings results are and Ludlow back with the latest and Warner Brothers Discovery. Yeah interesting, I mean doesn't

look great right down in after hours. They had a net loss in the quarter, which they attribute the costs relating to the merger between Warner Media and Discovery. Of course that closed in April, and this was the first time investors really got a look under the hood of this combined entity. And I'm zeroing in on subscribers across HBO Max other properties like Discovery Plus. They added one point seven million subscribers net new subscribers in the quarter.

So let's compare and contrast, because they weren't the only streaming name to report earnings this Thursday. Paramount up one percent in regular trading. Actually, Warner Brothers are almost five percent before its earnings. But Paramount across Paramount Plus added three point seven million subscribers in the quarter, so actually, even though it's a relative minnow in what we call the streaming wars, it's seeming to get some traction in

its user based and adding new users. What they both had in common was the ad business is really underperformed, which is interesting given what we've heard in the mixed picture of the global advertising market in recent weeks. Where do we stand here today, m with all these different names with zeroed in on who's doing well who's doing not? If you look at the share prices, actually Paramount is

the relative outperformer, down just sixteen percent year today. But Netflix still really ug down sixty two percent year today. Of course, they had a shock in the first half of this year with the shock loss of its subscribe It based a more positive outlook for the second half this year. But there's still a big questions right in the face of great inflation, what's the consumer of doing? That's a lot of option. Personally, I got a lot

of choices. I subscribed to all these. I don't know if you saw a top gun great movie that boosted Paramount, Can we have them all forever? I haven't seen it yet and I don't have time to go to the movie theater, But I will try to make it. Thank you. Okay, let's continue this conversation with Julia Alexander, director of Strategy at Parrot Analytics. Juliet, look, you know there's a lot to talk about here. Let's start with Warner Brothers Discovery.

You know clearly they're they're making changes, planning to make a lot more changes, and there's you know, some uncertainty about where this is all going. What's your take, right, I mean, the first thing we have to do is, I think almost stepped back from the amount of subscribers gained. So we look at the subs gained, right, they gained one point seven million. It's not much. They actually, according to their new way that they report, they lost about

three hundred thousand in the domestic market. But I think we have to look at and what David Zaslab CEO David zas Laws real game is is what is the actual value of this content? How do we go through HBO Max and call some of it and Discovery Plus and call some of it in order to really ensure that we're hitting profitability on the fastest path that we can for our shareholders. When we talk about David Zaslav

and his team's approach to streaming. It's different from what Netflix is doing and what Disney is doing, where they're increasing their content spend constantly and constantly, and David zas Lab does not want to be in the content spanned wars as he likes to say it. Instead, he wants to say, we want to get to profitability. We want

to get the most value for our dollar. And so what we're really going to see play out is how well that um ibada and how well that obada really comes into the case for Discovery going for Warner Brothers Discovery going forward. What are you expecting Zaslav to do as they work to merge these two platforms. You know, there's talk about a big calling potentially of HBO Max. They're taking movies out of the rotation that are already filmed because they don't want to spend money on marketing.

I'm thinking of the new Backgirl movie, which as I understand it has already been shot. Right. I mean, the key horde right now is amortization. Amortization. Amortization. When you're looking at the amount of debt that David Zazo and his team brought in, you're looking at what you can do um specifically with HBO Max. I think what we're going to see happen is less of culling than press made it, you know, to be that rumors made out

to be. Over the last two days, it's been a lot on Twitter as analysts and industry in centers and reporters try to guess at what's going to happen with HBO Max. This report, the earnings report to it was actually a little bit beneficial in that way. What we're seeing is that HBO Max use mail. We're seeing that Discovery Plus use female. And before Discovery Plus came in, the HBO Max idea was to invest in more female

oriented contests. We have like the Cooking Show with Lena Gomez, and you have um the New Gossip Girl, and you have all these such of shows that appeal to a different audience to really, why do that? Why didn't that total addressable market? But as Discovery Plus comes in, they're saying, well, we're already making this content. It's doing well on cable.

It is a brand and of itself, so we're gonna bring some of that to HBO Max and Casey Boys, the visionary leader who oversees content for HBO, HBO Max can focus on scripted content and scripted fair that works. So I actually think we're not going to see as much of a call as reports made it out to be. But that being said, I mean, I think when we talk about streaming services there is far too much confident content.

We're in an oversaturated market and it's never been easier for a subscriber to say this is mediocre and this is great. So if content isn't performing, why keep it on the platform? Is kind of the thought strategy that Warner brother Discovery executive seem to be having. Okay, so let's talk about Paramount Plus. As Ed said this, you know service has has been a minnows thus far, but it is racking up subscribers. The bottom line doesn't necessarily

look great so far. You know, Top Gun, Yellowstone, which is one of my favorite shows. Are people going to pay for four streaming services? Though before inflation, before interest rates started hiking, I would say yes in the United States. Globally, we don't know. I think now we're looking at closer to two to three over the next little bit, as people choose where they want to put their credit card dollars. Every single month, But that being said, I would say

that Paramount. Everyone has kind of looked at Paramount and said, you know, we don't really know. We're really m bearish on Paramount and what they want to do with their streaming. When I think Paramount really has going for them is that not only are they a great streaming service and they're building a great streaming services and their numbers are increasing every single quarter, but they're also a great seller.

There's someone who can license really in demand content to Netflix and to other players and charge a hefty feet for that because their content is so in demand, which means that people will pay to have access to it. So when I think we look at Paramount, you know, the question three or four years ago, not even you know, two years ago. So question was which are the three services that people sign up for? And it used to

be Disney plus Netflix and HBO Max. And I think as the stream wars, which is really just a colloquial term for proper uh competition in the marketplace, that as opposed to Netflix having a almost monopolization on the on the entire industry, I think what you'll start to see is a company like Paramount that can offer really great pricing on the ad front and also on the subfront, that has shows that people really want, that has the

film franchises that people really want. I think you'll start to see them emerge as a really strong contender in the same way that I really have faith at HBO Max unders As Lab and even HBO Max under Jason Clark, the former CEO. I think that's a great product in combining Discovery and HBO Max offerings in a really smart, strategic way that feels curated and human but also scalable

and accessible. Um. I think that's really going to help them even not maybe not surpass Netflix in terms of subscribers in the next two years, but definitely be worthwhile contenders. So are you saying, if you're a betting person, you should be spreading your bets right now. I would spread my bets a little bit. Yeah, I think it's too early. You know, it's funny. I think we're trying to declare a winner in the streaming wars again that term that

really just means competition is happening. It's far too early. We really need to see what a lot of these companies that have the theatrical studio components that have linear networks. We need to see what their strategy is for handling all that type of content across a bunch of different revenue streams. And I think the key takeaway from what we're seeing as a subscriber growth in the the United States kind of slows down a little bit, um kind of hits.

It's a bit of a peak for certain streaming services. I do think the takeaway is that streaming is not necessarily the end game for a lot of these companies, but it is a very important support system for a lot of its other different investment areas. And I think that's really key because it used to be that streaming was the only option. You know, two three years ago, everything was streaming, and now it's well, everything is also includes streaming. What about Disney coming up next week? What

are you expecting there? It's been it's been a tough ride for Bob j Peck. It's been a ride a ride for Bob Jeck. My major concern with Disney is the promise or the projection. I should say that Bob j Peck and his team gave to the street of two to two and sixty million subscribers globally by a

fiscal year. It's ambitious. That's an average with about ten million subscribers per quarter being added, and eventually you run out of countries to launching, right, that's kind of a guarantee subscriber based when you launch a new country, customers will sign up. So my biggest concern is what Disney will have to do on the Disney Plus front to really hit those projections, unless they come in, you know, next week and say we're changing our projections. But I

really don't think that's going to be the case. You know, as long as Disney has families and Marvel fans and Star Wars fans are going to continue to be a well supported streaming service. But I think the bigger question now is to hit those numbers, you have to increase your total addressable market, which means bringing more UM Hamilton's right, bringing more of that, bringing more the West Side story into into the Disney Plus sphere so that people can

watch it. And I think in the United States, when you have Hulu, that becomes a really interesting conversation with what goes to Hulu, what goes to Disney Plus UM and both are designed to support the bundle, and so globally, I think is where we're going to see what the future of Disney Plus really looks like under the Star and Star Plus banner, where we can see how Disney, a much more four quadrant designed Disney Plus can operate

in both acquiring subscribers and then retaining them. Okay, Julia Alexander, thanks for breaking up all that down for us. Appreciated. Director of Strategy at Parrot Analytics, appreciate it. Another story we are following American basketball star Britney Griner is nine and a half year prison sentence in Russia. President Biden is calling her sentence quote unacceptable and says the White

House will worked tirelessly for her release. Grinder was sound guilty of drug possession and smuggling after she was arrested at a Moscow airport with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. The United States has been trying to broke her a prisoner swap for her return, no deal so far. One of Wall Street's biggest traditional finance players is making a big bet on crypto, black Rock teaming up with coin based to make it easier for institutional investors to trade bitcoin.

Black Rock chose to partner with coin base because of its scale in the market. You're gonna break it all down. Our crypto CONTRIBUTORTIONALI Bostic Shine. Coin based investors loved this new It's so interesting, Emily because if you look at coin based shares, they really took a leg higher today it's up about ten percent on the day. Pre market that jump was much bigger, so appaired some of those

games for the day. But it's so interesting, especially because coin Basis shares have gained almost forty more than over three days, so you're really seeing some of the gains come back to coin Basis stock that's down still more than sixty this year. I want to flip up the board a little bit and talk about what Wall Street really feels about coin base, because you're seeing some one

of the biggest players come into it. The twelve month price target for coin base has also come down meaningfully among some of these larger challenges, even with uh some love from people like black Rock, you have coin Basis twelve month price target was so really flying at around a hundred dollars a hundred and one dollars her share. If you look at it today, it's just below ninety. If you flip up the board again, you still see again with all the challenges, still love from Wall Street.

About fifty percent of folks say by stay hold, which is basically, you know, we don't really know how to feel about things given all the volatility, six said sell. So there's been a lot of questions around whether the momentum would move to the downside for coin base. Emily, I have to say, what it's also interesting is the opportunity provided here from black Rock because this partnership not just with black Rock, but with a part of black

Rock that's called Aladdin. It gives you exposure not just to big institutional investors. Aladdin works with a lot of wealth management platforms across Wall Street and around the globe. And the reason that's interesting is it potentially exposes you not just institutional clients, which is a growth area for coin base, but more people that can really fly into the more traditional retail business at a time when rivals like robin Hood are under a lot more pressure. What

does this mean for coin based longer term? Obviously, the the winter is not over, you know, maybe maybe this is the beginning of something, But how much further, how how much colder, how cold is the road going to get? So that's a question because it's all correlated to bitcoin prices, and you saw something similar when it came to Blocks earnings that reported after the market closed today. This idea

that transactions have really slowed. Remember a lot of the retail investors that got into cryptocurrencies at the end of last year are very much in the red, and so how much powder is there left on the sidelines for investors to get back into it in volumes to come back again. The good news for coin base is and you saw it here with Robin Hood just this week when you see some of the rivals under pressure here, it is good news for coin base, and you saw

it reflected in coin bases stock. But just for a sense of how far we fall in for coin based, I mean, this is still a company that's under twenty billion dollars in market cap. This was once seventy five billion dollars in market cap, and that was at the end of last year. So how quickly you can bitcoin

recover get back to sixty seventy thousand. I think it has a lot to do with whether coin base can regain its former glory, and whether that even matters if people see enough crypto adoption moving forward among the big institutions, like you said today with a black rock. So, you know, what are you looking for next year? Obviously we've seen a wave of you know, difficulties for you know, there's

been bankruptcies, there's been increasing regulatory scrutiny. There has been this big letter from you know, hundreds of skeptics to Congress. You know, what's going to be the next inflection point in the story of crypto. You know, we've been talking about it a lot. You and I this idea of coin base versus the SEC. Why does that matter so much? Because exchanges coin based f t X, the more that they,

you know, don't heart with the SEC. You wonder if they look more like traditional exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange, like the Chicago CEBO, the Board Options Exchange. F t X has been highly regulated, working with a lot more traditional players here, and you wonder if there's a future where people list to token, they go public, they don't necessarily choose between the two, or do both.

The world's are merging. So the question to me is how much does coin based embrace that again like you see today with a big institutional partnership, or how much do they stick to kind of the heart of crypto, which was very focused on a decentralized finance and things that were so far away from Wall Street as we

know it. Alright, thank you. As always. As much as food produced in the United States is never eaten, that is according to the National Resources Defense Counsel, enter a Fresh Technology is a startup that is hoping it's AI software will help grocery stores massively reduce food waste. They just raised fift million dollars in new funding and they're on track to save thirty four million pounds of food

waste by the end of match. Schwartz is a co founder and CEO of A Fresh Technologies and it's here with us in the studio. Thank you for having me. So how does this say I technology work? So? Out of fresh We believe that food, more so than anything else, shapes the health of people and our planet, and specifically within that, we think that fresh food is really driving the future of the grocery business and what people want

to eat. At the same time, though, in building the company, we observed that most, if not all, of the technology was built for non fresh stuff. It was built for things that come in a box. And have a bar code and last a long time. And the result of that intern is that there was all these processes that were not built for fresh and that in turn would cause hundreds of billions of dollars of food waste across the world and a bunch of other problems. How can

AI help in the produce categories. So what we're doing is building technology specifically for fresh food, and what that enables us to do is optimize the quantity of food that goes into differ in parts of the supply chain to be as fresh as possible, order just the right amount and not too little, and that causes us to be able to prevent food waste while keeping grocers in stock. How do you do that? I mean, even me, as a mom, I it's either too much or not enough

whatever I buy at the store. It's a classic balancing

act and it's really, really, really tough. The way that we do it is we empower store employees at grocery stores with an app that's served on a tablet and that's powered in the background by artificial intelligence that's trying to predict the future, how much is going to be sold, understand how much is in the store, right now, and then use all that information to create a profit, maximizing waste, minimizing order, keeping the shelves full, while minimizing the inventory

that's in the back room. So you're basically trying to figure out how to get groceries not to overorder. That's right. You don't want them to overorder. At the same time, you don't want them to under order because the other problem we're seeing with the supply chain is those empty shelves. So what we really want to do is find that sweet spot where you go to the store and the shelf is full, but the food is they didn't or too much that they are going to cause waste. Why

is getting fresh food so difficult? I mean even when picking produce out at the store, sometimes it's it's already going bad by the time I pick it up. Yeah, well, a lot of this is going back to the original thesis of the company. We think fresh is the future, but fresh is just so tricky. When you pick a berry, it's basically a race against the clock until it's moldy. It's got to stay refrigerated, it's got to move quickly through it. It's could be sold by weight, and so

the data structures aren't there. There's no best by date on a strawberry, so everything in fresh is far more complicated, and that's why we believe you have to build fresh first technology to be able to handle it. You've got nine grocery chains on board in the US, SAT do you plan to get more? So we're demonstrating results. So we've shown to date that we prevent waste by about

fift while also increasing sales by over three percent. And so success like that is generating word of mouth and happy reference customers for us that are really enabling us to grow super rapidly. How do you plan to use

the new capital really scale? So at the end of last year, we were live in two hundred stores and we've signed now as of right now, over three thousands, so we're growing by over fifteen x. So we're going to use the capital to help us scale, and then we're gonna go from our starting point in fruits and vegetables to meet and seafood, Delhi Bakery, all the fresh stuff around the grocery store, and then we plan to make our initial forays internationally and up higher in the

supply chain. What was it like raising money in this environment. I mean, it's a tough environment. Did that impact your valuation? What is your valuation? We're in a we're in a bit of a unique place at of Fresh where we're of service to this mission critical industry of grocery. I

think during the pandemic everyone came to appreciate them. When times are tough, grocers are what really feed us and shareff stomach goes more towards eating in, and so we're of service to that industry that kind of is a cyclical or can even benefit from tough times. And then we're tackling problems of inflation and supply chain and so I think investors really saw all of that, and they saw the traction that we had and they were willing to be big on us, which I'm proud of. I

can't share that right now. Well, what are your longer term play ends? I mean, are you looking to stay independent, go public, get bought by a larger food distributor? What's the goal. Our mission is to eliminate food waste and make fresh food accessible to all. There's trillions of dollars of fresh food sold around the world. Our mission, what I believe we want to do is build a very big company that eliminates that waste and proliferates across the

supply chaine. So whether that be a standalone company or eventually I p owing, my plan really is just to try to fulfill that mission. And how does this impact the suppliers on the back end quickly? So is it worse for them because you know, grocers are ordering less. The dynamic we live in is that population is growing from something like seven billion people to nine and ten billion people. So we've got I mean, no comment, but what I will say is that population is growing and

we're out of land. Uh we're burning down the rainforest and create enough land to grow cowse and yields are going to be impacted by climate change. So we have to find ways to do more with less to be sustainable. And so at the end of the day, when we drive the ficiencies at the store, growers upstream are really appreciative that as well. All right, Matchwarts, CEO and co founder of a Fresh Technology. Thank you, really interesting, Thank you keep your eyeing you all right? That does it

for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco. Great show coming up tomorrow. Lift co founder John Zimmer will be here. Glenn Kelman of Redfinn and Reed Hoffman always loved talking to him. That's tomorrow, right here on Bloomberg Technology. This is Bloomberg