From Marhart where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Vallet NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
I'm Caroline Hyde at Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York, and.
I'm Med Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up, we sit down with Marcello Clara's launching a new venture firm focused on Latin America, aiming to raise half a billion dollars for its inaugural fund.
Plus bar hurdles facing the Microsoft's sixty nine billion dollar takeover of Activision Blizzard. We'll discuss why a US judge is temporary blocking the deal and Google.
Hit with charges by the EU for abusing its ad tech dominance. We break down what's next with the process that could take years to resolve. For first, let's check in on these markets at the moment, Ed, because it is a day of macro consequences, a day when we wait for the Federal Reserve to.
Come out, Will it pause the market expects?
So S and P five hundred on a roll on its longest winning streak, So is November twenty twenty one. If we hold onto these gains then a's like one hundred. Also on the higher side, Big tech on top, we're
up by five tenths of a percent. The US two year are actually interestingly falling on the day as people really do think that the Federal Reserve is going to be forced to pause that PPI data that focus on inflation actually showing some easing once again today, So people thinking good news is good news at the moment, and let's pick it on a look to the risk asset of choice when it comes to our world of technology.
Bitcoin having a bit of a volatile day, but look, we're holding up to five tens of percent gains this as we start to see maybe some reprieve and the anxiety around finance in particular and their particular token we're seeing at the moment are weekening the US dollar versus bitcoin. We're at twenty nine hundred and seventy six. What have you got in terms of the micro.
Ed Yeah, single names.
In terms of movers to the upside, Tesla, we continue to track. It's kind of flirted between g and losses, but if it is up at the close, it will be a fourteenth straight day of gains for Tesla, more than two hundred and forty billion dollars of market cap has been added in that run. You get into the numbers, that two hundred and forty billion dollar market cap gain is bigger than the standing market cap of ninety percent
of the Nasdaq one hundred. We look at RSI Relative Strength Index, and this is a stock that is very much in over bought territory around eighty eight. Anything over seventy is over bought. Two kind of news movers out there as well. First of all, Alphabet, parent company of Google, moving to the downside just three tenths of one percent, pairing some deeper losses. The EU has accused Google of abusing its dominant position in ad tech. We will bring
you those details from Brussels later in the program. And in Vidia unstoppable on one point nine percent and a fresh record for the name in AI. You think AI, you're buying in video because you think the GPUs are where it's at. If you want to get skin in the game for LLLM building.
Tell you who else is unstoppable.
Marcella Claring, the former chief operating officer of SoftBank, got a new gig executive chairman managing partner of his own bench firm, Bicycle Capital. The firm is already a mass four hundred and twenty million dollars in commitments so far for it's inaugural fund, and I'm so pleased to say that we're not only joined by Marcello, but Shuniata, Bicycle's other managing partner, also of SoftBank, someone that we've spoken to previously on shows and Bloomberg events. Welcome both of
you racing to us. Asello, you're targeting five hundred million dollars, you've already a mass of four hundred and forty million dollars.
What would you selling to people?
Why?
Latin America? What is there?
So first, thanks for having us. I'll tell you that it feels so good to be an entrepreneur again and to have finalized my non compete and be able to do what I love. And as I shared with you in the past, my passion is in Latin America. It's a great place. It has size, it has great entrepreneurs, it's already created some amazing technology companies that are world
numbers one, and I think always lacking his capital. So you know, we're lucky that this or first day of a fund and we've only made a few phone calls and it's nice to launch with four hundred and forty million. We should reach our target of five hundred million, which
is what we're targeting to get it done. And we're proud to partner not only Shoe as my partner in launching this fund, but also to partner with Mubalala, who, as you know, Middle Eastern funds have become a deep placed for capital today and the fact that they are trusting Latin America in the growth site in technology to us is something that we're very proud of.
I know we want to dig into that in a moment.
But Shoe your experience, of course you mentioned already you've shown that you can pick the right companies Rappi. You did that over with soft Bank, both of you together with the Latin American fund there as well.
As New Bank.
What other types of technology are you excited about that? Because everyone's talking about AI? Is it AI or is it really across the gamut of what's being built.
The interesting thing about times like now that are very uncertain is there's one thing you can count on as founders. Founders are focused on problems they can solve, and that's what makes them really interesting as an asset class in general, in terms that are as uncertain as this, and in Latin America, it's not really about the cutting edge. It's about inclusive technologies. It's about bringing technology to people who
are deeply underserved consumers and businesses. So it's propagating technologies deep into the pyramid and that's a real green field opportunity across every market in Latin America.
It's interesting. And we were just hearing about the money that's behind this. And last time I spoke to Marsello was out in Kata. It was all about Middle East and it's interesting where the money, the LP money is coming from at this moment.
Yes, Marcella, my understanding is you're able to launch because your non compete with soft Bank for Latin America has expired. So a comment on that, But Mabilala is interesting. Would you guys take money or bring in LPs from Saudi Arabia and China for example.
I think one is happy that now we can be back in business. It's a great feeling and to me happy that after you know, an exciting experience of being within the soft bankkecosystem for many years, I can be back how it all started in Latin Americas and entrepreneurs, so could not be more excited as that as it relates to the initial fund, I mean, this is the start of a journey and we tend to do a lot more in Latin America. This is our first fund and we thought five hundred million dollars is a good
way to start. And it's a combination of a Mvalalla, who to me is the premiere sovereign fund in the Middle East, and my family office and many other investors, including founders from Latin America, founders from the United States. So so far, everybody that we've asked has come through in terms of, you know, the potential amount of capital that we need. We really haven't discussed this with any other sovereign funds and at this point in time, I don't think there will be a need because we pretty
much have what we need for this first round. In the future, you know, we're going to look at where the businesses, where the pocuts of capital are in the case that we raise you know, bicycle capital two and three and four, But now we're focused on one. We got to go find the founders, We got to deploy capital and more importantly, we got to make sure that we generate the returns. You know, when people are crusting you with their capital is something that we got to go generate returns.
And Sue, good afternoon, good morning to you from San Francisco. Your friendship, your partnership with the guy next to you, goes back to soft Bank. They were not in LP or involved in the raising of this fund. But could you, through Bicycle invest in any of the startups and names that you were both involved in during your time at SoftBank if they were to raise future funds?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Our core is to keep good relationships with the entire ecosystem that includes soft Bank. We have a lot of gratitude to soft Bank. They helped put the Latin American ecosystem on the map with our help and they continue to be great partners. Marcelo I call the master of momentum. He helps generate the drive to get things done and then I helped execute it. And so we're just playing that role again here, but on our own this time.
I like the momentum.
I mean the name Bicycle in many ways, I know it comes from the idea of Steve Jobs thinking computer There is a bicycle for the mind. But also you guys bike together Mozllo when you're building together. Also you've had interesting partnerships, for example Sheen, that's something that you're helping bringing a big company, a global company, almost the supply side to Latin America, helping the manufacture in Brazil
and Mexico. When you're thinking about the companies you're investing, and you're also thinking about global companies accessing that in America, what kind of big companies you're thinking of, how much of the fund would be dedicated to that.
So this fun is all about Latin America, and it's about helping Latin American founders accelerate the momentum that they have because there are great businesses in Latin America. But it's also about helping global companies who having global momentum to basically land in Latin America. Latin America is close to seven hundred million people. People in Latin America make four times the amount of money that people make in India. The GDP of Latin America is two exercise of India.
So Latin America is a great place if you understand that it's not an easy place to do business. It's complex taxation and another thing. So we plan to invest not only in Latin American founders, but also in companies that are going to go into Latin America. And there are so many companies that you know, the current geopolitical landscape health for companies that you want to get into
Latin America usually faster than they did before. So excited about bringing companies, bringing you know, FinTechs, bringing companies like Shane who basically disrupted in the fashion industry. And there
are so many disruptors. Like I've always expressed, I think the next five years is going to be a world of disruption, not only because of AI but because of technology, and it's going to change pretty much every industry, every very clos We know it, and we want to make sure that if anything is being disrupted in Latin America, we have some role to play in that sense.
You've been the disruptors for Vision Fund appended VC in a way and many people's mindset the size of checks you would write. So if you're getting into really small companies but also really large ones and global companies, can the checkspe of any size? What are you thinking about where in the lifespan of companies are going.
To be entering.
It's important to say the ecosystem in latam is really good at the early stage. They're great funds that have been working for decades to set the foundation. We do not intend to compete with them, so we come in at the Series B and later. Our checks range from twenty to fifty million dollars in any given company. This is not going to be a big portfolio.
This is about really.
Choosing a few partners that we can work with for the long term. So we're talking about ten to fifteen companies and the life of the fund. So it's really about a close partnership. And we won't invest more than fifty million dollars in any given company, but we want to have a real seat at the table. So if you want big ownership, you have to go early. If you're writing checks of that.
Size, Marcello, Latin America is more than six hundred and fifty million people. I get your history with it, but what inside Latin America? Where is the San Francisco or Silicon Valley of Latin America? Is there a Stamford equivalents churning out founders like we see where I am I want to get some granular detail on where you see opportunities geographically and by which sectors.
So few things. There are so many lucky American founders who actually went to stand for, who come to Harvard, come to Wharton, and then they go back and they rather than become entrepreneurs in the United States, they basically take that knowledge and take it back to Latin America. And most of the stories that you've seen so far,
a lot of those founders were US educated. Most of them want to stand for and then they go back to Latin America with that entrepreneurial mindset, and that has given rise to a booming entrepreneurial ecosystem that's sitting in Sapaulo, that's sitting in Mexico City, that's sitting in Bogota in Colombia. Because now there are huge stories of success. I mean, you have Rappi, you have Eyefood to me, who's probably one of the best food delivery companies in the planet.
You got New Bank, which is a Colombian who emigrated to Brazil and today is the most valuable digital bank in the world and the one that makes money and the one that's worth tens of billions of dollars you have. Now you have the growth the Americati livery, who's a multi billion dollar marketplace that continues to grow. So today there's enough stories of success that have created entrepreneurial ecosystems
that have shared employees for starting a new company. So there's the I think what we started a soft bank was, you know, we took Latin America from one and a half billion a year to close to sixteen billion dollars a year of investment along other funds, and that gave rise to a wooman entrepreneurial ecosystem that right now needs
our capital. And I think Latin America deserves the fund that is going to be focused only in Latin America and not the traditional tourist capital that comes in only when good times rolled and then they retrench when things are not that good. Where there were committed, we're in it for the next few years. I made it a point to focus the rest of my career in Latin America, and that's what I want to do.
True you would deep be dedicated not just to Latin American founders, but diverse founders, minority founders.
With the sp Opportunity Fund, how much.
When we are still seeing look and an environment where interest rates are going higher, where companies are slimming down, where people are wanting to put money into tried and tested founders. How are you able to still focus on a minority founder?
Do you?
Is that priority all?
The interesting thing about founders who are underrepresented is they have the grid it taste to succeed. They have been overlooked. They're the perfect solution for this moment in time. They do not come from the typical mold. They have had to struggle to get where they are, and we like to back those founders because we just think they're unfairly overlooked.
So again, it's not about the macro for us, it's about the micro and the people best suited to navigate moments like this are people in places that are overlooked, people who look like they're overlooked. And if you back those folks, we believe you can make a lot of money.
We thank you for spending some time with us talking about the vision a Selah Clay Juniata. They're running back for a plane. We thank them.
At Google's conduct distorted competition among ad exchanges, rather than letting the best of the ad exchanges win the race. The helping hands of the powerful Google ecosystem gave Google's own exchange a unique head start over all other rivals in the industry, ann exclude a fort to keep its commission high without losing its advertisers.
You Commissioner, Margaret Vesta, are there Google being accused of abusing its dominance over advertising technology to crush competition? Now that is the European Union now fires off an anti trust charge sheet that threatens a breakup of the lucrative business. But look, it's a process that can take years to resolve. Let's dig into the details. Blue megs, Mark Bergen is in London, Sam Stalton is in Brussels, and Mark with the expertise of Google here. I immediately want to get
their response. We've just heard from Margaret Vesta and none of this seems to come as that much of a surprise to them, right.
No, certainly both things, both having vested your stand up and accuse them of monopoly of the acting as a monopoly and dominance, and then the same accusation around ad tech. This is something that they actually had first in the US and an identical case that they were using sort of ball size of the market in this opig and pretty powerful world of digital publishing. So I think that's
probably a contribution why the stack basically they move. Investies have basically priced in this regulatory risk.
Sam just in Layman's terms, what is the European Commission and the EU accusing Google of doing within the market's so healy involved in.
Yes, yes, and hello here from Brussels. Well, Effectively, the European Commission today has filed formal antitrust charges against Google's actions in the advertising technology space, and specifically it's focusing on Google services that match supply and demand for advertising space online and it's really all about self preferencing.
What the European.
Commission says is that Google has effectively self preferenced its own services to the detriment of other rivals in the market, and this could obviously have aative effects further afield in the online ecosystem. And these are formal antitrust charges. The investigation was first launched by the European Commission in Brussels in April twenty twenty one, and it's very much, as I say, this first step in a procedure that could go on for a number of years, Mark.
Explain, what is Google's advertising technology business different from its broader ad offering.
Yeah, it's hard to unpack, in part because it is that the ad tack is supervasive inside of Google. When we think about the commissioner talks about it. It is basically their machinery that deals with the buying and selling of online ads. Everything that's sort of not Google's own and operated property. So the things that aren't Google Search,
aren't YouTube, aren't its play store maps. But at the same time as using that same exact machinery to make Google Search ads, to make YouTube ads much more powerful, much more effective. And I think that competitors argue sort of elbow out these services that are playing the digital publishing field but don't have the tremendous data resources of running the world's biggest search and video and mapping platforms.
What's interesting here, Sam is sort of how they're going for the JUG leader the EU here saying, look, remedies on enough to your business model. You need to start hiving parts of it off. But will that become some sort of a reality because this is going to take a long time in the.
Course, Well, indeed, and I mean It was one of the main messages today from the press conference with the EU's Commission for Competition, Margaretta Vestaga, and she effectively said that behavioral remedies were insufficient in correcting the anti competitive
abuse here. And what's really fascinating is to watch the growing transatlantic sort of alliance around the option of structural remedies or like you say, hiving off certain parts of the business in order to correct the anti competitive abuses.
Because as Mark just said, there are of course a number of lawsuits open in the United States against Google's ad tech business, and the Department of Justice at least in its lawsuit has recommended the option of potentially structural separations, and as I say, one of the core messages from the press conference from Vestagers today was that's very much an option for us to and we're now going to engage with those discussions with Google to see if we
can make progress further afield in terms of correcting these problems.
A bloom best, Mark Bergen and London, Sam Stulton in Brussels for us, Thank you very much. Now coming up, more regulatory headwinds and hurdles facing Microsoft's sixty nine billion dollar takeover of Activision Blizzard. We'll discuss why a US judge is temporarily blocking the deal.
This is Bloomberg.
More regulatory action Microsoft's sixty nine billion dollars acquisition of Activision Blizzard. What it's temporarily blocked by a federal judge in California who said a temporary restraining order was necessary to maintain the status quo while the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission challenges the deal joining US now plums Anna Juton and is.
This just part of normal process? Is this a surprise all we expecting it?
Well, it's a really interesting development because you see how the FTC is trying to make sure this deal doesn't become a foregone conclusion. And part of the context of this is that we have kind of competing decisions from the other side of the Atlantic, where the UK competition authorities have said that this deal should not go forward they would be bad for market concentration, whereas in the EU anti trust authorities have said this deal can go
through with remedies and it's actually good for competition. So you definitely see the Federal Trade Commission trying to make sure that this doesn't go forward, that this deal doesn't play out while they're trying to prosecute.
Their case here.
I know it's a temporary holt because the FTC filed that emergency motion Monday to hold the merger. There will be a hearing next week here in SF, an evidentiary hearing for a longer term discussion around holding it. What is Microsoft and Activision's response to this about having to go before a.
Judge, Well, we saw we heard from Microsoft president Brad Smith yesterday where he said he's looking forward to presenting Microsoft's case in court. And one of the difference is is that this is a federal court where the Federal Trade Commission has to go and ask for this hold. Where is the actual case, the actual complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission is in there in house court.
So there's a slightly different juridical situation for them. And Microsoft has said that they look forward to presenting their case in federal court and kind of see that this is an opportunity to defend the deal that they say would be good for competition.
Briefly, Anna, this is a global narrative, right, absolutely.
Yeah, Like I said, you know, we see kind of competing decisions from the other side of the Atlantic. And also you know, Microsoft positioning has solved very strongly there, you know, criticizing the UK for their decision to block the deal and praising the EU for letting this seal go forward.
A right Bloomberg Xana editing out in DC, Thank you, Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology.
I am ed Ludlow here in San.
Francisco and I'm Karin Hawd in New York. Let's check in on these markets. It is FED day.
We're waiting for the all important decision.
We are looking at actually the market sustaining their higher inclination NASDAC cup four tenths of big tech managing to rally as many feel that there's a pause, it's likely to happen in terms of interest rates, of course, that being helpful for some of the technology focus and future cash flows. We're looking at the two year yields actually
dropping some four basis points as people start to price in. Indeed, the FED will go at what point we'll start to see the rate hiking process being an end most factoring in September Now we're looking at Bitcoin just about five ten percent as well, so look, it's relatively weight and see mode overall, but we're seeing some of the anxiety, particularly around financy exchange. They're dialing back a little bit
in cryptosphere. Let's move on and look at some of the individual movers, because while we're getting Microsoft on the upside more than percentage point higher, maybe because of course, there's a four stoppage on their plan to be purchasing Activision Blazzon sixty nine billion dollars being dropped, So maybe that's on the rally side, or maybe it's more of
an AI theme that's happening with Microsoft today. Nikola, one of ed's favorites and show focusing in on some sixteen percent higher, actually had been leading some of the charge in the other EV space, but largely Nikola having of late been pushed to pause any future supply side issuance of further shares. But on the upside today, as we see maybe more of an interest rate focus going on. I'm looking at AMD as well. This is AI front
and center. This is a company of course, is unveiling its AI focused chips, processes that are going to be AI accelerate and being able to support generative AI and the processing of data there that much faster the market seem to like what they were hearing from that particular CEO.
Ed, all right, Caroline, bear with me. I'm going to do something now and combine two of our favorite topics, AI and inflation, or rather AI and deflation. How are those two things linked. Well, let's bring in pooblicist sapient CEO Nigel Vaz. Your job is to work with technologists at all kinds of firms, banks, quick serve restaurants to digitoually transform. You tell us how AI is deflationary.
Our belief right now is that when you think about the ability for businesses to serve customers in lower costs, more efficient ways, AI is a huge accelerant to what they're trying to do, which means the achieved growth with lower costs and efficiency and productivity. Pretty much every Western economy today is bring from population challenges, people dropping out of the workforce. The hospitality sector in particular has been particularly hurt, so lots of check in lines orders heard incorrectly.
AI is helping with the work we're doing to start to make these simple, basic consumer experiences easier, more effective, and frankly more efficient for these businesses. So to us, I feel like that is a real opportunity to drive some of that growth at a lower cost.
Where do you sit in the debate around whether AI will eliminate jobs versus sort of be supportive of existing roles.
Well, you know, there's some research by David Artur talking about the fact that since nineteen forty we've now seen you know, sixty to eighty percent of jobs not exist today, and a lot of those jobs have been created by technologies that have come over the course of that period. When we think about AI, of course, there are going to be some jobs that are impacted and governments and
public private partnerships. The kind of work we do to bring in new skills and capabilities from younger people entering the workforce into this technology is going to need to happen to continue to build skills. But we also think this is going to be a huge opportunity for growth. We recently acquired fully publicly CPNAI Labs, a joint venture we created a few years ago, because we feel like that's going to help us bring in more people into
the workforce into this new space. What if I think GDP, you know, Goldmansacs is talking about seven percent The National Bureau of Economic Research is talking about fourteen percent in terms of impact on work our productivity. I think all of these things will create opportunities.
Yeah, Nigel, you just mentioned how you're training well the future workforce. What about the future for What about the workforce of the here and the now? Do the c suite do the people below them have the skill set to be adopting all the joys and risks of generative AI in the here and now?
I don't think anybody was expecting the adoption of this technology to happen as quickly as it has, right But what it does tell you the fact that you have so many people engaging with this, making this one of the fastest adopted technologies, is the potential is certainly there. With that come risks, management of ethics, understanding bias, all
of the issues that have to be worked through. But our belief is certainly now a lot of the existential threat that's being talked about AI, we're not in a place right now where that is in the immediate future. I think there are bigger issues in the immediate future and the context of AI, like how do you ensure that bias and things that brands wouldn't want associated with
them know how hallucinations. All of these ideas getting addressed today, and companies are making investments very very quickly because the benefits on the other side are huge. You know, we're seeing molecule identification in pharmaceuticals, We're seeing fraud detection in banking, We're seeing risk management and risk assessments for mortgages. All of these things now starting to be able to happen so much more seamlessly than was possible before.
Nigel, I'm kind of fascinated just the intricacies of exactly what you go and do you set up a meeting with a company who's new to you, What do you go in and say, how do you start to assess the need of each individual company where they're currently at, because mL and AI is already in our life, and then what they need to do to start to ensure that they're getting all the benefits of productivity.
You know, polic is say is fundamentally in the business of digital business transformation right effectively, very simply. What that means is helping businesses that were established transform themselves to be increasingly digital in a world that is fast becoming entirely digital. So our approach centers around this notion at this idea called speed. It is an acronym and an
idea about helping businesses move quickly. And one of the biggest challenges with enterprise businesses is the CEO would ask for a strategy in a business case, and then that would turn into requirements and then they'd linearly pass the
baton onto the next rung and the next rung. So for us, the S in speed is strategy, so being really clear about what use case you're trying to drive the outcome from assessing that, and then moving very quickly to this idea of P, which is products, so not thinking about the business and the context of a project that begins and ends, but a product that is constantly evolving. The E is experienced, so how do you think about the experience of the employee and the experience of the customer,
the patient, the citizen that you're trying to affect. The next D is engineering, which is all about how do you build these experiences in ways that allow you to evolve ever so quickly. And then the D is data and AI, so how do you create that closed loop system almost like fagers in a hand where the data feeds back into helping you automate and build the efficiency
we're talking about. And that conversation today in many organizations is about yeah, we've got this and this and this, but they don't work like fingers.
In a hand.
You know, there's a strong thumb and a strong index thing or but they don't connect to the pinky and guess what, it becomes very hard lift and shift and move things.
Yes, in that context, Nigel, for what it's worth, a headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal from Black Rock CEO Larry Fink, who's speaking at black Rocks Invested Ate. He says, AI maybe the tech that brings down inflation. When Nigel Vaz goes into a company like that, be it, Walmart, JP, Morgan, Marriott, do you want the CEO sitting on the other side of the table from you to implement this change with AI or do you want the CTO who's leading the charge within these companies.
I think this is a business change, and of course you need a very strong CTO CEO somebody he understands how the technology works. But for us, AI is an opportunity to reimagine the business. So, you know, the Bloomberg you know terminal headline that you were just calling out there are are belief is that doesn't happen when it's a CMO or a CIO or CEO. This has got to be something that is a CEO priority. And from all of this EOS, I'm spending time with some of
the biggest companies in the world. I can tell you this is the one technology that they themselves have started to realize will force the choice for them to be more transformative rather than digitizing what they already do, which is has been the first wave of digital I think.
Thus far whovers is Sapient CEO Nigel Vas. Great to have some time with you, Larry Finking you on the same page. Meanwhile, coming up now we're going to be talking about the Swedish tech scene. We are so global today standout tech companies that are currently being built in that market.
Of Thomas is joining us partner at Ox. This is bring back.
All right time for talking tech first off, and you study is shining the light on who may be the biggest winners and losers in the global AI boom. Research from McKinsey says generative AI could apt to add up to four point four trillion dollars annually to the world's economy. However, AI tools will likely put more pressure on the labor force and could especially be a disruption to higher wage knowledge workers whose work would be threatened by automation.
How often are we discussing that?
Plus Advanced micro Devices or AMD is hoping its new line of AI processors can compete with the likes of Nvidia in the AI computing market. During a presentation Tuesday, the company showcase the MI three hundred x accelerator. It will speed up processing for generative AI services and aims to help data centers streamline a crunch of AI traffic.
And speaking of Nvidia, the company drawing is drawing made some hefty stock buybacks last year after a three year hiatus, The chipmaker repurchased more than ten billion dollars in stock ahead of a massive rally fueled by Wall Street's AI friends. Now the company is drawing attention because it's stopped buying despite having more than seven billion on its buyback authorization. In Vidia Space person declined to comment.
Carrot, let's go broader, Let's go to Europe for a moment, because at the moment brilliant minds twenty twenty three years upon us Look. It's the foundation and related event established by Spotify founder CEO Daniel Eck and it's focusing this year on a theme of future gazing the slower speakers ranging from tech startups, actors, activists, education, sustainability leaders and
much more. They've also got a program to highlight startups in the European scene brilliant innovators and one of the men behind that is Ox partner Bob Thomas, who's joining us for more on the event and indeed the innovator that you singled out as the winner this year. Let's start Bob with Brilliant Minds as an event first and foremost, what is hoped to be achieved.
This is about shining a light on Sweden, on.
The ecosystem, but also well Swedish principles in many ways.
Yeah, absolutely so.
Daniel initially set up the Brilliant Minds Foundation with his board, which consist of some influential Swedish families, to bring Swedish values to creative builders, innovators from across the world. So every June kind of mid June, actors, activists, you know, some of the people who you've highlighted already descend on Stockholm during one of the most beautiful periods of the year and enjoy a two day conference where they discuss kind of creative ideas and the vision for the future
of how the world might look in a positive sense. So, you know, in Brilliant Innovators, what we're trying to do is extend that to the startup ecosystem and say, you know how can Swedish ideals of sustainability, of inclusivity, you know how can we highlight European startups that are promoting these ideals.
And you've singled out as a winner this year a French startup that is all about sustainability, particularly an aircraft right you're shunning a line on one particular companies are about hydrogen propulsion. What got you there for this particular set of founders and business that they're trying to build, It was a.
Combination both of the vision, which is to let me take a step back, so the businesses beyond arrow It's say, as you say, French business focused on hydrogen fuel cell transport in the private aviation space, and that business has a massive opportunity to take an enormous amount of carbon out of air travel and essentially kind of just you know, one of the biggest polluters in terms of kind of carbon emissions in the European landscape to take a huge
amount of carbon out of that. It was a combination of that proposition, that vision, and then the quality of the pitch and of the team. You know, a huge number of industry experts aligning around around a shared cause and again to you know, to speak to those ideals of teamwork, of you know, having having a kind of collective long term principle in mind when you develop a product. It really spoke to the judges.
Was there any commonality, Bob, between the founders and the startups that entered the competition with a heavily AI focus for example?
Interesting, So I've been watching your texto for some time and obviously kind of in recent days, and thank you, the focus has been very, very much on AI. Actually relatively little mention of AI in the startups that we
looked at, which was strange. There was a skew towards materials science, you know, how to innovate in manufacturing, innovating heavy industry with the thinking that you know, a big part of the reason that startups were entering was part of a sustainability theme, part of a long termism around the environment and around other cultural issues related to pollution.
So actually AI, you know.
Despite the despite the focus of things kind of more generally within tech and within MySpace in B to B software, in the last few weeks, AI was absence Bob.
Earlier in the show, we had Marcello Claray on about his new venture firm Bicycle. I'm sure you're familiar with Myllo, and he's all about Latin America. Has talked a little bit about Sweden with you. You know, I'm here in San Francisco. The history of this place in Silicon Valley is that you have Stamford, a lot of people focused on computing and software. They found companies, the vcs all moved here. Is there an equivalent thing going on out in Sweden and Nordic nations right now?
Yes, absolutely, and I would say to some extent it's already happened. So the European Investment Fund and THES have highlighted in their annual report that they do kind of ranking European geographies on the basis of various innovation metrics. You know, Sweden's been the top country in Europe for a number of years, and that's driven by quality of education.
But also that first cohort of great Swedish startups has now gone beyond the point where they've you know, a lot of the founders have exited, they've become public businesses, and you have those initial set of founders reinvesting in
the next cohort of startups. So you know, to take Brilliant Minds as an example, it's a foundation set up by Daniel Leck and you know, the support for that foundation is driven by the fantastic success that he's achieved with Spotify, So yeah, Spotify, klana Iz or you know, these great Swedish technology institutions now are feeding back into
that early stage ecosystem. And also, I mean there's a great private capital ecosystem that's developed here over you know, over the course of really twenty years, which we're very happy to play a small part of.
You know what's interesting, Caroline.
Every day on Venture Spotlight, we have vcs from around the world, and if they're American, we pose the question, are you looking outside of the US in terms of where you're writing checks and looking for opportunity?
And what called my eye actually on LinkedIn today was Nicholas Senstrom.
Of course another key.
So we just found a founded Skype gone on to have a Tomaco, very successful VC in the space.
He's put out a thought leadership.
Piece today, Bob all about why Europe's going to be the next area of innovation, why check shashould be being written there. But Ed and I have both been based in Europe. We both talked about technology there and it was always this ringing of hands that there's never quite been the moment that they powered through, that they were able to put.
Their stamp on it. Do you think this is different?
Do you think ultimately that we shouldn't always be that one area or region will win out visa via another all can do well and will eventually American money come in a more significant way to Europe.
I think we've definitely seen, particularly in a kind of low interest rate environment, particularly during COVID in the B to B software space, we've seen a huge amount of American money come to Europe. And you know, I'll say, to some extent we're seeing it leave again now given the economy and given the pricing of technology businesses. But I think the development of European ecosystems, you know, initially in places like London and Berlin, but now in the Nordics,
you know, not just Stockholm but Copenhag and Helsinki. You know, we're seeing a great startup ecosystem developing the Baltics, particularly in Estonia and Talent, but more broadly than that, I think it's really driven actually not by the influx of American money, but by the recycling of capital from cohorts of great technology businesses. You know, to take stop we've given a Swedish example, but to take Estonia as an example. You know, Pipe Drive, great B to B software business
sells globally, is now a global business. But a lot of that capital gets recycled into the Estonian ecosystem and becomes fuel for the next generation of seed stage Estonian staffs.
What's interesting, of course, we were looking at some pictures of the company that's just one overall beyond Arrow and it was a lot of guy engineers in the pictures, and we're sat here with a white male VC of course, but brilliant Minds in and of itself is very diverse female CEO. And also thinking about the people that they brought together in Sweden. How diverse is the European Talent pol right now? How diverse are the founders that you're coming and seeing pitched to you?
So I would say THEO.
Firstly, the CEO of beyond eerro Eloa, is a woman, and unfortunately she wasn't pictured.
In the video, but you know, just to be clear about that.
You know, I think when particularly does rank very highly, particularly in terms of gender diversity and companies at a point where you know, we're almost that kind of gender parity in in terms of public company CEOs in Sweden, and I think that you know, Sweden has been an early mover in the right direction. I think there is, you know, fundamentally in Europe but also particularly within tech, still a long way to go in terms of diversity, and I think it's important that we're you know, we're
doing more on that. Brilliant Minds is leading the way, but you know, I think we as a fund also lead away and we care very deeply about the diversity of our team and the diversity of the companies we invest in.
Ox partner, Bob Thomas and in Sweden, thank you so much. When you write your next big check come back.
On the program. We talk more about the audicts in Europe. Thank you for your time.
Time now for what's going viral? Fans are the Beatles, You're in for a tree. So Paul McCartney says that we can expect to hear one final song from the British pop group and he's crediting guess what, artificial intelligence
for the help. In an interview at the BBC Radio for McCartney said that the song was made using a demo with John Lennon's voice and will were released later this year and ed what's interesting, I was lucky enough to be at Glastonbury this time last year Paul McCartney was performing and at that time he performed alongside virtually John Lennon and that was using an isolated Lenin vocal at that time.
So already that we use the machine learning.
It's called AI to do d mixing.
So this was a demo tape that Lennon did on a ACEPT before he died in nineteen eighty. He gave it to Yoko Ono. Yokoona gave it to McCartney and all the AI does is isolate the voice and so interviews McCartney's talked about how it's so exciting because tracks that they never quite finished and now can finish the are available. But he's also admitted it's kind of scary if you think about it, give infinite life to something that wasn't quite quite done at the.
Time, and there is. It's been working with the artists right.
A lot of the other anxiety has been around copyright issues, has been around deep fakes and really how the business and industry navigates that. AI just keeps on giving us new areas to contemplate, and we love it that it's in music at least.
Wow, that does it for this addition Bloomberg.
Technology, Yeah, big, big show, so much to recap. So don't forget about the podcast Spotify. iHeart this is Bloomberg