Meta and Apple Hand Over Data to Hackers

handing over customer data. We have all the details. Plus Apple is cutting out the middleman, the iPhone maker developing its own payment processing technology, building a full in house set of financial services offerings on top of its Apple credit card and wallet. Bloomberg's Mark German will bring us his exclusive story and Tesla's hidden competitive advantage. The electric car maker made a secret deal to help dodge the nickel crisis. Russia is one of the world's top suppliers.

Now to that Bloomberg exclusive, Bloomberg learning that Apple and Meta provided customer data to presumed law enforcement officials who were really hackers in disguise. William Turton, our Bloomberg cubersecurity reporter, joins us. Now with that school will how did the hackers pull this off? Hey, Emily, thanks for having me. So here's what the hackers did. They kind of exploited

what some might call a loophole in this system. When you send a request of a search warrant or subpoena to a company for data, that has to be signed by a judge. But if you send something called an emergency data request, UM that's not something that has to be signed by a judge. So what these hackers did is they broke into the email boxes of legitimate law enforcement agencies and they sent emails posing as a legitimate law enforcement officer to these companies with a forged emergency

data request. And as we're reporting today, the co and he's complied with those requests and actually turned over user data. But we don't know is just the scale of this problem. We've been hearing from sources that you know, it's much bigger than these companies um AND has a much bigger scope. And that's what we're trying to find out now. So is it understandable then that Apple and Meta could have fallen for this or is this a major loophole in

their systems? So, I mean, it cannot be overstated how complicated and difficult these process are. The emergency data request. Some will say it's a very legitimate form for law enforcement to get information in times of crisis, like a like a terrorist threat or someone's life is an imminent danger. And that's exactly what the hackers do in their Forge request.

They will say something along the lines of there's a terrorist threat, someone's life is in danger, someone's you know, at risk of suicide, and you know, companies are expected to comply very quickly with these requests. Now, you know, I think, as it's becoming clear, companies need to have more oversight and more verification that these requests are legitimate and are coming from real law enforcement officers. Now, according

to your reporting, William Discord had a similar issue. Also, Snap also got this request, but we don't know yet if they provided any of this information to the hackers. Are there other companies that could be looped into this? That's right, So yesterday Brian Krebs reported that Discord, also, you know, was a victim of the same kind of scheme. We reported today that Snap received a Forge emergency data request, but we do not know whether they actually provided data.

And yes, I'm hearing from sources that many other companies, even beyond tech companies, beyond social media companies, have been affected by this Um, if anyone knows more, I you should reach out to me because I would love to know more. I think this problem extends beyond just the two companies that we've reported on today. Alright, bloombergs William

Turton with that scoop, William, thank you. I want to talk more about this now with Wendy Whitmore, senior vice president for Unit forty two, the threat intelligence team at Palo Alto Networks. Wendy, thank you so much for joining us. What do you find most notable about how these accurs hackers were able to pull these off with massive companies

with very established systems. Yeah, Emily, great question. So I think the biggest concern here of these attacks is clearly how well the attackers understand uh, this potential vulnerability, this process of government request to technology companies, social media companies, and understand it and are willing to take the risk to exploit it. So talk to us about why it's so apparently easy to do this. I mean, some of the folks behind these attacks we're finding out our teenagers. Yeah. Again,

great questions. So the interesting thing is it's not easy at all. This is relatively complicated. So first I would say The easiest part is probably for the attackers to get access to the data that they're stealing. Last year alone, our team identified over breaches where there was stolen data leaked.

So what the attackers do is by this information for relatively inexpensive prices and then use that to test out which kind of credentials they can use to legitimately break into organizations, and in this case, they chose those to

be law enforcement organizations. The complicating part is they have to understand that process, and then they have to be willing to spend the time that it takes to to do the social engineering aspects, understanding specifically who they need to contact that these organizations to make these requests, who the legitimate law enforcement officers are, and what their processes. So this is certainly not an easy task for them to orchestrate, clearly being done by people with time on

their hands. Well to that point, the folks suspected in this particular case are minors located in the US and UK. I'm reminded of the OPTA hacks that we covered last week, where you know, the suspected mastermind is a teenager who still lives with his mom in England. What do you make of the fact that these are potentially very young people behind these very disruptive attacks. It's it's incredibly concerning, right.

We typically would see this level of attack orchestrated by an organization who's got clear objectives and clear financial backing. So the point is these UH, the organization related to these attacks certainly has overlapped with lapses and the activities we've seen last week. One of the things that they're doing incredibly effectively, and we see this in ransomware investigations as well, is they use time demands as a way

to force an organization to make a quick decision. We see that with these ransomware attacks when there's extortion involved, and we're seeing this work very well with these emergency data requests. Now six hundred thousand open jobs in cybersecurity, that's what Bloomberg is reporting today that there are six hundred thousand jobs UH in the cyber threat landscape that are unfilled. Is that part of the reason we may be seeing an uptick in hacks. Well, I think you're

seeing that. So there's no greater example of that today and the challenges that we as an industry face than as it relates to Russian Ukraine. Right, the US government has come out and provided a tremendous amount of recommendations and actions to be taken, but the reality is it's challenging for organizations across the world to implement all of

them in a timely manner. Uh, it's much cheaper for the attackers to conduct these attacks, and it's much more costly and time and resource intensive for organizations to defend against them today. So yes, absolutely that's a concern. Now we're understanding that the information that was shared with these hackers includes addresses, phone numbers, I P addresses. How damaging could the release of this information be? How could the

hackers use it? Well, I think that there's some concern in terms of people being cyberstocked, being at that translated to physical attacks. Right, So when you look at these the people that are behind this oftentimes so they're selling this information for really inexpensive amount, right, the equivalent of about one fifty U S dollars, So that can be

used in a wide variety of ways. We want to make sure that people are protected and uh, you know that this data doesn't then translate to those type of tax So certainly law enforcement is going to be working very closely with these organizations who have released the data to make sure that they can protect people. What do you see as the learnings and takeaways here? I mean, is this a new tactic that we're going to see more cyber criminals start exploiting. Yeah, I think it's it's

become pretty widespread. Right, So these lapses group attacks over the past week saw that you know which you mentioned right to Octa to Microsoft um. The level of sophistication was largely in the social engineering, so the human to human aspects as well as the persistence of their ability to figure out once they got inside an organization how they could actually get to the data that they needed.

And so what the good news on that is that that largely relates to defense and depth strategies and best practices that we recommend the organizations. It doesn't often mean you have to buy millions of dollars of new technology, right. It means we have to get back to the basics and we have to make sure that, for example, for help desk, that we are not asking identity verification questions of our employees. That's information that could be easily found

on the internet. So we've got to continually focus on security awareness trainings for organizations and make sure that they're well implemented. As the war on Ukraine shows no signs of d escalation, but Ukrainian forces and the West have really put a lot of pressure on Russian forces. Do you see Russia resorting to more cyber attacks and getting

more aggressive in the cyber landscape? Since we haven't quite seen as potentially devastating attacks from the Russian side, is some more expecting yet, I think it's a likely scenario. One thing we know for certain is that the Russians have been incredibly formidable capability when it comes to cyber

attacks and cyber warfare. So we are encouraging all of our clients as well as non clients to be prepared to make sure that they've got a documented incident response plans in place, that they understand what rules and responsibilities their employees have across the board, so that if these attacks do occur, that we've got a well orchestrated response plan and we can contain contain that the damage as quickly as possible. All Right, Wendy went more power outs

on networks. Always appreciate your insight on these incidents. Thank you so much Wendy for joining us coming up. Russia is one of the world's largest suppliers of nickel. It is a key component in batteries for electric cars. How Tesla struck a secret deal to keep supplies coming. This is Bloomberg. This back market has been up and down, catching the attention of the SEC, which just announced a

plan for new disclosure requirements. One company that just went public this week vs. Back is Storry, the broadband provider listed on the New York Stock Exchange just yesterday. The transaction, implying at one point seven six billion dollar value, were joined out by check Kenogs Starry CEO and co founder chet How'd you pull this off in the middle of all this market volatility and a war that's casting a

great deal of uncertainty over the road ahead. Yeah. Well, I think probably two or three factors that contributed to it. Number one, a very supportive investor base, which I think is critical in this market and climate obviously, uh And and I think the basic for that support, or the basis for the support, including the new investors that came in, is really the company's performance. You know, Unlike a lot of sort of concept companies in the stack land if

you will, we um. You know, we're a real company growing very rapidly, real revenues, real customers, very lower customer based, massive tam um uh and and it real bottoms up analysis in terms of what the company is going to be doing. So so I think the deal basically got done because of those parameters. So talk to us about the ambition here. You know, you have for many, many years wanted to close the digital divide and democratize access. What's the goal with Starry? What unmet needs do you

feel like you're filling? So, you know, it really depends on geography. But in certain areas, in urban areas in particular, obviously in the rule is the government's had a lot of subsidy programs that provide connectivity because I think that's an important component for economic growth and economic engine and healthcare education is you know, the pandemic taught us. But there's an affordability problem in urban areas uh and UH.

Affordability ranges from people that you know, are looking for a better product that without the television bundle, which is typically how the cable companies sell it. For affordability for folks that can certainly. Uh, you know, euilize the technology and connectivity, but you are you know, can't pay. But the government is helping with that with subsidizing with the

program called a c P or Affordable Connectivity Plan. So endgame for us is really you know, core belief for the company is that what we're doing is a great work in terms of providing you know, real use case, real resource to consumers, taking care of them, elevating the experience.

Uh and hopefully you know, by doing all of these things, we're moving um society forward in terms of at least economic opportunity and availability of resources to to folks that would otherwise either be paying over too much or they would be paying or not getting the product at all because you know, they happen to be in a difficult

time in their lives. How is what you're offering, this personalized network service different from what traditional legacy broadband providers offer aside from price, and is this something that customers really want? So yes, there are different cohorts of customers that really look for different things. So I'll give you an example. You know, if you're a gamer, for example, you may be interested in different kinds of latency statistics.

You work from home potentially, and you know, cable broadband network will give you, you know, a very marginal up link, and we can offer you several hundred megabits up link up to gig a bit up link. Uh. So all of these things, you know, our bet is ultimately technology. We lead towards personalization and what people are willing to pay and what they want. Uh. And that's uh, that's the purpose and then that's how we are check with.

The network is in a highly personalizable way, which is very different than your traditional broadband network that tends to be one size fits all. You know, teaser rates that started whatever number and then go up the year after. You know all what I will say, you know, hundred year old business practices that really don't belong in a modern ecosystem. Alright, check Canoga Starry CEO and co founder. We'll keep watching as you continue trading. Thank you so

much for joining us. The war in Ukraine is raising anxiety across the electric car industry, Russia being one of the world's biggest producers of nickel, a critical component in a VY batteries. Sources tell Bloomberg that Tesla, however, has been signing deals to circumvent any supply disruptions. I want to bring in analysts as she Satilla, who leads our Commodities and energy research at Bloomberg do Energy Finances. She's

thank you so much for joining us. So, according to our reporting, Tesla has been scouring the globe since last year for deals on nickel. In particular, has struck a deal with Veil, a multi year supply deal that involves nickel coming from Canada. What is it you think that

made this deal possible? Good evening emplace. So essentially, nickel prices are already rising slowly and steadily before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and part of the reason for that was a tight market for class one nickel, which is predominantly used in manufacturing batteries which went to electric beakers. Now Russia was supplying almost scent of this class one nickel, so a potential disruption. They're definitely cost an impact on

the market. Tesla strategy, although has been quite straightforward for the last year and a half or so. They've been scouring, as you rightly said, for nickel around the world. Deals with pH D last year and another deal with teln Metals and Riot into earlier this year, so they're trying to kind of secure their place in the supply chain and interrate verticularly as much as possible. In reality, it's the battery metal supply chain in general that is under pressure.

How concerned should governments be and companies beyond the electric car market b so absolutely rightingly that there's a lot of pressure in the supply chain around the world. Um Interestingly, even in the absence of any long term net zero carbon emission policies, we expect demand for lethuman batteries to rise almost nine times between now and in particularly driven

by electric vehicles. So commodities like lithium, cobalt, nickel magnees will be required in large quantities, and actually the supply of these are in particular parts of the world which are sometimes not that robust in terms of government structures or supply chain enhanced Governments and companies around the world are trying to take matters in their own own hands to develop the supply chain, either domestically or essentially create

these partnerships around the world. Now, obviously these companies can work to secure extra supplies of nickel or cobalt or lithium what else can they do beyond that? UM, so I think two or three other interesting things they can do. The first one is UM they can use different battery chemistryes to reduce dependence on one specific material or metal. For example, Tesla has been using more of lithium and fosters batteries which require less nickel, although they have lower

range and lower performance. UM. There is a move towards using batteries which have hired magnees content and less nickel content. UM. The second thing that would be done is building more charging infrastructure. If you build more charging infrastructure, you need batteries that slightly lower range as well. Perhaps. And the third thing that could be done is recycling. So UM from twenty onwards you will have a lot of batteries UM, large volume of batteries that would be available for recycling,

and we probably need to make yourse oft time. All right, she Saiitia, thank you for that context. They're head of Commodities and Energy Research at Bloomberg and welcome back to Bloomberg Technology, Emily Jack in San Francisco. This week, I spoke exclusively with Uber CEO Dark Causa Shocking about the company's plan to quote out Amazon, Amazon, take a listen. I think that Amazon has is an incredible company and

no one is ever going to replace Amazon. But we can essentially use our technology local logistics capabilities to power the local merchant or restaurant to deliver anything within an hour, which we think is a delightful experience causa. He says, Uber's delivery business could eventually grow to be bigger than rides, the idea being that it doesn't deliver just food, but

potentially anything. This coming at a time though, when other delivery services are cutting back, instat Carts slashing its valuation and the information reporting go Puff plans to cut hundreds of employees. Here to discuss. Andrea Walney, general partner at Manhattan Venture Partners. And Andrea, you're an investor in instat cart What do you make of of instat carts move here? Should we be worried about its business? Thanks so much, Emily,

So overall, we're really not worried. I think generally this act of actually reducing the valuation is very much so based on the value of the stock options that the company is issuing to their employees today and any incoming employees. We think this move is really smart for the hiring and recruitment of new employees, because generally what employees want to see is the upside upside in their stock right. They want to see that there's going to be value

accruel once they joined the company. So overall, we think that this is a move that made headlines because they were one of the first companies to do it, amiss all the volatility in the market, and we just assume that many and many other companies are going to join suit in this. But doesn't it mean that anyone who exercise their shares that the original valuation thirty nine billion

dollars would be underwater now? Well, the folks that did exercise their stock options are probably there to hold on and see where the company goes as per their I p O and the plans there. So overall, with the lack of liquidity now leading up to the I p O, yes, those employees just have to bear with us and hold on.

But generally the tax treatment between the four owner and A which is the valuation, right, that's the addit valuation that every company who is private has to do once a year at least between that spread of the foreigner and A and where they actually sell the stock is what's really meaningful. So if we reduce that valuation price, it means that they can have more upside leading up

to what they ultimately sell the stock. At meantime, we just saw go Puff planning to cut hundreds of employees according to a report from The Information cutting forty million dollars in cost three of their global workforce. Do you think we're going to see more companies slashing their valuations like Insta cart and potentially going through these mass layoffs. Yeah, Emily, so, I truly think that we're about to see a one

eighty reverse of the Great Resignation. I think many companies are using this opportunity of the volatility in the market to reduce spend, reduce opex, increase their margins, get to profitability, and show both investors private and public that they can succeed as they grow, right, And so we do think that we're going to see a lot of companies. You know, further, even though we are expecting the opposite of the Great Resignation, we expect the talent pool and the recruitment landscape to

be just as competitive as it ever was. And so with that being said, companies need to find really compelling ways to recruit and retain, and so with that, they are going to be looking for ways to show the talent pool that's out there that they can have an increase in the value of the stock they're getting issued. So we think there's gonna be a lot more of

the layoff and news coming out. We expect a lot of companies are having conversations with the board of directors to say, what should we do around our valuation, should we bring it back down to real levels, and then how should we plan ahead for our hiring plans going into the rest of the year. Generally, companies like insta Car.

Last year we're really really focused on profitability and broke even because of that, and now companies like insta Car are focusing on top line continuous sing the focus on growth, and then furthermore really just focusing on that reduction of um spend across the board. So profitability is key, margins are key, and retaining talent from the executive level on down is also incredibly important. Now public companies in this

space also seeing their stocks slide. Uber and door Dash, for example, down here today, and I'm curious what you think of Uber's vision here to be the future of driving retail. That you know, the idea that they could deliver something faster, for example, than Amazon. And if you think that's gonna work, well, Uber certainly has the fleet capacity to be capacity to do so. But these days

their fleet is suffering. So I do think they're going to have to uh revitalize the way that they really incentivized the driver base and furthermore increase their own margins because it's not like Uber has always been the company to who that they understand how to focus on unit economics. So generally, though they have the fleet and logistics down, um, it's not there to say that they've proven themselves as it relates to being able to scale the logistics side

of the business. So I think overall they have a fighting chance. But Amazon has always been the clear winner in this category, and it's investing a lot in this space. So I think from a bet perspective, we're looking at where Uber can sit, but overall Amazon has always been

the leading category winner. Here isn't a cautionary tale here, Andrea, for investors and for employees and perspective employees, I mean, we all thought valuations were getting pretty hot towards the end of last year, and now you know, at least as you're saying, we're going to see a lot of

companies bring those numbers down. Yes, So overall, I think the cautionary tale to see here is that these companies that are raising money from big crossover funds, and when I say crossover, I mean the funds that are the mutual funds, they're the hedge funds that invest in both private and public companies, and then they really hold onto

those positions once the company goes public. Those crossover investors have a war chest of a ton of capital to deploy, and their risk profile is very very different than a traditional venture investor or retail investor. So what I say to investors is that we have to really look out to say for the late stage companies that are raising money um and furthermore just sitting on their own war

chest of a balance sheet. Those companies really raised a lot of rounds from those crossover investors who can weather the storm and plan on holding onto those positions and setting up arbitrage opportunities long after the company goes public, which is a very different strategy than a traditional venture investor. Right, traditional venture investors. Their role is primarily to distribute and cash out once a company has a lack of UH

and the lack of expires. And so I think that tail is that, you know, measure the risk profile, measure risk tolerance, you know, battened down the hatches. But furthermore, we're always going to be looking for companies in the venture community that are investing into growth, increasing their margins, and showing that they can become profitable if and when

they wanted to be. So are you saying, Andrea, that some of these big crossover funds, I'll just throw a name out there, like Tiger Global, are they driving up

valuations in an unhealthy way? I think that overall, Tiger Global and many other businesses that are operating similar to theirs in the venture and crossover space were the ones that have had war chests that are sizeably larger than most traditional venture funds, and so in the last few years they've proven that they could be very, very competitive because their strategy is so focused on arbitraging opportunities once

companies go public. So overall, I don't think anything Tiger has been doing from an activity perspective has been predicated on them trying to drive up valuations. They've been very competitive for that reason. But for now it seems like groups like Tiger and others are very much so focused on making sure that they kind of sit back see where things pan out, and they're not as focused on driving up valuations or putting all their bets in the

private markets in recent days. All Right, Andrea well Night, general partner in Manhattan Venture Partners, will be watching to see if some of the stuff you've predicted comes true. Coming up, the future of decentralized wireless, We're gonna talk with Noble Labs about their recent two hundred million dollar funding round and how they plan on using that to

expand their crypto wireless network. That is next this is bloomer Halium, the creator of a blockchain that powers a d centralized wireless network, just announced a two hundred million dollar rays in funding lad by Agriglobal Andagies and Horror. It's valuing them at one point to billion dollars. Helium also changing its name to Noval Labs. I want to bring in Noval Labs CEO Amir Haleem for more on all of this as part of our crypto rapport. So

walk us through how a crypto wireless network actually works. Yeah. So I think that the really really the easiest way to think about what Helium does is it empowers ordinary people, everyday people to participate in the telecom business. Right, this is the most entrenched industry that's almost impossible for like

a regular person to participate in. And what Helium is really pioneered is the ability for really everyday people to become part of the telecom business with this sort of decentralization, in this crypto twistedment. So everyday participants by a little piece of harnorware called the hotspot. You can think of it as a miniature cell tower um, and they earn HNT, which is the Helium token for providing network coverage that other people can use. That's that's sort of the simplest

word you think become it does. What are some of your first use cases and customers. Yeah, so there's been some interesting ones. I mean, the network today is focused on the Internet of Things, right, which is most these sensors, small devices that are battery powered, and so we've seen everything from drone delivery, so packages being delivered by drones that are orchestrated through the helium network, precision agriculture, things

like wildfire monitoring, connected rat traps. You know, there's the number of use cases extremely broad, and IoT as a category has been one that has really lacked a network that supports the kinds of applications that we're now seeing getting built. So it's we're really starting to see like the transformation of an idea which was IoT ten years ago to to the reality, which is people and businesses

starting to deploy sensors that solve the real problems. So is the goal here to take share from major wireless carriers and how do you plan to do that? You know, I think the goal really is to try and build an alternative to what we have today, Like the the Internet or access to the Internet has been something which has been so difficult, uh to separate from a sort of small constituent of of companies that own access to

the Internet. It's incredibly difficult to to decentralize that way due to so many different modes, whether it's sectrum, whether it's physical access. UH. And so what we see now is uh the sort of convergence of all these different technologies, including crypto, that makes it possible now for us to provide an alternative that is completely open, that is very private, that is very secure, that is really owned by the people, rather than a small group of companies that typically haven't

stranglehold in this industry. Now, given your fundraising announcement today two hundred million dollars, including from Tiger Global, we were just having a conversation earlier with Andrea Walnett Manhattan Venture Partners, who maintains that some of these bigger funds like Tiger Global are driving up valuations because they simply have so much money to plow into startups. What do you make of that critique and do you think it applies at

all to Nova? If you look at the telecom industry, I mean, it is one of the few industries that is valued and trillions of dollars, right, and so the opportunity here is so large that I think it is quite difficult to ascribe evaluation to it. Right. It's obviously obviously I'm biased, and I'm not going to say that we're overvalued or anything like that, but I think the opportunity that we're looking at is so big and so unique, right.

I think Helium is one of the few crypto projects that has a real tangible like, you know, really world use case that everyone can understand, right when people get to participate and become basically a little a miniature cell tower, right,

And so if you think about how that grows. You know, today the network is focused mostly on IoT, but as you think of the expansion, and there are now something like twenty thousand five G hotspots being deployed, and you know, we expect there to be other types of wireless network that get built on top of Helium too, whether that's Qui Fi, Bluetooth six G, or any other future technology. Meantime, we are seeing companies more broadly slash evaluation plan for layoffs.

We're in the middle now of of what seems to be a market downturn. How are you you know, are you changing your strategy at all? Are being more conservative with your cash as you navigate these macroeconomic conditions? You know, I think we've generally been the believers in small teams that that can do big things. And you know, today we are sixty or so employees and looking to grow um. But you know, I think the philosophy of the company has always been that small teams can do lots of

big things. And that has allowed us to be very flexible in different economic conditions. Right we are looking to add two thousand employees and put ourselves in dangering that way. So, you know, I think there's a lot of pressure on startups to to show growth in multiple directions, and one of those is is head count um and so we're we've always been careful about that and I think that

will serve as well going forward. Because you built this culture of trying to be disruptive this play, and as a result of being able to use crypto economics, you really get to build an entire community behind you. You know, So the size of the actual founding team or the core team matters a hull of a lot less because you've got a six hundred thousand plus spot hosts who are really the ones that actually running the network, who owned the network, and that's you know, those are the

numbers that matter rather than than our individual headcounts. All right, interesting, Amir Helleen, CEO of newly branded Nova Labs, thank you for joining us. Apple is developing its own payment processing technology and infrastructure for future financial products. According to Bloomberg sources, This as the iPhone maker is trying to reduce its reliance on outside partners over time. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Mark German for this scoop And why Mark, what's the

plan here? The plan is to bring the underlying infrastructure, the underlying processing, underlying you know, development process for Apple's future fintech products, things beyond Apple Pay, things beyond the Apple card and the Apple cash card. Will Apple in house right right now, as we know, Apple has a few partners in the fintech space, Goldman Sachs, Core Card,

Green Dot Bank, and a few others. They want to bring the underlying technology that they leverage from those partners in house for the next suite of Apple financial services. So who have this hurt definitely would hurt core Card right, every credit card, most financial products, they require what's known as a core processor or is it payment processor. That's the engine that allows banks to either approve or reject a transaction. Now, the core processor core Card in this

case does a lot more. They handle disputes, they handle parts of customer service through Goldman Sachs, they handle other underlying infrastructure for the financial system. And you saw their stock dropped, I believe more than ten percent this morning on the news of the story. That's because investors in the company and analysts know how important core Card is

to the Apple Card and Golden Sex. Now Apples building their own full on replacement for the work done by core Card, meaning core Card won't be Apple's partner in all likelihood in future fintech products. Apple will be going at it alone. So this will be Apple's biggest for a yet into the world of finance. I mean, it sounds like it's not going to be easy. Are they

going to be able to pull this off? This is a multi year effort with many engineers and other people across Apple in all sorts of teams across the company. They're investing hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions in this. You saw an acquisition recently called Credit Kudos from the UK. Now that company has technology to help

determine credit scores. That's part of Apple's push. Right This is all part of the same thing because Apple will for the first time also be working with credit bureaus to make lending decisions and approval decisions for fintech product applications for the first time. Right now, they go through core Card and Golden sacks to work with the transunions and Equifaxes of the world. Now they're trying to build

that on their own as well. So this is a major, major effort, very much underlying the whole future plans Apple has. And you know there's a few services Apple has in the works right now that go well beyond Apple Pay. They're working on a buy now later program actually to buy now later programs to compete with the firm and others that will launch, you know, this year and next. And you're also seeing them work on a hardware subscription service which also is going to rely on this new platform,

particularly for subscribing monthly to an iPhone. Quickly, when can we expect the first product that will rely on this new system, So buy now, Pay Later will be the first product, and that will launch either this year or next. All right, Mark German with get another scoop. Thanks so much, Mark, as always, thanks, and that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. You don't forget to check out our podcast.

You can find it on the terminal, Apple, Spotify, i Heeart, anywhere you get your podcast for this daily news round up, catch it every day. I'm Emily checking in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg,