Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news from the heart of where innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
Good morning.
I'm Tim Stenebeck and I'm Katie Grefeld Greifeld. It is Friday. We're both in New York City. Welcome to Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up metas Nick Klegg steps down as president of Global Affairs and is replaced by a longtime exec with Republican ties ahead of Trump's second term.
Plus TikTok in focus with a lumin ban later this month, will the Supreme Court.
Save the day?
And China flex is its lithium dominance by planning tougher scrutiny on next sport so technology to make battery materials. All that and more over the next hour on Bloomberg Technology. First though, a check on the markets. Megamp tech right now driving stocks hire today. Look at that the NASZAQ one hundred doll a full percentage point eighty six stocks higher, led by Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft. On the downside, we
got Apple lower again. We're going to be speaking with Ryan Vestelica in just a few minutes on the company's longest losing streak since November, down more than six percent from that post Christmas all time high. As far as the index go, the big question, Katie, can today's gains hold because we saw the same thing play out yesterday when stocks started out a little higher than closed lower.
Absolutely, yesterday was actually the worst trading day of the year. Yeah, thank you for laughing.
You got it.
I got to check out on big quite higher by half a percentage point right now, arising for a fourth day in a row. Still investors pulling money from that ibit ETF three hundred and thirty three million dollars yesterday. That's according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
I will say that was its worst outflow ever. But for a fifty billion dollar plus fund, it's amazing that only three hundred million dollar counts as a record outflow.
But in any case, let's talk about.
Some individual names here, and we have to talk about what's going on with Nvidia shares. You talk about big tech driving the day, it's in Nvidia that is driving. The index is higher right now, up about three and a half percent. Not a huge move in the grand scheme.
Of life.
But that is your biggest points contributor to the S and P five hundreds gain right now. Similar story if you take a look at the NASAQ one hundred.
So that's some good news.
Let's talk about Apple though, because of course, Tim, you mentioned that in.
Apple there's a lot of fears about China right now, and you.
Can see that those fears if you take a look at the five day chart right now, down six percent over the last five days. That is its longest such streak since April. So definitely a lot of concerns about Apple. Let's talk about them all now with Ryan Vlastelica joining us and Ryan when it comes to Apple and China fears, of course, remember Ruter's reported on Thursday that the company
is offering discounted smartphones in China. It feels like this has been the baarcase for a while for this company.
Yeah, good morning, thanks for having me.
So.
Yeah, China is a major market for Apple, no surprise about that. And the latest data on you know, monthly sales and shipments of iPhones in the country, you know.
Have been sort of muted.
Is sort of just sort of the overall takeaway and given just the size of that market, given the importance of the iPhone sixteen, which is of course the first one to have AI features, the fact that that is being met with some you know, weak sales data out of China, that's a little bit of a cause for concern, especially when you're looking at a backdrop that could have elevated terraf risks, you know, slower growth potential and just
whole you know, general list of concerns out there. So the fact that you're seeing weakness in China is certainly just a reason for people to start the year off on a little bit of a more cautious note, especially given how strong it performed going into the you know, the end of twenty twenty four.
I feel like this is how we started last year, Ryan, with all these concerns about China, and then Apple just you know, hit it out of the park, as it does seemingly all the time.
What's going on here, Well, you certainly have plenty of reasons for people to be optimistic, because you do have this sort of long term story of AI entering the iPhone, you know, more applications being released with AI features. That's something that's going to be playing out over the course of not only twenty twenty five, but you know, twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven, and it's likely we'll start to see more upgrades over time. So that's something
for people to be optimistic about. AI probably means higher services growth or maybe more cloud growth. There's all kinds of potential tail ones associated with it.
But just for the time.
Being, given you have such a major market out there seeing a little bit of a shakiness, it's probably not surprising, you know, can as people continue to wonder about what is Apple's overall growth rate going to be? Is it going to be as strong at other names within big tech? How does evaluation look relative to other names within big tech? Just reasons maybe again for people maybe to be easing off a little bit in the first days of the year.
Bloomberg's Ryan Bostelica, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
For more on the broader tech market, Mark Mahaney, Evercore ISI Senior Managing director joins us now Mark good as always to see you.
Nazak one hundred last.
Year, up by close to twenty five percent in twenty twenty three, high by more than fifty percent. The tech stocks that you follow still room to run higher in twenty twenty five.
I think so.
But look the setup here, as we were in a two and a half years into a major bull market. It started in the middle of twenty twenty two after we'd had this shock of this dramatic ramp in interest rates, and since then tech stocks have done really nothing but go up. At some point that'll fade, and I think it'll face start fading this year. I don't think you'll have the outperformance going into this year's you had the last two years. Maybe that's an easy statement to make.
I look at the fundamentals of the group. I look at the Internet names, and I look at online retail, online travel, cloud computingising, and I think the growth rates there are relatively sustainable. All of the checks we had at the end of last year going in the beginning
of this year have been relatively constructive. We also had record high margins, and I think those margins are largely sustainable because I think the sector as a whole is just being more judicious about headcount ads than they were in the past. And I do think the third factor here is this Ai jen Ai. I think it's a gift that keeps on is going to keep on giving for quite some time. It just leads to more efficient processes, better revenue streams, etc. So there's a couple of reasons
to stay fundamentally constructive. I just there's very little dislocation. There's very little. Very few of the major tech stocks that I look at really look dislocated. The one that I really like here that I think is is Uber.
Well, talk to us about that because ubert it's so dominant compared to Lift, but the fact that it hasn't exactly kept up with some of the other Internet large cap names that you cover that have seen the really dramatic multiple expansion. What is the bowl case for Uber going forward?
Well, let me start with the barecases.
You know, you did have a slow down in mobility bookings that's their ride share business in the back half of last year of twenty four. And then there's really the concern over robotaxis and whether they'll obviate the need to ever have ride sharing networks in the future.
I mean, it's possible that that happens.
I'm taking the other side on that, But those are the two factors that have cost the stock to correct from like mid eighties down to sixty sixty dollars, a pretty material correction. The stocks I look at is the only one that's really materially corrected. But I think that creates the opportunity because I think as the largest demand aggregator out there, I think that robotaxis will find a
place on ubers network. We got two cities Austin in Atlanta where we're going to see Weimo robotaxis on ubers network. And my guess is that you know, I'm a big fan of robotaxis here and of Weimo here in San Francisco, and I think you're going to see more competition in that space in the future, and I think you'll see more of those cars on Uber's network. And evidence that they will be on Uber's network is the catalyst on the shares.
Well.
I've never been in a way though, but I'll be in sanfor in about two weeks.
Should do it. It's awesome. Yeah, it's so cool.
I have a real fear of my own mortality, so well, we'll put a pin in that. But in any case, Mark, I'm taking a look at your notes.
You mentioned.
Of course those dislocated high quality stocks. Uber is among them, so is ARABNB so is Alphabet, And that caught my attention because Alphabet is in a bit of a different league than the airbnbs and the ubers of this market.
Well Google, I would say that Google at one sixty was dislocated a one ninety. I'm not sure it is, but we've got some events coming up. There's two particular of this is all getting out of fundamentals. This is all regulatory. First is the DOJ's anti trust case against Google and Google asst this in terms of its search business. We're not going to get really great visibility into this until August unless there's some sort of settlements, and I think the chances of the settlements went up when we
had the US electoral results. Well, you know, that's a very hard thing to handicap. But that's one factor out there. And then the other one is the TikTok ban, and you know we're days away from this band going into effect.
Now.
It's possible to get stayed. There is a provision in the law for that. It's possible to get stayed. And it's possible that there's some sort of force sale or a sale of TikTok. But if there is a TikTok ban, and I think the market is really heavily discounting this by more than they probably should. If there is a banning of TikTok, I think the beneficiaries of this are going to be Google YouTube YouTube shorts okay, and reels at meta.
Who's the bigger beneficiary if the band goes into effecting meta platforms because of what's going on with Instagram and reels?
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, just you know, users, if you really can't, if I can't really use TikTok like you're gonna there's a wonderful value proposition to TikTok, and so people will look for other short form video places. Reels is kind of the topless, but those YouTube shorts, so just meta by hair over Google.
But they both are beneficiaries.
And then advertisers have got these ad format's nailed, They've got them locked in.
They can't put them on TikTok. They're going to have to find other.
Places, and the two obvious places are Google and Meta.
What's the percentage chance mark that you think this ban actually goes through with TikTok, I don't know.
I guess it's still a minority chance, So you know, I don't think it's a probability. It's less than fifty percent chance. Maybe it's twenty twenty five percent. I'm just struck by talking with investors as a belief that there's single digital percent chance that it goes through. But it is the law of the land, and this is not a First Amendment issue. I know this First Amendment aspects
to it. It's really national security, and this was this was a pretty broad bipartisan congressional law that went into effect. I mean that was pretty well voted on by both Democrats and Republicans, and so you know, this is the law of the land that's going to go into effect.
It, but who knows what happens in the next couple of weeks. So I'm a little baffled by this.
But anyway, that's the law of land, and if it does go into effect, it you know there's a clear positive catalyst for both Google and Meta.
Yeah, it'll be fascinating to see how that actually shakes out. But Mark, before we let you go, when it comes to TikTok and potential beneficiaries of a band, we were actually talking about this in one of our morning meetings, that you take a look at the content on reels, for example, A lot of it is recycled content from TikTok. So how urgent of a question is it for Meta to actually attract the creators onto their own platform.
Oh, it's critical for them to do that. I mean whether or not there's a TikTok ban. I just think if there's a TikTok ban, those creators are going to be forced to take their audiences and build them somewhere else. And I'd be surprised if major TikTok A lot of TikTok creators. I think you are somewhat diversified anyway. I know there's some that aren't, but I think there's a good number that are so anyway.
Yeah, this has always been the drive of Meta is.
To attract more more short form video content and talent over to its network.
I think they'll be able to do that.
They've been pretty successful at doing it in a lot of different areas.
Yeah.
Well, Mark, great point to leave it on. Really appreciate the time that is. Mark Behiney of Evercore isi A.
You're gonna be okay if TikTok ats man, I'm.
Going to be pretty sad. I spent about three hours there a day, So I mean, maybe it'll be good.
For me, Katie to real's it'll be that'll be huge.
Bomtas Nick Clegg is stepping down from his role as president of Global Affairs and will be replaced by Joel Kaplan. He is a longtime executive with Republican ties. Now this move marks a shift by the social media giant, so it prepares for a second Trump presidency. For more, We're joined now by Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner, and of course Clegg said of Kaplan that he was clearly the right person for the right job at the right time.
Kurt tell us, why.
Yeah, Well, as you mentioned, Katie, this is a transition into you know, Trump's second term, and this is someone who is you know, Joel Kaplan being someone with Republican ties, with a lot of history with the Republican Party.
You know, works for George W.
Bush's administration way back in the day. So someone who I think can maybe speak that language better than Nick Clegg, who you know, came over from the UK. I do think that this sort of signals, you know, that Meta certainly sees the most important relationships right now being domestic right, and not necessarily what's going on in Europe where there's a ton of regulatory issues, which is something I think Nick Clegg was very well positioned to handle.
Kurt Joel Kaplan may be somebody with Republican Party ties, but the Republican Party that he was part.
Of the George W.
Bush administration, for example, is a far cry from Donald Trump's Republican Party, and in fact, many of the folks in the Republican Party now criticize that administration. And I'm wondering if you think there's going to be any tension there, If there is any tension there, if it still represents a disconnect between meta platforms and the Republican Party of today, yehossibly.
But this is what every big tech company is going to be dealing with, right, which is that the more traditional folks that they have in their policy divisions might not necessarily be the Maga Trump candidate party that we're starting to see really emergent take off.
Now.
It's closer, right, Joel Kaplan is going to be closer in alignment with those types of issues, I think than maybe someone like Nick Klegg. So maybe that helps, But I think the key here is really Mark Zuckerberg's role. Right For the last four years, he has been saying, Hey, I want to be hands off. This is this policy stuff is not for me. I want to focus on product.
I want to focus on the business. But now we see him show up in mar A Lago, we see him calling Donald Trump personally, and I think that Mark Zuckerberg will likely handle the line's share of the relationship with Donald Trump himself, and then you let Joel Kaplan sort of deal with all of this stuff on Capitol Hill where he is very well connected. It's just given all the years that he's been working in this industry.
Bloomberg's Ker Wagner joining us this morning. Thanks so much, Kurt, do appreciate it.
Well, It's not just Metta that is preparing for Trump's second administration. Other big tech leaders have met with the President elect, including the likes of Jeff Bezos, Sunder Pachai, and Tim Cook, all ahead of his return to the White House. For more on the future of Silicon Valley's relationship with Trump. Adam Kavakovich is a Chamber of Progress
CEO and he joins us now. Adam, how would you describe the relationship between technology and the incoming Trump administration, because a lot has changed over the last four years, especially with the rhetoric out of Silicon Valley more pro Trump, I think now than it ever has been.
Yeah, I think you have to factor in two things. One, there's a lot of unhappiness in the tech industry with how the Biden administration has targeted tech and seen tech more as an industry to trash rather than than an
industry to champion. And so frankly, I think there's a lot of frustration from people in Silicon Valley who are not necessarily Trump supporters or even right leaning, but there's been a lot of frustration that the administration hasn't champion in basically, you know, us the country's biggest export, So that's number one. Number Two, everyone has the benefit of having learned from the first Trump term in terms of what worked and what didn't. In terms of how to
deal with president and work with him. I think a lot of tech CEOs look to Tim Cook for this as the CEO who probably managed the first Trump administration the best, and a lot of that, frankly, came down to direct contact between the CEO and Trump himself. As you said, that's not something that can be easily designated to a deputy. Trump really cares about meeting with the CEO, and in fact, that kind of meeting often works that
succeeds with him. So I think that's what a lot of companies are meeting with.
Let's go to what Trump himself has said. Of course, this is a post on social media in late December. Big tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector, and as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of little tech. Which is not a phrase that I've heard before.
But reading maybe truth social is a little tech.
That's true.
Maybe he's talking his book there, but reading between the lines, it seems like that would suggest that this anti trust pressure that has been on these big tech names is going to continue.
Oh.
I don't think there's any doubt about that.
The fact is, you know, the Biden administration has been prosecuting anti trust cases against all of the big tech companies. Some of those started under Trump's first term. I don't expect any of that to go away. But I will say I don't think Trump particularly cares about antitrust as an issue. What I think he really cares about is are these companies.
Nice to him? And I think he's views anti.
Trust lawsuits as leverage, and so I don't think you'll see a lot of settlements, even though you know they'll be sort of right leaning people may not agree with the substance of the suit. I think you will see the Trump administration enforceers keep these suits going because they are leverage over the companies over things like content atoation and speech.
But I do think there's a real interesting question here, which is this little tech question.
You said right.
The Biden administration has had a chill over mergers and acquisitions, and that's been intentional. That's part of their approach to tech m and A and but little tech companies benefit when big tech companies are able to acquire them. In fact, many companies startups want the ability to be acquired as an exit path.
And so this is going to be.
A real test for the Trump administration. Does little tech do do they or do they not want big tech to be free to acquire small companies. Again, I think that's going to be a big tension within their administration's antitrust enforcement.
Adam, what Adam, very quickly, what has been your conversations with members of the incoming Trump administration thus far?
Well, you know, it's been very interesting because I do think they have people who really do want to get it right on things like AI and crypto, people like David Sachs.
They are they are talking to people in the administration.
I think there's frankly, a lot of optimism that on things like crypto, the Trump folks will reverse the hostility that the Biden administration has brought towards the crypto industry.
I think there's a lot of optimism that things.
Like the Biden Executive Order on artificial intelligence will be overturned. And there's a lot of optimism we can shift to a kind of a more of a mode of let's go beat China and other countries on technology. But there's a lot of debates that are going to be kind of up for grabs. There's a big debate about H one b's right now and where you have elements of the Republican Coalition against each other.
So we'll see how those unfold.
All right, Adam, great to get some time with you. That is Adam Kovakovic of the Chamber of Progress Now coming up.
Turow's safety under scrutiny.
After it was revealed that the platform was used for current vehicles in both the New Orleans and the Las Vegas attacks. More next.
Well, Turro's safety team scrambled to return to work after the latest attacks in Las Vegas and New Orleans, where it was revealed that the attackers use the car rental platform to procure their vehicles for more. Bloomberg's Dana Wolman joins us Now, Dan, I think for a lot of people watching these attacks unfold over the last couple of days, this was the first time they heard about Turow. I've been describing it as the kind of like Airbnb of vehicle rentals.
That's how it work.
That is the perfect way to describe it. It is people choosing to rent their own vehicles when and how and at what price they choose, and that makes it a little different from a car rental fleet, where car rental services obviously own the vehicles, so it's really inherently a different level of liability.
I also had not heard about Turow, but this is a company that has been an IPO candidate for a while. And it was interesting to see that in its paperwork to go public, it actually noted that vehicle damage and other safety and security issues could harm their reputation, and that's what.
We saw absolutely.
I don't think these are the exact kind of incidents they had in mind, but yes, it is people renting each other's vehicles, and there's a similar risk as Tim said on Airbnb, where someone could trash someone else's property, word could get out, and to the extent that the service might grow through word of mouth, the reputation could also sour through word of mouth.
There are questions about background checks coming out now. We're given that these two vehicles were used by folks who ended up causing loss of life, whether it was their own or others. The thing is they don't do background checks with a normal rental car company. I don't think so. I don't know if that's necessarily apples and oranges here apples to apples right.
What the company would say and has said publicly, is that the suspects in both attacks did not have criminal records that would have shown up in any.
Sort of checks.
That said, our team is very interested and is continuing to report on exactly how the checks work at Touro. Like so many algorithms out there in different services, the algorithm here seems pre nebulous. It seems to be dozens of different data points that are checked very quickly, even by the company's own admission and regulatory filings. Most users are approved within seconds, how exactly and based on what criteria? We're trying to find that out as well.
All right, Dana, look forward to more reporting from you and your team, that is Bloomberg's Dana Lman, Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology.
I'm Katie Greifelp and.
I'm Jim Steinovic, both here in New York City.
Let's go to check on these markets.
Of course, we have green on the screen, a nice turnaround from yesterday's closed. You can see the NASAQ one hundred up by more than one percent one point two percent right now. A lot of those games being led by Nvidio, of course, having a good day today, pulling its my but pretty broad breath in the technology sector overall. You take a look at the risk appetite being expressed
in bitcoin right now. Bitcoin also higher to the tune about nine tenths of a person, and of course we're still below one hundred thousand dollars per coin, but never said ever. Maybe we'll get back there, maybe even today, given how volatile bitcoin is. But let's talk about Rivian. Of course, this was one of the big stories from this morning. Rivian out with its fourth quarter production numbers beating estimates. Production came out with about twelve seven hundred vehicles.
The estimate had been for eleven four hundred. So you're seeing, of course, Rivian shares being rewarded in a big way right now, up about twenty one point six percent.
Tesla getting in on the action.
Remember that disappointment that we saw with deliveries fourth quarter deliveries for Tesla yesterday a distant memory. Tesla shares also up by about four point six percent right now.
Tim CFIA actually reiterating its sell opinion on shares of Rivian, a price target of eight dollars.
Look at that hikes. Yeah, shares trading at sixteen dollars right now.
We're talking to Garret Nelson a little later on a Bloomberg and BusinessWeek. Hey, let's get on over to tech and rising global trade tensions, with China planning tougher scrutiny on xt of technology to make battery materials. This as Beijing looks to protect its grip on the crucial supply chain. This is according to a notice seeking public opinion from
the Ministry of Commerce on Thursday. Bloomberg's Mike Shepard joins us for more Mike when it comes to rising trade tensions, when it comes to tariffs and protectionism, it certainly is a game that two can play. How much leverage does China have when it comes to exports of these critical materials.
Well, it matters because these are the essential ingredients to a lot of things, and in this case, they're focusing on what goes into the batteries that will be essential and critical to powering this next generation of electric vehicles, not only here in the US.
But elsewhere around the world. This is.
A field and industry, a sector that China really has developed a strong advantage in developing the technology needed to refine the chemicals used in making a car battery, you know, the kind that you'd see in the electric vehicles on our streets. It's also been behind the rise of their electric vehicle makers, most notably byd which have emerged as global leaders. So this is an area where they can actually say, oh no, we're going to try to fence
you off to protect our advantage. And in turn, the US has seen a risk coming from car makers like BYD. Earlier this year, we saw the Biden administration impose steep tariffs on imports into the US of Chinese electric vehels, really designed to keep them out of this market, to avoid undercutting the efforts to get domestic car makers here to develop evs of their own, with advanced technology of their own.
And of course we're talking just more than two weeks before Trump's inauguration for his second term. I mean, what is the mood music when it comes to the second Trump administration and China. Of course, being hawkish on China. That is sort of a bipartisan vibe that we have going on here. But what would you imagine the Trump administration's response would be to action such as this?
Well, okay, I think it's time to pull the lens back a little bit and see this in the broader
context of the US China relationship on technology. The Biden administration has been imposing restrictions on a lot of sensitive technology, and that includes exports of advanced semiconductor making equipment and also high bandwidth memory chipsy's are the two of the most notable moves made by the US in recent months, and those are designed to undercut Beijing's ability to stoke a semiconductor manufacturing base of its own at an advanced
level and advanced enough to develop artificial intelligence that would help its military. And that's an advantage that the US
does not want to see developed by Beijing. And certainly the Trump administration will not alter course on that, and we will expect to see the Trump administration not only embrace certain types of export controls applied by the Biden administration, but perhaps try to expand them and look for ways to retaliate as well, and try to maybe foster some domestic investment in these areas as well.
All Right, my great perspective, as always, that is Bloomberg's Mike Sheppard joining us from Washington. Let's keep the conversation going, because another story we're keeping an eye on is the future of H one B visas and America's tech industry under the new administration. Here's former US Representative Denver Riggleman of Virginia weighing in on Elon Musk's influence on the matter. He spoke with Bloomberg's Balance of Power co host Joe Matthew earlier this week.
Yeah, I'd have lunch with Elon and Jlad.
I thought, what's going on with Elon Musk here? We're already seeing a little bit of a breakdown over the H one B situation. Yeah, the Maga versus Musk situation tenuous. Well, a year or two from now, will he still have the president's year?
No, no, no, I mean the thing about H one B's what's interesting. You know, he's going again some really big packs on the far right, like Numbers USA and things like that. But for me, I'm an H one BH two, a an HTV supporter based on our district's very rural. But we also have a lot of technology in Virginia and the Commonwealth.
Let's bring in now ericson immigration group partner at HIBBA ANDVERT joining us now. Great to have you with us. And it's interesting because after you saw Elon Musk's comments on social media over the holiday period, you had Donald Trump kind of fall in line and voice his own support for H one B Visas of course, it'll be interesting to see if he sticks to that view as we get deeper into his administration.
But give us some context here.
We talk about H one B visas in the context of the tech industry all the time.
What role do they play though?
So H one B visas actually play a very critical role. American companies are the most scessful companies in the world in a variety of industries and sectors, and part of their success is attributed to their ability to hire the
best and brightest from around the world. Now, the H one B visa is one of the ways in which companies are able to hire and retain talent from around the world and remain competitive and global leaders in industries ranging from technology to semiconductor to AI to the financial industry, a variety of industries.
We know we have the first Trump administration to look back to for data for context. You were kind of have to share some numbers with our team ahead of this, and you noted that the denial rate for these H one B visas before Trump took office with six percent, then it increased to an all time high of twenty four percent in twenty eighteen, then immediately dropped down to
four percent during Biden's first year in office. Can we look to that happening again, or do you think this time will be different given that Elon Musk has the year of the president and he's so supportive of this type of visa.
I think it remains to be seen whether or not the second Trump administration is in any way going to be different. Obviously, folks that are in the industry are watching the way in which the Trump administration and the immigration restrictionists reconcile with the fact that there are certain
tech leaders that are close to President Trump. But if we have, you know, if basically what we have to go on is what happened during the first Trump administration, And to your point, the denial rates did increase to an all time high, and then overall processing times increased, and it was just more inefficient and difficult to obtain the same visas for the foreign workers on the part
of a lot of these companies. And so what a lot of us in the industry are watching is to see whether or not there's going to be a repeat of that the second time around.
Do you believe that within a short period of time, say the next Trump administration, the US will be able to put an infrastructure in place to actually train Americans to do this type of work or did that ship sail.
Actually, what I think a lot of people don't realize is that the H one V VISA program itself contains protections that are designed just for that. The H one B VISA program has numerous protections that are designed to ensure that if a company is going to hire a foreign worker, no harm is coming to a US worker. There are also certain fees that need to be paid to the government to a company that H one B filing. The purpose of some of those fees is to be
able to fund the training of American workers. So I think that the investment and training in the US workforce is ongoing, and I think most people would be surprised to learn that the H one B VISA petition actually plays a role in that.
I want to talk too about the fact that you have a lot of big tech leaders kind of coming to Mara a Lago and kind of kissing the ring when it comes to Donald Trump, of course, and he also is surrounded by the likes of Elon Musk and other big supporters of the H one B VISA process.
And we were talking about the fact that for now.
Donald Trump does seem to support the initiative despite what we saw in the first term. What's your outlook for whether that remains the case.
So what I'm going to be watching out for is a repeat of the first Trump administration, and what we're ensuring is that companies that we work with are properly prepared for some of the same things happening a second time around. Honestly, I think it remains to be seen the way that the tech leaders that are close to President Trump reconcile with the folks that have a little bit of a different stance when it comes to legal immigration.
I of course am optimistic and hoping that it's not necessarily going to be an exact repeat, because if we take a step back, I think folks will realize that this is actually a economic win win on all sides. In order for our companies to continue to be global leaders, we need to be able to hire the best and brightest from around the world, and the H one b V says a really important way in which we do that.
Eric's an Immigration Group partner. He abat Enver. Thanks so much for joining us. Do appreciate it coming up. But we're going to be.
Joined by Kathy Gal from Sapphire Ventures to share some of the firm's predictions for AI in twenty twenty five.
This is Bloomberg, Well, the.
Race to AI enhanced human productivity is on. The coming year will feature AI companies grappling with pushing out software that can do more with less help from humans and figuring out how to train the most powerful models. Bloomberg's Rachel Metz has more on AI predictions for twenty twenty five. Rachel, Happy New year to you. What can we expect from the world of AI when it comes to the coming year.
I think we're going to see a couple of things. One is a lot of focus on so called agents. This would be systems that use AI to accomplish tasks, either with no help or with just a little bit of help from humans. AI software that can go out and do something like us, say, help you plan a trip, or help you to process certain kinds of information more efficiently in a more complicated way than just like looking over a document.
So we've been talking to people a lot about that.
One of the other things that we're probably going to be seeing more hearing people talk more about is data. Data Very clearly became a issue for a lot of companies this year, not having more data if they want to train even more powerful systems than what they've already built. So it'll be interesting to see how companies find new sources of data if they look at synthetic data, which would be in some cases data that's generated by aisystems themselves.
Bloomberg's Rachel Metz out there in San Francisco. Got to leave it there, Thanks Rachel, Well, JENNAI has been a dominant force in tech in twenty twenty four, but also in VC, and it might remain that way in twenty twenty five. That's according to the venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures. Kathy Galo's partner at Sapphire Adventures, and she joins us
now to share some of the firm's predictions. Kathy, I want to start with something that Rachel said about this being the year where we see more and more AI agents. One of Sapphire Adventures predictions is that agents will begin to deliver on hype. I got to tell you Katie Gridfield sitting right next to me, she's not impressed with AI agents right now?
Is she going to be this year?
Well, that's a great question. I have to agree with Rachel. I think you're going to start to see agents come into the scene in a very, very big way. In many ways, the AI agent is a natural evolution of
what we saw with AI copilots and AI chatbots. So another example would be, whereas AI agents are able to autonomously execute actions or entire workflows, chatboss and co pilots were really more Q and A. And where I get really excited is the fact that if we can automate entire workflows, that frees up so much human capacity to
do the more creative and more strategic work. Now that being said, I do also agree with Katie right A lot of the challenges with widespread adoption and implementation of agents will be in what I call kind of the blast mile problems. This is the governance, the privacy, the protections, the devils in the details, and that has yet to be seen.
Okay, agents.
One of your predictions, what about when it comes to AI generated video? Because twenty twenty four was the year we saw a wider release of Sora from Open AI. I think a lot of people were pretty impressed by that. How are we going to see AI generated video this year?
I think we're going to see a lot of multimodal in general, tim but we're going to see a lot more video and we're going to see a lot more voice. The models have been developing extremely rapidly. I don't know if you guys have seen some of the recent AI generated videos from Sora and other video models, but they're incredible. They are starting to feel a lot more lifelike. The
latency is being reduced. The same goes with voice, So I think we're going to see much more widespread adoption as individual video and voice applications as well as full multimodal applications, which means there will be voice, they'll be text, there'll be video and images combined into one.
Yeah. I've seen some of those videos and they're pretty creepy. They're very realistic.
Yess.
So just if you call on Twitter or x.
Right now, you can find a whole bunch of them. But Kathy, I want to talk a little bit more about how companies might use AI in the year ahead because I speak to a lot of investors and they want to stay in the hardware space, investing in the chip makers because they're not clear yet on how companies will actually use AI and maybe actually boost productivity. Do we get further along in that investment timeline in twenty twenty five.
That's such a great question, Katie. Well, let's talk about what happened in twenty twenty four to set the stage for what we think might happen in twenty twenty five. In my view, twenty twenty four is a year where Ai really went mainstream. Ninety two percent of the Fortune five hundred adopted Jenai solutions internally and spent around fourteen
billion dollars on these solutions. But what's even more importantly, a lot of major companies, so think Walmart, JP, Morgan, Chase, Microsoft, Google, all announced in their public earnings calls that they've had significant success in significant measurable ROI using their Genai projects internally. So that gives me a lot of hope and confidence
that a budgets will continue to expand into twenty twenty five. Now, the big question is can the hype turn into actual proof in a wide scale manner in twenty twenty five. And in order to see that, we're going to have to see more adoption amongst all the employees at a company, not just within certain functions or certain specific projects, and we have to see more guidelines on how we actually measure ROI.
All right, Kathy, great to speak with you, looking forward to checking in as we get deeper into twenty twenty five.
That is Kathy Gal.
She is partner over at Sapphire Ventures.
Let's talk media deals because Paramount and Skuidance responded to critics of their pending merger, arguing that the critics filings are defective and lack merit. The company's claim critics fail to show how they will be harmed by the deal and that some of the proposed measures are unconstitutional. Paramount agreed to merge with Skydance back in July, and the deal would make Skydance's founder David Ellison the controlling shareholder
and CEO of Paramount. Now, let's take a little wider look into the world of entertainment and the box office this coming year with Bloomberg's Chris Palmery, Chris, I want to talk about the box office this year as well as what's happening with Paramount and Skuydance, because this is the deal that really, as you know, just never ends. What specifically did the critics do the critics have a problem with when it comes to this pending merger.
Well, there was some sort of a smattering of opponents, I guess most notably is a group that is challenging them. It's supposedly a nonpartisan political political group, but tends to side with conservatives and saying that the you know, big media is biased and said that you know, CBS News you know needs to you know, speak to everybody in the country, and that we actually got a conciliatory sort of statement from them today saying that they liked what
they heard in Paramounts filing yesterday to the FCC. So you know, that was one of the hurdles. We'll still likely hear more from the FCC. Brendan car, the incoming chairman, is of early outspot on this issue of fairness in the media, and that will be sort of the final hurdle probably for.
Paramount so TVD what happens there. I will note that Paramount Chairs fell twenty nine percent last year. They actually haven't posted a positive year since twenty sixteen, Tim, so some good news is needed for that company.
We'll see.
I do want to talk about the box office though, while we have you Chris because there's this frustration out there that I'm sure you're well acquainted with, is that there's nothing original anymore. It's just all sequels and it's reimaginations of old movies. Are we expecting more of the same in twenty twenty five?
Yes and no.
There are certainly gonna be a lot of sequels. You know, Mission Imposswell, Captain America Avatar, so we'll be plenty of that. There are a bunch of movies coming out f One for example. Once it won't resonate until you start to see the ads, but original movies from all tour directors, you know who may stand out. And that's why analysts are predicting that this year will be a little bit
better than last year. Still not back to the pre pandemic levels, but you know, the potentially the best year for the box office since the pandemic.
You say, still not back to do we ever get back to pre pandemic levels?
An I was saying, well, I mean if you look at the actual attendance numbers, it is way down, I mean almost half the level of people going to the theaters that they used to.
I mean, ticket prices are up and that sort of helps some of it.
More people are.
Going to these big screen at a higher price ticket formats, so that's helping the overall Fox office number. But yeah, no, Americans are definitely not going.
To the movies like they used to.
There's just so much alternatives online and in many cases that those movies come online in just a matter of weeks.
All right, Chris, gott to leave it there. Really appreciate your time. That is Bloomberg's Chris Paul Mary.
Do you ever go to the movies?
I went to the movies on Christmas Day. I saw a Complete Unknown starring Timothy shell May.
It was really good.
Actually, that's the Bob Dylan one.
Yeah, and I guess that is new.
I mean, Bob Dylan's been alive for a while, but it's new content in any case.
That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Next week, be Tech is heading out to see us in Las Vegas two in for conversations with some of the biggest names in AI, chicks and more.
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