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As the Blomberg Technology coming up, Micron planets after reporting earnings, and AI just couldn't make up for the smartphone and PC cheap weakness. Plus Elo Musk wielding his political power as the US now risks a government shutdown. We discuss as impact on the next stopgap bill, and Apple holds its plans for an iPhone hardware subscription service. This and much more on Apple News later this hour. But first
weche can on one key stock. It is down more than seventeen percent and it is having its worst day since March twenty twenty. Micron really slumping on the back of its numbers, and we get straight to it the why, the how, as you see that it eradicates most of its gains year to date.
We go to Blue meg Intelligence analyst Jake.
Silverman first, whose report lays out that the outlook missed by twelve percent and week a smartphone PC in auto bit demand.
This is it.
We were all really excited about high bandwidth memory for AI applications, but really it comes back to you and me not buying more phones.
Yeah.
Well, look, there was definitely an inventory correction to some extent for fiscal two Q and this was starting to happen earlier this year. Actually we're starting to see this in June, July, August, and the reason primarily was to build the inventory ahead of price increases that did occur but now are starting to impact the company's demand.
I see.
So Sanja Marotra is really trying to set and spell out that the second half it's going to turn around. We're actually going to see maybe even a growth of the PC market of some five percent in twenty twenty five.
But what spurs that, Well, there's typical seasonal demand, so we would hope to see seasonal growth in the second half regardless. But there's also the opportunity where there's content expansion within AIPCS AI smartphones, So there's an opportunity there. Whether or not that occurs, I think that still remains to be seen, but there's still optimism that there can be growth in the second half of the year versus the first half.
So look, as we're try and get our head.
Around the actual demand for AI in the consumer radiator department. In the data center, it is then, what four hundred percent growth in terms of their AI demand and sales.
Why is that not bringing in enough revenue yet?
Though?
Well, so, they do have a number of products that are really impacting data center and demand. So high bandwidth memory is probably the most talked about, but it's actually still the most nascent for them. It's really not generating the bulk of the growth yet.
So they still have other products.
Like high capacity DRAM modules, stems, LPDDR five. They're really for servers, both AI and traditional compute. Traditional compute was actually a bit better than had been previously anticipated. But on the other hand, there's also data center SSDs, which seemed to be moderating near term, where they had been experiencing some pretty tremendous growth beforehand and had been benefiting a lot from share gains as well well.
With meg Intelligence analyst Jake Silvan breaking down what is a pretty painful day in HQ in Voise, Idaho. But now let's go out to an investor in the scene. Kim forest Cio of Boca Capital Partners thirty five million dollars in assets under management, and Kim, you'll take on what is a absolute punishment on the stop today.
Absolutely, Well, I've been doing this for her number of years, since nineteen ninety nine. And well I was a sales side analyst and a biside analyst than a PM then chief investment officer of my own firm. That being said, this is not my first day at this rodeo and Micron in particular, and all the memory kind of companies seem to have this boom bust cycle, and the boom and bust can be really close to each other, as evidenced by the price chart of Micron.
So what's an investor to do? Well? Some people would like to be able.
To trade this know when to go in low, you know when the high is God bless you on that. I think what you have to do is look at Micron and say it has terrific growth. There are very few players in this space. There's maybe six or seven companies that are competitors, and for the most part, sometimes bad things like this happen, but sometimes good things happen too. And to be able to trade around that around these events where there's a sudden shortfall in demand, but it
will be made up. I think it's more of a buying opportunity than getting out now. The other thing is is, if you look at that chart, some people bought it at much higher prices this year, and it could be tax lost selling going on that's really driving the price down today.
So there's a seasonality element to all of this. It's interesting if you go to analyst recommendations at the moment, a lot of people cut their price targets, but still you've got thirty seven buys on this stock, You've only got one cell, and the overall consensus for price target it's still at one hundred and thirty five. You've got room to run up from an eighty five dollars.
But how does Sanjay Morotra.
Get us there in terms of what he needs to signal now to the market.
How much can he.
Say, look, put aside China, put aside my exposure to the consumer, I'm all in on AI.
Well, I think he made the case that he's all in on AI right, Like they have the products that AI wants and needs. AI for many reasons, has saved this market, right. I mean in video and meta certainly have driven it. But the real issue here is the AI people are buying stuff and building out their data centers, and I don't know that that's going to stop in any you know, definable time.
And I did you sorry just so, But in that Kim, did you get that sort of easing of any anxiety, whether or not it was closely held or far away that we might be at some pivot point where the demand does start.
To ease up.
Sure?
I mean, well, here's here's what investors really have to understand. Micron is a very small world in which all of its clients are either all on or all off, or so it seems.
And if you remember when we were.
Building out regular cloud database or cloud data centers, it's lumpy.
And what I mean by that is you're either.
Building out or you're not, and all of a sudden it can stop. And whenever several companies that have been building out data centers stopped, you know, the providers get clover. That's just the nature of this, and we don't know when it's going to stop. So investors have to be aware that we're not going to be spending in perpetuity to.
Build out AI.
There will be a day.
When people take a pause and actually have to you know, reap the rewards of building this product and you know, having people pay for the.
Service these mega clusters at a moment though that we seem to be seeing is not a signal of us pulling back anytime soon. But does macro policy, does a new administration in any way dampen the spirits or only accelerate them?
Kim, It doesn't seem so, because the companies that are building these data centers out have enough money from what they're doing now. They don't need to be able to say in the future, I'll be able to you know, in some very definable timeline, I need to get my money back. So they are going to be building these things out because they have the cash flow. And I'm talking to about Microsoft, Google and Meta, their regular businesses are providing the capital to build out data centers.
So you said this potentially could be a buying moment for Micron. What about the chip space more broadly, because everyone's been suddenly in on this focus on software trade.
Right, Well, I think it's great, Like at some point software has to come back to winning.
I used to be a software engineer and I.
Would love to be able to like buy a good software company that I think will grow again in perpetuity.
I like moneymaking machines.
Microsoft has been that, although it had a lull in the you know, twenty ten to twenty fourteen range something like that. But yeah, software is great, but hardware is what is driving me crazy right now, because it seems there is no lack of demand and I think the software will follow.
Now.
A lot of people are Momentum investors, and I worry about Nvidia about that because Broadcom's kind of taken all or Era out of the room for Nvidia.
Kim Forest just dampening our animal spirits when it comes to some of the key trades that have been in this here, Kim, we so appreciate it. Boca Capital Partners wishing you happily holidays, just cio there. Meanwhile, look, the Biden administration has cemented a deal to give sk Heinex, course another high bandwidth memory maker, close to four hundred and sixty million dollars in grants and five hundred million
in loans. This is to support a facility in Indiana which will focus on packaging chips sent to the US from sk Heinex plants in South Korea.
The deal is a key part of.
US efforts to build a domestic semiconductor supply chain. Now coming up, Elon Musk's influence in Washington being felt already as he helps kill a stop gap funding bill. More on that next, this is blue Meg Technology. The last minute government funding bill has been scrapped by House Speaker Mike Johnson after urged lawmakers and President elect Trump to risk a government shutdown rather than accept for post stop gap bill.
Room mergs Mike Shephard joins us for more.
And if anyone had potentially been doubting or questioning the influence of being on Musk, that proved wrong.
Here those doubts were erased. And in resounding forum yesterday it was almost like on cue. We saw Elon Musk use the power of his x ex social media platform to gin up opposition and amplify it very quickly and within ours. President elect Donald Trump and Vice President elect JD.
Vance chimed in and said that day two oppose this spending deal, which have been negotiated for weeks, if not months, to try to revert a government shutdown that will come as soon as Saturday morning if lawmakers can't go back to the drawing board and put together something on the fly, which looks really unlikely right now.
Republicans saying that that phone has been ringing off the hooks on the back of this call to arms.
To call your lawmaker, hasn get it taken off.
He's shown his political clout, but behind the scenes, he's also building a team, taking expertise from those he knows already and indeed attending every meeting that seems to be going on.
In mar Laga.
Well, you're right, Caroline, because what we've also seen is Musk using this bully pulpit of X to also give wing to this venture that Donald Trump appointed him and Vivek Ramaswami, one of Trump's campaign.
Rivals, to lead.
That's the Department of Government Efficiency. Now keep in mind it's not really a department. It wasn't an agency created by Congress. But its goal is to do kind of what they're asking for in their social media communications yesterday, and that is cut down the size of government, reduced spending, reduced the scope of government. And this entity, if you will, lack of a lack of a better run, we'll call it that. It is still taking shape, but we do
know that they are hiring. Thanks for really great scoop by our colleagues yesterday, we already know that they have hired about ten people. And Elon Musk has into an executive from the boring company and a former Trump Chief technology officer in his administration the prior administration, to lead
the hiring push. They've been talking to candidates. They're looking for software engineers, including folks with artificial intelligence expertise, and the idea is that they would apply that to the vast reams of government data, perhaps to try to figure out what are the efficiencies that could be gained.
I want to where that talent comes from, because of course he's been busy hiring an XAI in that department too. Mike Shepard a joy to have him here in New York. Let's just talk a little bit about lev space more broadly as well, because Tesla is in early talks. We understand the city of Austin about rolling out a fleet of autonomous vehicles.
As early as next year.
In emails acquired by Bloomberg, Tesla employees have been communicating with the Texas city, so it's at least May to establish safety expectations for the vehicles. The emails go on further saying that Tesla has not yet finalized its decision
for an Austin deployment. Let's stick on Tesla, Let's stick on EV landscape, Let's stick on all things in La Mosque as well, and how all of this is set to change under the twenty twenty five percent and Electrump administration, and maybe we see some of those EV incentives wound down,
even a possibility of fast tracking autonomous driving too. We've got a perfect person, Steve Westley's with us Wesley Group managing partner, who used to be on the border of the EV giant as well as your key player in California politics, and therefore this is the perfect dimension to discuss this with you. How are you thinking the EV landscape changes come January twentieth, Well, look.
Let's look at the big picture first.
So people are saying EV growth is slowing down, nonsense. One out of five of all cars sold globally in twenty twenty four will be electric or hybrid. So we're living in an EV world and it's just moving faster. That's twenty five percent year over year growth, seventeen million evs sold, globally, US Canada a solid growth about twelve percent, China red hot at forty percent. The big stories is you talked about are kind of tesla versus byd.
Who's going to be global leader?
And then there's this other issue of US versus China and how are terrorists going to affect this? And what people have to remember US has already slapped terriffs on any Chinese car sold in the US.
But that's firstly none.
You've got to ask the question of what happens at the Chinese slap one hundred percent terriffs on US cars or automakers.
Selling cars that happened.
Do you think there's a high risk even for a tesla?
Oh?
Look, whatever, there are terrifts slapped on by one country or another, you've got to expect the other country to respond. The big question is is that cars that are already made in that country are just cars that come so from the US going to China.
But the pastline's the same.
There's a lot more US automakers selling cars into China than vice versus.
So the US needs to be careful at in this one.
And yet we have seen vibes or whether it be real political clout driving testa share price up into the right.
Ever since the results of the election, has any.
Of this China US tension been priced in, do you think, Steve Well?
I think people don't have their arms around it quite yet. So you've got to look at the Tesla share price. Seventy six percent growth since January one of this year. That's astonishing. The big question is can Tesla keep it up? And I think it's going to be tough without getting some new products into the market. Tesla's auto growth this year, you know, after roaring sales growth in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two of fifty one percent and seventy percent,
this year it's darn year flat. So Tessa's got to get this new lower cost car into the market. There are new rumors that there's going to be a new sub thirty thousand dollars model Q coming sometime in twenty twenty five, but we've got to make sure that that's real, so investors have to look at it. I think twenty five is going to be a make or break year.
It could see new heights if you can see a lower cost car coming out and full self driving improve but it can also sink if they don't get a new car to market sales stay flat.
That's going to scare people.
Now as an investor, though, Steve, as an investor, how hard.
Has it been to read the tea leads?
Because we're trying to understand as to whether they're just going to cut costs of current models on the market and get us to some sort of sense of affordability.
Because Elon just signals.
Time and time again he's more interested in the robotaxi side and the full sife driving side.
It's incredibly hard.
I mean, share price going up seventy five percent when sales are flat.
I don't think anybody's ever seen anything like that before.
What's going on kind of a bet on full self driving and probably a bigger bet on Musk's relationship with President Trump. What no one's talking about is very quietly, the energy vision looks like the saving grace for Tesla seventy five percent year over year growth.
The other thing investors have to get their.
Arms around is auto companies aren't just auto companies anymore. They're also or energy companies too, and it's a whole new world.
You've got to pay attention.
I got to pay attention to the politics involved in it.
This week, of course we saw that again California is really going to be focusing in on in shoring, EV adoption, Steve where you sit. But also we've got a news story around the potential unionization let's call it subtly being done over with Rivian.
We understand the UAWS reached a.
Kind of secret deal with Rivian to make unionization easier as and when it becomes a profitable company.
How much you think.
That's a key area the labor side of things to the EV space.
Well, look, the labor side's huge because labor costs are going up. This is one of the things that's plagued GM and Forward for years. And what's interesting is must it's great at pulling out all the stuff, making things go faster than any of the automaker, but he still has to deal with unions. And he may be the well dis guy in the world, but that's not going.
To impact.
How well with union battles German workers potential the outline strike soon precisely when he's trying to catch up for a Q four sales. So it's going to be interesting to see can Tessela's auto sales increase this year. You can I show your over year growth. Gosh, that's going to be a tough one to sell to shareholders.
We'll see.
And you are a long time shareholder and an influential one of that, Steve Wesley. We thank you of the Wesley Group time now for talking tech.
First up.
Apple has halted its project building out an iPhone hardware subscription service it's acording to sources, the idea was to make owning an iPhone like subscribing to an app, with consumers paying monthly fees to get a new phone each year. Apple has since disbanded and reassigned the team to other projects. Plus, the European Commission is pushing Apple to further open up
its iPhone operating systems to rivals. Commission instructed the tech giant on Wednesday to rework iOS so that devices like smart watches, earbuds, headsets from rivals more compatible with the Apple ecosystem, and Apple is close to getting Indonesia to lift its ban on iPhone sixteen sales, this after the country's president gave his approval for a one billion dollar investment from the tech giant.
Again, according to sources.
Indonesia First Band remembers sales with the flagship device last month, saying Apple failed to comply with its domestic content requirements.
Get stuck into all of these Apple related stories. I want to known Mark German with.
Us, and Mark just talk to us a little bit more about what's happening with Indonesia because this is a big one eighty and they played hardball.
In a one.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
So Apple and Indonesia have been going back and forth for weeks now since the launch of the iPhone sixteen. Right, Obviously, Apple wants to get the device in as many countries as possible. Indonesia is important to Apple because that's a
potential growth market for them. Right, they are making a big bush across Southeast Asia and not being able to get it in one of the biggest countries there is a really big deal for them, and so they've been making different offers and what they finally landed on is investing one billion dollars into a facility there that would produce essentially twenty percent of air tags. AirTags, obviously, is that fun little device we're all gearing up to include
in our luggage for the holidays. Right, It's not Apple's most popular product, but it's an important one, and it sounds like it was enough to get the job done. Apple is gearing up to release a new air tag in the middle of next year with much better range, better privacy, So that is going to be a cool thing for Indonesia to be able to produce that product potentially or further generations of that device.
Let's stay global on the Apple front when you're looking at the EU news as well, because this compatibility argument has been going on for a while. Ultimately, whatever the EU forces does it become global in nature.
The EU wants to crack open the iPhone completely. They want to essentially make it Android. They want to make it so users could be a bunch of cowboys and do whatever they want to the device.
Right.
Apple, on the other hand, wants this closed ecosystem with a privacy centric design and a clean user interface.
They don't want.
People to be able to open up their device to work with third party earbuds and watches and headsets as well as.
It works with Apple products.
And so the EU put out a list of several things it wants Apple to adopt and allow third parties to use at a deeper level, things like air drop file sharing, things like airplay video beaming from the device to other products, things like opening up underlying Wi Fi protocols.
And Apple is.
Pushing back on that by using Meta as an example and showcasing fifteen data categories that Meta wants access to and physitioning Meta as this anti privacy company and trying to show consumers and the European Commission, right the regulators in the EU, what could potentially happen to Apple device customers if these programs are opened up to the extent that they want them to be opened up.
That Apple Meta rivalry really continues to play out when it comes to politics. Margam, thank you, welcome back to blow Meg Technology. I'm Caroline heid in New York. We also want to be going into the story that is TikTok. Today marks exactly one month until a possible ban in the United States, but now with the Supreme Court excepting to hear TikTok's challenge to that law, well, the social media app has a glimmer of hope. Alexander Levine joins
us Now it's Today's Tech Daily. It is a big viewership on this story.
And it's a big twist. It's a big twist.
I think a lot of people are looking at this as a huge game changer in the eleventh hour, and I think we need a caution to just say that this could very well just be the Supreme Court doing what the Supreme Court has always set out to do. And we need to remember that this is the first time, if the band goes through, that a social media app
will have ever been banned in this country. And so this could very well just be the Supreme Court, you know, recognizing how important these issues are and wanting to really set their record straight before a shutdown happens, and also before the administration changes hands, because a.
Lot of people have said, well, the Supreme Court, large part of them, have been selected by previous president and now President elect Trump, and maybe that would bend towards whatever his views on.
The social media app have been.
Of course, he says there's a soft place in his heart, for a special place in his heart for the app.
But these are lawmakers at the.
End of the day, and people who going to be assessing on the merits of the law.
Absolutely, you know, the justices are going to rule as they may. I think there's a lot of speculation given Trump and where Trump is seeming to come down on this now versus where he used to stand about how the justices may rule.
But I think we really don't know.
And the Supreme Court, we don't know what the Supreme Court is going to do. We don't know that this actually means that TikTok is going to be able to withstand being banned. But it is a really remarkable timeline when you look at the fact that we're one month from the band.
That was supposed to take effect.
The argument will be January tenth, and then the law is set to take effect in your nine days later. So if anything, it's just worth pointing out that the Supreme Court is moving exceptionally fast and unusually fast on this one issue.
So people who assess the law now have the ball.
But what I'm interested in is also we've got to remember it's not just a ban.
They could divest.
We kind of come off that narrative because TikTok wants us to think that this is.
Either a ban or nothing. If we had anything.
About potential suits about Withever, we would see its funnle.
Absolutely, we know that this is sort of the next phase of the saga. So Bite Dance has said they will not sell their most prize asset in the US. Beijing has also said that Beijing's export rules basically say that Chinese companies cannot sell their algorithms like the one that is central to TikTok in the US, and that's made it so popular here. But American, potentially American bidders, people who have deep enough pockets, are already lining up.
We have some reporting coming on that very soon later today, and I think it's important to realize that people are not going to take no for an answer here. When you've got over half of the American population at this point, more people than voting than voted in the last election using the platform, these bidders are really trying to line themselves up at the front of a competitive pack for who may be the person or the company to take
over the US iteration of the platform. If by Dance feels a squeeze in this sort of eleventh hour with all of the legal you know, the legal path coming to an end, they want to be sort of the ones at the front of the pack.
Well, look out for that next story publishing later today. Alexandre Levine All Things TikTok. Amazon meanwhile is delaying the return to office for thousands of employees due to lack of space. The company told some personnel working in at least seven cities, including Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, here in New York as well that the return dates will be pushed back until.
March even April, according to sources.
The company spokesperson said the vast majority of employees will have desks starting on January second.
Now.
This week, the Biden administration also announced the overhaul of H one B visa eligibility standards. It's a move that expands who can receive the work visas and gives more flexibility and clarity. The revision comes a mid concern that the upcoming Trump administration.
May change course. We've got a perfect voice, Simeon to catch founding partner.
Of One Way Ventures, a VC firm that backs immigrant founders in the United States and Canada, and the pre.
Seed at the seed stage. So just this.
News, this clarity on who can apply for H one B visas and ideally be fast tractive.
Indeed, you've been allowed one in the past. Does this make a difference to your companies.
Yeah, I mean, I think more H one B visas and simple final process is certainly going to.
Make it easier for people to hire.
The immigrants and occasionally for immigrants to start companies as well.
Yeah, And what was interesting is in the news on the H one B visa overhaul some people are calling it is that entrepreneurs in particular are going to be a to apply if you've got a majority holding in a company.
That you're building.
How much have we seen entrepreneurs those building within North America dependent on these sorts of accesses to living in the United States.
Well, yeah, I mean I think if there's more path to being able to start a company, it's going.
To have more companies started.
In particular, I think it's relevant to students that complete the education here and some of them may in fact be deterred from starting a company without simplified visa process.
There was certainly clarity given for students so that they don't see a hole in their ability to be staying in the United States if they're going to be finding a job or building a business here. We're just looking at the founders that you do indeed back most of them.
Being immigrant founders. Why focus on that demographic.
Well, our fund, you know, we only invest in immigrants. We are immigrants. We know that collectively immigrants. If you take immigrants from any country to the US, they're not just like slightly better at building businesses. They are responsible for the majority of the value generated from new companies.
Most of the unicorns that.
Are billion dollar, multi billion dollar success stories are in fact started by immigrants, like fifty five percent of them, people who personally themselves made the journey and came here.
Why why is that some sort of causal link or correlation link that people who have been driven and motivated to move and to come are going to be well more weighted to being successful.
Well, there's a number of reasons.
I think it's not a question of the countries they're from being full of people who are better at starting things. It's the people who make the journey, right. The experience of coming to a new country, like learning a new langue, which it's predictive of how much grit you have, how much perseverance you have. It's almost like, you know, your own immigration is like a startup because you're going into
that unknown. You have to have some kind of vision, some kind of belief that you can do it, but before you have real evidence, and when you commit to doing that, you often.
Don't really have a way back, right, Like.
It's very hard to come back and admit that, like nobody really wanted you in America and it didn't work out, Like people around you don't necessarily believe that that's what you should do. You're sort of abandoning your existing network, right, And so the people who've done that and had to survive, right, had to learn the culture of the language, figure everything
out from scratch, building your network. When they've done that once, they're more likely to be able to figure out how to disturb a big business, which you know, a big company has its own language right, its own culture in a way in any startup in order to has to be able to overcome it. So having done it once already on your own immigration, it's more likely that you will get there.
And you're not going to give up along the way.
You're not going to have as many alternative when things get hard.
It's not so.
Easy to get a cushy job right because you have the network.
Right.
What's interesting, though, is you think about the leaders of the Magnificent Seven, the CEOs, many of them immigrants.
Elon Musk himself, who has got.
The ear of the next elected president. Most of the time it feels like himself, an immigrant, didn't have to change languages, but certainly came here and built a number of incredibly successful companies. But what does the next administration look like to you? Do we see a pushback against immigration in some way?
Well, you know, it's hard for me to tell.
I personally believe that all the immigrants, even folks without an education, should be generally welcome, not illegally, right, they should be a pathilm to be illegal, of course, and I think it's just tremendous benefits the country to have these select few people who willing and able to make the journey. You know, we want to welcome them, But like I said, there's other reasons why they might do well, like having another culture, another language.
It makes it more likely.
That you'll figure out some new new culture, some new thing.
And of course immigrants.
Tend to be able to build technology offshore. Often there are places you can get engineers cheap, are far away, when normally a startup couldn't really do that in the beginning, because you want to be close to the customers. You want to be like a real team. You don't outsources. You want to have people on your core team from
the beginning that build it. But when you are an immigrant, with those connections, it's very likely you'll be able to find people somewhere else where a salary is a lower and where that could actually feel like they're really part of your group. You can make that connection. And of course, but you're missing and we're all certainly missing a lot of things that it takes.
To be successful.
And so we as a fund are immigrants ourselves, but we came here as kids, right, so we're kind of like a bridge. We understand a little bit more about the culture of building a business in America, and we are able to see like these unusual qualities that make someone potentially able to build a really big business, right, that level of ambition and vision and thoughtfulness and perseverance, and so we kind of help them unlock We find the missing pieces.
Sometimes it's a question.
Of storytelling or or just building a network, right, and so that's what we specialize in. I just want to say, like people like Illan Musk or Sergey Brinn who build this big businesses It sounds sometimes to people like it's kind of an exception, but it's not.
It's truly the majority of the big business. It's over half. I started by people like that.
Samon to catch. We leave it on a great statistic. Founding partner of One Way Ventures, thank you. Coming up, we'll hear from Salesforce CEO, many of on tech policy, on Trump.
Where the Time magazine is to sale. This is al big technology Perplexity.
So an AI start up building a search product to compete with Google. It's just close to five hundred million dollars round of funding that triples the company's valuation to nine billion all. According to sources. The round was led by institutional venture partners and completed earlier this month. Perplexity declined to comment. Let's bring in the person who brought
us the news blue bag. Surean gafari for more. And I might be numb because I look at one hundred and fifty seven million dollar valuation over an open AI.
But put it in context, what does nine billion dollars mean?
That's still a gigantic valuation.
If you think about just in June, perplexity valuation was one third of this. It's tripled so, you know, I think that sorry, it's not one third of it, but it is tripled since June. So I think that, you know, we're seeing a very strong investor demand still to get in on the AI market. I don't think that, you know, some people are wondering, will they I bubble burst?
Are we going to see investor demand cool off?
I think startups like this growing this quickly show that the demand is still very, very high.
Perplexity has been well used by consumers. They've got a fair share of legal issues to be contending with at the moment, and I'm interested as to how the growth actually is looking. Did you get any hints of where the fifteen million active uses has gone since March?
Yeah.
You know, they are saying that the number of searches that people do on Perplexity, and remember, their sort of competitive edge is that they're trying to be the best in giving people real time information and you know, good for kind of analysis and summaries, and they're saying that they're seeing.
People query a lot more.
They're seeing very strong growth in the past several months. They've also been rolling out some more kind of customized search options for people who want financial data or who want let's say sports data that's real time.
So they are growing and I think that's why we're seeing this investor demand increase.
And being levi'sjudial venture partners, we'll see how the growth continues. Sharing Gafari, thank you for the news. Meanwhile, let's talk Sales Force CEO Mark Benioff says the company's work in AI is the most exciting technology he's ever worked on, but that doesn't mean he's giving up his stake in Legacy Media recently spoke with me Megs Andrie Hordan about the future of Time magazine its recent decision to name President lect Donald Trump as Person of the Year.
I think you know that when I bought Time Magazine, I said that I wouldn't endorse any political candidate, and I stopped all funding of all political candidates.
But I think you also know that this week.
Time Magazine did say that President Trump is our Person of the Year, and I couldn't be more excited about that.
I mean, everything you've seen from the story, from the cover to the story itself, it's the biggest story we've ever done in the history of Time, and this is really speaks to a moment I believe in the political landscape where we really have to have a beginner's mind, that every possibility is ahead of us, and I think it's only in the expert's mind that we realize that we might have the constraints that we need to kind
of put aside. So I'm excited for the future. I hope that agents in AI are a critical part of achieving the next level of efficiency and capability inside not only our government, but every government. And I believe very strongly that we need to use these kinds of technologies to achieve a balanced budget, which I think is a bypart is an issue that all of us can agree on.
Yes, it is, and they are looking to jojify the government, bring experience industry people in that work with AI and crypto. Would you consider working alongside the administration if they ask you to maybe join something like a task force.
Well, I don't really have the ability to answer that because nothing has been proposed to me except I'm highly conflicted as a media owner and it makes it incredibly difficult for me to operate administration. Administrations change, but at Salesforce, we believe strongly our values don't change, and we're mostly
focused on operating our business. That said, when governments and presidents ask us to help them to make their countries more effective, more efficient, and more capable, especially in regards to artificial intelligence, we will always say yes.
Well, there are reports out there. Now you've led me to this that maybe you're even looking at selling Time magazine. So say you did sell Time magazine, you can comment on whether or not those reports are true. Would you consider offering up all your expertise in efficiency to you know, the DOGE Task Force and to the incoming administration.
Listen, I think that every American should do whatever they can to make America successful, and every American should do whatever they can to make the President of the United States successful. This is of course our country and our leadership team. So if called on I of course I would do whatever I can to support them.
But the reality is there is.
No deal on the table to sell Time, and it's extremely important that we do have fair and balanced journalism. And that's why I'm very proud to be an owner of Time Magazine.
Sales will see and Mark Benioff there speaking of bluemgg's Amory Horden, Today's big take is heart hitting. It's about a lawsuit arguing that Snapchat has helped dealers sell children deadly counterfeit drugs, and that lawsuit could change the Internet as we know it. Bloomberg's Olivia Carvill is here with yet another groundbreaking story, and the context is always as painful.
Since twenty twenty, drug overdoses this is what shocked me, driven by fentanel has become one of the leading causes of death among kids among teenagers.
Killing more than sixteen hundred people.
But all social media platforms in some way are implicated by this.
But why has Snapchat singled out so much?
That's right, I mean, drug sales can be found all social media platforms. I think what differentiates Snapchat here and why law enforcement, lawyers, even teenage users of the platform are kind of singling out Snapchat is the platform was really built on the idea of disappearing messages. It thrives on that evanescence, which means that if you send a
message within twenty four hours, it has gone. And unfortunately, you know, while the company wasn't designed for this, what has happened is that teenagers like using the platform when they don't want their parents to know what they're doing and drug dealers like using the platform because evidence of their crimes is immediately deleted by default very quickly.
In the story, the extent of use for drug sales becomes clear. We understand that Snapchat has removed two point two million pieces of drug related content, just as twenty twenty three they've locked more than seven hundred thousand dealer accounts. But we want to focus on Snapchat's response here because Jacqueline Buscher has responded to your piece and the Global had a platform safety saying that we're be committed to fight against the fundamental epidemic.
How are they fighting against it?
They're actually doing quite a lot, and the company points out that it wants to become the most hostile place on the Internet for drug dealers. They have fine tuned machine learning classifiers so AI technology to really detect any drug related content as soon as it's uploaded to the platform. That's resulted in them removing two point two million pieces of content and twenty twenty three alone that were flagged
as being connected to drugs in some way. It also allows them to deactivate or lock the accounts of anyone for suspicious activity where it looks like they might be selling drugs through the platform. They also have strengthened their safeguards. I guess you could say their features or their recommendation engine that enables users to connect with one another. Often drug dealers have used this to try and build out
their network to find more buyers. And the company really strengthens its safeguard when it comes to teen users with it recommendation engine, trying to limit the amount of strangers that it's connecting teenagers to combat the Fenoinnel crisis.
Meanwhile, Michael Brewer, whose story you talk about so eloquently in this story, is still going to court and we understand that this could have broad reaching effects for section two thirty and we will continue to discuss it with you in the future. Once again, go and check out the big take. It's an amotive one with Olivia Carvill.
We thank her. We're going to take it.
Back to the markets now because there is a big sell off underway for one particular name and many of you are exposed to it.
Mike run off by sixteen percent.
Chip maker here in the United States, biggest maker of memory currently off by sixteen percent worse days since March twenty twenty as their forecast did not live up to expectations. It's about weakness in PC and in smartphone chips in particular, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Don't forget to check out our podcast.
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