Microsoft and Amazon Downsize Staff

governor's orders. Could this be the start of a greater trend? And do you want one of Twitter's officers neon signs or a white board or a giant refrigerator. Twitter has resorted to auctioning office items will show you what was up for grabs. But first we want to talk about one of the key issues that off sometimes bring, certainly for plenty of chief technology and chief security officers, because

there are security concerns around all of this. Disgruntled workers for examples, maybe they take corporate secrets with them when they get laid off, or maybe they get a bit careless about them. Margie Murphy has a great story on all of this, and just tell us a little bit, Margy, about how companies are starting to prepare themselves as they know they're going to make layoffs. How do they ensure

that the data that they have remained secure. Yeah, it's a real problem because around the time that layoffs are happening, obviously everyone's trying to tighten their belt, and that's when security budgets might be cut a little bit. But companies are looking at things like new software that's around to track whether employees are are using data exfiltration methods um. And they're also trying really hard to just give out the messaging and reminding people that things that they're working

on belong to the company, not to themselves. Um I mentioned data exfiltration, and that's when people toward emails to their personal accounts or maybe a copy and paste of spreadsheet with contact details or client contracts, and that puts companies at risk of obviously losing business if that person takes that with them to another company, but also regulatory and confidentiality issues as well, Margie, we we've got to

ask ourselves why we're discussing this story. Fantastic work in business Week magazine and an analysis of what happens when we hear about jobs being cut layoffs in the technology industry to the tunes of thousands, the kind of the anecdote that you guys uses coin based right when it announced its layoffs and Brian or Armstrong basically explaining that by the end of the day, UH employees would receive notifications their personal email addresses, and it was very abrupt

and he said, look, we kind of have to do this because our customer information is key. We have to protect that customer data. What kind of serious steps have you report it on that companies are taking to kind of safeguard themselves and their customers when they go through

a random lyoffside this. Well, yeah, as you mentioned the case with coin base, it was, you know, employees were waking up to already having their email shut off, which sounds incredibly callous and was criticized, you know for kind of having lacking that personal touch to realize that you've been completely wiped from a company. But more and more companies are having to do this because the risk is

just so high. It's so easy for employees to just simply forward an email, you know, they if they've got a few hours left, they'll just be kind of sending stuff to to their own personal gmails and not. You know, you've got some people who are obviously irritated that they're fired and maybe want to do something really kind of

bad with that and leak it. But often people don't even realize that what they're doing is it is against their employment contract, and they simply want to kind of better themselves and then next employment because they're scared they've they've just been let go. Um. But largely we're seeing companies just really cracked down and shut down from the minute people are being laid off and being very very cold, I guess, but but extremely secure just because the risks

are so high. We've seen issues with coin Base, um, you know, it had that an employee was accused of insider trading because they were sharing some information. That was the famous case with Waymo, which was Google's driverless car arm Anthony Levandarsky he famously went to ub was defected and he took company's secrets with him and it was an extremely long court case and had serious ramiflications for Google.

So the stakes are really really high, alright, Bloomberg Margie Murphy just terrific reporting on air and also in business. We check out that story on Bloomberg dot com. Now, as we've been discussing, Amazon and Microsoft are laying off some of their work force. This is part of a wider wave of job cuts that are hitting the tech industry right now, already facing of course, the chance of recession globally. Here's what some of our guests across Bloomberg

Television have been talking about. We've not been positive on Big Deck for I don't know a year, a year and a half. We do believe that there is still some deflation to come out of this market after the exuberence of twenty one. I actually think that the tech sector is one of the few sectors that is really

discounting a recession in its outlook. The longer the macro volatility persists, we do expect early stage and seed to start to see that crunch that the late stages is seen right now, and there is going to be some amount of normalization of the demand. Uh. Quite frankly, we in the tech industry will also have to get efficient, right. It's not about everyone else doing more with less. We

will have to do more with less. All right, So let's bring in Bloomberg's Austin car who has been writing about why behind the job cuts, and you heard their auster and from a rural range of names across venture capital public markets also sat in Adela on why we're seeing these layoffs in the technology industry. Rapp all of this together, because you've been writing about this also in

Business Week. So what we saw over the last year or two was just as one of those analysts had noticed at this exuberance coming out of the COVID nineteen pandemic, where the tech sector, more than any other industry, had really bet big on this new revenue acceleration being permanent. And we've seen that course correction happened quite harshly in more recent days and months, with Amazon and Microsoft announcing sort of headline grabbing uh layoffs in the you know,

ten eighteen thousand range figures. And what's totally remarkable about that is how it compares to the rest of the US economy. Job cuts in two were actually up and the tech sector six compared to the previous year, whereas in the rest of the economy was only the layoffs

we're only up. So what you saw is all these tech companies betting huge on that COVID error growth remaining and and being a much longer term phenomenon, and we're now seeing a sort of big course correction from other big tech companies, and only is trying to understand firstly whether it's a bell weather, but also also why it's not really showing up in the big data at the moment.

Many hypothesize that these people are highly talented, highly skilled, and people still want them in the other industries, so they're snapped up very quickly rather than showing up in the BLS data for example. But go to also where they might add jobs, because I thought that was interesting from SATI in a data and Amazon and Microsoft at large, they are still going to be hiring in some spaces, right, Well, that's the narrative that they sold Walter on this sort

of high growth, higher risk, big return investments. So they can't just stop all of those moonshots that they've been investing in for the last couple of years and let go of that very high caliber, expensive engineering talent. So you're seeing sort of this balance between tech companies trying to give off some signal that they're going to be a little bit more financially prudent and conservative while not

giving up on some of those longer term bets. With Microsoft, for example, such an Adela saying we're going to double down in core businesses, but we're going to continue to invest in high growth areas like AI or with Amazon, they're seeing layoffs happen in the retail division or in some of their devices, sort of the risky or hardware

bets that they've been making with Alexa Advices. But at the same time he's also saying Andy Jassy, the CEO, has said we're still going to invest in high growth areas like groceries or B two B services, third part of party seller markets, So they're really trying to sort of balance that that sort of risk and reward. Right now, I want to bring up this terminal chart again which we showed earlier in the show. Um Amazon's total global

head count, right so eighteen thousand jobs. It's it's a striking headline, but it's one percent of its global workforce. And I think there's discussion about this from market participants in our in our reporting, right Austin, what does that what does that tell us the difference between the headlines and the reality and how this period, this economy of three might be different to the dot com bubble, even

the two thousand and eight financial crisis. Yeah, it indicates so far that just given how wired big tech is into the rest of the global economy, it's a lot different than it was during the dot com crash two decades ago. Uh. You know, all these companies around the world are much more dependent on Silicon Valley software, their hardware, their chips, their cloud computing services, their enterprise services as well.

So it's not the case that as much as these headline grabbing numbers are are pretty massive, there's still a small percentage of of Amazon's overall workforce, or for Microsoft, the ten thousand cuts that they announced, that's I think only five percent of their overall workforce. So it's a lot smaller. Uh. And it's also in specific areas, at least from our sources we're hearing from HR and recruiting rather than some of the high, high caliber, expensive talent

and engineering. They're sort of can double down for their core businesses that they want to continue invest in. But again it's always that balance. With Mark zucker Burke, he said, you know what, we're still going to invest more. We're going to reprioritize our adversis, but we're still going to make that that bet in engineering talent, our metaverse, which is that longer term bet that they're they're making. It's nuanced, and you do it so well for us, Austin, thank

you very much. Indeed, Austin car it's a great read. Meanwhile, we'll one sector in technology that's really been letting go of a lot of staff is crypto, and in fact, crypto firm Genesis is one of those, and it's also said it's preparing now we understand for bankruptcy filing as early as this week. They're lending unit of Barry Silbert's Digital Currency Group. Genesis is in confidential negotiations with various

creditor groups amid a liquidity crunch. Genesis suspended withdrawals in November, soon after ft X men bankrupt course. On Tuesday, Digital Currency Group told shareholders that it's suspending quarterly dividends in an effort to conserve cash. Coming up, Well, now, what access to TikTok at universities in Texas? What impact could that ban have? We'll discuss this Blue beg I think the national security issue of our time is the technology

competition with China. We've already seen that around things like five G Semiconductors were now looking at issues like new energy and synthetic biology because in China we have a competitor that's investing at a rate that's commensurate with what we're investing. And uh, I'm all for innovation, but I've

been particularly concerned about TikTok. My fears one TikTok collects more information about you as a user than virtually any other site around your keystrokes, your facial expressions, and I'm horribly afraid that that's being stored somewhere in besion. I'm also concerned about it being an ability to manipulate um

the flow of information to you. I was Senator Mark Warner that and look, speaking of TikTok, some universities in Texas, like the University of North Texas among others, there are said to be blocking access to the video sharing app TikTok on its WiFi and wide networks to comply with quote Governor Abbot's directive to all state agencies banning employees from using or downloading TikTok on all state issued or managed devices and environments. That's according to a statement shared

with Bloomberg. Now, Rumberg's Alex Brinka is here to break it all down. And what's so interesting to me, Alex is basically the university's front running the rest of the state. Oh, I think we've got a technical glitch. We're gonna be getting to Alex in a moment. Who's out in l A. But ed, first, let's bring in what our audience said, because yes, it seems as though we're seeing a front running in certain institutions in a state versus the state

itself and states themselves front running the federal government. But we are sked ultimately our audience as to whether this is going to make any difference. And well, many seem to think VPNs are going to come to the rescue in some way. Yeah. Look, there's two sides to this debate. Right in Texas, what you see is university is essentially public entities enacting the directive from the governor and putting

that into practice. And that manifests itself by the universities not allowing students or anyone on campus to access the TikTok app through the WiFi network. Well, they can probably still access if they turn off WiFi and use their five G network. But it's it's the debate around who should be acting on this, because the buying administration and the federal government have been leading a security view of TikTok and other cyber screty threats for some time. And

there's the answer, right Carol. For the eight percent of the respondents we polled said this isn't going to fix anything bank the specifics of not allowing TikTok access on campus in Texas universities. But they are following through in the governor's directive. They are, And let's get to Alex. Now, I think technology issues solved on this technology show. Tell us Alex about whether you're surprised that some of these institutions are going headlong into these sorts of bands. It

is a little interesting how they're interpreting this right. They actually University of Texas at Austin, for example, doesn't have a specific directive to move forward in this um. In this way, Texas Tech is waiting until they get more guidance from the state. So it's interesting to see Texas, Georgia,

Alabama really being front footed here. And following along what we heard at the top from Senator Warner basically saying, we're worried about data sharing on TikTok and potential data sharing with the Chinese government, and we're going to lock this down now. Ed what you said, um about students potentially looking for workarounds accessing TikTok on their cellular data and not on the WiFi words band, That's exactly what's happening.

I've been chatting to folks who are on the ground at u T Austin in particular, who have said, look, we have other ways we're gonna access this app. I use it for entertainment, I use it for educational content. So they're on TikTok anyways, even if it's not on the WiFi at the university. Yeah. Quite. I think it's also an educational issue, right understanding why is this a security skin and conveying that to uses of all social media platforms. That seems to be what we're hearing from

users of that particular platform. Bloombergs, Alex Barrinka, thank you very much. Now. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins spoke to Bloombergs, David Weston and Davos about tech layoffs, the impact of COVID nineteen on the tech sector, but first about their investment into software. Have a listen. Well, there's a few things we've done. We've added a lot of our cybersecurity technology is just pure software, right, I mean, that's just the nature of the industry and how we're defending against threats.

Collaboration is a lot of software. Our web ex portfolio and the meeting capability, so those are just natural software products that we then also begun to sell subscriptions on our hardware platforms, and that's been a transition we started back in two thousand, seventeen or eighteen and uh last quarter, recurring revenue including software and services represented our business, which is significantly different than where we were five, six, seven

years ago. You mentioned earlier the pandemic and what that did. Intact, I didn't change your business, and maybe over the longer term, maybe not just over the short term, but we're their fundamental shifts in the use of technology that fect Cisco. Well, I think it became clear. I really believe that prior to the pandemic, every executive believed technology was strategic. Right. We've a decade or fifteen years ago, we moved from it being an operational productivity driver to really being a

strategic enabler and a strategic differentiator for our customers. During

the pandemic, it just elevated. I mean everyone's eyes were open as to I mean, we kept the world running when everyone was at home, We kept everyone productive, and I think no one believed that was possible, including a lot of people in tech, and uh, we've never tried it before, so doing it at that scale, and I think what that did is it gave So I think it gave our customers this incredible confidence and investing in technology and listening to their teams who are bringing them

these new, crazy creative projects around what they want to do with technology, and they go, well, I've seen this, I've seen it work here, so I'm gonna trust you and believe you. So I think that's one piece of it. And I think from a cultural perspective, I think every company's culture was magnified during the pandemic, and I think that we'll never go back to the way we were.

I think, uh, we're gonna operate in environments where employees want to have human, authentic conversations, just like we did over video while everybody was at home, and so I think it changed how we engage with our employees as well. Tell you what new crazy creative projects in teach. There's a lot of talk around here about open AI, artificial intelligence and by the way, quantum computing. I'm not sure exactly what those mean, but there's a lot of talk

about them. Is that going to fundamentally change your business? Well, it's we're working on quantum networking today because when you have big networks of quantum computers, you have to be able to connect them and actually move the bits at at rates that are commensurate with the speed of the computers. So there's a lot of research that we're engaged in right now. So we're in the early days. We have team of people doing research on quantum networking, so absolutely

that will be a part of our business. And then these open AI and things like chat, GPT, and then that's something that I actually had a conversation with my team about and I think it's it's amazing how fast it went from sort of being exposed to all of a sudden My guess is my next board meeting, we'll have a conversation about chat GPT and open AI, and we think we're there's lots of great use cases that we can leverage that technology for, and there's also a

lot of uh under probably some understood and some not understood, unintended consequences from that technology. Think you'd very fundamentally disruptive. Absolutely, I don't think there's any doubt. Want to own a

piece of Silicon Valley history, Maybe you now do. Because Twitter was opening off it's old office supplies at the six thirty one lots on offer, and some of them went the tens of thousands of dollars, for example, a blue Neon light, the Twitter about itself, maybe an apt sign that was a planter, all of these going for

big bucks. The auction house behind it says that this isn't actually to secure the financing of Twitter itself, although we do know is in a relatively precarious situation at least to be paying down debt, and Elon Musk himself is or not paying some of the rents over in San Francisco. But for now the auction is done, and maybe you now have a piece of corporate history and you've checked it out, because I think it's stopped the auction twenty seven hours long, finished at ten am Pacific time.

Your time ed right thirty two thousand or there or thereabouts for that Neon sign. This is kind of trophy stuff, particularly if you work there. So I love that you focused on kind of more glitzy, shiny items. What I loved was just the endless thumbnails showing tables and chairs and if you really wanted, you could buy a full office set to furnish your office from Twitter issue. I actually know a guy who's been in that building a few times, Bloomberg Newses Kurt Wagner, who joins us now.

Because on top of that news, the report by the Information that Twitter's revenue dropped as much as thirty five percent last quarter from the same period a year ago. Goss, Twitter, You and I we've had a rough two navigating this. Let's let's start with the financials and we'll get to the furniture. A drop in revenue as reported by the Information,

I mean, what's happening in sure? Yeah, I mean we've been talking about this for a while, right, which is that roughly of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising, and if you're an advertiser right now, Twitter is a sort of a scary place. It's not a comfortable, a safe environment to be spending your money. Um, And so I don't

think any of us are shocked. We've we've seen the headlines and news about a lot of these big advertisers who are step have stepped back from Twitter, and so the reality that this hit them very hard, especially in the fourth quarter, when you know a lot of the marketing budgets usually come about, is not a super big

surprise to me. How is Twitter in chief dealing all of this because many it sort of commented that the tweets coming from Elon Musque have got a little less well controversial, shall we say, of late, But how is he trying to ensure that people are coming back to the platform wanting to advertise for him. Yeah, it does seem like he has sort of maybe redirected some of

his attention, right and and perhaps that means to Tesla. Obviously, at the end of the year beginning of this year, there was a lot of um frustration from Tesla investors that that he was not paying closer attention to the company.

And so this may just be simply that you know, he he got there, He did a lot of the budget cuts that he was planned, the layoffs that were planned, and now he feels like he can sort of redirect attention elsewhere, right, But I think like bringing people back, unfortunately, that just takes time and it takes trust if you're an advertiser, and I'm not sure that Twitter has really earned um the trust back from those big brand marketers.

And it's probably the kind of thing that will take a while and they'll have to watch and say, like, is Ellen just taking a couple of weeks off of tweeting controversial things or is this the new normal for him moving forward? And I don't think we can say that just yet. I want to dig deep into financials. I want to talk about the world's second richest man and how he's going to bring advertise this back. But I'm not going to ask you about that. You want

to know about the chairs chairs. I want to know about this auction. You're right, did you buy anything or I didn't buy anything? Um, maybe a high top table. You and Caroline can come over for dinner sometime. That would be quite fun. But no, I mean, like it's sad, right it is. There is a serious point behind this, which is that many people lost their jobs, that building

was once full. It makes sense from a logistic standpoint, right, if your Twitter used to have close to thousand employees um and you now have of that, you don't need all this office space, you don't need all this office furniture. You don't need five hundred white boards or five hundred standing desks or whatever may be, right, So it makes

sense that they would get rid of this. But I think you know what a lot of people are seeing, right, is sort of like a yard sale from this company that had UH for a long time, like a very visible culture, probably more than most tech companies, right with the AT symbol or the big neon bird, Like these are the things we would see pictures of at like

the office holiday party or whatever. Right, So I just feel like maybe there's a little bit more UH kind of connection to Twitter's culture than most companies, just because so much of it plays out on the service itself. So looking at the stats, the bird statue went for a hundred thousand in the auction, but Heritage Global Partners, who is behind the auction, kept saying that this isn't for the finances. Why do it then, and why do

it say publicly? Well, I think to do it is again sort of like a space thing, right, Like if you're really getting rid of offices in the way that we've seen Twitter get rid of close the Seattle office. I think there was a Singapore office as they that they closed last week as well, Like you've got to do something with all the stuff that's in those offices. Right, there's a logistics part of this where they no longer have the space to hold it, So I think that's

probably part of it. Now doing it publicly, I guess, how are you going to get the most bang for your buck? Right? You have to make sure people know to go bid on this thing. So I'm sort of speculating here, right because we haven't heard Eylan say here's the strategy behind the auction, But my guests would be that that's why they want to do it the way that they've been doing it all right. Bloomberg's Curt Wagner covering every twist and turn inside and outside of Twitter,

Thank you so much. I actually want to turn to the latest on Apple because another day, another scoop, and it's taking on Amazon and Google, according to sources, by expanding their in home product lineup. Meanwhile, Apple still planning to unveil its first mixed reality headset this year, but the plans for a lightweight augmented reality glasses have been postponed,

sources say, due to technical challenges. Bloomberg's Mark German broke both of those stories in the space of a single working day, and I'm delighted to say, joys, Caroline and I. Now let's let's start with the in home devices, because actually, when I was at CS in Vegas recently, that was a big theme for many of the consumer electronics companies. What are the details you've reported? So, actually, this morning Apple rolled out a new home pod, right, it's basically

the return of the original home Pod. It's a bit lower cost because they've rolled it out at three instead of the original three fifty of the home Pod, there's a few there's fewer microphones and tweeters inside the device, so not as powerful as the previous one. And it uses an Apple Watch processor instead of an iPhone processor, so you have a little bit of a shift there. But for audio fans, you're really not getting better than an Apple home Pod, the big one at three bucks

in your home. So I know a lot of people are looking forward to that product. Now they're working on a few other devices. They're working on a faster Apple TV for next year, though it won't have eight K functionality, and they're also working on a new low end iPad for the home smart home appliances, using it to FaceTime, using it to watch some video. So that's the smart home strategy for Apple moving forward away from smart home

to a r VA. Just tell us a little bit about the strategy there, because it looks as though they're struggling with the glasses at least. So Apple has been developing it's a r VR strategy for north of six years, seven years, eight years at this point, and for a

long time the strategy was twofold. We're first going to roll out this high end halo device that's going to be a mixed reality had set merging virtual reality and augmented reality, a very complex, expensive three thousand dollar device that will cast a shadow over the a r v R market, and then as early as a year later we would roll out glasses. These are lightweight, a our

only glasses. That plan has changed. The mixed reality had set the high end one the reality pro that's still coming this year, but instead of the follow up product being the AAR glasses. The successive product is going to be a new low end version of the mixed reality head set, so one that's probably about half the price. Somewhere closer to the same price is the high end Meta quest Pro head set. Now, the bigger news those are glasses. Those are not coming anytime soon. Those have

been pushed back indefinitely. Lots of technical challenges, lots of difficulty, right, the big headset is going to have about two hours of battery life. The a R glasses or something you need to wear all day without needing to recharge them until nighttime, like a phone or an Apple Watch. If the high end device is getting two hours, how could a device with even less space for components inside be worn all day. There's also challenges related to the displays, right.

That's called a wave guide technology. To be able to see things in front of you while also being able to glean information off and displays. They'll have to be connected to cellular radios and WiFi, AM Bluetooth at all times. So much complexity in that product. So it's gonna be many years before we see augmented reality glasses from Apple.

Expertly analyze for our smart gum and thank you as always, will let you get back to your scoop getting Meanwhile, coming up, Netflix picks up steam ahead of its earnings all important for tomorrow this bring back Netflix earnings as usual will focus on the company's new subscribe account. Every quarter, it is that way investors always thinking subscribeer growth, did

it go up? Did it go down? But this time around they'll also be looking to initiatives to increase revenue, and of course all the rage in the world of streaming is add supported tiers, which Netflix launched in November. Matt Spiegel, executive vice president of the Media and Entertainment Verse call a TransUnion, joins us, it's that interesting dynamic. We are obsessed with subscriber growth at all streaming platforms,

but particularly Netflix. Yet this quarter we're gonna ask ourselves how successful as Netflix been in attracting US customers in particular to an ad supported tier. Is that the focus for you? Yeah? Well, thanks for having me. It certainly is, and I quite frankly think it's going to be a challenge, but that's ultimately because they're a victim over their own success.

Do you look at how big Netflix is in the US, they really have more subscribers than really any of the stream players in the country, and so really the hard part is how do you get that penetration to shift to add dollars or to an add experience. And the likely reality is most of us who have Netflix accounts aren't going to do that, and so my guess is over the short term it's going to take a little while for them to get to the numbers they expect on the add model. I think over the long term

they'll be fine. But you know, if i'd make a predictionable here tomorrow, my guests is less AD users than they might have ultimately hoped for um, but we'll build over time. I actually have some some sympathy to to Netflix, so I know have frustrations about how micro focused we are. Consensus is for new subscribe editions around four point five million. But Karen, I have talked about this in the past. There's a whole generation of user out there, many of

them young people who have never seen ads. They grew up where they could stream whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, add free, and I wonder if that is a big factor here, not just for Netflix, for Disney the attractiveness of an ad supportive product, many people just don't want it. Yeah, listen, that's fair. Certainly, no consumers says they want ads. But if you look at really what happens in the entirety

of the media ecosystem, there's always a balance there. The practical reality as we as consumers can only spend money on so many things to really subscribe to. But and we're really willing to actually exchange our time, uh, in exchange for really subsidizing that experience. Think about certainly the cable experience and the linear experience will much less prevalent than it was, there are still times we do that, and so I don't think we have a question of

whether advertising is part of the ecosystem or not. You really have You've got premium content creators, Netflix being one of them, which is always going to look for an opportunity to make additional revenue and by the way, very highly a creative revenue when its scales in the form of advertising. So that balance between subscribers and advertising, I don't think it's going anywhere. And sure many consumers won't always want advertising, but my guess is you'll you'll always

find a market somewhere one of those markets. I mean, the only time I want advertising is when I'm watching the Super Bowl, right, So Matt, to that end, what about sport? What about live events? Is that how we're going to see the actual product and some of the content they provide its rate over a Netflix Listen, I

think that's exactly right. What we're really talking about is netflixs becoming a media company much like the others, right, different from a streaming content company that was all about subs. You're now talking about having to attract the type of eyeballs at one time in scale to balance that ad model. And you're right. You're seeing them already invest in or reportedly invest in the opportunity to take sports right, and I think that will be something they'll continue to do.

You've clearly seen that work well with an Amazon crime and ultimately, if you want to be in the media business inclusive advertising, you need to have those quote water cooler moments. It's not only sports, but it is clearly heavily dominated by sports these days. Those live moments really do matter, and that's really what all the media companies are finding that right. Balance right, The linear model clearly is shifting. Uh, it's not going to die for a while.

Streaming will be the dominant form of distribution those time goes on, but that can be on demand, it can still be what really feels like a linear TV ad business just in a streaming environment, which is things like live sports and balancing all those things is going to be what companies like Netflix have to do to compete.

Listen that they are absolutely in competition for against the Disneys and the Warner Brothers of the world, and that's part of the ecosystem and kind of I wonder what sets them apart from some of the competitors is that they get they've got technology in their bones. They all group of engineers. They're sort of a tech first but also media player, and I'm interested as to whether that

sets them apart. Can they win the personalization race, if perhaps at all putting back on content spend now, Yeah, I think that's gonna have to be part of it. Um. Certainly there are other companies that have good technology as well, but Netflix, to your point, has that at their bones. I think that's gonna impact not only their content strategy

but also their ad strategy. You really got to give them credit for how they've approached the ad business so far, some really gate you know, senior hires in that team a partnership with Microsoft, which makes a ton of sense. And so while we're certainly gonna, like I said, I expected a short term, it's gonna be a harder ramp for Netflix to get to the point where their ad business is as scaled as they hope. Um. But having that DNA, which is part content, part technology, I agree,

can only help. You know, certainly, the ad business is one where the mix of scale and precision matters right. Advertisers are absolutely absolutely looking for that balance and a Netflix who can hopefully invent in the right ways to provide both a scaled audience but doing that in a real targeted way with interesting new add creative which again,

let's be clear, this is gonna take time. It will it will be an evolutionary process, but there's a lot to be excited about for Netflix over the long term. Now speak of great to have you on that look ahead to the earnings. Executive vice president at TransUnion, I mean, well, let's pivot back to Switzerland the out to doubles because HCl Tech the software giant and it's based in India is coming over to talk about how they're focusing on s G or nonlinear growth in the long term. Then

Bloomberg's has an endarm and discussed the company's priorities. When the HCl Tech chairperson, that's what's yourn email Hotrah. So, I think, you know, we've got a couple of five strategic objectives, the first one being we are an IT services group and we cover UM digital engineering, cloud as well as software. So we want to be able to lead with differentiated products and services. We want to be able to be a preferred digital partner for global two

thousand companies in preferred geographies. UM. You know, I think weaving E s G into a lot of the business strategy is absolutely critical for us. UM A c L Technologies hires two five thousand people across the world and the average age is twenty seven and below. So I think today their strategic priority for a company has to

be to be a preferred employer. And and then lastly, UM, I think if we're able to meet these strategic objectives, then you know, delivering the highest shareholder return in medium to term it should be the ultimate strategic direction. There's so much uncertainty there's so much disruption, what's use strategy to stay relevant? So I think, like I said, I think one part of it is technology, and what's the growth strategy. I think the growth strategy is investing in

our people and investing in skills. Um you know, like I said, we've got twenty five thousand people all over the world. Technology is moving a lot faster than the skills can keep up. We do about two million to three million hours of training a quota, and that is only going to grow. We also have to find non linear ways of growth. So if you look at our software portfolio, which is quite unique to eight sale technologies, it's about two billion of our twelve billion revenue. It's

much more non linear. So while the balance ten billion would have more than a hundred and fifty thousand people working on it, are two billion in software will have about five thousand. You talk about being a twelve billion dollar company, how do you take it to thirty? How do you take it to fifty? When can you get there? I don't know when we're going to get there. I think I can only talk about our strategic vision in

the next five to seven years. But the investment that we made in eight c L software, which is a two billion that we get from you know, five thousand engineers is a non linear growth and I think that as we go forward, we're going to want to grow that business as well. Indian ID executives lament that there is a gap between engineering education and what the industries are actually need. How do you bridge that gap, especially now that you're part of the thin M T. S

Dean of the Global Advisory come, thank you so. Um. You know, there are a couple of experiments that we're doing in eight c L. I of course talked about investing in a lot of training, which you know, closes the gap between fresh engineers and what they need to

do to deliver to customers all over the world. We're also doing something very interesting, which is we've got eight thousand UM fresh school graduates in the eighth c L system and we've partnered with university so that on the weekends they can pursue an undergraduate education, but Monday to Friday, these are eighteen year olds, their digital natives. Um, you know,

we got them from grade twelve. We've got fifty percent women, young women as part of this cohort and after you know, eight to nine months of training, they're ready to deliver. So it's also looking at alternate talent calls. And you know, um, as you go forward in the world, you're going to realize that there are more people who don't pursue higher education than those who actually do, because higher education is becoming prohibitively expensive. So how do we actually tap into

different talent calls? And so I think that's quite unique to a cl tech going viral today? What was the fear of opening your bank account to see a negative balance? Dozens of Bank of America customers using the transaction service zell they were tweeting about how their funds Sunday disappeared overnight, although they had trouble logging into the Banking Apple tool. Now the website down detector had hundreds of reports. Then

there were issues with zul. Take a look at this chart and app similar of course, the vemmo built by a group of news biggest banks like Bank of America. Those reports they seem to have died down by Wednesday afternoon. Now, according to American Banker, Zel runs more than one point six billion dollars in transactions daily. This is heavily lent upon an overall, I know that I use it. I know that many many person uses to log on and

does see negative also freaked out. Yeah, I mean then saying as P s A. I guess three pm Eastern this was resolved. But you know, if if Instagram goes down, Twitter goes down, whatever, your bank account goes down and then shows missing funds, that's different and seeing social media response savage. Yeah, I have to say some of the memes are pretty great. Go and check them out on

Twitter or on Instagram. Meanwhile, that does it. From the addition of technology, Thursday, we'll share new data about crypto launderings from chain analysis. Don't forget the problem.