Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is a live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Eva though in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Tech Coming up.
Microsoft and in video commit to invest up to fifteen billion dollars combined in AI startup Anthropic. This is Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is set to discuss tech investments and AI innovation with President Trump today, and gaming giant Roadblocks takes steps to expand age verification across its platform.
We'll discuss with the CEO, but.
First we check in on these markets once again. Under pressure, the nasdack off by one point seven percent. That we have eraised one point eight trillion dollars from this benchmark since the end of October, in large part because some of the key AI players have been on the downside. Bitcoin no recovers ever, so slightly uppercentage for we're in NY two eight hundred and forty six. Move on to individual movers because it's all around some of our top story today cloud flaw. We want to check in and
we're down three percent. That's after it's been fixed. But we were struggling to get onto NJ Transit, you are struggling to get onto open AI's chatch ept, you are struggling to get onto many A website because of cloud flare more broadly, and that's as we saw an outage that now they say has been fixed. We're still off
by three percent. Let's talk about, though, the top story that we just mentioned, Microsoft and Nvidia both committing to invest up to a combined fifteen billion dollars in Anthropic, and a move that ties the AI developer closer to the biggest backers of its rival, open Ai. Lumg's AI editor Seth Bieman joins us some more, it's a tough time to be announcing that you're going to be buying cloud from one company. Well, they're going to be investing equity in another.
Just more circular deals.
It feels like this one feels very clearly following the opening eyeplaybook that we've been seeing in recent weeks. Here, Yes, I think Anthropic is taking money from Microsoft and Nvidia. Microsoft it's in the Anthropic then plans to commit spending to Microsoft's platform using Nvidia chips. Kind of textbook here, and I think we'll add to some of the anxiety there,
but it is on a big of a smaller scale. Also, our understanding at this point is that this financing is part of a larger investment round to be announced at some in determined time. So tbd how much Anthropic is actually planning to bring in here.
I mean they already just closed around that valued.
Them at more than one hundred and eighty.
The new normal. That's a bottomless need and everyone is tapping everyone else. All the ships have to rise together or else they fail.
But what's interesting is Amazon had to make clear that they're still the number one provider of cloud and of training compute to Anthropic. Everyone seems to be an Anthropic now, But how are we seeing that rival that likes of open Ai.
Yeah, I mean again, this is not going to either or a model. It's a yes. And you know, I think we've seen open Ai turned to anthropics backers, namely Google and Amazon, so Anthropic is doing the same.
Now.
There's a lot of intrigue there about what that means about the Microsoft opening our relationship. But again, at this moment, everyone is tapping everyone else until the music stops.
And the music has been sounding a little jerky of late. I mean, certainly in the public sector people have been worrying about these circularity deals on the actual productivity gains that we might ever get with AI, That's right.
I do think Anthropic, though, has messaged clearly in the last week or so that while they're kind of playing the Opening I playbook here, we're investing heavily in infrastructure, in chips, building out more, we're doing it on a smaller scale now. As I said, the last time I was on fifteen twenty fifty billion dollars. These are massive sums, but when compared to Opening Eyes one point four trillion, a bit more measured.
Well.
We've also got other breaking news today from LLM innovations and improvements, this time coming from Alphabet. Shares R under a pressure down two point three percent, but they rallied hard yesterday because we know Berkshire.
Halfaway is getting into Alphabet.
But now we've got Gemini three and it seems to actually be really rather good.
That's right.
So at the same time that Google has been helping Anthropic and Open AI, they're also still trying to be the best model on the market, and so I think with Gemini three they're really touting their gains encoding and in mimicking the process human reasoning. Obviously, those are key aspects for Anthropic and for Opening Eye as well. Interestingly, the GENERI I three model also offers a more premium tier.
I think it's two hundred and fifty dollars something like that amount that you get to do even more intense reasoning where you can test different hypotheses and we'll see, but they're all competing with the same kind of benchmark claims here to try to be the dominant force.
And will we have news of LM's getting ever more sophisticated. We're able to code, We're able to vibe code, and your team has been so busy because vibe coding startup Lovable, which is actually a European startup, seems to be expanding and maybe even getting a really high valuation too.
Yeah. I think it's really probably the most promising or one of the two most promising coming out of Europe right now. A lot of the vibe coding leaders are from the US, including Cursor, and you can argue Anthropic and others. I think Level has seem pretty strong organic demand and pretty promising growth in recurring revenue. But this is a crowded market and if Google's model changes the game overnight for coding capabilities, that might have disruptions further on down the line.
It's very much to be seen.
Two hundred million dollars annual recurring revenue and according to sources, a six billion dollar valuation.
We have the CEO and a little.
Bit later Seth amazing wrap up of all things AI, Seth Fiegerman, of course, who helps edit across that team.
Let's turn to Washington.
Now, guess what we're talking about, AI, but with the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed Vin Sulman. Here's at the White House today meeting President Trump. We know the talks about deepening US Saudi ties, but really there is such a focus on tech, on investment, on innovation, as Digital Wi begs Tyler Kendall joining us from the White House. A lot of it's going to be about chip access.
Right exactly, Caroline, and good morning to you. No doubt access to critical chip technology is going to be at the top of the agenda today. As Saudi Arabia has faced US restriction since twenty twenty three, in part over the Kingdom's ties to Beijing. Now, I will point out that when President Trump visited Saudi Arabia back in May, the two countries announced a slew of investment commitments related to AI, related to data centers that are going to
come to rely on access to these advanced semiconductors. But six months has gone by and we have yet to see the US greenlight those export licenses. Now, people familiar tell us here at Bloomberg News that the two sides are still hashing out one the security conditions for these shipments and two these specific reciprocal investments that RIOD is going to commit to making when it comes to making good on their pledge for six hundred billion dollars in
US investments over the next four years. Now, perhaps adding to the pressure here is that we know that recently the UAES saw some of its export licenses green light when it comes to projects run by US companies there. But Caroline, this really does dovetail into the other key part of the conversations today, which has to do with defense.
We are watching closely whether or not the two countries enter into a defense Mutual Cooperation pact, and also those F thirty five's that President Trump indicated that he will allow the sale of Of course, this comes back to the chip conversation, because there are concerns here also about whether or not China could have access to this advanced technology in these fighter chets. Caroline, I'll end on this.
It's absolutely packed here in Washington. We're expecting tech leaders from across the country to descend, in world, to descend here, all leading up to tomorrow's US Saudi LNE Investment Summit at the Kennedy Center here in Washington.
And we await that arrival of MBS to the White House. Tyler Kendall, thank you very much. Indeed, let's get the wider investor perspective here, please say. Margi Btella is with US all Spring Global Investment, senior portfolio manager, head of capital Allocation, and we are thinking about how global narrative around AI continues to develop.
Have you got any worries.
That we've been seeing, at least in the pressure.
In the stock market of ly.
No.
I think this is a little garden variety correction because we've had a few wobbles bad news in the private credit market. I think they we'll have maybe five percent correction.
I think the year.
We'll finish on a very very strong note because really the trend for artificial intelligence is so strong for data centers. In fact, when you look at the companies that have commented, basically they don't have enough capacity for all the demand, and they've been able to raise prices. So that doesn't sound to me like a peak of a market that's very to collapse or all.
I'm just going to go out to some sound that we heard a little bit earlier in a summit that Bloomberg has been having over in Africa. They have the JP Morgan vice chairman joining Tavipinto.
Just listen what he said about a correction is possible.
There is probably a correction there, and that correction will also create a correction in the rest of the segments in the SMPN, in the industry, because you are probably in order to justify these valuations, you are considering a level of productivity. That it will happen, but it may not have been as fast as the market is pricing.
Daniel Pinto there, JP Morgan, just speaking with our own editor over in Africa today, Margie, and I'm really interested as to well, why you think this will just be I think a garden variety correction. What will be there to support it will be in Vidia's numbers that get us back on track.
Well, I'm not sure anything in Vidia could say will be enough to assuage market concerns. But really, when you look at the big market corrections, the economic corrections, they've all been driven by frankly, Federal Reserve activity, whether when they start to aggressively raise rates. So right here it looks you could say, well, the fit is somewhere between neutral to slightly easing, and again that is not the precondition.
I think we've been through so many of these cycles, all driven by the FED, that we think it's natural that we should have a big downward correction, and I don't think we will. I think we'll just have a continued period of slow growth for most of the economy. The tech sector is very strong because artificial intelligence is really a qualitative leap in the kind of technology that we've had over the last several decades. So we think
it's just a small correction. In fact, if you look at Nvidia, the stock really for this quarter the fourth quarter is really just about flatish, and all they are except for Googles, only one that's up for the quarter, So that says to me there's a lot of nervousness waiting for it in Video. But I think after that clear as a year, I think we'll have a strong finish because the fundamentals are still so strong as far as the I can see, which I would say is at least for another year or so.
And we look at you today in video up thirty five percent, but it has erode it about half a trillion dollars of market cap since the end of October, Margie.
So is that a buying opportunity, Well.
I think it's.
I think it's a moderate opportunity, yes, because at least you have some of a discount. The pe is around forty times, and that's higher than the average stock which is around twenty seven times. But on the other hand, their leaders in their sector, they should have an above average growth as far as the guy can see, so it's really not as high priced as it was relatively a few months ago.
So I'd say, yes, it's a.
Good time to add to in video because their fundamental position is really strong. I think it's just as I said, market nervousness. Short term traders have gotten badly whipsawed back and forth in the last couple of months, and I think that's what's we're all causing this downward wave, involved orly giving us.
The longer term perspective. We always so appreciate it.
Margie Patel of all Spring Global Investments, Stay well, see you soon we home. Meanwhile, coming up, gaming giant Roadblock takes steps to expand age verification across its platform. We'll discuss the details of Roblox CEO Dave Zuki.
That's next. This is a Blume meg Tech.
Roadblocks and as we've going rolling out age verification technology for all users and is introducing age based chat as the gaming platform expands safety features with further parental resources too. Roblox CEO Dave Zuki joins us now and Dave. This really builds on that big, ambitious September announcement.
How is this going to be rolling out?
Hey?
Great to be here and what an enormous responsibility. With one hundred and fifty million users every day coming to the platform, We're rolling out what we believe will be the goal old standard for the future of Internet safety. We're the first really major gaming platform to use AI to estimate the age of everyone on the platform who wants to use chat and communicate. We're going to start rolling this out in December and then it'll be should
be all rolled out by January. Basically, on whatever device you're on, take a quick image, will analyze your age with AI, complement it with a bunch of other signals, and use that really to figure out who who might you be chatting with. To keep the platform more safe, we're not going to be allowing minors, for example, to communicate with people who are adults, and we're going to roll it out to everyone on the platform.
I'm really interested as to how you're going to measure success here, Dave, because in many ways you're trying to prove a negative. But how are you going to be internally thinking this has worked, people are satisfied and they're safe.
Well, I want to highlight things are already working in that we're a very unique platform, and that we filter all of the text and communication on our platform. We don't allow the sharing of images, we have monitoring for
critical harms, We work very closely with law enforcement. So I see this as an addition to everything we're doing and really to our vision of what we've been calling the gold standard, but we do estimate over the next few months will will know roughly the age of everyone on the platform, and we'll complement that with some of the other things we do, like trusted connections and things
like that to constantly build on our innovation. You know, we've shipped over one hundred safety innovations in the last year, so it's really a continuation of that focus.
You're using a third party vendor persona, I believe, and how are you going to be ensuring that that's robust enough the AI The underlying technology is we're bust enough ever in the UK well from the using Discord for example, managed to bypass previous facial recognition age verification tests.
There's a bunch of other signals we have in addition to the facial age estimation, and we do have the ability to estimate several times if we need to so, so in addition to using the camera to do an age check, we have other ways to validate and putting all of these signals together, we believe is pretty robust.
Really, what's so interesting is clearly you're here with safety as a priority. You did mention back in the earnings your CFO in particular that maybe you'll see some friction, maybe the numbers, the revenue, the growth might be impacted as people start to have to verify their age, maybe slower to come and adopt.
Do you think that that will bear out? How will it look longer term?
We shared this vision that we believe over ten percent of the global gaming market, which is somewhere between a one hundred and eighty and two hundred billion dollar market, is going to be running on roadblocks. And in the earnings call we just had, we shared this amazing growth both on bookings and DAUS in the seventy percent year on year rate. Long term, we believe this is just the right thing for the platform. We're unique and that we have all ages. We have people under thirteen, over
thirteen or over thirteen is growing rapidly. This is the right long term vision and we're really optimistic about continuing our growth.
Okay, so this is the right balance from your perspective, What do you think the data will bear out as to the name, well, ultimately the actual ages of people you have using it.
Do you think you have more under thirteen's you anticipated? Do you think you have more older users?
We can't estimate that exactly. What I can say is that our the facial age estimation tech we're going to use is pretty reasonable and pretty accurate. I've tried it, some of my kids have tried it. We've tried it within our staff meeting. So I think we're going to find out we're reasonably close. But over time we will get a better signal on everyone's age.
And this must be something that marked is that those that eventually we're buying more ads with roadblocks are going to be looking at is this going to help well inject some fuel to that offering because people will feel safer about what age group can be consuming such efforts.
We have shared a couple things. You know, we don't target under eighteen already on the platform, but there's an enormous number of older users joining the platform. We shared in our earnings call I believe in Q four like we're literally earn qth running at over ten billion hours a month of engagement. That's an amazing amount of engagement.
Our economy is primarily driven right now by our virtual economy powered by Robucks, but advertising is a wonderful compliment, and you're right, we're going to have a better more accurate estimate of everyone's age, which for a lot of our advertisers that are starting to hop on with events supporting all kinds of things, beauty products, movies, things like that, they'll have a better idea of really the number of people over eighteen on our platform.
Reblock CEO David Zuki on their latest safety updates.
We really appreciate you joining the show today. Thank you.
Now, coming up, we're going to be speaking with a Lovable CEO, Anton Asika, as the company is said to be nearing a six billion dollar valuation. This is bloom bag tech AI coding startup Lovable. It's set to hit a six billion dollar valuation. That's according to sources. The company is seeing rapid growth, reaching two hundred million dollars in annual recurring revenue and expanding with new offices in
Boston and San Francisco. Joining us now to discuss Anton Aseka, CEO of Lovable, Anton, I go to the numbers that you've actually given to us, the two hundred million dollars, the annual revenue run rate, that's a lot who's purchasing.
So we're seeing Lovable since we launched just twelve months ago. Empowered by this consumer and prosumer movement of individuals that use the product and then they love it so they
put in their credit card. And that's just the movement that's then translated to us being pulled into the enterprise where Fortune five hundred companies like Klarna, HCA Healthcare, they're transforming how they work on top of a completely new weight to build the software, software products, and even software companies on top of the products that are being.
Built two hundred million dollars.
In terms of what you're saying annual revenue run rate, you're seeing, as you say, a breadth of enterprise adoption and individual entrepreneurialism. But when it comes to vibe coding and the use cases, where are you having to build out your building offices in America, it would see.
Yeah, and that's great.
What we're seeing is that love is providing a lot of value in large companies moving faster, and many of those companies are in the US. So we have great leadership that has built companies at the largest stage. Before Ryan Meadows skilled Eclavio, he's not joining.
Building out from where he's based in Boston.
We have Maria and Kobe who joined from notion she's moving with her family to Stockholm.
I think that says a lot.
While we keep the core headquarters here in Stockholm, as we expand globally on the mission, which is simply to reimagine how software is built and who gets to build it, and it's initnessing a once in a generation democratization of the software creation.
The pace is extraordinary. It's only four months ago.
It's only back in July that you mentioned that you've got one hundred million dollar and your revenue run rate. Now that's doubled. You are, we understand looking for funding. You could have a six billion dollar valuation. Can you comment on how much you were needing to have yet further capital to finance this expansion.
Yeah, Krolyn, I'm not here to talk about any fundraising that hasn't happened, but what I can say is that the momentum is absolutely astounding and it's increasing. There are one hundred thousand new projects built on Lovable every single day. And what's was growing even faster is how much traffic the meaningful applications and businesses built on Lovable are gathering.
We're seeing we're seeing five million visits.
The level websites per day That doubled in just the last two months, and some part of that is us building out and just reimagining how does the entire life cycle of building a software product look like. We launched Lovable's cloud and AI offering two months ago and that has resulted in almost thirty percent of all the applications built having AI included. Even though they're built without a software engineer, they're built by the ninety nine percent who
don't go and then starting to collaborate with engineers. If they're being built in large companies in the same platform.
What are your costs? Where are you having to spend more? Is it talent?
Is it compute? Is it?
What is it that you are going to build within your business model?
So when someone asks Lovable to build them and your software or just a presentation and demonstration of something that they think the business should be doing, we are of course consuming compute to power the AI and that costs
a significant amount. But Lovable has healthy unit economics and now what we're looking to do is to just do everything we can to drive as much value for all of our customers, and that's going to require us to invest in the new offices that we're opening and to take care and teach customers that are using levelble how to get the most value out of the product.
And when you hear the anxiety in the public markets that companies are overinvesting, so we're not seeing the AI rewards yet in the timeframe that we need to for the amount of money that's going on happital expenditure.
What do you say to that?
So when AI initiatives are being pushed into a company top down, then I think there is often a risk that the expectation is wrong.
Someone hasn't used the tools themselves.
What we're seeing with Lovable is that it's all being adopted bottoms up. So people come to the web Lovable website and they build an application, publish it online or privately to their own company, and then they see value and then they start paying. So I think there's a a lot of different things happening in AI, and if you're considering making buying decisions, you should yourself use the technology and understand yourself how it can affect your business
outcomes or your personal personal life. And we've at Lovable, we're seeing companies like Microsoft Klarna a large part of fortunate one hundred companies adopting this new demo memo where anyone in the company build software to take the company forward.
Demo do memo.
Wonderful to say, being born Ata Sweden, expanding here in the United States. Leveable CEO, anton Asika. We thank you so much for your time today. Now, another key story we're all digesting is Microsoft and Vidia announcing investment combined
fifteen billion dollars into Anthropic. In return, Anthropik will be committing to purchase thirty billion dollars of computing capacity for Microsoft as your cloud service man Deep Seing and Boomberg Intelligence breaking down what is again a circular deal here, but it seems as though this could really be rivaling open Ai.
Well, so the way I look at it is everyone is looking to diversify. So in the case of Nvidia, they want a long tail of cloud players for their chips. In the case of Microsoft, they want to go beyond open Ai, and you know, diversify into different lllms. And because there are so few frontier LLM providers, I mean, Nthropic is the obvious choice. You can't really invest in Google or metas LM. So from that perspective, it makes
sense that they are looking for diversification. But look in the end, when you look at you know, the deployment of these lms, there is no doubt that you know, Gemini just release their Gemini three llms, so the progress is there. It's just for Microsoft because they don't have
their own LLLM. It makes sense that you know, they are investing in Entropic and really making sure they have you know, someone beyond open Ai to look up to be because that contract expires in twenty thirty two, so they're really playing the long game here.
And then playing the long game for compute demand as well. How important is that thirty billion dollars to the overall business model?
I mean Microsoft has a backlog of four hundred billion dollars with a two year duration, so they already have a ton of visibility. This thirty billions is sort of an increment to that. And that's where you know, they have really differentiated from the other hyperscale cloud providers with their backlog, with their shorter duration, and with the visibility and revenue they have from you know, just the GPU and AI workloads compared to all other cloud providers. So
from that perspective. This kind of helps their revenue visibility at least for the next two to three.
Years and keep seeing Blueberg Intelligence. Thank you so much. Amid all the talk of this AI investment venture investors, they are focused on two key things, picking the right startups sort of intertwined AI and helping portfolio companies make the most of the technology. Hillary goesher is with us managing directorate Insight Partners, where she oversees these considerations the
VCPE firm. It's got ninety billion dollars regulatory assets under management. Hillary, I'm so pleasing you're here to talk us.
Through what you have. You are in charge in many ways.
Of how AI is being adopted by your portfolio companies. You're all in on software in particular over Insight. How are companies making the most of it and really showing productivity gains?
Caroline, thank you for having me on the show. So Insight is an investor that invests across stage. We invest from early stage startups, scale apps, grown ups once they go IPO. And you know, over the history of Insight, we've had fifty five RPOs companies that you would be aware of, Shopify, Monday and this year Hinge Health, and so we're very focused on making sure that we help
build the best companies. And so this year we're celebrating twenty five years of Inside on Site, which is the team that works alongside portfolio companies helping them scale and grow.
Because the one thing.
That CEOs ask, which is what do you provide me? That's more than just capital, And the point is we provide expertise, we provide access, we provide talent so that they can really achieve their dreams. Just like you know, Antonadel lovable, I love Insight Onsite.
That's actually twenty five years that you've been bringing this to bear. And what is it that you learn at the moment that leaders are needing of you? Where is the guidance making most impact?
Yeah, So we have an accelerator program because, as you mentioned, everything is changing with AI and we need our portfolio companies to keep up with the pace of change. There is a difference between those companies that are AI native and those are companies that are cloud native. Anton being you know, AI native, and how do we help our companies who are cloud native pivot and make that shift towards adopting AI. And really we think about it as
our AI Accelerator and it starts with the CEO. So the CEO is the person that really needs to understand and adopt and drive the change and the transformation. So we bring CEOs into our AI Accelerator program. It's a six month program small cohorts of CEOs, and we help them think about two areas that they need to drive change in. The first is around AI in the product, So how are they building AI into their products that
delight and deliver more value for customers? And then how are they adopting AI in their business so that they grow and scale more efficiently.
When you're looking at I think you've got more than one hundred and thirty dedicated professionals getting on site, getting really bedded in with these businesses and helping them accelerate. When they're thinking of just the top down approach, it becomes a talent question.
How are you finding that.
Being an area of bringing everyone on board, everyone wanting to adopt, everyone wanting to ensure that these pilots have been proven out to work.
Yes, so there is a strong ground swell among employees to want to learn these tools. There is a fear as well on the other side, that if they don't learn the tools, that would they be disintermediated, would they not have jobs? Instead, what we're seeing is that AI is really augmenting people and making them more efficient and better able to do some of their jobs. I'll give you a great example. So one of our portfolio companies works in the airline industry. They sell security and training
software to large airlines. There are more than seven thousand incidents that are tracked day, types of incidents that attract today, whether an aeroplane is on the ground, in the air, on takeoff, fun landing, taxing, and these are connected across thousands of airports every day. There is analysts to collect
that information. It's an LM problem in the making. I mean, there's nothing better than a very large language model to be able to analyze all of this information and to really help those analysts provide the critical insights that keep aircraft in the air, keep passengers safe, and basically keep revenue flowing. So those analysts actually now feel like heroes, whereas before they were spending hours but also behind the times three weeks, four weeks before. Sometimes they got the
data and were able to produce the insights. So in some ways, AI is really augmenting and helping them up skill and making them the heroes of the situation.
And that's really about organic growth there. I think of the expertise that you have learned over your career when it comes to inorganic as well, and some of the acquisitions that have been made of your portfolio companies into bigger companies. But how much are you seeing the AARI is a talent acquisition story and that companies portfolio companies are looking out to buy others at this moment.
Is that something that you're helping guide through. Yes.
I think it's interesting that you say that private equity has always been thought of as the domain for M and A, you know, buy and build, build a platform company, but we think of it as also a domain for venture capital. And the on site team has created and expertise to help our companies make those acquisitions for exactly as you say, either geographic expansion or potential new products
to put in and for equi hires. And that is one of the ways that our companies are able to access some of this AI talent because these you know, new AI natives are starting AI first thinking companies and some of those companies are right for acquisition by some of our companies who are looking for their talent.
It's fascinating to have thirty years of insight in twenty five years that you've been building this team of on site expertise. It's wonderful to have you here on the show. I hope you do come back soon. Hillary, of course, is over at Insight Partners. Hillary Gosha, Managing Director. There now coming up robots are doing more for law enforcement, but as police departments invest more in these machines, ethical
questions are arising. 's next as a Bloomberg Tech, It's time now for talking tech and first up into It will spend more than one hundred million dollars on a multi year deal with open Ai, aiming to make its apps like TurboTax and QuickBooks more valuable with generator of AI for.
The chatchbt maker. While the deal is part of a push.
To get consumers and businesses to rely more on its AI tools plus I Do Will, It's posted its worst sales fall on record. The Chinese search Chinet has seen ad and marketing spend move to rival social apps.
Meanwhile, it's struggled to keep up in crowded.
AI race ul Jaomi, which sold its first card just last year, is turning a profit from electric vehicle sales. The company's EV division posted a profit of approximately ninety eight million dollars in the September quarter.
Shaomi plans to boost.
Its EV production so it looks to compete with Tesla and byd.
Now.
You may know this particular a mechanical dog we'll show you in a minute for its firal dance routines, but Boston Dynamics four legged robot Spot is also playing an increasing role in law enforcement. According to previously unreported news, more than sixty bomb squads and swap teams across the US.
And Canada are now using Spot.
Our consumer tech reporters Samantha Kelly joins US Now for more and sam, I mean, how is this being adopted in?
What situations? Are we seeing them really take these on? Yeah, this is really fascinating.
So we've seen some headlines over the years of Spot showing up maybe at a crime scene, but now we're getting new data from Boston Dynamics that shows more law enforcement units across the US and Canada are implementing bringing these robotic dogs into their forces to help out in hostage situations or chemical materials that are sensitive, like going in to see if something is hazardous. Basically to prevent law enforcement from entering somewhere. This dog can go win,
it can climb stairs, it can open doors. It basically acts as a separate set of eyes. There's a live camera feed, so an operator standing quite far away from a scene can go in assess the situation, and more law enforcement units, Like I said, over sixty now in the US, but also we're seeing it overseas. Police in Italy are also using it the Dutch ministry and it still remains quite popular and manufacturing and other facilities as well.
They aren't cheap, starting at one hundred thousand dollars, so the reward needs to be large. But what about some of the ethical implications here, Soum briefly.
Yeah, so it starts at one hundred thousand dollars, to your point that it can go way up from that. We're seeing two hundred and fifty thousand in some situations. But yes, ethical implifications here calling for more regulation around this from the state and even federal level down the line. You know, Boston Dynamics has some rules in place, but
perhaps some community guidelines are needed as well. Also, a lot of law enforcement units can't afford these different devices, so there's some you know, talking around that as well. So just really people trying to get used to seeing, you know, something like this at a crime scene or at a situation. Making sure that them that the public feels comfortable as well.
Makes Sam Kelly fascinating on all things spot.
While the price of Spot.
Is now quite well above the price of Bitcoin, it seems crypto selloff has just been taking a pause. But look, we're still in ninety three three, four hundred and twenty, let's call it. It actually tumbled below ninety thousand dollars overnight for the first time since April.
Numo's crypto reporter.
Miaoshen joins us now and it feels as though we've got a little line of stability. But do we know who's going to be a buyer in this market? Is it institutional or is it retail?
I think for now what we're seeing is that there's definitely some buyers has stepped in like as of a today because we saw sort of, as you said, a little as stability in the market at the moment. But what we're stroggling figure out actually who's going to be the new buyers right. I think right now we have a lot of these like that or the Digital Treasury complaints similar to micro Saler's strategy that perhaps going to coming out later this year or QY in next year.
I think they're expected to be the buyers of the market in the near future.
What's so interesting as well is during the government shutdown, we know that the list of ETF applications has been piling up over the sec Many people want to have more ETFs that are related to crypto, but not always about bitcoin. We know bitcoins taken ahead, but the old coins have really been selling fast and furiously. Is that something just the market's okay with it stomachs that volatility.
I think it's quite concerning in terms of what's going on in the auto coins right because I think they're still struggling to find support after the October market crash in crypto because some of the auto coins in the market crash went down to zero on some of the exchanges. Can you imagine as a retail investor just holding a token and all of a sudden went down to zero during this brief market crash, especially if you're holding leverage positions, right.
I think people ultimately do figure out, like, you know, what are the fundamentals of these auto coins?
Are the projects behind it, like.
Generating any sort of revenue or they're just sort of like you know, sort of created out of a thing air or sort of like being meant as a joke.
Right.
I think that's the questions people have to sort of like find out fundamentals.
It's a key question across all of this market. Mao shn It's great.
To have you on. Thank you very much.
Indeed, I mean you are coming up more to come on What to expect from that highly anticipated meeting. It's kicked off between President Trump and NBS. Of course Mahammed bin Salmon, the cram Prince of Saudi Arabia.
It's a pretty big tech.
Let's return to Washington now because Saudi Arabia's Cram Prince, Mohammed bin Salmon is at the White House today meeting with President Trump. The talks are expected to center on deepening US Saudi ties and of course the focus on tech investment, on innovation.
When bugs Tyler Kendall rejoins.
Us, you're live outside the White House and there was much fanfare, a flyover, and a very warm welcome for the leader of Saudi Arabia. Why is this relationship so important from a tech perspective?
Yeah, hey, Caroline, Well, this is the Saudi Crown Prince's first visits to the US in seven years, so, as you're alluding to, there's a lot of pomp and circumstance here today, as the White House has really viewed Saudi Arabia as a strategic partner when it comes to investments in the US, but also broadening out cooperation when it comes to tech and artificial intelligence. We know at the top of the agenda today Saudi Arabia is looking for the US to green light those export licenses related to
advanced semiconductors. But we have reporting here at Bloomberg News people familiar saying that right now those talks are centered around one what sort of security conditions will be put in place, and two, what are those specific reciprocal investments Riot is willing to make in the US. I have to say I was at the FII conference back in February.
That was a Saudi backed investment conference in Miami, and it was President Trump's real first domestic trip since taking office, and he made the pitch that he wanted more money to be coming in from Saudi Arabia. A few months later in May, we saw him visit the region and secure a pledge for six hundred billion dollars in investments
in the US over the next four years. We know a lot of this the administration wants to see in these critical sectors that they have identified as being really important, particularly when it comes to our competition in China, such as data centers and AI. So we're watching really closely whether or not there are any specific investments announcements related
to that. That of course goes hand in hand with the second bucket we're watching here, which is defense today, as President Trump has indicated that he's set to approve the sale of F thirty five fighter jets amid some concerns one again with those chips access that China could have considering the close ties between the Kingdom and Beijing, but then also what that means for Israel. We know that, of course, Caroline, that they have a monopoly over the advanced fighter jet technology in the region.
Be Mes Tyler Kendall not from the White House.
We so appreciate it busy day there, busy day across tech that does it for this aosition of Bloomberg Technology.
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