From Mahard. We're Innovations, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Vallet NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow and Karen hide A Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York, and Ludlow is off on a well earned vacation as a Bloomberg Technology Coming up, TikTok banned in Montana. It marks the first US state to sign a law banning the social media app across all phones. Will discuss the
legal and logistical implications of the move past. In today's VC Spotlight, we speak with a speak with an early AI investor, Serilgo, the founder at VC firm Conviction and former general partner at Graylock, and we bring you all the tech stocks. Moving on earnings, we take a deep dive into Ali Barbara as the e commerce grant pans as spinoff for its club business.
And much more.
First, let's check in on these public markets, because once again there's real risk on sentiment around the Nasdaq. We're off more than a percentage point at the moment to the races one hundred and thirty four points to the upside. Maybe a bit of a relief, it seems as though maybe that debt ceiling debarcle. We're inching closer to some
sort of respite to that with. Of course, though, have a strong jobs number coming out, and that is what's affecting the two year yield up some five six basis points. We're still thinking about whether the Federal Reserve really has to curtail the overall strength of the economy, the inflation some FED speak speaking to that today, we're looking at Bitcoin currently off by nine tens and percent. That's because basically every single currency pair in FX is also down
versus the US dollars. We think about where the Federal Reserve has to go, let's move it on. It's like at some individual movers because ED is out, I'm going to play on the micro today. Cisco off by three tens percent as they really show some of the draw down in spending. Remember this is the company that provides equipment for basically networking all our Internet access, and they're seeing more than a twenty percent drop in recent business.
We're seeing Ali Barbar also off by four percent. Doesn't manage to ignite that optimist particularly after the reopening of China. To a certain degree, they're not managing harnessing that growth, particularly in the cloud area, even as we get more detail on where they will spin off the groceries unit the cloud business as well. We'll dig into that later in the show. Netflix interesting look at this rally up
basically to ten percent. We know why they gave us some evidence of the growth that they're seeing in the advertising part of the model. They're going out to upfronts for the first ever time, basically where they pitch to advertise as the where's the content they're coming and people really liked what they heard. Relief were up almost ten percent. Meanwhile, though, let's really dig into what is the top news agenda
today in terms of tech. TikTok now officially from January first band in Montana setting up a legal battle in the state, and the social media company is already facing some heavy scrutiny from the United States more broadly in terms of its lawmakers joining us some more bluemegs, Alex Borinka, and just first dig in on what Montana has said, this is going to be incredibly difficult to.
Enforce, incredibly difficult to enforce. So Montana has said governor signed into law a bill that would basically restrict or, they say, restrict use of the app, but the owners would actually be on TikTok and the app stoor so Google, Apple app stores, who would, as they say, be fined ten thousand dollars a day for every day that TikTok is made available. But it's really unclear from this bill how they're actually going to enforce it, and certainly, Caroline
this bill will face a legal battle. This is a state basically kind of making a decision to limit an app only within its borders, while the federal government itself has been looking at it. But something like this is pretty unprecedented. The company has told us that this is a regulation on a free speech they have pushed back on it. We've actually already seen a group of creators too, because this bill was signed in the late hours of
last night. So certainly a really interesting move by some who are pro banning TikTok would say, good job Governor of Montana for restricting this on national security concerns. But critics of this bill would probably say, hey, why is this state kind of getting involved in what should be a federal move.
And maybe this puts the onus back on a federal move Alex, but remind us the ways in which TikTok has tried to alleviate concerns from a national security perspective is by saying, look, we're working with Oracle, We're ensuring that the data is in any way being accessed by China. Just tell us you did some really deep dive analysis on what that deal is with Oracle in the moment.
Right a callig and I wrote about where it stands this deal called Project Texas. Basically, TikTok has put Oracle up as this American partner who's going to wall off the data for US users to alleviate national security concerns,
and that process has already started. But what we broke this morning is that a large chunk of the really ambitious work of Oracle actually reviewing TikTok's code, which is pretty unprecedented and being the entity that submits the app to the app stores, that work has not yet started, even though TikTok has eluded that it has. This is all according to a person familiar, and Oracle will not start that work unless there's a final agreement in place
that the government has signed off on. You'll recall there is a national security review going on. It's an interagency review in DC, and that has stalled because the Justice
Department has not been happy. So without that moving forward, without a final sealed, done dusted, US stamped proposal in place or legislation that forces some kind of move, oracle will not start doing that really in depth work that TikTok has really used to say, Hey, look your stuff is safe because we have an American partner actually making sure there's no backdoors here for the Chinese government.
Fascinating. Alex Blerinka, thank you for bringing us the latest. It's great reporting and the breaking of that NEUS today. Go read it on the terminal and on dot com. Mean, well, we've got to dig a little deeper here, Kyl Zavos with us. He's George Mason, Professor of the Internet Law and also vice president and general council at net Choice. Now that's a lobbying group aimed at making the Internet
safe for free enterprise and free expression. So and hazard a guess here, Carl that you're pretty anti what we're hearing from the governor and Montanamo broadly today. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
This is something that should scare all of us, because this is exactly what we don't want the government to do and what the government can't do. It can't decide what websites we can visit and what apps we can download. Imagine if this government of Montana came out and said you can no longer go to Bloomberg dot com. Of course everyone would be apoplectic. But that's exactly what we're
seeing here with TikTok. At the end of the day, what we are ultimately going to see is a legal challenge on this because this is a clear violation of the First Amendment. The government can't ban speech, which is exactly what this is. Simultaneously is a clear violation and of something called a bill of attainer. It's a legal term that we use rarely where you can't criminalize an individual, and that's exactly what you're seeing here. So this is
a slammed don case of unconstitution. But more importantly, it's a dangerous precedent against free speech, free expression, and free enterprise in the freest nation in the world.
Remind us why thus far they've been able to ban them on government phones.
Yeah, the bands on government phones. I actually don't have any issue with. I'm an employer many employers are watching this program right now, and we all have rules and restrictions on what our employees can and cannot do on their own company devices, and we can say, well, you can't go to this website, you can't unload that app, And so the government is perfectly free to do that for their own employees, federal employees, state employees, local employees.
In fact, as a taxpayer, I don't see any reason why government employees should have TikTok on their government devices, because when I'm paying their salaries as a taxpayer, I expect them to be working, not producing TikTok videos, not watching entertainment videos. So that's why the government can do
it on their own devices. But it is very different from the government then coming and telling me, telling you, telling everyone else out there what websites they can visit and what apps they can download on their own personal devices.
So, as you say, and you've come out saying this is unconstitutional, TikTok has come out saying that it's against free speech. Legal arguments abound, but it does put the owners back on the federal government. And what is currently being debated by the administration to either ensure that national security is preserved or indeed courtail TikTok within the United States. More broadly, is there any way that the federal government could anactis do you think.
The thing at the federal level is TikTok is kind of a distraction, it's fig leaf. A lot of lawmakers don't want to have an important, necessary discussion on the US dependency on China, national security, cybersecurity, or privacy. But there is legislation today before Congress that they could look to do. They could create a national standard on cybersecurity, they could look to create a national standard on privacy laws.
And what this will do is it will protect all Americans regardless of whether an attack is coming from outside the US or from within. Let's remember some of the biggest data breaches in US history came from inside the US, whether it's solar winds in Texas, whether it is the hack last month of the health information of members of Congress, or whether it was a government employee deciding to dump all of our secrets about Ukraine under the Internet to
impress their friends. So we need to harden our critical infrastructure regardless and focusing on one business, one entity, one nation distracts us from the important work that Congress must do to harden these critical infrastructures and make us all safe.
More broadly, when you're looking abroad at what's occurring, we are seeing other countries UK, for example, also banning on government devices. Is there anywhere that is thinking that they have to curtail certain social media apps because in this, of course discussion that's been leveled by Montana, they don't just mention TikTok, they also mention other bytedn BITEDOWNCE owned apps, capcut Lemonade, but also there's Telegram, which they sort of for see having a link to Russia.
So there is certainly one nation that is in the business of deciding what websites and what apps it citizens can use, and that's China. They have the Great Firewall where if the CCP doesn't like what you're saying, the citizens can't see it. It's a horrible model for the rest of the world. It is the antithesis of what
America stands for. So I expect the US to lead the way to reject bands on speech, reject bands on apps, and push the notion that citizens and free people should be able to decide what is or is not appropriate for them, because at the end of the day, if I have concerns about TikTok, I just don't.
I just won't use it. I'll use something else.
And that's the freedom of choice. That's the freedom that we have here in America, and unfortunately, in Montana, that freedom is being taken away from its citizens.
Very briefly, of course, your associate association members are TikTok, but they also Amazon, Airbnb, etc. Meta a number do your association members currently feel that regulation in the US is working for them or against them?
You know, across the board, Netchoice is out there fighting every single day to plow the field for free expression, free enterprise, and we are all behind the notion of creating a national standard on things like privacy law or cybersecurity law because at the end of the day, what that will do is secure Americans and more importantly, it will make it easier for Americans to know how their privacy is treated, how their data is treated, and for
businesses out there, it gives them a simple, easy, one standard to follow, which drives down costs of compliance and makes it easier to spend that money on innovation. We need innovation at the speed of technology. Not at the speed of government. And that's what we all agree on, and.
It would say that as we look at AI and plan the other things being discussed. Kul so Bo great To has some time with the George Mason, Professor of Internet Law and of course of net choice.
This uniquely American innovation ecosystem is still the world's envy, and I want us to make it stronger. I've never seen rapid gains that we're seeing now with frontier language models. As fast we lead, the world is trying to catch up. We're still ahead. Let's continue.
Of course you recognize him. Former Google CEO there, Eric Schmidt, testifying a house hearing yesterday which fun Love was focused on China's embrace of AI for warfare. He also warned that, look, while the US still has an edge in the key areas like AI and quantum computing, China is likely having more people working on strategic AI and advises that the US must redesign its military to respond to that threat.
Let's talk more broadly about artificial intelligence, about what feels like a race, whether it's between US and China, or indeed company versus company here within the United States as well, particularly when it comes to generative AI. Zerogo, Perfect Voice, founder of Conviction. It's an AI focused VC firm built to serve software three point zero companies as you call them, And of course you've got a long history with gray
Lock and sitting on plenty of boards there. I'm interested at the moment as to where you're seeing the most value being attributed to AI companies.
Thanks for having me. We are very early in the AI revolution, and I think it's a very general technology. It's huge potential to improve people's lives and productivity and contribute to complex problems in climate and education and science.
In the near term.
Some of the areas we're seeing the most immediate value include democratization of creative capabilities, so giving everyone the ability to generate image and voice and video where you used to need to develop creative skills. And trying to give experts leverage. So think of companies that enable lawyers to do their work more quickly, or data scientists to leverage their work for a broader business audience. So we've invested in companies like Seek and Harvey.
In this vein, we're looking at some of your portfolio companies there more broadly, and there is of course, the minute you start to say leveling the playing field, democratization, when it comes to image to voice, copyright concerns come to the full How are you seeing the founders that you're working with really get ahead of the curve of where regulation could come.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I think there's a series of tricky issues that companies playing in this field need to consider, and that includes copyright, includes disinformation, and it includes abuse of these technologies by malicious actors, as you'll see with every technology tool like the Internet, of course, and so we expect when we invest in companies means for founders to think about these issues from a responsible AI perspective from the very beginning.
And it's interesting, of course you've been someone who thought a lot about Web three and indeed the democratization of finance in that way, crypto immediately comes to mind. Some people are trying to compare and contrast the way in which the AI ecosystem is looking to get ahead of regulation or lead start asking for it sooner visa the cryptosphere.
But is that our own naivety to realize how AI has been being built, you know, for decades a lot of these big companies and certainly the startups as well. We all suddenly feel like it's brand new and shiny because we're now touching it as a consumer. But are we behind the curve when it comes to regulation or we're managing to be at a better pace this time.
So this may not be a very popular view, but I think we actually need to be going faster on the regulatory front. That doesn't necessarily mean licensing, for example, to train models. I'd be cautious about cementing the concentration of power to the few organizations today in allowing them
to decide who has access. But in terms of the governance questions that come about when you have a technology that is so general progressing at a rapid speed, that justifies anxiety, and it should justify investment from both the private sector and academia and policy makers to understand and get ahead of the changes that will come in society. So I think we're going to need very strong partnership between industry and policymakers to reap the benefits of AI
and mitigate some of the concerns. And we're committed to engaging to inform and contribute to that process.
Yeah, how are you contributing? Do you feel the administration and those in power off speaking with the right people within this field.
I think there is a rapid acceleration of engagement from both sides over the last few months, and so we've been participants in that these are complex issues, right, Managing the misuse of AI is something that must be a arrived at through an inclusive and democratic process. And it's hard because it's also technical, right, if people are hurting
a lot. But I do think there's an opportunity for perhaps pro technology policy making that is, for lack of a better term, not just defensive right, protecting against against some of the issues that we discussed, but also really goes on the offensive, right in that you just showed
a clip from Eric Schmidt. I think that this is relevant from a national security perspective, relevant from a sort of economic stability perspective, and also relevant in that, you know, be a real shame if some of the sort of more ambitious applications of AI in for example, science or education were not reached because we didn't get regulation right. I'm very excited about there are some companies in our portfolio that are in small ways today already contributing to that.
We have a company called co Rise that uses AI to reduce the cost of reskilling for workers, And so I think there are a lot of benefits that we also want to support here.
Yeah, where do you fall on that general optimism pessimism viewpoint on whether this can ultimately be beneficial to society from a we will get more time to do more impactful work or is there a worry that jobs will be reduced and people won't be reskilled at the rate that they need to be.
Yeah, I think it would be intellectually dishonest for a technologist working in this field to not have that worry, right, And so you know, I founded the firm because I believe it AI is a technology of abundance, but that won't happen the distribution of that abundance will not happen automatically, right, And so this is why I think there's a real room for you know, nuanced policy making here. And so the technology is only good as good as the guardrails
we give it. But I think like the magic of the American innovation system is like technology drives wealth creation every There are so many things that are much cheaper for everyday Americans than they were ten years ago. Because of advancements in productivity and technology, and like one of my greatest hopes for the AI revolution is that a few of the fields that have been quite resistant to decreasing in class, like health and education, we can make some inpotes.
On Sarah, I wish I could speak too much longer. And of course you've got a great podcast we can listen to you, founder of Conviction. We thank you for your time today. Meanwhile, coming up, the UK's biggest telecom operator is planning to cut tens of thousands of jobs by twenty thirty. Well digain. Meanwhile, let's just check in
on Micron. You might have seen the story scoop here every body, but we're receiving about one and a half billion dollars in financial incentives from the Japanese government because all about helping to make the next generation of memory hips in that country. This is about global supply chain and ensuring that it's closer to home. For many from New York, there is a Bloomberg Welcome back to Blueberg Technology. I'm Caroline Hied in New York. Now, let's get a
check on these markets. Halfway through the trading day. We're currently seeing actually some more buoyant signs, particularly in big tech. Once again, we're up more than a percentage point in the moment in terms of the Nasdaq. Some big tech on top will dive into the individual moves in a moment, but maybe some anxiety draining out when it comes to the debt relief and the debt ceiling debarcle that seems
to be spiraling towards us. That Lexie anxiety is dialing back a little bit, maybe closer to the end as we hope, and currently also seeing the jobless claims coming in strong. The overall resilience of this US economy means, but it also means inflatory pressure is there. It also means the US dollar is going higher as the Federal Reserve might just have to keep on thinking about tightening its grip on inflation. We're looking at Bitcoin off by
more than a percentage point as the dollar rises. Turn your attention though to some individual names, because I do want to look at some of the higher siders in video up three point eight percent. Again, this company just continues to benefit from of course the ai A law, but also remember it's still bringing us new GPUs and some of its new trips are going to be serving the gaming community in particular people liking that Apple up more than nine tenser percent. I'm thinking of gaming. We
think about that mixed reality headset. We're expecting that June fifth, We're going to dig into that with Mark Germ and Cisco. Though, on the downside, and one of the biggest point drags on the overall NASDAC today. We know why they of course seeing lackluster orders for some of their equipment of late. Let's talk about other perhaps lackluster areas when it comes to earnings and Ali Barbar are really not managing to show much strength. It's shown in fact weak at e
commerce sales and perhaps have been expected. We're down by four point eight almost five percent on the ADRs. Here how the company has been approving, how it's basically restructure itself, particularly spin off of its cloud services division. Please to say MATCHI, MATCHI Today, Thursday is the day to where plum is One Isabelle Lee, and please to say that
we've got the memo. Uh, talk to me a little bit about what's happening in terms of these earnings, because it looks as though we thought China's reopening was gonna galvanize and revenue is up a bit, but not enough.
Yeah, so shares are tanking and investors are really unhappy because they thought this is the quarter that, you know, after China was closed for several years, it's a big reopening. We're going to bank on this and we're going to see growth. But it was a bit disappointing. So a couple of takeaways. Quarterly sales miss estimates. That's due to
a shrinking commerce business. We also have cloud revenue declined for the first time on record, and that's a big deal because Ali Baba Cloud is the largest cloud provider in China.
It's a multi billion business.
And of course the bread and butter, which is a customer management fees that also shrank for the fourth straight quarter. So that's really of a China reopening have gone south because we've found the Chinese consumers have preferred eating out, going on trips, going to karaoka rooms, and seeing their hearts out rather than shopping online, which they have been doing for the past two years when they were stuck at.
Home, like us, a little bit more into their experiences at the moment, what about the disrestructuring any people holding their breath for really the details coming from Jane Ziyng here and well, the focus is on the cloud right and the spin off their roll of and some of the other logistics businesses.
So many people were really looking at these earnings halls because that's what they wanted to do. In fact, some were saying that this is what we care more about rather than the earnings, because it's the future. It's a historic change. It's been around seven weeks since this was announced and a lot of people are speculating this is of course with the approval of the Chinese government or with their blessing and some takeaways. They did give some
details which made a lot of people happy. Look, for instance, Cloudnesses to your point, it's going to be an independent, publicly listed company likely in the next year. They also have their logistics business infront Ipo twelve to eighteen months. The grocery chain is also seeking to listen the next six to twelve months, and the international commerce business will
seek external funding. So many changes there. I still love the Bloomberg opinion callist Tim Culplan calling at six Baby Baba's and now the Baba is really unique on its own because it's one of the few, if not the only one that people look at as a sum of fits parts basis, So they look at the little parts and that's how they value the company, especially with this big historic breaking up happening, and.
They're going to have sort of rotating caster characters and the earning statements going on. Right when they speak to analysts, it will be one of the other leaders and one of the baby barber's coming on, So that's interesting.
Are they going to have one or are they going to be really treated as an independent company? And one important point is yes, they will be split into six, but there will be some favorites. Obviously, some businesses will be better and stronger than the others. So we're going to see the winners and the losers down the line.
Great to have you on, thank you breaking it all down as Vallee. Meanwhile, let's just stick with the e commerce a little bit more consumer jant Walmart. Look, it's reporting earnings today, really lifting its annual profit forecast after its discount model Walmart Plus it's powering new market share gains in the United States, so we see a pop and the shares just coming back from their highs. At
the moment, we're coming up all things. You guessed it artificial intelligence, founder of landing ai, Deep Learning dot Ai, co founder of CASERA. That's gonna be next. Where are we in terms of the education front? And let's all just keep an eye also on the shares of Panel because they trade. The Tesla supplier plans to roughly quadruple annual battery production capacity to two hundred gigor what hours by March twenty thirty one, a sign that it anticipates
greater demand for electric vehicles. It has a performed over the last couple of days. This Bloomberg. This is a good one. A new exchange traded fund and ETF tracking companies that benefit from the rise of artificial intelligence is hitting the market looking to tap into what is a growing frenzy for the technology. The Roundhall Generative AI and Technology ETF. We're in trading under the aptly named ticker
chat on Thursday. The actively managed fund will invest mostly in companies that derive portions of their revenue or profit from generative AI. There are stick on that theme, perfect Voice for now. Andrew is joining US general partner at AI Fund, also chairman, founder and CEO of Landing Ai. Also founded Deep learning dot AI is also the co founder of cor Sarah and also, of course a junk professor at Stanford University's Computer Science department. Whoh titles and
a half. And it's let's start on the AI fund in particular, doctor, because it's a venture studio, which particular applications, Which businesses? What industries do you want to disrupt? What you grow there?
AI is like electricity one hundred years ago. I think it there's a position to transform all industries. My friends used to challenge each other and name an industry that AI will not transform, and where actually struggle with that. I went sit on stage and said, maybe hairdressing. Can the AI cut someone's hair? But my friend, who was a robotic professor suit of data and pointed in my head and she said, Andrew, most AI can't. Most people's
hair can't get AI to cut their hairstyle. But you're here, Andrew, a robot could totally do that. So I think we're actually going to all sorts of industries today.
Brutal, your hair looks very nice today. Look, what's so interesting about your background is not only the wider range of companies that you found in, but look, you were a Google Brain team for example, really at the very beginnings of AI within that particular source of buy do I'm interested as to.
How I started to let the Google Bran team was a great fun and my team built a lot of Google's you know, modernly I capabilities. Yeah.
So with that, how do you worry about big companies, big corporates having so much talent having basically ability to you know, maybe even negotiate agencies that require licenses. Going forward, do you think that we will see a democratization in how AI has grown or do you think it will be owned by some big, big companies that already exist.
There are opportunities for both large companies and for new startups. This is where I see the value being generated. There's the hardware layer companies and video, Intel, A m D. You know, maybe new entrants as well though that that would create a lot of value. There's the infrastructure layer, including the clouds as was the AI tool builders. That looks quite competitive, but also opportunities there. And then the massive untaped opportunity that most people don't realize is the
application layer. So I think that AI is a general purpose technology. That means it's not just useful for one thing, you know, a built AI AD systems that moves massive amounts of dollars. It's some of the large add tech advertising platforms. But yeah, isn't just useful ads. It's useful for robotic process automation, medical diagnosis, and agriculture and manufacturing.
And I think it's actually very difficult for any one company to simultaneously build businesses and everything maritime shipping to education, to healthcare to financial services, and so I think the most efficient way to actually realize all of these diverse use cased art cross economy is to build multiple startups to attack these different opportunities. And actually that's what my adventure firm AI Fund does. And I think the application layer has love untapped opportunities, not just.
So no one company can own all those fields. But what about one country? Everyone needs to have deep anxiety about the so called race US versus China. As someone who is a by do, how do you how does your expertise instruct that view?
You know, we'out speaking to any one country. I feel like most countries at this point in time are prioritly under investing in AI. Ten years ago, we saw the explosion in deep learning machine learning basically labeling things. You know, label what's the text transfer for this label? When someone click on this, that label this medical linosis. Ten years later, we're not yet sold. We're not yet finished sorting out all the valuable use cases where this is going to
be applied. And in the last few years we now have generative AI, which is another general purpose technology, which again is useful all sorts of things. And that means that the number of applications to which we can apply AI is even BARSI greater than before. This means that for most nations, the next decade will have a lot of opportunities to figure out a lot more country use cases,
to create a lot of value for everyone. And I think thank in most countries invest more in the tech and in research and in education around AI.
You wrote quite a strongly worded response rebuttal, shall we say to what had been the proposal? The letter the signatory is saying, look, put a wholt, put a pause, particularly on generative AI development at the moment in the big large language models. You said, in particular it advise largely because you know the genie's out the bottle, but ultimately that you know they were unrealistic in the way in which AI could upend humanity. But also we don't
want to slow down innovation. Where are you on just how powerful AI could become, or at least where the regulatory landscape is moving at the pace at which the innovation is two So.
I think AI does have risk. There is bias, fairness, concentration of power, amplifying toxic speech, generating toxic speech, job displacement. There are real risks that the AI community takes seriously working on hopefully actually for the most part, working really hard to make things better. Then there is the overhyped existential risk or AI wipe out humanity. I am less
worried about that for a couple of reasons. One the heart takeoff scenario where AI isn't working that well yet today, but suddenly overnight May thirty first, twenty twenty three, we suddenly have sent in superintelligence and then forty hours later is taken over the world. Technology doesn't work like that, It actually grows gradually associated coming, and humanity has lots of experience controlling entities any more more powerful than a
single human. Corporations in nations states are much more powerful than one person. But we feel for the most part, managed to steal them for the common good. And then lastly, I think humanity does have existential risk. Maybe an asteroid will do to us, whether it did to the dinosaurs, or climate change leading to massive depopulation, and I think or the next pandemic, you know, fingers crossed. When the look the actual existential risks that face humanity, I think
AI will get large part of the solutions. So if you want a humanity to survive and thrive for the next thousand years, I would rush much rather make AI go faster to help us solve these problems, rather than slow AI down.
Well, let's talk about thriving. It's really interesting that one particular sort of public market capitalization that's been up and it is the education companies that we see listed. I think of CHEG and how much they started to reference that chat GIPT might be slowing their own growth. You are a man who knows and understands online education thoroughly. You're already developing a way in which you can perhaps
retrain reskill to make engineers prompt engineering developers. How are you seeing the landscape change for tech talent right now?
I think that in the tech talent landscape. I want to share one thing that is really obvious that AI insiders but it's not widely known, which is the rise of AI things like chat GPT. Not there's a consumer too, but there's a developer two. So many people have tried chat GPT having yet go try it or Bard or the Microsoft Edge of being searched. Fantastic consumer too. What many people do not yet understand is that these tools
are very powerful developer twos as well. And so there were AI systems that used to take teams like a year to build. They can now be built in a day or two. And so a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, Collaborative Open AI my team deep lamed the AI launched a free online costs juptpro program for developers to teach people how they use this to program a capabilities really fast, really quickly. And we actually had half a millionaire romans in about two weeks. Maybe
don know. It was the fastest growing cause the history of honor education. But I think that this massive wave of new applications that can now build much more cheaply and much more quickly is we're just at the start of that. And I think most people have not realized how big a flood of innovation does it cause an.
AI fascinating Thank you for coming on. Hope to have you on again soon, Doctor Andrew of course, founder and CEO of Lanning Ai. Of course, the AI Fund is where he's currently helping grow startups. Time now for what's going viral. Apple's long awaited mixed reality headset. That's what is. It's finally becoming a reality. Bloomberg's Mark Gumm and you've got a great piece out today and June fifth, we hold our breath.
Yeah, don't hold your breath much longer. On June fifth, Apple will be introducing its next big thing. We actually first wrote about the headset in twenty seventeen, that this is something Apple was working on. We've been reporting on it for a number of years now. All sorts of details you can find on Bloomberg dot com and power
on our later story today in BusinessWeek. Details to products development, how the initial Dream was standalone augmented reality glasses, lots of technical challenges and compromises needed to be made, and now we're going to be getting something that's sort of in between a classic VR headset and the Dream of AAR glasses. This is a mixed reality headset. It's going to be quite light and slim with an external battery,
very powerful with an M two macgrade processor. The idea being this device would replace many of the tasks done today on an iPhone, macro iPad. Focus on gaming, virtual reality, video conferencing, collaboration remotely through different applications, productivity. Gaming will be a big focus, meditating, working out at some point as well. So this is going to be a pretty jam packed and expensive product.
Yes, it better be. For three thousand dollars, Mark Gumman, absolutely brilliant, Go readers pieces. We thank you so much for giving us that setup. And let's dig into well. Someone who's helping build these new augmented and virtual realities, whether it be meditation, whether it be online learning. Emma rig just stadders with us, co founder and CEO of warp In. It's a Swedish vir training company that's helped businesses.
Of course, it's initial creator with Magic Leak, with Meta, even Disney and Ferrari they trained staff and market products. Emma just the possibilities here. It is a big price tag for Apple's product. We know that Meta perhaps has struggled a little bit with the sales of its oculus, and they're like, what are you seeing about the the overall desire of people to want to interact in this way.
Well, let's start off by saying that we are the beginning of the next technological revolution, right, So for the first time, we're seeing a lot of new technologies developing at the same time. We have augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, everything coming at the same time, creating new opportunities that we haven't seen before. I mean, Apple, they stand for quality and they have been working on this headset for many years obviously, so everyone is of course
very excited, exciting of what they're going to release. But what we are seeing from our point of view is the benefits that we're seeing with these technologies are a greater shift, I think than with the smart form phone or the internet.
What needs to happen. Does a price point need to be more accessible for this really to go mainstream?
Well, I think you know right now we are in the business to business where we're seeing the real results.
Right.
If you're using virtual reality for training and education, for example, you can lower your tough with eighty percent, have a retention of seventy percent, and you learn four times faster than any other training method out there. So I mean for this to become more mainstream, we need a headset that is more fashionable, that is a little bit cheaper, and of course content is king. It has to add value to us. It has to make sense for us to put on a headset instead of using our phone.
And I think that's the point emmer is many many would feel that actually, until you've tried it, you can't knock it. But the trying of it is going to be the hard thing. How do you get out there and market these products? How do you ensure that everyone can see the benefits?
Well, I think that to your point, the content is king here. We need to have experiences that rarely showcases what these technologies can do, because instead of being on the internet or just looking at the internet, we're going to be inside the internet, using all of our senses and engaging in a whole new way. And I think when we can see content and apps that will really show how these technologies will change our life, then I
think it will become much more mainstream. And I think gaming and social media and those areas are really exciting and fun, but the greatest benefits for humanity will be in training, education, And just like the first Internet revolutionize these areas, so will Web three point zero and a mataverse.
Of course, there's lots of hand ringing about that. There's worries in the same way you mentioned alificient intelligence. We're worrying about the regulation of that, the safe and ethical use of it. We're worried about people will live in too much of their lives in a virtual or augmented reality. How are you thinking about that? Because I know over in Sweden there as much thought to this.
Well.
I think that we have almost lost the whole generation for a two D world, right, we miss when we had the smartphones to actually educate people on how to communicate with each other. I see this actually as a window opportunity unity where we're leaving this is very limited to the world behind us and entering a more natural state of the treaty world. And I think when we're entering these worlds, we also we're going to see how we spend our time and how we can use this
to feel better and to connect with each other. You are three point seventy five times more emotional connected to the content that you can experience. So I think that we can use these technologies to kind of bridge those.
Gaps that we have built. And when we first introduced you, we heard of all the companies you've been working with in the economic environment, realities of it. Our companies as willing to venture into this field. Yes, and I think.
That what we need to solve are problems that we're facing at the moment. So I mean, by the year twenty twenty five, fifty percent of everyone on the planet we'll be needing reskilling or upskillings. So and the method is that we're using are costly and very and consuming. So companies are looking at new ways to solve problems that we're facing. And I think that if you're a company today within the production line, retail or those types of areas, you need to have a look at a metaverse strategy.
I'm a great to spend some time with you. Thanks for saying late. I'm Stockholm for us. Emma Ritaistance, co founder and CEO of Warping. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. You do not want to forget about our podcast catch up if you can't catch us Live provide on the terminal, as well as online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart This is Bloomberg.