From Marhart where Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Vallet NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Loudlove.
I'm Caroline Heide a Bloomberg's WORLDEA quarters in New York, and I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
The fallout continues for Elon Musk after the billionaire endorse an anti semitic post on his social media platform. Will discuss what it means for his businesses, and.
We'll return to APEX as Chinese President Jijingping finishes his first visits in the US in six years on a high note, what does it mean for US?
Kurds on technology to China?
And then there has.
Been some Tesla investors criticizing the Elon Musk post, of course, one that seemingly is endorsing anti Semitic views. More advertisers, though, are also fleeing his social media platform X. The European Commission joined IBM in announcing it will stop advertising on X after Musk agreed with a post that said the Jewish people hold a dialectical hatred.
Of white people.
Now.
Musk responded by saying, you have said the actual truth.
That was Thursday.
Meanwhile, this Friday morning, the White House is addressing Elon musk comments saying, quote, we condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans. Joining us now from DC Bloomberg's a Kayla Gardener, Kayla give us the rest of the detail on that White House response to Elon Musk and Elon Musk's post.
Yeah, the White House has been pretty adamant about condemning antisemitism pretty much ever since the President took office. They have a national strategy to counter antisemitism, and this has been a major focus of the Second Gentleman, who was of course the first Jewish spouse of a Vice president. And as you mentioned, this comes on top of yukes from the European Commission from IBM, which both announced they
would be pulling advertising from the platform. But I think the best way to think about this is a broader and much more complicated relationship between the President and Elon Musk. Elon Musk has been very critical of Biden. He says he will not support him. In twenty twenty four, he was also unhappy when Tesla was not invited to an event for EB companies earlier this year, and so that's definitely something to think about here. And at the same time,
the government also has contracts with SpaceX. It also applauded Elon Musk's decision to open up their charging infrastructure to other companies. But I do think it was the timing of these comments, of course, amid the Israel Hamas War that ultimately caused the White House to put out these statements because there has been such an increase in incidents, particularly against the Jewish community, they felt as though this was the time to make such a condemnation.
Okayla God, we thank you so much for that really important context coming from Washington. That's bringing more context coming from an investivase now. Kristin Hall is founder and CEO of NIA Capital. It's a social impact fund and it is about two hundred and eight to two thousand dollars of Tesla stock as of mid year. It's waged pressure campaigns against the company for years, including via shareholder resolutions.
You put out a response to Mask's comments saying that you're appalled by Elomusk's recent post on x Kristin, talk us through what you think. Ultimately, the investor viewpoint is at the.
Moment, oh, this is so complicated. Thank you for having me today. This is the most complicated CEO for investors to deal with, and yet it really doesn't need to be. We all are completely appalled by his statement, and we're really calling on the board to take some action. If you think about what Tesla's assets are, it's that brand and it's also its people. So we really count on Tesla to be innovative, and we really need them to be able to attract, recruit, hire, and retain top talent.
And of course a statement like this is going to inhibit all of those.
Kristin Ela Musk has said in the past and consistently he is absolutely pro free speech, and he's also said on more than one occasion he's against anti semitism of any kind.
That's right, you hold a small volume of shares.
My understanding is that that is basically just a function of being a social impact investor. There will be parts of our audience that say, why is Kristin on She holds hardly any stock.
Well, so we.
Actually held Tesla for many years in our core portfolios. We really were behind that battery play and of course the infrastructure across many of the products and services that Tesla is bringing for a just and innovative transition to a sustainable economy. So that thesis was really important to us,
and we did hold Tesla in our core portfolios. And yet when it became really apparent that there was racial discrimination within the plants and across the firm, we became really cautious and there was lots of risk for us as an investor, and we pulled out. We did retain some shares on a small amount of shares, as you point out, so that we could keep our responsibility as investors to engage with this firm and to call them on what in their own code of ethics says to
do the right thing. So Elon Musk is actually in violation of his own code of ethics right now, and that's why we're calling on the board.
Christ and thank you for that explanation.
I just think the audience wanted to understand the mechanics of how your firm is operating. The emphasis is on the absolute truth statement or posts that he made. He made a follow up post which I are going to bring up on the screen for our audience, where he says the adl unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot buy their own tenets criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat.
It is not right and needs to stop. What do you think Elon Musk was trying to say in that post?
Now, Elon Musk has been erratic, He's been volatile with this speech. We never actually know what he's trying to do. And while he is saying he's promoting free speech, hateful speech and hates speech has no place on X and it certainly doesn't have any place coming from a major CEO in our nation.
It's interesting that certain key founders leaders, one who actually co founded now Meta, has called on perhaps roles within other companies that Elon Musk holls. Of course, he's not just the leader of Tesla, but he also is the owner and CTO of X, the platform with which he's currently putting out these views. And indeed, one particular key founder saying, Linda Yacarino, your turn to actually potentially even
firer own CTO. Linda herself has been trying to point out that X's view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should.
Stop across the board.
What would you want to see for Elon, whether he be CTO chair of X, whether it be CEO of Tesla, whether it be his roles and the many other companies that he has. Are you calling for him to step down?
So that isn't my place to call for that. I do want to see the board stepping in and taking action. And whether that means, you know, taking his cell phone away, that's one possibility. But what we really need to see is leadership, and we want to see him not only protecting his brand but growing it in a sustainable and inclusive way.
You know.
Again, we want to see employees, both current and future feel not only really comfortable but excited to join this
and bring their top talent and expert and skills. And then also on the consumer side, there are so many consumers right now saying they're getting rid of their Tesla and they're certainly not considering purchasing anything new, and so with a prime business model at Tesla at any rate, we need to see as an investor that that CEO is really looking out for the business model, and that brand has so much to do, so there's I personally
would like to see him step down. Whether that's possible, that's really up to the board.
Christin.
It's been interesting because this hasn't happened in a vacuum.
In fact, we have seen him put out.
Very controversial posts before, some which he has indeed retracted, and he's gone to say he's full pro free speech but against anti antisemitism in.
All its forms. But he's almost been a bit like Teflon.
Nothing has stuck, and Tesla nevertheless is up ninety percent year to date in terms of a share price, and people thus far perhaps haven't been pulling back on their Tesla purchases. It's been deemed more of a consumer weakness story than it has actually a pushback against Lil Musk. Can you really sort of drive that narrative together?
Do you think this is the moment that we see a tipping point?
You know, it's going to be interesting to see what we see as a tipping point, because with a regular company, an ordinary company with one of the richest billionaire CEOs, we would have seen other consequences much earlier. Elon Musk is in icon in the US and across the world, and he seems to be treated differently both by his board and by his van base, and that's problematic, I believe, for the kind of companies and the kind of corporations that we want to see grow in the US.
We reiterate that Tesla has rebounded to positive territory, having been down as much as three percent in the session over a two day basis.
Of course it's lower, but on the week.
I think on track for a pretty sizable gain. There are many that took to X in support of Elon Musk who are both Tesla shareholders and vehicle owners. But there's one name that seems aligned with you, and that is Ross Gerber, a Tesla investor who says his clients his an asset manager.
His clients are.
Asking him to unwind their positions. They will no longer buy Tesla cars. My understanding is that you are doing a new initiative where you're right to the board of Tesla in the coming week. Have you spoken to Ross and who are you trying to bring in on the initiative that you're taking.
Actually, that's really interesting, So we haven't spoken to Ross yet.
I welcome that.
I maybe he's available for a phone call this afternoon, that would be great. We are part of a coalition with Whistlestock Capital and many others who have written to the board, and we did that actually earlier this year. We put out a statement and a letter speaking about lots of different issues that we want to see the board take up, and sadly we have not had a response. And so we've been meeting as a group monthly to figure out how we can be engaged to really support
this company to be its best. And we will resend that letter with a new cover letter with the additional grievances that have occurred since we sent the original letter, and that should go out in the next couple of weeks.
Kristin, howe, let us know what the response, if any, is, and we thank you so much for articulating your point of view for Nia Impact Capital today.
We thank you for your time. Meanwhile, coming up.
That we're going to turn to the markets, because, as we've been saying, Tesla stock is up over the last five days, and indeed over the last month, tech stocks have really outperformed, and we're up two trillion dollars worth in terms of a risk rally in November, but could it be at a slowing point?
And what are you looking at?
I'm looking at shares of Applied Materials, the biggest US maker of chip making equipment. To see they're the stock down five point five percent, five point four percent. Reuter's reporting that a probe's been opened by the US into it breaching those US technology export curbs to China.
We'll get the details next. This has Boombog.
Technology technology stocks wavering today amid November's two trillion dollar rally. What can we expect going forward? There's a bit of a learning still to come and joining us now. Jonathan Curtis, Franklin Equity Group, Senior VP and Director of Portfolio Management. You're an investor who holds a number of the magnificent seven key semiconductor names and software names. It's in the
chip space. I want to start Applied Materials. The report of that probe looking at whether they breached the US technology export curbs to China. You hold Applied Materials across different Franklin funds.
Just to what did you make of that report? First? Jonathan?
Yeah, Well, in fact, Applied Materials had actually disclosed back in October of twenty twenty two.
I believe that they were under investigation.
The incremental news that we got yesterday out of Reuter's was that the investigation had turned perhaps potentially criminal. I don't think comment the company is commentating on the specifics of that report. But importantly, Applied Materials is one of the world's leading semiconduction capital equipment companies. They're involved in really every part of the market with the exceptional lethography, They're a leading player in the space.
They're very very.
Essential for Western babs, FABS in Korea, FABS in Taiwan, and fabs in China. And while if they have made a mistake, or if somebody deeper down in the company made a mistake and allowed equipment to make its way over to a smith in China, then certainly that should
be dealt with. But when I don't think that any sanctions that would be imposed would negatively impact the company's earnings power or they're certainly their mote, their critical supplier in the ecosystem and very very essential to keep operating.
Johnath, thank you strapolate out the China risk to the industry more broadly. Right, if you think about how Nvidia is traded over the last seven days. Some of it's on reports of new gen China specific chips right trying to get product that complies with these curbs. Clearly there is a danger of being in breach of them. How as an investor do you navigate that?
Yeah, well, so, certainly in China wants to be able to be a player on some of these leading edge chips.
They want to be able to manufacture them. Certainly they want to have.
Them for their own efforts in cloud computing, in military and artificial intelligence, and the US is trying to curb that.
China is a very big market. Even if China is not able.
To acquire the chips they want, they will certainly find other ways around being able to get get the most leading edge chips by manufacturing their own less powerful chips, but spending then more money on the equipment to build those less powerful chips and more money on the infrastructure to run those chips so they can match the compute
capacity in the West. So, in an odd way, we actually think it is positive for the industry because it ultimately means that there's an overspend if you will happening in China to support matching the compute capacity requirements of China, but certainly we are paying close attention to it, you know, guard up applied Materials. At the beginning of our conversation, I think forty four percent of their revenue in the most recent quarter was from in fact China, So certainly
China is a big consumer. The US is really trying to limit China's access to equipment and processes and chips at the leading edge. But China can make good progress and build a very successful industry on lagging edge nodes if they want it, and they'll just end up having to overspend to match the compute capacity available in the West for more advanced chips.
Jonathan is interesting and mentions in video of course, and the way in which they're trying to build different types of chips to meet the current standards, and video course got its earnings coming up fast, and I'm interested in your perspective on ultimately how far these Magnificent seven have
room yet to run. Is an idea I think is put out by Goldman Sachs that twenty twenty four you stay, you hold, you remain invested, and actually these might have sent seven is still going to be some of the companies that deliver into the next year as well.
Do you abide by that with evaluations?
Yeah, yeah, we're certainly quite positive on really the entire technology sector and artificial intelligence particular. The Magnificent Seven have done well because they are truly magnificent businesses, strong balance sheets, high levels of profitability, structural growers. But almost all of them, with the exception of one or two, have very strong
AI talk tracks and opportunities. They have massive amounts of data, They can get more data, they can wrangle the compute to build these models, They have the talent to build these models, and then they have the pathways into which to deliver value from these models into their customers and charge for them. Some of these companies have the potential to double their overall businesses on the delivery of AI
features into just a small number of their businesses. Is great potential that lies ahead for many of the Magnificent Seven. Now we own many of them, we happen to be underweight them. We see greater value down the market cap range companies that have some of those same characteristics as the Magnificent Seven, but that are trading it more compelling valuation levels.
Can you just very quickly tell us some of the names therefore that are less obvious.
Sure a company like a service now for instance, they have they can tick all those boxes that the Magnificent seven can in terms of being able to be a player in AI.
But I think they're just a less well understood business.
They have significant opportunities to raise prices and to deliver new value to their customers, to make their customers more efficient, all with generative AI.
Jonathan Curtis, we thank you a Franklin Equity Group.
Great to have you time now for talking tech.
First up, Apple maybe falling behind in fact on his efforts to make a modem chip for the iPhone.
Apple will likely misrolling.
Out its own emonem for twenty twenty five due to the complex designs of Qualcom's chip.
Mean While open AI, s Altmann.
Believes we have yet to see the biggest risks in AI posers to US politics and policy. While he is hopeful that oftificial intelligence can help humanity in the longer term, Amann has called for government oversight of the technology in the near term. Plus, Amazon cunning hundreds of jobs in its voice activated Alexa division. Now, the company says it's shifting efforts to better focus on building capabilities powered by you guess it generator.
AI ed.
Back here in SF and the pitch, I says he expects China to be at the forefront of AI. The Alphabet CEO called China's work on the technology astounding to see during a conversation over at APEX.
Have a listen. It's not going to be easy.
But I would start from this premise that AI will proliferate. So this is not the inherent nature of software. AI advances will get out to in all countries, and so it is naturally the kind of technology. I don't think there's any unilateral safety to be had. We all have a shared incentive to solve for safety. You know, you could have AI go wrong in one country that will impact every other country. So in some ways, it's like climate change in the planet. We all share a planet.
I think that's true for AI. So now that you know that will be true, I think you have to start building the frameworks globally to make progress. I've seen encouraging progress when the G seven happened in Hiroshima. I think it was a good start. You've seen more progress the Uki summit last week, the administration here. The White House has been leading the way as well, and I saw good encouraging announcements even yesterday for us in China to start having a dialogue on AI alf Let's CEO.
So welcome back to Bloomberg Technology, Ed Ludlow here in San Francisco.
In Caroline Hide in New York.
There has of course been some weakness in Tesla's trading yesterday after of course, one has been seemingly an endorsement for some anti semitic posts post on x by the owner of x Any, the CEO of Tesla, which is Elon Musk.
But a lot to still be dissecting across the board.
D Yeah, that was the big story of the last twenty four hours. The other is Apex, which is wrapping up in San Francisco. It's a who's who of global power players in politics and technology. One of them, I'm delighted to say, joins me right now on set Bloomberg's Amory Horden. You make it to that party last night down the road.
I did that.
Now I'm in all seriousness. Everyone that matters in the world has been here. When you last joined us on the show, it was all about Biden. G what happened after that, particularly in the world of technology as well.
Yeah, I think Biden and she really was the starting gun to this entire APEC summit. But then for Shijingping, as much as the Biden meeting was very important. Actually, the New York Times had a story about one of the organizers was talking about how the Chinese had prepared three speeches for him to give those executives, and he ended up going with the friendliest one after the Biden meeting, that room where he.
Got all those applauses.
It costs a lot of money.
To say about Tim Cook being in the room as well, people.
Like that, Larry Fang, Steve Schwartzman. But then we also had a letter from Shijingping going out to executives saying he wants a heartwarming welcome really of the business community. He's clearly trying to woo investors. And it comes as there's been a tumble really a feign direct investment into China. So this was Shijingping's opening in his moment. The problem is these are just words at this moment. They sound very fuzzy and warm from the Chinese president, But will
there be actions? I will note about a few hours before Shijing Ping's letter became public and his remarks to these executives, the Chinese Commerce Ministry did say that they are going to try to go after a campaign for potential discriminative measures that are happening to foreign investors.
So aka technology export curbs.
Technology expert curbs.
I'm talking more about foreign direct investment into China, but yes, technology companies have been having a number of issues in China. But if we're talking about technology export curbs from the United States into China, that is something that I'm sure Shijinping brought up with President Biden. But the US is not going to budge on any of these sanctions, any of these penalties that potentially can hinder their national security.
Amory Horden, it's been great to have you on the show throughout the week. We really appreciate it, and we
want to well pick up where Amrie leaves off. Ultimately, has these discussions in any way changed the ultimate relationship, the trade relationship between US and China thus far, I've got the perfect guest e Liza Tobin, Senior director of Research analysis for the Economy Special Competitive Studies Project, And indeed you previously served on the National Security Council Staff as China Director, where you help lead development of multiple
US strategies and policies related to China. And to that end point, will policy change? Will doing business get any easier between these two nations?
Thank you so much.
No.
I think the previous speaker is right. I think the talk out of Xi Jinping is trying to signal that China is open to business. But I think words are cheap, and I think what we're seeing is a tactical shift, but no strategic shift on either side. I think the US is going to keep up the pressure on the technology and economic controls, and for China's side, I don't think Sheijinping's strategy has change at all over the long term.
I think this is trying to kind of reduce some of the pressure given how weak China's economy is looking lately.
Okay, so paint us forward five ten years time. What does this relationship look like. What does this self ability to provide for chips, for manufacturing, for technological innovation within China look like? Can they be self determination in that respect?
The administration going into this was really signaling that they see the United States as in a long term strategic rivalry and competition with the peoples from public of China, and so this meeting was intended to kind of set a floor and stabilize relations, and they kind of signaled very low expectations that they hope to at the very
least restore some kind of military to military communications. So going forward, based on the updates last month that you saw to the export controls on the high end AI chips, these were really a doubling down by the US administration on those controls and the signaling that they realized that they're in a cat and mouse game and that China will adjust to the US controls and continue to seek loopholes, but the administration in response, will continue to update them
in order to try to meet the object of preventing China from using US high end chips to accelerate their military development.
Eliza, you said a moment ago, words are cheap. I think that's what you said. That we're talking largely in the context of the diplomatic relationship between the US and China. You look at who is in the room Wednesday night. Tim kok hoc Tan of Broadcom, it seems as if the private sector the biggest technology companies in the world have a very different attitude to China.
They just want to do business there. Beijing is smart.
It has a strategy of trying to exploit the gaps and the splits in American society, you know, federal government versus local and state level government, public and private. They realize that we're democracy and they try to exploit these gaps. However, I think given how increasingly opaque and hostile to foreign businesses the Chinese market is, I don't think you're going to see any kind of strategic reprochement between the companies. China has moved on beyond the era of reform and opening.
That era is over.
They still say these words, but I think the reality on the ground is becoming increasingly hostile.
Liza, it's Friday. It's been a long week.
What is the most positive outcome from APEG. What is a good thing that's come out of it?
Looks I had mentioned that the administration kind of set a low bar for itself, and I think they stepped over those low expectations easily, and there are a few
kind of concrete deliverables. One that they're quite I think gratified by is an agreement to work with the Chinese on counter narcotics, and of course there's a lot of precursor chemicals for fentanyl flowing into the United States, much of it coming through Mexico, and they're signaling that the Chinese are starting to take some actions to crack down
on firms that are doing this. So I think the hope is very modest that at least in the short term, we can save some American lives by limiting the flow of this. So we should expect the cooperation on the Chinese side to turn on and off depending on how happy they are with other aspects of the relationship. But in the short term, if we can save American lives, I think that's a good thing. It's also good for
our militaries to be talking to each other. That's a pretty low bar, but we need to be communicating to avoid some kind of misunderstanding. And then they've also announced that we will start some type of initial discussions with the Chinese about AI risk and safety, and of course this is something the US is talking to a lot of different partners and allies around the world of art about, and they'll start doing the same with China.
All right, Eliza Tobin at the special Competitive Studies product.
Thank you for joining us here on Bloomberg Technology.
Now coming up on the show, we'll be joined by Michelle Gonzalez, head of Microsoft Spenter, to discuss her outlook for bench capital and interesting strategy there private markets and a big tech name. Thus nets this is Bloomberg Technology. Time for the VC roundup and in the news. Canadian startup Deep Sky raised fifty five million dollars from VC firms and governments to begin a carbon capture plant in Quebec.
Uses early stage technology aiming to suck millions of tons of emissions out of the atmosphere and also out of the oceans and over in Japan, Japan's state backed foundry startup Rapidness says it will work to develop semiconductor technology with Canada's ten storrants. The companies will exchange no how on two nanometer logic chips to help devices access AI. According to Rapidest, plus billionaires Zeba, Neil Rolledolf Sad and Eric Schmidt announced a new nonprofit AI research lab in Paris.
The lab will have three hundred million euros in total funding and produce open source research.
Caroline we've got to stick with the world of AI labs and investment.
Is today's VC spotlight. Let's bringing Michelle Gonzalez.
She is corporate vice president, Global head of Microsoft's bench Fund twelve. And what's so fascinating is you are aligning with your own thesis driven view on investing, but also basically what works alongside Microsoft's own business focus and in many ways helps turbocharge some of the companies that you have in your portfolio. Where is anything being done outside of AI? I mean, is everything about artificial intelligence fee right now?
Well, thank you Carolyn for having me here. Yes, we view AI as a revolution on the order of mobile, the smartphone technology, cloud computing, and the internet itself. We've even had a few of our experts in house think of it as the impact on society similar to electricity. And so we are all in on AI as M twelve's investment investment ARM. We are Microsoft's Venture Fund, a CBC thesis driven So the other areas that we do
cover our cybersecurity. We have the GitHub Fund, which is focused on developer tools and oh look there's our portfolio companies we have. We invest in infrastructure, deep tech as well as enterprise applications.
Now, it's quite an expensive place to be investing right now for AI, amazingly considering the macroeconomy. And it's also pretty competitive. What is your edge? I mean in lots of ways. We started to see big corporates come in because they can offer basically the compute power. Is that something that really has set you apart?
Yeah, this is actually a golden age for corporate venture capital, particularly with JENNYI. Founders are looking for access to customers. So in the enterprise right now, there's a lot of excitement. So we're seeing about sixty percent of enterprises say they want to adopt AI technology and then needing to have sort of the right partners. So that's one aspect for US.
We also, as you mentioned, have access to technology. So we just announced AAI supercomputer dedicated GPUs for M twelve portfolio companies, and you see this as well with Nvidia and salesforces investments as well. So for US, we look to connections customer access, helping these companies get go to market ready selling to the enterprise, as well as the compute.
I want to dig in on that supercomputer. It's interesting.
Access to compute is something we talk about in the show all the time. It's great having the supercomputer be built in the first place. Who pays for it on an ongoing basis so that your portfolio companies and founders can have access to that compute.
Well, what I can tell you now, right now, we're offering this as a way for our companies to start experimenting with their training, and it is free for a certain time, but we are a business, so eventually they'll be a paying for that as well.
Michelle, real quick, give us an example of something that you've invested in that down the road has ended up becoming a part of Microsoft or the technology that Microsoft uses.
Yeah, So one actually recent example here is in World. We invested two years ago. I knew the founders from Google and this is a company that's focused on non player characters, so AI characters in the gaming space. And we just announced a multi year co development partnership with Microsoft. This is about a year in the making and our team worked very hard to ensure that this partnership came together.
This will now allow game developers on Xbox to have access to almost an aigan co pilot, which will help them with prompting for different scripts. And help building their game development. So that's one example, but we have several others well.
Corporate vice president and global head of end to Michelle Gonzalez. When one of those examples goes big, come back on the show tell us about it.
Definitely for your time, thank you for joining us.
The fallout from an Elon Musk post seemingly endorsing anti semitic views, it continues to spread, whether it's Tesler investors criticizing the billionaire or more advertisers continuing to flee his social media platform X, including for example IBM as bringing in Blumber Businesswee columnist Max Chafkin, who has been following the rise the volatility around in a Musk for years now. Ultimately, this has sort of been hiding in plain sight for a long time.
Does this time it stick?
Yeah?
You know, Elon Musque, as you said, has kind of had an edgy social media presence for years.
Has anyone who followed the.
You know, funding secured ruhaha five years ago knows? You know, He's always sort of done things that are a little bit outside of the norm.
This is something further.
This was an explicit endorsement of a anti Semitic conspiracy theory and in fact, an anti Semitic conspiracy theory that has been cited in you know, a prominent mass shooting. It's the same philosophy that was used by the mass shooter in the Tree of Life Synagogue who killed eleven people.
So certainly very serious.
We've seen responses from investors, We've seen a handful of advertisers, you know, a lot of sort of backlash to this, and Elon Musk, I think crucially, has not really responded. I mean he's sort of attempted to do a little damage control the night of, but mostly he's been tweeting through it and more or less standing by what he said.
Well more than that, we've written to everyone and chased every avenue we have to try and get an answer or response from me or Musk. For what it's worth,
there's two things happening in parallel. So Media Matters post this report on Thursday right and it shows that names like Apple, Oracle, IBM, their ads are showing up in timelines alongside sensitive content, for example posts that are pro Nazi as an example, and X wrote to me this morning, Max, we're showing their response right now, but they're basically saying this is a function of the media matters, researchers, their
user base. In other words, this is how ad targeting works, and therein lies a bigger technology problem about the health of that platform.
Right.
Yeah, we should also say that, you know, Linda Yakarino posted essentially sort of like halfway towards a sub tweet of Elon Musk saying that the company doesn't tolerate anti semitism of any kind.
I do think.
It's a lot harder to make the argument that you're taking hateespe seriously when the de facto leader of the company, you know, Linda Yacarino's CEO, but Musk is the owner and seems to be making all the big decisions is going out there and actually actively tweeting hate speech himself. Right, it's harder to say you're taking this seriously, and that's going to create a huge challenge with advertisers.
Dustin Muskowitz, for example, he was one of the co founders of Facebook. He sort of put it out there in a social media post saying, look, Linda Acchni needs to fire Elo Musk as CTO as chair. Whether or not that's in any way feasibly possible. But at what point do you think, if ever, this might have ramifications on his holding of senior executive titles across his incredibly successful businesses.
Well, I think each of his companies are going to be a little bit different.
You know.
Tesla, of course, is a publicly traded company with a huge customer base. Now that customer base has traditionally been left of center, right, these are environmentalists, and you got to think that this is going to have an impact on Tesla's already significant challenges generating Jaman and for its cars. SpaceX is a government contractor, so you ask, like, is the Biden administration are they Are they gonna They've already they've put out a statement. You know, I suppose it
possible to go further. I do think at some point we will see a response from us, because the volume is getting up there, but it's telling. I'd say that it hasn't happened yet.
All right, Bloombers match Traffckin.
That has been the top story of the last twenty four hours. It is not the only story in the world of Elon. SpaceX has a significant launch planned for Saturday.
Starship will do a full attempt.
Number two joining us Bloomberg's Lauren Grush and Lauren, what is significant about this attempt and what are we expecting to happen?
Sure, So, as you mentioned, it's the second time ever that SpaceX will be launching a fully stacked starship system. So that's the starship space Trap on top of its massive super heavy booster. And you know, I can't tell you what we effect last time when it launched. Elon mentioned you know, excitement would be guaranteed. Preferably, we're looking to see them do quite a bit better than last time.
If you watch the last the first.
Launch attempt, they did, you know, have a few engine failures and then the rocket started spinning out of control and SpaceX was forced to intentionally destroy it. So the goal, hopefully is to get a little farther than last time.
Lauren just outlined the rocket science from from countdown ten nine, eight, five forty to one zero lift off, what happens thereafter?
Sure, So, at liftoff, presumably all thirty three Raptor engines at the base of super Heavy will ignite, lifting off the entire rocket. Roughly two and a half minutes into flight.
We're going to be looking at this thing called stage separation, so that's super heavy and Starship separating, and something that SpaceX will be testing on this flight is known as hot staging, So the engines on the Starship spacecraft will ignite briefly while that super heavy booster is still attached, giving it a bit of a kick and pushing it away. That's something that SpaceX changed from the first launch and it's the only thing. They can only test it during flight,
so that's going to be something exciting to watch. And then if all goes well, hopefully Starship we'll continue on reaching near orbit and doing almost a full lap around the Earth before it comes down off the coast of Hawaii.
Right, all right, gosh, we thank you so much.
That does it for the decision this edition of BlueBag Technology yet
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