Musk Draws Ire of Ukraine and Tesla Drops

Plus Tesla down more than eight percent at the close, the biggest one day drop in four months, this after announcing disappointing delivery numbers. How Musk's plan to localize production may help. And Kim Kardashian gets fined by the SEC after promoting a crypto token without disclosing she was paid

for it. We'll have the last. There's also this developing story Elon Musk drawing the wrath of Ukrainians all the way from President Zelinsky on down after this series of tweets urging Ukraine to seek a negotiated solution to the invasion by Russia and seed crimea for good. Um. David Kirkpatrick, founder of Techonomy, is also with us now. But and I just want you to walk us through the latest in the pack, and fourth it's started with a poll by Elon Musk. Yeah. So Elon Musk has sent several

tweets throughout Monday. The kind of two key points on them were, first that he suggested that there should be a negotiated settlement over the war in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia. In a separate tweet and the one you see on your screen, he implies that Crimea, which is an annexation of Russia's, should remain with Russia for good. And you know, obviously these are strong words for me,

for Elon must to be be saying. What I would also say is he sent a further pole later in the day saying that the citizens of those areas of Ukrainian territory that that Russia is currently trying to annex should be whether or not they should be given their opportunity to vote on their own futures. But there's been a pretty sharp reaction from all corners of social media and diplomatically to what Elon Musk has had to say, well,

including from President Zolynsky himself. Zalnsky responding with a Twitter poll of his own, which Elon Musk do you like more one who supports Ukraine or one who supports Russia. H David, what's your take on all this? It's a fairly easy one to have a take on. I must say, I think it must falls prey to a number of dangerous ideas. One is, if I'm so rich, I must be smart enough to do anything to solve anything. That's

loup us um. He He also is an attention hog, and his stock drop today tremendously in relation to the market, which might not even be unrelated. It may be that he's in a bad mood because of that, and he's trying to get attention to distract himself. It's all crazy stuff. He should not be involved in this issue, and talked to us a little bit more about the reaction that we're seeing here. Obviously, we've heard from President Selinsky, We've

heard from Tavor Kirkpatrick. Now, we've heard from analysts who cover Tesla, who cover Elon Musk's companies. What else are people saying? Yeah, we've heard from Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, Andrew Melanik. I won't show or say what he said in his tweet due to the coarse language that he used but he essentially implied that no Ukrainian or I'm paraphrasing no Ukrainian would now buy a Tesla product in the future based on what Musk had said. That was

Andrew Melnik, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany. This is slightly anecdotal, but many kind of well followed Tesla fans, Tesla vehicle owners and shareholders who have a presence on Twitter did come out and say, you know, this is not something that Elon must should be doing that. You know, many labeled it as a mistake as well. So it has invoked a pretty broad and sharp reaction, including from some of those that are fans and supporters of both Tesland

of Elon Musk personally. This, of course, as the takeover discovery process, the Twitter takeover discovery process continues. Kind of a difficult week from us last week, I imagine, with that delusion of text um being made public David. Also today in San Francisco, the CEO of Twitter, Parague Aggrawall, was just deposed in a closed door session. We're not sure exactly what happened inside that session. Yeah, but but what do you make of all of this happening for

Elon Musk and be of Elon Musk really at once. Okay, maybe you think I'm a bad armchair psychologist, but even before this development today about Ukraine, it was occurring to me that it might be that this whole folder all about Twitter buying it, not wanting to buy it, being sued suing, was a bid for attention it. You know, it's hard to explain why he would have tried so hard to buy Twitter and then tried so hard to get out of it without any real fundamental changes in

the business landscape. My dog just it is bold because he has to have attention, just like Elon Musk. Um. And you know, of course we're we're still waiting for headlines to come out of this deposition of Parague. But it should be said that Elon Musk's companies actually have

had some involvement in the war on Ukraine, especially Starlink. Yes, the SpaceX of which Elon Musk is a found under and the chief executive officer had for quite some time throughout the duration of the war in Ukraine been sending Starlink equipment to essentially keep the country connected during a time of war. You know, this fantastic reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal and Bloomberg dot Com about some of the background of how that came about in coordination with the US.

But you know, they are providing that service, They are providing that hardware, and and Musk had tweeted earlier on in the war about SpaceX's efforts to get that equipment into the country and how that they how they had been involved in keeping the Ukrainian people online essentially during this war. All right, well, certainly this one is still developing. We're going to continue to watch the tweets um al though our ownered blow Thank you so much, David Kirkpatrick

to Economy founder David. You're gonna stick with us and talk about the next story as well. A big challenge is coming to court for social media companies. The U. S. Supreme Court taking up two cases where they'll decide whether social media companies can be sued for hosting and recommending terrorist content. And it's a big test of an old law Section to thirty. Let's break it down with Bloomberg's

Supreme Court reporter Greg Store and Economy founder David Kirkpatrick. So, Greg, talk to us about how you're expecting this to play out in core and whether this is something that could divide the Court on ideological lines. Yeah, there's certainly reasons to think it could. This Section to thirty, which is the big issue, it's the issue that's involved in the

Google case. It's the law that generally provides very broad immunity to social media companies for things that their users post um that has come under fire from conservatives, including Donald Trump, uh and at the Supreme Court. The one Justice who has said something about Section two thirty is Justice Clarence Thomas, who is one of the most conservative justices. He has expressed concern that it gives social media companies too much liability, and he's been calling on the Supreme

Court to get involved for years. Section two thirty, of course, is the Communications Decency Act, which for so many years, decades in fact, David has protected and shielded these companies from responsibility for a lot of the content hosted on their platform. David, what do you think is the most likely outcome here? Well, I'm not a Supreme Court expert, so it's hard to know what the I think it is possible that the Supreme Court is taking this these

cases for ideological reasons. Um. But the bottom line. Long term outcome, in my opinion is we do need a different regulatory regime for social media and internet content. Section two thirty, for whatever pluses and minuses it might add to the dialogue is not doing what it ought to do, and Um, content that shouldn't be up there is up there. The companies are behaving irresponsibly and don't have an incentive

to do the right thing. We need change. Absolutely. Greg give us the bigger picture on these two particular cases and how significant they are how we might deal with social media in the future. Yeah, well, let me separate the two out. So the Twitter case that the court

has is kind of terrorism specific. It has to do with the law called the Anti Terrorism Act, and the question is whether, um, the allegation that social media companies is actually not just Twitter but also Google and Facebook, the allegation that they didn't do enough to take down identify and takedown post by isis whether that's enough to go forward in court. The other case, the Google case, is the broader one that applies beyond terrorists. It has

to do with claims that by making recommendations. This is a YouTube case that by making recommendations about videos to look at uh, YouTube encourage terrorism, and the question is whether that is covered by the immunity. Immunity conferred on your Section to thirty that says you can't be held liable for what you do as a publisher for just posting content. But the question is what about these targeted recommendations that are based on users viewing history and are

done by algorithms, David. If the Supreme Court erode Section to thirty immunity, how dramatic would that be for companies like Meta and Twitter and YouTube. It depends on how they were to do it. It's easy to imagine a scenario in which it could cause serious chaos in the marketplace. UM So, I don't think we could. If I were at the company's I would be very concerned. They claim to want a rewrite of Section to thirty, but it's not clear how this is going to play out in

a good way for them. Um I would say quickly. On this YouTube case, I think there is a good argument that since Section to thirty was implemented in order to indemnify companies against excesses of speech by people they couldn't control, that is logical. But once they apply their algorithms to that content. I don't see section to thirty

being a very good defense for their behavior. Now across upon in Europe, Greg, you've got social media companies being questioned with the British ruling that social media was to blame for the death of a teenage girl. Um, you know, what's your take on how that case could potentially impact these Yeah, you know, the Supreme Court justices here uh tend to ignore what's happening overseas. They look at US law, and they, particularly conservatives, are very proud of not paying

attention to what's happening with foreign lass. I wouldn't expect a direct impact that being said, you know, these justices do read. They understand that social media is controversial, that there are a lot of folks who blame it for a lot of society's ills, and they may feel that way themselves. And we'll we'll have to see when when they get to get to hear arguments, probably early next year, whether some of that uh sort of skepticism towards social

media comes out from some of the conservative justices. All right, Well, two cases here that will certainly be following Blueberg's Greg Store, who covers the Supreme Court and economies, David Kirkpatrick, thank you both. Coming up, we're gonna hear from the pay equity startups Cyndio talking about progress closing gaps across tech and business as a new law is about to shine a light on salaries across California. This is Bloomberg ready or not? What your job pays is about to get

a lot less private. California has become the latest state to join a quickly growing nationwide salary transparency movement, which means companies like Alphabet, Meta, even Disney will have to comply and share pay expectations for open roles on demand by January. To break it all down with Cyndio CEO Maria Cola Curcio, Cindio out with a new report that shows that well, most employers aren't ready. So Maria, let's

start with this new transparency law. What what exactly will this do and what will companies have to do as a result? Yeah, great question. So Governor Newsom signed the law sp last week September. And as we all know, California is the fifth largest economy in the world, so this is going to have tremendous impact because it's any company with fifteen or more employees with even one employee in California. So that has a huge, huge dramification on tech.

And so what it actually does is it requires companies to include pay ranges on job postings, as you said, starting January and report median and mean pay gaps and contractor pay to the state starting March. So you're out with a new report that shows employers they're not ready. Yeah, how's not ready? Are they? Maybe at least this report today, So it's pretty fresh. And what we found is two thirds of companies are saying that they are completely unprepared

to post salary ranges. And I think a big part of that is because companies don't yet understand why they pay what they pay. And if you don't know that, that's obviously the first question and employee is going to come to you asking once they see those ranges. Blick. Why is that so tricky for companies to know why they pay what they pay and even what they pay and where there are gaps. Yeah, it's tricky because of the old way of doing pay equity analyses. So obviously

this is what we do. We're innovating this with tech, but the old ways to outsource it to a law firm, You get back a report once a year that just tells you your remediation or what you need to pay people to get out of the woods, and you learn nothing about the underlying policies or programs that are driving pay.

So companies really need to start using analytics to figure out are there pay policies and programs actually working as intended If they say they pay for performance for example, which a lot of companies say that, but very few actually do. So let's take alphabet and meta for example, what would this mean for companies like them, which you know, compete with each other for talent um historically, you know, are known for paying folks quite well. But like all

most companies probably have pretty big pay gaps. Yeah, so the first thing they're gonna have to do is get on top of their pay gaps. Because starting pay is the biggest factor in any pay equity analysis. So if you have issues or as a company, if you have a philosophy of start low, stay low, or pay top dollar to the best negotiator, that's going to very quickly

catch up with you. From a pay equity and meeting pay gap perspective, You're going to start to have disparities that you can't rule out are because of something like gender, race, or ethnicity. So the way they would address this as a Google or a Meta or an Apple is to make sure you're not doing pay equity analyses just once a year, but you're looking at this constantly as you hire, as you you know, God forbid, have to lay people off. Are you having adverse impact? Are you letting bias creep in?

Because bias requires discretion. It's oxygen, and there's so much discretion in these decisions, and the only way to avoid that is to really use data and analytics to make sure you're informing those and guiding the decisions. Well do you think this is going to impact the labor market and if so, how, especially given that we are, you know, potentially heading into a recession. I think the interesting thing will be to see how this impacts competitiveness in tech talent.

So one of the maybe unintended benefits of what's happening with the market right now is we're going to see a little bit of loosening as it relates to that fierce competition for engineers in tech, and so with pay transparency on top of that, now you're going to see sort of that competitive nature of everyone trying to one

up each other on the salary and the packages. Maybe that will have a bit because there will be transparency and so folks will understand exactly what their opportunities and offers are and will be, so it might make the talent race a little bit easier to manage. Last quick question, I'm just curious what you're seeing in the labor market right now. We've heard about, you know, um, the Great Resignation, and then we also heard that kind of been on pause.

You know, job employees aren't necessarily moving around right now because there aren't so many choices out there. How would

you describe the state of play right now? Yeah, I think we keep sort of groping around for a term that gets at the essence of what's happening, whether it's the Great Resignation, the Great reshuffle, quiet quitting, all of it to me is just a massive reflection that we've seen a total fracturing of trust between employees and employers, and so the way to fix that is to really take workplace equity and the title wave of pay transparency that's coming at employers through some of these laws and

dive right into it, because that is really the way to rebuild the trust that has broken. All right, Maria Colcuccio, CEO of Cyndio, thank you for shining all light on that for us here today. Meantime, Elizabeth Holmes prison sentencing has been delayed. The judge overseeing the Sinist fraud case is looking into whether a key government witness gave truthful testimony at trial after her lawyers said he voiced mixed

givings during a visit to her home. She was found guilty in January of defrauding investors in conspiracy for her role in the collapse of the blood testing startups she founded that reached a peak valuation of nine billion dollars. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology and Emily Chain in San Francisco. Let's get back to the markets now. Shares of Tesla following the most since June after third quarter deliveries came

in below expectations. Even so, there was another record setting period from Musk and Co. Dan, i'ves of wet Bush Securities joining us now to discuss. So, Dan, how alarming is this delivery situation to you? Well, I think at first glance, clearly the streets going to be disappointed. You saw that in the stock. But I believe it's more logistical rather than demand rin and that's our view, especially coming at China. A lot of balls in the air,

but I do not believe this is men driven. Ultimately, that's really going to be the narrative now between the bulls and the barras. So the narrative from Elon Musk is this, uh, he tweeted, smoothing out crazy end of quarter delivery wave to reduce expedite costs and relieve stress on Tesla team aiming for steadier deliveries intra quarter. What's

your expectation that that will happen. Well, that's really the balancing act because if you look, I mean, they've had a pay significant dollar then the quarters and some of the logistical challenges they've had in the US and Europe as well as in China. Clearly they put a line in the sand this quarter. But obviously investors they're gonna be focused on that Q four delivery can be four sevent k you know, or higher, because ultimately that's really

the focus. I mean, you really need to see this smooth out, but we you know, to really stress we do not believe it's demand driven. I do believe it's logistical rather than anything other. And look, and that's gonna be guilty till proven is in situation until we hear god in and the call in a few weeks. So our investor is going to be convinced by this narrative. And you're you're seeing a pretty strong reaction here at

least today. Look in a white knuckle market and TESTA is held to a higher standard, especially with a higher multiple. It's it's not when investors want to see. I mean, there's nothing right home about you can't sugarcoat it. And now it's going to be approved me it's gonna be in the penalty box until we go into Q four. But I believe, as we've seen before, this is a back against the wall moment from Musk and Tests and

nothing more. Meantime, you've got Ellen with a lot of things going on, this big Twitter takeover trials set to start in just a couple of weeks. How worried do you think investors are about all of these other potential distractions. It's created a bit of a perfect storm. I mean, if you look, you know you have a soft delivery number. You've got the Twitter trial come up October seventeenth, and then just an overall risk off mar get. I think going to Twitter trial that there's a lot of questions.

Is there a settlement before the trial begins. If not, you know, then it starts to ultimately be a cascade where you could see musk. You know, still what I believe is owning Twitter at twenty we we've a settlement likely could happen before in the high forties fifty range, but once he steps in the court, it's likely easither going to own Twitter have to pay a five billion dollars settlement. And that's definitely been a bit of what I'll say that. You know, it's another cloud over the

Tesla story. Well, and you know, I don't know if the perfect storm could get even more perfect or more stormy. But you have Ellen setting off an uproar with a series of tweets suggesting uh negotiation between Ukraine and Russia. UM, a lot of folks commenting on this, analyst commenting on this all the way up to the President of Ukraine himself, Altamir Zelinsky clapping back with a poll of his own. UM, you know, as somebody who follows twist Tesla and Musk

so closely. You know what's your what's your take on this and and and you know the potential impact it can have on real world companies and real world investors who put who put their money behind Elon Musk look their black eye moments from Musk because it goes back instead of staying in his own swim ling, and you know, he just adds more and more controversy. And obviously Twitter, as we've seen that, that's sort of had a cascade effect. And ironically he could own Twitter as a platform, right,

so that just creates more worries. And I think this has just been a broader what I'll call really a night marriage. Nine months you know four Musk none decided for Tesla, and it's something where investors, patients is wearing thin in this type of mark is the last thing you want to see. And it speaks to some of the frustration that you're seeing, because I think today was a lot of frustration selling. You do an AI day on Friday and then you have a soft delivery Sunday morning.

It's not good walk yeah, and then you have frustration from some of Musk's biggest supporters in his own Tesla fans Um about this latest series of tweets Um. Of course, the next couple of weeks are going to be very interesting as we head into that Twitter trial. Dan Ives of Wedbush Security is always good to have you here. Thank you. Meantime, I want to talk a little bit about Peloton and that deal with Hilton to put its

exercise bikes in Hilton's fifty four hundred US hotels. Peloton will also offer members of Hilton's Honors program a free trial to its app and a hundred dollars off a bike or a treadmill purchase. Bloomberg Smark German with us now for more Mark. How significant is this deal? It's just one of a few. With this point, Peloton is basically pulling every lover they can, pushing every potential partnership they can, doing whatever they can to perverse the sales

fall in the stock price decline. I remember when the stock was well north of a hundred dollars about a year ago per share. We hit an all time low for Peloton, I believe even either today or on Friday, coming in it under seven dollars a share. This Hilton news brought the stock up a little bit, and now it's a little bit north of seven, still below eight. You can see right there it's about it seven dollars and forty seven cents. So clearly things are not looking

so hot for Peloton. The stock price at its worst point really ever, and they're hoping that more and more of these deals will help turn that around. I'm not certain that this Hilton deal on its own will do much for the company. We're talking about hotels here. I believe it's probably only going to be one, two or three bikes per hotel, so we're talking about twenty thousand units, maybe twenty five thousand units at the very most, and that's really not going to move the needle for the company.

But I think what Barry McCarthy, Peloton CEO, has said about better prioritizing the digital app and better partority prioritizing the subscription instead of the hardware is where Peloton is going to be long term. The question is this Peloton have enough money and runway investor patients, board of director patients,

UH to really see that vision through. What's your understanding of the level of confidence under Barry McCarthy from the rank and file at this point, Yeah, I mean at this point, you know Barry in that new leadership team has implemented this plan. Uh, they're executing this plan and they're doing exactly what they said they would be doing. Uh. They really changed how the company functions operationally. They're allowing

the company to generate more margin and more profit. They plan to shut most of their retail outlets next year. They're doing everything they possibly can. Unfortunately, for the stock price for the company, that's not changing anything. And as we know, a lot of the employee pay at companies like Peloton is very much tied to the stock UH, Mark German. As always, thanks for your reporting. Come up as we head into fall, where is the crypto winter headed?

We're going to talk about that and more as the SEC slaps Kim Kardashian with a one point three million dollar fine for promoting crypto without disclosing she was paid to do it. Coin Shair CSL Melton Demiraz just with us to discuss next. This is Bloomberg time now for a crypto report, and we've got to talk about Kim Kardashian,

who just got fined by the SEC. The reality star will pay close to one point three million dollars to settle allegations that she broke US rules by touting the crypto token ethereum max, but without disclosing that she was paid for that promotion. Let's talk about this and more with coin Chairs Chief strategy officer Melton's Mirrors and our cryptic contributor Shinali Boss. So, Melton, I got asked for your take on this Kim k situation getting fined by the SEC. It's kind of a big deal, it is.

I mean, Kim Kardashian is one of the most influential people on the Internet. She has hundreds of millions of followers. But I think there are two big issues here. Number one, the SEC doesn't oversee advertising, the FTC does, so that should be in the FTC matter to begin with. And number two, in order for these allegations to be true, Etherium max or the EMACS token has to be security and I have not seen a statement come out or

ruling come out from the SEC to indicate that. So while it's an attention grabbing headline, I think it's another example of Gensler's SEC pursuing rulemaking via litigation, which is disappointing. It's interesting you say that because, uh, we just interviewed Katie Hahn of Han Ventures last week and she also believes that Gary Gensler's approach is creating a lot of confusion.

Take a listen to what she had to say. But I'll just tell you what I hear from founders is that they're very confused because they get told come in register, just come in and talk to us. But you have the one company who has done the shi an act of going in and registering coin based file, the ne S one UM and still, you know, there's a lot

of saber rattling still going on. I think, Nelson, what do you think is there is there a lot of confusion happening because of regulation or if the SEC you know, is trying to create a path to do a little bit more certainty. Um, you know, along the lines of yes, there could be consequences if you do something that we believe is wrong. I absolutely agree with Katie's perspective and great respect for Katie. She has been in the belly of the beast, she's been on the hill. Um, She's

seen how these policies get made. I do think it's really confusing and one of the biggest costs for crypto companies and crypto projects today is compliance. These are early stage financial technology startups and they are spending millions of dollars not only on trying to untangle current rolemaking and the alphabets super different regulators in the United States who they may need to engage with, but also been the precedent that's been set, they need to set aside a

lot of capital for future litigation. So I think it really hampers innovation, It really hampers the ability for innovators to compete, and it definitely favors larger financial institutions who have relationships on the Hill, who have lobbyists, and who have pre existing relationships with these agencies. So I would love to see clarity. I have not seen it yet,

and I think it's a huge challenge going forward. Nothing what about other agencies, because you know, the SEC is obviously moving in a very different direction than it has the last several years prior to against her when it comes to crypto enforcement in particular. But then you see something like the CFTC recently suing a Dow and I'm wondering if you look at the agency's overall you know, even despite the issue of is it as security? Is

it not a security? With the SEC? How complicated is it to navigate the web here of agencies that are going after different types of investment vehicles in crypto? Well, as I said before, it's all for the SUP there's so many three letter acronyms. There's so many different agencies. It started really with the CFTC and the SEC. Now there are a number of different agencies involved. Intelligence is involved.

If we look at the recent Tornado cash o' fact issues and sanctions issues, if we look at some of what's happening on the Russia side with people concerned about money movement, there's a lot to navigate. There's not a whole lot of clarity. Now, the Biden administration did put out an executive order, but again, how long will it take for the research phase to move forward? How long will it take for actual practical, practicable policy to be implemented.

I haven't seen it yet. I've been doing this for eight years. I am hopeful, but I've not been impressed by what I've seen so far, and I think the challenges the blockchain doesn't have a physical jurisdiction, unlike the banking sector. There is no ceo you can call. It doesn't have physical jurisdiction. So some of these issues are just really nuanced and I think challenging to untangle without

really understanding what it is this technology does. So I empathize, but I'm also incredibly impatient because this is a very very expensive process. Well, speaking of in patients, you recently tweeted that vcs are going to start asking for refunds. What do you mean by that? Yeah, Look, I think one was the year of the crypto BC. We saw a ton of new funds, a lot of money coming

into the space, crazy valuations. Um. Last Q four we had an all time high plus to seven billion dollars of crypto deals done, which comprised for the first time close to six percent of the total for venture. Doesn't seem like a lot, but that's a lot for a fairly nascent sector. Now reality is setting in. People are realizing a lot of these businesses don't necessarily have a pathway to revenue. Burn was really high. People are spending

a lot of money. So I think over the next few quarters we're going to see consolidation, We're gonna see less dealmaking, and we're gonna see fewer exits in the form of M and A in the form of I p O s and even specs which a lot of investors and their LPs were counting on to deliver those returns.

You know, something we're talking about at length tomorrow, I know during our weekly crypto show is the idea here of traditional finance versus defy And you know, how much does traditional finance still need to to move and mold when you are still seeing crypto. Of course, the market value has gone down for a lot of these tokens, but money being raised that way through dows clearly a

whole generation of young people thinking about investing differently. And so if vcs are asking for their money back, the I p O model is under question, so are spects. How important is it for cryptocurrency, crypto markets, blockchain to be a new part of the financial system even within

the existing companies. Here's what's really exciting. So even though the cryptocurrency market cap might be down, what we see is the integration of cryptocurrencies, digital assets and blockchain technology into financial system is continuing at a really rapid pace.

So we see firms like Apollo, KKR, black Croft, Fidelity just to name, some that are not only offering asset management products are bolting on crypto, They're actually looking at innovative ways they can use the underlying technology to deliver products and services that are faster, cheaper, and in new ways.

So I'm really excited about this trend. It's not necessarily cryptocurrency in the traditional sense, but I think that a lot of institutions are looking at the speed at which one money can move, some of the programmatic capabilities of defined being able to actually program financial assets digitally on a global medium, and that's really exciting. So I think we're going to continue to see that integration between traditional

financial services and the crypto sector. Will it be digital assets UM in the sense that these are assets on a public ledger, absolutely, Will it be cryptocurrencies this typically, I think that's an open question that you can create anything and call it a cryptocurrency. I think UM institutional adoption is still limited to fairly small set of proven cryptocurrencies. But I think again that integration is starting to happen, and that is an area that we had coined. Shares

are just really excited about, all right. Maldom de Miror's chief strategy officer, at coin Chairs. Thanks so much for joining us as well as our own appreciate it. A bagel with fewer cars, That is what a new celebrity back bagel venture is promising. It's called Better Brand, and the startup has raised more than five million dollars. Let's talk about it with Bloomberg Cypriya anand who investigated and

pre I assume this involved a taste test? Okay, they say every bagel contains the same sugar content of a stock of salary and the protein content of four eggs. Does it actually taste good? You missed the taste test that we had in the office a couple of days ago, Emily. But the consensus among Bloomberg staffers was that it doesn't quite taste like a bagel, and by doesn't quite um Most folks thought it was pretty far off from a standard bagel and a grocery store bagel. So what's the

broader consensus here? And not that you know, our Bloomberg team isn't enough, But is this company having success? Well, this company actually has just rolled out across various supermarkets. They had a big rollout in Whole Foods. It's in the frozen section of whole food stores. Now they've got a couple of different flavors, classic cinnamon, They've got a pumpkin size spice flavor for the holiday season. Um, they have a chocolate chip flavor for those who love sweets.

And they seem to be expanding quickly. They're looking to roll out in Europe and across Latin America as well, and they're closing another round of funding, they said pretty shortly. There's a bigger question here. Can you call it a bagel if it's not full of carbs? Or is it something else? Entirely? I wonder, But you've got Alexis Ohanian back in this startup. Um, there's some celebrity uh folks involved. Is there a need maybe a real need that they're

filling here. Well, the company says it wants to be the beyond meat of carbs and create a very low carb breadline for folks who maybe have health issues and can't eat as many carbs as they're in a standard a loaf of bread or a standard bagel. Um, and you know this could be a substitute for folks who are really trying to change their diet in in a very specific way. Right. Um, you know so well, it

doesn't necessarily taste exactly like a standard bagel. There might be folks out there who say, you know what this resembles. It evokes that memory for me in some kind way. Um. And it is attracting investment from some Hollywood celebrities as well. And so the company says it plans to expand into other bread products like pretzels, eventually have its own ready made pizza bagel option as well in the frozen aisle. UM, and they're also talking to airlines about putting this in

airport lounges. All right, well, I'm gonna need to do a taste test, PRIA, so maybe maybe you can see if there are so left overs. Thank you, um, Bloomberg's Pria and non thank you for joining us. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. And make sure you tune in tomorrow our conversation with Cisco's Chief People Officer, Francott suit us. We'll be joining us how Cisco is approaching hybrid work and the future of the office.

I'm Emily changing in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg