From markhard where Innovation of Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
I'm Karene Heidel Bloomberg's world head quarters in New York and Ludlow's assignment in Sun Valley. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up. Elon Musk launches his competitor to open AI. We'll bring you all the details of his sick company x AI, and we'll talk big tech regulation. That's his FTC Chairlea and it Khan appears before a House Judiciary
Committee hearing on the oversight of the competition regulator. More ahead. Plus, the former CEO of crypto Leender Celsius is arrested, charged with fraud and sued by three regulatory agencies over the company's collapse. We'll bring you their details, but first let's get ahead of these markets once again. We're on the high note, Abigail do little.
Yeah, we have a solid rally here at Caroline and for some of the indexes, three to four days in a row, big Tech.
It's best day since the end of June. So the tech buyers are out.
This, of course is the Bloomberg Dollar Index and yields are lower. We'll take a look at.
That in a moment.
But the New York Fang Index pure Megacaptech up one point eight percent, one of the big helps alphabet of four point nine percent. I was just searching the tape right now to see if anything new has come out. I'm not sure that anything new has come out. But what as on the year into today? We had Google up about thirty eight percent on the year, not so shabby, but when you compare that to Meta's one hundred and sixty percent move on the year, perhaps some investors looking
up for looking for a potential catchup trade. Amazon also up two point two percent, of course, record prime day sales numbers. As for one of the big drivers, again, the Bloomberg Dollar Index down for a fourth or fifth day in a row, the longest losing.
Streak of the year. But take a look at the two year yield.
It is over the last week down thirty four basis points. Again on that cooler CPI and then the PPI print today, inflation concerns are.
Fading, so that means that valuation.
Concerns on big tech stocks with yields down also fading and maybe the idea that the FED is going to stop its hiking cycle sooner rather than earlier anticipated. One thing I will point out, though, Caroline, there is still the possibility that big tech could get volatile. If you take a look at the vix relative to the Vixen, there is.
A six point spread.
So investors still worried about tech at some point over the next three months, but just not right now.
And then finally, Meta.
Over the last four days surging today of course the announcement or the idea, the ft report that they may be planning to commercialize their AI product to compete, of course with both Apple or excuse me, Microsoft and Alphabet and that on top.
Of threads in the year of efficiency.
Well again, Caroline, Meta on the year up about one hundred and sixty percent.
Phenomenal outperformance a migail, thank you so much. Well, let's talk about who else is looking into the world as AI at the moment. Edel Musk taking to Twitter spaces to discuss the launch of his CHATCHBD rival Xai hamm'ing last night. He says, a company's mission is to understand the true nature of the universe.
Prominent safety standpoint I think a maximumly curious AI one is that that is trying to sort of understand the universe. Is I think going to be pro humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than my humanity.
Joining us for more. Ed Ludlow out there in sun Valley where I'm pretty sure this is a hot topic.
It's a hot topic, and XAI was a hot topic in the last twenty four hours understand the true nature of the universe. And I've spoken to so many sources in the AI industry here on the phone. They don't really know what it is that they're building, right. Is this a company that's building a foundation model or large language model like Inflection AI did separate to Open AI in GPT three point five, or are they doing something kind of more niche or specific in the field of
machine learning. What we know is they're hiring in the Bay Area and they've assembled this all male roster of tenured Google DeepMind researchers and also some pretty key names from academia in Canada.
Yeah, I mean, I think it is being a charge notable, as you say, at the moment, not a particularly diverse set of people, but certainly with a wealth of experience for across private markets and indeed from academia. As you say, ultimately, he said for months that he wants to perhaps bring some sort of competition to open ai. He's been frustrated by the team with Microsoft. He's worried about it's for profit nature after he stood down for the board in
twenty eighteen. But what ultimately does he want out of this? I remember what was it back in March he was saying, hold on, we need to put a pause for six months, and then he's actually busily building himself.
So spoke about this exact issue of read Hoffmann yesterday. You know, he acknowledged that open AI's origins are all directly tied to Elon Musk. He was an early investor, he was in on that initiative. But the way that read Hoffman put it, Carrie said, I'm askance at the idea that this is somebody who signed that pause petition and yet in the interim carried on with his own efforts in the field of AI. It doesn't really add up. We know his concerns are sort of existential. Still working on it.
He is, and you're still working on staying with us for a moment ed hold type because we're going to join the conversation now with Gerbert Kawasaki, President and CEO Ross Gerber, who, of course, you were an investor in Twitter, You became an investor in the what when Twitter went private? You stuck with it. It of course was folded into the now parent company x and now we have the birth of Xai. Look, given your expertise within Tesla as well and a firm commitment to that company. Is he
too busy? Is Elon Musk now a sixth company he's leading?
Well, yes and no.
I think that of course Elon's been too busy for a decade now and somehow has survived. And I think a lot of these projects he spearheads and puts a lot of like sort of initial inertia into and then he turns him over to really competent leadership and he builds great teams of engineers that we know he's good at. And that's what he's doing with Xai. And I don't think he's really quite sure yet what it will be.
And that's kind of the genius of Musk, is you know, he kind of builds these teams with a general goal. But the what will come out of this, I'm sure he has no idea yet, but it'll be probably pretty interesting.
Russ was the idea of XAI in the incorporation documents for ex scoop at the time you invested, No, I mean that.
That so they kind of said, you know, there's a lot we don't know he will do within this structure, you know, but it's really about acquiring Twitter.
But I think if you really understand Elon, he always.
Sees things way further than that I do, as far as like the way he sees the future. And Twitter is just a wonderful source of data to build an AI company around, don't you think so? I think, you know, there is a grand vision of He's got the data, and that's why he's protecting it so much with the limiting of the scraping of the data from Twitter, as he's trying to protect his data because he knows it's super valuable.
Twitter data is way more valuable than metadata, you know.
Metadata, you know, is much more personal about people, and Twitter data is really all about the world.
So if you're worried about humanity and sort of bigger issues.
I think Elon, you know, is building something that could be incredible as always.
Really, When the x Ai Twitter handle tweeted you know, questions to its following, I replied saying, how many the h one hundreds do you have in reference to Nvidia's most powerful GPU related to building of lms and the inference side. Lots of people replied and said, what are you talking about? Elon's got Dojo, So what's your interpretation of the read through between Xai and the work that Tesla's done historically in machine learning neural networks?
Right?
So you know, I'm not really an engineer. I'm not an engineer. In fact, I feared these passes in school. So my understanding of it is, if you're going to build AI quickly, you need in video chips because they're
scaling chips that are crucial to this. And Tesla has their own AI chips and they're building autonomy around them and they design their own ships, and then they have Dojo, which is really like a training mechanism, which would really speed up the process of learning through this AI mechanism. But I don't see any way around them buying Mattoman video chips is really the hugest winner in the AI revolution being, you know, the brains behind AI and the.
Hardware brains, So I think that it doesn't really matter. You know. The Nvidia and.
The Tesla chips are kind of similar, I think, in a lot of ways, and they.
Serve the same purposes.
But Tesla designs its own ships and designed its own training, and that is something that people should pay very close attention to, because this is really Elon's expertise. Actually, he's not going into something he you know, like out of his range, like Twitter, you know. So I'm very bullish on this, you know, And of course I think he's the right person.
There is a different leader for Twitter now, Ladie Acarino as a CEO. But I'm interested more broadly on the return on investment that we're likely to be getting from this, and ultimately, this is a lot of the time. When he bought Twitter, it was about more than just the of course, the profitability and the rewards there. It was about building something he thought were ultimately be better for humanity. So is SpaceX to a large extent now we see
it with XAI. How much you pay attention to some of the concerns he ultimately has around AI's risks, of course, he's got the Center for AI Safety on board as an overseer of this new venture.
I think his concerns are very legitimate, and I'm really happy he's bringing them up very early in the process of this technology, because if somebody would have done this during the development of social media, it might have prevented the mass amount of harm that Facebook and Instagram and
other social media's that's caused our youth, for example. And so the fact that he's stepping on early and saying we do need to look at the guardrails around this because the opportunity for abuse, misinformation, and then ultimately bad outcomes from AI are a possibility. And so I think his focus on this early on is actually a great thing.
And I think he's in a position where he can build a company with very long term focus because it's a privately held company with investors like myself who really don't care about the short term at all.
So yeah, he's really in the right position to execute US.
I remember when you joined US, I believe to really vent some frustration about leadership at Tesla distraction concern. You are so concerned about it, you were wanting to help take a board seat to help drive this company forward. What changes now with the birth of you at another company? You say, he's been too busy for about a decade, But what gets sacrificed here as an investor in his other companies.
Well, two things.
One, he did find a CEO for Twitter, and all the things I was pushing for have happened now, from advertising to secession planning and changes of the board.
And we've seen the stock recover.
So it's been a hugely successful campaign economically for me and my clients and for Tesla's shareholders.
So I've been really happy about that.
I don't look at XAI as like such a distraction Twitter, because with Twitter he was really like getting killed every day.
He still gets killed.
Every day with half his decisions and just his whole thing on Twitter has been I think somewhat detrimental, if not very detrimental to his image. But like when you look at doing an AI company, that's like right up as Alley, and he's most competent and capable of leading
a team in this area without really distracting him. And there's lots of ancillary benefits that Tesla and his shareholders will get from this development versus Twitter, where I think the risk reward was much worse for the Tesla shareholders for sure.
Ross also in the news cycle Activision Microsoft. You are an Activision shareholder the merger of say that the chance of this deal going ahead eighty to eighty five percent. The FTC filed it's appeal last night. What do you see is the chances of this deal going through?
We'll just with pull this.
We sold most of our Activision in the last two days after the FTC decision at over around ninety dollars a share er above. We felt the risk reward of just more time. It's a cash heel at ninety five, so we've moved on. So just out of disclosure. So I do think the FTC is going to lose again. Linda Kon and FTC have way overstepped their bounds, taking very weak cases to court to hurt competition in in in gaming.
They hurt competition, They weren't helping at all, and.
So I think, you know, the FDC needs to really reconsider what their purpose is because we're a capitalistic you know, society and businesses by other businesses, So they need to find better cases, and there are plenty of good cases they can jump in on.
How about the live golf PGA situation. Where's the FTC there?
They should be blocking that one hundred percent, so you know, they should need to focus on something a little bit more meaningful.
We're going to let you get back to some well earned golf playing now, it seems for us because you're on vacation and you came on just for us in California. We thank you very much. In Degaba Kawasaki president and CEO Ros Gerbert and our very own ed LaAlO who is not on vocation, but he's out there in some valley working extremely hard for us, and we're going back
to him in a minute. Thank you both. Huawei and it's disclosing for the first time it's annual income from its patent licensing deals, showing the company is making in well more than five hundred sixty million dollars last year from the part of the business. After of course, this business model of old was kind of upended by US sanctions of the Chinese tech player joining us now to see how this galvanizes growth of the future. Stephen guisles
with us. He's the US Chief Intellectual Property Council at Huawei. As long as Anni Perdy, He's Huawei USA Cso, gentlemen, both great to have you, Stephen. Just a lot of patents, thousands that Huawei has. How do you ultimately look to monetize all of this? You've been launching this licensing website as well, just in the last few days, you're providing details of how you're going to have bilateral licensing programs. Would you sell to Apple and the like? Even within
these sanctions? How these sorts of conversations go with big tech giants.
Well, So, regardless of Huawei sales, our patent portfolio covers many of the telecommunications products globally. So, for instance, in five G alone, we own approximately twenty percent of all standard essential patents globally for five G. So where our competitors or other marketing entrants are using five G technology, they would need to pay for a license from Huawei. We're not, though, primarily concerned with monetizing making revenue.
In fact, one.
Of the drivers of releasing the number five hundred and sixty million dollars in revenue last year from patent licensing was to show that, in the grand scheme of things within Huawei, that patent licensing is not our business emphasis. Certainly, my team, we're proud of the work that we've done globally in licensing, and for two years straight we've been positive in patent licensing. But Huawei certainly is a product
and services company. So this is transparency to allow people to see within context that it still is the productization that Huawei is driving for Andy.
Therefore, hol must define what Huawei is now because in many ways you have pivoted. You were survival mode now it's more focused on B to B. How do you summarize really what Huawei stands for now.
Well, we are now at a new normal phase of the evolution of this company. The context is there's technologies converging, five G software, cloud centered technologies, artificial intelligence, all these things are converging. So our strategy with an incredible investment in R and D. We now have one hundred and fourteen thousand people in R and D out of our two hundred and eight thousand dollars two hundred and eight
thousand employee mixture. So we've been adjusting our portfolios to bring value to the network carriers, the enterprises, to the consumers, embracing the key trends of digitalization, intelligence, and carbon neutrality, helping to reduce the carbon footprint. So we are a company about connecting the world, about bringing technology to every home, every company, every organization, and frankly, it's really exciting to be a member of this an employee.
Of this company.
Money is hard, and you know this while having worked with the White House prior to Huawei to do this, while navigating such sanctions. Do you ever see a world in which that will be alleviated in this currency of political environment.
Well, there's an awful lot of countries in the world that are eager to do business with us, and thousands of companies to partner with us. And in fact, when you look at the world, we have formed digitalization partnerships and Global Fortune five hundred companies with two hundred and sixty seven of the Global Fortune five hundred and seven hundred cities. So we're not so can learn about what
we can't do. We're excited about what we can do and how we're bringing the technology to the world, including five point five G and including our pangu ai and AI for industry approach, which is I think going to generate quite a bit of revenue.
Okay, I like that you went to the AI. How much focus is there on AII P at the moment.
Stephen, Well, I'll defer to Andy on the on the AI.
Yeah, So our company looks at the larger world where the future of computing is everywhere. There's going to be an intelligent world. There's going to be Internet of everything, and five G and increasingly five point G are going to help bring that about. We think artificial intelligence is going to rewrite everything, and so our lead for Huawei Cloud, for example, Zang Ping Ghan has said the Pegu model of AI is not about writing poetry. It's not generative
AI like the most publicity and these models. The Pangu model empowers every industry with in effect an intelligent system to make them more productive, more efficient in a real learning environment. Frankly, when we look at the future, we believe Ken who our vice chairman, has said that when you look at AI, generally ninety eight percent of AI will be industry in some agriculture and only two percent
will be consumer. So hopefully the United States is going to really get all in about the benefits of digitalization and transformation.
Certainly, so it feels that way when in terms of the level of conversation we have here on the show about AI in the US. We want to thank you both Stephen Guyser of course US Chief Intellectual Property Council at Huawei and Annie Perdi Huawei USA CSO. And while coming up, No, we're talking about FTC Charley in a Khan just with Roscerber a moment ago. Well, in fact, she's up in the House of the moment testifying for them. We'll have all of the details. Next, this is Blomberg.
Senator Elizabeth Warren says she applauds the FTC for trying to take on Microsoft and its merger with Activision Blizzard. Is what she had to say on Bloemberg's balance of power last night.
The merger itself is not legal, but we have an opinion from the judge. I want to commend the FTC for taking on hard cases, taking on big companies, taking on cases that in the past off and just slid through, but that are clear violations of the law. I applaud what the FTC has done and I say stay after it.
Meanwhile, underway, the FTC Charley and Khanna is currently testifying before the House Committee on the Judiciary on Oversight. In fact, well, let's get to Blueos Katie Lyones, who was busy conducting that interview with Senator Warren, and well, she's a Democrat, and she speaks highly of a Democrat led FTC at the moment, but it's kind of partizan and certainly that committee that Lena Khan's in front of at the moment is an embdem of that.
Yeah, exactly right, Caroline. I just returned from Capitol Hill. I was standing outside that hearing room, and Democrats I spoke with, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, did have kind words for the FTC Chair Republicans, though not so much in the hearing room. Chair con has been accused of being a bully, of her leadership being a disaster and outside
of it. And I spoke to several Republican members who sit on the committee who suggested that she's an ideologue, politicized and that her losing record shows that she's pursuing cases that don't actually have the law on their side. A lot of criticism of her leadership of the FTC and the degree to which she has pushed this kind of anti competition agenda. To summarize their words, I would note also that this is coming as she is trying to fight the fight on the Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal.
Of course, as Senator Warren was just speaking with us about last night, the idea that the judge ruled against her. In that case, the FTC does plan to appeal. When I saw chair Con walking into the hearing room earlier, I asked her why she was appealing if she thought that appeal would be successful. She didn't answer either of those questions.
Caroline, she's answering questions now, Kayleie lyons. I'm sure we'll be there putting more to her very soon. We really appreciate the time. Thank you. Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology. I'm Karen hid in New York. Quick check on the markets for you. Because we are higher. We are higher because inflation is cooling. We only had some CPI yesterday. We get PPI today and it adds some fuel to
the Nasdaq one hundred, Big Tech on top. We're see the two year yields just chrishnd no lower at the moment. That's the opposite way of saying it. I should say spiral lower by some thirteen basis points. At the moment, four spot sixty one is where we trade. We're seeing Bitcoin actually getting a bit as well as the dollar goes lower, up one point eight percent. Still have that thirty thousand or thereabouts level. Moving on and go to some individual names, because boy, Amazon Prime Day and days
as it was did well. We're up more than two percent for Amazon, and we're seeing Alphabet actually getting a bye well a higher price target at least for Morgan Stanley up more than four and a half percent on the day. Is once again see to be the moon music around Bard. It's Ai really managing to win some hearts and minds there. We're also seeing continued focus from the business on well where it now managers is all
of this, We're seeing the Golden Dragon China Index. This is the NASDAK Golden Dragon up almost well two percent.
Now.
We're seeing China once again committing to well stop punishing their tech sector instead start supporting them. It seems to be the read across the investor market right now. We're currently up two percent on some of those big publicly traded Chinese companies that trade here in the US. Meanwhile, let's talk a little bit of what sels is happening in the US and a bit of a crackdown on
crypto still. The former chief executive of the bankrupt crypto lender Celsius rested today charged with fraud in addition to being sued by three regulatory agencies over the company's collapse. Places say Bloemberg's Adson Investoral is joining us for more and will we anticipating this?
You know, we knew that the investigations were ongoing, and last week actually I had reported that the CFTC you know, had their investigators had determined that Alex Mishinski and Celcius had broken their rules and that basically the commissioners were just going to take a vote if they agreed, And we knew SEC and SD and Y we're also looking at this, so a little bit anticipated, but you know, it's always uh, you know, we don't know until we know.
What is the read across Now because we have, i mean, ultimately in some bitcoin prices we stabilized, it feels as though the noise the storm has started to dial down, even though of course we have the SEC really focused on some of the key big crypto players here in the United States. But what does this ultimate focus on the demise of Celsius mean for the rest of the sector.
You know, I think it means that we're going to continue seeing these sort of enforcement actions, you know, specifically for companies that were part of the turmoil last year. You know, we've now seen criminal charges against executives at Terraform Labs, which was the issuer of that terror USD stable coin that collapsed last May. We've seen criminal charges brought against Sam Bankman freed of FTX, and so now
these Celsius charges. You know, it's all pointing to the fact that we can expect there to be a lot of enforcement going forward.
And to a point, I mean, just run us through exactly what is being alleged of Alex because I think the fact that maybe he was not playing as many others would wanted him to is kind of key for the crypto ecosystem as well to show that there was wrongdoing involved here.
So there are slew of allegations, as you mentioned, there are three regular later lawsuits in addition to these criminal charges.
But at the core of.
It, it's basically that they're alleging that he lied about the financial success of the company, including the amount that the company raised in its initial coin offering. They're alleging that, you know, the firm was placing risky bets and then not disclosing that to investors that they were manipulating the price of the of Celsius's native token CEL. So it's a lot of misleading customers, misleading and there's that sort
of vibe. And we also know that there are criminal charges brought against another as Sociates executive, the former chief revenue officer. So you know it's not just Mashinski here.
We will follow it. Sivers Film, thank you so much for bringing us up to speed in the latest. Meanwhile, we want to take a hard turn here and think about an area of focus when it comes to black technologists and entrepreneurs and vcs. Because Black Tech Week starts on Tuesday and it's in Cincinnati now, connecting CEOs and investors to rising black entrepreneurs. Back by headlines like I siray if she isn't busy on the Barbie tour, Black Tech Week aims to really bridge the gap between minority
communities in the tech and business world. Joining us sound really policed to say, is like hip CEO Cannis Matthews and also Bracken as well, and who also is running this event and who's going to be involved in it. Revolt CEO Data Avio Samuels and both of you. Welcome Candice to you first. You brought this from originally, I think it was born in Miami, Florida. You've ordered Cincinnati.
Why, oh, think about all the Fortune one hundred companies in Cincinnati. It's a great place to connect black entrepreneurs to enterprise contracts. And that's what we did our first year and we'll continue to do that. I think you probably know that one percent of the US GDP is invested into venture capital. Yet venture capital accounts for like this fifty seven percent of the US market cap.
We want to make.
Certain that black founders are involved with that, and Cincinnati is the right place to do it.
Okay, let's talk about an entrepreneur leader, a business leader, and in fact someone that many I'm sure will want to emulate. Just did have you your your background, the fact that you were, by the age of twenty five already got a Bao duke. You're then at Stanford getting your MBA, You're now leading one of the fastest growing media companies out there. And I'm interested as to what
you want to be able to speak about. Talk about c and Shine a light on because many might feel that, well, you're to replicate.
Yeah, the notion about me being hard to replicate always breaks my heart because I believe that in order for black people to succeed, it can't be that you have to have the perfect background, right, it can't be that you have to go to Duke University in Stanford University in order to make it.
Well.
I'm hopeful and excited to talk about while in Cincinnati at Black Tech Week is this notion of the importance of black people owning and controlling our own narrative. Black people across the world have had a perception issue, which I think absolutely contributes to the policy issues that we have. And those perception issues are driven by the stories and the negative stories that have plagued us for hundreds of years. And so if you want to change the perception, you
have to change the story. If you want to change the story, you have to change the storytellers. And so I'm excited to have a conversation about the importance of changing the story, changing the narrative. How we can do it in businesses like mine, of course, but in tech, what are the stories we're telling within the tech industry space. What are the stories that we're telling in our marketing, even just the way that we show up as tech leaders entrepreneurs.
That's the conversation. I'm excited there.
And that's exactly why Shawan Diddy Combs set up Revolt and you now lead it. Can is I'm interested in. Therefore, the perception, many would say, the perception of this economy is one that is slowing, that one where vcs go back to backing entrepreneurs they know, understand and have already proved successful, That banks lend to people that look like them that fear, and ultimately that it's the women, the minorities, the people who are new to entrepreneurship and VC that suffer.
Is that something you're seeing or is that just a wrong perception.
That's just the wrong perception.
If we can invent a narrative, we can reinvent it a narrative. And so the entire week next week, you're going to see amazing founders who are growing big things. I mean, look, Procter and Gamble just acquired a company from a black founder, Monti Rodriguez from Mayel. She's built an amazing, amazing business that will be a one billion
dollar brand. Soon, and so eg Xitavio said, it's just time to make certain that people under stand that this is available, that these founders are out there, and really, if they're not looking, they're missing out in an opportunity of a lifetime.
Datavia. Of course, many would at the moment be wanting to see a commitment, whether it be from big companies continuing to put money into diversity to ensure that we get diversity at the founding of companies when indeed, when we're seeing the building blocks of AI at the moment everyone's discussing artificial intelligence, worried about the bias they're in ensuring that there are diverse voices at the very top of these companies. How are you seeing the landscape change
as you go throughout your leadership of a business. How do you how does it drive you as a leader of color at the moment.
Yeah, I think that I think that we're all here for a very specific reason. Right when you look at the unfortunate murder of George Floyd, without question and my industry, it sparks noise. It made people want to behave differently.
That's where we see advertisers and brands start to come out with these commitments about growing black on media, and if you think about what it took to make that happen, like you literally had to have a man murdered for nine minutes, the whole world had to be shut down to be able to watch it in order for people to then have that desire and that momentum to create change. And so my belief and what I say all the time is we are the people who are here for
a reason. Whether you're sitting in my seat, or candidscy or you're the CMO of PNG McDonald's Google, I don't care what it is. We are all here in this very specific moment in time for a very specific reason, and it is up to us to create change, to shift the algorithm.
And my opinion for all oppressed people.
Of course, I'm leading a charge and a revolution to fight for black leaders, black community, black culture, and black storytellers. But I think this is a moment where we all need to look around and say it is the job of the oppressed to be on the side of the oppressed. How do we fix the world and change the world going forward?
Da Javier has that got harder given the economy, given people's ability to put money between behind marketing and advertising.
For you at the moment out question, I mean, I think the last two years, you know, we can always brag about the growth of Revolt has had.
We always talk about how are.
The fastest growing black owned media company in the world. Right now, that said, you can absolutely feel the momentum start to slow, even if you weren't looking at the momentum slowing. What I would say is, you know, right now REVOLDA is probably doing work with you know, one hundred, two hundred and fifty of the top five Fortune five hundred.
Where are the other three fifty? Right?
You know?
When this thing first happened, the the the data that was out there was saying that black on media is one percent of the total industry.
That was in twenty twenty.
Well, od Ages just reached the report that says even after doubling the industry over the last two years, we're just now getting to one percent. And so we're still very much in this challenge where black folks and black on media are getting kinneys, and the energy around fueling the dreams of transforming the media landscape by fueling black on media is getting is getting smaller.
You mentioned the cool say the discussion around Black Tech Week the amount of fortune five hundred executives or focus that there is on your community at the moment, Candae, Well, within that fortune five hundred, less than a percentage of it are CEOs who are people of color and I'm
into or at least black. I'm interested in your perspective, Candice, and whether what you want people who've come to your event to take away what key points If I'm a budding entrepreneur who wants to continue to and drive this change, what two or three things can I go away and do to easily start to bring about change from myself?
Oh?
I mean we are the change.
We don't staff regardless.
I mean Tope from Calendly bootstrapped his business to the point where then people noticed what he was doing. We've got Dlally from Fearless in Baltimbore, who's bootstp wrapped his business to a billion dollar valuation. And so we're going to keep pushing and we're going to keep doing It is harder, and that is unfortunate, but we are and people are taking notice that interreasing coming in to look at companies, capitalized drive kpor, new voices, our own fund Lightship.
Capital, which is remind us fifty million.
Meat, Yeah, we have a fifty million dollar fund.
Yes, and that's been committed at the moment.
That's right.
Come to us when you've got some checks to talk about as well, and the companies you're backing. In the meantime, we wish you were a very good week.
Absolutely.
Lightship founder and CEO Can thank you very mean and Revolt CEO Datavio Samuel thank you both very much. Indeed. Meanwhile, coming up, look, we're going to be looking at that VC Outlook, we're just talking about a sixteen Z about Lighthouse. What about the VC pulse right now? Carl Stamford, lead VC analyst at Pitchbook, I'm afraid it's not pretty for Q two. This's a Bloomberg pitchbook out with this latter support on the health of the VC world and the
result el that's somewhat mixed. Let's bring in Pitchbook lead VC analyst Kyle Stamford for Today's VC Spotlight and Carl, I mean I say mixed. They're pretty ugly. Actually, if you're continuing to look at Q.
Two, yeah, I mean, unsurprisingly, VC stayed pretty pretty.
You know, tepid.
In Q two we had deal count kind of level off around four thousand deals, which I should mention is above any quarter before twenty twenty one. But deal value is still really low.
Right.
It's getting pushed up by Open AI and pushed up by Strip Steel this year, but excess look really really dismal. Obviously, the public market has not opened up yet for VC backed companies M and A is still really low as well. Obviously with you know, the FTC, you know, still making sure that they are putting pressure on the M and A market, we haven't seen much movement there either.
Can you break it down geographically a little bit for US as well, Kyle, because often on this show we're trying to represent that, Look, technology is being built everywhere, technology is being backed everywhere. But look, really Europe and Asia in particular seem to have a mark slowdown.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, I think when you're comparing the US versus some of the other markets, US is much more developed, there's much more there's a larger group of large investors that are able to really push up that deal value. So it's gonna look a little less of a dampened market than when you look at Europe or in Asia Asia two as well. China obviously having a very difficult time with their BC market. There's been a lot of tensions between the US and the Chinese governments, which is pressuring the market.
There as well.
So you know, US has stayed relatively strong compared to the other markets around the world, but still still dampened.
Here and other particular rays of light. I felt like everyone was really rather hanging the hat and AI would come to save the day in terms of the startups that are getting backed. Is that something you see in the numbers?
Yeah, right, well, I think it's a little more. You know, it's a little different than that, right generator. AI obviously getting a lot of attention right now, getting a lot of investment as a subsector of AI that is seen, you know, an increase over what we would have seen in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty one, but AI in general is not gonna pull back. The venture market overall.
The investment indu AI is lower than what we saw in twenty twenty one as a broader market, so everywhere we look, venture is a little bit slower than it was in twenty twenty two, which is much slower than twenty.
Twenty one, and of course that IPO market is firmly shot for the time being unless you're a salad based company or perhaps some energy drink that worn deed, a water company if it's called liquid death, I think is at some point looking at an IPO in twenty twenty four it seems to be the news. But second, I mean exits limited, if any.
Very limited.
Right, we're still at about twelve billion in exit value generated this year. You know, the record of twenty twenty one was about seven hundred and seventy five billion, So right there you can see how much lower that market is. You know, that's seventy seven seventy seven and a half billion dollars. A lot of the eighty six percent was right. Cava obviously was a nice exit for VC, but it's not a tech company, and so it's not gonna bring
back the IPO marketing and material way. We're still looking for those s ones to be filed, you know again, yeah, again, if you're a salad company or if you're a liquid death water company, you've made that move, but we haven't seen any material movement from the tech companies yet.
And do you think regulation is hindering it too. In terms of big tech spending.
Yeah, of course, right. You can think of Microsoft or Amazon willing to take on the FTC because they have the cash behind them to do it. But if you're making a billion dollar deal, are you gonna sende hundred million dollars to fight the FTC to get that deal done? Maybe not right, But I think when we look at
the public markets too. Obviously, with the number of unicorns we have in the US and where around eight hundred, IPO is going to be the more common route for those unicorns to go public or to to exit, and without the public markets willing to accept the kind of you know, growth at all costs models, we're gonna se a lot of these companies continue to wait out the exit market.
Wait.
Mark Kyle Stamford, we thank you always for shining Alne what's happening in the world of VC and money flows. We thank you from Pitchworck.
Bob is I think one of the great CEOs of our time. I think he cares a lot about Disney. He's been a great steward. I think he's uh, the news.
Doesn't surprise me. I didn't have any I learned about it here. I didn't. I didn't actually know in advance.
But I think it's part of what you want CEOs to be doing, which is acting like owners and feeling that the important thing is the legacy of the company that they hand on to their successors, to employees, to society. And I think Bob is that guy.
Gray Lock Partners. Read Hoffman there reacting to the news that Barbaiaga's contract was extended at Disney. Sat there talking to him was Ed Ludlow right now, still in Sun Valley, and its interesting read Hoffman talking about Bob Eiger in that way. I think, almost exactly word for word, one of the best CEOs ever seen with Steve Pagliuca. As well of being capital it clearly I people are relieved.
It's been the universal response, and you know, the boards thinking on this is that it's continuity of leadership and it gives more time for succession. And I think if there's still the question market is succession. You know, during that extended interview with CNBC, Iiger was really quick to make the point that this is partly what it's about.
It gives them more time for whoever comes next. But if you look at some of the cell side reaction or the market reaction, they basically point to this as being evidence that they hadn't come up with anyone, that the internal candidates weren't good enough. So there are still questions about the future of this company. But Eiger's on the job, and how.
Much did that upset some of the potential successes who are currently there in Sun Valley with him?
Right?
I understand there's Josh Damario of course, got the Parks chair and their TV chief there. We've got film Bass as well.
So what sources have been telling is that the CEO search, in terms of like interviews round has been ongoing anyway. And you know, during that interview earlier this morning, Eiger did say or disputed the idea that internally people aren't ready to step up. He said, actually he thinks they are, it's just that they need more time for this transition. What so interesting is how candid he was about things
that Disney got wrong. He stood by Disney Plus being priced at six P ninety nine because they knew that the time they wanted subs, but they got the marketing wrong. And there are other parts of the business linear TV sports where He's like, look, I'm going to act. But universally the response is Bob Iger is the right man for the job. He's the only person that can get this giant that is Disney transitioning into a more digital, streaming focused business that is profitable.
Ultimately, the conversation other than streaming wars, what else are you gonna hip an I on for the day?
Yeah, I think that there's just this massive overhang with Activision and Microsoft. Do you see appeal was a bit of a surprise, came really quickly. Then what's the response from the companies? We have a July eighteenth deadline, and you and I love a deadline. It gives us something to talk about until that point. Hopefully they'll extend it.
Oh, Ed, I know you're going to be pushing up to those deadlines and getting the great news for us. Thank you so much. Of course, edlar Low out there in Sun Valley. That does it for this edition of Blueberg Technology. You do not want to forget to check out a podcast. Find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, on Spotify, and on iHeart from New York, I've from Ida home. This is Bluebg Technology.