Musk's Big Twitter Backers and Buy Now, Pay Later

need to know. Whilst I'm joined by Clarinas CEO, Sebastian Simiatkowski is he ain't worried about Apple moving into Kliners, Clarinas buying out pay Later territory, and Arianna Huffington joins me to talk about how she got some of the biggest companies in the world to sign Thrives mental health pledge covering mill and of workers. We're gonna get to all of that in a moment, but first, A secretive five billion dollar fund is helping elon Musk's bid to

buy Twitter. By Capital has committed seven hundred million dollars to finance Musk's billion dollar deal. The firm is based in Dubai and was founded by Alexander Tamas, a German investor who previously worked with Russian billionaire Eurie Millner Bloombers. Kurt Wagner joins us to discuss. So tell us more about the significance, Kurt, of this fund's involvement. Well, I think it just goes to show exactly how far reaching Elon has had to go in order to get funding

for this deal. It also kind of goes to show how international I think this there is interest in Twitter right now and mostly in funding a project that Elon Musk cares about. Right Vy has a history of kind of connecting itself with these big named tech backers like Elon. I think they're also in the boring company which Zilon. Uh.

They've done some investments um in SpaceX before. So I just think there's you know, it kind of gives a bit of an international flare to this whole thing, but also just goes to show exactly how far Ellen is having to go in order to to find funding for this thing. And they are the third largest outside equity investor in the deal, so that's they're they're getting a big chunk of this deal. Talk to us about where the discussions between Musk and Twitter stand on bots. There's

been a lot of back and forth. Right, Yeah, So the latest this week was that Elon came forward. He formally filed a letter with the SEC saying again, you know, hey, I may walk away from this deal if I don't start getting information to prove that the Botto number Twitter claims is the Botto number is legit. And now what we heard from yesterday was that Twitter is going to give him access to the A p I, which is

known colloquially as the fire hose of tweets. Right, so every public tweet on Twitter is now going to be accessible to Ellen and his team. They can do with that what they wish. I'm not exactly sure if that's going to answer the box question for him, but it does show that they're trying to figure out a middle ground here where he can get the answers he needs and they can move this thing forward. Meantime, we've also

been coming another story. Meta had been working on a watch that we imagine would have been a competitor to the Apple Watch. They've now stopped those plans. What happened here, Yeah, so they're still working on a smart watch. I do want to be clear about that. But the one that we have been talking about and that you may have seen written up in the press is no longer going to be developed. And that one had two cameras. That

was kind of what made it unique. It at a front facing camera, but also a camera on the back, and you could take the watch off of the strap and kind of hold it up to take pictures. And what happened was that back camera that was against your wrist that was interfering with the company's ability to um use the watch as a controller. Right, So one of the things they want to do with wrist wearables is they want to be able to determine when you're moving your hand or your fingers so that you can use

that as a controller for example augmented reality glasses. And the camera was interfering there. So they're gonna get rid of this prototype and they're gonna do something else with the watch. But again, as you pointed out, this was kind of considered something that maybe they were doing to compete with the Apple Watch. So the fact that they're moving to something else UM obviously is notable. Alright, Bloomber, Kurt Wagner, thank you for your reporting on this. Now

back to that Musk Twitter deal. Another backer of that deal, of course, is Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder, is the world's eleventh richest person, with a net worth of eighty eight point nine billion dollars. In two thousand twelve, he bought of the Hawaiian island of lan I for three hundred million dollars. That purchase came with two four seasons resorts, a significant chunk of its homes, and practically all of

its commercial properties. Overnight, Ellison became almost everyone's boss, landlord, or both. In today's Big Take Blue, Sophie Alexander took a deep dive on the impact this has had on the people of Lenin and Sophie, I'm from Hawaii. We call it La Nutty there talked to us about the history of this island. I'm very familiar with it. How is it that one person was able to buy almost

the entire island. Yeah, it's unique because you think of billionaires buying private islands and it's not that big of a deal. But this one is different because it has three thousand people who live there. Uh So, Lena's history goes back into the eighteen hundreds when one person came

over and started buying up chunks of the land. And slowly accumulated pretty much the entire island, like of it, and that passed from one family to another until in James Dole bought it and he started turning it into the world's largest pineapple plantation, which it was for seven decades. Then it passes to another billionaire, David Murdoch, whom as chairman of Dole, and then in two thousand twelve Larry Ellison bought it. And of course there are still thousands

of regular people who live there. How exactly are they being impacted by Larry Allison now owning it? Yeah, this is interesting because, like I said, the people who live there and have lived there for generations are used to being under the control of a single company or a single person or family. But Larry Ellison is a whole different animal. As one person put it, you know, he's

got ninety billion dollars. That's a lot of money. I mean, it's nearly double what you have before the pandemic started. The last billionaire, David Murdoch, he only had like two billion dollars. They call him the poor billionaire. Um, so Larry can really do whatever he wants. And it's it's starting to show and what exactly is he doing? I mean this tell us the stories in your article are

just absolutely fascinating, right, so true billionaire form. You know, as soon as Larry gets there, he decides he doesn't like the food, so he builds one nobu. Now there's another sense a buy nobu. He renovates the two fours and seasons resorts and so now they're fancier than ever for you know, thousands of dollars tens of thousands of dollars a night, um. And he's also doing things for the community. You know, he bought the tree store and

he renovated it um. But that is the main concern is that he's buying up a lot of the small businesses. He's buying up some more houses, and people are nervous. So generally are people you know, you use the word nervous. They're they're not happy with this, I think, even though they're getting a new grocery store for example. Sure, I mean it depends who you ask, but I think it's more of an anxiety because the big problem is a

lack of communication. People don't know what ultimately Larry's plans are, and so they just don't know what their future is going to look like here, and so more and more of them feel like there's not a place for them on the island. There it's being catered to the uber, uber wealthy, not for for locals. Well, and a lot of these people, you know, their livelihoods, they service the resorts, they work at these resorts. Is Larry Ellison's spending a

lot of time there personally. Do we know anything about his endgame? Yes, So he moved there during the pandemic and that's been key because you know, it's kind of like out of place, out of mind. Now that he's there, all of his plans are picking up. So he's building a monk story school, He's building a five home complex for himself. Um, you know, he's building a new housing project to house all of his construction workers because housing

is a huge issue on the island. He's shut down his third hotel for workforce housing for the entire year. And a lot of this is happening with very little communication or no communication with community. M interesting. Well, it's a fascinating read. You can check it out this week's Bloomberg Big Take. Socie Alexander, thank you. Check out the article in Bloomberg Business week, while more musical chairs at Disney, CEO Bob Chpeck has abruptly fired the head of Television,

Peter Rice, for not being a team player. According to Bloomberg sources, Rice was chair of General Entertainment Content and oversaw a vast swath of shows carried across Disney Networks. The sudden firing is the latest twist and a tumultuous stretch for tape Chpeck. His leadership has come under scrutiny over the last year as he wrestled with challenges that included a high profile dust stop with Florida Governor Rohnda Santis over a new law limiting discussion of sexual identity

in classrooms. We're learning more about Apple's jump into the buy now, pay later business. The company will actually handle lending, including credit checks, with a new business called Apple Financing, marking a significant further push into financial services. Some see this push as a threat to the more established players, including a firm and Clarina. But is it joining me now?

Sebastian Schimakowsky, CEO and co founder of Clarina and Sebastian I was at Apple when they were unveiling this and everyone immediately thought about companies like Clarina and a firm you tweeted that plagiarism is the highest form of flattery. But are you worried that this could hurt your business? Not? Right? For first of almost like, I think it's a great win for consumers world one that Apple is now embracing

a better form of consuming credit. Um, we're looking at an industry of retail banking payments that you know has an addressable market of four hundred forty billion dollars worldwide, and it has been constructed in a way traditionally where credit cards have been making it fortune by trying to get us to revolve at high interest rates once we get that prayer card statement every month. And this form

of credit is better for consumers. So I think it's it's it's fantastic, And Plana has been offering this form of credit for a while. I actually would be mostly worried if I was one of those predre card banks who embraced Apple Pay. Was so happy to embrace this new technology and now suddenly find myself having this company in front of my credit card promoting an interest free credit instead of my forty percent revolving credit one and

then pushing the customer to another provider. I that that's the that to be should be the big headline of this news for US. I mean, Flana has a hundred fifty million users worldwide, where one of the largest third party globe and payment networks in the world. Paying for is a fantastic product. It has done tremendously well for us in the US and helped us a lot to

gain recognition and so forth. But people are using us for a lot of reasons, one not the least being the fact that we're the richest data payments networks in the world because we have skew level data and digital receipts on every transaction, allowing us to create a much richard consumer experience. Transactions are debit, not even credit. People don't know that um and so forth. So so I mean,

I'm working. I always think competition is nice, and I'm I'm also fortunate to have a neighbor here in Daniel X, the founder of Spotify, who has has can give me some tips on how to compete with Apple successfully. Obviously good. Good to know that you and Eck are friendly. I also spoke with a firm CEO, Max Election he similarly, you know, said it was a win for consumers, but he also said something else. Take a listen why I'm not particually worried about Apple pay entering the bioppulator space.

They're focused on the can into the six week product, which I think is great and display of competitors, and they should be worried. I think this spells a certain level of concern for folks that are really specialized in this really short term product. That's not calling out Klina. He might, you know, it's funny me and act of a long history. I remember presenting Clana at depth, trying to recruit him as a board member, and then being

surprised by him announcing a firm six months later. Um, so we have if we have a we have a fun history me and Max. But look, I think, look, they're very distinctly He's He's very accurate about one thing, and that is that Clana and a firm are distinctly different businesses. If I've understood the firm's reporting correct, their

businesses is um is financing, long term financing. If I understand correct reports online, fifty of their UM of their balance credit is priced at only five to interest rate rates that we don't even go up to Plana max. My maxisized at twenty five. So it's a very different businesses lending high ticket items to people that think interest rate is attracted. Clina is that pay interest free product. It's a payments product. We have the largest account to

account based payments network in the world. So these these are distinct different businesses and and and so yes, I think that in that I agree with him, and I don't think it's accuracy. So some some shots fired there. I'm gonna have to get Max to respond to that. You know. He also talked about how a firm. He also talked about how a firm is hiring and Clarina did have some layoffs recently. I believe you and I was planned to lay off ten percent of your workforce.

When you look back, do you see any mistakes in your execution? And you know, does this mean that you're kind of slightly less optimistic about how big the market can be for Klina than you work? No, I think look for us, there's a long term opportunity in this which has been that I believe we're going through a similar revolution in retail banking and payments that retail went

through ten years ago. You remember, I've been running Plan Up for fourteen seventeen years now, where of the fourteen first year we're profitable um and and I went through the financial crisis with this company two thousand seven and two thousand a. So, but what happened in the last two years is that we've been very focused on establishing

yourselves in the US. We're proudly we have twenty five million users that we see, you know, Macy's and Support and big fantastic brands in the U S adopted Klan and it is offering Klan Up today. So it's been a very very um a time where we've been investing a lot, and it's been very clear, as I think a lot of other companies in the US have understood now as well, that there is a shift in investors.

You know, investors being entirely focused on asking for what are you doing to grow faster six to nine months ago, are now starting to ask questions about profitability and softwath And again we have the benefit of having been a profitable company for a lot of for a long period

of time. We now invested heavily. We we we said, look the in goal is exactly the same that it has always been, but it's going to be a slightly different path towards that, and the unfortunately led us to something that you know, I find obviously very sad that we as a consequence of that, decided to make changes to how the order looks and how it's set up, and that has led us to suggest and ask people to uh, you know, offer them severance packages and so forth, and

as some people to to leave Plana, which is abviously very sad because I think this is all amazing talent, amazing people that you know have have contributed to the company. So it's a sad thing to do, but I think it's it's the right thing considering how the marketing look nowadays, and I think it will set up up even better for for future success going forward. Now in this new

in this new market environment that we're in. Well, I know you made quite a move and shared some of their their details, which um, I hope they're getting some inbound all of that great talent um. As you've said, the goal is to become the world's largest retail bank. Given regulation, given the changing competitive landscape, how far out is that vision In the United States? And abroad. No,

we're quite far actually ahead. Right. So I to me, like, if you look at this from a future perspective, what I believe in, what I believe a longer time is that like someday in the future, you wake up in the morning, your computer says to your your financial assistant, Digital as system says, hey have analyzed your mortgage, tonyed I realized it, could you know, save you x amount of the nars by shifting from supplier A to supplier B. And the only thing you need to say yes, it's

a little bit like self driving cars. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I do know it will happen. So the future of banking is very different to what we've traditionally seen, where banks have been obsessed with what they called maximizing interest rate spread, meaning you know, giving the positors as a little as possible and then

borrowing it out the highest possible interest rate. The true future retail banking financial services is somebody's on the consumer side trying to help them save time, save money, make you the less worried about their finances. And it's been very clear to me that that who those five or four large companies that will dominate that space in the next ten years on a global basis will be that somebody's global and somebody has a banking background and it's

willing to pursue that. There will be some tech companies pursuing that. We see Apple now pursuing some of that. There will be some fin techs, and there will be some traditional banks. And I think Planna would have hundred fifty million users and with a data set that is much richer than anyone else due to the you know the fact that we have skew level data on all transactions. It's giving us a tremendous opportunity to lead the game in providing more value for consumers and really be on

the consumer side. And I'm also happy now that even though media has questioned things like buying now, pay later, we're seeing other people adopting and recognizing that this is a better form of credit as well. So I think it's verifying a lot of the assumptions that we've had, and so I feel very excited about it. Sebastian Chimakowsky, Corner CEO, thank you for joining us as always coming up. Meta is now a leader in another social media trend lawsuits.

Why the company has been sued more than half a dozen times just in the last week. That is next. This is Bloomberg. In the last week, eight lawsuits have been filed across the country against Meta, the suits alleging that the company built algorithms leading young people into addiction. For more, I'm joined now by Bloomberg's Alafi Nayak Malthy. Thank you so much for joining us. So what kind

of addiction are you talking about here? So? The users who suit Meta claiming that Facebook and Instagram have created algorithms and products that keep users hooked onto um its platforms, especially young users, and that they promote excessive use of these platforms through these algorithms. The claiming that Meta knew that these algorithms were problematic, that they would lead to issues such as eating disorders a d h D, and depression among young users, but that the company continued to

keep these products and services going to drive profit. This echoes what the Facebook whistle blower quote unquote Francis Halgan testified to Congress about how is Facebook responding? So Facebook hasn't responded in court as yet, but spokesperson declined to comment because it is active litigation. But she did point to some efforts by Facebook recently such as having tools um for parents to control screen time and also enough resources like having these little pop up messages that come up.

If a user looks for information on and eating disorder, for example, then there will be some tips and resources that will pop up on screen to sort of help the help the young user deal with certain issues. Are these lawsuits coordinated so there are a bunch of firms. There's one group in Seattle, and then there's another firm called Beasley Allen which just filed these eight suits in the last week. UM. So at some point they could all get consolidated in court, but right now their separate

efforts interesting. Gos Mouth and I thank you, thank you for that update. Welcome back to Bloomer Technology and Emily Chang in San Francisco. We have heard so much about mental health over the last few years as we've all had to navigate the uncertainty of a pandemic from home

to work. This is why Thrive has partnered with the Society for Human Resource Management to get some of the biggest companies from Microsoft to Salesforce, Cisco, Uber, and Walmart to make a commitment to employees mental health and well being. Joining me right now, Founder and CEO of Thrive, Arianna Huffington's Arianna, great to have you back with us. So

what exactly are these companies committing to do? So Basically, they're committing during the staff economic times ahead, not to cut mental health and well being offerings to their employees as you know, and really offered. The last two years, we've seen an incredible increase offered. Ninety companies have increased their mental health and well being offerings to their employees. Over the last two years, practically every company became also

a healthcare company. And these are amazing advances, and US companies are making tough decisions. So we wanted to make sure that there was a real commitment not to cut down these fundamental services, especially at the time when the mental health crisis is seen as the second pandemic, and we were thrilled with a response. Within a week, we got over eighty both Fortune ten companies and also high

growth startups to join the pledgere and sign up. Now, we've been hearing a lot of talk about mental health lately. It's also being blamed for gun violence. I'm curious if you think this issue is being politicized. Well, mental um

crisis is real, and everything is being politicized today. But the truth is that we've seen unprecedented numbers of depression and anxiety, and that we know there is a lot that can be done by changing our everyday habits around sleep, around food, around the thought we hold in our heads to change outcomes. And that's one of the things that companies are doing. Beyond just the medical intervention if things get really bad, there is a lot we can do

about prevention. So the question is how, and and often how much is our own tech obsessed culture making all of this work worse. You and I have talked about Facebook and now Meta, which you know, as we were just discussing in a segment earlier, is being sued across the country for knowingly coaxing teens into different four of addiction.

What do you make of that narrative? So obviously I don't know the details of the lawsuit, but what I do know, and what every parent knows, is that managing the relationship of their children to technology, to social media is really hard. You and I were talking about your nine year old son and how long can you wait before he even gets a phone, and that's something that's

based on observation. At Drive. We launched a dedicated curriculum called Thriving Kids because one of the companies who work with Fighter saw the concern that working parents are having over the relationship of their children to their phones, to social media, the growing skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety among children and teenagers. It's a huge issue and I'm

so glad you're looking at it more closely. I also have to ask you about Cheryl Samberg because I know you're close friends, and we've seen this great resignation happening across the country and around the world, and some people didn't expect to see Cheryl Samberg be part of it. Were you surprised how long she stayed or do you have any more insights into why she left? And now I am very very proud of her for taking that step.

You know, Emily here and I have talked a lot about women, and so often I talked to friends in big corporate jobs who have stopped really feeling that that's what they want to be doing. But so many women and men, but especially women become so identified with their jobs and we know from everything Cheryl has done beyond Facebook with a lean in circles, with her work with Option B helping people who experienced loss to rebuild their lives,

that this is an amazing new chapter for her. And I profoundly believe that life comes in chapters, you know. I I've had many chapters myself, and I remember when I was debating leaving the having done post to launch Thrive, I actually called Cheryl and she gave me the advice to just take a deep breath, close my eyes and jump. And these changes, these jumps require carriage. It's always easier to stay where you are, especially when staying where you

are is a huge job. Well, that's a perfect segue to my next question, because you know a thing or two about owning a media company. And I'm so curious what you think of Elon Musk and his bid to buy Twitter. I know you gave him some advice back in to sleep More. I'm not sure if he took it, but any advice for him now? I mean, do you think he's a good owner? Will he be a good

owner for Twitter if it happens? Well, first of all, Emilie, are you surprised that a company like Twitter that thrives on drama and conflict is engulfed in more drama and conflict with a man who enjoys drama and conflict. I'm actually much more interested in a learn's decision to bring everybody back to the office full time. I think that's going to become a very key decision for companies and

for me. What's being missed from this conversation is that more important than where people are working is how they're working. And again, in the same way, with a mental health pledge, we want to avoid regressing into the pre pandemic past. The same applies here. We need to avoid regressing into cultures driven by burnout, and that means that whether people work in a hybrid environment, remote or back in the office, everybody has to be much more intentional about the new

work order. We cannot pretend and that we can unring the bell that millions of people worked remote and did a lot of good work. But we need to become much more intentional about building the social capital that we do lose when people are not physically together all the time, and that means not having people come back to the office to take zoom calls from their cubicles. That means

and that's a priority for us at Thrive. Being much more intentional about onboarding, we include something called the Entry interview, being much more intentional about hybrid rituals, like something we call reset, where people create their own sixty second reset of what gives them joy and share them. A teamm thinks, so a lot of work has to be done to navigate the new world order, and whatever Mordel a company chooses,

you cannot unring the bell. We will try to get Ellen that advice Arianna, maybe via Twitter, since that seems to be where he is hanging out. Arianna Huffington's founder and CEO of Thrive. Always love having you here on the show. Thank you for stopping by. Alright, Coming up, the future of crypto regulation. How a Democratic and Republican senator are taking a stab at working on this together. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lammas joined me. Coming up,

this is Bloomberg Time now for our crypto reporting. Today we are talking crypto regulation. A new bill that could help clarify which digital currencies are commodities and which our securities just got new support from the CFTC the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, while the bill would give them more power. I sat down earlier with Senator's Cares and Gillibrand from New York and Cynthia Lammas from Riot, Wyoming, who wrote the bill. Take a listen to what they had to say.

I don't think any bill can satisfy everyone, but I think this is a really great start because our goals are simple. We want to create safety and soundness in the American market. We want transparency and accountability, and we want to have consumer protections. And most industry players want to have rules of the road so they know they can count on it, so they know that they can create a business plan and know that that's consistent with

what US laws are likely going to be. And so what Sarah Loves and I worked on is a comprehensive framework to give guidance about which digital assets will be regulated through the CFTC, which will be regulated through the sec UM, giving I r S jurisdiction overall, making sure we have rules for stable coins and o c C. So we're doing the work that it takes to create that stability and create the essential transparency that this industry wants and needs to thrive. Our goal is not to overregulate.

Our goal is to have exactly the right amount of oversight so that the industry can actually thrive, grow, and continue to innovate in the United States. On that note, Senator Lamas, Wyoming is steeped in the history of the wild West and a lot of investors are attracted to crypto because it is unregulated. How do you strike the right balance here, Well, we have decided to use the existing regulatory structure for traditional assets UH and lay the

structure for digital assets on top of it. That's why we're using the Commodity Futures Trading Commission UH, the SEC, and UH the I R S UH in their traditional roles. So, for example, bitcoin is clearly a commodity, so it will fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. So will the spot market in the futures market, and Ethereum is almost certainly a commodity, and there are few others that will almost certainly be commodities, they will fall under the CFTC.

Then something that meets the Howie test, which is a court based test for what constitutes a security, will put those cryptocurrencies under the SEC, and the SEC has a strong history of being good at disclosures and consumer protection, so we believe we've found the right balance between these two agencies. The vast majority of these in terms of market share, will be under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, but the largest number of cryptocurrencies will probably fall under

the SEC. And yet there's no real broad agreement on whether cryptocurrencies are commodities or security. Senator Jillibrand, I'm so curious, which do you think our commodities? Which do you think our securities? So I think Senator love Us just answer that question perfectly. And the way we have the structure this oversight is by purpose. What is the purpose of your digital asset? Do you meet the TAWI test um? Are you like a company that's offering a stock to

raise money for your company to fund your company? If that's what you're doing with your digital asset, you are there for a security. And so it is there an issuer is the issue or giving you something of value? Um? Is it something that's based on the managerial expertise of the issuer. Those are all characteristics of securities, and so it depends it's not the name cryptocurrency that decides where

you go. It's the purpose of the digital asset that you are offering to the public for sale that's going to affect who's your regulator. You know, it's wonderful to see two people from different ends of Congress working together and you found common ground on this issue of crypto. Is there space in one of the most polarizing of debates, the gun controlled debate, in which you two could collaborate as well. Well, there's a bipartisan working group right now

that we're not part of. But yes, there is always common ground, and that bipartisan working group right now is figuring out where does it lie. Does it lie in reforming some aspect of background checks, does it lie in some aspect of red flag laws. Gun trafficking is an area of common ground, always bipartisan, because it's just giving law enforcement the ability to our state lines to find gun traffickers who are by nature criminal networks, giving guns

directly to criminals. So those are areas where I suspect there will be some common ground, but we are not on that committee, and if they fail, then Senator Lamas and I will certainly take it up. Senator Lamas. You did talk earlier this week about the volume of calls your office has gotten on gun violence and sort of signaled you know that you were giving this additional consideration. And I'm wondering where you stand on this new bipartisan

legislation now, just you know where's your head at. Well, I haven't seen the legislation. The calls that I were getting from people who want us to do something, we're not specific about what they want us to do. They just said it's time to do something. The calls I was getting from people who are opposed to doing something are specific to guns, because my state of Wyoming has

a strong gun culture. So for me, I'm going to be looking at issues like juvenile expungement of records for violent juvenile offenses, and I'm going to be looking at mental health solutions. Um. I'm worried that there are going to be a lot of um young people coming out of the COVID lockdowns that spent a lot of time on the internet viewing harmful websites that may trigger them to be UM violent or act out in ways that probably they would not have before we went into the lockdowns.

So those are the kind of things that worry me the most. Those are the things that keep me out at night. Senators cars and Jilly Brown and Synthi alumnus there. You can catch that full interview at Bloomberg dot com. The Biden administration is taking new steps to shore up US cyber defenses in light of Russia's ongoing war on Ukraine. The biggest cyber threats the hot topic of the weeks r s a conference happening right now in San Francisco. Crowd Strikes CEO and co founder George Kurtz was just

there and joins me now here in the studio. So what strikes you as different about this conference than years past. Well, certainly we're in person, which I think both vendors and customers were really excited about. I think there's a really strong interest in security. Um It's something that I've talked about for a while. Even if we go into a difficult macro background, security is still going to be a top priority for boards and a top budgeted item UH

to keep companies safe. So it's encouraging. Obviously we're in that industry, but we're also focused on helping customers and consolidate their spen and I think that's been a big focus. How do you consolidate spend in an area like security. Now, they've been conflicting reports on the actual state of the cyber threat landscape. For example, cyber ransomware attacks. Are they up or are they down? Well, some of the dollar amounts are down, and I think there's two reasons for that.

You've seen some movement in bitcoin right as it's as it's crashed, and when you calculate all the sits down a little bit. But the other pieces, um. When you think about Ukraine and Russia and some of the cyber crime e crime groups they used to coordinate. Now there's not a lot of coordination between the groups, and some of the groups have actually splintered and uh and fractured off. So overall it's still a really robust e crime market. Ransomware is one of the top threats of the day

and people are still paying big dollars for it. President Biden have warned about these retaliatory potential cyber attacks from Russia, but it doesn't seem like that has happened yet, has it. Are we missing something? Well? I think what's important to realize that Russia continually has access to lots of systems around the globe. They're very capable um cyber adversary. But it hasn't happened yet, right, I mean, it hasn't been as bad as certainly the president well you know, and

I think that's what I'm trying to say. They have access in lots of places, and once you start to destroy things, then your access tends to get figured out right. And what people have to realize that in in cyber wards a one time you sweapon if if something it's destructive is used, you can use it one time. The other piece that's interesting, and it's a broader question, is what a cyber attack, a destructive one, now constitute an act of war? And I think just given the changing

geopolitical landscapes, it's unclear. There's also been criticisms about Biden's approach to cybersecurity, you know, pushing more responsibility on private companies. Kirsten Todd of SISA was also at r s A. She was here on the show. Take a listen to what she had to say. When we're talking about ransomware. I think the challenge with this issue is that we've

created kind of a perverse structure. We in the United States have actually created a market, a very thriving, strong market in ransomware, where we now have companies that charge, you know, six figures to go on retainer to negotiate ransom to get information about malicious actors. What do you make of that? Did we create our own problems? I

don't know. We created our own problems obviously when you look at the amount of money that can be gained from encrypting a system, I think the bad guys have figured out that if you can make a three on one system, you can make a lot more by taking

out an entire company. And it's just a function of the complexity of the technology environment and the fact that from a regulatory or maybe from a legal framework perspective, it's very difficult to bring these thread actors to justice because they're all over the place and a lot of times you can't get to them. So there's big dollars to be made in those areas. Speaking of dollars, crowd strike share price has dropped significantly with the rest of

the market. What should investors be looking for over the over the next six months and what do you have to say to to folks who are maybe skeptical well, I mean I can't forecast the market, but when you look at our key one earnings and what we were able to uh to display UM and we talked about

that last week. You look at the growth rate annual recurring revenue almost two billion dollars in annual recurring revenue, and that's combined an incredible growth rate at scale with cash f generation, which is what investors are looking forty free cash flow generation hundred fifty seven point five million for the quarter. We think that's the right recipe and that's what we're focused on executing and keeping our customers safe.

There are so many more cybersecurity companies that this year's RSA than there were even last year, because so many new companies have been funded. Are they all going to survive? Are you worried about the future of some of these companies? Well, I think security is a complicated landscape and not every company, even ours, can handle everything in the security landscape in

terms of UM specific areas. That being said, a lot of companies at r s A are features right, They're not true companies or true platform companies, and a lot of them won't be public. And when we think about what's happening today. The public markets are locked up, so you have a lot of private companies with high valuations that don't really have an exit at this point. And when you think about the public market valuations going down,

that's going to bleed off into the private markets. We've seen layoffs at some of these companies, and in fact, we think it's gonna be an opportunity for better hiring because of just this lock up in the I p. O market, And the second area is in the M and A front. We think there's gonna be some great opportunities out there in the future. Interesting crowd checks. CEO and co founder George Kurt's good to see you in here in person for the first time in a couple

of years. Thank you for stopping by. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. We're gonna be back Tomorrow's got cutlerro Stockics will be with us. We'll talk about that legal battle with Nike and a new report about the rise of counterfeit luxury