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Collie in Silicon Valley, Nbon. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
And Carolin Hyde at Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York.
I'med Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
Full coverage of Video's annual GPU Technology Conference. Hoss Jensen Wang on Veil's it's most powerful chip architecture yet, Why Blackwell will be key for the future of.
AI plus as TikTok faces a potential ban or divest it show we'll get the outlook on what's to come next in the Senate with US Senator Bill hag from Tennessee, and.
We'll sit down with the CEO of the fastest growing cybersecurity company that's Whiz to Talk M and a valuation so much more.
Video CEO Jensen Huang name checked these names on stage at GtC on Monday night, either their customers or he was praising of where they sit in the AI infrastructure build out that we're seeing around the world in the context of data centers. Dell, one of those key names moving through the upside.
Caroline kingmaker of other stocks, perhaps not his own on the day in Video's Blackwell though ed the processor is the showcase of the chip company's GtC conference, and look it stends in video's dominance, it feels like of artificial intelligence computing.
This is Harper.
Harper changed the world.
This is Blackwell, named after the mathematician and game theorist David Backwell. This new platform is multiple times superior at AI models and inference that its predecessor Hopper. As we can see, he's just lining them up next to each
other moment. Let's break it all down the Antoine Skyman, his technology infrastructure analyst at News Street Research who covers in video and AI, and the dominance has been clear when you're looking at a market capitalization, when you're thinking the trillion dollars added in marketcap this year alone, did it live up to the third most well valuable company in the world.
Yes, thanks, thanks Caroline. I'd say our main takeaways from Jensen's keynotes yesterday is that the competitiveness of Nvidia's product is only getting stronger. Blackwell, the new platform that the company announced offers up to four times higher training performance and thirty times higher inference performance than its predecessor Hopper.
And so next time you hear someone announce it cheap that's ten times faster than NVDR, remember that a year later and Vidia will also have acheap ten times faster. So alternatives to Nvidia can have an advantage that lasts at best one generation, and a year later that advantage goes away. And last, but not least, remember that this advantage often comes at the cost first giving up on the flexibility that GPU's offer, and second the cost of not being able to leverage Nvidia's ecosystem.
So I would say that yes, it leaves up antoine.
There was a lot more emphasis from Jensen on inference than there has been historically. Right, The story was around the row h one hundred played in training large language models with many tens or hundreds of billions of parameters.
Are you convinced.
That if we're in a world where we move from more training to more inference, Nvidia continues to lead in that side of the market as well.
Yes, I think so, and I think Jensen clearly illustrated that very well. Inference is a very complex problem that involves very complex optimization where you have to paralyze a workload across dozens of GPUs, And I think what Jensen showed yesterday is that Nvidia's mode is really about being able to optimize these GPUs to solve that complex inference problem very efficiently. This thirty times better than Hopper clearly illustrates that Nvida is very, very much delivering on that front.
What were you most excited about from Jensen? Right he's like being compared to Steve Jobs. He is the man of the moment. He wears his leather jacket. You convinced by all the things that he says about the future when he's on stage.
I think I was most excited about innovation beyond just GPUs. If you look at the fact that Nvidia also announced material improvements for secondary chips like the Gray CPU, the DPU, various networking chips, we actually can conclude that only half the performance improvement is coming from the GPU, and the other half is actually coming from the rest of the
hardware stack and system level integration. So bottom line is that Nvidia's mode is not just about designing great GPUs, It's about designing great systems optimized to unleash fully the capabilities of those GPUs, and I think that's really what I was excited about when I looked at the keynote yesterday, and it's.
Clearly perhaps so I was saying some impact on rival chip companies. I mean MDS, I think, one of the worst performers on the day. Does this mean that they've got it all locked up? Or is with the new paradigm shift to inference and the fact some of these hyperscalers themselves want to be making their own chips, does that long term provide some sort of competitive issue.
Well, I think that Nvida's competition will thrive as well because demand is so strong at the moment, so everybody will continue to buy as much as they can at least until the end of next year. And that doesn't mean that they will challenge the dominus of Nvidia, but that will make room for alternatives. So at this point in time, we actually see upside in both Nvidia and AMD. But the uncertainty that there is beyond twenty twenty five means that the risk reward ratio is getting thinner and
thinner as those doocks keep having a run. What happens beyond twenty twenty five? I think nobody knows. It will depend on the performance of next generation larger models as well as adoption and monetization of AI. But I would say that there is room for challengers like AMD to also gain a lot of share in that market, probably in the ten to twenty percent region is something we would see as reasonable.
I want to just dwell on the supply side issues a little bit, because packaging is something that's beening highlighted time and time again. Are we ultimately going to see an issue never with demand that feels like just how much can be made, how quickly it can be made, and how and who buy?
So I think demand is really, you know, something that will have to look at, will have to look at many many dimensions. We are on the lookout, you know, observing the industry on or fronts, and so will definitely keep you posted. I don't think at this stage anyone can determine what's going to happen beyond twenty twenty five. Between now and twenty twenty five, though we have very strong visibility. All data points suggest that Nvidia is going to do very well, AM is going to do very well,
Broadcom is going to do very well. We see the industry shaping up, you know, supply coast capacity, for instance, doubling again this year. I think all the data points suggest that everything is going to remain strong until twenty twenty five, but there is no way to determine what happens beyond twenty twenty five. Yet, we'll have to monitor leading indicators on that front, as I mentioned earlier, like adoption then monetization of the I.
Love Caroline's question because Blackwell has two hundred and eight billion transistors in the tensercre right, it's so many transistors, it's actually two chips in a multi die format TSMC is going to be the manufacturer making them four MP technique. Just something you said, Antoine. I think the forecast in fiscal twenty five is one hundred and ten billion dollars of revenue, up from sixty one in fiscal twenty four.
Do you have a good.
Sense of how quickly Blackwell will be revenue generating? I think they said it will be launching later this year calendar year.
Yes.
I mean when you look at Nvidia's prior cycles, for instance, Hopper that launched in late twenty twenty two represented maybe meet single digits of sales and mostly in the fourth quarter, and that quickly remped in twenty twenty three, maybe to about half of sales, and so we expect it's probably a similar trajectory to play out for black Will.
All right, Newstreet Research and they center on scriber and great to have you on the program, reacting to the event of the year. Probably so fun are coming up. We're going to bring you the latest on the other big story, the TikTok divest or Bambil and why tech critics are saying Congress needs to think a lot bigger. That conversation's next, Caroline, another chip mover.
Yeah, and let's go back to the AI hype because well, we're seeing supply coming into action for super micro computer.
We're down my number cent. Why because they're often just sell.
More shares, two million more shares in a public offering that could raise as much as two billion dollars. Remember this computer server maker, it's been on an absolute taired a thousand percent gain amid this way AI enthusiasm.
Over the last twelve months.
It's going to be giving up a little bit as we see them sell more shares.
There's a Blomgechnology.
Senior officials from the Justice Department and other agencies. Now they're going to be holding closed door briefings in the Senate this week to advance legislation that would allow TikTok to continue its US operations are being severed from its Chinese owner. Now this is all his breathings are likely to be held today and tomorrow. We understand this is an ongoing lobbying battle, isn't it over the dovest or
band TikTok bill? And it moves to the Senate after what was a very quick passage in the House last week. I just sat down with Republican Senator Bill Haggerty at Tennessee to get his thoughts on the legislation earlier today.
Just take a listen.
Well, it's hard to say what's going to happen in the Senate because Chuck Schumer controls the pace of play in the Senate, and it's got to move through the Commerce Committee in that gavel's controlled by Maria Campwell, So I'm not certain what the pace will be, but I can tell you what the concerns are regarding the bill.
I think the bill is trying to address a very real concern that has to do with the national Security laws of China, and any company that is Chinese owned is subject to their data being surveilled by the Chinese Commonist Party.
There are no exceptions to that rule.
And that's data collected wherever it may be collected around the world, including in America.
The concern that this bill is trying.
To get at is the concern about the privacy of Americans data and a desire not to allow that data to be surveilled by the Chinese Commonist Party. That's a very real concern. There's also another concern that's being very clearly articulated as well. The last thing that we want to see happen is more power shift to the hands of companies like Meta that have demonstrated a willingness to
censor American voices, particularly conservative American voices. So I think what we're talking about here is who owns TikTok at the end of the day, and whether a divestiture.
Can be achieved.
So you'd want TikTok to remain as a competitive here in the United States, just under different ownership.
And I think that is exactly what the bill contemplates. We'll see again what the final product looks like as it moves to the centate. But that's what I would expect to see.
There has been some heavy lobbying, shall we say, coming from TikTok on the Hill. And it was notable that almost the person who first got the ball rolling on analyzing the ownership of TikTok and indeed its persistence here in.
The US was former President Trump. And then he changed his opinion.
He went more on the concern around Meta.
Do you think that was to do with lobbying. What do you think changed his mind?
I really doubt it has anything to do with lobbying. I think it probably has a lot more to do with what we saw come out in the X files, in the Twitter tapes, and the degree of censorship that's taking place between the Biden administration and companies like Meta, and Meta's willingness to get involved in elections. I think everybody was deeply surprised and shocked with the suppression of the story about Hunter Biden that was suppressed from the
New York Post. The degree by which this government, certainly this White House, has been quote flagging a post of concern to them, and that all feels like censorship to most Americans. I think that's the point. That's the concern that President Trump is highlighting.
To go the other route, and many people feeling that what they don't want to see happen is a lack of freedom of speech, a lack of nobility to use this platform. So if it was to remain in the United States, who should own it?
Who should be a buyer?
Well, I've certainly preferred American to own it, And that's the needle I think this legislation is trying to thread right now.
Should it be a social media company? Should it be individual investors?
I know that your background is such, well, it's.
Going to be a large price tag, I feel pretty certain. So it's hard to predict, and nor do I think legislation should dictate you know, who that buyer might ultimately be.
But we'll see what happens.
Should a ban or divestment on TikTok be significant to the US public.
I think it would be quite significant because of the number of users. I think the count is one hundred and seventy million users of TikTok, so I think there's a great interest in what happens here, And again, the Congress is trying to thread the needle on balancing our security concerns and our concerns about data privacy with concerns of free speed.
Have you received calls from people within your within Tennessee wanting to see that TikTok remains, not wanting to see it go.
We've received calls on both sides.
Ah, And so it's hard to say where the American public lies on this. I haven't seen polling on it, but again, I think the concerns are both very real. Again, the national security concern that our data would be exposed to surveill us by the Chinese Communist Party, even weaponization by the Chinese Communist Party. That's something Americans clearly don't want,
That's what I'm hearing. But also a concern that we not put too much power in the hands of those large media companies that have shown their desire and their willingness to censor particularly conservative voices here in America. So threading Nick Needil is where this legislation needs to go.
The Republican take from Senator Bill Haggerty of Tennessee giving his thoughts on a TikTok bill as it begins potentially to slowly move through the Senate, And well, let's just look at some of the overall concerns the opponents, the tech critics, the issue around Congress about thinking that it more broadly, should not just be a divestor ban legislation on TikTok, Perhaps borader privacy could tell well, privacy oversight coming to every single social media platform Alex brinkers here,
and I think that was kind of what Bill Haggerty was trying to get at here. The Senator Alex was that, well, as many Republicans might try to articulate, they've been concerns with us a social media platforms in their voice within should there just be a broader privacy oversight here, a broader law rather than just targeting one individual company.
That's what's been so interesting about this, Caroline, what Senator Hagerty kind of laid out to you that they're concerned about data privacy as the impetus for this bill. Some folks are looking at that saying we actually need to go bigger. This bill itself is not about data privacy in the language. It's about ownership and ownership by foreign
adversaries like China. We talked to experts for a story coming out in this latest edition of BusinessWeek magazine, and they are saying, look, why don't we think bigger about this and not just focus on one company or one country, but actually set federal data privacy regulations in the US, which the US doesn't have. I trieded to folks at EPIC, like Kellie Schroeder, who's their general counsel.
Epics an organization who has been.
Lobbying for a broader privacy regulation for a while, and she had a really great comparison. She basically said, look, if the Internet is a calender, then plugging plugging one hole is the equivalent of this TikTok bill. It's one small hole in the data ecosystem and American's data is slipping out elsewhere. So why don't we address this on a broader scale.
Alex, I think it's important to go back to what you and I reported last week and basically point out TikTok is not promising to divest at all.
The opposite. They're kind of digging in and saying.
We've put forward a user data solution that we're going to stick with. And listening to Caroline's interview just then there seems to be the political group that say this is just about TikTok, ownership of TikTok, And then there's the group that says this is much bigger. It's about censorship via social media platforms and a blanket control by government. Which voice is loudest right now.
It's a mix of both.
And to take you a little bit behind the scenes with our reporting over the last forty eight hours, we know that the Department of Justice is briefing senators this week encouraging them to vote for this bill, and also TikTok is passing out a one pager that I was able to review batting down some of those concerns on data privacy. In particular, the DOJ is pointing out that TikTok collects names, addresses, phone numbers, and TikTok.
Is saying, look, that's the same kind of.
Information that any other social media company, particularly the ones that might be lobbying them, like Meta and X and the like those other rivals, collect the same amount of data. And when I rewind and think about the social media industry, it is not lacking for infractions when it comes to user data getting out. What has been lacking though, is actual life. We've seen the CEOs of these companies come
through for hearing after hearing. Think about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, how many times he's arrived on the Hill to talk about this stuff. But we have yet to see any kind of data privacy regulation. And that's why folks like Democrat Mark pocon or Elizabeth Warren have in the past few days said, Look, we like some of the ideas
behind this bill. We think we need to be protecting American user's data, but let's set up an actual framework that does that holistically and doesn't just target one company in a bill that the language of it could actually be deemed illegal, as TikTok will probably take this to a legal fight if this passes.
I always think it's worth saying out loud it is a divest or ban bill, not a big picture, sweeping piece of social media regulation. Bluebags Alex Brinka terrific reporting social platform Reddit gearing up for its IPO this week, or what we can expect from the listening. Let's bring in Bloomberg Managing editor Linn Down and lynn Is this week.
We've been wasting years. What's on your desk this week and what are you looking for?
I mean, I'll give you an idea of what we are expecting here on the news side, A lot of details dropped earlier this week. We know that Reddit and some of its existing stakeholders are planning on selling a total of twenty two million shares. Of that total, fifteen million shares are expected to be sold by the company itself, and they see them going for as much as thirty
four dollars each. At the top range of that that it could end up with the market value of five point four billion dollars, making it what I think would be the biggest IPO so far this year. But you never know what's going to happen with these things. And we're told the IPO will price tomorrow and start trading the day after, So that'll be the big moment of truth.
Yeah, I mean moment of truth.
Also in the final innings in comes Nokia with some legal patent issues.
Yeah, I mean that surprised us all a little bit to see that come. Then again, I was I was talking to a colleague about it earlier this morning, and uh, and I thought, gosh, all these headlines are hitting so
close to the IPO. But at the same time we were thinking, oh, yeah, but this is also the moment when companies tend to, you know, drag all the skeletons out of the closet and disclose everything upfront and say, you know, you need to know what you're what you're in store for if you decide to invest in our company. I mean, in my mind, that pat an infringement complaint from Nokia is something to watch. It's definitely worth watching. I don't think the company would have disclosed it if
it wasn't material. And that being said, I think.
Also, Linda, and sorry to cut you off, welcome back to Bloomberg Technology.
Ed Ludlow here in San Francisco, have your.
Backhead, I'm Caroline hyding your Let's have a quick check on these markets, shall we, Because look, we've actually been selling off ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting and announcement tomorrow. But as that one hundred currently off by six ten percent, so big tech kind of pressure is we basically take some profits. This is a crowded trade according to Bank of America, when the most crowded trade.
Is the Magnificent seven.
And of course after in videos all important tech event is upon us, the woodstock of developers' conferences. Maybe there's just a little bit of chips off the table. The dollar still strengthening its particularly the Japanese yen. Is they end their policy of negative interest rates rather more than a percentage point, and of course we still anticipate where the feder Reserve will go in terms of their own rate hikes or cuts.
Later in the year.
Bitcoin currently off by almost seven percent, let's call it. Certainly seeing some concerns about the infros into the ETFs at the moment. Now, I want to shine a light on what's happening over at Tencent because they got their numbers coming out Wednesday, still off by one point four percent. Interesting US China tension still bubbling over with TikTok, but Tencent actually could show us some margin improvement, even if
we don't see revenue improvement. Keep an eye on that key name traded here in the US, of course, it's usdr's there at the moment, Cadence Design at one point percent. Want to shine a light on some of the companies that perhaps as in Video doesn't rally, we do see some other companies being singled out as using Video's Blackwell
going Forward and Sis Cadence Design Synopsis among them. So AMD though on the downside some percent as look that competition it's getting so tough as in video just shows its dominance within the world of training and inference.
But Ed, I want to get.
Your take on the dominance and what really Blackwell, the the whole scope of offerings that was being articulated by Chensen Wan.
What did you make of it?
Well, it's just a numbers game. That it's a different technology, right, So when we talk about the GB two hundred, it is actually two GPUs combined with one CPU, two Blackwell GPUs, one Great Shoppers CPU. But those numbers on the screen tell the story that they've just upped the performance levels and in aggregate, as we scale more data center infrastructure, the bottom points really important that it's just much more
energy efficient. When you put the Blackwell into a cluster, you get twenty five times power efficiency, which you know in the context of the environment and climate's important as well.
And when we think about the Hopper offering, and indeed the AGE one hundred is what thirty forty thousand per one And when you're thinking of the amount that each hyperscale is having to invest in the numbers rack up. We haven't got any sort of price point for Blackwell, But ultimately, when you're thinking of the power offset you can get, it just shows the amount that power is going to be costing for these data centers.
Yeah, because it's just it's easy for Gensen one to hold up two GPUs or tenacles in his hands. The reality is that Blackwell will ship as a rack or server design and go into banks of racks in a data center. The scale is just enormous and the power consumption relates to that. We're talking about hundreds of square miles of space with many hundreds, if not thousand, of these black wid gps going into what in vehicles a supercomputer is basically a server farm.
It's all about the terminology.
And I have to say I loved reading your Tech Daily newsletter yesterday because you really made it so straightforward for us AID. Meanwhile, let's stick with how straightforward ai OR isn't right now, particularly for the IT leaders, and we really got to also think about more broadly where it's being applied.
In cross industry groups.
It's front and center in fact, in terms of the conversation that was being had this morning on Bluemke surveillance.
They were live from Bank of America Training floor.
Take a listen the way we're looking at how AI changes virtually everything we do.
We never would have been able to do these indicators five ten years ago. We didn't have the capability of aggregating all this data together.
Now that you have access that only data scientists and quantities to have, you actually can use intelligence straight from your smartphone, leveraging all of those ways.
We're looking at sixty nine million in accounts. That's a lot of data that's not sending somebody a survey in the mail and getting them to respond, real time data on sixty nine million accounts, and I think this is a wonderful thing about AI.
That's what you're seeing right now. You're seeing the chips, the servers, Those are being bought and those are being deployed.
I think euphoria is really driven by themes at this point.
So it's AI.
Everybody owns the AI plays.
Oh, everyone's talking about it, and a few people are worrying about how much they call it up their sophistication and understanding of it, particularly it leaders. Right now, let's dig into how AI is changing every industry, every business.
With Page Costello, head of AI at asana. It's an enterprise work management platform, and you just put out a state of IT report, really which I'm sure you're going to a few optimistic but also slightly fretful IT leaders across every industry group thinking how am I suddenly THEAI leader.
An expert and how do I deploy this?
Yes, absolutely, seventy seven percent of CIOs and IT leaders believe that they are personally responsible for the intelligent transformation and that that is a high bar and it's creating a lot of stress and pressure for IT leaders.
Page on stage, Jensen Juang last night talked about this new age of computing and when we talk about computer, you know, I grew up with a Dell desktop with a keyboard.
I think we're talking about something completely different.
Do you think that your customers and everyone that you work with kind of watches that in video keynote and thinks, my goodness, I need to start hiring people that know what he's talking about so that we know what we're talking about.
Yes, I do think with this big change in work, people are going to be hiring for new roles and the existing teammates are trying to figure out how do I use AI to be a more effective player. And so one of the most wonderful things that we were observing is the excitement anticipation for what AI can do, but also some level of fear because there's real curiosity of can we add one more thing here? Can we actually ask and make demands of our teams to use
yet another app? And so that's one of the contentious zones right now is AI isn't always built in and ready to use.
Are the people available that they are needed?
Yeah?
What I think is most amazing is that it's not necessarily.
Actually about the people.
What's most important is the technology supports the people in what they're trying to achieve. So I work at Saana as an enterprise work management platform that serves eighty percent of the Fortune one hundred, helping them drive clarity and accountability a scale. And what's quite compelling is actually putting AI in the hands of the team and in the hands of executives to answer really normal questions like what's
the progress of our strategic initiatives? How do I break this work down and reason about it so we can actually get it done, And how do we connect workflows across us our work data to make decisions about what to do next and how to stay agile in this competitive environment.
Are some of the IT executives and others in leadership you're talking to, they're having to be too agile right now.
Yeah, Actually, one in four IT leaders says they moved a little too fast on AI and they're fretful about making technology selections.
Okay, so let's use best in practice. I'm an IT leader at healthcare company. How do I ensure that I've got everyone underneath me singing from the same hymn sheet wanting to do the same thing with the AI tools that I'm thinking of deploying. How are you seeing that being enacted at the moment?
Yeah.
I think the biggest thing is data connectivity and the access to the data, because AI is only as good as the data you feed it. Right now, many AI solutions are effectively islands that require entrepreneurial employees to figure out how to use them and how to apply and create value or their team and for their company. There's no top level connectivity around strategy and what's important to
the organization, and so that's where the gap is. You can't sing from the same song sheet if you don't know what the plan is and how to execute it. And AI needs that knowledge too. AI needs to know how do you want to get work done? And that's where quite a bit of the gap is. So what I would say is for CIOs and strategical leaders, and in the example you gave, it's first about data and
connectivity and then it's about safe and secure rollout. That's mindful and cognizant of your goals as an organization.
Asanahead of AI, Page Castilla, Great to have you on the program.
Thank you.
Another story that we're watching, chip Make is a racing to feed the growing global AI boom, and Samsung is laying down the gauntlet with a new research lab dedicated to designing an entirely new type of semiconductor which is needed for artificial general intelligence intelligence or AGI. It's a
long standing aspiration in AI development. The company's trying to catch up with s k Heine after the smaller competitor got a head start in a new type of advanced memory semiconductor tailored for the use with invidious chips, carrot.
In videos, chips everywhere in our conversation today. Meanwhile, well, let's go from AI to cyber and let's face it, cybers being focused on in AI as well. We sit down and the see of fast growing cybersecurity startup Whiz to discuss everything.
M and A to the cloud, I suff wrapperports with us.
This is Blue meg Technology.
Time for VC Spotlight.
We've got a shiner light on the fast growing cybersecurity startup. Whiz has already raised more than nine hundred million dollars from investors and is now said to be making well small acquisitions in the space potentially. We of course known that it's been buying gem Security for three and fifty million dollars. Joining us now to discuss the state of cybersecurity, the company's rapid growth. We CEO asav Rappaport and it's
been what feels like a wellwind to everyone else. For you, a grind of someone who is a serial entrepreneur who has seen companies bought got inside Microsoft, come outside of Microsoft, building a Microsoft competitor.
How do you.
Show what has made with so successful since you launched in COVID.
So but basically again, we have a journey ahead of us to be truly successful looking towards an IPO billion dollar in revenues.
So it's just the beginning for US.
I think said that you talked about the tailwind, and I think that the cyber market is definitely exploding. When we're looking at the global markets, we're saying that, you know, this is like the ultimate electioneer. Fifty percent of the
population of the of the world is going to election. Definitely, here in the US, the gaol to political crisis that we're saying are rising, AI introduces a new attack surface, but both like cyber criminals are averaging that all of that pushes for more and more, you know, need for cybersecurity tools. Definitely, we look at twenty twenty three. Unfortunately, twenty twenty three we had like more than thirty two
hundred reported data breaches in the world. This is the peak that we had, and twenty twenty four and fourteen doesn't look better. So definitely there is a huge demand. And when you're addressing this demand, a huge market demand and a huge market ten and you build a simple solution for a complex problem that gives you some of the tail that we had.
And that's how well evidence inspire some of the numbers that were made public last year, or the three hundred and fifty million run rate that of course helps you guide towards an IPO and evaluation, but you're also looking at MNA to beef.
P ahead of initial public offering.
What sort of companies do you need to add at this moment rather than organic growth.
Yeah, definitely organic growth is our core focused and definitely kind of innovation we're doing organically.
Having said that, and it's not unrelated to Whiz.
If you're looking at the last six months, two billion dollars of acquisitions in the cybersecurity space, lots of them by the way, in in Israel by four leaders, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, zis Killer, and Wiz. So definitely we're seeing that non organic opportunities are there when we're looking at the market. Definitely, Threat detection CDR super important for us to grow. When we're looking at AI, definitely another
focused area for us. But also if you shift left, like looking more in the developers and code security, this is a focus for us. So definitely we believe that twenty twenty four for US is going to be the ear.
Of acquisitions self. Good morning from San Francisco. The Financial Times reported on March eighth that you were raising more money at evaluation above ten billion dollars.
I remember a year ago there are.
Lots of reports you were raising money at ten billion dollar valuation, and then again in May in the summer, just clarify for our audience, are you raising money and at what valuation?
Look to ask a CEO of a startup, are you raising money? It's probably always do it every day? No, no, so not every day, And definitely our focus is on building technology and attracting the best, So that's kind of
our focus. Having said that, I would say that there is a lot of interest like our new publication of Dali the COO and president of Ziscaler joining with the publication of three hundred and fifty million dollars in revenues, the publication of forty percent of the Fortune one hundred are using Wiz today, and the exploding cybersecurity attracts a.
Lot of attention to Wiz. We enjoy it.
But again, when we have something to publish, we'll definitely share it here in Bluber.
So let's go to where the value lays. What is it from a technology perspective that's unique to whis relative to your competitors.
I think that if you look at what Whiz is doing Basically, what we're doing is helping organization to protect everything they run and build in their cloud. And the cloud environment is one of the most complex environments in the world. You know, new technologies are thriving there. It's not only centralized by IT or security, it's led by develop person devlops.
So definitely this supposes.
Like new challenges to organizations and with that kind of we need a new approach. I think that we're seeing like legacy companies that have like super good like technology in network security or in endpoint security, but definitely you need like the cloud security company, and I think organization now understand that that you cannot solve with legacy solution new problems and definitely invest in kind of the new initiative in cloud security.
In that vein.
Then what is the biggest tail wind to WIZ but also the industry right what is the headwind to companies that need to spend on security right now?
Cybersecurity?
I definitely think that the tailwind, and definitely in cloud security is probably AI. And we're talking a lot about that, so AI introduce us not only kind of I think like two new challenges in a way. One is is definitely it's a new attack surface. If you're looking at like the prompt, the AI pipeline, the data that you're using in EI, the models that you're using, all of that is net new attack surface for organizations. So that's one focused area. But it's not only that. It's also
a I that is being leveraged by cyber criminals. Criminals actually, to be honest, they're doing a better job probably leveraging gen AI today in their attacks and fueling their attacks then as is the defenders using it for our RBX. So definitely this is a great opportunity for us to use this technology and to leverage into the cyber defenders.
What's the hardest part of your job right now?
Oh, the hardest is always, since the beginning, is attracting the best talent, like the company and you can put the technology ap even customer. It's all about eventually, it's always get to the talent. You know, we're talking we you know, we raise nine hundred million dollars, we're expanding, We're about to recruit four hundred people in the US in the in twenty twenty four. To find amazing four hundred people.
That's truly tough job.
And then You're based here now in New York, so they could be New York people for four hundred or everywhere.
So we're a global company, definitely focused on the on the US market. New York is kind of our headquarters, so definitely lots of focus here. But we have an Austin office when if we have a DC office. We have a huge presence in California. So definitely in the US,
but also globally. I think that you know, unlike other markets cloud for example, in cloud security, you know, it's not like hey, INMEA or APAK are following the US in some fronts, there are actually more advanced than us here in the US.
Wow, I'm sure that's enough to keep you up at night. We thank you so much with CEO Asaf Rappaport, and hopefully we'll have him back when you can articulate just what the valuation is soon enough and how much they're always seemingly raising.
We thank you so much.
Google has just announced a slew of initiatives to deploy its artificial intelligence models in healthcare in particular, and that includes a tool that will help fitbit users glean insights from them wearable devices and a partnership to improve screenings cancer and disease over in India be brought up with Google's chief Health Officer, doctor Karen DeSalvo, just moments ago.
Take a listen.
Such an exciting time in healthcare because AI has reached this inflection point where it is now capable of being an adjunct and assistant to augmenting the work that doctors and nurses and other people in healthcare already need to do and extending the reach of clinical practice to improve access to care. Sometimes I'm very jealous of doctors that are just starting out in the field because they have this new tool in their toolbox that they're going to
get to use across their career. And the way that when penicillin was discovered, it was a new tool in the toolbox. So we're already seeing that AI is helpful in improving speed to diagnosis. For example, where we're doing some work with Apollo Hospitals in India to extend the ability of that health system to diagnose cancers earlier, like long and breast cancer, so they can reach people who
wouldn't have that kind of access to care. So thinking about how it's a wonderful augment to the work that needs to happen in clinical practice and makes that practice more efficient, but also gives people more access to It's a really exciting opportunity.
Can you articulate some of the ways in which Google in particular is able to use its own innovations, its own products that it's already brought into the field to be able to help with health.
We talked a lot about these at the Checkup, which is an annual event where we kind of mark the progress of how things are going and how we're working with partners, but also how we're directly helping consumers. I'll give you an example of how we're building it directly into some of our products to work with consumers. So on fitbit, where people already get advice about steps or sleep or nutrition, we're creating what's called a personal large
language model. So we're creating a new AI that's personalized to you so that it know with your consent, knows your sleep and your steps, sort of other characteristics about your day and your exercise, and can give you personal coaching that gives you those nudges that are going to matter most to you because it's reflective of what your
experience has I'm personally very excited about this. Also, I'm a person who's a runner, and it's really it'd be so exciting to have that personal AI coach built into our watch devices like Fitbit over time and pretty soon we're going to allow people to start to opt in to help us build and a mature that personal LLM.
Doctor Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer at Google and what have you.
Got time for? Talking tech? And in the news.
First Stop shot Back and online shopping rewards app backed by Temasek, is cutting about a quarter of its workforce is it retreats from the buy now pay Lata space. The CEO says the company's eliminating twenty four percent of staff to become more focused and self sustainable. Plus go To plans to buy back as much as two hundred million dollars of stock after recording its first ever profit on an adjusted basis. To Stop buy Back is the first ever for go To, which hopes to soak investor
confidence even as competition intensifies. And George Lucas, the legendary Hollywood filmmakers, said he would support Disney CEO Bob Iger in his POxy battle with activists investors. Lucas became a significant shareholder years ago when he sold his production company to Disney, and in a statement this morning, he says he has quote full faith and confidence in the power of Disney and Bob's track record driving long term value.
Caro, the force is with Bob Iger.
And I'm very pleased to say that we're in full force with you back as well.
Ed.
That does it for this edition of bluemog Technology.
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