Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news from Marhart where Innovation, money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Love Love.
I'm Karine Hyde a Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York and I met Ludlow in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up in video continues its meteoric rise. It touches three trillion dollars in market cap for coverage ahead.
Plus SpaceX's Starship reaches new milestones in its fourth major test flight.
We bring you the details.
And we'll discuss the latest in the world of crypto. Is bitcoin still hovers near record High's first, let's check in on the broader markets. Maybe just a little of profit taking today. Maybe we see the ECB over in Europe actually cut rates but signal that maybe inflation pressures are here to stay. We've got jobless claims actually showing that they're higher than anticipated, but all eyes on non farm payrolls tomorrow. So at the moment we're just cautious.
Ahead of those numbers. We're trading flat on the Nasdaq. Interestingly, in Vidia just offer that three trillion dollar market count just at this very moment, but it did eclipse it yesterday. Ed we'll go into that in a moment. Tenure yield currently just pushing up two basis points. Bonds selling off globally after the ECB does cut but still warns us that they've got to have a restrictive policy for longer to try and catail inflation. That means euro is actually
just that little bit higher versus the US dollar. At the moment, we're up a tenth of a percent, as maybe we don't anticipate rate cuts coming for the ECB until at least pushing out now to maybe September. Move on, have a look at what's happening in the world of crypto. We're going to focus in on bitcoin a little bit later in the show. We've had a little bit of volatility, but we're up three tens percent, seventy one thousand, still
at that very high level, near record highs. Well, we'll get to one hundred thousand by the end of the year. That's what one key investor has been saying. And what are you watching.
Let's talk about in video gen sanity, the phrase coined for the enthusiasm. Let's say of markets about Nvidia's CEO. Look, this is a clear pullback, the stocks down a percentage point. As you said, we touched three trillion dollars in market cap.
We are going to get into it.
We've be most just menting about valuations, comparisons against other peers on the S and P five hundred waitings are really important.
But Apple's flat.
I put that up as a precursor to my next chart with Meta the best.
Performer on then as that one hundred from a points.
Perspective, because this is all we care about right now. Let's bring up the terminal chart and look at Nvidia's market cap relative to Apple. It is so close right now, Apple just to touch above three trillion, in Vidio just to touch below three trillion.
It was briefed, it was short lived.
But the point is is that in Vidia's only need a third company to reach three trillion dollars of market cap and it's it's the first ever semiconductor name or chip maker to do. So let's get into it, Carol, Let's talk about on which metric we decide if this is fair, if it's a good idea, or if it's not.
And longer term, whether you keep on buying into this stock just mentens with us. Of course, a blue Megan. We just have that perfect setup for men telling us once again Apple is back just pipping the post as number two, but Emidia has just hit that landmark.
It's all psychological, isn't it.
It really is, and in many ways, so too is a stock split to psychological.
What's driving us here.
Well, not surprisingly because it is the stock split driving this moving higher ahead of that because Monday is when the official stock split goes into effect. But something that's important, to be an official shareholder before the ten for one stock split, you actually have to be a shareholder today by the close of trading in order for that to work. So it's interesting dynamic that we saw this huge run up and now the stock's selling off a little bit.
Not surprisingly we just did. To your point, Caroline, see that three trillion mark yesterday as well. If you look at the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, obviously it houses other stocks like AMD, Intel Micround Technology also down about one percent today. But again to Ed's point, when you're thinking about valuations versus the stock move that we've seen here, and also talking about Apple, Caroline, if you think about that April nineteenth low that we saw in Apple stock that stucks
close to about twenty percent higher in that span. It's only about two percent off of that December high record.
But when you do look at Nvidia.
In that span, that stocks up from that April nineteenth low for Apple though in comparison, and Videos up more than sixty percent. So which one was the better stock to buy? But again, Apple does have that fundamentals behind it when you think about the buybacks for a company like this.
Ed it's like one of those things.
So it's what it's three minutes past eight in San Francisco, three minutes past eleven in New York.
Is in Nvidia bigger than Apple?
Okay, And that's what we're going to do every day from this point because we're so excited about it. But the actual reason that I showed this sort of in the moment session trading is an important one, which is that start of the year in Vidia had I think about a three percent waiting on the S and P five hundred. It's doubled to about six or more than six percent waiting. And we talked earnings about how in
video's earning it's like a macro level event. My point, Jess is like it impacts a lot of people right now, what happens within Vidia.
It does, especially when you were talking about this stock now being the second largest waiting in the S and P five hundred, and something that's interesting about this even though we did see it eclipse Apple's market cap yesterday, earlier in this week, if you use the MEMB function for the S and P five hundred in the terminal, you would have seen and Videos waiting higher than Apples, but still its market cap wasn't crossing the threshold over Apple.
And the reason is because actually it has to do with float adjusted type shares. So Apples float adjusted, it's actually ninety four percent, whereas the other six percent, for instance, is held by institutional big investors like say Warren Buffett, whereas in VideA or even Microsoft, those are one hundred
percent not adjusted. So there's a little bit of a divergence there sometimes when you're looking in the terminal, and if you saw a divergence at the beginning of this week versus what the waiting was, and we're kind of scratching your head wondering why in Video's market cap wasn't bigger than that. But that's something else that imic when you're thinking about sort of the size and scope for a lot of these companies and why you're seeing discrepancies. There's sometimes in the data.
And we await that ten for one stock split, which will be an interesting moment. Blue most test meant and thank you very much. Let's go up into space SpaceX's massive starship rocket blasted off on its fourth major test flight as the company makes or works to make the vehicle operational, reusable, and ready for regular space trips. I want to bring in Bloomberg intelligence analyst and fellow space
nerd Matt Bloxham for this. I mean, loads of our audience are asking me all morning because we carried the launch live hold on the booster got dumped in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship spacecraft got dumped a controlled splash in the Indian Ocean. But really, I think the story here, Matt, is the data that's gathered from the process, and that's what was important for SpaceX.
Yeah, that's right. And actually one of those words you said, they're controlled, is really important too, that you know these were controlled re entries and kind of splash landings for both parts of the asset, and I think that's really important. I think what we've seen in the previous launches is very big fire explosions, you know, which is meant they've not quite delivered what they hope to in those tests. And also it's added delays to getting approval from the
FAA to do the next test launch. And you know that they've got this ambition to launch people on a man mission to the Moon sometime ho or after September twenty twenty six, so they want to kind of get anywhere close to that. They need to be doing these tests very frequently and getting success. So I think the fact that it was not perfect but close to perfect in terms of the objectives, I think will help them to kind of speed up those tests and move towards that objective.
I mean, clear focus of congratulations coming from or the guy who of course ultimately leads this business long term, whether it's on a day to day basis ed or must saying so many tiles and damaged flat starship made it to the way to a soft landing in the ocean. This incremental need for improvement. How costly is that map?
Very costly? You know?
This is that this program is kind of running into kind of billions of billions of dollars, but they've got multi billion dollar contracts with NASA, and also NASA is a really important client for THEIRS in terms of taking
US astronauts back to the Moon. But also this program is really important for the Starlink business, which is their low Earth orbit satellite business, which has a huge number of customers now maybe approaching three million, and they want to use the Starship Rocket to send more and more of those satellites up into low Earth orbit over the midterms. So you know, it's important both the NASA and it's also important for the SpaceX business as a whole, particularly Starlink.
I love bringing the contextualization there. Matt Bloxam, We thank you, Bloomberg intelligence analyst and fellow space geek. Meanwhile, our attention to China for a moment. Ali Baba, the president Corosine, speaking exclusively with bluebog Tiv's animal drulers, about China's economy, about tariff impacts on smooths and medium sized enterprises on its platforms, but also about how the company is incorporating as well.
AI take a listen.
This year we're tagting on two parts. The first part is about the AI, so you know AI GC the generous AI actually is one of the biggest kind of breakthrough for the technology. And using AI in global trade actually is one of the perfect user scenarios. So so many use cases that we can help improve efficiency for
the sellers. We can help their efficiency how to post product to the marketing, to communications buyers and as well as to manage their business to see datas and we are using the technology to help the seller as the buyers as well. So previously the buyers using Alba dot com as a sourcing engine, all the help of AI, this is kind of a creativity engine for the buyers.
We can help them to generate a product which can fit their imagination and we can use the agent to help them to source, to connect and treat it as the red partners. All this kind of technology can load a buyer for the seer and the buyers.
That was Ali Baba president quote Jim watching shares also at Mayswe and another Chinese name is we had to break ear needs to be expectations topline grow twenty five percent, but the company also expanding to new markets the Middle East. Looking at Europe and other parts of Asia. Its first fora outside of its domestic market in China. Interesting, be right back, this is Bloomberg technology.
If we take out the seventy three thousand in the next week or so, we're gonna have the year one hundred thousands. Somewhere around there were even higher markets work. They create ranges. When the ranges, the top of the range breaks, you know, you have a nice extension. And so you know at the bottom of that range was started around forty, so forty to seventy.
This seventy goes to one hundred old calls coming from Galaxy Digital CEO Mike novograts his outlook for bitcoin as it just hovers still near that record, joining us for now.
Of what fundamentally or not fundamentally is.
Pushing at higher Edify editor in chief Lara Kriga, and it's great to have some time with you, Lara. And there has been this focus that at the moment, the political sudden tailwinds in the US aren't being baked in to crypto's price points right now.
Do you agree that's.
A good question.
I do think that politics has played at least some role here, right So this is one of the few issues crypto investing and cryptocurrency on which we finally have bipartisan congressional support, which as you know, is very much
not easy to find these days. So you know, I do think politics plays a role here, but not the entire role, right, Like there's there's also enthusiasm around the finally getting the access to spot bitcoin ETFs and advisors and institutions graving to that, gravitating to that in that vehicle, and also there's interest and excitement around the spot ethereum etf potential of that coming to market and when is that going to come? And that's the next new hot topic, right.
You know, Laura, it's a presidential election year, right, And all of your industry participant colleagues that come on this program say, you know, we love engaging with Congress, in particular in Europe with regulators. But it's interesting that crypto has become a point of policy. You know, there's the reporting that former President Trump's very focused on crypto as a platform.
What impact do you think that will have?
I think it's helping to drive the conversation forward, for sure. You know, we're whereas eighteen months ago, twenty four months ago, politicians could sort of afford to let it lie, and maybe it felt like it was a little too toxic. The Overton window has shifted a little bit. Now there's no ignoring the reality that we need consistency, we need clarity on these markets, and you know it's time to
start having those conversations. So I think that Trump coming out very much in favor of bitcoin has sort of helped force the conversation to the forefront. Regardless of where you stand on the political issue.
Of it, you might be getting some clarity, you're not getting consistency. It seems to be slow, slow, slow, all at once when it comes to SEC approvals. And I'm interested therefore whether we get upended with other types of spot ets, So whether really we do the ether one and stop.
That's a great question, is the one very much top of my mind. So you know, the SEC a few weeks go approved this special filing from stock exchanges that allows them to kind of change their rules and list spot etherrough ETFs. But that's not the same thing as approving individual funds, although it is a necessary first step. So now the SEC has the task ahead of it of actually assessing and approving the individual ETF filings, so you know that's going to take some time. The that's
actually SEC head Gary Gensler's where it's not mine. So you're going to see the issuers begin to update their filings, and that process does take some time and is already beginning to happen. So you know, the the timeline might be compressed from weeks instead of you know, usually months.
Edify editsor in chief Lawer Kriger, thank you.
This is still a bit of a novelty. Most people driving next to us have never seen one of these.
This is a robotaxi from Zoos, an autonomous ride hailing company owned by Amazon. It has no steering wheel, no pedals, and four inward facing seats. It's now running on a five mile loop in Las Vegas, across three lane roads, unprotected turns, and in mixed traffic at speeds of up to forty five miles per hour.
We really wanted to feel like you're being driven by a very safe, expert human driver.
Zooks rover taxi runs on software trained on millions of miles gathered by test vehicles. It's also packed with sensors, cameras, led our radar, and temperature probes which generate a full picture of the world around it in real time. It's bidirectional with a battery electric drive unit at each end. On our left hand side, there was cones and warnings and we cut across two lanes of traffic.
And the map probably didn't have those cones in it. But we have to be able to detect anything that's changed in real time and then adjust our plans accordingly.
Zoos wants to prove its tech works on the outskirts of Vegas before launching in the city as its first commercial market. There were US agencies now looking at Zookes's self driving tech after two incidents with test vehicles. One of Zookes's main competitors is Alphabet's Weimo, which uses retrofitted cars for its autonomous ride hailing. While GM's Cruise has recently scaled backplans and testing of its own purpose built origin robotaxi, zooks has been deliberately cautious about when a
commercial service will launch. Expansion to San Francisco for the true robotaxi is in the works, but right now Zookes can claim to be the only operator of a purpose built robotaxi allowed to give rights on public roads in America. So it really is a first carr at least in America, a fully autonomous but purpose built robotaxi, right, no steering wheel, no pedals on real public roads. That wasn't a controlled test. It was a real one in the real world with
real traffic. And the news is that that will be available to the public maybe by the end of this year December, or at least the start of next year, even if it's in a limited number of miles of road.
Feels like a lot of firsts. But people other companies hot in their hills.
Yeah, I mean, what's interesting about it is the Tesla components this right, we know that robotaxi is coming in August in some shape or form, and maybe that's Elon acknowledging.
That Zooke's got it right.
Cruisers pulled back its plan for basically the same thing, and Weymo's not really doing it. What's extraordinary is like the real world. So in that example, it was traffic, cones, closed lanes, but there are some other things that it can handle as well.
Listen to this.
I've really stayed away from the race. And you know Carlin, who has bold position and who doesn't. There's so much nuance in this industry. What I will tell you is that Zeus has even more conviction in the path that it's chosen.
And it is believed that.
It chose it and had the courage to do it and to stay on course.
So just real quick.
What's interesting is like Icerevin's really impressive CEO, spend a lot of time at Intel before zokes.
She just won't exaggerate.
She doesn't do the musk thing of like this is happening at this timeline, We're going to make loads of money and that could be frustrating. But it's kind of like hair in the tortoise scenario where Zookes was the tortoise and it's come from.
Behind shock horror.
Soone actually telling it as it is rather than a little bit of an ambitious sprinkle. But what is ambitious is the fact that it's gone on to the real world, real life. What sort of things did you come up against when in real traffic?
Yeah, I think it's that human drivers are kind of erratic and sometimes you don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, and me as well, And sometimes something might drop out of the sky or a food truck gets in your way.
Listen to this.
There's a truck in front of us and it's happened to be a food truck and tackle plates started flying out of it. It basically looked at it. I saw them slowed down and say, hey, I'm seeing stuff coming. And then it had to make a decision as to this is debris. Is it strikaable debris or not strikable debris and so but it looked on the next lane and said that, oh, I have space there and just went on around it then moved on.
So literally, the zooks was driving food truck in front. The doors come out the back of the food truck and tacos and plates fly out, and the Zookes didn't panic.
It just plowed from some tacos.
Yeah, exactly exactly. Anyway, that was the experience. Check it out dot com. Another big story today, the Foundering podcast is back. In this astallment Our Bloomberg reporters take a look at open Ayes. Sam Outman from founding a startup at nineteen to running y combinat at age twenty nine. The CEO behind chat GPT is the most Silicon Valley man alive. I want to bring in Bloomberg's Ellen Hewitt give us just the broad introduction to this version of Foundering and what we learn about.
Sam totally So Foundering is this is in our fifth season. It's a narrative podcast in which we tell one story every season. It's a story of a high stakes drama in Silicon Valley, and this season we decided to go deep on Open AI and it's in particular Sam Altman, their leader, and I think you know what listeners can expect over the five episodes is really like an analytical arc of where did Sam come from? How did he
rise to power? What are some of the strategies that he's used over the course of his career to accumulate the kind of power that he has now, and what I consider the key question of the series, should we trust him? Should we trust this person, especially after the events of last November, which, as we all remember, he was fired from his seat as the CEO and then within five days was back.
Yeah, And well it's notable is I think Sam actually told EMONI Chang back at the Tech summit.
A year and over a year ago, don't trust me? Right?
There is the ability to ouse me and we saw that happen in real time, and then who are some of the people that he's worked to alongside. It's interesting that in particular, Pool Graham took to x recently posting this is the truth about how he left Y culminated for example, getting any clarity.
Well why Sam's relationship with Paul Graham is a perfect example of how Sam has accumulated power over the course
of his career. He even as at a very young age, you know, really won over Paul Graham, and when he joined Y Combinator at nineteen, and Paul went on to elevate Sam, you know, writing all these very effusive blog posts about how great a leader he is, and then you know, in twenty fourteen, hands selecting him to be his successor at Y Combinator, and you know, Sam goes on to make these partnerships with you know, very powerful people such as Elon Musk when Elon you know, agreed
to fund open Ai and then later when Elon left and Sam needed more money with Satya Nadella so that you know, open Ai could continue to get money.
And so we do try to track.
Like where he has really.
Made these decisions and what to do with the power that he has. Now it is a heavy burden, I'm sure. And you go into family life as well. It's going to be extraordinary. Listen, I can't wait to get into the first episode. Blue Meg's Ellen hewittt we thank you. Check out the Foundering podcast now.
On the terminal and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology. I'm Caroline Hide in New York.
And I med love Low in San Francisco. Carriage. Just a really quick check in on the markets.
This is kind of the broad picture in the United States, and that's that one hundred is as flat as a pancake. US tenure yelds creeping just a little higher four point two eight percent, and as you we've noted and actually we're now hiring the session half percentage point on bitcoin, but we're hovering at that record level around seventy one seventy two thousand US dollars per token. The equity story
is basically in Vidia. You know, we were very excited, we talked about how it hit three trillion dollars of market cap. Actually during the course of this pro the pullback has accelerated down one point eight percent. But the big picture is now that in Video is such a big waiting on the S and P five hundred more than six percent, and there is so much gensanity or whatever you want to call it, fanfare around Jensen Huang.
There wasn't actually any real.
News catalyst about its products or its use case in the real world, driving the stock into pullback from that three trillion dollar market cap mark, of which it was the first chip name to achieve.
It the third of.
All time to hit three trillion dollars in market cap, and I suspect we shall continue to talk about it for many months to come.
We will, and we're going to talk about who holds it, because it's time for talking tech and first up arc investments. Kathy would As actually saying they're well positioned in artificial intelligence despite having trimmed their own video position. In a video interview over in Hong Kong, Wood say that her firm still owns in Video in specialized portfolios and in its flagship fund, even though she sold out most of
her position before that enormous rally last year. Plus US regulators whi they're investigating Microsoft over a possible Aqua Hied deal for an AI startup now that's according to The Wall Street Journal In March.
Remember, Microsoft degree to.
Pay six round fifty million dollars to license the artificial intelligence software from the startup Inflection, with Microsoft moving to actually hire most of their staff. The deal now faces regulatory scrutiny for resembling basically what looks like a larger company sometimes do of taking over startups without an acquisition. And US federal regulators have reached a deal that will allow them to proceed with anti trust investigations of Microsoft,
Open Ai, and Nvidia. Under the agreement, the US Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether in Video violated anti trust laws. Meanwhile, the FDC will lead in examining the conducts of open Ai.
Okay, this is a name that made a big impact earlier in the year. Cognition AI is trying to make software engine easier, in engineering easier, but with AI, the startup is building collaborative AI teammates for engineers so they can focus on more interesting tasks, and they dubbed their own AI agent, Devin As the first AI software engineer. Delighted to say that Commission AI CEO and co founder Scott Woods with us in San Francisco. You're somebody that
spits your time San Francisco and New York. We're going to talk a lot about New York. But when you guys kind of I guess came out of stealth. The response was absolutely ginormous. The demo video in the millions and millions of views, and your name was everywhere. I just want to know in the first instance, what that's been like in the last few weeks and months.
Absolutely, version, thank you so much for having me. I mean, it's it's been crazy. No, it's it's been wild and ever since the lage and I think you know, we've seen a real, real need in the market for this kind of technology.
There's the gaming use case, which I'm going to get right to. I'm a massive gamer. I don't know what you're playing right now, but I just started playing Resident Evil for remake on PlayStation, and I bring that up as an a literative example that making video games the creation timeline is very frustrating for fans. That seems to be something that you think you can help with from the engineering perspective.
Yeah, yeah, So we've seen our customers use Devon for all sorts of different use cases. You know full stack engineering, data analysis, code migration, and I think in particular, we've seen a lot of real use in some of these real tedious, repetitive tasks that are often taking human engineers a lot of time. And so you know, we we have companies who are doing thousand hour projects that are now moving five times faster with the help of Devon.
Scott.
It feels therefore that you're in the we're augmenting humans.
Camp rather than replacing them.
But how much anxiety have you seen Have you talked about that this is going to replace people?
Yeah?
No, absolutely, I think you know, we're all engineers ourselves by training at Cognition, and you know, even ourselves we use Devan all the time when we're building Devon, and there's really so much more what we see all the times.
There's just so much more to build, you know, And we think the heart of software engineering is is deep logical problem solving, and you know, we want to be able to help people do more and more of that and have to focus a little bit less on some of the implementation and the debugging and all of these other details.
I loved how Aired articulated basically the fast worm you created when you came out of Stealth and much What caught the attention was the money going in twenty one million dollars from the likes of Peter Teal's bench Fund, but also the fact that there were so few of you, just ten in your team.
How is that scaled? What are you looking to do in terms of continue to grow?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, no, I mean I think we're still very very early and there's a lot more to do. We've been looking to go our team, you know, with really great technical talent from both New York and the Bay Area, and yeah, continuing to scale up and get it out to as many customers as we can.
Okay, let's go there, New York and the Bay Area. What is it that New York offers you in terms of talent?
What does the Bay Area?
How are you thinking about being decentralized or having headquarters in certain places?
Yeah, I think both are Honestly.
A lot of our team, you know, we have a lot of our team from New York and we have a lot of our team from the area as well, And I think we've seen that having access to talent from both locations has been amazing for us.
Part of the exploration of Actually Vance's story about you guys that kind of lifted the lid on cognition. Was some mystery about how you did it, how you made.
So much progress.
I'm not a computer scientist or a software engineer, but was this a case of you guys building your own large language model or building on top of other people's large language models.
Just give me the basics of why your thing works. Yeah.
So Devon is an autonomous agent, and what that means is that Devon is able to use all the same tools that a human would use. And so, you know, if you think about going through a debugging process or building a website or things like that, you know you're going to be writing code. But at the same time you're also going to be running code. You're going to be running tests, maybe browsing the web, reading documentation, and all the same tools.
That when would use.
And we specifically built Devon to be able to work with those tools and iterate on top of that.
Could we talk about money, You know, in the piece it says you raised twenty one million dollars through Peter Teel and founder is fund. That doesn't seem like very much when you consider compute costs. Are you revenue generating so you can support yourselves or you're going to have to find some more cash?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and so you know, we we actually we closed another round just last month, just last month, which yeah, yeah, and to bring in a little bit less about it all, we raised one hundred and seventy five million from a few different funds, primarily from founders Fund Kosler and a lard girl.
You be comfortable disclosing the evaluation.
Ish, Yeah, the valuation is around two billion.
Two billion, sorry I interrupted, ke.
No, Yeah, yeah, so you know, obviously a lot of really really great names and it's we're we're super excited to have have such such great investors at the table. But yeah, as you said, you know, I think this money gives us the runway we need to really scale up and to size up and to do more.
So do more, tell us as and when you do.
Wow, great to have you being so candid about the money you're raising and evaluation currently at Congratulations on that cognition AI CEO and co founder Scott wou Just great to have him in the building. Meanwhile, coming up, we turned to New York Tech Week for our VC Spotlight Rebecca Caiden, Union Square Ventures with us talk about the intersection of Web three in AI.
This is Bluebog Technology.
New York Tech Week is still underway right here in the big Apple industry. Titans, startups gathering throughout the week for events, for panels, conversations, a few rooftop drinks.
All week long.
Bluebog Technology has been speaking with these founders and investors.
Also, the executives.
Are really discussing how the tech ecosystem in New York City is helping them, why they choose to call at home. Let's turn our attention to Rebecca Caden, now managing partner at Union Square Adventures.
Probably a little tired from some of.
The parties and various social events from back up, but you've been front running this week but putting out some thought leadership just where you're excited to be putting your money to work over at us fee.
It seems to be the intersection of Web three and AI. Can you talk us through it? Yeah?
I mean it's a super exciting time because we're seeing two kind of tectonic plates of technology shift at the same time, which almost never happens in AI and in Web three and AI has massive promise on what it can do, but it relies on a reorganization of data and for its full promise to be met. We think that will most happen if it has access to data in new ways, and one of the most likely ways that could happen is through a Web three architecture. If you think about it, if we all own our own
data versus it being locked up in large platforms. As new agents and exciting experiences were built on top of AI, it could dip into our data wells, if you think about it like that, reuse it and create these magical personalized experiences. And we think both AI and Web three on its own have massive potential to do very exciting things. But the place where they intersect might create kind of the most exciting new energy.
That feels I'm going to take some time, Rebecca, And that's sort of the issue here. We will get the hype, the evaluation, exuberance, the idea that we're at this cusp of a new beginning to basically move to more of a Web three architecture and to own our own data.
That's going to take some years.
Right, absolutely, I think, and both AI and Web three we think will fundamentally change much of what we do, particularly online or on chain, but both are on their own timelines and will take time. That being said, they've been being worked on for quite a long time. Neither of them are brand new, and we think some pieces are more likely or happening faster than they've ever had before. If you think about the ability to send capital cross border, Web three is enabling that in a way it really
hasn't been able to before. The ability to build on top of that is really escalating, and certainly we're seeing it in AI too. So yes, it's not going to happen tomorrow, but the pace of change an opportunity here is very high.
Hey, Rebecca Zad in San Francisco, can we just take what what you've just explained and apply it to New York for New York Tech Week, you know what's changed for the city in that respect in the last twelve months or so.
Yeah.
Look, I think New York is an extremely exciting place to be building right now. New York has always been an epicenter for Web three. Crypto has always found a home here, but it's also a great place to build when you're intersecting technology and industry when you're really talking about the application layer, and that's really what we are talking about here. We're talking about what can be built on top of these new technologies versus the kind of
underlying technology itself. And New York is a center of industry and so a lot of that is going to happen here and we're really seeing it.
We were just speaking with Cognition Scott Wu and he was explaining the most recent round they did, right one hundred and seventy five million, I think he said at a two billion dollar valuation, but that was basically like their Series A or B. You know, what does that tell you as an investor that's trying to occupy similar spaces and write checks in that domain?
You know, I think what they are doing is amazing and there are some really magical things being created. What we're looking for is less the magic of technology itself, but what it can do. I think increasingly we're in a moment where we're really being wowed by tech, but increasingly AI is going to be an ingredient versus the whole dish. Right when you think about serving customers the best healthcare or the optimal financial services, AI is going to be a piece of how that is done versus
the thing itself, and that's where we get excited. And I think as that evolves, it's going to create businesses versus technology, and that will also kind of shift out some of the valuations.
Just how competitive is it to be writing checks to based companies right now? Or indeed do you do you sort of agnostic as the way the startup is based.
And one of valuations more broadly looking like to.
You at the moment, we are agnostic to where the companies are based. We love a New York company. We're a New York based firm, and we are super proud of what's going on in the ecosystem here. But our portfolio is rather global and we're really looking for the best opportunities that meet our thesis really all over, you know, but a lot of them are happening in New York, which is exciting. Evaluations are interesting. They're a little bit
of a tale of two cities. Right on one hand, when you say AI, it's high priced and very buzzy, but there's opportunities without that in the headline too that are really exciting that we are seeing that we're capital is less abundant and so I think it's just it's not a steady market and there's a lot of variety in it. I think AI is a piece of the puzzle of innovation right now, but it isn't the whole thing.
Rebecca of Union Square Adventures have a great week for New York Tech Week. Thank you very much for coming on the program.
Revolt, so leading black owned operated multimedia platform, has just announced a new ownership structure, which is now entirely owned by its own employees.
Move comes after its founder and former.
Chair Sean Combs Diddy, as is known, sold his remaining stake in the company amid mounting legal scrutiny. Joining us now is Revolt CEO Detavio Samuels. This must have been emotional, I can only imagine. And I'm interested in now being completely separated, now being disassociated from Diddy.
What made you decide it was going to be employees that should take his shares?
Yeah, if I'm being fully transparent, this idea of employee ownership was a big idea I had coming into the business back in twenty twenty. I'm a big believer in this idea called linked prosperity, and I've told the team since the very beginning that when Revolt wins, we all win, and we have executed through that over the course of the last four years and everything that we've done, So if you want to talk about we've got some of the biggest shows with the biggest creators in the world,
they all have upside participation. We've probably funded somewhere between fifty to one hundred entrepreneurs, gave them capital with no exchange of equity. And the years when Revolt has been thriving, which we've had in amazing last three years, our employees have seen the biggest bonuses that they've seen since the company was created. And so for us, this was just another way to not.
Just talk the talk, but walk the talk.
And make the people who give their blood, sweat and tears and pour it into this company every single day. The opportunity to build wealth.
Wealth is hard to come by, and media right now, how are you doing that?
Like?
What is it? Where are the deals being struck?
Where is the money coming in for people to see the upside of the secuity?
Sure, sure, sure the deals are going to come because what we have created space where we believe that we own this kind of youth culture opportunity. And so back in the days, you've had people who are sat in that seat. You've had great companies like a Complex, a BuzzFeed of vice that was MTV, that was kind of the old guard.
Today revolts.
It's squarely in that place. We own youth culture, dominate with youth culture, and we do it through a black owned lens. And as you know that for advertisers, youth culture, that kind of hard to reach minority audience is a massive base that they go after. And so in our work, we've kind of built the killer app. We are the connection to the culture. We connect brands directly to that audience.
We connect our affiliate partners directly to that audience. We partner with the biggest brands in the world, from the Walmarts to the Amazons, to the Targets, you name it. And through that we believe we'll be able to take this brand to what I'm hoping to be the next Black Unicorn. It's time for another billion dollar black owned business.
Did Tavia good morning. Look.
In my career, I've covered this scenarios times where the founder or figurehead of a company goes into crisis and he leaves and the startup or company tries to move past that move on, but in most cases thinking for example, like the ev company Niklar I covered, the product remains the same. Right, you guys want to do the same thing. Do you feel like you're going to have to change the offering or rethink any of the strategy or you can just continue the way you are going.
No, I absolutely believe that we can continue the strategy and the way that it is. We have said from the beginning that the vision and the mission is not going to change. We exist to shift in narrative for black people globally. The need for that is not changed.
The mission.
How We're going to do that by building the world's largest, most powerful black storytelling engine on the planet. That's not going to change. And we do that by partnering with some of the dopest creators who shape culture in the world. That strategy is the perfect strategy for this moment. While a lot of people might see the disassociates disassociation from Sean Colmes as a big thing, our truth is Shawn Holmes has never been involved in the day to day
since I've been there. So the team that you see, the vision, you see the strategy that you see, all the work that you see has been done by the incredible management management team that's there and the incredible employee base that's there. And so for us, there's no need to change. It's just time for us to dream bigger and dream blacker.
Okay, detail very I'd love to talk about the day to day. So you're the CEO, but it's an employee ownership structure.
Whose boss is who? Who reports to who?
Well, right now the company is being board managed. We are minority controlled, and so I sit on the board. There's the voice and as a representative for the company and for the employees, making sure that whatever our needs are, whatever our demands are, whatever our hopes and dreams are, that those things are represented at the board level so that we can get them done for our employees.
Tough question, how much did he get paid for the shows?
So you know we're a private company and so I'm not allowed to disclose any of that.
There's going to be some reallocation obviously, you've got to decide who gets what money as where they sit in the corps structure. Getting real, this must have been an incredibly difficult time for those working at revolt, and I'm wondering how you've helped support those that work there, because this has been tough for anyone who loved the music, who love the culture, and indeed now feels associated in some way.
Yeah, you one hundred percent right that the last six months have not been easy for this team at all. But what I would say is, I'm so proud of this team. This is a team that is resilient, that is committed, that is loyal, and what we have just done is shown the entire world publicly that we are battle tested. And so now I'm excited for this team to show where the battle tested team can really really do.
Now.
Of course, along the way, we did the things that we think you have to do as empathetic leaders to take care of your teams, and this was you know, regardless of whether this is a Sean Combs headlines allegations crisis or whether it was something else, We're always going to do what's best by our teams, and so whether that means our ergs have gone into action to support one another. There have been moments in times where we have brought therapists in to do group therapy individual therapy.
The groups have gotten together to do wellness community events. But this team is just stuck by each other, supporting each other through it all.
And I just couldn't be.
More proud, more humbled, and more honored to lead this incredible, amazing team at.
Revolve Daytavia, come back, tell us how the journey continues.
We appreciate it. Thank you, see Dytavio. Samuel's there meanwhile, that does it for this.
Edition of Bloomberg Technology ed another wellwind of space meets valuations meants corporate culture.
Yeah, it was cool like talking robotaxis, rockets, media, entertainment and video always in video at the moment. You know, it just shows how much momentum our world has got. To recap everything on the podcast. You know exactly where to find the pod Apples a fire, iHeart and all around.
The Bloomer verse, promesself in New York. This is Bloomberg
Mm hm