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In video says it's now getting orders from China and ramping up sales of its.
H two hundred chips plus. In video, CEO.
Jason Warms says that Openclaw is quote definitely the next chat ChiPT. I'll comment, there's Chinese AI stocks higher, and we bring you in exclusive interview with the CEO of Kalshi. That's after Arizona file criminal charges against the prediction market platform.
But first we check in on these public markets roiled by geopolitics, by macro events, and we keep an eye on what's happening terms of the stock market now is that one hundred is off by five ten percent, the SMP is lower after two straight days of and this is as we see oil spral higher more than five point five percent. This is a question of conflict in the Middle East that seems to be accelerating, and we're
starting to see infrastructure continue to be targeted. That is of course spiraling concerns about oil prices.
Now, all of this is an infratiory pressure.
On the back of PPI numbers today that show that inflatory pressure is already.
Here in the United States. What will the Fed do later today?
All eyes on macro policy at this moment, but there's also all eyes on what's happening in terms of individual stocks. And there is a macrotail at play when it comes to in video and the demand for compute, and also what's happening with China demand signals actually a sign off from the Chinese government at least, we're starting to see a bit more of an appetite for buying into Invidia stocks. As GtC continues, let's just get more context on the
market moves. What's happening with Nvidia? Bloomberg Carmen, Ryanikey joins us. Look in video is one of the few names that pushes to the green today, alongside the likes of Micron and others. Carmen, How is Nvidia able to shake off what for the rest of the market is angst about the Middle East and inflation.
Yeah, I mean, it really seems like investors are getting a little bit more confident with Invidia here. I think that Jensen has said a lot during this conference that hopefully, you know, making people feel a little bit more confident. I mean, the orders from China is very positive, something that investors have been looking for for a long time from Nvidia, and he also said yesterday that they are looking at a very large number to go into buybacks,
and you know, the dividend for Invidia. So I think these are all things that are positive and are maybe helping the stack sort of shake off some of those macro pressures that we're seeing really way down the rest of the market.
What have been extraordinary is that one trillion dollar figure initially said didn't spur any absolute buying, but then he's trying to articulate that that one trillion can then be added to other new products.
That are coming to the market.
Is well likely to inject upside to that number.
Yeah, exactly, and I think that upside is really important. He did clarify a very specific that doesn't include you know, the new products that are coming out, so you know, a lot of the positivity I think is baked into the stock, but that potential for future growth, which is what everybody you know expects from in video, but he wants to see even more of is really positive here, especially when we're seeing a backdrop that has so much
uncertainty for the rest of the market. And you know, I mean in Video is still the biggest stock in the s and P five hundred, So seeing you go up when sort of the rest of the market goes down is significant because if you're selling the SMP, you know, you're also selling a lot of in video.
A just of course speaks in big numbers talking about how computing demand has increased by one million times in the last two years. But he's pushing forward on where next for compute and that's going to be driven by a gender ki. You saw his adoption of this chatchypd moment for Openclore really helping Chinese names.
Is it going to have a read across to the US.
You know, that's something we're definitely looking for, and I mean, I guess it sort of means to be seen. You know, we know that, you know, in Vidia does definitely moves you know, stocks of other companies that are related, and we see that on a global scale. So you know, we've seen through GtC, you know, companies that have partnerships with Nvidia get some investor confidence through some buying into
their their stock. It's seen no reason why we wouldn't see more buying into certain US companies sort of based on this news. And you know, going forward there.
I've already seen stain analysts trying to talk about the companies that will be benefited by claw open claw the CLAW six. We'll see if that catches on Bloomberg's common Ryanikey, thank you very much. Indeed, now in Vidia CEO does, and Wang was indeed articulating this projection for a trillion dollars plus in AI chip sales and the fact that
of course it doesn't include other product offerings. Now we've already got the signal of the upside Bloomberg Intelligence noting that this reinforces confidence in AI demand through twenty twenty seven.
And in Vidia's market leadership.
Let's get more on that with Kim Forest's CIO of Boka Capital Partners. Look, we're used to Jenson Wang being optimistic. Are you buying into it, Kim?
Kind of?
Sort of?
I mean, he really is the poster child of AI buildout right, And for the longest time until this GtC, we've all made the assumption that this is going to happen at large data centers, and that is the who the company was serving. Probably the hidden gem in his comments were that only sixty percent of the chips that they're selling right now are going towards those large data centers. But then corporations who are trying to figure out maybe developing some in house you know, uses of this are
now buying their products. And I think that's really interesting and kind of takes a little pressure off of the company because it isn't solely dependent on you know what Core, We even Microsoft and you know the rest of the gang are buying.
That is not just about GPUs, CPUs, even LPUS is actually about the software side. How much did you pay attention to Nemo claw, for example, the way in which seems as though Jensen one's trying to get in on the enterprise desire to have safe agenda KI.
Right, And I you know, I talked to a lot of people in my job, and I have heard more and more companies rolling out agentic services for their employees, making them more productive. Now you know what the spending on that is going to be. It's anyone's guess. I am going to point back to the dot com Era, which it wasn't just about pets dot com and stamps dot com and all that kind of goofy stuff. But rolled into that was the Y two K conversion that
a lot of companies were undergoing. And one of the flaws and thinking by investors during that time was that spending was going to go on in perpetuity. What companies were spending on it for that Y two K conversion was thought to, you know, it will bloom and blossom into other areas, and it didn't happen. And I think
this is a warning for this technology as well. I've seen some really goofy estimates that you know, companies are going to be spending on this, you know, in perpetuity in the trillions, and that's really not how technology works. People want an end to it, and they just want to use the build out and they just want to use the technology for productivity. So investors beware, well how of them?
For should the warnings to investors be about im perpetuity the pricing of memory going at a higher At the moment, we seem to be getting endless calls that this is going to be at least until maybe twenty thirty, but there's got to be demand destruction and that's going to be focused on in Micron's numbers after the bell exactly.
And Micron is a really great example of this, right because they had been participating and I'd love to say this world oligopoly about six companies that were making land and dram memory, right and what would happen was somebody would bring on a new supply and that would just
kill nand prices because it was kind of a commodity. Well, even though high bandwidth memory is you know, a gating factor now for a lot of these build ai buildouts, at some point, you know, we're going to go back into that boom bust cycle even though it's exotic and in demand. So I think that Micron just announced that they're adding capacity to a Taiwan plant, and you know, look for the other players in this area to start
doing that as well. And again it's going it's not going to go upwards to the right like it has been the demand or the pricing, you know, because we're going to have supply demand here entering into this. And these are even a smaller oligopoly of about three players right now that are making this high bandwidth memory.
How much these stopped price sing in Already the enthusiasm here, Kim, because we're seeing MI chron rally into its numbers. Are people already expecting just killer results?
And can that? What more? Can the CEO already talk about?
Absolutely? I mean they are expecting killer results, but the physical world is going to impact their their you know results too, because there's only you can only ship what you make and they are running up everybody in this industry is running up against you know, supply problems and you can see that as the chip builders are complaining about it. So I would be I am very enthusiastic about my crime For the long haul, I think they're a great company, but in the short term, I wonder
can they ship enough to satisfy investors demand? And I guess tonight we'll see.
We've also seen perhaps a slight quantening of the anxiety around the AI trade, just from a can we afford it?
Will it? Really?
Do we need this level of data center build out perspective?
Kim?
Where is the anxiety right now for you? When it comes to the still optimism we see baked into the stock market.
Sure well, I have some real questions about how much capacity is needed. While I'm a huge bull on AI, I understand what it can do, I am not still convinced that large language models are the way forward forever and ever.
Amen.
I think they've done wonderful things in solving natural language processing, but I don't know that that is what we're going to do in let's say five years. So my fear still is that we are building our investors are building their expectations on what they know today, and I think things can change very very quickly with innovations like I don't know, open Claw or whatever it is. You know where I'm sure where companies using worst profiting power and getting more being from.
The bark unpredictability in the stock market.
That's exactly what Howard Marks is calling out today when it comes to AI. Kim Forrest, CIO of Booker Capital Partners, Great.
To have some time with you. Now.
Coming up, we're going to be speaking with Tarik Mansur Cal she CEO and co founder has after Arizona filed criminal charges against the Prediction market platform one.
Next this is bluembed Tech.
Arizona has filed criminal charges against CALS, accusing the company of operating an illegal gambling business.
So next, Tim Stenovich.
Joins us now and Kaoshi Kofanna and CEO Tim take it away.
Hi, We're joined by Tarak Monsieur. He's the CEO and co founder of Call She. Tarak, good to see you. Thanks for joining us on this. Look, even though other state regulators have taken steps to crack down on what they say is unlicensed betting on call She's site, Arizona appears to be the first to escalate to criminal charges. What is your response to these charges?
Look, I mean, these charges have nothing to do with gambling or the merits. If it was about gamling or the merits, they would let the judicial process fright its course in the federal courts. You know, five days ago on Thursday, CALCI filed suit against Arizona and federal courts on the mets on whether Calshi is subject to exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC. And you know, we're confident opposition
and wanted to let the court process play out. And instead of letting that happen, the Arizona Attorney General decided to subvert the judicial process and weaponize it and go to state court and file these criminal charges, which you know we view as merit lists and basis. We see this as a total overstep and we look forward to fighting it in court.
Well, experts are saying this could be the first of many charges such as these from other states too. How does it change your legal strategy.
Well, this is the whole point of federal preemption. So this is not about camera. The charges that the Attorney General filed are not about gambling. They're not even about sports only. They're about prediction markets writ large. It's just, you know, attacking the entire business model. And nothing prevents from the same attorney general or others from fighting the
same criminal charges against derivatives' markets writ large. They could file the same exact charges under the same analysis against CME or ICE or NASDAC. And that's the whole point of federal regulation of these financial exchanges is to prevent this sort of chaos and these sort of attacks on these businesses that could be political in nature or other. And that's a very important distinction.
Well, I read the charging document from the Attorney General as twenty charges. They're mostly about betting and wagering. When it comes to sports, there's some election stuff in there. Would you ever consider limiting your business in Arizona or other states, to things that these ags don't seem to have problems with, like economic data, the price of bitcoin, what markets are going to do predictions around those things.
Look, I mean the AGE also claim that we have war markets, which is incorrect. It's either flat out to lie or it's misinformed take which is unfortunate for someone, you know, filing criminal charges against the company. What's more important here, again is this is not about the merits. If it's about the merits, let's let the judicial process run its course in federal courts. This is about something other than the merits, which is what I'm focused on.
I don't know what the AGE is focused on, but you know she is off for reelection.
You know, it does.
It did some press, It does seem to be making some buzz. But what I'm really focused on is building a great product from lens of customers, out of which goes to four hundred thousand are in Arizona and fighting any of these basis cases in courts, which was which we're going to continue doing.
So you're fighting the cases. As I mentioned, Arizona is not the only state to take issue with your business. What happens. Ultimately, if courts do side with states, what does it mean for the future of your company.
We believe in the rule of law. Right, we will always abide by court decisions. The law applies to us, but it also applies to the government, including state governments, and then it's a very important thing.
Right.
This is really not about our business model. Again, if it was about our business model, we would be focused on the federal courts and the lawsuit about the merits. This is a broader attack, and you know many states have sided with us and have granted us a preliminary in junction, agreeing with our legal analysis. We have spent four years getting regulated by the federal government, and we have a federal government in the CFTC that is coming
strongly in favor of our position. Following these charges is a total total overstep and an overreach from an AG that's up for re election, and we find that unfortunate. But we will stay focused on what we do best, which is building a great product.
So certainly the CFTC. We know where the CFTC stands, and we know where Michael Mike Seelig stands on this. We don't know where courts stand on this, and I'm wondering if we see a state like Nevada, for example, block access to your business, what will you do? Will you continue to operate or will you will you say, Okay, we're not going to operate in Nevada.
Well, first of all, let's get let's get to that point, and you know, we'll have to make a decision as the company what we do. What I can reiterate is we will one hundred percent abye by the law. That's what we will do as a company. It's always been our position. That's why we spend four years getting regulated upfront, regulatory first as a company and always abide by the law.
But what I always say, the law applies to us as much as it applies to the government, and when government oversteps the law and goes out of bound, we're going to fight that in court, which we look forward to.
How long does that process take, because it seems like there's a regulatory limbo happening. You're you're it's almost like your legal team is going to have to play whack a mole with all these states that are that are filing suit or bring in criminal charges. How long is this going to take?
And gladly we have a legal team to handle these types of things, and we're going to be focused on and you know, maybe it's a question for them. I mean, look, whatever whatever long it takes, we're going to fight for prediction markets. I spent eight years building this company, four out of which have which are getting regulated upfront. I really believe in this marketplace. I'm very excited about the growth that we're seeing some of the fast growing company
companies in America right now. And so what I'm going to be focused on is keep building a great product, and that's what's sort of most important for me. The more important sort of question is, you know, when it comes to this is not really about you know, whether this is gambling or not. This is not really about state versus federal which are both co existing and both growing, both models. This really is turning into sort of some
special interests that like the status quo. The status always work very well for monopolies, but not for the consumers that are flocking to prediction markets right now, which we're going to keep fidding for Tark.
There is this perception though that people think this is gambling. An IPSOS survey from just a few weeks ago, for example, show sixty one percent of adults safe prediction market trading is closer to gambling. Eight percent say it's closer to investing. So there is this public perception that doesn't necessarily match with what you say. The platform is how do you respond to that and how do you at all that? Like, how is this not gambling?
I haven't really looked at these polls, you know. The thing I will say is there's always been a battle of whether financial derivatives are gambling. Great features were called gambling and the eighteen hundreds, and there was a Supreme Court decision that you know, said even though there is speculation, these you know, products have financial our structures the financial markets, and thus are going to fall under financial market jurisdiction.
So I always say this, you know, whether something feels and looks like gambling doesn't necessarily make it gambling. Speculation exists in all financial markets. If we're going to take a line that speculation is gambling, then the stock market with retail participation is gambling. Then buying options for retail or zero data to expier options is gammling. Then retail buying crypto is gambling. The more important line in the historical line that we've been taking under the law, but
also you know, as you think about it societally. Is is the business model a gambling business model, which is a model where the revenue of the business and the profits are equal to the customer's losses, in which case the incentive is to promote more losses and blog the winners. Or is it an open, free and fair marketplace where people can enter in and out freely and transparently, which is a financial exchange, which Calci falls under.
Tark monsieur Calci, co founder and CEO. Tark always good to speak with you. Thanks so much for joining us, Caroline, back to you.
Fantastic interview, Tim, thanks for bringing it. The Trump administration is dialing up efforts to oust Anthropic from all federal agencies, saying the US government has reason to question whether the AI firm is a trusted partner after the company asked for limits on how its technology was used by the Department of Defense. Let's get the latest on this saga of Boomberg's AI reporter Rachel Metz. This is now not
just in the public court of the media. This is going to the actual court for a fight out.
Yeah. So as part of this fight between the Anthropic and the federal government, the Anthropic has filed to Las suits and the one in California has a lot of action happening. Yesterday, the federal government said we are going to fight. We think that Inthropics technology became an unacceptable risk essentially to the military because Anthropic would not agree with a change to its contract that the military wanted earlier this year.
Emil Michael he's the US Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, and it has really sort of been the public voice of this, and he's talking about how there was hostility thrown around by Anthropic during the negotiations he feels and the fear it seems to be is that in some way the technology can be manipulated if it remains within federal use. Anthropic, if it feels as red lines across, could just go in there and change the
way in which the technology works. It's going to be grounds for this, Rachel as a legal argument.
I mean, I think that that is really alarming sounding, right, Like the idea that if you could be using technology in a war fighting situation and then the company that
has built the technology could do something about it. For Nanthropics part, they said in a statement Dario Amida, Anthropics CEOs and a statement in February, the company has never done something like that, and really what the company wants is just some specific limits on how its technology is deployed, while the military is saying we want to be able to use that technology for any lawful purpose, something that Anthropic it alleges refused to accept due to its usage policies for Claude.
Really they're talking about their long standing commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security. Is what Anthropics saying. How is this affecting or could affect the business?
Briefly, Rachel, It's.
Sort of affect could affect it in two different ways. On the one hand, this has seemed to be a huge boost for Anthropic, especially as a consumer product, which typically it is not thought of as a consumer product miss chatbot Claude, but that app has gotten extremely popular,
big boost in popularity. And at the same time, the company says this could be hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in damage, and it's cited in a court filing last week some specific ways that it's already starting to harm the company financially.
Racial mets on their latest with Anthropic and the Pentagon.
We appreciate it.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. We check in on these markets, which in many ways are in the eye of a geopolitical storm, a macrostorm, with of by five ten percent on the Nasdaq one hundred. More broadly, stocks have turned lower, and the S and P five hundred because Brent crude is on the higher side one.
Than five percent high.
The conflict with the Middle East, within the Middle East seems to be well worsening rather than coming to any near conclusion. We're currently seeing there for inflationary pressure. Me the key concern for the market. PPI reading is coming in today showing that there's inflation pressure even before the conflict erupted in some.
Nineteen days ago.
And we look towards what the Federal Reserve will do in response that meeting today, we're not expecting any change in rates per certainly a conversation to be had with a Fed chair. Let's move on and have a look at what tech stocks are doing, because in a monst a's that one hundred, which is down. We're actually saying in video trying to do its best in the green
We're up three tenths of a percent. Now, this is as we have some extraordinary dictations coming from the CEO Jensen Wan, who's talking about this moment in open Claw, the fact that we've got a new chat ChiPT on our hands in the world of agentic Ai.
It is driving those words.
Driving Chinese stocks in particular Minimax up almost twenty percent as they release you agentic Ai tools for its user base.
Jupu is up almost twenty percent as well. Look, these are record highs at the.
Moment due to open Claw frenzy that has beset the entire Chinese world alike. Look, let's stick more broadly with Chinese stocks, because another giant that has been betting on the use of open Claw style agents is ten Cent, which actually just released its earnings results showing that how many plans to at least double its investments in ai in twenty twenty six.
Please just say here in New York.
For the time, banks, blux ages, stop reporter if you can on Lee.
Great to have you here for a couple of months.
You can talk to us a little bit about ten Cent and what they said on the numbers.
Yeah, I think there are three key takeaways from their earnings this morning. I think number one is this top line crows. It said thirteen percent sales crows for the December quarter, which is its fifth straight quarterly results those posting double digit curls and that was in line with expectation thanks to its advertisement and gaming department. So I think that's the first key takeaway. And the secondly and
more importantly is AI investment. The company is that is going to double is AI investment and that's going to cause some share buy back. So company is going to scale back the share buy back so we can bank roll the AI investment that's going to at least double this year. And I think thirdly a third takeaway is actually the company is mentioned of the open cloud. The company mentioned how it's going to use open cloud and how it's going to help the company's as strategy using
the open class. So the company's CEO, Puny Mass set open Claw is actually an inspiration, great inspiration for the companies reach out related ecosystem and it also said is helping ten Cent leverages cloud computing.
So the mention of the open.
Claw topline growth is doubling of the AI investment. These are the key takeaways from this tencent earning this morning.
It's so fascinating because here open Cloor is sort of a developer phenomenon, but in China and Asia it's a consumer phenomenon. It's desire to see agent Kai autonomous agents used in your personal life. How are other giants like Ali Baba thinking about this as we look towards their earnings coming out?
Yeah, absolutely so Ali Baba is reporting their earnings on Thursday before before the market US time.
I think there are.
Several things that investors are looking forward to. I think number one is investment plan on and the monetization flavor is artificial intelligence. Overnight, we heard from Ali Baba that is going to hide the prices of its own AI storage and computing products by as much is thirty four percent, and Investor cheered the news to say, sending the stocks up as much as four percent in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
So investors have been looking for answers on how the company is going to monetize the AI investment and justify the massive investment they are spending on the AI.
So that's more details.
On this AI monetized instrument monetization plan. It's definitely going to own the minds of investors on during the Alibaba's earnest conference call, as well as plans on investment on other areas such as quick commerce. The company has been spending a lot to catch up with rivals and also definitely a continued growth. The investor will be looking for signs of continue growth in its top light and bottom line.
Yu Kiang, I'm so pleased you're going to be sticking around for a few months. We appreciate you joining Kiang Lee over from Asia here in New York talking all about Alibaba and Tencent. Look, now let's pivot a bit to the private markets. Cybersecurity startup Expo has raised one hundred and twenty million dollars at evaluation more than a billion now. The round was led by DFJA Growth and North Zone and comes as more companies are focusing on
the threats of aiured cyber attacks. Please to speak with Expo c more. I mean talk to us about first and foremost the money, what you use it for, how you can continue to power expot growth.
Thank you very much for having me. You cannot define defend against machine speed attacks with human speed tools. And that is what expert is all about. Last year, we proved that completely autonomous attacks are possible by entering our bot on the hacker one platform, and within a few
months it became the top hacker in the world. After that, we were we here were quickly signed up over our hundreds corporate customers, and we're now raising this money in order to better serve those customers and to very quickly further develop our products and go to market.
Okay, so what's so fascinating about your tool is that basically a GENTICKI is a force in terms of our defensive posture, but it's also a force in terms of our aggressive posture. The fact that people can fight back and you're using in many ways is the ability to find vulnerabilities ahead of bad actors. How are we seeing cyber attacks more broadly scale in this moment? How much is there an aggression from those that are wanting to do ill?
Absolutely so, attacker holes will and are already using AI. But the good news is the defenders can do it too. By thinking the one can attack our agentic AI system can find the flaws before it a bad guys, So the danger is not really AI itself. But the danger is defending modern systems with yesterday stores.
Talk to us about what we're seeing in terms of you beefing up the ability to scale.
Is it about people?
Because many in this moment I say, well, for the rise of a gentki, you need less talent, you just can empower the talent you already have.
It's well, it's absolutely We already have some of the very best human hackers in the world working for us, as well as a fantastic go to market team. Really, we've got other combination of both AI talent and security engineers. However, we also need to bring the product to market and go to market. Appalt is still very much our human human lad activity. A lot of the money you will also go cannot lead towards inference in order to speed up our development.
Where are you looking for for that sort of compute? How are you managing to ensure you've got the right inference power and you need it?
So we actually work with all the frontier labs. All of them give us special access to early models and that allows us to always be in front of the very latest, our very latest developments. We also across a very pretty large consumers have special deals with the large harvest galus.
You are so fascinating expos clearly fascinating, but your background as a computer scientist professor at Oxford decades, the fact that you help build GitHub, gethub co pilot as well. When we see this fervor around a gender KI, when you see the hype that's happening worldwide around an openclore and an open source model that can revolutionize personal AI, how does that make you feel?
How real do you feel this moment?
Is it's an unbelievable time to be building. We're seeing we're in the middle of a new revolution again to the industrial revolution of our previous century, but it's going to be much much bigger than that. So personally, I actually feel lot, deeply privileged to be parts of this transformation.
So briefly, you're optimistic at this moment rather than any concerns wire is security issues.
Absolutely, So the key about gender Gatorie systems is that they will actually amplify what we can do as as humans, and that's certainly too in cybersecurity. We've got one of our customers, sess now sometimes called the Google of the Czech Republic. They've been using our system for over a year and one quote from one of their engineers stuck with me. Every EXPO agent is like a new team
member in security. We're vastly constrained by the scarcity of talent and so having the ability to suddenly scale and do all the things that we know we should be doing but we're not able to do before. That's one and I believe not the same is true in many in money, older fields or for human activity.
Gudomar, great to have some time with you. Expo CEO and the fundraise.
Gradient Ventures, Well, it's raised two hundred and twenty million dollars for its fifth fund, doubling down on its strategy and backing the next wave of AI founders at seed stage, early stage. Now with his latest raise, the firm now manages almost one point two billion dollars across its funds. Please to say that we're joined by Darren Is Shirazi, He's general partner. And so do we move away from any of the learned performance already or do you double
down on the conviction that you already have. Is it's still about generator AI and the tooling.
Thanks for having me, Yeah, I mean, we have been investing in AI since since the very beg beginning, and then our focus has really been partnering with founders at the earliest stages, when founders are really starting out with a brand new idea, and we backed hundreds of companies, and we've been fortunate enough to partner with these companies from the very beginning, some of which are in an apartment or our founders that have never even been in
business before, and our focus is on helping them scale up and really find the next round of funding and to really partner with these founders all the way through IPO in some cases.
I mean, you've been doing this since twenty seventeen, since before chat ubt, since before AI got cooled. There we say it, you've backed what five hundred AI founders already talk us through the wins that you've already seen, because look, the LPs need convincing at this moment. Where were you able to show your prowess to those to come back and reinvest with you.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think over the course of the last ten years that we've been investing in AI, we've seen the number of companies that come through our doors really accelerate and increase. We used to see about one hundred companies in AI per year, and we were sort of the odd ball venture fund that was really really niche and looking at really technical people that were researchers or people that were not necessarily focused on building big businesses in the eyes of a lot of other
venture capitalists. But we saw that the chat GPT moment was going to come. We saw that the Transformer paper, which came out a month before Gradient launched, was really going to be the epoch moment for AI. And my partner Zach and I we saw that the ability for people to use these models as sort of an intelligent buddy and or an intelligent copilot was really going to be the future of the Internet and the future of technology,
and we partnered with these founders. Now we see two thousand companies a year come through our doors and pitch us with some new AI technology or AI capability, and we have to pick about ten to fifteen of those that we decided to partner with. So the job has gotten more difficult in terms of volume, but it's also gotten a lot more interesting because of the number of technologies and number of founders that we see and what
they are working on. Everything from wafer scale compute companies to open claw renditions or individual models that are for specific tasks.
What's also got more difficult is just the size of the rounds that.
We've just had.
The biggest sort of seed was it a billion that Yan Laccoon's just been raising over in Europe, I mean coming out with three billion. In terms of valuation, you're seeing Mira, Marati, rais and extraordinary fund people are calling these like mango seeds, ravocado seeds.
As I'd love to say, how can you compete?
So that's a really interesting question, is that we actually think that there is a bubble in certain parts of AI. There are bubbles. There is a bubble in foundational model companies, contenders to open AI, contenders to Google, contenders to xai, and anthropic and that's those are companies that we don't fund.
What we really want to be focused on are AI infrastructure companies and AI application companies, and those seed rounds tend to be really well priced and tend to be ones that we can invest in and lead with an average three million dollar check and own ten to fifteen percent of those companies. We actually don't see the valuation issues in the areas that we want to focus in
when it comes to AI. When it comes to a lot of these other companies that are raising a billion dollars here or there, it seems as though those are a lot of venture capitalists or investors that want to chase the next open AI. But realistically, the moat at the model layer is just capital. How much money can you raise? You know, because you buy data and compute and so where we focus, the valuations are favorable and the round sizes are favorable, and we believe that that will continue.
What is it like in terms of diversifying your LP base because it has a very interesting story gradient It came out of Google, but then you brought on external money. Does that change the way in which you have to invest because lots of people have different strategies the why they're coming to you with their money.
It was extremely challenging to raise from LPs, especially in this climate. I mean, we're very fortunate that we were able to get it done in about nine months, but you know before for our prior for funds, Google was the single LP and they've been an incredible partner. I don't think we could have launched an AI seed fund in twenty seventeen when everyone was looking at crypto without the help of Google, and so now I think we decided we wanted to diversify our LP base because it
gives us a lot more capabilities. We have partners in the LP base for our companies, and we also wanted the ability to sort of scale up our capital base and have that flexibility. But it was challenging because a lot of people haven't seen liquidity, especially in the institutional LP network. Fortunately, we found LPs that believed in our vision and mission and wanted to partner with us over
the long term. And now we have a collection of not just Google, but many other amazing institutions, including companies like Marcado Libra, which we're very closely partnered with, as well as a number of other insurance companies, institutions and foundations. And so I think that given the climate, it is challenging to raise, especially for a seed fund when you have inuresin in general catalyst raising ten twenty billion dollar funds.
But I think we've been able to articulate our strategy in focusing on the areas where there isn't a bubble, when valuations are favorable, and where we can partner with these founders when it's just an idea and mature and grow with them.
Love that clarity and your Canada.
Thanks so much, Darren Shrausi of Gradient, Congratulations on the new fund now coming up. Disney's new CEO takes over as the media landscape shifts, government scrutiny increases.
We're on that next as Bloomberg Tech.
Disney's annual shareholder meeting is today and it marks.
A leadership handoff.
Josh Tomorrow set to take over as CEO from Bob Byger, and he steps in at a challenging moment inheriting what is a bit of an underperforming stock and a media landscape still in flux for all Bloomers. Chris Palm Mary, who leads our Media and Entertainment team, joins us look for the second stint to Bob Iger.
He came on in what November.
Twenty twenty two, and the stock has only gone up nine percent compared to seventy percent for the SMP and huge moves for Netflix. What does Josh need to prove to an investor base today?
Well, Tomorrow is coming from the theme park business. That's where his whole career has been, so we don't know to what extent he really understands the TV a business and a film business that is still so critical to Disney, and there's just been a movement out of these stocks. You know, the streaming businesses haven't been as profitable as people hope. The traditional TV channels are just losing viewers
and advertisers. So Tomorrow has to articulate a strategy for that business that we really haven't heard from them.
Yeah, I mean he's got, of course, Dana Walden still on board when it comes to Chief Creative Officer and all things streaming movies that sort of ip, but it has done deals He's got into Epic for example. How are we likely to see him bring all of these clustered sort of assets together.
Well, what we get a sense of his strategy is that he sees, you know, coming from the parks business, he's got that direct connection to the consumer, and so he sees the Disney Plus service as a direct consumer service and a way to tie in, say the games like Fortnite, the Epic investment, and it's going to be a sort of a Disney universe, and he's going to put this all, you know, sort of better, more connections directly with Disney fans who are you as we all
know who have been and money spending consumers.
We'll see what he does with tech aivrar and the light bluembogs. Chris Palmry watching that shareholder meeting. Thanks so much. Now let's talk about the FCC chair running car. He is waging what he calls a crackdown on fake news as the Trump administration leans more heavily on regulators to challenge media coverage, raising new questions about the SEC's role in reach the most. Kelsey Griffiths takes a closer look at Carr himself his rise within the administration.
It's today's big take.
It's a fascinating read, and it all starts with how basically a lot of Georgetown alumni were amazed to hear that apparently they've gone to university with Brendan Carr, and they didn't realize he was not a big guy on campus or a big personality before the Trump administration.
That's exactly right, Caroline. I spoke with some of Brendan Carr's former classmates who were shocked to realize in hindsight that they had even gone to university with him, and I think that is such a contrast to the man we see today who has become this flamethrower for the Trump administration. That's really in contrast to his kind of shy,
quiet personality that he's had over the years. So we've really seen a change in his demeanor in the way that he communicates publicly as he's really stepped into this role as Trump's media enforcer.
Take us on that evolution then, of him, the personality, the man and the roles that he sort of almost said gump like got him into this place with the FCC.
So I've covered Brendan Carr since twenty seventeen when he was a commissioner, and I think it's been really interesting to watch. He has always had a really congenial relationship with the press. Even now, he always stops by the press table at the FCC's public meetings speaks with US banters, and I think that is sort of in contrast to the big swings that he's been taking in the last year or so against what he and Trump like to labels the fake news.
He must have had to grow a quiet fake skin just thinking of the fallout online, the pushback he's got from very famous comedians and the like, just how does he serve the administration agenda.
At this moment, Brendan Carr has very much taken the position that whatever happens in the media, whatever fallout happens in the media, is not really his problem. I asked him what it was like to publicly contribute to Jimmy Kimmel's temporary cancelation and then to face a lot of blowback for that, and he says he doesn't really care. He tries not to pay attention to the negative headlines, and when he does see them, he kind of chuckles.
So I think he kind of adopts that some moilar attitude that the president does that all news is kind of good news.
See if he's reading your piece to Bloomg's Kelsey Griffiths, it's a great deep dive and a great big take. Everyone to go online and take a look and on the terminal.
But that does it. With this addition of Bloomberg Tech, you.
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