From Marhard where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
And Karine Heider Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York and Imed Ludlow in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up, we'll bring you the latest details on that Reddit IPO as the social media company I is raising nearly a seven hundred and fifty million dollars for its.
Public offering, plus bitcoin top seventy two thousand dollars for the first time. As the digital currency continues it's rally. Aphilias Snider of twenty one Shares joins us to discuss and later this.
Hour will be joined by venture capitalist Vinov Kosla to talk one year since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and of.
Course his thoughts and open AI and so much more. But now let's turn.
Our attention to the public markets and look a little bit of caution still surrounding these tech names we sold off on Friday. We continue that into Monday as we I big macro points from the PPI from the CPI. Basically, where is inflationary pressure taking us We're down only by a bat of a tenth of a percent on the NASDAG and I'm looking at a ten year yield up only some two basis points now, so we're just fading some of that initial sell off, but still carry over
from Friday. Interesting that globally speaking, we're seeing a little bit of bottom picking happening in China at last, at least it seems after we wrap up the focus on the overall party and indeed the future of the economic trajectory in China, we're up about two point six percent on those Chinese traded names here.
In the US.
That's the Golden Dragon Dragon Index I look at. Let's have a look at what's happening in the area. That just moves apart from the risk concern that we see in the equity market and continues to power ever higher. Edwill dig into why the UK is looking more favorably on some spot bitcoin etns. I'm looking at three point nine percent higher on bitcoin seventy two thousand the clips today.
What have you got on the.
Micro Well, unsurprisingly in the equity space, you do see crypto related stocks moving higher. Coinbase kind of the main ones up four point three percent. I think at one point in the session, trading at its highest level since twenty twenty one, it's year today gain now beyond fifty percent. That often happens right when rallies in bitcoin continue. So did the crypto related equity side of the story, Meta to the downside, biggest drag on the Nasdaq one hundred.
There's no kind of clear news headline out there, but I would note that Trump this morning, former President Trump, reiterated his comments that a ban on TikTok is bad because it would benefit Meta, and he thinks Meta is bad. I'm not drawing a causal link between the move and that narrative, but it's the only thing really that's out there. The top story is about a name that will soon be publicly traded, and that is Reddit. We got the amended S one, and this is what it looks like.
Twenty two million shares at the upper end of the range, thirty four dollars as shared in terms of the pricing, and if you take it on a diluted basis evaluation, about six point four billion dollars.
It's interesting to go through the S one.
It's kind of as much about what you learn on the company and what you don't some of the stuff that's missing. But we've been waiting for this one since twenty twenty one when they filed confidentially and they kind of missed what was a banner year then for us IPOs.
Have they got the timing right now?
Key question is perhaps we come off the baill a little bit when we look at the tech names as of late Bloomberg's Ryangul joins us some more on all of this head and RN, what did you learn from the filing? And as Ed insinuates, what do you feel was really left out?
I think there was a little bit left, sort of a little bit of a question mark around you know, exactly how much how much was going to be offered. I think there was some question as to whether or not there would be more. And I think you know the ED is drawn attention to the valuation discrepancy. I think you know there have been some calls that I've had this morning. Is it five point four? Is it six point four? I think you know that is a
that is a valid question. Obviously on a fully diluted basis, it does extend as much as six point four billion dollars, But you remember we wrote that, you know, early testing the waters meeting said that they should target sort of five billion as a as a as a minimum, and I think, you know, that's sort of in the ballper
part that they've that they've gone to. But what I do think is interesting from the filing is that you know this eight percent that is going to you know, they're saying, we say investors, it's their employees, it's some of their existing shareholders. And also you know the fact that a lot of those shares aren't going to be locked up. So yes, come tomorrow there's a pub you could you could be selling these shares if you are, if you feel so inclined.
And not only sort of what we would call insiders staff, but if you're a redditor or a moderator on a platform, you can get access to the shares too. And Ryan and you and I were talking the other day right when they sent out that memo's redditors. Their pitch was basically like, hey, you can get in on the IPO at the same level as the Wall Street institutional investor. Look, how fantastic this access is. How big a factor though, if it's just eight percent of shares and there's no
lockdown or lock on them. How do you think that's going to impact trading in the day.
And I think I'd put this in the sort of you know, the ballpark of curious, just not least because you know, there is this campaign on what Reddit itself around you amongst the Wall Street bets crowd around shortening the stock on the open tomorrow. I think there's obviously a lot of provider around that. But I mean, you know, this is an ipa about you know, trying to strike you know, equality for for Reddit and it's its employees,
its customers. I think Reddit wouldn't have got to this place had it not been for those those you know, very loyal users who have stuck behind it for in this past three years, because a lot of them have been waiting for this moment. Some of them may not agree that, you know, the part of the public is the right one, but you know, this is a this
is a transition for the company. This is something that are looking to move past and sort of get behind because there's a whole lot of stuff to be done as a public company after trading, which is expected to be next week.
Well said, and we have had glimmers of like within the IPO space.
More broadly, Amma Sports came out.
We also know that there's a a key AI name that's backed by Intel that's looking at the market's Astera Labs.
More broadly.
If this does go well, do we think more technology names will follow behind Caroline?
For sure?
Not least because I think this mint, this window that we're in now, this March window has been one that there's been so much written about and so much said about it. Reddit is really a bell weather. It's going to be a very significant bell weather for names like Rubric, for names like tu Ro, waste Star. A lot of the sponsor backed tech names you mentioned Asterra Labs that is feeding directly into the sort of AI chips Frenzy.
There's another name, Cerebra Solutions, that you know we have also covered.
You know, that's all said.
You know, there is a huge backlog of tech names that are really look we know with eyes on today, tomorrow into next week, not least to see how the book builds, because you know, we should get a sense into Wednesday, Thirsty if this week as to how the book is building. Early next week we should get an indication as to you know, how firm the demand is across the price range, and I think you know that will feed directly into the momentum that follow All.
Eyes are some of those lead banks Morgus, Stanley, Goldman, JP, Morgan, Bank of America ED.
Yeah.
We'll also point out for the Officionada or the redditor out there that on Wall Street Bets forum, thousands up voted a post that was calling for Reddit stock to be shorted on the day it starts trading, and that sums up the relationship between its userbase and management of that company. The most wryanguld terrific reporting. Now coming up here on the show, we'll sit down with Aphelias Snyder of twenty one shares as bitcoin hits a new record
seventy two thousand US dollars per token. In fact, above that carrot.
Yeah, let's just focus in on another publicly traded stock, obviously global stock, Taiwanese Semiconductor so TSMC. We're off by well, it had been off by some three percent throughout US trading and indeed in its own trading, but the fact that we've now seen eclipse from an overall market capitalization perspective, broadcom means it is back in the top ten head of the most valuable companies in the world, so they managed to push on higher broadcon This is all, of course,
still a bet on artificial intelligence. This is blomebag technology. Bitcoin just still on its tear, surging to a new record seventy two thousand dollars per token today and in fact digital assets have scored another win. It would feel like more globally speaking alone the London Stock Exchange so it will soon accept applications for ETNS exchange traded notes backed.
By bitcoin or Ether.
Let's join now, twenty one Shares co founder president Aphelia Snyder. Twenty one Shares is the world's largest issue of crypto exchange traded products. Already got your presence here in the US and in Europe. So I can imagine with the LS starting to eyes these things while you're looking at how you.
Start to cross those t's dot those eyes.
Yes, absolutely so, I think this has been quite a while coming, and we're quite excited that the UK is now looking to allow these listings to mester. It should be quite a important change for the European market.
What's interesting though, there's still reticence from the UK market on allowing retail ultimately to be having access to such overall assets that are traded in this way. What is the difference that you're seeing between US, between Europe and potentially between the UK as to whether this is really institutional money they want to bring in or still allow easier access for a retail investor.
So we've seen a pretty broad mix.
Europe has for a long time, including Switzerland, allowed both retail and institutional investors, and that's been our bread and butter, has been really catering to both for the last five years as we've brought these products to market. I think what we're seeing in the US it's a little bit different. It's still quite early for big institutions in the US.
Mostly they require typically ninety days to assess products and due diligence to allow listings on wirehouses, so that has barely begun and it's a little bit earlier in its adoption cycle. I think you'll see something similar in the UK over time, that we'll see a little bit more retail participation, but it's early days still for that market.
I feel I really appreciated Caroline's question because I feel like we're still trying to understand both kind of what short term and long term drivers are at play with bitcoin in particular. Right, I always look at the chart over the weekend because Sunday rolls around, it trades twenty four to seven, and there always seems to be this kind of like start the week with momentum trade on bitcoin? What do you think has happened in just the four last four or five days alone?
So I think you're seeing and this is not just the last four or five days, but I think the last four or five days are a big part of this narrative is we're seeing institutional adoption in the US.
It's quite early still because obviously not all of the wirehouses, not all institutions have access to it, but you're actually beginning to see those types of investors come online, and that's changing bitcoin's market structure and biasing it towards weekday trading in a way that hasn't historically always been the case when this was a more retail dominated market and a market that quite frankly had a lot of focus
on Asian market hours. You're seeing that come more towards the US from a trading volume perspective, and it's largely being driven by ETF flows, which are trading on US hours and trading.
Is going to ask you, well, I was going to ask you, you know, what are the data sets that you look at each day beyond just the spot price at any given moment.
So actually I don't spend much time looking at this spot price at any given moment. I am typically more interested in in fundamentals and what's happening from an on chain metrics perspective, and what's happening within the blockchain community and the blockchain ecosystems. The reason for that is that it's quite sometimes challenging to see signal to noise purely in price action, whereas on chain metrics are a bit more sophisticated in that way and tell you more about
what's actually happening within the blockchain. And so that's actually the basis of one of the products that we operate in the US is actually turning productizing those types of metrics into an ETF. But those are typically the things that I look at.
What's been so interesting, of course, is the Bitcoin exuberance. Yes, it's solidified it in terms of the dominant player, but still all boats seem to have lifted to a certain degree. I mean, we're starting to talk about mean coins and some of them affiliated with politics, others I mean dog withif hat for whatever reason, just catching the memes slitgeist. But you also offer there's other products out there that you have and you have exposure to the likes of Tazels.
I'm looking at what you've got Avalanche, UNISWAP.
How are you seeing real desire to be going outside bitcoin and eth.
So we've seen obviously a lot of concentrated desire in bitcoin at the moment because of the arrival of the USCTFS. We'll see if that dynamic also spreads to eth as this regulatory process in the US moves forward. I think beyond sort of those top two names, we've actually seen quite an uptake in demand, including from titutional investors, in that longer tail, and we're quite a unique firm in that capacity. We're really the only people who offer that
broad of a suite. It's about forty products outside of the US, covering all sorts of different assets, and what we've seen is an interest in that longer tail being driven by some of our largest clients who are now looking at blockchain applications and adoption of blockchain applications in
a very different light. I think you know a key name, there would be something like Solana, where we've seen enormous amount of interest over the last several months, and that's continued as I think the overhang from some of the black Swan events has dissipated and the bankrupcy estates have come undone, and you're starting to look at those on chain metrics that I just mentioned, and you're seeing that actually there's some interesting things happening within those communities and
within these ecosystems that may or may not be priced in at this point.
The institutional clients, I'm assuming looking for not just a store of value but a utility here, I mean the main points of the opposite of that it is just about sort of greed for greed's sake, and that not always being a bad thing, but or of a speculation trade. But institutions want to see what, how is this changing dynamics?
Exactly?
How's it changing dynamics? What are people using them for? Why are they using them?
What do you know?
What do these blockchains offer and what do these applications offer in terms of actual utility. I think that's actually a very big shift versus prior market cycles, and it's coming partially from that institutionalization. I think it's going to ultimately be very positive for the space.
Every time I post on social media about a fresh bitcoin high, there's this one bench Cassis who replies almost every single time, going, I like this stock referencing.
You know exactly what it's referencing.
The one thing that the balls and bears agree on is that bitcoin and other crypto currencies or tokens are likely to go up before having a significant pullback, or have a pullback now but later rise. What's your kind of big picture outlook. Do you have a kind of one year bitcoin call, and what is it based on?
So I think a lot of that discussion around a potential pull back in the market centers around the having the point in time at which the rewards to blockchain minor through bitcoin minors actually reduces by fifty percent. The reason people are assuming this is because there's an assumption that that dynamic is priced in in some way, and so there'll be some overbought dynamics. I think this is a little bit different than what is currently being discussed.
Quite frankly, I think that's a little bit overblown.
That the size and impact of the HAVING relative to the size of institutional flows is so asymmetric, I'm not sure it will create as much of a you know, the sell off event as I think has been predicted, primarily due to just this is not as impactful of an event from a purely numerical order book standpoint as it would have been in previous market cycles. I think as I look longer term, I see quite a bit
of upside. There are the HAVING, while it can introduce some short term turbulence, does further restrict the supply side of this market. That ultimately, as long as demand continues, should be a positive indicator for price action.
That will take a little bit of time.
I think you'll as long as you continue to see increased institutional adoption and demand for these for the USATFS, for the Europe and ETFs more broadly from the international investor community, I think that's where you're going to see price continue continue to come up. And it's something that I'm quite bullish looking towards this year.
For Philias Schneider, we thank you for twenty one shares.
Okay, let's talk robotics.
Kavarians, a seven year old AI robotics company that works with retailers and logistics providers across apparel, health and beauty pharmaceuticals as well, has announced a new robotics foundation model r FM, one that will give robots a human like ability to reason with that a deeper understanding of language and the physical world. Delighted to bring in Covariant co founder and CEO Peter Chen, We talk increasingly about humanoid robots robotics broadly.
On this program. You are working on the.
Software side, not the hardware side. Correct, just explain the approach of covarian.
So what coverience building is really the debut of robotics.
So think about it.
As the general purpose brain that can sit behind any robotics hardware that gives it the ability to see the world, think about what's happening around it, and make decisions intelligently. And this is a big contrast with traditional robotics, which is really programming robots to do the same thing again and again, which just doesn't cut it in today's warehouse environment manufacturing environments where you have constant changes that are
coming in. And the unique Covariant approach is we don't just build a single specific AI that can solve one task. We're really approaching it in a similar manner that for example, like large language model is approaching chatbub other language right occasions, it's a single model powering multiple use cases.
But here's the thing that you don't control the hardware side. Right you take Tesla as a comparison. I don't know your thoughts on the Optimist program, but they are developing both the hardware and the software.
They obviously have Dojo that they're working on in house.
What are the risks and benefits of just focusing on software if you're not too also doing purpose built hardware to match it.
Yeah, So, first of all, on Optimus, we think it's an amazing robotics program, Like it's a really great humanoid hardware that is being build with being iterated very quickly. From a converient perspective, we believe there's not a single hardware form factor that would rule robotics to come because the physical world is very diverse, Like there's not going to be a single software, a single hardware the rules
it all. And we believe there are going to be multiple kinds of robot hardware, some in the humanoid form factors, some in the industrial form factors, some with maybe mobile robot with a manipulator on top of it, and all of these different hardware form factors still need to make sense of the same physical world and covariance building exactly that the same brain that can power multiple kinds of hardware to make sense of the physical world.
So Peter, talk to us about the inputs here, how hard What are the intricacies you need to go about building? What is the largest data set ever to train this new robotics foundation model.
That's an amazing question. So we have seen the explosive success of Large Language Model, and what is really behind its amazing generalization power is the fact that it's trained on the whole Internet of text. And if you want to build a robot AI that is as smart as, for example, Large Language model, but in the physical world, you also need to build the same kind of data set,
but there's no Internet to scrape in this case. So you need to deploy a large fleet of robots into the world doing diverse and dynamic things and collecting the video data, images, data, robot actions and the outcome of those robot actions in order to really train a model that understand the world. In all kinds of settings and be robust even in the weare long tail scenarios and truly deliver a human level performance to our customers.
And the reason you've been able to get such a wide varied underlying data settus because the amount of countries you're in, the amount of companies.
You're already working with.
Can you just give us an idea of whether this model is already being applied, How are we started to see it in our everyday lives.
Yeah, so we have already deployed the coherent AI to more than dozens of customers in more than ten countries, and they are powering the warehouse operations, the e commers for femal operations in a lot of places. So very likely if you have ordered an item, for example, during Black Friday, there's a really good chance that that item has been touched by one of the coverance robots that's operating around.
The world piece very quickly have ten seconds. Your favorite use case for the robotics you're working on.
My favorite use case for the new Robotics Foundation model IFM one is really the ability to talk to it instead of robots that are just rigidly doing the same thing again and again. We now have the ability to communicate with robots in natural language, very similar to how you will talk to chachipt or Gemini in natural language and ask the questions. Really democratizing access to AI for
a lot of people. We're really doing the same with robotics with IFM one Bavariant co founder and CEO Peter Chen. Great to have you here on set.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology, Ed Lovelow here in San Francisco, Taran.
Hyde right here in New York, getting you a check on your markets because well we are eyeing PLINNY and macro data to start this week, We're going to be looking at what PPI CPI basically the inflation imprints bring us and the direction of travel. Is it a shock once again to the overall system when we think about inflatory pressure still having to be dialed up against. I'm looking at the NASDAK just off about six tenths of
a percent. We're only off about a ten percent to start the show, so accelerating some of the losses.
Want to looking at the big boyard than as that one hundred.
I'm looking what's happening in the two year yield space as well, actually yields pushing up higher as we anticipate perhaps a little bit more stress coming from inflationary pressures later in the week, so yields up some five basis points. Let's call it bitcoin though, just managing to separate itself as an asset class today we're not looking at t tech more broadly.
As a spillover effect.
In fact, it's going its own path and we're up another four point three percent seventy two thousand, a level never seen before with bitcoin. Move on to see what are the individual stocks that are on the move today, and I want to be focusing in what has been happening When the diner and is leading the charge when it comes to the NASA one hundred, why well, maybe it's going to be able to find its application of
its technology. It's biotechnology throughout into the skin cancer space, and that's something that they're going to be teaming up with work on. We're up eight point eight pro up more than ten percent at one point. I'm also looking what's happening with PDDs and the Chinese names managing to get the lifting. In fact, some notes coming from analysts saying, look,
the geopolitical risk is overdone for this particular name. They still like TIMU entering the overall US market, and I think it's going to do well.
We're up some three percent.
Lastly, though, meta on the downside, ed, you pointed to this out to start the show off by more than four percent. No real fundamental catalyst other than well, of course, former President Trump on CNBC earlier today, really talking once again reiterating what he says on truth Social that he feels any ban of TikTok would actually be a negative because it would empower embolden the likes of Facebook.
Whichess Cone's owned Facebook Instagram.
So the meta parent of course on the downside, and the back of that potentially today, ed.
What have you got?
Yeah?
A year ago today, fear was spreading in the technology and startup community following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and it was swift.
In a matter of a few days.
SVB went from plans for an emergency sale of its stock to v season startups pulling their money out, to US regulators taking control.
For a while, it even looked like the.
Contagion could spread throughout the US banking system. Now, just a year on where do we stand. I want to bring in Coastal Adventures founder Vinode Coaster.
Good morning to you.
I wanted you to come on the program in part because you were one of the first vcs to look at what was happening and offer to make personal loans to the founders of the startups in your portfolio.
But you're also a.
Silicon Valley veteran and had a close association with Silicon Valley Bank by virtue of doing business today. What was the net result of all.
Of that, Well, the next result has been minimal. To be honest, people have moved on, They have other banking sources. Some of the people involved in Silicon Valley Bank are still alone working father firms. So are they entities and lifeguards on the valley? Has adjusted?
You noted there there were other sources of banking, you know, it brought names like Mercury, some what I would call native lending or transaction services to the fore. But if there was a lesson learned, it was the high concentration at SVV. Right if you were, as I say, an early stage startup, you had your banking there. You probably had some debt there as well, or lending and it was often the first place you could get a check. Is that concentration risk still there?
You know, the risk with Silicon Valley Bank had nothing to do with Silicon Valley in startups. It had to be do with interest rates speculation, which the bank did. So I want to separate irresponsible actions on their part on the interest rate side from what the business was. I think the business was a solid business in most of it has continued in the same way. I don't
think it has changed dramatically. The alternative banks, Mercury and others came up, but there's other banks that still the principal banks for startups in the valley.
I don't know if there's.
As much concentration, but you know, we don't worry about that too much.
Know.
What's been interesting is perhaps there was a moment of realization in a time of a crisis.
Who could you depend on?
There is so much fierce competition to get in money to the right startup.
Yes, that competition.
Perhaps stayed a little bit as the economy turned direction, But more broadly, has it brought.
You more business?
Do you think by the fact that you were able to stick your neck out early and say I'm here and I've got your back.
Well, that was what was most disappointing about the venture community for me. I called a number of other leading venture capital firms and said, we should all support our companies. It's a temporary crisis, a couple of weeks maybe, but I didn't get a lot of support. So we had to unilaterally go out and say for our portfolio companies where we were major investors or lead investors.
We would support all of them.
I think every firm should have done that, because venture likes to talk about how they helped their portfolio companies. But when the going got tough, most people didn't stand up to that scrutiny.
But now does it stops you going in to rounds with other players?
No, it hasn't.
You know, we continue to work with the same players, but to be honest, we don't rely as much on other players to add value to investors when the going gets rough.
It's cool because this has been by technology, right. We're also looking at this from the point of view if the startups themselves. It was a discussion about access to working capital. The great environment was part of the risk on the bank side. But today, do you think that there is a stronger access to working capital for startups of all sizes.
You know, access capital depends on the area you're in. If you're in AI, you have lots of access to capital. If you're not, it is somewhat harder because many of the funds aren't doing as well because they're to mark the twenty twenty one and twenty twenty high prices down. But it hasn't changed the reality the robust the senior is still very robust. Bought in AI obviously, but also
in other areas. I find the venture community is investing, but the startups are even more exciting and more impactful.
I think we should have a conversation about our official intelligence COASLA Ventures founder Vinode Cosler. You're going to stick with us and we'll continue the conversation. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. This is Bloomberg Technology. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Still with us is Vinokosler, Silicon Valley veteran and one of the first
investors to write a check into Open AI. The AI starts up continues to be in the headlines, but most recently that's due to a lawsuit FI by Elon Musk, who has accused open ai of breach of contract and failing in its fiduciary duty to its founding members because it no longer operates as a not for profit or pursues its original goal of building quote beneficial, artificial and general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
Vinode, you took to x in.
A threaded series of posts to basically say you.
Think Elon Musk is wrong. What is your thesis on why Elon Musk is wrong.
Well, it's very clear Elon Musk wanted OpenAI to go aggressively but grinneg Gunner's commitment to put up to a billion dollars.
You're referencing there what the general public learned through as being emails that were redacted that open ai chose to post to its website, and in one of them, even though the names are redacted, Elon Musk forwards a memo which suggests that the scale of funding needs to be in the billions. But also that, and I'm quoting as correctly as I can open ai attach itself to Tesla.
Well, I'm referring to the fact that before that happened, he wanted open ai to move aggressively and raise up to a billion dollars and he would commit to making up anything they couldn't raise from other sources, since at that point it was a nonprofit. That's when we realized from the emails that he pivoted to wanting it to be a subsidiary of Tesla. Tesla was driving, was developing
self driving technology for their cars. It was part of the AI push, and he chose to try and take control, which didn't quite work for him, and that was the source of the conflict.
What's so interesting is, of course, in many ways go to the heart of the case, whether or not there's the legal grounding in it, there is this interesting pivot that ultimately open AI had to make. You are so articulately put in one of our articles on bubag saying like this was about survival. No longer feasible to have an open source model. You spend ten million dollars of R and D on and then hand it to everybody else.
The economics don't make sense. Are you in any way having pause though about the closeness of open AI now with Microsoft?
Does any of that consider.
Any time in your head about a worry for you?
I am not worried at all about the Microsoft relationship. It's a minority relationship. They don't own a majority, and its structured such that both firms benefit. The larger sources of AI in the world are Google of course has great AI technology, of course, and we have it in Baydoo in China. Also, my original reason to asked was there needed to be a source outside of China to
help compete with China in this important technology. But I'm not worried about Microsoft's control, and i think the rumors and speculation about it is just plain false.
What's so interesting is we talk of you as a veteran adventure you are one of the most highly respected people in this space.
The fact that you open sources.
Sort of an area that you help spawn within some microsystems.
I'm interested.
You know, did you ever anticipate that you'd be drawn into basically meme arguments with the most wealthy at one point man in the world.
How do you feel about having to take to X in this way.
Well, you know, it's not about the argument with Elan.
The argument is really.
About our competition, our techno economic war with China, which I've talked about before. And if you have powerful technology, we shouldn't be open sourcing it and giving it to China. In other bad nation states Russia, North Korea among them, and they're benefiting a lot from the state of art open source. I'm still a big fan of open source in almost all other areas, including other areas of AI which are not state of art technology.
You may have seen on X this morning or even I Elon Musk posted to his account that this week GROC would be open sourced. Do you have an interpretation of what must meant by that, and based on what you just said, you'd be supportive of that.
Well, I saw the tweet. I'm flying with it. I don't think GROC is state of art, but I haven't personally evaluated it, and it will get better. It's started only recently. But if it's state of art technology, I think we should control the export of that technology as closely as we control nuclear technology or other national security technologies.
To be clear, it's not.
Just about national security with China, it's beyond that. It's political power coming from economic power globally because of how powerful this technology is.
I actually wanted to go back, and I probably should have asked this at the beginning, but we always say, well, you were one of the first people's write check into open ai and you have a really long standing relationship with what is an evolving business. Right it just explains to our audience what your relationship with open ai is. How involved you are or not day to day.
Well, we are very early in basses. I'm not day to day involved in every decision. I am very I was very curious to see this independent committee report, which, by the way, Sam insisted on at the time the board was being reconstituted. It completely cleared Sam of any wrongdoing. Beyond that, it really went on to say Sam did a great job in many of the functions a CEO is supposed to do, and blame the board for acting hastily.
I do believe the board was irresponsible in the way it acted before last Thanksgiving, and I'm glad the report clarified all that and validated all that in an independent sort of way.
You know, let's look at the new board announced on Friday, and there's more diversity in terms of more women. One of them actually, of course, the CEO of one of your portfolio companies, Fijisimo. I'm interested whether you think ultimately there is now enough diversity from a racial perspective.
What we make of this board being announced, Well.
I think those are all accomplished people.
I wouldn't call them just women.
I think they accomplished and very qualified to be on the board and add a lot. They've done very different kinds of businesses. There is some nonprofit experience, and I think think the goal of open ai to benefit humanity hasn't changed. In fact, one't the reasons Sam worked with us because he realized we had a strong focus on large positive impact in all the work we did and I focus on and so I don't think the goal
of open ai has changed from benefiting humanity. It needed a for profit arm and that structure is pretty common globally where for nonprofits own all or part of a for profit ikea being, Bosh being examples, Tarta in India, Mozilla in the US, so many many entities. So you know, my view is the goals haven't changed. The board has experienced in both for profit and not profit not for profit and that's a great things to say.
Mozilla Foundation Pando has been saying maybe Sam has lost his way in that respect of a for profit and not profit and ultimately the mission is to best way to carefully.
Steward AGI into existence.
Is a gradual transition to a world with AGI is a better one than a sudden one. It's so interesting you reference China a lot being the concern that you have about open sourcing, open ais overall technology, because I was sat with Kaifule a few weeks ago, and he now feels as someone who is building over.
In China more. He's really worried.
About the speed of AGI, the progress that we're making. More general, he doesn't think that the pace of change is controllable at the moment.
What do you make of that, Well, technology develops at the pace it develops. We can't predict breakthroughs in technology ahead of time. It has happened faster, and we should be more cautious. Absolutely, security research should be part of what every university in every government funds.
So I'm a big fan of that.
But I don't think we need to slow down ADI development or AI. I think we are far from it. We're making rapid progress and so I think that's a good thing. I think it will really really benefit humanity. I've talked a lot about it. I'm a big fan of not slowing it down.
Okay, let's try.
To move this moment forward. Elon Musk is an incredibly influential person. He has a history of litigation in many of the fields in which he's operated. If you could give one message to him. I know it was a threaded series of messages and we're showing some of them now, But what is it that you want out of this situation?
Well, I want to.
Remind him that when Blue Origin Jaffezo sued SpaceX, he tweeted. Elan tweeted, you can't sue your way into space. I want to remind him he can't sue his way into ADI. He can do hire great people, and he is hiring great people and building technology, which is the right way to compete.
Well, I'll try and get that message to youl On Musk, and our audience should know. We of course have invited Elon Musk on the program, but we are grateful that Coasler Ventures founder Vino Costler joined us here on set in San Francisco and explained what's been busy weekend for him on.
Social media as well.
Time for Talking Tech and first up, Apple is preparing to open its eighth store in Shanghai. This month, adding to the Tech Titans largest retail network after the United States, as iPhone sales in China are slowing.
The new store will.
Be located in the center of the city, which already hosts the largest number of Apple stores in China's main land, and TikTok's Chinese owners would be forced to sell the social media platform under a bill the House plans to vote on this week. If the bill advances through both sides of Congress, President Joe Biden said he sign his strongest show of support yet for the proposal, according to Ballionbos reporting, Plus, the US could further tighten controls on
China's access to sophisticated semiconductor technologies. Commerce Secretary Guinia Ramanda giving us that signal.
Washington may also.
Intensify its campaign to prevent Beijing catching up in military capabilities. She's sold reporters in Manila, quote, we will do whatever it takes to protect our people, including expanding our controls.
Cara.
Meanwhile, let's going viral ed Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Pictures, Ars and Science has held its ninety sixth annual OSCAR
ceremony for Oppenheimer. Absolutely cleaned up the biographical film about the inventor of the atomic bomb, which often people start to associate with, well, ultimately, where we are in AI right now and picked up seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Christopher Nonan and instantly those streamers that posted a pretty lackluster showing, We've got to talk about the fact that Netflix walked away with just one award,
Apple receiving none. I mean, what happened to It had so many potentials to win and didn't manage to walk away with anything.
So many podcasts that I listened to would would say, well, Maestro is going to take a lot of these They didn't.
I just go back to basics, right, it's no price.
You wake up Monday morning and on Google Trends or x or even LinkedIn. Everyone is arguing about that point, right Oppenheimer versus Maestro.
And Barbie doesn't even get to look in though.
Of course that was the big win from a monetary perspective, but it was back to those universal pictures perspectives.
It was back to.
Disney managing to conam and turn out the goods. I mean, congratulations, where it'st you. It certainly felt like I'm quite alive event. I'm pretty sure it probably got the most views that we've had in several years.
And if we do a deeper post more than going forward this year, I would just say Apple TV?
Where was you?
Know?
Same we always say what about Netflix? Were Apple as well? It's kind of the old guard that.
Did well and Ryan Gosling singing his heart out. That does it for this edition of Anemo Technology.
Please recap the show on the podcast. It was a pretty deep, long conversation where we've been Od Koestler. The pod is on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, and of course we post it to the Bloomberg platforms as well. One day into what's going to be a very big week from San Francisco and New York City.
This is Bloomberg Technology.