From Bahard where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Luod Love.
I'm Caroline Heide of Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York, and I'm Met Ludlow in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up. We'll give you the key takeaways from Apple's scary fast unveil, which featured new chips, laptops, so much more.
Plus we'll speak to an AI advisor to the White House as President Biden takes the most significant step to date in regulating artificial intelligence technology.
Meanwhile, in Vidia, it dips below one trillion dollars today as concerns linger over US curbs on China and how that may impact billions of dollars of existing orders. We'll have that and so much more, but first let's just check on on these marks. It is the end of
the month. We all know there's plenty of candy being eyed for the day, but it is the end of October and it was down, down, down, if you see for the Really the Nasdaq currently off by some three point three percent end the month, but it's the third straight months of losses as we see for some of the key big benchmarks across the US at the moment ed and that as we worry about earnings, we worry
about of course geopolitics as well. This is the worst therefore three month loss set of three months or so that we've seen since back in what June twenty twenty two. Overall, though this isn't as bad as September was. That's moving on to some of the other benchmarks that we're keeping
an eye on. I'm looking the Nasdaq one hundred on the day basically flat, which is pushing off of those loads for the day, but the tenure yield is coming down a little bit, so we've got a little bit of buying head of the all important FED meeting that comes tomorrow, and of course how much the Treasury Department will actually be issuing a new debt. We've got a little bit of a bid, but we're seeing the dollar
having a big bid against the Japanese end. This is the key macro story of the day, really, the fact that the back of Japan with Japan was not going to be changing any of those yield curve controls, but into the micro particularly the tech focus micro ed Yeah.
And earnings is still a story.
Pinterest a real surprise up more than eighteen percent, on track for its biggest jump since August of twenty twenty two. Top and bottom line beat, but a record monthly active user base. We will get a key analyst conversation later in the show on that name. Tesla's moving to the upside modestly four tens and one percent, but it's kind of rebounding from this slump since October eighteenth, and earnings
where it's down more than twenty percent. There's a lot of concern about interest rates and how that's impacting EV demand. We will have that conversation later in the program. And on Semi we had the CEO on the show twenty four hours ago, a tepid forecast for the fourth quarter, a mystery OEM customer they wouldn't name that dragged down results and the stock a second day of pressure.
There.
The key name that we're looking keeping it real this Halloween is Apple.
They're scary fast event.
We got what we expected because of Bloomberg's Mark German in his reporting. And I'm at a trio of Matt book pros and the first volume may curve PCs with a three nanometer processor, the M three, M three Pro and M three Max chip.
What does this mean?
Does it put the mac back on track? We're joining us now is Carolina Milianacy Creative Strategies, President and principle, And listen, you just heard me Carolina. Does this put the MacBook back on track?
I think it certainly puts Mac and ARM back on track. I think coming out of the snap Dragon qualcom event last week and seeing what they're able to do with their platform and now having Apple with the N three clearly puts the ARM architecture as a whole in a much better place compared to Intel an X eighty six. So I think that's what we're looking at, the excitement around what this opportunity brings to the PC market.
What did you make at the price points?
Krolena, It was very interesting to see that the entry level MacBook Pro was dropped in price visits. The one that, together with the Mac Bugere as being the volume maker and one that now at a lower price of one five ninety nine starting point is going to really worry
the pcoems. You know the power that Apple has to convince people that now that they own every from the silicon to the harder to the software, and Tim Cook pointed to that in the event yesterday, is really reassuring customers that basically they're buying something that is in full control of Apple and not like before at the mercy of the Intel silicon, it.
Really was Apple silicon that was a selling point here, Carolina, is that enough to drive significant well desire to be buying in particularly as we had towards the holidays, You think.
Well, I think if the silicon doesn't convince you, the black collar will was a lot of assignment on the black color for the higher end s Q of the book pro and I think that where Apple is pointing is really upgrading current Intel based Mac owners and then m one owners to really get into the newest and
fastest of their silicon product based. But you know, from a holiday perspective, we are still in a tough economic environment and that needs to be reconciled with We're looking at also enterprise, not only consumers for Apple though, and so there's definitely more opportunity there as we get into the new year.
By the way, Caroline and Carolina, the entire event, according to a blog post that Apple posted six minutes ago, was shot on an i phone fifteen Promax the entire thing, and it was edited on Max, So they're trying to
flex their product line across the board. What I think is interesting, Carolina, is how they compare the performance of M three and there's kind of an arc, right, M three, M three Pro, M three Max relative to M one, but also Intel, right, the top tier MacBook Pro they said was eleven times faster than the most powerful Intel Power PC.
So who are they going after here?
Right?
Are they going after just the high end PC market Intel, you know, users that want an upgrade, or are they just trying to keep refreshing those existing install base of Apple devices.
Both is really trying to capture market share in the higher end of a PC market, getting as many people as possible off of Intel so they can experience the higher seamless workflows that comes from owning all the pieces of the equation and continue to vent upgrade from there. I do think that, as you said, there's a lot of flex there on. They had actually footnotes at the end of the event about being shot on iPhone and editor on Max, so they are really talking to creators.
By the same time, without ever mentioning jen Ai. They were talking to AI developers two very high demanding workflows, so there's definitely an attention there to where the conversation is today.
Carolyn E.
MILNECI of Creative Strategies. Great to catch up here on Bloomberg Technology.
Thank you.
Another Apple story that we've been tracking, the company could be forced to scale back its app store fees for developers after one of the EU's antitrust watchdogs said its commissions violate the block's rules. The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Market's ruled that Apple's commission on certain app subscriptions are an abuse of the company's market power.
Caroc ongoing with the Dutch agency. Meanwhile, let's talk about pinterest shares absolutely rallying today after reporting sales that men expectations and mid of course, a push by the company to make the platform basically a more shoppable. Tom Forte da Davison, senior research analyst is with us and I mean, boy, you had a by rating you reierated. This is the best day for the stock since three years ago.
Tom, Yeah, they'd certainly delivered the treats that Pinterest Halloween. So what you're seeing is the company's making it easier for advertisers to prove that they're able to get conversion or sales off of their platform. This is having a huge positive impact to their revenue. You're seeing accelerating revenue top line growth, and at the same time, like other big tech companies, they have very much you know, belt
tightening going on managing expenses. So the combination of accelerating revenue growth with belt tightening is tremendous revenue and tremendous earnings.
What was interesting Tom was monthly active uses hit a record, or another way of looking at it is they eclipse their pandemic peage. What was the more important metric for you that monthly active use number or the fineinantals where they beat top and bottom line.
What's very important on the monthly active users is they're generating gen Z interest. So when you think about having more engagement than they had in the early stages of the pandemic, that's wonderful. How are they able to do
it so they stop trying to be TikTok. You've seen meta platforms and others basically come up with metso products to stay on parity with TikTok and they leaned into what made pinterest unique and what made pinterest special, and that's driven use in gen Z and it's had a halo effect to the extent that the gen z's posting content that other generations are liking as well. So very impressive engagement growth for Pinterest.
Tom help us out with this one.
The CFO is saying that the investments they've made are increasing shopability.
What is that? What does that mean?
The simple way to think about it is they have a third party advertising initiative with Amazon. So let's say you went to pinterest in the search for a green dress. Among the many pictures you would see would be items from Amazon. You could then click on those items and buy those items.
So think about it.
In the past, you would see wonderful pictures on Pinterest, but it wasn't always easy. Not easy to buy the sofa, not easy to buy the apparel. They made it a lot easier. That's improved the shoppability of Pinterest.
I mean, that's really what Bill Ready has been saying since it's come aboard a little over a year ago. It's about people come to Pinterest with intent. So clearly advertiser seeing that for now, Tom Forte. Great to have some time with you, Thank you, Da Davison.
Then one thing is clear. To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology. We face a genuine inflection point in history, one of those moments where the decisions we make in the very near term are going to set the course for the next decade.
President Biden there after signing an Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence, the most significant step to date in regulating the technology. Joining us for more on all of this is doctor Joey Bolowini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and author of Unmasking AI. My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines is published today. Congratulations spending some time with us as well. It's great to have you here. Equitable and Accountable AI, that's all about what
your Algorithmic Justice League is about. Does this EO get us there in some way? Absolutely?
I will actually say this is a commendable step forward. And part of this is because the EO that's been issued includes teeth when it comes to government agencies using AI. So once you're tying federal dollars too, who can procure particular systems? Then we're actually starting to see something that's going to compel change. So I am excited to see the civil rights peace within this EO.
It's interesting you talk about teeth and there's sort of the carrot teeth situation the US is using. There's the teeth of finds. The EUAI Act has been talking about. Everyone wants in on this pile of regulation or talking about it. We've got the UKI Summit about to happen. One of the critiques of that AI Summit is there's not enough actual people from civil society at that summit. How much do you think the US and lawmakers are engaging with civil society on this.
I think that is a fair critique. I am glad to share that a member of the Algorithmic Justice League will be there, But when we look at the overall roster, we don't want the tech companies writing the regulations, and so I certainly think there's more work to be done, and I also do think it's a good step forward to have the AI Safety Summit at this time.
Doctor Joy.
The main mechanism or tool that the Executive Order puts in place is big technology companies having to hand over an LLM or foundation model for safety review before it is released to the wider public. Just explain how you think that will work as a safeguard as we develop next generations of large language models.
I think it could go one of two ways. If you actually have the companies themselves setting what the safety measures are and what the safety test will be, will have a situation of grading your own homework, which I don't necessarily think is going to get us where we want to go. If it is a situation where you actually have third parties that are establishing what the standards are and the guidelines are, then I think you actually have a situation where the companies will have to meet
specific regulations that they themselves are not setting. So it remains to be seen. I am cautiously optimistic, but companies cannot be grading their own homework and then.
Turning in, Sorry to interrupt you.
The executive order kind of gives power to the agencies. Twenty four hours ago, we had doctor faith A Lee of Stanford on the show, and she basically said, I want to see a more even distribution of funding and control across academia, industry, and the public sector. Where do you stand on that balance of who is working on AI and who has the power to regulate it.
I think I would give more power to the government and then to companies. But I do think it's commendable to see increased AI capacity for academics. As we know, a lot of the compute power and a lot of the data access does go mainly to the large tech company, so it does make it difficult for researchers and outsiders to even have a sense of how to assess the risk if you don't have that access. So that's a good step forward.
Your whole Mighty thesis methodology basically showed the level of bias whether it comes racial agenda within sort of AI services from certain companies in the US. You are going out on your book tour and talking to some of the most notable names in technology, some Lpment for example being one of them. How much they wanted to engage with you. How much have they been trying to well improve their homework before turning it in and having someone else market I think it's a mixed bag.
I will say for Open AI, they have reached out to the Algorithmic Justice League multiple times and when they had their bug bounty program to try to look at AI vulnerabilities, they mention one of our white papers and so forth. So I think there is a good faith effort to reach out, but I certainly don't think it's enough, and we certainly have different views. For example, how do
you credit and compensate artist? I do think many companies have gotten a free pass on building llms with data that's been collected without consent and without compensation yourself.
Being an artist, a poet, not only just researcher and policy guidance is important. Rate the media for a minute, because I think there is this desire sometimes to go for the biggest headline, which often is you know, terminator style, AI is going to end us all. But much of the criticism has been in the here and the now. We need to tackle the bias in the real data
the application. Where we are today, are we managing to move away from hyperboley and get to actually what really is the risk when it comes to AI?
It depends on the outlet, right, and so I commend news outlets that actually bring in voices like the Algorithmic Justice League CDT and others. So we're getting a different perspective. But I still think there is a lot of fear mongering and numerism, and that's one of the concerns I have even with the framing of the AI Safety Summit, and so I certainly want to make sure we are
focused on immediate and emerging harms. It's not to say we don't want to be forward looking, but we don't want to be so distracted that we don't attend to the thing things we already know how to address.
Doctor Joy bolh and Weeni, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. Great to have you here on Bloomberg Technology. Thank you so much. Now coming up on the program in video. Shares taking a hit today on reports they may have to cancel billions of dollars worth of advanced chip sales to China. More on how those new US export rules are putting the company in a state of limbo. The stockdown about one percent, more than two percent in the session.
This is Bloomberg Technology. Okay, it's time for talking tech and first up, Vodaphone is agreeing to sell its Spanish unit to Zagonda Communications. The deal is said to be valued at roughly five point three billion dollars including debt. The European Commission is currently examining that deal, which would shift the telecommunications and open the door to more consolidation across Europe.
And Bunge, the Sony owned game studio behind the popular Destiny Too franchise, has let go of an undisclosed number of its workforce. This comes after Bungee delayed the upcoming expansion of Destiny to, pushing it out of Sony's current fiscal year. The move is part of a wider restructuring at the company and reflects a recent bout of layoffs across the gaming industry. Plus, Samsung is seeing encouraging signs of recovery in the chips market after reporting profit for
the third quarter, which was well ahead of estimates. The South Korean giant raked in more than four billion dollars of net income in the September quarter, more than double what was expected. Executives say that artificial intelligence is driving demand and it plans increased spending on advanced chip making.
Caroline, Meanwhile, let's look at the fresh US curbs on the advanced chip making that's going on to China. They're presenting a new risk to in video. We understand now a deep and dim in the shares that you've currently see to push the market value just below that one trillion dollar mark. So all off of the Wall Street Journal reported, well, well that potentially in Video might have to cancel five billion dollars worth of sales to China.
But please to welcome Conjan Zivani. He's been bag intelligence analyst covering all things semiconductors. And was this in some way obvious that they were going to have to pull back from selling China sooner than some had anticipated.
Yeah, I mean the cancelation of the grace periods was definitely a surprise for them, and we think now it is the restrictions have reached a point where this does start having some long term impacts. So when we look at long term impacts next year, which is fiscal twenty five, which is equal on to Calnar twenty four for them, you know, we estimate about five to eight billion that they would have shipped to China, so you can put a five billion threshold baseline impact that it will have
to the top line. However, there are some avenues we think where Nvidia can offset that loss, one being shipping to other customers outside of because they're still as of right now and things can change. Given the uncertain macro there are still but there are still demand for Nvidia chips. And second, there might be ways that n Media can still get exposure to the Chinese market through alternate means.
What we're talking about in the AI chick context is GPUs that are basically assemble components that go into data centers, and for China that's always been twenty to twenty five percent of its data center business right but their supply constrained, and they never talk about it. Is it just simply that they can sell to other nations, other startups around the world the same product that they would have otherwise sent to China.
Well, not exactly the same product, but a version of the same product.
Yes.
And then the second key point is when we look at these cloud providers, their CAPEX is not only the only avenue that n media can get exposure. For example, Microsoft has a compute offload through open AI, so when we look at Microsoft Capex, that's not the only piece that n media gets, but also through open AI. You have the same thing going on with Alibab announcing that
they are going to offer Meda's large language models. So there are still different avenues that sort of Nvidia can get an indirect exposure to the Chinese market.
Counjen Savannia, Bloomberg Intelligence, the other mister chip out here in San Francisco, Caroline.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Caroline had in New York.
And I'm ed Louvelow in San Francisco.
Let's go to check on European markets which have just closed all this week. Will bring you the European market closed and the stock six hundred Europe kind of this continent wide gauge of equities rising for a second straight day. But we're ending the month of October, and this has been the worst October going back to two thousand and four. European stocks. A bright spot with Stilantis and their earnings. That stock in its European trading up three point six percent.
Oil rebounding modesty.
Brent, which is kind of more of the global benchmark as opposed to WTI, have been moving lower Monday over the weekend due to the activity in the Israel hamass war, rebounding modestly four tenths of one percent in euro dollar one oh five six two softer the euro by half a percentage point against the dollar.
Caroline tell you also, what's a little bit softer today has been the Nasdaq and the NaSTA one hundred and we're down by another tenth of a percent, but actually all told, on the month of October we're down more than three percent, not as bad as it was the five percent sell off back in September, but it's three straight months of losses for the NASDAK at the moment, worse set of losing streets that we've seen all the way back to, of course about June of last year.
So clearly pressure is on some of these big tech naus A mid earnings amid these geopolitical stories that you talk us through ed looking in in video, of course, we're just talking about the JYMP politics there, the sales into China and the issue with well maybe not being able to put some of those orders through to that country. So stock under pressure there. It just only tests that up what about tenth of percent, two tens of percent,
let's call it. What a painful two weeks that's been the wed dof You see the story at what one hundred and forty five billion dollars wiped off in terms of its market capitalization over the course of those two weeks. That does seem to be in some way to do with its earnings.
Yeah, I think if we go back to October eighteenth when they reported earnings, until this point, we're down twenty percent on Tesla's shares. The other way looking at it, though, is that Tesla's up more than sixty percent year to date, while the S and P five hundred is up much more modestly.
But the concern is interest rates.
You know Elon Musk talking about the impact of interest rates and they've used price cuts earlier in the year to unlock demand. How much do we put emphasis on high rate environment hurting consumers hitting that ev demand? But yeah, that's a pretty telling chart, isn't it. The story at least in the last two weeks has changed that we're a little modestly higher.
It's Tuesday, and it has been interesting, hasn't it? Ultimately that they've had pressure from China as well byd But I don't know if you noticed overall that there was, of course, well, the idea that we're going to be seeing Elon Musk flying over to the UK. I think he's actually just touched down. This is all about not Tesla but art Intelligence, which of course, is a long term theme for Tesla.
Yeah, it is a long term theme because the ultimate business model is to have a fleet of robotaxis, which are Tesla vehicles centrally controlled by Tesla.
The training of that is.
Done on Dojo, their supercomputer, and the neural network they're building is their version of AI, which they have high degree of confidence on. And AI is really top of mind for mister Mask right.
Now, instantly is as he touches down for the UKAI Summit, and of course all things AI have just been happening right here in the United States with that Executive Order as well, I speak to someone who's been there helping craft what a NEO might look like with the President. You are at this signing of the Executive Order, credo a CEO Laverena singh Laverna. Really important to have some time with you today because you're in the business of governance,
governance of AI systems. Ultimately, this Executive Order, I feel, leaves a lot still yet to be ironed out when it comes to actual guardrails, actual benchmarks, actual well really auditing. How do you see this EO doing.
Thank you so much for having me here today. It truly is a historic moment, and I am reporting here life from DC. You know, this Executive Order was one of the most comprehensive and expansive commitments to responsible AI that we've seen from the federal government. And something that I've stated in the past is we need to be okay with adaptive policy making, and that's not exactly what we are seeing at this moment in time. This year
is so comprehensive. I've barely made it through half of it right now, but this is a strong signal from the government that now it is not about just talking about responsible AI, but making sure that not only the US agencies but also private sector is showing success against what those guardrails are. So Carolyn, absolutely, this is a starting point.
There's a lot to unpack.
In this executive Order, but I think they're going to see ripple effects across the world with this historic executive order from the President the Vice President Navarna.
Of the fifty percent of the extensive EO that you have read, what's your biggest criticism of the final form? Where would you have liked to have seen the administration do more?
So?
Ed, I think this goes back to we always want more and especially as technologists, we want it to be precise. But I think let's focus on what is so great
about the CEO. I think this EO think about it as not a rule of the law, but this is a work plan that is providing a very compressed timeline for US agencies as well as the private sector to start not only defining what does good look like in terms of benchmarking and evaluation of these powerfolised systems, but also holding them accountable in a very short timeframe to come up with a game plan as to how we are going to make sure that that whatever is defined
as good is actually adhere to. So two things that I would like to call out in the EO that we are very excited about is first and foremost, you know, creation of standards led by NEST, especially for benchmarking and auditing of artificial intelligence systems. We have about you know, two hundred and seventy days for NEST to actually start
building a game plan for that. And then secondly, the United States government agencies, you know, we're looking for the OMB guidance which is going to come out any day, which is going to put further focus on how procurement of AI systems by US government and the agencies happen.
So I would say that right now we should be focusing on all the great things that are in this ear and then yes, there's lots more work ahead of us, and we're going to continuously see over the coming months more and more getting defined in terms of what is really possible.
MIST being the national standard strategy for critical and Emerging Technology in AVRENA. I'm interested that they're setting basically benchmark guidelines. Your company already is kind of a private sector addition that could be taken if you suddenly got a lot of inbound from this, because when you're helping companies basically build AI accountablity.
Yes, Carolyn so crew DOOAI is an AI governance platform that provides continuous oversight and accountability of artificial intelligence systems. I would say, not only because of this executive action, but the need for trust, which is so critical as companies are adopting building using artificial intelligence at scale, that has really propelled and increased the need for CREDOI in the market as well. And I think just to underscore in CREDOAI, we are operationalizing what does good look like?
These might come from standards like nisst AI rmf ISO standards. It could come from regulations like New York City Low number one forty four. It can come from company policies or industry best practices, and CREDOAI already has been at the front of it. So now I would say the companies as well as US government agencies are really requiring creed OI as a core platform that's going to enable trust with their consumers.
Nevrina.
In that light and in pursuit of a range of views, I want to ask you the same question I've asked all our guests in the last twenty four hours. The main mechanism that the EO spells out and the Defense Procurement Act empowers them to do, is to require makers of large language models to offer them up for government safety review before they are released to the wider public. If a startups building in LM, is that a good mechanism. Will that help the industry move forward?
I think that's a great question.
I am concerned about regulatory capture, and I think we have to really focus on how do we bring this entire startup innovation ecosystem forward, And something that we are actively focused on at CREED OAI where executive orders as well as reads are not a barrier for startups, especially not the well capitalized startups, but it's an enabler for them.
So in terms of that, what the EO is spelling out that the foundation model providers have to provide test results to the government before releasing these models, especially for government use. I think it's a good step, but it's
not comprehensive. And this is where I am encouraged to see more action in the coming months, where we are going to provide that oversight as well as benchmarking and testing requirements across the entire value chain, the foundation model developers, the application developers, the enterprises, and the consumers.
So you know, that's the.
Ripple effect of this executive order that I'm really excited to see coming in the few months.
Everynessing Credo, AI CEO, thanks for making time with us for of course you're at that White House event. And of course one of the things that executive orders discussed is well water marking, being able to understand when something is fake or indeed created by AI. Well, we're going to talk about investing in watermarking when it comes to the art world. VC spotlights upnext, Christie's Ventures global head Devan Thaka is going to be joining us on its
portfolio expansion. This is Blombog Technology in today's Ventures Spotlight. We're going to sort of fuse art and VC with Christie's Ventures of course, held at seventh edition of Art and Tech Summit earlier this year, announcing a fair few investments Manifold Technologies, Lay Zero Labs for example, Proto Hologram. Today, Christie's Ventures is back expanding its portfolio, adding Eco Mark
and Atomic Form. Global head Divan Thacker joins us. Now, I think from rather late in Hong Kong, where you're on the road speaking to well companies building things, talk to us about some of these investments. What is the thesis behind ventures? Where are you backing? It looks as though you're backing sort of authenticity in so large part. We talk about that with AI at the moment.
Thank you for having me back, Carol and Ed and hello from Hong Kong for us, like we take a very principled approach on investing. As we mentioned last time,
we're early stage investors. We only invest in seed and Series A companies, and Echomark for us is one of those personally very near and dear to my heart company based in Seattle, Washington that is looking to create deterrence technology by adding invisible watermarks and AI based watermarks, something that you just discussed with your prior panelists into documents.
To deter people from leaking them.
Whether it's the Supreme Court league that we saw a few few quarters ago, or more recently things we've seen from other corporate as well as government branches. Leaks are a big problem, and echo Mark is attempting to use state of the art technology to solve them, so that even if you take a picture with your phone of a little corner of a document, we're able to sort
of detect that and catch who leaked the document. And Echomark just raised Series seed in collaboration Craft Ventures and Chriss is proud to.
Be part of that round.
So for us, we see this technology applying directly to our business because we have some of the most sensitive client information in our business globally right who has what art and who is looking to buy and.
Sell what art? So for us, this is critical data to protect.
Well den That's what caught my eye and what's interesting about echo Mark that Christie's auction House was one of the first users of the echo mark technology. It came out of stealth like a month ago. Just in very simple terms, explain how the auction house uses it with its client communications as a case study.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
So to take the example of a deal term and say you have a piece of art which is iconic and very expensive, and it's based in say some part of the world, in your home in Hong Kong, for example, the terms of that deal often exchanged in PDFs and email attachments. Those could accidentally or non accidentally leak to the public. Ecomark allows us to create another layer of protection so that that document is personalized for the recipient.
So if you, as a recipient get this document and accidentally leak it or maliciously leak it, we can immediately know where the source of the leak comes from, so that deters people from taking some malicious activity against sensitive data. So that's the prototype, or that's the first use case that we're working on. But I think the implications of
this are widespread. We can see that applying to all forms of communication, including this call that we're having, could also have invisible marks, so that if I took a screenshot or a picture from my phone and leaked the conversation that we were having.
I could immediately get caught.
So the implications of what ecomark is building are deeply rooted in sort of better stewardship of documents, and that's what we're using it in our business.
It's interesting that your other investment, atomic Form is still a back on web three, is still a back on non fungible tokens. Of course, I think back to the b pal sixty nine million dollar auction that made sort of put NFTs on the map with Christie's Why still support this ecosystem when so many people.
Question, no great question.
We first met atomic Form very early in the days of NFTs as a company that provided beautiful displays for these pieces of digital art. I think my belief is that in the long run, NFTs other sort of nomenclature, whatever you want to call it, in the end, it's all digital art, and what we've seen through the progression of Christie's three point zero and investments we've made there, digital art is here to stay. That's just our belief.
The bid that interested us.
In an atomic form is in addition to the hardware bit they're also a great software company, which I believe in software as a business model, as a scalable business model, so traditional introdditional businesses. If you take comics books for example, or comic books for example, there's a rating system. Right when you go into a comic book store, you can see a blue box that says the six star, seventh star.
No one's doing that for digital assets.
So tomic Form is one of those companies that's doing innovative things with software, whether it's ratings, whether it's applying physical activation data back to the blockchain.
For example, if I loaned.
You an NFT that happens in a physical world at MoMA for example, that doesn't get captured back into the NFT itself, this company is sort of adding that metadata back to the NFT, really connecting the Web two and Web three worlds. And we believe that whether it's Web three in its current iteration or Web three with AI augmented, we're going to live in a very fast and connected universe where companies.
Like this are going to be very important. Hence the support all.
Right devunk cekr Christy's ventures searching for startups at in Hong Kong. Thank you for joining us here. X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is worth less than half of what Elon must pay for it just a year ago when he bought the company for forty four billion dollars. According to a Bloomberg source, restrictive stock units awarded to employees value the company at nineteen billion dollars based on ursus of forty five dollars apiece joining us here in
SF Bloomberg's Asia accounts. You and I reported this story together, and part of it is a drop off in sales. Part of it is the debt burden, and part of it is that this is a work in progres shall we say.
It's so many things.
It's all the things that you just mentioned, right, I mean, this is such a steep drop in valuation. Part of it is the advertising revenue. In September it was down sixty percent. And you think about advertising revenue historically for X has been eighty ninety percent of the revenue, so that's already huge, as you mentioned. And then you have thirteen billion dollars of debts, so now you have to pay one point two billion dollars in interest every year.
So you add all that up and they're in a really tough smart financially and so it sort of makes sense that the valuation is so well.
The other thing we reported in the last week or so is like what the end result might look like. Elon must saying we're going after LinkedIn and we're going after YouTube in this all hands of employees.
What does that tell us about what X might be in the future.
It's that everything ap idea, right that Elon has talked about over and over again, But it could be interesting if it sort of turns.
Out that way, right.
It's the idea of being able to do things like areio and video calling. You mentioned LinkedIn, so they have a hiring service doing more video aka YouTube and then even having a wire service that they're planning the launch for it for PR So it could be all those things.
And the lesson learned of covering test and SpaceX for the last six years is don't discount Elon Musk because they've been highly successful, but rocky adventures, bliebizhu accounts, thank you Carrot, Yeah, and.
They're betting big maybe on being a payments focus as well. Let's go back to the world of fintech. FTX co founder Sam amun Fried just finished testifying in his criminal fraud trial today, megs Max Chafkin, who was actually in the court queuing for hours and the rain, you join us for the latest, And I mean he was trying to convinced that he didn't know as much as he should have known.
Yes, and this testimony has been going on since Friday. We've seen two and a half days of Sam Bankman Freed, essentially the defense trying to paint a picture of a well meaning but perhaps slightly out of touch executive, someone with competence and at least a rough understanding of his responsibilities. What we saw from the prosecution was kind of a methodical portrayal of Sam Bankman Freed as essentially a professional liar.
We saw repeated instances or accusations of deception deceit, as well as a refusal by the defendant to sort of admit to any of it. And as it played out in court, particularly yesterday and this morning, it was tough.
It was tough, perhaps less tough, obviously under friendly fare from defense. Then when it came to the prosecutors, did he lose his ground somewhat? What was the demeanor of him in court?
His demeanor was extremely subdued, you know, very very voicing, smaller than it had And as I was watching this, I just kept thinking about the way that this performance was playing, you know, during the rise of FTX, when we had Crypto soaring and we saw him as this kind of genius guy who was part of this like story movement. As things have fallen apart, that affect has not worked as well, and we've seen somebody who has seemed, even even when under questioning from his own lawyers, somewhat
out of his depth. And then, you know, under fire from a very adept federal prosecutor, you know, it only got worse.
So now is this story of psychology and process because the government could cool to other witnesses and it's about the loss.
The impression of the jury. What do you reconmac say does this go from here? Well, the government has rested its case.
In fact, they were they had talked about a rebuttal case, but that is not going to happen. They, it seems, feel confident with the case they presented, which, as we've talked about on this show before, it's been pretty comprehensive. We've seen multiple close friends, former colleagues of Sam magun freed testify to financial crimes as well as a not especially inspiring performance by the defendant. On the other hand,
you know, this is a complicated case, seven counts. The business FTX was in has a lot of financial nuance, so you never know how it's going to play with a jury, and we're just gonna have to wait and see. I think it's possible the jury iful you get the case as early as tomorrow, certainly some point this week.
We wait, We watched. We thank you for standing out in the cold and getting inside that courtroom for us. Smacks traffickin and do go see Ruin as well, which he's currently in the original's piece on the undoing of FTX. But that does it for this edition of BlueBag Technology yet.
Yeah, thanks to everyone that's been tuning into the podcast. We had some pretty deep conversations around AI today, So recap the show wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, iHeart, and of course we published the podcast to all of the bloombag platforms as well. Two days in megaweek ahead from San Francisco and New York City.
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