From Mahard where Innovation of Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed.
Ludlove and Caroline Hyde a Bloomerg's World head quarters in New York, elamed Lovelow in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
Sequoia splits into three firms.
The venture capital powerhouse divides into several entities. As as geopolitical tensions, they're on the rise, will break down the announcement.
And Coinbase is the latest target by the SEC, with regulator.
Suing the exchange. We'll discuss the US crackdown on crypto ahead.
Plus we've got to dive into the state of virtual and augmented reality following Apple's Vision Pro release. We've got the CEO of ar company, Magic Leap.
On the show.
All that and so much more up first, let's check in on relatively muted markets today. Regional Bank's getting kick higher, but in general, we're looking at what the World Bank is warning about the global environment in which we stand. What of interest rates, what of the disruption to global economies? We're not five tens percent on the Nasdaq? Is big tech manages to push up even though his apple is a little like luster. We see the two year yield though on the higher side five basis points.
On the front end.
That means maybe we're less confident that the Federal Reserve will put on ice some of those rate cut rate hikes, even rate cut Remember Rich Clarender, he's the vice chair of the Fed today saying, look, we're not cunning anytime soon and likely to see on pause for the time being.
Euro curring up by two tens percent.
Interesting that inflationary pressures just dive back that little bit in the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Australian central Bank fighting inflation hard. This really is the global narrative inflation and how that affects global growth. But moving on, because well, one risk asset, one growth asset, might say Ashley having an interestingly volatile day, We're back to it with bitcoin and actually training higher
twenty six thousand. It will still well below that thirty thousand nine that we managed to crack a little while ago. We were worried about some of the effects of the SEC focused on crypto, but actually managed to push higher about ten am there or thereabouts.
So maybe people buying the diff at the moment ed.
Yeah, very clearly moving to the downside. Is Apple off by three tents of percent. The street basically saying this is either sell the news or details of the Vision Pro mixed reality headset already priced into the stock. We will have a lot of day two reaction and analysis from that big WWDC event.
I'm looking a lot of the chip sector as well.
Taiwan Semiconductor This is the US ADRs up by two percent. They restated their four year capex guidance, coming at the low end of the previously guided range around thirty two billion dollars, having an impact in markets Applied materials the chip equipment maker higher by a percentage point have been lower. The idea being less capex spend by the world's biggest contract chip manufacturer would not be good news, but actually a rebound there. And sticking with chips Intel higher by
four and a half percent. The company is selling one point five billion dollars worth of its stake immobilize the automotive tech name and with options to sell further shares as well. The other top top story is Coinbase shares down significantly after the US Securities and Exchange Commission the
SEC said it's suing Coinbase for breaching securities law. Bloomberg also has fresh thoughts on this from SEC chair Gary Gensler, weighing in on the state of the crypto industry and the steps it needs to take to protect customer assets and its integrity.
Have a listen.
I think the crypto industry, more broadly, if it's going to have any success going forward, has to come into compliance with basic public policy about disclosure, about avoiding conflicts, about segregating properly segregating customer funds, and guarding against fraud manipulation. Without that, this whole area stands, the chances are collapsing like a house of cards.
The SEC sues Coinbase. Let some packet further with Shnalie Bassett, Bloomberg, Wall Street REPORTERNALI What is it the core of the SEC's argument here?
A few things here.
We have to think about this claim that the SEC is making that they are acting as an unregistered broker dealer and listing on registered securities, which has been up for debate in the cryptocommunity when it comes to regulators
at least for a long time now. Coinbase, we know says that a lot of the things that they've listed are not securities, while the Securities in Exchange Commission believes they are, and they have a very specific list here of tokens that they have referred to as believing as securities. When we've spoke to Brian Armstrong about this on the record, they have talked about the listing process they've had at Coinbase, so we know that they vigorously disagree with what the SEC.
Is saying listened.
I think there's another couple of twists and turns in this story too, because if you remember, Coinbase actually had looked to acquire, had acquired a broker dealer license that has been dormant with the SEC. So I expect that to come back up again because they have been talking about that in recent months.
So it's not for lack of trying to become.
A broker dealer as they are being sued by the SEC.
Here.
Let's just rud in the conversation to Binance, which of course was the news of yesterday. So the SEC is tackling all manners of exchanges at the moment.
Yeah, and you have two different things happening on two different days. You have Binance, the largest exchange in the world, but some of the allegations being made against Binance are very different than the ones being made against Coinbase. Here at Binance, they are looking at all your customer rules, corrupted trading volumes, reliance on related party transactions. Another thing to look at with Binance is the difference in where
the suit was filed. That is a very subtle difference, however, in the legal community here too, if you look the SEC had filed that suit in Washington versus New York State. Remember, there are ongoing investigations elsewhere when you look at the US government and how it's trying to look at Binance's operations, particularly because Binance as a whole is not on US ground. When it comes to coinbase, again, this is a matter more largely of not just unlisted securities or the allegations
of having unlisted securities. It is also the staking as a service, which as we know, is a pretty critical on ramp and the way we think about how people will engage in crypto moving forward. The other interesting thing is coinbas is based in the United States, publicly listed. The SEC allowed that to happen, and so there are different tensions going on here and the way that they
are in fact litigated, will also be different. My sources are saying over Coinbase, not surprisingly, that they intend to defend themselves very vigorously, as what you would expect from a suit here that is not settled as it stands today, all right, thanks.
To the bloomboation Aali Basset Wall Street report out there in New York. Meanwhile, venture capital giants Sequoia Capital is splitting global operations into three separate firms, is GPLIS Tensions between the US and China continue to SIMI let's get more details with Lazette Chapman covering all things venture capital for Bloomberg Technology. Let's start with Sekoia specifically. I kind of feel like the writing's been on the wall for this firm or three separate entities for some time.
Yeah. I think that's that's right.
This has been a rough it just kind of going
back here, Sequoia has had a very tough year. They've had a lot of challenges from you know, challenges related to the change structure right before the public markets tanked, to their backing of Twitter, to their their backing of FDx FTX, the largest crypto implosion that you guys have been talking about on the show on and off and on and off, and so they've had a lot of issues this past year, increased tensions from Washington d C to really clamp down on what they're doing in China,
what they have been doing there in terms of supporting investments there, both directly from their US partners and through their limited partners through who they convinced to invest in its Sequoia China operations two decades ago have all come together to this moment.
So it's been building for a while.
But then the ripple.
Effects is that Kose light speeds China partners as well as DST Global. Do we expect that others will have to make similar moves? Is this a very individual, idiosynclassic event.
There has been mounting pressure, i'd say for the past year or so.
It's really intensified in the past.
Few months on the part of Washington lawmakers to crack down on investors here in the US that are backing Chinese startups that are focused on sensitive technologies AI, quantum autonomous drones and other areas that could have a military application, and in fact do in many cases. You look at DGI drone. Now to your question, is this just the ripple effect. Is this the big ginning of more to come?
Again?
We don't have that's a great question.
We don't haven't heard anything from light Speed and Kochwu and some of the other US based investors who have also made big bets there.
But there is activity on the hill.
There is an EO and executive order which is expected, and it has been expected.
For some time and has not yet come through.
So what that EO is going to look like and whether it's the first step of many or the final will will help answer that question.
Caroline.
Yeah.
The policy landscape perspective is that Bloomberg has reported the President is considering limiting outbound investment to China. When you and I Laze are out in the valley at events whatever, speaking to venture capitalists, there's also this ethical and philosophical consideration either about taking money from Chinese LPs or deploying capital into Chinese startups. Just tell us what you're hearing on that front.
Well, one of the biggest that's a great point.
One of the biggest things that you and I have both been hearing has been this bickering kind of between you know, vcs that are really investing and focusing on defense technology and national security applications. That seem to be the loudest voices in the room. These are ones including Founder's Fund and Andrews and Horowitz through their American Dynamism Fund, that are looking at US competition in these emerging technologies
and the applications that it could have for for military. Now, you know, in terms of what this, what this means and kind of that tension between those firms, we haven't heard anything yet from from any partners as to, you know, whether this this split up is enough or.
Not, but there is concern.
About about the support that US money is giving a lot of firms. I think it's worth noting that it's that that one thing that that Koya did not mention in this is what's going to happen to their US partners that still have an interest in the fund. So that's have already made They've made these investments years and years ago. I'm thinking about TikTok, I'm thinking about Dji and other ones where they have billions and billions of dollars but it's illiquid, and they made these investments at
a time that it was legal. So now we're looking at a situation where they have this money but they can't necessarily get it out right now, and that's not even the focus of their announcement today, but that's kind of the elephant in the room to some extent, and they said, you know, hey, it's not geopolitical tensions that are pushing us. That they kind of downplayed that in some statements, but you know, it's kind of tough to avoid that when when any you.
Know, I don't really know that that is going to be their final statement on it.
Has that Chapman, We'll see.
I'm sure they'll be plenty more reporting coming from you on all of this. We thank you so much for breaking it down.
So in the same way that Mac introduced us to personal computing and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro will introduce us to spatial computing. This marks the beginning of a journey that will bring a new dimension to powerful personal technology.
Tim cookber one day on after the Worldwide Developers Conference, I'm veiling the Apple Vision Pro and the era.
Of spatial computing from more. Let's bring in judiask, principle.
Analyst Forrester, who is jetted in on the Red Eye, having been at that event, So ten out of ten for all the effort to be made to describe to us what on our special computing.
Is, thank you.
Yeah.
No, I had the opportunity to put on the it's not a headset, it's a spatial computing device and get a private demo, and I would tell you it impresses. It is It's like nothing I've ever tried before, and I've tried on a lot of headsets.
Yeah.
From the uh, the setup is easy, the inn face is very intuitive than for most devices. And then when you think about almost one hundred and eighty degrees field of view, it's you can't imagine it.
So at three and a half thousand dollars, do you feel that that's the right price tag they're going for, you know, a luxury item before they go for complete compute power in everyone's hands.
Yeah.
So I think often that is the Apple strategy. And I think one of the other advantages of not calling it a headset is Apple computer costs anywhere from about eight or nine hundred dollars up to seven thousand.
So this is.
A mid range computing device, spatial computing device for Apple. It's not an expensive headset.
Julie, I'm sorry, I've got to go back to this, the one question that everyone has. I was at APPLEWWDC as well. What is spatial computing?
Yeah, it's three D, so I'll get Let me give you a few examples of what that means. So, in one example, I was what appeared to be on the top of a cliff above a fjord in Norway, and I was able to peer over. I was also able to sit at the edge of a lake and listen to the lapping water on the shore while reading a book. I was a butterfly came at one point and landed on my finger, and a dinosaur gobbled my hand. So
those are a few examples. But the other exciting thing about this new device is that it can take photos and it can take videos. So I watched children having a birthday party. And to allow consumers to create this kind of videos on their own, we haven't seen something like this in a very long time.
What jumped out on me when I got up close and personal with the Vision Pro was the appendage, the battery pack and the gray cable running from it.
What did you make of that?
Well, it's so a couple things.
So one you know, the concern with a device like this that we're not calling a headset is always the weight of the device. So everyone's looking for ways to take any kind of weight or size out of it. So as it is now, the device is about one pound and so that's on the head, and then the battery pack is about the size maybe of an iPhone or an iPhone pro and it sits to the side. The battery life is two hours, I believe, and I've
heard folks not that. But on the other hand, you're also unlikely to have this device on your head for more than one to two hours, and so I think they've engineered that just about right, that it's the battery pack's going to last longer than I'm likely to have this on my head for one session.
You know, a Cara being at Apple Park paying close attention to the keynote the presentation. There was a lot of emphasis on the idea that the Vision Pro can do lots of things that are accessible on the iPad and iOS, that all that great stuff. It's ready to go, and given the price point, I thought that was interesting.
Yeah, I think it's a very smart strategy because if you look at the VR headset market today, it's primarily gaming, it's education, it is a little bit of fitness, and then meta is hopeful for some social media. If you look at the strategy that Apple is taking with their device, it's tapping into media consumption, which is far far easier for consumers to get up and get running and get going and have enjoyment from the device. And it also taps into the Apple one services that so many of
their customers are already buying. If you think about it, typical Apple smartphone owner, more than ninety percent of them also own an Apple computer, more than half of them own a tablet, a third of them own an Apple Watch or a one of the smart speakers, and so Apple, I don't know if you want to call them enthusiasts. People who own Apple products tend to own the many products within the ecosystem, and so when they use something like the Apple one services, they get the benefit of
using those devices. You know, that service across all of the devices they own. So very easy, quick startup and very easy, fast utility and value to the consumers what this device will deliver.
Judy ask jet Setting from Forster Research. We thank us so much. I have more on this later. Of course, we've got AI Officionada CEO, Magic Leap, peggiejansonet.
And also coming up.
Startup Instabace makes use of open AI, large language models and nabs a two billion dollar evaluation the process. More on that next with the CEO and at Budwatch.
This is Bloomberg Business Services.
Startup Instabase has raised a new round of funding, doubling its valuation to two billion dollars, a deal boid by the companies you solve new generative AI tools in its suite of corporate products. Let's bring in the CEO and and.
Bardwade for more. Welcome to the program.
Coatter, we're here.
Basically you're building on GPT four.
We use GPT three point five and GP point five and for both as part of five product moving fraideword.
Yes, what was the attractiveness of using that foundation model when you were thinking about your future use case and functionality so.
Earlier we use smaller language models. And one of the requirements in that case is if you want to make it word for like diverse set of problems, you have to find tune thoise models where basically retrain it on customer data like you have to take a few more sample.
This one can work out of the box.
So for example, I can just take the same model and apply it for legal discovery use case, or for loan processing, or for writing poetry, So you don't need to kind of like retrain or find you unit for every single use case. Which is a very very very valuable stuff for our customers speacause now they can use it from data.
Overall, the focus that you've made on productivity and the idea that this is going to sort of revolutionize, this is what the market seems to be gripping onto the fact that AI is going to add inject trillions of dollars of productivity into the overall economy.
Do you buy into that and do you think that the.
Efficiency is right here right now and you're able to sell this sort of product easily into your product into your overall client base.
Yes, I do believe so, and I think I'll give you an example along the spectrum of like from individuals to small businesses to LARTI enterprises like currently, AI has reached to the point where where like for people like us as an individual, if you want to file taxes, we can give all the documentsage can generate the tax filing for US, saving like a lot of time. And you can find like hundreds of huge cases of similar kind.
Now let's take an example of like small business. Let's say you are a legal firm and you have to do like you provide immigration you know, sort of like farm filling or immigration services. Now you can collect all the data from your customers and AI can read all of those stuff and generate automatically the farm filling, saving a ton of time. And we already work with like Larly enterprises. In fact, you know four of the top
banks are our customers in the US. Globally, we have several customers like a standard chartered NatWest, ACSA and so on, and mortgage processing or know your customer or client onboarding. We have been able to automate althose we are seeing that AI can significantly increage productivity both at individual level as well as at operational level.
I can tell that being able to reel out all these current customers the adoption rate, that's going to be easier to raise funds and that sort of an environment. But this is a difficult environment to raise funds. How quickly could you raise them? Was that the amount that you wanted and ultimately what you put the money to work.
For a nut.
So yeah, this environment is definitely slightly more difficult than in our prior environments that we have been In. All the prior environments, you know, we never had to go out to the market to rage. In fact, somebody came and offered us the money. In this case, I mean
we talked to a few investor. It took us about three to five months of time to rage around, but it wasn't super complicated, mainly because most of the investors who participated but already had a gifting investors which helped us significantly.
The argent Sety of Tribe Capital been on this program, takes a board observer's.
Seat with you.
What is it like doing business with open AI. I know Brad light Cap helped you technologically, but what is the financial relationship between you? Is it good value using their underlying model.
So it's definitely a good value for us in the sense that we can help our customers get value very very quickly. From the perspective of opening aird relationship. Given that we worked with very regulated environments like banks, we had to get into a scuccle partnership like how what happens with their attendant policy, What is privacy?
What is security?
How we can run the models in a way where it is compliant with the requirements that we have. So that's why we had to develop a deep relationship with Toponai to make sure that we can run it that way.
Fifteen seconds. Dreams of going public? Yes, oh okay, one word answer, Caroline, dreams are going public.
He got the memo insta a CEO and had great speaking with you. Thank you and Aunt Valdoaje there, welcome back to Rumol Technology.
I'm Caroline had in New.
York Andamed Ludlow out here in San Francisco.
Caroy.
Let's get a quick check in on the markets and in true for real muted session, not much going on. SMP five hundred tenth percent, basically flat on the Nasdaq one hundred some rotation. It's financial, some bottom feeding potentially going on. Not much of a clear catalyst as we've had in recent sessions. The yield on US ten year three point seven percent up by a couple of basis points.
Bitcoin kind of stabilizing. When those headlines came out about the sec sewing coinbase, there was a knee jerk reaction adding to the events of the last twenty four hours, and the SEC also looking at Binance, but we've kind of recovered a little bit twenty six thousand US dollars per token or so in terms of the individual mover one to the downside, but given its size its market cap, it's waiting in major indices. We take a look at
Apple kind of trading neither here nor there. A lot of the streets saying that the announcements from WWDC, the specifics on the Vision Pro mixed reality headset that's priced into the stock or it's to sell the news event for a lot of a lot of the market softer by about half percentage point, but of course coming off fresh intra day record, which it had come off anyway after the events of the keynote.
Character.
Yeah, and it was notable that that keynote, how perhaps of official intelligence was just leased in there into the future of this product, in the future of the chips of course, that they were announcing the strength of capability generative AI being one of them, were going to dig into artificial intelligence a little bit more in our VC spotlight segment, and we want to bring in an investor
who's also a founder deeply rooted in AI. Jacqueline Rice Nelson is here general partner and early stage bench fund coalition operators and CEO and co founder.
Of Tribe Ai.
It's a network of all the world's top technologists that builds advanced AI solutions for companies of all sizes, and that coalition must be.
Rather busy right now. I mean, how much inbound are you getting a lot?
Which is on both sides of the business. Actually, so right now you are hearing about lots of innovation happening across the tech sector and with AI companies specifically tons of early stage development. It's never been more attractive to start a company, and certainly an AI company. And then on the Tribe side of the house, companies have never
needed more help to become AI companies. And so we are really helping with that sort of last mile of delivery from experimentation into really helping companies build solutions that they can put in front of the market and the product.
Look, what the market, what investors.
What everyone is trying to discern is whether the hype is reality, Whether all these talk of trillions of dollars being added to markets of overall GDP and productivity is actually happening. When you're building with tribai inside corporate America right now, are you seeing real productivity gains.
It's still early in I think the AI market period, but if you even look pregenerative AI, there have been tremendous gains from machine learning. You really only need to look at Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. There probably isn't a part of these businesses that isn't running with AI and machine learning. You just mentioned it yourself. Even though Apple didn't talk about AI explicitly, it was embedded into everything
man ounced yesterday. And this is really the nature of how all businesses will be built going forward, and it is just the beginning of truly experimenting for many of these much larger organizations, true incumbent enterprise players who are building with AI truly is experiments. The pace at which they are moving to adopt these technologies is frankly on like anything I've ever seen before. But I think the gains from them are still sort of in that experimental phase.
And this is very much where my thesis is on the market, is that we are still so early and the opportunity for enterprises to become AI companies is going to create massive value creation across the economy.
Well, Jacqueline, with your venture capital hat on, how do you play the market in real terms? Twelve and a half million dollars doesn't seem like a lot of dry powder, even at the seed or early stage. You know, we just had insta base on two billion evaluation for a company built on GPT three point five. But it's basically an enterprise company. So how do you actually have a meaningful impact and establish a portfolio of companies that will give you a realistic chance of exit down the road.
Yeah?
Absolutely, And this is what's on everyone's mind right now. So when I look at the early stage market, I'm really looking at pre seed through Series A, and these opportunities are still quite nacent. Some of them are priced at crazy levels, and others are still quite attractive from a pricing perspective. So there's really a range, and I think we are getting in on the ground floor.
What I get really excited.
About is companies that are actually using AI to solve real problems. And so I really do think of this
as sort of the new vertical SaaS. So AI will be used to solve problems for particular types of verticals, businesses, buyers, and that is where I think we're going to see the most game from a valuation and tech perspective long term, is when AI is not just used as a buzzword or as something to get the highest pricing or valuation they possibly can, but actually to solve a real need for customers and for target buyers that otherwise is being completely unserved.
Jacqueline, is there a specific use case or area that you think generative aior foundation models will unlock? Tell me what is it that gets you excited? There's maybe underappreciated in the market.
Yeah, there's really so much that gets me excited. I think where all the focus today is on just how fast things like chatchpt have been adopted, But this has happened before. So if you look at consumer adoption of Netflix, Instagram, TikTok, consumers have actually moved through these platform shifts at really
fast paces. Now AI is moving faster for consumers, But what's most interesting to me is actually the pace at which businesses are moving, and that, frankly, is what is so different about this and feels like a true platform shift. And when I look at past platform shifts, so thank data migration and cloud even the SaaS wave.
These if these were waves.
AI is the tsunami, and the tsunami the large wave is coming. And I think this is where I see the tremendous opportunity both for Tribe but from an investment perspective, is to help some of these larger companies, enterprises and B to B companies actually adopt this technology into their business and leverage it for the full capabilities of their data.
And that takes talent.
What's so interesting about Tribe AI member owning network, the people, the experts that you have on there. How are they sort of setting themselves? Are you seeing that? Are they consulting? Are they being remunerated for this? Are they wanting to take full time roles? Is the market exploding for one type of talent in Techwina.
Yes, it is.
I think when people think about AI, they really think about just one particular skill set in this market. They think about the traditional classic AI engineers, the types of people who can build these foundation models. What's most interesting to me is one, I don't think that talent set is actually as scarce as other people do. So we have managed actually a mass hundreds of truly the top tier talent in this industry, and they want they're like
any top employees. Many companies listening in CEOs are going to feel they have similar conversations with their employees, but the things that impact them aren't any longer sort of
kombucha or ping pong. It's actually really making an impact, and so looking for opportunities where they can really learn, where they can earn and be remunerated for their skills, but actually make a real impact and use their skills to advance the field of AI and really make a difference in companies is what we're really seeing.
Talent cares about.
How diverse is that talent, because there's a lot of focus that this bias in AI, the AI is probably going to disrupt jobs mainly held by women. How diverse people of color women are there in your talent pool.
So in our talent pool, we take diversity very seriously. And this is of course I'm a woman founder who has built her career in part focused on diversity. It's something I deeply care about. And when you look at tech more broadly, diversity has.
Been a challenge.
When you look at AI and specialty engineering areas, it's even more challenging, And so what we make a very conservative effort to make sure we're recruiting a diverse talent pool and staffing a diverse talent pool across Jackson companies. And then beyond that, I think what I spent a
lot of time thinking about is incentives. So ethical AI and building AI that reduces bias is going to be critical no matter how diverse the network is, because we all are humans infallible, and so how can we actually build incentives into really al aspects of development in this field such that people are actually building responsibly and building systems and programs that will make humanity better, not just make companies more efficient.
Coalition operates his partner and Tribe AI CEO and co founder, Jack Laine Brice Nelson.
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Now so ahead.
First day in the books, it's Linda Yakarino's first day is Twitter ceo.
More on what's in store for her after the break. This is Bloomberg time now for talking tech.
The Japanese government is planning to triple domestically produced chips by twenty thirty, with a focus on economic security measures and advanced technology like Generator AI and TSMC just tempered its outlook for twenty twenty three. Capital spending is the main chip maker to Apple, grapples with soft demand for
smartphones in particular, but also computing chips. TSMC rear firm projections for revenue in the first half of twenty twenty three, which will decline by about ten percent in US dollar terms. And buy You an ed tech company that's provides services to more than one hundred and fifty million students around the world has skipped payments on a one point two
billion dollar alone, escalating a conflict with lenders. The firm says it won't make any further payment to the lenders until their dispute is decided in court.
Carot fascinating global array of stories. Let's go even more global right now ed and turn to one of the most red stories on Bloomberg right now most tweeted about it's going viral shock merger between the PGA Tour and it's Saudi backed rival Live Golf's talk about that and the Middle East Kingdom's money increasingly influencing not just our world of tech of VC, but also the world of sports.
And please to say Bloomberg Scarlet food rush is to set all about this, and okay, this seems like quite a sudden change of tune.
Coming from the player completely because they were just locked into this vitriol and a lot of charges flying back and forth losses between the two. They're a pretty entrenched in their two sides, the PGA Tour arguing that live Golf was coming in and stealing away players with lots of money, which of course it was doing, and Live Golf's saying that the PAGA Tour was acting acting monopolistically by banning anyone who participated in live golf tournaments from playing in the PGA Tour.
So they were suing each other.
It looked like this break this sport, a civil war in the sport, and then all of a sudden you get a surprise merger with the two sides saying, you know what, all the lawsuits will now end, and the Governor of Saudi Arabia Sovereign Wealth Fund, which of course backs the Live Golf Tour, will be the new chairman of this as yet unnamed company, and the PGA Tour will point the majority of the ward.
So, if we're going in with sporting analogies, has someone won here?
And as it Live.
I'm not sure, it's not clear, but it would seem that the PGA has kind of conceded here because it was really staking this claim saying that this what Live was doing was trying to buy players. They were the home of the traditional golf PGA Tour was and Live was coming in as an upstart. So certainly, by the looks of it, with Saudi money now infusing the PGA Tour or this new company, you could make that argument. On the other their hand, LIV didn't really have any
broadcastability for its tournament. Yes, they signed a deal with CW Networks, but that was in the US.
Beyond that, they.
Were streaming on YouTube and also on their own website, so it's not like they were getting a lot of viewers, and they certainly weren't attracting sponsors either.
I mean, there are quite a lot of viewers on YouTube maybe, and we're talking tech of course, but ed, I mean, this does feel like something that we talk about day and day out of just the power and the deep pockets, particularly sal Arabia of Middle East in general, and ultimately that brings power, that brings board membership, that brings a voice, It.
Brings a voice. It's a debate that's been raising. I bet you, Scarlet Food watched Full Swing on Netflix. I watched this and they, you know, they documented this whole saga. But do you know what's crazy, how many golf fans there are right now? You go on Google trends, yes, Scarlett, Yeah, immediate spike in searches on this topic, real time data because it's like, how many people really played golf and
a searching for it on Google trends. But also it's the most trending thing on Twitter in the US.
It is surprising because before the pandemic, it felt like golf was going into this decline where everyone was saying, this is a.
Stodgy old sport.
They really need to find ways to reach a younger audience, younger viewers, younger players. And then the pandemic came along, and then you have this naturally socially distanced sport. Everyone wanted to get outside and it was a revival in
the sport of golf. And as you mentioned at Full Swing, the Netflix documentary on golf, it just worked out running wise that it happened right along the live golf of dispute, and so you had players talking about it, deliberating over it their press conferences, where people didn't want to answer questions on it. So timing wise, it all worked out
for the sport of golf. Yes, for the PGA Tour, certainly it felt like it was being encroached upon by Live Golf, and I guess now in retrospect, it seems inevitable that something had to happen between these two sides. But at the time they were really dug in, it didn't seem like any daylight there was any way that the two could come together.
I actually asked Netflix for some viewership figures around Full Swing. I was curious how many people actually watched it, and they haven't replied yet. We will bring you that data, Scarlett. I guess it all comes down to money. Yes, you know, there's been some interviews this morning, They've put out statements. What do we know about the investment and what's at stake here?
Well, we don't know how much Saudi Arabia is going to put into this new, as yet unnamed company, but they will have a stake. It will be a minority stake, but we do know that reportedly, the Sovereign Wealth Fund Public Investment Fund reportedly made a two billion dollar investment in Live Golf. They back, of course, the Golf League as well, so if more money was needed, they would
certainly plow that into it. My understanding is that Live goolf did not make a whole lot of money in its first year, about seventy five million at most in revenue last year, and again that goes back to the lack of big sponsors, because most of the sponsors were committed to the PGA Tour were Now that does of course, with the two sides deciding to come together, there's still a lot of question marks about all these legal battles because even though the two sides have decided to end
their losses against each other, the Department of Justice got boiled into this as well. They're investigating the PGA Tour for monopolistic anti trust behavior and maybe they'll come in and say, you know what, the two sides you can't merge.
We don't know.
And in that instance was because the PGA Tours said to the players, you can't go. You know, it's just an amazing dynamic and come back to us, right, And who would have thought on across eighteen holes that would be an issue Bloomboth Scarlet Food, thank you very much.
Well, the first day is already in the books. Toill Linda y Acharino.
It's day two now for Twitch's new CEO, taking the helm after pretty rocky tenure from Melon Musk. Of course, let's just dive a little bit deeper into what lies a filandia Eacharino and Twitter at Large Blue MiG Sarah Fhire.
I'm very peace to say, joins us.
And you know, optimism abound when you look at her tweets, but ultimately she's got a big sort of area to stabilize, particularly when we've seen some important executives lead, particularly in the trust and Safety park.
I mean that's an understatement. She has a huge task ahead of her. She has all the advertisers to win back over. The New York Times reported on Monday that Twitter's ad revenues down fifty nine percent from the year earlier, based on internal documents. That is, her job is to restore that and grow it half you know what it was for and other business lines like like maybe Twitter
subscription business and Twitter Blue. And she has to do all that without these key executives who were in charge of keeping the site hospitable to advertisers by removing violent content, pornography, hate speech, things that people wouldn't want. Brands wouldn't want to have their content next to you, and frankly, users don't want to post their tweets next to either. So it's really going to be an uphill climb for yach Arena. She seems quite enthusiastic in her public tweets.
But of course she has to be. She's just getting started.
You know what's interesting to me Sarah is her use of Twitter. So she's welcomed some new hires from NBC Universal via Twitter. She did that I think Sunday before even day one. You know, you know this landscape, you know the executives that operate within social media. What do you make of her use? It's kind of almost Muskian in a way.
Well, she has to, I mean, she has to use the product to show how a can. She has to set an example, for instance, with the others who were her peers.
I mean, she's going to.
Be selling Twitter ad space to the people that she sold NBC ad space too. And one of the things that she would say when she was at NBC Universals this is cleaner than social media. This is what you see is what you get, Like these shows are are appropriate for your brand. And now she's going to have to take a very different tact and say, you know, social media is a place where anyone can talk, and yeah, it's going to be a little bit different, especially under
Elon Muscus. He's rolled back those content rules as he has fewer staff that can actually implement some brand safety measures on the site.
She's going to have to sell that.
And camp Con is coming up and and all sorts of opportunities for advertised to spend on Twitter, and we'll have to see if they if they restore their budgets.
She has tweeted Bay Area Views coming soon, so maybe she's moving out here towards FS. So thanks to Bloomberg Tech editor Sarah Fryer, Wow, two days in what weeks so far? That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Character.
Yeah, you do not want to forget aster cause you can find it on the terminole as well as online on Apple, Spotify, at iHeart, wherever you choose to digest. And yeah, if you go to some of those well history in the making recorder on those tweets more on that soon to come.
The supream, though