From the heart of where innovation, money and power collive in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Emily Jay. I'm Emily Changing in San Francisco, and this is Bloomberg Technology coming up in the next hour, from Google to Macy's, instatcart and Walmart. The power players of retail and those trying to break in are gathered at shop Talk in Las Vegas to talk about the future of commerce as interest rates and inflation squeeze consumer pocketbooks.
We will take you there live plus the slap seeing around the world. Will Smith smacking Chris Rock at the Oscars, overshadowing his own oscar, women sparking memes for day, maybe decades. We'll have a report from Hollywood. I the future of gene editing and biotechnology. We will speak about the promise of new science in a post COVID world with Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Down. Now, all of that in a moment, but first it's going to look at the market and
tech stuck starting the week on a high. Are at Ludlow here with the big movers, and yeah, we've got this continuation of the risk on sentiment we've seen particularly in equity markets over the last two weeks. You look at it then as that one d up one point six percent to its highest level in more than six weeks. And it's interesting. I put bitcoin on there as well.
It's around forty eight thousand dollars per token token. It's been a little under the radar, but we're the highest level of the year two on bitcoin, and it's also raised it's year to date losses, So real momentum there. And you've got a flag oil not necessarily directly related to tech, but oil down sharply Monday. You see futures for W two. I what West Texas Intermediate down seven
percent below ten dollars per barrel. But there's now a narrative around the question on global consumption, particularly China, the biggest consumer of energy products. Of course, m coming me, bobow terminal. Every so often a chart comes along, and I want to talk about Apple. Just look at this chart. Apple up on Monday for the tenth consecutive day. It's longest streak of gains since October two thousand and ten. Let that thinking, I'll let you have that sink in
for a moment. And that's despite a report from Nicka that Apple's cut production of its iPhone sc by because of waning demand, waning demand because of inflation, the conflicts in Ukraine, and investors they didn't seem to mind. The rapid streak that's been going on in mega tech continues and Apple really leading that charge. Also worth noting very quickly,
the Amazon is now positive year today as well. So despite that narrative about higher rates, really seeing investors look real close at megacap tech stucks are looking well quickly. Some movers Tesla up eight percent. We're gonna talk about this later in the show. It's gonna ask investors at this annual meeting for another stock split, the second in two years. Hping up three percent after a three billion
dollar all cash deal to buy Polly. This is one of the makers of remote work tools like headsets and video cameras. An interesting all cash deal for them. But you see investors taking negatively and lass amc entertainment up end. Do you know why why? No idea means talks about Alright, thank you Ed. Always love those history lessons, appreciate it well. This week we are in Las Vegas at Shoptop where thousands of retail moguls are coming together to talk about
the future of retail. The agenda covering the latest tech and trends from apparel and electronics to beauty and grocery. Connie Chance, general partner at entries in Horowitz, is in Vegas at the conference and joins us Now Live. Connie, you, we're a speaker on stage today, and I'm curious, what are some of the key themes and trends your most bullish on From day one? I mean, the energy here is so high. Everyone is talking about how to leverage
more technology. One of the key trends I'm hearing all retailers talk about is how to use more video going forward. That could be a combination of short video, long video, live video. Lots of retailers are asking questions about these topics, how to find the right hosts, the right seller to host these videos. But there's a lot of talk about just incorporating more technology and to our everyday shopping experiences. That said, we're looking at inflation, we're looking at interest rates.
All of us is really putting pressure on consumers. How are retail companies dealing with this and how are consumers
going to respond? I think retailers are thinking about how to decrease the space between brand, retail and customer, to foster more brand loyalty, to deliver better customer experiences, to make sure customers have more confidence and the things they buy before they purchase them, and so examples like using video or using personalized chat or having these one on one expert recommendations are always that brands can make sure
that consumers are more confident in their purchases. Now, your panel today focused on China as a global e commerce player, and we know that you know, in the Chinese economy, Chinese shopping economy, there are so many different kinds of experiences that have yet to sort of translate to a global audience. Talk to us about what you see there that has the most promise and whether or not you see some of these trends catching on around the world.
For sure, I'd say the biggest e commerce trend in China over the last two three years would be live shopping. Live shopping has taken China by storm and it's really changed the way lots of brands and retailers are even thinking about their marketing budgets. And so you can buy everything on live video and China. Now everything from medical
procedures to clothing to fruit farming. Anything you can think of that can be purchased online can be purchased through online video, and so I think that trend is now showing that it has lots of promise. In the US, there are plenty of companies now experimenting with live video and they're seeing really great results. You've talked about the rise of shop attainment in the past, and I'm curious which companies you think are at the forefront of this.
How do you, for example, think about Instagram versus TikTok, versus Facebook versus Snapchat when it comes to video commerce. I think lots of companies are going to put video commerce at the forefront, just because videos such a fantastic way to sell things. If you grow up watching infomercials, you know they are effective. And having customer testimonials, having live demos on boxing, all of these things are just fantastic ways to sell product and get customers more excited
about the things that they're buying. I think you're right, all of these large platforms are going to be experimenting with shop attainment and having more video enabled commerce. I also think lots of brands are going to attempt putting it on their own websites and on their own apps. And I also believe there's going to be third party apps that rise as new shop um shopping video platforms
that are going to do tremendously well. Now I have to ask you about what's going on in the broader environment. What's happening with funding and valuations. We just saw Insta car markets own valuation down from thirty nine billion dollars to twenty four billion dollars. I know this is a company that entries in horrowits invested in at an earlier stage. Are we going to see a slew of other markdowns? I mean, is this happening at at a lot of companies?
Like yn't speak about that particular company, but I will say that I tend to focus on the very early stage. So I'm talking about Precedes, Seeds and A's and so forth, and a lot of these companies have a really long time horizon five, ten, fifteen years, and so we're less concerned about near term shocks to the market, and that wouldn't change our focus on how we invest. So are you saying the broader economic environment the uncertainty that we're
seeing what's happening with inflation and interest rates. That's not really factoring into your calculus at all at entries and horrowits in terms of the early investments that you're making at the early stage, I don't think we're that phase by near term changes to the market, because again, we have a very long term horizon, and so do our founders. Many of them are building for five, ten, fifteen years outward.
So let's talk about what you are looking to invest in in terms of companies, in terms of trend what are you most bullish on as we come out of the pandemic hopefully uh, fingers crossed, But we are facing this kind of uncertainty of future of hybrid work. You know,
where are you placing your bets. I think COVID brought a lot of behaviors forward in a really great way in the sense that now we're much more accustomed to doing things through video, We're more used to ordering things on our phone, So I actually think it accelerates a
lot of the trends that we're going to happen. Anyways, I'm looking at new forms of commerce, how people are creating new formats, whether it's video or AI driven UM and the particularly excited about companies that use AI at the forefront, meaning how are they rethinking an entire experience with AI to begin with or video to begin with. So I'm excited about AI and video in particular. And how do you think, like, take us five years out, how will we be shopping differently because of AI, because
of video? Let's say five years from now. I think video shopping is going to be very common mainstream behavior five years out, which means that you are going to be shopping from all kinds of platforms. Means you're not just going to be shopping on e commerce platforms. Even you'll be shopping from social media platforms. There are other platforms that you spend a lot of time on. UM. I also think with AI that means you're going to have much better personalization and that's going to improve the
shopping experience for everyone across the board. Ideally that means for your returns. Ideally, that means you're buying things that fit your style, You're buying things that naturally delight you. So AI is just a wonderful way to give a more personalized shopping experience. So is this like a smarter version of QVC on social media. In some ways, QVC, of course is one of the original shopping video platforms.
Um But I think if you look at what happened in China in the last two three years, you get a glimpse of what's possible in the US. And in many ways, China video shopping is now one of the most popular waste shop and people are doing it on their smartphones all throughout the day. And you can buy literally anything on an online video shopping and it's great because you can ask the host questions, you can get real time answers. There's a lot of limited time discounts.
If you think back to your infomercial days, they would say or now or in the next fifteen minutes and get it a freebee or give one to you know, get an extra one to give to a friend. All of those limited time promotions, exclusive drops, special pricing, all of those things are much more possible through live video. And what is the role of the creator economy and all of this, I mean, our influencers were placed by AI s. I mean, are these real people still selling
us stuff or not? I think influencers are still really important creators are important because they are curating products and they are building trusts with their end viewers. Right, there are particular folks that I want watch on YouTube, and I trust the recommendations they're making based off the background, based off the things they've recommended or didn't recommend in
the past. And so creators are still really important as either creators of products or curators, and their curation is really valuable because it's giving me a better glimpse more information about what I'm purchasing. All right, Connie Chan of Entrees and Harrow, it's great to hear your view of the future. Thanks for stopping. By meantime, Netflix has headed for its biggest quarterly drop in a decade, entering the final week at the first quarter of the streaming video
giant down percent. That makes Netflix one of the biggest losers in the NAZAC one hundred, investors largely wary about its disappointing growth outlook. Coming up, we'll head back to Las Vegas, where Bloomberg's Bradstone sat down with Insta cart CEO pg SMO days after the grocery tech giant slashed
its valuation. That's next. This is Bloomberg and so as a private company, even though our businesses, you know, incredibly strong, we we really wanted to reflect the facts that, of course we're not immune to the volatility of the public markets, and so by proactively kind of taking down our valuation to reflect what it would be like if we were
a publicly treated company. It's an employee first move so that we can start granting stock to our employees at this lower valuation and helps um, you know, participate in the upside. Insta Carcimo, they're at sharp talk with our very own grad Stone talking about the company's re sent mark down. Last week, Instacart slashed its valuation by almost to four billion dollars to reflect public market declines at companies like doordesh and Shopify, also Instacart and Semo, saying
this is to give employees more upside. Our Bradstone joins us now to discuss and Brad the big question, is this the start of something that we're going to see happening more broadly at other companies besides Instacart. What more contacts context did she give you there? Well, you heard it. She called it an employee first move. She said it would help Instacart with retention but look, I think instacarts in a pretty unique position and it's going to be
more difficult for other companies to follow. As you remember, Emily, last year, a poor of a meta, the CEO and founder of instacarts, stepped aside. They brought in Fiji. She really signaled, you know, a full pivot for the company from just a food delivery business into a more sort of full featured, enterprise looking business where Instacart is providing technology for supermarkets, building them ghost warehouses, helping with thirty minute delivery. I think that Reset bought a Fiji a
lot more runway. It's allowed this private valuation Reset. Other companies that are facing more of a liquidity demand, who who might have to go public soon, who can't put it off as Fiji did last fall, are going to have less flexibility. She's pushing this idea of insta cart as an antidote to Amazon, and I'm curious what you think of that, given you know, the many many years that you've covered Amazon, Can insta cart really take on
Amazon in the way that she is expressing. You know, It's it's funny because that's not really the right question, at least right now, because Amazon's a little measily two percent a player in the grocery business, whole foods. They really haven't invested all that much. They're doing some interesting things with the checkout technology, but really the boogeyman, if there is one, is an instat cart partner. It's Walmart. I mean, with a twenty percent plus market share in
grocery is Kroger of course, another big giant. If you're a small supermarket, you know, maybe Amazon motivates you a little bit, but really, you know, the the the the dragon in the room are are these big scale players that are modernizing very fast. That's the real reason for
the digital transition that's needed at small supermarkets. Now. Since I spoke with Fiji Cimo a couple of weeks ago for Studio one point Oh, we had a debate in that episode about what's a fair wage and shoppers who had told me, you know, their typical payment for a shop is seven dollars. She told me that that wasn't consistent with what is normal. But it sparked this frenzy of shoppers out there sending me screenshots of their orders, some many of them getting paid seven dollars. So I'm
getting paid as low as five dollars. You know, what does she have to say about this about wages, whether or not they're fair, and whether or not this kind of economy is really sustainable? Right? And I mentioned that explicitly. I said, you know, if for anyone who who writes or reports about Instacart, you tend to get these testimonials
and that their shoppers are kind of suffering. And you know from what I recall, and I want to go back and listen to the tape she really didn't talk about I I asked directly, can you raise the wage? And she talked more about the kinds of perks that come with being a shopper for Instacart, trying to instigate more demand because in times of peak demand you maximize savings.
She talked about lots of features, specific features for female shoppers who are a preponderance of their of their labor ecosystem. You know, I have a feeling that they might be a little bit constrained at least on the economics. I mean, she talked about running the delivery business basically at cost and making instacarts margin on things like advertising and enterprise sales.
So it might just be that you know, the economics of instacrt delivery aren't that great, and they find that they're they're limited what they can do for shoppers despite that vocal percentage of shoppers that are complaining. All right, Brad Stone joining us live from the shop top floor. Thanks Brad. That certainly an open question. I'll be with you tomorrow there to interview Uber CEO Dara Kasra Shah
he and much more. Meantime, HP has agreed to buy plant Tronics, and at three point three billion dollar deal, the acquisition will help the laptop maker further capitalize on the pivot to hybrid work. Plantronics sells phone, headsets, and audio and video accessories. They all cash deal give shareholders a premium to plant Tronics closing price Friday. Coming up, it went viral in seconds. Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. We'll have more details on why and
what's next coming up. This is Bloomberg. It is what everyone is talking about. Dub simply on social media as the slap. Will Smith smacking Chris Rock on stage in the middle of the Oscar ceremony. This after Chris Rock made a g I Joe g I Jane kind of joke about Will Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who also suffers from alopecia and has been embracing it by going
bald for the last several months. Let's dig into it all with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw joining us straight from Hollywood and Lucas, I gotta ask you, twenty four hours later, are there any more details on what happened here? The backstory, what's next? No new details on exactly what happened on stage, and I think we we all saw. The real question is sort of what was happening behind the scenes, What did the Academy try to do or not try to do in the moment, and what is it going to
do going forward? There have been some reports about how they had considered trying to intervene and maybe stop Will Smith's from speaking, or talk to him before he spoke. I think the question everyone has now is will he be punished in some way? Will they, you know, bar him from the Academy or suspend him for a couple of years. Normally, as the winner of the Best Actor Prize, he'd be at the ceremony next year presenting the Best Actress.
Will they let him back for that, and we should know, probably not in the next day or two, but maybe in the next few weeks. The memes about this incident are insane. I'm pretty sure these will be going on for decades. This overshadowed Will Smith's own Oscar win. You know, in his own speech, he's he didn't totally apologize, he kind of apologized. Um, you know, what does this mean mean for Will Smith's career? Yeah, it is one of the most surreal moments in certainly in the history of
the Oscars, arguably in TV history. Um, it marred what was supposed to be the culmination of his career. He's been one of the biggest movie starts in the world for years and you know, he tried to win Oscars before, but nominated a couple of times. His career had been on the downslope for a little bit, and he's really revived it in the last five or six years, and this was going to be the kind of the pinnacle of all that, and instead, to your point, we're just
talking about this this one kind of unfortunate incident. Um. He's someone who's lived very much in the public eye over the last little bit, and I for one I'm curious to see how he tries to navigate this and what his response will be after he has some time to digest it. Meantime, Chris Rock had sort of remarkable composure in that moment. We still haven't heard from him yet, right, I mean, why hasn't he made a statement? I mean, he's probably waiting to see what will in the academy do.
You're right? I mean, it's pretty amazing that he handled He handled it so well that there were a lot of people who thought that that was a bit including this morning. I got text messages at with people asking me um, But I don't expect he'll say a whole lot all right, Luca Shaw for us in l A. Lucas, Thanks for that update. This incident, of course, not the only thing of note that happened at the Asker is
just the one that everyone is talking about. But my colleague Alex Webb points out there was a whole lot more to the ceremony. Take a listen. Much of the conversation around this is Oscars is focused on Will Smith hitting Chris Rock midway through the ceremony, but there was another really significant first from a business perspect The best picture Oscar went to Coda, which was the first film distributed by an online stream and it wasn't Netflix, it
wasn't Amazon Prime, it was Apple. The reason that's significant is because it says a lot about the way the economics of film are changing. The upside for streamers to win awards is far greater than for the classic film studio. In the old model, if you convince more people to go to the cinema to see your film after having one a few awards, you might get fift dollar spend on the cinema ticket. The studio might take home half
of that, so maybe seven or eight dollars. In the new model, you might be encouraging someone to sign up for your streaming service, in this case Apple tv Plus now Apple tv Plus it's about five dollars a month.
If you convince someone to sign up for it and they stick around for two years, once they see all the other content you have, that customer could be worth a hundred and twenty dollars to you, so rather than seven or eight dollars, you're getting a hundred and twenty at On top of that, the cachet that comes with being an Oscar winning studio and the ability to bring in and encourage other filmmakers to bring their talent to your studio. And it has a real snowball effects further
down the line and can benefit your output. Bloomberg's Alex Web there all right, coming out. Huawei earnings out at a seventy plus percent jump in private despite tightening US sanctions. AIE party of Huawei joins US. Next, this is Bloomberg, Welcome back to bloom More technolog gam emily changing San Francisco shares a vv giant Tesla jumping eight percent after the company said it would seek a shareholder approval for another stocks plan, the news driving the stock higher despite
other negative headlines. Bloomberg sources say Tesla has halted production at a Shanghai plant to comply with government lockdowns to combat COVID. Are at ludlow here with the latest and why another stock split? Yeah, it's interesting, you know. The street is hypothesizing that the rationale is same as the last stock split in August, which is to lower the
barrier for entry. Right. Elon Musk has talked regularly about how Tessa investors on the retail side are often Tesla owners, Right, they own the cars, they own the energy products um and they have a better understanding of the company than institutional investors. But with the stock at the level that it is a thousand dollars a share, it might be inaccessible to them. So by doing a stock split, you lower that per unit price and it opens up the field,
democratizes access to the stock. What more details do we have on how exactly this will work. Well, that's the whole problem, and we don't have details. You know, Tesla communicated this in a tweet right which we saw on your screen a few seconds ago. Then they put out a regulatory filing saying that they're going to ask investors to approve the additional shares that need would need to be offered for the stock split at their annual meeting. But we don't know the date of the annual meeting.
Last year, it was in October. The year before, I believe it was in June. So this is classic Tesla, you know, they don't communicate like other public companies do. We don't know what the ratio of stock splits will be. We don't know if it'll be a five to one three for one one like Alphabet Google Parent did earlier this year. This is classic Testa and it's hard to track, but clearly the share reaction took Testa into positive territory
for two and investors like the idea of another stock split. Now, what do we know about what's happening in Shanghai and how problematic is it? You know, it's problematic. Authorities in Shanghai, basically half a city at a time are doing testing because of a resurgence of COVID. The area east of the Huangpo River where the Tesla plant is is the focus of that testing. So according to sources, Teslas shut down through April one. We don't know how long it
will go through until total. But look at your screen right now, Shanghai accounts for almost half of production. The difference is that the cars coming out of Shanghai and more profitable. They have higher margins because the supply chain is localized and it has advanced robotics compared to Fremont. In February, Tesla delivered fifty six thousand vehicles from that plant, which basically is indicative of them outperforming the factories in
stall capacity. So if this holt does go on, it could really be disruptive for a company that has a lot of momentum in terms of scaling production. As you know, m Berlin's online and we expect the new plant in Austin's come on online again soon. So this is when we're watching closely. All right, Bloodlow, thanks for that update. Now, Huawei out with the company's annual report and seeing net profit surge see despite deep revenue declines as they navigate
geo political sanctions. Andy Petty, Quawei Technologies at USA, chief security officer with US Now, so Andy curious how Huawei managed to pull this off and how the company will keep it up in such an uncertain economic and geopolitical environment. Well, actually, you know, backing up my last trip to China, I left January and attended meetings of four different business groups as the company was planning their strategy to try to survive. Frankly was what it was. So this is this is
very heartening. So part of that work, given the limitations on our ability to buy a non sensitive technology from American semiconductor industry, we had to realign our business portfolio.
We had to invest very heavily in R and D. You saw we invested over our revenue this year in R and D. We're emphasizing the importance of digitalization, the importance of cloud, the importance of carbon uh and we are pleased that we have over seven hundred cities and two hundred and sixty seven of the Fortune Global five hundred companies have chosen Huawei for their digital transformation. So we've had to modify what we do and how we
do it. It's a long haul. We are making progress and we are going to work our way towards a flourishing future, and we can in the in the process, we're providing real value to our partners and customers around the world. Now we're facing another geopolitical crisis, and that is Russia's war on Ukraine. How will this impact Huawei. I know that Huawei has been known to increase its investments in Russia given US sanctions and has become Russia's
largest equipment supplier. We are really upset about the about the invasion of Personally, in twenty nineteen, I went to Key of twice to visits and friends over there with the World Bank, and learning about the history, going to museums and seeing what they're going through now is just absolutely shocking and horrendous, and hopefully there can be to cease far and a withdrawal and they can return some of the children who are apparently taken from Ukraine right now,
as you know, are rotating. Chairman earlier today said we're studying the various approaches of companies and governments around the world to try to come up with what our approach is going to be on this is very troubling issue. Does while we need to abide by sanctions imposed on Russia by other nations, and what if China imposes sanctions on Russia by your contingency plans. Well, that's part of
what we're studying, is what the terms are. One of the things that we've been doing even before the pandemic was improving the diversification of our supply chain, not just for semiconductors, So if there's a destruction in certain areas, we can pursue other areas with our investment in R and D and some in pure research, having the ability to find value, to create value, and frankly working as part of the information and communication industry telecommunications industry to
help move towards carbon negative and our work and digital power or uh so, we've got a lot of flexibility and different kind of products and different kinds of components. UH and we operate in a hundred seventy countries in the world, so we're going to find a way although it can be very, very difficult. The idea of dealing with business disruptions, supply chain challenges, business continuity, they're all
part of what major companies have to do. So let's talk about that way forward, especially with your overseas business strategy, given that you know your telecom your smartphone businesses have been really hard hit by US sanctions in particular, and it doesn't seem like this geopolitical uncertainty is going to end anytime soon. Yes, going from one kind of uncertainty
to another. We're pleased that with our work, for example, in five G there was a recent study of the five G networks in Switzerland, Germany, Finland, nether On, South Korean and Saudi Arabia. They said the law it provides the best user experience. And as you know, our consumer device, our consumer business apart from the mobile devices, UH where doable smart screens, entertainment sort of tremendous surge in that business.
So we're and we've got like six thousand partners in the world coming up with these digitalization solutions, and last year we had ten thousand, five G two b UH deployments working with our partners. So there are a lot of different ways that we can survive, and by heavily investing in research and working with our partners, we're finding ways to UH find our way what is while we're doing to address the security concerns raised by foreign countries,
in particular the United States. I know you don't agree necessarily with all of them, but clearly these concerns remain well in light of the recent cyber attacks that demonstrated that an old axiom about trusted suppliers is no longer valid. We are working with our competitors, with the major carriers in the world, with the major standards bodies to try to strengthen and improve standards for five G and particularly standards for the telecom equipment, and working to create conformance
programs and independent testing programs. We are very open to the US government recently emphasized the importance of greater information sharing when it comes to cyber incidents. In other words, don't just wait to really bad things happen. Try to share information more quickly and sooner so that dots can be connected. We're very open to having the US government come into our facilities and hopefully those of our competitors, to give advice about how we and other companies can
be more transparent. How can we make sure that we are doing what's necessary to address real risk, to promote resilience, and helping to find ways to do that before really bad things happen, whether it's state of breaches or cyber attacks. We need a greater capabilities of global community to figure out where we stand in terms out comparedness so that we can avoid really bad things happening. And hopefully the United States is going to get much more active internationally
in these efforts as well. Well. What about the Chinese government. We've seen the Chinese government crackdown on Chinese tech companies. How can you assure your your overseas partners, business partners that you can avert this kind of infravention intervention and that it won't negatively impact Huawei's business well, and that's one of the reasons we're partnered with so many different companies. We've got thirty thousand partners around the world covering every
every different line of business. UH. We are continuing to strengthen the Global Assurance and Privacy Protection program that that we launched shortly before I joined WAWEIH almost almost ten years ago, and the idea of of internal testing, external independent testing, participating in these standards bodies where you have to have certifications of your products, of your requirements, and trying to find ways to be increasingly transparent so our
customers and the customers of others know what we're doing. And so we've been one of the most tested companies in the world, and we believe that the folks that have been our customers and stakeholdness in those countries recognize that we are committed to following the laws in those countries, and we are committed to the best practices and cybersecurity and and we're open to ideas on how to improve. Andy per Huawei Technologies USA Chief Security Officer, Good to
have you, Andy, thank you for joining us. Coming up how crypto markets are continuing to be impacted by the War on Ukraine and how they can recover one that next to school work, time for our crypto report now, and let's take a look back on the crypto market since the start of the War on Ukraine. Bitcoins and others. Bitcoin and others have been fluctuating ever since, caught in the crosshairs between Russian sanctions abroad and rising interest rates
in the United States. Let's bring in our own crypto contributors n Ali Bassik now for more on this. Quite an interesting pattern, quite an interesting pattern. But I think what's important to note here is that even when the volatility, Bitcoin has erased his losses for the year and since the war has started, you see that Bitcoin has raised risen really significantly, more than twenty five percent over the last couple of weeks. Of course, we know there's been
a really big buyer. The Luna Foundation has confirmed to Bloomberg that they have been buying about more more than one billion dollars worth bitcoin since last January, including millions worth of purchases on Monday. So that's that's a steady rise for bitcoin. Certainly in the last couple of weeks. It really does emily outpaced the SMP five hundred since the war started, which only rose about six percent in
that time frame. And if you take out a theory um, take a look at the theoryum, it's risen even further than Bitcoin has. Of course, we know that's around the excitement around the merge among other things. However, we're seeing if you take a look there, about a thirty percent rise or so in the theory um now over the last twenty four hours. Yes, we've seen a big jump, but that has started to level off both with theory um and with bitcoin, so we'll see how much room
it has to run. People who are watching the space closely are waiting for it to get to fifty for bitcointe. One of the biggest hurdles that remain for for bitcoin, obviously there's a major regulatory one. Yeah, that is one
of the biggest things. The SEC has not yet approved a spot bitcoin e t F. Even with the the futures based ETFs really taking off here that pro shares bitcoin et F again, not a huge rise since it first really started, but we do see it coming back up along with the rise in bitcoin for the year. Something interesting, Emily, you can look at it both ways.
The big banks, Goldman Sachs among other big market makers as well, have started to make a lot of bitcoin derivative products that help institutions get exposure to bitcoin without holding it itself. My sources say every day that there's not a spot e t F. More people get into these derivative products to get exposure to bitcoin while they can't get exposure to a more direct body t F. And what about n f T s We saw n f T sales sputter a bit. Are we seeing any
kind of recovery there? You see a little bit of a recovery there. As you saw in that last chart, it's down significantly from the highs Emily and that's according to n f T go dot io. But you're seeing that then this is by volume to be certain, if you look at by market cap it's still quite high. But this all goes to say bitcoin itself has taken a rise. All of these other products follow on the heels of how fast Bitcoin can rise. Let's see if n f T sales in the next couple of we
start to catch up. Should bitcoin keep its bid? Okay, our crypto contributor, thank you, come up. The future of biotech investing and of the crisper gene editing technology in a post pandemic world. Biochemist and Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Downnutt joins us to talk about all of that and more. Next, this is Bloomberg. As we come out of the pandemic,
what the future of the biotech industry holds well? UC Berkeley professor and Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Down is trying to level the playing field by launching a new program to help women founders in biotechnology. Joining us now to talk about all that and more, Professor Down herself and Dr Down, I think the world most people would probably agree we need more Jennifer down as in this world. Talk to us about this new program and what the impact would be. Hi, Emily, we are so excited about
this program. At the Innovative Genomics Institute, we launched a WISE program, Women in Entrepreneurial Science, founded by anerful female entrepreneurial philanthropist. We have a incredible opportunity to recruit the best female entrepreneurs to the institute, give them a head start to get their ideas launched, and then found companies off of those ideas. It's a It's an extraordinary opportunity. I'm delighted to be part of it. Why do we
need more women in biotechnology in particular? I'm a big believer that the best science gets done by a diverse team. We have to have people from all walks of life contributing to the future of biotech in genome engineering. With Cristper technology, we've seen over the last decade the extraordinary advance is made both on the innovative side and also
on the applied side. And I think that, you know, going forward, we just want to have the most opportunity, you know, the largest opportunity to recruit people from everywhere to come into this field and work on opportunities and geno medity. What's your assessment of where we are at this phase of the pandemic, moving into hopefully post pandemic and the role that CRISPER engene editing will play in
preventing the next pandemic from happening. Crisper is such an extraordinary technology, I think, as you know, it came out of a study of a bacterial immune system, so it naturally works in nature as a as a way of protecting cells against viral infection. And going forward, we're using it not only as a way to detect the presence of infectious agents, but also to use it to uh, you know, make the kinds of changes in the genome
that could be protective against future infection. I think those are the two ways that we'll see Crisper having an impact in the future to prevent the kind of pandemic that we've just been through. Now, there's been some controversy in the crisper world recently. Berkeley recently lost a long and drawn out patent battle with M. I. T. And
Harvard's Broad Institute over the ownership of this technology. What's been your reaction to this, Oh, Emily, you know, I think this this is a common theme in areas of technology where there is extraordinary opportunity, there are always disputes about, you know, intellectual property, and Cristper is no different in that regard. I'm proud of the fact that U. C. Berkeley University, California retains more than forty five issued patents
that are not part of the interference. So we have a very strong intellectual property suite around Cristopher and we continue to do our our work at the Innovative Genomics Institute and with our partner companies. Were not impeded in any way by that ongoing dispute. So on that note, how does this impact your efforts too, and your dream really to commercialize this technology and apply it to hard problems for generations to come, not at all, you know,
I recently I was. I had a wonderful conversation just last week with Victoria Gray. She was the first United States uh resident who received a Crisper therapy for her sickle cell disease. UM just incredible to talk with her and hear about the impact on her family, her life. She's now enrolling in business school, something she couldn't have imagined doing when she was dealing with the ongoing impacts of sickle cell disease. And I think that's the future
for Cristper. We're going to see more and more opportunities to change people's lives in better way, for for the best. Talk to us about your near term goals and your long term goals on the therapeutic roadmap. Well, near term, I think we're we're on a path to continue expanding the kinds of applications that Cristopher will be used for, not only for very rare disease, but I think in the future using it as a way to protect against disease.
And they're already our companies, for example, Verve comes to mind that are on that same path. And I think, then, you know, further down the road. I think crisper eventually becomes a standard of or for certain types of disease. I think that's something that you know, I I can envision. You know, it will only happen if it's developed with an eye towards sustainability. It has to be affordable. You know, Victoria Gray's treatment was close to two million dollars, So
clearly we need to bring down the cost. And we think that one way to do that is to do the kind of research that we have ongoing at the Innovative Genomics Institute and then partner with companies when it makes sense. And what's your outlook on the future of biotech returns? I mean, for so many years this was and under invested in part of the tech landscape, certainly when you compare it to consumer and enterprise technology. Do you see a new era for biotech investing being ushered
in over the next decade. I do. And part of the reason, one thing I think is driving that actually is the intersection of biotech with other kinds of technology. Is hard tech for example, uh, computer science. You know, I think we many of us see that there are amazing opportunities when these areas of technology converge and that's what we're seeing right now. So I think the next decade in this area will be very, very exciting for
scientists and also for investors. So where the next big bets wish and investors be putting their money quickly, Well, one area I would I would recommend looking into is is agriculture and synthetic biology. These are these are areas where you know, we need crisper and we need other technologies to address the challenges of climate change, of a growing population on our planet. How do we keep people fed with the you know, high nutritional value crops. Christopher
will play a big role there, all right. Dr Jennifer dowdnat Nobel Prize winner, UC Berkeley Professor, always get to have you here on the show. Thank you for joining us. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Tune in tomorrow for my exclusive interview with Uber CEO Dara Kaswa Shahy. I'll be speaking with him at Shop Talk in Las Vegas. We will be live with the show Bloomberg Technology on the shop Talk floor and allays at all tomorrow. And don't forget to check out our
new podcast. You can find it on the terminal, as well as online at Apple, Spotify, our Heart Radio and wherever you get your podcast. I'm Emily checking in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg. Yeah. Yeah. Every art institution I know I want you to serve on their board. And you're very involved in the art world. What is it about art that attracts you? Well? Art is essential in the democracy, David. Art is so important. We know what our does to young people. We know that exposure to art brings about
higher levels of empathy. Um. It helps people understand how other cultures, other people live, um. And it just brings out the kind of humanity and all of us. There are times when I have observed leaders uh use um language that is inhumane while talking about other human beings, while while talking about the world. UM, And I think to myself, this person has clearly never engaged in beautiful poetry.
They've never listened to the words of a great play, right, They've never um sat and reflected on a beautiful painting or picture. Because if they had been really educated, had they really been exposed to the arts, UM, they wouldn't find it possible to use this kind of language.