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 San Francisco in This is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up in the next hour. Tesla beats the first major US car makers report first quarter results,
and they don't disappoint. How the company is weathering supply issues, rising costs, and production delays, while it's CEO explores buying Twitter plus Netflix still falling down on the day, making it the s ANDPS worst performer of the year so far. Is the solution adds gaming? Just better content or maybe a big fire like Apple? Will explore all scenarios and as public markets fall all the CEO of Amazon Web Services tells me he's open to deals of all sizes.
Adam Selipski joins me here in the studio on the heels of the AWS summit in San Francisco, will explore the future of the cloud, and well, what about Amazon as a buyer for Twitter? Lots to get to I want to start by digging deeper into Tesla's results. I'm joined out by Steve Wesley, founder of the Wesley Group. He was an early investor in Tesla and is a former Tesla board member. Okay, Steve, there's a lot going on here. The call is gonna start a little bit
later in our show. We're gonna hear what Ellen has to say live. Let's talk about the headline numbers. First, how is it the Tesla's managing all of these very difficult challenges out there, from a chip crisis to inflation to you know, a production shutdown in Shanghai. So well, well, first, Tesla Blue Way the numbers once again, posting three d
and ten thousand vehicles delivered. That's a big number. They were predicted to deliver e seventot six billion, and it looks like they're going to beat that by a good marsh And folks, this is year over year growth, annual growth off a big number and posting their eleventh profitable quarter on top of that. The real story is they've just opened two new facilities in Austin, Berlin. They're sitting on four massive production facilities and they just have capacity
that others don't. Elon is saying he predicts Tesla will deliver one point four million cars this year. I think he's going to produce at least one point six million. If they do that, they could be on their way to becoming a one point trillion dollar company. We'll see. There's been concerned that Elon Musk's interest in Twitter could potentially distract him from Tesla. We've seen Tesla shares take a leg down since this whole drama has unfolded. Of course,
we'll have to see where markets closed tomorrow. But what's your take on that can he do all of this at once? Well? Look, if a test to shareholder, you probably wanted to stay focused on Tesla. Only Ellen and Twitter's board know what is going to happen there. As you know, he offered his best and final offer forty three billion dollars last week. They responded with the boys and Bill. Look, Elon is not one to take no for an answer, But heading test less SpaceX and Twitter,
it feels like a stretch to me. But people have lost a lot of money betting against Tesla, and I think I know for sure this one's gonna be exciting. Indeed, if you can build rockets to Mars, why not try to buy Twitter? It certainly seems much more reasonable. Indeed, all right, so let's talk about the challenges that lie ahead for Tesla, given the chip crisis ongoing, given rising inflation,
given a pandemic that's not over. I mean, there's reports that workers at the Tesla pant in Shanghai are planning to sleep there to avoid further lockdowns. How well do you think the company will continue to navigate all of these things through the rest of the year. Look, there's a lot going on in the auto industry, and generally speaking, I would say if you're investor in auto companies, you need to be careful because you're seeing huge supply chain challenges.
Most of these other companies don't even have their factories up and running, and we could be heading into a recession. And precisely at the same time all that's going on their twenty new EV companies coming into the market, Rivan, Lucid. You've heard all the names, but the reality is it's hard to make e vs, and you're seeing Rivan and Lucid already backtracking on numbers, pulling numbers down. Ford and
General Motors dramatically lower numbers than people have expected. Ford fewer than seven thousands n e vs delivered this quarter, General Motors less than a thousand, so I think the takeaway here is touch Slate is lapping the competition when most of the other automakers are just getting buckled in. Let's see how checks out. There's also, of course, what you mentioned the R word recession inflation on the rise. Are people going to want to buy new cars right now?
Maybe Tesla is the best at making e vs, but doesn't matter if people aren't buying them. So that's the big issue. You know. On the one hand, if you go down to the testa dealership, now they're gonna tell you eight, ten, twelve month wait. So there's a huge demand there. The question is will that cool off? In Q two or Q three. Looks to me like there's a lot of pent up demand. Tesla will take advantage of it because they have got four plants going now and by the way, a or in the process of
doubling capacity of their plant in Shanghai. By the way, just for the viewers, we can picture this. You've all have been to a costco. The Tesla facility in China is ten million square feet. That's the size of one hundred costcos placed next to each other. These are huge facilities. There's are up and running, others aren't just also do
something smart. They've put supply chain contracts with firms you've probably never heard of, like Veil, the world's largest nickel producer, so they know where the supply supply is coming from and they've got I think a leg up on supply chain. Now, how is and how big a recession is coming? That's hard to predict right now there in the capperl seat. Meantime, Steve in the long list of other things that Elon Musk has to deal with, there is this lawsuit over
that tweet that he sent in funding secured. He's being sued by shareholders over this. He had asked to judge if he could continue tweeting about it, making comments about it. Uh, you know, as the suit is ongoing. A judge has now ruled that yes he can. He's not going to be muzzled. What do you make of this particular situation, the fact that this is going on now almost five years So, look, you've got a guy who's gonna get out of the park with SpaceX, out of the park
with tesla Um. Would I advise him to get into a a pissing match with the SEC or the government? Probably not, But Elon is nothing if not genuine. He As I said before, people have lost a lot of money betting against him. We'll see how this shakes out. It's really only up to the SEC to decide. Personally, I'd love to see him staying focused on building great vehicles, because right now he's doing a heck of a good
job of that, all right. Steve Wesley, founder of the Wesley Group, early investor in Tesla, early Tesla board member. Always great to have your perspective here on the show. Some announcements from the Amazon Web Services Summit right here in San Francisco. Amazon has taken a new step toward getting all of its power from green sources. By the world's large just online retailer, has reached deals to boost
its access to renewable energy by almost a third. Most of it will come from solar farms in the United States. It will be used to supply Amazon's offices, warehouses, and data centers. Meantime, Adam Slitsky, CEO of AWS, joined meat here on the set in San Francisco. We're gonna get to that conversation momentarily, but first I want to get back to our Ed Ludlow, who's been following testa's results,
and we're not just minutes away from the Tesla earnings call. Normally, how this goes, I believe Elon jumps on, muddles through some prepared remarks, and then goes off the cuff, right, Yeah, he kind of respectfully mumbles through prepared remarks before passing on to Zach kirk Con who's the CFO. Sometimes Shrew Bagnino, who's the s VP of power Train and Energy, but he often interjects. But as you know him, today is four twenty. I know nothing's happened yet and being but
we were all expecting a big moment exactly. So a lot of Twitter users to Twitter and said, oh, I wonder if Elon Musk tagging him in the tweet at Elon Musque will be on the cool He replied yes, So you know there's a lot going on in Elon Must's world right now. The bid for Twitter tests are having a great quarter in the first quarter, SpaceX doing really well. There's just intense interest here. But what is
it we want to know from him? Probably if he's not going to talk about Twitter, the outlook for Cybertruck, the outlook for Semi truck, these kind of new products because that's what he does. He keeps investors looking to the horizon. So could we hear something more dramatic from him on the Tesla Ernis call. Could that be the moment that he chooses to do some sort of reveal or make a move if I was a betting man. Yes, all right, we'll be listening into that call as it
starts momentarily ed, thank you. Meantime, back to that conversation with Adam Selipski, the CEO of a w S AS I mentioned a slew of new announcements, including thirty seven in new renewable energy projects, thirty million dollar commitment to startups led by diverse founders. My conversation with Adam Selipsky earlier talking about the future of AWS and the cloud, and two major Amazon Web Services outages late last year, I asked what he learned from that. Take a listen.
Availability is absolutely critical. Our first priority is always security, and immediately following that, operational performance including availability and overall, if you look at the sixteen year operating history of AWS, and even if you look at you know, shorter periods the last year, the last three years, we've been highly reliable. We've been highly available. We've had better availability track records
than other large cloud providers. Are certainly better than really any enterprise I've talked to has been able to achieve in their own data centers. So any evidence you've lost customers as a result of those, No, We've had a lot of conversations. I mean we Uh, we had a couple of days of course in December, which you know, we're not not good operational days and we own that, by the way, you know, we don't we don't run
away from that. Um. And uh, we learned from them and have been really trying to take whatever lessons we could to make ourselves even more reliable. But as we've talked to customers, uh, they've they've really all you know, understood that. Um. While we don't like what happened on a day like that at all, if because of our customers hurt, you know, we we feel to hurt too. That we really have a very strong track record and that keeps the partnership strong. People have been asking for
years whether AWS should be spun off from Amazon. Do you spend any time thinking about this or thinking about the hypothetical benefits? Really only with folks like you, m As it turns out, Uh, honestly not. We We have no current plans to spend on AWS. We think that our customers are very well served by having a w s B a part of Amazon. In fact, so many an increasing number of the conversations I have with particularly big inn prizes UH they want to make use of
the capabilities at Amazon has across the company. Whether it's energy companies want wanting to um sell us power, whether it's auto manufacturers who have electric vehicles that we need for our delivery fleets, whether it's UH telcos who want to deliver five G enabled services to their consumers around things like entertainment and and Amazon Prime Video. Okay, but Andy Jesse might have said he never thought about a stock split, and recent events show that even in this environment,
sometimes we have to revisit those sacred cows. Has the idea of a split ever come up in a conversation with Andy or Jeff, It's it's really not a topic of conversation. We were very squarely focused on the way we're operating today. We we honestly do not have any plans in which I'm aware to uh really entertain split off of AWS. We think the way that we're organized now is actually very good for customers. That said, the market is changing, eulations are dropping. If you look at
what's happening in the macro environment. How is this impacting your strategy around acquisitions? We've seen Microsoft be really opportunistic. Well, we've We've very consistently done acquisitions over the really the whole history of AWS. I'd say that overall our strategy has been to do smaller, tuck in acquisitions. Part of that it's because we're trying to build a complete infrastructure platform and we want the whole thing to operate as
a single platform. Casual spectators often point out that Amazon doesn't really have a social play. Does Amazon need a social play? Could it be could a Twitter makes sense? Well that I don't know, but we certainly, I mean a big part of all of Amazon's businesses and and our strategy into different businesses revolve around partners and our ecosystem. Certainly to an AWS it's two and other parts of
the business as well. So we're very close to many companies with a very strong social presence, be it as as AWS customers or in our retail business for customer acquisition and UH customer messaging, doing more and more in the retail business with the shopping experience using social channels. So we're very intertwined with social media companies, and I would imagine across all of our business what will continue to be closely intertwined. One of those is Meta, which
recently picked Amazon as its long term cloud provider. I'm curious if Meta is just giving you a piece of their business or if this is a step towards them getting out of their own data center business. Well, I think you have to ask them that. But we've been
working with them for quite a while. But we and they did announce recently that they were doing a significant amount of their machine learning workloads on AWS and would be doing more that going forward, and UM, we really love that as the next development and our long term partnership with them. UM. I do think there's a lot of things so we can do with with companies like
that together. UM to the economics, the agility, the flexibility of parading in the cloud, or are just so strong and powerful and even for a large sophisticated UH cost effective companies, there's still a lot of benefits to operating
in the cloud. How much companies like that move to the cloud, move to AWS will be a function of how well do we understand and anticipate their needs and how well can we build in a way that's really effective for them for their own customer acquisition and retention. There's a lot of new exciting technologies out there. Andy recently said that Amazon could potentially sell n f t s in the future. How do you think about n f t S, blockchain, web, three, the metaverse. Where's the
opportunity there for AWS? Where do you want to play Boy? There's just a lot of buzzwords in that center, aren't there? There are We're wondering what the actual market opportunity is. What fundamentally, you know, what we want to do is to enable all of the underlying technologies that our customers at AWS. Customers need to build all of those things, to build the metaverse, to build you know, three D computing, UH, to build a blockchain and cryptocurrency applications, and we're currently
doing that. So if you look at I mean, gaming companies are often where people start when they talk about quote unquote metaverse companies. And if you look at companies like Riot Games, if you look at epic. Uh, they're both you know, very deep AWS customers. If you look at Meta which is of course even had had a name change. UM, we're doing more with them over time, which is which is really gratifying. And so we also
do a lot we have blockchain services. UH and if you look at things like Ethereum, of Ethereum workloads in the world run on AWS. So we're doing more and more around blockchain, around Ledger technology, around three D and spatial computing, which is going to be an important part
of the metaverse. And UH at the AW strategies to really again try and be uh as far out ahead of where those emerging metaverse company demand ends and blockchain and cryptocurrency customer demands are going to be, and UH and deliver really great innovative services. M Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky. There you can catch that full interview at Bloomberg dot com. Let's get an update on the Musque Twitter saga continuing to go viral. Elon Musk now
reaching out to potential financing partners across Wall Street. But the question is he having any luck. I'm gonna bring in Bloomberg's Michelle Davis for more on that, Michelle, who's actually considering this? Yeah, so, you know, as we know, the most interesting one of the most interesting parts about musk S bid for Twitter is that he didn't made it public without having the financing lined up. We know that as of now, he has started to have financing
conversations with potential financing partners. At this point, he's only focused on raising debt UM. It's our understanding that he has yet to initiate conversation around you know, raising equity UM. And so it's his bank Morgan Stanley reaching out to other big banks UM reaching out to We understand Apollo has agreed to participate help you know, finance through debt
this offer UM. But at this point we also know that there are a couple of firms like Blackstone, Brookfield and Vista that have at this point said, you know, we kind of want to stay away from this situation. We're not going to help provide any financing. Do any context done? How much how these conversations are actually going. Is he putting pressure on on potential investors here, like, Hey, if you work with me, you get the benefits of
working with me, and I've got obviously a huge portfolio. Yeah. I mean, so that's one of the big questions that we're trying to find out is how exactly what a deal be structured. Um. Some things that have been floated are you know, maybe investors could come in and they might have some certainty baked in that they would have veto power over what Musk says. But at this point it's very you know, very little. We just know that they are reaching out to other banks, other financing sources.
Morgan Stanley is a bank that's advice saying Elon Musk, and so it's our understanding that you know, they would help with provide some of the financing for him. But um, yeah, unclear exactly you know, how it will be structured. How long could it take before it becomes clear whether he has money or not. So Elon Musk has indicated that he wants to make an official tender offer at some point soon. You know, he made a cryptic tweet past
night that you know, blank is the day. And so before he does that tender offer, he's going to need to have the financing gund up. Um, so soon when would they Well, it is four twenty. I was waiting for something, had to happen today, but we've still got a few more hours. Michelle Davis, thank you so much. And then it's disappointing for investors, and it is for sure. It's just a softer seasonal quarter for us. We have
this addressable market that's expanding over town. Internally, we're really geared up and this is like our moment to shine. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology Eclipse from the Netflix earnings called I Want to Stick with Netflix, bringing Ross Gerber whose investment from Gerber Kawasaki is also an investor in Netflix. Ross, this has got to hurt. Yeah, well, you know, it hurts for sure on the short term. But if you're
a long term investor like we are. I bought a little bit myself today to be honest, Why why do you think, why do you see potential? Well, it's what's changed is really in my mind two things. Number one, I don't really see the competition as really being the
biggest issue from other streamers. The competition is with real life, and real life is back and people are going out and people are going to Vegas and people are going to Disneyland, and the problems are just watching less Netflix, and and when you look at how many people are getting Netflix for free and what that addressable market is, which is actually a third of their total subscribers. Um, Netflix still has a lot of room they can grow.
I think another thing a lot of people are talking about is this could be a byproduct of the work from home culture. You know, Netflix has really struggled with the work from home culture because making movies and and content is a collaborative process and it's been very difficult.
And Netflix is called all their employees back into the office that's starting I think this month, and I think Read Hastings and the team there are the smartest people in Hollywood, and they're going to figure out new ways to monetize their brand. And I think we just have to change the metrics that we're valuing Netflix with towards earnings growth and away from subscriber growth. And when you
look at that, Netflix is a very cheap store. So let's talk about the ways that they could unlock new growth. One cracking down on password sharing. How much growth is that really going to unlock? Then of course there's the idea of an ad supported model, a tiered model gaming, or maybe it's just making better content, which of all of those options seems to be the hardest. Well, better content is sort of a nonsensical thing right now. They
have the most watched shows on television currently. Uh, I think it's inventing Hannah, which my wife is watching like NonStop. They have the best producers in Hollywood, and they have every great project in Hollywood. So the content isn't the issue. The issue is monetizing the content in ways that they haven't in the past. And I'm a big believer that Netflix needs to reinvent the theater experience around their shows
and movies. And there's many ways they can monetize, between merchandise, events and communities they can build around their content, which they currently are not. Secondly, you've mentioned to I think very important areas, which is an AD supported Netflix Light, which they take zero dollars in on ad revenue. And you look at a model like YouTube and how much money they're printing on advertising and the engagement. Netflix has the same engagement level as YouTube, and if they ran ads,
they would be very successful. And I would advertise on Netflix for sure, you know. And so that's another thing. And then of course half the people in my office don't actually pay for Netflix. So I asked them, you know, well, what would get you to pay? And it's the same thing with iTunes and music where people didn't want to
pay until it became a hassle to do it. So Netflix can employ several strategies to start monetizing these users, and we suspect they could capture another million users, maybe at a lower rate of cost, but I mean of revenue. But but certainly there's a lot of growth. When you got a hundred million subs, you aren't paying all right, ross You are also a testlate shareholder. And the Tesla earnings call has begun. We've been listening to the CFO
deliver some prepared remarks and Elon Musk is speaking. Now. We're gonna bring you headlines as those roll in, But curious what your thoughts are on the results looked. Tesla has had a better report than than certainly Netflix yesterday. But a lot going on in the world of Elon Musk. Does it bother you as an investor that there are all of these many distractions, Well, clearly they're not affecting
Tesla's focus. Um, you know, Elon's sort of lives on another planet we call Mars, and he doesn't sleep, and he has a tremendous passion for making the world a
better place and doing it profitably. How he's executed with such a difficult supply chain environment and manufacturing environment further shows the dominance and the mode that Tesla's built around their business and in the foresight that Elon hasn't being able to deliver so many vehicles profitably in this environment where no other company is doing that in their industry, whether traditional cars or e vs. So where I think the lack of focus at Netflix has caused them to
drift a little bit and now creating an opportunity for long term investors. Testa obviously is a fully valued company that's executing really, really well, and I think we'll continue to for a long time. So this is really a special time for Tesla because next sir looks even better than this year and they're executing beautiful. The CFO has been digging into this idea of you know, the impact of the production shutdown in Shakai, saying they lost about
a month of build volume. They're they're working back to to get full productive, full projection as quickly as possible, But how big of a concern is this ongoing, given that the Shanghai factory is such a lynch pin of
Tesla's production strategy. Yeah, and I don't want to minimize the concern because I think this is the biggest risk to many companies, not just Tesla right now, which is China's failed COVID policies are creating huge problems not just at Tesla, but also a companies like Apple and others in the hardware business in technology, so we're seeing and other industries as well. So we're seeing continued disruption, even worse than we saw earlier, which sucks. So you know,
I don't have a spin on that. What I do think is they are opening. They just opened to new factories and to new markets that aren't it China, and there couldn't be a better time for that to happen. But what I do suspect is that China is going to be challenging for Tesla over the next six months.
I think it's a short term issue and I think it will hurt production on the short term, but I think they're going to make it up in the other factories because I think what we're gonna see is tremendous uh productivity and growth in Berlin and Austin, and so I think within sixty days they'll have figured out how to make up all the production that might be lost. But I think for sure we're going to see that in the quarter, and I don't think there's any spin on it. Elon Musk just give a shout out to
the Tesla China team and the Shanghai factory. Talked about how it's been a record quarter on many levels, but this the latest headline saying Tesla Ross is working on a dedicated robo taxi with no steering wheel or pedals. Of course, you know, el On Musk, because you know, talk quite boldly about things that will come in Testa's future, and many things have taken a while to come to fruition, some haven't quite yet. But do you like the sound
of that? Yeah? I do. And I think this is really more a byproduct of the convergence of the full self driving technology, which is making a lot of progress currently, along with the idea of having a cheaper vehicle that would cost less money, like let's say thirty dollar price point instead of fifties sixty price point. But instead of selling that cheaper vehicle, we've seen tremendous demand from the rental car companies for low end Testla's whether it be
Hurts or others. And so I think test is like, well, why should we make rental cars, you know our robotaxis for everybody else, We should make them for ourselves, and especially this new vehicle which is using the new battery cell technology. So what I suspect is that Tesla fields they can build low cost vehicles using all their technology in battery technology as well as full self driving to create this sort of master yellow cab without a human in it. And and I think that that's a reality.
It's just how long it'll take. And I think that's really been the challenge with Tesla isn't the vision, it's it's how long it takes to achieve those visions. So so I don't know how long that's gonna take. But but I wouldn't be betting against Ellen, That's for sure. I'm betting with him, and I'm betting more with him. Well, he's saying he hopes to reach volume production in and says this will be a massive driver of Tesla growth
timing for us. Interesting. I recently sat down with Aisha Evans, the CEO of Zooks on the latest studio One point I was Zooks, of course, is the uh self driving robo taxi company that Amazon bought for over a billion dollars. We're gonna see a clip of that later in the show. Ross Gerber Gerber Kawasaki. Always good to have you and your colorful opinions here on the show. Thank you for stopping by. We're gonna get to our crypto report in
just a moment. But Elon must speaking right now on the Tesla ernies call, saying that the first quarter was a record quarter on many levels, congratulating the Tesla's team despite facing many headwinds, also giving a special shout out to the Tesla China team at that factory in Shanghai. He also said they're working on a new vehicle, a dedicated robo taxi that won't have a steering wheel or pedals, but could be a massive driver of Tesla's growth in
the future. We're continuing to monitor headlines from that column, will bring you more as they roll in to our crypto report. Now, I want to bring in Framework Ventures of venture capital firm that has just raised four million dollars for a fun focused on investing in early stage crypto startups from gaming and Web three to defy. Cofident
founder Michael Anderson joins me now. Michael talked to us about the advantages of being a Web three native venture capital firm and competing in an industry where most venture capitalists, uh, you know, go about their business in more traditional ways that they've been doing for decades. Yeah, it's it's a
great point and a great question. You know. One of the things that really I think separates us from traditional venture investors, especially investors in the web free space as well, is that we actually have more engineers on the team than we have venture investors. When we make an investment, we're participating by building alongside the investor, alongside the investments that we make, and partnering at a really deep level
to the founding teams that we're backing. And because of this, you know, we we've been able to really help dictate success of the investments that we make and really help understand where where things are going from new opportunities before they rise and before anybody else you notice them. So what are those opportunities? You've just announced a four hundred million dollar fund to invest in new blockchain startups. You've got all kinds of money, including the traditional money chasing
the startups. You know, what do you believe is out there that's unique that they're not going to see? Yeah, So when we started Framework with our first fund in ten, we were really I think one of the first firms to go bet the farm on DeFi and and DeFi has become commonplace at this point, it's really the poor area of engagement for most of the applications that are
being developed on top of Web three currently. And what we see now and especially with this new fund, is that blockchain based gaming and and what we see is the potential for blockchain based gaming into the next couple of years is really the same opportunity that we saw
with Defied twenty nineteen. It's really a unique opportunity to to get these these game developers that have been developing on consoles, on on PCs, on mobile for the last ten twenty years and and build on a new form factor which has advantages that just aren't aren't possible in the ecosystems that they're used to today. All Right, well, we'll be watching to see where you make your next move. Framework Ventures co founder Michael Anderson, thanks for joining us
as we continue to monit our Tesla results. I spoke exclusively with Zooks CEO Aisha Evans, the autonomous driving company recently bought by Amazon for over a billion dollars this and the latest edition of Bloomberg Studio. At one point out we talked about what it takes to turn a startup into a global ride hailing giant, including competing with Tesla. M this is Silicon Valley. We are, you know, pay tribute to disruptors. Having said that, we're not exactly in
the same business. We don't sell a car to people. We sell a right to people. Our customers are not drivers, they are writers, and therefore we use the same types of technologies. But they are in the car selling business. So how does Zooks fit into the future of Amazon, Well, that story is yet to be written. First of all, we are we hope to deliver on the promise of a new segment and uh sort of a big business uh and be one of those in the tradition of
of Amazon. We know there's a world of possibilities, but I tell everybody we first have to earn it right before we talk about a sort of synergies and possibilities and opportunities together. Zero times anything is still zero and it will be for a long time. So we're focusing on building our business, getting to market, and then there's a myriad of possibilities of things we could do together.
Zoo is going to be dropping off my boxss. Is that what I should expect potentially, if that's the right thing to do and if it makes sense to do so. But first we're going to make sure to take you everywhere you need to go without having to worry about parking, having a car, and so on. What's it like having Amazon as your boss? It's been good put an independent subsidiary of of Amazon. So yes, they are involved. We agree on what's going to happen, why it's gonna happen.
How often did you talk to Jeff Bezos or do you talk to Andy Jasse or maybe it's Dave limp Um. I don't talk to them that often. I mean, we have a monthly business for you or quality business with you, but no, it's not like I'm besties with them and we're on the phone and wrapping and chatting. Now, well, you must know what their expectations are. What is Amazon expecting of zoos execute get to market scale, and do you have the funding to do that? GM? Google very
well funded competitors or fellow travelers. As you say, are you getting what you need? Yes? More than what I need. I'm funding is not something I even worry about. So what's it like to operate in that environment where money is not an issue? Well, I mean you have to be careful, right, because you also don't want to be a drunken sailor and be like, oh now I have You still have to be a very disciplined You have to manage the phases of the business. We're like, okay,
how do we execute? How do we make our mouth stones? How do we get to market where things organized properly? How do we hire? How do we retain and so on and so forth? How do stay mission driven? The public seems to have lost interest in waiting around for self driving cars. I wrote in Google self Driving Car in eleven and I'm still waiting to be able to buy or just ride a self driving car on demand.
Why is it taking so long? I think in self driving, first of all, the opportunity is so clear, um the so the beach is so broad. We forget that big things do start small. One second, it's a hard problem to solve. We talk a lot about safety, uh and we talked talk a lot about human error when it comes to driving, but we also forget that collectively, at least in the United States of America, humans collectively drive a hundred million miles before having a fatality. That's a
lot of mouths. So humans are also pretty good. And the thing humans are good at, which is hand I call it exception handling. We all know how to drive. If you are all fully autonomous, would be deployed already. But we're driving amongst human and you have to deal with so many little scenarios. There are so many things that you've been learning about driving since births and codifying that using AI sensors and computers is turning out to be a lot harder. You can catch much more of
my conversation with Zooks CEO. I saw Evans tonight nine Eastern on Bloomberg Television. The question could as Zooks be delivering my Amazon packages one day? All that and more on this edition of Bloomberg Studio One point. Now, I want to get back to the latest on Tesla's earnings call Now and bring Back are at Ludlow. And it's very interesting since Ela must just just just described what sounds a lot like a Zooks saying that Tesla is working on a robotax seat with no steering wheel, no pedals,
neither of which Zooks have. This is a purpose built ROBOTAXI. Testa is working on mass production by four. He's had some criticism on the cool as well, some questions of criticism about overpromising on full self driving, but this purpose built car seem the big takeaway, and he says this is going to drive massive growth by I mean, Ellen has made bold predictions about timelines before and he's got them wrong. I think you know this is happening in
parallel with other stuff. So Cybertruck goes into mass PRODUCTIONE. They're continuing FSD beta and Elon musk message was, if you're a Testa owner, try FD beta, but the future is fleet based, you don't own your own vehicle. Sounds a lot like zoos. So the thing we haven't heard yet is anything about four joining or Twitter on the car. Yeah, right, the only kind of curious thing. Musk didn't start the call.
Cfo zat kirkwn did and then Musk made made very deliberate, prepared remarks, which is kind of not very Musk like. So he didn't go off script. He didn't go off script yet, better run back to my desk, right, So it's kind of how long there's a car go on for? It's about an hour, right, He's going to take questions from institutional investors, detail investors, from analysts. That's where the riffing, and somebody has got to ask what's going on with
your Twitter bit? Elon Musk, They've got, so I hope that will manage for Tesla investors. I mean, we've seen shares take a leg down since all of this drama started to unfold. And certainly if you're a Tesla investor, maybe maybe you don't want Elon mustard by Twitter and he's a busy guy. Is he distracted? That's another question, like how can he run all these companies and trying by Twitter? Well, multitasking is certainly nothing new to Elon Musk,
so there's certainly an argument to be made there. But we will be listening in for all the headlines, So stay tuned to Bloomberg Television for much more at Ludlow. Thank you that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology