Tesla Sheds Billions and Raimondo's TikTok Security Concerns

It just fails to energize shareholders. Then why the Commerce Secretary told Bloomberg the US concerns over Chinese apps go well beyond TikTok and a live conversation with SEC chair Gary Gensler about his concerns over artificial intelligence and crypto custody. This is crypto friendly bag. Silvergate continues to plunge after concerns about its viability. But first end, let's go to another key publicly traded stock, Teszler, of course, which look

didn't get much love from shareholders. Following yesterday's Invest Today event, which included another third master plan on this time the transition to clean energy, Bloomberg's John O'Cain joins us now and look it really feels like we sold the news on this. Yeah, I mean, I think people were expecting maybe more specifics on the product side. You know, Musk and self had on the most recent turnings called called out that the next generation vehicle platform was going to

be a big focus of it. And while we got some of the shape of what that might take and some of what's going into it, especially on the cost production side and the efficiency side, we didn't really get too much on the specifics. And you know, we got sort of a tease from lead designer friends from Holshouse and saying you're gonna have to wait for a later date to see anything more about it. Sean, you and the team out in Austin, editors in New York, myself

in San Francisco. Four hours we followed along which headlines did we get, What did we learn actually from that presentation? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the big things for me, especially here in Texas, is that they finally confirmed that they broke around on a lithium refinery down near Corpus Christie. This is something that we first reported back in September must sort of confirmed on the Q three call in October,

but it's been pretty mum ever since. I've had local sources down there for the last couple of weeks telling me, hey, you know, we're in the local government. We ever heard anything from Tesla, and it didn't really look like too much work was being done on the site, so they were actually a little bit maybe afraid that that wasn't going to happen. But this is their first big step into that sort of mine or that lithium supply chain that is maybe on the way to a potential mining acquisition.

We've had some reports about some of that coming from Bloomberg and others, but this is really like a hands dirty sort of thing, and they're going to move really quickly because they want to have product coming out of that facility, refined lithium going to other factories by around the end of this coming year, early twenty twenty four. I think bok Shank and Terriff eight repolting and they lost twenty four hours. Thank you. I want to sit with this story and bring in future fun niting partners.

CEO Gary Black, who was at last night's Tesla event out in Austin and Gary the market selling the news. Are you as disappointed by what you heard as the market was. I think there's a couple of things. One, it was going to go down anyway. As you know, going into today, Testa was up one hundred percent from its bottom, so you know there were traders and hedge funds playing the name because of this event, So it

was going to go down regardless. But I do think that the investor day itself was it was very aspirational, but it was really short on detail, and I think that's what you're seeing with today's move. And then you know, I'd say the third thing, it was a problem there really was no product unveil, even though there was a lot of rumors in height that there might be a product of veil. And there was no updated financial targets.

So you put those three things together and I think that's why the stock was off like six percent and an up one percent day. Yeah, sorry, Kara, I was just going to jump in that because I noticed on your Twitter and other people's Twitter you were hanging out with Ross Gerber while you were at the event. And as you know, Gary, he made an activist or a friendly activist bid so to speak to the ball, which he dropped. His grievance was lack of succession planning, lack

of other executives. Were you convinced by all of those sixteen names that you heard from that there are others at that company leading the charge. Yeah, I mean there are a few things that I think, you know, give tess or some credit for what they accomplished. I think they made a convincing case to your point, they have a pretty deep team, and you know in the Q and A it was I actually took a picture of this.

They're eighteen people all lined up in shares in a row, elon of course in the middle, and it did look like they had a pretty deep ense. So they get coups for that. I think the second thing, they made a convincing case that they can actually drive costs down fifty per They didn't but this knew what they called Generation three platform, but they didn't give a timeframe and actually two years, it could be ten years, and I think that's one of the again data points that would

have been helpful to have. And I think the third thing that you know was very helpful, as they said, cybertruck is definitely coming this year. That's a big catalyst. There's a million what they call pre orders one hundred dollars deposit, you know, that could add fifty cents to a dollar share next year, and earnings if they even got up to about one hundred thousand delivers. So those three things I think were positive, but again there really wasn't a lot of data to connect the dots, if

you will. They made the case that their volumes will go from one point eight million this year to twenty million by twenty thirty, and that was a big, bold assertion, but there really wasn't a lot of demand elements, you know, by model or by segment to support that. And I think, you know, those are the things that is institutional investor or We just didn't see a lot of garry. What about supply side? What's interesting, they're showing a deep bench

in terms of executives. They're showing a deep design to have a lot more in house technology, particularly on their chips actually saw a big move and some of their suppliers today. Do you like that sound? I like that they're trying to do a lot of it internally. Is you know, obviously they cut out the middleman. They're doing it themselves. We own Wolf and Wolf, you know, because Silicon card by they made the point that they're going

to cut that by seventy five percent. Look, Tesla makes a lot of claims, and you know, one of the things that I don't know who said it, but you know somebody said it last night is you can't always take their claims literally because it takes them a long time. I mean, think about Cybertruck. They announced this back twenty nineteen and here we are twenty twenty three and it's

not out, So it could or could not happen. So if I'm a supplier and you know some of the suppliers got hurt today, I wouldn't get too worked up about it because a lot of times these claims don't materialize with Tesla. So to me, like Wolf, we own it. You know, we think it's still cheap stock, and you know, I think it's going to be fine over time. Do you get ultimately them frustrated with master plans, with the fact that perhaps master Plan one point zero two point

zero on executed and we're already talking about three point nine. Look, that's Elon is brilliant, and he's yet, you know, unpredictable, and as an investor, you don't like the unpredictability of it, and yeah, we get we get frustrated with it. When he bought Twitter, we were very frustrated by that because you know, in my experience, it's hard to you know, run two companies, and Elon runs three or four now. But Twitter is a whole different animal, SpaceX and more

in which he built from scratch, right. So it's bad enough that he's got those two, but now he's got Twitter, which is a total rebuild, and so that's frustrating. It's you know, it is frustrating that you know, he often, you know, does it one a. I guess that's what makes him so skilled, and that's what makes him so successful that, you know, one of the things people tell me about when he realizes he's wrong, he will make an immediate turn and go in the right direction. And

you've seen that over and over again. What tells an example is they took radar out of the FSD, and I guess he realized that, you know, high death radar actually had advance and now they're putting the high death

radar back in. And I don't know if it frustrates me as investor, he used to do them because he adds a lot of you he's brilliant and he's he ads, you know, tremendous you know value from a a you know, stock picking standpoint, But at times you've got to be ready to you know, tilt when he tilts, investors left wanting more. A future fund managing partner Gary Black were really great to have some time at the thank you with.

What we're worried about is Chinese backed companies being on you know, tens of millions of American phones, including members of the military, and privacy concerns, data concerns, misinformation concerns. That doesn't just apply to TikTok. That was US Commerce Secretary Gina Ramundo. They're talking about her concerns around TikTok and other Chinese social media apps that are said to

me threatening national security. Now former NSA David Kennedy, who's now founded two cybersecurity companies, Trusted Set Combinary Defense, is with us, and David, my question to you is, where is the vulnerability. Why is Gina Raymondo concern not just about TikTok but other Chinese apps as well. We've seen for years that China has created one of the largest surveillance states, not only in its own people, but just globally tracking US personnel for espionage purposes, cyber warfare. They're

one of our peer competitors on the cyberspace. They're the largest country for intellectual property theft yielding trillions of dollars have been electric property efet per year from China. And you know, they don't play by any type of rules whatsoever.

And the big issue that you run into, and I think what the big contrast is from you know, social media companies here in the United States versus something like China is that you know, they control the content that is delivered to the endpoints or the dephone or the device that is looking at TikTok as well as the information that is collected that could then be used by

the government itself. That's you know, government employees, locations, um, you know, information about you know, specific individuals that are trying to pull or pulling a type of data information on. They use this as another source of many other sources that they centrally use and they're one of the best when it comes to large big data analytics and what they're dealing with if with tracking people all across the world, that it's a major problem and it's a major concern,

especially from China. David, you are a hacker, but the friendly, the friendly kind of hacker, as I understand it. What I don't understand is is this a sort of systems vulnerability or is this an issue of who has access to data? It's it's a combination of bulf actually. So if you know, if you look at byte Dance, which is the you know, subsidiary company that is um you know, out of Beijing, specifically they control the code that goes

into the devices. Now you know, Apple for example, has a pretty stringent UH policy around you know, inspecting source code and things like that. It's Google a little bit more on the open side. But the collection of the data aspect and where that data it goes to is the most concerning part about it. Could they introduce code that you know, could eavesdrop on US citizens, absolutely, um

you know. But the main concern is the amount of information that they're pulling back, collecting and then using that information to go against you know, key personnel that they would look to target um you know, or individuals or people that are of interest to the Chinese government, you know, scientists, medical research, you know, duty contractors that specifically focus on you know, next generation research or weapons systems, missile defense systems,

those types of things, as well as their ability to control content that goes to individuals. So obviously, you know, you hear the term misinformation quite a bit. I think what's most important to understand is that you know, they can start to home in and and focus content on individuals and really change their perception of what's actually occurring in reality. And you know, we live through our devices nowadays, and you know, live through TikTok, lift through you know,

Facebook and Twitter, and through various online news sources. So what is presented to us as content is typically our worldview on what's actually happening out there. So can you curb you know, public opinion based on the contents coming out of TikTok And that's absolutely possible, do you Roman though?

Of course, coming from the administration, there has been much talk the administration doing something about TikTok, maybe we chat Ali pay some of the others as well, but dragging their heels and so states have started to step in or individual institutions, particularly in the well the education side of things, is that the right way to deal with this, you know, the outright of banning of TikTok is is an interesting and other Chinese owned companies is an interesting dilemma.

I think, you know what just recently happened with banning it within government employees as a solid one. You know, we removed Huawei from being able to be purchased here in the United States specifically on military basis installation can have hardware in those facilities, which is a Chinese based company. And there's been direct intelligence that have shown Huawei has you know, worked on behalf of the Chinese government for

intellectual property theft in other areas. Um. You know, the interesting part is, you know, does the federal government play a role in what the US you know, citizens can and can't cannot do. And I think that's a pretty large discussion, heavy discussion have They've largely stayed away from that, And I think you're looking at states kind of looking at well, personal information is really important. It's not just TikTok for example, I mean social Security number is your

personal data that's stored within corporations. You know, Uh, the EU does this very well with protecting personal information. So I think states are looking at this and saying, well, can we look at this as a personal information issue, a privacy issue, and can we put controls in place that hold you know that that holds bitte dance specifically accountable for where that data is stored and how it's protected,

not necessarily banning it. I think that's probably a better measured approach to say, you know, this data has to stay here. Of course, the continued crackdown, you are still reviewing existing licenses from export to Huawei as well. We continue to keep our communications with that company open as well. David Kennedy, we want to thank you so much, trusted

sec founder and indeed an ethical hacker. Meanwhile, we've talked about how the cybersecurity industry, perhaps some would say, is seeing high labor shortages right now in the face of all of that work to be done. But look broadly, it's an issue across the board in America, the labor side that is. Here's what US Commerce Secretary Gena Romano also had to say earlier about some of the top concerns she hears from CEOs. She's in touch with workforce.

It's unbelievable, like workforce, workforce, workforce. We can't hire enough, we can't hire first enough, we can't hire people with the skills that we need. Look, so we went to you our audience, and we actually asked them, look does this apply to technology, because I'm afraid the labor tightness she talks of. We meanwhile got all these layouts who are closure in congres ideas all we hear is laos or service. I do hear from tech executives. There are

specific roles. They can't feel like expertise, but pretty divisive subjects in the tech sector as well. Fifty say yes look to tastop concern is talent still in the tech sector. Even so, we'll keep tracking that one now coming up. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff on the company's pivot away from M and A to provatization. The change in strategy seems to be paying off for investors. To take a look at that shark, Caroline. We'll bring you more of that next.

This is Bloomberg. As we really focus on our performance, on our profitability, on the reprioritization back to being a core CRM company. It was really time to put the M and A committee on ice and just mitigate what we've been doing with M and A and as focused more on our chord as part of the transformation that I've put it into the company in the last ninety days, sales will CEO Mark Penny of following the company's reprioritization,

it's back on profits. Some are let's bring in Bloomberg Intelligent senior technology analysts Anna Granner and look as he reprioritizes to basically where the activist investors want him to. What should he be thinking of if it's not M and A No. I think the organic growth rate is very important for this company. I think that a decail rating for a while that needs to go up. But the big thing for us as well as has been that they spend way too much on sales and marketing.

I think we are not the only one that talked about in the last few years. Everybody is looking at a company like this. Everybody knows Salesforce. It's been around for twenty four years. Why is it it's spending forty percent of its sales on sales and marketing compared to let's say Microsoft with eleven percent. I think that's where everybody got excited, and that's where where you see now. If Anna Ring you say everybody knows Salesforce, you've written

on a research date. This is the new salesforce. What is so attractive about the new salesforce? If philosophically an every good company should take care of, you know, sales and marketing and profit in the same manner as let you look at growth from a salesforce point of view. It was the only focus for growth for the past decade and two US and free cash flow was not the biggest priority. And I think that's you should have a balance of them. I'm not saying, you know, you

need to be on one side or the other. The new salesforce is going to be very, very profitable. I think from from the old point of view, the question is can we see a decent amount of growth when the economy turns? Hey, Anna, rag is Smartpenny is still under pressure? I don't. I think he has I would say a couple of years without any problem now, because he's delivered in one go. I mean, can you imagine his margin targets are well ahead of time, so I think he has enough time now. I don't think it's

going to be an issue. Slim Bag Intelligence Senior tech analyst, Anna rag Brna, thank you very much. Security and Exchange Commission that's been busy as looking into potential conflicts of

interest with asset managers using artificial intelligence, specifically predictive data analytics. This, of course, this is the SEC is also weighing some of the biggest changes to American equity market structure nearly two decades, and of course it continues to crack down on the crypto industry more broadly following the fall out of FTX, joining us to discuss from the BI Market Structure Conference. We're very pleased to welcome to the show,

SEC chair Gary Gensler. Long day of Blomberg conversations for you, and we are pleased to have you live on this show. Share Gensler, I'm just going to start with the day of news and start with Silvergat in particular its shares very much under dr rest at the moment because it couldn't hand in a ten K filing to you in time, noting that it was worried of course about well, it's ability to remain a going concern. How have you worried

about the spillover BACTERA. You're talking to colleagues over the FDIC and some of the other institutions. So let me let me step back caroline from any one company, and for your viewers, we play a role in overseeing the markets, overseeing registaurants, and of course we have a robust sort of copple on the beat or enforcement and examination functions.

So I'm not going to comment on any one company here, But in terms of the overall question about crypto tokens and the crypto markets, while they are give or take a trillion dollars of worldwide market value, our overall capital markets here in the US are well for one hundred trillion dollars, So that puts it in contexts of scale. But it is important that so much of this field, this crypto field, is highly speculative. It is not necessarily

the investing public should understand this. It's not necessarily compliant currently with the appropriate laws of our nation to protect you, the investing public, to get full, fair and truthful disclosures

to understand what's happening at these platforms. So that being the case, traditional finance, much of traditional finance being compliant has some question and is adverse in dealing with what may well be depending upon the company and so forth, dealing in highly speculative assets that are not necessarily compliant with their laws. Let's talk therefore more broadly about your focus and enforcement. I just want to ring what one particular builder in the ecosystem, the Ripple founder, had to

say a little bit earlier. If you could just take a listen, the sec is kind of playing offense and attacking the whole industry. This is not a healthy way to regulate an industry. Your regulation through enforcement, as opposed to where we're seeing in other countries where they're doing the work right, they're codifying, they're creating a framework that allows an industry to grow while protecting consumers. And I think that's really what the US is lagging now. Check INSLA.

I'm pretty sure you might say, well, look, a founder in that sort of business might be saying this, but what about some of these players. We've spoken to many who have perhaps been part of previous administrations who are now you know, advises to some of these companies and worried a little bit about the holistic nature of really trying to regulate, and worried that it is more about

enforcement rather than the rules of the road. At the moment, Paralyne, there's nothing incompatible crypto in our securities law, our securities laws were brought about to protect the investing public against fraud and schemes and manipulation. And it was through this idea of full, fair and truthful disclosure registering with the SEC. When you're raising money from the public and the public's anticipating a profit, it's pretty straightforward, actually common sense approach

to helping the public and investing. So this broad field, we have one goal at the SEC is for them to come into compliance. Whether it's the tokens, that's basically people raising money or offering these tokens, and it's also what i'll call the storefronts, but they can call themselves crypto exchanges or lending or staking as a service or other intermediaries to come into compliance and ensure that they aren't mislead the public. But also they don't commingle the funds.

They don't take the public's funds and do things we just don't allow in our financial markets. We don't allow the New York Stock Exchange to also play with the customers funds and make markets run a hedge fund, run a dealer, be in the clearing business. We separate out those conflicts missed against. Thank you for your time. You've set out the goal there, and what I want to ask you about is the results of your actions. You have asked a number of names in the crypto industry

to register their products with the SEC. Very few have, in particular those that are most known to us, the bigger names in the industry. Why are they not acting on your requests? Well, the law is the law, and they need to come in and properly follow the laws, and we will work with them to do that. But in the meantime we will also look out for the investing public and we've been very clear, for instance, about what's called crypto lending and what the requirements are there

about staking as a service. We've also been rather clear about pustodying customer funds and we will continue to do this, and of course we would yes most suggests that they come into compliance missed against. There are all types of subject matter crossing your desk at the moment. One of them is artificial intelligence. Caroline and I have been discussing all week what the finance industry is doing in often

a not uniform way with regards to AI. What are your concerns about artificial intelligence, potentially conflicts of interest in the asset management industry for example. I think this is the most one of the most transformative technologies of our times. Honored when I was at MIT to do research and teach both go on AI and crypto, and I think it's artificial intelligence. It's changing how we're going to drive,

how radiology happens, and yes, how finance happens. Our particular focus is that robo advising, and there's fifty one million accounts in America that has separately managed accounts from investment advisors, brokerage applications. Again, millions of Americans that the applications are using artificial intelligence predictive data analytics where they may be

putting their revenues, the platforms revenues. This is ahead of their clients interest and how to deal with those conflicts where there's scooping up data on our lives, scooping up data from our potentially from how we drive our cars to our fitbits, to the programs we want, and then marketing to us differentially, marketing to us rather than thinking putting us first, putting us the clients first, which is

I think really why finance is meant to be about finances. Also, we hope about transparency and about lifting all boats as well. And you at the moment are trying to transform regulation in many ways, trying to ensure that we have this overhaul of regulatory profile so that transparency does come to bear within the equity markets more broadly as well. Check INSLA. I'm interested in particular about some of the responses you're getting to that big proposal you'll put out in December,

in particularly the National Association and security professionals. They're representing women and minorities. As we enter, of course the month of where we think about equality in particular for women, we come out of that for people of color for February, I'm wondering about some of the warriors that they have

about ability for minorities to participate in equity markets. Out four proposals in December addressing four different aspects or problems in the market, and it was really to make the markets work better for all Americans, working Americans of our great diverse nation, men and women alike, of people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. And it's really about them.

Those are our clients, and that and that the markets actually when they submit an order to give them and work towards best execution and that we try to level

this playing field because so much of the market. Now, if you're a working family and you're just trying to invest in the market and you put an order in, it's going not to the transparent market, but it's being routed off to wholesalers and what's called the dark market, and trying to level up that competition for now then ASP of course have gone to you and hoping that that doesn't ensure that we see continued inclusion. Sec Chair Gary Ginzler, wonderful to have some time with you, Thank

you very much. Indeed, ed yeah, just you know, fascinating conversation. But I think you know, Chair Against makes a clear point. He doesn't think that these nascent more nascent industries are necessarily odds with the laws of this nation. What we put to him was, well, why why are many of these players not following them currently? And I'm not sure we've got a full answer to that. We will try

again in the next opportunity coming up. How the rise of generative AI is impacting every industry and that includes gaming. More on that next with Sony AI's COO Mika Spranger. This is Bloomberg so as we solve real world AI, because any I don't think there's anyone even close to Tesla unsolving real world AI. That was Elon must They're

talking about AI during Tesla's investor day yesterday. Now, Generals of AI fever has taken the world by storm since chat GPT showed just how far this technology has come and the possibilities it opens up to many industries, and that includes gaming, which, as you guys know, gaming Sony actually just released its own Grand Turismo Sophie game, which now features an improved AI racing agent. Sony's chief operation officer Mika Spranger joins us now, and I love the

idea of that. I've been playing video games my whole life, where the bot that you're playing against is either incredibly hard or incredibly easy, depending on how good a gamer you are. But this seems to be an extension of that. Have I got that right, Mika? Yeah, absolutely so. There

is a racing agent. And I was trained to really be competitive with the best Espards drivers in grunch Whismo, which is an extremely highly realistic racing game, and we did that last year, published on a cover of Nature, and this year, actually this month, we released it into

the game in varying levels of difficulty. So if you're a beginner, if you're intermediate, or if you're an expert, you can drive against the agent, but we balance the performance of the car, so you do have a chance against the agent in the beginner mold, but you can

also race against its one. We want fullhead, you know, same cars against a fully blown superhuman racing agent that we release last year, and so we hope this really can inspire people to learn from the agent, and it's an important step for the game because you know, if you are an expert in the game, it will take some time for you and you need friends actually at the same level to compete against, and that's what the

agent actually addresses Mika. A few weeks ago, we had son Ya Huang, who's a partner at VC fans a choir on the show, and she has this thesis that by twenty thirty, generated AI tools will be so good that they will be used to just dream up video games. And I wondered, what big picture work is Sony doing to that effect in the video game space. So obviously, I mean gaming has always been technology driven, right, and

so we are looking at new technologies. Obviously there's been a lot of bus around chat, GPT, mid journey and these kinds of models. For us, it's really important that this technology is therefore the creator, so we are interested in what this does to gaming creators, how it helps them creator fulfill their creative visions. And so, you know,

people are starting to take up the technology. I think there's a lot of things that still need to happen in the technology as well for this to be really useful for gaming, but we do see also, you know, people already starting using it, the artists are using it, and that's really important for us because for us, really the creator, so we are Creator Center Company is really about what the creators are doing with this technology. Delvin that maker. What more needs to be done to the

technology to make really purposeful, really useful for Sony. Yeah, so so obviously what we see today is a lot around to the image in a generation. But you know, games are three D. I mean, that's just a very big one and obviously that's something that would need to be addressed for this to be really impactful on the gaming production pipeline. But again, you know, I think the technology develops extremely fast. GT Sophie was a Nature paper

last year. It's in the game now. So you know, the cycles from like high high level technology breakthroughs to actually bringing this to users or creators around the world is very very fast. One thing I would say though, is what is really important for us is really the ethical aspects of this right. So we need to make sure also that the technology is developed in a responsible way from the data that goes into it. It needs to be fair and transparent. You know, people have rights,

creators have rights. These need to be respected. It's also important what happens on the output side. And so for us, actually aithics is at the core for Sony. I we have this, we have a we have a dedicated team at all the projects we're doing from an a ethics perspective and really shaping how we developed a technology. Do you need to be hand in hand with governments around this? We just have the SEC chair on talking about AI's use within finance and he's wanting to perhaps see some

rules of the road in place. Do you need governments to work alongside to build this ethical roadmap? I think it's important for governments to play a role, but I think this is also beyond governments. From a Sony perspective, we have a responsibility for our creators. We have you know, we work with them on a day to day basis, you know, in many part ways are part of the company actually, and for us, it's it's not just about

government regulation. For us, it's really about making the technology for the creators so that they can unbleach their creativity and their imagination. And so the human for us is really center. Yeah, of course governments, you know, play a role in this, but it's also companies that have to step up. Hey, mecare, Caroline and I are having a lot of executives from the world of AI on at the moment, a lot of investors, a lot of academic What we're strying to understand is how can we know

how competent Sony AI is at its craft? What makes you different? What makes you stand out from all those other AI players out there. I would say two things. One is we have extremely high impact projects and we aim also for you know, technology contributions that really are recognized. For instance, Gt. Sophie Agent was featured on the cover of Nature and that's really important part of us to raise awareness about the technology, but also a show that

we are actually able to do that. The other thing is really as part of Sony. As I mentioned, for us, it's important that we focused on the people and how people use this technology going forward to you know, fulfill their creative visions. And I think that kind of sets us apart and you know, our voice I think should be heard in this space. Thank you for such a global conversation coming live for us from Tokyo Nikos Branger Sony AI COO. Really fascinating the applications within gaming. Now.

We just talked to artificial intelligence, says talk, well, a little bit more share. We chatted with the macy CEO and he's in shout. Indeed, the chairman two Jeff Gannette, earlier today about well how he sees AI impacting his own business. But first I actually talked about the companies expanding digital footprint within the new Macy's marketplace and actually it's the good gaming take listen. So in the fourth quarter we launch the Macy's Marketplace. We did this in September.

We've added twenty new categories and five hundred new brands as a result of marketplace, and that gives customers a lot more choices. Example, So during the fourth quarter, two of the hottest categories for us in marketplace, and we really didn't have in our own inventory from before, was video games and electronics. Those are where customers they trust Macy's as a brand and so they're ready to transact with us if we have the right content for them.

So so much of our business starts on digital or is transacted on digital. So to have marketplace that a customer they don't know whether it's marketplace or offender direct or owned inventory, they just know that when they come to Macy's they can get they can get a broad range of categories at great values. So that's what we're

so encouraged by. So what you heard us talk about today is we're going to be adding two thousand new brands in twenty three on the Macy's side, and we're going to be adding a Bloomingdale's marketplace in the back half of twenty three. So it just gives us a lot of flexibility because we're a trusted brand. We're a department store that has many categories and about to have a lot more as a result of Marketplace. And you

really understood that omni channel balance. I'm going to ask you that for maybe a bit of a curveful, but maybe one being asked a lot more of you. AI Artificial intelligence it seems to be something that some of your competitors are talking up at least. Is this something that you embrace with Macy's. So I'll put that in the camp of kind as data and analytics. You know,

AI absolutely so. When you look at the technology that we have and that we've invested in, and when you look at the science that we have that we're putting against the art of the business, it's a combination of that that makes a great retailer. So art and science is so important. Where are the trends going? You can't always see that an algorithm the boy you can look at all the signals you can aggregate them for in real time and what's going on in the balance of

the industry. We're a customer that where they are on Instagram and how they're responding to new trends, and how do you express that you each of your individual brands. What we see is that our customers at Bloomingdale's, they're upfront with trends and when they move off of a trend, you know, you can see where that might cool based on trend perds on the macy side. So we're using all of the data that we have. You know, we've built up our gating analytics capability. We built us on

our fixed once over the past couple of years. That's paying dividends. You know when you look at dynamic pricing, to be able to scrape the entire internet on where the prices are on commodities and now in real time you can make adjustments online and in some respects in store. So we were clearly using you know, where science is

taking us to better. We're starting to respond to this customer who's got so many choices and they're looking for the best combination of value and experience, and we have a huge opportunity to get that rate and to do that in real time is an important component of who's going to win. I'm in region. It's been going viral. Elon Musk, while heading climate friendly Companies, made a ton of trips on his private jets, some even as short as thirteen minutes, but in the Business Week spent weeks

navigating Musk twenty twenty two travels. In total, he took more than one hundred and seventy flights one hundred and seventy, amounting to a dozen trips around the Earth. Carolina December was his busiest travel month, not surprised, notching fifty five thousand mars. Look at how he ranks against the pantheon of tech grades in his global travel. But what's also

amazing is the short distances at times he's doing. At one point, he went what from the SpaceX headquarters Hawthorne to six miles to the area before he went to phrase, that's it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. We're about to have a very big goodbye to someone special here. I'll be tweeting about it. An amazing week so far, Balan Swiller, we love you. This is Bloomberg