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Collie in Silicon Valley, Nbon This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed loud Love.
I'm Caroline Hyde at Rumbouge's world headquarters in New York.
And I'm Ed Lovelow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up, we'll have full coverage of TikTok from what we can expect in the Senate, who wants to buy it, and the response from China, and of course the impact on those content creators.
We've got you covered.
Plus Starship goes further and faster, but SpaceX loses the vessel during re entry, an unprecedented technology breakthrough for Musk's company.
Details to come, and we get to check in on the tech earnings, sit down with the CFO of UiPath, and push ahead to Adobe's results after the Bell Rumble.
Is one of the names to the downside, the sort of more conservative social platform backed by Peter Teel. But as you know, Caro, it's been absolutely soaring in recent days after its CEO said, hey, we could talk with TikTok about a cloud partnership about looking at TikTok's US operations.
There's no hard catalyst today, but it's interesting to look at different moves, and if anything, some of the names that saw significant gains in more recent days have kind of pulled back a little bit because I think we still have quite a lot to work out when it comes to TikTok.
Indeed, and we've got a lot to dissect in terms of the reactions coming from the business itself, from.
Key diplomats as well.
Just following the House passing that divestal ban TikTok, Bill Head, or the top American diplomat in China, hit out at Beijing's objection to a potential ban on the social media platform in the US. Just take a listen to the comments coming from the US ambassador to China.
Number of complaints from the government here in Beijing this week about the American debate on TikTok. I find it supremely ironic because government officials here are using the X platform to criticize the United States. They don't give their own citizens the right to use X, to use Instagram, to use Facebook, to have access of Google, and so
it is ironic. Indeed, that the government here is complaining about a process when they shut down access for one point four billion Chinese to all these platforms.
Meanwhile, we've got to get up to speed with what's happening here in the US. Down Flatley has more following the story, of course closely. And the key question now is does the startling numbers of support in the House really carry.
Over to what we might see in the Senate?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the question of the day. You know, the Senate is known for working certainly slower, more slowly than the House, and I think that you're going to have a variety of opinions over there. There's one hundred senators and they're each going to have their opinion, as Mike Gallagher, who is the author of the House bill said yesterday, So there's a few different paths forward. One that could go very quickly and a couple that
would take a little bit longer. It's looking likely that they'll take sort of the longer, more deliberative path. And if that happens, it's kind of a question of does the interest stay there? Where are we two or three weeks from now. What's happening in the world is this still top of mind for people, so you know, it's still a lot of tape to play out in terms.
Of that, Dan, is there a clear party line on this bill, like a Republican attitude towards it and a Democrat attitude towards it that we can carry through to the Senate or has there been basically a bipartisan approach to this.
Yeah, I think there's no real clear party line. I mean, it's sort of very similar to the National Defense Authorization Act, the big defense bill that passes almost every year, does pass every year without fail here where you have a lot of these sort of more moderate Democrats, a lot of the sort hawkish Republicans, which is really the majority of both chambers when you get down to it, supporting it, passing those types of bills, and then you have the
progressives and the more libertarians or conservatives who are against it, which is a smaller number. If you just look at the House vote, I mean, three fifty two to sixty five really kind of tells you where you are in the House. In the Senate, I've heard numbers like seventy of the one hundred Senators would support this, So that gives you a sense of where we are there.
I think it's worth reminding that we're seeing a pushback more broadly of the US government having foreign ownership of key companies or indeed access to its own population. We just have to see what's happening with US Steel and
nip On Steel as well. With your expertise when it comes to national security, Dan, will this be the focus of lawmakers that this is a national security concern or are they actually going to go more towards well, who does this ultimately make more powerful US technology companies?
Well, you certainly hear some concern about that, especially along antitrust grounds, like who would buy this? Would it be a meta, would it be somebody else? Would there be challenges to that? And you also hear questions about, you know, is this the right thing to do?
Does this really meet the moment?
Does it address the national security concerns while preserving the ability of folks to continue to exercise their First Amendment rights and their right to free speech. You know, the bills authors say that this is not a band, it's designed to force ByteDance to divest TikTok. But when you talk about a six month timeline to implement a divestment. That's where you get some people who are a little nervous that that may not be enough time to actually pull together a sale and that would in the end
lead to a band. So you know that all remains to be seen.
Bloom bet Dan Flatley has been a busy twenty four hours to say for you out in Washington, d C.
Thank you.
Let's keep going with the TikTok story and talk more about the implications of what is a divest or band bill and the potential antitrust issues around that. Let's bring in an academic studying the intersection of emerging technology and the law, Jennifer Huddleston, a Technology policy research fellow at the Cato Institute. Simple question, would the United States let a large technology company based in this country by TikTok's US operations if they choose to divest.
It's an interesting question.
This whole issue is coming up at a time where technology acquisitions have been under increasing scrutiny, and particularly in the social media market. When we look at popular social media apps like Facebook, some have really asked questions about concentration. Here you have what has become an immensely popular app providing yet another option for short term video that users have chosen because they feel like it's the right platform
for their choices when it comes to expression. If we did get to the point where it was sell or ban, you have the question of would the company is looking to buy it face further anti trust scrutiny, particularly from the Federal Trade Commission, around a potential acquisition of TikTok, or in the alternative, if it were to get to a ban point, what does that do for the over all social media market?
Jennifer.
Twenty four hours ago, FCC Commissioner car joined Bloomberg Television and he gave his opinion that it doesn't have to be a US company that buys TikTok's US operations. It could be from another country, so long as it's not China. Is that a feasible thing to your mind?
There are very specific requirements around the devestment that they have to assuage concerns about certain foreign adversaries being linked.
To the company in question.
So that would depend on how the administration looked at something like that and whether or not they felt that that was necessary or that that sufficiently met the concerns, as well as the question again of when we look at particularly if we're considering another technology company that might have the expertise to continue the popular TikTok product as it is, are there really companies in areas like Europe that have that expertise Right now.
I'm going to go really basic Jennifer for a moment. Is it a good idea to separates it from its China's ownership?
From real perspective, there have been a lot of questions raised about potential national security concerns and a lot of different questions around national security that have been brought up. Some are concerned about the potential access to data and there may be one set of restrictions that could resolve that, as well as concerns about if the data practice has changed, do you still have problems with the ability to buy
that same data on Americans from data brokers. The other issue that's been brought up often is questions about the algorithm, and that really starts to get into questions of speech, not only from the point of view of what could this mean for government, the US government getting into the speech of social media platforms more generally, but also what does this mean for the broader speech context when it comes to traditions around the First Amendment and Americans' ability to access speech.
I'm kind of this has been done in India, but before it was nearly as successful as it currently see TikTok being successful here in the US.
How technically do we do this?
I think that's a really important question because it also goes to who does the onus for enforcing this ban, for ensuring compliance with what could be a ban actually fall on. The bill in question focuses on the distribution, maintenance, and updating of covered apps or websites. So when you think about that, what that actually may mean is that it falls to places like app stores or web hosts
to ensure that these products are removed. Many of those companies are American companies, So again we have questions of what impact would such a piece of legislation have on Americans and American companies.
Almost feels like there's more questions than answers, But thank you for answering ours today. Cato Institute Technology Policy Research Fellow Jennifer Huddleston in while coming up, we've got to get back to space BASEDX launchers.
It's Starship rocket to near orbit in space.
We've got all the details and you're fresh on the back of reporting on that. But what else are you looking at?
Yeah?
Back down here on Earth, I'm taking a look at Adobe. So the stocks up two tens percent reporting after hours. They're on track for their third straight quarter of double digit sales growth. Boring, But the story is about Firefly AI. You look at like all of the startups working on a texted image platform and a text to video. Has Adobe got some response to that? That's what the street's worried about the world of AI. This is Bloomberg Technology.
There.
It is SpaceX launching its colossal Starship rocket and system in its third major test flight. The spacecraft lifted off earlier this morning from the company's launch shit in Bokachka, Texas. Simply put, the story is that Starship went further, and it went faster, and it pushed the boundaries of space launch systems and technology, but it was lost later while returning to Earth.
Let's go out to Texas to.
Bloomberg's space correspondent Lauren Grush explain what has happened this morning with SpaceX's Starship, Right, Well.
I think you just said it there earlier ed they got even farther than they ever have before. It's very clear that SpaceX is making progress when it comes to the development starship. This flight lasted about an hour, which was kind of the planned flight time. Earlier flights lasted just a few minutes before the vehicle exploded. No explosions this time, and they achieved a number of amazing feeds that they haven't before.
They were able to reach.
Near orbit, reach space, nearly lap the Earth.
Unfortunately, the vehicle did seem to burn up or be.
Lost during re entry into Earth's atmosphere, but they got wriven farther than.
They'd ever planned or ever expected before.
So let's show images of the re entry.
And there's an important technology point here, which is that SpaceX was able to maintain the camera images that you're seeing now because it had Starlin on board, and as it went from an altitude of say one hundred kilometers downwards, it was bouncing the signal off so many Starling satellites in orbit, Lauren, to maintain that kind of high fidelity connection.
This is what I want to put the question to you, though, to quote one of the pre eminent space minds, buzz light Year, is that flying or is it just falling with style?
Well, the way.
That they set up this flight is it was always going to come down no matter what. It never was intended to reach a full orbit. It was always going to be suborbitable, so.
Gravity was always going to bring it down at some point.
What they were hoping to see is if they could bring it back to Earth intact, and so they were kind of hoping that it would stay in one piece and splash down in the Indian Ocean.
It looks like that did not happen.
They'd lost signal at the all from all of their different inputs at the same time, which indicates it probably burned up, probably was destroyed in some way.
So yes, it was falling with style, but that was always the plan. But it did fly before that happened.
Ed Ludlow and his six Espresso shots to the rescue, as he might have said too.
I'm interested, Lauren, ultimately, like we.
All potentially going to mass we all.
Ordering with a NASA contract to go to the Moon. Where does this put SpaceX?
Right?
So with each of these flights they learn a little bit more than last time, So I would say they're incrementally farther along than they were before.
I mean, reaching near orbit was a huge achievement.
They're going to need to be able to do that if they want to launch satellites.
From the vehicle.
But there's still quite a long laundry list of things that they need to achieve.
In order for this vehicle to be a deep space vehicle.
For instance, they need to demonstrate transferring super cold propellants between the tanks in the vehicle.
They did have that demonstration on this flight.
They were trying to see if they could transfer those propellants while in space. We aren't sure how that went, but they seem to have conducted the experiment, so we'll be eager to learn about how that went.
And then they also have to come up with life support systems.
Demonstrate that it can land on other worlds like the Moon. There's a long way to go, but this give some confidence that they're removing high direction.
Lauren Grash busy morning. We appreciate it so much. You tour a dream team with all the quotes.
Okay, it's signed for Talking Tech.
And in the news, soft Bank is weighing a potential investment in one of Europe's hottest AI companies, Mistral. The Japanese tech giant has expressed interest in backing the French artificial intelligence startup the next time that it raises funds. According to sources, any deal can potentially value Mistral and more than two billion.
US dollars plus.
Fintech giant Klana will begin allowing users in the UK to make payments directly from their bank accounts in an effort to reduce its reliance on both Visa and MasterCard. Initially, the move will help Clana cut costs, and longer term the product will help it create a stronger alternative to the payment giants networks and finding. Amazon has pledged to make fixes to its advertising operation after mistakenly charging online
merchants to promote product shoppers actually couldn't purchase. The problem came to light when a seller discovered he was being charged thousands of dollars to advertised merchandise in California, even though he'd stopped selling those products there. After Bloomberg described the small business owners experience, the company acknowledged that he and other sellers paid for missdirected advertisements, and it was working to fix the problem.
Caroline, let's go to a key name to be watching today's shares of automation.
Software company UiPath. They're actually trading a bit lower.
That's after its first quarter revenue outlook seemed.
To come a little bit short of some expectations on the street.
But that said, the company reported fourth quarter results they really beat those expectations and it's received several analyst upgrades on the back of the results. So let's dig into where we're likely to see some transparency going forward now than the CFO of UiPath, Asheene Gutter, it was great to have you here, and Sheen, thank you for joining.
Thanks for having me Caroline.
So let's just first of all tackle some of the forecast and dip in net retention rates soft subscription sales is what BlueBag Intelligence calls out, JP Morgan saying.
Look, maybe there's some.
Macro pressures here that still need to be reworked repositioning. When can we get clarity on how that macro pressure is coming.
Yeah, Look, I think we've talked about the macro environment being relatively stable in the sense that it continues to be variable. We have different pockets that have strength. Our enterprise businessing is incredibly strong. If you look at our customers growing greater than a million dollars. They're up thirty one percent in the fourth quarter, and we look at that as a real sign of strength in terms of
enterprise spending. That said, the lower end of the market that's where we see volatility, and so overall we look at a very positive environment for AI and automation and the transformative effects of our platform. That's why we actually raise total year estimates for the total for the coming year by close to thirty million dollars.
Let's talk about convincing that lower end of the market that this is the right investment at the right time despite those macro pressures. I mean, JP Morgan seeing meaningful reacceleration ar our growth and I'm sure because if the AI promise and realization, what are you doing differently in your automation software?
Yeah, I think multiple things.
One is, we've had several great product releases that are out there. If you look at the AI trends that have been there, We've been actually investing for the last five years. So things like Autopilot, which enables natural language to allow developers to create automations faster, that's being released that's going to go into production and being priced in
the summertime for us. When you look at areas like intelligent document processing, this isn't just seeing a document, this is processing, understanding and processing the billions of documents that exist in governments and enterprises. That is meaningfully scaling now with our customers. So when we look at those trends, when we look at the C level conversations that we're having, they're no longer talking about digital transformation, They're talking about AI transformation.
Right.
They need business automation platforms, and that's where we come in and that's where.
We're valid It's in the last eighteen months has been about a romantic discussion around generative AI, in particular wreck to consume a focused chatbots.
But a lot of people I.
Speak to it now just coming to the honest reflection that where AI is most present and useful is an automation you do large scale, end to end. But I wonder if you've kind of feel like you got left behind in all of the chat around AI when it's actually the tools you're working on that everyone's now saying, oh, that's actually quite useful.
No, actually, it's the opposite. From my perspective, to be candid with you, if you go back to February of last year, there was discussions that said, hey, is UiPath, you know, is it really an AI company? You fast forward, you know through last year we had thousands of customers, tens of thousands really looking and understanding US sea level executives attending our AI summit. And when you look at analysts notes today, I think one of the analysts even
say that UiPath is AI that works. So the romantic notions of AI are great. We're excited about the macro trends. We're investing not just for the next year, but what's possible over the next ten years.
But it's practical today.
And so when you look at our revenue AI and the areas that our platform can drive growth that is already taken route, it is practical right now.
I've certainly been the beat of Kathy Wood on some other names in the AI space, ypath key one of them.
CFO. Actually can't go to a great to some time with your post roundings.
Thanks hi everyone the show here.
Just wanted to share some thoughts with our US users about the disappointing vote in the House of Representatives. There has been a lot of misinformation and I hope to clarify some things. First, thank you to our incredible community. You are what makes TikTok so special. Thank you for making your voices heard. Over the last few years, we have invested to keep your data safe and our platform free from outside manipulation. We have committed that we will continue to do so.
It's Nazi Downstaird team with the TikTok CEO show to react to the quote disappointing House vote. Let's bring in Bloomberg Opinions US tech columnist Dave Lee, who's about to.
Do a dance and it's not but it's actually just.
Going to tell us a little bit more about your point of view is a really interesting one you took to Bloomberg Opinion before actually the House.
Had voted it through, but looked likely it.
Was going to saying, don't take this to the last moment from a legal battle.
TikTok actually just sell and sell now why Well.
I think if this is going to be an inevitability, which some people feel it is, then the maximum value they're going to get from a sale of TikTok would be as soon as possible. Right, I was at the south by Southwest Festival in Austin this week, which is a hub for creators and social media figures to come together and discuss the industry. And already people are starting to say, well, is this a good place to build my following anymore? Because it may not be here by.
The end of the year, and so there is a.
Danger that if the sale takes too long, the value of the app might have diminished and they won't get as much money as they could have done. However, interestingally, you know it's writing that column some of the fallout.
We've seen from the users.
You do wonder what exactly a buyer might be getting because you heard there from the CEO of TikTok him saying, you know, the user base is what makes the site what it is. That's kind of true, right, And if there's a feeling that people don't like the new owners or they think that this has been done incorrectly, then the value of the APPI go down as well. So it's a really really quite quite tense situation.
I'm just trying to do the math. I think you're right, Like, what is it you're buying? The last reported valuation of byte Dance, the parent company was two hundred and sixty eight billion, right, and that makes it by some distance, the world's most valuable private company. There are one hundred and seventy million US TikTok users. They're about a billion around the world. How do you find a dollar value and then price in all of the shenanigans that is happening this week precisely?
And also it's interesting to think about what exactly is for you know, because technically this bill would only require you know, the US user base to be part of this divestitory. If it wants to op say in the US, that doesn't speak to the rest of.
The global community.
It's big, got a big presence in Brazil, it's obviously got a big presence in Europe, and so would that be a separate company and would that be obviously less valuable if it was separated from the US. I also think, you know, we need to think about the value of the algorithm and the technology that's behind TikTok. Of course, the reason why it exploded in popularity, as you know ed is you know, it's algorithm knows what you like and it shows you more of it, and that's how
it's grown. Now it seems like if this sale was to go ahead, China would still try to retain the secret source, you know, the thing that makes TikTok as popular.
As it is. And you know, without that.
Secret source, what are you getting? You might you might be getting something that's not worth very much at all.
Frankly, just real quick, yesterday after the vote, I got leaked to memo that Mike Dabs, who's on the public policy team at TikTok, senter all staff and it didn't say much other than they still think that Project Texas, the idea of housing US user data in US domestic data centers currently run by Oracle, is going to convince
people that it's fine. But that then leads me to believe, well, who might buy TikTok's US operations, or who might come to the rescue to operationalize whatever the solution is.
I guess one of the striking things about this particular moment in time is, you know, some of the companies that might have the funds and you know, the know how to buy and own a company like TikTok, they may not be in a position to do that. I mean, it certainly couldn't be brought by Meta for anti trust concerns. You question whether someone like Microsoft, who was part of that discussion when all of this was beginning a couple
of years ago. It doesn't seem like we're in the climate where a big tech company could take it over, but it could be a coalition of other buyers. We saw Steve Nishan, the former Treasury sectory today talking about how he'd gained he was seeking to form a.
Group of invest is to buy the app.
But I wonder, you know, if that is the kind of deal that ends up happening, what will these TikTok users think of that? Because of course, you know, as a former Trump administration official, I mean that's going to be seen as particularly disagreeable I think by a large member of those TikTok users. So it's finding the right buyer is going to be incredibly difficult.
I think.
Here with the opinions, we thank him, Yes, techconomists, Dave Lee. Meanwhile, we were just talking about what creators are going to think, what consumers are going to think. Let's get that create a perspective for you on potential separation. Even a ban a Ven's boxes with US president and co founder of VELTK.
It's one of the world's largest contextual shopping apps, and basically your clients are Indeed, you work with the creators no matter where they happen to be and where they're following is to enable shopping and were what they wear and see what they post. What do your content creators think of potentially having to pull back on TikTok?
Yeah, this industry was created around tenty eleven when we launched, so we're now fourteen years in ish and what we've seen is that history tells us these creators have a transferable skill set. We've seen almost a new platform emerge every two years, and these creators have both been able to expand their audiences on these new platforms, new creators
have been born. This really just reinforces the importance of having a home base for creators because because we know that these platforms come and go for us, we've built the lt K app for them to have a place where they can collect community across all different media platforms and be able to service them in the way that the hospitality business would over the years, regardless of which platform is really in vogue at the moment.
Have any of the creators you talked to work with a newer creator yourself. In many ways, have they spontaneously exited TikTok preemptive of any of these concerns. I mean, for example, Thailand and j Levins, he's a Fortnite streamer of twenty four million subscribers across other platforms did pull back, for example, from TikTok originally.
Certainly, these creators are hyper aware.
This is not something that is just a side gig for a lot of our creators. It's actually a full time business and even a family and a generational business. And so they stay aware of what's happening, even from a policy perspective.
And we're now anniversary a year.
Since TikTok was last.
You know, speaking to government, and we saw that our creators started to understand those that were single platforms started to really move their audiences into a safe place. But we have to remember it with all of these platforms, sometimes there's an evolution and sometimes there's a revolution, but ultimately these platforms don't have long term staying power. Creators
migrate and they migrate their audiences. And again, these creators have such a transferable skill set that you know, I know that they are preparing themselves to further into and future proof of their business.
But I find that such an interesting point of view. But creators are now finding careers as creators, right, it is their business, And you're basically arguing that while if TikTok goes away, they'll just transfer their skills to another platform. You know, Instagram and reels in particular is quite similar
to TikTok. But do you have any sense of where they're making the most money, right If TikTok is a complete cash cow for some of these creators, that I imagine they'd be a bit worried about having to transfer their energies elsewhere.
Well, I think that's I think sort of a piece of the misinformation here is that creators actually aren't largely paid by these platforms. And so know, YouTube is certainly one of the greatest, greatest payers, but when you look on down, the business models are such that they're actually taking one hundred percent margin on ad revenue. So as a creator, you actually have to find and build your own business, whether that's through partnerships or that's thue a commission on sales like.
What LTK offers.
We actually offer both of those things, and so these creators aren't losing a direct line of revenue from the platform. We have to look at who's paying the bills here. So the brands are the ones that are investing in creator and influencer marketing. With LTK, they've invested over two point seven billion dollars to date. Goldman expects that to triple over the.
Next three years.
This is an industry that is driven by consumer demand, and consumers want to be entertained for free on the internet. We see that adults on average or spending about an hour a.
Day on TikTok.
I believe there's gonna be a lift and shift if TikTok is in fact ban, But we have to go back to what Day was saying in your earlier conversations, which is what we're talking about right now in government is actually a divestiture. So this is much more like what we saw with Hint in twenty twenty and Hinge users, you know, continued on and so I actually expect that you know that TikTok users, whether you're a brand, a creator, a consumer, will continue to have access to this platform for a while.
But thank you for the explanation on how the business model works. I think our audience will find that very interesting on the creator economy side.
And you're right, it's a divest or band bill.
What are you hearing about how people feel about one big tech company buying the TikTok assets, And what are you hearing about the other platforms trying to steal some creator content, right, like saying, sleeve TikTok come to us, Right?
You know, it's become very competitive in the space for media platforms, and they all are trying to attract creators because ultimately we're the ones creating all the content that these consumers see. When you look at these platforms, there are various, you know, types of pipes, I would say, but unless the creator shows up an entertainment audience, there's nothing for them to do there. So we've seen these
these platforms become more and more competitive. When you talk about who would purchase this platform, certainly in the current regulatory environment, it would have to be a unique player. And I could actually see it being kind of a confluence of players coming together that maybe we're even nameless
faceless and pulling this platform forward. And I think that would be healthy for the ecosystem for there to be a continued kind of you know, a difference in kind of who holds the power in this space on the creator and the brand side. So even since last year, last March, when these hearings first started, the creator industry has come such a long way.
So while as when.
This industry started, our brands were looking it platform by platform, today they're actually logging to platforms like LTK three sixty where they're getting full funnel campaign information, cross platform, cross media, and they're able to understand what they're doing with that one specific creator, whether that's on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LTK, and so they're making decisions actually at the industry level
now and not specifically at the platform level. And tools like AI are making platforms like LTK three sixty possible, which is really removing any sort of subjectivity that used to exist in this industry, and it's helping our marketers to actually find more efficiencies in creator marketing. And I think that's why you see Goldman City being so bullish about this industry.
I'm a ven's box really great to get your expertise across a wealth of areas. President, co founder of LTK, Thank.
You Unstructured raised a forty million dollars Series B to make enterprise data l l M ready.
The round was led by men Ventures.
With participation from Data Bricks Ventures, IBM Ventures and in Videos Venture Arm and others.
Let's bring in the lead.
Investor in this round, Menlo Ventures partner Tim Tally on today's VC Spotlight. I want to talk about data ingestion and pre processing because we haven't talked for quite a while about the data that goes into building a large language model. But I first want to talk about the others in the round. What should we conclude from the fact that Data Bricks and Nvidia put their own venture money into this round as well.
I mean, I think I should tell you how important it is to have clean data before it goes into training things like language models. I would say that it's not just the language model preparation that unstructure is powering. It's actually some of the more powerful generator of a
applications themselves. So when you look at things like legal tech fintech applications that are leveraging things like the anthropic and open AI, they don't just use the anthropic in open EI, they're actually using a lot of unstructured data to sort of merge them together and do something more powerful together. That's really the power of constructured It cleans and prepares unstructured data so that it can go into these generative AI applications.
We're moving from a world where.
Large angage models have many hundreds of billions of parameters to many more large angrege models with fewer parameters. Right, this is a forty million dollar Series B. Some of the Series b's I've seen for the actual LLM builders are just astronomical. Why is this a lower amount? Why is there not such I guess hype reflected in the size.
Of the round because there's a language model itself.
It's more about the data pipeline and the preparation of the data. If it were a language model stuff, you might see this sort of more of a more of an extreme.
Multiplier, if you will.
But because it's more of an ETL preparation pipeline system, that's why you're not seeing that sort of insane multiplication when.
We're seeing insane appetite to be backing some of these companies, not just coming from your normal typical venture capital but.
From corporate VC. How competitive is it getting in the space for you?
It's getting quite competitive. You know, every VC in the area wants to be involved in artificial intelligence investments right now, and so it's getting competitive. I would say the corporate vcs are quite additive. They're helpful, They add a lot of value to these mounds, and we're excited to have them participate.
When I'm looking at an IBM, at data bricks or indeed a n video. Of course, the US companies are you at the moment with the context with which we're currently seeing technology. When we've got an administration or indeed Congress people taking issue with foreign ownership of really important companies here in the United States or avenues to target consumers in the US, does it give you pause of getting involved with vcs that don't come from the United States.
It definitely gives you pause and makes you stop and think. But we're really excited about the participation from Nvidio and IBM and data bricks.
I'm really interested more broadly in some of the AI bets you have already been making.
Then when you're looking at a pine cone, when.
You're looking at ultimate this stuff being used, how are we seeing it turned from hype into reality.
There's a lot of value being created right now. You're seeing a lot of companies that use companies like Anthropic, like pine Cone, some of our other investments generating a lot of cash.
A lot of software is being bought.
You're obviously seeing a lot of popular apps being generated right now, and so a lot of our focus is on building investing in infrastructure companies that power those applications.
We're really excited about what's happening.
Tim You'll understand that there is a just microscopic focus at the moment of the TikTok situation.
But what I want to talk about.
Is what's happening in Silicon Valley, Visa the Chinese technology companies, in American technology companies, you know, in AI in particular, there are many vocal advocates who say there's a lot of talent in China. But also at an academic level, we're all kind of working on the same thing. How are you weighing through that as a firm right now?
Yeah, we're just being very careful about what we invest in. I focus primarily on instructure investments, and so when I think about some of that software being built overseas, I tend to think about how to be sold here, right if there's a ton of engineers building applications overseas and countries like China, I worry a lot about what countries here in the US will buy, and so it gives me a great pause and sort of slows me down in terms of thinking about investing overseas.
So it sounds like you're taking a slower idea and suddenly more pause when it comes to investing in foreign companies, but also alongside foreign investors.
Where then, do you think this ultimately.
Takes us in terms of the US prowess right now? Do you think AI is streets ahead here in the United States compared to the.
Rest of the world.
I think the US is ahead in terms of what's happening. You look at companies like Opening Air and Topic they're based here in the US. I'm really excited about what we're doing. We're investors in Anthropic and they've released three models just in the last couple of weeks that are probably, you know, right up there with Opening the Eye in terms of capability sets.
So we're excited about what's happening, and.
You're putting your money where your mouth is.
Tintali, thanks for coming on and talking all about the latest round and indeedwhere else you're putting the money to work?
Menal adventures? He joins the board. Of course, I'm unstructured. Paramount.
Well, it's agreed to sell it's thirteen percent steak and it's Indian TV business by a comm eighteen to its partner over there, Reliance Industries. Well it earns five hundred and seventeen million dollars. Here to tell us why and what else is going on in India as well as me most Chris Palmry and just from the Paramount perspective, here, is this all about getting more core getting rid of non core assets at the moment.
Yes, exactly that. I mean, we're seeing this huge shake up in the Indian media business right now. Eight point five billion dollars combination of Reliance and Disney's business there that includes this by Com eighteen company that Paramount owned thirteen percent of that Steak was going to shrink. So they were becoming a much smaller investor. And at a time when, as you mentioned, they've been trying to reduce their debt load, they still have fifteen billion in debt.
They've sold off real estate, sold off sign.
And it's just a book publishing.
They talked about some channel sales, so just sort of all you know, merged together the opportune times for Paramount.
Chris.
Is this a story about the landscape in India or is this a story about Paramount trying to work out what on earth to do with itself.
I think it's a story about the media landscape all over the world, and I think it's a window and what we're probably going to see this year in the US Paramount and comcasts in talks about merging Peacock and Paramount Plus, for example, I think we'll see a lot of consolidation similar to what India has already gone to.
Here.
I just want to go back to Byron Allen as well.
What happened with that.
Doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traction from the Paramount folks right now.
They're still doing due diligence is.
What they called it.
With David Ellison and is offered to buy out the Red Stones Emerged Guidance. That's been the main focus. Apollo made an offer for Paramount Pictures alone, and so that's not particularly being well received by the Paramount folks, who like to keep the content portion of the company together and either you know, find a way out to the red stones and focus on content and sort of alleviating the losses and the streaming bists.
That seems to be the major focus right now.
Well, we keep our major focus on all things to do with these.
Content creation companies.
Chris Comary, thank you so much for bringing us the latest on Paramount and the exit from India.
Meanwhile, I mean we are.
In front and center content creation in all its guys is today whether we're watching rockets of RX and how many people tuned into that ed.
Well on x more than three million, which I thought we should have discussed. Actually, that's astonishing. Next week we can talk about it.
Well, apparently they're video first over there too, so everyone wants in.
Meanwhile, of course we don't.
Seemingly want the Chinese to be owning it according to US politicians.
Meanwhile, that does it. From the addition of Bloomberg Technology.
There is a lot to recap from today, So check out the podcast. So many of you are listening to the podcasts all over the world. This is Bloomberg Technology