Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news from the heart of where innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Luvelow.
Live from New York.
I'm Katie Greifeld and I'm Jackie Devallis in Washington. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up.
Big tech shares rebound as US stocks see some relief from tariff tensions that have shaken global markets and rattled consumers. Plus a conversation with the CEO of Palenteer as the company announces new partnerships to make American manufacturing more efficient and earning season is not over. We'll sit down with the CEOs of Rubric and DocuSign following their results.
Take a look at what's driving today's action. You have two names that really stand out to me. I'm taking a look at Tesla and I'm taking a look at Nvidia.
Tesla shares up about two percent right now. We know that Tehla really has been in the hurt locker for much of twenty twenty five, but seeing a little bit of a rebound on this Friday in Nvidia is your biggest gainer on a points basis when it comes to the S and P five hundred, also really helping out the NASAQ one hundred right now in Vidia shares hire by about four percent right.
Now, Jackie, Let's get to all of this with Bloomberg's Ryan Blastelica. Ryan, help us understand this roller coaster, because some of these mag seven names were exactly what was dragging us down earlier this week.
What's changed?
Hey, it's been a very vulnerable week. But some people have been really wondering, are we going to see some kind of capitulation here? Are we going to see some sort of end to the selling pressure that has been going on, you know, certainly this week, but really for the past couple of weeks, And it does seem like maybe we are starting to see a little bit of dipbuying coming in here. Some of these names have gotten very oversold by some metrics. There are still some concerns
about the economic outlook. Many of these names will have some slowing growth prospects, but the growth remains above the market rate. So I think people are kind of saying, you know, these are still pretty strong companies and they might be looking to take advantage of that.
Today well, Ryan, I'm curious what you're seeing as the driver when you talk to analysts, when you talk to investors, because it is still earning season, as we've been reminded of, but it feels like even good news isn't necessarily helping out these stocks when it comes to fundamentals of these actual corporate names. Is it just overall sentiment, risk, appetite, is invaluations? What is actually the catalyst of the market right now?
I'd say it's really all of those things. So prior to this year, all these stocks have done extremely well. Many of them are trading at multiples that were kind of stretch relative to their history. You know, when you have a two three year rally in some of these names that took some of them up, you know, more than one hundred percent, it's a natural place for people
to be wanting to take profits. When you couple that with you know, tariff uncertainty, overall economic uncertainty, you have people to sort of like shooting first and asking questions later. I don't think people have really soured on the group, but there's certainly nothing that's really continuing to push them higher from already elevated levels. Already elevated multiples.
Marian, I'm curious how consumer sentiment ends up affecting tech names that are sometimes a little bit more insulated, at least like in the short term some of those swings and how people are feeling about their budgets. Is that something that we're going to see later on.
I would say that you might see it most particularly with something like Apple, which is a very consumer facing name. It's a little bit less potent for say, Microsoft is more focused on the enterprise, maybe a little bit less focused for Meta and Alphabet. Obviously, there is a correlation between sort of ad spin and just overall economic growth, so it's less of a consumer story. But I do feel like if there is sort of broader uncertainty, it is likely you will see media a broader pullback here.
I'm not so concerned about it from a revenue perspective, outside of companies like Apple, which has already been struggling to see pretty robust demand for its latest I phone.
That's Bloomberg's Ryan Weastelica. Thank you so much for joining us. Meanwhile, Representative Biden Donalds is planning to introduce legislation today to codify an executive order that President Trump signed earlier this month which established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and US Digital Asset Stockpile. Passing the bill would ensure that the reserve in the stockpile could not be eliminated by future executive
action from another president down the line. This would protect crypto friendly policy that President Trump has embraced, Katie.
And this year, traditional finance executives have also been in versing crypto and discussing business opportunities with crypto firms. That's a shift in sentiment towards digital assets, and it was really on display at the Futures Industry conference in Florida recently.
Bloomberg's Bernard Goider was at the conference joining us now, so talk us through what the mood on the ground was, because I take a look at this market, the crypto market, and outside of just today, it seems like centiment has been pretty bad.
Yeah, it has.
I mean, the crypto market is really kind of coming back. Winter is coming, as we say in crypto land. But I think more broadly, there's some real structural shifts in this industry that bode pretty well for the long term in terms of crypto. So the main thing was that there were so many established exchanges talking about their crypto offerings. We saw last year that growth of these ecfs come on board. Doesn't feel like that it was that long ago before, you know, we didn't even have any crypto
ETF and now there's cryptodervatives people can trade. So we saw one exchange, the Singapore Exchange, of very established exchange launch looking to launch. They haven't had approval from the Singapore authorities yet, but they're trying to launch some new crypto products, perpetuals that were famously traded on FTX. So it's it's a sign that maybe the party is going to.
Carry on for crypto.
Bernard, I want to talk about some of the other structural change is that you alluded to just now. Prediction markets are really starting to come up in this sector, and I'm curious what you see as the impact on some of these newer players that they could have on futures markets for example.
Yeah, well there's you know, markets are characterized by fear and greed, and I think we saw both of that on display. So I spoke to the CEO of Ninja Trader, one of the upcoming futures trading brokers, and they were really keen on these on these prediction market players, they're kind of saying, well, you know you can you can put a bet on the Super Bowl, you can go to a casino, you can go to a sports betting plays, or you can or you can maybe do that with futures.
But we see real reservations in the regulatory community about about these kind of events contracts. And what was striking is a close ally of Donald Trump, Jeff Sprecker, who is the CEO of Ice, one of the companies we were just talking about, saying, look, we really need to draw a line between what's gambling and what's what's what's trading,
what's investing, what's giving people the opportunity to hedge. And one of the areas that I mean one rule that i've basically is there if there's a ball involved, then you're probably looking at the gambling side of things rather than rather than investing.
Talk us through how this conversation factors into what we're seeing in the market right now. I mean Bitcoin, it's back above eighty thousand dollars a coin, but we got below it and it feels like the halcyon days above one hundred thousand dollars per coin feel pretty distant right now. So you talk about this optimism that you're feeling when you talk to these executives and you talk to these conference attendees, but what's actually going on in markets.
Well, what you've got to understand about the people at this conference is these are either futures exchange executives or their executives are proprietary trading companies. These are companies like Citadel Securities that are they make market They make money
whichever way markets go. So really, you know, it's hard to the main sentiment is that there's a lot of volatility, and that volatility is great news if you're running an exchange, if you're a market maker, might be less good news if you're a retail investor who's decided to buy and hold, buy and hold bitcoin or Ethereg's.
Bernard Goiter, thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, shares of Rubric and DocuSign are surging today after posting an earnings beat. We'll speak with Rubric's CEO bit bull Singa and DocuSign CEO Alan Tigason.
That's next.
This is Bloomberg.
Well.
Shares of Rubric are absolutely flying today, up about twenty five percent. That's after the security software company posted a better than expected fourth quarter revenue and also you have a stronger than expected first quarter outlook for more. I'm pleased to say we're joined now by Ruberg CEO bit bul Sinha joining us. Great to have you with us.
Let's just talk through the first quarter forecast. It seems like that's what a lot of the sell side is seizing onto and that's why you see the shares reacting the way that they are. So your revenue forecast is now two hundred and fifty nine million dollars to two hundred and sixty one million dollars. That is well above the estimate of just around two hundred and forty three million dollars. Where did this strength come from? What are you seeing that led you to this upgrade?
First of all, thank you so much for this opportunity. We had a strong end of the last fiscal year. The Q four subscription revenue subscription arr group thirty nine percent year over year, and not only that, we generated seventy five million of free cast flow in the quarter, and then we were cash flow positive for the full year. And I love our customers. I travel around the world. I had four hundred plus meeting last year, and what we are observing is that cyber resiliency is the number one.
Priority in cybersecurity.
Everyone is worried about ransomware attack and cyber attack and how do they keep their businesses up and running irrespective of the attack. And that's what is driving the demand for Rubreak. That's what is reflected in our guidance. We guided thirty percent growth in the top line revenue for the next fiscal year.
Piple, Let's dig a little bit deeper under the hood. On the earnings call, as night analysts were really impress it. You're basically a year ahead of where you thought you would be just even a year ago. And so when we think about the generative AI opportunity here, obviously you guys were a huge beneficiary of the cloud transition, which seems silly to say now because it's so commonplace. But what does AI do for your future growth prospects.
At generative WAI gather systeam in the enterprise, businesses have to transform to be ready for gen AI, and these transformation involved transformation to cloud and also transforming the data landscape from the data integrity, data classifications, understanding of sensitive data because to deliver responsible AI, businesses.
Have to ensure that the right data goes to the right user. And Rubric is a data security company and we are delivering integrity of the data, availability of the data, and ensuring that only the right data goes to the right user on the right platform, at the right time, for the right duration.
When it comes to the geopolitical tensions around the world, there's a number of conflicts going on right now.
Do you guys.
See any kind of signal of increased cybersecurity threats that kind of correlate to what's going on in the world and is that good for your business at the end of the day.
Obviously, if you look at the geopolitical landscape, you have national state actors, industrial espionage insider thread.
I mean, as as we are.
Digitizing and moving and adopting newer and newer technology for productivity gains, the surface area of attacks keeps increasing.
So this has been a trend that has been a secular trend.
What is shift is in the last three or four years, there is a realization that they folks cannot stop all the attacks. And in the last twenty five years, everyone invested in attack prevention and now the focus has moved to saying that attacks will happen, and how do we ensure that our businesses keep running.
Schools are still open when the attack happens.
The kids can go to school, people can go to hospital, your banks can still dole out money when you swipe your credit card or swipe your debit card, so essentially keeping the business up and running. In the geopolitical environment, cyber warfare critical infrastructure is high variety, and that's what is driving this new vision in cybersecurity around cyber resilience.
Well, just in the past couple of weeks, I mean, you remember Elon Muss saying that X was being cyber attacked. X was down for a little bit. I couldn't see my fate. It was really a scary time. But I'm wondering if this is just a fact of life. I mean, you think about all the high profile cyber attacks that we've had in the past couple of years, the past couple months, even, and it seems like there has been an uptick and that's not necessarily abating.
Cyber attack has fundamentally changed in the last five to seven years. It used to be a board teenager showing middle finger to large corporation by bringing down their website or doing the denial of service attacks. Now it has become a cyber crime where people are trying to monitorize, or protest or demonstrate that they can take a business down, and it is a fundamental existential threat to businesses. As elon Road that X was under attack and they were trying to bring it down.
That's where the businesses are today.
So if you're not ready for cyber attack, and if you're not ready to keep your services up and running in spite of cyber attack, the business may not exist. And that's the new environment that everyone is living in.
Through Bricks.
CEO Bill pool Sanna, thank you so much for joining us. Another stock we're watching today is DocuSign. That stock is surging after the asignature software company gave an encouraging outlook for billings. For more on this, DocuSign CEO Alan Tikison joins us. Now, Alan, you started selling an AI powered product not too long ago, and I'm curious how much of a role you've seen in that growth of that product. How much of a role is that playing in this bullish outlook we're seeing.
It's very important for it. So first it was a very very strong quota for us and the culbination. I think of a transformative year for docu sign where we've continued to stabilize our core business. We got much more profitable, so we've i think taken our operating margin up by
ten percentage points in the last two years. And then most importantly, as you alluded to, we've introduced this new intelligence, giving and management platform that's very much centered around AI and we saw some very nice early success and that is what allowed us to not only print some good results, but show an increase in an acceleration in billings growth for next year. And I think the investors like that.
Talk to us a little bit more about what that innovation is going to look like going forward. If it is such an integral part of that growth story going forward, is it going to be what we see coming out of the language model developers? For example, there's a new feature every month that really kind of keeps us on our toes for you guys, what's kind of the next thing that's going to take it to the next level.
Yeah, So, look, I feel very fortunate to be the Docsun at a time when there is such an incredible improvement and the ability of AI. We've been a user of AI for a long time, it's been integrated into our products, but obviously there's been a step change in capability, and agreements have historically been dumb, flat files inside of all companies. People could barely tell you where they were let alone it was in them, and with AI we
can completely transform that. So now I can tell you where what's in all your agreements, when are they up for renewal, what are the key terms you might want to renegotiate, what are the terms where you or your vendors have not been performing. That just a total game changer that hasn't been possible before, and so we have
a lot aheadroom for AI features. We're going to be previewing a lot about new capability at our Momentum event next month in New York, but already we're seeing take tremendous adoption and interest in getting more visibility into and capturing the data and using the data from your agreements.
Allen, I want to talk a little bit about how this translates into the stock price, because you take a look at the five year chart, Obviously we're flying high during the pandemic that came with a lot of volatility on the back end. Then you had a fantastic twenty twenty four, up about fifty percent in your shares before yesterday. Through yesterday's closed, the shares were down about seventeen percent year to date though, and now they're up about seventeen
percent today alone, So a lot of volatility. What is your message to investors about how you're sort of going to stabilize the stock from here?
Yeah, I can't control the stock in the short term, but what I can tell investors is I think Docu Sime is on a transformation journey. We put down I think a very strong found for that last year. You can see our optimism about growth acceleration in our outlook, and we think we have years ahead of that and that will then flow through to revenue and ultimately into
operating income. There's just so much headroom in agreements, and DocuSign is the best position as the largest vendor focused on agreements to capture that, and I think we're starting to demonstrate that we have that opportunity. So there'll be a little bit of volatility in the short run, but I think the long term trajectory is very positive.
Alan here in Washington, there's been a lot of uncertainty with regards to the economy. Recession fears are starting to bubble up, policy tariffs, There's been a lot that has kind of eventually battered stocks across the board. And for you guys, how does the consumer sentiment affect your business? Are you a bit more insulated from it given your customer base?
We are, so we are very diversified customer base across really all sectors of the economy, all sizes of companies, and of course also geographically, and as a result, things that affect individuals, sectors and countries tend not to show up as much for Docusine. But if we take that macro question that you asked and the bulk of the agreements that get executed with docusigine our agreements with consumers.
Even through February, we've not seen a material deviation from trends so so far, it hasn't flowed through to consumer activity as we can see it. But obviously if the world economy accelerates or decelerates in a material way, that will also ultimately affect us.
In about thirty seconds, I'm curious about the competition. Here we saw drop boxing. They're kind of de emphasizing their signing business. Is this an opportunity for you guys?
Well, OK, there are a lot of companies who've developed basic signature solutions. Docu sign is the clear market leader. Said the pace and are usually the product of preference for small and large companies, and so I don't focus on individual competitors, but I like where we're sitting from
in the core sign business. And of course with this much broader platform for intelligent agreement management, we now have a much broader value proposition to sell to our one point seven million monthly paying sign customers.
Well, Alan, really appreciate your time, have a great weekend when you get there. That is Docu Signed CEO Alan Tigason.
No one has benefited more than the AI boom than Nvidio and It's CEO Jensen Wong. But with troubling signs ahead from the likes of deep Seek or President Trump's tariffs, and Vidia CEO is now trying to extend the good times.
Let's talk about.
This with Ian King here for more on today's big take. Ian, you have been covering this company way before it became the cool kid on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. What is next for the company now, given that we've seen it's not immune from new entrants coming into the AI space.
Yeah, I mean to be honest with you, at the moment, it's pretty safe in terms of competition, but that doesn't mean that there aren't those out there that are trying really hard. But what we were trying to show in the story is that, you know, the CEO, Jensen Wang, is not getting happy, fat and lazy here with these
billions of dollars. He's out there everyruarrey possibly can and his mission is to get AI out into the economy as fast as he possibly can and as make it as pervasive as he possibly can, because that's, you know, fundamental to whether this growth story has legs or not.
Happy, fat and lazy. That sounds like every cat's dream. But I want to talk to you about my favorite chart in the world, at least for right now. I want to look at Intel versus Nvidia. You're to date because it's a really stunning reversal of fortunes. Intel of about nineteen percent in video, which has been the darling down actually on a total return basis nearly ten percent from the folks that you speak to. Is this sustainable? Ian in just about forty.
Five seconds, Yeah, I mean this is This is just what's going on with Intel on a corporate level that's causing people to be trading in and out of it. Fundamentally, the flow of wealth is solidly in in Video's direction. Whether it's a inning's profit margin or anything.
Else, it's Bloomberg's Ian King. Thank you so much for joining us.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Katie Greifeld in New.
York and I'm Jackie Devallis in Washington. Pollunteer Technologies has announced a new partnership with healthcare software provider are One. Our very own Bloomberg Caroline Hight spoke with Palenteer CEO Alex carp and r One CEO Joe Flanagan about that deal and how cost cutting in Washington and corporate America could impact their plans.
People who are basically anti reform, whether it's like anti doge people or anti tech people. In corporate life, everyone has their excuse to Many companies are just like yeah, I'd rather I mean basically have a steak dinner with some model provider and feel cool and it doesn't work. And then you have the government version, which is we can do no reform.
The whole thing has to suck.
At a high level what America is going through and this is going to be.
An absolute.
A crucial example of this is you're going to get the system to work much better at a lower cost. And this is this is a macro trend that is unstoppable, which basically means those that actually run together are going to take over the whole market.
Like my version of this is.
The care and the economics are going to be so much better, they're going to take over the whole market.
Joe, I mean, you already have most of the market of top health systems, but how are those leaders in health wanting to work with you at the moment. There's a lot of anxiety in the market. There's a lot of worry about future economies and whether people want to be leaning into new contracts, new relationships, new partners.
Yeah.
Listen, we've had great receptivity from our health systems and the broader end market, and really we are one hundred percent aligned with their objectives. We want to transform the experience for the patient and the physician. Those are the two users of this process, and we want to unlock financial capacity for our customers that can be reinvested in clinical excellence supporting their communities. And the reality is the design of this operation.
When you look at.
At those outcomes that I mentioned, you.
Have to break that down.
What is the architecture today that one hundred and sixty billion dollars that's spent to convert revenue to cash. Eighty percent of that is labor, only twenty percent of that is technology. The technology is brittle, it does not have the ability to harness the power of these models. And we spend a lot of time and what we found was there's an abundance of raw intelligence and there is a shortage of technology companies that understand how to apply, configure,
orchestrate apply that intelligence to transform an outcome. And we are really really excited to partner with Palenteer on solving that problem.
The problem is government wide at the moment, are you pro or antidoja the moment are they using enough technology?
Say look, I don't want to We're supposed to have a normal adult interview.
Here, so I don't want to down.
But I've been everywhere saying the Democrats are committing, are involved in a suicide dance, and these are There are two macro trends here. One is transparency. One is optimization of the actual work product, whether it's in government or in commercial and AI is this unstoppable trend. And it's unstoppable because you can make the actual work product better. So and you can change the union economics. There's a fancy way of.
Saying, you can do it much better and much.
Cheaper, and nothing is going to stop that. So what we should all be doing is finding ways to reform every institution as soon as possible. And in the commercial space, if you don't do it, your competitor is and they are going to have a much better product at a much better price, so cost of revenue.
But we're worrying about defense spending getting caught, and I'm worried that that means that you're a friend gets caught.
Will it.
I'm in favor of whatever is good for America, and I'm in super in favor of meritocracy.
Buy the best products, look.
At the unit economics, and you know that should be good for our whole country, and it'll be good enough for Palenteer. I am very, very supportive of anything that brings better output at a lower cost.
In a transparent manner.
And by the way, this is the single biggest advantage America has. We have the most sophisticated, most intelligent, best trained corporate leaders in the world, and we have the best people from all over, including you, and we have to lean into this and that's.
Going to be very very good for our country.
And it's necessary because people expect the best product at the best price.
And that was Alex Karp, the CEO of Palenteer and Joseph Flanagan, the CEO of r One, speaking with our own Caroline High. Let's get more detail on Pollenteer's plans and its partnerships with Bloomberg's Lazette Chapman and Lizette. You right recently that analysts expect Pallnteer's commercial revenue to actually overtake its government revenue this year. And I have to imagine that these partnerships that they're inking go a long way towards furthering that.
That's the expectation for sure.
You know, a Palenteer started in government and they have been expanding into commercials since then. This what we just heard about with the partnership with r one is one of a blitz of different partnerships that Palenteer has done over the past. You know, several weeks months, they also had one with TWG to totally go in and distribute its software to all of its financial institutions and insurance companies. So this is you know, them applying the same playbook to healthcare.
And it seems like the word efficients exactly.
It seems like the.
Word efficiency is really the buzzword, especially with those running around here in Washington. Caroline actually asked doctor carp that, you know, are they seeing any kind of concerned? Are investors freaking out about the fact that cost cutting could affect their business?
Here's what he had to say.
We're focused on value creation, but value creation in the end will be rewarded heavily by investors.
I'm by the government because investors are freaking out right now that the government isn't going to stick with.
You for this cost cutting endeavor. Dot Com.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Honestly, I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'm not freaking out. I'm very happy. Who's freaking out?
I don't know what you're talking honest sometimes that I know, you don't.
Always please freak out people are always wrong.
Why don't you advise the Democratic Party? Like I mean, it is ridiculous, Liz.
Thatt, I'm curious what you make of that, especially given what you've written about now the company really shifting more toward a commercial strategy here, right, it's.
Not shifting from government to commercial, it's expanding. What he said is completely consistent with the message that he and the company has been giving, been given to the market and otherwise for the past you know, decade plus, I mean definitely since they went public. And the point that he's making is we don't care about these short term inflection points or that what the stock does one time
or another. A reminder that he, Peter Teel, and Stephen Cohen have control of this company in perpetuity, so whether the stock jumps, you know, a lot or a little is kind of irrelevant in his mind the way that he's described it to the long term creation that they're playing. So and just to put a little asterisk onto his comment about who's freaking out, we you know, we're not freaking out again, that's consistent with kind of.
What he's been saying all along and.
This conflict between a lot of the retail investors and the Wall Street analysts, you know, perception of the value of this company, with it being very much a retail driven stock.
Right, there's differing perspectives there, differing timelines, and it's important to keep that in mind. Something else that carp has said previously is that quote untamed demand for its AI tools has outstripped supply. Take us into that supply and demand dynamic. Is that's still the case.
Oh sure, that's a great question.
The way that he was framing that was basically, they didn't have a salesforce to go and sell this software. They simply hadn't expanded that muscle. And so what they did is they created a series of boot camp packathons where they have coders go sit side by side with maybe an executive lead from one of these companies. I attended one that was in Detroit with you know, VW and Lear and Caterpillar and a number of other ones.
And the idea there was to get people on prem quickly and teach them how to use it and.
Have it sell itself.
So that was what he was referring to with untamed demand. They can't keep up with it. They just didn't have enough people to sell it. So we'll uh, that's something that will be interesting to continue to track.
That was Bloomberg's Lysette Chapman, Thanks so much for joining us.
Still coming up near him.
Rivera of OOH Ventures joins us to talk about why the firm isn't pulling back from DEI focused investing under the Trump administration.
This is Bloomberg.
Now it's time for our VC. Spotlight h Ventures recently announced it's fourth fund. The firm investment in seed stage startups with a focus on diverse founders. CEO and managing partner Miriam Rivera is here with us to talk about this more. Miriam, this is quite a time for anything focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. Talk to us about the process of raising a fund in an environment like this.
Well, this is a challenging time to raise a fund, but fortunately we were out of the market before the election results were in. The challenge that we experienced during our time was really the bank failures was the predominant issue that scared investors, and fortunately the federal government did support the depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank and other banks in the country that were impacted and that had a particular potential to impact the tech economy.
One of the things it feels like forever ago actually that we saw Silicon Valley Bank really tumble.
But the other kind of big.
Question around seed seed stage investing because it takes so much I think kind of.
A real skill there.
You're really placing a bet on a founder, on a person, it's usually before they've started generating any revenue. How are you seeing the opportunity set in that part of the market at a time when any company that isn't in the AI space is having a hard time raising.
Well, it's true that there's been a concentration of capital in larger funds and also.
In areas like AI.
We've been investing in AI machine learning for over fifteen years, so that is not new. I think what is new is that this is a real infrastructure play, and that's one reason why a lot of capital is going in
that direction. We tend to be focused on the application layer at Blue Ventures, and so really a time of great opportunity is coming as all these other foundational ais are built and then they can be applied in different sectors of the economy, all areas including healthcare, legal, tech, education. We're investing in many of the applications that are benefiting from AI and helping to bring low cost technology to areas where perhaps they hadn't had as much access because of the cost of software.
Well, Miriam Jackie touched a little bit on the macro environment. I want to talk about the political environment a little bit here, because you have this focus on investing in diverse founders, investing alongside in verse diverse founders, and we know that this administration really has strongly criticized DEI and there's been a massive pullback at least at the government level here. What do you make of that and does that mean anything for your strategy?
Well, our belief is that diversity is in investment thesis for us.
We believe that's how we're going to financially outperform.
And part of the reason is that seventy percent of Americans fall into a bucket called diversity. We're talking about women, we're talking about people of color, we're talking about underrepresented minorities such as black and Latin X, and we're talking about immigrant Americans. Turns out that's the majority of Americans. So I believe that anybody who isn't investing in diverse founders is really giving up the opportunity to be part of the tradition of this gay country of benefiting from
the talent that we have wherever it comes from. That's one of the most important things about entrepreneurship. It is one of the few bipartisan aspects of our society today. Politically, everyone believes that Americans should have a right to start businesses that they are able to bring benefit to the economy, and that's what we're trying to do. Of our founders are diverse, meaning they fall into one of the categories that I mentioned, and eighty percent of our teams also.
Include white people, so it is not exclusionary.
Diversity means we have all permutations of founders on our teams.
Given you really a focus on the earlier stage companies, I'm curious how you're looking at the pipeline of talent flowing into Silicon Valley, particularly at a time when funding for universities is really starting to get pinched. Is this a moment where the venture community could really step in given so many of these schools really do provide the talent that Silicon Valley relies on.
Well, I think it's really important to say that our university system is one of the best in the world.
It is one that is emulated throughout.
Entrepreneurship in America is emulated throughout the entire world. I have been in ecosystems internationally dozens of times, and they're trying to implement American entrepreneurship, American venture capital type investing in many emerging economies around the world. The universities are a foundational piece of that, and the research that is done at those institutions benefits all Americans and frankly the
entire world. When we do healthcare research, when we do technology research, we end up creating the future businesses that drive our economy. You had Alex Karprum Pollenteer on we were an early investor and Pallenteer Pallunteer. Alex is half black, half Jewish.
One of his co founders is gay and an immigrant.
This is America and this is what is driving the future of our economy.
Well, that's a good note to leave it on. Miriam, great to get some time with you. That is Miriam Rivera. She's is CEO of Ulu ventures. Thank you for joining us.
All right?
It signed now for Talking tech and first Up. Shean's executive chairman, Donald Tang, says he's committed to taking the company public. This comes as the company grapples with accusations that tolerated labor violations among Chinese suppliers and tariff challenges from the Trump administration. She In confidentially filed papers in June for a London listening. Plus, Ubisoft is said to be on the hunt for new investors and is considering selling a minority stake in a new venture. That's according
to people familiar. The game maker has contacted potential bidders, including current shareholder Tencent, and has asked for preliminary bids to be made as soon as this month. And finally, British and US officials have held talks to alleviate concerns that the UK is trying to force Apple to build a backdoor into encrypted data. That's according to sources, This comes just weeks after Apple removed its encrypted security features for cloud data in the UK in response to a
British order that asked Apple to circumvent encryption. Meanwhile, let's stay on Apple because the company is said to be working on incorporating a live translation feature into its AirPods in a future software update. Bloomberg's Mark German broke this news, of course, and he joins us now for more so talk us through the opportunity set that Apple potentially sees here. Because you think about some of its rivals. You have Google Pixel buds, for example, they already have this option.
Yeah, Katie, thanks for having me. So this is a bit of a catchup feature, but this is becoming a standard enhancement in earbuds lately. Right, Like you mentioned, Google has this, Samsung's going to have it at some point in a big way. Now Apple's going to have it
later this year. The way it works is you could be wearing the earbuds, right, You could be an English speaker speaking to someone who's talking to you in Japanese for instance, right, and as they're speaking that Japanese will live translate into English into your years and when you speak back, you'll show them your phone or other Apple device and what you speak in English will be translated into Japanese for them to read.
Right.
So this is a feature that Google's had, but it's important for Apple to have it too. The big picture here is they're trying to turn the AirPods into their own ecosystem, into their own product line.
Into something that people know they.
Can buy, right, but understand that there's going to be softwareupdates over time that make it better and better. The same store you get with the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, et cetera.
Well Mark in the last minute I have with you, that's where I wanted to go because you think about the air pods, it feels like that has really been a focus for Apple here, and I think back to your reporting around hearing health.
They're trying to.
Introduce that into the AirPod as well. So just lay out the vision for the AirPod ecosystem here.
Well, the growth for Apple is not on their existing products, right, It's about the accessories, it's about the services, it's about.
The attachments, right.
So they need to make the air pods as good as they can to create that growth. There are a lot of people who have iPhones, but not all of them have AirPods, not all of them have Apple Watches, not all of them have other peripheral so they want to make those peripheral products as good as possible, as interesting as possible. To get more people using it. They also want people on old AirPods to upgrade to new AirPods. This translate feature like the hearing health feature. This is
an airpod's pro feature. Right, These are going to create differentiation between the lower end AirPods. They just updated those the older headphones, some of the older AirPods. This is another way to get people to upgrade.
All right, Mark, great reporting as always, That is Bloomberg's Mark German. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Don't forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the terminal, online, Apple, Spotify, and on iHeart. Have a great weekends. This is Bloomberg