From the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and.
Ed Ludlow.
Live from New York and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology coming up. President Trump asks Apple CEO to move iPhone production from India to the US market.
Plus the core we've CEO joins on the back of the company's first earnings as a public company.
And the CEO of e Toro joins US after its upsized US share sale as the IPO market opens back up.
But first we.
Check in on this market, which maybe it's just got a little bit over exuberant and dials back on the day we hit overbought technical overbought territory on the relative strength index when you're looking at the NASZAK one hundred yesterday.
Today we've paired back only by three tenser percent. Ed were on track for a five percent gain so far this week, and it seems as though big tech just comes off as some of those highs as the macro data paints maybe a slightly cooler inflation environment than.
We were thinking.
We see the same behavior in Apple, which is our top story muted declines, pairing some of its more significant declines earlier on High's US listed shares. That's the publicly traded arm of fox Conn, the company assembling the iPhone softer in.
Part and earning story but in part.
The President of the United States, with severe words for Apple and Tim Kirk, listened to this.
I had a little problem with Tim Koky yesterday. I said to him, Jimy and my friend I Fru did you very good? You're coming here with five hundred billion dollars, but now here you're building all over India.
I don't want your building in Indie.
Let's get straight to it.
Bloomberg's Mark Gumman gives us the context because before we go as to how realistic this could be, Mark, I want to understand for our audience just how much we've seen production shift to India to satisfy the US market.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
These are truly, you know, some harsh comments coming from President Trump.
Obviously, Tim Cook.
Has had no choice because of the thread of tariffs to move a lot of production of the iPhone and other devices to elsewhere. Right, So, for the most part, they were building things in China, but now they're building probably a third of iPhones in India.
They set on the.
Earnings call that the majority of iPhone production for the US market in this coming quarter is going to be done in India. They certainly have aggressive plans to expand even further in India for iPhone production.
Again, that's for.
The US market, and this is about avoiding trade war type of situations between the US and China, geopolitical issues having to do with China, but also because of these tariffs. A lot of this came into place because of the anticipation of these tariffs and how much more it would cost Apple to produce iPhones and how much that would snip into their margins if they continued to export from
China to the US. So definitely something Apple had to do, and it's understandable that with Donald Trump's agenda, why he would not be so happy about it.
Mark, I want to recap some of the data you just shared, which is that basically almost ninety percent of iPhones are currently made in China and the balance of iPhones are made in India around thirty million units per annum. Did we learn anything from Apple's most recent earnings or in any of your reporting since on how Apple is planning for the long term on its production of the iPhone, irrespective of what the White House says.
Well, right now, the plan is to produce the vast majority of iPhones in India for the US market by the end of twenty twenty six, so about a year and a half from now. There's still going to be a nice chunk of iPhones made in China, that is the higher end pro models. They're working on basically two
new iPhone models for the twentieth anniversary. Obviously, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone at the beginning of two thousand and seven, so across the end of twenty twenty six and the end of twenty two they have two major new iPhones coming out. They have a foldable iPhone which would compete with the Samsung Fold, the Google Pixel Phone, some of the other Chinese made foldables.
They also have a.
Twentieth anniversary glass wingd phone coming out at the end of twenty twenty seven. Uses very advanced curve glass, very advanced new chips, very advanced new technology. They're not going to be able to pull that off outside of China, so those aren't coming to India from the get go. But to I guess the larger points, there is no plan in place to begin building iPhones in the United States. I have an article that I wrote in early April
which outlines why this one happened. The engineering talent, the manufacturing skill sets, the manufacturing space, the cost implicacations, all of that essentially makes it imposs impossible for Apple to produce iPhones in the US at any rational, reasonable rate or scale.
Bloomber's Mark German, thank you very much.
Let's get more with Bloomberg's Mike Shephard and the political side of this story in Washington, d C.
And Mike.
In the last forty eight hours, the President has taken to the stage, so to speak, and called out Jensen Wang, the Nvidia CEO.
He called him my friend who's in the room.
Twenty four to forty eight hours later, he calls out Apple CEO Tim Cook with less kind words. This is a president who is using the public forum to try and get tech companies, American tech companies, to do things his administration wants.
Well, that's right, ed.
He is using the public space to pressure these companies, and he is not shy about doing it. And It is a tactic we have seen before. Think back to the very early days of the administration when SoftBank was pledging one hundred billion dollars of investment in the US and Donald Trump turned to Marseoshi's son. This may have even been before.
He took office.
How about doubling it? Could you make it two hundred billion dollars? Right there as the two men were standing at a lectern with the announcement being made. And it is a tactic we have seen repeatedly. When the Stargate announcement was made again, he was asking one hundred billion, Why can't we make it five hundred billion, Let's scale
it up. And so the president really is pushing companies to help fulfill his agenda here, which is the expanding manufacturing base, and he is leaning heavily in the tech industry to do so. Obviously, others like aviation and car
making too are feeling that pressure. But tech is really taking center stage in this and you can see that with the connections he's tried to make, as you mentioned ed with Jensen Wong and of course with Tim Cook, someone he's had a relationship with since the first administration, and Mike Thus for.
Tim Cook or Apple indeed has not responded publicly to the President's comments, but they have front run perhaps the president's comments in terms of trying to signal the investment to come five hundred billion dollars. They say that was going to be invested in the US. But that's the chips or indeed the AI focus. It's not for making iPhones. Realistically, are we going to see Apple try and respond by more investment but just not in terms of iPhone production.
Well, it's a difficult question.
That President made very clear what he wanted. He wants US phones made here in the US and not in India and not in China certainly, and to do that, perhaps Donald Trump needs to read Mark German's piece from back in April laying out all of the difficulties, but of course the fine print, those kinds of details. The President typically has not paid attention to that. And it is up to companies really to use the time that they get with Donald Trump and his aids to show Look,
it will be very difficult to do this. This is what the cost would be. Some officials have talked about, well, maybe there could be some savings when it comes to AI. When it comes to processes. And yet here also we do have a talent deficit. We don't nearly have enough engineers and assembly line talent to be able to produce the vast number of iPhones for the US market that are currently planned right now in India.
Michael sheppind great to check in with you. Thank you.
Meanwhile, let's return to what President Trump has managed to achieve for in video in the like, for example, in the Middle East, the tour is opening up though a rift within his own administration, Trump's aideals. They're raising alarm bells for China hawks in particular concerns growth that the projects could put US national security and economic interest at risk.
Let's bring in Ridy Griffin, who joins us for more.
This is a really well read story at the moment, and this is all to do with basically, how we ensure that in video chips going to the Middle East don't end up in China's hands.
Yes, we've seen this week in speaking with several Trump administration officials, that they are quite uncomfortable with the fast and loose way that these negotiations have happened. And particularly we're interested to see that there is concern about the way White House AI advisor David Sachs is a part of these negotiations. Trump administration officials feel that he is not paying sensitive attention to the economic and national security concerns that you mentioned.
I think it's important to explain to the audience the basics of the relationships between these nations. The original AI diffusion rule took into account third countries, right, which was the idea that if you sell a technology to a nation like Saudi Arabia or the UAE, those nations also have a close relationship with China, an economic relationship. There are Chinese nationals working in the fields of AI and UAE, for example, and that they might give access indirectly to
China to US technology. Has the US actually answered any of that in everything that's happened in the last four days.
What's amazing is that the diffusion rule itself has been under review in a way, these negotiations have front run the answer to that question ed, and we're seeing Congressional Republicans raise concerns about this process as well. This isn't just happening behind closed doors. It's being discussed out in the open. But there are two sides of the Trump administration one in which we're seeing concerns about these chips simply being in other countries potentially threatening American dominance.
But David Sachs.
Himself, the AI White House Advisor, believes and has said publicly that having American technology being used abroad helps to ensure the dominance, helps to ensure that country's returning to China for that same technology.
One example, G forty two, an investment firm focused on AI that has close links not just to the nation of China in UAE, but also a relationship with Huawei, the national tech champion.
Bluembo's Riley Griffin top reporting. Thank you very much.
Core Weave shares pushing higher today the posting the earnings after the bell yesterday. There were some concerns around profitability the forecast, but really this is as Core Weave works to bring forward spending in an effort to meet consumer demand. That is just ratcheting higher and higher. Core we CEO Michael Entrator joins us now on the back of yet a deepening tie up with Open Ai. Their own ed Ludlow has been writting about a deal worth yet another
four billion dollars. You'd already sealed revenue climbing to some eleven billion deal with them previously. Michael, are we seeing insatiable demand and how can you meet it?
Yeah?
Thank you for having me on. The demand for the product that we deliver has truly been INSATIONI it. You know, it's resulted on us having an opportunity to beat our guidance and raise our guidance for the year and beat our earnings for the quarter. You know, as we continue to try to pull in infrastructure so that we can deliver it to our clients that need the type of software stack, that need the type of compute that we deliver in order to drive their products into the market.
I want to just pick up on the beat because wow, did you beat in terms of revenue and certainly we see what four hundred percent growth is extraordinary, But talk to us about the fore cost and profitability because the area of investor concern is ultimately your capital expenditure. You're having to raise capital spending to what to twenty three billion dollars? Just vindicate that for the market.
Sure, Look, you know the structure of our business is built around the idea that we have success based finance, and so when you see us go out to the market and raise our capital budget for the year. You're seeing us raise money to fulfill our obligations under signed contracts for off take agreements. It's really a wonderful indication of the demand for our product and our unique ability to deliver such a performance solution to how you drive
compute into the artificial intelligence ecosystem. It's really been a you know, it's a it's an interesting aspect of the business that we've put together, but the increase in capital is representative of the client demand.
Michael, I think the sole outstanding question the industry has for Corewave is what is the proportion of workload you're running that is inference versus the proportion of workload you're.
Running that is training.
They're searching for a very specific number, and we can get into why.
Yeah, so.
I'm going to disagree with you. I'm going to say there's a few more questions that we're still working through I've got. But look, you know I said this on yesterday's earnings call, right, there is no trend that makes me more excited about the prospects of our business than the continued increase and velocity of inference Because at the end of the day. What inference represents is the monetization of all of the investment that going on into artificial intelligence.
It is a representation of the AI labs, of the enterprise clients that have invested enormous sums of money into the compute, into the software, into all the aspects of it, actually turning it on and having clients use it to improve the quality of their products delivered to their clients. It is by far the most important trend that I watch every day.
This is your first quarter as a public company, right, and if you scale back to the basics, it's buying GPUs and renting out the GPUs and that becomes a little bit like a low margin commoditized business. Primer facie. What is it that you're doing that's the value add What is it? It's making data centers more efficient now.
So this is one of the kind of recurring trends is that people trying to understand the compute requirements for artificial intelligence are relying on the best proxy they have, and that is the legacy cloud, and they're looking at it and thinking about it as if it is a
commodity service. The reason that these clients, the reason the most demanding consumers of this infrastructure come to core Weave is because of the way that we integrate the commodity hardware into our specific software solution, which extracts such incredible performance games and makes it so incredibly effective to build models, to run models, to be able to ultimately build their business. It is not a commodity. It's really difficult to run
this infrastructure. It's really difficult to build this infrastructure. And Corewave's entire business, truly from the data center all the way up through the software stack, has been built around the concept that we are decommoditizing it, that we are
providing enormous value on top of the compute. Our latest acquisition of Weights and Bias that's a great example of how our software stack will fundamentally decommoditize the products that we're delivering and imbue the products that we have with incredible.
Vale cour We've CEO Michael and Traded. It's great to have you on Bloomberg Technology. Congrats on your first quarter as a public company. We want to welcome our worldwide TV and radio audiences. We look at shares of an investment platform e Toro stabilizing a little bit after a
pretty hyperbolic debut in public markets. Yesterday the competitors robin Hood began publicly trading at fifty two dollars to share the upsize IPO raised raised nearly six hundred and twenty million dollars for companies and investors.
Were joined now by Utro's CEO.
Say, for both Caroline and I, it's a little bit of a sort of full circle story because I'd say, over the last day, cad or more it TOI is a company we probably most consistently talked about. Finally you've gone public. Actually, when chair started trading it was well above fifty two bucks.
How does that feel for you?
It's an amazing feeling, you know, the last two weeks on the road show, being inside capital markets here in the US, now listing on ASDAK, a super exciting journey. Eighteen years in the making of building Etro, the world's largest social investment network. Can now our customers can trade Toro on Ititorro.
Educate the audience that doesn't necessarily know about Etro. What is the proportion of stock activity on the platform versus say crypto, What is the mainstay of your business?
So we're doing both customers today on it Toro can trade stocks from over twenty different capital markets as well as more than one hundred and thirty different assets. We started the business in Europe and the UK. Our largest markets spend into Asia, UA and now the US as well. And our customers when they trade, they share of their trading activity and you can actually see the portfolios in the trek record of our customers, and you can automatically
copy the most successful investors on the platform. So it's not only about trading yourself both crypto and stocks. It's about being able to see others that are successful and copy them automatically. And the ratio between stocks and crypto changes in market dynamics. Last year, twenty five percent of total net contribution was actually crypto trading activity. Years when crypto was in a bull run like before. Sometimes it's up to sixty two percent, so it really changes with the markets.
We keep comparing you to Robin Hood and at the moment, I mean you have a social nature of course, spelling out in the way that you can copy those and.
Invest like them. But with Robin Head at a.
Fifty two billion market cap and yourself at a five billion as it currently stands.
How do you close that gap?
How do you show that you're more closing terms of competitors.
I think eventually a lot of great companies are aiming at a very very big opportunity, which is the largest generational transformation of wealth in history. Eighty four trillion dollars here in the US are going to move from older generations to younger generations. In Europe not that far behind, sixty trillion dollars are going to move from older generations to younger generations. And I believe that our generation expects to trade, invest, and save in a digital native solution.
And we're providing more than just the ability to trade directly in the markets through the copy trading pattern of technology. We provide people to automatically copy top investors from all around the world, as well as more than one hundred different smart portfolios, where we actually have our own chief investment office with sixteen market analysts across the globe who help our customers basically find portfolios like Thematics driverless cars.
We're just launching our also market neutral strategies learning from the hedge funds I met here in New York. So we're able to create more than just self directed trading, but actually the entire world of investments through smart portfolios and copy.
Trader, and that's as the business model MATURESI it's interesting that you sort of said you've got yourself to a more mature state than back in say twenty twenty one, when you were looking at going public virus back. Just tell us how different it looks now. What happened then to make you push to go for an IPO this time?
I think you know, we call twenty twenty two the year of education. A lot of our customers learned that markets don't always go up. And we were focused initially in twenty twenty one we need growth at all costs, strategy very sort of VC minded, let's just spend money to grow. And I think what twenty twenty two to us is to change our strategy to profitable growth. And we've significantly scale up profitability in it Toro with more than three hundred million dollars of adjusted to be the profit.
So I think that's the significant transition that we've done in the private market bring us to profitable growth, which is a strategy that I believe is more fit to public markets.
There was a lot of demand and now we see a lot of more IPO sideline waiting companies wanting to follow your tracks.
Johnny A Sea, it's great to have you back on the show. CEO VI Toro, thank you.
But I had a little problem with Tim Kky yesterday. I said to him, Tim, you and my friend I feated you very good. You're coming here with five hundred billionaires. But now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want your building in India. You can build an India if you want to take care of India. We want you to build here. And they're going to be
upling their production in the United States Apple. So Apple's already and for five hundred billion, but they're going to be upring their production.
Welcome back to New meag Technology and Caroline Hyde in New York and.
I met Lovelow in San Francisco.
Carroc I mean, we.
Think about the ramifications of President Trump following his call on Apple CEO Tim Cook there to stop building so much in India, satisfy the Indian demand in India. You want to sartentisfy US demand closer to home. It's extraordinary, really that shares managed to bounce off of their lows. We're back flat on the day. More about the macro picture here in the US, maybe some resiliency when it comes to the inflationary data that we're seeing and retail lackluster, but not a disaster.
And we've got to dig in more.
To what's happening in terms of Apple and its call upon its own supply chain.
Right now, Okay, let's get out to where the action is happening. Bloomberg's Emory Horden joined us now for the latest from Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East.
In amh He's used.
The public forum, so to speak, in the last forty eight hours to specifically name check technology CEOs, some positively, for example Jensen, and some more severe words for apples, Tim Kirk.
What have we learned?
Right?
This is the second time on the President's Middle East tour that he actually called out Tim Cook. The first time was on Tuesday in Riot. He looked out into the room and he said, my friend, Jensen, you're here, he said, but notably missing is Tim Cook.
But you're here.
And then before he touched.
Down in Abu Dhabi, he was talking about Tim Cook once again. In Doha, he was talking about the fact that India might be prepared to what the President said, literally lower their tirefrates to zero. And then he said, but I'm having a problem with Tim Cook, and I spoke to him about this yesterday. Why are you moving all your manufacturing to India. We let it go that you built all these plants in China. We want you to come to the United States. What's so interesting, of
course about this. The President has been flanked by corporate America, especially tech executives, throughout this entire trip, and notably missing was the Apple CEO, and the President found time to call him back. What he I guess very frustrating and disturbing to him. And the President said, though that he's going to be moving that manufacturing to the United States.
That has not been what Apple's been talking about. They're talking about de risking from China, willing to go into India potentially maybe more conversations about investments in the United States though.
And of course investments still coming with the Middle East, and it's interesting that a lot of that is focused around access to AI sophisticated chips going to where you currently are, whether it's Abu Dabi also over in Saudi Arabia. But this is ringing alarm bells within the president's own administration memory.
Yeah, that's right, and that becomes the national security concerns around all of this, getting what many would consider these Gulf countries as geopolitical swing states. This administration, especially with the China Hawks and this administration and even China Hawks Democrats in Washington want to make sure that the technologies does not leak to China. We saw a huge win for the likes of Nvidia and AMD in Saudi Arabia.
We are on the heels waiting for a potential announcement here in Abu Dhabi of some sort of tech cooperation when it comes to AI. This story started in March. I reported about Chicktan Noun coming to the United States in the Oval Office, and the UAE announced that they were willing to invest one point four trillion dollars when
it comes to AI and building data centers. But in order for them to do that, they need to get their hands on the chips, and we have reporting and potentially we will see these come across the finish line where the president is in the Emirates that they would likely allow one million high advance chips from Nvidia coming into the country. Kei, though, Caroline, to your point, for this to happen, they need to make sure that that technology does not leak into the hands of Beijing.
Plums Am Marie Horden, thank you very much.
The European Union today accused Takeok of breaking digital rules by not being transparent enough about advertisements Chinese owned social media platform says it's reviewing the decision. It's the latest regulatory move by the Bloc against so called big tech.
I want to get to more.
On how the European Union is approaching tech regulation and development like AI and bring in Hennah Vickenan.
She's the European Commission's.
Executive Vice President for Tech, Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Executive vice President. Welcome to San Francisco, into the program. Actually you heard Anne, Marie there discuss a number of issues on the global stage.
On your agenda and your calendar this week.
I believe you've met already with Tim Cook and Sunda Pichai. You will meet with leaders like anthropics, Dario Amma Day. What were those conversations about and what was the focus.
For your visit specially of course I want to meet American tech companies because for them, European Union is the biggest external markets and many of them they are having more users in the European Union than in USA. So of course it's very important that we have good dialogue with the tech companies and specially in the European Union. We want to boost investments and innovations when it comes to technologies, and we want to make sure that, for example,
in AI we are building our own capacities. Also on AI, so especially we are speaking about our innovation at gender where we are willing to boost investments, innovations, create one single market, simplify the processes. So we want to make Europe faster and easier for businesses.
The top story in the world today is the idea that the President of the United States has made an appeal to Tim Kirk to move production of the iPhone many millions of iPhones in Europe from India to the United States. Does the European Union have an offer to American technology companies to think about moving some of their industrial base to the block.
We have, of course our own strengths when it comes to European Unions, so we are stable place for investments of course, and I think we have also very like predictable regulatory framework also and of course very talented work force. So I think these are our greatest strengths in the European Union and we really want to encourage also more investments and innovations in the European Union when it comes to technologies.
Executive Vice President, it's interesting that you say a predictable regulatory environment, because many executives from big tech companies find it a frustrating regulatory environment. They think that it's too tough. What would your response be when you're going to meet Mark Zuckerberg in particular, who has lobbied the President of the United States. We understand because of some of what he sees draconian regulation coming.
From the EU.
What we want to make sure in the European Union is that we want to have a fair and safe and democratic environment. But also when it comes to digital world, so we.
Have very clear roles.
So we don't think that it's good to have, for example, mono police, because those gatekeepers they are often plugging them new innovations to enter through the market. So we want to make sure that we have fild competition, we have level playing feed for everybody. And also when it comes to big online platforms, they also have to take the responsibility there to make sure that they have not for example,
spreading illegal content or selling illegal products. And they have to make care take care of course, for example, of safety when it comes to protection of miners, for example. So we have some very important priorities now we are also discussing with our online platforms.
Especially the priorities.
Are very much connected to our democratic processes and protection of miners for example, and transparency is something that we are also obliging from the very large online platforms because they have a great economic power nowadays in the world and also create power in our society. So that's why it's important that they are also respecting our rules and values.
And your fines.
And you did just levy what was it, five hundred million eurofine to Apple recently two hundred million euro two Meta because you feel that they didn't align themselves with the Digital Markets Act in particular. But some would say those fines were smaller than expected. Because we're worried about the repercussions within the tariff negotiation. How do you respond to that as ecutive vice president, Perhaps you're going softer because suddenly Trump is going harder.
It's not something that we are seeking that we are posing fines for the companies. Of course, the main idea is all the time to make sure that everybody is
complying with our roles. And the main tool how we are working with the digital companies is to have all the time dialogue with them and look that what we are expecting from them and how they could comply with our roles, and of course all of them always defending their business interests, but I think we have also good dialogue with them and constructive discussions.
Executive Vice President.
Last month, Bloomberg reported that President Trump was pressuring Europe to get rid of the AI Code of Practice, which is the framework attached to the EUSE Artificial Intelligence Act. What conversations have you had with this administration about that issue? The administration feels it is too burdensome on US technology companies operating in the block.
It shouldn't be, because we see also that it's important that now when we are implementing our AI Act, that we are doing it in very innovative and friendly manner, and Code of Practice is really something that is supposed to help also businesses and industries and sms to comply with our al So we are still finalizing code of practice, but there has been a month of discussion with the different stakeholders and public hearings about it and we are
still working on it. But how we want to implement our AI Act is very much that we want to support our industries and SMEs to really develop AI in ther Union. But in the same time, we see that it's important to be aware of the risks.
You brought news with you, and that is the TikTok news. Today, the EU says that the TikTok ad system breaks consumer protection rules.
Why what is your argument?
They haven't been transparent in their actions, So it's something what is core in our Digital Service Act legislation that online platforms they have to be transparent with their actions. And that's why we saw that TikTok is not complying with our rules. So we published preliminary foundings today and now they have time also the review and respond and comply. We have several investigations going on in a pipeline now.
Hannah Beckon, it has been wonderful having some time with you.
We appreciate it.
As you said, across all of your meetings and speeches European Commissioner for Tech, Sovereignty, Security in Democracy, on all things EU regulation.
Meanwhile, we just bring you some breaking news.
Toma Bravo is said to be have sold already it's remaining stake ink.
For three point four billion dollars.
Now, this, of course is the company the NASDAK that operates the exchanges and overall the private equity firm working with JP Morgan on The sale is conducted in an unregistered block of trades on the May seventh and May thirteenth, so selling the rest of their remaining Nasdaq holding shares flat on the day.
For that company, Ali Baba earnings failed to impress investors as it faces slow in growth in its e commerce arm and missed earnings projections for its cloud business. Let's get out to Bloomberg's Henry Wren. Those are the two key categories. But what do we learn about the underlying reasons?
Henry?
Yeah, sure, some worrying signs for Alibaba this quarter. And let's start from the core e commerce business. The customer management revenue was pretty strong, up by about twelve percent from a earlier. However, there has been some more signs of competition going on. The company said that it's going to invest more heavily in a quick commerce business, which is an area that already been under investment under assault by its peers such as JD dot Com as well
as PDD. The company said that its advertising tool as well as higher take rates from merchants are taking effect. However, it's unclear how much of the GMV has been growing for Ali Baba, so that has always been a concern for Ali Baba because it has been seeding market share to JD dot Com as well as PDD. On the other hand, for Cloud, it's growing about eighteen percent in
terms of revenue. However, on earnings from because it's still investing heavily on AI chips, so earnings was a miss, and on the sales growth it's also missing more bullish investor estimates about twenty percent, so that has been a disappointment as well.
Into these earnings, and Henry just go to the AI side of the equation as well, because they've been trying to reorientate.
The logistics side was a weak point.
But Generator AI and the infrastructure and investment, they're not quite living up.
To the hype. Yeah.
Indeed, so remember last quarter that Ali Baba told us that it's going to be an so called AI first company, is going to be pivoting a strategy to or in AGI. However we did this, didn't hear so much about AGI from the management in this quarter, and the company, to its credit, it's still seeing strong demand for AI influencing. However, it's probably takes time to invest because it's still kind of it told us that it's still in the investment phase of this business. And in the meantime, its.
Models, its Q and models is generating some revenue.
However, it just takes some time to gain traction.
Bloom merg Henry Wren on all things Ali Baba and in commerce, we appreciate it. Let's stick with China because the ATL is set to raise at least four billion dollars in its Hong Kong share listing, pricing at the top of the end of the range and what is indicated based on some really strong demand so all according
to sources. Let's go out to creator Dell who who tell us just how the e battery maker that is kind of in the eye of the geopolitical storm between China and the US is managing to drum up such support for this secondary listing.
Yeah, and this listing was very much caught up in all of that sort of geopolitical tension where you had, you know, US banks that maybe we're going to have
a role have to bow out. You know, CTL going back a few years has very much been a political football where you know, I'm reminded of the governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, you know, was in the running for a plant where Ford was going to license c ATL technology, and he pulled his state out of the running and said, you know, this is a you know, a trojan horse.
You know, these are just batteries, to be clear. And yet because of the dominance of China in this space, there's a lot of concern elsewhere in the world about how the how the West can possibly sort of catch up or compete with you know, the scale that this company has now reached.
I remember that story and that interview with young Can very well. The frank reality is is that c at L is the world's biggest It is core to the EV battery cell supply chain. Where do those batteries get made and where do they go? And I'm of course, kind of hinting at Tesla's relationship with c at L.
Yeah, I mean they predominantly make their batteries in China for China, and so if you want to buy a Tesla and you happen to be in China, you may indeed have a car with c at L batteries.
And in fact, I mean, you know, virtually all.
Manufacturers, you know, most of the major manufacturers are at least using Catel batteries in many of their models, right, And so you know, this is a company that is going overseas a little bit.
It is, you know, opening in Germany.
It's it's not entirely relyant on China, but it is very much a dominant aspect of their business.
I think that's part of why you have so much.
Concern on the part of government, since it's not so much you know, completely being you know, unwilling for this company to supply it wants, you know, I think, especially over here in Europe, there's a desire for Okay, we're open to you supplying to our manufacturers, but you need to build here.
The most credudell As a theme for the day, it seems we appreciate you ed what's next.
Okay, it's between tech and first Up.
Pony Ai is confidentially filed for Hong Kong listing, with an offering set to take place this year. That's according to sources. The move comes as the autonomous driving company announced to partnership with Uber last week. Pony Ai declined to comment about the potential listing, and the offering size remains unknown. Plus sales of China Jaumi Su seven sedan plunged to around thirty six thousand units in April, continuing a lower trend from March after the company faced a
fatal highway accident involving one of its vehicles. The company, you're also facing back clash from consumers over alleged false advertising at the vehicle's hood design and bay Do is fanning to test and eventually launch its autonomous ride haating service called Apollo Go in countries like Turkey.
And across Europe. That's according to sources.
The companies in talks with Swiss Posts to roll out a robot taxi service in Switzerland.
We're testing to start by the end of the year.
Bloomberg Technologies ones to Watch list it's out today this year highlights ten people shaping the artificial intelligence sector, and Joshua Brustin joins us to talk us through what is a myriad of investors, entrepreneurs, regulators, thought leaders and I'm really interested in Well, let's start with three. We're going to single out Luke Farada. Now he's a software engineer. We know him for his DOGE work, but we should know him for what he's doing with an ancient scroll Previously.
Yeah, we actually wrote about Farada last year when he won a contest to use artificial intelligence to read the words on a series of ancient scrolls that have been burnt during the explosion of POMPEII, and this brought him to prominence and Ferreder, also a former SpaceX intern, then got a new position working with DOJE. We don't know a lot about what he's doing now, but we do know that a lot of people are trying to watch it.
At least.
Sarah Gua has been coming on this program with respect for almost two years, so I think I identified her as one to watch well before this list.
But Joshua, she's connected.
She's influential in Silicon Valley as an investor, but particularly in the realm of AI.
Absolutely, I think She was one of the most nominated people when we went out looking for calls here. Had a history investing in other sectors, notably Crypto. Recently has been looking into the AI sector. She's made investments into companies that if you follow away at closely, you may have heard of, not the Open Aiyes and Anthropics, but Mistroll, the European AI company, and Harvey, a company that's doing AI for legal work.
I think it's really notable that you've got fifty to fifty women and men across this particular list, and one of the most leading voices when it comes to the new.
Era of social is ja Over at Blue Sky.
And the way in which has perhaps taken on Mark Zuckerberg at.
His own game.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Jay Graber the CEO of Blue Sky, which actually is a social network that started with in Twitter and has spun out. The idea here is to have a social network that has you have more control over what you're seeing,
what's in your feeds. It's decentralized, so you can't have the control that someone like a Mark Zuckerberg has And Graber really was notably wearing a shirt that had some Latin writing in it, sort of mocking Mark Zuckerberg for taking to wearing a shirt that compares himself to Julius Caesar.
Bloombergs Joshua Breustein, thank you very much, and that that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
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