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From Marhard where Innovation, money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Love Love.
I'm Caroline Heind of blomgg's world headquarters in New York.
Now I'm Ed Lodlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up, we'll break down to t SMC's first quarter earning support. This is the company scales up profit, but scales back. It's outlook for a chip market expansion.
Plus, Google fires twenty eight employees after they were involved in protests against Project Nimbus to provide Israel's government and military with AI and cloud services. Will bring you the details.
And Cisco's plan for keeping AI systems safe from attack artificial intelligence itself. Of course, we'll discuss the company's new safeguarding approach and so much more throughout this app. At first, and we check in on these markets and actually a little bit of optic in the NASZAC in some of those technology stocks to say we're up about five tens per percent.
Now elsewhere, we've sort of been trending water.
We'd been digesting what has been quite a harsh sell off throughout the week in stocks and indeed in bonds as we really start to digest just two cuts for the rest of the year, if that coming from the Federal Reserve tenure yields still up again four basis points four point six three is kort of where we currently are standing. We lost some of our technology. We'll get
it back in a minute. We're currently seeing the vics on the downside, though, so some of that volatility that we've seen in the fear index in that gauge just dampening down. We're down just about seventeen level. Remember we spike to nineteen on the back of geopolitical risks at the beginning of this week.
Move on, have a little look at what's happening in the world of.
Crypto, because we had been, in fact seeing a bit of a rebound. We're up almost five percent on the day, but look we're still languishing out about a sixty three sixty four thousand dollar level. We dig into crypto a little bit more in a moment, and what are you watching on the micro.
Well, we are going to look at alphabet pairent of Google. The shares a higher half percent they have been down earlier in the session. Very shortly in the program, we're going to go to our reporter davely Album and find out about these jobs that were cut or the firing as a result from the protests. Very well read Bloomberg, Terminal and online. A lot of interest in that story. The chip sector is the main focus of readers again
this Thursday. Let's start with TSMC. It's now down on the ADR's three point eight percent have been much lower, giving us a maintenance of that capex guidance. Very strong in AI, weakness in smartphones. Remember this is the world's biggest contract manufacturer of semiconductors. And then a Bloomberg exclusive, Micron is softer half a percent. Bloomberg reporting that it's going to get about six point one billion dollars in grants from the US government as part of the Chips Act.
Grants only, but there's a loan component as well, and it could come as soon next week. There's a lot to discuss, and for that we go to Bloomberg's Ian King, who leads our semiconductor coverage. Let's start with TSMC. The world pays attention at the moment when TSMC gives US numbers. We learned that AI is strong, high performance computer is strong, potentially smartphone is weak. What was your takeaway?
Yeah, I know, that's absolutely right. They've confirmed basically the fears and hopes of everybody who's watching semiconductors right now. Smartphones were down steeply, and people will be concerned that that to read on Apple and what's happening to the iPhone, particularly in China. On the flip side of that, HPC high performance computing, which is obviously in video, AMD and all of the very large, very expensive chips were strongly.
Pair that then with the news that we had with ASML yesterday and the fact that chip equipment perhaps isn't so in demand.
What ISSMC really trying to signal here?
What they're trying to signal really is you know that, as usual, they have the best read on what's going on, and they're really confirming what's going on in terms of these end market forces. We've been waiting for the smartphone market to come back for a long time. It is coming back in China, but unfortunately it's coming back for chips that are probably being made outside the Western ecosystem.
So that's a concern there for the geopolitics, ASML is a longer term read on the confidence of a small group of companies, doesn't have as much of an indication on what's happening in the short term.
Let's talk about Micron and Bloomberg's reporting that it will get six point one billion grant allocation from the Chips Act to build capacity in the United States. There's a loans component as well. The sources are telling us this we get announced next week. What do we know about the package Micron's been awarded.
Yeah, I mean, as ever, the companies want more, They want as much as they can probably get. This is being seen as roughly what commensurate with sort of microns role in the value chain here. Remember they make memory chips. That production, as with advanced logic, has been moving to East Asia for the last few decades. This is the Biden administration saying, hey, we haven't forgotten about memory. That's important to You need that in your phone, you need
that in your data center. So they're enabling Micron to at least bring some production back to this country.
And we've heard time and time again from the CEO Motor really talking about you need to make it worth my while though I could be building manufacturing abroad for much cheaper, where in the US is he going to be putting it? And really does it make economic sense?
It makes economic sense if you get the government subsidies. What Sanjay has said all along, as you pointed out, and a lot of his colleagues have said the same thing. The government here needs to do the bare minimum, which is to close that gap in terms of what it costs between the US and places like Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan where those facilities are currently being made with a lot of government support, with tax regimes, with all of
these things which helped large capital projects like that. He's looking at upstate New York, and he's looking at the home base of Micron, which is in Boise, Idaho.
Bloomberg Ian king always on for us. We so appreciate the analysis when it comes thick and fast across the trip sector.
Meanway.
Meanwhile, let's get to Huawei.
Let's release its latest series of smartphones today, sustaining its momentum after that breakthrough Mate sixty, Remember that device that helped erode Apple's dominance over in China.
In that high end segment.
Now the poorer seventy smartphone series starts at seven hundred and sixty dollars, then goes up from them, matching in fact, the price point of an iPhone fifteen n.
All right. Coming up on the program, Google fires employees staging protests from California to New York over a contract with Israel. We can have that report next. A quick check on Trump Media and Technology shares hire fourteen percent in the session, adding to the gains of yesterday. Class expect trading. There's a lock up until September. A lot of activity in warrants market. This is the Spack one oh one. We're seeing a big deer, now a big rebound.
This is Bloomberg technology. Time for Talking tech. And in the news, Elon Musk is apologizing for incorrectly low severance packages. The Testa CEO made the rare apology via email and said it has come to his attention that some severance packages were incorrectly low and it will be corrected immediately. The news comes after Tesla slashed global headcomt by more than ten percent as the ev baker struggles with slowing
demand for electric vehicles. Plus, Apple CEO Tim Cook is meeting Singapore's incoming Prime Minister at the tail end of his most extensive Southeast Asia tour in years. There's the company searches for new growth markets and manufacturing locations to offset headwinds in China. The trip could pave the way for a more aggressive sales campaign in a densely populated region where Android phones from Samsung, Chaomi and the Oppo
dominate the market. And Delivery said orders return to growth with a two percent increase in the first quarter, driven by strong progress in the food delivery company's international segment. Users place seventy three point five million orders in the first quarter. The London based company kept its guidance for the year unchanged.
Carro.
Now, there's another story that we're currently following ed and Google has fired twenty eight employees after they were involved in protests against a one point two billion dollar joint contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military AI and cloud services.
Now.
The protests took place across Google offices in New York and Seattle and California, and were led by the No Tech for Apartheid organization. Google said physically in other employees work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies and completely unacceptable behavior. Joining us nay now A please to welcome Davey Albert, who has helped report on this very sensitive story ultimately daily.
And the protests came a day before an all important Israeli government approval right for a five year strategic plan to transition to cloud. It's called Project Nimbus, and this was sensitive for certain employees.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean especially in the in the midst of the war between.
Israel and Gaza.
Employees have really been activated about this issue and have been organizing to try to protest the way that their work contributes to tools that would then serve the Israeli government,
which again is engaged in war. And so they say that they have a right to you know, ban to get and object to this use of their work, and that US labor law actually protects them from sort of consequences from the company, discipline from the company, because they believe they are within the rights to come together over this issue.
Davey, in your story, you present a very clear chronology of what happened and the perspective of both sides of the situation. When I put on social media you were coming on the show. One of the questions I got most commonly was could you tell us a bit more about the roles of those that were fired, what we know about those specifically, because it was quite a broad protest and we're saying less than fewer than thirty people actually lost their jobs.
Yeah.
So from the workers we spoke to, several of them were software engineers, some of them worked on cloud, and there were even some employees who were involved in speaking out against Project Nimbus who work for DeepMind, which is
Google's AI lab. You know, these these workers tend to not have specific visibility into exactly what Israel is doing with their technology because these contracts are so siloed and workers don't you know, directly work on on the tools that the Israeli government might use, but they build the tools that the Israeli government can then use for any purpose.
There's been prior reporting that, you know, the cloud services that the Israeli government uses is on their own instance, private instance of Google Cloud, and so from that perspective, you know, employees can't see inside of that cloud that's
on Israeli soil and being used by Israeli government. But these employees have in obviously following the news and believe that their work may be not so in a straight direct line, but still does contribute significantly to the way that the technology that Israel is now using and deploying in the war with Gaza.
When you say Gaza actually not quite right, the war between Israel and Hamas. Of course, Hamas deemed of course a an issue a terrorist organization by the EU and the United States. Davey, I'm really interested in perhaps is this a tone shift in any way coming from the very leadership of Alphabet and indeed Google. I mean, so Nopitchai, how much has he had to weigh in here and decide what the outcome is.
Yeah, it absolutely is a shift in tone. For so long, really, the founding culture of Google has been, you know, to foster this sense of open debate and employees are encouraged to speak out about anything really having to do with their work. Those were in the early days, but then over the years employees have really started to ban together
over important social issues. You know, in twenty eighteen or so, there was organizing around sexual harassment allegations from leadership at the company and sort of the way that they wanted women to be able to speak out about their experiences, so there was a walkout from employees around that issue, and other issues have also galvanized these employees, you know, in twenty twenty, with the killing of George Floyd and organizing around the Black Lives Matter protests, that was another issue.
But this really has emerged as a particularly sensitive point for Google, this particular issue with Israel, and the company appears to be sending a message that they aren't going to tolerate this kind of workplace activism anymore.
Davey, you talked about how that the workforce has been galvanized. You note in the final paragraph of your report that despite the response from Google, many employees feel that they're getting support. Is that happening contemporary eraneously and is there any sense that these strikes or sit ins will continue or if this is the end of it now? It's hard to say.
Google sent a very strongly worded message to all employees, essentially saying this is not this is not something they will tolerate, that it is against company policy. At the same time, you know, we've heard from employees who have been keeping an eye on the internal messaging that's been happening at the company, and several people are actually quite upset by this move from the company, and maybe it'll take a while for them to do another action, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
This could continue on for many more months.
We showed Google's full response and communication at the top of the segment, and you can go and read Davey and Julia's story and see it in Writing for Yourself on bloomberg dot com. Bloomberg's Davy outur thank you harnessing the power of AI to keep AI software safe from attack. That's the promise of Cisco's latest product, Hypershield. I want to go straight to Cisco's exiti Vice president and general manager of Security and Collaboration G two Patel. This is
classic Cisco, right. You want to do more on services and software, but just explain the technology you're going to use. AI is the defense tool against an attack on AI infrastructure.
Well, security is actually one of the most pressing issues of our time, and AI is actually being weaponized quite a bit by malicious actors, so it only makes sense for us to also use AI effectively to provide machine scale defenses to organizations.
So we launched what I.
Would call probably one of the most consequential innovations in the history of Cisco in the area of cybersecurity in the past forty years, and it's called Cisco Hypershield. And our goal over there is to fundamentally re imagine security for this AI world web at AI scale, because it's very hard to go out and handle these threats at human scale GJU.
It's been interesting because time and time again people have come on saying, look, with AI as the aggressor, we can also use AI as the protector. You really talk about this being a radically new approach. How is it radical? How is it that new from what's already.
On the market.
Yeah, I think it's important because you need to make sure that there's a certain set of building blocks that are built on top of which you can build these solutions. And we now have some very advanced technologies around hardware acceleration, around AI that can allow us to build these very sophisticated capabilities.
There's many examples.
I'll give you one particular one the amount of time that it takes from when a vulnerability is announced in the market, two when an exploit happens by malicious actors is now down to single digit days, and I think I wouldn't be surprised if it goes down to hours or minutes in the next few in the near future. And so what we've done is we've actually seen that the amount of time it takes to patch that infrastructure is actually still twenty two to forty five days.
So you've got this massive.
Gap from when an exploit happens and how long it takes to patch the infrastructure.
We've solved that problem because what.
We can do now is within minutes, have a shield that can put in front of infrastructructure that has not been updated, that has not been patched, so that you can protect the organization from critical infrastructure attacks that might happen to hospitals or financial services organizations and so on.
You talk u about the building blocks, what we're talking about is data centers, rows and rows of service stacks. And we know that that infrastructure build out is happening. It's happened, and the spend is committed for more of it, is the spend committed to hypershield? Is anyone actually buying this service from you in parallel with that infrastructure build out?
Well, This was the first day that we announced it to our customers. We had about we had many of the leading chief information security officers over here in the UK where we announced this product, and the most common phrase that I heard was this is completely game changing.
And in fact, one of the customers told me I'd like to have two and so I think if you care about cybersecurity and if you care about your critical infrastructure being protected, it's going to be very obvious for you to make sure that you can allocate some focus on something like Cisco hypershield. And the reality is is this is the only one in the market. There's no one else who quite handles the problem the way that we are over here.
Of course, all of this is surrounding the partnership and increasing partnership that you've been talking through with in Video.
How integral is in Video's practice beIN within this.
And the way that we think about this is you have to work with the ecosystem at large rather than being completely kind of a wall garden. So and Video is a very important player in AI, and we want to make sure that we partner with them so that we can build security specific models. We actually take our technology and optimize it for their GPUs and so we will continue to work with Nvideo and others in video.
We've enjoyed a great partnership with them already and this one just extends that further.
GD what in video offers is expensive, and everyone's been talking about the rush to harness chips, to harness energy, the expense that's coming in this new world of general to aire.
How expensive?
What can you price point your new AI cybersecurity prevention.
App So the way that we are going to go out and price this is by workload. We haven't announced the exact pricing yet. This is going to be general availability around the August timeframe, and so between now and August we will make sure that we actually have more information on pricing. But our philosophy is the price for mass market, right. We want to make sure that we have high unit volume so we can get to many, many customers within a very quick amount of time.
So you see, there is a human safety net element of this. You're not handing over complete control to the defense of critical infrastructure. Just explain the safety net.
The way I think about this is humans are always apprehensive of something automated taking over and so remember the day's ed when you actually had to update your iPhone and you would actually back it up three times before you started updating it. Now you don't worry about it
because there's that trust that gets built over time. And so what we've done is we've actually made sure that customers have the option of having a human in the loop, so if you do want to auto update your systems, that you actually have the ability to make sure that that can be approved by you and it doesn't happen automatically, but when you feel comfortable, you have the option of having that be completely transparent to you so that you can then start focusing on higher order bid items.
Tit. You've used the word customers a lot. We just have thirty seconds, but just explain who the market is here. The users you're selling to.
Our market is.
Every large organization, mid sized organization and small organization that's interested in making sure that they can protect the data centers from attacks from a cybersecurity standpoint at aiscale.
G two.
So great to spend some time with you live from your garage.
We joke you're actually at the McLaren Center over in the UK. We've got some nice parts in the background.
So is Goo Executive vice president and general manager of Security and Collaboration Cheta Fintel.
Thanks for joining us on the day of the announcement.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. Ed Ludlow here in San Francisco and.
Karen Hyder in New York.
Let's get you a quick check on these markets because actually, well still the economic data comes strong.
Ah, there you are, Joel. Nice to see you, our for.
Mour manager, just shining a light on some of our market check. I want to go back though to the macro for a moment, because before we get into the individual names, I want to shine light the fact that we have been seeing overall the Nasdaq on the higher side of things, are up about five tens aer percent of there or thereabouts. We've also seen, of course, an introduction to the bomb market just selling a little bit.
We seeing a bit of a sell off. We seem to be wanting to commit to some of the individual names that are on the move today. So I'm going to shine a light on Netflix earnings coming thick and fast after the bell, up six tens of a percent. We're expecting about a fourteen percent increase in revenue for its fiscal first quarter. Netflix juggernaut faces a high barbow after one hundred and twelve billion dollar rally. We've got
emphasis on the downside after its numbers. Of course, Indian key player in the technology space, actually underwhelming when it came to overall revenues. We're looking at MicroStrategy up more than six percent, some of the individual crypto names doing well ed Why because crypto is bouncing on the day at least, although we see and of course some profit taking of late.
All right, let's keep the conversation going around cryptso and bringing Thomas Perfumo crack in head of strategy to mass. I have been invited to not one, but two bitcoin harving parties tonight. Whether I go to either of them remains to be seen. But it got me thinking that for many this is something that is interesting to be celebrated, you know, it's coming in the calendar. For others they focus on the supply mechanics of what it does to the market. Where do you focus your attentions?
So for me, I think of the takeaways for the bitcoin having and falling into two different spectrums. Firstly, it underpins why we believe bitcoin is the soundest form of money. There's a whole host of reasons why on the demand side of teams like global liquidity, twenty four seven, three sixty five, market access, permission, permission lists and so ship resistant, like all these nice qualities for why bitcoin served as
a good form of money. But on the supply side, you know, how reliably can you plan around a currency and bitcoin because of the having, you know that there's only ever going to be twenty one million bitcoin in existence,
and so on. The second part of the takeaway here is that this Bitcoin having in particular, you know, we celebrated every roughly four years, but this one is the most symbolic, in my opinion, in bitcoin's history and even looking forward, because at a time when you have people who are looking at their conventional currencies, inflation, interest rates, and the economic environment that they live in, they see this alternative form of currency, Bitcoin, and it's something that
has this really crisp story, this idea that as of tomorrow, when the having takes place, ninety four percent of all bitcoins that will ever exist will have been mined, and less than one percent. We'll see less than one percent inflation in the circulating supply of bitcoin going forward, so that's a really powerful story I think for people, yes, and why they're having is so.
Important tom Us, there will be a big section of our audience watching thinking what has this got to do with me? Is there a chance that they wake up in global financial markets? The world has been changed by this harving.
No, the having in of itself isn't going to be a cataclysmic event. We're not talking about a raptor here. But what it is doing is it's reinforcing the narrative of bitcoin as sound money, and in our opinion, the adoption of bitcoin and of crypto takes time. This is something that is a very innovative technology. It's very different from how people use money today. And so this is something that's going to take place over five, ten years, twenty years, et cetera.
And you're going to think of it as.
Almost like a change in culture and a change in understanding of how people transact with one another. And so when we think about this having in particular, nothing super special, but again like an important milestone, particularly in this time and age, and we love to celebrate it.
Thomas, I want to get a glimpse of what you're seeing in this unique position over at kracken at the moment. Because yes, the reason many have said that this harving is unprecedented is because where crypto has been priced at before, where Bitcoin has been at all time highs, that hasn't happened before in the other times.
But there has been money taken off the table of late.
Why has there been new money just trying to resettle when we have this risk occurrence, we've had geopolitical tensions, Why do we suddenly see such a fallen price.
Yeah, so there's definitely a lot of volatility when it comes to bitcoin in general. I wouldn't say that we've reached any kind of peaks. So historically, if we look at prior all time highs, we start to see these massive sessions of all time highs, so like fifteen twenty all time highs within a single month on a day to day basis, and that's when you see in the volatility peak to one hundred percent or so. With bitcoin, we've only seen a handful of all time highs in
the last month. It is a little bit of head of schedule versus the other three having events we've seen, but nothing crazier out of the ordinary.
Yet, what I like to.
Think about when it comes to the price action, is it's a momentous occasion. You will come in, they see the price level, they're like, I want to participate, and you get a little bit of that momentum play. But we still have a lot of new entrants coming into space. The Bitcoin ETF for example, twelve billion dollars a new NetFlow coming into the cryptocurrency sector.
A whole lot of people are.
Coming in, signing up for accounts and buying bitcoin for the first time. So this is just something you have to kind of space out over the long term, and you're going to have these ups and downs along the way.
More broadly, how have you been thinking about that new inflow into Bitcoin coming into other parts of the crypto ecosystem. What's been interesting is perhaps and the other old coins, we've just seen a churn a movement within it, rather than perhaps money coming into Bitcoin and then going, oh, I'm going to play in their worlds of Salona. Now, what do you think about that movement coming from Bitcoin eight into the other or coins.
Yeah, these rotations ebb and flow, and it depends on the trend at the time. And so when we see in twenty twenty For example, we had that momentous occasion called de five Summers, so everyone was going and playing around with ethereum tokens, and the reason was because you had the maturation of those applications that had been invested in back in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, so they were launching.
You started to see the application and the network FECs built up from there, and then that led into rotation into bitcoin, etc. Here we have the having event, the US Bitcoin etf as the catalysts for people getting interested in so bitcoin comes first.
As far as other alternative.
Currencies, whether they're tokens or other layer ones like solana ethereum. A lot of that's driven by whatever application exists that people are starting to really adopt early on. And one of the interesting things, in my opinion, is that the last cycle back in twenty one, you had tens of billions of dollars come into the space to develop new projects and whatnot. We're talking at this point about three years of maturation, and so that investment cycle, we kind
of have these dark horses. We don't know exactly what application is going to come out, but we're really excited about it, and some stuff that's proliferating right now would be things around like GameFi in the crypto space. So we'll have to see from bitcoin where it goes come back.
It's been too too long time us for FuMO of Atkrack and he's head a strategy.
We thank him for talking all things crypto with us.
Now let's talk all things IPOs because we've started to get a few more. The CEO of I Bought A, Brian Leach, is joining us straight from the New York Stock Exchange.
Why have you decided that.
For your business model, which is all about giving cash back rewards when you're purchasing groceries, maybe even your gas, Why is it now the time to show your technology solution on the public markets?
Thanks for having me.
We think it's the perfect time because our mission is make every purchase rewarding. Sixty percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, Seventy five percent are financially insecure. We've given away one point eight billion dollars to help people make those ends meet.
We've also gotten.
To a point in our company where we've built out a large network and are beginning to see those network effects.
We've had six straight quarters where.
We've been profitable on an adjusted ebit our basis cash flow positive, net income positive, so we feel it's a great time to come to the markets, raise some money, and invest even more in our platform.
One of our social media editors, DM Martine, poses a big picture question for you around extreme couponing. She is a self confessed I bought a user. Is that a story you're telling the street that it made economic difficulty or how consumers behave extreme couponing's coming back.
It's true that there are certain people who we like to think of as professional savers head on our platform. Our direct to consumer app has fifty million registered users, many of them are proud extreme savers.
However, it's also important to note.
That we power the first ever manufacturer offer cash back program for Walmart, for Dollar General, for Family Dollar, for Kroger, and these are much more everyday purchases occurring from people with a lot broader type of background, not all of whom are shopping to the sale. They're encountering these offers as they're searching for products online, as they're building a basket, and we're able to move markets for the largest brands
in the world. So it's a combination. But I do think that in environments that are like this one inflationary as well as every day environments, it's always something that's relevant. You know, people shop for groceries one point six times a week. Eighty seven percent of Americans use at least one coupon a year on their groceries, so it's not a discretionary category and it's relevant in all climates.
You took a risk coming to the market at this moment, and it looks like it's going to be paying off. Your shares indicated at one hundred and seven hundred and twelve being reported at the moment.
You priced at eighty eight.
So having marketed below that, there's been real interest in your company.
Tell us the marketing pitch now.
Because you are very integral within a relationship to Walmart, can you therefore get other big grocery stage practitioners on board. Can you white label for others out there at the moment?
Absolutely, Caroline, We've already begun to build a network with Walmart at the center. They are strategic investors in Ibada, but we also have Kroger Dollar, General Family, Dollar, Exxon Shell and app Card, which represents over three hundred other grocery retailers using our network to pull in rewards content on.
A white label basis.
We think that that's going to be a very broad and attractive network, and it's really a network effect business. The more of these publishers sign up, the more we're able to attract advertisers to bring offers in, the more we're able to fulfill our mission on behalf of the end consumer, which is to make every purchase rewarding.
Brian, what's the Ibada AI story.
That's right?
AI is critical to the future of Ibada. We are really helping to create a next generation platform for what we call performance marketing, meaning we don't charge for impressions and clicks. We only get paid when our clients sell a product. They want to put the right offer with the right amount in front of the right consumer at the right time. Gone are the days of your grandmother's coupon.
This is not a one size fits all solution. The level of sophistication we have is because forty five percent of our eight hundred employees are technologists and we've been doing AI for years, using it to find personalization algorithms, machine learning, and we'll continue to invest.
In that ED, we want to be thank you. I bought a CEO Ran Leach, thank you so much. Meanwhile, coming up, well, we're going to be talking to a company, ED. Who are we gonna be speaking with?
The Maving Clinic CEO Kate Ryder. Big expansion on a fertility program, really impoort New York City conversation is coming up next Carriage and stock Marketing news.
Yeah, this is a company that you know we're just talking about IPOs. There one that opod not long ago, not more than a few years ago, is thinking about actually going private twenty three and meters speaking with Jaki of course, the woman behind this business that more than almost fifty percent reports that look, she's not liking it being undervalued in the public markets.
We see a pop on the idea that it might be taking private. This is Groom Meg.
Technology, New York Tech Unicorn Maven Clinic, it's the largest virtual clinic for women and family health announced that there's expanding it's award winning fertility and family building program. The company, which is founded back in twenty fourteen, it's raised three hundred million dollars. They're about investors including General Catalyst, Sequoya Looks Capital, to name but a few, and well peace
to welcome to the show. Mavin Clinic founder and CEO Kate Ryder for more and Kate, You've got more than two thousand clients using your product, and I want to understand when you go to them and say, this is the benefit that you're going to garner by offering this, what is it?
Well, you know, clients right now are really interested in supporting their working families, and so I think it's been you know, COVID was certainly a moment where working families were really stretched. And I think in general, women's health, whether it's fertility, whether it's pregnancy, menopause, is just an area that has been so underfunded, underserved from an experience standpoint, that employers really lean in to support these journeys.
And so they can do that with MEMN so.
They can understand that they get talent talent acquisition to have retention of gen z and millennial. But already statistics you give clients like this is the return on investment you get when bringing in Mayven Clinic.
Oh yeah, I mean fertility and maternity as a bundle are often one of the top health care costs that employers face and so with us, we're a triple bottom line business. Number One, we can reduce costs and one of the most costly areas of healthcare. Number two, we can help attract and retain some of the most important talent. I mean, forty five percent of workers say that they really look for the fertility benefits and family building benefits at companies today to see how they're going to be
cared for. And number three, from an equity lens and a health equity lens, you know, employers can really lean in here and solve some of I think our healthcare system's biggest challenges when it comes to supporting you know, women and families on these journeys.
Challenges being where do I get this sort of advice? How do I get it for both men and women? And indeed, how do I get the right, truthful, right advice The business that you'll building, I mean, Boyce is twenty fourteen.
We have been through some different economic environments. How is it going.
How you seeing adoption in the US and indeed from international businesses.
Yeah, Well, we grew our revenue to ninety five percent last year, and so even though it was a year where I think there was a lot of uncertainty about the macroeconomy. This is still an area where employers and health plans are really leaning in because again there's just so much catch up to do. Twelve percent of our member base is international, and so that's another big area that we're seeing continued growth in. You know, the a multinational is looking to bring again that equitable lens to
family building and across the world. It's you know, that's really different whether you're in a public system, what the regulations are, and so how do you how do you bring that same access to everybody? And so you know, we work, we were we were we were talking with our client Amazon about our global family building benefit with them and our partnership over the summer, and so we work with a lot of companies like that.
Having birthed in the UK and the US, I can attest the slightly different talking about your business stuff.
Well, we just had a border on they've just gone public. How much all the.
Companies that are invested in you, the VS see saying hey you ordering so what with a ninety five percent increase in revenue last year that you were able to say, look, we're almost profitable, we should be going.
Public or you're like, no, no, wait, wait this up, well not this year, but you know, I think that it's certainly where we would like to end up. You know, for us, we're really lucky to have a board that really sees the long term and so we're certainly headed
in that direction. But I think we there's just there's a lot of products we're still launching at the moment, and you know, the markets are different these days than they were three years ago, and so we would you know, we're holding ourselves to a very high standard so for when we get to the public markets will continue to grow versus I think what's happened in the past with some companies where after the six month b lockup ends, you know, the share price kind of falls.
And what about competition?
Competition? I mean, honestly, our biggest competition is still the status quo.
You know.
There there it's hard to change a build a category and change mindset and you know, that's what we've been working on for ten years. And I feel like five percent and run the way into the product romot. But but yeah, I would say satus Quo is the biggest, the biggest challenge, and it's something that you know as we continue to see more brand awareness and more celebrities and more member stories around why fertility benefits matter, why menopause, pregnancy, pediatrics.
You know that that's that's that's really helpful.
It takes a while.
It's just shift a mindset. We thank you for coming on talking all about it. As new products get rolled out, name in clinic founder and CEO, Kate Rider, we thank her.
Congress it's on fast track.
To approve a bill aimed at forcing TikTok's Chinese parent that's White Dance to divest it's controversial ownership stake or indeed, you know, we'll have to see an exit of the business. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Alex Brunker for all the details. Now, this suddenly injects new life into this conversation we're having a lot a month or so ago. The how is looking at fast tracking it by tying it to well relief or money towards Ukraine and indeed towards Israel.
Correct, that's exactly right.
We had a prior bill that did basically the same thing that this one looks to do pass in the House already. It ran into some pushback from senators who thought that the timeline for divestiture was too short.
So what House Speaker.
Mike Johnson has done is basically put this in a wrapper with really key items like aid for Ukraine and aid for Israel, things that appeal to both sides of the aisle, and made some of those changes. They've extended the deliberation period for a divestiture to kind of satiate some of the concerns from key senators.
So we do.
Expect this to be voted on on Saturday. We do believe that this will pass the House again in this wrapper of bills, and in a very DC fashion the Senate and Joe Biden said they would both quickly take this effort up if it passes the House on Saturday.
I think there's just still so many questions how this would work, whether it's next month, next year. You make a really interesting observation in your Tech Daily that the concern is Chinese interference, which is you write, is largely hypothetical at this point. So TikTok's face with a divest or ban. You and I reported last month of the month before that the company's position is we're just not going to do it.
That's right.
They will push for legal challenges before this becomes a divestiture situation. Byte Dan certainly does not want to actually carve out this really valuable asset, and I do expect that in that year long almost a year that they would have to fight this or figure out some kind of separation, they will be fighting tooth and nail. We've heard from the company that they plan on leaning into
a First Amendment argument. I'm sure that both them and their supporters will be picking apart the specific language of the bill because ed as we wrote back then, this still remains a really unprecedented situation to have such a large consumer tech company actually forced to separate from its owner by any country, particularly the US, where the social media industry kind of has its home.
In TikTok's competitors, and what if there's a ban. You cite some data for the Center for Economic Policy Research that you'd literally have to pay college students, as an example, to delete the app from their phone.
That's right.
They say fifty nine dollars a month or over seven hundred dollars a year is what you'd have to pay them. That's no small dollar amount for a college student.
But this ban is actually.
Not going to be paying its users to relinquish TikTok. It's almost a payment in kind. Congress is saying we'll protect you from this kind of invisible existential threat of China and their potential influence or data hoovering capabilities. So I do expect that folks could be pretty upset. But with the new deadline, there's an important distinction in timing.
Had the original bill passed along this same timeframe, had sent it, passed the bill and Biden signed it into law, that deadline for a divestiture would have come right around the election. With this extension and timing, this actually pushes that decision into the next presidential administration past the election.
And I'm sure that politicians don't want to be making the argument right around election day to their important young constituents why they shouldn't be, you know, looked at negatively if they in fact voted to pass this bill.
Alex Brunke bringing it to us and in her Tech Daily, go read it.
We thank you so much.
Meanwhile, that does it for this incredibly busy edition of Bloomberg Technology Yet.
Yeah, lots of recap in the podcast. You know where to find it. On the Bloomberg platforms, as well as on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. From New York City and San Francisco, this is Bloomberg technology.