From Mahard where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Vallet NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed lud Love.
I'm Caroline hide A Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York and Ludlow He's off.
This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
Twitter becomes X in a musk, makes some overnight changes to the look of the social network.
What's the vision for the company?
We discuss, plus Apple planning to keep shipments steady for the latest iPhone fifteen. Will break down why the company is still so confident with eighty five million being targeted despite the decline in the smartphone market. And Sam Altman's other project, world coin saws on the first day of trading. We'll dig into the details of the token and the project from the open AIICEO. First, let's I can in the broader markets. Well, some pretty downbeat economic days to globally.
Abagail did to.
Them there certainly is, especially in Germany, pretty shocking and maybe suggesting that maybe some sort of a global economic slowdown could be ahead.
But here in the US we do have the.
S and P five hundred climbing for a second day What makes this interesting is the fact that you have the cebo Vix, that volatility index also hire. Typically when stacks go hired, that goes lower. So it suggests that maybe in this week, as big tech earnings really kick
off in Earnest, that we could have some fireworks ahead. Now, one stock that's doing really quite well today, Apple, of course, on this report that the company has ordered enough parts to think that they are going to be they're basically holding their iPhone shipment plan for this year of eighty five million units, flat.
To last year.
The stock being hired suggests that investors may be relieved that it's flat, that it's not a decline. As for the year, well, it's been all about this big tech rally. The first half was the best half on record. Right now that nazak one hundred forty one percent on the year. It's only July this earning season, though, Caroline, it's going to be a real nail bier. We of course, tomorrow have Microsoft in alphabet. On Wednesday we have Meta, so lots and lots of stocks moving to the upside and
the downside Meta. It's interesting just to note that at this point off of its lows, but down about eight tens of one percent. That's going to be a big one Caroline. As you know, on Wednesday, everybody looking for the year of efficiency, their new Twitter competition, plus the stock last week up one hundred and fifty percent of the year, will the numbers justify?
It's something to keep in mind.
It's still a mid single digit growth number that they're looking for. It's going to be an interesting report for sure.
Yeah, and I'll go be calling it Twitter for that much longer, certainly.
Not a calling to Elon Musk.
Let's get back to what apagail was just starting with the Apple biggest points contributor to the SMP today, let's talk about why I'm very pleased to say Mark Germans here with the latest reports according to people familiar, and they are sticking to eighty five million as their target for sales to the iPhone fifteen, which is pretty resilient if you think about the economy.
That's right, So eighty five million units flat through the rest of the year for these next generation iPhones, four new models, two new iPhone fifteen Pro models to standard iPhone fifteen models. That means that the shipments that Apple's targeting are going to be flat for the third year in a row.
Now, that's pretty good given everything.
Going on economically, if you look at the Android market for smartphones, if you look at the larger consumer electronics market, flat is a good thing.
Now.
But let's give some context, some comparison here, right, the last two iPhone models, the iPhone thirteen line and the iPhone fourteen line, those were pretty basic upgrades.
Not a lot new there, right.
But the iPhone fifteen Pro models as well as the lower and iPhone fifteen models, they're actually going to be quite significant upgrades. They're going to have a redesign on the high end, they're going to be switching from stainless steel to titanium. They're going to be changing the charger from lightning to USBC, which is.
The industry standard.
You're going to see the dynamic island, the feature you're showing right now on TV on the lower end iPhone fifteen models. Big camera upgrades on both, even a bigger upgrade, particularly for zooming in on photos and videos on the highest and iPhone the fifteen Pro macs. You may see a little bit of a price increase internationally across the four model, so big iPhone upgrades this year. While flat, in my opinion, it's a little bit more nuanced. It's
flat in a major iPhone upgrade cycle. All things considered, still fairly positive though, marg You've.
Always got the nuance.
And one of the nuances also that Apple doesn't really want us talking about these numbers anyway. They want us to think about the subscriptions. They want us to think about overall direction of travel rather than the intricacies of how many iPhones they sell. But on the top end of the bottom end, what's more important. Are they still really a luxury item that can charge us more?
You know, I think it's interesting Apple made a change I believe it was five years ago now, four or five years ago now where they stopped reporting unit sales for their individual products like the iPhone, the iPad, etc.
And they move to revenue only now.
At the time, they did that because unit sales were slowing, so in terms of overall units, those were going.
Down in terms of how many they were selling.
But at the same time, revenue is going up because of the pricing creases, right, So they do want us to focus on the revenue because that is what is increasing. And in terms of the devices being a luxury item, I would say somewhat right. Phone prices overall across the entire market have been going up. You're seeing a lot of Android phones, Google phones getting in that pricing tier. Apple at this point doesn't even sell the most expensive
phone in the market. Those would be the foldable phone sold by Samsung, Google and some of the Chinese players.
But I think Apple will get there, right.
If they're continuing to increase storage, add new camera capabilities. Next year actually is going to be another iPhone upgrade. Of note, they're going to increase the screen sizes marginally, right, That could add some pricing.
Pressure there as well.
So clearly I would say they're luxury item, but they're not at the very very high end.
But they'll get there.
Marc German, we thank you for breaking down what is.
The key story because it is the most valuable company more than three trillion dollars currently being added at the moment to its market cap. Three point zero three seven is where we stand. And remember, look, Apple is not going to give us its earnings. It's juicy details until next week August the third, But boy.
Have we got a lot to be digesting this week.
Alphabet Snap Microsoft, Mega names, Mega about a market capitalization going to be coming through with transparencies to whether they live up to those valuations. Let's get it to it with Liz Young therefore, head of Investment Strategy over As. So far, it's a big week, and it feels as though all eyes on some of these AI focused names, the Microsofts and indeed the alphabets.
Yeah, it's a huge week, fed week, and all of these earnings coming in. It's really feeling like this is when the rubber hits the road for a lot of these companies that have seen so much optimism and multiple expansions so far in twenty twenty three. The common carry out of earnings is going to be hugely important because if you look ahead to the end of twenty twenty three and into twenty twenty four, earnings expectations are pretty
high just across the board for the index. So companies are going to have to be able to justify the multiples that these stocks are trading at with their own expectations of what the next twelve months look like.
So it's going to be.
A really sticky situation if they can't justify that some of the AI enthusiasm. My concern has been that when you have a new theme and a new innovation that is supposed to take the world by storm or just even change the marketplace a little bit, themes usually take two to three years to really materialize, and they go
through a price discovery phase along the way. So I'm not sure that we're going to get justification and gratification of this AI theme in the next six to twelve months, and that's something that these companies will have to grapple with in the market.
I'm just thinking about price discovery of his last week, the Microsoft got to push higher in terms of its record market cap for itself because well, they're starting to outline how they're going to price for some of the add ons that we're getting with the big chat features, and it looked pretty toppy. People were impressed by the amount that they think they can charge. Ultimately, you've been impressed by the market capitalizations more broadly, do you think that we have moved.
Too far too fast?
We hold on to the level of outperformance and tech stocks that we saw on the first half of the year.
Well, when you've got an index like the Nasdaq one hundred up forty five percent year to date, that's an outlier as far as performance goes, and I would say it's probably due for a little bit of steam coming out just because of how quickly things have run up.
Expectations haven't changed too much from a fundamental perspective, So when you see that big dislocation, not only among different sized companies, you've got large caps that really outpaced small caps maybe until just recently, and when you've got certain sectors that handily outpaced other sectors, there usually is a little bit of mean reversion or just kind of closing that gap. Those big divergences don't last forever, so they
do need to come back to a more rational place. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that everything has to come crashing down. There's still an argument to be had, which a lot of the bulls will tell you, which is that the rest of the market can catch up rather than those
big names having to come down. That being said, given the environment, given that we are on the precipice of what's expected to be another FED hike, it just doesn't quite make sense, especially for those what we would call long duration equities, to be trading at such lofty valuations when we haven't really finished the tightening cycle. Yet usually the market hits the skids a little bit when that tightening cycle stops.
Of course, today was the day we're meant to see the NASDAT one hundred rebalancing.
It's occurred, maybe a.
Little bit of volatility in the run up, but did it make much changes for you? Do you think ultimately the NaSTA one hundred is a bench malt that can really be used for diversification.
I think it can be used.
I mean I don't know that it's something that necessarily is the epitome of diversification, given how top heavy it becomes at certain times, but that's just the nature of a market cap weighted index.
The rebalancing.
The actual day of rebalancing obviously isn't having too much of an effect. I think a lot of that probably got baked in when the announcement was made. You can extrapolate what's going to happen, but over time, as things change and as prices move, that's just always going to be the case with a market cap weighted index, which is why sometimes it becomes more of a risk not to own some of those names because you're under exposed to what's really driving broad markets.
And driving investor sentiment.
Yeah, a lot of those actively managed mutual funds have been under pressure, according to the likes of Gold and Sacks.
Lastly, is I mean what about protection?
If you all worried that we've gone too far, too fast, is it in any way well advantageous to be protecting the downside right now?
Sure?
Well, you know, I've been one of those people who is skeptical of this rally all the way up and have felt very very wrong all the way up. But that being said, it is always good to have protection in the portfolio. I would say it's even better to have it in the portfolio when you have valuations above the five, ten, and fifteen year averages, and when you have a VIX that seems pretty asleep at the wheel, that's.
When it's kind of prime to spike.
So although it feels like a ball and chain, it can feel like cement boots. To put protection in the portfolio in the midst of a rally, that's really the time when protection is going to pay off more Because maybe it's not under such strong demand. You can get it at a cheaper price, and then it's there if and when you need.
It helps you sleep a bit better, maybe, Liz Young, SOI fi get some rest ahead of what is going to be a monumental week. We thank you so much for spending some time with us today. Remember, the end of last week we saw that seven leading AI companies in the United States agree to voluntary safeguards Linear Technologies Development, Amazon and Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, Open EIE, all formerly making their commitment to new standards for safety, for security,
and as well as trust. Was in a meeting with the President Biden at the White House on Friday afternoon. Now, the Biden administration has already been vowing to manage the risks of new tools even as they compete over the potential of artificial intelligence joining us. Now, I'm pleased to say someone who is at the meeting been thinking about safety for a long time, Anthropic president and co founder
Daniella m Oday. And Daniella, these safeguards voluntary as they are a step in the right direction for you.
Hi.
First of all, thank you so much for having me here on the program today. And yes, we were very grateful to be invited to the conversation at the White
House on Friday. Our CEO, Dario, my brother was there and had the opportunity to speak with the President and with the other industry leaders, and yes, you know, I think this is an incredible first step towards really making sure that we are working together at the industry level, with government, with civil society in thinking about how to develop these systems in ways that are safe, that are secure, that are trustworthy, and so we were very happy to be part of that conversation on Friday.
Of course, many have sort of tried to understand how really authentic some leaders in AI are about sort of being regulated, about being overseen. How deeply do you think that runs when actually everyone's also just trying to race to ensure that they are the first to innovate.
You know, I think that these two things, you know, really don't have to be intention And one of the things that I think Andthropic has really sort of built kind of our ideas around is this concept that you can develop these very transformative systems in ways that are
robustly safe. With the launch of Claude two that we had, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, one of the things we really emphasized and focused on was sort of this commitment to making the models, you know, as safe as possible and really working to improve on things
like helpfulness, honesty, and harmlessness. And so I think this kind of industry discussion as a whole around how to you know, move forward with this innovative technology, but also really ensure that it's done in a way that is you know, safe and secure is so important.
Claude too, of course, is meant to be less susceptible to manipulation than other chapel So you really are thinking about safety kindness, but how how do you go about building that into a model.
Yes, so you know, of course, you know, no model on the market is one hundred percent you know immune from you know, jail breaks or is perfectly safe. But really our goal has been to try and provide a model that's as safe as possible today, and we do
that through you know, a few different techniques. One of them is something called constitutional and this is really a process of training the model with kind of guidelines around how to be you know, safe and helpful to users, really trying to maximize the honesty and also harmlessness of the model, so making sure it doesn't output you know, negative biased, toxic content or you know, making it harder to you know, assist a human in doing harm.
You can course, taking your time in releasing product updates, has that in any way been attention with your own back as you've raised a lot of money, if people wanted you to be faster, or have they understood that time is necessary if you're going to be focused on safety.
So again, you know, I really think of this as kind of, you know, a balancing act.
Right.
We have had Claude internally and we've been using it and testing it for some time, and we also really just wanted to make sure that the model that we're putting out onto the market, right, that Claude dot ai was as safe as possible, right, so that not just businesses but individuals are kind of signing up to play around with it that you know, it's hopefully you know, as safe as possible and certainly safer than you know claud one, you know, our previous model that was on the market.
I meanwhile, being able to analyze, summarize vast quantities of information give us the productivity gains the rule looking for I'm interested as to when you're thinking about developing not only the models internally, but doing them safely and within future regulation. How do you look at what Europe's up to in terms of trying to set the rules of the road.
Yeah, so, you know, I think this is a really again kind of important conversation that we have been having, you know, both with US policymakers and future regulators, but really abroad as well. Right, I think so much of what we've seen in the past you know, six to twelve months, is that artificial intelligence is becoming this kind of worldwide phenomenon, Right, It's not just something that's the
province of you know, specific country or countries. And so I think obviously the conversations that are having you know here but also in the EU are just incredibly important from a data privacy and uh you know, security and safety perspective, and a conversation you know, we've really been actively a part of as well.
Of course, prior to Anthropic and helping co found it, you were at open AI. You're also at STRIPE as a risk manager. How do you compare the way in which regulation is top of mind full the focus on AI visa v. Fintech visa V. I mean we will think about the blow up a crypto for example.
Yeah, I mean I really think that this Uh, really just this concept that I kind of come back to around this kind of public private kind of partnership or you know, communication norms I think are just incredibly important, and I think that those are you know, some of the lessons learned from kind of previous industries. Right is really having you know, communication early and often.
Right.
I think at Anthropic we view part of our role in industry as helping to give policymakers and civil society and academics access to our information. Right So we've published more than fifteen safety papers. Anyone can read them on our website, and we develop policy briefings because we really view this as part of our role. Right is helping to inform people more broadly about potential safety, safety topics and questions.
Daniela Amade, great to have some time with you. Thank you.
Anthropic President Anna d co founder, whose brother had been there at the meeting with the White House on Friday. Meanwhile, coming up, Albenheimer, was that your weekend, Well, it was many people's weekend. It sent shot ways to the box office and we got all the numbers for you. Next come New York. This is roombag technology. Let's talk about what was hot this weekend movies. Parently, Bobby Oppenheimen brought out movie fans in their droves, making this weekend's box office revenue.
All in double from a year ago.
Joining us really about the business uplift from Babenheimer preveig intelligence is Geita Raganathan and either I mean, wow, Warner Brothers must be pleased, so too must be some of the cinema chain Cinney World and AMC. But ultimately, is this as amazing as it seems to be.
It's absolutely amazing. It's unprecedented. I mean, you know, this kind of foot traffic Caroline is something that you would reserve for let's say a Marble or a Star Wars kind of a phenomenon, right, and then to have two movies like this, which which are really polar opposites, you know, it's such a fantastic, clever piece of counterprogramming that both these studios kind of put together on the same date.
And the fact that they were able to kind of tap into this whole social you know, cultural like it really kind of became this pop culture moment, and they both appted into it so aggressively and so beautifully. It ended up boosting the box office for both movies, and it's just created this whole positive, upbeat conversation now for the industry, which has come really at such an opportune moment I think.
I mean, considering that the entire conversation around the industry was about writers strikes, about acting strikes. How much is that going to be a concern going forward or can they reap the rewards of the production that's available to be distributed now.
Yeah, So as we came into this summer box office a season, you know, obviously there was a lot more content. So last year what we were kind of looking at was there was just not enough content out in the theaters. People were willing to come. The demand was there, but the supply wasn't. And this year we have thirty percent higher,
so thirty percent more titles versus last year. But we saw that a lot of these even high profile titles, right whether you looked at an Indiana Jones or Elemental, you know, the Flash, all of these kind of underperformed. They didn't live up to expectations. And so that kind of brought us back to this question about, you know, can we ever go back to pre pandemic levels and then add to that the added complexity from the writer's strike and you know, the actors strike that's kind of
shut down production. I don't think we're necessarily going to see anything any major delays as far as twenty twenty three is concerned. But then you get into twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five and things start to look a little bit hazy because you know a lot of the titles that we were expecting to come out then now could be pushed back.
Keep a keen eye on some of those other stocks you're looking at AMC therefore, on the back of this, but we always love all your analysis across all the stocks you watch. Kathy Braganath and of course of Blombag Intelligence, thank you so much. Meanwhile, coming up, we'll talk about the debate around the viability of blockchain's utility. This is Bloombag Technology. Welcome back to bloue meg Technology. I'm Karen
Hyde right here in New Yor. Let's check in on these markets because actually the rebalancing has occurred, then that's that one hundred meant to be taking away some of that overall well dominance of the key five, six seven players that have so rode the wave of AI euphoria this year, we see it just gaining about a tenth percent as that comes to an end the overall rebalancing.
Many have traded ahead of that as to whether we see a downplay in the likes of Meta and Video and some of the stocks that are really outperformed this year, but all country world indext managing to stay afloat up three tens percent, even though we saw some pretty ugly data PMI data coming out of Europe in particular, just showing that maybe these central banks are going to have to look at the tension between growth and interest.
Rate hikes that much more.
Is inflation still on the eyes of the ECB in particular, but remember they've got to be able to support the economy too. Bitcoin on the downside three a half percent lower. Maybe no real catalyst here, just a lack of clarity as to whether or not we do get some of those spot bitcoin ETFs coming to the market and indeed where regulation goes. That's moving on to the individual names
that are moving this market. Because Apple is really helping support the likes of Then now is that one hundred and indeed the benchmarks today up six percent most valuable stock. Why well, then Lally to be selling well eighty five million as we understand how many phones they want to
be made for the next upcoming iPhone fifteen. So actually people thinking that looks pretty strong given the overall economic environment, and video on the upside, Mazouhu going long this stock, saying really there's still opportunity to buy despite the significant outperformance of this chip stock and all eyes on AI. Remember we've got a bit of time to wait for their earnings later in August. Guilliad Science is your worst performer really on major benchmarks today, off by four and
a half percent. Sadly, HR high risk MDS is something that they're not going to be able to be combating with a really cocktail or some of their drugs.
They were doing some testing.
The phase three is having to be wound down. We're off by four and a half percent. Let's go back though to the crypto news. I was just looking at bitcoin under pressure and look it's three years and multiple digital asset market dislocations one hundreds of millions of dollars, but an eyeball scanning crypto project and as world coin its officially launched for more, we're joined by Bluemost Kaylee Lines.
And what's so interesting about this project is is kind of managing to that perfect hype of AI and crypto and indeed some Altman too.
Yeah, exactly, spearheaded by Sam Altman, who has in many ways become synonymous with AI Caroline. And you're right to point out just how long this took. Since Bloomberg first reported about this project back in June of twenty twenty one, Bitcoin has gone from around thirty two thousand dollars up to sixty seven thousand dollars back down to thirty thousand dollars. So there's been a lot of change leading up to
this debut. But what at debut it has been. The initial price Caroline for this token was one dollar and seventy cents. Currently, according to pricing on coin marketcap dot com, we're at two dollars and twenty eight cents, so that's up roughly thirty seven percent on this day. About one hundred and forty three million coins have been allocated in this launch, and this is very much about the fervor
around AI. Is this bridge between AI and crypto. Is what world Coin does is it has this small device called an orb which scans the eyeball of an individual and creates a digital identity, giving that person what this company is calling proof of per personhood. They essentially build this as essential in a world where it's very hard to tell what is generated in terms of content by a human and what is not what is generated by AI. So clearly you are seeing some of that excitement showing
up in the price action today. It is worth noting, though, that this can't be traded everywhere. It cannot be traded currently here in the US because of the regulatory environment, and Sam Altman spoke to Bloomberg about this about the uncertainty around regulations here in the US. He told Bloomberg that he hopes the US will be able to get to a quote rational place in terms of crypto regulation. So limited here as to how you can interact with
world Coin, but consider it elsewhere. It seems to be getting quite the reception.
Kay, brilliant as always, We thank you, of course, the co host of the most crypto shows. So, as you know, it's a fair thing or two about the overall speculation of this market, well, hyper reality, let's stick with that, and indeed some of the over use cases that's what everyone has wanted, identity being a key one for the world coin.
What about blockchain?
How do they remain that underlying technology relevant and applications.
Well, there's a tool to check it out. It's called the Value Proposition. It's a website.
Database demonstrating the positive impact, they say of blockchain applications on any network. Website is powered by Polygon Labs and launched just over about a month ago. Let's bring in Polygon's chief legal and policy officer, Rettig. It is great to have some time with you, Rebecca, and interesting that we're just talking about identity as a key area that
blockchain technology can be a real use case. Just tell us a little bit about the value problem the other opportunities we're seeing blockchain technology be applied and used.
Thanks so much.
The Value prop is an interactive website that allows you to go in and see all of.
The positive use cases for a blockchain.
It answers the question, as you said, is there a fundamental value to blockchain?
We've seen it asked by the.
White House, by reporters, by policymakers around the world, and this interactive website is really meant to answer the question and the affirmative. Yes, so it showcases from as you said, identity with world cooin that's on the value prop, but also things that we've seen from Starbucks and other and Sports Illustrated and other major companies that have launched blockchain based applications as well.
Yeah, we're looking at some of those companies now Starbucks, you mentioned, Disney, Coca Cola, and Nike, even well chargeable elements like UNICEF. What is perhaps the is it all about financial applications? Is it's about loyalty? What are you really seeing companies' willingness to embrace at the moment the world of web three when it hasn't exactly been loved from a regulartry perspective.
I think finance is one part of blockchain and it's gotten a lot of attention, but there are forty two disparate use cases on the value prop that range from consumer loyalty to identity, to gaming to social impacts.
And there are.
Over four hundred and thirty applications that fall within those forty two different use cases. So I think what we're going to see as we continue on this blockchain journey is something that expands well beyond the finance use case into things like democratizing all of the ways we use the Internet, such as social media, consumer loyalty, and even something like the California DMV government is looking at ways to use.
Blockchain based applications as well.
Okay, let's look about the government a little bit, because you, of course, the reason Polygon is there, and the use case in many ways is about building the infrastructure of Web three, making it easier, faster, cheaper to be transacting on ethereum in particular. How much are you seeing your own use case being well elevated at the moment?
Are we stagnating in any way?
I do think that the infrastructure and the scaling infrastructure in particular is really getting a lot of attention and in terms of making blockchains much more available and widespread
and faster, cheaper, easier to use. Or is it not a use case in particular, as you, it's just the infrastructure that allows all of these various use cases to be built on top in an open and permissionless way and democratizes all the ways that the Internet is being used, whether it's by governments or by people through consumer loyalty programs as well.
You'll token matic well, the SEC has decided that perhaps it is a security How have you managed to deal with that? I know you've recently taken on the legal part of the role that you now have on top of policy.
How are the conversation's going.
Well, the matic allegations were in allegations against Binance and coinbase to third parties, which which we have no affiliation,
and those cases are progressing forward. But more than that, I do sort of echo what mister Altman said, which is I hope, especially given what we've seen as to different types of decisions coming out of US district federal courts about the ways that crypto can be used, I hope we do have sensible regulation and that really brings clarity and allows businesses in the US to continue doing business and get back to the business of doing business as well.
Do you Man committed to the US? Do you think this is tolk of talent moving overseas?
So Polygon Labs is an international company.
But I do think that people view the in the people in the crypto space in general view the US as a particularly important place and a place where technology has really thrived for a long time. And I think that many in the industry are really committed to seeing legislation move forward that puts really safeguardrails around the industry and the way that users interact both with technology and with tokens as well. Other countries around the world have
already done that. The EU has had MECA in place now for a few months, and there are rules and rides being built out by the European Banking Authority and by ZMA, which is the Securities Authority to really implement MEKA in a practical way. The UK has put out a very compelling crypto asset consultation about building a regulatory regime there, and other countries around the world have had cryptoregulations in plays, particularly for these centralized exchanges for many years.
So I do hope and think that people are hopeful that the USA, it's long been a tech center, really catches up and takes the same type of approach.
And I'm sure in many ways this is exactly why the value prop has been put forward, is to try to discuss that this isn't just always speculation, but this is actually real tangible use cases of the underlying technology. How much do you think that that's the flight that you have to have or is it better if we start to see the Larry Finks the other key players in this world start to push for bitcoin spot ETFs than like that will actually change hearts and minds.
Well, I think the value prop is really something that can change hearts and minds because it really allows people to go in and search by use case and the things they care about the most and see how blockchain is powering that in a very positive way. But I think this is a group effort that I do hope that Larry Think and others in the traditional financial world who are really coming around to the compelling use case that bitcoin and other types of crypto assets may have.
They're an important voice.
And for people who've been working in the industry behind the scenes as builders and lawyers and others who believe in this technology, there's.
An important voice there as well.
So I do hope that this is a group effort over time for the value proposition of blockchain to really come to the fore.
Well, thanks for being the voice on this show today, Rebecca Retti. I appreciate it. Putagon chief Legal and policy Officer, We thank you. Meanwhile, coming up, let's talk about well, it's been a well and true slump in M and A, of course, in many ways spearheaded by a collapse of Credit Suite or some of the concerns and agitations within the banking sector interest rates. More broadly, what is it
doing for Wall Street giants? What does it mean for your technology companies in the venture backspace actually eventually going public? More on that next. This is putting back technology time now for talking tech. First up, Ali Barbara has decided not to sell any part of its one third stake in Ant during the Chinese fintech leader's imminent share buyback. The e commerce company says it wants to maintain its life of an important partner.
Won't take partner.
Ant's planned to buy back as much as seven point six percent of its stock, while others are indeed selling out. Meanwhile, soft Bank is setting up an AI powered warehousing joint venture with Symbotic.
Both companies are investing a combined one hundred million dollars to.
Establish the deal, which will be called green Box Systems LLC plus. Tesla delivered more electric vehicles in the first half of this year than Volkswagen BMW and Mercedes Benz combined. German carmakers are struggling as software issues delay key models and contribute to waning sales, particularly in China.
Meanwhile, let's talk.
More broadly about risk taking in this sector because high boring costs, geobolitical tensions.
And well the threat of a global.
Recession just some of the factors that have led to a slump in mergers and acquisitions. In turn, Wall Street titans have kind of reshuffled their M and A leadership this year. Some firms have gone on hiring spree, while others are still there hoping that M and A boom cycler is just around the corner.
It's a great story.
It's today's big take, and Bloomberg's at Crystal c is one of the reporters behind it.
And I hadn't thought.
About this angle that even though M and AS kind of felt on ice, even though we keep talking about Microsoft and Activision. Basically, people are all moving decks at the moment.
Why why a bank is moving?
Yeah, I mean a lot of what you're seeing, like Microsoft Activision, it indicates a high regulatory hurdle when it comes to deal making, right, So what that really means is that it takes much longer for deals to clothes and the bonus doesn't really hit that year you do that deal. So a lot of people are moving around trying to pick up guarantee packages to see if they can get a one new guarantee or like a second year on an eurnout to see if that can subsidize
them of their income. And that obviously it isn't the main reason. The main reason is the Credit Suez ubs merger that really left so many bankers trying to find jobs all at the same time, and coupled that with not so good M and A performances last year, like not very good bonus performances, that just all led to everyone wanting to get a new job in a new environment.
You sort of talk about some of the regulatory concerns and many have felt that it's a big tech regulatory concern. But is it more m and a more broadly and what does that mean for you know, the venture investors out there who are looking for some sort of exit because he used to cover IPOs and that's been pretty much shut too.
Yeah, IPO has been non existent for almost a year until pretty much this month. Right we are not seeing any like big boom of IPO coming either. But what you're describing in the regulatory herd. It really is an industry at noss issue. We're seeing that in consumer you see Alberson's Kroger running into problems. You're seeing in healthcare, Mgen Horizon Therapeutic is also in courts. So you're seeing
these issues everywhere. And for venture capital firms it may not be immune neither, because you're seeing some private equity firms are being looked at for antitrust issues. So all in all, regulation is a bigger problem in every single sector, and especially in tech.
But then a few are moving thinking they'll be a pick up what would be the catalyst to there being some ple to pick up at M and A.
So some of the investment banks are thinking that if they can pick up talent right now and when the boom comes back, they are well positioned for it. And we see a lot of newcomers in this market. Actually, especially in the US, you're seeing some European comers Santander Atlantra are making big hires in the US and with big prices as well. A lot of the credit spee people actually moved over to a Santender as a curt
see two point zero and a lot. You see that and you kind of wonder what happened here because that had happened before with HSBC coming over, with like Nomura coming over. So this is an interesting time and could history repeat itself? Very much could, But we've not seen this kind of scale and this kind of scope of people moving around in a long time.
This is a global story in nature.
We were just hearing about and financial and anabab But I mean, is that the sort of name that we need to see starting to kickstart at least some.
Of the spin offs, some of the activity.
How much is this a US European bank story or is this a global Asian flank story too?
So the players in Asia are slightly different. When I was in Hong Kong, you see a lot of Chinese banks being very very active players in M and A and EC refund raising. A lot of the IPO may have like a Morgan, Stanley and Goldman at the very top, but they will have ten Chinese banks supporting the listing. So it's it's a slightly different player composition out there. But this particular story, I would say describes more so
what happens in Europe and in the US. You see that similar like moving around musical chair out in Asia as well, but more so in places like as the management where foreign players are still more dominant, and if you need if you're talking about a more relationship based business out in Asia, it's very much still local players having that advantage.
Truly global story. We thank you for it, Christiss.
She's been everywhere covering everything and we thank her for it.
Wow, we discussed it earlier earlier.
Let's dig in X going viral being Twitter's new logo of course, replacing the signature bluebird, as part of Elo Musk's vision of transforming what is a seventeen year old service into what is everything app here with more is Bloomberg's Asha counts.
And even though we knew back in April the holding company been changed names.
We knew the obsession with x or started well back when PayPal was first formed.
It sort of felt overnight in the way that it occurred. It did in a lot of ways.
Right Elon Musk sent a tweet and was saying, if I get a good logo for X We're going to run with it starting tonight. So it did seem fast, although it's been a slow development. As you mentioned, they started adding more of the features. He's talked about it a lot, He's been really vocal, but now the bird logo is slowly disappearing. If you go on the site, you don't see the bird in the top left corner anymore. So it does feel pretty fast in that regard.
Immediately, we sort of felt that, even though his CTO and executive chairman, the CEO Linda Yacarino getting on board, sort of supporting the change, trying to illustrate where the overall everything out goes, and it seems to be very much payments alongside what video content, audio as well.
All of those things right, and we've seen some movement towards those things. Musk has been testing out live video a lot. Know that the Tucker Carlson Show is on Twitter, so adding those capabilities to do longer form videos. Audio obviously has always been a thing with Twitter spaces, they've been doing more of those. Must have been involved in a lot of those. And then he's talked a lot
about payments. We haven't seen the full fledged version of that yet, but even just thinking about subscriptions, how you can subscribe to people's tweets. Now they're paying creators a share of ad revenue. So all of those things have been steps towards this vision and we'll see what that sort of next step is to fully realize it.
And it feels kind of shocking. But look, I mean Facebook recently did it with Meta. We know that Google became alphabet as a parent company. Is it tried to sort of diversify its moonshots a bit? This isn't unheard of. But what sort of brand damage can it do? How much are advertisers, indeed consumers users is.
Going to be kind of upended by this.
I mean, that's a good question.
And even in the examples you've mentioned, right, you go on Facebook and you still see that blue f Right, you still kind of see some of the brand, But it almost feels like Twitter is moving away from even having the blue bird logo, And so I think that is a bit different. And look, it's a question, right, That's something that we're going to be asking people as we're having conversations this week, is how much was the Twitter brand worth and how much will they sort of
lose in moving away from that? Now, you could argue that the rebranding is also a way to move away towards some of the challenges Twitter has faced over the past six seven months in terms of the content and just the perception amongst advertisers. So it could be helpful in that regard, But I don't know how much is the brand worth. It is something that we've all sort of known for so many years. Even to tweet has
become a verb. What happens to that? If it's now X, there's all these sorts of questions that lay in front of it.
Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking it. One was lost over the weekend.
What is it if you retweet because you reacting kind of kissing. I like to see an ex as a kiss. But ultimately are you Are we starting to see it come to its fruition, particularly on the mobile apt because I haven't seen much change there as much as the web for example.
Yeah, it's not as much.
Again, the top left, at least on desktop you can see the X. If you go to Elon Musk's profile, you'll see it says he works for X, and X has the page and the affiliates and all the employees and things like that.
So there are there have been movements.
It's not full fledgedet.
We haven't gotten there.
But I mean it's been pretty fast.
I mean he's got a sun called X I think along with a few other letters.
He's got space x X.
Definitely, he does love it, can't take it away from him. Meanwhile, Asia Count's brilliant. Thank you for synthesizing it all down for us. I meanwhile, that does it for this addition of blie med technology, do not forget to check out our podcast find out on the terminal and go online on Apple, Spotify and iHeart from New York.
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