US Says Framework for TikTok Deal Reached - podcast episode cover

US Says Framework for TikTok Deal Reached

Sep 15, 202543 min
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Episode description

Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss comments by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that a framework to keep the TikTok app running in the US has been reached. Plus Elon Musk buys $1 billion worth of shares of Tesla and keeps up his political activity. And US Energy Secretary Chris Wright joins during his European swing to discuss powering the AI revolution and boosting nuclear power.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is alive from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New York and Ed Lovelow in San Francisco.

Speaker 2

This is Bloomberg Tech.

Speaker 3

Coming up a framework to keep TikTok running in the US reached and Donald Trump Warren out the details with Shijingping later this week.

Speaker 4

Plus, Elo Musk buys millions of Tesla shares following the board's unprecedented pay proposals, and.

Speaker 3

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright joins us later this hour to discuss his big European swing, powering the AI revolution and much more.

Speaker 4

Meanwhile, big swings still being taken in the market. Ed nine straight days of gains on the nasback one hundred longest winning streets is November twenty twenty three. We are at a new record higher up six ten percent. You're looking at the individual stocks underneath this.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's a very busy start to the week in the world of technology. Elon Musk has bought a billion dollars of Tesla stock.

Speaker 2

We will discuss it in the show.

Speaker 3

It was on the same day that we spoke to the board chair of Tesla Alphabet parent of Google has joined the three trillion dollar market cap club and shares are at all time high.

Speaker 2

We'll get to that lage one two.

Speaker 3

Then news a framework has been reached between the United States and China for a deal that would allow TikTok to continue in the United States. The market reaction was in shares of Oracle. Let's understand why bringing Bloomberg Senior Tech editor Mike Shephard in DC.

Speaker 2

So, we don't know a lot.

Speaker 3

We know a frameworks in place, we know the President of the United States. We'll meet with g on Friday. They'll discuss it. What else do we need to know, Mike?

Speaker 5

The things that we need to know are pretty much that a lot of the details remain unknown at this point. We have not heard from the Chinese side yet to confirm that they also view that a framework deal is in hand that would allow TikTok's US operations at the least to stay running. We don't know what the terms are of the transaction, what Beijing would be willing to hand over, and that includes ed the algorithm. This is the recommendation software that is really viewed as a crown

jewel of TikTok's operations. Globally, and the question has always been, would Beijing allow Byte Dance, the parent of TikTok, to part with at least some of that recommendation software to US based buyers. Unclear whether that's going to happen, and unclear whether the terms of this transaction will satisfy the national security terms. That the Chinahawks who pioneered the legislation in twenty twenty four, are requiring the divestiture by by edance of TikTok or a ban, whether they will be

satisfied by whatever they see a lot. We'll ride on this phone call Friday between Xijiping and Donald.

Speaker 4

Trump ed and boy, Mike, is there a lot to discuss between Jijingping and President Trump and not just TikTok, but in video or another key chip within this whole negotiation. And we understand that China is ruling that in Video in some way is being deemed well a monopoly or at least violating anti monopoly laws. Can you take us up to.

Speaker 5

Speed, Well, you know, Cara, the announcement today from China from their state competition agency that found in Nvidia violating

anti monopoly laws in the country. It's no coincidence. The relationship between the US and China is very tightly orchestrated and stage managed, and this ruling that was announced earlier this morning really is a message to the US going after the most valuable company in the world, provider of the chips that are powering the AI revolution that are seen as essential not only for meta platforms and all the other US hyperscalers, but a lot of other Chinese

companies that have favored the H twenty chip, for instance, in building their own model that the Trump administration has recently given back permission to Invidia to resume sales of

that chip. But now we are seeing this headwind for Nvidia in China, and it will be a test of the transatlantic relationship not only for Donald Trump and Chi Jianping, but also for Nvidia CEO Jensen Wang, who has cultivated ties in Beijing as well, trying to ensure that his company still has a sizeable enough footprint there to compete with the likes of Huawei.

Speaker 6

So we'll be.

Speaker 5

Again watching this phone call on Friday between Trump and she to see what is also said about Nvidia. Remember, Donald Trump and Jensen Wong have forged this relationship a close relationship, and he is betting on a Nvidia's success as part of the administration's broader AI program.

Speaker 4

Carol Mike Shepherd wrapping it all up from Washington. We so appreciate it. Let's dig into what the investor sentiment is like. Tiffany Wade, senior portfolio manager at Columbia thread Needle, joins us in. Tiffany, if I just don't care ultimately, and video is down about one and a half persore, but it rallied more than six percent last week, and you could say it's just a bit of profit taking.

More broadly, markets that are record high and focused on the FED, should they be more worried about this tit for tat China US.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 7

I think that's a great point. In videos down a little bit today. There was also headlines related to China looking at some analog semi companies for dumping earlier in the weekend. Those docks are barely down as well. So I think what that's telling you is that investors think that this is more of posturing by China in relation to trade talks, and that there's not going to be a significant impact on these companies' earnings over the long term that it's really just posturing Tiffany.

Speaker 3

Another piece of news this morning the President posting on social media that American companies should not be subject to quarterly reporting, they should report earnings every six months, and the President also acknowledged that would be pending authorization by the SEC. But if somebody in the markets, would you just react to that piece of news from the President please?

Speaker 8

Yeah?

Speaker 7

I think this is an interesting one, and there's arguments on both sides of this. The you know, European regulator only requires companies to report every six months, so there is a model for this or a framework for this. From a company perspective, it likely reduces some of the reporting requirements for them, some of the reporting burdens for companies. But I think from an investor perspective, what it does is reduces volatility for or it reduces visibility for investors

since we have less information points from companies. Potentially also increases the sort of information disparity between investors institutional investors in retail investors, and then potentially also increases volatility because you have less touch points with the companies, you know, perhaps a greater disparity between estimates and actual numbers from the company that could increase volatility around reports.

Speaker 3

I love it in the context of data points. At the top of the program, we had the headline that alphabet has joined the three trillion dollar market cap club, right, and if you think about the story at earnings, it still was the Hyperscalers sharing with us their capital expenditures plans a data set. You know, how would this idea impact those kind of soft data points that now the market really relies on.

Speaker 7

Yeah, that's interesting for the Hyperscalers and for the company as they're developing AI models because they use data. Right, the more data, the more powerful the models become. So especially with regards to models that are maybe intended for a financial analysts or that are intended to help analysts with research, less data means less robust models.

Speaker 4

What's interesting is there's always this anxiety that the amount of data, the amount of compliance means that it puts off companies going public. For last week, we had the busiest week for IPOs of a sizable nature in about four years, according to some. So what do you make of just this weighing up of demand insatiable investor demand on one side, with compliance and overbearingness.

Speaker 7

On the other Yeah, I think we've had a tremendous year for IPOs. This is certainly in contrast to the last three years.

Speaker 2

So the IPO.

Speaker 7

Volume so far through the middle of September this year is larger than it was for the full year of twenty two, twenty three, and twenty four. So definitely some pent up demand from companies that have wanted to go public. I think it reflects certainly capital markets being open, you know, stocks are at all time highs. Also a little bit of improved investor sentiment around the confidence in the economy as well as.

Speaker 4

An asset manager should you be buying in. Initially the barb was very high. Companies had to be profitable, they had to be showing growth on the bottom line as well as top line, But of late that seems to be pushed out the window too.

Speaker 7

Yeah, you're definitely seeing some of that. The growth stocks coming back to market with no earnings or you know, earnings in a couple of quarters or free cash flow in a couple of quarters now is back certainly a good indicator for companies and that growth yer part of the economy that investors are willing to invest in. Some more speculative companies, but we've also seen IPOs in the last couple of weeks in the consumer space. There's another one coming this week in the energy space that seems

to be very well subscribed. So it's not just in tech, it's really across the board.

Speaker 3

Tiffany, I want to end the conversation going back to where we started today, which is the relationship between the US and China. We have a framework for a TikTok deal. The President will speak by phone with Ujingping on Friday and in video is.

Speaker 2

Caught at the heart of this negotiation.

Speaker 3

How much you expect politics and political volatility to play into markets, particularly for technology, in the balance of this year.

Speaker 7

I think technology is going to continue to be sort of a hot spot for tariff negotiations, especially with China. It's kind of the biggest bargaining chip that both countries have with each other. So I don't imagine that the volatility around that will will quiet down, and it might even continue into future years, depending on how the Supreme Court rules on the AVA tariff.

Speaker 3

Yep tiffany Way, if Columbia freadneed or handling every single new item of the day that we threw you, thank you very much. Now coming up, Elon Musk buys about a billion dollars worth of Tesla shares. We're going to explain why and also how next.

Speaker 2

This is Bloomberg Tech.

Speaker 4

Elon Musk responded to an unprecedented pay proposal from the Tesla board bym buying about one billion dollars worth of shares. As you see, we're up six percent on the back of that demand. Let's bring in Billium, Meg's Global Auto's editor creatredel for more, who is also part of the Elon Inc. Team. Just showing boldness, showing a support for the company that investors seem to like.

Speaker 9

Here.

Speaker 4

How did he orchestrate it on Friday?

Speaker 10

Yeah, I mean he did it in the midst of you and ed talking with Robin Denholm at Tesla, the chair of the company. There's clearly a sort of coordinated effort on the part of Musk and board to really generate excitement about the future of this company at a time when there's a lot of reasons to be really concerned. Right in terms of the here and now business, we continue to see signs of of you know, really difficult

demand issues. You know, we heard from Denholm that you know, the board downplays the extent to which Musk is doing damage to this brand with his politics and his involvement in that realm. But he then proceeded over the weekend to you know, do more politicing that you know, I think raises a lot of eyebrows, particularly here in the UK right. And so just how much there's really sort of meat to this optimism I think is going to be the question in the months to come.

Speaker 3

So Caroline and I were explicit with Robin Denholm in asking how did you the board define politics or political activity? Let's get some of what she She responded.

Speaker 11

With as from a personal perspective in terms of his political motivations, etc. Is up to him, I mean, clearly from our perspective as a board, we're measuring him on results and measuring him on what he does as a CEO of TESLA.

Speaker 3

So part of the reason we pose that question is because literally in the days since the proxy hit in the comp package was proposed, Musk has been very active on X talking in particular Craig about UK politics. That accelerated over the weekend. What's the latest.

Speaker 10

Yeah, this very far right convicted criminal Tommy Robinson puts on this march that I think, you know, did surprise a lot of people with how many people showed up. Of course, we should note there was a substantial counter protests that showed up for this as well. But a lot of you know, anti Muslim rhetoric, a lot of sort of you know, talk about this idea of civil war, which we've heard Musk use.

Speaker 2

That sort of rhetoric before.

Speaker 10

We've you know, on the backs of this heard you know, Cure Starmer's spokesmen and others in Westminster really you know, express alarm about this sort of charge language that we're

hearing out of Musk. And you know, I think we're also in the US, of course, hearing over the weekend from the governor of Utah where Charlie kirk Kirk was assassinated last week talk about the sort of evils of social media and so on one hand, I think you know, from those comments that that Robin denhol Holme gave, it's clear that the board is willing to give pretty wide latitude in terms of what Musk is up to on

a political basis. But if they're measuring four results, there are indications that this is not helping Tesla's brand.

Speaker 3

Bloomberg's global cars are crazy delh thank you just very quickly to buy those billion dollar shares. Musk used a revocable trust. Quite a few of you reached out to me to ask about that. It means that the trust can be changed in Mus's lifetime. It's a pretty normal tax focused tool that billionaires in the United States used largely for inheritance planning. Another story, last week, Oracle founder Larry Ellison momentarily surpassed Elon Musk to become the world's

richest person. The shares of the tech giant surge starts, posting a major increase in bookings, putting Ellison top of the list, at least for a day.

Speaker 12

Here's the breakdown. For a few hours last week, the richest person in the world wasn't Elon Musk. It was Larry Ellison, whose personal fortune suddenly skyrocketed.

Speaker 13

Larry Ellison's net worth soared by eighty nine billion dollars. That was the biggest one day game ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Speaker 12

The cause of this giant leap the company Ellison co founded, Oracle, just had a bit of a moment.

Speaker 14

Oracle shares half search pre market after the company posted a major increase in bookings and gave an aggressive outlook for its cloud infrastructure business.

Speaker 12

Oracle made its name selling database back in the late seventies, but in recent years it's become a tech behemoth thanks to the key role it plays in cloud computing, and it's that demand for cloud services that has driven the company's recent stock surge.

Speaker 13

Oracle's cloud computing business is really in demand by AI companies. That's essentially allowed it to reframe its narrative around AI and to ride the stock boom that's been connected with other AI companies.

Speaker 12

On September tenth, it was revealed that Oracle made a deal with open Ai, the creators of chat GBT, worth three hundred billion dollars.

Speaker 13

And I think a lot of investors and analysts are assuming that if it can do deals like that, there will be more coming down the line. So if you've been paying attention to Oracle, this has actually been a while in the making. The last several quarters, this has been the story of their earnings.

Speaker 12

After years of sluggish growth. Oracle's revenue is expected to take off thanks to the race for AI computing power that sent sales in its cloud infrastructure unit Soaring. The new deal with open Ai builds on a critical AI agreement announced in July.

Speaker 2

This is an non precedent cloud deal.

Speaker 8

I mean, this is likely the largest single cloud deal I ever signed.

Speaker 13

Ellison and Oracle are part of a half a trillion dollar announcement called Stargate that Trump made several months ago. It's a partnership between Oracle, Open Ai, and soft Bank and the goals to build data centers for AI across the US, and Oracle will be a key computing power provider for that initiative.

Speaker 12

Well, the likes of Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have all vied for Donald Trump's attention, Ellison seems to have succeeded in nurturing a lasting working relationship with the US President.

Speaker 8

I have a high respect for Larry.

Speaker 2

Iis in to somebody I know.

Speaker 5

He's been really a terrific guy for a long time.

Speaker 12

While Oracle's share price has tripled in the three years since the arrival of chat GPT, the AI revolution wasn't enough to keep Ellison as the world's richest person.

Speaker 13

So this was a brief flirtation with the top spot for Larry Ellison. He was surpassed by the end of the day Wednesday by Elon Musk, again, who has been in first place in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for much of the year. There are questions of how long this boom in AI stocks can last. A lot of investors have expressed concerns that at least some of these companies are overpriced at this point, and there are fears that if the economy starts to slow down that we could

see a pullback in these stocks. And of course, if that happens, the billionaires whose wealth is tied to these companies, including Larry Elson, will see a concurrent fall in their fortunes. Musk stands to potentially leap far, far ahead of all of his billionaire peers in the coming years. It was announced recently that Tesla's board has approved a one trillion

dollar pay package from US. He has to meet several very ambitious milestones in order to get all of that money, but if he does succeed in doing that, it could make him the world's first trillionaire. And there's no one else who would come anywhere close to that level as.

Speaker 2

Of right now.

Speaker 4

Boy, if we talked about that pay package at length time now for Talking Tech and first up Sony Pictures. Demon Slayer was the most popular film at the box office this weekend, and it is that a new high for the Japanese anime genre. It earned Sony million dollars in the US and Canada, having already grossed about two

d eighteen million dollars worldwide going into the weekend. Plus, Snap has a new operating system for augmented reality glasses singly in the company is getting closer to launching a consumer version of the device next year.

Speaker 8

Now.

Speaker 4

Snap OS two point zero includes an overhaul browser and updated ar app. Snap is competing with the likes of Meta, Apple and Google in Space and Charmi Well, it's aiming to take on Apple with its later smartphones coming out later this month. Currently, Charmi only has a silver a sliver of the premium smartphone market globally, but it is well positioned to make games in China, where the release of Apple's i'vephone air it's been delayed.

Speaker 3

Okay, I'm going to bring you a story that broke late Friday. Apple's Robbie Walker, one of the I film Maker's most senior artificial intelligence to executives is leaving the company.

Speaker 2

That's according to sources.

Speaker 3

Walker's exit adds to an exodus of executives and engineers from Apple's AI division, going to bring in Bloomberg's Global Consumer Tech Managing editor Mark German, the story broke Mark. What was this executive's function and role that makes it so notable that it's the latest and another departure from Apple.

Speaker 15

Walker was in charge of Siri. It's as simple as that. Yeah, he was leading Siri for the last several years, but he was demoted out of that role in the spring when Apple realized that it would need to delay its new Apple Intelligence upgrade for Siri for upwards of a year. And after that Walker was removed from his position. His boss, John jen Andrea was removed from overseeing both Siri and Apple AI robotics teams, and more recently, Walker has been

overseeing a team known as Answers Knowledge and Information. It's called a KI internally. This is a new team spun up Underwalker, and this group is responsible for helping build a new AI based web search tool that's coming next year, designed to compete with both Perplexity people. Going on to Perplexity to do searches. Right, You've seen Google traffic go down on Apple devices and favor some of these AI apps. So Apple wants some skin in that AI web search game.

So he's been leading that or parts of that, and so his departure is quite notable. And more broadly, he's on the senior staff of John Jane Andrea. He's one of a few people who are leading the company's overall AI initiative.

Speaker 4

And of course, time and time again, you many others have been talking about how Apple is seeing me behind on the general of AI fight, but they're trying to remind us all of their prowess when it comes to innovation from what things look like feel like. Talk to us about the product innovation they've been talking on.

Speaker 15

Yeah, you know, Apple on this last keynote, it didn't allow any distractions. It didn't raise prices, it didn't talk about tariffs, it didn't talk about shipment delays, it didn't talk about AI. It focused just on the core competencies. That's hardware, that's design, that's engineering. None of the distractions were there. All the focus is on these new devices

coming out on Friday. Except as you mentioned, the iPhone air delay in mainland China, which is a whole other story, but for all intentsive purposes, Apple's focusing on what it needs to focus on, and it's probably setting up itself up for a very solid holiday period.

Speaker 4

Another really well read set of reporting for Markoman. We thank you all Things power.

Speaker 2

On Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech.

Speaker 3

Two technology stories is told through the markets. The first alphabet, parent of Google, has joined the three trillion dollar market cap club, joining Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The market is talking about the idea that that antitrust ruling when in its favor, not having to divest Chrome is a big catalyst. But remember in earnings Google cloud platform really taking market share, so there's momentum in that name. But it's a milestone

in technology history. The other big one, and actually this is the most read story pretty much on the Bloomberg terminal and on the website, is about BYD. So BYD has seen it shares for all about thirty percent over the last four months from all time highs that were hit earlier in the year.

Speaker 12

And Caroline, what a reverse wind story.

Speaker 3

We started the year talking about how BYD was overtaking Tesla in all these markets like Europe, and Asia, not just with EV.

Speaker 2

But hybrid as well.

Speaker 3

That chart says things can reverse a little Tesla outperformance in recent weeks byd really slumping. Check it out on Bloomberg dot com.

Speaker 4

You should and also look like to talk more about China and particularly the trade talks with China, because US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen said a framework to keep the TikTok app running in the United States has been reached that President Trump and she can speak to complete this deal, though the blueprint that's pretty unclear. Let's bring in Bloomberg social media reporter Alexandra Levigne. What's really interesting, Alex is

we've been very close before. Remind us of how close we came, but like six months ago, well.

Speaker 16

We came extremely close back in the spring. I think it was a couple weeks before the deadline had been reached. Vice president of Vans said we are very close on a high level deal, and then days before President Trump basically said we are at the finish line. And then within days the entire thing had all but imploded because talks over tariffs between US and China had basically escalated. So even though it could potentially be an exciting week for TikTok and also for the roughly half the country

that uses the app. There is still a lot that we don't know.

Speaker 3

In the time that we've gone to air, there have been these headlines from China's side confirming that this frame works in place. So we have it from China and Treasury Secretary Besson and basically the negotiators for China is saying that this is a good framework for both sides, but that China won't sacrifice its principles for this TikTok deal.

I noted earlier in the show that one of the reactions to the news was Oracle shares rising remind us like, if a deal goes through, who is going to own and operate and run TikTok in the United States.

Speaker 16

So, again, the terms of the deal are still unclear. Oracle, though, has for many months been floated as one possible leading contender here among other US investors. Oracle would make a lot of sense potentially because Oracle and TikTok have this

pre existing relationship. They had been working together in the past on something called Project Texas, which was essentially a program aimed at helping TikTok secure and separate all of TikTok's US user data in the United States and keep it basically separate from by Dance's global operations in China.

Speaker 3

Bloomberg's Alexandra Levine, I have a feeling you'll be back to talk about a TikTok deal in the days and weeks to come.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much.

Speaker 3

Stormtroopers from Style Wars, vlogging with a selfie, Steak Dogs hosting a podcast. Such AI generator videos are taking over social media subs, shooting for news and other kinds of creative content all over our feeds as we enter the early stages.

Speaker 2

Of machine generated media.

Speaker 3

The debate has been centering around the impact on Hollywood, but what about its impact on social media? Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor Bradstone takes a deep dive in an essay. It's hard to summarize, but basically, everywhere on social media there's AI generated video. There are more tools than ever available to do this, and we explain the industries that are being hit. But you've penned it in some detail through some case studies.

Speaker 17

That's right, and you miss babies being interviewed. That's a new one these days. But look, this is our an opening essay for our screen Time issue, and I wanted to examine you know, what I'm seeing and what a lot of my friends are seeing in their social media feeds, and it is really incredible.

Speaker 2

A rubacon has been crossed.

Speaker 17

I think back to this summer when you have this video of bunnies bouncing on a trampoline everywhere on TikTok, everyone are on Instagram. People thought it was real, and then there was an examination in the comments how one bunny seemed to disappear, and in fact it was a creation of a twenty two year old named Andy Kozovski. He did it one night when he was bored. The

key here is Google's tool VO three. What's different about VO three is it's not only raised the bar in terms of video generation, but it has also raised the bar in terms of audio generation. You can enter in a few prompts, you can enter in a script, and essentially you know the dogs who are talking, the babies who are talking. Not only are they saying the written dialogue, but their lips are moving. So it's really kind of a perfect deep fake.

Speaker 4

The twenty two year old basically made that funny disappear on purpose to create the discussion around all of it, Brad. But what's so interesting is he's really strong on saying this is democratization as we see it. How much is it upending actual creators work. How much we see Hollywood adopt and embrace this or not this case?

Speaker 17

Maybe, I mean it's really starting on social media. We saw what the Hollywood strikes a few years ago, a great resistance among the industry around the embrace of AI. Now we are seeing that begin to change. I mean recently, Amazon or a studio affiliated with Amazon, announced it would be finishing orson Wells's film The Magnificent Amberson's using AI to recreate some lost scenes. So it's beginning to see about But you know, we're looking at the dog.

Speaker 2

Podcast right now.

Speaker 17

That's a Montreal company called dog Pack App. They're trying to market themselves and they've got dogs talking.

Speaker 12

It's kind of cringe.

Speaker 17

The humor is very dad joke, but you know people are responding to it. You kind of see it everywhere on social media right now.

Speaker 4

Who doesn't have a dad joke? Bradstone, brilliant opening piece. We're all so excited about screen time, thanks very much. Indeed, meanwhile, coming up we can be talking about startup line of sciences. It's aiming to turbo charge scientific discovery with guess what using AI. Of course we'll talk to the CEO about the latest funding round. It's big. There's a series as a Bloomberg tech.

Speaker 3

Startup, Lilah Sciences has just closed a two hundred and thirty five million dollar Series A funding round. The company aims to create what it called scientific super intelligence by developing AI that runs thousands of scientific experiments at once. Let's bring in Jeff on Molhal's the co founder and CEO of Lilah Sciences. That is an eye catching Series A and I think the best place to start, Jeff is just with the basics of explaining what it is

Leila wants to do. Because you know, maybe the money gives credibility, it gives you the news headline, but there's a very specific focus that you have.

Speaker 6

Yes, first of all, thank you for having me. Lyla's mission is the reason for this fundraise. Our mission is scientific superintelligence to solve humankind's greatest challenges. That is, of course a lofty mission, but what it means is that we're trying to build a kind of beautiful mind that can be a polymath across fields of science, materials, chemistry, and life and become super intelligent within them by running the scientific method itself.

Speaker 3

Jeff, we became accustomed in twenty twenty four to these very large series a's all over the world, actually, particularly those focusing on specific models.

Speaker 2

Why do you.

Speaker 3

Need that level of capital from the beginning, What is it that requires that capital to be deployed?

Speaker 6

Yeah, First of all, I realize it by saying scientific method, I've either given euphoria or PTSD to audience members that may have enjoyed or not there most recent science class. So what's special about Leilah is the realization that AI is now positioned to be able to run every single

step of the scientific method. Scientific method is the most valuable wheel that has ever existed, and the reason for scale capital is running the scientific method at scale is going to lead to scaling laws for scientific intelligence that will go beyond what's possible with scaling laws of the Internet and previous human knowledge alone.

Speaker 4

Jeff, It's interesting where you stand. We've just seen the interesting investors coming on board and the pension money, the big pockets wanting to put money to work, But ultimately call me a cynic. We've had an awful lot of scientific AI companies coming in offering a new world of medical advancement. Why are you different? It seems to be something about the.

Speaker 6

Lab so that the mainstay of scientific AI companies are sitting in a small niche of science focused on a

specific application. The insight that led to Lilah is the same kind of inside that led to the modern scaling laws and ascent of large language models and reasoning capabilities, which is that we no longer need to compartmentalized science into a whole bunch of tiny subdomains, but instead one can build a single kind of mind that can operate across an immense diversity of scientific fields and pull new knowledge into that single mastery of the way that the

world around us works. And we believe that this is going to open up incredible frontiers across those subdomains and between those subdomains in medicine, energy, new climate technologies, and a lot more.

Speaker 3

Jeff, we started this conversation by saying that Lilah focuses and running thousands of experiments at once using a.

Speaker 2

Single AI model.

Speaker 3

Is this you taking advantage of quantum compute? To do that, or accelerated computing or both.

Speaker 6

Primarily the ladder for now. But if you wild a beautiful mind for science, it needs a new kind of body. And those who are training only on data sets of the past are going to hit a ceiling of scientific intelligence. And that wheel of the scientific method, of course, has been in human minds and hands for all of our existence. And we believe the paradigm of what you're seeing behind me allows science to ascend into a higher intelligence, higher scale,

and higher speed. And the implications of that are that we're going to be able to pull inventions out of the future like has never been possible before.

Speaker 4

Wow, when you start announcing some of the pay customers, you've got to come and tell us about it. Jeff On Meltson, we appreciate it. Co founder and CEO of LAE of Sciences. Now, let's talk about Macado Leebra las In America's e commerce and fintech giant, just got a new CEO. Ariel Schafstein, will be taking on the rains January after Marcus Galprin, who co founded the company led it to become the region's most valuable firm. Well, he's handing of the reins and let's just hear about what

the incoming CEO had to say. When asked for his vision for the company for the next ten years, he spoke in his first exclusive interview with international media as incoming CEO.

Speaker 9

I think we've done tremendous things over the first twenty six years, but the opportunity for us in the next twenty six are equally big or even bigger and what we've done in the first era of Marca Olive. I think the opportunity to continue increasing the size of our ecommerce business through ecommace. Penetration in retail is still very big in Latin America. Digital advertising is nascent in Latin America and we are convinced that we can drive growth

in that atmosphere. And last but not least, fintech. Right so, financial inclusion in Latin America is still pending, and we can beat the probable lists of the process of bringing more people into financial services across the region, as we have been doing over the last few years.

Speaker 4

The US and the UK will sign an agreement to make it quicker for companies to build nuclear power stations, but the countries will use safety assessments of reactor designs from each other to fast track their checks. The announcement comes as President Trump prepares to travel to Britain tomorrow, with more economic deals expected to be announced. Already in Europe doing deals as US Energy Secretory Chris Wright, exactly the person we want to talk to about the opportunity

of nuclear, particularly in our world of AI. How quickly do you think it'll be brought online in the US or indeed the UK, because your timeline is fast. It seems.

Speaker 14

It's aggressive, Caroline, And that's President Trump. You know, he came in fall in on nigular energy. And we will have reactors, these next generation small module reactors critical next year.

Speaker 8

In fact, I'm pretty confident will.

Speaker 14

Have one of them before July fourth of next year, and several more.

Speaker 8

During the year.

Speaker 14

Now, it's not the back ended electricity production, but it's the whole nuclear system running demonstrating how it will work. I think this expedite final permitting and sales and commercialization of the reactors.

Speaker 4

It's going to move fast, not just fission but fusion as well. Just how optimistic are you there? Eight to fifteen years I saw? Is that realistic? And how self dependent would that make? The US for what five gigawatts designs that we're currently seeing just coming from Oracle and Open AI alone super exciting.

Speaker 14

I worked on fusion energy in college forty years ago, and we've seen steady progress for the last forty years, mostly at the national labs at the Apartment Department of Energy. But with AI and commercial fusion companies coming into space now,

the pace of innovation is faster than ever before. Yeah, I believe we will know the commercial pathways to fusion during the Trump administration, And as I said, I think we'll see commercial electricity from fusion energy on could be as fast as eight years, and I'd be very surprised if it's more than fifteen coming.

Speaker 8

It's coming and into exciting.

Speaker 3

Secretary, right as you travel across Europe and heads to the UK, what kind of instruction has the president given you to put these energy deals in the context of national security and defense.

Speaker 14

I think the President has talked from his campaign that his goal was prosperity at home and peace abroad, and he understands instinctively that both of those are intimately.

Speaker 8

Tied to energy.

Speaker 14

You need low cost, abundant, affordable energy at home to lower costs for Americans and make businesses thrive. That's the same agenda overseas. Here I am in Europe. They're very, of course, shocked at what happened with the Russia invasion of Ukraine and their energy dependence on Russia.

Speaker 8

Everybody gets that as a mistake.

Speaker 14

They want to switch that dependence from Russia on the United States.

Speaker 8

We are bringing them assurances.

Speaker 14

We can continue to wrap up natural gas exports into Europe as a safe, secure partner. And of course there's huge enthusiasm for American nuclear technology over here. You want to get your energy and your key strategic inputs from your allies and not your adversaries.

Speaker 3

When President Trump took office, he pledged to cut electricity price in half within twelve months.

Speaker 2

For everyday American secretary.

Speaker 3

Right in the time since the president's been in office, electricity prices have risen ten percent. Is he still able to make good on that election pledge? And how does he get that?

Speaker 14

Look, the President is a very ambitious, aim high guy. He is absolutely committed to lowering energy prices in the United States. We've seen that in gasoline and diesel and oil products.

Speaker 8

We're seeing screaming increase in.

Speaker 14

US natural gas production and prices as well not rising at all. Electricity grids harder. It's just long time frames. Long time frames change that whole system cost. But if you look at it on a microscale, the President is ready to permit, and we are permitting immediately electric generating capacity that will be less than half the cost of the stuff that was built under.

Speaker 8

The Biden administration.

Speaker 14

So are we adding new capacity on the grid that's less than half the cost of the Biden administration?

Speaker 8

Absolutely, the presence Adam it about that.

Speaker 14

For that to filter in, for the whole grid cost to come down imediately, that will take some time.

Speaker 8

For rest assured. We're driving as hard as fast as we can.

Speaker 4

Sanctuary, right, You've been driving hard and fast when it comes to well updating. It feels like the Department of Energies view on what to use when it comes to energy sources, and in particular, I'm thinking about the thought leadership. Back in July, you put forward what was a report it was deemed about the threat of climate change and said basically it's exaggerated. Now that working group has been disbanded,

many have been critical of some of the findings. Do you still stand by those findings that were ultimately saying a lot of the well climate views were wrong about the speed of which the globe is getting hot, or at least.

Speaker 14

Actually no dispute at all about temperature and sea level data. What we did was just popularize the data that the climate alarmis and the politicians don't want to popularize. Ninety percent of what's in our Climate report is in the Inner.

Speaker 8

Governmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

Speaker 14

I've been studying this issue for twenty years, so quite familiar with it. Five fantastic scientists produced that report, and of course environmental groups that don't want in ofst and honest, fact based dialogue about climate change sued over silly procedural thing about the paperwork for one of the five. And instead of fighting this in court, the climate scientists, I'm

sure they'll still respond to the questions. We've opened a real dialogue about climate change, and that's exactly what we wanted to do, and I couldn't be happy about it. It's funny I go on more and more shows talking about climate change and no one wants to ask me any questions about climate change.

Speaker 4

I'll keep climate change. I'll ask you, because why did your department undertake it in such a way it seemed to that the study wasn't following usual procedures like the omb's guidelines on science reports.

Speaker 14

Now, this is when you publish a technical paper. When you publish the paper, that's when the dialogue starts. We wanted to publish This was from no scientists at DOEE, although we did.

Speaker 8

Do peer review at DOUE.

Speaker 14

These are five independent scientists that we said, please write a report. It just sort of summarizes the big picture about climate change, so we can publish it, open it up for public comment, and we've got tons of comments. Lots of them are silly. But what you can see from the substance of the comments we received as there's very little disagreement with the data we published on temperature data, sea.

Speaker 8

Level data, and models.

Speaker 14

People are complaining around the edges, or mostly complaining around Yeah, but.

Speaker 8

The future might be different. That's true.

Speaker 14

We don't know the future, but I heard twenty years ago that future might be different.

Speaker 8

We're just publishing the real data on c level rise, on.

Speaker 14

Temperature increases, on the effects of kerbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which makes the planet creer a little bit wetter. It kind of changes a real thing, but it's just been so wildly exaggerated and misrepresented, and it's made the kind of scientists that go on TV only the most dramatic larvest ones that make TV us.

Speaker 8

Most of the honest, sober ones are in the background. We're bringing into the.

Speaker 3

Forefront US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, currently in Vienna, but continuing through Europe. Thank you very much for joining us on Bloomberg Tech. Just a quick update and video shares have swung from a pretty notable decline to positive territory. You remember the story broke this morning that China's market regulator had said that in Video violated anti monopoly laws

on the twenty twenty acquisition of Melanox. That was a bargaining chip pardon the pun, right carrot, in the context of these US China talks that are happening, and it's a big week in that context.

Speaker 2

It is.

Speaker 4

I remember it was a big week from video stock last week. I added about six percent, So maybe there's just a been a profit taking earlier today. That does it from this edition of Bloomberg Tech. But don't forget to check out our podcast. Find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. From New York and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech,

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