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Live from Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco: Android Hardware, Mozilla's Open Source AI & Venture Capital
00:56:22
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- [00:02]
Carol Massar
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Sameer Samat
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Carol Massar
Please, for the love of everything good
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Sameer Samat
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Carol Massar
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- [02:04]
Emily Chang
Carol Massar, Tim Stanback this is this annual gathering of leading CEOs, innovators, everybody who is harnessing technology really change the world around us. Safe to say, once again, we're talking a lot about artificial intelligence.
- [02:17]
Carol Massar
Yeah, we've heard from the executives, the venture capitalists, the founders at the forefront of the next era in technology, AI, wearables, robotics, the blockchain, and more.
- [02:25]
Emily Chang
Someone who knows a lot about this space is our own Brad Stone. He's sitting down next to me. We're going to get to him in just a moment. We're also going to talk with our own Ed Ludlow. He's fresh off a conversation with the co founder and executive chairman of Andrew Industries. We're talking about Trey Stevens, so we'll talk about that. Also a really fascinating conversation with Cerebras Systems last night. So it's going to also dig into that as well. So that's coming your way.
- [02:49]
Carol Massar
Yeah. Joining us to a little later is Katie Hahn, the former federal prosecutor. She was the first female general partner over at Andreessen Horowitz. She's going to join us. She's got Han ventures just raised $1 billion for a new venture fund known for CR. Crypto.
- [03:02]
Emily Chang
Yes.
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Carol Massar
But branching out of crypto a little bit, but really also just staying in her lane.
- [03:05]
Emily Chang
Maybe looking for the next.
- [03:07]
Carol Massar
Yeah, exactly.
- [03:09]
Emily Chang
Or something like that.
- [03:09]
Carol Massar
You can find it.
- [03:10]
Emily Chang
Let me know exactly. Hey, let's get right to Brad Stone. He's the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. He's also the author of many, many books, including two on Amazon, the Everything Store and Amazon Unbound. He also wrote a book about the upstarts, which I want to ask him about Today's upstarts. Anyway, let's get right to it. Good to have you here.
- [03:27]
Brad Stone
How many of these have we done?
- [03:29]
Emily Chang
A lot. And they're still excited. There's so much coming at us. Walk in here and what's interesting for you?
- [03:35]
Brad Stone
Well, I mean, today is really in large part a conversation about AI. And every time you talk about AI, you have this tension between sugar coating and candor, optimism and concern. And that is no different. I mean, we heard from Yoshua Bengio, professor, University of Montreal, a godfather of AI, saying we cannot trust the big tech companies to do the right thing. And then Faith Li, a godmother of AI, saying that she believes that all this friction is kind of overblown, that it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. And you have these polar opposites that are unrealistic. And then Dan Schulman, CEO of Verizon, saying, oh, yeah, a lot of the customer service employees are gone. I saw he spoke with a lot of candor today.
- [04:17]
Emily Chang
Yeah.
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Carol Massar
Where are we in a cycle right now, Brad? Because you, as Carol mentioned, you have the book about the upstarts. You've written about Amazon, you've written about tech companies in a completely different part, an era of Silicon Valley. Are we in a cycle right now that's any different than others?
- [04:32]
Brad Stone
I think you know the answer to that one. We are riding the wave. We are surfing it. We are, it feels like at the peak of a massive hype cycle.
- [04:41]
Carol Massar
Does it feel like this time is different? Those words that I'm never allowed to say, but I always do.
- [04:46]
Brad Stone
I mean, I would compare it to the Internet boom of the late 90s in which there's a lot of hype, a lot of froth, not all the companies are real and are going to make it, but that, you know, that the underlying change is so fundamental and I, I think, you know, it changes everything. It's already changed the way we work, the way our company works. I think it's happening across the. And we're just at the beginning of realizing the promise, you know.
- [05:12]
Emily Chang
But I also think about, you know, the intersection of technology and money and people spending a lot, chasing to be the first, the best in this, this race. But I wonder how much of that clouds the judgment of whether or not that race makes sense in the end.
- [05:29]
Brad Stone
Right. And so we're talking about perceptions and valuations. But look, I mean, we had Daniela Amadou, the co founder of Anthropic, you know, she gets on stage and you know, this is this build out costing
- [05:43]
Sameer Samat
a lot of money.
- [05:44]
Brad Stone
So we're going to go half the public markets. But we've already seen, though, that those offerings are generating a lot of excitement. The excitement is real and it has paid off for different investors at different levels of the ecosystem. You know, the big question ends up being whether that retail investor at the end of the line, how well they do.
- [06:02]
Carol Massar
Brad, I also feel like it's changed San Francisco. And you know, Carol and I come here a couple times a year and we came here during the depths of the pandemic. A lot of people left the city for dead, pat, that time. And I got to tell you, I'm in a small part of it right now, but anecdotally speaking, There was a 20 minute line for like $7 matchos this morning and everybody was waiting in line. There are people everywhere. There are people spending money. I walk out of my hotel room and I see a supercar. Like, what is happening to the city right now?
- [06:31]
Brad Stone
Well, first of all, are we to understand that you yourself purchased a $7 matcha?
- [06:35]
Carol Massar
I'm just doing research. I'm just doing research.
- [06:37]
Brad Stone
Well, look, we in San Francisco, you
- [06:39]
Carol Massar
could also get coffee there too.
- [06:40]
Brad Stone
We are very good at wringing our hands about things. And five years ago it was homelessness and the desertion of downtown and the chaos of the open drug markets and, you know, credit to our new mayor and the change in the business cycle. There's a lot of excitement and energy in the city, but now the concerns are different. We worry that with this wave of wealth coming from these IPOs that it will be impossible for people to buy and rent homes. It's already classically difficult in the city. And it's only going to get more difficult if you're an employee at one of the big companies in San Francisco that's not in tech. You know, the gap, Levi's. How do you possibly compete and live in this?
- [07:23]
Carol Massar
That's a really good point.
- [07:23]
Brad Stone
And so look, I mean, I think that yes, the problems are different and there's a lot of energy and excitement, but a city like San Francisco, it's hard to kind of bottle the economic phenomenon.
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Carol Massar
You bring up a really good point. Levi's is a great example. How does Levi's hire a computer programmer or an engineer? If that person could go get a job that pays 3x and gives stock based compensation?
- [07:46]
Brad Stone
Over at Anthropic, I think it's incredibly challenging. You also have an anti business environment here that occasionally does raise its head. And in the primary that we just had earlier in the week, there was consideration given to an extra tax on businesses whose CEO makes a factor larger than average employees. Now, that ballot did get defeated, but there's a lot of push and pull around. What kind of city do we want to be and how do we manage the economic disparities that are being created by this boom?
- [08:15]
Emily Chang
We'll go into politics. I feel like you've been having a lot of conversations. We think about the governor's race, some interesting candidates in that. I mean, what do the people of California want going forward? Well, and who's going to do that for them?
- [08:27]
Brad Stone
I mean, the funny thing is we voted on Tuesday and we do not know what the citizens of California said yet because only about half the votes have been counted. But so far, Javier Becerra, Scott Hilton are the leaders. You've got Tom Steyer still within shouting distance. It's interesting because some of the most extreme viewpoints on tech seem like they're not advancing. I mentioned the ballot initiative that's failed. You know, Steyer was really the most aggressive about regulating tech and AI and he doesn't seem to have made the runoff. Of course we don't know so. But look, I mean, for some reason we count the ballots slowly here. But I will be interviewing Scott Wiener, Senator, State Senator Scott Weiner, who appears to be the frontrunner for Nancy Pelosi's job. He will instantly become the most interesting and maybe important regulator of tech and AI in the nation's capital if he
- [09:19]
Emily Chang
wins the election in the fall, I have to say. And that is one of the things that has come up often with the naysayers or those who are concerned, whether it's Yoshua Bengio, I mean, just concerned about, you know, having people in government, the United States government, but also globally, to make sure that the regulations and the oversight is there. What do you want to hear from him?
- [09:39]
Brad Stone
From Senator Weiner?
- [09:40]
Emily Chang
Yeah.
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Brad Stone
Yeah. Well, I think two things. One, he has been an important state legislator. He's proposed these two bills about regulating AI. The one that passed was the watered down version. I want to know that if he does get elected, what kind of regulation does he bring to the nation's capital? But the second thing is that some of the ideas we hear right now for regulating AI come from Senator Bernie Sanders and they're pretty extreme. A data center moratorium and state ownership, 50% ownership of the AI companies. Obviously Silicon Valley here that's going to go down, does not like those ideas. So how does he work with his colleague?
- [10:15]
Emily Chang
Right.
- [10:16]
Carol Massar
We have 5 or 8% state ownership of intel right now.
- [10:20]
Sameer Samat
Right.
- [10:20]
Carol Massar
We never thought that would happen.
- [10:21]
Brad Stone
Well, Senator Sanders is talking about 50% ownership at the same time as a data center moratorium would really slow down the AI revolution and crush valuation.
- [10:30]
Sameer Samat
So.
- [10:31]
Carol Massar
So on this political question, what's the narrative right now around finding employees outside of Silicon Valley to do the work that Silicon Valley is so known for? And this idea of taking like Elon Musk taking his company's headquarters to Texas or people relocating to Miami, is, is Silicon Valley still where the talent is?
- [10:53]
Brad Stone
I mean, absolutely. I think a couple of years ago we heard about the migration away from San Francisco or Silicon Valley because of an anti tech or anti billionaire environment. Yes. There's still a looming question about the billionaires tax which will go in front of voters in the fall. But no, this is the concentration of innovation and ingenuity is still here. But you mentioned the narrative and I think that the narrative particularly around regulating AI has changed. We recently saw President Trump introduce an executive order on AI that called for a 30 day moratorium on or 30 day review period on reviewing AI models. Obviously because of Mythos and the concerns about vulnerability. Now that was down from a 90 day review period. But for the the first time, the President has gotten farther ahead than a lot of tech companies and legislators hear about the need to be to go a little bit more slowly and with introspection about rolling out these powerful models.
- [11:49]
Emily Chang
Well, speaking of them being powerful models, I know Mary Daly, President, the San Francisco Fed was up here talking with Caroline Hyde. She said there's still no clear evidence in the economic data productivity gains from AI. She remains bullish on the technology. She possibilities for early rewards. But I think about the irony or the harsh reality perhaps that if this does make us all product much more productive, takes away jobs like what does it mean for Silicon Valley or the rest of the country?
- [12:17]
Brad Stone
Right. Well, we've heard a lot of opinions about that. And what I thought was interesting for Mary Daly is she was comparing it to the introduction of electricity and how it took a while for companies for inventors to completely rethink their technologies and business models. And that's what you said, that we haven't yet baked in the power of AI fully into our companies. But I mean in terms of yeah. What AI does for jobs. I mean, Dan Schulman of Verizon saying after all the layoffs they've had that it's essentially coming for all their customer service workers to an extent. We heard it from Trey Stevens of Andrew, certainly from, from Yoshua Bengio. Yeah, I mean I think like there's still a really interesting conversation here how to what extent it to places workers and if so, what is the responsibility of government government to come in and either retrain workers or you know, help with the livelihood for everyone who's displaced.
- [13:15]
Carol Massar
We're speaking with Brad Stone. He's the editor of Bloomberg Business Week. He's on set here in Bloomberg Tech here in San Francisco Francisco, the Bloomberg Tech Summit. I want to go back to our interview with Yoshua because what, what I found so fascinating was that, you know, he's, he's known as one of the godfathers of AI and he, there's a lot of stuff that really keeps him up at night. And he couldn't really tell us for certain if the potential positives of the technology outweigh the potential pitfalls of the technology. And I'm just wondering, given your experience covering this stuff, if we've ever seen a moment where we're sort of at this precipice like this.
- [13:50]
Brad Stone
I mean, I think Mythos from Anthropic was an inflection point. The fact that we have this technology that can identify vulnerabilities in all of our important systems and of course remediate it. But the question is when that technology is broadly distributed, is it exploited before it's remediated? And what, what he said was that Mythos is the beginning, that everybody catches up those eventually even the Chinese models. And also I can't remember who somebody else said that that Open Air will be here soon and other companies. And so yeah, I think we're, we've Hit a point where the genie is escaping the model.
- [14:31]
Carol Massar
Yeah. Rafi Krikorian from Mozilla was on our program and talking about the way that they've used it to identify vulnerabilities at Firefox. But at the same time, you know, Mythos is going to be old news in a year from now when we're talking to you, Brad.
- [14:45]
Brad Stone
Right.
- [14:46]
Carol Massar
And everybody else is going to be.
- [14:47]
Brad Stone
And every commercial model will essentially be mythoscale and it will be the age of the zero day vulnerability where these, these openings are exploited before companies or governments could possibly rectify them. And so, you know, and then it was interesting, Daniela saying that they will begin to release these commercial models before consumer models. So obviously the industry is starting to think about, and of course, we mentioned the Trump executive order regulating these rollouts and trying to instill some order around how these tools are distributed.
- [15:18]
Emily Chang
You've covered technology for a long time. You've seen similar events like this from Bloomberg. I mean, do you ever walk away? Because it feels like a lot of the tech community is always optimistic about what's to come. Can you, can you feel a difference from last year or two years ago in terms of tones and what we're hearing from the industry?
- [15:37]
Brad Stone
I feel like in some years, only in retrospect do I think, boy, we were scrambling a little bit to make that interesting, you know, that we, that that obviously the issues of the day, they loom large. But in retrospect, maybe they weren't as significant as we thought. And this year, and it was the same last year as well. You know, it feels like people are here legitimately because they want to learn, because they feel desperately behind because news and events are happening faster than we can possibly integrate them into our lives. And I feel like that's the energy here today. People want to hear from these speakers and they want to understand how they can bring this into their own lives.
- [16:16]
Emily Chang
It's funny, I feel like you and I were talking a little bit last night or like, I feel that way. You know, I've scratched the surface of the, in terms of what I can do, but I want to understand it
- [16:23]
Carol Massar
more because, yeah, we had this conversation at dinner. Like, none of us are vibe coding right now. And I feel like we're just using BLMs in the most sort of like, elementary way as glorified search. And I'm like, I'm not really there yet.
- [16:35]
Brad Stone
Right. So I think there's a real hunger to learn. I think we could make this a three day event and have Bring in people to teach. Teach people how to vibe code, how to use the latest models. Do you. I'm not in charge. I don't, I don't. But I try, you know, when I can, I try to bring it into my work.
- [16:55]
Carol Massar
Okay. Are your kids five coding?
- [16:59]
Brad Stone
Well, we got a daughter back here, so she could answer.
- [17:01]
Emily Chang
Are you vibe coding? Okay, fair enough.
- [17:05]
Carol Massar
The future is safe. The kids are all right. Kids are all right.
- [17:11]
Emily Chang
If you could talk to one person for an hour right now, when it comes to the world of AI, who would it be?
- [17:16]
Brad Stone
I mean, there's so many, you know, there's so many great speakers here today. So any.
- [17:21]
Emily Chang
But anybody, anybody doesn't have to even be here.
- [17:24]
Brad Stone
I mean, that's. That's a real tough one. But Dario Amodei and Anthropic, I mean, they have. Look, how many times in this industry does the company that is perceived as the secondary player suddenly leapfrog into the league, command a higher valuation, dominate the narrative with it's not just its consumer, but its commercial models? And I think that's a really interesting company to kind of understand. He has steered that company particularly well amid all the chaos and the noise.
- [17:55]
Emily Chang
I will say, it's always that moment of time like this. I wonder, okay, who have the big names that we talk about are not going to be here and who are the ones that like five or.
- [18:03]
Brad Stone
This is a curse of having an annual event. We've had Daria, we've had Sam Altman. You want to try to create a fresh lineup every year.
- [18:11]
Emily Chang
Great stuff. Brett Stone, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Going all around Bloomberg Tech here in San Francisco.
- [18:18]
Carol Massar
Stay with us. More from Bloomberg businessweek Daily coming up after this.
- [18:27]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [19:28]
Sameer Samat
Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Divergent author Veronica Roth to talk about her sprawling new no seek the Traitor's Son. It's a sci fi fantasy epic about two protagonists on opposite sides of a war and a prophecy neither of them wanted.
- [19:47]
Katie Haun
My first book was Divergent and when that came out, like, because it was so popular, I think it attracted like mostly positivity, but the negativity I sucked
- [19:56]
Narrator/Advertiser
in like a sponge. And I think it was like critiques
- [20:00]
Katie Haun
of things I liked. When I was like, you know, I was 23 and I wrote this book and it had all my like dorky little cheesy or maybe unrealistic loves in it. And I started to feel a lot of shame about those things. And so for the rest of my career, I steered away from those little
- [20:18]
Narrator/Advertiser
things that like, make you feel pleasure when you read.
- [20:22]
Katie Haun
But I also was like saying no to these parts of myself that I
- [20:26]
Narrator/Advertiser
then was like, screw it.
- [20:28]
Rafi Kokorin
Yeah, so that's this.
- [20:31]
Sameer Samat
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:39]
Narrator/Advertiser
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
- [20:54]
Emily Chang
I gotta say, in prepping for this segment, I actually found a story back in 2019 that Bloomberg reported out. They did a deep dive. The story is entitled the Smartphone Revolution Was the Android Revolution. It was by Shira Overday and it got into how the mobile operating system called Android drove Steve Jobs at Apple crazy. And the reporting went on to note that while Apple sparked the modern smart smartphone revolution, Android Tim, was the essential ingredient that made the devices ubiquitous.
- [21:19]
Carol Massar
Okay, so fast forward just a few years to today, seven years later, the open source mobile platform, it's the world's most widely used, depending on the stats that you look at, just about 70% of global share leading the global teams behind it, Sameer Samad, president of Android Ecosystem. He joins us live here at Bloomberg Ted Tech. Welcome. How are you?
- [21:37]
Rafi Kokorin
Thank you.
- [21:38]
Sameer Samat
I'm great. Nice to see both of you.
- [21:39]
Carol Massar
It's good to see you as well. Look, we think about Android in the context of iOS, I think a lot of people, because that's, that's really the duopoly that exists. I think many people would argue how do you position Android in the United States versus how you position it globally, where it is more widely adopted?
- [21:59]
Sameer Samat
Well, Android is an open source operating system, which is really great because it allows people to build all kinds of different devices. So of course we know that Android is popular for phones today, where there's over three and a half billion Android devices that are used every day. It's the most widely, widely used operating system in the world. But Android is so much more than phones. People use it for cars, they use it for televisions, they use it for. For smart watches and all kinds of new devices, including some smart glasses that we're working on for later this year as well. So it's really become much more than phones and it's a whole ecosystem.
- [22:30]
Emily Chang
Well, you know, it's funny, before we get started too, when we think about an operating system, how do you think about an operating system within an AI world that is. We're still kind of figuring it out, right? We're all finding our way here.
- [22:40]
Sameer Samat
Well, it's changing a lot. Things are changing all around us. And I think the way we think about this moment is we're moving from an operating system to what I call an intelligent system, one that is able to be more predictive and more helpful in the moment for you. So instead of making you the micromanager of your device, which is the way I think computing's worked for 40 years, you have the idea in your head and you use a pointing device or taps to take that idea and do all the things you need to do to get things done. In this new AI era, how can we actually make the system much smarter? So you give it your intention, your goal, and it can translate that into the action that it needs to take to help you get more done.
- [23:22]
Carol Massar
Yeah, I want to push on that a little bit because I still think when right now, when a lot of people think about AI, they equate it with LLMs, and they think about LLMs not necessarily as, you know, clogged code or helping us vibe code, but rather as glorified search engines. And that actually does search a lot better than we've grown up using. What is the value proposition for an ecosystem in the world of AI? Because you're explaining this idea of us being more productive as a result of this technology, but I don't even know what that, like, looks. Looks like. Is it predictive? Does it know what we want before we want it? Like, what is it?
- [24:01]
Emily Chang
Which just gets a little creepy, then potentially. Potentially.
- [24:05]
Sameer Samat
Let me give you one simple example that I used new release of Android with Gemini for recently on my, on my Pixel device, which is, you know, I had a list of folks that are coming to a barbecue that I'm holding, and next to each person I had, how many people are coming in their family? Are they vegetarian? Are they not vegetarian? Vegetarian. You know, the normal thing you do when you're throwing a party, you make this list.
- [24:26]
Carol Massar
But, like, where do you put that list? Does that go in Google Docs?
- [24:28]
Sameer Samat
I think I just had it in an email that I was writing to myself, you know, like we all do sometimes. And I asked Gemini, working on my Pixel device, can you take this list, analyze it, figure out how many hamburgers, how many hot dogs, how many buns, and then go to Instacart and add it all to my shopping cart and then let me check it out. And, you know, it took that. Figured out all the vegetarians, figured out all the things, figured out how many people are coming, how many kids, and it did it for me. And so that probably saved me, I don't know, six, seven minutes. You add that up multiple times a day throughout all the things that we're doing, and that's really helpful.
- [25:05]
Emily Chang
Sameer, what do you think in terms of the conversations that we're having about artificial intelligence? Because I do feel like you and I were talking about this at dinner last night. We're just scratching the surface in terms of certainly how we use it and how we need to push ourselves to better understand what this tool can do or eventually do.
- [25:21]
Sameer Samat
Well, I think the most important thing right now is for all of us that are in the industry or even around the industry, is to make sure we have on hands on experience. One of the things we tell our teams, and I tell my kids as well, is we should engage with the technology to understand how it can help you and what the limits of it are. And it's changing so quickly. What I tell folks is even if it wasn't able to help you with something this month, put a note for yourself and check back three months later because it's moving so fast.
- [25:51]
Carol Massar
What I think is important about your example is that you had the initiative to actually ask Gemini to do that. I think the challenge in this world is that a lot of people don't know that LLM like Gemini can actually do that sort of thing. So they wouldn't even know that with that example, AI could save them six or seven minutes. How do you communicate that to a population that has no idea what this technology can do, truly has no idea
- [26:23]
Sameer Samat
Well, I think that's a great question. And you know, in the beginning when these interfaces came out, you had a chat prompt and we didn't know what we could type into it. I think people do discover over time by trying things, but most importantly the software itself. This is where the operating system can be really helpful. When you talk about an intelligence system, it should be able to understand from you what your intention is, what's my goal, what am I trying to get done? I'm planning a party. Okay, well, did you know I can help you with this and to prompt you to do that and to show you how that it can assist you in that moment. And that's a different kind of user interface than what we've seen.
- [27:03]
Carol Massar
What I have noticed is with Google Search, it's actually pushing me to Gemini within web based Google Search and it's becoming very natural. So it's sort of like I'm not starting at Gemini, I'm starting at Google Search and then using it, interacting with Search like an LLM.
- [27:19]
Sameer Samat
Well, I'm glad it's helping you.
- [27:21]
Rafi Kokorin
That's great.
- [27:22]
Sameer Samat
We have so many different tools that I think are there for folks and I just want to give one small example of one called NotebookLM. And if your viewers haven't checked out NotebookLM, people love this. Yes. I mean, NotebookLM is one of my favorites. And on the Android app, For example, for NotebookLM, my son who just finished finals, he was like, dad, can you help me study for the science final? And I said, sure. Overly confident as I am about this. And then he gave me the material and I looked at it and I said, I haven't reviewed this in years, you know, but tonight I have to do a study session with him. So I put it all in Notebook LM and it gave me an audio podcast that I listened to on the way home. And when I got home, I looked like super dad, you know, because I could answer these questions and go back. This is where it starts to become helpful. And I think it's all about in the purpose that the way in which we use this technology in a purposeful, intentful way to help make our lives better. And that's what we're trying to do.
- [28:21]
Emily Chang
So let's go there because last month when you guys announced a bunch of upcoming features for your Android 17 operating system, you made some comment about there is a great concern about AI for AI sake. And we want to be very purposeful.
- [28:34]
Brad Stone
Yeah.
- [28:34]
Emily Chang
What does that mean?
- [28:35]
Sameer Samat
Well, I mean, I think if you, if you look at any, just Go talk to people. People. The word AI has become pretty overloaded and I think people are. They have mixed feelings about it, let's just put it that way. I think what they really want is to not hear about the technology. What they really want is to hear about how is this going to help me. I gave the Notebook LM example, but, you know, there, there's so many more that when you, when you talk about how this can help you, it changes the conversation. I'll give you one of my favorites from Android. Android has a feature called Circle to Search. And Circle to Search is really simple. You hold down the home button and then you see a flash and at that point you can circle anything on your screen. Let's say you have a celebrity on your screen wearing a great outfit, circle it and say, shop the look and it brings. Google will go take what they're wearing and figure out what the jacket is, what the tie is, what all the different pieces, and bring back each of those to you so you can figure out where to buy them. And if they're right, if they're right for you. There's a ton of AI behind the scenes there. That's not the important thing. The important thing is that it's super helpful, packaged in a way that's intentful, purposeful for the user to help them get something done that they couldn't do before.
- [29:51]
Emily Chang
Samir, where do you think AI impacts our world the most? Is it in our personal lives? Is it in our work lives? Is it everything we keep talking about, what it's going to mean for our health care and medical world? Like, where do you see it impacting our world the most, or will it be everything?
- [30:07]
Sameer Samat
Well, I think there's a number of places that it's already impacting our world. But I think, you know, if you, if you take the discipline of software engineering, for example, that's going through a lot of change, I think exciting change, but also there are people who are concerned changes, you know, with that as well. I think in the end it was. Will be very productive. We're going through that same change at Google as well. But I think if you look at every industry, there are amazing applications. If you look at biotech, there will be amazing applications. If we look at, as you said, healthcare, you know, there will be amazing applications. I'm wearing my new Fitbit Ace, which
- [30:40]
Carol Massar
is, I spy three different tracking things.
- [30:42]
Sameer Samat
I'm a wearable guy. I'm a wearable guy. But I think the most exciting part
- [30:46]
Carol Massar
about wearables, that's the new screen list. Google device from Fitbit.
- [30:51]
Sameer Samat
Yeah, And I love it. And the most exciting part for me is, you know, we've had wearables, as you can see, I've got a bunch of them and I've been involved in the space for a long time. They're collecting health data, but it's what you do with the data that's most important because, you know, if you're looking at your sleep score, I mean, I kind of know when I had a bad night of sleep, you know. So the question is, what are the patterns, what are the trends? What are the insights that can really help with behavior change? I think that is where AI on the device can really help us with that.
- [31:20]
Carol Massar
Yeah. If you're listening on radio, Samir's got a Fitbit on one wrist. It looks like an Android watch.
- [31:25]
Sameer Samat
Have a Pixel watch, an aura ring.
- [31:28]
Carol Massar
He's got to check out what the copy.
- [31:29]
Sameer Samat
Do you have any others to recommend?
- [31:30]
Brad Stone
All yours.
- [31:31]
Carol Massar
So I want to go back to this whole idea of the ecosystem and how it relates to AI and Gemini and the stickiness of it, because I think that's a, a part of the conversation that really has, has just recently occurred to me and I'm wondering what advantage you think Google has having Gemini as its own AI operating system along with Android and not working seamlessly across whether we're talking about your Fitbit, whether you're talking about an Android phone, whether talking about a pixel watch versus sort of third party LLMs like, you know, Claude or ChatGPT.
- [32:09]
Sameer Samat
I want to say a couple things about that. First, you know, Android is an open platform and so one of the things that's a central tenant of Android is choice. So Android is the only mobile operating system where you can choose your personal assistant, you can choose the agent that's important to you. So if you want Gemini, you can use Gemini. If you want Claude or something else, you can choose that.
- [32:28]
Carol Massar
And those will work equally well.
- [32:29]
Sameer Samat
Yeah, the idea with Android is that open and so you should be able to plug in what's important to you. That's a fundamentally important part of Android and I think it's an advantage in this world where things are moving fast. From a Google perspective, of course, Google competes with some of those companies and I think Google has a unique position in that it has a full stack of innovation that it's worked on over a decade, from silicon, unique silicon in the data center, foundational models, all the way through to the operating system. And we want to connect those things in ways that are powerful and that help consumers live better lives. That's what we're doing. In fact, recently we announced something called Gemini Intelligence. Gemini Intelligence is the best Gemini experience available on the most premium Android devices. So take a Samsung device or Pixel device and that's really where you can experience the best of that entire stack.
- [33:21]
Emily Chang
Do you think being open source and being able to let users choose and select what their agent will be will give you guys longer term advantage? Because I do think there's folks say that at some point there's going to be some shakeout because we're not going to need necessarily every big LLM. Like at some point people are going to financially. We heard it from the Cerebras CEO last night that people are going to select kind of what they need and
- [33:45]
Sameer Samat
what I think that competition is good and I think that it's led to a ton of innovation. Look at all the change we're seeing that's fueled by everyone competing, which is great from an Android perspective. The thing about Android being open source and being an open ecosystem, it means that we work with many, many different partners we work with, for example, of course Google builds its own hardware with Pixel devices, but we also work with Samsung and Motorola and many other companies. And what that usually leads to in times of a very fast paced change, Android does better because that open nature you have innovation coming from everyone. And so you got foldable phones, you've got different types of LLMs, you've got different types of screen technology and all of that is great for the consumer and usually pushes the ecosystem.
- [34:32]
Emily Chang
But it also, so yes it's an
- [34:33]
Carol Massar
advantage, but it also sounds to me like it's a risk and it's a branding risk because the experience that someone might get on a non premium smartphone or a non premium device that uses Android might be completely different than the experience that they're getting from one of those high end Pixel devices that you talked about. So how do you control for that and how do you sort of protect the brand in an open source world?
- [34:53]
Sameer Samat
That's a great question. And what we do as Google, our role in this from an Android perspective is to do a couple of things. First is to make sure that the experience has a certain amount of compatibility. Meaning if you get the Google Play store, for example, or any store of your choice and you download apps, they should work. They should work really well, right? So that's a baseline set of compatibility, including the new LLM apps that you want to get. That's really important that we create that baseline of compatibility. But it also means allowing manufacturers to bring the latest and greatest technology. You know, if we controlled everything on our end, you wouldn't have foldable phones, you wouldn't have flip folds or open folds. And that's pushed the industry forward. And so that is the dance. It's Android being open. You want to create a great experience. You also want to let innovation thrive because that pushes the whole industry forward.
- [35:48]
Emily Chang
Sameer, you know, we've just got about a minute or so left here and I look at your background. Bachelor of Computer Science from UC San Diego. You completed a program for management development at Harvard Business School. What's your view on AI in education and maybe how education has to evolve?
- [36:01]
Sameer Samat
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think that AI can play a huge role for the positive in education if we, if we embrace it and use it correctly. Obviously there's a lot of ways and a lot of concerns about misuse of AI in education. I think that my experience is that there is not enough access to high quality education around the world. And if you think about, for example, learning English, that's not only a skill that is important. If you want to be bilingual in many countries, it improves your economic standing in many places if you have, if you're multilingual or you, or in particular, if you have learned English now, how can we get English language learning, for example, to as many people in the world as possible? And there are companies like Open Education and Open English that are doing exactly, exactly that using AI technology. That's awesome. That provides wider access and I think we're going to see a number of things like that which help level the playing field.
- [36:57]
Emily Chang
Samir, thank you so much. Give us so much time. We really appreciate it. Samir Sama, president of the Android Ecosystem, joining us here at Bloomberg Technology.
- [37:06]
Carol Massar
I love the three different pieces of wearable technology.
- [37:08]
Emily Chang
It's pretty impressive.
- [37:10]
Carol Massar
Are you getting consistent scores, Samir?
- [37:12]
Rafi Kokorin
No,
- [37:15]
Sameer Samat
I have to say, like the, the whoop is the. Excuse me. The, the URA is the hardest on me and, but I do, I really love the new health coach with Google Health. I have like many of us, I'm sure we all have our 48. We all have our ailments. I have a lower back.
- [37:34]
Carol Massar
Yeah.
- [37:34]
Sameer Samat
It's not great. I told it that I gave it my MRI report and it is totally, it is totally tailored my workout.
- [37:41]
Emily Chang
Yeah.
- [37:42]
Sameer Samat
To prevent injury and like that's been awesome.
- [37:45]
Emily Chang
Interesting stuff. Love it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate Samir Smart joining us.
- [37:50]
Carol Massar
Stay with us. More from Bloomberg businessweek Daily. Coming up after this,
- [37:58]
Narrator/Advertiser
you're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
- [38:13]
Carol Massar
Well, let's continue talking AI and specifically talk about mythos. It's the AI model from anthropic that has central banks, financial institutions, governments around the world freaked out. It's aimed at finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Anthropic has said it was too dangerous to make available to the general public. Actually, the co founder and president of Anthropic, Daniela Amade, was on stage here earlier talking, talking about the model. If you missed any of that, you can check out that interview@bloomberg.com and on the terminal.
- [38:37]
Emily Chang
Yeah, and some are also seeing opportunity. We should point out the technology organization Mozilla, it is known for Firefox actually used Mythos to find and fix more than 271 vulnerabilities identified in a recent version of Firefox. We want to get into that and so much more. Joining us from the Bloomberg Tech Summit, excuse me, in San Francisco's Rafi Kurkori. He is the Chief Technology officer of Mozilla. Welcome, welcome. Nice.
- [39:01]
Carol Massar
Thank you for having me.
- [39:03]
Emily Chang
You know, as we mentioned, people know Mozilla as really the organization behind Firefox. What are the vulnerabilities though that Mythos actually identified?
- [39:11]
Rafi Kokorin
Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of them. A lot of them had to do with being able to break out of the browser self and actually execute code on your machine. So like actually having JavaScript or HTML come in and like just load it from a web page and instruct the browser again, go do other things. So Mythos have been very helpful for us to actually find some of these really long standing old bugs and actually help us shut them down.
- [39:32]
Carol Massar
But what I noticed in the, in the blog post that, that your team wrote about this was that quote, they wrote, quote, we haven't, we also haven't seen any bugs that couldn't have been found by an elite human researcher. So was it as, is it as powerful as everybody says it is if, if a, if an actual human being could have identified these things?
- [39:53]
Rafi Kokorin
Yeah, no, I mean, there's just a question of just like how many elite human researchers are there in the grand scheme of things? So like, yeah, these models are pretty powerful and they're allowing us to do what like thousands of these researchers could do instead of just like six of them.
- [40:05]
Carol Massar
So would you have been able to identify these with your own team.
- [40:10]
Rafi Kokorin
We have a really good team, I think, in the fullness of time.
- [40:13]
Sameer Samat
Yes.
- [40:13]
Rafi Kokorin
But, like, allowing us to, like, rapidly accelerate and just closed out a bunch of stuff that we didn't even know about.
- [40:18]
Carol Massar
So should we be freaked out about this tech?
- [40:20]
Rafi Kokorin
Yes, I actually think we should be. I think we can, like, we'll be getting to a world like, once everything settles down where things could actually be more secure. But, like, we're living in this, like,
- [40:28]
Carol Massar
intermediary zone is the reason why we should be scared. Because if Mythos is in the wrong hands, they could go to, you know, your bank and say, okay, identify the vulnerabilities in, you know, Rafi's account, and then they get access to your, the
- [40:42]
Rafi Kokorin
banks, the water company, the power company, like, all the critical infrastructure of the world. Like, I actually have faith that the Internet folks will figure this out. Like, we're used to patching things and deploying at scale. Like heartbleed when SSL had problems.
- [40:54]
Carol Massar
Yeah.
- [40:54]
Rafi Kokorin
But I don't think my bank knows how to do it. Like you said, I don't think my power company knows how to do it. Those are like the other pieces of critical infrastructure that I'm really worried about.
- [41:02]
Carol Massar
I mean, you're cto, you should tell
- [41:03]
Emily Chang
them, okay, so there are things that are happening. Why isn't it happening more? Or is it and where they're being caught or what? Like, give us an idea.
- [41:12]
Rafi Kokorin
Yeah, no, I think we need to have actually a real large scale, like Y2K, like, effort to actually start closing a bunch of these critical vulnerabilities. And, you know, many kudos to what Anthropic is doing, but we need to give access to more people. Like, we need to get access to all the open source providers, we need to get access to all the database providers, and then we need to fund them to actually start doing the work. So not only do you need to clean up the bugs up, but then we also need to start thinking about mitigation. Like, this is actually a large scale. Think about how much work we did for Y2K, right? Boards got involved, governments got insurance got involved. We haven't kicked all those in yet.
- [41:45]
Emily Chang
Why aren't we doing that yet? Because this is moving so fast.
- [41:48]
Katie Haun
Is it just.
- [41:49]
Emily Chang
Is that it?
- [41:49]
Rafi Kokorin
That's exactly the problem. I think this is just moving so fast. Like, Mythos was only really given to us. And like in the. In the winter time, it's only been a couple of months. But the real question is that open Models are catching up. So, like, I think it's only six to nine to 12 months when all the open models can start doing what Mythos are doing. So we only actually have a small window time.
- [42:09]
Carol Massar
So then how do we get to a point where, you know, you're sitting here with us a year from now, Mythos is going to be old news.
- [42:17]
Sameer Samat
Yep.
- [42:17]
Carol Massar
There's going to be some sort of next model that is just that much better. How do you. How are you going to be sure that it's a company that's, you know, quote unquote, responsibility, responsible behind it, like many would say anthropic? Is being with this rollout maybe too responsible in your view? But how do you make sure that it's not a bad actor who has this?
- [42:37]
Rafi Kokorin
Yeah, no, I mean, I think this is actually where some government intervention might not be a bad thing, like actually making sure that we put the right investment into actually getting these things shown deployed.
- [42:46]
Sameer Samat
Exactly.
- [42:47]
Carol Massar
Have you been to the post office?
- [42:48]
Rafi Kokorin
Yeah, I know, 100%. Like, I mean, we. But we do need to do all this work across all the efforts we need to secure that post office, too.
- [42:56]
Carol Massar
I don't disagree with you, but I think there are many people out there who say this could be something that maybe the free market would solve more efficiently than the government bureaucracy. Experience in government, sort of.
- [43:08]
Rafi Kokorin
So no 100%. I mean, politics you've experienced. I think the real problem is that public sector infrastructure is not treated in the same way. And so, like, we really need to figure out how to do the real investment there that I don't think is purely. Just maybe a public private partnership solves that, but I don't think that's purely a market problem.
- [43:23]
Emily Chang
Rafi, you were the first CTO of the dnc, the Democratic National Committee. Politics. Today we see the impact social media, some good, some bad.
- [43:34]
Brad Stone
Sure.
- [43:35]
Emily Chang
On politics.
- [43:36]
Narrator/Advertiser
What about.
- [43:36]
Emily Chang
I know.
- [43:37]
Rafi Kokorin
I mean, like, I think about this a lot. Like, we're living in this world where we're like, owners, not renters. And all this technology, like, this technology. Just think about your search experience. It used to be 10 blue links on Google, and now it's one result when I ask a chatbot. And it's a right result for somebody. Like, is it a right result for me? So I really worry about this world where, like, living in someone else's intelligence all the time, what does that actually do? And how we think, how we decide, how we buy all those kind of things.
- [44:03]
Emily Chang
Can we actually get ahead of that and be better with it?
- [44:07]
Rafi Kokorin
I Mean, this is where I really think we need to, to figure out how to do open deployments and open governance. Like right now the incentive models are just such that like there was a whole study based out of I think University of Maryland where they just asked a bunch of these chatbots to help you buy something and they're vastly weighted toward sponsored and promoted goods. So like how do we make sure that they're really on my side? I need to be able to go into it, understand it, tweak it, work with it, as opposed to just being delivered it. So we need to start working on those kind of questions is now you,
- [44:35]
Carol Massar
you were talking a little bit about your family earlier and I'm just wondering how, how you as a CTO and somebody who understands this technology and the potential downfall and pitfalls of it, rather you sort of have that diet, that information technology diet.
- [44:51]
Rafi Kokorin
I mean, can I tell you the pros and cons?
- [44:52]
Sameer Samat
Yes.
- [44:53]
Rafi Kokorin
My 10 year old is vibe coding video games. Like they're actually unbelievable cute and stinky productions. They're like, it's like the best thing ever. And so it's an expression of creativity. My 13 year old, I got a phone call from a teacher saying I think you catchy people cheat on an essay. So like we do need to figure out like how we actually treat people. How do we do teach critical thinking? Like that's the thing that's still missing and that's the thing I think we need to really home in on. It's less about the tools about that.
- [45:20]
Carol Massar
So how do you do it though?
- [45:21]
Rafi Kokorin
I think it's asking real questions. I think it's having lots of conversations. You know, the Pope is an encyclical talk called it Fasting from AI.
- [45:28]
Sameer Samat
Yeah.
- [45:28]
Rafi Kokorin
So like we just need to figure out a way like we need to teach this new tech, but we also need to just monitor and help them like do productive struggle.
- [45:36]
Emily Chang
We're being told we have one more question with you and it's Twitter or it's Uber. So go. Tim's got to ask.
- [45:42]
Carol Massar
Yeah, I mean you were, you were Uber's advanced technology department. This was like the precursor to self driving cars. It was. This department was killed a few years ago. The promise was that you would have driverless cars at Uber. The technology as it is today, I mean you walk outside of here, there are waymos going everywhere. Not really in New York City at this point. Where are we when it comes to just getting into a car and it taking us where we need to go and there's no Steering, I mean it
- [46:09]
Rafi Kokorin
turns out to be a really hard problem. This is one of the things we learned, right? It turns out to be a really hard problem to do. Generalized self driving. Like to be able to drive anywhere under any condition, under any situation. Like a city by city basis seems to be working out like waymos are pretty good. You know I recently crashed my Tesla under full self driving.
- [46:27]
Carol Massar
You did?
- [46:27]
Rafi Kokorin
I did. So like the Tesla's clearly have problems. We slammed into the wall at like 30 miles an hour.
- [46:32]
Emily Chang
Oh my God.
- [46:33]
Rafi Kokorin
And so like we. There are clearly still problems with all this technology.
- [46:36]
Carol Massar
But that doesn't sound like full self driving.
- [46:38]
Rafi Kokorin
It doesn't sound like full self driving. I totally think that the Tesla technology is not quite ready yet. Whereas Waymo technology designed to literally not have a person in the wheel, like the whole human in the loop version of self driving. I think it's not the right path that we should be going on and we should be thinking about just like actually tackling the real problem head on.
- [46:54]
Emily Chang
20 seconds left. What's the question we should all be asking ourselves in this environment today?
- [46:58]
Rafi Kokorin
Yeah, I mean the question is like how do we make sure all these technologies are deploying are actually on our side, not on someone else's side? Like I want to live in a world of 7 billion AGIs, not 7 AGIs. How do we get there?
- [47:08]
Emily Chang
Really interesting, interesting. Ravi, thank you so much.
- [47:10]
Rafi Kokorin
This is a lot of fun.
- [47:11]
Emily Chang
Thank you. Fun for us to Robby Picorin. He's Chief Technology officer at Mozilla.
- [47:16]
Carol Massar
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- [49:10]
Emily Chang
Carol, Massachusetts Den of Life here at Bloomberg Technology out here in San Francisco getting ready to wrap up, but we have one more important conversation to bring to you.
- [49:18]
Carol Massar
Yeah. Very excited to have Katie Hahn with us. You know her because she's a former federal prosecutor. She was the first female general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. She made her name investigation investigating digital assets before investing in crypto startups. She's raised $1 billion for new new venture funds. She's also getting ready to join Bloomberg's Emily Chang up on the main stage to talk about where she's looking when it comes to new opportunities in tech. And she's joining us on Bloomberg businessweek daily.
- [49:44]
Emily Chang
We're eager to pick her brain. Katie Hahn is founder and CEO at Bond Ventures. Welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.
- [49:50]
Katie Haun
Welcome to California.
- [49:51]
Emily Chang
Thank you. We love California. What do you when you look at the world broadly, we're having so many conversations about I we're going to talk crypto and some other things. But where do you think about the best opportunities and where you might want to commit invest?
- [50:05]
Katie Haun
Yeah. Well, I think how we think about it is we've raised $1 billion in new funds and the world looks really different than four years ago when we raised our first fund. And it even looks different than 12 months ago. And what we're doing and where we're excited to invest, where we're seeing a lot of opportunities is what I'm calling the new economy. It's founders that are building the future of finance, for example. And obviously digital assets are a part of that. But we're seeing kind of three structural shifts right now that we're keeping a close eye on. The first structural shift we're seeing is what I'll call the new plumbing or the new financial infrastructure. This is financial infrastructure that's built for a global world from day one. It's built for a 24, 7 and it's built for a digital world. That's the first structural shift. The second structural shift is kind of new asset classes entirely and new market. And it started as stablecoins, a new digital form of a dollar, for example. But quickly we're seeing tokenization of stocks, of bonds and of other funds. And so with those new kind of asset classes also you can have new markets, things like prediction markets, which we can talk about, things like perpetual market that's getting a lot of attention ahead of the space X ipo. And then the third structural shift we're seeing and this is really exciting and probably the furthest away is what I'm calling the future of agentic finance. And it is quite simply what does the world look like when you're building financial services and products for the end user who is not a human, but the end user who is an agent or a computer. And that's just kind of a mind blowing world. What does that look like? They don't stop working, by the way. They're 24 7, so it's got to be always on.
- [51:38]
Carol Massar
Is crypto still though part of the DNA of the fund?
- [51:41]
Katie Haun
Absolutely. You know, we've always said we're, we're looking to back founders who are building the future of finance. And cryptographic, cryptographic primitives and digital assets are still a huge piece of that. I mean stablecoins. A lot of people don't even think of stablecoins as is crypto, but I think they very much are. So is the tokenization of assets. Like I said, prediction markets. But, but there's a lot of synergies.
- [52:05]
Carol Massar
But you've had a really strong track record with stablecoin companies. I mean we can just go through some of these. Bridge stripe, acquired for $1.1 billion. That was a home run for you guys. You also invested in the stablecoin company BVNK, sold a MasterCard for about $1.8 billion. So you know what you're talking about when it comes to stablecoins. But is that era like are the opportunities for early stage venture capitalists or are we past that? Because I don't think.
- [52:32]
Katie Haun
I mean it all depends on how you define early stage. But I think we're still in the early innings. You know, actually I've been talking about stablecoins since 2017. I mean, I debated Paul Krugman about the promise of stablecoins in 2018 and he said it was a flash in the pan. And obviously I think, you know, we're seeing that it's not, I mean, MasterCard the transaction you just mentioned, it was the third largest acquisition in history that company's ever done.
- [52:54]
Carol Massar
Stablecoin is not a flash in the pan. I think that's fair to say. Bitcoin right now is under serious pressure moment. Yeah, we're, you know, we're basically at levels not seen since 2024. Really.
- [53:09]
Katie Haun
Well, we saw them in February.
- [53:10]
Carol Massar
We did. That's what I mean, like so February. So like we're down to those levels.
- [53:13]
Katie Haun
Right, right.
- [53:14]
Carol Massar
But my point is that they haven't, it hasn't participated in the risk on rally that we've seen in the NASDAQ. 100 is up more than 30% just since the end of March. Michael Saylor's strategy is selling just a little bit of bitcoin. What's going on right now? I log in earlier this week and it seems like people are losing faith.
- [53:32]
Katie Haun
Yeah, I don't think so. I think, look, I, I remember where I was the day bitcoin first hit $1,000. I remember I was the first day it hit $10,000. And I remember where I was the day it first hit $100,000. And I wonder where will I be when it first hit $200,000? I think it's just a question of time horizon. And of course we're not a hedge fund. We're not trading in and out of, of these assets. We are a long term venture investor. And, and you know, we've made bets in our, in our first fund in bitcoin, for example, and those have done very well for us. So I'm still a believer in the long term store of value story, that bitcoin, it clearly has product market fit. Another thing I debated Paul Krugman on years ago when it was in the billions of dollars is an asset class class, and now today that number is in the trillions. And again to your point, it does vary dramatically. But if you would have told me a few years back a bitcoin has crashed or have a moment at 65,000 or 64, 63,000, I would have told you. Oh my gosh. Really incredible. So it's all about time horizons and that's why we're taking a long term patient view.
- [54:32]
Emily Chang
Kenny is sucking some of the interest out of the retail investors or retail trade and they're kind of shifting their, their attention.
- [54:40]
Katie Haun
Well, you know, one of the interesting things about the digital asset space that I've been really, really pleased to see is the institutional story. And I think that's the quiet story and that's what's really changed. So where you have retail focused is not necessarily always where you have institutions focused. And it used to be the case that retail made up 90% of kind of the digital asset economy, 10% institutions. Now that number has shifted.
- [55:03]
Emily Chang
It's.
- [55:04]
Katie Haun
It's kind of closer to 20, even 30% institutional. And I think I would actually say that's why we're seeing the volatility lesson. I know it doesn't feel like it from what you're seeing, it was more tradition, like. That's right. It used to be much more retail heavy. And still retail is a very important component of the digital asset story. But it's not the only component. And I think what we're seeing is we're seeing a lot of institutional participation. You're seeing BlackRock. I mean, you mentioned Michael Saylor, but the, the reality is that, you know, it was a very de minimis amount that he sold and it's all about the net accumulation.
- [55:33]
Carol Massar
Yeah. I think for some people it was symbolic because he's such a maximalist.
- [55:36]
Katie Haun
Absolutely, absolutely.
- [55:38]
Carol Massar
I want to talk some personal investments versus investments in the fund. I mean, we go through the list of like some of the hottest companies. You've invested in them personally. Cerebris, Anthropic and Coinbase, Databricks, Cognition, Figma, Grok, Nico, OpenAI, Space X, the list goes on. How do you separate sort of your interests as a, as a, as an investor personally versus the fund? Because I'm sure there are a lot of people who invested in your fund who'd say, wait, I would love to have investments on that list.
- [56:08]
Katie Haun
And I think many of them do have investments on that list. The thing that you mentioned is very easy actually, if you're in the future of finance, if you're in digital assets, the new economy, very clearly it goes in the fund and the fund has the first opportunity. But if you're talking about, you mentioned Necco, you mentioned Edison, these are great examples. These are bio companies, these are longevity companies. And they're really harnessing the power of AI. I mean, if you take a company like Edison, it's doing drug discovery and shrinking the discovery of medicines using AI. That's clearly not in our mandate as a fund of the future of finance. But I'm really lucky being where I am and being in these circles to meet these incredible founders. Necco, another one. You know, it's coming to the US People who are in London have obviously heard of Necco. That's Daniel Ek, one of his, one of his new, new ventures Founder Spotify. Founder of Spotify. It's really exciting what they're building, what he and Shack are building with Necco. And there's a long waiting list in London, but it's coming to New York, actually to your neck of the woods later this year. And it's going to be under $500. And you're really talking about preventative medicine that is accessible and that $500 is the starting point. Obviously, I think that company, you can talk to them, helps to bring that price down over time. We are talking about really harnessing the power of technology for preventative medicine for everybody, not just for a few people. And I think that's really powerful and it's not in our fun mandate, but I'm not going to stick my head in the sand.
- [57:29]
Emily Chang
Right.
- [57:30]
Katie Haun
And not participate in those. And it's really great for our founders to be in touch with founders of the ventures portfolio because there's actually, actually a lot of synergies between some of these technologies.
- [57:39]
Emily Chang
Well, I love that you went there because when it comes to, I mean, there's a lot of obvious things that we think it's going to do, but I think about the things that you guys might be investing, right. That maybe isn't in the headlines or the main stories. Where do you think investors need to be thinking about.
- [57:53]
Katie Haun
Yeah.
- [57:54]
Emily Chang
How this ultimately impacts our world.
- [57:55]
Katie Haun
Well, look, there's two areas that our fund is really excited about. You asked is it sucking all the air out of digital assets? And I would say no. There's so much synergy between the two frontier technologies. If you think about like cryptographic primitives and you think about AI. One of the things I think about is agent commerce, Right. And we have companies like Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase looking at agent commerce platforms. And if you think about, I think we can all agree, can't we, that agents are going to be doing more than humans are going to be doing with the, with, with these tools. Right. Who knows about the pace of that? Who knows how much work they'll take from humans? But certainly I think we can all agree that computers are going to increasingly take on more and more of our work and, and they're going to need to pay for things if they're going to be effective. They're going to need to transact and they're going to need to operate 24 7. And we don't think they're going to use the old payment to do that.
- [58:46]
Emily Chang
Right.
- [58:46]
Katie Haun
They're going to have to be able to subscribe to services. Right. And what are they going to use? We think they will use technologies like stablecoins. But another really important thing I'm really excited about forward provenance, identity, privacy, reputation. Those are so important in the age of AI. And these are things that people in cryptography have been working on for.
- [59:06]
Carol Massar
You have agents acting on your behalf right now?
- [59:07]
Katie Haun
Yeah, we do at the fund. Okay, well, I'm not going to give away all of our secret sauce here to folks who are looking, but we're experimenting. I think like many, you know, I still think we're at a point where we still need a lot of human oversight. And particularly I do have people who tell me, well, agents can take and they're better pickers than humans. I don't believe that for a second right now. I still think there's a really important role for humans to play, especially when you're judging founders and figuring out what to invest in.
- [59:34]
Carol Massar
Well, Samir Samad over at Android Ecosystem gave us a great example of how he was, you know, having an agent help him get food for an instacart for a barbecue that he was having.
- [59:43]
Katie Haun
Yeah, sure.
- [59:44]
Carol Massar
Yeah.
- [59:44]
Katie Haun
You want an example? I mean, we're definitely using it to help us make sure our pipeline is strong. Are we seeing everything? Definitely. My investment team is using cloud and using Kodaks and using other technologies to make sure we're scanning the full surface. Because of course, where we're investing is not just here in Silicon Valley, it's global.
- [60:02]
Emily Chang
Katie, what you're seeing, and maybe I think we've probably got a wrap up soon, but in terms of dislocation to the economy. Jobs.
- [60:08]
Katie Haun
Yeah.
- [60:08]
Emily Chang
Is it just another technology where they. There's going to have to be a little adjustment period or is it something more significant, what you're saying?
- [60:15]
Katie Haun
Look, it is transformational technology. I think what we could debate is the timeline and I think that's really unknown. I think there are a lot of people that are prognosticating that that's going to happen this year. I think that's really unknown as to how long that's going to take. And I still think there's a really important role for humans to play here. But I do think it is something serious to pay attention to just socially and economically. And one of the things I think back to is, you know, the computer era, obviously that replaced a lot of jobs, but it also created a lot of jobs. So I think there's truth on both sides and I think it's something everyone, all of us need to pay close attention to.
- [60:51]
Emily Chang
Great stuff. Stay in touch. Thank you so much as you. I love also to going into the medicine and longevity because I think these are things areas that could be impacted greatly. Katie thank you.
- [61:01]
Katie Haun
Thank you for having me.
- [61:02]
Emily Chang
Have fun on the the stage.
- [61:04]
Katie Haun
Take care.
- [61:05]
Emily Chang
You too.
- [61:05]
Carol Massar
Katie Hahn, Founder and CEO over at Hahn Ventures.
- [61:07]
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