Loading summary
Transcript113 lines
- [00:01]
Deloitte Representative
The right technology can strengthen human judgment. That's why Deloitte brings together AI and data analytics with multidisciplinary teams who can help you connect the dots across your enterprise from risk to operations to customer needs. So opportunities don't slip by and surprises don't spread. Because the smarter your systems, the sharper your instincts. That's how technology makes people better at what they do best. Deloitte together makes progress. Learn more@deloitte.com TogetherMakesProgress so there's a lot
- [00:35]
Bloomberg Tech Host
of noise about AI. But time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off. Deep in the work that moves the business. Business let's create smarter business IBM Sending
- [01:04]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
a file is easy. Making sure your clients understand the file
- [01:08]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
is the hard part.
- [01:09]
Deloitte Representative
But with PDF spaces in Adobe Acrobat,
- [01:12]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
you can give your clients the full picture with custom intros, audio summaries and
- [01:17]
Deloitte Representative
a helpful AI assistant to your docs. So if you want to stop the endless follow ups, do that with Acrobat. Need to make your docs crystal clear.
- [01:26]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
Do that with Acrobat.
- [01:27]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
Want to make sure your clients get everything they need to hear?
- [01:30]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
Do that with Acrobat.
- [01:32]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
Learn more at adobe.com/do that with Acrobat.
- [01:38]
Deloitte Representative
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
- [01:57]
Bloomberg Tech Host
This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Cerebras is now seeking to raise as much as $4.8 billion in its IP upsizing, a listing that could be the biggest so far this year.
- [02:08]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Plus we speak with the Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire about the company posts in fourth quarter revenue beat and shares its vision of an agent led future.
- [02:16]
Bloomberg Tech Host
And Google researchers say they have uncovered the first ever zero day attack built by artificial intelligence. We'll have the details.
- [02:24]
Bloomberg Reporter Margaret Murphy
We will.
- [02:24]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
But first we check in on these markets that just relentlessly push higher. We're currently seeing the NASDAQ 100 up a tenth of a percent. We are on track for another record on the NASDAQ 100 pounded. We're seeing some tentative moves in the broader benchmarks. Look, we are worried about what's happening, the straight to world moves. We're worried about whether conflict continues between Iran and the United States. We worry about peace talks. But more broadly, Tech wants to go higher and it is fueled to a potential seven weeks of gains. Ed. That'll be the longest winning streak in the NASDAQ 100 since October 2024.
- [02:57]
Bloomberg Tech Host
The exuberance of AI is also hitting the IPO market. Chip maker and datacenter operator Cerebras is boosting the number of shares it plans to sell and their price. Now it's to raise as much as $4.8 billion, 1/3 more than it previously aimed for. Bloomberg reporter Rebecca Torrance joins us. We got confirmation now what Bloomberg had already been reporting. So it's funny thing to say the biggest IPO potentially so far this year, just like with Space X waiting in the wings later in the year. But there's a lot of interest here. Big oversubscription, massive over subscription.
- [03:31]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
And we reported on Friday that the IPO was more than 20 times oversubscribed and expected this price range bump coming. The previous price range 115 to $125 per share and now it's up to 150 to $160 per share at the top end. That will value cerebrus at over $34 billion. That is making it the biggest IPO so far this year by a long shot and a clear demonstration of the insatiable demand for AI, compute and infrastructure
- [04:01]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
and insatiable demand for stocks that related to them in some way. I mean it's got to be music to the bankers is the CEOs is when we have record high after record high, a lot of it being galvanized by the trade more broadly. Are there any nerves coming through from retail investors, institutional investors as to the issues that Cerebras has to make sure that market share can be a win and that supply chains aren't an issue?
- [04:24]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
I would say less nerves than just pure unfettered excitement. I mean there has been so much buildup in the IPO market, so much demand for new listings over the past few years. You know, we really haven't seen that many. And so far this year, Cerebras has clinched partnerships with Amazon and OpenAI sort of prove out that, you know, the demand is real and it's going to translate into real capital. And that is being reflected in the demand that we're seeing for its ipo.
- [04:48]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Rebecca, just quickly run us through the mechanics of the week. We think this is expected to price May 13, right?
- [04:54]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
That's correct on Wednesday afternoon. And we would expect shares to begin trading on Thursday.
- [05:00]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Bloomberg's Rebecca Torrance top top reporting. Thank you very much. Let's discuss what this means for broader tech markets with Carol Schleif, chief market strategist at BMO Wealth Management. So we're in this really interesting moment, right. Caroline said it at the top six straight weeks of gains on the NASDAQ 100. I feel like the next phase is like this pre IPO anticipation, you know, Cerebras. Yes. Space X June. How does that impact a market at the index level, that anticipation?
- [05:29]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
Well, I think the anticipation does keep a lot of eyes obviously focused not just on AI but on, on the broader index. And it's interesting because on the one hand, yes, markets have gone up, but so too have earnings. We've just come through an earnings season. We're almost towards the end of it. When you've got top and bottom line growing double digits not just among tech, but that anticipation is there. We'll see if we get several trillion dollar size sized deals later this year what, what the investment appetite is and how much can be absorbed. Because unlike your former commentator, we do have some nervous clients because on the one hand they don't want to get off the bus. On the other hand they're scratching their heads about how can markets be at all time highs when you've got all these concerning short term headlines which you just mentioned.
- [06:19]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Carol, can we not have two things being correct at the same time? Yes, there are short term issues. Yes, oil is an issue and in some ways for chips, helium and other things that pass through the Strait of Hormuz are an issue. But longer term, the drive towards infrastructure is only a supply side issue rather than demand.
- [06:36]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
Yep, exactly. And that's exactly what we've been writing to our clients. I wrote a piece last Friday talking about a brave new world and just laying out the case for this next phase that we're in because the orders of magnitude that we're talking about investing in capital structure that tends to tee you up for very good performance from productivity standpoint, from gdp. And we're seeing it start to creep in the numbers because it's not like the markets are just floating up without earnings and revenue and margin support. And you're seeing very well managed tech companies that are paying a lot of attention to their margin management in the way they're managing their people and their costs and their inputs. And you're exactly right that it's capacity constraint. It's not like we're going to have dark data centers yeah. Other than the fact that if you can't get energy to turn them on.
- [07:26]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Well said. That is the bottleneck that many are focusing in on. That's why everyone's turning towards nuclear. It's why we look at Constellation Energy's earnings and we'll be diving, diving into them in but a moment. But there's this great report out of Bloomberg Intelligence at the moment air is swallowing the world. Everything else is just holding on. Is that the sense you get from clients at the moment, Carol? Because this isn't just a US trade. And boy have we seen Qualcomm, Micron, other of the chips sectors up today. And the stocks has been extraordinary. But think of the moves SK Hynix of Samsung. But still earnings potential for those companies means that even though we've seen hundreds of percentage points added in terms of their share price, the P ratios are actually coming down because people think earnings are going to rise, rise even faster.
- [08:07]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
That's exactly it. And the markets are telling you underneath the surface too that even with all of the, the issues going on in the Strait of Hormuz and the fact that the bulk of that oil goes to south Southeast Asia, those stocks are rallying anyway because they're tell this is a lot bigger. And one of the phrases we had used in last week's piece was how about, I mean it's like we're all grabbing the tiger by the tail and just hanging on for the ride. But it's got fundamental underpinnings to it and it touches so many other places and you take, you know, I spent the weekend talking to grandkids about how exciting space is and lots of things going there. There's so many things we haven't even started to explore.
- [08:50]
Bloomberg Tech Host
I'm changing my mind. I just asked Marguerite in the control rooms bring back that research. But you brought up space. So I'm going to pivot. Right. The point of that research is that the entire market in terms of profit growth is held up by a very small number of companies. Yes. They're around the world infrastructure related. Space X is trying to sell that story as well. Right. With its ipo. The vision the bankers are putting out on the roadshow is Orbital Data Center. How easy is that for you to translate to clients, Carol? Like is that believable for the biggest ipo. Of all time?
- [09:24]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
Well, the IPO aside, the whole when you take the Artemis mission and what was going on there and the fact that actually when you look at earnings it's not just a handful of companies because Revenue, we had double digit revenue growth. I pulled the numbers from Bloomberg this morning and you had double digit revenue and bottom and and earnings growth in 8 out of 11 sectors. So this is pretty broad spread and there's a lot of companies playing into it. But space, I mean clients love to talk about space. The Artemis mission got kind of shoved aside because it coincided with with increased hostility in the Middle East. So it got pulled short term. But this is definitely a market that wants to lean into that long term story and investors are all about it.
- [10:07]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Carol, earlier you talked about riding the bus and if we stick with that analogy, if you are an investor and you know that the biggest IPO of all times happening in a month's time, do you put yourself into cash or do some kind of rejiggering in order to be able to participate in that IPO?
- [10:29]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
Well, we don't necessarily go chasing down IPOs any more than I did managing money for clients in the 90s IPOs per se. But strategic rebalancing is something we do all along. And trimming some of your losers or some of the winners if you will, trimming some of the gains that you've made there to make sure that the portfolio stays balanced, intermediate, longer term is where you want to be. We've been growth biased all along. This, you know, starting but or last year we never bought into the recession fears in 22. We didn't think that tariffs were going to throw things substantially off last year, although our companies are learning to adapt. And this year too we think it makes sense to trim some of the winners. Look at other industries, look at those second and third tier knock on industries. We touched on energy, we touched on space. There'll be substantial rebuilding or reconstruction. If you think once we settle some of these, the conflicts, Russia, Ukraine, Middle east, you're talking about substantial rebuilding. You're also talking about companies rethinking supply chains and where they get done and solidifying. So you're talking about a massive infrastructure build or teeing up for that that has many years to run.
- [11:47]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Carol, I want to go to the rethinking of supply chains because for many years people have been rethinking their dependence on China. Maybe that's starts to get more clarity this week. We understand that President Trump of course is going for that meeting with President Xi over in China and he's taking a whole host of CEOs with him. Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk, of course talking of SpaceX. But a moment ago, Micron, the chip sector qualcomm but also there are some sprinkling of banks and other areas. Carol, does this meeting mean something to your clients? Briefly?
- [12:16]
Carol Schleif, Chief Market Strategist at BMO Wealth Management
We definitely think we've been watching this geopolitical political pivot and the geo economic pivot for the last year and a half or so. And it's been clear from the beginning that you've got two major players in terms of the US And China. China was the only primary country able to push back on the US against the tariffs and engage in, even if briefly in the, in the trade war. But they've got critical supply chain issues with rare earths. The US has critical supply chain issues with, with energy and materials. And so clearly they want to have a collaborative relationship where there's certain things that we want to manufacture here, things China wants control over. But business deals are what the administration is all about and hence bringing a lot of those companies with. But you've got a lot of interesting interplay to watch here and how this thing plays out.
- [13:11]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Karish Life of BMO Wealth Management thank you very much indeed for joining us today. Look, we did just talk about how earnings are the name of the game. Constellation Energy is actually down by four and a half percent. This is as they reported first quarter operating revenue that beat but they're facing pressure from nuclear refueling outages in particular. This is about execution and boy has that made a dependence on companies like this ad we think about the future of data centers and potentially with some sort of cleaner energy like nuclear.
- [13:40]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Okay, coming up on the program we're actually going to go back to earnings. We speak with Circle CEO Jeremy Allair after the stablecoin platform posted a first quarter revenue beat and announces an agent led future. This is Bloomberg Tech.
- [13:56]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Circle seeing shares up once again, 9% thereabouts on the day that says it saw a 20% revenue surge in its first quarter but net income that decline. The company is saying that its focus is moving to a future with autonomous agents that transact in stablecoins. Joining us now is Circle CEO Jeremy Allair. There's a lot to get to in your numbers and what's so interesting is the way in which you make an awful lot of your profits is largely based on government and yields of course with the money that you sit upon. Jeremy, how are you thinking about that amount that you currently earn back and how your diversity find the business?
- [14:33]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
Yeah, I mean look when, when we went public last year we talked a lot about we're building the world's largest stablecoin network. We want that network to provide the highest Utility form of digital dollar money in the world. Since then, USDC has become the leading dollar digital currency in the world. We reported in our earnings call, according to third party data in Q1 we saw almost $30 trillion of transactions on chain with USDC accounting for 80% of the stablecoin transaction volume market. And so we're, we're seeing that happen at the same time, you know, we've been investing in building out these platform pillars alongside our stablecoin business. Our payments network with CPN and ark, our new economic os, which is really designed for the future of how transactions, how financial services and broader economic activity is going to be digitally and software mediated. That's obviously, obviously a place where the emerging world of AI operating systems and agency systems are coming into play as well.
- [15:31]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
You invest today for fruits, tomorrow. When are those fruits come? Jeremy?
- [15:36]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
Well, you know we're seeing this, I mean we talked a little bit about this in, in our earnings call. We've been investing for a couple of years to build Ark. We announced this morning that we had pre sold $220 million of Ark tokens with a 16Z crypto as the leader, but also major financial companies, Apollo BlackRock, Standard Chartered Intercontinental Exchange and many others. And so we're building an infrastructure and we will begin to monetize that infrastructure. And as we shared in, in our, in our earnings call, we'll have a lot more to say about that on our next earnings call. But ARK is getting ready for liftoff and we're getting close to the main net launch and between the, the, the stake that Circle has in the ARK network, the various types of programs that we're going to be building with partners all around the world on that and then participating in validation, transaction fees and other services that we build on top of it, we think that ARK represents a tremendous opportunity. So that's a, that's a place there. And then our payments network CPM continues to grow since we last reported we saw the annualized volume go up about 75%.
- [16:50]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Jeremy, let's go back to reserve return rate. I don't think we've, we've got to an answer there. So, so essentially USDC circulation is growing strongly and that boosts your overall revenue but your profit is pressured essentially when you have declining reserve, reserve term rate, essentially the interests that you earn on the assets. Well, let me, let me just finish this one. That back the stablecoin, if that's the business model, you're at risk here when we have a lower rate environment. So what's Your plan?
- [17:20]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
Actually, we've seen the opposite. So when the yield curve started coming in in December 23rd and we saw almost all of the rate cutting cycle get undertaken, we saw rates come down over 40% during that same period. We've seen USDC in circulation grow multiple hundreds of percent. We've seen transaction volumes grow massively and, and so lower interest rates actually at the end of the day create higher velocity money, create more demand for money in the economy and we believe actually support that growth. And historically we've seen that, you know, when we think about that long term growth, when the Treasury Secretary talks about trillions of dollars of stablecoins in circulation or when, you know, new regulation like the Clarity act defines models for incentivizing stablecoin adoption based on utility. Those are, those are emblematic of the fact that utility is what is going to drive this growth. And so interest rates are a factor, but fundamentally it's utility, it's network effects, it's the number of apps, developers and others that drive it. And on that front we're clearly winning. And we're, we're showing that in the incredible traction that we're seeing in terms of the adoption of this as a transactional technology on the Internet that did
- [18:36]
Bloomberg Tech Host
get us the answer. Circle CEO Jeremy Allair. Great to have you back on the program. Thank you very much, Carrie.
- [18:41]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Yeah. It's time now for talking tech Ed. First up, Softbank is stepping up its push into AI infrastructure. Founder Masayoshi Son is in talks to unveil a major data center project in France for President Emmanuel Macron in the coming weeks. Now, according to sources, sun is considering a multibillion dollar investment and at one point floated a figure as high as $100 billion. Meanwhile, SoftBank's mobile unit is expanding into AI computing services and large scale battery production, aiming to meet growing demand for the hardware powering artificial intelligence. Plus, Ripple's prime brokerage unit has secured $200 million in new financing from Neuberger Berman to expand the margin it offers clients trading across traditional and digital financial markets. The funds will boost its capacity to finance client trades with margin loans backed by collateral. And Alphabet is planning to issue yen denominated bonds for the first time, a move that could help fund its growing investment in new guest. The company has already raised its capital spending outlook to as much as $119 billion this year, has tapped other currencies beside the US dollar as it looks to secure low cost funding.
- [19:42]
Deloitte Representative
The right technology can strengthen human judgment. That's why Deloitte brings together AI and data analytics with multidisciplinary teams. People with deep industry experience who can challenge assumptions and help you connect the dots across your enterprise. From risk signals to operational pressure points to shifting customer needs. Deloitte helps you see what's coming sooner so opportunities don't slip by and surprises don't spread. It's not just dashboards, it's real clarity in the moments your decisions are made. When models reveal patterns, people can ask better questions. When data and people are connected, leaders can move faster with confidence. And when your teams are aligned, smart choices can scale from the frontline to the C suite. Because the smarter your systems, the sharper your instincts. That's how technology makes people better at what they do best. Deloitte Together makes progress. Learn more@deloitte.com TogetherMakesProgress so there's a lot
- [20:42]
Bloomberg Tech Host
of noise about AI. But time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business.
- [21:11]
Public Investing Representative
IBM Support for the show comes from public Lately it feels like there are two types of investing platforms. Some are traditional brokerages that haven't changed much in decades, and others feel less like investing and more like a game. Public is positioned differently. It's an investing platform for people who are serious about building their wealth on public. You can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti. Retirement accounts? Yep. High yield cash? Yes again. They even have direct indexing. Public has modern design, powerful tools and customer support that actually helps. Go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market and paid for by
- [21:56]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
Public Holdings Brokerage Services by Public Investing member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services By Public Advisors SEC Registered Advisor Crypto Services By ZeroHash all investors investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com/disclosures.
- [22:13]
Bloomberg Tech Host
OpenAI will acquire consulting company tomorrow to contribute to a new private equity backed joint venture. The goal Help drive adoption of its AI software across more businesses. The new entity will be staffed with roughly 150 employees focused on deploying AI software.
- [22:30]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Now companies like OpenAI are investing heavily in AI to build boost productivity. But a new consensus suggests that the global workforce staring down some sort of displacement crisis. Joining us now for really how we are going to see AI boost productivity or not is Bloomberg Stacey Vanek Smith. He's got a great story out in BusinessWeek. And it starts with a bet between two key economists as to whether productivity is actually going to go up and to the right. Are we seeing signs that ise boosting productivity productivity not at the expense of me and labor.
- [23:03]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
We are seeing signs that ise boosting productivity, but it does seem to be coming potentially at the expense of jobs. So it is a really good news, bad news situation. I think we just got productivity numbers out for the first quarter of 2026. They came in quite high, 2.9% year over year, which was higher than people expected. So that is evidence that, that robots are, are produce, are, you know, boosting our productivity. At the same time, I think we've all been covering the job market and it's not great. So I think there's just a lot of concern, and rightly so, that that the AI is displacing jobs.
- [23:41]
Bloomberg Tech Host
It's so difficult to see clearly through the metric of productivity. Like we've been growing at 2% since 2020. Do we know for certain that there's a like tangible contribution in each of those numbers?
- [23:55]
Bloomberg Reporter Rebecca Torrance
This is a great question. It is so hard to know where the productivity is coming from. So the bet that you referred to was between two economists here in the U.S. erik Brynjolfsson at Stanford and Robert Gordon at Northwestern. And they bet on productivity growing by an average of 1.8% between 2020 and 2030. It seems like it's going to beat that, but there are a lot of questions as to why. When I was talking to Robert Gordon about why productivity had grown so much, he thought it was potentially layoffs. A lot of the layoffs that we've been seeing has have boosted productivity because it's a very simple equation. It's just the amount our economy produces divided by hours worked. So the second you take a bunch of workers out of the workforce, then that number can go up, even if it's doesn't. Even if, you know, our productivity isn't necessary, even if the productivity isn't growing as fast as we hope.
- [24:53]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Top, top analysis. Thank you very much. In the next 30 minutes or so, we are going to be keeping our eyes on the court in Oakland, where Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is set to take the stand in Elon Musk's lawsuit over the nonprofit status of Open. I remember that Musk is suing Open AI and its two founders, Sam Altman, Greg Rockman and Satya and Adela Caro. That's a it's a kind of a wow moment too.
- [25:19]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
It is whether at least a couple of hours that he'll take to the stand understanding the intricacies of which Microsoft first came in to OpenAI to back it. Remember, this is really the moment that Elon Musk takes issue with when because Open I would argue compute capacity, maybe mention that they had to take outside financing was that moment that maybe that the idea of it being a not for profit started to fall away.
- [25:41]
Bloomberg Tech Host
I would read the California brief from our Bloomberg law team where they basically point out so far there's no smoking gun email communication. It's just been about egos and personalities. Musk versus the others. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Let's look. Take a a look at today's big number and that is Alphabet or Google's current market cap 4.75 trillion. Here's the thing. It had become a dominant player in the AI space and was on the brink of overtaking a chip giant, Nvidia, potentially as the world's largest company. I say here's the problem. Actually in this Monday session, Alphabet is down almost 2% and Nvidia is up 3%. But the gap had been closing. So Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, around $5.4 trillion market cap Alphabet was heading toward the $5 trillion club. Why? Let's go to Bloomberg's Ryan Basilica, who has more. That was the story. And like, I'm not blaming you at all, Ryan, timing is a funny thing. But the point is, is that Alphabet had had a lot of momentum recently and that gap had been closing on Nvidia.
- [26:49]
Bloomberg Reporter Ryan Basilica
Absolutely. I think there is a growing apparent appreciation that when you look at any part of artificial intelligence, Alphabet is extremely dominant in that area, if not the most dominant company. So we can talk about how strong Gemini is their AI model. We can talk about how growth at Google cloud is accelerating. We can talk about how AI seems to be improving, growth trends at Google search at YouTube. We can talk about physical AI with their Waymo cell phone driving car company. We can talk about their TPU business, which is their semiconductors, which they said they might start selling around to other cloud companies. So that's a huge potential revenue boost for them. And that is an area that is really getting into Nvidia's own territory. We wrote about this about a week ago about How Nvidia might be seeing increased competition in AI chips and Alphabet is a huge part of that. And so when you add all of that together, it just seems like they are really the company of the era.
- [27:46]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
The vertical integration has been something that, the flywheel effect has come into play in earnings recently. What's amazing is even with this rocket ship of a share price move, analysts are still really positive on the stock and it's got zero sell ratings, 18 buys. I mean, could we see it start to move towards that price target of 430? What would be the catalyst?
- [28:06]
Bloomberg Reporter Ryan Basilica
Well, we've just seen a real grind higher in the, in the share price for a while now. I think the latest results really just reinforced how strong they are on all these different issues. And when I talk to portfolio managers and investors, they will say that even if we saw something like OpenAI come out with their latest model, let's say it's better than Gemini on, you know, whatever metrics you want to use, that really just speaks to increased AI adoption overall, which is probably going to end up being a tailwind for Google Cloud for the chips business. It really seems like even if one leg of this story starts to, to falter, the other ones are able to kind of pick up the slack here. So it's a very diverse sources of revenue. It's much less dependent on one major business like you might say of Nvidia.
- [28:48]
Bloomberg Tech Host
We're just showing on the screen, Ryan, that, you know, Alphabet shares over the past 12 months are up 160% year to date, 25%, 26% but beating the major indexes. You make the point through that the voice of the investor that it's completely logical for Alphabet to take that title eventually. And lots of people for that reason see it as a good stock to own.
- [29:10]
Bloomberg Reporter Ryan Basilica
Yeah, exactly. And I will say about a year ago there was a lot of skepticism about what is going to competition going to mean for Alphabet, Is it going to reduce their search market share? A lot of those fears, not only have they not really come to pass, but they've really shown, you know, acceleration in growth. They've shown strength across all, all these different markets and it really just has set up them, you know, just to be an incredibly strong stock. And even the multiple right now, it's a little bit elevated for their own history, but it's not a sort of dot com price for perfection. Everything must go right otherwise this thing is just going to collapse sort of thing. It doesn't feel like that at all. People feel very optimistic that they can keep a lot of these momentum going around Basilica.
- [29:49]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
It's great to get you on the stock that we're watching at the moment. And look, it's actually Alphabet that we tend to next in a different capacity because the worst case scenario the White House is actually warned about seems to already be a reality because Google researchers say they have uncovered the first ever zero day attack built by artificial intelligence. Joining us now with the details is Bloomberg's Margaret Murphy. Why is this so concerning?
- [30:15]
Bloomberg Reporter Margaret Murphy
Yes, so we have been on the show to talk about the kind of mythos effect and we know that the White House has been calling emergency meetings with tech and industry leaders about concerns that AI tools that we have currently may be used to build these really, you know, explosive attacks against a lot of the software we use and could have serious impacts on national security. And now Google is saying actually we think that this is already a reality. The threat that we, we thought we saw coming along is actually here. And we have identified a prominent criminal group who was working with an LLM and was able to find an exploit in a popular software tool. Luckily, Google kind of foiled it ahead of time and let the software developer know. So they've issued a patch. But it just shows that the things we've been talking about and we've been concerned about in terms of AI and security are a reality now.
- [31:14]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Zero day I think just help us out. I'm learning so much through the reporting. But the basics of what that is. Zero day vulnerability and the fact that this is an artificial intelligence linked or discovered one, please.
- [31:29]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Yes.
- [31:29]
Bloomberg Reporter Margaret Murphy
So a zero day means that it's a flaw that in a piece of software that the developer didn't know about or nobody else knew about. So once it becomes apparent, once a hacker has, you know, identified it, they have exactly zero days to fix that. So it's a, it's a big concern because then you're always, you're a step behind anyone trying to get in and exploit it to potentially get into your customer's systems. And in terms of AI being able to generate that, it's all about the speed and this race between the defenders and the attackers. So if an AI like LLM is able to scan and find these zero days, these previously unknown flaws in a lot of the software we use, it means that we're going to quickly see a lot of exploits and potentially these could be further down the line, potentially a load of hacks that otherwise, you know, would have been more trickier for these kind of criminal actors or espionage actors to have conducted.
- [32:31]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Now remind us what the spokespeople you've been talking to have said about who's to blame, which LM was behind it, and more broadly, sort of whether or not there was Mythos, because there's an argument against that.
- [32:44]
Bloomberg Reporter Margaret Murphy
Right. So Google's been very clear that it isn't. They don't believe it's Mythos. They don't believe it's Gemini, which is its own lm. However, they're keeping the name of the LM they believe was used under wraps. They're saying to protect their sources because they have kind of intelligence which suggests who's using what. And frustratingly, we're not also going to hear about the software that was developed or the criminal group that they've been tracking either. So that kind of makes it a little bit more challenging for figuring out. But I think the, the broader story here is it doesn't matter which limit was. It's the fact that there are, there's alarms that are available right now for people to use that are being abused in this way.
- [33:33]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Bloomberg's Margie Murphy, thank you very much. Now, coming up, we're going to be joined by Dan Wagner from Resolve AI as the company is making a bid for commerce.com details next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
- [33:47]
Public Investing Representative
Support for the show comes from Public. Public is an investing platform that offers access to stocks, options, bonds and crypto. And they've also integrated AI with tools that can assist investors in building customized portfolios. One of these tools is called Generated Assets. It allows you to turn your ideas into investable indexes. So let's say you're interested in something specific like biotech companies with high R and D spend, small cap stocks with improving operating margins or the S&P 500 minus high debt companies. Chances are there isn't an ETF that fits your exact criteria. But on Public you just type in a prompt and their AI screens thousands of stocks and builds a one of a kind index. You can even backtest it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks, go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market and paid for by
- [34:41]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
Public Holdings Brokerage Services by public investing member FINRA, SIPC advisory services by public advisors SEC registered advisor crypto services by ZeroHash sample prompts are for illustrative purposes only, not investment advice. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures@public.com disclosures.
- [34:59]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
A business gift is never just a gift. It's a thank you, a milestone, a moment of appreciation. It's a message about how much someone matters and what your brand stands for. At 4imprint, you'll find thousands of customizable options like premium apparel, branded drinkware, tech totes and more, each chosen not just for function, but for meaning. You can tailor every detail. Your logo, your message, your presentation so your gift feels personal and on brand. And with expert support, dependable service and thousands without a setup fee. Creating something thoughtful doesn't mean making it complicated. Every order is backed by 4imprint's 360 degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain it'll arrive exactly as expected, on time and with the care your brand deserves.
- [35:44]
Deloitte Representative
Because when the moment matters, the right
- [35:46]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
gift speaks volumes and the right partner makes it easy. Explore gifting with purpose and certainty at 4imprint.com for imprint for certain.
- [35:56]
Deloitte Representative
If you follow markets, you know the value of long term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But in life, even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. A fire, a loss, a disruption that demands immediate attention. When that happens, what matters isn't just what you planned. It's who shows up. That's where Cincinnati Insurance comes in. For more than 75 years, they've helped individuals and businesses navigate life's toughest moments with care, expertise and personal attention. Together with independent agents, Cincinnati Insurance focuses on relationships, not transactions. Their approach is grounded in experience, follow through and trust built over time. Bad days happen, and when they do, you deserve an insurance partner who understands risk, respects what you've built and is ready to help you move forward. The Cincinnati insurance companies let them make your bad day better. Find an independent agent@cinfin.com.
- [37:02]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Resolve AI IT designs tools for digital shopping, customer engagement. A lot of AI within it is also making a hostile bid for commerce.com now the board rejected an earlier offer and called the new proposal of one Resolve share for every two shares of commerce.com even less favorable. Resolve CEO Dan Wagner is here to talk about the agentic opportunity along with, I hope a discussion about why M and A would make sense for your business at this moment. So let's start with the M and A. Why want to become bigger? What are the opportunities to lean in as a Resolve+commerce.com business?
- [37:35]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
Well, so I think first of all you've got to frame it within the context of our growth. So we're seeing fantastic growth in our business. You know, extraordinary momentum. We went from nothing to 232 million of contracted annual revenue in one year, we did 60 million in the first quarter in revenue versus the whole year last year, 46 million. So we're growing at an incredible rate. And in this space, when you have the best product in the vertical that we're operating in, which is commerce and retail, it's very important. Having been building tech businesses over many decades, although you couldn't possibly tell, no
- [38:13]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
youthful demeanor, not going to age that,
- [38:16]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
that the, the most important thing is kind of land grab. Right. We have to move quickly, quickly to consolidate our position as a leader. Now we're doing that anyway, organically. But if we were to acquire commerce.com, which is a stock that's really a business that's really kind of stuck and, and needs us to unlock it, unlock the value, you know, we, you know, we immediately give ourselves a greater presence and we will continue to do deals like that when they're available at good value to increase our market position.
- [38:49]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
So what would be unlocked with a commerce.com is like the companies, they already work with the client base that they have, and you unlock it with this future of agent. Okay, let's just talk about the agent commerce offering because you're even a little bit in the world of crypto. And we've just had Jeremy Allaire of Circle on and he thinks his business and stablecoins are the future of agentic commerce.
- [39:10]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
Right.
- [39:11]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
How are you the rails rather than a circle, for example.
- [39:13]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
So circle is a, is a, is a coin, is a token. But you need that token to be sitting on some sort of infrastructure to allow it to be used in everyday commerce. Right. So for example, if you went to Starbucks today, you're not going to use stablecoins to buy your coffee. We're going to facilitate that change with resolve pay so that the retailers and the brands can take stablecoins in the same efficient way for a consumer as credit cards and, and other forms of payment. Because crypto as we know it today is a frustrating and clunky experience. And we're changing that we resolve Pay so that it's as good, if not better, an experience as what you're used
- [39:52]
Bloomberg Tech Host
to Often sometimes M and A is strategic. Right. And so commerce.com is 60,000 merchants. Would you say, Dan, that that the strategic value of it, and if so, you boost your offer, you'd be willing to pay more of a premium to realize that strategic asset.
- [40:15]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
So, yes, a 60,000 merchant base that's frustrated with them because there's been lack of innovation. I mean, they're forecasting growth of one and a half percent in the next 12 months. I mean, you can't even imagine such a sort of embarrassing growth. Growth rate for a business in commerce, one and a half percent is just ridiculous. You know, we're growing, conversely, 750% year on year. 750%. So you've got a company where it is at the moment which is not really innovating. It has a large footprint that's historically been gained over, you know, over a decade of providing services, but it's kind of lost. And it needs us to come and inject value and enthusiasm and innovation into that customer base to energize them. Now, do we need them? No, we don't. Because as I've just told you, we're growing 750% year on year and we've got all this momentum and everything else, but if we were to buy them, we could unlock that value and grow that element of the business much faster than it is today. In answer to your question, yes, I think we're open to being more, more generous with it, with a deal. But, you know, the board rejected us and then they put in a poison pill. And I really can't be bothered with a board that is so locked in its own protection that they can't see the benefit of a combination with us. We should have, you know, any sensible board should be having a proper conversation with us to try to extract the best value for their shareholders and, you know, fully embrace this opportunity.
- [41:49]
Bloomberg Tech Host
What about the competition and risk to you? I've enjoyed reading about resolve and trying to understand the story. Right. And it's whoever controls the agent layer wins in commerce. And a very reasonable question that the Bloomberg Tech audience would pose is why doesn't an Amazon or an Alphabet or Google or even open? I just do what you do and come you.
- [42:11]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
I mean, they've tried. Some of them have tried. So open. I did a deal with Wal Mart. You Pro was very highly publicized about five, five and a half months ago. That was disbanded about two or three weeks ago. And the reason it was disbanded was started making these terrible mistakes, which is what we call hallucinations. Generative AI is uses probabilistic algorithms, you know, mathematical algorithms that. Algorithms that guess words and the next word, the next word in a sentence to create a paragraph and to create, you know, an answer. And when you're guessing things, there is an element of error. We knew this from the very outset because of my background in search and, you know, for decades and being involved in some of the major innovations in search technology in the 90s and the early noughties. So we knew that this would happen. So we spent the last ten years preventing hallucinations. That's really our primary position. And of course we did it with a very clear vision of providing that technology to represent digital platforms as the best salesman on the planet, you know, interacting with customers. But you can't have the best salesman on the planet who's hallucinating, you know, who's saying the wrong things, making mistakes. Then you end up with returns, you know, the mis, misled customers buying the wrong products and so on. So we believe, and Microsoft and Google have endorsed that belief, that we have the only technology that in this vertical that is reliable for merchants, they don't have to worry in deploying our technology that their representative, generative AI representative is going to be selling the wrong things, making mistakes, misleading customers and worse, insulting people.
- [43:46]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Dan Wagner, CEO of Resolve AI thank you very much for your time on Bloomberg Tech. Now coming up, Apple looks to refine its macOS design and add a few new features. We have more on the reporting next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Breaking news on the Bloomberg Terminal. President Donald Trump says the US Iran cease fire is in a weak state. And on life support. It was in response to a question posed by journalists. He's speaking the Oval Office in the White House. It was an event about maternal health care, but then taking reporter questions. He'd earlier said that he was going to meet with a large group of generals for an update about Iran, but that's the headline. US Iran cease fire is in a weak state says President Trump on life support. And what we saw is oil nudge higher. Brent, the global benchmark back above $104 a barrel. We'll keep with it.
- [44:40]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Car we will. Now let's turn our attention to Apple. It's planning a slight redesign to its upcoming Mac OS 27. That's according to sources. It aims to smooth out some of the visual quirks introduced by macOS 26 Tahoe, particularly around shadows and transparency tied to its liquid glass interface. Man behind that story, of course, is Bloomberg's Apple and consumer tech reporter Mark Gurman, an editor and team leader. I'm interested, Mark, on the liquid glass issue. In many ways it's what? Because the deployment is meant for slightly more cutting edge technology versus the Mac.
- [45:14]
Bloomberg Reporter Ryan Basilica
Yeah. So last year they rolled out their new liquid glass interface. I quite like it on the iPhone and iPad. It looks good with the OLED displays of the newer devices, but doesn't look so hot on the Mac. Part of the reason is that it uses older LCD technology. Apple's not moving to OLED until the new MacBook Pros hit, probably at the tail end of this year or early next year. So they're making some tweaks to macOS with the 27 release being announced on June 8th at WWDC. Cleaning up some of the transparency, some of the icons shadows that have made Tahoe a bit controversial.
- [45:47]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Controversial. So I find that interesting. We spent so much time talking with you about Apple intelligence, Siri and iOS and the cadence of update and how it's getting better. Less about macOS. You know, I'm a Mac user. I believe you are too. Why are you saying it's controversial that the rollout and development and macOS generations
- [46:06]
Bloomberg Reporter Ryan Basilica
oh yeah, macOS Tahoe has been huge, hugely controversial on Reddit among developers, among some consumers, among technophiles and what have you. People just don't like the way the liquid glass interface, the new icons look. I don't think it's a catastrophe. I don't think it's that big of a deal. But certainly it's a step below the implementation on the iPhone and the iPad the most.
- [46:28]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Mark Gurman, who leads, leads our coverage, Consumer Tech and the author of Power On. Thank you. At the same time, Apple's Mac Mini has emerged as a go to machine for running standalone AI agents. Its ability to operate around the clock at low electricity costs has fueled a surge in demand for more. Bloomberg's Austin Carr has the Business Week story. This is in the culture. Like this is everywhere. People put together clusters of Mac Minis and that is their compute to do all things in AI and inference. Just give us the top line of the BusinessWeek article that you wrote.
- [47:02]
Bloomberg Reporter Austin Carr
Yeah, I mean this is a big trend right now of starting your own agents at home instead of flinging off every request to some far flung data data center or cloud server, you can have your own personal AI supercomputer essentially in your living room. You're seeing a lot of people buy Mac Minis. Their higher end cousin, the Mac Studio, installed all agents frameworks like Open Claw to sort of have this 247 personal AI concierge that you can interact with on any messaging app. It's pretty wild to see this trend take off and be a rare bright spot for AI when it comes to Apple, which didn't really foresee this trend. It just sort of took off that this hardware was really, really good for for local AI computing.
- [47:42]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
Open Claw life and it's a global phenomenon and I Think we even sort of heard about the supply chain surprise coming Apple's way. But I've, I mean we saw stock of say a Raspberry PI go up and to the right over in the UK as people thought the other types of hardware would be useful for this. Austin, is Apple really been ended up the only game in town?
- [48:03]
Deloitte Representative
Not.
- [48:03]
Bloomberg Reporter Austin Carr
I mean it remains to be seen. I think a lot of the hardware makers are chasing this, this future right now where the hardware is being tailored to merge some of the graphics processing and CPUs that were historically doing that processing separate. They're now merged into a unified architecture on Apple devices, which is really good for, for AI processing. It has a lot of memory, memory bandwidth and it can do a lot of things that just a few years ago weren't really that efficient to do. So you're seeing the hardware get remarkably better tailored to AI and at the same time you're seeing a lot of AI models becoming radically more efficient. And if you remember last year with Deep Seek, one of the really amazing things about that model was how efficient it was in terms of doing a lot of the processing that it would take a lot more to do for an open air anthropic to do. So you're going to see a lot of these models getting smaller and more efficient to run locally. But what you're seeing the Macs do is just a lot of the stuff on device like opening a browser, checking your files, you know, interacting with business systems, interacting with your apps in ways that are just adjusting autonomous and essentially making what's called a headless Mac, meaning it's just plugged into the wall. It's your agent, your local server and you can interact with it however you want. Just like having sort of a personal chat in your living room.
- [49:20]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Awesome. We have 15 seconds in the piece. You're talking about developers, you're talking about everyone vibe coding, everyday people.
- [49:27]
Bloomberg Reporter Austin Carr
It's a mix. I mean I talked to a lot of people who are using it for their sort of an AI developer developer to have to interact with. But then consumers who are just building these things very simply, you know, setting them up to sort of be a household chief of staff, their butler, to monitor the grocery list and things of that nature. They can give you can give them a lot more access to your local files, customize them in a lot of really fun ways and you're going to see this trend take a lot on, off a lot more. When Apple sort of makes its own open claw like system eventually I would assume that's where all this is heading, I think.
- [49:58]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
A great read and Business Week. We appreciate it. That does it from this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Great to have you back, Ed.
- [50:03]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Yeah, it's good to be back. Check out the Pod Lots to recap to start the week and find it on all the Bloomberg platforms and online. This is Bloomberg Tech.
- [50:14]
Deloitte Representative
If you follow markets, you know the value of long term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments. With expertise, personal attention and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions, the Cincinnati Insurance companies let them make your bad day better. Find an agent@cin fin.com this plant shop
- [50:51]
Bloomberg Tech Co-Host Ed Ludlow
a perfectly balanced ecosystem thanks to genius from Global Payments.
- [50:56]
Deloitte Representative
Tracked inventory, seamless payments and reviews in one place. Big league reliability for your business.
- [51:03]
Resolve AI CEO Dan Wagner
That's genius.
- [51:05]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
These days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere. You turn every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right
- [51:18]
Bloomberg Reporter Austin Carr
by securing your AI agents identities, giving
- [51:21]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust.
- [51:24]
Bloomberg Reporter Austin Carr
So whether an AI agent supports a
- [51:26]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent.
- [51:33]
Bloomberg Tech Host
Secure any agent.
- [51:34]
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire
Okta secures AI.