Alphabet's Bond Sale Signals AI Confidence

Summary

Bloomberg Tech Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Alphabet's Bond Sale Signals AI Confidence
Date: August 6, 2026
Host: Ed Ludlow, Bloomberg
Location: San Francisco

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Episode Overview

This Bloomberg Tech episode centers on Alphabet’s massive $25 billion bond sale and what it signals about market confidence in AI investment and infrastructure spending. The show also dives into Western Digital’s outlook amid the data storage boom, Figma’s latest results and leadership moves, and a deep dive with Sequoia Capital’s new co-stewards about the future of VC and seismic shifts in the technology sector. Notable guests include Robert Schiffman (Bloomberg Intelligence), Yuhara Anand (Board), Irving Tan (Western Digital), Dylan Field (Figma), and Alfred Lin & Pat Grady (Sequoia Capital).

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Alphabet’s $25B Bond Sale & AI Investment Appetite

Guest: Robert Schiffman – Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Credit Analyst

Key Points

• Alphabet's $25B Bond Sale:
  • Alphabet is raising up to $25B via a ten-part bond offering ([00:22]).
  • High investor demand—orders hit $65B; only $25B will be issued.
  • Alphabet’s total global debt sold since 2025 stands at $89.5B.

“[This] deal is going to be substantial. The book stocks were at $65 billion. I think they're only going to issue $25 billion. So not raising it is positive.”
— Robert Schiffman ([01:39])

• Capital Expenditures & Borrowing Outlook:
  • No borrowing fears; hyperscalers are generating strong cash flows.
  • Confidence from recent quarterly results—bond and share prices reflect this.
  • Alphabet increased CAPEX guidance by $20B recently.
  • Alphabet holds AA+ credit rating and could theoretically add $200B in net debt before a ratings slip ([02:55]).

“These are real businesses that are generating cash... The flexibility you see enables them to borrow as much as they want.”
— Robert Schiffman ([02:55])

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Alphabet’s Leadership Shifts & AI CapEx Economics

Guest: Yuhara Anand – Principal Economist and Director, Board

Key Points

• Leadership Changes:

  • Jeff Dean exits to found a startup with DeepMind researchers.
  • Demis Hassabis steps back from day-to-day at DeepMind, becomes chairman and Alphabet’s Chief Scientist ([04:00]).

• Economic Signals from CapEx:

  • Alphabet’s negative free cash flow for the first time since IPO (2004) signals a mature CapEx cycle ([04:58]).
  • Hyperscalers still solvent—no immediate worries about financial sustainability.
  • Core economic risk centers on the possibility of capital misallocation rather than inability to fund investments ([05:41]).

“They're absolutely spending with the belief that future cash flows are really going to validate that level of spending... The real conversation is around the risk and what capital misallocation looks like if the bet doesn't pay off.”
— Yuhara Anand ([05:41])

• AI and Macro-Economic Impact:
  • Fed Chair Wash linked CapEx boom to rising infrastructure costs; possible inflationary impacts through asset price gains ([06:14]).
  • Theoretical long-term AI productivity is disinflationary, but investor-driven asset booms could be inflationary near-term ([06:37]).
  • No clear macro evidence yet that AI is materially lifting productivity; recent productivity data remains flat or negative ([07:44]).

“At this point in time we don't have the macro evidence that AI is meaningfully impacting productivity.”
— Yuhara Anand ([08:59])

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Inside the Data Storage Boom: Western Digital’s Strategy

Guest: Irving Tan – CEO, Western Digital

Key Points

• Q4 Results & Market Reactions:

  • 40% YoY revenue growth; gross margin over 54% ([10:33]).
  • Stock hit hard despite strong numbers—down as much as 21% ([10:33]).

• Demand Drivers:

  • Robust demand from hyperscalers and cloud—expecting 25% CAGR next five years.
  • Storage demand compounding, as data is largely not deleted.

• Product & Tech Roadmap:

  • Focus on technological advancements, not just increasing drive units.
  • Introduced 32TB, now moving to 40TB drives—delivering 30% more capacity without increasing units ([12:01]).

“We are currently shipping a 32 terabyte hard drive as our top of the line... starting this quarter we'll be shipping a 40 terabyte drive.”
— Irving Tan ([12:01])

• Long-Term Contracts & Pricing Challenges:

  • Customers seeking storage commitments as far out as 2031.
  • Working on volume and tiered pricing structures ([14:13]).

• Competitive Landscape:

  • Comparisons to Seagate’s margin expansion; WD expects to regain ground as new technology ships ([16:26]).

“People thought that hard drives were a thing of the past, but it's shown to be a fundamental piece of the infrastructure stack.”
— Irving Tan ([15:39])

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Figma’s Update & AI Strategy

Guest: Dylan Field – CEO, Figma

Key Points

• Financials & Guidance:

  • Second quarter sales and profits exceeded expectations.
  • Shares dropped 17% on cautious Q3 guidance ([18:17]).

• Product Growth & Customer Behavior:

  • 48% YoY revenue growth; strong net dollar retention ([19:10]).
  • Clients evolving their workflows to integrate AI; Figma responding with new offerings like Figma Agent and increased workflow automation ([19:51]).

• Leadership Move:

  • Dylan Field voluntarily forfeited $46M in stock awards to reduce dilution and boost investor confidence ([20:48]).

“Dilution is something that I feel just like our shareholders feel. And given that this is an investment period right now, that felt like the thing that made sense to do.”
— Dylan Field ([20:59])

• Innovation Focus:
  • Pushing on Figma Agent and code layers, aiming for design as the operating layer in software workflows ([21:33]).

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Sequoia Capital: New Era & Investment Philosophy

Guests: Alfred Lin & Pat Grady – Co-Stewards, Sequoia Capital

Principles, Structure & Decision-Making

• “Our Sequoia” & Partnership Culture:
  • Rejects hierarchical, boss-driven structure; all partners participate as equals ([24:02], [25:05]).
  • Influence comes from expertise, not tenure or hierarchy ([25:19]).

“Influence should be awarded to expertise and reason and not to tenure and hierarchy... that's what allows us to play at our best.”
— Pat Grady ([25:19])

• Flexible, Founder-Obsessed Process:

  • Any partner can propose deals anytime; no reliance on weekly meetings—deals move as founders need ([28:26]).
  • Process is chaotic by design, allowing partners to “play free” and bring out their unique strengths ([29:00]).

• Decision by Conviction — Not Just Consensus:

  • Debates encouraged, truth-seeking over uniform agreement ([31:08]).
  • Example: Sean Maguire (partner) had outlier conviction on SpaceX investment in 2019 and it paid off ([31:47]).

“All that matters is presence of conviction.”
— Pat Grady ([33:01])

• Partner Spotlight – Sean Maguire:
  • Unique background as physics PhD, gamer, day trader; led entry into hardware and SpaceX despite strong initial skepticism.
  • Courage and persistence are valued traits (“wimpy sponsor” is a partnership anti-pattern) ([36:16]).

Recent High-Stakes Bets and Case Studies

• Anthropic Investment:
  • Multiple partners sponsored, shifting from OpenAI exclusivity as customers used both ([37:28]).
  • Initial proposal for $5B investment, settled on $2.5B—the largest they could commit across core funds ([39:35]).

“This is the tectonic shift of our lifetime... the best thing we can do now is to come in at the most scale that we can muster.”
— Pat Grady ([39:41])

• Stage Fluidity & Talent Depth:
  • Sequoia partners freely move between early-stage and growth investing, focusing on people and markets, not check size.
  • Deep bench—partners like Constantine, Sonia, Sean stretch beyond traditional boundaries ([40:57], [42:12]).

Market & Industry Reflections

• Private Stakes & Competitive Dynamics:

  • Commentary on being approached about acquiring private stakes (e.g., Anthropics), highlighting competitiveness and respect for rivals ([43:10]).

• Valor Atomics Case:

  • High-technical-risk, high-reward bet—backed by partner technical expertise and founder assessment ([44:24]).

• AI: Optimistic Future:

  • Despite negativity, AI seen as a “tectonic shift”; memo would be a “white swan” (positive game-changer) rather than a black swan (unexpected disaster) ([45:56]).

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “The flexibility you see enables them to borrow as much as they want.” — Robert Schiffman ([02:55])
• “At this point in time we don't have the macro evidence that AI is meaningfully impacting productivity.” — Yuhara Anand ([08:59])
• “We are currently shipping a 32 terabyte hard drive... starting this quarter we'll be shipping a 40 terabyte drive.” — Irving Tan ([12:01])
• “Dilution is something that I feel just like our shareholders feel.” — Dylan Field ([20:59])
• “Influence should be awarded to expertise and reason and not to tenure and hierarchy.” — Pat Grady ([25:19])
• “This is the tectonic shift of our lifetime... the best thing we can do now is to come in at the most scale.” — Pat Grady ([39:41])
• “If I had to write a memo today, it would be a white swan memoir, not a black swan memo.” — Ed Ludlow ([45:56])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | |----------|----------------------------------------------| | 00:22 | Alphabet’s $25B bond sale, intro | | 01:39 | Schiffman on investor appetite & market view | | 02:55 | Comparison to dot-com/financial crisis | | 04:58 | Yuhara Anand on CapEx economics | | 07:44 | Anand: AI & macro productivity data | | 10:33 | Western Digital CEO on storage boom | | 12:01 | Tech innovations: 32TB/40TB drives | | 14:13 | Long-term storage agreements | | 18:17 | Figma’s quarter; Field forfeits stock | | 19:51 | Figma’s customer AI integration | | 24:02 | Sequoia’s culture & “our Sequoia” | | 25:19 | Partnership dynamic & influence | | 28:26 | Investment process: anytime, any partner | | 31:47 | SpaceX case study (Sean’s conviction) | | 39:41 | Anthropic investment strategy | | 43:10 | Private stakes, competitive landscape | | 44:24 | Valor Atomics investment decision | | 45:56 | “White swan” memo and future outlook |

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Memorable Moments

• Sequoia’s radical partner democracy and the story of “gang-tackling” investment decisions on tight founder timelines ([28:14]–[30:31]).
• Candid internal reflections on courage and conviction, including anecdotes about SpaceX and Valor Atomics decisions.
• The “White Swan” optimism about AI and American industrial resurgence contrasted with headline pessimism ([45:56]).

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This episode provides broad, candid insights into how big tech is funding the AI future—from Alphabet’s bond market maneuvers to Sequoia’s all-in early and growth-stage bets—illustrating both the business pragmatism and human beliefs behind today’s AI supercycle.

Transcript

[Ed Ludlow]

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart

[Yuhara Anand]

of Silicon Valley with Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.

[Host/Interviewer]

This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, another mega bond sale. Alphabet looking to raise as much as $25 billion from its latest offering. A deal that will test investor Apath appetite for AI related debt. Plus a rough day for Western Digital, or wd. The storage giant slides after a disappointing outlook despite the broader infrastructure boom. And Sequoia's leaders Alfred Lin and Pat Grady join us on the future of the storied venture capital firm. It is a debt day. That's what we're talking about. Today's big number, $89.5 billion. That's how much Alphabet debt has been sold globally since 2025. Looking at shares of AL a bet, the Google parent in the equity market. The stock is flat but had been under some pressure in the last 24 hours about a wave of departures. We'll bring you that story later on. I want to zero in on a debt and get more on Alphabet with Robert Schiffman, Bloomberg Intelligence senior credit analyst. This is a $25 billion dollar denominated offering 10 parts, right? But it's the latest in a sequence of bond market activity. You write borrowing fears question mark. Answer your question mark.

[Robert Schiffman]

Yeah, the answer right now is no. I think the second quarter prints that we saw for the biggest hyperscalers actually prove to people that all the money that they're spending is being monetized and the confidence levels have improved. You're seeing that with share prices and you're seeing that with bond prices. The demand for this deal I think is going to be substantial. What we heard already was that the book stocks were at 65 billion. I think they're only going to issue $25 billion. So not raising it is positive. Obviously their cost of capital is going up a little bit. But after increasing their CAPEX guidance by 20 billion just a week or so ago, this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. And quite frankly, I think they're actually front running a lot of next year's borrowing. And this might actually help technicals going

[Host/Interviewer]

into 2027 versus hurt them on a US dollar basis. You know, Alphabet, it's at $42.5 billion since 25. Amazon $77 billion. You know, you have done a really good job, Chef, of explaining to the Bloomberg Tech audience why it's different in the here and now to say the dot com bubble, the financial crisis, like what do the balance sheets of these companies and their top line growth Outlooks differ from that period in history.

[Robert Schiffman]

Well, these are, these are real businesses that are generating cash that are just spending more money these days to make more cash down the line. We're starting out with a tremendous amount of balance sheet flexibility. Alphabet traded double A plus at S and P. They're one notch away from the highest potential rating that you can have. And the raider said this morning they have $200 billion of net debt capacity within their current ratings. That means just to fall a notch to mid bid AA they would have to issue another $200 billion of debt and spend it. So I think the flexibility that you see from we've said it time and time again, these Mount Rushmore of credits enables them to borrow as much as they want. And the concerns that people have been having that they're not going to be able to fund themselves as capex budgets go up by 50 or 100% next year. It's just, it's just not true. They can borrow, they can raise the money. The demand is there, the balance sheet flexibility is and people are now getting paid for it versus two or three years ago when you got basically no spread to own any of these names.

[Host/Interviewer]

Robert Schiffman, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Credit Analyst thank you very much. I mentioned the news story for Google, which is Google is undergoing its biggest leadership shake up in years. Longtime executive Jeff Dean is leaving to launch a startup with several senior DeepMind researchers while DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping back from day to day operations to become chairman of DeepMind, but also Alphabet's chief scientist. The changes come as Google faces mounting pressure to keep pace in the IRS race with investors basically questioning whether the company can retain top talent and turn its AI research into commercial success. That was the stock story of yesterday. Let's stick with Alphabet. Joining us is Natalie Gallagher, principal economist and director at board. I want to go very briefly back to Alphabet. Going back to the bond market, what does that signal about where we are in a capex cycle?

[Yuhara Anand]

You know, it really signals that we're continuing to mature. In the CapEx cycle. We have had the hyperscalers largely following a similar playbook that's to utilize internal cash flows, keep leverage low. Right. When you do look at the balance sheets more holistically, solvency really isn't an issue. And so I really see no cause for concern when we talk about Alphabet specifically. They just had their first quarter of negative cash flow since they went to IPO in 2004. So I'm not surprised to see it.

[Host/Interviewer]

The economists view of seeing companies of Alphabet scale and they're not unique in that respect. Entering negative free cash flow. Does that go into the economic model?

[Yuhara Anand]

You know, speaks more holistically to the commitment of spending by these hyperscalers on AI. Right. And they're absolutely spending with the belief that future cash flows are really going to validate that level of spending. Now, you know, we've talked about this before, but really the question becomes not, you know, can they continue to do so? It's very likely. You know, they're in very strong positions, balance sheet wise. The real conversation is around the risk and what capital misallocation looks like if the bet doesn't pay off.

[Host/Interviewer]

I want to go back a little bit to Federal Reserve Chair Wash, his first meeting and press conference because he discussed CapEx, the CapEx boom. And I'm paraphrasing, but what he said is that capex boom is driving up prices of infrastructure. Right. That was his analysis. Is there an inflationary impact elsewhere in the economy from what's happening in AI?

[Yuhara Anand]

You know, there is a broader conversation happening right now. How much of the economic growth we are experiencing is it because of AI? And there's really, you know, multiple areas in the economy that this can come out. One is capex by these companies, companies directly. The other is actually an asset price valuations. Right. So think of all of the gains that have really happened in the stock market right now. There's a very strong argument that that is in fact inflationary because when people have more money, what do they do? They spend more money longer term. And Warsh has come out and said this sort of. Historically there's a belief system that because I increases productivity, it's actually disinflationary in the long term. Which is why as a Federal Reserve chairman, he's very, or has shared comfort with having a lower, a lower neutral rate in the.

[Robert Schiffman]

Sure.

[Host/Interviewer]

Every day we're still trying to understand the impact of AI on the real economy. Like if you look at labor productivity where it runs now relative to pre pandemic, is there any tangible evidence in front of you that AI is in some way impacting that data?

[Yuhara Anand]

Yeah, it's a great question because I mean, you know, when we talk about the overall implication of AI and making it all worth it. Right. We have to talk about productivity. When we look at a pre pandemic sort of productivity growth rate, average growth rate, we were at about 1.5%. Post pandemic, we've been closer to 2.5 to 2.75% on like an annualized basis. Now on the front that looks really great, right? You get a lot of people that are saying, hey, that's happening contemporaneously with AI story done, right? We have the productivity story, but what we actually can do is a lot better, right? We can look deeper and look at metrics like total factor productivity utilization adjusted. And that helps us really tease out, okay, out of productivity growth how much of this is really coming from innovation. And that on a four quarter basis is trailing at about 0.7%. So that's essentially flat. Quarter one 2026, the data is a bit delayed. Quarter one 2026 actually came in minus 2.76%. Now there's contemporary contemporaneous impacts with the Strait of Hormuz closure. So we can't perfectly extrapolate. But I share all of this to really say that at this point in time we don't have the macro evidence that AI is meaningfully impacting productivity.

[Host/Interviewer]

I appreciate that because I feel like it connects the dots from the data points that a lot of the software companies gave in earnings on how AI is actually being used. Nancy Gallagher, Board, thank you very much indeed. Another big story. Take a look at shares of Space X which are behaving interestingly. They're up 3% in the session. There was a heavy decline yesterday. Reminder that they there is a lock up expiration on around 900 million shares which was a complicated structure for lock up post IPO from mid June. Right now the stocks are higher 3%. Will continue to track it coming up. We are still in the thick of earnings and this time it's all about hardware. WD CEO Irving Tan joins us next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Let's take a look at some of the storage stocks. Sandisk, Seagate, Western Digital differing performance Sandisk to the downside, Seagate higher on earnings performance. Western Digital is down 9% at one point in the session. Have been down more than 20% and on track for its biggest drop since the year 2000. That has turned around somewhat. Let's stay with WD. WD CEO Irving Tan joins us now. We're getting back to the AI hard disk drive story. I think it's great to have you back on the show. You know like investors still believe in that story. I hard disk drive, your stock is under some pressure. Just reflect on like the moment that you tried to outline in this in this earnings print.

[Irving Tan]

Yeah, well first of all, thank you very much for having me back. If you look at the results that we delivered in Q4 fiscal 26, they were very strong. We had over 40% revenue growth, gross margin was above 54%. Very strong cash flow generation as well. If anything, probably the expectations were very high in terms of the increased amount of exabytes that we could supply into the market. But if you take a step back, really the fundamentals for ongoing revenue growth, margin expansion, cash flow generation remain very strong. On the demand side, demand from hyperscalers, new clouds, physical remains very robust and we continue to see over 25% CAGR demand from a demand perspective over the next five years. Similarly, on the supply side, we have a very robust roadmap that we have put in place that will be able to meet this demand. And so it's pretty much a function of just quarterly transitions that we're going through.

[Host/Interviewer]

I think what you're touching on there is, you know, storage is distinct in many ways from what's happening in memory. In some ways highly analogous. Right. There is a pricing story there, there is a demand outpacing supply story. And your industry facing the balancing act of expanding output manufacturing capacity on it on a permanent basis or not. How are you managing all of that?

[Irving Tan]

Yeah, so first of all, thank you for highlighting that. It's a clear distinction between memory, which is like NAN and DRAM versus storage, because memory and like compute is being recycled all the time for different workloads. But the data that's being generated continues to be stored, it isn't getting deleted. So the amount of data storage requirements is just compounding over time, which puts a lot of more demand on our products on an ongoing basis. And how we're trying to solve for that is really to technology. We're not investing in increasing the number of drive units we are producing. We continue to invest in technology to increase the amount of hits and media that we produce because that's the big driver of capacity in a drive. So we are currently shipping a 32 terabyte hard drive as our top of the line drive. But starting this quarter we'll be shipping a 40 terabyte drive. So that's an ability to drive over 30% capacity to customers without adding any unit capacity.

[Host/Interviewer]

Could you go into, into how that works? Networks, you know, bring a 40 terabyte drive to market, the engineering complexity of it, and how much do the customers have to sort of re architect their infrastructure to accommodate for that new generation of, of hdd?

[Irving Tan]

Yeah, well, hard drive, actually, as an engineer, I always do hard drives as a marvel of engineering. We use 2/3 of the periodic table in our product. So as we move from capacity point to capacity point. There's a lot of re engineering that goes on into the recipe of our media designs, the recipe of our head design. So it's quite an engineering feat. Obviously we have great teams that have years of experience doing that. At the same time, we work very closely with our customers to make sure we go through very robust qualification processes because customers are very sensitive to the quality and reliability of their data storage capability.

[Host/Interviewer]

The other sort of highly analogous factor that is in front of you is long term agreements with the memory market. We see long term agreements coming in as well. So you have these in place like 2029, 2030, 2031. How do you know how to price an agreement today going that far into the future?

[Irving Tan]

It's a really good question. We do have LTA's in place locked in till 29. We have customer demand. Customers are coming us to put lt's in place to support demand for 29, 30 and 31. They have really good visibility in terms of the storage requirements that they need because they're looking at the entire infrastructure stack, everything from GPUs to CPUs to HBMs to NAND. Yes to storage. And they realize you have to take a much longer term time horizon in terms of how they plan. So we are working very closely with them. We're definitely locking in the sort of exabite supply that they need. But what we're working through with them is still the commercial construct of how we would price something further out in.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right. So let me look at it another way. Somebody comes to you and says, irving, I'm a big customer and I want to lock you in until 2031. Why might you say no?

[Irving Tan]

Well, what we are saying is if you need 600 exabytes of storage in 2031, we will deliver that to you. How we actually price it. We're still in negotiations with them where we might have a base price for a percentage of that volume and then a tip stop tiered pricing structure as we increase the capacity we deliver to them.

[Host/Interviewer]

I don't mean to trivialize this in any way, but you know, like it's the hard disk drive moment, you know, make hard disk drive great again. What's, what's that been like for you to put the technology the forefront of discussion at the moment?

[Irving Tan]

Well, it's really exciting. I mean people thought that hard drives were a thing of the past, but it's shown to be a fundamental piece of the infrastructure stack. With 80% of all storage in the cloud and is continuing to reside on hard drives both today and going forward. So it's a very exciting time for us. It's a great challenge and I always tell my teams there's a great responsibility that we have to deliver to the industry to enable this once in a lifetime opportunity that is creating so having

[Host/Interviewer]

a go back to the stock again, it's down about 8 or 9% right now. Was down 21% its biggest drop on paper since December of 2000. A lot of the analysts are talking about your comparison against Seagate, what Seagate's doing on margin expansion, etc. You know, how would you answer those those analysts reports on how you are performing relative to your peer?

[Irving Tan]

Yeah, as I mentioned in the beginning there always be quarter to quarter variations at you know we were the first one out for 32 terabyte. We gain on them. They have a new platform coming out so they are a bit ahead in terms of the exabyte storage that they can deliver that drives gross margin expansion. We have the 40 terabyte coming out in Q3 of our fiscal year and we expect that by that period of time. Sorry, we have a 40 terabyte out right now. It's going across 50% of all the bits we ship by fiscal Q3 and that will give us another driver of exabyte growth. And so this constant evolution of technology and the transition points that we introduce them all will result in some time shifts in terms of results and performance.

[Dylan Field]

Right.

[Host/Interviewer]

WD CEO Irving Tan back on Bloomberg Tech. Thank you very much indeed. Okay, coming up, we're going to stay with earnings and it's figma. Figma CEO Dylan Field joins us. This is Bloomberg Tech.

[Yuhara Anand]

It's time now for talking Tech. I'm your Hira Anand. First up, Deep Seek says it plans a quote squad significant price hike for its AI products. While the changes weren't specified, the announcement is an unusual shift from the Chinese AI companies that have emphasized low cost models plus met as recently released Muse Spark 1.1 breached an outside firm systems and accessed the Internet during cybersecurity testing. This comes just days after similar incidents from models by OpenAI and Anthropic. And Figma CEO decided to forfeit $46 million in company stock awards in an effort to ease investor concerns over AI. Dillon Field made the forfeiture voluntarily and no replacement awards were issued. Looking forward to the interview Ed.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, thank you Yuhara. Let's stick with Figma. It comes as the company reported its second quarter sales and profits that exceeded analysts expectations. Shares are on track for their biggest drop since September, down 17, 17% or so. A lot of that is the guide for the third quarter, the current period. FIGMA CEO Dylan Field is with us. I think, you know, beyond the numbers themselves, Dylan, some are looking at this and saying, well, there's lots of new Figma products. Is Dylan being conservative in guiding how those new products are showing up in the latter part of this year?

[Dylan Field]

Well, first of all, good to see you again and thanks for having me on. Yeah, I mean I think that as we look at forecasting in general, our guidance does not always price in potential upside of efforts that have not proven themselves yet.

[Ed Ludlow]

Right.

[Dylan Field]

And we try to make sure that we guide based on what we can observe. And what we did observe this quarter was very strong revenue growth, growth year over year. Revenue grew by 48% and this is our third consecutive quarter of accelerated growth. It's also our first full quarter of modernization and our NDR was about 136%. So overall we felt very strong and we are very much investing for what's ahead.

[Host/Interviewer]

How are the customers behaving? Like what's the, what's the story in the fields that you sell your software into? Dylan?

[Dylan Field]

Yeah, I would say that customers have been on definitely a journey as they look to figure out how do we integrate AI into the workflow. And some of those customers that journey, they really understood where they're at and what they're doing. Even end of last year and we're doubling down on figma. Then others I think have, those may be the early adopters, others have been working through that process of figuring it out throughout the last six months and they're also coming back to double down on FIGMA fully. And I think that as workflows change, what we're trying to do is meet customers where they are. So what we see our customers sometimes starting with design, sometimes starting in customers code and with our mvp, they can pull their work into Figma or they can read from FIGMA to go build and more of that will be fully encompassed in the FIGMA workflow with our agents in the future.

[Host/Interviewer]

Dylan, a lot of people today are reading the story. Figma CEO forfeits $46 million in stock after share decline. What was your thinking on that?

[Dylan Field]

What did a while back? So it wasn't linked yesterday, but yeah, I mean look, dilution is something that I feel just like our shareholders feel. And given that this is an investment period right now, that felt like the thing that made sense to do and.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Robert Schiffman]

Yeah.

[Dylan Field]

I mean mostly I've just been. My entire head is in how do we invest for the future because we have so much we can grow right

[Host/Interviewer]

now it's still trying to build. Yes. We just had 30 seconds. Cinema. What are you most focused on building right now?

[Dylan Field]

I'm focused on a few things. First, our Figma agent, making it so you can. We already have this out, but getting that to monetization and also making it so that we're able to serve customer needs and workflows better. I'm also focused on code layers, bringing code into the canvas and making it so that as code becomes more of a commodity, design is the operating level and layer that you're able to work in in order to define what your team is doing and able to make it so that people build great software from there. And I think that if we can capture that and make it so the Figma agent can support these workflows, then you'll be able to build out from the design layer and from there I think there's so much that's possible and you can really have designers steering Figma

[Host/Interviewer]

CEO Dylan Field back on Bloomberg Tech. Appreciate your time. Thank you very much indeed. Coming up in the show, Sequoia partners Alfred Lynn and Pat Grady, the firm's latest leaders. The new titles of co stewards. Join us. We're going to discuss what's changing at the firm, what the tech companies of tomorrow are and what the future holds. This is Bloomberg Tech. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Last November, longtime Sequoia partners Alfred Lin and Pat Grady became the firm's co stewards. For more than 50 years, the Silicon Valley firm has backed some of the biggest winners in technology, from Apple and Google to Nvidia. Today it manages more than $80 billion dollars. But as detailed in Bloomberg Businessweek, it recently raised another 10 billion across its growth and expansion funds. Since then, the Sequoia partners have made a risk the franchise investment in anthropic. They've returned to investing in chips and continue to hold onto one of the firm's greatest investments, Space X. With us now on Bloomberg Tech, Alfred Lynn and Pat Brady to discuss what's changing at Sequoia, the technology companies of tomorrow. Tomorrow, I want to start with our Sequoia. You published what reads to me is like a mission statement. It outlines principles the firms held for quite a long time and I think some new ones that you are trying to emphasize. Alfred, is that fair?

[Ed Ludlow]

Well, first of all, thank you for having us. It's really fun to be here with my co steward and we get to do this together. And it's because it's our Sequoia. It's not. It was never Don Sequoia when he named it Sequoia Capital. And it wasn't 84 years ago. 54 years ago. And so Pat and I wanted to make sure that everybody at Sequoia thought of it as our Sequoia. That's principle number one. Principle number two, if you take care of the founders, you will. They'll do right by our LPs, we do right by LPs, will do right by Sequoia, we do right by Sequoia, we can take care of the team, and then we can take care of every. A single person at Sequoia.

[Pat Grady]

Right.

[Ed Ludlow]

That is principle. That is a principle that has been at Sequoia for a long, long period of time. And also, we are only as good as our next investment. And that is not a risk of your franchise. It is what makes us Sequoia.

[Host/Interviewer]

I noticed the smile when I read out the line. We will get into how that manifests. I mean, it's a co steward title. You regard yourself as partners, as part of a partnership.

[Ed Ludlow]

Yes.

[Host/Interviewer]

You are not managing partners.

[Ed Ludlow]

Correct.

[Host/Interviewer]

You, as Sean McGuire outlined to me in a telephone call, you know, he rejects the notion that your bosses, you are partners in a partnership. To lots of people, they're like, how would that work?

[Pat Grady]

Well, so first off, on this boss thing, we had a funny conversation with one of our partners a couple of years ago where he referred to somebody as his supervisor. Like your supervisor. What are you talking about? He's like, well, he's my boss. He's my supervisor. Like, no, no, no, no, no. This is a partnership. The only way that we're going to bring out the best in all of our partners is if it feels like a real partnership. Okay, so one of those principles that you mentioned with, with our Sequoia is this idea that influence should be awarded to expertise and reason and not to tenure and hierarchy. And what that means practically is in any given conversation, if we're going to make an investment decision, Alpha and I might have less of a say than our other partners, like Sean or Andrew or Sonia or David or Konstantin, because they might actually have more expertise on a particular topic than I do. In fact, they have more expertise on most topics than we do. And so this idea that influence should go to the people with the expertise, not the people who happen to have been around for a long time, that's what makes it a partnership, and that's what allows us to play at our best.

[Host/Interviewer]

There's no tiebreaker essentially that you two get awarded. You participate under the same rules as the rest of the partnership. I mean this with full respect. What does the term co steward communicate that any other title doesn't? You know why I think you both don't want to get bogged down in administrative duties. You want to participate in the partnership.

[Ed Ludlow]

That's part of the reason why we get to do this together. There's no. And part of that is we, we are partners across the board and we get to help lead the organization in. Part of leading the organization has to do with making sure that we have structure and we sign FCC documents. A lot of it is administrative and we get to split that so that both of us can stay on the field.

[Pat Grady]

I try to make sure that Alfred signs all the SEC documents, but literally

[Ed Ludlow]

this is the part that is really good about this. This is a partnership. We want to show the value of partnership and we want it to be a team effort and not everybody has to do everything.

[Pat Grady]

And this idea of stewardship, if you go back to the original generational transition which was in Don Valentine handed the firm off to Doug Leone and Michael Moritz in the late 90s, the standard at the time was to have the younger partners buy out the departing generation.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Pat Grady]

Don instead gave it to them for free and said your only job is to leave it better than you got it. And so that's become a very core

[Host/Interviewer]

part of the Sequoia culture and continue that tradition.

[Pat Grady]

Yes. This idea that you're stewarding it for the next generation as opposed to there's no concept of ownership at Sequoia. All of the partners own the partnership together. Our job is to make it great.

[Host/Interviewer]

We're sitting here talking, but you know, you're eight months in essentially as co stewards. But in that time quite a lot of things have happened. I want to get to what you've, you've enacted or changed that's different in that eight month period to the history of the firm. And one of the things outlined in the BusinessWeek article is if you are, are a partner that is interested in an investment, you can propose at any time.

[Pat Grady]

Yeah.

[Ed Ludlow]

Yes.

[Host/Interviewer]

Through a various means of mechanisms. So traditionally in Silicon Valley venture funds, you have your Monday morning meetings. You guys have said basically seven days a week, any time. Well, let's talk about it.

[Ed Ludlow]

Talk about like being customer obsessed. Yes, we are.

[Host/Interviewer]

Who are your customers? Exactly.

[Ed Ludlow]

It's founders. And so we should work on the founders timeframe. If the founder wants to make it make a raise, a fundraising. They have a timeline. We should abide by their timeline, not the other way around.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Ed Ludlow]

And this notion that we get to like have every decision happen on a Monday is kind of a little backwards. Are we the customer to the, to the founders or the founders our customers? And for us, we want to make sure, we want to send a clear message that the founders are our customers and we're customer us.

[Pat Grady]

And there's a second concept here which is outlier founders want to work with outlier people. And so our partner Ravi has this idea of playing free. You know, everybody should play free. And we don't want Luciano or Andrew or Constantine or Sean or David or Sonia. We don't want them to become another Alfred or to become another Pat. We want them to be the best version of themselves. And the only way we can do that is if they feel like they can play free. Like they have roped to just go at 100% velocity all the time. And then our job is to help enable them not to get in the way. And so we are, we are tight on principles and we are tight on values. We're very flexible on process.

[Host/Interviewer]

So some people. That might sound chaotic. Just literally, how does it work? Mechanically it is. Somebody will send a WhatsApp to the rest of the partners saying, guys, got a great op. We have to meet now and talk about it and what happens.

[Pat Grady]

A couple of days ago, an email came out recommending an investor. Controversial investment. We go into a document. There's a lot of commentary in the document. Here's what's good, here's what's bad, here's what I like, here's what I don't like. What are we gonna do? We had six people on Red Eyes to New York a couple nights ago. We went and spent a couple this

[Host/Interviewer]

week, this calendar week.

[Pat Grady]

Tuesday night, Tuesday night we had six people on red ice to New York. Randomly. We were on five different planes. I don't know why we took five different planes to get to New York,

[Host/Interviewer]

but it was a spur of the moment decision.

[Pat Grady]

It was a spur of the moment thing. We spent two hours with the company yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon we signed a term sheet. So gang tackle, get everybody in front of Juicy.

[Host/Interviewer]

Bound to ask you which company.

[Pat Grady]

Oh, I know, I'm sure you would, but yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And the answer is comment.

[Pat Grady]

For now, company probably a monster. Probably one that's going to be huge.

[Host/Interviewer]

Was it a big check? As in the stakes were high.

[Ed Ludlow]

Come on now, hang on.

[Pat Grady]

Our job, the smallest possible dollars for the Largest possible.

[Ed Ludlow]

Our job is to put small dollars to work and make them large dollars.

[Host/Interviewer]

There is some case studies we're going to get to later in this conversation that would say slightly otherwise. Let me ask you this, let me say ask you this. We can do the big dollars if we have to. Conviction over consensus. So in lots of partnerships, be they a venture firm or a law firm, you know, you vote. Yeah. Your structure is very different. Things are not achieved by consensus. How does it work?

[Ed Ludlow]

We vote. But the points about conviction is that you need conviction to, to be committed for a company for a long period of time. We love building companies and helping founders build companies. We want to be an early believer and compound with them into the future. And that requires real conviction by the person who has the most expertise. And so when we debate, we are trying to get to truth. We are a truth seeking organization and there's much better conversation when there's a debate than when everybody is, oh yeah, I agree. And then it's a, it's usually a investment.

[Pat Grady]

And let me give you an example on that. 2019, okay. 2019, Sean McGuire joined Sequoia Capital.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yes.

[Pat Grady]

He joins the early stage team. Okay. 2019. Zoom had just gone public. We just got into business with Dylan Field of Figma, who I know you guys just had on the combined market caps of Tesla and Nvidia were approximately the same as the market cap of Salesforce. So to set the stage in 2019, the thing on the menu was software. Yes, software was consensus. We love software. Every love software. Sean, a brand new early stage investor shows up and says, I think we should invest in a rocket company at 20 billion. We thought that was insane. But Sean had conviction. He had done the work. He painted the picture. This is pre Starlink, Right. This is when it was a launch company and the main customer was the government. Right. Sean painted the picture of what this thing had a chance to become. And it's become one of the best investments.

[Host/Interviewer]

We talked about Space X.

[Pat Grady]

And so that was, that was SpaceX. Yeah, so that was, that was conviction at work. That was 2019.

[Host/Interviewer]

What I'm trying to get to is the idea that in any number of voting partners the majority might say, I have a lower conviction. I have a four. You guys do it on a scale zero to 10, you don't count five, but just two might say we are eight or we have nine.

[Ed Ludlow]

We love those kinds of investment.

[Host/Interviewer]

And you do go with the investment investments.

[Pat Grady]

We've been recording the data since 2014, so we now have 12, 13 years. Of data on this. And we thought that contentious investments would actually be the best investments. And it turns out it actually doesn't matter whether it's contentious or consensus. All that matters is presence of conviction.

[Host/Interviewer]

I want to get to Sean because it's outlined in the BusinessWeek article and Sean has been on this program and I've spoken to him somewhat regularly. Right. The idea is that Sean has made, let's say, incendiary posts on, on social media. He has said things that are divisive. But you regard him as being unique. Right. He has a unique background and set of interests that you believe put Sequoia into opportunities that you would not otherwise have. I don't want to speak on your behalf, but, you know, let's talk about that.

[Ed Ludlow]

Like, I think we should just talk about the balance sheet, Sean, Like a lot of the balance sheets of Sean, the positives and negatives. I see you just talked about a bunch of negatives. And I just want to make sure that people understand the positives. The guy was one of the like top 10 counter strike gamers when he was in high school. He was a day trader in high school. He then went and got a PhD in physics in quantum theory. Much if you regard physics is hard, quantum theory is one of the hardest. He, when he joined Sequoia, he put together a hardware manifesto. He led us into hardware, he led us into SpaceX with a lot of conviction and a lot of courage because there was. There was votes by GPS that was a 1 on a scale of 10. It was a 1. And he kept pushing and pushing and pushing.

[Host/Interviewer]

A 10 out of 8.

[Ed Ludlow]

He was a 10 out of 10.

[Pat Grady]

And it tends to be either a 0 or a 10. 10.

[Host/Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ed Ludlow]

Fairly binary, very binary person. And so, you know, in terms of conviction, he has strong conviction. He's been right a lot. He helped led us into crypto. And I don't want to talk just about the negatives because I think people

[Host/Interviewer]

need to understand the space X is one of the biggest returns that this firm will see in its history.

[Pat Grady]

And I also go back to the thing we're talking about earlier. We want everybody to become the best version of themselves. Now, again, we are strict on values and principle variables. And so we need to believe that when people behave, they're doing so with the best possible intentions and they're doing so with a standard of excellence that we expect of all of our partners if they are doing that and if we happen to agree or disagree with the output, the agreement or the disagreement doesn't necessarily matter. It's the inputs that we tend to focus.

[Host/Interviewer]

I would say for the record that, you know, Sean told me that he would not work anywhere else and, you know, he believes in the principles that you outlined. Also that, you know, his belief is that his intentions were never to have a net, a net harmful effect on the firm.

[Ed Ludlow]

His intentions are always pure. And that's another thing I was going to mention. But he also has great courage. There's conviction. There are people with conviction and they don't have courage. And you can talk all day long and then you don't sort of make the investment or you push.

[Host/Interviewer]

What does courage look like? What's the action that you're looking for the partners to take?

[Ed Ludlow]

If you have a GP and you're not a gp and there's a vote of a one by a gp, but you still keep pushing forward, that is courage. You're willing to get fired for something that you believe is going to be a great investment and that turns out to be one of the best investments in Sequoia history.

[Pat Grady]

We have a list that we keep of all the different failure modes that we can run into on investments. There are 40 or 50 of them, one of which is called Wimpy Sponsor. Wimpy Sponsor is you say you love something and then you get a no and you just go away.

[Ed Ludlow]

You just won't.

[Pat Grady]

You probably didn't love it if you got one no and you went away. If you actually love it, you're going to keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing. And that's what courage looks like.

[Host/Interviewer]

I want to get some of the investments you have made. So what we're going to do is take a quick break. We'll be right back with Sequoia Partners, Alfred Lynn and Pat Grady and we'll talk about the big one, which was Anthropic. This is Bloomberg Tech. We're back with Sequoia Partners and co stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady. I'd like to talk about the Anthropic investment. It's detailed in the Businessweek article, but essentially it was something a bit new. It was an example of risk or franchise risk or risking the franchise. Where should we start with what happens? I mean, you were along with Sonia, right, the sponsor on that opportunity.

[Ed Ludlow]

So. So there have been multiple sponsors of this. We work as a team. There are multiple sponsors on. On the company. Ravi had sponsored it for a period, one round. Sonia had sponsored it with him for another round. And then we kept passing. Part of it was because we wanted to sort of be. We were early investors in OpenAI and we thought, well, we can't invest in both. And for a period of time that was our mode until we checked with all of our founders and they were

[Host/Interviewer]

using both companies and they were using the technologies of both for different things.

[Ed Ludlow]

Exactly. And so obviously OpenAI started with the consumer app and finding information and Anthropic had cloud code and it was much, much more focused on coding. And so over time we got greater and greater conviction. Our own, our own engineering team was telling us how good the cloud co product was working.

[Dylan Field]

Right.

[Ed Ludlow]

So we gained more and more conviction over time that we should make an investment in Anthropic on the, on this billion dollar round, this last round that we made investments, it came together because we had just been following the company and three months before, we had made an investment in the company.

[Host/Interviewer]

That was January of this year.

[Ed Ludlow]

Yes. Yeah, it was actually November and then

[Host/Interviewer]

it was closed in, disclosed then. Yeah.

[Ed Ludlow]

And so we've been following the company. The revenue ramp continues to go up and we decided that we're going to make a fairly large investment in this round.

[Host/Interviewer]

A fairly large investment initially was a

[Ed Ludlow]

billion, but the idea, recommendation by Sonia and I that we invest a billion and we were like, we're going to get the money. Well, we have plenty of places we can invest from.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Ed Ludlow]

And I was pleasantly surprised, first with a call from Sean and then a call from Pat and then in the, in the room, we started with a number that I thought was like, huh, interesting where we could get that number from.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Ed Ludlow]

And the number started at 5 billion

[Host/Interviewer]

and then you work backwards then.

[Ed Ludlow]

Yes.

[Host/Interviewer]

To two and a half come in. And it explain your take on the events that, that transpired?

[Pat Grady]

Well, I mean, the, the simple, the simple explanation for the investment is this is the tectonic shift of our lifetime. In a perfect world, we would have backed Anthropic many years ago. We didn't. And so the best thing we can do now is to come in at the most scale that we can muster. And so 5 billion was kind of a theoretical number mentioned to be provocative. We ended up at two and a half because we can't really do 5 billion across all of our different funds. And so two and a half is kind of the most we can do. And that's sort of how we ended

[Host/Interviewer]

up fair to go as far as to say, like, how much money can we deploy without putting the firm at risk?

[Pat Grady]

Yeah, that was part of the conversation. Two and a half or five would Be comfortable numbers as far as that goes. But, but one thing we don't, we've never done spv. We're not in this SPV business where you speak for something I think we

[Host/Interviewer]

have time today to talk about.

[Ed Ludlow]

Yeah.

[Pat Grady]

So we don't, we don't do that stuff. And so two and a half billion was what we could do out of the core funds. Committed Capital Capital.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. Let me ask you this or give some background. Growth early stage. Since 2017, you've led the growth co led. You've co led early stage. But you SaaS consumer. But there's a lot of overlap. Right. You have made significant growth stage investments and joined boards. You've made early stage investments, particularly in AI. Just talk a little bit about how the two of you see that progressing, you know, forward looking.

[Ed Ludlow]

I think it's very, very simple. Which is like if you've been in this business a long period of time, you know what a good early stage investment looks like. You know what a good growth investment looks like. So Pat has been traditionally a growth investor. He made the early investment in Harvey. I've, I've seen how early stage companies grow and advocated for growth investments in Airbnb and Doordash when they grew up. And over time I think if you've been in this business long enough, you'll make both early investments and growth investments. We have Constantine, that champion Citadel securities and Waymo. We have, we talked about Sean. We have, we have David that is invested in a NEO lab. That's relatively early. We have Sonia who's recently sort of flew with me to, to London to advocate for the investment. Ineffable.

[Host/Interviewer]

Ineffable.

[Ed Ludlow]

So these are this, our team is much more fluid and we don't just going back to like most of our partners don't like being put in a box.

[Irving Tan]

You don't.

[Ed Ludlow]

None of us want to be put.

[Host/Interviewer]

You also regard the partners. Sorry Pat, to interrupt you to say that these partners, if you stack them up against any venture firm in the world, they would be in the top 10 of, of of the list of partners all time.

[Pat Grady]

I genuinely believe that we have the best partners in the world. If Alfred and I got hit by a bus, we'd be fine.

[Yuhara Anand]

Fine.

[Pat Grady]

If whoever came next got hit by a bus, we'd still be fine.

[Robert Schiffman]

Right.

[Pat Grady]

But this idea of being able to go beyond early in the growth growth into early consumer, into enterprise. Enterprise and a consumer. I think one of the things you realize over time is that there are two core primitives in our business. It's people and markets. And if you develop a good understanding of what outlier potential looks like in a person, and if you develop a good understanding of where a market has a chance to go over time, those two ingredients kind of transcend the stage at which you happen to intersect that company. And so that's what we see out of the folks on our at Sequoia. You know, as they progress, they can kind of go across stages.

[Host/Interviewer]

I have to ask you both. Bloomberg reported this week that Sequoia was one of the firms approached by Situational Awareness as they tried in the reporting to offload some private stakes. You know, we've seen what's happened in public markets, an opportunity to comment on that and how you see the situation.

[Pat Grady]

We'd be delighted to comment on that. We were aware of that situation and it has been reported that we were talking with them about the anthropic stake. You know, Ken Griffin showed up with what was a better solution for Leopold at that moment in time, and he went with the better solution. I think that our, our observation is that there is this game on the field over the last couple of years, investing the supply chain. Leopold was one of the first people to recognize that that was the game on the field. And on balance, he played it pretty darn well. And so our suspicion is that he's going to be a fixture in Silicon Valley for a long time to come.

[Host/Interviewer]

I wanted to get to the Valor case study we've talked a bit about. Sean, one, go ahead.

[Ed Ludlow]

On situational awareness, he did just wire $400 million to a company that we invested in, so.

[Host/Interviewer]

Oh, could you. We actually reported on the 400 million, but I haven't got a clue who the company is.

[Ed Ludlow]

Yeah, no comment on that. But he's, he's not a good one. He's not, he's going to be, he's, he's really good. He's going to be around.

[Host/Interviewer]

We just have, sadly, two and a half minutes. I found what happened with Valor Atomics really interesting. Again, we're going over history, but would you just kind of explain how that happened? Sean was the sponsor. He made a really big proposal. Then what happened?

[Pat Grady]

Well, we have a partner named Liam Corgan who joined us just six months or so ago. Liam, physics undergrad at Harvard, happens to be an Olympic gold medalist, but he actually came from the nuclear industry before joining Sequoia. And so we have this person in Liam who understands the market to a great degree of detail.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yes.

[Pat Grady]

And then we have this partner in Sean, physics PhD as Alfred mentioned who deeply, deeply, deeply understands the technology. So the two of them together were working on this investment. And generally speaking, things that have multiple layers of. Of technical risk remaining with a business model that is many years in the future, those are scary investments.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Pat Grady]

And so we're happy to take risk, but usually we do so with smaller check sizes. And so when the recommendation came out for a $300 million investment, you know, some eyes popped out of some skulls.

[Irving Tan]

Yeah.

[Pat Grady]

And I said, boy, that seems like a lot of money for a company with this much risk in it. But Sean and Liam made the case. We decided to get on a plane. We went to.

[Host/Interviewer]

You got a plane. Alfred, you were in New York.

[Ed Ludlow]

I was in a Citadel security board meeting.

[Pat Grady]

Yeah. A few of us got on a plane. We went to visit them. We spent the whole day with them. We got to know Isaiah and his team. Isaiah is truly a one of one, force of nature, exceptional founder who we're now delighted to be in business with. I think we started to appreciate exactly how many of the different pieces they've put together, how novel their approach is and how well they're executing. And at the end of the day, like Sean and Liam, we think they are right, and we rode with their conviction.

[Host/Interviewer]

We have literally 30 seconds, and I'm sorry to do this to you, but let's end it with your white swan memo. What would the title be if you did a white swan?

[Ed Ludlow]

I just think that there is a lot of negativity around AI and it's really just misplaced. I think we have a tech tech tectonic shift in AI, we have a tectonic shift in hardware, tectonic shift in semis. We have a tectonic shift in industrialization of America. This, the future is very bright. And if I had to write a memo today, it would be a white swan memoir, not a black swan memo.

[Host/Interviewer]

Sequoia Partners, Alfred Lynn, Pat Grady, thank you both very much.

[Ed Ludlow]

Thank you.

[Host/Interviewer]

And the conversation. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. One last look at shares of Google. Alphabet drew out about $115 billion of orders for a $25 billion debt offering. There's also the background of those departures. We covered 24 hours ago. Recap all of that on the podcast. You know where to find it. Beautiful day here in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech.

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