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For every six Chinese people, there's a Ping an customer. We have accumulated a massive amount of the customer data, not just on the financial side, but end to end across channels thanks to our AI advancements.
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This is the Technology Empowered Growth at Ping an podcast. In our latest episode, Ping an is utilizing technology to provide integrated and personalized 24. 7 support for China's rapidly growing elderly population. Now available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and Ping An's website.
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So have you heard the story about the prescription plan? With savings automatically built in, it's where a family of any size can feel confident the cost of their medication won't hold them back. Go to CMK Co Stories to learn how CVS Caremark helps members save just by being members. That's CMK Co Stories. This holiday season is likely to be a roller coaster for logistics and manufacturing. But having the right staff in place can be when you choose Express employment professionals, they can handle everything. To ensure you have the right size contract workforce, go to expresspros.com solve your workforce challenges when you choose Express to support your hiring in a variety of roles, including two of our biggest areas, manufacturing and logistics, visit ExpressPros.com today. That's ExpressPros.com.
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Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts Radio News. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York.
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And Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, Microsoft and Nvidia commit to invest up to $15 billion combined in a startup Anthropic. This is Saudi Arabia's crown prince is set to discuss tech investments and AI innovation with President Trump today. And gaming roadblocks take steps to expand age verification across its platform. We'll discuss with the CEO. But first we check in on these markets. Once again under pressure, the Nasdaq off by 1.7%. We have raised $1.8 trillion from this benchmark since the end of October, in large part because some of the key players have been on the downside. Bitcoin, though, recovers ever so slightly. Up percentage point. We're in 92,846. Move on to individual movers because it's all around Some of our top story today. Cloudflare. We want to check in and we're down percent. That's after it's been fixed. But we were struggling to get on to NJ Transit. You were struggling to get on to OpenAI's chat CBT. You were struggling to get onto many a website because of Cloudflare more broadly and that says we saw an outage that now they say has been fixed. We're still up by 3%. Let's talk about though, the top story that we just mentioned. Microsoft and Nvidia both committing to invest up to a combined $15 billion in anthropic in a move that ties the AI developer closer to two of the biggest backers of its rival OpenAI. Bloomberg's editor Seth Beeman joins us some more. It's a tough time to be announcing that you're going to be buying cloud from one company while they're going to be investing equity in another. Just more circular deals.
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It feels like this one feels very clearly following the opening I playbook that we've been seeing in recent weeks here. Yes, I think Anthropic is taking money from Microsoft and Nvidia. Microsoft Anthropic then plans to commit spending to Microsoft's platform using Nvidia chips. Kind of textbook here and I think we'll add to some of the anxiety there, but it is on a bit of a smaller scale. Also our understanding at this point is that this financing is part of a larger investment round to be announced at some indeterminate time. So tbd, how much Anthropic is actually planning to bring in here?
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I mean they only just closed around that value them at more than 180.
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The new normal. That's a bottomless need. And everyone is tapping everyone else. All the ships have to rise together or else they fail.
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But, but what's interesting is Amazon had to make clear that they're still the number one provider of cloud and of training compute to Anthropic. Everyone seems to be an anthropic now, but how are we seeing that rival the likes of Open?
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Yeah, I mean again, this is not an either or model. It's a yes. And you know, I think we've seen OpenAI turn to anthropic backers, namely Google and Amazon. So Anthropic is doing the same. Now there's a lot of intrigue there about what that means about the Microsoft opening our relationship. But again, at this moment everyone is tapping everyone else until the music stops.
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C
And the music has been sounding a little jerky of late. I mean, certainly in the public sector people have been worrying about these circularity deals on the actual productivity gains that we might ever get with.
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That's right. I do think Anthropic though, has messaged clearly in the last week or so that while they are kind of playing the opening eye playbook here, we're investing heavily in infrastructure, in chips, building out more. We're doing it on a smaller scale now as I said the last time I was on 15, 20, $50 billion. These are massive sums. But when compared to opening eyes, 1.4 trillion a bit more measured.
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Well, we've also got other breaking news today from LM Innovations and improvements this time coming from Alphabet. Shares are under pressure, down 2 point percent but they rallied hard yesterday because we know Berkshire Hathaway is getting into Alphabet. But now we've got Gemini 3 and it seems to actually be really rather good.
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That's right. So at the same time that Google has been helping Anthropic and OpenAI compete, they're also still trying to be the best model on the market. And so I think with Gemini 3 they're really touting their gains in coding and in mimicking the process human reasoning. Obviously those are key aspects for Anthropic and for Opening as well. Interestingly, the Gemini 3 model also offers a more premium tier. I think it's $250, something like that a month and you get to do even more intense reasoning where you can test different hypoth and we'll see. But they're all competing with the same kind of benchmark claims here to try to be the dominant force.
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And well, we have news of alums getting ever more sophisticated. We're able to code, we're able to vibe code and your team has been so busy because vibe coding startup Lovable, which is actually a European startup, seems to be expanding and maybe even getting a really high valuation.
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Yeah, I think it's really probably the most promising or one of the two most promising coming out of Europe right now. A lot of the vibe coding leaders are from the US including Cursor and you can argue Anthropic and others. I think Level has seen pretty strong organic demand and pretty promising growth in recurring revenue. But this is a crowded market and if Google's model changes the game overnight for coding capabilities that might have disruptions further on down the line, it's very much to be seen.
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$200 million annual recurring revenue and according to sources, a $6 billion valuation. We have the CEO in a little bit later. Seth, amazing wrap up of all things. Seth Fiegman of course, who helps edit across that team. Let's turn to Washington now.
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Guess what?
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We're talking about AI, but with the Saudi Arabian Crown prince Mo Bin Salman, he's at the White House today meeting President Trump. We know the talks about deepening U.S. saudi ties, but really there is such a focus on tech, on investment, on innovation, as to it all, Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall joining us from the White House. A lot of it's going to be about chip access, right?
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Exactly, Caroline. And good morning to you. No doubt access to critical chip technology is going to be at the top of the agenda today as Saudi Arabia has faced U.S. restrictions since 2023 in part over the kingdom's ties to Beijing. Now I will point out that when Trump visited Saudi Arabia back in May, the two countries announced a slew of investment commitments related to AI, related to data centers that are going to come to rely on access to these advanced semiconductors. But six months has gone by and we have yet to see the US Green light, those export licenses. Now, people familiar tell us here at Bloomberg News that the two sides are still hashing out one, the security conditions for these shipments and to the specific reciprocal investments that Riyadh is going to commit to making when it comes to making good on their pledge for 600 billion in US investments over the next four years. Now, perhaps adding to the pressure here is that we know that recently the UAE saw some of its export licenses greenlit when it comes to projects run by US Companies there. But Caroline, this really does dove into, dovetail into the other key part of the conversations today which has to do with defense. We are watching closely whether or not the two countries enter into a defense mutual cooperation pact and also those F35 that President Trump indicated that he will allow the sale of. Of course, this comes back to the chip conversation because there concerns here also about whether or not China could have access to this advanced technology in these fighter jets. Caroline, I'll end on this. It's absolutely packed here in Washington. We're expecting tech leaders from across the country to descend and world to descend here, all leading up to tomorrow's U.S. saudi led investment summit at the Kennedy center here in Washington.
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And we await that arrival of MBS to the White House. Tyler Kendall, thank you very much indeed. Let's get the wider investor perspective here. Please say Maggie Patel is with us all spring, Global investment Senior portfolio Manager, head of Capital Allocation. And look, we are thinking about how global narrative around AI continues to develop. Have you got any worries that we've been seeing at least in the pressure on the stock market of late?
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No, I think this is a little garden variety correction because we've had a few wobbles, bad news in the private credit market. I think that we'll have maybe 5% correction. I think the year will finish on a very, very strong note because really the trend for artificial intelligence is so strong for data centers. In fact, when you look at the companies that have commented, basically they don't have enough capacity for all the demand and they've been able to raise prices. So that doesn't sound to me like a peak of a market that's ready to, to collapse at all.
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I'm just going to go out to some sound that we heard a little bit earlier in a summit that Bloomberg's been having over in Africa. They have the JP Morgan vice chairman joining David Pinto. Just listen what he said about a correction.
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It's possible that is probably a correction there and that correction will also create a correction in the rest of the segments in the S and P and in the industry because you are probably in order to justify these valuations, you are considering a level of productivity that it will happen, but not it may not happen as fast as the market is pricing.
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C
Daniel Pinto there of JP Morgan, just speaking with our own editor over in Africa today, Margaret, and I'm really interested as to, well, why you think this will just be, I think a garden variety correction. What will be there to support it? Will it be in videos numbers that get us back on track?
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Well, I'm not sure anything in video could say will be enough to assuage market concerns. But really when you look at the big market corrections, the economic corrections, they've all been driven by frankly, Federal Reserve activity when they start to aggressively raise rates. So right here it looks you could say, well, the Fed is somewhere between neutral to slightly easing and again, that is not the precondition. I think we've been through so many of these cycles, all driven by the Fed, that we think it's natural that we should have a big downward correction. And I don't think we will. I think we'll just have a continued period of slow growth for most of the economy. The tech sector is very strong because artificial intelligence is really a qualitative leap in the kind of technology that we've had over the last several decades. So we think it's just a small correction. In fact, if you look at Nvidia, the stock really for this quarter, the fourth quarter is really just about flattish. And all the all they are, except for Google is the only one that's up for the quarter. So that says to me is a lot of nervousness waiting for Nvidia. But I think after that clears the year, I think we'll have a strong finish because the fundamentals are still so strong as far as the eye can see, which I would say is at Least for another year or so.
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We're looking yet to date Nvidia up 35% but it has eroded about half a trillion dollars of market cap since the end of October. Margaret. So is that a buying opportunity?
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Well, I think it's, I think it's a moderate opportunity. Yes because at least you have some of a discount. The P e is around 40 times and that's higher than the average stock which is around 27 times. But on the other hand their leaders in their sector they should have an above average growth growth as far as the guy can see. So it's really not as high price as it was relatively a few months ago. So I'd say yes it's a good time to add to in video because they their fundamental position is really strong. I think it's just as I said, market nervousness. Short term traders have gotten badly whipsawed back and forth in the last couple of months and I think that's what's really causing this downward wave in volatility.
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Giving us the longer term perspective. We always so appreciate it. Maggie Patel of all Spring Global Investment Investments. Stay well. See you soon we hope. Meanwhile coming up gaming giant Roblox takes steps to expand age verification across its platform. We'll discuss the details of Roadblocks CEO Dave Azuki that's next. This is Bloomberg Tech. Roadblocks began rolling out age verification technology for all users and is introducing age based chat as the gaming platform expands safety features with further parental resources to block. CEO Dave Suzuki joins us now. And Dave, this really builds on that big ambitious September announcement. How is this going to be rolling out?
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Hey, great to be here and what an enormous responsibility with 150 million users every day coming to the platform. We're rolling out what we believe will be the gold standard for the future of Internet safety where the first really major gaming platform platform to use AI to estimate the age of everyone on the platform who wants to use chat and communicate. We're going to start rolling this out in December and then it'll be should be all rolled out by January basically on whatever device you're on. Take a quick image will analyze your age with AI, complement it with a bunch of other signals and use that really to figure out who, who might you be chatting with to keep the platform more safe. We're not going to be allowing miners ample to communicate with people who are adults and we're going to roll it out to everyone on the platform.
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I'm really interested as to how you're going to measure success here, Dave, because in many ways you're trying to prove a negative. But how do you, how are you going to be internally thinking this has worked? People are satisfied and they're safe?
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Well, I want to highlight things are already working in that we're a very unique platform in that we filter all of the text and communication on our platform. We don't allow the sharing of images, we have monitoring for critical harms, we work very closely with law enforcement. So I see this as an addition to everything we're doing and really to our vision of what we've been calling the gold standard. But we do estimate over the next few months will, we'll know roughly the age of everyone on the platform and we'll complement that with some of the other things we do like trusted connections and, and things like that to constantly build on our innovation. You know, we've shipped over 100 safety innovations in the last year so it's really a continuation of that focus.
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C
You're using a third party vendor Persona I believe. And how are you going to be ensuring that that's robust enough, the AI, the underlying technology is robust enough over in the uk? Well, some using Discord for example have managed to bypass previous facial recognition age verification tests.
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There's a bunch of other signals we have in addition to the facial age estimation and we do have the ability to estimate several times if we need to. So, so in addition to using the camera to do an age check, we have other ways to validate and putting all of these signals together we believe is pretty robust really.
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C
What's so interesting is clearly you're here with safety as a priority. You did mention back in the earnings, your CFO in particular that, that maybe you'll see some friction. Maybe the numbers, the revenue, the growth might be impacted as people start to have to verify their age, may be slower to come and adopt. Do you think that that will bear out? How will it look longer term?
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We shared this vision that we believe over 10% of the global gaming market, which is, is somewhere between a 180 and $200 billion dollar market is going to be running on roadblocks. And in the, in the earnings call we just had, we, we shared this amazing growth both on bookings and use in the 70% year on year rate. Long term we, we believe this is just the right thing for the platform. We're unique in that we have all ages. We, we have people under 13, over 13 or over 13 is growing rapidly. This is the right long term vision and we're really optimistic about continuing our growth.
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Okay, so this is the right balance from your perspective what do you think the data will bear out as to the name? Well ultimately the actual ages of people you have using it. Do you think you have more under 13 you anticipated? Do you think you have more older users?
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We can't estimate that exactly. What I can say is that are the facial age estimation tech we're going to use is is pretty reasonable and pretty accurate. I've tried it. My some of my kids have tried it. We've tried it within our staff meeting so I think we're going to find out we're reasonably close but over time we will get a better signal on.
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Everyone'S age and this must be something that marketeers that those that eventually will buying more ads with roadblocks are going to be looking at. Is this going to help well inject some fuel to that offering because is people will feel safer about what age group are going to be consuming such adverts.
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We have shared a couple of things. You know we don't target under 18 already on the platform but there's an enormous number of older users joining the platform. We shared in our earnings call. I believe in Q4 like we're literally earning Q3 running at over 10 billion hours a month of engagement. That's an amazing amount of engagement. Our economy is primarily driven right now by our our virtual economy powered by Robux. But advertising is a wonderful complement and you're right, we're going to have a better, more accurate estimate of everyone's age which for a lot of our advertisers that are starting to hop on with events supporting all kinds of things, beauty products, movies, things like that. They'll have a better idea of really the number of people over 18 on our platform.
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Roblox CEO Dave Suzuki on the latest safety updates. We really appreciate you joining the show today. Thank you. Now coming up we're going to be speaking with a lovable CEO Anton Esika as the company is said to be nearing a $6 billion valuation. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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For every six Chinese people there's a ping on customer. We have accumulated a massive amount of the customer data not just on the financial side but end to end across channels thanks to our AI advancements.
- [19:04]
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This is the technology empowered growth at Ping an podcast. In our latest episode, Ping an is utilizing technology to provide integrated and personalized 24. 7 support for China's rapidly growing elderly population. Now available on Spotify, Apple podcast and Ping An's website.
- [19:21]
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Support for the show comes from public.com you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic option plays on the side. The point is, you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Crypto trading provided by ZeroHash complete disclosures available at public.com.
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That.
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C
Coding startup Lovable is set to hit a $6 billion valuation. That's according to sources. The company is seeing rapid growth, reaching $200 million in annual recurring revenue and expanding with new offices in Boston and San Francisco. Joining us now to discuss Anton, CEO of Lovable. Anton, I go to the numbers that you've actually given to us. The $200 million average, the annual revenue run rate. That's a lot. Who's purchasing?
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A
So we're seeing Lovable since we launched just 12 months ago, being powered by this consumer and prosumer movement of individuals that use the product and then they, they love it so they put in their credit card. And that's just the movement that's been then translated to us being pulled into the enterprise where Fortune 500 companies like Klarna, HCA, Healthcare, they're transforming how they work on top of a completely new way to build software, software products and even software companies on top of the products that are being built.
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C
$200 million in terms of what you're seeing, annual revenue run rate, you're seeing as you say, a breadth of enterprise adoption and individual entrepreneurialism. But when it comes to vibe coding and the use cases, where are you having to build out your building offices in America, it would seem.
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Yeah, that's correct. What we're seeing is that Lovable is providing a lot of value in large companies moving faster and many of those companies are in the US So we have great leadership that has built companies at the largest stage before. Ryan Meadows scale Klaviyo. He's not joining building out from where he's based in Boston. We have Marianne Cohey who joined from Notion. She's moving with her family to Stockholm. I think that says a lot. While we keep the core headquarters here in Stockholm as we expand globally on the mission which is simply to reimagine how software is built and who gets to build it, we witnessing once in a generation democratization of software creation.
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C
The pace is extraordinary. Is only four months ago is only back in July that you mentioned that you've got $100 million annual revenue run rate. Now that's doubled. You are, we understand, looking for funding. You could have a $6 billion valuation. Can you comment on how much you are needing to have yet further capital to finance this expansion?
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A
Yeah, Caroline, I'm not here to talk about any fundraising that hasn't happened, but what I can say is that the momentum is just is absolutely astounding and it's increasing. There are hundred thousand new projects built on Lovable every single day. And what's growing even faster is how much traffic the meaningful applications and businesses built on Lovable are gathering. We're seeing, we're seeing 5 million visits to lovable websites per day that that doubled in just the last two months. And some part of that is us building out and just reimagining. How does the entire lifecycle of building a software product look like? We launched lovable's cloud and AI offering two months ago and that has resulted in almost 30% of all the applications built having AI included. Even though they're built without the software engineer, they're built by the 99% who don't code cloud and then starting to collaborate with engineers. If they're being built in large companies in the same platform, what are your costs?
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C
Where are you having to spend more? Is it talent? Is it compute? Is it what is it that you are having to build within your business model?
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So we're we when someone asks Lovable to build them a new piece of software or just a presentation and demonstration of something that they think the best business should be doing. We are of course consuming compute to power the AI and that costs a significant amount. But Lovable has healthy unit economics. And now what we're looking to do is to just do everything we can to drive as much value for all of our customers. And that's going to require us to invest in the new offices that we're opening and to take care and teach customers that are using level how to get the most value out of the product.
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C
And when you hear the anxiety in the public markets that companies are overinvesting, that we're not seeing the rewards yet in the timeframe that we need to for the amount of money that's going on, capital expenditure, what do you say to that?
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A
So when initiatives are being pushed into a company top down, then I think there is often a risk that the expectation is wrong. Someone hasn't used the tools themselves. What we're seeing with Lovable is that it's all being adopted, bottoms up. So people come to the Lovable website, they build an application, publish it online or privately to their own company and then they see value and then they start paying. So I think there's a lot of different things happening in AI and if you're considering making buying decisions, you should yourself use the technology and understand yourself how it can affect your business outcomes or your personal personal life. And at level we're seeing companies like Microsoft, Klarna, a large part of Fortune 100 companies adopting this new demo don't memo where anyone in the company builds software to take the company forward.
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C
Demo Day memo. Wonderful to see it being born out of Sweden, expanding here in the States. United United States. Lovable CEO Anton, we thank you so much for your time today. Now another key story we're all digesting is Microsoft and Nvidia announcing investment in combined $15 billion into anthropic. In return, Anthropic will be committing to purchase $30 billion of computing capacity for Microsoft's Azure cloud service. Mandeep Singh and Bloomberg Intelligence breaking down what is again a circular deal here. But it seems as though this could really be rivaling Open Air.
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A
Well, so the way I look at it is everyone is looking to diversify. So in the case of Nvidia, they want a long tail of cloud players for their chips. In the case of Microsoft, they want to go beyond Open Air and you know, diversify into different lms. And because there are so few frontier LLM providers, I mean Anthropic is the obvious choice.
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B
You can't really invest in Google or, or metals.
- [27:33]
A
So from that perspective it makes sense that they are looking for diversification. But look, in the end when you look at, you know, the deployment of these lamps, there is no doubt that.
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B
You know, Gemini just released their Gemini 3 LLM. So the progress is there is just.
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A
For Microsoft because they don't have their own LLM, it makes sense that, you know, they are investing in anthropic and.
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B
Really making sure they have, you know.
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A
Someone beyond open air to look up to be because that contract expires in 2032. So they're really playing the long game.
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C
Here and then playing the long game for compute demand as well. How important is that $30 billion to the overall business model?
- [28:14]
A
I mean Microsoft has a backlog of.
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B
$400 billion with a two year duration. So they already have a ton of visibility.
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A
This 30 billion is sort of an increment to that.
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B
And that's where, you know, they have really differentiated from the other hyperscale cloud.
- [28:29]
A
Providers with their backlog, with their shorter duration and with the visibility in revenue they have from, you know, just the GPU and AI workloads compared to all other cloud providers.
- [28:40]
B
So from that perspective this kind of helps their revenue visibility at least for.
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A
The next two to three years.
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C
And even Singh and Bloomberg Intelligence, thank you so much.
- [28:49]
B
Much.
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C
Look, amid all the talk of this investment, venture investors, they are focused on two key things. Picking the right startups that have intertwined AI and helping portfolio companies make the most of the technology. Hillary Gosher is with us, managing director at Insight Partners where she oversees these considerations. The VCP firm, it's got $90 billion regulatory assets under management. Hillary, I'm so pleased that you're here to talk us through what you, you are in charge in many ways, ways of how is being adopted by your portfolio companies. You're all in on software, in particular over Insight. How are companies making the most of it and really showing productivity gains.
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B
Caroline, thank you for having me on the show. So inside is an investor that invests across stage. We invest from early stage startups, scale ups, grown ups, once they go ipo. And you know, over the history of Insight we've had 55 IPOs companies that you would be aware of, Shopify Monday and this year Hinge Health. And so we're very focused on making sure that we help build the best companies. And so this year we're celebrating 25 years of insight on site which is the team that works alongside portfolio companies helping Them scale and grow. Because the one thing that CEOs ask, which is what do you provide me? That's more than just capital. Yeah. And the point is we provide expertise, we provide access, we provide talent. Talent so that they can really achieve their dreams. Just like you know, Anton at lovable.
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C
I love insight on site. That's actually a 25 years that you've been bringing this to bear. And what is it that you learn at the moment the leaders are needing of you? Where is the guidance making most impact?
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B
Yeah. So we have an accelerator program because as you mentioned, everything is changing with AI and we need our portfolio companies to keep up with the pace of change. There is a difference between those companies that are native and those are companies that are cloud native and ton being, you know, native. And how do we help our companies who are cloud native pivot and make that shift towards adopting AI? And really we think about it as our accelerator and it starts with the CEO. So the CEO is the person that really needs to understand and adopt and drive the change and the transformation innovation. So we bring CEOs into our AI accelerator program. It's a six month program, small cohorts of CEOs and we help them think about two areas that they need to drive change in. The first is around AI in the product. So how are they building AI into their products that delight and deliver more value for customers and then how are they adopting AI in their business so that they grow and scale more efficiently?
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C
When you're looking at, I think you've got more than 130 dedicated professionals getting on site, getting really bedded in with these businesses and helping them accelerate. When they're thinking of just the top down approach, it becomes a talent question. How are you finding that being an area of bringing everyone on board, everyone wanting to adopt, everyone wanting to ensure that these pilots have been proven out to work.
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A
Yes.
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B
So there is a strong groundswell among employees to want to learn these tools. There is a fear as well on the other side that if they don't learn the tools, would they be disintermediated? Would they not have jobs Instead? What we're seeing is that AI is really augmenting people and making them more efficient and better able to do some of their jobs. I'll give you a great example. So one of our portfolio companies works in the airline industry. They sell security and training software to large airlines. There are more than 7,000 incidents that are trained, tracked a day, types of incidents that attract a day, whether an airplane is on the ground. In the air, on takeoff, on landing, taxiing. And these are connected across thousands of airports every day. There is analysts who collect that information. It's an LLM problem in the making.
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Yes.
- [32:33]
B
I mean there's nothing better than a very large language model to be able to analyze all of this information and to really help those analysts provide the critical insights that keep aircraft in the air, keep passengers safe, safe, and basically keep revenue flowing. So those analysts actually now feel like heroes. Whereas before they were spending hours, but also behind the times, three weeks, four weeks before, sometimes they got the data and were able to just produce the insight. So in some ways ise really augmenting and helping them upskill and making them the heroes of the situation.
- [33:03]
C
And that's really about organic growth that I think of the expertise that you have learned over your career when it comes to inorganic as well and some of the acquisitions that have been made of your portfolio companies into bigger companies. But how much are you seeing? That is a talent acquisition story and companies portfolio companies are looking out to buy others at this moment. Is that something that you're helping guide through?
- [33:23]
B
Yes. I think it's interesting that you say that private equity has always been thought of as the domain for M and a, you know, buy and build, build a platform company, but we think of it as also a domain for venture capital. And the answer is site team has created an expertise to help our companies make those acquisitions for exactly as you say, either geographic expansion or potential new products to put in and for equi hires. And that is one of the ways that our companies are able to access some of this talent because these, you know, new natives are starting AI first thinking companies and some of those companies are ripe for acquisition by some of our companies who are looking for that talent.
- [34:00]
C
It's fascinating to have 30 years of insight and 25 years that you've been building this team of on site expertise. It's wonderful to have you here on the show. I hope you do come back soon. Hillary, of course, is over at Insight Partners. Hillary Gosh, a managing director there now. Coming up, robots are doing more for law enforcement. But as police departments invest more in these machines, ethical questions are arising. That's next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
- [34:30]
A
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B
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- [37:16]
C
It's time now for talking tech and first up intuition. It will spend more than $100 million on a multi year deal with OpenAI aiming to make its apps like TurboTax and QuickBooks more valuable with generative AI for the chat CBT maker. Well, the deal is part of a push to get consumers and businesses to rely more on its AI tools. Plus, Baidu, when it's posted its worst sales fall on record. The Chinese search giant has seen ad and marketing spend move to rival social apps. Meanwhile, it's struggled to keep up in crowded range race. Meanwhile, Xiaomi, which sold its first car just last year, is turning a profit from electric vehicle sales. The company's EV division posted a profit of approximately $98 million in the September quarter. Xiaomi plans to boost its EV production, so looks to compete with Tesla and BYD. Now, you may know this particular mechanical dog. We'll show you in a minute. For its viral document dance routines. But Boston Dynamics four legged robot Spot is also playing an increasing role in law enforcement. According to previously unreported news, more than 60 bomb squads and SWAT teams across the US and Canada are now using Spot. Our consumer tech reporter Samantha Kelly joins us now for more. And Sam, I mean, how is this being adopted? In what situations are we seeing them really take these on?
- [38:33]
B
Yeah, this is really fascinating. So we've seen seen some headlines over the years of spots showing up maybe at a crime scene. But now we're getting new data from Boston Dynamics that shows more law enforcement units across the US And Canada are implementing bringing these robotic dogs into their forces to help out in hostage situations or chemical materials that are sensitive like going in to see if something is hazardous, basically to prevent law enforcement from entering somewhere. This dog can go in, it can climb stairs, it can open doors. It basically acts as a separate set of eyes. There's a live camera feed so an operator standing quite far away from a scene can go in, assess the situation. And more law enforcement units, like I said, Over 60 now in the US but also we're seeing it overseas. Police in Italy are also using it, the Dutch ministry and it still remains quite popular and manufacturing and other facilities.
- [39:35]
C
As well, they aren't cheap, starting at $100,000. So the reward needs to be large. But what about some of the ethical implications here, Sam, briefly.
- [39:43]
B
Yeah, so it starts at $100,000 to your point, but it can go way up from that. We're seeing 250,000 in some situations. But yes, ethical implications here calling for more regulation around this from the state and even federal level down the line. You know, Boston Dynamics has some rules in place, but perhaps some community guidelines are needed as well. Also A lot of law enforcement units can't afford these different devices. So there are some, you know, talking around that as well. So just really people trying to get used to seeing, you know, something like this at a crime scene or at a situation, making sure that the, that the public feels comfortable as well.
- [40:25]
C
Bloomberg. Sam Kelly Fascinating. And all things spot. While the price of spot is now quite well above the price of bitcoin, it seems crypto sell off has just been taking a pause. But look, we're still at 93,300, 420, let's call it. It actually tumbled below $90,000 overnight for the first time since April. Bloomberg's crypto reporter Michael Shen joins us now. And it feels like as though we've got a little line of stability. But do we know who's going to be a buyer in this market? Is it institutional or is it retail?
- [40:55]
A
I think for now what we're seeing is that there's definitely some buyers have stepped in like as of today because we saw sort of, as you said, a little stability in the market at the moment.
- [41:04]
B
But what we're struggling to figure out.
- [41:06]
A
Actually who's going to be the new buyers.
- [41:08]
B
Right.
- [41:08]
A
I think right now we have a lot of these like that. So the digital treasury complaints similar to Michael Saylor dollars strategy that perhaps going to coming out later this year or Q1 next year, I think they're expected to be the buyers of the market in the near future.
- [41:22]
C
What's so interesting as well is during the government shutdown we know that the list of ETF applications has been piling up over the SEC. Many people want to have more ETFs that are related to crypto, but not always about Bitcoin. We know bitcoin's taken a hit, but the altcoins have really been selling fast and furiously. Is, is that something that just the market's okay with it stomachs that volatility?
- [41:42]
A
I think it is quite concerning in terms of what's going on in the auto coins.
- [41:46]
B
Right. Because I think they are still struggling.
- [41:48]
A
To find support after the October market crash in crypto because some of the.
- [41:53]
B
Other coins in the market crash went.
- [41:55]
A
Down to zero on some of the exchanges. I can imagine as a retail investor.
- [41:59]
B
Just holding a token all of a.
- [42:01]
A
Sudden went down to zero during this brief market crash.
- [42:04]
B
Especially if you're holding leveraged positions. Right.
- [42:07]
A
I think people ultimately do figure out like, you know, what are the fundamentals of these auto coins?
- [42:12]
B
Are the projects behind it like generating any sort of revenue or they're Just sort of like, you know, sort of create out of a thin air or sort of like being meant as a joke.
- [42:20]
A
Right.
- [42:20]
B
I think that's a question people have.
- [42:22]
C
To sort of like find out fundamentals. So key question across all of this market. It's great to have you on. Thank you very much indeed. Meanwhile, coming up up, more to come on what to expect from that highly anticipated meeting. It's kicked off between President Trump and NBC, of course, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. This is my tech. Let's return to Washington now because Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is at the White House House today meeting with President Trump. The talks are expected to center on deepening U.S. saudi ties and of course, the focus on tech, on investment, on innovation. Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall rejoins us. You're live outside the White House and there was much fanfare, a flyover and a very warm welcome for the leader of Saudi Arabia. Why is this relationship so important from a tech perspective?
- [43:20]
B
Yeah. Hey, Caroline. Well, this is the Saudi crown prince's first visit to the US US in seven years. So as you're alluding to, there's a lot of pomp and circumstance here today as the White House has really viewed Saudi Arabia as a strategic partner when it comes to investments in the US but also broadening out cooperation when it comes to tech and artificial intelligence. We know at the top of the agenda today, Saudi Arabia is looking for the US to greenlight those export licenses related to advanced semiconductors. But we have reporting here at Bloomberg News people familiar earlier saying that right now those talks are centered around one what sort of security conditions will be put in place and to what are those specific reciprocal investments Riyadh is willing to make in the U.S. i have to say, I was at the FII conference back in February. That was a Saudi backed investment conference in Miami. And it was President Trump's real first domestic trip since taking office. And he made the pitch that he wanted more money to be coming in from Saudi Arabia. A few months later, in May, we saw him visit the region and secure a pledge for $600 billion in investments in the US over the next four years. We know a lot of this the administration wants to see in these critical sectors that they have identified as being really important, particularly when it comes to our competition in China, such as data centers and AI. So we're watching really closely whether or not there are any specific investments announcements related to that. That, of course, goes hand in hand with the second bucket. We're watching here with which is defense today as President Trump has indicated that he's set to approve the sale of F35 fighter jets amid some concerns. One again with those chips access that China could have considering the close ties between the kingdom and Beijing, but then also what that means for Israel. We know that of course, Caroline, that they have a monopoly over the advanced fighter jet technology in the region.
- [45:04]
C
Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall live from the White House. We so appreciate it. Busy day there. Busy day across tech. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. But do not forget, check out our podcast. You can find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify and Iheart. And keep an eye on some of those big tech names as we anticipate Nvidia's numbers after the bell tomorrow. From New York, this is Bloomberg Tech.
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A
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