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Hi, I'm Lisa Mateo introducing you to the new Stock Movers Report from Bloomberg. These are short audio reports, five minutes or less, delivered right to your podcast feed. Throughout the day, Stock Movers fills you in on the day's winners and losers on Wall street and tells you about the news and data that's driving those gains and losses. If you want to stay plugged into the stock market but don't want to spend all day watching tickers scroll across your screen, then Stock Movers is a place for to get informed. Listen a couple times throughout the day to find out what's moving equities and why. Search for Stock Movers on Apple podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else you listen. Get the latest stock news and data backed by reporting from Bloomberg's 3,000 journalists and analysts across the globe. Subscribe to Stock Movers wherever you get your podcasts. Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news from the heart of where innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
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B
Live from New York, I'm Katie Greifeld.
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A
And I'm Jackie DeVolos. In Washington, this is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up, big tech shares rebound as US Stocks see some relief from tariff tensions that have shaken global markets and rattled consumers. Plus, a conversation with the CEO of Palantir as the company announces new partnerships to make American manufacturing more efficient and earning season is not over. We'll sit down with the CEOs of Rubrik and Docusign following their results.
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B
Take a look at what's driving today's action. You have two names that really stand out to me. I'm taking a look at Tesla and I'm taking a look at Nvidia. Tesla shares up about 2% right now. We know that Tesla really has been in the hurt locker for much of 2025, but seeing a little bit of a rebound on this Friday. Nvidia is your biggest gainer on a points basis when it comes to the S&P 500. Also really helping out the NASDAQ 100 right now. Nvidia shares higher by about 4% right now.
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A
Jackie, let's get to all of this with Bloomberg's Ryan Westelica. Ryan, help us understand this roller coaster because Some of these Mag 7 names were exactly what was dragging us down earlier this week. What's changed?
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C
It's been a very volatile week, but some people have been really wondering, are we going to see some kind of capitulation here? Are we going to see some sort of end to the Selling pressure that has been going on, you know, certainly this week, but really for the past couple of weeks. And it does seem like maybe we are starting to see a little bit of dip buying coming in here. Some of these names have gotten very oversold by some metrics. There are still some concerns about the economic outlook. Many of these names will have some slowing growth prospects, but the growth remains above the market rate. So I think people are kind of saying, you know, these are still pretty strong companies and they might be looking to take advantage of that today.
- [03:23]
B
Well, Ryan, I'm curious what you're seeing as the driver when you talk to analysts, when you talk to investors, because it is still earnings season, as we've been reminded of, but it feels like even good news isn't necessarily helping out these stocks when it comes to fundamentals of these actual corporate names. Is it just overall sentiment, risk appetite? Is it valuations? What is actually the catalyst of the market right now?
- [03:47]
C
I'd say it's really all of those things. So prior to this year, all these stocks had done extremely well. Many of them were trading at multiples that were kind of stretched relative to their history. You know, when you have a two, three year rally in some of these names that took some of them up, you know, more than 100%, it's a natural place for people to be wanting to take profits. When you couple that with, you know, tariff uncertainty, overall economic uncertainty, you have people to sort of like shooting first and asking questions later. I don't think people have really soured on the group, but there's certainly nothing that's really continuing to push them higher from already elevated levels. Already elevated multiples.
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A
Brian, I'm curious how consumer sentiment ends up affecting tech names that are sometimes a little bit more insulated, at least like in the short term to some of those swings and how people are feeling about their budgets. Is that something that we're going to see later on?
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C
I would say that you might see it most particularly with something like Apple, which is a very consumer facing name. It's a little bit less potent for say, Microsoft, is more focused on the enterprise, maybe a little bit less focused for Metta and Alphabet. Obviously there is a correlation between sort of ad spend and just overall economic growth. So it's less of a consumer story. But I do feel like if there is sort of broader uncertainty, it is likely you will see maybe a broader pullback here. I'm not so concerned about it from a revenue perspective outside of companies like Apple, which has already been struggling to see Pretty robust demand for its Latest iPhone.
- [05:11]
A
That's Bloomberg's Ryan Westelica. Thank you so much for joining us. Meanwhile, Representative Biden Donald is planning to introduce legislation today to codify an executive order that President Trump signed earlier this month which established a strategic bitcoin reserve and US Digital assets stocks Pile passing the bill would ensure that the reserve in the stockpile could not be eliminated by future executive action from another president down the line. This would protect crypto friendly policy that President Trump has embraced.
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B
Katie and this year traditional finance executives have also been embracing crypto and discussing business opportunities with crypto firms. That's a shift in sentiment towards digital assets and it was really on display at the futures Industry Conference in Florida recently. Bloomberg's Bernard Goyder was at the conference joining us now. So talk us through what the mood on the ground was because I take a look at this market, the crypto market, and outside of just today, it seems like sentiment has been pretty bad.
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D
Yeah, it has. I mean the crypto market's really kind of coming back. Winter is coming, as we, as we say in crypto land. But I think more broadly there's some real structural shifts in this industry that bode pretty well for the long term in terms of crypto. So the, the main thing was that there were so many established exchanges talking about their crypto offerings. We saw last year the growth of these ETFs come on board. Doesn't feel like that. It was that, that long ago before, you know, we didn't even have any crypto etf.
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A
Right.
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D
And now there's crypto derivatives, people can trade. So we saw one exchange, the Singapore Exchange, a very established exchange, launch, looking to launch. They haven't had approval from the Singapore authorities yet, but they're trying to launch some new crypto products, perpetuals that were famously traded on rtx. So it's a sign that maybe, maybe, maybe the party is going to carry on for crypto.
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A
Bernard I want to talk about some of the other structural changes that you alluded to just now. Prediction markets are really starting to come up in this sector and I'm curious what you see as the impact on some of these newer players that they could have on futures markets, for example.
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D
Yeah, well there's, you know, markets are characterized by fear and greed and I think we saw both of that on display. So I spoke to the CEO of Ninja Trader, one of the upcoming futures trading brokers, and they were really keen on these, on these prediction market players. They're kind of saying, well, you know, you can, you can put a bet on the super bowl, go to a casino, you can go to a sports betting place, or you can, or you can maybe do that with, with Futures. But we're seeing real reservations in the regulatory community about, about these kind of events, contracts. And what was striking is a close ally of Donald Trump, Jeff Smith Brecker, who is the CEO of ice, one of the companies we were just talking about, saying, look, we really need to draw a line between what's gambling and what's, what's, what's trading, what's investing, what's giving people the opportunity to hedge. And one of the areas that, I mean, one, one rule that I've got is basically is that if there's a ball involved, then you're probably looking at the, the gambling side of things rather than, rather than investing.
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B
Talk us through how this conversation factors into what we're seeing in the market right now. I mean, bitcoin, it's back above $80,000 a coin, but we're seeing, we got below it. And it feels like the halcyon days above $100,000 per coin feel pretty distant right now. So you talk about this optimism that you're feeling when you talk to these executives and you talk to these conference attendees, but what's actually going on in markets?
- [08:29]
D
Well, what you've got to understand about the, the people at this conference is these are either futures exchange executives or they're executives of proprietary trading companies. These are, these are companies like Citadel securities that are, they make market. They make money whichever way markets go. So really, you know, it's hard to. The main sentiment is that there's a lot of volatility and that volatility is great news if you're running an exchange. If you're a market maker, might be less good news if you're a retail investor who's decided to buy and hold. Buy and hold Bitcoin or ether.
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It's Bloomberg's Bernard Goyder. Thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, shares of Rubrik and Docusign are surging today after posting an earnings beat. We'll speak with Rubrik CEO Bitbul Sinner and DocuSign CEO Alan Teageson. That's next. This is Bloomberg.
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D
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We have to understand the changing world when it comes to trade, wage growth.
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C
The disinterest inflation process is well on track these days.
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D
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E
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F
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B
Tariffs are bad for growth.
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F
Economic stability is non negotiable.
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B
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- [10:12]
D
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- [10:16]
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- [10:18]
B
Feed by 7am well, shares of Rubrik are absolutely flying today up about 25%. That's after the security software company posted a better than expected for fourth quarter revenue and also have a stronger than expected first quarter outlook. For more, I'm pleased to say we're joined now by Rubric CEO People Sinha joining us. Great to have you with us. Let's just talk through the first quarter forecast. It seems like that's what a lot of the sell side is seizing onto and that's why you see this shares reacting the way that they are. So your revenue Forecast is now $259 million to $261 million. That is well above the estimate of just around $243 million. Where did this strength come from? What are you seeing that led upgrade?
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G
First of all, thank you so much for this opportunity. We had a strong end of the last fiscal year. The Q4 subscription revenue subscription grew 39% year over year. And not only that, we generated 75 million of free cash flow in the quarter and then we were cash flow positive for the full year. And I love our customers. I travel around the world. I had 400 plus meeting last year. And what we are observing is that cyber resiliency is the number one priority in cybersecurity. Everyone is worried about ransomware attack and cyber attack and how do they keep their businesses up and running irrespective of the attack. And that's what is driving the demand for Rubric. That's what is reflected in our guidance. We guided 30% growth in in the top line revenue for the next fiscal year.
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A
People, let's dig a little bit deeper under the hood. On the earnings call last night, analysts were really impressed that you're basically a year ahead of where you thought you would be just even a year ago. And so when we think about the generative AI Opportunity here. Obviously you guys were a huge beneficiary of the cloud transition which seems silly to say now because it's so commonplace, but what does I do for your future growth prospects?
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G
At Generative AI gathers team in the enterprise businesses have to transform to be ready for gen AI and these transformation involve transformation to cloud and also transforming their data landscape from the data integrity, data classifications understanding of sensitive data. Because to deliver responsible AI businesses have to ensure that the right data goes to the right use user. And Rubrik is a data security company and we are delivering integrity of the data, availability of the data and ensuring that only the right data goes to the right user on the right platform at the right time for the right duration.
- [13:07]
A
When it comes to the geopolitical tensions around the world, there is a number of conflicts going on right now. Do you guys see any kind of signal of increased cybersecurity threats that kind of correlate to what's going on in the world and is that good for your business at the end of the day?
- [13:26]
G
Obviously if you look at the geopolitical landscape, you have Nissan estate actors, industrial espionage, insider threat. I mean as we are digitizing and moving and adopting newer and newer technology for productivity gains, the surface area of attacks keeps increasing. So this has been a trend that has been a secular trend. What is shift is in the last three, four years there is a realization that they folks cannot stop all the attacks. And in the last 25 years everyone invested in attack prevention and now the focus has moved to saying that attacks will happen and how do we ensure that our businesses keep running. Schools are still open when the attack happens. The kids can go to school, people can go to hospital, your banks can still dole out money when you swipe your credit card or swipe your debit card. So essentially keeping the business up and running. In the geopolitical environment, cyber warfare critical infrastructure is high priority. And that's what is driving this new vision in cybersecurity around cyber resilience.
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B
Well, just in the past couple of weeks, I mean you remember Elon Musk saying that X was being cyber attacked. X was down for a little bit. I couldn't see my feet. It was really a scary time. But I'm wondering if this is just a fact of life. I mean you think about all the high profile cyber attacks that we've had in the past couple of years, the past couple of months even, and it seems like there has been an uptick and that's not necessarily abating.
- [14:53]
G
Cyber attack has fundamentally changed in the last five to seven years. It used to be a bored teenager showing middle finger to large corporation by bringing down their website or doing the denial of service attacks. Now it has become a cybercrime where people are trying to monetize all protest or demonstrate that they can take a business down. And it is a fundamental existential threat to businesses. As Elon wrote that X was under attack and they were trying to bring it down. That's where the businesses are today. So if you are not ready for cyber attack and if you're not ready to keep your services up and running in spite of cyber attack, the business may not exist. And that's the new environment that everyone is living in.
- [15:38]
A
To Rubrik CEO people send out thank you so much for joining us. Another stock we're watching today is DocuSign. The stock is surging after the E Signature software company gave an encouraging outlook for billings. For More on this, DocuSign CEO Alan Teakerson joins us now. Alan, you started selling an AI powered product not too long ago and I'm curious how much of a role you've seen in that growth of that product. How much of a role is that playing in this bullish outlook we're seeing?
- [16:10]
E
It's very important for it. So first, it was a very, very strong quarter for us and the culmination, I think of a transformative year for DocuSign where we've continued to stabilize our core business. We got much more profitable. So we I think taken our operating margin up by 10 percentage points in the last two years. And then most importantly, as you alluded to, we've introduced this new intelligent equipment management platform that's very much centered around AI and we saw some very nice early success and that is what allowed us to not only print some, some, some good results, but show increase in an acceleration in billings growth for next year. And I think the investors like that.
- [16:52]
A
Talk to us a little bit more about what that innovation is going to look like going forward. If it is such an integral part of that growth story going forward, is it going to be what we see see coming out of like the language model developers? For example, there's a new feature every month that really kind of keeps us on our toes. For you guys, what's kind of the next thing that's going to take it to the next level?
- [17:15]
H
Yeah.
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E
So look, I feel very fortunate to be leading docs down at a time when, when there is such an incredible improvement in and the ability of AI. We've been a user of AI for a long Time it's been integrated into our products. But obviously there's been a step change in capability. And agreements have historically been dumb, flat files. Inside of all companies, people could barely tell you where they were, let alone what was in them. And with AI, we can completely transform that. So now I can tell you where your what's in all your agreements, when are they up for renewal? What are the key terms you might want to renegotiate? What are the terms where you or your vendors have not been performing? You know that just a total game changer that has been possible before. And so we have a lot of headroom for AI features. We're going to be previewing a lot of our new capability at our momentum event next month in New York. But already we're seeing tremendous adoption and interest in getting more visibility into and capturing the data and using the data from your agreements.
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B
Alan, I want to talk a little bit about how this translate into the stock price because you take a look at the five year chart. Obviously we're flying high during the pandemic. That came with a lot of volatility on the back end. Then you had a fantastic 2024, up about 50% in your shares before yesterday through yesterday's close, the shares were down about 17% year to date though, and now they're up about 17% today alone. So a lot of volatility. What is your message to investors about how you're sort of going to stabilize the stock from here?
- [18:47]
E
Yeah, yeah, I can't control the stock in the short term, but I can tell investors, investors is, I think Docusign is on a transformation journey. We put down, I think a very strong foundation for that last year. You can see our optimism about growth acceleration in our outlook and we think we have years ahead of that and that will then flow through to revenue and ultimately into operating income. There's just so much headroom in agreements and Docusign is the best position as the largest vendor focused on agreements to capture that. And I think we're starting to demonstrate that we have that opportunity. So there will be a little bit of volatility in the short run, but I think the long term trajectory is, is very positive.
- [19:33]
A
Alan, here in Washington, there's been a lot of uncertainty with regards to the economy. Recession fears are starting to bubble up. Policy, tariffs. There's been a lot that has kind of eventually battered stocks across the board. And for you guys, how does the consumer sentiment affect your business? Are you a bit more insulated from it given your customer base?
- [19:57]
E
We are so we are a very diversified customer base across really all sectors of the economy, all sizes of companies, and of course, also geographically. And as a result, things that affect individual sectors and countries tend not to show up as much for DocuSign. But if we take that macro question that you asked, and the bulk of the agreements that get executed with DocuSign are agreements with consumers, even through February, we've not seen a material deviation from, from trends. So so far it hasn't flowed through to, to consumer activity as we can see it. But, you know, obviously, if the world economy accelerates or decelerates in a material way, that, that will also ultimately affect.
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A
Us in about 30 seconds. I'm curious about the competition here. We saw Dropbox saying they're kind of deemphasizing their signing business. Is this an opportunity for, for you guys?
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E
Well, there are a lot of companies who've developed basic signature solutions. Doc Sign is the clear market leader. We sort of set the pace and are usually the product of preference for small and large companies. And so I don't focus on individual competitors, but I like where we're sitting from in the core Sign business. And of course, with this much broader platform for intelligent agreement management, we now have a much broader value proposition to sell to our 1.7 million monthly paying Sign customers.
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B
Well, Alan, really appreciate your time. Have a great weekend. When you get there. That is DocuSign CEO Alan Teageson.
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A
No one has benefited more than the AI boom than Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang. But with troubling signs ahead from the likes of Deep Seek or President Trump's tariffs, Nvidia CEO is now trying to extend the good times. Let's talk about this with Ian King here for more on today's big take. Ian, you have been covering this company way before, before it became the cool kid on Wall street and in Silicon Valley. What is next for the company now given that we've seen it's not immune from new entrants coming into the air space?
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D
Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, at the moment, it's pretty safe in terms of competition, but that doesn't mean that there aren't those out there that are trying really hard. But what we were trying to show in the story is that, you know, the CEO Jensen Huang is not getting happy, fat and lazy here with his billions of dollars. He's out there everywhere he possibly can, and his mission is to get AI out into the economy as fast as he possibly can and as make it as pervasive as he possibly can, because that's fundamental to whether this growth story has legs or not.
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B
Happy, fat, and lazy. That sounds like every cat's dream. But I want to talk to you about my favorite chart in the world, at least for right now. I want to look at Intel vs. Nvidia year to date because it's a really stock stunning reversal of fortunes. You have intel of about 19% Nvidia, which has been the darling down, actually on a total return basis nearly 10%. From the folks that you speak to, is this sustainable? And in just about 45 seconds, yeah.
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D
I mean, this is, this is just what's going on with intel on a corporate level that's, that's causing people to be trading in and out of it. Fundamentally, the flow of wealth is solidly in Nvidia's direction, whether it's earnings, profit margin or anything else.
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It's Bloomberg's Ian King. Thank you so much for joining us.
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B
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Katie Greifeld in New York.
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A
And I'm Jackie Devalos in Washington. Palantir Technologies has announced a new partnership with health care software provider R1, our very own Bloomberg. Caroline Hyde spoke with Palantir CEO Alex Karp and R1 CEO Joe Flanagan about that deal and how cost cutting in Washington and corporate America could impact their plans.
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H
People who are basically anti reform, whether it's like anti doge people or anti tech people in corporate life, everyone has their excuse. Many companies are just like, yeah, I'd rather, I mean, basically have a steak dinner with some model provider and feel cool and it doesn't work. And then you have the government version, which is, we can do no reform. The whole thing has to suck. What, at a high level, what America is going through, and this is going to be an absolute crucial example of this is you're going to get the system to work much better at a lower cost. And this is, this is a macro trend that is unstoppable, which basically means those that actually run together are going to take over the whole market. Like my version of this is the care and the unit economics are going to be so much better. They're going to take over the whole market, Joe.
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A
I mean, you already have most of the market of top health systems, but how are those leaders in health wanting to work with you? At the moment, there's a lot of anxiety in the market. There's a lot of worry about future economies and whether people want to be leaning into new contracts, new relationships, new partners.
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C
Yeah, listen, we've had great receptivity from our health systems and the broader end market. And really we are 100% aligned with their objectives. We want to transform the experience for the patient and the physician. Those are the two users of this process. And we want to unlock financial capacity for our customers that can be reinvested in clinical excellence, supporting their communities. And the reality is the design of this operation, when you look at those outcomes that I mentioned, you have to break that down. What is the architecture today? That $160 billion that's spent to convert revenue to cash? 80% of that is labor. Only 20% of that is technology. The technology is brittle. It does not have the ability to harness the power of these models. And we, we spent a lot of time and what we found was there's an abundance of raw intelligence and there is a shortage of technology companies that understand how to apply, configure, orchestrate, apply that intelligence to transform an outcome. And we are really, really excited to partner with Palantir on solving that problem.
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A
Dr. Cop, the problem is government wide at the moment. Are you pro or anti dojo at the moment? Are they using enough technology?
- [26:55]
H
I look, I don't want to, we're supposed to have a normal adult interview here, so I don't want to go down. But I've been everywhere saying the Democrats are committing, are involved in a suicide dance. And these are. There are two macro trends here. One is transparency. One is optimization of the actual work product, whether it's in government or in commercial. And AI is this unstoppable trend. And it's unstoppable because you can make the actual work product better. So, and you can change the unit of economics. There's a fancy way of saying you can do it much better and much cheaper and, and nothing is going to stop that. So what, what, what we should all be doing is finding ways to reform every institution as soon as possible. And in the commercial space, if you don't do it, your competitor is and they are going to have a much better product at a much better price. So cost of revenue but Dr. And.
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A
We'Re worrying about defense spending getting cut and they're worried that that means that your offering gets cut.
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B
Will it?
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H
I'm in favor of whatever is good for America and I'm super in favor of meritocracy. Buy the best products, look at the unit economics and you know, that should be good for our whole country and it'll be good enough for Palantir. I am very, very supportive of anything that brings better output at a lower cost. In a transparent manner. And by the way, this is the single biggest advantage America has. We have the most sophisticated, most intelligent, best trained corporate leaders in the world. And we have the best people from all over, including you. And we have to lean into this. And, and that's going to be very, very good for our country. And it's necessary because people expect the best product at the best price.
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B
And that was Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, and Joseph Flanagan, the CEO of R1, speaking with our own Caroline Hyde. Let's get more detail on Palantir's plans and its partnerships with Bloomberg's Lisette Chapman. And Lizette, you write recently that analysts expect Palantir's commercial revenue to actually overtake its government revenue this year. And I have to imagine that these partnerships that they're inking go a long way towards furthering that.
- [29:19]
I
That's the expectation, for sure. You know, Palantir started in government and they have been ignored, expanding into commercial since then. This, what we just heard about with the partnership with R1, is one of a blitz of different partnerships that Palantir has done over the past several weeks, months. They also had one with TWG to totally go in and distribute its software to all of its financial institutions and insurance companies. So this is, you know, them applying the same playbook to health care.
- [29:56]
A
And then it seems like the word inefficient. Exactly. It seems like the word efficiency is really the buzzword, especially with Doge running around here in Washington. Caroline actually asked Dr. Karp that, you know, are they seeing any kind of concern? Are investors freaking out about the fact that cost cutting could affect their business? Here's what he had to say.
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H
We're focused on value creation, but value creation in the end will be rewarded heavily by investors and by the government.
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A
Because investors are freaking out right now that the government isn't going to stick with you for this cost cutting endeavor. Doctor.
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H
I have no idea what you're talking about. Honestly. I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'm not freaking out. I'm very happy. Who's freaking out? I don't know what you're talking about.
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A
Analysts sometimes that I know you don't.
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H
Always freak out, that people are always wrong. Why don't you advise the Democratic Party? Like, I mean, it is ridiculous.
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A
Liz, that I'm curious what you make of that, especially given what you've written about now, the company really shifting more toward a commercial strategy here, right?
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I
It's not shifting from government to commercial. It's expanding what he said is completely consistent with the message that he and the company has been giving, been given to, to the market and otherwise for the past, you know, decade, decade plus, I mean, definitely since they went public. And the point that he's making is we don't care about these short term inflection points or what the stock does one time or another. A reminder that he, Peter Thiel and Stephen Cohen have control of this company in perpetuity. So whether the stock jumps, you know, a lot or a little is kind of irrelevant in his mind the way that he's described it to the long term creation that they're playing. So just to put a little asterisk onto his comment about who's freaking out, we, you know, we're not freaking out. Again, that's consistent with kind of what he's been saying all along and this, this conflict between a lot of the retail investors and the Wall street analysts, you know, perception of the value of this company with it being very much a retail driven stock.
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A
Right.
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B
There's differing perspectives there, differing timelines, and it's important to keep that in mind. Something else that Karp has said previously is that, quote, untamed demand for its AI tools has outstripped supply. Take us into that supply and demand dynamic. Is that still the case?
- [32:32]
I
Oh, sure, that's a great question. The, the way that he was framing that was basically they didn't have a salesforce to go and sell this software. They simply hadn't expanded that muscle. And so what they did is they created a series of boot camp hackathons where they have coders go sit side by side with maybe an executive lead from one of these companies. I attended one that was in Detroit with, you know, VW and Lear and Caterpillar and a number of other ones. And the idea there was to get people on prem quickly and teach them how to use it and have it sell itself. So that was what he was referring to. With untamed demand, they can't keep up with it. They just didn't have enough people to sell it. So we'll, that's something that will be interesting to continue to track.
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That was Bloomberg's Lisette Chapman. Thanks so much for joining us. Still coming up, Miriam Rivera of Ventures joins us to talk about why the firm isn't pulling back from D I focused investing under the Trump administration. This is Bloomberg.
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You can get the news whenever you want it with Bloomberg News now.
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A
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I
Yes, there are other products like this.
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F
From a variety of news organizations, but they usually rerun their radio newscasts throughout the day.
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That's not what we do.
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F
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A
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F
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A
Now it's time for rvc Spotlight Ventures recently announced its fourth fund. The firm invests in seed stage startups with a focus on diverse founders. CEO and Managing partner Miriam Rivera is here with us to talk about this more. Miriam, this is quite a time for anything focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. Talk to us about the process of raising a fund in an environment like this.
- [35:17]
F
Well, this is a challenging time to raise a fund, but fortunately we were out of the market before the election results were in. The challenge that we experienced during our time was really the bank failures was the predominant issue that scared investors and fortunately the federal government did support the depositors at Silicon Valley bank and First Republic bank and other banks in the country that were impacted and that had a particular potential to impact the tech economy.
- [35:53]
A
One of the things I it feels like forever ago actually that we saw Silicon Valley bank really tumble. But the other kind of big question around siege stage seed stage investing, because it takes so much, I think kind of a real skill there, you're really placing a bet on a founder on a person, it's usually before they've started generating any revenue. How are you seeing the opportunity set in that in that part of the market at a time when any company that isn't in the space is having a hard time raising?
- [36:28]
F
Well, it's true that there's been a concentration of capital in larger funds and also in areas like AI. We've been investing in AI machine learning for over 15 years, so that is not new. I think what is new is that this is a real infrastructure play and that's one reason why a lot of capital is going in that direction. We tend to be focused on the application layer at ULU Ventures and so really the time of great opportunity is coming as all these other foundational eyes are built. And then they can be applied in different sectors of the economy. All areas including health care, legal, tech, education. We're investing in many of the applications that are benefiting from AI and helping to bring low cost technology to areas where perhaps they hadn't had as much access because of the cost of software.
- [37:28]
B
Well, Miriam, Jackie touched a little bit on the macro environment. I want to talk about the political environment a little bit here because you have this focus on investing in diverse founders, investing alongside inverse diverse founders. And we know that this administration really has strongly criticized DEI and there's been a massive pullback, at least at the government level here. What do you make of that and does that mean anything for your strategy?
- [37:52]
F
Well, our belief is that diversity is an investment thesis for us. We believe that's how we're going to financially outperform. And part of the reason is that 70% of Americans fall into a bucket called diversity. We're talking about women, we're talking about people of color, we're talking about underrepresented minorities such as black and Latinx, and we're talking about immigrant Americans. Turns out that's the majority of Americans. So I believe that anybody who isn't investing in diverse founders is really giving up the opportunity to be part of the tradition of this gate country of benefiting from the talent that we have wherever it comes from. That's one of the most important things about entrepreneurship. It is one of the few bipartisan aspects of our society today. Politically, everyone believes that Americans should have a right to start businesses, that they are able to bring benefit to the economy. And that's what we're trying to do. 80% of our founders are diverse, meaning they fall into one of the categories that I mentioned. And 80% of our teams also include white people. So it is not exclusionary. Diversity means we have all permutations of founders on our teams.
- [39:15]
A
Given you really focus on the earlier stage companies, I'm curious how you're looking at the pipeline of talent flowing into Silicon Valley, particularly at a time when funding for universities is really starting to get pinched. Is this a moment where the venture community could really step in, given so many of these schools really do provide the talent that Silicon Valley relies on.
- [39:40]
F
Well, I think it's really important to say that our university system is one of the best in the world. It is one that is emulated throughout entrepreneurship in America, is emulated throughout the entire world. I have been in ecosystems internationally dozens of times and they're trying to implement American entrepreneurship, American venture capital type investing in many emerging economies around the world. The universities are a foundational piece of that and the research is that is done at those institutions benefits all Americans and frankly the entire world. When we do health care research, when we do technology research, we end up creating the future businesses that drive our economy. You had Alex Karp from Palantir on we were an early investor in Palantir. Palantir. Alex is half black, half Jewish. His one of his co founders is gay and an immigrant. This is America and this is what is driving the future of our economy.
- [40:48]
B
Well, that's a good note to leave it on. Miriam, great to get some time with you. That is Miriam Rivera. She is CEO of ULU Ventures. Thank you for joining us. All right, it's time now for talking tech. And first up, Sheehan's executive chairman Donald Tang says he's committed to taking the company public. This comes as the company grapples with accusations that it tolerated labor violations among Chinese suppliers and tariff challenges from the Trump administration. Sheehan confidentially filed papers in June for a London listing. Plus, Ubisoft is said to be on the hunt for new investors and is considering selling a minority stake in a new venture. That's according to people familiar the gamemaker has contacted potential bidders, including current shareholder Tencent, and has asked for preliminary bids to be made as soon as this month. And finally, British and US Officials have held talks to alleviate concerns that the UK Is trying to force Apple to build a backdoor into encrypted data. That's according to sources. This comes just weeks after Apple removed its encrypted security features for cloud data into the UK in response to a British order that asked Apple to circumvent encryption. Meanwhile, let's stay on Apple because the company is said to be working on incorporating a live translation feature into its AirPods in a future software update. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman broke this news, of course, and he joins us now for more. So talk us through the opportunity set that Apple potentially sees here because you think about some of its rivals. You have Google Pixel buds, for example. They already have this option.
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J
Yeah, Katie, thanks for having me. So this is a bit of a catch up feature, but this is becoming a standard enhancement in earbuds lately. Right. Like you mentioned, Google has this. Samsung's going to have it at some point in a big way. Now Apple's going to have it later this year. The way it works is you could be wearing the earbuds Right. You could be an English speaker speaking to someone who's talking to you in Japanese, for instance. Right. And as they're speaking, that Japanese will live translate into English into your ears. And when you speak back, you'll show them your phone or other Apple device and what you speak in English will be translated into Japanese for them to read.
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A
Right.
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J
So this is a feature that Google's had, but it's important for Apple to have it too. The big picture here is they're trying to turn the AirPods into their own ecosystem, into their own product line, into something that people know they can buy. Right. But understand that there's going to be software updates over time that make it better and better. The same story you get with the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, etc.
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B
Well, Mark, in the last minute I have with you, that's where I wanted to go. Because you think about the AirPods, it feels like that has really been a focus for Apple here. And I think back to your reporting around Hearing Health, they're trying to introduce that into the AirPod as well. So just lay out the vision for the AirPod ecosystem here.
- [43:41]
J
Well, the growth, growth for Apple is not on their existing products, Right. It's about the accessories, it's about the services, it's about the attachments. Right. So they need to make the AirPods as good as they can to create that growth. There are a lot of people have iPhones, but not all of them have AirPods. Not all of them have Apple watches, not all of them have other peripherals. So they want to make those peripheral products as good as possible, as interesting as possible to get more people using it. They also want people on old AirPods to upgrade to new AirPods. AirPods. This translate feature, like the Hearing Health feature, this is an AirPods Pro feature, right? These are going to create differentiation between the lower end AirPods. They just updated those, the older headphones, some of the older AirPods. This is another way to get people to upgrade.
- [44:21]
B
All right, Mark, great reporting as always. That is Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Don't forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the terminal, online, Apple, Spotify, and on iHeartra. Have a great weekend. This is Bloomberg.