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- [00:00]
Caroline Hyde
Data threats don't knock. They sneak in quietly make themselves right at home. But when you partner with Veeam, you can spot threats before they're a threat to your business. Whatever the world throws at your data, it's all good. Get data resilient@veeam.com that's ve. Com these days, AI can help you adopt better time management, but it can't stop colleagues booking meetings during lunch. But how about being able to easily adopt industrial AI to streamline your business? Siemens Xcelerator helps you find the right AI providers and easily understand what they offer so you can use modular solutions to quickly scale up and grow your business. That's AI for real. From the global market leader in industrial AI, Siemens. Learn more on USA.Siemens.com AI running small and medium sized businesses is hard work.
- [00:54]
Ed Ludlow
Business owners need to be sure their ads are working just as hard as they do.
- [00:58]
Caroline Hyde
Amazon Streaming TV ads makes your marketing dollar work harder. With Amazon ads, trillions of insights help.
- [01:05]
Ed Ludlow
Small and medium businesses reach the right customers that matter. Your ads will show up during the.
- [01:10]
Caroline Hyde
Shows the people are actually watching and measurement tools show you what's working the hardest. Gain the Edge with Amazon Ads Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
- [01:40]
Ed Ludlow
This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, a framework to keep Tick Tock running in the US Reached and Donald Trump wide out. The details with Xi Jinping later this week.
- [01:49]
Caroline Hyde
Plus, Elon Musk buys millions of Tesla shares following the board's unprecedented pay proposal.
- [01:56]
Ed Ludlow
And U.S. energy Secretary Chris Wright joins us later this hour to discuss his big European swing powering the revolution and much more.
- [02:04]
Caroline Hyde
Meanwhile, big swings still being taken in the market at nine straight days of gains on the NASDAQ 100 longest winning streak since November 2023. We are at a new record higher up 6. 10%. You're looking at the individual stocks underneath this.
- [02:18]
Ed Ludlow
Yeah, it's a very busy start to the week in the world of technology. Elon Musk has bought $1 billion of Tesla. We will discuss it in the show. It was on the same day that we spoke to the board chair of Tesla. Alphabet, parent of Google, has joined the $3 trillion market cap club and shares are at all time high. We'll get to that later on. To then news, a framework has been reached between the United States and China for a deal that would allow Tick Tock to continue in the United States. The market reaction was in shares of Oracle. Let's understand why bring in Bloomberg Senior Tech Editor Mike shepherd in D.C. so we don't know a lot. We know a framework's in place. We know the President of the United States will meet with Xi on Friday. They'll discuss it. What else do we need to know, Mike? The things that we need to know are pretty much that. A lot of the details remain unknown at this point. We have not heard from the Chinese side yet to confirm that. They also view that a framework deal is in hand that would allow TikTok's U.S. operations at the very least to stay running. We don't know what the terms are of the transaction, what Beijing would be willing to hand over, and that includes the algorithm. This is the recommendation software that is really viewed as a crown jewel of TikTok's operations globally. And the question has always been, would Beijing allow ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, to part with at least some of that recommendation software to US Based buyers? Unclear whether that's going to happen and unclear whether the terms of this transaction will satisfy the national security terms that the China hawks who pioneered the legislation in 2024 requiring the divestiture by ByteDance of TikTok or a ban, whether they will be satisfied by whatever they see. A lot will ride on this phone call Friday between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
- [04:10]
Caroline Hyde
Ed and boy Mike is there a lot to discuss between Xi Jinping and President Trump. And not just TikTok, but Nvidia are another key chip within this whole negotiation. And we understand that China is ruling that in video in some way is being deemed, well, a monopoly or at least violating anti monopoly laws. Can you take us up to speed?
- [04:31]
Ed Ludlow
Well, you know Cara, the announcement today from China from their state competition agency that found in video violating anti monopoly laws in the country. It's no coincidence. The relationship between the US and China is very tightly orchestrated and stage managed. And this ruling that was announced earlier this morning really is a message to the US going after the most valuable company in the world, a provider of the chips that are powering the AI revolution that are seen as essential not only for Meta platforms and all the other US hyperscalers, but a lot of other Chinese companies that have favored the H20 chip, for instance, in building their own models. The Trump administration has recently given back permission to Nvidia to resume sales of that chip. But now we are seeing this headwind for Nvidia in China and it will be a test of the transatlantic relationship not only for Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, but also for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has cultivated ties in Beijing as well, trying to ensure that his company still has a sizable enough footprint there to compete with the likes of Huawei. So we'll be again watching this phone call on Friday between Trump and Xi to see what is also said about Nvidia. Remember, Donald Trump and Jensen Wang have forged this relationship, a close relationship, and he is betting on a video success as part of the administration's broader AI program. Carol?
- [06:05]
Caroline Hyde
Mike Shepard wrapping it all up from Washington. We so appreciate it. Let's dig into what the investor sentiment is like. Tiffany Wade, senior portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle, joins us. And Tiffany, investors don't care. Ultimately Nvidia is down about 1 1/2 percent, but it rallied more than 6% last week and you could say it's just a bit of profit taking on more broadly markets at a record high and focused on the Fed. Should they be more worried about this tit for tat China US Yeah, I think that's a great point. Nvidia is down a little bit today. There was also headlines related to China looking at some analog semi companies for dumping earlier in the weekend. Those stocks are barely down as well. So I think what that's telling you is that investors think that this is more of posturing by China in relation to trade talks and that there's not going to be a significant impact on these companies earnings over the long term, that it's really just posturing.
- [06:51]
Ed Ludlow
Tiffany, another piece of news this morning. The president posting on social media that American companies should not be subject to quarterly reporting, they should report earnings every six months. And the president also acknowledged that that would be pending authorization by the sec. But as somebody in the markets, would you just react to that piece of news from the president, please?
- [07:17]
Caroline Hyde
Yeah, I think this is an interesting one and there's arguments on both sides of this. The, you know, European regulator only requires companies to report every six months. So there is a model for this or a framework for this. From a company perspective, it likely reduces some of the reporting requirements for them, some of the reporting burdens for companies. But I think from an investor perspective what it does is reduces volatility for or it reduces visibility for investors since we have less information points from companies. Potentially also increases the sort of information disparity between investors, institutional investors and retail investors and then potentially also increases volatility because you have less touch points with the companies. You know, perhaps greater disparity between estimates and actual numbers from the company that could increase volatility around reports.
- [08:10]
Ed Ludlow
I love it. In the context of data points at the top of the program, we had the headline that Alphabet has joined the $3 trillion market cap club. Right. And if you think about the story at earnings, it still was the hyperscalers sharing with us their capital expenditures, plans, a data set. You know, how would this idea impact those kind of soft data points that now the market really relies on?
- [08:34]
Caroline Hyde
Yeah, that's interesting for the hyperscalers and for the companies. They're developing AI models because they use data. Right. The more data, the more powerful the models become. So especially with regards to, to models that are maybe intended for financial analysts or that are intended to help analysts with research, less data means less robust models. What's interesting is there's always this anxiety that the amount of data, the amount of compliance means that it puts off companies going public. But last week we had the busiest week for IPOs of a sizable nature in about four years, according to some. So what do you make of just this weighing up of demand, insatiable investor demand on one side with compliance and overbearingness on the other? Yeah, I think we've had a tremendous year for IPOs. This is certainly in contrast to the last three years. So the IPO volume so far through the middle of September this year is larger than it was for the full year of 22, 23 and 24. So definitely some pent up demand from companies that have wanted to go public. I think it reflects certainly capital markets being open, you know, stocks are at all time highs. Also a little bit of improved investor sentiment around, you know, the confidence in the economy as well as an asset manager, should you be buying in. Initially the bar was very high. Companies had to be profitable. They had to be showing growth on the bottom line as well as top line. But of late that seems to be pushed out the window too. Yeah, you're definitely seeing some of that. The, the growth stocks coming back to market with no earnings or, you know, earnings in a couple of quarters or free cash flow in a couple of quarters now is back, certainly a good indicator for companies in that growth year, part of the economy that investors are willing to invest in some more speculative companies. But we've also seen IPOs in the last couple of weeks in the consumer space. There's another one coming this week in the energy space that seems to be very well subscribed. So it's not just in tech, it's really across the board.
- [10:27]
Ed Ludlow
Tiffany, I want to end the conversation going back to where we started today, which is the relationship between the US And China. We have a framework for a TikTok deal. The President will speak by phone with Xi Jinping on Friday, and Nvidia is caught at the heart of this negotiation. How much do you expect politics and political volatility to play into markets, particularly for technology, in the balance of this year?
- [10:50]
Caroline Hyde
I think technology is going to continue to be sort of a hot spot for tariff negotiations, especially with China. It's kind of the biggest bargaining chip that both countries countries have with each other. So I don't imagine that the volatility around that will will quiet down and it might even continue into future years depending on how the Supreme Court rules on the IBA tariff. Yep.
- [11:15]
Ed Ludlow
Tiffany Wade of Columbia, Fred Needle handling every single news item of the day that we threw you. Thank you very much. So coming up, Elon Musk buys about $1 billion worth of Tesla shares. We're going to explain why and also how next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
- [11:33]
Caroline Hyde
Cybercriminals count on chaos. Count on Veeam to stop them fast. Partner with them and get 24. 7 ransomware support from the first red flag to full recovery. Whatever the world throws at your data, it's all good. Learn more@veeam.com that's V E A-M.com Every business has an ambition. PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open. Grow today at PayPalOpen.com loans subject to approval in available locations. Introducing the all new Adobe Acrobat studio, now with AI powered PDF spaces. Do more with PDFs than you ever thought possible. Need AI to turn 100 pages of market research into 5 insights with a click. Do that with Acrobat. Need templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal. Do that with Acrobat. Need an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report to sound real smart in real time. Do that with the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio. Learn more at adobe.com/do that with Acrobat. Elon Musk responded to an unprecedented pay proposal from the Tesla board by buying about $1 billion worth of shares. As you see, we're up 6%. On the back of that demand, let's bring in Bloomberg's global autos editor Craig Trudell for more, who is also part of the Elon Inc. Team, just showing boldness, showing a support for the company that investors seem to like here. How did he orchestrate it on Friday?
- [13:24]
Ed Ludlow
Yeah, I mean he did it in the midst of, of you and Ed talking with Robin Denholm at Tesla, the chair of the company. There's clearly a sort of coordinated effort on the part of Musk and the board to really generate excitement about the future of this company At a time when there's a lot of reasons to be really concerned. Right. In terms of the here and now business, we continue to see signs of, of, you know, really difficult demand issues. You know, we heard from Denholm that, you know, the board downplays the extent to which Musk is doing damage to this brand with his politics and his involvement in that realm. But he then proceeded over the weekend to, you know, do do more politicking that, you know, I think raises a lot of eyebrows, particularly here in the uk. Right. And so just how much there's really sort of meat to this optimism, I think is going to be the question in the months to come. So Caroline and I were explicit with Robin Denholm in asking how did you, the board, define politics or political activity? Let's get some of what she, she responded with us from a personal perspective.
- [14:41]
Caroline Hyde
In terms of his political motivations, etc. Is up to him. I mean, clearly from our perspective as.
- [14:48]
Ed Ludlow
A board, we're measuring him on results and measuring him on what he does.
- [14:52]
Caroline Hyde
As a, as a CEO of Tesla.
- [14:56]
Ed Ludlow
So part of the reason we pose that question is because literally in the days since the proxy hit and the comp package was proposed, Musk has been very active on X, talking in particular, Craig, about UK politics that accelerated over the weekend. What's the latest? Yeah, this very far right convicted criminal Tommy Robinson puts on this, this march that I think, you know, did surprise a lot of people with how many people showed up. Of course we should note there was a substantial counter protest that showed up for this as well. But a lot of, you know, anti Muslim rhetoric, a lot of sort of, you know, talk about this idea of civil war, which we've heard Musk use that sort of rhetoric before. We've, you know, on the backs of this heard, you know, Keir Starmer's spokesman and others in Westminster really, you know, express alarm about this sort of charged language that we're hearing out of Musk. And you know, I think we're also in the US of course, hearing over the weekend from the governor of Utah where Charlie Kirk was assassinated last week. Talk about the sort of evils of social media. And so on one hand I think you know, from those comments that that Robin Denholm Holm gave, it's clear that the board is willing to give pretty wide latitude in terms of what Musk is up to on a political basis. But if they're measuring for results, there are indications that this is not helping Tesla's brand. Bloomberg's global cars are crazy. They'll thank you just very quickly. To buy those billion dollar shares, Musk used a revocable trust. Quite a few of you reached out to me to ask about that. It means that the trust can be changed in Musk's lifetime. It's a pretty normal tax focused tool that billionaires in the United States use largely for inheritance planning. Another story Last week, Oracle founder Larry Ellison momentarily surpassed Elon Musk to become the world's richest person. The shares of the tech giant surged after posting a major increase in bookings, putting Ellison top of the list, at least for a day. Here's the breakdown. For a few hours last week, the richest person in the world wasn't Elon Musk. It was Larry Ellison whose personal fortune suddenly skyrocketed.
- [17:14]
Caroline Hyde
Larry Ellison's net worth soared by 80 billion.
- [17:17]
Ed Ludlow
That was the biggest one day gain ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The cause of this giant leap? The company Ellison co founded, Oracle just had a bit of a moment.
- [17:27]
Caroline Hyde
Oracle shares have surged premarket after the company posted a major increase in bookings and gave an aggressive outlook for its cloud infrastructure business.
- [17:36]
Ed Ludlow
Oracle made its name selling database software back in the late 70s, but in recent years it's become a tech behemoth thanks to the key role it plays in cloud computing. And it's that demand for cloud services that has driven the company's recent stock surge. Oracle's cloud computing business is really in demand by AI companies. That's essentially allowed it to reframe its narrative around AI and to ride the stock boom that's been connected with other AI companies. On September 10, it was revealed that Oracle made a deal with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, worth $300 billion.
- [18:10]
Caroline Hyde
I think a lot of investors and.
- [18:12]
Ed Ludlow
Analysts are assuming that if it can do deals like that, there will be more coming down line. Now if you've been paying attention to Oracle, this has actually been a while in the making. The last several quarters this has been the story of their earnings. After years of sluggish growth, Oracle's revenue is expected to Take off thanks to the race for AI computing power that sent sales in its cloud infrastructure unit soaring. The new deal with OpenAI builds on a critical AI agreement announced in July. This is an unprecedented cloud deal. I mean, this is likely the largest single cloud deal ever signed. Ellison and Oracle are part of a.
- [18:46]
Caroline Hyde
Half a trillion dollar announcement called Starg.
- [18:49]
Ed Ludlow
That Trump made several months ago. It's a partnership between Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank, and the goal is to build.
- [18:55]
Caroline Hyde
Data centers for AI across the US.
- [18:58]
Ed Ludlow
And Oracle will be a key computing.
- [19:00]
Caroline Hyde
Power provider for that initiative.
- [19:02]
Ed Ludlow
While the likes of Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have all vied for Donald Trump's attention, Ellison seems to have succeeded in nurturing a lasting working relationship with the US President. I have a high respect for Larry Ellison. He's somebody I know. He's been really a terrific guy for a long time. While Oracle's share price has Tripled in the three years since the arrival of ChatGPT, the AI revolution wasn't enough to keep Ellison as the world's richest person. So this was a brief flirtation with the top spot for Larry Ellison. He was surpassed by the end of.
- [19:34]
Caroline Hyde
The day Wednesday by Elon Musk, again.
- [19:37]
Ed Ludlow
Who has been in first place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for much of the year. There are questions of how long this boom in AI stocks can last. A lot of investors have expressed concerns that at least some of these companies are overpriced at this point, and there.
- [19:54]
Caroline Hyde
Are fears that if the economy starts.
- [19:56]
Ed Ludlow
To slow down, that we could see a pullback in these stocks. And of course, if that happens, the.
- [20:01]
Caroline Hyde
Billionaires whose wealth is tied to these.
- [20:03]
Ed Ludlow
Companies, including Larry Elson, will see a concurrent fall in their fortunes. Musk stands to potentially leap forward far, far ahead of all of his billionaire peers in the coming years. It was announced recently that Tesla's board.
- [20:17]
Caroline Hyde
Has approved a $1 trillion pay package for Musk. He has to meet several very ambitious.
- [20:22]
Ed Ludlow
Milestones in order to get all of that money. But if he does succeed in doing.
- [20:26]
Caroline Hyde
That, it could make him the world's first trillionaire. And there's no one else who would.
- [20:30]
Ed Ludlow
Come anywhere close to that level as of right now.
- [20:33]
Caroline Hyde
And boy, have we talked about that pay package at length. Time now for talking tech and first up, Sony Pictures. Demon Slayer was the most popular film at the box office this weekend, and it is set a new high for the Japanese anime genre and $70 million in the US and Canada. Having already grossed about $280 million worldwide going into the weekend. Plus Snap has a new operating system for augmented reality glasses, signaling the company is getting closer to launching a consumer version of the device and next year. Now SNAP OS 2.0 includes an overhaul browser and updated apps. Snap is competing with the likes of Matter, Apple and Google in space. And Xiaomi, well, it's aiming to take on Apple with its latest smartphones coming out later this month. Currently, Xiaomi only has a Silver a sliver of the premium smartphone market globally, but it is well positioned to make games in China, where the release of Apple's iPhone Air has been delayed.
- [21:32]
Ed Ludlow
Okay, I'm going to bring you a story that broke late Friday. Apple's Robby Walker, one of the iPhone makers most senior artificial intelligence executives, is leaving the company. That's according to sources. Walker's exit adds to an exodus of executives and engineers from Apple's AI division. Going to bring in Bloomberg's global Consumer Tech Managing editor Mark Gurman. The story you broke Mark, what was this executive's function and role that makes it so notable that it's the latest and another departure from Apple? Walker was in charge of Siri. It's as simple as that. He was leading Siri for the last several years, but he was demoted out of that role in the spring when Apple realized that it would need to delay its new Apple intelligence upgrade for Siri for upwards of a year. And after that Walker was removed from his position. His boss John Jane Andrea was removed from overseeing both Siri and Apple AI robotics teams. And more recently Walker has been overseeing a team known as Answers Knowledge and Information. It's called Aki. Internally, this is a new team spun up under Walker and this group is responsible for helping build a new AI based web search tool that's coming next year designed to compete with both Perplexity people going on to Perplexity to do searches. Right? You've seen Google traffic go down on Apple devices in favor of some of these apps. So Apple wants some skin in that AI web search game. So he's been leading that or parts of that. And so his departure is quite notable. And more broadly he's on the senior staff of John Gianna Drea. He's one of a few people who are leading the company's overall initiative.
- [23:18]
Caroline Hyde
And of course time and time again you many others have been talking about how Apple is seemingly behind on the generative AI fight, but they're trying to remind us all of their prowess when it comes to innovation from what things look like, feel like. Talk to us about the product innovation they've been talking on yeah, you know.
- [23:36]
Ed Ludlow
Apple on this last keynote, it didn't allow any distractions. It didn't raise prices, it didn't talk about tariffs, it didn't talk about shipment delays, it didn't talk about I, it focused just on the core competencies. That's hardware, that's design, that's engineering. None of the distractions were there. All the focus is on these new devices coming out on Friday, except as you mentioned, the iPhone air delay in mainland China, which is a whole other story. But for all intents and purposes, Apple's focusing on what it needs to focus on and it's probably setting itself up for a very solid holiday period.
- [24:12]
Caroline Hyde
Another really well read set of reporting from Mark Gurman. We thank you. All things Power on.
- [24:24]
Ed Ludlow
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Two technology stories as told through the markets. The first Alphabet parent of Google has joined the $3 trillion market cap club, joining Apple, Microsoft. And in video, the market's talking about the idea that the antitrust ruling went in its favor. Not having to divest. Chrome is a big catalyst. But remember in earnings, Google Cloud platform really taking much market share. So there's momentum in that name. But it's a milestone in technology history. The other big one, and actually this is the most read story pretty much on the Bloomberg terminal and on the website is about BYD. So BYD has seen its shares fall about 30% over the last four months from all time highs that were hit earlier in the year. And Caroline, what a reversal in story. We started the year talking about how BYD was overtaking Tesla in all these markets like Europe and Asia, not just with EV but hybrid as well. That chart says things have reversed a little Tesla outperformance in recent weeks. BYD really slumping. Check it out on bloomberg.com you should.
- [25:23]
Caroline Hyde
And also look, let's talk more about China, in particular the trade talks with China because U.S. treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said a framework to keep the Tick Tock app running in the United States has been reached that President Trump and Xi could speak to complete this deal, though the terms of the blueprint are pretty unclear. Let's bring in Bloomberg social media reporter Alexandra Levine. What's really interesting, Alex, is we've been very close before. Remind us of how close we came but like six months ago. Well, we came extremely close back in the spring. I think it was a couple of weeks before the deadline had been reached. Vice President Vance said we are very close on a high level deal. And then days before President Trump basically said we are at the finish line. And then within days, the entire thing had all but imploded because talks over tariffs between US and China had basically escalated. So even though it could potentially be an exciting week for TikTok and also for the roughly half the country that uses the app, there is still a lot that we don't know.
- [26:22]
Ed Ludlow
In the time that we've gone to air, there have been these headlines from China's side confirming that this framework is in place. So we have it from China and Treasury Secretary Ben and basically the negotiators for China is saying that this is a good framework for both sides, but that China won't sacrifice its principles for this Tick Tock deal. I noted earlier in the show that one of the reactions to the news was Oracle shares rising remind us, like if a deal goes through, who is going to own and operate and run Tick Tock in the United States?
- [26:50]
Caroline Hyde
So again, the terms of the deal are still unclear. Oracle, though, has for many months been floated as one possible leading contender here among other US Investors. Oracle would make a lot of sense potentially, because Oracle and TikTok have this preexisting relationship. They had been working together in the past on something called Project Texas, which was essentially a program aimed at helping TikTok secure and separate all of TikTok's US user data in the United States and keep it basically separate from ByteDance's global operations in China.
- [27:23]
Ed Ludlow
Bloomberg's Alexandra Levine I have a feeling you'll be back to talk about a TikTok deal in the days and weeks to come. Thank you very much. Stormtroopers from Star wars vlogging with a selfie, stick dogs hosting a podcast. Such AI generated videos are taking over social media, substituting for news and other kinds of creative content all over our feeds. As we enter the early stages of machine generated media, the debate has been centering around the impact on Hollywood. But what about its impact on social media? Bloomberg businessweek editor Brad Stone takes a deep dive in an essay. It's hard to summarize, but basically everywhere on social media there's AI generated video, there are more tools than ever available to do this, and we explain the industries that are being hit. But you've penned it in some detail through some case studies. That's right. And you missed babies being interviewed. That's a, that's a new one these days. But look, this is our an opening essay for our Screen Time issue, and I wanted to examine, you know, what I'm seeing and what a lot of my friends are seeing in their social media feeds. And it is really incredible. A Rubicon has been crossed. I think back to this summer when you had this video of bunnies bouncing on a trampoline everywhere on Tik Tok, everywhere on Instagram. People thought it was real. And then there was an examination in the comments how one bunny seemed to disappear. And in fact it was a creation of a 22 year old named Andy Kozaki. He did it one night when he was bored. The key here is Google's tool, VO3. What's different about VO3 is it's not only raised the bar in terms of video generation, but it has also raised the bar in terms of audio generation. You can enter in a few prompts, stops, you can enter in a script. And essentially, you know, the dogs who are talking, the babies who are talking, not only are they saying the written dialogue, but their lips are moving, right? So it's really kind of a perfect deep fake.
- [29:22]
Caroline Hyde
The 22 year old basically made that bunny disappear on purpose to create the discussion around all of it. Brad. But what's so interesting is he's really strong on saying this is democratization, innovation as we see it. How much is it upending actual creators work? How much are we seeing Hollywood adopt and embrace this or not, as the case may be?
- [29:42]
Ed Ludlow
I mean, it's really starting on social media. We saw with the Hollywood strikes a few years ago, a great resistance among the industry around the embrace of AI. Now we are seeing that begin to change. I mean, recently Amazon or a studio affiliated with Amazon announced that it would be finishing Orson Welles film the Magnificent Ambersons using AI to recreate some lost scenes. So it's beginning to seep out. But you know, we're looking at the dog podcast right now. That's a Montreal company called Dog Pack App. They're trying to market themselves and they've got dogs talking. It's kind of cringe. The humor is very dad joke. But you know, people are responding to it. You kind of see it everywhere on social media right now.
- [30:26]
Caroline Hyde
Who doesn't love a dad joke? Brad says Stone. Brilliant opening piece. We're all so excited about screen time. Thanks very much indeed. Meanwhile, coming up, we're talking about startup line of sciences. It's aiming to turbocharge scientific discovery with guess what? Using AI, of course. We'll talk to the CEO about the latest funding round. It's big. There's a Series A. This is Bloomberg Tech. Every business has an ambition. PayPal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and Access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo, pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations Introducing the all new Adobe Acrobat studio. Now with AI powered PDF spaces. Do more with PDFs than you ever thought possible. Need AI to turn 100 pages of market research into 5 insights with a click. Do that with Acrobat. Need templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal. Do that with Acrobat. Need an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report to sound real smart in real time. Do that with the all new Adobe Acrobat Studio. Learn more@adobe.com do that with Acrobat. These days, AI can help you write emails, summarize long meetings, and even create presentations that impress your most demanding customer. But how about industrial AI that uses.
- [32:07]
Ed Ludlow
Data and simulation to boost productivity on the shop floor?
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Caroline Hyde
AI tools that help you understand machine language. AI that helps you grow your business. With Siemens Xcelerator, you can use AI services, software and consulting from a single.
- [32:22]
Ed Ludlow
Trusted digital business platform.
- [32:24]
Caroline Hyde
Plus you can find the right AI partner without having to search through hundreds of providers. That's AI for real. From the global market leader in industrial AI. Siemens accelerator. Learn more at Siemens US accelerator.
- [32:46]
Ed Ludlow
Startup Lila Sciences has just closed a $235 million Series A funding round. The company aims to create what it called scientific super intelligence by developing AI that runs thousands of scientific experiments at once. Let's bring in Jeff on Mulhouse, the co founder and CEO of Lila Sciences. That is an eye catching Series A and, and I think the best place to start, Jeff, is just with the basics of explaining what it is Lila wants to do. Because, you know, maybe the money gives credibility, it gives you the news headline, but there's a very specific focus that you have. Yes, first of all, thank you for having me. Lila's mission is the reason for this fundraise. Our mission is scientific superintelligence to solve humankind's greatest challenges. That is of course a lofty mission, but what it means is that we're trying to build a kind of beautiful mind that can be a polymath across fields of science, materials, chemistry and life and become super intelligent within them by running the scientific method itself. Jeff, we became accustomed in 2024 to these very large Series A's all over the world, actually, particularly those focusing on specific models. Why do you need that level of capital from the beginning? What is it that that requires that capital to be deployed? Yeah, first of all, I realize that by saying scientific method, I've either given euphoria or PTSD to audience members that may have enjoyed or not their most recent science class. So what's special about LILA is the realization that AI is now positioned to be able to run every single step of the scientific method. Scientific method is the most valuable wheel that has ever existed. And the reason for scale capital is running the scientific method at scale is going to lead to scaling laws for scientific intelligence that will go beyond what's possible with scaling laws of the Internet and previous human knowledge alone. Hmm.
- [34:54]
Caroline Hyde
Jeff, it's interesting where you stand. We've just seen the interesting investors coming on board and the pension money, the big pockets wanting to put money to work. But ultimately, call me a cynic, we've had an awful lot of scientific AI companies coming in, offering a new world of medical advancement. Why are you different? It seems to be something about the.
- [35:12]
Ed Ludlow
Lab, so that the mainstay of scientific AI companies are sitting in a small niche of science focused on a specific application. The insight that led to LILA is the same kind of insight that led to the modern scaling laws and ascent of large language models and reasoning capabilities, which is that we no longer need to compartmentalize science into a whole bunch of tiny subdomains, but instead, one can build a single kind of mind that can operate across an immense diversity of scientific fields and pull new knowledge into that single mastery of the way that the world around us works. And we believe that this is going to open up incredible frontiers across those subdomains and between those subdomains in medicine, energy, new climate technologies, and a lot more. Jeff, we started this conversation by saying that that LILA focuses on running thousands of experiments at once using a single AI model. Is this you taking advantage of quantum computing to do that, or accelerated computing, or both? Primarily the latter for now. But if you will, a beautiful mind for science needs a new kind of body. And those who are training only on data sets of the past are going to hit a ceiling of scientific intelligence. And that wheel of the scientific method, of course, has been in human minds and hands for all of our existence. And we believe the paradigm of what you're seeing behind me allows science to ascend into a higher intelligence, higher scale, and higher speed. And the implications of that are we're going to be able to pull Inventions out of the future like has never have been possible before.
- [37:06]
Caroline Hyde
Well, when you start announcing some of the paying customers, you've got to come and tell us about it. Jeff Von Molson, we appreciate it. Co founder and CEO of Lila Sciences now let's talk about Mercado Libre. Latin America's E commerce and fintech giant just got a new CEO. Ariel Chastein will be taking on the reins next January after Marcus Galperin, who co founded the company, led it to become the region's most valuable firm. Well, he's handing over the reins and let's just hear about what what the incoming CEO had to say when asked about his vision for the company for the next 10 years, spoke in his first exclusive interview with international Media as incoming CEO.
- [37:41]
Ed Ludlow
I think we've done tremendous things over the first 26 years, but the opportunity for us in the next 26 are equally big or even bigger than what we've done in the first era of Mercado. I think the opportunity to continue increasing the size of our E commerce business through E commerce penetration in retail is still very big in Latin America. Digital advertising is nascent in Latin America and we are convinced that we can drive growth in that atmosphere. And last but not least, fintech. Right. So financial inclusion in Latin America is still pending and we can be the protagonist, honest, of the process of bringing more people into financial services across the region as we have been doing over the last few years.
- [38:36]
Caroline Hyde
The US and the UK Will sign an agreement to make it quicker for companies to build nuclear power stations, but the countries will use safety assessments of reactor designs from each other to fast track their checks. The announcement comes as President Trump prepares to travel to Britain tomorrow with more economic deals expected to be announced. Already in Europe doing deals is US Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Exactly the person we want to talk to about the opportunity of nuclear, particularly in our world of AI. How quickly do you think it'll be brought online in the US or indeed the UK because your timeline is fast.
- [39:08]
Ed Ludlow
It seems it's aggressive, Caroline, and that's President Trump. You know, he came in all in on nuclear energy and we will have reactors, these next generation small modular reactors critical next year. In fact, I'm pretty confident we'll have one of them before July 4th of next year and several more during the year. Now it's not the back end in electricity production, but it's the whole nuclear system running, demonstrating how it will work. I think this will expedite final permitting and sales and commercialization of the reactors. It's going to move fast, not just.
- [39:42]
Caroline Hyde
Fission, but fusion as well. Just how optimistic are you there? Eight to 15 years I saw. Is that realistic and how self dependent would that make the US for what, five gigawatt designs that we're currently seeing just coming from Oracle and OpenAI alone.
- [39:58]
Ed Ludlow
Super exciting. I worked on fusion energy in college 40 years ago. We've seen steady progress for the last 40 years, mostly at the national labs at the Department of Department of Energy. But with AI and commercial fusion companies coming into space now, the pace of innovation is faster than ever before. I believe we will know the commercial pathways to fusion during the Trump administration and as I said, I think we'll see commercial electricity from fusion energy on could be as fast as eight years and I'd be very surprised if it's more than 50. It's coming, it's coming. It's exciting. Secretary Wright, as you travel across Europe and head to the uk, what kind of instruction has the President given you to put these energy deals in the context of national security and defense? I think the President has talked from, from his campaign that his goal was prosperity at home and peace abroad. And he understands instinctively that both of those are intimately tied to energy. You need low cost, abundant, affordable energy at home to lower costs for Americans and make businesses thrive. That's the same agenda overseas. Here I am in the year in Europe. They're very, of course shocked at what happened with the Russia invasion of Ukraine and their energy dependence on Russia. Everybody gets that was a mistake. They want to switch that dependence from Russia onto the United States. We are bringing them assurances we can continue to wrap up natural gas exports into Europe as a safe, secure partner. And of course, there's huge enthusiasm for American nuclear technology over here. You want to get your energy and your key strategic inputs from your allies, not your adversaries. When President Trump took office, he pledged to cut electricity price in half within 12 months. For everyday American Secretary Wright, in the time since the President's been in office, electricity prices have risen 10%. Is he still able to make good on that election pledge? And how does he get there? Look, the President is a very ambitious, aim high guy. He is absolutely committed to lowering energy prices in the United States. We've seen that in gasoline and diesel and oil products. We're seeing screaming increase in US Natural gas production and prices there as well. Not rising at all. Electricity grids harder. It's just long time frames. Long time frames change that whole system cost. But if you look at it on a micro scale, the President is ready to permit, and we are permitting immediately electric generating capacity. That will be less than half the cost of the stuff that was built under the Biden administration. So are we adding new capacity on the grid that's less than half the cost of the Biden administration? Absolutely. The president's adamant about that. For that to filter in, for the whole grid cost to come down meaningfully, that will take some time. Rest assured, we're driving as hard and fast as we can.
- [43:02]
Caroline Hyde
Secretary Wright, you've been driving hard and fast when it comes to, well, updating. It feels like the Department of Energy's view on what to use when it comes to energy sources. And in particular I'm thinking about the thought leadership back in July. You put forward what was a report. It was deemed about the threat of climate change and said basically it's exaggerated. Now that working group has been disbanded, many have been critical of some of the findings. You just still stand by those findings that were ultimately saying a lot of the, well, climate views were wrong about the speed at which the globe is getting hotter at least actually no dispute.
- [43:39]
Ed Ludlow
At all about temperature and sea level data. What we did was just popularize the data that the climate alarmists and the politicians don't want to popularize. 90% of what's in our climate report is in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. I've been studying this issue for 20 years, so quite familiar with it. Five fantastic scientists produced that report and of course environmental groups that don't want an honest fact based dialogue about climate change sued over a silly procedural thing about the paperwork for one of the five. And instead of fighting this in court, the climate scientists, I'm sure they'll still respond to the questions. We've opened a real dialogue about climate change and that's exactly what we wanted to do. And I couldn't be happier about it. It's funny, I go on more and more shows talking about climate change and no one wants to ask me questions about climate change.
- [44:32]
Caroline Hyde
I'll keep climate change. I'll ask you because why did your department undertake it in such a way? It seemed to that the study wasn't following usual procedures like the OMB guidelines on science reports.
- [44:46]
Ed Ludlow
No, this is when you publish a technical paper. When you publish the paper, that's where the dialogue starts. We wanted to publish. This is from no scientists at doe, although we did do peer review at these are five independent scientists that we said please write a report. It just sort of summarizes the big picture about climate change so we can publish it, open it up for public comment. And we've got tons of comments. Lots of them are silly, but you can see from the substance of the comments we've received is there's very little disagreement with the data we published on temperature data, sea level data and models. People are, people are complaining around the edges or mostly complaining about yeah, but, but the future might be different. That's true. We don't know the future, But I heard 20 years ago the future might be different. We're just publishing the real data on sea level rise, on temperature increases, on the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which makes the planet greener, a little bit wetter. It's climate change is a real thing, but it's just been so wildly exaggerated, misrepresented, and it's made the climate scientists that go on TV only the most dramatic, alarmist ones that make TV news. Most of the honest, sober ones are in the background. We're bringing them to the forefront. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, currently in Vienna but continuing through Europe. Thank you very much for joining us on Bloomberg Tech. Just a quick update. Nvidia shares have swung from a pretty notable decline to positive territory. You remember the story broke this morning that China's market regulators later had said that in video violated anti monopoly laws on the 2020 acquisition of Mellanox. That was a bargaining chip, pardon the pun, right? Carry in the context of these US China talks that are happening and it's a big week in that context and.
- [46:35]
Caroline Hyde
Is I remember it's a big week for video. Stock last week added about 6%, so maybe there's just a bit of profit taking earlier today that does it from this edition of Bloomberg Tech, but don't forget to check out our podcast. Find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Apple, Spotify and Iheart. From New York and San Francisco, this is Bloomberg Tech. How can you free your team from time consuming office tasks? Amazon Business empowers leaders to not only streamline purchasing, but better support their teams. Smart business buying tools enable buyers to find and purchase items fast so they can focus on strategy and growth. It's time to free up your teams and focus on your future. Learn more about the technology insights and Support available@AmazonBusiness.com these days. AI can help you adopt better time management, but it can't stop colleagues booking meetings during lunch. But how about being able to easily adopt industrial AI to streamline your business? Siemens Xcelerator helps you find the right AI providers and easily understand what they offer so you can use modular solutions to quickly scale up and grow your business. That's AI for real from the global market leader in industrial AI, Siemens. Learn more on usa.siemens.com AI Every business has an ambition. PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo, pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations.