About synergies and the road ahead. Chinese Online Retailer alibaba defies the slowdown of missed a trade war with sales surpassing expectations. It was a big week for tech ideas with fleet work and cloudflare filing to go public. Cloudflare has been in the news given its relationship with hm 8chan. Three alleged gunman posted manifestoes on 8chan before three mass shootings. Cloudflare stop providing services after el paso, texas, largely take the platform offline taking the platform offline. So is now the time to go public . Like many other tech ideas, especially in software, it is not profitable. It has a pretty good growth rate , it is really trying to look at competitors. Fastly went public earlier this year and is doing ok. There have been some sources who were asking me why cloudflare took this long to get this point. They had been preparing since the fall of last year for a public offering. Emily cloudflare is a name we of the companies that will go public soon. Tell us exactly what cloudflare does. In the case of a company like 8chan, they basically protected it from being taking down in denial of service attacks. Will one of cloudflares most popular and wellknown products s preventiondo service. It protects the website from a denial of service attack. Anyone looking to attack the website and take it offline. They offer the service to tons of websites on the internet. They think of themselves as a utility. When you have the service, it is the most effective or one of the most effective ways to protect your website from attacks like this. Emily right. And there is where 8chan comes up because cloudflare did not cut off 8chan the site was still operational until days ago after that shooting in el paso, texas. Talk about what cloudflare says about 8chan and how investors might take that. Liana it is listed as a risk in the filing. This has gotten a lot of buzzyion because it is a is buzzy, it is relevant in the headlines, but i think that cloudflare was really aiming in its filing today to show the world how its financials are doing and what its prospects are. I think it did a good job of putting out there this is a Solid Company that serves the backbone of the internet. And there is pentup demand among investors for these sorts of companies to hit the market. A few weeks ago, medalia went public and crowd strike has a good valuation a couple months after its ipo. I would say cloudflare today is really trying to associate itself with some Successful Software ipos from earlier this year. Emily that said, cloudflare only made news when they made bad news under criticism that it helped keep some of these websites afloat. If you go back to 2017 and what happened in charlottesville at the time, cloudflare was under fire for helping support a neonazi website the daily stormer. It was only after much criticism that they finally took that website down by cutting off service to it. I spoke to the ceo matthew prince at the time and talked to him about some of their general policy of trying to remain neutral when it comes to content online. Take a listen to what he said to me then. We turn to the experts in terrorism and illegal content which is Law Enforcement legislators, regulators. We say, here is this content. What would you like us to do . That feels like due process, that there are actually politically enshrined organizations that can make these decisions, as opposed to these decisions being made on the political whims of me or Mike Zuckerberg or jeff bezos. Emily when it came to 8chan, more recently, it was several hours after that shooting in el paso that cloudshare said we are cutting them off as well. In a statement at the time prince said, they have proven themselves to be lawless and a cause of multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan had not violated the law and refused to moderate their hateful community, they have created an environment at a revels inbels violating its spirit. Expand on the context. We are seeing companies, facebook and google, struggle with what to leave up and take down on their platform. For cloudflare, it is a slightly different story. Will cloudflare is in a difficult position. They do not want to make content decisions. Like i said earlier, cloudflare thinks of itself as a utility. The product is so good and it is hard to find other comparable products. So, when you do not have cloudflares ddos protection, it might be difficult to stay online. What that means is cloudflare basically can decide who gets to be on the internet. They dont want to make those decisions. As you seen they have only made , the decision twice in removing daily stormer and 8chan. It is a really difficult position, and when you do things like remove 8chan and remove daily stormer, then you get material to say why not remove this website or whatever other website that has vile content on it . I dont think this is a business cloudflare wants to be in. They do not want to be deciding what is on the internet and whats not. Emily we work also officially filed for its ipo this week, expected to raise about 3. 5 billion. That would make it this years secondlargest ipo behind uber. They revealed a loss of 69 million in the first month and a list 3 billion lost in the last three years along with some unique business dealings by the ceo. We have all the details. Anyone who has been following we work closely knows they have been giving out select financial newrmation, so we are a they lost close to 2 billion while making revenue around 1. 8. Surprises we got more details about some of the loans and complicated financial structures that go on between adam newman and the company. There was some knowledge about this before. Butas famously a landlord we also got information about loans the company has made and the Succession Plan that would happen if he could no longer serve as the ceo. Emily our colleague shira ovide called the Office Leasing company on steroids with a complicated structure. They are offering three times types of stock. It takes a step further than what Mark Zuckerberg and the founders of google have done. Ellen there are three classes and two of them have 20 volts votes per share. Class a has one vote per share. As you would expect, that is a great consolidation of power. It is largely in the hands of adam newman. He has a lot of voting control over the company. That is by design. People who support the structure think that adam has the right vision, the boldness, and the leadership to take it even farther than it has been. For some of the people, they will look at that and raise their eyebrows thinking that might be too much. Emily the other thing that is interesting as they laid out how many of the buildings are fairly new. 30 of their locations are mature. 70 are two years or younger. The vast majority of their space is incredibly new. Ellen and they have changed the definition of that metric of a mature location. It used to be 18 months, they have expanded to 24 months. Even with that, its only 30 of the Office Location open for have been open for more than two years. They look at that as pointing to highgrowth. Exactly. Like, look how fast we are growing. But it is also interesting because a lot of the most stable Unit Economics they like to highlight are focused only on mature locations. They say these are where we no longer have to rely on marketing to fill the buildings. When you start to realize thats only 30 of their portfolio, it starts to raise some questions about how sustainable their growth is and how easy it would be for them to get to profitability. Emily they say they may never be profitable. Which is similar to what we heard with uber and lyft. How are investors feeling, are they excited . Ellen we see a lot of activity on twitter on both sides. They think the growth is exciting and others cannot wait for it to go public so they can short it. It will be a divisive stock. We will see the price will be decided soon by the public markets. Think a lot of people are looking to see if it will meet that 47 billion private valuation. Emily how quickly do we expect them to get to market . When does the roadshow launch and all that . Ellen sometime in the next few weeks. We expect and have reported that we expect a september ipo. That is just around the corner. Emily that was bloomberg techs ellen huet. Coming up, thumbs up. Redstone cements her status as the most powerful woman in u. S. Media with cbs merging with viacom. And if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. This is bloomberg. Emily cbs has merged with viacom. The deal unites the mostwatched u. S. Broadcast network with the parent of Paramount Pictures and cable channels like mtv and nickelodeon. It followed a marathon negotiation at the two sides a price. Hased out a price. Finally realized that whatever misgivings they might have had, they both just needed to compete in this streaming war. Over the past two years, we have seen them sell out. We have seen fox and the we have seen time warner sell out to at t. We have seen fox and the murdochs sell a lot of their assets to disney. Companies worth 100 million, 200 million. Cbs and viacom come even viacom, even combined they , are worth only about 30 billion. But by coming together, they have a deep library that will get much stronger. Emily how does this position this now combined entity against all of the other newly merged now larger Media Companies . Most investors would tell you there are probably more deals to be made. I spoke to the ceo of the combined company and he acknowledged that more m a is likely. They have been linked to Companies Like lionsgate, discovery. It is also possible that the redstone family, who will own the combined company, say it is time to cash out. In might take a couple assets weve seen but it might be stronger and might be able to entice some Larger Company to scoop it up. Emily that was bloombergs lucas shaw. As for details on the newly merged companies and strategies, we heard from viacoms ceo who sat down in new york. That wee thrilled announced the combination of viacom and cbs, creating a leading platform. When you look at the assets, it operator, a station a syndicator, with Paramount Pictures, one of the most storied studios in hollywood. Nickelodeon, and mtv, bte bt. Bet . And, of course, showtime. We have created an incredible asset base. This was the deal negotiated by two special committees and went through a diligent and thoughtful process. The critical thing is we got the deal done because it positions us to do great things. No question it is a phenomenal deal for both sides and there was a willingness to get it done, yet some shareholders are nonplussed that value come viacom is not valued at more. With cbs have given in eventually . Was conducted by two independent committees of special directors. When you need to focus on is the value created potential. These are two companies valued at low multiples. Love that was due to the uncertainty hanging over them. A lack of clarity on the path toward. Starting yesterday, we started talking about a threepart Growth Strategy really building a business through a combination of cbs subscriptions, when i have millions of subscribers and viacoms ad supported structure with pluto tv being the leading streaming service. Up 50 since we bought it. Putting those together, you have an ecosystem. We love that and will be a very significant partner with ads, distributors, and a huge content supplier. Very exciting Growth Strategy going forward. You have also identified 500 million in cost savings. Can you give us more detail . When you put two companies together, people talk about synergies. Those numbers you reference is a cost number. It includes organizational costs and sourcing benefits. Beyond that, we have not gotten into it, the more important thing to focus on is the power of this combination is going to create incredible value for all of our stakeholders, including the incredible employees of viacomcbs. That is what people need to focus on. Emily viacom ceo there. Coming up, softbanks massive fund makes its first ever Energy Storage send that set. We set. We find out what energy fault is with the ceo. This is bloomberg. Vault is with the ceo. This is bloomberg. Emily softbanks massive vision fund made its first ever Energy Storage that, investing in energy volt vault. This company stacks concrete blocks in a tower that can store and release energy. It is presenting it as a solution to lithium batteries, claiming it cant supply electricity 24 hours a day. To discuss what this means for the Energy Storage market, i sat down with the ceo. We have designed an Innovative New system tower. It includes a six arm crane and 35,000 metric ton bricks that are all orchestrated with a proprietary software set, so that is the whole system integration. We take excess energy from solar or wind when it is produced and not needed. That energy is used to raise the blocks and when the energy is needed by the grid, we lower those blocks and discharge the energy. Emily how widely deployed is this . It says you are on four continents. Correct. We have had a working model for the last year in switzerland. In addition, we are building our first commercial scale unit in the Fourth Quarter in the north of italy and, as we announced many, many customer engagements on many continents, so we are excited. Emily what do you think the draw is for softbank . They share our vision for renewables and understand how important Energy Storage is to make renewables real and make renewables solve the problem of our reliance on fossil fuel. They own an energy company, so they understood this beyond just being an investor. They share our passion to be part of the solution. Emily it relies on this giant Automated System that has to work reliably outside in the elements year after year after year. Seems like a lot of moving parts. Do you have concerns, or is there a risk that some parts might not function properly given all that exposure you can exposure and throw the whole things off . That is one of the beauties of innovation. The technology we are leveraging is proven physics. We are leveraging unique material science working with one of the Largest Materials Companies in the world, so we actually are not using normal concrete. We are using a material composite for 95 of these bricks and raising and lowering them, so the fundamental core physics is known. Where innovation comes in is with the proprietary Machine Software that fully automate the automates the tower as well as a lot of other innovation we thought of from a sustainability perspective. This last point is important. Not only the materials, we can use the soil right from the site we excavate locally to make these bricks, so we dont have bring in trucks, materials. We are not spewing omissions with trucks coming in or other transportation elements coming in, and from a sustainable perspective, we use some of the suppliers in a Global SupplyChain Ecosystem that exists today, so we can do it now. Emily we have seen lithium ion batteries start to be attached to the energy grid, but also they can only supply energy for hours at a time. How long can your system sure, that is another one of the innovations, longduration. We can do eight to 12 hours. Why is that important . We cannot only meet the time requirements of utilities but think about manufacturing companies. Industrialand processes that rely on the power 24 hours a day. Desalination is a great example. They need power to make Drinking Water 24 hours a day and we can now provide them for the first time that power. Emily we have seen a lot of pushback from local communities against giant solar power plants or large wind farms because of the fact that they dont look attractive. Do you run the risk of that as well . A large concrete tower, while it might work, it might not be what Companies Want in their backyard. For most of the markets we will be building this system, it is out where there are farms. Out in typically remote areas. Wind farms, where theres already turbines sitting up high, and the off grid applications which are pretty important for us to get power to remote farms, villages, etc. , to areas that that need power that cannot get it from the grid. In those locations, we dont see a lot of problem. Emily there is not really another company that does this this way. Other company is working on this in a different way that might be the most challenging idea to what you have proposed . The big thing that has not been solved until now are for the economics. How do you get renewable Energy Storage down to price . When combined with solar or wind , you can do it below the cost of fossil fuel. That is really the major innovation and we have done that through the material science, to thinking about design, and through sustainability. That is, primarily, what we are solving that no one has been able to solve. Emily you have other competing, crazy, bold ideas. Pumping compressed air underground releasing it to turbines. There are obviously a lot of paths to get to the best results and create the most amount of energy at the cheapest price. What do you think makes this better than all of those others . Sure, sure. Three main reasons when we designed this, we did not want to have this dependency on things like geology or geography or topology. Dams, for example, rely on mountains and things. We want to be able to deliver this everywhere, it is so big, the problem we are solving. Second, sustainability. Chemical battery companies, how they get the material, the batteries degrade immediately when you install them. Through cycling, they are going to degrade. Our system doesnt degrade at all. You have to solve this with innovation across material , and thinkingn about sustainability of your environmental aspects every day. Vaultsnergy volt ceo. We take a deep dive into the ftc probe of facebook next. And bloomberg tech is Live Streaming on twitter. Be sure to follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. This is bloomberg.