Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Technology 20240712 : vi

BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Technology July 12, 2024

We will be joined to talk more about that. But first, lets talk about the market. Abigail doolittle is with us. On the back of a big speech by joe biden last night that has been largely wellreceived, even some republicans saying it was successful. Abigail indeed. Probably not too much influence in the markets today because earlier today on the open, really small moves. It was as the day got going that the gains continued, especially for the tech stocks on the day. A real head scratcher because we have a they were we do not have any positive macro data on economic front, and we also dont have any negative data relative to the macro either except for the further out uncertainty around the election and u. S. And china relations. Here we have the big tech stocks you were talking about once again climbing to the nasdaq 100 and faang index both at record highs. The faang index now up 115 since its march low. Apple is just incredible, up more than 5 today. Split does notck create value. Interesting to see investors jumping on this stock ahead of that event for sure. Nvidia making up for some lost ground after they reported. On the other hand, those are the stocks helping. On the other hand, some of the wellknown stocks lagging just a bit such as microsoft, amazon, facebook, and netflix. There were some Management Changes at the amazon and netflix that were mentioned. Net, not a lot of news. Some relatively big moves. Especially for a summer friday. Emily right. We will talk about some of those Management Changes later in the show. Lets do talk about the week. Obviously, so many things happened this week. You got the dnc, big fires, the lack of stimulus, unexpected rise in unemployment. How did the week look when you step back . Abigail everything that investors have to deal with, especially unemployment, that should be something that is worrisome unless it causes investors to think it is more likely to spur congress to pass stimulus sooner rather than later. Because of the good and bad, we had a mixed week. Week, it is an believable. The new york faang index up more than 7 . The nasdaq 100 up 3. 5 . The s p 500 up slightly. The smallcap russell 2000 down 1. 6 , its worst week in two months. Really, the story of the haves and havenots continues. It is about the stay at homes. Many are hoping for a cyclical trade into industrials and materials. That was not the case. Financials and energy both down 3 and 6 respectfully. So negative week. As for the big individual winners, the stocks we were talking about before, apple having a huge week, up 8 . Tesla of 24 . That is another stock split name, a five for one. Over the last eight days come up 50 since that was announced. It does not create value, but people want in. Nvidia and jd. Com both reporting this week. Investors both liked those reports. Pretty incredible to see these gains simple continue. All about the fed liquidity as a guest told me earlier. Emily all right. We will be watching to see what happens this week. We will certainly be closely following apple on monday, the split. Stocks have a good weekend. It is time for the 1500 employees of tiktok who are based in the u. S. Planning to hire 10,000 workers and open new offices on hold. Social media stars are inserting clauses into their contract to deal with what happens if the Trump Administration ban comes to pass. For more, lets bring in shelley. No resolution. Still talks with microsoft happening. Now another jumping into the fray. Even alphabet saying they have not ruled out a bid. Lets start there. What do you make of the latest developed with alphabet . Shelly yeah. I think google is looking at it like every other tech company. Definitely thinking about it. Maybe they have not formalized talks, but it is for any tech company in the u. S. Now, the thought is i would like to take a look at what it is like to buy this extremely fastgrowing, extremely lucrative market. Emily lets talk about what tiktok does in the interim while the talks proceed. Obviously, they plan to hire thousands of workers. That is not happening right now. How is this affecting the inside of the company . Shelly yes. I was really interested in finding out the answer to that question. I was like, how is this Company Continuing to do business knowing that it when he five days it could no longer exist . What must not be like inside of the company . So far, the number of executives and employees, advertisers, and brands that work with the company as well as creators who generally talk from time to time, a lot of them described this bizarre disconnect between the inside tiktok bubble and the outside of tiktok. Inside, users are still growing faster than other apps. They are continuing to have brands and advertisers put up advertisements and campaigns on the app. Outside, they are getting tons and tons of questions from their fans and family. That is making them nervous permit inside the company, they are in town halls. They are asking, can you confirm we are still going to get paid in the next month . Am i going to get my next months paycheck . To which the company said, yes, you will get paid. And other questions as different talks emerge. Emily and then you have the question of, ok, what if a deal happens . Lets say microsoft wins this deal. Is hiring supercharged . Then you hold out for the what ifs. Shelly yes permit a lot of the job openings are still there. If you go on linkedin, there are about 500 job openings still open and live on there. Tiktok says publicly it is continuing to hire missioncritical positions, things Like Customer Service and security and Public Policy folks in d. C. Those positions are definitely continuing to happen. I think they are still collecting resumes from people. What is interesting is there are tons of people who still want to join because they figure some other big Company Might buy it and i might become a microsoft employee but i want to work on tiktok anyway. Emily all right. Banjo, continuing your great reporting on this. Thank you for sharing that update with us today. Coming up, the apple and epic dispute continuing to heat up. Apple firing back in a court filing saying epic wanted a special side deal. We will talk about the story with a gaming ceo, next. This is bloomberg. The saga continues. Apple firing back at epic games, the creator of the popular game fortnite in the app over app store fees. Apple claiming epic Ceo Tim Sweeney got a special side deal for fortnite and accuses the company of breaching its contract. Is our us to discuss guest, a veteran in this industry. What is your take on this backandforth . Do you take a side, epic or apple . Well, put me right on the spot. First of all, apple, google, epic, these are all incredible companies that have done tremendous things for the gaming ecosystem, the esports ecosystem. One thing i will say about epic is they have always championed the independent game developer and gamer, the little guy. It is actually in their dna and part of their core values, and so i do understand them following through with that fight. I would say they are great companies. They will figure it out. I think we all now realized the gaming revenue pie is massive and there is plenty of revenue to be shared. A big part so i am sure they will find a way. Emily there is plenty of revenue to be shared, but there is the question of what is fair and what is not fair . Do you think charging 30 rent, if you will, is fair . Ann well, certainly, this is like anything when you have a few Small Companies controlling the ecosystem. You know, they get to take all the spoils. I think in some ways, very true again, it is true that we are all about empowering the everyday gamer, letting them create their own esports experience and share their content and highlight reels. Epic is all about doing that same kind of democratization, and what it will create is a more fair market through their actions. Emily that said, epic is a fairly Large Company as well, and most folks play fortnite on a pc coming up mobile. Do you think this will have on a pc, not mobile. Do you think this will have an impact . Who will this hurt . Ann they thing the thing they did so well with the lodge is the crossplatform. I making it super accessible to the more casual gamers, the teenage girls who maybe would theyto pay to play on pc, widened the net and that is why they got so much more user adoption. I think certainly the people who compete and play aggressively need to level up. Mobile gaming is now becoming just as competitive as the hard core kind of desktop competition depending on the genre of game. It does hurt the everyday casual competitor. There is not an easy way for them to continue to engage in the game. Emily meantime, gaming, the industry has been booming with everyone sheltering in place. For the folks who want it, you can imagine they might sense a little desperation if they cannot get it. Your platform has skyrocketed in popularity. Scene 700 growth. Seen 700 growth. Talk about the trends you are seeing during quarantines scattered across the united states. Ann certainly we were already seeing pretty significant audience and register player growth last year. Never in our wildest dreams would we imagine that we would year0 of last years full impressions in just the first seven mutts of the year. Seven months of the year. So for us, this is our chance to show with the explosive growth and engagement, we can turn that into one of possible ad and start driving advertising revenues against it, monetize the players themselves just like the game publisher did so well with in game transactions. This has been a real breakout year for us. Often, investors say to me, what happens when they find a cure for the pandemic . What happens . They will look, sure, all be so excited to get outside that we will rush out and do the things we have not been able to do for some time. But the fact of the matter is i set it on your program before. Gaming precovid was already and the boxtv office. It was already in play that it was the dominant form of entertainment for gen z and millennials. We are capturing a surge of entertainment and we will not have a problem maintaining a post pandemic. Emily meantime, you are working to make gaming more productive, launching a partnership today with the Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and entrepreneurship to launch the first of its kind videogame that combines fun with entrepreneurial skills, developing entrepreneurial skills you might need to start your own thing. Tell us about that. Ann yeah. This is so near and dear to my heart. Because i spent about 18 years in large companies. I was an executive at bp for several years. Then i made this while jump into entrepreneurship. It was all scary. It is hard to scale a small business, to create a new product, and find a market for it. What they are doing with this new game venture valley is so cool. It is a multiplayer game that will be available for download next year, 2021. What happens is multiple players compete against each other inside this game. But what they are is ceos of their own businesses. So one person might be running a dog walking business. Another one from a drone factory. You get to pick the business you run as a ceo and have to make all types of decisions about pricing and product quality and advertising and operations and maintenance. Neat toolreally is a targeted at teens to get them excited about their own business literacy and entrepreneurship. I just love it. Goes along so beautifully with super league. We have always been about, how do you create a forum, a Community Platform that actually is about what is really more true about gaming . Which is about inclusion and community in fun and socialist and good sportsmanship and goodlness and sportsmanship. We have always had gaming is good for you and has a positive impact. There is no better proof point then the venture valley game. Emily now with the pandemic being prolonged, how does that impact your pipeline . What else is coming down the pipe for you given the dispersed workforce and gaming creators . Ann thank you for asking that because it is kind of exciting to see the new direction. We gave up our office space. We said, hey, that is a big amount of money we are spending. Actually, productivity has been super high. I feel just as connected or more intimate with staff because we all get to see each others homes and our dogs and all these aspects. And then really what it has done for us is we have a really unique piece of technology. It is a little bit of upper crown jewel. We made some announcements about it. It is patented. It is a unique way because we have to create it ourselves to run the first esports competition to create digital broadcasts of it. We created this great 100 virtual remote content studio. It is a super affordable way to have the same high quality feel as one big Production Companies go into those giant production booths and have the cameraman and relays to make it a great broadcast. We can do that and offer the platform for all kinds of uses. We are getting into traditional sports broadcasts, talk shows, game shows. It has applications way beyond gaming. Emily fascinating. You gave up your office space. That is a big development. Thank you so much for joining us. Ann, the ceo of super league gaming. Coming, Mark Zuckerberg is not done giving answers about antitrust. This time, to the ftc. We will bring you the story, next. This is bloomberg. Bloomberg has learned the ftc has questioned Mark Zuckerberg, the ceo of facebook, this week as part of an antitrust investigation. Hearing lasted for two days. Covering the case for us. Een what do we know . Week, it wasthis in the antitrust case that the federal trade commission has been pursuing against facebook ever since the Cambridge Analytica matter closed. That closed and the next day or later that same day may be the ftc said they were investigating the companys competition practices. So we know that he spoke to the commission on these issues. The case may be coming to a close. Emily so good news for facebook, but certainly not the end of the scrutiny, right . Ben no, absolutely not. It could be coming to a close in a way. That means the filing of a lawsuit. It could be the beginning of a journey that could last several years and could see government antitrust enforcers even possibly seeking a spinoff of Something Like whatsapp or instagram, which are acquisitions that we know are heavily scrutinized in terms of facebook. Put thehat said, what ftc under pressure to do this . Ben absolutely. This kind of came out of the Cambridge Analytica matter. They did not depose Mark Zuckerberg in that matter. The republican commissioner said they have ample evidence and ample message traffic. Democrats said that was not enough. They caught a lot of slack for at last year. Even as weaselly as earlier this month, senater Richard Blumenthal said he believed the public would only be satisfied with the ftc deposing the very top executives. The ftc has really clearly heard that. They said they would only be deposing people if it was very important. Clearly in this matter they thought it was. Emily do we know what questions were and were not asked and what that signals about the case . Ben so these depositions are obviously secret, but i think you can start to get a bit of an idea what these looked like. From what we watched last month, a public hearing in front of the house on antitrust matters, i would not imagine that i would imagine the questioning went i would imagine the questioning went similarly. Mr. Zuckerberg, you said you wanted to buy instagram because it was a competitive threat. Is that true . Was there anything else you were thinking . Is that true of other acquisitions . You start to dig down really into what the company was thinking at the absolute highest level as you develop your case. Emily so what is next . Ben i think we start to look for whether or not that case is actually going to be filed, whether or not there will be a federal lawsuit. Wh the case is, and then you start to ask what facebooks potential defense is. You have motion to dismiss. It becomes a lengthy battle with lots of coverage for us, but there will be a lot of attention from the ftc to facebook going forward, and they have made clear that facebook right now is their top competition matter so i do not see this ending anytime soon. Emily all right. Thank you so much, bloombergs ben brody in washington for us. Appreciate it. Coming, fires continuing to ravage the western united states. San francisco, california, colorado being hit the hardest. Firefighters are overwhelmed by the amount of fires so far this season but fortunately getting help from an unlikely partner. Thats next. This is bloomberg. Emily welcome back to bloomberg technology. Im emily chang. Acres of 700,000 california burning as wildfires continue to ravage the western united states. Firego on the map bloomberg terminal to look at how this is impacting our country. Wildfires damaging northern california. The second largest fire to date also sweeping through colorado. With firefighters overwhelmed and understaffed, how are these fires being fought . Of are joined by the ceo how his company is being used to battle the blazes. Talk to us about where your drones are right now and how they are being used. We have a system that allows the drones to start fires. An ignition system to start fires to fight fires. There firefighters are using this in oregon, northern california, colorado. What they do is start fires from the air to create fire breaks so the main fire does not have the fuel to go. Howy so, talk to us about your Technology Actually works. You basically stop fires by starting fires, right . Carrick our system has basically little pingpong balls that has a chemical in them. When we inject them and drop them, they will start a fire 30 to 60 seconds after hitting the ground. With that, we can remove the fuel in advance of the main fire so we can have the controlled burn to create this fire line so when the main fire comes, it does not have any fuel and it will go out. This is when you see the news stories about a fire is 50 contained. It is because they have actually removed a lot of the fuel around the boundary to prevent it from spreading. One of the main ways they do that is by actually starting fires safely. Talko, what are the to us about the safety benefits of this technology because as i understand it, 25 of the deaths related to wildfires are aerial deaths. You are helping to

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