, journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. Im Alisa Parenti. This is bloomberg. Bloomberg technology is next. Caroline im Caroline Hyde from london, in for emily chang. This is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up, a change in ownership. We will analyze a u. S. Rivals deal. Plus, alibaba enters the ring as the fight to dominate the Smart Speaker market intensifies. How it stacks up against its rivals. Prepareseslas model3 to hit the road, a speed bump for the electric car giant. While teslas sales shifted down a gear. First, a massive deal in the Digital Payments ace payment space. This comes after j. P. Morgan showed interest, but ultimately backed away from the takeover offer. They hope to gain greater exposure to ecommerce retailers and Small Businesses through the acquisition. For more, we are joined by bloombergs editor at large, cory johnson. With me for the hour as guest host is Martin Mignot. Now, i want to kick off with cory first. Give us the background of this deal. Big exposure to ecommerce, smallr exposure to business. Cory why is it based out of cincinnati for a Global Payments business . It is a spinoff from fifth third bank, which tells you the history of this business of payment transactions. With the way this business works, when you go into a store and you use your credit card, the credit they find out if you have the money in your account and come back and approve the credit or not, but there are a number of steps that happen behind the scene. That takes a different chunk. You get the verification from the merchant, then the movement of the money between the merchant and the bank, and then the verification at the merchant side. As you go through each of these steps, theres a little bit of money taken each part of the way and it results in billions and billions of dollars. Commerce hasof gone from physical stores to online. Andpayment infrastructure the companies servicing those businesses have changed as well. Thats why you see vantiv making this move. They want to take advantage of the things happening online because theyve done so well already offline. Caroline lets talk to a man who knows about the online presence. Is it all about the graduation of payments to online to on the channel as well to omnicha nnel as well . Martin its a big part of the story. , its a big market still growing very fast its a big market, still growing very fast. Ay is verye worldp well exposed to online. They were the first payment processor for ecommerce in the u. K. In 1994. Its very much part of their dna. They have a Global Presence in europe and in asia. I think thats part of the story that is attractive to vantiv, which has been mostly focused on more traditional, brick and mortar retailers, which have been under attack against online players. It is a trend we have seen in some of our companies, the main one being a Company Based in holland, but with a very global footprint, which is very much playing on the same strengths of a new infrastructure stack, a global footprint, and offering offering. Nnel i think thats been very important. Emily co caroline cory, interesting that this is the key move. What about other m a in this sector . It has been hot. Interestingly, it wasnt the only suitor to begin with. Jpmorgan was looking in, but perhaps backed away. Cory there have been a number of acquisitions in this area over the last few years, where youve seen the Traditional Companies that have had such great business want to have more exposure to ecommerce. You saw heartland payment acquired. Forsaw the deal today nearly 10 billion. There is a play here. Lets not forget the very specific action amazon took in going after whole foods, if that acquisition is to come through. Vantiv shares dropped on that acquisition. All foods uses vantiv to process their payments. Although they are not mentioned in the annual report of vantiv, you saw shares drop about 4 on the day of that deal. What if amazon says, we will stick with our existing payment structure, get rid of vantiv, and use our payments processor, which is none other than jpmorgan . It is a competitive space here. You can see that with the m a oldline with the payment and Processing Companies trying to buy the newline companies. Also, the newline Ecommerce Companies are kingmakers, particularly amazon. Emily interesting. We saw another deal in europe. Paymentspany company saying it was being id vcs atby american the moment. Is it your view that m a might be the exit route . I thinkthink martin we would like these companies to brazil fulfill their potential. They can become public and ipo at some point. Some of them have a very large footprint. They dont really need a backer to grow all the way. Thats been the pitch from the getgo. Thats very much what we are focusing on. Caroline we will see who jpmorgan eyes up next. Brilliant reporting, as ever, from bloombergs cory johnson. Martin will be sticking with me. Door, the revolving ericsson chairman agreed to step down in 2018 after seven years on the job, completing an overhaul of top management at the embattled company. The company is in the midst of a transportation transformation, refocusing on ericssons core business, ling Network Equipment networking equivalent and pulling back in former areas of expansion. Coming up, more tech employees are speaking out against Sexual Harassment. How tech firms and startups are planning to combat this. And Bloomberg Technology is Live Streaming on twitter, weekdays at 5 00 p. M. In new york, 10 00 p. M. In london. This is bloomberg. Story we are, a watching. Amazon will create 1500 new fulltime jobs at its Salt Lake City center. It will allow workers to pick, pack, and ship smaller customer items. This is amazons first facility in utah. , stories of Sexual Harassment within the Tech Industry continue to come out. Vc firms and Tech Startups have been rocked by numerous Sexual Misconduct allegations, resulting in several resignations from tech investors, with the latest one coming just this week. As the industry moves to grapple harassment as the industrys moved to grapple with harassment danes momentum, questions gains momentum, questions remain. Joining me, joe nocera, who wrote about his column about this in his column today. Still with me, guest host Martin Mignot. Its pervasive and ingrained is what you wrote in your story, and the tide is now turning as men start to lose their jobs. But just how pervasive was it, is it, and why is it the tide now turning . Joe it is so pervasive. There are studies out there that show that 60 of the women who were polled said that they had had to deal with some form of fact Sexual Harassment. I would say thats pretty darn pervasive. Its really gone on for years, because the power imbalance between a venture capitalist who has money and a female founder who desperately needs money is immense. Its as powerful as a ceo and underling. So, its really only recently, especially after susan fowler wrote that incredible blog post about her year at uber, which launched, really, the decline and fall of travis kalanick, the ceo, that women have started to come out and not talk in vague generalities, but use their names, so they are on the record, and named the people who harassed them, the men who harassed them. It has been an explosion over the last two weeks in Silicon Valley over this, and jobs have been lost. There are going to be more explosions because women are going to keep talking about this and more names are going to come out and more jobs are going to be lost. Caroline im fascinated with whether this is something that has been talked about in europe much. Ive been in Silicon Valley for a few months, but it doesnt feel like we are going to get the explosions here that you are seeing in Silicon Valley. Am i entirely wrong . You areim afraid wrong. I think the imbalance of power that joe mentioned, between the fact that there are way more men than women, especially in the vc industry, but in the Tech Industry as a whole, is as true in europe as in the u. S. The issue of the imbalance of power, im afraid, is going to be the same here as well. Caroline you think, therefore is it jobs that need to be lost here in europe and in asia to start to see the harassment start to come away, but also the dissemination and the diversity start the discrimination and the diversity to start to even out . Martin whats been happening the past few weeks and months has been a call to arms for the industry. Weve seen a lot of unacceptable behaviors. Mary brave behavior from the women who are speaking up. Bravek its been very behavior from the women who are speaking up. I think its been a very good thing. Four female investors as part of our 20person investor team, which is not terrible, but we should do much better. And we dont have female partners, which i think is not really a good thing. We really need to make it a priority to expand the female partnership at our firm. We are taking that really seriously. Caroline joe, your piece is fascinating. Take brave women to come out and speak against tech giants such as uber, to take on the likes of binary 500 startups. But weve also seen it affect other industries. Maybe we start to see harassment decline, but it do we see diverse city pick up as well but do we see diversity pick up as well . Joe in a weird way, the harassment is the problem to solve, because it is such an offense. If you make the consequence youre going to lose your job and your reputation, men will stop doing it. Thats what the other industries show. Gender bias, getting women on board, getting more women founders that is much more difficult, although i will say i do think one of the reasons that all this is coming out now is because there are a lot more women founders than there were in the past. There is an increasing number of women who want to get into technology. I think its their frustration that is driving some of this these exposes and could lead to big change. Caroline fascinating from joe. Martin, theres interesting news going on in europe. We have a femalefounded company, set up by females themselves. We have diversity vc, which is focused on shining a light on how little they were city there is in the vc how little diversity there is in the vc community. What else can be done to ensure that we get over this disgusting hurdle that is going on in the industry . Martin we need to start with us. We need to act on what we can really control. For us, it means making sure we open up and look at the broader range of candidates. If we only look at our personal network, which because we are more male around the table, it orientedore male as well. I think thats a critical piece. Weve been doing that for the past from the beginning of the firm, but we really emphasized that in the past five years, passed 10 years past 10 years, but we need to do more. More systematically, one of the issues related to that is, if you look at something that needs to be addressed as well, well before people decide to go with a vc. Thats an issue with the pipeline. Caroline we hope more entrepreneurs come through as well. Martin will be sticking with me. Bloomberg view economist joe nocera, who has written business columns for the new york times. Wonderful to have you with us. Coming up, earlier, baidu held a conference focusing on its ai ambitions. Who is in the drivers seat . We will bring that to you next. A feature we want to bring to your attention, at tv on the bloomberg. You can watch us live. You can send our producers a message. Play along with the charts we bring you onair. This is for bloomberg subscribers only. This is bloomberg. Caroline two more airlines say they have now been exempted from the u. S. Ban on laptops in airplane cabins. Emirates and Turkish Airlines satisfied american concerns about security. The u. S. Band laptops banned laptops because it was feared they could contain explosives. News out of china. On wednesday, Search Engine giant baidu held a conference focusing on its Artificial Intelligence ambitions. All Tech Companies are desperate to get into it before its too late. Baidu is out to prove they are a serious contender in the ai world. Joining us, selina wang. Still with us, guest host Martin Mignot. Selina, what was unveiled today . It seems to be about Driverless Cars, rather than voice recognition. Selina this is baidus inaugural Artificial Intelligence conference. It was supposed to be a chance for them to show off their technology, new developments in ai, and really get the Artificial Intelligence community excited and ready to work with baidu. The big news from today was that they unveiled more than 50 partnerships with folks across the board for Driverless Cars. These players included ford, big suppliers like bosch, ri dehailing Services Like grab. Baidu basically saying, we want to be the android of the driverless ecosystem. We want to be the open Software Platform and work with all the other Game Changing players to make our technology as good as possible and beat out our rivals. Caroline martin, talk to us about the driverless car ecosystem. Going in on a Partnership Strategy to compete with waymo and uber. Martin i think they are playing catchup. Maymo waymo started way before everyone else. They have about 3 million miles with very lows currencies of human drivers occurrences of human drivers having to take back the wheel. The other tech players are playing catchup now. Caroline selina, where do we start . The partnership seems to be a savvy way that baidu is dealing with it. It is quite a short timeline in which they want to get all these cars on the road. Can they achieve it . Selina martin made a really good point. By do is playing catchup baidu is playing catchup. They are behind waymo. The caveat to these partnerships, while it is smart and the best way forward for them, this likely these likely are not exclusive partnerships. For these partners, it is in their best interest to be with as many different driverless car providers as possible, just because it is still so early. We dont know exactly who is going to win. But you are right. They want to have the driverless car on the road by 2018, mass production just a few years after that, so they need to do Everything Possible to get to those timelines, especially as their core business is struggling. So, they have a lot to prove. Caroline martin, as a vc, how are you looking at this space . Are you looking to give funding . Are these Companies Already larger than the ones that are really going to make an impact . Martin it has been i would say by far the hottest area of startups and investment in the past 12 months, 18 months. Weve seen startups coming picking up every little part of the slack, whether its hardware, radar, sensors on the car, software. Or mapping, even some battery technology. Weve seen a bit of everything. Weve seen the space moving a lot. There are some players going for the partnerships, others going more integrated inhouse development, like waymo. We have been focusing more on services around the car, the intelligent car, with investments like a multimodel, data focused service to help people navigate around the city or helping passengers navigate from city to city with a ridesharing model. Those are the types of services we have been focusing on. Well be able at some point to leverage, we hope, the self driving car when it gets ready and potentially commoditized. Caroline thank you very much. Andght from Martin Mignot great reporting as ever from Bloomberg Technologys selina wang. Sticking with ai. Alibaba is out with a new Smart Speaker to compete with the likes of amazon and google. Who else is in the race to own your home . We will discuss next. This is bloomberg. So we need tablets installed. With the menu app ready to roll. In 12 weeks. Yeah. The world of fast food is being changed by faster networks. Data, applications, customer experience. Which is why comcast business delivers Consistent Network Performance and speed across all your locations. Fast connections everywhere. Thats how you outmaneuver. So new touch screens. And biometrics. In 574 branches. All done by. Yesterday. Banks arent just undergoing a face lift. Theyre undergoing a transformation. A data fueled, security driven shift in applications and customer experience. Which is why comcast business delivers Consistent Network Performance and speed across all your locations. Hello, mr. Deets. Every Branch Running like headquarters. Thats how you outmaneuver. Alisa im Alisa Parenti in washington, and you are watching Bloomberg Technology. Lets begin with a check of your first word news. President trump discussed the dispute over qatar in a phone call today with egypts president. Egypt is part of the Saudiled Coalition moving to isolate their gulf neighbor because of claims that qatar supports ter