So i said, the founder of obviously being sarcastic. Then but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you. Trump was introduced at that rally by Reince Priebus. It is the first time the rnc chairman has joined him on the campaign trail. Hillary clintons widening lead over donald trump in three battleground states. The survey gives secretary clinton a bigger lead in colorado, virginia, and North Carolina. The numbers in colorado, clinton 46 , trump 32 . Clinton 46 to trump 33 in North Carolina clinton 48 trump 39. From new york, im mark crumpton. Emily im emily chang and this is bloomberg west. Lyft hit the brakes on g. M. Plus, the c. E. O. Behind 2015s biggest ipo joins us on the current climate for trading debuts and what he thinks of jack dorsey. Asias massive bet on Virtual Reality. The bulk of the latest funding round came mostly from china and japan. Why asia is buying into vr bigtime. Lyft has turned down a buyout offer from General Motors according to a report from the information. The company is commenting on the story. The report comes two months after lyft hired the banking firm catalyst a move that at the time suggested lyft was open to or even soliciting a sale. G. M. Is already an investor in lyft. The car maker paid 500 million for a 9 stake in lyft earlier this year that valued the company at 5. 5 billion and gave g. M. A seat on lyfts board. It is not known what price g. M. Offered to pay for a potential takeover but this report indicates how serious g. M. Could be about establishing its presence in ride hailing. Joining me to discuss the head of technology, brad stone. We know lyft has been potentially looking for buyers. Brad it was one week ago we were talking about the combination of d. B. And uber china. So much heat in this space. Lyft obviously in the u. S. Out gunned and out manned by uber which has raised what 15 billion now . Lyft has raised maybe 2 billion. Its been gaining market share in some cities, San Francisco almost half. Every car you see is a lyft car almost. Emily a lot of drivers drive for both services. Brad of course they do. And growth is expensive and now uber can contain its fire to the market where it has a stronger foothold. So, look. This was a great reporter. It doesnt make either Party Look Bad the fact that they were talking and lyft still thinks it has enough runway to go it alone. There is no price as you mentioned. That latest 5. 5 billion valuation g. M. Would have to pay a premium, fund its lyft losses off its own Balance Sheet. Until we see an actual number and see what kind of premium g. M. Is willing to pay, say interesting but maybe not to the point where they had a document in front of them. Emily we dont know just how serious they were. Back in january when they announced this investment i actually spoke with the president of g. M. And lyfts c. E. O. John zimmer and i asked, does this rule out g. M. Working with uber . Listen to his response to this question talking about just how deep their relationship will be. Integration that needs to happen to bring together what we want to bring together with this network that will require two companies to Work Together really closely. That will be a special partnership and something well be putting a lot of resources behind as will the lyft team. Emily obviously the partnership is still in place. He is still on lyfts board. What do you make of g. M. s potential increasing interest in this business . Right. Thats a multi dimensional partnership. In the shorter term g. M. Is driving cars who want to drive but may not have a vehicle. In the longer term there is a question hovering over all the auto makers about what happens if and when people arent buying cars anymore and were seeing daimler chrysler in europe making these investments. And so, yeah. I dont doubt that g. M. Is thinking about it. Until we do get to the era of driverless cars, you know, its a whole other Balance Sheet. Hole in their Balance Sheet. I think uber is still feeling very comfortable in the United States. It has such an advantage. If anything, lyft being acquired by g. M. With very activist Share Holders who want returns on investment. That might be a good outcome. Lyft would cease to be an ambitious rival funded by the kind of funny money in the private market. Emily i want to talk a little bit about the other big ride sharing company. The other big sharing company which is air b b a new story airbnb, a new story out today they are now giving employees way to ways to sell their stock. The secondary market has really cooled down since facebook. They are giving employees this opportunity but with more restrictions. What does that mean . Well, this is customary in private startups particularly ones that have been private for a long time. Air bnb started business in 2008. Now were now what, seven years into the trajectory of this company. Its not going public any time soon. Emily an ipo is further out . Potentially. They just raised money and were valued at 30 million. Also they have regulatory issues across the world they have to resolve before public investors can fairly evaluate the company. There is going to be some pressure for the early Share Holders for, early employees, for liquidity. Like a lot of other Companies Really since the early days when twitter was being sold willy nilly on the secondary market, companies have looked for ways to put organization and tame this process. Thats what airbnb is doing. Emily weve seen a lot of big acquisitions and startups with lofty ambitions, selling or selling out. Now were also hearing that pinterest, theyre considering allowing their employees to do similar things. Does this mean an extension of their timeline as private companies . Does this mean theyre just not ready to nobody is enthusiastic about the ipo market right now despite the fact the stock markets have achieved a new high. Everyone sort of sees the advantages in Silicon Valley of staying private longer. And so theyre trying to par lay that advantage as long as they can. Emily airbnb in particular as you said are raising another round, 850 million at a 30 billion valuation, still fighting regulation in new york. You asked about this, the c. E. O. Of airbnb a few weeks ago on the show. Listen to what he had to say. The vast majority of people in new york are sharing homes they live in. Telling a middle class family who depends on airbnb to pay their rent or mortgage that they cant advertise their home on airbnb is not best for new york and i hope Governor Cuomo will ultimately see that. Emily whats the progress that airbnb has made with new york regulators . Well, it hasnt been good. This battle has been going on for many years. And there is a bill now that is on Andrew Cuomos desk. The governor of new york that would put some pretty onerous restrictions on airbnb in new york. Theyve been fighting it tooth and nail. Just this week they got a lot of their investors and Silicon Valley luminaries to write a letter to cuomo. We still dont know what he will do. My suspicion is he will veto it. You know, he presents a very strong view of one aspect of airbnbs business in new york, that is people sharing their homes, but the other aspect and the one in which lots of new york city legislators, City Council People worry about, is the fact that you do have, you know, quasiillegal hoteliers running their business on airbnbs network and thats what the opponents want to curb. Emily all right. Well keep an eye on that. Another side bar as airbnb may be fighting regulation in new york the company could see a boom in Rio De Janeiro thanks to the summer olympics. Airbnb says it expects 76 million in Economic Activity in the city including 25 million in host income. The company also says it is expecting 66,000 guest arivals in rio with as much as half the traffic from domestic travelers. On average airbnb guests are spending 136 a day and staying for about six nights. Turning now to another big story of the week, bill marist announcing his departure from formerly Google Ventures. His departure is the latest in a string of executive departures from the company. Earlier this summer chris urmson and earlier this summer tony fadell. I did speak to bill marries on the phone and he told me it was just time to move on, time to do the next thing. He wants to spend time with his family. He lives in san diego and commutes up here. What do you make of bill maris leaving now at the same time were seeing turnover . I dont know if its related. I think i would take him at his word on that. He has been sort of the public face of Google Ventures. Not really much, didnt have much of an investing role. Had more of an administration role. Was sort of the key inside of google. You have basically a google live, literally the first p. R. Person for the first 10 years at google. He knows everyone inside the company. He knows everyone in Silicon Valley. He is responsible for two of Google Ventures biggest deals, one nest and two of course uber. David crane personally brought uber into google. So he is kind of the natural successor. Emily do you see a potential shift in the philosophy of the firm . Bill maris championed the biotech and life science investment. Could they be making a turn toward more consumer interests . I dont think so. My understanding is david crane has a wide set of interests as well and has invested in food tack, Consumer Technology stuff, some enterprise stuff. I dont think so. Google ventures the d. N. A. Is to plant as many seeds as possible and it is one way that kind of google infiltrates the startup community. What about chris urmsen leaving the selfdriving car unit . There is a lot of excitement around the unit. Hes been at google a long time but running that particular unit for only a couple years. Google is positioning itself as focused on fully selfdriving cars, no semiautonomous cars like what elan musk is focused on at tesla. But, you know, is there anything that you would read into or any additional insight here . Of course theyre saying its all amicable and everything is great. But i think there probably is something going on. The selfdriving car project inside google is kind of run in a sort of academic way. It was an r d project for a long time. Emily right. They came out of projects at carnegie melan university in stanford, the grand challenge, basically efforts at two universities to win a prize. Now, whats happened with the selfdriving cars, its key strategic ground right now and google is competing with apple and tesla and with uber and last year they hired an executive from hyundai to come and lead the effort. Clearly there is pressure at google to really commercialize this effort to exploit the lead that they have, to get out on the market with something that is not just am bling around mountain view. And is more than a novelty. So my guess is that there are probably some stresses related to that. We cant miss an opportunity to talk about the interesting flying cars which you wrote about with our colleague. He is investing in that personally. But is that, you know, more than just a sort of personal interest . Could it become something bigger . I think if were i think that is a very longterm project and there is a reason. Amid all the crazy stuff that google does, that is something that larry does on his own. Because the prospect for commercializing, flying autonomous emily i can imagine saying not yet. All right. Brad stone, our global head of tech. Thank you for sticking with me. Now, his third point. Loading up on tech stocks. A hedge fund by 3. 75 million shares of facebook during the Second Quarter according to filings released friday the stake valued at 429 million was the funds biggest new purchaser in the quarter. The fund also made a private investment recently. In a july letter to investors he says he expects this to grow into one of chinas largest internet companies. He is less optimistic about alphabets future. He sold 300,000 shares after making the search giant his top new holding two quarters ago. Coming up techs Biggest Companies are fueling this years monster bond sale. But why . That is next. Plus, theyve raised 80 million in funding to broadcast live Virtual RealityEvents Worldwide and get this, most of the funding in the series b round, came from asian investors. Well ask nextvrs chairman what its all about. This is bloomberg. Emily u. S. Tech is having a love affair with u. S. Bonds. Tech companies have sold approximately 100 billion in bonds just this year. Compare that to the 108 billion for all of last year. Apple, microsoft, and alphabet are responsible for more than 40 of the sales. So whats the strategy behind it . Brad stone our global head of tech is still with me. In new york, the Manhattan Venture Partners chief economist. Max, make sense of this. Is it all just about taxes . More than a little bit is about avoiding repatriating money here. Huge hoards of money which would incur potentially 35 marginal tax rates which would wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars down into much lower numbers. The other thing is that debt is incredibly cheap right now. The longterm carry costs are cheap. The appetite is enormous. You can borrow for 30, 40 years. In an industry like tech where no one has any visibility 10 years out you can borrow for 30 or 40 years, at really low rates, why not . We have a little bit of an a a here where people are going a little crazy paying huge premiums for public and private names. So having domestic, post tax cash on books isnt so bad. After all when its all said and done you can also deduct some of the Interest Payments from that tax break. Emily so, brad, Tech Companies have historically less debt focused. What do you make of this . I would hit the last part a point all little bit harder. There is a lot of optimism right now in the future, the growth of the market. They want to invest in infrastructure, their own growth, and, yes, m a opportunities. You have lots of startups. You have Public Companies whose prospects maybe arent so optimistic and the big guys are kind of taking, embellishing, putting more poker chips on the table and getting ready to bet heavily. Emily the c. F. O. Of alphabet said on the analysts call theyll continue to take advantage of the low Interest Rates. Take a listen to what she had to say. We remain focused on optimizing our capital structure recognizing the Strategic Value of our Balance Sheet. We completed alphabets 1. 7 billion Debt Exchange in the Second Quarter, which gives us flexibility including the ability to use Debt Financing if appropriate. In light of the Interest Rate environment we made opportunistically access the market to term out our commercial paper. Emily max, is this a strategy you expect to continue . Do you expect other Tech Companies to do the same . Yeah. Absolutely. Part of what ruth is pointing to there is the idea that with really low Interest Rates and a really forgiving market here, we can also see them recycle older debt with higher coupon or Interest Rates into longterm debt with lower rates. Thats part of what theyre speaking to. And also acquiring some growth. If you look at what makes facebook exciting or google exciting or alphabet exciting or microsoft exciting a lot of it is acquisitions whether the story of instagram or whats app or oculus or android or you name it. So the other thing is that they return on big, brassy expensive Premium Investments is also the stuff of legends that keeps these companies big. So its cheap. Its easy. The market likes it. That means well see a whole lot more of it before this is over. Max, the tax costs of repatriating capital have become something of an issue in the president ial election. Do you foresee this loophole changing at all . If it does, what will be the impact on these kinds of bonds offerings . So its a great question. We saw candidate trump try to put this front and center. It was in a sort of avalanche of other things a lot of which seemed a little bit unhinged so it might have gotten lost but i think well eventually see a holiday. I dont think well see a huge structural shift. I think well see a holiday. Back in the old days when it was bill clinton, not hillary that the leading candidate right now, they did talk about, did implement some ideas of a temporary holiday to repatriate money. I think well see that. I dont know if well see a permanent structural shift, but eventually were probably going to end up with more like a 25 to 30 Corporate Tax rate because a loft the world has it and we know the biggest leading companies dont pay that 35 anyway. Emily right. Apple specifically has gotten a lot of heat for the money that they have overseas. When might a company like apple actually want to cash that out or bring that back . So, i mean, its been a long kind of endless stand off here or staring contest. Obviously they want to bring a bunch back when they can especially if its a 20 or 15 or 25 marginal tax rate. Not 35. I think we get a holiday at some point but giving the challenge that came from the left to Hillary Clinton i dont think she wants to be out front saying hey can we adopt a billionaire. I think