Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow discuss OpenAI's deal with Oracle as they search for more compute capacity. Plus, a look at President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill as it nears a successful House vote. And the White House lifts some chip design software curbs on China.
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This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Open AI ramps up with more computing capacity from Oracle, expanding the Stargate initiative. Plus, the US House of Representatives is on track to vote on Donald Trump's tax and spending bill.
What does that mean for tech?
And the Trump administration lifts some export license controls requirements for chip design software sales, specifically for China. Let's get right to financial markets and as that one hundred is pushing once again to fresh record highs strong jobs data for the month of June. Halfway through the show, we're going to go really deep on jobs and then we're going to look at the labor market when it comes to the technology sector. But there are other things happening that are pushing the tech sector in XT markets higher. A lot of it is related to compute capacity. Bloomberg broke a really big story last night, and I want to get right to it.
The story's Oracles.
On a two day basis, we saw a five percent jump in oracle yesterday. We're pushing a little bit higher again this Thursday. But the deal is open AI expanding the Stargate project, getting more compute capacity in new states and new sites beyond what they've already got in Texas. The person that broke that story Bloomberg's Brody Ford, and he's.
With us now.
I think we need to get to the details of what you reported, because there was a lot of detail in it, Brody, specifically in terms of gigawatts.
The scale of this new capacity.
Yeah, we saw earlier in the year, you know, Larry Ellison standing there in the White House talking about we're going to deploy five hundred billion dollars with open AI for data centers. A lot of people doubted that scale. Well, yesterday we broke that they have inked a pretty unprecedented deal four point five giggle watts. The usual rule of thumb is that a gigglewats about a nuclear reactor, and so we're talking about a scale of four and a half worth of nuclear reactors or powering about three and a half million homes. I mean, this is likely the largest cloud deal of all time, and it's gonna be tens of billions of dollars of chips of power. I mean, it's gonna be hard to wrap our head around what this looks like in the build out.
Okay, what do we know?
What are sources telling us about where these new sites are going to be, what's under consideration? And kind of like how near term this is?
Right?
So they've narrowed on a handful of data center sites, right, I mean a ten states like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Texas. They'll also be expanding the campus they've already built out in Abilene that a lot of us have seen, you know, images of how near term I mean, a lot of this stuff is tough to get off the ground. Oracle earlier this week said that the full ramp would likely not hit into twenty twenty eight, and so it's it's fairly far out, but I would expect to see some of these sites come out and a pretty rapid clip. We don't know exactly which one's gonna move first, but you know, I'm sure we're gonna be starting to get more details trickling out in the coming weeks and months.
Let's talk about the Oracle side of this.
This is a stop that's now again pushing fresh record highs almost every day. At the moment, it's up forty percent so far in twenty twenty five.
This is a big win for Oracle.
They are really pushing and changing their position in the landscape of infrastructure and AI cloud computing.
Three years ago, if you said Oracle major cloud player, people would make fun of you, definitely, But today that's not the case, right. I mean, they're making I think around ten billion per year in cloud infrastructure. On Monday they said the deal that we connected is this opening I one will be thirty billion per year. I mean that is triple the size of their entire current cloud and so it's huge for revenue. The big question is what it means for margins, And that's kind of the classic with a lot of these AI businesses that they're going to be buying a lot of chips and power and construction, and that's going to constrain their margins. What does that mean for cash flow? That's what investors are asking this morning.
Bloomberg's Brody Ford there with the reporting, let's get to the analysis. This expanded deal between Oracle and open Ai. It's also good news for some chip makers. That's according to Bloomberg intelligence, who say the likes of Nvidia and AMD are going to benefit here. Keunjin Sabani offered that note and he joins us. Now inside all of this infrastructure, at the heart of it is the compute, and the compute right now in this market is largely coming from Nvidia, but also to a greater extent increasingly from a AMD. What's the thesis here that you've got congent.
Well, two points, As Brady mentioned, Oracle has been really beefing up their spending versus what we thought a year or two ago. Now if you look at the estimates now you're in for twenty five, it is going to be the fastest CSP in terms of capex increases, so definitely increasing the wallet share and becoming a serious buyer of the chips. Second point, it is one of the only hyper scalers or cloud providers among the top five who does not have a custom silicon or an ACIC program. What does that mean is majority of the capex that is is going to spend to bring up this four point five gigle wats of capacity is going to merchant GPU providers, likes and media which it has been buying. Most of GPS from in the past, but also AMD because as they announced, they're ordering about one hundred and thirty k M three point fifty five for the second half, which equates to somewhere between three to four billion dollars of revenue for AMD.
Just real quick, con Jen Brody was giving us the reporting on the dollar value of this deal to Oracle, right, it's that thirty billion dollars that we were talking about earlier in the week per year starting in fiscal twenty eight. Are you able to model or do the math on what these kinds of deals and the value of them are to AMD and Video in terms of like number of chips that they will send that way, or kind of the pipeline of business that they're securing through Oracle.
To some extent, because there are a lot of assumptions, but what we can map is the gigawards to the chip spending. So rather than the revenue that Oracle will collect the four point five gigabards, assuming that's all brand new data center build out, one gigaward approximately in today's term, equates to sixty billion dollars of capex, which includes everything from chips and hardware. So even if you had to like make take conservative stance and cut it half for chips. That still leaves you for what every gigaward at least thirty billion.
Dollars Bloomberg Intelligence is congense.
Vanni, there with the analysis, we had the reporting, We got the analysis.
Now let's get the market reaction.
Janet Murray, head of market analysis at RBC Berandolphin, found it really interesting these big capital projects in infrastructure just keep coming. What does that signal to you about what the market should model for in the coming years ahead?
As thanks for having me.
I think the significance of this deal is that the demountable computing power is just incestiable. And remember when deep SIK come out, a lot of investors were worries that actually they may not be the need for so much computing power if the modeling is so efficient, But actually that's not true. We see that there is high visibility of the scale of the investment by sovereigns, by hyperscalars and many corporates. So I guess this is really the big conclusion is that the runway still is still very long and the incentive to invest is still very high. So I think the theme of investment in a particularly in semiconductors and cloud which are the AI infrastructure is particalarly.
Relevant Janet and Brodie's reporting. He's saying that this expansion between Oracle and Open AI is four point five giggle watt's worth of capacity and in the context of energy, you could power this country at that scale. How do you think about the energy sector and the energy infrastructure requirements that markets are going to have to fund to support these types of data center expansion.
Again, I think the utility side energy side of things goes hand in hand with the need for from shooting power, and that's why we have seen our hyperscalar like meta investing in nuclear energy for example. So I think the quest or cheaper, more efficient energy would be there, and I think that is why I think the US warming basically the region that would lead the AI race, because the US is basically self sufficient in the energy production relatively cheaper energy compared to say Europe and for example, the UK. So I guess that's a very important conclusion, is that there is incentive for companies to invest and base their production in the US to access is cheap energy base.
Janet, the story this Thursday is treasuries are falling, the dollar is stronger, and equity markets, particularly the technology sector, pushing fresh record highs on the Nasdaq one hundred. Give me your reaction to the jobs data and the coprint that we got this morning.
Well, I would say that data is basically goldilots because on one hand, you get better than expected jobs data in general a softening trend, but it's still okay. It's still reflective of a solid labor market. An employment rate is lower, and at the same time, wage growth is actually slower despite a shrinking labor force. So I would say it's a goldilocks, which market clearly likes. And I think the conclusion is that the Federal Reserve really is in urgency to cut raise. But that's fine because I think the markets would prefer the evidence of a strong labor market rather than fretting over the exact timing of the rate cut.
I do see some outperformance in technology. Why is that? Why is that? Is it just a waiting issue right now and technology is what this market is or is there something in this economy and the path forward for the Fed that makes this sector more attractive right now?
Yeah?
I guess there are lots of reasons right. First of all, in terms of earning it's growth profile, technology is still the brightest spot out there, as I mentioned, a clear visibility on AI investment. I think secondly, I think in terms of the productivity gains, I think the tech sector is likely to see or have a lot of those productivity surplus. And of course, I think in terms of the US market, I think the tech sector is where the actionists to access the aif them et cetera, and if we see for example, rape cuss really coming by. I think law barn Yiel's law interest rate also partically benefit those growth areas as well. So really a combination of factors.
If you're a technology investor, that was the what you needed to know. Janet Mouri, head of market analysis at RBC BRA and Dolphin, thank you very much. There is a lot more coming up the house pools and all nighter as Republicans race to get a tax bill to President Trump's desk before their July fourth deadline. We're going to live to Washington, DC next and we will have the latest on where things stand.
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Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech.
You're looking at live pictures from Capitol Hill where House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is delivering a blistering rebuttal of the tax bill that's now going into its sixth hour.
Here with the very.
Latest, Bloomberg's Tyler Canda out in Washington, DC. What is the latest? What do we expect to happen? What do we need to know?
Yeah, hey, Ed, So, the House Democratic Leader Hawking Jeffries has something known as the magic minute, which means that he can speak for however long as he wants, and as you mentioned, he started at four fifty three am Eastern, so we could be in this for the long haul. But it really does feel like they're sort of delaying the inevitable because Republicans a pure poised to pass President Trump's signature legislative Achievement, which would be the one big, beautiful bill. Once Leader Jeffries is done speaking, House Speaker Mike Johnson might take the mic, or they could try to get this done as soon as possible and this would proceed immediately to a vote on finalized passage. Once that happens, we're looking for that magic number of two hundred and seventeen, which means House Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose three votes, but he appears to have it. It seems like Republican leadership was able to flip some of the staunches critics of this bill, those members of the House Freedom Caucus, those Republicans that were pitching themselves as fiscal hawks, and our reporting on the Hill this morning indicates that they did get some sort of concessions and assurances from this White House in order to flip their votes, including one that I know that you pay close attention to, which is when it comes to the phase out of those clean energy tax credits. Ralph Norman told our reporter on the Hill today that one of the assurances that the White House gave them was that there would be strict enforcement when it does come to the phase out, particularly around solar and win tax subsidies. So that's something to look forward and look out to as we try to glean more details on exactly what it took to get these Republicans to flip their vote when it came to the procedural vote.
Earlier this morning, tailer technology markets in real time and as that one hundred already pushing fresh record high is now extending its gain in the session to one percent. It is a short week because it is a July fourth holiday this Friday in the United States. There's a lot being made of, like the symbolism of the President signing this bill July and fourth. I heard you speaking with Bloombogs, Matt and Miner about that earlier.
Why is that symbolism.
There, Well, it really was this self imposed deadline from the administration that they wanted to get this done by July fourth. We are expecting a pretty big signing ceremony either later today or tomorrow, so that President Trump can tout this legislative achievement that they're really hoping we'll pair with some of these potential trade deals frameworks that we could get next week ahead of that July ninth deadline that they have put into effect. Because the administration is really hoping for a few different things to happen here. They want to see a confluence really of economic factors going into the summer so that they can help push ahead when it comes to President Trump's economic agenda. Now, of course they're dealing with criticism. We have the House Speaker, for example, railing against some of the changes when it comes to Medicaid. But this administration is really trying to focus people on this idea of stabilizing the debt to GDP. Yes, this bill is going to add significantly to the national debt, but it is the other policies that they're looking to put into place that ultimately they say will help grow the economy.
The national debt pile the big focus of Elon Musk, as we've discussed all week, Bloomberg Tyler Kendall terrific work out in Washington, DC.
Thank you very much. Let's get to another big story.
The US and China are beginning to implement their recent trade deals, and as part of that, there's some easing of restrictions on critical technologies, including export license requirements for chip design, software sales, particularly in China. Bloomberg's Peter Elstrom, who leads the team in covering Asia tech and European tech, is with us. So what we're talking about is EDA and as of last night, we're hearing from the key players, the key names in the DA space that they're now free to do business in China.
What do we need to know?
Yeah, that's right. So this is a strange one. It was just in May when we found out from the companies that they were going to have these export restrictions on China. Their EDA software is necessary to be able to design semiconductors. It was also strange the way that it got announced. It was the companies that actually were these new restrictions, it was not the Commerce Department, which is the agency behind that. Again this time it's kind of similar. We had Semens come out first. Cadence Design Systems and Synopsis are also affected here. They came out and then they said it in fact, those restrictions are now being rolled back. They're not going to have the same kind of restrictions on servicing and supporting selling into China to support their customers.
So what's going on.
Behind the scenes? As you say, the US and China are now in the middle of East trade negotiations. Back in May, China was kind of playing tough. They were not exporting some of the rare earth the minerals that American companies needed. Now that the negotiations are preceding, China struck this tentative agreement to be able to ship those again. In the US and China are coming back to the table and as a result, these companies are going to have a little bit more breathing space. But that's very unusual. You've got export controls, which are typically national security issues now being traded as part of the trade negotiations.
We're seeing some of the chip makers push higher, but really the stories around the software name, Cadencenopsis, the two that you mentioned also pushing higher. Will show those in just a second. The modern day cutting edge chip has billions of transistors. Right, No human brain can do the blueprint or designed for that. But there is some concern here that Huawei, in particular, if they are having free access to EDA, that they can use that technology in that software platform to close the gap a little bit, you know, design their own cutting edge chips. Why is America not more concerned about that, Peter, Yeah, that's a.
Key issue in the technology race between the two countries. You have the US ahead and a few different key areas. In particular, DA is one of the most important ones. Of course, semiconductor equipment is another one. The Netherlands ASML is by far the leading player. While Way however, has been able to break through some of these barriers. It's become a national champion for China. It's helped try to focus on some of these key bottlenecks that they have. DA is one of the key areas, or if they're able to use these tools, they can step ahead and design some of these chips. They have the surprise the world, i'd say, with some of their advancements and semiconductors, particularly this seven nanometer chip that they used in one of their smartphones in the past. But now they have not been able to make some of the progress, have not been able to move forward quite as quickly. So these tools are going to help them make some of those steps going forward again. That's why it's so surprising that they're trading this away in the negotiations between the US and China.
Bloomberg's executive editor for Global Technology, Peter Elstrom, thank you so much. It's time for talking tech, and first up, Deep Seek ramps up hiring. The Chinese AI startup posted ten positions on LinkedIn, indicating it maybe looking to lure talent from outside of its homeland. The listings include three roles focused on general intelligence, with the positions based in Beijing and Han Joe plus ASML and other European semiconductor stocks extended losses. Today, there was a report from Nicky Asia that said Samsung would be delaying its completion of a chip factory in Texas. The report, citing sources, says the delay is due to Samsung struggling to find customers for the plant's output and some news that broke this hour. Core Weaves the first company to receive the latest AI system based on Nvidia's newest chip. Dell delivered the first GB three hundred MVL seventy two.
Rack of servers to core Weave and would deploy them.
In the US, with core Weave aiming to bring more of the tech online throughout the year. Open AI is one of Corweave's customers and the infrastructural players, saying the new systems will work well for larger, more complex models. That's the reporting, that's the detail. I want to get some more analysis on this. One man deep seeing of Bloomberg Intelligence is with us. There's this like constant tracking of the launch and ramp of Nvidia's latest generation server design that has the latest generation chip and chip combination in it.
Col Weave goes first, what do you make of that?
Well, when I look at in video's release cycle, they are on a one year rhythm and in between that year now they are launching the black Vell Ultra before the Ruben series comes online. And look, they're almost giving a fifty percent performance upgrade with the black Vel Ultra in terms of token processing. So from that perspective, Corviv having that chip first really gives them a leg up over the hyperscalers, which will also get their in Vidia allocation. But for Corviv, you know they have a backlog of about twenty six billion. To convert that backlock to revenue, you need the most kind of impressive in Vidio chips first and that helps with the faster backlock conversion.
So really good news for Corevive, especially on the training front, because a lot of these latest black Ultra chips I believe will be used for training and then the older series will be used for in printing over time.
So call we've stock really pushed higher after news came out. I'm also looking at Dell, like, help us understand the Dell component in this ecosystem.
Yeah, well, Dell is the one who is making that server, So in Vidia is providing the chip and krviv is really bringing those racks and the servers online to be consumed in a cloud consumption model. But Dell is the one who is actually assembling that server and making sure that it can be delivered to coreviv. So from that perspective, they are part of that supply chain and it's a good thing that they get to, you know, do that for Nvidia before any other server maker like Quanta or you know, any other Chinese OEMs come into play.
Very quick, we just have twenty seconds, Mandy, Well, what's the BI big picture thesis right now on how this AI infrastructure build outs going.
I mean, Oracle and open Ai really raised up the ante when it comes to you know, their big announcement the thirty billion dollar contract and now this news. So to my mind, you know, the infrastructure supercycle is really playing out and you're seeing that right now.
Man, keep seeing Bloomberg Intelligence of BI. Great to have the reaction here on the show.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech.
Let's get right to the markets and I'll start with the technology sector in the acuity market. Right then, a's that one hundred continuing to push fresh record highs. But we got the job's data for June strong labor market, and the story is really clear. Equities pushed higher outperformance in the tech sector, but you also saw treasuries full the dollar strengthen. Take all of that in aggregate. It's really important. This is what the bomb market looks like. I know we go there less often, but there is always a relationship between what's happening in yields and particularly valuations around technology sector. Now, this was the blowout jobs report, and there's any one guy that I want to go to on a daylight today, that's Bloomberg's Economics and Policy correspondent Michael McKee.
As you know, I just don't know.
I don't really understand the granularity of the job's data, the revisions, the changes, what is the need to know in June, and the kind of explanation for why markets reacted the way they did.
Well.
The explanation for why markets reacted the way they did is fairly simple. The economy seems stronger than it was expected to be, and that would suggest that corporate earnings can stay strong. But this is a report that looks better on the surface than it does underneath. It's not terrible, but it's not as great as it looks. We had one hundred and forty seven thousand jobs created, and the unemployment rate falls to four point one percent. But of those one hundred and forty seven thousand jobs, seventy three thousand were in government employment.
Most of that.
State and local education schools are out in June, so there's probably a seasonal adjustment problem with these numbers that will cause them to be revised lower. Private payrolls were up only seventy four thousand. That's lower than we had been seeing, so there is some concern about all this. And of course the unemployment rate falls because one hundred and thirty thousand people left the labor force, so ed not quite as good as anticipated, and of course we want to know how they're doing out in.
Your neck of the woods.
We lost five thousand jobs in computer manufacturing, another thousand in semiconductor manufacturing. Web search portals and hosting lost three hundred jobs, so on the tech side not so great either.
I'm really grateful for that level of detail on the tech sect, like we're going to go deep into what the environment is right now, particularly in software with our next guest, But what I'm seeing on the news cycle and timel this morning is very FED related a lot of questions directed towards the administration and about what the FED should or shouldn't do.
Why is that, Well, everybody wants lower interest rates because of course it's going to mean higher corporate profits. But this report pretty much pushes the FED out of that. For the July meeting, there was only a couple of FED officials who were talking about July. September still stays on the calendar as the most likely first month for a rate cut. We'll see what happens next week when we get the CPI report on the fifteenth. That could make a difference to the Fed. But at this point it looks like the Fed stays on hold. And of course the President will keep tweeting that he doesn't like j.
Powell.
Bloomberg's Michael McKee, International Economics and Policy correspondent. It's great to have you back on Bloomberg Tech. Let's get right to tech and more on the jobs outlook in the sector. Eric Wosakowski is the Bespoke Partner's CEO, an absolute specialist in executive search, particularly in the fields of SaaS software also private equity here in the United States, and I want to talk about what that market is like right now, particularly at the higher end. There's been so much in the news cycle about talent poaching. Frankly, but just on the data this morning, was there any read through for you that directly correlates to what you're seeing in the technology sector?
Ed?
Thank you for having me on. I tend to agree with Michael. I think the headline news sounds fantastic, but I think when you peel back the onion, private sector jobs, particularly in tech and innovation, are flat. CEOs today are trading on uncertainty in the market, whether it be the impact of the tariffs, the geopolitical environment. That said, I don't think it's a negative situation because I think what we saw yesterday with Microsoft announcing they're cutting more jobs is CEOs over the last six months have really tightened their belt to see how the market pivots. If we get negative implications from tariffs, they're going to be able to weather the storm. But I actually think the underpinnings here are on a positive economy in the next six to twelve months, a strong future, and I think CEOs are sitting back with capital to invest. Is they get favorable news on tariffs in the geopolitical environments and hopefully a rate cut.
We did hear from the administration, so to speak. This morning, Stephen Moran gave an interview to Open Interest, one of our earlier shows. He leads the Council of Economic Advisors. Let's listen to what he said.
What we see is an economy that continues to continues to defy expectations, continues to define all the doom and gloom that's out there, whether it's about the border, or immigration or tariffs, just labor market continues to power ahead. There were tons of predictions that there'd be a disaster of labor market because of the border policies, and nothing could be further from the truth. The economy continues to create jobs, and if you look at the details of the jobs, all of the job gains since the president of office are due to native born Americans, and there's actually been a decline in foreign born worker which means that all of the benefits of the expanding economy are recurring to Americans instead of migrants.
What Stephen outlined, they're seeing in the relationship between policy and how it impacts fiscal policy and political policy and how it impacts the jobs market. Do you see what he explained reflected in software and SATs.
I don't think it's reflected yet. I think there's an opportunity going forward because the largest creator of high paying good jobs in the United States is innovation and private equity. And I think when we look at the number of deals that are done in private equity, the investment that's happening, I think we're still in a wait and see mode. I think if you look year over year, the number of private equity deals is down. That said, in speaking with the investment banking firms, their mandate pipelines are full. In speaking with our private equity clients, they're reviewing a record number of new deals. And I think the next six to twelve months, I really think we're going to start to see the deal activity pick, which is going to fuel investment in jobs.
So the big story has been mister Mark Zuckerberg, according to mister Sam Outman, the CEO of Open Ai, approaching talent in the field of AI, but let's call it software and offering. According to Sam Outman, pay packages of one hundred million US dollars.
Is that the kind of market that you're seeing.
This is what you specialize in absolutely, and we're not privy to those particular deals. But I think the labor market at the high end in software tech SaaS is very tight because you don't have that natural flow of deals and exits that creates natural term You've got a number of assets that are at the ready to transact in the next six to eighteen months, and so executives today are not reticent to make a move, and so that notion of poaching, the notion of having to overpay to attract star executives for those open roles you need, is absolutely happening. The premium proven executives are at a premium right now, and that's why they're demanding outsize pay AI is clearly another area that's on the frontier. The top executives that are leading way there are demanding outsized pay packages.
Eric just very quickly, how does Bespoke use technology to find a solution in that type market.
So we have, as far as I know, the first executive index in executive recruiting. It's focused particularly on the software market. We used AI and mL to index six hundred and seventy six thousand software executives in North America. The technology gives us key indicators on job fits, propensity to make a move and the like, and so we, as far as I know, are the first and are going to continue to push the envelope on technology and recruiting.
Eric Walzakowski, it's great to have you on the program, Bespoke Partner's CEO on this job's Day, but also there's so much conversation around what's happening right now in the technology jobs market.
Thank you very much.
So.
Coming up, Amy Saper from Uncoort Capital joins us talk about the state of seed stage investing and competition to get in early. How common a theme has that been in recent weeks? Really looking forward to this one. Stay tuned. That's next.
This is Bloomberg Tech. It's time for the VC Spotlight.
Our next guest is a classically trained singer, backed Michael Jackson in one of his music videos and competed across California. She's also worked at some of the world's most important technology companies, Twitter, Uber, and Stripe, and she's now a partner at Uncourt Capital, at one point two billion dollar venture firm chasing the biggest potential names in AI. Amy Safer joins us here in San Francisco, Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me increasingly on this program. At all of the dinners I'm going to, there is a big battle to get in earlier. Actually, sometimes founders don't really have a fully baked idea. And reading your notes and the thesis, but also being subscribed to tasting notes on Cork's newsletter, that's kind of where the focus.
Is right now. Absolutely so.
Here at Kirk we are focused on seed investing, so we typically write the first institutional check into a company. We are really excited about what we're seeing in AI, and we back founders with a deep belief on a new customer segment or a new company, and we're trying to back the founders that are building the companies that are really going to define this next decade, and virtually all of those have AI as they're.
Undercurrent right now.
What is also true is that the scale of the seed round is being redefined. I see seed rounds in the high tens of millions, depending on which sort of corner of the technology market it is.
How has that changed things for you? Yeah, absolutely so.
I think if you look overall of the seed market, it is true that rounds are getting larger. I think the average in Q one was over three million, up from maybe two and a half last year. So the large rounds of the tens and twenty millions do make the headlines. Those are not the norm of what we're seeing, though they do occur. I do think it's true that companies and founders are raising a little bit more reflective of the increased expectations that the Series A investors are placing relative to a couple of years ago.
There's what you can do in the field of AI, and then there's what you can do with AI. What is it that you're looking for in a founder right now? Like people would say, well, I'm ANAI adjacent company or I'm AI we're native, they might just be using AI to do something else. They might be not necessarily developing a new technology so to speak.
Yeah, absolutely, so, I think AI is already rapidly shifting from being a sector that you might invest in into encompassing every startup so whether their core product is AI native, and we do have several of those in our portfolio IVO for example, in the Legal Contract Review GPT zero for copy editing. We also have companies that are selling to AI companies so tail scale counts companies like Mistroll and Perplexity and others amongst their customers set and are emerging as the de facto networking solution for those AI companies. So we are focused on companies that are cognizant that the market is changing right now, and so whether they are building that into their product, whether they're using it in their back office to streamline some of their operations, or whether they're selling to AI customers, it really is everywhere right now.
I invite you to reflect on your music career, but I think largely your career in technology Stripe Uber, Twitter now known as X. Are you more of an operator than then traditional finance and how are you helping the founders that you're backing.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I leverage my operating career every day, and I will say my background is a mix of product, product marketing, international expansion. I use the product marketing side far more than I thought. I'm particularly attracted to companies and founders that are largely technical, building AI enabled applications for engineering, product and design teams, and they might not have a product marketing or a sales background, and so I help them define who's their ideal customer, how do you reach them? How do you get your first sets of customers? And that's such a critical set of activities to do with the seed stage.
I know a lot of bench capitalists watch this program. Many of you are not operators. You have a finance background, nothing against any of that, but really interested in the operator side of the story.
Where is it that the founders are struggling right now?
Like capital is basically commoditized, right, so what is it that they say, like we really need your help with imminent Is it hiring putting operational staff?
In absolutely?
I think it's two main things at the seed stage that we focus on. One is really honing on getting as specific as possible about who your ideal customer is. And that's so critical for the seed stage because you have the large horizontal players, the lms that are trying to be the horizontal layer for everyone. Where seed stage companies and early stage companies can really compete is by focusing on a particular customer segment and owning their workflow.
End to end.
And so we spend a lot of time there and then helping them identify the right talent that they need to achieve those milestones and reach those.
Customers, Amy say pert partner un Court Capital, thank you very much for joining us here. Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner says Mark Zuckerberg and Meta's lavish spending for top AI talent may not guarantee their success. On Bloomberg Insight with has Linda I'm in.
What we're really seeing here with Meta is metas started to get a reputation of having a little bit of a dysfunctional AI team, not really having its organizational structures set up in a way that Billy butts them succeed and innovate. And what I think we're seeing here is CEO Mark Zuckerberg really stepping in and saying, Wow, we have to do something differently. We need a big new push, we need a big new effort. The real question is can it turn around Meta's fortunes and can it turn Meta into a real juggernaut.
Staying on Meta, the company's Twitter alternative Threads has grown to three hundred and fifty million monthly users since his debut two years ago. Still, the social media platform is continuing to work on finding their own identity among the industry. So the subject to today's Tech in Depth newsletter written by Bloombers Kirk Wagner. I said Twitter, I of course meant X the platform formerly known as Twitter. I don't know about Threads. Like when it launched, I used it a lot because I like the interaction between Instagram and threads. Like one thing I posted there I could take there. I don't use it in the same way to share news as I do potentially on x or even LinkedIn. But it's it's your teching depth newsletter. What's the kind of conclusion here.
Well, I think we're in the same boat, ed, because that was sort of my thinking here as we come up on the two year anniversary of this product. I like threads, I use threads, but I still ask myself, what is this thing for?
Right?
I think with Twitter, old Twitter, I knew what that was. That was the place I went for breaking news. That was a place I shared breaking news. That was where I assumed that I would get, you know, things that are happening right then, right now, right around me. And I just don't really feel that from Threads. And part of that is that I don't think they leaned into politics during this last election cycle, and in my opinion, sort of missed an opportunity to plant that flag on the news side, and they made a few things changes in the last few months that make me think maybe they do care more about news and they want to move in that direction. But again, two years in, my one critique of platform is what do we use it for?
Well?
Also, how does meta position it and value it, you know, as a platform visa the WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram commercially or otherwise.
Yeah, I mean I spoke to you know, the executive who's running that team, Emily Dalton Smith, earlier this week and she said, you know, it's a platform for exchanging of ideas, right, It's clearly text. It's very much meant to stoke some type of interaction between people in a way that even Instagram I think is very much you know, you sort of post something and people observe it. Right, this is meant to be more back and forth. But again, what are you talking about there?
Right?
Like people will find their communities, But what makes you want to open that app every single day and make that a destination for yourself? And that's where I feel like, you know, I at least don't know exactly why I'm opening threads.
All the time.
I hope that it will be because it becomes a news source for me down the line. I just don't think we're there.
Yet Bloombos Kurt Wagner, who is also the author of Battle for the Bird, the book on Twitter Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter in its transition to X really really highly recommend you go read that. That's why I kept referring to Twitter. Let's get to another really important piece of reporting. Immigration lawyers are advising clients to scrub their social media accounts of controversy or politically sensitive topics, warning the posts could be used to block their entry to the US or.
As grounds to remove them.
Bloomberg Cecilia Deannastasio has been reporting this and it's a particular segment that we're talking about. It's people who are online influence, influencers to a certain extent. What have you learned and what's the need to know?
Sure, so one in five Americans gets their news today from influencers. Influencers have a lot of power over what people think, especially politically these days, and what we heard from immigration lawyers is that just bite influencers status as citizens in the US, they are being advised not to post on topics that the lawyers are considering hot button for fear of potential repercussions.
So this is potentially severe.
It's part of a broader backdrop where migration in and out of the United States is in focus. We talked about it earlier in the Hour in the job sector. Are there any sort of examples of where this is already happening.
Sure, we have seen several examples of influencers in the US, both people who have been born here, people who emigrated here, people who might be undocumented facing repercussions.
For the way that their speech is viewed by.
People both close to government and inside of the government. One of the examples that we use in our story is far left leaning twitch streamer Hassan Piker, who's been very outspoken on Palestine. He was detained in questioned when he was bring back into the country to Chicago O'Hare, and what he told us in an interview was that he believes that this was a tactic for people to become afraid of sharing their opinions on topics that might not align with current governmental positions.
Cecilia just very quickly. Has there been any reaction to our reporting from the government.
We haven't seen anything yet, but one of the concerns that have heard from people who have read the story is that today's influencers who speak on politics tend to actually be more conservative than left leaning, according to a recent pupil and considering some of the concerns around speaking about certain topics in certain ways, there are worries that that gap might actually widen overtime.
The HS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Trishop Pacoffin also emailing us saying that their officers are following the law, not agendas. Really check out that reporting from the team Bloomberg. Cecilia Deannastasia, thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. It's a show week in the United States. There won't be any show this Friday because of the July fourth holiday, but this was a big show, so much to recap.
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