Palantir Soars and Salesforce Expands It’s AI Toolkit

Published May 9, 2023, 5:51 PM

Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow break down the biggest tech earnings of the day. Plus, Salesforce may be expanding its AI toolkit, and will we soon live in world with AI-powered … car inspections?

From Marhart where Innovation, Money and power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.

This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.

I'm Carolin Hyde at Bloomberg's Wiltid quarters in New York and I met Lolo in San Francisco.

This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.

Full coverage of tech earnings ahead.

Is of course palents, SOLS and unprecedented AI demand while chipmakers struggle.

To wather it, the industry downturn, plus Salesforce expanding its approach to the degenerative AI boom with a new set of tools unveiled. Salesforce co president Sarah Franklin joins us from the Tableau conference in Las Vegas.

And we talked the state of fundraising as the startup UBI raises one hundred million dollars for AI powered car inspections, and we speak to the co founder of RX three, which is also raised one hundred and fifty million dollars from athletes and celebrities for its second growth equity fund. First, that's sort of the private money being raised. What's happening with your publicly traded companies today? We're nervous, cautious, and we see a bit of a pullback on the Nasdaq grow off by six tenths percent at the moment.

This is all about worries about that debt.

Ceiling coming front and center for the United States investor, but also what's happening in China. The worry about the impart demand not being as strong as we anticipated, is that global economy, one of the fire powers of the global economy not returning to growth post COVID as quickly.

As we hoped.

Golden Dragon therefore off by two point seven percent, and also anxiety around the regional banks once again front and center were off by nine tenths of a percent.

So that's your macro picture.

Let's move on to what's happening in the world of crypto, because today we see a little bit of caution.

Overall.

We're just off by about five tenths of a percent. We've had volatility in the og that is bitcoin today. Really this is more a story of where the dollar direction of travel is ahead of that debt ceiling demarcle, whether or not it's more about the crypto.

We're just taking a bit of a pause on crypto.

It feels on the day, ed Yeah, I'm afraid. The earning story also putting a lot of pressure to the downside. You take a look at PayPal lowering its margins outlook for the year. We're going to dig into the details around that later in the show. Lucid Group softer by eight percent, basically reguiding to the low end of its previously stated forecast. An automaker that's trying to catch up with Tesla but not making a lot of progress. Global Founderies again paying for the chip sector, seems to be in place through the end of the year. We're going to go to Bloomberg's Ian King, the guy you want to talk to when it comes to semiconductors. Global Foundry softer by five percent. The big name, the big mover to the upside is Palenteer up around twenty percent so far in Tuesday session, a couple of percentage points more, and this is a stop that's heading for his biggest jump since January twenty twenty one. They've shown their hand with a new AI tool and talk about talks about unprecedented demand for that AI tool during the earning school. I want to get more on this story and bring in Bloomberg's Lazette Champman, who's here with us in San Francisco. The palentin AI tool is atte what is it? Hey there?

Yeah, you know, palent here had a Crackerjack quarter. It had a surprise profit. It said it was going to be profitable not only this current quarter but for the entire year, and they had unprecedented demand for their AI platform, which you know, as the CEO Alex Kark said, is still under construction. They don't exactly have a pricing strategy, but they are in conversations with hundreds of their hundreds of their customers about incorporating this into their into their plans.

His turn of phrase, he's not shy of using sometimes more controversial language.

He says in large language.

Models as a revolution that will raise ships and sinkshit will raise ships and sink ships. I'm just I'm fascinated by the fact how this sits with people ultimately about generative AI studying in large language models helping us in the battlefield, right.

I think that there's been a huge demand for that based on the you know, in increased interest both from you know, are the United States Department of Defense as well as our allies, and so it's very much seen as a critical asset in a software first defense scenario given the rising tensions with China and Russia and others that are not necessarily friendly to US interest. So there is definitely a defense application. More than half of Palanteer's revenue does come from the government sector, which includes not only the Department of Defense and all of its branches, but also those of our allies. So it's very much geared toward a defense context, along with some commercial applications.

Well, so astonishing about this story. Yeah, the stocks up twenty percent because of AI. Also surprise profit and no one's really talking about.

It, right, Well, let's dig into that a little bit more.

It's a surprise profit.

And one of the things that I think that was interesting was that they achieved this two years before they originally said they would. Originally the plan was for them to hit gap profitability by twenty twenty five. Now they're saying that they will do it for this full year and they will maintain profitability, will continuing to reorient all of their resources. That's thousands of employees around building this AI platform.

Absolutely extraordinary, I mean, big move on the stock.

Great to have Lizette breaking it all down on the surprise profit side of the equation as well as all in on AI as another company seems to be we thank you so much for coming in and joining the show. Meanwhile, let's turn to another key company that's out with earnings and look, the share price is not having a similar reaction. Global foundryes signaling weakness in its outlook on muted chip demand. More, let's go out to really most in king, the king of all things when it comes to our chip coverage here in what do you make of what this is signaling?

More broadly, because we keep on waiting.

For there to be some sort of turnaround, Is in any way Global Foundry is a bell weather for the sector?

Yeah, one hundred percent.

A good way to look at them is a smaller version of TSNC through their customers. Effectively, they're in the auto chip business, they're in the data center business, they're in the mobile phone business. And the outlook that they gave today unfortunately reflects a lot of what's been said throughout this ending season and that's not particularly positive.

Next, therefore, are we tending to start to think we can call a bottom on this? Did they in any way say okay, this isn't looking good in the meantime, in the here and the now, but we see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah, No, it's a very good question. They're basically effectively speaking out of both sides of their mouth, which a lot of chip companies have been doing, which is and what they've been saying is quarter one that was the worst, that was the absolute bottom, and things will get better from here. But things will not get better at the rate we thought that they would. So that's obviously causing some concern. Can we believe this kind of rose tinted scenario for the second half of the year, And again Global Foundery said, not looking as good as we thought it had.

Just on the specifics here in what particular areas of demand When you say it's like a good bell weather or smaller ty SMC or whatever they likes, What particular areas of demand are we so worried about smartphones?

Has got to be number one.

I mean, they effectively repeated what Qualcom said, which is, China hasn't come back as quick as we thought. The inventory that we said was going to be burned away by the middle of the year looks like it's going to be hanging around into the second half of the year, So they're saying, Look, supply is kind of getting better, that position is improving, but demand whereas demand.

It's interesting that when you in video was a big drag today and indeed, as you've pointed out, sort of, this has been a bit of a bell weather for the entire ship sector on the day, and a video actually hit at fifty two week high yesterday.

The areas are we going to get both bifurcated market?

Are we going to see the chip makers, designers that are all in on AI doing well and those that aren't languishing because they're consumer exposed.

Yeah, I mean that would appear to be the way to look at it.

Look at the only green dot on my screen today was AMD and that's definitely a play on the future of AI and what investors are expecting to happen.

The Bloombergsie and King joining us out of San Francisco, Salesforce expanding its approach to generative AI with the reimagined version of its Tableau suite called Tableau GPT and also Tableau Pulse for more ns. We welcome Salesforce co president Sarah Franklin, who's coming to us from the Tableau conference out in Las Vegas. Let's get straight to the why, why is Salesforce doing this and why now?

So big picture, Salesforce has been a pioneer in AI for over a decade. We created Einstein, which brought everyone to have their own data.

Scientists about a decade ago, and now today.

We're delivering over a trillion prediction every week for all of our hundreds of thousands of customers, which brought them into AI. And now we've moved from predictive to generative, and Salesforce, who has led every seismic shift and technology from going to cloud, to mobile to social, we are here right at the forefront leading all of our customers into dinnerative AI with Tableau GPT and Tableau Pulse.

So, Sarah, you're out at the Tableau conference. The other tool announced is Slack GPT. So the question is this is this you trying to get Salesforce customers to use the services of other things you've acquired in recent years.

So, Salesforce, we have an incredible suite across the entire customer through sixty sales service marketing commerce lack has been an incredible addition to our portfolio helping everyone have great productive employees. And we ask ourselves a question, how do you make every employee more productive? How do you make every customer more happy? How do you provide incredible customer service and sales and marketing and a fully integrated single.

Source of truth of your customers?

And so yes, by providing that entire suite of products for our customers, they can all have better customers and better employees. And it's really important that we give them all of their data so they can unlock it and really have that trusted customer and company data to use generative AI and to have tabloa GPT really bring that data to life for everyone that's involved in customer engagement.

Caroline data is really the key point, isn't it, Particularly when we're talking about enterprise is a use case for generative AI tools. There's an element of concern about the data it's sourcing and how it's secure.

Yeah, and so to that point, you use trusted a number of times there or single source of truth. Is there any concern that generative AI does just make some things up? If there is a hole in the private data that this is being run on the so called hallucinations and many people to take issue with that particular turn of phrase, But is that happening? How do you ensure that people are getting the right insights at the right time.

Trust is absolutely paramount, As we've discussed just now, Every company wants to have trusted data.

They need to know that they have their data is being trusted.

Their customers expect them to trust them with their data and salesforce at our core, we have always had trust other number one value, and so having trusted data is important because your AI is only as good as your data, and so no company wants to bring hallucinations, as you say, into the enterprise.

They need to know that they can trust the AI.

And that's why our approach is founded on trust and we always have a human in the process because the AI is here to help us, not to not to replace us, and so that's so important that the data is trusted, so that you can also trust the generative AI that's being created from that data.

Interesting, so I'm feeling that you're on the AIS here to augment us humans rather than take away our jobs. But you are someone who's built your career on the democratization of technology, or someone who's se passive passionate about how with ease people can change.

From a blue collar job to a white college job.

Using, for example, the ways in which you've used trailheading for example. But are you brought a picture here thinking AI is going to inevitably take white college jobs at the moment.

So I really want to look at generative AI as an incredible opportunity for us.

It's really interesting when you rewind back in history and you think of the first computer.

The first computer was a person, not a machine, and there's a lot of fear that it would replace us in our jobs. Fast forward to today, we don't have enough skilled talent for all of the jobs that work with computers and work in tech, and so we're already seeing new careers being created such as prompt engineering or AI illustrations.

There's just a lot of opportunity.

So we as an industry and as salesforce, we do take it as a responsibility to scale people up for the future. We created Trailhead as a free online learning platform to democratize all of this technology so everyone can have access and everyone can learn. There's an incredible opportunity and we want to make it easy and accessible for everyone, and we can also hopefully change the ratios and tech in the process. But yes, we are here to help skill people up and help remove the fear from this incredible new generation of technology we see with generative AI.

Sarah, how are these new tools driving sales for Salesforce?

So Generative AI is everything that all of our customers are talking about. They are wondering how to future prove their business in the wake of this new technology trend, and it's here to stay. It's not a bad and so every single one of our customers is looking at Salesforce right now and saying, we trust you. We know that you will guide us into this future, just like you guided us into cloud, into mobile, into social. So yes, every single one of our customers wants Salesforce GPT to help them.

With sales GPP, service GPT, marketing GPT and more.

And Tablot GPT and tablet Pulse are incredible innovations that are going to help fuel all of our customers' success.

In your career, as Caroline pointed out, you've been through waves of new technological advancement. This has happened quite quickly. Did Salesforce really plan these tools over a really long period of time, or is this something that you've rushed through in recent weeks in response to what the rest of the industry's done.

So this is what's so powerful is.

That Salesforce has been a pioneer in AI for over a decade. We've been investing in Einstein, which is our AI platform, and we have seen, as I mentioned earlier, we have over one trillion predictions being done every single week on our AI platform. So this is not something that we're just pulling out of a hat. We have been investing in this for a long time, and we have the world's best data scientists that are here at Salesforce, and they're generating all kinds of incredible large language models that help us create code, that help us create reply response, that help us create.

Great engagement and ways for like you.

See with Tableau GBT and Tableau Pulse, for people to really bring their data to life, where in the past they haven't been able to really do that easily. So this has been something Salesforce has been doing for a long time and will continue to be a leader in generative.

AI, a leader at a time where the macro headwinds for every single industry are tough at the moment, and Sarah, as you talk about the in house talent that you have to keep building, it's at a time where we know companies like you also are having to lay off staff, having to slim down in the face of what has been a slowing economy.

Have you got the right mix of talent in the moment you.

Think at Salesforce, we have the most talented engineers, marketeers, salespeople. We have the best people in the business at Salesforce, and we are more equipped than ever. Our company is in a great spot set up for the decades to come. We're laser focused on our customers, on our innovation, and really delivering success for everyone.

Sarah Franklin, thanks for spending some time with us co president of Salesforce.

There.

Meanwhile, ed one of the biggest concerns, of course, that comes with using artificial intelligence just in our daily lives, Well, we're just talking about being replaced by it, especially for those that work in the media landscape.

Enter GPT zero.

It's an app launch to distinguish whether copy was written by a human or by artificial intelligence. More than one million users of registered since January and the brain behind the app is just a twenty two year old from Princeton University. A student is also launching a new program called Origin, which aims to weed out disinformation in the online media generated by AI. It secured three and a half million dollars in funding so far.

Ed Yeah, let's stick with AI. IBM introducing a platform for large companies to train and use AI models. When it rains, it pours Caroline, the company leaning in on its Watson legacy to stand out in a crowded field for AI. Tool have to say, not doing much to support the shares this Wednesday Tuesday. Sorry, down one right and at a seven month low. So many headlines in the field of AI now coming up. Regional banks resume their sell off as uncertainty hits the sector. We're going to discuss that next in our weekly Wall Street Beat.

This is bloomberg.

Time for Wall Street Beat. Pack West and Western Alliance led regional bank stocks lower today as the hard hit sector resumed its decline. The drop comes as investors remain unnerved by a rash of deposit outflows from banks and increasing concerns about general stability. Plus Linked in the latest tech company to join the wave of job cuts. The company plans to shut its jobs app in China and cut about seven hundred and sixteen jobs as the networking service further shrinks its presence in the world's second largest economy, and a group of firms including Goldman, Sachs and Microsoft adjoining a new blockchain system aimed at linking disparate institutional applications, potentially encouraging broader adoption of distributed ledger technology in financial markets. Participants in the Canton network, which will start testing some features in July, say the system offers better privacy and controls than currently available AI. At the same time, it will achieve a scale and standard appropriate for financial institutions. That all according to a quite long statement released by the companies on Tuesday.

Yeah, a little one to dig into. Basically, blockchain is back. Meanwhile, we els is back. Celebrities endorsing brands are x three raising one hundred and fifty million dollars from athletes from celebrities were at Second Equity Fund where they really analyze some consumer opportunities.

We've got an exclusive interview for you coming up.

Nate Robb's going to be joining us managing partner at our ex three ventures that's up next.

Meanwhile, another stot that we've got an eye on Nintendo.

Wow, the Mario maker is learning and warning a big slowdown in the switch console sales. This is a key concern, but actually Nintendo managing to tread above water at the moment, at least over the last few trading days. But it seems as though maybe you want too many consoles out there.

D you know you're the expert on this one.

Yeah, look, I am tracking Mobile. I we kind of pared some earlier gains. We're up sort of more than nine percent. After we did an interview with the CEO the company reaching a deal with Porsche to just basically give them their advanced driver technology assistance technology going forward. The CEO telling me that actually we could see the tech in real cars in production sooner than we might think. Have a listen.

Normally, when you get a design, when it's between two to three years until you have started off production. So we're talking about the same timeframe. But we started working a few months early before this announcement, so you can do this smath then come up with a start of production.

I would say, Caroline, this is a deal that the mobile it's in recent weeks, particularly on the earnings care or wondering who is this mysterious European automaker the mobilized doing businesses. Well, it's a pretty decent one poor show. It'll be interesting to see if this moves the needle for them and they get some more deals. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm ed love Low in San Francisco.

I'm Caroline Heard in New York. And let's dig into some of this market action. Halfway through the show and I'm looking at what is sentiment a little bit more like luster On the day, we're off by seven ten percent on the NASDAG. We're worried about some key themes here in the US, the debt ceial course, keeping some investors on edge. We're also worrying about China potentially more of a hit to that economy that we're anticipating imports not as fast as we wanted Golden dragons. So some of those Chinese listed companies here in the United States, or Chinese companies listed here in the US, are on the downside. Two and a half percent. KBW bankin nets. Keep an eye on some of these regional lenders. We are still worried about them. Pack westers on the downside once again, so a lot to think about from the macro perspective, but also let's dig into the earnings the micro. Have a quick look at what's on the move in terms of your individual tech names on the day. Look, Amazon manages to outperform and what's actually up modern than this. It's adding in terms of points perspective to the NASDAK and the NASDAQ one hundred to day. It's unveiling the fact that you might be able to buy Amazon products even when you're in a gaming or virtual reality sphere at the moment.

So don't worry. You can order that Amazon get you down on a matter where you go.

Paleteer, as you mentioned at the top of the show, ed up twenty two percent, absolutely soaring because Moves is twenty twenty one as they say, look this AI app that they're developing, the software they will be used even in the battlefield.

That is unprecedented demand for it.

PayPal though on the downside after its earnings because operating margin not as strong as wanted to be seen. Even though they're seeing volumes increase in terms of overall payments processing, they're.

Doing too much white labeling.

People want to see more of the PayPal payments going forward, and I'm looking at fiska off by six tens percent, six percent fully actually, as we worry about the software in its new SUV and whether or not that's looking pretty cunky for the time being.

At right from the public markets, let's go to the private markets. The Venger Fund RX three has just raised one hundred and fifty million dollars from athletes and celebrities for its second consumer focus growth equity fund, The Farmers, co founded by football star Aaron Rodgers, bench catalyst Byron Roth, and Nate Raby, who joins us now for an exclusive interview. Nate, good morning to you. Why are all of the LPs athletes, actors, celebrities. Yeah, thanks Ed Caroline for having me on.

I think the reason we have a lot of these athletes, celebrities and actors as LPs it really provides us access to consumer brands across the growth sector.

And not only we have be able to provide capital, but we can provide.

Value beyond that capital and really move the needle and help drive revenue to these brands.

When you look at the portfolio companies or potential portfolio companies. Do you think that having celebrity backing is an investor and then endorsement increases the I guess the likelihood that you will have success and then a successful exit down the road.

Yeah, I think it definitely can if there's the authentic relationship. So we really drive, really strive to align our differentiated LPU based with brands when there is that authentic relationship.

I don't think you can set it up.

Where the days of where they just get paid to do a post, those are kind of long gone. So we really try to baster authentic relationships between our differentiated LP based in our brands.

Some VCS that I've been speaking to Nate have said the one area that they are not going anywhere near a consumer led companies right now, consumer focused companies because of the economy that we're in.

Why is it still the great hit for you?

Yeah?

For us, because we have athletes and entertainers. It's easy for them to get behind because it's products and brands they use on the have a day basis. So we invest across help, wellness, active, lifestyle, beauty, pet and these are all brands that they can feel, touch and using their daily life. We have shifted our focus from kind of high growth BTC consumer brands to more consumer essentials, profitable brands that have strong fundamentals behind them.

Always got to feed your pet.

Talk to us a little bit though about some of the overall valuations that you're seeing. Are you getting a better entry point when you're starting these conversations and where do you think some of the opportunities are and what is a dislocated market?

Yeah, I think there's there's definitely been a healthy reset in the market across private equity.

You know, we're looking at it.

We've only made one investment out of our second fund, and well positioned to kind of take advantage and really help provide value to these brands. So we're excited about about this vintage because there definitely has been a healthy reset.

Healthy reset that in many ways ED has not just been seen across technology companies and in the private markets, but in the public markets as well. But really a lot of this is about having technology at its core, a way in which you can speak to a mass consumer via the power of well social media, and big brands that are happened to be big individuals in this case ED.

Yeah, I guess that in that vein Nay, when you guys are making an investment decision, a deck hits your desk, do you then invite all of these LPs that would be involved in the endorsement of this company to participate actively in that investment decision or do the three partners just make the decision on their behalf.

No great question.

So our LPs and our athletes Lebri advessors we're return focused.

First.

We don't require anybody to do anything, but rather, if there is that natural alignment, we do go out to our existing lpbasency if there is interest, and they would it is a brand that they would give behind. They're not involved in the day to day investment decision and not required to do anything for the brand. But we do try to align ourselves with brands where there is someone in our network that we.

Can provide value to.

Nate Ashton Kirsch had told us on the show last week he raised two hundred and forty three million for his AI fund in just five weeks. How quickly did he raise this fund?

A little more in five five weeks? Ashton Kutcher as a strong brand in the investing side. That's very impressive. Definitely took us a little longer, so very impressed with what he did, but we're happy to say we're oversubscribed with our second fund him.

What about artificial intelligence?

What a way about the ways in which that is seeming uppending every business model?

Is it something that you're looking at?

Yeah, I think it's something that all of our brands across the consumer spectrum are going to have to take a look at and how they can incorporate it into their company. I think it's still early days here and it's definitely something though that we're looking at and will be a part of our our super brands.

Nate Raby, thanks for the time, managing partner and our X three ventures. Meanwhile, coming up, we're going to stick on the focus of investment VC firms continuing to tap their commitments to AI native companies.

We're speaking with a partner from Bessemer Venture Partners.

We're gonna dig in really to the nuance of the portfolio, what they're building in AI.

That's next.

This is Bloomberg. There's time now for our VC roundup.

Investment firm processes exploring potential divestments from its emerging markets fintech company Pay You Look. Sources are saying it's working with Bank of America to gauge interest in pay US business outside of India and could fetch as much as eight hundred million dollars in the potential deal. Meanwhile, Taiwanese battery maker pro Logium Technology is looking into funding an evaluation of about two billion dollars to ramp up growth in twenty twenty four.

The ev battery supplier, which is backed by Mercedes.

Benz, some talks with potential advisors to raise as much as three hundred million dollars, according to sources, and Aura, the finished company behind some of those pricey health tracking rings, says it's buying a little known tech startup called Proxy.

Proxy makes digital identification tools.

Said yeah, loving those private startup and venture stories from around the world. They're stay in the VC space and wait welcome. Samir de La key partner with Besmadventure Partners, a billion dollars.

Billion dollars the AI four AI from an existing fund, from an existing fund. We have lots of flexibility with our existing funds to be able to deploy it. The message is really clear to entrepreneurs out there. We are committed to AI in investment in AI native founders.

Okay, tell us Samir, how you thought week from chaff at the moment we had. Of course, many VC come on saying there's plenty of opportunities to write checks at the moment, but not all of the companies are as strong as the other. How do you understand that they're really doing something foundational within AI?

No question, and that is fundamental to our job is to be able to sort those I will just say I've been in software now for twenty eight years, served as CEO of two different companies, joined venture capital recently. But I'll tell you I've seen these seminal moments in technology history where it becomes clear to the mainstream that we have made a technical leap forward and everything about life and work will be different. I saw it with the Netscape moment in ninety five. I saw it with the iPhone moment with.

Jobs in seven.

And there's just no question in my mind that we will look back at November thirtieth of twenty two and say that was the chat GPT moment, and everything about the future is going to be different in great ways. And I think that in on us as venture capitalists. If I take the Netscape example, the first one that I lived through. We need to go find the next Jeff Bezos and I know he's out there and or she's out there, and we would love to talk to her, and we want to and we have to be able to sort the Jeff Bezos from you know, the next Amazon from the next Webvan And that's hard to do, but we're excited to go do it, and we want a signal to the market. We've got a billion dollars of capital here to deploy into this new breakthrough that we think is going to change the world.

And we're looking at some of your portfolio Jasper Dpel, for example, Samir. There is currently this discussion about whether big tech or indeed all gardens will win out. We see, of course everyone talking about open AI and being a relationship with Microsoft. We think about the competition with Google, but many are also talking about well open source. We're also seeing how hugging face makes an impact on that. What do you think about that sort of the dichotomy we're.

Getting at the moment.

Absolutely, I think you're going to see continued innovation at all layers of the staff. We're seeing open source flourish costs are coming down really quickly. I do believe if you were to ask me as a betting man, I think at the foundation model layers would probably see a redux of the cloud wars, where the big tech provides the biggest platforms. But I think you'll but you will also see open source solutions. I think you'll see vertical solutions that are smaller lms trained to solve a particular problem set in a given vertical industry, et cetera. And so I think we're just going to and then of course at the application layer, I think you're going to see the creativity of the world's entrepreneurs unleashed and problem solved in novel ways. And there will be thousands of those solutions. So I think this is one of those moments where I genuinely would say trillions of dollars of market cap will be created from this AI moment. And it's not I say that not because my crystal ball is any clearer than anybody else's, but because I'm a student of his, and I've lived in twenty eight years through the previous platform shifts, and every other platform shift has led to that level of innovation creation and market value creation, which are.

Is you pulling back from or hitting pause on so you can commit a billion dollars to AI Native.

The fun thing for me about the AI investments is AI is not a category. In my humble opinion, I think it is going to be embedded everywhere. They're the AI natives. We will invest deeply, and that's what this fund is all about. Every one of our portfolio companies have heard the message, how are you adopting and rethinking your solutions in the context of this technical leap forward? And so I think we're seeing it everywhere, and so I believe will continue to invest meaningfully behind all the places we have historically vertical SaaS, horizontal SaaS, and cybersecurity or healthcare. We do invest behind crypto as well. Well, We've got a Dow where and so I believe crypto as well. I think all of these categories will fundamentally adopt AI because it's just a great.

New capability psychologically and mechanically. Is the timeline for exit different for an AI company or an AI adjacent company or a native AI company AI native and the type.

Of exit, Yeah, I would say yes, and I think it's faster. So the companies that I've invested in so far. As an example in AI, Jasper and deep l are two of the fastest growing software companies that I have ever seen in twenty eight years, I've seen a lot of companies. They're rocket ships the adoption because they solve a very real problem for customers. They each have tens of thousands of paying business customers already, and so I think we'll see exits even faster. I think these are IPO worthy companies, and so I think that's kind of exits will be the same, but I think they'll be even faster than what we've seen in the past.

What we've seen and you just mentioned crypto, there is not only talk of a hype cycle, but also some talk of.

Lack of regulation. How are you seeing round corners.

I know you said your crystal ball isn't good as others, but I'm pretty sure it is because that's why you're a VC. What are you for seeing in terms of regulatory strain and the race for AI being a certain and safe one.

Yeah, First off, I think the hype around AI is under hyped given the impact I think it is going to have on the way we work and live in terms of the regulation. I would say, in my experience in business, it is so uncommon for me to see all parties agree that regulation is needed and want to collaborate together across policy makers, founders, technologists, etc. And so I'm very confident that the industry as a whole is going to address that. I think there are some obvious and no brainer areas where regular will come into play that'll be good for everybody. Where I'm focused is gosh, the amazing technical lead forward here can solve things in healthcare in industries that I think could be an education that can be game changing for us as humans across the world.

Caroline, the humble opinion of Samir de Lakia, partner over a best of adventures will called twenty billion dollars to play with.

Yeah, quite phenomenal, don't now for what's going viral uvii just raised a hundred million dollars from investors including General Motors, CarMax and Look the company is using artificial intelligence for vehicle inspections. Please to see with us the person who can explain exactly how CEO and co founder Emir Heava, it is great to have some time with the Amir so I drive in and what automatically you can understand what's wrong with my vehicle?

How is this going to work?

So exactly? At UVII, it's kind of you can think of us like MRI for the vehicle. We have a few systems. You simply drive through our systems and then we're able within a few seconds to really understand the full condition of the vehicle. We're taking images of the tires, the undercarriage, the whole exterior. So if you have any leakages, any expire tires, any issues that were in tear of the tires, were simply able to find out everything.

Hanneko Ventures led the round, but GM did participate through its venture round. I thought we'd use that as a sort of case study. Do you do business with General Motors? What is it that you actually sell to the auto makers or to the service shops.

So we have quite a few partners. It was published that we work with General Motors. We work with them on mainly on their dealerships to be able to service their customers better. It's really important for us to give a better customer experience while someone driving into the dealership, exposing kind of the issues and really understand the full condition of the vehicle.

We are working with them on the dealerships.

But also we have more partners like CarMax, like Volvo, like Yundai and Tuta that invested us in the previous round.

We're also working with them as well.

Bloomberg reported that the deal valued UVI at around eight hundred million dollars. How difficult was that to raise the funds in this environment from those partners and I guess we wanting to hit unicorn status. I think right now we're really focusing on building value. Samir just spoke about companies that really needs to approve that they have customers who are bringing value to their customers, and this is exactly what we are doing. We are working with all of our partners, where GM and the others, to make sure that our products bring value not only to our customers, but also to their customers.

And this is what is important, and this is.

Why we were still able to raise fairly a lot of money, especially right now, which is slightly harder in terms of everything that is going on the economics CARO.

They describe it as the MRI machine for Vehicle inspection, but really this is a story about artificial intelligence.

Yeah, and I'm interested in to that end, how do you actually say that this is an artificially intelligent at its.

Foundation level company.

Because you're running it through images, I'm assuming to be able to understand whether your tiles are looking good or whether other parts. But how do how do you prove to the investor base that you haven't just tacked on AI to make yourself sexy?

Right, So basically, what we're showing the investors, how does it really work right? How do how do we are able to really find all the issues at the vehicle? How do things work in the back end. The fact that we're able to break the vehicle into the different parts, the fact that we're able to find different things really really quickly. These are the things that are important to our investors to make sure we have a really strong foundation off models and AI based models. They can really work for every vehicle, every type of vehicle, vehicle, and any condition of the vehicle that we're seeing. And this is kind of why it's really important and kind of the strength of your AI because it really helps us to even support things we haven't seen before. So if there's a new vehicle we haven't seen it before, we're still able to find most of the damages on that vehicle, even when we didn't see the specific type or model off the vehicle.

And that's kind of the strength of what we're building.

V I faced Nehir. Well, you're in Jersey, right, you came from Israel. Where is your tech talent at the moment for this?

So both here and here in Jersey we have offices both in in Jersey but also in Ohio, and we also have an office in Israel. We also have offices in Germany and the UK.

Very quick and where will you build and manufactured the systems here in North America?

Where so we're now manufacturing here in Indianapolis and that help us to scale a lot quicker and to share more systems to our customers.

All right, Oh, thanks to mere Hava, the CEO and co founder of uv I.

Thank you very much.

That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Stay with Bloomberg Television because we're speaking to the Nicola CEO, Carol Michael Loscheller who's coming up with me and Matt Miller and John. I meant in the next hour here on Bloomberg TV to.

Power people that love all things autos. Sitting down with Michael Mimmile. Do not forget to check out our podcast. You can find it all on the terminal. You can be online on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, wherever you like to consume your audio.

Come do it with us and.

Get your AI fixed, because boy, are we focused on it at the moment.

From New York. From San Francisco, this is a Bloomberg

Bloomberg Tech

Bloomberg Tech is the only daily news program focused exclusively on technology, innovation and the  
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 847 clip(s)