Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow break down the competition for AI chip dominance heating up as Intel takes aim at Nvidia. Plus, Paramount's annual meeting kicks off, and Tesla shares drop on reports Elon Musk has redirected thousands of AI chips reserved for the EV maker to X instead.
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This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Lovelove.
I'm Caroline Hyde a Bloomberg's World Headquarters in New York, and I'm Ed Lovelow in San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up the competition for AI chip dominance. It heats up as Intel takes aimin in video details to come.
Thus we'll bring you the latest updates from Paramount's annual meeting which kicked off this morning.
And Tesla shars.
They drop on reports that Elo Musk has shifted thousands of AI chips to Xai over the vehicle maker. First, let's check out on the broader market context and look jobs market cooling, those jolts numbers.
Really putting pressure on. Certainly the stock market for the.
Bond market is currently seeing money move in at the moment yields go lower. Some three basis points is maybe we see space for the Federal Reserve to be able to cut later into the year. Now, remember we've got the all important jobs data on Friday as well to digest interesting that even though we've got money going into the one market, we're not seeing that optimism around technology stocks right now. We're off by some three tens percent. We're digging into the individual names that are perhaps dragging us a little bit lower. But look, we've been seeing all time highs hit time and time again. Maybe a bit of profit taking currently being digested. We're looking at, though, a macro picture that goes global for a moment. This is a political story, complete upending of what many had anticipated happening in the Indian election, and for now the euroupee is down versus the US dollars significantly on what has been a shot coming from a political stage where Mody does not seem to be having the majority that was anticipated.
More on that throughout the show.
Let's move on to happen in the world of crypt so a little bit more risk on sentiment coming from bitcoin. At the moment, we're up eight ten percent, nine tens percent, let's call it. At one point ed we eclipsed to seventy thousand dollars. Handle this as we see perhaps more money moving into some of the ETF products and well maybe some of that meme frenzy from yesterday helped some of the tailwinds.
But what are you seeing on the micro Let's go back.
To that Tesla story for a minute.
The NBC reporting that Elon Musk directed in video to divert twelve thousand, h one hundreds or AI chips that had been destined for Tesla to his other companies X and XAI. Tesla shares now basically flat, they've been lower. I think everyone's trying to make sense of what that means for the kind of Tesla pledge to achieve full self driving, because that is principally what the AI accelerators are being used for in the Tesla case. We'll get more on that later in the hour. Back to our top story, which is the battle ground and the market for AI accelerators. Intel in a video about both now sort of modestly lower. Intel had been higher. Pat Gelsinger on age at Computex a lot of headlines coming out of Computex. Here is what Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger had to say about that market for AI chips.
Every device will become an AI device, every company will become an AI company, and we see this as the fuel that's driving the semiconductor industry to reach a trillion dollars by the end of the decade.
The other thing that he said, blue berg Z and King is that Moore's law is very much alive, a reference to the white paper in nineteen sixty five by one of Intel's co founders that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every year without sort of adding costs to the production process. But what he was really doing was pushing back against Jensen Huang of Nvidia and saying we're going to catch up.
We're going to do this.
Yeah, I mean, he's arguing his case, right, He's saying, look, we can still do it. He's trying to make the case that Intel is still relevant and can have a central role in what's going on and can capture some of this massive amount of spending. But at the moment, all of that money is going to Innvidia. Over one hundred billion dollars of revenue projected for that data center unit this year. Intel's data center unit is going sideways at best, and I.
Think what they have to compete on.
Yes, we're hearing yet once again, annual upgrades to the offerings of semiconductors in but it's the full package that you get with in Nvidia, even if it is expensive.
Yeah, I mean what Jensen has already decided is, look, hey, I've got more about four big customers, the big hyperscalers. But guess what I really need to broaden that audience. So he's networking, as you mentioned, full servers, basically supercomputers, and he's put everything together already so that pretty much anybody can adopt it. So anybody that's trying to crash his party, like Pat Gelsinger, like Lisa Seuer, AMD has to come to the table with everything, including the software, and that's a massive amount of effort it required. They've got the resources, but he's got the lead.
He does, and at the moment it feels as though everyone else is slightly snapping around his heels. Where is ultimately, for now all the value attributed to data centers? Can any of it be sort of thought to be being brought this one trillion dollar market that Pat Gilsinger talks of, how much is that going to be allocated to PC?
Well that was the show. The sort of sideline of the show is, hey, look will of the accelerators, guess what your PC is going to get? Cool again. It's going to get interesting again. We had Qualcomm Christian i'mon there. We had Lisa Sue of A and D talking about it. So they're all talking about revitalizing this thing that we all carry around and all use all day at the moment. You know, I saw some demos yesterday. They were okay. You know, I think we need to see a lot more on the software side before we can get fully excited about this being a new dawn for a product we've seen for a long time.
I get all of the stories, particularly in Intel's case, Pat has been saying I will return Intel to a position of technology leadership, and the problem is is that presently revenues and sales don't match that story. So Intel basically five hundred million this year for AI accelerators, AMD four billion, which is slightly better than they previously forecast, and Nvidia let's just call it forty billion, And that's the state of play.
Yeah, I mean, the number is probably close to one hundred at this point. If you look at the estimates, it's absolutely enormous. But yeah, back to Pat exactly what you say, which is he's got all of these audiences, he has to serve. He has his internal audience. He has to motivate his engineers, he has to get his customers excited about what he's going to offer. But at the same time, if he promises too much and makes too bullish an attitude, investors are going to get excited and think, oh, hey, we're going to see a big upside on earnings, and he can't deliver that at the moment.
So Ian King breaking down, what is the ongoing fight amid Ai semi conductors?
Brilliant have you taking on Taiwan?
Let's move over and think what this means for market capitalizations the fight that goes on there. Ibec Oscodeshkaya is with US senior market analyst over at Swiss code Ebec. It's great to have you back on the show, and there has been a tussle at the top. Market valuations just keep on being allocated to Nvidia.
Is that the right step?
Well?
I think that Nvidia is making the headlines and they're doing a great job. Not only that they are making huge progress on their numbers. They do make enormous forecasts and they beat them by very comfortable margins quarter after quarter, but they come very regularly with new updates, with new promises, with a new idea of, for example, creating an ecosystem offering hardware, software and services.
So they are making the.
AI a full environment where everybody could be interested and everybody will find their well what they're looking for. So in the sense, Nvidia looks like it's still except ahead of the other competitors. And in terms of P ratio, what we see is that even though the prices are going higher, well the PI ratio is not going that high because well, the earnings actually do follow up.
Epec.
Let me show you this chart, and it's a busy one, so I'll explain what it is that we're looking at. If you think about it, Big Picture Video is just a few percentage points away from exceeding Apple's market cap, from having a market cap greater than Canada's equity market, and ten percent or so would take it beyond Microsoft to be the world's most valuable company. Is that justified to your mind?
Well, I can'tually tell you this is justified.
But today with the AI.
Revolution and media has been cut uppoted to that place of the leader of this market, and the leader is in a revolution. So this is not something that happens every year. This is once in a decade or once in a few decade thing. If AI is the next thing after Internet, that Nvidia has get a huge opportunity, a huge potential to increase as business. And now we are reading the reports and NVDA is not selling chips. It is now selling an environment and selling a dream, and it is actually selling us in new lives, a new way of doing things. And now we are just at the beginning and people know that the opportunities are simply huge. So yes, as Apple has become one of the world's most valuable companies because while they just got this iPhone in our hands, well, MVDA could very well become the next big thing while putting AI in our devices and make our lives completely different from what it was before.
I really like that you've referenced Apple there, ultimately, because the market capitalizations are.
Buying each with each other.
But in our tech news daily, there's a great thought leadership piece there ultimately that Apple did this previously.
It won out by having a sort.
Of closed wall ecosystem, whereas Google went to say, hey, everyone can play in our garden. Whereas seeing that sort of playing out within video versus the likes of well, of course the other competitors that we've had for whether it be Intel working with all the other particular players out that EPEC.
I'm interested in.
Not just the analogy between Apple, what's happening in China. I know you've had some thought leadership there from your own and whether if you can invest in Chinese AI they might went out too well.
Actually, we think that Chinese technology and AI related companies are intriguing because we know that in this context of technology war, Chinese government is putting a lot of weight behind US technology and AI companies, and China does have this pool of very big technology companies that have been once very popular that still is in China, and that have a proven track record and app that are right now treating at extremely low valuations compared to the US peers.
I mean we are talking about.
Peer ratio for around ten to twenty for the big Chinese technolology sucks, compared to six to six for MBDIA at one hundreds for i AMD for example. So in this context they are cheap and interesting. Now, one risk is the geopolitical and political risk. I'm going to put that aside. But one other risk right now is the fact that these technology companies in China are in a fierce competition against each other, and they are mostly focused on expanding their market share rather than maximizing their profits. This is something that keeps investors a little bit relaxing regarding the Chinese technology sucks. But this is temporary because ultimately one or a few of these technologies sucks are going to be the winners of this AI revolution in China, and that day, as an investor, well, you want to be in that elevator.
We started this program with Pat Gelsinger's belief that Moore's law is intact that they will regain a foothold in the market. Is the addressable market big enough to have AMD, Intel and all offering into the same thing.
Well, I think the market is huge.
The opportunities are huge.
But what's going to matter is not only how fast and how efficient the chips are, but it's also how well the service and the ecosystem and the environment that these companies are going to offer. And it looks like Nvidia has well, I have a very good understanding of this three hundred and sixty degree offering. So it's not going to be about chips only, but it's going to be about who is going to offer the best service to like the most of the companies on the face of the start not only is the big technology companies, but to companies across mock sectors.
So I think that in.
This sense, yes, there's demand for a lot of chips because the AI revolution is happening and we.
Are all concerned with it.
But the real winners are then going to be not the best ones in terms of their products, but also the ones that are going to be offering all the environment and the universe with it.
You paid cost Code SKay, a senior market analyst over at Swiss Quote, thank you very much. Now coming up on the program paramounts and your meeting is underway. We're going to bring you those details next, Cary, what are you looking at?
Just go back to chips for a moment, because we've had on the show before ed Core, we've CEO. Look, that's it's a private company cloud computing provider ultimately trying to win out and offering data center capacity for AI.
They're making a deal.
They're going to spend about a billion dollars to acquire a bitcoin minor call Scientific for four five dollars seventy five for shares. You can see we go hire on call Scientific today up thirty four percent from New York, San Francisco.
This is a Boombog technology.
Paramount having its annual general meeting today. That's after the reporting that keeps coming from Skydance Media's plan we understand to offer twenty three dollars a share to investors for the latest who want bring Ethan Raganathan of course of broome Bag Intelligence.
And we think.
About the promises made from these new leaders, three co CEOs, interim CEOs. It feels talking about streaming partnerships, cost cutting.
Any of that. Master if there's potentially a deal on the table.
Not really, Caroline, and you know this, this has really been the story of Paramount for so many months now because the fundamentals and the fundamentals are pretty weak, those have been completely overshadowed by these ongoing M and A talks. I mean, sky Dance has now been in this M and A mix for many, many months, I would say almost eight nine months. They had almost a thirty day exclusive negotiating period which expired in early May. There was another offer from Sony which was on the table. I think that you know, the speculation that Sony is still interested, that's obviously dying. And you know, we still kind of have the upgraded sky Dance offer for Paramount, but we do require that final sign off from you know, the controlling shareholder, Sherry Redstone. Yes, they did have the annual shareholder meeting, as you just pointed out, and obviously they outlined a lot of strategic initiatives. Again, as you said, I don't think any of it matters right now because you still have you know, the potential of this huge deal kind of coming through.
So Githa and you are in research you published this morning saying final act in Paramount m and a saga as sky Dance poised for takeover dramatic television movie voice.
Are you sure it's the final act?
I'm not.
And that's why I said it's not over until it's actually over, because we've seen this movie now so many times ed with with Paramount, right, sky Dance has been in, they've been out. You know, they were prepared to walk away from the whole thing, and then of course you had Sony and then you have some additional wrinkles now because we have you know, Hollywood financier Stephen Paul, who was rumored to be offering a three billion dollar steak for you know, the National Amusement. So Sherry Redstone's controlling stake in Paramount.
So who knows.
There have just been it's just been a whole roller coaster with Paramount for the past so many months now, so again, very hard to say it. Too many TWI centurns in this drama and with.
Some key players, and ultimately it comes down to Sherry Redstone and whether she prioritizes herself or in anyway some of the non voting shareholders here, many of them being value investors rather than growth investors. I think John Rodgers from Aaron Investors, who's joined the show before to talk about his frustration that the premium goes to the voting holder rather than himself well, rather than long term investors in the non voting shares. What do you think needs to be articulated for the future of this business? Is there a future of streaming for Paramount or broadly?
I mean that is a great question, Caroline, and I think that is the question that you know, that's the burning question right now. I mean, yes, with the with the merger with Skydance, Paramount will still very much remain a public company. You know, It's not like the Sony deal where the company would just kind of disappear.
But the question is.
Does mergers do mergers really do anything?
Do they mean anything? I mean, we've seen this over and over again.
Even with Viacom, the Viacom CBS combination which resulted in Paramount, we've seen a destruction of something like about sixty percent valuation. You know, it was over thirty billion market cap when when they kind of recombined in twenty nineteen. Today it's close to ten billions. So again, you know, none of these mergers have really worked. You look at Warner Brothers Discovery again, you know, a fiasco there. You again look at Disney Fox. All of these mergers have kind of really struggled. And so the question is do mergers really solve the fundamental value? I mean, there is so much of pressure, secular pressure in the linear TV ecosystem. So again that's a question that remains to be answered and we'll have to see how that, you know, kind of plays out.
KEITHA.
Rangenefan and Bloomberg Intelligence really appreciate the analysis.
Thank you time now for talking tech. First up, Christie's hackers who stole client data have failed to upload any of that information to the dark web now. The hacking group known as ransom Hub threatened for over a week to release the stolen files on Monday, but there are no signs that has occurred. The criminals said Christie's had ceased communications after they had attempted to reach a quote reasonable resolution seeking on cyber A cyber attack on Change Healthcare is putting pressure on Washington Congress and the Biden administration are stepping up efforts to better protect highly sensitive data.
From falling into the wrong hands.
Up to a third of Americans are said to have had their private information exposed from the hack, and it's cost United Health up to one point six billion dollars in profits this year. And meanwhile, major hospitals in London they've been thrown into chaos. According to the BBC, a cyber attack on hospital's partnered with pathology services provider so Novis caused operations to be canceled, patients to be diverted, and deliveries to be rerouted. According to the Health Service Journal, the system was victim to a ransom wear attack ed.
Okay, let's get back to that other big story.
Elon Musk, according to reports ordering and let's be honest in Muskian style, may have exaggerated its procurement of AI chips for use at Tesla in x More, Bloomberg's craggedel joins us, this time from Detroit, his spiritual home. Some breaking news Musk has taken to x You'll be surprised to hear explaining that reports around him directing the shift of h one hundreds that were destined from Tesla to x.
Or Xai were for a very.
Logical reason Tesla had nowhere to put them.
Craig, Yeah, it maybe stands to some reason ed because you reported just in the last few weeks that Tesla was running behind I'm building data centers. They're standing these up in Buffalo and in Austin, Texas, where they have their big factory. But this is a case still of, you know, an indication within Navidia that's they're sort of looking askance at some of the things that Musk has been saying about a really important aspect of you know, Tesla's business. This is, after all, sort of where he's steering this company is to self driving and AI and really trying to play up that aspect of what Tesla's working on as the fundamental car business really is struggling for the company. So for him to have to address a report like this in the midst of you know, a slowdown and EV demand and this big pivot that's he's making toward AI and self driving development, it's not particularly reassuring if you're a shareholder.
Particularly as we look towards June the thirteenth and that all important shareholder vote where you a mask seems to be threatening that, Look, if you're not going to give me my payday, but you promised me several years ago, maybe there's more interesting things to be done with AI at different companies in Tesla.
Yeah, this reinforces that ultimatum that he gave back in January that he wanted to essentially take his AI and robotics work elsewhere, and we've already seen indications that you know, he's he's sort of willing to follow through on that threat that you know, if I don't control something like twenty five percent of Tesla, I want to work on this stuff at some of my other companies and with any other CEO you know, that would maybe not necessarily be taken seriously, it would potentially be viewed as a veiled threat. But this this is after all, someone who runs six companies and you know, has been standing up an AI company and Xai that is, you know, closely tied to x formerly known as Twitter, and does have you know, a significant amount of work that it's trying to do with you know, large language models and essentially you know, trying to you know, build x up into a company that was worth the investment that he and some of his fellow stakeholders made in what was formerly Twitter.
About fully four billion got a few years ago. Craig Trudell, thank you so much breaking it down. Welcome back to Blombow Technology.
I'm Caroline heid in New York and I'm had Lovevote in San Francisco.
A very quick check in on the markets.
We've got some economic data which has basically reinforced the idea that the Federal Reserve will have room to cut rates in the United States this year. And that's got a lot of people doing the math on their technology holdings and valuations. And a's that one hundred tech heavy index a little bit softer the Socks or Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is more markedly lower, down one point two percent. In fact, only one out of the thirty names is modestly in the green, and a big part of that story is kind of what's going on over in Taiwan at Computex. The main names that we're looking at throughout the show are Intel and Envid. Actually Intel opened a little bit higher in the session. You can see it's now lower four tenths of a percent, in Vidia softer by half percent, and things are heating up a little bit between those names. Listen to Pat Gelsinger speaking overnight.
We're looking now to have a billion transistors on a single ship and even looking to a trillion transistors in a single package by.
The end of the jet of the decade.
And unlike what Johnson might have you believe Moore's law is alive and well.
Mister Gelsinger calling out his industry friend and rival, mister Juang at Computex's mister Wang also the other keynote speaker, take a quick look again at Apple. I put that in there because earlier in the show we talked about this idea that in Vidia, which is lower in Apple a little bit modesty lower is just a few percent away from overtaking Apple five percent or so. And next week's a big week, right, Karen, because we have WWDC where we think we're going to get the AI story finally from Apple and how it's going to work on my iPhone and iOS.
Goldman Sachs saying, look, reiterating that by yesterday on the optimism around WWDC, but has been a real improvement in Apple's market capitalization of late. Let's just dig into it all with Bloomberg's Jess mentioning Bloomberg Intelligence analysts and rag Rana and just I want to go to you first in terms of the context here, Apple was having a pretty horrific twenty twenty four. Now it's broken back to basically flat on the year, and there seems to be this hope that it can get its AI narrative in gear.
That's right.
So we just saw Apple on Monday actually clause even for the year after it did hit an all time high back in December, so it actually entered a correction technically ten percent off of that high back in March. But then coming into the second quarter, we have seen that stark recover pretty trendously. If you look at it's April nineteenth low, it's up about eighteen percent in that span. In some of the conversations I was having with Olio managers coming into the second quarter, because of the big run we saw an Nvidia stock in the first quarter, and then when you prepare that against Apple relative to the S and P five hundred, that was one of its worst quarters this century coming out of the dot com bus.
Whether or not there were.
Going to be positions where people were kind of flipping some of the mag seven stocks there.
So you're starting to see a little bit of that.
But again, if you look at the top six stocks there, if you take out Tesla because of the volatility, you still see a record concentration there about thirty percent in the S and P five hundred. But you are starting to see more optimism in Apple's stock recovering.
And again a lot of that has to do not just because we've.
Talked a lot about that record buy back historic program that they had announced about a month ago, but then also some of the easing tensions that you would think some of the problems they would have had in China.
Caroline Anna rag Apple ended last week with its third successive weekly gain from the Bloomberg Intelligence perspective on Apple, how much we just treading water to WWDC and how much are you hoping to learn?
Yeah, I think it is the change in sentiment on Apple because of all we have heard about different things Mark has reported on what could happen on WWDC, especially a potential partnership with open Ai and maybe even Google.
So I think, I mean, it is.
A very important event for Apple, probably the most important WWDC in a long time, because it really give us some direction in which way the phones can grow, either in the second half or next year, because so far what we have seen and again sentiment aside, the numbers have not gone up, you know, in the last two years or so, numbers only being going downwards when it comes to Apple.
Just throughout the year.
You've done some fantastic charting of Apple, charticles, chart focused work, and we always used to refer to Apple as kind of the most important waiting name on the S and P five hundred. Now in video is kind of like, oh, this is a macro level event. Everyone quick pay attention to a video. How has your day to day changed to how you cover those two names?
Well, I still feel, especially when I'm speaking with my sources, that they do care about Apple because it's one of those names, even though we saw its struggle at the start of the year, because again with its buyback programs and the funnel metals, and then of course it's cash flow behind the company. For longer term portfolio managers, that obviously is still going to be a key holding in there. So it's more of the shorter term expectations there. But if you look from a hedge fund perspective Goldman Sachs Prime Brokerage Data where they analyze data from hedge funds, they actually coming into the second quarter, they started trimming their exposure to some of these big technology stocks, but they were actually looking at more different types of AI plays, like utilities. So we've seen that particular group, especially since mid April, really take off and some of that. A lot of times people think of it as low volatility dived into type paying stocks and more of kind of maybe a safe haven, but this seems to be more of a play of a peek and rates, but then also a little bit of that AI play there. But again, if you're looking at Nvidia, I mean, coming into today it was only about five percent away from trying to catch up to Apple's micros market cap. But then also Apple not too far away from three trillion again, so if it does cross, that'll be the first time since January since it's done so ed and just sticking on.
The Apple theme, And there was some reporting from other outlets such as The Information talking about how maybe we could have seen a deal for offering Apple TV plus two China of all places, and just just mentioned this the perhaps easing of tensions or people trying to understand how the China US relationship impacts Apple.
What are you expected to hear on that in the future, Analog, Yeah.
So from a China is concerned, I think more than these you know, the TV and the other things, I think the rebound in iPhones what we heard in the last couple of weeks is far more promising and encouraging because there has been a big debate whether China is a structural problem for Apple or it's a cyclical problem. And the latest state of you know indicates at least for now that Apple seeing a bounce back and people going back and buying the iPhone instead of you know, this particular argument that people don't want to buy Apple products right now, so that's I think a bigger driver for the change in sentiment when it comes to China.
Bloomberg's Jessmnton and Bloomberg Intelligence and list Ana rag Rana terrific to catch up with you both.
Thank you very much.
Now coming up, we're going to be joined by Aru Matthew, partner at Excel for his outlook on cybersecurity investing. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg Technology. It's time for talking tech and first up. Cisco plans to invest one billion dollars in startups that are working on what it calls quote secure and reliable AI services as part of a push to be a bigger player in AI. The company says it's already committed about two hundred million dollars of the money, and it's making investments in the likes of Mistro AI and Scale AI.
Plus.
The Washington based lobbying group Ja Green Know for its keevy client roster, including Palenteer in SpaceX, is raising one hundred million dollars for a new VC fund alongside investment firm and Zoo Partners, which laim to bank back tech startups that support national Security and hack Loots, the London based firm that's provided advice to companies and buyout firms for nearly thirty years, is now building a presence in Silicon Valley as a startup investor. The investment armor of the firm has raised its first VC fund, surpassing a target of fifty million dollars.
Carol, I nice VC round up there and let's stick with venture capital.
Time for VC. Spotlight O own Matthew is with.
Us his partner and Accel of course is usually based in SF. Is jended over here to New York's Tech Week is upon us. But you're the focus of cybersecurity investments.
You've got a.
Lot of early money, early checks in some of the key companies we think of when we associate with Accel one pass where better cloud call like. Look, we've just had a whole swathe of news of cyber issues today, whether it be Christie's, whether it be hospitals and London being effected. A companies getting that they need to invest in their cyber right now.
I think they are.
But it's a hard problem.
You know, we've been investing in cyber for almost thirty of the forty years that Excel has been around, we've invested in seventy five companies, over two billion dollars Across those seventy five companies, forty active investments across every major category of cyber So we have a pretty good view of what's happening in the cyber landscape. But the threats are getting more and more extreme and more severe, and so it's a bit of a cat and mouse game.
You level up, you try to defend yourself.
Hackers level up as well, and so there's this dynamic between hackers and defending against it that's just really difficult.
Artificial intelligence making everyone level up.
It is, and it's being used on both sides of the game, on both the hacker side and on the defense side. But I do think that we are in a promising early stages of AI and the application of AI across a number of dimensions, particularly in cyber and so we're really excited about what AI can do on the defense side in particular, and.
We've talked a lot about the idea that the generative AI tools available to play defense are equally as available to the threat actors. Right those that are posing a threat from a cybersecurity perspective. With that in mind, what's the strategy you know, seed through to growth stage in where you guys deploy capital.
Well, for a lot of our companies, they serve companies of all types. Enterprises in particular have gotten the message at cyber is extremely important for them and they're investing heavily. We're also investing behind companies that are attacking or that are that are in the mid market and the longer tail of SMBs. We they address a lot of cyber companies address these companies through what's called the MSP channel, the managed service provider channel, and so we're investors in a company called Blackpoint Cyber that addresses these companies that are sort of underserved. And so whether you're a growth company or you're an early stage startup, cyber is critical. Many of these companies are hiring security talent and CISOs at the very inception of those of their journeys, and it's a problem that's being felt across the industry.
A lot of what I.
Hear from founders CEOs could be a company or set up of any size, is that they probably didn't think as much about their software and hardware infrastructure as they should have done because of the pandemic, right they had a flexible working policy, they had to change sometimes to being fully remote, and that in some cases can make them vulnerable. Is there an opportunity for you guys.
In that absolutely?
The concept of where you sit used to twenty years ago, used to go into an office, use a company issued machine, a company issue.
They will do every day.
I own every day, phone days a week, most days of the year, keep going.
A large percentage of knowledge workers today are working from home and they're never going back into the office. And so how do you protect across their personal devices and their enterprise their laptop issued through work. And so we're seeing a number of solutions such as one password that are being deployed across every device, across every login, across every application to ensure full coverage. And I think that's where the world is moving, that security has to protect you in your personal and your professional life, not just one phase or dimension of it.
I asked you at this start whether companies are getting with a program, But ultimately this is about me. You the consumer are kids eventually realizing that to have two factor authentication, if not better, is the consumer getting with the program?
I think they're getting there, but I think they're getting there a little slower. You know, there's always a little bit of a delay in terms of the consumer understanding it. But these hacks are getting, as you said at the beginning, more and more severe, they're getting more and more public, and so whether it's ticket Master or a number of consumer applications, I think people are starting to get the message.
Are in where is the innovation in cybersecurity technology happening?
I see it happening across the number of dimensions, you know, the zeitgeist, tech media, vcs. We're all talking about AI, but AI is only applicable if you have good data, and so we're seeing a number of opportunities in data security, in particular understanding the provenance of the data, the quality of the data, where that data goes. Understanding that is really critical to having a robust security strategy. So we're investing pretty heavily there. If you look at a lot of these hacks, identity is the core of why identity base vulnerabilities are the core of why these hacks are happening for the vast majority of these cyber attacks, and so we're investing pretty heavily in identity. The MSP channel, as I mentioned earlier, is a big opportunity to make sure that security is democratized for everyone. And I think the last one, you know, we invested in CrowdStrike in twenty thirteen. It was an early investment for us. Endpoint was in its an decency then, but it's really exploded a lot of the themes that we just talked about of having devices, mobile phones, laptops at home and at work are really important and CrowdStrike protects those things. And so the endpoint in particular and extending into a number of other categories is where we're seeing an opportunity as well.
Excel partner Haru Matthew Triffings have you on the program, Thank you very much. Going viral and trending across social media and search, India's national elections voting chain coverage sits high up on Google real time and daily search trends globally is Tally's signal that Prime Minister and Narrendra Moody's ruling party was struggling to win a majority of seats. The race was also being discussed on x and LinkedIn as Modi vowed to carry on as Prime Minister but he and his ruling party will likely be forced to rely on allies and other parts parties to form a government. In markets, India stock market plummeted, raising three hundred and eighty six billion dollars in market value. Mody had appealed to India's one point four billion people with a package of business friendly policies. His BJP party was leading in two hundred and forty seats, short of the two hundred and seventy two needed to form a government and well behind the three hundred and three to one in the twenty nineteen election.
Cat big market impact. Meanwhile, let's turn our attention back to New York Tech Week. It's officially kicked off right here in the big Apple ed and look. Industry titans are here, startups gathering throughout the week for events, for panels, for conversations for your party. Now all week long on blieonbag technology, We're going to be speaking with those founders, with those investors and executives to talk about the ecosystem here in New York City and look why they choose to make it home and police. Now say we've got Ben, there's managing partner at a hippo of course long time focus of VC, of media, of digital built here.
In New York. But you've been writing some checks.
Not all of the companies are New York City based. What is your view on allocating capital here?
Ben, Yeah, well thanks for having me. You know, we are longtime New York believers. I grew up in New York. We started the Fund in New York. Everyone employed by the Fund is here, and we've been investing in this ecosystem for a long time, far before it was it was cool. And you know, more than half the checks we write are to New York founders. But you know, in many ways the world has gotten smaller, and obviously with COVID and sort of the move to everyone getting comfortable zooming for three quarters of their life, we find.
Ourselves investing in people all over the place. But we really do.
We think we have our sort of strongest competitive advantage investing here in New York and our community is centered here.
Ben.
One might always say, oh, I can see media being here, fintech being here, But you've been allocating money to Caldeen Biotech, which is I think Brooklyn based company. You're doing footprint, which is all about well onboarding of people and knowing KYC what is working here from an industry vertical perspective.
Yeah, So you know, when we started investing in New York fifteen years ago, it really was a consumer market and so a ton happening in media, a lot happening in commerce and sort of commerce adjacent markets.
That has changed.
And so I think it really started with Google and Facebook and sort of big tech building large offices here back in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, that you saw the markets start to shift and you saw a sort of real ennge talent come into the New York ecosystem that has only continued. And so I really believe today you can build any kind of company in New York.
There is all different sorts of talent here.
And you know, I think anything that New York sort of decides it wants to be great at, it ultimately finds a way to be great at. And so there are there's pockets of value all over the place. And you know, I will always think, or so far in my career, I have always thought that New York is the perfect place to build a company.
Ben how strong and how important are the base of academic institutions out on the East Coast for.
You, Well, I think that the ivs and sort of like the large you know, there's a bunch of undergraduate institutions and graduate schools sort of throughout the Northeast that send a ton of students to New York, and so I think that those are incredibly important. Interestingly, now, I think last year more Stanford Business School students came to New York than to San Francisco for the first time ever. And so it's not just the New York schools that matriculate here, but that's really important. Obviously, you have Columbian NYU and Cornell's Tech School and lots of sort of schools within the city, which is great, But New York is a feeder for all different kinds of institutions throughout the country.
At this point, if there are three main advantages of three big straws for New York City, what are they.
Ben.
Well, I think it's the you know, in many ways, New York is the center of the sort of economic world. I mean, this is the you know, this is the number one place that business has done globally and certainly in the United States.
So that's one. Two. New York is a really diverse and interesting place with.
Just like it's a fascinating place to live, and so lots of interesting, fascinating smart people want to be here, which is really appealing.
And three litre hippo is here. So come on, what can I say?
I like that last one, Ben, We've got to shout out the food and many other things that are here. But aside from that, look, we can put all like you know, rainbows and butterflies around New York, but not all of it has upside. It's expensive to live sometimes, you know, we get a bit hard around the edges when we live here.
Ben.
But what from your perspective are you see in terms of the ferocity of competition to allocate money here? Is it hard to allocate checks right now? Are you getting bean out of them?
Yes?
So this is a different market than it was when we started investing. There was a handful of sort of institutional firms that were deploying into early stage venture when we got started. Today you have a ton of emerging managers, You have a handful of funds that look like us, that are really sort of true New York committed long term institutions. And you now have a bunch of large multi stage firms, many of which are sort of West Coast based, that have built satellite offices here, and so there's many more options in terms of where founders can go to raise money.
I still think that there are not a ton of.
Really high quality, truly New York focused funds that sort of have their best talent here and have the kind of vibrant.
Communities that we do and some peers do. But there's way more talent these days.
There's just more talented folks who are starting businesses and growing businesses.
And so wrap it up there, I'm a Fray Brandy. We thank you so much of Leir Hippo. This is Bloomberg Technology