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tv   Bloomberg Technology  Bloomberg  May 6, 2024 11:00am-12:00pm EDT

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>> from the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide in silicon valley and beyond, this is "bloomberg technology" with caroline hyde and ed ludlow. ♪ caroline: i'm caroline hyde in bloomberg's world headquarters in new york. ed ludlow is off. this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, 80% of s&p 500 companies now with results. as warren buffett cuts his stake, we will go to an apple
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event. plus, we speak to a counter as a company announces a brand-new range of ai powered products. but first let's check in on the markets. we have a post fed feeling of optimism in the markets it feels. we don't have an awful lot of economic data on the table. we have an issuance with 10 year yield -- with the 10 year yield holding steady. the s&p 500 breaking some of the technical levels of where we see the average trade the last 50 days so there seems to be some risk on attitude. not in crypto with bitcoin off. when it comes to crypto related news, we will be digging into what happened with robinhood of course. the sec looking at particularly its crypto sales. zero and 7% despite the announcing the sec might well be looking into its business.
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warren buffett pulling back on the state of apple. really loving the iphone product but we look ahead to new products new ipads with mark gurman in a moment. i want to shine a light on some of the chip makers -- chipmakers. nvidia still yet to report on may 22. we also get arm this week. earnings season well underway. technology, communication services company beating profit estimates. 90 percent of tech and communication services customer companies. we want to get all the statistics. it feels as though when companies have beat, have they really outperformed? apple was a massive sigh of relief when we saw the stock
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rally. >> you can see gina's team in that function and you can see the equities there. when you look at how stocks in aggregate have been performing in excess of the broader index, it is basically -- it basically pales in comparison to prior quarters but because of apple on friday when you see this, now the s&p 500 since earnings season has gotten in full swing with jp morgan back on april 12 and now up close to 1%. in that span, and had been clover to -- it had been lower close to 1%. caroline: there was so much optimism baked in. what about those that have missed? they have been punished hard. have there been any themes as to why they have missed? jess: that is a great point because a lot of that has to do with more forward-looking guidance, and that is why,
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because as we know when you think about first-quarter earnings results, that is more backward looking. when it comes to the guidance, that is where it has been disappointing. because this is a technology program, a lot of traders and investors want to know when the cost-cutting efforts that help propel any big tech company or anything tied to that, especially when you think back to meta-at the end of -- meta at the end of 2022 when it started its big jobs cuts. on a 12 month aggregate basis, analysts are still marking up their projections for technology companies and growth companies but a lot of the laggards like health care and utilities are starting to pick up now. caroline: maybe with the effect of ai, many waiting to see the impact on those groups. give us a sense on where companies have been rewarding shareholders. it feels like that is a reason why apple popped, because we got a massive buyback. you triggered my memory that meta did not this time but they
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did the previous earnings season. jess: that is usually music to traders' ears. but also when you look at capex and reinvesting, that is what investors want to see more -- that is what traders want to see more of. one you still think about what potential catalysts could come for apple, in early june we will have the worldwide developers conference but i know mark gurman is coming up soon and we'll talk about the big event tomorrow where we potentially can see some new ipads coming out. caroline: we will let mark loose in a moment. brilliant to have you around. we want to get a real investors take here. our guest is here. apple actually one of your biggest holdings. you have been cutting that a little bit across some of your funds.
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warren buffett doing the same thing. how have you interpreted a company such as apple's results and the growth trajectory of a business like that? >> apple is a consumer utility, and one of the things about apple is they have been slower in adopting this ai cycle. the hope is that at some point they will catch up and be a fast follower, which we strongly believe they will, but in the near term, there are other companies more immediately investing in and procuring ai type revenues that is propelling growth. caroline: ok, let's talk through some of those names. we heard from alphabet, amazon, meta. are they building the reward in return for that investment from your perspective? ankur: absolutely. it is the number one thing we have been looking at through the earnings season, capex, how these committees are spending their capex. we expected them to have a big capex number through 2024, and
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they are even talking about 2025. this to us is the leading indicator of what is to come in ai because they would not be building this capex unless they saw the demand trends. i would remind you that during earnings season, both microsoft and amazon talked about how they were limited on capacity and gpu's. people keep asking, where is the application? someone is using those gpu's. they are all used up already. hundreds of millions have already been spent. caroline: of course, the benefit has to be to nvidia. has that been the number one play for you? have you been looking at amd and the design element? ankur: i think a lot of boats will rise the next decade and a lot of boats are rising now. will it be a winner take all market? it will not be a winner take all market. there will be many different winners. nvidia will be the winner take most, however.
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we are really excited about what nvidia is doing in terms of not only software development but how they are changing the network in order to make data centers more efficient. so they are reaching out beyond just chips into the enterprise networking and software as well. so that sets up a really great month for them and makes is very bullish on nvidia. caroline: it is one of your number one holdings across some of your largest funds. i know you have been starting new funds and etf's trying to execute on the ai theme but can you talk to us about why you have not automatically considered the ai pla -- play? ankur: there are two companies, both of which used to be relatively slow growth companies but are now delivered to the ai plane. one makes cooling systems for data centers.
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the other, -- i joke that these are ditch diggers or pool climbers because they make the transmission for electricity. both of these things are going to have radically changing competitive dynamics. for example, for one we do not have enough electricity. we expect to see utility capex start to rise incrementally over the next five to seven years, all of which will service the people that implement the mines. for the other, you have a changing dynamic on the cooling aspect of the data center and it ends up being the net winner. caroline: that is really interesting because we are hearing again and again that this is a worry. for example, going around the middle east in particular, worrying the key bottlenecks are energy and indeed access to gpu's. that is why there has been so
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much reporting that he is trying to build up other chipmakers. have you been thinking about ultimately that being the key bottleneck? do you agree energy will be the real key here, the limiting factor? ankur: technology has been pretty amazing as you look forward. as we stand today, will energy be a bottleneck? it is. however, as you move forward, 2, 3, 4 years, the energy events are quite significant. we think the technology on cooling and electricity will keep up and not hamper the growth of the industry. for example, if you look at the performance per watt of the b100, which is nvidia's newest ship, it is significantly more efficient than the older generations. as you move through time, i
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believe essay -- on a performance per watt basis, you get more efficiency than is baked into the market. caroline: where is the market getting too exuberant? do you believe any view that the hype has made capitalization unstable? ankur: i don't think the market is exuberant right now. everyone always asks, are we in a bubble? are we in nai bubble -- in an ai bubble? it is much too early. it is revolutionary in terms of what is about to happen. i just look at the evaluations across the seven this morning. meta currently trades at a 10% discount to the market on our 2025 earnings. actually, it might be a 15% discount now that it has pulled back so much. that to me for a company that is going to change the way we interact as consumers with ai
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and how businesses interact with consumers is not an egregious multiple. you can go down the list with amazon. amazon does not trade at that egregious a multiple to the market. you look at microsoft. microsoft, again, if you look at, 2026 -- if you look at 2026 numbers. these are not set up as bubble-like valuations, and we are not terribly exuberant. caroline: well said. ankur crawford, great to give your perspective as someone holding a lot of these names, investing income and adding to. we thank you, ankur crawford. meanwhile, coming up, apple preparing to unveil a up of ipads with a product launch -- unveil a new group of ipads with a product launch. you know is the og meme stock. down 30% last week.
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it was rallying hard, end of friday, 29%. there seems to be a desire to get in and out of this key name once again. we will keep an eye out for you. this is "bloomberg technology." ♪
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caroline: berkshire hathaway held a meeting over the weekend, and apple quickly became one of the biggest topics as the meeting unfolded. laurent fit praised the company, calling the iphone of the greatest products of all time. that was after revealing he cut a steak. a $135 billion holding an apple at the end of the quarter, down from $174 billion at year-end. meanwhile, the whole news when
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it comes to apple and foxconn posted the strongest monthly sales growth since the start of 2023, and look at the impact on shares, potentially raising expectations for a phones -- for iphones, for ai. bloomberg's mark gurman is with us. however you want to talk about it, always a great tell. we had been worried about its previous earnings but now it looks like from a month on month basis or a year on your monthly posting, we are getting record sales for the company. mark: if you look at the prior quarter, they raised their revenue, expectations were not so hot, and then apple revealed iphone sales for the previous quarter last week and you saw the iphone come in $5 billion down on a year-over-year basis. but let me get to the june quarter, the current window we are in. apple said it expects to grow low single-digit, so growing for
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the -- single digits, so growing for the first time in a while. it seems to align with that given that they assemble a vast majority of iphones via foxconn. it is also development and manufacturing of ai servers for various companies. however, i don't believe the ai servers that foxconn is building are connected to apples ai announcement coming in june. for all intents and purposes, the ai from apple be on device at least from the get-go and probably using third-party infrastructure, not something they are creating on their own, but one day i expect apple to move to its own. caroline: interesting. therefore, talk to us about the long-term commitment to apple and a slight pullback from its third biggest shareholder berkshire hathaway saying we are to be back but they seem to -- we are trimming back but they seem to believe in apple. mark: warren buffett in his
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typical process for which stocks he buys, apple is right in his alley. you will not see apple grow tenfold or to some significant degree at this point, but you know that it is more likely than not you will get solid returns off of this company. you will not lose your money. certainly better than putting your money in a bond market or mutual fund in most cases. it is a very safe pick, apple i think for many quarters to come despite the fact that it will not be a high flyer or anything like that. caroline: $110 billion share buyback among many people feel that is the tell -- buyback, many people feel that is the tell. we are all caring about the products and unveiling's and -- unveilings, and we will get some. mark: that is right, tomorrow, tuesday, 7:00 a.m. pacific time is the let loose product launch. a few things coming.
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one is a revamped version of the ipad pro, the first update since the current model was launched in 2018. we will see a new ipad air. why is that important? you are getting a bigger ipad air, something closer to a macbook air. this will be the first time apple is offering a 12.9 inch ipad at the mid tier price point, right at that mid tier product line. so that is a big deal as apple looks to make its ipads like the macs. and you will see the ecosystem with two new key accessories, a new keyboard, a higher inversion that makes the ipad pro look like a laptop on use, something more durable and convenient. the second thing is a pro version of the apple pencil. that is a really popular
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accessory that are artists and creative's -- artists and creatives like to use. you can erase the logo on the apple home page which means the pencil might finally get an eraser on the back like a classic number two pencil. the other thing is feedback. when you use the pencil, it will vibrate back on your finger so you know what you are doing based on tactile feedback. that will be a nifty update as well. overall for ipad fans, especially those who have been waiting many, many months or even years for a revamped version of the ipad pro, tomorrow will be an exciting launch for them. caroline: love to play the mark gurman bingo of all the things you just told us and all the things tomorrow when they play out in life. meanwhile, coming up, new bidders come to the forefront to save a french company.
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we will have all the details. this is "bloomberg technology." ♪ what about zocdoc? so many options. yeah, and dr. xichun even takes your sketchy insurance. xi-chun, xi-chun, xi-chun! you've got more options than you know. book now.
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caroline: time now for talking tech. first up, a chinese self-driving firm filed confidentially for an ipo in the united states and it may happen as early as this year. the company was founded in 2016 by a team of ai engineers from microsoft research asia. plus, the biden administration is opening applications to $285 million in federal funding to set up an institute focused on digital twin technology for the chip industry to leverage ai to help reduce development and manufacturing costs. jack dorsey has left the board of blue sky, which he helped fund and popularize a year ago
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after the sale of twitter. he wants companies to open internet protocols. in fact, he said x is such a freedom technology. let's turn our attention to the french technology company atos. it has received four proposals to restore the group to financial health, including one it already rejected. the firm is seeking to reach a deal by the end of the month to inject fresh funds after clients have begun to hold off business. the latest bidders to throw their hats into the ring are a czech billionaire. remind us, this is a company thought of incredibly integrally in the tech space and the country wants to make sure it survives. >> yeah, it has been a darling
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of the french text seen and a major blue-chip index company in france. it appears to have a market capitalization of $15 million dollars now to $15 billion now down to $200 million -- $15 billion now down to $200 million. many key customers around the world. the i.t. for the olympic games for example upcoming in france this summer but also for the french defense industry. it also has computers. the french government seeing the trouble of the company finally decided to make a bid on that part of the company. caroline: talk us through the rivals, some of the key players. you mentioned a couple of billionaires throwing their hats in the ring. benoit: so one of the bids is from the bondholders of the company. they want to be center stage here. they want to bp in deciding --
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they want to be key in deciding who will be the winner. this could be one who has been known to buy sort of unloved assets, assets that need restructuring. he started in energy. he has been to retail. in france, he made a bid to buy a retailer. he is teaming up with a credit fund again to make a bid for atos. and then there is a french entrepreneur. he has a much smaller i.t. company called one point. he is teaming with butler industries, an investor in france, to buy the company and a plan he is calling one atos. so it is sort of down to a race between these two. caroline: we will see how the race continues. we thank you so much for the update on the french company.
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coming up, the sec warning robert had markets -- robinhood markets. meanwhile, a tussle over sales. paramount, an offer came from apollo and sony. this is bloomberg. ♪
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caroline: welcome back. a little bit of optimism on the day. a hired tune after we see a quieting. a ramp-up coming from the federal reserve after teamer comments from chair powell. we are seeing the msci on the high side. bitcoin not finding love.
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currently down by .5%. let's look at what else is moving in the world of curb though. more broadly, we have seen the chips sector doing well on the day. getting back into these ship names. apple on the downside. warren buffett cutting his stake. and robinhood up a quarter of 1%. they are facing a potential lawsuit. any detail what the sec does not like about the play into crypto?
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>> it was a securities filing. they received a notice, and intend for the sec to sue the cryptocurrency business. we do not exactly know all the details behind it, but we have robinhood's men. the officials believe that the assets listed are not securities. we know that the sec has been looking at exchanges and brokerages from what they deem to be unregistered securities, but we know it has been a massive fight between players in the industry as well as their fight against the sec in this pursuit. caroline: most people think of it as a stock player. how important is crypto to robinhood? >> look at the assets. less than 15% were crypto.
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even though it is a small amount of the overall crypto, to your point, they are known for equity and option play. the last quarter of last year he saw equities and options volumes dropping off. they were negative. even if it is a smaller base, the business has been rising dramatically. you probably see them benefiting from that crypto boom. it is volatile revenue, but it has been helping them attract new customers. with that said, investors have shaken off their worries. the fights have been long. caroline: we look forward to the earnings as well. let's go to the latest in l a.
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kicking it off in beverly hills. gathering to discuss everything. our own wall street hose sat down to discuss what the regulatory landscape attack is. >> i think every regulator is worried about several topics. they are right about innovation, competition, safety and regulation. when you take those together, they come together to help you foment regulation. it helps to think about what is going on here. in my experience, open technology is safer and more secure than close technologies. >> is one of the risks that some of the big guys get an advantage and get an entrenched position?
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>> when you have it, those areas being more innovative or less innovative? and so, i think it really helps you create more competition. does it avoid regulatory lock in? likely. but isn't that good for all of us? >> are you pro regulation? >> i am, as long as it is light touch and allows innovation to happen. >> l regulating technology versus the uses? he thinks they do not regulate technology because it will impair regulation. >> always. how can you regulate the technology when you do not know where it will go?
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if we come out, six months ago, nobody had ever heard of that. trying to regulate a technology implies that the regulator and policy folks believe more innovation can happen. i think that is a bad bet to make. caroline: coming up, we will be joined for an exclusive interview on a brand-new sweep of the ai products. this is bloomberg technology. ♪
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caroline: we are a week out from the event a few days from now. this is bloomberg.
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announcing a brand-new range of a high-powered defense products. electromagnetic warfare. not only countering known strengths with preprogrammed techniques but leveraging artificial intelligence to detect old and new threats. angela joins us now. the key question is, how is this used and how is it different? >> is being used on fixed sites, vehicles and aircraft. it has actually been in existence for years. it is in a high-powered tool that can understand what is going on in the domain and take measures to accomplish fewer aims within the domain.
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jamming, hacking, spoofing, countering those things, making sure that your own systems maintain functionality. it is able to do that extremely fast. it is able to do what would have previously taken a team of electronic warfare specialist at a building full of equipment weeks or months to accomplish in just seconds. caroline: i preface all of this from a political perspective but also a personal perspective right now. we are sensitive to that, but where at the moment is this being used? you talked about how it has been used since 2020, but how is artificial intelligence changing the pace with which you can iterate and how things are changing within warfare?
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>> i was concerned that we were losing our technological edge. how things have been playing out in ukraine and around the world have really proven that out. ai is changing the game because it allows you to deploy in a much more useful way than we ever have before. we have been focused on ai since several years ago. the acronym is ai and that is for a reason. we believe artificial intelligence will be changing the nature of warfare. i remember when we were starting the company and it was hard to raise money. people saw it as a science fiction jim but not something that was real. unfortunately, the reality of the world today has forced people to pay more attention to what ai can do on the battlefield.
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caroline: the air force in the u.s. has gotten with the program and understood the impact you are making. you are seeing as a new type, a new force of defense tech startup. can you talk us through the collaborative combat program? this is about aircraft that flies alongside those that are manned. >> they deserve a lot of credit for their vision. they want to deploy aircraft at scale alongside manned aircraft on a timeline. to have the ranges and capabilities that need to be meaningful to the adversaries that we need to fight. i just name the name. it is china. a program to develop and build over 1000 ccas that will fly alongside manned aircraft.
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loyal vindman is what they have been called. they just beat out for a slot on the program. we will build representative aircraft. they will be ready to go to scale at manufacturing, if we can hit all of our milestones and prove that we are as good at building airplanes as we are at building ai. caroline: i'm interested in where you will manufacture and see the deployment of these particular autonomous fighter jets. >> they will be built right here in the u.s. and where they will be deployed, that is up to our customer. i do have some ideas. caroline: i'm interested when you see the u.s. taking leadership back. do you still worry? bless you.
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do you think that the u.s. has reasserted itself and become the leader? >> i think we have a long way to go in certain areas. i think people have been pulled out of their slumber and they realized there are areas that we can move much faster. we can do things in months instead of years we were not able to before. the construct of how we were supposed to get things done. taking a bet is just one of the examples of people realizing that business as usual is not something that we have time for, not in the current environment. caroline: what about the competition? are they not making acquisitions? >> i do not feel like they are really the competition. i feel a little bit of kinship with them.
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at the end of the day, we are all trying to protect the same country and all trying to protect the same values, more or less around the world. i'm more worried about the competition from iran, russia and china. the innovation i have seen out of russia, china and iran as a coalition of very technologically advanced adversaries, it worries me a lot more than the competition in the u.s. there are things i am going to build that would be better than billing and there are things that boeing is going to build where they are better than me. we are doing a good job of finding how we can continue to work together. all the companies i just mentioned beating, we are working with all of them in some capacity on other programs. it is a little less cutthroat than people think because of that. caroline: you are aligning with
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allies as well. an autonomous sub that you have been working with, with australia, codeveloping and keeping on pace, which is unheard of. where else might you manufacture, might you codevelop? it was interesting that one of our reporters highlighted that the vp of taiwan was speaking at a u.s. event. will there ever be manufacturing in taiwan? >> we actually just delivered the first submarine year ahead of schedule and on budget, which as you mentioned, it is practically unheard of. there are other areas we are looking to expand but i can tell you that i am in taiwan frequently. i am going back in a few weeks. it is one of the key technological partners of the
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last and it is critical for the u.s. military security that taiwan remains free, independent and democratic. i would say there might not be another country in the world that is really underpinnings so much of our way of life when it comes to semiconductors and all the things that they power throughout every economy. caroline: you talk about how things have changed, but what is also changing is the politicization of companies that are working within warfare. we see that from protests among students. how have you been feeling? are they being embraced for a mining perspective? are you looking to go public? >> i think there is a big golf
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in sophistication and the types of people skipping class to camp out on campuses. a lot of people recognize that the u.s. should have the best technology. the only way to credibly deter warfare is to -- there is no way you can deter every adversary with the threat of a sternly worded letter or the idea that sanctions will cripple the economy. i think that on the funding side, but we do not have any problems, we have a lot of money in the bank. we are on the path to be a publicly traded company. a lot of people are excited about that. as well as building tools to keep our men and women safe, it is also a good and credible business that is doing well with our existing products. we just announced pulsar and showed off some other products.
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we will be announcing products through the rest of the year. we have another dozen that are not even publicly talked about yet and other ace similar caliber. i think our investors recognize that. caroline: quickly, ipo 2024 or 2025? >> i can almost promise you it is not going to be 2024. it is something that we have wanted to do since the very beginning. this is my second company. i sold it to facebook for a few billion dollars and i was there for a few years before i was fired. i decided i wanted to go on a different path. it aligns with what our investors want us to do. they want to be able to buy into the companies.
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beyond reach and beyond control. caroline: this is bloomberg technology. ♪
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caroline: what a song. simplicity's delight was created by ai. while the aia music era is creeping upon us, not everyone is a fan. rachel metz is actually the joy behind that song you just heard. when will i be able to stream this on spotify? they're kind of taking away the business of real artists year are they? >> that is a concern, absolutely, both of artists who see this developing -- there are a lot of stakeholders in the music industry. as and comes to making music, they have concerns about this that they are expressing, for sure.
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caroline: you sign a light on it. they do have the backing of some players and music, but it looks like the companies are trying to make sure that you're not able to say, please make me a song in the essence of the eyelash. we are trying to be careful about the way that we copy or do not. >> they want to position themselves as something anybody can use to make using. it is true that it is a very quick process, or you can make it as complicated as you want. it is for anybody, anybody who is a professional musician or for someone who just wanted to type in a topic of eating cheese. there are some people in the
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music industry like common or will.i.am, who put money into the business. it will be interesting to see where musicians come in, and the coming years, if they are interested in participating or if they say, wait a minute. i do not want you trading all of my music. caroline: is a lawsuit likely to happen here? >> i would expect so. they said that is one of the things they are expecting to see happen. they are expecting to see deals with companies making the software and record labels and maybe other stakeholders in the coming months. as we know, it has been quite litigious involving lawsuits.
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caroline: we are looking at how to protect artists versus aia. thank you so much. that does it for this edition. do not forget to check out our podcasts. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
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>> welcome to bloomberg etf iq. >> it feels like we are in a quiet period after a hefty week last week. >> a lot to look forward to. let's get to the biggest stories right now as investors push up the timing of the fed rate cut, we will be eating about

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