'Bloomberg Technology' Full Show (08/16/2022)
From the heart of where innovation money and power collide. In Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Emily Chang. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco and this is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up the next hour meme stock mania is back. Bed Bath and Beyond Sergent in defiance of Wall Street as retail investors get a second win. I'll chat with the CEO stuff tweets about how social media is impacting market moves. Plus you know who else is back. Adam Newman. Yes the woodwork founder who lost billions for investors and one of tech's most spectacular flameout.
He's just raised money yet again getting the biggest check ever written by Andreessen Horowitz. Silicon Valley's watercooler is all abuzz. We will take you there. And big tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon have pledged to go green. But critics say they're also helping big oil prolong the fossil fuel age. We'll tell you how. But first let's get a look at the markets and stock shaking off
a tech slide as investors buy the dip movers. Cristina Aquino joins us now with more. Christine. Well Emily it's another classic summer trading day today. Low volumes. Not a whole lot of big moves. But let's take a look at the NASDAQ here. We did see some whipsaw price action today. It did take a dive in the mid morning session and it looked like it was about to claw that back and come back in the afternoon session. Not enough though. And we're seeing it just finishing higher on the day here up more than two point six percent here. And also some good news from a big tech today from the thirteen
F filing season. We did see a lot of investors piling back into some of these big tech names in this most recent reporting season. You know that's really a sign that some of those massive declines that we saw in the first half of the year finally making some of these big tech names stocks cheap enough for investors to buy but is still a bit of a mixed bag today in terms of price action. We see Amazon and PayPal finishing the day higher here but Alphabet and Apple
a little bit lower on the day today. But you know who's having a good day of course. Bed Bath and Beyond in the rest of the main store complex. That Bath and Beyond of course standing out today with a whopping 29 percent gain on the day that triggered several trading halts as investors really piled back into the stock. I know that we've seen about 99 million dollars worth of buying into the stock over just the last few weeks. If you take a look at the year to date gains here. That's up more than 82 percent now this year. Definitely a far cry from the S&P 500 9 percent decline here Emily. All right Christine thanks for that.
Let's take a look now at a three week chart of Bed Bath and Beyond. The stock up 400 percent despite at least three downgrades on Wall Street. Shares were halted after spiking this morning. A sure sign the meme trade is alive and well. I want to bring in Ricci Connor now CEO of Stock puts a social platform for investors. So Ricci
curious what kind of activity you saw on stock twits ahead of this surge. Hey Emily thanks for having me on. Yeah. So we saw you know kind of at the end of July beginning of August. You saw a bed Bath and Beyond rocket up to 400 top leader boards in terms of activity. So since August 1st it's been second only to AMC and activity. And you know historically in the last six months Bed Bath Me On has not cracked the top 10 20 or so. And also since August 1st we've seen it grow its followers by 33 percent. You know approaching 50000 followers on stock twits.
And I think the most interesting thing also has been to start with social sentiment over the last four or five months since about April has been mostly negative on Bed Bath and Beyond. And then there was a spike in early July in its sentiment. And then since August 1st it has moved to an extremely positive position that has maintained that position. And you kind of see that correlated with the run up in price you know from the five dollars that it's been out for most of last you know six plus months to I don't know where it goes that today 20 bucks right. 20 25. So we've seen a lot of really interesting activity. And to me that started in July on the Bed Bath and Beyond. So here's the question. Why. Why are retail investors on this train. Yeah
I think you know there's a couple of factors in bed. Bath Beyond is probably interest one. But overall I mean stocks have know we've seen over there you know has seen less capitulation in the retail markets than some of the other ones. So AMC has maintained its position. You know GameStop has been steady. And so the interest there from the retail world has maintained better than some of the other stocks. Bed Bath and Beyond. I think there's probably a lot of factors at play here. There's you know the short interest report that came out at the end of July. You know I think the Ryan Cohen news obviously today
yesterday was probably a big catalyst factor. And you know in the summer we've had generally speaking of low low volumes. And so I think all these pieces come together and retail definitely still seeks out these kind of opportunities. Retail traders and investors seek out these opportunities of dislocations whether short interest or just price movements. And
Bed Bath and Beyond has been the beneficiary as a stock over the last three weeks I guess. Right. So talk a little bit about the power. Ryan Cohen in particular obviously. He's the chair of of GameStop which is sort of the original nonstop. But how much of this is driven by him and how much of this is truly driven by general retail investor sentiment. You know I think definitely in the in the retail trading community the Wall Street best community you know that the kind of mean stock community. Ryan Cohen seems to have some pretty significant sway on the markets. I don't know personally I can't speak to anything of that nature. But you know I think if you look at you know when he takes when he takes positions the markets move. Ryan so the move we saw today in Bed Bath and Beyond after already a massive move you know getting probably
highly be attributed to the news that he took the out of money call options. You know I think that came out last night or this morning or whenever it did. But so you know he's an interesting person in this place obviously kind of first with the GameStop. But you know his has made a lot of moves over the last 18 months that have definitely been followed by the retail community and the media. So you know I think you can't ignore what he does at least in short term versus. In general we're hearing we're seeing this talked about our. We're seeing this stuff talked about on Twitter. What would you say the role is of social media in stock market movements these days. You know I think the role of social media and you know kind of social platforms in general is you know we do disseminate information quickly. We allow you know kind of big communication and sharing of ideas.
And I think you know the ability for retail especially to kind of communicate you know some extent they've organized in the past. Right. Because as we remember in the kind of the major mean stop moment of of 21 and I think you know social media has a strong role to play in know platforms like stocked with you know kind of give retail a place to learn to collaborate to share and and you know ideally to kind of do it in a way where they where they profit from it. They they weren't in a positive way. So it's it's a powerful tool. I think you know it can be used for good and bad. And you know there's a lot of you know education and learning and partnerships that kind of come out of it. From a community perspective I think any regulatory concerns for stock twits. At a moment like this. Not you. No not not so much. I mean where were we. Do we have our house rules and stuff. But those are our rules. And you know we cooperate where you know there are issues you know
potentially on the board. You know we do know I've seen some of the bigger agencies like the FCC and stuff are paying attention. But no I mean you know we don't see any major massive regulatory issues. You know along the lines of social media not none. The current kind of environment I don't think. All right. Rachael Kohn CEO of Stock Tweets thank you for joining us on the latest addition to the meme craze. All right. Coming up Silicon Valley's best known venture capitalist just wrote its biggest check ever. Too controversial. We were founder Adam Newman sparking an outcry
about yet another tech guy failing. This is Mark. Why do you feel so much rage. Yes. So whenever something big like this comes out a big funding round a lot of underrepresented founders particularly women people of color are asked why why the outrage. Why do you have this emotion. Well it's because only 2 percent of U.S. dollars go to women. 2 percent go to Latin. Next founders quaint 67
percent go to black founders. And there are less than 100 black women total who have raised more than a million in DC funding. That's the outrage. It's visceral. It hits you. But then it also quickly becomes a muted rage because as I tweeted it is expected. It is not a surprise. We are used to it. But you you have to feel that rage when you are part of that community that is just historically blocked from accessing this funding. That said we reached out to a lot of female investors today. Privately they feel like you publicly. They don't want to talk about it. Why do you think that is.
Well it is really difficult to talk about in any industry where you are marginalized or where you can have repercussions for speaking out. It can be a scary thing to do right. There's risks. There's risks to my business. There's risks to those who associate with me when I am outspoken. But I also really believe that in order to have any kind of change or awakening of these reactions within other populations and segments you can do something about it. You have to talk openly about it. And to me it's just a clear choice in the community that comes around in. And opportunities like this that come from it is how you
catalyze public discourse and really make a change. So here's what Marc Andreessen wrote about this. He says Adam is a visionary leader who revolutionized the second largest asset class in the world commercial real estate. Adam and the story of We Work have been exhaustive. Tivoli chronicled analyzed and fictionalized sometimes accurately. We understand how difficult it is to build something like this. And we love seeing repeat founders build on past successes by growing from lessons learned. Taking on Andreasen Horowitz. Allison is bold. I mean you might never get a check from them. Why take that risk. OK I honestly. What this signals to the world and particularly to underrepresented founders again only 2 percent of females
have 2 percent of U.S. dollars go to women. I don't think I am getting a check from them but also it signals that their check is not for me. Unfortunately it signals that venture may not be for many founders and that's just not true. But you do have to be intentional and realistic about where you put your time as a founder. If you want to build a successful company and intentional about whose money it is that you're taking for me. Ethics business ethics and competency and honesty are paramount.
Along with the viability of the idea of my business and the difference that I want to make in this industry I do not want investors who don't believe in that. I do not want an investor who clearly says it is okay. But you overstated yourself and your business. We're still going to write you a check. We're ignoring that to the exclusion of others who have more viable business ideas and better business ethics. You allude to that in your tweet where you say founders value your time. Getting a meeting does not equal getting a check. Choose wisely. You also told Tech Crunch you could be mad about this all day long but you have a lot of other female founder. You know what
to do. What do you what do you mean by that. I assume you're talking about all the extra burden that comes with being a female founder. What's all this extra female founder stuff. Yes of course. I think it's that sentiment. Again it's that muted rage. It's the it's the known element. For anyone who is on the receiving end of this that this is how it is. And if we're going
to run our businesses we have to run our businesses. It is harder for us. The numbers don't lie. We do not get the funding. We do not get the resources. We do not have the access to the networks are metrics that we are assessed by first signals of growth and potential are much harder than others. And this goes for women but also a lot of other underrepresented groups. And you just have to keep going. I don't have time. I don't have time for
this to consume my day. I'm building a successful business and I'm going to earn a profit for my investors. So yeah I have my bleep to do. I got to go do it. Let's talk about that your company screw business helps companies helps people with their own pitching. What's your big idea. Yes. So thank you for bringing up Scorpius so arguably it's two years
old. We're a startup to stem from my last experience where I did successfully raise 10 million for a startup medical device company that I helped launch in Caron where I experienced extreme gender bias during the fundraising process. So we're screwed because we are product rising. What you would get from working with a pitch coach or having access to resources that teach you how investors think so that you can present yourself is investable. Because if you have been traditionally blocked from accessing those resources whether by network or whether because of funds because those are very expensive things to access for quality material you don't know that you are not presenting in a compelling way. It is not intuitive to
understand how investors think. And then on the other side of that we are building not yet launched. We have launched that found our side a data driven way to cure rate in a hyper curated way. What investors see so that it will speak to them and what they want to write checks to both the idea and the person which is where we need the checks from at the early stage. A few other stories we're watching Coinbase shares fell as much as 7 percent today after announcing in a blog post that it will temporarily pause knew a theory many RTS 20 token deposits during the merge. It is a temporary precautionary measure.
Theorem anticipates the merge will be completed on or around September 15th. And after a number of delays Apple has set a September 5th deadline for its corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week. Covid surges delayed the company's plans multiple times. Apple has been making other Covid related adjustments. It's also dropped its mask mandate in office. Common areas. And according to people familiar with the matter Apple has laid off many of its contract base recruiters in the last week about 100 contract workers fired at the world's most valuable company. We're told these cuts were made due to changes in Apple's current business needs. We reported last month the company was joining many other tech firms and hitting the brakes on hiring. And coming up how big tech is helping big oil pump more fuel. What that means for their pledge to transition to a greener
future next. This is Bloomberg. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology AM Emily Chang in San Francisco. President Biden has now signed the 750 billion dollar health care climate and tax bill into law capping more than a year of negotiations as Democrats had in the midterms this fall. Known as the Inflation Reduction Act the bill aims to reduce
inflation while encouraging greener industries to develop. And big tech has been vocal about wanting to go green. For some time now except big tech has actually been helping big oil make more profits than ever. Let's hear more about how Bloomberg's Marc Bergin who covers Alphabet joins us now. So Mark is there some hypocrisy here. I sense that certainly the criticism from both from outside environmentalists and from even the employees of these companies. So Microsoft actually has been
that the leader in the energy market a Paul Allen Covid closely behind by a W us Amazon. You know these companies will say and I've said multiple times that the reason that they're partnering with the oil and gas industry is to help them with the energy transition to clean renewable sources low carbon. We know we started off this report sort of interrogate that idea. It looks like so far a lot of that work has been there existing oil and gas production whether that's making that more efficient. And in some cases you know that oil and gas companies say they're lowering the carbon footprint of those operations. You know
there's there's certainly evidence that they haven't slowed down oil production. And especially now what you're seeing gas prices so high this summer there's the political demand for the oil companies to be producing more. And the cloud companies are really there's powerful data assets that let them do that more efficient. I recently spoke with Thomas Curia the head of Google Cloud about Google clouds deal with Saudi Aramco. Take a listen to what he had to say. And we work with their system integration division to provide our technology to customers in different parts of the Middle East. We have said that again and again that we don't work with
the oil and gas division within Aramco or with the system integration of our. What is you say said there underscore what you're trying to explain here. I think I mean there's certainly employees at Google have been very vocal about this. It's as if it's an Amazon and Microsoft.
And in some ways if you're a you know just a Google shareholder you might think well I want them to be more active in the industry. Like there's a lot of money in the oil and gas sector right now whether that's there. Their regular sort of production and exploration businesses and even some of this you know Chevron and and BP and these big majors have talked about a big game about busting a lot of energy. And so I think in some ways Google is sort of behind this sector whether or not that's because they intentionally sort of put one arm behind their back as far as limiting their work. But I do think that's that's a tension. But it doesn't seem to be slowing down Microsoft and Amazon. And in their defense they're saying that you know the companies oil companies wouldn't be able to move in to the renewables and clean energy as quickly without us. Interesting. All right. We'll continue to watch your coverage on
this Bloomberg's Marc Bergen. Thank you. Well the Inflation Reduction Act will lower drug costs as well. I want to bring in Jason Kelly now the CEO of the biotech firm Ginko Biotechs to discuss. So Jason how is this bill being signed into law. Impact your corner of the biotech universe. Yes there's actually two recent bills so that so there's the Chips and Science Act and then the Inflation Reduction Act both of both them are relevant in biotech.
So on the Inflation Reduction Act you saw these forty five to tax credits being expanded. That's really to create a growing market for carbon capture. And I think biology if you like look out the window right now you'll see plants out there pulling CO2 out of the air and fixing it you know. And so biology we see as one of the few really scalable technologies for doing carbon capture. But I think the the chip's bill actually is just as important from my standpoint. Why do you think it's so
important. Yeah. So. So if you look at if you look in that bill I think two things are critical. So one I think you see the US sort of kind of getting our mojo back when it comes to industrial policy and the government saying hey this sort of technology is important for us to have on shore. Actually I can go we just acquired a copy on California or announce that we're gonna acquire a company in California called Zimmer. You know this is a really build on the foundry technology we have at Gingko. You know my view is we want to be doing that so that we're not doing a bio chips bill you know 20 years from now and
having to bring that back on shore. These types of growth of these bio foundries here in the US I think is important. And you see that reflected in the bill. You know it directs the National Engineering Biology R and D initiative where OSTP is supposed to direct NSF and DOMA and DADT to spend on this. And then also has the OSTP establish a national genomic sequencing strategy. So
you actually see bio in the bill alongside chips. So I think it's a really it's a good signal by the government that these types of technologies are critical for the US is become a sort of regular voice for us through the pandemic. What are the biggest post pandemic storylines in biotech right now that aren't being talked about enough.
Yes. So I think the big one is going to be certain types of technologies that got built out in the during the pandemic are gonna stick around for ongoing prevention. So we actually just announced yesterday morning it's up to sixty one million dollar contract with the Centers for Disease Control here in the US to do monitoring on an ongoing basis at airports in the US where we basically collect samples from planes that come in internationally and then sequence the DNA to look for new variants. And this program we did as a pilot with the CDC caught the first cases of the two and be a three in the US that were sequenced. Well now now the CDC is funding this up to have it. Stick around. I mean to me this type of thing eventually will be kind of like a smoke detector right. We should be on the lookout for infectious disease. And that's a change. I think that is happened because of Covid. But we'll stick around after Covid. Are we prepared to go back to school. You know as a parent I
feel like there are still conflicting messages about masks. No masks testing. Like what are the rules supposed to be. Yes it's as easy to just update some some guidance on this. So I think where we're headed towards is I think you're gonna see this disease is starting to reflect a little more how people have been operating and are going to see you seeing relief and some of the things like the distancing roles and mask wearing making it easier where if you've had an exposure you don't need to quarantine. Just to be clear if you have Covid you still need to quarantine. So I think that's a misinterpretation a little bit on that. So if you're a positive go ahead. You should quarantine. But for folks that have been exposed you don't need to. That's going to help a lot in terms of having classes full. I think the the regular monitoring you know which we do and you
know like 10 or 15 states across the country where you're doing weekly testing in a group this actually allows for schools to stay open because you can identify you know if there's a positive case in the class you can pick it out send that one student home to quarantine but not the whole class and then prevent big outbreaks in schools which I think if we let it just kind of rep you will see a lot of that type of disruption. You know in various places. And so so I think you'll end up seeing monitoring stay you know masking go distance and go. And then the big wildcard is is there some new variant that flips that all on its head. And that certainly still in the range of possibilities. Well on that note do you think there will be a universal Covid vaccine in the future or. No because you know the virus is just going to keep changing. So I mean you know I think you will see the virus keep changing. You know I think you are working on this. There's ways to get at
it in the in the scope of biotech you know over the next 10 20 years I think we will get dramatically better at this. But we you know obviously we've been fighting flu and we do updated vaccines annually. I think you'll see things like that in the near term. But folks are definitely working on that. And so you know we you know we can help. But I'd say in the near term it's
more likely to be just updated versions of the vaccine. All right. Well we can help indeed. Gingko biotech CEO Jason Kelly always good to have you. Jason thanks for stopping by. All right. Coming up why is Jesse Powell still so bullish on Bitcoin. More on that and wider institutional sentiment on crypto. Next. This is Bloomberg. It's hard to know what the private markets. You know obviously we were not tracking the price kind of minute by minute basis like markets are. So it's really hard to know. You know we haven't been out raising capital. We've got a very long runway. Cash in the bank are profitable. So we don't need to go do another financing anytime soon. I
think we'll probably wait for the market to improve before we do another another round. It is time now for our crypto report. And that was crackin CEO Jesse Powell talking about what he thinks the current crypto bear market. In an interview earlier on Bloomberg's crypto show with Kelly Lyons let's talk about it more with our own crypto contributor Sonali Basak Jihye Lee. Give us an update on the crypto market son whether Jesse Powell is right by just waiting it out. Well Jesse Powell had bought in more at about 18000. Then you saw Bitcoin did reach twenty five thousand four a bit this month. It has come down below 24000 again. So where does that leave us. Emily. It doesn't leave us at the price that he
thought it would hit last year. Do you remember he told you and me that Bitcoin would be worth a Lamborghini. But even though it has not hit that price you do see it about half the price it was at this time last year but double where it was two years ago. It'll be interesting to see the market kind of sort out the natural price of bitcoin as you make it through another cycle. Wanted to also point out a theorem on the month because you do see a gain on the month. You do see that price rising because of that anticipation of the merge. But in more recent days that excitement has worn off just a little bit. You have it rolling around eighteen thousand seven D seven right now. It did peak above two thousand this month with that anticipation. It is
anticipation of the merge. I know we're going to talk a little bit more about that next. All right all right. Stick with us. I want to talk about this more and how Bitcoin startups are trying to secure capital as as the crypto winter continues. Are investors buying the industry back up. Are they staying cautious. Let's talk about that with at least Killeen founder managing partner of Still Mark. So Elise are you on the bullish side like Jesse Powell or somewhere else on the spectrum. We're very bullish both about bitcoin the asset and the underlying protocol. And we have to be because entrepreneurial activity has never been more robust. In fact we've seen a pickup in sort of the tests that people are willing to take during this period
when the market is more quiet when we're in a bear market and there's less consumer activity. It's a great time to both dig in to the metrics that you've produced in bull market times as well as to experiment. And that's what we're seeing now from top founders. What do you make of the merge. Because you saw this news coming out about a coin base really looking to pause transactions in and around the merge. Clearly there was going to be some technical difficulties around it as people try to scam others. That was a warning that they sent out. What are you thinking will be the near-term issues and what is a long term
prospect. Well Coinbase Quinn this is note that they're parsing deposits and withdrawals for E. I think it's something that's expected but it works out to us the trade offs as using a centralized exchange to hold your cryptocurrency. Of course there's some opportunities using using a custodian. But the advantage is to
people using self custody that they they themselves set the rules for how they use their bitcoin or their money or other forms of crypto assets. Now looking ahead to point 2.0 I think that we know we know that there's risks and that the Algerian community is hoping that there's great reward. But one of the things to look out for is the centralizing forces of moving from proof of work to proof of stake of course. We know that the majority of these states the vast majority of the state is eat
belonging to these large institutions. And so those folks of course are exposed to U.S. regulators and have been tested very recently with O. Fact coming out against tornado passion. And these same institutions that comprise the majority of state eat in fact are those that have complied within days to affect sanction of Tawni. I'm so glad you brought up tornado cash because earlier today Jessie Powell did say that the shutdown was unconstitutional. I'm wondering how you see this debate
really playing out in the market the good the bad and what behaviors might not be accepted among these companies moving forward. It's hard to know what regulators are going to do but it's easy to know how centralized institutions are going to respond. They're going to comply. And that's the value of course of decentralization. So we know that Bitcoin leads with decentralization. What that means is that when looking at how the protocol is secured Bitcoin finds it most important to make sure that the protocol is secured in a decentralized fashion and that any industry individual user can do two things. One they can validate the code Bitcoin's core protocol and its payment
network protocol. The open source users can know the rules the software rules the systems. But number two users can participate in validating the accuracy of the ledger themselves. That's something that's much easier to do in Bitcoin than in other protocols. And one of the reasons it's important to be able to do that is sort of being demonstrated by the news of the last couple of weeks and the implications of it governments and imposition of regulations for instance regulations to prevent things like money laundering. We're seeing that happen now with tornado cash. And we know that some of the most critical services in the ethereal space has have felt the need to comply and have quickly done so making users that have received even passively transactions from tornado cash sort of lose access to services that they depended on at least. I recently sat down with Coinbase CEO Emily Choi to talk about their partnership with BlackRock. Take a listen to what she had to say.
I have wanted to do that Black Rock Partnership since the day I joined Coinbase. So for this to come together now actually during the crypto winter is such an incredible testament to where we are where they are where their customers are. And I think the most important point is it speaks to institutional customers very traditional institutional customers wanting to get crypto asset exposure. She said to expect more partnerships like this. But every day
there are more bumps in the crypto road. How is this all impacting. Give us the temperature of investor sentiment. Institutional sentiment. So the BlackRock and Coinbase partnership were the coin only a BlackRock is doing is allowing its institutional investors to participate to buy Bitcoin and to trade Bitcoin via Coinbase while still using blackbox software from management and risk analysis. This I think was a response. We see it as a clear response to the demand of the very
traditional institutions that are served by BlackRock. Now it's important to note here is that providing a new onramp in a familiar environment and with familiar tools is likely to act as a very significant catalyst for institutional adoption. I want to flip this for a moment though. Emily Emily Chang say that well while we're seeing traditional institutions adopt Bitcoin like BlackRock we know that some of the most significant and important adoption of Bitcoin and Bitcoin payments network is happening in emerging markets. And so these two forms of adoption are happening simultaneously. And I think and to sort of the fundamental value of bitcoin that Jessie from crack and spoke to earlier. Elise Clean still Mark Capital. Thank you so much for sharing your views with us today as well as our own channel IBEX. OK. Coming up is the FTSE
harassing Jeff Bezos. That's what Amazon plates. We'll have more on why next. This is. Amazon is fighting back against the FTC in a filing made public on Monday. Amazon claims that FTSE staff have made unduly burdensome demands on the e-commerce giant as it keeps investigating its subscription services. Here for more on this
Bloomberg's Emily Birnbaum. With us now and Amazon also claiming that the FTC is harassing Jeff Bezos. How so. Yeah. So in this filing made public yesterday Amazon claims that the FTC has been overreaching in their ongoing consumer protection investigation into Amazon's subscription services. So that includes Prime and it's actually expanded to include audible Kindle and some other of Amazon's services. So they the FTC issued what's called civil investigative demands which are essentially subpoenas to 20 former and current Amazon employees. They serve them at their houses. And that includes Jeff Bezos
and Eddie Jesse the two top executives at Amazon. And they say it was unnecessary to give them to Jassi and base those. These are about a lot of different parts of the business. These were the highest level executives. You know there's nothing. This is what Amazon says. They say there's nothing that Jassi and Bezos can give you that you can't get from documents and lower level executives. Is this unusual. It's actually extremely unusual in how confrontational it is. What's typical is that companies will always fight to narrow down subpoenas and civil investigative demands that they get from the government. But what's atypical
is how public this is how aggressive they are in their rhetoric. You know calling this very unusual perplexing and asking the FTC to pare it down in such a public way. Remind us why the FTC is investigating Amazon and the status of this case. So the FTC has been investigating Amazon for several years now.
It actually began under the Trump administration when they were given the power to investigate Amazon over antitrust concerns. It's gotten broader since then. This particular investigation that we're talking about is a consumer protection investigation into whether Amazon makes it too difficult for consumers to opt out of Amazon Prime or other subscription services. But this is only one part of a sweeping investigation that looks at all parts of Amazon's business
including cloud including streaming. So when could we expect this to draw to some sort of conclusion. The filing says that the FTC intends to make a decision about whether to sue Amazon over the subscription issue by the fall. This is probably gonna prolong it. So it's probably going to take more time than that. You know a couple of months. But what's clear from the filing is FTSE staff are under a lot of pressure by the commissioners including FCC Chair Lena Conn to get something done by the end of the year. All right. Well we'll continue to follow your reporting on this Bloomberg's Emily Birnbaum for us in Washington. Thank you. And so that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Wednesday we've got Arms CEO Rene Haas joining us about the chip landscape and the latest with their possible IPO. And don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcast. You can find it on the terminal online. Apple Spotify I Heart Radio and more. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg.
2022-08-19 12:24
