Apple's Vision Pro For Sale and Ford Cuts EV Workforce | Bloomberg Technology
From the hardware, innovation, money and power collide in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow. I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Caroline Hyde is off this week. This is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up in the program, Apple's Vision
Pro is officially for sale. We'll discuss early demand for the pricey products and why big names like Spotify, Netflix and YouTube are snubbing the device. Plus, Ford announcing plans for production cuts of the F-150 lightning electric truck.
More on a weakening demand picture for EVs and the 1400 employees impacted by that pullback. And Amazon's $1.4 billion deal for iRobot is expected to be blocked by the U.S antitrust watchdog, sending shares of the Roomba maker plunging. All that and so much more. Happy Friday. It is the end of a shortened week because of the US holiday. This is what financial markets look like in the technology context. NASDAQ 100 up a percentage point
outperformance has been the story in semiconductor shares. The stocks of Philadelphia Semiconductor index continue to push higher two percentage points. So much of that is the ripple effect from what we heard 24 hours ago from TSMC, the biggest contract manufacturer for CHIPS, and we're thinking about 2024. Do we see improvement for end markets that all those chips go into? Remember, next week is a big earnings week as well. You have Texas Instruments, you have Intel reporting.
Do we continue that story or does the momentum get halted? TED yields 4.16% on the US, ten year creeping up a little and Bitcoin now back even nearer to 40,000 USD per token. There has been some kind of pullback and volatility after the euphoria of the spot Bitcoin ETF approvals of last week. Let's be honest, the big story the single name of the week has been Apple catalysts to both the upside and the downside. On a five day basis, we are up 2.4%. We're headed for a second consecutive weeks of gains. Remember, one big catalyst was Bank of America's upgrade to buy with some enthusiasm about what Vision Pro does on the hardware and services side of the top line For Apple, you can now place a pre-order for a Vision pro, but if you go on the website you'll notice one thing The date of delivery is getting pushed back further and further. We have the perfect voice.
Bloomberg's chief correspondent Mark Gurman with us. Now let's start with the data we see in real time. If you try to AWS our Vision pro right now, what do you see? Yeah. Ed, thanks so much for having me, as always. That's right. The visual fro went on sale for preorder this morning, 5 a.m. Pacific Time. And right now, if you're going to place
a new order, it's likely if you're doing it for an online delivery not to come until mid-March, you're seeing between March 8th and March 15th for all three storage capacities, 256 gigs, half a terribly and a terabyte. Now, if you're trying to do in-store pickup, the first day of availability is also booked up. But depending on the sizing of the headset that you need, you do a face scan when you order it and it gives you a custom size. There's about 25 different sizes you may be able to get pick up in the first couple of days of availability, but for the most part, if you're doing a delivery to your home, you're not to be able to get one deep into March. I think that, you know, we're using the
delivery date as a kind of proxy for early demand. And the Vision Pro is going to be initially a pro like high price point, small volume niche product. But it does seem like there is demand there. You agree with that? People are quite excited about this product. There is absolutely demand. Now, it's unclear exactly what the slip ups mean, right? It could be a combination of demand, a combination of supply, a combination of both.
You could be seeing really low demand, but really, really low supply. So it's not entirely clear what it means. But based on what I'm seeing on ex what I'm seeing on other social media platforms, the usual suspects, so to speak, the early adopters in the Apple community are all over this thing. I ordered one personally. As you know, I have a deep interest in Apple products, so it's people sort of in my category, early adopters, big time Apple fans, people that really want to learn more about the company that are buying this thing for now.
And I imagine once some tech enthusiasts start trying it in an Apple retail store starting on February 2nd, they'll get about a 20 to 25 minute demo. You'll see sales go up as well on that opening weekend. They'll have some inventory for non preorders.
But you know, the company itself, they're expecting a pretty strong opening couple of weeks. But for sales to taper from there, which is what you would expect from a new major product category at this price, the people who want to buy this thing have been wanting to buy it for months now since it was introduced in June. So they're going to get their orders in early and then it's really going to take price cuts and new generations of this product to really expand market share for Apple in the VR space and make it a real revenue maker. Right? It follows the format of the iPhone, right? You have Vision Pro, but I guess we're waiting on the Vision Songs Pro at a later date. The news flow this week has been
astonishing when it comes to Apple and in the context of Vision Pro, we did a lot of reporting about the developers or content great creators that are choosing not to make a vision pro specific application. Tell us those names and what we've learned. Yeah, someone deeply involved in the development of the product told me it's going to be the applications that make or break this product.
And right now you're seeing some of the top tier platforms deciding to not participate. I'll give you three names Netflix, YouTube and Spotify. Spotify is interesting, but you know, you can use that through the web and it's a music streaming service.
And who really knows or cares, to be honest, if this is going to be a great platform for music listening. But Apple's really positioning. This is a video and a movie watching device. And if you're not going to have YouTube or Netflix applications on here, that's a real drawback now. So they certainly have Macs, Disney Plus, Peacock, ESPN, NBA, you name it. But the two biggest streaming services in the world, right? YouTube and Netflix not being on there is a real omission and it's potentially a problem for Apple out of the gate.
Now, I have some theories as to why they're not participating. I think both are taking a wait and see approach. In the case of Netflix, maybe they don't want to prop up a rival in streaming who has Apple TV Plus, but at some point you may see enough people tell you YouTube and Netflix they don't want to use their services anymore. If you're not on the Apple Vision Pro, then they'll have to get on there. But I think that's going to take a while there. They're okay to lose a thousand users, but if you start seeing tens of thousands of people saying, We're not going to subscribe anymore over this, they'll have to make a change. But of course, that's going to take
many, many months, if not longer. Mark, The final story I want to touch on is in the context of the European Union. But if you're an iPhone user and you go into a store or grab some food, you can pay by tapping your iPhone on the receiver. And what Apple seems to be doing now in the context of regulatory action is opening up that technology to some of its competitors. Explain that one. Yeah, it's interesting. So this morning, you know, the European Union said that Apple had agreed to open up the NFC chip to third party payment services. So right now that tap to pay feature you
described and only could work with that Apple Pay Apple service. If you're a third party, if you're a Chase, if you're an Amex, you can't integrate your own tap to pay service using that hardware component through your application. Now, Apple said they're agreeing to open that up to change that. It's funny because on March seven, they're going to be doing that anyways. Right. March 7th is when the Digital Markets act and EU kicks in.
That is a requirement of the DMA to open up things like NFC, to open up the App Store to third party billing services. Right. So Apple basically said they're going to be doing something that they're already planning to do in two months anyway. So not necessarily a woman here for Apple. You know, there is a scenario where they may lose a little royalty on Apple Pay because of this.
But if it continues to fend off regulators and avoid multibillion dollar fines, that certainly is a positive for the company. Okay. Apple up 8/10 of a percent in the session, up 2% on the week. And I highly recommend that you subscribe to Mark's news that a power on because you summarize all of that on a weekly basis Bloomberg's Mark Gurman chief correspondent Thank you. Now coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, Ford is cutting its workforce that's responsible for making the F-150 lightning electric truck.
There's a lot of to discuss when it comes to EV demand. I also want to go back to Apple for a second. We're watching shares because on the back of that boss upgrade, Evercore ISI is also added the stock to its tactical outperform list, with the firm writing that various risks surrounding the iPhone maker could be overdone. And remember, this year, a lot of concern about growth and a lot of concern about China. But ISI, Evercore ISI, a little bit more bullish. This is Bloomberg Technology. Turning to some breaking news just out a few moments ago on the Bloomberg terminal, Open Air CEO Sam Altman is seeking billions of dollars, specifically in an effort to secure supply for air chips.
It is part of a broader initiative that we're reporting here and at Bloomberg, myself and colleagues, including Dana Bash, that the aim is to set up a series of fabs globally, plants or factories with specific dedication to capacity for these chips. Let's get right to Bloomberg's Dana Bash, one of the co bylines with me on this story. And, Dana, you know, we've done a lot of reporting on this kind of initiative. We know that Sam out there was looking at chips, but actually what's new here is the focus on capacity, future capacity. Yes, that's right. So in the wake of the Sam ouster, we you know, Ed, you and a couple of other reporters reported this CHIP initiative.
But I think the belief or assumption was that what opening I would be doing yours, similar to what Microsoft is doing, is similar to what Google does, similar to what IWC does, which is design their own artificial intelligence chips. In reality, what we hear from our sources is that we're almost trying to address is the chip shortage, that there's not enough fabrication capacity to make enough chips. Now, that's been going on for a while, but we're opening them up and want to address actually not the current shortage.
It's what our sources tell us and fears that there will be a significant shortage a couple of years out from now. So when we come to the end of the decade, if artificial intelligence is as pervasive as Sam Altman thinks it will be, if you remember, he's very focused on heading towards AGI, artificial intelligence that there will simply not be, in his view, enough processors for what he thinks is going to go on at that point. There are still many questions about how mechanically this would work. Right. You know, what I'm hearing you're hearing is that there's all these talks with all kinds of investors to raise a huge sum of money, tens and tens of billions of dollars.
But in reality, it's not just as simple as saying, okay, great, we've got the funds. Let's build a loaded hit factories wherever we want. You know, the market is dominated by TSMC, Samsung and at a hopeful newcomer in Intel. What do we know about what's on the table here in terms of the proposed way this would work? So what we're hearing is it often is now on a stage of, as you say, putting together sort of a group of partners. So some of that is the capital, the investors, who is going to fund all of this. And some of that is is talking to the
existing chip fab companies. We're not you know, we're not hearing that Openai wants to, you know, start learning how to pour concrete or anything like that. This is a really complicated business with really just about three competitors in it. And, you know, it takes a ton of expertise to do so. What we're hearing is that the idea would be to work with the people that know how to do this, but again, to figure out a way to dramatically expand that to be so that five years from now, the industry doesn't find that it's not in a position to to produce what's necessary. You know, you. Edina, I just want to relay to our
audience that Openai, Intel, SoftBank, TSMC, Microsoft and G42, which is a firm that we had reported in the past, wanted to give some out in money for this. Did not respond to requests to comment or declined to comment. Samsung in particular, just a key name in the fab space. Didn't respond to requests for comment. But the takeaway that I have is that forget what happened with Sam Altman's short departure from open Air and then return. He's able to go out there and talk to people, raise money and come up with these big plans, which, let's be honest, this is a bold move in the context of how chip manufacturing actually works.
Right? Absolutely. And he was obviously in Davos this week. So we will see if anything comes out of any meetings there as he tries to put together some sort of consortium behind this. You mentioned Microsoft. You know, we have reported previously reported again today that Open has held talks with Microsoft about this idea that if the software giant remains interested potentially in being being a part of it, again, they declined to comment as well. But you know what we're reporting and what you see, Sam, trying to put together the pieces of what he would need to do that sort of to put together a financial backing.
As we mentioned in the story, there also been talks with SoftBank and to to put together the expertise around chip manufacturing. And as you said, this is a this is a much more dramatic initiative. And there's various forecasts for the the A.I. chip field. You know, there are some people who feel
that there there will not be enough. And there are some people that feel that the the industry is on a trajectory to increase the number of chips that are manufactured, that that will be just fine. And the reality is that what we're we're right now, all I would say is that what we're reporting is the reality of is that it's the world's leading AI company trying to have a more direct control over its supply chain, for want of a better summary, Bloomberg saying it Abbas. Great to work with you on this story. Thanks for joining the show.
Now, another story that we're tracking is Ford says it's going to reduce the number of workers that are making its F-150 lightning truck, and that is due to demand for electric vehicles weakening. About 1400 employees will be impacted that work on the assembly lines for F-150 lightning. I want to bring in my friend and colleague Keith Naughton out of Detroit. And, Keith, you know, this is directly linked to what we already knew. The F-150 lightning production this year will be half what Ford previously estimated. But just explain the mechanics of how they're carrying that out.
Yeah. So they are, as you said, eliminating 1400 people at the F-150 lightning plant. Interestingly, 700 of them will move over to an internal combustion engine plant here in Detroit that builds the the Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup truck, because those traditional gas fuel vehicles are selling very well.
So they're adding a third crew to that plant while going down to one shift at the lightning plant. It really does reflect on this weakening demand that we're seeing for electric vehicles. Sales of electric vehicles are still up, but their growth has slowed dramatically. Uber sees their growth at about 11% in the US this year. Last year, electric vehicle sales grew
by 47%. And therein is the story, right, Keith, that, you know, they're saying there's still demand globally. It's just even less than our already lowered expectations. And at the same time, we've got to make sure we build enough of our popular combustion engine cars. And tell us the summary of the EV story with Ford. All I see is lightning and all I see is mach-e and okay. Trends it.
What are their bigger picture plans at this point? You and I did a lot of reporting on that historically, but things kind of seem a bit stale. Yeah. So what they have is their first Gen EV of the vehicles out there, which, you know, arrived as you would call Ed with a lot of fanfare, but they've really slowed. They've also cut production of the Mustang Mach-e. There's incentives on that. Now they're really talking up their next gen EV vehicles, which will be ground up electric vehicles with all kinds of digital capabilities that are, you know, to be discovered by consumers. But they promise they'll be very exciting. But those are still a ways away 20, 20,
25, 2026. And that's one of the reasons UBS actually cut Ford this week to hold from buy. They feel like the payoff on Ford's strategy is going to take longer than expected. All right Bloomberg's keep Naughton on
the auto be at in Detroit's greats catch up. Thanks for joining the program. Now coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, an all European commercial crew is on its way to the International Space Station, the first time that all the seats are occupied by Europeans. We can have those details coming up next. I'm also taking a look at shares of AMD, which currently up three and a half percent in the session, AMD pushing fresh record highs.
And what's so interesting about it is its outperformance relative to in video. They closed at a record high Thursday. The momentum in that stock continues. It's a 12% gain on the week and this is a name that in the next couple of weeks reports earnings. What are we looking for? Am I 300 x the I accelerate up? What do we want to know? How many of them are they really selling in the real world? The investors seem really bullish around this name is one of the picks and shovels, as Kara calls it, in the air space.
This is Bloomberg Technology. 3 to 1 ignition engine, full power and. They're on the way. SpaceX rocket blasting off yesterday
carrying the first European commercial crew to the International Space Station. It's a landmark mission for Europe's space industry, which frankly has been struggling to get off the ground due to a number of delays on the launch system side. I want to bring in Bloomberg Space correspondent Lauren Grosch. You know, this is kind of business as
normal for Space X for Axiom. It's an important moment with an all European crew and for commercial spaceflight also important. Just give us the basics of this mission. Sure. So this is the actually the third mission for Axiom Space, which is a company based in Houston, hoping to build their own private space stations in the future. And basically, these missions that
they've been doing with Space X, they held a contract to do a number of these missions to the International Space Station. They're bit like practice missions. Precursor missions to an axiom has its own private space station in orbit, which it's hoping to launch this decade.
So this is giving them kind of a dress dress rehearsal for when they send humans to their own station one day. What you said is really interesting. I kind of see the mission is as more evidence of momentum of the public sector or space agencies handing over to the private sector to get this done. And you know, I love the numbers, right? Space X charge is like, what, $55 million a seat to carry people up. And then the idea is the axiom wants to
be like the travel operator, you know, the broker, the middleman. Is that is that a good summary? That's essentially what's happening with these Axiom missions. And then eventually, you know, they'll move to their own space station. But yes, the idea is to eventually transfer kind of the or give the keys over to the commercial space industry.
You know, right now, the main destination for astronauts in low-Earth orbit is the International Space Station, which is overseen by NASA. But, you know, eventually the space station will have to come down. It's destined to stay up until the end of the decade. But the idea is eventually private space stations will take over what the International Space Station has provided for astronauts.
And Axiom Space hopes to be one of those companies to take over the reins when the space station has to eventually come to its end. Lauren, real quick, I know you cannot be in two places at once, but while we speak, there's a key lunar mission being carried out by Japan's space agency. Just give us a quick summary of what's happening above our heads. Yes. So this morning, Japan attempted to land
its first probe on the surface of the moon. And we were kind of left in a state of ambiguity when they said that it landed, but they could not confirm the status of the lander. I believe we just got confirmation that it did indeed land. They secured a signal, but we're not sure if it's generating power with its solar panels, which is not necessarily a good sign.
I believe there is a press conference going on as we speak, so maybe we can get more details once they sign off from planet Earth. They're all views on space. Bloomberg's Lauren Grace, it's great to have you on the program. Happy Friday. Now coming up on Bloomberg Technology, Amazon's $1.4 billion iRobot deal is due
to be blocked by the European Union's antitrust regulator. We will go over to the continent to talk about that and go a little bit broader on what's happening in the antitrust context of big tech in Europe. And in M&A, Bloomberg's Mark Bergen is going to be joining us. And remember, with fresh off the back of a conversation with the EU's competition chief Margaret Silvester, who joined me on the set just ten days ago from SARS.
This is Bloomberg Technology. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology Ed Ludlow here in San Francisco. So as it stands in the markets, the Nasdaq 100 on track to close at a fresh record high on a five day basis. We're up two percentage points, second straight week of declines. Although it's worth reminding ourselves, despite all the news flow, we're only, what, two, four weeks into the year.
So the story here has been about mutual funds, hedge funds being very long. The technology sector, which they were not at the beginning of 2023, there's an element of FOMO that you need exposure to tech because if you want in 2023, you missed out on that rally driven by the Magnificent Seven. But remember, the Fed also factors into this new wait. We've been kind of going back and forth on the debts and cadence of rate cuts that we will or won't get in 2024, driven by all the Fed speech that's happened this week. Next week, the story is all about earnings and into that valuations are high and expectations are high.
How does a I go That's a lot, isn't it? Factor in to that equation next week in the news flow to clear movers iRobot down 27%. Amazon is higher by half a percentage point. Bloomberg record reporting that according to sources, the EU will move to block the $1.4 billion acquisition by Amazon of iRobot because they have not offered remedies and they've not addressed the use concerns with arguments. Now what's interesting about this, ten days ago the EU competition chief Margaret Thatcher joined me here in the studio and at that time we knew that Amazon had not offered remedies. And she said very simply, we need to understand them what their arguments are. Have a listen to this.
In any merger, it is so that if we have concerns, it is for the businesses either to address these concerns by debunking them or by addressing them by coming up with remedies that will solve the problem. And if a company say we will not come up with remedies, well, then, of course, we expect that they have good arguments, that our concerns should not be sustained. And we are still in the process of assessing our concerns compared to to a situation where we do not have a remedy to the concerns that we have have drawn up.
So that was the EU Competition Commissioner ten days ago talking to me about this Amazon iRobot deal, saying we don't have remedies, so we need good arguments on why this deal should proceed. I want to bring in Bloomberg's Mark Bergen out of London. And Mark, what do we know? Because it seems like Amazon did not have good arguments. And it also seems like the issue here is that some kind of meeting has taken place. You know, our understanding, according to sources, is that there was a meeting between EU officials and there was a meeting between Amazon representatives, and the had been informed that the EU intends to block that deal. I think we having some issues reports will go back to it later on.
I want to stick with M&A and acquisitions vows of the Montreal based company specialising in acquiring and growing vertical software businesses announced the closing of a $170 million funding. Investors include CO-2 and Viking. I'm delighted save our CEO Sam Youssef and my good friend Bloomberg Sonali Basak join us now.
And Sonali, I'm going to let you take it away in a second. But Sam, this is an unusual financial transaction. So you're raising money, but the investors are basically handing it over to you so you can go shopping. Yes, Basically, we thanks a lot for having me on first. And it's lovely.
It's a pleasure to be here. Basically, we're at a point where we 20, 22 and 2023 were very good years for many, with interest rates going up, uncertainty around the economy. For a serial acquirer like us, it was a good environment. We deploy the capital did really well. And we went out to the market to, you know, get additional funding to execute on our pipeline. And we had options to raise money through equity. But we had this this offer from Viking
that involved, you know, a hybrid type of arrangement where were the give us money and there was a payment in kind rather than cash interest, allowing us to preserve maximum liquidity to execute our pipeline and diminish the dilution. Given that we had such a clear way to allocate the capital, we decided to go with something like that because we could increase the value of the company and create more shareholder value that way and delay a little bit the equity financing. Sam, tell us about the process here, because there are a lot of questions about crossover investors, big hedge funds in the venture capital space.
How hard was it to raise money at this point in time and why did you go to Viking in Q2? Yeah, well, Viking was already an investor in the company, about a 15% or so equity stake back in 2020, 2022 and 23, and then they chose to participate in this funding, backing us to do more of what we've been doing and could see has this new crossover fund that suited our needs perfectly for us. It wasn't hard to raise equity. I think there's a big divergence that's happening in the market between, you know, speculative growth and sort of quality. But also it's a business model is around mission critical software and the acquisition of these small to midsize companies.
The market is consolidating and also has been able to build a global platform to be a significant player in that consolidation. The market participants appreciated that, wanted to be part of it. Sam, what about the valuations you're seeing in the market? Presumably they're still falling, so how are the pricing mechanisms behind which are buying assets for. So what we saw happened in the market is around the 2022, you know, mid 2022 and all of 2023. It was a good market for us. So we're like a value based buyer.
We're looking at, you know, buying things that we feel could be accretive to our shareholders. So so with interest rates going up, private equity being a little bit more cautious, the private equity port calls doing a little less deals. It was an exceptional environment for us because we are cash buyers. We we're doing deals on unlevered basis and and we saw our record pipeline and that continues for now. But you could see, you know, like with the rally that's been happening in in the markets, we're starting to see a little bit more competition than we saw over the course of 2023. Mm hmm.
What about the potential to go public? If you think about your own path moving forward and the rivals around you, the potential things that you could buy. Are the public markets attractive or do are people preferring private hands? I think for for for a company like ours, the market will be would be reactive, like the private market interest is an indication of that. And I think we we it's it would be our plans to to execute on an IPO potentially in the next 24 months or so if the opportunity comes. Some in the market, but also in your operations.
I got to ask, how is I factored into all of this? Yeah, of course, it's the jury remains out. I mean, there's there is. I was reading about this this new start by Chamath Palihapitiya, the 8020, where they're promising to build 80% of futures at 90% less of the cost. Our feeling is we deal in vertical market software. So the integrations in the specific
industry are very difficult to replicate and give us a barrier of entry like we haven't seen any meaningful impact. We haven't seen any impact at all other than the fact that it's enabled us to offer more to our customers for for a similar price. And so far it's given us some efficiency in terms of we support our customers. There's efficiency around that. We've seen the productivity of our developers go up significantly, and that's accelerating. The jury remains out.
I think it's it's still not clear, but you could see a world where we're where software companies become more efficient. And you can also see a world where software companies could become a little bit more commoditized, especially more horizontal companies. Also see Sam, Yusef and Lindsay. Sonali, that segue. Thanks to you both. Some breaking news crossing the bloomberg terminal moments ago. Within google DeepMind, some of its key scientists are in talks to leave and start a new AI startup.
Bloomberg also reporting that those scientists are looking at fund raising and some big numbers are involved. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Mark Bergen who is out in London. Mark, he led some of the reporting on this. What do we know?
We don't know a great deal, but we do know that the names are involved are two key long term scientists at DeepMind, which has been long, long considered probably the most leading AI research lab in the world. They're based in Paris, where there's a lot of activity around French air. We saw the Mistral Open, a competitor that came up last year and is now worth 2 billion. This is a round. We've heard an initial funding round potentially, is there? They're in talks with active investors, a €200 million, which is a huge amount even for generative AI. But these are researchers and two of them at least, that have had multiple experience. One of them was involved with the AlphaGo paper.
If everyone remembers that from 2016, where DeepMind built that algorithm, that was the first to ever master the game of Go, and it was just a seminal work in the field. All right. Bloomberg's Mark Bergen, who is one of the team at in Europe and here in San Francisco, reporting out that story. And to your point, €200 million. I mean, Mitchell's debut fundraising round was just north of 100 million USD. These are big sums for a two person act that we've seen a lot of activity around in recent months. Thank you very much. Coming up here on Bloomberg Technology, we continue talking about all things tech M&A in 2024 with Mashable chat from day one Ventures.
My goodness, as Fridays go. There is a lot going on. That conversation is coming out next. This is Bloomberg Technology. After the Adobe Figma deal was called off. Where do we stand in tech M&A and particularly in looking ahead to 2024? Delighted to say we're going to talk about that with Masha Butcher and today's VC Spotlight. She is the general partner and founder
of Day One Ventures, an early stage VC firm, but with lots of asset under management. Masha We got obsessed in September about a very short lived IPO window, and then we kind of lamented that a lot of deals got shut down. If you're a venture capitalist with a portfolio of maturing companies, what are your options in 2024? What do you advise them to pursue? I think, first of all, most of the most interesting and most important companies of our time, that's creating a ton of value for freelancers and for early stage entrepreneurs and for people. And this will be in couple of months a
lot. I think, first of all, it meant for later stage investments that looking to invest in a later stage. And right now that investors realize, as you do and there is someone who wanted to acquire portfolio companies and ready to pay a sizable amount for this opportunity, it might not go through because the regulator might not let this deal to go through. This is first, and I do think it will lead to decrease the amount of investments in later stage.
I think for early stage it would also mean a lot if this deal went through, it would have been $7 billion of fresh capital. Then it would go back to this year to some of the early investors and taking. So it's $7 billion that would have gone to top tier funds and some other funds that have invested and figured early that they could reinvest in other opportunities. And right now they wouldn't be able to do so. And I think it's also influencing the early stage in different direction. Right now.
Everyone understand if you invest in a company in a very early stage at 5 to 10 billion valuation, like our fund that you do still can have very good and sizable returns because you have secondary opportunity. You could still make a lot of money if your company has it 1 billion, it doesn't have to grow as far as 20 billion. So I do think near-term it will increase competition on early stage and the stage where we're operating. The I case study is very interesting because if you look at early private market investor enthusiasm and take some examples like health care or biotech, those types of companies do seem ripe for acquisition for mature or long standing, publicly traded health care companies. Right.
That they they could be a destination for for a smaller firm with a micro focus. Well, I think it is very exciting. I personally think that this is the only way for us to solve some of the most pressing problems that's related to climate change, that related to some horrible disease like cancer. And it's really they're one of the very few way in the world to increase inequality and to give economic opportunities to less developed places and less developed part of the population. But I do think at the same time, if you a company culturally, you're so different and you operate so differently compared to the rest of economies that I do not think it's a good pathway for any progressive company to be acquired by old school, big public companies in biotech or in any other field. So I actually do think we will be in the world when companies will be bigger than their old school companies. It's not a competence. And I do think that in a few years from
now, I wouldn't honestly tell you which company would be bigger. Opening at Microsoft, actually, you two were thinking that it would be Openai. And we can use this analogy when we think about any other companies. Marshall, what is 2024 look like for you? You know, where are you going to be focused and writing checks thematically or geographically? I'm really focused on humans. My entire career from two perspectives. On the one hand, I think there's only one topic right now that's as exciting for me as A.I., and this is Future of
Human. And I think there are different things that falls into this bucket that can have to do with longevity and health, that has to do with future of reproduction. It has to do with mental health. I do want to explore what it is future of humans. And I do think there are different leaders like Brad Johnson that pushing the boundaries of what's possible.
And I do think of Brian himself creating a so-called blueprint economy when people will organize their entire lifestyle around that. I do like to say that future of consumer is longevity, because I think you can't get to healthy, you can't get too happy. And more and more people finding out about the opportunity to improve their house, to improve their mental cost, to improve their relationship. So I think the future of film is really
interesting and kind of investors and invest very early. And I invest in founders and I keep being excited about meeting new founders, which is different from anyone else and can change the world. I think tech founders and tech entrepreneurs are the ones that will drive the biggest change for humanity and definitely change for the better.
And I'm very hopeful to meet new companies and find out what is it. All the crazy things that I come up with that will change the world that we live in right now with such a big step. Day One Ventures general partner and founder, Mashable. Great to have you on the program and good to catch up. Thank you. Now, we're also going to stick with Amy for the rest of the program coming up.
AI powered wearables are going to take on the smartphone market. Have you heard that one before? We'll bring you some details next. This is Bloomberg Technology.
All right. Here's some news in Talk in Tech. And first, on Tsmc's outlook for capital spending and revenue is lifting hopes of a bounce back in smartphone chips and computing demand for 2020 for other chip stocks like India. Over in Tokyo, Tokyo Electron gained more than $160 billion of market value after TSMC gave its outlook. And also. Fashion giant chain fits firmed up plans for a US IPO late last year. But despite selling nothing in China, it's still going to be subject to review by Chinese regulators.
The revelation casts a cloud over the debut of an estimated $90 billion company that could be the fifth largest consumer company IPO of all time. Plus, the judge presiding over Epic games is challenge to Google's play store business model. Wants to hear from expert economists saying he's not confident about setting a fee for mobile app developers without some expert input. Google Play currently charges
commissions of as much as 30% to software developers who typically don't have any other options. AI powered wearables are taking on smartphones, a new crop of pens, monikers, smart sunglasses. They're all coming to market and are trying to challenge the dominance posed by traditional smartphone. I want to bring in Bloomberg's Shereen Ghaffari, who's been writing about this in her newsletter, I must say. See, yes, this was the thing. Air is real.
It's in these devices. What have you been writing about? That's right. I think we're seeing the most hype and excitement around wearables since perhaps ten years ago when Google Glass first came out. You know, people are really trying to capitalize on the rapid advancements that have been made on the software side with Gen AI and bring that into hardware.
A part of this story is is a bet that human beings change how they interact in terms of communication. Right. Humane is what we're showing on the screen now. We've had the CEO on the show, but it's going to be different from having something physically in your hands seems to be the main takeaway. Rex. The idea is for a lot of these devices, they're not aiming to necessarily completely replace the smartphone write out, but try to be a supplement to it. Kind of like how we have an Apple Watch. So Humain is a pin that you can attach to your clothing.
There are manacles that you can add to your glasses. Metta has its smart Ray-Bans. And then, of course, we're seeing Apple's Vision Pro, which is a lot more heavy duty. And, you know, seems like it's being pitched very much in an enterprise fashion as well. Coming out next week or in a few. The monocle. The monocle, $300 from Brilliant Labs A.I. powered.
It makes me think about that emoji, which, you know, I'll post it on, I guess, after this. But we have 15 seconds. Which of all those things are you most inclined to use? You know, for me, it's the classic sunglasses. Actually, on a recent trip to Hawaii, I crushed my normal analog glasses and I had to use Meadows Ray-Ban testers that I had for fun. And they kind of, you know, were sort of seamless because they looked like, again, regular shades. I didn't look strange if I was walking around in public wearing them. So for me, something that sleek and designed well and looks normal is what I about.
All right. Building bikes Shery Ahn. Jeffrey, check out our newsletter. Thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Check out the pod, by the way. New Times starts next week. This is Bloomberg Technology.
2024-01-24 18:40
