'Bloomberg Technology' Full Show (11/15/2021)

'Bloomberg Technology' Full Show (11/15/2021)

Show Video

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 in the next hour. President Biden promises change for the better with his new infrastructure law coming at a precarious political moment for the president as polls show overwhelming pessimism across the US about the economy. We will break down the details. Plus another

Twitter filled weekend for Ilan Mass. This time the world's richest person taking on Senator Bernie Sanders. Why Twitter users believe Musk could be hinting at selling more of his Tesla shares. And he is the youngest CEO of a public company on track to transform the trucking industry. I'll be speaking with the CEO of Embark about how self driving semis fit into the future of logistics.

All that in a moment. But first let's get a look at the market. Stocks a bit choppy in trading today. Our critic Gupta has the full picture. Kristie take it away. Well Emily Red on the screen today and the really people just liquidating their positions when it comes to stock market tech taking it a little bit worse than the broader index but a little bit split under the hood names like tussle and video down on the day. But then you had your Facebook your alphabets higher on the day. And it's really that split tech. But that really ended up with the S&P 500 essentially unchanged on the day. Another thing that really shows that it was kind of a risk off day was that cryptocurrency. You didn't see that risk bid show up there

either. And even people pulling out of treasuries to the point where you saw a five basis point move in the 10 year yield. And it all comes down to one major theme Emily and that is inflation. I want to show you a chart here that really shows the month over month change in CPI versus consumer sentiment. That's the side of the chart here. They really want to point out that white line is the month or month inflation changed. The blue line is the change in consumer sentiment. You can see they are diverging this idea that this healthy growth this recovery tray that's actually pushing inflation higher. Well the consumer isn't really liking and that's where you're starting to see the correlations start to dip very very slowly. So that's going to

be the macro picture. I want to hit one micro after hours earnings story. And that of course is lucid motor shares up after hours after reporting some pretty decent third quarter guidance. Affirming is 20000 thousand vehicle goal next year and strengthening its balance sheet to four point eight billion dollars in cash only. All right Christy thanks much for that roundup. Meantime of course President Biden promised Americans that his

new infrastructure law will improve their lives and keep the U.S. economy growing even as polls show widespread discontent with the nation's trajectory. The president signing the five hundred fifty billion dollar measure at a White House ceremony to kick off the week after appointing a group to guide the laws enactment. Our Emily Wilkins is in Washington with all the details. So Emily talk to us about the president's words today as he was signing this bill into law. Well you saw President Biden hit on a couple of different topics. Number one bipartisanship. Remember that's sort of who

he ran on when he was running for president. Was the president who could work across the aisle with Republicans get things done. This bill is sort of going to be Biden's probably achieving a crowning achievement in that particular area getting to work with Republicans on this bill. The hyper partisanship in Washington is probably going to prevent him from getting anything else like this done. So he's really going to tout this. This also came at a time where President Biden his approval ratings are very low. He is struggling to deal with inflation to

deal with Covid-19 to deal with the economy. And so this was a moment for President Biden to really take the win to do a victory lap to tout this bill and to tout the benefits of this bill. He also alluded a bit to China hours before he set to get on the phone with president President Xi Jinping saying that this would prevent the U.S. from losing its edge and help it remain competitive against other major economies. What does this get implemented. So we're going to see implementation start already. You saw President Biden go ahead and nominate Brian Deese one of his top

officials at the White House as well as Mitch Landrieu a former mayor of New Orleans to be sort of a part of a leading a committee trying to make sure that as this 550 billion goes out to Americans that it's implemented within the White House's vision. And that's taking things into consideration such as speed really getting the money out there to where it's needed as well as a social justice component to it making sure that disadvantaged communities are also receiving funding to this. I spoke with Transportation Infrastructure Chairman Peter DeFazio in the House just a few weeks ago and he said once spring comes once construction season gets underway in the spring that's when Americans are really going to start seeing the effects of this bill. Now of course this is only half of President Biden's infrastructure agenda. What about the other half the human

interest direct infrastructure part of the bill that involves social welfare taxes. And of course the most controversial part of this plan. Absolutely. And that's the one that Democrats are still struggling to figure out how to pass even though they don't need any Republicans for that. Democrats are dealing with thin margins and there are pretty broad ideologically speaking party. And so it's been difficult for them to come to consensus. But it looks like might happen this week is we could still potentially get a vote on that package within the House. But right now moderates are holding that up saying that they want to get scores from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That

office it scores all the bills. It says hey this is how much they're going to spend. This is how much they're going to raise with rising inflation in the US. It's become really really important for those moderate Democrats to make sure that this bill is fully paid for. If the House does pass that this week then it goes to the Senate which is going to continue to tweak it. Go back to the House. They're really on a deadline here of at this point the end of the year. Usually it's once you cross over into that election year 2022. Does it matter that the elections all the way in November once you hit that year it gets

harder and harder to legislate. So Democrats still have a good bit of a path ahead of them on that particular bill as they figure out various components of it. All right. Bloomberg's Emily Wilkins thank you for that update. Meantime the world's wealthiest person spent much of the weekend taunting Senator Bernie Sanders on Twitter after Sanders repeated his call for the ultra rich to pay more taxes. Musk insulted the senator's age and asked if selling more Tesla shares would satisfy it. That would of course require Musk to pay taxes on the gains. Musk offloaded almost 7 billion dollars worth of Tesla stock over the last week. Our Diana Hall with us to break it all down. So Musk back at it again. Why is he. I don't know lashing out or taking the bait this time. And now you know it's strange is that as far as I know Bernie Sanders does not even run his own

Twitter feed nor does he reply to anybody. But Musk is replying to him and you know insulted him about his age. I think Musk has very very clearly feels like a lot of politicians in Washington are too old to be governing. And so he's sort of taking potshots about his age offering to pay more taxes you know saying should I sell more stock. Bernie what do you think. I keep forgetting that you're still alive. We have the exact word. So you know we will share them. Want me to sell more stock Bernie. Just say the word. Bernie is a taker not a maker. I'm trying to say here. I mean I think he just feels emboldened that he is the richest person in the world. And here he is. On the one hand a government contractor Space X gets money from

NASA and the Department of Defense. You know SpaceX Tesla has gotten funding in terms of the federal tax credit and has certainly benefited from a lot of public policy. And yet here he is kind of throwing pot shots at a member of Congress who has you know a little along with other progressives just wants the wealthy to pay their fair share. So this seven billion dollars that he's already sold you know do we think he will sell more. Why is he selling this in chunks. Where's he going. He seems it seems to be like a drip drip drip where he's selling a little bit every day. I haven't see there haven't been any form for his yet today but they could come at any time. And I think he's just kind of like he doesn't want to do it all at once. Why he's

doing it this way. No one really knows. But he has a lot more to go if he's going to actually meet this 10 percent that he claimed that he had a couple of weeks ago. Do we understand yet how much of what he sold so far is purely to meet tax obligations and and stock sale obligations and how much additional he plans to sell to you know I don't know fulfilled this deal that he could sleep in benevolent taxpayer. Yeah. I mean I don't know if he does quarterly estimates or if he does it all at once. How moving to Texas impacted things their state taxes federal tax. I don't know what his tax planning strategy is. But he he said that he would sell 10 percent of his stake in Tesla. That's above and beyond what he would need to sell for

his own tax obligations. OK. All right. Well we'll be watching potentially for more share sales and certainly for more tweets. They do keep on coming. Glimmers of hall. Thank you. Meantime some vaccination news we are following in recent months. Pfizer has begun to ramp up deliveries of its Kogan vaccine outside the richest nations. However CEO Albert Boola won't budge when it comes to divulging the shots secret formula. Developing nations have been pushing a proposal to waive intellectual property rights for Covid vaccines and treatments. Morella has been leading the resistance and he calls IP rights

the blood of the private sector. Plus New York City is opening Covid booster shots to all adults anyone age 18 or over who got them a doughnut or Pfizer vaccine at least six months ago or the Johnson and Johnson shot at least two months ago can now get a booster. This as the city grapples with a rising Covid cases. More than six hundred thirty thousand New Yorkers have already gotten that booster. Coming up the great resignation. It is apparently happening in tech more than anywhere else. We will tell you why next. This is Bloomberg. The great resignation is continuing to loom now over the holiday season. Thousands of workers still quitting in droves in a tight labor market where they have more leverage to move around and employers are doing everything they can to keep up and staff up.

Joining us now to talk more about it is Sapphire Partners Kathy GAO. Kathy thank you so much for joining us. So interestingly the great resignation is being led by tech workers. Why is that. Well Emily the Greek resignation is not only happening. It's accelerating right. A record four point four million Americans quit their jobs in September and 50 percent of workers said that they're planning to look for a new job in twelve months. There is absolutely an ongoing war for talent. And companies must

adapt and introduce new strategies and new technologies to thrive. Now we're seeing a tight labor market across all sectors including retail health care but especially we're seeing in technology and in tech. Emily it's a game of musical chairs right now. Seven out of 10 workers are thinking about leaving their job in the next year. Employees have never been in such a position of power. So a very interesting inflection point in the market.

Is there something about tech in particular that has employees re-evaluating is it because there are so many open jobs so many choices out there. Yeah absolutely. Look there's a lot of IPO money out there right now and venture funding is at all time highs. There's many great opportunities and lots of competition for the best and brightest. So while some folks might certainly be changing careers or potentially exiting the labor force. My sense is that

the majority are actually switching companies now. Think about it. Traditionally tech companies have boasted amazing office culture that really fostered bonding and loyalty. All of that went away during the pandemic. And companies are now scrambling to find novel ways to attract and retain talent. So right now there are seven workers for every 10 jobs overall. How do employers compete with that. What should they be doing. To survive the talent shortage. Companies must really innovate on both tactics and technology. There is absolutely a dramatic shift in the future of work that's happening right now. Not only

is H.R. evolving and becoming way more expansive the technology that will support new modalities of work are also changing. As an investor at Sapphire Ventures a leading B2B venture capital firm we are funding the next generation of companies pushing forward the future of work and collaboration. Just to share an example on the talent acquisition side. We recently invested in a company called Gem which enables companies to hire passive talent faster via automation. These are folks who aren't actively looking for jobs right. SALES teams have been using tools like Outreach and HubSpot for years to automate and

leverage analytics for out that efforts. And it's finally finally moving over to the talent acquisition side. By necessity. How long do you expect this to keep on happening I mean is this the foreseeable future. Is this just a short term blip. Do things stabilize sometime next year or could it go on longer than that. I think it might go on for a lot longer Emily. And one thing I

want to point out is a lot of the discussion and a lot of the narrative around the so-called great resignation has been centered around challenges and frankly fear that it's going to stymie growth at specific companies and in the general economy. But I think this is a huge opportunities. This is a huge opportunity for employers to really evolve and think about their relationship with their employees. And technology is going to have a huge role playing. Not many traditional paradigms around work like the 9 to 5 and a central physical HQ really stemming from legacy from time. So we didn't necessarily have the

technology to power. What we now know could work could be like post pandemic. Workers can now work anywhere anytime with the ADA. Communication and collaboration software. This is a massive opportunity for employers and employees to move forward into the future together. Absolutely will help me watching to see how long this keeps up. Sapphire Partners Karthik out. Thank you for sharing more about this trend with us. Coming up ship four payments rising after announcing a five year deal with Space X's

satellite operation. Starlink Chip Core CEO Jared Isaac. Men who rode a course on that space X inspiration for historic trip says payments and e-commerce is a huge untapped market in space. He will join us next to tell us why you don't want to miss it. Meantime we work shares ending up 3 percent Monday. The shared workspace company narrowing its losses in the third quarter. It also reported an 18 percent decline in revenue for the same period. We worked first financial results as a public company

after merging last month with a blank check firm. Going public is back. This is Bloomberg. Let's take a look at what's going on in space with Russia firing an anti satellite missile at one of its own satellites throwing hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris and smaller chunks into orbit. These are now endangering the International Space Station. The U.S. military says it's tracking the event. And NASA is gathering more information. Space debris debris has been a growing problem with thousands of satellites populating orbits more quickly than they are removed. Meantime shares of ship for payments flying high rising as much as 26 percent the most intraday and more than a year. That's after the payments

processing company said it entered a five year global strategic partnership with Space X Starlink. Elon Musk's satellite broadband venture. CEO Jared Isaac. Men who also commanded Space X is inspiration for history making trip to space last September. Joins us now. Jared great to have you with us. And I haven't talked to you since. So welcome back. Talked about this new partnership with Space X. What does it mean. Well we're really excited about it. I mean obviously I'm a big space enthusiast. I love everything they're doing in Space X right now. You know a lot of people know them for putting cargo

and human beings in space but they don't notice they're building out this broadband constellation network with you know tens of thousands of satellites to bring Internet connectivity to some of the hardest places to reach on Earth. You know this is potentially like the second wave of cord cutting as people get rid of their cable modems and DSL and they embrace you know even faster broadband connectivity through satellites. So we're excited to be able to power the payments for that. We had a lot of other exciting things to talk about in the quarter too. So it's not all space X by now. That's a big. Payments are actually happening in space right now. I mean isn't the market pretty non existent. And how fast do you actually expect it to scale up. Well I mean the actual customers for Starlink are people here on Earth. So you know and really the world is the entire. Tim you're talking broadband Internet capabilities in virtually every country. So some analysts think that they'll do over 100

billion a year in subscription revenue which is very very exciting for us because I mean that would be a substantial lift. We touch about a quarter of a trillion in payments a year. So that's a pretty big lift. But in space in broad general look space is a huge camp. There will be an economy in 10. That's why people are there will

be an economy in space. That's why people are putting investing so much capital into what the future of space could hold. We certainly hope to play a part in it you know as much as we play a part on global commerce here on Earth. And before we talk a little bit more about space. Talk to us about. Give us the update on your commerce efforts and payments efforts here on Earth. You know where where's the company and how are you positioned right now going into 2022. Oh I mean we're

growing really fast. I mean you know we measure all of our expectations for Q3. We grew payment volume 90 percent year over year. We reaffirmed our 2021 guidance and we set you know mid-term guidance for the next three years and outlook of 50 percent plus year over year growth. And when you do as much volume as us that it's pretty hard to hit. It means we're a share taker. You know one in three restaurants and hotels in the country you shift toward payment technology. A lot of the

stadiums you love to go to to watch a game and order a beer and a burger powered by ship shift for retailers e-commerce gaming. And now we have some some interesting space based technology that we're able to contribute a very small part to with our payment services. There's so much focus on space tourism but a lot of research still needs to happen in space. And St. Jude's Hospital just announced this new era of scientific discovery and inspiration for Advanced Research Center. Tell us about why this

continued research is still so important. It's such a good question. You know some people think it's it's it's one or the other. You can either you can either invest in our future in space or we can invest in some of the problems we have here on Earth. And I disagree. That was why with inspiration for it was about you know addressing real problems that we have here on Earth like childhood cancer and children and families they get an opportunity grew up and experienced anything like like what I've been fortunate to experience in life that you can you can you know raise substantial funds for a cause like that. We raised over a quarter of a billion dollars for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and still make progress for tomorrow in space because we have no idea what we could learn out there by satisfying our curiosity to you know explore the stars. And we just like as we climb the mountains and cross the oceans and

what we could learn in space could change or alter humankind's life and destiny here on Earth for the better. So we have to be able to do both. And that's why St. Jude was such a big part of our mission. We were honored. They unveiled the inspiration for Advanced Research Center. And they're going to raise you know the survival rates of childhood cancer across the world from that center. Meantime I have to ask you about this. Russia anti satellite weapons test creating fifteen hundred pieces of debris endangering astronauts on the ISIS. What's your take on this. What does this tell you about the hazards of space travel. Yeah I don't understand it all. Honestly it's not it's not hard to

shoot down a satellite satellite's orbital mechanics. I would say that anything that's in orbit right now is essentially on railroad tracks. It's very predictable. I do not think that Russia or China or even the U.S. for that matter has to shoot one down for people to know they can't. So I really don't know what was accomplished here other than not just endangering human beings at the space station but it destroys satellites. The debris will take out weather observation satellites things that can predict you know storms here on Earth

that could save lives as well. So I don't see the good out of it. And if there is a lot of kinetic activity in space Su Keenan satellite started getting blown up. It's going to really destroy low earth orbit and our ability to go and explore among the stars. And that's unfortunate. All right. And people going up like yourself. Garrett ISE X-Men Ships for Payments CEO. Always good to have you with us. Thank you for stopping by. Meantime the head of General Electric Aviation Open acquisitions that can make the jet engine maker bring the jet engine maker new capabilities. G.E. said last week the company would be splitting

into three with aviation being one of the stand alone companies. The aviation CEO John Slattery says Electrification Technologies is one area where deals could boost the company's portfolio. Coming up a major pandemic picture of Silicon Valley. Our tech startups overvalued. We're going to talk about that and more with equal capital founding partner Lauren Kolodny next. This is Bloomberg. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology Emily Chang in San Francisco. Elon Musk sold shares last week and suggested he might do it again over the weekend. Blueberries critic Gupta breaks down the numbers and what we can expect. Not sure

if he was being genuine or sarcastic in that tweet. But of course people are speculating it's anyone's guess as we get closer to the end of the quarter. The likelihood of him potentially doing even more share sales while debt rises. Let me show you the math behind it in particular because last week let's take a little bit of a trip to last week he exercised options granted to him in 2012 about 4.5 million options essentially allowing him to buy Tesla shares at a lower price than current value out of it getting about 5 billion actually whose mission is selling them for 13 or buying them for thirteen point four million then selling them using essentially the share sales that he has to make up for the taxes and getting about five billion dollars out of it. I can show you exactly what it did to the stock price because it's a pretty clear reaction over the last 17 years. You can see that it's lost about 18 percent of its value.

And those big drops there show you that's not just Tesla and Elon Musk in particular loosening his position. But of course some of those retail bidders those institutional investors that followed his lead. And yet again Emily we're seeing him tweet over the weekend in response to Senator Senator Bernie Sanders saying he might just do those share sales again very specifically saying want me to sell more stock. Bernie just say the word. And the question here is is it just about Twitter poll or is it about the options in particular. So we called the numbers about just how much more he really has to sell right now. And he's only exercised about nine point four percent of his options only about a tenth of those share sales to actually accommodate for the taxes in those options. So by all the calculations I mean he still has about nine million shares to

sell if he sticks with the figures he's previously said to the public. And that's not accommodating for the 10 percent he's promised Twitter that he would sell sake. So something to watch. We only have a couple more weeks till the end of the year. And that's really the time the clock that you want Musk is racing against. All right. Christi thanks for doing the math for has it

is complicated. Indeed. Appreciate you breaking it down. Well the area of venture capital has been red hot as investors look to find the next best thing with the pandemic fueling the appetite for tech startups. The question though are we entering a bubble. I want to bring in a crew capital founding partner Lauren Kolodny. Lauren thank you so much for joining us. So first of all coming out of the pandemic made pandemic I should say we are now. What trends are you doubling down on and what is overhyped. Yeah. So look we uh we have put an increasing emphasis on the intersection of climate tech and some tech as one example. I would I would you know this is particularly important today

coming out of the GOP. Twenty six. So it's timely. One example of a company in our portfolio that I think embeds this is cattle. They're doing reinsurance for climate risk. So essentially enabling consumers and businesses to maintain insurance coverage on things like their homes to protect against wildfire. And this is so important because historically reinsurance in the traditional industry has valued or underwritten climate risk based on historical records. And we know that that is not actually predictive of the future. And so Petal as one example is using machine learning to better predict vulnerable areas for wildfire and allowing consumers to purchase that homeowner's insurance. And they're also using that data not

just to help insure coverage but actually for prevention so they can let fire departments and utility companies know which areas are most likely to be the most vulnerable to actually do some some prevention. Now how you thinking about valuation. I mean I've been talking to a lot of investors who've said it's expensive. Right now it's it costs a lot to get it. Yeah. Well. And you're feeling that at the early stage too. Certainly.

Series A's today look like series views did even just a year ago. So we're very mindful of that. At the same time you know tech is pervasive when you think about the fact that four and a half billion people now have Internet access and every industry is really technology. You know you start to understand how how some of these valuations have shifted up. And it's interesting you know if you look at the uniform report from back in 2013 there

were 38 privately held unicorns at the time. Today there are almost that many DAX. But I do think that the markets are supporting it. And there may be a correction but I don't anticipate multiples going back to what they were before. Independent Nick I want to talk a little bit about a cruise mission. You called on venture capital recently to disrupt itself pointed out how the majority of the partners at your firm are women or people of color or immigrants. You represent three generations from Gen X and millennials to older folks as well. How is this impacting your investment decisions. Do you believe that you are making decisions differently than other venture capital firms. And if so how. Yeah absolutely. I think we just look at things through a

different lens right. All of the data out there supports the fact that diverse teams make better decisions. In fact you know there's data that supports that diverse mental forms or or perform 30 percent better than non diverse venture firms. And it's just because you have different perspectives around the table. And we think about these markets that startups are trying to address. They're they're global and they're everyone. And so having as many of those perspectives represented around the table is really meaningful. And when you think about companies like Chime which we where we led one of the series a rounds I

think you know at the time it was considered pretty revolutionary because they were serving an audience of people that live paycheck to paycheck and most in tax were were more focused on high earners. And there was doubt in the market around whether they could actually make the economics of a company work serving that demographic. But because of some of the different perspectives around the table we felt very conflicted in making that decision. And so we continued to enhance that at a crew. As you said 90 percent of us were women or people of color on our team. And you know I think entrepreneurs are drawn to that. In addition to our portfolio our track record we see increasing number of entrepreneurs that are looking to diversify their boards and their investor base. So we're we're happy to be a part of that story.

There's been a big concern about women backsliding in the pandemic. We also saw funding levels venture capital funding going to women in mixed gender teams actually dropping at surgeons certain stages. We recently spoke to Shelly Porges of Beyond Bill Billion who actually said she has seen some optimism and statistics showing that women are actually going now in in a more positive direction. So far this year. Take a listen to what she had to say. In our consortium of over 100 venture funds we see over 80 percent of them are women people of color or both. And we couldn't be more excited because we know that when women are the check writers they generally over index toward female founders and female founders know that too and seek them out. In fact are things starting to get better. For women entrepreneurs really or or not as far as what you're seeing. I think that they are starting to change. You're starting to see

a lot more emerging managers like like a crew that that look different and are supporting supporting female founders at the top of the funnel. We have our diversified capital fund initiative which is actually intended to help diversify late stage companies. We add board members through our network to these teams to try to to try to enhance the diversity of perspectives. I think there's there's a lot happening across the board. But you know change is

so slow. JPM and pitch book came out with some data recently. I'm on diverse boards in particular showing that 50 percent of the females that have been added to boards recently came from inside the company themselves. And while that's helpful you know it really seems like a reaction to some of the recent regulation requiring more women and diverse people on boards prior to an IPO as opposed to a really proactive and deliberate decision to bring diverse perspectives out earlier on in the governance of a company. So you know I think it's starting to change but but there is a long way to go. You guys are involved in many stages of a company's life cycle and I'm curious what you're seeing with exit now exits now over the next year. How are we going to see the balance between Manet and IPO rose or even Sparks direct listings. Shift. Yeah. Look I mean I have every reason to believe that the markets continue to support great outcomes for great companies.

We've seen you know a lot a lot of companies take that path with great success of late. And you know I look at fintech where I spend most of my time and companies like New Bank that are anticipated to go out the door in the coming months. A company like that with great fundamentals that now serves 48 million users across Latin America and brought people into the financial sector through there through their application. I

anticipate that they and others like them will continue to have great outcomes. So so so in fintech I continue to believe that the IPO market is is really exciting. Lauren Kolodny a coup capital founding partner thank you for joining us. All right. Coming up transforming the trucking industry and bark tracks goes public led by the youngest CEO of a public company. We're gonna have more on the tech behind their automation and how they stack up to the competition. That is next. This is

Bloomberg. Transforming trucking and that is what then twenty one year old Alex Rodriguez set out to accomplish back in 2016. Armed with just research and ideas. Now he's the youngest CEO of a public company at just 26. And Barak went public last week VIX back and is aiming to transform the trucking industry with its self-driving trucks. The deal died and bark at five billion dollars. For more I want to bring in co-founder and CEO Alex Rodriguez. Alex congratulations and thank you for joining us. So

talk to us about where the trucks are now. What can you do and what is the vision. Having me. It's a super exciting time in the world of self-driving trucks Embark has a fleet of trucks operating today in the US Sun Belt making commercial deliveries for big partners like HP and Navy InBev. And so we're really at an exciting inflection point. You can really see some of the videos here of trucks being on the road making deliveries going from the edge

of one city to the edge of another and doing that autonomously. The next step. The reason that we're going public last week is really to bring in the funding to allow us to take that from a small scale and put it into tens of thousands in trucks in some of America's biggest fleets. Let's talk about how you scale. Aurora has partnered with FedEx to simple has U.P.S. and USPS. What kind of logistics partnerships do you have at this point. Mark has some of the leading partnerships on the logistics side. We're working with folks like Mike Swift which is the largest trucking company in the United States with Werner with DHL.

And out of our partners we have fourteen thousand two hundred reservations. Which is more than double the nearest public com. So how do you make money. Talk to us about the business model. Yeah that's one of the things that really differentiates Embark Embark is a software focused company and we have a software as a service business model. So we license software to those big fleets. I just mentioned and those are the people actually buying the trucks and running the operations and then embark is charging between 30 and 40 cents a mile depending on the length of haul for the or software that we developed.

What do you think we see this at scale. For example when we're driving on the roads you know how many years from now will we be. You know almost sure that that truck next to us is using self driving self trucking technology. I like that self tracking it. It's a big industry. Maybe I'll start there. And so I think in order for every truck on the road to be transformed that's into a long time. But you know every to start making a big dent

and improving efficiency across the U.S. economy I think that's coming really soon. Embark is looking to have over two billion miles driven in 2024 on the system. And so you can really start to see some of that scale coming to a road near you fairly quickly. And does it happen sooner than self-driving cars. I think many of us expected self-driving cars to be on the road sooner or faster than than they than than they happen. And you know maybe it's a consumer safety issue. And there are still so many concerns and so much red tape. Does the trucking industry self trucking industry develop much more quickly than the self driving industry for consumers. I think that's really the key insight that Embark had when

Brandon and I started the company in 2016 is that trucking by focusing on highway driving can really be a simpler problem. And that was really our core insight. We started embark back at a time when everyone as you say was talking about cars. We focused exclusively on trucks today with the longest running program that has been running self-driving trucks on public roads. And I think that's a huge advantage. It turns out cities are really really complicated and highways are a much more structured environment. It's better suited to robotics. Interesting. Well great to hear the vision. Alex Rodriguez

co-founder and CEO of Embark. We will keep watching. Your self-driving trucks. Meantime Amazon is stepping up its efforts to make workers in its California warehouses feel more safe. The company has reached a deal with the state's attorney general to keep workers more informed about safety protocols and Covid outbreaks. The changes include notifying workers within one day of any Covid case on the property and local health agencies within 48 hours. California is home to more Amazon employees than any other state with more than one hundred fifty three thousand workers here in this state. At the end of last year. Coming up we'll talk about the latest in the third dose trial as the government expects to

rest its case this week. And as we head to break let's take a look at shares in E.T. maker Lou said we're seeing gains in extended trading after the company announced it strengthened its balance sheet to four point eight billion dollars in cash in the third quarter. This is the startup's first quarterly earnings report since listing the reverse merger back in July. Lucid also says it's on track to produce 20000 vehicles next year. This is Bloomberg. After telling investors that it will make as much as 1 billion dollars less than expected in fiscal year 2022 Peloton followed up the bad news by previewing a new product that it believes can put its revenue growth back on track a home strengthening device for your TV. The peloton guide comes out early next year in the U.S. and other countries for four hundred ninety five dollars. A user attaches the device to their TV where they can view strength. Trainers perform several different exercises whether that's full body workouts or lifting weights and the user can follow along life. The guide has a camera in A.I. so it can watch you as you follow the instructors and it can provide you with life feedback

to ensure you during the workout correctly. The guide also includes a new heart rate arm band so it can measure your intensity while working out. That band will also work with the company spikes treadmills and digital phone apps. The guide can also be controlled by voice and the company told Bloomberg that it plans to add similar features to its bikes and treadmills in the future while the peloton guide be enough to help propel the company as the pandemic continues to ease. Only time will tell.

I Mark Gurman this is power. And you can cite of remarks Weekly Power our newsletter at Bloomberg Quicktake. While the trial of former CEO and founder of Thera knows Elizabeth Holmes continuing the founder of the failed blood testing startup once hailed as the next Steve Jobs is accused of multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud and faces up to 20 years in jail. And as we enter another week packed with witnesses let's bring in Bloomberg's own Joel Rosenblatt who of course has been in the trial every step of the way. Joel it is dragging on. The government may rest its case this week. How convincing has the case they have brought so far Ben. Well the last time I was on Emily Chang I told you that the case was convincing and it's become only more so. We've heard from

more witnesses since you and I last spoke. We've heard from investors in particular. The focus has been on investors and she faces a very difficult case. Like I said last time though it's now kind of buttressed by all the evidence and the witnesses that we've seen. What what what defense what kind of a defense are we expecting

her to put up. I mean there's been so much speculation about what kind of things she could clean. Will she take the stand herself at this point. What do we know. You know what we don't know. We don't know much but we're about to find out. And that's why we're at what it is to me by far the most interesting part of the trial. This is the crossroads for Elizabeth Holmes. So she has essentially three options. One is to say I'm not going to the government hasn't met its burden to prove me guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So I'm not I don't have to present a case. I think that's very unlikely given the strength of the

case. The government has made the second is that she can just make a case the way the government has built on other witnesses to rebut essentially the government's case point by point. Very difficult. And then the third option is kind of part of the second is as Elizabeth Holmes testifying. That's what everybody is kind of hoping for. That's what my sources say is most likely

to happen because almost because she has to she's just kind of forced to. Given that given the case she faces. So talk to us about the most damning evidence. I mean you know some of the stuff that's emerged just in the last few weeks that they're nose lifted logos from pharmaceutical companies who had already rejected them and put their those logos in their reports to say that they were supporting them. I mean it's pretty brazen. It's brazen is the perfect word for it. That's the word that that I

kind of always think about. It's when you see it in court it's especially compelling when you think of yourself as a juror. The company lifted the logos of Pfizer of sharing Schering-Plough and and put them on reports claiming to endorse Theranos technology when in fact those very companies had rejected it. To me it's the kind of it's it's kind of it's kind of lie. It's a kind of plagiarism that you might see in elementary school. I mean I don't mean to demean her or demean the situation but it's just brazen. It's just shocking. And to imagine that as a witness or as sorry as a juror it's just astounding. So there's there's that they've Steve heard from employees very high level the highest level employee you know besides her and Sunny Balboni explaining how the technology just didn't work. And explaining to her how it didn't work. So she she knew that evidence that she knew it didn't work and kept telling people especially investors that it was endorsed by pharmaceutical companies that this technology was great. And there's more to that list. I'll go on if you want. But the evidence has been

strong intermittent does long stretches of kind of boring testimony. But then peppered into it is this very very stunning examples these explosive moments just about 30 seconds left jaw. How long do we expect the defense to make its arguments. I mean the case has already been going on for months. It's been going on for months. And it just all depends on what

Elizabeth Holmes does. If she puts on the defense that I mentioned and then as she testifies the prosecution has wide latitude to ask her about all of this. The door is wide open to them and they will be aggressive. They're gonna have to be careful. They can't be overly aggressive but that could go on for some time. It just all depends on on how it plays out. I

think we're looking at mid-December. No juror wants to be in this courtroom past Christmas. Right. All right. And we appreciate you going down to San Jose and being there every day. Bloomberg's Joel Rosenblatt thank you for that update. We'll continue to watch your reporting and that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Got a great show coming up for you tomorrow. The CEO of Roadblocks will be joining us David Suzuki right here

on Bloomberg Technology. And Stewart Butterfield Slack CEO and co-founder since being acquired by Salesforce. It's been a while to be good to catch up with him. Thank you all for watching this edition of the show. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg.

2021-11-16 16:40

Show Video

Other news