Bloomberg Tech Summit Special
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. From the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide. In Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow. ♪♪

Live from San Francisco, this is a special edition of Bloomberg Technology, live from the Bloomberg Tech Summit. Yeah, absolutely. Leaders from across tech and business are gathered here to discuss how they're going to navigate economic geopolitical uncertainty and multiply the opportunities in that landscape. We'll be hearing from some of those speakers. We kicked it off last night with incredible conversations with Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Meta's Andrew Bosworth. Right now, the tech sector is also very focused, Caro, and markets are right about what's

the discussion between president trump and china xi jinping and it's giving a positive spin to markets nasdaq coming out of its lows we're now trading higher look not gargantuan moves we're up about three or four tenths of a percent on the nasdaq 100 as you'll see but we are trending higher as we see a positive signal coming from president trump that they're going to be meeting yet further with

Of course, the First Lady going to China and indeed a reciprocal kind of discussion coming with the Chinese leaders coming to the US. But more broadly, rare earths. Is there any clarity on rare earths? That's what we want to hear. Let's get some news breaking out of the Bloomberg Tech Summit. Anderil, the defense tech company that's quickly become a major player

in U.S. national security has just closed its latest funding round. Joining us for more is Trey Stephens, co-founder and executive chairman of Anduril. He's also a partner at Founders Fund. He will be a speaker as well at the Tech Summit later today. Trey, good morning. Good morning. Congratulations. This is Series G. What are the details? And this seems meaningful for Anduril.

It is. As we continue working on building a company that has the capacity to scale into the largest problems for the national security community, we thought it was really important to shore up the balance sheet and make sure that we have the ability to deploy capital into these manufacturing and production problem sets that we're working on. The round ended up being a $2.5 billion round.

at a valuation of 30.5 billion post money. It's a tremendous opportunity for us to continue growing the team, growing the infrastructure and our ability to really ramp up into these bigger problem sets. Founders Fund led the round. You have an interesting role as executive chair at Anduril, but you recuse yourself from the Founders Fund part of that.

They, I believe, wrote one of, if not their biggest check ever. - Yeah, the largest check in Founders Fund history. We put $1 billion into the $2.5 billion round. - Okay, why is this commitment, this necessary money right here, right now? Is this gonna be the last one before a potential IPO?

Oh man, it's a great question. You know, there are a lot of ways to raise capital. It's not just the possibility by PO. Obviously, long term, we continue to believe that Anduril is the shape of a publicly traded company. We're not in any, you know, rapid path to doing that.

We're certainly going through the processes that are required to prepare for doing something like that in the medium term. But right now we're just very focused on the mission at hand, going at this as hard as we can. Does that mean we raise another private round of capital at some point? Maybe. Hard to say.

You know, we're always surprised at how much demand there is in these massively oversubscribed grounds. Well, in demand, how oversubscribed, please? It was a lot, like 8 to 10x of what we had the capacity to take on. You know, there's a lot of players that are starting to figure out that the momentum is drawing into...

being able to do this at Anderle. And I think there's just a lot of interest from growth funds, from crossover funds, from mutual funds for getting a bite of that before there's a public market opportunity. Well, interesting you say getting a bite of the action. When it comes more broadly to defense, suddenly all of Silicon Valley kind of wants to be in defense and in U.S. manufacturing. In fact, Boz, Andrew Bosworth of Meta yesterday talking about how

Maybe there's some bigger patriotism than we realize across Silicon Valley. Just take a listen.

There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning that I think people give Silicon Valley credit for. But taking a step deeper, this is actually a return to grace for the Valley potentially, not just from Meta but from Google and other companies. The Valley was founded on a three-way investment between the military, academics, and private industry. That was the founding of it. There would be no technology if we weren't all tasked with the problem of computing naval ballistic trajectories

during the first two world wars. You have a partnership. The technology that Meta makes, working hand in hand with Anduril. Interesting, of course, that Parmalaki now goes back to a company that he of course sold Oculus to in many ways with this partnership. What does it look like if more partnerships are going to be erupting here?

Well, I mean, to Bas's point, you know, the world has changed a lot in the last eight years. Andrel actually turns eight years old tomorrow. We're approaching our anniversary, which is the anniversary of D-Day as well. We started the company on the 73rd anniversary of D-Day, recognizing there's an important contribution

for not only ourselves, but also the American enterprise into national security efforts. Palmer was fired by Meta in 2016 for his politics. There was a Google Maven walkouts and protests. The reality is that the silent majority actually believes that these things are really, really important to work on.

And Palmer being able to go back to his roots and reach a point of forgiveness with the meta team to focus on the most important task at hand, which is leaning in on the best-in-class optics and VR/AR work that they're doing to contribute to the mission that we're leading with the iVAS opportunity with the DoD. What was really interesting about how Boz explained it is that they are basically providing components. We actually had Deleon Asparov on the show the other day in the context of founders in Endurosat.

And what he was talking about is that the innovation of big tech is being driven by consumer electronics, right? I'm thinking about your supply chain. Could you just explain the mechanics of how metal works with you and why it's useful to you for them to come up with these components in the products that you want to do? Right. I mean, they're obviously, they've done an incredible amount for the AR/VR community.

I think Palmer has been on record many times saying that Zuckerberg is VR boy number one. He's led the way with putting a ton of capital into solving some of these basic science and research problems around optics, the physics challenges that make this really difficult.

We don't have to take all of that on ourselves. We can go and partner with someone in America who believes in the mission, who's done a lot of that work, and then we can bring that into an integrated system, which is really what we do as a defense products company. Let's talk politics. You talked about Palmer's politics. The story today is about

President Trump speaking with China's Xi Jinping. And at the heart of that is rare earths. But I actually think for you guys, you've historically, when we've discussed China, taken a different approach, which is you believe Anduril is critically important now because of future hostilities from China. Just explain that thesis.

Yeah, I mean, obviously there's a huge supply chain component to all of this. China is right in the middle of most of these conversations around manufacturing, production, supply chain challenges with natural resources, including rare earths metals. You know, at Anduril, we've been thinking about this long before the second Trump administration started. We've been shoring up to make sure that our tier one suppliers are being sourced from allied nations, the U.S. and our allied nations.

And, you know, for the first time ever, I think that the entirety of the government is taking supply chain seriously as a national security asset rather than just something that's kind of like important from a trade context. So I think it's incredibly critical that we don't wait until we have, you know, our access to critical materials, our access to chips, our access to all of these things removed from us. But isn't that already happening?

Isn't there a limitation already on rare earths and how does that impact your business? There is. And, you know, this is the type of thing that you have to plan for well ahead of time, believing that at some point, yeah, we might lose access. And I think all, you know, intelligent and thoughtful American companies need to be thinking about how to

how to address that problem before it actually becomes a really critical existential threat. Well, has the administration been doing it in a methodical manner that you wanted to see? Because at times there's been a worry about basically the timeframes that we get cut off too quickly before the U.S. has really understood its own supply chain and resources. Many companies haven't been looking at this as well as Anduril has. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, at Anduril, certainly we've been thinking about it a lot.

And through the Founders Fund context, I spend most of my day thinking about this exact problem. You know, Xi has said very clearly that he intends to, you know, reclaim Taiwan by 2027. That's a really short timeline. That doesn't mean that we have five or ten years to build up semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. It means that we have, like...

Two years, 18 months. And so, you know, we really need to be thinking about these things. I think it's incumbent upon the U.S. tech community to contribute in ways. It's incumbent upon the U.S. venture community to put capital towards solving some of these problems. And certainly every company needs to have a plan for how they're going to address that should it become a real issue. Golden Dome.

Golden Dome, yes. You know, obviously, there's very few things as exciting as the idea of protecting the U.S. homeland from airborne threats. You know, we've been engaged in a lot of conversations there. Too soon to comment on anything. That's my understanding, though. So when this big announcement happened at the White House...

there were some of the sort of legacy prime defense contractors named Lockheed Martin being one. And a lot of people that I speak to were surprised that the name Anderil wasn't said over and over again because of the position you now have as a...

a supplier to the US military apparatus. But it is early in this process. I guess the point is, what will happen? Do you have to make pitches and competitive bids and say, here's what we can offer in this? Or is it...

a case of the administration coming to you and saying, "Do this for us." Well, it will obviously have to be a tremendously multi-layered approach. There's not going to be a single vendor that provides the entirety of the system. There's end effectors, interceptors, things like that, space-based interceptors, all the sensor networks that are going to be required, and then a software layer to coordinate and see to all of that activity that's going on.

You know, it's not just going to be Anduril. It's not just going to be Lockheed Martin. I believe that it will likely be a mosaic of a lot of different companies coming together to make sure that this problem is solved in the best way possible. You talk about space.

There is one particular founder who is very close to the White House, who now seems to be less close, and it's Elon Musk. How are you seeing the relationship of venture with the administration right now? And is there a repercussion as Elon withdraws and then seemingly gets pretty angry at the state of the current spending bill, or at least the way he sees it as a spending bill, they say it's reconciliation? Yeah. Well, I mean, we're still very kind of near in on the start of the administration. We're only, what, five months into things right now.

I do think that this administration is incredibly communicative with the tech community, with the venture community. The channels are open. They're curious. They're looking for information. Do you have a direct line with President Trump at all? There's lots of paths into the White House without commenting any further on that. But, yeah, I think that there's a tremendous openness to having that dialogue.

a lot of these initiatives, whether you're talking about the big, beautiful bill. You know, I like what Elon said. It's difficult for a bill to be both big and beautiful. It can be big or it can be beautiful. It can't be both. But, you know, I think, you know, there's...

There's at least receptivity, and we'll see how some of these big programs, these big plans shape over the next year. And the reason Caro's question is important is, you know, you were part of the contingent that went to the Gulf or the Middle East with the president in corporate America. Let's end here with a look at the future. After you and I were together in Ohio in January, my phone just kept ringing from private companies and startups that are in the defense technology space.

Is there a world where Anduril and three or four other players exist and coexist, or is it just Anduril and nothing else? Well, first of all, I want to say thanks for coming to the Arsenal launch in Ohio. It was freezing cold. Thank you for having me. It was freezing cold. You're one of the few people, ex-Anduril, who has even seen the site in Ohio. So it was cool to have you out. Thanks so much for doing that.

Yeah, you know, I think categories are tough, right? Like there usually isn't such a thing as category investing. You know, if you're a social media investor and you didn't invest in Facebook, you probably lost money. If you're a space investor and you didn't invest in SpaceX, you probably lost money.

Do I think that there's room for a couple of players to make a big entry into the defense space? Sure. I don't think there's going to be multiple Anderles. And that's really our goal is we're trying to create a concentrated opportunity to be a next generation defense products company that goes out and wins these major programs where we're going to have the ability to bring software chops, autonomy, speed, scale, manufacturing into the defense industry for the first time as a new player in a really long time. A new player.

that is now worth more than $30 billion, just double the valuation, having raised more than $2 billion. Trey Stephens, it's a joy to have you. And Royal Executive Chairman, Founders Fund partner as well. Now, so much more coming up about, clearly, the future of AI. Alphabet CEO Sona Pichai, following his panel at Bloomberg Tech Summit last night, talking about actually competition.

How is looking in AI? This is Bluebird Technology. You know, there's no doubt to me that three years from now there'll be a company which will be dominant in this AI age which we don't even know the name of today.

Discover how one of China's largest financial services companies serves 240 million customers with AI-powered solutions. Hear from Ping An's co-CEO and chief scientist. We're on a goldmine of data, integrated to provide tailored solutions to our customers. Public domain tax, 3.2 trillion tokens, 7.5 billion images. Tune in to our technology-powered growth podcast.

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Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg Technology, live from the Bloomberg Tech Summit. Alphabet CEO Sunil Pichai says the company will continue to expand its engineering ranks, at least into 2026. Emphasizing human talent remains key, despite AI investments. That was part of the discussion with Bloomberg's Emily Chang last night when we kicked off the Tech Summit here in San Francisco. Here's some more of that conversation.

In 2025, our capex is $75 billion. So we are definitely investing for the long run. But it's the same investment which powers businesses from search to YouTube to cloud to workspace to Android and Play to Waymo. And to our subscriptions business, we just launched

Google AI Pro and Ultra, and it's definitely doing well. I've been pleased to see the reception. So I think it's such a profound technology. I feel the opportunity ahead is bigger than the opportunity we had in the past. - So to double click there, if I may, what specific new revenue streams do you see increasing, and what revenue streams do you see decreasing? - The growth in cloud, like Vertex AI,

is up 40x in usage on a token basis just in the last 12 months. So obviously, you know, we have billions of dollars in providing AI-based solutions, in AI as an infrastructure, AI subscriptions. So there are many, many new businesses. You have over 180,000 employees right now. Is it half that in the future? I expect we will...

grow from our current engineering base even into next year, right? Because it allows us to do more, right? I think the opportunity space is also increasing. I just view this as making engineers dramatically more productive, getting a lot of the mundane aspects out of what they do, allowing them to spend on higher value added tasks,

But that means it's an accelerator. People will be able to do more, which means maybe we'll create new products, and hence we will need more people. At least in the near term, to me it looks like

You know, we will expand engineering velocity and that doesn't mean we're constrained in what we will do. We'll end up doing more as a company as well. But in two trials now, judges have said that Google is a monopoly in search and partly a monopoly in ads. How do you address the concern that your AI is built on an existing domination of search and ads and that this is just reinforcing original monopolies?

first of all, we disagree with the rulings and we are in the process of appealing these things. Look, if anything, this moment has shown, I don't think there's anyone here who is using anything they don't want to use. You look at the success of ChatGPD or any other product, people literally have more choice than ever before. The reason people use Google is because they want to use it, right? And so I think

I think we continue to innovate. I think choice is good for users, competition is good for the world. So that's how I see it. You said the remedies proposed are too extreme. Would you ever voluntarily break yourself up, control your own destiny? Compared to what

the initial scope of the ruling was. Some of the proposed solutions are far overreaching. We'll see how it plays out. I've heard you say a few times that you think of AI as an expansionary moment, but so far it does seem to be favoring tech giants and well-funded startups with access to GPUs and data centers and enormous amounts of capital.

Isn't this really concentrating power in fewer hands and is AI just another winner-take-all game? I'm confident there is a company that's going to be created with AI, just like when the internet happened. Many years after the internet happened, Google didn't exist. So, you know, there's no doubt to me that three years from now there'll be a company which will be dominant in this AI age, which we don't even know the name of today. That's the only way things work in the future.

A confident Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai there, along with Bloomberg's Emily Chang. Right now, we can talk it all through with executive editor Tom Giles, who joins us from all that conversation you were sitting down with, Boz, from Meta after that with Sundar. But just going back to what Sundar was saying around his optimism on jobs. Look, today, one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg terminal is Vista Equity Partners, Robert Smith, saying, look, at my conference today, 60% of you are going to need to find new jobs. White-collar work.

is going out. The number keeps going up. I know, what, Dario? Just last week, Dario from Amadei from Anthropic, 50%, right? Look, the fact is, AI is definitely coming for some engineering jobs. The number, the percentage of coding that is happening from artificial intelligence seems to keep creeping up and up and up.

Some people would argue that's going to put a lot of engineers out of jobs, but as Sundar pointed out last night, he thinks what's going to happen is it's going to make them more efficient. It's going to mean creating more products, bigger companies, bigger businesses, and need for more people.

Where do you draw that line? I mean, we have to encounter it as journalists, right? Right. When are you going to hear the news from the AIs? We have to stay a step ahead of them. We have to stay smarter. And the engineers, it's the same thing. You have to become more sophisticated in the way you code. And that's what Sundar is talking about. And I guess the news headline was that they will keep hiring engineers.

at least for the next 18 months or so, which was super interesting. - Least into 2026. He didn't want to be pinned down into much longer into the future. - The thing is that Google is so core to the news cycle at the moment. That was why it was such an important way to kick off Bloomberg Tech Summit.

He made this point that like, look, what we're doing in our scale, you can't accuse us of being a threat to the world existentially because we're also facing all of this competition. Some of that competition is going to be speaking over the next 12 hours, for example. Absolutely. You can't say on one hand that we are

at extinction level threat, right, at the same time too big. He definitely, he came back to the antitrust question, right? Basically, the government right now is considering breaking up Google. Would he consider breaking up himself? Of course,

His answer is that is not on the table. He thinks that the government is overreaching right now. And he has to keep sending that message that we are not a threat and that there is a lot of choice. Now, I will say that when you come to him and say that people are using AI, much more chatbots to do their searches, even TikTok to do searches, that...

actually feeds into his argument. That's really beneficial to him to know that there is this much competition. The chat GPT is out there and people are starting to use it for all the things that Google is, you usually do with Google. And perplexity, who's speaking to Shireen a little bit later today, Shireen Ghaffari. We've also got Shireen speaking with the government as well, Michael Kratzios. What are some of the conversations going to really be

pushing forward, do you think? Because yesterday you got Barzah Mehta to push forward on this patriotism focus, on this alignment of Silicon Valley with defense. What else came out of that conversation? Right, yeah. I mean, he pointed out that for many years, Silicon Valley has said no to working with the Defense Department. The pendulum is swinging dramatically. Patriotism, silent majority. We heard that before in U.S. history, you'll recall. Not sure I've seen the polling that shows that, that demonstrates that, but I get the sentiment behind it.

As you talked just now with Trey, I'll be talking with him a little bit later. I'm looking forward to hearing. It's got to get a seat on. You've got to get a seat on. It looks great. I'm looking forward to hearing from Lurie, Mayor Lurie, to hear about the comeback of San Francisco. Is it real? Is it lasting? And what's ahead for this important city to Silicon Valley?

We're just getting kicked off here. That was Bloomberg Technology Executive Editor, Senior Executive Editor Tom Giles. Let's get out to Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreeing to further trade talks during a phone call today. Bloomberg's Kayleigh Lyons has all the details. And at the center of it, rare earths.

Yeah, that's right. The president said that after this phone call with Xi, which lasted about an hour and a half, there should be no more questions around the complexity of the rare earths issue. That does still leave us, though, with some questions as the president did not specify exactly what was agreed to on rare earths. If China has formally said that it will be lifting export restrictions or granting licenses,

for the export of those rare earths to American companies. So we're still left with some questions here. China's readout of this call has been a bit different. China in its statement also said that President Trump has said that Chinese students are welcome in the U.S. despite the State Department's efforts to be revoking some of those visas of Chinese students. But the big picture here is that President Trump says that this has brought the U.S. and China to a better place on trade and that they are going to continue conversations, which will be a bit broader

remembering the first conversations in Geneva were just the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson with his counterpart now Howard Letnick, the Commerce Secretary, as well as the U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer will be involved in the next talks at a location that has yet to be announced as well as the time. China, top of mind, Kayleigh, in 30 seconds. Elon Musk also top of mind for this big bill.

Oh, absolutely. The Speaker of the House was actually planning on talking to Elon Musk today as he says he wants to see Americans kill this bill, possibly in part because it will roll back the $7,500 EV credit by the end of this year. And Tesla, of course, benefits from that, Caroline. Kayleigh Lyons, we thank you.

Welcome back to a very special edition of Bloomberg Technology. We are live from the Bloomberg Tech Summit right here in San Francisco. I'm Caroline Hyde. And I'm Ed Ludlow. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says that, quote, the tides have turned in Silicon Valley, making it more palatable for the tech industry to support the U.S. military's efforts. He sat down to discuss that last night with Bloomberg Senior Executive Editor Tom Giles.

I have family members in the armed services. I want them to have the best equipment available. And I've always been a very patriotic American and believe in the importance of our role, not just inside the nation but globally.

There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning that I think people give Silicon Valley credit for. But taking a step deeper, this is actually a return to grace for the Valley potentially, not just from Meta but from Google and other companies. The Valley was founded on a three-way investment between the military, academics, and private industry. That was the founding of it. There would be no technology if we weren't all tasked with the problem of computing naval ballistic trajectories

during the first two world wars. Like that is the heart and soul of the investment that led to what we are today.

And that really got severed for a while there. And some of that's because of the procurement laws that changed in the 60s and 70s. Some of that's the last supper that happened in 1995. We ended up just kind of going our separate ways. And I think we're worse off for it. I think we're spending more money for worse technology in the public sector. And I think the private sector is not attacking some of the most valuable challenges for us to solve.

And I think it's a mismatch. - You mentioned smartphones earlier. Do you see Spectacles headsets as a replacement for or a complement to smartphones? - We've always talked about the mixed reality devices, VR devices, as being kind of a laptop style market.

I use this joke a lot, but you know if you're ever on your phone and you're answering an email and you're like, no, this is not a phone email, this is a laptop email. And you put your phone down and you upgrade your power. You're like, yes, now I have all the windows and I will have all my research. And it's like, this is a laptop email. There's an increase in power that comes there that we all recognize and you just know instinctively when you're in what zone.

the headset should feel like that. It should feel like a crazy upgrade. Like, this is not a laptop email. This is a headset email. Now it's like the world is your oyster and you're just moving things through the universe. So I think there's a story there. Certainly in the limit, I think AR glasses replace smartphones.

That's a ways off. Smartphones are incredible, and it's not just that they're great devices and they're convenient, we're used to them. They also have an incredibly entangled ecosystem of software connected to the rest of the world around us that is going to be very slow to move over. And a lot of people who aren't going to want to move over because it's going to disenfranchise them or disintermediate them. So I think that'll take a longer journey. The good news is they work really well in concert. The platforms don't make it easy.

Sundar does better than Tim. But the truth is with AI, you've got this obvious use case where it just makes sense to have these wearable devices, even though you also still have a phone. So we're not in a place anymore where it's like one or the other and you have to pick today. They will coexist for a long time. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, along with Bloomberg's Tom Giles. Look, it's not all about

AR, VR glasses. When you think about the future, you also think robotics. Got the perfect person to discuss it with. Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics. Look, we are thinking about the next step of humanoids working with humans. You're already, after a year in the job, a year with your humanoid robots in GXO Logistics. What are you learning about how difficult it is for us to work alongside them?

Well, the biggest factor to scaling humanoids is safety. So still today, humanoids need to work inside of a work cell, which is a small gate that keeps them out of the proximity of humans. To really scale, you need to come outside of the work cell to be able to walk down to the loading dock or across a factory floor.

And we're working on that right now. Our next gen, which we will show off before the end of this year, will be what's called cooperatively safe. We can be within proximity of humans in a safe manner. How much is it software dependent rather than just hardware dependent? It's a bit of both.

You have to have a lot of sensors, a lot of cameras. Interestingly, unlike humans, robots can see behind them. They can see 360. They're much like electronic vehicles in that fashion. But you do need a layer of software on top to ensure that nothing ever happens that would put a human in harm's way. Peggy, what range of tasks can your robots currently perform, I guess, autonomously? Literally movements, pressures...

Yeah, so right now the entry point is moving materials, so moving plastic bins and boxes and things like that in warehouses. But that is only the entry point. It is a multipurpose robot. It can do a number of tasks. But this entry point can teach us new skills as we learn to do more things in those facilities and eventually come outside of those facilities and into our homes.

What is Agility's core competence? You make hardware or are you better at the software component? Well, I would say a little bit of both. You said that already though. I get told every single day at the moment when you speak to a robotics company, ask them about how good their software team is, how good the engineers are.

because it has been the limiting factor to progress. Yeah, so AI has really supercharged that. We used to have to code all the movements of the robot and now with AI we can teach it new skills much more quickly. We're actually exchanging engineering hours for compute hours and it really shrinks the time and the cost of teaching the robot new skills. What about supply chain?

We've got a lot of news about China-US relationship today. How is it looking for you? Well, a couple of things. We manufacture right here in the United States. Only about 1% of our parts come from China. So we're relatively immune to any of the issues that others may be having. The robot was just initially built that way, and it's been a real advantage for us. Can you pit us, therefore,

We love to put generative AI prowess of China versus generative AI prowess in the US. What about robotics? Who's winning? I would say the US is winning. A lot of what you see coming out of China today are flashy videos, demos, not actually on a factory floor like we are, working.

Eight-hour shifts, lifting heavy items. That is when that's the true test of what a robot can do. That's the thing. I think the Bloomberg Tech audience really just appreciate understanding the basics. So with the GXO deal, in one calendar year, you've moved 300,000 items. But how many robots is that? How many actions can a robot doing a shift? I can't believe you used the word shift.

performing that eight hour stretch. How does it work in practice and give us a sense of scale? Sure, so it is an eight hour shift. It's just a handful of robots that are producing that type of number. Basically, the robots can walk in and perform a task, but what's interesting about humanoids is that they can perform several tasks. So they can do one thing in the morning, something else at noon, something else in the evening, where robots

The traditional robots, say a single arm, is very specific. They do one thing over and over, and they do it very well. Humanoids can actually change what they do, and now with AI, we can give them commands, and they can change on a moment's notice. The history of agility is so interesting. It came out of Oregon State University. We're thinking at the moment about state funding, about funding to science and R&D, of talent being able to come in from immigration. Are these things top of mind for you?

Well, we did have early grants from the US and it really helped the company get going. So I am a huge fan of basic research for US companies. We absolutely have to continue to invest both in research and in the talent. So we need proper immigration in place in order for us to be able to access this kind of talent. Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics. Remember when a single technology glitch could bring an entire workday to a standstill?

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The world is built on code. From the apps we use every day to the systems powering industries, developers like you are the architects of tomorrow. But let's be real. The road to innovation can get a little tricky. You need the right tools to move fast, but you also need a community to help you go further. That's where Microsoft comes in. Microsoft has the tools to help you move at lightning speed, like GitHub Copilot, VS Code, and a ton of AI resources to keep you on the cutting edge.

But here's the best part. You can build with confidence, knowing that Microsoft security and compliance are already taken care of. No more worrying about vulnerabilities or threats while you focus on your craft.

And with Azure AI Foundry, you can build your way. The future is yours to build, no strings attached. From ready-to-code tools to full flexibility, it's all in one place. The future's in your hands. So learn more at developer.microsoft.com.

Welcome back to a special edition of Bloomberg Technology. We're live from the Bloomberg Tech Summit in San Francisco, where AI is top of mind. AI's impact on the workforce is already being felt, and that's especially true for engineers. Our partner, Chana Pregada, is the Chief Product Officer of Experiences and Devices at Microsoft, which is at the forefront of some of these changes. She joins us here.

Tech Summit SF. So as you know, about six months ago, I just did 30 days straight of using Copilot on a Windows-based laptop. I wanted to commit to working out how on earth you use these tools in the real world

Really interesting that I felt within the confines of the laptop. I couldn't get out of the laptop onto my smartphone. What are you finding six months on and how knowledge workers use your tech? First of all, thank you for having me and also for thank you for nailing the pronunciation of my name. You know, like taking a step back, I think we are in this like super early phase of like the AI shift.

This is like the 1995 equivalent of the internet shift to me where I see it. And to me, I think what we are starting to see is for knowledge work, very clearly efficiency gains, right? For organizations, you're saving millions of dollars of like money and time, automating workflows. I mean, summarizing documents, meeting notes, et cetera. Is Copilot just narrowly a tool for knowledge workers or are you finding consumers are using it in equal measure? It's broad.

because productivity is not bound by the work organizational boundary, right? But I do think that actually one of the things that we are seeing where the traction is is in efficiency for organizations, right? Efficiency for at the individual level. Imagine having a digital assistant at work for every employee, right, which you couldn't afford to have before.

The thing that we are seeing, and I'm seeing it with customers talking about it too, is that shift between from efficiency to more of effectiveness. Meaning, look, I mean, it is great. For example, I can't imagine doing a meeting without the facilitation by Copilot, right? It takes the notes. It carries action items. It tells if you're going off the rails in a discussion because in meetings that happens all the time.

But what I am seeing is that for effectiveness, the key unlock has been these model advances in deep reasoning. Meaning it's not just about like faster answers. We launched an agent in Copilot called Researcher. Think about it as a super smart, intelligent chief of staff in your pocket.

And so for example, I had a customer meeting last week and this thing went around and kind of like scoured the whole web information, but also the email from three years ago from the CIO of the customer to kind of like pointing an issue and said, make sure you bring that up.

I mean, that's the effectiveness. That's like superpowers that you didn't have before. That's what we're seeing. People are getting their superpowers from other places too. And ChachiBT Enterprise, the interesting nature of your relationship with OpenAI, but also them as a competitor, can your customers afford both? Are they affording both?

I think with OpenAI, first of all, we have a great long-term relationship. It's a win-win relationship. We build products on innovative models from OpenAI, the frontier models. Our customers build agents and workflows and AI apps on top of our Azure OpenAI service platform.

What I do see at Microsoft is, for us, at least, what AI and Copilot is about, number one, bringing the advanced intelligence, right? That's table stakes. But number two is making sure that it works where you work, right? I'm in Teams all day. Not just where you work. So right now, I'm using this thing. This is a smartphone. Various brands are available. In the future, because this is part of your portfolio, which device does Microsoft bet?

that knowledge workers are actually using for AI tools? I mean, there's clearly a lot of knowledge work that happens on laptops, on desktops. But then I think we have a mobile app, for example, for the M365 co-pilot, the one that you do use at work. But I think the other thing I do want to come back to is

You can't build all of these on Jenga blocks. You have to build this on security, safety, compliance, and governance. And that's the thing I hear all the time from customers. In fact, the phrase that I use internally is we need to innovate at the speed of trust. Which means it's an and. And at Microsoft, that's what I think of as a differentiator. Which is how do you innovate, but how do you do it at the speed of trust with governance? I go back to that and though.

Are people having co-pilot and other enterprise generative AI offerings right now? It's a mix, and I would say it's actually a healthy thing right now because again, think about, I think of AI tools for employees as a contact sport. In fact, I think one of the, like you have to get in and use this stuff to actually get the intuition. That's how I think about it, sure. The challenge is amazing because, and in fact, we did a study called the Work Trend Index,

And one of the things we found is this class of companies, we call them frontier firms, and the big distinction there is that they're not thinking of AI as a snack. It's a main meal, right, for their employees. It's an org-wide adoption. It's not this thing off to the side. They're using multiple tools. They're experimenting with things. But at the end of the day, they are also looking at what's the ROI.

Where are they getting the governance and the security and as well as kind of the latest access to intelligence? And that's how I think about like where Microsoft is playing. Wow, Aparna, it's been great. Contact sport, I can't play rugby anymore, but it's not contact sport. Different nature. Aparna Chanavagada, she's Microsoft Chief Product Officer of Experiences and Devices.

Now we've got plenty coming up. Turning to the battle, a contact sport for chatbot dominance into a business. Look, we're talking to the co-founders of LM Arena. That's next. This has been Big Tech on G.

Developers like you are building the future, but you need the right tools to move fast and go further, right? That's where Microsoft comes in. With tools like GitHub Copilot, VS Code, and Azure AI Foundry, you have everything you need to push the limits and bring your ideas to life faster. And with security, compliance, and responsible AI built in, you can focus on what matters most, building the next big thing. Learn more at developer.microsoft.com.

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