Elon Musk and President Trump Feud Impacts Tesla, SpaceX
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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 Bloomberg Technology. Coming up, Tesla in the crosshairs after the Trump-Musk blowup.

led to a $150 billion route. Plus, what could it mean for SpaceX? Elon Musk backpedaling after threatening to pull Dragon spacecraft from NASA missions. And is it the fastest growing software startup of all time? The company behind coding assistant Cursor cashes in on the AI frenzy with a close to $10 billion valuation. But first, we check in on the stock of the moment. We rebound some. We recoup about $50 billion on the day, but Ed...

Over the course of the week, we've lost $140 billion in market cap for Tesla. It is now sub $1 trillion. It is its worst week since February of 2025. Right. And at one point in the session, the worst week going back to October of 2023. We need to talk more about what is happening. Let's go to D.C. to discuss it with Bloomberg's Balance of Power host, Kayleigh Lyons. The latest reporting, Kayleigh.

is that in the whirlwind of the last 24 hours, there will not be a conversation or phone call between Elon Musk and the president today.

Yeah, that is what White House officials are signaling to Bloomberg, Ed, despite the fact that there was reporting that some kind of call must happen. And there's been signaling from Elon Musk that he is willing to lower the temperature here. After someone posted on X at him yesterday that they should cool off for a few days, he said that was good advice. And when Bill Ackman said that Trump and Musk need to make peace for the good of the country, Elon Musk responded, you are not wrong. So it does seem on at least one side there is a willingness to lower the temperature here. It's unclear, though, whether or not

President Trump feels the same way. That same White House official that indicated no call would happen today also said that Trump is considering selling the Tesla that he purchased in that flashy White House event just months ago when these two were still incredibly tight. So if they can't fully mend fences here, obviously there are some major implications we have to consider. There is the political implication of whether or not Elon Musk will continue to attack what is supposed to be President Trump's landmark legislative accomplishment in his second term, this one big beautiful bill, while

Elon Musk's criticism may not actually change the odds of the legislation getting through Congress. At the very least, him broadcasting his views to hundreds of millions of people does damage Republican messaging around the deficit impact of this legislation. There's also Elon Musk's money to consider. He, of course, deployed some $290 million in the 2024 election cycle, a lot of that toward the effort

of getting President Trump re-elected, but Republicans have to consider whether or not Elon might deploy that money to primary challengers, for example, if he decides he would like to punish those who go ahead and vote for this legislation. That will, of course, in addition to raising the deficit, lead to the rollback of EV credits that Tesla benefits from. There's national security implications, too, given that Musk and those working for him in Doge were given...

access to government systems. It's unclear how far that access went or whether or not access for some of those individuals is going to be revoked. And then you get into, of course, the business implications as to whether or not government contracts, as President Trump threatened yesterday, that Elon Musk's companies from SpaceX to others could actually, do actually benefit from, need, will actually go away. So there are many different layers to this. And while there is a signal that maybe things have cooled down for now after what was an

Incredibly wild day yesterday where this escalated very quickly. There's really no telling where this goes from here.

What a thorough roundup, Kayleigh Lyons. We appreciate it from Washington. Let's now bring in Bloomberg's Max Chafkin from the Elon Inc. team. And Max, I just want to get your perspective here on we know how tough the president can be when he holds a grudge. Harvard's experienced it. Universities have experienced it. But what about Elon? He's still got that vote going on on X about whether a new political party needs to be formed. Do we really think he's going to cool down from here?

I think it would be in his interest to cool down. And I think the stock chart that you showed reflects that. There is no universe that I can imagine anyway where Elon Musk maintaining this position where he's, you know, this kind of maximalist, we should impeach Donald Trump, start a new political party, you know, yesterday accusing Trump of being associated with Jeffrey Epstein. You know, like this is a point where he's going to start alienating Republicans

MAGA-aligned customers. And unfortunately for Tesla, that is now an important contingent of their customer base, because Elon Musk has already alienated the left-leaning customers. So you're in this situation that is difficult. Now, Musk has cards to play, right? He has the money that he can donate, as we just heard.

heard, he also has this aerospace company which, you know, the US, Trump can threaten to cancel contracts, but as the Pentagon is constructed right now and as NASA is constructed, they are depending on SpaceX for rocket launches. So he has cards to play, but I

But I don't see how he can kind of maintain this pose without watching Tesla stock decline further, without watching sales fall further. I mean, this is the most self-destructive -- I have covered Elon Musk for a very long time. This is the most self-destructive that I have ever seen Elon Musk.

Okay, Tesla shares are up more than 6% in the session, but we remind ourselves that the stock fell 14% as of yesterday's close. And while all of this was happening, something you mentioned was the core story, President Trump's threat to cancel government contracts. And if you look at it from the Elon Inc. lens, Max, Tesla is the publicly traded proxy for sentiment towards Elon, right? But

But since 2000, Tesla, SpaceX, in aggregate, have benefited from more than $20 billion in grants, subsidies, and direct contracts. Explain that landscape to us and what's at stake here if the president were to carry through with that threat. You know, that's why I'm reacting the way I'm reacting and why I think there are a lot of people who still kind of expect

you know, maybe some reconciliation because Elon Musk has, over the course of his career, as you just said, Ed, he has been really, really effective at basically getting the federal government to give him money. And I think what we have been seeing, and you saw this frustration coming out a little bit in the wake of the departure of Jared Isaacman, the person who Musk had hoped would be the NASA nominee, as well as

the discussion around the EV tax credit, which is part of this tax bill that the Republicans are trying to pass, you saw a little bit of frustration, I think, from Elon Musk that although he's had tremendous influence, and although he's gone to all the parties, he's been in Mar-a-Lago,

Trump has let him, you know, basically, it seems, do whatever he wants with Doge. He hasn't actually been able to get the business priorities. And now, of course, it's going to get harder. Now, like I said, I don't think the government is just going to unilaterally cancel SpaceX contracts, but the government has leverage over Elon Musk, and Trump is signaling that he's willing to use it.

What I reported with our DC colleagues is that Isaacsman's nomination was canceled because of his relationship with Elon Musk and a White House official called Sergio Gore, who did not like Elon Musk. And that's in copy on Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg's Max Chafkin of Elon Inc. Fantastic. Thank you very much. I want to go to Nancy Tengler. She's CEO and CIO of Laffer Tengler Investments, about $1.5 billion in assets, but a significant holding of Tesla shares.

Nancy, is what we saw in Tesla's stock yesterday, Thursday, the drop in 14%, is it the market betting against Musk himself as opposed to whatever they feel about the long-term thesis of Tesla? I don't know, Ed. Thanks for having me. I think

Part of what we saw yesterday is what we always see in the short term, and that is that the algorithms read the headlines, then the shorts jump in. And this is the stock and the guy that everyone loves to short. So, I mean, I'm not saying I think this was well advised, what Elon did, but I do think the fundamentals ultimately will trump this issue, if you will. No pun.

And that's important because this might be a great entry point. We had bought in, added again to our holdings on March 10th, and I think the stock was trading about 240. That looked really smart until yesterday. But that said, I think you do want to add it in the volatile periods because Musk has a habit of teetering on the edge of destruction and then pulling himself back.

and in the nick of time. He has said himself he's wired for war and he often shoots himself in the foot and clearly he's not wrong about that. The shooting in the foot, how prolific could that get in terms of getting robo-taxis and a cyber-cab on the road and implicating that long-term thesis that so many people hold?

Yeah, I don't think it will. I mean, Caroline, I don't know, but because President Trump's equally unpredictable. I was reading a story about one of his previous advisors who had given him all the judicial nominees in his first term, and he called him a sleazebag who hates America. So he has a habit, too, of embracing people and then disengaging, and not only disengaging, but saying some pretty rough things about them. But that said, I do think that

that what the administration understands is they do need productivity-driven growth to make this tax bill work. And a good portion of that is pointed at Elon Musk and his efforts and initiatives, including RoboTaxi. I expect that next week, after the RoboTaxi announcement, unless something ridiculous happens, that we will be talking about something else as it relates to Tesla.

What's interesting is we're talking about something else that relates to Elon. We're going to talk more about the space part of the equation later in the show, Nancy, but it's interesting that there's some debt being shot by Morgan Stanley right now for XAI, and it went on for sale basically yesterday. We wonder what the sentiment is like in terms of shift. Would you want to be adding at this point? You said maybe it's smart, but would you want to be adding exposure to all things Elon at this moment?

So we have a pretty full position. And there's a reason this stock is not in our 12 best ideas portfolio, Caroline, because it is inherently volatile and a lot of it has to do with Elon. So I would say if you don't own it, and we have some clients who have asked us to buy positions for them today, which we will do in their non-managed accounts. But effectively, I'm going to wait. And if I

If we see what we need to see next week and the stock doesn't bounce, then we may actually add to it discreetly, not in a big way, because it's a 4% position, or it was yesterday, so call it 3.5% today. And that's about as much as we want to own of this stock in our growth portfolio.

Let's go back to RoboTaxi. This is the thesis from Bloomberg Intelligence, our in-house analysts, about what the events of the last 24 hours mean. And they argue specifically that it will result in a protracted rollout of RoboTaxi.

Because the whole trade was based on the idea that Musk's proximity to the president would result in favorable legislation or federal-level policy that would help RoboTaxi. Where do you stand on that, Nancy?

Yeah, and I think that's the risk. And that's one of the reasons that we're not jumping in here. The regulatory environment. But I would also point out, you know, all the tech CEOs sort of did their homage to the administration and to the president in particular. And it hasn't really resulted in much good news from a regulatory standpoint. In fact, you could argue it's resulted in none.

Google, Meta. So I think that I'm hopeful that cooler heads will prevail, that the technology will be seen for what it is. And, you know, if you look out, the robo-taxi would be the lowest cost per mile provider. Well, there's only two, Waymo. And it comes in significantly below. And so I think there's a lot of reasons to support this technology. But, you know...

These are two unique individuals. I think it's important to point out that actually Musk was quite consistent over a number of months that he would be fine if EV subsidies were killed or cut. He said it in July. He said it in December. He said it more recently. And Trump said it at March cabinet meeting. Does that factor in for you, his position on that?

Yeah. Yes. I mean, I thought that was disingenuous of the president yesterday to say that he saw that the EV mandates were gone and that's what, you know, drove him crazy. I think that was the direct quote. Uh, he has been consistent. I agree with his position on that. Uh, it, it supports the weaker, uh,

manufacturers. It doesn't necessarily support the industry leader. The Tesla buyer is really not influenced by the mandate, and most don't qualify because of the income limitation. So I think...

I think Elon is a smart businessman and what really frustrated him was the fact that the government is not run like a business. So you make the logical, you have the logical discussions and then the government goes on this giant snowball rolling down a hill. So I

I'm hopeful that we will see things settle down and that next week I'm hoping we'll be talking about RoboTaxi and how amazing it is. I live in Waymo land. It's pretty exciting what's going on and what Amazon is doing with robots delivering packages. They could be getting out of a RoboTaxi for all I know.

Let's just go to sentiment on buying a Tesla though, Nancy, because this I think is what's caught many off guard. Europeans are incredibly angry about some of the political leanings that Elon Musk has had and it's affected sales, it would seem. It hasn't just been the production halt and the wait for a new Model Y. We're seeing that borne out in May numbers. So will this implicate who buys Teslas going forward?

That's a great question, Caroline. You know, what's interesting is that BYD has been taken to task by the Communist Party for lowering prices because they're in a deflationary environment. And so I find that super interesting. Will that open up some space for Tesla again in China? It could. I mean, they've called it rat race competition, the Communist Party calling out the CEO. So we may see another, you know, another instance where the companies

the public market is invaded by the Communist Party, and that may help. But I don't think people are going to get over this soon. I think they will eventually get over it. But he needs to dial down the rhetoric and the drama and get back to the business of, you know, optimists and robo-taxi and full self-driving. That is what people own the stock for, and for his brilliance and genius, of course, but not for the histrionics.

And therefore, do you think you're going to get enough of his attention, particularly on the humanoid robot side of the equation?

I do. I mean, what Tesla has said is that they're going to have thousands in their factories coming up. That would be a good thing, Caroline, because, you know, we have five as much as the president talks about bringing manufacturing back to America. We have 500000 manufacturing jobs that have gone unfilled. It's hard to turn that one around when for years we were shrinking the manufacturing base. The solution is robots, not not across the board, but in a good instance. And they they are very productive way of of

producing things. So just as AI is writing AI code, I think the robots will build the robots and we'll see manufacturing plants use more and more robotics. That's a good thing. And I think Tesla will be at the center of that, as well as energy storage. If anything's come out of the events of the last 24 hours, it's to remind us of the deficit. Nancy, listen to this.

We can debate. He didn't get his trillion. He got probably $100 billion or so in terms of cuts. But he worked. He was part of DOGE. It was right after the inauguration we had DOGE. So I think some of this is, as he's looking at this one big beautiful bill, seeing that really the tax cuts are temporary. So is Musk trying to highlight the deficit issue again?

Remember, this was all about the big beautiful bill. It's where it started. Is Musk putting the emphasis back on the deficit helpful, Nancy?

I actually think it is, Ed. I think a lot of what he's done has changed the narrative. Whether you support Doge or not, it's shined a light on the profligate spending in Washington. And I think what most Americans took away, and just like if you just start with Harvard, why is the government giving an educational institution that has a

endowment, sorry, of $14 billion, whatever it is, why are we giving them hundreds of millions of dollars every year? Those are good debates to have. There may be a very good reason, but I don't think most people think that the government is efficient with their tax dollars. And so to start that debate, then to see it do the work, see it unwound, really with this tax bill,

which is long on spending. I don't like it either. I don't think it's a very good bill. I think that they could have done better. They obviously don't think they could have. I'm not there, but I think that's really what he's focusing on. And that's important. $37 trillion in debt is nothing short of suicidal in my view.

Remember when a single technology glitch could bring an entire workday to a standstill?

I'm Mark Banfield, Chief Commercial Officer at TeamViewer. Today, most technical issues are recurring. If you know the patterns, these issues can be remediated before they impact your business. One major UK retailer discovered a single point of sale outage cost them around $1 million in lost sales during a single lunchtime. Now, using TeamViewer's digital workplace platform, the same company is able to identify and fix those issues before they even happen.

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The company behind the popular AI coding assistant Cursor has a new valuation, $9.9 billion, just three years after it was launched and says it's bringing in $500 million in annualized revenue. Michael Truel is AnySphere's CEO and he joins us now. Your name comes up a lot, all the time, not just here in Silicon Valley, everywhere. The growth that you've seen in the platform has been rapid.

This is a finance story. It's a funding, it's an access to capital. But what I want to ask you is what the true motivation behind it was. Did you need the money or was it just because of the interest in you from the outside?

Well, the goal for us with building Cursor is to invent a very new way to build software. And I think that the product that we built today is just the very start of that. I think that over the next five years, we have a chance to invent a style of programming that looks very different from how you build software today. One that's much higher level and more productive. And it's just still down to defining what you want to show up on the computer and how you want the software to work.

And we have a long way to go there. And there's a lot of research and development to do to get there. And so we took on this capital to invest in frontier AI coding research. What is unique about Cursor, how it was written, relative to what Claude is offering with their similar tool, Windsurf, and other similar platforms? Well, the API models created by folks like

Anthropic and Gemini and OpenAI are fantastic and are big parts of Cursor. And they power the technology under the hood alongside custom models that we developed too that are specifically very good at parts of programming. And so at this point, Cursor is powered by an ensemble of models. Some of them are API. A lot of them are custom.

And we do over half a billion model calls per day on our custom models. And it's that ensemble of models under the hood that separates a useful AI product from one that's just a demo. And it's that ensemble of models that gives you the speed and stability and performance that you need to be really useful.

vibe coding, that is something that's come into our lexicon. I just want to be shining a light on who's been using Cursor for that very reason. Sunil Pichai, just take a listen to what he said a couple of days ago at the Bloomberg Tech Summit. I wish I could do more, but I've just been messing around, be it either with Cursor or I vibe coded with Replit. Compared to the early days of coding, things have come a long way.

How does it feel that the CEO of Alphabet is using what you've made in only the last few years? Well, it means a lot and we're honored and we're big fans of the technology and the company that he and the people working with him have created. I will say that our target market, the person we're really building for, are folks who build software for a living, professional software developers. And our goal is to raise the ceiling. But by doing that,

you do raise the floor too, I mean lower the floor. And it's been awesome to see folks that are less technical, executives, designers, product folks, also experimenting with building software end-to-end. And the money is through subscriptions. It's made you, many would claim, to be the fastest growing software startup ever. And I'm interested, is the pivot to enterprise really what drives your growth from here? Because you have been about individuals, but you're selling $40 subscriptions for the business. Is that the growth trajectory?

We have a very healthy upmarket motion. A lot of our growth comes from serving larger and larger companies. And we're happy to announce as part of the funding that we're serving over half the Fortune 500 and companies like NVIDIA and Adobe and Uber. And we're very happy to be serving those folks' missions. The question is posed all the time if a larger entity will try and acquire you.

has a larger entity tried to acquire you. And when I say a larger entity, I mean a company that is of OpenAI scale, XAI scale, Anthropic scale.

Well, we can't comment on anything like that here. Actually, if you stay in age, you can. Just go ahead. I will say that we would like to build an independent company. The founding team and I feel like we were made for this opportunity and we're really energized by the product journey that we have ahead of us. And we would like to do that standalone.

Michael Trill, CEO of Anisfair, of course, maker of Cursor. It's a joy. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Now we've got some breaking news regarding rare earths and supply chain. Let's just take a look at how China is granting rare earth permits to some U.S. auto suppliers. This is currently, of course, being discussed by Reuters as we stand. Reported by Reuters, we're up three-tenths of a percent on General Motors. The other

Well, auto companies have been trading higher in this session. China granting rare earths permits to some U.S. auto suppliers, according to Reuters, Ed. Okay, coming up on the show, the feud between President Trump and Elon Musk may be cooling off, and the future of U.S. space has something to do with it. We're going to talk about the Rocket Man and the President of the United States next. From San Francisco, this is Bloomberg Technology.

Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Caroline Hyde right here in San Francisco. Yeah, for the final day this week. And I'm Ed Ludlow. What are you looking at? Let's get a check on these markets, Ed, because actually, despite the sell-off in one particular name that we've seen over a couple of days, the NASA 100 has had a nice week. We're up...

almost 2% as it stands. We're currently seeing the best week since all of last week, but it's two straight weeks of gains. We're up two percentage points. If you're looking at points contributors on the day, Nvidia's up there, Apple's there, Amazon's there, and so too is Tesla. Let's look at Tesla, though, over the last five days. Yes, it claws back.

some of its market capitalization erosion that we saw yesterday hard and fast. But over the course of the week, we are down by $140 billion in terms of market cap. All of this as Elon goes versus, well, the most powerful person in politics, President Trump. Let's recap. From bromance to breakup, and now maybe a truce, it started with Musk slamming Trump's tax bill. Trump's response? Disappointment.

I've always liked Elon, and I was very surprised. You saw the words he had for me, the words. And he hasn't said anything about me that's bad. I'd rather have him criticize me than the bill, because the bill is incredible.

Trump claimed that Musk was mad about EV incentive cuts. Musk denied it, noted he's long opposed to subsidies. Then it turned personal. Trump called Musk crazy and claimed he kicked him out of the administration. Musk fired back. Tesla shares dropped. Investors had hoped Musk's ties to Trump might fast-track robo-taxi rules. Then Trump threatened to end Musk's federal contracts, a direct hit.

to SpaceX. Musk said he'd pull Dragon spacecraft from NASA missions and then he walked it back. So what happens now for space, policy, and Musk? Blue Mosby's Lauren Grush joins us now. We're focused on Dragon, which is the capsule that sits atop the SpaceX rocket that takes humans and cargo to and from the International Space Station. Musk said that he would decommission the program and then walked it back. Explain why that was so important.

Yeah, it's hard to overstate just how dependent NASA has become on SpaceX and the Dragon spacecraft. It is kind of the, it is the primary way that NASA sends humans to the International Space Station, and it is probably the biggest supplier of food and supplies to the ISS. So without it,

We can't staff the space station very well, and we can't send food there for the astronauts to eat. So we do have some other options, but none are as prolific as the Falcon 9 and the Dragon combo. So it really would bring the operations at the ISS to a standstill.

That's the pain point for NASA, for astronauts. But what about the pain point for SpaceX? How dependent is it on the United States?

Right. So it's no secret that in order for SpaceX to become this behemoth company that it has become, it has really leveraged NASA and government contracts to help develop its Falcon 9 rocket, to develop the Dragon capsule, which it uses for...

commercial purposes. It's not just a government spacecraft. They have used it to send tourists into orbit and for private citizens to visit the International Space Station. So they have actually used it for services outside of the government. Of course, SpaceX does have a diversified revenue stream. A lot of that comes from Starlink now, which it uses to

provide broadband coverage to Earth and to customers. So that has definitely supplemented a lot of their incoming revenue. But NASA and the Defense Department are very big customers, and it would definitely be a major hit to their incoming money if they were to just cancel all of their government contracts without explanation.

Lauren Grush, a great roundup. Thank you so much on all sides of SpaceX. But for more on the broader impact of this feud, and indeed it has cooled down, Anna Rathman's with us, global market strategist. Anna, your perspective on yesterday's market moves on the back of what seemed to be online warfare between Trump and Musk?

Yeah, it was an unfortunate and very unnecessary spat between two very powerful individuals who have the potential to move markets. And we really saw that and felt that yesterday. At the end of the day, the question really was like, who holds more power? Because that seemed to be the trajectory of the spat.

Where we settled for the time being is that Mr. Trump seems to have won it. And you really saw that because of the potential impact for cash flow. If SpaceX had been a publicly traded company, you might have seen something similar for that particular name as well. But for

frankly, they need each other. And so I'm really glad to see them toning down the rhetoric and taking a little pause to cool down, because the government needs that public-private partnership in order to make this country great. And also, you know, Tesla needs better regulations or friendly regulations, and SpaceX needs the government as well. So they're going to have to work together, whether they like it or not.

We've focused a lot, Anna, on Elon Musk and the Elon Musk proportion of what's been happening. Is there still an element of headwind risk uncertainty for the technology investor in the market from the president?

You know, so this takes us to the tariff question, right? And just recently, you were just reporting about rare earth minerals from China and making it available to automakers. And that's really great news. And after, at the heels of the Xi-Trump conversation yesterday, which was a step in the right direction, I think this is an olive branch to take the conversation further. We may expect

to see maybe Mr. Trump going to China or Xi Jinping coming into the United States, and that would be a huge step. But we do need to make headway because we are at a detente. I do think that the Trump administration has undermined the difficulty of negotiating with people who may not just respond to threats. You know, they call their bluff.

145 percent tariffs and they didn't blink. Right. In fact, they told us they wouldn't respond at all. So I think it's going to take a lot more nuanced negotiations. And I would look at this rare earth minerals news as an opening for a good faith negotiation.

There are people I've spoken to who would say, I look at the rare earth situation and wonder what the United States can do in the context of a trade negotiation. One idea is a quid pro quo where rare earths access on favorable terms would be exchanged for semiconductor access that's codified in the AI context. That sounds messy, doesn't it?

It sounds very messy, and I'm very skeptical. So the question is, who holds the cards? China certainly holds the cards on rare earths, but in many ways, that is the only thing that they have the cards on where we absolutely need it.

We hold the cards on the massive consumer base and also influence in other countries as well, as we've seen through all of this negotiation process. So even though Jensen Huang would love for us to lower the export controls on AI chips,

I just don't see that happening because if we make it available to them, it still doesn't guarantee that China isn't going to be making strides in creating their own chips and designing them. So I don't see U.S. giving up on it. And that takes me to what may the solution actually look like at the end.

Well, if we're at a detente and China is a national security issue, then what are we willing to compromise? Probably not much, in which case we may actually end up in a similar place where we started, where nobody is giving up on anything. And that's, to borrow Shakespeare's words, much ado about nothing for all of this drama.

All of this drama involves other people than President Trump and Elon Musk. And there are some very focused technology experts advising the White House. One of them is David Sachs. There was a lot of concern about what the ripple effects of this feud might have on him. But thus far, AI policy, crypto policy more broadly, has it been in the right direction from your perspective? I think in the right direction in terms of doing not much about it, yes.

I do think that on the hardware side, yeah, there's going to be some questions about making certain chips available, et cetera. But on the software side, we have to be continuing to develop because at the end of the day, that's where the race is right now. It's not just on the chips. The chips we're very excited about. Data centers we're very excited about.

But it's really going beyond the proof of concepts and making it more productive for not only American citizens, but global citizens around the world. Taking that step is the race. And I think they just need to be left alone in some ways so that they can continue to innovate. And also that innovation will come with being able to protect from the bad actors, because ultimately that rounds out the national security issue.

Anna Rathbun, Global Market Strategist. Thank you very much. Coming up, we'll break down one of the splashiest public debuts in years, that of stablecoin firm Circle. What's next? This is Bloomberg Technology. Remember when a single technology glitch could bring an entire workday to a standstill? I'm Mark Banfield, Chief Commercial Officer at TeamViewer. Today, most technical issues are recurring. If you know the patterns, these issues can be remediated before they impact your business.

One major UK retailer discovered a single point of sale outage cost them around $1 million in lost sales during a single lunchtime. Now, using TeamViewer's digital workplace platform, the same company is able to identify and fix those issues before they even happen. But proactive troubleshooting isn't just about the incremental improvements. It's about fundamentally reimagining how work happens for everyone.

And the companies that move first get competitive advantages in terms of efficiency, productivity, and innovation. To find out more, visit bloomberg.com forward slash team viewer.

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We really do think that major technology firms, major financial institutions, major commerce firms are going to go the stablecoin route. And we think that they're going to look to partner with the leading platforms and the leading infrastructure that can bring the technology, the scale, the network effects, and really the broad regulatory footprint like Circle has provided.

That was Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire following the stablecoin firm's IPO. That was yesterday. Circle shares are still surging after the company and its shareholders raised nearly $1.1 billion in an upsized offering. Stock was halted several times for volatility on the first day. Let's bring in Matt Oguz, venture science founding partner and a Circle investor. I have to ask the question, was too much money left on the table? It's now trading at $109. Did the bankers get the price just too low here?

Well, thank you for having me. But look, nobody knows how some of these stocks will play out after the bell. So the important thing was for the IPO to be sold essentially the night before. And I think it was...

significantly oversubscribed, maybe 25 times oversubscribed. So the companies do get paid ahead of time and that's all locked in and after the bell rings where the direction takes, obviously this much of an increase is a pleasant surprise to all of us involved but that's kind of how it happened. Let's go back a few years. Why did you first get into Circle?

Yeah, that's a great question. I remember, I think about seven or eight years ago, here not too far from these offices here, where our offices are actually, I attended a dinner with a number of people from the regulatory side, people from, I think, some crypto experts, even...

from the Federal Reserve and during that dinner anytime Circle's name came up the sentiment was quite positive so you know obviously cryptocurrency, blockchain, these subjects carry a certain nuance with them but one of the things that we noticed was essentially Circle was sort of the grown-up in the room and being on the positive side of you know regulatory things and compliance obviously a US-based company now

That was quite positive. But not to mention the technology that they're developing. Circle has some of the best blockchain cryptocurrency engineers in the world, along with some, you know,

Maybe I have to mention Ripple as well because we're a Ripple shareholder also. But these are the best engineers in the world working on amazing cutting-edge technology. And so the two things combined, along with, of course, we're a quant-driven firm, a number of other factors that we considered led us to that decision. And now it feels as though that grown-up in the room is bearing dividends when you're looking at the Genius Act coming into play, when you're thinking about the

finally some support for stablecoins writ large when it comes from a government perspective. That must have helped the moon music for why you IPO now. And that, absolutely, absolutely, you're right. And of course, you know, all the positive signs that I mentioned before were really the writing on the wall

Now, of course, nobody knew how the numbers would exactly play out. And again, this is a pleasant surprise and the stock's doing very well today. This liquidity event for you, this is a great moment to celebrate a return for you and shareholders or you keep holding? We keep holding. We're a different firm. We participate both in the equity capital markets offerings as well as the private positions that we carry. And so we're holding on to both for now.

Matt Oguz, Venture Science Founding Partner, thank you very much. Peloton CEO Peter Stern says he has no interest in selling the business while he works on its turnaround. He made those comments at the Bloomberg Tech Summit in San Francisco yesterday, where Stern outlined his vision for reviving the fitness giant. Here he is alongside Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

My predecessor took a lot of the really hard steps to right-size the company and set us up so that now we can execute on the strategy of empowering people to live fit, strong, long, and happy. And we're doing that for six million members in multiple countries. We're in a really good place now to build on that really strong foundation that was established by my predecessors.

So what is the strategy? What is Peter Stern's strategy for Peloton? Are you going to keep it a hardware software services company? Have you thought about spinning out the hardware and focusing just on the app? Yes, we're an equipment company plus amazing software plus human coaching with community. We are not, our future is not to try to scale the app at the expense of that equipment business. We have reignited the innovation engine for us

as a company and so focusing on the products and the experiences that we're going to offer over the next few months is absolutely my number one. Another one that I think is really important that we're focused on is how we use AI to deliver personal experiences for our members. That is another one I'm spending an enormous amount of time on, so huge priority for us. Last question for you.

Peloton, standalone business for years to come? Is it potentially an acquisition target for a larger company? What do you see as the--? I was not hired to sell this company. I was hired to bring this company back to growth, to reinvigorate it, and it is happening. So, there is-- we are a standalone company for years to come.

Hello to CEO Peter Stern there alongside Bloomberg's Mark Gurman at the Tech Summit. Coming up, the Nintendo Switch 2. It has finally been released. We're going to be breaking down what the biggest consumer tech product release of the year really means. This is Bloomberg Technology.

It's hard to overstate how important the Switch is for Nintendo. Almost all of its revenue comes from this one product, or the exclusive games the company develops for it. Its popularity since 2017 has driven Nintendo's share price to an all-time high. And everything's riding on the Switch 2, keeping that trend going. The stakes were very high.

Nintendo is at the most successful point in its history. And here's why. The Nintendo DS, 154 million sold. The follow-up 3DS, 76 million. The Wii, 102 million sold. The follow-up Wii U, oh dear.

And the Nintendo Switch, almost the best-selling console of all time, $152 million sold. No pressure then. Switch 1 created a very high hurdle for the future consoles to surpass.

So Nintendo's breaking new ground with some very subtle shovels. It's the first console in Nintendo's history that is kind of the same thing, but just a little bit bigger and a little bit better. That strategy belies decades of corporate lessons learned sometimes the hardest way. But this time, the stakes are just too high for history to repeat itself. Let's go!

And now it is here. Legions of gamers now unboxing, trying the new $450 gaming console for the very first time. Remember, Cecilia D'Anastasio joins us now. Does it live up to the hype? The console definitely lives up to the hype. It is bigger, it's got better graphics, it's launching with a game, Mario Kart World, that everybody is so excited for. Gamers were lined up around blocks and blocks outside of the GameStop stores in Manhattan and Nintendo New York.

So in San Francisco, Cara, I forgot to tell you this. So I was driving to our event Wednesday night, June 4th, the night before June 5th. And in Union Square, San Francisco, Cecilia, people were lining up and I was thinking like they got the date wrong. But I guess it's like one of those iPhone moments where people, I guess, are holding their spot in line overnight. Or is that the level of enthusiasm we're talking about?

Not just overnight. I talked to one customer who was waiting outside of the Nintendo New York store since April. He had people holding his spot in shifts, bringing him pizza. Yeah, shout out to Chicken Dog. He got the first Switch 2 at the Nintendo New York store, given to him by Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser.

I hope he got some accolades for standing in line for that time. That's an extraordinary story. And therefore the rewards to Chicken Dog, who stood there for however many days and months, is how high fidelity are we talking? How much are we likely to see the games come into their own? Because we saw a lot of Mario Kart just then, but there's plenty of other Zeldas that you can be getting the action on.

Yeah, so the Switch 2 launched with a lot of sort of refreshed versions of very popular games from the original Switch console. There are a couple of games that people are really excited about going forward, including a new Donkey Kong game. But people I spoke to, while they are very excited about Mario Kart, some people feel a little bit disappointed with the launch slate of games. It's not quite so big. Nintendo should be filling that out over the next year or so.

Cecilia, I think it's important for you to explain to the audience that this is a completely different console to the original Switch. I have a Switch and I'm always remarking on its performance or lack of performance, but inside Switch 2 is a really important GPU.

That's right. So there's a custom NVIDIA chip inside of the new Switch 2. I'm not sure I would say it's a completely different console. I think the form factor is very similar. It's capitalizing on the Switch's innovation being both portable and having a docked TV mode. It has these detachable controllers called Joy-Cons. It's not quite as big a leap as past console generations were for Nintendo. A lot of people think it's playing...

pretty safe right now, which is a good bet considering the games industry has been having a lot of difficulties the last couple of years. Okay, go check on that guy that was in line since April and we'll make sure he's okay. Bloomberg Cecilia D'Anastasio, thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Real quick, Tesla, right, there was some buoyancy in Friday's session, Caro, but the main point is that on the week, this was the worst week for Tesla since February. And in aggregate,

This is a huge story, yeah. And it's one that's going to play out over the course of the weekend. Watch for shots fired or not and pulled back on social media of your choice. Don't forget to check out our podcast recap on the feud that was. You can check it out online on Apple, Spotify and iHeart. This is Bloomberg Technology.

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