Nvidia Faces Chip Curbs, iPhones Sales Fall 5%
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Live from New York, I'm Caroline Hyde. And I'm Mike Sheppard in Washington. This is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up, reports of Nvidia's biggest customers facing further Blackwell delays, adding to those concerns of export limits from the White House. Plus, iPhone anxiety as new research shows a sales drop globally and loss of ground to Chinese rivals.

and the LA wildfires. They rage on with high winds predicted for this week. We talk to Lyft about how the company is helping in relief efforts. But first, we check in on these markets. And Mike, we are seeing some risk-off tone across the markets. The Nasdaq is off by about a percentage point. We've got key inflation data. We've of course got the start to earnings season. But really, big tech is being dragged lower. And I signify two key points drags. One of them, Apple, down 2.4%. Counterpoint research coming out with the latest numbers saying, look,

for the last quarter of the year. We're probably seeing sales down by some 5%. They are losing market share to the tune of about just 18% globally. We'll dig into that with Mark Gurman in a moment and plenty more to do with Apple. But let's just dig into Nvidia. Of course, the most valuable company out there, off by 3%. Is it interest rate focus? Is it the White House in particular finally unfolding what are yet key limitations that will come in in one year's time to the compute power that

that Nvidia and other AI chip makers can export globally. But then, to add to this, is the latest out of the information saying that yet more delays potentially surrounding Blackwell and the racks that, of course, house their latest and greatest chips. InKing has more. And just very briefly with the information report here, Ian, is there anything new? We know that the latest innovations take time to roll out and perhaps it's not surprising that you get these sort of snafus when it comes to actual glitches in the system.

Yeah, I mean, we don't know whether the reports are based upon fact or just speculation at this particular point. What we can say in fact is that the senior executive, Jensen Wang, and also his CFO, as recently as last week said, no problems. The issues that we have

trying to get Broadwell to market are behind us. Everything's going full tilt. It's a very complicated system, but we are making a lot of progress, is what they say. Ian, there is a big headwind coming NVIDIA's way from the direction of Washington, and that is in the form of these new AI chips.

curbs the Biden administration announced this morning. The company has already expressed unusually vocal opposition to this. Where do you see this headed? Is this something that Jensen Wang could perhaps persuade Donald Trump once he takes office to roll back or change?

Yeah, I mean there's a lot of to and fro on this, and as you say it's been an unusual situation that a company has got out ahead of the actual announcement and started saying things. What I think is key here and what you're hinting at is obviously whether this initiative, whether this new set of rules can survive the transition in administrations.

Who knows? You're in Washington. You probably know better than we do, Mike. But clearly, this is another restriction that investors do not want to see. This is another limit to what they can do and coming in another direction, which would potentially hurt them. Bloomberg's Ian King, thank you.

Now, Apple sold 5% fewer iPhones globally and lost ground to Chinese rivals in the final quarter of last year, according to CounterPoint Research data. Let's break it down with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Mark, tell us what the back story is

and the undercurrent to this all is. It seems that artificial intelligence seems to be a thread holding this all together. Investors don't seem to be, and consumers don't seem to be satisfied with what they are seeing in terms of Apple's AI offerings to date. Yeah, Mike, thank you so much for having me. So back in June, Apple announced Apple Intelligence, right? This is their new AI platform.

The good news is that Apple is here too with AI. The bad news is their AI is really not up to snuff in comparison to the competition. You have Samsung, which has Google Gemini deeply integrated. You have Microsoft products. Obviously, they're not in mobile, but they have Samsung.

OpenAI deeply integrated right at the core of their AI stack. You see Meta with Lama integrating their AI into different devices and different applications. And so the industry knows that Apple is behind, right? But here's the other side of the coin. I don't think that 95% of consumers really care about AI. I'm not sure consumers are making their purchasing decisions based on Apple intelligence, based on OpenAI, based on Gemini, et cetera, right?

I think consumers are making their buying decisions still very much because of design hardware features. And what we've seen from Apple over the past few years is no major hardware upgrades. So I think that is what's holding back iPhone sales. I think a lot of people are anticipating in the market, at least big iPhone redesigns in the fall.

of this year, right? So there's probably a lot of consumers holding off on their purchases till the end of this year, wanting something that's quite a bit thinner, better camera capabilities, new designs, new display. So I think it's really the design stagnation that's driving a little bit of this pessimism on the iPhone in particular.

Interesting time, given that potential pessimism around the iPhone, to be seeing a big pay increase go to the CEO. Yeah, I mean, if you look at it in comparison to a few years ago, Tim Cook was getting paid nearly $100 million per year, right? His pay did go up about 18% in 2024, went up to something north of $70 million. Base salary is the same. The RSUs, the shares were the same, but because of the stock growth in the past year or so, you saw the stock drop.

uh go up so you saw his pay uh increase with a little bit more share count as well so i think that's the driving force there in terms of how apple's going to fare this year in my column yesterday in power on i gave a look at the roadmap for the apple product line for 2025 and what you're seeing

are a lot of devices. This is going to be an extraordinarily jam-packed year in terms of new products for Apple, but nothing particularly revolutionary or innovative. But I still think that's going to drive a good chunk of sales. I think that Apple engineers and people who work on the iPhone in particular are pretty excited about the iPhone roadmap.

I mean, this year you're going to see a new iPhone 17 Air model, much thinner device. They think that's going to do well. And then in the years to come, you're going to see foldable iPhones and other new types of phones. So I think they're quite excited about the future.

Mark, moving away from Apple, we'd like to ask about news from Sonos today. The audio technology provider changed its CEO. It promoted Tom Conrad to replace Patrick Spence. And this is in part due to troubles with their new app.

What sort of challenge will Tom Conrad face as he takes this new job? Yeah, I would say this is almost entirely, or it is entirely because of the new app. So it's just some background here. About a year ago, last May, Sonos revamped its app. And for the Sonos user experience, the app is really the center of everything. It's how you control your speakers. It's how you set up your speakers. And so if the app doesn't work right, your ecosystem, and in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars of speakers in your home theater or in your house,

It's not going to work properly. This was driving people really mad, not able to control volume, not able to control music properly, not able to play the songs they want, not able to search, alarms not going off, sleep time not working. This really led to a sales decline for Sonos. You're going to see another 15% decline in the current quarter.

they had to hold someone responsible and they chose the CEO. The new guy has been a board member for several years and helped create Pandora. Mark Gurman, with the latest and greatest reporting, we thank you so much. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined the Joe Rogan podcast on Friday to lament the rise of, quote, culturally neutered companies. Just take a listen.

The kind of masculine energy, I think, is good. I think corporate culture was really, like, trying to get away from it. Having a culture that, like, celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits. Let's bring in Bloomberg's Riley Griffin for more. Riley, you go back in history.

And Mark Zuckerberg's first business he built was about rating women's attractiveness at Harvard University. Look, he's progressed and changed and become the CEO of a massive company. So too, his changes around culture ebb and flow, it seems. No doubt. And he said it in his own words there. The use of that very strong language, culturally neutered companies, has drawn the attention of several.

And he talked about feminine energy. He's a man who grew up around women and has three daughters himself. But those comments have been controversial over the weekend, to say the least. Riley, we have to ask also about another comment that he made during this exchange with Joe Rogan. And that was about the company's relationship with the Biden administration. It sounded like it was not very fruitful and it might even have been hostile.

Tell us about that and tell us what sort of change in direction he is looking for as the Trump team comes in. It's a great question, Mike. The three-hour interview with Rogan was wide-ranging and much of the conversation was spent talking about the Biden administration and specifically content moderation in the COVID era.

He described the Biden administration and staffers as hostile to the company, shouting, cursing. And it was a tone that shifted when he then talked about Donald Trump and the incoming administration. He described a lot of optimism there. And it's no surprise that this podcast has come at a time in which Zuckerberg is positioning himself

as a closer ally to the administration. Just last week, he actually went to Palm Beach, reportedly to Mar-a-Lago as well. And it was a big week for Meta, one that began with news of appointing UFC chief Dana White, who is an ally to Trump, and then ending third-party fact-checking here in the United States, changing its hateful conduct policies, ending some DE&I programs. So what a week it was for Meta.

all in this theme of moving closer to the Trump administration. Bloomberg's Riley Griffin, thank you. In other news, O'Leary Ventures chairman and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to discuss his plans to buy TikTok.

This after the U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely to uphold the law on Friday, which would ban TikTok on January 19th, less than a week from now, unless it divests from its Chinese owner ByteDance. Let's bring in Jennifer Huddleston now. She is a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute for more.

Jennifer, where do we go from here? It really looks like the high court is going to uphold this law. What are the options? The road is running out. Do we see a purchase happening? And do we see Donald Trump enforcing this law with any vigor in the event a transaction doesn't happen?

Well, notably, what we see is there's a deadline of January 19th, which would be the last day of the Biden administration before the Trump administration took office. There is in the law an option of a 90-day extension. So we could see that happen. That would then kick any further conversations around a potential divestment or around other options into the Trump administration. We also could see the Supreme Court act.

either issue a final decision on the constitutionality of the law or provide some sort of preliminary injunction or even an administrative stay, as was discussed during oral arguments, that could extend that timeline a bit further for what, in any case, even if a divestment were to be found to be possible, would be a quite significant transaction.

How unprecedented would a delay by the Supreme Court be? Our own Bloomberg Intelligence analysis says, look, basically there's only a 30% chance here of TikTok winning this. Well, I think some of the question there is what does the court see in terms of is there enough of a possibility? Is this considered enough of a risk? Do they need more time to really analyze the underlying constitutional issues of the case such that they want to issue that preliminary injunction on the likelihood that it might happen?

Again, there is also that option of the Biden administration doing something to extend that deadline slightly. But I think it remains to be seen whether or not, given that this would be a very quick turnaround, and we've seen that things in this particular issue have moved very quickly, almost unprecedentedly quickly at times.

could we see a bit longer of a timeline just to make sure that those deep underlying issues around free speech around executive power around what this means about balancing national security versus free speech some of the questions around the appropriate levels of scrutiny can really be analyzed the way the court wants. Jennifer we had Frank McCourt Jr. who alongside Kevin O'Leary is presenting this offer to ByteDance as it stands

We had them on the show Friday. His perspective was this is a win for the consumers who keep TikTok in the US. It's a win for potentially investors in the overall parent company ByteDance because at least they get some value. And more broadly, this is a win for national security with a different tech stack, with moving to decentralization. Would it solve some of these national security concerns from your perspective?

I'm an online speech expert and a technology policy expert, not a national security expert. But I think there are a lot of questions around what a divestment looks like. There's the underlying question of what exactly are you divesting? Is it the branding? Is it the algorithm? Is it the data? So some of these questions about what a satisfactory divestment looks like remains a bit unknown.

And that's been one of the underlying issues. The government will have to approve any potential divestment as alleviating the concerns about potential foreign influence. And of course, that remains to be seen what that would look like, both in a Biden administration before the 19th, as well as in an incoming Trump administration.

- Jennifer, let's pull the lens back a little bit on this whole TikTok story. What are the broader implications of the government singling out the ownership of this app? What happens in other areas? Where could we see some ripple effects?

You know, at the end of the day, this underlying discussion is much bigger than just TikTok itself. A lot of the questions that we saw raised at the Supreme Court were not just about this particular app and this particular data use or this particular relationship to the parent company. They were under

underlying questions about what does it mean for a divest or ban bill to be potentially a less restrictive means. Is this something that actually implicates speech and forcing a parent company or a U.S. subsidiary to divest from a parent company? Or is that a secondary effect?

And that's going to have a much broader impact in the future if we see this come up as it relates to other apps. There also were a lot of questions about what does this mean for the underlying user's speech? So we focused a lot on TikTok and TikTok speech as it relates to their choice of algorithms.

But there's also a combined case that involves TikTok users, the millions of Americans who have chosen this to be their preferred platform for content creation. And could the Supreme Court rule on how the government impacts those users' choice of venue? And it also puts a burden, a specific burden on companies like Apple and Google and even the Internet service providers to ensure that this law is upheld.

where does it leave them and do they have any say in this? The heads of the US, of the House China Committee even wrote to those companies ahead of time last month to warn they expect full enforcement. Where does it leave them? So I think this is a very interesting and often underappreciated element of the law. What the law actually does is it impacts the updating, maintenance and distribution of this app or of other apps that may find themselves subject to the law.

That means that ultimately the enforcement, as you mentioned, comes down to app stores like Google and Apple. It comes down to various ISPs or data storage providers. That does mean there is an option where in some cases TikTok could move the data to continue to allow people to access it potentially, but that would be quite cumbersome and then that raises its own data security issues for potential users. There are a lot of questions for the users of the app

what this means if on January 20th they wake up and the law has gone into effect. But this does impact the American companies just like it impacts the American users, and I think we have to pay serious attention to what that means as well.

Of course, the principal of the Cato Institute in many ways are libertarian, individual liberty, limiting government and the likes. Can you broaden it out to what has been seen to be done elsewhere other than in the United States? TikTok is in Europe, but Europe has far stricter rules around content moderation, for example.

So we've seen a broader ecosystem around conversations as it relates to tech and online speech more generally. Here in the U.S., when we're looking at this particular issue, we're going to be looking at the potential First Amendment issues here, as well as the broader free speech environment in general. So, of course, one of the concerns is if we start to see the U.S. create divest or ban requirements around this app or around other apps,

Could we see other countries start to go after some of those leading American platforms, platforms like Facebook or X around actions that they don't like that those platforms are taking when it comes to their content moderation? And what kind of principles does that give the U.S. and its leadership to push back against potentially some of those attacks if we see the U.S. restricting speech because of how it feels and algorithm is choosing to portray that speech in its own way?

This is a key test. Jennifer Huddleston, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. Thank you. Coming up, Waymo's expansion plans and competition with Tesla. That's next. This is Blue Meg Technology. 89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority, according to research by Boston Consulting Group. But with AI tools popping up everywhere, how do you separate the helpful from the hype? The right choice is crucial, which is why teams at Fortune 500 companies use Grammarly.

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Waymo CEO Takedra Mawakana plans to expand testing of autonomous driving in the U.S. and abroad this year. She sat down with Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow at CES last week, where she claimed that competition with Tesla is a good thing. That's because safe driving is a big goal that will take more than one company to meet. Take a listen. We welcome competition in the space.

Right, like making the road safer is an important mission and it's too big for one company. So that's a great thing. As far as a national framework, that would be great. It's just that that framework should require people to demonstrate their safety record. Do you have faith that Elon Musk, if he were to influence that process, would do it in a way that is fair to companies pursuing the same goal as his?

I'm not going to talk either about my faith or Elon Musk in that context. I have a lot of faith, though. I do have a lot of faith as a person, as a human, in humanity. And no, I mean, I think it's a... I think... I think...

You know, I've been at Waymo for almost eight years. When I joined Waymo, Donald Trump was president. Secretary Chao was transportation secretary. Yes. The administration was very forward-leaning on advancing AVs. I feel really strongly that there's an opportunity to do so in a very different context, which...

Globally, the race around autonomous vehicles has matured. And so this is a real opportunity for US leadership. And so enabling safe, sustainable transportation that's autonomous is very aligned with what I think this administration will want to do.

That was Waymo's CEO at CES. Caroline? It's time now for Talking Tech, Mike. First up, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has delayed its inaugural launch of its new Glenn rocket. The company says the temporary pause was due to an unspecified issue with the vehicle. Now, Blue Origin did not provide a new launch date, but says they're reviewing opportunities for its next attempt.

Plus, investors in mainland China are doubling down on Tencent. Ownership by onshore Chinese traders has actually swelled to an all-time high, climbing to 10.8%, following the Biden administration's move to blacklist the company over alleged Chinese military ties.

and CATL is planning a second Hong Kong listing and is looking to raise as much as $5 billion, according to sources. The world's top EV battery maker is said to be hiring banks, including Bank of America, China International Capital, CSC Financial and JP Morgan Chase, to arrange what could be the biggest Hong Kong offering in recent years. Coming up, how Snowflake plans to meet the growing demand for AI skills. The company's CEO, Sridhar Ramaswamy, is joining us next. This is Bloomberg Technology.

Welcome back to Blue Mode Technology. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York. A quick check on these markets for you. We're in sell-off mode when it comes to the NASDAQ.

of their magnificent seven, as they're known, are in the red. So no wonder from a points perspective we're being dragged lower on the Nasdaq. We've got worries about inflation prints coming this week. You've also got the start to the earnings season and where inflation rates and interest rates are therefore going, what it means for big tech. But move on and have a look at some key movers. The one I choose is Nvidia. It's actually second now in terms of market capitalization on the Nasdaq 100, below that of Apple's.

Apple, 3.2 trillion. We've wiped off all of 2025 gains. This latest issue is, of course, surrounding the White House implementation from at least this current administration. There'll be limitations on the ability to sell their very high-end AI chips to certain countries around the world. Of course, export limitation is going to hit the revenue growth. But then there's also this new headline coming from the information that yet there are still these delays affecting Blackwell in particular. We're off by 3%.

But we want to talk about generative AI and the implications of it for you and I when it comes to our own skill base now. Snowflake, it wants to upskill one million people in the next four years to meet the growing demand for AI across the tech industry. The first phase of the plan being announced today is it will train 100,000 users on the Snowflake AI data cloud. And no cost. Here for more, Snowflake CEO, Sridhar Ramaswamy.

And so good to have you on the show, Sridhar. This focus on, well, skills, it's global in nature. Where are you focusing the investment? Thank you, Caroline. Excited to be here. We all know this data and AI are transforming the world. And Snowflake is right at the center of it. It is the most consequential platform for data and AI.

And we felt that it was really important that we help upskill people. So we are investing a lot into this. This is the 1 million minds on a single platform program. A lot of it is dedicated to emerging markets. But it also benefits companies that are in the U.S. because they have competency centers there.

India. As you were saying, we want to get 100,000 people trained right this year, but the ambitious plan is to train a million people in data and AI. Yes, partly Snowflake, but more generally data and how AI can be used over the next four years. Philanthropic in nature, but what about the skills shortage right here in the United States where Snowflake is based? How confident are you that you can get the right talent in the door to help build your generative AI offerings right now?

Well, so we've been at this for several years. We have an amazing team. We also work extensively with all of our customers here. In fact,

One of the programs that we run with our customers here are hands-on workshops that our sales engineers run with our customers. And this is great for them because they get to learn about new technology, how they can be more efficient with Snowflake. It raises the general level of awareness. And so we are doing this across the board, both within Snowflake, but also with our customers that are here and in emerging markets like India and others.

Talking of India, I mean, the US gets an awful lot of talent from India via H-1B visas, for example. Is that something that you use a lot? How confident are you of getting the right talent from abroad right now, considering the next administration? It seems as though Trump thus far is pretty pro the H-1B visa scheme.

Look, I came as a student. I was on an H1 visa. A lot of people have had amazing opportunity and impact in areas like high tech where there is a real shortage. So we use it, but we also hire a lot of folks from our own universities here in the United States. We are fairly confident that the program is a win-win and that it will continue.

I think the thing we talk to most with leaders such as yourself is an anxiety over talent. But there's also currently an anxiety over infrastructure when it comes to the future of generative AI. You just heard the latest and worries of a slowdown or at least some containments in getting the latest Blackwell chip into the data centers that are so needed. Are you hearing that from clients, worries about access to chips and ones that ultimately work within their server racks?

I mean, there's a lot of attention that is going into this space in terms of how do you do, you know, what's called inference. How do you use these AI models at runtime? And for a company like Snowflake, we care a little bit more about doing inference right so that our customers can use these models than we do about training. When it comes to training, absolutely. We work with wonderful partners like Anthropic, which went live on Snowflake last week, by the way, to help them train great models.

And while there is some shortages in some areas, but there are also lots of great new things that are coming, new kinds of chips, lots of new innovations, new models that are smaller. We feel pretty confident about being able to meet demand for the kind of use cases that our customers want to use on top of Snowflake.

There's been a lot of confidence from your own investors. It's been building in terms of the product pipeline that you're bringing, the generative AI innovations. Just tell us through the product roadmap at the moment as to whether or not you're meeting demand. What does demand feel like right now? Because for many, it felt like a hype cycle in terms of actually being able to be productive with some of these tools.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. So, you know, I've been CEO for a year and a lot of my attention has gone into accelerating product velocity, product delivery. And I'm pretty happy with what we have done over 25 products that we made available.

available to all of our customers, including many in AI. And what is unique about Snowflake is that we work very, very closely with our customers to help them realize value. We work on what are called use cases, which is how they think about a business function that we can help them fulfill. And in AI, we have over 1,000 use cases that are in production, thousands of customers that are using our AI products a lot.

of strength in the core Snowflake product, which is really around analytics, plus momentum around the new things that we are doing with data engineering and AI. And it's really this combination of core strength, new products doing well, that makes me feel pretty optimistic about 2025 and what we are able to do. Absolutely, we are meeting demand. We're also hiring a lot of people because we think there's a lot more business to be created.

Where are most of the inbounds coming from? Is it brand new wins that you're making? People who are adopting generative AI and wanting to use it for first case, are you managing to take from competitors? Look, we've talked often about Databricks ramping up its own private numbers and money thus far. Microsoft is a key competitor. How are you managing to make inroads, Judah?

You know, Snowflake is the easiest to use, fastest time to value, and most efficient data platform that there is. A lot of our competitors are still implementing features that we had five, six, seven years ago. So it is a world-class product.

And what we did with AI was make it a natural complement to how people use existing Snowflake products. This is why you have customers, you know, like Disney and Haya, use things, for example, in machine learning on top

And so when it comes to incremental revenue that is being generated, for Snowflake, it typically comes from existing customers. Most first deals, most new relationships that Snowflake has with companies tend to start small.

like $50,000, $100,000, but they can rapidly ramp up to millions of dollars. In areas like AI, what we are very clear is in our ability to enhance the value of data that people already have in Snowflake. We are not an AI research lab. We don't compete with OpenAI or Anthropic. We partner with them. It is that combination that unlocks value very, very quickly for our existing customers.

You're such a great mind to talk about this with, Sridhar, because not only are you offering the latest in generative AI products to be used in the real world rather than hypothetical, but you were busy building an application previously that used large language models. I just want to understand the future of 2025. Will we get the reality of return on AI investment, do you think?

Well, I think the reality of AI is here. When it comes to any kind of content that even you and I want to generate, whether it's a new blog that we want to write or better formats and existing thoughts that we have, or even generate a fun new image, we are already turning to AI. And that was the promise

that my previous company, Neva, which was a search engine saw. And that was the main reason why Snowflake acquired Neva because we were able to see into the future of making AI easy to use as well as powerful. I think this is absolutely going to be the year where you're going to see broader and broader applications of

AI. I roughly tell people any visual interface that we have used so far probably has a better version powered by AI. Information is going to be a lot easier. Data transformations are easy when you use language models. This is what people use Snowflake AI, Cortex AI for because somebody that's just an analyst that knows how to write SQL queries is now an AI analyst because they can use the

of these AI models in their day-to-day work. I think similar to phones, it's just going to be a technology that permeates everything we do, and we are right at the forefront of how our customers are making this happen. Almost a year into the job of CEO of Snowflake after acquiring Neva. Sridhar Ramaswamy, it's great to speak with you. Thanks so much.

Now coming up, as California wildfires continue to rage, social media is battling fast, spreading conspiracy theories related to this disaster. More on that next. This is Bloomberg Technology.

89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority, according to research by Boston Consulting Group. But with AI tools popping up everywhere, how do you separate the helpful from the hype? The right choice is crucial, which is why teams at Fortune 500 companies use Grammarly.

With over 15 years of experience building responsible, secure AI, Grammarly isn't just another AI communication assistant. It's how companies like yours increase productivity while keeping data protected and private.

Designed to fit the needs of business, Grammarly is backed by a user-first privacy policy and industry-leading security credentials. This means you won't have to worry about the safety of your company information. Grammarly also emphasizes responsible AI so your company can avoid harmful bias. See why 70,000 teams and 30 million people trust Grammarly at grammarly.com slash enterprise. That's Grammarly at grammarly.com slash enterprise.

Grammarly. Enterprise-ready AI.

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As California's deadly fires look to reignite, some social media users are using the disaster to push political agendas as well as conspiracy theories. For more, Bloomberg's Jeff Stone has the latest on political agendas being one thing, disinformation another. How does this compare at the moment, Jeff, to prior such events? One of the things that we're seeing, Caroline, is this really become a normal part of these disasters. If you remember back in 2023, there were some suspected Chinese operatives that were

spreading conspiracy theories around the wildfires that struck in Maui. As social media has become the way that people consume news instantaneously, a lot of these conspiracies, really unfounded and in some cases bizarre conspiracy theories, gain a lot of attention very quickly.

JEFFREY BROWN: Jeff, you and I have worked on a number of disinformation stories over the past year, including on natural disasters, but in other areas too, including online extremism. But one thing that we have noted in our work is that it doesn't stay online. What are some of the real-world impacts of these kinds of bogus claims?

That's right, Mike. Last year, around the time that some of the hurricanes were really hammering the southeast United States, we saw the biggest example, some armed militia groups, really some extremist groups showing up in some of the worst hit areas where FEMA

and other US federal agencies were trying to support communities as they were rebuilding their homes, picking up some of the mess. Instead of being able to respond to those areas, they were in fact turned away as some of these, again, armed groups were trying to stop them from getting involved. It got to the point where FEMA administrators needed to give a press conference and send instructions that in fact they were there to help rather than try to exploit the situation in some way.

Bloomberg's Jeff Stone, thanks.

And for more on the L.A. wildfires and what some companies are doing to help in relief efforts, we're joined by Lyft Chief Policy Officer Jerry Golden here in Washington. Thank you, Jerry. I wanted to ask you about, in light of this immense tragedy that we're seeing unfold even now, about your company's efforts and what is being done and how much more frequently you and other companies are finding yourselves

having to step in to pitch in in times of crisis? - You know, thanks so much for the question, Mike, and for the opportunity to be here to talk to you about this. Lyft tries to show up in a very Lyft way when there are times like this, big crises, natural disasters and the like. And in this particular situation, we're providing the ride code CAFIRERELIEF25 to enable anyone who's affected by the wildfires to get free or discounted rides through Lyft. It's a way that we can contribute to the drivers, to the riders, and to the communities we serve.

How many drivers are continuing to do their role at the moment, Jerry? Pardon me? How many drivers are able to fulfill their role at the moment in LA more broadly? You know, drivers, just like anyone else in the community, are affected by the wildfires. And the first thing we always tell drivers is safety first. Make sure you're not entering into dangerous places. Turn to 911 before you turn to your Lyft app if you're in a dangerous situation. But what we have seen in these circumstances already is more than 15,000 riders have

have taken the ride claim codes already, and we see that number continuing to grow. So I think both riders and drivers who are either on the driving side or sometimes the drivers themselves become riders in these situations are hopefully benefiting from the service. You are a long-serving policy leader across various industries, I mean, one of them being the insurance industry, interestingly. But, Gerry, how is it...

able, how are you able at this moment to speak to leadership, to governments, to those in California, to those currently in the White House? How easy has it been?

You know, we've been trying to keep open lines of communication. We have found those lines of communication very positive in the sense that Lyft is trying to show up in a way that's in spirit of partnership. So whether it's local officials, riders, drivers, community leaders in these areas or our partnerships, one thing that anyone can do, Caroline, whether you're in the L.A. area or not, is in your Lyft app, go to the Donate feature, click within the Lyft app,

Click for the American Red Cross for your roundup and donate opportunity. For someone like me who's a Lyft rider all the time besides being the chief policy officer, I really love the fact that if a ride cost me $9.02, I use the roundup and donate. It's set it and forget it. $0.98 rounded up to $10 goes to the American Red Cross in this situation to serve those in need for the wildfires. But that's something that's been really sort of important for us and high impact.

Jerry, I wanted to ask about coordination with other businesses that are also seeking to help victims in this area. How is that happening and who is actually doing the coordination, not only with Lyft, but others like Amazon that may be trying to provide help? We've been really

finding it really positive, Mike, to see all of the efforts that have been coalescing around rising to this occasion. I know that for Lyft, our direct lines of communication have really been with the elected officials and with the transit people in the governments that we're working with. I think fundamentally, our opportunity has been to make sure

that we're keeping safety as one guidepost and opportunities for both riders and drivers through Roundup and Donate and through the ride code itself. Now, Jerry, as a point person on public policy, we'd be remiss if we didn't ask you how this seeming unending wave of disasters, the hurricanes this fall and the wildfires now, how this shapes what you are asking the government to do.

You know, we have found more and more need for natural disaster support in our time. Lift Up, our program that provides disaster relief, Mike, began in 2017, and since that

the origin, we have found $33 million contributed to 22 nonprofits throughout the United States and Canada by very generous roundup and donate support from our riders. All that we've been asking for governments to do is to turn to Lyft and other partners in a spirit of partnership to make sure the private sector and the public sector together rise to this occasion and recognize that we're all in this together. Great. Okay. Lyft Chief Policy Officer Jerry Golden, we thank you.

A win for Elon Musk amid his ongoing fights with OpenAI. The US Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have sided with the tech billionaire, arguing that overlapping board directors at tech giants could harm competition, even if the people then resign. In Musk's lawsuit, OpenAI and Microsoft are claimed to have violated antitrust laws by allowing LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman to serve on the boards of both companies from 2017 to 2023.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is focused on bolstering support for investment in artificial intelligence in the changing political landscape. The company is planning to host events in Washington, D.C. and two other key swing states. For more, Bloomberg's Shireen Ghaffari joins us now. And, well, is there anxiety around future commitments to AI investment as the administrations shift?

I think OpenAI is really making its case and framing their policy recommendations under a sort of U.S. interest first angle and saying that if the USA wants to win this AI arms race with China, that the government needs to support OpenAI in its request for support to build out AI infrastructure, things like data centers, as well as

taking investment from foreign investors. It's interesting that once again China is almost put up as the bogeyman as to why we need to have this commitment to investment. We heard that from a meta-playback previously when it comes to talks with Washington. What do you think these events will actually stir?

I think that this is some sort of testing ground to see how a new Washington, D.C., reacts to OpenAI's suggestions. And I think that when CEO Sam Altman goes to D.C. later this month, and as we broke, he will also be attending Trump's inauguration, I think we're going to see how receptive this new audience will be.

You've been speaking with the OpenAI Vice President for Global Affairs. That's Chris Lehane, who's well known over in the crypto space before that and Airbnb. What is he seeing as the narrative of the new administration amid what have been some tensions between Elon Musk, for example, and OpenAI's leadership and its birth, in fact, and how close Elon Musk is to, well, Trump and the president-elect?

Right. So I spoke with Chris Lehina ahead of this Blueprints release. And what he told me is that he has seen the administration being receptive to this U.S. interest in AI and understands the economic stakes here. So, you know, they're hopeful. He's hopeful that they will find a receptive audience for this message. And the money?

What sort of money do they deem necessary at the moment to come from the administration in the future? Well, we don't know specifics about how much or if or exactly when they're trying to fundraise. But what we know in AI is that if you're a private company, you're sort of always fundraising, right? That's a common refrain here from AI CEOs. So at some level, they're...

sort of as an upper limit to how much domestic investment you can even take sometimes, right? And so that's why we see foreign interest and investment in some of the most important AI companies. And they're wanting to invest in open AI, like we've seen from Masayoshi Son, but he's also wanting to invest in the infrastructure in the United States and in data centers too. So plenty of read across there. Shereen Ghaffari, it's a great interview. I urge you to go and read it on the Bloomberg and online. Meanwhile...

Let's get to the infrastructure story of OpenAI and of generative AI writ large. Nvidia on the downside, down by 3%. It is now only the second most valuable company on the NASDAQ after Apple. Once again, concerns about policy. This is Bloomberg Technology.

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