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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - June 28th, 2025

2025/6/28

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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Businessweek Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Businessweek. This past week, our backdrop on again, off again, Middle East tensions, commentary from Fed Chair Jay Powell, a NATO allies summit. All the details can be found on the Bloomberg and, of course, at Bloomberg.com.

And so all of this shaping our approach this week, a lot of people's moods this week and really shaping our conversations this week, including a conversation that we had with Bloomberg's own Joe Weisenthal. You know him. He's the co-host of the Odd Lots podcast. He stopped by to weigh in on the Democratic socialist who could be the next mayor of New York City. Oh.

Also, gene editing, anyone? Just one of the innovations in life science trends capturing the attention of venture capitalist Jenny Rook of Genoa Ventures. All of that to come. We begin, though, with that macro view and really all that's coming at today's C-suite and CEOs, especially when it comes to the tensions around the globe.

From Iran to Ukraine and even New York City, geopolitics is definitely in focus for investors. Kevin Kajawara is managing director and co-president at Teneo Intelligence. He joined us to break down how Wall Street is dealing with what's happening around the world. He also talked about what he sees as some of the biggest risks for executives.

Well, I think you highlighted just the variety of issues that are out there, right? And the fact that they are all happening at the same time. What's, you know, more typical historically, right, is to have a number of sort of discrete events and you can respond to each of them. But these now happening with greater frequency, right?

they are happening simultaneously and they are therefore compounding on, on one another in ways that, you know, you look at any individual issue and you might question why the market reacts in that way, but there's really, you know, there's a lot of different inputs, uh, coming in. So I think that the, you know, the challenge for say a CEO, uh,

or frankly an institutional investor for that matter. But for a CEO is, you know, how do I triage everything that's going on and what is actually kind of signal

for the business that i'm in versus trying to cut through all that noise well that's where i want to go kevin because companies are going public right ipos are happening companies are doing deals companies are making decisions they're spending capex so like what are you hearing from the community about like what are the lines to say all right i'm ready to pull the trigger on spending money or hiring people or expanding versus it's just too unclear i'm out

Well, I think the way that they look at it is that uncertainty is essentially a tax or it is effectively a tax in the sense that it perverts what would be otherwise normal economic behavior, right? So in other words, if you were trying to anticipate tariffs,

you probably tied up capital building inventory that you wouldn't otherwise do. Or because you have no visibility on what the runway is looking like, you're going to hold off on that potential M&A transaction or opening that new factory or rejiggering the supply chain in some way, shape, or form.

So I think though that while there's this realization that there's a lot going on, there's a lot of uncertainty CEOs, just like the president himself, always making decisions based on imperfect information. And now it's perhaps more imperfect than usual. But any moment that you get that clarity,

and there's an opportunity, you know, you and your CFO had better be ready to act and be able to commit that capital. On the uncertainty tax, on the uncertainty side of this, there's certainly geopolitical uncertainty, but there's also the uncertainty about policies that are coming out of Washington that are coming out of the White House. And we've seen

this sort of changing way that companies are speaking or communicating with the president, especially companies outside of the United States announcing investments, companies in the United States announcing investments in the U.S. How would you say that your clients or you're advising your clients to communicate with Washington, to communicate with the president? Well, look, I think that there's a the

The issue is that it gets really bespoke really quickly, depending on the sensitivity of the industry you're in, depending the country that you're from and what the trade relationship is or the overall nature of the relationship. So you have to take all of those things into consideration. I think that there is a focus, perhaps a greater indexation, if you will.

on things that you know are going to resonate well and via avenues that you know will resonate well with this administration and with this president, right? So for some people, that means we've got to go to Mar-a-Lago. For some people, that means appearing on certain news outlets. And in others, it means taking- Wait, for executives? Yeah, sure. We saw Jamie Dimon, I think it's fair to say, Carol, communicate

That morning on Fox with Maria Bartiromo. Yeah. And it seemed like he made his message known to Washington through that interview. It was an audience of one. So understanding that going on there, that President Trump is listening. Yes. And watching. Absolutely. Huh. You know, we've had a lot of conversations here. Like, it's just amazing the fear of executives to speak out in the United States of America. Tell me, give me, what...

And I understand you can't tell us specifics and stuff, but I'm just curious, like what is kind of the psyche of the corporate clients that you're dealing with and why there is that fear? Well, I mean, I understand if you're publicly held, you don't want to be a target. But aren't you surprised? I mean, these are leaders that are supposed to speak out when things are...

maybe they don't agree with things. Well, I think that there are, there's again, there's a hierarchy of leaders, right? You just mentioned Jamie Dimon, who's probably the closest thing we've got to sort of a head of state level chief executive in this country and perhaps further, further in power, but it also plays into his own personality. He is comfortable in that role in a way that not every executive is, I think. Um,

But secondly, I think this has forced executives not necessarily to shrink, but to refocus on what's important to them, their industry, their company, the stakeholders they have, and to focus in on those things rather than feeling like they need to weigh in and opine on every single issue that is out there. So you think that's a good thing? Well.

well i think it's i think it's just the new reality i don't think any of these things are good things or bad things it's just the thing this is the this is the environment that we are currently in that environment will change four years from now and they'll shift again because it's such a swing if you think you go from the murder of george floyd and covid and executives were out talking about everything and we thought that there was this real opening and then it just feels like i understand pendulum swing

It swung another direction.

because of the actions that they have taken over the years. And now, even if you change the website a little bit or something of that nature, but you remain committed because you can see the bottom line positive impact of these types of policies, you've got a lot of goodwill already built in with your stakeholders. So you consider the stakeholders...

the ones who work for you, the employees as a group of stakeholders, you don't necessarily talk about the DEI policies outside of the company in the same way, or maybe you don't even talk about them internally in the same way, but perhaps you did see a return on the investment. So you keep doing those things and you call them something else. Like what happens here? There's elements with it. And, you know, and Teneo is a perfect example of the type of company that has a lot of people who are devoted toward helping executives,

you know, kind of thread this needle, so to speak. And some need more help than others. And also, you know, it's an awareness of who your audience is, who your customer base is. Some are going to respond, you know, and we all know the companies, right, where, you know, we're taking certain stands has stood them in good stead with their audiences and others who've had a more challenging time. So it's, you know, it's about being...

smart and surgical about this. But you've seen cycles. Like I think about, you know, in this world and I think about the great financial crisis, there's COVID, there's just so much stuff. War, overseas, different presidents and so on and so forth. How do you describe this cycle?

And how do you think a lot of CEOs, and I hate to dump everybody in a bucket because it's just not the way the world works, but I am just curious, you know, historically, business-wise, economically, the role of the United States in the world, like how do you see this cycle? There is something changing right now. This is not just a cycle. This is a secular change, right? And this is something that

can no longer be punted down the road. In other words, the decisions that CEOs are making today are existential decisions for their companies and whether they are going to be nimble enough to be some of the winners on the other side. Think about it.

in the context of like climate change, as an example, right? Remember a few years ago, companies, managements were making zero carbon commitments and the like. But the reality of it was, it was like a generation or two down the road of management that would actually have to implement that. That was an easy commitment to make in a sense, right? - Yeah, exactly. - But right now,

like you say, the playing field is actually fundamentally changing. And it is not hyperbolic to say that it's a paradigmatic shift right now. But it is this generation of leadership that's having to have the situational awareness and kind of realize that even though you've got all these balls in the air right now with the just-in-time, you know, just what's happening right now with trade, with geopolitics, with the fiscal bill, all of that, this is a bigger picture. So this isn't just a presidential administration thing? No, not at all. So you're talking about supply chains? You're talking about, like...

What? What does that mean? What we think of as the international rules-based order, which is a system that laid the groundwork for the multinational corporation to be the single most important economic actor. If that is evolving, if the role of the U.S. is evolving,

Is it axiomatic that those same economic actors are going to be the big winners in the next? Or do you have to be nimble enough to be thinking ahead of how this might change? I mean, this interim period, I don't know if it's going to be long or short. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like on the other side. But, you know, those who are aware, it's like Eisenhower said, right? The plan is worthless when the first bullet flies, but planning is everything, right?

So interesting. Putting you on the spot. Is this a positive development in the work that you do? Well, I mean, I think so, in the sense that it is inevitable that, you know, over time, strategic decisions have been made predicated on a certain perspective on what the global operating environment is going to look like and then all your other decisions change.

stem from that. The global operating environment being a world of liberal democracies and a liberal world order. But not just that, right? This ability to have, to take advantage of the free flow of labor, free flow of capital, you know, a just-in-time global supply chain system, opening of markets, all of that, right? The sort of the key variables of globalization. Right. If that's,

shifting, right? If that's shifting, you've got to start scenario planning for how that might impact your business. - 25 seconds, it's a question Tim and I like to ask a lot of folks who come on here because in January we thought about American exceptionalism a lot.

Is that going away? And forgive me, only about 25 seconds. Look, the United States has certain built-in advantages, scale, the English language, the dollar, an economic ecosystem and financing ecosystem that finds phenomenal ideas and can bring them to market and so on and so forth. Nobody else has got that still, even with all the challenges we've got. That was Kevin Kajawara, Managing Director and Co-President,

at Teneo Intelligence. Coming up on Bloomberg Business Week, Joe Weisenthal of Odd Lots on how some on Wall Street are decrying a hot, commie summer. That's next. This is Bloomberg.

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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

Zoran Mamdani is poised to become the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City after the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist forced his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York State, to concede within hours after polls closed. Mamdani spoke to supporters after Cuomo's concession. We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford, a city where they can do more than just struggle.

One where those who toil in the night can enjoy the fruits of their labor in the day. Mamdani exceeded more than 60% of the vote in vast swathes of the city, building a multi-ethnic coalition across Brownstone, Brooklyn, working class Queens, and upper Manhattan. We've got with us Joe Weisenthal. He's the co-host of the Odd Lots podcast. He had Zoran Mamdani on the show.

just pretty much exactly a month ago. Before we get going, I do want to point out that Michael Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg Radio, did endorse Governor Cuomo in the election. It was a 45-minute conversation that you and Tracy had with Mamdani on Odd Lots. He gave you his socialist vision for New York.

What did you take away as his vision? I would say two things. Obviously, probably the most provocative of his ideas that's causing a lot of anxiety, even in the stock market. Like if you look at real estate, some of the rent freeze stuff, which for obvious, like economists hate that kind of thing. They think it's various forms of rent control is a terrible idea. We understand why investors in real estate don't like it either. On the other hand, and so we talked about that

But on the other hand, my main takeaway from that interview is like,

yes, like if you're a young Democratic socialist, of course, you're going to be really excited about the Mamdani candidacy. But he comes off in a way that if you're sort of like, I would say like normie center left Democratic liberal or something, and you're sort of the typical person who works in an office in New York City, like he is really good and really talented at not seeming like someone who will be a threat to you. And I think that when you look at the results, that's like, to my mind, like the really striking part

is that how broad that coalition was, et cetera. Because we know that there are parts of the city that have trended that way for a while. Obviously, AOC's victory in 2018, that was a stunner, but that was niche. This was the entire city, right? This was kind of

everyone across, you know, huge swaths, much bigger numbers. He did well in sort of the, you know, white educated areas, but also he did well in more non-white areas that had trended more towards Trump in the most recent election. So he clearly did a really good job of sort of overcoming the fact that many people would say he has pretty radical politics

And he's like, well, actually, he can sort of like talk very fluently about policy. He comes off as a very thoughtful guy. And he really, I think, ended up like disarming a lot of the critics. Yeah. He's also ticked off a lot of billionaires. And there's a great story that's among the most read on the Bloomberg that talks about Wall Street decrying the hot, cummy summer. Yeah. Dan Loeb, hedge fund billionaire. It's officially a hot, cummy summer.

It's sort of corny. But there's a ton of them coming out. They're like, whoa. If I were running for mayor and the thing is like, oh, he's upset a lot of billionaires. It's like, bring it on. Seriously. If you're going to say, oh, he's really ticked off a lot of billionaires.

That's like about as good of an, that's one of the, probably the best thing you can say. Most people aren't billionaires. So is he, you know, there's another one, a New York power broker, Kathy Wild, and she's connected business titans across all different industries in New York City and saying that he terrifies taxpayers and employers. I mean, are employers going to be running for Florida? The rest of the, is the rest of Wall Street going to run for Florida? Here's my thoughts on this. And maybe I'm like a little biased, but this is my take. And maybe I'll end up being totally wrong.

New York City is the best city in the world. Everybody knows that. Even during COVID or after COVID, people were like, New York City is dead. They're like, oh, we're going to go to Miami. No one really moved to Miami. They went there for the minimum amount of time they could to maybe change tax status. And a bunch of people came back. I don't know. I'm not going to Miami. Now, on the other hand, there aren't really going to be that many people like, oh, I'm upset about the mayor. I'm upset about taxes. I'm going to move. But

If the quality of life in the city degrades, if people perceive, oh, the public transit is not running as well, it's not as clean, there's more crime in the city, the schools aren't as good, then of course you're going to have people leaving. So my gut would be, and again, maybe this is just my sort of pro-New York mindset,

My gut is that very few people are going to leave because they're upset about the mayor per se. This is where all the action is. If you want to talk to someone interesting, you got to do the first mayor that people have been upset about. They're going to be upset about. So like, I don't think that is on the other hand, if he can't implement a vision of a, you know, he says it's going to make this city more affordable. People expect the quality of services to be good. People expect transit to be good. If he can't deliver on that,

Right. Then I would expect that, yeah, at the margins, more people leave because the city is less appealing. But if the quality of life in New York City is roughly sustained or maybe hopefully improves, then I don't think you're going to have like some mass exodus just like on principle. It's still New York City. Well, just a couple of weeks before he was on Odd Lots, he was on surveillance. I was filling in for Paul Sweeney then with Tom Keene.

I asked Zoran Mondani about the label of democratic socialist. Check out what he had to say. I embrace the label because ultimately I do identify myself as a democratic socialist. And I think...

I think that the thing that New Yorkers hate more than a politician they disagree with is one that they cannot trust. And I think it's important to be honest about how we're coming to this politics and also what that label means to me, which is ultimately that each and every New Yorker has what they need to live a dignified life and that it's city government's responsibility to provide that. And I think we have a general consensus on many of those building blocks in our society, whether it's public education or libraries or sanitation. But then there are certain places where

We tend to believe that these are necessary parts of living a dignified life and yet we allow people to be priced out of it. And I think housing is one of the most obvious examples of that. Okay, so that was our interview with Zoran Mamdani back on May 6th. He was on Bloomberg Surveillance. The housing part is something I wanted to hit with you because-

There's this idea of rent freezes, which he ran on and talked a lot about. But if you think about this from a supply and demand perspective, how do you get people to build more housing, which is what the city needs, if you don't provide the incentive that people are going to pay for it? And if you say, OK, well, if we're going to build the affordable housing, we can't raise the rent on it.

Well, I would say a few things. So one is he's not completely doctrinaire about how it all has to be rent-regulated housing. And in various interviews, he has talked about there is a role for market rate development. He's talked about upzoning, all of the things that wonks like... The abundance stuff. Yeah, and he's like... So he's not...

So it's not like a particularly start radical vision on housing. He's talked about market rate housing. The other thing I noticed in that video, you know, he's wearing a suit, he's smiling. He's really, and then you say these things like dignified life, et cetera. Like you just see in that clip watching it just now, why someone would see that as like, Oh,

okay yeah i think that makes it i mean look there's a lot of people in here like socialists etc and i get like you know people find that to be very provocative or scary or radical or whatever but he did not come off as a radical in that clip right he comes off as like a pretty serious likable politician

And I think what he said too about like sort of being genuine, it's like the fact that he didn't run away from his past, that he didn't run away. I do think that is pretty big deal these days. And that in an era of social media, et cetera, people can sort of sniff out a fraud or sniff out a phony or whatever. And he certainly doesn't come off as one and he probably made trade-offs and he probably said, you know, there are certain things that maybe aren't as appealing to somebody, didn't run away from them. And I think it helped put together a package of like, okay, like maybe I don't agree with him.

on x or y but he seems like a legitimate serious guy i mean how much can he you know actually change we've had some conversations about you know really everything's decided out of albany yeah in many ways and that what a mayor in new york city amazing this you know massive city um

And how important it is really to kind of the overall U.S. economy, right? It's a big one that there's just so much that they can actually get done. So this is where I think a lot of the success, I mean, look, the general hasn't happened, but he is the favorite in the general election. So if he becomes the mayor, I think a lot of the success or failure is just going to come down to the sort of nuts and bolts management side of it. And so, you know, it's like, what happens to the trash? What happens to the war on rats?

which the current mayor, Mayor Adams, is, like, really taking seriously the war on rats. And he talked about... Got a rat saw, right? Yeah, and he's, like, made this a big deal. And my understanding is he's actually made progress. Yeah, those trash cans, they do wonders. Yeah. And so, like...

Setting us a lot of the questions of this administration, if again, if he wins, are going to be like, OK, setting aside his sort of loyalty to DSA people and so forth. Like, is this an administration of competent managers who could do the day to day basis? And I think one of the things he said when we interviewed him is like that he would make a point of that and a sort of diversity of viewpoints within the administration. That might be the test even more than some of the housing. Does he hate rich people?

I should have. I didn't ask him that. I don't know. I mean, I don't like he doesn't come off like that. He doesn't. That was a nice suit. I think he's rich.

His mother is like a massively successful filmmaker and he went to Bowdoin, so I'm sure he's doing fine. As a Colby College graduate, you know, Bowdoin's a big rival, so I'll let that one slide. You went to private school, that's what we're at, right? I do want to get your take very briefly, 30 seconds on the grocery stores. You asked him about this because you guys did a whole episode about how New York gets its groceries.

thin margins when it comes to grocery stores. How do they get any more efficient? You know what I would say of all the different things he's talking about, I get the impression this is the one he's least attached to. And he actually said like, look, if it doesn't work, we're talking about city run grocery stores. So he has this idea of three or four pilot publicly run grocery stores and food deserts area. I,

Don't get the impression that he's really attached to this idea if it doesn't move the dial. I don't think he wants some sort of like citywide, you know, Bolshevik breadline type thing. I think he wants to do a trial that are sort of like, let's see if there's some way to move the dial on costs or just availability in certain neighborhoods. But I also get the impression if it doesn't work, I don't,

He doesn't seem that attached to us. Yeah, I can't imagine what Brownstone Brooklyn would have thought of closing Union Market and replacing it with a city-wide grocery store. Besides, Trader Joe's and Aldi's, which everyone likes, are pretty close to those Soviet grocery stores anyway. Oh! Aldi for sure. Aldi for sure. Yeah, Aldi definitely. Not Trader Joe's. That was Joe Weisenthal, co-host of the Odd Lots podcast.

He's not a shoo-in by any means. No, he's not. This is a process. Also, it feels like the field of independence could grow too, so there might be more folks on the ballot ultimately to vote on. I think one part of the conversation also that

We've talked about over the last couple of weeks and really this week has been how much power does this next mayor actually have? This mayor will have to work with Albany and work with the city council in order to implement whatever he or she would like to put into practice. I think that's a huge point. I think it's something that when you and I first heard it, we were like, what?

I had no idea. You just think of New York City as being so independent, the mayor of being kind of having a lot of power to determine, you know, a lot of initiatives in a really big city in the United States. So it's fascinating to see that a mayor can come in,

Have some plans, have some goals, have a mission. And yet it's ultimately up to what's going on in upstate Albany about what gets done. And just remember, the campaign season is just starting now in earnest because the general election is still coming up. So expect more campaigning from candidates. You expect more calls and knocks on the door. The ground game. You've been complaining about it all day.

All week. The text messages have finally stopped. Showing me from the doorbell camera. Who's that? Look who's at the door. A lot of door knockers in Brooklyn. Let's just say that. I live in New Jersey. I feel blaster at this moment. Oh, yeah. Let's talk about New Jersey politics. Yeah, maybe in a week or so. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, where one venture capitalist is finding opportunity at the intersection of biology and technology. The founder of Genoa Ventures, Jenny Rook, is up next. This is Bloomberg. ♪

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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

Big news earlier this month in the world of cardiology. Millions more Americans should be taking weight loss drugs to prevent heart disease. That's according to the American College of Cardiology. Exercise and a clean diet aren't always enough for heart health, the nation's top cardiology organization said in new recommendations released in June. Weight loss drugs should be used earlier, the group said, making them part of the first line of defense for obese patients.

Jenny Rook looks at a lot of this stuff, things like this too, but kind of under a bigger lens. She's the founder and managing director of Genoa Ventures. It's a VC firm that invests in, as she says, quote, the next generation of companies at the convergence of technology and biology. It does feel like we're on the cusp of something. She has invested in such companies as Interven, BrightSpec, and many, many more. Some notable exits include Zemergen,

- Zymergen. - Zymergen, I knew I didn't say it right. - And Caribou. - Caribou and Topaz and Moore. She joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. I'm never good at getting some of the names. Why do they make it so difficult? - Well, it's to keep out the riff-raff. - No. - No, I mean, there's a process, right, of how they name some of these things. - There is, but often it comes from the inspiration of the technical founders and they might not be thinking about the rest of the world and how to communicate that science. So that's also something we help them with.

You come by periodically and we talk about kind of big, broad macro, but we are curious too about some of the things, I think when we last left off, we didn't get a chance to really talk about some of the things that you are excited about right now that you think are just interesting in your space that you're investing in. Take us there. Oh, I'd love to. It seems like a great way to end the week too. I know it's been a long one and let's, so let's,

have our eye on the horizon, have some exciting things. So you mentioned Caribou, you know, that was a Nobel prize winner, Jennifer Downer's first gene editing company based on her CRISPR-Cas innovation. It's, it's a new world post CRISPR. And an evidence of that is just last month, we had our first in vivo editing of a human to fix a genetic disease and

And that is incredible. It's the first time that's ever happened where the treatment can go into the living body and address a problem with a gene. And that infant in this case is now cured of that genetic disease. Is it, help me understand, is it just what's involved in that identifying the gene and then surgically going in and removing the gene?

Surgically, but with molecular. So it's like the crisper scissors go in at the molecular level. But you're right to ask about the process because the whole process end-to-end took six months, which is extraordinary. For this one baby. For this one person. Because it's molecular-based. Because it's molecular. And so they sequenced the person's entire genome. They identified what the error was that was the basis of the disease. And then they were able to design DNA to go in and replace that. Basically,

cut and paste and replace it with a functioning gene. One thing that came up during our conversation with Jennifer Doudna is the decline in excitement for this technology that we're seeing from venture capitalists right now. So VC money raised for gene therapy companies peaked in 2020. That was $3.3 billion then.

It's been moving lower since just a few hundred million dollars last year. This is according to data from Dealforma. What's going on? Yeah, well, I think VC money in just about every category has gone down since 2020, except AI, right? So we never learn hype cycles, right? So there has been a correction and a really retraction for, I would say, risk capital and long-term capital.

- And some of that is, I think it's important to take stock of the moment that this big milestone happened. So 2025, that's 25 years after the human genome was sequenced, right? So if you think about the hype cycle then, there was, oh, perhaps all genetic diseases will be cured. Well, maybe one day,

But it does take time. And so I think- That was the hype cycle in 2000? In 2000, right. Okay, so then now in 2025, what's the hype cycle related to this now that we saw this baby experience, this gene editing? Well, what I would say it's now delivering on that promise, but it is a reminder that investors need to inform themselves about the challenges between the promise and the potential and the actual reality of delivering on that. Well, like what did it cost?

to do this. - It was expensive. - It was expensive. - I read some commentary on it that we shouldn't extrapolate too much from this because there were a few unique elements here. One is that the alternative, if this didn't work, was a really bad shortened life for the baby. So the downside, potential downside. So the risks of this outweigh

the benefits rather outweigh the risks. - The benefits outweigh the risks, that's right. - Because the downside was basically death. - Correct, yeah. And so it doesn't apply necessarily immediately to all things that we might want to do for our genomes and health overall, but it's a start. It's a great place to start in terms of that risk-reward. And just like any innovation in these technologically driven spaces, the cost comes down over time.

So it starts expensive and then we keep moving. What's interesting about this time though, it is an N of one, but the approach was quite modular. It's sequence the whole genome, find the error, design a sequence that goes in, deliver, and all of those modules can be reused. - So is this already being done to other babies? Do we know? - I know that there are some in research, yeah. - And what about to adults?

I think that's probably a slightly longer timeline. And this is, gene therapy is not my particular expertise, although I'm a geneticist by training. So I think the timeline for that is really going to depend on some of these other questions you were asking, like how much does it cost and how does the risk reward play out? I do think about though, like for the application of something like

Alzheimer's. So many things. It just depends, right? And this is not something that's going to happen overnight. I'm excited about it. That whole idea of genetics. Because I do feel like as much as we know about the body, there's so much we still don't know. So little. And the use of using the body to fix things is so much more.

Is that something that excites you? Can I give you a new example? Yes. Have you heard of exosomes? No. Okay. Exosomes. So you know about cells, right? Cells are kind of like bubbles. They're the components of the body. They contain our DNA and the proteins and everything else that's going on. Exosomes are little tiny bubbles that bubble off of the bubbles, little blebs. Right. And best we know, they are a communication mechanism between all those cells, right?

So they come off of a cell and they have little packets of information. They have some of the proteins. They have some of the RNA. There are 30 trillion cells in a human body. There are 3,000 trillion exosomes in a body. So there's 100 times, two orders of magnitude more of these little vesicles moving around. Ton of information. So much information. And we're just now figuring out what they are and what they're talking about.

We've spoken to you twice this year, and I think both times was after major cuts were announced to American universities and to research. You were...

- To bring us back to earth here. - Well, that's what I wanna do because at the time you were very concerned about what this would do to the pipeline of innovation. - I was feeling optimistic. - I know, but I think I need to bring us back to earth because what we are seeing are anecdotal stories. I've seen some headlines of people's therapies like stuck in the freezer in some cases and they can't access that because of cuts that we've seen. Are you any more optimistic now?

I think we talked last time, I'm long-term optimistic. These are long-term plays. We will continue to have innovation. We will continue to have impact. But we are still on a trajectory where significant retraction in funding for these kinds of innovations will mean the pace thereof and their ability to have impact on people's lives will be delayed. Because so much of initial ideas comes out of academia or so on and so forth. That's right.

That's where it all starts. That's where the basic research happens where someone like Dr. Danna who's curious says, well, what if we try? And you don't know whether it's going to work. Are you looking increasingly at

or potentially thinking that you're going to be looking at firms that are started in other countries because that's where the researchers have gone? Is that starting to happen? We have always looked over globally. We're always looking for the best idea regardless. But you know what I mean. Is it going to be less U.S. or no? Do you think that, which is so part of, I feel like, the U.S.,

innovation or innovative fabric. Yeah. What I am seeing immediately is a shift of early stage risk capital to focus more on startups outside of the U.S., which we've never seen before. We've actually seen some of the firms kind of in our network say, we were looking at that company in the U.S., but there's so much uncertainty now. We think we'll perhaps focus closer to home. What is close? Look, it depends on who you're talking to, but

There's no startup ecosystem like the US startup ecosystem. I think that's fair to say. If you think regionally or geographically,

What should investors be looking at outside of the US? Well, there's extraordinary innovation happening all over the world, but a lot of interesting work in the UK and Europe broadly where there's wonderful basic research happening. And because there's better information transfer and tool transfer now globally, those same startups can kind of get things going. What about China?

China is a little more opaque to us, right? But there's certainly, again, extraordinary innovation happening there and a lot of, I would say, government support for translating it. Do people think of the shifts in R&D as just an administration, one administration thing? Mm-hmm.

Is it just an administration thing? It's certainly heavily weighted by some of those choices in funding availability, in the certainty thereof, and also the regulatory landscape. Okay. So I guess my question is, are they thinking that after President Trump finishes up his second term, could it possibly the pendulum swing back?

to the way it was in just about 30 seconds. Sure. Hopefully, we will see over time increased support for this kind of innovation because it is so important. But some pruning is irreversible. If you're a gardener and you over prune a tree, it just never quite recovers. It'll never be the same. That's Genoa Ventures' Jenny Rook.

Carol, one thing that we talked about with Jenny, not just this time, but the last time she was on with us, was the promise of gene editing technology, so-called CRISPR technology. And then after our conversation with her,

we saw a story about super babies. Yeah, I kind of love it. It's a story specifically about Bootstrap Bio. It's a California startup. It's working on technology to genetically edit human embryos. And the goal, I think it's safe to say initially and mainly is to eliminate inherited diseases, but it's also about enhancing desirable traits.

And this is against a backdrop of a lot of concerns out there from scientists and ethicists about the technology's safety and potential consequences. We've talked about these designer babies. Like, do you, you know, kind of figure out what you want your kid to be and edit out things you don't like? And so that is terrifying to a lot of folks. Even though the promise of removing some of these inherited diseases, that sounds pretty great. Experts do warn that germline editing is unproven and potentially dangerous and it could have consequences.

If a flaw is introduced to an embryo with some calling for a 10 year moratorium on the practice. What I would point out is that even laboratory work on germline editing, highly, highly regulated in the United States. So researchers continue to make progress, but it's not ready for prime time, according to those who are in the field. And so I would assume regulators are going to get pretty involved in this. They have to.

And that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Businessweek from Bloomberg Radio. Coming up in the next 60 minutes, Tesla, Uber, Waymo. Driverless cars are seemingly everywhere and I can't wait. Am I allowed to say that? Are you sure? I've read some stories in recent days. This is my opinion only. This is not anybody else's. Okay. I've gotten a little bit of pushback in recent days. Okay. And there have been, I've seen some lawsuits that have been filed. Anyway. Go. Plus the next reality TV president.

And forage brewing. Yes, it is a thing. Our Pursuits team taps into making beer with ingredients found in the wild. Yep, everything from roots, fruits, vines, and even tree bark. Yep, it can go in a beer. This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser. And I'm Tim Stenevek. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.

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Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, including investors have revved up shares of Uber, in part because of its partnerships with Waymo. We're going to take a deep dive into the world of driverless cars. Plus, do not compare him to that other reality star who made his way to the White House. I mean...

Is he even interested in going to D.C.? Our Business Week team talks to Mark Cuban. And the top shelf special, everything from beer in our backyards to American sake having a moment. That's from our Bloomberg Pursuits team. First up this hour, we got news this week that Uber will begin offering its customers driverless Waymo rides in Atlanta, making it the second market after Austin, where the two companies are teaming up instead of competing against each other.

We've got the perfect duo to talk about all of this. Max Chaffkin is Bloomberg Businessweek columnist, co-host of the Elon Inc. podcast. Craig Trudell is Bloomberg News Global Autos editor and the editor of the Hyperdrive newsletter. Max right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Craig out there in London. Craig, let's start with you.

All right, so there's a lot going on in this sector. What do we know about how things have been going down in Atlanta, in Austin, like how it's all progressing? And full disclosure, Tim and I both have done Waymos on the West Coast. I've also done them in Arizona and we kind of love them.

So how's it all going down? Because all of a sudden it feels like everybody's all in on these driverless cars. Yeah, I have to say, I mean, just to start, you know, your experience of Waymo's, you know, being sort of surprised and delighted from the sounds of it is consistent with, you

know basically everything I hear at this point you occasionally do hear people sort of to the extent that they denigrate you know Waymo's at all it's just oh gosh you know I would be too scared to get into one of those but you know almost universally when you talk with people who experience it

You know, they get a kick out of it. You don't see, you know, a ton of sort of negative takes on sort of how they perform. They've held up quite well. The company's been forthcoming about its safety record and is pretty transparent about if and when it does have issues. I think things are sort of night and day in terms of how, you know, the company has approached things with, you know, in comparison to Tesla, where you have companies

Musk, you know, for years sort of hyping up what is driver assistance, you know, software that he offers as something more than that and calling it full self-driving, you know, not delivering it until, you know, this past weekend. And once he has

taking people out from behind the wheel. You know, on day one, we see these incidents that are that are pretty troubling and getting the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. OK, we're going to talk more about those in a second. I want to bring in Max Chavkin, who's been following the industry closely. And Max, you've been when we've spoken to you in the past about the driverless car technology, specifically Waymo, you've been you've been a little skeptical about it.

I think everything Craig is saying, everything you're saying is true. The questions around Waymo are business questions. Essentially, is this more than a very, very expensive, money-losing attraction for tourists in a handful of cities? Which it definitely is compelling in that sense. There are questions, and these are questions that even Waymo has acknowledged. They need to figure out, they need to turn this into a money-making business. They feel like they've gotten the...

uh, technology to a point that's pretty, pretty good. And, and now they're working on the business stuff. And this Uber deal, of course, is part of that. That's part of why you're seeing the stock go up. And then, you know, when you, when you compare it to Tesla, the, the Uber stock go up, when you compare it to Tesla, uh,

Tesla is, I think technically like a good way to think about this is they are years behind where Waymo is. Like Waymo was doing some of the stuff that Tesla is doing, you know, years ago, like five years ago. There are ways in which Tesla, yes, is, is impressive and ahead. There are a lot of, Tesla has a lot of miles logged using its driver assistance technology, which it also confusingly calls a full self driving, but Tesla is really at the

beginning of this and like when we're like they have not even even this pilot program we're talking about very modest it doesn't include members of the public just a handful of influencers in a very small in a very small part of Austin so just just very early and everything that Waymo is doing both in terms of

customers and then in terms on the business side kind of makes that point just shows you how wide the gap is and how far Tesla is at least at this moment from actually operating you know a money making robotaxi. All right so this came up in the news and while we show that there's no so some folks in some emerging market country that aren't sitting with a joystick like actually driving the way most. They're

There are monitors. There are people monitoring the Waymos. I think the question, they're not using joysticks according to Waymo. Little steering wheels? They're not using little steering wheels, but they are there watching the Waymo. And that's like part of the business problem for both of these companies. Like you potentially have

Like this very expensive piece of hardware and then a bunch of expensive engineers, engineers who cost more money than Uber drivers who are having to oversee these autonomous systems. So that's still a question with Waymo. It's a bigger question with Tesla. Hey, Craig, come on back in here because you've covered the you cover more than just these two companies and also more than just the sort of driverless element here. But a question that I have is where this where does this technology leave Tesla?

the traditional automakers because there was this promise from Elon Musk years ago. I mean, I've lost count of how many years ago this was, but he basically said your Tesla will become more valuable because you will be able

to essentially set this thing free as a robo taxi when you're not riding around in it and you'll be able to charge for that. Where does all of this lead to more traditional automakers? I mean, I think to your point, you know, there was a real sort of freak out in Detroit and Wolfsburg and, you know, Toyota City.

almost a decade ago now, because Musk started making these pronouncements along the lines of what you're describing. And everyone kind of panicked, right? And we saw sort of everybody put together plans to sort of answer what Tesla was up to. You saw GM acquire Cruise. You saw Ford invest in this company called Argo.

and Volkswagen invested in them as well. You saw Toyota stand up its own sort of self-driving outfit and hire sort of top notch talent for it. And here we are roughly a decade later, Argo's gone bust.

Cruise has been sort of put out of business by GM. I think a lot of the established manufacturers are saying, you know what, we're going to try and make money off of these driver assistance systems that kind of make the human driving safer, or at least we hope can offer that benefit and this sort of safety and convenience benefit.

But, you know, this is just not going to happen in sort of a major way for quite some time. And we can't, we may not be able to afford to invest in it to the extent that a company like Google can. Yeah. And Waymo, Google, you know, even there we're talking, I don't think we know the exact numbers because of the way that they report revenue and so on. But they've dumped tens of billions of dollars into this. This has been an incredibly expensive endeavor, the kind of endeavor that

really only a company like Google or really a handful of other companies can do. We even saw Apple, Craig didn't mention Apple, but they also tried to get into this business and got out of it. - Threw in the towel. - For some of the same reasons. - Despite having super deep pockets. - And the challenge here for Tesla is that a lot

the investors who are betting on this thing, and even to some extent, Elon Musk, have sort of decided that this is the future, that, you know, Musk has said this over and over, you shouldn't think of Tesla as a regular car maker, you should think of it as an AI company. And now here it is, we're seeing the AI. And, you know, it's just a long way from being, you know, a fully fleshed out

uh you know robo taxi service and and that's and whether or not they can somehow get there in the in this like in the crazy timelines that elon has offered he said they're going to have something like 100 000 cars on the road by the end of this year you know just huge numbers numbers that would blow waymo out of the water if they delivered um

I mean, he's created a huge challenge for himself. Well, I do also wonder about the value. And Craig, come on back in here in terms of having, whether it's Waymo for Alphabet and obviously the self-driving for Tesla, the amount of data that they get and what they learn in terms of technologically creating these. We've talked with our Steve Mann of Bloomberg Intelligence recently.

who's talked about the robotics and the manufacturing that has been going on in China and what technological capabilities that has given them. So I do wonder by these companies doing these kinds of things, what they ultimately get out of it. Is it still a plus?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's been the sort of go-to messaging on Musk's part, right, is that, you know, my approach, you know, my being Elon Musk, is, you know, to put this hardware on every vehicle I sell. It's a much cheaper and less robust, you know, hardware set than Waymo puts on its cars, sure, but people can afford to actually buy it.

I can ingest all of this data and, you know, I can put more cars out on the road, bring in more data. Therefore, I will eventually win. I think that stood to reason to a lot of people. And yet we've it is all sort of theoretical. Right. We don't know whether that's

that data advantage will mean anything in the long run. And we've also sort of heard from Musk, sort of conflicting messaging in the years since he was making that argument of, well, we're not going to sort of hard code our cars

uh, you know, based on all of the data that we bring in, we're going to just, you know, sort of build a robust system that can sort of make decisions on the fly. And we're not going to try and, you know, uh, hold into our cars what they should or shouldn't do. And so, you know, there's sort of speaking out of both sides of his mouth and a lot of, uh,

you know, sort of theoretical messaging on his part that that makes you sort of question whether or not, you know, he actually has the advantage that was sort of believed, you know, half a decade ago. Max, just want to bring you in for the last 30 seconds. Given Elon Musk's recently tumultuous relationship with President Trump, does that put the regulatory elements around self-driving technology for his company? Does that put it at risk?

I mean, I think there are real regulatory questions, also maybe some securities questions. Like people have made claims about Musk sort of seeming to exaggerate at times. That said, I don't think the challenge here is a regulatory challenge. It's a technical challenge.

It's on one hand, Elon Musk saying these cars can operate totally autonomously. And you watch in the videos and they have somebody in the passenger seat with an emergency brake, probably somebody sitting in a control center and they're still struggling, you know? And so that's the question, how to make the tech work.

Our thanks to Max Chafkin, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist and co-host of the Elon Inc. podcast. And Craig Trudell, Bloomberg News Global Autos editor and the editor of the Hyperdrive newsletter. Well, Max is going to stick around for our next segment as we go from driverless cars to the next reality star and billionaire that may be on the road to the White House. That's next on Bloomberg Businessweek. This is Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, he's a billionaire with decades of experience playing a rich guy in the press. He took his shtick to a TV network. He starred in a primetime reality show. He's a fan of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. He's a fixture on the Maniverse podcast circuit. Wait, is this Donald Trump? He likes crypto. Sounds like Donald Trump, right? He's been mocked for being less accomplished.

And that is then his net worth would suggest. And no, Carol, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mark Cuban. He's a sports mogul, a small business influencer, a media personality, a health care disruptor.

and perhaps the ultimate Trump foil. Max Chafkin and John Tazi profile Mark Cuban in the forthcoming new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. It's the July issue. It's out on newsstands soon, but you can read the story now on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com. Max is Bloomberg Businessweek columnist. He's also the co-host of

of the Elon Inc. podcast. John is Bloomberg News Healthcare Reporter. Both join us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Max, I want to start with you. Wait, I want to know, was it up in the food court and you guys were grabbing some coffee and you're like, that Mark Cuban guy, and you were like, yeah, we got to do a story. No, I mean, the genesis of this is that John, who's been following the healthcare industry,

you know, Cuban got on his radar because Cuban has been doing some really interesting things there. And where I got interested in it is, is all this buzz around Cuban as a political figure. And it seemed, you know, it seemed like an interesting thing because on one hand he is this kind of somewhat goofy, somewhat unserious reality TV personality. On the other hand, he's doing something serious in healthcare and we've just learned that

that being a little goofy, being a little unserious, sometimes it can work politically. It obviously works politically really well for Donald Trump. Well, let's talk about the serious stuff that he's doing in health care. Costs plus drugs, John Tazi.

There's a good portion of the piece that's dedicated to explaining the intricacies of buying certain drugs in the US. And I was shocked to find the price differences. Yeah. I mean, Mark Cuban launched this company, they launched it to the public, you know, several years ago, started working on it with an entrepreneur in 2018. Initially as kind of just an investment, just another kind of portfolio company he put some money into. But he

got really involved and became a co-founder. And now this is sort of what he's spending a lot of his time on. He's going to conferences, he's going to like small wonky health conferences that you don't expect, you know, a lot of bold faced names at. But there's something that really resonates with Americans about health care. You've written a lot about UnitedHealthcare and the aftermath of

the murder of a healthcare executive here in New York in December and the frustration that Americans had, there's something that's sort of visceral when it comes to tackling this problem and having someone like Mark Cuban do it. - Yeah, and what he did is he came in and looked at this market, prescription drugs,

where there are just vast inefficiencies. There are things that make no sense and we've written about them, we've talked about them here, drugs that cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in one place that cost a tiny fraction of that for the person acquiring them and huge markups being taken in the middle. And what he's trying to do is kind of go into those transactions and sort of take out the middleman and

make these medications available for people paying cash without their insurance at a more affordable price than they sometimes get when they go through the traditional channels. I got to say, you wade into something like drug costs and health care, and all of a sudden you're tackling what has been

as we've been talking, one of the biggest problems that are around. And there are other billionaires who've been like tackling, you know, trying to look for some solutions, whether it's Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, who teamed up. I remember, you know, we were all reporting and thinking, okay, they're going to be able to fix all of this. Having said that, you wade into an area like drug costs and all of a sudden it's a real political issue.

kind of field, right? And you wonder, okay, what else does he want to do? Because it's a big beast of a problem. Well, yeah. I mean, there's something inherently political about talking about this stuff just because it's a thing that makes people angry. Also, you know, a lot of the solutions here are going to require some form of regulation or government spending.

And also, Cuban is just politically involved. I mean, he was, during the Harris campaign, during the 2024 election, he was like a really important surrogate for Kamala Harris. He was on the campaign trail. He was kind of crafting or attempting to essentially sell Harris to the business community and sell Harris as a moderate on economic issues. And that is sort of, you know, if you think about

different directions the Democratic Party could go in in in 2028 you know one of them would be some sort of moderate approach and Cuban is is very attractive and there are a lot of like Democratic political consultant types who are excited about this a lot of Republican political consultant types who are thinking about this already because not only does he have this kind of identity as a as a moderate as a business guy solutions oriented

but he's really good on camera and he's also

good at sort of sounding like a real person. And that's the thing that kept coming up in my reporting, how important that is. And when you look at, when we talked to Cuban about like what went wrong with Harris, that's kind of what he keyed in on. You know, she didn't know how to sell. That's what he said. And that she, you know, she wasn't herself. It's this kind of like incredibly difficult thing for a lot of politicians. And I think especially for the type of person Mark Cuban is, a business guy, somebody who hasn't been in that

spotlight to be able to thread that needle, to sound like a normal person while also being moderate, like it makes him politically potent. You know, I want to go back to this comparison that I was talking about earlier. And you guys laid it out perfectly. I read right from your story.

You actually suggested, Max, to Mark Cuban that he's had a similar career trajectory to President Trump. What happened when you did that? He did not react well. He called it the meanest thing anybody's ever said to me. And John and I were sitting there with him, and I really did think for a second. You know he's a big dude. He was going to throw us out. I know. And he...

And the thing is, he was kidding to some extent anyway. But he and Trump have been kind of publicly feuding for almost 20 years. It goes all the way back to The Apprentice when shortly after Trump launched The Apprentice, Cuban launched his own show. They sort of traded punches back then. They traded verbal punches during the Obama administration. I

I think Cuban is sort of an effective critic of Donald Trump, partly because they are kind of similar, because they are both sort of professional billionaires, guys who play billionaires on TV. And Cuban is able to sort of effectively point to some of the ways that Trump's personality

like the character he plays doesn't really live up to the reality. However, he didn't carry his own reality show. He didn't do as well as Donald Trump. And the other point that Cuban makes in terms of their differences is that he, he is a self-made billionaire and, you know, kind of worked his way up, started companies, uh,

you know, started selling trash bags door to door, you know, and that he has that background that the president doesn't. I love the highlight quote. The difference Mark Cuban says is he never had to start from broke.

You know, you brought up the difference between The Apprentice and Shark Tank, and I do think that's an interesting, it's an interesting contrast. And again, it shows you why Cuban could be politically potent. You know, on The Apprentice, it ends with this kind of ritual humiliation. Donald Trump's firing someone, which, of course, is very entertaining. And I think one of the reasons Cuban's show, which was called The Benefactor, didn't work is that Cuban was too nice. Yeah.

he, you know, no one really nice shark. I'm going to, I'm a huge fan of that show and he's always the nice shark. So Cuban playing this kind of nice guy on this as a supporting role, that was really effective. The other thing that I think made him sort of beloved both on shark tank, uh,

well, initially on Shark Tank was just the fact that he's the richest and most successful person there. He's the only billionaire of those judges and he is the one who's kind of backing the goofy companies. He's taking it not quite as seriously in the same way that Cuban as a sports owner, as the owner of the Mavericks,

Part of what made him fun as an owner is that he's the billionaire, but he's also acting like a fan. He's running up and down the court. He's acting like, you know, goofy. He's booing. He's doing all this stuff that a billionaire would not normally do. And that, of course, can be attractive. So that's the perfect segue to talk about the genesis of Cost Plus Drugs, because as a shark on Shark Tank, he had this inbox where you would get all these emails, you, Max, and John Wright, in the piece saying,

John, back in 2012, or a few years, I should say, perhaps a few years after that, because it was around the Martin Shkreli time. 2018. 2018 is when this guy Alex... Oshmayansky. Oshmayansky got in touch with him. Yep. What happened?

Yep. So Alex Ashbiansky is a radiologist entrepreneur who is following the drama around drug prices and Martin Shkreli raising prices of some older off patent drugs that attracted a lot of attention, a lot of criticism. And he said, why don't we start a company where we can make some of these drugs that are in short supply

and kind of solve some of these problems in the market and kind of eliminate the window for people to take advantage of shortages by raising prices. So he came to, you know, he cold pitched Mark Cuban through an email with this idea. I think the company was originally called something like OSHA's Affordable Pharmaceuticals. Doesn't have the same ring to it. Doesn't have the same ring. And

You know, Cuban bit and he invested and kind of took an interest in the business and it became what's now known as as cost plus a lot of people who know cost plus know kind of the mail order website primarily for generic drugs, some brand drugs available on but mostly lower cost drugs.

generics, but there are other elements they're trying to build out too. And what they articulate is really, they're trying to kind of build an alternative to the existing pharmacy benefit managers, the way most people get prescription drugs. They're trying to build something outside of that system to compete with it. It's not really there yet as a full service solution. There are a number of drugs that

You can't get, you often can't use your insurance through the site. It's not, it sometimes can be much less expensive than going through your insurance, but it's not always. Our thanks to Max Chavkin and John Tazi. Check out their profile of Mark Cuban in the forthcoming new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek.

It's out soon. You can read the story now, though, on the Bloomberg Terminal and at Bloomberg.com. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, breweries that forage for ingredients are blossoming across the United States. They don't really have a plan in the morning when they decide to brew beer. They might have like a rough idea of a style, and then they just go out in the woods and see what they find and fill a bucket up. And, you know, it could be like perilla herbs or bee balm or fennel or, you know, wild dandelions, even like nuts, barbecues.

And the funny thing is, which I always laugh about, is, I don't know, I thought when it was like you taste like a blueberry IPA or something from Sam Adams, I think there's like a lot of science to it. Maybe they make like a tincture or it's, no, they just throw blueberries in. Like they're brewing the beer and they just toss in a bunch of blueberries. And a balanced investment portfolio in wine. Bloomberg Pursuits is coming up. This is Bloomberg.

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You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Watches are most of the time perceived as a time capsule. It's very chic and posh. The most powerful car made in the U.S. The beautiful interior, the iconic design. Now it's time to take a look at luxury with Bloomberg Pursuits.

Searching for beer in the backyard, American sake, I believe is how you say it, is having a moment. We talked about this in the newsroom. Who cares how you say it? Just drink it, Carol. Oh, yeah, from the guy who drinks tons of alcohol. Yeah, I have had sake before. I don't drink it currently. Anyway, maybe after reading this, I will, especially a certain American sake that is now being exported to Japan, which is a very big deal. Yes. Also, do you want to invest in wine? I just want to drink it.

All right. It is time for Pursuits. You can tell by what we're talking about. With us is the editor of Pursuits, Chris Rauser, along with Bloomberg Pursuits deputy editor, Justin Ocean. Justin runs our award-winning top shelf newsletter. Chris, I want to start with you. You oversee the whole section. Does that mean you had to drink a lot to do this? Chris doesn't drink. Oh, you don't drink either? But Justin had to drink, had to do a lot of sampling for this. How did that go? It was terrible.

It's fun. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. I love that. Well, let's start in just envision some beautiful fields where maybe perhaps somebody would forage for ingredients not necessarily found in beer because apparently that's happening right now. Yes. Yes.

foraging for ingredients to flavor beer and change beer and make new beer is a new trend across the U.S. And it's been something that we've written about here and there. Our beer writer, Tony Rahagan, is always telling us about it. And Justin wanted to do a big feature on all the different farms where you can go. Maybe you can help forage for the ingredients, their flowers, their herbs, or you can just try new beers every season. And so we sent Tony off across the country to

look at these different places. How did that go and what's that like? Is it literally taking a bucket and just like picking up things from the ground, Justin? Yeah, yeah. They don't really have a plan in the morning when they decide to brew beer. They might have like a...

rough idea of a style and then they just go out in the woods and see what they find and fill a bucket up and you know it could be like perilla herbs or bee balm or fennel or you know wild dandelions even like nuts bark and the funny thing is which I always laugh about is I don't know I thought when it was like you taste like a blueberry IPA or something from Sam Adams I think there's like a lot of science to it maybe they make like a tincture or it's no they just throw blueberries in like they're brewing the beer and they just toss in a bunch of blueberries

And that's how this is with all this stuff. It's very easy. I love how they call it ground to glass, right? We talk about farm to table, right? Ground to glass. How big is this? I mean, I feel like, you know, for so long we talked about all the craft breweries, right? And I know they're kind of having their own moment, maybe not so great. But it just sounds like how much of this is going on?

So, it's not huge. It's a select number of breweries across the country, but they're in all the major regions. We have Wonder Camera up in Maine. Scratch Brewing is one of the main ones that we profile. They're in Illinois, about two hours from St. Louis. Portland, Oregon, of course. Of course. Yeah, of course. Shocking.

But it's increasing and growing because as craft beer as an industry declines, people need novelty. And what consumers are craving now is an experience. And what these breweries are really doing is, they're not selling the beers in stores as much, they're trying to entice people to come to the brewery and really drink it in nature and feel nature and feel this moment in time and think of beer in a more special way. So how do you do this in a single day? Because the beer brewing process

from my understanding, is a relatively long process. So you're actually able to infuse the beer with these ingredients and drink it that same day? No, no. They would be brewing the beer and then letting it mature. So it would still take a long time. Yeah. Because some of the ingredients are ready-made and they can just add...

Like they have the malt and the water ready made and they can add whatever they forage to that. Exactly. And that's how it works. But they're still doing this every day. They're doing it. Yeah. Whenever they have a brew day, because it's all this is pretty small quantity. So, you know, they might, you know, have one consistent thing that they make over and over like a dandelion IPA or there's this one beer from Fonteflora called Pine Zips.

which is made with white pine and it's kind of their seasonal. Needles and wood have gathered white pine trees. That sounds amazing. It sounds like a joke, though. Isn't that funny? You're like, this tastes like piney. And they're like, because there's pine needles in it.

Did any of you guys ever have your beer brewing moment where the bathtub in your apartment turned into sort of like a little brewery? That would be a no. Absolutely not. No. Just me? No, we're gay, Tim. I walked in about 10 years ago.

About 10 years ago, I walked in and my roommate, my roommate, I was like, it smells weird in here. My roommate at the time was like, I'm brewing beer. And I was like, how long is this going to take? And I went into the bathroom and, you know, it's like you're in your 20s and like you're sharing an apartment with somebody. The whole bathtub is like full of beer making stuff. I'm like, what are we supposed to do here? And you were like, did you even clean the bathtub? No, it definitely didn't.

What's really interesting though, you guys write that Scratch, they've had some James Beard nominations, which is really notable. And so this trend is definitely getting noticed. But there's some beers that have no hops. So it makes me wonder, can you even call it beer? Technically not. It's called a Gruet. Never even heard of a Gruet until reading this. Me neither. I didn't either.

This is why you read this stuff. We learn. We learn. And it's like one of the oldest styles of beer, you know, before hops became like the primary. Like hops in beer is for bittering, but you can get the same effect using different herbs. Bottom line, before we move on to some other stuff, is it good? You sampled, so did you like it? Yeah, I mean, they're different. So if you're looking for your traditional...

That is never an endorsement. No, they are good, but I think for, you know, depending on how adventurous your tastes go, you know, it could be not as expected at first. But then, like anything, you keep trying and it grows. It grows on you. Justin, I think you should stop right there. Glass is half full, Justin Ocean. All right, so let's go to what's having a moment in the U.S. And I say sake because I said sake in the newsroom and everybody's like, no, not everybody. Certain select people.

So is it sake? Sake? Sake. Oh, it is. See? Why are you looking at me like that? Oh, this is radio. Everything I do is with my voice. For the record, he's staring at me like with daggers. All right, take it away. What's going on with sake? Yeah, so American sake, you...

You might just be surprised that sake is even made in America. I had no idea. There are Japanese companies that have done it here, like Geki-Con out of the West Coast, and then Desai, it's a premium sake. They just opened up a huge new facility up in Hyde Park, New York, near the culinary school.

trying to make their premium sake using American water, and rice is a huge deal. But there's all these places all over. Medford, Massachusetts -- sorry, Medfield, Massachusetts. You have Arizona, they're using Navajo tea in flavorings. Arkansas! Who'd have thunk? Yeah, Arkansas is interesting. So, the reason the whole industry has been able to grow is this farm called Isbell Farms.

And they grow premium sake rice that, before they did it, nobody thought it could be grown outside of Japan. And so, because they've invested so much in this, they've become the main supplier, and now they have a mill, because milling the rice down is the first step in sake production.

And they make it easy for these startups to do it. Also, the water is really good in Arkansas. One of the largest independents is Origami Sake. And they have a whole sake fest. It's tiny compared to Japan, there's only about two dozen brewers.

But then, Japan has over 1,000. But it is growing. Again, as people want to try a local product, it has a good story. It's growing in the U.S., and it's shrinking in Japan, right? Yes. That's actually the coolest thing. As production or consumption goes down in Japan, the U.S. is now the No. 1 consumer by volume of imported sake.

But then getting the bottle, there's a company called Brooklyn Kura, which is now exported for the first time to Japan. And it's a premium product there. It's in a bunch of fancy department stores. It's at the Peter Luger. So U.S. sake going to Japan. To Japan. Our Brooklyn sake. Our Brooklyn sake. Brooklyn is everywhere. And Brooklyn is popular. And the hope is that, and they've seen it before with, say, fashion, if you bring something that was Japanese, it got popular abroad, you bring it back to Japan, then people think it's cool again and hopefully can stoke consumptions.

Is there a sort of a corollary between sake and wine and the way people think about where it's from, different varieties, different processes of fermentation?

Not as much. So sake is interesting. It's more like a beer than it is wine. There are different types of rice. There's different grades of polishing the rice down that make it different purities and flavors. There's some sparkling ones. There's unfiltered. Cold and hot? Cold and hot. Most people drink it cold. I think hot is for lower grades. Oh, interesting. Hot is for college. Hot is for when you're brewing beer in your bathtub.

All right. So you want to invest in wine. You just have to have good taste.

taste, right? Maybe a lot of money and just be a little patient. That's all you need in life, good taste and lots of money. You sound like my mother. Chris, is that all it is? No. It is much more complicated than that. It's funny, things like wine or things like watches that you wear, stuff that you participate in on a regular basis may suddenly seem appealing to invest in when it's a weird economic time, or just if you become really a fan.

And so, you know, we've done these guides and pursuits, how to invest in jewelry, how to invest in watches, how to invest in handbags. And we are amazing wine columnist columnist. I was like, we got to do how to invest in wine because, you know, a lot of people know and it's a big industry that people participate in. But we haven't done a beginner's guide in a while. And so she really went into it and it's very helpful.

Jess, is there a couple of things that we should top of mind real quickly? I think the main one is just like one, check your expectations. You're probably not going to make money, so you might as well buy stuff that you like. It's a long-term game. You're going to want to age it. And then hire an advisor and really research the fundamentals. I'm out. Yeah, you're going to drink it, Carolyn.

Sounds pretty good to be an advisor in this business because then you can make the money regardless of what happens with the value of that wine. Can I ask you though, in terms of wine, is it

Normally, French wines, if you're going to get something that's going to go up in value, or is California good? Is there anything in terms of regional stuff? Yeah. Traditionally, it's Bordeaux and Burgundy. They're kind of slipping a bit right now. Italy is one of the hottest places to invest in terms of return, and California is getting more and more as well, Champagne region as well. But it's mostly like France is still the heart of that. It's the big guns and old wineries because the young independents, and even wines that are really amazing, there's just not a lot of it to

trade like there isn't the volume that you need to trade to make it liquid assets like liquidity is a big thing and that liquidity which is hilarious yeah um this is a big issue in this

You did a pun without even knowing. Hey, there's something else in here about drinking your Wheaties. We'll just say that it's all about locally grown whiskey. We don't have time to get to it, but I encourage everybody to check out the new issue of Pursuits. Yeah, and I got to say, investing in wine, you guys really just lay it out of the things that you need to do. Bottoms up, everybody. Thanks, guys. Chris Rauser, of course, the editor of Pursuits, and Bloomberg Pursuits deputy editor Justin Ocean.

And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Businessweek from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Businessweek daily, Monday through Friday, starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio, and on Sirius XM Channel 121. You can listen to us on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It's free in the Apple App Store or Google Play.

on Google Play. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Podcasts and we're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals. Available at Bloomberg.com slash originals and streaming platforms like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus and more. Find our Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

The latest edition of the magazine is available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Tim Stenevick. And I'm Carol Master. Have a good and safe weekend, everyone. Try some wine or some sake. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.

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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - June 28th, 2025