JD Vance Bashes Europe, Musk Factories' Undocumented Workers
40:51 Share

I'm Alpine skier Michaela Schifrin. I've won the most World Cup ski races in history. But what does success mean to me? Success means discipline. It's teamwork. It's the drive and passion inside of us that comes before all recognition. And it's why Stiefel is one of the fastest growing global wealth management firms in the country. If you're looking for success, surround yourself with the people who will get you there.

At Stiefel, we invest everything into our advisors so they can invest everything into their clients. That means direct access to one of the industry's largest equity research franchises and a leading middle market investment bank. And it's why Stiefel has won the J.D. Power Award for Employee Advisor Satisfaction two years in a row.

If you're an advisor or investor, choose Stiefel. Where success meets success. Stiefel Nicholas & Company, Inc., member SIPC and NYSE. For J.D. Power 2024 award information, visit jdpower.com slash awards. Compensation provided for using, not obtaining the award.

Are your hands full? More to get done than resources to do it? Get the help you need for your workforce from Express Employment Professionals. Visit expresspros.com today. Whether you're looking for contract workers or a new team member, the streamlined process from Express Employment Professionals is more efficient than hiring on your own. Start at expresspros.com. Hope you enjoyed this podcast brought to you in part by Express Employment Professionals.

Live from New York, I'm Tim Stenevek.

And I'm Jackie DeVallos in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology. Now coming up, U.S. President J.D. Vance blasts Europe, accusing the region's leaders of undermining democratic values and taking aim at the bloc's attempt to regulate hate speech and misinformation in media online.

Plus, we are joined by the CEO of Databricks on the company's AI-focused partnership with SAP and a look at Elon Musk's empire and how some of his companies hired undocumented workers to build factories.

Let's also take a look at those shares of Meta. They're up on the day and this says the company is pushing into augmented reality and AI and has identified its next big bet, AI-powered humanoid robots. Let's get more on this with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who joins us now. Mark, humanoid robots sound like something out of a sci-fi movie. What is Meta's vision for this venture here and how much are they spending to do it?

So META wants to own this still nascent humanoid market, right? These are home robots that can do chores for you, maybe fold laundry, carry a glass of water, bring something for you up the stairs. We've seen Tesla get into this game with Optimus. We've seen Boston Dynamics with Spot. Other companies like Apple and Google DeepMind are making investments here.

But Meta wants to be the Android or Qualcomm of the humanoid industry and power the underpinnings, the software, the hardware, the artificial intelligence, the sensor stack, the compute for the whole industry. So they're talking to several partners, including Unitree. They're talking to a company called Figure AI, and they want to power this. And today they're starting up a new division run by the former CEO of GM's Cruise, Mark Witten. They're going to hire about 100 people for the robotics field.

And their plan is to try to own this market and eventually maybe even make a humanoid robot of their own. Mark, is the idea here that they make money on the hardware, the software? At the end of the day, how does this help the company make more money selling us ads?

I mean, Meta is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence and augmented reality, and those are two core technologies that are also useful in humanoid robots, right? This technology could be applied to humanoids. They're spending $65 billion on R&D investments across 2025. So a portion of that will now go to humanoid robots. And how they can make money from this one day, obviously, is selling it to consumers.

But sooner, they can make money on becoming the platform and licensing their technology, parts of it open source, to third-party partners. Meta believes that the hardware stacks are pretty well done right now by the third-party humanoid manufacturers. Where they see a step down is in the AI and the software, and they believe with Lama they can fill that gap.

Mark, what has the company learned from its Reality Labs prior ventures in headsets, for example? What does it plan to do differently this time around with humanoid robots? Well, I don't think they're going to do much differently, right? Other than I think they're starting to hire a little bit more slowly than they have with the augmented reality metaverse push, right? So they're hiring about 100 people this year, right? That seems like small potatoes compared to the number of people they hired at the height of COVID, at the height of building out the metaverse and

mixed reality. Right. So they're going to go a little bit more slowly here, maybe invest a little bit less money at the get go. But I think their ambition is still the same. What is that moonshot? What is that long term area that we can own as a company? Bloomberg's Mark Gurman joining us out there in Los Angeles. Mark, always good to see you. Congratulations on this scoop as well. Well, earlier today, we heard from Vice President J.D. Vance, who spoke at the Munich Security Conference. Take a listen to what he had to say.

The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.

Vance called out Europe's regulation of big tech, saying it's out of control and harming free speech. Vance cited incidents from Germany to Sweden to the UK of what might be called woke policies as evidence of how Europe has lost its way. Bloomberg's Mike Shepard joins us now to discuss. Mike, how did this message, how did this speech land with the audience in Munich?

Well, it fell a bit flat because when you consider the context of the Munich Security Conference, you have to think about what's happened earlier this week. We saw J.D. Vance's boss, President Donald Trump, make this sudden outreach to Vladimir Putin and Russia to try to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. And Ukraine really did not come up very much in the speech at all from Vance. And over the last

Overall, it was an elbows-out address. He began his remarks by saying basically that there is a new sheriff in town. And he really tried to suggest that Europe needs to fall much more into line with his and Donald Trump's brand of politics, especially when it comes to the tech industry and regulation of online content.

And regulation of AI, there's a thread between the remarks we heard today in Munich and what he said earlier this week in Paris, where he addressed the Artificial Intelligence Summit convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. The idea from Vance there was to talk about overregulation of that sector, too, and say that that is stifling innovation. But again, he also brought up this whole question of regulation.

moderation and the risk of censorship through artificial intelligence. Mike, Vice President Vance also seemed to suggest that the annulment of the Romanian election in December was somehow uncalled for despite that there was evidence of Russian interference. How did those comments land?

Well, again, this is another remark that he made during his appearance. It really did not sit well with the audience, especially the Romanian delegation. There's ample evidence that Russia had tried to interfere with the results, which led to a far-right candidate pulling off a surprising victory.

The concern about Russian interference with and tampering with domestic affairs of its closest neighbors is a constant concern. It was something that we have heard from Baltic officials that we have interviewed. I've spoken with the foreign ministers of Lithuania and Latvia in the past year, and this is something very much at top of mind. And they recognize the risk of these kinds of interference operations.

And it is a sensitive point for Vance and the Republican Party too, because dating back to 2016, we saw Donald Trump's election somehow tied to a Russian interference operation here as well. So this is something he is trying to diminish.

And don't forget, JD Vance is not just aiming this speech at the audience there in Munich. He has an audience back here in the U.S. that he's trying to satisfy, and that is his allies, Donald Trump's allies, and they are looking for him to have this really strong approach toward Europe

And even if the speech didn't land well in the room there, it very likely landed well with allies here who want to see J.D. Vance take this forceful role in propelling the MAGA politics of Donald Trump for the future. That's Bloomberg's Mike Shepard. Appreciate you joining us.

Shares of Airbnb are surging today as the company posted an upbeat forecast for the first three months of 2025, citing continued strong demand following its holiday strength. Now for more, Bloomberg's Natalie Long joins us now. Natalie, help us understand this because gig economy peers Lyft and Uber issued more muted forecasts, but what's driving Airbnb's optimism here?

Yeah, they had a very good fourth quarter during the holiday season where U.S. airline carriers as well as online travel peer Expedia also talked about, you know, strong international travel. And in particular, Airbnb saw acceleration of growth in all of the regions that it's operating in, including the U.S., where there was some slowing demand last year, but it seems like it's really back down.

in the later part of the year. - Natalie, what's going on with the company's experience as part of the business and the investment that they talked about happening there?

Yeah, the company told us that they're going to be spending $200 million to $250 million this year into new initiatives, including the relaunch of experiences. The CEO talked a bit about how in the past when they launched it, they maybe haven't cross-marketed products enough. So let's say when you're staying in a particular city, they don't push or promote the related experience as much. And so the relaunch would be better at that.

All right, Bloomberg's Natalie Leung. Thanks so much for joining us on Airbnb Surging. Let's bring in Tiffany Wade, Senior Portfolio Manager at Columbia Threadneel Investments. They've got about $645 billion in assets under management. Tiffany, I want to start with Palo Alto Networks and get your thoughts there because we're seeing shares down a little more than 4% as we speak. The company did report disappointing earnings outlook, but Fortinet and Checkpoint posted strong results. What's going on with Palo Alto?

- I think across the cybersecurity space, we are seeing pretty strong trends. The last couple of quarters, we saw some customer rationalization of spending. I think we're seeing that coming to an end and we're starting to see sales growth pick up again.

Palo Alto, obviously down today. For the most part, the metrics were pretty good that they reported. Some of the key metrics that investors look at, like recurring revenue, was very strong in the quarter. And they beat numbers for the most recent quarter that they provided. However, free cash flow guidance looks like it's a little bit second half loaded for the year, which I think is disappointing some people.

But I would say I think the other important thing that we're positive on is that over the last couple of quarters, Palo Alto has adopted a platform approach to product sales, which seems to be resonating with customers. And I think we saw more evidence of that this quarter. And this helps customers consolidate spending, which is a trend that we've seen for the last couple of quarters.

But I also think for the longer term, the trend of increasing cyber threats is not slowing down. And Palo Alto will play an important role in helping their companies and their customers secure their data and also their AI models, because we are seeing companies face traditional security threats such as data breaches, but new threats driven by AI such as more sophisticated threats or enhanced security threats that are designed to disrupt output for an AI model.

Tiffany, let's stick with AI. In particular, some of the big tech giants that have made some pretty wide comments about infrastructure, R&D, talent investments. How discerning are investors when it comes to this kind of spend? Do they care where it's going, especially now off the news that Meta is building a humanoid robot, which is surely to take quite a bit of investment there?

Yeah, I think investors are definitely keeping a very close eye on the amount of spending that the large companies like the hyperscalers are putting into AI. And over the course of the next couple quarters, we're going to want to see returns on those investments.

For the cloud providers specifically, they're spending a significant amount of capex and investing in AI processing capacity, I think in order to stay ahead of trends. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos said recently that he thinks that we'll see a world where virtually every app has generative AI in it and they need to invest to stay ahead of this.

So the cloud providers are offering a variety of AI models which are pre-trained for use cases, but they also help customers tune a model or adapt it to specific needs. And they're also offering tools and services like secure data storage and data management that make it easier for their customers to handle the large data sets required for AI models.

And I think that all of these services should see additional demand with faster adoption of AI. And I think what we'll see is these companies are becoming kind of the toll roads for AI, where they're supplying the cloud, the tools, some of the developers, and the processing capacity that their customers need to enable other companies to develop and deploy AI.

We've also seen some comments coming from Washington that the government plans to be more supportive when it comes to investments in artificial intelligence. How much of that initial enthusiasm from President Trump's Stargate venture being announced has worn off by now?

that's probably the Stargate venture is a flashy announcement, but I think it's more of the same of what we're seeing. There was already a significant amount of capital investment going into infrastructure spending. Formalizing announcements with multiple companies investing is a great news story and maybe accelerates some of the spending, but I think a lot of the spending was going to happen anyways over the next three to four years and over the next decade.

Are you not at all concerned about CapEx spending from the hyperscalers, from any members of the Mag7 being too much? Are they overspending?

I don't think they're overspending right now. A lot of the spending from the Mag7 companies is going to their own use cases where they're actually seeing a return on those investments in terms of better advertising models or better offerings to customers. But a lot of the spending is also going to support their customers who are trying to develop AI tools that they're going to sell in the future. So I don't think that the... I wouldn't call it overspending at this point.

And I do think that the adoption curve for AI is probably going to pick up very significantly from here as we do see costs coming down very significantly. And that's going to fuel more demand for the services that the cloud providers are providing. Well, speaking of costs coming down, the news that we got from DeepSeek a little over two weeks ago or three weeks ago at this point, does that mean that indeed these companies have become more efficient?

when they're training LLMs, for example, that they won't need all the CapEx that's been invested? That's definitely a concern in the market, and you saw that in the Monday after the DeepSeek R1 model announcement. I don't think that we're going to...

I think what we're seeing is that the DeepSeq announcement was really highlighted the efficiency of model development already. So costs for model development from the established US players like OpenAI or Anthropic have been coming down almost as quickly as we saw in the DeepSeq model.

So I think it's really highlighted how efficient the models are becoming, how fast the technology improvement is. And if we need less processing power per unit,

computation or for inferencing instance, I don't think that that leads to a lesser demand for processing capacity. I think that means that adoption picks up faster. So if you think about the adoption of cell phones as they got cheaper, more people bought them, you didn't end up needing to make less cell phones. - That's Tiffany Wade from Columbia Threadneedle Investments. Thanks for joining us.

Coming up, we'll be joined by the CEO of AI startup, Tynes, on their big funding round. We're also watching shares of DraftKings, this as the Boston-based company reported fourth quarter earnings that beat expectations. Also boosted its sales guidance for the current year to at least $6.3 billion, in a sign that the company is overcoming concerns about a tough market for sports betting operators. This is Bloomberg.

Okay, business leaders, are you playing defense or are you on the offense? Are you just, excuse me, hey, I'm trying to talk business here.

As I was saying, are you here just to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next MVP, NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite is your full business management system in one suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your financials, HR, e-commerce, and more all from your online dashboard. One source of truth means every department's working from the same numbers with no data delays.

And with AI embedded throughout, you're automating manual tasks, plus getting fast insights for your next move. Whether you're competing on your home turf or looking to conquer international markets, NetSuite helps you get the W. Over 40,000 businesses have already made the move to NetSuite, the number one cloud ERP. Right now, get the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash stereo. Get this free guide at netsuite.com slash stereo. Okay, guys.

I'm Alpine skier Michaela Schifrin. I've won the most World Cup ski races in history. But what does success mean to me? Success means discipline. It's teamwork. It's the drive and passion inside of us that comes before all recognition. And it's why Stiefel is one of the fastest growing global wealth management firms in the country. If you're looking for success, surround yourself with the people who will get you there.

Thank you.

If you're an advisor or investor, choose Stiefel. Where success meets success. Stiefel Nicholas & Company, Inc. Member SIPC and NYSE. For J.D. Power 2024 award information, visit jdpower.com slash awards. Compensation provided for using, not obtaining the award.

On today's AI in Action, we're looking at AI software startup times after Goldman Sachs Growth Equity Union led a $125 million funding round for the company. At $1.13 billion valuation, let's bring in CEO Owen Hinchey. Owen, welcome to the Unicorn Club. How does it feel to finally reach this milestone and how do you plan to put this money to use?

First and foremost, Jackie, thank you for having me. Happy Valentine's Day. Yeah, it's a great question. We're really proud and excited to have raised this capital. I think where you'll see us invest is in the areas where we've seen kind of outsized traction over the last 18 months.

So as a startup, we've been around for about seven years now, but it's really in the last kind of 18 months where we've experienced a lot of accelerated growth, especially as we brought these new AI capabilities to our customers. And so we'll continue to invest in R&D. We'll hire about 100 people this year. And that will be all to support the growth and demand that we're seeing. We're now doing about a billion automated actions on behalf of our customers every single week. And we expect that growth to accelerate, if anything.

Oh, and as Jackie mentioned, $125 million funding round. It increases the valuation by 80%. So certainly a big round when it comes to your company. I'm trying to get an understanding for how difficult it was to raise money in this environment. How long did it take? Was it easy? Was it tough?

I would say it's never easy. Raising capital regardless of the markets is never easy. I would say that the reason we were able to raise this round, and it's only nine months since our previous fundraise, was just the success we've had in the market over the last 12 months.

And so as I say, and you know, we've increased the number of automated actions we're performing 10x in 18 months. We've grown our active users by about 250% in the last 12 months. And so when you're kind of posting those numbers and you're adding the level of value we are to our customers, it tends to attract a lot of investor attention. And so we find that our customers and the customer love that we generate, that's really the reason we've been able to raise this kind of valuation.

Oh, and let's talk about some of those customers because a lot of European startups kind of get a bad rap for not being kind of the big heavy hitters that you see coming out of the US and Silicon Valley. Where is your customer base coming from?

Yeah, it's a great question. So although we're headquartered here in Dublin, we also have offices in San Francisco, Boston, and in Australia. And so we very much consider ourselves a global company. About 75% of our customers are in North America and Canada. We've got about 25% in Europe. But it's across a variety of different segments from commercial to enterprise to Fed to strategic. I would say that the

Their initial sweet spot for times was in those high growth software companies. So Coinbase, Databricks, Snowflake. But since then, we've expanded a lot into your kind of more traditional industries, confectionery like Mars, but also in Fed and strategic as well.

We're expecting a much friendlier Federal Trade Commission here in the United States and something that might open up the doors to more M&A. You operate in a space that could potentially see some of that uptick. Have you thought about how far you want to take this? Do you see yourself as a public company or perhaps selling down the line?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think what we love to do as a company, honestly, is build product that our customers love, make our customers outrageously successful. And that's what we're going to be focusing on for the next kind of like short and medium term. And I think if we do that, then I think we'll have optionality towards the outcome. But right now we're heads down focused on building a great product. Owen Hinchey, Tynes CEO, joining us from Dublin this afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us. Do appreciate it.

Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Tim Stenevek in New York.

And I'm Jackie Davalos in San Francisco. SAP and Databricks are launching a new product, combining SAP's business data with Databricks AI platform. For more, Ali Ghotse, CEO of Databricks, joins us now. Ali, you're going to invest $250 million. You say you're expecting a billion dollars in revenue. Talk to us about how this partnership is going to differentiate you from what's already on the market.

Yeah, so this is, you know, we've only had one partnership this big and that was 10 years ago with Microsoft. So we think this is going to be game changing for the industry. So when we talk to our customers, we say, oh, we have an amazing platform. It's great. They always say, but what about the SAP data? Because SAP's data is the most important data in the world. It's what's powering all the ledgers, all the financial systems of over 90% of Fortune 500. And this data has sort of been locked away and people couldn't access it. So

So what the partnership means is that anyone that goes and now buys SAP Databricks from SAP will get all this data accessible right there, and they can start building agentic systems, AI, and so on. So that's why we're so bullish on it, and that's why we earmarked the quarter of a billion dollars, as you said, from our $10 billion fundraise that we just did.

You know, another important partner of yours is Microsoft, and it's increasingly becoming a competitor. It said that it's using its product, its fabric, it's going quickly. What's the pitch to use Databricks rather than Fabric? Yeah, look, Microsoft's a great partner, but still remains a great partner. They're actually an investor in Databricks as well. So is, by the way, AWS. So is also Google. But there's competition, as you pointed out. They have sometimes their own products. The

The great thing about SAP Databricks is that you have now all the SAP data in it there, and you won't find that in the other offerings. So the other offerings out there in the market will not be there with all the business data that SAP has, and it's been enriched with all the semantics. So what I mean by that is this is not just data on the financial ledger of a company. It's also the travel system because SAP has data.

a product called Concur. They have success factors for HR. They have Ariba for procurement. All this data has been combined and enriched, and it's just available in SAP Databricks. So that's the big difference between using SAP Databricks and using any other data platform out there. Ali, there's been a huge conversation lately around inference cost, and I'm wondering if you've seen inference costs go down. What does it mean for Databricks?

Yeah, inference cost has been going down all the time, you know, last few years. And we have a whole research team dedicated to just optimizing the software portion of that. There's, of course, a hardware portion. We don't build hardware. But the software portion is actually significant, too. We're seeing, you know, 2.5 to 3x boost just in the software. What does it mean? Well, what it means is that it's just much cheaper to build applications on top of AI. You know, it's kind of crazy if you think about it. If you zoom out,

What it costs is it costs less than a dollar to produce a million words. That's basically three books. You can get the AI to produce three novel books for you for less than a dollar. So that's what, you know, cheaper inference means. And that just unlocks all these applications on top. So that's what we're excited about. But for those applications, you need special data.

And that's all that's going to matter. And the enterprises have all this special data. So the question is, how do you combine that AI with that special data that they have? And then, of course, with the inference so that you can build these AI applications. Well, as we heard from Jackie, you recently closed this $15 billion funding at a whopping $62 billion valuation. Is that it for fundraising? Is that done? Oh, never say never, you know.

But it's a significant portion that we've raised. Now I think it's more important for us to invest it wisely, invest it in AI talent, invest it in building AI systems, invest it in go-to-market, expanding around the world. And we have significant business in Europe and in Asia and Latin America. So continuing to expand, we're about 8,000 people. We want to grow very fast. We're still hiring. So more focus on that, but never say never.

Ali, we're seeing some reporting coming out of our colleagues here on the venture capital team that late stage startups are actually kind of struggling to get additional funding because of just this dry up in IPOs. What's the future for Databricks? Is that coming down the pike for you?

Well, I've said many, many times, we will be a public company. There's no doubt about it. So it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. But the thing is, we're not trying to time the market. We're trying to win the market. So that's what we're focusing on. We've raised all this funding. Now we're going to use it. We did this big partnership with SAP where you can get all this most important data in Databricks. Now we want to build AI for our customers and make them successful. That's the focus. How do we win this market?

What kind of milestone are you setting for yourself before you actually get to the point where you tell investors that you're ready to go public, that you're ready? We are ready. We could press a button and we would be public today. It's really sort of a question of what's the priority right now and how much benefit do we get out of going public.

This fundraise that we just did, the 15 billion that you just referred to, we're also using a large portion of that towards liquidity for our employees. So, you know, we're solving the liquidity problem. We're solving investing in, you know, our business, in our product. So, you know, there's not an extreme sense of urgency.

But we evaluate, you know, every day. If it's in our interest, we will go. If not, you know, we'll stay private. I do think, my guess is that we will be public and it's not going to be too far in the distant future. How far in the distant future? 2025, 2026? What can you tell us? Yeah, I mean, I would say the earliest would be probably this year. But, you know, I think that's unlikely. That's all I can say. And then, you know,

But I don't think this is like a five years off thing. - But still, I just wanna confirm, the option to raise more money before going public if you need it is still on the table?

I mean, look, when we did this fundraise, we weren't sure there was going to be enough interest. In fact, maybe we set the price too high and there's not going to be enough capital. That actually happened to some other late-stage companies that tried this a year or two ago. So we were worried about that. And we got twice the amount that we wanted to raise in interest. We got close to $20 billion of interest. And the problem was the investors kept calling me and saying, please don't cut me back. Let me allocate...

the full amount that I want to put in. Let me put one billion, let me lead this round. So the interest for AI and data is just insane. I have never seen anything like it in, you know,

the 10-15 years I've been doing this. So there's a lot of capital out there, but they want to invest it towards AI. So you're right, if you're not in AI, then it might be a completely different story. So it's sort of a tale of two different cities. You know, the AI companies, where there seems to be infinite amount of interest, and then the non-AI companies, where, you know, there's like

it's sort of not great. It's not growing. They don't want to invest. You know, multiples are depressed. So unfortunately, it's like that right now. Ali Ghazi, Databricks CEO. Good to see you, Ali. Thanks so much for joining us.

Well, you heard Ali mention it's kind of this tale of two different types of companies, those ones that are AI-backed and those ones that aren't. VC-backed unicorns, though, some reaching a tipping point. Over 1,000 startups with a $1 billion valuation or higher are struggling to IPO and raise funds. For more, Bloomberg's Katie Roof joins us. Katie, was that surprising to hear from Ali that they just have like investors...

clamoring to invest more and more money? Or does that make sense because of where they play in the market? Yeah, I wasn't surprised at all. I was well aware that there's a lot of investor interest in Databricks. But, you know, they are in a league of their own. There's a small number of these unicorns that are able to raise a lot, or decacorns in their case, that are able to raise a lot of money.

You know, there are over a thousand unicorns, maybe over 1200 according to CB Insights. And the vast majority, especially the ones that aren't AI, are going through a tough spot. According to data reviewed by Carta about

Well, fewer than 30% of the unicorns have raised money in the last few years and almost half of those were down rounds, which used to be something that you wouldn't do in greener times. Katie, what about those other startups that aren't in a league of their own? What sorts of desperate measures are they now resorting to?

So beyond the down rounds, we've seen other things like reopening the last round, quietly raising more money at the same valuation. But then sometimes more desperate things like pay to play arounds where you require investors to pay more money to be able to keep their existing stake. There's all sorts of different ways that they're getting creative here.

Some of them are taking on pretty difficult terms. Much was made of what Service Titan did. They took some difficult terms from TBG, although in the end they were able to go public above their round. But most of them aren't on track to go public. There have been very few IPOs in the last few years. And so the industry is quietly talking about what's become known as zombie unicorns. These unicorns that are still there because they have revenue, but

They can't go public and provide liquidity for their investors. No one wants to acquire them at the price for their last round. And they're just in a really difficult spot. That's Bloomberg's Katie Roof. Thanks for joining us. Coming up, advertisers return to X. More on that story next. This is Bloomberg.

I'm Alpine skier, Michaela Schifrin. I've won the most World Cup ski races in history. But what does success mean to me? Success means discipline. It's teamwork. It's the drive and passion inside of us that comes before all recognition. And it's why Stiefel is one of the fastest growing global wealth management firms in the country. If you're looking for success, surround yourself with the people who will get you there. It's

At Stiefel, we invest everything into our advisors so they can invest everything into their clients. That means direct access to one of the industry's largest equity research franchises and a leading middle market investment bank. And it's why Stiefel has won the J.D. Power Award for Employee Advisor Satisfaction two years in a row.

If you're an advisor or investor, choose Stiefel. Where success meets success. Stiefel Nicholas & Company, Inc. Member SIPC and NYSE. For J.D. Power 2024 award information, visit jdpower.com slash awards. Compensation provided for using, not obtaining the award.

From providing extra support during busy seasons to replacing vacant roles, you need Express employment professionals on your team. Express can handle everything from contract placements to finding the right full-time team member. Solve your workforce challenges when you let Express to deal with workers' compensation, payroll, benefits, and more so you can concentrate on what really matters, growing your business.

Go to expresspros.com. If you've never used a staffing company, here's how Express has helped business like yours. 80% of businesses turn to staffing companies to fill temporary vacancies. 72% use staffing for extra support during busy times and 68% to staff special short-term projects.

For all types of jobs and a variety of reasons, choosing Express Employment Professionals is the move to make this year. With more than 860 locations in the U.S., find the one near you at ExpressPros.com.

Social media platform X is seeing a resurgence in advertising. The company's revenue jumped over 40% in December compared to a year ago. This as marketers rethink their position with the platform as Elon Musk gains newfound influence with the U.S. government. More on this, Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner joins us now. Kurt, how much of this has to do with Elon's influence in Washington versus X getting better as a platform for marketers to be on?

Yeah, I think the influence part from Elon is a huge factor here, right? Because I think if you look at what X looks like today versus what it looked like six months ago, I don't see a huge difference. The marketers that I talk to don't necessarily see a huge difference. What has changed, as you point out, Jackie, is, of course, Elon's role within the government and also the fact that

that X is now out suing brands that aren't advertising on the platform, right? So if you're a marketer today, you're sitting there going, hey, is it worth spending some money on this service or sort of getting in the crosshairs of Elon Musk right now, given his power? And I think some brands are choosing, you know, that it's the time to return for them. At the end of the day, though, Kurt, does it work? Does it work better than Meta Platform's Instagram? Does it work better than TikTok?

As far as advertising goes, I mean, it has never worked better. It's a different type of ad, right? So usually with X or formerly with Twitter, you would be doing what's called a brand ad, essentially, you know, the digital version of a TV commercial type of thing.

And that can be great if you're going alongside the Super Bowl or the Grammys or some other major news event. You're not really going to drive sales in the way that you would on Google or Meta. And so it's a different type of ad. It's never performed at the same level as those other competitors, which is one of the reasons why X and Twitter's business has always been significantly smaller than those bigger players. - Kurt, now that we're seeing this kind of improvement on the platform, where does this leave X in the broader array of businesses that Elon Musk oversees?

Yeah, I mean, it's always been, you know, the most maybe culturally important of those, just given the speech factor, right? Given the fact that Elon's out here commenting on, you know, politics and other things that are happening in the world. It's still certainly going to be a much smaller part of the business than, or his empire, excuse me, than a Tesla, SpaceX, even XAI, right? The valuation we're seeing that XAI is raising at is significantly higher than X.

So business-wise, it is still a smaller part of his portfolio. But again, it's more of the cultural and speech elements of this that I think give it so much clout within his broader universe.

Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner. To subscribe to the Bloomberg Tech In-Depth Newsletter, go to Bloomberg.com slash newsletters. Well, let's look elsewhere in Elon Musk's empire. Today's big take looks at how Tesla and SpaceX both relied on work by undocumented immigrants. All the while, well, Elon Musk advocated for a broader crackdown.

Bloomberg's Sarah Fryer joins us for more on this. As I mentioned, Sarah, it is today's big take. Julia Love's investigation. What did she find? What did the Bloomberg News team find about Musk's company's reliance on undocumented labor?

Well, it's really quite stunning. I think we are all used to the idea that a lot of construction projects, a lot of agriculture projects, a lot of cleaning projects do use undocumented labor. What's

What's different here is Elon Musk's proximity to that issue and advocacy against undocumented immigrants, working with Donald Trump on policy in that area, tweeting, sorry, posting on X about it constantly. This is a huge area of interest and concern for Musk, and yet Julia Love spoke with several undocumented

undocumented workers who have helped be part of Musk's expansion in Austin with his Gigafactory and with SpaceX. So what they have spoken about is whether they're working on facilities, on construction, on parts of expanding and maintaining those factories. It has been a critical part of

of the workforce for the Gigafactory and for some SpaceX projects. So we have been talking to those people and trying to understand their role. Julia spoke with about a dozen people. Sarah, what did the company have to say about what you guys found in the reporting? Are they improving practices in any way?

We have not gotten a response yet from the company, although, of course, as journalists always do, we ask for comment. We have not heard any response. But we worked very hard to, Julia Love worked very hard to verify everything that she was told. Bloomberg's Sarah Fryer, thanks for joining us.

Apple and Alphabet are restoring TikTok to its app stores after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to two companies assuring that a ban wouldn't immediately be enforced. For more, Bloomberg's Alex Levine joins us now. Alex, this has been quite the tit for tat ever since the ban was initially passed. This is kind of something that is underpinned by federal legislation. So even though it's momentarily brought on, where does this leave the fate of TikTok's future?

I think, Jackie, that it can seem like this is a huge win. I do think that it is a big win in sort of this longer saga that TikTok is now back online in both the Apple and Google app stores. However, it is definitely not the end of the road for the platform.

Donald Trump has essentially stopped enforcement of the law that went into effect for 75 days. So for now, that means he has another roughly six weeks. Early April is the deadline at this point. And so what he has to do between now and the beginning of April is negotiate a deal that would keep TikTok running in the U.S., but would also address the national security concerns that were brought up in a very bipartisan manner.

with the prior administration and the prior Congress. So even though, like I said, it is a big win in this longer saga, it is certainly not the end of the line for TikTok, and it does not guarantee its future in the United States. Alex, what could that deal look like? Is it on the table for the U.S., perhaps, to buy TikTok via a sovereign wealth fund if that does get established?

The terms of the deal and various proposals that have been thrown around are very mushy. I think that every week we hear another kind of proposal. We hear about another interested potential acquirer, another interested potential buyer. Some of the names that have been thrown out have denied actually being involved in any way. People like Elon Musk, who we had initially heard was being considered as

one potential off-ramp by the Chinese government actually came out just at the end of January to say he's actually not interested. So the sovereign wealth fund was another thing that was put forward, but the terms of how that would actually work were very unclear. And we also know that with the sovereign wealth fund, this would take a lot of time to actually stand up. And Donald Trump, as of right now, has only given himself until the beginning of April

for the enforcement of this law to kick back in. So that's all to say there's a lot of stuff on the table. It's all a little bit uncertain at this point, but we do know that there are ongoing talks in the White House and between the White House and TikTok and ByteDance on a potential path forward here. Alex, do we know what kind of assurances lawmakers want to see before we end up getting any kind of deal between President Trump and any other party involved?

That is a great question. And most lawmakers have been mum on this ever since the executive order was signed by Donald Trump during his first day in office. We know that a large number of the folks that actually pushed this legislation across the finish line to begin with were members of Trump's own party. And some of them, for example, Tom Cotton, have come out to say the law needs to be enforced. And even though

you know, even though there hasn't been a whole ton of chatter since the executive order was signed, we do know that behind the scenes there is likely a lot of pushback from folks who are concerned that whatever deal may end up coming to fruition may not actually address the national security concerns that got the app shut down here in the first place. So that all remains to be seen. Bloomberg's Alex Levine joining us from New York today. Alex, thanks so much.

Have a great long weekend. And you have a great long weekend, everybody, because that is going to do it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Do not forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the Terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. This is Bloomberg. We'll see you on Tuesday.

Some people like A and others like B. At BMW, we prefer X. Like the dynamic X3 meant for ultimate exploration.

The X5 built to conquer even the most difficult paths or the pinnacle of comfort and luxury, the X7. And since every X range vehicle is packed with performance and versatility, you'll always get the best of X. The BMW X range. Your next X venture starts here. Hurry into the BMW President's Day sales event and receive exceptional offers through February 28th. This podcast is supported by BetterHelp, offering licensed therapists you can connect with via video, phone,

or chat. Here's BetterHelp Head of Clinical Operations Hesu Jo discussing who can benefit from therapy. I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to be going to therapy once you're like having panic attacks every day. But before you get to that point, I think once you start even noticing that you feel a little bit off and you can't maintain this harmony that you once had in relationships, that could be a sign that maybe you want to go talk to somebody.

There's always a benefit in talking to someone because we can all benefit from improved insight about ourselves and who we are and how we behave with other people. So if you're human, that's like a good indicator that you could benefit from talking to somebody. Find out if therapy is right for you. Visit BetterHelp.com today. That's BetterHelp.com.