Figma Goes Public, CEO Field Sets Eyes on Growth | Bloomberg Tech 7/31/2025

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[Music] Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Ledllo in San Francisco. [Music] This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, Figma CEO joins us live from the NYC. Shares are due to start trading in one of the year's biggest IPOs. Plus, Microsoft and Meta saw on the back of earnings and their big bets on AI. We'll also dive deep into the latest chip earnings. We speak with the CEOs of ARM and Qualcomm. Uh we have a massive show for you. This is what the technology earnings story looks like right now. And last night, Microsoft and Meta dominating. Uh actually, some of the gains have cooled off a little bit, but very simple equation. We see AI fueled growth. The capex commitment is there but on the top line you're really starting to see AI make a contribution. Apple and Amazon are after the bell and that is a big focus because some of the themes are similar to Meta and Microsoft some are not. Tariffs a big equation but Amazon under pressure to show it's keeping pace with the gains we saw in cloud from Microsoft last night but remember Alphabet last week. Then there's the chip makers, right? Shares of ARM under pressure as the chipmaker posted second quarter results with weaken than expected outlook for profit. Some were surprised by that in the investor base. This is the company says they're going to increase spending to better capitalize on the AI boom for more. Delighted to say that we're joined by ARM CEO Renee Hass. Renee, good morning to you. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. There's actually like a lot of granular questions about what you're spending on, whether it's a kind of shift to offer more in the AI domain beyond the core CPU. Could you just explain a little bit of of where that's based? >> Yeah. Uh, happy to. Uh, and good morning, Ed. Thanks, uh, thanks for having me this morning. So, a few things, uh, going on with our business. Uh, we just came off our first quarter. We're uh, in our first fiscal year. We've never actually in the first quarter ever had a billion dollars in revenue. Uh, that was a that's a record. our royalties are are way up uh 25% yearonear but also what's fueling uh growth for us are these compute subsystems that uh that we've talked about we now have five customers shipping uh we had three customers in the last quarter uh that have taken on that product uh two in the data center one in PCs and we also announced our automotive comput subsystems all of that is fueling demand for more and more ARM technology across the board uh we expect to be uh at the end of this year over 50% market share ARM CPUs in the data center. So as a result of all that we are really uh doubling down on investing in this space. Uh we see huge opportunity for uh growth. We see huge opportunity for ARMbased compute. Uh we're the only AI compute platform that can run from very very small devices such as earbuds millows up in the data center into megawatts and gigawatts. So yes, uh we uh we are investing uh more aggressively than we had anticipated, but I'm very confident it's the right thing to do. >> You talked about project Stargate as an opportunity and and that project uses ARM for the core CPU, right? But I think I'm right in saying you you talked about there's a unique opportunity to provide solutions. Is that an expansion of the CPU IP or building on top of it or are we talking about ARM moving into not just AI accelerators but high performance compute systems more generally that would represent quite a shift in in the business model for you Renee? >> Yes. So Stargate is an amazing uh opportunity endeavor. Uh I think as you know I'm I'm not only the CEO of ARM but I sit on the board of SoftBank. So, I'm fairly close to what's going on with uh with Stargate, which is a a joint venture between SoftBank and OpenAI about really bringing uh a huge amount of investment for data centers. Uh we announced a $500 billion investment January. Uh I think when Mossa and Sam were talking a couple weeks ago, Sam had talked about expanding this out to 10 gigawatts over the next number of years. That's a lot of compute. And in a 10 gigawatt uh investment or $500 billion there's a lot of opportunity for innovation. Uh right now all we're talking about is the fact that we are uh the CPU of choice. Uh Grace Blackwell is the device that's being used. I think as you know Grace is based on ARM. So right now that's all we're saying publicly. But you can imagine with that type of investment with those type of demands for for compute and power there's a lot of opportunity for ARM to do even more than we're doing today. But that I think that's what the market's trying to understand. If more means more than enhancing the the CPU IP and and moving into more of the stack basically is would that be a fair assessment? >> Yeah, what we what we said on the call yesterday is that we are now exploring those opportunities. Uh and they can come in lots and ways, shapes or forms. Uh does necessarily need to be uh an end solution. Uh there are things such as chiplets. These are essentially compute subsystems that use ARM IP but delivered in a physical form. Uh one of the things that we see with these data centers that is that customization allows for a lot of opportunity to increase performance and power efficiency. So we have a lot of optionality in terms of what we do there and we're looking at everything right now. >> The the the shares are down more than 11% and at one point in the session on track for their biggest drop since last August. what you said about new licensing activity which I think appears to have taken a bit of a pause is that that is a normal fluctuation that you see but why should investors not be so concerned about that and I'm I'm just going off off of the share reaction as as we have it to last night's print. >> Yeah. Yeah. you know, as far as the share reaction, you know, really can't comment on that. But one of the things about our licensing activity is that it is uh it's pretty robust and and pretty sticky. Uh what do I mean by that? Uh so these compute subsystems that we're licensing, we're actually now on the second generation of licensing those. That means um customers who have licensed the previous generation are now licensing the next generation. Uh the reason that we have such good continuity in our licensing activity is that the software that runs on ARM uh is so ubiquitous that uh the change to a different uh architecture alternative it's a pretty large lift that consumers really would not see much benefit from. So what we think we see in licensing is from quarter to quarter it may be a little bit lumpy meaning that a deal that could have signed in June may sign in July and that may affect the financials but in terms of the overall health of the trajectory of the license activity uh it's very very strong. We've seen record licensing uh revenue over the last number of years, Ed, and people have just thought, could your licensing revenue really grow given the market share is so high? But we see growth. Renee, some of the math that everyone's trying to do on tariffs is how much of a pull in or pull forward there was in 1H. So, what were you seeing in terms of orders coming in for the first half that may not materialize in the second half if people were trying to frontr run the impact of tariffs in the end markets you work with? Yeah, we're not we're not feeling that very much uh Ed and part of the reason for that is again when we went to our new compute subsystems uh that the royalty rates are much higher than what we traditionally had had seen. We grow much faster than the market. You know what does that mean? Uh we were up 25% yearon-year in terms of royalties. Some of the end markets that we participate in were up single digits in some cases one to two percent. So, uh, we're really not seeing, uh, as far as I can tell, any effect of people pulling ahead orders because of tariffs, etc., etc. I think what we're seeing is our royalty growth re really being fueled by investments we made a number of years ago around these compute subsystems. >> Renee, just bear with me, please, if you will. We've got some breaking news. The president has posted on truth social that he's extended a tariff deal with Mexico for 90 days. uh he had a phone call with Shine Bomb uh and he's extending the the tariff deal with Mexico for 90 days. We'll bring more to our audience on that as we get it and more analysis. Mexico to pay a 50% tariff on aluminum and copper. Um if tariffs is not that that signal for you Renee in the second half of this year, what are the headwinds that you baked into your projections? you know, the geopolitics and tariffs and things of that nature are still, um, something we're all learning about as an industry. So, uh, as a result, uh, we didn't give fullyear guidance. We haven't done didn't do that in the in the last quarter. Uh, so we're trying to get a handle in terms of what the next six months look like, but I would say the fundamentals are very very strong. Uh again when you look at the share that we're gaining in the data center almost 50% by the end of the year all the growth of AI uh Stargate being a huge opportunity for us and ARM being the only compute platform that can address AI from the smallest of devices to the very largest uh we're very very bullish in terms of long-term demand. The quarter quarter tear of things we'll just have to see how those all settle out over the next number of uh months and days. Renee, really really quick. You've made some gains into automotive, which I find absolutely fascinating. Just explain the outlook for that business and and where the traction is. >> Yeah, thank you for asking. It's a it's actually a very uh similar story to some of the other markets that we serve in. And by that, what do I mean? You know, first off, power efficiency really matters, particularly in these EVs where uh the compute requirements for autonomous driving is very, very high. Uh there's a lot of software that's now been ported and written to ARM. Uh if you look at the the players in this area, whether it's Tesla doing their own chips or Nvidia or Qualcomm, all those comput chips are based on ARM. ARM is the compute platform for uh autonomous >> and as more and more uh compute requirements go up, power efficiency being a very very big key, uh that's a very very good trajectory for us in the long run. And again, it follows a very similar formula that we see in other markets. Renee, very quickly, Cristiano Aman is on later in the hour. Investors want you to and are asking when you'll bury the hatchet and go back to being the important long-term partners that you were. >> Uh Qualcomm's a great partner. Uh they do a lot of business with ARM. Uh as you know, we are in a litigation with them that uh is still ongoing, so I can't comment on that, but uh Qualcomm is a long-term partner of ARM and they have a lot of products based on us as you know. Renee Haram, really appreciate your time on Bloomberg Tech. Thank you very much. We're going to have more on the chip sector. As I said, Cristiano Ammon, the Qualcomm CEO, will be on later in the hour with the latest on their earnings. And up next, Figma CEO Dylan Field joins us as his company goes public. We'll head down to the New York Stock Exchange for that conversation. That's next. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] To our world TV and radio audiences, I welcome you back to Bloomberg Tech outside the New York Stock Exchange. Sat with the latest listing, the CEO of Figma, Dylan Field, joins me now. And to your 13 million users, to the thousands of global employees worldwide, how's it feel to go public? >> It feels surreal. and just thank you for having me and for being here with us today. It's just amazing to see the community turn out. Uh and also just to be with the team. Uh the contributions of Figmates past, present, and also just all the things we've learned and continue to learn from our community. They all just kind of show up today and >> physical manifestation and uh I couldn't be more grateful. >> I mean the vibes, there's a live DJ, there's so many of your employee base, as you say, your fig mates, those who have backed you early. Why this? Why this? What does it show about your community? >> Well, I mean, what we really wanted to do is involve the design community uh in this experience today that we're having because I think it's not just that Figma's going public today. Design is going public today. >> Yeah. >> And if you think back several decades, you know, back, you know, 20 years ago, the sort of mindset was the design was lipstick on a pig. this is how you make it pretty. And uh maybe a decade ago it was design is how it works. And then today, you know, 2025 in a world where software the competition is increasing so much, it's easier than ever to create software. >> Yes. >> Uh I think we're now in a world where design is the differentiator. That's been our thesis for 10 years. We've seen it play out, but it's even more clear now. The design craft point of view, that's what sets companies apart. And so, we're just trying to be this engine for product design and development. And to be able to celebrate design today with all of our friends and community, uh, is such a privilege. What sets you apart to be able to enable design versus the whole plethora of generative AI startups that are suddenly here and on the east seat and making things very cheap to build to say as you say design. >> Yeah, I think that um there's such an opportunity for us with Figma make to be able to help people go from prompt all the way to app and uh we're very focused on that and improving that surface area. We have so much more to come there. But already you can not only do things through prompting, but you can also copy and paste things in from your Figma design, your canvas into Figma make. And there are times you want to edit via prompt. There are also times you want to edit in a more direct manipulation way where you go into the canvas and you're able to see many different options in the option space. We think both are important and both have to work really well together. And so that's something we're excited to uniquely enable. Uh, and I just think in general we're kind of in this MS DOSS era of AI and if we're able to get to the point where we really well it's true and if we're able to get to the point I mean I used to say TNET era and people were like what's Tnet so you know stopped with that and went to MS DOS but if we're able to get to this point where people can really explore the latent space of these models and what can be generated and see the entire option space of what they can do then humans designers can had that craft. >> Yeah. >> And really figure out how to differentiate and also have the system in their head. Not just the design and the technology system, but also the business constraints. And that's why it's important to lower the floor, raise the ceiling, bring more people into the design process. Uh >> so that $1.2 billion that you raised through this process, where does that go? Where does that get allocated to ensure that you're building? Well, so one thing that was unique about this transaction was because of the cash balance we have at Figma, uh you know, due to rounds we've raised but never really used uh cash that we've generated and also uh the breakup fee, we had quite a cash balance and so it's a transaction that is um a lot of secondary uh and then there's some primary but mostly for the release of RSUs and so it's more synthetic uh primary and the uh so I mean we already have quite the cash balance. It's more or less what we're exiting the transaction with. And um when we think about the future of how to deploy that, uh first of all, we want to be good stewards of capital always. But I did put my founder letter uh in the S1. >> Yeah. >> Expect us to make bold moves. And I wanted people to know that investment community because we're going to invest in AI. We're going into an investment cycle here. And it's important people are aware of that. >> You are going to invest. You're not going to be focusing on profitability. You'll be focusing on growth. >> We are focusing on growth and we're focusing on all the great things that we can do right now and enable for our users, the value we can create for our customers. >> You think the public markets are going to give you that bandwidth? >> Well, that's their choice. Uh that's why I want to make sure I called it out up front. >> And the other thing that I think is important to note is in terms of big swings, I don't can't say when or if, but uh I my intention is to do big swings when it comes to scaled M&A. >> Okay. And >> what kind of companies? >> Well, when I think about uh how we approach the process, we're always surveyed. We're always trying to learn. And there's so much that can uh be applicable to Figma when you think of the breadth of product design and development in that entire process which we're really trying to cover. And not all the gaps we have will be filled with us building or buying. A lot of them will be partnerships. But I wanted to call it out because for skilled M&A as you do that uh it's often misinterpreted by markets. It creates volatility. Um people get you know sometimes they don't understand the really good stuff and obviously will be prudent. You know it has to be an amazing team, an amazing asset. uh has to be something that we think that the team is culturally consistent the least but preferably culture ad and they're going to create new dimensionality to our culture that we didn't have before and we're going to learn from them. >> But third and most importantly it has to be a main priority going forward. That's the minimum and uh we will hold us a high bar for what if we if and when we do that. >> To our TV and radio audiences, we're with Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, which has just gone public. And if we cast our minds back, the valuation that you're currently at looks at about $20 billion and that was the amount that Adobe wanted to pay to buy you. That didn't work out. Just talking about M&A. Was this the right path to be independent? How does that make you feel? I I mean, we've been so focused on this path uh for years now, and I'm just really excited to be here today. The uh Adobe stuff kind of feels like so long ago now. >> Um >> and yeah, just as we look forward, I mean, there's so much to build and such breath of opportunity. We have, like I said in the Federal letter, more ideas than ever. Yeah. >> Uh and it's all about prioritization and it's all about clarity for the team. And that's what we're trying to do is to create that clarity. >> I mean, talking about demand, you are 40 times over subscribed to those retail investors that want to get in on this. What do you say for the short term if the shares pop? >> Uh, the only message I can give you if you're on the retail side is understand what we do. Um, we have our S1 out there. We've done our best to present it in a really readable way. Uh, read the document and, uh, look at our numbers. uh understand where we're headed and uh what we offer, play with the product. >> Yeah, >> you know, become a designer. Uh I think, you know, that's that's true for a lot of people and a lot of companies. Uh if design's how you win or lose, you should be part of the process, too. But the more you can dive in and the better you can understand it, the better you can make a decision on things. And that's the main advice I give anyone, whether they're joining Figma, trying to invest in Figma, those are both investments. Yeah. of time, of money, and that's important is to deeply understand it. >> Dylan Field, CEO of Figma on the day of their IPO from the New York Stock Exchange. Ed, back to you, >> Caroline. Down at the NYC, we're still awaiting trading for Figma, and it is one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year. Now, some breaking news. President Trump announcing moments ago on Truth Social that the current tariff rates for Mexico have been extended for another 90 days. Let's get out out to Washington, DC. Bloom's Tyler Kendall. And a part of this, as the president explained it, Tyler, is to allow more time for negotiation between Mexico and the United States. >> Right. Exactly, Ed. He says that there will be an additional 90 days and they'll hope to ink some sort of trade agreement in that time, but he did write in that post on Truth Social that it could be even extended beyond that. Now, our understanding according to the president is that Mexico will continue to pay the 25% tariff that has been in place and those sector specific tariffs aren't changing. 25% for autos and then 50% for steel and aluminum. Keep in mind that Mexico had been faced with a 30% tariff threat if they weren't able to make a deal by tomorrow, August 1st. And it's really important context here that the uh negotiations with Mexico have always been on a totally separate track. While Mexico was yes uh faced with tariffs on the same sort of legal basis, IPA, the international emergency economic powers act, they were tariff months before so-called liberation day with the legal basis being from the administration that this has invoked over concerns about the border and fentanyl flow. Something that the president also mentioned in his post on truth social. There's a few different threads here that we're going to be watching moving forward. But importantly, we should highlight that uh the aspect of USMCA compliance and that those goods are of course shielded here from the tariffs. The latest data I pulled it about $83% of goods that came from Mexico last year, Ed, were USMCA compliant, but that still leaves about $80 billion worth of imports that are exposed to a higher tariff. >> Right. >> Bloomberg Tyler Kendall in DC. Thank you very much. Let's get to another earnings story. Shares of Roblox absolutely soaring today after the gaming platform reported a 51% increase in bookings last quarter and a daily active user count that topped 111 million. Bloomberg's Cecilia De Anastasia joins us to explain what gardening has to do with all of this. We can get that to that in a minute, but go through the numbers. What is Roblox doing well right now? >> Roblox is attracting a lot of users and connecting them to any of the millions of games on the platform. Roblox filtered a lot of users who would be excited about its hit game, Grow a Garden, to that game. That's 22 million concurrent players at one moment in July. And the wealth is not just concentrated at Grow a Garden. Roblox's chief executive officer, Dave Bizooki, was bragging today that more than 75% of the people who were playing Grow a Garden um every day also played another game on the platform. So, it's bringing people in and then just channeling them to other games that the company knows they'll love. >> So, Grow Garden is is kind of key. I know that like in terms of their servers, it's it's a big use of capacity right now, but in the month of July, which we're still currently in, um the platform has like several titles that have 10 million daily active users. Kind of explain that landscape to us, Cecilia. Of course, when you log on to Roblox, you have a sort of um a a big catalog of games that the platform thinks that you might like. And Roblox has done a really good job figuring out what a specific user might be interested in, whether it's like a driving game or a role playing game or a fighting game. And um creators have been making games at the same time that um based on data that they have, they know that will be popular on the platform. Over the last year, four games have been um published to the platform that have attracted a concurrent 10 million um users, which is a which is a ton. >> Cecilia, Roblox has come in for a lot of crit criticism on safety, particularly around child safety, but looking at the the the narrative from leaders, they want to have a leadership position in safety in this domain, right? >> Yes. Roblox's chief executive officer, Dave Bazooki, says that he wants the company to um be a leader on safety. And the company's implemented dozens of safety changes over the last year intended to ensure that children are not put in contact with people or materials who might cause them harm. >> Bloomberg, Cecilia De Anastasio, thank you very much. And join us tomorrow for a conversation with Roblox CEO Dave Bazooki. the stock up more than 12% all-time highs, biggest jump in the session today since October. Now, coming up, a conversation with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Ammon. So, the company sees some weakness in the phone chip industry, but some strength in other places. We're going to go to that conversation next. You do not want to miss it. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] [Music] We want to welcome our Bloomberg TV and radio audiences worldwide. Shares of Qualcomm under a bit of pressure. The company posted thirdarter results showing a bit of lackluster growth in the smartphone market, but their story longer term has been a move into other areas. delighted to say that Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Ammon joins us now and you and I have discussed this so many times the move into IoT and in particular automotive. So I thought that a good starting point would be to ask when uh smartphone and handset is no longer the majority of revenue and when that kind of tipping point or how close toward that tipping point is uh where your diversification efforts have shifted the business model. >> Very good Ed great talking to you. Um, look, I I don't really understand what not to like about it. We have been consistently delivering what we said we're going to do. I think the company has changed. The company uh created a lot of growth opportunities. And uh to answer your question, we outlined I think in last year on our investor day a plan that we're going to have $22 billion of nonhancet business by fiscal 29. And at that point, we expect the company to be diversified at a 50% uh non handset revenue. And we continue to execute on that plan. We're happy with it. We provided a new metric. The new metric that we provided as we as we provide guide for fiscal 25. We now expect that we will have the second consecutive year of QCT or chip business non-Apple growth of 15%. So we have second year double digit growth on non-Apple revenues. I think the company continue to diversify, continue to generate growth. We're executing what we said we're going to do and uh we're happy with it and we're creating optionality for the company in other areas. for example, data center in robotics, all of those which are going to be upside to the plan. So, we're just going to continue to to execute on our strategy. >> The the data point is new, right? QCTx Apple revenues and I was interested to read and understand it. You've also like communicated quite a lot about this this shift as Apple moves away from your modems for iPhone. May I ask like what you think investors need to understand and remodel for or or even what is it that mis investors are misunderstanding about that that process? Cristiano, >> look, I I believe that investors are probably still uh overindexing on the short term and and I and they've been focusing about Qualcomm as a handset company. I think the handset market has been a market that has uh not been growing and then you have this conversation about the fact that Apple's transition to their own modem. You have to step back and you have to step back and you have to understand that Qualcomm has very very unique and competitive IP across many areas. We're no longer just a communications company. We have very compelling computing IP both on the CPU on the GPU on the AI accelerator of our NPU and this IP is creating leadership position in other industries actually we execute on our growth and diversification out of nowhere we create an automotive business we're now going into the uh era of AI at the edge with industrial our IoT had a great quarter and exceeded expectations because of a new uh personal AI devices like the Meta glasses and we're growing on Android. We had outlined we're we're going to be doing 5% the market will grow on Android 5% per year at our investor day. We're doing in around 10%. So, so the company is showing its growth and earnings power 15% on >> Yes. >> Sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you. There's so much I want to get through because I understand the calculus on the long term. >> The thing that many were trying to understand is the pull forward effect of tariffs. Did you see in the data anything that would suggest orders went in in 1H or the most recent quarter and then won't show up in the second half of this year? >> No. And that's reflected in our in our guide. We had a strong guide in the handsets uh for next quarter. I think we'll remind folks that we don't have flagship lines in this quarter and we have seen no pullins. >> Uh if you're listening live on Bloomberg TV and radio, we're speaking to the Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Ammon. Cristiano, I don't know if you remember, but you know, two years ago almost to the day, you and I sat on stage and did a demo of an ondevice running of an LLM in airplane mode. Um two years on, I'd like to ask if that shows up yet in revenues and and how that's playing out in the real world. Yes, you have to you have to look on on how people are using those devices and we provide an interesting data point with the Samsung Galaxy S25 uh that is to what they're selling right now compared to the prior phone the Galaxy S24 the use of Google Gemini is 3x triple. So what you're starting to see more and more you have uh people using AI it's a mistake to be talking about is this cloud connected is this ondevice connected is both the smartphone is the most cloud connected device in the world and we have a lot of processing power in our devices and we see that playing out and in this quarter we said something very unique Ed we said first time ever we show 1 billion parameter model running on a glass on a smart glass so think about for example the use case everything you say to the glass, you can have an immediate response with the model running locally. And this is how this is going to evolve. >> As you know, I'm probably one of the few journalists on the planet that likes to rip apart things, including cars and servers. And I've been thinking a lot about your automotive business. Um, you've made gains, sales are up, but I wanted to you to talk through the the equation of content per vehicle and whether that's the key metric that's going to drive growth. Um I the most of our growth right now is actually converting our pipeline into revenues. Remember we outline a very large pipeline of design wins as those cars are being launching. They're launching they're getting to SOP. Those started to show the revenue. That's what's driving our growth. We're not our growth has not been driven by the size of the market. It's by converting. It's about share gain converting the pipeline. Having said that, we see content and automotive accelerating. More and more computing is going to the car in the digital cockpit for genai use cases. A lot of OEMs uh adding uh use cases on on the dashboard of the car on the infotainment because we're going to be working from the car, get entertained from the car, we're going to talk to the car. The second thing that we see is content for ADAS and autonomy and that is adding a lot of processing content and we have a runway ahead as a lot of these softwaredefined vehicles change microcontrollers into a central computing. So we have we have a road map to continue to increase content. >> Cristiano, I asked this same question earlier in the hour to ARM CEO Renee H. So I'm going to ask you the same question out of sheer objectivity and fairness. longtime partners. When will you bury the hatchet? My understanding is investors want to see movement towards that. >> Look, the most important thing we had a a trial. We are incredibly happy with the trial outcome. It it determined that Qualcomm uh is fully licensed for Orion CPUs and we'll continue to be able to build ARM compatible CPUs. So from our perspective um as as a our ability to continue to build incredible products and ship to our customers, we're in great shape. And I think you should be looking at Qualcomm as a company that has the ability to provide uh um one of the best ARM compatible CPUs and we're going to bring that across every one of our markets. Cristiano Ammon, Qualcomm CEO, thank you for your time here on Bloomberg Tech. Okay, coming up we'll hear from an investor who's been with Figma since its series B. Mammoon Hamid from Kleiner Perkins joins Caro out of the NYC. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] We are outside the New York Stock Exchange with one of the very early backers of Figma which today goes public. Mammoon Hamin of Climber Perkins joins us now and Kleiner Perkins history with Dylan Field the CEO goes way back and I'm just interested as to your perspective of what you saw in him >> in that series B round. >> Yeah. So, we've been fortunate partners with Dylan Field for the last eight years or so. And Dylan always embodied the spirit of what we embody at Cliner because we want to back founders who make history. And Dylan is certainly one of those. If we actually look back at our investment memo from 2017, uh we wrote something like Dylan and Evan are special founders and they reference as such and they built a team around themselves that will help them scale and that absolutely still holds today just as we look at the team that was up there ringing the bell with us and quite a few of those folks were with us back in 2017 >> and and Mimoon look we're looking at a photo as you speak of you with Dylan and what's also interesting is it was your first ever check that you wrote a Kleiner Perkins. I mean, I'm don't know if you could say what the valuation was back then, but it was definitely sub 200 million and now it's worth potentially 20 billion. I'm looking at indications that this stock is going to double as it opens. How does that make you feel that it's a $40 billion company? >> Yeah. Well, I guess nothing surprises me with this company. Yeah. And just going back to when we first invested, uh, it was a bit of this unmistakable love for the product that we see here on here at the NYSC today. If you look around, you see just like the the Coachella for design that is happening around us here. And uh, that was actually the the love that people had for the product uh, in in 2017. The user base may have been small, the product may have been early, but you would walk around cafes around San Francisco with people using Figma to design things and digital products even at that time. And that really just kind of continues on. And and I had some of this perspective from early investments in Box and Figma where I saw great products built that had this amazing bottoms up enterprise adoption and Figma sort of followed that path as well. And what was really just stood out for Figma though was the depth of engagement that Figma had in those days which really spoke to designers who were using Figma Figma daily to get their job done and that sort of like that that Dow Mau that depth of engagement was incredible even then and now it's you know just expanded multiffold. the depth of engagement in the stock. I'm just being told that there's a $75 to $80 per share indication on the stock right now. That is even as in the S1 Dylan Field is very clear that he's focused on building this company. He's not looking at profit. He's looking at being thoughtful, but he's investing in M&A and he's investing in innovation. >> Yeah. How important is that investment, self-investment, growth over profitability when he's got generative AI startups coming at him? >> Yeah, AI is probably the biggest thing that's happened to us maybe in all time. Uh it will have a tremendous societal and economic impact on all of us and we're excited about it. Uh and we're excited about it not just at Figma overall as uh at Kleiner Perkins. We're excited about it. But as we think about AI and what the capabilities of AI are which is to create more software faster uh there's a an important role that design plays. It is melding both the machine intelligence in artificial intelligence with human creativity and that is precisely where Figma plays is that we are the platform that where products get built and where AI products get built and that's the position that we have. Going back to where the stock is indicated, there was a very thorough a very thorough process as the company went out and road showed and got really a test of demand. But if the share price doubles on day one and you have an influx of retail investors, you got the head of product at X saying this is going to be the meme stock of all meme stocks. Do you want that as someone who's going to be, I'm assuming, holding this stock for the longer term? Yeah, I I think we want people to go and learn about Figma. If you haven't used it, tried it, uh go play with it, and have more people use the products. And we have not just one product, our design product. We have now eight products. And I think there's something for everyone. Uh even my my young children who are just outside here use Figma products uh to design websites, to build products. Yeah. And so I think there is a market for a lot more people than our tens of millions of users today out there. And so uh if it gives an opportunity for folks to get to know more Figma products, that's a great thing >> and a global product because I think what stands out for me reading the S1 is that 80% of users and there's 13 million of them on a monthly active basis are actually outside the United States. What does the global nature of this business mean to you? Yeah, to your point 80% is international and uh it's actually also 80% of the users of Figma are non-designers. >> And if you think about it, there are billions of people consuming digital products today that are designed inside of Figma. If you look at Google Maps, if you're hailing a ride through Uber or streaming a show on Netflix, those are all products that are today being designed inside of Figma. So the global impact and scale is tremendous and 95% of the Fortune 500 are customers of Figma. >> But you need that to go public in this moment. Does other portfolio companies need to be that international to have this level of demand or is it just having a growth story? >> I I I think generally speaking more software companies go international faster as the world gets flatter and that's just been our experience in software. >> Mammoon, it's been great having time with you here at the stock exchange. Heaven, we thank him so much for Kina Perkins. Back to you in the studio. >> Great job with the NYC Caroline. Now coming up on the program, Aayoka Yoshoka from the Wealth Enhancement Group joins us and we're going to get to Meta and Microsoft's earnings because those stocks are making big move. Also discussing the road ahead, we've got Apple and Amazon posting earnings after the bell today. It's just an astonishing 24 hours. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] Big day for US tech. Let's get back to earnings after Microsoft and Meta showcased some record spending on AI sending both of those stocks soaring postmarket. And now in the session as well, Yoko Yoshoka joins us, portfolio consulting director at the wealth enhancement group. I'm going to start with Meta. It wasn't just the ad pricing in the quarter gone or talking up all of their AI prowess or narrowing the capex range. The thing that surprised many was them saying next year 2026 we will grow capex. What did you make of that? >> Sure. Now it tells you that the spending on AI really does continue. I mean I I think everybody's been concerned that the spending is going to drop off a little bit but from a dollar perspective meta talked about how 2026 we'll see you know substantial increase in capex similar to what we saw in 2025. So very strong for the overall infrastructure of AI. >> I think what meta was trying to explain is how AI is improving existing product. So there was strong ad pricing. And I mentioned that because some of the Chinese advertisers pulled back in the period, but they still still did well. What people still struggle with is the future, how Meta presents its AI to the world. Did you have that question answered? >> You know, I think with the way Meta is approaching AI, you know, I think they're trying to figure out how much they want to keep sort of closed and how much they want to open it up to the rest of the world. Um, and and I think that's still up for grabs a little bit here. Um, and I think they're going to just keep trying to test what's best for them. But for for Meta, they're really seeing that ROI come through. And I think that's what investors like to see. >> Just very quickly on Microsoft and Azure, we got a revenue number for fiscal 25 and we got growth numbers. What did you learn? >> Sure. So for Microsoft, you know, we continue to see again strong numbers and you know, the cloud continues to grow helped by AI. So, I think we want to stay the course with Microsoft. I don't think you want to drop off that train, but we know that concentration continues to be an issue within the index. Um, and these names just keep getting bigger. >> After the bell, we have Apple and we have Amazon. Which you most excited about? I mean, Amazon, they'll be read across from Microsoft. Apple, my goodness, there are many headwinds in front of that company. >> Sure. I think Apple's the one that I'm probably interested in and a little concerned about simply because they've been a little bit slower when it comes to uh AI deployment. Um, and you know, just the iPhone hardware upgrade cycle is what everybody's been waiting for and we have yet to really see an acceleration there. >> We just showed that the estimate is for Apple to swing back to growth in greater China. So away from tariffs, the end market there. How closely do you watch that? >> Sure. I think in the short term we're continuing to watch that because it's been such a, you know, high topic of conversation, but I think for us, you know, we try to look at the long term and how Apple will continue to be, you know, it's a little bit more like a consumer staple at this point uh with a razor razor blade model. >> Okay, I want to bring some news that's broken in the last few minutes. Nvidia has said in an emailed statement that it won't allow backdoor access to its systems and that there are no back doors in its chips. That was response to a story overnight where China's internet regulator had summoned Nvidia representatives. They were concerned based on comments that lawmakers in the US had made that they would require Nvidia to have some kind of backdoor access. Clearly, this China issue with the H20 is not as smoothed out as we thought. just your reaction to that basic story. >> Well, I think in general we are more positive than negative on on this story just given that again we all thought that the China market was completely closed for Nvidia going forward and there are still details that need to get worked out but eventually we think it'll get worked out and it will be a positive in that Nvidia will be allowed to sell to China. Is there a path very quickly for China to go back to being proportionately the level of revenues for Nvidia that it once was? >> I think there is probably a path. It's just the details need to get worked out. There still seems like, you know, as we build out AI, security tends to be a big issue and so we're going to have to figure that out. >> Hayyoko Yoshoka from the Wealth Enhancement Group. Great to have you back on the program. Thank you very much. uh astonishing day for US technology. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. But there's a lot to recap. Just critically important conversations with CEOs including Figma CEO on their IPO day. Find that recap on the podcast. You know where to find it on the Bloomberg terminal and online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. From San Francisco and today from the New York Stock Exchange, this is Bloomberg Tech. Heat. Heat. [Music]