US AI Action Plan Targets Rapid Data Center Growth | Bloomberg Tech 7/23/2025

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[Music] Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hyde in New York and Ed Lelo in San Francisco. [Music] >> This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, tech earnings are in focus with Texas Instruments and AT&T already out and looking to Alphabet and Tesla after the bell today. Plus, the Microsoft SharePoint hack hits the US nuclear weapons agency as the tally grows of organizations breached. >> And the White House unveils its AI action plan, including the promotion of a rapid buildout of data centers for AI. >> Meanwhile, let's check in on these markets cuz maybe the NASDAQ 100 is lagging some of the other key benchmarks today. The enthusiasm for the S&P, for the Dow post that Japan trade deal not quite filtering through. We've got more anxiety around individual earnings that you're digging into. Currently flat on the NASDAQ 100 key tech benchmark. What are you looking at? >> Yeah, we're kind of treading water to tonight, right? But the two earnings that are out, AT&T, which is also completely flat. The story, they just didn't hype themselves up as much as some of their peers had taking advantage of policy. We'll get into that in just a minute. But look at Texas Instruments down 12.3%. Do the math on tariffs. Maybe part of this, Carol, is that for a company that makes chips that go into basically everything, they can't do the math on tariffs. And I think that's where we go. >> We do because 100,000 customers, they couldn't tell us who was dragging inventory forward or not. Ian King joins us for more. And look, this is the worst fall in the stock since 2008. Ian, >> yeah, they're having a very bad day. And uh it's not because the numbers are terrible. They're absolutely not. It's more of a directional thing. And it's more because, as you guys just alluded to, they're kind of pressing the the the wrong buttons, the fear buttons for the market right now, which is tariffs are going to have an impact. Maybe they're having an impact already. Frankly, we don't know. Um, and that was really the the tone of the call yesterday. And obviously analysts and investors this morning did not like that. >> Ian, in your interview with CFO Raphael Lazardi, he he basically said this idea, right? We have all these customers in all these different domains. It's hard of for us to keep track. But executives on the call also talked about the idea that in the current period the order data is quite strong. Yeah. I mean the the way that they described it was that it was kind of long nonlinear that when there was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen with tariffs at the beginning of the quarter, we had a kind of a spike very strong orders and then after that things kind of evened out a little bit more and followed normal patterns. But that is the kind of thing that analysts and investors have kind of been looking for as like a sign that this demand that we're seeing isn't real demand. That it's this inventory buildup that Caroline just sort of alluded to that this kind of pulled forward. So again, the numbers were good, right? 16% then forecasting 11% growth. That's there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is is that people are concerned about how much of that is real and how much of that can continue. >> What's the read across? because NXP sort of signaled this, but Texas Instruments is the bellweather. >> Yeah, Texas Instruments is a more um diverse company than NXP. What they have in common was auto and what Texas Instruments said about automotive, which is, as you know, one of the great hopes for the chip industry. Things haven't got better yet. We perhaps saw a bit of pull forward in China. And again, this is a you know, this should be turning into a positive story. this should be sort of heading upwards and making everybody smile again and it's not right so that if as we look at other companies throughout this earnings period companies that are trying to do well in auto perhaps a company as like Qualcomm which is part of that diversification story people are now concerned about this area people are now concerned more in general >> Bloomberg Ian King thank you very much another company that's out with earnings is AT&T shares have been slipping they're now flat after the company reiterated ated a profit forecast that fell short of analyst estimates. Still, the company saw rapid wireless phone subscriber growth, adding 401,000 customers with the help of increased perks and incentives in the second quarter. For more, Bloomberg's Kelsey Griffith is here in Washington, DC. So, basically, investors are saying, well, hold on a minute. One of your big rivals, Verizon, big themselves up what they've been able to do because of President Trump's policies, particularly around tax. I guess the read across is that they're disappointed AT&T is not doing the same thing. >> Exactly. So, what we saw this morning is that AT&T became a bit of a victim of inflated Wall Street expectations after Verizon ended up posting these really good um numbers. Um they ended up updating their fullear forecast and I think the market was kind of hoping that AT&T would do the same. Now, AT&T did adjust their um their numbers a bit, but it wasn't anything as dramatic as we saw with Verizon. >> Meanwhile, what was dramatically better than Verizon was the amount of net ads they're making in terms of phone use. Kelsey, just push us forward therefore on AT&T, perhaps what was baked in because these stocks have run up this year. >> That's right. AT&T is on a really good growth trajectory and they're seen as this pretty steady um you know, growing uh business. They've been investing a lot of cash into their Fiverr subscriber ads. And although they were a little short of expectations this quarter, that is still an area where they're predicting massive growth. >> They were bullish about their commitment to investing in this country. This is a theme Caroline and I have discussed with AT&T in the past. What did the CFO say they're going to prioritize and and what's the kind of level of investment that they're they're talking about here? >> That's right. So, in the wake of the big beautiful bill, um all companies um including Verizon and AT&T are looking to really invest in their networks. They're looking at these tax savings and kind of thinking about how they're going to spend that. For AT&T, we've heard that they're going to invest um an extra billion or so in the fiber network u I believe per year and then we're also going to see some pretty big contributions to the employee pension plan. We'll keep an eye on it. Kelsey Griffith, we thank so much in the wrap-up on AT&T. But now, let's get some other earnings context and what we expect to come after the closing bell today. Of course, it's Alphabet. Brad Ericson, internet analyst at RBC Capital Markets, joins us now. And look, you have got I think it's about a $200 price tag outperform on Alphabet. How can they live up to the prior to this day 10day runup, a longest winning streak for Alphabet that we've seen since 2010, Brad? Yeah, there's a couple of uh kind of crosscurrent things going on. I I think first on the fundamental side, we're going to see really good numbers. Our checks through the quarter were fairly strong. Um and I do expect them to print upside tonight. Um so I think that's kind of why you've seen the market uh price that in a little bit and and run the stock up here in front of the print. Offsetting that uh maybe not quite as good from a from a forward setup perspective is is ne once they print numbers tonight. say what they say, then we've got to sit around and wait two, three, four weeks for this regulatory decision out of the judge that that obviously will will scare some people. So, >> and let's just think about that regulatory overhang. We love reading your notes and really you were talking about how this is a strong fundamentally company but challenged thematically and awaiting regulatory wild card. We await what Judge Meta says in August, but when you think about the challenge thematically, any numbers that you're going to be looking at that would tell you that there is competition in terms of search that CHBT is eating in to their bread winner. >> Yeah, I mean they'll they'll obviously again they'll print the numbers tonight. I do expect them to be good. And so just objectively on that piece of it, I think they'll have a really strong case and story to tell on the conference call around why AI is good for their business. They're not going to directly address sort of the competitive threats, but they will definitely be, I think, in a good position tonight to position AI as as sort of nothing but a good thing um for the business. But uh yeah, I think the point of our note was the numbers will be good. they can say what they want but the reality is so long as you know chat GPT perplexity anthropic there's a number of companies that are really uh making a lot of headway on the AI front everyone's well aware of um that that that bare case that AI narrative against Google's core business is is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future >> Brad the technology story I see is like quite simple how does the Gemini model become more embedded across all of Google's business but I I I guess I'd love to know where you want to see it show up in in the financial results to give you faith that the payoff is there. >> Yeah. You know, I I think the most important piece and it's not I I don't think it gets enough focus is Gemini the model, right? Partially is just because of the brand people have learned the name. It's it's obviously driving the the Gemini app and that is important. Where where we're actually really focused is certainly on AI overviews, but bringing Gemini to AI mode. I call it the my mom test, right? When my mom is suddenly using some of these tools, we know they're really hitting sort of broad-based. In fairness, my mom doesn't do a lot with technology, so there it is. But the point is that if you're spoon feeding AI mode to people that would ultimately just be coming to Google for normal purposes and you've got the power of a really solid set of Gemini models, that's where I think it becomes a bigger and bigger tailwind for these guys. Brad, we got the White House's AI action plan this morning, 23 pages. I printed it out for you. Uh, so for some light reading later in the program, we'll get into the details and the politics of it. But the simple question is whether or not Alphabet is going to be a beneficiary of what this administration wants America to do in AI. Do you think it will be? >> Uh, generally yes. But I do think there's going to be more and more attention paid to how sort of equitable the the value distribution is of AI. I think that's something we spend a lot of time thinking about these days, which is I think if you look at the parts and pieces of what we know of AI today, it would suggest that a lot of the value could acrue to only a very few number of companies. And I don't think that's going to work bigger picture from a regulatory perspective. And the reason we like Google in that perspective is Google is the distributor of traffic, right? The biggest one on the internet. And I don't see that changing. And so I actually think that plays quite well into the regulatory framework going forward. >> Let's go to regulatory overhang just the last case though, Brad, because that is the cloud you signal coming in August. What do you brace for? Do you think Judge Meta would break up the company? >> Um, short answer is we don't we don't think so. I I think that we have we ascribe kind of a lower probability to that. But there's sort of two or three things we think about. Number one is you're not going to be able to pay for placement on default search. We're pretty certain that's that's that is going away. Two, um there could be some some sort of opening up the kimono on on data that that Google has to competitors. We actually don't think that matters that much, but that could certainly play out. And then the third one is the devestature potential of of Chrome. Um, and there are stances, you know, Chrome's not a business, it's a product. Um, I think that the maybe the DOJ comments sort of ignored that piece in the in their uh aspirations to to have that piece of it removed. And so ultimately, you can they could force them to do that. It's certainly possible, but then you're introducing a whole other set of issues as we've seen perplexity, open AI, all these companies talking about opening browsers, right? It's clearly going to be very important for distribution. Seems incredibly arbitrary to to sort of hand away Google's browser in the hands of another when they're saying that is going to be critical to the technology innovation here for the future. It would just be handing value away. So we see low likelihood of that happening. >> Brad Ericson, RBC Capital Markets, internet analyst pushing ahead to Alphabet after the bell. Thank you. The other name after the bell is Tesla. This is a stock that's down 17% year to date. It's up half a percent in the moment and the data carro is like probably biggest drop in revenue for a decade year on year but the street probably looking past that because it's not about selling cars anymore. >> It's not it's about one man really and his vision and let's just stick with Elon and Elon's empire and because actually look you took a look at the language the fine print included in the tender offer that's going on for SpaceX, right? And you noticed that there's a new little warning just tucked in there about his potential to get more involved in politics. Yeah. So, what we saw was the risk factors section in the tender documents that valued SpaceX at $400 billion, right? And this is what it literally says. It acknowledges that Musk was previously a senior adviser to President Trump as part of Doge, but also, this is the key bit, may in the future serve in similar roles and devote significant time and energy to such roles. The reason that's important right now and analogous to Tesla is that Tesla investors are also saying all we need to hear is that Musk is committed to the company and other companies, not necessarily what his political beliefs are. I think that's kind of what we're watching for. >> And look, he's been trying to signal that on X, right? He's sleeping, eating, repeating work amid a little bit of like child care. >> Yeah. seven days a week back at the the the company, but there's this big overhang about the America Party and people on X are saying, will he even address the America Party thing during Tesla's earnings calls? That's the state of play right now. Yeah. >> Well, we keep our eyes on it. More coming up right now on the Microsoft SharePoint hackad. It widening. Bloomberg is learning that a US agency responsible for designing nuclear weapons. They're among those breached. More on that next. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] [Music] Now, the number of companies and organizations that have been breached by the hack on Microsoft SharePoint has grown to about 400 entities. Now, it's according to Bloomberg reporting that this includes the US National Nuclear Security Administration, which of course oversees the design of nuclear weapons. For more, Bloomberg's Jake Bllyberg joins us. And just how extreme are these hacks? What sort of information do we understand that they've managed to gather? So, we're still learning about what they're gathering, and it's it's a hard question to answer in a lot of cases. The thing we know they've taken in at least some instances are signin credentials, usernames, passwords, other information that's used to secure systems. And that's particularly concerning because it means the hackers can potentially branch out from what the the one system they got into. Jake, when Bloomberg broke the story last night about this particular agency being hacked that is responsible for the development and disposal of nuclear weapons, understandably loads of Americans on social media were like, "What on earth are we in trouble? Do we know the limits of what the hackers were able to gather? What is the AY's response?" I think it's a time where we just like, "Here's the reality of the situation." So what our reporting shows so far is that uh there wasn't sensitive or classified information taken from this nuclear agency and that the classified information within it and mo most other government agencies is sort of sectioned off from the type of system that was easily breached in this attack. However, as I, you know, just mentioned, one of the concerns here is that once the hackers get in, they may be able to branch out and burrow in elsewhere. >> Now, what's interesting is the number of agencies and companies and entities has been identified by a Dutch cyber company at the moment. This one being eye security. They're saying it's largely US-based, but actually very international. What has Microsoft been identifying? They've of course told us who potentially the hackers are, but how are they keeping us ab breast of this? So, Microsoft has told us that uh at least two Chinese statebacked hacking groups are behind some of these attacks and that there's another group based in China that is carrying out attacks too. Um what we know is that the servers that were made vulnerable by this attack for the common micro or soft software SharePoint are spread out all over the globe and that the number that were potentially vulnerable is in the thousands not the hundreds. So the the scope of this is really something that's still coming into view and you know Microsoft up to now has not told us how many how many of their customers have experienced breaches. Uh Jake, many Microsoft customers watch this program. Many Microsoft employees watch this program. What has Microsoft told us in terms of their response and how they're handling it? So Microsoft moved quite quickly to roll out patches to this vulnerability once they became aware of it. They rolled out a patch over the weekend and more during the week to sort of clo try to close this door and keep it shut. But what we've heard from other security researchers is that once the hackers are in, you're still potentially vulnerable. Closing the door once they're in the house doesn't solve your problems and that really requires sort of continuing to search and understand did we get hit. >> Bloomberg Jake Bllyber with ongoing reporting. Thank you very much. Now coming up, Apple set to offer a new product insurance plan. We'll discuss what behi what's behind that move next. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] It's time now for talking tech. And first up, Uber is testing a ride option in the US that matches female riders and drivers. Now, the safety feature is already available in some international markets. The pilot will launch in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit in the next few weeks. Has long been offered by Lyft. Plus, Sonos has named interim leader Tom Conrad as chief executive officer. The appointment is a vote of confidence in his effort to get the struggling audio company back on track after a disastrous software launch that hurt sales and forced the company to lay off workers. And the UK's antitrust watchdog is proposing giving Apple and Google's Android so-called strategic market status. Now, the move would pave the way for regulation of their mobile operating systems, app stores, and mobile web browsers. Ed, >> a stick with Apple. It's launching a new version of its device insurance plan, Apple Care. The new $20 a month plan can cover up to three devices. Bloomberg Sam Kelly has the details. So often have I tapped into Apple Care, having dropped this thing on the floor. What's new about it? Why are they updating it? >> Hi, good morning. Yeah. So, basically this new $20 a month subscription allows you to have three different devices um of any different base model. So, you could have a newer iPhone or a Vision Pro or an Apple Watch. And, uh for $20, it will protect against uh spills, um accidents, um cracked screens, you can talk to somebody 247 if you have IT help, uh battery replacements. Um before previously the company has long offered a uh subscription plan where you can opt into the same type of thing for the iPhone but you would have to pay for it almost all a cart. So if you had an Apple Watch you'd have to do just that. You'd have to do the iPhone. This bundles packages everything very nicely together for $20 a month. And in theory there could be some savings here for some consumers as well. And obviously a subscription play for Apple as well. Let's go there because I can see why it be advertising for consumer particularly if there's loss and theft coverage. What is in this for Apple? >> Yeah, so this is a major play for Apple. Again, you know, devices and insurance isn't exactly doesn't sound sexy on the service, but there is a major play here. So, basically um the the services division in general is uh Apple's second biggest money maker behind the iPhone. Not only is it the App Store, there's Apple TV Plus, there's Apple Fitness, there's iCloud. So here um with um Apple Care you're able to keep you have two billion devices out there. This is people who maybe have one device insured if that this is money that they would be able to make and it would in theory help offset some of the different challenges that they're seeing right now around the Apple store or lagging behind AI in certain areas against competitors trying to drum up subscription sales in general. And this is money that potentially people might not be paying, but they might say, "You know what? For $20 a month, if my phone breaks, if I lose it, maybe this is enticing enough for me to do it." >> Where are the limitations, though? For me, I think the offputting thing is, yes, I can see you wanting to opt in if you're buying a new device, but then to get the older stuff that you already have insured, you kind of got to get it diagnostically tested, right? >> Yes, you do. So you have to um go through a short sort of several minute testing to make sure that the screen is okay, the you know the the battery, they want to make sure everything is okay before your insurance almost like health insurance want to make sure things are okay. Um and but it it does go back four years. So you might say, you know, I have a brand new iPhone, but I haven't bought an Apple Watch in quite a while. And so this might be a way for you to say, oh, you know, maybe I can opt into something a little bit more. Bloomberg Samantha Kelly, great analysis. We appreciate it. Making insurance sexy again. Meanwhile, coming up, AI leaders gather in Washington as President Trump delivers his AI action plan. Details next. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] [Music] Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Let's check in on these markets because actually tech is kind of underperforming some of the other major benchmarks today. There is uplift and euphoria around Japan US trade deal. Is there more to come? But on the big tech benchmark, we're flat on the NASDAQ 100. We had some key earnings that drag us lower from a points perspective. Let's dig into them. Texas Instruments, Ed, we talked about it at the top of the show. It is having its worst day since 2008. Clearly, global tariffs impacted the business, but the executives can't articulate how much is there is a pull forward on the previous quarter and it just didn't live up to the expectations of investors. Meanwhile, we're also down on SAP and trading in Europe. We've just closed the market. We're off by 5%. Again, tariff headwind. The dollar weakness impacting this particular software business end. >> Okay. AI leaders are gathering here in Washington as President Trump is set to give an address on his AI roadmap for the United States. Details that it includes the rapid buildout of data centers and the removal of quote ownorous AI regulations. Bloomberg's Michael Shepard joins us with more. >> We've both printed it out, all 23 pages. We haven't read the entirety of it. >> We skimmed it. But we've been talking for a while about how the the focus of the document I it's infrastructure related the American technology stack and the energies to support it. Is there substance to it on that side? >> The substance will really bear out over time that as we see a lot of uh administrations, not only the Trump administration but all of its predecessors have flooded Washington with these sorts of policy directives in the past. And the catch here will be to see whether they can actually gain some traction with this document, not only with industry, but also with Congress, with the federal bureaucracy, with the agencies that they currently oversee. And then at the state and local level, too. They have to make sure that a lot of this can be done and it's an ownorous process. They talk about removing ownorous regulations, but they will have a lot of digging to do on it. that is to cut some of the red tape that they talk about right in the uh beginning of the report to also try to pave the way not only for the data centers but for the energy needed to power them. That's a big deal. It's a big uh pillar of this. And then also you talked about this and we've talked about this on the program before too and it was in your conversation with David Saxs uh just last week building AI globally on the American text act. another pillar of this document and it's something we'll have to watch to see how they implement. >> Yeah. Sort of helping promote exports to an extent. Mike, dig into what they're looking at abroad right now because yes, there's been anxiety about states going it alone, but meanwhile, Europe's on top of AI regulation. How do they counteract that? >> Well, what they're trying to do first is set the tone here in the US when it comes to regulation of AI by pursuing what they consider to be a lighter touch. Caro. More importantly though, they are focusing on deployment of technology and the infrastructure that is needed to power it abroad. And that is why in part you saw the relaxation of the export curbs on H20 chips from Nvidia to China. And this is a step that the administration sees and certainly one that Jensen Wong endorses. uh that's needed to be able to have American companies, especially Nvidia, competing in China so that it doesn't make it so easy for China to be able to export its own technology perfected at home to other markets as well. And that's a really critical step for them. They've articulated here and President Donald Trump will be signing orders later today to implement parts of this plan. Among them, we uh expect to see orders uh instructing US export agencies uh to take steps that would enhance deployment of American technology and export of of not only just the chips themselves, but everything that goes with it uh for uh for it, the software and everything else too. Cara's Mike Shepard with the latest on the report. We appreciate it. For more on the future of AI and President Trump's action plan, Nina Singh is with us. Credo AI CEO. You really look at the way in which we can implement AI from a governance perspective, from a risk tolerance perspective, from a cultural perspective within businesses. Nefrina, when you're looking at this report, when you're thinking about AI being more hands-off, more progrowth, is that the right way? >> Well, good to see you, Caroline. And today, we really commend the White House on launching the AI action plan. I think if you dive a little bit deeper into the AI action plan, there's a key key statement and sentiment which is the bottleneck to harnessing AI's full potential is not necessarily the availability of models or tools and application. It is slow adoption and central to that is lack of trust. And I think as you know that credto has been on this journey to embed that trust in the full AI life cycle and I think the AI action plan is really diving deep into it with how do you standardize evaluations how do you actually bring more transparency to AI so that you can fuel growth but all that growth has to be grounded in trust and that's what the action plan is focused on. Nina, in pillar one of the document which is titled accelerate AI innovation, something very high up is the commitment to encourage opensource and openw weight AI. And I thought that was really interesting the prominence of it within the document. Why is it important that this administration focuses on open-source and open weight AI? >> Yeah, Ed, great question. I think we've seen historically that open source really contributes to more innovation and in artificial intelligence especially with United States leading we are finding a lot of great innovation is coming from our open source ecosystem. So the focus in the AI action plan on open source further strengthens uh the capability for everyone else to build on top of AI innovation at large scale. There is a really heavy emphasis on deregulation, cutting red tape to facilitate the infrastructure side of this. Does that concern you that that's the plan as opposed to I guess a codified or frameworked piece of of rule making around AI? So as you know Credtoai serves some of the largest global 2000 companies in the world and what we are finding is governance and oversight and control of AI systems is not just tied to regulation. It is really about understanding these AI systems and making sure that you have the right uh you know not only standards but also some guardrails which are in place. So what we are going to see I think coming out of this AI action plan as stated is a focus on more contextual evaluations which are paramount for making these systems happen. I would like to see obviously the CI action plan stretch a little bit further into standardizing what does good look like for AI and more to come on that soon. Nina, let's just dig into the global perspective you have and the fact that the context is this is a race and this is a winner takes all US versus China. Is that what you're seeing? >> Absolutely. You know, um what has been really important is this isn't just a policy moment. I really believe this is a moonshot moment for us and to continue leading in artificial intelligence, US will need to lead with trust and that's how we're going to unlock the power of this technology. So this is a arms race. United States is leading and it's going to be critical how we bring our allies and partners together on this journey by grounding them in trust, oversight and right responsibility is going to be key. So when we go back to the open- source question that feels in reaction to what happened with deepseek and China and ultimately is that do you think where this sentiment is coming from and what does that mean for the players here in the United States is all in on meta's viewpoint >> you know Caroline that's a great question you know United States has been leading in artificial intelligence and we will continue to maintain that leadership the open source focus is a really pivotal one because if we want to lead uh especially with hard sciences in uh using artificial intelligence building on each other's work has always been foundational to how open source works. So I don't think this is in reaction but this is a continued leadership from United States perspective in terms of how we're going to lead in artificial intelligence. >> Lena Singh of Credo AI great to have you back on the show. Thank you very much. Now coming up the CEO of compliance startup Vanta joins us to talk about the company's latest funding round that raises its valuation to over $4 billion. I'm going to jump out and head over to winning the AI race summit. Car I'll leave it with you for the rest of the show. This is Bloomberg Tech [Music] Compliance startup Vanter. Well, it's raised $150 million in its series D round, bringing its valuation to over $4 billion. Now, the 8-year-old company helps businesses stay in line with rules and regulations around managing and storing customer data. Vanta's CEO and co-founder, Christina Cacyopo, joins us now. So, the 150 million, what does it help you do? >> It helps us uh continue to help our customers build and demonstrate trust across the internet. >> Okay. Demonstrate trust across the internet. I mean, I immediately makes me think of today's news flow. We're worrying about Microsoft and the hack there. I mean, is this something that you're worrying about more broadly, that security isn't strong enough, particularly when it comes to access to third parties? >> Yeah, I think what what we've seen is security online is an increasing concern. This has been true for years. It's been true for decades. It will continue to be true. And it's not because smart people aren't working on it. Lots of smart people are. It is just an increasingly hard cat-and- mouse game as adversaries get stronger and stronger now with AI as well. And so it is increasingly hard for businesses to build out trustworthy platforms uh secure customer data and we hope Vanta is a a part in helping them do that. >> 12,000 of them already customers that you're helping. What has been the demand like for your own AI applications, AI agents in particular? >> Yeah, we launched our AI agents uh earlier this year. We've seen great reception from customers. Um I think we've we've had the agents uh kind of automate a lot of manual work our customers were doing. uh customers like Dolingo and Ramp and Snowflake are all using the AI agents to automate kind of what were manual security and compliance workflows. >> What's interesting is the way in which you want to expand now is by looking not just at companies but at governments and government agencies. We can show your customers. We can also show the VCs that are continuing to back you. One of whom of course is well the business of Craft Ventures and that we associate with David Saxs. Is he going to be able to open doors for you? >> You know what we've heard from David and and Craft is David is very focused on Washington DC. Uh he left an incredibly strong team at Craft, but there's kind of strong guard rails in in place between those two teams. So we really enjoy working on you know with the folks at craft and you know separately we're pursuing engagements in DC but from what I hear David's really engaged with this work with the government >> and do you think just in the current administration and environment that they are more willing to work up with startups such as yourself that government now is in more accessible area for your company >> I think so we've seen you know this government be very receptive to software providers they want to get more software into the government um save time, save money for taxpayers. Uh, and there's programs like Fed Ramp 20X, this pilot that is going through to help software providers prepare better and faster to serve the government because US government is just a different sort of customer than almost any other in the world. >> It is. And what I'm interested therefore is how you beef yourself up to meet that demand. You said that you want to continue to expanding, continuing to help your own clients that you already have. Where are the bottlenecks for you? Is it about hiring more talent? Is it more about a marketing play and just getting into the the orbit of other businesses? >> Talent is a huge part of it. You know, we are only as good as uh the people who work at Vant at Vant. Um and there's all sorts of, you know, different pieces of that. So AI talent is definitely a part of it. It's a very hot area of the market as I'm sure you're covering. Um the government piece is another one. Again, that is just a specialized skill set and so uh we are hiring across the board. Lots of roles, lots of opportunity. >> And where are you hiring? I know you've been beefing up offices in London. You've been put data centers in Australia. How global does this get? >> Quite global. So, we've got five global offices around the world. Follow the sun coverage for our customers. Um, we also in the US have folks spread out across the country, uh, which we've found to be a a very successful hiring strategy over the last 5 years. >> Christina and Catchopo, we'll let you get back to that hiring strategy and running the business, the CEO and co-founder of Vanta. Congratulations on the raise. Meanwhile, coming up, can robo taxi plans turn around Tesla's deteriorating outlook with investors? We'll get a preview of the EV makaker's earnings next. They come after the bell. But here and now, let's just check in on the meme stock frenzy. GoPro now in it up 27%. Crispy Cream not so tech focused. Neither's Beyond Meat. But we show these companies because this is where the heavily bet against businesses in the institutional market. So big asset managers betting and hedge funds betting against these companies. Now, the love of retail. Let's look at what this has meant for Open Door Technologies, which of course an online real estate company, more than 300% in one month alone. We've come down from our highs. But is this 2021 again? You let me know. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music] [Music] Tesla it is set to report earnings after the bell. The quarter it was a busy one with the re-engagement of CEO Elon Musk, the launch of the company's robo taxi service in Austin. Nume's Craig Trudell is here to tell us well whether investors are going to care about the fundamental business picture which is an ugly one. We're expecting revenues to fall the most severely in more than a decade. >> Yeah. And I I think you know we only have to go back a quarter for you know how Musk is is likely to approach uh you know tonight's uh call where you know he said something to the effect of uh kind of look don't don't look at uh what's going on now cast your gaze on you know this bright shiny object on a hill. Uh you know that that is likely what we're going to to have a sort of repeat of here because this is a company that it's its fundamentals are in in really rough shape. uh you know the the car business uh not only is it is it not growing anymore but it's actually shrinking uh pretty substantially and you know they did indicate earlier this year that uh the energy business uh which has been a source of growth is going to get hit hardest by by tariffs. So you know the the leaning into the robo taxi messaging the ai story is absolutely what we can expect to hear from us tonight. It's also not just tariffs that they're exposed to, but a pulling away of support for EV measures. Does that ultimately matter when you're thinking of a company that is valued at 142 times projected profit? Do they care about what happens from a support perspective for buying? >> I think that's that's got to come up at some point on tonight's call, right? Is is where are regulatory credit revenues uh headed? because there's a lot of concern particularly about uh you know the the state of affairs in in the US where you have you know as part of the big beautiful bill you had the zeroing out of penalties for not meeting uh fuel economy standards. So uh that sort of source of of revenue where other manufacturers who are having trouble meeting those numbers uh they no longer need to go to Tesla for for help. uh you know there's also the Trump administration going after the California ZEV mandate and you know also on on the EPA front tailpipe emission standards. So really sort of across the board, there's less and less reason for Tesla's uh rivals to have to turn to Musk and say, "Hey, we need some help from a regulatory perspective." And that's been a huge source of revenue for this company over the years. >> And how much does that matter for plowing money into the future bets? As Nick Kolas over at Datrex puts it in our story, I think 95% of the valuation of Tesla is basically based on its futures, which are Optimus, which are robo taxi. But is that at risk if we don't have the cash cap? >> Yeah, I mean I we're talking uh when we talk about just how much revenue, you know, over the years going back to uh you know, since this has been a public company, we're talking about over 12 billion. That's a substantial amount of money and a lot of that has has is weighted toward just the last few years where we've seen, you know, steadily Tesla report more and more of this revenue. And so when you if and when you see that reverse and also uh this company is no longer to generate uh cash from its its car business because uh that is is no longer growing and and yet it has all of these you know operations to to tend to uh you know with with plants that are underutilized. this starts to become a real issue and you you you do have to sort of question if uh the these robo taxi statements uh sort of don't pan out. What what next? You know, what what can investors sort of count on uh you know from from Tesla to sort of uh steady things and get back to uh a state where you can feel comfortable putting that sort of multiple on this stock. >> Can they count on Elon being focused on the business? Cro Tudel, we thank you so much for looking ahead to After the Bell and look, let's continue looking there because we've got IBM coming up as well and it's flipping the script at the moment. This is once a relic of another era and big blue is back as our Brody Ford says. Look, let's just talk about how this company has steadily convinced investors that it can grow. >> You put it perfectly, right? I mean, IBM has been talking about reorienting around software and services since the '9s. People didn't really believe them until a year or two ago, and you can see it in the stock price, right? That investors are really trying to starting to buy into this idea of an IBM based around largely infrastructure, software, and consulting. The real star right now is that software picture um led by the acquisitions of Red Hat and Hashi Corp this year. And if you look at largecale software companies, most of them are struggling to really keep growing revenue steadily. IBM is doing it, making a better profit picture, stickier business. Clearly, Wall Street is happy about it. >> They are sending the shares up 30% so far this year, Broady. But the fly in the ointment has been of course global narrative of trade issues and a worry about people really plowing money into consultancy. How much do you think the Gen AI piece of that is going to be eroded because they've already done what six billion dollars in business but largely through consulting? >> It's a really good point. Yeah, consulting is the other half of the IBM empire. And that really has struggled because when the economy looks funky, what do you do? You cancel your consulting projects. And so IBM has booked a lot of business and consulting for Genai products. You know, these big companies saying, "Hey, which tools do we use? We're confused." What is kind of an issue is that this is coming at the expense of traditional consulting and so it it may not be a net increase. But what we've seen so far is that as long as software keeps getting purchased, investors are willing to overlook the choppy consulting. >> Well, for now, analysts, nine of them say buy, nine hold, just four say sell. Bloomberg's Broady Ford across IBM. We're waiting for your reporting after the bell when it breaks. But meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. Don't forget to check out our podcast. You can find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. And don't forget to tune in to Ed Lello as he's over in the White House, of course, listening in on the AI Summit and what that will bring in terms of the look ahead from President Trump. We've also got S&P 500 at session highs, records across the board. NASDAQ just lags a little bit though today. This is Bloomberg Tech. [Music]