# OpenAI Seeks $30B as Trump Backs AI Safety Audits

An episode of [Bloomberg Tech](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1611767434), 30 Sep 2026, 44 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/41764a4f-fc64-4e11-89ba-ae7c0030ab5e/ec9d649c-c434-42a0-b676-b4d5010cf9eb/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=9caafc41-289c-4115-995d-ae7c0030ab75

Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow breaks down OpenAI's plan to raise at least $30 billion from investors in a new round of funding after pushing back its plans for an IPO. Plus, President Trump supports using outside auditors to assess the safety of AI systems after meeting with Silicon Valley leaders; and Apple keeps pushing the envelope under new CEO John Ternus with plans to make its foray into the smart-home market. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.
[0:12] Speaker 2: Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart of Silicon Valley
[0:16] Speaker 2: with Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
[0:21] Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, OpenAI aims to raise
[0:24] Speaker 3: at least $ 30 billion from investors in a new round
[0:27] Speaker 3: of funding after pushing back its plans for an IPO. Plus,
[0:31] Speaker 3: President Trump supports using outside auditors to assess the safety
[0:35] Speaker 3: of AI systems after meeting with Silicon Valley leaders yesterday.
[0:40] Speaker 3: And Apple keeps pushing the envelope under new CEO John
[0:43] Speaker 3: Ternus and plans to make its foray into the smart
[0:46] Speaker 3: home market. Good morning from Los Angeles. We'll get to
[0:49] Speaker 3: why I'm here a little later in the show. Let's
[0:51] Speaker 3: get straight to our top story in today's big number.
[0:54] Speaker 3: $ 1. 4 trillion. That's the valuation OpenAI is seeking as it
[0:59] Speaker 3: looks to raise at least $ 30 billion in a new
[1:01] Speaker 3: funding round. all according to sources. The potential raise would
[1:05] Speaker 3: give the ChatGP team a fresh capital after pushing back
[1:09] Speaker 3: plans to go public. Bloomberg's AI editor, Seth Figerman, joins
[1:14] Speaker 3: us now. And Seth, you worked on this story with
[1:16] Speaker 3: me yesterday. Let's be very clear. This is Bloomberg's reporting alongside,
[1:21] Speaker 3: in parallel with OpenAI having its Dev Day. And it
[1:24] Speaker 3: sounds very much based on our reporting, this is the
[1:26] Speaker 3: investors pushing for this, right?
[1:29] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's certainly the impression that we've gotten here. Now,
[1:31] Speaker 4: that said, I think OpenAI, at this point, there's no
[1:34] Speaker 4: clear timetable for when this company might go public. And
[1:37] Speaker 4: our understanding is it's looking potentially for a bridge round
[1:40] Speaker 4: to kind of give it additional capital while it continues
[1:42] Speaker 4: to push forward on these very cost-intensive infrastructure initiatives and
[1:47] Speaker 4: model development to give it the bandwidth to continue to
[1:51] Speaker 4: build without necessarily going public in the next few months.
[1:54] Speaker 3: We had two critical conversations yesterday, which we will play
[1:57] Speaker 3: out later in the program. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and
[2:01] Speaker 3: OpenAI CFO Sarah Fryer, and both of them addressed both
[2:04] Speaker 3: the IPO timing. And in Sarah Fryer's case, they have
[2:08] Speaker 3: a lot of capital on the balance sheet. And, you know,
[2:10] Speaker 3: she kind of responded to our reporting a little bit.
[2:13] Speaker 3: It was your job to take that, put it in
[2:15] Speaker 3: the story, kind of summarize it.
[2:17] Speaker 4: Yeah, I think she said a couple of important things
[2:19] Speaker 4: to you. The first is that this is a very
[2:21] Speaker 4: well-capitalized business. They raised $ 122 billion in March, which exceeds
[2:25] Speaker 4: pretty much any IPO that we've ever seen. At the
[2:28] Speaker 4: same time, she suggested that there is market demand for
[2:31] Speaker 4: possible funding around here. And certainly, as this company looks
[2:34] Speaker 4: to push ahead with new data centers and its own
[2:37] Speaker 4: chips endeavor and other efforts to compete for top talent,
[2:40] Speaker 4: there might always be an opportunity and a need to
[2:43] Speaker 4: bolster its coffers, so to speak.
[2:46] Speaker 3: The headlines of yesterday morning before the Dev Day kicked
[2:49] Speaker 3: off was, how is OpenAI's business doing? And there were
[2:52] Speaker 3: ARR numbers. What do we learn about the health of OpenAI? Yeah,
[2:56] Speaker 3: I certainly feel that.
[2:57] Speaker 4: The narrative in the last quarter has been that its
[2:59] Speaker 4: business has been re-accelerated. And I think for a lot
[3:02] Speaker 4: of this year, there was a perception, probably more true
[3:04] Speaker 4: than not, that the company was a bit on the
[3:06] Speaker 4: back foot as Anthropic was more ascendant. But as the
[3:08] Speaker 4: company has kind of narrowed its focus to AI coding
[3:12] Speaker 4: and enterprise tools and and started to really regain momentum
[3:15] Speaker 4: with its in-house models, including Astra, it seems to be
[3:18] Speaker 4: experiencing renewed consumer and business adoption, including, again, on the
[3:23] Speaker 4: consumer side, it felt like it took a long time
[3:24] Speaker 4: to hit a billion users after slowing a bit, but
[3:27] Speaker 4: now they're saying they've hit 1.2 just a couple months
[3:30] Speaker 4: after announcing one. So it seems like on both sides,
[3:32] Speaker 4: they're kind of starting to fire again on all cylinders,
[3:35] Speaker 4: and that's a good story if they're going out and
[3:36] Speaker 4: potentially raising more capital.
[3:38] Speaker 3: Bloomberg's AI editor, Seth Figerman, thank you very much. As
[3:41] Speaker 3: billions more pour into AI, tech leaders are making the
[3:44] Speaker 3: case for opportunities that come with that investment while continuing
[3:48] Speaker 3: to warn about the risks. Here's what they had to
[3:50] Speaker 3: say after meeting with President Trump at the White House.
[3:54] Speaker 5: Whoever wins AI wins.
[3:56] Speaker 1: I think that's very important. But I think the technology
[3:59] Speaker 1: has very real risks.
[4:00] Speaker 5: And, you know, the mechanism, how we address those risks
[4:03] Speaker 5: is still under discussion.
[4:05] Speaker 1: But we all need to work.
[4:07] Speaker 6: We all need to work together to make sure that
[4:09] Speaker 6: we can win and we can win safely if we
[4:11] Speaker 6: if we do this right.
[4:13] Speaker 7: To work with the president and everyone here, we can
[4:15] Speaker 7: win safely.
[4:15] Speaker 4: This is the largest industrial revolution in history.
[4:18] Speaker 6: And we're going through the single largest infrastructure build-out in
[4:22] Speaker 6: human history.
[4:23] Speaker 7: And so it's creating a million jobs here in the
[4:26] Speaker 7: United States.
[4:27] Speaker 8: We have chip plants coming up, computer plants coming up,
[4:30] Speaker 8: we have factories coming up.
[4:31] Speaker 5: And so it's creating just an enormous amount of jobs.
[4:33] Speaker 2: The basic idea is that we want to give the
[4:37] Speaker 2: American people and our customers' confidence that the technology works.
[4:41] Speaker 1: In the way that we intend. Jobs are going to change.
[4:43] Speaker 1: Jobs have always changed.
[4:46] Speaker 5: But being a computer used to be a job. There
[4:50] Speaker 5: used to be buildings full of people doing calculations. But
[4:53] Speaker 5: now digital computers do those tasks. I don't think anyone
[4:57] Speaker 5: is pining to go back and do calculations all day
[5:01] Speaker 5: to do bank interest rates, which is what they used
[5:03] Speaker 5: to do.
[5:05] Speaker 3: Let's get more from Washington. Senior tech editor Mike Shepard
[5:07] Speaker 3: joins us now. There is an agreement in the way
[5:12] Speaker 3: in which all of those CEOs, the biggest and most
[5:14] Speaker 3: important tech CEOs in the world, are going to work together.
[5:17] Speaker 3: And there is a position from the government. Explain it.
[5:21] Speaker 6: Well, Ed, this agreement emerged after a nearly two hour
[5:25] Speaker 6: lunch between President Donald Trump and some of Silicon Valley's
[5:28] Speaker 6: biggest names. And we all just saw them there.
[5:31] Speaker 9: On the screen.
[5:32] Speaker 6: Now, this agreement is not something that is binding legally,
[5:36] Speaker 6: but the president said it is morally binding and what
[5:39] Speaker 6: calls on. is for companies to employ independent auditors to
[5:43] Speaker 6: assess the safety of models. It calls for them to
[5:46] Speaker 6: strengthen their internal controls of those AI systems to make
[5:49] Speaker 6: sure that they don't go rogue. And it also calls
[5:52] Speaker 6: on the companies to collaborate more and to talk more
[5:55] Speaker 6: about safety and to meet more regularly. So we could
[5:58] Speaker 6: be seeing a repeat of this, perhaps not with the
[6:01] Speaker 6: president of the White House the way we did yesterday,
[6:03] Speaker 6: but it does suggest that there will be further conversations
[6:07] Speaker 6: on this. And the fact that the president was willing
[6:09] Speaker 6: To entertain this talk at the White House is really
[6:14] Speaker 6: a sea change for him. He's rejected a lot of
[6:16] Speaker 6: these doomsday fears about AI as a hoax. And so
[6:20] Speaker 6: to see him welcoming all these executives there for this
[6:23] Speaker 6: discussion itself marked a big move by him. Perhaps a
[6:28] Speaker 6: change in direction for the administration, too.
[6:31] Speaker 3: Now, in that photograph that we're showing on the screen
[6:33] Speaker 3: right now, there is an absentee, which is Sam Altman,
[6:37] Speaker 3: the CEO of OpenAI. He was with me in San
[6:39] Speaker 3: Francisco at Dev Day. Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI there. Chef,
[6:45] Speaker 3: as far as I can tell, actually, a lot of
[6:46] Speaker 3: the focus was on what Dario Amodei had to say.
[6:49] Speaker 3: And the press pool calling for him to come forward,
[6:52] Speaker 3: talk a bit about how he felt the meeting had gone.
[6:56] Speaker 6: Well, Dario was really the focus of this meeting. And
[6:59] Speaker 6: in a way, he is the one who helped to
[7:01] Speaker 6: bring it about with that essay on September 12th, warning
[7:04] Speaker 6: of the existential risks, promising to slow development of the
[7:08] Speaker 6: company's most advanced models. calling on the industry to do
[7:11] Speaker 6: the same and actually winning support from Sam Altman and
[7:14] Speaker 6: Elon Musk to perhaps slow the roll a little bit
[7:18] Speaker 6: on the most advanced AI models to understand.
[7:20] Speaker 1: Their risks better.
[7:21] Speaker 6: But all of that has put him in conflict with
[7:24] Speaker 6: President Donald Trump, who wants to see no slowdown whatsoever.
[7:27] Speaker 6: He sees AI as critical to his economic agenda and
[7:31] Speaker 6: to keeping a strategic edge over China. So hearing Dario
[7:35] Speaker 6: talk about the risks in front of the president in
[7:37] Speaker 6: the same way But then to hear the president also say, Dario,
[7:41] Speaker 6: you're doing a fantastic job, it was really quite a
[7:44] Speaker 6: moment because the two had been at such odds for
[7:48] Speaker 6: really months. But they managed to patch things up perhaps
[7:52] Speaker 6: with this dinner on Sunday night. We didn't get a
[7:54] Speaker 6: full readout of it, Ed, but it really did seem
[7:56] Speaker 6: like Dario is in the fold and acknowledged and tolerated
[8:00] Speaker 6: as maybe that voice of dissent that they need to
[8:04] Speaker 6: help propel a document forward like the one that was
[8:06] Speaker 6: signed yesterday.
[8:08] Speaker 3: The president also mandated we now call it super intelligence,
[8:11] Speaker 3: not artificial intelligence. Bloomberg's Mike Shepard, thank you very much indeed.
[8:15] Speaker 3: Coming up in the program, we'll be joined by the
[8:16] Speaker 3: CoreWeave CEO, Mike Entrader, on the company's latest lineup of
[8:20] Speaker 3: tools for developers. Don't call us a neocloud. This is
[8:24] Speaker 3: Bloomberg Tech.
[8:28] Speaker 10: Bloomberg.
[8:34] Speaker 3: CoreWeave's out with a new set of development tools called Forge.
[8:38] Speaker 3: This is the company aims to move beyond its Neo
[8:41] Speaker 3: Cloud label and looks to diversify its lineup. The product's
[8:44] Speaker 3: designed to help clients train and improve their AI models.
[8:48] Speaker 3: They were announced at CoreWeave fully connected earlier today. The
[8:51] Speaker 3: company's first large-scale user conference in San Francisco. Delighted to
[8:54] Speaker 3: say Mike Intrater, CEO of CoreWeave, joins us from there.
[8:57] Speaker 3: This is interesting, right? I know that there's a discussion
[9:01] Speaker 3: you and I need to have about don't call you
[9:03] Speaker 3: a Neo Cloud. But what is the business case here
[9:06] Speaker 3: for CoreWeave offering this kind of software solution?
[9:11] Speaker 9: So, look, first of all, thank you for having me.
[9:13] Speaker 9: Always a pleasure to be on the show.
[9:15] Speaker 10: But I think what you're seeing from us is the
[9:20] Speaker 10: systematic pull by the clients that use our infrastructure up
[9:26] Speaker 10: the stack. And they are looking for a cloud solution
[9:30] Speaker 10: to the distinct and unique problems that are associated with
[9:35] Speaker 10: artificial intelligence. And CoreWeave is the company that is leading
[9:40] Speaker 10: the delivery of the environment that is required to be
[9:45] Speaker 10: able to build the next generation of artificial intelligence tools,
[9:51] Speaker 10: everything from you know, the frontier labs through, you know,
[9:56] Speaker 10: 100-year-old companies like Caterpillar, right, where, you know, people need
[10:01] Speaker 10: access to the tooling that allows them to confidently do
[10:04] Speaker 10: what they need to do for their companies. And that's
[10:06] Speaker 10: really what Forge is there to do.
[10:09] Speaker 3: Michael, Corby is the original neocloud. Why should we not
[10:15] Speaker 3: call you a neocloud?
[10:18] Speaker 10: So we were the original neocloud, and now we are
[10:21] Speaker 10: the original AI cloud, right? I mean, it really has
[10:24] Speaker 10: to do with the fact that a neocloud is something
[10:27] Speaker 10: that exists at a point in time, but what we
[10:29] Speaker 10: have built is the cloud solution for artificial intelligence. And
[10:34] Speaker 10: when you build from the ground up, when you build
[10:36] Speaker 10: specifically to serve a particular type of computer, a particular
[10:41] Speaker 10: use case, you begin to build the tooling that allows
[10:44] Speaker 10: for the optimal delivery of the service.
[10:47] Speaker 9: And that's really what we've done.
[10:48] Speaker 10: And we don't think that's a neocloud, and we don't
[10:52] Speaker 10: think it's bounded by time. We think it's going to
[10:54] Speaker 10: be a long-term, very successful business that is going to
[10:57] Speaker 10: be required by the world as it increasingly leans on
[11:02] Speaker 10: artificial intelligence.
[11:03] Speaker 3: Just very quickly, on Forge, this will be meaningful to
[11:06] Speaker 3: you financially? This will be accretive to margins?
[11:11] Speaker 10: Yeah, it's going to be wonderful for the company. It's
[11:13] Speaker 10: going to be accretive to margins. It's going to really
[11:17] Speaker 10: allow an entire class of companies that have struggled to
[11:22] Speaker 10: integrate artificial intelligence, either because they don't have the skill
[11:25] Speaker 10: sets to manage the infrastructure internal to their company or otherwise.
[11:30] Speaker 10: It's a developer tool set that allows folks to move
[11:33] Speaker 10: into artificial intelligence quickly, efficiently, effectively. And at the right
[11:39] Speaker 10: pace and cadence, for their companies. And that's really important.
[11:43] Speaker 10: We meet them where we are. We provide them the tools.
[11:47] Speaker 3: Mike, help me understand in real terms what pacing the
[11:52] Speaker 3: frontier of AI means for an AI cloud. You know,
[11:56] Speaker 3: when this all started, the assumption was if you pace
[11:59] Speaker 3: the frontier, there's a drop off in activity. So that
[12:02] Speaker 3: demand story for compute changes. What have you actually seen?
[12:07] Speaker 10: So I think that narrative is misunderstood, deeply misunderstood, actually, right?
[12:14] Speaker 10: Let's kind of bound it, right? Like America is the
[12:17] Speaker 10: leader in artificial intelligence, and it is imperative that we
[12:21] Speaker 10: remain at the forefront of artificial intelligence. And so when
[12:26] Speaker 10: you're talking about pacing, it's a rather narrow definition of
[12:29] Speaker 10: what it is, right? You're You need to be able
[12:31] Speaker 10: to maintain your position at the forefront, but you also
[12:36] Speaker 10: need to build guardrails to ensure that you can deliver
[12:40] Speaker 10: the best quality safely.
[12:42] Speaker 9: And that's really what pacing is about.
[12:44] Speaker 10: The net effect of that is not impactful in the
[12:49] Speaker 10: demand that we are seeing as companies continue to procure
[12:54] Speaker 10: the infrastructure, the software, the cloud services that they require
[12:58] Speaker 10: to build their businesses over time.
[13:02] Speaker 3: What is the political threat or headwind to you right now?
[13:04] Speaker 3: You know, we're so close to the midterms. There are
[13:07] Speaker 3: debated data center moratoria everywhere. Is there something tangible you
[13:12] Speaker 3: can tell me about how that does impact you?
[13:16] Speaker 10: Yeah, look, we have really been the leaders on operationalizing
[13:22] Speaker 10: the infrastructure for artificial intelligence. At my last earnings call,
[13:25] Speaker 10: I talked to you about how we brought on 500
[13:27] Speaker 10: megawatts worth of active power into our infrastructure.
[13:31] Speaker 9: That is an enormous, enormous amount of scale. And part
[13:35] Speaker 9: of that comes.
[13:36] Speaker 10: From our approach to how you go about building data centers,
[13:39] Speaker 10: where you enter the communities early, you work with the communities,
[13:42] Speaker 10: you make sure that there are community benefits, you make
[13:45] Speaker 10: sure that their voices are heard. It also is a
[13:48] Speaker 10: recognition that not every community is going to have a
[13:50] Speaker 10: data center and that we don't have to force the issue. Fundamentally,
[13:56] Speaker 10: moratoriums do not alter the demand for compute. They simply
[14:00] Speaker 10: move where the compute is going to be built. And,
[14:03] Speaker 10: you know, we're not trying to force this on anybody.
[14:06] Speaker 10: We're trying to work with the communities with where we
[14:09] Speaker 10: build our infrastructure.
[14:10] Speaker 9: And we think we do a really good job of that.
[14:12] Speaker 10: We think we get a lot of credit from the
[14:14] Speaker 10: communities for the work that we do there.
[14:18] Speaker 3: In your risk factors in different regulatory filings, you talk
[14:20] Speaker 3: about this idea that to meet that demand, you might
[14:23] Speaker 3: also need to look at non-NVIDIA solutions. And over weeks,
[14:26] Speaker 3: I sat down with Lisa Su on Monday. I sat
[14:29] Speaker 3: down with some of those specialized inference platforms that are
[14:31] Speaker 3: out there. Where are you in your journey on non-NVIDIA
[14:35] Speaker 3: or non-NVIDIA GPU-based architectures? Have you done anything there yet?
[14:40] Speaker 10: Yeah, so look, we monitor the full spectrum of accelerators
[14:46] Speaker 10: that are available that can drive artificial intelligence companies forward, right?
[14:53] Speaker 10: Our job is to deliver the best solution in the
[14:56] Speaker 10: world on the best technology in the world through the
[14:58] Speaker 10: best software in the world. And right now, we don't
[15:01] Speaker 10: have enough infrastructure to stand up enough of the NVIDIA
[15:05] Speaker 10: infrastructure to meet the needs.
[15:07] Speaker 9: Of our clients.
[15:08] Speaker 10: We are overwhelmed. We are largely sold out. We are
[15:11] Speaker 10: sold out over time for several years. It's really a
[15:16] Speaker 10: function of being the best at the job that we do,
[15:21] Speaker 10: which is deliver the best solution in market, which is
[15:24] Speaker 10: the NVIDIA solution from the accelerator perspective to our clients.
[15:28] Speaker 9: And we do a great job of it.
[15:29] Speaker 10: We have 5,000 people At this conference, the conference was
[15:33] Speaker 10: sold out. It's people that want to get onto our
[15:35] Speaker 10: cloud and build with us on our infrastructure, which is
[15:40] Speaker 10: really grounded in the NVIDIA GPU Accelerator.
[15:44] Speaker 1: Cool.
[15:44] Speaker 3: We have CEO Mike Entreda. It's great to catch up
[15:46] Speaker 3: with you. Thank you for making some time for us
[15:48] Speaker 3: from your own conference. Coming up in the show, we're
[15:50] Speaker 3: going to speak with Saronix CEO, Dino Mavroukis. The company
[15:53] Speaker 3: breaks ground on its Texas shipyard. This is Defense Tech.
[15:57] Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg Tech. The way things used to work
[16:08] Speaker 3: between the U.S. government and defense contractors was pretty strict.
[16:11] Speaker 1: The U.S.
[16:11] Speaker 3: Military would define specific requirements for a new system. Several
[16:15] Speaker 3: defense contractors bid for it, and one of them would
[16:18] Speaker 3: be selected. Spend years developing capability. Now, Lockheed Martin CEO
[16:23] Speaker 3: Jim Ticlare says things have changed with the new administration.
[16:26] Speaker 3: Listen to this.
[16:28] Speaker 11: What is different now is that the current leadership in
[16:33] Speaker 11: the Pentagon has decided to take the straitjacket off the companies,
[16:37] Speaker 11: which allows us to take the straitjackets off of our
[16:39] Speaker 11: engineers and scientists to allow us to be flexible, to
[16:42] Speaker 11: propose solutions, to do prototypes, to go out.
[16:46] Speaker 3: We go out in the field, and the field could
[16:47] Speaker 3: be the Pacific Ocean, of course, for us.
[16:50] Speaker 11: And we test prototypes on actual ships with sailors that
[16:54] Speaker 11: are stationed on the ships running the prototype to see
[16:56] Speaker 11: if it works.
[16:59] Speaker 3: That was Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Ticlette. Tune in on Friday.
[17:02] Speaker 3: More of that conversation during Bloomberg's Defense Tech Special, 11 a.m. Eastern,
[17:07] Speaker 3: 8 a.m. Pacific, live from Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin's Advanced
[17:11] Speaker 3: Aircraft Development Facility in Southern California. One of several reasons.
[17:16] Speaker 3: I'm here in L.A.
[17:16] Speaker 1: Today.
[17:18] Speaker 3: Saronic is breaking ground today on what it says will
[17:20] Speaker 3: be the largest and most advanced shipyard in America. Port
[17:24] Speaker 3: Alpha in Brownsville, Texas, is at the center of the
[17:27] Speaker 3: defense tech company's push to rapidly scale production of autonomous ships.
[17:32] Speaker 3: Joining us now is Saronic co-founder and CEO Dino Mavrukas.
[17:35] Speaker 3: And Dino, it's great to have you back. Just summarize
[17:38] Speaker 3: why this is such a critical moment.
[17:41] Speaker 2: This is the revitalization of a critical industry here in
[17:45] Speaker 2: the United States. I mean, you've seen the administration call
[17:49] Speaker 2: for the revitalization of shipbuilding.
[17:52] Speaker 1: Here in this country. The Vice President is actually.
[17:56] Speaker 2: Joining us today at this historic groundbreaking. This is the
[18:00] Speaker 2: first new shipyard built in the United States since World
[18:04] Speaker 2: War II, and we are investing billions of dollars. We
[18:07] Speaker 2: are going to create thousands of jobs, and we are
[18:10] Speaker 2: going to start building ships again right here in this country.
[18:14] Speaker 2: This is American ships, American jobs, and the revitalization of
[18:18] Speaker 2: an American industry.
[18:20] Speaker 12: Dino, speed.
[18:22] Speaker 3: In your field, you, Anderil, what Lockheed Martin wants to do, speed.
[18:26] Speaker 3: So how quickly does that facility actually operationalize and get
[18:30] Speaker 3: that autonomous craft out there?
[18:34] Speaker 1: Speed is everything.
[18:35] Speaker 2: Let me put it in perspective. We started Ceronic four
[18:39] Speaker 2: years ago. In four years, we've raised two and a
[18:42] Speaker 2: half billion dollars and we're standing in Brownsville, Texas, getting
[18:46] Speaker 2: ready to break ground on the largest shipyard in the country.
[18:50] Speaker 2: Speed is everything because our adversaries aren't waiting. The shipbuilding
[18:55] Speaker 2: industry in the United States has declined dramatically. China has
[18:59] Speaker 2: invested heavily. We need this now. So we're going to
[19:03] Speaker 2: be operational here in Brownsville at Port Alpha by the
[19:07] Speaker 2: end of 2027 with our first ships off the line
[19:10] Speaker 2: by the end of 2028. And we already have orders
[19:13] Speaker 2: for those ships delivering LCU vessels to the Navy and
[19:17] Speaker 2: Marine Corps.
[19:19] Speaker 3: Do you know the orders are there? What are your
[19:21] Speaker 3: capital needs to make that happen? Ramp production, get it out.
[19:26] Speaker 1: Well, I mentioned we're going to invest.
[19:28] Speaker 2: We've already committed over $ 3 billion to this project.
[19:31] Speaker 1: We've raised $ 2.
[19:32] Speaker 2: 5 billion in private capital to date.
[19:36] Speaker 1: We are putting capital to work.
[19:37] Speaker 2: We will raise more capital as needed, and we will
[19:40] Speaker 2: keep moving quickly ahead of demand, ahead of need, to
[19:43] Speaker 2: make sure that the capacity is online to deliver, not
[19:47] Speaker 2: just for defense, but ultimately for the corporations.
[19:50] Speaker 1: Market as well.
[19:52] Speaker 3: Your platforms have been deployed very recently in the context
[19:57] Speaker 3: of the war in and with Iran. Is there any
[20:00] Speaker 3: update to that, how the US is using your platforms?
[20:06] Speaker 2: I mean, I obviously can't get into the specifics of how.
[20:09] Speaker 1: They're being used, but what you're seeing.
[20:11] Speaker 2: Is autonomy being proven out real time on the battlefield.
[20:16] Speaker 2: You mentioned the platforms that are overseas right now.
[20:18] Speaker 1: That's Corsair.
[20:19] Speaker 2: That's a 24-foot fully autonomous speedboat. We can build thousands
[20:24] Speaker 2: of those vessels every single year, and we've already delivered
[20:27] Speaker 2: hundreds to the Navy. And what you're seeing by using
[20:30] Speaker 2: these— I mean— One of our Corsairs was used to rescue
[20:34] Speaker 2: two downed Apache helicopter pilots in the Strait of Hormuz.
[20:37] Speaker 2: It's the trust and the confidence from the military to
[20:41] Speaker 2: use these autonomous systems in the highest stakes environments and
[20:45] Speaker 2: keep actual additional people out of harm's way.
[20:50] Speaker 3: Speed is one key factor. What is the economic proposition
[20:56] Speaker 3: per unit of your platforms, right? If you think about
[20:58] Speaker 3: the Air Force's CCAO program, they want $ 20 million per
[21:02] Speaker 3: unit on an aircraft fighter. Is there something comparable where
[21:06] Speaker 3: you can say, look at the economics that we offer
[21:09] Speaker 3: versus other alternative solutions, legacy solutions?
[21:15] Speaker 2: Well, look, we were also just awarded an MUSV production
[21:20] Speaker 2: contract for the Navy for Marauder, which is a 180-foot
[21:24] Speaker 2: fully autonomous ship.
[21:26] Speaker 1: We're going into production.
[21:28] Speaker 2: We not only designed, built, launched, and tested that ship,
[21:32] Speaker 2: but we invested $ 300 million into our shipyard in Franklin, Louisiana.
[21:37] Speaker 2: And now we're able to produce those, the Navy announced,
[21:39] Speaker 2: on average of $ 40 million per ship.
[21:43] Speaker 1: Think about that compared.
[21:45] Speaker 2: To a naval destroyer, which is $ 3 billion, but also
[21:50] Speaker 2: takes six to eight years to make. And then you
[21:53] Speaker 2: want to think about not just the overall price, but
[21:56] Speaker 2: the unit economics. If your mission is to carry VLS
[22:00] Speaker 2: tubes or to carry really large missiles, how many missiles
[22:03] Speaker 2: can each ship carry? Well, of traditional munitions, destroyers can
[22:07] Speaker 2: carry about 96. Marauder can carry about 16, which means
[22:12] Speaker 2: per missile tube you're getting a 10x decrease in the
[22:16] Speaker 2: cost to field and a 100x increase in the speed
[22:20] Speaker 2: to field.
[22:22] Speaker 3: Dino Mavrukas of Saronic, back on Bloomberg Tech, breaking ground
[22:26] Speaker 3: in Texas. Thank you very much. Coming up, we're going
[22:29] Speaker 3: to have that conversation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company's
[22:32] Speaker 3: new always-on agent called DOTS. This was a big one.
[22:37] Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg Tech.
[22:39] Speaker 8: Bloomberg Tech.
[22:52] Speaker 3: Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. OpenAI is getting into the
[22:55] Speaker 3: bots game with DOTS. At the company's Dev Day yesterday,
[22:58] Speaker 3: it unveiled DOTS, a tool designed to work alongside users
[23:02] Speaker 3: like a personal assistant that is tailored to a user's
[23:05] Speaker 3: needs and takes over tasks as guided. I spoke with
[23:08] Speaker 3: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after his keynote and asked where
[23:12] Speaker 3: in the market this new product fits.
[23:16] Speaker 1: It started as a premium product.
[23:17] Speaker 7: We know it's, you know, we're putting our best model, Astra,
[23:20] Speaker 7: in this.
[23:20] Speaker 3: Premium being prosumer, sorry to interrupt, or it's an enterprise product?
[23:26] Speaker 7: More like for getting work done, which I think is
[23:28] Speaker 7: largely enterprise, but there's a lot of people that are
[23:29] Speaker 7: going to build their own startups that are sort of
[23:31] Speaker 7: in the traditional prosumer category. But this is like a
[23:34] Speaker 7: very capable model, and it's a ton of usage. So
[23:38] Speaker 7: we're starting for something at the top end of the market,
[23:40] Speaker 7: and you will see us over time make a mass
[23:42] Speaker 7: market consumer version.
[23:43] Speaker 3: How much do you and the team, various people at OpenAI,
[23:48] Speaker 3: benchmark against the agents that are already out there? So
[23:51] Speaker 3: how much do you use a Grok bot, a Muse,
[23:54] Speaker 3: an Instinct from the product perspective? Because they've been out
[23:58] Speaker 3: there a while and people are actually using them.
[23:59] Speaker 1: I've tried them. I don't use them regularly. I have not.
[24:04] Speaker 7: found a place for them in my life, but I
[24:07] Speaker 7: try to try every major new AI product. This is
[24:10] Speaker 7: a totally different category. The amount of work, the level
[24:13] Speaker 7: of capability, the level of intelligence this can take on,
[24:16] Speaker 7: I think this is just a completely new thing.
[24:19] Speaker 1: Why is it different?
[24:20] Speaker 3: Literally, are we talking about its capabilities or is this
[24:24] Speaker 3: an economic discussion of how you've priced it or where
[24:26] Speaker 3: you've made it available in existing tiers?
[24:28] Speaker 7: Well, I mean, it is priced higher than other things
[24:31] Speaker 7: in the market, but the reason for that is because
[24:34] Speaker 7: of the capability and the amount of compute we're putting
[24:38] Speaker 7: into this, which is why I think it's useful in
[24:40] Speaker 7: a new kind of way at a new level.
[24:44] Speaker 3: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman there. I also spoke with OpenAI
[24:47] Speaker 3: Chief Financial Officer Sarah Fryer, who says the company is
[24:50] Speaker 3: turning consumer adoption into enterprise growth, and it's continuing to
[24:55] Speaker 3: invest heavily in compute to support that.
[25:00] Speaker 13: We're in a very fast-growing business, and my job is
[25:03] Speaker 13: always to make sure that, number one, we have made
[25:06] Speaker 13: the investment in compute so that we never need to
[25:08] Speaker 13: slow the business down, and those are investments that need
[25:11] Speaker 13: to get made well ahead of time. In addition, that
[25:14] Speaker 13: every time we make investments, that we're looking at it
[25:16] Speaker 13: with the right ROI lens. If anything, I would say
[25:19] Speaker 13: a year ago, we were taking down a lot of computes.
[25:22] Speaker 13: Folks like you were giving us a little bit of
[25:24] Speaker 13: a hard time for it. And I think right now,
[25:27] Speaker 13: we still sit in the same place where we could
[25:29] Speaker 13: use more compute if we had it today. We could
[25:32] Speaker 13: use more compute in 2027. So I always want to
[25:34] Speaker 13: make sure we're well capitalized so that we have maximum
[25:38] Speaker 13: optionality as a company. We don't know what DOTS is
[25:40] Speaker 13: going to do. We're super optimistic. The worst thing would
[25:43] Speaker 13: be not to have the compute to go serve it
[25:45] Speaker 13: to customers.
[25:45] Speaker 3: So you could do a private market round if you
[25:47] Speaker 3: need to?
[25:48] Speaker 9: Absolutely.
[25:48] Speaker 13: There's demand in the marketplace if that becomes the right
[25:50] Speaker 13: thing to do.
[25:52] Speaker 3: That was OpenAI CFO Sarah Fry ending there on the
[25:55] Speaker 3: idea that the company could do private funding. Something, of course,
[25:59] Speaker 3: earlier in the show we discussed, we broke the story
[26:02] Speaker 3: yesterday morning that there are early talks between OpenAI, its investors,
[26:06] Speaker 3: $ 30 billion raise maybe, $ 1. 4 trillion valuation, but they have
[26:11] Speaker 3: plenty of capital on the balance sheet as Sarah Fry disclosed.
[26:15] Speaker 3: Let's go to the public markets and what's happening in AI.
[26:17] Speaker 3: Micron is scheduled to report its fourth quarter results after
[26:21] Speaker 3: the market closed today. And while analysts expect the memory
[26:24] Speaker 3: chip maker to show strong growth driven by AI tailwinds,
[26:28] Speaker 3: they're also now questioning how sustainable current growth trends will
[26:32] Speaker 3: prove to be. Delighted to say that Beth Kindig, lead
[26:35] Speaker 3: tech analyst at the IO Fund, back with us on
[26:37] Speaker 3: Bloomberg Tech. Like, the memory market was so dynamic for
[26:41] Speaker 3: a really long period of time. Every day we talk
[26:43] Speaker 3: about it. What's changed is maybe we hit kind of
[26:45] Speaker 3: peak pricing earlier in the summer. And we're questioning, is
[26:50] Speaker 3: there a cycle? And where in that cycle are.
[26:54] Speaker 14: We? When it comes to Micron, it might be second
[26:56] Speaker 14: to NVIDIA in terms of setting the tone for the
[26:59] Speaker 14: AI trade this evening.
[27:01] Speaker 9: And like you said, are we at peak pricing?
[27:04] Speaker 4: Well.
[27:10] Speaker 3: I'm going to jump in here because I think Beth, unfortunately,
[27:13] Speaker 3: her Zoom shot has frozen. But let's go through some
[27:16] Speaker 3: of the basics on what we expect from Micron's results.
[27:19] Speaker 3: Fourth quarter results after the closing bell this Wednesday. Strong
[27:23] Speaker 3: growth is expected, particularly on the top line. But this
[27:25] Speaker 3: is a company that has adjusted margins. Adjusted margins, 87%.
[27:29] Speaker 9: Now, in part.
[27:33] Speaker 3: That is an issue about memory pricing, right? Pricing was
[27:37] Speaker 3: up as supply was very tight. I believe Beth Kindig
[27:40] Speaker 3: is actually back with us. We got the shot back. Beth,
[27:43] Speaker 3: just pick up where you left off.
[27:46] Speaker 14: Strategic customer agreements could mistakenly cause the market to think
[27:51] Speaker 14: that Micron will not participate as HVM and DRAM continue
[27:57] Speaker 14: to surge in pricing.
[28:03] Speaker 11: Okay.
[28:03] Speaker 3: Unfortunately, for a second time, we lost Beth Kindig of
[28:06] Speaker 3: the AIO Fund's shot, which is a shame. She has
[28:08] Speaker 3: a sharp mind in the world of what's happening in
[28:11] Speaker 3: memory specifically, but in the AI infrastructure space overall. We'll
[28:15] Speaker 3: try and have a conversation very soon. Coming up, go
[28:17] Speaker 3: to private markets again. Flow Engineering just raised $ 50 million
[28:21] Speaker 3: to help companies build hardware faster by using AI. Founder
[28:26] Speaker 3: and CEO, Pari Singh, and investor and board member, Rolof Bota,
[28:30] Speaker 3: join us next. This is Bloomberg Tech. AI is moving
[28:45] Speaker 3: beyond software and deeper into the physical world. Flow Engineering
[28:49] Speaker 3: just raised $ 50 million at a $ 750 million valuation to
[28:53] Speaker 3: help companies use AI agents to design and then build hardware.
[28:59] Speaker 3: Joining us now is Flow Engineering founder and CEO, Perry Singh,
[29:02] Speaker 3: and Rolof Bosa, Flow investor, board member now, and formerly,
[29:06] Speaker 3: of course, of Sequoia Capital. We're going to get to
[29:08] Speaker 3: the backstory as it comes to Flow. I think, Perry,
[29:11] Speaker 3: this is a great opportunity. Just introduce us to Flow,
[29:14] Speaker 3: what it is you do when you work with a
[29:17] Speaker 3: Rivian or an Anduril.
[29:19] Speaker 1: Sure.
[29:19] Speaker 12: So a little bit of context on what we're building.
[29:23] Speaker 12: AI has completely transformed software development in the last year.
[29:26] Speaker 12: We've gone from design cycles of two weeks to design
[29:30] Speaker 12: cycles of two hours. And today, nearly 100% of code
[29:32] Speaker 12: in Silicon Valley is written by AI. That same shift
[29:35] Speaker 12: is about to come to hardware development. And Flow is
[29:38] Speaker 12: sitting at the heart of that. Flow is doing for
[29:40] Speaker 12: hardware engineering what AI has already done.
[29:42] Speaker 9: For software engineering.
[29:45] Speaker 3: Roloff, it's great to see you. Welcome to the show.
[29:49] Speaker 3: You led the Series A with Sequoia when that happened.
[29:52] Speaker 3: You're now coming in as a private investor with your
[29:56] Speaker 3: own capital and joining the board Explain the decision to
[30:00] Speaker 3: do that, the opportunity that you see, why you still
[30:02] Speaker 3: want to be involved here with Flow.
[30:04] Speaker 8: Well, good morning. It's wonderful to be here. The three
[30:09] Speaker 8: key reasons I wanted to continue to work with the
[30:11] Speaker 8: company is team, traction, and timing. So from a timing
[30:15] Speaker 8: point of view, Pari explained how the company is really
[30:17] Speaker 8: taking advantage of the current technology capabilities in AI to
[30:21] Speaker 8: become a companion to the development of hardware. And so
[30:24] Speaker 8: the market opportunity for the company is fantastic. Next, I
[30:27] Speaker 8: look at traction. And the company has wonderful momentum with
[30:30] Speaker 8: its customers. They have customers across automotive, energy, space, defense,
[30:37] Speaker 8: And 96% of the customers that the company has found them.
[30:40] Speaker 8: It's wonderful to be in a business where you don't
[30:42] Speaker 8: have to go and find your customers.
[30:44] Speaker 3: And then the third one is team.
[30:45] Speaker 8: We have a spectacular team that's led by Pari, and
[30:48] Speaker 8: we're building for this wonderful AI hardware future.
[30:53] Speaker 1: Pari.
[30:54] Speaker 3: Let's go to the case study of Andoril, I guess.
[30:58] Speaker 3: You know, this week we have a really big focus
[31:00] Speaker 3: on defense technology on the show, which we talked about
[31:02] Speaker 3: a little earlier. It's so interesting to hear you say
[31:05] Speaker 3: the design cycle of two hours. You know, when I
[31:07] Speaker 3: think about a program like Vectis at Lockheed Martin through
[31:11] Speaker 3: the Skunk Works, you know, they take great pride that
[31:13] Speaker 3: that went from design on the back of a napkin
[31:16] Speaker 3: to wind tunnel testing in two months. That doesn't seem
[31:19] Speaker 3: that fast based on what it sounds like Flow is
[31:22] Speaker 3: helping companies do.
[31:25] Speaker 12: Yeah, so we're lucky to be working with companies like Anduril,
[31:28] Speaker 12: but it's not just Anduril, it's Rivian, Joby, Stokespace. And
[31:32] Speaker 12: these companies are taking a fundamentally new way of working.
[31:37] Speaker 12: AI is transforming how these companies operate. And what we're
[31:40] Speaker 12: seeing happen is we're seeing companies go from this traditional
[31:44] Speaker 12: waterfall model where a design cycle might be two or
[31:46] Speaker 12: three years to this continuous verification cycle where engineers are
[31:51] Speaker 12: able to make changes in CAD, simulation, Git, and our
[31:55] Speaker 12: AI agents are able to listen to those, understand them,
[31:58] Speaker 12: integrate them, and understand the impact of that change very,
[32:01] Speaker 12: very quickly.
[32:03] Speaker 3: Perry, let's talk a little bit more about the team
[32:05] Speaker 3: that Roloff mentioned. Tell me a little bit about you
[32:08] Speaker 3: and your background, but some of the people that you've
[32:10] Speaker 3: been able to bring in, where have they come from principally?
[32:13] Speaker 3: You know, your core competence is software, right? So what
[32:16] Speaker 3: kind of people have you been able to bring in?
[32:19] Speaker 12: So I'm a mechanical engineer by training, and I became
[32:22] Speaker 12: an engineer because I wanted to build machines that mattered
[32:24] Speaker 12: for the world. I wanted to design rockets and airplanes
[32:27] Speaker 12: and cars and nuclear reactors. But when I went into
[32:29] Speaker 12: the industry as an engineer, I was a little heartbroken
[32:32] Speaker 12: because what I saw is that 10% of the time
[32:35] Speaker 12: would go into the actual innovation and the architecture, and 90%
[32:39] Speaker 12: of the time would go into digital manual labor, rebuilding
[32:42] Speaker 12: that CAD model for the 11th time, rebuilding an Excel model,
[32:45] Speaker 12: going to a huge regulatory PDF of 200 pages and
[32:48] Speaker 12: finding that one bit of data. It was really obvious
[32:50] Speaker 12: to me that if we were able to automate and
[32:53] Speaker 12: accelerate these design cycles, engineers could focus on the core
[32:56] Speaker 12: things that really mattered, and we could massively accelerate the
[33:00] Speaker 12: number of iterations in a year. Our team is really
[33:03] Speaker 12: built around the culture founded at Skunk Works. So we
[33:07] Speaker 12: believe in very, very small, lean, sharp teams with high ownership,
[33:12] Speaker 12: and we iterate on a nearly daily basis. AI is
[33:16] Speaker 12: at the core of what we do. And the way
[33:18] Speaker 12: we think about AI is AI's live as employees.
[33:22] Speaker 9: In our altar.
[33:23] Speaker 12: So we today can go from a 50 person, 50
[33:27] Speaker 12: headcount team with 25 humans to 100 or 200 headcount
[33:31] Speaker 12: team with 50 humans and AI is taking up real
[33:34] Speaker 12: roles in our altar.
[33:37] Speaker 3: So Roloff, in the org chart of Flow, you are
[33:40] Speaker 3: very real, very human there now on the board. How
[33:45] Speaker 3: is that going to be different for you as a
[33:46] Speaker 3: private investor? I understand you did this with your own capital, right?
[33:51] Speaker 3: The kind of impact you want to have operationally, what
[33:54] Speaker 3: you think you can help Perry and the team with,
[33:57] Speaker 3: and how that's different from when you were the steward
[34:00] Speaker 3: at Sequoia, when you have that kind of bigger venture
[34:03] Speaker 3: firm behind you.
[34:06] Speaker 8: Well, I go back to the things I love when
[34:08] Speaker 8: I joined the venture business in the first place, which
[34:10] Speaker 8: is meeting founders and hearing them articulate a vision for
[34:12] Speaker 8: the future and then working with them in company building
[34:15] Speaker 8: and actually helping them to achieve that vision. And a
[34:19] Speaker 8: lot of that what I can deliver as a board
[34:21] Speaker 8: member is helping a founder see around corners and leveraging
[34:24] Speaker 8: the 20 plus years of experience I have in Silicon
[34:26] Speaker 8: Valley to help them not make the mistakes that I've
[34:28] Speaker 8: made and be able to build for that future. And
[34:31] Speaker 8: I have a tremendous network that I've been able to
[34:33] Speaker 8: build up in my career in Silicon Valley to be
[34:36] Speaker 8: able to help a founder like Pari succeed. I'm very
[34:39] Speaker 8: judicious about the boards I take on. I'm on six
[34:42] Speaker 8: public company boards right now and five private company boards,
[34:45] Speaker 8: Flow being one of them. And it's a delight for
[34:48] Speaker 8: me to be able to help Pari build the future
[34:51] Speaker 8: of the company.
[34:53] Speaker 3: Rolof, can I ask you, this round was co-led by
[34:56] Speaker 3: Antonio Gracious of Valor Equity and Gavin Baker. They also
[35:00] Speaker 3: have that kind of joint vehicle. This comes up quite
[35:03] Speaker 3: a lot at the moment. They're very active in some
[35:06] Speaker 3: very interesting... rounds back into very interesting companies. What benefit
[35:11] Speaker 3: do you see those two individuals bringing to flow?
[35:15] Speaker 8: Well, I've known both of them for a long time.
[35:19] Speaker 8: Antonio and I actually worked together on another board before
[35:22] Speaker 8: we now work together on the SpaceX board. And Valor
[35:25] Speaker 8: has deep experience investing in and around hardware technologies. And
[35:30] Speaker 8: I think one of the things to bear in mind,
[35:32] Speaker 8: people think that hardware is this new thing.
[35:34] Speaker 9: If you actually look at.
[35:34] Speaker 8: The 100 most valuable companies in the world, 35 of
[35:38] Speaker 8: those are technology companies. And 26 of those 35 are
[35:42] Speaker 8: either predominantly hardware businesses or have meaningful components of their
[35:46] Speaker 8: business that depend on hardware development, whether that's consumer products
[35:49] Speaker 8: or semiconductors or robotics. And so I think it's evident
[35:52] Speaker 8: that the most valuable companies are a combination of hardware
[35:55] Speaker 8: and software companies. Valor is one of the best firms
[35:58] Speaker 8: out there with deep experience in that. They have a
[36:00] Speaker 8: network of companies that benefit from Flow's technology, and that's
[36:04] Speaker 8: what gave them such strong conviction to be able to
[36:06] Speaker 8: participate in this financing. It was the references they got
[36:09] Speaker 8: from the companies that they work with that Flow is
[36:12] Speaker 8: the right company to back.
[36:14] Speaker 3: What I find really interesting about the mechanics of the deal, Perry,
[36:18] Speaker 3: is 50 million raise, $ 750 million valuation. That's interesting. In
[36:24] Speaker 3: this environment, early stage investments have seen some interesting valuations
[36:30] Speaker 3: assigned to them. But you've kind of been through the
[36:33] Speaker 3: customer list. It seems very real. What is the business momentum?
[36:37] Speaker 3: What are the real revenues or ARR or whatever that
[36:41] Speaker 3: you're really seeing?
[36:43] Speaker 12: Yeah, we've had explosive growth of flow in 2026. So
[36:47] Speaker 12: we've gone from being this early upcoming rising star to
[36:51] Speaker 12: now the default platform and system of record for requirements
[36:54] Speaker 12: and verification in frontier hardware. We're lucky enough to be
[36:58] Speaker 12: working with the market leaders in a number of the
[37:00] Speaker 12: key verticals, but it's not just the frontier anymore. Companies
[37:04] Speaker 12: like General Motors, their PPU division, and also Volkswagen and
[37:07] Speaker 12: Rivian's joint venture are They are coming to Flow. They
[37:10] Speaker 12: were pre-AI and they're completely retooling their core development practices
[37:14] Speaker 12: with Flow and AI at the center.
[37:17] Speaker 3: It's interesting. I know Rivian well. They would say that
[37:21] Speaker 3: they have some competence in software and particularly in ECU, right?
[37:26] Speaker 3: There are things they're good at. They're supposed to be
[37:27] Speaker 3: helping Volkswagen. What is the willingness, Perry, of let's call
[37:31] Speaker 3: them legacy OEMs or more historic companies in working with
[37:35] Speaker 3: a company like yours?
[37:38] Speaker 12: It is a really great question. We see this as
[37:42] Speaker 12: a new era for hardware development and a new wave
[37:45] Speaker 12: of companies. These companies really care about time to market.
[37:49] Speaker 12: They really care about iteration speed. And they really care
[37:52] Speaker 12: about designing complex systems that are both software and hardware
[37:55] Speaker 12: integrated together. Now, this new wave and this new era
[37:58] Speaker 12: of hardware companies are selecting AI and tools like Flow
[38:03] Speaker 12: to be able to power their iteration speed. And companies
[38:06] Speaker 12: that choose to adopt AI and move faster have a
[38:10] Speaker 12: huge competitive advantage. So in the legacy world, there are
[38:14] Speaker 12: going to be companies that adopt early and are able to.
[38:18] Speaker 3: Follow that wave.
[38:19] Speaker 12: And there are companies that might take a little bit longer,
[38:22] Speaker 12: but I think we're going to see the competitive advantage
[38:24] Speaker 12: on the companies that move fastest to adopt AI.
[38:28] Speaker 3: Roloff, when the opportunity crossed your desk, and I know, again,
[38:32] Speaker 3: we went into the history that you have with Flow,
[38:34] Speaker 3: but how much do you think about this bigger story
[38:37] Speaker 3: of reindustrializing America? You know, the emphasis from the administration
[38:41] Speaker 3: and from all kinds of software companies, actually, that want
[38:44] Speaker 3: to work in this domain because they see activity. They
[38:48] Speaker 3: see investment to have all kinds of manufacturing done domestically.
[38:53] Speaker 8: I think that's a very important tailwind, and it clearly
[38:55] Speaker 8: was part of the thesis when I was at Sequoia,
[38:58] Speaker 8: when we first backed Flow just more than a year ago.
[39:01] Speaker 8: I don't think that's enough, though. You know, Government administrations
[39:06] Speaker 8: can change and those tides can turn. And that's why
[39:09] Speaker 8: I made the point earlier that fundamentally hardware is just
[39:11] Speaker 8: such an important part of the success of most of
[39:14] Speaker 8: the valuable technology companies in the world. And so I
[39:16] Speaker 8: don't think it's a new thing. It's just a sustained
[39:20] Speaker 8: benefit that Flow will have that more hardware will come
[39:24] Speaker 8: to the United States.
[39:27] Speaker 3: That is Pari Singh, founder and CEO of Flow Engineering.
[39:30] Speaker 3: and Rolof Boda who invests privately and joins the board
[39:33] Speaker 3: of that company. It's great to have you both with
[39:35] Speaker 3: us on the show. Thank you very much indeed. Now
[39:37] Speaker 3: coming up, Apple is making a bigger smart home push
[39:41] Speaker 3: with an upgraded Siri and fresh hardware on the way.
[39:44] Speaker 3: Another Bloomberg's Mark Gurman exclusive coming up. This is Bloomberg Tech.
[40:00] Speaker 3: Apple's first foldable iPhone could sell about 6 million units
[40:03] Speaker 3: this year. That's according to Counterpoint Research. The $ 1, 999 iPhone
[40:08] Speaker 3: Duo goes on sale in October and is expected to
[40:12] Speaker 3: give the broader foldable market a boost. Apple's also seeing
[40:15] Speaker 3: strength in China, where early sales of the iPhone 18
[40:18] Speaker 3: Pro lineup are up 12% from last year's pro models.
[40:23] Speaker 3: And Apple isn't stopping with the iPhone. Apple plans to
[40:26] Speaker 3: make its push into the smart home market on October
[40:29] Speaker 3: 13th with a smart home hub codename J-490 at the
[40:34] Speaker 3: center of that strategy. Critical product expansion from the company
[40:38] Speaker 3: under new CEO John Ternus. Bloomberg's consumer tech editor Dana
[40:41] Speaker 3: Wallman's with us. Okay, so we actually, the kind of
[40:44] Speaker 3: new and exclusive bit of that is the date, the timeline,
[40:47] Speaker 3: it's coming soon. Tell us about the smart home hub
[40:50] Speaker 3: and the broader strategy. Yes, absolutely.
[40:52] Speaker 15: Just to recap people who are less read in, Apple
[40:56] Speaker 15: has been working for years, actually, on these smart home products.
[41:00] Speaker 15: I don't want to call them tablets. I think they
[41:02] Speaker 15: will sound a little bit like tablets to some people,
[41:05] Speaker 15: but they are sort of like slate devices that can
[41:07] Speaker 15: either be mounted to a wall or live on, let's say,
[41:10] Speaker 15: a countertop. They are plugged in on like a tablet device.
[41:13] Speaker 15: And they do a lot of things that current products
[41:15] Speaker 15: in the market can already do from Google, from Amazon,
[41:18] Speaker 15: FaceTime calls, things like recipes, calendar updates. The deal here
[41:25] Speaker 15: is that they will be personalized in part thanks to AI.
[41:27] Speaker 15: So they can see who is walking up to them
[41:29] Speaker 15: and adjust the settings, adjust what is shown based on
[41:33] Speaker 15: who it detects is using the device. And this really
[41:36] Speaker 15: is a category that Apple would have loved to enter
[41:38] Speaker 15: years ago, but it's been waiting behind the scenes to
[41:40] Speaker 15: do catch up on its AI capabilities.
[41:43] Speaker 3: You know, I really value your consumer tech editor perspective
[41:48] Speaker 3: on this. Like, we're an Alexa household, different device form
[41:52] Speaker 3: factors in different rooms. But, like, it's not on the
[41:54] Speaker 3: hardware side that it's a problem. It's on the software side. Like,
[41:57] Speaker 3: it's a real limit to what Alexa and I talk about.
[42:00] Speaker 3: It could be the weather or play me a song.
[42:02] Speaker 3: You know, what is it that Apple thinks they can
[42:04] Speaker 3: achieve here with both the hardware and how the software
[42:07] Speaker 3: works with it?
[42:08] Speaker 15: So it really wants these devices to be not just
[42:11] Speaker 15: an additional screen in the house, but a hub, one
[42:14] Speaker 15: that you could use to control, let's say, smart home devices.
[42:17] Speaker 15: I think it's really interesting that they're offering a wall-mounted
[42:20] Speaker 15: option as well. That would sort of help it differentiate
[42:23] Speaker 15: from the... competition. And it is really interesting that it
[42:28] Speaker 15: is doing this now. It had waited for Siri AI
[42:32] Speaker 15: to sort of get on par with the competition, but
[42:34] Speaker 15: of course the competition has kept moving. So Sonos, for instance,
[42:39] Speaker 15: has been the main competitor to the HomePod, but Sonos
[42:42] Speaker 15: now is making a big push in AI. So it'll
[42:44] Speaker 15: be really interesting to see how Apple stacks up while
[42:46] Speaker 15: the competition has sort of tried to keep entrenching itself
[42:49] Speaker 15: in Apple space.
[42:51] Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Dana Wallman with the reporting. Thank you very much indeed.
[42:55] Speaker 3: Let's do another quick check on shares of Micron. We
[42:57] Speaker 3: had to cut our conversation short earlier, but fourth quarter
[42:59] Speaker 3: results after the market bell. Expecting to see growth, but
[43:03] Speaker 3: is there sustained momentum in the memory cycle as it
[43:06] Speaker 3: relates to AI? Have we hit peak pricing? The stock
[43:09] Speaker 3: has had momentum in recent days, actually, in aggregate. But
[43:12] Speaker 3: we will wait and see when the market closes this afternoon.
[43:15] Speaker 3: That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. I
[43:19] Speaker 3: am in L.A. And one reason is tomorrow we're going
[43:22] Speaker 3: to be live from Bloomberg Screen Time here in Los Angeles.
[43:26] Speaker 3: and bring you some great conversations on the future of
[43:29] Speaker 3: entertainment studios, music, the impact of AI on creative industries,
[43:33] Speaker 3: and much more. There is an incredible lineup that we'll
[43:36] Speaker 3: have both in the show and at the event itself.
[43:39] Speaker 3: Today's show was pretty mega too. Don't forget to recap
[43:41] Speaker 3: all the conversations that we had on the podcast. You
[43:44] Speaker 3: can find it on the Bloomberg Terminal, as well as
[43:46] Speaker 3: online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart. There is so much
[43:51] Speaker 3: to come this week. Thanks for being with us. This
[43:53] Speaker 3: is Bloomberg Tech.
[43:55] Speaker 8: Thank you.

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