# Smart Ring Maker Oura Delays IPO

An episode of [Bloomberg Intelligence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/326301337), 29 Sep 2026, 23 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/7f534b8c-9e91-429a-b102-ae3c00090c6d/0c44e48c-c60a-4b57-8a4a-b4d401192f53/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=0ad812bf-fd15-4012-a18c-ae3c00090c76

Watch Paul and Scarlet LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF. Bloomberg Intelligence hosted by Paul Sweeney and Scarlet Fu -Anthony Hughes, Bloomberg US Equity Capital Markets Reporter, discusses Oura delaying a US initial public offering, citing uncertainty in the market for first-time share sales. The wearable technology startup and its backers were looking to raise as much as $2.2 billion in the IPO, which had drawn about four times as many orders as there were shares available. -Ed Ludlow, Bloomberg Tech Anchor, discusses OpenAI holding back a version of its Astra model while it establishes stronger safeguards for artificial intelligence development, due to heightened risks after recent rogue AI hacking incidents. The company's head of safety systems, Saachi Jain, said the in-development GPT-6.1 Astra model wasn't as good as the company wanted in terms of "staying within scope and authorization" and communicating with users. -Geetha Ranganathan, Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst on US Media, discusses the latest on Former Walt Disney CEO Bob Chapek. Chapek talked about his new book detailing his time at Disney. He also discussed former CEO Bob's Iger succession planning and Josh D'Amaro talking the helm. Chapek is currently building a new career in private equity after being fired as CEO of Walt Disney Co. four years ago. -Theo Baker, Author of "How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University" & Janet Lorin, Bloomberg News Higher Education Reporter, discuss Theo’s new book. Seventeen-year-old Theo Baker showed up for freshman year at Stanford University as a tech-obsessed coder. It seemed like paradise. There were Rodin sculptures next to nuclear laboratories and inventors lounging with Olympians. But Baker soon discovered a culture that embraced corner-cutting, that vested infinite excess and access in the hands of kids with few safeguards to catch bad behavior. Stanford, he realized, was less a school than a business. Its annual budget was nearly twice that of Harvard or Yale and higher than those of 116 countries. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
[0:04] Speaker 2: Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 3: Radio.
[0:06] Speaker 2: News.
[0:09] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
[0:13] Speaker 1: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
[0:16] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
[0:19] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
[0:24] Speaker 4: Well, I know the Charlie Pellett, John Tucker, the hipsters,
[0:28] Speaker 4: they're all into the aura rings. They want to know
[0:30] Speaker 4: how they're sleeping. Are they getting enough steps and all
[0:33] Speaker 4: this kind of stuff? I'm not into it, but.
[0:36] Speaker 5: It's a company.
[0:37] Speaker 4: It's a big and it had planned to go public here.
[0:39] Speaker 4: But I just saw some news today or delayed a U.S.
[0:43] Speaker 4: initial public offering, setting uncertainty in the market. Anthony Hughes
[0:47] Speaker 4: joins us here. Equity Capital Markets reporter for Bloomberg News. Anthony,
[0:50] Speaker 4: I'm not buying it. We're near all time highs here
[0:54] Speaker 4: in the market. I got a VIX, you know, down
[0:57] Speaker 4: like 15 as an IPO banker. This is what you
[1:00] Speaker 4: dream of. What's going on here with or do you think?
[1:03] Speaker 5: Well, I think the excuse that there is market uncertainty
[1:07] Speaker 5: in this case does hold. The company itself is obviously
[1:11] Speaker 5: doing very well at the moment, but people didn't like
[1:14] Speaker 5: the deal, some aspects of the deal, particularly the valuation,
[1:16] Speaker 5: but also the structure of things like the lockup. And
[1:20] Speaker 5: there is a track record of these sorts of consumer
[1:22] Speaker 5: hardware companies being sometimes do well initially, or they have
[1:26] Speaker 5: strong financials for a few years, and then then they
[1:28] Speaker 5: fade away. So, I mean, I think the company tried
[1:31] Speaker 5: to address some of these issues around the fattishness of
[1:33] Speaker 5: some of these consumer hardware products, but ultimately it was
[1:36] Speaker 5: pretty bad timing and, you know, they were probably looking
[1:40] Speaker 5: at pricing below range if they really wanted to get
[1:42] Speaker 5: this done. And, you know, I mean, I guess you
[1:44] Speaker 5: could say to the company's credit, they held firm. They
[1:47] Speaker 5: decided not to cut the price in the range. They
[1:50] Speaker 5: have enough conviction now to, you know, take the deal
[1:54] Speaker 5: off the market and look to go public maybe another day.
[1:56] Speaker 5: But obviously the market, the investors are lacking conviction in
[2:00] Speaker 5: these sorts of, you know, and actually most IPOs at
[2:04] Speaker 5: the moment, there's a bit of a lack of conviction.
[2:06] Speaker 5: I mean, I think a lot of people are focused
[2:07] Speaker 5: on Anthropic later in the year and a lot of
[2:09] Speaker 5: the other stuff doesn't really measure up. So when was
[2:13] Speaker 5: it supposed, when was it scheduled to price? It was
[2:15] Speaker 5: scheduled to price tonight. So this is really a postponement
[2:17] Speaker 5: on the eve of, you know, the 11th hour. And
[2:19] Speaker 5: that's usually what happens when there is a postponement. It
[2:22] Speaker 5: tends to happen right at the last moment, basically.
[2:24] Speaker 4: And so when you see something at the last moment
[2:26] Speaker 4: like this, it suggests that they weren't getting, I guess,
[2:29] Speaker 4: the order flow that they were really looking for at
[2:31] Speaker 4: the price level they were looking at.
[2:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
[2:32] Speaker 5: So, you know, there was a marketing problem. marketing process
[2:36] Speaker 5: a roadshow that went on in the last week or
[2:38] Speaker 5: so and you know i think it was pretty slow
[2:39] Speaker 5: going i think because of these market conditions a lot
[2:42] Speaker 5: of the long only investors who you really want to
[2:44] Speaker 5: support these sorts of deals unless you know less so
[2:46] Speaker 5: the hedge funds they they were they were hesitating and
[2:49] Speaker 5: i think they some some of them we know passed
[2:51] Speaker 5: and many of them passed really and uh they if
[2:54] Speaker 5: they i think they were holding holding off to see
[2:56] Speaker 5: whether the market conditions would improve as well so you
[2:59] Speaker 5: know i think the fact that the quality the you
[3:00] Speaker 5: know the quality of the demand that they were getting
[3:02] Speaker 5: was not was not adequate was one of the one
[3:03] Speaker 5: of the factors in the decision not to go ahead.
[3:06] Speaker 4: Is this deal or the pulling of this deal, is
[3:07] Speaker 4: that indicative of the IPO market today? Is the IPO
[3:11] Speaker 4: market like a little softer than maybe people would like
[3:12] Speaker 4: to see?
[3:13] Speaker 6: Oh, absolutely.
[3:14] Speaker 5: I think that, you know, we've seen three postponements now
[3:17] Speaker 5: in three weeks. We saw an insurance company go postpone
[3:20] Speaker 5: last week. And the week before that, we saw another
[3:22] Speaker 5: company postponed. So it's becoming a trend. And basically, investors
[3:27] Speaker 5: are lacking conviction on these companies, particularly paying up big valuations,
[3:32] Speaker 5: you know, and And, you know, really IPOs are like
[3:35] Speaker 5: a lot of business transactions, getting people to agree on
[3:38] Speaker 5: a price. And, you know, I think the sellers of
[3:40] Speaker 5: these assets are wanting more for them than the buyers
[3:43] Speaker 5: are prepared to pay. And that's basically that disconnect is widened.
[3:47] Speaker 5: You know, we've seen a bit more of a focus
[3:49] Speaker 5: on macro issues, rising rates, stuff like that, which has
[3:51] Speaker 5: made it tougher for growth-oriented companies to get these really
[3:55] Speaker 5: high valuations. And, you know, people have been more picky
[3:58] Speaker 5: and discerning about the quality of the companies that they've
[4:00] Speaker 5: been prepared to invest in.
[4:01] Speaker 4: Interesting. What is the latest on Anthropic? That's probably maybe
[4:05] Speaker 4: one of the reasons that some of these IPO buyers
[4:07] Speaker 4: are waiting because they think they may have the opportunity
[4:10] Speaker 4: to put serious capital to work. Yeah, so I think the.
[4:13] Speaker 5: Interesting thing about Anthropic is that the, you know, we
[4:16] Speaker 5: were assuming maybe it'd almost be public by now, but
[4:18] Speaker 5: I think there's been a lot more uncertainty around the
[4:20] Speaker 5: company that's been, you know, that's been evident in all
[4:24] Speaker 5: the public discussion around safety and regulation and, you know,
[4:27] Speaker 5: the future of.
[4:30] Speaker 5: AI and also what's happening in terms of the releases
[4:34] Speaker 5: of these competitive models. These are all factors that are
[4:37] Speaker 5: added to some level of uncertainty. I think it's been
[4:39] Speaker 5: quite prudent for them to delay. And the word is
[4:42] Speaker 5: they're waiting till after the election now. And I don't
[4:44] Speaker 5: know whether they're expecting a different political environment to have
[4:47] Speaker 5: an impact. Sometimes those factors are a little overstated, but
[4:51] Speaker 5: that could be a factor here. But I think the
[4:54] Speaker 5: buy side is still pretty keen for this company the
[4:57] Speaker 5: the numbers that you've seen floating around show very strong
[4:59] Speaker 5: growth uh growth that we've you know it's mind-boggling growth
[5:03] Speaker 5: that we don't see at scale that we don't see
[5:05] Speaker 5: with um companies you know almost ever but ever and
[5:09] Speaker 5: uh you know, this is a new era for AI.
[5:12] Speaker 5: But I think the buy side is pretty eager for Anthropic,
[5:15] Speaker 5: just not very eager for most other IPOs that are
[5:17] Speaker 5: out there. Interesting.
[5:18] Speaker 4: Yeah, it was reported earlier today by Axios initially that
[5:21] Speaker 4: OpenAI's annual recurring revenue near $ 70 billion. So the numbers
[5:26] Speaker 4: continue to grow pretty dramatically.
[5:28] Speaker 5: Yeah, so I think that's another factor is the competitive environment. And,
[5:31] Speaker 5: you know, I think while Anthropic is sort of hoping
[5:34] Speaker 5: to push ahead here this year and OpenAI has pushed
[5:36] Speaker 5: into next year, but I think there's quite a serious
[5:41] Speaker 5: competitive process going on here where these two companies are
[5:45] Speaker 5: trying to assert who has the superior model, who's going
[5:47] Speaker 5: to dominate this market going forward. But I think investors
[5:50] Speaker 5: are probably looking at the situation now and thinking there
[5:52] Speaker 5: are going to be multiple players in this industry. And
[5:54] Speaker 5: if you look at some of the.
[5:57] Speaker 5: Tech themes over the past few decades. I mean, I
[5:59] Speaker 5: think maybe some of the Mag7 companies who dominate our
[6:02] Speaker 5: market today really had a dominant position in certain areas
[6:05] Speaker 5: of technology and maybe with large language models and AI,
[6:11] Speaker 5: it's less certain that that's the case.
[6:14] Speaker 2: Stay with us.
[6:14] Speaker 1: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this. You're listening
[6:21] Speaker 1: to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at
[6:25] Speaker 1: 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with
[6:28] Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get
[6:31] Speaker 1: your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
[6:35] Speaker 3: OpenAI, of course, this is the privately held AI lab company.
[6:39] Speaker 3: According to Axios' Madison Mills, OpenAI's annual recurring revenue is
[6:44] Speaker 3: nearing $ 70 billion. Enterprise sales more than doubling since July.
[6:49] Speaker 3: So perhaps this is a sign that OpenAI is catching
[6:53] Speaker 3: up to Anthropic, which we know had kind of overtaken OpenAI. OpenAI.
[6:57] Speaker 3: Speaking of OpenAI, the company is actually holding back a
[7:00] Speaker 3: version of its Astra model while it establishes stronger safeguards
[7:03] Speaker 3: for AI development. And of course, this suggests heightened risks
[7:07] Speaker 3: after all these spate of recent rogue AI hacking incidents,
[7:12] Speaker 3: and people are kind of mindful of all of that.
[7:14] Speaker 3: Let's put all of this together into context and bring
[7:17] Speaker 3: in our Ed Ludlow. He is our BTEC anchor on
[7:19] Speaker 3: Bloomberg Television, tech reporter for Bloomberg News joining us. And
[7:23] Speaker 3: of course, Ed will be at the OpenAI Development Day
[7:26] Speaker 3: later today as well. Ed, just put into context the
[7:29] Speaker 3: headlines that we just gave you about OpenAI, this Astra
[7:33] Speaker 3: model being held back, the annual recurring revenue approaching $ 70 billion.
[7:38] Speaker 3: What does this all suggest?
[7:39] Speaker 6: Well, on the ARR, Anthropic, its great rival, was tracking
[7:44] Speaker 6: at sort of $ 74 billion ARR as of the third quarter.
[7:49] Speaker 6: So that's kind of fun. What it tells us in aggregate, right,
[7:53] Speaker 6: is how difficult it's going to be for these frontier
[7:55] Speaker 6: labs to balance the growth their investors want to see,
[7:59] Speaker 6: with both of them destined for the public markets, with
[8:02] Speaker 6: making decisions like hitting pause, Which can have commercial impacts.
[8:07] Speaker 3: Right.
[8:07] Speaker 6: So the news headline is that GPT 6.1 Astra was
[8:13] Speaker 6: being evaluated internally. It was a model, a new model.
[8:18] Speaker 6: And they basically said that this model is not behaving
[8:22] Speaker 6: reliably in the way that we thought it would. So
[8:26] Speaker 6: out of safety concern, we're just not going to release it.
[8:30] Speaker 6: And that is open AI, to be fair, making good
[8:33] Speaker 6: on what it has said over the last 10 days,
[8:35] Speaker 6: that it has some kind of more structure in place
[8:37] Speaker 6: on how it makes those kinds of decisions.
[8:40] Speaker 4: Ed, how are folks out in the Valley thinking about,
[8:42] Speaker 4: the AI folks there, thinking about their policy for guardrail
[8:47] Speaker 4: development of AI versus what we're hearing from President Trump,
[8:51] Speaker 4: Vice President Vance, and maybe some others here. It feels
[8:54] Speaker 4: like it's getting kind of political here.
[8:56] Speaker 6: So there are certainly camps emerging, right? Different schools of thought.
[9:01] Speaker 6: It's very rare that Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI,
[9:05] Speaker 6: Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, and Elon Musk agree
[9:08] Speaker 6: on anything. They agree it would appear that it is
[9:12] Speaker 6: sensible to pace the development of what the capability of
[9:16] Speaker 6: the model is so that your work on safety can
[9:19] Speaker 6: catch up. The camps are distinguished by who they think
[9:24] Speaker 6: should oversee that. Someone like the president or David Sachs
[9:28] Speaker 6: or even Jensen Wong are like, you guys, the AI labs,
[9:32] Speaker 6: you're the ones that see this. You're the ones working
[9:34] Speaker 6: on it. If it's not safe, don't release it. And
[9:38] Speaker 6: so today with OpenAI, it's a pretty concrete example of that.
[9:42] Speaker 6: the Frontier Labs themselves are also saying, we want some
[9:46] Speaker 6: third party here to kind of check our work. And
[9:51] Speaker 6: those in DC are saying, that's fine. But at the
[9:54] Speaker 6: end of the day, you're still responsible. You can't sort
[9:56] Speaker 6: of pass this off onto someone else.
[9:58] Speaker 4: Well, I guess we will discuss morning to some reporting
[10:00] Speaker 4: out of Reuters, which Tom Keene just was calling out
[10:04] Speaker 4: repeatedly for good purposes. Anthropic warned that its technology poses
[10:09] Speaker 4: catastrophic or existential risk to humanity. That's a risk factor
[10:14] Speaker 4: in their IPO filing. What does that language mean? I mean,
[10:19] Speaker 4: what's going on?
[10:21] Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, there was reporting that this would get
[10:25] Speaker 6: included in the prospectus. The S1 has not flipped public.
[10:29] Speaker 6: Someone somewhere has got their hands on it and we're
[10:31] Speaker 6: trying our best. It's funny because I went back to
[10:34] Speaker 6: the S1 from SpaceX and there were loads of risk
[10:38] Speaker 6: factors in there, but not this idea of existential threat
[10:41] Speaker 6: to human life. I guess that what people out here
[10:44] Speaker 6: would say this points to Is Dario Amodei, the CEO
[10:48] Speaker 6: of Anthropic, trying to be consistent? You know, when all
[10:52] Speaker 6: of this emerged, the idea that in a series of
[10:55] Speaker 6: interviews and also in that essay that he published last
[10:58] Speaker 6: month on pacing the frontier, that his motivation for doing this,
[11:03] Speaker 6: giving a warning signal, was marketing. That might seem paradoxical, right?
[11:09] Speaker 6: But if you're going, oh, this is super dangerous potentially,
[11:12] Speaker 6: It also kind of is empowering and gives momentum to
[11:16] Speaker 6: an IPO because you're basically saying like so cutting edge
[11:20] Speaker 6: is this technology that this is the degree of risk
[11:23] Speaker 6: we're talking about.
[11:25] Speaker 2: Stay with us.
[11:25] Speaker 3: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
[11:32] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
[11:35] Speaker 1: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
[11:38] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
[11:42] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
[11:46] Speaker 3: Joining us now is Geetha Ranganathan. Geetha is Bloomberg Intelligence's
[11:50] Speaker 3: analyst on U.S.
[11:51] Speaker 5: Media.
[11:52] Speaker 3: Geetha, Bob Chapek's got a chip on his shoulder, I suppose,
[11:56] Speaker 3: given the way that he left the company, that makes
[11:58] Speaker 3: a lot of sense. Do you agree with him that
[12:01] Speaker 3: Disney needs a growth engine, that it lacks a growth
[12:03] Speaker 3: engine right now?
[12:05] Speaker 8: I do agree with that, Scarlett. I mean, it is
[12:08] Speaker 8: absolutely true that, yes, the parks are performing well, given
[12:12] Speaker 8: the current situation, given all of the uncertainty that we've
[12:15] Speaker 8: seen in the economy, given what we've seen with the
[12:17] Speaker 8: Comcast Universal Parks and much softer attendance there. Disney still
[12:21] Speaker 8: is somehow managing to hold its ground. But he's right.
[12:25] Speaker 8: I mean, there's nothing there on the horizon that's super
[12:28] Speaker 8: exciting in terms of, you know, a growth catalyst or
[12:31] Speaker 8: a growth narrative. And it all depends on how they
[12:34] Speaker 8: want to spin. I mean, investors are definitely looking at
[12:36] Speaker 8: the streaming product. This was a business that was losing
[12:41] Speaker 8: billions of dollars just a few years ago and now
[12:43] Speaker 8: has become, you know, a source of profit today. but
[12:46] Speaker 8: how profitable it gets to be. I mean, that's the
[12:49] Speaker 8: ultimate question. And we really need some more concrete numbers
[12:52] Speaker 8: around that to really kind of energize the narrative around Disney.
[12:55] Speaker 4: And Geetha, I think for a while there, investors were
[12:57] Speaker 4: saying maybe streaming will be that growth story. Just look
[13:01] Speaker 4: at Netflix, but the Netflix stock is underperformed and primarily
[13:04] Speaker 4: because they just haven't had any hit shows to kind
[13:07] Speaker 4: of get you all jazzed up. It kind of goes
[13:09] Speaker 4: back to the old, this is how media companies work.
[13:11] Speaker 4: You have to have hit shows, hit movies, that kind
[13:13] Speaker 4: of thing.
[13:14] Speaker 8: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Paul. So the biggest problem for
[13:18] Speaker 8: Netflix this year has kind of been this whole story
[13:20] Speaker 8: around engagement and engagement that has been languishing. I mean,
[13:24] Speaker 8: we look at some of the numbers that come out
[13:26] Speaker 8: of Nielsen's monthly gauge report, and they point to share
[13:30] Speaker 8: of TV viewing time that's constantly declining for Netflix. So
[13:33] Speaker 8: right now it's at less than 8% of total TV
[13:36] Speaker 8: viewing time. Meanwhile, you have YouTube that has climbed to
[13:40] Speaker 8: record highs, and it's at 14%. So you really have
[13:42] Speaker 8: all of these media companies that are contending with you know,
[13:45] Speaker 8: a lot of viewing that is happening on YouTube, that's
[13:48] Speaker 8: happening on social media platforms, on TikTok, on Instagram. So
[13:51] Speaker 8: they really need to kind of tailor that strategy. And yes,
[13:55] Speaker 8: you know, Disney, you're right, Disney does have that kind
[13:57] Speaker 8: of benchmark from a net, you know, from the Netflix
[14:00] Speaker 8: operating profit and margin perspective. But, you know, we need
[14:04] Speaker 8: something more to really kind of get investors excited and
[14:08] Speaker 8: for a re-rating of multiples, not just for Disney, but
[14:10] Speaker 8: for the entire sector, I would think.
[14:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, well said.
[14:12] Speaker 3: Well, we know that Disney recently increased the price of
[14:15] Speaker 3: its Disney Plus streaming service, at least the one without ads,
[14:19] Speaker 3: to $ 21. 49 a month. And if you bundle it with Hulu,
[14:23] Speaker 3: then it's slightly more expensive. But that idea of bundling
[14:27] Speaker 3: things is back in fashion again. How much of a
[14:30] Speaker 3: difference is that going to make to the bottom line
[14:32] Speaker 3: in the coming quarters?
[14:34] Speaker 8: It is definitely going to make a difference. I mean,
[14:36] Speaker 8: this is what we've been seeing across all of these
[14:39] Speaker 8: streaming platforms. And we've seen kind of quite a noticeable
[14:42] Speaker 8: change in terms of the whole profitability picture and the economics.
[14:47] Speaker 8: So majority of the services that were posting pretty huge
[14:50] Speaker 8: losses are now posting profits. This is important for all
[14:54] Speaker 8: of these streaming services because subscriber growth has kind of
[14:56] Speaker 8: come to a screeching halt. So the only way that
[14:58] Speaker 8: they get to actually pad that bottom line is by
[15:01] Speaker 8: increasing prices. And you bring up a very good point
[15:04] Speaker 8: with the bundle. Disney has this unique advantage of the bundle,
[15:07] Speaker 8: not just with Hulu, but potentially with ESPN where you
[15:10] Speaker 8: get a lot of sports content and where people absolutely
[15:12] Speaker 8: want to subscribe and want to get to that bundle.
[15:14] Speaker 8: So yeah, we do think it'll be really important to
[15:18] Speaker 8: the profitability equation going forward. But ultimately, I think, Scarlett,
[15:22] Speaker 8: what it's going to come down to is how exactly— and
[15:24] Speaker 8: we've heard a lot of rumblings about this, but really
[15:26] Speaker 8: no concrete picture just yet— in terms of what exactly or
[15:30] Speaker 8: how exactly Josh DeMauro plans to position Disney +. Does
[15:34] Speaker 8: he really make it the central hub for all things Disney?
[15:37] Speaker 8: Do you go to Disney +, and not just get
[15:39] Speaker 8: a streaming subscription, but also your park tickets, also your
[15:42] Speaker 8: movie tickets? does it almost kind of become like an
[15:45] Speaker 8: agent for you in terms of getting to, you know,
[15:47] Speaker 8: anything and everything Disney. So that is what is going
[15:50] Speaker 8: to be really interesting to see how, you know, how
[15:53] Speaker 8: they kind of position Disney +, how they position the
[15:56] Speaker 8: streaming business as kind of the door to the entire
[15:58] Speaker 8: Disney ecosystem.
[16:00] Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
[16:07] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
[16:10] Speaker 1: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
[16:14] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
[16:17] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
[16:21] Speaker 3: It turns out Stanford University is not just an elite
[16:25] Speaker 3: Ivy League level university. It's also an incubator of talent
[16:28] Speaker 3: for tech startups, which makes a lot of sense given
[16:31] Speaker 3: its location in the heart of Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, California.
[16:34] Speaker 3: Theo Baker knows this well. He is the author of
[16:37] Speaker 3: a new book, How to Rule the World. an education
[16:40] Speaker 3: in power at Stanford University. It's basically on his four
[16:44] Speaker 3: very adventurous years at the school. He and Janet Lorne,
[16:47] Speaker 3: our higher education finance reporter, join us now in the
[16:51] Speaker 3: Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. So Theo, just walk us through
[16:55] Speaker 3: what surprised you the most when you showed up at
[16:57] Speaker 3: the Stanford campus, ready to take on as, I think
[17:00] Speaker 3: you came in knowing how to code and maybe looking
[17:03] Speaker 3: to pursue computer science as your major, and you were
[17:06] Speaker 3: just totally taken away by what this school does when
[17:10] Speaker 3: it comes from his young talent and how they kind
[17:13] Speaker 3: of usher you along.
[17:14] Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah.
[17:15] Speaker 2: Well, it's great to be here with you. It is true.
[17:18] Speaker 2: I showed up as a true tech geek, the kind
[17:20] Speaker 2: of kid who would build a machine learning model into
[17:22] Speaker 2: my room in high school and called it a fun
[17:24] Speaker 2: Friday night. And I showed up and I realized that
[17:27] Speaker 2: very quickly, you know, either you're in or you're out, right?
[17:31] Speaker 2: There's this system that is designed to extract talent from
[17:34] Speaker 2: these teenagers. They are viewed almost as a commodity to
[17:36] Speaker 2: be monetized because if you get in on the ground
[17:39] Speaker 2: floor of the next Google or Instagram, you've made your
[17:42] Speaker 2: own career. These venture capitalists and assorted hangers-on who are
[17:45] Speaker 2: constantly on campus trying to court the next up-and-coming teenagers,
[17:49] Speaker 2: these hangers-on are really a huge part of the experience
[17:52] Speaker 2: for those people who belong to what I call the
[17:54] Speaker 2: Stanford inside Stanford. That is, those future trillion-dollar startup founders
[17:58] Speaker 2: who've been tapped on the shoulder at age 17.
[18:01] Speaker 5: All right.
[18:01] Speaker 4: Your freshman year involved investigative journalism that prompted the Stanford
[18:04] Speaker 4: president to step down. Part of this book, How to
[18:08] Speaker 4: Rule the World, An Education in Power at Stanford University.
[18:11] Speaker 4: Talk to us about that.
[18:12] Speaker 6: What happened there?
[18:13] Speaker 4: And what's the basis for this book? Talk to us
[18:16] Speaker 4: about it.
[18:16] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I describe this book as being about, you know,
[18:19] Speaker 2: the kids who are being raised to rule the world
[18:21] Speaker 2: and what they learn from those who already do. And,
[18:24] Speaker 2: you know, in that respect, Mark Tessier-Levine, who was the
[18:26] Speaker 2: president of Stanford, is a great example.
[18:29] Speaker 7: Right.
[18:29] Speaker 2: Mark Tessier-Levine was a world renowned neuroscientist, the first in
[18:32] Speaker 2: his family to go to college. He ended up earning
[18:34] Speaker 2: a Rhodes Scholarship, created an entirely new field of neuroscientific research,
[18:38] Speaker 2: and eventually went on to become a fabulously wealthy entrepreneur
[18:41] Speaker 2: and biotech executive. I discovered in my reporting for the
[18:45] Speaker 2: school newspaper across an eight-month investigation a number of research
[18:49] Speaker 2: papers that he had co-authored or otherwise overseen, which contained
[18:53] Speaker 2: falsified images and other forms of data manipulation. Mark Tessier
[18:57] Speaker 2: Levine eventually, as a result of this, had to retract
[18:59] Speaker 2: several papers and was pushed out as president of Stanford.
[19:03] Speaker 7: So you describe in the book wanting to talk to
[19:05] Speaker 7: him and sort of staking him out, but you didn't
[19:08] Speaker 7: want to appear like you were staking him out. But finally,
[19:10] Speaker 7: you got to meet him and talk to him. And you're, what,
[19:14] Speaker 7: 17 years old at this point? Can you describe that?
[19:17] Speaker 7: I mean, he was, at that point, sort of a
[19:18] Speaker 7: larger-than-life guy. Yeah.
[19:20] Speaker 2: So I've never sat with an interview with Mark Tessie Levine,
[19:23] Speaker 2: despite over a dozen attempts and You know, I've sent over,
[19:25] Speaker 2: I believe it's 126 questions in writing to him, the
[19:28] Speaker 2: vast majority of which he has declined to answer. Instead,
[19:31] Speaker 2: usually I hear from his lawyers who have tried to
[19:33] Speaker 2: prevent the publication of my articles and subsequently the book
[19:36] Speaker 2: that was published based on some of that reporting. You know,
[19:39] Speaker 2: Marc-Tessie Levine, as you say, looms larger than life. I mean,
[19:42] Speaker 2: he is this iconic figure. I've tried and basically failed
[19:45] Speaker 2: to find a single negative word published about him before 2022.
[19:48] Speaker 2: But of course, you excellence, these positions of higher and
[19:53] Speaker 2: higher acclaim that he segued to over time amassed a
[19:56] Speaker 2: lab culture that changed over time. Eventually, Stanford's in-house investigation
[20:00] Speaker 2: determined that he created a culture within his labs that
[20:03] Speaker 2: rewarded the winners, that is, the people who could produce
[20:05] Speaker 2: the results that he wanted, and marginalized the losers.
[20:08] Speaker 3: Theo, how did he preside at Stanford University? If this
[20:11] Speaker 3: is what he was doing in his research, you know,
[20:14] Speaker 3: to get his doctorate, to kind of make his reputation,
[20:17] Speaker 3: what kind of leader was he at Stanford University and
[20:19] Speaker 3: what kind of tone did that set for the school?
[20:21] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[20:22] Speaker 2: Well, it's important to step back here and understand that
[20:24] Speaker 2: Stanford has been on a unique trajectory for the past
[20:26] Speaker 2: few decades. No other institution in higher education has had
[20:29] Speaker 2: the meteoric rise. that Stanford has had, it went from
[20:33] Speaker 2: a suburban school for the wealthy Californian elite to a
[20:36] Speaker 2: juggernaut that now has a budget, an annual budget higher
[20:39] Speaker 2: than 116 countries.
[20:42] Speaker 6: 116 countries, right?
[20:42] Speaker 2: And so a lot of that happened under John Hennessy,
[20:44] Speaker 2: Mark Tessier Levine's predecessor. But he continued on with barreling
[20:48] Speaker 2: toward this corporate university, right? This is a place where
[20:52] Speaker 2: students are no longer treated as teenagers going about the
[20:55] Speaker 2: ordinary course of coming of age, They're treated like a product.
[20:58] Speaker 2: They are treated like someone who might potentially kick back
[21:01] Speaker 2: billions of dollars in revenue to the school in the future.
[21:04] Speaker 7: So for the last year and a half or so,
[21:05] Speaker 7: I've been writing a lot about the Trump administration's assault
[21:09] Speaker 7: on higher education, mostly focused at Harvard. Why do you
[21:12] Speaker 7: think Stanford hasn't had the same level of scrutiny?
[21:16] Speaker 3: Good question.
[21:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I was stunned, stunned by the number
[21:19] Speaker 2: of stories that I found that should have been reported
[21:21] Speaker 2: years earlier, including the president. Where I started in 2022,
[21:25] Speaker 2: anyone could have started seven years earlier with the same
[21:27] Speaker 2: pseudonymous comments online that sparked my investigation. All of these stories, basically,
[21:33] Speaker 2: that I reported on, the campus imposter who was kicking
[21:36] Speaker 2: around campus for a year pretending to be a student
[21:38] Speaker 2: and removed multiple times from campus with the school's knowledge,
[21:41] Speaker 2: the professor who had been rubber stamping the pseudoscientific practices
[21:48] Speaker 2: of Tony Robbins, who claimed a 100% remission from depression.
[21:52] Speaker 2: based on Stanford University study using his fire walks that
[21:55] Speaker 2: have in fact injured people, dozens of people, walking over
[21:58] Speaker 2: the hot coals that he claims will cure their depression
[22:00] Speaker 2: because Stanford University's professor of genetics, head of the genetics department,
[22:04] Speaker 2: has rubber stamped it. All of these stories don't get covered,
[22:07] Speaker 2: I think in large part because Silicon Valley is still
[22:10] Speaker 2: an immature system of power. It has not had this
[22:13] Speaker 2: power it has accrued recently for very long. And so
[22:15] Speaker 2: it hasn't developed the same robust series of guardrails of transparency,
[22:19] Speaker 2: of accountability, and journalism.
[22:22] Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
[22:26] Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday,
[22:30] Speaker 1: 10 a.m. to noon Eastern, on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn,
[22:36] Speaker 1: and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us
[22:39] Speaker 1: live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.