this is not bit of the top stories. ertain investigation by chinese authorities. company said last month that did not contact him. yimai says neither him nor are under investigation. it will appeal a ruling that he can be extradited to the u.s. to face charges of copyright infringement, money laundering, and racketeering. the megaupload founder did have a case to answer. an appeal could take years.

york is at a premium for the first time since january. crude is heading for second annual loss. at the marketsok right now if hong kong and china currently close -- but here's how they were trading in the morning session. the shanghai composite building on the gains of the year despite that. checking the rest of the picture in asia, mumbai gaining right now. if south korea climbing half a percent higher. i am back in half an hour. ♪

emily: i'm emily chang and you plus, detroit clearing up at the silicon valley. silicon valley raises the bar on over-the-top holiday parties. but with a guilty celebration at google. this -- that is a space x rocket trying and failing in a soft landing on a barge in the middle of the ocean back in april. today is a new day for elon musk and the space industry. axis relented up right a launchpad at cape canaveral. ted was the first flight another was destroyed by fire. the point of this experiment is

dramatic cost reduction. they spent more than $60 million on each standard launch and musk is aiming for 100 fold cost reduction. how close are we to the goal? joining us to discuss is lori, a former nasa administrator, and jimmy, the ceo of a satellite imaging company. 11 satellites were released into space. lori, i will start with you. how significant is what happened today? did elon musk make space history? lori: absolutely. we have the ability to land successfully that has been the holy grail to reduce cost and open up space to more industry and more people. he is to be congratulated on a successful return of flight within six months of the failure and now to drive the cost down.

we would take tenfold. emily: is that possible to drive the cost down 100 fold? lori: elon is great at making these spectacular statements and proving them. i will not question it. he has already dropped the cost of launching satellites into space significantly by at least 75%. they are usually several hundred million dollars. the u.s. lost the entire market to the russian, french and chinese. getting launches down to $60 million was unheard of. getting it down and reusability -- the fuel is only $200,000. this is something like airplanes could be flying more regularly. the only way you get that is to reuse them. there are other parts he intends to reuse.

emily: we all celebrated when jeff bezos' blue origins did something similar and landed a reusable rocket safely. what elon has done is significantly different, jimmy. how so? why is it so much of a bigger deal? jimmy: it is one thing to touch the edge of space and another thing to orbit the earth. the falcon 9 had 15 times the thrust than the blue origins. to launch a booster rocket, put satellites into space and drop it back onto earth is truly amazing. emily: when it comes to satellites and what this means -- it means the ability to do more missions more quickly. what does it mean for your industry? jimmy: it is fantastic. for the last 20 years, the biggest barrier to the enrichment and further growth of the space industry was the cost of launch vehicles.

the cost of space vehicles have dropped over time, but the cost of launch vehicles have fallen slowly. a tenfold or 100 fold drop would change everything for us in terms of access to space and the cost of the satellites. emily: let's talk about mars. musk said i think it improves my confidence that a city on mars -- a city on mars is possible. that is what this is all about. somewhere between cheaper satellites and a city on mars -- there has to be more meaningful milestones within reach, within the space industry. what are those? lori? lori: i think there are -- the cost to be reduced opens up new industries, things we can do in space that were really reserved for those things that are worth several hundred million dollars to launch. when you open that up there is

no limit to the amount of things we can do. being able to land successfully after a launch helps planetary missions because then you are able to get off the planet when you want to come back successfully without building another rocket. it is meaningful to companies like jimmy's that are utilizing space to study earth and the phenomenon of the atmosphere. very important for the future and more people will be able to go to space. we have had cost of $20 million and a dozen tourists going to space. this opens that up very quickly much further. emily: i know elon is focused on mars, but what about the moon? there are countries in asia that are focused on a lunar landing. i was speaking to a board member at spacex, a longtime investor.

he is much more excited about getting to the moon. steve: i want to go to the moon. sooner then we would go to mars. fly around it at a very low orbit. just skimming the five peaks. it is closer, the views are awesome and it is a long trip to mars. mars is great for all of us, but for a starter location, the moon is significant. emily: jimmy, what about the other opportunities out there? space tourism in general. asteroid mining. jimmy: this opens up a tremendous number of things. the ability to look at all the cities on the earth every day. the ability to allow internet access to everybody on the planet through satellites and the ability to mine asteroids and the moon. in terms of going to mars, the ability to mine asteroids for

fuel. all of these advances build on each other. that is eventually that realizes the dream to be able to go to mars. emily: lori, elon musk has proven he can do this. what is the next thing he has to prove? what is the next milestone? lori: i think the private launch of astronauts to space that will likely be within two years. elon, spacex and boeing are the competitors. nasa is already committed to do this. they are booking flights. when astronauts go on that private vehicle, i think that is the next big milestone. delivering between now and then -- we have all these cargo flights to the space station, the satellite flights that are great for the nation, our scientific quest to understand

the earth and the universe -- all benefited by this. i think elon being fixated on mars is a wonderful challenge. and the moon, in my view like steve, will be on the way. emily: here's to mars. he said he wants to die there. it is on him that he can prove it. lori, a former nasa administrator, and jimmy, ceo of orbital insight. nasa has delayed its next mission due to a leak. it was meant to take up on march and land on mars. the next launch window will not be for another few years leaving the mission unclear. coming up, one of the oldest car companies is setting up a partnership with one of silicon valley's companies. while uber and facebook are on

the cutting edge of american business, they are pushing the envelope for holiday parties. that is next. ♪ emily: ford and google are in

talks to partner with self-driving cars. the u.s. auto manufacturer is discussing a joint venture to use self driving cars. the announcement could come as early as this january at the

consumer electronics show. joining me now is kevin. kevin, what strikes you as most significant about this deal? kevin: to me, it makes sense. what strikes me is that the two sides are actually together talking about their weaknesses and leaning on the other to further the technology, further the transportation and appeal and change themselves. ford is a very old company and has been doing the same thing for a long time. for them to partner with google and say our strength is this, your strength is that and together we can go to the future is the most important part. emily: what does ford have that google needs and vice versa? kevin: manufacturing. ford manufactures vehicles. we hear more and more every day -- as far out as self driving vehicles may be, it could be decades, you still have to

produce the vehicles. google who may have the software and technology expertise does not want to manufacture vehicles. we see what new manufacturers -- if you look at tesla, they will struggle to make 50,000 units this year out of 85 million globally. it is a lot of investment to actually manufacture vehicles. to go to ford who is one of the oldest and best added, we can contribute this and you can contribute the manufacturing is the right thing to do. ford has been dealing in basically analog vehicles for a long time. to jump to that technology, which is ultimately the self driving vehicle, reducing risks and fatalities and to say we are going step-by-step. we need to take a leap forward and google can do that. emily: we have been talking about self driving cars for a long time. i rode in one in 2011.

they still have not hit the road in meaningful numbers. bill gurley was speaking about this recently. take a listen at what he said. bill: this is something that will take 20 to 30 years to play out. i don't think it is something that happens tomorrow. >> that is longer than others. bill: i'm not as ambitious. there is this thing in tech known as the hype cycle. for this overly choreographed technology disruptions, people get excited. it is doable but there is a lot of ai. it takes longer. emily: kevin, are self driving cars going to hit the road in significant numbers in the near-term or is it all hype? kevin: neither. they will happen. i think it is inevitable.

my belief is that what we're seeing -- what will stop the advancement is the interaction between self driving and human piloting vehicles. i like driving, but the human is the problem in the equation. when we see self driving vehicles have accidents, it is because the human driver hit the self driving vehicle because they are following this ridiculous set of rules. we don't follow the rules. we barely pay attention when we drive. the interaction between the two sides is difficult. if we make big advances in vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communication where we take large numbers of the human drivers out of the equation, it could advance faster. emily: ford has been doing, trying very hard to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. they have been trying to take on uber and lyft with this dynamic shuttle service. talk to us about the other things they are working on.

kevin: allen at ford has been out and retired since the middle of 2014. but even going back to 2010 and beyond, this was very important strategy points for ford which was to say that we may not know what the future of transportation is going to look like. we have a pretty good idea it will be very different. this sort of uber or vehicles as a service, transportation as a service, not so much about the driving anymore. but, actually getting to your destination more quickly and safer. it is something they have been looking at for a long time. credit ford. mark fields brought this forward today in this announcement we will probably hear next week which is to say they have done a good job to say it is not going to be what we used to know growing up. we want to be ready for the future.

we want to be in position for that when that changes. emily: kevin, our auto analyst, thank you very much. staying with driverless cars, the south korean government plans to build the world's first autonomous driving road. the site will be in the province outside of seoul. authorities are reviewing the plans for a joint investment with global developers of autonomous vehicles. construction is scheduled to begin in 2017. coming up, the holiday party season is in full swing in silicon valley. we will tell you which companies have been naughty or nice. at the end of the break, we will leave you with this stock. it is sliding in extended trading and pc and smartphone demands took a bite out of revenue. more of "bloomberg west" next. ♪ emily: carlos slim is ready to

say goodbye to the year. his fortune declined by over $20 billion. shares of his america movil telecommunication giant is heading for the biggest decline since 2008. he is now the fifth richest person in the world, down from third. such a pity. 'tis the season for holiday parties and that means pizza and the box. not so much in silicon valley where over the top is the standard. at dropbox, party planners hired st. lucia to play.

marissa mayer's at yahoo! had champagne towers. if you work at twitter, you spent the evening at at&t park where the san francisco giants play, complete with a dj. joining me now with more is our editor, mark millian. let's start with facebook. a trapeze artist? mark: a trapeze artist, 1920's style cars. a giant art deco in the design of the facebook logo. this was one of these blowout events where you can only imagine how much money they spent on this holiday party. emily: facebook is doing well.

is that ok? mark: i leave that up to the investors. they are doing well. i mean, it's just some of it looks excessive anywhere else in the world. emily: how about google? mark: google have this very trippy, hippie, weird san francisco burning man-style party. it was the under the sea event with jellyfish dancing. this is like -- google's founders are well known for making the trip out to burning man which is this annual hippie festival in the nevada desert. this very much fit that kind of theme. the employees loved it. emily: and yahoo! -- i think this picture might win for the most awkward photo of the year. mark: extremely awkward. employees essentially lined up to take photos with marissa mayer who, as you can see, is

pregnant. it just looks strange. there is this weird white, silky scene with this couch. they also, like facebook, threw this roaring 1920's theme party which goes back to the era of excess. probably some parallels with silicon valley especially when yahoo! is not in the best position. emily: dropbox. mark: dropbox's party had this hip, indie band playing. trying to sort of convey this aura of coolness, which i think helped. dropbox is also undergoing its own issues.

emily: fidelity and black rock writing down their investments. twitter, another company which had layoffs in the last six months. mark: ceo transition. but, not too much trouble to, for them to cancel their rental of at&t park which is probably the coolest of venues. facebook have their holiday party at at&t park last year. emily: there is a little following going on. mark: i think twitter would like to be the next facebook. emily: mark pincus serving beer at the holiday party. we have the ceo of uber wearing a tuxedo with his dog. mark: it is a goldendoodle. it's named after uber's chinese brand. emily: they work hard.

is it really too much? mark: i think they earned the trapeze artist and champagne towers. emily: thank you so much. we will be back after this quick break. ♪

when you're on hold, your business is on hold. that's why comcast business doesn't leave you there. when you call, a small business expert will answer you in about 30 seconds. no annoying hold music. just a real person, real fast. whenever you need them. so your business can get back to business. sounds like my ride's ready. don't get stuck on hold. reach an expert fast. comcast business. built for business. to discover the best shows friends together and movies with xfinity's winter watchlist. later on, we'll conspire ♪ ♪ as we dream by the fire ♪ a beautiful sight, we're happy tonight ♪ ♪ watching in a winter watchlist land, ♪

♪ watching in a winter watchlist land! ♪ xfinity's winter watchlist. watch now with xfinity on demand- your home for the best entertainment this holiday season. the top stories. appeal a ruling that he can be excited to the u.s. to face charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering. say the appeal could take years. they have decided to sell the rest of the agricultural unit to pay down debt. the embattled singapore commodities trader reached a deal with china's costco which was the company picked up nobles

manning -- remaining. early indicator from china suggest the economy may start the year on firmer footing. josie reading of 50.24 december and january. in the index shows improved sentiment. last week the new york-based china saw a business climate worsening across the board. the areas capital described as hazardous as the u.s. embassy and sears the polluted. they been times above the accepted level. -- 12 times above the accepted level. let's check in another markets have been trading in the asia-pacific today. >> it is too early to call this

a santa claus rally. certainly, we're getting a little bit festive. thesen mind we are seeing festive trading volumes. by -- 60% less than the 30 day losing average. a lot of traders have closed up shop for the year. on the back of the recovery, oil prices overnight also getting a lift. they pick up about 2% as well. getting gains across southeast asia. some inflation numbers coming out of singapore and malaysia. hong kong stocks up by over 1%. we are really seeing that energy being played out. we have oil related counters and australia doing quite well. listeda, the hong kong and remember this is one of the

majors that lost. their surging today up by as much as 9% at one stage after the ceo is said to have returned to resuming his duties today. we're counting down at the top of the hour. emily: we have been covering megaupload founder kim dotcom and his legal troubles. i sat down with him for an exclusive interview back in april. kim: the vast majority of files on megaupload are completely legitimate. there are no differences between megaupload or dropbox. you can use it for good things or bad things. you can buy a knife and stabbed someone in the heart, or you can

use it to slice your bread. you are not throwing a knife maker in jail because someone is murdering someone with a knife. i have never uploaded a single copyrighted file onto megaupload and shared it. emily: but did you try hard enough to stop it? kim: we followed the law. when we got copyright notices, we followed them. emily: you had a reward program. you paid users to upload content, and they made more money the more popular their content was. and the more popular things were movies that hadn't been released, music that was free. in that way, weren't you complicit? kim: i don't think so.

the rules are the front page. they say you cannot upload things that don't belong to you. the moment you upload a rip of a movie, you don't make a penny. emily: do you believe in copyright? kim: i believe in copyright, but i know believe in copyright extremism. if you are a hollywood studio and you release your content in one country first, the united states, and then roll it out over a couple of months in other countries around the world and expect the internet community and all of these different countries to wait for the release -- they just launched netflix here in new zealand. the catalog of content is roughly 10% of what is offered in the united states. that's completely unfair.

and because people don't get that access, they are looking for this stuff elsewhere. it's a problem created by the content creators. i am not responsible for that. emily: are you scared? kim: i am not a person who gets scared. emily: you not scared of 88 years in prison? kim: i am not scared of anything. everything that happens to me, i try to make the best of it. i know this sounds crazy, but i don't know fear. i don't understand fear. emily: my exclusive interview with kim dotcom. now, to a stock you might wish you had heard of last year, fingerprint cards, the swedish maker of biometric technology. apple has helped to this technology go mainstream. it is used by other big

manufacturers like lg. neither apple nor samsung use this company. fingerprint claims about 45% of the biometric market this year. coming up, as china tries to temper an economic slowdown, we will hear what one of its most prolific ceos has to say. ♪

emily: china's leaders are signaling they will take further steps to support growth in the country, including stimulating the housing market as beijing tries to put a floor under the economic slowdown. a ban on shareholder sales is set to expire next month. the shanghai composite has rallied 20% this quarter after the government took unprecedented measures to stabilize equities following a $5 trillion route earlier this year. few people have a better take on business than the founder of alibaba. here is another stocking stuffer for you. i caught up with jack ma on singles day and asked him about business and the health of the chinese consumer. jack: this is a day when we want all manufacturers and shop owners to be thankful for consumers. we want consumers to have a

wonderful day. business-wise, numbers-wise, maybe not a big difference, but the event itself, the meaning of it, generates such excitement in china. emily: you want this to be a global holiday. you want 50% of revenue to be international. what the timeline for that? jack: 10 years. everything we do, we have a 10 year plan. since we started. we judge how much we should do and what we should do to realize our dream in 10 years. our plan is that in 10 years we will reach 50% of revenues and sales from outside china. emily: you and i last spoke on ipo day. it has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for the stock since.

how do you explain the love-hate relationship that investors have with alibaba? jack: they love me. they hate me. but we love them. right? the hate cannot stop it. we're clear. we cannot take care of the stock price. we have to take care of customers and performance. that is what we care about. people don't like china's economy. they hate us. we have 86 years to go to prove ourselves. emily: you said today the chinese economy faces a bumpy ride. many internet companies will fail. what are you most concerned about?

jack: not the chinese economy. if the chinese economy is good, that does not mean your company is good. if the chinese economy is bad, that doesn't mean your company is bad. we think it's an opportunity for us when everybody is worried about the chinese economy or the global economy. we think it's an opportunity. worrying does not solve the problem. we have been worrying for years. many internet companies have failed and will fail in the future because they don't change themselves to meet the future needs of internet users. the consumers of the internet change so fast, so quickly, it's almost impossible to keep

yesterday's wonderful life. 10 years ago, who had the most successful internet company in the world? yahoo! today, i don't know. will alibaba still be like this in 10 years? emily: do you think we are in a tech bubble? jack: i don't think so. a company like us makes a billion dollars profit every year and you call it a bubble? it's a good bubble to have. emily: investors out there are saying they are skeptical of alibaba. they are concerned about accounting at alibaba. how do you respond to that? jack: that's their right. if they believe what they do, they should continue to do it. we cannot comment on their strategy.

but people like you, people hate you. i cannot make everybody like us. we do things we believe are right. we do what we think is right for the customer. as i said with the ipo, we can never promise that everyone is happy. we will do everything to make our customer happy, and then our shareholder will be happy. this is our philosophy. it's kept us safe for the last 10 years and it will keep us safe for the next 30 years. people like it, people don't like it, that's their right. emily: the united states is your biggest potential market. you have visited several times over the last year. what does alibaba in the united states look like in five years? jack: we are very thankful for the united states. without the united states, without seattle in 1995, there would be no alibaba.

without american tourists coming to my city, i would never have learned to speak english. and without the wonderful innovation of silicon valley. people say why come to america? where are you going to compete with amazon? when are you going to compete with ebay? we do not compete. we want to help small businesses in china, help them to asia. we have consumers online every day. 150 million people, even on their mobile phones, shopping our site. we need good products and unique products. the usa has huge potential. i want our team to be thankful, to invest in high technology, to

invest in companies in the united states that are helping them to grow, helping them one day come to china. it's a huge market. emily: amazon is also going global. they are focusing on india, for example. you are focusing on russia, for example. when the world's biggest e-commerce companies collide? jack: amazon and alibaba have a pretty different model. they buy and sell. we are a platform. on our site, we have 10 million businesses. we believe every company can be amazon. if amazon is a great apple, we are an apple tree. they are using our logistic

system. we want to enable every company to be e-commerce. i don't think amazon and us will compete. we want a lot of companies. emily: you just bought the youtube/netflix of china. you have been visiting hollywood. you were on stage with daniel craig. you invested in the mission impossible films. are we going to see you buy a u.s. studio? jack: i don't think they want to sell. you can't buy everything in the world. emily: have you tried to buy a studio? jack: no. i watch them with great respect. they need us. i think we can really work together. emily: my conversation with jack ma, chairman of alibaba, in beijing. cats, dogs, ponies, oh my.

amazon is pulling out its checkbook for commercials with cute animals. one features a dog with a cast limping through a park while other dogs chase frisbees and balls. the dog's owner uses amazon prime to order a baby bjorn for his injured pet. animal ads are the most shared of the year. amazon spent $3.5 billion on marketing in 2015, up 3% from a year ago. 2015 is almost over. we will give you our 2016 asia tech predictions next. tomorrow, david miliband on surveillance. more of "bloomberg west" next. ♪

emily: cbs ceo les moonves began his career as a television actor, but now he is up for the role of a lifetime. he will succeed sumner redstone as chairman of cbs when redstone passes away. the 92-year-old billionaire controls both cbs and viacom. a provision in the family trust allows sherry redstone to become chair of cbs. what do we have to look forward to next year?

our tech reporter joins us from taipei with some of his 2016 tech predictions. thank you for joining us. the first thing you predict is that it is going to be a big year for tech ipos. ipos.nese tech why? tim: it was a crazy year last year in china. one of the results is that the chinese government closed the spigot, they shut off the ipos. the runway has since been opened and all of these tech startups who had been looking forward to an ipo look like they could launch in 2016. there is a reason they go to china, and that is valuation. you are still getting better valuation in china if you are a

startup or an investor. if you have to list your stock next year, you are probably better off doing it in china. the u.s. tends to be a little more picky, especially when it comes to corporate governance. china looks like the place a lot of companies will go next year to get going and get ipos. emily: you also predict that indonesia will give birth to its first unicorn, which is a company valued at more than $1 billion. which unicorn are we talking about? tim: there is a company in the e-commerce space that is the most talked about, but it depends on which one gets the first round of funding. the first one to rise through

the ranks could get the crown. it's likely to be in the e-commerce space. there are about half a dozen unicorns in southeast asia, mostly in singapore and malaysia. there is one in vietnam. indonesia is going big on e-commerce. it's a new, struggling, kind of fledgling industry in indonesia, but it's something that is ready to take off. a few players are ready to invest and there is a lot of capital going there as well. emily: finally, you predict a number of different countries in asia are going to the moon. of course, this is interesting in light of elon musk's big success in landing a reusable rocket today. why this rush to the moon? tim: we know that china, japan, and even russia have plans to

send a mission to the moon, but they will basically be unmanned missions. they will collect samples. send a drone, pick up some moon rocks, head back. as we know, putting a human on the moon is a big step. none of those nations have announced a timeline. our own moonshot prediction is that one of those countries will come forth and decide they want to give it a shot. emily: the united states did it in 1972. elon musk has up to the ultimate goal to mars. tim in taiwan, thank you for your tech predictions. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg west." tomorrow, alan patrick off is our guest host for the hour. do not miss his predictions as

we head into the new year. ♪ bring your family and friends together

to discover the best shows and movies with xfinity's winter watchlist. later on, we'll conspire ♪ ♪ as we dream by the fire ♪ a beautiful sight, we're happy tonight ♪ ♪ watching in a winter watchlist land, ♪ ♪ watching in a winter watchlist land! ♪ xfinity's winter watchlist. watch now with xfinity on demand- your home for the best entertainment this holiday season.

>> can i look down?