taylor: you are watching "bloomberg west." let's start with a check of your bloomberg first word news. the fbi released details of its investigation into hillary clinton's use of private e-mail while secretary of state. findings show at least 100 state department employees had clinton's private e-mail address. clinton has denied she was using private e-mails to avoid federal open records laws. donald trump met with african american leaders in detroit -- today, before he visits a church in detroit. the republican nominee is working to appeal to minority voters. the only president uzbekistan has had since splitting from the

soviet union has died of a stroke. he will be buried tomorrow. islam karimov was 78 years old. an official in south carolina says tropical storm hermine brought scattered reports of flooded roads and power outages, but no major damages. hermine weakened to tropical storm strength as it moved across the southeast. the system could hit connecticut and rhode island through labor day. global news, 24 hours a day, powered by 2600 journalists and analysts in 120 countries. i am taylor riggs. this is bloomberg. "bloomberg west" is next. ♪

emily: i'm emily chang, and this is "bloomberg west." coming up, vladimir putin rejects accusations his government hacked the democratic party, but he says whoever did it did the public a favor. our exclusive interview with the president of russia. baidu's vision of the future includes robot taxis and digital personal assistance in every home. our chief executive interview this hour. and samsung's bid to compete with apple may be going up with -- going up in flames -- literally. we break down samsung's major global recall. russian president vladimir putin said the hacking of thousands of democratic national committee e-mails and documents was a public service, but denied his government had anything to do with it. u.s. officials say otherwise. the fbi has high confidence that hackers guided by the russian government breached dnc servers. that, we know, had a cascading effect. wikileaks went on to publish 20,000 of those private e-mails

on the eve of hillary clinton's nomination, causing the head of the dnc to resign. all of this leads many to wonder whether russia is trying to underhandedly influence the outcome of the u.s. presidential election. our bloomberg editor in chief john micklethwait sat down for an exclusive interview with vladimir putin in eastern russia ahead of the g-20 summit, and asked putin what he knew about his government's alleged involvement in these high-profile hacks. mr. putin: i do not know anything about that. you know how many hackers there are today. they act so delicately and precisely. they can leave their mark at the necessary time and place, or even camouflage themselves as hackers from other countries. it is an extremely difficult

thing to check, if not impossible to check. russia did not do this, at the state level. is that really important? does it even matter, who hacked the campaign headquarters of mrs. clinton? the important thing is what was -- the consent that was given to the public. there should be discussions about this. there is no need to discuss the public's attention in a search for who did it. but i want to tell you again, i don't know anything about this, and at the state level, russia has never done this. to be honest, i could not even imagine it.

specifically since the campaign headquarters worked in the interest of one of the campaigns, rather than all of the democratic party candidates. so from this point of view, we could not have penetrated it. you understand, to do that you need to have your finger on the pulse. and give the specifics of political life in the u.s. john: do you not think this is a time when everyone should come clean about this? russia tries to hack america, america tries to hack russia, china tries to hack america, everybody tries to hack each other. and one of the purposes of the g-20 is to come up with a new set of rules, so this can become a more orderly version of foreign policy, when everybody's doing it, allegedly?

vladimir putin: i think it would be better for the g-20 not to get involved. there are other venues for this. the g-20 was formed to discuss issues mainly concerning the global economy. of course, politics is part of the economic process. that is a clear fact, but if we have squabbles over very serious -- over not very serious issues, we will overwhelm the g-20's agenda, and instead of working on issues of structural changes to the economy, taxation, and so on, we will endlessly argue about syria's problems or other world problems, and there are plenty. we could talk about the middle east. it is better to find other venues and other forums. the un security council, for example. emily: that was russian president vladimir putin,

telling bloomberg editor in chief john micklethwait that it is impossible to know who is ultimately behind the dnc act,. -- hack, but a probe by cyber security firm crowdstrike back to twoack groups that it says are russian intelligence services. we asked crowdstrike's ceo what makes him so sure. >> given what we have been able to track over the years, we can associate what we saw on their network with russian actors. looking at the tools they used, the infrastructure the , motivation, the tactics, the techniques, they all point to known groups that have been associated with the russian government. emily: our cyber security reporter mike riley has been covering the dnc hack and others for us in washington. bring us up to speed, mike, on the latest official line from the u.s. government on this hack. mike: the u.s. government has not publicly pointed the finger at russia. keep in mind, that happens rarely.

it happened in the case of sony, when they pointed the finger at north korea. we have some cases where the justice department talked about hacking by china. but they don't publicly do this often. but what has happened,, there has been layers of leaks to the press from the intelligence community, the fbi, all saying that the evidence we have looked at so far points to this being not just russian actors, but a state russian operation. on top of that, as we saw in the previous segment, the dnc hired a private security firm that is really good at that, who went in and made an attribution to two different russian groups that are associated with the intelligence agencies, and then they got a second opinion from two other forensics firms who found the same thing. at this point, a lot of people would say, the preponderance of the evidence certainly suggests this was a state operation by russia. emily: obviously, you have reported that not only have these dnc hacks been linked to russia, but other hacks can be

linked back to russia, indicating a broader political agenda. what would it take to definitively prove that russia is indeed behind this? mike: well, definitive proof is really tough. even the intelligence community does not talk in terms of definitive proof. they talk in terms of low, medium, and high confidence. they gave a briefing to the white house saying they have high confidence this is russian officials. that's about as good as they will get. putin made a really good point in the interview, which is that hackers are very good, especially at the state level, of making themselves look like something else. one thing that happened recently, we saw a leak of an nsa attack codes, and in there were hardcoded ip's for a chinese company. the nsa apparently all the time tried to make its hackers look like chinese hackers. so he is right. it is really hard to get something definitive. but this is like a crime scene, a forensics event where you collect lots of layers of evidence, and effectively what

they have done is said that, based on the evidence we have got, this looks like a russian state operation. emily: you have now even the president of russia denying that russia had anything to do with this. what can the u.s. actually do about this, at this point? mike: that's really the question for u.s. policymakers. if in fact russia is trying to influence the u.s. election process, even if they are just tried to make it very messy, if they don't have a candidate in mind they want to win, but they just want to blow it up, that's a really big deal. you cross kind of the red line that is very new, because you have another country trying to influence who will be the next president of the united states. so far, we have not seen what the u.s. government's response will be. there has been speculation that the ongoing fbi investigation may at some point come to a point where the u.s. government makes an official attribution. but if they do that, they have

to answer the next question after that. ok, if we think it's russia, and we are going to publicly say so, what are we going to do? there's all sorts of questions about escalation. you know, russia is already under significant sanctions, financial sanctions from the west. would you strike back in the cyber space? could this escalate to a level where it increases tensions and leads to a different kind of conflict? does our task questions for the u.s. -- those are tough questions for the u.s. on the table right now. as far as we know, they have not come to any answers yet. emily: michael reilly, bloomberg news cyber security reported in washington. we will continue to follow the story. we will have more of our exclusive interview with russian president vladimir putin in a special report on monday, 12:00 p.m. new york time, 5:00 p.m. in london. staying on the topic, fireeye says two hong kong companies were attacked last month. they found evidence of at least three attacks in the week leading up to sunday's

legislative election. the group used so-called "spearfishing" to send e-mails with malicious links as attachments. fireeye says it is not possible to determine whether they are linked to the chinese government. coming up, samsung issues a recall after reports of some phones exploding. how this impacts the bottom line. ♪

emily: a major setback for samsung. the company announced a global recall of large-screen galaxy note 7 smartphones the day before rival apple gets ready to

launch its new phone. the problem, faulty batteries that can catch fire. samsung will replace the approximately 2.5 million units consumers already have. joining us from new york is bloomberg's selina wang. this is obviously a devastating and far-reaching recall. how serious is this for samsung? selina: you never want to hear about phones catching fire, do you? regardless of the size of it, which some analysts are saying is reducing estimates of the sales of the phone from 14 million to 12 million, this is a huge blow to samsung's reputation. until this, things were going well for them. the note 7 had rave reviews. they had innovative technology, a great earnings announcement and they were able to maintain market share despite a global slowdown, and now there is this. this is definitely really irritating consumers and will not be helping their reputation. emily: are other samsung devices at risk? do we know what the problem is with the battery in this particular situation?

there are those horror stories about hoverboards catching fire, and i wonder if this goes beyond this. selina: samsung has responded quickly, but they have not been detailed about what the problem is. all they said is that it is a battery cell issue. have not been more detailed than that. samsung has a variety of battery suppliers. right now, customers don't even know, is my device ok, should i keep on using it? is not clear how they should proceed with this. emily: selina wang in new york, thank you so much. not great timing for samsung. while samsung does damage control, apple prepares to release new devices next week. they are setting the tone for the holiday quarter with iphone camera upgrades, and improved apple watch, and refreshed software. mark has breaking news about what is coming up.

as we get closer what are the , latest details, and what do we know about what will be unveiled? and how excited are people? mark: this is an exciting time for apple, their september event the biggest of the year. they will talk about new versions of the iphone and the apple watch. we expect the camera to be the big focus of the iphone upgrade, and the apple watch will get fitness and health tracking features. emily: what is the consensus among analysts about how much this will improve sales ahead of the holiday quarter? mark: this iphone model will not look much different than the iphone 6s and 6 from the last few years, so a lot of people with a 6s or 6 might not want to just upgrade to the 7 given the lack of big design changes. but we have to think also about all the people using iphone 5's and older. all the two-year contracts are beginning to expire for people with older models, so we will probably see a big stream of upgrades because of that.

emily: what about the watch? we are expecting a new watch, but not a big design change. is it going to be enough to get people to start buying it? mark: it might be. i don't think gps alone is going to really get people who only current generation to upgrade. but a lot of people with fitbits or the nike fuelband, for users who really like fitness trackers with gps and other dedicated features might be spurred to upgrade because of the more accurate tracking the new model will include. emily: what won't we see? mark: what we won't see our are bigger devices. this event onset temper seventh -- event in september will focus on the mobile stuff, the watch and the phone and the ios operating system and the watch operating system, but in october we will see apple's bigger in terms of size products being talked about.

new mac laptops and desktops. the new macbook pro with the function row, a macbook air with new ports, a big 5k monitor, a lot of cool stuff on the mac side is coming later in the fall. emily: how about next year, if we are not seeing big design changes? are they saving that for next year? mark: 2017 could be a very significant year for apple in terms of design changes. we are due for an iphone overhaul. 2017 is the 10 year anniversary, and it seems they are trying to save something extra special for the decade anniversary, so we will see a big design overhaul than. -- then. we already reported that next year's phone will lose the bezels around the display, meaning the phone will be smaller overall, even though it will either come with a bigger screen or retain the same large screen size now. it will not have a physical home button. i think that will be a real big change, and a lot of investors and consumers alike are going to be very happy with that. emily: looking forward to the unveiling. mark gurman, our consumer tech reporter, thank you so much for bringing us all the news before the news happens.

be sure to tune in to bloomberg tv and bloomberg radio on wednesday for live coverage of the apple event. and staying with apple, after a few days of will they, won't they, regulators ordered ireland -- ireland has confirmed it will on apple. tax ruling regulators ordered ireland to recoup $14 billion from apple, saying the government illegally cut their tax bill giving them an unfair advantage. prime minister enda kenny struggled to convince lawmakers they should support an appeal. coming up, it would have been really hard for elon musk to have a worse week. new filings reveal just how cash-strapped his companies are, and he had a rocket blew up in front of the entire world, disappointing mark zuckerberg. but there is a silver lining. we will explain. plus, ai is the new electricity according to baidu's ceo.

we will bring you the interview later this hour. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: elon musk had a really bad week. this thursday a spacex falcon 9 rocket blew up on the launchpad, marking their second loss of a spacecraft in just over a year. a person familiar with the matter said spacex did not buy an insurance policy for the rocket. it was carrying a satellite that facebook was planning to use to beam internet across africa. the satellite was backed by an insurance policy worth $3 -- $300 million. andlatory filings for tesla solarcity shows how fast they are burning through cash. it also shows that elon musk put up his personal stock in the company as collateral, so when

both companies tanked this week, he lost to $779 million on paper. silver lining -- big oil might tesla burnsions and h like other people burn gas. our bloomberg gadfly columnist says that the world's biggest automaker should be scared of the electric carmaker. check it out. >> tesla. it burns cash, trashes sales targets, and wants to buy a sister company, solarcity, that does more of the same. big oil should be terrified. why? capital. investors are pouring it into tesla, as they ask for it back from the likes of exxon. exxon mobil and its peers still rake in mind-boggling amounts of cash despite the oil crash, and

the international energy agency estimates big oil needs to invest $1 trillion every year to meet future demand. in theory, investors should want big oil to be big spenders, but investors want money back in dividends rather than having it plowed into the ground. so big oil is doing that and spending is heading down, not up. tesla gets a free pass. despite negative cash flow, investors want them to keep spending. ceo elon musk is talking of spending tens of billions dollars more on ever more ambitious products. stopped forecasting higher earnings for tesla around the end of 2014. the stock didn't really notice. every time they have sold new shares in the last five years, buyers stepped up. there is another analogy, shale drilling. despite a slew of bankruptcies, many smaller companies have succeeded. that is kept going, aided by willing investors ready to buy

more of their stock. bust eventually? sure. could more shale drillers go bust? yes. but even if they do, others will pick up where they left off. enough investors believe that electric vehicles and shale drilling promise growth and want to fund it. the oil majors just can't say the same. emily: our bloomberg gadfly columnist liam denning. we are getting breaking news about an e-mail sent to tesla employees couple of days ago urging them to cut costs and deliver "every car we possibly can." he said the simple reality is, they will be in a much better position to convince investors to bet on them if the headline is not tesla loses money again, but rather tesla defies all expectations and achieves profitability. and my favorite line, it would be awesome to succeed in the face of naysayers. that e-mail coming from elon musk after a tough week. coming up, baidu's ceo shares his vision of the future,

complete with driverless cars and digital personal assistants. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: i am taylor riggs. russia wants a compromise in a dispute with japan that stretches back over 70 years. at the end of world war ii, the soviet union occupied four small japanese islands. in an exclusive interview with bloomberg editor in chief john micklethwait, president vladimir putin said resolving the conflict should be part of developing a long-term relationship. mr. putin: several years ago, we discussed this topic, and we met him halfway. so in the past couple years, led by initiative from the japanese side, now our partners are

showing willingness to return to this topic. we are talking not about an exchange, but finding a solution where neither of the parties would loose. taylor: president putin weighed in on the american presidential candidates. mr. putin: with all the shock tactics of not only one, but the other candidate, they are going the wrong way. they are very smart people. they understand they need to get people to listen to them. taylor: don't miss our special report on monday at 12:00 p.m. eastern spain is moving closer to its third election. parliament rejected acting prime minister mariano rajoy's bid to form a minority government and end the country's eight-month long political deadlock. they have until october to create a new government or elections will be called, possibly on christmas day. the world health organization warns that zika remains an international health emergency that continues to infect new countries. zika has to date infected 72 countries and territories. young hispanics, asian-americans, and after americans are more likely to trust hillary clinton than trump on immigration issues, according to a new poll. 26% said clinton would do a better job handling the border, and 18% said neither would. global news 24 hours a day in more than 120 countries. i am taylor riggs. this is bloomberg. emily: this is "the request." baidu is outlining plans to stake out a spot in the rapidly expanding field of artificial intelligence. the smallest of china's big three internet giants is planning a partnership with nvidia to develop autonomous cars, taxis, and a device and later the amazon echo. shery ahn spoke to ceo robin li this week. robin: yesterday we introduced the baidu brain to the general public, the main theme of the baidu world event.

ai is very important. i think the next episode for the internet is ai. we started from pc-based internet, which has lasted for 10 or 15 years. over the next, over the last four to five years, it is pretty much mobile. and now mobile is also passing. everyone has a smartphone now. the next growth driver for internet will be ai, and baidu brain is the core of the baidu ai technology. we are coming to promote the next stage of growth. shery: autonomous vehicles are very popular, and you just received approval from california to test drive them on roads. what can baidu provide for the car market, compared to apple and google? robin: i think we have a number of advantages. we have been doing mapping for over a decade.

autonomous driving is heavily reliant on high-definition maps, and we have the best technology for that. also, the chinese government is very friendly to self driving cars. they gave us favorable terms. for example, they would have a controlled area for us to test self driving cars. we have invested in ai technology for the last five to six years, and self-evident cars are heavily reliant on image recognition and computer vision. we are at the very front of this kind of technology in our cars, making progress almost every day. as you mentioned, we now have a permit on california roads.

when will he challenge is on that end? robin: it is kind of normal, for something like us. we provide search services for hundreds of millions of users

every day. sometimes there are just areas that we didn't pay attention to, where there are bad apples. we need to clean that up. but going forward, the users are very dependent on our service. right now, most queries are in text format, but going forward more and more people will use voice, use images to search. voice recognition, the accuracy is very high, and that is one of the basic ai-related technologies. we are also at the forefront of that. shery: will ai technology be able to make up for some of the downside you have seen in your search business? robin: yes. probably five years down the road, 50% of queries will be in the form of voice and images. so people can express your needs in a more natural way. right now, people think typing is the natural way to talk to a computer. but it's actually not. the next generation has already gotten used to touchscreens, but talking is even more natural than using your fingertips. we have technology for that, and we think people will use our service more. shery: how can this kind of innovation drive china's growth going forward? robin: the chinese government pretty much thought internet to fuel the growth of the next age for the chinese economy. they call it the new normal, and they are using the so-called internet plus to drive the economy's growth. but internet itself needs a growth driver, too, and we think that is ai, so we have been heavily investing in ai

technology, and that will open up a lot of new possibilities in the car industry, in the health care industry, in manufacturing, in lots of industries, and china will benefit from that. emily: baidu ceo robin li, speaking with shery ahn. uber's deal with didi in china. regulators in the country are investigating the planned merger and have twice met with executives. if approved, the deal will create a $35 billion giant that will dominate the chinese car hailing market. the antitrust watchdog is unlikely to stop the merger. didi claimed they did not have to file for approval because the deal did not meet the financial threshold. this weekend, we bring you all our best interviews of the week. "the best of bloomberg west" is saturday on the television.

coming up, one social network is trying to put an end to racial profiling and abuse. nextdoor's ceo joins us to talk about product tweaks going beyond what any social network has done before. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: now to a stock we are watching. shares of rocket internet fell the most in four months after the company announced it lost nearly $690 million in the first half of the year, mostly due to losses in its apparel e-commerce business, global fashion groups. the company has seen its share price slide 30% over the last year as investors lose patience with the slow pipeline to take its units public. turning now to a serious issue on nearly every social platform,

racial profiling. with online abuse between more -- becoming more prevalent, social media companies are scrambling to adjust their policies accordingly. the private social network for neighborhoods, nextdoor, is the latest to make that a change. the company's cofounder and ceo nirav tolia joins me in the studio to talk about how the company is taking the issue seriously. you say these changes go farther than any social network has gone before. explain the changes you have made. nirav: we had entirely re-created the post form that users use when they share safety information in their neighborhood. i'm not sure it goes past anyone else, because we are pretty inwardly focused, but for us this was a major change. emily: explain the tweaks. in one case, if you are reporting a criminal activity you have seen, you have to include multiple details about

the person involved. nirav: we are really looking to do two things. first, we want to make sure when members are posting in crime and safety, they are actually posting information that is suspicious, criminal,, or potentially criminal. that's the first thing. second when members have to include race, we want a higher bar. we want to have more information so that an inadvertent post will not stereotype an entire race. emily: one of the criticisms of nextdoor is that it has become a crime and safety platform, at least in certain neighborhoods. how are people using the platform? nirav: the most popular use cases are sharing service provider recommendations and classifieds. emily: so finding a babysitter, finding a handyman.

nirav: the sorts of things he would lean on your neighbors to help you with. it turns out creating a safer neighborhood is important to neighbors, so nextdoor is used as almost a virtual neighborhood watch. but the vast majority of content is not related to anything regarding race. emily: this is obviously a problem a lot of social networks have dealt with. humans are racist, computers are not, and it's a matter of, how do you take that out of the algorithm, essentially. twitter, for example, has gotten a lot of criticism in this area. leslie jones left twitter. ev williams, cofounder of twitter, was recently on the show. i asked him, and he like you had been working on the internet for a really long time, and he said things are getting worse, not better. ev: it has gotten worse, for sure. in the early days of the internet, it was a little better, and we sort of felt like it's a big club, and if you are there, you are welcome. to use a metaphor, we had dinner parties with our front door open, and if you stopped by everyone was kind of glad to see you. so much of the internet has evolved with that default framework. so the idea that anyone can join any conversation is not something we expect in the real world.

emily: airbnb has also dealt with racial profiling issues. the hashtag #airbnbwhileblack was trending, with some user saying they were accepted less often. how could the changes you made help the platform at airbnb or twitter? nirav: every company is different, but for us it was being true to our mission, creating stronger and safer neighborhoods. racism, one of the worst ills in our society, is counter to our mission. for us it was about rolling up our sleeves and changing the product. it is hard to do, particularly if you are already used by 110,000 neighborhoods across the country, but we had the urge to do this because this was a real moral issue for us. emily: even you said it may alienate some users, and that's ok. if you lose people, that's all right. nirav: since we rolled out the changes one week ago, the response we received for members and community groups is overwhelming the positive, and even in cases where members have

to go through the forms we created, it results in better content. in this case, i think it is a win-win. emily: so how are you going to measure the effectiveness of these changes? nirav: well, everything will day -- every single day we are looking at the number of our members who write in or flag comments as racial profiling. this is something we're watching very, very, very closely. and it is something we don't feel we have finished. the work has started. we have a good milestone with 75% improvement, but there is a long way to go. emily: as someone who started many companies, working in this world for a very long time, what are your bigger picture thoughts on how the internet gets harassment and trolling under control? nirav: the internet has provided a medium where it is very easy to communicate, and you don't have the same authenticity you find online, when you talk to someone off-line, you are actually talking to them about real issues because you are right there with then. how do we create that analogous

feeling of responsibly online? that's what we're trying to do with nextdoor. we are not trying to be a different place were you talk with your neighbor. we are trying to be an icebreaker, so that when you speak your neighbors in person you have strengthened that connection with something you have done online. in general, we need to make the internet a facebook we can be our best selves, not where we feel safe doing things we would not do in person. emily: airbnb and twitter doing enough? nirav: we are in an industry that cares deeply about these issues. in a world that appears to be increasingly divided, i believe technology is a force that can be people together. and that's not just our company, but all the companies we work with. emily: nirav tolia, ceo of nextdoor. thanks much for stopping by. nirav: thanks for having me. emily: coming up, we speak to ceo who plans to bring ed tech

emily: coming up, we speak to ceo who plans to bring ed tech into the boardroom. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

a story we are monitoring. pushback. the wall street journal reported -- horowitz as returned a total of $1.2 billion of cash to invest is -- investors. sequoia returns more money. a benchmark has multiplied investors money 11 times in -- since the 2011 fund. managing partner scott kopur responded with a blog post, saying that the journal conflated realized and unrealized returns, using unrealized returns for the headline. mark andreessen also tweeted out, talking about how it's easy to get confused.

ed-tech is venturing into the boardroom. one company leading the charge, coursera, the silicon valley startup that offers courses from top colleges and universities. they recently announced they are branching into corporate learning. coursera for business allows companies to use the platform for continuing education. joining me is the ceo, rick levin. you have so much experience, as president of yale university for 24 years. your partnering with businesses. how will this work? rick: we learned from our consumer product that many of our 21 million learners are taking courses from a company e-mail address. when we realized we had companies with as many as 10,000 employees taking our courses, and it seemed only natural to extend our product to a business offering that would provide support for those companies

in their incorporate training. emily: other ed-tech companies made the jump into the corporate learning environment. how do you stand out? rick: we're pretty special. we are much bigger than some of the competitors, and we have a tremendous breadth of content from 100 for the five universities, spanning tech, data science, business, personal skills, and our courses are deeper. most corporate learning things in are short videos on specific subjects. a lot is about compliance. ours is about in-depth training. these days a lot of companies need to take people and update their skills, and we are well suited for that. emily: there have been so many attempts at creating giant multibillion dollar ed-tech companies, yet we have not seen one.

why is that? rick: just wait. we will get there. emily: what makes this market difficult? rick: i don't think it's difficult. we are only four years old, and we have 21 million people signed up. we found a real market in specialization certificates, groups of courses that go in depth in a subject, in business, technology, data science. our credentials from these are the most frequently cited credential in the world on linkedin. and we are only four years old. emily: so many copies are trying to disrupt the job you used to have. you think a yale degree in 20 years will mean the same thing? rick: i do. in a way, you can think of us as augmenting the power of great universities, allowing them to reach across the world. we have partnered with yale, stanford, northwestern, chicago, university of tokyo, great schools around the world, giving their professors access to 10 or 100 times the number of learners they would normally educate.

it is an amazing way to scale what universities can do in the world. emily: why will that yale degree still be as valuable? as we know, there are a lot of new ways to learn. these degrees are very expensive. people graduate college with a lot of debt. i was one of them. why do you think they will be as important? rick: we have very generous financial aid, but it is true as a general problem. i think the very strong colleges provide a kind of learning experience that goes beyond the classroom. you are in the company of outstanding scholars and phenomenal students, and a lot of it is the education you get outside of the classroom and all the extracurriculars, the environment, the richness of the resources. undergraduate education will still be, you know, at the top end be very much alive for a long time. i think that skills training, though, will migrate in the direction of online, because it is so much more efficient and

scalable, so much less expensive. we can train people to learn programming languages, or to be a software developer, or to learn financial or accounting techniques much more efficiently than you otherwise could. emily: you have raised $146 million in funding. what is the long-term plan? do to you want to go public? rick: eventually, of course. but right now we are too busy changing the world to talk about an ipo. emily: where will coursera be in five years? rick: we will be a public company, offering both smaller micro-credentials that help in the labor market, and offering coursera for business, offerings for many hundreds of companies. we are also developing online degrees in professional areas.

where we have a computer science and data science degree from illinois, and we have several others in the pipeline. this is, again a way to reach , people all around the world who never would have access to such high-quality schools. they can do it online, they can stay in their jobs, and not sacrifice all the money it would require for them to leave their jobs and pay for courses. emily: coursera ceo rick levin, thank you so much for joining us. former president of yale university. we will keep our eye on you. one-story we are geeking out about, lowe's stores in san francisco are introducing a new employee, the lowebot, which will help you find an item you are looking for. but it speaks multiple languages and can scan aisles for missing products. it will debut this fall at 11 stores in the bay area. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg west." next week, don't miss full coverage of apple's highly anticipated product event on

wednesday. we will bring you a special one-hour special, and "bloomberg west" as usual in the afternoon. this is bloomberg. ♪