emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next the u.s. hour, senate voted overwhelmingly to reinstate penalties for zte, defying president trump and potentially upending the deal the president struck with the chinese company. we will hear from senator mike brown of south dakota. plus, ibm's watson has beaten humans with trivia on "jeopardy," but what about a complex public debate? an ibm robot just took the

stage. who won and what it means. and a tech startup robin hood wrapped up a million new sign-ups when it got into crypto trading. we will hear from the cofounder about what is next, including possible plans for an ipo. but first, to our top story. u.s. lawmakers are pushing back on president trump's attempt to save chinese telecom maker zte. senators passed a bill to restore penalties on zte, effectively cutting off its access to the components it needs to build smart phones. senator chris van hollen spoke with bloomberg television earlier to explain why lawmakers moved to pass what could be a death sentence for this company. sen. van hollen: zte poses a national security threat to the united states through their telecommunications network. on top of that, zte, of course violated u.s. sanctions multiple flagrantly, tried to cover it up, so there is no

reason to let them off the hook. emily: joining us from new york, we have "bloomberg technology" selina wang, who has been following the saga. does this mean these penalties will, indeed, be reversed on zte? selina: the senate passed a bill that would reinstate the ban. this complicates the earlier agreement trump had made to ease sanctions as long as it paid a hefty fine and rearranged some of its management structure. this does not necessarily mean the ban is going to be reversed. this has to be passed through the house. any compromise has to be agreed upon by the house and senate, and then, at the end of that, trump still has to sign it into law. many asian analysts think this is just prolong the process for zte, and in the end, the ban will still be eased. there is bipartisan support for this bill and it is the first time congress has stood up to trump on a trade situation, but the end outcome is still unclear. emily: senator mark warner tweeting tonight, the senate passed our bipartisan amendment

to block the trump administration's bad deal with zte. if the president will not act on warnings from his own top officials about the dangers posed by zte, we will. and senator marco rubio issuing a statement that says, i issued a bipartisan statement with other senators after the senate passed the amendment. chinese companies who steal from and spy on america should not be able to stay in business using our technology. while zte is in limbo, can they stay in business? selina. selina: we are certainly seeing zte get punished severely by investors. the longer they are in this limbo, the more damaging it is for companies. they have already lost billions of dollars. their operations have all been halted. they don't have a clear path ahead. they still rely on united states chipmakers for key parts of their telecom equipment. but at the end of the day, the whole process is really

providing more impetus for xi jinping to achieve his made in china 2025 goal, which is at the center of the concerns of u.s. lawmakers. they don't want china to be technologically independent, don't want china to be able to steal ip from the united states. but the saga of zte is telling china they need to be able to figure out how to create this domestically in their country so they are not tied and beholden to the u.s. parts. emily: selina wang in new york, thank you for that update. i want to bring in senator mike rounds of south dakota. he currently sits on the senate armed service committee. he was previously a governor of south dakota. senator, welcome to "bloomberg technology." do you think president trump has started a trade war? or would you call it a trade dispute as peter navarro calls it? sen. rounds: right now it is a

dispute, but nonetheless impacting markets. south dakota is looking at significant impacts to soybean prices, down $1.45 a bushel, amounting to a lot of money in south dakota. china imports -- well china , takes up right now about 25% of the entire soybean market in the united states, 60% of everything exported. so it makes a real impact on some agricultural states, south dakota being one of them. emily: the tit-for-tat certainly sounds like a trade war to me. we are talking another couple $100 billion worth of chinese goods facing tariffs. sen. rounds: the president does not feel like we are getting good trade deals. there are a lot of people in the united states who feel the same way. we will allow the administration time to put together plans, but time is going to start running short, particularly in ag where we are looking at this year's production maturing. we are looking at corn crops coming in, soybean crops coming in. and if we don't have stability in this market in the near future, it is going to start impacting our economy.

that is one thing we do not want to have it do. there is certainly a lot in the ag states, a lot of support for the president but they also want , to know his endgame. what does he expect to achieve and can we sustain the impact on the agricultural economies within different states. emily: yet bloomberg has published a story that these tit-for-tat -- the war, dispute, whatever you want to call it -- could hurt american companies, apple, walmart, gm, tesla, starbucks among the most vulnerable. doesn't that concern you? sen. rounds: it certainly does. look. as we have said for several months, when you go after china, they are the big dog in this, you should do it from a position of strength. i think the president understands that. disputew, we have a going on with canada. we have a dispute going on with mexico. we did not get into the tpp, which had 11 other countries representing .5 billion new

consumers, that we are not doing. in each case, the white house felt strongly we should do individual agreements with each country. we don't have a single one done. let's get some of those done, and go after china from a position of strength. what we are asking is what is the endgame, what is the plan? in the meantime, let's continue to grow this economy. and you can't do that without some stability within the trade markets. emily: your senate colleagues have voted to restore penalties on zte. do you think the president deal -- presidents deal let zte off the hook? sen. rounds: it was not so much letting them off the hook that concerned me. we were concerned with what zte represents as a threat to our national defense. kaspersky had relationships with the russian government. we prohibited our government from buying and purchasing kaspersky equipment. the same thing in this particular case. at least my concern is not so

much the damage that zte has done. i think the president addressed that with a one dollars billion -- a $1 billion fine and the fact he wanted the board of directors removed and oversight board. i don't have an objection with that. i do have a concern that we have to make sure zte equipment is not being utilized within infrastructure critical to our national security. emily: doesn't it seem like these issues are getting a little bit muddied, whether zte is really a separate case or being used as some sort of chit in this broader trade war/dispute? sen. rounds: in some cases it is part of the discussion with regard to trade disputes. it is also part of the issue that the president would like to use a negotiation with china on other issues, including their relationship with north korea. so i don't want to tie his hands when you make the deal with leaders in china unless it impacts our national security. and that is one thing we have real concerns with.

are we allowing zte to still sell products to infrastructure critical areas in the united states that impact our national defense? my message is, look. we passed a bill. now let the president tell us , what he is willing to negotiate. the house has a bill with similar restrictions in it. there are some simple modifications that could be done with the senate bill if we get an agreement with the white house in terms of how we can all agree to move forward. but zte simply can't be allowed to sell to the government -- the federal government and particularly to the areas that are critical to our national defense, the infrastructure areas, where telecommunications could be impacted by this organization which has direct ties to the chinese government. emily: if tariffs on $200 billion of additional chinese goods, is that something you support or is there a middle

, ground that you would prefer? sen. rounds: this is the president negotiating in a style that only he has. $50 billion in tariffs, they put another $200 billion. he suggested if there is retaliation for that, he could put another $200 billion on. he is close to $450 billion in about $505 billion total imports from china today. so we are getting to a point where there might not be much we can do in terms of retaliation on chinese goods. at some we have to come to an point, agreement on how we move forward. time is of the essence for many of us. we want to see our economy grow. we did the right thing on tax policy. we did the right thing, and the administration did the right thing on the 1900 regulations that have been reduced. we are moving the right direction. we need a good, qualified job for us, which we are short on. and we absolutely have to have stable trade policies, the sooner the better.

the president wants to be the first that is able to make fair trade deals. right now we don't have those , deals. some of us we would love to see , those start to come to fruition. we are hungry. emily: senator mike rounds, south dakota, thank you for stopping by. sticking with tech companies, and the senate facebook has , missed a senate deadline to respond to lawmakers concerns about user privacy. on june 5, senators thune and n elson asked facebook to answer five questions on how it shares data with telecom companies. facebook had until the end of business on monday to respond. it is not the first congressional deadline facebook has missed, of course. previously, they were late responding to questions after mark zuckerberg's april congressional appearance. facebook also has until june 22 to respond to another senator's request about the telecom data sharing. coming up, square has a huge boost after expanding to cryptocurrency. it just got over a big hurdle with regulators. details on that, next.

and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. listen on the bloomberg radio app, bloomberg.com, and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: earlier this week, square announced it has been granted a virtual currency license in new york, letting customers buy and sell bitcoin. it sees the cryptocurrency market as an area for growth. investors agree, leading the stock to jump more than 80% this year. for more on that and the crypto market, we are joined by bloomberg's caroline hyde in london. so, caroline lots of difficult , headlines for crypto investors to digest, not the least of which the bank of international settlements saying bitcoin may never be ready for prime time. this is basically the central bank of central banks. what has happened over the last three days and what is going , through investors' minds?

caroline: amazing stuff. it was a tough start to the week when you have the central bank of central banks, as you said, saying that crypto is going to break the internet eventually. if you eventually have crypto have been, or bitcoin, the blockchain bitcoin has built upon, helping with all retail transactions, it would basically overwhelm the internet, they say. but they also say the main issues are instability of crypto is a key concern. they also worry about the consumption of electricity, saying it is an environmental disaster waiting to happen. and they are also worried about forward manipulation. however, this is the central bank of central banks. are we ever going to really anticipate them to like decentralized money? it is against everything they stand for. in many ways, many had anticipated this reaction coming from the bank of international settlements. they had already hinted earlier

that they found the combination of a bubble, a ponzi scheme, and environmental disaster. that is how they talked about crypto. so many are looking at reports from the bis and saying they have not done enough research. certainly, the ceo of circle, one of the key startups, is saying it is a shallow report, not looking at the research and development for the future of crypto. so many put that to one side, but it did concern many, as has reports about the ongoing so -- selloff in cryptos that we have seen throughout the year and the poor performance of some hedge funds. the start of the week was not too pleasant if you are on the crypto wave. emily: and yet square is still going all in and investors love , it. caroline: they do, they love it. it is not only helping square's share price, but has also given a boost to crypto itself. we have seen bitcoin rally on the back of these announcements. as you can see on gtv, you can see how we have seen a bump in

the previous day's trading on the back of some of this news coming from square, saying finally they have that bit license, as it is known, from new york. remember, new york has slightly tougher license requirements if you want to trade these sorts of cryptos. in the rest of the state, all you need is a transmission regulatory over read. in new york, you have to pass slightly more licenses and regulations. many feel that has stamped out innovation in the state, but still, many are going for these licenses. you see square has one. circle is going for genesis, one. coinbase. this is because it helps your startup if you can trade crypto. you have seen 7 million users come to square, wanting to trade crypto and use square cash. it is no wonder jack dorsey has lived up to his promise and got that bit license. emily: all right, bloomberg's caroline hyde for us in london

continuing to digest those , headlines. thank you so much, caroline, for that update. coming up, ibm's project debater faced off against its human competition. so did the robot hold its own and what does it mean for the future of watson business? we would discuss with the director of ibm research. bloomberg tech is live streaming on twitter. check us out and be sure to follow our global breaking news network at tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> i think that one of the claims made was that people should choose how to spend their money. i would like to offer a different view. emily: that was ibm's project debater giving its first ever public rebuttal monday. the robot held its own during two short debates and had some success, showing how adaptable this technology has become. the audience of mostly journalists and analysts said the robot scored better than

human debaters on enriching knowledge, but human debaters scored better on delivery, perhaps because the robot sounded like a robot. we caught up with arvind krishna, ibm's senior vice president and director of ibm research. i asked what grade he would give if it was a high school student. >> i would give it a high school grade right there. i have been clear about this maybe in the middle of high , school, and then it will graduate to high school and in college right after that. emily: project debater cracked a joke or two, but there were times it was clear it was repeating news articles. you know, how do you make it -- how do you improve the performance even more? >> there are two sides. one is how do you make the speech much more persuasive, much more well constructive. i don't think we will equal the best humans on that. we could put together a cohesive, lucid speech. on the other side, the knowledge and the evidence that it gives, i think, by and large people are , waiting to say it is more

knowledgeable and giving more evidence toward the claims its bouts. we have to decrease how repetitive it gets sometimes. emily: you have been working on this for six years. this must have been quite nerve-racking. >> oh, it was. completely. live in front of an audience on a topic we have never seen. emily: it is like your child performing in a high school debate. >> correct. i have had that experience and it is nerve-racking to be in the audience, watching that. emily: how does this compare to watson winning "jeopardy"? and answer. they get one right answer. when you are trying to form an opinion and persuade, there is not one right answer. out of all the possible claims, which are the three that are going to be the most persuasive? which three have the evidence that will persuade the audience? this is a whole topic. when you don't have a single best answer, or one answer is clearly better than another there is a whole complex science , field underlying all of this. emily: there are some things that watson can't do yet, right?

it can't do an interview, for example. why not? >> to interview, you need to come with a lot of knowledge about what you are trying to convey. emily: isn't it the same with a debate? >> no, it is not. in a debate you are given the , topic. yesterday, should space travel be subsidized? you are given the topic. you can find things that align to that topic, find things that might be against that topic, so it has to argue both sides. for and against. emily: what are the things that watson can't do, like an interview? are you going to be working on those? >> i'm not sure we are doing an interview. i would like to have watson work on making people more informed and to make decisions, which is the next phase of being informed , is what we want watson to help on. how can you help a geologist decisions? how can you help a lawyer make decisions? how can you help a lawyer decide what will best help a brief? help a business executive decide if a decision is good bad? as opposed to people who have

biases, conscious and unconscious, built in. a machine can say, i don't have any biases, let me give you the pros and cons and you decide. emily: watson has been slow to succeed in the real world. there have been criticism of watson's efforts in health care. there have been layoffs in the watson health division. what is your response? >> there is always going to be criticism when there is something new and nascent coming on. that said, 16,000 watson projects globally in 45 countries across different industries. i will take that as being the proof people are desiring these technologies and are employing value inet a lot of enterprises. that is what we are focused on, enterprises. 16,000 projects at the end of the day is the most telling. emily: why is it moving so slowly? why have you had layoffs? >> i think always as you balance , any business, we both hire and rebalance. that is the case here. you lean forward when there is something new and you might hire

a few hundred more than you need. then you realize this is not an area that will make progress, so you rebalance. but if i take it as an aggregate, i would say we have massively increased our total ai workforce and increased the number of people working in technology and in implementation projects. from five years ago, we have tens of thousands more people as opposed to less. emily: it has been many years since watson was unveiled. in just the last couple of years, we have seen amazon alexa, google assistant. these things have happened in the public eye. is ibm behind? >> not at all. our focus is very much helping an enterprise achieve success having enterprises deploy ai, whether it is customer service, discovery, reading, etc. we're not focused on just the assistance world. there is a lot of value on those. however that is a different , world of trying to help the individual consumer. our role is to help enterprises and governments deploy these

technologies to help their employees, their clients and , citizens. emily: when are we going to see a real breakthrough in how watson helps me, essentially? >> if i look at what watson is helping in oncology, over 30,000 patients served, helping doctors across asia and africa make better decisions. in 30% of the time, it finds a better protocol or something a doctor might have overseen. i think those are all real examples of how it is helping behind the scenes. emily: some of my conversation with arvind krishna, senior vice president and director of ibm research. coming up, ai in the workforce. how one startup is using artificial intelligence to give sales teams a new edge. and later in the our chat with hour, robinhood co-ceo vladimir tenev. what he has to say about the company's baidu fallout deal back in 2016. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: this is "bloomberg technology," i am emily chang in san francisco. ai is everywhere and ibm just added another entry to its chapters of ai history. first watson beating humans on jeopardy, now ibm showing off project debater, taking part in public debate. artificial intelligence is becoming a larger part of our personal and professional lives. according to statista, the global revenue for the ai market is expected to hit $20 billion billion by 2025. one company looking to make its mark is clari, a platform looking to help companies spot risks.

its clients include adobe, audi, ge, and more. it is backed by sequoia capital. joining us to discuss is the ceo and a partner at sequoia capital. thank you for joining us. it is basically ai for sales teams to give them an edge. why do you think this is such a big opportunity? >> because we are in the business of helping sales teams predict the future. if you think about that, predictive computing and sales, why is that big? predictive computing is arguably the largest transformational technology shift in our generation. if you look at statistics, jpmorgan is saying that today ai's spend is roughly $20 billion, growing to $60 billion by 2021. the impact of predictive computing on the global economy

will be huge. second, for us, sales. you can ask marc benioff this question when he comes on your show. emily: one of your main competitors. >> sales is the lifeblood of any company, whether you are privately held or publicly traded. imagine if you are the chief revenue officer or vp of sales and you can accurately predict the future of your forecast, whether it is bookings, revenue, earnings. this can have a massive impact on your financial performance and earnings. emily: salesforce is basically your competition. how big a threat is marc benioff? >> salesforce is obviously a very impressive company. it does many great things. i think it does something different than clari in that clari takes information from salesforce, combines it with other sources, and applies ai to help sales teams with their important questions, how much are we going to sell and how do

we sell more? emily: how do you drum up enthusiasm when you have cryptocurrency and all of these sexy technologies and it is a war for talent? >> no question. we don't have drones or self driving cars, no blockchain in my narrative. emily: it could come, everybody is doing it. >> everybody is talking about it. for us, it is the real impact we are making for companies like palo alto networks, nutanix, making a meaningful different in their growth. you mentioned ge, audi. if you look at what they are able to do today, for sales reps now logging into clari and clari is letting the rep know, here is where you have risk, this is what you should do next to close deals faster. or managers logging in and having this new view into exactly where they have risk,

and the machine not only showing them where they should spend time but showing them, what is the number going to be next quarter or two quarters out? allowing them to accurately predict where they are going to end up. emily: let's take a look at another business software company, domo. they had to refile in s-1 because it was so disappointing. does that have you resetting expectations? >> sometimes private markets can get carried away and public markets are unsuspecting. -- unforgiving. emily: is the private market getting carried away right now? >> we know the answer to that. the important thing is sustainable companies with revenue and profits over time and let the valuation fall where it may. i want to go back to where -- why people should be excited about ai and clari. when i think of it compared to other things, cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles, these things are exciting for the future. ai is happening now.

we see it in business applications and clari is an application of applying ai to sales. emily: are you excited about cryptocurrency for the future? >> very excited, because it is fundamentally a different way of doing things. it is a decentralized trust model, which is what the blockchain is all about. it is a fundamentally different organizing principle that can be applied many different ways. bitcoin is just the first application. emily: there are some who say we are in an ai hype cycle. elon musk saying it is going to be the end of the world. prove them wrong. >> if you look at our customer traction and momentum, that is real proof. we are using artificial intelligence, predictive computing to be able to allow reps to close their deal faster, managers to drive more revenue -- emily: do you have concerns about the power of ai?

>> our belief is ai is not going to replace humans. it is actually going to make the human superhuman in that i am no longer going to be thinking about what i should do next, how should i prioritize. the machine is going to help me use my own human brainpower to serve a higher purpose of exactly what we should be doing for planning, for execution, for being able to understand how we communicate to the street. a lot of the mundane organization of excel spreadsheets and the way people are trying to roll up their forecast today is a total nightmare. with the machine handling that and telling us, hey, this is what we are going to do in terms of our forecast for bookings, revenue, etc., it totally transforms the way i plan, the way i hire, the way i execute as chief revenue officer.

emily: softbank is investing $100 billion, giving startups very long lifelines and delaying exits for vc's. how was that impacting your strategy? >> it has had no effect at all. our goal has always been to partner with entrepreneurs everywhere from inception to ipo and beyond and that is what we are continuing to do. emily: is it frosty out there? you have done this many times. >> my answer is that we went out to raise $20 million and it went to $25 million, $35 million. it was oversubscribed. we raised faster than we thought. the markets are very healthy to be raising money, no question. emily: bringing it full circle and back to ai, the ceo of social capital has this new experiment using machines to make investment decisions.

do you think ai could put investors out of a job? >> ai has tremendous potential and a long way to go. today algorithms struggle to tell the difference between a blueberry muffin and a kitten. while we are making progress, there are a lot of jobs where human judgment is needed and i don't think they're going away soon. emily: could ai take bias out of the system? >> it could if designed correctly. it could also bake bias into the system. emily: andy byrne, ceo of clari, and the partner at sequoia capital. thank you for joining us. prominent names from technology have responded to president trump's family separation policy. speaking to the irish times, tim cook condemned what he called the inhumane detention of children, saying "it is heartbreaking to see the images and hear the sounds. kids are the most vulnerable people in any society and what is happening is inhumane and needs to stop."

elon musk responded to a tweet calling on him to make a statement, saying, i could not even keep the u.s. in the paris accord, but if i can help, i will do so. airbnb cofounders said "ripping children from the arms of their parents is heartless, cruel, immoral, and counter to the american values. the u.s. government needs to stop this injustice and reunite these families. we are a better country than this." the backlash follows the detention of immigrant children, including more than 2000 children separated from their parents after they crossed the u.s. border illegally. coming up, we catch up with robinhood co-ceo vladimir tenev on why the company is pushing into the already saturated crypto market. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: goldman sachs ceo spoke with john micklethwait at the economic club of new york tuesday. he touched on cryptocurrency and reiterated that goldman sachs does not own bitcoin. he says he does not consider a cryptocurrency that fluctuates widely to be a core value. >> it is not a systemic issue at this point. people are passionate for, passionate against it. i remember when it came out, when they came out with cell phones, i remember thinking, who the hell is going to lug this thing around? there are 10 phone booths on every corner. this is a fad, no one is going to carry a cell phone. i passed on that whole thing. turns out to have worked. [laughter] not for me, i own no bitcoin.

goldman sachs as far as i know has no bitcoin. if it does work out, i can give you the historical path where that could happen. emily: speaking of cryptos, over one million people have signed up for early access to crypto trading on robin hood. there is huge interest in the company's user base, but the cryptocurrency market is getting crowded. selina wang sat down with robinhood co-ceo vladimir tenev and asked what makes robinhood stand out. >> we saw the opportunity to provide a dramatically better product and we are doing that in two ways. one is by cutting down the pricing. customers can buy and sell cryptocurrency with no commissions. if you compare that to other offerings on the market, where you can pay 4% or 5% in commissions, that means for every $100 you invest in bitcoin or ether, five dollars goes away in fees.

we have dramatically lowered the price and also built a platform where all of your investments can be in one place, so you can trade cryptocurrency, trade stocks and options all commission free. selina: you are quickly becoming one of the largest options trading platforms. last week you rolled out a multi-leg strategy process. are you trying to target a more experienced investor base? >> the performance has exceeded even our most optimistic expectations. when we rolled out free options trading last december, it surprised a lot of people, because if you look at it, options trading is more expensive than stock trading. you get charged twice for every transaction. one is just the trading commission, but there is also a per contract fee. so a lot of our customers did not even think that would be possible to offer for free.

we were getting feedback from early customers, saying if you charge four dollars, that would be amazing, we would move all our portfolios over. making it free surprised a lot of people. it has quickly turned us into one of the top options brokers in the world. we recently announced crossing 2 billion in volume for our options business. it is continuing to grow really quickly. selina: robin hood was also founded during an historic bull market, impeccable timing. are you concerned how market volatility may impact user growth down the line? >> i think we have been focused on improving the product and also offering more products to customers. you are right, we have benefited from good market conditions. the great thing about offering different products like options

and cryptocurrencies is it gives people tools to actually make investments in all types of market conditions. cryptocurrency as an asset has seen less correlation with the broader equities markets. we offer thousands of different securities that give people exposure, not just to the u.s. equity market, but also foreign markets through a wide catalog of etf's. i think long-term we are going to solve that problem by offering a broad suite of financial services. five years from now, you should be able to open robin hood and get anything you could at your local bank or brokerage house at dramatically higher value and better experience. selina: one of your investors has called robinhood the amazon of financial services. so what is next? >> if you sort of take the theme of robin hood -- it started out

being free stock trading. what we did not anticipate was that customers would develop such attachment to the brand and to what the company represents and to the mission, really, which started out being democratizing the market. the mission has gone broader over time. now we will take what we learn from that first offering and we have used it to expand into other things that we offer at the best possible price. we want customers to think of robin hood in a similar way that they think of amazon, which is if you want to buy something physical, you go to amazon because you know you are getting the best possible deal and you are getting the item fast. i think people have been missing that in financial services, where they have been getting ripped off and overcharged by the incumbents and legacy players, paying 5%, 10%, sometimes even higher fees.

if we lower that to effectively zero, i think we see an opportunity to do that across the board, not just in investment products but all sorts of others. selina: we spoke in 2016 when you were doing an integration with baidu. what became of that and when you enter the chinese market again? >> we are obviously a very ambitious company, judging by the product roadmap and all of these things. a couple of years ago, we decided to launch in china with baidu as our partner. china obviously is a very tough market. we were a much smaller company at the time, somewhere around 50 people. what we realized was that launching in another market, especially a market like china, is sort of like growing this huge branch, this really big

branch to our business when the trunk is not yet so big. we realized that probably in order to make that effort succeed, we needed to invest a lot into it. when we kind of looked at it, we realized that investment could be matter made in our core business. emily: that was robin hood co-ceo vladimir tenev and selina wang. coming up, ezcater scores big with a $100 million funding round, the largest scored by a female ceo in tech this year. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: for the past 21 years, stefania mallett has been seeking venture capital usually from white male investors. last week she finalized her biggest yet, $100 million to grow a startup she cofounded 10 years ago. ezcater connects business with catering from local restaurants. its clients come from organizations of all sizes and

industries, including astrazeneca and tesla. the funding round is the largest secured by a female founder and ceo in tech this year. stefania mallett joins us now. thank you for joining us. this is nearly twice the amount you have raised over the last 10 years. why now? >> we are at a place where our results make it clear that we can use this money. we never raise more money than we know what to do with, and we know what to do with $100 million. emily: why do you think investors are buying it now? >> they were buying in before, just buying in bigger amounts because our data demonstrates there is a huge market. a $22 billion market in united states we are going after and we think close to $100 billion worldwide. we have demonstrated we know how to go after it, we are the market leader, the biggest player in the entire space by far.

if anyone is going to get funding, if you want to go after this market, we are the natural people. emily: there are lots of different kinds of food and food delivery businesses and many have tried and failed. we have seen businesses like doordash for example come back from the brink and raise a huge round from softbank. how do we separate the wheat from the chaff? >> you have to be careful about separating the people who deliver from the people who help the business professionals who are trying to find food do so. i say we don't slice, we don't dice, we don't deliver. we are the people who make it possible for a business professional to find the solution they need. we work with restaurants who know how to do the delivery and are effective at making their catering be what the restaurant needs -- i'm sorry, what the customer needs.

by putting players that are proven in touch with customers who have a need, we are not creating something new. the delivery guys, they are trying to create something new, putting together an entire staff that will do the delivery. they are calling on people who are on demand workers to do work they are not necessarily trained to do. we are dealing with professionals on both sides. emily: you have been raising money for almost 20 years and $100 million is a lot of money when women led companies are still getting just 2% of funding overall. what has changed and what has not when it comes to fundraising as a woman in technology? >> i don't think i can see a lot that has changed. behaviors are pretty much the same and the reactions i get when i walk in. if anything has changed, it has been inside me that i have learned to use the data. don't focus on relationships, don't pretend you want to golf or drink with these people. don't fake something, but go back to your data.

when you have results to point to -- one of the examples we use is results is the new gender. go back to your results, keep demonstrating you have results that make this a powerful investment for somebody. with that, suddenly gender, race, ethnic background, socioeconomic background, all of that disappears. stick to the data. emily: is there an age issue, too? >> possibly. i do have gray hair, as you see. i managed to raise money. i suspect i am more successful now than 10 years ago because now everyone thinks i am their mother and it is hard to say no. 10 years ago i was just old. this situation is more advantageous -- i am old enough to be their mother. i am not sure, that is just a guess. the truth is i keep focusing on the data and results. when you have a good idea and

good results, age, gender seems to fall away. emily: what is your advice for investors who might still be making biased decisions? >> try to put aside your biases. try to think about the scenario. you know the example that has been given when all evidence of who the performer was was taken away so all you could hear was the music, suddenly women became 50% of orchestras. before that if you were looking at the person, looking at the individual, your biases would come into play. so look at the business plan, read the plan without reading the name. look at the data being presented about how well this idea is expanding. and then think, if your heart raced a little bit, you thought that sounds like a good idea, then stop listening to anything that tells you, yeah, but it is a woman or minority or something. emily: stefania mallett, ezcater

ceo. we will keep our eye on you. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we will be back tomorrow. ♪

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