♪ emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco. and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, antisocial. president trump's campaign on what he calls unfair searches on social media. how will this latest spat impact tech regulation? plus, elon musk returns to twitter, yet again fanning the flames. why the tesla ceo can't quit social media, despite warnings from investors. and the slack ceo stewart butterfield talks to us about building a massive start up and a timeline for a possible ipo.

first, president trump has issued a warning to social media companies after he accused google of rigging search results to show negative news about him. president trump: google and twitter and facebook, they're really treading on very troubled territory, and they have to be careful. it's not fair to large portions of the population. emily: experts say it's unclear what he or congress could do to influence how internet companies distribute online news. trump has talked about expanding libel laws, but is it possible? for more, we are joined by max. is it possible? matt: it's possible. congress has the power to impose pretty serious regulations on internet companies if it would like to. what isn't possible right now is president trump taking unilateral action to go after the companies themselves. any serious action is going to take action from congress.

it is going to be controversial. it would likely lead to litigation as well under the first amendment. emily: how much damage could trump do by continuing to say these things, text messages to supporters, his campaign reiterating that the fake news cycle is in full swing? bey are going to continue to at this drum. matt: they are. perhaps it helps the president politically. i think for the internet companies, the real threat is that, you know, for 20 years, congress has taken a very hands-off approach to these companies, believing that the best approach is for the government to stay out of the way. and what we've seen in recent months is really an erosion of that. and now, the idea of regulation, serious regulation is really on the table. that's different from saying we

are likely to get there, that this congress will get there, but we will see a number of legislative proposals in the months ahead to regulate these companies in ways we have not seen before. emily: so, what kind of ways that we have not seen before? we are seeing sheryl sandberg, twitter ceo jack dorsey prepare to testify before congress next week. mark zuckerberg, going earlier this year, completely unprecedented. what a direction could congress take? matt: you're going to see a number of things on the table. some will be aimed at election interference. you've seen the introduction of what's known as the honest ads act, requiring transparency in advertising on social media. you are likely to see more legislation introduced about privacy protections, really requiring the consent of subscribers before social media can use your information, your data, giving you more control over it, not the company the ability to profit from it.

in the more extreme case, perhaps what donald trump was referring to yesterday, really treating social media companies as common carriers, as utilities, something that his old advisor, steve bannon, had pushed, and really requiring equal treatment, nondiscrimination from these companies. that would be very aggressive. ironically, it conflicts with the first amendment views of some of the judges that president trump is appointing to the court. i think some of those more extreme measures would have a real tough time getting through. emily: what's the most likely scenario? matt: i think you will hear a lot of noise about this in the coming months. i don't believe the most disruptive scenarios that really disrupt these companies' business models are likely.

i think the most likely scenario is probably a regime focused on transparency. we know very little about how these companies' algorithms work, and i think congress -- the most likely scenario, to gain a consensus, is focused on shining more light on that process. tell us how you operate. let researchers see that. let's go from there. emily: our bloomberg intelligence reporter, of course so much to cover in the week ahead. thank you for joining us. meantime, google maps did not wait to see if lawmakers renamed a senate office building for senator john mccain. the russell senate office building across from the capital came up on the search engine's map as the mccain senate office building for several hours on wednesday morning. senate minority leader chuck schumer of new york proposed the idea of renaming the building. google said, in the early afternoon, that it was fixing the map.

coming up, tesla ceo elon musk is reviving old feuds and issuing denials about reports on , where else but twitter? why his use of social media could get him in hot water again. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: elon musk returning to twitter just days after abandoning his short-lived plan to take tesla private, but this time his tweets have nothing to do with the company.

in a series of posts yesterday he denied that he cried during , "the new york times" interview earlier this month and traded a follower who criticized him for calling a cave explorer in thailand a pedophile last month. bloomberg has been covering this story. given that the sec has opened inquiries into tesla, namely musk's communication and how he revealed information, is this risky? >> yeah. i don't think this calms investors or folks involved in the company. these are not the types of tweets or public statements you are accustomed to getting from a chief executive about if someone broke down in an interview or not. again, these aren't violations of securities laws. nothing was mentioned in that regard, but following the closure or the idea of taking the company private, that ending

a few days ago, that doesn't mean the sec stops looking at that statement. even though they are not going to go forward with that plan or at least that's the current state of play, the agency is going to look at the kinds of statements, the factual basis in all of that. in terms of his latest tweets, i don't think it would probably give a lot of investors -- wouldn't calm them. they would expect more impulsive statements in the future as well. emily: the sec is denying that they are investigating tesla. what do we know? >> the sec never confirms or denies any probe. that's kind of their standard language. we have reported that they were looking at this tweet. we've also reported that the agency was looking at model 3 production numbers even before this talk of taking the company private. so, the sec doesn't confirm or deny. that's their standard language. as we've reported and others that there is an ongoing investigation going. emily: but what do we know about

the likelihood? we've had former sec lawyers on the show who said given that they are clearly sending subpoenas out, that means there is an open investigation are signals -- or signals an open investigation. matt: a subpoena is a formal request for information that says we want all the communication from elon, the board, what was discussed and when. another thing to point out, these investigations take years. the average investigation takes about two years. we've written about how the agency is probably going to want to move faster than that here, given the tweet. it's a finite amount of time. there's a pretty definite amount of evidence to gather. they should be able to turn around, make a determination of if securities laws were violated on that tweet more quickly than other investigations that they do. emily: bloomberg's matt

robinson. i know you will keep us posted as we continue to cover this story. that tweet from musk denying that he cried in the interview was prompted by a contributor piece in "forbes" about the stress of the ceo job and expectations on men versus women. amy nelson wrote in that piece "i read musk's interview with a , bit of wonder. i don't believe i could cry in an interview or any public setting." amy nelson joins us now from seattle. first of all, what do you make of elon musk's response to your piece, which appears to be his first public response to this "new york times" interview, which said he alternated between laughter and tears? amy: hi, emily. it was an interesting response. i think mr. musk remained quiet for a week and he had a lot of options here. he could have said nothing at all. instead, he chose to deny crying. i think it's interesting how it

speaks to the piece itself in talking how men and women are treated differently in the workplace and i think we view ourselves differently, too. we've read so many articles about elon musk yelling at employees, at journalists, and he has never denied those but here he stood up, and said, i deny crying. what does that mean? emily: do you think if marissa mayer cried in an interview they -- that investors or analysts's would have any sympathy for her? amy: they would view her as being weak. in society we look at women and men with different lenses. women have to walk the line of being strong, but not too strong. being kind but not gentle. there is no place for crying. emily: you have gone on to respond to musk's response, saying he could have addressed the double standard between men and women ceo's, but instead he simply denied it. do you think that's part of the broader problem? amy: i do. i think that in the past year,

the #metoo movement and everything that's happened, we have started a conversation about how we look at women in the workplace and in america more broadly. have we made progress? what's the next step? at the riveter, we are building a community for women to move forward. we include men in that. we are at an inflection point where men could stand up and be part of the conversation. it would've been amazing if elon musk had said, yes, and that's ok, i had this authentic moment, and that's good, we need to show up as our authentic selves. start of life is so hard. we need men to jump in and say, it's ok to show that emotion. emily: the riveter is a co-working space that is more catered towards women. it is sort of an alternative to wework. you have a lot of female founders, female startup workers in your work space. have you seen much progress in the #metoo movement, or is it more talk than action?

amy: i think we are really at an inflection point. if you look at the percentage of vc funding that went to women in 2016 versus 2017, there wasn't much change. we've seen some movement this quarter, but we are at this really important point where we need men to get involved. men still meter the oxygen in so many ways. they are 90% of vc investors. we need them to step in and say, how can i work with women to make this change happen? emily: that said, we are continuing to see companies -- you point out the scooter companies that are valued at $1 billion plus. it's almost unheard of for a company founded by women to get top dollar. in the skeptics would say that women aren't founding companies with big visions, huge earnings potential. what's your response to that? amy: i think you should take a look at the riveter. we are opening our fifth

location in 16 months, which means we are outpacing wework's early years. to say it's a pipeline problem or that women are not ambitious and can't build billion dollar companies is 100% wrong. there is so much opportunity. investors who get on the right side of that will win. emily: knowing that tesla needs to build a diverse workplace, spacex as well, what is your advice to elon musk? he has the sec on his back for simply the way that he has communicated all of this information. amy: i think elon musk is a visionary. he wants to change the world, and tesla can do incredible things. i think elon is taking a good step and showing up as his authentic self, and i think he should own it. as a former litigator, the lawyer in me says, perhaps he shouldn't share everything via twitter. emily: amy nelson, founder and ceo of the riveter. thank you so much for stopping by. coming up, slack's ceo speaks about the competition, workplace diversity, and his thoughts on a possible ipo.

that's next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: hewlett-packard enterprise came out with a better than expected profit forecast. that's seen as a signal that hpe is starting to benefit from cost-cutting. the company also named a cfo. in the latest edition of "bloomberg studio 1.0," we covered a lot of ground with stewart butterfield, including taking the company valued at $7

billion public and rising competition from microsoft. take a listen. stewart: no, it hasn't shown up in actual usage of customers. in actual usage of customers. where it does show up is in the sales process. i think what will be really interesting is people talk about new microsoft versus old microsoft. where i think that will make a big difference is what the policies are for customers. enterprise software is an enormous category. microsoft is the single biggest company in that category, but it is still only 5% of all revenue, so there is another 95%. the reality is customers make their choices. they will use one product from one company for one part of their business and another for another. and the degree to which they can can interoperate or integrate with one another is really important for the added value you can create. first of all, i think it's good validation for us. second of all, we are ahead on the product side. emily: so, you are not worried about it? stewart: no. emily: you said you are running

the company to get ready to go public, but you are not necessarily going public. where are you now in that? stewart: kind of in the same position. i think it's difficult to contemplate -- there are not many outcomes where we don't end up going public. i don't have any kind of timeline. we are not in a rush to achieve that. it is an unusual circumstance, because i think 10 years ago, 20 years ago, we would have been public long before we got to this stage. we are a big company with hundreds of billions in revenue. -- hundreds of millions in revenue. we are still private. emily: would you consider selling? i mean, we have chased speculation that there is a buyer out there for slack, at an insane valuation. stewart: there are definitely people who would be willing to buy it. doesn't work that way in a private company. it's a much more circumspect conversation. hey, stewart, if you would be interested in talking about how our companies could work more closely together, we would also be interested in that conversation, or something like that. if we don't say, that sounds

great, let's talk about it, there is no offer. no one ever says, here is a check, want me to sign it? we are so optimistic about the future and having so much fun, and i personally would like to do this and other 20, 30 years if i can. it doesn't make sense to sell it. when i say unbounded potential, i mean we should end up as big as microsoft if we are able to execute in the way i hope we can. emily: that said, microsoft, facebook, and perhaps even google are trying to do what you do. do you think they have too much power? stewart: if i had to answer the question point-blank, i would say no. it depends on what you mean by too much power. i think things change. sometimes they seem impossible. people tend to overestimate the short-term effects of technological change, but they underestimate the long-term effects. i think the same thing is true in business.

there will be disruptors to those companies in the fullness of time. emily: i know you are nervous about being held up as a model for diversity, but the truth is your numbers are far above industry average when it comes to diversity. you, personally, decided very early on in slack's lifecycle to make it a priority. what was the spark that sort of brought you that realization? stewart: first of all, it wasn't just me. it was a company-level decision. it was when we were around 30 people, and we looked around and we were like, hmm, this is looking more or less like every other tech company. it caused a conversation. what is it we can actually do to make a difference? the real impact was more likely to come in building an inclusive culture, one where people of all different types can thrive, one where critically people are less likely to fall out. the longer someone from an underrepresented group or a woman in technology stays in, the more success that she has in her career, the greater the odds that she is going to bring people from her network that she will mentor and role model.

that's the way you get lasting change. we don't have it figured out. what has happened is we've made some positive moves and we've taken an open, experimental approach. we've attracted a lot of people. success begets success. emily: 43.5% of your workforce is female. versus 30% industry average. your numbers are way better across the board. facebook and google released their diversity reports, and the numbers have barely moved. how could the rest of the industry move this in a substantial way, and what is your advice to young entrepreneurs who are starting at the beginning? stewart: second question, start as soon as possible. once you get really big, it's hard to move on a percentage basis. i think people have high expectations of what kind of

change we can see in the short-term, but the long-term i think we will see a more profound change than anyone realizes at this point. emily: that was some of my conversation with slack ceo stewart butterfield. catch our whole interview on "bloomberg studio 1.0" tonight. when we come back greylock , partners has made big bets on everything from big data to self driving vans. what is next? we will talk to one of their partners, coming up. this is bloomberg. ♪

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and free shipping too. sale prices are available right now. go to buyleesa.com today. you need this bed. emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. founded in 1965, greylock partners is one of the country's oldest venture capital firms. it has backed the likes of facebook, airbnb, linkedin. what are the next big trends? joseph from greylock partners joins us now. you are also founder of a company called gladly that you run outside of greylock. greylock has seen some companies go public recently, dropbox. how did those exits impact greylock's appetite for multistage investing versus traditional a round? >> i think that we try to focus primarily on the early stages,

but we believe in being a partner through the whole process. one of the things that's unique about what we do is not only are we the first investor, but we can help shepherd those companies through that whole process to being public and large-scale. emily: given the amount of capital that is flooding into the market, huge funds like softbank, we just saw toyota make a $500 million investment in uber, how is that changing your strategy? joseph: you've seen companies be able to get more access to capital and do more audacious, big ideas. emily: that also means more competition, right? joseph: most of the competition we see is the traditional venture capital folks. early-stage investors at sequoia or benchmark, we tend to see those as our primary partners, as well as competitors. it has not dramatically changed series a and series b, but it definitely changes the later stages.

emily: what are the next big trends? social networking was one, and greylock was there. then it's the sharing economy, and greylock was there. what is next? joseph: we focus on consumer investments and enterprise investments. i tend to focus more on enterprise. we are thinking what are the new opportunistic areas of investment. obviously, autonomous vehicles is something everyone is making about, and we've done some investments there. emily: a self driving van company. joseph: that's a great example. we are taking the delivery of goods and services oftentimes done by people, how you can make that autonomous. if you want to order groceries, you don't have to have a person drive to your house anymore. the idea is that this vehicle will drive to the grocery store and show up at your house. you walk out and open the device, but there is no person even in the car. we are going after places like that, where we think there is a range of vertical applications. emily: talk to us about big data, another one of your portfolio companies competes with palantir, which is very

controversial, big data company. what is the opportunity that you see there? there has been so much data unleashed, but it hasn't been proven that it can actually be useful. joseph: right. you highlight probably the biggest issue around data. people collect more and more data, but data without insight is pretty useless. the space they focus on is around machine data, so all these servers and devices that are creating things, how do you manage those and understand the health of those systems, how will they are performing. it's the dashboard to run the internet, if you will. they tend to compete more with a company called machinewhich is a data company.

what they do is they are taking this terabytes, terabytes of data every single day, helping the companies understand what that information means. whether you are airbnb or marriott, both of whom are our customers, they use it to make sure they are understanding and managing the infrastructure they run the digital economy on. emily: talk to me about how you are harnessing the power of big data at gladly. the goal is to change the customer service experience, which i think we would all agree needs to be improved. joseph: the application there is really interesting. one example is to understand what are the questions that customers are asking of companies? jetblue is one of the customers we have talked about. we see the questions customers ask and we help to suggest answers, first to their crewmembers, so they can drive better efficiency and deliver better answers. if you are asking what's the baggage policy, how can we make sure that customer is getting the right answer and help drive efficiency so you get a better experience as a customer using machine learning, and you help them lower the cost of running their company. emily: how do you balance ai

versus good old-fashioned humans? especially when these are situations where people are frustrated. joseph: right. we start with the idea that we want to put people that are doing the help more efficient, meaning the agents. our approach is to say let's make the crewmembers engaging with jetblue's customers, how do we make them smarter to start with? if we are suggesting an answer, if we are right 50% of the time, we have improved their efficiency dramatically. if you are a customer and you are only right 50% of the time, you don't have a very good experience. we are helping make the person doing the support smarter, then they are making the decision to say, this is the right answer. emily: in your former life you founded a cybersecurity company and testify before congress on these matters. what are your thoughts on continued reports about election meddling from now multiple state actors? it seems like there is no level of security which will protect us. joseph: clearly, at a state level, it's a challenging issue

for every single country, our country in particular in the u.s. we are obviously a target for many people. it's clear that it's not just election meddling. it's the power grid, our utility system. everything that powers the way we live, and it's a real risk. it's definitely a real risk. i think one of the things that has been great to see over the last decade is actually the partnership between government and industry to work more closely together to help solve these problems. and i think the only way we are going to solve it is through innovation and new technology companies. because as the threats evolve, you need to get new technologies to solve them, and i just think it's going to be this never-ending battle, if you will, to keep up and continue to defend. emily: you could argue that technology and innovation created this problem. google and facebook and twitter are these massive platforms that are potentially, in a way, unprotectable. is that fair?

joseph: our society today is built on the digital foundation, very different than it was 50 or 100 years ago. when you have that foundation, you need to protect it. security and privacy are two sides of the same coin. as individual consumers, i care about my privacy and that no one gets axis to my data, but as a country, we make sure no one has access to this. it is a never-ending challenge. you are right, it is a new challenge, but it's not going away anytime soon. emily: you are obviously bullish on the new economy, given your focus on enterprise, your history in cyber. with companies as big as microsoft out there, salesforce, rising companies like slack, do you think there is room for new, smaller, up-and-coming players, or will they just get eaten by the bigger companies that have more resources and indefinite runway? joseph: i'm definitely biased. [laughter] if you look back over the last 50 years, greylock's history of

the company, it's always been a cycle where there are new companies that do things differently and ultimately become those big companies. salesforce was only started about 20 years ago. they were a startup just across the street, and look at them today. we see that trend continuing. we don't see that changing. it doesn't mean every company becomes a linkedin, for we know there will be some that do. emily: joseph ansanelli, partner at greylock. also running gladly. thank you so much for stopping by. well, square shares climbed in wednesday's trading after guggenheim added it to its best ideas list and gave it the best price target on the street at $100 per share. the revenue potential from the firm's cash app is underappreciated. coming up, one analyst out with the most bullish call on the street for amazon and alphabet.

why optimism for tech is still playing the market. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: u.s. stocks plowed to records on wednesday with tech shares helping lead the way. meantime, morgan stanley striking a bullish tone for alphabet and amazon. the latter is hovering at new all-time highs. romaine bostick joins us now from new york with more. talk to us about this note from morgan stanley. >> he is making a very bullish call. frankly, he is not really alone on this. quite a few analysts on wall street have taken a much more bullish view, if that's even

possible, of a lot of these big tech names. a lot of it really has to do with their market dominance and what a lot of these analysts perceive as their continued dominance, when they look at names like amazon, alphabet. a lot of what they are looking at is what type of competition do these companies really have now, what type of competition are they really going to have a couple years down the road? they are also looking at the general market picture, the idea that there are still a lot of consumers that haven't really embraced these particular companies or these particular platforms and that, once those consumers become a little more integrated into those products and services, that will benefit these companies even more. emily: amazon shares have doubled over the last 12 months, though. are expectations too high? romaine: it's funny. you think about the stock, has doubled, as you said. i was looking at the price target for amazon. at the start of the year, it was

just below $1300 per share. the price target now going forward is at about $2200 per share. i've looked at the data. here is the thing to think about. a lot of people are basing these price targets on the revenue growth. when you look at annualized revenue growth for amazon over the past -- if you just take the beginning of the bull market back in 2009, it's running at somewhere in the neighborhood of about 40% or so. when you think about -- excuse me, the share price is running annualized about 40% or so, but the revenue growth is running at an annualized pace of around 30% or so. the revenue growth is keeping pace with a lot of the optimism that you have in the shares. if you break it down over a longer term trend, it's not as outrageous as it looks when you look at it maybe over a one-year chart.

there is a lot of reason why analysts remain bullish, and it is the revenue growth. emily: meantime, bloomberg is reporting there are still a lot of short bets on the faang stocks. where are the shorts concentrating their focus? romaine: some of the shorts are going into the names that have seen trouble, like tesla, alibaba, facebook. but they are also piling into amazon and apple, and a lot of that has to do with valuation. when you talk about apple at $1 trillion, amazon just a breath away from being $1 trillion market cap, it's understandable you will get an increase in short positioning. that's sort of normal. it goes with the flow. when you look at the ratio, like the short interest ratio to some of these companies and the growth over the course of the year, it's really not as dramatic. in fact, for some of these companies, the short interest ratio has actually fallen, even for companies like google, alphabet, where it has risen, it has risen something like less than 1% from where it started the year.

people are being a little more cautious, but, again, you still have this fear of missing out. do you really want to be that investor that jumped off the boat just as it was really getting to take another leg up? emily: all right, romaine bostick, bloomberg tv's markets editor. thank you for stopping by. meantime, amazon whole foods have expanded delivery of groceries through prime now in new cities across the u.s., including columbus, dayton, portland, and additional areas of new york city. as amazon pours more money into its whole foods venture, competitors like walmart and target have stepped up their online grocery presence. much more coming up. a reminder, we are live streaming on twitter, @technology. be sure to follow our global breaking news network, @tictoc. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: salesforce earnings are out just after the bell. this is the latest tech company to embrace the idea of having two chief executives. the san francisco-based software maker has recently promoted keith block to run the company alongside co-founder marc benioff. he became chief operating officer in 2016 and also served as vice chair. earlier, i sat down for an exclusive conversation with him and asked about his experience as co-ceo so far. >> we are certainly in a marc and i have worked together closely for a new year's. we've known each other a long time. this is just a natural extension of the operating model that we have been working together. when you think about our company, we are a large global enterprise, growing quickly, and this is an opportunity for us to put together a decision-making process that enables us to make decisions very quickly for our

customers. again, it's a natural extension of what we've been doing. emily: he's a cofounder of the company, a big personality. how do you divide responsibilities? >> we have been operating under these principles for the last five years. it's a very trust-based relationship. it gives us the opportunity to focus on our strengths. marc, as you have described him, he is a visionary, has great ideas, outstanding ceo. he is passionate about the culture. my focus is on growth and execution and customer success and operational excellence. it allows us to focus on our strengths and areas of expertise. emily: co-ceo structures have not worked out so well in other cases. some would say it has prevented the ability to be decisive. how do you overcome those historical precedents? what are the plans to troubleshoot, if necessary? >> i think it starts with trust. we have a very trust-based relationship.

we are trusted advisors to each other. we collaborate all the time. we make decisions together. we see this as a way to execute speed at scale. we are growing at scale. you've seen our results in q2. we are excited about what we've done in q2. this is a great operating model for us. emily: you have boosted your forecast for the year. the stock is down slightly after hours. what should investors be looking at in this quarter? >> i think investors should be thrilled because we are thrilled with these results. we are the number one liter in -- number one leader in the number category of enterprise one software, the fastest-growing category of enterprise software. number one in sales, marketing, service, and platform. we are growing at a rate that is twice the rate of the market, so we are taking share, driving success with our customers, and we are very pleased. we are operating and growing at scale. everything is going well. we are very pleased. emily: you said you are well on your way to that $23 billion in 2022. what do you need to do to get there? what will you do to get there? >> i think that growth strategy is in place.

when we think about growth leverage, we think about international expansion. our fastest-growing region was 32% growth. we are super excited about that. when you think about our focus on industry and speaking the language of our customers, we are doing some incredible things. then of course, we have the world's largest ecosystem in the cloud. we have great business with our systems integrators. we are thrilled with our growth strategy. we are operating and executing at scale. we are on our path to the $23 billion goal, which makes us the fastest-growing top-five enterprise software company in the world. emily: salesforce has redefined customer relationships, management. what are the white spaces you see out there that still exist for you? >> there is plenty of opportunity just in the space that we play, but we are considered to be one of the most innovative companies in the world. having the market share leader in sales, service, and marketing, there's a lot of room to run. we focus on industry solutions,

focus on international expansion. all of realizes great customer success and great growth, like our success in the quarter. emily: salesforce is known for making big deals. we've seen you make big acquisitions. how much will m&a be part of your strategy and where? >> when we think about growth, we think about organic and inorganic. the ideas always come from our customers. we listen to our customers. they give us our great ideas. our most recent acquisition, just in q2, we've seen great success with this already, but we got the idea from our customers. we listen to our customers to drive our innovation strategy. emily: plenty of salesforce acquisition rumors. often we hear twitter come up, that salesforce is interested inviting a company as big as twitter. is that something that has ever been of interest? >> we listen to our customers. that's a guiding light. they are an inspiration for us. that's how we decide how we innovate, whether it's organically or inorganically? . emily: let me put it this way.

would you do a deal that big, are you open to big potentially , transformative, but also risky deals? >> it's been barely 90 days since our biggest acquisition, and we are excited about what we are seeing. emily: let's talk about international expansion. you said we should look for growth there. what is the actual status? that's where salesforce has a lot of untapped opportunity. >> we've made a lot of investment over the last five years to drive growth in the international space. amia was 32% growth in the quarter, aipac was 28% growth in the quarter. this is a strategy born out of driving success for our customers globally. there's a lot of room to run. we are very excited about the results. you can see it in our q2. emily: you worked at oracle for 26 years. we've heard marc benioff and larry ellison trade barbs many times. is oracle in dire straits, as benioff seems to think it is? >> we are in a wonderful place. that was a long time ago.

i've been with salesforce five years. i just celebrated my fifth year anniversary in june and i couldn't be more thrilled to work with marc. i'm excited for the future of salesforce. emily: who is the competition? >> there is competition in every element. any given time there is a , different type of innovation that could enter our space. our category of crm continues to broaden. we see competition, but look at our results. we are the category leader in crm, the fastest-growing segment of enterprise software, growing at twice the rate of the market, taking share, operating at scale, growing at scale, executing at scale. at the end of the day, our job is to focus on our customers. we have over 30,000 employees. they wake up every day with a focus on driving customer success. if we take care of that, everything will take care of itself. as the company continues

to vertical as the sales strategy, what are the industry sectors we will see you target? >> financial services has been a hotbed, also health care. public sector, manufacturing, telecommunications, kind of the classics you would expect. we can see just huge opportunities to drive success for customers there. emily: dreamforce coming up. what should we be looking forward to? >> we know you will be speaking. we are looking forward to that. dream force is the big event of the year. over 175,000 attendees. millions of viewers online. it's a celebration of innovation, of success for our customers. it's going to be at the end of september. it's always a great event. emily: obviously, the cloud is growing. but yet it's a war between amazon and microsoft and google and potentially salesforce, depending on how you look at it. do you have any concern that those big, big companies will make it impossible for a company like you to ever get there? >> we like to think of ourselves as a big, big company. we are the number one category leader. we will be $23 billion by the end of 2022.

we have partnerships with amazon, google, microsoft. emily: it's always difficult with salesforce and some of these other companies to draw that line between friend and frenemy or enemy. --it is really cool upper tion.rate -- cooperati as long as you have a transparent relationship any work collaboratively, it works out for the customers. emily: our exclusive conversation with keith block. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." tomorrow, we will catch up with a partner at khosla ventures. the latest investment into residential real estate platforms. i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪ xfinity mobile is a new wireless network

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