work?" "all sites are green." all of which helps you do more than your customers thought possible. comcast business. beyond fast. ♪ emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, in the next hour, the big chinese hack. a bloomberg investigation revealed hackers implanted tiny microchips in servers that infiltrated data centers of almost 30 u.s. companies , including apple and amazon. plus, new rules for testing self driving cars are out. that they take away drivers no , longer need to be human. we get the action from the hill. and medium is publishing its first novel a satire of silicon , valley written by a formal google executive.

that is truth just as absurd and shocking as fiction? author jessica powell joins us later. to the top story, the most significant known supply chain attack ever on u.s. companies. a bloomberg businessweek investigation revealed chinese hackers implanted tiny microchips in servers that infiltrated the data centers of almost 30 u.s. companies, including apple and amazon. this is based on extensive interviews conducted with intelligence and corporate sources. both apple and amazon have disputed summaries of the reporting and so has the company that assembled the servers, and the chinese government responded calling itself a "resolute defender of cybersecurity" but not directly addressing the allegations. the story and the latest issue of "bloomberg businessweek" hits stands joining us from friday. washington, one of the authors of this exclusive story, jordan

robinson, and from santa clara, california, the chief technology cybersecurity officer from mcafee. talk to us about the extent of your reporting. you spoke to 17 unnamed sources report. talk to us about what you found. >> we cite 17 different sources in the story. these are senior-level officials across the government and also senior-level individuals inside of the affected companies, aws and apple. this is a constellation of sources that is robust and broad and it is a pretty comprehensive look at what happened in this attack. what happened here is that the chinese government installed , according to our reporting, malicious microchips on supermicro assembled motherboards. let a malicious microchips is, think about it as an infection hardcoded into your computer. you cannot get rid of it without

throwing the machine away. a very powerful attack. very few countries would have this capability. what has really alarmed u.s. officials is that china's control over manufacturing of computer equipment, computer hardware makes this possible. you have had a lot of oversight over the supply chain over the years. what do you make of this? steve: we recognize a hardware-based implant would be one of the most powerful ways for a nationstate to spy on a data center infrastructure. what is ultimately required is that there is a chain of trust. applications need to trust the underlying operating system or cloud software, and that software has to trust the underlying hardware. if you are able to tamper with the hardware, you are able to have access to all of the other things that sit on top of it and would provide tremendous insight and data to an adversary.

emily: given the seriousness, i want to read the responses of the companies in full. amazon said it is untrue that aws new about a supply chain compromise when acquiring elemental. this is the company that, jordan, you reported was the source of the chip. apple saying they have never found malicious chips, hardware manipulations, or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any of the servers. supermicro said we remain unaware of any such investigation. in the meantime, the chinese government is not directly addressing questions of manipulation of supermicro servers, issuing a statement reading in part "supply chain , safety in cyberspace is an issue of common concern. china is also a victim." jordan, what is your response to these companies pushing back so hard?

jordan: the story speaks for itself. the constellation of sources that we gathered from the story, again, it encompasses senior-level officials across the government and senior individuals inside both the named affected companies. i cannot speculate, that is not my position, on why they might deny these allegations but i want to clarify where i did speculate on the why the companies would deny this. that's not really my place. i can say the sourcing is brought in robust. multiple levels of corroboration between individuals and companies and the government. and the story included the companies' denials in full, which is our typical policy for transparency purposes. emily: the extent of the data collected is unclear. steve, talk about how difficult would it be to determine that

, given that this is a hardware hack, not a software hack. steve: one of the challenges with hardware is they are black boxes, meaning they perform a specific function, but the underlying implementation of how they work is often only known by the designer. what makes this even more challenging in today's world is the way modern semiconductors and platforms are built. there is massive requirement for sub suppliers to supply many of the underlying technologies. chipmakers license what we call ip blocks, a thing that could create an artificial intelligence part of the chip or graphics part of the chip to do very specific functions. even the designer of the chip itself may not have full visibility as to how all of the underlying components work.

what that means is that if there is any sort of weakness in the supply chain or what i call the design chain, meaning how those components were designed, it is possible for an adversary to implant logic that would allow this type of spying to occur. emily: jordan, what is the u.s. government telling us here? you report there is still an investigation into this issue currently open. jordan: the u.s. government is in a tricky position. when we started reporting the story, we thought for sure there must have been some private alert that went out and we there must have been some kind of mechanism to report the attack. we discovered the u.s. government was in a tricky position because if they announced the breach, this is an issue that could potentially damaging u.s. company. this was a u.s. company, and also this was a problem with no solution. that is what we walked away from

in many conversations with individuals. what do we tell people? what do we say to people? apple and amazon, according to the -- reporting found , these chips. you're not supposed to find these. they were doing a level of analysis that most companies do not do. in many ways, they could be a model. this approach could be a model for other companies. you have to think of hardware as another way that your data centers could be compromised and many companies do not look at this. emily: does the story make this happened, if this what else is out there? steve: absolutely. one of the things we're thinking about is what are all of the different ways an adversary could tamper with the supply chain? even things like intentionally introducing defects into open-source software components that would then be implemented into products across the industry. one of the ways to think of this is we are challenged already in

cybersecurity by vulnerabilities accidentally introduced in the products. if there was an adversary whose goal was to intentionally place a vulnerability such that it could be exploited by them for a long period of time before it was ever found out, that would be an effective technique. i think if we look at this case, the fact that this was focused on a hardware component in the baseboard management controller portion of the hardware, that is really a portion of the hardware that is about making it easier to support machines in data centers. we know we can no longer have humans crawling through data centers to do all sorts of repair. that means that type of hardware has immense privilege and power. even though we have not done forensics on the specific case, it is a plausible type of scenario that we have a lot of concern about.

emily: jordan, we heard the vice president take aim at china in a speech earlier and we have also been in the middle of a trade war between the united states and china. what do you expect the fallout of this will be? the question really is, what now? jordan: our original information , the original tip about this came in the obama administration. what that signals to me is that both administrations were deeply concerned about the security of the supply chain and china. it's impossible to predict what the administration will do what , but what i will say is this. one of the lessons we took away from the reporting, strongly, is that you will not find hardware manipulation if you're not looking for it. amazon and apple again were

looking for these things, and they found them. the vast majority of companies would not. thed it make sense to take manufacturing of all motherboards back to the u.s.? i think a practical approach for most companies is implementing some form of hardware analysis and inspection as part of their normal security practices. bloomberg's jordan robertson there, and mcafee's steve grobman thank you for , joining us. we should let you know bloomberg lp has been a super microcode -- customer, but has found no evidence to suggest they have been affected by anything in this report. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the trump administration released guidelines for testing autonomous vehicles. one big takeaway is that drivers no longer need to be human. the transportation department's automated vehicles 3.0 guidance

will no longer assume a commercial vehicle driver's human. basically, an initial step to allow trucks to travel across state lines piloted by an autonomous system. the document asserts the department of transportation already has the authority to set safety standards allowing for innovative automated vehicle design. to talk about this, i want to bring in senator gary peters of michigan, who last year introduced bipartisan legislation to advance self driving cars. for joining much us. first of all, what do you like and what don't you like about these guidelines? senator peters: i think the guidelines are pretty clear that we have to make sure we have a framework to allow this technology to continue to move forward. existing vehicle safety laws do not allow an automobile without a steering wheel or break pedals. you have these new technologies piloted by advanced machine learning and ai systems. they will be piloted by machines

and we have to make sure we have that framework. emily: the administration is saying the dot has the authority and congress does not need to step in. why do you disagree with that? sen. peters: i think we want to do this fairly quickly. it depends on how quickly the department of transportation will move forward on this. this gives flexibility to manufacturers as long as they are certifying they have safe vehicles and they are dealing with things like cybersecurity. this technology is moving rapidly. we want to make sure automakers have an idea of what that framework is. you are looking at some of them which will be putting out level four cars as early as next year in commercial operation. we are looking at our international competitors. folks in europe and asia are moving full speed. we do not want to like behind. .- lag behind it has been my experience that when you have a bureaucratic

organization involved, it does not move quickly. however we get there, safely and efficiently, quicker will be better for international competitive positions. emily: in your view what should , congress have oversight of or input in? sen. peters: this creates the framework and allows companies to have exemptions to current regulations in place now. it will also ask the federal agencies to move quicker. in the meantime, they can put these cars out on the road , provided there is validation as to their safety, and not just physical safety operating on the road, but cybersecurity as well. emily: given you want speed here, do you foresee passing legislation that you introduced anytime soon? sen. peters: we are hoping it will. it is passed through the house and our version in the senate passed unanimously. we are working with a variety of stakeholders related to this issue.

we are close to coming to an agreement and getting its move forward. we would like to have this done by the end of the year. this is being done on a bipartisan basis. i'm working closely with the chair of the commerce committee. he has been very focused on this as well. we hope we can get this moving quickly. emily: do you have a sense of whether senators in your own party, senator schumer, senator feinstein, will come to your side? sen. peters: that is why we work with everyone to make sure we have language people are comfortable with. we understand that we need to have a consensus of folks who believe this is the right way to go. as i mentioned, it did pass unanimously in a bipartisan way out of the commerce committee. it enjoys a broad bipartisan support and we have a ways further to go before it gets on the floor or is attached to some other vehicle that may be moving here in the senate. emily: what is your biggest concern when it comes to the safety of self driving cars? sen. peters: obviously the technology has to be tested.

there needs to be a comfort factor that this technology will indeed allow these automobiles to move through a very competent -- complex environment if you're in the city. part of that testing requires these vehicles get out of the road. -- on the road. the fact that it has been described to me, basically a few hours on a public highway is weeks of testing on the test track and we will make sure , so weicles are safe need to get them out on the road. we believe that we can eliminate -- in thisnts on the country. 95% of all accidents are human error. nearly 40,000 people die on the highways every year and hundreds of thousands are injured. the quicker this is developed, the more lives will be saved. emily: you travel to south korea and saw the competition we face. is the u.s. at risk of falling

behind? sen. peters: there is no question that other places in the world are working very aggressively to bring these vehicles to market. i was with hyundai and they have a very advanced vehicle that i had the opportunity to ride in. they are expected to commercial ize that on a fairly quick timeline. i know the chinese are investing billions of dollars of this technology, the same with european companies. there is certainly a believe of whoever comes to the market thoroughly will be a competitive advantage versus the other competitors. i want to make sure those are american competitors, that this technology is in the united states. that we are a leader. we have traditionally been a leader in the automotive sector and we need to continue being a leader. emily: senator peters, thank you very much for joining us today. coming up the network for , freelancers goes public. can it keep up with the likes of linked in? we hear from the ceo next. "bloomberg technology" is livestreaming on twitter. check us out @technology, and be sure to follow our global news network, @tictoc, on twitter. this is bloomberg.

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emily: the world's largest freelancing network has raised $187 million in the initial public offering. the platform which connects freelancers with clients was formed through the merger of competing companies in 2014. . now it boasts 375,000 freelancers working for almost half a million clients. we caught up with the ceo to talk about the ipo. >> the excitement of the freelance economy we serve, people tend to be highly skilled.

80% of the users on upwork have a college degree. these are people who are truly doing this by choice. if they want a traditional job, they could get one. what they want to do is choose to be their own boss. more flexibility. they can be working from anywhere. they can work on the schedule they choose. they choose their clients. on top of that, they make significantly money -- more money than through the local job market. from what we hear from freelancers, they would rather take a higher pay and choose their own benefits then what would happen through a traditional employer. freelancers, when we surveyed them, we asked how much money would a transitional employer have to pay you to convince you to take a full-time job with them? literally 50% of the respondents will say no amount of money. this is something people do by choice as opposed to something

by necessity. emily: where does the growth come from? you are listing this week. where are you going to put that money to work? >> we will continue to do what we have been doing, which is getting more new clients signing up every single day as well as getting existing clients to spend more on the platform, including cross-selling clients from one category to the other. what we see a lot is clients hiring developers, and then we get them to realize we also have designers on the platform, and progressively, one thing leads -- one thingd they leads to another. it is ultimately about creating more jobs on the platform because we need more of that to fulfill the need for work that freelancers have. emily: lastly, you did say this is an increasingly competitive market. you have linkedin, google, facebook, and of course amazon, who tends to make competitors

shaking in their boots. who are you most worried about and what are you doing to be sure some of these big tech giants are not taking share from you in what seems to be an attractive space for a lot of these tech companies? stephane: the reason why investors have been interested in the company is because the strength of the competitive modes in this business. this is not an overnight success. this company has been around for almost 20 years. it takes a long time to build a network. once you get the wheels going, it feeds itself. today, 100% of freelancers who sign up on upwork do so through word-of-mouth. 80% of the business on the buyer side comes through free channels , including word-of-mouth. the spinning wheel at some point starts to really accelerate. that is one of the main sources of strong, competitive growth, and it is hard for others to imitate. we continue to innovate and

spend a lot of money on research and development. by the way, we use freelancers a lot. there are 1500 people who work at upwork and 1100 of them are freelancers. we are able to attract really tough talent from around the world to innovate and continue to push forward as we build this freelance economy. emily: that was alex barinka with the ceo of upwork. coming up, the top story of the day. china's big hardware hack. bloomberg reports a chinese military unit manufactured chips embedded in servers of almost 30 u.s. companies. more ahead. plus, jessica powell may have headed google communications, but she wants to make sure her new book isn't a tell-all about the search giant. she has a new satirical look at silicon valley. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

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emily: this is "bloomberg technology" and i'm emily chang. amazon and apple. chinese hackers and put trading data servers of dozens of american companies, including apple.and the chinese government did not directly address the allegations, but says china has also been a victim in cyberspace. this story has a senator from south dakota calling for more extensive investigation from the u.s. he talked to us earlier. >> the finance from the department of defense has made it clear that over the next 10 years, defensive capabilities alone aren't going to be enough. we will need some deterrents to slow down the cyber interference

occurring. emily: joining us from new york, senior fellow at the asia society, isaac jones. our reporting, 17 unnamed sources telling us if this is true, what is your response to this? does it surprise you or not a surprise at all? >> it is a surprise. i do commend the reporting on this story. it was an excellent story, very deeply reported. i think where we are as a society in america is starting to wake up to all the different things that the communist party and its various arms have done metal is too strong of a word, but to interfere in various american processes, but this is a detailed look at an example of where the party got very, very deep in disrupting the american supply chain. emily: i do want to read the statements of the companies again. it is untrue. amazon saying aws knew about a

compromise with the hardware. this is from the company that deployed the server that had these chips embedded. from apple, they say, " on this we can be clear, apple never found any chips purposely planted on any server." and the company that bloomberg is reporting made the servers say they are unaware of any of this. look at the statement from china. they say that china is also a victim. the chinese government not denying it, not directly addressing the allegations. what do you make of that response from the chinese government? >> it's interesting that the statement comes from the foreign ministry, which is one of the few bodies of the party that has a spokesperson that speaks somewhat regularly to the american press.

it is possible that the people in the foreign ministry don't have any idea what the party's military was doing and that they got instructions to address it this way or frankly just didn't know. unfortunately, the pla, the party military, does not have a spokesperson that speaks to international media, so there is no way for journalists on the outside to go in and get the military's view on any of this. even if we were able to, it is very likely that the military would not admit to having done such a complicated and devastating process. emily: tensions between the u.s. and china already high. we are in the middle of a trade war. the trump administration has expressed a lot of concern about national security concerns with respect to china. how do you expect a story like -- upight of the ante,

the ante, or increase the level of tension that we are now seeing between the united states and china? >> with vice president pence's astonishing speech today which was the most critical by a president or vice president towards china as long as i can remember, i think we really are at the perfect storm in all these different areas of u.s. society having things that frankly they feel that beijing did wrong, ways that beijing has wronged them. i think we are going to see more reporting like this come out, because i think u.s. officials and people in the intelligence community will be talking about it. i think we will see more of a response from government, civil society, and academia about ways to constructively pushback on china's influence in america. i want to make it very clear, china's influence is not chinese people's influence, and neither myself nor most of the people working on this support anything

that would make it more difficult for a chinese student to study here, for example, and that this is really about the communist party and not the chinese people. emily: are we going to see u.s. companies moving their supply chains outside of china? >> i think we will. i think that is something the trump administration has long pushed for, and i think stories like this are good ammunition for the trump administration to say, besides the political wind you moving by production to america or possibly other parts of the world, it is also a security win for you even though it is. cheaper and easier to manufacture in china, you have to bake in the risk. emily: thanks so much for weighing in. we should note bloomberg lp has been a supermicro customer and has found no evidence to suggest that bloomberg has been affected by the hardware issues raised in this article. ofsica powell spent years her text career shaping the communications strategy at one of the world's biggest tech giants. that is google.

now the former google v.p. describes herself as a technophobe and technophile. startrves now at ceo as a -- software startup for musicians. in her new book "the big disruption," but essentially true but totally fictional story, she gives us a satirical take on an inner that is calling for change. the book is out on medium. it is the first full-length novel to be finished on the public thing -- publishing platform. jessica powell joins us now. why did you write this? >> [laughter] i wanted to shed critical light on what i see as tech's hypocrisy. we go about saying we are building these amazing things and doing great things for the world, but we are also causing a lot of serious problems. i wanted to approach that with a funny, approachable way that people would actually read.

emily: this is a satire, not to be confused with a tell-all. that said, you had a perch inside of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. you decided to put your name on this. you thought about writing this anonymously. how did you weigh the risks and the benefits? >> i would have loved to do this anonymously. you work in pr your whole life and you are usually loving the idea of being behind the scenes. it's kind of terrifying, but at the end of the day, and i didn't want to think it was about a specific company. but i also realize at this time there are few senior evil in tech that speak out about issues like this. a lot of times they are still on the payroll so i thought it was important to put my name on the book. emily: not long ago, your job was to defend silicon valley. when you look at the plot lines, the sales guy battling with the engineers, the female employees, the unwitting subjects of a social experiment, the vps plotting against each other, and lululemonoving

wearing women? >> it is inspired by google. i worked at a startup and other large companies. i feel confident saying larry page is not a nymphomaniac obsessed with the moon. emily: talk to me about the theme here. tooe is kind of like a me theme, the misogynistic ceo, and the woman who buys into the company and hurley. how should we -- entirely. how should we interpret that? >> i thought a lot about that. i eliminated much any women or people of color from the book because i wanted to make a point, that we are dramatically underrepresented, and when we are there, we are not given the same opportunities. the one female character in the book is a female receptionist with a phd who basically saves the whole company with her invention. by the end of the book, she's

back to being a receptionist. here: i can't have you without talking about some of the challenges google is facing now. number one, trying to get back into china. many people don't seem happy with this. the u.s. government doesn't seem happy with this. is it the right call? the chinaally torn on issue. on the one hand, i believe in moral imperatives. i think what google that is admirable. i felt proud at the time. at the other hand, i think it is a fair question to ask what tangible good did it do other than making us feel really good? censorship is worse in china, information access is worse in china. there's an argument to be made that more search competition, from google or someone else, actually be a really good thing for chinese users. i'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt of seeing actually what they want to do and how they would plan to build in safeguards for chinese users. i think the devil is really in the details. emily: google did not take an

opportunity to testify before congress. now they are sending sundar pichai. you would have been a part of that decision. was that a mistake? jessica: i wasn't there, so i don't know what the thought process was like, but you kind of answer the question in the sense that they didn't go, and now they have to go anyway. emily: so when you say at times you had to defend the indefensible, what is indefensible? jessica: across the industry, there's a problem we have of -- blackwhite thinking and white thinking, that we lead with data all the time. it lends itself to a moral abstraction is a. you say 2 billion users here it may be a small percentage of that is bad actors. when you look at it like that, this tiny percentage, it's easy to forget that is thousands, or millions. that is electoral interference, myanmar,m suicides,

really terrible stuff. but it gets abstracted to a data point where it looks so small that you don't look at it in a human way, and think, how can we solve this in the best way? emily: we are entering an era where tech is really unpopular. facebook just announcing 50 million accounts were hacked. the facebook login could also be affected. do you think this is the beginning of a prolonged era of tech hating? if you were on the inside of google, how would you be handling it? jessica: i think in terms of the best in about the cycle we are in, absolutely. i don't think the valley has enough interaction with the outside world. instead, they build what they want and impose it on the outside world. the outside world is increasingly angry about the power dynamic. i think it will come to a head in some way. if i were at google or any of the large companies, i would really want to have a heart to heart and some level of self interrogation around, are we theys asking ourselves at very start what the potential

unintended consequences are? if you build a platform for free speech, you are building a platform for free speech, then anyone can say anything.it's not just all roses . what does that mean? second, the other thing i would do is say, the starting point in so many companies whenever a problem arises is my let's solve it with machines, or solve it with ai. the truth is ai may solve these problems someday, but not today. just throwing your hands up in front of regulators and saying that the machines will get there at some point is an on sectors -- unsatisfactory answer. emily: live medium? jessica: i thought it was appropriate a book about tech platform. a tech i loved it was free. it is globally accessible immediately. there's none of the traditional publishing turnaround times, which made it a pretty exciting opportunity. powell, former

vice president of global communications at google, also an author. check out her book on medium, "the great disruption." coming up, the sustainable benefits of vertical farming is undeniable, but what does this mean for farm labor? how it is changing tomorrow's jobs. this is bloomberg. ♪

by 2050, the global population is expected to grow to 9.8 billion. sustainable food production is needed now more than ever. indoor forms can transform industrial, arable land, using less space, water, and pesticides. but what does vertical farming mean for labor? we investigate.

>> it might look like we are inside a spaceship, but this is actually a farm. the crops are grown mostly by machines with a help of a few humans, like this woman. her life offers an early peek at a new kind of farming. it's a promising twist to an ancient career, but only if the robots don't replace her altogether. >> my name is katie and i vertical farmer. >> katie works for a three-year-old startup called valerie --bowery. the farm is here at this industrial park in new jersey. it's the last place you would sign ofo find any life. step inside, and you will see a cross between a factory and a lab.

trays of produce are vertically stacked to save space and each of them is given the amount of light, water, and nutrients at the optimal temperature and humidity. an incredible level of precision, which is why katie can grow more, faster with less water and no pesticides. >> whoa! >> it taste like a candy apple. this is sour. >> i know. >> the majority of the facility is automated. the data is collected by sensors and a computer controls growing conditions for the crops. for the things that the machines can't do yet, katie and her fellow human farmers fill in. even those tasks are dictated by the software that runs this whole operation. >> it lets me know what i have

to do, what time i should be doing it by, and that is how i get my day done. after a full day at the farm, katie likes to bring home samples to her husband jake. ,and her cat. on the menu are two items from katie's farm. basil for pesto pasta and mixed greens for a salad. >> i'm terrified. everyone is judging. cheers, guys. >> katie fell in love with environmental science. after graduating from college, she struggled to find a full-time career in the field. >> jake has had to deal with me , lot, coming home to me crying trying to figure out if i am making the right decisions. then somehow, online, bowery

popped up. >> she told me about this job, like an indoor vertical farm, and i thought it sounds like total b.s. [laughter] i took my work truck and swing around to see what it was all about. i drove up to it, doesn't look like there is a farm in there at all. >> i figured i would check it out for myself. i pulled up, and it was exactly how he described, but i gave it a shot. so in 2017, katie joined bowery. she became employee number nine. it is backed by some of silicon valley's top investors, and with funding,0 million in the start of is expanding fast.

in may, katie got promoted to lead a team of her own farmers. the world's population is set to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050. 2/3 will live in cities and we we are going to need all kinds of new technology to sustainably feed everyone. foodey to making that affordable is to continue to make more with fewer farmers. no matter how high tech of this gets, katie thinks or will still be a place for her. >> i just think there is something about the human mind that you can't really replicate. i think we will work closely with technology, but i still think it is nice to have a human there. it would also be pretty lonely for the robots if they don't have anybody to talk to. [laughter] was bloomberg at bowery farms. coming up, the online education platform do a lingual is the most popular way to learn languages online, and now it is making money.

we will talk to the ceo, next. this is bloomberg. ♪ rg. ♪

emily: if you want to learn a language online, you probably use duolingo, now with over 300 million users. it is the most downloaded language app and was chosen by apple as the most downloaded of the year. it is designed to make education more like a game, but it is free. can a free education app be a sustainable business? >> hello, thank you for having me. we think it can't. this is what we have been working on for the last few years. duolingo started as a highly mission-based company. we want to make free language education for the world. startup,me point, as a a for-profit company, we had to start at -- advertising. we actually put in an ad that generated tens of millions of dollars for us. in addition, there are descriptions to turn off ads,

and having access to duolingo gives -- offline, which us more money. we are proud of the fact that we are now in the top three top grossing apps in education, even though all the content is free. that is something we are proud of. emily: what sets you apart from competition like rosetta stone and the like? >> a couple of things. the first is that it was really app, and when we launched, rosetta stone was mainly for the pc. we also are a game. the hardest thing to learn a language by yourself is to keep yourself motivated. we decided to make duolingo as addictive of possible. basically, you get addicted to learning. and the third thing is it is users.r the majority of if you don't mind at, it is free, as opposed to paying hundreds of dollars. emily: the fascinating thing about ed tech is that there has never been a multibillion-dollar ed tech company.

do you think you would be open to selling to a big-tech giant or go it alone? >> the plan is to go it alone. we think we can do it. our goal is to ipo. it will not happen this year, but we are on track. we will probably be ready, i don't know if we will be able to do it, depending on market conditions, but in a couple of years, looking at revenue growth. emily: and do you get to that multibillion dollar mark? >> i think so. i think we will be able to do it. emily: how high? >> it's hard to say. i think we can be a $10 billion business. ,anguage learning in the world people spend about $80 billion a year or learning languages. we are the most popular way to learn a language in the world, so we should be able to capture that value. emily: that is some confidence. the duolingo ceo. we will be tracking to see if you get to that milestone. thank you. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology."

i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

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