emily: i'm emily chang and this is the "best of bloomberg technology." we bring you all our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, a flurry of tech unicorns charging to the public markets. we will take a look at the inner workings of wework ceo adam neumann's company and is complex and controversial business relationships. plus, content kings. cbs and viacom finally inked a

$11.7 billion merger deal. we will talk to viacom's ceo about synergies and the road ahead. what slowing economy? chinese online retailer alibaba defies the slowdown amidst a trade war with sales surpassing expectations. first to our top story, it was a big week for tech ipo's with wework and cloudflare filing to go public. the web security company cloudflare has been in the news lately, given its relationship with controversial message board, 8chan. three alleged gunman posted manifestos on 8chan before three separate mass shootings in the united states. cloudflare stopped providing services after the latest shooting in el paso, left two dozen dead, largely taking the platform off-line. so, is now the right time to go public for cloudflare? i discussed it with liliana baker and will curtain. >> like many other tech ideas, -- ipo's, especially in software, it is not profitable.

it has a pretty good growth rate though. it's really trying to look at its competitor, fastly. fastly went public earlier this year and is doing ok. liana: there have been some sources who were asking me why cloudflare took this long, though, to get to this point and have their filing. they had been preparing since the fall of last year for a public offering. emily: right, cloudflare is a company, a name we've heard often in conversations about companies that will go public soon. it did not happen until this filing. tell us exactly what cloudflare does. in the case of a company like 8chan, they basically protected 8chan from being taking down in denial of service attacks. will: right, so one of cloudflare's most popular and well-known products is ddos prevention service.

it protects a website from a denial of service attack, anyone looking to attack the website and take it off-line. they offer the service to tons of websites on the internet. they think of themselves as a utility. when you have the service it is the most effective or one of the most effective ways to protect your website from attacks like this. emily: right, and this is where 8chan comes up because cloudflare did not cut off 8chan. the site was still operational until just days ago after that shooting in el paso, texas. liana, talk a little bit about what cloudflare says about 8chan and how investors might take that. liana: it's listed as a risk in the filing. this has gotten a lot of attention because it's buzzy, it's relevant in the headlines, but i think that cloudflare was really aiming in its filing today to show the world how its

financials are doing and what its prospects are. so i think it did a good job of putting it out there that this is a solid company that serves the backbone of the internet. there's been pent-up demand among investors for these sorts of companies to hit the market. a few weeks ago, medalia went public. crowd strike has a good valuation a couple months after its ipo. so, i would say cloudflare today really is just trying to associate itself with some successful software ipo's from earlier this year. emily: that said, cloudflare only made news when they made bad news under criticism that it helped keep some of these websites afloat. if you go back to 2017, and what happened in charlottesville at the time, cloudflare was under fire for helping support a neo-nazi website, the daily stormer. and it was only after much criticism that they finally took that website down by cutting off

service to it. i spoke to the ceo, matthew prince and talked to him about some of their general policy of trying to remain neutral when it comes to content online and the websites that they service. take a listen to what he said to me then. matthew: we turn to the experts in terrorism and illegal content which is law enforcement, legislators, regulators. we say here is this content and what would you like us to do? that feels like due process, that there are actually politically enshrined organizations that can make these decisions, as opposed to these decisions being made on the political whims of me or mark zuckerberg or jeff bezos. emily: now, when it came to 8chan more recently, it was several hours after that shooting in el paso that cloudshare said alright, we're cutting them off as well. in a statement at the time,

prince said they've proven themselves to be lawless, and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. even if 8chan hadn't violated the letter of the law and refused to moderate their hateful community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit. will, expand on the context. very complicated issues. we're seeing companies, facebook and google grapple with what to leave up and take down on their platform. for cloudflare, it's a slightly different story. will: so, cloudflare is in a really difficult position here. they don't want to make content decisions. as you saw in that interview. like i said earlier, cloudflare thinks of itself as a utility. the product is so good and it is hard to find other comparable products. so, when you do not have cloudflare's ddos protection, it

might be really difficult to stay online. what that means is cloudflare basically can decide who gets to be on the internet. they don't want to make those decisions. and as you've seen, they've only made that decision twice in removing daily stormer and 8chan. it's a really difficult position, and when you do things like remove 8chan and remove the daily stormer, then you get material to say why not remove this website or whatever other website that has vile content on it? so, i don't think this is a business cloudflare wants to be in. they don't want to be deciding what's on the internet and what's not. emily: wework also officially filed for its ipo this week, expected to raise about $3.5 billion. that would make it this year's second-largest ipo behind uber. wework revealed a loss of $690 million in the first month and $3 billion lost in the last three years, along with some unique business dealings by the ceo. ellen hewitt had all the details. ellen: anyone who has been

following wework closely knows they have been giving out select financial information quarterly for the last year or so. we already knew that in 2018, they lost close to $2 billion while making revenue of around $1.8 billion. there were some surprises we got more details about some of the loans and complicated financial structures that go on between the founder and ceo adam neumann and the company. we have gotten some knowledge about this before. he was famously been a landlord but we also got information about loans the company has made, the succession plan that would happen if he could no longer able to serve as ceo. emily: our colleague, shira ovide, called the office leasing company on steroids with a complicated corporate structure. they're offering three classes of stock. one with 20 times voting power as another. which takes it even a step further than what mark zuckerberg and the founders of

google have done. ellen: right, there are actually three classes and two of them have 20 votes per share. class a has one vote per share. as you would expect, that's a great consolidation of power. it's largely in the hands of adam neumann. he has a lot of voting control over the company. that is kind of by design. people who support the structure think that adam has the right vision, the boldness, and the leadership to take wework even farther than it has been. for some of the people, they will look at that and raise their eyebrows thinking that might be too much. emily: now, the other thing that's interesting is that they laid out exactly how many of the buildings are fairly new. 30% of their locations are mature. 70% are two years or younger. the vast majority of their space is incredibly new. ellen: they've changed the definition of that metric of a mature location. it used to be 18 months, they have expanded to 24 months.

even with that, it's only 30% of their office locations have been open for more than two years. they look at that as pointing to high-growth. exactly. like, look how fast we are growing. but it's also interesting because a lot of the most stable unit economics they like to highlight are focused only on mature locations. they say these are where we no longer have to rely on marketing to fill the buildings. but when you start to realize that's only 30% of their portfolio, it starts to raise some questions about how sustainable their growth is and how easy it would be for them to get to profitability if they stopped growing. emily: and they say they may never be profitable, which is similar to what we heard with uber and lyft. how are investors feeling? are they excited? ellen: we see a lot of activity on twitter on both sides. some people think the growth is exciting and others cannot wait for it to go public so they can short it. it will be a divisive stock. we'll see the price will be

decided soon by the public markets. i think a lot of people are looking to see if it will meet that $47 billion private valuation. emily: so how quickly do we expect them to get to market? when does the roadshow launch and all that? ellen: very soon. sometime in the next few weeks. we expect and have reported that we expect a september ipo. that's just around the corner. emily: that was bloomberg tech's ellen hewitt. coming up, thumbs up. redstone cements her status as the most powerful woman in u.s. media with cbs merging with viacom. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. listen on the bloomberg app and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg.

emily: cbs hagreed to merge with viacom for $11.7 billion the all stock deal unites the most-watched u.s. broadcast network with the parent of paramount pictures and cable channels like mtv and nickelodeon. it followed a marathon negotiating session and the two sides hashed out a price. i got details with lucas shaw. lucas: they finally realized that after two or three years of going back and forth, that whatever misgivings they might have had, they both just needed to get bigger so they can compete in this streaming war. over the past two years, we have seen at&t buy time warner and time warner sell out to at&t. we've seen fox and the murdochs sell a lot of their assets to disney. and now most of the companies that are playing in media entertainment are companies worth $100 million, $200 million. if you count companies like apple and amazon, $800 billion, $900 billion. cbs and viacom, even combined, they're worth only about $30 billion. but by coming together, they have a deep library that will

bundle into streaming services that will get much stronger. emily: so, how does this position, this now combined entity, against all of the other newly merged now larger media companies? lucas: you know, it's still small in comparison. most analysts and investors believe there are probably more deals to be made. i spoke to the ceo of the combined company and he acknowledged that more m&a is likely. they've been linked to companies like lionsgate, discovery. it's possible they might merge with one of them. it's also possible that the redstone family, who will own -- control the combined company, say it's now time to cash out. they might take a couple assets we've seen, but it might be stronger and might be able to entice some larger company to scoop it up. emily: that was bloomberg's lucas shaw. after details on the newly

merged companies and strategies, we heard from viacom's ceo who sat down with bloomberg's vonnie quinn new york. bob: we were thrilled that we announced the combination of viacom and cbs, creating a leading platform. when you look at the assets, it unites the powerhouse cbs, a station operator, a syndicator, the studio with paramount pictures, one of the most storied studios in hollywood. global brands in nickelodeon, mtv, comedy central, and bet. they have shaped culture for 40 years. simon & schuster, a force in consumer publishing, and of course, showtime. a premium service that is pushed the boundaries of storytelling. we've created an incredible asset base. this was a deal that was negotiated by two special

committees and went through a diligent and thoughtful process. and again, the critical thing is we got the deal done because it positions us to do great things. vonnie: no question it was a phenomenal deal for both sides and there was a willingness to get it done, yet some shareholders are nonplussed that viacom is not valued more. would cbs have given in eventually? bob: again, this deal was conducted by two independent committees of independent directors. when you need to focus on is the value creation potential. these are two companies valued at particularly low multiples. a lot of that was due to the uncertainty hanging over them. also, a lack of clarity on the path forward. starting yesterday, we started talking about a three-part growth strategy, really building a significant d to c business through a combination of cbs subscriptions, where they have millions of subscribers between

cbs all access and ott. plus, viacom's ad supported structure with pluto tv being the leading free tv streaming service in the u.s. up 50% since we bought it. putting those together, you have a d to c ecosystem. we love that and will be a very significant partner with ads, distributors, and a huge content supplier. very exciting growth strategy going forward. as that tracks out, people will see the material value here. >> you've also identified $500 million in cost savings. some of those will be job eliminations. can you give us any more detail on how many and where? bob: sure, when you put two companies together, people talk about synergies. those numbers you reference is a cost number. a gross cost number. it includes organizational costs and sourcing benefits. some real estate benefits. beyond that, we haven't gotten into it. i think the more important thing to focus on is the power of this combination is going to create incredible value for all of our stakeholders, including the incredible employees of viacom-cbs.

they will shape the future of media. i think that's what people need to focus on. emily: viacom's ceo bob bakish there. coming up, softbank's massive vision fund makes its first ever energy storage bet. we find out what energy vault is with the ceo. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: softbank's massive vision fund made its first ever energy storage that, investing in energy vault. this company stacks concrete blocks in a tower that can store and release energy. it is presenting the system as a

bigger and more affordable solution to lithium batteries, claiming it can supply electricity to the grid 24 hours a day. to discuss what this means for the energy storage market, i sat down with the ceo. >> we've designed a very new, innovative system tower. it includes a six arm crane and 35,000 metric ton bricks that are all orchestrated and raised and lowered with a proprietary software stack, so that's the whole system integration. what we do is we take excess energy from solar or wind when it's produced and not needed. that energy is used to raise the blocks. and when the energy is needed by the grid, we lower those blocks and discharge the energy. emily: and how widely deployed is this? it says you're on four continents. robert: correct. we've had a working model for the last year in switzerland. in addition, we're building our first commercial scale unit in the fourth quarter in the north of italy.

as we announced, many, many customer engagements on many continents. we're excited. emily: what do you think the draw is for softbank? robert: they share our vision for renewables and understand how important energy storage is to make renewables real and make renewables solve the problem of our reliance on fossil fuel. they own an energy company, so they own an energy generation company, so they understood this beyond just being an investor. they share our passion to solve this problem. emily: so this system, as we saw there, relies on this giant automated system that has to work reliably outside in the elements year after year after year. it seems like a lot of moving parts. do you have concerns, or is there a risk that some parts might not function properly given all that exposure and throw the whole things off? robert: actually, that's one of the beauties of innovation. the technology we're leveraging fundamentally is proven physics.

we're leveraging unique material science working with cemex, one of the largest materials companies in the world, so we're actually not using normal concrete. we're using a material composite for 95% of these bricks and raising and lowering them, so the fundamental core physics is known. where innovation comes in is with the proprietary machine vision software that fully automates the tower, as well as a lot of other innovation we thought of from a sustainability perspective. this last point is important. so, in not only the materials, we can use the soil right from the site we excavate locally to make these bricks, so we don't have bring in trucks, materials. we're not spewing omissions with -- emissions with trucks coming in or other transportation elements coming in, and from a sustainable perspective, we use some of the suppliers in a global supply chain ecosystem that exists today, so we can do it now. emily: now, we've seen lithium ion batteries start to be attached to the energy grid, but often they can only supply energy for hours at a time. how long can your system? robert: sure, that's another one of the innovations, long-duration. so, while we can support four hours of storage, we can also do

8-12 hours. why is that important? we cannot only meet the time shifting requirements of utilities to serve early evening spikes, but think about manufacturing companies. industries and industrial processes that rely on the power 24 hours a day. desalination plants are a great example. they need power to make drinking water 24 hours a day and we can now provide them for the first time that power. emily: now, we've seen a lot of pushback from local communities against giant solar power plants, large wind farms because of the fact that they don't look attractive. do you run the risk of that, as well? a large concrete tower, while it might work, it might not be the most attractive thing somebody might want in their backyard. robert: actually, most of the markets, we'll be building this system. it's out where there are farms. out in typically remote areas. wind farms, where there's already turbines sitting up

high, and the off grid applications which are pretty important for us to get power to remote farms, villages, etc., to areas that that need power that can't get it from the grid. in those locations, we don't see a lot of problems. this way. what is the most challenging? what other company is working on this in a different way that might be the most challenging idea to what you have proposed? robert: the big s not been solved until now are for the economics. how do you get renewable energy storage down to price when combined with solar or wind low cost, so you can do it below the cost of fossil fuel? that's really the major innovation. and we've done that through the material science, through thinking about design, and through sustainability. that's, primarily, what we're solving that no one has been able to solve. emily: you have other competing, crazy, bold ideas. pumping compressed air underground releasing it to - through turbines.

there are obviously a lot of different paths to get to the best results and create the most amount of energy at the cheapest price. i mean, what do you think makes this better than all of those other ideas? robert: sure, sure. three main reasons. when we designed this, we didn't want to have this dependency on things like geology or geography or topology. dams, for example, rely on mountains and things. we wanted to be able to deliver this everywhere, it's so big, the problem we're solving. second, sustainability. chemical battery companies, how they get the material, how they dispose of it - a lot of issues. the batteries degrade immediately when you install them. so, through cycling, they're going to degrade. our system doesn't degrade at all over time. so, you have to solve this with innovation across material science, design, and thinking always about sustainability of your environmental aspects every day. emily: eenergy vault's ceo robert piconi.

coming up, swirl into tech. we're going to take a deep dive into the ftc probe of facebook next. and bloomberg tech is live streaming on twitter. be sure to follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪

back to the "best of bloomberg technology." i am emily chang. we continue to follow washington targeting big tech on antitrust. the chair of the federal trade commission is weighing in. in an interview with bloomberg joe simon said his agency is , ready to get down and dirty of -- if necessary. if you have to, you do it, not ideal because it is very messy, but if you have to, you have to. remember that the sec is currently investigating facebook including its acquisitions in an antitrust probe. that is one of the big tech companies being targeted by the trump administration. to discuss in washington, charlotte joined us. before that, she was part of the

ftc's anti-competitive practices committee. in new york we have sally hubbard from the open market institute. before that she served as an assistant attorney general in the antitrust bureau of new york state. as well as bloomberg tech's sarah frier. >> it is hard to reach much -- read much into it. if you have to, you have to. almost a tautology. i think when he is talking about is that it can be difficult to force significant divestiture, something we would call a breakup. and in order to get that type of remedy at court, you need to show it is really necessary. so again sort of a tautological comment. but i think that's what he's getting at there. emily: sally, would you agree -- i mean there's certainly been a , lot of questions given that the ftc recently fined facebook, for privacy violation, but critics say at that time it did

not go far enough. you know, do you agree that he has what it takes or the agency has what it takes to make that leap if they have to? sally: i think he was just really stating the fact that that's a remedy that every antitrust enforcer needs to consider. i would not really expect it out of joe simons, given how he handled the facebook consent decree violations and really just gave them a slap on the wrist. i know a $5 billion fine sounds like a lot, but it is really not going to change anything or protect the american people from privacy abuses. i don't expect anything aggressive coming out of this administration. however these investigations take a long time, so it might not be joe simons making the decisions on the proper remedy. whether it should be broken up or a different type of contact. emily: meanwhile, you have a new piece out in bloomberg businessweek that speaks to how facebook has evolved under scrutiny from regulators after this fine penalty was levied by

, the ftc, and your assessment is facebook is only getting stronger. how so? sarah: if you think about it logically, the data is the most important part of facebook's business model. that's what is at the bedrock of 70 billion advertising businesses. the ftc is basically telling facebook now it is very important that you do not share your most valuable asset with any third parties, and facebook had already buttoned it up. they already don't want to share data with third parties, they understand that owning the network and owning a much bigger network, and making that bigger is most important thing for the future of their business. so really, what ftc did was let the company continue on their current path and have an excuse to do things that are anticompetitive, like the messaging app. charlotte, talk to was a little bit about -- first of all would you agree with sarah , there? charlotte: yes i think that's a

, major concern. something i was hoping the ftc would do in this settlement is have requirements for interoperability with competitors. that is a form of data sharing but it allows competition. i think it is really important. emily: sally, at what point do you think the ftc would say, ok this is a company that needs , to be broken up? whether it's facebook, or joe simons specifically spoke to amazon and the issue around third-party sellers. sally: so, you know, it takes years of investigation before an enforcer is going to break up a company. in our history when it's been done, it's taken time. said,k, you know, like i it may be after the 2020 election and we could have a different decision maker making the ultimate decision. and the concerns he voiced about amazon i think are also very important, that it's not allowed to enforce basically rules it said it was going to do in terms

of low pricing on its third-party sellers in a different way. emily: charlotte, as somebody who worked at the ftc how , concerning is the amazon issue in your mind? charlotte: well, the ftc certainly wants to make sure that competition is happening fairly on the amazon platform. so small retailers ought to be able to compete and not worry that amazon is going to anti-competitively interfere with them. so, i think that's the type of thing the ftc is going to be looking for. emily: now sarah, in response to the ftc penalty on facebook, alex stamos, the former chief security officer at facebook, had a pretty striking tweet. he said i can't believe facebook didn't pay more for this. if the ftc ordered amazon to help consumers make money by offering house brands in

every category bezos would leap , across the table with a $10 billion check and a massive grin. what does he mean by that? sarah: he means basically that this is a valuable asset and facebook is no longer able to share, therefore it is good for facebook to have this rule in place. the facebook of five or seven years ago, the one that resulted in cambridge analytica, that's no longer how facebook works today. there are developers making personality -- sorry personality , quizzes and games that operate on facebook, that used to be necessary to bring in more users. but in this current world, facebook no longer wants that. and in fact it wants to keep its entire network for itself mostly for itself. emily: you just came out with a fascinating piece yesterday about how facebook contractors are listening to audio of its users talking over facebook messenger, and today, the story about facebook only getting stronger.

sally, i'm wondering why don't these bad news stories seem to hurt facebook more than they do? sally: i think the reason why the bad news stories don't hurt facebook is because the enforcers are not making a -- making facebook change its business practices. when they got the fine, and it was just a fraction of its was able toue, it keep doing what it's doing, mining users' data in a way they don't expect, that settlement was a win for facebook. you know, until an enforcer actually makes them change their business practices in a way that affects profitability, their stocks will not be effective. emily: charlotte, what is your expectation of how this ftc investigation of facebook will play out, as well as a potential investigation into amazon? charlotte: so, of course it's hard to predict. we don't have access to the nonpublic document that they are

reviewing at the ftc, but i do not expect it will lead to huge changes. the track record is not strong on that, and antitrust is a narrow and difficult area of the law. so actually, our hope is that there will be a new agency with new regulatory powers, in addition to antitrust, and i think that is how we are really going to address the power that facebook has. emily: that was sally hubbard, institute, markets charlotte's lehman of public knowledge and our own sarah frier. coming up, tencent revenue falling short amid the chinese economic slowdown, but alibaba proving it has room to run, reporting better-than-expected results. we will break down both companies next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: tencent reported second-quarter revenue that missed estimates, while they beat profit expectations.

online ad revenue grew a worse than expected 16%, this as they grapple with competition and an economic slowdown. for more on tencent i spoke with bloomberg's selina wang in beijing. selena: even though we spoke on -- even though those profit numbers beat expectations, the focus was really on the decline in growth along the online ad revenue. even though it is not the most important section of tencent, it was the most promising area, and we're really starting to see that hit by broader macro economic issues in china as well as competition. what was interesting is where the company pointed out the slowdown in advertising ad sales from the auto sector, the real , estate sector, the financial sector, which is really not a surprise given the stream of weak economic data out of china. in terms of beit dance this is , really the big elephant in the room. that company has been on a roll

in terms of getting companies to buy into their ads and buying user eyeballs onto their platform. the company did not directly mention that company by name but said they would be investing more in mini video apps which right dance is a leader in, longform quality content to try to differentiate itself from its competitors. emily: now, gaming has been a controversial part of the business in china. of course the chinese government has cracked down and since eased up. but what did we learn about the gaming segment at tencent? selena: for tencent the worst is over, given that this is still the company's most important revenue line. now we did see them start to monetize their important games, including "peacemaker elite." for those who did not know, this is the new, less violent version battlevery popular royale game that did not get approval from chinese

regulators. we did not see the full growth from game type monetization, but analysts are expecting it to pick it up later in the year. you mentioned censorship for any company in chinese -- in china in the media space. they have to deal with government sensors, and those regulators haven't been improving -- approving these game titles fast enough. we also heard from ceo pony ma that they are going to be focused on making less violent games, trying to manage the time and keep a balanced profile of these games especially when it comes to teenagers. those ad sales around media ad sales were also hurt significantly by censorship, and the expectation is that as to -- as we are awaiting national day, they are slowing down and being strict on cracking down for what content can be shown. emily: meantime, wechat, of course, is the crown jewel of tencent, sort of a super app to which there is no equivalent in the united states. how is wechat doing?

selina: in china we certainly rely on wechat for everything. whether it's communication, haircuts, you can do anything. what's shocking is that this wechat app is reaching penetration, but it is still growing. it grew 7% to 1.1 billion users in this most recent quarter. to try to continue to juice growth here, they're trying to add more services and content into the app. they are really focusing on mini apps, which are essentially light apps within the app. that encourages users to spend more time within wechat than other parts of the internet. respondseen companies positively to those many apps which can be anything from booking a car to ride-hailing, as well as bike sharing. so, that's been a really successful growth within wechat. emily: that was bloomberg's selina wang. this week selina was also tracking alibaba results out thursday. they defied china slowdown, its sales beating top estimates.

selina and kevin carter of emqq discuss the company that made jack ma a household name. kevin: the real story in china and emerging markets is the billions of consumers that are moving on up, and they want better stuff. more and better food, more and better clothing, appliances. even as growth has slowed in china, retail sales and consumption continues, and in emerging markets, that consumption is going online onto a smartphone, just as it is here, but there's a leapfrogging because most of the traditional consumption infrastructure was never developed in china. emily: the alibaba co-founder joe tsai talked about demographics and digitalization, that that was what was driving the results, despite what was happening macro economically and geopolitically, but i guess the question is, how long can that keep up? selina: joseph pointed out a few

factors reaching -- how can this happen amid the broader economic slowdown in the trade war that looks like it has no end? one of them is the consumer upgrade in the developed markets. joseph mentioned the tier one cities are reaching the levels of consumptions of developed markets around the world. in addition to that they are pushing these lower tier cities are starting to pay off. you see rapid digitization of these lower tier cities, and they are really able to go head-to-head in competition with companies that are focused on lower tier markets. and they're planning to invest more in these areas and their market share is growing. so this is a really big trend in china that seems to be defying the broader slowdown. but in addition to that they're , investing a lot in personalization, in targeting these types of consumers with better algorithms as well as investing in sales promotion.

so that altogether is helping to boost the china commerce business by 40%, almost twice the amount of online retail sales in china. emily: kevin would this lead you , to believe that e in general as a segment will not impacted by trade tensions in china? kevin: i think it's probably the sector to be affected the least. emily: why? kevin: because the tariffs and trade war is about agricultural products on our side manufactured goods. ,e.m. qqq and e-commerce it's , about the 500 million people in china that still don't have a smart phone, that are going to get a smart phone and be in the third or fourth tier cities and , as soon as they get that, they are going to connect with their friends, play games, shop. so, the secular trend of e-commerce is a one directional thing, and it's not really part of the trade war. emily: and you know, to that point, jd.com also reported strong results that said alibaba has increasing competition from

pinduoduo.d. but what are the headwinds that alibaba faces ahead? selina: alibaba has been pretty resilient amid increasing competition from the likes of jd.com as well as pinduoduo. but we did see some areas of challenges that cloud computing segment still has those negative operating margins. we also saw growth start to decelerate in that area. there is also losses in the digital media and entertainment sector that has narrowed, but they are facing increasing regulatory issues. something worth pointing out, alibaba is not just based off of advertising. alibaba isn't truly an e-commerce company in the way that you would think of amazon, and while we saw tencent's online advertising really take a hit, alibaba's business has maintained strength there. so they are doing things to keep their customers engaged and improve the advertising return on investment for their customers. emily: so kevin, if the trade

ar drags on and it appears it will we don't know , how long, what will the fallout be in china more broadly as an emerging market? kevin: well, i think it's likely to impact the chinese economy. it is likely to impact the sectors that are part of the story which are the export and manufacturing sectors. i would like to think that the tariffs are not going into aefect. mathematically -- emily: many tariffs are already in effect. kevin: this is true, in both directions. but the new ones that have been proposed, the once pushed out to i would like to think this is a december, negotiating tactic. we had a trade skirmish with china 10 years ago and put a tariff on chinese tires. they responded by putting a a tariff on our chicken feed. but that was a tariff put in under the obama administration, and it lived for three years. we go back and study it, it saved 1200 american tire making jobs at a cost of $1 million per

job, and it also cost three jobs in retail for every job it saved and the american taxpayer-funded -- and the american taxpayer funded that, so i would like to think the mathematics are clear enough we won't really do the things we're threatening. if we do the market is voting , out that we will likely have a recession in our country, and i frankly think it could be bad if with -- if we go ahead with the tariffs as described. emily: where does that mean you're placing your bets? , the emerging internet companies are not really part of the trade war. this is about people all over the world consuming, wanting stuff, using their smartphones. emily: that was kevin carter of emqq and bloomberg technology selina wang in beijing. coming up, you know him as the former head of google china. he is now at the helm of one of china's most popular capital funds. an exclusive conversation with

him next, as he eyes an ai ipo valued at more than $1 billion. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the former head of google china is turning heads at the helm of one of china's most prominent funds. since its founding, kaifu lee's firm has invested in more than 300 companies, including one he hopes will be the fastest ai startup to hit $100 million in revenue. we spoke exclusively to bloomberg tech's selina wang. she asked about the long-term plan for capital raising. kai-fu: we don't plan this ahead of time. based on the trajectory of innovation, it's, i think today, it is fair to say it's fastest $200 million revenue company in the world for ai. selina: where are you now? kai-fu: we're not quite there, yet. but by the time we project we'll

get there, which is not far from now it will be the fastest to , reach $100 million of revenue. a lot of unicorns are not even at $100 million revenue, i think it can get there pretty quickly, both the revenue over onwards $100 million, towards $200 million. at that point, it should be well over a unicorn and can be listed publicly. selina: what's your timeline for an ipo? kai-fu: i think that would be close to time. $100 million to $200 million revenue and the price sales ratio of 10 or so which values the company at $1 billion to $2 billion. so it wouldn't be far from now, it would be less than two years. selina: you wrote in your book that the area of technological discovery was over, and now it's all about implementation. so, how do you see this business continuing to evolve? kai-fu: we're still at a very early stage in the commercialization. we are still at kind of the equivalent of early internet portals back when everyone was

using yahoo! and there was not even a google yet, nor amazon or facebook. there's a lot of room to reap rewards. selina: now we are seeing venture deals fall dramatically. they fell 77%. do you think this a long-term winter or a healthy, short term place to bring valuations back to healthy levels? kai-fu: on the negative side, in an economy that's slowing down, everything slows down, including venture capital. what will happen is there will be a shakeout. the top companies will continue to thrive. i think many of the smaller first time vc's that have raised money in conventional ways will get in trouble. so that is part of it. but the positive side is if the economy is challenging, and the valuations are down, it's a good chance for us to go shopping. selina: there are reports that

some chinese ai companies, like some you are invested in like facebook plus, could be added to the blacklist which means they would be cut off from u.s. technology. how do you see that playing out and does it really have an impact on china's ai industry? kai-fu: the companies are built from a software stack that are domestically developed, so i think the impact would be much less than say, a company like huawei, which has intricate hardware-software products built with multiple dependencies. selina: the u.s. has been scrutinizing foreign deals in the u.s., and many chinese funds have scaled-back their investments. how does this strategy in the short-term and in the long-term? kai-fu: in the short-term, it has no impact because u.s. investment has always been less than 5% of our total, so now it just goes from 5% to 2%. so it is inconsequential.

a the long-term i think it is pity if we really have to cause a total separation of two countries because one could argue that artificial intelligence got to where it got to because the whole world has been able to work together. emily: part of our exclusive interview there with kai-fu lee. chair and ceo of's innovation ventures. and that does it for this edition of "the best of bloomberg technology." we will bring you all the latest of check throughout the week. 5:00 new york, 2:00 san francisco. and we are livestreaming on twitter, as well. find us of their @technology, and follow our global breaking news network @tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪ ♪

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paul: welcome to daybreak australia. i am paul allen. shery: i am shery ahn. sophie: i am sophie kamaruddin in hong kong. we are counting down to asia's major market open. paul: here are the top stories we are covering, talking trade, president trump said negotiations with china are making progress but he is not ready to make a deal. protest in hong kong amid warnings of a widening fallout. they talk of an economic