taylor: i'm taylor riggs. this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all of our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, ipo woes. wework was supposed to be embarking on its big roadshow this week, but complications delayed the ipo. regrouping? mpany plus, listening in. is it really the right time for facebook to tout a device that can listen to you in your own living room? we speak with the vp of

augmented and virtual reality. and rapid climate adaptation. billionaire bill gates wants to help invest nearly $2 trillion over the next decade to help the world become more resilient. his thoughts on and potential solutions for climate change. for wework, it was the roadshow that wasn't this week. one of the most anticipated public debuts of the year, it is now postponed until october. the shared office space provider is looking for time to calm investor doubts about its dropping valuation, governance problems, and financials. remember that, at one point, this was supposed to be a $47 billion company. that number is now $15 billion and could be perhaps even smaller. joining me to discuss this all was phil haslett, cofounder and chief revenue officer at equityzen, a secondary

marketplace for pre-ipo shares and bloomberg's crystal tse. crystal: they have a lot to address before they can go out to the investors and ask them for their money. like you said, they were looking for a $47 billion valuation, and now we are hearing it could be as low as $12 billion to $15 billion. you know, they have actually made a lot of changes to corporate governance, but investors are really looking at valuations, whether they will performance, financials, and whether more changes are needed to the corporate governance structure for them to be convinced about the valuation they want to get. taylor: phil, this morning on the open, they spoke with gene munster, who cofounded loup ventures. he had some comments as related to the valuation part of wework. take a listen. >> the valuation is really a wake-up call to private investors that the public markets are holding them accountable. and the specific reason i think this report reflected that was the amount of cash burn -- what is a consistent theme and your setup here addressed this --

companies that are losing a lot of money, not surprising, are being held to lower valuations. in the case of wework, it is $1.5 billion over the last year, more than what tesla lost, to put that in perspective. taylor: phil, react to those comments on valuation. phil: i would say wework is kind of in a space of its own. having lost $2 billion in 2018. i think of a mix of lyft, uber, and wework planning to come public in 2019, i think we have seen really the largest losing companies coming out of the pre-ipo tech space. at equityzen, these types of groups of companies, we also see plenty of companies that are burning only $100 million, $200 million in cash. wework is an exception to the norm, but writing off $37 billion of value over a period of three to four weeks will certainly catch the attention of a lot of capital venture investors and a lot of public market investors. taylor: we can joke all day long about how you value company

using a discounted cash flow to evaluate a company that does not have cash flows. but on a serious note, how do you value this company? phil: sure. with wework, the first thing we theed at is trying to find multiples of revenue. the first thing we found, some of their competitors were trading at 1 or 1.5 times their revenue. we work earned $2 billion in revenue in 2018, so to come out at that evaluation seemed ludicrous. the toughest thing for wework is trying to explain and defend itself as a technology company where in reality it is really a real estate company that happens to have some technology bells and whistles. so i think this is really a big wake-up call for them to recalibrate those expectations maybe in q4 or may be in 2020. -- maybe a little bit later in 2020. taylor: talk to me more about that valuation. what did the private market see that the public markets are missing? phil: one of the interesting things we saw at equityzen, where we see a lot of pre-ipo secondary flow before companies go public, is there actually was not that much interest for

wework, particularly at the valuations that had obtained from softbank and other investors in primary capital raises. we saw much healthier markets for companies that went public recently in 2018 and 2019, companies like docusign, slack, that were little bit more popular with investors. we would have expected to see something similar for a company like wework because the brand is so ubiquitous. however, there was a little bit of hesitation from those investors at that lofty valuation. when you get north of $20 billion in valuation, you are not talking about hundreds of unicorns anymore. the number of decacorns or whatever unit you want to call it drops precipitously. in particular, when you have that kind of valuation coupled with losses north of $2 billion, it was kind of a recipe for disaster here. one thing i think about is we have been in very much a bull market not only in public stocks but also in private companies, and that has led to founder-friendly terms on how they raise capital. at some point, you are going to have the pendulum swing. and i think, when you have this type of headline, a cut in

valuation will really start to shift those types of numbers over to investors that are going to start to ask for more corporate governance, more reasonable valuations, and other parts within the cap structure that they will get more comfortable with. taylor: crystal, when we were talking about bondholders, you mentioned that a $6 billion financing was contingent upon raising $3 billion in that ipo. assuming that doesn't happen, when does wework need to get more cash and where do they get it? crystal: i think the very simple answer to that question is that always need to get more cash as soon as possible. if, say, the ipo does not happen by the end of the year, they may look into tapping through softbank to get more funding. there were some talks about softbank being willing to put in another couple hundred million dollars into the company, but that would not move the needle. they definitely want to do an ipo to recapitalize. taylor: phil, quickly here, any ideas on when is the drop dead deadline for raising more cash?

phil: i have to think they want to push this over to 2020. but with only about $3 billion or $3.5 billion of cash available to them, things could get really messy here, starting in q1 of 2020. particularly if lenders have promised to provide them capital if they raise their ipo before 2019. they will put them in this tight bind. if i were them, i would spend the next quarter really tightening the belt, trying to overhaul spending, show great numbers after q4, try to renegotiate with some of the banks and list in q1. taylor: that was phil haslett, cofounder and chief revenue officer at equityzen and bloomberg's crystal tse. apple told the european union court this week it was unfairly painted as a tax dodger. in luxembourg, an apple lawyer says that in fact, that the company is the world's largest taxpayer. apple is urging the e.u. general court to overturn an order from the european commission that it pay a record $14 billion in back taxes to ireland. bloomberg's maria tadeo filed

this report from luxembourg. maria: apple is coming face-to-face with european regulators in the biggest tax case in the world. the company has appealed a 13 billion euro fine dictated by the european commission in 2016. the idea behind it, according to the europeans, is that apple received special tax treatment from the irish government, which allowed the company to pay artificially low taxes. apple says this was not the case and has appealed that decision. and if you were hoping to get a "sorry" moment from the company, that was certainly not the case. apple said it is the company that pays the most taxes in the world. the actually claimed the decision from the europeans lacked any logic or sense, and they also believe the numbers here were tweaked in a way that presented apple in a bad light in front of the public. essentially, the goal was to portray the company as paying no taxes. when you look at the european side to the story, they will tell you they still believe they are right.

they still believe it is pretty obvious by now that apple has set out a tax structure in europe to pay the least amount possible. and they do believe that if the arguments are validated and they are vindicated by the court, they can continue to get tough on american tech companies to make them pay more in europe. of course, those tax cases happening as tensions continue to play out between the united states of america and europe over big american tech. the president of the united states of america, donald trump, has said many times that this is only happening because europeans cannot compete on the innovation so they compete on the taxation. when it comes to the e.u., they deny this is the case. they just want everyone to pay their fair share. taylor: that was maria tadeo from luxembourg. coming up, part of our exclusive interview with ibm ceo ginni rometty. why she thinks blockchain is all about trust. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. you can listen on the bloomberg app, bloomberg.com, and in the

u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: ibm announced wednesday it would open the first quantum computation center in an effort to expand its fleet of quantum computers and further realize the business potential of the next generation technology. the real-world application of quantum and blockchain is something that bloomberg's caroline hyde covered when she sat down with ibm ceo ginni rometty in this exclusive interview. ginni: we look at the future, technology is coming. we're all about applying them to business, but we build some of the world's leading technologies together here. yes, cloud and ai, everyone talks about that today. artificial intelligence and cloud. much more to still be done there, by the way, but we will park those for a minute. the next two -- blockchain and quantum. now, as often is the case with new technologies, people

overestimate them in the beginning and then underestimate them in the long term, as it is said. but blockchain -- if you said, ginni, what is one word you would associate with blockchain? i would say trust. crypto -- that is a use. put that aside. it even have to use the right --d of blockchain, which today. what blockchain should do -- it will put trust between parties who don't even know each other. it would make trusted transactions. and it will do what the internet did for communication between lots of parties. and so a great example, if i can, on trust and blockchain -- because what it allows you to do is you and i can share a transaction together. i don't have see anything you don't want me to see. and once the transaction is completed, it cannot be erased. so think of a ledger, right? so why do we each keep our own checking accounts? do we trust what the bank says? today, we probably do. in the old days, we would each

balance our checkbooks and the like. if i said to you hate, you have $100, you would say hey, i'll check my own notes here. so it is the same idea. and a big application is food safety. one out of ten people get sick -- 600 million people all over the world get sick from food safety, it's a big problem. and it costs a lot of money. you have seen it with recalls on the spinach and the like. we started something called food trust. think about this on walmart, carrefour -- these are competitors out in the world all being willing to join on. nestle, unilever, driscoll strawberries and the like -- what they are doing is saying no, no, we will all put our data on here about what row on the farm this came from. so from farm to fork. so when there is an issue, and my goodness, we have done millions and millions of transactions already through this, i can pinpoint where the bad spinach is versus call it all back.

because a third of food is wasted in this world. can you believe it? and so that, to me, is one. and quantum. to jump over to quantum. just like with blockchain, i said think about the word trust, quantum will solve problems today that traditional computers, no matter how fast they are, cannot solve. because traditional computers are 1's and 0's. we all learned about that, a bit in a computer. quantum bits have infinite states. they are for the kinds of problems that today, even if you have the best supercomputer, you could never model it. it would run forever. i am exaggerating a little bit on that. so let's take wetlands in biology as an example. it is an approximation. why do they still do live -- they can't get an exact simulation done. quantum will do is things like -- the very first things will be drug discovery, material sciences.

risk management, logistics. these are incredibly different. if you were to want to truly model a molecule of caffeine, you would need a computer a 10th the size of this planet. if you actually wanted the actual simulation. so we are ready with our quantum systems. we have made commercial ones available through the cloud. because they operate at colder than outer space, that is what quantum is. things like -- you've got daimler working on new materials like batteries and cars. jpmorgan is working on things like how to price different kinds of options. how to look at risk differently. and drug discovery. so we have got a huge network of clients, because now is the time to start to get used to it. now you say the word trust. i would add only one other side of quantum. there is a dark side. one dark side of it is that quantum can break traditional encryption that has protected most of the world. we announced to some new systems

-- announced some new systems last night that are prepared for quantum already. and already, our security that is in them, to secure what is inside our systems and run all of those mission-critical systems are quantum-safe. and so we have been equally building something called lata sonography, which is -- lattice the talk murphy -- oftice photography, a kind encryption that quantum cannot break. in this, to me, goes back to responsible stewardship. if i'm going to build a tool that is that powerful, i owe it to society to make sure that i also address the downside. so we put as much effort into that to then prevent that thing from being that powerful. both sides. taylor: that was part of bloomberg's exclusive interview with ibm ceo ginni rometty. and coming up, listening in. facebook confirms it will resume collecting and transcribing some user audio clips from its in-home video device portal. we hear from facebook's vice president for augmented and virtual reality, andrew bosworth. and later, corporate ventures

data analytics company splunk. officially enters the vc world. we will get details with ceo doug merritt. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: facebook confirmed this week it will resume collecting and transcribing some user audio clips from its in-home video device portal. i spoke to facebook's vice president for augmented and virtual reality, andrew bosworth, at the launch of a new generation of portal devices. bosworth overseas hardware and devices that facebook. take a listen. andrew: we are so excited about our new products. we have a 10 inch and an eight inch hd screen, and they are really oriented towards connecting people with the ones they love the most who are not nearby through video calling. these were designed to look like picture frames, so they can fit into anyone's home as naturally as if they were picture frames. they will even show pictures when they are not in use. taylor: and another really cool

thing that you guys are launching is the tv portal as well. tell me about that. andrew: yeah. portal tv takes advantage of the biggest screen in most people 's homes, the tv, and turns it into a really immersive video calling device. taylor: one thing that really stuck out to me was the price point, which at about $149, feels like you're really trying to push into what is already a competitive space. you have roku, appletv. how do you stand out? andrew: we think the most important thing people do is connect with each other. all of these devices are not focused on that. they are focused on connecting you to content, which is great and useful. but when it comes to connecting with the people you care about, that is what was missing. so with portal, you can use facebook, you can use messenger, you can use whatsapp to connect with the people you care most about in a rich, immersive way with cameras that follow you around the room and are hands-free, and you and your kids can connect with your

grandparents or your friends without having to worry about holding a phone and your arm getting tired and trying to fit everyone into the shot. taylor: you mentioned cameras. i have to bring up, on the portal, there was that button where you could turn the camera off. privacy has been a huge concern. was that the focal point of making sure it was very easy for me to turn the camera on and off? andrew: yeah. when you are introducing new devices for people's homes -- people have never experienced anything like portal. it has a camera and a microphone. we wanted to make sure everyone felt really comfortable and in control of that experience. so these generation of portals do not just have controls to turn on and off the camera and microphone, they have integrated shutters that cover the camera so you can see that it is not seeing you. taylor: what about the microphones? andrew: the microphones have an active light when they are disabled so you know they are disabled. alternatively, you can leave it on if you want to use assistance like alexa or "hey, portal." taylor: so if i say, "hey, portal," am i still being recorded?

andrew: if the device here's the wake word "hey, portal," it sends the recording of the voice clip up to the servers to get an answer back to you. and if you have storage enabled, which is the default, we may review the voice recordings to improve the quality over time. but you can also disable those on the device itself or your facebook activity log. taylor: you know, privacy, data, all of that has been a big focal point of facebook. is now the right time to be launching new products where there is a camera, where there is a microphone? because right now there is so much scrutiny and arguably the least amount of trust in facebook. andrew: yeah, i think now is the best time to launch a product like this. connecting with someone you care about is the essence of what facebook does, and that's what the portal devices are centered around. video calling with the people you care the most about. we have taken every precaution we can to make sure people feel comfortable with the devices in their homes and the control they in those -- they have in those devices. but i think, when they have the experience of connecting with somebody they care about who

does not live nearby, they will really experience something special for them. taylor: it also comes at a time when antitrust scrutiny is at the highest, looking at big tech. when you think of facebook, a lot of people think the app and software. is now the right time to expand your tentacles and showing regulators how big you are, going into text, going into your home, going into tv? andrew: the smart display category is so new. entire devices of smart displays have only been in the market for two or three years now. i think it is really early. everyone wants to experiment and see what kind of value we can create there. it is not very big yet, but it is growing year-over-year.

we think they will be, portal will be a great fit for them. taylor: joining me now to discuss this further is "bloomberg technology" reporter kurt wagner, who covers facebook. first, i wanted to talk about the privacy issues that are going on. frankly, that opt out button is not an opt in. does that go far enough to quell our concerns about privacy? kurt: the big issue we have seen so far with these transcription happenings that have been a big issue with tech, people just did not know about it. people were not aware that the audio they were giving these companies were being transcribed at all. i think, at the very least, facebook is at least acknowledging this. they are talking about it. they made the opt out thing in their presentation with the press yesterday. so while it is not necessarily they say hey, privacy is important, you think they might make it the default if that is how they truly felt. at the same time, they are acknowledging this in a way that a few months ago none of these companies were doing. taylor: what do you make of them launching in your living room cameras and microphones when trust in that company is at an all-time low? kurt: yeah, you asked him this. i asked him this yesterday as well. it seems crazy. the timing for facebook to be adding not only a device to your home, but one that has a camera and a microphone on it. it just does not feel like the right time. at the same time, when is the right time for facebook?

i am not sure if -- a year ago, it certainly would not have been any better. a year from now, is it going to be any better? i understand why they are pushing forward with this, because you never know when will be the, quote, "right time." but certainly, more than almost any other company they have been dealing with this privacy and trust issue. it is hard to get into someone's living room when people don't trust you. taylor: when we talk about timing, this is a very competitive space. you have comcast making an announcement, facebook, you have companies like roku, apple, name it. this is very competitive. how does facebook stand to differentiate themselves? kurt: yeah, they were very clear about this yesterday. they said the differentiator is the video calls. we think people are going to use portal for what you may call a facetime call on your phone, but this would be through their hardware and, in some cases, even through the tv set. do a video call through your tv. they think that differentiates them from all of the others. we asked about what about the idea of having netflix or hbo,

these other kinds of entertainment apps on these devices? they kind of said, listen, there is a ton of places you can already go to do that stuff. our differentiator is the video camera. i think it would make sense if they had both, but that is what they are really leaning into. taylor: when would we see facebook come out with a version of the google home or the amazon alexa, an actual device you can talk to? yeah, well you can talk to this one. there are two ways. you can either talk through alexa, as you mentioned, or you can say "hey, portal," and that would wake it up for basic commands or requests. those are the things that they are actually starting to collect and transcribing. but the bigger question is when will they have their own assistant? the software where you would say "hey, portal" and it would give you a bunch of different options versus basic commands. right now, they don't have any plans, they said, to remove alexa and build their own thing. but clearly with the "hey, portal" software, they are getting started on that. taylor: coming up, what does a $17 billion data analytics company due to diversified -- do

to diversify? if you are splunk, you enter the vc world. and "bloomberg technology" is livestreaming on twitter. check us out on @technology and be sure to follow our global breaking news network at @tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: welcome back to "the best of bloomberg technology." i'm taylor riggs. data analytics company splunk splashed wednesday as it entered the venture capital world. the company announced investment funds totaling $150 million. thefirst is $50 million -- first is $100 billion and it is an innovation fund, while the other is $50 million. splunk ventures touted the move. >> it is a classic corporate fund. they are super passionate about data and the power it can bring

to solve some of the world's problems. those two funds are constructed to help investment companies that have more of a commercial purpose on using data to solve different issues around the world from health-care to consumer issues to privacy issues. platform, the splunk keeping it open to people who play outside of the splunk ecosystem, and the other one is more of a social fund. it is more of a data and service driven economy, and there is a lot of great organizations out there that are trying to help with everything from rescaling of populations all the way through to different beneficial programs in areas like human trafficking or areas that would not be commercial entities. thingally do an amazing of good by using data as a backbone. taylor: analysts are bullish. the last time we checked, they are really bullish on future growth opportunities, where do you see the future growth?

doug: we have classically focused on the technical departments within organizations. they are fully digital already, which means they have overwhelming amounts of data that they need to craft a signal versus the noise from. which is where president obama's comments came from. the genius of that data is that it can also be used for manufacturing optimization, supply chain optimization, but our focus for the technical buyers is still early in the journey that we look at the market as being less than 5% penetrated. so our bulk of our focus remains on cybersecurity, resiliency, -- i.t. resiliency, developers, and then helping those buyers serve the rest of the organization by taking that data and using it for other revenue-generating or customer serving, or cost-saving activities. taylor: it was really interesting in post-market, rosesday shares of splunk as much as 2%.

-- 2% on news that cisco had tried to make an acquisition for data dog. the point is the broader m&a landscape. do you assume that splunk makes further cloud acquisitions or do you get bought out? doug: the thing is, we cannot control who we focus on, and we have made over 10 acquisitions across four years. we are actively always looking at additional technologies that could help customers. i would anticipate that there would be more in the future. we had two relatively big ones over the past three weeks and we see so much opportunity -- we are truly at the beginning innings of this data era. whatever it takes, organic or inorganic, to make sure that our customers' needs are solved and they can actually turn data into doing and not just be overwhelmed by it is something that we are committed to. taylor: within the cloud space, how do you compete with the big guys? amazon, oracle, etc. who not only have the cloud but also have the data analytics company.

doug: right now we are adding value to the different data services that those vendors provide. we are enhancing and enriching the services that they offer. the reality that any of us live in when you are participating with google, microsoft, or amazon is that you have to find ways to add value to that stack. that is going back to acquisitions and massive investment to constantly make an r&d. they keep coming out with really compelling services. we find ways to find much more effective value for those services, and also draw from the multi-cloud horizon, and data centers to take that value up even higher for organizations that have these very heterogeneous landscapes. taylor: as we dig down into your business a little, we should note, j.p. morgan analysts upgraded the stock today on advanced or future bookings really strong going out into the year. how do you forecast future bookings? how do they look? doug: the economy is in such an

interesting state right now. what we have seen in the last two quarters is while people are -- well, there is a lot of change, and they are trying to digest the change. we had data initiative and a digital transformation that we have been talking about remains top of mind for leaders. when you're facing a board of the cloud vendors that bring new business models to their customers, you must keep investing in the digital transformation journey and in taking advantage of data. so far, we are not seeing any big impacts in our outlook for our products. and it is always a quarter by quarter outlook on that. taylor: yeah, how is the broader tech spending environment? do you at all fluctuate with tariffs, international versus domestic? how does that consumer band -- how has that in sumer band felt -- consumer band felt? doug: we

will try a secondary impact, as organizations have to bear the burdens of tariffs, they have to determine what to spend the money on. we do trade and sell internationally and currency is an issue. we tend to be in u.s. dollars and that still has an effect on us because now they have to quantify what the new price is based on their own currency fluctuations. so it is probably not the same impact that manufacturers or people shipping physical goods have, but ultimately we are at the service of our customers and trying to drive them forward and their budgets translate back onto what they can spend on firms like us. taylor: finally, you introduce some recent price changes. how much more of a tailwind is that for you going forward? doug: the main focus that we were really driving is serving our customers. customer success is our number one business criteria, so this was a key element we felt was critical for customers to get value from splunk. within our modeling, we think it is tailwind. it provides a lot more leniency for what we can do with software and there is so much data that with an easier pricing metric, they are able to put a lot more

data in and get a lot more value back out. taylor: that was doug merritt, ceo of splunk. now, splunk's rival data dog also joined bloomberg tv this week. the new york-based enterprise software company went public on thursday. bloomberg's at hammond -- ed hammond caught up with the ceo at the nasdaq. >> you have to solve the real problem for real customers. that's what we do. the way that we settled this and focus on making customers' lives simpler and helping them run their infrastructures and applications. ed: how do you grow in terms of market share because you have a lot of competitors. it is a very crowded space nonetheless in cloud. have you compete with these companies in the world? olivier: it is a very big market. and it is a market that is

growing very fast. there is room for many companies to be successful. really, the way we compete is that we focus on cloud and companies moving from public to private clouds. we build on that from day one. we focus on getting to the maximum level with reach within those companies that is being used by as many of their engineers as possible. that is what makes us different. ed: what is the point of differentiation of this company? olivier: we are trying to make data more accessible. we started between teams that were separate or did not actually see eye to eye or look at the same kind of data and our focus from day one was to bring all of this data from different sources into one place and make it accessible to different teams. we can get more teams, more users, and in the end compete with the other companies. more teams get more users. ed: everything the public market at the moment is overshadowed by what's going on with wework and their travails. a very painful route to market. having just done an ipo and been a very successful ipo in terms of day one pricing, what would

be your advice? olivier: i do not have much to say about ewework. in atually use wework number of cities for offices. it is a real business. the best to do is always focus on your customers and having a business that is healthy in terms of the metrics and profitability. that is what we do and we keep doing that. and i guess others should do that too. ed: you have the stock that is very common, obviously, among tech companies. it has been a subject with some controversy if should companies have so much control over companies going public. what was there any discussion on potentially pulling back on that? olivier: for us, we are building for the long term. we want that to remain the case as a public company. that is why it was important for us -- at the same time, we serve investors, we deliver returns to

investors, we represent investors, and it is healthy. at the same time, we wanted to work long-term on that. ed: another story that has been much in the news, at least overnight, is interest from cisco. talk to us about that. indeed, why does it make sense for a company like datadog to be independent verses under the auspices of a bigger organization, like cisco? olivier: i cannot really comment on any of the rumors that we have heard, but what i can tell you is that the market that we are in, there are many more problems that we can solve for customers and there is a much more important way for the company to build than where we are today. we have been very successful. ed: do you see m&a down the road? olivier: the founders acquired this.

we will certainly do more in the future. taylor: that was datadog ceo olivier pomel. and coming up, and internet unit naser as south africa's pers traded publicly for the first time in europe this week. we will check in on their performance and its tencent stake with the ceo. and the world's second richest person on climate change. gates, hisfrom bill thoughts on the kind of adaptive action we can take now to protect the planet. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: just last week, investors piled into the newly listed internet unit from south africa's naspers. shares initially jumped as much as 32% above its reference point before declining. prosus holds assets that include a lucrative stake in the tencent holdings.

i caught up with ceo bob vandyke prosusks what he sees in that investors should be open to. bob: the start was positive, and we expected it to be volatile in the beginning. it is a new listing, and actually the shareholders have not received their shares. they will only get them on monday. there will be more activity going forward. people arei think excited to have a large group listed in europe, and we are the largest consumer internet group in europe. investors are very positive about it. taylor: is now the right time to be ipoing? bob: it is profitable in classifieds and payments, and we are also growing very fast organically. so i think the timing is actually perfect. taylor: you mentioned classifieds. what is next business you would direct list or ipo? bob: we are really focused on prosus at the moment and we want

we are a growth company, we want to see the right amount of happen. we want to get the right investor base into the listing and that is the first priority. taylor: what sectors are you investing in next. bob: there is so much out there that we are excited about. we are investing in food delivery, also in the u.s. that is a very rapidly growing sector. but we basically see it everywhere in the world. people are really using meal services to order in at work or home, so we think that is growth opportunity. taylor: talk to me more about food delivery because competition is heating up in that space. you have more companies coming out that are trying to invest in the market. how do you stand out and how do you differentiate yourself? bob: what we see is it is really important to have excellent local operations. what we have seen in markets like india, what it requires to be successful there is what it -- is different than what it requires in another market. you need an excellent operator

who understands what restaurants need on the ground who has a very efficient and scalable operation. taylor: you mentioned being in india on the ground. talk to us about being in the local market in china. how does that work? bob: in china we are an investor in tencent and we have 31% of the shares. as a market, it is the most attractive internet market in the world. the biggest internet market and users, obviously, and growing very fast. i think tencent has a fantastic position in that market, probably the best leadership team and we are happy to be active in the markets with tencent. taylor: you talk a lot about food delivery. i know you are also a big investor, ai is all the rage these days, cloud products software, and outside food , delivery, where do you see the next frontier? bob: if you look at technology that will make a massive difference in our lives, i would say machine learning is the one that stands out. i think it is going to be as transformational, even more

so than mobile phones have been over time. it is really changing how people interact with the internet, and i think it is actually going to be relevant in all the businesses that we have. so machine learning is a huge topic of interest for us. taylor: a big thing in the market lately has been finding the path to profitability. as you look at companies and individual markets that you do or don't like, looking at the different sectors that you want to be involved in, how important is it to see that roadmap to a path to profitability? bob: the way we think about it is if you understand the business model well, you have come through that and have really grasped the details of it, we are fine with investing. we did that in classifieds and it turned profitable. as long as you know well the model in which you are investing and you are comfortable with a number of years of losses, but in the end you need to make money. taylor: we talked about india and china. we have not talked about the u.s. continue to focus

on investments in emerging markets and would you consider big investments in the u.s.? bob: it is a good thing that we speak about that because we are a growth company, but not necessarily just a growth market company. we have invested quite a bit in the u.s. in the past few years in a company that is trying to which isled letgo, trying to let people sell things that they do not need on a mobile phone. taylor: tell me more about that. bob: it is founded by someone who founded our core classified business and also this company. what it does well, it makes something you do not need anymore as easy to sell as throwing it away. it is super simple now. taylor: we have another question here about being in the midst of the u.s.-china trade war. .ou have been focused on china have the tariffs or trade war impacted any of your relationships between the u.s. and china? bob: if you look at the

investments that we have in china, in $.10 i think tencent is mainly operating domestically. it is a strong franchise. i would say the operations of the business has not been so much impacted. i think it obviously has impacted investor sentiment, and that has had an impact on their share price and ours as well. taylor: are you purposely focusing on companies that do -- that are locally operated within china that don't have the international exposure and are subject to the trade headlines in the u.s.? we: one of the things that do, we take a long-term perspective on the world, and it has served us well over time. when we do an investment, we typically take a 10 year horizon. we really would not worry about what happens today in the here and now. that was never ceo bob -- nasper ceo bob van dijk .

coming up, clearing the fog on climate change. we will talk sustainable investing and hear how the world's second richest man is helping those hit hardest. we speak with bill gates. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: the united nations climate action summit is due to be held next week and most americans agree climate change is something that needs to be addressed. bloomberg is part of the "covering climate now" project, which includes 100 news outlets. cbs news, part of the project, recently conducted a poll, which found 56% of americans think that we should be addressing climate change right now. bill gates has invested in clean energy to tackle climate change. but his latest strategy is not to try and prevent it. gates wants to help those hit hardest by climate change, year towards adaptation. the world's second richest man recently spoke to bloomberg's eric in seattle.

bill: if you cannot afford air conditioning, when your crop fails, if you do not have a savings account to get past that so your children are not having enough to eat, if you live near the equator where the absolute temperatures are higher than it is in a temperate zone, climate change is caused by middle income and rich people, but the people who suffer by far the most will be the poor. it is very unjust, even eventually for the wealthy people, the problems will be very, very bad. but for the next 30 or 40 years, most of it will hurt the subsistence farmer. eric: why focus your efforts on mitigation and adaptation to climate change instead of combating the root problem? carbon emissions. bill: mitigation is not an area that the foundation gets involved in. that is when you are trying to switch to green energy or

electric cars, or meat made without cows, that is big private sector stuff. eric: do you invest in that? bill: i invest billions in those things, including nuclear reactors and all sorts of things to help. adaptation, which is taking the fact that there will be climate problems and we need to help those who are hurt by it by giving them better seeds that can deal with the drought or are more productive so you can save the money, those things foundation is very, very involved in. and most people think about this mitigation of reducing emissions, the idea of how you minimize the damage, which they call it adaptation, that gets very little attention, which is why i and a few others, banco

-- and a few others created a commission about this issue that, later this year it will make it more clear that there is work to be done there. eric: do you think climate stoppable or maybe even reversible at some point? bill: we are not going to have a year where the world is cooler than it is today. the temperature, the average global temperature is going to go up a lot, and in the next 50 years, it will not go down. now, deciding how much it goes by twooes it go up degrees, three degrees, four degrees? that is in our hands. if we ignore the problem you are going to aim to something that is like a four degree scenario, which in terms of natural ecosystems, forest fires, days that humans just cannot go outside if you live near the pretty extreme. knowing how seriously people

are going to take it, what type of innovations will come along will determine where in that two to four degree range we are by the end of the century. i certainly hope we do not run the experiment of being higher than two degrees, but it will take a lot of commitment, and a bit of luck on the innovative breakthroughs to be able to get there. eric: there are a number of different ways of fighting climate change, renewable energy is clearly one of them. do you think government should -- governments should-- governme renewable energy or be dictated by market forces alone? bill: the cost of wind and solar has come down dramatically, and some of that subsidization has helped drive the volume which drives the learning curve. the prices come down. now they are not going to come down much more, so the tax benefits there should be shifted into things that are more limiting, like energy storage,

offshore wind, which still has a huge premium price. lots of places that we need the market to get going. the progress on solar and wind is very helpful, but the sun does not shine 24 hours a day if you are far away from the in the, actually -- winter you cannot get as much. that is just for the electricity piece, that is only 25% of the emissions. so we need a lot of efforts, but yes, that subsidization, that accelerated rollout is one of the few advances that we have . is less than 10% of all energy generation, because the global economy has a lot of energy generation. but it is one of the good things that has been developed. taylor: and that does it for best oftion of "the bloomberg technology." we bring you all of the latest in tech throughout the week.

tune in each day, 2:00 p.m. in new york, 5:00 p.m. in san francisco. bloomberg technology is livestreaming on twitter. check us out @technology and and follow our breaking news network at tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

francine: bill winters is a consummate global banker with a track record that speaks for itself. he spent 25 years at jpmorgan, rising to the top to lead the investment bank. during his four-year tenure as chief executive of standard chartered, he has turned around the company with the bank delivering its first buyback in 20 years. in july, i welcomed back bill winters to "leaders with lacqua." bill winters, thank you for joining us on "leaders."