emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, reddit traders at it again. this time, rallying a call to start a #biowar on biotech companies looking to cure disease. one, working on a cobit drug, soaring as much as 36%. this as gamestop falls back down again. -- covid drug, soaring as much

as 36%. plus, elon musk makes his debut on the hot social audio app clubhouse. he talked about everything from mars to wiring monkeys brains. he even surprised listeners by interviewing the robinhood ceo himself. clubhouse cofounder and ceo paul davison joins us this hour. and talk about a stock story, okta shares up 100%. how the company is helping to keep workforces secure and why they are now telling employees they can work from home forever. the ceo todd mckinnon will be my guest. all those stories in a moment, but first, stocks had their biggest rally in about 10 weeks as several strategists said the recent explosion in speculative buying will not derail the bull market in equities. let's get the bloomberg's ed ludlow with the latest. lots of curiosity about how the markets would open today. walk us through the day. ed: a positive day. jp morgan leading those voices, saying they are not seeing any of the excessive leverage, excessive momentum that would give them cause for concern based on their models.

the big story, u.s. equities rallying on monday, led by the tech. the s&p 500, up. you can see very easily the outperformance in technology stocks. the nasdaq 200 up. the philadelphia semiconductors index of about 4%, best day since november 5. part of the story here is the big cap tech stocks. the plus index, up 3%. of course, we are waiting on both amazon and alphabet, the google parent company, to report earnings on tuesday. as you have discussed, emily, going into this earnings period, there was a big expectation that we would see outsized earnings growth from those mega cap tech stocks. the reddit story, the retail trader story, does not go away. gamestop down 30% on the day, extreme volatility in those stocks. another reddit favorite, amc entertainment, basically flat. in terms of where those retail

traders are turning their attention, wow what, what a story and silver. silver jumped to an almost eight year high, extending the surge. the most active users rose as much as 30% to as much as $30.35 -- futures rose as much as 30% to as much as $30.35 an ounce. that is the highest level since february 2013. they've come away a little since then, but that is the new hot pick for the keyboard warriors, silver. emily: even though the frenzy dying down when it comes to some companies, this whole controversy still very much in the spotlight. in fact, elon musk was in a clubhouse last night and surprised everyone listening by passing a mic to vlad tenev, the ceo of robinhood. he just happened to be in the room, almost a click soon best it clips and interview with -- almost eclipsing elon

himself. what was your take away? ed: he put him on the spot and said, tell us what happened. there were rumors that some of the market makers but pressure on robinhood. he said that was not the case. it was a very wide-ranging appearance from elon musk. count on one man to bring the conversation back, and he talked not just about robinhood and read it, but also about bitcoin, moving the price of bitcoin for a second time in a week. he also had his tesla ceo hat on and addressed issues of a supplier, saying "it is important to emphasize to our suppliers, we are not trying to put them out of business, we want them to increase the rate." i thought that was interesting because this is a man who is ceo of a publicly traded company, also the ceo of spacex. companies he discussed, spacex's ambitions going to mars. he talked about nora link putting technology into the brain of a monkey that is now capable of playing video games.

they plan to release images of that within a month. he also talked about his own personal life, that while he may be regarded as a genius, it has been hard for him at times. this is classic elon musk, reflective of him using alternative channels to communicate, mirroring some of the stuff he puts on twitter from time to time, and going outside the realms of what we might expect from the ceo of a publicly traded company. emily: elon musk really disappoints, right? thank you so much for that update. stick with us in about a half-hour. we will be sitting down with clubhouse cofounder and ceo paul davison himself. you don't want to miss that conversation talking about the future of the hot social audio app. meantime, more on robinhood. robinhood's biggest backers are plowing money into the online brokerage. investors have poured $3.4

billion into the firm in a matter of days including $2.4 billion announced today. the cash infusion coming as robinhood grapples with outraged customers, increased scrutiny from washington. for more, we are joined by bloomberg's any maha. what can you tell us about this additional funding? $2.4 billion on top of a billion last week. >> it has truly been extraordinary to watch. you saw robinhood raise an emergency billion dollars last week. today, an additional $2.4 billion from their existing backers. it has come in at a wild rate, eclipsing all of the money they had raised up to that point, which was around the $3 billion mark already. from venture investors, so it goes to show you how wild the past week has been. stepping back, the reason they had to do this has to do with the collateral they had to post to a central clearinghouse for the industry. amid all of this volatility with

gamestop, amc, and other meme stocks, we saw robinhood investors frenetically trading and buying these securities, which resulted in the app and company to put up more collateral at the clearinghouse. emily: we interviewed vlad tenev last week and asked all of the questions. he definitively said market makers had nothing to do with the decision to restrict buying. even after that, there was a lot of speculation, and seemingly not enough transparency from robinhood about what and why they supposedly had to do this. they did put out a new blog post over the weekend. we had this conversation happening with elon musk. what is robinhood telling users now? i know they have narrowed the number of stocks that the restrictions impact, but you are still seeing some on the platform. annie: that's exactly right.

in that interview where you asked vlad about why they had to put the brakes on purchases of that handful of really volatile stocks, he was saying this was not at wall street's behest, this was a decision that had to do with risk management. in the days since then, they have reopened some trading for these stocks, purchases, with limits, with a cap, and they have been slowly unwinding some restrictions in place. the thing is, like nature, twitter abhors a vacuum. what we have seen is users were upset that they flooded the airwaves with conspiracy theories. some people are confused about what happened. it puts robinhood in this awkward position of having to explain market structure on the fly to millions of users who might have varying levels of

familiarity with the whole system that underpins the stock trades that they make. emily: i saw those comments, hundreds of them in response to the interview. a lot of speculation, a lot of unhappy users. how does this impact the company's plan for an ipo. annie: this is the big question, with the ipo for robinhood kind of hanging in the balance, it will be a question for their investors now. they have been targeting a may ipo. what we will have to see in the coming days is whether this enormous capital raise and this unprecedented period of time for them will affect their plans for that initial public offering? emily: we will continue to follow as you will as well. annie massa, thank you so much. coming up, with almost $200

billion on hand, we will look at why apple is looking back at the bond market and why shareholders may see more cash. this is bloomberg. ♪ (announcer) back pain hurts, and it's frustrating. you can spend thousands on drugs, doctors, devices, and mattresses, and still not get relief. now there's aerotrainer by golo, the ergonomically correct exercise breakthrough that cradles your body so you can stretch and strengthen your core, relieve back pain, and tone your entire body. since i've been using the aerotrainer, my back pain is gone. when you're stretching your lower back on there, there is no better feeling. (announcer) do pelvic tilts for perfect abs and to strengthen your back. do planks for maximum core and total body conditioning.

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emily: apple is selling $14 billion bonds to take advantage of borrowing costs as it looks -- tapping the market for the third time since may as it looks to return more cash to shareholders. until 2020, apple had not borrowed in the u.s. investment-grade market more than once in a calendar year.

joining me now, our bloomberg news consumer finance reporter, molly smith. molly, give us a little bond 101. why is apple doing this again? molly: why everyone is borrowing now, it is really just why not. the money is there. investors are so eager to lend especially to a company like apple which is a major issue r in the bond market that you really are compelled to be involved in these deals if you are an investor, that any -- tracks any meaningful index, apple will be a large part of that. new issues are a good way to get exposed if you're looking to sell out of old holdings of a bond and get into a new one. they usually come with a more enticing yield for investors as a reason to buy the new issue. i just priced -- it all went pretty well today. emily: so, apple is not just anyone.

why is apple doing this when they have almost $200 billion in cash on hand? molly: i think that is where it looks like some analysts have been speculating the company will really ramp up returns this year to shareholders. that is usually what apple had borrowed for in the past, to fund share buybacks and dividends. it looks like that will continue as they try to lower their cash balance down. if you can do that opportunistically when the money is very cheap and pretty much there for the taking, it makes sense. emily: what does this mean for shareholders? for the folks on the other end? what sort of windfall might they see? molly: the actual debt issuance itself does not really mean much for an apple shareholder. for companies less credit worthy than apple, this may be

something you wouldn't want to see, the company taking on more debt, but apple certainly has enough money to service its debt. i would think that shareholders have become accustomed from getting these kind of payouts from apple, whether that is coming from internally generated cash or external borrowing. i think they are just happy to see it. emily: is this going to be a theme this year? i'll be going to see more companies do this? -- are we going to see more companies do this? molly: as long as the markets stay open and it is credit that bondholders are willing to invest in, i would say, why not? it is interesting because usually bondholders do not like to lend to companies that are just going to give the cash to shareholders. it is kind of at odds with what they do. but in the case of apple, i don't think you have anything to worry about.

the company will pay you back no matter what. they have always been able to borrow for this reason. emily: all right, molly smith, thanks for giving us a little bond education. we will be watching our bloomberg ms. corporate finance reporter. coming, famed investor arlan hamilton is opening the door to everyone to invest in backstage capital. the goal, to change the status quo where over 90% of vc funding goes to white men. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: backstage capital has invested in over 150 startups led by underrepresented entrepreneurs, now going even bigger. the company has launched a campaign that allows anybody to realize potential gains from vaccines in the current portfolio. with this new initiative, any investor can participate in helping backstage close the funding gap. for diverse founders. joining us now for more, arlan hamilton of back stage capital. reminder that bloomberg beta, the venture capital arm of bloomberg elsie, is an investor. tell us of the bit more about how this works. arlan: you are investing in a reg cf, a crowdfunding campaign. when you invest as little as $100, you will participate in the upside as backstage the investment entity does. this is not an investment in an

individual company or portfolio, it is an investment in backstage itself. you will participate in the backside of our carry and management fee. emily: we have been closely following this sort of retail investor revolt, the rise and fall of gamestop, and there seems to be a fundamental shift in power happening from institutions to individuals and also continued pushback against sort of the establishment people -- and people wanting their voices to be heard. tell us more about why you are doing this? what drove this idea? arlan: as you said, 90% of venture funding goes into companies led by white men in the united states where white men make up one third of the country. so that does not really make sense. a lot of the problem has to do with who is allowed, who has access to invest in the venture

capital space. it is a very closed off space. since 2015, my fund has been working towards democratizing that in the way we invest in companies. today is a new day as well. we will shepherd in a new way of investing as an lp. and as an investor in venture fund. emily: how much are you hoping to raise? what kind of start are you looking for? arlan: this is an investment in our operations. across three phases, it will last a couple of months in the reg cf and reg d, we will raise about $10 million. the first tranche of that is about the first million available now. over the past few hours, we have passed about $400,000 of the first million. five or 10 investors per minute.

emily: when you started in this game, there are folks out there who said you would not live up to the hype because you are not playing the game like anyone else. now that you are in this, you have been in this for a few years, tell us what progress you have made. arlan: we invest in pre-seed space, a long horizon for returns. some of the companies we have invested $25,000, $100,000 in before they raised a million, go on to raise tens of millions, closer to $100 million each. it is not the only way to measure success, how much a company can raise. but to go from a company not even being able to get into a room with an investor and now they are valued at $200 million, $300 million plus, it shows you the trajectory we are on. i believe in the next decade, backstage will not only have new

success stories but he will see us have hundreds of millions of dollars under management and some of our companies will do want to be unicorns. you also have to enjoy the companies who do not make it to unicorn. we are very founder friendly. we think of it as cash on cash. if we put a dollar in and bring back 10 we don't care how you got there. emily: there has been a lot of momentum behind the black lives matter movement. we had the first woman of color as a vice president of the united states. how much change is actually happening on the ground in the trenches for people of color who are starting companies and need funding? arlan: i think it is on a week by week basis. last year, all these people came

out, corporations came out with manifestoes and what they were going to do, and a lot of them lost interest really fast. i think you are seeing on the ground, companies that i admire still in that movement. for the founders, we will make do no matter what. we will not sit around and wait for others to figure it out and for institutions to get their act together. yes, there are institutions doing the right thing and catching up for their own good. but there are more people, individuals who i again am reaching with this raise, were -- you are taking it upon themselves to say, we are either going to bootstrap or go for alternative ways of capital, or we will band together and do things you see right now. where the crowd is taking over. emily: you told me in the past you would let the mark zuckerberg walk away. you're not interested in investing and anybody who looks like mark zuckerberg. let's talk about the folks who you are backing. what is one company, if you

could pick one one, that you could say we should keep our eyes on? arlan: two questions. i will not say they are the biggest success. we have a lot better in stealth that are successful, but there is a company called akash, doing satellites, competing against starlinks. they are also providing equipment for a starlink. i think they have a pretty smart model, but we put $25,000 in, kept in touch, helped where we could. we just put $1.5 million into subsequent rounds. they raised more than $20 million. i think they will be a unicorn in the next three years if not sooner. if they win, we all win. they get more broadband to places that don't have it. the sky literally is the limit. emily: we have been through a tough year. are you hopeful about 2021 when

it comes to vc and trends? how will this year be different than the last? arlan: i am hopeful because it seems like there is a reckoning happening. i don't know if it is because today i am in a good mood. but people are taking it into their own hands. this is an example of a win for all of us. there are people who want to collaborate. those people are coming to the fore. it is not just about the few dozen people who may have access to lp's. right now, it is about really celebrating these founders who day after day -- emily: ok. thank you for bringing us some hope. arlan hamilton of backstage capital, good to have you back. a reminder, bloomberg beta is an investor in backstage. coming up, the hottest platform in social media right now

getting a huge vote of confidence from elon musk. clubhouse cofounder and ceo paul davison joins us next to talk about growth on his live audio platform. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." when the private social app clubhouse debuted in march, it almost instantly became the hottest topic of silicon valley. intrigue and fascination. now over 2 million users have joined the line audience platform including oprah, drake, and most recently, elon musk. the ceo gave a lengthy interview sunday night and surprised listeners by asking the ceo of robinhood to take the mic and

grilling him on trading restrictions. web house is backed by horror with -- horowitz and more. it's backed by some heavyweight entries. joining us is the clubhouse cofounder and ceo, paul davison. you've had quite a 24 hours, from elon musk, and i'm jumping in the middle of the day and i hear ashton kutcher on the platform. i believe you have a 10 person team. paul: yes, we are about that right now. emily: talk to us about your vision here. a lot of people are talking about clubhouse is next big media platform. what does that mean to you? paul: i guess i will start out with what clubhouse is. it's a new type of social network that's based on voice, where people get together with others to talk and listen and learn from each other, all in real time. you open the app, you will see

thousands of different rooms and you can jump into any of them adjust people talking about all sorts of different topics like financial markets and philosophy and hip-hop. if you want, you can just sit back and listen, or you can raise your hand and participate. the idea is that it is a place about is connecting with others. if you think about boys, it's -- voice it's relatively new in , the world of social networking, at least in the u.s.. gathering with other people and talking for as long as civilization has existed is something that is really human. our goal is to create a new type of network that's more about those authentic human connections then about gaining likes or follows. we have found that voice is a really powerful medium. emily: it's definitely an intimate and a different kind of experience.

it's hard to describe it until you go in there. i did try to get in to the e line room last night and like a split second after it open, it was already filled with 5000 people, then there were all these other rooms that were filled with thousands of people. it is invite only for now, but i notice you been increasing invites it seems like quite dramatically in recent weeks. is that by design? and how soon will it be open for everyone? paul: from the earliest days, we've been designing clubhouse for everyone. our goal is to open it up as fast as we possibly can. as you mentioned, we've historically been a small team, and we just want to make sure the experience scales before we open it up. i to make sure each time a new wave of users joins, the experience is better rather than worse. but the goal from day one is to open it for everyone. we don't know exactly when we will open it up. we sort of turn up the notch on invites and watch what happens and get feedback from our users. if it continues to scale, we

will open it up more. my hope is we will be open to everyone within months. not weeks, not years, but months, and we are excited to get out on android and to localize in other languages so everyone around the world can experience clubhouse. emily: will it be just like you can turn on the tv and in anyone can watch a certain program or turn on the radio and anyone can listen in? is that what clubhouse will be like? paul: a large percentage of people who come in and listen to conversations end up talking as well. you can sit back and be passive or you can multitask, or you can participate. the thing about boys, you mentioned a second ago, it such a powerful medium. you have all the intonation and inflection that voice gives you. without any of the anxiety of video. you don't have to wonder about

what you look like or how messy your house might be. it's incredible how quickly you can form connections with other people when you are just using your voice. emily: there's been some confusion about happens on clubhouse is public or private. i know you say you are not allowed to record anything you here, but people were streaming elon's remarks. there has been news reporting on it, people are tweeting about what they hear. where do you draw the line? paul: we leave it up to the creator. we always say creator first. it guides a lot of our product decisions. if you want to host a big public conversation and allow people to record it, that's fine. you can actually do that with the explicit permission of all the speakers. if you want to have a more private conversation, you can have that too. you can think of it like going to a conference, where some people might opt to go to the keynote and there's a really impressive speaker and she's got thousands of people listening to her. it's not particularly interactive, and a lot of people

like going to that. then there may be smaller breakout sessions. then you have the hallways to the convention center line with hundreds of thousands of people charging their laptops and introducing their colleagues to each other and having private conversations. are you go to a music festival and you have the mainstage inside stages and thousands of people on picnic blanket meeting their friends. we leave it up to the creator. if you want to be public, great. if you want to have more private conversations, you should be able to control that. emily: there are concerns about hateful confident -- content, racist, even radical content. facebook has not a good out how to moderate and create more healthy conversation in almost two decades. how can you police and moderate anything and everything that is said in any room at any given time?

paul: that's a really important question for any social network. the reality is if you want to build a product for the whole world, you have to recognize that there are bad actors in the world and you have to build a product that is durable and can withstand that. we think about it on the lines of who are the people internally that think about the nuances of live group audio and how we can do better, what are the policies we have in place externally and internally, so we can enforce any incident reports we receive in a consistent way. the third thing is product, the ability to block things and quickly report an incident if you see one. the internal tools we built to manage the flow. people, policies, and product. the reality is, this job is never done. the most important thing of a social platform is you care about it and prioritize and recognize it constantly has to

evolve so you can stay one step ahead of that sort of thing. emily: you have been building companies for a long time. you have experience with different investors. it seemed horowitz has really stepped up. another entrepreneur tweeted today, i can think of another startup whose investors have had such an early impact on breakout success. mark, ben, ben's wife felicia is on there. where would clubhouse be without them and will it put pressure on other silicon valley investors to step up? >> they been phenomenal partners -- they have been phenomenal partners to us. we've had high expectations of them and they have exceeded it tenfold. not to mention chris and nate and others and their internal teams. they have been wonderful partners to us. i hope it inspires other people. we could not have asked for a better partner.

we raised another round of funding also led by them and we are just grateful for everything they have done for us. i think the user community is another group that i would be remiss if i didn't recognize. they have been so thoughtful and helpful and their feedback, with their suggestions, helping us build a diverse, welcoming, inclusive community. it's group like both of those that have allowed us to do what we have done so far. we cannot have done any of this without either of them. emily: speaking of somebody in the user community, the founder of the information last night tweeted, elon musk tells the world he will be on clubhouse tonight, but reporters can't listen and because marc andreessen blocks them. so it's really time to think

about powerful people who can shape the narrative exactly as they want. twitter allows folks to block people and is often used to combat harassment. but what is your response to that? paul: well, it goes back to our policy of creator first. the reality is, there are times when you're dealing with life group audio where the wishes of the creator -- and that is just the person who started the room, anyone can be the creator, can be at odds with the would be listener. it could be you are hosting a room and someone wants to be there but you don't want them to be there. you want it to be more intimate or they want to be on stage and you don't want them to be on stage. my co-founder and i decided if there ever was that tension, we would prioritize the creator. we think it would be better for everyone if you could build a product for creators. like i was saying, there will be people that want their conversation to be broadcast to the whole world, and there will be people that want to have a

smaller, more intimate conversation. we believe as a creator, you should be able to decide that. emily: so how do you plan to make money and how do those monetization efforts scale? paul: we are excited about the idea of monetization, not for us, but for our creator community. again, i mean creator with a lowercase "c." there are so many incredible people on clubhouse in the world who are smart, funny, who have domain expertise, who are just great at bringing people together and hosting conversations. you see that in our community. all these amazing people are doing that every day. we want to allow them to be able to earn money directly from listeners who are happy to pay them for the experiences they are creating. that might be subscriptions, it might be ticketed events, it might be the ability to tip

someone and thank them for bringing the event together. we are really excited about doing that. it gives someone incentive to host on the platform and everyone benefits from that. we are planning to invest in that to do it sooner rather than later. emily: we are in such an interesting time right now where people have more uninterrupted time at home and they can listen in. when we get to a normal, where typical silicon valley networking events start coming back, does clubhouse continue, or do you see a change in behavior? paul: we think that voice is a durable medium. we started this company in late 2019. i just fundamentally believe that a lot of the best event technologies that i've seen have taken things that we always enjoy doing in the real-world, natural, human things, and just made it easier to do that. i don't think amazon is going to go away after the pandemic.

i don't think tender will go away as a way to meet people. they have taken natural things we've always done online, buying things, dating, and just made it easier to do that. for us, it's the idea that if we can give anyone in the world instant access to meaningful conversations, to meaningful human connections, no matter where you live or what networks you have access to, whatever your economic situation, you can be in a room. you can pull out your phone and instantly have a group of wonderful people who are super thoughtful, talking about something that is interesting to you, and engage them in a meaningful conversation. we think it is a durable thing that can continue. emily: we will be watching. paul davison, clubhouse co-founder and ceo. coming up, technology grew at its fastest rate ever over the last 12 months, fueled by the pandemic as workforces rushed to work remote. we will look at some of the

top-performing platforms and what the future holds for working remote with the ceo of okta next. , this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: last january, no one could have predicted the role technology was going to play over the next 12 months, including a company that releases work place trends every january. this year, cloud and cybersecurity as people work remotely. for more on our special work shifting series, i'm joined by the ceo and cofounder. no one knew how 2020 was going to play out, but we have a better idea of 2021, now that we are here. what surprised you most about the last year? >> it was a crazy year.

for the viewers, okta is a data company where we connect people with where they work and expose it in an aggregated way to let the industry and our customers and market know about the trends and what people are using and finding success with in this crazy time. that's the context. this is our seventh annual report and it did not disappoint. if you look at the top fastest growing applications, nine of the top 10 are totally new, including number one, which is amazon business. amazon has a lot of great products but they are not necessarily known for the business purchasing application which we saw rocket to the top of the charts. amazon business helps them do that to the tune of a 300 plus percent growth rate the past year.

emily: okta shares have been up 100% over the last year, in part because they're more companies -- because there are more companies out there that want to protect the work their employees are doing, whether they're using slack or salesforce or zoom. what do the next 12 months look like to you? todd: i think what we've seen is the pandemic and working from home accelerate trends that have been in motion for many years, the trend for every organization to have to build their own websites and local apps to compete with their digital competitors and off-line competitors. the third thing as you mentioned is every company has has to be great at security. we see a lot of interesting data about education in general is -- about data security. higher education and education in general is the most threatened industry. we see emerging threats against

that group of organizations at about twice the rate of banking and finance. everyone has to deal with security and education organizations have to deal with it, according to our data, more than most. emily: speaking of cybersecurity in the wake of the solarwinds breach, has there been an increase in the demand for cybersecurity, and what can you say about your outlook there, given this new and it sounds like very dangerous threat? -- threat landscape? todd: the threat landscape is dangerous and has been for a long time. as organizations are trying to take advantage of all this new, modern, innovative technology, we talked about the top 10, all these new modern applications, collaborations, there's all kind of innovation out there. it's easy to use and highly accessible from the cloud. but that means more security risks. so if you look at something like

a solarwinds breach, everyone is looking at their own infrastructure and saying i thought the cloud was the way to go, but maybe that was a legacy system attack. maybe the cloud is going to come into modernization faster because of this and maybe the cloud can be more secure. so you get that benefit of easier to access and more security. that will be the impact of this breach and generally more people want to take advantage of cloud computing. emily: i urge everyone to check out that report. on workplace trends. todd mckinnon, okta cofounder and ceo, thank you so much for stopping by. coming up, signs pointing to a strong fourth quarter from amazon, despite costs related to covid. we are going to talk about the results and what's ahead, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: big tech earnings continue.

amazon set to report fourth-quarter results tuesday. after the bell, analysts optimistic about holiday sales but keeping an eye out for the impact of covid-19. for more, tom forte, senior research analyst at davidson that has a buy rating and a 3800 dollars price target on amazon. tom, what is your outlook for amazon this week? tom: my outlook is that the december quarter should be nothing short of amazing. we know they delivered 1.5 billion items to consumers during holiday. the big question in my mind is, having watched apple deliver an incredible december quarter and give favorable comments on the market quarter, does the stock go nowhere, will amazon into the same situation? emily: what do you think the impact of the pandemic and how it continues to play out will be as the vaccine is rolling out, but slowly?

tom: it's a great question for amazon. and i think there's good news for amazon to the extent that you're seeing elevated demand for e-commerce and there's bad news for amazon in that the company has been able to meet the elevated demand, target, walmart, wayfair, overstock, etsy ebay, and at the same time, , the company is doing a balancing act on health care. they are spending billions of dollars to protect their employees from covid, hundreds of millions of dollars to test their employees for covid, and at the same time they are rolling out health care related services like amazon pharmacy. their halo connected device, so i think the pandemic for amazon is good news and has represented a lot of opportunities, but it's also bad news, incremental costs and basically giving competition to customers.

emily: how much of our e-commerce behavior actually sticks in the new normal? in the last nine months i've been buying all my paper towels on amazon. when i can go to the grocery store, maybe i will buy them there. how much is that a risk factor in the near term? tom: it's a risk factor, but unfortunately, when you think about the slower than expected rollout for vaccines and things of that nature, i think when all is said and done, we are going to have an elevated commerce -- e-commerce spend further into 2021 than we expected. i think we all thought by july 1, there will be some sort of return to normalcy, but i think it's going to take longer than that. so you might be buying those paper towels from amazon for a little while longer in 2021. emily: tom forte, thanks so much. we will be all over amazon results later this week. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology."

bloomberg daybreak: asia is coming up next. i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪ yousef: this is bloomberg

daybreak middle east. manus: asian stocks rise after wall street's best rally in weeks. strategists say frenzied speculation once derailed the market. yousef: investigators are focusing on stimulus talk. more americans have received one shot that have tested positive for covid. manus: