♪ emily: i am emily chang in san francisco. this is "bloomberg technology" coming up, news that jeff bezos is stepping down as ceo of amazon reverberates through the tech industry. why now, and what will his successor andy jaffy's experience mean for competitors?

last, amazon's forme delivery guru striking out on his own. tech earnings continue for some highlights from my conversation with the outgoing and incoming ceos of qualcomm, as the chip industry is going through massive transformation. although stories in a moment, but first, the s&p 500 pared gains at the close. ed ludlow has the latest. walk us through the day. ed: straight day of gains broadly three u.s. equities for . all of the volatility around stocks like gamestop holding off a little on wednesday. s&p 500 up originally, but that follows the biggest to-day decline in three-month. technology one of the underperformers, if you think

about it sector by sector. nasdaq 100 down by .4%. the big basket of make a cap tech stocks up but -- mega-cap tech stocks up by half a percent. you can see some of the specific names driving moves. amazon down 2% following news that jeff bezos will stand out as ceo, andy jaffy taking over. it had been in positive territory at some point but ended up lower. similar story with apple, down by .8%. apple did report news that some users of icloud services may be experiencing difficulty. microsoft, all-time high. alphabet, parent company of google, up more than 7% after it beat on earnings. also some optimism around the cloud business.

the cloud business recorded a loss for the first time. they've invested really heavy and investors are giving google cloud the benefit of the doubt. mixed bag for markets. the market is digesting news as the biden administration tries to pass a stimulus l. -- stimulus bill. emily: qualcomm shares slumping after hours, with a forecast that disappointed some analysts. i spoke with the outgoing ceo and incoming ceo, and they talked about the bullishness about paul, burgeoning up -- qualcomm burgeoning out to other industries. we have seen some interesting changes. take a listen to this from cristiano about handsets.

cristiano: we have seen a v- shaped recovery. the market is still contracted. it is 7% down. but we are growing within the market because of 5g, and we saw that happened in developed markets, and now emerging markets. there is recovery on the handset. the use cases are changing. a lot of those collaboration activities we have, is driving an upgrade to high- and premium-tier devices that is good for qualcomm. emily: i had the two of them on the phone together so i wanted a quick take on the passing of the baton. this into steve mollenkopf talking about the opportunity ahead. steve: the opportunity is great, but i would say move as fast as

possible, because it is a great opportunity. i'm looking forward to cheering him on. >> i think qualcomm is a good place to be, and we have one of the greatest opportunities i had come and the key is to keep executing opportunities. emily: look, no question, the shifting competitive landscape. you see some big tech companies like apple chip-making in-house. ed: very marginal miss on revenue. the expectation was that it would translate to qualcomm results, but mullen, basically said they had supply constraints which impacted earnings. they expected it to be better had it not been for the supply constraints. it suggests there is consumer

demand for 5g handsets. qualcomm puts in the chips that helps phones connect to them mobile network and puts the smart and smartphone. with more 5g models in the market, the expectation is that it will translate on the top line, too. emily: of course we will be watching to see how cristiano amon leads the company. ed ludlow, thank you for that roundup. i want to get back to amazon, the biggest management change in the company history since jeff bezos founded the company in his garage 25 years ago. he will step down as the ceo of the world's largest online retailer, succeeded by andy jaffy, who runs aws, the clouded juggernaut that has changed the way companies run their technology.

the big question everyone keeps asking is why now. we expect it to happen someday, but certainly a lot sooner -- people who follow the company really closely thought it would happen. >> yeah, and i think it has left a lot of people -- when you look to other departures other ceos of tech companies, there are commonalities. we look to when bill gates left microsoft or jack ma left alibaba. there was significant pressure due to communicative microsoft, antitrust issues following a doj trial and in the case of jack ma, the chinese government putting pressure on him to give up the reins. that is likely to be something that is worth considering. in 2020 amazon faced more

scrutiny due to regulatory issues than ever in its history, and it is not outside the realm of possibility that the ceo would say enough, i've had enough, i would rather focus on things that are important to me, and our game changing for the future of the world, whether it is space for other inventions. emily: he said he is moving into the world of executive chairman and he will be there as a resource come and i wonder how much he will be able to leave. we saw bill gates and steve ballmer struggle with of the baton, and marc benioff of salesforce took on a co-ceo and that did not last that long. how do you think bezos will handle potentially the confusion of who is in charge of the company? sucharita: one thing to keep in mind is that the new ceo is somebody who has worked with him for decades, and presumably they

know each other quite well and they know their working style quite well. that alone should hopefully ensure that the transition is relatively smooth. even if it is not, that is one of the questions that i think is important to keep open, that there doesn't seem to be any health issues. it is not an adversarial departure of jeff bezos. there is a chance that if things don't come out, he will come back and be ceo once again. that is what happened with steve jobs. that may also be in the minds of investors, because this is not something that is such a shock and so outside of the realm of possibility. this is a succession plan that probably is the smoothest succession plan you could envision for amazon.

emily: meantime, obviously andy jaffy has been the architect of this cloud business which has been wildly successful. how will amazon going forward balance the growth of its cloud and retail business, and the fact that they are serving different stakeholders, whether it is businesses or individuals or the competitors committee few will? -- competitors, if you will? sucharita: yeah, concerns are becoming a competitor with clients you serve, which is a huge issue not just with aws, but the delivery business and the third-party seller business. this is absolutely probably one of the biggest challenges that the company now faces with its existing businesses. but a common theme that has emerged with people who have in

the last few days, out and spoken about their experiences with andy jaffy, understanding his management style, he is very much an inventor and the company has a culture of invention. if there is a sense that the company is gone as far as it can and existing businesses, this is a company that will not shy away from pivoting. they have already pivoted many, many times and invented new businesses that did not exist before, whether it was the kindle device or echo device or cloud services. in many cases, boebert ideas from other companies. the future of the company is very much rooted in its history from where there has been tremendous success to build new

products and services. emily: thank assessment of what is going on here. sucharita kodali of forrester research, appreciate you sticking by. increasing dependence on the cloud. what it means for partners like amazon going forward. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪ so you're a small business, or a big one. you were thriving, but then... oh. ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you don't, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. powered by the largest gig speed network in america. but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business.

wanna lose weight and be healthier? it's time for aerotrainer. a more effective total body fitness solution. (announcer) aerotrainer's ergodynamic design and four patented air chambers create maximum muscle activation for better results in less time. it allows for over 20 exercises. do the aerotrainer super crunch, push ups, aero squat. it inflates in 30 seconds. aerotrainer is tested to support over 500 pounds. lose weight, look great, and be healthy. go to aerotrainer.com. that's a-e-r-o trainer.com.

emily: what was once a nicety has become a necessity. cloud computing has been embraced by governments,

schools, businesses. now they don't want to rely on just one cloud, but many. dynatrace makes a multi-cloud operation possible. air out with results that -- they are out with results that topped estimates and sent the stock soaring. i'm joined by the ceo of dynatrace, john van siclen. thank you so much for joining us. i have got a start on this amazon is because you have a partnership not just with amazon, but google and microsoft also what is your take on andy jaffy becoming the heir apparent to amazon and the person who is going to have to presumably fill the big shoes over at aws? john: he has obviously done a fantastic job with aws, envisioning it, scaling it, growing it into a phenomenon. obviously, it's caused microsoft

to react, google to react. he is quite a businessman. amazon is probably in good hands. emily: does this make amazon an even more competitive and inspire more fear in the likes of google and microsoft, or does this give a competitive advantage? john: you know, it's a good question. we will have to see whether aws it's a little more favors or andy gets pulled in additional directions and it gives microsoft and google an opportunity. from our point of view, it is that the cloud phenomena has been phenomenally powerful for all businesses around the world. it underpins digital transformation everywhere, and we are a beneficiary of that acceleration in digital

transformation, and the fact that the more companies go to a multi-cloud approach, the more complex it is, the more need for heterogeneous monitoring platform like dynatrace. emily: how does this multi-cloud phenomenon -- 10 years ago it was do we need to the cloud at all, and now here we are, we need multiple clouds. how does that impact the evolution of a company like yours and the cloud technology sector? john: one of the important things to understand about dynatrace is that we focus on only the largest companies on the planet. we draw a line at about $1 billion company and larger, because they have more complex challenges, especially when it comes to digital transformation. they are the ones we see moving

to multi-clouds first. none of the want to be locked into just one. they want to play the field a little bit. there is technology -- container technology that allows for affordability of occasions and workloads among the various clouds as well as private extensions of the clouds. with that kind of layer, this move to multi-cloud is accelerated. as i said, it accelerates complexity needs, or the requirements, challenges with these enterprises. our business is to light up the clouds and the application environments and help the companies understand how they are operating, how they work, predict challenges or bottlenecks so they can be resolved before the impact users

of different services they might offer come and allow them to take action immediately as opposed to being around and taking days or weeks, the way it has in past lives. we do this all for some of the very largest cloud environments. some of them might be surprised, actually. emily: you know, we talk a lot about amazon's dominance from a retail perspective, but it is less understood how dominant aws is. given the possibility of more regulatory scrutiny facing amazon, does this feel like amazon has a too-dominant share of the cloud ecosystem as an operator within it? john: i wouldn't say so much on the cloud side, because of microsoft and google's presence. maybe on the retail side e-commerce site, it is a little more painful.

but we see quite a strong -- microsoft and google are strong competitors. they have plenty of money to invest. they are investing. they all have their angle on the market. like i said, the market wants multiple clouds. nobody wants to be locked in. that sort of provides a little bit of relief and cover for amazon from a regulatory standpoint. emily: interesting. well, we will be watching to see if there is a competitive advantage for google and microsoft really interesting to hear your cloud insider's perspective. john van siclen, ceo of dynatrace. coming up, where exactly do things stand with mass vaccination, the biggest vaccination campaign in history? we will have the very latest on the ground next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: california and new york governor's say they will be opening stadiums as mass covid-19 vaccination sites. new york will extend vaccine eligibility to restaurant workers, taxi drivers, and people who work at home for the development we disabled. san francisco is pursuing its own school district over-- suing its own school district over the failure to reopen schools. joining us for more, bloomberg's health care reporter riley griffin. i want to start with johnson & johnson, which had really promising data last week. they have submitted for emergency-used authorization for a one-shot. how does that affect how the story plays out?

>> that's a great question. we are in a pivotal moment in the vaccination campaign. more americans have had at least one dose then have tested positive. in the last week, an average of 1.30 2 million doses a day were administered. we want to push those numbers up, and one thing that will be critical is getting additional supply on hand. the 33.7 million doses are at your beautiful to two vaccines, one from moderna and one from pfizer. j&j is poised to be the third entrant. they are submitting this very week for emergency avenues authorization and that takes place over a series of weeks. we will see regulators evaluate the data convene a panel of independent advisers to make their own recommendation. we expect to see an emergency avenues authorization in march.

at that point, we will see new doses flood the market, but we heard from officials earlier this week that it may not immediately easy widespread supply constraints you were noting. it will, however, spread protections for those who live in rural communities or those confined at home with the ease of the single factum and the fact that the j&j vaccine can be kept at refrigerator temperatures. emily: what about these efforts from johnson & johnson and pfizer to help combat these variants? how successful have these efforts been so far, and will they work? riley: we are really in the early stages. away know is that pfizer, j&j, which are not, -- pfizer, j&j, moderna, they are probing ways

to combat a disease that is constantly changing. the south african variant knows no bounds or borders. they have reached the u.s. something from the j&j data last week is that the stock is 72% effective in the u.s., but that fell 57% in south africa. another vaccine developed by novavax 89% effective in the u.k., only 49% effective in south africa. those numbers are sobering. to be sure, not just looking at the number of antibodies induced by the pfizer and moderna vaccines have also suggested they may be less potent against the south african variant, although still providing a semblance of protection. the more we understand booster shots or new strain-specific vaccines are in reach, they could translate to a sustained revenue stream for drugmakers. emily: those numbers are

astounding. thank you so much for the specificity and for your great reporting on this. we will follow your work. riley griffin, who covers health care, thank you. more on the big amazon bombshell. jeff bezos stepping down, andy jassy taking his place. we will speak to a former amazon insider next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. back to the top story of the day, jeff bezos stepping back, andy jassy taking place as ceo in the third quarter of this year. long before the pandemic overloaded delivery infrastructure, a former amazon employee was trying to make it a shipping powerhouse. he founded and led amazon air, and now he wants to solve shipping problems on his own. his new startup has gotten $5 million in funding and aims to offer major retailers

affordable, fast delivery while competing with his former employer, amazon itself. he joins us to discuss. scott, i have to ask what your perspective is on this as someone who worked at amazon for so many years. jeff bezos stepping down much sooner than most of us thought he would an anemic andy jassy-- and naming andy jassy as his replacement. what was your reaction? >> i wouldn't say i was entirely surprised. jeff has been talking a while publicly about some of his best work being things he is doing outside of amazon -- blue origin, for example. i will say the specific timing of it, i'm not sure if there is any time that is good for a founder with the success he has had on from the position as the ceo. i will say that i do think that amazon is in fantastic hands with andy and dave clark, the

ceo of worldwide consumer, being able to take the reins from here on out. i think they will be in good shape for sure. emily: as somebody who worked with jeff bezos for so many use, do you will really be able to hand over the reins? scott: well, i'm really not so sure. i'm not -- i don't know if i have a whole lot of perspective on his desire to do that, but there is good pre cedent. bill gates did a similar move, eric schmidt as well, if i recall. given the level of competency he has around him with andy and dave and the rest of the team, i think he is going to be able to get at it for sure. emily: let's talk about the delivery operation which you helped for so many years, amazon

reducing its reliance on fedex and ups. you still think there are some gaps in the process. where are the gaps? scott: i think most of those gaps are outside of amazon, the other 60% of the market trying to compete with amazon, at least in the u.s. we are building a business that will focus on the middle mile, purpose built network for e-commerce deliveries using out intelligence data in order to make sure the we can optimize the package flow from and 10 -- from end to end and give the other retailers the same type of on-time delivery experience to consumers that amazon does. emily: pandemic has really strained the logistics industries. when we go back to work, when we are all vaccinated, what makes

you think demand is going to keep up? scott: well, just yesterday, one data point, carol tore to meet --carol told me that the ups earnings call, at the peak season of last year there was a three million package shortfall of supply and demand. she said she did not expect that to change in 2021. the pandemic has trained tens of millions of americans to buy online, baby boomers in particular who may not have been online shoppers or shopping online today and are enjoying the convenience of e-commerce. there have been articles in recent publications talking about how surveys indicate that it is not going to change. my thesis is that while there will be some return to brick-and-mortar, there is going

to be significant growth on top of this growth we saw in 2020. emily: it sounds like you are saying you don't intend to compete with amazon. do you ever intend to compete with amazon, even if not today? scott: our primary competitors will be those transportation providers that all of amazon's competitors use. fedexes, ups's of the world. that will be our primary competition in the days ahead. and a lot of people like to speculate about amazon's interest in getting into that space. they may, they may not. just like amazon is really focused on their customers as opposed to the competition, we are taking much of the same approach and focusing on meeting the needs that e-commerce retailers have now to improve the experience for customers. we will let competition take care of itself. emily: all right, fascinating.

we will be keeping our eye on you, pandion founder and ceo scott ruffin, longtime amazon employee, thank you so much. we have been discussing the corporate shift -- biggest corporate shift so far this year, jeff stepping away from his post, leaving that role to be filled by andy jassy. i want to bring in the ceo of a software company good data. you have been critical of amazon's ability to handle so-called co-opetition, their ability to look with a number of different kinds of stakeholders, whether it is individuals, companies, or other partners. what do you make of the passing of the baton from jeff bezos to andy jassy, who has been running the cloud business for years? roman: yeah, good afternoon.

i actually believe andy jassy did an amazing job of balancing the competition. it is almost impossible building a platform, cloud platform of that size without engaging existing clients or future clients. he actually did an amazing job and he balanced it really well and he competes with gooddata, even though we are competitors. how do you bring innovation to the market and take away from the market and still give back enough so that people actually don't consider you 100% competitive and go some place else? that is critical for the success of amazon in the future. emily: you now believe this is the biggest challenge ahead, how

do they balance their retail and their cloud business, and how do they do that, given that they are both incredibly powerful and both incredibly promising? roman: from my perspective, the biggest competitor of amazon is not an individual brand. it is a technology company like shopify, because he can do what amazon did in the past, combined services, combined systems and strengths of individual brands. the competition is not any individual brand. it is going to be essentially amazon plus aws against everyone else like shopify. emily: interesting you mentioned

shop of pipe -- shopify. i interviewed the ceo, and he said that if amazon is building an empire, we are arming the rebels. how big is a company like shopify and the relationships they are building with merchants, could sell their wares on amazon, but shopify and sell them to customers? roman: that is exactly my point. shopify is the biggest competitor to amazon. he knows how to actually balance this competition. shopify can do shopify prime -- [indiscernible] e-commerce were there is a collection of services, and on the other hand comply collection

of services under the shopify brand. shopify is like the general motors of commerce. it is not an individual brand, it is all the brands together. emily: interesting take, roman stanek. appreciate you helping us think of new technicals for the story. thank you so much for stopping by. ok, coming up, the building blocks of artificial intelligence and data aggregation. ceo of the ai platform data bricks about their big funding round and why some are comparing the company to the next snowflake. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the power is in your data. cloud companies are expanding faster than ever with the ever- evolving dependence on technology. databricks, a data management platform, also seeing major growth. the company secured a billion dollars in funding from amazon, alphabet, and others, putting the value of the private company at $28 billion. databricks ceo ali ghodsi with me now. tell us how the company works and what the biggest revenue driver is to get this valuation. ali: absolutely. we take massive amounts of data in the cloud --artificial intelligence, machine learning. companies already have vast amounts of data on data links that the cloud providers

provide. but today, to get the value out of it, they have to copy into other places. we've cracked the code on how to combine these processes directly so they don't need --they can directly start doing machine learning and make organizations much more efficient. emily: so, at 28 going dollars,--$28 billion, shouldn't you be a public company? why stay private at all? ali: the way the private markets work is that there is a lot of access to capital and you can get the same investors you can get in public market, as we showed in this round. we brought in the big mutual funds. you can provide liquidity to your employees and get quite a bit of press. the urgency that used to be that you had to go public to get access to capital markets, you don't quite need that. we are taking our time. there is quite a few things that you want to do that are

strategic that you cannot do when you are public. emily: some folks out there are saying you are the next snowflake, and i'm sure you are looking at the option. could it be a direct listing, given that you just raise this funding? ali: we are looking in all the different options for there are pros and cons to these. direct listing is less dilution. on the other hand, with an ipo you can build a much bigger relationship with mutual funds investing in you, but you are doing that at a discount. it dilutes the company more. we are seeing given companies utilize them and learning from them. emily: curious, given that amazon is one of your backers, what your take is on the passing of the baton from jeff bezos to andy jassy, especially since andy jassy is so big in your world, the cloud. ali: yeah, and i'm a big fan.

andy is amazing. he has investment in this round of databricks, and i think it is great for us all around and great for amazon as well to have him at the helm. i also think there are lots of other people and we look forward to working with them. it shows how important the cloud services are and how important they will be. emily: we spoke to a former longtime amazon employee yesterday who said she felt sorry for whoever it was that was going to fill andy jassy's shoes leading aws. i wonder if him shifting his focus to not just aws but the entire committee opens up a competitive advantage potentially for microsoft and alphabet, which i know is another one of your backers. ali: i think it will be a place for all of the different cloud companies. i don't think any of them will go away. they have different strengths and weaknesses. amazon will double down on its

strength -- it is developer-focus. microsoft has enterprise relationships and agreements. i think there is a place for each of them. i don't think that will change. emily: where do you see the evolution of cloud and ai? a decade ago when we started "bloomberg technology," the cloud was a nascent thing. now people want multiple clouds. ali: that's a good question. there is ae secular trend going on that multi-cloud will become a thing. i hear it from enterprises all the time -- we need to make sure we are not putting all our eggs in one basket. companies like databricks can ensure that you don't have to take one cloud computing pick vendors that work across them. that is one thing. i also think ai is a thing you will see much more of. we talk about cloud computing. in 10 years it will be about

machine learning and data science. emily: how does that impact your, databricks's priority? ali: our focus is to democratize & fight further. -- and simplify further. our mission is to make it simpler and simpler so every enterprise can get value. if you think like a company like google, they would not be here today without data and ai. that is not quite true, but in 10 years that will be the case they will have ai like google has or they will be out of business. emily: all righty, the ceo of databricks, ali ghodsi, interesting picture you paint for us. thank you so much for joining us. coming up, with no clear timeline for the public market debut, investors are piling into another ipo for hong kong's

exchange. a live report from hong kong next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: china's number two video app is the latest hit for hong kong investors. it is selling heavily ahead of its public debut. underscoring the demand for the biggest internet ipo in two years for the i-10 bringing bloomberg--in two years. i want to bring in bloomberg's asia correspondent. >> it is an interesting come in is one of the biggest success stories in the internet for china in the past decade, and there has been quite a few of those. kuaishou means "fast hands," and literally it has been a fast

turnaround for this company that rose from really nothing and riding the wave that tiktok started with those little apps, video apps. the number one revenue stream is the livestreaming, virtual gif, and they filled it into a big ipo. the chairman and founder, he started off as a google employee in beijing, and turn this thing into quite a phenomenon. just yesterday there was -- two days ago in a beijing court we saw bytedance, a big rival actually suing, because their equivalent to tiktok domestically, they alleged it was in violation of antitrust laws for not having on qq and

wechat in china. there is big competition in this space and retail investors are plowing into kuaishou in large part because of the ipo collapsible to there is liquidity out there and they are looking at kuaishou. emily: let's talk about the ipo that didn't happen, which is ant . where does it stand and what does it mean for jack ma, who has been under a lot of pressure, and even sort of disappeared for a few weeks? stephen: yeah, he is kinda persona non grata right now, taking a very low profile. in-state media a couple days ago they did a big, long list of the most influential tech luminaries in china.

the head of huawei was on the list. but jack ma, probably the kingpin of them, was not on that list. that tells you he is out-of-favor right now. the good thing about ant's they will not be totally broken up. all of their assets will be folded into a holding company that will be overseen by the people's bank of china. they want to contain the risk because the number one revenue stream for ant is no longer payment, it is micro lending. they need to raise capital. it will value the company much less, some say half of what he was going to be if they went ipo in hong kong last year. they are restructuring, and we will have to see. it was a sigh of relief for some investors that will not be entirely broken up and they will continue with many of the businesses beyond payments but in a more restrictive and are. emily: will and ipo for ant ever

happened? stephen: it could, absolutely. we heard from a state governor a week or so ago. was not ruling it out. it is a matter of how jack ma and alibaba/ant are going to comply with the new regulatory environment. these new restrictions that are coming down the pike from authorities in china, they are all do, and it is new for ant as well. once they comply come and if they do comply, they perhaps could go ipo again. it is not going to be as large. emily: quick question to you -- we have a minute left. is there concern at alibaba proper -- i know jack ma is no longer there -- on how it reflects on the company and could it lead to stiffer regulatory action on alibaba

itself? stephen: that is a big concern, because they have had a spree of acquisitions and they have been slapped on the wrist for some of the acquisitions and not being forthcoming. i have interviewed jack ma several times over the last 18 years i have been in bloomberg and he has repeated a similar mantra, that he has to stay ahead of regulators. that is coming back to bite him right now, and some have argued that maybe alibaba is better off with jack ma on the sidelines. i am not saying that. i have heard that, though, because he is drawing a lot of attention to himself right now, and his comments to the shanghai conference in december ormber dy favors with regulators, who are catching up with the behemoth that is alibaba. emily: it has certainly been fascinating to watch it play out. stephen engle in hong kong, you

know the story better than anyone else, so thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we have "bloomberg daybreak: asia" coming up next. i am emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

anchor 1: good morning we are counting down to asia's major market open. anchor 2: welcome to daybreak asia. our top stories this hour. asian markets face declines after tech and retail drag on wall street. the sec searching social media for signs of fraud in the gamestop frenzy. alibaba adr is extending gains,