and texture, so they'll blend right in for a natural, effortless look. call in the next five minutes and when you buy 500 strands, you get 500 strands free. call right now. (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ emily: welcome to "bloomberg technology." a rally in tech pushing stocks to records. south korea's version of amazon is now worth more than $84.5

billion. speaking of newly minted public companies, we have a date with bumble. the ceo joins me after her companies first earnings report. the stock skyrocketing. he went from flipping burgers at burger king to flipping the fintech world on its head. first, tech stocks rallying. you have your eyes on tech performance more broadly. what do we see? >> a lot of this is due to stimulus checks that are on their way. the rally is coming in technology. the outperformance in the nasdaq

100 was up on thursday. the semi conductor index was up 4%. we have seen a lot of volatility in that index. i wanted to bring up bitcoin. higher, above $57,000. we are in a risk on mode. we have seen some symmetry between investors going into assets and bitcoin. the story about tech stocks has been about rising bond yields. this etf tracks the nasdaq very closely. you can see outflows last week. as we saw rotation into value stocks.

money flowing back in, it raises the question how long this is going to last? how long as they're going to be a tie off between tech writing and a rotation to offsetting it? gamestop lower on thursday down by almost 2%. amp entertainment which is another favorite on the reddit forums up by almost 4.5%. what we have seen in recent sessions is that those to move together but that has not been the case. the spac that his agreed to by lucid motors, gains almost 9% on thursday. we got earnings after the bell on thursday. here is my colleague looking at what's going on. >> doc you sign is at the top of the earning stories.

there is a high bar for tech already. the other earnings story is posh mark. over 12% decline after the revenue missed estimates. those stories are not pretty despite the action you sought in the tech side. let's take a broader look of how this compares to the rest of the tech industry. the average sales beat was positive. the price action not so positive. you saw that take a hit. that tells you that despite the good outlook for growth and tech stocks, it is a high bar for investors to buy into these. emily: thank you for that roundup. we will be talking to the ceo of posh mark tomorrow about the company's earnings. you don't want to miss it.

meantime, tech giants and their cars. the buzz around apple's foray into the car market and how they might accomplish it. apple has three primary options. partner with an existing manufacturer, build its own facilities, or team up with a contract manufacturer. for more, i am joined by our automotive's reporter. what do we know? >> what we wrote about today is that it makes sense for them to work with a contract manufacturer. there have been leaks about apple talking to carmakers. it would make a lot of sense for apple to follow its playbook like it has with the iphone and tablet in that they are good at managing a supply chain. there used to having total control and that would be an issue if they partnered with a

carmaker that could be a competitor. can you hear me? emily: is apple ever going to make a car? >> i think that we are seeing some clear signals that a car is coming. not just talks that have leaked, but my colleague and i reported a few weeks ago that they have been having talks with makers of the sensors for self driving cars. it looks like they are in discussions lining up their suppliers. if you're serious about making a car, you have to do that years in advance. they are doing that. we are seeing clear signals that

there -- it's going to happen this time. i think that it still probably a few years away, but that's -- it's not software that you just published instantly. it takes a lot of time to design , test for safety, all those kinds of things. emily: what kind of threat with this pose to the established auto industry and to tesla? >> with tesla, it's funny that you see elon musk on tesla dragging apples efforts. he vocalizes it or comments on it when he sees competition on the horizon. ceos of bmw, volkswagen and toyota have all commented on how they're not worried about apple. this is definitely something on their minds. in terms of where they have a competitive advantage, apple is

the strongest consumer brand in the world. they are automatically going to have a lot of shares, every motorist mind. also, design. they are known for design. the love their iphones. they love the sleek design of apple products. also in terms of -- there is infotainment in the car. silicon valley is always going to be better that than the auto industry. emily: thank you so much. coming up, the first earnings report from bumble since its ipo last month. the results show optimism. we will hear from their ceo. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> i am so proud of our team forgetting to this day. it is been such a journey. for those people who believed in us and subscribe to this radical idea of a woman making the first move, they have been what drove this home. emily: that was the ceo of bubble. one month ago when the company went public. shares rising up 18%. optimism that a return to social life antedating may be returning to normal as people are vaccinated.

the dating app reported its first earnings results yesterday. fourth-quarter revenue slightly beating estimates. there's a lot of promise for in person dating. i caught up with the ceo of bumble to get her outlook. >> we are very confident about regardless of covid or lockdowns, the desire and need to meet people is not going anywhere. as loneliness has presented itself in such an extreme way, we have seen engagement go up. prior to the pandemic, even the statistics around how people meet around 40% of people meet online. you can see that this is very durable. either in a pandemic or post pandemic time. the one silver lining of the pandemic for our business has been people's willingness to engage on a deeper and more

meaningful level inside the product. pre-pandemic, you were not seeing engagement levels to the degree that you are seeing today surrounding video and audio. people are building whole relationships via video and audio. we have heard and are starting to witness that even when people are given the opportunity to return to the offline market, the ease and accessibility and the benefit that online dating has proven, we believe that that is here to stay regardless. >> are you saying that you can't separate out pent up demand because the equation has completely changed? >> we think pent-up demand is on top of pre-existing demand for love and relationships. the pent up demand nature of post-covid is going to extend well beyond dating. there is pent demand for going

socialites, to meet friends, to be with people. we think that we will benefit from the reopening even beyond dating because of people's propensity to use our product for more than just romantic purposes. pent up demand goes beyond romantic relationships. >> we are in a volatile market, there has been a tech selloff. what has it been like running a public company and how do you watch the stock? >> our business fundamentally has not changed since we have gone public. we are still very anchored to our customer. we're trying to stay very focused on the things that we were focused on pre-ipo. we are watching the stock day-to-day. you mentioned it being up, that's not something we are paying close attention to. we are paying attention to our

metrics. to customer sentiment. we are laser focused on building and continuing to invest in a great business. we feel that regardless of the volatility in the market, our business continues to be a great one and we are laser focused on executing against our priorities. >> there are quite a few analysts covering bumble. citigroup talked about a number of different things including the stigma of online dating and also rising older marriages. what kind of success are you seeing in bumble matching older users and could you see perhaps taking more share from a more traditional company like match? >> to the first point of your question, absolutely. the willingness across the age spectrum to join our products and to find meaningful relationships has been on the

rise. we have noticed that throughout the pandemic, the stigma around online dating or the unwillingness to find your relationships digitally has gone out the window. when you think about the increase of divorces or breakups throughout this time and not only that but people who were historically so used to being hyper social that they weren't interested in a serious relationship, that has all shifted. the quest for more meaningful relationships or second winds, new beginnings, that has been on the rise. we see this propensity for what may be was our young professional market. their parents are now joining.

we don't suffer the consequences of alienating our audience which has historically been college-age or young professionals because of the way that we allow you to search for people within your design -- desired age band. there is a product for everyone and we are seeing a wider user base. emily: let's talk about bumble bff that connects people for friendship. you talk about that as a key development area. what should we expect to see you do there? >> bff is a focus of ours in 2021. primarily from a product relaunch from product investment from a strategy and marketing investment standpoint. you should not expect a revenue plan around bff until 2022. we are trying to get the product and a strategy up to speed with where we believe it should be and rolling that out in our markets and being measured,

thoughtful, and strategic as we go on to build the future of platonic relationships. also, as we go and build community. that is an exciting future opportunity for bumble and one that we are very excited about. that's what you can expect. emily: that was the ceo of bumble. you can catch that whole interview on bumble.com -- bloomberg.com. coming up, a new speaker with 10 hours of battery life. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: you are looking at the new speaker priced at $169.

it is slightly taller than an iphone, weighs just under a pound. it has 10 hours of battery life. the company which made its name as one of the early proponents of a connected home speaker has seen shares search since going public. they are setting a goal of $2.25 billion in annual revenue by 2024. they introduced this speaker, the latest entrance into its high-end sound system. the company generating $1.33 billion in revenue last year. joining me is the ceo. let's talk about the new speaker. how does it stand out? >> this helps us get inside the home. we have been known for being in the home and having the best connected home audio system. this is a big step for us going outside the home. it could not be a better time

given the people are finally going to be able to leave their homes, get together. we think this is the perfect product at the perfect time. it works inside the home with your existing system, but it will appeal to a whole bunch of people who have been looking at sonos and are interested at the system for some reason they did not feel like joining it quite yet. we think this will apply to a whole new wave of customers. >> talk to us about how you double revenue by 2024. what are plans you have in the making and plans for recurring revenue as well? >> we detailed this week our aspiration to get there. part of that is looking at the opportunities. show people that while we have made a lot of progress, we are only into about 9% of the addressable affluent homes we believe we can reach. we account for 7% of sales in the premium home audio market. even though we have done great

to this point, there is a huge opportunity in front of us. we have a business model that is good for customers. they can buy one and add more overtime. we think there are opportunities there to add more products into new homes. we have a roadmap and aspirations to get into all areas of audio. we are building from a position of strength and we think bringing in new homes which we sent a record on -- set a record on, we also had a record number of existing customers come back and buy another product to add to their systems. these two things are giving us a lot of confidence that we can build to the billions in fiscal 24. we have set up the aspiration we want 100 million plus people using our products and services. one of those is the radio hd. we set an aspiration of 500,000

subscribers. sonos radio is our number three listen to service. we are excited about that. creating great experiences for customers, curated stations and creating the top experience people can have when it comes to sound. >> speaking of audio, how far off are the headphones? will we see them this year? >> we are very interested in the categories of audio. we don't talk about our future roadmap plans. we feel like we have opportunity in all these different areas. there is an audio segment more globally as we think about things like offices, commercial, we had auto this week in our first partnership with audi. we are excited about the opportunity in all those categories and i would say stay tuned because we definitely want to be playing in all those different areas.

emily: we have been talking about the global chip shortage. the supply chain was heavily disrupted by the pandemic. how does hardware development -- how has it been impacted by the pandemic and what changes? parks it has been a tough year. we have relied in the past -- our people have made heroic efforts to launch new products. then deal with all of the disruption over the last year. we face everything you can name. chip shortage is just one thing. port delays, covid has hit, tariffs. there have been some any different things. our team has set themselves apart in terms of being able to manage through these things. they have shown a lot of resiliency. we have come in ahead of expectations every quarter during the pandemic.

i think we are going to continue to see challenges. our team is up to the task ultimately and it comes with the territory when you are building hardware. i do expect unlike some of the fully digital companies, there is a place for physical presidents -- his presence of working in the office building physical products. we do plan to return to the office in september and we will have more flexibility with our workforce. we will also see a lot of people working together and collaborating to create the next set of great products. emily: interesting deep dive. thank you so much. that was the ceo of sonos. we appreciate you stopping by. coming, how a harvard dropout came a billionaire. what is being called the amazon of south korea. i spoke to the ceo. you will hear from him next.

this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to bloomberg technology. roadblocks continuing its surge thursday after its stellar debut. the gaming platform has seen revenue and valuation grow as the pandemic continues to keep people and kids at home. part of the surge is thanks to kathy woods. it has purchased more than 500,000 shares of roblox. i spoke yesterday to the ceo and talked about whether he saw any

issues with scaling. >> most of our skills -- our systems have scaled well with users. our infrastructure scale, we do not see any issue with scaling that moderation function, which forms the foundation of the platform. emily: roblox made a big splash in the market. coupang also debuting today as korea's largest listing ever. walk us through the coupang trade. >> 41% debut for coupang. that is in one day. i want to put this in perspective with what you see with the largest asian tech ipos. i want to show you though top five ipos. coupang one of them shared why now?

why such a surge? it has to do with the accessing of capital markets you have been seeing a lot lately. since the start of the year, this ipo index has been surging, pulling back after the gamestop saga. now once again on a tear. thanks to coupang, there is a lot of expectation you could see more people come to market given the massive trading debut you saw. this could be the start of the ipo mania everyone warned us about in 2020 especially as we start to get the tech giants come to market and add some additional shares. coupang may be the start. emily: thank you so much for that update. sticking with coupang, i spoke with the ceo along with my colleague to talk about the company's vision for the future. >> we are here today because we focus on a long-term strategy,

long-term vision. we have had teams and shareholders who have been aligned with a long-term vision. we will continue to stay steadfast to that dna. emily: people compare you to amazon. what you think of that comparison and how do you think about your competition with amazon? >> we have been inspired by a lot of companies. there are a lot of great companies we learn from. our investments are quite unique. it has produced some unique experiences for our customers. our delivery has enabled our integration. order as late as midnight. delivered before 7:00 a.m. against millions of items. you order right before you go to bed. you wake up to find it like christmas morning every day. we have gotten rid of classical trade-offs you make where you choose online convenience like box packaging. 75% of our shipments do not have box packaging.

in the case of fresh groceries, we removed disposable packaging by instituting our eco-bags because we are end to end integrated. our drivers are picking up the empty bags. that is a result of unique investment in not only infrastructure but the technology that integrates at all. >> i have to ask you about the way you treat your workers. jeff bezos and amazon have received a lot of flak for the way they treat workers. you have had several deaths among delivery and logistics employees who were allegedly overworked, overnight working. how does a company answer to this issue? >> it is heartbreaking. whenever there is a passing of one of our family members. here is the context. we have hundreds of thousands of people who work in our operations and fulfillment and delivery. we have had one work-related

death the past year. one is too many. we have to continue to do better. we are leading the industry on this front. we were the first logistics service provider in our industry in our market to make a five day work weeks the standard versus the six-day standard of the industry. we are the first and still the only company that offers -- we offer insurance to all our workers. even temporary ones on day one. with this ipo, we became the first company to make all of its frontline employees shareholders in the company. we are going to continue to lead on this front. >> it is a concern for u.s. investors. after reports of several deaths of your employees, what can you do to improve the situation? >> we have to continue to change

and make the standards better. we are raising the bar and we will continue to invest. we have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in automation that makes not only the deliveries better experience for customers but makes the work easier for employees. we will continue to create good jobs. the best working condition jobs in the country as well as invest billions of dollars in infrastructure that extends our network deeper and closer to customers. 70% of the population lives within seven miles of one of our centers. we are continuing to innovate on this front. emily: you also invested heavily to keep warehouses safe through the pandemic, disinfectants for example. how is the company changed through the pandemic and what are your expectations for growth post pandemic? >> covid was challenging for us.

our integration, our technology and the hard work of so many of our teams who were able to maintain the delivery promise nationwide, three under 65 days a year. emily: my interview with the coupang ceo. meantime, ed ludlow has been taking a look at how much has changed since the pandemic. how much we have to talk about and what will be different in the new normal. we have a big week of special coverage next week to mark the one-year anniversary of the lockdown in the united states. what have you been watching? ed: this time a year ago, the declaration of a pandemic brought covid into the homes of many americans. there was such drama. the u.s. government declared a state of emergency. the federal reserve cut rates to near zero, or pulling through financial markets. on march 24, president trump

said he wanted the pandemic over by either. -- by easter. we knew that was not going to be the case. we fast forward to summer, in july, the milestone of one million deaths and the youth -- and the cdc only recommending ask wearing in july, which in hindsight as a shocking thing to raise. the president said when he longed operation warp speed on may 15 they wanted a vaccine by year end. a vaccine was approved on december 11, and the first dose administered on december 14. 2.6 million deaths globally is a sad miles dump it a fifth coming from the united states. -- a sad milestone. a fifth coming from the united states. emily: all right. ed ludlow.

thanks so much. we have a big week next week. lots of special guests. we will be agreeing you -- will be bringing you the biggest names in technology as we look back one year since the shutdown. i will be speaking to the huber ceo as well as the palatine ceo and the cochair of the bill and melinda gates foundation, melinda gates. meantime, coming up, a by now, pay later model is picking up steam. one swedish company is keeping up with its peers. we will hear from the most valuable startup in europe amidst its big plan. the ceo joins us next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: i want to take a quick look at gamestop dipping one point 9%, snapping a six-day winning streak. we are going to continue to follow gamestop throughout the week. i do want to talk about klarna, a new way to purchase goods at the virtual checkout counter. it is becoming increasingly popular with the next generation. giving consumers the option to pay for items in installments or deferred payments. leading the pack are paypal and klarna, the highest valued fintech startup in europe.

recently raising $1 billion. joining me now is the ceo and cofounder. thank you so much for joining us late in the evening your time. talk to us about klarna and how it stands out from the competition whether it is square or paypal. all of these companies do different things, but there is some overlap. >> right now, there is a lot of focus on the buy now, pay later aspect of it. to us, that has always been one feature. klarna is the only company of our size. we have 90 million customers worldwide. 60 million customers in the u.s., growing by a million a month. there are tons of things that set us apart. one key thing is we have skew level data on every transaction.

if you look at what is happening in europe, we have beaten paypal every country we are in whether it is the nordics, german-speaking countries, the u.k. and so forth. we are hoping to repeat that in the u.s.. emily: your valuation has tripled in a matter of months. what accounts for that? >> you should ask our investors, but i would say that we have always had very strong success in the u.s. i think among the closest competitors people comparison to, the impression is we have moved from one of the players in the market to the market leader and obviously you do get some premium when you take a position like that. emily: another one of your peers recently had a blockbuster ipo in the united states. the ceo cofounded paypal.

what are your plans to go public and how do you see that as a validation of what you are doing? >> i think it is great. at the end, i started this business with my cofounder 16 years ago. i hope to be added for a couple more decades. what is fantastic is to be in this industry. we are going after credit cards. credit cards is not a great business model if you think about it. it is free for you and i. we rarely ask ourselves who is paying for. the answer is a lot of low income people are revolving at 29% interest rate. buy now, pay later is equal for everyone. it is not caused interest for consumers to use it. consumers reward merchants with more spending. i think this is a fantastic opportunity to change an industry that has lost sight of customers, has legacy technology

, and it is a massive industry. i am happy there other players like us who also have ambition to participate in what i believe is going to be the decade of disruption to retail banking. we have an opportunity to do what tesla has done to the car industry. emily: what about your go public plans? you mentioned you prefer a direct listing over an ipo. what is your thinking now? >> i was hoping i could circumvent that question. emily: no, i am going to pin you on it. >> we have been quite consistent. we have had fantastic backing of our investors. we are getting closer to a point where that makes sense. we have not taken a formal decision. it is unlikely he could happen the next year or two years. there is no formal decision. emily: ok. there has been a lot of scrutiny of this buy now, pay later

model and criticism you are encouraging young people who do not have a lot of money to get into a worse financial position. you respond to that? >> there is a lot of misconception in the market. we follow high standards. we have a full bank license in europe. when you look at it, there is a different thing. when you apply for a credit card, you get a thousand dollars. the bank encourages you to spend through all of it. that is the traditional model. what we are offering is saying, do not do that. use a debit card for most of your purchases. use installments occasionally. when we provide credit, we give you $100 credit first time. consumers show us they can use that in a responsible way. then we extend that limit. it is a different model.

we have showed with our losses over the 16 years we have been operating we are below industry standards on losses compared to credit cards. there is a lot of misconception. to some degree, i do believe some of those is fueled by the bank establishment that is getting worried. digitalization of banking products is great, but the problem is they need to fundamentally change their business models to compete. that is scary to be honest. emily: bitcoin is picking up momentum again 10 i am curious -- momentum again. i am curious what your take is on cryptocurrency and how you see it being integrated into the business going forward. >> i'm always worried when i get that question because then i get a lot of people stocking me on twitter and being angry with me. i in general, i am open to new

technologies and so forth. i am a little bit worried. we have accepted the fact that when you advertise financial products, you have some minimum amounts of disclaimers and information to people investing in it. it feels like for whatever reason, regulators have forgotten that should apply to the financial instrument as well. just getting nervous it is becoming so speculative. i'm worried a lot of people are going to lose some money. as much as i am excited about the technology, i am worried about participating in building further on that and with the risk of some people losing their savings as a consequence of not fully understanding the risks of what it means to invest in volatile asset like that. -- in a volatile asset like that. emily: speaking of coming from humble beginnings, i understand you started your career flipping burgers. here you are today. any advice for young and

up-and-coming entrepreneurs who want to be like you? >> flipping burgers is a good start at least. i do not know. i wish i could say. i think i've been very lucky. obviously we have been trying to just learn as much as we can, iterate, iterate and learn and in what we do. if you stay committed. klarna may be different from a lot of other tech companies. we did not raise a lot of money and burn thread. our first fundraiser was $60,000 and we burn through half of it before we became profitable. we have been focused on providing a service for customers they would like and they would like to use. it is just that commitment and trying and trying and eventually

you will make it work. emily: you have also announced you will give 1% of a billion dollars you raise to initiatives combating climate change. how is that going and what prompted that? >> when we started companies, when i was 23 years old, i had not figured the world out. neither have i now probably. we just wanted to start a company. we wanted to do something different. all of our friends wanted to work at morgan stanley or goldman sachs. starting a company was a very odd thing to do. 7% of university students wanted to do it. now it is 70%. as a company, it has become larger. we transact $80 billion worth of gmb. we have come to the conclusion that we can have an impact. we can contribute somehow to

society shared it has allowed us to grow and exist -- to society. it has allowed us to grow and exist. we believe if we can transform this banking industry that has not been great for customers, we can do something great. we also realize we are living on a planet that is having some issues and we felt, what is something we can do? we thought maybe if we pledge 1% and give one back on what we are able to raise right now and invested in initiatives to support sustainability on the planet and diversity, we can at least do something and maybe we can encourage other tech companies that when they ways, they can give one back to the planet because without a planet, it will not matter what we do as a business. emily: absolutely. thank you for staying up late for us. sebastian siemiatkowski, ceo of klarna.

we will keep our eye on you. coming up, some are calling it a transformative moment for the art world. we are talking non-fungible tokens. a record $69 million. we will talk about that next as crypto gets collectible. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a few other tech stories we are following. in the world of art, non-fundable tokens have become the hottest things. the digital file acts as a digit -- acts as a certificate of authenticity that runs on blockchain technology. thursday, a digital artwork less than a month old entered for more than 62.5 million dollars in new york. comes to a record 69.3 million

dollars. every day, the first 5000 days is a mosaic of every image that artist michael winkleman has made since 2013 and does not come with anything physical attached. christie's made waves when it announced it would start accepting cryptocurrency as payment. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. i'm emily chang in san francisco. tomorrow, we will talk about vaccines. michael maren will be joining us . at the height of the pandemic last year, march through may had nearly 300 covid-19 patients. we will talk about lessons learned, breakthroughs in science and technology and more. you do not want to miss next week as we examine one year since the u.s. shut down with one of the biggest voices in science and technology. some of our guests including the uber ceo, the ceo of pennell --

of peloton, the cofounder of moderna and the cfo of zoom. all of that to look forward to next week. i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

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haidi: good morning. we are counting down to asia's major market open. shery: the dollar slumped against its major peers. south korea z chalmers giant coupang sword on its debut in new york.