>> from the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide in silicon valley and beyond. this is "bloomberg technology" with emily chang. emily: i am emily chang in san francisco. by now, pay later. it is not a new concept, but it is the latest push by apple to get users to use apple pay. how it will rival paypal and affirm. plus, arianna huffington continues to thrive.

her wellness company gets a $750 million valuation after raising fresh funding. what is next for the company looking to minimize burn out? could nft's for the washington wizards be a slamdunk? owner ted leonsis think so. we will talk about whether he thinks crypto will be a big part of the future of professional sports. that's later this hour. all that in a moment. first, we will look at the markets with kriti gupta. kriti: risk off day and it all had to do with the cpi. nearly double the surveyed amount. 0.5%, that is what economists were surveyed to really expect. 0.9%. once again, the inflation fears really strong, but it did not show up in tech sectors, cyclical sectors. it was across the board. risk off. we saw people take cash off when it came to the market and dive

into treasuries. treasury getting a big yield coming down. i want to show you the one notable exemption, those are going to be the new york faang index. it is flat on the session. if you look at what is inside, it has to do with the big tech names, apple, facebook. alongside the nasdaq golden dragon index, that is the index housing some of the chinese adr's, doing really well. of course, the stocks index under pressure with the risk off move. i really want to zoom in on the nasdaq golden dragon index. it is going to be crucial. in the last two weeks, you have seen a lot of pressure. they have kind of taken quite a little bit of a hit. today, really bouncing back off the rsi, the oversold level, the green line at the very bottom. you can see the line hopping up a little bit. this is a big, extremely important moment. this could signal maybe they are coming back up, maybe there is a

little bit of room to run. as it gets back up to the trend channel. shout out to abigail doolittle for putting this chart in front of us. the question, will this be a longer-term trend or a shorter-term ounce? emily?: thank you -- emily: thank you. apple is working on a new service that will let consumers pay for any apple pay purchase over time. it would rival the by now, pay later offering. the service will use goldman sachs as the lender for the loans needed. i want to bring in mark gurman, who broke this story. how will this work? mark: you will be able to, when this eventually launches, sign up for this pay later service. you will go to a store or make an online purchase, say it is $100. if you're part of this pay later program, you will have two options. one will be apple pay in four.

what you will be able to do is split that up into four installments of $25. you have to pay four times every two weeks. the other program is called apple pay monthly installments. this is a longer-term program, if you make a sizable purchase, thousands of dollars, that you want to pay for over several months. in that case, apple will charge interest and apr. goldman will be the one handling that as well. emily: if you have an iphone, i am sure you have noticed, it is increasingly easier to just use apple pay with zero friction really. i'm wondering what some of these other companies will have to say about it? mark: this will definitely be a new layer. the interesting part, you can use any credit card you have in apple pay already. you do not have to use an apple card, a credit card.

you don't need to do a new credit application. it will be so seamlessly integrated, so i am not sure why an iphone user with apple pay would not use this service over the competitors like affirm, paypal. emily: with some of the services, you do get an additional credit check, which sometimes can impact your credit score. it is great that apple is making this easier for users but i find it interesting that they are doing this in the midst of this antitrust scrutiny on how they run the app store and google -- apple pay in particular. mark: the interesting thing to me in reporting this, that apple's terms are essentially identical to affirm and paypal. this pay in four installments is the same interest-free plan that every one of these competitors used. it is not like apple is beating them in any sort of functionality. they are a true competitor, it

is not like they are going overboard are doing better deals. i think that will give them more safe ground. personally, i am concerned about how dangerous this is for me or others, you want to buy a pricey item, now you feel like you have no interest to pay this off over eight weeks or low interest over several months. they want to make more money, keep people glued to their iphones. i think this will be lucrative for apple and goldman. emily: how much has apple pay grown over the past few years? i imagine it is becoming a bigger part of the pie because of its success. mark: apple takes a small percentage, low double-digit cents on every transaction that uses apple pay. my understanding is they make a few billion dollars per year as part of the larger services by on apple pay transaction.

this will create another growth area. in addition, they are working on a square-like feature, where you will be able to receive payments if you are a small business, let's say i am doing a lemonade stand, you can tap your phone on the back of my phone, or a credit card on the back of my phone, and i can take a payment from you like that. i think the big picture here, apple is posting there for tech priorities. it will be interesting to watch in the coming years. emily: thank you very much for that update. elon musk managed to keep his temper in check as he wrapped up his second and final day of questioning about tesla's takeover of solarcity. musk was the first and most central witness in the case. expected to go about two weeks. remember, he was solarcity's chair and biggest shareholder. that was when tessa decided to

buy solarcity. he denied involvement in price talks and state committed to the idea that solarcity was critical to tesla's success. i will bring in ben caddo. he has an outperform rating currently -- what do you think? ben: thank you for having me on. i think, looking back on it -- there was a lot of controversy. first of all, he recused himself from voting. even though he was the chairman, he did recuse himself. i think it is pretty interesting that he did take the stand. looking back, 2016, tesla energy did about $300 million of revenue. we forecast about $3 billion. in five years, 300 million to $3 billion. i think it was a good choice. there is solar involved. but, that is pretty spectacular growth.

emily: we talked to dan ives yesterday. he thinks this whole deal is one of the biggest black eyes on tesla and elon musk that he has seen. they have made a lot of risky moves and a lot of them have paid off but he does not believe this one did. ben: i was down in the trenches during this, i think i was one of the only analysts covering both stocks. the integration had a lot of questions about crossownership between the companies. i think going back to the numbers, $300 million to $3 billion. also, the leadership they have shown. five years ago, they made this choice to move into the energy business. now we hear the likes of vwo, -- vwo, gm this is a situation where musk was several years ahead of the competition. emily: interesting color from

the courtroom, there were some elon musk fans in the courtroom itself. there is a potential risky has to pay upwards of $2 billion if he loses the suit. he wanted to go to court anyway. what is the likelihood that he loses and has to pay up, and if he does have to pay up, how big a deal is that? ben: i can't comment on the case, outside of my pay grade here. emily: what do you think, looking at the future of tesla more broadly, of course we have earnings coming up, does it matter that tesla keeps soaring echo i know you have an outperform on the stock. what do you think the future is? ben: i think the energy business continues to grow. a slower pace of the energy business than the car business. i think this is a situation where tesla with its market cap,

at the time, solarcity was a $3.4 billion company, which is somewhat of a rounding error at this time. i do not want to minimize how big of a business it is, but i think the growth is very key to the overall infrastructure that tesla is trying to build out for its ev's and renewables. i think the acquisition of solarcity accelerated that. having the services has helped it sell more equipment, helped get the brand out, more awareness. overall, i think it was a good choice at the right time. emily: thanks so much for weighing in. coming up, 2021 was supposed to be the year of the spac but so far, that has only been partially true. after the break, we will be joined by marc cooper to talk about this.

and dealmaking in the second half of the year. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the first half of 2021 saw a record m&a deals from amazon, at&t, and discovery, and of course the rise of spac's. let's not forget about the roller coaster ride of bitcoin. we are joined by pj solomon ceo marc cooper. it was a record for m&a in the first half of the year.

the question, will that be repeated in the second half? marc: it certainly looks that way given the backlog of transactions, recognizing that they have a certain cadence to them. it is going to be a very big second half. emily: how so? a very large transaction. but across the spectrum of industry, whether strategic, pe related, which has been just extraordinary especially with some of the larger transactions that you are seeing emerge for the first time in 10 years, and the space market. keep in mind that there is $128

billion in trusts that have a finite timeline to invest. one, hitting on all cylinders. the other issue, why does timing matter and why does the back half of the year matter? capital gains make a difference. we have heard that potentially it could be retroactive. that is not necessarily what people expect. people want to get in under the window. i think the second issue is fear of inflation, fear of interest rates going up. now is the time to deploy capital. thirdly, there is an enormous amount of cash sitting on the sidelines that was less active last year, incredibly active now. i have heard from all of my friends, it is not just isolated.

this is the busiest time they have ever seen. emily: how do you expect to see that cash put to work? marc: i think you will see a continued surge in activity, in private equity activity. you will see spac's pickup. we are launching a number of spac's sell side and others are active in forming the spac's. technology is still leading the pack. technology these days, much broader, it is pervasive across industries, whether it is the medical business, retail business, fintech business. as technology takes over the world, we will see continued

consolidation and continued acquisition to create capabilities and this idea, but most around existing businesses. what is one fly in the ointment? a pronouncement by the biden administration about anticompetitive behavior. i think you will see a much tougher ftc on antitrust. emily: what do you think it looks like? we saw a flood of spac's earlier this year, then it kind of died down. how much are they going to be in terms of the total pie of public offerings? marc: it will still be pretty significant. i think it is going to evolve, and it needs to evolve. it was kind of speculative in the early days. far more about big opportunities

with results now. i think you will see them focus more on companies that actually are profitable, that are a bit more conservative, get with some growth potential. we are about to launch a transaction in the e-commerce space, digitally native brand and business, profitable. i think you will see more of that. i think there is also more of a digestion period going on. so many happened so quickly that the market has to how things shake out. i think there will be some negative fallout in some of the more speculative transactions. i would say, hopefully by the end of the year, there will be a more normalized cadence, more normalized spac market, rather

than the boom that we saw late into last year and early into this. emily: we will have to continue this conversation another time and see how your prediction holds up. marc cooper, pj solomon ceo, thank you for joining us. coming up, a russia linked group vanishes from the internet just days after the u.s. warns russia to act against hackers. those details next. tomorrow, a blockbuster lineup , including an exclusive interview with microsoft ceo satya nadella. plus, we will be joined by former u.s. vice president al gore to talk about the race against climate change and the 15th anniversary of the release of his film, "an inconvenient truth." this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: france has fined google $593 million in a dispute over paying for news. french regulators say google ignored an agreement by displaying articles on its new service. france is not the first country trying to hold tech companies accountable. earlier this year, australia passed a law. a group has seemingly vanished from the dark web. it is not known if law enforcement took them off line. it was suspected by the u.s. government of operating out of russia, accused of being behind the cyberattack on the meat supplier giant, jbs. it eventually paid the hackers $11 million in ransom. the sudden outage comes just

days after president biden warned russian president putin to act against hackers in his own country. joining us is william turton. what do you suspect happened here? william: it is really hard to know. no one seems to have a good idea yet. what we do know is that their website and infrastructure has gone off-line in a way that they haven't before. the context here is really important. president biden said they expected to take action against some of these groups. we just don't know if this group went underground and decided to run and hide or, as these groups very often do, they rebrand when there is a little too much attention. they kind of go under for a little bit, then they will come back under a new name. this group already did this in 2019. it is unclear still. emily: how often does president putin do what the u.s. president asked him to do? isn't that quite unusual?

william: that is another question. you have to wonder to what extent putin is kind of balancing the benefits he gets by letting these criminals operate in the country versus the consequences. for the most part, we don't really know what the consequences could be, especially in the cyber realm. those kind of things are classified. computer network intrusion operations, we in the public don't hear about that often. a lot of this stuff is happening outside of public view. emily: revel, how many attacks have they been responsible for lately? there are many of these groups. jbs was one. how many players are they on the cyberattack scene? william: they are one of the most aggressive and brash groups. they are not really worried about bringing attention to themselves. you kind of get the sense in

their communications and the types of targets they had, that they know they are operating with impunity. they are responsible for dozens of attacks. they also had companies that don't make the press all the time. sometimes people just pay the ransom and they go away. it is hard to know exactly how many organizations they have hit. emily: all right, william turton, thanks so much. we will continue to watch and see if they pop up somewhere else. coming up, we will be joined by thrive global founder and ceo, arianna huffington, about her app's new $750 million valuation and helping find a worklife balance. plus, ted leonsis talks about the explosion of nft's and why his capitals and wizards are betting big on that. this is bloomberg. ♪

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emily, welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang in san francisco. for more on the markets, what are you tracking now? >> it was a risk off day across the markets everywhere except for those chinese companies mostly tech heavy listed in the u.s, that white line is the nasdaq golden dragon index that points to that sector. since february, it has been a downhill track, except for today. a little bit of a bounce back.

but there is a really big tencent deal acquisition that did get approved by chinese regulatory authorities. i want to show you the spillover effect into other stocks. there has been the issue of some antitrust scrutiny weighing on the stocks. today, a little bit of that pressure was taken off. these indexes are all in the green, helping on a day with the u.s. stock market saw a drop. apple released some news they are going to be creating a payments firm with goldman sachs , one that would rival the likes of paypal and you can see that helped apple shares. but facebook and amazon are not doing so well. microsoft is in the green, not enough to lift u.s. stocks. emily, a good day for microsoft.

-- emily: a good day for microsoft. we have got the ceo on the show tomorrow. thank you for that update. i want to turn now to employee wellness. arianna huffington launched thrive global to help employees focus on personal health and minimize burnout. they work with hundreds of organizations and just raised an additional $80 million in funding. arianna huffington, founder and ceo of thrive, great to have you back on the show. the pandemic has taken such a huge toll on louise, on -- employees physically and emotionally. how big has that been? arianna: it has been enormous. it also highlighted what has been a problem since before the

pandemic, the burnout crisis, and from thrive's point of view, these were the very problems thrive was founded to address. the pandemic has made all of these issues become absolutely central to the agenda. these are no longer hr issues, they are truly a company strategy that has to be addressed to prevent attrition, make recruitment easier, and physically address the bottom line. emily: the huge debate is how much flexibility you give employees for the long-term esop -- long-term. you see companies saying yes you can work in a hybrid mode and goldman sachs saying everyone has to be back in the office. who is going to be on the right side of history here? arianna: employees, in the end,

are going to determine what happens. recruitment is going to be very hard if there is no flexibility given. i predict a very hybrid future and the key here is what kind of skills will be required. one of our investors was a global leader in education technology. we are finding that upscaling and rescaling is no longer enough. companies need to help employees with skills, and stress management, that is where the future is going to be. it is not just where are our workers going to work from, but what kind of skills is the employer helping them get?

that is where thrive comes in. we are helping companies in every sector, whether they are dealing with knowledge workers or front-line workers. as we are doing with walmart. making sure they prioritize employee resilience stress management, and see this as connected to business at the bottom line. no longer nice to have warm and fuzzy benefits. emily: when you talked about wellness, that was anything. -- a new thing. leaving your iphone outside of your bedroom door is radical and now there are huge categories. there are companies like better up, which focuses on long-term personal improvement and professional improvement. prince harry is one of their executives. talk about thrive and what separates it from the other offerings. arianna: what differentiates the thrive app is we are addressing

the whole human. there are six journeys in that. recharge, which is about seconds of recess during the day. food, movement, focus, financial stress, and community. we realize it is possible to address well-being with point solutions. you need to address the whole human. if you are sleep deprived, you are going to crave fat, carbs, and sugar. so focusing on food and weight, also looking at sleep and movement, gratitude, financial stress makes it much harder to change behavior. we believe in practical change, and that is why we really saw our valuation rise. that's why we were able to raise

a significant investment to double down on what we are doing because frankly, what our platform offers is meeting the moment because of the pandemic that has accelerated these priorities. emily: what is your long-term goal? do you have plans to go public? would you be open to being acquired? arianna: right now, we are doubling down on growing faster both across the productivity range that companies are dealing with, but also around health. we need to address not just the last mile of hill after people are sick but the first mile before people get sick and that is all about behavior. that is all about prevention at there is way too little investment at the moment in prevention. emily: now that the world is

changing again, we are emerging from lockdown, people are going back to work. how worried are you about burnout and a hybrid world where it almost seems like people are working more? there is less compartmentalization home and work and employees seem they have to prove how productive they are and can be. how big a problem is burnout in this moment? arianna: it is huge. when i started thrive 2016 our mission was to end the stress and burnout. in 2016 not many are talking about burnout, now it's front and center. this is also an opportunity to use the pandemic as a catalyst to redefine and reinvent productivity and move away from the delusion that burnout is the price we pay for success. what makes me optimistic is

there is a lot of science that shows that we can force correct from stress during the day and prevent burnout. stress is unavoidable but cumulative stress and burnout are avoidable so we have a feature that is literally a 62nd -- 60 second reset between zoom calls come you receive stressful news, that helps you course correct. there are a lot of science and database tools that we can use in the pandemic has actually brought all of these tools, this conversation about mental resilience and well-being, to the forefront. emily: i may have left my phone outside my bedroom door twice and even read some poetry before bed, which he once recommended we appreciate you being out there and working on this.

arianna huffington, thank you for joining us. coming up, monumental sports' ceo joins us to talk about the explosion of nft's and explains why his capitals and wizards are betting big on that space. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the world of nfts is shaking up the sports world. just last week, ted leonsis announced collections for the washington wizards and washington capitals.

digital collectibles made a splash and they are betting fans will find them and investment. some people would say the space is kind of fizzling. why bank on this now? >> nba top shots is really important for the league and i was an early investor in dapper. i still believe very much so in the capturing of moments and using those video assets trails capturing memories but they have tended to be aimed at collectors and we wanted to make nft's understandable and approachable and so we have launched a series of products to our customers, the people that follow the teams on a worldwide basis the whole

idea was to get people to experiment, to understand what and fts, what nfts are about it is how you can create memories and currency so that your fans have a more digitized experience and it's all within this platform around game with occasion, gamification and trying to take our platform a worldwide basis. emily: you are in such an interesting position as an investor and as an owner. i'm wondering about your thoughts on cryptocurrency. wondering about accepting cryptocurrency. how big of a future will it play and are you concerned about

volatility when thinking about long-term adoption? >> right now we are at the high-end of the market and the top of the funnel. i started life at america online. our goal was to get everyone on line, make it accessible and easy to understand and that is what has to happen with crypto. just trying to create an account on open sea and having them bump you over to your wallet to coinbase, and put your money in. it reminds me of the old days opening an e-commerce account. we touch so many consumers on the worldwide basis, our goal is to become more populous with all of the technologies. one of the reasons i love

e-sports so much as you can get online, download the app, play some games, see how you are doing against your peers if you are really good you can come a professional e-sports player. right behind me, you can see the nba 2k championship that we won last year. my prediction is people will have more entry into the nba in e-sports and video games than they will in getting into an arena and subscribing through cable or even direct to consumer. e-sports gamification. we are seeing things in the gaming space. we were an investor in revolution growth in draftkings, which created a lot of value for our investors. also in sports radar. they will be going out soon.

the globalization of gameification of sports. having a rooted interest in the outcome of a game or play is a huge business. emily: you mentioned draftkings, which just had a pact with the mlb. my little baseball fans hit the draftkings sign and there was a victim as the result of that. do you think there will be similar agreements with the nhl and nba? >> all of these next-generation companies are at an advantage. like draftkings, fan dual, they're not being positioned as hospitality companies with a casino wrapped in it. they are big data companies. draftkings has been growing very quickly. they went out and built $20

million plus in value. they are a pretty simple model, that each state legalizes and is more and more states want to legalize, they want to take commerce that has been done in the shadows and bring it into the sunshine and it will create jobs, it creates taxes. we just opened the first sports book in an arena. i deal with william hill. it will probably due to hundred -- $250 million worth of handles in the first month it is open. it has created a whole new sector of growth for sports books by making in context gaming within an arena where sports fans come. and it really starts to show the power of the platform of professional sports in a way that we can nest and test and bring to a wide base of

consumers and partners. a lot of new technologies. these technologies around nft, around direct to consumer and streaming are becoming the main driver of the overall media business. you look at bam and bamtech and how that has spun out to create disney plus and now disney plus has 100 million subscribers and espn plus is streaming and growing and all of that really was created off of the jump point of the sports platform. emily: the big debate is continuing about the ncaa and students being paid for play. the door seems to be opening, but what are we waiting for? congress? do you think it is enough that brands, name likeness is enough, or schools should be paying players? >> i think about it like the

blockchain business. making sure everything is in the light of day. there is a general ledger. paying the players in areas outside of scholarship makes a lot of sense. it is certainly on the right side of morality, if you will. i also think it will change collegiate sports. i think the g league in the nba, the ahl in the nhl, that now young players might go from high school into the geely, g league and be showcased and get paid, and be able to go to the nba after their first year. i think you will see a lot of change where -- as you were talking on the previous -- power is moving to the workers. power is moving to the talent.

they can create big following, become their own media companies through social media. i think it is a good balancing right now. if you're going to be an athlete, you should start early. you should have this as a career option, if you will. what they've done is smart. it's a shame they had to be forced to do it because they were being unfair to the athletes. emily, i want to have you back because there's so much more to talk about but i appreciate you stopping by today. >> i would love to do it. emily: good to have you back. ted leonsis, monumental sports ceo and revolution growth founding partner. thanks so much for joining us. streaming services dominate another award season. who is up for a nod at this year's emmys. and games for shares of e.a..

upgraded to outperform at bmo capital market they price target whose did. the analysts saying the videogame industry is faring better than many expected. sort of along the lines of what ted leonsis said there. this is bloomberg.

emily: streaming services continue to dominate tv's highest honor. one of rose and hbo max getting the most nomination. netflix came in a close second and disney plus third. the mandolorian tied with the crown from netflix for most nominations for any individual show, 24. my fave, mare of easttown also nominated. for more details, i want to bring in kelly go blonde.

obviously, the rise of streaming is the story yet again. what is your take on who is on the list this year? >> that's right. the rise of streaming continues to be the story in entertainment. i think the interesting takeaway is this shows, our shows that were built to attract new customers to newer streaming services. disney plus launched with it, and mare of east town was one of properties meant to draw customers to hbo max. it seems they are hitting the right notes with the tv business elites that give out the trophies and have prestigious events in hollywood. emily: meantime, a big development on the diversity front. the first trans-actress ever

nominated. tell us about that. >> that's right. rodriguez becomes the first trans-actress to be nominated for a major acting award at the emmys. i think the most surprising thing, if you have seen the performance in the show, there's no doubt she was definitely worthy, but just that she had not been recognized before. it just shows that even though they have put a lot of effort into making things more diverse, we still have a long way to go. you would think that because of all the talented people in hollywood doing their jobs well, this probably would have happened by now. but in 2021 it is happening for the first time. emily: we need to see more of that talent in front of and behind the camera. thank you so much. this is it for this edition of

"bloomberg technology." join us tomorrow. we have a huge show. we will be joined by microsoft's ceo and an exclusive with vice president al gore, talking about the race against climate change and the 15th anniversary of the release of his film, "an inconvenient truth." hard to believe it has been 15 years. i am emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> the following is a paid program. the opinions and views expressed do not reflect those of bloomberg lp, its affiliates, or its employees. ♪ >> the following is a paid presentation brought to you by rare collectibles tv. ♪ >> the california gold rush is considered to be one of the most impactful events to affect america's young economy during its first 100 years, and it has certainly had a long lasting impression in numismatic history, as well. the people of california soon needed a way to standardize the value of the new gold. so, they set up assayer'