>> from the heart of where innovation, money and power collide. in silicon valley and beyond, as is -- this is bloomberg technology with emily chang. carolyn: welcome to bloomberg technology. i am caroline hyde. i have absolutely no script some on the television prompter so i will be ad-libbing as we move toward the marquis technology headlines. i'm looking at the movement in shares as the fda is client

emergency use authorization for pfizer's covid pill. we dig into this new milestone. there we are. we are back up and running. amazon labor groups filing union petitions in new york city. the cloud unit draws antitrust from the ftc. getting ready to take full control. we will have all the details from l.a. first, let's remind us what happened in the markets. stocks closing on session highs over speculation the coronavirus variants will not upend the economic recovery in a large part thanks to pfizer. kriti: has everything to do with the overgrown variant. -- the omicron variant. is it going to stop the underling economy and the markets? keep in mind extremely thin volume. extremely thin liquidity.

you have stocks on cruise control. the s&p 500 ending 1% higher with a defensive tilt. information technology, those were the sectors leading the charge higher. you can see the tech outperformance in the nasdaq outperforming the russell 2000, which tends to be this momentum play. a very broad verily in the market. went to point out yields flat on the day. the question for a lot of tech investors is going to be the volatility picture. volatility in the nasdaq. on a one-year basis, you can see tech volatility has dropped for the better part of the year. i the last month or so, bank age has spiked and remains fairly elevated. going into 2022, were talking about not just a volatile timeframe but a lot of volatility cured for the 10 elegy stocks -- volatility geared toward the technology stocks. amazon dealing with some antitrust headlines today.

the ftc targeting amazon and their cloud business unit. this was an investigation that began under the trump administration, is continuing now. you sold this dip in amazon shares right after 1:00. the question for a lot of investors will be, do you look through some of those antitrust concerns? caroline: we are going to be digging into amazon in other ways. let's go back to what is dictating trade. the fda has issued an emergency use authorization for pfizer's covid hill. all over the story, and important milestone in terms of the arsenal with which we have to tackle all of the new variants we seem to be coming across. >> this is the latest of the therapeutic treatments we have for covid-19. this one is a milestone because

it is the first treatment we have available in the u.s. that you can use at home. the existing therapies we have, they tend to be more onerous and need to be administered in a hospital or via an infusion. now, there is this new pill that you can take once you get tested and you test positive, you get it in a few days. it should make things a lot year for people. caroline: we're looking at a graphic the pel of reduced hospitalization some 89% in trial. remind us of how hospitalizations are currently looking. the numbers are sensational. 100,000 people in the u.k. with latest to be diagnosed with covid. 20,000 in new york. aurora -- our hospitalizations remaining low? >> hospitalizations are one

metric public health experts are monitoring closely. while cases are really climbing, in the u.s. and elsewhere, it is not clear hospitalizations will follow likely have with previous variants. today, there is a trio of studies from south africa and england suggesting omicron produces fewer hospitalizations than delta or other variants. the data is early but it is promising signs hospitalizations won't spike the way they have some times before. caroline: we are all about together with our relatives, some of whom are older. i'm going back to the u.k. where there are 100,000 cases a day to my 75-year-old parents people are nervous about this.

testing is faster in the u.k. but how are you thinking about a country such as the u.k. right now? >> that is something people are nervous about. one of these studies released today shows people who have already been infected are 10 times as likely to develop omicron than previous variants. as everyone knows, the prevailing narrative has been if you have been invented, if you are vaccinated, you are case that does raise the concern there will be more breakthrough cases. people are closely watching how severe omicron will be. it is early to know exactly how it shakes out. caroline: it is all about the data, which luckily we are good at here at bloomberg. great to have you with us. let's turn our attention to one of the other stories. we are looking at the workers at amazon seeking to unionize four

facilities in new york city. have enough signatures to call for a vote. the labor group filed a petition wednesday to hold a union election after failing to collect signatures. remind us as they refile, what is next? >> they have summoned all the necessary paperwork required to go forward with this union petition. and of the coming days, the agency that admit errors these things will be counting the counts of interest. it is all the signatures amazon has collected and then they can meet this threshold, which they were not able to meet last time and had to refile. caroline: the president behind this to a large extent, a man who was let go by amazon, tell us about how they are being organized and how across the country. >> there has been a lot of union

activity and organized labor across the board when it comes to emma corrin -- comes to amazon across the u.s. today, there was a walkout in two warehouses in chicago. he said some of the activity that happened in chicago today was independent of what was happening in staten island. caroline: perhaps not working quite as holistically as might be anticipated. remind us -- there are a myriad of things amazon is trying to take on to their putting masks back on either warehouses. -- in their warehouses. the other key part of amazon is amazon web services. kriti was telling us how the ftc was eyeing it should >> our colleagues in washington had a big skip about this. the ftc had started this probe under the trump administration

looking into the amazon web services, which is the back of the internet. it provides a lot of access to websites. they are focused on the antitrust and competition side. they are looking at how amazon interacts with companies that use aws and those who don't as well. they have spoken with companies in the last week or so could it is clear this probe is advancing caroline: just to add to the angst, ws had a bit of an outage. >> it is the third outage this month. i woke up this morning and i saw that. it kind of felt like it was last week again because that with the last time this happened. they had a really big one in the beginning of the month, which took out netflix. even the little bathroom cleaners that go on your floors. there was another outage. it is this kind of issue that keeps popping up for aws. it is affecting companies that

are all over the place. it is affecting netflix. it is affecting something like fidelity investments. it is affecting coinbase as well. it would be hard if you were a retail trader or day trader or day trader or somebody managing an account and trying to get liquidity when aws is down. it adds a whole other layer of complications especially when liquidity is really thin. caroline: great analysis across the whole of amazon we thank you. for bringing us up to speed. let's talk about another key tech player. muska made a comment during interview with a satirical website he has been offloading tesla stocks since november. it is part of a plan to cover $10 billion in stock options. on twitter, he said he is almost done. coming up, tiktok remains a private company as a rival goes public. we talked to the platform ceo

about the decision to hit the nasdaq before the end of the year. this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: google has been dethroned as the top ranking to men. this year's number one spot belongs to tiktok. last year, the social video platform was ranked number seven. google remains number two followed by facebook, microsoft, apple and netflix. a social media -- social video platform has agreed with a reverse merger. the transaction will valued them at $5 billion. it is a four fold increase. it is expected to close in the first quarter. the ceo is here with us pit i feel like i spent the whole of 2021 spending about special-purpose acquisition companies. what did you go for a reverse merger? >> it is not just backing into a shell company. real synergies between the business, which is around streaming and providing ott capabilities to operators. and our platform, which has been focused on empowering creators to be they've -- to be the best they can be, giving them ai powered superpowers to drive

-- giving them ai powered superpowers to drive better monetization of their content. >> talk to us about the plan. when you're looking to expand, i am wondering how your business model involves. you have been making some interesting acquisitions. you recently acquired this music platform but also you have been getting into ai and streaming yourself with the sports streaming. how does this all work together has a business model? >> it is a great question. our business model, we are barely a three-year-old company. we came together initially with a short form video app. it is a real innovation we had a year-and-a-half ago that the creator economy is broken. platforms like facebook and tiktok rely on creators to

create content and create a -- a vibrant environment for consumers. those platforms, which make all the money through advertising, don't share much of it with the creators. we saw an opportunity -- we heard from creators they need better tools. they need tools that cannot only help them create and distribute content but to measure the audiences that interact with them. how did they create monetization experiences for them to potentially install some of the dashed eventually -- to eventually sell some of that content? how did they create their own subscription services? a lot of thing we have done in the last year has been creating these flagpole events like with fight club, around music. all of those are designed to

inspire creators and to be able to bring them onto our platform and help them create their own audiences. in terms of scale and scope, we have done 11 big events this year. on the tv platform, we did 1100 events for other people. the platform focus is coming into play. caroline: you can give the size and scale of the events. give us the size and scale of users. i know enough a lot of people have downloaded the app but how many people on a daily basis are using it? >> keep in mind that our platform is a mixture of our own apps, things like the fight tv app but it is so much more in the interactions we create on

other platforms. a creator might create a piece of content using our platform and send it out to instagram, to tech talk, dashed to tiktok, to twitter, to facebook. our job is to instrument that click out experience. all you get is that bite-size bit of content. what we enable is driving users out of the short form experience into something more longform, more montetizeable. we talked about in our announcement we enabled north of 750 million interactions with consumers around the world not just on our platform but all these other platforms we connected to. caroline: going back to the app itself, a many people are using that given it is a rival to

tiktok? >> we certainly started our journey being compared closely to tiktok but we have grown so much further and the tiktok app, which is all about getting you there, keep you engaged, showing you apps and monetizing it and putting the money in the pockets of tiktok, our story is very different. caroline: how many people are on the app? >> we have not disclosed that in terms of public numbers. the numbers we are focused on is 150 million content interactions -- 750 million content interactions we are enabling on behalf of creators. caroline:caroline: fascinating you are going public at this time. what do you hope to achieve by going public? you're going to have to start disclosing those numbers into the market. >> sure. the journey of being a public company has lots of regulatory

burdens. it is not something we take lightly. at the same time, it did -- it gives us access to capital. it allows us to strengthen our balance sheet in a way that can continue for us to grow. we have grown organically. we have grown through acquisitions. when we think about those larger creator economy, we think there is a larger opportunity for us to make a bigger impact and bring some of these smaller companies under our tent and join our team should caroline: come tell us when you continue to grow. we would love to hear the story. thank you so much for your time. coming up, he may no longer be the ceo but bob iger's shadow still looms large at disney as he sets to leave the company in the coming days. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> flying out into the darkness. >> what do you mean? >> they all die. caroline: no way home continues to crush the competition. on tuesday, the film brought in 31 million. film has grossed 750 $1 million globally. despite the rise in covid-19 cases, it has seen the second-highest opening day in the history of the north american box office trailing only disney, avengers and again. disney is probably wishing it had worked out a better deal for spider-man. currently, none of the recent live action movies are on disney plus. one of the company's's concerns coming into 2022. i'm joined by chris palmeri who has a great story out on sort of the changing of the guard at disney as we say goodbye to bob

iger. how is it feeling over there at disney under bob chapek? >> this is one of the most excruciating secessions ever. there are many would-be successors who rose and fell. even what he did pick the new ceo, it was a year and a half still he would sit around as executive chairman. he would think everything would be great but living with so many questions unanswered at disney. caroline: the questions that need answering first and foremost seem to be disney plus. has chapek got a hold of that? >> this was a runaway success. then he really upped the ante saying that it will more than double by 2024.

already, the growth has started to slow. based on the current trajectory, it does not look like he is going to make that target. caroline: wall street trying to learn where they can and cannot understand the growth trajectory with bob chapek. how well-liked is bob chapek? >> he was never liked as some of the other candidates at the time. he has a reputation as being a hard-nosed guy. he has made some decisions that have been particularly unpopular internally. he has moved all the people who worked at the themepark from

california to florida, which has uprooted a lot of people and they are not happy about that. the other big change is he has work and eyes to the tv and film divisions. there is this new unit in charge of distribution. in the past, the head of the film studio would be able to decide what movie to make and whether it will go online or theaters first. those decisions get passed on to the central distribution unit. that is very unpopular with the tv and film executives who used to to have that autonomy. caroline: how does that sit with bob iger? >> a very different approach. you don't know how exactly how he would have handled it today. iger acquired a lot of businesses and usually let people run them independently. with this massive focus on streaming under chapek, everything is directed toward that. it is a different era. chapek has said this is the way things are moving.

caroline: really great story. look at it on the terminal and bloomberg.com. coming up, we will talk to falcon x about what the trend has been. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> this is bloomberg technology. a little bit on how the markets are performing. >> today was a cruise control kind of day, a fairly broad rally. tesla was a major contributor rising pushing the s&p 500 up. look at tesla's shares this year, because that has been quite a year. you had them under pressure early on then skyrocketing with the eb boom. -- ev boom.

essentially, a trend they created and thrived on. and, you saw a lot of that momentum fade and a lot of it had to do with elon musk selling his stock and investors taking the q to liquidate their own positions. today, some news saying he is done with selling. another big mover i want to talk about was pfizer. that is a big story from today, pfizer getting fda clearance for its pill to target covid-19. let's talk about the risk off risk on trade there. when pfizer gains, mnoderna tends to sell off and vice versa. you can see on a pe basis it's cheaper than some of its peers despite the success. 58% of covid vaccinations and

the united states come from pfizer. i want to and with -- end with a crypto check. a year in review type story. etherium has been outpacing gains compared to the yellow line which is the bloomberg crypto index and the blue line is bitcoin. the wide adoption of blockchain has spurred the rally. >> thank you so much. we want to stay on the crypto focus. we have an expert on all of this. she is the falcon x global head of institutional coverage. we thank you for sticking with us. let's talk about volumes going thin and the nasdaq s&p were down quarter percent from usual volumes. is that also playing out and

crypto? >> the last 24 hours, we have seen far more activity than in the past week. also notably layer one. luna hitting a breakpoint around $100. we are seeing really aggressive pursuance around the institutional client base. caroline: talk to us about the alternative coins. how much are they diversifying outside of bitcoin? >> i would say the majority of our institutional clients no longer just hold bitcoin and etherium. that was a narrative that eight months ago stood strong. at this point, i would say the narrative is around multi-chain.

people are looking at other chains that have p/e ratio, adoption. thinking through these different applications that have adoption and user numbers to measure against. >> as we unfold into 2022, is it the current institutional players will just go deeper, bigger, further amounts in terms of allocation toward that space? or are you looking for former players to come in? >> at this point, the biggest narrative is thinking about diversification against inflation. if you look at the u.s. dollar, roughly 40% of u.s. dollars that ever entered circulation have entered since the beginning of 2020. investors have top of mind how do i diversify against that?

to your point, 100% i think we have seen our institutional client base, the types of institutions that we are seeking to grow larger and former comprehensive and greater press personas and across geographies. caroline: as of late, bitcoin just seems to trade like a risk asset. it doesn't seem to be moving so much on where inflation is printing out, it is much more to do with risk on or risk off. how do you square that circle as to what it acts like as a ballast? >> i would say to date, these asset classes are getting more institutional. we will see it likely trade more

risk on and risk off. that's why you are seeing more of this diversification into other alternative coins. even if you look at just bitcoin through end of year, it is just a testament to how institutional the space is getting. bitcoin is still up over 60% year-over-year and etherium up over 400%. going into the multiple chain and alternative investment pieces. caroline: what are some of the new projects the people are getting excited about that we are not so used to using? at the moment, it's amazing if you get -- people to talk about bitcoin and ethereum. where are some of the more exciting projects coming from globally? >> this is the first year where we have seen decoupling away from bitcoin prices. if you look at an fts or gaming, this is the first time where a user can enter that space and they never have purchased bitcoin before. you are seeing other tokens that

are trading not directly correlated to bitcoin and even etherium which is exciting, this is where mainstream adoption is good to have. you have seen a lot of that context whether it is and fts and the volumes. in addition to all of the companies that have entered the metaverse had just -- caroline: is diversity not just diversification of assets, diversity of people within the space, how is that proving out and will we see more optimism? >> i would say it is incredibly top of mind for every company in the space to diversify. i have seen a number of organizations that are actively

working on partnering in order to make sure that happens, that we are constantly hiring a more diverse group of folks to enter the space. providing those opportunities and education to make this accessible to everyone. >> great to have some time with you. in other news, apollo global management is looking for financing to purchase softbank. -- looking to lend to softbank. coming up as we deal with another outbreak, some are saying we need to invest in better public health. one founder and ceo has some thoughts on the data for the institutions in the u.s.. this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: well hope sooner than later to look beyond the pandemic. the u.s. system will have to take a look at itself.

the u.s. governments cdc recently announced it had been over counting the number of americans who received at least one dose of the vaccine and the date it was far off from what states have been reporting. there are millions more unvaccinated than we originally thought. here is the founder and ceo of kinzer. you focused your attention on covid. you have been flagging for a while now that the cdc has lagged far bond -- far behind many other data inputs. >> if we analyze the cdc as a university and its action throughout its history makes sense. if we analyze it as our country and the world public health

response agency, it is sadly falling very short. one of the issues is data. the bigger issue has to do with the culture. don't get me wrong, the cdc is filled with dedicated public health servants. the culture has done our country a big disservice. >> talk us through that. how can it be different? >> there's a couple of different problems. the cdc would rather wait for data. then be fast. we are in the midst of a pandemic. response is critical. if you look at cdc history, sometimes the data they report can be years old. the second problem is a bigger one. that is that the cdc would rather reinvent the wheel than invest in innovations. at the beginning of the pandemic , the cdc had to rebuild its own diagnostic test despite the fact that other countries already had diagnostic tests going out.

unfortunately, the test didn't work and that caused a big delight. and mike sprint the cdc i have learned that they just don't have a willingness to engage with private business. that is a big problem. there is innovation, diagnostic innovation, vaccine innovation going on in the private sector and cdc should be playing that central coordinating role. that's a big problem. if you're not willing to be that coordinating role in a pandemic, that's a problem. caroline: why is that? previous directors have said there is a lack of investment. you would think outsourcing would do away with the sheer scale of money they need to deploy themselves. >> recently, i was in a senior level conversation with a cdc official.

i said we have been building this early warning system for a decade. we saw this unusual spread of illness in march 2020 weeks before case counts surged. as early as 2017, we called the worst flu season on record months before you. the response to me was we don't work with technology startups and private companies. that's the cdc foundation's role. i said you are kidding me. i did my homework afterwards. i talked to other companies in a similar position. there's a lot of money flowing through the american rescue plan for things like genomic sequencing. the same thing is happening there. this unwillingness to use innovation or partner with other sectors is not something that is new to the cdc. if you look at -- caroline: i'm interested about if other countries are doing it better.

you can compare and contrast so many. what is happening very well is they are measuring than taking data and testing. in the u.s., i see the lines going around for miles. is the nhs partnering with startups or other countries doing it better? >> other countries have different levels of success. the nhs is central coordinating body. it is coordinating among private entities, health systems, playing a central role. that's what i want cdc to do in the united states. >> it's fascinating that it hasn't been and a great under serving to the u.s. population. are you hopeful having had those conversations, is it still like

this is not part of who we are? or do you think that they will have lessons learned? >> i hope they will have lessons learned. if i talked to my advisors, former government officials who have worked with the cdc, i find this continues time and time again. it is an unfortunate situation that the cdc doesn't play well with other government agencies. if we look at the agencies that partnered with the private sector, that was hhs, the department of defense let those efforts cdc.

i hope there is an opportunity for this pandemic to result in a big shift in culture. that is a tough one if it is decades entrenched. it might need congress to set up a parallel entity to be the response vehicle while the cdc to news to be the research vehicle. >> thank you so much. coming up with the news of the omicron variant spreading, our online walkouts gaining popularity? netflix shares climbed to fresh highs after success of squid game which became the biggest series launch ever. this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: one of the year's biggest tech mysteries have been solved. an entrepreneur says he was the mystery bidder that paid $28 million to pay for a space on blue origin in july. at the time, jeff bezos said there was a scheduling conflict. he said he will fly next year and invite five people to join him. for many as we confront the pandemic once again, fitness was put on hold when we saw jim's close. then workout routines became the way to do it at home. joining me now is the beach body ceo. but to have him on the show. it has been a year of ups and downs.

i have been completely converted to this way of doing it. >> i think the pandemic showed people that working out at home is extremely effective. this is been the premise of the company since we started 20 years ago. the pandemic celebrated something that was our premise from the get-go. p90 x was the first billion-dollar product now we have over 100 products on the on-demand platform. now what we are seeing is not necessarily that people will ever leave the gym like that will never end. however, there are 150 million people in north america alone

who are members of jim's who want to feel better, who want to feel less vulnerable to getting sick and in control of their own well-being and those of the people who will turn to in-home fitness like beachbody in order to take control of their own well-being. caroline: remind us how you are different from peloton. why is beachbody different from their workouts? >> beachbody is unique because we have never been a one-sided approach. we have an incredible catalog of content. we have an amazing connected ike which uses content training that feels like a class, but we also have nutrition programs to help people make better food choices and control their portions. without feeling like you are on a diet, you're getting great results because you're doing the work out on the bike or in front of the screen, but you can't control your food. caroline: shout out to p90 x.

i'm finding that our director did it and loved it. after i interviewed you previously, i have never had such an outpouring on twitter of people who loved the product but have also been deeply upset by the roller coaster ride of your share prices. how has that been? >> it is definitely different. normally, you have control to be able to work through headwinds outside of the public eye. as the largest single shareholder of the company, i have the most to gain and the most to lose. and all of this, i am literally side-by-side as a shareholder.

i haven't sold share for years. my job is to make sure that we provide a good experience for the shareholder at the same time that we meet our mission of helping people achieve their goals to lead healthy fulfilling lives. that is the good news. right now, it is rocky for the entire fitness space. you mentioned peloton, we have heard of other companies and we saw what lululemon announced about their forecast for mirror. this is not the time that a lot of people start fitness program. we have been in this for 23 years. every first quarter, people get tired of feeling sick and tired and that's when they come back to find a solution. we believe we have a solution and that will ultimately be reflected in our results and the share price. caroline: great to have time with you again. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. tune in tomorrow and we will talk with mk and partners and plenty other money managers as well as some key expertise. this is bloomberg. ♪

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