>> from the heart of where innovation, money, and power combined in a silicon valley and beyond, this is "bloomberg technology" with emily chang. ♪ emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco, and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, robinhood says it will allow most employees to work from home permanently. we discussed the continuing

trend away from the office. plus, hbo max has its biggest digital premier ever with "euphoria." from netflix versus disney to apple and more, we have more on the streaming wars. and what employers and employees say are the best in tech and why. continuing a comeback with a big focus on inflation. ed ludlow is here with the latest. ed: we get the biggest inflation sprint in four decades. 24 hours prior speaking at a confirmation hearing on capitol hill, chair powell said the fed will act to stem inflation. you see a muted reaction. the nasdaq 100, a very tech-heavy index, up 1.4%. a rebound after pretty heavy

losses to start the year. in the crypto space, you also saw some buoyancy, particularly driven by bitcoin, which briefly lost $44,000 per token. you see the crypto index, which includes eithere -- ethereum and other lower cap stocks. let's take a look at the likes of tesla and alphabet, the parent company of google. tesla up 4%, despite news of a hack by in individual in europe who allegedly took remote control access from vehicles. also seeing strength, of course, in microsoft and apple shares. microsoft has hired one of apple's top semiconductor talents.

it has been volatile. we have been talking about what is bitcoin, but when we saw that inflation print, we did see bitcoin go above 40 4000 u.s. dollars per token and make some gains. the question remains, what is bitcoin? is it an inflation hedge or does it behave like a less risky asset like equities? emily: we shall see. i want to continue to be returned to the office or for some tech companies, the lack thereof. the company behind robinhood and saying there will be no requirement -- robinhood saying there will be no requirement for employees to return to the office. any moffett, who covers robinhood, and nico grant, who

covers alphabet, joining us. robinhood going remote work. certainly not the first company to do so, but why? annie: this is really driven by the ability to attract all kinds of talent all over the country, and they want to reach across the aisle to some of the people who have been hit hardest by the pandemic and want that shift to remote work to stay. they say it can help improve the diversity of their workforce. that was the main argument that they made in making this move. emily: talk to us about the exceptions. why would an employee you need to live close to the office? especially the regulatory concerns. annie: they can keep some employees in a zone where they would have to remain a distance to the office -- this would be

in limited cases, but any kinds of employees who have to be in the office at certain points for in-person work, but it would be in very limited cases the real move into remote. emily: will robinhood be getting rid of their office footprint or significantly scaling it down? annie: they did not say exactly, but they did say offices would be available for employees who did want to come to work on's office buildings. they did not say this would be about dramatically reducing their office footprint and that they have been able to adapt to the work from home environment, and employees will still be able to get into their offices and go into offices, but we have certainly seen some companies take advantage of the new work from home lifestyle to do things like offer salaries that are

different maybe for those people who work outside silicon valley or reduce office footprint, so that is something to watch. emily: thanks for that update. nico, talk to us about what google is supplying employees versus contractors. nico: if you are a google full-time employee right now in the u.s., they are not obligated in the majority of circumstances to report to any google office or campus, but you can choose to request a covid test. this is through the google portal, the same way they might request, say, an extra monitor, and this is a $900 system where it comes with a reader and 10 covid tests. they can get an additional 20 per month, and it gives you results in a number of minutes.

meanwhile, contractors, vendors, and temp workers who still have to go into google campuses, their data centers, and their offices are supplied with home tests that are pcr tests, so high-quality, but they then have to mail it in to a lab, and it could, of course, take days for that to happen, depending how long the lab takes to process and how long the mail system works. this is viewed as another example of how google treats its employees that are direct versus workers who number about the same amount as full-time employees or even more by some estimates that are treated differently. emily: google employees have maybe some of the best benefits in the world. also, no secret go employees are not shy about complaining.

what are they saying internally about this sort of discrepancy? nico: for google employees, this is a wonderful thing and everyone right now needs access to high-quality testing, but there has been a lot of criticism on social media and through the alphabet workers union, which represents more than 800 employees, basically saying this is another example of what they call a two-tier system at google and that the company is not actually putting everyone's health and safety first if full-time employees get preferential treatment, even though they get to work from home, so there is quite a bit of criticism, but for some people, it is just expected that they will say yes, they are contractors. of course they do not get the same benefit as employees. emily: what is google's reaction?

nico: google has major to emphasize that they really are reducing the burden on public testing systems by providing all employees with -- and workers with access to tests. if you report to an office, you can get in-person testing. the problem here is the home testing as well as having the option. the company says they are trying to keep a safe workplace for those coming in and trying to keep their entire workforce safe during these difficult times. they think they are ultimately doing their part for workers and also for the country. emily: thank you for your reporting on that. we will see how that plays out. a date has been set for the start of the criminal trial theranos president sonny belmonte -- sunny balwani.

he faces the same charges as founder elizabeth holmes. last week, she was found guilty of criminal fraud for her role in the blood testing start of that was once valued at $9 million. her sentencing is set for september 12. we continue our coverage of bloomberg's top 50 stocks to watch in 2022. what does roku have in store for viewers? that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: analysts at bloomberg

intelligence have identified the top 50 companies to watch in 2022. on the list, streaming services like roku and netflix, further proving the competition among streaming services will only continue. the reporter who covers streaming sector joins us now. what do you think? will they defy the odds for investors this year? >> if you think about what is happening to consumer behavior, we have really shifted over the last few years. the pandemic certainly was an accelerant, but we have shifted from linear tv to streaming tv, and there is no going back. when you think about the fall, we just finished up the fall and winter tv season, and there is nothing new on tv that everyone was talking about. everything that was being "discussed" was happening on

streaming. the biggest show of fall 2021 -- what was it? "squid game." nothing was even close. the numbers were just staggering. sports is still holding up. there's no doubt about it that sports is still holding up. nfl was up 10% year on year coming out of the pandemic, and that was great for the nfl, but from an entertainment content -- context, it really is completely a streaming game, and if you think about netflix, their contents late into the first half of 2022 is incredible, and i think, especially with disney+ sort of in a lull -- you know, they sort of ramp up toward the back half of the year -- netflix is positioned well for 2022. investors have been pulling back with low expectations, but i

think you will be surprised at the run-up they will have. emily: earnings come out next week. i'm curious what you expect. do they need to keep "squid games" content coming? richard: if you asked about the biggest titles for 2022, i'm sure the top 20 was not going to be "squid games." netflix takes far more shots than anyone else, you're going to have lots of misses and lots of hits -- and you are. no one was protecting "stranger things" when it happened. very often what has happened with netflix is the things that you did not expect other ones that really work. nobody thought a french tv show would captivate in the u.s..

-- in the u.s. nobody protected those would be the breakout shows. when you look at the titles that have been really successful, it is not so easy to predict, but the aggregate amount of content is why you keep turning on netflix time and time again, that there is just a lock to watch. there is always something to go back to, whereas most of the other services we could talk about are things you turn on every once in a while, like, hey, there's a new episode of "hawk i -- "hawkeye." a 40-minute episode airs once a week. most of these services do not have a reason to spend hours every single night, and that is their biggest problem right now relative to netflix. netflix is giving you a reason to never leave and giving everyone in your family a reason not to leave, and that is the

competitive advantage they have. emily collett hbo max had its biggest digital premiere ever with "euphoria." how confident are you that hbo can keep hits coming under new leadership since discovery's takeover of warner media? -- emily: hbo max. richard: hbo had a pretty good 2021. you think about domestic subscriber growth, i don't think anybody had more domestic subscriber growth than hbo did last year. the strategy of putting new release movies directly onto hbo max clearly worked, and i think the team at hbo max deserves a lot of credit for doing something that was not easy to do during the pandemic, but i think it worked out well. they don't get a lot of credit for it, but i think it did work out very well. if you are going back to movie theaters this year, i think it

will work out well for batman, which comes out in march. the movie theater remains challenged, and that will be a real issue. in terms of hbo content, i think all signs point to casey staying in the new warner burroughs -- warner bros management structure. got a bunch of really exciting content coming up later this year on hbo, so i would not be worried about hbo at all. emily: obviously, as you mentioned, everyone watching their own streaming network. some of those networks go live this year. cnn plus, paramount plus, apple tv plus. do you think this is the year we really see the true death of cable, the real nail in the coffin, or will this be a long and drawn out process where it is such a tv jumble out there and there's no such thing as a

"tv guide?" richard: i think last year was really that year. most of these services, if you think about it, the big shift was from 2020 into 2021. in 2021, everybody watched a streaming service. 2020, it was like the disney+ show joining netflix and amazon and hulu, but 20/20 one was one discovery plus launched an paramount launched -- 2021. apple tv was something people started paying attention to with "ted lasso." i think 2021 was that demarcation line when we fully entered streaming era. no one outside of sports is talking about traditional linear television anymore. i think 2022, you will see some incremental launches. you mentioned cnn plus, but there is not a lot left to launch, and i think that's one of the challenges roku has been talking about. last year had a tremendous

amount of new service lunches that do not repeat this year. it is definitely a headwind as you look into 2022 that they have actually been quite open about. emily: give us one or two that will not survive. which ones do not make it? richard: we have already been calling for consolidation. it is hard to imagine as you look out. discovery plus is going to get folded into hbo max. that is in our 2022 predictions. coming up, does peacock need to buy something, merge with something? paramount plus, we thought they could combine starz content. these companies do not have enough big, bold franchise content, and you are playing a game now where the amount of money being spent -- we are not just talking billions, we are talking tens of billions. this is a very serious financial game now, and it will require

massive scale. emily: always good to have you on the show. thanks for helping us kick off the year. coming, tesla sets its sights on the middle east as a location for a new factory. and we take a look at intel, shares of the chipmaker up so far this year. we may be only a few weeks into 2022, but investors seem to be reacting positively to ceo pat gelsinger's plans for the company this year. you can read about it in this week's "fully charged" newsletter on the bloomberg terminal or subscribe. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a teenage security researcher claims he hacked into more than 25 teslas in 13 countries. in a series of tweets, david

colombo says a flaw in a piece of third-party software allowed him to unlock doors and windows, start the car without keys, and disable their security system. tesla has not responded publicly to these claims, but like many tech companies, it does have a bug bounty program where people can report security flaws and received money. lucid's chairman spoke to bloomberg. >> they are working closely with the ministry of investment. they have obviously worked with ford motors and the industry has been cooperating with us. we announced our intent. we worked very hard on what percentage will be owned

directly by us, but 2025 is our timeframe. >> would you say it is gaining a bit more momentum? is that part of the reason you are here? >> i'm here for lots of reasons. we have boosted our ambitions here. we are three years in the making, and now that we are successfully producing and selling cars in the u.s., our attention is on the factory here. su: --yousef: lucid has set ambitious goals for deliveries. what do you see in terms of supply chain constraints that might walk back some of those goals? >> i will say to you that if you think about when we first said we would be producing this very moment, we had a startup production successful in october, and we have our

prototypes, and our cars are being delivered. it is in florida. it is a phenomenal car. i'm not saying that just as chairman. it is a phenomenal car. but, yes, we are experiencing supply chain issues. yousef: where does the european market sort of fit into the global pie? >> retail in europe, we eventually get to u.k., but certainly, continental europe is one of our key markets. our car is a luxury car. it is at the high-end, and it is a beautiful car. it is up against mercedes and bmw, and what we have going for us is our range, and that, frankly, beats everyone. our business in europe is very

strong as well in terms of retail. emily: that was lucid motors' chair. startups raising more vc funding than ever in 2021, but is the new money going to more diverse founders or more of the same? we talked to carla harris of morgan stanley next. ♪

emily: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. they say 2021 was a big year for startups and venture capital funds is an understatement. -- to say 2021 was a big year. ed: understatement is the word. what is interesting in the data is that the u.s. is pretty much the single biggest market and a lot of money went into early

stages. any guesses what was the biggest region? emily: gosh, can i say silicon valley? ed: pretty close to home. silicon valley is still top dog. in asia, china accounts for half. what is interesting is the size of these deals. a massive jump in the deals or rounds greater than 100 million dollars. what is also interesting is where the money is going. one in every five dollars went to a fintech start up, which is fascinating. we always like to know what the big names, the big players are in our industry. any guesses who came out on top in 2021? emily: that i don't know. it feels like every new fund is bigger than the last. ed: tiger global did the most deals in 2021. they actually ended the year down 7% in terms of annual returns, so you see some really

big names there. again, the u.s. dominates. another name we know really well, sequoia capital, it was actually it's china business that did really well -- its china business. really fascinating to see this massive jump in capital employment. emily: massive indeed. 2022 could be even bigger. this week kicks off morgan stanley's innovation lab showcase where 11 entrepreneurs with underrepresented backgrounds will strut their stuff in front of investors. these range from fintech, health and wellness, content, media, and more. joining us to bring us the bigger picture, carla harris, morgan stanley's senior advisor. great to have you back on the show. bring us inside the room. great to have you.

carla: i tell you, it was another exciting day. this was probably our biggest demo day heretofore. we had over 500 people register. we had easily 300 discrete kind of investors, and what was great was we had the breadth of investor types. regular way vc's, corporate vc's, strategic buyers, high wealth individuals. this was probably the largest audience of different types of investors that any of these companies have ever had an opportunity to present in front of, so it was just tremendous. emily: would you say this momentum shift his day real and lasting change? carla: you and i talked about this in the summer of 2020, and i told you i thought it was definitely a movement and not a moment. the number of entrepreneurs of

color and women are steadily going up, and interestingly enough, as you just saw or foreshadowed in the report you all just talked about, the valuations are going up, which tells you there's a lot of demand for these types of properties, which is part of what is driving the valuation up . emily: i believe the last time we talked, we also talked about your love of singing, and i'm curious if you can tell us what caught your eye. i know there's one startup focused on playlist cure ration and artist discovery. carla: absolutely. that is called playlister, and the founder is danny garcia. this is a company designed to get music content creators in front of those who want to listen to the music and by the music. as you probably know, the way most people consume use it today is through a playlist, so

playlisters come to playlister.com to find new artists. i had a new album that came out late last year, and it was a holiday album, and there was one single that i wanted to see if it would in fact be listened to, and sure enough, within a few days, it was trending, so playlister.com is the real deal. emily: congrats. i want to talk about the massive of money going into startups and venture capital right now. startups raising 621 billion dollars last year. funds like entries and harlots -- andreessen horowitz raising $9 billion. where is this money going? is it really going to more diverse founders or the usual suspects? carla: i will tell you there's no question there's more money going to diverse founders now, and as you know, the numbers are being compiled as we speak.

when i think about someone like entries and, for example, who has a dedicated fund, 10 years ago, that in itself did not exist, and they have made a number of investments, and there are a few others that have announced -- and you know the names very well -- that have been putting money into founders of color as well as female founders. -- when i think about someone like andries and. no question there is an increased amount of money, but i would still argue not enough. emily: president obama appointed you back in 2013 to the national women's business council. we also got new data showing that women founders raised just 2% of venture capital funding last year. i believe it is the lowest since 2015. the numbers go up if they are partnered with a male founder. why are we not making more progress?

carla: again, i think we need to dig into the numbers because the denominator has gotten bigger. we should be talking about the absolute amount. it has been 22% and 3% the last few years, no doubt about it -- between 2% and 3%. but the absolute amount of money is going up. with respect to the female and male combination, we obviously know the historic reason around that, but i'm hearing more and more women focused funds that have been founded by women that are focused just on women or you have corporate with an in-house accelerator focusing just on women. these are the kind of improvements and advances that i think we ought to amplify because as people hear more about those successes, success will beget success in this space. emily: you have always been a glass half full kind of person,

and i appreciate that, so thank you for this silver lining. i want to talk about valuations. they seem to be through the roof . do you think companies are getting too expensive? are we heading into a bubble or are we already there? carla: i would not necessarily say we are heading into a bubble, but you have a lot of people working for deals and companies that have been founded by multicultural founders and women, and i think the fact that now we have the visibility that has been created successfully over the last couple of years and you have more success stories that are out there and you have larger funds, there's a lot of money chasing deals out there, and that is part of what is driving up the evaluation. simple economics 101, supply and demand. i think that is what we are seeing. i'm hard-pressed to say at this point that it is a bubble. emily: carla harris always giving it to us straight. thank you.

morgan stanley senior client advisor. good luck. an online word game that caught the attention of "tonight show" host jimmy fallon and many others is causing confusion in the app store. a website only wordplay game is available to play once a day, but there is no app for it just yet. the reason for the confusion is other similarly named games. downloads of a similarly named game rose 850% from the week before. apple removed several other similar games due to the confusion. again, the wordle loved by fal lon et al can only be played online. coming up, finding the next big

thing in energy and mobility. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: jack dorsey has revealed that a bitcoin legal defense fund has been set up to protect from litigation. dorsey writes, "the bitcoin

community is currently the subject of multi-front litigation." he goes on to explain that the nonprofit entity aims to minimize legal headaches that discourage developers from actively developing bitcoin and related projects. the fund weekly became a topic -- a trending topic on twitter with many developers voicing their support for the initiative. well, more money for mobility. the wesley group, an early investor in tesla, has raised $300 million for a new fund and at finding the next big thing in mobility and energy, maybe even the next tesla. where could the next tesla be? steve: there's a revolution going on in sustainability, driven by the fact that [indiscernible]

we are seeing every automaker in the world with huge opportunities. there's big opportunities in nexgen batteries. by the way, it is not just battery chemistry but the software that comes with it. infrastructure in cybersecurity is a huge thing. every energy company is under attack by foreign actors. then there is a big issue with green supply chains. every company says "we are green," but are they really? we did a global search for the next generation of companies that provides sustainable supply chain traceability. a lot of interest goes far beyond solar wind. you will see more teslas in the sector. emily: where do you think the

most disruption needs to come from to usher in better, long-lasting sustainability? steve: it is an interesting question. i have been doing this for a while. in the beginning, what they called cleantech 1.0 did not work out well. what we have moved towards is this new future, and it is really a convergence of software, iot, and big data. the digitization of energy is leading us toward this new revolution. we are looking with companies -- looking for companies with rapid growth, with real gross margins, and you can see a trajectory. as much as we love this sustainability space, there is a lot of hype. our job is to separate fact from fiction and help make sure we invest in winners in each sector. emily: i have to ask about tesla because it has changed so much since the time you invested and were on the board.

what do you make of the tesla today and elon musk, leadership controversies and all? steve: elon musk may be the most controversial coo of our time, but he is also the thomas edison or steve jobs of our time. i served on the board of tesla, and i can tell you elon is not easy to deal with, but he is the great coo of our generation. i love lucent. they have a cool car, but the two of them together have not sold to thousand units yet. -- i love lucy -- i love lucid. last year, they did $52 billion in revenue. this is an enormous company growing 50% a year. no one else is doing this.

whatever you think about him personally, he is one heck of a ceo. we are proud to have been an early investor. emily: world-changing companies come only once or twice, maybe three times in a generation. you mentioned three times in apple. how confident are we that there is a next tesla and when will we see that company? steve: i left a great job teaching at stanford's school of business. everybody thought i was crazy. when we decided to invest in tesla, $300 valuation, i told my wife we were investing in electric cars, she said, "go get

your money back." one thing i would point out is, again, everybody realizes we've got to get to carbon neutral. solar vehicles -- solar, wind, electric vehicles are an important part of that. you are going to see a revolution in what is called sustainable supply chain traceability. we did a global search. five years from now, every fund you know of, you are going to know if they are green or not because of this new deal. stay tuned. there are fascinating new things all the time. just for member, you are looking for that world of the convergence -- software, iot, big data. emily: steve westly, thanks for

that trip down memory lane. absolutely fascinating to think about the time when you invested, and look at tesla today. coming up, an annual report card on the best companies to work for. a tech company taking the top spot, but find out which chipmaker it is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: sony has a plan to tackle the supply disruption that is causing the company to limit production of its playstation 5 console. they will produce more ps4 consuls. -- consoles. the older generation console used less advanced chips and is

cheaper to make. employees are still in the driver seat as we roll into the third year of the pandemic. glassdoor's senior economist joins us to discuss the best places to work. >> nvidia, which has been a high-ranking company in the past, reaching number one this year is particularly interesting because there is a global chip shortage going on, and i think it really speaks to the fact that their readership has been very effective, and that is something we hear from employees. they have transparent and compassionate leadership on top of the ability to work on these high-tech products and, of course, competitive compensation and benefits. emily: walk us through the surprising additions to the list

this year, especially in tech. daniel: i think the interesting thing we are seeing is that tech has actually grown as a share of the list. last year, it was only 28%. this year, it is 40%. we are seeing not just big tech companies on the list but more medium-sized companies going onto the list, and this is a reflection of the fact that tech is often more flexible. with a pandemic, it has been more important than ever for companies to be flexible in the face of crisis, and on top of that, tech has traditionally been a leader on the employee experience. thinking back to 2019 or even earlier, there were tech companies investing in all these office perks. that is not the environment we are in today, but i think that culture of caring about culture has persisted and helped the tech industry. emily: "the culture of caring

about culture" -- i'm going to take that one. meta, the parent company of facebook, continues to fall. what do you make of that? daniel: we do see that it is best -- a best place to work, number 40 on the list. what we see here is even though employees appreciate the career opportunities, the ability to work on a product that is actually impacting consumers, we hear that the increased public scrutiny and increased public criticism has started to leak into employee morale, and that is taking a hit as a result. emily: going into year three of the pandemic, what do you think will define the "best places to work" this year ahead? daniel: i think it is interesting because our research has shown that the most important factors determining employee satisfaction have not changed very much, even during the pandemic.

the most important factors we found are culture and values, senior leadership, and career opportunities, and those have been the most important factors, even before the pandemic began. one thing we do see that has become increasingly important during the pandemic is flexibility. this is something employees value because they know there is a lot of uncertainty going on right now. that type of flex ability, if it means the ability to work from home or something else, that is something employees really value right now. emily: glassdoor senior economist daniel zhao, appreciate your time. we will see how the list shapes up next year. that does it for "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

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haidi: very good morning. i'm haidi stroud-watts in sydney. yvonne: i'm shery ahn -- shery: i'm shery ahn in new york. hot u.s. inflation further bakes in market expectations for a march rate hike. china's political meetings as the virus flareup