>> from the heart of where innovation, money and power collide, in silicon valley and beyond, this is "bloomberg technology" with emily chang.

emily: i'm emily chang and this is "bloomberg technology." build your own bikes. peloton looks to cut costs and are planning a redesign so customers can assemble their own bikes at home. will customers spin for it? activist investor dan logue is calling for changes at disney. details on his new stake and why he is urging a spinoff of espn. how google maps misleads people searching for abortion clinics. why and why it is more critical. more on our bloomberg analysis later this hour. we will get to that in a moment. first, stocks rising for a second trading day. nasdaq outperforming with tesla,

apple, microsoft and nvidia leading the game. welcome. >> we started the week with bad news out of china, coming in the form of a surprise rate cut. after some big misses in july, you wouldn't know that looking at the price action in the u.s. equity market. green across the board with the s&p 500 closing 0.4% higher on the day and that comes off a string of four weeks of gains already propelling the index up 18% from year to date lows we saw in june. nasdaq 100 also following in the s&p 500 footsteps, up 0.7% on the day. one of the big stories is disney . you will be digging into that later but it is making headlines because of dan loeb and his company taking a stake in the

company. he was not shy suggesting changes he would like to see two disney's ceo and some include potential spinoffs of espn. i know you will dig into that later. the semiconductor index, rebounding towards the end of the day. that was down earlier but finishing the day zero point 3% higher. as we take a look, you would be hard-pressed to see the impact of the china news. alibaba, a key gauge of consumer sentiment, perhaps bearing the brunt, trading lower by six -- 0.6%. some competitors trading higher on the day. pinto -- pinduodo

outperforming. you can really see the diversions is clear. we see the china index really still extending gains. it is 30% over the past year. the nasdaq 100 is still down on a one-year timeframe but it has staged a recovery since june and pared down the declines by 10%. we will dig into those stories. there is a feeling of summer markets but still lots to talk about. emily: thank you very much. activist investor dan loeb, urging disney to make sweeping changes to boost shareholder value including new board members and spinning off espn. he suggests -- his company is taking a significant stake in

disney. some of the changes, not new ideas. we have heard talk about spinning off espn for years. what is dan loeb suggesting and why? >> that's right, in the letter, he says disney might be working on these things already although sources at disney say there aren't -- there isn't going to be an espn spinoff anytime soon. some other things loeb is calling for like cost cuts and buying a stake in hulu, these are things investors have been expecting for years. this is loeb's second bite of the apple at disney. in 2020 he took a stake, disney scrapping debit dens -- dividends. those are things disney never did so we will see if he has a better shot. loeb is a big name and activist investing, shaking up yahoo! and

sony, but he has a mixed record as to seeing changes he is asking for. emily: the letter to disney starts off fairly flattering to ceo bob j peck, then he digs in. espn currently generates significant cash flow but we believe a strong case could be made that espn should be spun off to shareholders with an appropriate debt load that will alleviate leverage to the parent company. disney saying not quite no thanks, saying we welcome the views of all our investors. while disney company continues to deliver strong results powered by world-class storytelling and valuable content and distribution. what do you make of this? >> it is good to stir the pot. dialogue is helpful and it is

interesting to put out these ideas. if i were bob to affect -- if i were the ceo of disney, espn does a lot of things for disney. sports for one. it does a couple things, one is you have loyalty. someone is more likely to tune out the next season of the manda lori and if they don't like it -- the mandalorian if they don't like it, but they aren't likely to tune out baseball or whatever they want. there is appointment viewing, which still exists in sports because i game is taking place when it takes place and people want to watch. there is a lot of benefit to having espn as part of the portfolio. it is not an accident that every other media company disney competes with has a major sports entity as part of their mix.

emily: what do we know about loeb's track record and how likely it is that he will be successful, especially with a company like disney? >> it is hard to say. there was a vaguely threatening line in the letter where he said there is a talent gap on disney's board and he has good connections and can make some introductions to disney. i don't know who disney needs to meet that they don't know already but the idea is he is floating with investors to see if they will support him in a board fight. disney, the window for directors would open for later -- later this fall. loeb has a mixed track record taking over boards. at yahoo! in 2012 he had success, but history will tell whether marissa mayer was the right move. at sotheby's they went private but it took several years.

sony hasn't made a lot of changes he wanted so while he is a big name, it is not clear that even though he is going after a blue-chip company that is a slamdunk, that all of this will come true. emily: i remember covering the yahoo! marissa mayer story every day. what do you make of the other changes, new board members, ownership of hulu? not new ideas but something several investors have called for for a while, but hasn't happened. >> i think disney buying the share it doesn't own in hulu from comcast is a good idea. i agree with dan loeb on that. there is a lot of tension within disney because on the one hand, there is a deadline to execute this deal by 2024. obviously, it is in disney's best interest for the price of that chunk to be as low as possible. it is like a weird motivation to

drive down the value of hulu and that is a very tense situation that will unfold for the next couple years. disney has a controlling interest in hulu and in my view they are doing a great job. i don't see they should fold it into disney plus necessarily. i think it is a strong brand on its own so i see a lot of value in disney executing on this earlier, even if as dan loeb says, they have to pay a premium. emily: we will continue to follow this evolving story. we will see how long it lasts. thank you both. more changes for palatine after last week's layoffs and price hikes. they are retooling bikes for self-assembly. that means customers will be able to put them together themselves. it is part of a turnaround by the new ceo who is planning to launch a rowing machine.

mark covers peloton for us. peloton raise prices and no it wants customers to put the bikes together themselves? >> i wonder if dan loeb will try to get his hands on peloton. they have a lot of changes in the works. one initiative last week as part of layoffs was taking costs and dropping them significantly when it comes to distribution and warehouses. they are landing off over 500 people that work in distribution. if you have ever bought a peloton, you know this. you order online and they show up to your house, white glove service. they unboxed it and set it up. that is a $400 fee to consumers and that is expensive for the company to make happen. they will start moving to third-party companies to do that white glove service. the next step is having consumers set the devices up themselves.

the ceo said last week they are redesigning equipment so they can ship via ups or fedex. you take it home, it arrives at your door, you open the box and put it together yourself. that is not a great customer experience compared to white glove service but it would be cheaper for the customer, cheaper for peloton, and if they redesigned it in a way where it is a 15 minute process with a few parts, it is pretty convenient rather than having people come into your house. emily: we have covered safety issues with peloton. are there safety issues with this? >> i have to tell you, if you have set up a bike incorrectly or the treadmill incorrectly, and it falls apart because you didn't do a good job setting up the device, that is a clear liability issue. that comes down to engineering, supply chain, operations. the figure out a way to make the devices work reliably and set up

reliably. if you have to have the equipment to do it, the right screwdriver, that could be complicated. that is a consideration. we have to hope peloton engineered these things so they can be set up quickly and safely. emily: you reported on a rowing machine. what else can we expect the echo >> the rowing machine is then next major product from peloton other than the redesign of the bikes. the rowing machine has been in the works for several years. mccarthy says they will probably launch during the holiday season. there were supply chain issues, so let's see if they get that launched. they launched a tv device that allows they camera to follow along and analyze your work out and tell you how you are doing. after that, they have been working on a machine similar to a tonal and a strength training machine. there are wearables in the works, they have a heart rate monitor.

what i really think is, they need to really probably make a cheaper bike. the cheapest bike is around $1500. the sweet spot for something like this is probably south of $1000. they have been pushing the refurbished models. maybe they can make a low and self assembled bike with a smaller display, that could compete with bikes from other companies that are not charging as much as peloton. emily: we will continue to follow your reporting on peloton . mark, appreciate it. monday is the deadline for hedge funds to disclose their u.s. equity investments for the second order. this is one way we get insight into how hedge funds and large family offices actually invest. this hedge fund bought moderna and eli lilly. tyco -- tiger global took new positions in zillow.

they exited positions in doc you sign, zoom and salesforce, reducing sales in snowflake and microsoft. coming up, dozens of facts have fallen through. we will tell you why, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the stock world continues to unravel. at least four planned mergers to go public have been canceled since the market closed last friday, earning the tally to 42. concerns have pushed 89 backers to withdraw plans to refresh capital for blank checks.

here to explain is bailey. how many of these are we talking? why are we seeing so many? >> as you saw in the chart, there is a growing number that have only had -- that has only shot up. 600 blank check companies on the hunt for deals are bracing against deadlines that are built up at the end of the first quarter of next year, summit -- some going into the second quarter of next year. 700 spacs chasing new target companies. things like electronic vehicles, cryptocurrencies, a lot of high-growth technology companies are ways away from generating any kind. that is something we have seen fallout across public markets so that is part of the reason the plug has been pulled on some of these deals. emily: talk about the broader market for spacs and what this

bodes for the rest of the year. >> we have seen more than 60 close their deals this year. another 100 are livedeal's so there is a partnership between the sponsorship team and the target company. you can expect to continue to see these getting across the finish line but the way these spacs are trading, 22 honey to class is down median 48%. markedly underperforming those who went public through ipo's. you can expect to see some deals getting across the finish line but there are expectations for liquidations like we saw with some spacs, in addition to expectations that we will see deals broken because these terms were agreed to back in december, even through april when the market was indifferent shape compared to right now where there are concerns about a potential recession and what lies ahead with expectations for the fed to continue to hike interest rates.

emily: does the trend pickup when or if the markets get better? or longer-term, are investors souring on this as a means to do business? >> they are optimistic they can get deals done. that is why one company announced they plan to push back two deadlines to sometime next year, kind of reading the room from talking to investors, the idea that as the market rebounds there will be demand for some of these deals to get across the finish line. for experienced sponsors to find and bring private targets public. the expectation from people is that the future iteration of spacs in 2023 and 2024 will look like what it did in 2019 where you have 50-60 spacs filing to go public, taking smaller companies public that can't find

a larger bank to underwrite the ipo. the expectation is that the go-go days we saw in 2020 and 2021 is very much a thing of the past and more of an anomaly. emily: interesting. bailey, thank you for covering that story for us. coming up, how alex jones made even more money after being taken down from major social media platforms. we will have more on that next. ♪ this is bloomberg.

emily: in the summer of 2018, apple, facebook, spotify, twitter and youtube banned the media companies of conspiracy theorist alex jones, which meant

taking downs his broadcast after jones spent -- threatened robert muller. they cited content policy violations to deplatform the controversial host, which was supposed to relegate jones took in -- to obscurity. but his business became more lucrative than ever. max took a deep dive at this. how is this possible? >> two things are going on. although the big tech companies band info wars and banned alex jones, they didn't stop the circulation of the sandy hook conspiracy theories or other people from posting jones' videos either in support or criticism. as a result, even though he was banned, you are seeing a lot of

alex jones on social media in the form of him on podcasts, these contrarian, edgy sites like joe rogan having alex jones on the show, and people criticizing him. the other thing that happened is alex jones turned this into a storyline where he became this martyr. he doesn't make money through a traditional media company. he makes money selling products. there may be a situation where although his audience, he is not getting huge numbers but he is making more money off the audience he does have because he has been able to activate them by spinning this narrative of martyrdom. as we learned, this isn't true. he is doing really well financially. emily: you mentioned the trial, the judge awarding the parents of one of the sandy hook victims tens of millions of dollars. there is a texas verdict, another one coming up.

are these verdicts, these penalties actually changing the narrative around him or are they making him potentially more powerful? >> it is hard to know. you have a jury award in texas, $50 million. you have the case in connecticut. in these cases, jones has been found to have defamed the families and you have trials on the damages. it is tempting now to say this is probably the end of alex jones and his career. he has gone too far. but people have been saying this for a long time and you still have lots of people, lots of companies basically enabling and making money off this stuff. alex jones has a book coming out . it is near the top of the amazon bestseller list. there is a documentary, a sympathetic documentary that has come out. you have lots of media types

still eating off the conspiracy theories. it is depressing, because the cruelty, as we saw during the trial, of these conspiracy theories towards the parents was disturbing. emily: yes. you can read more about it in max's story. thanks for bringing that issue to light. we will follow the verdict from the upcoming trial. new analysis from bloomberg finds google maps repeatedly misleads people looking for abortion clinics. we will have more on that later in the show. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> we have been covering the changing pivotal -- digital

privacy escape. and the power that tech companies have to safeguard that information. even google maps regularly misleads people searching for abortion clinics. this according to new analysis by bloomberg news. jack went through all the data for us. tell us what you found. because we wanted to start off just as if somebody wanted to find an abortion clinic. the results were pretty surprising. these bases encourage women to not get an abortion when they come in even though they will masquerade themselves as a bona fide abortion clinic or doctor's office. this is very different than if

you type in certain fast food chains. this has led to some confusion about google. >> what does this practically mean for those seeking an abortion? >> it means that if somebody is in need of this procedure and they go to one of these places, they can be drawn into this process and told sometimes with very erroneous medical information that they don't need one. we spoke with one woman who googled an abortion clinic, went to a crisis pregnancy center and quickly realized it was not an abortion clinic. confided in them that she was in an abusive relationship and they try to convince her that if you

stay in his relationship with the baby, things will get better. it is unclear what sort of emotional damage that did to that woman or other people seeking an abortion. there might not be people up to date on this post roe v. wade world. >> what is google doing about this? >> they say they have policies that can prevent this. the critics we have spoken to ask if google is doing enough. some of these websites are pretty clear. thank you for bringing that story to life. for more on the implications of

the power of tech in a post roe v. wade world and the impact on tech investing at large, i want to bring in the managing partner and former executive of aol. susan, as we were talking about, tech platforms have incredible power in a post roe v. wade world. they have some decisions to make about how they use that power. what are you most concerned about from the perspective of an investor? as we see these issues play out, -- play out? >> i think about it more as an opportunity that exists. it is really clear that women are not being served. certainly in the 20 states that have banned abortion.

i think there will be a huge impact on business overall and that always creates opportunity. they will be founders out there who are looking for solutions that enable companies to really address the retention issues, the recruitment issues and challenges of a post roe v. wade era. a lot of women left for multiple reasons. just the overall caregiver issues that fall to women. this new ruling is just going to exacerbate tha workforce, fewer women advancing at companies, we all know that gender diverse

teams divert better -- perform better. unless companies find a way to begin to mitigate this, i think we will have big challenges. >> how is this impacting your own investment thesis? >> we back female and diverse founders who bring new thinking to sectors where a lot of changes -- change is overdue. finance, education, climate and they are all areas where diverse founders have been traditionally overlooked. one of the things we learned during the eight or nine years we have been doing this is that people with lived experience as well as learned experience, people who really understand the users of a tech platform, the

people whose lives will be better for it are generally the people who will come up with better solutions. it is really for us. it is looking a little bit ahead of where things are right now to identify where the opportunities exist and i think we are seeing them in multiple areas. certainly telehealth. that is a really i arena right now. in 2020, the restrictions on medication and abortion which used to demand that you go to a hospital or health care provider in order to get prescriptions, that was listed because of covid and those restrictions are still gone. that opens the way for a whole new stream of telehealth solutions.

companies that are serving women in their own faith but also internationally. >> you mentioned women we lost in the workforce post-pandemic and there has been a bit concern about female entrepreneurs and backsliding in the pandemic. are you seeing evidence that female offenders and entrepreneurs are at more of a disadvantage than they were at the start of 2020? >> i would say no. we have seen more female founders pitching this year than we did last year. more last year than we did dear before. i think part of the reason is we

invest early. we invest in seed states. sometimes precedes. -- -- sometimes pre-seeds. women have not been doing this long enough to have seen hundreds and hundreds of ipos at this point. for the time being, i think women are slightly advantaged by what has been happening nationally. the early part of 2022 saw an increase in the percent of rounds that were led by women. >> what is your broader thesis about the market environment? we know we are seeing lots of volatility in the public market.

we know it impacted the private market, the valuations are coming down. what are you seeing and how concerned are you about the macro environment? >> i think that early on, we told our founders to really think hard about how they were spending capital this year. not a lot of -- in order to grow sufficiently to do a giant mount next year. that is great. we are all for that. there will be a number of companies that just run out of cash this year. venture capital is investing far more slowly.

that is rough on founders, that is rough on companies. there will be companies that unfairly go under. >> lost to continue to watch. -- there is a lot to continue to watch, thank you. coming up, galaxy digital wants to end its acquisition of the cope but picoult is fighting back. we will tell you how. this is bloomberg.

>> elon musk isn't the only one walking away from deals in the crypto world. galaxy digital is terminating its acquisition of bits go -- b -- of bitco. we will get into this with ever crypto contributor. bitcoin is fighting back. request galaxy digital, the $1.2 billion agreement. investors have been waiting a long time for this deal to close. now we know that galaxy is looking to terminate this deal and bitco wants them to pay the termination fee. if you look at the statement by their lawyers, it says it is pretty audacious that there was no blaming them on this merger.

they call it absurd. both galaxy and mr. no regrets have been distracted. or it has been acting in bad faith and faces damages of that much or more. again, kind of like twitter here. it is not easy to terminate a deal. galaxy shares are up on the day. you see investors applauding the decision to let go of what would have been more expensive last year than this year. >> what do you make of this latest development within try to get out of this deal? >> if anyone in the vc space will look at the deal and say the valuations are different

from the time the conversation started, do we really have cash on the balance sheet to do it? this is very easily provable by the exchange of emails that could have never been reached here. if there was ever an intention of actually doing the deal. whether galaxy can afford it or if it even makes sense that the business is going forward with it. >> i am so curious what this means for dealmaking going forward. a lot has to be said about confidence with a deal getting broken up but you look at the investment banks including galaxy and a seem to be busy. are these deals born out of a market that is trying to restructure or are deals born out of a chance to build a stronger market at the end? >> i think it is everywhere.

you have institutional accounts to help them with crypto ownership. if the valuation is still the old valuation, people are backing out. we have seen that even at this smallest level. so many have committed the money into early-stage investment. we have been seeing it for the last couple of months. we have seen the shift in the valuations in a massive way but i think this is one of the cases where the valuations are old and the deal has to be done in the market where you can get a better deal. >> another deal in the market is this idea you can be paid through reddit for a way to purchase ethereum through an integration with ftx.

ftx is the new crypto but what does something like gratitude for them? do we think more social media platforms will partner with them to get the job done? >> they just did with bitcoin. i think you will see more and more bitcoin adoption. there will be an extra layer of payment and blockchain if you want to go there. you can see his change is coming and getting new customers. i think it is a very smart way ftx is coming. any place where you have an e-commerce option to be done, just add another crypto payment system out there. >> thank you for joining us. always great to have your take on the latest dramatic twists in the crypto business. coming up, snapchat's one

million paid subscribers. what that means for the efforts to move away from advertising. we will discuss that next, this is bloomberg. ♪

>> snap said it's paid subscription plan is a hit. the company launched snapchat plus back in june. a plan that gives you early and exclusive access to this for 3.99 per month. including changing the app icon. let's bring in alex for more on this. kind of surprising that snap was able to rack up as many paid subscribers. one of the so excited about?

-- what are they so excited about? >> these subscribers are the younger users that snap has brought onto the platform and tried to give them interesting and exclusive new ways to monetize. one million is a number that surprised me but it will also probably be an important number for snap if they move forward and look for revenue streams outside of their beleaguered ad system. >> how quickly and how much do you think snap can expand this? >> i can tell you this is what they are focused on right now. if you remember their last earnings report, they got hammered in the market. they basically came out and said our advertisers are not spending money on the platform. we are seeing a lot of softness on that side of the business. when you think about snap, there is to places they can make money. it is the advertisers and then there are users. in the social media industry, we know it has been pretty tough to

get users to pay out. this seems to be an early win for snap. this is a company that has been really good at rolling out products. they are finding a winning ticket here. advertisers seem to be a bit pocketbook side right now. >> all right. our other social media companies going to do this? roger mcnamee has been pushing for a subscription model of facebook for years. could instagram do this? could tiktok? chrysler question will be what value could it provide? snap is given -- giving people tickets to the front of the lines. the front of celebrity dm's when you message them. it seems like they are rolling out some other user focused things that are not monetize belike algorithmically driven

seeds or focusing on different types of content. i think this is a place where snap is unique. it is smaller, a bit of a different platform than those things mentioned. they have been laser focused on zigging and zagging. probably a unique case here. we saw twitter flare with this a little bit but we have not seen any moves of somebody get to a million users, paying for something within a social media platforms. >> this is my next question. what will continue to differentiate snapchat in a sea of other options? >> snap has been focused around this idea of a camera company and that seems to be where they are fitting. ways to create content. their filters and lenses continue to be differentiated

even though you see tiktok creeping up on them. they spend a lot of time on person-to-person communication. that is not necessarily the main or the home feed on a lot of other apps. snap is kind of winning over this younger market. let's remind people that snap is a much smaller user base than what we see out there. there revenue is a lot smaller than giants like meta and facebook and instagram. that being said, it does seem like they are zeroing in on what that younger 18 to 24-year-old demographic wants. and catering how they want to talk and spend time with their friends one on one instead of just broadcasting content of the world. >> one million into most. does that mean 12 million in a year? -- one million in two months, does that mean 12 million in a year? >> we will see if those people stick around paying four dollars a month for these features.

>> that doesn't for this edition of bloomberg technology. tuesday, we will talk about investing in clean energy with jason kelly as president biden signs the inflation reduction act. and don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. i am emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

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