announcer: 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 in san francisco, and this is "bloomberg technology." ♪

coming up, ryan cohen sells out. shares of bed, bath & beyond are plunging after the meme stock idol sold his stake. we will explain why he did it. some of silicon valley's richest executives and investors are campaigning against multifamily housing coming to their neighborhood marc andreessen, , including the investor who just gave controversial wework founder adam neumann a huge check to re-envision rental housing. and last year was the most lavish on record for executive paychecks by almost any measure. more than 30 public company executives were paid $100 million in 2021 according to the bloomberg heat index. we will dig in. all of that in an moment, but first we want to get a look at the market. stocks ending in the green after

swinging between gains and losses. cisco rising after a an upbeat forecast and bed, bath & beyond sinking on the back of a filing by gamestop chair ryan cohen's firm. bloomberg's kristine aquino is here to tell us all about the day. kristine: emily, it really is all about the dip buyers today. in the absence of volume, the path of resistance for stocks is higher. green across the board in the text complex. the nasdaq finally delivering a gain, the first in three days. even semiconductors, they have been battered for the last two days but they are finally ending the day higher by 2.2%. as you mentioned, bed, bath & beyond definitely missing out on this rally, after the news about ryan cohen wanting out of his stake of the company. that has made for a plunge of nearly 20% on the day. but the good news is that it is

not nearly enough to undo the 400% rally that we have seen since july. that is going to hurt, though, for retail traders who have plunged into the stock here. one thing to keep an eye on in the text complex, evaluations. keep an eye on those. the nasdaq is currently trading at a price multiple of 24. that is well above what we are seeing for the s&p 500, at around 18 here. we have talked about investors thinking about the asset rotation and loading up on treasuries because those have reached cheaper levels earlier this week. if we see that tech valuation creeping higher from here, that could be what finally tips the scale back into treasuries and out of these more expensive tech stocks, emily. emily: kristine aquino, thank you. let's get back to the bed, bath

& beyond stock. the latest meme stock target sliding. ryan: called for a sale of the company. shares have plunged now that he has officially taken his stake to zero. i want to bring in bloomberg's john edwards for more. what sort of intel do we have on why ryan cohen sold out? john: we haven't heard directly from him yet, but it looks like he just lost patience with this struggling retailer. he came in back in the spring and march, thinking that he could really effect a turnaround here, and it looks like he has lost patience with that and bailed out. he had made a lot of changes. he had brought in three independent directors in june. then as patients started wearing thing, he backed the ouster of the ceo, mark turton.

the thought then was that cohen thought bed, bath & beyond should sell entirely or sell its baby unit, which is doing better than the rest of the chain. but it looks like he had just run out of patience, and bed, bath & beyond has run out of time with him, at least. emily: let's look at the time line. earlier in the day there was a filing from rc ventures. they might sell. then we heard they have officially sold out. is there any potential for regulatory scrutiny here? john: some shareholders have made some noise about filing complaints about the way that cohen handled this. he, again, came into the stock with a lot of fanfare. and then there was that filing made officially on tuesday but disclosed yesterday, that they

were thinking about getting out of their entire stake, and then of course the new filing that they have indeed taken their stake down to zero. a lot of the retail investors who piled into the stock are certainly upset with cohen at this point, and some might be looking to take action. it is unclear if he has actually done anything wrong per se. emily: we will keep following that. bloomberg john edwards, thank you for that update. meantime, billionaires living in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the world are pushing back on plans for more housing. top investors and executives from apple, facebook, and more want to stop california from allowing businesses and multi family housing in atherton. one of the most vocal is none other than mark and reason. bloomberg learned of the push back and in bloomberg

businessweek. talk to us about what is going on here. >> so there is this interesting moment where the comment in the town was put online and people discover that even though mark and reason has been very vocal publicly about the need for states like california to build more in order to fix its housing shortage, it turns out that when people proposed changes in the town of atherton that would allow for the family housing, the neighbors get very upset, and atherton is the richest place in america. that is why the people who are upset tend to be the biggest names in tech, executives and others. emily: we actually have a letter from mark andreessen, he says he is writing to communicate his immense objection to multifamily housing in atherton. "please immediately remove all multifamily housing" -- in all caps. "overlay housing projects will

increase noise pollution and traffic." you've referenced a blog post a couple of years ago he wrote that it is time to build, indicating -- it was a pretty big picture, not a lot of details about what he was saying that it was time to build and how, but this is, of course, on the back of a very big check that he. new line to the controversial founder of wework, adam neumann, to re-envision housing. there is some irony? ellen: it is the classic nimby mentality, not in my back yard. atherton is a strange town, extremely wealthy. all big names lived there. they like it because it is private and really not d ense, and they are surrounded by other rich neighbors. of course, we like housing, but not where i live. i think that is just a very common attitude, and it is funny

to see it show up here. emily: and it is not just mark and reason. you singled out a quote from the ceo of sofi, talking about how his family has had to get private security because crime is on the rise. can we substantiate that? ellen: it is bringing up all these fears about public housing. it tends to be fear about change. they like the tone the way it is. one of the quotes in the story is "atherton as we know it will come to an end, and only you can speak to that." emily: given that you have reported so much on wework and adam neumann, what is your take? ellen: i think they want to send a strong, a little troll-ish signaled that hey, we are not afraid to back founders who have had some bad press in their past examples, and we believe in the

iconoclastic, brash person at the head of the company. that will end up being a smart check or not, we will see. in wework, the people who got screwed as investors are those who came in later, so and resend may have actually made a smart move here back in adam neumann early. it all remains to be seen. emily: we shall see. it may be fodder for another podcast one day. thank you. better.com once to make mortgages more accessible, despite one of the most unaffordable housing markets in decades. we will discuss, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: the u.s. housing market

is quickly changing. homes are more unaffordable than they have been in 40 years and home sales have fallen for six months straight. the homebuyer affordability index is at its lowest point since 1989, which means more than half of families cannot get on the property ladder. the online housing business is growing and better.com once a -- wants a leg up on that ladder, partnering to create a new platform to help borrowers qualify for better loans. here to discuss is the ceo. the shallow guard, thank you for joining us. how will this marketplace work? >> thank you so much. we have 32 major institutional investors on our platform today that actively buy loans. what this platform will do is provide them more granular data

to make loans to cra eligible loans, low moderate income -eligible loans, homes with solar, things that have been traditionally difficult for mortgage investors to provide this comes on or make more affordable. emily: yet we are heading into what could be a very prolonged economic downturn -- we are already in it. this is never a good time for the housing market. why do you think this is a good time to launch this? vishal: i think affordability matters than ever before. we have $3 trillion of capital raised for esg funds. most of it never makes its way into the mortgage market. by creating bloomberg for loans, effectively, working with palantir, what we are going to be able to do is help families that are in sectors favored by esg investors actively connect with those investors, and effectively be able to lower their cost of home ownership.

emily: what are the challenges you think you are going to face in trying to build out a time when the housing market is slumping, if not crashing? vishal: i think the demand for houses is down, but there are still millions of homes being bought and sold every year in the united states today. better.com has grown fairly rapidly. we have grown from nothing to doing almost $100 billion in mortgages this year. so while the market is down, we are still less than 1% market share, and we hope we can continue to grow. and by making housing more equitable, we can actually grow, addressing one of the issues that most homeowners face today. emily: you got a huge capital infusion from softbank. is this you putting that capital to work? how else will we see you putting that money to work?

vishal: we did get a huge capital infusion from softbank, and making homeownership more equitable while driving or business is the most wonderful innovation we can hope for. so, this is at the cutting-edge. by partnering with palantir, what we were going to do in five took 10 years, we have been able to leverage our softbank capital to actually make live this year. emily: i have to ask you about the macro picture it has been challenging for a lot of companies. in the last year you laid off 9% of the company, 900 people you laid off via zoom, then an additional 3000. i know you got a lot of heat for that. when you look back on that, what do you think went wrong, what would you have done differently? vishal: i think we get a lot of things that were very wrong. i should have handled the layoffs with more care and more empathy. we were very lucky that, because

of the fact that we are a digital mortgage company, and a digital homeownership platform, we were able to see the downturn in the market that is evidenced today, and you see many other mortgage originators laying off thousands of people, we were able to see that as early as late last year. so we have been able to get ahead of it. we have been able to downside, we have taken $1 billion in expense line items out of the company took a cost structure, and we are using that savings to innovate and continue to serve customers. emily: what are you doing to manage costs, to manage hiring and make sure you have learned from those lessons and that something like that doesn't happen again? vishal: managing the up cycle of the cyclicality of the mortgage industry is something that is new to us. we are again, only a six-year-old company and there are companies in the mortgage space that had been able to

manage that more superior to us. what we are keeping our pulse on is customer demand, customer demand for new products and legging into growing those new products, not at the rate we did in 2028 when we grew to almost 800%, but slowly into into customer demand. emily: you are also being sued by one of your former executives alleging you misled investors in the process of trying to go public via spac. she is also alleging retaliation. the sec is now looking into this. what is your response to all of this? vishal: i think it is very hard for me to comment on matters that are in active litigation or the subject of an sec inquiry. all i can say is everyday we find gratification in helping make homeownership cheaper, faster and better for more and more american families.

and the more we can keep on doing that, the better the world will be. emily: you are also trying to take the company public, i believe, still via spac, and i believe there is a deadline coming up for that. is that still the plan? especially given that the spac market has fizzled, what are you thinking about whether now is the right time? vishal: we are evaluating all of our opportunities. again, i cannot comment publicly on. all i can say is that we remain committed to actually achieving greater capitalization so that we can have the funding to serve our customers. we are open to all of the different options out there that enable us to continue to be well-capitalized. emily: i am curious your thoughts on this, we have been talking about the funding that adam neumann, the founder of wework just received, the biggest check from mark andreessen to

revolutionize the real estate sector. what do you make of that funding? vishal: i am so happy that the venture capital community and entrepreneurs are still interested in revolutionizing the residential real estate market. here we have a $40 trillion industry where consumers still 6% to buy or sell a home, 10% of the value of your home just transacting. where it takes 60 days to transact. there are so many aspects of the residential bill estate market that need to be optimized and made work for consumers rather than brokers or transactional intermediaries, and we really welcome the fact that there will be more innovation and more capital and more innovation in the space. emily: even if it is going to adam neumann who, at the very least is a very controversial founder? vishal: adam neumann is a controversial founder but he did

revolutionize the idea of office space. many of our offices are in wework space. while i cannot speak to any and all the opinions in the market about him, we are delighted users of the product that he helped create. so if he can do the same for residential real estate, good luck. emily: vishal garg ceo of better we will be watching following this new partnership with palantir. thank you for joining us. much more coming up after this break. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: qualcomm is taking another run at the market for server chips in an effort to

decrease its reliance on smartphones. the company seeking customers for a product stemming from last years purchase of another product, according to bloomberg sources. they say aws is one of the biggest server chip buyers and has agreed to take a look at what qualcomm has to offer. china is lashing out at a 52 billion dollar program to expand american manufacturing of semiconductors. an industry association says it contains elements that violate fair market principles. ed targets china's own efforts to build the chipmaking industry. the legislation prohibits companies that receive funding from expanding production of advance chips in china. and it is the biggest annual television deal ever for a college sports conference. the big ten has reached an agreement for a seven year contract with fox, cbs and nbc. it is worth about $7.5 billion. the price of college football broadcast rights has soared and no one has cashed in more than the big ten and the southeastern conference, both of which are expanding to 16 teams.

coming up, big names like netflix, microsoft and disney were all foundered during recessions. so, how do you find the next world-changing startup when the r word is looming? we will discuss. plus, the state of the nursing shortage post-pandemic and what career marketplace incredible health is doing to bridge that gap, with ceo ima abuzeid, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

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♪ >> welcome back to bloomberg technology. incredible health. permanent health care workers

announced 89 -- $80 million in funding. the valuation is 1.6 5 billion. unicorn status. this at a time when the nursing shortage is a huge problem in the united states. a recent report estimating the u.s. will be short 200,000 registered nurses by 2025. let's bring in dr. m on opposite. she's the ceo and cofounder. great to have you back here on the show. you talked about the nursing shortage right here early in the pandemic. what is that shortage like now? >> the big difference that has happened in the last 12 months is that this is a workforce that is overworked, burnt out, our report on nurses in the u.s. showed that one third of nurses are considering leaving the profession permanently by the end of the year.

emily: how has the pandemic potentially changed the industry for the longer-term? are we expecting the pandemic to impact availability of nurses for years to come? >> absolutely. before the pandemic, our demand for health care in the country was increasing. pandemics are a demand shock on the system that put more strain on the health care system and the need for even more workers to fulfill that demand. emily: the cdc just announced a huge overhaul and acknowledging the mistakes they made during the pandemic. what do you think went wrong? >> there were certainly some challenges with how the cdc collaborated and communicated with the public. they have some responsibility in terms of how intense and challenging covid became in the u.s.. that affected health care forces.

they were massively overworked and hopefully, these challenges when and if there's a future pandemic, it won't decimate the health care workforce is much as the last one did. >> what are the implications for the doctor and hospital marketplace? what are you seeing on your platform? >> what we are seeing is, we now work with over 600 hospitals and health systems across states including kaiser permanente and johns hopkins, cedars-sinai and others. every one of these hospital executives we are working with is dealing with this problem. they are tackling shortages and understaffing on every unit. 30% of our employees are using new graduate nurses. labor expenses and labor costs are negatively impacting hospital financials as well.

>> how do you hope incredible health will help bridge some of these gaps? >> our focus is on ensuring that nurses are able to get the best permanent roles. we invest heavily in features and tools for nurses that are completely free. we offer free continuing education, free salary estimators, we want to continue investing in that including skill growth, educational scholarships, relocation support in order to make sure that incredible health is a place where nurses can manage their careers instead of only the place where they find their permanent job. emily: the u.s. is dealing with another some would call it a crisis, the roe v. wade decision from the supreme court. is this at all impacting your platform and workers on your platform?

especially those working in states where abortion is restricted? >> it is not affecting the incredible health platform, but it is affecting the nursing workforce. there will be an increasing volume in patients. when you restrict that care, you will have more ectopic and life-threatening pregnancies. that increases the workload on the health care workers. they have to examine the legal ramifications when they are supporting and counseling patients. they have to be very aware of their code of ethics and legal regulations they have to follow in their state and hospital. finally, the vaccine mandates were extremely controversial. so is roe v. wade even among health-care workers. you will have health-care workers on either side of the discussion which creates more angst and debate and discussion and tension in the workplace. emily: how are you expecting

this to play out over the next several years where this could potentially happen and more states? you're talking about a potential bottleneck already. where are week three years from now customer? -- where are we three years from now? >> every report we read, every projection shows that the shortage of workers is projected to continue unless we can do more to support and grow the workforce. the one positive that came out of the pandemic is it put more this is on the importance of the health care workforce and how we need it to deliver care. emily: the ceo and cofounder of incredible health, great to have you back on the show. tech stocks are staging a comeback generally after a brutal start to the year. the nasdaq 100 was down 31% a month ago. now, it's down 17% year-to-date.

joining me is the cofounder and ceo and managing director of a firm with 200 million in assets under management. how cautious are you right now in this investing environment? >> i have been in silicon valley since 1982 so i have gone through many cycles. one of the things that tends to happen is there's a bit of overreaction when we have these big dips in the public stock market as well as growth at all cost including profitability. the pendulum swings in the other direction but it tends to swing too far and that's what we are seeing now. emily: your firm made a record number of investments in the last quarter.

20 investments. why is that? >> we look at risk-adjusted return and while we have seen the risk go up, and we account for that in terms of how we make investment decisions and the model that we used to power our process, what we see is that a lot of folks overreact to the news. they don't know which a look for increasing the risk in their models and that creates fear and makes people hold back capital at a time when it's a good time to be investing because many people are sitting on the sidelines and not sure how to price and the financial process allows us to price at this stage very well and still trying to achieve the same waited multiple we look for in each investment. emily: let's talk about the

pricing because it seems that investors would be an advantage right now. we're hearing about lot rounds, down rounds. we're seeing layoffs. what is happening behind the scenes? >> many of the things that are happening you described very well. a lot of that is happening at the later stages where the pricing impact of what happens in the public capital markets has a larger impact. what tends to happen in the earlier stages is that you don't see such large actuations in valuation as you have seen recently. for the end of the cycles where people are doing growth at all costs, you tend to have higher pricing at the seed stage. but not as much as at later stages. we see people doing more flat rounds. we haven't seen a lot of down

rounds yet in our portfolio, but i do think that is not an uncommon thing to happen. holding the price constant right now helps entrepreneurs to get additional capital so they can weather the cycles and the cycles tend to be less than a couple of years for the most part. it's not your price today, it's where you think you can be two years from now in terms of the metrics and outcomes that your investors are going to be looking for at that stage that's important. emily: many companies were founded during downturns. airbnb, black, instagram, square. microsoft was founded during a downturn. how optimistic are you that one of these companies is being founded right now? >> i would say there are more of

these world changing companies founded now than ever before in more technology sectors than ever before. i am optimistic. i am a long-term investor and i believe the technology stocks are a place where both individual investors and institutional investors should be because the wave of technology that is occurring now in terms of the market sizes that are possible on the internet, 5 billion users on the internet. when i first started in 1995 as counsel at an ipo for an internet company, there were 39 million users. these numbers have never been possible to access in this way before and they will continue to be a dominant force in the economy moving forward. emily: curious what your thoughts are on one firm writing its biggest check ever recently. we also spoke to founder earlier

in the show who praised the decision. what is your take? >> i am of two minds. one is that people make mistakes and i don't believe in canceling people. i also believe that we have really benefited as a technology sector from some of the work of wework. before, companies used to have fixed costs in terms of real estate space and no more and more companies have a much more variable approach to what was once a very large part of their cost. these kinds of innovations, they do come with good and bad. in your book, you talked about the bro-topia in silicon valley and i definitely have a lot of

issues with that as well, but i recognize when innovations have changed how work gets done and where it gets done. emily: here's my question. i'm not against second chances either, but i think the criticism is that shouldn't we give some people first chances first and people like women, people of color haven't gotten that first check or chance? do you think the venture world is changing or is what happened here an example that it's not? >> this is a really good question. we came into existence to give people the first chances at seed. the idea is that right now, we are still in 1947 if you think about when jackie robinson entered baseball, it was .9% black players.

.7% latinx players. you see a difference now. that is the opportunity in front of venture. those that are not seeking that opportunity will get left behind because 70% of the population can't be inferior to 30% of the population. emily: i love the baseball metaphor. thank you for sharing that. miriam rivera, we appreciate you stopping by. next up, the ethereum merge is finally coming. all the details. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: it's time for our crypto report, let's talk about the merge. september 15 is firmed up as the likely official date. is this the last likely date? how likely is it that is going to happen on this date? >> i know, there has been a lot of dates thrown around in the past week or so. last week, we knew it would happen for sure in september, but now we know it's going to be probably september 15. this date could still change because ethereum developers are basically looking to see how many computers are supporting the network, if the number

declines rapidly they might pull forward the date. it could still change. emily: what will change once the merge happens? >> basically, what will change is the power consumption of the ethereum network. it will decline by more than 99%. today, transactions on the network are ordered by computers called miners that take up a lot of energy. after the upgrade, it's going to be done differently in a much more energy efficient way. >> what are the implications for other blockchains? >> some of the older blockchains still use miners, these power-hungry computers might be more likely to switch something more environmentally friendly. the newer blockchains already

use a similar technology to what ethereum is moving to. i think we will see more investments into this type of blockchain. emily: lots to continue to watch. we will tune in on september 15. coming up, $100 million, $200 million or more. how the pay received by the top ceos are reaching incredible highs, many of them in tech. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: nine figure paychecks once a rarity are now proliferating despite critics on capitol hill and beyond. as the u.s. was grappling with the pandemic, 2021 was the most lavish year on record by almost any measure with pay deals of more than $100 million in value according to the bloomberg pay index. tell us who is getting these paychecks. elon musk and who else? >> elon musk, tim cook, the ceos of rivian and lucid. you have a couple of finance guys in there. the list looks similar than the last few years. the list tends to be men and mostly white. there is one woman.

emily: i remember when steve jobs paid himself a dollar or something but he had a ton of equity in apple. how unprecedented is this? >> it's interesting. i thought when i started covering executive pay a few years ago that we would start to see a shift to the one dollar ceo because you have a lot that are quite wealthy. especially with the bull market ran for so long. instead, it is almost in the opposite direction. it really goes back to elon musk in 2018 when he got the biggest pay package that has ever been granted to a company executive. in which he would earn tens of billions of dollars over the course of about a decade through generous grant of stock options with audacious goals attached to them. what many companies did was to say this looks interesting.

they went out and they constructed similar packages for their ceos and that's what we are seeing popping up here and there across corporate america not just in tech, but in other places. that's driving this trend. emily: it's interesting to see some of the names on this list. rivian just got a car on the road. how are companies justifying these numbers? >> i should caveat these figures by saying the figures we published today are what these packages were worth at the end of fiscal year 2021 when equity markets looked different them they do today. however, historically things have tended to pan out pretty well for company executives. a company say with these packages is that this is what we need to motivate our top guy or gal. this is reflective of his or her skills and what other ceos get

paid. it has to do with what does the rest of the landscape look like and that's why you get these butterfly effect from elon musk gets a grant then somebody else and you have the domino effect. whereas if you saw more one dollars ceos, you would see that proliferate to a different extent. >> you just wrote a piece about ryan cohen that he made $68 million on the sale of his bed, bath & beyond stake this week. some people were not happy about it. we talked about the potential for regulatory issues earlier. what do we know about the timeline and why he did this? >> we don't know so much about why he did it. we know he started acquiring in january and he held it for seven

months then he offloaded this week. it came on the heels of a rally in the stock after it was disclosed earlier that he had held onto the stake for that long. we are not really sure about the motives, but we do know that it was quite a nice profit for him. emily: i'm sure someone is looking into that. thank you as always for joining us. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. coming up, why our guest thinks apple is skirting regulators busy with amazon and facebook. this is bloomberg. ♪

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