announcer: thg "bloomberg technology" with caroline hydroxychloroquine and ed will ludlow. ♪ caroline: live from new york, i'm caroline hydroxychloroquine. plus u.s. treasury secretary scott bessent weighs in on a.i. productivity and his relationship with elon musk and the c.e.o. of carvana joins us as the stock sinks on lower gross profit per vehicle but first we check in on the markets and they're also sinking. currently off by more than a

percentage point. we're still digesting some of the points drags to to the downside. palin tear being one of them. the effects of less spending in the military means for some of these tech names. we also see amazon weighing in a points perspective and nvidia. but have a look at some of the individual names that are really key line on the higher side. and it's the chinese names that do well. once again today, alibaba absolutely soaring at one point ummore than 13%. we're up 9% on the moment on the american depository receipts. really a.i. demand, cloud, we're seeing growth of 13%. seeing ecommerce come back as they charge more fees overall. we want to dig in on it. this seems to be alibaba coming out of the doldrums. >> yes. right. exactly. so today is the big earning day for alibaba and i will say it delivered very strong and solid earnings. if you looked, it feeds on the revenues. from the top line, it reported a

revenue growth which is the fastest in more than a year and it's way above the wall street analysts' estimates. and it also comes from the improvements from two of its most important segments, one is ecommerce and the second is the cloud business. so to drill down a bit, the ecommerce apparently is the bread and butter and helped by the overall recovery of the chinese consumption trend. but also, the a.i., the cloud business is really the highlight here because apparently lots of the market sentiment or interests have been going to how alibaba is going to deliver on its a.i. strategy and the cloud is where it houses the a.i. feature, q-1 and different initiatives it has. so there alibaba's cloud service also up, was up like 13% on a year over year basis. again, it's really impressive

earnings print. jackie: what do we know about how much the company expects to invest in cloud and in artificial intelligence to really keep this boost going? >> yeah, that's a really good question. it's a question that all lynn lists -- analysts were asking on the earnings call. so the c.e.o. stated that he's going to nut more money in a.i. infrastructure in the next three years and will be more than it did over the past decade. so that's a really big commitment. the company keeps saying that a.g.i., which is artificial general intelligence, is going to be the primary objective for the company going forward. so that's a strong boost, you know, to the sentiment. because if we take a look back, alibaba's stock today is up 10%. but year to date, it's up more than 16% and it's mostly driven by the a.i. hold that the market

is giving the company, right, following on the ride of deepseek. now this is a moment that's sure that the fundamentals is back in and on the earnings outlook it also showed that sentiment. caroline: let's talk about how the flip side is affected. of course the deepseek impact on a.i. investments here in the u.s. as well. ankur crawford is with us, portfolio manager at alger. nvidia is a key name, microsoft. all of these refocuses and recalibrations of a.i. investment and whether it's worthwhile. has anything changed for you? >> absolutely not. if anything, the amount of investment that's going to go into the ground is going to accelerate. and in part because what deepseek showed us is that, you know, you can start building these models and it doesn't cost that much. as long as you have a foundational model to build upon. and therefore adoption rates should skyrocket.

you know, you saw just yesterday or just this morning nebius reported that their -- the usage of their data centers actually skyrocketed post-deepseek. so clearly there's more demand for something that's cheaper when it's increasing productivity. jackie: we're also seeing signaling from washington that lawmakers, j.d. vance, president trump, really trying to support a.i. infrastructure. and as it relates to tariffs, because chips are now kind of within that discussion, you know, it's intended to encourage domestic production, but that manufacturing is incredibly complex and you as a portfolio manager, i'm curious if you find that assumption risky, could that back fire in a way that does lead to higher prices ultimately for the companies and for consumers? >> yeah, so the thing is, if you look at the cost of a chip relative to the cost of the product, it's in fact a very

small percentage of the product. so if you look at nvidia's gross margins, the cogs are what is going to tsmc is only 10% of the revenue. if that. so if you take a 25% tariff on the chiches, you're only -- chips, you're only increasing the price by 2.5%. because the fundamental cogs are lower than people think. so is it risky to tariff chips? i don't think it is in terms of the inflationary effect. i do think that, you know, the impact is we really do need to bring more manufacturing onshore. that is nonnegotiable and just for our national security, that's what we need to do. caroline: i love that you bring us the breakdown of what it means from a price perspective. with chip tariffs. but bring us your expertise on whether you think tsmc is going to start manufacturing more here in the u.s. there's been ongoing reporting about when they do a deal with

intel, many saying that's not going happen if you've got to push back against foreign openership of companies, foreign relations here in the u.s.. >> so a little known fact perhaps is that morris chang, who is the founder of tsmc, is in fact an american citizen. right? so tsmc is a taiwanese company that is -- was born of an american citizen who moved to taiwan after studying in the u.s. and working here for a long time. so i would argue in fact that it might be kind of an american/taiwanese company. so a little known fact i wanted to bring up. you know, i do think that the intel taiwan semitie-up is a necessity in part because where intel is today is not a function of this management team or the previous management team. it is a function of some strategic kind of errors that were made 15 years ago that have carried on to the life cycle of

intel. and catching up to where tsmc is is i would call a low probability event. and so for our national security, i do think like we have a footprint of fabs in the u.s. those are intel fabs. should they not be somehow handed to tsmc that actually knows how to manufacture it, it solves a lot of problems. it solves the capital intensity that. it s.m. has to put into the ground in the u.s., which is a big hurdle for them. it solves a national security problem of bringing more capacity to the u.s. it solves intel's problem of not quite knowing what to do because they're struggling to catch up. so to me it feels like a really win-win situation for t.s.m. to actually take ownership of the intel fabs. caroline: these are reports but would you buying in on these reports or these potential

win-win scenarios? >> i think there can be many flavors, it has to suit all parties. do i think there's some version of this? i think it's logical for it to happen and therefore yes. it is really the only solution that we have. jackie: how do you feel about the ecosystem of chip makers? tsmc is a great example of perhaps these plans to bring more plants to the u.s. solves one problem, bringing production here to the u.s., but it also increases concentration in one player. how do you feel about that? >> i would be focused more so on the fact that if you bring it to the u.s., the ecosystem in the u.s. actually gets stronger. one of the biggest problems right now is we don't have the engineers, we don't necessarily have the supply chain. therefore it costs too much as people bring manufacturing into the u.s. for the first step in this is that we can allow t.s.m. to build a sizable footprint. intel is about 12% of the

world's manufacturing capacity. why not utilize that footprint to build the u.s. engineering ecosystem which has slowly deteriorated over the last three decades? jackie: speaking about talent, that's one of the biggest questions. do we have a pipeline of researchers, both kind of on the manufacturing side, but also for the software? are you concerned at all about where we are in that landscape compared to china? >> yeah, look, i think that china's very innovative but so are we. and over the last i would say two decades, we have seen a dearth of talent graduating in the more tech fields that are not software. and we have to right that ship. you know, i graduated in material science and engineering two decades ago and, you know, we need to kind of start that engine again because really we

do need to build that in the u.s. so do i worry about it? i think it's an effort that needs to be pushed on. jackie: that's ankur crawford, portfolio manager at alger. thank you very much. coming up, we'll hear from scott bessent on all things musk. caroline: yeah, actually a political ramification for a key tech stock that has outperformed this year. palin tear an outperformer but today it comes out by 12%. we're worried about potential budget cuts. pete hegseth talking about the potential of reducing 8% spending over the next five years. will that effect this software company? on one side you have someone saying no, no, it will steer its way clear of this but others worry being the exposure. this is "bloomberg technology." this is "bloomberg technology." ♪

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>> can you just describe what it's like to work with someone like elon musk, someone as successful in american business? just what's that like day to day? >> look, elon musk, i always compare the great business people to great athletes, they keep their eye on the prize. whether he's the messi or michael jordan, he's focused and his energy level's unbelievable. and he's gotten to where he has because everything's on the table. there's always this examination of why are we doing it this way? why are we doing what we're doing? and most of all, if something's

not working, let's fix it. >> sam altman was on bloomberg tv just two weeks ago and called elon musk insecure. do you view him as such? >> i'm not going to get into the tech magnate kind of slap fest. >> i would say that's wise. he's drawing criticism, though. the administration comes out and picks various things on where money is being wasted on, we can agree that that's a waste of money. where there might be concern is the way some people are being laid off in washington, that it lax some dignity. could you comment on that today? >> look, i think that there are many fine public servants and -- but i think that -- i've been in washington three or four weeks now. and there's a real bias toward the status quo and if you don't move quickly, then the lobbyists

get involved, the entrerchged interests -- entrenched interests and it's impossible to get anything done. so anyone who has experienced financial hardship, any kind of the mental duress, i'm sorry for them. but that's also what the average american experiences every day. most of us, you all come to work, you want good ratings, you get a performance readout. you really push forward. and i can tell you that in treasury, i have been so impressed with the quality of the permanent staff and i want to get everybody back to the office and a lot of people are onboard with that. caroline: u.s. treasury secretary scott bessent on bloomberg surveillance earlier today. let's break it all down with bloomberg's mike shepherd in washington now. what are the keytakeaways?

it was a -- key takeaways? it was a wide-ranging segment. >> the musk segment was illuminating. we saw once again, naz our first interview with the treasury secretary about two weeks ago, no daylight between scott bessent and elon musk. musk of course has been tasked with this government efficiency push. donald trump asked him to lead this. it has caused some controversy for the way they have powered through agency by agency, moving to even shut down some entities like usaid altogether. and it is generating, as we saw this morning, some negative poll numbers in "the washington post" and a survey. a majority of americans were uncomfortable with how this was working in terms of agencies being shut down like that. at the same time we saw scott bessent really lavishing praise on elon musk, likening him to a great athlete for the focus and energy that he brings and the urgency of this moment. that if they want to make

change, they have to move quickly. it's important for us to remember that scott bessent's own agenda of reducing the deficit depends in large measure on the success of elon musk with doge in trying to find those kinds of saves and cost reductions across government. and he also wants elon musk to help in other ways too. and that includes pearing back -- paring back some of the regulations he sees as an diment to the economy. jackie: what did bessent say about where these doge saves will actually go? >> well, you know, he and the president have talked about trying to get them somehow returned to the taxpayers. but so far the math really isn't holding up. we had great reporting yesterday that while doge has claimed $55 billion in savings so far, the numbers on the group's website itself show something closer to $16 billion. and you have to have that yet again because one of the contracts was mistakenly listed

as $8 billion rather than $8 million. so when you break that down, it's about $11 per taxpayer as opposed to the $5,000 per head that donald trump and elon musk have possibly been floating. so we have to see. they're only a month in as the treasury chief was kean to point out. but we have a long way to go before we're actually going to start seeing some of this money go back to the taxpayers, but the treasury chief and musk have said. caroline: many people have wondered whether math will start mathing on a.i. productivity gains. take a listen. >> the u.s. productivity i think, i've been meeting with a lot of the tech leaders lately, and i think we are very close to the cusp of this a.i. finally coming in to the product teivity numbers. caroline: 30 seconds left. what did you make of the view on a.i. helping productivity in the u.s.? >> he's trying to answer one of the big questions out there for investors and even companies

themselves. when are we going to see this break through this terms of a profit-generating real game-changing use case for it. he's signaling, though that there could be productivity gains. we have seen evidence of this already at meta, for instance, and we've incorporated into their own business structure. finding efficiency, finding gains, helping profitability there. but he did not elaborate and it would be interesting to hear him lay out more of a case down the road. jackie: that's bloomberg's mike shepherd. thanks for joining us. it's not just scott bessent talking about musk. the c.e.o. of boeing came out this morning saying elon musk and his doge team are helping the plane maker work through bottlenecks that have caused the next fleet of air force one jets to fall years behind schedule. this comes as president donald trump has repeatedly criticized the company for failing to deliver the jets on time. caroline: coming up, apple launches a new low-end smartphone. we'll dig in next. this is "bloomberg technology." ♪

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jackie: apple introduced a new low-end smartphone yesterday. the phone which will go on sale next week, february 28, this in an effort to revive the company's growth after a slow holiday season. let's bring in nabila popal. this is a great upgrade but it's also far pricier than lower priced models from the past. how well are you expecting this to sell? >> you know, i think that's the really great reason why apple rebranded it from the s.e. to the 16-e, right? because they don't want consumers to think this is a more expensive s.e. device because the previous s.e.'s were at 429 and prior to that at 399 and this is significantly more expensive but they want

consumers to think of it as a much less expensive 16 device. so we think that given all the bells and whistles it is coming with, it's a significant upgrade from all the different specs, this is coming with much, much greater, with their latest chip set, bigger screen size. and all the different -- and more -- the biggest -- the most innovative mode um. i think that's the biggest news right now. so i think that's what they want the consumers to focus on. so we really expect traditionally or rather in their previous s.e. devices of their budget phones, they have been doing about anywhere from 5% to 8% in their launch year. and we expect this device to do actually -- this is going to be the bigger news than in fact even the launch of the 16 device and it comes with apple intelligence to top it off. so for a budget device, we expect it to do really well.

caroline: talk about that c-1 chip set. and the fact that they're moving away from qualcomm. how important road steft this for the 17 -- road test is this for the 17's? >> i think this is what the biggest news is, right? they didn't want to test drive it with their 16 models. they finally launched it as -- they've been trying to get into this space with integration and launching their own mow dumb and -- modem and this will play well into the hands of the investors. more profitability. but also give them more room to play with the design, play with whether it's -- they use it as a test to see how much more they can make the device more efficient, how they can play with the design. and what they can do is essentially, how -- what lessons did they learn? to bring it into play, whether it's in terms of efficiency and design or really bring the modem into the 17. it's a really good test ground

for them. and at the same time the 16 users or the 16, not e, right, but the pro and the users are paying double the price so the rest of the family won't feel cheated because they're playing double the price, but at the same time they're getting the qualcomm chip. so i think it's a really genius marketing move. at the same time the s.e. users will get a phenomenal upgrained they won't feel that we're paying $200 more for -- they're getting all of these fascinating upgrades, not just the modem but the latest chip and bigger screen size and the whole list of upgrades. caroline: and apple intelligence. nabila popal, senior research directer joining us. interesting reports that apple's tim cook is going to be meeting with trump in the oval office. plenty for him to discuss when it comes to china, they probably want that 16-e to be selling well. coming up, we're going to look at meta's pullback after its record 20-day stock rally.

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caroline: welcome back to "bloomberg technology." i'm caroline hydroxychloroquine in new york. jackie: and i'm jackie in san francisco. caroline: we are pushing lower on the nasdaq more broadly but i want to shine a light on what's happening in china. the golden dragon index is up more than a percentage point. we are on fire when it comes to the likes of p.d.d., but alibaba drives these chie time ins yet further. remember, we've had an absolute 20% rocketship when it comes to tech names in china of late. we're up 8.9% on alibaba as we get the earnings showing growth not only in ecommerce and recovery there, but also a.i. demand and they focus on a.g.i. individual names that perhaps are on the lower side. palantir off by more than 10%.

we worry about cuts coming to military spending, could it effect palantir. amazon off. actually it's getting some control, some indreed creative control over -- indeed creative control over james bond films. that caught my eye when it came to amazon m.g.m. studios but still sank by more than a percentage point. meta, off by more than 5% after that 20-day rally, that record rally, that saw shares go into record territory. what does that 20-day rally mean? yes, we pull back a bit but this has driven the stock to numbers we've never seen since its first listing and we're questioning whether they need to get a little cheaper. >> exactly. we've been watching meta for a while. it's had an incredible run over the last few years and this 20-day rally was just amazing to watch. meta's never split its stock before, so since 2013 it's just, you know, been going up. and so it really -- the level that it's hit now, it's more

than $700 per share, kind of puts it in the sweet spot for a stock split. and actually the pullback that we're seeing today makes me think that it could make even more sense. companies often enact stock splits when the price per share gets very high. lowering it, so splitting the stock, doesn't change anything about the fundamentals, it's purely math. but that lower price per share can be really enticing for invest, especially the retail crowd. and that is a major part of the market force that we've seen lift a lot of these technology stocks. so it would be very interesting to see if meta does it. it's the only mag7 stock that hasn't split its shares. we'll be keeping an eye on that. jackie: on that note about retail investors, on the one hand it's great to bring them into the fold. but does that inject more volatility into the stock as well? how has it worked out for other tech stocks that have done similar splits in the past? >> i think the biggest one that comes to mind is nvidia. nvidia obviously enacted a split last year.

and it has had an incredibly volatile years, fow years. the stock at one point was more volatile than bitcoin. so certainly, yes, there could be volatility that comes in to play. but i also think that these stocks are very volatile. they're big parts of the market. so when we see them swing, we can see the entire s&p swing, we can see the nasdaq 100 swing. and i would think that most people would say, it's worth some volatility, that helps you to get better. better price action. and opportunities for investors. caroline: it is all psychological. the idea that you could own a whole share even though you can trade parts of shares as a retail investor but they're not the only name that's eclipsed the thousand-dollar mark. netflix sat there. you must be questioning a stock split there as well. >> exactly. netflix is over $100 to per share. it has split -- $1,000 per share. it has split before in 2017. that's another one where retail names could really be enticed back in and keep a rally going.

jackie: thanks so much for joining us. sticking with metaer and turning to politics. c.e.o. mark zuckerberg went to the u.s. capitol yesterday to lobby senators or artificial intelligence. he's seeking to muster his influence in his standing with donald trump at his inauguration. emily, is this working? is this closer relationship to trump actually increasing disukerberg's relationships to republicans on capitol hill? >> i think there's evidence that it is working. so we've heard for years zuckerberg is enemy number one to republicans. you know, he was an ally to the democrats, that's what they said. and now it's a totally different tune on capitol hill, after zuckerberg has made extensive overtures to trump and republicans. ted cruz, the head of the senate commerce committee, says trust but verify about zuckerberg.

jim jordan is sounding a different tune over in the house. so these were once, you know, the people who attacked him. so i think there's still skepticism, there's still a desire to hit big tech from republicans because they have seen that this is something that their base really reacts to. but in terms of zuckerberg himself, i think that his reputation is changing really fast among conservatives in washington. caroline: what can can he get done? what are his policy prioritys? >> policy priority number one is a.i., trying to staving off any -- stave off any regulation that could hamper the company, trying to get any policy that could boost open source which is a big lobbying campaign that they've launched over the last year. you know, a.i. development is top of mind for meta. they are going to invest $65 billion in it this year. and then there's also this ongoing fight with the e.u. where they found allies in the trump administration. e.u. passed regulations that would crack down on the tech

companies for hosting misinformation, for hosting certain kinds of harmful speech. this is a big threat to meta and to the other social media platforms and it's one that j.d. vance this past week has taken up. trump himself has taken up, you know, criticizing the e.u. for hurting american companies. so those are top of mind, there's also anti-trust issues, you know, ongoing case against meta by the government, what will the f.t.c. do with it? all of that is still pending. but there are existential issues facing meta that the government can help with and zuckerberg is doing everything he can to try to protect his company. jackie: let's talk about that overall lobbying strategy. how else is it changing during this congressional session? >> yeah. so over the last four years during the biden administration, meta's policy team was led by

nick klegg. he was seen as being slightly closer to democrats. they cultivated relationships with democrats. but there was a recent announcement that joam capland, the big republican at meta, now they layered him on top of nick klegg so he is the head of global policy for meta and he has taken the reins a lot within the company. he's make decisions about ending d.e.i., he's made decisions about ending fact checking. two really big asks from republicans. so joel kaplan and his influence can be felt in meta's lobbying strategy and how they are approaching republicans. caroline: always great to catch up with emily birnbaum. appreciate it. carvana's c.e.o. joins us as the shares slide. we'll discuss the company's earnings, its outlook, its profitability. this is bloomberg technology. "bloomberg technology." "bloomberg technology." ♪

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caroline: "bloomberg technology." check out our podcast. you'll find it on the terminal as well as online on apple, spotify and iheart. this is bloomberg. ♪ caroline: time now for talking tech. k.k.r. has secured enough shares of fuji soft in a tender offer to take the company profit. it ends a months' long bidding war. k.k.r. ames to acquire the remaining shares of the software maker through a squeeze-out process in late april, giving it a near 58% stake. the company posted a faster than anticipated 20% jump in quarterly revenue, len oaiveo. due for demand of its a.i. computing infrastructure. and shares of grab, they're falling today after the company predicted full-year revenue that actually trailed estimates.

citing caution in the southeast asian ride sharing and food delivery market in particular. bloomberg spoke with grab c.f.o. who had this to say about their user base. >> it's a big year for our digital banks and it's a really very ecosystem-driven play when it comes to our product server digital banks. over half of those users on the digital bank platform today are from grab and we see a lot of benefits that we're seeing in making sure that the on-demand business and the digital banks are actually cohesive, working together. because it really drives that retention and also just l.t.v. of our user base. jackie: sticking with earnings. carvana out with its report overnight. while the company had a strong fourth quarter and a rosy outlook, shares are down significantly today. let's get some answers from c.e.o. ernie garcia. ernie, clearly shares are reflecting some skepticism and in particular your gross profit per vehicle declined, what was behind that fall and do you

expect it to rebound this year? >> first of all, thanks for having us. to try to briefly answer that question specifically, i think their seasonality and retail g.p.u., we saw that a little bit this year, but there's a way bigger story going on that we're extremely proud of and that's that we just had the most profitable year in automotive retail history and we did it while growing at 33% for the year and 51% in the quarter and we did it with just 1% market share. so i think the big story here is we've still got a huge teufnlt we still have a ton of work to do. the team's done a great job. we're extremely excited. day to day the market's going to do what the market does and our job is to keep marching. jackie: we're seeing pullback in the retail sector. i'm curious if this bodes kind of any kind of weakness for carvana. where do you see used car prices going this year? is there any vulnerability to your consumers being more touchy around inflation? >> yeah. i think the way that we try to think about things is a little bigger picture than that.

again, i think the history of companies that are the most profitable in their industry and are growing the fastest is a pretty thin history. and when you look back on those companies, generally the next 10-plus years, 10, 20 years are pretty great years. i think we're focused on that timeline. i think month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, there's going to be inflation and tariff and e.v. stories. but we don't talk about those specific storylines about great companies when we look back in time and i think our goal is to be a great company and so we're going to stay focused on our customers and just keep moving down the path and we think that's going to take us to a great spot. as it has over the last couple of years on average. caroline: i hear you on the market's going to do what it's going to do. it's up by 16% today and that is a big -- off by 16% today, and that is a big fall. i know you've run up more than 300% in previous years. credit where credit is due. but we need to get into some of those issues that the investor base is seeing and i really want to ask about perhaps some of the gains that you saw in the sales of loans. perhaps people saying, that padded -- [indiscernible] -- is

that something that will continue to pad or is it a one-off? >> i think it's something that's been a consistent contributor for the last couple of years. so i don't think we expect major changes there. i think since you brought up them, my job is to make sure i frame this as positively as possible. we increased it by four times year over year. i think that's pretty great as another line that points at a very good direction. so like i said, i think we have to focus on our customers, give them a good experience that they love, give them a ton of selection and value. if we do that, the rest will take care of it self. caroline: i think your job is to give things not just a positive ring, but a truthful ring and i'm sure that that's what you're trying to do but let's talk about -- >> they happen to overlap. caroline: you're a positive guy and we love it. but talk to us about some of the positive impacts or indeed negative impacts of tariffs. what does that mean for the autos more broadly if it's going to be tougher to get foreign cars in? >> so i think that's incredibly complicated. and i think there's probably a

lot of people that are better positioned to answer those questions than we are. so i unfortunately am going to give you a very unsatisfying answer to that. we will pay attention and react to whatever happens, but again, i think what's going on inside of carvana is we grew at 33% last year. that's so large compared to anything that can happen macro. and so we think it's smarter for us to stay focused on our customers and what we do because it's just a bigger range than anything that's going to happen from a macro perspective. jackie: you said your guidance is based on the environment remaining stable. but there's a lot of external factors that also come into play. which ones are you paying attention to specifically, given to caroline's point tariffs do play a role, inflation does play a role, what will you be focused on to make sure that guidance stays on track? >> i think everything you just mentioned. we'll see, i think there's a lot of uncertainty about what happens with tariffs and inflation. i think if you ask two people you get three answers. i think there's a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen with rates.

we're going to pay attention and adapt to our environment. and we're going to keep moving forward. so i think we watch all of that, if investors watch that very closely as well. but we think that our job is mostly to look at our business, to put together a bunch of projects that we're very confident will create value for our customers and market those probablies one at a time because on average the macro environment is the aaron. and if you spend -- average. and if you spend a ton of energy chasing your tail on that, it's energy that could be put somewhere else that creates long-term value. jackie: another part of the car market. autonomous vehicles is the next big thing. how are you thinking about how that might effect your business model? are you looking to buy more of those types of cars wholesale or how do you bring in that kind of business into the fold? >> sure. also i think a related concept is e.v.'s. we put out a report today that said that 5.7% of our sales last year were e.v.'s. that compares to 1.3% for the used market in total. we're four times more likely to sell an e.v. to our customers. we're believers in e.v.'s.

we generally set up our system where it's a pull system so we're buying the cars that our customers want. as autonomous vehicles start to become more available, we'll certainly buy more of those and provide those to our customers and in general we're fans of any particular nothing that -- any technology that pushes things forward. as a 1% market shareholder, we will likely be beneficiaries of any change in the market, any shake-up we're very well positioned to take advantage of because our customers love our offering and it makes things a little easier for us. so we'll be rooting for e.v.'s and autonomy. and we'll be doing our best to give our customers a great experience along the way. caroline: great to have some time with you today. thanks for coming on. all the positivity. ernie garcia. now coming up, the founder and c.e.o. of together a.i. joins us to discuss the startup's latest funding round and the demand for open source models. this is "bloomberg technology." ♪

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developers access to multiple open source a.i. models and compute power which the company says makes building a.i. applications faster and cheaper. its c.e.o. vipul ved prakesh joins us now. help us understand why you think open source a.i. technology is the future. >> thank you for having me here today. our customers are encoding their business logic into these models now. they are part of their technology strategy. and companies want to control these models and the intellectual property they're creating in the process. they also want to make it more cost efficient when they're deploying these models at scale to run sometimes hundreds of millions of their customers. they really want cost efficiency. we have great customers like zoom and sales force and others that are deploying these things at large scale and are choosing

to use open source models. caroline: why are these customers that you mention going to you rather than amazon bedrock or azure a.i.? >> yeah, so together we are a.i. systems research lab. some of our co-founders are luminaries in this field and what we've been able to do is really do fundamental research on how to make these models work more efficiently. this is really a new kind of computation. so we do a lot of work on, for example, how the linearal gentlemanberry in these models executes inside core he's or how to quantify models into smaller models that run more efficiently at the same quality. so we do a lot of work here, which really reflects on the economics and the scaleability of our platform. and so it's faster and it's cheaper relative to using hyperscalers and we are on the

forefront of technology. so when new models come out in open source, they are on together's platform on day one. jackie: deepseek is also available on the together a.i. platform but it's also raised national security concerns, concerns about its overall security. how are you thinking about that and navigating having deepseek on the platform? >> what we do is we own all of our infrastructure which is mostly based in north america and europe. and all the models that we serve on our platform, they run on our cloud platform so there's no sort of data leakage. and we're seeing a lot of demand for deepseek and other models. partly for the reason of security and having sort of control that we provide through our cloud. jackie: david sack, the a.i. czar in washington, is a fan of open source modelles. do you i think this could open the door for a regulatory environment that favors open

source more than closed? >> you know, i think that would be welcome. we do believe that this technology should be developed in the open, transparently. this is really a fundamental tool for humanity. so we -- and you're seeing this really happen all around the world now. we have meta who is investing significantly in building open source models. the companies in china and europe. so we really think a regulatory environment that row motes open source, that promotes open safety and open research is going to be great for the industry. caroline: let's talk about the fund raise, the valuation is a lot more, 3.3 billion dollars. $305 million is what you raised. where do you put that to work right now? >> what i would say, a.i. has really moved from the experimental phase into production phase.

so we have over 400,000 a.i. developers, a.i. companies, enterprises building applications on our platform. we will invest in, as i mentioned, our research development companies will invest in a research program. we also have a very wide product. we serve models of all modalities, language, images, videos, audio. and of course we are also scaling up our infrastructure to meet the growing demand for the platform. caroline: it's great to have time with you. vipul ved prakesh, c.e.o. of together a.i. on the latest funding round. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." do not forget to check out our podcast, you'll find it on the it he were nall, as well as on-- terminal, as well as online. from new york and san francisco, this is "bloomberg technology." ♪

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♪ >> welcome to bloomberg markets. this hour we will not only be covering the news in this session but also bringing you the highlights from bloomberg's interview today with scott bessent. vonnie: the s&p is down about .9%, the nasdaq is down 1% and they're off to session lows but bear in mind, many of the stocks within these have had he's in run-ups. many of them have had nice run-ups. there are a few concerning things out there. wal-mart's outlook, for example, perhaps a little bit of trepidation about the consumer. but in general we're getting a lot of reassurance, including from scott bessent. if you look at the 1