"squawk on the street. for not only the month and the quarter but also the first half of the trading year. that's going to do it, as i said tech check, my god, starts right now. >> didi. didi happy wednesday. welcome to "tech check." ahead this hour, dede's dramatic depew. this year's biggest ipo and how it impacts the likes of uber and lyft, and then slack ceo stewart butterfield as the debate in silicon valley about hybrid work and remote work rages on later, bulletin board material as facebook introduces its own

competing product. >> and john, several tech movers to get to this morning, as wall street gets bullish on micron and bearish on virgin galactic those calls and more on the last day of the month coming up >> guys, meantime, didi, as you know by now, making its debut. ipo price at $14, raising $4.4 billion for the chinese ridesharing giant. the upsized offering giving didi a market cap of more than $66 billion. 17 listings today renaissance capital said the market is already on track for a record year, with 213 traditional ipos raising more than $70 billion year to date. one of the biggest backers of today's didi debut is softbank, which finds itself backing multiple fronts of the rideshare and delivery wars. holding a 21.5% stake in didi after it sold $2 billion of stock in its competitor, uber,

earlier this year. its claim to fame is pushing uber out of china over all >> uber one of the winners as well because in return for leaving china, it got a stake in didi, which is worth much more with us on didi's debut is one of the company's earliest investors, big ideas ventures christian cad cadeo. didi did price this conservatively some thought it might fetch a valuation of up to $100 billion. there's regulatory pressure. there's really stiff competition. what do investors thinking about buying into this ipo need to know >> well, i'm not a broker dealer, but i think it's absurdly low you should back up the trunk and buy as much as possible. it's completely underpriced at $14 per share. and in terms of competition, we love competition what competition in china, china, they have, what, 90% of

the market share no competition there >> i'm talking about 200 other companies in china, which yes, are much, much smaller, but now didi is in the regulatory cross hairs. we know how quickly that can flip if the regulators start to look at a company. we saw that with ant group it's also fating stiff competition in latin american with uber. so there's lots of competition, christian. >> respectively, what the cpc, the organization that does trade, they have, what, 54 people there nothing is going to happen, at least in my opinion. number two, i'll give you a number of why i'm not concerned about it 13 million what 13 million means is that's how many drivers didi has on the platform, that basically depend on it for a living they're not going to do anything versus ant or crack down on didi >> what makes you so certain i mean, a lot of other companies have been caught in the cross hairs and we have seen the

effect on markets. we pointed to this earlier, but chinese companies, the big tech giants, have really underperformed this year under all that pressure. i go back to ant group, $100 billion wiped off the valuation because it got stuck in the cross hairs. what makes you so confident? >> fair point. again, i'll refer to 13 million people depend, 13 million drivers depend on their livelihood with didi there's no way that cpc is going to cut down on that and cause social unrest because of that. this is something that differentiates them between alibaba, between aunt, anything else 13 million people are depending on it. >> let's talk about the global landscape and the global play. part of my question as i look at didi and the whole landscape is model wise, which makes more sense in local delivery, breadth or focus didi, it seems to me, has not only, you know, the ride hailing. it's got electric vehicles

it's got food delivery in latin america it's got all of those different plays with different investors on the side as well. but then you have some focused players like your lyft, like your doordash. doordash has been pushing hard in the u.s., for example is didi going to gain some kind of data advantage or scale advantage for its approach as it expands internationally? >> it's going to be a culmination of breadth and depth. and in china, their core market, it's going to be purely focused on death 90% market share they're going to dive deep into that and expand because, look, i'll give you one stug statistic. by 2030, 70% of the population in china are major cities. and frankly, most people won't have cars so they're going to use didi hopefully other markets are going to go for breadth. the reason being, as deirdre mentioned, there's a ton of competition. you can't basically go deep in

ridesharing. you have to have a lot more wider offerings. that being said, it's still measurable in terms of, a, the cap-x they're spending vis-a-vis other markets. i think it's pretty minuscule issue at this juncture >> christian, what happens as didi does try to invest in some of these smaller growth businesses in the past, through either different equity deals or debt deals, they have shifted their ownership stake in those rising businesses is it possible that equity investors in didi could lose control of those going forward and that investors should be thinking about that? >> possibly, right, but i think then you also have the upside, are you getting equity and a new possible entity? i don't think that's going to be a big consideration. >> christian, you know, the other discussion going on is what the chinese are thinking in terms of how they will dominate in various sectors, how they will back, perhaps, local

players over international players. a lot more talk about nio over tesla within china clearly, alibaba is a big media story, and now didi in ride sharing and mobility is this another signal about their longer term ambitions? >> 100% agree on that. i think didi is such an amazing home-grown story, as deirdre mentioned before they basically beat uber and have been able to win on many fronts i think it's something where the government itself is going to put most of its muscle behind it yes, they're going to crackdown, make sure the 13 million drivers get fair competition, et cetera, but most of that is window dressing at the end of the day >> christian, let me give you another number didi, yes, a dominant player right now in china its ridesharing business is profitable, but its margin on each ride is far lower than that of, say, an uber 3% versus a 20%, so why should it be valued higher than uber and what is going to pay for all these ambitious and expensive

ambitions and units, business units from food delivery to autonomous driving should investors not care about profitability here >> no, they should and that's a spot-on statistic i will give you this as my thesis, going back to that number in 2030, 70% of the population in china, about 1.6 billion, are going to be in the cities. and they're not going to be driving. so there is some ability to close that delta between the 20% and 30% they're currently doing right now. if you look at the top line number, they're going to double what uber is doing what did uber do last year about $11 billion. didi did $22 billion in the midst of a crazy pandemic. there's going to be an upside. as we transition to post pandemic, there will have tailwinds, autonomous driving. i think they're doing the right strategy, and of course, in china, disposable income is increasing so you could have expansion. so i think those are favorable

tailwinds. >> right, although investors, american investors at least, have paid more attention to the bottom line than the top line when it comes to ridesharing and gig economy. christian, we'll continue this conversation at another time, i hope, and we look forward to seeing how didi opens. >> thank you cheers >> slack's ceo stewart butterfield on the other side of this break and robinhood's record settlement a big hour of "tech check" just getting started. it's another day. and anything could happen. it could be the day you welcome 1,200 guests and all their devices. or it could be the day there's a cyberthreat. get ready for it all with an advanced network

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demand remanes strong for semi-conductors. shares are up about a percent. >> all right, john, a fierce debate in silicon valley and corporate america. what does the future of work from home look like? we're going to talk about that with stewart butterfield in a cupper minutes when "tech check" returns. don't go anywhere.

cisco. the bridge to possible.

apple, the latest company to weigh in on work from home, saying it will not back down from its hybrid proposal, requiring workers to return to the office three days a week beginning in september so what will hybrid work look like joining us to discuss is slack's cofounder and ceo, stewart butterfield. slack announcing a fresh slate of tools including its new audio feature. it's great to have you i was looking at this line you gave to the verge. talking uthuddles. nobody would choose having an office location over having software today if you had to choose one or the other, 100% of people would choose software. it doesn't southbnd like you're going long real estate >> it would be great to have both, right? there's no advantage, i don't think many people want to work from inside their houses we had to do that during the pandemic, but i think we have gone over the last 20 years or so from a world where digital

supplements the in-person technologies or call it techniques people have for collaboration and communication, to the in-person stuff via supplement to the digital, and therefore, kind of moving towards a digital first world. >> can you talk about how, if we're really in a true new hybrid world, i mean over the long term, not just the next couple years, how is that going to alter the trajectory of innovation at companies like yours and others >> well, you know, i would put myself in this category of leaders who in february 2020, if you asked will you be able to get everyone in the company to work from home and still maintain the same level of productivity over the next year, i probably would have said no, but when you thought was impossible turns out to be possible and you have to do it, you have to question what else is possible that you didn't previously think was possible. obviously, innovation can happen a lot happened over the last 18 months without people being in the offices. it will be great to add that to the mix. but we're just not going to get back to a world where employees

will allow themselves to be demanded to come back five days a week i think it's ultimately going to be a market-based decision >> stewart, i keep hearing about this push and pull when i talk to ceos. i completely agree that a five-day a week for a large swath of employees isn't going to happen, but i also get the sense that in a lot of companies, people are going to be in the office a majority of the week, perhaps what they do in the office is going to change but there are certain functions, certain kind of creative functions when it comes to innovation that just happen better when people are in person is that something that you would allow and something that you're factoring in as you design software >> absolutely. i mean, like i said, i think it will be wonderful to have in-person meetings and kind of in-person collaboration back in the repertoire of tools that we have you know, it's funny, i think

hybrid in let's say ten years or 20 years is going to sound the same way paperless office sounds now, kind of that quaint stilted ring where the question of how much paper is there in the office is not really a significant one when you're thinking about how decisions are made or how the business is managed and reported on. i think it ultimately will transcend the number of days people are in the office if you say two days a week or three days a weem, you're p presupposing everyone living in the area if you have two jobs, same comp, same degree of excitement about them, and one says you have a sick family member, you can go back to ohio for a couple months if you want to live in lake tahoe for january and february and go skiing in the off hours, go ahead, the other says no, you have to be there five days a week, who are you going to choose >> we had a ceo on last week, stewart, by the way, it's deirdre, who said he didn't care he wants everyone back in the office 100% of the time.

cre3 a.i.'s tom vrabel, embracing a fully back in the office model, doesn't want employees who would like flexibility. he said he has enough candidates to choose from so he only wants the ones who will be in the office do you think that puts him and others who may have that sort of strict adherence to office at a disadvantage >> i think it will be. and i don't think any prediction is going to be 100% accurate at this point, but i think it's going to be a market-based decision if someone said i want to hire a bunch of software engineers and i'm going to pay them $30,000 a year, they're not going to get a lot of options we'll see where it falls on the spectrum, but it's something, the standard is set, expectations are set, and people will have choice there are employees who want to be back in the office, and it's hard to tell whether that's just we miss the office and we want to get back together with people, but for some younger employees. they're fresh out of cleemg, it's a lot of their social life so they want that kind of

interaction, but no one wants to have to commute every day. >> at the same time, lebron james doesn't work from home if you work in a chip fab, you don't work from home there are different circumstances out there and different companies have different cultures as you're looking forward, i'm sure you hope to getting with salesforce more closely, what are the opportunities and challenges of both blending those cultures and churning a path forward out of a pandemic >> i think there's a best of both worlds approach you're right there are jobs that are tied to location, and i was talking to nasa's jet propulsion lab, a longtime slack customer they put it this way, some people have to go to where the rocket ship is on the other hand, there's recruiters, lawyers, all kinds of positions where it's not necessary that they're there all the time and it's hard to unscramble an egg. there's a lot of people who went from a couple hundred days a year of business travel to zero

who maybe are eager to be back on the road, but many more are like, wow, this is amazing i have more time for hobbies, more time with my kids, i spend less time in the car we're going to have a little bit of a pendulum swing the other way as restrictions open up, but i think after that, there will be a pendulum swing backwards. and dwi don't think we're ever going to go back that's the challenge if you think about what is going to be different in the future with february 2020 as your baseline and imagine only small differences, you're going to come to some weird conclusions because we move into the future from where we are right now, and right now, people are forming a lot of expectations and habits they didn't have before. >> that's interesting. especially for people who are starting their careers this new environment is all they know finally, stewart, we always come back to this interview andy jazzy gave to jon fortt earlier in the year. he said what typically happens is you're talking about an idea in the meeting, and the initial idea is not the one you end up

with people start riffing on top of one another, they don't quite get there, but after words, three people leave the meeting, they talk on a whiteboard outside the conference room. that to him is how true innovation happens your argument is it will still happen, only on fewer days of the week >> i definitely don't want to speak for andy, but amazon famously has a culture of we start the meeting with a six-page memo that everyone reads in silence until we're ready to discuss it. it's really the kind of the back and forth, the dialectic between careful consideration writing that is edited for clarity and concision and a depth of thought, and then the freeform collaboration and a little back and forth. that really produces the best results. glitz >> it's going to be fascinating to see how it shakes out stewart, thanks so much. >> thanks for having me. >> and carl, as we get ready for didi's opening trade, we're getting an indicated range between $15 and $16, which is

above where it priced at $14 also take a look at mongo db shares and we have sequoia capital partner pat grady joining me next "tech check" is back in three minutes.

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the hour welcome back to "tech check. jb has more on facebook's bulletin board material for substack in just a moment, but first, let's get back to one market, do >> thanks. the didi ipo the headliner today, but there are at least 17 listings today at the nasdaq and nyse in what is a red hot market for entries to the market. despite a relative slow down in spacs and direct listings in recent month here to discuss me, sequoia capital partner pat grady. ranked as the most active vc firm in 2020 i'm thrilled you can join us >> thank you for having me here in person. >> second quarter was strong average return of about $34%, but that's mostly on the first day. so that really means that retail

investors have been left out is that an issue weren't spacs and direct listings supposed to democratize this a little better >> in the long term, the thing that really matters is the performance of the companies in the near terd, the fact we have ipos, spacs, that is good for founders ultimately, it's going to be good for consumers too >> on a day that we have 17 listings what should investors be looking for to separate the longer term bets, even if we see that initial ipo pop? >> i would zoom out. so if you zoom out, if you boil it all down, in the last 15 years, there are two things that have driven all of the market cap creation it's consumers refocusing their attention around mobile and enterprises replatforming for the cloud. i think if you have a company that is tethered to one of those two trends, it's well positioned for the long term. >> we just had stewart butterfield on i know you saw a bit of that interview. how has the shift to remote or hybrid work affected start-ups are you seeing more just in

silicon valley but beyond forego their traditional headquarters, different companies coming up because of the shift >> we're seeing a ibit of an unbundling office space, you sort of bundled work and relationships you can actually unbundle those two. you can work more efficiently remotely, but you have to dedicate extra time to relationships. we sue a lot of remote start-ups sticking with remote work, but having a point of having more team get-togethers, more dinners, and really solidifying the relationships that sometimes you lose when you're not in the office together every day. >> talktuse about staying private longer versus going public i'm sensing maybe there's somewhat of a shift, particularly the spac market seems to have opened up a responsibility for younger companies with perhaps less proven models to come out earlier. which offer more opportunity and risk to investors. has the mindset shifted in this market around, aside from stripe, around how long you stay private? >> i'm glad you mentioned stripe

because i was going to start there. that's a good example. we partnered with them in 2010, a couple brothers who had yet to process a single payment, and you fast forward a decade or so and the company is a monster and their best days have yet to come stripe is a good example of companies who want to stay private longer spacs on the other hand, spacs provide a pretty interesting alternative because it allows you to tell a more nuanced story. in our portfolio, we had 23 and me, which went public via spack, which is a consumer genetics business we have embark trucks which recently announced a spac which is a self-driving truck company, and bird, a micro mibuilt company. each of those businesses is a little bit of a nontraditional or a novel model it's not as straightforward as your typical sass company, so having the ability to tell a more nuanced story is good >> how does that get better for the public market investor is there more disclosure that could take place is it a matter of rethinking the

road show? there's a lot of questionable companies that are coming public in spac, but then also, a lot, you mentioned 23 and me, that have strong track records and strong grahams as well >> i would start by saying accountability brings out the best in people so the fact that some of these companies can access the public markets earlier than they otherwise might have is ultimately good for public market investors it's a countervailing force to the trend of staying private longer it gives public market investors access to a longer menu of opportunities. >> we have seen some targets, especially in the ev space, get scaled down, not too long after they presented their investor thesis to retail investors there's still so much money in private markets. i wonder, do you think the retail investor in public markets are offering better terms than private markets is that why you're seeing more companies go public via spacs? >> it's hard to say if you can find better valuations and better terms i thin the important thing is to

assess the underlying fundamentals of the business ev is an area we have largely stayed out of in the u.s av, autonomous vehicles, we think is one of the most important trends of the next 10 to 15 years. we have embark trucks and aurora who are well positioned there. >> i have to ask you about robinhood, one of the mostimented ipos they announced this morning they settled with finra, and you mentioned stripe as well, a lot of people have been waiting for that one to go public. what is sort of the deciding factor to make them take that leap >> i certainly can't comment on the specifics of ipo timing for either one of those companies. i can however say one of the beautiful things that robinhood has done is it has democratized access to the financial markets for a much broader swath of people that had access before. in the fullness of time, we think that's going to be a very powerful thing >> for a price, though, their business model has been a controversial sticking point do you think they have moved beyond that and have sort of let their investor base know enough

about that model and this is the right one for them when you have other trading platforms using different models >> payment forward flow was a feature of the financial markets long before robinhood came along, and it is one of many ways they generate revenue >> right, so their characterize, or maybe it was the broader landscape characterizing it as commission-free trading, anyway, thank you so much for being with us today we hope to talk to you again soon in person >> thanks for having me. >> back over to you. >> and it is june 30th, the last trading day of the month and hey, the last trading day of the first half of the year close to what has been a remarkable run for docusign in june up more than 40% it's outperforming the rest of the nasdaq by, let's sigh, innasdaq 100, by a pretty wide margin a lot more "tech check" straight ahead. stay with us

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look out, substack facebook has entered the arena with its own competing newsletter product called bulletin julia has the details. hey, jb. >> hey, carl like substack, bulletin is a way for writers to distribute free or paid news petlers to connect with and grow their fans what's interesting here is bulletin is built on a separate platform, on its own website which will circumvent needing t pay a cut to google or apple facebook says it will support an ad-supported model at some later point. while you don't need a facebook account to subscribe to these, the account will be integrated into features like subscriber only groups as well as audio rooms. the service is starting with a dozen featured writers including

malcolm gladwell and erin andrews as well as jane wells. facebook recruited and is paying these writers for multi-year deals. for now, all of their newsletters are free facebook tells us that many more newsletters are coming and some will be behind a subscription pay wall this is all part of mark zuckerberg's push to draw creators and their fans to facebook's platforms guys, this is really about the land grab in the creator economy. >> speaking of platform competition, you have some fresh reporting on more voices weighing in on anti-trust. >> yeah, that's right, carl. so antitrust regulation is in part designed to prevent giants from squashing upstart competition, but the national venture capital association is opposing proposed legislation, saying these antitrust bills threaten economic growth and could tamp down on -- by tamping down on tech giants' acquisitions of competitors and that could harm innovation sxin

fact competition that's all because nearly 60% of start-ups say they expect to be acquired, according to a recent survey from silicon valley bank. the numbers show selling is a much more likely outcome than an ip orc last year, nearly 900 venture backed companies were acquired compared to the roughly 100 that went public last year. so battery ventures partner michael brown tells us, quote, it makes great headlines to go after the big companies and call them anticompetitor and try to stop acquisitions, but i think the knock-on effects to the broader entrepreneurial e ecosystem is going to far outweigh the benefits of what they're trying to accomplish brown also tells us a lot of ceos in his portfolio don't want to run public companies. they understand how long and challenging that path is to get there. so carl, we'll have to see how these bills shake out and how much these bills couldreally restrict acquisitions of smaller rivals >> yeah.

i want you to weigh in here, but i'm looking at the tape. there's a story crossing speaking of all of this, that amazon has filed a petition to have lena khan recuse herself in light of her repeated criticisms of the company this is going to get more interesting. >> yeah. it certainly will. it certainly will. and julia, combining carl's thought there, certainly responding to that, i'm trying to put these two things together the facebook newsletters and the antitrust thing. yeah, facebook is saying we're not charging creators on this, and so that's a good thing trying to position themselves versus apple but couldn't substack come right back and say, well, that's predatory pricing, facebook. look how big you are with access to all of these consumers? >> well, substack could say that, but then also, you have to remember that facebook is in this battle with apple facebook saying that, look, we are at the whim of apple

they're doing things like charging these fees, and they're also restricting the way we can target ads that's bad for small businesses. so i think all of these things will interplay here, and facebook is really trying to align itself with small businesses and with creators who are in a way a different type of small business, trying to show they're offering them ways to make money and trying to put themselves in opposition to apple which they say is preventing small businesses from being able to target ads effectively enough to make money. yes, it will be very interesting to see how this all shakes out with substack, which is of course, an example of one of the smaller rivals that antitrust regulation might want to protect. >> right as for the venture capital association, julia, obviously, their opposition to these kinds of bills makes sense but i'm trying to think, we haven't really seen any evidence that they would start to close their wallet because of the threat of these things on capitol hill, right? >> well y have actually -- i was

talking to some sources just the other day who said they believe that it's already starting to limit these bills and the antitrust sort of crackdown, this perception there's a lot of scrutiny right now, is already starting to limit the types and number of acquisitions that facebook and the other tech giants are making. you know, facebook and some other companies like it have traditionally done a lot of acqui hires, buying up smaller companies, both for the talent and also for the technology, and even though facebook has continued to make some acquisitions, there is a sense that if these bills continue to move forward, and a lot of them really target their ability, facebook's ability and these other tech giants' ability to buy up smaller rivals, that could really put a very big chill on the m&a landscape here. >> that's interesting. wow. julia, thank you and speaking of substack, the ceo of substack, chris best, is going to join us on "tech check" a week from today. you don't want to miss that. >> looking forward to that meantime, appears to be sales season for developers.

shopify becoming the latest company to announce it would no longer take a cut of the first million dollars that any developer makes. that's developers who have apps on the shopify platform, not munch nl merchants who are selling. that move comes as names like microsoft, google, apple, amazon have all reduced fees in some way over the past few months, with heightened pressure from regulators happening, but also, something tells me isn't all about regulators they want to maintain momentum coming out of the thick of the pandemic when people relied on digital platforms, digital commerce juicing their creative ecosystem to make money is one way to do it >> it's certainly getting more difficult to make that monopoly argument when you have different platforms coming out with different types of if hes, right? so this topping is moving very, very quickly, and we know, we

have talked about the regulators, how they can move slowly but this new generation of regulators, lena khan being one of them, maybe has a different playbook or a set of tools, but that headline you just brought us, very interesting how amazon is reportedly asking her to recuse herself from that investigation. >> right jon, i keep thinking back to when the economy was less robust and you had these cloud service companies grant some forgiveness to customers who maybe couldn't pay their bills every six months, let's say. you have to fertilize the ground every now and then, and maybe this give-back to some of the developers is a chance to sort of reap what you sow down the road >> hopefully, it's the response of hypercompetitive environment trying to incentivize developmenter developers to be creative that's what you want to see happen whether it's the app store or shopify, b2b, that's healthy i hope it's not companies that certainly are not dominant, dee,

just responding to the possibility, the threat of regulation that might not even have a strong legal basis. that would actually, i think, be bad, because then companies wouldn't be taking in profit that they're due, and that's money they can't pay people, and they can't use to grow the business >> that's a good point, jon. meantime, take a look at these shares the supply chain ahead of the iphone 13. that's the call out of barclays as names surge double digits a breadok wn on that trade on the other side of this break stay with us

welcome back buying the supply chain. barclays out with a new note calling for a buy on iphone component suppliers as apple is likely going to release its next phone this fall. all up so far this week. apple itself up nearly 10% for the month of june, as counterpoint research reports today that the iphone 12 line filled 100 million units worldwide by april it beat the iphone 11's pace by two full months. turning to other chip makers, intel is flat for the week, while rival amd sees a boost, more than 10%, after intel announced a delay of the new version of its service chip, code nape sapphire rapids.

that's pushed into 2022 instead of appearing at the end of this year just showing how high the wall is for pat gelsinger to climb to get not only the company itself but the narrative around intel turned around. >> i'm curious to know, jon, your thoughts, because so many times we see a succession at a high-profile c-suite, and i guess you could argue he did come in with some pretty high expectations we know these things don't turn on a dime. >> i would say it's interesting last week to see the executive shuffle, very interesting to see sondra rivera moving from chief people officer back into a c-suite more operating role over server, as well as some other arenas these things, the road can be bumpy. i think the question is, when it comes to process technology, when it comes to getting those fabs running, when it comes to getting the right kind of aid that appears to be coming from the federal government, dee, how well is intel going to be able

to position itself and execute despite some of these bumps. >> yeah, and that's a question that could take years to answer, as well. meantime, nvidia, can't forget, a little lower today, but up 240% since the start of 2020 meantime, i want to mention another story. the gloves are off use the lobbying power against one another. the agreement was made in 2015 by then two relatively freshly new ceos, satya nadal and sundar pichai since then the tech landscape has changed significantly. the two now compete directly with software productivity google stepping up its efforts in the cloud tarring microsoft's azure. the relationship also being tested as regulators increase anti-trust scrutiny of big tech. and meanwhile microsoft -- this is interesting, appears to be preparing for a regulatory battle, axios reporting it has planned to increase the sides of

the legal times buy 20%. carl, i suppose you don't get to a $2 trillion market weight cap without raising a few eyebrows and microsoft is at least preparing to perhaps be under more scrutiny. it's been pretty left out so far. >> it's definitely been toward the bottom end of the ladder of regular risk at least that's the typical view but, jon, it's going to be interesting. do you provide a unified front in front of the hill even as you battle it out day to day in the business world it's the definition of frenemy. >> i know that there are the narratives kind of microsoft versus apple now microsoft versus google. i might argue -- i'll argue it right now, versus six years ago when they made this truce microsoft and google aren't core rigles bing isn't a thing for microsoft right now. they're more z focused on

amazon google has to be too with amazon rising as a cloud competitor and advertising senator. are they rivals? a bit. but also both a lot more amazon-focused, dee than six years ago. >> you can have more than one rival. the question, i guess, jon, on the other hand is how much distraction can you take if you are battling all the tech giants there we go, the graphic against, as much as we can use that but, yeah, as to a unified front, carl, the cracks are certainly showing. we'll see if it changes as regulators get tougher, smarter, perhaps quicker. in the mean look at virgin galactic, a double downgrade for the company. next plus the opening trade of didi tech check back after one last break.

plus the u.s. surgeon general on the rise in delta variant covid cases across the country >> the facts the news the truth with shepard smith, 7 eastern, cnbc it's one of a whopping 14 debuts taking place at the nasdaq today leg zoom going public in an ipo. the ceo dan wernikov joins us exclusively. this is a 20-year-old company, only two and a half years younger than google itself

put the strategy into context for us at this point you come from intuit which gets thought of as a replacement for professionals who did things like taxes in the past but more and more has become an augmenter of the process giving more power to the consumer it legalzoom moving in that direction as well? >> it is it is. it's a great question. i'll start by saying our mission is to democratize law. we troy try to provide a low cost solution, that's simple making it less intimidating for small businesses to get started. it's always been a balance of, you know, making sure the customers could do what they need to do on their own. and also if they need to get access to the right attorney that knows the matter and has done it at high volume so they can handle it efficiently for a small business and so it's always going to be the hybrid, this idea of some people are comfortable and confident and some people need a little bit more help and that's where we partner with independent network of lawyers >> how much opportunity is

there, then, both to build awareness of that the concept? because i think a lot of people think of it as either or i can go legalzoom or get a real person and how much opportunity is there, similar to the intuit playbook, to get value from the legal side, from lawyers and helping them access more customers and be more efficient in handling them >> i mean, it's interesting. today you only have a couple of options. you either have a very low cost solution which doesn't provide any guidance or you have to go to the extreme of now you pay for an expert and you worried about the time you spend with the expert we try to get right in the middle of those two opportunities. and -- and use technology really to make the expert that much more efficient the market weight itself is extremely large. we're talking about a 50 billionish s.a.m today the digital consumption is extremely low. so, you know, thinking about legal services, we only have 8% of our services are delivered

online versus other categories like accounting where you see much more adoption of online solutions. so that's the opportunity that's in front of us and when we get really excited. >> i think i see the indicative price behind you look forward to legalzoom opening. i believe you're raising around half a billion dollars in capital to put to work, dan. thank you. >> thank you >> in the mean, guys we are getting a statement from amazon on the request for lena khan to recuse herself from the and i trust investigation. it reads her body of work and public statements demonstrate that she has prejudged the outcome of matters the ftc may examine during her term and under established law preclude her from participating in such matters. carl, amazon adds, even large companies have the right to an impartial investigation. this could be a very interesting

development, because do people know amazon and the anti-trust implications as well as lena khan. >> it's fascinating. the whole argument, jon wsho, i was thinking to myself, they don't comment on every wrinkle of of american busy but the jedi contract or planning a second headquarters they swing hard this is one example. >> they do you wonder how this works out. because the setup was while lena khan was chosen for the position because of her strong take on so many of these matters -- and that strong take might be exactly what some of the companies focus on on why she shouldn't weigh in if that happens, what is the playbook then? dee, it could get complicated. >> yeah, it would be an amazing precedent if this moves minds. we'll find out later quite a statement from amazon today. finally a comment on virgin galactic today you might have heard earlier this morning it's lower on the heelsfest rare double downgrade

going to underperform, maintain the $41 price target saying any premium on the stock has been priced in ar last week's rally and will only dwindle as more commercial space companies go public. $14 in may went to $57 earlier in the month and currently now 46 time for the half. carl, thank you very much and welcome, everybody to the "halftime report." right at the halfway point of the year in for scott wapner i'm tyler mathen, final trading day of the quarter, the month, the the half cutting foam off the top what's hid ahead for the second half we'll debate it and where to put money to work from this day forward. our investment committee amy rascon on the phone. chief investment strategy of chevy chase trust, megan shue head of strategy at. jo