Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Instant Reaction: Microsoft, AMD Earnings
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek
- 0:12Speaker 1: inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's
- 0:15Speaker 1: most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech
- 0:19Speaker 1: news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer
- 0:23Speaker 1: and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
- 0:26Speaker 2: Okay, the call has not started yet, Carol. Investors are
- 0:29Speaker 2: still taking note of the numbers that we got from Microsoft.
- 0:33Speaker 2: Shares down six point eight percent in the after hours.
- 0:37Speaker 2: The company reported Microsoft Cloud revenue for the fourth quarter
- 0:40Speaker 2: that met the average analyst estimate capex though coming into
- 0:44Speaker 2: at thirteen point eighty seven billion, that was higher than
- 0:47Speaker 2: analysts wanted to see at thirteen point twenty seven billion dollars.
- 0:50Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of interesting, So let's get to it. Dan
- 0:52Speaker 3: Morgan is with a senior portfolio manager at Sonvs Trust
- 0:55Speaker 3: Company about twenty billion in acids under management, joining us
- 0:58Speaker 3: once again from Atlanta. Hey, Dan, so good to have
- 1:00Speaker 3: you back with us. Having said that, yeah, Hey, it
- 1:05Speaker 3: feels like all of the numbers are kind of right
- 1:07Speaker 3: where the street was expecting. We were talking ahead of
- 1:10Speaker 3: it that we needed to see some outperformance in order
- 1:12Speaker 3: for investors to be impressed. Are you impressed with these
- 1:16Speaker 3: results from Microsoft?
- 1:19Speaker 4: Well, you're right, Carol. You know, the two numbers that
- 1:21Speaker 4: really stay out stand out to me. You've already mentioned
- 1:23Speaker 4: these as terms of ASER growth only up twenty nine percent.
- 1:27Speaker 4: They had guided on the previous third quarter that they
- 1:30Speaker 4: would hit growth between thirty and thirty two. The street
- 1:33Speaker 4: was actually looking for something north of that. And then Tim,
- 1:36Speaker 4: you mentioned that Campex number coming in a little bit
- 1:39Speaker 4: higher than expected. Of course, there's some rollover going on
- 1:43Speaker 4: right now from the Alphabet report that we came out earlier,
- 1:48Speaker 4: when it really raised concerns about, you know, how much
- 1:52Speaker 4: gain are you getting in regards to your AI initiatives
- 1:57Speaker 4: versus the amount of CAPEX that you're spending. And I
- 2:00Speaker 4: was kind of hoping, Carol and Tim that this Microsoft
- 2:03Speaker 4: report might kind of dampen those worries and just kind
- 2:06Speaker 4: of blow numbers out, you know, ASER up thirty four
- 2:10Speaker 4: percent and so forth, But unfortunately it was a little
- 2:13Speaker 4: bit shy. So I think that conversation is going to
- 2:16Speaker 4: have to come back in in these concerns that we
- 2:18Speaker 4: saw after the Alphabet report are going to reignite again.
- 2:23Speaker 2: Yeah, Shares down six point six percent. Right now, help
- 2:27Speaker 2: us help us understand exactly, Dan, where we should be
- 2:31Speaker 2: seeing the results of Microsoft's investments in AI and in
- 2:37Speaker 2: open AI. Where should we be looking in this earnings
- 2:40Speaker 2: report to see benefits from AI.
- 2:45Speaker 4: Well, foremost is in the data center, right, Tim and Carroll,
- 2:49Speaker 4: That's been the area where we've seen the biggest amount
- 2:51Speaker 4: of spending. That's going to be out of their ASER group,
- 2:54Speaker 4: which is encompassed in the umbrella of Commercial Cloud and
- 3:00Speaker 4: Intelligent Cloud. Those are the two segments that report. Of course,
- 3:04Speaker 4: we don't get the hard numbers. We just get a
- 3:06Speaker 4: growth rate from Microsoft. That's what they disclose to us.
- 3:10Speaker 4: But if you look at intelligent Cloud and Commercial Cloud,
- 3:13Speaker 4: they both looks like they both kind of keen in line.
- 3:17Speaker 4: I noticed the cloud segment was a little bit shy
- 3:20Speaker 4: three point eight to zero versus eight four, which I
- 3:24Speaker 4: think was the estimate. The other area that we'd like
- 3:27Speaker 4: to get a little more clarity on, Tim M and
- 3:29Speaker 4: Carroll is what's going on with copilot. That's kind of
- 3:32Speaker 4: buried in a lot of different areas, but it's hard
- 3:35Speaker 4: to distinguish it. But we're always hoping that Microsoft, maybe
- 3:38Speaker 4: on the conference call, will come out and basically release
- 3:41Speaker 4: how many seats they've been able to license on that product,
- 3:45Speaker 4: because that's another one of their core AI products. We
- 3:49Speaker 4: all know that they ink that deal back a year
- 3:51Speaker 4: and a half ago with chat GPT, But that's kind
- 3:54Speaker 4: of hard to really figure where that comes into the
- 3:56Speaker 4: earnings reports. But you know, the key areas is ASER growth,
- 4:00Speaker 4: commercial cloud, intelligent cloud, and then any additional information that
- 4:04Speaker 4: we can get on copilot in terms of additional disclosure.
- 4:09Speaker 4: So again, guys, Tim and Carroll, it's very difficult, right
- 4:12Speaker 4: to really distinguish, you know, we look at these segment
- 4:16Speaker 4: data points that came in on this, you know, headlines
- 4:19Speaker 4: coming through. It is very hard to distinguish exactly where
- 4:23Speaker 4: all this capex is impacting in regards to AI initiatives.
- 4:27Speaker 3: So what do you Okay, So wait, you just threw
- 4:29Speaker 3: a lot at us. So what is the question to
- 4:31Speaker 3: Microsoft in the aftermarket or on the analyst call Dan
- 4:36Speaker 3: to kind of get more clarity to try and figure
- 4:39Speaker 3: out if the AI spend is maybe not living up
- 4:42Speaker 3: to expectations or it is slowing down.
- 4:46Speaker 4: Right, So if we look back, for example, Carol and
- 4:48Speaker 4: Tim and we look at the last quarter they came
- 4:51Speaker 4: out and specifically said that ASER was positively benefited about
- 4:57Speaker 4: seven hundred basis points compared to six center basis points
- 5:01Speaker 4: in the second quarter in terms of increased growth coming
- 5:05Speaker 4: out of the data centered unit, which is huge for them.
- 5:07Speaker 4: That's huge recipe for their overall growth. So obviously, Carroll Tim,
- 5:13Speaker 4: that's a number that everyone's going to be looking at
- 5:15Speaker 4: when they publicly disclose of the twenty nine percent growth
- 5:19Speaker 4: they did in ASER. What percentage of that or what
- 5:23Speaker 4: boost did you get from AI and the past they've
- 5:25Speaker 4: disclosed that, So that's a really key number that everyone's
- 5:29Speaker 4: going to be queuing in on the conference call.
- 5:31Speaker 2: What's the question that you have for Satinadella?
- 5:36Speaker 4: Well, I think you know, again, you know, just trying
- 5:38Speaker 4: to weigh out CAPEX expense. You know, where is it going?
- 5:42Speaker 4: I mean, let's be let's be honest, Carroll Tim. I mean,
- 5:45Speaker 4: you're looking at a company it's going to probably spend
- 5:47Speaker 4: about fifty billion dollars in campex, So everybody wants to
- 5:51Speaker 4: know what kind of ROI are you getting from that?
- 5:53Speaker 4: And at this point we really haven't seen a lot
- 5:55Speaker 4: of ROI from anybody, So again it's just them laying
- 5:58Speaker 4: out that roadmap in and again going into what they're
- 6:02Speaker 4: doing and their hopes in terms of how this will
- 6:04Speaker 4: come to fruition and pay off for them. Yes, I
- 6:07Speaker 4: think that's what everyone's going to be really focusing on
- 6:09Speaker 4: Tim and Carroll after that Alphabet report.
- 6:11Speaker 2: I mean, how, how does this response from investors explain
- 6:16Speaker 2: how investors are pricing companies right now? Because Microsoft reported
- 6:21Speaker 2: a slight four tenths of one percent beat on EPs
- 6:25Speaker 2: and then a small one tenth of one percent miss
- 6:29Speaker 2: on cloud revenue, and Microsoft shares are just getting punished
- 6:33Speaker 2: after hours.
- 6:34Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, Tim, the stock really traded up anticipation
- 6:38Speaker 4: of the reporter. Is actually trading at forty four times earnings,
- 6:42Speaker 4: about thirty eight thirty nine times Physical year twenty twenty
- 6:45Speaker 4: four estimates the average pe on Microsoft over the last
- 6:50Speaker 4: five years is about thirty two times earning. So these stocks,
- 6:53Speaker 4: including Alphabet, Meta is going to report here in the
- 6:57Speaker 4: next day or two. We've got Apple and Amazon all
- 7:00Speaker 4: are trading at the very high bandwidth of their multiples
- 7:04Speaker 4: because of excitement surrounding AI. So it doesn't surprise me
- 7:08Speaker 4: Tim and Carroll that unless this report is perfect, it's
- 7:12Speaker 4: going to sell off. And there was enough in here.
- 7:14Speaker 4: As you mentioned Tim, beyond just the top line and
- 7:17Speaker 4: bottom line beat, you mentioned the commercial cloud unit. Kind
- 7:20Speaker 4: of a miss on aser that's going to lead to
- 7:23Speaker 4: a selloff on the stock.
- 7:24Speaker 3: Hey, I do want to mention too, AMD just crossing
- 7:27Speaker 3: the Bloomberg terminal. Second quarter adjusted EPs sixty nine cents
- 7:31Speaker 3: is share that's a penny better than what the street
- 7:33Speaker 3: was expecting. Second quarter revenue five point eight billion. The
- 7:36Speaker 3: estimate on the street is five point seventy three billion.
- 7:39Speaker 3: Second quarter capex one hundred and fifty four million versus
- 7:42Speaker 3: an estimate of one hundred and twenty seven point one million,
- 7:45Speaker 3: So that is coming in higher than forecast second quarter
- 7:48Speaker 3: just an operating margin twenty two percent, that's better than
- 7:51Speaker 3: the street estimate of twenty one point eight percent and
- 7:54Speaker 3: giving some guidance in terms of the outlook. Third quarter
- 7:58Speaker 3: revenue six point four to seven billion dollars, and that
- 8:02Speaker 3: compares with an estimate TIM of six point sixty two billion.
- 8:05Speaker 2: Yeah, we're seeing shares move higher sharply now in the
- 8:08Speaker 2: after hours as traders look at what's going on. Up
- 8:11Speaker 2: four point six percent carroll for AMD right now in
- 8:16Speaker 2: the green ceas third quarter adjusted gross margin about fifty
- 8:19Speaker 2: three point five percent. That came in below estimates of
- 8:22Speaker 2: fifty three point eight percent. Dan, I know you're just
- 8:24Speaker 2: getting these numbers as soon as we get them, but
- 8:27Speaker 2: do you have any thoughts on what we're hearing from AMD?
- 8:31Speaker 4: You know, Tim and Carroll, the big number that we're
- 8:33Speaker 4: waiting for AMD was their data center segment. The expectations
- 8:38Speaker 4: for that group was to grow over one hundred percent.
- 8:42Speaker 4: Everybody was worried Tim and Carroll coming in his report that
- 8:46Speaker 4: we might get some sort of color from Microsoft that
- 8:50Speaker 4: they might have been backing off in terms of purchasing
- 8:54Speaker 4: AMD's AI chips, which are the MI I three hundred
- 8:58Speaker 4: x I three hundred A. That's what the big concerns
- 9:01Speaker 4: were coming into this report. But at least based on
- 9:04Speaker 4: what you've told me so far, it appears that there's
- 9:07Speaker 4: been no aberration in terms of demand for those products. Yeah,
- 9:11Speaker 4: they said extremely welcome record.
- 9:13Speaker 2: They beat so record. Data center up one hundred and
- 9:17Speaker 2: fifteen percent year over year, So that number coming in high.
- 9:20Speaker 3: Two point eight three billion versus one point three two
- 9:23Speaker 3: billion year over year. So all right, step to watch,
- 9:26Speaker 3: Dan Morgan, thank you so much. AMD A different story.
- 9:30Speaker 2: Yeah, I AMD's up by two point six percent right now.
- 9:33Speaker 2: The company reported revenue of six point four to seven
- 9:37Speaker 2: billion dollars versus estimates of six point six two billion dollars.
- 9:41Speaker 2: Adjusted earnings per share came in just above estimates at
- 9:45Speaker 2: sixty nine cents, and then data center revenue coming in
- 9:49Speaker 2: at two point eight three billion versus estimates of two
- 9:51Speaker 2: point seven five billion dollars. With us now to break
- 9:55Speaker 2: down these numbers and more, we got Ed Ludlow, co
- 9:58Speaker 2: host of Bloomberg Technology on Bloomberg TV. He joins us
- 10:00Speaker 2: here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. We were just
- 10:02Speaker 2: talking to Dan Morgan over at Sonovas he said data
- 10:05Speaker 2: center revenue, they wanted to see growth over one hundred percent.
- 10:07Speaker 2: It came in at one hundred and fifteen percent. Is
- 10:09Speaker 2: that what has investors so excited?
- 10:10Speaker 5: Yes, And to put it in Layman's terms, it more
- 10:12Speaker 5: than doubled year on year, and it shows sort of
- 10:14Speaker 5: the evolution of AMD from a standing start to taking
- 10:18Speaker 5: a tiny little bite out of the market share that
- 10:21Speaker 5: Nvidia has for AI accelerators. We actually didn't learn that
- 10:24Speaker 5: much in that release.
- 10:25Speaker 1: You know.
- 10:26Speaker 5: The expectation was that data center revenue would grow more
- 10:29Speaker 5: than one hundred percent. You're in year. You're going to
- 10:31Speaker 5: have to wait for the call because the number we
- 10:32Speaker 5: want is the full year forecast for their AI accelerator family,
- 10:37Speaker 5: the mi I three hundred and with that will know
- 10:39Speaker 5: if things are going better than expected in their efforts
- 10:42Speaker 5: against in video or just as we thought they were.
- 10:45Speaker 3: Any questions that you've got besides that for AMD.
- 10:48Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, the market for high performance GPUs or AI
- 10:52Speaker 5: accelerators that we train large language models on looks as
- 10:55Speaker 5: follows in. Nvidia will probably do one hundred billion dollars
- 10:59Speaker 5: of sales in that market this year to AMD four billion,
- 11:03Speaker 5: maybe a little more. We'll find out Intel five hundred million.
- 11:06Speaker 5: So the real question for me is what's different between
- 11:09Speaker 5: the three of them. You know, they all talk about
- 11:12Speaker 5: how they benchmark against one another in terms of energy
- 11:14Speaker 5: performance and their ability to process data. But the real
- 11:17Speaker 5: question for investors is, like, if we're going to believe
- 11:19Speaker 5: that you can grow in this market against Nvidia, in
- 11:22Speaker 5: which cases are you? Why would a big enterprise company
- 11:26Speaker 5: or a META, for example, choose your A accelerator over another.
- 11:30Speaker 5: Meta's very very solidly behind in video, right, it's buying
- 11:34Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of GPUs from them, And I think
- 11:37Speaker 5: that's really interesting that you know, what do all these
- 11:41Speaker 5: things get used for? Because right now it seems like
- 11:43Speaker 5: in video seems the de facto choice for large language
- 11:47Speaker 5: model training.
- 11:47Speaker 2: What do all these things get used for? Because the
- 11:50Speaker 2: reason I'm asking this question is because last week we
- 11:52Speaker 2: saw alphabet cap x come in above estimates. We saw
- 11:56Speaker 2: it come above estimates today with Microsoft. A lot of
- 11:59Speaker 2: that has to do with the buildout of infrastructure around AI.
- 12:03Speaker 2: What is this getting used for and when our investor
- 12:05Speaker 2: is going to start to see it show up in
- 12:06Speaker 2: the bottom line.
- 12:07Speaker 5: This is a really worthwhile conversation to have, even in
- 12:09Speaker 5: the context of earnings where you kind of focus on
- 12:11Speaker 5: the numbers. When we talk about chips used for AI,
- 12:14Speaker 5: we're not talking about sort of a bagg of chips
- 12:16Speaker 5: you throw over your shoulder and look, I've got some.
- 12:18Speaker 5: The reality is they go into many, many racks of servers,
- 12:21Speaker 5: and those servers get lined up into massive data centers.
- 12:25Speaker 5: And while we don't have a sense yet of how
- 12:28Speaker 5: much money has been made through services or software and AI,
- 12:31Speaker 5: not really. I mean, look at Microsoft's earnings as an example.
- 12:33Speaker 5: We'll get to it. I think people need to understand
- 12:36Speaker 5: that the workloads have increased massively. The training of the
- 12:39Speaker 5: models requires an enormous amount of compute, and so Microsoft Aws, Amazon,
- 12:44Speaker 5: Google Cloud Platform have no choice but to buy these
- 12:47Speaker 5: chips because they work for that purpose and build more
- 12:49Speaker 5: data centers and the nervousnesses will hold on. Whereas all
- 12:53Speaker 5: the money going on the other side of the big moneyment.
- 12:55Speaker 3: Sages, it's kind of like, build it and they will come, Well,
- 12:57Speaker 3: will you know, are they coming? Will they continue to
- 12:59Speaker 3: come and will payoff? Be there? So I mean, I
- 13:02Speaker 3: feel like that's still the big million, tillion dollar crush.
- 13:04Speaker 5: So let's jump into Microsoft, right. They very narrowly missed
- 13:07Speaker 5: on their cloud services revenue or growth in cloud services revenue.
- 13:11Speaker 5: I'm doing the math, but basically they had fifteen percent
- 13:14Speaker 5: overall top line growth from just below thirty percent growth
- 13:17Speaker 5: in the Azure unit. And the headline on the Bloomberg
- 13:20Speaker 5: terminal eight points of contribution to as your revenue growth
- 13:23Speaker 5: came from artificial intelligence. We readheaded it, so it must
- 13:26Speaker 5: be important.
- 13:27Speaker 3: Eight hundred basis point. Dan Morgan said, what was seven
- 13:30Speaker 3: hundred bass points as your increased growth for the data
- 13:34Speaker 3: center group? So he was looking for, I think a
- 13:36Speaker 3: number that was comparable or above that. So that seems impressive.
- 13:39Speaker 5: And sequentially it's an improvement from the prior quarter, but
- 13:43Speaker 5: it doesn't really tell us anything. And this is what
- 13:45Speaker 5: I mean by the money machine. So capex is the
- 13:47Speaker 5: money going in. It's the number of dollars Microsoft spends, right,
- 13:50Speaker 5: But what we don't have a good clear Layman's explanation
- 13:54Speaker 5: is how many dollars are coming out the other side.
- 13:56Speaker 5: You'd hope it was several more dollars for every dollar
- 13:59Speaker 5: you put in. Cloud growth is important, but AI contribution
- 14:03Speaker 5: can mean many things. It can mean running workloads, or
- 14:06Speaker 5: storing data or doing all kinds of things. It's not
- 14:09Speaker 5: evidence of sales of a generative AI tool.
- 14:11Speaker 2: Can it be better placed advertisements against Instagram reels ed too?
- 14:19Speaker 5: So this is why I think a lot of people
- 14:21Speaker 5: are very interested in meta because we've talked a lot
- 14:24Speaker 5: about how in the first half of this year the
- 14:26Speaker 5: majority of the game on the SMP five hundred is
- 14:28Speaker 5: attributable to those mag seven games. The idea that we
- 14:31Speaker 5: believe the infrastructure will pay off in top line growth,
- 14:34Speaker 5: in the EPs growth, even if they have stretched valuations.
- 14:37Speaker 5: A lot of investors I speak to see a point
- 14:39Speaker 5: of difference in meta. They're making all the same infrastructure investments.
- 14:42Speaker 5: They're a developer of large language models with open source,
- 14:45Speaker 5: but they have social platforms where you can believe more
- 14:49Speaker 5: near term that you drive growth in your existing advertising
- 14:52Speaker 5: based business because you're using smart artificial intelligence technology. There
- 14:56Speaker 5: are many investors I speak to that believe that Microsoft
- 14:59Speaker 5: doesn't have that. I mean, with respect, you guys probably
- 15:01Speaker 5: have a longer standing relationship with Microsoft than I do.
- 15:04Speaker 5: You know, in the early nineties when I started using computer,
- 15:07Speaker 5: that's what was there. They've always been good at selling software.
- 15:11Speaker 5: They still do that. It's just it's not clear to
- 15:13Speaker 5: us which the AI part is. What they've really done
- 15:16Speaker 5: is just make their existing software offering is a little
- 15:18Speaker 5: bit better.
- 15:18Speaker 2: I've heard good things about copilotes in the sense of
- 15:21Speaker 2: on Microsoft teams. I mean, I think Carroly, you did
- 15:23Speaker 2: this during one of your prep calls for some of
- 15:25Speaker 2: the conferences that you've gone to, you know, instead of
- 15:27Speaker 2: taking notes during that, yeah, you know, copilot will actually
- 15:30Speaker 2: spit out some pretty solid notes. Take the notes with
- 15:33Speaker 2: And I've heard from some folks in financial firms who
- 15:35Speaker 2: use it ad for getting actionable items return to them
- 15:39Speaker 2: after a car.
- 15:39Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a good way of boosting one's efficiency or
- 15:43Speaker 5: aggregating information very quickly. But at the same how much
- 15:48Speaker 5: does that move a financial thinking yeah, And what we're
- 15:51Speaker 5: talking about here, I think the show me the money conversation.
- 15:55Speaker 5: It's not a consumer like me at my PC thinking wow,
- 15:58Speaker 5: AI is wonderful. These are enterprise customers and you want
- 16:01Speaker 5: to see they're committing big contracts to deck out their
- 16:04Speaker 5: ten thousand person company with Microsoft Copilot. That's where the
- 16:09Speaker 5: money is to be made.
- 16:10Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about the conversation we had was at
- 16:11Speaker 3: last week about workers saying, Okay, all the bosses said AI,
- 16:14Speaker 3: our generative AI was going to help me be more productive,
- 16:17Speaker 3: And in fact, it's stressing people out. It's stressing people out,
- 16:20Speaker 3: and they're not necessarily finding those productivity gains. Are we ed?
- 16:24Speaker 3: You know, when I think about technological cycles, is it
- 16:27Speaker 3: just going to take some time for this to kind
- 16:29Speaker 3: of work its way through in terms of jen AI
- 16:33Speaker 3: really making an impact on how we work and creating
- 16:36Speaker 3: those productivity gains.
- 16:38Speaker 5: I mean in the near term. That's why Microsoft's down
- 16:40Speaker 5: seven percent and after hours because investors had hoped it
- 16:43Speaker 5: would be now and it's not. It is probably it's.
- 16:45Speaker 3: Still many months or years ago wish, right.
- 16:48Speaker 5: But you also have to say that thirty percent top
- 16:50Speaker 5: line growth year on year for the second quarter in
- 16:52Speaker 5: a row of azure is pretty good, you know, in
- 16:55Speaker 5: any other sector industry you go, Wow, what an impressive
- 16:57Speaker 5: set of earnings, right, even if you slightly miss estimates.
- 17:00Speaker 5: There's something. I'm trying to tie all of this together
- 17:02Speaker 5: like it's one quarter print in a big newsweek, but
- 17:05Speaker 5: I think that it's very telling the comments of Mark
- 17:07Speaker 5: Zuckerberg and Jensen One yesterday on stage in Denver that
- 17:11Speaker 5: right now, AI is for the knowledge worker. It's for
- 17:14Speaker 5: a computer scientist who has to do it for their
- 17:16Speaker 5: job every day. And the vast majority of businesses, even
- 17:19Speaker 5: if they know they have to invest in it, haven't
- 17:21Speaker 5: quite worked out what they're supposed to.
- 17:23Speaker 1: Do with it.
- 17:24Speaker 2: But that's not what the promise of AI is going
- 17:26Speaker 2: to be.
- 17:26Speaker 4: Now.
- 17:26Speaker 2: Promise of AI is, you know, for lack of a
- 17:29Speaker 2: better term, getting rid of customer support agents who you
- 17:33Speaker 2: call because it's so expensive for a company to pay
- 17:36Speaker 2: them that you know, the idea is they'll create programs
- 17:39Speaker 2: that will do their work for them.
- 17:41Speaker 4: Yes.
- 17:41Speaker 5: So like one example is a startup called in the Van.
- 17:43Speaker 5: I just pluck it out of my head because I
- 17:44Speaker 5: saw a billboard I drove past it the other day.
- 17:47Speaker 5: Think about like if you have some travel disruption, or
- 17:49Speaker 5: you are providing technology to a like package holiday website,
- 17:53Speaker 5: and you go, my flight's cancel. Get me on another.
- 17:55Speaker 5: The vision is that the agent has enough intelligence to
- 17:59Speaker 5: say there's a flight at four, I'll move you on
- 18:01Speaker 5: to it our refund. I'm doing this of my own
- 18:04Speaker 5: volition based on the data available to me, and it's
- 18:06Speaker 5: getting there.
- 18:07Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 18:07Speaker 5: But also the consuming's willingness to use that is important.
- 18:11Speaker 5: Like I'm not using AI to write my scripts for
- 18:13Speaker 5: Bloomberg Technology every morning because I still feel that please
- 18:16Speaker 5: please keep me in my job as a journalist. I'm
- 18:19Speaker 5: better suited.
- 18:19Speaker 2: We've tried it. It's track right, So maybe I'm a
- 18:22Speaker 2: bad prompt engineer. Maybe that's the problem, but we have
- 18:24Speaker 2: not been able to pull it off yet.
- 18:25Speaker 4: Ed.
- 18:26Speaker 3: Yeah, although we talk about it. If there is a
- 18:27Speaker 3: point where it is actually really good in terms of
- 18:30Speaker 3: writing introductions, how great it would be to free us
- 18:33Speaker 3: up to do things like booking guests and doing things
- 18:35Speaker 3: like that or researcher what have you, kind of move
- 18:38Speaker 3: it to a higher level. All right, so alphabet, yeah, Microsoft,
- 18:44Speaker 3: So now we move on to what Meta. We're going
- 18:46Speaker 3: to move on to Amazon. What are you thinking about
- 18:48Speaker 3: the rest of the space.
- 18:49Speaker 5: So the thing about alphabet is it goes first and
- 18:52Speaker 5: you learn a lot about the week that's to come.
- 18:54Speaker 5: But the big takeaway from that earnings. Even though we
- 18:56Speaker 5: focused on Capex, which you've been talking your guests about
- 18:59Speaker 5: for forty eight hours, and we focused on cloud growth,
- 19:01Speaker 5: the most important takeaway was it was their search business
- 19:04Speaker 5: that was the biggest contributors to growth. And they didn't
- 19:07Speaker 5: expressly say that it was AI that did that. They
- 19:10Speaker 5: just said it was our search business. They old fashioned
- 19:12Speaker 5: bread and butter search business. And so when you look
- 19:14Speaker 5: ahead to a Meta or an Amazon, you're going to
- 19:17Speaker 5: get AWS cloud growth from Amazon, You're going to get
- 19:20Speaker 5: Meta talking up at Capex and it's AI agents. But
- 19:23Speaker 5: it's very likely that they'll also say growth came from
- 19:27Speaker 5: one of our many other businesses. That's why they have
- 19:29Speaker 5: some differentiation. But that might also be a cause for disappointment.
- 19:32Speaker 2: Do the increasing visibility of AI agents within what's Happened
- 19:36Speaker 2: within Instagram? Does that do anything for the bottom line?
- 19:40Speaker 5: They hope?
- 19:40Speaker 4: So.
- 19:41Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know how many of Meta's platforms
- 19:43Speaker 5: you guys are on. On most of them, yeah, I
- 19:45Speaker 5: like Instagram What's Happened? I use the Meta AI quite
- 19:49Speaker 5: a lot in the search function. Right, it's basically another
- 19:53Speaker 5: chat GPT for want of a better comparison Lama, Yes, exactly,
- 19:57Speaker 5: it's better AI built on Lama. But the probably most
- 20:01Speaker 5: interesting example is Facebook Marketplace, where people are buying and
- 20:04Speaker 5: selling their own secondhand goods, right or dealing is a
- 20:08Speaker 5: small business as an advertiser on the platform. I think
- 20:11Speaker 5: that's where Meta really sees AI agents adding value. It
- 20:15Speaker 5: just automates and makes more efficient that business transaction.
- 20:19Speaker 3: All right, everybody, that's a wrap. Ed Lo Love, of course,
- 20:22Speaker 3: co host of Bloomberg Tech on Bloomberg TV.