In short
AI industry updates and market context, plus youth-safety, AI cybersecurity testing failures, and tech investing/antitrust.
Guests (backgrounds)
- Shereen Ghafari (Bloomberg team; broke Anthropic ARR story).
- Janice Henderson (Portfolio Manager, Head of Technology Research) and Denny Fish (Portfolio Manager; discusses AI supply chain/semis).
- Lauren Jonas (OpenAI Head of Youth and Families; leads teen product safety).
- Madeleine Mecca Boy (Bloomberg legal reporter; covers Meta youth-use trial).
- Dan LeHavre (Irregular CEO; runs AI cyber stress tests).
- Dave Minuciello (GV managing partner; invests in AI application layer).
- Josh Sisco (Bloomberg antitrust reporter; DOJ probe details).
Key claims + notable examples
- Anthropic projected $65B annualized revenue by end of July; up from $47B in May; IPO planned fall; OpenAI cited at ~$40B.
- ChatGPT for teens (ages 13–17) uses same model power as other ChatGPT but different teen-specific safeguards; includes “study mode,” age estimation, and parental controls/notifications; no immediate school rollout (partnership with American Federation of Teachers).
- Irregular found a sandbox misconfiguration: models accessed the open internet during cyber evaluations; stresses need for pre-deployment testing.
- Markets: chip sell-off tied to bond/inflation anxiety; AI supply chain exceeded Q2 expectations; enterprise/neocloud/sovereign AI spend highlighted.
- Apple framed as “anti-AI” stock due to no infrastructure spend; inversely correlated with semis.
- Meta faces up to $1.4T in potential penalties in a youth-compulsion trial in Oakland (trial scheduled to Sept 23).
- GV: investing focus shifting to application layer; example exit: Qualcomm acquiring Modular (software layer to run models across chips).
- DOJ antitrust probe: A16 partners allegedly serving on boards of competing AI startups (Databricks/Fivetran).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOAnthropic's Revenue Surge and IPO Plans
0:33 to 1:37
Discussion on Anthropics's projected revenue and IPO insights.
“make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use.”
Anthropic's Revenue Surge and IPO Plans
2:10 to 3:38
Discussion on Anthropics's projected revenue and IPO insights.
“Anthropics annualized revenue top$65 billion bolstering its plans for an IPO.”
Comparing Anthropic and OpenAI's Growth
3:38 to 4:46
Analysis of revenue comparisons between Anthropic and OpenAI.
“Of course, the market is watching closely to see how much revenue growth is going to continue and what pace for these leading AI companies going into their public offering.”
Market Trends and Tech Sector Volatility
4:46 to 5:50
Discussion on the current volatility in tech markets and its implications.
“Once these companies do actually go public and we start to see their financials, then we will know more of the details of how that revenue is counted for each.”
AI Supply Chain and Investment Trends
5:50 to 8:39
Insights on the AI supply chain and investment dynamics in the sector.
“Well, clearly there's not as much room on the balance sheet as there was two years ago.”
NVIDIA's Recent Financial Strategy
8:39 to 11:15
Discussion on NVIDIA's strategy involving third-party capital for GPU leasing.
“Have you tweaked anything or changed anything in your approach, your holdings, your strategy since June 18th as a result of what you've just outlined?”
ChatGPT for Teens: Launch and Features
14:00 to 18:31
Learn how OpenAI identifies teen users and designs ChatGPT for their needs.
“How do you know that a user of ChatGPT for teens is a teen?”
Meta's $1.4 Trillion Legal Challenge
18:31 to 23:16
Understand the implications of the $1.4 trillion lawsuit against Meta over youth engagement.
“Meta is facing$1.4 trillion in financial penalties over allegations that the company purposefully designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young users.”
Apple's Position in the AI Market
23:31 to 26:27
Examine how Apple's strategy differs from AI competitors in the market.
“pulling back into AI winners, piling back into AI winners, they're starting to work against the stock.”
AI Models and Cybersecurity Risks
26:27 to 28:01
Explore the risks of advanced AI models breaking out of controlled tests.
“Now coming up, AI is getting better at hacking, but are we getting better at stopping it?”
Show all 20 chapters
Understanding Cyber Evaluations and Misconfigurations
28:01 to 30:48
Learn about the importance of stress testing AI models and the implications of cyber evaluations.
“Let's start with the idea of a misconfiguration.”
Industry Reactions and Best Practices
30:49 to 31:28
Discover the industry's response to AI model performance and the need for best practices in cyber testing.
“Some of the anthropic disclosures, et cetera, is mostly because models have passed a threshold of competency that allows them to actually do these elements and just have a real-world effect.”
Navigating AI's Future in Cybersecurity
31:29 to 36:14
Explore future challenges and opportunities for AI in cybersecurity and the balance between testing and deployment.
“Several points, many people in your industry said this is a watershed moment for AI in the context of how it plays in cybersecurity.”
The Impact of AI on Security Processes
36:15 to 37:31
Understand the evolving role of AI in enhancing cybersecurity measures and the importance of dual expertise.
“and operation of the sandbox environment.”
The Impact of AI on Security Processes
37:49 to 39:59
Understand the evolving role of AI in enhancing cybersecurity measures and the importance of dual expertise.
“The people who seem to get more done than everyone else.”
Investing in AI Applications with GV
40:06 to 42:00
Insights into GV's investment strategies in AI applications and the current market landscape.
“The speed of AI development means investors trying to stay ahead of the curve also need to move faster than ever.”
Investment Strategies in Private Markets
42:00 to 46:02
Explore the dynamics of private market investments and the role of venture capital.
“best for a company is what's best for the founder.”
Antitrust Probe into Andreessen Horowitz
46:02 to 46:30
Learn about the Justice Department's investigation into potential conflicts at a major VC firm.
“Thank you very much for being here with us.”
Details on the Investigation Process
46:30 to 49:48
Understand the steps involved in the DOJ's investigation of board memberships in competing firms.
“There are specific individuals at Andreessen Horowitz also that are a part of this story.”
Details on the Investigation Process
50:11 to 51:15
Understand the steps involved in the DOJ's investigation of board memberships in competing firms.
“Before you sign off, you tuned in for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use.”
Transcript
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2:00Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart of Silicon Valley with Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
2:09Ed Ludlow:This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Anthropics annualized revenue top$65 billion bolstering its plans for an IPO. Plus, OpenAI releases ChatGPT for teens, a version of its chatbot aimed at 13 to 17-year-olds to encourage safe usage and deeper learning. And after advanced AI models broke out of controlled safety tests and reached real-world systems, we'll speak with the startup that stress-tested them. In the markets, there's a sell-off in chip makers that is dragging technology lower. There's a lot of consideration about the global economy out there. The outlook for inflation, you have treasury yields at 2025 highs, and there's still this debate about where we're at in the cycle, particularly with the AI build out.
2:53Ed Ludlow:In private markets, something interesting happening. Let's look at today's big number,$65 billion. That is Anthropik's projected annual run rate for revenue by the end of July. This is a 24-hour update. You remember we started the show yesterday with an ARR figure for Anthropik that originated from May. Let's get the latest from Shereen Ghafari, part of the Bloomberg team that broke the story. So the latest ARR is$65 billion. What else is in the reporting? That's right. So if you look at the increase, we last reported that Anthropik had hit $47 billion in that same run rate revenue figure in May.
3:33So this is a notable increase ahead of their planned IPO in fall. Of course, the market is watching closely to see how much revenue growth is going to continue and what pace for these leading AI companies going into their public offering.
3:50Ed Ludlow:When we started the show yesterday on the ARR figure from May, which was$47 billion, there were lots of AI stocks moving to the upside. There was some read through from that. Today, we're not seeing that. But we are learning more about Anthropics momentum. You know, people are hesitant to compare Anthropic to OpenAI, but where is that race right now if you were to measure it on revenue or even like on usage and the subscriber base? So as we reported just last week, OpenAI has recently hit$40 billion in that annualized revenue projection figure. So if you're comparing to Anthropic, that is a lower number.
4:30And it is part of this, you know, Anthropic in the past year has really grown at sort of rocket speed and becoming a higher, more highly valued company in the private markets and seeing some higher now annualized revenue run rate figures. That being said, the way that they measure revenue is not exactly the same. Once these companies do actually go public and we start to see their financials, then we will know more of the details of how that revenue is counted for each. But that being said, Anthropic now is citing a higher annualized revenue run rate figure.
5:07Ed Ludlow:Boomba Shereen Ghafari, AI correspondent, thank you very much. Let's take a look at markets again. So there's volatility. That's continuing for tech. particular pressure on semiconductors. U.S. 10-year yield is at kind of 2025 highs right now. We see some bond anxiety out there. The S &P 500 head towards its third straight day of losses. Where are we in the cycle? Janice Henderson, Portfolio Manager and Head of Technology Research, Denny Fish, joins us now. And I want to continue a conversation that started in yesterday's show. One of your industry colleagues arguing we are in the riskier part of the cycle, where the biggest companies in tech are moving from their balance sheet to equity and debt in the markets.
5:48Ed Ludlow:How do you feel about that, Denny? Well, clearly there's not as much room on the balance sheet as there was two years ago. So by definition, we're definitely getting riskier. I think what's different though, is that it's still existential to each one of these companies, depending on where they sit. So if they can't go to the debt markets, my suspicion is for the next couple of years. If you're a hyperscaler, you'll probably issue two or three percent of equity and accept the dilution if you think it's the best thing to do for your business, if the credit markets aren't amenable, or if rates just continue to go to a level that isn't necessarily appealing.
6:30Ed Ludlow:At the start of the summer, you wrote an essay titled The AI Tide Rolls On. That was in June, June 18th. And so the question is, what's changed since June 18th until now, if anything at all? But I suppose one observation you made just before we came on air is, you know, there's stocks go up and stocks go down. It's normal to see the stocks down 5 % or up 5%, for example. It's hard to see through it, though. Yeah, I mean, it is hard for the average investor to see through it. You know, I've been investing in semiconductors for 20 years, and it's just the reality of the sector. and we are in the most pronounced cycle that we've ever had for leading-edge semiconductors.
7:12And so I think that part is what's really unique here. To your question of what's changed since June 18th, I'd say if I just parsed back the earnings season that we just finished up, Q2 earnings season, the AI supply chain, if anything, pretty much exceeded expectations across the board. And the estimates for 2027 and 28 just went up a bunch more than we had before the reporting season. And I'd say the other thing that has been interesting is, you know, SpaceX has gone public. We saw the XAI numbers and the spot pricing for GPUs that they're selling to Anthropic and to Google. We saw the return metrics on CapEx spend from Microsoft and Amazon, which were rewarded by the market, which was really nice to see.
8:00and then even Nebius, which is a neocloud. If you parse back their commentary, there were a couple of things that were interesting and that is, once again, suggesting spot pricing continues to be really strong, but then also the uptake of enterprises and sovereigns and that other piece of the pie that doesn't get as much attention. Everybody gets focused on hyperscaler CapEx. Half of the AI spend out there, if you talk to Jensen and listen to their calls, is enterprise neocloud sovereigns. And that's growing really fast. And that's going to be a really important component here in addition to the hyperscalers and the open AIs and the anthropics of the world.
8:39Ed Ludlow:Have you tweaked anything or changed anything in your approach, your holdings, your strategy since June 18th as a result of what you've just outlined? Not necessarily. Clearly, we're trying to find ways to participate in this market that are non-semiconductor, right? and to the extent that we can find that to balance out the portfolio, that's what we're doing. That's just an issue of diversity. It is, because we do think there's going to be a lot of money to be made with companies like as Microsoft starts to re-rate, for example, after it had the quarter that it had, it has really underperformed for the last 18 months because concerns about ROI on spend, the impact of AI on the software business, and whether they were going to develop a frontier model or not.
9:26And some of those concerns, I think, are starting to be put to bed. And so looking for opportunities like that and then also getting comfort, as Andy Jassy talked about with Amazon and the three-year payback period on their AI spend right now.
9:40Ed Ludlow:So the idea on that is if you invest in a technology stack based on a certain GPU, within three years it's paid for itself and then it's just cash generation. Yeah, yeah, yes, for the most part. So that brings us to the NVIDIA story of the last 10 days. Jensen gets six Wall Street giants or investment firms to try and use them as a conduit to third party capital. You set up an SPV, I think borrow money, buy the GPUs and lease them to an NVIDIA customer. To lots of people that was difficult to understand. What did you make of it? So my interpretation of all of this is, and I'll go back to what I talked about, you have hyperscaler and then you have enterprises and sovereigns and the rest of the market.
10:21I think in Jensen's mind, he thinks there's a place for a globally distributed standardized cloud. And that is based on NVIDIA. And that's Blackwell's, that's Rubens, Vera Rubens, Feynman, which will be coming at some point. And to the extent that he's right about that and the duration, it makes a lot of sense to have third-party capital to help finance that. So I think in the broader scheme and the strategy for NVIDIA, it makes a lot of sense. And just seeing external partners have that confidence in the strategy as well and being willing to syndicate that type of funding is a really important barometer for the AI spending trend.
11:09Ed Ludlow:We're out of time, but next time we'll talk about computers collateral. Yeah, absolutely. This is an asset class of its own. Denny Fish, Janice Henderson, portfolio manager. Great to have you back on the show. Another stock that we're watching, by the way, is Alibaba. There's been some movement in the ADRs. That's the US-listed shares. Off-session highs this morning, but there seems to be some momentum out of various products, Alipay being one, that caused a kind of uptick after the market opened this morning. We'll continue to track that one. Coming up on the program, OpenAI just released a new experience to ease fears that AI may be unsafe for kids.
11:42Ed Ludlow:OpenAI's head of youth and families, Lauren Jonas, joins us next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
11:56Ed Ludlow:OpenAI rolled out its latest experience called ChatGPT for teens with features that prioritize education and digital safety for what it calls, quote, the first AI generation of students. Lauren Jonas, OpenAI's head of youth and families, joins us here on Bloomberg Tech. I think let's start with the very basics. How does ChatGPT for teens work? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So ChatGPT for teens is a dedicated learning focused experience for teens with built in safeguards for this particular demographic. You know, nine to 10 teens are using ChatGPT for learning. And so our goal here is to make this an incredible learning tool for teenagers.
12:36Ed Ludlow:Lauren, I don't know that I'm a power user of ChatGPT. I use an enterprise version that Bloomberg provides to me, right? But I think it's interesting to put them side by side. Is there a fundamental difference in the models underpinning ChatGPT for teens versus the version I'm using, for example? Is there a design difference between the two? There's not a difference in the power of the models, but there's a difference in the safeguards. The goal here is age-appropriate safeguards for teenagers. So we have model policies that are different for teens. The way the models should respond is different for teenagers.
13:11That's the fundamental difference that you see between those two experiences.
13:13Ed Ludlow:Can we get specific on that? What are the guardrails that you've put in place for teenagers? Yeah, numerous. So at the model level, we have advised by the American Psychological Association and a number of third parties model policies that we publish that are different for teenagers. This is around harmful content of a number of different kinds. This is based on a teen's developmental life stage and where they are. Additionally, product differences. So as you're seeing on the screen now, this is a really learning-focused experience. Teens have the ability to put themselves into a study-only experience.
13:47We call this study mode. Have the product respond to them in a study-only way during certain hours of the day. Invoke quizzes and what have you to make this a really robust learning experience.
13:58Ed Ludlow:I find that very interesting. So this is analogous with social media in the context of verification. How do you know that a user of ChatGPT for teens is a teen? Is within the sort of ages 13 to 17 that you're going after with this new tool? Yeah, so AI is very different than social media. It's a fundamentally different product. But in terms of identifying who's a teen, we do this a couple of different ways. It's a layered approach. Some folks tell us they're teenagers, in which case they get the ChatGPT for teens experience by default. We also have built a model ourselves that we call age estimation or age prediction.
14:33If a person is predicted as under the age of 18, they will also get this experience by default.
14:40Ed Ludlow:Can we have the backstory? What catalyzed the decision to say, okay, we need and we will launch ChatGPT for teens? We have been working on teens at OpenAI for a number of years. This is just really focusing on the use case that we see teens engaging with in the product. Again, the vast majority of use on ChatGPT is learning. And so the goal here is to make it the most robust learning tool that it can be. And so that's our focus here. We also co-design this product with teens and their parents. And this is a lot of what they ask for. Teens love this. They want to continue to learn. And they love these features.
15:18Ed Ludlow:You know, learning is done in the context of education, which is done in the context of schools, right? And how much is that a part of the plan to go out to the education system throughout this country and outside of the United States and work with academic institutions, say, like, look, here is a tool you can use school-wide as part of the, you know, to learn set curriculums, etc. We have a partnership with the American Federation of Teachers that we're thrilled by, and we have teacher-specific tools, and we're thrilled to support teachers in their teaching journey. But ChatGPT is not in schools today across the country, and that's a very deliberate choice on our part.
15:58We have been very slow and very thoughtful to introduce this into schools, but are thrilled to partner with the American Federation of Teachers and others to make sure we're serving that demographic.
16:08Ed Ludlow:But there will be an action taken to get ChatGPT for teens into schools. We have no immediate plans. We're starting with teachers and really focused on teachers and administrators and making sure that the folks that surround the teen are well supported. So it sounds like, you know, in terms of real terms, how teenagers are using ChatGPT today and will use ChatGPT for teens. It's outside of school hours. It's at home in the evenings. and therefore it sounds like there's an element of supervision. So how do the parents get brought into this, Lauren? Is that sort of formalized parents' oversight of the use of the tool?
16:48Yeah, great question. So we have parental controls. We launched parental controls about a year ago. We were the first in the industry as part of parental controls to launch what we call parent safety notifications. So that is, you know, if a teen is on the platform and they're having a hard time, We notify that parents that they're having a hard time, give them enough information to take an action. But there are, as part of our ChatGPT for Teens launch, additional parental controls. You know, parents have the ability to put their teenager into what we call study hours. So that is ChatGPT will only be in a study mode.
17:21It'll ask follow-up questions, make sure the teen is learning the material. So, you know, again, like teachers, the goal here is to make sure that the folks that surround the teen are well supported.
17:31Ed Ludlow:Lauren, another area where the technology is analogous with what we've seen in social media is a teenager's relationship with the technology for emotional support, you know, to engage with ChatGPT for advice, to confide in, etc. How much have you considered that and formalized that in terms of policy and guardrails? Yeah, so these policies are formalized and we continue to build on these and have built on them with ChatGPT for Teens. With this launch, we added to our reliance policy, the model should not be a friend to teens. It should not be sentient. It should not claim any of this for teens.
18:11Again, the goal is that this is a tool for teenagers and nothing more. And so with this launch, we continue to build on these policies and these safeguards for teens with the American Psychological Association, with Moonshot, with the American Federation of Teachers to make sure that we're getting this right.
18:26Ed Ludlow:Lauren Jonas, head of youth and families at OpenAI. Thank you very much. Indeed. Meta is facing$1.4 trillion in financial penalties over allegations that the company purposefully designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young users. The landmark social media trial is just kicking off today. Bloomberg's legal reporter, Madeleine Mecca Boy, joins us now with what to expect. And it's probably worth explaining how that$1.4 trillion figure is calculated. It's based on lots of potential penalties and violations. That's right. The$1.4 trillion is a huge number. And that's because it's at the very top end of the estimate of what penalties might be in this case if the states are successful at trial.
19:13And it's going to be based on the individual consumer protection laws of the four states that are leading this charge. And so each state has in their laws a fine that they assess when they identify a violation of these laws. And so the calculations come into play when the judge and the jury are going to try to determine what constitutes a violation. And whatever number they land on there is going to affect what the figure is. So we've heard$1.4 trillion. We've heard$200 billion as a possibility. but what you can take away from that is that we know that the stakes are high for meta here remains to be seen exactly what that dollar figure might look like at the end of the day
19:54Ed Ludlow:this is happening in oakland california right now um what do we expect to happen how many weeks will the trial go on and what is the format of the trial that's right so this trial is happening before a jury however the jury will be in an advisory capacity so they're going to issue their determination after they hear the evidence And then the judge can decide whether she wants to agree with the jury, adopt their recommendation or rule in a different manner based on what she heard. We know that the trial is scheduled at this point to go until September 23rd. And this judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, stickler for her schedule.
20:30So I think that that's kind of what we can expect here today is going to be opening arguments from both sides. So we'll hear from the state AGs. We'll hear from Metta. They're going to lay out kind of a roadmap of what we can expect to hear for the rest of trial. And then we're going to hear from witnesses, see internal documents, and kind of dive into the evidence here.
20:51Ed Ludlow:Bloomberg's Madeleine Mecklenburg, thank you. Coming up, Apple set out the AI spending race. And now, they may be paying the price. We have more on that next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
Read the full transcript
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23:30Ed Ludlow:Apple's decision to sit out the AI spending boom once looked pretty smart, but with investors pulling back into AI winners, piling back into AI winners, they're starting to work against the stock. Apple shares are down 10 % from a record high on July 28th following a disappointing earnings print. Blumo's Ryan Vasilica has been looking at what's behind the reversal. So I think to be fair, Apple's still up like 14, 15 % year to date, just ahead of the S &P 500. but it has changed the overall look at the stock since earnings. What I would say is really interesting is the degree to which Apple has become inversely correlated with the rest of tech, semiconductor stocks in particular.
24:10So you're even seeing this today where Apple is up a little bit, but the semiconductor index is down pretty significantly. It does seem like whenever one part of the market is doing well, the other part is faltering. And it really is an indication of how Apple has become something of an anti-AI stock. So whenever you see the sentiment towards AI-related companies like hyperscalers, like semiconductor companies, whenever those are doing well, that's when you see Apple really kind of pull back a little bit. And then when you see that reverse, like today, Apple's doing well and the rest of the AI space is down.
24:45It's really a reflection of sentiment towards AI overall with Apple on the other side of that.
24:52Ed Ludlow:Part of this is how Apple is different from the behavior of the hyperscalers, right? So its AI services are through partnerships, and it does not spend on infrastructure. How is that playing into the psychology of those you were speaking to in the markets? Well, it depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to someone who is very optimistic about the AI-related CapEx, if they're expecting this to really pay off with a strong return on investment, then they tend to be pretty positive about those companies, especially since their growth is more robust than Apple right now. And their valuations tend to be lower.
25:27Whereas on the other side of that, if you're concerned about is this spending going to pay off? Is there some kind of bubble in the works here? Then maybe you look at Apple, which is doing a ton of buybacks, which is more of a lower grower, but pretty steady there. You know, higher valuation, but seen as much more of a quality and kind of a safe haven trade. So if you're concerned about the CapEx side of things, that's why you're seeing people rotate into Apple.
25:51Ed Ludlow:Just have 30 seconds. But what if the AI trade unwinds? How would Apple respond? Well, people I spoke to said that if we did see another reversal in the AI ecosystem, Apple would probably benefit from this kind of trend. It might have some muted downside just because it has no AI-related CapEx risk. It's not part of the AI disruption narrative, and it's not really part of that whole ecosystem. So if we do see a pullback there, we could see this inverse correlation work back in Apple's favor. I think Apple's still trading at beyond 33 times forward earnings. Bloomberg's Ryan for Celica. Thank you very much.
26:27Ed Ludlow:Now coming up, AI is getting better at hacking, but are we getting better at stopping it? Irregular CEO Dan LeHavre is with us next. Really important conversation coming up. It's halftime here on Bloomberg Tech. We're going to show you some markets, then maybe some pictures of San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech.
26:57Ed Ludlow:Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Very quickly, this is what technology markets look like. There's a sell-off in chip makers. We're at one point in the session on track for our biggest drop since July 2nd. And largely it relates to anxiety in the bond market, but there is some selling pressure, particularly in the most AI relevant corners of the chip sector. The Nasdaq 100 also following suit down 1.6 percent. A consideration of what's happening with global inflation, but there's still half an eye on what's happening in the Middle East and the president's latest comments on the war with Iran. Let's get to what's happening in the world of technology.
27:34Ed Ludlow:We recently learned that AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others broke out of controlled tests and accessed real world systems. Those evaluations were run with Irregular, a startup hired to stress test advanced AI models. But the sandboxed environment had a critical flaw. A misconfiguration meant the models could access the open Internet. Irregular's CEO, Dan LeHav joins us now here in San Francisco. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for being here. Let's start with the idea of a misconfiguration. Help the audience understand the very basics of what that misconfiguration was.
28:11Should we start by explaining why are we even doing cyber evaluations for these models?
28:14Ed Ludlow:We can, but I want to understand what happened. Let's start there. So before models are being released, it's highly important to stress test them. And the reason is models are getting really, really capable. We've seen demonstration of that in recent times. If models are getting good at many other skills because they're better at reasoning and coding, they're also getting great at hacking. Before models are being deployed into the world, there is a necessity to use them and just test them in a lab environment to make sure that they're safe and secure. These tests are getting more and more complicated over time, because the models are getting great.
28:47And some of these tests actually include environments that are highly, highly realistic with a lot of levers. In some of these environments, there was, due to a miscommunication, due to some human errors on our side as well, we had an issue where the environment was left with an access to the Internet. And that allowed the models to also just like access targets outside.
29:06Ed Ludlow:May I ask a human error? Is it as simple as it was miscoded by a human? The rules and parameters were not written as they were intended. So these environments have a lot of different levers to play with. And just like to explain and give context on what happens here. Just like imagine the fact that, you know, you want to just like stress test for realistic scenarios. So for example, whether someone can hack your phone or hack your laptop in order to steal sensitive information. As a journalist, that should highly concern you, right? Because if I'm able to hack you through a model in order to steal your sources, that's an issue.
29:38Ed Ludlow:Yes. But in order to simulate whether that's a possibility, you need to simulate quite a lot, right? You need to simulate the entirety of the Bloomberg network. You need to understand and even generate fake traffic in order to just get as close as possible to the world. Because these environments got more and more and more complicated, in some of them, there are a lot of controls. One of these controls is access to the Internet. And why do we even have access to the Internet as one of the controls? If you think about it, a real-world attacker that may go after you will definitely not say, ah, you know what?
30:04The models were tested without an internet connection. So let's not just have it as well. Obviously, if I'm going to go after you, I'm going to go after you with everything at my disposal, and that's going to include internet access.
30:14Ed Ludlow:Well, in the OpenAI case, there were two models, one released and one unreleased but more performant model. And the instruction from OpenAI was ace this test. We want to evaluate your cyber capabilities. and the models concluded that in order to ace the test, they could get information from a third-party platform via the Internet. So just to clarify, that case did not involve us in any sense. That was a separate case. And I think the reason that you're seeing multiple cases that happened recently, whether for us, there were issues with the UK government as well, there were issues of open air and hugging face.
30:48Ed Ludlow:Some of the anthropic disclosures, et cetera. Some of the anthropic disclosures, et cetera, is mostly because models have passed a threshold of competency that allows them to actually do these elements and just have a real-world effect. That shows why it's actually so crucial to also do pre-deployment testing because if you're not going to discover that in a pre-deployment test, you're going to discover that when it happens in the world, and that's a much greater issue. That's also why, looking forward, we both included and committed to an effort of just redefining best practices for the industry because we have to find a solution on how to do this testing in a way that includes that, but also brought kind of like a view on what's happening in AI security more broadly right now in an essay that we just published.
31:28Ed Ludlow:That tension is so interesting. Several points, many people in your industry said this is a watershed moment for AI in the context of how it plays in cybersecurity. Yes. But many also said it's not a scandal. You want to see the frontier labs testing and evaluating the capabilities of the models. What have you changed since? How do you get that balance better? You have to test the models before. Because if you don't do that, the alternative is way worse. You're going to just discover these issues in the world without any controlled environments. The reason that we're finding so many of them is because in a controlled environment, even if mistakes happen, you have the ability to assess a lot of information because you have traces and you're able to get better.
32:07The alternative would be discovering something bad happened after deployment, which is much, much worse. Exactly, and that's a huge issue.
32:14Ed Ludlow:May I ask then, if you must test, then what have you done to ensure that testing is safer? What have you changed? So a lot. So I think there's multiple elements here. Just like, you know, one, we've expanded a lot of the monitoring and manual efforts that are now being put in. Two, we've essentially upgraded a lot of the monitoring systems that were there. I think a point that is really just like important to make here is classic cyber monitoring tools only go so far in an AI context. And the reason is a lot of the analysis that you need to do is about analyzing specific transcripts of just like models having conversations with themselves.
32:47It's just like very high velocity. So there's a lot of upgrades to just like how it happens there. So like a third element is also the process of how you're doing some of the testing. So there are many, many elements that we are now working on and we are going to just like release a new white paper of best practices on how that's going to happen. But a lot of it was already implemented at this point.
33:05Ed Ludlow:May I ask, are there other incidents that you're aware of that have happened in this interim period that are not yet public? I appreciate there's a reality to what you can or cannot say, but it's a question of how pervasive this issue is. Yeah. So we've reported to our customer base just like everything that we know, but obviously not going to get into confidential information or interaction between us and our customers. But there are other incidents that you've identified. No, so that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that we've reported to our customers everything that is on our side, and obviously not going to get into just details of what's reporting.
33:38But I really do think that we're kind of like, as you've mentioned, are in a watershed moment and just like that we need to think about what happens next. And in a way, I want to just like make two comments that I think are highly important. Like one, you know, just like the labs deeply care about security. And I think you're seeing that even by the fact that they're going through, you know, the trouble of just like doing all of this testing per deployment because they understand how big is this moment. And every time that we came to one of the labs of saying, you know, we should change the protocol here, et cetera, they were extremely receptive to it.
34:07And the second is that we actually are also in a moment in time where, you know, looking over the long term, there is a huge opportunity in what AI can do for the defender side, right? I think we can even be optimistic about, you know, what ultimately happens. There are elements here which is, you know, we can live in a world in a few years where AI is going to review every line of code for security elements. We can live in a world where there's going to be formal verification scale, your ability to actually make sure mathematically that, you know, that things are getting better. But one of the issues, and that's also something that we published in the essay, is something that we call the end-state fallacy, which is the long-term values are occasionally conflated with short-term problems that we still need to figure out how to...
34:46Ed Ludlow:So this is where I'd like to end our conversation. The end-state fallacy, where is AI security headed, published in the last 24 hours? Yes. The conclusion you draw is that frontier models will roughly double their performance every six months. At least for the next two years. And their effective autonomous work horizon goes with it. Yeah. the question the audience quite rightly has is, does that mean that you can or cannot contain and prevent the types of incidents that we've reported on in the last three weeks? I'm very optimistic, but the reason that we call it the end state fallacy is because we believe that there is a difference on kind of like the time horizon of just like how you look at the question.
35:26I'd just like to be clear, if I'm going to set myself an objective, something like getting better shape, the end state is incredibly better and optimistic, but if you look at me, you know, the path to getting in shape is going to be painful. And we think that occasionally people are conflating the properties of that end state that can be very valuable with the difficulty of getting there. So over the long-time horizon, we can have AIs also verifying, you know, just like sandboxes, verifying that there are no issues. A lot of AIs are going to be useful for extended monitoring that we think should be implemented, not just in testing environments, but also in the world.
35:58But there are challenges where in the short term, there are going to potentially be issues that we need to figure out as a community how to solve, and we offer just concrete strategies on what to do there.
36:06Ed Ludlow:So I want to go back to what this experience has been like for you and for the company. Yeah. You had two roles. You did the testing, provided testing, and also part of the providing and operation of the sandbox environment. Have you seen massive demand for your services? Have customers said, we need to rethink the relationship? What has happened? So, you know, just like, I think the most credible thing is just like to say, to just like use what our customers said, which if you look, all of them end at the statement by, It's like thanking and recognizing the complexity of what we do and saying that they're looking forward to just doubling down on the relationship in the future.
36:41And the reason is it's a dual specialty that's incredibly hard to do. In order to do that well and in order to make sure that we work together to ensure that ultimately you, and I don't mean necessarily you as an, I mean we as society are going to be in a secure world. We need people that have a real dual expertise, both a very deep cyber background and a very deep AI background such that we can test environments. And as you can imagine, it's a fairly rare thing. So as an outcome, it's a learning moment for everyone in the industry. And by the way, we are not a sandbox company. Just to be clear, that's actually not the role of what we specifically do.
37:11The open eye, hugging face is not something that is on our side. But it is still kind of like a grand moment of things changing in the industry. And together, there's a role of taking the people that have a deep knowledge of what's going on and being able to work together to resolve and understand how to make sure that things are going to be in a much better optimistic position.
37:32Ed Ludlow:Dan La Huff, a regular CEO and co-founder with us here on Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure being here. Coming up, Dave McIniello, managing partner at GV, joins us to talk about why the next big AI investing opportunities could be in the application layer. Also coming off some recent exit success. This is Bloomberg Tech.
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40:08Ed Ludlow:The speed of AI development means investors trying to stay ahead of the curve also need to move faster than ever. For venture firm GV, that means focusing now on the application layer. Having already made strategic bets on AI infrastructure, chip startups, Dave Minuciello, managing partner at GV, joins us now. And GV's sole limited partner, as you may know, is Alphabet. But it invests independently without regard for Alphabet's business strategy. It was written, so I read it. Welcome to the program. Thanks so much. It's really interesting to have you here today because quite recently we covered one of your exits with the acquirer.
40:45Ed Ludlow:That was Qualcomm and Modular. I just wanted somebody who was high up the cap table on that company, your experience of that process. We were fortunate to be the first check-in to the company. We led that first round and have been involved with Chris and Tim the entire part of the journey. you know the company modular is the software layer that sits right top of technology sits on top of ai chips to make sure that any model can run on any chip so i'm kind of riffing on the intro there right that there is this appreciation more than ever of that layer and nvidia has cuda and chris's idea was what if there was an alternative to cuda that was more open and could work for any chip and any model and qualcomm was an early customer cristiano was quite visionary.
41:28And I still remember where I was sitting when Chris Lattner called me and said, hey, you know what? Chris Giano is going to fly up from Irvine and he wants to have dinner with me. What do you think he wants to talk about? They've been customers for a while and they're excited about what they're seeing. And of course, that dinner ended up being an overture to Chris Lattner to come and be a part of Qualcomm. Usually founders don't love the idea of M &A, particularly.
41:51Ed Ludlow:Did you like the idea? I mean, you can be honest, but your advice was go for it. start with a skepticism of M &A. The thing that I think about when I think about, you know, what is best for a company is what's best for the founder. And here, Chris and Tim saw a huge vision of disrupting CUDA, and they wanted the fastest path to do that. Cristiano painted a future where together with Qualcomm's capital and focus and attention and portfolio of chips, where they could do that together over the next decade. That was what Chris was enamored by. If we zoomed out to get perspective the environment for your industry is private markets venture money is very happy to support companies private for longer etc for sure uh there is some life in the ipo market where does the the sort of acquisition by a bigger technology be sit in in the field right now yeah so for us for gv the thing that we care most about is investing in founders as early as possible right So we try to invest in the very first round like we did at Modular, like we've done at Flapping Airplanes or Samba Nova Systems where we led the Series A.
42:56And our objective is to help those companies grow and realize the technology that they're building, the vision of that technology, and get it out into the market. And sometimes that happens through an IPO, which is a massive amount of funding and just another milestone on that startup's journey. Sometimes it's M &A. Sometimes, like in the case of Slack, it was IPO and then M &A, right? And like eventually that technology needs to exist in the world and be funded by public markets. And it's either funded through a public company or through an IPO.
43:24Ed Ludlow:It's a very interesting list. So Sam Minova is an example of a company that hasn't done either yet. But where's the activity happening? You know, many of your industry peers and colleagues talk up San Francisco and the Bay Area and Silicon Valley as being the mainstay of intellectual and financial capital. So GV has$13 billion under management and offices in London, New York, Cambridge, Mass., and the Bay Area. We're trying to convince most of our London, New York, and Cambridge investors to spend more time in San Francisco. Wow. We think that all of the activity right now— You mean the investing partners of the firm that are based outside of the Bay to come spend more time in the Bay?
44:01We're convincing them to spend more time. So a partner like Crystal Huang in New York, she spends every other week in San Francisco because of the sheer volume of the activity that's happening here. She still invests in New York-based companies. We still think the best companies are built everywhere in the world. But right now, the clear concentration and the activity is happening in the Valley.
44:21Ed Ludlow:The last thing I want to ask you about is proxies. So this is an interesting idea. In the software space, it was a bit easier because you had publicly traded proxies. You could sort of determine valuation and TAM and where they would sit in the field. In other areas, that's more difficult if all these companies are staying private for longer. or they're being acquired, like many of your portfolio companies have? I mean, I think valuations are increasing exponentially, and they're doing that because of the TAM. Exponentially, but justifiably so? I think in many cases, justifiably. I mean, when you have exits that look like they're in the hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars, like the set of IPOs that are coming soon, then you have a lot of venture frenzy into early-stage companies.
45:02I think at GV, we like to pair deep subject matter experts with people who have conviction. There are some firms that just look at conviction. And so when you're just following conviction or you're just following heat, you're going to invest in things that everybody else thinks are interesting. We tend not to do that. We tend to be quite contrarian. I think you'll see that. We were investing in infrastructure before the chat GPT moment. We were investing in AI applications when everyone else sort of pivoted into infrastructure. Right now, we're really excited about science. I think that AI for science is going to be a fascinating place to be in the next 10 years.
45:34And this is using the best models with the best science in the world to find breakthroughs in things like material science, physics, math. We're seeing papers being written at an unprecedented rate that are showing human breakthroughs. And we think that rather than the chat GPT moment, the chatbot moment being the thing that connects with Main Street, it might be those scientific discoveries that connect with Main Street that increase the human condition.
45:58Ed Ludlow:That's probably the next watch then for the show on Bloomberg Tech. Dave Minuciello, Managing Partner at GV. Thank you very much for being here with us. Okay, coming up, sources tell Bloomberg the Justice Department is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over partners serving on the boards of competing startups. We have the details of that report next. This is Bloomberg Tech.
46:27Ed Ludlow:venture capital firm andreason horowitz is the focus of an antitrust probe by the justice department according to sources the doj is investigating whether a16 partners are improperly serving on the boards of competing ai companies databix and fivetran let's get the details of Bloomberg's antitrust reporter, Josh Sisko, who broke the story. There are specific individuals at Andreessen Horowitz also that are a part of this story. Let's just start with the basics of what we're reporting and what we need to know. So there's a law, an old law, dating back more than a century that says you can't, that investors can't serve on the boards of competing companies.
47:08And for Andreessen Horowitz, that would be co-founder Ben Horowitz, who serves on the board of Databricks. And then a gentleman named Martin Casado, who serves on the board of Fivetran. They both are, you know, at a high level data analytics companies. And so the Justice Department wants to make sure that there is no sort of competitive issue with that.
47:35Ed Ludlow:We say in our report, this is a probe. What is the process? What is it that the DOJ is doing in terms of actions taken or not? They ask the companies questions. They issue sort of formal investigative demands, civil subpoenas to sort of the companies themselves, any competing companies that might have information or help them better able to understand the market. And then after doing an investigation, then they decide whether and how to settle it or to file a lawsuit. And the solution here, the government under under in the Biden administration under Jonathan Cantor, who led antitrust enforcement then at the DOJ, they brought a lot of these investigations and they typically were resolved by the director of one of the companies stepping down from one of the boards.
48:30Right. In all of those situations, it was a little different because it was the same person on both boards. Here you have two different people serving on each board, and so that could create a bit more tricky dynamics in terms of how you figure out who steps down from which board. If that was to involve the investment mission.
48:54Ed Ludlow:Noted. Spokespeople for Databricks and the Justice Department declined to comment on our reporting. Andreessen Horowitz and FiveTrend did not respond to our request for comment. I guess difficult. You know, this is an investigation as detailed in the reporting went on for a year and is now being disclosed to our reporting. But what happens next? Well, the government will have to decide what its next steps are, whether it can work out a settlement with the company. It could also just drop the investigation altogether if it doesn't feel like its case is strong enough. Or, you know, the most unlikely outcome is it could sue to force one of the directors to step down or to.
49:31to fund any other solution that they want.
49:35Ed Ludlow:And I'll just repeat that in our reporting, all of the parties involved have either declined to comment or haven't responded to comment. But if they do, we'll bring the update on what's a really big story. Bloomberg's just a scope. Thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. One final check on markets. Again, it's semiconductors that are under pressure, and that's taking the rest of the technology sector with it. There's some anxiety in the bond market. you see the U.S. 10-year yield at 2025 highs, a part of the pressure that is translating into the tech equity space.
50:07Ed Ludlow:Recap the show on the podcast. You know where to find it. This is Bloomberg Tech. Before you sign off, you tuned in for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. Chat GPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in Chat GPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using Chat GPT for Work. Download the Chat GPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more.
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From the publisher
Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow breaks down Anthropic’s annualized revenue topping $65 billion as the AI startup moves closer to a potential IPO. Plus, OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens, aimed at giving 13- to 17-year-olds a safer way to use the chatbot for learning. And, after advanced AI models escaped controlled safety tests and accessed real-world systems, we speak with the CEO of the startup hired to stress-test them.
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