Oracle shares rising on news the company could be the winning bidder for tiktok but it will not involve an outright sale. Bytedancehinese owner Sarah Ponczek has been following the ups and downs. Tech has been leading the comeback. Also, this latebreaking news ikola, and the sec investigating the company over shortsellers. Sarah the last i had checked, down about 8 or so after the market closed. Examining nikola based on this claim that came from the platform hindenburg. 30 , 35 ors fall so from last week. It has been quite the ride for nikola. Still up more than 200 this year but certainly getting hit pretty hard after these original allegations took hold. Now, getting even more focused with the sec taking them on. Emily this on the back of gm taking a huge equity stake in nikola. Lets talk about tech more broadly. News, continuing development. Oracle is in the leading position but a potential deal still under review. Oracle shares did rise. Walmart could still be a part of this. Sarah there are reports that walmart could still be part of this through the ecommerce division. If you look at shares, the reaction, we did see oracle shares spike the most. However, we did see microsoft and walmart shares in the green as well. If you look at what analysts are saying about what is going on with oracle and this tiktok bid. First of all, the structure is still evolving. Still unclear. It is going to be more of a Corporate Restructuring than a sale. Reactionssome mixed when you look at what city wrotets are saying, they that they could not find a sound likely tothat it is change the competitiveness of oracle in cloud. Some look at this as a positive and that it is another potential diversified revenue stream. Emily thank you so much for that update. We will talk a little bit more about this tiktok situation. Oracle moving into the lead position. Steven mnuchin saying the federal government will now undertake a twotrack National Security review. Stake in a company, more of a Corporate Restructuring. I want to bring in the cofounder former of coda, and google Vice President for youtube. I am sure you have walked tiktoks rise with some fascination. What is your take on this . Shishir it has been a lot of fun watching the tiktok rise. I think that new social interactions like this dont form super often. It is interesting to watch when they do. I have two young daughters. You cant walk into a room without one of them doing a tiktok dance. I think the impact it is having on society is very large. We pair that with this interesting dynamic with multiple governments and multiple companies, it is interesting to watch. Emily what do you make of oracle as a potential owner or partner, given that oracle was certainly the more farfetched candidate in this particular situation . Shishir as your last segment pointed out, it is not done yet. Usually, m a negotiations are two parties. Least four. Oracles of it being versus not, one of the obvious things is that it cant really go to the company that everyone would think is obvious, for antitrust reasons. If it has to get sold, it is going to end up with a company that may seem unnatural. Oracle would be as good as any. I am not sure i have a good or bad reason for them. I think the more interesting thing is what is being bought. Depending on what is being bought, each company has a different interest. Emily what is interesting about that and how big a threat do you think tiktok is to a facebook, a google, the companies that might make sense as owners but cant buy it for antitrust reasons . Shishir i look at sort of three things in terms of what can be bought. Includinghe product, the experience, algorithm coming users command content. There is the second set of users and content. There is a discussion as to whether the algorithm can be split out . The third is the right to host and serve data. It is somewhere between number two and number three. It is clearly not the overall product. It isk my viewpoint on this is a little bit contrary to other people i think the algorithms are important but maybe less important than people think. In this space, algorithms for products like these tend to be tuned to a specific set of data and over time, they need to be upgraded. Also, i think the challenge is in scaling the algorithm. I think this i think between the second and third of those buckets is reasonable. Emily that is definitely counterintuitive that the body rhythms may be less important than you think that the algorithms may be less important than you think as they have been pitched at the crown jewel. What do you make of the political aspects of this, that the president has forced such a deal. Day by day. Nothing done yet. But what are the implications of running a business in the united states, in Silicon Valley . Shishir in some ways, it is not new. In some ways, it is very new. Anyone who has run a large media platform like youtube understands that you have to operate differently in every market you operate in. In dozens of markets with youtube and we had to be very aware of the political dynamics in each place. At least in the last decade, those markets have been somewhat homogenous in terms of their interest. You could operate in one market and kind of presume that most markets would be the same. All of a sudden, we are in a fractured geopolitical climate. I think the idea that these media platforms archon between that fighting, is inevitable. I think these media platforms are almost a second form of government. The fact that you have to interact with these is not surprising. The fact that it is so fractured is surprising and quite challenging. Emily a second form of government. That is quite profound. I want to talk about the trend toward working from home. A is one of those companies remotelyeople work Reed Hastings has talked about he wants people to come back to the office as soon as possible. He just think people are more productive in the office. What is your take on that . Shishir i think it differs by company. Leaned rightave into that distribute it culture from the start. For us, it was very natural. We shifted toward working from home. About 10 or 15 of coda employees who have physically moved their homes to other places. I think for us, that is here to stay and for a lot more companies, that will be here to stay. Thank Shishir Mehrotra you so much for joining us. We will be following every tick and tock of this tiktok story. Coming up, similar to microsoft excel and Google Sheets but potentially better. That is what airtable claims to be. We will speak to the ceo. This is bloomberg. No codeir table, a approach spreadsheets, bringing its valuation to 2. 5 billion. The company has more than doubled its valuation in the last two years. Joining us now for more is the liu. F airtable, howie i believe you are on the show last when you hit that unicorn status. High valuations can be a blessing and a curse. What do you make of that number at a time when we are in the middle of so much economic, social, and Health Uncertainty . Howie it has been a trying year, i think qamar everyone. The first thing that comes to our mind, everyone is trying to figure out how to transition into this world. , weerms of the valuation have taken a more measured approach than the Silicon Valley would dictate. With this round as well as our prior one, we spent time organically building relationships with investors to make sure we knew that the longterm expectations and commitment we would be making. We have never put emphasis on the valuation. , can we ben for us the biggest possible company in this category opportunity . Makes it easier to create things without having to code. Small business owners, consumers especially at this time, one we are all stuck at home, working from home. Whereas demand been like for you and what are the major use cases you are seeing . When we first started the company, we thought this would be more of a tech startup oriented base. We thought it would be other startups like us that would use our product. We were surprised how much diversity we got before covid. Major farmers, lawyers, enterprises doing things like Film Productions or major product launches. I think what has changed in the time of covid, with enterprise especially, we are seeing this second wave of digital transformation. The first wave was about getting communication in place. When shelterinplace hit, everyone was scrambling to figure out, how do we communicate . It is almost like in the maslow hierarchy of needs, communication is the first layer. If you cant communicate, you cant do anything else. Now that most companies have zoom or slack set up there are opportunities to come in and create structured work in a much more agile, digitized way. That is where airtable comes in. Emily you have microsoft. Excel. Google with its own productivity suite. What sets airtable apart from them . Howie microsoft and amazon launched their own direct competitive offerings in this space. This is ayear that category got validated by the market. Isdiffer because airtable ultimately not just a better spreadsheet but an apt platform. You can actually build real apps. We are taking the product a huge step towards being able to customize. The Film Production use case can build an even more specific addon to do Something LikeResource Management in a unique way. I think our focus will be on continuing to differentiate. Reallyre differentiation matters, winning the hearts and minds of creators. People who will build apps, that is paramount to success in this category. Emily we are seeing a lot of Companies Benefit from work from home trends but understanding how much of this will be recurring demand. Int covid, or when we are some sort of new normal, do you think this growth will be sustainable . Will it plateau even . Think the broader trend is durable for us. This is not just the initial hit of digitization because of the remote work phenomenon. I think this is something that was already happening, and really at the beginning of the trend. The idea that Everyone Needs apps is not yet mainstream. I think there will be 500 million new apps created in the next five years. At the veryy tion ofng of the appifica every part of the enterprise. We hope to empower more creators with paper solution then every other product out there. Emily airtable ceo and cofounder howie liu. Thank you very much for joining us. We will see you hopefully sooner than another two years from now. Coming up, another big deal took shape over the weekend. Nvidia agreeing to buy softbanks shift division arm for 40 billion. This is bloomberg. Emily welcome back to bloomberg technology. Some breaking news about the tiktok deal. We have now learned that tiktok is planning to give sticks to not just oracle but also sukhoi our capital and General Atlantic equoia capital and General Atlantic. An early investor in the company so maybe that means they get a stake in the reconstituted u. S. Version of the company. Bigtime, turning to that nvidia arm deal. Shares soaring after the company agreed to a deal to sell the chip developer arm for as much as 40 billion. Nvidia will be revisiting a plan to go private. Daniel, thank you for joining us. What is your take . Think this is a huge deal across semiconductors. Nvidia had a ton of momentum in , this makesness, ai the Company Really significant and relevant. In the smartphone space is another area where i see it impacting the business where arm has influence across the entire smartphone space. Nvidia is a part of that. Arm will beomers of coming to nvidia now. Intellectual property that has been driving devices like the edge, compute, and these smartphones that are some of the most important devices in our lives today. Emily what does it mean for softbank . Obviously, the company has had its struggles and this is an important exit for them. Daniel there was only a handful of companies that really made sense. Nvidia makes a little sense. There will be some who probably will not be crazy about this deal but by and large, those will be companies that feel they will have missed an opportunity. For nvidia, there is not a lot of overlap. Not a lot of direct competition, if any. It expands the business. ,ne of them builds the chips the other is building the intellectual property. With softbank, it got them an exit. Such a large holding in his portfolio, having a solid, profitable exit, it was an important transition and it fell into hands that can continue to propel momentum forward. Emily do you think we will see more m a in chips . Some have said valuations are too high. Others saying this is the perfect environment for m a. Now, big,think, right Smart Companies like nvidia, i think they are always looking for opportunities to make smart acquisitions. Verticallye apple integrating. Apple is going to be a customer of nvidia. I think the continued momentum for m a will have to be something we watch. These are big numbers. Takecould easily help to nvidias market cap tort half a trillion and beyond. That was almost covered just in the growth the company size this news broke. Saw as this news broke. Emily something we will continue to follow. Daniel newman, thank you so much. Coming up, amazons latest hiring spree the company adding 100,000 new jobs in north america. Widespread criticism about treatment of workers. We will hear from an amazon executive next. This is bloomberg. Welcome back to bloomberg technology. Soared in the midst of the pandemic. Despite some logistical challenges, amazon is now hiring 100,000 new employees across the u. S. And canada. That is after an additional 300,000 announced last week. Joining us to discuss, spokesperson at amazon. Kelly, these are huge numbers per tell us more about what jobs you are expect him to fill and what impact these employees will have on the business. Kelly thank you so much for having me. We have 100,000 new and parttime jobs. They pay 15 an hour or more. They start with the same benefits on day one that i have. That will play a huge role in helping us meet demand for customers. In fact, a lot of these roles a re at New Buildings. This month alone, amazon will open up 100 New Buildings across our network. These are centers, delivery stations. Of thee last mile package getting to your doorstep. Also at our air hubs. The roles are across those buildings and we are fortunate we can open those buildings at this time and bring 100 New Buildings continually around the u. S. , but also to be adding jobs at the buildings that we have today across the fulfillment networks. Emily typically over the Holiday Season, amazon does hire additional workers. How is this different . Are these permanent jobs as opposed to temporary Holiday Season slots . Kelly exactly. These are permanent roles. Stay tuned on Seasonal Hiring because it is still early in the season and i expect we would potentially have roles to fill seasonally pure these are for individuals who are looking for regular, fulltime, or parttime jobs. Emily tell us more about the locations of the 100 New Buildings. Where are these New Buildings going to be popping up . Kelly glad you asked. We had a building open last week in florida. We have a new building in spokane, washington. Thesese buildings so buildings are all around the u. S. Jobs, overa bit of 3000 jobs in the seattle area right now we have open. Over 5000 jobs in the chicago area, which have a starting rate of 15 per hour or more. And we are offering signon bonuses for individuals. Those range from 250 up to 1000 as people join. So, we know there are so many impacted right now given what is going on, where people are out of work. These roles really span across most states in america. Anybody can learn more at amazon. Com apply. Faced amazon has significant amount of criticism throughout the pandemic, especially from warehouse workers who complained about working conditions. Some workers have felt unsafe, some have said they are not paid enough. There was a protest in front of jeff bezoss own home where workers were calling for 30 an hour instead of 15 an hour. What is your response to their concerns . Kelly we take every concern seriously. For me and the team who were on the front lines of hearing from individuals, one, we welcome the feedback. But two, i would say nothing has been more important than the safety of our team, since, well, always, but particularly with the pandemic. We feel actually that we would love to see a company who handled it more quickly than amazon. We started early. We immediately hired epidemiologist specialists to work with our already existing safety team, for which we have thousands of members who already work on safety every day. We have rolled out more than 150 process changes and improvements across our buildings. I can only really speak for myself. I have been through several buildings since coronavirus started. I am in the buildings quite regularly. Quite frankly, it is my favorite placed to place to be, to be out in the field at our centers, at delivery stations with drivers. The reality is the vast majority of employees feel like we are doing a great job. We have a mechanism at a at amazon where we ask all employees a question of the day. Every day when i start work i get a question related to how i am feeling about working at amazon. That is not new, but during the pandemic, we have shifted the questions for the employees in our hoyuurly network. They are all about the Pandemic Response and how they feel about working at amazon right now. And our employees and servings are playing such a vital role in serving their communities. The reality and facts shows well into the 90th percentile, including how do you feel about amazons response, do you feel safe at work, do you have the ppe, masks, supplies you need the vast majority, well into the 90th percentile, feel extremely great about our response. We respond and we work hard to be better. But nothing along the way has been more important than keeping our employees safe. And having gone to many of the buildings, i have seen that firsthand. Emily all right. Appreciate that additional context. Kelly cheeseman, amazon operations a spokeswoman. Thank you so much for joining us. The company is hiring 100,000 new employees in the u. S. As Climate Change increasingly becomes a front and center issue for government and companies worldwide, hp think hp inc. , that has flipped their business to become more sustainable. I caught up with her Ceo Enrique Lores and asked about how the a session, economy, covid, has impacted their business. You should know that hp is a Founding Partner of bloomberg. Enrique we have seen both sides of the impact of the covid situation. There is plenty left in the office and this has had a negative impact. At the same time, with more people working from home, more kids learning from home, this includes increases demand for all of our home business. At the same time, we also have a iry important business mportant pc business. And pcs have become essential. If you want your kids to learn from home, if you want to entertain from home from gaming, you need a pc. What we have seen is we are moving from a paradigm where there was a pc per household, to a paradigm where we need a pc pe r person. This has really increased the demand for pcs. Core product for everything we want to do at home. Emily you mentioned with your what you are doing with planting trees to make up for the trees people are using. What are you doing to make the supply chain from start to finish more sustainable . Enrique we are working across all elements of the chain. Westarts from core materials choose when we design the product to make sure that we use ocean bound plastic to avoid plastic going back to the ocean. Pc usinged the first ocean bound plastic. We look at what programs do we use in terms of recycling to make sure that when a customer when they use a cartridge, they can send it back to us and we can recycle that product. We look at the energy we consume both in the factories and in our offices to make sure that we minimize the consumption of energy. We look at the usage that we do of plastic for only one time and look for any opportunity that we had to reduce debt and to mitigate that reduce that and to mitigate that. Values are very important for us as a company. Helpingng and actually is one of our values. Across every action we take we have this in our minds how we define our business. Emily the supply chain as long and i wonder if your supply chain goes all the way to china, and have you been able to maintain the integrity of the supply chain given all these geopolitical issues . Can you still make the choices you want to make in the supply chain when the world is so complicated . Enrique the world is complicated, and we think it is going to be getting more complicated during the next month. So we are looking for opportunities to make, to continue to make our supply chain more resilient. We have learned that the dependency we had would be a few problems a few countries would be a problem. So we are looking for opportunities to make it more flexible, make it more local, to bring more production closer to where customers will be using our products. And we are driving that internally. This is also a great opportunity for our 3d and digital manufacturing business. The onlye are not company that is going to be facing the need to divest change. Many other companies will have to move their production capabilities closer to their customers. And we are going to be looking for the flexibility, reduction in delivery time that 3d printing brings. Tos an opportunity we have grow one of our businesses. Emily you mentioned you think the world will get only more complicated. How so . Enrique we had been living in a world where globalization was accepted and supported around the globe. Challenged,y being and we are seeing tensions between the u. S. And china, between many different countries, that are driving the need for us to really look at how should we be operating in this new environment. Emily that was hp inc. Ceo enrique lores. A reminder, hp is Founding Partner of bloomberg green. You can catch more of the weeklong bloomberg green festival later this week which gathers scientists, business practitioners, for a Virtual Event focusing on the core issues of climate issues. Coming up we are going to talk isut how Digital Innovation impacting virtual education. This is bloomberg. Oomberg. Emily the pandemic has taken a toll on pretty much everything but tech. We have seen a boom in the tech sector since the start of the outbreak with the s p index gaining over 25 year to date. So how are College Graduates gearing up and preparing for these new opportunities . Fromus is maryam alavi georgia tech and an expert in all things digital. Thank you so much for joining us. Hasously the pandemic shaken up the education system, not the least of which is Higher Education. So many collegebound children are taking gap years, not going to college at all. What trends are you seeing at georgia tech . Maryam well, like any other business school, like any other university, we are impacted by covid19, as you mentioned. It has been a highly disruptive event to say the least for Higher Education as well. Our classes and delivery of education has changed, it is altered, to accommodate the impact. Schallerle, at college and georgia tech, many are in a higher mode of teaching and learning. That means hybrid mode of teaching and learning. That means they are both online and in person in order to protect the safety of faculty, staff and students and we observe social distancing in a classroom setting. What trends are you graduates andege how they are dealing with this new landscape and looking at new opportunities, but also fewer opportunities . Maryam i guess it really depends. In some areas, in some sectors of the economy, as your program has been pointing out, in hightech for example, ecommerce and hightech and organizations and industries and companies that have Digital Products and services actually have been growing in this environment. So there are jobs there that a lot of graduates can apply for. Industriese other there has been a negative impact and there are not new jobs. At scheller college, despite the covid19 crisis, we have had excellent placement of students both at the graduate and undergraduate level. At the graduate level, three months after graduation, the cla ss of 2020, we had 92 offers. For undergraduate we had 91 of graduates of 2020 with job offers. These are great statistics at any time, particularly commendable in the year that we have had with covid19. Emily do you think that Higher Education will be forever changed as a result of the pandemic . Like, even when school goes back inperson, we have a vaccine, and hopefully life returns to some kind of new normal. How do you think colleges and universities and Business Schools will be different . Maryam i think in a couple of ways. Think being thrown into an Online Learning environment, a lot of us have had a great experience about learning how to teach and how to learn in an online environment. So that development of opportunities has been there. We know how to do these now. It has been very successful in most situations i am familiar with in terms of learning outcomes for students. I think we are going to see a lot more inclinations to really be able to learn online. What i am hoping to see is the weortunity that increasingly at Higher EducationBusiness Schools will bring in technology and a valueadded way to support learning so that we can prepare our graduates for a future of work and work of the future. What are the innovations that you have made that you are most proud of . Maryam some of the innovations we have made, first of all, have been really using technology in an innovative way. Not just to transfer everything we have always done in a classroom, now put it online, but really taking advantage of Technological Capabilities to be ane to bring in more of interactivity and participation on part of the students in the learning process. We know that the more engaged students are in the learning process, the better learning outcomes. So there are opportunities and we have seen the Way Technology has moved to be able to get all the students to answer questions and participate, using chat, for example. In a class environment, only one person can talk at a given time, whereas in an online environment, all students can respond to a question. And build on each others answers, and really come out with more innovating problemsolving approaches. And this is really helpful, because the more participation and engagement, the better the learning outcome. So i see some of our students really taking advantage of that. Is certainly impressive to see how schools, how individuals are rising to the crisis. Thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, we are going to be talking about apples first product lines of the year coming up tomorrow. This is bloomberg. Row. This is bloomberg. Tomorrow, apple kicks off a broad slate of new products at a Virtual Event two lines of hardware beyond the iphone, the apple watch and the ipad. I want to bring in dan flax, and mark gurman has reported that the iphone will not be the center of attention tomorrow, that it will really focus on the watch and the ipad. What are your expectations . Daniel great to be with you as always. I think apple will showcaseits innovation tomorrow and really demonstrate how it is advancing in key areas like augmented reality. The phone, as you noted, we may or may not get the introduction of it tomorrow, but even if we get it next month, the key is that the installed base is growing, the ecosystem remains healthy, and 5g devices should help drive that are growth over the next 12 to 18 months. In terms of what we are looking out for the watch, we are expecting more and more innovation in key areas Like Health Care and fitness. If you think about the watch, you have features like the ecg app, fall detection. We could get better traction in key areas like sleep. Theres potential for them to do things like blood oxygen monitoring. Things within the health care tolm, really enabling users lead healthier lives with greater awareness around their daytoday activities and how that impacts them. Very exciting there, and certainly any innovation they bring out with the ipad will receive strong growth. Should be an interesting day tomorrow with a lot more to come in the next month or so as well. Are seeing aow, we lot of demand for ipads, especially in the midst of staying at home. But do you think what we are seeing now will fundamentally change the demand that we are seeing for ipads and i watches in the future . That productwatch, is very much in its infancy. With each generation there are more and more capabilities being added. New people are still discovering the watch in the united states. And overseas in a lot of the international markets, it is even earlier. I think about that is having a very long runway over the next several years. Ipad is more mature in some markets like the u. S. , but the company is seeing good growth in many markets overseas. And i think what is important overall that User Satisfaction is high and the installed base is growing. I do think the Current Events are helping to catalyze greater interest in the ipad, and that the platform is likely to become even more strategic as a result of everything that is going on. Anly and so, if we do get iphone announcement next month, what are you looking ahead to there . Daniel emily, i think the key things are the price points well, let me go back one step. It comes down to the innovation. At its core, the iphones success has been because of this integration of hardware, software, and services, and really empowering the Developer Community lovely to build on top of the platform. That is what helps to drive the differentiated user experience, which ultimately drives value for customers and growth. What i think will be important is having devices at different price points. I think we are very early in the rollout of 5g networks, but apples ability to deliver product for the new networks will be important over the next few years. And then the bigger story is how the iphone and these other products that we are talking lets wearables, the mac, not forget about that, and the services businesses, broadening the growth for this company. That is a very interesting opportunity over the next couple of years as shareholders. Emily ok. Daniel flax, joined so much for joining us. We are going to be all about the apple event tomorrow and have everything you need to know right here on bloomberg technology. I am emily chang. Daybreak australia is next. This is bloomberg. S is bloomberg. Is a very good morning and welcome to daybreak australia. Were counting you down to the major market open. Good morning, from headquarters in new york. We have new bids on oracle u. S. Operations which faces a twotrack National Security review and will need the blessing of president trump. Japans next pme