Fourth quarter shipments are up yearoveryear. We will talk to him about what is ahead for 2020. He is the amazon executive who calledd over what he vain toxicity running through company culture. Stories in a moment but first, tech earnings trickling out today. Abigail doolittle is with us. Abigail there was some action later in the day. Another sleepy day for much of the day for stocks. Record highs for the s p 500 and the nasdaq. News came out from pfizer, another headline that pfizer, the doses they will be able to provide for this year expected to be half of what had been anticipated. When the headline came out, it ran very bearish it read very bearish. Stocks initially took a leg lower. The s p 500 going down three tens of 1 . A decent intraday move. The s p 500 finishing down for the first time in three days. The nasdaq, however, managing to keep a small gain and a record high on the date. Pfizer really slipped, 1. 7 . Etf up 8 10 ofnd 1 . Tones of risk off, uncertainty around the pfizer news. Pretty interesting, for sure. After hours, more choppy news. Off of itsn trading highs. They put up a solid quarter. Revenue forecast beat. Marv l technology, that stock is down. 4. 3 . Tock is down deeper intoigging that. Out with a look at pfizer. This stock was down for most of the day. We are going to see the move lower. On the news, taking a leg lower. Nonetheless, investors slightly discouraged by the fact the amount of doses of the vaccine this year less than initially anticipated. Emily all right, abigail doolittle, thank you so much for that update. We will talk a little bit more about that. I want to bring in michelle, who covers health for us. What is happening with pfizer . There was this report from the dow jones that is rattled the market. Michelle the amount of the supply for the ingredients that goes into the Pfizer Vaccine hit a snag early in the production process and the company had originally intended to supply 100 million doses by the end of this year. Now they are saying they will only be able to do about half of that, 50 million doses. This is breaking news right now so everyone is turning to figure out exactly what that means. The u. S. Had said they would be able to distribute it within 24 hours of an approval. That is expected to happen within the next two weeks. It is unclear whether the doses are in somebodys hands. Is thisom line, though, will delay the number of people who will be vaccinated immediately in the u. S. And that will push through the next couple of weeks to months. Ableompany expects to be to make those up during the process. In the meantime, this news out of california, on california, and i know you have family in california. Governor newsom will start imposing regional stayathome orders depending on i see you capacity. Icu capacity. None of them have hit the emergency threshold yet but my understanding is this could happen this week in some places. Michelle in southern california, l. A. Has begun its own lockdown. The greater region looking at some serious issues. Handle hospitals cannot regular medical emergencies, your whole population is vulnerable, right . Some people think i am not at risk for coronavirus. I am not older, i am not elderly. You never know when something bad is going to happen to you or your child. Many things that can happen. When your hospitals go down, your whole population is vulnerable. Southern california, that could happen this week. Northern california, it could happen in the bay area by middecember. Icu. 15 mark for the they will be closing down nailthing like gyms and salons, any kind of interactivity. Retail will be able to any type of indoor activity. We table we able to stay open but at a retail will be able to stay open but at a 20 level. After three weeks, they will revisit those numbers. It could be a month or two of lockdowns. How does how he is handling this in california compared to what is happening in other states . We just talked about new york and new jersey. Each regional leader is handling their state differently. Michelle you are absolutely right and it will be interesting to go back after this is all over and see how it played out. We are seeing some of these places that did not take it as seriously in the beginning, who thought they were somehow blessed or lucky or had more land space and lower population density, that they would be able to avoid some of this. We saw it across the midwest. We had people, Record Number of cases in iowa and the dakotas, places that did not have mask mandates. Has been more aggressive than any other state, except perhaps new york. Is,y i guess the question is the vaccine going to get here in time . There will be some supply issues. They have all been making plans, theynt know for sure if will be able to pull off this these ambitious rollouts they are proposing. Is the vaccine going to come soon enough . Michelle it will come when it comes. The truth of the matter is, taking a beat and making sure we are doing it right is going to be a better approach than gambling to try to get a little bit of efficacy for people who need it most desperately. The pace we are going at now is blistering and that will be true even if we are getting 15 million fewer doses than we thought. That is unfortunate. Pace to, it is a record get this virus under control. We will beg at hitting herd immunity levels in the summer. Everyone in america would have access to this vaccine. Modernarnity and the and Pfizer Vaccine especially. Astrazeneca has said they will do another trial to confirm their vaccine will hit the efficacy rate they want. Those very aggressive targets we were talking about yesterday and dr. Fauci and others have raised did not include those vaccines. There is room for improvement here as well as the possibility of other setbacks that we do not anticipate, which is what is happening with pfizer. Hopefully, we get more wins than losses. It is not something we can really control. Emily all right, michelle cortez, always appreciate you helping to tell the story to us. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. Bloomberg businessweek just released its top 50 individuals. We talked to one who step down from a big job at amazon. This is bloomberg. Bloomberg is that with its top 50 today. Over 20 fairy raising Million Dollars for restaurant workers, to the president of taiwan keeping covid at bay, the latest addition of Bloomberg Businessweek highlights the top people of 2020 whose accomplishments merit recognition. With me is one individual who gained notoriety when he stepped down from his executive job at amazon. Joining me now is former amazon vice president. You left amazon back in may after five years as an engineer, saying you were dismayed how the company was treating whistleblowers, folks raising alarm about warehouse working conditions. How do you reflect on that decision . Was it the right call . I am sad about it because it was a great job and i was making a lot of money. I think it was the right call. Amazon is by a large o well run company a wellrun company. Emily what was your main complaint . Tim there was an argument that broke out in the context of covid, whether we were taking good enough care of the people in our warehouse. They were doing a lot of work to make the warehouses safer. Some internal activists were speaking up on behalf of the workers. Amazon intervened and fired all the people speaking up. Whistleblowers and activists and so on. I was at a vp rank and that means you have to be on board, and i could not be, so i said goodbye. Emily amazon has released a number of statements to explain their side of the story as the worker agitation has played out. Our employees choose to work at amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available. How do you respond to that . Tim i do not think amazon is the worst place to work at work. Problem saying that our in society is in amazon problem. Amazon is a symptom of our problem. Inequityble level of in wealth and power between the ordinary people who work and the people who run the show. The level of inequality has been getting worse and worse for decades. If we dont like the way amazon is not the worst the way they are behaving, the thing to do is to change the balance of society using boring old politics. Emily it is exacerbated by the fact that amazon is run by jeff bezos, who happens to be the richest man in the world. What would you like to see him do differently . Tim it is easy to snare at and cast him as a super villain with his new look. I dont see it that way. We dont need to be telling jeff to play nice. We need to be changing Regulatory Frameworks around labor and tax structures and compensation structures so the powerlessness does not go on. Amazon is optimized for efficiency, and how can that be about thing . But there is no free lunch. Somebody is paying the price. The ones paying the price are the ones who are powerless. We need to rebalance the power equation, not yell at jeff. We need to do with regulation and oldfashioned grassroots politics. Emily you have some unique ideas for how to do this. Splitting up cloud and retail. Why would that make things better . Tim this is not a controversial position. The free market works better when you have competition. To the degree that the market becomes mom monopolized, things just work less well. Hightech is prone to this. If you look at the top five players google, amazon, facebook, microsoft and you look at the broad range of services they offer, it would be much better if that were 20, 30, 40 Companies Competing with each other on a level playing field. Im in favor of breaking up amazon. I would go after the whole hightech sector. It is absurdly monopolized. Emily what of those companies should be broken up . Tim i would start with facebook and google. They have monopolized the Advertising Market and they have destroyed the Business Model of publications because you cannot make any money on the internet with advertising anymore. They have a monopoly. They buy the ads, they sell the ads, and they broker the ads. As Elizabeth Warren said, we have rules against Insider Trading for reason. It is not that hard. If you look at each of these businesses, you will find things that are only loosely related. I dont see those as having that much to do with each other. Realnk it is time for a stiffening of the antitrust muscles in the nations leadership. Emily what are you up to now . And next . Tim i am advising a couple of people, i am writing a book. I am trying to create an urban marine park in the heart of vancouver. I am enjoying life. I enjoyed my job but i am enjoying after the job as well. Emily what is your advice to other employees who might be at Big Companies who want to speak up . It is hard to find the courage to do that when you can afford to leave. Tim particularly in the United States where your health care is tied to employment. We are starting to see a certain amount of optimism creep into of activism creep into employee culture. Think if you look at the population of Engineering Workers who make technology go, they tend to be quite progressive bunch. If they were to start banding together and flexing their political muscles, it could have a real effect in moving the needle on a bunch of societal issues. I would like to see that happen. Emily it is certainly fascinating to hear from you, given your insider, now outsider perspective. I appreciate you sharing your story with us. Thank you. Investor jim chanos has reduced the size of a tesla short that he calls painful. We will hear from him next. Another exclusive conversation, tim cheney was has trimmed jim chanos has trimmed his position on tesla. He is not done just yet. He spoke with scarlet fu. I think that it is really a Business Model and valuation issue with tesla. There are things we dont like about their accounting as well. This is a Company Trading at half 1 trillion market gap. Revenues of 30 billion. Despite what everybody says, they are still in automobile company. They are competing with other companies that make cars. Increasing, those other companies have evs as well. Every market has a stock that people pin their hopes and dreams on. Certainly, one of those stocks this go around is tesla. For some holders, it is an ev company. For other holders, it is a clean energy company. For others, it is an Autonomous Vehicle company. It is whatever they want to believe elon musk is touting. Tesla hasint out that not made any money selling cars. Whatever profit they have shown has been very low. For all of this, for all of their market leadership and selling 50,000 on average cars, they are still not making any money doing it. Have you ever met elon musk . I have never met elon musk. Have you ever had a conversation with him . I have never had a conversation with them. What would you say to him . I would say, Job Well Done so far. You announced your tesla short back in the fall of 2015. All your shorts are capped at 5 . Only are not max short because we are still short. There are so many other things to do, including in the ev space, that we found lots of other things that are even crazier than tesla. We still do have a position and it has been painful, clearly. For the first four years of those five years, it was not about short. It went sideways while the market went up. Shorts inthe kinds of a bull market that you hope for. But last 12 months, it has been a different animal, as you know. The stock is up five or six fold and we have had to risk management. Manage it. Emily jim che knows there chainos. Bloomberg has reached out to tesla for response. Third quarter estimates Beat Estimates largely. Will that change one of vaccine is finally underway . We will hear from the president of Client Solutions group, next. This is bloomberg. [ sigh ] not gonna happen. Thats it. Im calling kohler about their walkin bath. My name is ken. How may i help you . Hi, im calling about kohlers walkin bath. Excellent happy to help. Huh . Hold one moment please. [ finger snaps ] hmm. The kohler walkin bath features an extrawide opening and a low stepin at three inches, which is 25 to 60 lower than some leading competitors. The bath fills and drains quickly, while the heated seat soothes your back, neck and shoulders. Kohler is an expert in bathing, so you can count on a deep soaking experience. Are you seeing this . The kohler walkin bath comes with fully adjustable hydrotherapy jets and our exclusive bubblemassage. Everything is installed in as little as a day by a kohlercertified installer. And its made by kohler americas leading plumbing brand. We need this bath. Yes. Yes you do. A kohler walkin bath provides independence with peace of mind. Call to receive 1,000 off your kohler walkin bath. And right now were offering no payments for 18 months. Emily this is bloomberg technology, im emily chang in san francisco. Climbingology sales 23 million, lifted by work at home demand. Despite predictions of the death of the pc, dell says the pc is experiencing a renaissance. But will the demand keep up when people return to the office . Joining us now is sam burd, president of the Dell Solutions group. You know people who purchased not only dell pcs, but also monitors to replicate the Office Experience at home. Tell us about the demand see. For having meanks on. We have certainly seen Strong Demand for technology, and we have seen in work from home and learn from home that Pc Technology is really important for keeping people connected, and letting them get done the things they need to get done. So whether that is a system that has all the power you need to run videoconferencing and do work, or a great big monitor, i inch, 4k using a 40 curved monitor, amazing tool for productivity that lets you get it done. We have seen people and Companies Need solutions to be successful in the world as it is that today. How will this Holiday Season be different from last Holiday Season, as an example . Sam we have seen a big difference this year. If i think about the last Holiday Season, we are going to be see a big shift online, people buying Technology Online that is delivered to you. So the capability we have built, the way we pioneer doing business, we have seen really embraced in these times of covid. I was looking at time i spend with my sales team. We have a great scent of people who are engaged with our customers. A year ago, i would have been on the sales floor wasnt with holiday spirit. Now, our team is working from home, working from the home office, working at the Kitchen Table engaging customers, virtually bringing them into their home to get them the right kind of solutions. So we have seen a totally different approach. Isme, the exciting thing that technology is very important, im getting more requests than ever from friends on what is the right pc for me and my children to get things done, and i think we will see a good holiday size and good Holiday Season, a good Online Shopping season for technology. Happens postcovid, post vaccine, the demand . Presumably all these friends and family members who bought new devices will need them for a while, but wont need them at all if they go back to the office. Sam we will see Technology Still be really important at how people get things done. Ago, people started writing about the death of the pc. It was overhyped then. That news is overhyped now. Since 10 years ago, we have shipped 3 billion pcs to customers. They have spent about 2 trillion on technology. So we have seen huge demand. Ed if you look at how people get things done, the and if you look at how things get done, the pc allows you to bring the world into your house, so if you look at work, playing games, that has been essential in before covid times, but in a postcovid world, we see people operating in a hybrid model. We dont see things flipping back to the way they were before. The best places in the world have virtual teams that engage. There is also great strength that being together as a team in an office. So we see the world operating in that hybrid mode going forward, and technology is really critical in bringing that world alive and helping people bring the most people get the most out of the employees they have, or helping employees be successful in a school environment, or a work environment. I dont think that changes postcovid. Emily the pc is alive and well for me personally, that is for sure. A number of Companies Made drastic decisions early in the pandemic to cut 401 k . In particular suspended 401 k matching races, hiring, then business turned out better than they thought it would be. We have heard you have reinstated some of that, whether it is 401 k matching, promotions, raises, what is the status . Sam you heard correctly, emily. Back 401 k ght matching. We announced that to our team today. Some measures we put in place as covid came in, we are going through a process of putting that back in place. So we are optimistic as we look forward to the Role Technology plays in the world. Whether itested in, is personal computing, infrastructure software, we have been all in in this space since our company started. We have seen it be really important in the world today and we think there is a Bright Future for the products we are perching together over the next year. We are putting together over the next year. Emily are merit based raises and promotions back as well . Sam we announced those are back, yes. Emily what is your outlook for nearterm, 2021 demand, when it comes to us being in this in , with manyiod Companies Still stuck at home. Stuck at home . Industry thise pc year, if you look at q4, if we do about like what we did in q3, the pc industry would have its best year in the past five years. We still see a need for technology. And if you look at how people use systems, videoconferencing, it consumes power, you talked about displays, you see when people have a set up with displays and the right peripherals, they are more productive. When we do surveys with customers, Gen Z Millennial workers, new workers coming into the workforce, almost 80 of them are factoring in the technology that they have in the job and the fact the company puts Cutting Edge Technology into their hands factors into their decision on where they are going to work. I cant predict what demand is iing to be in the future, but am an optimist around the Impact Technology will have in the future and i have seen good Things Technology has done in the past. So i think that continues. And it is my job and our job to put out great products that deliver the experiences customers want. If we do that, we will see continued good demand. s president of Client Solutions, sam burd. Thanks, sam. Coming up, 2020 likely to be the most challenging year yet for startups. Insight on how they have been spending and how many have gone out of business, from the ceo of flecks, a lender to other startups. That is next. This is bloomberg. Earlier this year, the covid19 pandemic seemed to be the catalyst for a long awaited reckoning for the venture startup world. A memo was titled coronavirus lacks one of 2020. One Fintech Company with a unique view into the startup landscape is brex, which offers Corporate Credit cards to Small Companies that have difficulty getting traditional financing from banks. Joins Henrique Dubugras us to tell us whether what he sees is as bleak at what sequoia predicted. Henrique honestly, we started might bet we thought it might be in march and april when the memo came out. No one knew what was going to happen in the world. The recovery turned out to be faster than most of us imagined. Startup spending that we see on our platform is at an alltime high, 5 higher than before the pandemic. Being, itt difference is not as if startups are spending on the same thing. We had restaurants and now we are seeing increasing spending in software and advertising servers, more things you would expect as more companies go remote. Your company went fully remote as i understand it earlier in the pandemic, you moved to l. A. , headquarters still in san francisco. How is that going . Henrique it is going really well. Honestly, it got much better goingwe announced we were to go remote indefinitely. I thought a lot of our Employee Base took advantage of the remote world. Before we announced it, no one was willing to move to a larger house further from the office or move to another city, because we also announced we werent going to adjust pay for four years, so even if you moved, and people started taking advantage of that only after we announced the before efinitely indefinitely. And before, there was a limbo when nobody knew what to do. Emily what happens in four years . Henrique in four years, the world will have changed a lot. We get to revisit the decision based on how everything is going. It is too early to tell. Emily so what is your sense of how startups are doing now, faced on the money they based on the money they are asking for . A number of companies laid off and ended up doing better than expected and might not have laid off employees if they had known what was to come. Are you seeing more stories like that, or more stories of startups that are really struggling and may not survive this . Henrique during the core months of the pandemic, that is when i saw a lot of startups go out of than we, probably less expected, but still a lot. All of them did the layoffs and ,ere able to survive the crisis and i dont know about the overall economy, but Venture Capital is the most aggressive i have ever seen since i have been in the look on valley. A lot of ipos that are happening, a lot of money is going back to Venture Capitalists, who are then reinvesting in more startups and hopefully will have ipos in the next five years. With the amount of venture funding afforded to startups right now, that increases spending and all the major platforms for advertising like google and facebook and others, but also for other startups and advertising and servers at all these things. So the startup economy is strong and my prediction is that 2021 is going to be an incredibly, incredibly strong year for startups and Venture Capital, nothing like what everyone was predicting in march and april. Emily your company as i understand it is now valued at 3 billion. Any plans to go public . Henrique no plans so far. Even though brex is valued at 3 billion, it is a similar valuation to other companies. We are only three and a half years old, so we still have a long way to go private. Ceos dont want to go public. Brex definitely wants to be a public company, but we are just not ready. Emily thank you for sharing, brex ceo Henrique Dubugras, thank you for joining us from l. A. New York Attorney general Letitia James made history in her election and hasnt stopped since, taking on donald trump. We bring you an exclusive conversation with her next. Another in this years top 50, new York State Attorney general Letitia James. She has filed more than 35 lawsuits against the Trump Administration, leading the charge against blocking minorities and other voters. She is also leading an investigation into big tech, and we had an exclusive conversation. At this general james point in time, we are preparing a list to be submitted to the Bidenharris Administration to address and reverse all of the policies of the Trump Administration that unfortunately have adversely affected new yorkers, issues such as salt deductions, the 10,000 cap on property tax deductions, that was a limit placed by the Trump Administration on new york city, issues such as the Affordable Care act which is critically important for individuals with preexisting conditions, and those who have miners that have who have access to health care. Before the Affordable Care act, the number one reason individuals across this country are filing bankruptcy was because of medical expenses. It is important we defend the United StatesPostal Service. Administration tried to dismantle and affect operations of the Postal Service prior to the election. It is important right now to stand up for immigrants who are shout at standing in the shadow of the government. We are a nation of immigrants, as evidenced by a book authored by the late john f. Kennedy, and it is important individuals understand the contributions of immigrants to our country. That and other policies, litigation and regulation we have to reverse, including standing up on behalf of our environment. This is a lofty list and there are a couple of things pertaining to the salt act as well as the Affordable Care act. Is this a role for a state attorney general to take, or something that should rather be left to congress . Guess the you, i authority and i guess, the ability to make these changes to try to reverse those decisions . Attorney general james because there are three branches of government. And unfortunately over the past four years, two arms havent been working, the legislative and executive branches, suet has been left up to the judiciary so it has been left up to the judiciary. Democratic attorney generals have stood up against this federal retrenchment and it is important the constitution and the rule of law controls, not men. It is important that attorney generals stand up for democracy and defend policies that unfortunately have disparate impact on new yorkers. That is what i get each and every time. And it was important to defend our institutions, and our institutions withstood the challenges of this administration and in fact, in the majority of cases, over 80 of our cases we have been victorious because the constitution and rule of law is what governs our government. Leading a are also group of state attorneys general in the fight against big tech. What is the progress, and would you partner with the ftc or is it better to have multiple cases at once . Attorney general james there are several investigations against big tech at this moment, facebook and google, and there are still ongoing investigations. Until those investigations are concluded, i will not prejudge our investigations. But a number of attorney generals, it is bipartisan, are involved in both investigations. You mentioned bipartisan, but we have seen with the google case for example, that it felt sort of along partisan lines. Do you worry about a lack of bipartisan nature . Will that improve when you are looking at facebook, google and other Big Technology giants . Attorney general james our investigations have not concluded. The overwhelming number of attorneys general on a bipartisan level are part of this investigation. We are reporting this investigation in any any manner faced on the facts and based on the evidence. Emily close of interview with litan an exclusive interview with Letitia James, new York State Attorney general. A member of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at google says she was fired for sending email management deemed inconsistent with expectations of a google manager. The content of the emails are unknown apparently. Joining me is Seattle Bureau chief and tech reporter, dina bass. What can you tell us . Dina this whole issue started even earlier than the email. Google demanded that she retract an ethics paper on ai she had written. That happened about a week ago. She refused and expressed concerns, requesting to know more information about problems with the paper, what processes would be in the future to evaluate papers written by Google Researchers, and said that if those conditions werent met, she would offer her resignation after a transition p eriod. Then, she posted in email on a group for Company Researchers which was commenting on various issues, including her paper, and noted that people trying to take diversityut googles issues by documenting it shouldnt bother, because it was unlikely to be effective. At that point, google cut off her corporate email and center emailed to her personal account saying they accepted her resignation effective immediately. Is reallynow that she passionate about the work that she does and the issues she covers. What is google saying . Commented tohasnt us. Justine, who runs Google Research, circulated and email internally which Google Researchers were discussing on twitter at dont seem to be happy about its contents, but it has different versions about what occurred. They havent commented to bloomberg. At this point though, it raises issues for dean in terms of half in terms of how he is going to calm things down in this google Ethics Research group. It is hard to underestimate how Important Research in this field has been. She was the coauthor of the Foundational Research paper that impacted the way facial recognition and ai has been handled and led microsoft to approve the product and Led Companies like amazon, microsoft and google to limit how they sell those products. So she has an outsized role in the field that is very enteral in the group at google. Is very influential in the group at google. Emily put this in a broader context in terms of the work, google obviously needs this work, Image Recognition is a huge part of technology and the work they deliver. Dina the question for google is, what do they intend to do in terms of Ethics Research on this product . Google is a leading developer of ai tools. They have had a robust, Diverse Group of researchers within Google Research that have been examining the ethical implications of the very product google and its partners and competitors work on. Raised by google to retract the paper is whether they will let people continue to publish really on products publish freely on the products they are working on. Emily a really interesting and impactful controversy, dena, thank you for your research. That does it for this issue of andomberg technology, [bloomberg daybreak Asia Bloomberg daybreak asia is next. Im emily chang. This is bloomberg. Shery welcome to daybreak asia, im shery ahn in new york. Haidi im haidi stroudwatts in sydney. Top stories, asia set for an uncertain start about doubts about the rollout of the pfizer covid19 vaccine. Deliveries may be cut in half for shots this year. Oil prices rise on a deal on output