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>> So, Anthropic has confidentially

submitted draft paperwork for a public

listing, potentially leapfrogging

long-time rival OpenAI in the race

toward a Wall Street debut as soon as

this fall. The company, in a blog post

today, said, quote, "The number of

shares to be offered and the price have

not yet been set." I want to bring in Ed

Ludlow. He's the co-host of Bloomberg

Tech every day at 11:00 a.m. Wall Street

time. He joins us from

the San Francisco bureau. So, Ed, this

comes just days after we learned about

this monster, I believe it was a series

H round for Anthropic, uh close to a

trillion-dollar valuation. I looked at

the blog post from the company.

Not much in there.

Just telling us that they filed

confidentially for this. Did we learn

anything about numbers and or or any

more about their their books?

>> I mean, literally not. Uh you know, as

you outlined, they said that that

they're not disclosing the the the size

of the offering, the the price range,

just that it would be dictated by market

conditions.

Um but, you know, the timing uh when it

when a company files confidentially,

they have a choice. They don't have to

uh do a big blog post. They don't have

to say anything. And Anthropic did

choose to say something. So, you know,

that kind of got it out there. Um it is

it uh unusual, let's say. It's pretty

extraordinary that it was within 4 days

of that round. And, you know, I think

you you've already struck the kind of

key point, which is that they just

closed the series H at a $960 billion

dollar

post money valuation. So it takes into

account the 65 billion dollars that they

raised, but it puts us on this kind of

three-way path SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI

to have three trillion dollar club IPOs

in in the calendar year based on the

existing reporting.

>> How much does this confidential IPO

really leapfrog

Anthropic ahead of OpenAI?

>> Well, so when Anthropic closed the

series H, by the way, series H for those

listening and watching around the world,

it's just in alphabetical order the

number of rounds that they've done.

H the most recent. You guys can count on

your hands how many letters into the

alphabet that is while I give the rest

of my answer.

You know, the the

a psychological milestone from that was

that the post money and pre money

valuation

put Anthropic above OpenAI as the

world's most valuable AI startup if you

don't consider SpaceX to also be an AI

startup. Because of course when SpaceX

merged with xAI, that transaction valued

the whole entity at 1.25 trillion.

There is some chatter in the market of

course about the timing of all of this.

Last week wasn't I on the show last week

Tim? Do you remind me? Talking about

OpenAI was supposed to be filing

confidentially last Friday or this

Monday or and

and I'm not misspelling right OpenAI

separate from Anthropic and it's the

best of my knowledge it hasn't happened

yet. And so like a part of it was also

how much did OpenAI and Anthropic study

SpaceX's S1 when it flipped public, had

all that detailed information and decide

all right, we can do this too.

>> So we're also learning yeah, and I

promise we'll get to SpaceX at some

point but you're going to stay with us.

We're also learning that Salesforce has

a stake in Anthropic worth about 5

billion dollars after repeatedly

investing in Anthropic over the last few

years. Because this company has raised

$65 billion billion dollars and it's

just in its most recent round. By the

way, H is the eighth letter of the

alphabet if you're counting along. Uh

$965 billion dollar round. Uh beca- Are

we going to hear more and more about

this? Like how much everybody's stake is

worth af- you know, as as it goes to

that IPO?

>> Uh $965 billion dollar valuation and a

$65 billion dollar round. But the the

the other thing about it is like the

chronology and how quickly things are

happening is so important. You know, I

think March they'd only just closed the

What letter comes before H in the

alphabet? Uh you guys fill that in for

me. Right. Great. Series G. Um they'd

raised, you know, an equivalent amount

of money, $35 billion dollars at a $350

billion dollar valuation. And many of

the participants were in both. Um so, to

answer your question, yes, with time you

can form a better um understanding of

the cap table. Typically, in quite

obscure regulatory filings, it's only

those that own a 5% stake or greater

that you hear about until it comes time

to an IPO itself when it kind of comes

out in the wash, the proportionate size

of each one. But remember with

Anthropic, Amazon and Alphabet, the

parent of Google, have made absolutely

uh serious financial commitments to this

um

uh company in terms of investment and

also offered them a lot of compute uh in

lieu of cash as part of that that

arrangement.

>> I do want to get to SpaceX. And just,

you know, hearing you speak about this,

Adam, just talking about the

astronomical amounts of money that are

being raised for these markets, uh I'm

wondering if you can talk a little bit

about some points raised in today's

Bloomberg Big Take about how much retail

money is going to flow uh into these

IPOs. The Big Take today, of course,

specifically about SpaceX and in part

about how retail investors can actually

tap into this IPO and get exposure.

>> Well, you know,

the a sort of background story historic

story was Elon Musk talking about how

Tesla, which is another publicly traded

company of which Elon Musk is the CEO,

those retail investors, those loyal to

Tesla having some kind of preferential

access to a SpaceX IPO

um

when it came around. And there's nothing

so

solid or codified yet in the reporting

that that will be the case. You know,

the most interesting and recent proxy

was the Cerebras IPO where actually a

very very small allocation went to the

retail investor. Lots of people were

disappointed.

Um so so there's whether Elon Musk

follows through on that pledge or not,

some news that came out this morning is

that about 5% of the offering will go to

employees, family of employees, and

friends of employees. But what I would

say is that any IPO historically of that

scale, that's a pretty standard thing to

do. So So the red headline hit the

terminal and lots of people made a lot

about it, but actually if you look back

at the history of the tech IPO market,

it happens a lot. So in the big take

you're talking about, there there's a

really interesting scenario which is

well, what if you are a really uh

committed investor of Tesla? Or

something also interesting Tim and I

spoke about on DTTV the other day,

Bitcoin.

>> Mhm.

>> Would you have to liquidate some of your

holdings there to participate in a

SpaceX IPO anyway?

Um and that would put you in an

interesting spot because you're like,

oh, there's actually a lot of connection

between those three entities, SpaceX,

Tesla, and Bitcoin. It make you think a

little bit more. And I love how the um

the big take kind of outlines that

consideration.

>> Yeah, and I guess there are also

questions about, you know, what it looks

like for

the indexes, for QQQ, for the S&P 500.

And you know,

I'm not going to say a breaking of the

rules, though critics might say a

breaking of the rules."

>> or what?

They might make adjustments.

>> Yeah, well, well, well, wait. Why does

everybody want a piece of of this?

Because, you know, it looks great going

up, but that's not a guarantee here.

>> No, it's not a guarantee. I mean, you

know, again, the reporting is that

SpaceX will seek to raise $75 billion

at a valuation. We reported last week

that it's nearer to $1.8 trillion, but

previously at two or above $2 trillion.

So, there's the mathematics of the

offering. But, actually, if you just

take a step away from like this is an

IPO and that's how IPOs work. The

company offers a percentage of itself, a

certain number of shares at a certain

price range. There is a bigger picture

and like lots of investors that I speak

to that own quite a lot of this private

company already would say, "Well, I see

this by the end of the year and

certainly by the end of the decade being

a $3 trillion company or a $5 trillion

or even a $10 trillion company." And

they just have conviction that that will

be the case. And so, if that were to be

the case, if that assumption is

realized, then from a pure waiting

perspective, just like we see with

Nvidia now, any move in even modest in

that name will have an impact at the

index level. Um and the difference is is

that this is a rocket AI and satellite

connectivity company all at the same

time and that's a bit new.

>> Well, we're doing more with Ed. We're

doing more with SpaceX with retail

investors. Charlie Wells is going to be

join joining us on the other side as

well.

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg

Business Week Daily coming [music] up

after this.

>> This is [music] the Bloomberg Business

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>> I want to go back to our coverage of the

SpaceX IPO.

We have been talking to Ed Ludlow. He's

the

co-host of Bloomberg Tech. He's out

there in San Francisco. Also staying up

late for us. We really appreciate it is

Charlie Wells. He's from California, but

he lives in London. He's Bloomberg News

reporter and he joins us from London.

Charlie, I want to start with you and

it's a special treat to have you on the

program because our afternoon program

often means that you can't join us cuz

it's so late where you are. Um you

you're diving into what's happening with

retail traders uh

who have been

exposed over the last few years to funds

that have traditionally only been given

access by um let's say accredited

investors, people with over a million

dollars in investable assets. But

increasingly you have funds from the

likes of Cathie Wood or or Robinhood or

others that do offer what they say is

exposure to private companies. How does

that work?

>> Yeah, it's really interesting, Tim,

because basically we're at this moment

where we're kind of getting all this

fervor and excitement about IPOs. And

then we also have this kind of evolution

of retail trading, right? We know that's

been kind of stacking up over the past,

you know, 5 years. We've seen an

increase in retail volume, significant

increase in retail volume from about 15%

to about 20%. And then you also have the

fact that companies are staying private

for longer. So you get this kind of trio

of facts coming through. And then some

products that are hitting the market or

that have really been hitting the market

over the past couple years that sort of

give that everyday person who's not

accredited, who doesn't have, you know,

six figures, seven figures to invest

access to some of these pre-IPO

companies, to some of these kind of

venture style firms. And there's a real

fervor for them right now and there's a

lot of kind of Reddit conversation about

this. There's a lot of social media

conversation about this about, you know,

everyday people who want to get in, who

want to kind of get access. They're

talking at the water cooler about

SpaceX. They're using Claude, they're

using Open AI, and they feel like the

economy around them is changing. They

want to get in. And so, a lot of these

funds, a lot of them are closed-end

funds, kind of give them a give them a

way to do that.

>> And Charlie, tell us about kind of what

your reporting has uncovered about some

of the limitations of these funds.

Because, of course,

there's no such thing as a free lunch on

Wall Street.

>> What? What do you mean?

>> [laughter]

>> No, you're totally right. You're totally

right. And you know, there were a lot of

teachable moments in some of the

investing activities of these people.

So, I think in the story that I wrote

recently, I talked to a father and a

son, and they started investing in one

of these closed-end funds that gives

people access to Open AI, to SpaceX, to

Anthropic. And basically, the deal with

this fund was that there was a 6-month

lockup period, right? So, retail

investors could get involved. They have

to pay pay much higher fees and say to a

standard ETF, and they also have to lock

up their money for 6 months. And so,

there was there was a moment when this

fund was just skyrocketing in value, and

the 19-year-old son calls up his dad and

just goes,

"Okay, wait. I put in 2K, I now have

76K.

Am I rich?" Um and the dad has to kind

of remind the child, the kid, he's 19,

he's not a child. Um "No, like you can't

sell yet, right?" And this is kind of,

you know, a demonstration of the

evolution of retail trading to kind of

emulate the private markets, to emulate

kind of institutional money a lot more

than it has in the past. So, this is

kind of retail starting to learn what

Emily with some of those limitations

other investors deal with um on an

everyday level.

>> Charlie, there's also fees, and and you

write a lot about personal finance and

investing and and the way that fees can

eat into future returns. So, with a

product a closed-end fund such as this,

and there are a few that you mentioned

here, what do critics say about the

fees?

>> Yeah, I mean the issue is that they

would compound, right? And so there's

this fast that like, you know, if you're

paying higher fees and kind of kind of,

you know, standard index fund, it's

going to over time really compound. And

I think that also kind of gets to the

point of kind of risk-return, right? So

I think one of the reasons a lot of

retail investors want to get into these

funds is cuz they feel like they've been

missing out. They feel like a lot of

these kind of VC-style investments have

been gatekept, and this is a kind of

extension of the democratization of

retail trading. But then if you think

about it, you know, you're taking on the

risk of an earlier-stage company, and

then you're also having some of the

potential returns being eaten into. That

kind of brings about a question about

how much you're actually getting out of

this. And then another risk that a lot

of kind of skeptics brought up kind of

time and again as I was reporting this

was, you know, by the time these stakes

are getting to retail, it's pretty late

in the cycle of these companies that

everyone is so excited about. So there's

questions of, you know, have you kind of

missed the boat? Yes, this is, you know,

you know, you're getting SpaceX, it's

not publicly traded yet. That's cool,

but it's also a lot later than say, you

know, what a VC would be getting and

what they would be kind of, you know,

getting the upside [clears throat] from.

So I think that kind of has brought a

lot of skepticism from people kind of

outside the Reddit channels.

>> Yeah, that I'm glad you went there, and

that's exactly where I want to bring in

Ed Ludlow. He's the co-host of Bloomberg

Tech. He's out there in San Francisco.

It's just a short drive from Sand Hill

Road, where many of those legendary

venture capitalists, Ed, are based. And

And you're looking at this, I know, from

the venture capitalist angle. We were

just talking about the Series H. Was

that right? Yeah, Series H round that

Anthropic had had raised, and the fact

that, you know, they announced this just

days ago, and now they're already on

the, you know, the path to to to having

an IPO. What What is the What do you

hear from venture capitalist about

retail sort of trying to replicate their

success? Because we hear about all the

home runs and the grand slams that these

VCs and these legendary VCs had, but

they'll be the first to say, "Listen,

there are a lot of duds for investments

that we've made, and they're not all

going to be a winner."

>> Well, the the capital

uh approach of a of a VC is is like

across the curve. So, you make lots of

investments, and over the life cycle of

those startups, many of them are net

zero. They fail, or they they never

amount to anything, they never achieve

anything. Some of them are acquired very

early by a bigger company. Some of them

go on to do IPOs, where if you invested

in a SpaceX very early, you you are

getting many, many X returns on your

initial investment, especially if you

invested early and then again over a

series of rounds, either through the

primary and secondary markets. You know,

the the retail investor

consideration in in a case like SpaceX,

it probably isn't going to move the

needle. For one, you know, there's a

difference between economic ownership

and then voting power. So, in this case,

pre-IPO, Elon Musk has 85.1% voting

control of SpaceX anyway. And those

names that that are at the top of the

cap table after him, Fidelity, Founders

Fund, Sequoia, um

uh Google, they've been there for a long

time, and so they participate in the IPO

through the offering, but they also

you'll see like cornerstone investors

come in, like BlackRock, someone like

that, who says, "Okay, I'm muscling into

this IPO, and I'm going to buy a few

billion dollars worth of the the

offering up front, you know, on IPO

day." That squeezes out the retail

investor, unless there's a very big

specific allocation, which as we talked

about before the break, in this case we

just don't know yet.

Charlie, when you talk to the the

proponents of these funds, When you

bring up um you know the the lockup

period, the higher fees, the risk of you

know investing in a a company that's

maybe more you know speculative than a

company that's already public. Um what

is their response to those limitations?

>> Basically what they say is look, you

know, we're democratizing venture

capital, right? We're bringing this to

more people. Isn't that a good thing? I

think we could spend a lot of time

talking about whether or not that's a

good thing. But they basically say look,

yes, our funds are higher than if you

were investing in like an you know S&P

index fund, but our fees are still

cheaper than you know someone would have

to get in a very standard say venture

capital fund. So they talk about that.

They talk about the evolution, right? So

some of the people will say you know

this is early stages. We we're in kind

of the early innings of the kind of you

know private era of markets. And as

people learn more, as more investors, as

more retail investors come in, there'll

be more transparency, fees will come

down. I think you could you know really

dig into some of those questions. And I

think others have said and you know this

is the head of Robinhood Ventures who

you know they have a product out that is

similar where you can get exposure to

say OpenAI

talking about how you know what this

could be risky, but it's less risky than

say starting you know from you know day

one of a startup. That like we are

bringing people

much later stage companies and they're

not going to get as much upside, but

they're also not going to get as much

risk. And so from from the people who

are going to bring these funds to

market, you get this you know

realization yes, these are different,

they're more expensive.

Um they're they're not going to give you

those 10x returns that a VC is going to

get, but you still get some exposure.

And this is something new. Why don't we

try this out?

>> These are the whales right now, Ed.

These are the ones that are getting all

the attention. These are the ones that

are getting a lot of the oxygen right

now. But for venture capitalists who who

you speak to, where are they putting

their money? What's the what's the sort

of like you know second derivative of a

public Anthropic, of a SpaceX, and of an

OpenAI.

>> Well, the thing is that, you know,

uh

SpaceX in particular,

um but I, you know, also Anthropic and

OpenAI are like very mature companies

now relative to what's happened in the

last 12 calendar months. You know,

SpaceX was founded in 2002, is that

right? And

uh maybe prior to that and, you know,

people have have been on this journey

with them where they've just done a lot

in the private market. So, applying that

thesis elsewhere, there are other

companies that are looking at uh orbital

data centers, but there is also an

acceptance that you need to have a lot

of capital and a lot of scale for make

all to make orbital data centers make

sense. So, like one of those companies

is Starlink, for example. Um they have

an H100 Nvidia GPU in on board a

satellite computing in orbit right now.

But they're nowhere near the economic

might of SpaceX. So, like you can apply

those. The frontier lab thing is getting

very interesting because if we bring it

back for one moment to the Anthropic

confidential filing today,

and you compare and contrast, Anthropic

is a is a a customer of uh SpaceX AIs,

right? They're renting compute for more

than a billion dollars a month. In the

end, they also compete with each other

as two frontier model labs that want to

sell uh AI software to enterprise

companies. OpenAI is in exactly the same

race. And so, like somebody at some

point's going to have to pick a winner.

That doesn't really answer your question

how do venture capitalists play the rest

of the field. If you're like Sequoia,

for example, with SpaceX, you've had to

adapt and grow and raise funds and keep

to stay up there because the bigger

phenomenon that's happening now in this

game is it's the mutual funds, sovereign

wealth funds, and those kind of legacy

Wall Street um private growth equity

names that are coming in and muscling in

in later rounds.

>> Oh, okay.

>> So, that's a factor you got to think

about.

>> Uh guys, going to have to leave it

there. Appreciate both of you joining

us. Ed Ludlow's going to be having a

conversation a little later this week

out in San Francisco uh, with Anduril

uh, co-founder uh, Trace Elements.

That's a little later this week. That's

at the Bloomberg Tech Summit. I don't

know if there's going to be um, tickets

still Ed, but you can watch it um, at on

bloomberg.com and on the terminal. And

Charlie Wells joining us, Bloomberg News

reporter. Check out his story on the

Bloomberg terminal and at bloomberg.com.

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Businessweek Daily podcast. Catch us

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>> Copper advanced in New York and London

to kick off a crucial month ahead of the

Trump administration's deadline to make

a fresh determination on launching uh,

US import levies. In the meantime,

Goldman raised its end-of-the-year

copper forecast by more than 10% as it

sees US stockpiling and weaker than

expected mine supply keeping the market

tight. Its analysts wrote a note that

copper will finish 2026 at $13,735

a ton versus a previous forecast of

around $12,465

a ton.

So, we're curious what Andrew Groves is

seeing right now. He's chairman of

Copper Intelligence which focuses on

mineral exploration and acquiring and

developing high-grade copper assets in

the Democratic Republic of of Congo. He

joins us here in the Bloomberg

Businessweek studio. Thanks for joining

us Andrew. How are you?

>> Very well. Thank you very much for

hosting me. Having me here. First time.

But

>> Yeah, welcome.

>> So, let's just start kind of high-level

about where you kind of see the forces

driving the copper market right now and

how AI plays into all of that.

>> I think there's a number of factors

driving the market and you got to start

with the supply issue always.

And um, you know, over the last 10, 20

years you've had a dearth of mining

investment in

the source of raw materials whether it's

existing mines upgrading the mineral

reserves or finding new deposits.

And then you

So, there's been a complete lack of

that. And then you have the existing

mines. A lot of them, especially in

South America, have declining grades.

So, if you look at some of the mine

grades in Chile and that, you're running

at 0.9, 0.7, 0.8%. That means you've

really got to move 100, 110 tons of dirt

to produce 1 ton of copper. And how much

does it cost to move that 100 tons of

dirt when you look at

fuel costs, human costs,

vehicle costs, etc., etc. So,

you you you've got that issue in in in

in the supply side. And then obviously

on the demand side, you've got these

hyperscalers requiring what is it?

50-odd thousand tons of copper per

per unit.

So, you you multiply that over a whole

series of hyperscaler data centers being

being built out.

>> In terms of regions of the the world

where

you are most bullish,

is is it fair to say it would be a DRC?

>> I'm very bullish on the DRC on the on

the basis it's very, very underexplored.

And historically,

it's been in constant conflict.

>> Which is why it's probably

underexplored.

>> Correct. And the new government under

Felix that's coming

in his second term, where he's not in a

coalition with Kabila,

he's

done an exceptional job.

There's a lot of investment going in the

country, roads being built. You go into

Kinshasa, there's a lot of

infrastructure being built, buildings,

and a lot of mining

investment. You had 32 plus billion

dollars of mineral exports last year,

the highest ever for the for the DRC.

And it's on track to do probably in

excess of 50 billion this year.

So, huge amount of investment in copper.

But what's exciting about Congo is the

copper grade.

So, if you look at the average grade in

Congo, it's running two, three, four,

some deposits 6%.

Means you've got to

move a lot less dirt to produce the same

ton of copper

>> Mhm. than you do in a lot of these South

American jurisdictions.

>> How How do the

I guess how do the customers of the

buyers of copper, how do they access the

copper? Is it a market where

it's there's still

I guess more demand than there is supply

and it's it's getting even harder.

>> At the moment demand exceeds supply. I

mean even going into this year I think

you're going to have a 3-400,000 ton

shortfall and I see the banks

targeting 13,800 at the year end. So

then my own prediction would be more on

15,000 tons.

>> So

you've got you saw Codelco

recently announced 20% reduction in

in supply. I'm not sure if Grasberg has

fixed its issues in uh

Asia.

So

and with the demand going, where's the

supply coming from?

>> Mhm. You mentioned the history of

conflict in the DRC and and it's also

right now in the news as a result of

what's happening with Ebola and I'm

curious about how that affects

uh you know you have you're on the

ground there often times. It's one of

the places you split your time between.

Uh what are you seeing? What are you

hearing? How does that affect the

industry? I mean it's a it's a story

about infectious disease and it's a

story about people but it's also a story

that affects exports.

>> I mean Ebola at the moment's

concentrated in that northeast area

around Punia and it hasn't really spread

and it kind of self-contains itself and

over time it it burns out. I mean

in 2014

>> Mhm.

>> we were in

the Ebola area of of Guinea near

N'Zérékoré where we were exploring iron

ore.

And again, as long as you sort of

hygienic and you're not sort of

getting involved

in any way with the the locals and as

far as sexual activity as far as

you know, it's all driven by semen,

saliva, and and and blood. It's not It's

not an airborne disease.

>> Dr. Amesh Adalja from the Bloomberg

School of Public Health was on our

program on Friday and he reminded us

about how, you know, we hear about how

it spreads, but he reminded us this is

a, you know, blood and bodily fluids is

the way that that this spreads.

>> And one of the traditions in African

culture when a body dies,

they wash it and then they all hug the

body.

And the the Ebola virus sits on the on

the body. And that's one of the the big

issues in in their culture of

perpetuating the

>> and and for your business, not an issue.

>> No, it's not an issue really. We've got

all our staff are well aware of of the

risks.

We've uh we run a program

informing everybody of what to do and

what not to do. You know, don't eat

bushmeat, don't eat bat meat, don't eat

fruit that bats like because they

urinate on the bat.

>> Does it make you Does this current

outbreak make you spend less time there

or will you go back and

>> No, I'll go back. It's I mean it's no

problem. As I said, it's not an airborne

disease. If it was If Ebola was an

airborne disease, I'd be staying, you

know, a million miles away, but it's not

an airborne disease. It's a, you know,

it's a bodily fluid disease.

>> Mhm.

>> So, as long as you avoid bodily fluids

in in whatever shape or form,

you're okay.

>> Okay.

>> So, it's it's not a huge risk.

>> I do want to end just going back to to

copper here and the the role how you see

the US's role kind of playing into this

because you're not Are you seeing guys

an increase in manufacturing and and and

mining in in the US?

>> I don't I can't comment on that cuz I

don't know too much what's happening in

in in the US. So, sort of my sort of, if

you want to call it, expertise is

working in the DRC and finding

high-grade copper assets that we can

develop. But one one advantage with us

is we haven't

signed any off-take or done any off take

agreements with

anybody yet. So all our

copper will be uh

coming hopefully to the United States.

>> How what's the way that you identify

deposit?

>> We identify the deposit normally looking

at surface mineralization where you look

at the copper oxidization on the surface

and you and that's very very visible in

in

in Congo and I'll just run you through

quickly how we discovered Botambo. We

have a

sort of way of discovering deposits in

in in the DRC what whatever mineral it

is and our local team

called us at our office in Lubumbashi

and said

sort of guys you come up here there's

very interesting copper and how it was

discovered in that area of Botambo the

locals

were digging from the top surface

through the laterite and then through an

oxidized

mineral layer of copper. So you looked

at about

10 12 m of ore and they were panning for

gold and getting very nice lumpy gold

three four five grams a ton out but then

at the bottom they hit almost a layer of

cement of green cement which was your

solid copper and then they'd move on to

the next sort of 50 m 100 m away do the

same you'd hit the same and it was over

and over so we then flew up there with

our team we bought in an excavator.

>> Right.

>> And we dug

along strike 1.2 km.

>> And and you found it Andrew Groves good

to see you.

>> Thanks for joining us.

>> Thank you very much for having

>> Chairman of Copper Intelligence here in

the Bloomberg Businessweek studio. Stay

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Another stock that moved today, Grail,

it's saying 10%. It was down as much as

24% earlier in the day, the most

intraday going back months. It's a

cancer detection test maker. It reported

results from its Pathfinder 2 study. It

showed that Gallery met its secondary

endpoints. The company previously

reported that Gallery failed to reach

its primary endpoint. Thinking that

Roderic Wong and Stephanie Serota follow

these developments closely. This is

their world after all. Rod is founder

and chief investment officer of RTW

Investments. Stephanie Serota, chief

business officer at the firm. It's got

close to $10 billion in assets under

management. RTW specialty is investing

in biotech and medtech innovation. It's

sort of across the lifespan of companies

from companies that are just beginning,

startups, all the way to public

companies. Usually they're in New York.

They're in Chicago though for the 2026

ASCO annual meeting. It's a major and

huge oncology conference. Rod,

Stephanie, thanks so much for for

joining us. Rod, I just want to start

with you and and and and give us the

takeaway from this this conference right

now and sort of what's dominating at

this major oncology conference already.

>> Yeah, how are you? Thanks for having us.

Um

yeah, I think the big highlight of the

conference for sure, far and away, is

the RevMed data.

Um so basically they reported a doubling

in uh survival for pancreatic cancer.

It's really the first real breakthrough

we've ever seen.

Um it's actually the first time in

several years, I'd say, that I was in a

room when data was presented and they

got a standing ovation. And I think the

first time ever that it happened mid

presentation. So when the presenter put

up the survival curves,

um

everyone just got up uh and started

clapping. Um it's really a huge a huge

day for pancreatic cancer.

>> That's incredible. Now mention the

mention the company one more time.

>> Sure, it's RevMed and the ticker is

RVMD. Okay. It's one of bigger emerging

biotechs. It's uh little north of 30

billion market cap now.

>> Yeah, that's pretty remarkable. I mean,

I I think look, I you know, you you

live long enough and you meet enough

people that you're going to know

somebody who's been affected by

pancreatic cancer and it's just an

absolutely debilitating

illness. And even though Rod, even

doubling of the

of the survival rate is still it's a

pretty low survival rate, right?

>> No, that's right. I mean, and some

people pointed that out which is before

this

survival was around 6 7 months. They put

up 13 months.

>> Okay.

>> I would just point out though that, you

know, from the pipeline following this

we see

we think clearly where pancreatic cancer

is headed is in probably within 5 years

you're going to see survival double

again. And not just that, not just

moving the median from say a year to 2

years, but we think at that point you're

going to have this non-zero percentage

of patients that might actually be

basically cured. And that's that's of

course meaningful no matter how

skeptical you want to be.

>> Stephanie, let's bring you in here as

well. What else stood out to you in

terms of themes at this conference?

>> Well, there were there were a number of

things and, you know, the Revolution

Medicine

>> [clears throat]

>> data and the standing ovation was really

moving. This was actually my first time

going to ASCO.

Rod and the team have been going for

years and so this was a a pretty

monumental

event.

I think

you know, what

what really was amazing to me to see was

there were 40,000 people at this

convention center. And, you know, I

think sometimes you hear people

question, well,

what's actually happening in cancer? Or

they can can't they can't they can cure

it, but they're not doing it, you know,

they meaning like the pharma.

And, you know, what? I was

I was just blown away with

how many people were there who are you

know

giving their heart and their soul and

dedicating their time and making their

livelihood out of research and advancing

incredible innovation

around cancer and I think and you know

oncologist is like one aspect of you

know biotech and innovation that that we

cover at RTW but it really blew me away

to see all of these people come

and convene

and you know share this data so

that is it's a it's a pretty remarkable

thing.

>> I love the the optimism from both of

you. I mean it's like honestly it gives

me chills because this is something that

affects truly you know cancer affects

everybody and you know you live long

enough and you you meet people you lose

people you lose family members and it it

affects truly everybody. Rod are we are

we right to be optimistic right now in

in an environment where we're seeing

funding being cut from the federal

government to universities that that

often are the early points

of research such as this?

>> Yeah I think yes the the short answer is

still yes but you do have this

convergence

of a few mega forces that are

dramatically improving the productivity

of drug discovery. One is now having the

genome that's been around a while now

but it wasn't it hasn't been that long

that has been very very cheap right

which is enabling

you also have the explosion all these

new technologies that you can develop

drugs from right we didn't have cell

therapy we didn't have gene therapy a

whole bunch of tools you know even half

dozen years ago and then more recently

of course there's been the emergence of

a science from China and then now we're

just starting with AI so those four

things added together are mega forces

that far outweigh any kind of short-term

decreases in things like NIH funding.

>> Rod, where do you think the market is

maybe

mispricing or misunderstanding the

opportunity in China?

>> Yeah, you know, I think you know, the

the China

conversation is obviously a super active

one.

I think at the end of the day what China

is very very good at

is having built an ecosystem that's very

good at iterating, right, on existing

drug targets.

Um

Uh you know, so that iterative

innovation and then rapidly moving it

into the clinic.

Um and the result of them being good at

that has added probably, you know, 30 to

40% more drugs into the global drug

pipeline than we would have had

otherwise.

Um right now it's actually I think net

net very favorable to the west and it's

and clearly not favorable to patients

around the world. Um because right now

the business model, the standard

business model has been China takes it

through the early proof of concept in

human clinical trials very cheaply, um

very rapidly, and then ultimately

[snorts]

partners everything outside of China uh

typically to global pharma and

sometimes, you know, to venture

capitalists in the west. Um so I think

that's a good balance of that

relationship. Of course, people are

worried what it will mean

in the future for US pharma if we don't

stay competitive.

>> Well, so so Emily asked Rod about China

and and pulled at that thread.

Stephanie, I want to ask you about AI

which Rod mentioned as well and the mega

trend there. Because one of the promises

that I think is still

um for a lot of people

you know, we're hopeful but we haven't

seen the results yet is what how AI

actually transforms healthcare and

transforms the industry and and and

biotech. Are we seeing that already,

Stephanie?

>> Um I don't you know, I think I

I think we like to say that, you know,

there are different buckets where AI is

starting to be transformative and where

it's going to be really important and

meaningful. On the development side,

we're not seeing

uh you know, the benefits of it yet.

That, you know, hopefully will come one

day, but um right now it's really about

it doing the right things with data. Um

and certainly on the late stage as, you

know, a drug um

is being reviewed by FDA, there's a lot

of a tremendous amount of administration

um that can be

ac- accelerated with with AI. Um and if

you think about like the paperwork um

>> [clears throat]

>> and all all the things, you know, that

can clog up um a drug review process,

that can certainly um

speed things up, which is really what,

you know, we want to see. Um and we're

always pushing for more um you know,

speed and flexibility um from FDA. So,

that I think is uh those are the key

areas. Maybe on the discovery side and

then um as drugs are kind of ready to be

vetted.

>> Uh we actually two

>> Yeah, we Rod, unfortunately, we we have

to run, but we got to get both of you

back here in the studio. Uh we'd love to

continue this conversation. When you do

get back from Chicago, we'd love to have

you both in here and join us here in the

Bloomberg Businessweek Studio. Rod

Wong is founder and chief investment

officer over at RTW Investments. Uh

Stephanie Sirota, chief business officer

over at RTW Investments, close to $10

million in assets under management and

they invest across the entire life cycle

when it comes to biotech innovation.

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