The tech product that made Bloomberg rich is a symbol for his campaign

As billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempts to buy (and meme) his way into the hearts of voters in the democratic primaries, there’s renewed scrutiny on who this dude is, what he’s done, and where he came from.

A good starting point is: How did Bloomberg earn the billions that make him the ninth richest man in the world?

A large part of the answer to that is The Bloomberg Terminal, a clunky but allegedly highly effective tech product. It’s an information portal, a social network, and a trading tool that’s deeply entrenched in the financial industry, used by finance bros and salespeople the world over.

And as a legacy moneymaker with deep ties to Wall Street and problematic social undercurrents, it also happens to be the perfect metaphor for Bloomberg as a political candidate. 

Vox laid out the origin story of Bloomberg’s cash in a thorough explainer. In 1981, Mikey got a $10 million severance package from the investment bank where he worked. He used that cash to found his company, Bloomberg LP, and sold a number of terminals to Merrill Lynch the following year.

In the ’80s and ’90s, Bloomberg Terminal was a specialized machine that allowed bankers, traders, analysts, and other finance professionals to connect to a portal of information about the financial industry. That included industry reports, trading records, news, company information, and whatever else traders need to do their thing. That amount of information at a user’s fingertips was revolutionary itself, since the internet would not be mainstream for another couple of decades. 

Bloomberg Terminal gained subscribers throughout the ’80s, ’90s, and aughts, and became the market leader in 2011. Today, Bloomberg LP is a $10 billion company and, according to Vox, about 75 percent of that valuation comes from the Terminal.

Image: Thomas Yau / South China Morning Post via Getty Images

The Terminal still does everything and more than it used to, and is reportedly the main digital arena of the trading world. It’s now lost most of its hardware, and is instead a piece of subscription software called Bloomberg Professional that runs on PCs —though, it does still look decidedly retro with neon block text and a specialized keyboard that helps users navigate the program with commands and shortcuts. For example, entering EQUITY plus a company name will surface search results for a company’s stock price or entering DINE will give users…restaurant recommendations. 

In addition to helping financial sector workers, well,  work, it also has a social networking component. There are profile pages of people within the industry, which Vox reports are a go-to for looking up “hot salespeople.” There are also chatrooms, some anonymous, which can be “cesspools” of bro-dom and misogyny.

It’s all extremely fitting as the engine that powers Mike Bloomberg’s fortune and campaign. Like the Terminal, Bloomberg himself has been ballooning in power and influence since the ’80s. That’s thanks to a deep relationship with the financial sector that both Bloomberg the machine and the man retain (Bloomberg recently announced a new plan to regulate Wall Street, which has been viewed as a bid to distance himself from the banking industry).

Bloomberg’s past as a mayor and boss are also reminiscent of the cultural aspects of the Terminal. Many remember Bloomberg the mayor as the man behind New York’s controversial stop and frisk policy which racially profiled people of color. An exhaustive report from the Washington Post describes the intolerant and inappropriate workplace Bloomberg allegedly fostered as a sexist boss; that reality is mirrored in the chatrooms and alleged objectification of user profiles. 

The insider-y nature of the Bloomberg Terminal makes it a literal gatekeeper for the finance industry, giving anyone in the establishment with the ability to pay a pricey subscription a leg up over those on the outside; an apt metaphor for white privilege.

Today, the technology industry is already lobbying the government extensively for influence. Bloomberg may not be widely known as a tech guy. But in reality, he’s a member of the club, too.