An interactive who's-who of the tech execs at Trump's White House dinner
The White House invited a gaggle of top founders and tech executives for an intimate dinner at the White House.
Meta: Facebook is for the children, basically
Meta has a youth problem that it keeps trying to fix using old stuff. This time it’s trying to bring back “pokes” — a feature from yesteryear the social media company had buried that allows users to digitally nudge others without having to say anything.
To make the feature shiny and new, the company is adding “counts,” along with a dedicated poke button and page, so users can keep track of who they poked or were poked by and how much.
Meta is hoping the updated feature will lead to more usage from young people, who’ve already started to adopt the practice thanks to previous pushes by Meta. Social media companies, like Snapchat and TikTok, have previously gotten into hot water before for similar gamification elements like “streaks” that critics have said are addictive.
The average age of Facebook users has been ticking up for years as the company loses young people to newer services, including Instagram, which Meta bought more than a decade ago, back when it was still called Facebook. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, released last winter, teens were way less inclined to use Facebook than TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
Meta is hoping the updated feature will lead to more usage from young people, who’ve already started to adopt the practice thanks to previous pushes by Meta. Social media companies, like Snapchat and TikTok, have previously gotten into hot water before for similar gamification elements like “streaks” that critics have said are addictive.
The average age of Facebook users has been ticking up for years as the company loses young people to newer services, including Instagram, which Meta bought more than a decade ago, back when it was still called Facebook. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, released last winter, teens were way less inclined to use Facebook than TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
OpenAI is working on a “jobs platform” for people who lose their jobs to AI
OpenAI has some good news and bad news for workers. The bad news? AI will probably take your job. The good news? The company will offer AI-powered classes to retrain you, and try to help you get a job as a certified AI pro.
The company announced plans for the OpenAI Jobs Platform, in partnership with Walmart, John Deere, and Accenture, to help workers looking to level up their AI skills, and match them with companies seeking such candidates.
In a blog post announcing the plan, the company wrote:
“But AI will also be disruptive. Jobs will look different, companies will have to adapt, and all of us—from shift workers to CEOs—will have to learn how to work in new ways. At OpenAI, we can’t eliminate that disruption. But what we can do is help more people become fluent in AI and connect them with companies that need their skills, to give people more economic opportunities. “
Using AI-powered instruction, users can receive certification for their training, and OpenAI said it is committing to certifying 10 million Americans on its platform by 2030.
The company announced plans for the OpenAI Jobs Platform, in partnership with Walmart, John Deere, and Accenture, to help workers looking to level up their AI skills, and match them with companies seeking such candidates.
In a blog post announcing the plan, the company wrote:
“But AI will also be disruptive. Jobs will look different, companies will have to adapt, and all of us—from shift workers to CEOs—will have to learn how to work in new ways. At OpenAI, we can’t eliminate that disruption. But what we can do is help more people become fluent in AI and connect them with companies that need their skills, to give people more economic opportunities. “
Using AI-powered instruction, users can receive certification for their training, and OpenAI said it is committing to certifying 10 million Americans on its platform by 2030.
Trump administration plans to loosen rules for self-driving cars, exempt them from windshield wipers
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Thursday it’s planning to propose three new rules that will make it easier for self-driving car companies to develop their vehicles more cheaply. Those include getting rid of requirements that were mandatory for human drivers, including gear shift sticks, windshield defrosting and defogging systems, and some lighting equipment.
“Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards were written for vehicles with human drivers and need to be updated for autonomous vehicles. Removing these requirements will reduce costs and enhance safety,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said in a statement.
Earlier this year NHTSA announced it was loosening other rules around autonomous cars, including exempting them from certain federal safety rules for research and demonstration purposes. This time around, however, stocks like Tesla, which is banking on autonomous driving as part of the future of the company, aren’t moving as much on the news.
“Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards were written for vehicles with human drivers and need to be updated for autonomous vehicles. Removing these requirements will reduce costs and enhance safety,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said in a statement.
Earlier this year NHTSA announced it was loosening other rules around autonomous cars, including exempting them from certain federal safety rules for research and demonstration purposes. This time around, however, stocks like Tesla, which is banking on autonomous driving as part of the future of the company, aren’t moving as much on the news.
Meta’s Threads app is adding a way for users to post up to 10,000 characters, using a new feature called “text attachments”.
Currently Threads posts can contain 500 characters, and many times people just post screenshots of longer text. The company said they noticed users posting screenshots of text from books, articles and podcast transcripts.
Threads competitor X allows users to post up to 25,000 characters, but the feature is only available to paid subscribers. Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the platform had passed 400 million monthly active users.
But as we’ve written, the app won’t necessarily allow you to take a ride in one of Tesla’s roughly 30 autonomous cars in Austin — or even in its more Uber-like ride-hailing service in the Bay Area. For now it just allows users to join a waitlist for the two services. (I’ll let you know when I’m in.)
Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk is currently suing Apple, alleging the iPhone maker has kept xAI’s Grok app from ascending the App Store. Grok is currently ranked 73rd.
But as we’ve written, the app won’t necessarily allow you to take a ride in one of Tesla’s roughly 30 autonomous cars in Austin — or even in its more Uber-like ride-hailing service in the Bay Area. For now it just allows users to join a waitlist for the two services. (I’ll let you know when I’m in.)
Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk is currently suing Apple, alleging the iPhone maker has kept xAI’s Grok app from ascending the App Store. Grok is currently ranked 73rd.
Amazon is reportedly testing an enterprise agentic AI tool called “Quick Suite”
Shares of Amazon are rallying as the tech titan readies itself to take another stab at the enterprise software market with a new “agentic AI” tool, according to a report from Business Insider.
“Quick Suite” is a tool that Amazon documents say helps “every business user to make better decisions, faster, and act on them swiftly by unifying Al agents for business insights, deep research, and automation into a single experience,” Business Insider reports.
Amazon is reportedly testing the software with 50 companies, including several large clients like BMW and Koch Industries, the report says. The release of the AWS-powered Quick Suite was delayed from a planned July release to September, per the report.
The timing of this report looks just about perfect for Amazon: recently, the AI trade has shifted more toward software beneficiaries than the picks-and-shovels hardware providers.
Amazon is reportedly testing the software with 50 companies, including several large clients like BMW and Koch Industries, the report says. The release of the AWS-powered Quick Suite was delayed from a planned July release to September, per the report.
The timing of this report looks just about perfect for Amazon: recently, the AI trade has shifted more toward software beneficiaries than the picks-and-shovels hardware providers.
Morgan Stanley predicts Apple will raise its iPhone price for the first time in seven years
When Apple unveils its latest phone next week, the iPhone 17, analysts at Morgan Stanley Research expect new models to cost about $100 more. That won’t include like-for-like price hikes, but rather they expect the iPhone 17 Air to cost about $100 more than the iPhone 16 Plus and for Apple to eliminate some lower-storage options, effectively raising starting prices. Such a small boost, the analysts say, won’t hurt demand but will juice Apple’s revenue. They wrote:
“Importantly, we don’t see these pricing changes as likely to drive elastic iPhone 17 demand — the price hikes are modest in nature and when amortized over 2-3 years, shouldn’t serve as a material headwind to iPhone demand, and therefore we see pricing as an under-appreciated upside driver to Consensus FY26 expectations.”
Google is reportedly pitching its AI chips to data centers
Nvidia unquestionably dominates the current AI chip market, making the most popular GPUs to train and run today’s AI models.
But the companies paying hundreds of billions for those powerful GPUs are all working on their own custom chips.
Amazon has been iterating on its Trainium and Inferentia chips, promising favorable performance for the price. OpenAI has been quietly working on designs for its own chips, and even Microsoft is hedging its bets with its own AI chip design.
Today, The Information reports that Google has been reaching out to data center providers to get its own custom chips in racks to rent to customers. The company is shopping around its custom tensor processing units (TPUs) to cloud computing providers like CoreWeave, Crusoe, and Fluidstack, according to the report.
With Nvidia sitting comfortably at the top of the mountain, companies are looking to reduce their dependence on one supplier for the specialized hardware that powers their AI businesses.
But the companies paying hundreds of billions for those powerful GPUs are all working on their own custom chips.
Amazon has been iterating on its Trainium and Inferentia chips, promising favorable performance for the price. OpenAI has been quietly working on designs for its own chips, and even Microsoft is hedging its bets with its own AI chip design.
Today, The Information reports that Google has been reaching out to data center providers to get its own custom chips in racks to rent to customers. The company is shopping around its custom tensor processing units (TPUs) to cloud computing providers like CoreWeave, Crusoe, and Fluidstack, according to the report.
With Nvidia sitting comfortably at the top of the mountain, companies are looking to reduce their dependence on one supplier for the specialized hardware that powers their AI businesses.
Apple closes near session highs after report it’s planning an AI web search tool like ChatGPT
Shares of Apple closed near session highs, getting an extra jolt near the end of the trading day following a report from Bloomberg that the iPhone maker is planning on launching its own AI-powered search tool next year that will compete with similar ones from OpenAI and Perplexity. The “answer engine,” dubbed World Knowledge Answers, is part of a larger AI overhaul of its Siri assistant that Apple has so far failed to deliver.
Apple reached an agreement with Google to “evaluate and test” the underlying tech behind part of this AI Siri. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple is in talks with Google over using Gemini to power Siri.
The news comes one day after a US court ruling on Google’s monopoly case that left its commercial relationship with Apple little changed.
Apple reached an agreement with Google to “evaluate and test” the underlying tech behind part of this AI Siri. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple is in talks with Google over using Gemini to power Siri.
The news comes one day after a US court ruling on Google’s monopoly case that left its commercial relationship with Apple little changed.
Morgan Stanley: The next Google is still most likely Google
Out of the ashes of Microsoft’s mostly toothless monopoly decision rose Google. And out of the ashes of Google’s mostly toothless monopoly decision... Google will also rise. Or at least that’s what Morgan Stanley Research analysts led by Brian Nowak think, calling the remedies in the ruling released yesterday “likely benign and unlikely to dislodge GOOGL’s leading position.”
For the most part, things will remain pretty much exactly the same following the court’s decision. Google’s Chrome browser and Android operating system will remain part of Google. Google will still likely pay Apple for default placement on its iPhone’s Safari browser, though with some minor changes to exclusivity and contract length.
Google will have to share some data with competitors, but Morgan Stanley points out that isn’t a clear path to more competition.
“Data sharing clauses seem (in our view) likely to be somewhat benign as it will still be challenging (and require extensive investment) for a competitor to use GOOGL data to create a viable search threat,” Nowak wrote. “This is likely to be challenging given GOOGL’s leading scale, reach, daily feed of user information, and accelerated pace of improving (and more personalized) GenAI offerings.”
Anthropic raises $13 billion, now valued at $183 billion
Anthropic, the startup behind the Claude AI chatbot, said it has completed a $13 billion round of fundraising.
The Series F round gives the company a valuation of $183 billion, securing its place in the elite group of leading AI startups alongside OpenAI and xAI.
The round was led by ICONIQ along with Fidelity Management & Research and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other investors in this round included the Qatar Investment Authority, BlackRock, and Blackstone.
Anthropic is reportedly closing in on $5 billion in annualized revenue, but is burning through cash at an high rate, as the cost of running its Claude models grows. The Information reported that the company expects to burn $3 billion this year, after burning $5.6 billion in 2024.
Amazon has invested $8 billion in the startup, and Anthropic also counts Google and Qualcomm as investors.
The Series F round gives the company a valuation of $183 billion, securing its place in the elite group of leading AI startups alongside OpenAI and xAI.
The round was led by ICONIQ along with Fidelity Management & Research and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other investors in this round included the Qatar Investment Authority, BlackRock, and Blackstone.
Anthropic is reportedly closing in on $5 billion in annualized revenue, but is burning through cash at an high rate, as the cost of running its Claude models grows. The Information reported that the company expects to burn $3 billion this year, after burning $5.6 billion in 2024.
Amazon has invested $8 billion in the startup, and Anthropic also counts Google and Qualcomm as investors.
