The Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether Microsoft hiring basically all of Inflection AI’s employees and licensing its tech was the same thing as an acquisition, which would have required review from the government body. Regulators are already set to open antitrust investigations into Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI’s dominant roles in the AI industry.
More and more communities across the US are wrestling with the pros and cons of having a data center come to town. Georgia has become a hotspot of resistance to the data centers planned by Big Tech, according to a new report from The Guardian. The Atlanta metro area led the nation in data center construction in 2024.
Georgia state representatives introduced legislation that would place a one-year moratorium on data center construction in the state. Ten Georgia municipalities have already passed local bans on data centers.
Per the report, at least three other states have seen similar data center moratorium legislation introduced in the last week, including Maryland and Oklahoma.
Georgia state representatives introduced legislation that would place a one-year moratorium on data center construction in the state. Ten Georgia municipalities have already passed local bans on data centers.
Per the report, at least three other states have seen similar data center moratorium legislation introduced in the last week, including Maryland and Oklahoma.
Glass company Corning is soaring in early trading after announcing a $6 billion deal with Meta to provide its data centers with fiber-optic cable products. Thanks to a string of big tech deals — including partnerships with Broadcom and Apple — Corning’s stock is up about 100% over the past year.
A 175-year-old glass manufacturer, Corning is known for its Gorilla Glass, used in smartphone and laptop screens. It was known in the past for its iconic blue cornflower CorningWare ceramics, a consumer cookware business it spun off in the 1990s.
In an interview, Corning CEO Wendell Weeks told CNBC that he thinks “next year the hyperscalers will be our biggest customers,” amid demand from tech giants including Google and Microsoft.
Ahead of earnings Wednesday, a new note on Tesla from Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives argues the company is on the cusp of a Robotaxi-driven transformation, with Full Self-Driving penetration rising above 50% and autonomy unlocking as much as $1 trillion in value — putting Tesla on a path to a $2 trillion to $3 trillion market cap over the coming year.
The issue isn’t the optimism; it’s the absence of mechanics. FSD penetration across Tesla’s global fleet currently sits in the low teens. The note doesn’t explain how Tesla bridges that gap — whether through pricing changes, bundling, or a behavioral shift among mass-market buyers. Tesla is ending the option to buy FSD outright in favor of subscriptions, but that alone isn’t going to push adoption from roughly 12% to 50%.
Ives treats Tesla’s Robotaxi progress as inevitable rather than conditional. The removal of safety drivers in Austin — which for now is isolated to two or three vehicles and involves using an extra car to follow the Robotaxi — is framed as a tipping point. But there’s little discussion of scaling risks, regulation, real-world performance data, or actual demand. Ives only says President Trump will likely issue an executive order on autonomous rules and regulatory hurdles will effectively disappear — with the implication that FSD adoption would accelerate rapidly.
Even near-term fundamentals are stretched to support the narrative. Tesla didn’t beat Q4 delivery expectations, though Ives says it did, having previously cited whisper numbers rather than the analyst consensus. That claim is then used to clear the runway for a valuation argument focused almost entirely on future autonomy.
In the end, this is less an earnings preview note than a statement of belief: autonomy works; adoption follows; Tesla wins at scale.
That story may eventually prove right — but for now, it’s an assertion that outstrips the evidence.
