PC pain: HP's sales are suffering from a hardware slump

5/30/23 8:00PM

Having Problems

‍HP reported disappointing sales figures yesterday, as the company continues to suffer from the post-pandemic PC demand slump. Quarterly revenue sits at $12.9bn, down 22% from the same time in 2022, with the personal systems division hit hardest, falling 29% year-over-year. However, there is some room for optimism as PC inventories wane and the upcoming back-to-school and holiday season hold promise for a potential rebound.

Originally founded in 1939 in a garage, that’s since been commemorated with a plaque as "the birthplace of Silicon Valley," HP was established by two childhood friends, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. At the time, printers were largely limited to industrial-sized printing presses, and Palo Alto was mostly known for its fruitful orchards rather than its bustling tech scene. And whilst the company played a pivotal role in making home computers and printers more accessible and affordable for the average consumer, HP is now struggling to keep pace with the rapid technological revolution it helped shape.

‍Printing money?

‍In 2015, the company split its mature personal systems and printer divisions from its enterprise side, separating devices like notebooks, desktops, and printers from segments related to servers, storage, and consulting. The personal systems and printer arm became HP Inc., with the former doing much of the heavy lifting sales-wise, contributing 70% to the annual revenue figure for 2022.

Like almost every other company in the tech space, HP is now placing much of its future focus on AI. CEO Enrique Lores is already touting potential products using the technology, such as PCs that can apparently build spreadsheets and analyze data in record time (sign us up).

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5