AI Briefing Room

EP-77 Intel Layoffs ⚠️, Microsoft’s Ai Rivalry 🤖, Ai Music Legal Battles 🎶

i'm wall-e, welcoming you to today's tech briefing for friday, august 2nd. dive into today's top tech stories:
intel's workforce reduction: intel plans to lay off over 15% of its employees, totaling 15,000 jobs, as part of a strategy to reduce expenditures by $10 billion by 2025 following disappointing second-quarter earnings.
microsoft lists openai as competitor: in a notable development, microsoft has officially designated openai as a competitor in its latest sec filing, despite a $13 billion investment and ongoing partnership.
suno's legal troubles: ai music startup suno faces legal challenges after admitting to training its ai model on copyrighted songs, raising significant fair-use concerns.
amazon's advertising growth: amazon reports 20% year-over-year growth in its online advertising business, bringing in $12.77 billion in q2, though missing analysts’ expectations as overall sales fell short.
that's all for today. we'll see you back here tomorrow for another tech briefing.

EP-76 Nvidia’s Sizzling Surge 🚀, Meta’s Heavy Losses 📉, Irl Fraud Scandal 💣

welcome to wall-e's tech briefing for thursday, august 1! dive into today's top tech stories:
nvidia shares surge: investors show renewed confidence as microsoft and amd express plans to ramp up spending on nvidia-based infrastructure, boosting nvidia’s stock by 13%.
meta’s reality labs losses: despite posting a $4.5 billion loss in q2, meta continues to bet on the metaverse, with hardware sales from quest vr headsets showing some growth.
irl founder charged with fraud: abraham shafi, former ceo of social app irl, faces sec charges for deceiving investors about user numbers; investigation reveals 95% of users were bots.
dating app vulnerabilities: ku leuven researchers find flaws in bumble and hinge that allowed stalkers to track users' locations; apps have since implemented fixes.
samsung’s robust q2 earnings: substantial demand for ai training memory chips drives operating profit up by 1,458% year-on-year, exceeding analyst expectations.
stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!

EP-74 Apple’s Ai Leap 📱, Meta’s Video Vision 🎥, and Ai Safety in Transit 🚌

welcome to wall-e's tech briefing for tuesday, july 30th! dive into today's top tech stories:
apple intelligence preview: apple unveils its ai capabilities with features like enhanced siri, auto-generated emails and images, and efficient notification sorting, available in the developer beta of ios 18.1, ipados, and macos.
apple's ai training practices: a new technical paper from apple highlights their approach using public, licensed, and curated data, emphasizing user privacy in ai training.
meta's segment anything 2: ceo mark zuckerberg introduces sa2, which extends object identification to video, reflecting major advancements in ai vision technology, and makes the model and annotated video database freely available.
u.s. commerce department's support for open-weight ai models: new report backs models like meta's llama 3.1, recommending capabilities to monitor risks, aligning with the biden-harris administration's responsible ai development initiative.
las vegas ai weapon detection: the city fully deploys ai-based weapon detection technology on its public transit system, a $33 million upgrade to enhance safety across over 400 buses.
stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!

EP-73 Apple’s Ai Commitment 🤖, Spacex’s Falcon 9 Return 🚀, Crowdstrike’s Windows Recovery 💻

i'm wall-e, welcoming you to today's tech briefing for monday, july 29th.
apple signs white house ai commitment: unveiling plans for its new generative ai, apple intelligence, embedded into core products to reach 2 billion users, joining other tech giants in setting ai ground rules.
spacex falcon 9 launch resumes: after addressing a fault that caused a failure in the second stage engine, spacex is cleared by regulators to continue launches, ensuring no public safety issues.
crowdstrike outage update: ceo george kurtz reports recovery progress following widespread blue screen errors caused by a routine update, affecting the company's share price and global it systems.
apple loses ground in chinese smartphone market: for the first time, apple falls out of the top five vendors in china, overtaken by domestic brands like huawei, with a market share drop to 14% in q2.
stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!

EP-72 Title: Searchgpt Launch 🚀, Gig Economy Win in Ca 🎉, Gemini Ai Upgrade by Google 🤖

welcome to wall-e's tech briefing for friday, july 26! dive into today's top tech stories:
openai enters search market: introduction of searchgpt, an ai-powered search engine that organizes and makes sense of information, powered by gpt-4. features include follow-up questions, sidebar links, and ai-generated visual answers, with partnerships for clear attribution.
california gig economy decision: uber, lyft, and doordash secure a major victory as the state's supreme court upholds proposition 22, allowing gig workers to remain independent contractors, providing flexibility but falling short of full employee benefits.
google gemini ai chatbot upgrade: upgrade to gemini 1.5 flash ai model enhances response times, reasoning, and image understanding, with an expanded context window of up to 32k tokens. available in the free version on web and mobile, with added links to related content for fact-seeking.
dexcom stock drop: shares plunge nearly 40% post-disappointing q2 revenue and weak future guidance. ceo attributes shortfall to sales team restructuring and fewer new customers, with a new over-the-counter cgm called stelo set to launch in august.
whatsapp milestone in the u.s.: meta ceo mark zuckerberg announces whatsapp surpasses 100 million monthly active users in the u.s., boosted by marketing efforts and emphasizing privacy and end-to-end encryption. globally, over 2 billion active users, with the largest base in india.
stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!

EP-71 Apple Maps Web Beta 🌐, Tesla’s Stock Drop 📉, Meta’s Anti-cybercrime Push 🛡️

i'm wall-e, welcoming you to today's tech briefing for thursday, july 25th.
apple maps web expansion: apple maps launches a public beta for the web, taking on google maps with support for safari, chrome, and edge, and promising features like driving directions and curated guides.
tesla shares plunge: tesla shares drop 12% following weaker-than-expected q2 earnings, with ceo elon musk hinting at an affordable car and autonomous ride-hailing service on the horizon.
meta’s crackdown on sextortion scams: meta shuts down 63,000 instagram accounts in nigeria linked to financial sextortion scams, using advanced technical signals to identify and restrict these accounts.
crowdstrike outage: a botched update leads to a massive outage affecting 8.5 million windows devices, with crowdstrike issuing $10 uber eats gift cards and public apologies from its ceo and cso.
colin kaepernick’s lumi: colin kaepernick launches lumi, an ai storytelling platform aimed at democratizing content creation, with tools for character generation and script development, backed by $4 million in seed funding.
that's all for today. we'll see you back here tomorrow.

EP-70 Waymo’s $5b Boost 🚗, Meta’s Open-source Giant 🧠, Tesla’s Robotaxi Update 🚖

i'm wall-e, welcoming you to today's tech briefing for wednesday, july 24.
alphabet invests in waymo: alphabet announced a $5 billion investment into its subsidiary waymo to support its self-driving technology ambitions, delivering over 50,000 paid rides per week across various cities.
meta unveils llama 3.1 405b: meta has launched its latest ai model, containing 405 billion parameters, capable of various tasks including coding and document summarization, available for download or cloud use.
tesla's robotaxi prototype reveal: tesla ceo elon musk has rescheduled the robotaxi prototype reveal to october 10, emphasizing the long-term importance of autonomy despite recent profit drops.
harvey's $100m series c funding: legal tech startup harvey raised $100 million to develop an ai-powered "copilot" for lawyers, aiming to enhance legal workflows and expand services.
mercury's service shutdown in multiple countries: digital banking startup mercury ended services for clients in ukraine and nigeria following federal pressure, affecting startups in those regions and opening the door for competitors like brex.
that's all for today. we'll see you back here tomorrow.

EP-69 Wiz’s $23b Rejection 🛡️, Cohere’s Funding Boost 💸, Teen Prodigy’s Startup 🚀

i'm wall-e, welcoming you to today's tech briefing for tuesday, july 23.
wiz rejects alphabet’s $23 billion offer: cybersecurity startup wiz turns down a $23 billion acquisition offer from alphabet, preferring to remain independent.
cohere’s $500 million funding round: generative ai startup cohere raises $500 million, boosting its valuation to $5.5 billion with plans to double its workforce and expand enterprise ai solutions.
17-year-old eric zhu’s aviato: eric zhu launches aviato from stealth with $2.3 million in venture funding, aiming to tackle gaps in private market data analytics.
crowdstrike faces technical fallout: crowdstrike shares drop 13% after a global tech outage caused by a defective software update affects millions of microsoft windows devices.
google’s jigsaw open-sources altitude: google subsidiary jigsaw releases altitude, a counterterrorism tool, as open-source software to help smaller companies manage extremist content.
that's all for today. we'll see you back here tomorrow.

EP-68 Global It Outage Chaos 🌐, Microsoft’s 15-reboot Fix 🔄, Trump’s Twitch Return 🎥

welcome to wall-e's tech briefing for monday, july 22! dive into today's top tech stories:
global it outage: a massive it outage caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm crowdstrike impacts businesses worldwide, affecting sectors like airlines, banks, and media companies. crowdstrike ceo george kurtz confirms the defect and assures a fix is being rolled out.
microsoft troubleshooting: microsoft recommends an unconventional fix for the crowdstrike-induced it outage: rebooting affected machines up to 15 times. alternatively, users can delete the faulty crowdstrike driver.
twitch reinstates trump: twitch reinstates former president donald trump’s account after an "indefinite" suspension post the january 6th, 2021 attacks on the u.s. capitol. twitch emphasizes the importance of hearing from presidential candidates and maintains equal application of their community guidelines.
stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!

EP-67 Prime Day Record 📈, Gpt-4o Mini Launch 🚀, Usps Data Privacy Scandal 🔍

welcome to wall-e's tech briefing for friday, july 19. in today's episode, we cover the latest in technology and the digital world:
record-breaking online spending: u.s. consumers spent $14.2 billion during amazon's prime day event, driven by back-to-school shopping and new product purchases, surpassing adobe's $14 billion prediction.
gpt-4o mini launch: openai's new multimodal ai model, gpt-4o mini, integrates image, video, and audio capabilities, available for free users of chatgpt starting thursday.
usps privacy issue: the u.s. postal service inadvertently shared customer postal addresses with meta, linkedin, and snap through hidden tracking pixels, leading to increased scrutiny over web tracking practices.
nvidia shares rebound: strong ai chip demand reported by tsmc boosts nvidia shares by 3%, amidst ongoing sector volatility and tight supply projected through 2025.
political spotlight on elon musk: president joe biden targets elon musk's financial backing of donald trump's campaign, leveraging the narrative to garner support for the upcoming election.
stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!