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☆ Shares of this under-the-radar data analytics company can rally 60%, Guggenheim says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Investors should consider buying into cloud database company Teradata, according to Guggenheim Partners. So far this year, shares of Teradata have gained 15% through Friday's close. The company focuses on consulting, cloud services and analytics for businesses. Guggenheim analyst Howard Ma thinks that Teradata is poised to outperform expectations for customer retention and grow revenue in its cloud sector. TDC YTD mountain Watch shares of Teradata for as much as 60% upside, Guggenheim Partners says.

☆ Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet deliver slower cloud growth. Here's how AI could reverse that trend
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Paulina Likos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

As more and more businesses of all sizes continue their digital transformations, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet aim to be there to provide cloud solutions. However, those gains quickly evaporated as the post-earnings call got underway and Wall Street learned of slowing cloud growth in April , the first month of Q2. The company is now using AI as a tool to accelerate cloud growth and gain share. The Club's take: Microsoft demonstrated impressive cloud growth given the difficult macroeconomic backdrop for the quarter. We hope to see a reacceleration in cloud growth along with profitability momentum.

☆ Top cloud providers Amazon, Microsoft and Google face ongoing spending cuts by clients
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The result is slowing revenue growth at the cloud divisions run by Amazon , Microsoft and Google . AWS saw deceleration in the third and fourth quarters, and last quarter Microsoft finance chief Amy Hood spooked analysts with comments about a slowdown in December that she expected to persist. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said "what we're seeing is enterprises continuing to be cautious in their spending in this uncertain time." At Google, cloud growth slowed to 28% from a year earlier in the first quarter from 32% in the prior period. WATCH: Ongoing deceleration in IT spending not reflected in tech earnings

☆ Google Cloud boss Kurian's rocky path to profit: 'We were not in a very good situation'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-29 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, right, arrives on stage as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai exits during the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco on April 9, 2019. Earlier this week, Alphabet said Google's cloud unit generated $191 million in operating profit, after losing a total of $4 billion in 2021 and 2022. Under Kurian's predecessor, VMware co-founder Diane Greene, critics said Google's cloud business hadn't matured enough to handle enterprises even as it was investing heavily to do so. The cloud division includes the Google Cloud Platform, which competes with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, and the Google Workspace productivity software bundle that goes head-to-head with Microsoft Office. Google Cloud technology chief Will Grannis said Kurian's commitment to improving the division's offerings was evident right away.

☆ Amazon is the growth laggard of the cloud industry now
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon said cloud revenue trended down by 500 basis points in April, suggesting year-over-year growth of 11%. The three largest cloud companies reported results in recent days and the growth picture for Amazon Web Services is, well, cloudy. Microsoft's Azure cloud unit grew sales by 31% year over year in the first quarter, while Google Cloud reported a 28% increase. So that suggests a year-over-year growth rate of just 11% for the early part of the second quarter. AWS is still the largest cloud provider, but if Microsoft continues to outgrow Amazon every quarter, the gap will narrow.

☆ Microsoft's bet on AI is still in its early days. But there are signs it's already paying off.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI has lead to a new wave of innovation in artificial intelligence. There are already early signs that the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership is paying off, analysts say. Analysts say there is still work to be done, but "Microsoft is leading this tech AI arms race." Wall Street analysts took that as a sign that Microsoft's big bet on AI is already leading to financial gains. Ultimately, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said, "the AI story is still in the first inning," but, he said, "Microsoft is leading this tech AI arms race."

☆ Microsoft's blockbuster Activision deal may be doomed. But the tech giant's future is still bright
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Microsoft 's (MSFT) proposed blockbuster acquisition of video-game publisher Activision Blizzard (ATVI) may be doomed thanks to British regulators. The U.K.'s top antitrust body — the Competition and Markets Authority — said Wednesday that it opposes Microsoft's $69 billion bid because of competition concerns in the budding cloud gaming market. Microsoft's multipart gaming business includes Xbox consoles, cloud-based Xbox Game Pass service and in-house titles, such as the long-running "Halo" series. The CMA's opposition centered on competition concerns in the burgeoning world of cloud gaming, which Jefferies analysts estimate is less than 2% of the overall gaming market. Cloud gaming enables players to, essentially, stream video games without having to buy a physical console.

☆ Analysts are getting even more bullish on Microsoft's A.I. prospects after latest earnings report
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft's big swings on artificial intelligence are paying off, and analysts are even more bullish on the tech giant. Rangan has a buy rating on Microsoft and a price target of $335, implying upside of 21.6%. "Azure growth was ahead of expectations with MSFT showing ability to protect margin/EPS in a tough backdrop," Turrin said, who rates the stock as overweight. He also hiked his price target to $345 from $320, pointing to a 25.2% potential gain. Keith Weiss of Morgan Stanley also reiterated an overweight rating on the stock, and hiked his price target to $335 per share from $307.

The company forecast revenue in its main segments for the current quarter would match or top Wall Street targets. Those results and Microsoft's helped boost shares of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), another major cloud operator, 4.8% in after hours trading. Microsoft revenue rose 7% to $52.9 billion in the quarter ended March, inching past analyst estimates of $51.02 billion, according to Refinitiv. The bulk of Microsoft sales still come from selling software and cloud computing services to customers. The sales drop in the segment was less severe than analysts expected, with Microsoft reporting revenue of $13.3 billion versus analyst estimates of $12.19 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

☆ Inside Meta's scramble to catch up on A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

For more than a year, Meta has been engaged in a massive project to whip its AI infrastructure into shape. He declined to comment on whether Meta abandoned its AI chip. Generative AI gobbles up reams of computing power, amplifying the urgency of Meta's capacity scramble, said five of the sources. By 2021, that two-pronged approach proved slower and less efficient than one built around GPUs, which were also more flexible in running different types of models than Meta's chip, the two people said. Executives also that spring set about reorganizing Meta's AI units, naming two new heads of engineering in the process, including Janardhan, the author of the September memo.

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Generative AI gobbles up reams of computing power, amplifying the urgency of Meta's capacity scramble, said five of the sources. Executives also that spring set about reorganizing Meta's AI units, naming two new heads of engineering in the process, including Janardhan, the author of the September memo. According to four of the sources, Meta did not prioritize building generative AI products until after the launch of ChatGPT in November. Zuckerberg announced a new top-level generative AI team in February that he said would "turbocharge" the company's work in the area. Carvill, the Meta spokesperson, said the company has been building generative AI products on different teams for more than a year.

☆ Science Proves the 4-Day Workweek Prevents Burnout, Helps Productivity
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Shubham Agarwal | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

At the time, back in 2018, a New Zealand firm had just wrapped up a landmark trial to test the efficacy of a four-day workweek. A lot of the benefits of the four-day workweek come down to a simple, everyday activity: sleep. A lot of the benefits of the four-day workweek come down to a simple, everyday activity: sleep. Less time, more productiveThough the four-day workweek may seem like a recent phenomenon, it's been decades in the making. But for now, the four-day workweek certainly has the potential to be a far-reaching antidote to pressing workplace concerns such as mass resignations and the burnout crisis.

☆ Inside the AI talent wars: Tech companies are ransacking university AI programs at Stanford, MIT, and Cornell in search of engineers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Driven by the recent AI boom, companies are raiding top college campuses for rare technical talent. She's currently on leave from her Stanford AI Ph.D. program to focus on Moonhub. In 2011, new AI Ph.D. graduates took jobs in the tech industry and academia in about equal measure. But since then, the majority of new grads have headed to the AI industry, with nearly double the percentage of AI Ph.D. grads taking industry jobs versus academic roles in 2021, according to Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI's 2023 AI Index Report. "All AI companies have roles for people with Ph.D.s and without," said Attaluri, the soon-to-be researcher at DeepMind.

☆ Nvidia shares could pop up another 23% as surging AI workloads stokes stronger demand for specialized hardware, Bank of America says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Nvidia shares could rise 23%, Bank of America said in raising its price target on the chipmaker. AI workloads are rising and Nvidia's specialized hardware should benefit from stronger sales. Nvidia shares have jumped 90% in 2023 as interest in AI is fueled by ChatGPT. The note from the BofA analysts come after Nvidia shares have already soared this year on the back of the ChatGPT craze. The bank said sales of specialized accelerators in 2023 could overtake those of worldwide standard x86 processors.

☆ These 3 Club stocks just hit their highest levels in a year. Here's where we stand on them now
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Three Club holdings — Salesforce (CRM), Linde (LIN) and Nvidia (NVDA) — just reached their highest levels of the past 12 months, which Wall Street generally views as encouraging. At the same time, however, some investors may be wondering whether hitting a new 52-week high might signal that it's time to take some profits. Here's how the Club is thinking about our positions in these three stocks that reached this juncture during Tuesday's session. Our last purchase of Salesforce stock was Dec. 21, scooping up 25 shares around $130 each on the belief that investors were way too negative on the company. As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade.

☆ Piper Sandler calls generative A.I. the next $100 billion tech revolution, names stocks to play it
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Samantha Subin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

"We see Generative AI as the next major revolution in technology that could have far reaching implications across both consumer and enterprise sectors," wrote analyst Brent Bracelin in a Friday note to clients, calling generative AI the "next $100B+ technology revolution." Amazon Web Services is also launching Bedrock , a generative AI service that's geared toward developers. Given this setup for the industry, Piper Sandler named some of its top picks to play the growing field. Microsoft seemed to win the first marketing battle, but Piper Sandler sees Alphabet as well-positioned for AI given its yearslong use of AI and machine learning in its search products. Despite the run up in shares, Piper Sandler expects nearly 7% downside for the stock from Thursday's close.

☆ Junior doctor strike: Some of England's trainee doctors are paid less than fast-food workers. They've had enough
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Anna Cooban | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

“For too long we have been undervalued,” Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA junior doctors committee, told a crowd of striking doctors Tuesday. It is difficult to compare the salaries of UK junior doctors with those of their international peers, said Lucina Rolewicz, a researcher at Nuffield Trust, a healthcare think-tank. Junior doctors make up nearly 40% of England’s NHS doctors, according to the confederation. But NHS junior doctors have been squeezed for well over a decade, says former radiologist Tania King-Mohammad. “[Junior doctors’] pay is not reflective of their education, dedication and commitment,” King-Mohammad said.

In this article ANET Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTSompong_tom | Istock | Getty ImagesThe rise of ChatGPT has sparked another national conversation about artificial intelligence. That has poured more fuel on an arms race that has been going on for years in AI. Today, the device is barely functional after the company shut off a host of services last year. The largest cloud service providers, or hyper-scalers, today each have millions of servers in data centers scattered across the country. The company produces network switches for large data centers that enable connectivity between devices in a network.

☆ Goldman recommends buying call options in these two tech titans before their earnings reports
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Goldman Sachs recommends clients buy call options on Apple and Microsoft ahead of each company's earnings reports in two weeks. For Apple, Goldman thinks the mobile app spending portion of the company will beat Wall Street expectations and service revenue will become the main force behind earnings growth. "While app spending growth has slowed, as we lap recent benefits from consumer stimulus and engagement benefits due to the pandemic he expects app spending to resume mid-teens growth in F2024." AAPL YTD mountain Apple could beat expectations in mobile app spending and boost shares as investors look toward earnings, according to Goldman Sachs. "AI-related 12 April 2023 3 Goldman Sachs Weekly Options Watch workloads can also provide a boost to Azure over time.

☆ Inside the AI talent wars: Tech companies are ransacking university AI programs at Stanford, MIT, and Cornell in search of rare talent
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

☆ Social Security is in the 'worst public service crisis in memory,' labor union says. What it may take for services to improve
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Lorie Konish | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Social Security beneficiaries who call the agency's toll-free number may face hold times of more than 30 minutes. Long lines and shortened hours are common at many of the agency's field offices where beneficiaries may seek in-person assistance. Moreover, applicants for disability benefits face waits of more than six months for decisions from the agency, a panel of experts from the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 40,000 Social Security Administration employees, said Monday. The service delays facing the program's approximately 67 million beneficiaries are signs of "an agency in crisis," according to Rich Couture, Council 215 president at the American Federation of Government Employees. AFGE leaders spoke out about the Social Security Administration's diminishing services amid funding constraints that have lasted for more than a decade.

☆ Microsoft's $13 billion bet on OpenAI carries huge potential along with plenty of uncertainty
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Microsoft's cumulative investment in OpenAI has reportedly swelled to $13 billion and the startup's valuation has hit roughly $29 billion. What does that mean for Microsoft's investment and broader arrangement? The structure changed in 2019, when two top executives published a blog post announcing the formation of a "capped-profit" entity called OpenAI LP. Microsoft has an exclusive license on GPT-4 and all other OpenAI models, the OpenAI spokesperson said. When considering potential exits for OpenAI, Microsoft — which does not hold an OpenAI board seat — would be the natural acquirer given its close entanglement.

☆ Big Law firm draws ire for leaked list of 'non-negotiable expectations' for associates — including being online 24/7 'no exceptions, no excuses'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Bethany Biron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A leaked list of "non-negotiable expectations" at law firm Paul Hastings is sparking debate online. While some say the demands are "horrible" others say they represent realistic expectations within the industry. The firm told Insider "the material was prepared by an associate," but noted "the views expressed do not reflect the views of the firm or its partners." Lee Edwards, general partner at Root Ventures, an investment firm focused on tech, wrote in a tweet on Friday that he found the expectations "horrible." "Good and helpful description of working in any top-tier profession services firm at any point in the last 30 (50?)

That's why it's difficult to recommend casual iPad users to spend $270 more for the iPad Air series. Still, the 2022 iPad Air is our mid-range pick for the best iPad. Conversely, the 2022 iPad Air is the value champion for power iPad users. Deal Apple iPad Air (2022) With its powerful processor and mid-level pricing, the 2022 iPad Air is a little overkill for running simple, popular apps and video streaming. Get the 256GB iPad Air, or the base 64GB iPad Air if you don't need the storage.

☆ Japan's March service-sector grows at fastest rate in over nine years - PMI
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

April 5 (Reuters) - Japan's services sector activity at the fastest pace in over nine years in March, a private sector survey showed on Wednesday, suggesting that the post-COVID bounce was gathering steam and providing some offset to a still-weak factory sector. The final au Jibun Bank Japan Services purchasing managers' index (PMI) rose to a seasonally adjusted 55.0 last month, from February's 54.0, marking the quickest rate of expansion since October 2013. The subindexes of new orders and overseas demand grew for a seventh month, rising at the fastest pace since February 2019 and December 2022, respectively. The subindex for employment expanded for a second month and at the fastest pace in ten months, as workloads and business expansion plans increased. The composite PMI, which combines the manufacturing and services figures, grew at the fastest pace since June 2022.

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