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☆ Amazon predicts bright holiday season, cloud stabilizing
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Facing an array of challenges to its business, Amazon is trying to keep its mantle as the world's biggest cloud provider and online retailer. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission in September sued Amazon for allegedly inflating prices and wielding monopoly power, claims that Amazon has disputed. Microsoft, the second-largest cloud provider by revenue after Amazon, beat Wall Street estimates this week as its customers geared up for AI upgrades. Amazon Web Services brought in revenue of $23.1 billion, compared with analysts' expectations of $23.09 billion. For the current holiday quarter, the company forecast revenue in the range of $160 billion and $167 billion.

Persons: Gonzalo Fuentes, Long, Andy Jassy, LSEG, Akash Sriram, Anil D'Silva, Deepa Babington Organizations: REUTERS, Amazon.com Inc, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, U.S . Federal Trade Commission, Amazon Web Services, Wall, Web Services, Thomson Locations: Bretigny, Paris, France, Bengaluru

Microsoft's chief financial officer Amy Hood said on a conference call with analysts that higher-than-expected AI consumption was responsible for a 3 percentage point boost to its cloud business. Alphabet has prioritized snaring AI startups as customers for its cloud division, while Microsoft has relied on its existing relationships to secure larger customers. Azure revenue rose 29%, higher than a 26.2% growth estimate from market research firm Visible Alpha. RBC Capital Markets has previously estimated that Microsoft will clock over $3 billion in revenue from generative AI offerings this fiscal year. Quite surprising to see strong growth reacceleration in the Azure Cloud segment, which is clearly driven by AI-as-a-service related demand," said Global X analyst Tejas Dessai.

Persons: Microsoft's, Bob O'Donnell, Bing, Bard, Amy Hood, Krishna Chintalapalli, capex, Akash Sriram, Anna Tong, Max Cherney, Yuvraj Malik, Greg Bensinger, Stephen Nellis, Sayantani Ghosh, Sonali Paul Organizations: Microsoft, Wall, Microsoft's, TECHnalysis, Parnassus Investments, DAZZLES, Alpha, RBC Capital Markets, Reuters Graphics Microsoft, Tejas Dessai, AWS, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru, Anna, San Francisco

☆ Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks AI, closing the Activision Blizzard deal, and his best business decision so far
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-22 | by ( Mathias Döpfner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +47 min

Just like the cloud transformed every software category, we think AI is one such transformational shift. Therefore, this notion of Copilots that we're introducing is really going to be revolutionary in terms of driving productivity and communication. Milton Friedman once famously said: "the business of business is business." One is, is the business of business just business? So, I think AI can actually be very helpful in many ways to be a little more empathetic and more understanding of the world.

Persons: Satya Nadella, Axel Springer's, OpenAI, Nadella, Axel Springer, —, Mathias Döpfner, Pankaj Nangia, Steve Ballmer, Steve, I've, It's, I'd, Herbert Simon, Karl Marx, Lakshmi, Hayek, Marx, Justin Sullivan, Carol Dweck, they're, Vuk Valcic, That's, it's, you've, Jae, Copilot, Jeff Bezos, I'm, We've, Milton Friedman, Elon Musk, we've, Lina Khan, Sam Altman, Sam, Tomohiro Ohsumi, Bard, Bing, Mathias, wouldn't, Picasso, Jakub Porzycki, Mustafa Suleyman, We'll Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Olympic, Australia, Getty, Activision Blizzard, Gaming, AP, Windows, Linux, Children's Hospital, University of Wisconsin, Associated Press, Google Locations: Berlin, India, Hyderabad, Seattle, United States, Milwaukee, American, China, derisking, DC, Beijing, Europe, GitHub, British

☆ Amazon Web Services to open development centre in Kenya
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

A logo for Amazon Web Services (AWS) is displayed at the Collision conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 23, 2022. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsNAIROBI, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company's cloud-computing division, said on Wednesday it would open a development centre in Kenya's capital Nairobi, creating jobs in software development, cloud support, and software engineering. Sometimes dubbed the "Silicon Savannah", Kenya is one of Africa's biggest technology hubs, hosting offices of some of the world's tech giants alongside thriving startups. "This centre will enable the local market to tap into an incredible pool of technical talent," said Uwem Ukpong, vice president of global services at AWS. "The Kenyan technology sector continues to be a source of growth and job creation at a time when there is so much uncertainty in the world," said Kenya's President William Ruto.

Persons: Chris Helgren, Uwem Ukpong, William Ruto, Hereward Holland, Aurora Ellis Organizations: Amazon Web Services, REUTERS, Rights, Web Services, Netflix, General Electric, Sony, Thomson Locations: Toronto , Ontario, Canada, Rights NAIROBI, Kenya's, Nairobi, Kenya, Kenyan

☆ Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-04 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

There's a new stack of hardware, software, tools, and services that will power AI applications for years to come. Cloud 2.0Another key point here: Most AI developers already know how to use CUDA and Nvidia GPUs. Arguably, Nvidia has already created an AI cloud platform – as AWS once did for the Cloud 1.0 era. James Hamilton is an AWS cloud infrastructure genius who can take on Nvidia, even if the chipmaker has a major head start. Her startup spent months building a data center from scratch to help customers train AI models.

Persons: —, Jensen Huang, Nvidia Rick Wilking, Andrew Ng, CUDA, Michael Douglas, Bernstein, Douglas, Luis Ceze, Ceze, It's, Andy Jassy, Adam Selipsky, James Hamilton, Oren Etzioni, Claude, Dario Amodei, Anthropic Anthropic, Noah Berger, Sharon Zhou, Zhou, Lamini didn't, Etzioni Organizations: Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Service, Home Depot, AWS, VMware, Cloud, Madrona Venture, Amazon, Amazon Web, Annapurna Labs, Intel, AMD Locations: San Francisco, Seattle, Selipsky

REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Acquire Licensing RightsLONDON, Sept 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) gaming master plan is slowly coming together. But Microsoft’s gaming revenue was still around 8% of group sales, or $15 billion, for the year ended June 2022. Given these risks, it makes sense for Nadella to grow his exposure to those parts of the gaming market which are less likely to be upended by cloud gaming. It remains possible that cloud gaming is a dog that doesn’t bark – or at least not for some time. As a result of the Activision deal, Nadella has a hedge of sorts against cloud gaming happening too fast.

Persons: Kevork, Satya Nadella’s, Ampere, ”, GamesIndustry.biz, Nadella, George Hay, Katrina Hamlin Organizations: Activision, REUTERS, Reuters, Bethesda, Microsoft, Satya Nadella’s Activision, Ampere, Sony, Nintendo, Reuters Graphics, Netflix, Gamers, Xbox, PlayStation, Big Tech, Apple, HK, reckons, Competition, Markets Authority, CMA, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Ubisoft Entertainment, Ubisoft, Thomson Locations: Los Angeles , California, United States, U.S

☆ UK regulator says it may clear Microsoft's new Activision Blizzard takeover offer
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-22 | by ( Ruxandra Iordache | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft submitted a new proposal to U.K. regulators for the takeover of American game publisher Activision Blizzard after its initial proposal was rejected. LONDON — The U.K.'s competition regulator on Friday said Microsoft 's restructured takeover proposal of Activision Blizzard , submitted in August, "opens the door to the deal being cleared." The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority had blocked the Redmond tech giant's initial $69 billion transaction, first put forward in January 2022, on concerns that it would restrict competition in the nascent cloud gaming sector. Critically, cloud gaming could eliminate the need for costly specialized consoles, allowing players to access the games on PCs, mobile phones and TVs. EU officials were first to clear the deal in May, after Microsoft offered concessions to the tune of royalty-free licenses to cloud gaming platforms to stream Activision games that a buyer has purchased.

Persons: —, Brad Smith, We're, Bobby Kotick Organizations: Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, LONDON, Competition, Markets Authority, Redmond, Activision PC, Activision, Ubisoft Entertainment, CMA, Ubisoft, Netflix, European Union, U.S . Federal Trade Commission Locations: San Francisco

☆ Oracle to use Ampere's newest chips in its cloud offering
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-20 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsSept 19 (Reuters) - Oracle (ORCL.N) said on Tuesday that it would use Ampere Computing's flagship processor chips in its cloud computing service, in a boost to the chip company that has filed for an initial public offering. Ampere aimed to create chips that are designed to be more energy efficient than traditional processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), both of which have subsequently announced offerings that compete with Ampere's chips. Oracle is a major investor in Ampere and was among the first cloud companies to adopt its chips in 2021. Ampere said last month that Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google Cloud unit would offer its newest chips, which feature computing cores custom designed by Ampere. Cloud computing companies are among the largest purchasers of chips, buying them en masse and renting them out to software developers.

Persons: Brendan McDermid, Ampere, Taiwan's TSMC, Renee James, Stephen Nellis, Jamie Freed Organizations: Oracle Corporation, New York Stock Exchange, REUTERS, Oracle, Intel, Arm Holdings, Devices, Google, Thomson Locations: New York City, U.S, Ampere, San Francisco

☆ Alibaba and more: CLSA names 3 of the ‘cheapest AI plays’ worldwide — giving two over 50% upside
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( Amala Balakrishner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

"The U.S. could account for some 55% (of the growth), but China is likely to be the world's second largest AI market with over 6% share. Computing power serves as the foundation for AI development and ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, as a group are the world's second largest buyers of AI chips (12%)," they added. A key driver will be AI cloud services, they said . Stock picks CLSA named Baidu , Alibaba and Tencent as the "cheapest AI plays" that will "lead China's AI innovation." "Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are trading at only 8.8x, 13.1x and 15.6x 24 [months] adj[usted] P/E (price-to-earnings) which only reflect the value of their traditional businesses.

Persons: CLSA, Stock, — CNBC's Michael Bloom Organizations: Baidu, International Data Corporation, Inspur, Tsinghua University, Hong Locations: U.S, China, Hong Kong

A man walks past a logo of Alibaba Group at its office building in Beijing, China August 9, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang Acquire Licensing RightsSHANGHAI, Sept 12 (Reuters) - New Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu has told staff the tech giant's two main strategic focuses going forward will be "user first" and "AI-driven", according to an internal letter reviewed by Reuters. The new CEO, one of Alibaba Group's founders and long-time lieutenant of former chief Jack Ma, is laying out his strategic priorities at a key moment for Alibaba, which is undergoing the biggest organisational restructure of its 24-year history. Late on Sunday Alibaba also announced that Wu would concurrently serve as CEO of its cloud computing unit, replacing Daniel Zhang. The cloud unit is Alibaba's second-biggest revenue source after domestic e-commerce and houses the group's generative artificial intelligence model, Tongyi Qianwen.

Persons: Tingshu Wang, Eddie Wu, Wu, Alibaba, Jack Ma, Daniel Zhang, Zhang, ByteDance's Douyin, Casey Hall, Gerry Doyle, Stephen Coates Organizations: Alibaba Group, REUTERS, Rights, Alibaba, Reuters, Cloud Intelligence Group, PDD Holdings, Huawei Technologies, Tencent Holdings, HK, Baidu, Thomson Locations: Beijing, China

Alibaba Group sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. Zhang also handed over the role of group CEO to Wu on Sunday as scheduled. "Alibaba Cloud has lost some ground with government and state-owned enterprise clients, which were previously a stronghold for the company," Li said. "During his leadership tenure, Alibaba Cloud's business did not improve significantly despite his efforts. Zhang likely realised that the challenges facing Alibaba Cloud's lacklustre growth were beyond what he could influence or control as an individual executive."

Persons: Aly, Daniel Zhang, Alibaba, Eddie Wu, Zhang, Wu, Canalys, Li Chengdong, Li, Sern Ling, Union Bancaire Privee, Donny Kowk, Josh Ye, Yelin, Anne Marie Roantree, Brenda Goh, Muralikumar Anantharaman, Christopher Cushing Organizations: Artificial Intelligence, REUTERS, China's, Reuters, DAMO Academy, Huawei Technologies, Union Bancaire, HK, Thomson Locations: Shanghai, China, HONG KONG, Hong Kong, HK, Alibaba, Beijing, Yelin Mo

☆ New benchmark tests speed of running AI models
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Max A. Cherney | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] An AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song Acquire Licensing RightsSept 11 (Reuters) - An artificial intelligence benchmark group called MLCommons unveiled the results on Monday of new tests that determine how quickly top-of-the-line hardware can run AI models. The benchmark simulates the "inference" portion of AI data crunching, which powers the software behind generative AI tools. Nvidia's top submission for the inference benchmark build around eight of its flagship H100 chips. Nvidia has dominated the market for training AI models, but hasn't captured the inference market yet.

Persons: Aly, hasn't, Dave Salvator, Eitan Medina, Max A, Leslie Adler Organizations: Artificial Intelligence, REUTERS, Nvidia Corp, Intel Corp, CNN, Nvidia, Habana, Intel, Google, Thomson Locations: Shanghai, China, San Francisco

☆ Barclays says buy this software stock with AI tailwinds
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-05 | by ( Hakyung Kim | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Oracle shares have surged nearly 48% in 2023 and close to 62% over the past 12 months. Barclays thinks the company is set to maintain high levels of growth in the near future as its tailwinds have yet to fully take effect. "OCI, partly fueled by emerging AI workloads, will be key to the database and overall story." He added that OCI is well-positioned for an AI tailwind due to its close relationship with Nvidia. Oracle was also one of the first cloud solutions providers to enter the market with Nvidia's software as a service products, Lenschow added.

Persons: Raimo, Lenschow, — CNBC's Michael Bloom Organizations: Oracle, Barclays, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Nvidia

☆ AI chip giant Nvidia mentioned a particular company again and again during its latest blockbuster conference call. You'll be surprised which one.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Investors have been counting how many times executives say 'AI' on conference calls. Instead, I counted how many times Nvidia mentioned different companies on its latest call. AdvertisementAdvertisementThis year, investors have been counting how many times company executives say "AI" on earnings conference calls. Here's one example, where the CEO discussed large companies adopting new AI technologies. Amazon and Google, two of the largest cloud and AI companies on earth, only got a couple of callouts each.

Persons: That's, It's, Nvidia's, Jensen Huang Organizations: Nvidia, Morning, Tech, Sentieo, VMware, Broadcom, Google

☆ Tech's broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-21 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The various bundles are now as annoyingly confusing as cable, and cost basically the same. The Financial Times recently reported that a basket of the top US streaming services will cost $87 this fall, compared with $73 a year ago. Cloud promises are being brokenFinally, there's the cloud, which promised cheaper and more secure computing for companies. In the roughly five years since going public, the company has spent about $3 billion on cloud services from Google and AWS. So, cloud services connected to the internet are great for everyone, except Google?

Persons: we're, Uber, Lyft, Steven Levy, Dara Khosrowshahi, Khosrowshahi, Slack, Andreessen Horowitz Organizations: Morning, Netflix, Disney, Wall Street, Paramount, Showtime, Financial Times, Tacoma International, Microsoft, Google, CNBC Locations: New York City, Seattle

☆ Cisco CEO says AI is already becoming a huge new market after it 'missed' the initial cloud computing boom
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-18 | by ( Julie Bort | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Cisco CEO surprised analysts by mentioning it had already sold half a billion dollars of AI gear. Cisco is trying to woo cloud companies away from offerings by Nvidia. "To date, we have taken orders for over half a billion dollars for AI Ethernet fabrics. But Robbins says this new AI cloud market will be triple or more the size of the original and, this time, he plans to make sure Cisco gets its share. And, you know, unfortunately for us, as it's been well documented, we missed the original cloud build out," Robbins said.

Persons: it's, Chuck Robbins, That's, Infiniband, Robbins, Morgan Stanley, Meta Marshall, Julie Bort Organizations: Cisco, Nvidia, Morning, Mellanox Technologies, AMD, Arista, Broadcom, HPE, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Arista Networks, Twitter

☆ How Amazon is racing to catch Microsoft and Google in generative A.I. with custom AWS chips
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-12 | by ( Katie Tarasov | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

In this article METAGOOGLMSFTAMZN Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTChips as 'true differentiation'In the long run, Dekate said, Amazon's custom silicon could give it an edge in generative AI. Microsoft has yet to announce the Athena AI chip it's been working on, reportedly in partnership with AMD. So you train the machine learning models and then you run inference against those trained models," Wood said. Amazon's custom chips, from left to right, Inferentia, Trainium and Graviton are shown at Amazon's Seattle headquarters on July 13, 2023. An Amazon employee works on custom AI chips, in a jacket branded with AWS' chip Inferentia, at the AWS chip lab in Austin, Texas, on July 25, 2023.

Persons: Dekate, It's, Nitro, Stacy Rasgon, Matt Wood, Wood, Trainium, Nvidia H100s, Rasgon, Joseph Huerta, they're, Mai, Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Gartner, Swami Sivasubramanian, Sivasubramanian, Katie Tarasov Organizations: Microsoft, AWS, Amazon, CNBC, AMD, Intel, Bernstein Research, Google, Unit, Nvidia, Seattle, AI21 Labs Locations: Austin , Texas

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailHow AWS is designing its own chips to help catch Microsoft and Google in generative A.I. raceDespite its firm footing as the world's biggest cloud provider, Amazon Web Services got a slow start to the generative AI race. AWS released its large language model, Titan, months after Microsoft's reported $13 billion investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Google's release of Bard. But AWS is also designing its own custom AI microchips, shown to CNBC in an exclusive tour of its Austin chip lab. Now analysts say AWS may gain a long term advantage in AI by offering an alternative to Nvidia GPUs.

Persons: OpenAI, Bard Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Web Services, AWS, CNBC, Nvidia Locations: ChatGPT

For the second quarter, Amazon's revenue grew 11% to $134.4 billion, beating estimates of $131.5 billion from analysts polled by Refinitiv. In recent months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw its sales growth slow as wary businesses scrutinized their cloud bills. The unit beat estimates of around $21.7 billion in second-quarter cloud sales, increasing them 12% to $22.1 billion. Its rivals posted bigger jumps off smaller bases: 28% growth in Alphabet's June-quarter cloud revenue and a 26% quarterly increase for Microsoft's Azure. Longer-term, Amazon aims to turn one unit, its $35 billion in yearly gross business-to-business e-commerce sales, into $100 billion, Jassy told analysts.

Persons: Pascal Rossignol, Brian Olsavsky, Olsavsky, Andy Jassy, Arun Sundaram, Sundaram, Jassy, Thomas Monteiro, Investing.com, Monteiro, Refinitiv, Chavi Mehta, Jeffrey Dastin, Noel Randewich, Arun Koyyur, Aurora Ellis, Chris Reese Organizations: REUTERS, Amazon.com Inc, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Refinitiv, Amazon Web Services, CFRA Research, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Lauwin, France, Alphabet's, Bengaluru, Jeffrey Dastin San Francisco

☆ Amazon's outlook brightens on cloud, consumer sales lift
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Facing an array of challenges, Amazon has aimed to keep its mantle as the world's biggest cloud provider and online retailer. Despite this, Amazon sped up revenue growth in the second quarter. Sales increased 11% to $134.4 billion, compared to estimates of $131.50 billion from analysts polled by Refinitiv. AWS beat estimates of around $21.7 billion in second-quarter cloud sales, increasing them 12% to $22.1 billion. The company forecast current-quarter net sales in the range of $138 billion and $143 billion.

Persons: Pascal Rossignol, Long, Andy Jassy, Refinitiv, Chavi Mehta, Arun Koyyur, Aurora Ellis Organizations: REUTERS, Amazon.com Inc, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Refinitiv, Amazon Web Services, Thomson Locations: Lauwin, France, Bengaluru

☆ This may be the most bullish note we've seen on Nvidia — signaling what's next for the stock
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-31 | by ( Zev Fima | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Take Club stock Nvidia (NVDA) for example. You can't own Nvidia if that's the data you're using to generate your worldview of future demand, especially after the monstrous run shares have already had this year. After all, those buying Nvidia's chips will need to harvest profits on their investment at some point but 12 to 18 months is a lifetime in the stock market. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang,speaks at the Supermicro keynote presentation during the Computex conference in Taipei on June 1, 2023.

Persons: Jim Cramer, That's, Bernstein, we're, Jim loves NVDA, It's, —, ByteDance, NVDA, Jim Cramer's, Jim, Jensen Huang, Walid Berrazeg Organizations: Nvidia, Semiconductor Manufacturing, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, CNBC, Getty Locations: China, Taipei

☆ Exclusive: Amazon has drawn thousands to try its AI service competing with Microsoft, Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | Thomson Reuters | Jeffrey Dastin Is A Correspondent For Reuters Based In San Francisco | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File PhotoJuly 26 (Reuters) - Amazon.com’s (AMZN.O) cloud division has drawn thousands of customers to try out its service vying with Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) in a key area of artificial intelligence, an executive told Reuters. "Our mission is to make every company an AI company," said Sivasubramanian, in an interview pegged to a summit the cloud provider hosted in New York. Amazon Bedrock is the company's answer to services announced by Google and Microsoft, cloud rivals that have developed or marketed AI garnering significant public attention. Microsoft has invested in OpenAI, the startup that created ChatGPT and the AI model known as GPT-4. The cloud provider announced Agents for Amazon Bedrock, which lets businesses create chatbots that execute tasks and give more personalized answers drawing from their proprietary data.

Persons: Gonzalo Fuentes, Swami Sivasubramanian, Sivasubramanian, Jeffrey Dastin, Stephen Nellis, Chizu Nomiyama, Daniel Wallis Organizations: Viva Technology, Porte de, REUTERS, Microsoft, Google, Reuters, Sony, Ryanair, Sun, Thomson Locations: Porte, Paris, France, New York, OpenAI, Silicon

☆ Alphabet profit beats expectations, CFO Porat to assume new role
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-25 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

July 25 (Reuters) - Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) second-quarter profit exceeded Wall Street expectations on Tuesday and the Google parent announced that its long-time CFO Ruth Porat would assume a new role while the company sought a new finance chief. Porat, hired in 2015, is one of Silicon Valley's most prominent female executives and oversaw tremendous growth at Alphabet. Google Cloud, which is among the biggest cloud service providers, is expected to benefit from growth driven by strong adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The company reported net profit of $1.44 per share for the April-June period, compared with estimates of $1.34 per share. Revenue for the quarter stood at $74.6 billion, compared with estimates of $72.82 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

Persons: Ruth Porat, Akash Sriram, Arun Koyyur, Matthew Lewis Organizations: Google, Meta, Revenue, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru

☆ Meta opens AI model to commercial use, throwing nascent market into flux
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Katie Paul | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

"Any incremental improvement in open-source models is eating into the market share of closed-source models because you can run them cheaply and have less dependency," said Masad. The announcement follows plans by Microsoft's largest cloud rivals, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Amazon (AMZN.O), to give business customers a range of AI models from which to choose. Amazon, for instance, is marketing access to Claude - AI from the high-profile startup Anthropic - in addition to its own family of Titan models. Google, likewise, has said it plans to make Claude and other models available to its cloud customers. Until now, Microsoft has focused on making technology available from OpenAI in Azure.

Persons: Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Bard chatbot, Amjad Masad, Claude, Katie Paul, Jeffrey Dastin, Krystal Hu, Kenneth Li Organizations: YORK, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon Web Services, Thomson

☆ Webb telescope’s first anniversary image reveals the birth of sunlike stars
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Ashley Strickland | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

CNN —The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning new image of the closest star-forming region to Earth, located 390 light-years away. The release of the image marks the first anniversary since the space observatory began observing the universe. “Webb’s image of Rho Ophiuchi allows us to witness a very brief period in the stellar lifecycle with new clarity. The most powerful telescope ever sent to space, Webb launched on December 25, 2021, and NASA shared its first set of scintillating images on July 12, 2022. Both have served as the targets of other telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope in the past.

Persons: James Webb, another’s, ”, Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb, “, Bill Nelson, “ Webb, Nicola Fox, Eric Smith, “ Webb’s, Jane Rigby, NASA’s, “ We’ve, we’ve, — Organizations: CNN, Telescope, Telescope Science, NASA, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, Hubble, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Locations: Baltimore , Maryland, Greenbelt , Maryland

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