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☆ Adobe pushes Firefly AI into big business, with financial cover
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

June 8 (Reuters) - Adobe Inc (ADBE.O) said on Thursday it will offer Firefly, its artificial intelligence tool for generating images, to its large business customers, with financial indemnity for copyright challenges involving content made with the tools. Adobe earlier this year released a test version of Firefly, its own service which it says was created with legally safe image data. On Thursday, San Jose, California-based Adobe said it will start offering Firefly to its corporate customers as part of Adobe Express, a tool aimed at helping business users who do not specialize in design to create images and documents. "Rather than someone going over and pulling the data for a time range and generating the report, now you can see it. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Sonali PaulOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Adobe, Ashley Still, Suman Basetty, Basetty, Stephen Nellis, Sonali Paul Organizations: Adobe Inc, Adobe Express, Firefly, Adobe, Reuters, Thomson Locations: San Jose , California, San Francisco

☆ What it's like to try Apple's new Vision Pro headset
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

[1/4] Apple's Vision Pro headset is on display at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, U.S. June 5, 2023. REUTERS/Loren ElliottCUPERTINO, California, June 5 (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) on Monday let analysts and media, including Reuters, try its $3,499 Vision Pro headset. The Vision Pro headset has a "digital crown" similar to an Apple watch crown, which can be tapped and turned to make the display transition fluidly between the real world outside and the virtual world inside. Even when fully immersed in a virtual world, exterior cameras keep an eye out for other humans. If another person approaches the user, that person starts to materialize through the virtual world.

Persons: Loren Elliott CUPERTINO, Carolina Milanesi, Apple, Stephen Nellis, Sam Holmes Organizations: Developers, REUTERS, Apple Inc, Monday, Reuters, Apple, Creative, Meta Platforms Inc, Vision Pro, Thomson Locations: Cupertino , California, U.S, Loren Elliott CUPERTINO , California, Hollywood

☆ Apple to sell Vision Pro AR headset for triple Meta's top-line price
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

[1/4] People use cameras as Apple's Vision Pro headsets are on display at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California, U.S. June 5, 2023. Apple's headset will be available early next year in the U.S. with more countries coming later in 2024. The Vision Pro has two hours of use with an external battery, which Apple said would reduce the weight on the user's head. Investors and tech fans alike are focused on how much Apple's view of the virtual reality market overlaps with Meta's. In addition to Meta, Sony Group Corp (6758.T) and ByteDance-owned Pico both recently released virtual reality devices.

Persons: Loren Elliott CUPERTINO, Apple, Alan Dye, Tim Cook, Walt Disney's, Mark Zuckerberg, there's, John Ternus, Apple's, Craig Federighi, Stephen Nellis, Yuvraj Malik, Dawn Chmielewski, Katie Paul, Peter Henderson, Aditya Soni, Lisa Shumaker Organizations: Developers, REUTERS, Apple Inc, Pro, Apple, Vision, Reuters, Adobe, Microsoft, Unity, Meta, Sony Group Corp, Pico, Research, IDC, Mac Pro, Mac, Intel, Thomson Locations: Cupertino , California, U.S, Loren Elliott CUPERTINO , California, Bengaluru, Dawn, Los Angeles, New York

☆ About ducking time: Apple to tweak iPhone autocorrect function
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

June 5 (Reuters) - One of the most notable happenings at Apple's event for developers on Monday is likely the iPhone maker's tweak that will keep its autocorrect feature from annoyingly correcting one of the most common expletives to "ducking." "In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too," said Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief. Apart from the texting tweak, the company had a lot on its agenda - an expensive new mixed-reality headset, details on a revamping of its desktop and a laptop revamp. Apple shares hit an all-time record Monday, putting the company's market valuation just shy of $3 trillion, which would also be a record. Of course, iPhone users have always had the option to turn off the autocorrect feature on their phones, which would allow its foul-mouthed users to be as profane as they want.

Persons: Craig Federighi, Stephen Nellis, David Gaffen, Anna Driver Organizations: Apple, Thomson

☆ Apple expected to reveal mixed-reality headset at developer conference
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

CUPERTINO, California, June 5 (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is expected to unveil a mixed-reality headset at its annual software developer conference on Monday, its first big move into a new product category since the introduction of the Apple Watch nine years ago. Like Meta's Quest Pro from last year and Quest 3 announced last week, Apple's device is likely to blend a video feed from the outside world with a virtual world displayed on screens inside the headset. Investors and tech fans alike will be focusing on how much Apple's view of the virtual reality market overlaps with Meta's. In addition to Meta, Sony Group Corp (6758.T) and ByteDance-owned Pico both recently released virtual reality devices. Investors will also look for updates on CarPlay, Apple's software for vehicles, which the company said last year would start to power more dashboard functions.

Persons: It's, Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Nellis, Edwina Gibbs Organizations: Apple Inc, Apple Watch, Apple, Facebook, Meta, Meta's, Quest, Sony Group Corp, Pico, Research, IDC, Apple Park, Thomson Locations: CUPERTINO , California, San Francisco

☆ In challenge to Meta, Apple expected to unveil mixed-reality headset
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

"Meta and Apple are competing with each other. The difference is that Meta is doing it publicly, while Apple is doing it privately," said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. Analysts say that the Apple device, which Bloomberg has reported could cost near $3,000 and look like a pair of ski goggles, is a place holder of sorts. While Meta has products on the market, Apple has major advantages in defining the emerging field among software developers, said Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager who tracks the XR market at IDC. "And Apple is in a much better position to give you an experience that works across devices than Meta is."

Persons: Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Greg Joswiak, iPhones, Sag, Ben Bajarin, Meta, Jitesh Ubrani, Ubrani, Stephen Nellis, Peter Henderson, Matthew Lewis Organizations: FRANCISCO, Apple Inc, Apple, Worldwide Developers, Meta, Moor, Strategy, Analysts, Bloomberg, Sony Group Corp, Quest, Creative, IDC, San, Thomson Locations: California, Cupertino , California, Silicon Valley, San Francisco

May 31 (Reuters) - Specialized cloud computing provider CoreWeave has raised $200 million in funding from its existing investor Magnetar Capital, highlighting investor interest in backing infrastructure powering the generative AI boom. The funding, which valued the company at more than $2 billion, comes weeks after CoreWeave raised $221 million from investors including Magnetar Capital and Nvidia (NVDA.O). CoreWeave specializes in providing cloud computing services based on graphics processing units (GPUs), the category of chip pioneered by Nvidia that has become central to artificial intelligence (AI) services like OpenAI's ChatGPT. CoreWeave sells computing power to those AI companies, competing with cloud computing service providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon's AWS. (MSFT.O), (AMZN.O)CoreWeave aims to stand out by building its data centers differently for AI work, using a networking technology called InfiniBand to link computers together instead of Ethernet cables that are the current standard in most data centers, McBee said.

Persons: CoreWeave, Brannin, McBee, Krystal Hu, Stephen Nellis, Himani Sarkar Organizations: Magnetar, Magnetar Capital, Nvidia, ChatGPT, Microsoft, AWS, Thomson Locations: New York, San Francisco

Nvidia chips have been at the heart of major tech tends from video games to self-driving cars, to cloud computing, and now AI - artificial intelligence. Born in Taiwan, Huang moved to the United States as a child, earning engineering degrees at Oregon State University and Stanford University. Its first big hits were specialized chips to power high-intensity motion graphics for computer games called graphics processing units (GPUs). Even then, Huang did not think of Nvidia as just a chip company. "Computer graphics is one of the most complex parts of computer science," Huang told an audience in Silicon Valley in 2021 while receiving a lifetime achievement award.

Persons: Jensen Huang, I've, Huang, grunting, Inc's, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, ChatGPT, Stanford University . Huang, selfies, Curtis Priem, Chris Malachowsky, Andrew Ng, Yuvraj Malik, Samrhitha, Stephen Nellis, Ben Blanchard, Matthew Lewis, Sonali Paul, Jacqueline Wong Organizations: Nvidia Corp, Apple Inc, Oregon State University, Stanford University, Nvidia, Valley's Sequoia Capital, BET, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Intel, Thomson Locations: Taiwan, United States, Taipei, Silicon Valley, Bengaluru, San Francisco

May 30 (Reuters) - Jensen Huang, the chief of chipmaker Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), has joined an elite list of tech executives to head a company worth $1 trillion. Nvidia shares have been on a tear, rising on stellar sales projections from a boom in artificial-intelligence workloads and components. Huang was born in Taiwan but moved to the United States as a child, earning engineering degrees at Oregon State University and Stanford University. In 1993 he founded Nvidia along with Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, securing backing from Silicon Valley's Sequoia Capital and others. As companies further adopt AI, Nvidia could be one of the key beneficiaries.

Persons: Jensen Huang, Huang, Inc's, Jeff Bezos, ChatGPT, Curtis Priem, Chris Malachowsky, Andrew Ng, Yuvraj Malik, Samrhitha, Stephen Nellis, Matthew Lewis Organizations: Nvidia Corp, Nvidia, Oregon State University, Stanford University, Valley's Sequoia Capital, BET, INTEL, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Intel Corp, Logic Corp, Devices Inc, Alphabet Inc, Baidu Inc, HK, San, Thomson Locations: Taiwan, United States, Taipei, Bengaluru, San Francisco

[1/3] Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang speaks at the COMPUTEX forum in Taipei, Taiwan May 29, 2023. Under the agreement, announced at the Computex technology trade show in Taipei, MediaTek will integrate an Nvidia graphic processing unit chiplet and Nvidia software into the system-on-chips it supplies to automakers for infotainment displays. MediaTek systems using Nvidia software would be compatible with automated driving systems based on Nvidia technology, the companies said. The partnership with MediaTek gives Nvidia wider access to the $12 billion market for infotainment system-on-chips, the companies said. MediaTek, which has its base in the Android smartphone chip sector, sells its Dimensity Auto technology to lower-priced, mass market vehicle lines, and has strengths in mobile connectivity and Android systems.

May 29 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) owned chip designer Arm on Monday rolled out new technology for mobile devices and Taiwan smartphone chip maker MediaTek Inc (2454.TW) said it will be using it for its next-generation product. In Arm's blog announcing the new products, MediaTek said the new chips will help improve the performance of its next-generation smartphones. "Investors have become extremely sensitive to any news about AI or chip technology and jumped on this Arm news," said Masahiro Ichikawa, chief market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management. Last month the Financial Times reported that Arm was developing its own chip to showcase the capabilities of its designs. Arm said the Cortex-X4 was taped out on TSMC's N3E process and said it was an industry first.

May 29 (Reuters) - Arm Ltd on Monday rolled out new chip technology for mobile devices and Taiwan smartphone chip maker MediaTek Inc (2454.TW) said it will be using it for its next-generation product. In Arm's blog announcing the new products, MediaTek said the new chips will help improve the performance of its next-generation smartphones. "Arm is not in the business of selling chips. Last month the Financial Times reported that Arm was developing its own chip to showcase the capabilities of its designs. Arm said the Cortex-X4 was taped out on TSMC's N3E process and said it was an industry first.

SANTA CLARA, California May 22 (Reuters) - U.S. semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials Inc (AMAT.O) on Monday said it plans to spend up to $4 billion on a research center in the heart of Silicon Valley to speed up advances in semiconductor manufacturing. Applied Materials said the new facility, called the Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center, will be the size of more than three American football fields. The scale of how fast we invest is going to be tied to the government incentives," Gary Dickerson, CEO of Applied Materials, told Reuters. Taking ideas from research universities and turning them into tools used in factories can take many years, said Applied executives. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to attend an Applied Materials' event in Silicon Valley announcing the center, along with top executives from major chip companies.

☆ Nvidia chips away at Intel, AMD turf in supercomputers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Nvidia is the world's top maker of graphics processing units (GPUs), which are in high demand because they can be used to speed up artificial intelligence work. But Nvidia's GPU chips are typically paired with what is called a central processing unit (CPU), a market that has been dominated by Intel and AMD for decades. The University of Bristol system will be used for climate science and drug discovery research, among other things. That's actually six times more performance and energy efficiency than the university's previous system, Isambard 2," Ian Buck, general manager and vice president of accelerated computing at Nvidia, said during a press briefing. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Bill BerkrotOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Intel gives details on future AI chips as it shifts strategy
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 22 (Reuters) - Intel Corp (INTC.O) on Monday provided a handful of new details on a chip for artificial intelligence (AI) computing it plans to introduce in 2025 as it shifts strategy to compete against Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O). At a supercomputing conference in Germany on Monday, Intel said its forthcoming "Falcon Shores" chip will have 288 gigabytes of memory and support 8-bit floating point computation. Intel, by contrast, has essentially no market share after its would-be Nvidia competitor, a chip called Ponte Vecchio, suffered years of delays. Intel on Monday said it has nearly completed shipments for Argonne National Lab's Aurora supercomputer based on Ponte Vecchio, which Intel claims has better performance than Nvidia's latest AI chip, the H100. But Intel's Falcon Shores follow-on chip won't be to market until 2025, when Nvidia will likely have another chip of its own out.

☆ Ampere Computing launches its custom chips aimed at cloud computing
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 18 (Reuters) - Ampere Computing on Thursday released a new family of data center chips with technology it has custom-designed for cloud computing companies. Founded by former Intel Corp (INTC.O) president Renee James, Ampere has focused on courting cloud companies that buy thousands of chips at a time and in turn rent them out. Unlike Intel, Ampere uses a computing architecture from SoftBank Group Corp-owned (9984.T) Arm Ltd, which is also an investor in Ampere. The new Ampere chips will have as many as 192 of those cores where Intel chips tend to have only a few dozen. We are ever hopeful that the market will open and that it will open for growth companies," James said.

May 18 (Reuters) - Semiconductor manufacturing tools maker Applied Materials Inc (AMAT.O) forecast third-quarter revenue above market estimates on Thursday, as governments around the world pour funding into chip factories. Chief Executive Officer Gary E. Dickerson said the company believes about $400 billion in government funding is supporting the chip industry. Applied Materials forecast third-quarter revenue of $6.15 billion, plus or minus $400 million, compared with analysts' estimates of $6.02 billion, according to Refinitiv IBES data. The company posted second-quarter revenue of $6.63 billion, compared with estimates of $6.38 billion. On an adjusted basis, the company earned $2 per share in the second quarter, beating estimates of $1.84 according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Reuters previously reported that the company was not planning to deploy its first in-house AI chip widely and was already working on a successor. The blog posts portrayed the first MTIA chip as a learning opportunity. As part of that, the company scrapped plans for a large-scale rollout of an in-house inference chip and started work on a more ambitious chip capable of performing both training and inference, according to the Reuters reporting. Meta acknowledged in its blog posts that its first MTIA chip stumbled with high-complexity AI models, although it said the chip handled low- and medium-complexity models more efficiently than competitor chips. The MTIA chip also used only 25 watts of power - a fraction of what market-leading chips from suppliers such as Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) consume - and used an open-source chip architecture called RISC-V, Meta said.

But the materials are expensive and still face supply bottlenecks compared with the cheaper standard silicon used in most chips. The company has previously raised funding from semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT.O). iDEAL has partnered with Bloomington, Minnesota-based chip manufacturer Polar Semiconductor to make its first chips and is planning to roll them out later this year. Granahan said silicon carbide chips can still beat iDEAL's for certain applications including the extremely high voltage chips needed for applications such as electric semi trucks. But he said iDEAL's chips could be competitive for about 90% of the overall market for power chips.

☆ ON Semiconductor mulls $2 bln investment in electric vehicle chip production
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 16 (Reuters) - ON Semiconductor Corp (ON.O) is considering investing $2 billion in boosting production of silicon carbide chips that are widely used to help extend the range of electric vehicles, company executives said on Tuesday. The company makes more than half of its own chips internally and has invested in a full supply chain for energy efficient silicon carbide chips, making both the raw materials and finished chips in-house. Trent said that increased silicon carbide production would happen at one of the company's existing sites, rather building a new factory, to save costs. At a financial analyst day on Thursday, executives said they aim to capture 40% of the silicon carbide automotive chip market by 2027. Over the same time period, ON Semiconductor expects to expand free cash flows from $1.6 billion in 2022 to $3.5 billion to $4 billion by 2027.

☆ Intel, Boston Consulting Group team to sell AI to corporate customers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 10 (Reuters) - Intel Corp (INTC.O) and Boston Consulting Group on Wednesday said they are working together to sell generative artificial intelligence tools to big businesses. Google owner Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) are revamping their search engines with AI technology to provide answers to questions rather than lists of links. Previously, BCG employees conducted a keyword search and had to click through each document to see whether it contained what they were looking for. With the new system, the AI system can answer employees' questions using the archive or summarize entire documents. Intel built the supercomputer and software so that BCG did not have to share its data with Intel.

☆ LinkedIn cuts over 700 jobs, phases out China app as demand wavers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

In the past six months, more than 270,000 tech jobs globally have been cut, according to Layoffs.fyi, which has been tracking the fallout. A LinkedIn spokesperson said the vendors were "external partners" who would take on new and existing work. The remaining China app, called InCareers, will be phased out by Aug. 9, LinkedIn said. LinkedIn will retain a presence in China to help companies operating there to hire and train employees outside the country, the company spokesperson said. Before LinkedIn's announcement, 5,000 technology jobs had been in eliminated in May alone, according to Layoffs.fyi.

☆ LinkedIn to cut 716 jobs, phase out China local jobs app
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 8 (Reuters) - LinkedIn, the social media network owned by Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) that focuses on business professionals, said on Monday it would cut 716 jobs as part of broader changes that would also result in it phasing out its local jobs app in China. In a letter to employees, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky said the move to cut roles in its sales, operations and support teams was aimed at streamlining the company's operations. Roslansky also said in the letter that the changes would result in creating 250 new jobs. A LinkedIn spokesperson said that employees affected by the cuts would be eligible to apply for those roles. The remaining China app, called InCareers, will be phased out by Aug. 9, LinkedIn said.

☆ Alphabet-backed Anthropic outlines the moral values behind its AI bot
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The moral values guidelines, which Anthropic calls Claude's constitution, draw from several sources, including the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and even Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) data privacy rules. Anthropic was founded by former executives from Microsoft Corp-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI to focus on creating safe AI systems that will not, for example, tell users how to build a weapon or use racially biased language. Co-founder Dario Amodei was one of several AI executives who met with Biden last week to discuss potential dangers of AI. Anthropic takes a different approach, giving its Open AI competitor Claude a set of written moral values to read and learn from as it makes decisions on how to respond to questions. "In a few months, I predict that politicians will be quite focused on what the values are of different AI systems, and approaches like constitutional AI will help with that discussion because we can just write down the values," Clark said.

☆ Qualcomm to acquire Israeli auto-chip maker Autotalks
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Autotalks makes dedicated chips used in the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications technology for manned and driverless vehicles to improve road safety. The company had credited the jump to its Snapdragon Digital Chassis product used by car makers and their suppliers. The Snapdragon Digital Chassis can provide assisted and autonomous driving technology, as well as in-car infotainment and cloud connectivity. Qualcomm on Monday said it would incorporate Autotalks' solutions into Snapdragon Digital Chassis product portfolio, but did not elaborate on the financials of the deal. The acquisition will be made through its unit Qualcomm Technologies, Qualcomm added.

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