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"At this point, we are no longer behind in building out our AI infrastructure," Zuckerberg said on a conference call. AI recommendations increased time spent on Instagram by 24% in the January-March quarter, Meta said. Reuters GraphicsCOST CONTROLSpending on the AI retooling has spiked the company's capital expenditures, which came in slightly under expectations at $7.1 billion for the quarter. "We've been focusing on both AI and the metaverse for years now, and we will continue to focus on both." Revenue for the first quarter rose 3% to $28.65 billion, beating an average estimate of $27.66 billion.

☆ Meta's first-quarter win shows Zuckerberg is serious about cutting costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Zev Fima | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Meta Platforms (META) reported stellar first-quarter results on Wednesday, in the latest sign CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency" is translating into tangible financial progress for the Club name. Meta stock soared in afterhours trading by more than 11.5%, to around $233.70 a share. As a result, we are raising our price target on Meta stock to $250 per share, from $220. Outlook Meta said it expects second-quarter 2023 revenues to be in the range of $29.5 billion to $32 billion. First-quarter commentary Over 3 billion people now use one of the company's apps every day, Zuckerberg said at the start of Meta's post-earnings conference call Wednesday.

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.

☆ 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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☆ China's SenseTime unveils new AI products and chatbot
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] The logo of SenseTime is seen at SenseTime office, in Shanghai, China December 13, 2021. REUTERS/Aly SongHONG KONG, April 10 (Reuters) - China's SenseTime (0020.HK) unveiled on Monday a slew of new artificial intelligence-powered products including a chatbot and image generator, joining a global race ignited by the popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Big models are typically trained on massive datasets using powerful hardware. Global interest in AI technology has soared since the debut in late 2022 of ChatGPT, a popular chat bot developed by U.S. company OpenAI which uses generative AI technology that learns from past data to create new text, images or computer code. "We have been focusing on developing our big models.

☆ Google reveals its newest A.I. supercomputer, says it beats Nvidia
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

While Nvidia dominates the market for AI model training and deployment, with over 90%, Google has been designing and deploying AI chips called Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, since 2016. On Tuesday, Google said that it had built a system with over 4,000 TPUs joined with custom components designed to run and train AI models. It's been running since 2020, and was used to train Google's PaLM model, which competes with OpenAI's GPT model, over 50 days. Google's TPU-based supercomputer, called TPU v4, is "1.2x–1.7x faster and uses 1.3x–1.9x less power than the Nvidia A100," the Google researchers wrote. For example, Google said that Midjourney, an AI image generator, was trained on its TPU chips.

☆ Want in on the AI boom? These 8 high-quality stocks are already ahead of the pack
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Paulina Likos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +13 min

AI-powered technology companies Microsoft Microsoft arguably pushed AI into the mainstream with its unexpected release of its new AI-powered search engine Bing. During its annual conference for developers earlier this month, Nvidia demonstrated the fundamental importance of its role in facilitating the usage AI applications. Also unveiled were four new chips designed specifically for inferencing , which are optimized for various new generative AI applications. To facilitate these operations, AMD provides machine learning and deep learning systems which offer higher-performance computing capabilities to accelerate AI applications. Qualcomm Qualcomm (QCOM) is focused on making AI technology on-device processing more efficient across different industries and products.

☆ Top Wall Street analysts pick these stocks for attractive returns
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( Tipranks.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

In these tough times, investors would be well advised to find stocks that are positioned to navigate a potential economic downturn. To help with the process, here are five stocks chosen by Wall Street's top professionals, according to TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance. However, the company issued conservative guidance for fiscal 2023 due to the impact of high inflation on its low-to-moderate income customers. Further, he thinks that Kontoor's fiscal 2023 outlook "will likely prove conservative." Poser raised his fiscal 2023 and 2024 earnings per share estimates, reiterated his buy rating for Kontoor Brands and increased the price target to $60 from $53.

☆ Is ChatGPT the tip of the iceberg? Analysts reveal potential A.I. uses — and the stocks to play it
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Zavier Ong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

ChatGPT is considered by far the most successful generative AI tool to date. But while ChatGPT is undoubtedly the talk of the town, HSBC believes it could just be the tip of the generative AI iceberg. However, there is the potential for Generative AI to have a significant impact on several sectors of the economy," the bank said. How to play it Morgan Stanley has named a raft of global stocks to play generative AI. Medical diagnostics Meanwhile, Canaccord Genuity in a Feb. 20 note highlighted the implications of AI on the medical diagnostics sector.

☆ Meet the $10,000 Nvidia chip powering the race for A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Powering many of these applications is a roughly $10,000 chip that's become one of the most critical tools in the artificial intelligence industry: The Nvidia A100. The A100 is ideally suited for the kind of machine learning models that power tools like ChatGPT, Bing AI, or Stable Diffusion. Huang, Nvidia's CEO, said in an interview with CNBC's Katie Tarasov that the company's products are actually inexpensive for the amount of computation that these kinds of models need. "We took what otherwise would be a $1 billion data center running CPUs, and we shrunk it down into a data center of $100 million," Huang said. Huang said that Nvidia's GPUs allow startups to train models for a much lower cost than if they used a traditional computer processor.

☆ Nvidia pops after strong quarter, guidance — showing why the stock still has long-term promise
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Zev Fima | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Nvidia (NVDA) reported better-than-expected fiscal 2023 fourth-quarter results after the closing bell Wednesday and a strong current-quarter forecast. As of Wednesday's close, Nvidia has been one of our best performers in 2023, up 42% this year. Essentially, this service provides customers the ability to access an Nvidia DGX super-computer with nothing more than their browsers and allows them to access Nvidia AI Enterprise for "training and deploying large language models or other AI workloads." Guidance Looking ahead to fiscal 2024 first quarter, management forecasted better-than-expected sales, adjusted gross margin and capital expenditures on a non-GAAP basis. Capital Allocation In its fiscal 2023 fourth quarter, Nvidia returned a total of $1.15 billion to shareholders via dividends and buybacks.

☆ Microsoft's $10 billion bet on ChatGPT's maker gives it a powerful new weapon in the cloud wars with Amazon and Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Cloud, increasingly important to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, is slowing down in the short term. But the company has a longer-term strategic weapon that could help it win the cloud wars: its once-in-a-generation bet on OpenAI. Any hint of a slowdown in growth for Microsoft's Azure, Amazon's AWS, and Google Cloud tends to provoke analyst angst. Even if there are immediate challenges for cloud growth, Microsoft sees its OpenAI bet, reported to be worth $10 billion, as a bigger strategic move. Microsoft Cloud, which also includes revenue from Office 365 and other products as well as Azure, represented around 50% of the company's overall revenue.

☆ Microsoft says it will roll out ChatGPT on its own AI service after reports it will invest $10 billion into OpenAI
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The tech giant plans to make the chatbot available through its Azure OpenAI service. Azure OpenAI is now generally available as part of an expansion of Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft's corporate vice president for AI platforms Eric Boyd wrote. Azure OpenAI is a service through which language tools like GPT-3 and Codex can be used and adapted to specific tasks. ChatGPT — which has been trialed on Azure AI infrastructure — will be available through Azure OpenAI soon, the post said. Microsoft highlighted that companies like KPMG, Al Jazeera, and Moveworks are already using its Azure OpenAI service.

☆ Read the memo Mark Zuckerberg sent to employees announcing Meta's plans to lay off more than 11,000 people
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo to employees on Wednesday announcing mass layoffs at Meta. Meta employees have been expecting widespread layoffs for months as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's focus on creating the metaverse has proven extremely costly and slow, Insider previously reported. Read below the full note that Zuckerberg sent to Meta staff:Today I'm sharing some of the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history. I've decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We would not be where we are today without your hard work, and I'm grateful for your contributions.

☆ Meta laying off more than 11,000 employees
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

Meta is laying off 13% of its staff, or more than 11,000 employees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday. "I've decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. Impacted employees will receive 16 weeks of pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, Zuckerberg said. This hefty bet has cost Meta $9.4 billion so far in 2022, and the company anticipates that losses "will grow significantly year-over-year." I've decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go.

☆ Not even Mark Zuckerberg's beloved metaverse projects are safe from Meta's sweeping layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Meta has announced sweeping layoffs across the whole company, including its metaverse division. Meta has pumped billions of dollars into its Reality Labs division, leading to massive losses. Reality Labs has reported massive losses that are crushing the company's profits. "We continue to anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year," Meta said in an SEC filing on Wednesday. "I'm currently in the middle of a thorough review of our infrastructure spending," Zuckerberg said.

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