 | Sep 17, 2024 | | | | Supported by  | | | | | Happy Tuesday! Meta has banned RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media outlets from its platforms. Amazon is planning to reduce the number of managers. Intel's CEO outlined the chip maker's plans to revive its business, including a deal with AWS.
| | | | Meta Platforms has banned Russian state media outlets including RT and Rossiya Segodnya from its platforms due to allegations that they have engaged in deceptive influence operations, Reuters and other news outlets reported. Meta's move comes after the Justice Department earlier this month announced a set of actions to crack down on the Russian government's influence operations in the U.S. The actions included criminal charges against two RT employees in a $10 million scheme to distribute content "with hidden Russian government messaging," according to the Justice Department's Sept. 4 statement. Meta's latest action is more drastic than most other steps the social media giant has taken in the past against Russian state media outlets. | | | | Amazon is planning to reduce the number of managers at the company, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo on Monday. The company is also ordering most employees back to the office five days per week. Jassy said in the memo that Amazon's goal is to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025. He said the aim of having fewer managers was to decrease bureaucracy, among other goals. Jassy's decision to order most corporate employees back to the office five days per week, up from three currently, will take effect the first week of January. It will make Amazon one of the first out of the largest U.S. tech companies to require employees to return to the office for five days per week after companies relaxed in-office work rules during the pandemic. | | | | Intel's stock jumped more than 8% in after-hours trading after CEO Pat Gelsinger published a memo outlining several ways he plans to revive the firm, including by making a server networking chip with Amazon and receiving more funding from the government. He said the chip designer plans to make its money-losing chip manufacturing business, Intel Foundry, an independent subsidiary so the unit has the ability raise outside capital. Gelsinger also said Intel and Amazon Web Services plan to develop a custom semiconductor known as an "AI fabric chip," which Intel Foundry will produce. He said the deal is a part of a "multi-year, multi-billion-dollar framework." An Intel spokesperson declined to provide more specifics on the terms. The fabric chip is a networking technology that will allow servers to communicate with each other, according to someone with direct knowledge of the effort, and could help AWS lower costs for AI workloads in its data centers. The chip deal suggests AWS is reviving old plans for a networking chip. Gelsinger also said Intel received $3 billion in funding under the CHIPS Act to manufacture advanced semiconductors for the Department of Defense. Earlier this year, Intel got a separate $8.5 billion CHIPS Act grant to build advanced chip fabrication facilities in the U.S. Before Monday's announcement, Intel shares were down 56% this year. | | | | Three federal appeals court judges hearing TikTok's suit against the U.S. government over legislation that would ban the app in the U.S. focused their questions on the government's claim that TikTok posed a national security risk. The line of query signaled the judges may be unswayed by TikTok's argument that the law will violate its users' freedom of speech. During oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, judges knocked down TikTok's argument that its ownership by China's ByteDance was analogous to foreign–owned media outlets such as Politico (owned by Germany's Axel Springer). And the judges noted there was precedent for a court ruling that national security concerns outweighed freedom of speech concerns. TikTok is trying to stop a U.S. law that requires it to find a new parent for the app in the U.S. or shut down by Jan. 19 from going into effect. TikTok has successfully fought prior U.S. efforts to ban the app by arguing such bans infringe on its users' freedom of speech, and in the case of former President Donald Trump's executive order in 2020, that he was exercising presidential overreach. Congress, in passing legislation on TikTok earlier this year, argued a divestment of the app from its U.S. parent is necessary to prevent China's Communist Party from influencing TikTok's U.S. users. Outside legal experts said it will be much harder for TikTok to convince the court to overlook these national security concerns. | | | | Thierry Breton resigned from his role as internal market commissioner for the European Union, according to a letter the French official posted to X on Sunday night. He accused European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of trying to prevent his candidacy for a second term in the EU executive body. "You asked France to withdraw my name – for personal reasons that in no instance you have discussed directly with me – and offered, as a political trade-off, an allegedly more influential portfolio for France," the letter said. Breton clashed with President von der Leyen last month when he issued a warning letter to Elon Musk that von der Leyen's office had not approved. French President Emmanuel Macron nominated foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné instead of Breton for the European Commission on Monday, Séjourné said on X. As Internal Market Commissioner, Breton enforced the EU's Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, a responsibility that put him in conflict with tech companies like Google, Apple, Meta, and X. Breton also worked on passing the bloc's AI Act. Minutes before sharing his letter, Breton posted an image of an empty picture frame with the satirical caption "My official portrait for the next European Commission term." | | | | Microsoft will raise the quarterly dividend that it pays investors to 83 cents a share, up from 75 cents, beginning in November, the company said late Monday. The software maker will also buy back $60 billion in stock. It's almost completed a $60 billion stock buyback initiated in 2021. Shares rose by roughly half a percentage point on Monday evening after the company's announcements. Microsoft is returning cash to shareholders as they await a return on the company's unprecedented spending on AI in recent years. Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI in exchange for the rights to reuse its software and a share of its profits. It has also projected that it will spend more than $50 billion in capital expenditures this year to build out datacenters to power AI applications. Microsoft has been generating revenue from OpenAI's use of its Azure cloud computing servers, The Information previously reported, but has yet to see a noticeable bump in software sales as customers hold back on spending heavily on Microsoft's AI-infused applications. | | | | Microsoft is rolling out new 'Copilot' features in its Office 365 software in an effort to convince more businesses to spend on the $30-per-user AI software, CEO Satya Nadella said Monday. The company is adding a new "Copilot Agents" feature that lets people configure AI agents that will carry out certain tasks automatically without being prompted by a human—for instance, the agents can monitor an email inbox and automatically add data from certain emails to a spreadsheet as the emails arrive, Microsoft said. Microsoft has for months been working on the new agent features, which are powered by OpenAI's models, in the hopes of convincing more customers that the AI software is worth the money, The Information previously reported. The company is also rolling out new features aimed at making 365 Copilot work better in apps like Powerpoint and Excel. One feature automatically creates Python code based on users' written prompts, then feeds the Python code into Excel in order to carry out complex tasks like forecasting or visualizing data, corporate vice president Jared Spataro said Monday. The Information first reported that Microsoft was building such features earlier this month amid halting adoption from customers who were frustrated by glitches in the pricey AI software. The new features will be introduced this month, Spataro said. | | | | | Popular articles
By Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo and Amir Efrati
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